Daily Bible Reading: Amos 9 and John 5:24-47

Amos 9 – In another vision, the prophet sees the Lord standing by the altar asking that the building be reduced to rubble so that no one can escape. God has led not only the Jews. He has led the Philistines and the Aramaeans too. The Israelites cannot just rest on their laurels, thinking God will always be by them. But his anger will not strike all. There will be a remnant, “For now I will issue orders and shake the House of Israel among all the nations, as you shake a sieve so that not one pebble can fall on the ground. All the sinners of my people are going to perish by the sword, all those who say, ‘No misfortune will ever touch us, nor even come anywhere near us’” (9:9-10).

The book ends with a vision of restoration – possibly added on. “’The days are coming now—it is Yahweh who speaks—when harvest will follow directly after ploughing, the treading of grapes soon after sowing, when the mountains will run with new wine and the hills all flow with it. I mean to restore the fortunes of my people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them, plant vineyards and drink their wine, dig gardens and eat their produce. I will plant them in their own country, never to be rooted up again out of the land I have given them, says Yahweh, your God’” (9:13-15).

John 5:24-47 - Jesus goes on to speak more broadly of the “life” – “the eternal life” – he offers us. I will use the simplest English translation: “I am telling you the truth: those who hear my words and believe in him who sent me have eternal life. They will not be judged, but have already passed from death to life . . . the time is coming – the time has already come – when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will come to life” (5:24-25). 

Then he speaks again, this time just a little bit differently, of this life-giving power: “[T]he time is coming when all the dead will hear his voice and come out of their graves: those who have done good will rise and live, and those who have done evil will rise and be condemned” (5:28-29).

It seems on the surface as if he is speaking of two separate times – a spiritual resurrection that can happen NOW and a resurrection to judgment and separation of good and evil that will come at the end of time. It is mysterious!

The main power Jesus has in John, the power that makes him one with the Father, is his power to bring life out of death. And it is not just a promise of life after our physical death; it is a promise of a life we are not fully living NOW. We think we are living, but the natural state of man on this earth is not real life – the life God meant us to live when He created us - but merely a physical (or fleshly) semblance of life.  In saying this, John is continuing to place his gospel message in the context of the Genesis narrative. In Genesis 2, the second creation narrative in the redacted text, God tells Adam, “’You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die’” (Gen.2:18). When Eve and Adam violate this “word” or commandment, they do not die physically – not immediately – but they do die spiritually; and this spiritual death, which we all partake in, is the death John’s gospel wrestles with. It is this death we are already in that Christ can bring us out of.

TS Eliot also put this Johannine vision into powerful words:

But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender (Eliot’s “Dry Salvages” V, 16-21)

This is the dimension where Christianity reveals its unique truth – at the crossroads of timelessness and time where the incarnation happens, where we can become joined with our eternal Father through love of His Son.

I think George Fox and early Friends understood this dimension of the gospel in a unique and powerful way.  That’s why they placed such urgent emphasis upon hearing the voice of God, experiencing the judgment of Christ inwardly, and clinging to that inward presence so it would bring you into life.

Returning to the text, Jesus goes on to speak about John the Baptist.  He says that John was “a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But I have a testimony greater than John’s” (5:35-36). Then Jesus speaks of ALL the signs or testimonies that have pointed to him, to Jesus. John the Baptist testified to Jesus’ coming; the works Jesus performs testify to his truth, and the ancient scriptures too testify to Jesus, but the people still do not want to believe. Jesus tells them it will not be he who accuses them of unfaithfulness. They say they believe in what Moses has taught, but Moses too has testified to Jesus and they do not SEE it (Deut. 18:15).

Daily Bible Reading: Amos 8 and John 5:1-23

Amos 8 – Amos says the Lord showed him “a basket of ripe fruit” – an image for the people of Israel “ripe for destruction” (8:2). “I will no longer overlook its offenses” (8:2).

“Listen to his, you who trample on the needy and try to suppress the poor people of the country, you who say, ‘When will New Moon be over so that we can sell our corn, and Sabbath, so that we can market our wheat?” (8:4-5). They use the profits they make to buy fancy things.

The Lord repeats his message: “’See what days are coming—it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks—days when I will bring famine on the country, a famine not of bread, a drought not of water, but of hearing the word of Yahweh. They will stagger from sea to sea, wander from north to east, seeking the word of Yahweh and failing to find it” (8:11-12). When we forget the poor and the needy, when we get all caught up in worldly desires and "things" we lose the hunger we have as God's creation for His presence, His voice and light.

