Show Notes
With spit in the eye, Jesus heals a man born blind. The Pharisees object, and Jesus tells the Jews that they are not of “His sheep.” He might as well have just spit in their ears and their eyes.
John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.” Next verse, “The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, ‘I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?’ The Jews answered him, ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.’”
Men making themselves God is a real problem in Scripture. Reference the King of Babylon, King Herod, “The Kings of the Earth.” In Revelations 19, a sword from the mouth of the “King of Kings,” appears to cut the flesh from all these kings and “all men.” Don’t all men attempt to make themselves God? That’s a problem.
God owns everything, and I want to own everything — but if I own everything, I can never be given anything. I can’t know Grace. God does everything, and I want to do everything — but if I do everything, I can’t do anything with anyone. I have to dance alone. God is absolutely free; He does whatever He wants. But if I do whatever I want, I must destroy the wants of all who disagree with me. God is most glorious, so of course I want to be God, but to win the beauty pageant, I must convince myself that everyone is uglier than me. To make yourself wonderful is to trap yourself in a world without wonder. To make yourself the best is to make everyone else the worst. To make yourself first is to make everyone else last. To own everything, you end up killing everyone.
Sigmund Freud argued that “in the beginning was the deed”: that the sons of a primal father killed that father in order to become that father and have the women of the horde all to themselves. “The primal father at once feared and hated, revered and envied, became the prototype of God himself,” he said. Freud argued that each clan represented this “Father-god” with a totem. He argued that Christian communion was the perfect example. That’s horrifying, and yet . . .
The Gospels tell us that the crowd took the life of Christ (one with the Father) out of envy. They saw that Jesus was God, wanted to be God, and so took the life of God…and everything went black. And it wasn’t the first time that it had happened: In the beginning, the Adam (including Eve) saw, but didn’t see, that the thing on the tree was the Good and the Life — the image of God. They took the fruit, and everything went black, for they were hiding from God and one another. Isn’t that what we all do around the age of two? Not knowing what life is, we take knowledge of good, try to make ourselves the best, which is to hope that others are the worst. We try to be God and find ourselves unable to love; we compete.
Jealous of Jesus, they wanted to be Jesus, and so crucified Jesus on a tree in a garden on the Holy Mountain; they were men making themselves God.
John 10:33, They say, “It is... because you being a man make yourself God.” And yet, we the readers of John’s Gospel know that Jesus is actually God, having made Himself man, and He is the very first man to resist the devil’s temptation to make himself God.
So, in John 10, men trying to make themselves God, project their own thoughts and feelings on to God, having made Himself man. Maybe we do this all the time?
We project our bad will onto Jesus and assume that He died for us because He had to, when He died for us because He wants to. He is the Free Will of God. We project our sense of Justice onto God and think He has to satisfy justice, when He is Justice and satisfies Himself by making us in His own image. We project our pride and shame onto God, think He needs to be worshipped by us, when in fact, we need to worship Him, so we’d forget about us. We project our fears onto God and cannot hear the voice of our Shepherd. We assume that He wants to take everything from us — whe
More from The Sanctuary Downtown / Relentless Love
“The mere idea of you, the longing here for you. You'll never know how slow the moments go till I'm near to you. I see your face in every flower, your eyes in stars above. It's just the thought of you, the very thought of you, my love.” My wife and I have spent a lot of time on romantic vacations listening to those words sung by Billie Holiday or Nat King Cole.
Sometime around 1968, I learned about germs in school. They can be found in dirt and most of all, in the very pinnacle of depravity: poop. So, I began to wash my hands... a lot. I washed and washed, but I am a producer of human excreta, and so is everyone I know. So, it felt as if I was never finished. I was driven to cleanliness and then to the doctor, for my hands were red, raw, cracked and bleeding — open wounds susceptible to germs! I had been better off with no knowledge of “germs” and “not germs.” The doctor looked at my hands and said, “Stop (Shabat in Hebrew)! Stop washing your hands.” They hurt like hell, but it was hard as hell to stop.
John 18:38-40: “Pilate said to [Jesus], ‘What is truth?’ After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, ‘I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?’ They cried out again, ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ Now Barabbas was a robber [lestes: a taker].”