Reflections on John 10: Jesus as the "Good Shepherd," Part 5

In John 10, (implicitly) during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus famously tells a parable (paroimia) of a shepherd and his flock of sheep in which he curiously identifies himself both as the gate by which the sheep enter the fold, and the "good" shepherd himself, who leads them out to pastures and ironically "saves" them by laying down his "life" (psychē) for their benefit (hyper) (John 10:1-13). Later, at the Feast of Hanukkah, in response to the crowd's request to tell them "plainly" (parrēsiai) whether or not he was the Messiah (10:24), he tells them that he already had done so―and he had indeed, precisely by his claim to be the Davidic Good Shepherd promised in Ezekiel 34 (10:25; see my earlier post here). He then turned the screws by asserting that their (implicit) unbelief was manifestation of their not truly being his sheep, a deliberately offensive response to people whose self-image, as God's covenant people, entailed being God's flock waiting for the promised shepherd.

At this point, Jesus explicitly refers back to the parable and makes some extraordinary theological claims:

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. What my Father has given me is greater than all else,* and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one. (John 10:27-30, NRSV [alt. JRM]).

This text is significant, both in what it says about the "eternal life" (zōē aiōnios)** given to the sheep by Jesus and in the Christological basis for the confidence he has in that certain future. This "life," secured by virtue of his "laying his own psychē down for them" (John 10:11, 14, 17-18) and "taking it up again" (cf. palin labein autēn, vv. 17-18) in resurrection,*** is ineradicable: as Jesus says, "they will by no means perish … ever" (ou mē apolōntai eis ton aiōna). The use of the double negative with the subjunctive mood here is what Greek grammarians refer to as a "subjunctive of emphatic negation;" what is denied isn't simply the fact of something, but its very possibility of ever happening. Thus the Johannine Jesus plainly asserts that aspect of the Calvinist doctrine of the perseverance/preservation of the saints commonly referred to as "eternal security."****

What is important, however, is the Christology on which this security is based. The foundation of the sheep's security lies in their having been gifted to Jesus by the one he calls his "Father." In this connection, in his original Sukkoth Good Shepherd Discourse, Jesus claims that no one had the ability to take his life from him―hence attempts to do so were foiled because it was not yet his "hour" to die/be exalted (cf. John 7:30, 44; 8:20, 59; 10:39)―because he alone had the authority to both lay down and take his life up again (John 10:18). How so? Because, as he claimed earlier, he had been given "life" (zōē) "in himself" from the Father, the very life the Father possesses (John 5:26). Nevertheless, he would in fact lay his life down in obedience to the Father's will ("I received this commandment from the Father"), because of which the Father "loves" him" (10:17). It is this obedient-yet-willing death that is the basis for the "eternal life" given by Jesus to the sheep gifted to him by the Father. And this is a life they cannot lose, forfeit, or have snatched forcibly (oudeis dynatai harpazein) from them because of the double, invincible grip of the Son and the Father. Indeed, as Jesus concludes his response, "I and my Father are one" (10:30).*****

This text, of course, has been the focus of study and controversy throughout church history. The salient point is that the word "one" (hen) is neuter, not masculine (heis); hence the "oneness" between them denotes a singularity, not of personhood―sorry, Sabellius!―but of authority and operation. Just as Jesus claims an exclusive, reciprocal knowledge of the Father (John 10:15), and, even more outrageously, claims that he and the Father have a mutual indwelling ("perichoresis,"10:38), so, despite an "economic" subordinationism of Jesus to the will of the Father,****** they work together as one in the activity of guarding and protecting the sheep Jesus came to save. In case someone might be inclined to deduce a sort of ontological subordinationism here, note that John certainly didn't intend it this way.  As was the case in John 5:18, the "Jews" were incensed and picked up stones to stone him because they rightly understood this as a claim to be God (John 10:32-33).

The title "Son of God" was, of course, in keeping with 2 Samuel 7:14 and (especially) Psalm 2:7, used as an honorific for the king of Israel and the hoped-for Davidic Messiah, both in Second Temple Judaism (cf., from Qumran, 4Q174.1-10) and in the New Testament (e.g., Mark 1:1; Matthew 16:16; Romans 1:3-4). One sees a reflection of this in John's Gospel as well, most notably in the parallelism of Nathanael's initial confession: "You are the son of God; you are the king of Israel" (John 1:49). What stands out in John's Gospel, however, is the stunning absolute use of the title "Son" in conjunction with God being referenced as the "Father." While not entirely absent in the Synoptic tradition, most notably the so-called "Johannine thunderbolt" found in the Q tradition recorded in Matthew 11:27//Luke 10:22, the absolute "Son" recurs repeatedly in John.******* Moreover, he is famously called God's "one and only" or "unique" (monogenēs) Son in John 3:16, and simply "monogenēs" in apposition to the noun theos (hence, "The one and only, himself God")******** in John 1:18.

This last text points to the key to understanding John's Father-Son dynamic. Simply stated, John's Christology must be understood under the controlling rubric of the Prologue's Logos ("Word") Christology (John 1:1-18). Jesus, throughout the Gospel, is to be understood by the reader as the incarnate "Word," the one who was himself God by nature and therefore existed "in the beginning" with God and was the instrument through which the universe came into being. His incarnation marked the fulfillment of the promise of a new Temple, the eschatological "meeting place" between God and humanity where God's glory is made visible. As the "one and only one/Son" he is the very self-expression of the invisible God (cf. Colossians 1:15). Thus understood, Jesus' identification as "the Son" simpliciter is, in the words of James D. G. Dunn, "an elaboration of the initial explicit identification of Jesus as the incarnate Wisdom/Logos―an identification taken over certainly from earlier Christian tradition, but expounded in John's distinctive fashion."*********

It is as the Incarnate Word that Jesus the Son, the uttered Logos, both reveals the Father and works with him to secure and guarantee the ultimate salvation of the sheep the Father had entrusted to his care. That is where our security lies. Soli Deo Gloria!

"Concrete Cowboy": A Review

 

Three years ago, as I was driving through Southwest Philadelphia on my way back from Bartram's Garden to the old homestead in Haverford Township, I came upon a sight I never would have expected in that déclassé section of the city: two men riding horses on a narrow side street. Shortly thereafter I read a story about a man named Malik Divers and the horse-riding club he had established in that part of the city, which explained everything I needed to know at the time. Fast forward to 2021, and Philly indie filmmaker Ricky Staub, having encountered real-life urban cowboys and hung with them at their stables in the Strawberry Mansion section of North Philadelphia, has made a movie about them, roughly following G. Neri's novel, Ghetto Cowboy, itself based on a 2005 article in Life Magazine entitled "Street Riders." And when I heard that the great British actor Idris Elba had signed on to star and produce the film, I made it a priority to watch it as soon as I could after it was released on Netflix. And I'm very glad I did.

