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Lent is not about chocolate

March 21, 2015

Lent 5 – 2015

John 12:22-30

Marian Free

In the name of God who raises the dead to new life, and who raises us from our daily deaths to newness of life. Amen.

Some time in recent weeks, I was shown a column in The Courier Mail. It was written by a young man who was making comments about Lent that demonstrated that he not only did his misunderstand the purpose of Lent, but that he had completely missed the point. I don’t have a copy of the article to hand, but as I remember the writer was pointing out how foolish, even meaningless, it was to give up things for Lent. He urged readers to go out and indulge themselves and to ask themselves what made them feel better – going without or indulging?

The article was a stark reminder that a sad reality of today’s world is that the Christian faith has been transmitted in such a way that the faith and its practices are not only misunderstood, but are also, at times, a source of ridicule. I am not precious about my faith and I have no problem with people making fun of it, or of us, when that humour is properly informed. What does disturb me is that sometimes humour slides into misinformed derision. One only has to listen to some of the radio stations favoured by our youth to hear that misconceptions about, and negative attitudes towards, Christianity abound. Worse still, it appears that for a large number of people, such misconceptions are a result of their experiences of the church and its teaching.

This means that if the faith is misunderstood, if a whole generation does not understand what we are on about, and if there are many people in the world who do not respect the Christian faith, then the fault, broadly speaking, lies with us. I would contend that for decades, if not centuries we have failed to share the good news, reducing it to rules and regulations that can deaden rather than enliven. The season of Lent is a good example. There are people who give up something for Lent who then spent the whole of Lent either complaining or boasting about it? Such people give the impression that the discipline of Lent is something that has been imposed rather than freely chosen or implied that it is a burden rather than a form of liberation.

The problem with this is that Lent is NOT about self-abnegation or self-mortification, it is not – I repeat, not- about being miserable or imposed upon. Rather Lent, like all forms of spiritual practice, is a God-given opportunity to grow, to examine our lives, to stop and see whether there are areas in which we can improve, ways in which we can better live out our Christian vocation. If we chose to give up something for Lent it is to facilitate, not hinder, our spiritual development.

Traditionally Anglicans have given up a luxury item for Lent, something that is enjoyable but not essential – chocolate or wine. We might like chocolate or a glass or two of wine, but neither are absolutely necessary to our well-being. Ideally over the course of Lent we learn that we don’t need whatever it is that we have given up, that our lives are not determined by it and that we can live happily and well without it.

It could be argued that chocolate and wine are easy to give up. Other things, those that have the potential to stunt our spiritual growth are much harder to let go of. Such things can be material, emotional or even psychological. They will be different according to the individual. For example, in the gospels, the thing that was holding back the rich young man was his possessions, for the man who wanted to follow Jesus it was his desire to farewell his family and for the man who had been sick for thirty eight years it was his inability to give up his self-identity as someone who was sick.

Through each of these examples, Jesus challenges each of us to consider what it is that is constraining us, what it is that is preventing us from reaching spiritual maturity. So for example, it is possible that some of us are overly concerned with financial security, or that we are in the grip of unhealthy relationships or that we are allowing a long-standing grudge to define who we are in relation to God and to others. These and many other things prevent us from developing fully as human beings and they certainly prevent us from realizing our divine natures.

In today’s gospel Jesus says: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” The language of love and hate is strong to be sure but Jesus uses it to underline his point. We can be so focused the things of this world that we lose the opportunity to be engaged with the world to come. We can be so obsessed with material things that we do not pay enough attention to spiritual things. We can be so wrapped up with the trivia of the everyday that we overlook the bigger picture of a full and happy life.

Jesus says that those who love their life will lose it. He is claiming that those who are bound up with their own issues are not really living. Those who hate their life he says will keep it for eternal life. Jesus is pointing out that those who are dissatisfied with the chains that hold them back, will allow themselves to be changed, transformed and set free to grow. This is the promise – that if we die to ourselves, especially those parts of ourselves that hold us to worldly values and ideals – we will be raised to newness of life – again, and again and again.

What is extraordinary is that iff we have the courage to let go of the things that bind us, we will discover that we lose nothing and gain everything.

When we allow ourselves to be liberated from concerns about wealth, liberated from false sense of responsibility to other and liberated from the emotional baggage that ties us down we are free to grow and to life life to the full. To live as God has always intended us to live – free and happy and content. To live a life that not only gives us everything, but demonstrates to the world how much we have as a consequence of faith. Unless a seed dies …. unless we allow God to change and transform us, the world will never see the privilege and joy that it is to have and to live out our faith.

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Victory of the cross

March 14, 2015
Cruciform woman - Emmanuel United College Toronto

Cruciform woman – Emmanuel United College Toronto

A more sentimental image

A more sentimental image

Nikolai Ge Crucifixion

Nikolai Ge Crucifixion

Lent 4 – 2015

John 3:14-21

Marian Free

 God of contradiction, open our hearts and minds to understand that your ways are not our ways and your thoughts are not our thoughts. Amen.

The crucifixion of Jesus has been portrayed in a wide variety of ways from the pious and sentimental to the violent and grotesque. Many are confronting (if for different reasons). For example I feel some disquiet when I see an image of Jesus fully dressed (in Bishop’s regalia) and exhibiting no signs of pain. Equally confronting is one from South America that depicts what looks like a charred body arched in pain and screaming in agony. For centuries the crucified Jesus was depicted as white (often blond). During the twentieth century new and original images emerged that more accurately reflected Jesus as a representative of all humanity – or example a Jesus with Chinese, Maori or African features. Sidney Nolan portrayed Jesus as a woman as did the artist whose sculpture was placed in a United Church in Toronto. Such imagery enables women and those whose skin colour is not white to fully grasp the notion that Jesus died for all people – including them – and not just for white (middle class) males.

New and confronting images of the crucifixion can help to make real the horror of the crucifixion. They can enable us to peel back the layers of piety that have, over the centuries, stripped the cross of its meaning. Our churches have crosses in all kinds of shapes and designs. There are wooden crosses, brass crosses, crosses made of silver or gold and crosses that are encrusted with jewels. Crosses in a number of different designs are worn as jewellery – even by those who do not profess the Christian faith. In many cases, the image of cross even when it is adorned with a crucified Christ has become so familiar that it has lost its power to confront and to challenge.

