Wednesday Bible study: metaphoritis

John 15 begins with a bizarrely extended metaphor about fruits and vines, which apparently is supposed to mean something. Well, one meaning is clear: people who don't worship Jesus will be burned alive. (v. 6) The stuff about loving each other sounds great, but unfortunately many Christians take it to mean that they should love only other Christians, and even more specifically Christians who adhere to the same interpretations of the Bible. 

Once again, keep in mind, this appears only in John. The other Gospel writers apparently weren't in on this particular speech. 

 

15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes^[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. ³ You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. ⁴ Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

⁹ “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

The World Hates the Disciples

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’^[b] If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. ²¹ They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. ²⁴ If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’^[c]

The Work of the Holy Spirit

²⁶ “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. ²⁷ And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

Footnotes

1. John 15:2 The Greek for he prunes also means he cleans.
2. John 15:20 John 13:16
3. John 15:25 Psalms 35:19; 69:4

 

TV Review -- cont.

Of course, The Pitt is unrealistic in the ways TV shows generally have to be. The recurrent characters, unless there's a good reason for them not to be, are generally quite physically attractive. That's obviously a quality that helps actors get parts -- for some of them it's about the only one that matters. And their characters are interesting and charismatic, which is not necessarily true of doctors and nurses. I mean, that's okay, they want people to watch.

 

None of the cases that come into The Pitt are routine and boring. Mostly what happens in EDs is standard stuff -- broken bones, lacerations needing stitches, acute appendicitis, heart attacks (oops, I meant acute myocardial infarctions), chest pains that might be AMIs but aren't after all, and all kinds of other stuff that doesn't produce a lot of drama. The people with the broken fifth metatarsal or inflamed appendix might well have interesting lives or qualities, but the ER staff don't know that, or much of anything about them at all. The writers have to resort to a lot of contrivance to pull interesting stories from the outside world into their universe. That includes a lot of highly unlikely coincidental connections between the staff and the patients, but obviously implausible coincidences are fairly ubiquitous in fictional plots and we just accept it.

One thing I should have mentioned when I talked about physicians treating people like shit is that the doctors and nurses in The Pitt are entirely free of any sort of prejudice. It doesn't matter if you're gay, or Black, or don't speak a word of English, or you're overdosing on opioids or drowning in ethanol, you get total acceptance and respect. I can assure you, there is plenty of evidence that all of those characteristics can result in unequal treatment. (Actually, Unequal Treatment is the title of a well-known book length study by the Institute of Medicine.) A few years back, the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association got fired for publishing an editorial in which the authors denied this. As I say, the writers want to present an idealized world and they want their heroes to be heroic. I understand that, but don't believe it's real.

Finally, I'll close with the finale. Season one ends with a mass shooting at a music festival, obviously modeled on the horrific incident in Las Vegas in 2017. Level One trauma centers most certainly do drill for mass casualty events and yes, they do happen. And this one definitely did create an opportunity for the writers' heroes to be heroic, as indeed ED staff generally will be when such a thing happens. But such a thing, while very noteworthy and highly memorable, is actually quite rare. 

 

We call it a mass shooting when four people get shot, and certainly there have been incidents since 2017 with bigger numbers than four, but in fact five or six people showing up in the ED with gunshot wounds is a lot, and in this episode The Pitt got dozens, nearly all of them very serious and life threatening. That may be realistic in the sense that if it were to happen, it would look a lot like what the show presented. But unless you live in Orlando, Boston (marathon bombing, not a shooting) or Las Vegas, it hasn't happened in your city. For example, the worst mass shooting in Sacramento history resulted in four people being taken to the nearby Level One trauma center. (Believe it or not, there were very few serious injuries from the 9/11 attack in Manhattan because either the people got out, or they ended up under the rubble. The EDs braced for mass casualties that never came.)