In terms of its plot, the film is boilerplate Hollywood fare: troubled teen is faced with two options for his future, one criminal and destructive, the other redeeming, if not necessarily financially lucrative. In this instance, a troubled teen named Cole (Caleb McLaughlin) is expelled from his Detroit High School for getting into one too many fights, and is tearfully driven to North Philadelphia to spend the summer with his estranged father, Harp (Elba), who lives in a tiny rowhouse on Page Street in Strawberry Mansion with a horse―in the living room!―and only some beer, soda, and a couple of slices of cheese in the fridge. Harp is the leader of a group of urban cowboys who are based in one of the last remaining stables in the city, located on Fletcher Street in Strawberry Mansion. Cole, though, as one can imagine, is unimpressed with both his dad and his spartan living arrangements, and hankers to go back to Detroit. While on the street the next day, his cousin, Smush (Jharrel Jerome), notices him and picks him up. The problem? Smush, though friendly and happy to see his old mate, is a drug dealer. Even worse, he is skimming profits off his boss Jalen (played with chilling effectiveness by Michael Ta'Bon). When Harp finds out that Cole is hanging with Smush, he kicks him out; to avoid having to sleep on the gunfire-laden streets, Cole agrees to help out at the stables―which humorously involves, much to the displeasure of Cole, shoveling large amounts of manure from the stalls―while continuing to hang with Smush on the side. Of course, we all know how this ends: Smush is gunned down on the street by a kid on a bike, and his murder becomes the start of Cole's turnaround and maturation.

However, this standard Hollywood arc is simply the framework for the real work of the film, which is made easier by the extraordinary performances of the cast. As leads, Elba and McLaughlin are excellent. Elba, as is obvious from his roles as Stringer Bell in "The Wire" and Charles Miner in "The Office," certainly has no problem playing American characters. But he does especially well in the tricky business of sounding like an authentic Philadelphian, which he learned from listening to tapes of Fletcher Street veteran Eric Miller, who was gunned down in a home invasion a week before production of the film commenced (and to whom the film is dedicated). Moreover, Elba is an actor who is as powerful in his silence as he is in dialogue. Not that his dialogues lack power. Particularly moving was his soul-baring discussion with his son in which, with John Coltrane's 1961 recording, "I Wish I Knew," playing on the turntable in the background, he tells his son why and how he named him after the neighborhood's most famous resident, the saxman who lived in a 3-story rowhouse on 33rd Street just south of Oxford from 1952-1958. McLaughlin, for his part, plays his stereotyped role with skill and subtlety. He is a talent to watch out for in future. Also excellent, as expected, is the wonderful Lorraine Toussaint as neighborhood prayer warrior, and fellow cowgirl, Nessie. But what sets the film apart is its use of real-life Fletcher Street riders in supporting roles, who bring their stories and experiences to the film in ways Hollywood pros could not. Of these authentic Philadelphia riders, particularly excellent were Ivannah-Mercedes as Cole's love interest, Esha, and wheel chair-bound Jamil Prattis as Parris (who is the first I have heard to utter the Philadelphia-ism "jawn" in a Hollywood film). The latter's screen presence is astonishing, coming as it does from an amateur.

As predictable as the story-line may be, thankfully the emotional and material center of the movie lies, not in Harp's standard "tough love"/Cole's coming-of-age saga, but elsewhere, namely, with the story of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club (FSURC), who, as the closing credits mention, face losing the large, vacant parcel of land they use for their horses and riding. What this club embodies and represents gives the lie to much of what white America takes for granted in its mythical self-understanding. I was raised largely around 7 miles from where this movie was filmed. As a lad, my exposure to Strawberry Mansion was mainly gained from the drive between my house and Connie Mack Stadium, the home of my beloved Phillies, at 21st and Lehigh in adjacent Swampoodle. The neighborhood was in decline in those days, more than 50 years ago, but the substantial, ornate 3-story rowhouses along 33rd Street across from Fairmount Park were still largely in good repair, a far cry from the gap-toothed dereliction one finds there today. What happened? Most fail to remember that Strawberry Mansion was, in the days prior to World War II, a largely Jewish, middle-to-lower middle class neighborhood. But then came the rampant deindustrialization that affected all older manufacturing cities with union work forces, among which Philadelphia was, apart from Chicago, the largest and most prominent. So-called "white flight" ensued for those who had good jobs and could move elsewhere, leaving behind a population with little means and even less opportunity, the human detritus of cold-hearted American capitalism. Watching Concrete Cowboy, with its images of shabby dwellings, spectacularly derelict factories, and weed-strewn lots brought home to me, as only a good film can, the world of difference between the realities and opportunities life offers for residents of North Philly and those, like me, who hail from the city's famed Main Line. And it is a difference that most Americans still need to realize and face with honesty. "Equal opportunity?" Please. If one is honest with oneself, it isn't hard to imagine why angry young men like Cole are angry and tempted to follow the path taken by the ill-fated Smush. And I hope I don't hear any more Pelagian, bootstrap moralism from white, Calvinist Christians whose theology should have taught them better. As Harp, near the end of the story, rhetorically asks his son, who is a boy supposed to grow up to be when he's warned his whole life to watch his back on the streets?

But the most salient characteristic of these urban cowboys is obvious at first glance: they are black. In American mythology, the Cowboy is a lone hero. And he is almost always white. Just the image of Harp and his fellow riders making their way on North Philly's narrow streets on horseback and wearing cowboy hats―remember that the famous Stetson hat was made right here in Philadelphia at a massive, long-gone factory complex in Kensington―is jarring to any lover of, say, My Darling Clementine or even Unforgiven (jarring, yes, but also inspiring, as is vividly shown at the end of the movie through the beautiful smile of a young boy in a bus who sees the Fletcher Street crew riding in the lot along the side of the road). But, as the Fletcher Street riders tell us, in a wonderful exposition scene over a "campfire" roaring in an empty metal barrel, things were not always so, that the "Hollywood John Wayne bulls**t myth" was just that, a myth (as Nessie says, "Hollywood has whitewashed us … right out of the history books"), and that even the Lone Ranger himself was based on the exploits of a black cowboy named Bass Reeves. Indeed, historians estimate that roughly one quarter of all cowboys were African American. Even Philadelphia's black cowboys, though seemingly an anomaly, have a long history dating back more than 100 years. What happened? The city decided that horses were no longer needed, that trucks were the new way to go. And, despite stable after stable being closed, the Fletcher Street riders remain, with a future as precarious as their past was insecure …

