The Gospel of John

Welcome to the study of John's Gospel. I'm Father Turro. I am stationed at Seton Hall Seminary in New Jersey. I also teach in Connecticut at the Cromwell Seminary, Holy Apostles. The thing that I most of all would like to get across is that I am enthusiastic about the study of Scripture. I hope that that is contagious, that you will catch fire as a result of what we have to consider here.

John's gospel is quite an assignment. It's a very profound and vast study, and there is no thought of within the compass of a single course of doing full justice to it. We are going to do bits and pieces of it and hope all the while that enough of the character, the essence, of the gospel comes through from the limited treatment that we will be able to afford to give it. The New Testament comes into existence as it seems in answer to the needs of the people back at the time when it began to be written.

At first the Christians were very much taken by the fact of the Resurrection. They were bedazzled by it. When you stop to think about it, why shouldn't they have been? They knew this person, saw him dead, limp on the cross, then subsequently saw him alive again. Quite alive. This was not a phantasm, not a ghost, nothing insubstantial. It was really the same person who had died on the cross, now alive again. You can understand how this would become a kind of an obsession for these people. This was all they could think about, all they could talk about back in those early years of Christianity.

As the New Testament comes into existence it answers the need of these people. It corresponds to their enthusiasms. At the beginning they are so taken with the Resurrection, you find that the first part of the New Testament deals precisely with that, with the Resurrection. And the first part of the New Testament consists of the Epistles. This comes as a surprise to many because we are usually in the habit of working our way through the New Testament starting with Matthew going on to Mark, Luke and John and eventually getting to the Epistles. But just the reverse in chronology, the Epistles were first produced and then only subsequently the gospels.

The earliest bit of New Testament material we have dates from the year 51 A.D. The gospels don't come into existence until a later decade. But the thing that I want to put across now is that these Epistles concentrate on that fact that looms so large in the consciousness of the old Christians, the fact of the Resurrection. The Epistles speak to us not only about the fact but about the implications, the consequences of that fact, and the people were happy enough to find material that discussed all these tangents, these aspects of the Resurrection.

But with the passage of time an interesting thing happens. The people are still very much taken by the fact that Jesus has risen from the dead and is alive again. But now they are consumed with a desire to grasp more and more of the details of the story of Jesus. Where was it that Jesus cured Peter's mother-in-law? Well that was in Capernaum at Peter's house. Who was it that came and emptied a small box of perfume over Jesus? These incidental features become fascinating for the people and so the gospels were conceived, among other reasons, to satisfy the curiosity of the people of those times, their desire to know more and more, even small seemingly insignificant facets of the story of Christ.

The gospels come into existence with that thrust. Of all the gospels the one that we haven't had, John's gospel, is arguably the most beloved, the gospel that Christians respond to more readily. People say that that's because they find it to be so spiritual. All the gospels have a spiritual dimension to them, but this gospel perhaps has more. The writer of this gospel is not satisfied just to indicate the significance of a particular thing that happens in the story of Jesus: he underscores that significance more than it would seem the other gospels do. But for whatever reason it is perhaps the best known and the most loved of all the gospels.

It certainly is in its construction the simplest and yet in some respects the most profound book of the New Testament. It mixes history and interpretation, biography and theology. All are blended together to project on the consciousness of the reader the Jesus of history in the light of Christian experience. It is perhaps for that reason eminently useful and enriching. Useful: by that I mean to suggest that it can be a very great help to someone who is going to be teaching Christian doctrine. Caught up in the catechetical program of some parish you will find this gospel to be a mine of information. But enriching because just a quiet reading of it does so much for the individual person, for the individual soul.

It is an outstanding gospel. A good long while ago the Christian community worked out symbols for the various gospels. For instance the lion is the symbol for Mark's gospel. The eagle is the symbol for John's gospel, for clear enough reason. The eagle soars, and when one soars above a landscape one gets a very good comprehensive impression, view of that whole landscape. It was much like someone who has lived on the island of Manhattan one's whole life but then later on in life for the first time flies over it on a flight to Chicago. And for the first time that person who is so familiar with this venue now gets an impression of its outline, of its silhouette. You know if you soar as an eagle soars that's what you see down below.

That would have been one reason why the people back centuries ago thought of the eagle as best symbolizing this gospel, because it gives it that sense of the shape of the phenomenon that is Christ, a sense of the shape of His teaching as well. But there probably was another reason why they chose the eagle to symbolize this gospel. In those days rightly or wrongly I'm unable to say, people had the idea that the eagle was the only animal that could look directly into the sun and not flinch. That struck somebody as how very appropriate for this gospel, because this gospel does something like that. It looks directly into the sun, the Divinity of Jesus, and does not back off, does not blink. Just think of the way the gospel begins with a resounding affirmation of the Divinity of Jesus.

In the beginning was the Word; the Word was with God and the Word was God.

To be sure all of the gospels note the fact that Jesus is to them the Divinity, no question about that. But the added emphasis that is put on that fact here in this gospel is thought to be explained in part in this way as the community, the Christian community, out of which this gospel originated, was probably a community in the city of Jerusalem. Now bear in mind that at this early period all the Christians were Jews. Top that for a remarkable statement, the ultimate oxymoron. But that was the fact. All the Christians in that first generation were Jews, including this particular community here in Jerusalem, the Johannine community, very much influenced by John.

Within that community a difference of approach made itself felt. Some people in that community while in no way doubting the Divinity of Jesus were just being quiet about it for fear that this would have terrible consequences for them. After all they were living as all other Jews lived. They followed the same spiritual and devotional life that the other Jews did: they continued to go to the temple, they continued to go to the Synagogues on Saturday. This segment of that Johannine community was in fear of being castigated in some way if they spoke too loudly about the Divinity of Jesus.

On the other hand the other part of this same community was for just speaking out the truth come hell or high water, taking whatever consequences that might follow from that. It is from that segment that this gospel originates with this particular orientation strong in its assertion of the Divinity of Christ. Some people speak of this as the different gospel. There are any number of instances in the life of Christ that don't come up for consideration in this gospel at all -- for instance Jesus' birth, His birth here on earth, whereas Matthew and Luke have so much to say about Jesus born in Bethlehem and the shepherds coming and all the rest, and the early years of Jesus on earth. Not this gospel, reason being that it is so fixed on the fact that Jesus is God. He is God and as God is from forever. In the beginning was the Word; the Word was God. So if we're going to talk about this beginning of Jesus that is the way you have to speak about it in the minds of these people. But in any case, for whatever reason, they included very little about Jesus' early years.

But then other things as well get short shrift in this gospel. The Baptism of Jesus is just mentioned. John the Baptist baptized Jesus, but it isn't described, recounted in the way that it is in the other gospels. This gospel also has nothing about the temptations that Jesus experienced. It says very little about the Last Supper. What are we to make of all this? Well, nothing of any great significance. We mustn't foolishly suppose that the reason this gospel doesn't make any mention of these things is because the author of the gospel was unaware of this information. But there were other ideas, other notions, other facets of Jesus that they also felt had to be emphasized, had to be brought to the surface, and there is only so much that you can discuss within the compass of a particular gospel. Remember a great physical controlling feature about the length of the gospels were the scrolls on which the gospel was written. It just couldn't run on indefinitely; the Evangelist had to make a selection, choosing this and omitting that. And that's what the author of this gospel did, just as the authors of the other gospels did; they proceeded along the very same lines. They chose those instances in the story of Jesus and those teachings of Jesus that would hit home with the congregation that the particular gospel writer was aiming at.

The controlling feature of what gets into a gospel and does not get into it was just that: the needs of a particular Christian congregation which were understood by the gospel writer and accommodated accordingly by bringing forward for that congregation aspects of the story of Jesus these people would find helpful. That's the way to deal with the diversity that you find in the gospels. Actually it is a diversity created by the needs of the congregations for which the gospels were destined, but also by a different viewpoint. A different angle of vision was assumed by the different gospel writers. One could in a particular room describe the room from one end, and the description would be valid for that part of the room that was being considered, but somebody else might take it as positioned at another place in the room, a side of the room that the original person didn't have in view at all. If you saw the two separate descriptions you could think, Is this the same room? And indeed it is, but viewed from a different angle. That's the way to come to grips with the variety that you find, the diversity among the gospels.

Some people didn't rest easy with that in the early years of Christianity. You had a man by the name of Tatian who thought: Why read these four accounts? Why not conflate them into one account? And he proceeded to do just that. Everything that is found in all four gospels would turn up in this now compressed version that he came up with. All four gospels recount the multiplication of loaves and fishes. And in this book that Tatian wrote he would have just one account, just one instance, of the multiplication of loaves and fishes. But it happens that the gospel of John mentions the detail that the other three gospels don't mention, namely that the loaves that were multiplied were barley loaves, and so Tatian includes that in his account. In the end he comes up with a new work based on all four gospels containing all the information found in all four taken together. He called that the Diatessaron which is Greek for one through four, one work composed of four.

It is still available and is a perfectly legitimate book. But I think the concern or the point of view that brought it into existence is not as enlightened as one that I'm offering you, namely that there is an absolute advantage in having four presentations of the story of Jesus as you have in the four gospels rather than to have just a single one. You are seeing different profiles of Christ which, if taken together, give us more of Christ than we would otherwise have.

Sometimes this fourth gospel is also called the gospel of special knowledge. And what people intended to say by that is that you find in this gospel incidents, accounts that are not to be found in any of the other gospels. So, for example, this is the only gospel that speaks to us about the miracle at Cana. This is the only gospel that tells us about Nicodemus' visit, which is actually very precious. There is much to be learned from that consultation. And then Jesus' dialog with the Samaritan woman: that too, is precious to us but found only in this gospel. The raising of Lazarus is another instance. And the washing of the feet of the disciples is recounted only here.

I have told you all this to familiarize you in a general way with this gospel that we have in hand and that we are going to analyze in greater detail. One further thing before letting go of this comprehensive view of the gospel: the author of this gospel had an eye for detail. And that is fascinating and pleasant for us in the long run. There are people like that: they experience a scene or a happening in that way. All the little facets of it are clear in their minds; you know what the weather was like at that moment and what time of day it was. Who was around to see this? And on and on. The author of this gospel seems to be that kind of person. Details are given even when they don't have any special significance, even when they don't have a part to play in the way you construe the incident.

