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Bible Study 3: I am... the Life

Néstor O. Míguez (25 Septmber 2002)

What life are you talking about?

This time my story is a joke I heard during a visit to Cuba. A Cuban young man wants to join the Communist Party. After due investigations and tests, at last he is admitted and goes on to the final examination before the oath. He is warned: "-You should know that a good Cuban communist does not smoke..." "What? -he asked- the "Che" smoked, Fidel smokes..." "Yes, but that is to advertise Cuban tobacco on international press. But since cigars are part of our main exports, we should refrain from smoking them at home so we have larger exportation surplus." He was not quite convinced by the argument, but finally said: OK, if to be a member of the party I have to quit smoking, I'll quit.

The instruction went on: "A good Cuban communist should not drink..." --And that? --Well, you know, alcohol loosens the tongue... You drink with your friends, begin joking, talking, and you might give away some party secrets... Are you willing to give up drinking alcohol in the future? -OK, if to be a member of the Party I have to give up rum, I'll do it.

--You should also avoid going around feasting, being with women... you know. You get in love with the wrong person, she is a spy... that has already happened... we do that to foreign agents... -All right. This is hard... but I will refrain from parties, from women...

--So, finally, you are ready for the Oath: Will you be loyal to the people of Cuba, to the Cuban Communist Party and to Comandante Fidel Castro, and are you willing to give up your life, if needed, for the sake of Fidel and the Revolution?. -Oh yes... yes, for that (censored) of life you left me... a Cuban without cigars, rum, parties, women... that life I'll give it all for Fidel, for the Revolution, for whatever (censored) you want it...

Besides the joke, what is life for the majority of the people of the world? Where two thirds of the population are poor, more than twenty percent live in absolute misery, where diseases spread and life quality has decreased in the last decades for most of the world population, what does life mean? Caught up in the midst of violence and starvation, where life is survival, where the goal is not joy but endurance, hundreds of millions do not even have the chance to ask themselves if another kind of life is possible.

Haven't we Christians, in some way, done to life something like the parody that comes up in the joke? Have we not so emphasised life after death that life as we live it today becomes void of meaning in itself, just a waiting room for "real life" to happen? Have not our worldly economic and social systems, with other mechanisms, done the same in many ways, dispossessing most people of the resources for a joyful life? So the answer to those who experience life as deprivation, struggle and grief has been "convert, wait and hope". We might think that that is part of the past, but new and more subtle forms of the same message appear: life has its meaning in something else (other time, other world, other dimensions). Is that what Jesus' affirmation: "I am the life" means?

Starting with eternal life.

This time we will evade the intricacies of pursuing the history of the word through the whole biblical text, for John's Gospel and letters offer us enough complexities of their own. In the prologue to the Gospel we learn that life was in the logos, and that through the Word life came to creation, to human kind, so life was light to humans (John 1:4). So life dwells in the Word, and thus, in humans as they come to light. Hence, the whole Gospel message is a call to come to Jesus as light, through faith towards him, "so that you may have Life" (20:31).

Yet, this simple aim and scope of the Gospel narrative is not without its sideways. Because, throughout the Gospel, "life" receives certain qualifications; it is described and displayed in such ways that what seems to be clear and evident requires more consideration and pondering. And certainly also praying that the Spirit will give us the light to exist and walk in that life.

One of the first qualifications is that of "eternal" life. It comes to us in the well known passage of John 3:15-16, but we can find another 22 opportunities in John's Gospel (18) and letters (6) in which "life" is qualified as eternal. But then, the fact that makes life eternal is not always the same. Obviously, faith towards Jesus brings about eternal life. I insist that it is not faith "in" Jesus but "towards" Jesus , for faith is not a "deposit" that you place somewhere, but an attitude towards someone. Whoever believes toward the Son already has eternal life (3:36). We find this idea in many other passages. To have life you must trust the life that is in Jesus. It is this relationship of confidence towards Jesus as the Son sent by the Father, as the manifestation of the true life that the creator gave to God's human creatures that opens human life to its eternal dimension.

