21th Sunday of Ordinary Time B
August 23, 2015

Reading I: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b

Responsorial Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21
Reading II: Ephesians 5:21-32 or 5:2a, 25-32
Gospel: John 6:60-69

Gospel

Many of Jesus’disciples who were listening said,
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,
he said to them, “Does this shock you?
What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending
to where he was before? 
It is the spirit that gives life,
while the flesh is of no avail.
The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.”
Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe
and the one who would betray him. 
And he said,
“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me
unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this,
many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer accompanied him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” 
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? 
You have the words of eternal life. 
We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”



Mystery Writing

John's gospel is very different from the other three. While it does not look like an historical narrative, it is nevertheless firmly embedded in reality by the series of factual events it presents. On the foundation of these events lengthy discourses are displayed, complex compositions that remind one of the poetry of T S Eliot [1], or perhaps exercises in word association. Reality is found in the protestors too. In every episode there is a hard-nosed opposition putting the case for reason against the fanciful ideas floated in extravagant imagery.

Early on there was some reluctance to accept the gospel according to John as an authentic christian work so much did it seem to resemble the mystery religions that flourished in various forms at that time. [2] There are significant differences: the mystery religions were about secrets encased in rituals of initiation that a novice had to pass through to reach enlightenment. This gospel is not about secrets, even if the language in the reflections is quite enigmatic.

The whole gospel is grounded in historical events presented so realistically that you can readily place yourself within the scene. Small details are mentioned that make these stories more realistic than those in the other gospels. Just a few examples:

At the baptism we could see ourselves as one of those first disciples happening along by chance, wondering what we might find in this man the baptist pointed out. We follow him, and the surprise is palpable when he turns and asks: 'Whadda y'want?' (in that terrible Nazareth accent!) [Jn 1:37-46].

In chapter 3, Nicodemus slips in after dark. Being a man of substance he couldn't afford to be seen with the likes of this new Rabbi. For a pharisee he is surprisingly naive in his question: “How can a person once grown old be born again? Surely he cannot re-enter his mother’s womb and be born again, can he?” 

In ch. 4 they were returning to Galilee through Samaria and stopped at Jacob's well. The disciples went off to buy some lunch, while Jesus was tired and sat on the coping of the well. A woman came along and he asked her for a drink of water - as you do.

It's an interesting exercise to leaf through the chapters reading just the stories, noticing the people and their very ordinary reactions. How to read the discourses is another matter.

They certainly are mysterious in the sense of containing much that is not obvious or even clear. They deal with being born again, with having a spring of water bubbling up inside yourself to give "eternal" life, with eating a man's flesh to have life in you, with gaining sight that is more than human eyes can see [9:39-41], to name a few.

Always there is a strong focus on the person of Jesus. "I am he" becomes a refrain which would take readers to Second Isaiah where the prophet reminds the people over and over of how they have been saved, for "I am YAHWEH!" Jesus does not directly declare himself to be identical with the one who spoke to Moses from within the fire, but he is the one who makes the Father known, because he and the Father are one. [3]

The unrelenting demand in every discourse is that people accept Jesus personally. His credentials to speak in Yahweh's name are affirmed without compromise. To absorb this requires a reading of the gospel in another dimension compared to how we read the synoptics. 

In life we are familiar with a world in three-dimensions. Everything has height and breadth and depth. We can also grasp something of a fourth dimension in the extension of time. Physicists are currently speaking of as many as 12 further dimensions which may be beyond our ability to grasp other than as a mathematical formulas.

Recently Dr Suresh Shenoy has given us a very lucid sketch of the teachings of the historical Jesus which amounts to a three-dimensional view of the man. [4] In a related thread Brian Coyne has suggested an abstract view of Jesus as a prototype for our moral behaviour. [5] Neither of these, in my opinion, comes close to the 'other dimension' of the mystery that John's gospel presents. We could easily call this dimension "spiritual" but for the fact that spirituality can be very three-dimensional - earthy, and still valid. The opposite must be said of "mystical", which may be open to meaning a perception that is 'out of this world'. 

