Becoming a Grumble

In his delightful apocalypse, The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis describes “the thin voice of a Ghost talking at enormous speed.” The troubled spirit complains to any and all who will listen that she was mistreated and ignored at every step in her life. This ghost was in danger of eternally rejecting the Gift of Life Abundant in the heavenly countries.

Lewis, as the narrator, is bothered by the scene he observes. What troubles ye, son?” the narrator’s Guide asks. “I am troubled, Sir,” said I, “because that unhappy creature doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of soul that ought to be even in danger of damnation. She isn’t wicked: she’s only a silly, garrulous old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling, and one feels that a little kindness, and rest, and change would put her all right.”

The Guide explains that this was the proper description of the woman in life. “But the whole question,” the Guide continues, “is whether she is now a grumbler.”

The narrator is surprised at this question. “I should have thought there was no doubt about that!”

The Guide clarifies his observation. “Aye, but ye misunderstand me. The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman-even the least trace of one-still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there’s nothing but ashes, we’ll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever. They must be swept up.”

The narrator is both troubled and confused. “But how can there be a grumble without a grumbler?” he asks.

The Guide takes one more pass at the problem. “The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye’ll have had experiences . . . it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticizing it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.”

“The Jews, therefore, were grumbling about him because he said, ‘I am the Bread which has come down out of heaven…” (John 6:41, my translation). Manna is also, as Hylen (2013) notes, an occasion for grumbling. It’s clear that the crowd in John 6 plays the role of the people of Israel in the wilderness. The disciples also grumble and don’t yet have faith (cf. John 6:61).

The Exodus complaining begins in Exodus 15:24 when the water was sweet enough to suit the people. It continues in full force in chapter 16 – “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Exodus 16:2, NRSV). In response, the LORD provides manna and quail to satisfy their hunger, and their complaining.

In Exodus 16:9, the problem is identified. Moses tells the people that their complaining is not against him and his brother Aaron, but it is really against the LORD. In chapter 17, the issue is water again. The complaining is reprised in Numbers 14 as they draw near to the land of promise, flowing with milk and honey. The complaining leads to outright rebellion in Numbers 16. And in Numbers 17, Moses puts a stop to the complaining – at the Lord’s instruction – by turning his staff into an almond tree loaded with nuts.

The sign was reproduced with the staffs of every clan leader. Aaron’s staff was kept as a warning that the complaining had to end, or the people would die. The response of the Israelites was desperate fear that they had gone to far and were lost. “The multitude, and even some disciples, reenact Israel’ s lack of faith in the God of Moses evidenced by their ‘grumbling,’” J. Dennis writes. “But this time, the multitude grumbles not against Moses, but against the Messiah of Israel” (page 117).

The grumbling takes on a theological cast with the complaining of “the Jews,” representatives of the Jerusalem orthodoxy of the time. The complaining is not about the amount of bread but rather the supposed identity of the Baker. Unlike the Synoptics, in John the complainers observe that Jesus is the son of Joseph. Of course, we know (wink, wink) that Jesus is the Son of God. The son of Joseph would come from earth. Only the Son of God can come from heaven.

Jesus takes on directly this line of grumbling. “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Do not keep on grumbling with one another. No one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent would draw that one, and I will resurrect that one on the last day” (John 6:43-44, my translation).

In response to the theological critique, Jesus engages in further scriptural interpretation. “It is written in the prophets, ‘And all shall be the taught ones of God’” (John 6:45, my translation). Dennis notes that this is likely an allusion to Isaiah 54:13 in the Septuagint translation. “For our purposes,” he suggests, “it is important to point out that the context of Isa 54 concerns the restoration of Israel and the renewal of the covenant between Israel and YHWH. Isa 54,” he notes, “holds out the promise of Israel’s restoration from exile and destruction…” (page 117).

“Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me,” Jesus concludes on the basis of the scripture quote (John 6:45b, NRSV). Dennis argues that in applying this quotation, Jesus says that the day of restoration described in Isaiah 54 has arrived. God is teaching Israel through the words and actions of Jesus, the Messiah. The one who hears his teaching and learns from God through him is coming to him. Coming to Jesus is, Dennis suggests, the second exodus. Not coming to Jesus means missing the second exodus (page 118).

