Experiencing God in the Gospel of John

Article Experiencing God in the Gospel of John Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 1­–12 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/00209643231185117 journals.sagepub.com/home/int https://doi.org/ Jaime Clark-Soles Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA Abstract What does experiencing God look like in the Gospel of John, and what questions or possibilities might such an investigation raise for our own religious experience? To work within the scope of this essay, I limit the discussion primarily to the Farewell Discourse (chs. 14–17) and address the following as it relates to experiencing God: 1) the text as revelatory; 2) the senses; 3) union with God and Jesus; 4) the divine name; 5) and the Holy Spirit. I conclude with a word about the transformation that comes from experiencing God. Keywords Transformation; Gospel of John; Farewell Discourse; Mysticism; Sensory Studies; Divine Participation; Embodiment; Religious Experience; Divine Encounter; Epiphany; Theophany; Paraclete; Holy Spirit Thanks to personal experiences and professional engagements over the past five years, I am currently writing a book called The Agony, the Ecstasy, and the Ordinary: Experiencing God in the New Testament. In engaging this project, major questions have arisen that many of us ask. Have you ever experienced God? Was it in the regular course of daily life or in an especially difficult time? Have you had visions, revelations, or ecstatic experiences of the divine? How do our Scriptures help us to make sense of God’s presence in times of agony, ecstasy, or the quotidian mundane? How, if at all, does Scripture become a site of divine encounter? How might engaging the Bible occasion divine encounter? As a test case for exploring these central questions, this essay will briefly illustrate useful categories for engaging the Gospel of John and introduce the reader to scholarship around embodiment, sensory studies, and participatory theology, including mystical union with the divine. I hope to inspire the reader to thirst for more conversation about the topic and experience the Gospel of John in a new way that will introduce questions or possibilities for their own religious experience. To work within the scope of this essay, we will limit the discussion primarily to the Farewell Discourse (chs. 14–17) and address: 1) the text as revelatory; 2) the senses; 3) union with God and Jesus; 4) the divine name; and 5) the Holy Spirit. I conclude with a word about the transformation that comes from experiencing God. Corresponding author: Jaime Clark-Soles, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, PO Box 750133, Dallas, Texas 75275, USA. Email: [email protected] 2 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 00(0) The Text Itself as an Experience of God The Fourth Gospel (FG) has two endings, both of which certify that the author cares deeply about the power of written texts and writes not to record the annals of history, but to convince the reader to join and remain in relationship with Jesus. The thesis of John can be found in the first ending: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written (graphō) in this book (biblion). But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name (20:30–31). Like the first ending, the second (21:24–5) indicates that the author knows of many other things that Jesus did, thus indicating that the goal is not merely to impart information, but rather transformation of the reader. Notice both the bookishness (biblion) and that three times the author uses the word “written” (graphō), the same word used elsewhere in John to refer to written Scriptures. The word “witness” is used forty-seven times (sixty percent of all occurrences of this word in the four Gospels occur in the FG). The author is a witness (martyreō), and the Gospel text itself is a witness (martyria), along with John, the crowd, God, and the Holy Spirit. In 5:39, Jesus declares that the Scriptures themselves (graphē; referring to the Old Testament) testify to Jesus. Thus, the text of the Gospel of John functions exactly as the Scriptures to which it refers. Few scholars speak as eloquently about Scripture as a locus of divine encounter as Sandra Schneiders. Referring to John’s words in 20:30–31 she states: Rather, only those things that “are written” in the Gospel, and as they are written in the Gospel, are necessary and sufficient for later disciples, who will come to believe through their reading (or hearing) of the text and thus become and remain disciples of Jesus just as truly as his first disciples. This is very important because it locates the revelatory encounter with God in Jesus, not in one’s experience of the words and actions of the earthly Jesus (which was available only to a few followers in first-century Palestine) but in the engagement with the Gospel