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Tales of a Jewish Mystic Written by John Shelby Spong

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Tales of a Jewish Mystic Written by John Shelby Spong Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford 1 Study Guide The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic Written by John Shelby Spong Begin and end each session with a prayer. Allow for a check-in period where each person can share for two minutes. Ask for people to share what they thought/felt about the readings for the session. What new insight did they learn? Was there something in the reading they found disturbing/disagreeable? General study questions for each Part: Part I—Introducing the Fourth Gospel Before you read any part of Spong’s book what was your perspective on the Gospel of John? How might Spong’s suggestion that the Gospel of John was written in at least three stages influence your understanding of the gospel? (Chapter 2) What you think about Spong’s goal to pull the anti-Semitism and Creedal orthodoxy out of the Gospel of John? What difference might it make for the understanding of Christianity/Jesus if he succeeds? (Chapter 2) What is the value (if any) in understanding “The first passion story to be written is thus a liturgical interpretation, not remembered history?” In studying pages 26-29 what do you find most enlightening? Most disturbing? On page 39, Spong writes, “The spilt between revisionist Jews and orthodox Jews which led to the followers of Jesus being expelled from the synagogue when this gospel was being written was both real and clear. This gospel reflects the pain and trauma of that expulsion, as well as the necessity for reformulating the Christ message so that it will endue in its new reality as a movement that is outside the synagogue.” How might this statement be applied to Christianity today? Or not? (Chapter 4) How has or has not anti-Semitism distorted the reading of the Gospel of John? Affected Christianity? (Chapter 5) “While God may not be subject to change, the human perception of God is: and history, even the history of the Bible, is the story of the ever-changing human perceptions of God.” (Chapter 5) Agree? Disagree? How or why? (also see quote on page 54 beginning with the third paragraph, “The idea of a changing God…”) Can you relate in any way to the evolution of Jewish mysticism in, around, and following Jesus’ presence on earth? (Chapter 5) Focusing on pages 56-57 and Spong’s discussion of the wisdom tradition, how do you interpret his statement, “The journey into the self, however, was perceived to be the same as a journey into God?” What does it mean to you when Spong says (page 57) “God must be understood as a verb, calling, informing and shaping us and all creation into being all that we were created to be?” Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford 2 Have you ever had a mystical experience that took you into a “new level of consciousness?” (page 59) Could you describe it? (Chapter 7) What do you think about Spong’s comment, “Ultimate truth, however, cannot be captured in finite human words?” How might we see “Jesus as a doorway into a new consciousness?” How might that effect our understanding of Christianity today? Part II—The Book of Signs: Mythological Characters Wrapped Inside History How or not does Spong’s insistence that the writer of the Gospel of John, used the characters in the story as literary figures to make his point (as opposed to literal characters and events)? How has this statement affected your understanding of Mary the mother of Jesus? “Embrace this fact and face the reality that this is the sum total of what we know about the mother of Jesus until the ninth decade, when the gospel of Matthew begins to develop her image mythologically via miraculous nativity stories.” (page 79) How might it affect your reading of the Gospel of John if the mother of Jesus is symbol (a mythological figure) and not a literal person (in this Gospel story)? (Chapter 8) How might it affect your understanding of the Bible if the story of the wedding of Cana is symbolic and a story about Jesus literally turning water into wine? (Chapter 8) How might this statement affect your understanding of Christianity? (from page 88) “A realm is more of an experience…A realm could be an experience of new levels of consciousness, the ability to see beyond the limits of physical vision.” What do you think of Spong’s statement on page 91? “Self-consciousness, however, does open up the possibility of escaping all the boundaries and touching, seeing and experiencing a universal consciousness, a radical new awareness of connectedness, a mystical sense of identity with that which is ultimate. That is an experience that only self-conscious human beings can have.” What do you make of the writer of the Gospel of John having Jesus equating himself to the healing serpent of Moses? (page 91-92) In Chapter 10 Spong writes (page 106)—“Jesus is a barrier breaker. Before him falls the human division first between Jews and Samaritans and then between women and men. A vision of the “realm of God” begins to come into view.” What implications might this have for us today? (From pages 107-111) Spong discusses tribalism. How can we (or not) apply what he says to our world situation today? (From pages 112-116) “God was present in Jesus, but was not confined to his single life.” What does mean for us today? What does this statement mean to you? (page 119) “Stepping out of the familiar religious forms of yesterday and into the post-religious freedom of tomorrow is never easy. It takes courage and a willingness to think outside religious boundaries.” Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford 3 How might this statement apply to Christians today? (page 123) “Not all of the followers of Jesus could walk the walk into the new consciousness that John was outlining…They could not bear the anxiety of the uncertainty that maturity always requires….They could not make the transition that following Jesus required.” (from page 127) “If one hears the question literally, one must respond with a literal answer.” What might that mean for us today as we read the Gospel of John and understand Jesus in light of a new level of consciousness? Reading Spong’s explanations of the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus walking on the water in Chapter 13, has this changed your perspective of these stories in the Gospel of John? How so? (page 131) “The Jesus says one of the most provocative things that John ever records him as saying: “You must,” therefore, “eat my flesh” and “drink my blood.” (132) Spong says that Jesus means, “Eat my flesh—take my life into yours. Drink my blood—open your spirit to my spirit.” How might we use these statements to create a new way of thinking and talking about the Episcopal celebration of the Holy Eucharist? What does this statement from Spong mean to you? (page 140) “Jesus is a doorway into a universal consciousness that no one can know until he or she steps into it.” What might this statement mean for us today? (page 150) “If the Jewish traditionalists could not move out of the past and walk in the light that Jesus came to give, said John, they were choosing to live in darkness, to hide in the religious security of yesterday. That, John asserted, is to make a virtue out of closed minds.” How might Spong’s statement about Lazarus affect your understanding of Jesus and/or scripture? (page154) “Every symbol employed by John reveals that Lazarus is not a person, but a sign and a symbol.” In light of the Lazarus story, Spong says, “Jesus thus represents an ultimate threat to our tribal and religious life?” How so? Part III—The Farewell Discourses and the High Priestly Prayer What does this statement mean to you? (page 173) “Oneness is achieved in our willingness and in our ability to love one another. God is experienced as present in us, in our freedom to escape our needs and to give ourselves away to one another.” What does this statement mean to you? (page 185) “Salvation, now perceived as a call into wholeness, had been accomplished, but only in those few who ‘believed’—that is, those who had stepped beyond their drive to survive and into a new sense of what it means to be human.” What does this statement mean to you? (page 185) “John said (Jesus) had died to pen human life to a new meaning, an new definition. His death was to be the moment of his glorification, the moment when God was fully revealed in him.” (page 186) “Indeed you will do even greater deeds than the ones I (Jesus) have done. The secret, however, is for you to keep the new commandment. You have to love, not for gain, but for love’s sake.” Comment and thoughts? Study Guide Developed by Gil Stafford 4 What do you think about Spong’s statement that “a little while” is to understand this is an internal manifestation not an external one? (page 186) (page 193) Comments and thoughts? “For John there was no fall into sin and thus no time when the human and divine were separated: One literally permeated the other. Since in John’s mind God was not an external being, there was no division between God and life—at least no division with spatial, temporal, or more connotations. Jesus, therefore, did not die for your sins. Neither was he the victim who God punished so that God did not have to punish the deserving sinners, nor substitute the sacrificial animal for the sinner.
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