TODAY'S Liberating Word || Subscribe Today! || HOME
Send Page to Friend || Contact Rev. Piazza || Archives

Week Thirty-Four, Day Three

John 6:41-51

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” Then, verse 41 says, “The Jews began to complain about him.” Statements like this have resulted in modern concerns about John’s anti-Semitism. Although the author likely was Jewish himself, he generalizes his references in such a way that in later years his writings would be used to justify the distain and hatred that so many Christians held for Jews through the centuries.

That clearly was not his intent, but it is an important reminder that our attitudes and words can have powerful impact long after we are done with them. John is seeking to set up a defense of Jesus in a day when the majority of Jews still held that he was not the Messiah. His apologia sets up an entire religion to believe and say one thing, when there had never been that kind of monolithic belief in any race or religion. The “Jews” did not complain about Jesus. What probably happened was that some of the Jewish leaders were upset that Jesus made such claims of divinity.

Today, fundamentalist leaders get just as upset if anyone questions Jesus’ unique divinity. Yet, the complete witness of the four Gospels is that Jesus was God’s child and the incarnation of God’s word. But Jesus tried to tell us that we are too, and then teach us how to live out of that reality.

John is trying to win people over to belief in Jesus. Today what might be needed is not so much an exalted image of who Jesus was/is, but a fuller understanding of who he tried to teach us we are.

Perhaps that is what upset the religious leaders most. After they begin to complain, they ask, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” You see, they wanted to emphasize that Jesus was just a human. They clearly had a dualistic view that humanity was down here and divinity was up there. Jesus’ integration of his human and divine nature was very threatening. That still seems to be true about him and about us.

Blessings,

Michael Piazza
President, Hope for Peace & Justice

TODAY'S Liberating Word || Subscribe Today! || HOME
Send Page to Friend || Contact Rev. Piazza || Archives