Agape in JOHN SHELBY SPONG’s “The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic”

In the following first paragraph of quotations from John Shelby Spong’s book, The Fourth Gospel, he explains that the English translation of the Greek word ‘agape’ is rendered as ‘love.’ Because this indication led me to understand that when spiritual ‘love,’ divine ‘love,’ and unconditional ‘love’ are used in the way ‘agape’ was originally used in the Bible, then that should actually be left as the Greek ‘agape,’ so in the quotes that followed, whenever ‘love’ was used in a spiritual way, I changed it to ‘agape.’ I believe this is more in keeping with biblical usage.

      “The Farewell Discourses {of Jesus in Jn. 13-16} are set in the days preceding the Passover celebration. John thus gives Jesus a final opportunity to identify his mission and to interpret the divine love. This love is called agape in Paul {and in the original Greek version, appears in these verses in John}.

      “Jesus wants to open the world to this agape and thereby to invite his disciples into a new dimension of what it means to be human. That new humanity, John argues, is revealed immediately as soon as this agape is grasped. Agape is selfless and thus produces and enhances life. 

      “John’s Jesus is determined to show agape revealing itself in the community, and in his passion, his death, and the Easter experience.

      {After the meal} “Jesus then acts out the role of the servant. He lays aside his garments, then binds himself with a towel. He pours water into a basin and begins to wash the feet of the disciples. In this dramatically written episode, the strictures of life, the boundaries that establish status and power, are reversed; all human images of protective barriers that provide security are removed. 

      “Peter is the only one who seems to have the eyes to see this, however, and he recoils: ‘Lord, you do not wash my feet.’ Jesus responds, not in these words, but with this meaning: Peter, do not resist the freeing power of divine agape, through which I am calling you into a new dimension of what it means to be human. Here status needs are not relevant. Those rules apply only in the world of consistent human yearning, the world of human becoming. I am inviting you into an experience of being itself that will make you whole, more fully human.

      “Jesus concludes this narrative by asking the disciples to reflect on the scene. I have served you, he says. I have taken the role of the servant. That is what agape does. When agape lives in you, you will serve the world. You will give agape and your life to others. The status games that human beings play no longer work when the new awareness, the new consciousness is experienced.

      “That will be the doorway into a new consciousness, a new oneness with all that God is, a doorway into that which is eternal. Jesus reveals God as the source of agape that comes not to judge human inadequacy, but to open the eyes of people to see that they are part of who and what God is so that they can enter the eternity that God represents.”