Which brings us to the primary threat to this venerable tradition, namely, gentrification. The threat is brought up first by rider-turned-cop Leroy (Method Man), who warns them that neighbors' complaints have been brought to the city's attention, and that the "new condos" on Oxford Street in gentrifying Brewerytown across the Amtrak tracks to the south, the wave of the future, are only 5 blocks away. (As an aside, the response of one of the cowboys―"That's a long way for those skinny, hipster-ass, latte [folks] to be walkin'"― is a classic of contemptuous, precipitant dismissal). Later, after Smush's murder, we see the city taking the expected action and removing the horses to the city stables on Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive in preparation for demolishing the ramshackle Fletcher Street stables.  The film thus does a good job of portraying the systemic racism faced by minority, especially black, communities in Philadelphia as everywhere else in the United States.

To my mind, the most important myth shattered by Concrete Cowboy is the persistent one, long past its expiry date, of the "rugged individual," exemplified in the pictures by John Wayne and other Hollywood cowboys on the range of the Old West. Staub deliberately evokes the classic Westerns, not only with time-worn clichés like the breaking of wild horses and "campfires," but also with stunning cinematography including spectacular sunrises and sunsets against the backdrop of North Philly's venerable rowhouses. But the cowboys of North Philly don't ride alone; they don't fight the authorities alone. As Elba's Harp preaches―and "preaches" is not too strong a word―while the riders witness the city about to take down their stables, "Let 'em take the stables … because they can't take who we are as a people. Home ain't a place; it's a fam. That's what makes us Cowboys." In thus deconstructing and reconstructing the American cowboy myth, Harp hits on an essential truth: to succeed, they must do so, not as rugged, take no prisoners individuals, but rather as a people, as a community. That's a lesson I hope America learns, and sooner rather than too late.

Concrete Cowboy (Rated R: language, drug use): ★★★☆

Reflections on John 10: Jesus as the "Good Shepherd," Part 4b

For all of John's "high" Christology―about which more will be discussed in a later post in this series―and his stated purpose to engender eternal life-resulting "faith" in Jesus as Messiah and God's "Son" (John 20:31), the Fourth Gospel is fundamentally a book of division. In the Prologue to the Gospel, the eternal "Word," identified later in 1:14-18 as Jesus Messiah, is said to be the bearer of (eternal) "life" that brought an inextinguishable "light" into the darkness of the world of humanity (John 1:4-5). Indeed, John states that Jesus, the true light, "sheds light" (ho phōtizei) on every person (John 1:9). Despite popular misunderstandings to the effect that this entails the impartation of a sort of an indiscriminate spiritual illumination to every person, this verse instead provides a cryptic foretaste of how John will develop his drama of Jesus' life: Jesus' life had an inherently divisive effect; the "light" dispels the darkness precisely by its ability to reveal a person's character, separating those who are transformed by its rays, and hence "believe" and "live by the truth," from those who love evil and thus flee to the dark shadows so as not to be exposed by its shining on them (John 3:19-21).* 

The story of John's "Book of Signs" (John 3-12) is the story of how this principle worked itself out over the course of Jesus' career. This point is adumbrated in the Prologue itself, in shocking fashion. The eternal Word, says John, was "coming" into the very world which owed its very existence to his creative instrumentality (1:9-10b). Nevertheless this world failed to recognize him (1:10c). The term "world" (kosmos) here clearly oscillates between the sense of the created world itself and the "world" of human beings who occupy it, a world notable less for its size and scope than by its fallenness, domination by evil, and need of being "saved" (cf., inter alia, John 3:17).** Considering the fact that John's theological presuppositions include the notion that God had revealed himself notionally to his covenant people of Israel alone―indeed, in Sirach 24 (ca. 180-175 BCE) ben Sira writes that God's personified Wisdom, in the form of the Torah itself (Sirach 24:23), was commanded to "make its tent" (kataskēnōsani [cf. John 1:14!] "in Jacob" (Sirach 24:8)―this lack of recognition is, at first glance, hardly surprising. But matters get trickier very quickly. "He came to his own home" (ta idia, "his own things" [neuter], i.e., the land and cultural heritage of Israel), John says, where one might have expected him to be recognized. Shockingly, however, "his own people" (hoi idioi [masculine], i.e., the people of Israel themselves) did not "accept" (parelabon) him. But some nevertheless did: those who did "receive" (elabon) him, those who "believed in his name (tois pisteuousin eis to onoma)" were given the authority or right (exousia) to become God's children (1:12). Here, in a nutshell, is the story of the response to Jesus, both in John's narrative of his career and in the subsequent centuries to come.

Those of us who have known this verse since childhood are prone to overlook the sheer theological radicalness of what John is saying. Indeed, the Jews, on good "biblical" warrant, considered themselves to be God's children (cf., e.g., Exodus 4:22; Deuteronomy 32:6; Isaiah 44:8; 63:16; Jeremiah 3:4-5, 19; 31:9; Hosea 1:10; Malachi 2:10). And this is precisely what the "Jews" who opposed him*** proudly claimed (while perhaps snidely impugning Jesus' suspect parentage): "We**** have not been born of fornication; we have one Father, God himself" (John 8:41b, trans. JRM). But for John, just as it was for the Paul of Galatians, being the spiritual offspring of Abraham and, hence, a true child of God, was not a simple matter of physical heredity. Those who believe in Jesus and hence are given the right to become God's children are "begotten" (egennēthēsan),***** not of human desires or agency, but by God himself (John 1:13). And paternity, both here in John's Gospel and in his first Epistle, is marked by character rather than mere physical genetics: like father, like son or daughter.

Which brings us back to John 10 and Jesus' shocking claim that his interlocutors didn't believe in him because they weren't his sheep in the first place (John 10:26). In other words, it wasn't simply a matter of them choosing not to believe and follow, but rather of their not being able so to believe. To use Jesus' analogy, being a sheep of the Good Shepherd is not, first and foremost, a matter of human decision, but of being gifted to the Son by the Father (John 10:29). 