So, in short, it's a TV show. I will say that what it depicts about the pernicious influence of financial pressures in medicine is salutary, but it probably doesn't go far enough. The long hours and dedication, and the emotional burdens that go with medical training and the practice of emergency medicine are rightly respected and we should all be appreciative. But realistic is a relative term. 

 

 

TV review

A streaming service I subscribe to offered the first season of The Pitt, so of course given my profession I had to watch it. I must admit that wasn't hard because it was pretty engrossing. But I'm not here to do drama criticism, I'm a medical and public health sociologist, so that's the take you're gonna get.

 

In case you are just awaking from a 40 year slumber, the series is set in the emergency department of a fictitious Pittsburgh hospital. Each episode constitutes one hour in a 12 hour shift, though the last hour runs overtime. If there's a lead character it's senior attending physician Michael Robinavitch, known as Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle, who's already been an emergency doctor for many seasons of ER so I guess that gave him a head start). However, it's really a deep ensemble cast and there are ongoing plot lines and vignette stories featuring residents, medical students, nurses, a couple of other attending physicians, and of course patients. The writing is intricate and there's a lot to keep track of. 

 

The series has been widely praised as highly realistic, and that's what I want to focus on. I'm not a real doctor, I'm a doctor of philosophy, so I'll take other people's word for it that the medical processes are legit: how the patients present, how the physicians respond to that and go about making diagnoses and choosing a course of action, all technically sound. The special effects are extraordinary. The actual procedures that happen in the ER, which involve a lot of cutting of flesh and inserting into orifices, are convincingly gory. There's a birth scene and the only way they could have done it, as far as I can tell, is to film an actual childbirth and intercut it with the acted scene.

 

But that's not so important. The status relationships and behavioral norms among the various castes -- attending, senior resident, resident, intern, medical student, head nurse and nurses in general, also a social worker -- are generally as I understand them to be in reality. The way the clinicians interact with patients, however, is somewhat idealized. I'm a member of the Academy of Communication in Healthcare, and we have a pretty good consensus about how physicians should interact with patients, and the doctors in the Pitt have evidently all read our books. They are even seen to instruct the medical students and interns just how I would want them to. However, if there's one thing we healthcare communicationists know for sure it's that most doctors don't really do all that good stuff all of the time, or even most of the time.

 

However, I'm pretty sure the writers know that, and their purpose isn't to make us believe that this is actually really real, but to give lessons about what ought to be. Robby and the senior resident get opportunities to give little speeches about what's wrong with the world and how to do things right. More broadly, the series is unrealistic because it has to be more interesting than reality, and it has to pack a lot more meaning into an hour than you could normally get from sitting and watching reality unfold for that long, even in a busy ED. All of the cases present either an unusual and complicated medical problem, an intense human drama, or plenty of both. 

 

Oh, and by the way, the doctors and nurses view everybody with respect, positive regard, and compassion, without respect to gender, age, race ethnicity, personal comportment or behavior. As a personal note, I have written more than a couple of papers about how doctors treat people like shit because they have substance use disorder, don't take their pills the way they're supposed to, or otherwise annoy the Gods. So again, that isn't realistic, but it's didactic. The writers are trying to show us how things ought to be. 

 

This is a long enough blog post for now, I'll finish up next time. 

Sunday Sermonette: The most important dispute in all of history

Well, maybe not quite, but arguably. John 14 might be the most historically important chapter in the Gospels because in centuries hence, dispute over the proper interpretation of this gibberish caused turmoil throughout Christian Europe. It  sparked wars, fractured institutions, motivated torture and murder, tore apart empires. . . .

