Aphorism of the Day, March 31, 2020
The cross of Jesus is the biggest "make-over" of history. Imagine babies with pieced ears and little golden crosses worn on their lobes. An instrument of capital punishment worn on a baby's ear lobe. Logically it seems macabre and Paul noted that it was a scandal to the Jews and foolish to the Greek. How can the capital punishment of Jesus become the mystical experience of Paul "dying to himself." That quite some "alchemical poetry," except Paul would say, I have the empirical evidence of my changed life to prove it.
Aphorism of the Day, March 30, 2020
In the appointed Epistle for Passion Sunday, we will read the poem about an understanding of Jesus as the one who emptied the divine and became human, so human that he died. Death would be a full expression of identity with humanity. In postmodern deconstruction terms, it would be saying that even though the Signified is always already being referred to, the referring can only happen within the constant play of signifiers. We are always trying to "get to the Signified," but we can only use signifiers to do so. The Signified is always, already "emptied" into the signifiers.
Aphorism of the Day, March 29, 2020
What does resurrection mean for people who are not yet dead? St. Paul wrote that the body is dead in sin, but even this state one could know mystery of Christ in oneself by the power of the Holy Spirit. Lazarus in the tomb represents each "Pauline mystic" who was dead in sin, but who is called forth by the word of Christ to new life, abundant life. The Gospels present Pauline mysticism in story form as the mystagogic church initiates new members into the "mystery" of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, March 28, 2020
Ponder inter-Gospel dialogue. In the Gospel of Luke parable, a beggar leper named Lazarus dies and in death he is with Abraham and has a conversation across a vast chasm with a rich man who neglected Lazarus when they were alive. The rich man begged Abraham to send someone from the dead to warn his family, but Abraham said they would not believe even if someone was sent from the dead. Fast-forward to John. Who is the person who returns from the dead? Lazarus. And what is the aftermath of Lazarus' return for the religious leaders? They do not believe and begin to plot the death of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, March 27, 2020
Is something like resurrection found in the Hebrew Scripture? The Sadducees, it is said did not believe in a resurrection because they could not find a text verifying such in the Torah. It is different in the prophets. In the "Dem dry bones" portion of Ezekiel, it is prophesies: "I am going to open your graves and bring your people up from the graves." In a world of constant change, where does permanent Identity reside? Is there Personal unlimited Byte of Memory who can remember and reconstitute all that is previous in an unspeakable way? Hope within humanity is always looking for narratives of continuing Identity.
Aphorism of the Day, March 26, 2020
Observe how the oracle of Jesus Christ in John's Gospel mocks literalism. The disciples said on the way to Lazarus' tomb, "If we sleeps, then that is good." Jesus replied, "I using sleep to mean death, guys." If one does not learn how to read figuratively the text of John, one misses the point.
Aphorism of the Day, March 25, 2020
St. Paul wrote that even though we have the Spirit, the "body is dead because of sin." The story of Lazarus is the mystical teaching about how all live in " a body which is dead because of sin," but while we live in our "mortal state" we like Lazarus can know the resurrection and abundant life of the Spirit. In our deathly state, we can "come to life, abundant life of the Spirit," even as we are like Lazarus, our bodies will die. Please understand how the mysticism of Paul is placed in a story narrative of Jesus in John's Gospel as a cryptic teaching method of mystagogy.
Aphorism of the Day, March 24, 2020
How is the Pauline teaching that the presence of the Holy Spirit is actually a taste of eternal life before one dies taught in Gospel story form? The raising of Lazarus. Lazarus was raised, only to die again. This Gospel Sign means an encounter with the Risen Christ, when we experience the "death" of our sins, is resurrection and life, and when we physically die, a continuation in this qualitative life. The writer of John was a mystagogue for the mystical initiates on the spiritual path of transformation.
Aphorism of the Day, March 23, 2020
Take the didactic, teaching theology and mysticism of Paul and place it in life narratives of Jesus which becomes spiritual process of visualization technique such that the presented Jesus of Nazareth before his death is actually the Risen Christ teaching death and resurrection theology as a continuing oracle within the Jesus Movement and early Christ-Communities. This is the brilliant mystagogy of the Gospels.