This notion of divine sovereignty as to who is numbered among Christ's people finds its classic expression in Jesus' Bread of Life discourse in John 6:

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But I tell you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Everything that the Father gives to me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day" …

Jesus answered them, "Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, 'and they shall all be taught by God' (Isaiah 54:13). Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me" …

"It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no benefit. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you are some that do not believe." For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones who did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father." (John 6:35-40, 43-45, 63-65, NRSV [alt. JRM])

This is a remarkable text, in that it holds together both poles of a paradox or antinomy which separately are found in numerous places throughout the New Testament: the reality of human responsibility with its imperative to "come" and "believe" in Jesus, and the prevenient, enabling, indeed life-creating sovereignty of God who "draws" (elkō) people, whose subsequent "coming" to Jesus in faith is described as a gift to them by the Father himself (hēi dedomenon autōi ek tou patros).******

But such sovereignty as to who can and will come to Jesus implies that others cannot come. Not surprisingly, this implication is stated explicitly elsewhere in John's narrative. For example, in the passage in John 8 referred to above, after "the Jews'" claim to being children of God, Jesus utters perhaps his most scathing indictment:

Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are of your father the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God. (John 8:39b-47, NRSV)

But nowhere is this more clear than in the twin Old Testament texts from the Book of Isaiah that mark the climax of John's "Book of Signs:"

Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him. This was to fulfill the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah:

"Lord, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" [Isaiah 53:1]

And so they could not believe, because Isaiah also said,

"He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, in order that they might not see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn―and I would heal them." [Isaiah 6:10] (John 12:37-40, NRSV [alt. JRM])

The natural human tendency, echoed in scores of commentaries down through two millennia, is to play down the precise force of these quotations and to soften the "could not believe" (ouk ēdunanto pisteuein) to "did not believe" (which, had John intended that, he would simply have written ouk episteusan). No. According to John, this Jewish unbelief was not simply the manifestation of self-seeking bloody-mindedness on the part of "the Jews." Nor was it an unforeseen or inexplicable tragedy. Rather, the failure of Jesus' "own people" to "receive him" (1:11) was the ineluctable result of their inability to believe, an inability grounded in prophetic oracles in the Hebrew Bible uttered hundreds of years earlier. According to John, their unbelief occurred in order that (hina) Isaiah's word might be "fulfilled" (plērōthēi); their inability to belief occurred because (hoti) Isaiah also said that God blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts in order that (hina) they wouldn't see, or understand, or turn, lest they be healed. In other words, John's language clearly implies that it is not a matter of Jewish unbelief resulting in the fulfillment of Scripture. In fact, it is the other way round: it was the words of Scripture themselves that ultimately guaranteed―indeed one could say effected―the tragic Jewish rejection of Jesus.

Now these are very hard words indeed, but they are not unique in the New Testament. Paul famously spent three chapter wrestling with anguish and pathos over his fellow Jews' unbelief, making the ingenious argument that God's present rejection of his covenant people Israel was neither total nor final, that "all Israel" would ultimately be saved after "the times of the Gentiles" were "fulfilled" in a mysterious inversion of standard salvation-historical expectations (Romans 9-11). Even more significantly, John was not the only New Testament author to point to Isaiah 6:10 to explain Jewish unbelief. The Synoptic triple tradition points to this verse as an explanation for Jesus' purposeful use of parables to keep his opponents in the spiritual dark (Mark 4:12; Matthew 13:34-35; Luke 8:10). And Luke later uses the text to explain Jewish rejection of Paul's proclamation of Jesus and his subsequent turn to the Gentiles (Acts 28:26-27).

Of course, Isaiah 6:9-10 is not a prediction of later Jewish responses to Jesus Messiah. It is a record of God's commissioning of Isaiah to a ministry intended to harden the people. As such the verbs there are imperatives: make their hearts hardened; make their ears dull; close their eyes. The point is that the New Testament writers saw the spiritual obduracy of the people in Isaiah's time as a pattern which would be repeated eschatologically in the ministries of Jesus and his apostle Paul. And this, in keeping with a fundamental biblical axiom, all took place in accordance with the sovereign plan of God.

This, of course, begs the question as to why God planned things so. And, to be clear, we have been given no answer to that question. Nevertheless, wisdom dictates that, to be fair to what the biblical authors wrote, we must make sure not to snap the tension or ease the antinomy caused by the dual affirmations of human responsibility and divine sovereignty with respect to the same actions.******* Indeed, just a few verses later, John refers to "many" of the leaders "believing" in Jesus, albeit with a faith of a shallow, distinctly cowardly sort (John 12:42). People remain free agents, and as such are not constrained psychologically in the choices they make. Hence the "necessity" involved is, in the words of Raymond E. Brown, to be understood "on the plane of salvific history."******** Speaking theologically, certainty and psychological compulsion are not necessarily coordinate.

One final thing. John intriguingly claims that Isaiah "said these things" (tauta eipen, i.e., Isaiah 53:1 and 6:10) quoted in verses 38 and 40 "because he saw Jesus' glory (doxa) and spoke about him" (John 12:41). What he meant by this is a perennial conundrum. Presumably John refers to Isaiah's vision of the divine throne room at his commissioning in Isaiah 6:1-13. Thus many, going back to many Patristic writers, have seen a Trinitarian allusion in the trisagion ("Holy, holy, holy is the LORD almighty" [Isaiah 6:3]), and understood his vision of Christ in that sense.********* I would suggest, however, that another understanding lies closer to hand. In the Prologue, John claims that "we have seen (the incarnate Word's) glory, glory as of the one and only one from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14b). Later he makes the astounding assertion that the hour of the Son's "glorification" was when he was lifted up/exalted on the cross of Calvary in exercise of his role as the promised new Temple (John 12:23). Could it be, then, that John understood Isaiah's Temple vision to be a vision of the crucified Jesus, whose death would be the ultimate means of atonement for the people's sins, including their unbelief, and continues to serve as the basis for the continuing call to belief as the world's savior (John 12:44-46)?**********

Christ's Resurrection and Our Justification: Romans 4:25

"He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification."
~Paul the Apostle, Romans 4:25

In the evangelical piety in which I was raised, our "salvation" was almost exclusively tied to Christ's achievement on the cross of Calvary. The bodily resurrection of Christ on the third day, while celebrated and affirmed as a theological nonnegotiable, was seen often as simply proof that Jesus was who he claimed to be (sometimes wrongly seen as "proof that he was God," but that's a matter for another time) and that God had accepted the sacrifice he had offered on the tree. Sometimes the classic piece of oldest Christian tradition cited by Paul in Romans 4:25, based on a Christological interpretation of Isaiah 53, was interpreted in the sense that Christ was raised because (Greek dia) our justification had been "accomplished." Of course, such an interpretation is rendered unlikely because justification is consistently used by the apostle as a metaphor dealing with the application rather than the accomplishment of salvation in the context of Romans 3-4.

