Thoughts

In John 18, Jesus is arrested and brought before Pilate for questioning. With what I imagine to be a tinge of exasperation and sarcasm in his voice, Pilate asks Jesus “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Jesus, in typical fashion, answers with a question of his own: “Do you say this on your own or have others spoken to you about me?”

Now Pilate is openly irritated and retorts, “I’m not a Jew, am I? Your nation and its chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?”

Here’s where Jesus says something really interesting (and again, in typical fashion, doesn’t actually answer the question):

“My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn’t have been arrested…”

Isn’t that fascinating? Jesus intimates that if his kingdom did derive its power and authority “from this world,” then his disciples would fight to prevent him from being arrested (and of course we remember that Peter actually did draw his sword and attempt to prevent Jesus’ arrest).

But because Jesus’ kingdom doesn’t “originate from this world,” he isn’t threatened in the slightest by the powers of this world. Therefore he has no need for violence. Nothing ultimately important is threatened by death.

Jesus’ kingdom is dependent upon a power that is completely independent from the power dynamics of this world, and thus violence is done away with as a strategy for affected good in the world.

Ergo, to presume that violence is necessary to bring about goodness is to contradict what Jesus says about the kingdom of God. It is to live as if Jesus’ kingdom was indeed subject to the powers of this world, as if it is a new version of the “same old thing” the world has been producing for millennia.

But Jesus’ kingdom is not from this world. It doesn’t operate by the violence and coercion we are so familiar with.

And this kingdom is real and it is available to us. Like our Lord, we can learn to live in it, derive our life from it, interact with it. The more we do, the more our confidence will grow that we really don’t need to fight, because our flourishing has already been secured in a kingdom that doesn’t originate from this world.

Violence is rendered obsolete! It’s just not necessary anymore, now that the kingdom of God has come. So don’t be afraid. God will become all in all. Nothing can prevent it, not even death.

I wrote this on Twitter a couple mornings ago while waiting for my coffee to brew:

Ad-funded social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, e.g.) have a vested interest in the propagation of antagonism, because the algorithm has determined that antagonism is what best keeps people “engaged.” This shapes how we participate in it, whether we like it or not.”

I realize there is some irony in the fact that I posted this on Twitter, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Part of the power of these social media platforms is that they present themselves as “transparent” i.e. they want you to think that what you read there is simply “What’s Happening,” as Twitter puts it.

It’s easy for me to look at my social media feeds and think the world is a dumpster fire, but I have to remember that social media isn’t the world. It’s websites funded by ads and venture capital with an algorithm that rewards “hot takes” and “take-downs” because that’s what keeps people coming back for more. And around and around we go.

Not that social media is all bad and we should never use it. That’s a lazy all-or-nothing viewpoint, I think. I just think it’s worth seeing it for what it is. It’s not a public square. It wasn’t designed for the good of society. It was designed to make boatloads of money for the few people who own it. It’s worth being sober-minded about that as we use it.

One of my goals for 2020 is to spend more time in the “analog” world. Real people. Real places. Getting to know the actual physical environment around me so I can discern and really feel my vital connection to the people in my life and the place that I live.

In John 5, Jesus notices a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years, lying near the Bethesda pool, which apparently was rumored to have healing powers for the first person who could enter the water when it was stirred by an angel.

Jesus approaches this man and asks him, “Do you want to get well?”

What a question! The man answers, “I don’t have anyone to put me in the waters when they are stirred up… someone always gets there ahead of me.”

In other words, “Yes! I’d love to get well. But I am blocked from pursuing the only way I know to get well. I am excluded from ‘getting well’ according to how I ‘know’ it works.”

I find it interesting that Jesus doesn’t say, “I’ll help you get into the water.” Instead, he simply says, “Get up! Take up your mat and walk!” As the man responds to this command, he is healed, takes up his mat, and walks.

Jesus doesn’t help him get into the water, or recruit some friends to help him get into the water. Instead, he bypasses the whole system of healing as it has been established and invites the man to look to him for healing.

I read this the other day and wondered how much of my prayer life consists of trying to get Jesus to help me into the water. I have a way I “know” my healing will come. I “know” what flourishing looks like and try to recruit God to help me get there. “Sure, I’d love to get well, God, but look at all these obstacles in my way! Look at these challenges I can’t do anything about!” And so I pray and wait for God to remove the obstacles to my healing.