Aphorism of the Day, March 22, 2020
"Surely we are not blind, are we?" Of course we are always blind, blind to what we cannot see. Seeing is not just physical sight, it is also an empathy from within that allows one to focus, perhaps on "background" features which were so "taken for granted" that they were not "seen." Why was not slavery or the subjugation of women "seen" for many centuries? There remains lots of blindness that we need to recover from in the universal practice of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, March 21, 2020
For Gospel writers, blindness was the external and environment darkness of living in a paradigm which did not take into account the fullness of God who loved all and wanted to reach out to all, even the "non-kosher" folk of the Roman Empire. Joseph Campbell is quoted as saying, "Yesterday's virtue may be tomorrow's vice." This illustrates the blindness of living in a former paradigm when the Spirit is calling for conversion and new birth. One can say that the practice of slavery and the subjugation of women which characterized the "enlightened" biblical people has become "darkness" once new light of justice and equality is shone. Christ as the Light of the World give sight to those who live in the blindness of the darkness caused by inferior paradigms which do not yet allow for the fuller expression of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, March 20, 2020
What is the condition of blindness which all seeing people can experience? Darkness. Light is essential to sight, meaning that seeing does not just involve physical ability, it is contextual environment. The environment new light for people to see. The Jesus Movement proclaimed a new "Light" in the world environment in Jesus Christ, in the Risen Christ and in the experience of the Holy Spirit. This new environment of "light" allowed persons to re-arrange their lives in how they understood God and God's inclusive purpose for all people.
Aphorism of the Day, March 19, 2020
One could make the case that the Gospel of John is mainly about hermeneutics, interpretation and seeing life differently. See from "above," and seeing figuratively rather than literally as a way of enhancing one's landscape with one's inscape that have been "renew" in mind to attain the "mind of Christ" in the mode of the Risen Christ. The warning of John's Gospel is "Don't get stuck in one's literal landscape." Work on the inner life because what one perceives in one's landscape reflects the nature of one's seeing from one's inscape.
Aphorism of the Day, March 18, 2020
Seeing from within or being converted to another paradigm expresses the new paradigm of Jesus Movement. When Samuel sought to anoint all of David's brothers as king of Israel and was left with the small lad David as "God's choice," the observation was that God sees what humans don't, God looks at the heart, at the interior. Jesus of John's Gospel discourse, notes that the blind man came to see and the religious leaders were in fact blind. Conversion means that one moves into a different hermeneutical circle with a different kind of seeing and one was in fact blind when one inhabited a previous hermeneutical circle.
Aphorism of the Day, March 17, 2020
"Who caused this man's blindness, his own sins or his parents?" Causation questions sometimes are victimization implications. If bad luck is happening to others because they deserve it, then the one presuming to know precise causation can justify one's own blessing of good luck as God's direct favor. Precise causation is a myth since any event lies at the end of an infinite regress along with every other contemporary event each with its own infinite regress. So the event whether good or bad is a set up for some more in the future proving the glory of the divine no matter what happens because tomorrow always means outcomes are only temporary. This is the glory of the creative and glorious Freedom within which we live and have our being.
Aphorism of the Day, March 16, 2020
Jesus told Nicodemus that he couldn't "see" the kingdom of God because he wasn't born from above. The blind man healed by Jesus "saw" the kingdom of God while the religious leaders, even though they had eyesight, were "blind" to the kingdom of God. The book of Signs which is included in the Gospel of John is the ability to convert to the new paradigm of the kingdom of God which was initiated by Jesus Christ. The Gospel of John is less about the history of Jesus of Nazareth and more about the paradigm of the Risen Christ via Holy Spiritual experience which enabled people to "see" life in a new and different way. To remain in biblical "literalism" is to be like the "religious blind."
Aphorism of the Day, March 15, 2020
Mount Gerizim Shrines and the Temple had long been destroyed when the Gospel text of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman was written. If Holy Places had been destroyed where could Holy God reside? The edifice complex of trying to limit the divine presence had to be given up to each body becoming known as a temple of the Holy Spirit whose inner presence would be like a gushing spring of water. A very different kind of water than what was drawn from Jacob's well. John's Gospel is about moving from landscape to InScape.