 

The whole thing is so ridiculous that if you don't already know about it you probably won't believe me. The position that the Catholic church arrived at after a couple of centuries is called trinitarianism, which holds that God the Father, God the Son (i.e. Jesus) and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons sharing one essence, co-existent and co-eternal. (If you're wondering what the fuck that means, don't bother.) The so-called Arian heresy holds that the son (Jesus) is distinct from the father, that he was born of the father and therefore did not exist before he was begotten. There are variations on these themes. If you really want to know more about it, here's the Wikipedia article on Arianism, and the one on Trinitarianism, but you can take my word for it, it's 100% meaningless bullshit.

 

14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God^[a]; believe also in me. ² My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. ⁴ You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Jesus the Way to the Father

⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

⁶ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you really know me, you will know^[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

⁸ Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

⁹ Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. ¹¹ Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. ¹² Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit

¹⁵ “If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be^[c] in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. ²¹ Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

²² Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

²³ Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴ Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

²⁵ “All this I have spoken while still with you. ²⁶ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

²⁸ “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. ²⁹ I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. ³⁰ I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, ³¹ but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

“Come now; let us leave.

Footnotes

1. John 14:1 Or Believe in God
2. John 14:7 Some manuscripts If you really knew me, you would know
3. John 14:17 Some early manuscripts and is

 

Stochasticism

As you are no doubt aware, unless you have recently emerged from a coma, the UCONN men's basketball team beat Duke in their quarterfinal game on an intercontinental ballistic buzzer beater following a miraculous steal, giving UCONN a one point victory after they had trailed the entire game. So okay, it's a win, and UCONN gets to go on to the semifinal and maybe win the whole enchilada while the Duke players are crying themselves to sleep.

 

But does either team deserve their fate? The shot could as easily have rimmed out, the stolen pass could have been two inches higher, with one less missed free throw it wouldn't even have mattered. What people seldom realize that the same principle is true for historical events of vastly greater import than a basketball game. We are built to look for patterns and meaning and causes everywhere, but sometimes stupid shit just happens. For example, if the very aptly named Anthony Wiener hadn't texted a 15 year old girl, Ronald Dump never would have become president. Now watch out -- that doesn't mean that was the single cause! It wouldn't have mattered if the corporate media hadn't been bizarrely obsessed with Hillary Clinton's information security practices, or if not for the unreality show The Apprentice, or a million other contingencies that had to happen for the Wiener dick pic to matter. 

 

For want of a nail, a shoe was lost . . .  

Wednesday Bible Study: The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name

John 13 is interesting for a few reasons. One is that it makes it pretty clear that Judas is not betraying Jesus, but rather carrying out the orders Jesus has given him. "So what you are about to do, do it quickly." That's the only way the whole thing makes any sense in the first place, because Jesus repeatedly says that getting crucified is the plan. 

Then there's the whole footwashing business, which seems fairly kinky. Interwoven with all this is the unnamed disciple "who Jesus loved," (verse 23) who is physically intimate with Jesus. This "disciple who Jesus loved" comes up a few times in John, he is never named, and well, not that there's anything wrong with that. . . . 

 

13 It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

² The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. ³ Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; ⁴ so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. ⁵ After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

⁷ Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

⁸ “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

⁹ “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

¹⁰ Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” ¹¹ For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.

¹² When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. ¹³ “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. ¹⁴ Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵ I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. ¹⁶ Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ¹⁷ Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Jesus Predicts His Betrayal

¹⁸ “I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfill this passage of Scripture: ‘He who shared my bread has turned^[a] against me.’^[b]

¹⁹ “I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am who I am. ²⁰ Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.”

²¹ After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”

²² His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. ²³ One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. ²⁴ Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”

²⁵ Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

²⁶ Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.

So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” ²⁸ But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. ²⁹ Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. ³⁰ As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.

Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial

³¹ When he was gone, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. ³² If God is glorified in him,^[c] God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.

³³ “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.

³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

³⁶ Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”

Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

³⁷ Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”

³⁸ Then Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!

Footnotes

1. John 13:18 Greek has lifted up his heel
2. John 13:18 Psalm 41:9
3. John 13:32 Many early manuscripts do not have If God is glorified in him.

