A Farewell Riddle: Birthing a New Reality Through Worship
By Steve Yeagley
In John 16, Jesus shares a riddle with his disciples as part of his Farewell Address. “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.” He unpacks the riddle with a metaphor: a woman giving birth. The disciples are about to enter a painful transition filled with weeping and mourning, but their sadness will turn to joy.
American Christianity is entering a painful transition. Pew Research recently reported that 28 percent of Americans are religiously unaffiliated.[1] They project that within three decades, if current trends continue, the number of “nones” could rise to over half, placing Christians in the minority.[2]
In 2010, Jaco Hamman observed that the North American church “is a sad church, filled with loss and mourning” as its numbers and cultural influence wane. However, he asserted, “few congregations and denominations actively engage their work of mourning or are aware of a deeper unconscious response to loss, best described by the psychodynamics of sadness.”
One unhealthy response to this sadness is “an unconscious desire for a ‘dominant other’ who will save the church from real or perceived loss or even the threat of death.” Churches unwilling or unable to acknowledge their losses and process their grief may gravitate to assertive (often masculine) leaders, hoping they will return things to the way they once were. Indeed, in the past decade, white evangelicals embraced such a leader in a bid to recoup perceived losses.
Hamman contrasts this tendency with the “wombishness” of leaders who offer compassionate, life-giving spaces where mourning and rebirth can occur.[3] Like a woman bearing her unborn child, these leaders carry congregations through the pain, struggle, and uncertainty that mark transitions to the possibility of new life beyond.
Those seeking an alpha leader may dismiss this maternal image as weak or ineffective.[4] Yet Beth Stovell draws attention to Isaiah 42, where the metaphor of a warrior in battle (v. 13) is paired with the metaphor of a woman giving birth (v. 14). The warrior’s “shout” and “battle cry” are heard alongside the woman’s “gasping,” “panting,” and “crying out.” Both represent God’s intense commitment to protect His people and bring forth newness (v. 9).[5] Giving birth is a courageous and creative process. So is grief.
With this in mind, return to the Gospel of John, which serves as a model for worshiping communities navigating times of transition. It is widely held that John wrote his Gospel (80-90 AD) shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 AD). This event, which decimated the physical and symbolic center of Jewish worship, was influential in occasioning John’s Gospel.[6] He responded to the loss by leading his readers through a process of collective mourning and “meaning reconstruction.”[7]
John layered “new Christological meanings onto older Jewish material”[8] so its symbols might “retain their viability and continuity in a context of profound crisis and change.”[9] He birthed a new worship community centered on a New Temple, Jesus Christ.
Thomas Attig aptly said that grief is about “relearning the world.”[10] For John, the role of the Paraclete is not just to comfort but also to remind and teach. He is there to reveal Jesus to those whose worlds have been turned upside down. Worship in transition is worship “in Spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23). Old maps marking familiar territory (Gerazim or Zion) are relinquished, and fresh, unexpected winds begin to blow. Let the relearning begin!
[1] Gregory A Smith, Patricia Tevington, Justin Nortey, et al. “Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They are and What They Believe.” Pew Research, January 24, 2024. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/01/24/religious-nones-in-america-who-they-are-and-what-they-believe/.
[2] Stephanie Kramer, Conrad Hackett, and Marcin Stonawski. “Modeling the Future of Religion in America.” Pew Research, September 13, 2022. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/
[3] Jaco J. Hamman. “Resistance to Women in Ministry and the Psychodynamics of Sadness.” Pastoral Psychology 59 (2010):769–781.
[4] See Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020). Du Mez documents how evangelicals have replaced the Jesus of the gospels with a “nostalgic commitment to rugged, aggressive, militant white masculinity” (277).
[5] Beth M. Stovell. “The Birthing Spirit, the Childbearing God: Metaphors of Motherhood and Their Place in Christian Discipleship.” Priscilla Papers, 26, No. 4 (Autumn, 2012): 16-21.
[6] Andreas J. Köstenberger. “The Destruction of the Second Temple and the Composition of the Fourth Gospel.” Trinity Journal, 26(2005), 205-242, argues this point persuasively.
[7] Robert A. Neimeyer. Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2001).
[8] Spaulding, M. B. Commemorative Identities: Jewish Social Memory and the Johannine Feast of Booths. (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 162.
[9] R. Alan Culpepper. Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 184.
[10] Thomas Attig. How We Grieve: Relearning the World, Revised Edition (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011).