Aphorism of the Day, March 14, 2020
When the Gospel of John was written, holy places for the Jews and Samaritans had suffered devastation. What do we do now that the Temple is destroyed or Mount Gerizim shrines is in shambles? Our identity resides from knowing the place where God resides and is a place to renew that identity through pilgrimage to the holy place. The Risen Christ as an oracle in the early church says to the Samaritan woman, "God is totally, portable and nomadic, because God is Spirit, so God as Spirit resides wherever people are since God is as close to a person as the very language that a person has. How close are you to language? You are one with your language. God is Spirit. The words of Jesus are spirit. Our words are our identifying spirit and we're one with them. So, let us clean up our word life if therein lies our very identity.
Aphorism of the Day, March 13, 2020
The Jesus Movement involved a renovation, a do-over, and re-definition of symbols which arose in the Hebrew Scripture within the new "Christ-flooded" context where the poetic effervescence of St. Paul's "Christ as all in all" became the center of the new paradigm. Christ becomes the Rock struck by Moses from which everyone is able to drink the living water. The Jesus Movement as it came to text meant that it manifested itself in a poetic revolution with a new pulsating center generating extreme poetic license centering on the Risen Christ. Was this mere hype? No, because one cannot artificially generate such widespread experiences of the Risen Christ to "make" the hype happen.
Aphorism of the Day, March 12, 2020
The practices in the early Jesus Movement community become starkly anachronistically instantiated in the Gospel narratives of Jesus including his words. Jews and Samaritans were "enemies." The Jesus Movement included the reconciliation of "former" enemies and, yes Jesus came to say in the Gospel presentation, "Love your enemies."
Aphorism of the Day, March 11, 2020
The metaphors of Jesus in John's Gospel indicate a new birth by water and the Spirit. In John 4, the Spirit is likened to an inner gushing spring. So Spirit as inner gushing spring is like an interior baptism, the clean heart and renewed spirit which the Psalmist asked for from God. A spring gushes up through the dirt and is clean water even when the rest of the environment is "dirt." So, look for the God-gush from within as the acceptable identity with a perfection that one cannot have apart from the one who complements and supplements the rest of oneself which is not perfect.
Aphorism of the Day, March 10, 2020
One might note that the presentation of the dialogical Jesus in John's Gospel pertains to his constant provoking of crassly literal people to embrace figurative, allegorical or spiritual interpretations of "physical" reality. Take for example the food and water metaphors of the Woman at the Well pericope. Water of Jacob's well or water of the inner Spirit fountain? Jesus had "food" to eat that his disciples who brought him provisions did not know about. The "born again" metaphor has much to do with going beyond literal meaning to other kinds of meaning which pertains to qualitative interpretation for inner enrichment amid the exterior "literal" landscape.
Aphorism of the Day, March 9, 2020
The early churches engaged in the practice of love between peoples who were formerly known as "enemies." When this practice was presented by the words and actions of Jesus in the Gospels, people like the "hated" Samaritans were shown to be those who responded to Jesus as the bringer of a new paradigm of love between former enemies. Men and women of the time were not "enemies" but they were definitely segregated in restrictions on public interaction, yet Jesus is shown to commission an unknown and unnamed Samaritan Woman at the Well to be the "first apostle" to the Samaritan people. It is quite amazing how the church for so many years retreated to the secular habits of patriarchalism which our own Holy Gospels were shown to be overthrown by Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, March 8, 2020
Every day is a day to be "born again" or "born from above" in the sense that one should be surpassing oneself in manifold excellence each day in life. To limit the "born again" experience to a one time event to escape hell is a very limited application of the metaphor and therefore not really true.
Aphorism of the Day, March 7, 2020
A theological catch phrase derived from the King James translation of a verse in John 3 came to characterize the evangelical movement of persons who call themselves "born again." This has persisted even though a better translation of the Greek is "born from above." The "born again" movement has been a response to those who believe in a prevenient baptismal grace for those who were baptized as infants. Born again is not in disagreement with "born from above" even though not literally accurate. Typically evangelicals believe one is "born again" once in order to avoid hell and have eternal life. The phrase should really be limited to the dialogue presented between Jesus and Nicodemus, even though it can be general instructive for understanding the moments of conversions to new insights and perspectives. Jesus was saying to the inquiring Pharisee that he needed a paradigm switch, a conversion in order to understand the new perspective of the Jesus Movement. Paradigm switch, being born again or from above is consistent with the Christian pedagogical process known as "repentance," or "meta-noia," the "after mind," the "new mind," or the "renewed mind." This would mean that rebirth is more of a process of metamorphosis with continual cycles of new insights and new births. To limit being born again to a one time event violates the entire growth concept implied in life as repentance.
