Book Review: The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town

Searching for John's Jesus
A review of The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town
by Paul Louis Metzger

Paperback: Intervarsity Press, 2010


When an author compares the disciples at the Last Supper to a bunch of hobbits, it gets your attention. There were a lot of such attention-grabbing moments in Paul Metzger's new book, The Gospel of John: When Love Comes to Town. This is a book which references everything from Dirty Harry to McDonald's Filet-of-Fish sandwiches, all in the service of offering the message of the gospel of John to a contemporary world. The pop culture references were abundant. The evangelical mojo was working. Where, though, was John?

The Tolkien reference is a great case in point. As he discusses John 13, Metzger pulls in the hobbits to shed light on the transformational nature of Jesus' mission - taking people who thought they knew who they were and giving them a new identity.
Why does Tolkien choose a halfling--a hobbit--to bear the ring and not a warrior or a wizard? Because hobbits do not desire to rule the world. And most hobbits do not seek financial gain (except Bilbo's relatives, the Sackville-Bagginses, and we all know a few kin like them). Rather, they seek out fellowship and feasts and celebrations, kind of like Jesus. -- (p. 168)

So give me family feasts, foot washings, and farewell speeches with tax-collectors, zealots, fishermen and thunder's sons-turned-hobbits, as we leave the Shire all together. It's the only way to turn a he-man world upside down, as Jesus welcomes in his halfling kingdom made up of former he-men turned hobbits. -- (p. 171)

This is creative cross-pollination. It connects with an important cultural touchstone and speaks a language that will resonate with a people nurtured on Hollywood and You Tube fragments. It is combined with frequent hortatory language that lends the book a sermonic quality. There are countless places where we are told that "we should" or that "we must" do something as a response of faith. Metzger ties this to John by identifying the central message of the book as evangelical: "calling people to faith and confirming believers in faith" (21). But if the hobbits and other denizens of the book are surprising, the Jesus he points to is very familiar and perhaps more to be found in a particular strain of American evangelicalism than in the pages of John.

The Gospel of John is the first of the Resonate series of biblical commentaries, for which Metzger, a professor of Christian Theology at Multnomah Biblical Seminary, is the executive editor. The stated aim of the series is "to provide spiritual nourishment that is biblically and theologically orthodox and culturally significant" (12). Unlike traditional verse by verse commentaries, these volumes are intended to develop themes found in the biblical text in conversation with the culture.

It is good to keep this in mind because readers looking for traditional commentary material will be disappointed. Metzger does make some references to scholarly research into the gospel, but it is scant and usually confined to the endnotes. His approach is confessional and not at all cautious. He states at the front that he believes the apostle John, who was Jesus' disciple, wrote the book and also the other books credited to him. There is no discussion of a Johannine school, just as there are no extended excursuses on Greek philosophical influences or Greek translation issues. Metzger sees the gospel as all about proclaiming the Word and he wants his work to mirror that.

In the foreword, Leonard Sweet describes Metzger as inventing a "whole new genre of literature, a hybrid commentary where the best in biblical scholarship is coupled with theological reflection on the text that is accessible to the layperson" (10). This seems overly generous. Despite the many biblical citations in the book, John seems curiously absent from this commentary. We do not encounter the text in its strangeness nor with the expectation that we will discover a message that will surprise. Instead it is mediated (with novelty but sometimes tritely) through cultural references many contemporary people will know well and through traditional evangelical language that will strike many long-term Christians as boilerplate rhetoric.

At the end of each section what stays with the reader is a central image, like disciples as hobbits. But the strange and disturbing character of Jesus who haunts the gospel of John, with his cryptic language and mysterious actions, does not linger because, through Metzger's lens, he isn't much different from the illuminated Sallman painting of Jesus which hangs on the walls of so many Protestant churches throughout the land. I love hobbits. I just wish Metzger's Jesus was as intriguing.

Does God Accept My Questions?

I have really been resisting it, but I think I have to join every other person in the known world and talk about the most important media event in the history of history. I'm talking, of course, about Charlie Sheen. I've tried not to pay attention to this, and I haven't seen any of the interviews or You Tube clips, but it has been impossible. Libya may be in crisis. Japan is in crisis. But we seem to be transfixed by a television star having a major meltdown.

