Word to the Wise
Saturday, May 16, 2020 - 5th Week of Easter - Sat
[Acts 16:1-10 and John 15:18-21]"If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you." [John]
There is a common expression: "It's us against the world!!" The Gospel According to John has a distinct adversarial tone to it. The vocabulary includes words like "judgment" and "testimony" and contrasts like light/darkness, above/below, sight/blindness. In the Farewell Discourse, Jesus is not speaking to his adversaries as he does in the first twelve chapters. He is speaking only to his disciples, which includes us now! We have been commanded to go out a "bear fruit" in a "world" that may hate us!!!
In the Gospel According to John, the "world" is anyone who does not believe in Jesus as the one whom God has sent. There are good people in the world like Nicodemus who honestly seek the truth, but there are also those who blindly resist. The latter category is represented in this gospel by the opposition in the Jewish community of that time which began expelling Christians from synagogues. The resultant resentment shows up in the text. However, the "world" in our time is more like the secularism that is hostile to all religious belief. This is the "world" that we disciples now confront. I recommend Charles Taylor's influential book A SECULAR AGE to anyone who wants to know just how pervasive this force is in life around us.
The Farewell Discourse will continue to challenge us in the days ahead. Its somewhat repetitive and abstract character is due more to the choices made by the evangelist or any "editor" in its composition. But there is much teaching ahead to hear. AMEN