That said, I’m not at all sure that we would wish to be confronted with the horror of the crucifixion on a daily basis. We are told that crucifixion was an awful way in which to die. Whether a person was nailed or tied to a cross, they died slowly and of suffocation – pushing down on their nailed (or bound) feet so that they could take a breath[1]. It could take as long as three days to die. Crucifixion was also a very public death. Those who were condemned to die were generally put to death by the side of a well-travelled road so that their deaths could serve as an example to as many people as possible. It was a cruel, inhumane and humiliating way in which to die and, one would think, the most unlikely image to become an object of veneration.

This contradiction – that an image of torture and death could become a symbol representative of life and hope – is captured by the author of John’s gospel. In 3:14-15 Jesus says: “the Son of Man must be lifted up so that whomever believes in him will have eternal life.” In this passage and other places in which Jesus uses the expression “lifted up”, he is referring to his crucifixion. (“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself.” (12:32)) For the author of John’s gospel the cross, the crucifixion is the high point of Jesus’ ministry, the moment towards which the whole gospel is moving and the point at which it Jesus’ mission reaches not only its climax, but its fulfillment. The cross is a victory, not a defeat.

Lindars points out that Jesus’ victory on the cross is at least two-fold[2]. By laying dow his life for others, Jesus is demonstrating not only his deep love, but what is really God’s love for the world. In freely offering this gift, Jesus shows his readiness to do as the Father wills and demonstrates that he and the Father are one. Lindars refers to this as his “moral union with God”.

By overcoming the natural human resistance to pain and death and by conquering the human will to live, Jesus shows that human nature’s propensity to resist God and goodness can in fact be overcome and that humanity does not have to submit to selfish desires or to the propensity to gratify one’s own needs and desires before all else. Through his submission to the cross Jesus, Lindars suggests, wins the “supreme moral victory” (which is also a cosmic victory for “in his own person the devil’s grip on humanity is broken” (12:31)).

“Lifting up” in John’s gospel several layers of meaning. It can refer to the cross as the place of victory but it also suggestive of Jesus’ exaltation to the right hand of the Father. At the same time, because as we have seen, crucifixion was a very public event and because the cross lifted the victim above the level of the crowds the condemned men were very visible to those who gathered and to those who passed by. On the cross, Jesus is visibly and publicly displayed for all to see. Thank goodness we do not have to witness the physical event, but through the images that are available and those in our mind’s eye, we see Jesus’ lifted up and through John’s gospel comprehend that in this instance defeat is in fact victory, that death is a door to life and that even the worst of human excesses can be overcome.

We come to understand that on the cross, Jesus bore all the suffering of the world, experienced the baseness and cruelty of humankind at its worst and identified with the victims of cruelty and torture, the victims of domestic violence and bullying, the victims of oppression and injustice and all who have suffered at the hands of others. Those who have experienced unbearable pain and suffering can look at the cross and know that God shared/shares their pain. This understanding is best captured by a poem written by a woman who had experienced abuse at the hands of a man. The poem is written in response to a cruciform image of a woman that was hung below a cross in a United Church Chapel in Toronto.

May we all see in Jesus “lifted up” the victory of the cross, Jesus union with the Father, the triumph over evil and the possibility of resurrection.

By his wounds you have been healed

1 Peter 2:24

 

O God,

through the image of a woman

crucified on the cross

I understand at last.

 

For over hold my life

I have been ashamed

of the scars I bear.

These scars tell an ugly story,

a common story,

about a girl who is the victim

when a man acts out his fantasies.

 

In the warmth, peace and sunlight of your presence

I was able to uncurl my tightly clenched fists.

for the first time

I felt your suffering presence with me

in that event.

I have known you as a vulnerable baby,

as a brother and as a father.

Now I know you as a woman.

You we’re there with me as the violated girl

caught in helpless suffering.

 

The chains of shame and fear

no longer bind my heart and body.

A slow fire of compassion and forgiveness

is kindled.

my tears fall now

for man as well as woman.

 

You, God,

can make our violated bodies

vessels of love and comfort

to such a desperate man.

I am honored

to carry this womanly power

within my body and soul.

 

You were not ashamed of your wounds.

You showed them to Thomas

as marks of your ordeal and death.

I will no longer hide these wounds of mine.

I will bear them gracefully.

They tell a resurrection story.

 

Anonymous. Written after seeing a figure of a woman, arms outstretched as if crucified, hung below the cross in the Chapel of the Bloor St United Church in Toronto. The statue is now in a courtyard of Emmanuel United College in Toronto.[3]

 

 

[1] A Google search of images of the crucifixion provides some sketches which demonstrate what crucifixion was like.

[2] Lindars, Barnabas, SSF in The Johannine Literature. Ed Lindars, Barnabas, Edwards, Ruth B. and Court, John. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000, 91-93.

[3] The poem is anonymous. I read it in a Newsletter published by The World Council of Churches in 1988 as a part of the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women (1988-1998).

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Breaking down the barriers

March 7, 2015

Lent 3 -2015
John 2:13-21
Marian Free

In the name of God, whom we access through Jesus – not through buildings or rituals. Amen.

John 2:13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body.

I wonder what, if anything, surprised you in today’s gospel? For myself, three things are immediately obvious. The first is that Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple occurs at the beginning of his ministry; the second is that Jesus compares the Temple precincts to a marketplace and not to a “den of thieves” and the third is the reference to Jesus’ body as a temple. These stand out because they are not found in the other accounts of the same event. If you were to put John’s account of the cleansing of the Temple side by side with the accounts found in the other three gospels you would notice other significant differences in the retelling. These include Jesus making a whip of cords, pouring out the coins of the money-changers, the disciples’ remembering the Psalm (“zeal for your house”) and suggesting that if the Temple were destroyed, he Jesus, could raise it up in three days.

These distinctions are significant and important if we are to understand John’s gospel and the differences between John’s gospel and Matthew, Mark and Luke. Among other things, the Synoptic Gospels place the majority of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. Jesus makes only one visit to Jerusalem and that is for less than a week – the week in which he dies. The author of John’s gospel suggests that there were three occasions on which Jesus visited Jerusalem and that his first visit – this one, occurred immediately after the wedding at Cana (which is in Galilee). Jesus performs the first of his signs – changing water into wine – and immediately makes the long trip to Jerusalem for the Passover.

According to John, Jesus goes to Jerusalem on several occasions during his ministry and he appears to spend a great deal of time there – more time there than in Galilee. The Synoptic gospels tell the story quite differently, Jesus visits only once and that just before his death. The differences in the accounts means that it is difficult to tell just how long Jesus’ public ministry was. Was it only one year as implied by the Synoptics, or was it three as implied in John’s account?