Just to recap this sad story - Sheen is the primary actor on CBS television's highest rated show. In recent years he has been involved in a string of incidents involving domestic violence, substance abuse and general instability. Finally, CBS decided to fire Sheen and end the show. It's all too common a story in Hollywood but what makes Charlie Sheen's story unusual is that he is actually talking about his breakdown to every media outlet he can. And not only talking about his troubles, but glorying in them.

Now, a couple of things. First, why are these networks giving Sheen so much air time? It should be obvious to any interviewer worth her or his salt after the first few minutes that the man is going through a major crisis and his incoherence is a sign that he ought to be in treatment, not on our television screens. Stop the cameras and get out of there. This is not news. I know. I know. Ratings. The same reason that car wrecks and crime stories lead the local news. But I want to go on record, as a former journalist, to say that it is immoral to make money off the misfortunes of others.

Secondly, why do we care? What is it about Charlie Sheen's breakdown that fascinates us? Maybe it's the same thing that causes us to slow down when we pass a car wreck or to turn on the evening news to see them. But here's what interests me - Charlie Sheen let's us see what happens when we let our magical thinking get out of control.

What is magical thinking? It's the kind of thinking that let's us look at the facts of the world around us and yet believe things that are not true. Like "I can buy this new car even though I have no realistic way to pay for it." Or "I'm sorry to hear that you have that you have cancer, but that will never happen to me." Or, on a larger scale, "This war is a war to end all wars." "This agreement with Hitler will mean peace in our time." "The fall of the Soviet Union is the end of history." "8-track tapes will be the most advanced music technology ever." Magical thinking.

So when Charlie Sheen says that he is tired of pretending that he is not a total rock god from Mars, it's only an extreme example of what happens all the time among us humans. We are an optimistic race, always believing that the world can be and that we can be something other than we are. We have a hard time being realistic.

Which brings me to Jesus. You might have noticed the change in colors up front today. The church year is going into the season known as Lent. Purple reflects the themes of royalty and what it means that Jesus is king, but also the theme of reflection on his journey to the cross and what his suffering reveals about how God works in the world. During Lent we are invited to walk with Jesus on this journey and to deepen our connection to him. We are invited to explore our questions about who we are in the light of God.

Lent begins every year with the reading of Jesus going out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When you think about it, this is a really strange story. I mean, just who did the devil think Jesus was that he thought he could tempt him? And why did Jesus go out into the desert in the first place to fast, of all things? He was God. Did he really need to prepare?

There is a purpose to all this, though. Matthew tells us that Jesus "was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil" (v. 1). The temptation was not a sideshow taking place alongside the main event of Jesus fasting - it was the reason for the trip in the first place. Some important confrontation is happening out there.

It may help to know where Jesus is coming from, though. He has just been baptized by John in the Jordan River, which is also a really strange thing. It was so strange that John tried to prevent it from happening. "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" he asks (3:14). The sight of the Son of God coming to a man who was baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins was bound to raise eyebrows.

Here's the thing, though. This Son of God was also fully human. And by going under the water he symbolically enters into the sin of the world. Jesus came into the world in order to confront just this problem - a problem as old as Adam and Eve. We know that the we are living in a misshapen, fallen world. Sin is the condition that keeps us from living out our true destiny. We've known it since the first moment. Adam and Eve go, in the course of 8 verses, from being naked and unashamed, to being naked and ashamed. Something evil has entered this world. Something beyond our power is here. And Jesus has come to take on the sin of the world. To be one of us and yet still God.

So he goes out into the wilderness, a place with a lot of symbolism for the people of God. The wilderness is where the great prophet Elijah went for 40 days to fast. The wilderness is where the people of Israel wandered for 40 years as they prepared to enter the Holy Land. But it wasn't just a place. Karl Barth, the great theologian, tells us that "the wilderness was a place which, like the sea, had a close affinity with the underworld, a place which belonged in a particular sense to demons." How many of us watched those images of the sea rising up to swallow whole towns in Japan and didn't wonder at its awesome power? Who could stand in the face of such a thing? That's what Jesus was doing by going out there. As Barth says, Jesus was showing that "his way will never be at a safe distance from the kingdom of darkness but will always be along its frontier and finally within that kingdom."* Jesus, in other words, is taking the fight to the enemy.

