+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:
AM: Proverbs 8:22-30, John 13:20-35
PM: Isaiah 44:1-8, 1 John 5:1-12

One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him
John 13:23

John lives to a ripe old age and dies. Tradition says he was the last of the apostles to die and that, for a time, Jesus’ mother, Mary, lived with him. Other stories are told of John, in ancient history as well as today. Most of these have basis only in hearsay and so may be believed or not as the case may be.

John has always been my favourite of the Apostles because he is the Disciple whom Jesus Loved. I read in that none of the sexual implications that some modern folks want to see. But I do read into it what may be called Homoeroticism - allowing for that to be culturally acceptable in Roman Judea and Galilee, but not here and now.

To me this is the key to the entire Gospel.

Jesus and John, Peter and James, brothers and more than that - friends.

Friendship was always very important to me. But when I reached college and joined a fraternity, I discovered friendship as physical. And, again, remove the sex part from the picture. The joy of friendships between men who felt no fear about touching each other: reclining on the couch watching TV, walking down the street arms locked, shoved into benches in bars, drinking out of common cups. This level of intimacy was always alien to me growing up for two reasons: because I was attracted to men, such intimacy was far to great a temptation; and because, where I lived, men shook hands from a great distance. No one was physically intimate - no matter how emotionally bound they were. (Of my closest friends throughout high school, I can’t recall hugging one of them until a death struck our circle in my senior year.)

And so John leaning on Jesus seemed then - and now - a highly charged image, one filled with some emotion I could understand only in the abstract.

There are places (California comes to mind) where such intimacy is common. I don’t think hand shakes ever happen at my former Parish in San Francisco. Or only among newcomers. New York City is not such a place - even my Fraternity bothers had to admit that they were non-typical (we often scared other Fraternities). What I have noticed is that the younger one is now, the more likely it is that such intimacy is common. My Beloved tells me that he and his family and friends (gay and straight) often hug and touch.

Me? I crave such touch and can’t get enough of it when I’m with them all. This is a shortcoming in my own youth - in the culture in which I was raised, perhaps, or as a result of something in my family or myself, but a shortcoming nonetheless. I work always to overcome it - although during my five years in Orthodoxy I think I hugged about 8 people. Again, a sign of my own shortcomings. But it does feel good now, on a Sunday at the peace, to be drawn into huge hugs by the Rector’s wife or the Rector. Hugs are so very important.

Why to I say this is the essence of the Gospel?

Because the divine love that flows out of God to each of us craves union, unity. Peter, in this passage, “The Pope”, can’t even understand what Jesus is talking about and so has to ask John, the man with intimate contact. It’s not a case of right teaching or dogma, but rather of all-human-love directed towards its rightful object: the Divine present among us. The Gospel is not about Orthodoxy, but rather about Orthagape: right love.

Jesus says “Whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.” To receive as a companion one sent by Jesus is to receive God, himself. That level of intimacy we develop with each other is the level we develop with God. For God comes to us in those whom he has sent.

Whom has Jesus sent? Matthew 28:17 - everyone, even the doubters, get sent into all the world. All of us, even those of us who have theology or “issues” that are annoying and repugnant.

Whom has Jesus sent? The Benedictines teach (according to their rule) that any guest who comes to the house is Christ himself - to be greeted with a prostration. That is, God has come.

If such is true of the random stranger, imagine all of our friendships being so important.

Much love,

Huw