Of course each author retells the story in a different way according to the point they want to make. In the case of John’s gospel, one of the author’s intentions is to demonstrate that in his person, Jesus replaces the Temple, its festivals and its rituals. Through Jesus, in other words, John claims that believers have a direct access to God. There is no longer any need for an intermediary – whether that be the priests or the rituals associated with the Temple. In Jesus is all that a believer needs for healing, rest, and life-giving sustenance. This is most evident in what we know as the “I am” statements some of which occur specifically in the context of the Jewish festivals. When Jesus says: “I am the light of the world”, “I am the living water”, “I am the bread of life”, he is implying that in his person he represents the symbols of the cult. As the light of the world, Jesus makes Hanukkah redundant, as the bread of life he implies that he replaces the Passover festival and as the water of life, he becomes the primary symbol associated with the Feast of the Tabernacles.

All of this goes to explain why the author of John’s gospel places Jesus’ clearing of the Temple at the very beginning of Jesus ministry. It sets the scene for what is to come. In other words, John is using this event in Jesus’ life to introduce the idea that Jesus replaces the Temple and all that it represents. This theme is not unique to John, but is found, albeit in a very different way in the Book of Hebrews, which is much more explicit about Jesus’ replacement of the Temple, the priesthood and the sanctuary as the primary means by which believers access or enter into relationship with God.

To us this all seems self-evident – it is a theme with which we have lived our whole lives. It is important to remember that John is writing in a completely different context – one in which the Temple had played a role for centuries and in which there were temples were central to the worship of the vast array of Greek and Roman gods. Worshipping a god without a Temple was almost inconceivable if for no other resaon than that there needed to be somewhere to offer sacrifices.

John is writing at the end of the first century. At the time Jerusalem (and therefore the Temple) had been destroyed – the focus of the Jewish cult no longer existed. Even had it survived, those who believed in Jesus would not have been welcome because they had not supported the Jews in the uprising against Rome If the Temple no longer existed, it would have raised the questions: Where and how might the cult be practiced if there is no longer a Temple, no longer a Holy of Holies? If there was no longer a Temple how and where would believers express their relationship with God? Without the Temple how could the people communicate with God.

John’s gospel provides the answer – all these things are possible in and through Jesus. The Temple is no longer necessary. Through Jesus believers have direct access to God. They do not need cult or ritual to express their relationship with or to communicate with God. Everything that the Temple cult had provided – reconciliation with God, purity rituals, opportunities to give thanks to God and so on – is now to be found in and expressed through the person of Jesus. This is the point that John is making in his retelling of the “cleansing of the Temple”. Jesus claims that should the Temple itself be destroyed, he could raise it up – not in the 46 years it had taken Herod to bring it to its current state, but in just three days. This is an extraordinary claim. It would be impossible to rebuild the bricks and mortar of the building, but as John explains for the benefits of his readers, Jesus is not referring to the physical Temple, but to himself. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus will become the means of communication with God. All that the Temple has been, all the functions that the Temple has served, will be available through faith in Jesus. If there is a need for a Temple, Jesus is that Temple.

It is important to understand that the Church is not a substitute for the Temple, that the clergy are not intermediaries between the faithful and God, that our rites and rituals might express our faith but they do not stand between God and us. Thanks to Jesus, the relationship between each individual and God is direct and immediate. Those who believe in Jesus don’t need someone else to pray for on their behalf, to ask forgiveness on their behalf or to offer sacrifices on their behalf. No one needs another person to act as God’s interpreter because God is accessible to each and every one of us.

God has broken all the barriers, between himself and humankind. Such barriers as there are of our own making and our own design.

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Open to heaven

January 17, 2015

Epiphany 2 – 2015

John 1:43-51

Marian Free

 May my spoken word, lead us through the written Word, to encounter the Living Word, even Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

Last week Rodney and I attended the Clergy Summer School. Attending is always worthwhile, because whatever the topic, I find that I learn something new. At the same time I enjoy the break and the collegiality of my peers. This year our theme was music – “The Experience of Music as Theology. One of our speakers was Geoff Bullock – the founder of Hillsong Music Australia. A composer and lyric writer, he was the Worship pastor of Hillsong from 1987-1995. Four of Geoff’s songs can be found in our hymnbook including The Power of Your Love and The Heavens Shall Declare. The second speaker was Maeve Heaney, a member of the Spanish religious community (Verbum Die Missionary Society). Like Geoff, Maeve is a writer and composer of Christian music. She hails from Ireland, has written a Phd on music as theology and now teaches at the Australian Catholic University at Banyo.

The two speakers were invited for very different reasons. The committee were aware that Geoff had left Hillsong 20 years ago and that since then both his faith and his music writing had taken a different direction. Music and lyrics that had formerly reflected the theology of the Hillsong community had changed to be more representative of mainstream theology. Geoff was invited to tell his story and to share with us some of the history of contemporary church music. Maeve had recently published her Phd and was invited to speak about church music from a more academic perspective.

As I have said, the Summer School is always valuable, but this year there was a very different feel to it. On reflection, I suspect that it was because the input was not just academic, but also personal – there was heart stuff as well as head stuff. In sharing the story of his music, Geoff shared a great deal about his faith story and in teaching us about the theology of music; Maeve revealed something of her relationship with Jesus. The generosity of both Maeve and Geoff in sharing with us their personal stories brought us face-to-face with the presence of Jesus in their lives. I felt that they told their stories in such a way that the presence of God was almost palpable. It was if a door had been opened between heaven and earth and that Jesus was in the lecture theatre with us.

This week and last, the gospel readings have reminded us that in Jesus the boundaries between heaven and earth have been radically changed. Last Sunday, we heard from Mark’s gospel  that at Jesus’ baptism the heavens were ripped apart and that the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove. In today’s gospel Jesus tells Nathaniel: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Many of us will have recognised in today’s gospel the reference to Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:7 in which Jacob sees angels ascending and descending a ladder that reaches into heaven. There is a significant difference however between Genesis and John. In the former, access to heaven occurs when Jacob is dreaming whereas Jesus’ promise to Nathaniel suggests that access to heaven is through Jesus, that Jesus’ presence on earth means that the barriers between heaven and earth have been permanently removed. From now on, access to heaven or to God is not limited to dreams, it is not mediated through the patriarchs, the prophets or the priests, it is not found only in the Temple, but is available at any time and in any place to each and everyone of Jesus’ disciples and to all who worship him. Jesus’ coming among us on earth means that heaven and earth have been brought together in a way that was unimaginable and perhaps even impossible before.

