John 4:1-42 Jesus and the Samaritan Woman Part 6

I am continuing my preparations for preaching on John 4:1-42 in August by blogging my thoughts on this passage. Previously, I started a commentary, and got from John 4:6 to John 4:8. I could not post the following installment because of other commitments over the weekend, so here it is (belatedly).

John 4:9

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans).

John refers to her as the Samaritan woman (also in John 4:7). He uses the term that she would use to describe herself. The term “Samaritan” literally means “keeper”, as in “keeper of the law”. Jews used the pejorative “Cuthim”, after the foreign city of Cutha, to imply that they were the foreigners in the land, and not “true” Israelites (see my earlier blog on the origins of the Samaritans). It’s remarkable, then, that John, a Jew (though one with Hellenistic leanings), uses the term “Samaritan”. John’s irenic use of the term is underpinned by one of the major themes of his Gospel, which is that the Word had come to the whole world, not just the world of the Jews.

John lays down a pattern that we ought to follow. By using the words that a person uses to describe himself or herself with, we respect their sense of self identity. If a person self-identifies as “gay”, “Mormon” or "black" or whatever, it seems to me to be something of a violation to substitute my words for theirs, even if I don't share the values that these terms sometimes convey.

The Samaritan woman certainly recognizes Jesus’ self-identity by baldly stating You are a Jew…. Let’s get this clear; Jesus was a Jew. He was not an Aryan, a Greek, and American or something else, despite various attempts by some (for nefarious reasons) to co-opt him into a non-Semitic ethnic identity. Jesus does not correct her on this issue because, frankly, she is right. She thought he was a Jew; he thought he was a Jew and everybody else at the time thought he was a Jew. If you have a problem with the fact that Jesus was a Jew, I can only appeal to you to stop fighting the evidence and get over it. He was.

The Samaritan woman’s surprise at Jesus’ request is articulated in her question How can you ask me for a drink?. She was undoubtedly aware of the taboos around food that the Jews operated under, because the Samaritans shared most of them. According to the Jewish Rabbis, food given by Samaritans was considered unclean, but there was a concession for food bought from them. To her, then, Jesus’ request was odd, made odder by the fact that he had even spoken to her at all. Jesus crossed several racial and ethnic boundaries here; something that was not lost on her.

When John notes that …Jews do not associate with Samaritans, he is being diplomatic in the extreme. The fact of the matter was that they hated each other, and there had been a long a bloody history of animosity between them.

John 4:10

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

Jesus answers her question with a riddle and though I have a couple of theories about why, none appear conclusive. Perhaps John is giving us a stylized and truncated version of the original conversation, because he brings us right to the point and omits to tell us if Jesus actually got the drink that he asked for. Perhaps, sensing the woman’s receptiveness to his message, Jesus deliberately steered the conversation in another direction, forsaking his physical needs to capitalize on the opportunity, which would align the discussion he had with his disciples later on in the passage (John 4:31-38).

Jesus’ startling response to the Samaritan woman, which would be a conversation-stopper in most circumstances, parallels his response the opening question of Nicodemus (a Jew) in the preceding chapter (John 3:1-3). Again, this signals to me that John’s Jesus is concerned with treating Jew and Samaritan even-handedly.

The riddle concerns the gift of God, who it is who asks and living water. It is difficult to overlook a Trinitarian formulation here, with such clear allusions to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

(Note that John does not use the term “Trinity”, which was first used by Theophilus of Antioch in about AD180, then Tertullian in AD211, some 120 years after the writing of John’s Gospel (depending on the date of the latter), but the concept is derived from the basic ingredients presented in the NT; there is One God; the Father is wholly God, the Son is wholly God and the Holy Spirit is wholly God; and yet the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct from each other.)