Grumbling in this context is not mere complaining or even whining. This is not a text meant to enforce eternal optimism and to make criticism illegal. Instead, the grumbling noted here is quite specific. It is the resistance which makes trust in the Messiah, Jesus, as the Son of God, impossible. So, the argument comes back to “belief.”

“The issue here is neither wickedness nor depravity but the failure of humans to respond to God’s ultimate gift,” Anderson (2000) argues, “often because they cling to something less than ultimate…In this sense, the sin of unbelief is parallel to Israel’s grumbling in the wilderness,” he continues. “Rather than trusting in God, they rebelled and rejected the human/divine partnership that trust implies” (page 26).

Believing in Jesus, as we have seen previously in John’s gospel, means trusting in the One who sent him into the world. “Jesus has seen the Father because he comes from the Father and he is God made flesh.” Karoline Lewis writes. “The reason for the incarnation is for us now to see God, to experience God in the fullness of relationship that was assumed in God’s relationship with God’s people but could be known only at a certain level. In part,” she concludes, “Jesus is saying, ‘in me you do see God in a way you have never seen God before’” (page 92).

I have gotten myself into the biggest trouble when I have been sure I know how things are supposed to turn out. The trouble comes, not just from the arrogance of that position, but from the consequences of acting on it.

For example, I served in an interim where I made a change in the worship setting. I did that on the basis of something that had worked well in a previous parish. I saw something I thought was familiar, assumed I knew what was going on, and acted without listening to or seeing what was really going on around me. After some difficult conversations and some needed humility therapy, I was able to accept what was real rather than to insist on what I wanted.

It’s a small and too mundane example. But a fair bit of trusting in Jesus may well be the willingness to see and accept what’s wanting to happen rather than insisting on what I want to happen. Much of the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth in ELCA congregations these days comes from insisting on what we want to happen and resisting what’s wanting to happen.

What’s wanting to happen is justice, inclusion, repentance, repair, renewal, reconciliation. What we want to happen is going back to what we know and doing it over and over again. Trusting that Jesus is teaching us what God wants to happen is the path to life. Resisting what God’ wants to happen is the path to death. Many of our congregations, unfortunately, have already made their path choices.

It’s no wonder that all we have left in some places is a group of grumbles.

References and Resources

Anderson, Paul N., “Anti-Semitism and Religious Violence as Flawed Interpretations of the Gospel of John” (2017). Faculty Publications – College of Christian Studies. 289. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs/289.

Anderson, Paul N., “Navigating the Living Waters of the Gospel of John: On Wading With Children and Swimming With Elephants” (2000). Faculty Publications – George Fox School of Theology. 283. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs/283.

Dennis, J. “Exodus Imagery in John 6.” In STUDIEN ZUM NEUEN TESTAMENT UND SEINER UMWELT (SNTU), Serie A, Band 30. https://kidoks.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/300/file/2005_105_121.pdf.

Hylen, Susan E. “Seeing Jesus John’s Way: Manna from Heaven.” Word and World, Volume 33, Number 4 (Fall 2013), pages 341-348. http://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/content/pdfs/33-4_Bread/33-4_Hylen.pdf.

Kloppenborg, J.S., 2011, ‘Disaffiliation in associations and the ἀποσυναγωγός of John’, HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 67(1), Art. #962, 16 pages. DOI: 10.4102/hts.v67i1.962.

Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce. https://www.thespiritlife.net/warfare-publications/3203-the-great-divorce-by-cs-lewis-chapters-7-9.html.

Lewis, Karoline M. John (Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries) Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.

Wallace, Daniel B. Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI.: Zondervan, 1996.

Continuing Theological Deviance

John 6:35 contains the first “I am” statement in John concluded with a predicate nominative. The grammar of such constructions has occupied Greek scholars for centuries. However, the real import here is, as Lewis points out, the incarnational theology of the Gospel. “I am” is the real name of the God of Israel, and Jesus identifies fully as that “I am.” The predicate nominatives expand and interpret the incarnational meaning of that name.

