Day 5: John Chapter 4 (part 2)

In the first half of this chapter Jesus speaks to the woman at the well about living water and its connection to eternal life in the spirit of God. True worshipers worshiping in spirit and truth not on a mountain or in Jerusalem but in life and as life. This vision of the kingdom is both "coming and is now here (v.23)." In the second half of the chapter he completes the spiritual sustenance with the food that is the work of the Father. The analogy of sowing and reaping is used with the disciples. The food comes after the water. The food is the work of the Lord in revealing the kingdom of God on earth. This food is the sustenance of the true worshipers and believers in the savior. Christ has sown the seeds of life in all and that life can be harvested by those who have eyes to see: "look around and see that the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life (v.35-36)." We are new beings in Christ! Born again to new food and water with new eyes to see the kingdom that is among us and in us and with us and above us!
The chapter is concluded with the second sign the messiah performs for the people, the healing of the official's son. Again, with reluctance Jesus reveals his glory in a practical and tangible way. When the father returns to find his son healed he does the math and realizes the moment Jesus said "your son will live" the boy begins to recover. So it is recorded that "he himself believed, along with his whole household (v.54)." I want to use this to begin to introduce a continuum of conversion that ranges between personal experience and ontological shift. The former is that of the official: he believed because something he was very emotionally invested in was affected by the work of the Savior. It was a specific moment in time with a specific meaning that cannot truly be understood by outside parties. The latter is an entire overhaul of one's concept of reality. A project that often takes many encounters and circumstances to be fully understood and accepted. This is in part the story on Nicodemus. Nicodemus is thoroughly confused by Jesus' cryptic message of a new life in the kingdom. This may be the beginning of the road for him to understand truly what was meant there that night. One that begins to rework the framework around which he organizes and processes reality. Belief, specifically Christian belief, is a journey that contains both "signs," specific moments of personal revelation, and conceptual shifts that develop over time and within community. Some may be more heavy to one side or the other but neither fully encompasses the breadth of God's relationality with humanity. It is not one thing, it is many, to many and for many, many times over. This is where the community as a source and foundation for dialogue is so important, because your experience is not mine and mine is not yours. I cannot assume to know you or your journey. So I must sit and look and listen as God reveals himself to me through your story and your life.

Day 4: John Chapter 4 (part 1)

This story of the Samaritan woman at the well is a beautiful example of the inefficiency of human endeavors. "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again (v.11)." The most primal human endeavor, the one we thirst for again and again is the pursuit of certain knowledge. As I have said before it is the sin of the garden: the desire to know good from evil. Truth in a universal sense. What I want to distinguish is universal truth from eternal truth. Universal is static and constant eternal truth, the truth of God through Jesus, is living and creative. Living water is the source of eternal life, a life in the Kingdom of God. Living water is a well-spring in the being of a believer that flows up to the eternal, which is the present, bringing forth the kingdom into this reality. It has been said: "Theology is done every generation." This is because it is a human endeavor to understand God. Rather we must drink from the living water Jesus offers us so as to become a well spring of the kingdom effecting every moment with the creative and living presence of God. Why return to the well of knowledge about God when you can live with God in spirit and truth?

Here the conversation moves to the site of worship. "We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews (v.22)." To contemporize this could easily say we worship what we know for salvation is from the church. It is the knowledge imparted to us by the church that we worship. In this sense we are still returning to Jerusalem to worship. Every Sunday we meet to worship the God we know. The God we know through the beliefs and doctrines off the church yet what does Christ say? "The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (v.23)." I have spoken before and will say again "spirit and truth" are presently eternal and eternally present in the very essence of the believer. These are the two components of the living water Jesus spoke of earlier in his conversation with the woman. They flow not from the well of knowledge we must continually replenish but the well spring of living water offer through Christ alone. Living water, spirit and truth, is only one facet of the kingdom. Jesus, as his disciples return speaks also of the "food to eat that you do not yet know about(v.32)." Of this I will speak next time.