So there he is in the desert. 40 days he goes without food and, just so we get the point, the Bible tells us that after those 40 days he was famished. That's when the tempter shows up.

Now, we have not talked about this so far. You may be saying to yourself, "Do we really believe in the devil?" Maybe you've never seen the devil. Maybe you're expecting that if he did show up he would look like the devil that shows up in cartoons with red skin and a pointy tail. Our imaginations are not good enough to get a handle on what the Bible means when it talks about the tempter, the devil, Satan. (He's called all three in this passage.) Our temptation is to make this figure out to be more powerful than he is. He is a fallen angel with no ultimate power and no existence like you and I know existence. What power he has comes from his ability to deceive and mislead us. As another theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, says, "The devil's only viable mode of operation is to 'tempt.' The devil can be only a parasite, which means that the devil is only as strong as the one he tempts."** Even so - this parasite has caused a lot of trouble. But to answer the question - do we believe in the devil? No, we believe in God but we talk about the devil because the Bible does and because we know how evil creeps into every life making the devil seem all too real.

The devil comes to Jesus and tempts him the first time. "If you're the Son of God..." You know, the Bible doesn't say that the snake in the garden of Eden was the devil, but they certainly sound similar don't they? The serpent says to Eve, "Did God really say, 'Don't eat of the tree'?" Inviting her to doubt what she knows to be true. Now the devil says, "If you're the Son of God," as if that were an open question. "If you're the Son of God, and I know you're hungry, turn these stones into bread."

Jesus is the Son of God and he will do miracles to feed the five thousand and the four thousand. Surely he can do what the devil says. But what would happen if he did? Who's to know the difference? Barth says, "What would it have meant if Jesus had yielded? He would have used the power of God which He undoubtedly had like a technical instrument placed at his disposal to save and maintain His own life."*** He could have done it, but at what cost? He would no longer be the one who came to trust God fully and to give his life for the world. What he asked of his disciples was just what he did himself. "Those who love their life in this world will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it to eternal life" (John 12:26).

So when the devil tempts him with bread, Jesus quotes Scripture. He knows his Bible. He quotes Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 3 in a section where Moses was telling the people of Israel that God had tested them in the wilderness by giving them manna so that they would understand that "one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."

The devil tries again. "Jesus, come with me." And he takes Jesus up to Jerusalem. How? We don't know. He puts Jesus on the highest point of the temple and says, "If you are the Son of God..." Still trying to put a seed of doubt there. Or maybe he's just trying to get Jesus riled up. "If you are the Son of God, jump off, because the Scripture says...(the devil knows his Bible, too)...the Scripture says angels will come to prevent you stubbing your toe."

A small temptation. Let's have a little show. Let's have you jump off in a death-defying leap and save your life. Again - what's at stake? What would it hurt? The text doesn't even say that anyone was around to watch it, so it might not even be a public thing at all. But if Jesus had done it, he would have been putting God's grace to the test to save himself. When the time comes Jesus will take that leap. He will put himself at risk of death. And he will do it not for himself, but for us. And he will not be spared a stubbed toe. He will be crucified and he will die. For you and for me.

Again he quotes Deuteronomy. Chapter 6 verse 16 if you want a reference. "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."

A third time the devil tempts him. (All good stories have their threes.) This time they go up to a very high mountain. Usually biblical characters go up a high mountain to meet God. Moses. Elijah. Jesus and the disciples at the Transfiguration. But this time, the devil takes Jesus up a mountain so high that all the kingdoms of the earth stretch out before them. And all the wonders of the earth, the riches of human wealth, are laid out. "These are yours," the devil says. (This time he doesn't bother to say, "If you are the Son of God," because that's been established. This is what it's all about.) "These are yours," he says, "if you will just worship me."

And what if he had? What would it have hurt? A little nod to the devil and he could rule the world. He was a good man. The best. What a ruler he would be! No one would have to know that had gotten his position by worshipping the devil. But if he had, then his mission would have been over before he began. He may have done good, but he would not have done what it is that he came to do -- to overtrow he evil powers of this world and reverse the curse brought by sin. And to do it all, not by taking over the position of the powerful, but by emptying himself of all power and submitting to the worst the world could do to him.

"Away with you, Satan!" he said. "It is written," (Deuteronomy 6, verse 13), "Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him." With that, the devil left him, until, Luke tells us, "an opportune time" [Luke 4:13].

