Lectionary Commentaries for May 19, 2019
Fifth Sunday of Easter

During his last meal with the disciples Jesus performs a rite that has become customary in many churches ever since: the washing of the disciples’ feet.

It was a proof of his love for them, an example of service they were supposed to follow (John 13:15). Jesus sounds engaged and positive in verses 1-20, but all of the sudden he becomes troubled in spirit (13:21). The word used to express this feeling is tarasso, which usually refers to anger or indignation (see also 11:33).¹ Jesus is vexed at the prospects that one of his disciples, Judas, is about to betray him (13:21). Such an attitude is virtually a sign of shame on the group’s leader, and the fact that the disciples asked him about who among them was going to do such an unthinkable thing, proves it.

Astonishment is followed by puzzlement, when even after clearly signaling Judas as the one who is going to betray him, by giving him a piece of bread and telling him to do it quickly, the disciples misunderstand the exchange, thinking that he was telling Judas to perform some of his duties as the treasurer of the group (John 13:28-29). Obediently,² even when about to betray him, Judas leaves into the night, a symbolic reference to the pathos of the moment!

The text

There are three important ideas in this passage: Jesus’ glorification (31-32), Jesus’ departure (33), and Jesus’ new commandment (34-35).

Jesus’ glorification

The text says that the Son of Man has been glorified and that that is happening now (John 31). Throughout the gospel, glorification is linked to the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus (17:1). Here we see that it affects not only Jesus but also God. God is glorified in Jesus’ death. The cross, rather than bringing shame, brings glory to God. This shows the evangelist’s reversal of the cultural values of the time as well as his subtle — or not so subtle — criticism of the power of Empire. The purpose is to assure his community that its origins are rooted in an honorable event, because through it, God showed God’s love for the world. Here, John joins the rest of the New Testament writers who emphasized the overcoming of shame through weakness.

Glory is a “common Hellenistic word for opinion, honor, or reputation, and is one of the terms used by John to indicate Jesus’ honorific status. Every Mediterranean person would understand the special honor that attaches to an only son of a father.”³ In John, Jesus is said to have had a glory that predated his earthly life, from before the foundation of the world (17:24). This glory is manifested throughout his ministry for his followers to contemplate, since honor must be publicly acknowledged (1:14; 2:11; 11:4).

Jesus’ departure

Jesus here announces his death and resurrection in a coded way using the language of a journey. He is going to a place where no one can follow him, neither the religious leaders (John 7:32-34; 8:21), nor the disciples. He is returning to God, the one who sent him (7:33). At this point, the disciples cannot follow him, but this doesn’t mean that there will be a permanent separation. No. Jesus is going to prepare a place for them (14:3) and then he will come back and take them to himself (14:3).

The verb for take is paralambano, which can also be translated “to receive.” The NRSV chooses to translate this verse as “I will take you to myself” which seems to point at the parousia, that is, the second coming of Jesus at the end of time. But since this is not a prominent idea in John — it only appears sporadically through the narrative (see 5:25-29; 11:27; 21:22;) — it is better to translate it as “I will receive you to myself,” which conveys better the Johannine idea of the disciples, Jesus, and the Father sharing in an spiritual communion through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Maybe this is a conscious way to change the traditional eschatological language of a future parousia, such as the one present in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, into one that reflects more the realized eschatology of John.

Jesus’ new commandment.

In what sense is Jesus’ commandment new? This has elicited many responses. For instance, that Jesus is here providing the disciples with an unheard law, a novelty in the religious world of the time. But there is nothing really new about the need to love members of your in-group, and the strangers among it, something that was already prescribed in the Torah (Leviticus 19:18, 34). What is new is the way Jesus interpreted and practiced that love, namely, through service, as exemplified in the washing of the disciples’ feet. This sacrificial love will be fully manifested on the cross, when Jesus will lay down his life for his friends (15:12-17).