Up until this point, Jesus has been somewhat oblique in his identification with the manna from heaven. “Jesus identifies himself as the bread of the Scripture, the manna God is currently giving to the people,” Hylen (2013) writes. “Manna,” she continues, “is not a substance of days gone by, but something available now in Jesus” (page 343).

The manna image describes survival in the wilderness, sustained by God, Hylen notes. Receiving and benefitting from the manna required obedience to God’s command, especially when it came to gathering only as much as was needed for the day (and twice as much on the day before the Sabbath). So, Hylen (2013) notes, by Jesus’ time, manna had become a metaphor for God’s word or God’s wisdom (page 345).

“Manna is a theologically rich concept that brings with it notions of life, death, and following in God’s ways,” Hylen (2013) writes. “John uses all of these concepts to understand Jesus,” she continues. “Those who believe have a different sort of life than the life of mere survival and existence without faith. As manna,” Hylen concludes, “Jesus makes available a life that goes beyond sustenance” (page 345).

Lewis notes that verses 36-40 are necessary if we are to understand both the interpretation Jesus offers and the critique from the “Jews” that he receives. “Incorporating these verses removed from the lectionary provides the necessary background for what is to be the subject matter of belief in this moment,” Lewis argues. “To believe in Jesus here is to make the connection that he is both the bread God provides that gives life and also the source of the bread” (page 90).

The one who “comes” to Jesus, he proclaims, shall under no circumstances ever hunger. As Wallace points out, the Greek here “is the strongest way to negate something in Greek” (page 468). This construction “rules out even the idea as being a possibility” that one could come to Jesus and still be hungering. What is negated here is the possibility that one could come, or continue to come, to Jesus and somehow lose the gift of the abundant life.

In addition, Jesus notes that whoever is believing in him will never under any circumstances ever thirst. The same Greek negative is used in that second clause. We have once again the present participle form of the Greek for “to believe.” Wallace reminds us that this syntax emphasizes the ongoing, continual nature of saving trust in Jesus. It is probably best to translate the phrase as something like “the one who keeps on believing.”

By extension, that same linguistic logic can and should be applied to the verb for “to come,” also a present participle. “I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus says. “The one who keeps on coming to me will never, ever hunger, and the one who keeps on trusting in me will never, ever be thirsty.” Clearly, the continuing nature of coming and trusting is directly related to the continuing nature of being fed and watered.

We American Christians live in an ecclesial culture strongly shaped by the history of Evangelical piety. A part of that piety is the “conversion story,” where the believer narrates a dramatic, one-time, unrepeatable “coming to Jesus.” I think that one of the unfortunate side effects of that cultural reality is that we form people to think that “once is enough.” Therefore, we tend to make ongoing participation in a faith community optional or even superfluous. That tendency appears to run counter to the assertions about coming and trusting that are made here and elsewhere in John.

I have learned in my own faith journey that I cannot rely only on that moment of “conversion” (now over forty years ago). Just as we may need regular booster shots for our immune systems, so we need regular and ongoing “boosters” in our relationship with Jesus through his body, the Church. In addition, I have (I hope) experienced some growth in faith, hope, and love since then. Continuing to come and to trust in Jesus looks different and requires support as I grow, as I experience different life situations, as I become in many ways a different person.

Jesus amplifies this promise of ongoing relationship in verse 37. “Every one the Father is giving to me will come to me,” he declares, “and I will never, ever cast out the one who is coming to me.” Lewis walks us toward this verse.

“To believe in Jesus as the Bread of Life is primarily to acknowledge the relationship between God and God’s people,” she writes. “The bread from heaven is provided for the Israelites whom God loves and will not abandon. In the wilderness, God is present,” she continues, “providing for God’s people, and God’s people rely on God for that provision. To believe in Jesus as the bread from heaven is to recognize that relationship,” she argues. “It is to believe in the relationship and what that relationship means, both then and now” (page 90).