So what's the magical thinking the devil tempts you with? I'm guessing most of you don't really believe that you have tiger blood or that you are a rock star from Mars. But you might be tempted to think that there is some shortcut around the sufferings of this world. You might be tempted to think that if God really loves me, God will give me the winning lottery ticket or even just a raise. You might be tempted to think that those bad things you've done are not really that bad. Given the circumstances you're living with they're understandable. With the right lawyer, no jury in the land would convict you. So really, why would God? You might be tempted to believe that the rules don't always apply to you so why not give in to your impulses, no matter how destructive you've seen them be for others?

You might be tempted...but then the problems come. The doctor comes back with a diagnosis that doesn't look good. Your bad habits turn into addictions. Your benign neglect of your spouse turns into divorce. The earth shakes and the waters rise and you wonder where is this God I have taken for granted? And you are tempted to despair.

When the magical thinking breaks down and we are left with the realities of life in a broken world, all the little justifications of our lives turn into questions. Does God accept our questions? That's the title of this sermon, by the way. Does God accept our questions? What else is there that God would accept from us? Our answers are always going to be partial and insufficient. So it is our questions that lead us to God.

It's a strange little thing we're doing here in Lent. We began it on Wednesday by putting ashes on our forehead to mark the inescapable reality that we are mortal. No magical thinking can get us beyond that fact. We are human beings. We came from the dust and to dust we shall return. Our journey through Lent begins with ashes and it ends with the cross. But just beyond the cross is an empty tomb that tells us that being human is not the same thing as being hopeless. Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. His righteousness. Let's walk this Lenten journey together, following Jesus' footsteps home.

Thanks be to Jesus who has gone through into the wilderness before us - out to where the demons live - and who has risen victorious so that we can live, too. Thanks be to God.

*Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, trans. by G.W. Bromiley, [T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1956], p. 260. Referred to hereafter as Barth.

**Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew [Brazos: Grand Rapids, MI, 2006], p. 51.

***Barth, p. 261.

Do This in Remembrance of Me

This year, I have been meeting with our Montessori classes on Thursdays. We have been singing songs, telling stories, preparing the sanctuary for worship - all kinds of things. This week we got out the palm branches that we used last year for Palm Sunday. They've been drying out in a closet in my office for the last year.

We talked about why we use them on Palm Sunday. You remember this? We wave them as we remember Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on the way to his crucifixion. The people, including the children, placed branches before his donkey and shouted, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." It was as if they were welcoming a king. But then, by the week's end, Jesus was standing before a crowd that yelled, "Crucify him!"

We'll get to Palm Sunday. It's not that far off. But the practice of many churches is to take the palm branches from the year before and to burn them to make ashes to be used for the Ash Wednesday service that begins Lent. Partly that's because palms make a good ash for the service, ash that doesn't tend to irritate most people's skin. But more so, it's because it is a reminder that the same people who can shout 'Hosanna' can yell 'Crucify him!' We are a sinful people. A forgetful people. And we need reminders of who we are.

That's one of the things I have enjoyed the most about my times with the Montessori children. In the older class we burned the branches and made the ash that we will use this Wednesday night. We touch the stuff. We talk about why we use the stuff. And as we do we create memories that will linger. We will remember the feel of the brittle leaves, dried after a year. We will remember the smell of the smoke as the leaves burned in a coffee can outside. We will remember the smudge of grey on our hands. And through this stuff, God can speak to our senses and to our souls.

Friday, Suzanne and I went to see her great aunt Augusta who is in hospice care in Franklin. Augusta is 98 years old and has been single her whole life. She is the last of her generation and one of the last remaining ties our family has to Southampton County.

After visiting her at the hospital, Suzanne and I went to get some barbecue at the Golden Skillet, which is a place that both of my grandparents loved to go. It's an ugly place inside - seriously in need of a makeover. The outdated furnishings. The grease of many years clings to the ceiling tiles. But the food! In the barbecue and slaw and string beans I was remembering many such meals like that one sat around the tables of family members. In the stuff, God was speaking through my senses and to my soul.

