Bible Study With The Bishops: The First I Am

Reading Plan Text for March 25: John 6:35-40

John gave the church seven of its most enduring images of Jesus:

• The Bread of Life
• The Light of the World
• The Gate (of the sheepfold)
• The Good Shepherd
• The Resurrection and Life
• The Way, Truth and Life
• The True Vine

We hear most of these over and over again in our hymns, and one even has its own Sunday in our liturgical cycle: The Good Shepherd.

Four of these images relate to agriculture and animal husbandry. In an increasingly urban society, these images become less and less "real" to us. They become familiar phrases, but like "the Good Samaritan," we no longer fully understand what is meant by them. Even our modern agriculture has become highly specialized and mechanized.

If John were writing today, what images might he use? The Oil Barrel of Life? The CEO (there is a book Jesus CEO written by a business consultant)? The True Corporation?

Talk about cognitive dissonance! Yet the people who heard the originals probably had similar reactions to our reading the ones in the previous paragraph. John's Jesus took images and phrases as familiar to the Jews as the Good Samaritan is to us, like the bread of life, and turned them on their ear.

Jesus often asks us to look at the familiar with new eyes. By doing that, he calls us to change our perceptions, change our actions, change our lives, and change the world. We are not comfortable with change, even when we initiate it. Change is unpredictable. It leads to new things.

To new life.

Peace,
Jeffri