It is interesting to me that today’s Gospel selection (JN 7: 40-53) begins where it does:

Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said… 

In what follows, there is no direct mention made about the actual words that Jesus said, which elicits so many responses from the crowd.  What we do hear in the passage is every possible response.  Some claim he is a prophet, others say he is the Christ.  Still others question the fact that he comes from Galilee and that doesn’t seem to correspond with the scriptures that indicate he would come from Bethlehem.  What happens as the result of all this is clearly stated in the Gospel:

So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.

The next interchange about this divisiveness that Jesus’ words seem to have made occurs between the temple guards and the priest and Pharisees.

So the guards went to the chief priests and Pharisees,
who asked them, “Why did you not bring him?”
The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”
So the Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived?
Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?

The authority card is played in a hopeful attempt on the Pharisees’ part to stamp out Jesus’s so-called unsubstantiated authority.  Finally, it is Nicodemus, a member of their own group, who actually questions whether or not one can be condemned without having the opportunity to explain himself and his actions.  The Pharisees don’t even respond to Nicodemus, but shut him down completely going back to the point that no prophet could come from Nazareth.

Actually, we could find this same type of interchange on any given day in our present day media.  Opinions upon opinions, questions not answered, judgements made, authority being used to silence and manipulate – minds made up.  No one is listening and everyone wants to be heard.  Quite honestly, the media is not the only place that this scenario plays itself out.  It happens among spouses, friends, families and on up the scale as well – community, church, city, state, country, etc.

So, what exactly were the words that all these people were responding to in the Gospel.  In verse 38, just prior to where today’s Gospel passage, we hear Jesus say it…

Whoever believes in me, as scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water* will flow from within him

Sounds hopeful, but as we can see from the Gospel, and as we have experienced in our world and in our own lives, what is hopeful to some is threatening to others.  That’s the ‘division’ that Jesus’ words are pointing up.  The division of accepting or rejecting the promise from a person that you will live and that life will flow from you.  How could it be that life can come from oneself?  What does that say about established authority?  How can one’s own life be a gift of life to another?  In a way, that is what Jesus is saying here I believe.  We are made to transmit life to each other.

On one hand, it may seem too simplistic and too good to be true, and on another hand, it flies in the face of the established lines of authority that we ‘believe’ grant life.  One way of looking at this is as an offer of Jesus to care for us in the depths of our lives if we allow it.  Another way is the threat to have to give up something that we feel we absolutely need because it’s ingrained as a habitual pattern or more so it actually identifies who we are.  And here is where it seems to get difficult.  We are more than likely asked to do both of these –  accept the offer of ever-flowing life and break down the barriers, or perhaps better, allow the flow to break down those barriers – those habits, patterns, beliefs that may look like life to us, but are not really that, and indeed, cannot BE that.

What the big threat is, on one level, the divine care for the soul – our souls, the soul of humanity, the soul of the world.  Jesus has offered his life, which is the divine life in human life, to us so that we can share in the life consciously, which already sustains us though we have told ourselves something different.  Habits and patterns lie to us and we believe them.   The opportunity is to become conscious of the inadequacy of our crutches and allow the Divine care to make us human.  Divine care for the soul is what can make us truly human, just as it does in Jesus Christ.

The Sufi spiritual teacher, Kabir Helminski, speaks of this care of the soul, as the constant practice of bringing loving attention to the problems, conflicts and longings of our lives.[i]  I am convinced that this description can be aligned with what accepting the Divine Life offer would mean for us in our lives.  The Divine Life for us is bringing loving kindness, attention and care to the problems, conflicts and longings of our lives.  This is the ever flowing life of Christ caring for and in our souls!  This is transmitting life to each other.

We are in a very unique position to do that right now – to explore new ways of loving and caring as we live through the coronavirus pandemic.  We may be feeling we are being forced to let go of many things and we are! At a deeper level, though, we are being asked to let go of those things that distance us from our true nature and prevent care of the soul, which always involves the cultivation of presence and remembrance.[ii]  That true nature of our soul as human/divine is exactly what we are being offered.   It is a chance to honestly ask ourselves the question in today’s Gospel – How have you also been deceived?”  What is your soul distance?

It doesn’t matter where we’re from, Galilee, Baton Rouge, New York City or anywhere. The offer is everywhere and the questions are how have we been deceived (including deceiving ourselves) and what can we come up with that will not just get us back to normal, but even more what will allow Christ’s loving attention IN us to really address the problems, conflicts and longings of our lives, i.e., to reduce our soul distance!

As the Gospel concludes today, we are reminded of our status at this moment…

Then each went to his own house.

Still in our soul, in our ‘house’,  new life is budding.

[i] Kabir Helminski, LIVING PRESENCE (Tarcher and Perigee: 2017),  77

[ii] Ibid., 75-76