Let me give you some examples. I've already mentioned that in John's account of the multiplication of loaves and fishes he mentions that the loaves that were multiplied were barley loaves. Now that's not really essential for us to know. The miracle is in the multiplication whether the loaves were whole wheat, rye, seven grain, or whatever kind of bread. That's incidental; that's a detail. The big fact is that they were multiplied. And yet he puts it in. Why? Because that was the fact: they were mostly barley loaves. Our appreciation of the incident is enriched somewhat by the fact that we know from other sources that this was the bread of the poor. The poor could only afford barley; only the wealthier people could have afforded grain for normal bread. So this is then indicating to us that most of the people in attendance on that occasion were poor, since this was their diet, barley bread.

Another instance of details that are offered us is in the account of the calming of the storm at sea. Again, all four gospels bring that to our attention, but this is the only one that tells us that the disciples had rowed about three or four miles out onto this lake of Gennesaret when the storm came up. That makes it clear in our minds that it was probably right about the middle of the lake, because to this day you can measure the lake: it's eight miles across and twelve miles long. But it's not a vital bit of information. The miracle was in the calming of the storm, whether that took place when the disciples were fifty yards out on the lake or four miles out on the lake. But here it is given as a feature of this happening.

Another example of the detail that catches this man's eye, we are told that there were six stone water jars at Cana, water that Jesus changes into wine. Once again the number six and the construction, the material of the jugs is unimportant to us whether it was clay or stone the miracle is in the changing of water into wine and whether it was a glass full of water that was changed into wine or six stone water jars of water that was changed into wine is of small consequence, of no consequence even.

Another instance of this: when two disciples of John the Baptist leave the band of disciples that had grown up around John the Baptist and went to be with Jesus, this is recounted in the first chapter of the gospel. They go to meet with Jesus, and they converse with him, and at the conclusion we are told it was about four in the afternoon. Once again, it's a detail that's not at all essential but it's there and very likely there because indeed it was four in the afternoon when that conversation was held.

Then there is one with a detail that I enjoy reading because it brings to mind a beautiful and very pleasant happening. It is in the account of the anointing of Jesus' feet by Mary, who comes in with a box of perfume. It's here in chapter 12 verse 3,

And Mary took a pound of liquid spikenard perfume, very costly, and poured it on Jesus' feet, and then wiped his feet with her hair, and the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (Goodspeed Bible)

All this, then, said in general about the gospel. Now we have to get down to specifics. As I said earlier on, there is no thought of going through the entire gospel, twenty-one chapters, because we would end up being very superficial, making some brief comments about Chapter One, and then Chapter Two, and Chapter Three, and so on. That's hardly worth while. I think it would be a wiser approach if we limited our study to a small section, but do it in depth. So rather than run through the entire gospel, to set aside the opening chapters and deal with them. And that's the way I'm going to proceed.

I'm not going to start, though, with the opening verses, which are part of the prologue of this gospel. This prologue is really a masterpiece of literary composition. It is so profound in the message that it conveys and yet so plain spoken. The words are ordinary words that a child in grammar school could grasp, and yet it is putting across mind-boggling concepts about Jesus. The famous Scripture scholar, Rudolph Bultmann, made this comment, which is very much on the mark about this prologue. He said, this prologue is like a table of contents for the rest of the gospel, and it is that. What is hinted at or briefly stated in this part of the gospel subsequently will turn up and get an expanded treatment. I'd rather speak of it as more as the overture to an act of an opera, where you are made to hear the themes that subsequently will surface in the next act. In light of Bultmann's saying that this presents us in advance with what we are going to encounter later on, he feels that it really registers on the reader when read after the gospel. Then you can come back here and catch these very concise phrases and see the depths of meaning that each of them has.

I thought I would start just after this prologue and start with the account of the story of Jesus as it's given here. So I'm going to proceed in this fashion, I'll take a segment of the gospel, read that through, and then go back and comment on the ideas and vocabulary that call for some clarification.

The first of these passages is the opening of the story of Jesus that the gospel is going to present. It starts on the same note that all the other gospels start their account of Jesus' life and work. It starts with the testimony of John the Baptist. Think of John the Baptist as a Master of Ceremonies who comes on front and center to introduce the main act. It might sound blasphemous to put it that way, but it gives you some idea of how the gospels start -- always with the ministry of John the Baptist, which ministry is predominantly this to introduce Christ.

Note, too, that at this point in the gospel the author is speaking of successive days. Now that's very helpful for the reader; because of it the clarity of the account is heightened. If, for example, you are trying to recall a vacation that you had not long ago, you say, On Monday we were at such and such a place, and then Tuesday we moved on to this next place, and so on. It's clearer in your mind if you see it in terms of the days that are involved. To arrange the account in this way, in terms of successive days, does this as well. It gives you a sense of something progressing, something growing. The first day you're at this point, the second day is somewhat enlarged, this happening, and then a third day, and so on. That's how the author has arranged this opening part of the gospel.

First I want to highlight the phrase "the testimony that John gave". You must not imagine that this is a casual wayside little chat that John was having with these people. This is a very formal happening. It's a court trial that's going on. There are prosecutors who officially came up and interrogated John the Baptist. It's not that they happened to bump into them and get talking and say, by the way this, this and this. No, they are sent up for the specific reason of questioning John the Baptist about his intents and purposes. This is not just a casual conversation. Notice what is happening in the course of this interrogation: John the Baptist is testifying to Jesus. All four gospels start on that note. John comes along and testifies to Jesus, and here he is doing that in a very official circumstance; he's under pressure to give answers that have to be brought back to headquarters.

Some scholars prefer to think of this gospel as the great trial. When Jesus comes into focus here it is he who will be testifying -- testifying first of all to God's will, testifying to right and wrong. That's the character of this gospel. The opposition to Jesus will form up, official opposition. You know what brings about the death of Jesus is a formal trial before Pilate, before the high priest. So that's the way this particular segment of the gospel starts off: this is the testimony that John gave when the Jews sent priests and Levites to him from Jerusalem.

This next thing that I have to comment on will seem odd, but it is a fact. In this gospel the term the Jews does not designate a whole population, a whole ethnic or religious group, as it does with us. When we speak of the Jews we're just speaking of a religious grouping, a religious entity, the Jews, the Catholics, the Lutherans. Or sometimes we use it in an ethnic sense so the Jews, the Germans, the English. That's not the way it's used here. It actually is used in this gospel for the most part to designate those elements of the population that were antagonistic to Christ. When the author of this gospel has to refer to that whole grouping that we would call the Jews, he speaks of Israel or the Israelites. He reserves that word, the Jews, to those persons in the community who were inimical to Christ.

The question is raised sometimes about the anti-Semitic cast of this gospel. Sometimes this is pointed out that the Jews appear in a bad light throughout. But remember that it's not an indictment of the whole group but a reference of those elements in the population that were opposed to Jesus. Another thing to realize is that this gospel originates from a Jewish background. Is it possible for a Jew to be anti-Semitic? Usually one thinks of that in terms of outsiders venting their displeasure or prejudice on the Jews. That's being anti-Semitic, but this is from within the family, so to speak. Think of the prophets: they are very strong in condemnation of their contemporaries, who were Jews, but the prophets themselves were Jews, and so no one is tempted to think of them as anti-Semitic.

We are told that these men who came up from Jerusalem were sent to ask who he was. Again, to come back to the idea of the official character of all this and how serious this was in the minds of the authorities, we think of that because they come up from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was pretty much the hub of life in those days. It was the center. You take things seriously that originate in Jerusalem; it's not a backwater place, it's the capital. So these people are from Jerusalem. Secondly they are priests and Levites. These were important people in the community, so it's not just a casual individual that's doing this questioning. It's very official, solemn.

Priests and Levites. There's a note of irony in this as well: John the Baptist was from a priestly clan. We know that because his Father is identified as a priest in Luke's gospel. His Father, Zachariah, is functioning as a priest in the temple when word comes to him about the impending birth of his son. John grows up, and he is a priest, because that's what constitutes a man as a priest, birth from a father who is a priest. Our concept of priest of course is quite different; in these days one gets ordained a priest. But among the Jews to this day an individual is a priest because that individual's father before him was a priest.

As an aside I might mention that priests still exist among the Jews, though they don't function, for the best of reasons. But the consciousness of a family being a priestly family has survived to this day because of the surname. Anyone bearing the Jewish surname of Cohen would be a priest because that's the Hebrew word for a priest. The reason why in synagogues Cohens do not have any function is because it is the duty of a priest to offer sacrifice, and sacrifice could be offered only at the temple. The temple has been destroyed, hence priests are without a job.

The next thing I'll comment on is the word Jerusalem. As it appears here in the text it looks like Herosolema -- that's the way one would pronounce it in Greek. That is a later form of the name of Jerusalem than originally people would have used. Originally people would have made an effort in the Greek-speaking world to pronounce the word the way the Jews pronounced it, which is Yoshaleim, but this has more of a Greek sound to it. In any case, the conclusion that some scholars draw is that then this gospel was written at a later point in time. The Christians had been making reference to the city of Jerusalem and calling it as best they could by its Hebrew name. But with time they make the name a little more comfortable for themselves, the pronunciation of it, by making it sound Greek. That is one reason why you might think that this gospel does not go back that far in time.

The next thing that I want to bring to your attention in this passage that we have under examination is in this verse:

He admitted -- he made no attempt to deny it -- he admitted that he was not the Christ. (John 1:20, Goodspeed Bible)

This is in verse 20, I am not the Messiah. A curious thing happens in the text, in the Greek text. (As you know the gospel was written originally in Greek.) It puts in the word for I. Normally in Greek it would not have the word I for the reason that the verb indicates I. The verb for I am is ~enee. The word for I is ego and the word for no, not is ~uk. So normally if someone were to ask you are you so, you would say in Greek ~uk ~enee, I am not, without using the special pronoun I. But here it's used and for a good reason. When that is done in Greek it's a way of saying, no I'm not but someone here is. It's almost as if someone were to rush into the room and say, who of you parked by the fire hydrant? And I would say, I'm not the one, but I would be implying that someone else in the room is the guilty party.

When we left off the last time we were talking about the questioning of John the Baptist. We are struck as we are meant to be by the firm denial of the Messiahship. He has nothing to do with it and has delicately hinted, at least the gospel writer has delicately hinted, that though he is not the Messiah someone around here is -- a very subtle reference to Jesus. You see we're being prepared: shortly there will be a forthright identification of Jesus as the Messiah. But that's the stage that we're at now.

