John proclaims that our trust conquers the world and makes us victors…Trust implies relationship rather than transaction or exploitation. For John’s audience to be people who trust (and who are trustworthy) means for them to see others as people rather than problems.
If Jesus is a vine, can we really accept a theology which permits us to sit back and take without contributing anything ourselves?
Mutual knowing is not a given in relationships…
Access to the sacrament of the Eucharist has been weaponized against all those the church deems unworthy, immoral, or in sin. The sacrament that was meant to be a way of knowing and encountering the risen Christ through breaking and sharing of bread has been made into its opposite.
The unity embodied in this psalm is idealistic, imaginative, and radical, embodying fluidity. It disrupts the exclusivist notion of nationalism common in its contemporary literature and embraces unity, which is symbolized as inherently good and pleasant.
As a motif of Easter grace, the mountain is a place of new beginnings and renewal for all who seek abundant life.
Like the humble talk in the psalm, this hand-wringing fear about a loss of Christian identity in the US masks the devastating power that white Christians wield against others in this country and elsewhere. It is a rhetorical humility in the service of actual power and dominance.
The son of Man, the son of God gives us a sign that, once more, he is not only at odds with but opposed to the structures that administer (a certain kind of) life and death.
In this passage in John, light is associated with Jesus and with the love of God for the entire world. Light is explicitly linked with a capacious love that was present from the beginning of creation and includes all of creation. It is therefore opposed to racism of any kind.
In a world of increasing anti-Jewish sentiments, we do well to note at whom Jesus points a finger. It’s not at Judaism, it’s at Rome.
Yet this “good news” – profoundly strange, even apparently morbid – promises that, in relinquishing our supereminent concern for the self, pursuing instead the way of peace and justice, we become so free that even a violent end may be an expression of an ultimately joyful reception of the gift of life – that is, it may be the way to save a life.
Lent can become a season of personal and societal transformation as people of faith respond to the counter-cultural call from Jesus’ baptism. It challenges us to examine our own attitudes and behaviours, encouraging a shift towards a more compassionate and just way of living.