The gift of God is God Himself. He becomes the gift to those He loves, just as husband and wife become their gifts to their spouses in a marriage. The promise of God’s intimate presence amongst His people is a common trajectory in Biblical scripture; for example, Ezekiel’s oracle ends with the statement “And the name of the city from that time on will be the LORD is there” (Ezekiel 48:35). John, of course, sees this intimate relationship brought into tangible reality by the presence of God in Jesus, “made flesh” in the world (John 1:14).

Jesus refers to himself as who it is who asks. This statement might echo Jesus’ role in John 14:16-17, in which Jesus describes Himself as the One who asks the Father for the Holy Spirit.

The living water, like so many things in John’s Gospel, is a both thing and a metaphor. The thing refers to water that is fresh and flowing, not stagnant. Jews were concerned at keeping water “live”, by keeping it moving. Sometimes they would puncture their cisterns so that there would be a notional flow of water through them. Demons, according to Matthew (Matt 12:43), could not cross “living” water. It was the “thing” that brought refreshment, life and cleansing, and it becomes the metaphor for what the Samaritan woman really needs. The water from the well will serve her for a day, but the “living water” that Jesus promises will serve her for life. It’s a metaphor for God the Holy Spirit, who refreshes, animates and cleanses the Church; the Holy Spirit is, quite literally, the life-breath of God, and He is God’s gift of Himself to the Church. That might seem quite a religious and esoteric thing to say, but think of it like this; the Holy Spirit is the very life of God, and this God-life is what gives life to the church.

John 4:11-12

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and flocks and herds?”

This is where commentators differ. Is she a simple rustic, who has missed the point and cannot see beyond the immediate circumstance of the well; or does she engage Jesus in some intellectual sparring? I tend to believe the latter. This is a remarkable exchange; else John would not have bothered to write it down. What I think is happening here is that the woman is remarking on the immediate, visible circumstance, and the underlying truths behind them, which are best understood when they are viewed against the historical conflict between Jew and Samaritan.

Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep Can this woman lift her gaze? Is she captive to the daily drudgery of lifting and fetching water for her man, who could be too selfish to marry her? Perhaps, but her question could be a double-entendre. She could be flirting by equating “this well” to her own sexuality. It would be unlikely that a Jew would arouse her interests, unless she had got bored with the attentions of the Samaritan men she knew. More likely, she is teasing Jesus’ for his Jewish religion, which she would have regarded as being too limited to draw from the well of Jacob.

I believe that she could see beyond the physical well; however all she could see was her Samaritan religion, which, she thought, was sufficient to her and her community (Jacob’s “sons and flocks and herds”) The problem with her religion was that it was bankrupt, which was patently apparent from its failure to sustain a Temple, or to sustain a faithful relationship with God. What she needed, indeed, was some new and living water, to refresh, animate and cleanse her.

John 4:13-14

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

If I am right about the Samaritan woman’s perceptiveness, then she and Jesus are talking on the same wavelength. Both see how bankrupt her religion is. She has likened it to her journey to the well, carried out with tedious monotony, and with always the same result. The journey to the well, day in and day out, was not enough to heal the divisions in the land or to make that vital connection to God that was now broken.

The well is not enough, yet Jesus promises something more in himself; it is something that He has within His gift. He doesn’t promise say “join my religion and it will sort you out” (as the Jewish missionaries to Samaria would have said), but he gives her a personal guarantee. Faith in Christ is not about signing up to a religion, or a program, but believing in Jesus, the person, who gives us his personal guarantee.

…the water I give them will become a spring of water welling up… The gift of the Spirit will be something experienced continually within the very being of those who receive it – like a spring of water welling up within them. The verb used for “welling up” (Greek hallomai) means literally to “jump up”, and in the only other places where it is found in the NT it has that literal meaning (Acts 3:8; 14.10). It is a vivid metaphor for the activity of the Holy Spirit within those who believe in Jesus, reminding us of the experiential as well as the cognitive side of the Christian faith. The fulfillment of this promise (with its future-tense verbs “I will give”, “will never thirst”; “I will give”, “will become”) awaits the coming of the Spirit following Jesus’ exaltation (John 7:37-39). (Kruse)

And now for something completely different. John 4:14 is partially quoted in the film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. In the film, it appears as part of an inscription on a crusader’s shield in a clue to the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. The film infers that eternal life might be gained by drinking from the Holy Grail, which Indiana Jones and his father both do, though the “eternal life” they imbue only survives within the confines of the grail’s secret location. I enjoyed the film, but I do no think that Jesus had this in mind; this “eternal life” is not dunk from a physical grail, but the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, and it is certainly not constrained by locale.