Aphorism of the Day, March 6, 2020
John's Gospel discourses of a "channeled voice of the Risen Christ" in an advancing Christ Movement, indicates the conversion of the writer to a post-synagogue paradigm with a Christo-centric theology involving the reinterpretation of the themes of Hebrew Scriptures under the guise of the Jesus events. So the serpent lifted up in the wilderness is paired with Jesus lifted on the cross teaching that a glance of faith in sacrificial grace is the salvation to tolerate ourselves in our perpetual undeveloped states.
Aphorism of the Day, March 5, 2020
St. Paul uses Abraham as a representative of "universal" faith. He is a patriarch who exists before Israel, Moses and the giving of the law. His faith was valid, meaning he was justified before God. The purpose of religious institutions seems to be about declaring people "justified" before God. This probably means "justified" before the religious authorities who perhaps reduce being justified to being compliant with the rules of the community. The non-religious crowd of "nones" do not really care about religious community rules where religious institution and political power becomes ever increasingly separated.
Aphorism of the Day, March 4, 2020
The Gospel of John, like other New Testament writings, were written by people who did not conceive of their writings becoming a part of a "canon" of Scriptures, or an agreed upon "textbook" of "inspired" writings exclusively prescribed for the widespread Christian communities. It was written long after Jesus walked and talked; it was written by people who like Paul believed that they "had the mind of Christ," and thus could through the Spirit "channel" the mind of Christ in written and spoken words in such a ways as to be authentically associated as words Jesus might say if Jesus was still physically present with an accessible voice. The Nicodemus discourse of Jesus is presentation of how an appeal is being made to a devout Pharisee who is open to new insights. You must be born again or born from above in T.S.Kuhnian terminology would be "You must make a paradigm switch if you are going to understand the new Christ-definition given to all manner of theological thinking and spiritual lifestyle."
Aphorism of the Day, March 3, 2020
John's Gospel indicates that Word is God. And we are told that in a Word product, writing. John's Gospel is a word product of diverse expressive tropes. It present the metaphors of equivalence expressed in "difference," e.g. "I am light, Good Shepherd, Life et al." Word is really an invisible phenomenon and yet it become "made flesh" or embodied in human experience. And through word, it is reported that word is made flesh. John's Gospel reveals that human existence is known in the reflexive "play" of language, because by Word we proclaim that we exist with an existence we know because we have words.
Aphorism of the Day, March 2, 2020
St. Paul became the chief apologist for the Jesus Movement, particularly as it was becoming a significant party within Judaism causing consternation in many synagogue communities because of a rather wholescale acceptance Gentiles becoming viewed as those who had genuine faith without being observant of the ritual purity rules of the synagogue. What is discovered about systems of rules is that compliance is mainly about community identity and being received in specific communities. Of the Ten Commandments, how many of them rise to juridical significance in the U.S. justice system? Murder and stealing and lying when it is under oath perjury. Do we want to make complying with community identity as equal to justification before God? We must conclude that, God being an omni-clement One, tolerates all of the consequences in a system of Freedom and such clemency is beyond any community of people who purport to speak exclusively on behalf of such an "omni-clement" Being. It is fine to have the differences of community identities because we are located in special situation with a variety of traditions claiming universal relevancy, and we know the clash and the mutual judging between competitive communities claiming universal relevancy. This should indicate to us that the omni-benevolent One who tolerates much more than any of us would, reveals only omni-benevolent freedom in the differential manifestations which occur in each situation. One hopes that in the clash of human manifested "God-systems" when God-metaphors seem to be in conflict that one accepts the identity of a solidarity humbly as a matter of one's temporal location and not as one who has a panorama of everything, as though one could claim to know synchronicity with "Omni-Becoming."
Aphorism of the Day, March 1, 2020
In biblical numerology, 40 is the symbol of testing and the ordeal. As if, we could actual schedule the test or ordeals which come to us. Ordeal is the biblical term for accepting the fact of the range of probable occurrences in the field of freedom as discipline. Lent is a simulated ordeal of training to build the kind of response muscles for the general ordeal of the conditions of freedom. Accepting the general of freedom which occur with our free choice is the life epic.
