John 14:6
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is both the Creator and the Created. He is like a performance artist who, throughout the Gospel, chisels away at our perception of God in order to reveal God.In revealing God, we see our true selves. Jesus as the Logos is the means of that encounter with the true self, made in the image of God.
Being human, by nature, is a creative state of existence. Creativity can lead us to God oraway from God. In an effort to determine who we are before God, we construct a framework of understanding. This framework is at once a perfectly human thing to do and a very dangerous enterprise. It is a danger to self and to the wider community, and has in the distant and recent past led to oppression and genocide. In the Scriptures, this framework takes the form of language, which actually has its origins in pictorial form. There is great beauty in words and images but also potential for misunderstanding. The prohibition against images and the exclusive use of language in Judaism, Islam and Protestantism did not and has not prevented schism and violence since even “language is never precise and always ambiguous.” This is what might be called a conundrum; in our efforts to approach God, we inadvertently distance ourselves from him. In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ identification with the Father is understood as idolatry when it is just the opposite of that. He is the pattern of what a relationship with God should be.
The language in this Gospel, which in the past has presented a narrow, sectarian view of Christian faith, is better understood in a postmodern context. Postmodernism validates the experience of the writer, the artist, or the viewer. Paradoxically, the subjectivity of postmodernism gives way to universal truth. For example, if we consider a group of people creating a sketch from a living subject, each artwork will be different. Each person sees and creates through the lens of his own experience and emotions, and there is validity in each interpretation. People can also differentiate between their own work and the living subject. The creation only functions as a reflection on the experience of the subject. No one would mistake the reflection for the real thing; however, with regard to God, this is exactly what humans often do. Jesus, in the Gospel of John, demonstrates that “there is no gap between the creation and the Creator” except of our own making. A postmodern reading of the Gospel of John rejects a misconceived objectivity in favour of an awareness of subjectivity.4 Jesus uses the words, way, truth, life and light as metaphors for himself. That self is the “I AM”, that is God. Through a postmodern approach to the Gospel of John, Jesus can be understood as the way, the truth, the life, and the light.
When Jesus speaks of the way, he is talking about recognizing God. The way is not a particular religion or ideology. Religion is only a method of worship but it is not definitive. Jesussays to the Samaritan woman at the well that “the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” (John 4:21) He could also have included Rome or Mecca in this list. To those who make a fetish of religion and feel that they have a monopoly on the truth, this is disturbing news; however, it is just as disturbing to those in contemporary times who sometimes feel adrift. Humans crave certainty; it is one of our serious flaws because it makes us needy. Jesus is throwing all of it into question, as if those who have been faithful will be left in uncertainty. It is important to note with whom he shares this information. Jesus, a Jewish male chooses to freely interact with a woman who is also an enemy. In the context of first century Palestine, this conversation should not be taking place at all. Jesus does not distinguish her from anyone else, because he “sees beyond gender and ethnicity.” For God such divisions do not exist because God sees beyond the superficial self. Jesus is the way that allows us to meet God face to face. The form that religion takes can never be mistaken for its function. That function can only be achieved through trust, just as the Israelites trusted God to lead them through the desert: “The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light.” (Exodus 14:21) God was in the pillar but not the pillar itself. The way is walking by faith. Those who crave certainty also crave spiritual death and they make an idol of religion. A postmodern approach to understanding what Jesus means by the way, does not suggest that people should embrace Relativism. Humans need spiritual practices but “true religion is a means to an end, a vehicle for God-realization, not a path to institutional piety.”
Jesus refers to himself as the truth. This does not refer to creeds or dogma, nor is it about any historical fact. Jesus also uses the actual word as something outside of himself. He associates truth with “spirit” and “worship.” For example, Jesus states that “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24) Truth in this context is a way that one approaches God. Worship is only possible when we recognize our true selves in God. In the same way, Jesus’ disciples must also accept the truth of Jesus’ origins in a way that goes beyond heredity. Jesus states that he has “come down from heaven,” to which his disciples respond “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” (John 6:42) Jesus’ disciples derive a sense of stability and comfort from this enquiry. The truth of Jesus is something that goes beyond familial bonds and it extends beyond his Jewishness. At the same time, it is not a denial of his humanity. The truth, that is Jesus, is to be found in the “true self by grasping his life and death.”7 The life that we see in him is perfectly human. He is “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” to the point that he weeps in sympathy with Mary and the Jews who are mourning with her for Lazarus. (John 11:33-35) Jesus
knows what the outcome will be, thatLazarus will be raised from the dead. Jesus brings the very human, universal experience of physical suffering and death into the presence of God. When Jesus weeps, it is God weeping in communion with human kind. This is not a simulation of emotion no more than the crucifixion is a simulation of death. In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ crucifixion is the most critical place that God meets us face to face. Jesus says of his life “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my owaccord.” (John 10:17) God transcends any power that impinges on mortal life. Jesus chisels away at the power of death by his free acceptance of it.