Finally, this last point is actually important in the context of John’s Gospel. Up to this moment in time, the connection to God and the source of life were regarded as being located in the Temple (in Mount Zion for the Jews and in Mount Gerizim for the Samaritans). Jesus brings that connection and that life out of the Temple such that it can be reached by all persons, wherever they are. In John’s idiom, the true connection to God is made in Jesus, not in the Temple.

To be continued…

Bibliography
• Clements, Roy “Introducing Jesus” Kingsway Publications, ISBN 0 85476 321 X, 1996

• Guthrie, Donald, Commentary on John in The New Bible Commentary, 21st Century Edition, Inter-Varsity Press, ISBN 0 85110 648 X, 2002.

• Kruse, Colin G “The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries – The Gospel According to John”, Inter-Varsity Press, ISBN 0 8511 327 3, 2003

• Wright, N.T. (Tom) “John for Everyone, Part 1, Chapters 1-10), Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, ISBN 0 281 05302 2, 2003

Jesus and the Pharisees

Why did Jesus give the Pharisees such a hard time?

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in (Matthew 23:13, KJV)

I've had it with you! You're hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God's kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won't let anyone else in either. (Matthew 23:13, The Message).

Growing up, I was told that Jesus fiercely condemned the Pharisees because, basically, they were the “bad guys”. Their seminal sin was their hypocrisy; they taught one thing, yet they did another. The message I received was a warning against insincerity.

Now, after many years considering the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees, I now believe that my earlier assessment was unduly harsh and a little misguided. It’s not that I now think that Jesus was unjustified in his criticism – he certainly was, rather that it’s not all about insincerity and it has much to tell us in our modern 21st Century environment.

Let me start by proposing that the Pharisees were not the pathological “bad guys” I had been led to believe.

I say this because I don’t believe the Bible separates people into pathological “bad guys” and pathological “good guys”. I believe that this tendency to separate people into pathologically “good” and “evil” camps actually arises from Gnosticism, and the Bible is staunchly anti-Gnostic. It also arises from Hollywood, but that’s another story.

Sure, the Bible talks about the “righteous” and the “wicked”, most prominently in the Psalms and Wisdom literature, but it also describes saints who sin (e.g. David in 2 Samuel 24:10), and sinners who do the right thing (e.g. Rahab in Joshua 2, see also Hebrews 11:31). The picture that emerges is not that we are either pathologically “good” or “evil”, but that we all have the same potential to do good or evil, and we all live out those potentials to greater or lesser degrees.

It follows then, that no human being is pathologically evil, not even the most Pharisee-est of the Pharisees. Incidentally, that’s how Paul described himself before his conversion (Phil 3:4-6), but the fact that he converted at all demonstrates my point.

This doesn’t solve the problem of sin, because none of us are pathologically good either; that’s a quality that belongs to God alone (see Luke 18:19). There is sin in all of us and it is present in all we do, even when we are at our best, and no amount of religion can purge it from us (see Hebrews 10:1-4).

If we are all in the same boat, why, then, do the Pharisees get singled out for a special roasting from the Boss (so to speak)? Let’s pick up the story from before Jesus’ entry onto the scene.

Its worth noting that its probably wrong to view the Pharisees as a religious cult that was based on a systematic theology. In my view, it’s better to regard Pharisaicism as a religiously conservative movement that considered itself to be the guardian and custodian of Jewish culture and identity. Josephus describes the Pharisees as a popular and powerful faction, ascetic in lifestyle, concerned to present themselves as rigorists for the Torah (Antiquities 18:12-17) (New Bible Dictionary, IVP, 2004).