The cross of Jesus is the biggest "make-over" of history. Imagine babies with pieced ears and little golden crosses worn on their lobes. An instrument of capital punishment worn on a baby's ear lobe. Logically it seems macabre and Paul noted that it was a scandal to the Jews and foolish to the Greek. How can the capital punishment of Jesus become the mystical experience of Paul "dying to himself." That quite some "alchemical poetry," except Paul would say, I have the empirical evidence of my changed life to prove it.
Aphorism of the Day, March 30, 2020
In the appointed Epistle for Passion Sunday, we will read the poem about an understanding of Jesus as the one who emptied the divine and became human, so human that he died. Death would be a full expression of identity with humanity. In postmodern deconstruction terms, it would be saying that even though the Signified is always already being referred to, the referring can only happen within the constant play of signifiers. We are always trying to "get to the Signified," but we can only use signifiers to do so. The Signified is always, already "emptied" into the signifiers.
Aphorism of the Day, March 29, 2020
What does resurrection mean for people who are not yet dead? St. Paul wrote that the body is dead in sin, but even this state one could know mystery of Christ in oneself by the power of the Holy Spirit. Lazarus in the tomb represents each "Pauline mystic" who was dead in sin, but who is called forth by the word of Christ to new life, abundant life. The Gospels present Pauline mysticism in story form as the mystagogic church initiates new members into the "mystery" of Christ.
Aphorism of the Day, March 28, 2020
Ponder inter-Gospel dialogue. In the Gospel of Luke parable, a beggar leper named Lazarus dies and in death he is with Abraham and has a conversation across a vast chasm with a rich man who neglected Lazarus when they were alive. The rich man begged Abraham to send someone from the dead to warn his family, but Abraham said they would not believe even if someone was sent from the dead. Fast-forward to John. Who is the person who returns from the dead? Lazarus. And what is the aftermath of Lazarus' return for the religious leaders? They do not believe and begin to plot the death of Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, March 27, 2020
Is something like resurrection found in the Hebrew Scripture? The Sadducees, it is said did not believe in a resurrection because they could not find a text verifying such in the Torah. It is different in the prophets. In the "Dem dry bones" portion of Ezekiel, it is prophesies: "I am going to open your graves and bring your people up from the graves." In a world of constant change, where does permanent Identity reside? Is there Personal unlimited Byte of Memory who can remember and reconstitute all that is previous in an unspeakable way? Hope within humanity is always looking for narratives of continuing Identity.
Aphorism of the Day, March 26, 2020
Observe how the oracle of Jesus Christ in John's Gospel mocks literalism. The disciples said on the way to Lazarus' tomb, "If we sleeps, then that is good." Jesus replied, "I using sleep to mean death, guys." If one does not learn how to read figuratively the text of John, one misses the point.
Aphorism of the Day, March 25, 2020
St. Paul wrote that even though we have the Spirit, the "body is dead because of sin." The story of Lazarus is the mystical teaching about how all live in " a body which is dead because of sin," but while we live in our "mortal state" we like Lazarus can know the resurrection and abundant life of the Spirit. In our deathly state, we can "come to life, abundant life of the Spirit," even as we are like Lazarus, our bodies will die. Please understand how the mysticism of Paul is placed in a story narrative of Jesus in John's Gospel as a cryptic teaching method of mystagogy.
Aphorism of the Day, March 24, 2020
How is the Pauline teaching that the presence of the Holy Spirit is actually a taste of eternal life before one dies taught in Gospel story form? The raising of Lazarus. Lazarus was raised, only to die again. This Gospel Sign means an encounter with the Risen Christ, when we experience the "death" of our sins, is resurrection and life, and when we physically die, a continuation in this qualitative life. The writer of John was a mystagogue for the mystical initiates on the spiritual path of transformation.
Aphorism of the Day, March 23, 2020
Take the didactic, teaching theology and mysticism of Paul and place it in life narratives of Jesus which becomes spiritual process of visualization technique such that the presented Jesus of Nazareth before his death is actually the Risen Christ teaching death and resurrection theology as a continuing oracle within the Jesus Movement and early Christ-Communities. This is the brilliant mystagogy of the Gospels.