But what would happen if I simply looked to Jesus and opened my imagination to a completely different way of seeing the whole situation? What if the things I think are obstacles to my flourishing aren’t anything of the sort? What if I’m so locked into the “way I know things are” that I’m unable to hear Jesus telling me to get up, pick up my mat, and walk?

What if I’ve pinned all my hopes on Jesus helping me get into the water, and I’m missing what he is in fact inviting me into? What if prayer could be more like attending to his voice, gazing upon his face, and listening for his surprising invitation?

I’ve been reading the Gospel of John during morning prayer this month, and several times have been struck by how Jesus confronts us with a fundamentally different way of knowing truth than we (Westerners) typically imagine.

“How can you believe when you receive praise from each other,” Jesus asks the Pharisees, “but don’t seek the praise that only comes from God?”

In other words, your ability to know the truth, to apprehend reality and see it for what it is, is based on your intention. Your capacity to see what’s right in front of you (God’s Messiah!) is connected to your willingness to seek and submit to God’s will.

Because the Pharisees were only seeking honor in each other’s eyes, they could only perceive reality in those terms (that which brings me honor or takes it away from me). So they couldn’t see God standing in front of them because they weren’t really looking for God to be with them. Their project didn’t involve God at all, in fact. Their project (seeking praise from each other) merely used the language of God and his kingdom as a mask to make it sound more holy than it really was.

Because of this, they had no use for Jesus, because he didn’t play their game. And in fact Jesus became a threat to them, because in doing God’s will, he was attracting the attention and adulation of the crowds. They had no other way of interpreting this as Jesus “stealing” their honor in the eyes of the people.

“To believe in him means to do his will,” as Iraneaus said.

Later in the story (John 6), Jesus has begun to speak of eating his flesh and drinking his blood as the only way to have life. Many disciples leave him at this point because it is a “harsh teaching.”

Jesus, with a remarkably non-anxious presence and open-handed posture, asks the Twelve if they will leave as well. Peter’s response has become iconic (we sing this before we hear the Gospel read every Sunday):

“Lord, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and have come to know that you are God’s holy one.”

It seems to me the order here is important:

1. We believe, and
2. have come to know.

Even if a strong argument can’t be made from the grammar, seeing the text this way does cohere with what Jesus has been telling everyone again and again up until this point. You can only come to Jesus if the Father enables you. The people who recognize that Jesus is “God’s holy one” are those who have been listening and obediently responding to the Father already.

Again, our intention and our willingness determine the truth we are able to perceive and comprehend. We tend to think that we see things rationally, objectively, and if something can be “proven” according to these methods, then it’s worth “believing.”

Many of us automatically listen to God’s word this way, thinking that we will be able to rationally comprehend it and then make some decisions about whether to believe it or not. The modern mind wants to believe after it “comes to know” through what it thinks is “objective observation.”

But Jesus says the exact opposite. In fact the rational mind, merely operating according to the flesh, is offended (disgusted, even!) by the Word. But for those who have been listening to God with an intention to obey perceive something entirely different: Jesus the Holy One of God, speaking the words of eternal life.

They believe (they trust God with a heart to put it into action), and then, through believing, they come to know (the see the truth of who Jesus is and what God is up to)!

This offends the modern mind, but, according to Jesus and classical Christianity, it’s the only way to life.

It’s interesting that the angel didn’t just preach the gospel to Cornelius the Centurion in Acts 10. Instead Cornelius is told to fetch Peter, and of course at the same time an angel told Peter to allow himself to be fetched.

It’s interesting that it was important for Peter to go to Cornelius’ house, to be present with this Gentile in order to preach the gospel. Peter’s presence mattered in this encounter. Why?

Because the gospel isn’t just “information.” Because God is creating one new humanity in Christ out of all the ways we come up with to divide ourselves. And the oneness of this new humanity must not remain an abstract concept but must become an incarnate, embodied reality.

Peter must cross the threshold of a Gentile home. He must preach to them, lay hands on them, baptize them with water, and then stay with them. The church’s unity is not a nice ideal, it is a sacramental reality, enfleshed in the bodies of Peter, his companions, Cornelius, and his household.

So of course Peter must be present for the gospel to truly be preached in its fullness. If the angel had just given Cornelius the gospel “information” there would have been two parallel churches. This would be a bastardization of the gospel.

The church is the one new humanity that God is creating. This is not a nice ideal for us to think about, it is an incarnate, embodied, sacramental reality. It requires that human bodies learn to be together, stay with each other, and love one another.