The Jesus in John's gospel is very three-dimensional, a real man mixing with women and men on easy terms, even when challenging them to think 'outside the square' - or in this case outside the cube. The images in the gospel reflections however are anything but 'real'. Eating  his flesh and drinking his blood is no more real than being born again by re-entry into the womb, no more real than having a spring of living water bubbling up inside yourself. The meaning here can only be grasped in another dimension. 'It's the spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail.'

So I keep looking for a word to express what John is teaching with so much insistence, and I come up with a phrase like "identify with": "Unless you identify with the Son of Man you will not have life in you". "You must identify with him to have life in this other dimension: otherwise you only live and die and that's an end to it." John's gospel says we have to see in Jesus more than just some local preacher. He is a man anointed, filled, permeated, enlivened and transformed by the very breath of Yahweh, the Spirit of the Divine. In identifying with him we also are filled with the life of God, the Spirit of the Divine. We are capacitated to live in that other dimension. 

Always in an essay like this it is hard to get away from time-worn, tired old phrases. When we say "Jesus is God" we really have no idea what we're saying because we have no clear and positive idea of "god". Even Jesus referred always to 'the Father', which must have given Joseph quite a buzz to think his fathering had been good enough to allow his boy to find in it a suitable reference point when speaking of the Great Unknowable Mystery whose name could not be spoken.

However, that Jesus is just a great teacher, or an inspired confection produced by our human need to have a prototype on which to model perfect human behaviour, these fall far short of the one that John puzzles about page after page through his gospel. The complex reflective style of this writing is intended to map out a way for us too to meander through the known elements until some light is given us, and we come to see. 

With that seeing, all the conflicting elements become resolved in principle. Oneness is seen at last, even while the disjointed bits remain disjointed and refuse to be simply explained away. With that seeing we enter a new dimension where the metaphor of being born again is scarcely sufficient to express the novelty of it all. With that seeing we do experience that spring of water always refreshing from within; we find nothing more important than to identify with the mysterious one whom we see ascending where he was before. 

I know a priest who seems to have lived in this other dimension his whole life through. Even as a young priest I think he truly understood the dictum of Juliana of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”  The very idea intrigued us in our over-anxious youth. Being a very slow learner it has taken me many many decades to see it, but at last... 

John's gospel is like a mystery play. It can't be read through as you might read Mark's crisp text. It demands a dedicated contemplative return over years to come finally to know that it is good to identify with this One who is the logos, the word / the idea / the thoughtful plan who was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were made, and who has become human and dwelt among us, pitched his tent among us, taken a house in our street, who shops at Coles or Woolies and gets the train to work along with us. 

Of his grace we have all received, grace for grace. 

I'm glad the wonders of the universe have been newly revealed by the Hubble telescope for it makes me realise I need not rationally reject such a revelation as John speaks of when the physical cosmos is so much more than we have ever dreamed it might be. Gosh, the spiritual cosmos might be too.  


[1] E.g., The Wasteland: "The poem is known for its obscure nature—its slippage between satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time." or Four Quartets  Wiki  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries

[3] cf. The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1990. 83:43. The commentary quotes this attempt to explain how the expression may be understood: "If a translation of ego eimi [I am (he)]... is sought I should be inclined to offer the colloquial English, "I'm the one," that is, "It is at me, to me, that you must look, it is I whom you must hear." ... The sense would be not, "Look at me because I am identical with the Father," but "Look at me for I am the one by looking at whom you will see the Father [14:9], since I make him known [1:18]." Barret, C.K., Essays on John 13, London 1982.

[4] http://www.catholica.com.au/gc1/ss/005_ss_170815.php

[5] http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?mode=thread&id=174940#p174940




AN EARLIER VERSION - SOMEWHAT EXPERIMENTAL

Is there a problem?

Translators try to get the feel of vs 61. From the old versions, 'Does this scandalise you?' to Barklay's 'Does this cause you to stumble?' through J B Phillips 'Is this too much for you? ' even to my own suggestion in today's idiom: 'Is there a problem?'

Facing squarely the problems that make the mystery hard to swallow is typical of John's gospel. But we need to look at the framework of the gospel itself.

