20. Brown, Gospel, cxvii–cxviii.
21. This description follows John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
22. J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003).
23. Bultmann, Gospel.
24. Robert Allan Hill, An Examination and Critique of the Understanding of the Relationship between Apocalypticism and Gnosticism in Johannine Studies (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997).
25. Brown, Community.
26. Ashton, Understanding.
27. Ashton, Understanding.
28. Ashton, Understanding.
29. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Book VI, Chapter XIV. http://www.ucalgary.ca/~vandersp/Courses/texs/eusebius/eusehe6.html#XIV.
30. Tricia Gates Brown, Spirit in the Writings of John: Johannine Pneumatology in Social-Scientific Perspective (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2003) 13.
31. Bultmann, Gospel, 692.
32. Brown, Community, 28–29.
3 / Summary of the Courages in John
The courage to:
• Raise Christology
• Employ Gnosticism
• Discard Apocalyptic
• Dismiss Parables
• Leave Home
• Leave Momma, Papa, and Abba
• Revise Eschatology
• Call for Decision
• Set Sail
• Re-imagine the Gospel
• Use Gnosticism against Gnosis
• Diminish the Baptist
• Displace Peter
• Eliminate the Sacraments
• Trust the Truth
• Offer Jesus Only
• Dare to be Different
• Risk Di-Theism
• Probe Divine Relationships
• Declare Words more durable than deeds
• Use Legal Language
• Enter Night Talks
• Jazz the Gospel
• Discard the simple direct faith of signs
• Write Theology
• Rewrite the Gospel
• Make a Meta-Gospel
• Enlarge Christianity
• Name a culpable blindness
• Include many formal contradictions
• Not only leave the synagogue but also take up gnosis
4 / Two Battles
John 1:1–18
“These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
This year we will scale a great promontory, the highest peak in the Bible, which is the Gospel of John. John is Slide Mountain in the Catskills, Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks, Pikes Peak in the Rockies, Mt. Everest in the Himalayas, the Matterhorn in the Alps, Mt. Fuji in Japan. John is the bride, the Synoptics are the bridesmaids; John the groom, the others the ushers. John is the gospel for which the others were made. Before John, the rest is prelude.
The Gospel of John is a story of dislocation and disappointment. Your life is such a story, too. In fact, these are the two battles of salvation, the two great battles of the salvation we work out daily in fear and trembling, are battles with dislocation and disappointment. The Gospel of John brings grace for dislocation and freedom in disappointment, and hence is great and good news!
The Battle for Identity
A freshwoman sat last week between her mom and dad, having a sandwich at the Colgate Inn. They were tightly seated, mom and dad and daughter, although the room was not full. They huddled together, like geese heading for the water. Mom and Dad drank coke and spooned soup, wordless, mute, silent. They never dared to catch each others’ eyes, so filled were each others’ eyes. They spooned and listened, and waited, for that last trip to the room, coming (you could tell) after dinner, and that last hug and that last gift and that last goodbye. There are no atheists in foxholes, and all parents pray when they leave the freshman dorm.
She roamed the world by cell phone while her parents spooned soup. A friend in Milwaukee, was it? Can you hear me now? High school sweetheart in Boston. Can you hear me now? Sister in San Diego. Can you hear me now? I could not hear her then, but I can hear her now. She was not about to let her geographical dislocation become a matter of relational disorientation. By Glory, she was carving out her own virtual dorm, her own telephonic suite, her own cyber city. What they faced in despair, she addressed in anxiety. The dislocation would come soon enough.
The great and surprising good news of Jesus Christ, in this Gospel, is that grace may be found, may especially be found, in the upheaval of dislocation. Students or parents, hear it well; future students or grandparents, hear it well: “All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.”
You can do it. You will get through it.
Oh, prayer will help, and reading of the scripture and a church family and the habits of generosity and service. All will help. But it is largely and lastly Grace that will see you through.
Out they walked, the dislocated trio, arm in arm, into a dark and unforeseeable future. Is that not grace, the faith to walk into the dark?
Today’s text is from the first chapter of John, and there is bitter hurt in this sublime chapter, caused by a break with the first identity, a cutting of the umbilical cord, a leaving home, a separation from the family, a dismissal from the synagogue.
The religion of origin said, “In the beginning, God. . .” Replies John, “In the beginning was the Word.”
Inherited religion said, “In the beginning God created. . .” Rejoins John, “All things came into being through Him.”
Old time religion said, “God created the heavens and the earth.” Retorts John, “In Him was life.”
Inheritance said, “God said, ‘Let their be light.’” Rebuts John, “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all peoples, which shines in