Entrusting Ourselves

So in the year 70 of the Common Era, the armies of the Roman Empire retook Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple.  That was in response to a rebellion that had started just a few years before from some of the Jews who didn’t want to live under Roman imperial control anymore.  Rome responded quickly and harshly, sending massive armies and putting down the rebellion, laying waste the country, and destroying the Temple.

In the midst of that, there was a crisis of identity within the Jewish community for whom the Temple had been a central source of their ethnic, cultural, and religious identity.

It was in this context that the Gospel of John was written. . .

[Note: Scott preached without manuscript today, so you’ll need to listen or watch the video in order to hear more about how the crisis in the Jewish community prompted a crisis in the early church out of which this Gospel was written and how it helps us to reflect on the relation between belief and entrusting ourselves to a community to help see us through adversity.]