The next thing we have to address is this: these people who were interrogating John are not satisfied to ask him are you the Messiah, get a denial from him, and drop the matter. They pursue it and pursue it in rather a strange way. They are speaking about Elijah and the prophet. Now why should that be? The reason is this, that in the Judaism of that time the expectation was for the one who was to come -- some figure who would come from God to bring on the day of the Lord. Different people in different parts of the Israel envisioned that one who was to come in different ways. So for instance some people visualized this one who was to come as a royal figure, a Messiah. Messiah means anointed one, and kings were anointed. So that was the way they fleshed out that expectation, that a kingly figure would come, a Messiah, an anointed one. Other people were thinking the one who was to come would be Elijah; he would usher in the Day of the Lord. Lastly there were some who thought that the one who was to come would be someone broadly spoken of by Moses as a prophet like unto me.

Everybody agreed that someone was coming from God, mandated by God to bring things to a head, so to speak, to bring on the Day of the Lord. The way different people pictured this person who was to come varied, but most of the people pictured the one who was to come as Messiah. These interrogators want to cover every base, and when they hear John deny that he is the Messiah they may have been thinking, well he is being cute here, he is saying he is not the Messiah but he is Elijah. So they press the matter that far, are you Elijah? And still not satisfied, they wanted to be sure to cover the situation completely, and they ask if he is the one who is to come. So that explains this variation that we have here.

But let's dig deeper into this matter of Elijah. How could it ever come about that people would have supposed that Elijah was the one who was to come? An interesting conjecture is that, though it's not found as such in the Bible, a popular tradition arose that pictured things in this way. There is an account in Second Kings 2 about Elijah being swept up by a fiery chariot. Most people would have considered that a poetic, strong way of saying he was taken from this life, he died. Fine and good. But then some time later on reflecting that passage of time, there is in Second Chronicles 21 a reference to a matter coming from Elijah to the reigning king. This now is at some later date. So the popular imagery, the popular conclusion to all of this, was that Elijah really had not died. That reference to the fiery chariot did not speak of his death but meant that Elijah was off in the wings somewhere waiting to be sent by God to usher in the Day of the Lord.

Just to document all of this I am going to read first of all Second Kings 2:11. This is Elijah and his successor Elisha:

Now as they were going along conversing, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into the Heavens. (Goodspeed Bible)

He [the king] also made high places in the mountains of Judah, and led the inhabitants of Jerusalem into unfaithfulness, and led Judah astray. (Goodspeed Bible)

"Thus says the LORD, the God of David your ancestor: 'Because you have not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat your father, nor in the ways of Asa, King of Judah, but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel and have led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem into unfaithfulness, as did the house of Ahab, and also have slain your brothers of your father's house who were better than yourself, now the LORD will strike down with a great plague your people, your children, your wives, and all your property. . . ." (2 Chronicles 21:12-14, Goodspeed Bible)

So much for that as a version, an aspect of the one who is to come, but how about the third one? The prophet. That all depends on Deuteronomy 18:15. This mysterious figure spoken of by Moses as coming to usher in the great period known as the Day of the Lord.

Instead, the LORD your God will raise up a prophet for you from among yourselves, one of your fellow-countrymen like me (it is he that you must heed) . . . . (Goodspeed Bible)

Yet he must remain in heaven until the time for the universal reformation of which God told in ancient times by the lips of his holy prophets. Moses said, 'The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, as he raised me up. You must listen to everything that he tells you. Anyone that will not listen to that prophet will be annihilated from among the people.' (Goodspeed Bible)

You see by the exasperation these questioners felt because they are getting nothing from this man. I'm not sure they hoped, but they probably foresaw that he would say oh I am the Messiah, and then they would know where they stood. I don't think I mentioned why they were concerned to know if John the Baptist thought of himself as the Messiah, but the reason probably was this. Messiahs were a dime a dozen at that time. The conception of Messiah that these people had was this, military leader. At the time the Holy Land, Palestine, was under Roman rule and many people were restive under that rule, foreign rule, and looked forward to deliverance from that foreign domination. They began to think of the role of the Messiah being just that: the Messiah would be the one who would drive the Roman occupiers into the sea. So it was not an uncommon occurrence for somebody to come up from the population and declare himself Messiah and get a raggle taggle bunch of followers with swords to go down to defeat the Romans. Well, that didn't happen, the Romans were practiced in the arts of war and made quick work of these people.

The religious authorities in Jerusalem worried that at some point they were going to exasperate the Romans and they were really going to take action, with all these would-be Messiahs coming down the pike to unseat Roman rule. That's why they were concerned to know if John the Baptist was one of these types that were going to cause a dustup and annoy the Romans even further. Ironically that's exactly what happened: the Romans finally lost patience and in the year 70 just leveled the city of Jerusalem to be rid of all this provocation. But that's the idea behind sending people off to interrogate John the Baptist precisely on this heading as to whether he was the Messiah. The questioners get nowhere in that regard.

So almost in exasperation they said, who are you then? Finally they have something positive to go on: almost grudgingly then John the Baptist speaks of himself, his self understanding and what he is there to achieve. I am the voice of one shouting in the desert, 'Straighten the Lord's way!' as the prophet Isaiah said. What he has to say about himself is minimal, but we're going to see that's very much in the character of John the Baptist as he is portrayed in the gospel, very self effacing. He's unhappy, uneasy talking about himself. We're going to go to some interesting contrasts. Subsequently he talks volumes about Christ; about himself, he barely eeks out a phrase and then only as a generality. I am the voice of one crying in the desert, 'Make the Lord's way straight'. And that's what we're seeing here. This definition of himself, I'm the voice of one shouting, is actually a quote from the Old Testament. In Isaiah chapter 40 verse 3 there are these words:

A voice of one crying "in the desert, make the Lord's way straight".

Here's something that recently has come to the attention of scholars, but they have wondered whether this might not be the way we should read this text. You may have caught the way I read it. ~ I am a voice of one crying: in the desert make the Lord's way straight. Normally people have broken that sentence down in this way. I'm a voice of one crying in the desert: make the Lord's way straight. The difference in meaning is considerable. In the way we have traditionally read that, I'm the voice of one crying in the desert, it speaks of the futility of the person who is clamoring for your attention. I'm like the voice in the desert. Nobody hears a voice in the desert; that voice dies on the wind.

But this other reading is fascinating because it offers a good rich background of meaning to the words. It would be this, I'm a voice crying, and here's what I'm crying out, this is my message: in the desert make the Lord's way straight. In other words, go out into the desert, that's the command, and there make the Lord's way straight. That meaning recommends itself to us for very good reasons. One is a conception that the Hebrews had about the desert: it was the ideal place for encountering God. Why should that have been? First of all, there is not much distraction in the desert. You look out and there's nothing to catch your eye, no beautiful lake or majestic surf, no tall mountains. It's just there -- so nothing can take your attention away from God.

But the other reason the desert was traditionally conceived of as the place for having proximity to God was this. In their history, at the time when the Hebrews were escaping from Egypt, it was in the desert that God was so close to the people. And it was a glorious reminiscence for them to think back on that. In those happy times God was close to us. They felt they knew that was the case because of the miracles that took place during that period. Fresh water gushes from a rock when the people are about to die of thirst. Food is provided in the form of manna in sufficient quantities for them to survive. These are miracles. It is not normal for this sort of thing to happen in the desert, but it did for them. It helped them survive. Their thinking was that these were miracles; only God can perform a miracle, and if God is performing a miracle here in our presence it means that he must be here to make the miracle happen. So they thought back on those years when their forefathers had marched through the desert as being a time of particular closeness of God to his people. The desert has that flavor to it, the suggestion that that is where you can best concentrate on God.

Of course we are all familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls and perhaps know a bit about the people who produced them. They were Jews, a very Orthodox form of Jewry, very serious about the practice of the faith and about serving God. They read these words in Isaiah and construed them as a mandate to them from God to go out into the desert and there prepare to meet God in the next life, spend their life in the desert, a life of recollection, of meditation, of sharp concentration on God and the things of God, to prepare one to meet God eventually. For that reason scholars are thinking in terms of reading that line found here in that way, I am the voice of one crying. And then here's what I'm crying out: In the desert make the Lord's way straight.

I might just add in passing that there is a certain ambiguity to all of this. I've spoken about the very lofty conception of the desert that the Jews had in those days. But they also were aware of the other side of the desert. The desert was a risky place to find oneself in those days. There weren't state troopers that patrolled any lonely stretch. You were on your own, and robbers understood this, so that many of them lurked in the deserts to set upon the hapless traveler and take what they could from him. That was one risk. Another risk was that wild animals populated the deserts in those days. And then the obvious risk that the desert represents is that there is no way of sustaining oneself. Desert by definition is a place where nothing grows, so if you find yourself in the desert without provisions it's a deadly state of affairs that you are in. That was one side, but the other side was what we explained before, a kind of a glowing experience, an experience of God that one could have off in the desert.

One other comment about this particular quote that John uses to define himself: he says, I am the voice of one crying in the desert. Saint Augustine has come up with a very delightful and I think very apposite comment on that. He says, oh a voice indeed, John the Baptist's voice. A voice is a very tenuous thing. Now you hear it, and now you don't. A voice is not constant. Jesus on the other hand is spoken of in this gospel as The Word. The word is different. The word once spoken can have everlasting impact. Once again John the Baptist is contrasted with Christ. John the Baptist is weak, transient. Jesus is firm and permanent.

The next phrase that I want to comment on is why are you baptizing? That's a legitimate question. These men have come up, and they've asked for this man's identification, and finally they get some identification from him. What they remember so well, how could they forget, is his firm absolute, almost perturbed, denial that he is the Messiah. Now in possession of that fact they're puzzled by what he's doing, because they say, if you're not the Messiah why are you baptizing? This was the work that was particular to the Messiah. This is what the Messiah would do among other things when he came: he would baptize. So very legitimately these people were left puzzled. You say on the one hand that you are not the Messiah, and on the other hand I see you functioning as Messiah. How do you explain that? There's a very easy explanation. I'm baptizing only in water; when the Messiah comes he will baptize in water and the Spirit.