text (which is open to all people of all time). Revelation is rooted in the life of Jesus in Palestine in the first century. But it occurs in the faith life of believers in the community shaped by the text of Scripture.1 In the essay, “Transformation by a Text,” Robin Griffith-Jones argues that: The claims made by John for Jesus and so for his own readers and for the world were, on any mainstream Jewish assessment of the world, bizarre. They called for a sustained view of the world that defied the recommendations of reason and any normal assessment of experience. To enable his readers to trust those claims, John wrote a mystagogic text. We will understand very little of it until we have grasped and analyzed John’s role as the midwife of his readers’ rebirth from above.2 The text itself occasions and is the locus of divine, life-giving, present, and eternal experience of God. It does this by leading the reader carefully from chapter one to the end of the Gospel in a specific order that affects the reader in specific ways emotionally, bodily, and intellectually, without a single wasted word. 1 2 Sandra M. Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, rev. ed. (New York: Herder & Herder, 2003), 10. Robin Griffith-Jones, “Transformation by a Text: The Gospel of John,” in Experientia, Vol. 1: Linking Text and Experience, ed. Colleen Shantz and Rodney Werline, Early Judaism and Its Literature (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 105–24 (123). Clark-Soles 3 Scholars refer to chs. 1–12 of John as the “Book of Signs” and chs. 13–20 as the “Book of Glory” (John 21 is considered an epilogue or second ending). Chapters 1–12 find Jesus conducting his public ministry. With the opening of ch. 13, Jesus’s attention turns specifically to those closest to him as he prepares them for his imminent departure. Thus, scholars designate chs. 13–17 the “Farewell Discourse” (FD). Agony is easy to find in the FD. The occasion of the Discourse itself is Jesus’s own impending death and the grief (lupē), weeping (klaiō), mourning (thrēneō), and anguish (thlipsis) associated with it. In addition, he tells his followers that they will be hated (miseō) by the world and face persecution (thlipsis). In the same Discourse, though, Jesus promises ecstasy—that his joy will be “among/within y’all” (en humin) and “your joy may be complete” (15:11). He compares the range of experiences and emotions to a woman in labor who goes from pain and anguish to joy. How does he prepare them (and us) for a life that inevitably contains such a range of experiences and emotions? He begins by washing their feet. Experiencing God through the Senses “All of the senses are important for how the evangelist tells this story—where else, indeed, is God so palpably described as ‘enfleshed’ (cf. Jn 1.14, 18)?”3 “The very being of God—ineffable, invisible, unknowable, intangible (1:18; 6:46)—stoops to enter the world of speech, sight, perception, hearing, touch; bringing divinity to humanity immortality to mortality, eternity to time.”4 Touch and Smell The FD opens with the poignant declaration that Jesus, having loved his own who were in the world, loved them completely (eis telos) (13:1). The first thing Jesus does is to take off his outer robe and get down on his knees to wash the feet of the disciples and wipe (ekmassō) them with a towel. Peter is made clean through this touch. Jesus then commands his disciples to wash one another’s feet. In her essay on the footwashing, Jeannine Hanger argues that “[Jesus’s] touch conveys a quality of love that no other physical sense can.”5 The only other use of the word wipe (ekmassō) occurs one chapter earlier where Mary cradles an exorbitant amount of nard, gets down on her knees, anoints Jesus’s feet, and then wipes his feet with her hair (12:3). She does what Jesus commands before he commands it. Like Jesus, she anticipates the need of the other before a word is said and uses the power of touch in a profoundly spiritual way. Later, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea will anoint Jesus’s body with an exorbitant amount of spices (19:39–40). Notice that John is careful to indicate that the smell (osmē) of the expensive perfume (polutimos myron) made from pure nard (nardos pistikos) “filled the room” (12:3). The sense of smell is highlighted in John. The only other place the word is used is one chapter earlier, when Lazarus died 3 4 5 Deborah Forger, “Jesus as God’s Word(s): Aurality, Epistemology and Embodiment in the Gospel of John,” JSNT 42.3 (2020): 274–302 (295). Dorothy Lee, Transfiguration (London: Bloomsbury, 2005), 111. Jeannine Hanger, “The Role of Touch in Comprehending Love: Jesus’s Foot Washing in John 13,” Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies 4.1 (2022): 39–59. 