The verb in verse 37 that the NRSV translates as “to drive away” is the Greek verb whose most basic meaning is “to throw out.” Lewis notes that this verb prepares us for the fate of the man born blind in John 9:35. He is cast out of the synagogue, perhaps in the same way that members of the Johannine community are being cast out of their synagogues for continuing to come to Jesus and continuing to trust in him as the Messiah.

Members of the community may be thrown out on their ears. But Jesus will never throw them out. “Eternal life is the certainty of provision, the source of what sustains life that you know and trust witnessed in the feeding of the five thousand. At the same time,” Lewis writes, “it is this same promise carried into the future that Jesus prepares for all believers” (page 91).

Now, was anyone actually booted out of their synagogue for following Jesus during his earthly ministry? Most scholars regard that as unlikely. Instead, this concern reflects some measure of the reality of life for the Johannine community some sixty to eighty years after Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

The case for expulsion from the synagogue is most forcefully made by Martyn in his papers and commentary on the Gospel of John. That case has been critiqued, defended, rejected, amended, and embraced over the last forty years. Martyn argued that the concerns of John’s gospel reflect the 80’s and 90’s of the Common Era, when Jewish communities revised their list of condemnations to include Jesus followers. He looks in particular at the sign, dialogue, and discourse in John 9 to make his case.

Kloppenborg summarizes the arguments against Martyn’s position and its impact on the theology and themes of the Gospel of John (page 5).  Nonetheless, as Kloppenborg observes, the writer of John’s gospel must have been pointing to something real in the life of his community. He argues that the Jewish Christians in the Johannine community may have engaged in practices that distanced them from the more “orthodox” and mainstream community of which they had been a part.

Those practices may have included deviant Sabbath practices, seeing Jesus as the replacement for the Temple (thus rendering the Jerusalem Temple and its practices unnecessary), and tangible acts of love toward all rather than to insiders. Central to this final practice might have been the ritual of foot-washing, memorialized in John 13. As these practices solidified and were criticized, Kloppenborg argues, the theology of John’s gospel developed to support and underwrite these “deviant” practices.

Kloppenborg’s position is that these practices identified the Jewish Jesus followers as different and then deviant. The Johannine Christians gathered in their affinity groups and in a real sense ultimately excluded themselves from the larger community. “The resolve of the Johannine clique to persevere in their deviance,” he concludes, “turned exclusion into expulsion” (page 14).

This backstory gives particular resonance and even poignancy to verses 37 and 38. “Every one whom the Father gives to me, to me shall come, and the one who comes to me I will never, ever cast out, because I have come down from heaven not in order to my will but rather the will of the One who sent me” (my translation). We may get the boot from the Establishment for engaging in peculiar practices (like loving everyone), but Jesus will never give us the boot.

In fact, it is the Father’s will that not one of us deviants should be lost. This is the real definition of the Resurrection. Nothing, and no one good, will be lost. We can take a chance on being excluded for pursuing the will of the Father because anyone who seeks the Truth will be kept, fed, and nurtured by Jesus.

An explosive and potentially dangerous line of thinking, unless we really are following the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus’ debating partners get that immediately, as we will see in the following verses.

References and Resources

Anderson, Paul N., “Anti-Semitism and Religious Violence as Flawed Interpretations of the Gospel of John” (2017). Faculty Publications – College of Christian Studies. 289. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs/289.

Hylen, Susan E. “Seeing Jesus John’s Way: Manna from Heaven.” Word and World, Volume 33, Number 4 (Fall 2013), pages 341-348. http://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/content/pdfs/33-4_Bread/33-4_Hylen.pdf.

Kloppenborg, J.S., 2011, ‘Disaffiliation in associations and the ἀποσυναγωγός of John’, HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 67(1), Art. #962, 16 pages. DOI: 10.4102/hts.v67i1.962.

Lewis, Karoline M. John (Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries) Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.

Wallace, Daniel B. Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI.: Zondervan, 1996.