You see that what John the Baptist was doing was disposing the population for the time when the Messiah would come and the genuine baptism could be experienced by them. But this is, so to speak, to win converts for the Messiah even before he came, so that they could take full advantage of the baptism that He would bring on when in time He came. He says, I'm only baptizing in water. Someone is standing among you, this is his second rather broad hint that Jesus the Messiah is nearby, there is someone standing among you of whom you do not know. He is to come after me and I am not worthy to undo his shoe. His point is this, you're encountering me first but Jesus is before me even, and that of course harkens back to what you find as the opening line in the introduction in the prologue, "In the beginning was the Word". So Jesus has priority to me. I'm the first one you are encountering but he preceeds me, it's just that you haven't met him yet.

He goes on to say this: I am unworthy to undo the strap of his sandal. That has much more impact than we would imagine. It seems curious to be discussing this sort of thing, but this is the background to this supreme expression of humility to hear on the lips of John the Baptist. Back in those times people had a revulsion of feet and things to do with sandals with good reason. One supposes in the summertime people went about unshod, and so their feet were very dusty. In the winter they would be very muddy. As a result it was a disgusting thing. That's why in the more refined households when people ate, for example, they would eat reclining with their heads resting on their left elbow on the table raised maybe just six inches or so above the ground and eat with their right hand but with their feet away from the table and the food because feet were disgusting.

To show how far they carried this, when a person came on a visit to a well-to-do home, a home of people of substance, that person would be refreshed by having his feet washed. One of the slaves would be called to wash the feet of the guest. You can picture that. You know putting one's feet in cool water is very exhilarating. But it was a dirty task, and that's why you could not ask a Jewish slave to do that work. You would have to ask a Gentile slave. It was too degrading for a Jewish slave to do that task.

That was one example of how they felt about this matter. Another was this: that a teacher in those times could ask any favor at all of any of the students. He could ask them to get him a glass of water, or to bring him another scroll, or to do this or do that. But one thing he could not ask a student would be carry my sandals. That was considered simply too dirty a thing to ask of anybody. Against that background then here are these words of John the Baptist saying: this most menial of tasks, namely to unlatch the strap of his sandal, even that I am unworthy to do. Just as an aside against the background of what we've said about people's thinking and feeling about feet and shoes, think of the washing of the feet that Jesus engaged in during Holy Week as recounted in this very gospel.

The last comment that we are going to make in this segment has to do with the word Bethany. In the New Testament there are, it would seem, two Bethanys . One was and still is a suburb of Jerusalem, a short distance to the Southwest. That's the Bethany where Lazarus and Martha and Mary lived, a town that Jesus often visited because these were close friends of his. And that town had survived down to the present. It's no longer called Bethany, but it's called El Azurea, which is Arabic for Lazarus. The memory of Lazarus as having lived in that spot centuries ago has endured all these years. We don't often realize that that whole area was solidly Christian in the seventh century. When the Arabians came they spread by force in many instances the Muslim faith, so that now there are Muslims throughout the whole area and Christians are a minority. But the memory of the Christians about this place being the home of Lazarus, Jesus' friend, has taken hold, and the old name of Bethany has been discarded and now they know it by Lazarus.

Now to get back to the Bethany that is spoken of here, it's Bethany beyond the Jordan, therefore some distance removed from Jerusalem. We have not found the foundations of that town at all. We just have this note that it was on the other side of the Jordan. Interestingly, the etymology of the word bears on what has happened here. The word Bethaneniais is composed of two Hebrew words, beth, house, and anenia, testimony. So the house, the place of testimony. Here is John the Baptist doing nothing if not giving testimony, testimony to Christ, and this all happened in a place called the place of testimony.

We'll go on now to what follows right after that. Remember that all this is progressing in terms of days, successive days. Discussing something in terms of days, you see the development, the growth of a particular happening. We're going to see that now. Thus far what we have from John the Baptist is denial: I am not the Messiah. That serves to clear the decks for action: the very next day we are told who is the Messiah.

Here it is then, all anyone would have hoped for as far as who is and who isn't the Messiah. There is a fascinating way that John the Baptist has of making this identification. He says, Look! There is God's lamb. That really is a formula that we really ought to be quite aware of. The formula works this way. It derives from the Old Testament where it goes along these lines, someone sees, that is the first thing seeing, someone says, that's the second, and then the third member of this combination, this formula, is look or behold or lo. So: sees, says, look. That's what we note from the Old Testament. Someone is pointed out, and then something is said, and what is said always has that now archaic word, lo, behold, there is so and so. Before we get any deeper into this examination we have to note that this formula is identifying Jesus as having a special role to play in salvation history.

I'd like to show you just one instance of this function back in the Old Testament, First Samauel 9:17. Now you know the three indications that you have to be on the lookout for, seeing, saying, and lo. First Samuel 9:17.

That's when Samuel saw Saul there is the first one: the Lord said to him there's the second: Behold there's the third, lo, the man of whom I spoke to you.

That's one possibility, that John the Baptist then in using these words, this particular formula, is suggesting that Jesus is that suffering servant figure that people are primed to know and to expect from reading Isaiah. Further reason for thinking that this may be the meaning of Lamb of God is that there are several texts in this part of John's gospel that derive from that same part of Isaiah's work.

Another possible interpretation of Lamb of God is to see in it a reference to the Paschal Lamb. The Paschal Lamb is what saved the Hebrews back at the time just prior to the Exodus. The Hebrews were instructed to take this Paschal Lamb and to slaughter it as a sacrifice and consume it. But they were to take the blood of this lamb and put it on the doorpost of the house, and any house so marked would be spared. It was the blood of the lamb that saved. Immediately we make this connection, because this is one of our understandings, one of the truths that we accept and live by, that Jesus saves. That seems to be the equation then, Lamb of God equals Paschal Lamb.

Also in this part of John's gospel there is a strong Passover symbolism. There were several broad references to the Passover in this gospel. For example, when this gospel is talking about the suffering and death of Jesus it makes a very interesting little allusion: it speaks about hyssop. When Jesus was hanging on the cross one of the soldiers takes pity on him, takes a stem of hyssop, puts a sponge on it, dips it in sour wine and holds it to the lips of Jesus. What is fascinating for us is that word hyssop. It's a rare word; it was rare in those days as it is today. Has anyone ever in the normal course of life heard that word used?

It was unusual even at the time when the gospel was written, and yet that word is used, and it calls to mind the Passover Lamb. When the instructions are given for the way the Passover Lamb is to be slaughtered and how its blood is to be sprinkled on the doorposts, they speak of dipping hyssop into the blood of the lamb and then sprinkling the doorposts with it. What I'm suggesting is that this reference to the Lamb of God would flow right into place, right in line with other Passover references that you have here. So that is the second possibility.

What we have confronting us now is a range of possibilities. John has said, look, there is God's Lamb. We want to be clear in our minds what he means by that, and we can suggest thus far that it's either suffering servant or Paschal Lamb. But there are still further possibilities. For instance Jeremiah makes reference actually to himself as a lamb. Jeremiah 11:19, But I was like an innocent lamb that is led to the slaughter. I knew not that they had plotted against me, but I was like an innocent lamb led to the slaughter.~

What makes that seem to be a possibility for construing this expression: Lamb of God is innocent, so is Jesus innocent. He wasn't put to death for killing somebody; he wasn't put to death for stealing. He was innocent. He went to death an innocent person. This is a real possibility. Jesus could be seen as a suffering servant. He could be seen as a Paschal Lamb, with very good reason because what the Paschal Lamb did was to spare the lives of those people and Jesus has come to save all of humanity. That's a very logical linkup and possibility.

Now we've seen a third, there are still others that we have to look at in Exodus. It speaks about the lambs that are to be offered every single day for the people. These lambs are sacrificed and offered one at daybreak and the other at twilight for the benefit of the people every single day. Let's look at the way they are spoken of in Exodus 29:38.

Here then is another possibility. These lambs are to be offered twice a day with this intent, with this thrust, in behalf of the people. That forces us to think of Jesus because his whole passion and death experience is in behalf of the people. So there is the connecting point between the two. There are other possibilities that we have to consider, factor in, before we try to reach a conclusion. It would be interesting to see what you think will be the final judgment to be made on all of this, but we are going to finish at this point and leave you in suspense.

We have been occupied trying to tease out the meaning of this expression that is very familiar to us but when examined and looked at up close we wonder at the depth of its meaning. I'm specifically thinking of John's identification of Jesus as God's Lamb. We considered some of the proposals, suggestions that have been made for construing the impact and the meaning of this expression. First, something very similar to this is said of the suffering servant in Isaiah. Secondly, the Lamb of God does powerfully call to mind the Paschal Lamb, so perhaps that's the way we should interpret the expression. Then we go on to see that Jeremiah at one point speaks of himself as a lamb, as a sheep undergoing serious threat, about to be slaughtered, but innocently. And of course that could connect very easily with Christ, total innocence put to death not for any crime, but for completely trumped up charges. So that would be a possibility construing Jesus as a lamb in that sense. Then we went on to see that in Exodus the law is laid down that each day at the temple two lambs are to be sacrificed, one at daybreak and one later on in the day in behalf of the people, for the welfare of God's people. Of course immediately you are prone to think of how that links up with Christ because his death was full of humanity. In the interest of the human race he was sacrificed. So that remains a distinct possibility.

We want to look at still another reference to lambs that we find in the old Testament. Here once again in Leviticus (4:32-34), the reference is to the sin offering.

If it is a lamb that he would bring as his offering for sin, he must bring a perfect female. He must lay his hand on the head of the sin-offering victim, and slaughter it as a sin-offering at the place where the burnt offering victims are slaughtered, whereupon the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger, and put it on the horns of the altar for burnt offerings, while all the rest of the blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar. (Goodspeed Bible)

Another possibility, found in Genesis 22:8, is the familiar account of the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by his father, Abraham. There we find something that really suggests what we haven't had here, the Lamb of God. I'm going to read this passage. Unfortunately when people encounter an these words a problem confronts them. Would God ever be so brutal as to ask this kind of a sacrifice of a human being, of a father, that he slaughter his only son? The answer to that is very easily and quickly given. No. And this is not that at all. This is a question of a test of Abraham's faith. Throughout Genesis Abraham is presented as a profoundly faithful man. It carries over into our liturgy where to this day we speak of Abraham as our father in faith. That's what is at issue here. The point that we ought to take from this account is simply this, that there is nothing, but nothing, that God could ever ask Abraham that he would not deliver, that he would not accede to. So with that background we look at what is really a very delightful account here, especially in its details.