In the dialogue with the Samaritan woman, Jesus compares himself with a fountain whose water springs for eternal life (4:14). And in the discussion about the bread in chapter 6 he also recalls that he is the bread from heaven, and whoever eats this bread will have eternal life (6:47). So one must not work for the food that perishes, but for that food that brings eternal life (6:27). But he himself is that food, and his blood is the true drink, so those who nourish from his life have eternal life (6:51, 54). These words require certain attitudes that are something different that just "believing." Or better, a new aspect of believing is expressed. To drink and eat of Jesus is to nourish one's own being and doings on the being and doings of Jesus. It is to grasp Jesus' life and make it what sustains our own life. But it is not a personal act, but also, as the Eucharistic overtones of the context allow us to guess, an invitation to a life shared in the community. Eternal life, then, is nourishing and partaking in the life of Jesus and the community of those who can go nowhere else, because in him we find words that bestow life (6: 68).

"My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand" (10:27-28). So a new dimension comes into the scope of believing and nourishing in Jesus. It is that of responding to his voice and following. When that occurs, life becomes eternal and no one can snatch it from the Fathers hand. So now "eternal" is a way of life, the way of Jesus, which we are to follow responding to his voice. To have confidence becomes a relationship of doing. What is, then, eternal life? For John it is not basically related to a life after death, or in heavenly places (though that is not to be discarded) but: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (17:3). Eternal life is the knowledge of the true God, that particular relationship with the source of life that makes it plenty.

Life of joy, grace and plenitude.

The prologue of the so-called first letter of John also starts with a witness to the Word of Life (Jo 1:1). The purpose of this witness is to share complete joy (1Jo 1:4). The notion that faith in Jesus fills life with joy can be traced back to the exclamation of such a solemn character as John the Baptiser: "He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled" (John 3:29).

Jesus also instructs his disciples to live united with him and in love of one another, because "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete" (John 15:11). This joy is not an irresponsible attitude that ignores the troubles and dangers of life in this world. "You will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy" (John 16:20). That joy is like the one of a woman in the hour of birth, that after the suffering of birth pangs rejoices because a life has come into the world. That joy cannot be taken away from them when they experience the full glory of the presence the Resurrected Christ. That is why in his prayer Jesus affirms that, through his going to the Father, the disciples will share complete joy (17:13).

Sharing life in Jesus is sharing in joy. A different joy, of course, that the one proposed by the world and its powers. This plenitude depends on grace. Since "from his fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace" (John 1:16). The life of grace and truth comes through Jesus Christ, as over against life under the Law, mediated through Moses (v.17). In the johannine writings we will not find much reference to grace, outside these verses, since life itself is grace. We cannot separate life from God's grace, because then it would not be life anymore. Only in God's Word there is life, and apart from it we come into a crisis, into the shadows that oppose life, since "the life is the light of all people". Life comes to the world through Jesus, because of the loving grace of God. Since that life is, in the last instance, God's life, it cannot be other than the most plenty, abundant, powerful life.

As we have seen, John the Baptiser knows a complete joy. So, if "complete" grief will fill the heart of the disciples in Jesus' departing (John 16:6), complete joy will fill them when they are able to pray in Jesus' name (16:24). These affirmations are related to the fullness of life which is the very end of Jesus' mission: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10). This well-known verse is nevertheless difficult to translate. The "abundantly", that most of our translations use to qualify "life", can work independently. And as a matter of fact, we have here a parallel construction, that translated word by word says: "I came for (to the end of) life they may have and abundant (they may) have". The word we translate "abundant" usually means "overflowing, more than enough, exceedingly". Sometimes it is used in the negative sense, superfluous.

In the context of the metaphor of the good shepherd, in which these words are pronounced, "abundant" can be referred to many aspects of life. The people to whom Jesus is addressing (the flock of the common people of Israel, as distinct from the leadership that act as thieves) are living as "normal life" the mere survival under the hardships imposed by the Roman Empire and the oppressive Priestly elite. Jesus announces a life that overflows in joy, a life that goes beyond what they now know. While the thieves steal the sheep, Jesus is at the same time the door and the shepherd, which allows the sheep to go out safe to the fields in order to find good pasture, so they can eat to full satisfaction. In this comparison "life abundant" is a life of trust (be saved) and freedom (they can come in and go out), a life that has assured the supplies needed for well being (find good pastures -v. 9), a life that can rest on the life of the good shepherd: "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (v.11).

"All you need is love".