Jesus says that he is the life. This declaration is perhaps the most revealing for some and difficult for others because God is the sole source of life. Jesus promises eternal life, which is “conscious awareness of God” in the present and “not life in the world to come.” 8 He refers to himself as the “bread of life.” (John 6:35) Bread was and still is a staple that is basic to human sustenance. (In some cultures, such as the Calabria region of Italy, the word for bread is used as a metaphor for someone who is virtuous.) Jesus is saying that the life that is “a manifestation of God” continually depends on God without interference or interpretation.9 It is not enough that “the breath of life” came from God at the beginning of the world.” (Genesis 2:7) By conflating “bread” and “life,” Jesus is saying that living with God is not extraordinary, and that it is essential to human existence. For Jews then as now, blood was prohibitive, “for the blood is the life” itself (Deut. 12:23) The removal of blood was required for meat to be kosher. In the Gospel of John, when Jesus states “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood you have no life in you,” he is not referring to the Eucharist. (John 6:53) This declaration is startling to his listeners on two counts: the consumption of any blood is prohibitive and cannibalism is considered a terrible evil. Jesus is speaking about an apocalyptic time that is referenced in the. Hebrew scriptures, but also is prescient of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. (Deut. 28:53-57, Jer. 19:9, Lam. 2:20 and 4:10, Ezek. 5:10) As the gospel was written between 90 and 100 C.E., John is referencing a past event, but the horrors of the Roman invasion in the first century C.E. are echoed throughout Jewish history. The flesh that Jesus refers to is spirit since “it is the spirit that gives life. The flesh is useless.” (John 6:63) It seems like a contradiction, but Jesus, in the Gospel of John, is often misunderstood when he uses language metaphorically. People who turn to God for sustenance are less likely to feed on one another through exploitation and are less likely to succumb to xenophobia and tribalism.
Light is a theme that is introduced in the Prologue of John’s Gospel. It is often coupled with darkness, as “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”(John1:5) On the surface, the duality between light and dark, good and evil seems too extreme for a postmodern understanding. It seems to lack nuance and condemns those who are unwilling to see past their religious identity and ethnic origins. John says that Jesus “himself was not the light,but he came to testify to the light.” (John 1:8) This is consistent with the statement “I am the light of the world.” (John 9:5) Jesus, as the Son of God, testifies to the light, is the light and shares that light with humankind. (John 11:9) It is important to consider the nature of light when we analyse Jesus’ teaching. We cannot see light; we can only see what is illuminated. This illumination originates with God, but does not exclude humanity from sharing in his divinity.10 When people are in darkness, they are overshadowed by their own delusions, pretentions and misunderstandings. They are the architects of their own undoing. This is not God’s condemnation but a choice to remain in darkness, confident that the barriers that they have erected between themselves and God are justified. In John’s Gospel, those who are identified as the “Jews” are people who conspire against Jesus, but they are also the ones who “worship what [they] know for salvation comes from the Jews.”(John 4:22) In the past, the message about “salvation” was subverted by an anti-Semitic, literal interpretation of John. In a postmodern interpretation, the “Jews” in John’s Gospel stand in for all “those humans that cling to their pride in themselves, those humans who cannot accept that self-understanding presented in the revelation of God in Christ.” The Jews could not see God, in the same way that today Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Sikhs, Agnostics or others may not see him when they choose to block the light, insisting that their version of God is actually God.
Jesus, in the Gospel of John, is a “disclosure of God” and not a veil.11 Viewed from a postmodern perspective, this gospel may be the most universal of all. Jesus, as both the Creatorand the Created is at once in the world and outside of it. He is a faithful Jew who frequently takes part in the religious life of Jerusalem. Conversely, he also goes about deliberately healing on the Sabbath and making “I am” statements, which infuriate the authorities. (John 5:5-18) Within his fully human existence, he challenges the wisdom and law of the day in order to bring people closer to God. Jesus performs signs and experiences glory in order to demonstrate through his life and death the timelessness of God. At the Resurrection, his response to Mary Magdalene is worthnoting. When he tells her “Do not hold onto me,” it is not simply a matter of protocol. (John 20:17) When we cling to our ideas about Jesus, we can easily delude ourselves into believing that the theology and religious practices are something other than the worship of God. This is when we cease to love and serve others in the ways that he taught us. This is also the place where we can easily be seduced into living lives of judgement and bigotry. Jesus, in the Gospel of John, rescues us from these pitfalls, by reminding us that there is nothing dividing us from God.
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