Years ago Westminster Seminary Professor Richard Gaffin pointed my way to a better solution by looking at yet another piece of primitive tradition quoted in 1 Timothy 3:16:

Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great:
    He appeared in the flesh,
        was vindicated by the Spirit,
    was seen by angels,
        was preached among the nations,
    was believed on in the world,
        was taken up in glory.

The verb "vindicated" is the verb dikaioō, which is precisely the term used by the apostle to speak of God's act of "justifying" or "acquitting" those who believe in Christ. Another piece of the puzzle came together when, in the course of my research for my doctoral dissertation on Galatians, I noticed Galatians 2:17, where St. Paul says that we are justified "in Christ," i.e., by virtue of our union with/incorporation into Christ. At that point I had a Damascus Road experience, as it were: Christ's resurrection was his vindication, "justification," and we who believe are justified as we, through faith-union with Christ, are incorporated into that vindication.

Thus I was thrilled when I later came upon this exposition in the blog of Mike Bird:

Once upon a time I believed that our salvation and justification was something achieved principally by the cross (i.e. justified by his blood, Rom. 5.9). The resurrection, then, was really just the proof that God accepted Christ’s atoning death and proof of life after death. However, after I read through the Pauline letters more carefully, I came to see that God’s justifying verdict was more intimately bound up with the resurrection of Christ. Passages such as Rom. 4.25; 1 Cor. 15.17 and 1 Tim. 3.16 (obliquely Rom. 5.18-21; 8.10-11) show that God’s saving action is executed in Jesus’ death and resurrection. For in the cross, we see God’s verdict against sin, our sin, meted out in the flesh of the Son of God, the condemnation of our evil is given its due. But then, the resurrection transposes that verdict from condemnation to justification, taking us from death to new life, from guilt to acquittal. Moreover, Jesus himself is justified in his resurrection, he is vindicated as the Son of God, and because we share in his death and resurrection, his justification becomes ours as well. In other words, we are justified because we participate in Jesus’ own justification!

Amen! So on this Easter morning, I leave you with the famous words in the venerable Anglican liturgy: "Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!"

The Parable of the Unjust Judge: A Good Friday Musing

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” ~Luke 18:1-8 (NRSV)

People raised in "evangelical" Protestantism are, in David Bebbington's famous analysis,* "crucicentric." And not only that. Overwhelmingly, when they think of the cross, especially on Good Friday, they tend to view its significance almost exclusively in terms of one primary interpretive category, namely, that of "penal substitution:" Jesus died in my place, bearing the penalty of eternal condemnation I had incurred for my sin(s). On this understanding, the cross finds its significance largely in the context of a works contract God had established with humanity, specifically as the divinely-ordained "solution" to the plight caused by human failure, dating back to Adam himself, to live by the terms of said contract.**

Now, I am firmly convinced that the notion of substitution―even penal substitution, so long as it is nuanced properly, shorn of heretical/cartoonish Trinitarian caricatures of "divine child abuse" and understood in terms of an Israel-centric salvation-history―is a prominent element of the New Testament witness concerning the death of Jesus Messiah. Prominent, yes, but exclusive and controlling, by no means. Other models, most notably that of Christus Victor, must take their place in the panoply of theological interpretations of Jesus' death.*** Enter the column published this week by Emory University Professor David Gushee, in which he reflected on the significance of Jesus' Parable of the Unjust Judge for the events of Holy Week, specifically in terms of its implications regarding both God's dealing with injustice in the biblical narrative and Christians' consequent obligations in that regard.

The Parable of the Unjust Judge has often occasioned confusion among readers because of its implicit comparison of God to a human judge who only (finally!) decides to grant justice (ekdikeō, 18:3, 5) to a poor widow to stop her from importuning him to death about the injustices perpetrated against her. It doesn't take too much effort to realize that the implicit comparison in the parable is ironic and that the point being made by Jesus is a classic, rabbinic qal waḥomer argument based on the fact that God's revealed character is fundamentally different from that of the human judge in the parable: If even an unjust human judge will grant justice to a woman who relentlessly begs him for it, how much more is it the case that God will ultimately vindicate his oppressed people if they reach out to him faithfully in prayer? 

If read in context, it becomes clear that the persistent "prayer" mentioned in verse 1 has nothing to do with the various and sundry "wants" God's people might have, let alone the desires consumerist Western Christians might have. In the immediately preceding Luke 17:20-37, Jesus discusses the coming of the anticipated eschatological kingdom of God. On the one hand, he tells certain Pharisees that the kingdom, far from coming in such a way that its inception can be observed (meta paratērēseōs), was in fact "in their midst" (entos hymōn) in the sense (implicitly) that he was the very king they were looking for and thus his kingdom was already gaining a foothold as people responded by giving their allegiance to him (17:20-21). Then, turning to his disciples, he introduces a hint of delay in regard to that kingdom's ultimate establishment. The "days of the Son of Man"―i.e., when Daniel's vision of the ascent of "one like a son of man" to the throne of God to receive dominion (Daniel 7:13) would be fulfilled―wouldn't take place until after Jesus, the self-proclaimed "Son of Man," would suffer and be rejected by his generation. Even after this the day when the Son of Man would ultimately be "revealed" would arrive when least expected, when, like in the "days" of Noah and Lot, people were going about their business as usual. But when that day arrived, it would do so suddenly, issuing both in some people being taken away in deliverance and others being left for judgment (17:22-37). Hence the encouragement to persistence (pantote proseuchesthai, present tense) and perseverance (mē enkakein) in prayer (18:1) is a call to prayer for the consummation of the promised kingdom, when all wrongs would be righted and God's "chosen ones," suffering like the Son of Man to whom they are committed (17:25), would ultimately be vindicated.**** Indeed, putting the bookend verses 1 and 8 in juxtaposition suggests that such persistent prayer for the coming of the kingdom is part and parcel of the "faithfulness" (pistis) which Jesus wonders will exist that day when the Son of Man "comes" (18:8).