 

Expert Opinion

In case you aren't already familiar with the blog of military historian Bret Deveraux, you should be. Here I'm linking to his recent post about the Iran war, which confirms much of my own thinking, but with greater authority and detail. Actually everybody with a whit of common sense can pretty much come to the same conclusions. This is nothing but a catastrophe, particularly for poorer countries -- the U.S. can endure it but the cost to our people is enormous. There's no telling where it will lead, but spiraling refugee crises, China taking advantage of the weakened U.S. military, Russia gaining the upper hand in Ukraine, widening regional conflicts -- all this and more is possible. But nothing good can come of it.

 

I'm not really sure what I hope for now. It would probably be best for Dump to declare victory and go home, which seems to be percolating as one possibility in his decaying brain. It would be a very bad outcome anyway -- the world would be considerably worse off than it was before -- but at least it wouldn't get much worse than it is already. Alas, most people think that's highly unlikely because just about nobody would buy it as a victory, while Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and the Republican senatorial majority can't survive a defeat. 

But then what's the next move? As Deveraux and I both are telling you, introducing ground forces, whether just on Kargh Island or in an attempt to capture enough territory along the Strait of Hormuz to eliminate the threat to shipping, would be utter folly. There aren't enough troops to hold even a fraction of the needed territory, and they would just be drone fodder. Actually I foresee a massacre.

 

Would they pile such insanity on top of their idiocy?  You know they just might, and the New York Times will explain why it's necessary.

Sunday Sermonette: Priorities

There is so much I could say about chapter 12. Again, the many discrepancies with the other gospels mostly aren't worth mentioning. By now we know that the Bible is rife with contradictions and either you have an excuse for that or you don't. But I will mention that the reference to Zechariah in verse 15 is bogus, because that passage refers to a military leader and the ruler of an earthly kingdom. This is true of most of the references in the gospels to the Tanakh -- they are taken out of context. Jesus is also mistaken about botany (verse 24). Dead seeds don't produce plants. 

Now, if you agree that it was more appropriate for Mary to blow a year's wages on precious oil with which to anoint Jesus's feet, whereas the money, as the purportedly evil Judas points out, could have been spent to aid the poor, okay then. I guess that's Christian morality, and it explains the trillions of dollars worth of gold ornaments and precious graven images in Catholic churches and cathedrals. But you'll have to explain why that seems right to you. 

It would be interesting to know how the experience of being dead has affected Lazarus but apparently he took it in stride. And I'll just point out once again that the purported "betrayal" by Judas is exactly the opposite. Jesus wants to be crucified,  he repeatedly predicts it, and Judas plays the essential role Jesus needs for him to play. Think about it.

 

12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. ² Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. ³ Then Mary took about a pint^[a] of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

⁴ But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, ⁵ “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.^[b]” ⁶ He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

⁷ “Leave her alone,” Jesus replied. “It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. ⁸ You will always have the poor among you,^[c] but you will not always have me.”

⁹ Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ¹⁰ So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, ¹¹ for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him.

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King

¹² The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. ¹³ They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!^[d]”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”^[e]

“Blessed is the king of Israel!”

¹⁴ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:

¹⁵ “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
    see, your king is coming,
    seated on a donkey’s colt.”^[f]

¹⁶ At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.

¹⁷ Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. ¹⁸ Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. ¹⁹ So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”

Jesus Predicts His Death

²⁰ Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. ²¹ They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” ²² Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.

²³ Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. ²⁴ Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ²⁵ Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

²⁷ “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. ²⁸ Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” ²⁹ The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

³⁰ Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. ³¹ Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. ³² And I, when I am lifted up^[g] from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³ He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

³⁴ The crowd spoke up, “We have heard from the Law that the Messiah will remain forever, so how can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this ‘Son of Man’?”

³⁵ Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. ³⁶ Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.

Belief and Unbelief Among the Jews

³⁷ Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. ³⁸ This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet:

“Lord, who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”^[h]

³⁹ For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere:

⁴⁰ “He has blinded their eyes
    and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
    nor understand with their hearts,
    nor turn—and I would heal them.”^[i]

⁴¹ Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.