4 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 00(0) and was raised, in a story that also foreshadows Jesus’s death; there the author carefully noted the smell of the tomb (11:39). The stench of death, literally and metaphorically, is overcome by Mary’s perfume (12:3). Experiencing God happens through touch, as evidenced when Jesus mixed dirt with spit and rubbed it on the eyes of the man born blind, and he gained sight (and insight) (9:6). The theme of experiencing God through touch continues to the end of the Gospel. Mary Magdalene attempts to physically hold onto (haptō) the resurrected Jesus, who has not yet ascended (20:17). Thomas, of course, initially insists on a sensory experience of Jesus, seeing and touching the nail marks in Jesus’ hands and the pierced side in order to believe (20:27). Taste The story next finds Jesus eating with the disciples, with the Beloved Disciple reclining upon Jesus’ breast (kolpos 13:23). Outside of this scene, the only other place the word kolpos occurs is 1:18, which finds Jesus upon God’s breast (kolpon tou patros). This is not accidental. In antiquity, feeding, particularly breastfeeding, was associated with maternal provision and with the development of moral virtue.6 The Apostle Paul, for instance, depicts himself and the apostles as wetnurses to their congregants, breastfeeding them into spiritual maturity (1 Thess 2:7; 1 Cor 3:1–2). Jesus also provides food and drink in ways that blur lines between the physical and the spiritual, from the water and wine in Cana (ch. 2) to the Samaritan woman exchanging well water for living water (ch. 4), and throughout the Gospel.7 In 4:31 the disciples tell Jesus to “eat something” and Jesus responds: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work” (John 4:34). Jesus says “I thirst” on the cross “in order to fulfill the Scripture”; he is given not the choice wine we heard about in Cana, but rather sour wine on a hyssop branch (19:28). The hyssop branch is symbolic, alluding to purification rites connected with Passover. Only in John is Jesus depicted as the Passover Lamb (19:14–18; see 1:29). Eating Jesus’s flesh is life-giving and liberating. In John, Jesus is “the bread of life” (6:35). John 6:1–58 is sometimes called the “Bread from Heaven” discourse. As in the Synoptics, Jesus miraculously feeds thousands of people (6:1–14). However, unlike the Synoptics, Jesus himself becomes the bread which followers ingest and, in so doing, they are intimately and mystically joined with Christ: Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever (6:54–58). Jesus’s flesh is the Passover Lamb, the manna from heaven (cf. Exod 16:1–36; Num 11:1–9). By ingesting Jesus, we are mystically united with him and God. Recall that the anointing that Mary does occurs in the context of a meal at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus (12:1–8). The Gospel ends with the Lamb of God feeding the disciples on the beach (21:9–13) and commissioning Peter not once, not twice, but three times to “feed my lambs/sheep” (21:15–17). We experience God through taste. 6 7 See Jaime Clark-Soles, Women in the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2020), 152–53 and 243-45. See Jane Webster, Ingesting Jesus: Eating and Drinking in the Gospel of John (Atlanta: SBL, 2003). Clark-Soles 5 Seeing “Seeing” figures prominently in John, both literally and metaphorically. Not only the number of occurrences, but also the number of different words for seeing (blepō; theoreō; oraō; theaomai) impress. Sight is tied to light, revelation, knowledge, glory, belief, and eternal life. To See Jesus is to See God Immediately after declaring the incarnation, John says “and we beheld (theaomai) his glory, the glory as of the father’s only-begotten (monogenes)” (1:14). Four verses later we learn that only this only-begotten (monogenes) has ever seen (horaō) God (1:18; cf. 6:46).8 Jesus sees God and “interprets” God for us (exegeomai; 1:18). In 14:7 Jesus tells the disciples that to know him is to know God and, furthermore, “from now on you do know him and have seen (horaō) him. Philip immediately commands Jesus: “Lord, show us the Father. . . .” Jesus responds: “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (14:9). To see Jesus is to see God. To believe in Jesus is to believe in God: “Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees (theoreō) me sees him who sent me” (12:45). Seeing Signs We experience God through the material, created order. And why not, since the Prologue clearly indicates that God and Jesus created every single thing in it (1:3)? As Mary Daly-Denton suggests: From the idea that all things were created through the Logos it follows that everything in the creation was intended by God to be a revelation, a communication, a logos with a small “l” so to speak, a word from God for human beings to hear, heed and reflect upon, thereby learning something about its Source. 