What does this parable, incisive as it may be, have to do with Good Friday? Gushee makes this connection brilliantly by suggesting that Jesus' role be understood in terms of the experience of the persistent―and persistently oppressed― widow. While at first this may seem to be a stretch, upon further reflection one detects in it more than a little insight. Gushee himself points to the Markan tradition of Jesus' cry of dereliction on the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" (Mark 15:34, followed by Matthew 27:46)? This famous cry was taken verbatim from Psalm 22:1, a classic Davidic psalm of lament. It is not, of course, a "prediction" of Jesus' cry a millennium later; but Jesus' use of this lament is itself a theological claim to be the embodiment, indeed the eschatological epitome, of the sufferings of the righteous which were previously articulated and inscripturated by David himself. Luke, however, while certainly alluding to Psalm 22 in his narrative of the crucifixion (23:34 [cf. Psalm 22:18]; 23:35 [Ps 22:17]; 23:36 [cf. Ps 22:7]), nevertheless uses another Davidic lament for Jesus' final utterance: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Psalm 31:5).***** He also emphasizes the injustice involved in Jesus' execution by recording the tradition, found only in Luke's Gospel, of the conversation between the two insurrectionists crucified alongside Jesus, one of whom acknowledged Jesus had done nothing wrong to deserve his fate (Luke 23:40-41).

Too often ignored is the fact that these Davidic cries of lament, though genuinely uttered in desperation, are not done so in the absence of hope and faith in the God to whom they are directed. Indeed, in Psalm 22 the psalmist later utters a vow of praise in confidence that "[God] did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him" (Psalm 22:24, NRSV). In Psalm 31, despite being handed over to his enemies and abandoned even by his friends, the psalmist places his trust in the Lord for deliverance (Psalm 31:9-18) and utters praise for the deliverance he thus anticipated (Psalm 31:21-22). Just as the laments in these psalms adumbrate the sufferings Jesus would later experience, so these subsequent expressions of confidence and vows of praise imply his unfailing trust in the God he called his Father, the same God who had earlier delivered David from his adversaries upon hearing his persistent cries.****** And, needless to say, the Gospel narratives go on to demonstrate that Jesus' implicit faith was well-founded, as he was delivered from death and vindicated when resurrected on the third day. This means that God's "chosen ones" have yet another reason to persist in their prayers for justice and vindication: not only an abstract theological understanding of God's character, but that character's historical manifestation in the vindication of his Son.

What should we take from this? An answer to this question involves what we can learn both about how God responds to injustices and how we as Christians should respond to them. With regard to the first of these matters, Gushee rightly notes that "The church historically has taught that Jesus bears and absorbs all the sins of the world, including sins of injustice, on the Cross." In fact, not only did Jesus die to atone for human sins; he defeated sin (singular!) and assorted other hostile powers precisely by being crushed under their weight. In one of the most powerful visions found in the Book of Revelation, John the Theologian writes:

Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals." Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered … He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They sing a new song: 

"You are worthy to take the scroll 

and to open its seals

for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God

saints from every tribe and language and people and nation;

you have made them a kingdom and priests serving our God,

and they will reign on earth."   (Revelation 5:5-10, NRSV)

The Lamb here is clearly Jesus in his role as the royal Davidic King. But the nature, or at least the means and foundation, of his power has been redefined, as it were. Rather than displaying the raw, brute strength of a lion, the Lamb has "conquered" (enikēsen) and even now exercises royal "power" precisely by virtue of having absorbed rather than inflicted violence, specifically by having been slaughtered (esphagmenon) sacrificially in order to ransom a royal, priestly, worldwide people. And, as Richard Bauckham has argued, the fact that Lamb is seen standing "in the midst of" (en mesōi) the throne points to his sacrificial death as the means by which God exercises his rule over the world.******* Looking back at the parable in Luke 18, it is biblically foundational that God, by definition, hates injustice; and so it is that Luke, in concert with the other Evangelists, provides the narrative of how God made his definitive response to it in the cross of Messiah Jesus, who, though recognized even by a Roman centurion on duty as an innocent and "righteous" man,******** took the weight of its evil upon himself and thereby exhausted it. And so God's vindication of Jesus on Easter Sunday guarantees that he will also vindicate, on the "day of the coming of the Son of Man," his "chosen ones" (Luke 18:7) ransomed from all peoples of the earth.

As far as our response to injustice is concerned, Gushee emphasizes the imperative that Christians work for justice in the world. Of course, one of the defining characteristics of the Davidic kingdom as promised in the Hebrew Bible is that the king would reign "forever" with "righteousness and justice" (cf. Isaiah 9:7 et passim). If indeed, as N. T. Wright has consistently maintained, a necessary implication of New Testament inaugurated eschatology is that God's people are thereby commissioned to implement the victory won in Christ's death and resurrection, it would seemingly be incumbent on them to work diligently in the service of the kingdom's priorities, of which justice―in particular restorative justice―is primary.

But such an implication, at best, lies beneath the surface of our parable. Indeed, an unstated presupposition of the text is that God's "chosen ones," like the persistent widow in the parable per se, will suffer and experience injustice, and will continue to do so until the Son of Man "comes"―a day whose arrival, though certain to come "quickly" (en tachei, "suddenly"?), is implicitly delayed and temporally unknowable in advance. In the meantime, their stance must not be one of entitled triumphalism, but of humble faithfulness and perseverance in prayer for vindication when the kingdom is ultimately consummated at Jesus' return. If indeed Bauckham is correct and the modus operandi of God's present reign is that of the slaughtered Lamb, those of us who claim to be his followers ought likewise to understand that following this Lamb will necessarily take the form of, in the words of Michael Gorman, "non-conformist cruciform faithfulness."********* These, of course, are not words (all too) comfortable Western Christians, who so desire to maintain a presumed cultural hegemony they fear is slipping away, will want to hear. Instead, it will take humility, and it will take both patience and perseverance in the most difficult of circumstances.  As Jesus said, will he find such faithfulness when he comes (Luke 18:8)?

Worthy is the Lamb, who was slaughtered, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. (Revelation 5:12, trans. JRM)

Soli Deo Gloria! 

Reflections on John 10: Jesus as the "Good Shepherd," Part 4a

 "You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord GOD"

~Ezekiel 34: 31 (NRSV)

The imagery of the covenant people of Israel as a flock of sheep, and of YHWH as their shepherd, is ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, extending all the way back to Jacob's Blessing in Genesis 49:24. It was as Israel's shepherd that God brought the people out of Egypt in the Exodus (Psalm 78:52-55), and his tender care for his sheep extended even to people at an individual level (Genesis 48:15 [Joseph]; Psalm 23 [David]). While the people of Israel and Judah languished in exile, God the shepherd promised to rescue them from their captivity, make a (new) covenant of peace with them, and raise up another shepherd, a king in the line of David, to tend them in the land he had promised them (Ezekiel 34:22-31). Indeed, it was this last text that served as the implicit background to Jesus' claim, in John 10, to be the "Good Shepherd" who rescued his sheep precisely by laying his life down for them.