None Driven Away

Last week I noted in closing that the crowd gives the right response for the wrong reasons. “Lord, always give us this bread!” (John 6:34, my translation). They clearly don’t know what they’re asking. They keep talking about bread, but they don’t get past the dough. In the words of Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Lord, feed us with your life all the time and at all times. That’s the “applause line” for this passage, to use a category from performance criticism. As the gospel writer enacted the story for the audience, verse 34 would end with a pregnant pause. Perhaps the listeners responded with cheers. Perhaps they shouted out, “Yes, Lord! Us too!” That line is really the end of the previous pericope.

Now we move to the Bread of Life Discourse proper – except that it’s really more dialogue than discourse. Verse 35 is the beginning of this section. The lectionary folks saw fit to omit verses 36 through 40 from the reading, but I would include them for a number of reasons. In addition, I would end the reading at verse 50 this week. It is another “applause line” in the performance of the text and caps off the debate in the previous verses.

Verse 51 clearly begins the next section of the dialogue/discourse, which is the section most focused on the eucharistic meanings of the text. Of course, we will dive more deeply into that section next week, so I will focus on verses 35 to 50.

It’s important to begin by noting that, as is the case throughout the Gospel of John, this is an intra-Jewish debate. This is not an assertion by the Johannine community that Jews are bad. Instead, this is a debate about the correct interpretation of the Jewish scriptures in light of the coming of the Messiah, Jesus.

Paul Anderson offers a detailed and downloadable discussion of anti-Semitism, religious violence, and John’s gospel in his fine monograph. I want to lift out a few paragraphs to focus our attention and clarify our thinking in this regard.

“While it is a tragic fact that the Gospel of John has contributed to anti-Semitism and religious violence during some chapters of Christian history,” Anderson begins, “John is not anti-Semitic. It was written by a Jewish writer, about a Jewish messianic figure, targeted first toward convincing Jewish audiences,” he notes, “that Jesus was indeed the Jewish Messiah” (page 1).

I would note that this is made the clearest when we reflect on the most accurate translation of the purpose statement of the Gospel of John in John 20:31. “But these things have been written in order that you might come to [and/or continue to] trust that the Messiah is Jesus, the Son of God, and in order that as you are trusting, you may have life in his name” (my translation and emphasis). John’s audience doesn’t need to be convinced that the Messiah is coming. They need to be persuaded and/or assured that he has come, and that he is Jesus.

That’s an intra-Jewish debate. In our time when anti-Semitism and the hate crimes it generates are on the rise again, we Christian preachers have a responsibility to remind our folks that the supposedly anti-Jewish texts in the Christian scriptures have been repeatedly misused and abused.

This in no way excuses or downplays the horrors of Christian anti-Semitism. We have inhabited a system that for 1500 years has perverted the gospel witness to do violence to Jews. That violence continues, often based on the same texts as before. Therefore, we must continue to equip our folks at least with the conviction that the texts are being misused. If that perversion was imported into the text rather being native to the text, then that perversion can be resisted and rejected.

“The thesis of this essay,” Anderson writes, “is that while John has played a role in anti-Semitism and religious violence, such influences represent the distortion of this thoroughly Jewish piece of writing, which actually provides ways forward for all seekers of truth and inclusivity if interpreted adequately. The Fourth Gospel represents an intra-Jewish perspective,” he asserts, “standing against violence and force, forwarding a universalist appeal to all seekers of truth, while also documenting the dialectical engagement between revelation and religion” (page 3).

This comes to focus in John 6 because the issue at hand is the theological interpretation of the manna in the wilderness, narrated in Exodus 16. The crowds bring up the image of manna in John 6:31. Jesus launches into the Bread of Life Discourse to interpret the image for the crowds and for the readers of John’s gospel.

“When Jesus’ words are understood as an interpretation of Scripture,” Susan Hylen (2013) writes, “it appears instead that Jesus is not rejecting the Jewish version of the manna story but interpreting the story in light of present experience. Like other interpreters of his time,” she argues, “he reads the story in a way that makes it relevant for the hearer” (page 343).

