Chapter 2 searches the Gospels
for themes of paradise
Abundant life:
The wedding at Cana
In the gospels, themes of paradise are found in the miracle
stories; in the stories of Jesus’ passion and resurrection; and especially in
the gospel of John, where Jesus says,
I come that they might have life, and have it
abundantly.
John’s gospel points to three dimensions of eternal life:
knowing God; receiving the one sent by God to proclaim abundant life to all;
and loving each other as Jesus had loved them.
By following Jesus’ example of love, disciples could enter eternal life now.
Luke’s gospel points to the presence of God - and of the emerging kingdom of God - in Jesus. He announces his mission by reading from
Isaiah 61: The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… God’s
compassion extends to the poor, the sick and the hungry in this world, now. (While
Matthew’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’ begins with Blessed
are the poor in spirit, Luke’s ‘Sermon on the Plain’ begins with Blessed are the poor.)
Abundant life:
The loaves and fishes
The miracle of the feeding of 5,000 is told in all four
gospels; images of the loaves and fish are frequent motifs in the Roman
catacombs and in early churches around the Mediterranean. The Eucharist, the church’s most important liturgy, echoes this act
of feeding.
When Christians gathered to share of the bread of heaven in the Eucharistic feast, they entered the most concentrated form of
paradise on earth, where the living and dead communed with the risen Christ, and
the banquet of abundance was spread for all.
(See Saving Paradise, p. 55)
Jesus’ Kingdom of Heaven is the basileia (realm) of God.
When Jesus spoken of heaven, he referred to a world ordered by God’s priorities,
not the world controlled by Rome. And since food and drink are the material bases of life, the Eucharist
is more than sacred liturgy – it is also political criticism and economic
challenge. Jesus’ judgments against the rich and powerful revealed how
injustice betrayed God’s desire for all to have abundant life.
The modern world tends to divide sacred and secular, and
disconnect the spiritual from the physical, making it easy to neglect the
relationship between material life and spiritual power. But as the feeding of the 5,000 indicates,
the Bible understands heaven as permeating the practical and ordinary, rather
than being separated from it.
The Prologue to John’s gospel introduces a revised version
of the opening of Genesis. John also identifies Jesus as Word and Wisdom, asserting the persistence of
God’s Logos/Wisdom, even if the world does not recognize see it.
Early church teachers, drawing on John's gospel, spoke of the
incarnation as the recreation of humanity in the image of God, a renewal of
Wisdom’s presence in the world and the reopening of paradise.
The theme of eternal life is a variation
on
the concept of paradise.
This theme reverberates through John’s gospel: Eternal life is possible now because of the
presence of divinity in this world. The Christian scriptures claim that the Spirit of God dwells
in human beings, taking residence in our flesh, inhabiting this world in all
its diversity. Jesus was the sign of this reality.
Abundant life:
The living waters
Baptism ‘in the name of Jesus’ brought people into paradise
on earth, gave them entrance to eternal life, and gave them the power of
Logos/Sophia.
As Genesis begins with creation and moves to the garden of paradise,
John’s Gospel follows the same pattern – chapter 2 gives us the marriage feast at Cana, where the miracle of water into wine demonstrated that the
joys of the garden flow into this world. Following the wedding, we meet Nicodemus
(whose story points to the meaning of baptism in a conflicted, confusing world); and the Samaritan woman, who encounters a Jesus
who, like Moses, possesses the power of the Name (I am). (The Samaritan woman would become one of the
most popular figures in early Christian art.)
John’s version of the Last Supper
stresses the themes of inclusive friendship, the abiding love of God, sacrifice for the community, eternal life, and
the future coming of the Spirit.
Abundant life for
all:
Women at the
Eucharist
The gospels challenged all systems of domination, including
gender relationships. The presence of
women in Jesus’ community was a sign that his community did not follow Roman
hierarchies of power and exclusion.
Jesus’ suffering on the cross and his corpse do not appear
in early Christian art, but the gospels texts describe his crucifixion in great detail. These passion narratives broke conventional
silence about the shame and fear that crucifixion instilled.
When speaking of the crucifixion, the gospels used words of
lament from the psalms and the prophets.
To lament was to claim the powers that crucifixion was designed to destroy:
dignity, courage, love, creativity, truth-telling.
Some conclude that lament, most often done by women in
ancient times, is a prelude to women’s reentry into the social order on their
own terms. That is, it is an assertion
of life-giving power in the face of unjust structures that suppress, exclude,
violate and control life.
Abundant life even in
death:
A funeral Eucharist links the living and the dead
in one feast of life
Telling the truth about Jesus’ crucifixion has abiding
importance - and by the 4th century, the church was re-telling its stories of
lamentation during Holy Week. Christians were also filling their churches with images of the life that
lamentation allowed to break free.
In telling Jesus’ story, his community remembered his name
and claimed the death-defying power of saying his name aloud. The story of Jesus’ crucifixion asserts that
the answer to abusive power is the courageous and decisive employment of the
powers of life – to do deeds in Jesus’ name.
The final disclosure
of paradise in John’s gospel comes with the Resurrection, which is encountered
in a garden. “The resurrection was the
gift of persistent love, stronger than death: life in his name.” (Saving Paradise, p. 54)
Abundant life:
Jesus the Vine
Jesus the Light of the World
Some thoughts for reflection:
In John’s Gospel, Jesus says: ‘I come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.’
(John 10:10)
This chapter has given us many images of abundant life:
the vine…
the light…
the living
water…
the loaves
that fed the hungry…
the water
turned into wine…
the
community gathered for Eucharist…
If you were to make an image of abundant
life, what symbols would you choose?
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