That does not necessarily mean that we are always aware of God’s presence, nor that we are constantly “moved by the Spirit”. Life would be impossible if every person of faith was constantly experiencing or seeking some sort of religious or spiritual high. If that were to be the case, there would be a danger that the experience of heaven would come to be taken for granted, that instead of our experience of God being wondrous and special it would become mundane and ordinary. Of course, we all know the presence of God in our lives most if not all of the time, but there are occasions when it feels as though, God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit is particularly close. At those times there seems to be no barrier between the eternal and ourselves.

How and when that happens will almost certainly be different for each one of us. For some it will happen when they are listening to a particularly inspiring or beautiful piece of music, others will have their breath taken away by an extraordinary view, still others will have an experience of God during worship or in a time of private prayer and yet others when they are sharing together stories of their faith. We may experience God in all of these or in many other ways at different moments of our lives. God in Jesus is not limited to time and space and will at times catch us by surprise, move us deeply or take our breath away.

Jesus might have ascended to heaven, but that does not mean that he is no longer accessible to us. Heaven has been opened to us, if we are to get the most out of our relationship with God, it is essential that we are open to heaven.

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Jesus’ absence and presence

May 31, 2014

Easter 7 – 2014

John 17:1-11 (Acts 1:6-14)

Marian Free

 In the name of God whose Son we know both as present with us and exalted in glory. Amen.

 One of my friends has a blog on which he writes primarily about liturgy. For the past few years he has invited followers of that blog to support his campaign: “Easter is 50 days”. He is both insistent and persistent in trying to win over his readership and, through them, others to his position. You might wonder why he feels the need to be so vociferous. After all, this is the seventh Sunday of Easter and next Sunday – Pentecost – brings us to 50 days of Easter. A search of the internet will reveal that the length of Easter is a matter for heated debate (or at least a cause for confusion) in the blogosphere. The reason is this: up until the prayer book was revised, the season of Easter used to end on Ascension Day – 10 days short of 50! The argument then, is between those who support the change and those who do not and between those who think the Paschal candle should be extinguished on Ascension Day and those who keep it burning until Pentecost.

It’s interesting, but hardly a matter that will affect our eternal salvation! The seasons of the church as we practice them are somewhat arbitrary and as a result are open to discussion and to change. Jesus didn’t leave any detailed instructions for the church, and apart from instituting the Lord’s Supper, did not suggest the establishment of any festivals. It was believers who, over time, felt that there was value in setting aside days and lengths of time to commemorate different events in Jesus’ life. This did not happen all at once, but was a process that developed gradually and was open to change.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples continued to worship in the Temple or in the synagogue. As well as this they met on Sundays to celebrate the resurrection and to continue the practice Jesus’ had instituted at the last Supper. It was not long before the community began to commemorate the anniversary of the crucifixion on the day of Passover or the nearest Sunday. What began as a single event began to grow until it extended over the course of a week and commemorated all the events in Jesus’ final week from the entry into Jerusalem to the resurrection. Gradually, the celebration of the resurrection – Easter – was extended for the seven weeks or 50 days leading up to Pentecost.

Some time before the fifth century the day of Jesus’ ascension began to be observed as a separate feast. The fifty days of Easter were thus broken into 40 days plus 10 and Ascension Day came to be seen as the conclusion of the Easter season – that is until the 1960’s when we reverted to the practice of the early church.[1]

One of the traditions associated with Ascension Day that remains contentious was the extinguishing of the Paschal Candle after the reading from Acts or after the Gospel. The candle is burned from Easter Eve as a sign of Jesus’ risen presence. It was extinguished to proclaim Jesus’ ascension into heaven and the absence of his physical presence. If Easter ends at Pentecost then of course, the candle should remain lit.

Of course, if Jesus is not bound by time and place, the candle, which symbolizes Jesus’ resurrection, can remain lit. There is a tension however between Jesus apparent absence and Jesus’ continued presence with us and it is reflected in the readings for this morning. In the book of Acts we have Luke’s dramatic description of Jesus’ ascent into heaven. The disciples remain – looking up – as if they expect that the cloud will part and that Jesus will return. It is only when the angels interrupt the disciples’ vigil that they realise that Jesus is really gone and that, at least in the short term, he is not coming back. In contrast, the account of Jesus’ discourse in John’s gospel implies that though Jesus is “no longer in the world” he is still very present to the disciples – reassuring them, challenging them and praying for them.

The question is, which is right – is Jesus now confined to heaven until his coming again? or do we, like the Johannine disciples continue to experience the risen Christ in our lives? Do we experience Jesus’ absence or his presence? The answer is that both are true. Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of God. He has returned to the place from which he came. We cannot know or experience the risen Jesus in the same way as did those first disciples. At the same time, Jesus, being God, is not bound by the constraints that limit us. Jesus can be both exalted and present, both with God and with us. There will be times when we feel Jesus as a living presence in our lives even though we know Jesus to be with God.

It is important to know that the customs of the church are just that – traditions that have developed over the centuries that are designed to give structure to our faith lives, to make our worship more meaningful and to bring into focus particular events in Jesus’ life. They are intended to enrich our experience of faith, not to bind us forever to one way of seeing or to one way of re-living the story. What matters is not so much the external practices of the church, but the internal disposition of our hearts. Not whether Easter is 50 days or 40 days, but whether or not we enter fully into the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Not whether we debate Jesus’ absence, but whether we or not we experience his presence.

We believe that the risen Christ who transcends time and space is as real to us now as he was to the disciples two thousand years ago and there is nothing – not now nor in all eternity that will extinguish the light of his presence.

 

[1] Not surprisingly the Prayer Book Society encourages the return to the 40 plus 10.

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The work of the Holy Spirit

May 24, 2014

Easter 6 – 2014

John 14:15-21

Marian Free 

In the name of God whose Spirit enlivens us and gives us peace. Amen.

 I am sure that most of you could name at least one Wesley hymn and that some of you could name many more. I wonder how many could name which of the two Wesley brothers John or Charles was the hymn writer and which was the driver for the movement within the Anglican Church which became Methodism (the Methodist church)?

 Yesterday was the feast day of John and Charles Wesley and though their story would take much longer in the telling, it seemed an opportune time to give you some insights into their lives and their influence.

Charles Wesley, the younger of the brothers wrote an extraordinary 8,989[1] hymns (or poems), some of which consisted of more than 100 verses. Among these are some of the best-loved hymns in the Anglican Communion: “And can it be?”, “Love Divine” and “Hark the Herald Angels sing”. So well-known and well-loved are these hymns that 71 are included in the hymn book (Together in Song) Nearly one tenth of the hymns considered useful for today’s church were written by Charles Wesley. both brothers were prolific writers, Charles of hymns and John of 500 religious books, papers and tracts.

