A Fresh Perspective

Our Gospel reading today is part of a larger unit that begins in 17:1 as a prayer of Jesus to the Father. Though it’s cast in the form of a prayer, it is intended as instruction to the church. Keep in mind, as in almost all of the discourses in John’s Gospel, these are the words of John as he and his community try to imagine what the living Christ would say to them. This part of Jesus’ prayer casts a vision for oneness that extends beyond the first disciples of Jesus to embrace those who would come to be disciples after them, and eventually to embrace the world. This prayer nurtures a vision of oneness, which is not limited to Jesus’ disciples, and that shouldn’t surprise since “God so loves the world.” Jesus says that he prays for the oneness or unity of his disciples so that the world may know that God had sent him to be a definitive revelation of God’s love, and so that the world would come to know that God loves them just as much as God loves the unique Son who was sent to inc...

When Jesus appears to the disciples they are huddled together in a locked room in fear that the Jewish authorities will come for them next. Jesus had said that when the shepherd is smitten the flock will scatter. They had scattered and now they are together again, I suppose, because misery loves company. Jesus has every right to be angry and confrontational. But Jesus doesn’t scold or rebuke them does he? Jesus speaks a word of peace, a word of acceptance and hope. Crushed, no doubt, by the weight of their betrayal, full of fear and guilt, it’s what they desperately needed to hear. I’m sure they at first wondered, Could this be true? Is God this forgiving and full of grace? Can we really trust this? He tells them again, a second time: “Peace be with you.” It is true. Jesus wants his disciples to know that their betrayal, their breach of covenant loyalty, did not dissolve the covenant, did not result in their rejection. They are loved and accepted. This is where we all ...

In the first paragraph after the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:13-16), Jesus’ disciples are directly addressed as the salt and light of the world. Light as a metaphor hardly needs comment; salt may be less obvious. Salt functioned as a spice as it does today, but it also functioned (in an age without refrigeration) as a preservative. I suspect both meanings are intended. Disciples of Jesus can have a preserving function in our world by living according to the wisdom of God rather than the wisdom of the world (the domination system). Communities of disciples of Jesus can help preserve some of the virtues and qualities so essential to our true humanity, like compassion, mercy, justice, humility, honesty, etc. And these qualities do need preserving. John Pierce, editor of Baptist Today , in a recent editorial told about coming across a historical marker along the Tennessee Riverwalk that chilled him as much as the cold wind and falling temperatures he was walking in. It was Preside...

In his farewell discourse to his disciples in the Gospel of John, Jesus says: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35). Jesus creates community, not on the basis of purity codes, levels of holiness, or degrees of worthiness, but on the basis of a transcending, inclusive, loyal love. The command to love is itself not new, but what is new is the emphasis and centrality Jesus brings to it. The duty of humankind toward God and toward each other can be gathered up in the command to love. If there is one virtue that is foundational to all other virtues, if there is one quality or attribute that stands above all the others and is the source of all the others it is love. This is the essential mark of Christian discipleship. The commandment is also new in the way Jesus makes God’s love tangible, visible...

Gospel scholars tell us that Mary’s canticle of praise (the Magnificat) was most likely a song or prayer used in early Jewish Christian worship. It is a song or prayer of longing that envisions a dramatic reversal : “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (1:51–53). . The overthrow of the wealthy does not come about through the rising up of the oppressed in revolution, but through the advent of a lowly, humble child, who is born in humility, if not poverty, and who, throughout his ministry, demonstrated what Gospel scholars call a preferential option for the poor. When he defined his ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth , he declared that his mission was to bring good news to the poor and set the oppressed free (Luke 4:18–19). When he said that he had come to declare “the acc...

In the Gospels, Jesus’ sense of vocation—his conviction about what he was called to do—emerged from a clear sense of who he was. Before Jesus began his public ministry he may have been a follower of John the Baptist. He was baptized by John in the desert. In the context of his baptismal experience Jesus was given a vision, a revelation of his true self. The Gospels employ symbolical language to describe Jesus’ spiritual encounter: The heavens opened, the Spirit descended in the appearance of a dove, and the Divine Voice pronounced, “This is my Son whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Immediately after this experience Jesus faced Satan in the desert, that is, Jesus faced the temptations of his calling (temptations he would encounter throughout his ministry). And then, in the power of the Spirit, Jesus began proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God, welcoming all manner of sinners into his fellowship and manifesting healing power. Jesus becomes the Messianic agent of Go...