John 5:1-23  – Jesus is in Jerusalem for a festival. Sick people crowd a place by the “sheep Gate” where there is a pool (Beth-zatha). There was a belief among the Jews that “at intervals” [not specified], an angel would come down and stir the waters and that “the first person to enter the water” after the waters were moved would be cured of whatever ailment he had.  Jesus cures a man who had been ill for 38 year and was too infirm to get into the pool himself before others crowded him out.  Jesus asks him if he wants to be made well and of course he does. Jesus tells him to pick up his mat and walk and he does.

Unfortunately, it is the Sabbath, and people accuse the man of violating it by carrying his mat, and Jesus too will be accused of breaking the Sabbath by healing the man.  It is because of Sabbath “violations” like this that the officials want to persecute Jesus. Jesus tells them that his “Father” works like this on the Sabbath, so why not him.  Officials are furious not only because he healed the man but also because he called God his Father. (5:18). A note explains that while there was a “rest” on the seventh day from God’s work in creating, his work as “governor” or ruler never ceases; Jesus claims the what he does and what the Father does are one.

Jesus makes a very long response to the accusations made against him, some of which we read of today; most of Jesus’ response is in tomorrow’s reading. He says, “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the Father doing: and whatever the Father does the Son does too . . . and he [the Father] will show him even greater things than these, works that will astonish you. Thus, as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to anyone he chooses; for the Father judges no one; he has entrusted all judgment to the Son” (5:19-22).

John’s gospel focuses a lot of attention on the reasons why Jesus ministry was so offensive to “the Jews,” as John always refers to them: 1) the liberties Jesus took with the letter of the Law and 2) later, after his resurrection, Johannine claims about Jesus’ oneness with God. For John, the Father and Jesus are one in being.  To know Jesus is to know the Father.  To refuse to accept Christ is to refuse to acknowledge God. 

Daily Bible Reading: Amos 5-7 and John 4

Amos 5 – Like a virgin who dies before enjoying the joys of marriage, Israel will “lie all alone on her own soil, with no one to lift her up” (5:2). Yahweh says this to the House of Israel, “Seek me and you shall live” (5:6), but Yahweh will not be found in the sanctuaries where sacrifices are offered. It is the Lord “who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns the dusk to dawn and day to darkest night. He summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the land” (5:8).

Yahweh will punish “those who turn justice into wormwood, throwing integrity to the ground” (5:7).

“It is no wonder that the prudent man keeps silent, the times are so evil” (5:13).

“Seek good and not evil so that you may live, and that Yahweh . . . may really be with you as you claim he is. Hate evil, love good, maintain justice at the city gate, and it may be that Yahweh . . . will take pity on the remnant of Joseph” (5:15).

There should be “lamentation” in every public square and street. The Day of the Lord will not bring light but only darkness if things do not change.

God takes no joy in superficial religious observances – feasts, festivals and holocausts, chants. “But let justice flow like water, and integrity like an unfailing stream” (5:24).

Amos 6 – The self-indulgent and comfortable people of Samaria “will be the first to be exiled” (6:7). “I detest the pride of Jacob, I hate his palaces. I mean to abandon the city and all it contains” (6:8).

Amos 7 – The prophet recounts the visions he has had – of locusts devouring “all the greenstuff in the land” (7:2), the drought, the vision of God holding a plumb-line to his people to see if they will be able to stand.

The priest of Bethel, Amaziah, sends word to King Jeroboam that Amos is “plotting against you in the heart of the House of Israel; the country can no longer tolerate what he keeps saying”(7:10-11). Amaziah sends Amos away, back to the land where he worked as a shepherd. Amos tells Amaziah he is no professional prophet; he was called from herding to go prophesy to the people. And he repeats the core of his message.

John 4 – The Pharisees learn that Jesus is becoming more popular than John, baptizing more disciples (through his disciples—not personally) than John. So Jesus leaves Judea and heads back to Galilee through Samaria. 

In a city call Sychar, at Jacob’s well Jesus rests around noon. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water and Jesus asks her for a drink.  The woman’s first reaction to Jesus is to notice that he has breached several prohibitions – the prohibition against men speaking to women in public and the prohibition Jews had against speaking to Samaritans.  Jesus tries to spur her interest in him by telling her if she knew whom she was standing next to it is she who would ask him for water.  At first she only hears him in a conventional way, not yet seeing the dimension of reality, which he is pointing her toward. 