9 Unlike in the Synoptics, we have no “miracles” (dynamis) in John; rather, we have signs (semeion). Signs point to something beyond themselves; in John seeing signs can lead to a transformative encounter with God. The signs are material, physical. The first sign involves the transformation of water into wine and the transformation of disciples into believers (2:1–11). John says that Jesus “manifested” (phaneroō) his glory to the onlookers. The word “manifest” (phaneroō) comes from the same root as do epiphany, theophany, angelophany—visions that involve encounters with divine figures. Some of the signs involve healing. The story of the man who is blind in John 9 uses language of sight, blindness, and revelation in a layered, even ironic way. The story opens with a proclamation by Jesus that the works of God will be manifested (phaneroō)) in this man. By the end of the story, the formerly blind man publicly believes in, worships, and testifies to Jesus’s works. Meanwhile, to the unconvinced physically sighted onlookers, Jesus declares the irony that they are actually blind.10 We can experience God through seeing the signs of God’s presence in our material world. 8 9 10 On the topic of seeing God, see Brittany Wilson, The Embodied God: Seeing the Divine in Luke-Acts and the Early Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). Margaret Daly-Denton, John: An Earth Bible Commentary: Supposing Him to Be the Gardener (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 34. For a discussion about this passage from the angle of disability studies, see Clark-Soles, “John, FirstThird John, and Revelation” in The Bible and Disability: A Commentary (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017), 346–54. 6 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 00(0) Epiphanies Like the rest of Scripture, the Gospel of John insists that we can experience God through visionary experiences. The Samaritan woman is the first to experience a theophany (manifestation of God). The Gospel of John is known for its use of “I Am” (egō eimi) statements. Sometimes Jesus reveals his identity through use of a predicate nominative with the “I Am” (e.g., I am the Vine; I am the Good Shepherd). When he uses the egō eimi alone, he is identifying with the God who gave God’s name as “I AM” when Moses asked what he should tell Pharaoh (Exod 3:15). When Jesus declares to the woman egō eimi (“I AM”) in 4:26, he is revealing himself as God. She understands, indicated by her leaving her water jar and going to testify about him (4:28–29). There are many resurrection appearances in John. Mary sees Jesus in the garden and, as a result, becomes the first apostle to make the resurrection proclamation: “I have seen (horaō) the Lord!” (20:11–18). She recognizes him as the same incarnate Jesus but now in a different physical state. Jesus now has a body that can walk through locked doors (20:19). The disciples experience him twice in the manifestation of the risen Jesus, no longer bound by time and space (20:19–29; 21:4– 23). For some believers, this is why it continues to be possible for them to have visionary mystical encounters with Jesus today. Just as the Gospel opens with a visionary experience (1:14: “We beheld his glory”), so too it ends with a visionary experience. “After these things Jesus manifested (phaneroō) again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he manifested (phaneroō) in this way (21:1). After narrating the details, John concludes: “This was now the third time that Jesus manifested (phaneroō) to the disciples after he was raised from the dead” (21:14). Hearing/Listening The word for hearing, akouō, is used not simply for sounds hitting the ear, but also to indicate active listening or obeying. This is the hearing that John aims for with the text. With such a low literacy rate in antiquity, hearing was a crucial sense, and the Gospel would have been primarily heard, not read. Just as in the narrative itself, the goal of hearing is believing and having life. To Hear Jesus is to Hear God Jesus speaks a lot in the Gospel of John. The Farewell Discourse itself is four chapters long. At the end of ch. 14, Jesus says, “Rise, let us be going” (14:31), but then speaks for three more chapters! To hear Jesus is to hear (and thus know) God. Jesus is the Word of God (1:1), and he speaks the words of God. At 14:24 Jesus says, “the word (logos) that you hear (akouō) is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.” As Deborah Forger notes, “Jesus’ speech enables Israel’s ineffable Father God to become tangible, audible, discernable, decipherable, experienceable and approachable; that is, Jesus’ speech—just like his body—renders God both materially and corporeally known.”11 His Sheep Know His Voice In John 5:25 Jesus declares: “the hour is coming and now is . . . when the dead will hear (akouō) the voice (phonē) of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” He reiterates it almost exactly in 5:28. Five chapters later, in the Good Shepherd