You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Today we're on the last sermon in our series on communion. Through the last few weeks Peter and I have been talking about the themes that are part of this meal. We talked about sacrifice - the notion that this is not only a representation of Christ's sacrifice but that it also calls us to offer ourselves as a holy and living sacrifice. We talked about thanksgiving, mystery, a foretaste of heaven. And today we end with talking about communion as a memorial meal. What does it mean that we do this in remembrance of Jesus?

There are some traditions within the Christian Church for whom this is the only thing that communion is. These traditions downplay any notion of mystery or Christ's presence in the meal. It is a time to recall the events of the Last Supper that Christ shared with his disciples and to reflect on how the bread and cup represent the life Jesus offers us through his broken body and shed blood.

United Methodists don't go that far. We do believe that Christ is somehow present in the sacraments. We talk about Christ's real presence in the meal and we should expect to meet Christ when we come to the table. If we believed that communion was a memorial meal, then we would probably just do it once a year on the Thursday before Easter. John Wesley, the first Methodist, urged us to do it frequently, weekly.

Having said that, though, communion is a memorial meal. It does connect us to what Jesus did. When we hold the bread in our hands we should hear him saying, "This is my body broken for you." When we drink from the cup we should hear the echo, "Do this in remembrance of me."

How many times had Jesus sat down to eat with his disciples in the time that he was with them? Sometimes they were miraculous meals, as when the four thousand and the five thousand were fed when all that was around were a few loaves and fish. Sometimes they were in the homes of the curious - the house of a Pharisee, the home of friends like Lazarus and his sisters, Mary & Martha, in Zaccheus the tax collector's house. Most of the time, however, they were mundane meals shared on the road. But how many times had they done this and how close had they become?

Will Willimon, now the United Methodist bishop in North Alabama, wrote a book a few years back called Sunday Dinner. In it he talked about how "to be a Christian is not to think long thoughts about noble ideas. To be a Christian is to encounter a person." Specifically, it is to encounter the person of Jesus.

Therefore we must understand Christ the way we understand a person: by spending time with the person; by being respectful and attentive; and by receiving what the person wishes to share, knowing that no matter how well we get to know the person, we cannot possess or control the person. To be with a friend, Jesus or any other, is to be patient and let that friend disclose himself or herself to us in his or her own good time...You already know, in your encounters with persons, that friendship takes time. You must keep at it. You must be ready for long morning coffee breaks, leisurely lunches, times to put down your work and listen, late night telephone calls, and afternoons spent walking along the beach. Friends take time.*

Friendship is not all high, holy moments. It is mundane moments as well. It is a journey through time. But in the stuff of time and meals spent together, memories that endure are made.

That's why the memorial that the Lord's Supper is vibrates with so much meaning. We hold that bread and we remember nails through flesh, crowds shouting love and hate, scared disciples in an upper room, a savior's face weeping for the people for whom he came to die, the grace that comes so undeserved for a forgetful people. We are a forgetful people and we need this bread and this cup to remember.

The gospel lesson for today takes us to the mountaintop with Jesus and three of his disciples. Jesus is praying there with Peter, John, and James when suddenly he is changed before them. His clothes become dazzling white and his face is transfigured. And there beside him are Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets. It's all there on the mountaintop. The past, the present and the future. In case there was any doubt about who Jesus was or what he was going to do, there is this vision given to the disciples. And a voice comes from a cloud that descends on them saying, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

We weren't on that mountain. And we may wish for a vision so clear to help us see the way in a world filled with doubts and confusion. We want to know what God is about. But we do have this meal. We take this bread in our hands and it's all there - past, present and future. Who you are, who God is, and what you will be through God's love.

There is a point of debate among preachers that I've gotten into from time to time. In the Great Thanksgiving, the prayer that we say before communion, when we get to the part that tells about Jesus and the disciples sharing this meal, why don't we break the bread at that point? Some clergy do. It seems to make sense. We're talking about the breaking of the bread at that point.

The reason we don't is because remembering is not only about calling to mind what happened two thousand years ago. It's about remembering that it's still going on - that Christ is still here. So we break the bread just before we share it to say that the Christ we meet is not a figure from history - he's present in the here and now. It's all there in your hands. The savior who loved you before you were born is with you to the end. Spend some time with him this week. Get to know him as you would a friend. It is time well spent. Thanks be to God.

*William H. Willimon, Sunday Dinner: The Lord's Supper and the Christian Life, [The Upper Room: Nashville, 1981], pp. 97-99.