⁴² Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; ⁴³ for they loved human praise more than praise from God.

⁴⁴ Then Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. ⁴⁵ The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me. ⁴⁶ I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

⁴⁷ “If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. ⁴⁸ There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day. ⁴⁹ For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. ⁵⁰ I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”

Footnotes

1. John 12:3 Or about 0.5 liter
2. John 12:5 Greek three hundred denarii
3. John 12:8 See Deut. 15:11.
4. John 12:13 A Hebrew expression meaning “Save!” which became an exclamation of praise
5. John 12:13 Psalm 118:25,26
6. John 12:15 Zech. 9:9
7. John 12:32 The Greek for lifted up also means exalted.
8. John 12:38 Isaiah 53:1
9. John 12:40 Isaiah 6:10

 

You really need to check this out . . .

No doubt you have accepted the enshitiffication of Google search like a slowly boiled frog. You don't have to! It turns out that there is not just one, but about 47 weird tricks that will make Google search work for you the way you want it to. You should go there, read it, and bookmark it, but just to convince you here's a (very small) sample.

Try: site:nytimes.com climate to search only the Times, or site:gov vaccine to pull results exclusively from government domains. It works as a better version of a website’s own search function (most built-in site search is mediocre at best), as a trust filter when you only want results from a specific domain type, and as a research shortcut when you already know which publication or institution you want to pull from. You can also run it in reverse: electric vehicles -site:tesla.com returns coverage that isn’t from Tesla’s own pages. 

After any search, click Tools (just below the search bar), then the “All Results” dropdown, then select “Verbatim.” Google stops paraphrasing you entirely and returns results for exactly what you typed, stripped of personalization and synonym-swapping. 

The minus sign removes a word from your results entirely. Put it directly before the word with no space: jaguar -car returns the animal, mercury -planet returns the element or the musician depending on your other terms.

There's so much more.  I just picked these to convince you. Check it out!

 

Wednesday Bible Study: Why didn't anybody else notice this?

John 11 is the well-known story of Jesus raising a man named Lazarus from the dead. Not in the minor way he did before with a 12 year old girl who had just died (Mark 5), when in fact Jesus said "She is not dead but only sleeping," but in a major way with a guy who had been dead for four days and was rotting in the tomb. This would seem to be a noteworthy event, but it seems that neither Matthew, Mark nor Luke knew anything about it, which is pretty strange. 

 

Obviously this presages Jesus's own resurrection, but what exactly the author thought this added to the plot isn't entirely clear. Note that the eternal life Jesus keeps promising is not supposed to happen on earth. The idea is not that, if you believe, you'll rise up and walk out of the tomb. It's supposed to happen in a transcendent realm. So this is just a very weird story. 

 

FYI, here's the relevant excerpt from Mark 5: 

³⁸ When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. ³⁹ He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” ⁴⁰ But they laughed at him.

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. ⁴¹ He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). ⁴² Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. ⁴³

 

11 Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) ³ So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

⁴ When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” ⁵ Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. ⁶ So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, ⁷ and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

⁸ “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

⁹ Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. ¹⁰ It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

¹¹ After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

¹² His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” ¹³ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

¹⁴ So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, ¹⁵ and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

¹⁶ Then Thomas (also known as Didymus^[a]) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Jesus Comforts the Sisters of Lazarus

¹⁷ On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. ¹⁸ Now Bethany was less than two miles^[b] from Jerusalem, ¹⁹ and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. ²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

²¹ “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

²³ Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

²⁴ Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

²⁵ Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; ²⁶ and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

²⁷ “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

²⁸ After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” ²⁹ When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰ Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹ When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.

³² When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

³³ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴ “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

³⁵ Jesus wept.

