This past Wednesday marked four years since the official beginning of the Covid - 19 pandemic emergency. Like 911, it will become a question; What were you doing when the world shut down?
My youngest daughter was living alone in a nice northwest Portland neighborhood that abounded in cafes and other gathering places. She had recently ended a relationship and was renting the apartment temporarily from a friend who had moved to a new place but had not yet sold his last one. As a licensed clinical social worker, my daughter worked with people who had endured traumas, and stresses of all kinds. When the world shut down, she found herself working and living each day all alone. Naturally extroverted, she found the situation nearly intolerable. After a few months she began to refurbish the small RV she had purchased a few months earlier, doing much of the work herself, and adding solar panels as well as updated décor. Then, she took off.
There was no reason to sit inside an apartment up above the ground, alone, and miserable when she could travel around and still continue her work online wherever she went. She acquired a little dog who has been a great companion, and eventually, she landed in Baja Mexico with a significant group of displaced US citizens as well as people from Canada, Europe, and of course, Mexico. My daughter is a fluent Spanish speaker so the adjustment was not as difficult as it could have been.
It was hard to have one of my children move so far away. It somehow felt like rejection, but the reality is that she is a much happier person. She comes home every summer for a few months and has made at least one trip home during the winter holidays each year. Her work has flourished. She still works online, but she also conducts in-person retreats for people who have experienced trauma, which includes many first responders and social workers. People come from across the US. I am enormously proud of her – and I know she loves me, even though she moved far away.
In this week’s Gospel, John 12: 20-33, Jesus says “Whoever loves their life loses it, and whoever hates their life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, there also will my servant be.”
John’s Gospel is not as straight forward as the other gospels. In order to understand what John is saying it is important to remember that his Gospel was written after the temple had been destroyed, after persecutions of Christians had begun, and long after Jesus had walked this Earth with his disciples. Most of the words put into his mouth are not the words of Jesus. They are written to express what John’s community had come to know. But it is also important to delve into what the culture was like, how people thought, and how they lived. When I have questions about the society of the first Christians I turn to Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh’s book, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John. (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1998), or their first book, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. (same press, 1992)
Malina and Rohrbaugh were schooled in cultural anthropology and cross-cultural studies, and spent years living in places other than the US. They are clear that the world of the bible was different, and not just in time and space, but also in social distance. “Social distance includes radical differences in social structures, social roles, values, and general cultural features. In fact, it may be that such social distance is the most fundamental distance of all. It may have had a greater impact on our ability to read and understand the Bible than most of what has preoccupied scholarly attention to date.” (Synoptic Gospels, Pg 2)
In the reading that we hear today Jesus speaks of loving and hating one’s life, and he also speaks of eternal life. Too often Christians have understood these verses in a very literal way, that Christians must hate being alive, wishing only to live in the afterlife. Beliefs like this spawn disdain and disregard for the world while encouraging people to withdraw from the world, to hope for the end of the world, and even to act in ways that they think will bring on the ultimate battle to end the world. Those who believe this way are certain that they will be saved from disaster and be blessed with life everlasting in Heaven. Other Christians read these verses with discomfort. They want to live. They want the world to continue. They see the problems but have hope that people can change, that conversion will bring people into harmony with the Earth, with other countries, with everyone. They are not eager to die for the sake of finding ‘eternal life.’
People of biblical times were group oriented. They did not do the kind of introspection that occurs constantly in post-industrial society. (Pg 86-87, S.S. Commentary on the Gospel of John) Rather than thinking about one’s conscience as a personal internal experience, conscience was external – coming from the group to which one belonged. Thoughts, emotions, and feelings like love and hate, which are considered personal and internal in modern society, had external references. It was, therefore, possible to figure out what one loved by looking at what they were attached to. Conversely, what they let go of, detached from, was what they hated. When Jesus spoke of love or hate it had a different context, and meaning than is used today. Today we would not say that people who choose to serve the human family as priests, who leave their homelands, or find life more fulfilling in separate places necessarily hate their families. Nor would we say that people who detach from elements of the post-industrial world hate being alive.
In addition, in John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of eternal life in a way similar to how he speaks of the kingdom in the Synoptic Gospels. While there are Christians who believe that the Kingdom of God will only be encountered in the afterlife, Catholics are part of those who understand that the Kingdom of God is already breaking into this world, that it is something to work actively for in the context of this life. e.g., a world of peace, where justice prevails, creation thrives, and everyone has what they need to live life with dignity and joy. This belief keeps us attentive to the world we live in. For the followers of Jesus, eternal life is already a reality. They are living with ‘kingdom values’ and see hope for life in the world realized as more people live as Jesus did.
What is heard on this last Sunday before the start of Holy week, is Jesus telling his followers that they must detach from ways of living that are detrimental to life, and reattach or attach more firmly to ways that foster life that is compassionate, forgiving, inclusive, merciful, and abundant for all of creation.
May the experience of Holy Week bring new meaning for your life in the world.