We have to avoid here the thought that Christian love is loftier than that practiced by people of other faiths. Our love for others follows the example of Jesus of Nazareth, even as we acknowledge other love-models in other religions (Buddha, Mohammed, and Moses). We should not be in competition when it comes to love, nor should we make it an object of pride, but we should love concretely and share the burden of a hurting world with people of faith, no matter which one.

For more than two thousand years Christians have been identified as the people of the cross, a symbol of self-sacrifice in John but of conquest and colonization in recent history. I wonder what would have happened if instead of the cross Christians would have been identified by the basin and the towel. Perhaps our world would be less divided, and everyone would love each other a little bit more.

Notes:

1. Gail O’Day, “The Gospel of John. Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. IX. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 729.
2. O’Day, 730.
3. Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998) 33.

Borders, barriers, and identity seem to be prominent not only in recent news, but in the assumptions and the world-view that all of us carry.

Whether those convictions focus on borders that should be erected or maintained, or on borders that ought to be thrown into the scrap heap of history, any action which challenges those convictions seems guaranteed to get a strong reaction. Which is precisely what Peter got from the church in Jerusalem.

We need to remember that Peter has already had his world view rearranged by a vision from God in Acts 10. He has already gone to Cornelius’ house. There he learned that God hadn’t waited for the church to figure this out, but had already visited that Gentile in a vision of his own. Peter had then preached the good news of Israel’s Messiah, Jesus, to that household that was not a part of Israel. The Spirit had been given to them before Peter could even finish his sermon, in power and clarity indistinguishable from the Jerusalem church’s own original experience (11:15). At that point, Peter had done what seemed obvious to him in the moment, but which seemed like reckless border-deconstruction to those in Jerusalem: he had baptized everyone in sight, the whole Gentile household.

It may not have been the preaching or the baptizing which most bothered those in Jerusalem. The criticism lodged in verses 2-3 addresses another boundary that had been crossed: “Why did you actually eat with those people?” Sharing a table with others holds great power. It can, and maybe always does, indicate some level of acceptance, support, and partnership with them. Perhaps that is why family gatherings around holiday tables can be so profoundly rich and so profoundly difficult. For Jews within the Roman Empire, practices of food and table had been an important part of maintaining identity within a context which included constant pressure to assimilate to the majority culture. To those serious about Israel’s covenant, eating with Gentiles carried a whiff of idolatry.

It might have been understandable to preach the good news to these Gentiles. It might even have been acceptable to baptize the household, especially if the Spirit was as evident as Peter alleged. However, those in Jerusalem apparently did not agree with Peter in how to interpret, and even more importantly how to embody, what this event meant.

Baptism admitted these Gentiles into some level of belonging, but if they were going to be treated as equals at the table, then they should alter their behavior to respect the traditions and practices of Israel. The church should certainly not accommodate to their foreign ways and thus endanger the clarity of the church’s identity. Maybe Gentile faith and baptism meant that they could be welcomed at the church’s table; but should the church really join a Gentile table? Peter’s critics in Jerusalem apparently would have let Cornelius’ household in, but as second-tier members of the church.

In response, Peter explains what happened in an “orderly” way (NRSV: “step by step”, 11:4). The author of Luke and Acts is the only New Testament writer to use this word for “orderly.” The word is used in Luke 1:3 to describe the author’s whole theological/literary project. However, here “orderly” doesn’t primarily mean the order of chronology. Instead, what is “orderly” is a telling of the story which will make clear what God is doing. Thus, Peter’s account in Acts 11 doesn’t precisely match the narrative in Acts 10, but that doesn’t matter (for example, 10:17 sounds like he has time to think about the vision, but 11:11 has Cornelius’ men arrive at the very moment the vision ends). Peter tells the story to make the truth clear: God was in charge here, pushing things forward.