Discourse, Jesus continues the theme: “the sheep 11 Forger, Jesus as God’s Word(s), 284. Clark-Soles 7 hear his voice. He calls (phoneō) his own sheep by name (kat’onoma) and leads them out. . .the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (10:3–4). John puts flesh on all of these words in the story of the raising of Lazarus, itself a very noisy scene, what with Martha and Mary expressing aloud to Jesus their feelings about his delay, Mary crying, the Jews who were with her crying, and Jesus crying (11:32–35). Jesus speaks: “Take away the stone” (11:39). Martha balks. Jesus replies: Did I not tell (legō) you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” (11:40). Jesus next prays aloud to God: “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me” (11:41–42). Jesus then shouts (kradzō) with a loud voice (phonē megalē), calling his sheep by name: “Lazarus, come out!” (11:43). Lazarus comes out to new life, and many believe (11:45). Forger comments on “the dynamic power of Jesus’s physical voice. With its sonic force, it cuts through the binary between life and death. It pierces the ears of those who have died.”12 The resurrected Jesus speaks with a different weeping Mary (Magdalene) at a different tomb (his own) in John 20. It’s not until he calls her by name that she recognizes him (20:16). God and Jesus hear and listen to one another. By hearing and listening, followers experience God. Jesus knows and calls them by name. Abiding in God Union The FD is replete with language of mystical union between Jesus and God, Jesus/God and us, and we with one another. In 14:1 Jesus tells the disciples: “Do not let y’all’s (plural) heart (kardia, singular) be troubled.” Jesus’s followers share one heartbeat. They are destined to dwell with Jesus. John 1:14 speaks of the Word tabernacling “among/within us” (en humin). John 14:2–3 continues the theme of dwelling with and in God: “In my Father’s house there are many “abiding” places (monai). . .I go to prepare a place for you. And. . .I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” John certifies this union in 14:18–20: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. . . .On that day you will know that I am in my Father (en to patri mou), and you in me (en moi), and I in you (en humin). . . .” In John 15, God is a vinegrower, Jesus is the “true vine” and we are branches. “Abide (menō) in me (en moi) as I abide in you (en humin)” (John 15:4). The language of union with Jesus and God is not mere metaphor for John. The whole of ch. 17 is loaded with language aiming to convey this reality. In that chapter the cluster of words glory and glorify, knowing, seeing, name, indwelling, and “one”/union cannot be separated, as they work together as the climax of mystical union that the whole FD, in fact the whole Gospel has been driving toward and which will play out in the passion, resurrection, and the lives of readers beyond the Gospel of John. For example: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one (heis). As you, Father, are in me (en emoi) and I am in you (en soi), may they also be in us (en hemin), so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them (en autois) and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them 12 Forger, Jesus as God’s Word(s), 286. 8 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 00(0) even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am (cf. 14:3), to see my glory (doxa), which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (17:20–24). Glory Drawing from the Old Testament, including Isaiah, “glory” refers to God’s radiant presence. Glory (doxa) is on stage in John from the statement in 1:14 to the crucifixion of Jesus, interpreted in John as his crowning moment of glory. On account of our participation in that very same glory, John assumes that the glory of God shines through every minute of our lives. As Grant Macaskill writes: “The Johannine literature contains some of the richest participatory language found in the New Testament. . . .It is small wonder, then, that the Fourth Gospel. . .has been so influential on the construction and development of Trinitarian theology and vocabulary, as well as on the development of theologies of deification.”13 Community and World Notice that those glorious lives are communal ones; “you” is always plural. We are in union with God communally. In addition, notice that we have the glory of God in us for the sake of the world (“so that the world may know” [14:31]). For John, participation in God does not lead to esoteric navel-gazing and withdrawal from the world, even a world that hates the participant and their God. Rather, Jesus “sends” the disciples into that very world to work and bear fruit! After all, according to John, God sent Jesus patently because God “so loved the world” (3:16). As Dorothy Lee notes: “John 17 represents also the gathering of the whole creation into the