The Singular Answer

Introduction to the Project (part 2)

The bible is often referred to as the "Word of God." This title has always been something I considered to have obvious meaning: the bible is the words God has given us to live by. They are His words, the words for all time, without which we cannot know how to act or think or be. Certain new understandings has brought this perspective into question.

1. The Nature of Language: The "linguistic turn" in philosophy has shook the very foundations of foundational thinking. Language is intersystematic, it is a system of symbols and signs that correspond to each other. God as "backing" the meaning of language in a universal sense seems like nonsense. Even if God had a true meaning he intended his word to have how are we supposed to know it? This is American Denominationalism. Truth and meaning become ever more fragmented in the incessant splintering off of disagreeing opinions until finally we are left with the truth of one: ourselves. Locked in a system of meaning that refers only to the self that has constructed it.

2. The Word made flesh: God's word is not the words of the bible but the Word made flesh. With God in the beginning, speaking the world into being, the Word is the creative force of the Infinite God. This Word made into flesh is the actualization of the kingdom on earth. Bringing God's kingdom to earth revealing its presence to humanity. This active creative force of empathy and compassion seems so different from the static words of the bible. So much so it seems almost counterproductive to get caught up in interpreting and deciphering its ancient teachings. Yet the story is our story (as Christians) and as such contains a dynamic power that is still relevant for the life of the community. The Word made flesh is that power become actual in the life of the believer. Not as some proposition, a belief that must be defended, but as a life in the story of the bible. It is we who give the words of the bible flesh. The word was made flesh (in the life and death of the historical Jesus) and is being made flesh in the life of all who believe.

The truth in the bible is bound up in the reader's response to its message. A response that is either an acceptance of the story as meaningful and transformational or a denial of its power to call one to clothe themselves in the language of the text, to empathize with the hero, and to give flesh to the story through the life they choose to pursue. It is with this attitude that I come to the Word of God for inspiration. This project is intended to reorient myself to the Gospel not as a book of Truth but as a story that has meaning and continues to create meaning in my life.

Day 3: John Chapter 3

"No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above (v.2)." Notice this is not will see the kingdom but can see. The kingdom is not just a future reality, a place that one may or may not go rather a present reality that is either apprehended or missed. Here Jesus uses the analogy of a second birth. To be born of the flesh is to live in the flesh and see only earthly things. To be born of the spirit is to awake to a new reality, a spiritual reality. Being born from above or "born again" is not just some catchy way to speak about believing in the propositions of the church rather it is a new existence in Christ. Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom in this world and enlightened the path to our inheritance of this kingdom. The kingdom is here, it is present but we must have eyes to see! "The Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (v.15)." Again, not will have eternal life but may have eternal life. Eternal life is a way of being specifically being born from above. Eternal life is life in the spirit. We are no longer dying a spiritual death. "Everyone believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (v.16)." Belief in no way prevents us from dying "in the flesh." This is inevitable it is a horizon we are always heading towards yet are not privy to the duration of our journey. Jesus is speaking of a spiritual death. We are dying in the flesh: "those who do not believe are condemned already (v.18)." Already condemned to a life of death a life without the other a life without spirit. Eternal life is life without borders: no beginning and no end. This is the present. We are always and forever presented with two options: life in the present or a blindness to the present propagated by mind. Where shall we live? In our heads? Blind to the other and consumed by our own construction of self? Or open to the dialogue and community of the present.? Yet it is only through the revelation of Christ that we can live in this present. The death of the flesh is to be consumed and defined by both what has happened and what will happen. Kingdom vision, seeing the kingdom, is the acceptance of the nowness of life. Life is eternal. We may be born anew into the presence of God or live out our days in the isolation of the past and future where nothing exists but our own thoughts and structures of thoughts i.e. the world we have constructed for ourselves. "Who ever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life (v.36)." Accept the eternal that is yours in the now. Those who do not obey are not sentenced to death after life rather "will not see life" at all! Life in the Kingdom or death in the self. This is the choice.