³⁶ Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

³⁷ But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Jesus Raises Lazarus From the Dead

³⁸ Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹ “Take away the stone,” he said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

⁴⁰ Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

⁴¹ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

⁴³ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

The Plot to Kill Jesus

⁴⁵ Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. ⁴⁶ But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷ Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.

“What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. ⁴⁸ If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.”

⁴⁹ Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! ⁵⁰ You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

⁵¹ He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, ⁵² and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. ⁵³ So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

⁵⁴ Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the people of Judea. Instead he withdrew to a region near the wilderness, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.

⁵⁵ When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. ⁵⁶ They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple courts they asked one another, “What do you think? Isn’t he coming to the festival at all?” ⁵⁷ But the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who found out where Jesus was should report it so that they might arrest him.

Footnotes

1. John 11:16 Thomas (Aramaic) and Didymus (Greek) both mean twin.
2. John 11:18 Or about 3 kilometers

Baloncesto

I digress from our usual subject matter to consider events in the nearby town of Stoors, Connecticut, which bills itself as the Basketball Capital of the World. While some might think that braggadocio, it is at least defensible that Stoors is the U.S. College Basketball Capital, and probably indisputable that it's the U.S. Women's College Basketball Capital. How that relates to the globe is debatable, but I'm pretty sure they would beat any women's college basketball team from Albania to Zimbabwe. 

 

The first two rounds of the tournament this year were actually such outrageous blowouts that it was difficult to watch, even for a UCONN fan. You had to feel sorry for the opposing players and coaches, who discovered they didn't belong on the same floor. Toward the end of a recent Boston Celtics game, the announcer speculated that coach Joe Mazzula might be about to "geno." It turns out that geno is now a verb meaning "to empty your bench late in the game." 

 

But the truth is that coach Geno* Auriemma's problem is that the players at the end of his bench could start for just about every other team in the country. The team this year may be the best ever, even though they lost superstar Paige Bueckers to the WNBA after last season, and she was the Rookie of the Year. Her childhood friend Azzi Fudd (whose uncle Elmer is very proud of her) will likely be the number 1 pick this year, and she isn't even the best player on the team.

 

Okay, they still have to play the games. They will most likely face UCLA in the national championship, and I wouldn't say that's a mortal lock. Basketball teams can have their off days, and UCONN was indeed very cold shooting in the first round game. (It didn't matter, they crushed anyway.)  The reason I bring all this up is that women's basketball has come an incredibly long way in past decades, and that Geno Auriemma and UCONN have led the way. There still isn't enough well-developed talent to go around among 64 college teams, which is why the early round tournament games can be uncompetitive, but the top level of play is awesome. The game is exciting to watch, and the WNBA players just won a new union contract that's going to make them millionaires. 

 

While Geno Auriemma deserves the most credit for this of anyone, it's really a testament to a change in the culture. Title IX of the 1972 Civil Rights Act provided the financial basis for the revolution. Since universities had to give athletic scholarships to women, they had to compete with each other and make the game interesting enough to sell tickets and TV ads. That took a while. In the beginning, there were few if any women who could coach basketball at a high level and that's why the game depended mostly on male coaches for a while. That's changing slowly, but it's still the case that about half (I'm guessing) of top-level women's college basketball coaches are men. As female players retire and go into coaching, the supply of women will keep increasing, but we won't really have arrived until more women start coaching men. 

 

In the meantime, I'll just say that the world can change for the better. The backsliding we're facing now is infuriating and depressing, but I'm betting it's going to be short-lived. The nearly universal reaction of disgust when Dump insulted the U.S. women's hockey team -- and the shaming of the men who laughed at it -- is strong evidence in my favor. So Go Huskies!

 

*His name is actually Luigi, Geno is a nickname. Bet you didn't know that. 

