“Solomon’s porch”
Noel K. Anderson
First Presbyterian Church of Upland
John 10: 22-42 New Revised Standard
22 At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; 26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.”
31 The Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?” 33 The Jews answered, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.” 34 Jesus answered, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’—and the scripture cannot be annulled— 36 can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? 37 If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. 38 But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” 39 Then they tried to arrest him again, but he escaped from their hands.
40 He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. 41 Many came to him, and they were saying, “John performed no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” 42 And many believed in him there.” †
the public square
A heaviness in the air
Solomon’s porch stood on the temple mount outside of the Temple proper. It was a public area where people gathered and speakers could address large crowds. It was the place of public discourse and commentary—their public square. The Feast of Dedication—what we call Hanukkah—was in progress. Hanukkah, you’ll remember, is a celebration of the light from an oil lamp that burnt for eight days before they could prepare more oil for the lampstand and rededicate the temple. It’s not just about the lights; it’s about the sanctification of the temple that had been destroyed roughly 300 years prior.
Jesus, who IS the light, is in Solomon’s portico, and there is a terrible heaviness in the air because lots of the Jewish leaders are out to trap him, get him, and kill him.
They ask him, “Come on—out with it—if you’re the Messiah then just say so.” But the question is loaded. If Jesus says yes, then he’s telling them that he’s the kind of Messiah that they’re expecting—a political, militant Messiah—which he was not. But neither can he say no because he is God’s Messiah, fulfilling the Messianic mission on God’s terms, not those of the people.
So they go after him, and he tells them that his works scream out who he is and they should be listening, but they don’t because they’re not his sheep. His sheep listen to him and follow him. They want him dead for saying that he and the father are one.
The whole scene is definitely unpleasant. Jesus is the light and the true Temple they mean to celebrate and rededicate (when Jesus says he is the one God has “sanctified,” he is fulfilling Hanukkah). His body is the rededicated Temple—but they call him a blasphemer and try to stone him.
There is a horrid heaviness in the air.
Do you know what that’s like? Ever felt a heaviness in the air: Do you feel a heaviness in the air right now?
I don’t want to take any time or effort in describing it because you all know it and feel it already and I don’t want to bring you down. But we know that in the public square of America—and indeed, the world—the air is heavy indeed.
We live on Solomon’s porch. We have public discourse and opinion aired constantly in our lives. It is inescapable—you can’t turn on the television or go online without a bombardment of opinions and feeling the crush of the heavy air. Things are not merely divided; they are divisive.
Now Jesus is clearly divisive, but he is the judge of the world and whatever division he brings is justice, for he is merely separating the sheep from the goats--separating out his own sheep from those of other flocks.
He is a dividing line, but he is never rude. His teaching is saturated with an invitation to follow—to become one of his sheep.
Who is rude? The Scribes, Pharisees, and leaders of the Temple are rude. What makes it worse is that they can also be quite nice. They call him “Lord” and “Good Rabbi,” but while friendly on the surface they are rude to the core.
Manners Matter
Especially when morality doesn’t
So here’s what we need to discuss: manners.
The late humorist P.J. O’Rourke, whom we lost less than a month ago, put it this way:
The modern world is a horrid place. It lacks anything enduring and true. It is devoid of every tenable value.
All existence is in disarray. Religious beliefs are no longer believed. Love is much discussed but little practiced. Morals are in confusion when they are in evidence at all. And intellect is no consolation: modern intelligence has become well-nigh unintelligible.
Given that life is such a mess, why should anyone care which fork is for the oysters? And yet this may be the only thing we can care about. Just as cleanliness becomes more important at moments when godliness is not possible, so manners come to the fore when more august forms of authority collapse. [Modern Manners, p.6]
In other words, when authentic morality fails, manners may be all we have left.
Manners are minor league morality. They take into account the feelings and sensitivities of others and act respectfully towards them.
Some of you may remember Judith Martin, also known as Miss Manners, who wrote books with titles like Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior and Miss Manners' Guide to Rearing Perfect Children. I had both of those books when I started ministry and kept them in my car for several years, walking through them whenever I was out for coffee.
I loved her work. It struck me as fiercely counter-cultural after the narcissism of the 70s and 80s. She is full of moral imperatives—do this, never do that. And beneath it all is a kind of grace that allows others to be who they are—messed up people in whatever of a zillion ways people can be messed up—and it doesn’t matter; we can still sit down to a meal together without going for one another’s throats.
She is a big believer in phoniness, which is a laugh. Telling her kids that they were having adult guests over for dinner and they had to dress nicely and act like ladies and gentlemen, her children said, “Come on, Mom, do you really want us to be fake?” “Absolutely,” she says, “I know you’re not ladies and gentlemen; you’re going to have to act like it.” She adds, “In turn, when you have friends over, your father and I will act our age and behave like adults, fair enough?”
Manners matter. I’ve heard talk of Charm School as if such things exist but I’ve never seen one. There was a time when colleges—think the Ivy League—were associated with the cultivation of charm and good manners. Today, it seems many of our universities are teaching rudeness as a cardinal virtue.
The air in America is heavy because we know so much division. When good manners were valued, polite people wouldn’t publicly speak about sex, politics, or religion. These topics are now the central thread of public discourse. That shows you what we’ve become. And it is part of the reason the air seems so thick.
We must learn to connect over and above deep differences if we are going to be a society at all.