Notice the irony in what is here said. Abraham does not want to terrify his attendants by saying "I'm just going up there to kill my son". And so he lies -- he thinks he's lying, but in fact this is exactly the way the scenario will play out. Eventually, after having worshiped God, Abraham and his son will return to these people. When Abraham says this he doesn't think that's going to happen, but in fact it does.

In fact, he did not think that would happen. But he can't say to his son, "I'm going to kill you: you are the sacrifice." But indeed this is just the way it works out -- that God provides a substitute for his son Isaac.

This is the critical moment.

At that critical moment, not five minutes before, not while he was tying the boy up, but right as he takes up the dagger to plunge it into the child.

The possibilities of linking this up with our concerns in John's Gospel are clear. The analogy is very strong. First of all, we could think of Jesus as that ram, but this ram caught in the brushwood substitutes for Isaac just as Christ in his death on the cross substitutes for us, for the human race, which because of its sinning deserves that kind of penalty. But in its place there is Jesus, the Lamb of God. So that's also a possible understanding of Lamb of God as John employs the term.

Before letting go, let me point out to you, harking back very briefly to that incident we just looked at in the story of Abraham, there is a twofold application there that the Christians early on recognized. Not only the parallel of the ram being the stand-in for Isaac as Jesus is the stand-in for us. But also a parallel between God and Abraham. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son; God was willing to sacrifice his son (the difference being that Abraham does not end up having to sacrifice his son but God does). From the earliest period onward Christians were aware of this sort of satisfaction in pondering this. So there we have laid out before us all possibilities. We're plumbing the depths of meaning in that expression used by John the Baptist of Christ, Lamb of God. Could be the Lamb spoken of in Isaiah. Could possibly be the Paschal Lamb. Could be the Lamb of Jeremiah, innocent going to its slaughter. The Lamb of Exodus sacrificed for the welfare of the people at large as is the case with the sacrifice on the cross. The Lamb of Leviticus dies for the remission of the offerer's sins just as Christ dies for our sins. And lastly, the ram caught in the brushwood as suggesting Christ substituting for us. He undergoes the penalty that we deserve for our sinning. Which of these are we to choose as being the key to unlock the meaning of Lamb of God? I'm going to suggest that every single one of these helps for us to cast the richness of meaning in that expression on John's lips, There is God's Lamb. There are suggestions of every one of these Old Testament references that we've looked at.

John says right after that, He existed before me, about Jesus. Here John is implying something we all subscribe to, that priority implies superiority. The first ones on the scene are those who have the advantage of everyone else, just as the Mayflower settlers have it in prestige over everyone else. These people were experiencing John the Baptist first, but he has to say to them, though I am first in your experience now, Jesus preexists me. And so that principle remains in place: priority implies superiority, and Jesus is prior.

Now we come to something that people stumble over and wonder at. But there's really no need for that. John the Baptist says of Jesus, I did not know him. Well elsewhere in Luke's Gospel we are made to understand, at least by implication, that John the Baptist is the cousin of Jesus, because Mary and Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother, are related in that way, and here John is saying I did not know him. There are various ways of explaining that. John the Baptist very early on left the family to go off and lead his hermetical life in the desert, preaching to all that were serious about religion and baptizing them in his fashion, so that he grew up apart from the family, not involved in family gatherings. And the families did live quite a distance, one from the other. John the Baptist was, we believe, raised in a small town Southwest of Jerusalem. Jesus lived up in Nazareth a good distance away, up in Galilee. So it isn't a question of living next door to one another, so that John the Baptist would have recognized Jesus immediately, having grown up with him all along.

The third consideration, I think, is the one that is operative here, that explains why John might say this. In saying, I did not know him, he would mean, I did not know him in that capacity as Messiah. I would have known him well enough as a cousin, but I didn't know this about him. In much the same way we could be surprised in life. Some person whom we've met as a registrar or a principal of a school and that's been our only relationship with this person but we find out down the line that in fact this person is a very accomplished concert pianist. And we could say, I never knew that, I felt I knew this person perfectly well, very well, but I never knew this about him.

I think that does justice to the piece we just examined and it's time now to push onward to see what follows in the text.

What strikes us here is that this is the beginning of discipleship. Discipleship of people, of men, to Jesus. There is the first instance reported, in this Gospel account in any case, of anybody coming to learn from Jesus as Master. Notice the logical progression in the way this is being reported. On the first day you will recall John the Baptist is canceling himself out, taking himself out of consideration as being Messiah. He is not the Messiah, so he has cleared the decks for action. So we know who the Messiah is not. Second day we find out who he is. Look, there is God's Lamb. It is in fact Jesus of Nazareth.

Now the third day, very logically, people act on that. Certain things that come to our attention demand action. If someone should come into a room that you sit in and say the building is on fire, you can't dawdle over that, you are compelled to do something about that. It's that kind of a situation that forces you to take action. You have something like that here. If indeed this is the Messiah, as John is identifying Jesus, then these men should indeed break off from John the Baptist and go to be with Jesus, and they do just that.

We're going to see from this point onward these disciples begin to form up around Jesus. We're going to see a regular progression beyond this point. But here is the start of it, at least according to this Gospel. Jesus' question to them is important, what do you want? An understandable question in those circumstances, but perhaps we ought to see more in it than that. The community from which this Gospel was created and for which it was created, for them the question is understood in this way. What are you looking for? How do you explain the restlessness in your life? What are you after? In other words, deeper than would appear from the text. The reply of the two disciples ought to be construed at the same depth as well. It's not really to say, what is your address, what street do you live on, but it really is an expression of a desire to be with God and to enjoy the strength and the comfort and security that God represents. There are intimations of that at deeper levels in this questioning and these answers that are given here. So they went and saw where he was staying.

Now it is very important for us to fix on that word Rabbi. Rabbi is the word for teacher. It is from the Hebrew word for great, and it means the great one. But it was used only of a teacher and only the teacher of the Scriptures. So basically and technically that is what Rabbi means, teacher, i.e. teacher of Scripture. What interests us is that this is the word that is used to address Jesus by these two incipient disciples of his. But it lets us in on their thinking. This is the way they estimate Jesus at this point. This is the way they identify in their minds, that's who Jesus is, a Rabbi, a student and a teacher of the Scriptures. It's important to keep that in the background of our thinking here, because subsequently they're going to revise their understanding of Jesus, as you will see, toward understanding Jesus as being infinitely more than a Rabbi. But at this stage this is what they think of him, he is a Rabbi. We'll keep that in reserve.

Here we see Andrew taking action on this. He comes to this insight into Jesus and his first thought is my brother, he should know about this. This is like the discovery of a treasure and you want to share it with those who are near and dear to you. He should tell Peter about this, their discovery of Jesus. Andrew immediately sought out his own brother, Simon, and said to him, we have found the Messiah, that is to say the Christ. At that point I would like you to take up what we had to say about Jesus as a Rabbi. You see initially Andrew understood Jesus to be that, a Rabbi and nothing more, a great Rabbi perhaps but nothing more than that. But now his understanding of Jesus had taken a quantum leap. Now he understands Jesus to be not just merely a Rabbi but indeed the Messiah.

We've got to notice, in this particular part of the Gospel, this as a regular occurrence, namely that a person would come to be with Jesus, start up as a disciple of His, be with him for a time. And in that time his understanding of Jesus will take on great depth and substance. In the fourth chapter, where we read about Jesus' dialogue with the Samaritan woman, this interior process is right there on the page for us to trace. We see this woman in the course of her discourse with Jesus constantly revise upward her understanding of Jesus. At first she thinks of him as just another Jewish man, then she seems to understand that here is a Jewish man of some depth, of some attainment, because she now addresses him very respectfully as sir. Then at a certain point in their conversation she says, I see that you are a prophet. So that ups her level of understanding considerably. Finally she leaves her jug there by the well to run back to the village to say to her townsfolk, I have found a man who told me everything I have ever done. Do you suppose that he is the Messiah?

That is some distance to travel in estimating the identity of Jesus. But it's part of the pattern that we're seeing in this part of the Gospel. Perhaps the author of the Gospel is suggesting the story of every Christian's constant growth in knowledge, in depth of knowledge, in depth of understanding of Jesus. But here we have an absolutely glowing instance of that. Andrew going from his assessment of Jesus as Rabbi to his understanding of Jesus as Messiah.

He took him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon, son of John. You shall be called Cephas" -- that is, Peter, which means rock. (Goodspeed Bible)

I would offer a comment on Philip's name: it's Greek, and yet he counts as one of the disciples. Sometimes we have a stronger and unwarranted sense of the separation of Israel from the rest of the world, and even from its neighboring countries. There was a very strong Greek influence, especially in the North of the country, in Galilee. That, in fact, explains the name Galilee, the Hebrew meaning the ring of the Gentiles, so named because mixed in with the Jewish population in the North was a considerable non-Jewish Greek-speaking population. That would account for the reason why Galileans were made sport of and were not well thought of, because they were thought to be contaminated Jews, contaminated by Gentile usages and customs.

You could see that the Greek influence in the North had some impact on the population because Philip was a Jew, from a Jewish family, but bearing a Greek name. Jesus says come with me. Now Philip came from Bethsaida, the town of Andrew and Peter. Philip sought out Nathaniel and said to him, we have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, about whom the prophets wrote. Now here's the thing we have to note here: this is a recurrence of the situation that I spoke of a moment ago. Here Philip, having been with Jesus a short while, is able to identify him as the one spoken of in the law and the prophets. That's a big jump. What is the significance of that description of Jesus, the one spoken of in the law and the prophets? It is a way of saying one spoken of in the Scriptures, as we would say the one spoken of in the Old Testament. The Jews back then and right up to the present think of the Old Testament as tripartite: the law, the prophets, and the writings. So that what Philip is doing here possibly is using a shorthand speaking of the two big segments of Scripture, the Law and the Prophets, to characterize the whole thing. You know that figure that looms large in the Scriptures. In the law and the writings and the prophets, the Messiah, this is the one I want to tell you about.

Bear in mind that Philip has been with Jesus a short time and he has achieved this insight into him. In other words, people upon meeting Jesus do not keep static their understanding of him, their appreciation of him, but it grows, and it surely has in Philip. He was just summoned from the roadside and he has been with Jesus a little while and is now able to identify him in this very profound way. Note his instinct in coming upon this incredible find, Jesus the Messiah. His thought is to go to Nathaniel his friend and share the good news with him.