In fact, in verse 14 Peter says that Cornelius testified to him that this meeting was not just about sharing food but about salvation, a crucial point that wasn’t mentioned in the narrative of these events in Acts 10 (see 10:30-33). Peter was willing to listen and learn from not only God but also from Cornelius. Peter has also done some reflective discerning of his own about the meaning of what has happened. This whole encounter with Cornelius has reminded Peter about what Jesus had said regarding the Spirit and the church’s mission (Acts 1:5). Peter now recognizes that this promise has broader implications than might have been understood at first. It isn’t just repentant Israel, but even Gentiles like Cornelius who are God’s intended beneficiaries of Jesus’ resurrection and the recipients of the Spirit.

The church’s Spirit-led experience has brought new insights regarding things like slavery, racial equality and justice, women’s ordination, and LGBTQ dignity. Some of that may look obvious in history’s rearview mirror. Still, encountering the Spirit who is alive and pushing the church in new and astonishing directions can be frightening. However, the Spirit is not random or incoherent. The Spirit always pushes the church into greater practice of God’s love for all people of the world.

This is a text about crossing borders. We know how contentious that can become! We put up walls, concrete or steel or metaphorical. It would have been more comfortable and seemingly safer for the early church to keep Cornelius and his Gentile household at arm’s length. They could have had a probationary period to make sure everyone understood where the boundaries were. But God apparently had no patience for such things.

Clearly all the implications of this event haven’t been worked out in Peter’s report, otherwise the Jerusalem meeting in Acts 15 to settle the “Gentile question” would be unnecessary. The church is always working toward a fuller understanding of what God is doing, and listening to hear from surprising sources what new things God is doing. Peter doesn’t give an abstract theological defense of his actions. Instead, he tells the story of God’s grace toward these people. Whose stories do we need to be willing to hear?

In a “Preaching from Psalms” class I taught in 2013, we read/sang/meditated our way through the Psalter.¹

Encountering Psalm 148 through the ancient method of lectio divina brought forth a number of insights. One student from Burma reminded us of the potential for harmonious co-existence of all things. Another student was struck by the power of God’s voice. Yet another student expressed discomfort over the Psalm’s reminder that she was worrying about so many things instead of praising God.

As I read through the Psalm I noticed the number of times I said, “Praise!” After three readings, it was nearly 39 times. “Praise him!” “Praise the Lord!” “Praise the name of the Lord!” Since the practice of lectio divina encourages participants not to judge what comes to mind, I’ll risk sharing with you what came to my mind. I was imagining that silly arcade game, Whack-a-Mole. You know the one where the moles pop up randomly and the player tries to whack them back into their holes.

It’s not the latter (whacking the moles back into their holes) that led to the association (especially since the Psalmist very well could have had moles in mind when crafting vs. 10). Rather, it’s the “randomly popping up” part. Instead of moles, the repetition in fast succession of “Praise” in the Psalm was a reminder of the abundant and random nature of reasons to praise the Lord that arise in any given day.

I wake up. Praise the Lord! I have food to eat. Praise him! I have meaningful work to do! Praise the name of the Lord! I encounter people who know my name and care for me. Praise him! Praise him! I breathe in the crisp, clean air and note the gorgeous magnolia tree attempting to bloom as I walk to work. Praise the Lord from the Earth! There are all these reasons to praise the Lord and I have not even been awake for two hours.

Later in the day, it occurred to me that there may very well be days when I inadvertently whack these abundant and seemingly random invitations to praise out of my sensory purview. The student’s statement indicating the Psalms potential to convict began to make sense.

Indeed, this Psalm is an invitation to praise and not necessarily a description of the way things are. As it offers a new thing with its hopeful, forward-leaning inertia, it hopes to move beyond an invitation to praise and into praise itself. While reading it aloud or, better yet, singing it full voice, we are joining the heights, the moon, the sea monsters, and the cedars in praising the one who commanded us into being.