They talk further and she realizes that Jesus knows far more about her than any stranger could ever know.  They discuss the fundamental difference between the Judaism of the Samaritans and the Judaism of the Israelites – the Samaritans worshipped in a decentralized way, on the mountains of their home; the Israelites insisted that Jerusalem was the only proper place to worship.  They both await the messiah who will, they hope, sort the truth out.  For the first time in his ministry Jesus openly claims to be that messiah (4:26) and informs her that neither place will be the right place.  The true worshippers are those who worship God in spirit and in truth.  She goes off to proclaim to others the experience she had. 

Meanwhile the disciples return and are shocked to see Jesus in conversation with this woman.  Jesus and his disciples have a parallel conversation about food, which show they are no more “spiritually” ready than the woman was to hear the true import of Jesus’ testimony.  This passage shows too that the writer here is very much into the typological understanding of Jesus that many in the early church were—this is in fact the origin of the power of the gospel about Christ, I feel. Not only is he the well of life-giving water, but also he is the true manna on which we must feed.  And the kind of food Jesus is talking about is the grace from God that gives him the will and the desire to live according to God’s will.

                 

We learn that many Samaritans are brought to faith in Christ through the testimony of this woman. He stays two more days. They come to him directly.

Then he goes on to Galilee where he is welcomed, and then to Cana again where he meets a court official whose son is ill in Capernaum. Jesus cures the boy even though he does not go physically to the boy.  The important thing is that the official puts his trust in Jesus' words (4:50). This is Jesus’ second sign. 

This willingness of Christ, and God in the Old Testament, to bend to the needs of those who want to put their trust in him but cannot quite do it in the way He would like, I find interesting.  It runs against the idea of God as being unchanging, omniscient and irresistible. There are many instances in scripture where God yields to our needs and desires, where our freedom and our limitations are honored.

Daily Bible Reading: Amos 4 and John 3:22-36

Amos 4 – Amos calls the rich owners of livestock “cows of Bashan.” They oppress the poor and the needy. They “will be dragged out with hooks” and driven out in the direction of Assyria [not named but alluded to].

The superficial religious rites they participate in will not save them. Yahweh has sent famine, drought, fire and locusts but they do not come back to Yahweh. He sends plague and war and plundering, but they do not return. “This therefore, Israel, is what I plan to do to you, and because I am going to do this to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God!” (4:12)

The glory of God is alluded to: “For he it was who formed the mountains, created the wind, reveals his mind to man, makes both dawn and dark, and walks on the top of the heights of the world”(4:13).

John 3:22-36 - After the talk with Nicodemus, Jesus and his disciples go into the Judean countryside where he spends time with them and baptizes (3:22). This is the only reference to Jesus himself baptizing that I am aware of, and John will clarify in the next chapter that it is really Jesus’ disciples who are baptizing, not Jesus himself.

John’s disciples get into a discussion about “purification” with “a Jew” (3:25), and tell John that Jesus is baptizing too and that everyone is going to him.  It is usually thought that the term “Jew” as used in John was a term that came out of the time in which John wrote—a time of expulsion from the Temple for Christians, a time of persecution and division.  But could it be that it really comes from an earlier time, from the time when the Baptist preached and baptized from the Essene branch of Judaism.  Maybe he was distinguishing his sect from the wider community of Jews.  That is what it seems to be here. 

John does not worry about Jesus’ activity.  He reemphasizes that he, John, has told them he is not the Messiah. “The bride is only for the bridegroom; and yet the bridegroom’s friend, who stands there and listens, is glad when he hears the bridegroom’s voice” (3:29). This reference to Jesus as the bridegroom echoes the references in Old Testament writings to God’s chosen people God’s “bride”, especially the one from Jeremiah: “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness” (2:1).

“He who comes from heaven bears witness to the things he has seen and heard, even if his testimony is not accepted; though all who do accept his testimony are attesting the truthfulness of God, since he whom God has sent speaks God’s own words: God give him the Spirit without reserve”(3:31-34).

Jesus is the One who comes from heaven and speaks (by inference) “on a heavenly – spiritual – plane.”  For John the things Jesus says often cannot be understood in their ordinary sense, and I think this is definitely true.  I am not always sure the other gospel writers understood this, especially Luke who seems to me sometimes overly literal or “earthly” in his understanding.  For John, the earthly is fundamentally different from the spiritual, so when he says, “Anyone who believes in the Son has eternal life, but anyone who refuses to believe in the Son will never see life: the anger of God stays on him” (3:36), I don’t think he is speaking of life after death, but a more mysterious dimension of life now.  And the wrath is not literal either but that which a person dwells in when he does “not see life.”

