1 John 5:1-6
Easter 6 - Year B
Interesting equality between Jesus as Messiah and Child of G*D. So often we focus on the belief that Jesus is the Messiah and leave out the understanding that Jesus is also Child. John goes on to push us to love the children of G*D (and just who falls outside that category?) as a way of fulfilling the "commands" of G*D.
Here, again, we bump into the tension between command and love.
Try paraphrasing this passage. The language is so internally oriented and circular in its references that it is difficult to break into, and thence out of. Eventually this leaves us either saying yes or no to it. In this way it is less useful as an evangelistic tool and more useful as a point of meditation for folks already experienced in the assurance of also being a Child of G*D.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/may2003.html
"...whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith." (NRSV)
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"John Wesley emphasized that the God in whose image we are created is love. Thus humanity "was what God is" -- love....
"In Wesley's vision, this love, though properly directed toward God, includes and integrates the love of self, fellow human beings, and all other creatures. As Daniel Day Williams notes, however, the human being is a 'battlefield upon which many loves clash.' Our constitution in love (and, therefore, in the image of God) becomes disintegrated as we become preoccupied with some loves to the exclusion of others and as we turn in on ourselves, or as we love creation more than God. This disintegration of love is what we mean when we use the word 'sin.' So it is that, for Wesley (and, as we shall see, for process theology), sin is ultimately a failure to love. Conversely, what Wesley spoke of as a 'perfection' of love may be understood as the reintegration of love and, in that sense, a vanquishing of sin."
["Process and Sanctification" by Bryan P. Stone in Thy Nature & Thy Name is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue, p. 71]
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Now, what would happen if we were to substitute growth in perfection for conquering? It feels as though conquering tends to "preoccupation with some loves to the exclusion of others." It feels as though the author of 1 John slipped here (preoccupied with getting correct doctrine in somewhere?) and might have more helpfully said, "And this is the victory that perfects the world, our maturing in love."
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/may2003.html
1 John 5:1-6
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
John 15:9-17
Completed joy is something yearned for and yet resisted in light of the joy of the journey.
Conquering joy is something we know all too much about. It is the thrill of victory with nary a trace of the agony of defeat. An impulse to power and connecting that with joy excuses all too many acts of violence, including that preeminent one of war.
Righteous joy conditions us to a legal approach to living and sharing. Judgment and equity, to be joyful, must end up on our side. Any bias toward the poor can be shredded by an appeal to righteous living as evidenced by a claim to joy through property, status, or any other hierarchical system.
Ecstatic joy brings us full circle when we use it as a measuring rod for completedness.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/may2006.html
1 John 5:1-6
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
John 15:9-17
While Peter spoke - something beyond words came to folks. There was an active crossing of boundaries - words restricting us from one another were left behind. Acknowledgment of our commonness was made. Whenever such boundaries between people are reduced it is a time to confirm such changes.
Baptism is an act of affirmation. Re-membering a Baptism re-minds us of our connection beyond tribal connection re-binding us to a common journey expressed in a multitude of keys and tempos - a seeming babble of tongues only understood in acting out a movement from servant to friend (others and ourselves).
These moments always come as a surprise, while something else is going on, and as a shift in expected outcome. Here we move from a specific witness to a universal one, from a known God to an unknown.
- - -
sing a new song
G*D remembered!
hooray
finallysing a new song
help G*D remember!
woe
nowsing a new song
past the past
beyond tomorrow
sing
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
We are still dealing with a lot of conquering language in service to matters of love and faith. One really needs to dig pretty hard to avoid the surface connections of one's "faith" (read belief system rather than active experience) conquering every other faith. We do have a difficult time being a gracious image of a gracious G*D.
If the Johannine community is having difficulty and "love one another" is the healing balm needed, this passage seems to set the stage for the community having a schism (another?) as arguments about what constitutes victory or conquering are inherent in the text.
Where would you put a moderating word in edgewise?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
“Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
And who arbitrates who has the “Son” and who doesn’t. Since the days of Constantine, the church institutional is the decider. This is a power position. No wonder church and state are so intimately intertwined — each using the other to its ends that become closer and closer together.
At stake here is something called “eternal life”. That’s big. At least it sounds so. If you are out for it and the arbiter is the church you are willing to cover your conscience in order to follow where it leads. A few shady thoughts, doctrines, actions can be excused in light of eternity.
Why an indefinite length of time as time is a desirable, I don’t know. More ticks and tocks, in and of themselves, do not appeal. In a loving context, time is luminous. Listen to a few sentences from The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible about the word here translated “eternal”.
The basic sense of the Greek word aiōn is the relative time associated with something, such as a person’s life or a generation in the sense of an “age” or an “era.”... It may refer to an indefinite past or future, often with prepositional constructions; e.g., “from of old”, “before the ages”, “forever”.... Similarly, they may also have the sense of “in perpetuity” ... Aiōn as the time of the world elides with a notion of the “world” itself. ... Thus, in the NRSV, aiōn is also translated “world”.
Imagine how differently we might approach this passage if we were talking about G*D giving us the world or G*D giving us this generation. To see this passage as some heavenly eternity does a disservice to more energetic translations that wouldn’t have us sit back and talk about Jesus. We could be doing what Jesus did, take advantage of the time given a person to draw near to G*D and to Neighbor. We could be asking what it means to honor the world as we honor Jesus rather than crucify the environment as Jesus was crucified, for the sake of power.
May you know you have your life in which to shape meaning. May you know your life to be invested in your generation, your era, your time and context. May you know your life to be connected with both past and future, but neither being your end-all or be-all.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/05/1-john-59-13.html
All manner of a priori statements here. The biggest of them is that our faith is the source of victory. Somehow belief in Jesus as the preeminent one born of G*D trumps everything and is the answer to everything. Some preexistent truth that has been labeled Spirit, validates this. This puts the Spirit in the same position as a concierge who validates a parking token.
Can those who believe Jesus is related to G*D, believe also that everyone else is also so related? If they can, they are larger than belief, they are compassionate. If they can’t, they are smaller than the experience available to them, they are dogmatic.
Compare verses 6-8 from the NRSV with The Message:
“This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.” [NRSV}
“Jesus—the Divine Christ! He experienced a life-giving birth and a death-killing death. Not only birth from the womb, but baptismal birth of his ministry and sacrificial death. And all the while the Spirit is confirming the truth, the reality of God's presence at Jesus' baptism and crucifixion, bringing those occasions alive for us. A triple testimony: the Spirit, the Baptism, the Crucifixion. And the three in perfect agreement.” [Message]
Now, you try to put into words what these constructs do that a simple, “The Universe, G*D, if you will, engages life - respond”, does not do.
Might this quote attributed to Albert Einstein help us connect with a larger circle of Jesus’ birth and death as well as our own and others we relate with or are at odds with? - “We are part of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate. This separateness is like a prison for us. Our job is to widen the circle of our compassion so we feel connected with all people and situations.”
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/05/1-john-51-6.html