Becoming God's Beloved in the Company of Friends

A Spirituality of the Fourth Gospel

Pazdan

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781498270441
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Becoming God's Beloved in the Company of Friends offers a fresh perspective and invites persons to develop a personal and communal Christian spirituality. It offers a way to deepen commitment to live as a disciple of Jesus personally and with others. It bridges the gap between a first-century biblical text and twenty-first-century readers who hunger for genuine spirituality today. Each chapter focuses on a few stories and a few teachings to illustrate a particular characteristic of becoming a disciple.

1

Believing in Jesus

The First Commitment toward Becoming God’s Beloved

Believing in anyone takes a soupcon of trust, courage, and chutzpah. Sometimes it is the mere presence of a person and what that person says or does that inspires us to desire a relationship. We feel an intuition, a simpatico, or a click that urges us to speak or stretch out a hand to another. At other times, we hear about a person and we are curious. We are not content either to second-guess for ourselves or to trust the word of someone else. We need to experience the person who is being spoken about for ourselves before we even imagine a relationship.

Believing in another person also entails the risk of discovering ourselves in a new way. We learn who we are with our gifts and limitations through the trust we have in another to identify us. Being open and being vulnerable are implicit when we begin to believe in another and hope for a genuine relationship. Especially as adults, it can be intimidating to simply hold out our perceptions of self to another for acceptance or rejection.

Reflection Questions: First Naiveté

1. What is your earliest experience of another person? Recall the event by engaging your senses to re-imagine it as an adult. Write down several phrases that express how your body, mind, and spirit felt. Draw a picture to capture the experience. You may be able to tell the story to another person if you are studying the Gospel of John together.

2. What is your most recent experience of another person? Review the event by referring to question 1. Compare and contrast the experiences to discover if there are any similarities.

3. What is your earliest experience of God? Follow the suggestions of question 1.

4. What is your most recent experience of God? Follow question 1.

5. Reflect upon the Gospel of John. Can you name any characters who believe in Jesus? Why? How do you know? Are they loyal and faithful to Jesus?

6. Now read John 1:1–18, the Prologue. Is there any word, phrase, or image that is similar to your responses for questions 1–5? If so, write them down.

7. Finally, review questions 1–6. Read John 1:19–51. What happens?

Critical Inquiry of Christian Tradition

Prologue (1:1–18)

“In the beginning” before we can imagine time, there are the Word and God (John 1:1). Who knows how God calibrates time? For example, Jeremiah hears God speaking: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:4). What is “before” for us? In contrast, when we read our first book of sacred history, Genesis, we can trace the cosmic beginning of God’s initiative when the earth was dark with no shape (Gen 1:1). The Genesis creation accounts describe the shaping of the cosmos and human beings (Gen 1:1–31; 2:1–25).

In the Prologue of John (vv. 1–18), however, we ponder another insight about time and creation. This extraordinary hymn offers us a glimpse about God’s time and providence. In God’s time, “in the beginning,” there are God and the Word (vv. 1–2). Both create all life as light for all people that no darkness can overwhelm (vv. 3–5). The Word is Light to which John bears witness (vv. 6–8). The Word became flesh, and his presence is like the Shekinah, the glory of God that the Hebrews experienced in the wilderness (v. 14). It is the Word as God’s Beloved Son who dwells among the people offering them life and light. God and the Word made flesh dwell with one another. The Beloved Son lives at the heart of the Father (v. 18).

How did the Johannine community create the hymn to the Word? What heritage did members draw upon from their memories and imaginations? They reflected upon a mysterious figure named Wisdom: Hokmah (Hebrew) or Sophia (Greek). In particular, they pondered particular qualities of Wisdom that enable her to be in relationship with the cosmos, human beings, and God.

First, Wisdom is an abiding presence that hearts and minds and souls long for throughout life (Prov 3:13–15). She is more valuable than all human efforts, achievements, and dreams; yet the Lady is elusive like quicksilver (cf. Prov 2:4). She is not to be possessed through expending and expanding energies searching for her. Why? Sophia always takes the initiative. She whispers in attentive ears, “Seek me. Come to me.”

Second, Wisdom is pure gift. Her presence and absence are easy to experience but difficult to accept. Wisdom is not like a reliable income to draw upon in critical moments. Wisdom is not accessible through solitary pleas; Wisdom comes in God’s time.

Third, Wisdom is never found in isolation. Wisdom breathes, speaks, walks, and moves only in relationships. Her traces appear in relationships with God, among families, friends, and neighbors, in spider webs, starry skies and ocean foam. Wisdom is revealed wherever and whenever relationships speak and witness to the possibilities and limitations of human lives. Wisdom, like God, calls every person to life (Prov 1:23, 25, 30; 8:6–9, 15, 35). Since Wisdom was present at creation (Prov 8:22–31), she proclaims to all, “whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord” (Prov 8:35).