In Jesus' paroimia in John 10:1-5, one distinguishing characteristic of the true shepherd is that his sheep follow him out to pasture once he opens the gate because they recognize his voice. By contrast, the sheep will not follow the voice of a stranger (allotrios), alien as such an imposter would be. If indeed Jesus was the Good Shepherd promised in Ezekiel, one would presumably have expected the Jewish people of Palestine, ostensibly the sheep of God's pasture, to follow him when he called. But, of course, that is not what we see here in John 10. Indeed, during the later festival of Hanukkah, the "Jews" ('Ioudaioi) who were gathered around him in the Temple, having apparently discerned the implication of his earlier (at Sukkoth) claim to be the promised shepherd of Ezekiel, implored him to lift the suspense and tell them openly (parrēsiai) whether or not he was the Messiah (John 10:24). Jesus' response clearly implies that this seemingly honest question was, in fact, not asked in good faith, but rather in unbelief. And it is staggering in its theological implications:

Jesus answered them, "I did tell you, yet you do not believe. The works I am doing in my Father's name testify for me, but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:25-27, trans. JRM)

Let this sink in for a minute. Remember that, in his "interpretation" of the paroimia of verses 1-5, Jesus strangely identifies himself both as the "gate" for the sheep to enter the fold (10:7) and as the genuine shepherd himself, who leads the flock out to pasture to provide nourishment―indeed, "life" itself―by giving his life for them (10:11). Those of us raised in evangelical Protestant circles are conditioned to emphasize Jesus' role as the gate/the "way" of entrance into the fold, and to stress "faith"* as the only means of entry. Indeed, as the Johannine Jesus later tells his disciples in the Upper Room, he is the only "way" or "path" (hodos) by which people can "come" (erchomai) to the Father because, as the "Word" (logos) and, hence, the very "exegesis" of the invisible God (John 1:18), he is the (sole) embodiment of the "truth" and "life" that come from the Father (John 14:6).** Hence the call for faith as the instrument through which to receive eternal life is entirely appropriate. But note that this is emphatically not the point Jesus makes here in John 10. Indeed, what he does say―not to mention the apparently outrageous claim he makes for himself in the immediately following verses, which will necessitate a post of its own―so enrages his listeners in Solomon's Colonnade that they reach for stones to hurl at him.

In particular, note that Jesus does not say in John 10:26 what we have been conditioned to expect. He does not say, "You are not my sheep because you do not believe in me." Rather, what he does say is staggering, and well nigh unimaginable to Western ears: You do not believe because you are not my sheep. Jesus here affirms that he has been sent by the Father to be the Davidic Shepherd promised in Ezekiel, and thus by implication is the "Messiah" the people were expecting to come. His interlocutors, however, though they are "Jews" (10:24) who hoped for a coming "Messiah" and, as such, to all appearances are the flock to whom the promises of Ezekiel were made, are not in fact those sheep. And the implications of the words Jesus says here are enormous: Belonging to Jesus'/God's flock, and thus being the beneficiaries of God's prophetic promises, is antecedent to a positive response to him, not the other way around.*** Needless to say, for Jesus' original audience, this would have been deeply offensive to their sensibilities, eagerly awaiting, as the Palestinian Jews of the time were, the promised deliverance from centuries of Gentile overlordship. Hence their rage at what he says is not surprising. At a deeper, theological level, however, what Jesus says is deeply mysterious and, as such, it would certainly be unwise precipitantly to deduce causally deterministic inferences from such a text.**** Nevertheless, what the Johannine Jesus says here ought not be explained away, let alone ignored, as all too many commentators are wont to do. Indeed, Jesus' hard words here are but one manifestation of an important theological thread that finds many iterations in John's Gospel. It is to explore this thread that the next installment will be concerned.

Howard Porter and the 1971 Villanova Wildcats

Tomorrow, hard to believe, marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most memorable college basketball games of my lifetime, the 1971 NCAA Championship game at Houston's Astrodome between my underdog hometown Villanova Wildcats and the dynastic UCLA Bruins of John Wooden, who were in the midst of winning championships for 7 straight years and 10 of 12. The 'Cats were only the seventh Philadelphia Big 5 team to make the Final Four, and were attempting to be only the second, after Tom Gola's 1954 LaSalle Explorers, to win the championship (see my post about the Big Five and the Final Four written in 2013, before Villanova shockingly won two titles in the space of three years in 2016 and 2018). 

No one was shocked when Wooden's Bruins disposed of the Kansas Jayhawks, 68-60, in the semifinals to reach the title game. To be sure, these were not the 1967-69 Bruins of Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), who went 88-2 to win three straight titles, or the 1972-73 teams of Bill Walton, who went 60-0 and won two consecutive championships before falling to David Thompson's eventual champion NC State Wolfpack in the '74 semifinals. But these Bruins, who lost but one game all season―a 7-point loss at Notre Dame in January― still had three future NBA players on the roster: Curtis Rowe, future 76er Henry Bibby, and consensus All-America Sidney Wickes. The 'Cats … not so much. Indeed, for the entire regular season, they weren't even the best team in the city. That honor went to the 3rd-ranked, Ivy League (!) Penn Quakers who, after going 25-2 in 1969-70, finished the 1970-71 regular season at 26-0. Led by Bob Morse and future NBA players Corky Calhoun and Dave Wohl, the Quakers easily swept the City Series, including a 78-70 win over the 'Cats on January 23 at the Palestra. Indeed, for most of the season Villanova probably wasn't even the city's second-best team. When they lost to Ken Durrett's LaSalle Explorers, 73-69, at the Palestra on February 13, the Explorers stood at 14-2 and were ranked 10th in the nation (A devastating knee injury to Durrett after 21 games for all practical purposes ruined LaSalle's season and derailed what looked to be NBA superstardom for Durrett). And not far behind were their most heated rivals, the St. Joe Hawks who, after a slow start, rebounded to win 19 games and make the NCAA tourney after beating LaSalle in the Mid-Atlantic Conference tournament.

Villanova's success in 1971 was not totally surprising. Led by 3-time All-Big 5 player and 2nd Team All America forward Howard Porter, what they lacked in depth they made up for with an estimable, iron man starting five that also included front court stars Hank Siemiontkowski and Clarence Smith, and future NBA backcourt players Chris Ford and Tom Inglesby. And they did what UCLA couldn't: on February 11, they defeated Notre Dame, 99-81, at the Villanova Field House (cheekily dubbed the "Cat House" by most Philadelphians). But when they lost their next game, the aforementioned 73-69 City Series thriller against LaSalle at the Palestra, they stood at 15-6 and dropped out of the national Top 20. It was to be their last loss of the season prior to March 27.