According to the Christian History website, Charles is often considered the forgotten Wesley, however, in my experience, it is the other way around. Because I am so familiar with the hymns, I tend to credit Charles with the founding of Methodism, whereas it was his older brother John who was the driving force and chief organiser of the new movement.

The brothers were born four years apart in 1703 and 1707, to Samuel and Susannah who had nineteen children – 10 of whom survived into adulthood. Samuel was an Anglican clergyman educated at Oxford. Both he and Susannah were well-versed in theology. Education was an important value in the household and the children (girls and boys) were taught at home by their mother, who not only taught them Latin, Greek and French, but who found time twice every day to quiz them. In addition, Susannah set aside one hour a week for each child to give them intensive spiritual instruction.

John initially embarked on an academic career and though he later became a priest, he returned to Oxford as a teacher after a two-year curacy. It was while John was away from Oxford, that Charles, then a student himself, formed what became known as the Holy Club in response to the general disinterest in spirituality. The group practiced a rigorous spiritual regime – meeting daily from 6am to 9am for prayer, psalms and the reading of the Greek New Testament, once every waking hour they prayed and though the current practice was to receive Communion only three times a year, this group received communion every week. They adopted the practice of the early church and fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays. The group became known as Methodists because of the methodical way in which they practiced their faith.

Over time they began to visit prisoners, and to relieve jailed debtors. They visited the sick, preached and taught. Such was their enthusiasm and piety that the group were held in suspicion and regarded as radicals and fanatics.

In 1735, both brothers responded to an invitation to a new colony in Georgia. The trip was a disaster in many senses – a mission to the indigenous people failed and though John was given a parish, Charles was employed as a private secretary to the colony’s governor. Charles, despondent and in poor health, left first. John remained, but was unlucky in love, and was sued for defamation. He too returned to England. A positive result of their trip was that they had met up with a deeply pious group of Christians – the Moravians who were originally from Germany.

For both brothers this relationship was a turning point in their lives. Despite their intensely rigorous spiritual practices, neither had never really felt at peace with God or that they had achieved salvation. Charles, during a period of illness read Luther’s commentary on Galatians and, for the first time felt confident of God’s love. Sometime later John attended a Moravian service at which he heard read the introduction to Luther’s commentary on Romans. He “felt his heart strangely warmed and he wrote in his journal: “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” Both learned, as Luther had before them that they was put right with God through faith, and not by anything that he had done. This insight was to play a vital role in their life and ministry from then on.

George Whitfield who took over the leadership of the Holy Club when the brothers went to America, found himself excluded from churches in Bristol. He began to preach to those who felt neglected by the Church. When the brothers returned and they too found pulpits closed to them. George persuaded them the Wesleys to preach to a group of miners in the open air. Unregistered religious meetings outside a church were illegal but though Charles thought the practice vile and John that the appropriate place for preaching was in the church, both eventually saw value in the practice and it seems, had considerable success. John rode something like 250,000 miles through the countryside of the United Kingdom and preached some 42,000 sermons. Charles claimed that in five years he had preached to over 149,000 people (and those were only the crowds for whom he had an accurate count).

John and Charles were both Anglican clergymen, whose desire was to reform the Anglican Church, to deepen a sense of holiness and live out the gospel message of serving the marginalised. Neither had any desire to see Methodism (as their movement became known) as a separate and therefore dissenting sect. However, as they were gradually cut off from the church and denied the right to administer the sacraments, they began to operate more and more outside the establishment. Further the strength of the movement meant that separation was inevitable. Within four years of John’s death, Methodists in Britain were legally able to administer the sacraments and conducts marriages. Today Methodism is the fourth largest church in Britain. In Australia the Methodist Church united with the Presbyterians in 1977 so it is difficult to measure the strength of the movement here. Globally the movement consists of 70 million people.

Wesley differed from contemporary Anglicans not in doctrine but in emphasis. He taught that Christians should strive to obtain holiness of life (called “perfect love”) with the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, in today’s gospel promises to send the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth that will abide in them and unite them to the Father and the Son. John and Charles Wesley allowed that Spirit to work in them to achieve extraordinary results. If the Spirit could achieve so much through just two people, imagine what the Spirit could do through all of us!

 

 

[1] In comparison, Isaac Watts, the nearest competitor wrote only one tenth of that number. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/poets/charleswesley.html?start=1

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Not just sheep

May 10, 2014

(Please remember in prayer the 180 Nigerian girls who remain in captivity, their families and all women and girls who are trafficked or who are victims of violence.)

Easter 4 2014

John 10:1-10

Marian Free

In the name of God who calls us by name and who trusts us to know the shepherd from the thief. Amen.

I wonder just how much you absorb when you hear the gospel read on a Sunday morning? How well do you think you would go if I threw a good old-fashioned comprehension test at you today? My suspicion is that none of us would achieve a particularly good result – myself included. Today’s gospel is full of confusing and inconsistent metaphors and allusions. There are gatekeepers, thieves, bandits shepherds and gates and the difficult question is – what represents whom? Presumably, the thieves and bandits are the Pharisees, but is Jesus the gate, the gatekeeper or the shepherd or all three? Who are the strangers – are they the same as the thieves and bandits or do they represent someone else? One problem is that the text seems to jump from one idea to another – gate keeping, following, listening, destroying, giving life. It is difficult to work out just what Jesus is trying to get across. No wonder even Jesus’ listeners were confused (10:6).

If you were in my New Testament class and we were examining today’s gospel, the first thing I would suggest is that you read and reread the text, preferably in Greek.

Once you were familiar with these ten verses, I would suggest that you read them in context, that you investigate what comes before and after the text and whether those passages shed light on what you have just read. In this instance it is obvious that what comes after is important for our understanding of the passage. The theme of shepherd continues in some way or another until the end of chapter 10. However the connection with Chapter 9 is less evident. Only if we take a closer look does it become clear that what we know as chapter 10 is in fact a continuation of Chapter 9. The first sentence of chapter ten continues Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees and the connection between the two chapters is strengthened when we see that 10:21 refers to the discussion about the healing of the blind man.

What all this means is that if we really want to understand the ten verses set down as the gospel for today, we have to read from the beginning of Chapter 9 to the end of Chapter 10 and to try to make sense of the relationship between an account of healing and a discussion about shepherding.