glory of God, as indicated in the use of ‘all flesh’ at the beginning of Jesus’ prayer (17:2).”14 Jey Kanagaraj summarizes well what union with God means in John: “Undoubtedly John is using the Merkabah mystical concepts that were familiar to the people of his time but radically alters them to stress the personal and historical nature of union with God which, for him, is attainable only in Jesus rather than by contemplation. For John. . . .true mysticism is marked not by seclusion, but by active participation in the affairs of human beings with love and obedience to Jesus’ words.”15 What’s in a Name? John is particularly taken with the word name (onoma) and uses it in a variety of ways. Presently, we are most interested in the name of God and the name of Jesus as they relate to experiencing God. Almost half of the occurrences of the divine name in the New Testament occur in John. Most of those occur in ch. 17. In the climax of the FD, Jesus’s speech to God, he says that he has “made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world” (17:6). Jesus commands: “Father, glorify your name.” This provokes the only occurrence of God speaking in John: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” God’s name will be glorified from the cross, where Jesus is exalted: “And I, when I am lifted up (hypsoō) from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (12:32). 13 14 15 Grant Macaskill, Union with Christ in the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 251. Lee, Transfiguration, 109. Jey Kanagaraj, “Mysticism” in the Gospel of John: An Inquiry into its Background (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,1998), 281. Clark-Soles 9 YHWH: The Holy, Mysterious Name of God John is so influenced by the Old Testament revelation of the divine name “I AM” that Jesus several times uses it as a designation for himself in this Gospel (e.g., 6:35, 41, 48, 51; 8:12, 58; 9:5; 10:11, 14; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1, 5; 18:4–5). Of all of God’s names, the Tetragrammaton (“the Four Letters”: yod, he, vav, he), transliterated as YHWH and revealed to Moses from the burning bush in Exod 3:14–15, is considered the holiest name of God and tied to God’s very being (as opposed to a title or reference to an aspect of God’s nature). This is why most Jews and some Christians never vocalize that name of God. Jews pronounce “Adonai” (“my Lord”) in place of the name of God when it occurs in the Hebrew Bible or in prayers. The name YHWH is always translated as kyrios, “Lord,” by the Septuagint. Thus, English translations typically use the word “Lord” in small capital letters in place of the Hebrew letters yod, he, vav, he. This name of God is related to the verb “to be” and is impossible to translate exactly. Sometimes it is translated as I AM: God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord [YHWH], the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations. (Exodus 3:14–15) Such a translation (the static I AM), however, misses the dynamic state implied, which is captured more in a translation such as “was, is, and will be.” The Greek verb “to be” is eimi. Thus, when John, writing in Greek, depicts Jesus declaring himself as ego eimi (I AM), John is drawing upon this name and meaning related to YHWH. Scholars call these instances the “absolute” I AM statements to distinguish them from the “I am” statements in John followed by a predicate nominative (e.g. I am the good shepherd; I am the light of the world). Honoring, reflecting on, and engaging the name (onoma) of God is one avenue for experiencing and participating in God. As Coutts writes: “[T]he meaning of [onoma] in John 17:6 arguably includes the idea of revelation. In the name, something of God is disclosed.”16 After discussing the name of God in Exod 3:1–17, as well as Mary’s Magnificat (“the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name” [Luke 1:49]), Kendall Soulen notes: Even today, Jews do not pronounce God’s holy Name, preferring to use some circumlocution in its place such as “The Holy One, Blessed be He” or “Ha’Shem,” which simply means “the Name.” The practice serves as a perpetual reminder that God’s identity and God’s mystery are two aspects of the same thing. The God who got Israel out of Egypt is not a nameless X but the ineffably mysterious God who revealed God’s name to Moses at the burning bush and whose angel spoke to Mary in the hill country of Judaea.17 Furthermore: The mystery of God is that God can be reliably identified as the endless mystery that God is. That is the eternal “meaning” of the Tetragrammaton. What this eternal meaning means in time is expounded by the 16 17 Joshua Coutts, The Divine Name in the Gospel of John: Significance and Impetus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 29. At the beginning of the section titled “Meditation on the Name I: The Power of a Name,” Rabbi Yoel Glick writes: “The first technique that we will do is a meditation on the Divine Name Yud Heh Vav Heh. Meditating on God’s Name has a long tradition in Judaism. Psalm 16:8 states, ‘Shiviti Yud Heh Vav Heh lenegdi tamid—I have set the Lord Yud Heh Vav Heh always before me.’” Yoel Glick, Living the Life of Jewish Meditation: A Comprehensive Guide to Practice and Experience (Nashville: Jewish Lights, 2014), 66 (Kindle Version). R. Kendall Soulen, Irrevocable: The Name of God and the Unity of the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2022), 164. 