The story of the Pharisees starts in post-exilic Judea, in the period between the Old and New Testaments. The Jews have returned from exile, having been chastened by their experiences. Their prophets interpret the exile as God’s judgment on them for their sins, and their restoration to the land as God’s faithfulness to His covenanted people. Not wanting to repeat the experience, the Jews took their scriptures to heart, in particular such passages as Leviticus 25:18;

Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land.

This experience of God’s judgment provided the spur for improving the religion of the Jews. I imagine that the reasoning would be something like “we got kicked out because we failed to properly obey the law, so we need to get better at doing religion.” Among others, the Pharisees then set about codifying the law and extrapolating it so that it governed every aspect of life in the community.

For example, the commandment to desist from work on the Sabbath was well established, but when did a legitimate activity, such as traveling, qualify as “work”? The Pharisees’ solution to this particular quandary was to define an allowable distance that one could travel on the Sabbath without falling foul of the prohibition on work. This is evident in the phrase “a Sabbath-day’s walk”, which is used to describe the distance from Jerusalem to the Mount Olivet in Acts 1:12. It’s about 5/8 of a mile or 1 kilometer.

Other instances would seem to us, particularly with respect to maintaining ritual cleanness around the most important feasts of the year…

A fascinating example of the lengths to which rabbinic precautions could go concerns a man who had a boil and wanted treatment for it at [Passover]. If a physician cut it off, then the moment it was severed from the body it became dead tissue. Contact with it would render anyone unclean and physician or patient or both were almost certain to be disqualified from keeping the feast. So the procedure was that the physician cut enough to leave the boil hanging by a thread. It was still part of the man’s body and thus living and not defiling. The patient then stuck it on a thorn and pulled away from it smartly, thus severing it from his body. In this way, neither of them touched the defiling tissue and both were able to keep the feast (Kerithoth 3:8)! (The Atonement, Leon Morris, page 94)

It would seem that an inordinate amount of effort was spent in avoiding defilement and ritual cleansing. I believe that this would lead to an unresolved tension between those who focused on doing the law, and those who focused on doing what the law was for, much like the tension between the Temple Cult and the Old Testament Prophets in the centuries preceding the Exile.

However, this movement also fostered two developments that are vitally important to my current enquiry;
1 The Temple in Jerusalem consolidated and grew as the focus of the community’s religion and self-identity
2 A genuine missionary effort was launched from Jerusalem to take the scriptures into surrounding provinces, including Galilee.

I consider that, like modern Christian missionary efforts, the missionary thrust of the Pharisees focused on taking the scriptures to “all nations” with the intent of discipling them in the ways of the Lord. Given that previous efforts relied on individual initiatives (e.g. Jonah), the Pharisees might have been the first, organized missionary movement. Hand in hand with this proclamation was an effort to increase the literacy of the common folk to such an extent that many of the adult males could read, though only a few could write. The irony here is that we Christians owe the writing of the New Testament largely to the Pharisees (whom we love to hate) and their commendable efforts to educate their Galilean neighbors in the art of reading and writing.

It’s not as if the Pharisees failed to create and sustain a law-keeping system either. In fact, they not only succeeded in implementing it from generation to generation; they optimized it.

These outcomes might seem counter-intuitive, but consider the thrust of Jesus’ denunciations in Matthew 23. In Matthew 23:15, Jesus acknowledges the missionary efforts of the Pharisees and the extraordinary lengths they went to in their proselytizing. In Matthew 23:16-22 Jesus addresses their elaborate methods for arranging oaths in a kind of hierarchy (which they used to get out of certain commitments). In Matthew 23:23-24 Jesus addresses their tithing. What is striking about these judgments is not just the ferocity of the language, but that Jesus does not condemn them for failing to practice their God-given religion successfully, and this is the critical point I wish to make.