Aphorism of the Day, March 22, 2020
"Surely we are not blind, are we?" Of course we are always blind, blind to what we cannot see. Seeing is not just physical sight, it is also an empathy from within that allows one to focus, perhaps on "background" features which were so "taken for granted" that they were not "seen." Why was not slavery or the subjugation of women "seen" for many centuries? There remains lots of blindness that we need to recover from in the universal practice of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, March 21, 2020
For Gospel writers, blindness was the external and environment darkness of living in a paradigm which did not take into account the fullness of God who loved all and wanted to reach out to all, even the "non-kosher" folk of the Roman Empire. Joseph Campbell is quoted as saying, "Yesterday's virtue may be tomorrow's vice." This illustrates the blindness of living in a former paradigm when the Spirit is calling for conversion and new birth. One can say that the practice of slavery and the subjugation of women which characterized the "enlightened" biblical people has become "darkness" once new light of justice and equality is shone. Christ as the Light of the World give sight to those who live in the blindness of the darkness caused by inferior paradigms which do not yet allow for the fuller expression of love and justice.
Aphorism of the Day, March 20, 2020
What is the condition of blindness which all seeing people can experience? Darkness. Light is essential to sight, meaning that seeing does not just involve physical ability, it is contextual environment. The environment new light for people to see. The Jesus Movement proclaimed a new "Light" in the world environment in Jesus Christ, in the Risen Christ and in the experience of the Holy Spirit. This new environment of "light" allowed persons to re-arrange their lives in how they understood God and God's inclusive purpose for all people.
Aphorism of the Day, March 19, 2020
One could make the case that the Gospel of John is mainly about hermeneutics, interpretation and seeing life differently. See from "above," and seeing figuratively rather than literally as a way of enhancing one's landscape with one's inscape that have been "renew" in mind to attain the "mind of Christ" in the mode of the Risen Christ. The warning of John's Gospel is "Don't get stuck in one's literal landscape." Work on the inner life because what one perceives in one's landscape reflects the nature of one's seeing from one's inscape.
Aphorism of the Day, March 18, 2020
Seeing from within or being converted to another paradigm expresses the new paradigm of Jesus Movement. When Samuel sought to anoint all of David's brothers as king of Israel and was left with the small lad David as "God's choice," the observation was that God sees what humans don't, God looks at the heart, at the interior. Jesus of John's Gospel discourse, notes that the blind man came to see and the religious leaders were in fact blind. Conversion means that one moves into a different hermeneutical circle with a different kind of seeing and one was in fact blind when one inhabited a previous hermeneutical circle.
Aphorism of the Day, March 17, 2020
"Who caused this man's blindness, his own sins or his parents?" Causation questions sometimes are victimization implications. If bad luck is happening to others because they deserve it, then the one presuming to know precise causation can justify one's own blessing of good luck as God's direct favor. Precise causation is a myth since any event lies at the end of an infinite regress along with every other contemporary event each with its own infinite regress. So the event whether good or bad is a set up for some more in the future proving the glory of the divine no matter what happens because tomorrow always means outcomes are only temporary. This is the glory of the creative and glorious Freedom within which we live and have our being.
Aphorism of the Day, March 16, 2020
Jesus told Nicodemus that he couldn't "see" the kingdom of God because he wasn't born from above. The blind man healed by Jesus "saw" the kingdom of God while the religious leaders, even though they had eyesight, were "blind" to the kingdom of God. The book of Signs which is included in the Gospel of John is the ability to convert to the new paradigm of the kingdom of God which was initiated by Jesus Christ. The Gospel of John is less about the history of Jesus of Nazareth and more about the paradigm of the Risen Christ via Holy Spiritual experience which enabled people to "see" life in a new and different way. To remain in biblical "literalism" is to be like the "religious blind."
Aphorism of the Day, March 15, 2020
Mount Gerizim Shrines and the Temple had long been destroyed when the Gospel text of the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman was written. If Holy Places had been destroyed where could Holy God reside? The edifice complex of trying to limit the divine presence had to be given up to each body becoming known as a temple of the Holy Spirit whose inner presence would be like a gushing spring of water. A very different kind of water than what was drawn from Jacob's well. John's Gospel is about moving from landscape to InScape.