Daily Bible Reading: Amos 3 and John 3:1-21

Amos 3 – The prophet here addresses all of the tribes of Israel, those whom God has “chosen” on the earth to love in a special way. “You alone, of all the families of earth, have I acknowledged; therefore it is for all your sins that I mean to punish you” (3:2). 

The prophet’s call comes from God. It cannot be resisted and the prophet must proclaim what God has conveyed to him. “Therefore, the Lord Yahweh says this: An enemy [Assyria] is going to invade the country, your power will be brought low, your palaces looted. Yahweh says this: Like a shepherd rescuing a couple of legs or a bit of an ear from the lion’s mouth, so will these sons of Israel be rescued, who now loll in Samaria on the corner-pillows of their divans” (3:12). The altars of Bethel will be brought down; the houses of the rich destroyed.

John 3:1-21 - Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, comes to Jesus secretly, under cover of darkness because he recognizes that the signs Jesus performs shows that he is from God.  Jesus tells him he will never see God’s “kingdom” unless he is “born from above” (3:3). People must be spiritually “born” to see spiritual things. Jesus continues his discussion with Nicodemus.  Even though Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a teacher and a leader of his people he cannot understand what Jesus means when he talks of being born of the Spirit.  And these are “earthly things,”—being born again—Jesus says.  Then Jesus tell him how he (Jesus) must be “lifted up,” like the serpent on Moses’ staff, “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (3:14-15).  I sympathize with Nicodemus.  Who can understand these things?

Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus continues –“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (3:16). John uses the term “world” in two very different ways in his gospel.  Here it is the “world” of God’s care—his creation. Later it will be “the world” of man’s creation, a tempting but shallow prize that keeps man from God.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that he has come not to condemn us but to save us. “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (3:19).

Daily Bible Reading: Amos 2 and John 2

Amos 2 – Amos continues to “channel” God’s words to the wicked nations of Moab, Judah and Israel.

Judah has “rejected the Law of Yahweh and failed to keep his precepts, because the false gods which their ancestors followed have led them astray” (2:4).

Israel’s crimes are laid out in great detail: they have “sold the virtuous man for silver and the poor man for a pair of sandals” (2:6). They “trample on the heads of ordinary people and push the poor out of their path” (2:7). They have engaged in the practice of “sacred prostitution” even though it is part of the religious practice of people overthrown by God when the Jews took possession of their lands. “I raised up prophets from your sons and nazirites from your young men” (2:11). Nazirites were young men who pledged themselves to a consecrated, holy life, which did not include any drinking of wine or cutting of hair, unless the hair was offered up as part of a sacrifice to God.

Now Israelites have forced Nazirites to drink wine and forbidden prophets to prophesy (2:12). For these sins God intends to “crush you into the ground” (2:13). 

John 2 – “On the third day there was a wedding . . .” (2:1). The wine gives out and Jesus’ mother says to him, “They have no wine” (2:4). It must be pregnant with meaning for Jesus when she says this, because he responds with a non sequitur—“Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come” (2:4). She ignores him and says to a servant, “Do whatever he tells you” (2:5).

Why does he call her “woman”? Why does she ignore his reservation? Is this supposed to have humor in it—Jewish mother humor? There may be some of that in their interaction, but there is also some very profound stuff in this gospel about what is happening here. Jesus’ use of the term “woman” would make sense if he is preparing us to see her as the “woman” of Revelation 12:13, and I would add the “woman” reference in Genesis 3:15 – the “protoevangelium” that plays such an important part in John’s gospel. The “seed” [offspring] of the woman is Christ but Brown would say not only Christ but the Christian believers who are His body in the world – the “beloved disciples.” I have written a whole article that is posted here - "Genesis and John" - and I will make reference to it as I go along here.

Jesus does the miracle, turning six 20-30 gallon stone jars of water into fine wine. The result of it all is that Jesus reveals “his glory” here very early in his ministry, “and his disciples believed in him” (2:11). This level of comprehension and acceptance does not come anywhere near this early or easy in any of the other gospels.  In Mark, Jesus dies deserted.  In Matthew and Luke, his disciples’ comprehension does not come until after the resurrection or just before the ascension.

Jesus goes from Cana to Capernaum with his mother, brothers, and disciples. The Passover celebration is near and Jesus goes to Jerusalem.  He finds people in the Temple selling cattle, sheep and doves.  He makes a whip out of cord and drives the merchants and moneychangers out of the Temple.  His disciples immediately connect his act with the prophecy “Zeal for your house will consume me” (2:17 quoting Psalm 69:9).