After defeating Boston College, 90-77, on March 2 to end the season at 20-6, they snuck into the 25-team NCAA tourney and were put in the East Regional. Their first game was played at the Palestra against their city and "Holy War" arch-rivals, the Jesuit St. Joseph's Hawks. Led by Porter's 26 points and 18 rebounds, the Main Line's Augustinian Wildcats easily dispatched the Hawks, 93-75, with Siemiontkowki adding 23 points and Inglesby 20 to offset Hawks' star Mike Bantom's 20. At this point the going would ostensibly get tougher. They would next play 26-2, 9th-ranked Fordham at Reynolds Auditorium in Raleigh. But, with Porter scoring 25 to lead all five starters in double figures, the Rams proved no more difficult, as the 'Cats moved out to an 11-point halftime lead and coasted to an 85-75 triumph.

This led to the East Regional Final and a rematch with Penn, who had upped their record to 28-0 by defeating Duquesne and blowing out 6th-ranked South Carolina in the tourney's first two rounds. What ensued was the most shocking game I have ever watched (and that includes the Eagles' victory over the Patriots in Super Bowl LII). The 'Cats opened up a 41-16 lead in the first half before expanding it to 59-22 in the second, ultimately coasting to a 90-47 blowout. Porter exploded for 35 points and 15 rebounds, Siemiontkowski added 20 and Smith 15, while no Quaker even reached double figures. It was the single greatest team performance I have ever witnessed in college basketball, with the possible exception of Villanova's 1985 championship game victory over Patrick Ewing's Georgetown Hoyas.

In the semi-finals, Villanova would face Jim McDaniels and 7th-ranked Western Kentucky. Despite the Hilltoppers attempting 32 more shots and grabbing 11 more rebounds than the 'Cats, Villanova prevailed, 92-89, in double overtime, as Siemiontkowski played the greatest game of his career, scoring 31 points and grabbing 15 rebounds, while Porter added 22 and 16. This put Villanova in the final against UCLA.

By this point, my youthful enthusiasm for my hometown team reached a point hitherto reserved for Jack Ramsey's great St. Joe's teams of '65 and '66, both of whom ultimately let me down in the tourney. I truly believed, after the Penn game and the nail-biter against Western Kentucky, that they would prevail. Sure, Sidney Wickes was the consensus player of the year, but he was no Alcindor! But, as seemed inevitable to a young Philadelphia sports fan disappointed by the Hawks of '65-'66, not to mention one whose first season of following the Phillies was the ill-fated 1964, things immediately didn't go as I had hoped. Wooden's teams were always prepared, and they were prepared, as almost all others were not, for Jack Kraft's famous 2-3 zone defense. Indeed, the Bruins' two best players, Rowe and Wickes, were held to a combined (!) 15 points, but UCLA couldn't seem to miss―they shot 55% from the field for the game―and nobody was prepared for the career-best performance of center Steve Patterson, a 13-a-game scorer who exploded for 29 on 13-18 shooting. Meanwhile, nobody for Villanova save for Porter and Siemiontkowski could hit the broad side of a barn. When UCLA opened up a 45-37 halftime lead, my hopes had dwindled considerably.

But then Wooden made what, though it appeared to be a sound decision on paper, turned out to be a mistake. For the second half, Wooden made the decision to stall, going to a four corner offense (remember, these were the days before a shot clock) in order to force 'Nova out of their zone into a man-to-man. But this backfired, as Porter et al. showed themselves more athletic than the Bruins. The 'Cats steadily-but-slowly whittled away at the lead, until they came within three, 63-60, with a minute to play. Alas, Porter missed a 15-foot jumper and UCLA escaped with a 68-62 win and their 5th straight championship. Porter, however, who scored 25 in this, his last game, went away with the Most Outstanding Player trophy for the tournament.

But even this was not to be. Rumors had circulated for a couple of months that Porter had signed a contract with the Pittsburgh Condors of the ABA, which would, if true, have made him ineligible. When the Chicago Bulls of the NBA drafted him, the Condors objected, and the agreement he had signed with the Condors in December was made public. As a result, he was stripped of his Most Outstanding Player award and Villanova was forced to forfeit all their games dating back to December 16, 1970. Hence both the award and the runner-up slot for the tourney are officially "vacated" in the record books. But all of us who watched the game, let alone those of us with an emotional investment in the team, will never forget what happened on the court that day in the Astrodome.

Porter, it seems to me, having watched the Big 5 for 56 years, remains the 5th-best player I ever saw play in the unofficial association, behind only the aforementioned Durrett, LaSalle's Lionel Simmons, St. Joe's Jameer Nelson, and Villanova's Kyle Lowry. And this is out of dozens who eventually played in the NBA. Porter himself, though never achieving the stardom anticipated for him because of an inability fully to transform himself from a back-to-the basket post player to NBA small forward, nevertheless played seven years in the league, three times averaging more than 10 points a game. His best season came with Detroit in 1976-77, when he averaged 13.2 points and 5.9 rebounds. One thing that never left him was his beautiful rainbow jumper, which he learned from reading a book by NBA legend Oscar Robertson.

Villanova, of course, has now made it to the Sweet Sixteen in its 31st trip to the tournament in the ensuing 50 years. Nine times it has reached the Regional Finals, has made the Final Four four times, and won the National Championship in 1985, 2016, and 2018. This record is nothing short of astonishing for a smallish Catholic University with only a D-2 football program. Porter, meanwhile, struggled mightily after the end of his playing days, despite having graduated on time with his degree back in 1971. He had problems with cocaine, and ended up sleeping at his mother's house while managing a 7-11 store in Sarasota, Florida. Eventually, he seemed to manage to escape his problems, moving to Minneapolis―in his words, he was the only person in America who ever moved from Florida to Minnesota!―and becoming a probation officer. However, on the night of May 18, 2007, Porter called on a prostitute in St. Paul, who led him to an apartment in which two men were waiting to rob him. After assaulting him, they dumped him in a Minneapolis alleyway, where he was discovered the next day and died a week later at the age of 58. This was a sad, sobering end to the life of one of my favorite players. But my memory still recalls vividly his exploits of 50 years ago, and that sweet jumper of his swishing through the net.