The heavy air of our public square—today’s Solomon’s Porch—struggles with good manners because everyone seems so much more concerned with themselves and their own feelings than with those of others. We Christians proclaim God’s love and profess love as the central, universal virtue, but what is our witness worth if we are not kind or even friendly?.
Friendly or kind?
The deep and the shallow of it
Here we go a bit deeper, for there is a difference between being friendly—well-mannered—and kind.
Talking to a pastor friend last week, he said something very interesting about his people:
“Our church is very friendly,
but it’s not very kind.”
Do you get that? Manners are good, but they are only skin-deep. Manners matter, but they are the morality of the most shallow waters.
Maybe you’ve experienced that mere friendliness that is not kind. Did you ever enter a club where everyone was polite but no one truly accepting of you? This is what much of racism and other exclusionary practices look like—friendly on the surface but rejecting underneath. A smiling face that lies. “Friendly” lives on the surface; “kind” goes to the depths.
Imagine, say, a LIFT meeting and a visitor—a nice lady in her 80s, Mrs. Grantham—shows up with a fresh stripe of red lipstick running across her front teeth. It happens. The friendly thing to do is simply ignore it and treat the person with friendliness and dignity. That is excellent manners. But is it the kind thing? The kind thing to do is to pull her aside and gently let her know so she can fix it. Wouldn’t we all prefer that? If I had a dime for all the times I’ve come to church with red lipstick on my teeth….
Only a fool would say, “How dare you! Maybe that’s her own individualized expression of who she is. Why would you presume it was a mistake or an error?”[clearly a college graduate—probably philosophy major] If you think that’s a ridiculous thing to say, then you may not be very well attuned to our larger public discourse here on Solomon’s Porch.
Come on, we live in California! If a boy wants to pretend he’s a girl, or a girl wants to pretend she’s a boy, we should all be friendly at least. Good manners always serve the common good. I am willing to use whatever pronoun they desire, within reason, because I want to be friendly, at least. There are people who present themselves with such enormous sensitivity that they are especially prone to offense and injury—much more so, it seems, than the rest of us—and it is right that we should be aware that they “bruise very easily” so to speak.
Good manners prepare us to avoid offense, especially unintentional or accidental offense.
But what does it mean to be kind? Is it possible to respect another’s convictions without feeling like you have to fix or correct them? Do we tell dear Mrs. Grantham about the lipstick on her teeth or do we simply ignore it?
That’s the question.
The Nice and the Good
Being friendly that we can yet be kind
As there is a difference between friendly and kind, there is a difference between niceness and goodness. Kindness and goodness are the deep water—and the spirit of Christ works from the depths.
The Scribes, Pharisees, and leaders of the temple who approached Jesus in Solomon’s Porch were publicly well-mannered. They were friendly and nice. They called him “Rabbi” and “Good Sir,” as all well-mannered religious people are taught to do. They were, like the people of my pastor-friend’s congregation, friendly, but they were not kind; they were out to kill him. His goodness—his God-ness—was to them offensive.
Goodness is often an offense.
The world of today’s Solomon Porch wants us—Jesus’ followers—to be friendly, but not good. Our goodness may be offensive. They want us to ignore the lipstick on their teeth—which we can and ought to do—but when they say that we must accept lipstick-lined teeth as the new standard of beauty, and stand up and salute it in the public square, then we have a problem because we are servants to different deep waters than they.
I’m shocked by stories of kids physically fighting their teachers in American classrooms. I’m shocked to hear about grown-up children who won’t sit down to a meal with family members because they disagree about politics. I’m fairly disgusted by party politicians in Washington who can’t show civility to fellow leaders across the aisle. I’m disheartened at how quickly divisions escalate into violence without civil attempts to work things out thoughtfully. We can differ in thoughts, feelings, and convictions and yet set our differences aside, sit down at the same table, and have a conversation that is not all about ourselves.
As disciples and followers of Jesus, we must embody a counter-cultural kindness. We must be hospitable to all. We can be, because God in his grace has been hospitable to us while we were yet hostile and out to get him. We have been found, overwhelmed, and saved by grace. We should seek every means of being gracious.
Jesus alone has the right to separate the sheep from the goats. We are wrong to think we have that same right.
Jesus is kind, deeply kind, beyond all mere friendliness. Verses 27-28:
My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand
The goodness of Jesus is infinitely deep. While we are yet hostile, he snatches us up, covers us with his grace, gives us spirit and spiritual life that is eternal and from which we can live and love. We can and will differ with our fellow citizens on Solomon’s Porch, but the differences don’t really matter because Jesus loves them all, even those who hate him.
May we all seek to embody some of the grace, the kindness, and the charm that we see in Christ. †
Questions
- Why do you think the parable of the “good shepherd” and the flock was so important that it took the entire chapter?
- Why do you think the crowd continued to ask Jesus if he is the Christ?
- In what specific ways in John’s gospel has Jesus clearly told people that he is the Messiah?
- What are the two attributes of Jesus’ followers and why are they important?
- Why is it difficult to practice these two attributes?
- How do true loving relationships work and what attributes are necessary?
- What does Jesus mean when he says those sheep who belong cannot be snatched from him/God? (See Romans 8:31-35)
- Again some want to stone Jesus - Why?
- What does Jesus mean by his argument that scripture “calls the gods”? (See Psalm 82:6)
- Why are verses 37 & 38 important for us?
- Why do you believe Jesus is your Lord and Savior?