Walter Brueggemann’s work on Psalm genres can help us here. He has moved beyond the traditional (and varied) genres of the Psalms to suggest three “functions” of the Psalms: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. This way of categorizing the Psalms converges a “contemporary pastoral agenda” with a more” historical exegetical interest.”²

At first glance, Psalm 148 appears to be a Psalm of orientation given the apparent “lack of tension,” “coherence of life,” “good order,” “celebration of the status quo,” and the “assurance that [all is] well grounded” and will continue in this way. Yes, the content suggests everything is aligned, or, as my student poetically stated, everything is in harmonious co-existence. The heavens and the earth are aligned with one another, the elements in the heavens and the earth are aligned with one another (people, animals, landscapes, heavenly beings, solar system), and, very importantly, the heavens and the earth are aligned with their creator.

In addition to content, the structure suggests good order. In between the invitation to praise the Lord that bookends the Psalm (A) are two sets of verses that mirror one another as they move from invitation to praise (B) to exhortation (C) to clarification of motive (D). The first set represents heavenly elements and the second represents earthly elements. It looks something like this:

A¹ Praise the Lord!

B¹ Invitation to praise (heavens)

C¹ Jussive (Let them . . .)

D¹ Motive (for . . .)

B² Invitation to praise (earth)

C² Jussive – (Let them . . .)

D² Motive (for . . .)

A² Praise the Lord!

Despite the alignment of the structure and content, this Psalm might be better understood as a Psalm of reorientation. Psalm 148 does not simply describe the way things are, but proclaims there has been a turn events that is a welcome reversal. While there are definite resonances with the language in Genesis, this is not simply going back to those edenic good ol’ days. Instead, Psalm 148 is a “new song sung at the appearance of a new reality, new creation, new harmony, new reliability.”³ Indeed, there is a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21).

Here the Psalm has the most homiletical potential in this season of Easter. Interestingly, we encounter this Psalm every year (A, B, and C) the first Sunday of Christmas. In year C, we also hear it during Easter. The newness expressed in this Psalm was unimaginable a few weeks back when we wept at the foot of the cross. Having been through the most profound disorientation we call Good Friday, we cannot look back, only forward where everything is made new (Revelation 21).

The student who mentioned the power of God’s voice reminded us that we take our lead from the creator who speaks all creation into creation. When we join in singing this hymn, we participate in bringing forth the new world; a new world we thought was not possible, one where all of heaven and earth not only notices, but joins in praising the Lord who is above heaven and earth. May it be so!

Notes:

¹ Commentary first published on this site on April 28, 2013.

² Walter Brueggemann, “The Psalms and the Life of Faith,” in Soundings in the Theology of Psalms: Perspectives and Methods in Contemporary Scholarship, ed. Rolf Jacobson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 3.

³ Brueggemann, 16.

John communicates much of the message of the Book of Revelation in images, that is, in word-pictures.

While Revelation 21:1-6 contains some imagery, its method of communication is a little more direct and propositional. This passage provides an explicit theological frame for interpreting the imagistic presentation of the new heaven and the new earth in Revelation 21:9-22:5.

Paying attention to the literary context helps the significance of Revelation 21:1-6 stand out. In their final confrontation, the Faithful and True rider (Jesus) captures the beast (Roman Empire) and false prophet (Roman imperial religion). The rider throws them into the lake of fire and kills their followers (Revelation 19:17-21).

While John here depicts this scene as a single battle, John has earlier indicated that the destruction of the Roman Empire is already taking place through the violence by which the Empire rules. John uses Revelation 19:17-21 as an imagistic way of confirming that this process will bring about the end of the Empire.

Setting aside the network of issues surrounding the infamous millennium of Revelation 20:1-10, we note that John paints a traditional apocalyptic picture of a final judgment of the dead. God consigns the unfaithful — those complicit with Empire and its idolatry, injustice, and violence — to the lake of fire where they will burn forever (Revelation 20:14-15; see also 20:10).

