A Fresh Perspective

Last week a prominent Jewish religious leader had a meeting with Jesus where Jesus talked about wind and Spirit and eternal life. Nicodemus approached Jesus from a place of theological and religious privilege. Jesus told him in no uncertain terms that his privileged religious heritage did not make him any better than anyone else – he still needed a spiritual awakening, he needed the Divine Spirit to touch his human spirit in a way that would lead him into participation in God’s life and love, which is what this Gospel calls eternal life. This week we read about another person who has a conversation with Jesus about spiritual reality who is, for the most part, the opposite of Nicodemus. Jesus’ conversation partner today is a woman. From the perspective of most Jewish males in Jesus’ day that alone would have disqualified her from receiving religious instruction from a rabbi, just as in a number of Christian circles today being female disqualifies one from certain types of ministr...

One of the most significant statements on worship in our sacred writings can be found in Jesus’ conversation with the woman of Samaria in John’s Gospel. The Father seeks, says Jesus, those who worship him “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23). What does that involve? Worship “in spirit,” I take to mean, is worship that engages the spirit, that taps into the best part of us. We are to bring a certain vitality and energy into our worship. On the one hand, this calls for a focused discipline and practice; on the other hand, this involves flexibility and fluidity—because after all, we are dealing with “living water.” “Living water” is the image John’s Jesus utilizes in the conversation to speak of the divine-human encounter/relationship. Living water is always moving, changing, surging; it eludes manipulation. We can’t control or confine the Divine Spirit who is the initiator of the spiritual life. Living water requires living worship.    I heard about a pastor who t...

Living water is one of the many images the Gospel of John employs to describe what in other places the writer simply calls “eternal life.” Eternal life is, of course, eternal. Mel Blanc is a name that was associated with characters in Warner Brothers Looney Tunes for years. When at the end of a production Porky Pig came across the screen and said, “That’s all folks!” that was the voice of Mel Blanc. When he died his family engraved an inscription on his tombstone that read, “That’s all folks!” Christians refuse to believe that this life is all there is. There is more to come. We believe that we possess a life that transcends death.   The emphasis, however, in the phrase “eternal life” is not on the quantity of life, which is assumed, but on the quality of life—the kind of life it is. Almost always John’s Gospel speaks of eternal life in the present tense. It is a reality that is possessed now, that one enters into and experiences in this life/world.   So what is i...