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WITH ONLY A FEW EXCEPTIONS, THE EPISODES IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN ARE NOT found in any of the other three gospels. One episode that does also appear in the other gospels is the so-called “Anointing at Bethany” — and in each gospel, it’s a story that turns the status quo on its head. Each …
Continue reading "Just an Ordinary Woman, She Transforms the World"
IF YOU LOOK AT IT PSYCHOLOGICALLY RATHER THAN THEOLOGICALLY, you’ll discover a fundamental problem with the way we see Christ. The traditional images of Christ, the ones with which we are so familiar, are all unambiguously masculine. On the one hand, we see Christ, the glorious son of God, ascended into heaven and sitting at …
WHEN JESUS COMES BEFORE PILATE, WHO’S FACING JUDGMENT? We are, according to the account in the Gospel of John (18:28-19:16). Here’s how. John’s story of Jesus before Pilate reads as if it were an episode in a play. The episode has seven scenes, alternately taking place outside and inside the governor’s fortress in Jerusalem. Here’s …
Discover a Side of Jesus You've Never Seen Before “Jesus and the Feminine in John” — a 5-week course on Zoom In mythology, a deity who dies and rises on the third day is a moon god, a son of the Great Mother. The good news of Christ says Jesus died and rose on the …
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, THE “SPIRITUAL GOSPEL,” CASTS A DARK SHADOW — especially in English. The Fourth Gospel is known and loved for the light it shines on spiritual reality and the mystic path. How, then, could it also have justified racist prejudice and deadly persecution for millennia? The answer, in large part, lies in …
Continue reading "The News in the Gospel Hasn’t Always Been Good"
MARY MAGDALENE IS THE FIRST WITNESS TO THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, according to the Gospel of John (20:1, 11-18), but she isn’t the “redeemed whore” of traditional Christian devotion. The Johannine portrait show us, instead, a towering woman of prophetic and spiritual power. The tradition that makes the Magdalene a prostitute grew out of a …
TWICE, JESUS TELLS THE CROWD, “I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE” (Jn. 6:35, 48) — and the image glows with the radiance of moonlight, giving us a surprising glimpse of the feminine face of Christ. The twin proclamations reveal the essence of the “Bread of Life Discourse” (Jn. 6:25-59). The evangelist has Jesus deliver this …
JESUS OF NAZARETH WAS A HUMAN BEING. So, whenever we assert his divinity, we need to remember his humanity. The orthodox formula, for the last 1,700 years or so, has insisted Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human. The Bible also shows us both, although the fully human sometimes can be harder to …
Continue reading "When He Saw Her Weeping, He Burst into Tears"
FOR THOSE WITH EYES TO SEE, the symbolism in the Gospel of John invites us into remarkable, even transformative encounters. The gospel’s prologue, for example, proclaims a light in the darkness, a light the darkness doesn’t overcome. Many see this to be an image of the sun and the invincible solar hero, but I feel …
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