The Jews ask him what “sign” he can show them and he responds, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (2:19). They are astonished that a temple that took 46 years to build could ever be rebuilt so quickly, but John tells us that he does not mean the outward temple, but the “temple of his body” (2:21). In Jerusalem, many respond to his signs, but he does not trust them “because he knew all people . . . knew what was in everyone” (2:25).

Daily Bible Reading: Amos 1 and John 1:29-51

Introduction to the Book of the Prophet Amos: Amos is the oldest of the “minor prophets” included in the Hebrew canon. The “minor prophets” were not necessarily less important than the “major prophets” but the texts were shorter. There were twelve book of “minor prophets” included in the Hebrew canon.

Amos was a shepherd from the town of Tekoa on the western bank of the Jordan in the northern kingdom where the religious center was Bethel. He preached under Jeroboam II (783-743 BC). The Jerusalem Bible says he was a “true son of the desert, rough, direct, proud, rich in the images natural to the desert dwellers” (1134). He condemned the corruption more associated with urban life, and preached against social injustice.

Amos tells us that the “day of the Lord [Yahweh]” will be a dark time when God will wreak vengeance on those who have been unfaithful; and God will summon a “nation” [Assyria] to fulfill this task. Amos tries to kindle a degree of hope by assuring us that there will be a “remnant” that will be the seed of hope for the future. Both terms – the Day of Yahweh and the “remnant” – are used for the first time in scripture in Amos’ writing.

There are problems apparently with the text of the prophet’s words left to us. There is likely a mix of authors and the order of the verses is also somewhat problematic. Laurence Boadt says in his book, Reading the Old Testament, that scholars have wondered why the words of Amos were preserved at all; apparently this was not something done for the earliest prophets like Elijah. He speculates it was because Amos’ words were directed to the people as a whole, not to any ruler or king. “Amos strikes out in a new direction. No longer will God punish only the king or leader for a nation’s evil, but he will hold the people as a whole responsible” (Boadt 319).  He also notes that the ending (Amos 9:11-15) were probably words added on by others to leave a degree of hope.

Amos 1 – These are the words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa, words about a vision he had at the time when Jereboam was king of Israel (8^th century BC). The vision concerns not only Israel but the nations all around them. This “universal” reach of Israel’s God is something new in Hebrew Scriptures.

For the crimes of Damascus, I [the Lord] am going to break down the gates of the city and take down its king; the people shall “go captive to Kir, says Yahweh” (1:5).

For the crimes of Gaza, “because they have deported entire nations as slaves to Edom, I am going to hurl fire on the walls of Gaza to burn up her palaces” (1:6). God is going to take down her rulers and “turn [His] hand against Ekron” (1:7).

For the crimes Tyre has committed, “because he has persecuted his brother with the sword . . . persistently nursing his fury” (1:11), God is going to destroy her.

Phoenicia, Edom and Ammon are also condemned for their crimes.

John 1:29-51 - When John the Baptist sees Jesus, he says “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29) John is not seen baptizing Jesus in this gospel. John only testifies that he saw “the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.” God reveals to John that Jesus is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit, the Son of God (1:34).

The day after, John and two of his disciples see Jesus, and when John repeats his testimony, his disciples leave him and go after Jesus.  One of the two is Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.  The other is not identified. Andrew believes Jesus is the Messiah and brings Simon to Jesus, and Jesus changes his name to Cephas (1:42).

                 

The next day they go to Galilee. Philip is recruited from Bethsaida (Andrew and Peter’s home) and Philip finds Nathanael and tells him Jesus is the one Moses and the prophets wrote about.

The prophet like Moses and the Messiah are here seen as one and the same—interesting that these and being David’s descendant are all conflated even at this early date-—in the first hundred years it looks like all the types and figures were seen brought together in Jesus. Ray Brown points out in his book The Community of the Beloved Disciple, that in John’s gospel, we see a movement from what he calls a “low Christology” where Jesus is seen as messiah, prophet like Moses, son of Joseph, or Son of Man – all Old Testament “figures” that he was thought to have embodied - to a “high Christology” where he is seen as Word made flesh.

Nathanael responds to Philip’s claim that Jesus is the “son of Joseph from Nazareth” (1:45) by saying, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (1:46) Nathanael is curious to know where it was Jesus got “to know” him.  When Jesus tells him, he proclaims him Son of God and King of Israel.  Jesus is amazed that it takes so little to win Nathanael over.