Lambeth Diary: Walk and Witness

Joanna Clegg, the Oxford theology student working with The Times on work experience throughout the Lambeth Conference, shot this video for us on Thursday's march. Regular readers will know that during the Lambeth Conference, she is keeping us sane in Times house in Harbledown with daily Bible studies round the pool at 8am. I hear from conference insiders that there is real and deep unhappiness with the standard of the Bible study texts the bishops are being forced to study. I'll try and get some written examples of the unbelieveable banalities that have reached my ears here. Meanwhile, unlike the 650 Anglican bishops imprisoned on this campus, apparently designed by prison architects with the prevention of student riots in mind, Times readers can enjoy the real thing, below, courtesy of Joanna, a pupil of the excellent Alister McGrath.

We are following the same passages from St John as the bishops.

Joanna writes:

As we read further into John’s gospel, we learn that the author has masterfully constructed his account of Jesus’ life.  Like the other gospels, allusions to the Jewish scriptures and Israelite history abound, and as all four gospels would have been initially passed on via oral storytelling (not circulated in print), each contain repeated phrases to assist the memory of the listener.

John develops this, using Jewish festivals almost as characters in the plot, markers that indicate something significant is going on - so verse 4 of chapter 6 ‘the Jewish Passover feast was near’, is not merely an aside.  In chapter 2 verse 13 we learn that it was Passover when Jesus threw people out of the temple for using it as a marketplace; here in chapter 6 he is about to perform the miracle of feeding a large number of people; lastly, as John builds the Passion narratives, he mentions Passover three times (11.55; 12.1; 13.1) within the same context of Jesus’ final turn in Jerusalem.  The various incidents’ are threaded together by reference to the Passover and this reminds the reader of Exodus chapter 16, when God fed Israel in the desert with manna.      

The passage we looked at today, John chapter 6 verse 22-35, is the first of the ‘I am’ sayings in the Fourth Gospel, in which Jesus makes overt and apparently outrageous claims about himself.  There are 7 ‘signs’ in the Gospel, for instance turning the water into wine or the healing of the royal official’s son, and as the name suggests the ‘signs’ direct the viewer to something else.  The 7 ‘I am’ sayings elucidate that something-else, they complement the signs.  So when Jesus says ‘I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty,’ he does so in light of the fact that he has just fed 5000 people, properly with real loaves and fish.  Is he now undermining this miracle?

It’s interesting that, today, it is very easy to contest miracles that happened 2000 yrs ago.  Did they happen at all, do they point to some deeper spiritual truth, how can we prove them etc.  We can’t prove that Jesus was the Son of God by these acts.  Jesus himself makes it clear throughout the Gospels that he does not want to be recognised exclusively by these miracles.  Didn’t Jesus know that 2000 years later, such miracles would not serve us best today (John 21.25)?  The ‘I am’ sayings were misunderstood at the time by so many, and yet recorded in the Bible and over 2000 yrs later, they are rich testimonies that Jesus made about himself, abundant in symbolism and relevance.

His apparent rebuke in verses 26-27 could make us think that God is not so bothered with the minutiae of our lives, that spiritual matters are all that matter.  But, ‘in the beginning’ God created humankind.  In the beginning the earth was ‘formless and void’ which can also be translated as ‘wild and waste’, so God ordered the chaos to create life.  Things aren’t now as they were intended to be, that’s for sure.  Jesus could have said ‘come and believe in me and you will have perfect lives’ but he doesn’t, and they aren’t.  In this passage Jesus is not saying that it doesn’t really matter that there are people who are suffering, people without food – he feeds them first, before revealing his spiritual side.  Their hunger is not trivial to him.  But Jesus is as concerned with our ‘becoming’ as our ‘resolution’.  The technical term of ‘inaugurated eschatology’ used regarding John’s gospel refers to this – smatterings of God’s Kingdom are experienced on earth, but the best is yet to come.  (More on this theme, later) 

Comments

[Rick Beekman]

Ruth;
Once again Thank You for all of Jo's Bible study.
Please keep her on here after Lambeth she does0a wonderful Job.

Just a little (Pardon the Pun) "Food for thought";
Jo mentions in John 6 v 35 where Jesus states he is The Bread of Life. (Typeology) then Jesus says; "Ge that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that beleiveth on me shall never thirst".

(Literal and Typeology in meaning).

The Righteous; those who believe and trust in Jesus and obey his word will never be beggers Psalm 37 v 25; "I have been young and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread".

Matthew 4 v 4; "..It is written man shall not live by bread alone but by EVERY word that proceedth out of the mouth of God". (Also Deuteronomy 8 v 3).

So we now see the dual meaning of Jesus' remarks. (1) Literal Food (2) Spiritual food we "Eat" from His Word.
Thank you Lord for all your Truth...Amen.

[Malcolm+]

Bishop Gre Kerr-Wilson, who appears at about minute 4:00, is blogging his Lambeth experience, and appears to be the only bishop to have liveblogged the day opf the march / Lambeth dinner and royal garden party.

His blog can be found at bishopgreg.blogspot.com