November 10 2013

John 3: 16: For God so loved the world….: houtoos gar ègapèsen ho theos ton kosmon

The Greek original is there for a particular reason. That sentence contains two words in the Greek that we all know: agapè and cosmos. The verb ègapèsen has agapè nas its root. It means “unconditional love”. My 2000 pages Webster dictionary defines cosmos as “The world regarded as an orderly harmonious system”.

I am always extremely puzzled that the church only pays lip service to John 3: 16. Tell me: if God unconditionally, without a grain of reservation, with everything God possesses, loves the cosmos, do not we, who claim to his followers, have that same holy duty?

We know the words of John 3: 16: they have been set to song, they are among the most quoted in the church and also the most misinterpreted. Of course God loves us, but his loving us is included in the totality of the cosmos. God equally loves the trees, the soil, the air, the birds, everything that lives.

Something else that never fails to astound me: how can we say we love our neighbours when we poison their air, contaminate the water, etc. etc. which we do all the time. We sing in church “’This is my Father’s world” but once out of church we drive away without ever given a thought that by slamming the door of our vehicle shut, our minds are equally shut to the air pollution we generate in God’s harmonious divine order. “Sin bravely” said Martin Luther, and I agree, but should we not at least pray for forgiveness because we have painted ourselves into such a corner that our entire existence depends on driving a car?

I guess the sad truth is that we, all of us, are in the grip of money: you, me, basically everybody. This is not because we want that but because we have allowed ourselves to become so entangled. We have become victims of a system that has been devised by the Satan whose aim is diametrically opposed to God’s. Where God wants harmony and cosmos, Satan wants destruction and chaos: his sole aim is to destroy God’s well-ordered system.

The more perceptive among us are discovering that money, far from being harmless, is actually the great destroyer. Because of the subdivisions we live in, we are forced to own one or more automobiles. To be able to drive from our far-flung residences and work-places we have paved the woods, mined the mountains, eaten the seas, eliminated species, causing all the large land and sea animals of the earth and most of the birds to become extinct. Money is at the root of all this.

Yes, we live in a society obsessed with money, an infatuation that equally applies to all religious institutions. Money is the most important rule in today’s society and the acquisition of it is seen as its highest goal. Money makes the world go round and goes around the world with a velocity equal to the speed of light and in torrents unequaled in history: the daily flood amounts to Trillions of Dollars. Because of Money the global economy is like a jet plane, fast, comfortable and when it crashes, its fall is also spectacular. And fall it will.

And what has all this to do with Jesus?

When Jesus came to earth, forever to retain the status of both God and Human, he could have been a human being of any description, stature, degree and condition; and yet he chose to be poor. The English poet Christopher Harvey said of him in the seventeenth century:

It was Thy Choice, whilst Thou on Earth didst stay,

And hadst not whereupon Thy Head to lay.

 No wonder that throughout the Middle Ages Jesus is appearing not just as God, but as a pauper. Curiously the fastest growing Protestant movement in the USA preaches the theology of prosperity, which promises material success as well as eternal salvation. With such a complete reversal of what Jesus portrayed in his life, we do well to investigate the relationship between Jesus and money a bit closer.

I am convinced that Jesus had some basic misgivings about money – just as some of us do at times- because we all know that wealth and its acquisition makes people do crazy and often dishonest things. “The love of money is the root of all evils,” is Paul’s warning to Timothy and this probably was one reason why Jesus did not like money. I think that with Jesus there also was a deeper reason, something very personal. I get the impression that Jesus went out of his way to avoid contact with money and was even loath to touch the stuff. Why do I make that assumption? Well, Jesus has a perfect recall of everything, past, present and future and so had perfect insight, hindsight and foresight into everything. We will recall that his betrayal, his suffering and death was directly associated with money. How would we feel – how would I feel – if I know that money would eventually kill me? Well, I think that this view governed Jesus’ attitude towards money and perhaps even towards economic theory.

Jesus and Money

Here are some concrete examples. Take the feeding of those thousands: Jesus knows that if these people had gone off to buy bread and fish in the neighbouring stores, the merchants, being good businessmen, would have suddenly increased the prices of these basic food items because of greater demand. The law of supply and demand is certainly not a latter-day invention: it has existed as long as people have traded. That’s what economics is all about: charge high when everybody needs it. It happened in Ontario and Quebec with the prolonged blackout during the ice storm: the few candles available tripled in price overnight in the disaster areas. So what did Jesus do to forestall this price-gouging? He simply by-passed the economic law of supply and demand and created bread and fish ex nihilo- out of nothing- well, almost out of nothing.