Nathaniel is not credulous at all. You can't put anything over on him. So he is very dubious, especially when Philip identifies Jesus as coming from Nazareth. Nathaniel is prompted to say can anything good come from Nazareth? This takes up something that I mentioned a moment ago. Galilee was not well thought of, and Nazareth was one of the principal towns in Galilee, almost the summation of all that Galilee stood for in the way of a subject of foreign influence, not all that close to what went on in the seat of action in Jerusalem. Nazareth was so far removed from Jerusalem that since the people there would get down to the temple infrequently. They wouldn't be well versed in the liturgy of the temple. This served to make them scapegoats and to be criticized. All that is contained in the scornful dismissal that Nathaniel makes in these words, can anything come from Nazareth?

It's interesting elsewhere, throughout this Gospel even, Jesus meets with doubt and rejection, and there the judgment is much stronger. Not here but eventually Nathaniel saves himself by coming around to a better state of mind. At least he is open to being convinced. But elsewhere it's the hardened doubt and dismissal of Jesus that you find later on in the gospel.

Here Nathaniel just talks from the top of his head, dubious about anything originating in Galilee, most especially in Nazareth. But after all he is willing enough to make the effort. When he is told to come and see, an invitation to faith, he does just that. In this gospel the expression come to Jesus is equivalent to saying believe in Jesus. Seeing Jesus has the same import. So they are virtually synonyms for belief, and in saying come and see, Philip is really saying to Nathaniel believe me, believe this is the case.

Jesus encountering Nathaniel is prompted to say here is an Israelite without guile. There is much in that remark. The first Israelite was the man whose name was changed to Israel, Jacob. All his descendants then are called Israelites. And now Nathaniel is referred to as an Israelite. That by the way, also bears out what I said earlier, that the word Jew did not function in this Gospel to characterize someone who normally we would speak of as a Jew, a member of the Jewish race. This Gospel would refer to such a person as an Israelite.

But let's go back to look at the origins or background of this remark in Genesis 32:28.

Jacob is completely free of all distraction even in very legitimate concerns that he would have had in any day, the welfare of his family and of his possessions. All that is put aside to give him the opportunity to focus sharply on what was to befall him. Jacob himself was left behind all alone.

Now there's an indication that Jacob has not just been wrestling with another man, but there's something much more significant at issue here.

So here's the point, Jacob was granted this experience as a direct encounter with God. And you see his name gets changed to Israel, one who sees God, one who has seen God.

Now we see what we are so prompted to think of here in this case of Nathaniel being called an Israelite. Whom is he looking at at the moment? He is looking at Jesus, you see, and is called Israel. An Israelite just as Jacob was called an Israelite because he had looked on God. Here is Nathaniel looking on Jesus so I think very legitimately we may think of this as a new angle that is strongly suggesting the Divinity of Jesus. But Jesus also says of Nathaniel an Israelite in whom there is no guile. The reference there is to Jacob's deceit. Jacob was not the most virtuous of persons. You remember he managed to steal the birthright from his brother Esau. He did that by guile and Jesus says of Nathaniel, there is no guile in him, as indeed there was in Jacob who did his brother Esau in. I would like to go back just momentarily to that little text from Genesis where there is an account of Jacob's meeting with God. At the end Jacob says, I have seen God face to face and yet my life has been spared. What a strange thing to say, as if there were something deadly about God! The awe of the Hebrews, their awe of God was such that they seemed to fear that the very greatness, the bigness, the power of God would overwhelm them. That was a worry: don't get too close to God; it could be dangerous. But I like to think of it as kind of an analogy in the sun. There is nothing more blessed in our lives and more necessary than the sun, but if you look directly into the sun you will go blind. Its very brilliance is blinding, and yet we need it to see. Also if you get too close to the sun you are consumed by it. So something that is quite essentially good for us but its very greatness could be devastating. That seems to be the fear that the Hebrews had.

To come back to Nathaniel: Nathaniel said to him after this exchange,

"How do you know me?"
Jesus answered,
"Before Philip called you, while you were still under that fig tree, I saw you."
Nathaniel answered,
"Master you are the Son of God! You are King of Israel!"
(John 1:48-49, Goodspeed Bible)

Jesus answered,
"Do you believe in me because I told you that I had seen you under that fig tree? You will see greater things than that! . . . I tell you all, you will see heaven opened and God's angels going up and coming down upon the Son of Man."
(John 1:50-51, Goodspeed Bible.)

Jesus is pointing us forward to what will evolve in the story. Up until now it's been the words that Jesus spoke that have caught the interest and won the belief of his Disciples. But now there are going to be things that can be observed, signs as this gospel calls them, that will convince people, or make them understand the true and rich identity of Jesus. It cannot be just a matter of words now; it's going to be deeds as well.

We have reached the conclusion of the first chapters, but we must put a proper period to that whole discussion, and perhaps we can do that in commenting on one of the lines that is on the lips of Jesus himself, spoken to Nathaniel and to the group around him: You will see greater things than that! . . . You will see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. (John 1:50-51)

Now that's an Old Testament reference that we ought to track down. It's Jacob's dream that is recounted in Genesis 28:12.

That's the backdrop against which this remark is made by Jesus to Nathaniel and the group. You will see Angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, not on the ladder but on the Son of Man. The imagery of ladder has high significance. What does a ladder do but give us access to a higher level? If there is an attic and there is no stairway leading up to it, it's the ladder that makes the attic accessible to you. Jesus uses himself in that way. You will see Angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, not on the ladder, implying in this picturesque way that Jesus is our means of access to God and to Heaven just as the ladder is the only possibility you have of reaching the attic.

On that note the first chapter ends. We are pitched forward now to action, whereas all along it has been discourse. So what we find at the very top of the next chapter is the account of wedding feast of Cana.

First of all I'll make an overall comment on this episode. It is a climax of what has gone before, where there was a real press forward to something visible. Remember the last thing virtually that we heard in the first chapter was: you will see greater things than that. And now we were going to see one of those greater things: a visible manifestation of the Messiah. Now it's not just going to be concluding that this is the Messiah from what he is saying; now it's what he is doing that will enlighten us as to his identity. In that world and in that culture this was the more powerful, more effective way to identify someone: by his deed rather than his word. They would prefer to draw their conclusion about who this individual is by seeing him at work. A strange approach from our point of view -- but maybe not quite so strange when you think of it. How many of our surnames in the various European strains are based on that same theory? Here is a man called Metzger because his original ancestor going back in time was a butcher. And somebody else is called Baker because his ancestor earned his living in that fashion, and on and on. That's the point here: we're going to see things happening that will open our minds as to who Jesus really is.

That's one thing to note and the other is that we're right at the starting point of this whole self-disclosure of Jesus through the actions that he will perform, through the signs. It says here, this the first of Jesus' signs that he performed at Cana and Galilee. If this is the first, that implies that there is a second and third and so on, and indeed there are. It's all going to lead up to the Resurrection, which then is the sign above all other signs that makes the point of Jesus' identity and of his role and meaning.

To take this bit by bit, the opening: on the third day, two days later, on the third day. Is it the third day after the Baptismal scene? Is it the third day after discussions with Philip and Nathaniel? Is it purely a symbolic reference to the Resurrection? Some people have suggested that, because here we are confronted with the first of Jesus' signs. The last and the greatest of them will be the Resurrection, and here we're starting on that road that leads there, to the empty tomb. All of these signs indicate who it is that we are dealing with. That's a possibility, but perhaps it is a remote possibility, that this third day is meant to call your mind to the third day which is the first Easter.

More than likely, though, on the third day after Philip and Nathaniel's call, this particular thing happened. Now the occasion for it was a wedding. Weddings were observed with quite a flourish in those times. The reason was understandable: people led a very drab life in those times. You might think of the Sabbath: they had a Sabbath every week. That's true enough, but the Sabbath was not so much recreational. It was the time when people recouped their physical strength. That was the force and intent of the Sabbath. But as for good times, they were few and far between. So when a wedding took place in a village it was celebrated with a vengeance, so to speak, for seven days. It might be worth looking at a few places in the Old Testament that indicate just that, the seven day celebration.

First of all in Judges 14:12 there is a reference to it at Samson's wedding. He is talking to his cronies who have come for the celebration.

Let me propound you a riddle: if you can but solve it for me in the seven days of the feast, and find it out, I will give you thirty linen robes and thirty festal garments . . . . (Goodspeed Bible)

And there was rejoicing among all his brothers in Nineveh. And Ahikar and Nasbas his nephew came, and Tobias' marriage feast was held for seven days with great gladness. (Goodspeed Bible).

Now, we are told that the mother of Jesus was there, which makes it seem, at least it may be an indication, that Mary and Jesus were related to the person being married, specifically the groom. From around the third or fourth century onward a tradition developed, but there is no way of knowing whether it could be traced all the way back. The tradition was that the person being married, the groom, was a nephew of Mary, a man by the name of John, son of Zebedee and Salome. But that dates from the third century, not from the very start, and there may not be any substance to it.

Mary is called the mother of Jesus. In the Arab world to this day that is the typical, frequent way of referring to a woman, mother of so and so. It's kind of honorific, it's flattering to a woman to be able to say of her, she has mothered a son. You don't want to get too deeply into the sociology of it. But a son who was better to have in the family than a daughter because in case of war that son could do his family's share of defending the nation. He could bear arms. Furthermore a son could bring in an income at an early age. It's all very materialistic, but that may be in the background of this thinking. It's good to have a son in the family, and it's a point of honor to be referred to as a woman who has given birth to a son.

It's noted that Jesus comes with his disciples. Here is another indication that it very likely was a relative of Jesus who is being married, so that Jesus could feel free to bring along his followers as well as himself. If it were just an acquaintance perhaps Jesus would have come alone. It is very much worth noting that these persons who accompany Jesus to the wedding are referred to as his disciples. The word is used. Prior to this time these would have been people at most friends that have clustered around Jesus, but now they have entered that category of being the disciples of Jesus. That implies that they are to learn from Jesus the Master, and also to live as he lived, to live his life. That, in a nutshell, is the concept of a disciple.

Some of these disciples of Jesus had previously been disciples of John the Baptist. Andrew, for instance, and that unnamed disciple that came over to Jesus would certainly be in that category. But we would have to conclude that they have set aside the abstemious ways that John the Baptist had. John the Baptist led a very Spartan existence. He wasn't for going to wedding celebrations and that sort of thing. But Jesus lived more normally, so to speak, more in the usual way that people in his time lived. And now these disciples of John the Baptist had put aside their rigid mode of life and taken on the way of life that Jesus followed.

