Giving and healing social life, part 2

As we reflect further on our reading this week from the Gospel of John, Jesus and his life’s work are again subtly different in the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus’ life’s work is to liberate those on the margins and bottom of his society, to heal those oppressed by illness and disease, and to call out those responsible for the economic exploitation of the poor for their complicity and participation in the status quo and joins his movement to make the world a compassionate, safe and just home for all. This is a movement that the Synoptic Jesus refers to in those Gospels as “the kingdom.”

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(Read this series from the beginning here.)

In John’s Gospel, “the kingdom” is completely missing. This Gospel pays lip service twice to the “kingdom” of the synoptics. But in both cases it spiritualizes the kingdom as something that transcends the concrete and material experiences of Jesus-followers, or describes it as primarily concerned with matters of “another place.” John’s kingdom has nothing to do with threatening the privileged and exploitative power structures of this world or with injustice.

“Jesus answered, ‘Truly I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the earth. Spirit.’” (John 3:5, emphasis mine.)

Jesus said (to Pilate): “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom comes from another place.” (John 18:36, emphasis mine.)

In John, Jesus’ purpose is to open death, transform it into a portal, and show us how to follow Him through death and resurrection into the higher, postmortem bliss of reuniting and reuniting with “the Father” ‘. We see the influence of John’s Gospels today in expressions of Christianity that focus on reaching heaven in an afterlife, while remaining oblivious to the suffering and harm done to those around them in the here and now experience on earth. This focus is nothing like the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels.

There are a few things in our reading this week that I think John’s Gospel is accurate. Let’s take a look at those next.

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