In those early times before the so-called 'canon' of inspired writings was fixed there was some concern that this fourth gospel might not belong. It resembled too much the myths employed by the Mystery Religions

The setting is 'in the beginning', i.e., before time began, as in Genesis. 'There was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God... and through the Word all things were made, everything that was made.' [Jn 1:1 It might be worthwhile to leaf through the gospel, the first half anyway, to freshen up the memory.]

In this opening the scene is set for a mystery play of epic proportions, comparable to the greatest myths. However this one is anchored at every turn in real history, events that have actually happened. John down at the Jordan is the first witness, the John everybody knew about, 'a man sent from God', and he testified he was not the Anointed One but would point him out. 

The action moves quickly: 'The word was made "flesh"' - the Word took on humanness - and came to dwell among us - pitched his tent - took a house in our street, shopped at Coles or Woolies and got the bus to work along with the rest of us. 

The problem is this humanness, as we bump against it every page. It doesn't just make us stumble; it shocks us, it scandalises us every time, that this human could enfold the one who is God, that someone on our street could encapsulate the Word through whom all things were made, that this common man could offer us life of another order. 

Yet the teacher is unrelenting. The gospel sets out a series of scenarios in which we can see ourselves woven into the tapesty. We can situate ourselves alongside the actors with a feeling of being there, even more than in the other gospel narratives. At the Jordan we are following the one pointed out by the baptiser when he turns suddenly and says: 'Wadda y' want?'... and we spend the whole day with him there, down by the river bank. 

Nico sneeks in after dark because he was a somebody and couldn't afford to be seen with the likes of us. With disarming naivete, pompous old Nicodemus, right in the middle of the mystery talk, asks: 'Can a man enter his mother's womb and be born again?' Then there's that day up in Samaria at Jacob's well, when Jesus was tired and sat on the coping of the well and asked a woman for a drink of water. Later we'll hear the parents of the man born blind, wary of getting trapped by the interrogators, saying: 'He's our son, that we know, and he was born blind, that we know. But how he's able to see now, we don't know.'

And here in chapter 6 our relentless mystic guru sets the scene with a free picnic/banquet in the desert, after which the inquisitors hungrily follow Jesus into the synagogue at Caphernaum (you could imagine the occasion might be on record there), and ask for a sign. As if!

But Jesus tells them it's not a sign they're looking for but more free tucker, and goes on to say they'll have to eat his flesh to get a go at real life. 

They're offended at this, whichever way you take it. Eat human flesh? No way! And him from Nazareth telling us how to live. Not likely!

But the gospeller is unrelenting, till our teeth are on edge at the words: 'Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood...' It's as if he relishes the way we squirm at the realism of his metaphors, like a horror movie script-writer must. Is this the touchstone of authenticity in a gospel that seemed to be written by the Gnostics, so adaptable is it to esoteric interpretations of mystic life.

But John's gospel mysticism is forever anchored in the real. In this Good News the spirit is embedded in the flesh and refuses to be dislodged. You see the divine in the human or you see nothing. You accept the humanness of the Anointed One or you're off with the fairies. 

Is this a problem?

'What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?' What indeed???

And then it's crunch time: we're not talking things here, but spirit. Not flesh but humanness. 'It's the spirit that gives life. Flesh is of no avail!' Everything is upside down. The man who lives on our street, and will be murdered by execution as a whistleblower, is a spirit-man. In him we are in touch with...

...with - "God". 

The old mystery religions kept the most sublime things secret lest they lose their power to awe the initiated one as he arrives, after many arduous stages, at the point of revelation. Once the spirit-man comes to live in our street the secret is out, and we have to juggle our capacity for wonder.

Why should a gospel be written in such a confusing way? The signs are simple enough, but the discourses that flow from them are very complex. The argument folds in on itself, over and over. It reminds me of making pastry, rolling and folding, rolling and folding. Why doesn't he simply spell it out the way you do a scientific theory? Why is the fourth gospel so different?

In this it resembles the Religious Mysteries of the time, and with reason. Enlightenment is not had by a simple exposition of some facts. Understanding, the perception that goes deeper, deep into whatever it is that underpins these ideas, comes only from much discussion, much searching and silent reflection. In that process we discover that the spirit makes everything plain ...