Next we come to the remark made by Mary. Jesus' mother told him they have no wine. Some people wonder whether Mary was requesting a miracle here or not. Some people take a dim view of that understanding of the matter. There is no record of Jesus having performed a miracle before this, so what would put this into Mary's mind to ask him to do something as extraordinary as that? Secondly, Mary had the typical Old Testament upbringing, and in the Old Testament miracles were performed generally for the whole group, for many not for individuals. So that someone who was brought up in the Old Testament mode wouldn't think in terms of a miracle being performed in aid of a single individual. For those reasons they doubt that Mary was asking for a miracle.

But I would like to point out that maybe it was just that, that Mary asked for a miracle. I say that for a few reasons. We really have no warrant for saying that there was no miracle prior to this one. There was none reported here in John's Gospel. But John does not introduce this account by saying this is the first ever of Jesus' miracles. And number two, that matter of Mary ‘s Old Testament upbringing does that preclude her belief that God and Jesus would perform miracles for individuals. It is a generalization too broad, I think, to make, to say that in the Old Testament there is no instance of a miracle performed for an individual. After all, there is the instance of the widow that Elijah meets. She and her son are facing death from starvation. A miracle was performed in her behalf through Elijah's intercession. Another instance comes to mind. A general in the Syrian army comes down with Leprosy and is told by one of the maids that work in his household that there is a Prophet in Israel whose intercession with God is very powerful, and maybe he should go down and ask that man's prayer. And he does just that and gets his cure. He's a Syrian, not even a Jew, and an individual who is favored by a miracle.

So I don't see that this is a great problem then to rule out the possibility that Mary was asking Jesus to perform a miracle. The other thing that I think bears on all of this is then, what would Mary be asking? Was it just pointing to the obvious, to say there are these lovely flowers here on this table? It does seem as if she was expecting Jesus to take some action.

The shortage of wine may very well have been due to the presence of Jesus with his disciples. In those times it appears to have been the custom when invited to a feast of this kind to bring along one's own supplies, because people were poor in those days. Not every person was rich enough to entertain a whole big group of people, a whole village that might turn out for a wedding. So people came bringing their own food and drink supplies. There are indications of that in the literature that has come down to us. Here comes Jesus with his disciples; they have lived in a very impoverished way; they would not have brought anything with them. But they are participating in the general celebration, and this may have brought about a shortage of wine. So Mary may be reminding Jesus that something has to be done, because now they have run short of wine.

The next word that I would want to dwell on is Jesus' address of Mary as woman. Unfortunately because of the character of English and our usage of the language this is a problem. It's crude in English for us to make a direct address of a woman in that way, to say woman. At the very least it is dialect. It may be in more remote parts of the country that a man could speak with his wife in that way, as woman, but normally we don't do that.

So our first impression on hearing this is as though this were a rebuke, a put down of Mary. That's what we have to disabuse ourselves of altogether. It is a very normal way of addressing a woman, and men would not raise eyebrows at all. The problem really is with English; there is a deficiency in the language. When we speak to a woman that we are not familiar with, how do we start? If we say Miss that may not be on the mark because the person may be married. So we can't do that. Lady doesn't do it because technically it implies royalty. But even apart from that it's not our usage. How does one handle that situation? We don't have a word for it.

But in any case we have to be disabused of the thought that Jesus when speaking to his mother as woman is being anything but normal and polite. There are any number of other places in Scripture where this word is used as a form of address, and there is no thought at all of it being any kind of rudeness or roughness in using the word. Let's look at some of them. In Matthew 15:28 here is the woman who has asked Jesus for a favor for her daughter and has persisted in asking that. Jesus answered her, "Woman you have great faith! You shall have what you want."

So you can just see from the context here that there is no roughness in this dialog. It's a perfectly normal exchange between Jesus and this woman. He says, woman you have great faith. No reason to put her down.

Then in Luke 13:12, another instance of this. When Jesus saw her he called to her. This is the woman in the synagogue who was bent over and had this ailment for 18 years. She was bent double and could not straighten herself up at all. When Jesus saw her he called to her, "Woman, you are freed from your sickness." There would be no possible way that you could read any thought of sterness in Jesus at this moment, any effort to correct this woman. Just rule it out completely. But it's out of his benevolence that she doesn't even ask him for a favor and he grants her this cure.

We have to relate to this expression differently than we normally would. There is also this to be pointed out about the use of the word woman here. In this Gospel a certain meaning is put upon Mary as the woman who is on hand at the important moments of salvation history. This certainly is one of them, the very top of Jesus' public life. Remember at the cross -- that by the way is the best example of all, I think, to show that the use of the word woman in this case is completely without any kind of bad feeling. On Calvary this gospel reports that Mary was present and Jesus says to the disciple whom he loved, "Son behold your Mother." And he says to Mary, "Woman behold your son." There is a special impact to the use of that word woman in this gospel. And in the background of that use is the reference back in Genesis, God says to the serpent,

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
And between your posterity and hers;
They shall attack you in the head,
And you shall attack them in the heel.
(Genesis 1:15, Goodspeed Bible)

So this has to do with the fall of man and the salvation of man. In this gospel the author takes great pains to show us Mary present at these critical moments that contribute to, that work toward, the salvation of mankind. It's all a take-off on that reference to woman back there in Genesis. Woman what is this to you and to me?

Once again unfortunately this is a roughness as it comes out in English, but that is not present in the original at all. It just is a simple expression of disengagement. What Jesus is saying is this is not my province. It is much as if someone should come into this room to say that there is a leak in the faucet down the corridor. All I could say is you will have to get maintenance and besides I have no authority around here to make any kind of rearrangements. That's all, a simple disengagement without any overtones of criticism or annoyance even. It's just stating fact, this is not my realm of activity, I have nothing to do about this and I shouldn't even. That's somebody else's task and I shouldn't interfere. That's really the force and the spirit behind those words, what is that to you and to me?

Mary's response to that is, do whatever he tells you. There is clearly persistence in that. Mary does not just give up when Jesus replies to her as he does that this is not my province. It's interesting to know that this kind of perseverence, let's use the kinder softer word, this kind of perseverance in the face of what appears to be Jesus' refusal is constant throughout the Gospels. Time and again people come to Jesus for a favor and they stay with their request. They're not easily put off, and invariably they are rewarded for their perseverance.

We should look at a few examples of that.

Now this woman is nothing if not persistent. This persistence is an expression of faith. This woman deeply, firmly believes that Jesus can accomplish this miracle that she is asking for. So it is elsewhere where people keep after Jesus to get what they are requesting.

Let's look also at John 4:47.

You see, the fellow keeps after it, and he doesn't wilt when Jesus seems not to hear or when Jesus seems uninterested in doing anything. And what is the upshot? Jesus says to him, You can go home; your son is going to live. That's the way you should read Mary's persistence here. It's an expression, an indication of her deep faith in the ability of Jesus to correct this situation.

Consider is the containers that are mentioned here: six stone water jars. Some people have a heyday in seeing symbolism throughout this Gospel. The Gospel is very keen about symbols, but some people go overboard, and this is one instance where some do. They say six is one less than seven. Seven is the number of perfection, so this is seen as a comment, an all too subtle comment on the inadequacy of the Jewish faith, the Jewish religion. It's six, it doesn't come up to seven, and these stone water jars had to do with a religious practice of the Jews. Therefore this is a remark, a hint, an insinuation about the imperfection of Jewish religion. That is a bit far-fetched. Maybe it mentions six is because indeed there were six and that's that without further implication.

Some people even fix on the stone, the fact that they were stone not clay, and they hark back to a text in Exodus which speaks about stone water jars that have been polluted in some way and how they ought to be purified. That, too, is rather a brash connection that very likely doesn't exist. They are called stone water jars because they were stone and not clay and that's all there is to it.

Now we are given some indication of the volume of water and subsequently the volume of wine that is involved in this miracle. Each jar contained fifteen to twenty five gallons. That of course is an approximation; the fact is that with embarrassment we have to confess that we don't know exactly the measurements that prevailed in those times. There has not been a continuity when there was a conversion from the measurements that they used at that time to a subsequent measurement finally getting around to our measurements of quarts and gallons. No one took the trouble to show the equivalents, so we are left pretty much to guess. But a pretty good guess would be that fifteen to twenty five gallons, which is a considerable amount of wine that was produced as a result of this miracle.

There is a reference made to a head waiter here, and some people see more in that reference than really is present. These people point out that it was not customary among the Jews when they launched a celebration of this kind to have a head waiter. Normally the groom would simply engage a good friend to manage the whole celebration. Some people then go on to say that the words head waiter indicate that perhaps the man who wrote up this account was unfamiliar with the Jewish scene and is describing things as they would have happened in the Greek world. That is an exaggeration, that conclusion. More than likely what you have here is a man who was at home in both worlds, the author of this Gospel, and writing as he knew for people who would be in many instances Greek-speaking, he uses an expression that would be familiar to Greeks, although he knows that normally a friend of the groom would have run the affair.

The author of this Gospel seems to have been very well versed with the Jewish scene. Some time ago a Jewish scholar in England decided to read the Gospels to see how he in his own studies of Jewish situations at the time of the Gospels might profit from what he had learned from them. His comment was, after reading the four Gospels, John's Gospel is the most Jewish of them all. That came as a great surprise to Christian scholars because they didn't have that impression. Matthew has such a strongly Jewish coloration. For this man who knew whereof he spoke, a Jew himself, to say this was sobering to Christian scholarship.

Now we are told that the head waiter comes up to the groom to say, usually the choice wine is served first, you saved it for the end: how come? It was regular etiquette or routine at these festivals to serve the best wine first. It's simply an instance of human shrewdness. I imagine bartenders must do this often enough knowing that a fellow is going to go in for a series of drinks. You start out with the best ingredients at first, but toward the end a fellow will be so taken with drink that he won't be able to distinguish good from bad. And that's all that this reference means. It's a shrewd human practice.

Now we come to the real punch that this episode has. It really is not just a stray account of a miracle that Jesus performed. It is really put down to show you the actions of Jesus as identifying him. Up until this point it's been his words that have served to characterize him, to pinpoint his identity, but now it's his actions. It is an explosive moment.