The fact is that the Pharisees were successful at practicing and implementing a religion that had been ordained by God. So why, then, did Jesus give them such a hard time?

The question could be answered, rightly, with the word “hypocrisy” but, again, we need to set this word in context to see just what Jesus meant when he used it.

One of the oddities of the Gospel narratives of Jesus’ Galilean ministry is that though they are firmly set in the landscape of Galilee they make no mention of the biggest town in that region at the time – Sepphoris ( see http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/sepphoris.htm). Sepphoris was predominantly Jewish and wealthy enough to support a new-fangled luxury of modern life – a theater. The good citizens of Sepphoris would retire there for an evening’s light entertainment and watch the actors. The Greek word for actor is “hypocrités”, the Latin is “hypocrita” and the literal English rendition is “hypocrite” (Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, 2008). Though our modern word conveys a pejorative sense, it’s meaning in Jesus’ day meant, literally, someone pretending to be something that they weren’t, and it could be used in the legitimate sense of play-acting.

I might add that religious conservatives reviled the acting profession because the “actors” occasionally (often?) performed lewd live or simulated sex acts. For example, Clement of Alexandria advises a Bishop to require a converted actor to change his profession, probably for these reasons (citation needed). Also, potential disconnects between the actors’ “real” lives and on-stage personas might have been common knowledge, so its not unlikely that the first century term “hypocrite” could have had the negative connotations that it does today.

In its unadorned state, then, Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees is that they were pretending to be something that they weren’t. They performed their religion in public but it was disconnected to their inner, private life. When they were “on stage”, they would make a great show of their piety, but when they weren’t they would use their religion to cheat, lie, steal and murder. They had taken God’s Holy law and used it for their own nefarious purposes.

The way I think of it is that they drew a very definitive line between those areas of life that were controlled by their religion, and those areas in which they did what they pleased. The worst of them found ways of using their religion to abuse their neighbors, but its probably unfair to regard all Pharisees so negatively. Many of them, I suspect, were simply trying to live Godly lives, much like the religious conservatives of today from the Southern US to the middle east.

However, their God-given religion and Temple had failed to deliver them to God; else they would not have done the things they did and they would not have suffered under his judgement. This is plain enough from the Gospel narratives, but it leads to a nagging question; why did their God-given religion fail to deliver? This, I believe, is a profoundly important question, and it probably provides the impetus for the writing of the New Testament. I call it the failure of religion.

According to the scriptures the God-given law of Moses and the Temple system should have delivered its devotees to God and yet it didn’t. The solution to this problem, as presented in the New Testament, was not that the religion needed to be improved – Jesus and his followers had seen that the Pharisees and other rigorists had already optimized it. No. The solution offered in the New Testament is that no religion, not even an optimized God-given law and Temple, could possibly deliver a person from bondage to sin into the Kingdom. There are no paths that we can follow that will lead us to God. Instead, we are wholly reliant on God breaking into our world. It is He, and He alone, that delivers, not our religion, our temple, our law or our anything-else.

The picture that emerges in my mind is a Pharisee praying towards the altar, and Jesus tapping him on the shoulder. The Pharisee ignores the interruption, and concerns himself with finishing his prayers. The irony is that the true object of his prayers, and the true answer to them is standing right behind him, in the person of Jesus.

Jesus gave the Pharisees a hard time not because they failed to be sincerely religious but, ultimately, because they had rejected him. He had a right to be angry with them because he was the one whom their religion should have delivered them to, and he was the one who alone could deliver them from their sins and into their true inheritance.

Like the Pharisees, what we need to learn from this is that we should cease to put our faith in our religion, our righteousness or our anything-else, and begin to put it in the One who can, and does, truly deliver.

God questions from a 6 year old

This week, a colleague of mine sent me an email. She explained that her 6 year old son had been asking her questions about God, and could I help answer them. I wrote back as soon as I could with the following response.