“John’s narrative is written by a Jew, about Jesus the Jew, who is believed to be fulfilling Israel’s divine vocation and global mission as a light to the nations and a blessing to the world,” Anderson argues. “Thus, in no way can the thoroughly Semitic Gospel of John, the most Jewish of the Gospels, be considered anti-Semitic. If anything,” he continues, “John represents a radical view of the Jewish vocation, in that it sees Jesus as the embodiment of typological Israel as a means of blessing the nations” (pages 12-13).

This perspective on the interpretive framework of John’s gospel can open up the text for us (well, me!) to notice layers of significance. I want to lift up the ongoing universalism of the Gospel of John. We know that God is loving the entire cosmos through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus (John 3:16). Let’s remember Jesus’ declaration that when he is “lifted up” he will draw all people to himself.

In John 6:35-40, we see that universalism clearly as well. Whoever comes to Jesus will never be hungry. Whoever puts their faith in him will never be thirsty. Anyone who comes to Jesus will never be driven away. Jesus comes down from heaven so that he should lose nothing (or no one) that God has given to Jesus. Rather, all of (it, them?) will be raised up on the last day. “This is indeed the well of my father,” Jesus concludes, “that every one who sees the Son and puts their trust in him may have eternal life, and I will raise that one up on the last day” (John 6:40, my translation). I’m not sure there can be a clearer fulfillment of what it means to be blessed in order to be a blessing for the cosmos.

Jesus continues a debate that has gone in within Judaism from the end of the Babylonian exile up to the moment of our text. Are the Jews called to pull inward and focus on being a holy people, not risking contamination from the world? Or are the Jews to be a light to the nations, as advocated for example in texts from Isaiah? Jesus argues and asserts that the latter is the fulfillment of the vocation of Israel. His opponents adopt varieties of the former strategy as the means to survival in a difficult and threatening world.

Of course, this debate rages (or simmers) in American Christian congregations. In my experience, the default position of congregations is the inward-turned, defensive posture. Congregational life is focused on those who are already there. It takes focused and intentional effort to change that gaze to those “outside the walls” of a congregation. And even when that change happens, it takes equally as much focus and effort to maintain the outward gaze and to prevent a return to self-enclosed defensiveness.

While we will look in more detail at the Eucharist in John’s gospel next week, certainly this week we can look at who is welcome, or not, at the table. I have experienced and observed an evolution in my thinking and the thinking of other ELCA Lutherans in this regard. We still officially expect the Lord’s Supper to be available only to the baptized. But that is certainly not the practice in many congregations.

The debate is often whether the “Table” (the Eucharist) can lead to the “Font,” (Baptism) rather than insisting that only the “Font” can lead to the “Table.” In my experience, the more a congregation is involved in reaching out beyond the walls of the congregation, the more flexible the congregation must become in this ordering.

When I was involved in weekly ministry with offenders and ex-offenders, I knew that many of the regular communicants had not been baptized. If I had insisted on the “proper” order of things, any number of those folks would not have returned – either to the Table or to Sunday worship. For the sake of caring in Christ, we exercised (as that congregation still does) a liberal flexibility in this regard. Anyone who comes to Jesus will never be driven away – if we are faithful to what we see and hear in John 6.

The good news is that such a welcome and openness begins with and is applied to – me! I come with all my selfish agendas, intentional misunderstandings, and perverse prejudices. And I still hold out my hands to be filled, expecting a welcome and a feeding. Too often, I simply take that welcome for granted rather than experiencing it as the astonishing reality it is.

In a time when invitation, welcome, and inclusion continue to be massive challenges in our (white) congregations, this may be a good place to begin with the text.

References and Resources

Anderson, Paul N., “Anti-Semitism and Religious Violence as Flawed Interpretations of the Gospel of John” (2017). Faculty Publications – College of Christian Studies. 289. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ccs/289.

Hylen, Susan E. “Seeing Jesus John’s Way: Manna from Heaven.” Word and World, Volume 33, Number 4 (Fall 2013), pages 341-348. http://wordandworld.luthersem.edu/content/pdfs/33-4_Bread/33-4_Hylen.pdf.