It is a perfect spring day (Happy Equinox) at the Rancho. A Swallowtail is floating through the breezes in front the flowering tree next to the driveway. After begging the whole morning to be let outside, Rainy the cat is sunning herself on a flagstone. The thing I most often tell this cat is: Rainy, I have to go see Jesus. As in: Rainy, you have to stay inside. Please stop blocking the door and/or threatening to dart out of it as soon as I open it. I will be right back. I have to go see Jesus.
The words “liturgy” “Mass,” and “visiting Jesus” are all equally indecipherable to this little feline mammal. But I find myself explaining this action in the terms you would explain to a small child. Maybe not because the cat is a child as much as I am being the person I would be in the presence of the child. The cat is not so much like a child as much as I am like a mother.
Right now, the little household predator is stalking a very large bee that is meandering through the snowdrops. Her little black nose and green eyes and white-masked face are peering through the flowers. She’s a well-camouflaged cat at the moment.
I am supposed to give a homily tonight on the Agony in the Garden, but all I can think about right now is the eighth chapter of John.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the eighth chapter of John for the past week, since the Gospel readings at Mass—or, as Rainy the cat now knows it as “visiting Jesus”—have been from this eighth chapter.
During the week, I have been editing many reflections upon these Gospel passages for the Catholic Artist Connection. And, since I wasn’t reading the Gospel passage they were reflecting on very closely (mea culpa), I was confused why all these reflections seemed to be reflecting on a broken record Gospel—the same passage being meditated upon over and over again.
Today’s Gospel, at first, seemed to be repeating the same song—Didn’t we just hear this? I thought. And since I was reading the Gospel on the phone (and also using the fact that I’d forgotten my lectionary as an excuse to have my phone open during Mass and respond to emails on the sly!!) I decided to open up the whole eighth chapter of John. What’s going on with this. Let’s get to the bottom of this.
The eighth chapter of John is a mystery. It is kind of confusing. It’s a continuation (mostly) of the seventh chapter of John, which is real tame after the excitement of John the Baptist (Chapter 1), the wedding at Cana (Chapter 2), the visit of Nicodemus (Chapter 3 —containing perhaps the most famous scripture verse of all time), meeting the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well (Chapter 4), the healing of the blind man (Chapter 5), culminating in the Feeding of the Five Thousand in Chapter 6. For the first third of John’s Gospel the hits really do keep coming.
Chapters 7 and 8 are so odd, so strange, so funky and narratively off-kilter, after this straightforward beginning. If you sat down to tell someone the story of Jesus’ public ministry, you might do it very much like John Chapters 1-6.
And, presumably, that’s what happened. I am such an innocent. It took me a while to cotton onto the fact that the reason that Prince Harry’s or Jeannie Gaffigan’s or Britney Spears’ memoirs read as though they are just a transcript of Spears or Gaffigan or Windsor sitting down to tell someone the story is because that’s what they are. Doctored transcripts.
The ghostwriting profession is perhaps the oldest profession and the noblest. The reason that John Chapters 1- 6 are such good storytelling is because they are someone’s recollection of the story that was told to them and the story they tell. We all wink and nod and tacitly acknowledge that Britney Spears and Prince Harry did not personally sit down at a MacBook and open Microsoft Word and write “Chapter One.” The process of writing a book, now, is democratically available to anyone who has access to a Google Drive account and a library computer terminal. But we all know that, of course, Mark and Luke did not have personal scribes following them around, transcribing their Gospels. And yet somehow the idea that the Four Evangelists were not stenographers is distressing to us.
Why is this important? Well, because, of course, if the Gospel is not a modern book (which it is not), if the Gospel is not a modern book, then it becomes massively more interesting—and revelatory. If the Gospel was not John himself sitting down with a neat papyrus sheet in front him to tell the story from Chapter 1 to 22, then the story of how the story was written must also be a story of God acting in the world—God acting through ordinary human traditions and communities.
And so the seams where the stories are stitched together—the wrinkles, the glitches—become interesting, because those little cracks are where some other story shines through.
At the beginning of the seventh chapter of John, things start to get immediate. It’s no longer a tightly wound yarn to share with friends back home—it become a bit closer to home and personal. There’s a whole set-up about why Jesus isn’t in Jerusalem: he was afraid he was going to be killed. And then the disciples convince him to go: “No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.”” (John 7:4)
So he goes, halfway through the feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), and begins to teach. And suddenly, we, the readers, are dropped into the midst of Jesus teaching. It’s hardly a linear tale, and it’s hard, when hearing it read aloud in church, exactly why the crowd is getting so het up.
And yet there are glimmers from what Jesus said that flame out like the red ink they were written in the first time they were made into a modern book: “I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true.” What on earth does that mean. “I am with you for only a short time, and then I am going to the one who sent me. You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.” It’s like the guard says later on in the chapter—no one has ever spoken like this man does.
So Jesus is almost carried away to the passion then and there. But he departs, unharmed, maybe to the Mount of Olives, or at least so says the beginning of Chapter 8, which has, since the German Biblical exegetes got their hands on it, essentially written out of John. Oh this is some fragment of Luke that clearly ended up in the wrong place. Ignore!
But even the strangeness of this encounter—it’s always been a bit strange, a bit difficult to tame, even though it’s gotten its cinematic due, that’s for sure—makes me think it belongs here. Some editor thought: Well, this clearly goes here. Jesus just had a narrow brush with the law, and he extends the same mercy to this woman. The question of authority is written all over this chapter. “You have no idea where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one,” he says, just a few breaths later (John 8:14-15).
You have no idea where I come from.
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
I imagine the Beloved Disciple listening, perhaps running to write down these words or share them with a nearby scribe. They read like very good notes after you have seen something out in the field and run quickly to the nearest piece of physical or digital paper to write it all down in a big rush. They read like eyewitness testimony: the race against time, trying to hold the entire memory before it runs through your fingers. There’s no way you can hold it all—time runs like sand or water—before you can fully grasp it, it has vanished a bit.
But even the smudges the divine has left behind will take your breath away. Each fragment of this scene at the temple, Christ’s words, they all leave a little bit of glory you can never plumb.
And that ending:
“You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”
““Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”
No wonder, in the hubbub that followed, the stones lifted against Jesus just as they were against the woman caught in adultery, John ran away to write it down. Something greater than Abraham was here.