A number of things are going on here, but the key to the relationship between the two chapters is the controversy about Jesus’ identity and the argument between the man who was blind and the Pharisees. The blind man whose sight has been restored is convinced that Jesus is a prophet sent from God. He holds firm to this view in spite of the Pharisees trying to convince him otherwise. Not only that, he identifies Jesus as God – in response to Jesus’ question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” he acknowledges Jesus as Lord and falls down and worships him. The Pharisees however, refuse to accept that Jesus can have been sent by God let alone be God. They prefer to believe that Jesus is a sinner (9:16, 24,31) or worse still that he is possessed by a demon (10:20,21). Jesus threatens their position and what they believe about God and God’s way of relating to the people.

At the heart of the discussion then, is an issue about leadership and authority. Who can be trusted to lead the people of God – the priests and the Pharisees or this itinerant teacher/healer – and who decides between the two? The eyes of the blind man have been opened. He can see that the true leader, the true shepherd is the one who is trusted by and who cares for and respects the people. The Pharisees demonstrate their blindness, because they cannot see Jesus for who he is.

Contrary to expectation it is not the Pharisees who have the authority to determine who is or is not from God – that authority belongs to the people. The fact that the man born blind identified Jesus has demonstrated that the “ordinary” people, those of no status in the Jewish worldview, are able to make up their own minds about God and about God’s representatives. No matter how hard the Pharisees try, the blind man refuses to be cowed, or to change his opinion about Jesus. He does not need to be told who to follow. Whatever arguments the Pharisees use, he knows that Jesus cannot be a sinner because God does not listen to sinners – only to those who know and obey him. He knows (despite the Pharisees’ statements to the contrary) that if Jesus was not from God he would not be able to do anything (9:33) let alone give sight to the blind.

The question of true authority, true leadership is decided by the people. They (the sheep) will not follow a stranger nor will they listen to thieves and bandits (the Pharisees). It is the people, the sheep, who recognise where true authority lies. They know instinctively who it is who will lead them “in right paths” and allow them “to go in and go out and find pasture”. Their eyes have been opened to the true nature of their religious leaders. They are thieves and bandits, strangers whom they will not follow.

Jesus (the good shepherd) is not a benign, harmless figure in the world of first century Palestine. Quite the contrary – he is a revolutionary who turns everything upside down. Not only does he undermine the authority of the Pharisees he also makes the radical claim that the sheep – the ordinary, uneducated people – are able to make up their own minds as to whom they should follow. It is they, not the religious leaders who are able to recognise the true nature of the Pharisees and of Jesus and to decide between them.

Jesus – the gate, the shepherd – has made it possible for us to have a relationship with God that is not mediated by Temple rituals, a priestly caste or by the observance of the law. It doesn’t matter whether we are ordained or lay, well-educated or poorly educated, professional or manual laborer each of us through Jesus can have direct access to God. The gate is open, the shepherd is calling us by name. All it takes is for us to respond.

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Faith and doubt – two sides of one coin

April 26, 2014

Easter 2

John 20:19-31

Marian Free

In the name of God who, far from demanding blind faith, challenges us to think for ourselves. Amen.

I can clearly remember July 20, 1969 – the day Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon. The space landing was considered such a significant historical event that we were given a half day off school to go home and watch it on TV. As my family did not have a television, I went home with a friend and saw it as it happened. America really did manage to land someone on the moon. Amazingly, though the event was broadcast live and watched by people all over the world, there were still those who didn’t believe that it was real. At one extreme, the grandmother of one of my friends who steadfastly clung to her naive belief that the moon was made of green cheese and at the other end were those who held all kinds of conspiracy theories – including one that the whole thing was filmed somewhere in the Australian outback.

New discoveries or new ideas are not always readily accepted. Most of us take time to absorb new information or to adjust to new ideas. All of us, before we accept something new or different, have to make decisions about who and what we trust. Confronted by new information, we have to weigh up the evidence before us and come to our own conclusion before we change our mind-set. This is true not just for advances in science, but also for revisions in the way in which historical data is interpreted over time. So for example, one of the questions which requires a response at the moment is whether climate change is real or whether its proponents are hysterical nature lovers who want to impose their ideals (and their limitations) on us. Another challenge is to come to a conclusion about the way in which historians are revising the story of the Gallipoli landing. Could it really be true that the calamitous campaign was as much the responsibility of the Australians as it was of the British or are the historians just trying to create controversy and draw attention to themselves? Faced with new data, we also have to decide whether our failure to accept it is based on a rational examination of the new facts, or whether we are held back by sentiment, conservatism or a dislike of change.

This need to question, to test ideas, is no less true in regard to issues of faith. It is reasonably easy to demonstrate that Jesus was an historic person who lived and was crucified in the Palestine of the first century and it does not require a great intellectual leap to acknowledge that Jesus’ teaching contains wisdom and guidance for life that crosses the barrier between secular and divine.

The resurrection however is a different matter that creates a number of difficulties. There is no rational, reasonable explanation for the resurrection. There were no witnesses to the actual event and there are at least four differing accounts of the risen Christ – more if John 21 is considered original to the gospel. There are consistent elements – the women at the tomb and Jesus’ appearing in locked rooms – but they are reported slightly differently by each evangelist. Both John and Mark record a meeting with Mary Magdalene and Mark and Luke suggest that the risen Jesus met travelers on the road. Some stories are unique to the individual gospels. Jesus’ appearance to Thomas is recorded only in John and Luke alone suggests that the risen Jesus is able to eat. If we had only the original Markan gospel we would have only the account of the empty tomb and the fear of the disciples to convince us that Jesus had risen.

And yet we believe. We believe despite the lack of eyewitnesses; the apparent absurdity of the claims and the paucity of the evidence. We believe despite the centuries that separate us from the events themselves. Does that mean that we suspend our reason, that we allow ourselves to pretend that belief or faith requires that we do not need to question or to think, that we can just ignore the difficulties presented by a dead man returning to life?

I don’t think so. We don’t believe without a basis for our belief. Like Thomas we ask questions and we test what we believe and like Thomas, we believe because, we have had an experience of the risen Christ and because we know Jesus’ living presence in our lives.

Over the centuries, for a number of reasons, Thomas has had a lot bad press:.he questioned the experience of the other disciples, Jesus’ asked him to have faith and his lack of confidence in the other disciples led to the expression ‘doubting Thomas’. This has caused many to come to the conclusion that faith requires unquestioning belief in what others tell us. The reality is that for many, doubt and questioning are essential ingredients of faith. Jesus himself was not free from doubt – before he died he wondered if God could do things differently and on the cross he doubted that God was with him.