Sunday Sermonette: The devil can quote scripture

 In John 20, Jesus proclaims himself to be God. That seems pretty psychotic to me, as it does to many of the people who heard it. (Verse 20) So, at Hanukkah, he says it again, and some of the people want to throw rocks at him because he is committing blasphemy. (I wouldn't throw rocks at him, but I'd put him on an anti-psychotic regimen.) So, in verse 34, he tries to justify himself by quoting Psalm 82, pretending the verse is addressed to people, and asserting that people are gods. Uhm, no. Here is psalm 82, in its entirety.

 

A psalm of Asaph.

¹ God presides in the great assembly;
    he renders judgment among the “gods”:

² “How long will you^[a] defend the unjust
    and show partiality to the wicked?^[b]
3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
    uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
⁴ Rescue the weak and the needy;
    deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

⁵ “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing.
    They walk about in darkness;
    all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

⁶ “I said, ‘You are “gods”;
    you are all sons of the Most High.’
⁷ But you will die like mere mortals;
    you will fall like every other ruler.”

⁸ Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
    for all the nations are your inheritance.

Footnotes

1. Psalm 82:2 The Hebrew is plural.
2. Psalm 82:2 The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here

 

This psalm is post-exilic. It was probably written about 800 years before the purported events in John. It is obvious, from the plain language of the psalm, that the author was saying that there had been many gods. Yahweh is presiding over a council of gods, and he was angry at them because they permitted the conquest of Judea and the Babylonian exile, so he demotes them, and makes them mortal. He is not addressing humans, or saying that humans are gods. What the psalmist are saying is that all the old gods are now dead, and Yahweh is now the one god. That's pretty interesting! But it has nothing to do with what Jesus is claiming. 

 

10 “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. ² The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” ⁶ Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

⁷ Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸ All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. ⁹ I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.^[a] They will come in and go out, and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

¹¹ “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. ¹³ The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. ¹⁷ The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

¹⁹ The Jews who heard these words were again divided. ²⁰ Many of them said, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?”

²¹ But others said, “These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

Further Conflict Over Jesus’ Claims

²² Then came the Festival of Dedication^[b] at Jerusalem. It was winter, ²³ and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade. ²⁴ The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

²⁵ Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, ²⁶ but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. ²⁷ My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all^[c]; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.”

³¹ Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, ³² but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?”

³³ “We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

³⁴ Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’^[d]? ³⁵ If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside— ³⁶ what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? ³⁷ Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. ³⁸ But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” ³⁹ Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

⁴⁰ Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing in the early days. There he stayed, ⁴¹ and many people came to him. They said, “Though John never performed a sign, all that John said about this man was true.” ⁴² And in that place many believed in Jesus.

Footnotes

1. John 10:9 Or kept safe
2. John 10:22 That is, Hanukkah
3. John 10:29 Many early manuscripts What my Father has given me is greater than all
4. John 10:34 Psalm 82:6

 

Wednesday Bible Study: No comment

This story is so ridiculous I can't be bothered to say anything about it.

 

9 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. ² His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

³ “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. ⁴ As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. ⁵ While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

⁶ After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. ⁷ “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

⁸ His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹ Some claimed that he was.

Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”

But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”

¹⁰ “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.

¹¹ He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”

¹² “Where is this man?” they asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

The Pharisees Investigate the Healing

¹³ They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. ¹⁴ Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. ¹⁵ Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”

¹⁶ Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.

¹⁷ Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”

The man replied, “He is a prophet.”

¹⁸ They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. ¹⁹ “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”

²⁰ “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. ²¹ But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” ²² His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. ²³ That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

²⁴ A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”

²⁵ He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”

²⁶ Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

²⁷ He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”

²⁸ Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! ²⁹ We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”

³⁰ The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. ³¹ We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. ³² Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. ³³ If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

³⁴ To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

Spiritual Blindness

³⁵ Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

³⁶ “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”

³⁷ Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

³⁸ Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

³⁹ Jesus said,^[a] “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”

⁴⁰ Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”

⁴¹ Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

Footnotes

1. John 9:39 Some early manuscripts do not have Then the man said … ³⁹ Jesus said.