But, what makes that life abundant, a joyful life? Is this referred to our life here? If so, how can the life that we endure in this wretched world can become that joyful, plenty, eternal life of the Gospel? For John's theology (Gospel and First Letter), life is not an idea or any other abstract entity of metaphysical order, "life is not an ideal magnitude, so it does not consist in the inwardness of the life of the soul after the fashion of mysticism [...] but in believing commitment to a historical fact and a historical person. It thus consists in the manner of a historical existence... "

But "historical existence" is always under constrain, is always limited and full of ambiguities. Life in this world is a life in struggle, a life that has to face the hardships of disdain, deprivation and even persecution. Jesus acknowledges this in his prayer, when after affirming that his followers "are in the world" (17:11) he asks the Father to preserve them from evil. So, how can "historical existence" be at the same time "eternal life," full of grace, joy and plenitude?

Going in deeper, the Jesus of John's Gospel announces that eternal life is related to God's commandment. "And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me" (John 12:50). This commandment is the commission to love. "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" (John 13:34). I do not need to press on in this line because all of you have certainly read and know the emphasis of John's Gospel on the love commandment, and how that love relation unites Father and Son, and the community of followers, all in one.

Just as a remembrance of this, we can recall some of the passages of the First Letter of John, which abounds in the same line. The importance of this concept in the letter can be seen in that in its short 5 chapters the word love (agape) occurs more than 30 times, 14 as the substantive, 17 as the verb. It is in this letter that we find twice the expression that God is love (4:9, 16). Our possibility to love is grounded in that initial love of God (4:10, 19), but if we are not able to love our brother or sister, then that love cannot dwell in us, and we lie when we say that we love God (4:19-20). Love guides us to a life of plenitude because it takes away fear (4:18). Because of this fearless love we can face the crisis of this world in confidence, stand up with boldness, and live today as Jesus lives, because as He is, so are we in this world (4:17).

So, the final test of real, eternal, plentiful life is our possibility, not to be right, not to have the best Church with the correct dogma, not even of the highest standards of moral rectitude, but the love of our brother and sister: "We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death" (1 John 3:14).

He who has life, has all things.

"Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (John 12:25). This is one of the few passages that John shares with the Synoptic Gospels. It seems to contradict all that we have heretofore said. We have been reading the Gospel along the lines of life as having not a goal beyond or outside life, but in life itself. But now we are confronted with this saying that tells us that to love one's own life is to lose it, that life in this world is something we should not consider of any value, but, to the contrary, something we should hate... how are we to put together these contradictory understandings of the Gospel?

But... should we? Would it not be wiser, instead of forcing things into a single pattern, to admit that we have here some concepts in tension? That, on the one hand, we can hold to the Gospel's understanding of Jesus as the manifestation of God's love to the world, the kosmos, so that the incarnation of the Word is life to the world (6:33). But that, on the other hand, life is a precarious condition in which humans find ourselves, exposed to violence and death, so that our temptation is to take this unsteady life as all there is to it, and make the best out of it as long as it lasts. This was the dilemma of the Cuban folk of the joke. What life is the life that we cherish as God's gift, and what the "life in the world" that we are to forego in order to keep the real, eternal, life? Are they not both, in a sense, life?

Of the "I am" sentences of Jesus in John's Gospel, "I am the life" is one of the few that are repeated. The other occasion is that of the Resurrection of Lazarus. In that context, the play between Resurrected life as the "post mortem" hope at the endtime, and life in faith as present life is central in Jesus conversation with Martha (11:23-25), and in the outcome of the narrative. When Jesus is present, life is present. Not only as hope for an unknown future, but also as the power to move even what seems death, the power of love.

While we are in this world, we experience both, the fragility of a life that has to await for a new dimension, and the presence of the eternal life that is manifested in Jesus, and that works in us as love for our brothers and sisters. We know of the peaceful life that Jesus gives us and that this world cannot, but also as the suffering life that cries in the hunger of the starved children, in the harassed children and women of the international prostitution circuit, in the millions of unemployed young people searching for a living in the trash cans of the world major cities. Both lives exist. And they exist in us, in tension. Thus, we have to learn to hate one in order to ensure the other, yet we cannot look apart from the other, because it is also life.

When we affirm "Jesus is life" we affirm the life that is. The life lived by a man, a carpenter of Nazareth, a performer of great deeds and signs, but also the powerless crucified that manifests God's glory, the thirsty man in the Cross that said, "It is finished." And then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:30). And yet, once again, that Christ is the living God, the Risen Revealer, the creative power of God. In Him we see the Glory of God. The Glory of God is that men (humans) live.

Notes

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