Day 2: John Chapter 2

He turned the water into wine. The first sign of his glory. He told his mother his hour had not yet come. So the only people that knew of the miracle were the disciples, his mother, and the servants that facilitated the sign. This more private revelation of his glory his followed by a very public confrontation in the temple. Not a sign but a statement. The revelation was personal the declaration was public. The Jews ask for a sign and he gives them a riddle. A riddle that will not be answered till the "hour" of his glory. Jesus seems to almost encourage a misperception of his status as the Son of God by the religious leaders of his day. The revolution must begin with the common people. The disciples being the first recipients of the revelation. They are the ones that have eyes to see. Jesus exploited the blindness of the Jews in a public confrontation of their authority. "He himself knew what was in everyone (v.25)." To see the other and respond in relation according to this perception is the mode of the Savior. These traits of virtue ascribed to the Christ are contextual. His relations were not dictated by principles but were present responses in accordance to his relation to the Father. The Spirit of God descended upon him and remained. It is an ever present reality in his interactions with others. These two very different responses, the sign at the wedding and the clearing of the temple, show that Jesus was guided by a present and sustaining spirit of God not a static principle.

Day 1 - John Chapter 1

The prologue speaks of the Word, the eternal creative manifestation of God. Through the Word the Lord created and creates all reality. This Word became flesh in the person of Jesus. The creative and redemptive person of God filled with grace and truth (v.14). There is a categorical difference between the law of Moses and the grace and truth of the Word made flesh (v.17). The law is in language, a system of propositions that functions as a framework within which to understand life. The Word is of grace and truth and does not seek to understand but rather create life. For "what has come into being in him was life , and life was the light of all people (v.4)." Life is connected to light. The light "shines in the darkness(v.5)," it is a revelation of reality. Christ as the light reveals the heart of the father, he "makes him known (v.18)." So then, the reality of God is made known to us through the light of the Word. This Word is a creative and active force in the world, not a static sign of language. The truth of the Word then must be something very different than the truth of humans, the truth in language. The truth of the Word is an ultimately creative and redemptive vision of the heart of God. It is the light into the darkness.
Enter John the Baptizer. The voice in the wilderness, the chaos, the "Babelian" confusion that is before the coming of the Word, sent to prepare the way of the Lord. John is the whisper of the kingdom, the faintest of breaths in the chaos of life saying: "after me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me (v.30)." The spirit "descends and remains(v.33)" with Jesus. The relation to God has been opened in this moment. Jesus is in full communion with the father. No mitigating language is necessary, it is life with God, a restoration of the Garden.
Finally Jesus speaks. To those that wish to follow him he says first: "What are you looking for? (v.38)" and second: "Come and See. (v.39)" A question and an answer. An invitation to see the kingdom, to see where the light of life will shine, to"see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man (v.51)." The Christ presents us with an invitation to a spiritual reality, to a spiritual vision for we are baptized not of water but of the Spirit. What are you looking for? ........... Come and See!

A New Direction

Today I strike out on a new frontier in search of the God I never found. Much like the Israelites of the Old Testament I have been a slave. A slave to myself. For years I have set about building a world unto myself, making bricks from mud and straw, drying them in the sun and stacking them in the hot desert sand. I have been both Jew and Egyptian brutalizing my thoughts into a system of ideas all for the sake of worshiping the Pharaoh within me. The wilderness of the Bible awaits me. I hope to leave this city of sand I have built up around myself for the wilderness wanderings of a pilgrim in search of the land God has set aside for his people. I leave with nothing but a promise and the hope of future encounters. Each day for one year I am going to reflect on a particular passage in the text. A text I have only known through the ready-made meaning of the Church. This is not a systematic reading through the bible in a year program rather it is duty in the service of revelation. So I hope you will check in on me from time to time. Comment on my journey or the text that was read for that day but always keeping in mind these are not points among a larger systematic theology I am trying to articulate and defend rather points on a journey to nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

Sara's Art Book

This is an Artbook made by designer Sara Seal. The following are selected excerpts from this artbook. These images have always provoked interesting questions for me. The juxtaposition of image and word has a hauntingly ironic quality while maintaining mysteriously beautiful.

For more of her work go to: candycoateduniverse