10 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 00(0) empire-cracking events of Israel’s exodus from bondage in Egypt and Jesus of Nazareth’s resurrection from the dead.18 God Gives Jesus God Name; That Name Has Agency John draws upon other presentations in the Hebrew Bible (especially Exodus and Isaiah 40–55) of God’s name as well where God’s glory and God’s name are intertwined. The absolute I AM statements referred to earlier, where Jesus reveals himself as the “I AM” are tied to that particular revealed name of God’s. God’s name has power, agency, and authority. In 17:11–12 we learn that God’s name can provide protection. God has given Jesus God’s name and thus Jesus’s name is authoritative and efficacious. By the power of Jesus’s name, we will be able to do greater works than Jesus himself did (14:2)! Jesus expects us to use the power of his name to bear fruit. Jesus makes this astonishing promise: “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it” (14:13–14). Jesus Makes God’s Name Known to Us Jesus’s prayer in ch. 17 culminates with these words: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them (en autois), and I in them (en autois)” (17:26). Jesus summarizes his entire ministry and message by saying that he has made God’s NAME known. He also declares that he will continue to make it known (that’s where we come in). Thus, God’s NAME is eternal. And our knowing God’s name is tied to having God’s love in us and having Jesus in us. We Have a Name As followers, our own identity/name is tied to the name of God. If John, as a Jew, continues the practice of honoring the sanctity of the Tetragrammaton by using the word kyrios (and other words) as a substitution, then it stands to reason that the followers of Jesus in the narrative would do the same. They say “Lord,” understanding the identity to be God’s very being (YHWH). Coutts argues that the resurrection appearance stories reveal that Jesus has the name of God (kyrios and even theos standing in for YHWH). Mary Magdalene is the first to announce: “I have seen the Lord (kyrios)” (20:18). In 20:25 the disciples tell Thomas: “We have seen the Lord (kyrios).” Finally, in 20:28 Thomas declares “My Lord (kyrios) and my God (theos). By the end of the narrative, it is clear that Jesus has, in fact, made God’s name known to his disciples as he indicated he would (17:26). According to the Gospel of John, from start to finish, our identity and our very lives now and forever are inextricably bound up in God’s name, which is also Jesus’s name. We receive our identity as “children of God” by believing (pisteuō) in Jesus’s name (1:12). By entering a trusting relationship with Jesus (pisteuō), we have life in his name (20:31). We can experience God through the mysterious, efficacious, name of God. The Holy Spirit The Holy Spirit is a crucial part of experiencing God in John. The Holy Spirit first appears in 1:33 when John the Baptist declares: “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” (In John, however, Jesus’s baptism is not narrated.) 18 Ibid.,173. Clark-Soles 11 Jesus calls Nicodemus to be “born of the Spirit” (3:5). Just as the name of Jesus births us as children of God (1:12), so does the Holy Spirit. What is unique in John is that no one can receive the Holy Spirit until Jesus departs: “Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (7:39). Why? Because the Holy Spirit will continue the very work Jesus did. This is why Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete (parakletos), to be with you forever” (14:6). Clearly Jesus was the first Paraclete. Translating Paraclete is notoriously difficult since it has a range of meanings. English translations include Comforter, Advocate, Counselor, Helper, and Companion. It might be best to leave it as Paraclete, so as not to rob the designation of nuances and preserve its strangeness, since the word does not appear outside of John (except in 1 John 2:1). John uses it four times in the Gospel, all within the FD (14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). The Paraclete does for the generations who live later (whether the first audience of the Gospel text or we today) what the earthly Jesus already began in his own lifetime. The Paraclete is “the Spirit of truth” and, like Jesus “abides with y’all” (par humin) and is “in/among y’all” (en humin) (14:17). Once again, we see mystical participation language. Jesus says that God will “send” the Paraclete “in my name” and that it will remind all believers of what Jesus himself taught, but also will teach believers everything (14:26). In 15:26 we learn that Jesus himself will send the Paraclete, the “Spirit of truth,” and it will testify, which the believers will also do as a result. Because the Paraclete reveals truth, it will prove the world wrong about sin, justice, and judgment (16:7). Surely this is comforting to those who will be treated unjustly, as Jesus says will happen to his own disciples. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (16:13). Those who have this Spirit then, just as those who have the revelatory text of the Gospel, are at no disadvantage compared to the first-century believers. Jesus bestows the Spirit from the cross, and in his resurrection appearances, which are one long moment to John, since mystics think in symbolic time in addition to literal time. From the cross Jesus declares: “It is completed (teleō).” Then he bowed his head and “bestowed the Spirit” (paradidomi to pneuma; 19:30, my translation). Translations that say that Jesus “gave up his spirit’” as a euphemism for “he died” miss John’s point entirely. Jesus did not merely “expire”; rather, he inspirited his beloved who were there. Jesus gives birth to the church standing at the foot of the cross in John. Just as he promised throughout the Gospel, he completed the work of God that he came to do, and he is now sending the Spirit. In John 20:22 he does the same for those who were not at the foot of the cross; he “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” This is an embodied mystical sensory experience, sharing breath and spirit and mutual indwelling. Transformation/Transfiguration Experiencing God in John can be transformative. The reader/listener can move from death to life; from uncleanness to cleanness; from spiritual blindness to spiritual insight marked by healing and wholeness and oneness. This transformation entails life, rebirth, glory, joy, embodied knowledge, and a trusting relationship with Jesus. In his last will and testament, the FD, Jesus bequeaths the gifts of Paraclete, power, presence, purpose, and peace. The word peace (eirēnē) occurs six times in John, thrice in the FD and thrice in the resurrection appearances. It is always spoken by Jesus to his disciples when they are gripped by anxiety and fear. “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let y’all’s heart be troubled, and do not let it be afraid” (14:27). After the crucifixion, the disciples, paralyzed by fear (20:18), lock themselves up in a house. They then have an extraordinary vision 12 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 00(0) of Jesus among them, and the first thing he says is: “Peace be with you.” He shows them his body—his hands and his side, which retain the marks of his suffering. Physical, material bodies and emotions and senses continue to be part and parcel of experiencing God, even post-resurrection. Seeing those marks certifies that it was indeed the same Jesus they had sojourned with. Notice that he immediately says, “Peace be with you” once again, before he sends them out. They are going to need it. Transformed people do not hole up behind locked doors. They move outward to bring wholeness to others. A week later, Jesus returns so that Thomas can experience God. Again, his body can move through shut doors. And again, his first words are, “Peace be with you.” The story ends with Thomas confessing: “My Lord and my God” (20:28). The Gospel concludes (the first time) by consciously addressing the reader/hearer and inviting them into the same transformative experience of God—abundant, eternal, embodied life. Conclusion In this essay I’ve suggested some entry points for a conversation about experiencing God in the Gospel of John. One can experience God through the biblical text and through our senses of touch, smell, taste, hearing, and seeing. Readers of John are invited into mystical union with God and Christ through the mystery of God’s name. They may encounter God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and they can be transformed. In the end, experiencing God in John is about transformation, becoming fully alive and radiating the glory of God for the sake of the world that God has created and loves completely. John provides a pathway for experiencing God in times of agony, ecstasy or the ordinary. Jesus and the disciples are both said to be “troubled” at times (12:27, 14:1) and “hated” by the world (15:18–25). Jesus and his followers both have visions of God (1:18; 4:26; 14:7). Both abide with and in God, day in and day out, now and forever. The Gospel of John assures us that we, too, are called and equipped with and by the Holy Spirit to share in this embodied experience of deep, eternal union with God in Jesus.