Doubt need not be an indication that faith is wavering. It can be a sign of faith that is growing into maturity. Questioning, searching often indicates a movement from a faith that is dependent on the word of others to a faith that is based on personal research and experience – a faith that is truly one’s own. Questioning is not only healthy, but as the example of Thomas indicates, it can lead to a deeper understanding – a richer experience than is possible if faith is based on second-hand knowledge or experience.

It is important to note that Jesus does not censure Thomas for his failure to accept the word of the other disciples, nor does he deny Thomas the opportunity to have the same experience that they had. Instead Jesus allows Thomas not only to see, but also to touch and feel – to discover conclusively for himself that what the others said was indeed true. The result is powerful. Thomas falls to his knees declaring: My Lord and my God.”

Thomas should be remembered, not for his lack of faith but for his recognition of Jesus – as Lord, but more importantly as God. In this Thomas is a ground-breaker, a leader – anything but a doubter or a failure.

We do not believe because someone else has told us to. We believe because like Thomas we know Jesus Christ as our Saviour, as our Lord and our God.

 

Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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Opening the eyes of the blind

March 29, 2014

Lent 4

John 9:1-41

Marian Free

In the name of God who causes the blind to see and the deaf to hear. Amen.

Some of you may have seen the movie A Time to Kill. It is based on a John Gresham novel and set in the Deep South of the United States. A black man (Carl) is on trial for attempting to kill the men who raped and tortured his ten-year-old daughter Tonya. The evidence is clear and the white jury have no sympathy for the grief and rage that led the man to take justice into his hand. It becomes clear that he will be condemned and that he will receive the death penalty. His lawyer (Jake) tries to persuade him to plead guilty but Carl says to him: “If you was on that jury. What would convince you to set me free?” What follows moves and challenges me every time I think about the movie.

In his summing up, Jake takes the jury on a journey in their imagination. He describes what happened to the child – how she was abducted, raped so viciously that she would never have children, used as target practice – full beer cans thrown so hard that they tear her flesh to the bone. He tells how she was urinated on, had a noose place around her neck and hung from a tree and how when her tiny body proved too heavy for the branch, she was tossed back into the truck, driven to a bridge and thrown thirty feet into a river. “Can you see her?” he says.” “I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she is white.” At that point the penny drops for the jurors. At that moment, the child is no longer a stranger, no longer a member of a race for whom they have no respect. She becomes their own child – their daughter, their niece, their granddaughter. The horror of the crime and the violent grief of the father become understandable. They would have felt the same.

Of course, powerful as that is, it is fiction and it is set against a particular background. That said, it is a reminder that many of us tend to see the world in a certain way. We tend to be blinded by our experiences, by our cultures and our religious ideals. Whether we like it or not, most of us make judgements about other people. We create stereotypes that are difficult to break and make assumptions based on false or limited information. Sometimes our ideas change gradually as we get to know the person or group we have demonised. At other times we need something to shock us out of our complacency so that we can see the other for whom they are, not who we believe them to be.

Jesus is an expert at shocking people into a new way of seeing. He wants us to see things in new ways, not in the conventional, centuries old way of seeing things. He astonishes us by appearing to disregard the law, by healing on the Sabbath and by eating with tax collectors. His parables explode existing religious truths and force his hearers to reconsider their ideas about God and about other people. His teaching and behaviour are sometimes contradictory. In Luke, the story of the rich young man is followed by the account of Zaccheus. Jesus urges the rich young man to give away all his possessions then he commends Zaccheus who only gives away half of his possessions. It begs the question: What are we to do with our possessions? Jesus is not being fickle or obtuse, the contradiction and confusion have a purpose – they are designed to destablise our preconceptions, to make us dependent on God and to prevent us from believing that we can have all knowledge and all truth. If Jesus does not conform to the party line, and if his teaching is apparently then inconsistent it is impossible for anyone to claim that they fully understand or that they have a monopoly on truth.

The account of the healing of the blind man is a lesson about seeing – seeing differently. The Pharisees, who believe that they can see clearly are exposed as those who are blind whereas the blind man gradually comes to see who Jesus really is. The Pharisees who believe that they have nothing to learn are shown to be misguided and ignorant whereas the blind man who is aware how little he knows is proven to be the one who recognises the truth. The Pharisees are so locked into what they think they know that they are unable to change their preconceptions and expectations, whereas the blind man who recognises that he knows little is open to new ideas. He is aware that he has room to learn.

Throughout the story the Pharisees dig themselves into a deeper and deeper hole – demonstrating how little they really know. The blind man not only receives his sight, but allows himself to be enlightened and his ideas to be challenged. The Pharisees who represent the religious leaders, judge Jesus on outdated credentials – he is a sinner, he does not observe the Sabbath, he does not observe the law (9:16), they do not know where he comes from. The blind man uses other – also legitimate – criterion to accept that Jesus comes from God. Just as his forebears believed Moses because of the signs he performed so the blind man sees and believes in the signs that Jesus does – making the blind to see (9:16). He understands intuitively that God listens to one who worships him and obeys his will (9:31). The Pharisees believe that they give glory to God by rejecting Jesus, yet it is the blind man who gives glory to God by worshiping Jesus.

John’s gospel is written for those who will come to faith – that is ourselves. As witnesses to the drama that is unfolding, we are challenged to think about ourselves and our ability to see; to ponder whether we identify with the blind man or the Pharisees and to consider how much we know about and whether we are willing to know more. We are challenged to remain open and expectant, to allow God to reveal God’s self in ways that are unanticipated and that break apart our previous ideas as to who and what God is. We are warned against holding rigidly to preconceptions and assumptions that lock us into only way of thinking and that therefore lock us out of the truth.

The problem with believing that we know it all is that it can blind us to what is actually in front of us. confidence in what we know means that we see things from one point of view – ours. If we believe that our perspective is the only one that has a claim to truth, we are forced to protect and defend it even when the facts contradict it. The Pharisees were unable recognise Jesus because they persisted in their way of seeing things, even when Jesus’ actions seemed to put the lie to it. The blind man was not bound to one interpretation, one view of the world. He was willing to learn and to use what he did know in a different way.

Let us not be so self-assured, so confident in our way of seeing that we are blind to the presence of God or that we fail to see Jesus even when he is right in front of us.

 

 

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Limited and partial understanding

March 22, 2014

Lent 3 – 2014

John 4:5-42

Marian Free

In the name of God who draws us into relationship, allows us to question and reveals the truth. Amen.

