WE HAVE to stop reading somewhere, or we would need to set aside the best part of three days every time we opened the Bible to read. I know it takes that long to read aloud from Genesis to Revelation, because we once did a reading of the whole Bible in college chapel, starting after dinner on the Thursday, and ending on the Sunday.
In this instance, the Gospel ends on a controversial note: “The Father and I are one.” It sounds like a conclusion, but it is not; for it opens up a conversation instead of ending one. Jesus’s words provoke a reaction and a challenge. He is in danger of being stoned, not because of the “good works” that he has done (John 10.31), but “because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God”.
The translation is trying to be helpful. NIV (“mere man”) and NRSV (“only human”) take the same line, as does the New Jerusalem Bible (“only a man”). I wondered whether the rot had set in with the RSV, but no. It stuck closely to the accuracy of AV: “you, being a man, make yourself God”/“thou, being a man, makest thyself God”.
Do we really need to have the insignificance of any human being in comparison with God expounded to us? For that seems to be the effect of the “mere” and “only” additions. Perhaps it does not matter, since the words are Jewish criticism, not something spoken by the Lord. But it is sad that this is how the divide between human and divine is being expressed in scripture — not, it is important to realise, by those Jews who were ready to stone Jesus, but by translators who seem to think that we need to have that divide emphasised.
Is anyone (anyone, that is, who possesses a sound mind rather than, say, is a narcissist) in danger of forgetting that we mortals are as nothing in comparison with God? I doubt it. But, although I dislike the over-translation, I think that it is on to something, theologically if not scripturally. If the incarnation means what we think it means (the Word being made human like us to make us like him), then Jesus’s point is not about exalting himself at the expense of “mere” humankind. It is the very opposite: to show that God’s purpose from the very beginning, not of the Christian era, but of creation itself, has been to make human beings divine.
This would mean that Jesus’s calling himself one with the Father is not a piece of narcissistic self-aggrandisement, but a visible embodiment of what we have all been called to. He has already mapped his own being on to that of the Father in verse 29: “No one will snatch them out of my hand . . . no one can snatch [what my Father has given me] out of the Father’s hand.”
Anyone who has read that verse with attention ought to be expecting the conclusion in verse 30. There is no need to Bible-splain “you, being a man, make yourself God,” by adding “meres” and “onlys”. The words speak more powerfully as they stand. Jesus responds to their take on the divine-human divide (how frustrating that this is beyond the scope of the lection!) with a quotation from the Psalms: “You are gods” (Psalm 82.6). But that is a further question, for another time.
Coming back to the Gospel set for this Sunday, instead of writing about what I think it ought to have been, I am unexpectedly glad to be reminded that I am a sheep. Perhaps this is because Easter is the best time of year to be sheep: they are all around us, not merely as rather dull grass-eating machines, but as playful, energetic, funny creatures, full of the joy of being alive.
When the Jews ask Jesus to tell them plainly who he is, he is enigmatic. He affirms his messiahship by depicting himself in terms that do affirm it, but indirectly: “My sheep hear my voice.” Sheep know the voice of their shepherd, and in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible the shepherd is God himself (Psalm 23.1). The chain of reasoning is short and clear. But it is still not a “yes/no” reply. Jesus’s playfulness, jumping in unexpected directions, may be one reason among many that we also encounter the Good Shepherd as the Lamb of God.