(NB I have edited it lightly, by gathering my footnotes in the "footer")

Who is God and how was he born?

I’ll try to relate this in language that a 6 year old can understand, but I’ve put in some “adult” notes to try to help you make sense of it, too.

I’ll stick to the Bible on this, but I think it is fair to say that different people and different religions have very different views, and they are not all the same. Not everybody is going to agree on this (1).

God is bigger, and stranger, than any of us can possibly imagine. If you can imagine how big the universe is, then you also need to imagine that the universe exists within God to get an idea of just how big He is. That means that we will never fully understand everything there is to know about Him. However, we can know Him. You might not be able to understand everything about your Mum and Dad, but you know them because you talk to them, you know what they like and what they don’t like and in many ways you are just like them (2).

So, God created the universe, the world and you and me. We live in the world that God has created. God was there before the universe started, He is there now, and He will be there after it has finished. God wasn’t born and He will not die. He was always God and He always will be. This is one thing that’s very different between God and us (3).

One day, God decided that he wanted us to see Him as He truly is. He knew that we could look at all the stars and read all the books and ask everybody who knew something about Him, but it would never be like actually meeting Him. So, He came into our world. He came as a baby that grew into a man – Jesus Christ, who was born on Christmas Day, died on Good Friday and rose again on Easter Sunday. Finally, we could see for ourselves what He is like (4).

If I were God, and I were to come into the world that I made and ruled over, I think I would make myself King. I think I would set myself up in the most expensive palace, and I’d get my servants to run around after me, doing all the chores, doing all the boring stuff, and looking after my interests.

When the real God came into our world, He did things differently. Instead of getting us to serve Him, He served us. Instead of grabbing all the toys for Himself, He gave everything away. Instead of setting Himself up in a Royal Palace, He made Himself homeless. Instead of setting things up so that He could live forever, He died on a cross so that we could live. The story doesn’t end there, though. The Bible tells us He was raised to life, and He lives today.

So, when you ask me “who is God”, the face that comes to my mind is the face of Jesus. When you ask me “what is he like”, the story that comes to my mind is the story of Jesus.

There’s a poem in the Bible that was written shortly after Jesus had come to our world. It tells us how we should react to this story:

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.
He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what.
Not at all.
When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!
Having become human, he stayed human.
It was an incredibly humbling process.
He didn't claim special privileges.
Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.
Because of that obedience, God lifted him high and honored him far beyond anyone or anything, ever, so that all created beings in heaven and on earth—even those long ago dead and buried—will bow in worship before this Jesus Christ, and call out in praise that he is the Master of all, to the glorious honor of God the Father.

Philippians 2:5-11. This version from “The Message”. See also the NIV translation for a more “formal” rendering.

Notes:
1 Some people have tried to reconcile the world’s religions through syncretism. IMO, syncretism doesn’t work, and we just have to come to terms with the fact that the religions cannot be reconciled theologically
2 Much of this stems from the opening chapter of the Bible in Genesis 1, particularly Genesis 1:27. Also, there is a difference between understanding and knowing, and anyone who claims to fully understand God has plainly lost the plot.
3 Much of this stems from the title “Alpha and Omega” that is applied to God in Revelation 1:8, and a slew of other verses that I regularly refer to when I contend with people who insist that God was created, or that he had his own heavenly father and mother, e.g. Mormonism.
4 This is what theologians call the Incarnation – the Word made flesh, as in John 1:14.

An Open Gospel

I am a proponent of an open Gospel.

I mean “open” in the sense of “open house”; where a real estate agent opens up a house for sale so that interested people can come in and look around. They will poke their noses into the cupboards, check various certificates (termite protection is a big issue here), wander around and generally scrutinize the place. Some will be genuine buyers, others will be just curious. The point of the exercise is to allow the buyer the chance to inspect the property before proceeding further and the real estate agent gets to know the neighbors for potential future business.

By contrast, “closed” refers to the situation where you can see the outside of the house, but you can’t look in; or at least, not until you’re fully signed up or initiated.