Against this background, heavy with judgment, John’s vision of the new heaven and the new earth falls on the ear with particularly forceful uplift. For all its positive character, the old heaven permitted the distortion of God’s purposes of Revelation 12:7-12. The new heaven and the new earth bespeak new structures of existence that do not permit the violations that were possible in the first heaven and the first earth.

As every first-year seminary student quickly learns, the sea in Jewish literature is sometimes a symbol of chaos. In the new world, the destruction of the sea means that chaos is no longer possible. This is in stark contrast to the chaotic social conditions in the Roman Empire.

John sees the new Jerusalem come down as “a bride adorned for her husband.” The phrase “new Jerusalem” is a way of speaking of a community whose relationships fulfill the qualities of life in mutual support in covenant. On the one hand, the association of the new Jerusalem with a wedding evokes one of the most celebrative occasions in the Ancient Near East. On the other hand, brides were typically passive during the wedding and subsequently often led reduced lives. Today’s preacher could use this unfortunate association as an occasion to critique the feminine image in its historical context and the history of passivity often forced upon women.

The words from the loud voice from the throne speaks in a double entendre. On one level, it assumes “first things” in the broad sense of the old age. On another level, it evokes the Roman Empire which thought of itself as the earthly home of its deities. Most of the wealth of the Empire was in the hands of 1.5% of the population. Everyday living conditions in the Empire for those in the lower 98.5% of the social pyramid were often the source of tears, death, mourning, crying, and pain.

For the apocalyptic tradition, Death is not only the end of life but is personified as an active agent who works against life. In John’s world of thought, “mourning” was often associated not only with the grief that comes with ordinary life but specifically referred to mourning for the broken conditions of the old age. The violent behavior of the Roman Empire only reinforced these tragic characteristics.

By contrast, the sovereign God, Alpha and Omega, will make God’s home in the new community. According to Revelation 22:1-5, the holy city will not contain a temple since the people will have unmediated access to God. The notion of God “dwelling” with them invokes the memory of the exodus when God liberated the slaves from Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire and tented (dwelled) with people in the wilderness. The transition from the first heaven and earth to the new will be a painful time, but just as the divine presence carried the community from Egypt through the Red Sea and the wilderness to the promised land, so God is with the community in the current transition and will be immediately present in the new world. The power of Death will be destroyed. The qualities of life that create tears, mourning, crying, and pain will disappear.

John has in view a future community that comes about through divine action, much of which takes place through social process. Many Christians continue to believe that God will bring the new Jerusalem. Other Christians, including me, do not anticipate an actual, singular cosmic event. Nevertheless, I believe God is present and inviting people to partner with God in social reconstruction. God does not create the holy city by immediate divine action, but neither do we bring it solely based on human initiative.

From this point of view, Revelation 21:3-4 offers a principle for social criticism. The preacher might ask where and how empires today are creating conditions such as tears, death, mourning, crying and pain that deny God’s purposes for life. Where and how is God at work through social process to replace circumstances that create tears, death, mourning, crying, and pain with circumstances that replace those things with mutually supportive, covenantal community?

To John’s beleaguered community struggling to be faithful under Roman oppression, this hope may have seemed almost unbelievable. By quoting God in Revelation 21:5-6, John underlines the authority by which the community can believe this vision is trustworthy and true.

When God says, “It is done,” God does not mean that the transformation is complete in the present. Rather, the community can count on it because God guarantees it. In that sense, it is as good as done.

I know a lot of people who struggle similarly today. Indeed, 2,000 years have passed, and the number of people suffering has increased in almost immeasurable numbers. A preacher could think with the congregation about why it is possible to believe in a transcendent power that is at work on behalf of life in the face of so many tears and crying, and so much pain, mourning, and death. To many people thirsty for such confidence, a sermon helping them understand how it is possible to believe in transformed social world would be a gift from the spring of the water of life.