Fourth, Wisdom nourishes life. She invites all into her house of seven pillars: “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity and live, and walk in the way of insight” (Prov 9:5–6). Wisdom’s bounty is available, “Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my fruits” (Sir 24:19).

Fifth, Wisdom renews and transforms creation because of her extraordinary relationship with God. “While remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets; for God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom” (Wis 7:27–28).

In the Prologue, we discover the culmination of the Wisdom tradition, “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (v. 14). Jesus was the Wisdom of God for the Johannine community and believers.

Narrative Scenes (1:19–51)

Now we turn to the prose section of chapter 1. Here we find persons interacting with others and Jesus. See chart 1.1 Prologue (1:1–18) and Narrative Scenes (1:19–51) on the next page. Notice that John 1:19–51 is a series of seven narrative scenes. When we read through the settings, do they fill in adequate details of place and time? The common setting is Galilee in northern Israel. Exact time is not important since Mediterranean people lived in the present moment. The narrator only mentions “the next day” (vv. 29, 35, 43) and “four o’clock in the afternoon” (v. 39).

What about the list of characters? Some remain for a few scenes while others disappear, like the priests and Pharisees. Named characters are often more important in a scene than unnamed persons, groups, or crowds. A community remembered persons and handed down their significance through story.

A strict gender-based division of work existed in the Mediterranean world. Notice that the characters have male names. Maintaining honor is the responsibility of the head of the household, a male, who enters the public arena to guard and maintain it through dialogue with other males. Shame is positive, virtuous living, i.e., the integrity of household, for which females are responsible. Women nurture values among the members of the household in domestic situations.

Let us consider the conflicts section. The essential conflict in each scene is: Whose authority counts? Why should another’s testimony be trusted? As conscientious readers, we are in the same situation as the characters. Whose authority do we trust to hand down and interpret the Jesus story? I highlight the verbs in bold print. They are significant words that have many levels of meaning. Important characters are italicized.

The fourth section in each scene is labeled Denouement, i.e., the ending or resolution of conflicts. However, the characters do not always resolve conflicts by the end of the scene, e.g., 1:43–44. Sometimes, characters disappear and we do not know what happens to the conflict, e.g., 3:11–21.

How does the narrative structure of each scene disclose theological insights? Whose authority counts was an important question to maintain the honor of one’s household in the first-century Mediterranean world. Each day the head of the household went out to meet another male. The partners addressed one another with sharply focused questions and responses to discover the answer about authority.

Scene One (vv. 19–28)

The Pharisees send priests and Levites to John because they are curious about his authority to baptize (v. 19). They may have heard through the active gossip network, the traditional way news traveled from village to village, that some people thought he might be the Messiah, Elijah, or the prophet of the end time. John speaks his own truth, but they want more. In verse 22, we see that they are envoys (brokers) for the Pharisees, the adjudicators of purity laws. John ascribes his authority to baptize “to one whom they do not know” (v. 26). There is no response to his reliable witness. We can only imagine what the Pharisees thought about the information.

Scene Two (vv. 29–34)

In contrast to the first scene, this scene describes John’s experience of seeing Jesus. John functions as a prophet for the crowd. He names Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (v. 29) so that he may be revealed to Israel (v. 31). There is no longer any need for repeated water rituals of public cleansing for sin. John’s vision authenticates his words: “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him” (v. 32). Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit (v. 33). John’s final witness in the Gospel echoes the Prologue: “Jesus is the Son of God” (v. 34, cf. v. 18). Who gave John authority to name Jesus? How do listeners respond? Readers wait expectantly for Jesus’ and the crowd’s response. Neither replies. Perhaps some of his disciples listen to his witness (v. 35) that he repeats the next day in scene 3 (vv. 35–36).

Scene Three (vv. 35–39)

Whatever the power and content of his witness may be, we know that John loses two disciples to Jesus (v. 37). Is he shamed? His only role is to witness to the light (vv. 7–8). Nonetheless, there i...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Believing in Jesus The First Commitment toward Becoming God’s Beloved
• Chapter 2: The Life of Jesus and the Father Mutual Knowing, Loving, and Abiding
• Chapter 3: The Life of God’s Beloved Mutual Knowing, Loving, and Abiding in God’s Household
• Chapter 4: The Activities of God’s Beloved Hearing and Keeping Jesus’ Words for Oneself and God’s Household
• Chapter 5: The Activities of God’s Beloved Seeking and Finding Jesus for Oneself and God’s Household
• Conclusion
• Bibliography