My theology for an “open” Gospel is derived from my reading of the Bible. It starts with an act of divine disclosure – God creates the Cosmos so that He can be known by it. Without a creation, God remains alone and there is nothing to which He can be known. He declares His creation “good” (Genesis 1:4 etc) because it fits His purpose and it reflects who He is. He creates humankind in His image, male and female (Genesis 1:27) so that they can recognize Him. Of all God’s creatures, we are the ones with the special privilege of being able to comprehend God; see the comparison with the Angels in Psalm 8:4-6, in which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews sees special significance in Hebrews 2:5-9.

Jesus is God’s ultimate act of self-expression, so much so that John calls him the “word made flesh” (John 1:14). When Christians think of God, they rightly think of Jesus – he is The God, come to make Himself known to us. Perhaps the most confronting image from this story is that of a crucified God, stripped naked and impaled, spread-eagled on a cross for all the world to see. This is God, bearing our sin. This is what our sin does to God. And yet, God triumphs, even over death.

Moving into the church age, we see that the Christian church has always striven to get the word out. Initially by word of mouth and handwritten scripts, then by the printed press and now by the internet. Christians want to make the Gospel of Christ known, and the more they can broadcast it, the better. The Bible is replete with admonitions to do this, not least of which are the concluding words of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel;

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

(Matthew 28:18-20).

Did you get the “teaching” part?

God wants to be made known. He wants us to see Him as He fully is. Put it another way; He wants to be scrutinized by us, all of us and not just a select few. It’s “open house”, and we get to set the agenda.

So, I get pretty worked up when I detect the introduction of “secrets” to the Christian Gospel. To me, this cuts right against the whole tenor of God’s self-revelation to us. To put it bluntly, it’s blasphemy of the highest order.

However, these “secrets” do crop up, and they do so in the Christian community. That’s because the people who promote the idea of “secrets” are thinking more like Gnostics than Christians.

Gnosticism has made something of a come-back in recent years, and because western culture has been inculcated with Gnosticism-lite, it’s quite difficult to diagnose.

One of my theological hobbies is to develop diagnostics for heresies and here’s one for Gnosticism – if I find myself thinking that I am justified by my knowledge, then I’m thinking like a Gnostic, not a Christian. Why? Because I am justified by Christ, and Christ alone and He is not me nor is He any part of me. In fact, if I find myself thinking that I am justified by my anything, I am not thinking like a Christian.

Gnostics, as their name suggests, put a great deal of emphasis on knowledge. That’s appealing to an educated and knowledge-based culture like ours, but it’s no accident that the most active proponents (e.g. Elaine Pagels) are those who pride themselves on their knowledge. I’m not saying that knowledge and education are bad, rather that they are not the end-goal of human existence – that’s God’s prerogative.

Further Gnostics pride themselves on their ownership of a “secret” knowledge – a knowledge that is only available to their initiates. They operate a “closed” house.

A prime example is Mormonism. Joseph Smith, it’s founder, joined the Freemasons on 15 March 1842, setting up a Masonic lodge in Nauvoo (http://www.irr.org/mit/masonry.html). In his early career, Smith promulgated a message that retained some Christian imagery, and this is the Mormonism that is familiar to most everyday Mormons. However, Smith progressively moved to a more secretive form of Gnosticism, introducing an elaborate system of temples, rites and initiations. The difference between the two has been described by Mormons as the "Preparatory Gospel" and the "Full Gospel", but by Mormon critics as the "Bait and switch" (see here for a discussion). Remarkably, both sides acknowledge that there is a difference.

These Mormon Temple rites remain secret today, and Mormons are forbidden to discuss them or what they were taught in them.

However, the keeping of secrets is a hard business in the days of the internet, and any enquirer can quickly search for what they want to find. To cut a long story short, the theology that emerges from these secrets is that Mormonism is actually a polytheistic religion, in which men become Gods by acquiring multiple wives and subscribing to the Church. Brigham Young, Joseph Smith’s direct successor, said “The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy" Journal of Discourses 11:269, 1866. Ask the next Mormon missionary who comes knocking on your door, though you're unlikely to get a knowledgeable answer.