Then there is that so uncharacteristic incident where Jesus almost went berserk when he chased the money changers out of the temple, upsetting much more than the tables. After all having these business people do their work in the temple was an age-old tradition and necessary to keep the Jewish house of worship functioning properly because only certain kinds of money were accepted in the temple. How else would the pious supplicants obtain the proper animals for sacrifice? I think it was money and its abuses that made Jesus so angry. Another, more indirect, indication: I find it curious that Judas, the unredeemed among the disciples, carried the purse and handled the finances: Judas, who loved money more than Jesus. In the end he ended up with thirty pieces of silver and then discovered that money as an idol wants our very lives. In that sense we are much closer to Judas than to Jesus. With ‘we’ I include all people in the over rich West. Also to me a tip-off was Jesus’ great disdain for the nominal value of currency, evident when Mary spent perhaps a year’s income on that precious oil. “So what,” Jesus remarked, “So what if such a large sum was spent. It is only money.” Or consider the occasion when Peter was asked if Jesus would pay the temple tax. “Of course,” is Peter’s immediate reaction, “of course Jesus pays.” But for Jesus this was not such a straightforward matter. Why this reluctance to pay the temple tax? Well, I have my theory about this. I think Jesus knew that perhaps this very money given to the temple was going to buy his life and ensure his death.

And then, in an ironic twist, with almost a touch of black humor, Jesus shrugs his shoulders and says: “OK, not important. Let me not major in minors. Go to the lake, catch a fish and there you’ll find a silver coin enough for the both of us.” I like that. Jesus is never skimpy. And, of course, with this gesture, he shows that all the fish in the sea and- by implication- the cattle upon a thousand hills, are his.

Here we see Jesus’ royalty coming through. Queen Elizabeth never carries a wallet. Wherever she goes on an official visit, she goes free. Jesus is the same and much more so. Here he shows that he is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, but people do not recognize him that way.

Dualism exposed

Remember that familiar encounter with the Pharisees who were out to trick him? They asked Jesus whether Jews should pay the Roman head-tax. The story is well known. Jesus calls for a denarius (No, he does not carry money on him) and asks; “Whose image?” They dutifully answer, “Caesar’s.” Jesus replies: “Give to Caesar what belongs to him and to God the things that are God’s.”

Here is a story we have grown up with in the church. On it we have based the separation of church and state and have interpreted this to mean that there are two important divisions in society: God- religion – and the State. Well, we live in times where all automatic responses need to be questioned, so let me try another angle. In the first place Tiberius, the then emperor, could not possibly have owned the coin any more than the heirs of George Washington or Queen Elizabeth have the legal right to the bank notes which carry their images. In his compact answer Jesus touches upon two important segments of society: the political-economic reality represented by Caesar and money on the one hand, and the eternal as expressed in the Kingdom of God on the other. He implies in the political part that, no, he would not support an armed revolt or even passive resistance to Rome, and in the economic sector Jesus asserts that the tax and the coins themselves are simply a human device and that all of life, including money, is a matter of faith. That the latter is becoming more clear every day with Mr. Bernanke, the great money wizard, fabricating $85 Billion every month, $1 Trillion a year. Jesus then already implies that the value of money is sheer fiction. The only matter that counts is the eternal – God’s kingdom- which is at hand.

So here is a curious twist in the historical explanation of this incident. Where Jesus, by his life and in this particular instance proclaims an almost puritanical and revolutionary renunciation of the world of money, today we explain this passage to mean exactly the opposite. Where Jesus saw only the Kingdom – which includes all things, also money – as the dominant factor of his life and his followers, and money at best a minor player, today, based on this very text we believe that there are two realms of equal importance: Caesar, the State, represented by taxes- money – and the Church- God- Religion- in charge of the sacred. Here we are face to face with a dilemma: where Jesus abhorred money by all indications because it contributed to this death, we adore it. Where Jesus lived without money, our lives are centered on it. Jesus once made a radical statement: “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” In our Western world everything is about money: the stock market, the strength of the dollar, the price of gold, three items mentioned in almost every newscast. Let’s not kid ourselves: Mammon is God, the Dollar is King in the world and its possession a holy grail. We now put a price tag on everything. First on Jesus – 30 pieces of silver – and now also on the rest of creation: indeed money has become the great destroyer. We all participate in that criminal act, even as we drive to and from church. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave: we are selling creation to serve us as a slave. We, as 6 percent of the world’s population cause 40 percent of the world’s pollution, in perfect accordance with the aims of Capitalism which defines itself as Creative Destruction. I am more and more inclined to think that Capitalism and its exponent, the global money economy, is the Anti-Christ, focused more and more on credit-debit-pin numbers such as 666, the almost perfect number, never to attain ‘7’ the perfect one. I think that’s why Jesus feared money because he foresaw how destructive it would be for him, for his creation and for us.

He died so that we too could be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than we can ever live in a money society. If we want to share in that life then we must regain a new sense of value; we must reset our priorities to have our treasures expressed not in money but in love, in genuine compassion for all God’s creatures, humans, animals, trees, flowers, air, water.

In the final analysis, what does John 3:16 really mean?

The text means that God loved the cosmos so passionately that this love even surpassed the love he had for his son. For us this means that we too must love the cosmos also above the love we have for our spouse, our children or grandchildren. Think about that when mounting that carbon-fed iron horse. At stake is eternity.

Next week:

Is it time for the church to change its focus?