Aphorism of the Day, March 14, 2020
When the Gospel of John was written, holy places for the Jews and Samaritans had suffered devastation. What do we do now that the Temple is destroyed or Mount Gerizim shrines is in shambles? Our identity resides from knowing the place where God resides and is a place to renew that identity through pilgrimage to the holy place. The Risen Christ as an oracle in the early church says to the Samaritan woman, "God is totally, portable and nomadic, because God is Spirit, so God as Spirit resides wherever people are since God is as close to a person as the very language that a person has. How close are you to language? You are one with your language. God is Spirit. The words of Jesus are spirit. Our words are our identifying spirit and we're one with them. So, let us clean up our word life if therein lies our very identity.
Aphorism of the Day, March 13, 2020
The Jesus Movement involved a renovation, a do-over, and re-definition of symbols which arose in the Hebrew Scripture within the new "Christ-flooded" context where the poetic effervescence of St. Paul's "Christ as all in all" became the center of the new paradigm. Christ becomes the Rock struck by Moses from which everyone is able to drink the living water. The Jesus Movement as it came to text meant that it manifested itself in a poetic revolution with a new pulsating center generating extreme poetic license centering on the Risen Christ. Was this mere hype? No, because one cannot artificially generate such widespread experiences of the Risen Christ to "make" the hype happen.
Aphorism of the Day, March 12, 2020
The practices in the early Jesus Movement community become starkly anachronistically instantiated in the Gospel narratives of Jesus including his words. Jews and Samaritans were "enemies." The Jesus Movement included the reconciliation of "former" enemies and, yes Jesus came to say in the Gospel presentation, "Love your enemies."
Aphorism of the Day, March 11, 2020
The metaphors of Jesus in John's Gospel indicate a new birth by water and the Spirit. In John 4, the Spirit is likened to an inner gushing spring. So Spirit as inner gushing spring is like an interior baptism, the clean heart and renewed spirit which the Psalmist asked for from God. A spring gushes up through the dirt and is clean water even when the rest of the environment is "dirt." So, look for the God-gush from within as the acceptable identity with a perfection that one cannot have apart from the one who complements and supplements the rest of oneself which is not perfect.
Aphorism of the Day, March 10, 2020
One might note that the presentation of the dialogical Jesus in John's Gospel pertains to his constant provoking of crassly literal people to embrace figurative, allegorical or spiritual interpretations of "physical" reality. Take for example the food and water metaphors of the Woman at the Well pericope. Water of Jacob's well or water of the inner Spirit fountain? Jesus had "food" to eat that his disciples who brought him provisions did not know about. The "born again" metaphor has much to do with going beyond literal meaning to other kinds of meaning which pertains to qualitative interpretation for inner enrichment amid the exterior "literal" landscape.
Aphorism of the Day, March 9, 2020
The early churches engaged in the practice of love between peoples who were formerly known as "enemies." When this practice was presented by the words and actions of Jesus in the Gospels, people like the "hated" Samaritans were shown to be those who responded to Jesus as the bringer of a new paradigm of love between former enemies. Men and women of the time were not "enemies" but they were definitely segregated in restrictions on public interaction, yet Jesus is shown to commission an unknown and unnamed Samaritan Woman at the Well to be the "first apostle" to the Samaritan people. It is quite amazing how the church for so many years retreated to the secular habits of patriarchalism which our own Holy Gospels were shown to be overthrown by Jesus.
Aphorism of the Day, March 8, 2020
Every day is a day to be "born again" or "born from above" in the sense that one should be surpassing oneself in manifold excellence each day in life. To limit the "born again" experience to a one time event to escape hell is a very limited application of the metaphor and therefore not really true.
Aphorism of the Day, March 7, 2020
A theological catch phrase derived from the King James translation of a verse in John 3 came to characterize the evangelical movement of persons who call themselves "born again." This has persisted even though a better translation of the Greek is "born from above." The "born again" movement has been a response to those who believe in a prevenient baptismal grace for those who were baptized as infants. Born again is not in disagreement with "born from above" even though not literally accurate. Typically evangelicals believe one is "born again" once in order to avoid hell and have eternal life. The phrase should really be limited to the dialogue presented between Jesus and Nicodemus, even though it can be general instructive for understanding the moments of conversions to new insights and perspectives. Jesus was saying to the inquiring Pharisee that he needed a paradigm switch, a conversion in order to understand the new perspective of the Jesus Movement. Paradigm switch, being born again or from above is consistent with the Christian pedagogical process known as "repentance," or "meta-noia," the "after mind," the "new mind," or the "renewed mind." This would mean that rebirth is more of a process of metamorphosis with continual cycles of new insights and new births. To limit being born again to a one time event violates the entire growth concept implied in life as repentance.