Remember my diagnostic above about “I am justified by my [fill in the blank here]”? Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and the Mormon prophets after them want to tell you that you are justified by your polygamy.

In discussing this with Mormons, the most common response I get is the “milk before meat” thing. It’s a misappropriation of what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 3:2, where he’s actually saying “I’m going to take you back to basics because you seem to think that the Gospel of Christ gives you a license to sin”.

However, the Gnostic isn’t interested in allowing the text to speak for itself because he already has a “special knowledge” that tells him what he wants to know. Why does he have this “special knowledge”? Because he has been initiated into the brotherhood, of course.

I once asked a Mormon Bishop what he thought the main intent of Christ’s mission was. He replied that it was to give us the ordinances and principals of the Gospel. His answer indicated that it was all about transferring a special knowledge to his followers. When I replied that we don’t read much about that sort of thing in the Bible, he retorted that that’s because it had been changed by the Catholics. I feel that he considers himself to have this “special knowledge” because of his connection to the “one true Church”, and it’s not his fault the Bible doesn’t agree with him.

There are a couple of themes in the Bible that might seem to support the Gnostic view, but I think they can be dispelled as giving support to it. I’ll address a couple briefly.

The first is that Jesus spoke in Parables. The dialog in Matthew 13:10-11 addresses this directly;

The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.

Jesus goes on to quote Psalm 78:2. This is one of those instances where it’s worth going back to the scripture quoted to get a fuller picture. Here’s the opening stanzas of the Psalm…

My people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.

(Psalm 78:1-4).

In other words, the Psalmist is proclaiming an “open” Gospel, using such phrases as “we will not hide”. If there is a “secret” knowledge here, it is only so because the people have forgotten it and needed to be reminded - a situation that the Psalmist seeks to correct.

So, is Jesus misquoting the Psalm? I believe he is doing what the Psalmist is doing, by opening the eyes of the people to what they can already see. The Parables are a superlative vehicle for this message, because Jesus takes everyday scenarios and uses them to point out the obvious. It remains a “secret” to his opponents because they are incapable of “getting” it. Jesus’ opponents don’t see the Kingdom of God described in the parables because they see it in the building of their Temple and the “principals and ordinances” of their law. Thus the parables divide between those who are Jesus’ followers and those who are not.

Another verse I needed to reconsider this week (because it was brought up in a post at blog.mrm.org, click here and do a search on "white stone") was Revelation 2:17b

I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.

My reply was that it is not appropriate to interpret the apocalyptic language of Revelations too literally, however it is appropriate to understand the meaning from the imagery provided. The “white stone” signifies a permanent monument or marker post, like the Ebenezer in 1 Samuel 7:12. The “new name” denotes a change in ownership, like the change in name that God gave to Abram and Sarai (Abraham and Sarah, Genesis 17:5 and Genesis 17:15).

The fact that the new name is known only to the person who receives it is a little more problematic, because it appears to imply some kind of secret initiation. However, I think that John is saying that the only people who can be sure of this change of ownership are the people themselves, perhaps at an individual level. In other words, the fact that God’s people now belong to God is a fact that the world cannot comprehend or “know”.

In my experience, I’m often greeted with blank stares when I tell people that I don’t belong to myself – I belong to God, doubly so because He created me and He redeemed me

You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

(1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

That’s a confronting message to give to the next person who protests at Christianity’s interference with his or her life, saying “it’s my life, I’ll do with it as I please”. They might even challenge the Christian with “it’s your life, why do you allow yourself to be dominated by God”. They cannot see the white stone with the new name written on it. God owns us.

There may be secrets in the world. The revelation of God, whom He is and what He is like, is not one of them. If it is a secret, then it’s a secret that’s meant to be exposed.