 We do not need to know any history to understand that the Jews and the Samaritans regarded each other with suspicion. This is evident in the shock expressed by Jesus that the leper who is a Samaritan is the only one of ten to return to thank him for healing and that it is a Samaritan not a Jew who risks his own safety to assist the man set upon by bandits. The deep antagonism between the Jews and the Samaritans is something akin to that between the Sunni and Shia Muslims, people whose practice and form of the same faith, has, sometime in the past, taken a divergent path one from the other. Adherents of both expressions of Islam believe the others to be profoundly wrong. Such is the depth of their discomfort that the antagonism between the two group spills over into violence as is evident in Iraq and Afghanistan today. The people whom Moses brought to the promised land were one people. However, in the year 931 BCE, the kingdom split into two – the northern kingdom which, in the records of the Kings, is referred to as Israel and the southern Kingdom centred around Jerusalem which became known as Judah. From then on the two groups of people developed quite separately.  In the first century Jews and Samaritans had very little to do with each other but each regarded the other as misguided and as people who had corrupted the true faith.

It is in this context that we need to approach the account of Jesus’ meeting with the woman at the well. The story is so familiar that I am sure that you heard it as a story about Jesus’ encounter with a woman of disrepute – a story which reveals Jesus’ inclusive, non-judgemental love. Certainly that is how it has been interpreted for centuries. There are however greater depths to be discovered, particularly if we consider that despite the low opinion the Jews had of the Samaritans the gospel writer is quite matter-of-fact about the Samaritans coming to faith in Jesus. It is possible to draw from this that Samaritans had come to faith and were accepted as members of the community for whom John writes.

Sandra Schneiders believes that this story was included by the Gospel writer to explain or defend the presence of the Samaritans in the Johannine community. The account, she agrees, is a story of Jesus’ radical, inclusive love, but its meaning she argues is much broader and deeper than Jesus’ acceptance of the despised woman. Schneiders writes: “Jesus goes to Samaria, the land of the hated “other”, to confront and to heal the ancient divisions and to integrate into the new covenant  those who were not merely ignorant of, but who were unfaithful to, the old covenant.”(147) In this scenario, the woman, Schneiders argues, is representative of the Samaritan people as a whole and the woman’s discussion with Jesus puts into context and provides a theological explanation for the inclusion of the Samaritans in the community.

A secondary theme running through the story is the place of women in the Johannine community. The woman’s intelligence and strength of character coupled with the disciples’ disquiet at Jesus having a serious theological discussion with her suggests that the leadership of women is a contentious issue in the community – an issue that the writer of the Gospel is trying to address. A significant clue to this meaning is the fact that Jesus’ discussion with the woman is the longest discussion Jesus has with any person in the gospel. Elsewhere, interactions with another person provide an introduction to a monologue from Jesus. In this instance however, the woman remains a significant conversation partner, allowing Jesus to make the point that belief in him transcends that old barriers between Samaritan and Jew thus is able to form a new community – one with a shared faith. Jesus and the woman are not arguing about her morals, but about significant differences in their beliefs.

Differences between the Samaritans and Jews were many. According to the Samaritans Scripture consisted only of the first five books of what we know as the Old Testament. For this reason they placed a greater emphasis on the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses – than on the Kings of Israel. This meant that their messianic expectations were that God would send a prophet like Moses, not a King in the line of King David. They believed that God should be worshipped on Mt Gerizim not in Jerusalem and that when the messiah did appear, he would restore worship in Israel not in Jerusalem. Neither kingdom maintained absolute fidelity to Yahweh, but the northern Kingdom – the Samaritans – were known to have followed other gods.

These significant differences are all addressed in Jesus’ conversation with the woman.

That the discussion between Jesus and the woman is serious and theological is indicated by the woman’s first question: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” Then Jesus’ offer of living water causes the woman to wonder whether Jesus is greater than Jacob (the patriarch) who gave the well to Israel. The conversation moves to the question as to where true worship takes place. In response, Jesus claims that, with regard to faith, while the Jews have priority when it comes to salvation, the messiah will reveal that true worship will not be limited to a physical place but will be worship in spirit and truth  – neither mountain will have significant meaning. The woman agrees that the Christ will reveal all things, to which Jesus responds with the words God used to identify Godself to Moses: “I am”. At which point the penny drops and the woman realises that she has been speaking to none other than the Christ. She returns to the city to share the news with the people who themselves come out to the well. They in turn are convinced by their encounter with Jesus that the woman is right declaring Jesus to be the “Saviour of the world”.

In the context of a story about Jesus’ chance meeting with a Samaritan woman, the author of John’s gospel has provided a theological basis for the inclusion of the Samaritans in the new faith that emerged out of Judaism. If worship is not limited to the place associated with one group of people, then all people can worship the one God. Furthermore, the declaration of the Samaritans makes it clear that Jesus is the Saviour not only of the Jews, but of the whole world.

The issue of five husbands takes on an entirely different meaning when we understand that this is a theological not a moral discussion. We do not have to wonder if the woman is a prostitute or whether she has been profoundly unlucky in love, or whether she has been abused or disposed of by one man after another. If, as Schneiders argues, the story is primarily about the inclusion of the Samaritans, the imagery of multiple husbands suggests a reference to the unfaithfulness of the Samaritans. Throughout the prophetic writings and particular in Hosea, those who abandon Yahweh are accused of being “whores”, of running after other gods, abandoning Yahweh, their true bridegroom. 2 Kings 17:13-34 tells us that God rejected the northern kingdom because they worshipped calves, erected a sacred pole to Baal, worshipped all the host of heaven, made their sons and daughters pass through fire and used divination and augury. What is more, their current “husband” is not really a husband because unlike the Jews, the Samaritans are not in a full covenant relationship with God.

This, in my mind, is a convincing explanation of Jesus’ discussion with the woman. All kinds of elements now make more sense to me. In the end though, it doesn’t matter whether or not you are able to integrate these new ideas into your understanding of the story. What does matter is that you accept that every interpretation, every meaning of the biblical story comes from a human source – that is, it is open to question and to reinterpretation. The wisest among us cannot fully know the mind of God as it was expressed in Jesus. Two thousand years after Christ, we can only guess at what he was really saying.

Our understanding is always partial and limited. Just as Jesus exposed the ignorance and misunderstanding of the woman, so if we are open and if our views are not fixed and final, Jesus will meet us where we are and gently but firmly expose our failure to understand and reveal the truth to us.

Schneiders, Sandra, M. Written that you may believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. New York: A Herder and Herder Book, 1999.

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