Aphorism of the Day, March 6, 2020
John's Gospel discourses of a "channeled voice of the Risen Christ" in an advancing Christ Movement, indicates the conversion of the writer to a post-synagogue paradigm with a Christo-centric theology involving the reinterpretation of the themes of Hebrew Scriptures under the guise of the Jesus events. So the serpent lifted up in the wilderness is paired with Jesus lifted on the cross teaching that a glance of faith in sacrificial grace is the salvation to tolerate ourselves in our perpetual undeveloped states.
Aphorism of the Day, March 5, 2020
St. Paul uses Abraham as a representative of "universal" faith. He is a patriarch who exists before Israel, Moses and the giving of the law. His faith was valid, meaning he was justified before God. The purpose of religious institutions seems to be about declaring people "justified" before God. This probably means "justified" before the religious authorities who perhaps reduce being justified to being compliant with the rules of the community. The non-religious crowd of "nones" do not really care about religious community rules where religious institution and political power becomes ever increasingly separated.
Aphorism of the Day, March 4, 2020
The Gospel of John, like other New Testament writings, were written by people who did not conceive of their writings becoming a part of a "canon" of Scriptures, or an agreed upon "textbook" of "inspired" writings exclusively prescribed for the widespread Christian communities. It was written long after Jesus walked and talked; it was written by people who like Paul believed that they "had the mind of Christ," and thus could through the Spirit "channel" the mind of Christ in written and spoken words in such a ways as to be authentically associated as words Jesus might say if Jesus was still physically present with an accessible voice. The Nicodemus discourse of Jesus is presentation of how an appeal is being made to a devout Pharisee who is open to new insights. You must be born again or born from above in T.S.Kuhnian terminology would be "You must make a paradigm switch if you are going to understand the new Christ-definition given to all manner of theological thinking and spiritual lifestyle."
Aphorism of the Day, March 3, 2020
John's Gospel indicates that Word is God. And we are told that in a Word product, writing. John's Gospel is a word product of diverse expressive tropes. It present the metaphors of equivalence expressed in "difference," e.g. "I am light, Good Shepherd, Life et al." Word is really an invisible phenomenon and yet it become "made flesh" or embodied in human experience. And through word, it is reported that word is made flesh. John's Gospel reveals that human existence is known in the reflexive "play" of language, because by Word we proclaim that we exist with an existence we know because we have words.
Aphorism of the Day, March 2, 2020
St. Paul became the chief apologist for the Jesus Movement, particularly as it was becoming a significant party within Judaism causing consternation in many synagogue communities because of a rather wholescale acceptance Gentiles becoming viewed as those who had genuine faith without being observant of the ritual purity rules of the synagogue. What is discovered about systems of rules is that compliance is mainly about community identity and being received in specific communities. Of the Ten Commandments, how many of them rise to juridical significance in the U.S. justice system? Murder and stealing and lying when it is under oath perjury. Do we want to make complying with community identity as equal to justification before God? We must conclude that, God being an omni-clement One, tolerates all of the consequences in a system of Freedom and such clemency is beyond any community of people who purport to speak exclusively on behalf of such an "omni-clement" Being. It is fine to have the differences of community identities because we are located in special situation with a variety of traditions claiming universal relevancy, and we know the clash and the mutual judging between competitive communities claiming universal relevancy. This should indicate to us that the omni-benevolent One who tolerates much more than any of us would, reveals only omni-benevolent freedom in the differential manifestations which occur in each situation. One hopes that in the clash of human manifested "God-systems" when God-metaphors seem to be in conflict that one accepts the identity of a solidarity humbly as a matter of one's temporal location and not as one who has a panorama of everything, as though one could claim to know synchronicity with "Omni-Becoming."
Aphorism of the Day, March 1, 2020
In biblical numerology, 40 is the symbol of testing and the ordeal. As if, we could actual schedule the test or ordeals which come to us. Ordeal is the biblical term for accepting the fact of the range of probable occurrences in the field of freedom as discipline. Lent is a simulated ordeal of training to build the kind of response muscles for the general ordeal of the conditions of freedom. Accepting the general of freedom which occur with our free choice is the life epic.