This, the first of the signs of his mission, Jesus showed at Cana in Galilee. By it he showed his greatness, and his disciples believed in Him. (John 2:11, Goodspeed Bible)

Jesus answered,
"The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains just one grain. But if it dies, it yields a great harvest."
(Goodspeed Bible)

Let's pause for a while now to probe the very significant and substantial theology that is embedded in this account. What we are told at the conclusion of this account is what the miracles, the signs of Jesus, achieve. They serve to identify Jesus. That's the point. If Jesus can do this, change water into wine, if Jesus can cure a person who is gravely ill, if Jesus can maneuver nature as he does in calming the storm at sea, what is this saying about his identity? That's what is very much at issue here. We're seeing Jesus in action. And what conclusion are we to draw? He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Another thing to note here in this passage is what might be called the replacement theme. By that we mean that you have something in place, and then something comes in to substitute for it, and what comes in brought on by Jesus Himself supercedes, exceeds, is more significant than what it is replacing. And always it is Jesus who is doing that. Here, a clear-cut instance is replacing water with wine. Wine is ever so much more precious, so much more appreciated, so much stronger, nourishing even than water. Here was a Jewish usage, water in those jars used for Jewish religious ritual purposes, and that is being replaced by wine. Wine tops it by far.

We are going to see other instances of this; this gospel is shot through with those ideas. Whereas at one point in time God's people were nourished in the desert by manna which sustained their bodies, kept up their physical health, now Jesus comes to bring not manna but the Eucharist. His body that is infinitely more valuable and necessary and craved for than manna ever was. Manna just kept up one's physical forces, but the Eucharist nourishes our spirit. Jesus is spoken of as the Light of the World. Consider the practice of illuminating the temple on the occasion of the celebration of the dedication of the temple. Very striking moment: it must have been an experience to see this illumination. But Jesus is not just the lighting up of one building. Jesus is the Light of the World. We keep seeing this in this gospel: the replacement, usually of a Jewish religious practice, with something that Jesus brings on and that supercedes it in every way.

We want to talk about the wedding as a Messianic fulfillment. You see the Scripture and the people in the Scriptures have to gear us to the great Day of the Lord, the coming of the Messiah in glory. It's going to be an absolutely overwhelming experience. How to suggest that? How can you put across the idea that something really tremendous will be this Day of the Lord? The best way these people thought of suggesting that is the wedding theme. The wedding was a high point in any villager's life. When there was a wedding that was a memorable thing, something really to look forward to. Think of the Day of the Lord that way, as one everlasting wedding. Our attention is pointed forward to the great times that will come with the return of the Messiah. Always the image used, the reference made is the wedding, the wedding banquet, the wedding feast.

We are at the point of bringing to a conclusion our discussion of a wedding feast at Cana. I had finished off in the last session a consideration of a wedding as a symbol for the last days or the Day of the Lord. Actually all this implies the embarrassment that you experience in trying to speak of something that is so far out of our range of thinking and imagining the greatness of it simply eludes us. So we do the best we can in those times. The highpoint of the social life is a pallid reflection of what it would be on the Day of the Lord. Wine was the symbol of the good life, the high life. And here we are seeing the replacement of water with wine that is better than the wine the guests had been drinking all along. That, remarkably, the head waiter had kept the choice wine until now could very well be a proclamation of the coming of the Messianic days. And Mary's remark they had no wine could have been kind of a poignant reflection on the barrenness of religious life up until that point. But now Christ has come and that's changed. Specifically it's abundance of wine that characterizes the high point of the human story, namely the Day of the Lord. It's actually an Old Testament symbol of the joy of the final days. It's worth tracking down a few of the Old Testament references to this.

First Amos 9:13-14.

Behold the days are coming, saith the Lord, when the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seeds: and the mountains shall drip new wine, and all the hills shall melt, and I will restore the fortune of my people Israel.

Now, Osee 14:7.

And his fragrance like that of Libanus. Those who shall again dwell beneath his shadow shall raise grain; they shall blossom like a vine whose fragrance shall be like the wine of Libanus.

And Jeremias 31:12

They shall come and be jubilant on the height of Zion,
They shall be radiant at the goodness of the LORD --
At the grain, the wine and the oil,
At the young of the flock and the herd.
They shall be like a well watered garden,
And they shall languish no more.
(Goodspeed Bible)

 

We have from an apocryphal book, a book that is not part of the collection of inspired books, Second Baruch 29:5, an expression of superabundance of wine that will characterize the Messianic day. It reads as follows,

The earth shall yield its fruit ten-thousand fold.

And each vine shall have a thousand branches, each branch a thousand clusters, each cluster a thousand grapes, and each grape a hundred and twenty gallons of wine.

Through these symbols the miracle of Cana could have been understood by the disciples as a sign of Messianic times. The texts I just read from the Old Testament and from the apocryphal literature would have created the mentality of the people who were in attendance at this wedding feast. And now to see this happen, this change of water into a huge supply of wine, could have recalled to their minds just these things that we've been reading about as earmarks of a Messianic period.

The next account that we find in the order of the Gospel is the account of the cleansing of the Temple.

Here we are speaking of his body as the sanctuary, so afterwards when he had risen from the dead his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the passage of Scripture and what Jesus had said.

The first thing that we might address is that expression, Jesus, his mother and brothers went down to Capernaum. And now there is something that ought to be looked into, since Catholics have the belief in the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Mother, that she was a virgin before, during and after the birth of Christ. Now if Jesus had blood brothers, how could that be? And possibly one has to take into account the use of that word brothers in Hebrew. Many believe that the word brother was used to cover a broader expanse of human relationships, male relationships, than is normal in our language. For us to speak of one's brother means to speak of another male child of the same father and mother. But the fact is that in other cultures, not just in the Hebrew but elsewhere, people use the word more loosely, identify someone as a brother who really is not from the same family, at least from the same family unit as I am from, my father and mother. This fellow is not another son of my father and mother, but I still refer to him as brother.

We have an instance of that in the Old Testament where at one point Abraham has to part company from Lot's group because of some trouble among the servants of both these men, Lot's servants and Abraham's. So Abraham says to Lot, my brother, if you will go South I will go North, if you will go East I will go West. He refers to Lot as his brother. Down the line we find out the actual relationship between Lot and Abraham: Abraham's sister was Lot's mother. In other words Lot is really his nephew by our way of reckoning things, yet he is referred to as his brother. Not just in Hebrew but in other cultures of the world, in Africa, for example, there are places where this is customary.

In China one's brother-in-law is called a brother, one's cousin is referred to as brother. In certain places in the Far East your brother is the person who comes from the same village that you do. That would be understood if you were to introduce this individual as your brother; people would say oh, then he is from the same town you're from. If you mean to identify your actual physical other son of your father and mother you would have to put it in another way. So that is the way we view the reference to brothers here, male relatives of Jesus but not blood brothers.

There is an interesting comment that one might bring to your attention. This is from the work of an episcopal scholar by the name of Bernard in the International Critical Commentary, and Bernard says this:

It is difficult to understand how the doctrine of the virginity of Mary could have grown up early in second century if four of her acknowledged sons were prominent Christians and one of them Bishop of Jerusalem.

The Jewish Passover was approaching and Jesus went up to the temple in Jerusalem. We note that this is the first of three Passovers mentioned in this Gospel. These Passover references are used in an effort that people make to section off the time periods of the public life of Christ. It says that Jesus went up to Jerusalem. An interesting thing to note is that normally this expression to go up to Jerusalem implied going up for religious reasons. Going up in pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Going up to pray at the temple. If anyone were going to Jerusalem for other mundane reasons they would have to put it some other way, because just saying you are going up to Jerusalem would be understood generally to mean that you are going up for religious purpose.

Jesus finds within the temple precincts people doing business. The temple was sectioned off somewhat in this way. There was an outer court referred to as the court of the gentiles. Anyone could enter that, and that would be where this business was going forward. There was an inner court where Jews might enter that was more solemn, more sacred in their estimation. And there was the holy of holies, which was the most sacred spot in the whole complex. This was the place where only the high priest might enter and then only once a year on Yom Kipur.

All these sales were going on in the outer court. Originally this business was being conducted on the slopes of the hill right outside the temple complex but compromises had allowed these people to come in and do business in this inner court. You might wonder why these particular merchants were there and what was the point of all this. It was to facilitate the purchase of the sacrificial victim that the person would then take in and have offered as a sacrifice in his name. So one would buy a sheep or lamb right there and bring it in and that would be the sacrifice. The requirement was that these animals had to have been born and bred right in Judea in that sort of more sacred part of the Holy Land. If someone living North in Galilee raised sheep, it wouldn't do for him to take one of those animals, bring that down to Jerusalem and have that sacrificed. No, it had to be an animal born and bred in Judea. Hence the need for merchants who would market these animals.

The money changers were present to change the normal currency. The universally used currency in the Holy Land was the Greek or Roman. But that was unacceptable. One of the things people did upon coming down to the temple, especially when they came down for the pilgrimage, was to pay the temple tax that was levied on every family. The normal money was either Roman denarii or Greek drachmas. That was used not for paying the temple tax but for the other purchases and expenses that one had in life. But this kind of money could not be used in paying the temple tax for the good reason that imprinted on each one of these coins was either the head of the emperor for the denarius or the image of a famous philosopher that would be the drachma. The Jews felt at that time that this was a breach of the First Commandment which asks that no graven image be made of any living thing. And then it goes on to say to worship it. But the Jews construed that very strictly and felt that it would be sacrilegious to bring a graven image into the temple. So money changers were there to take your Roman and Greek coins with their images and to give you in return Tyrian coins from up in Lebanon that didn't have any image on it. And that would be acceptable for paying your tax.

You see from all I've said so far that this arrangement of merchants available to visitors to the temple was for the best of reasons. There was a strong sentiment among the people, and it would have been the thinking of our Lord as well, that this had gone too far. It's true that this was very convenient for people to have these merchants right there at hand, but it was within the precincts of the temple, and that seemed out of order. Hence our Lord takes the action that he does.

Some people have noted that in driving these merchants out Jesus seems to be rather harsh with respect to the dealers in cattle and sheep but a little more lenient with those who were pigeon dealers. And they go on to construe that further in this way. That would be explained in this fashion: pigeon dealers were the ones who accommodated the needs of the poor. The poor, unable to get enough money to purchase a normal sacrifice, sheep or calf or lamb, could afford a few pennies for a bird. And so the pigeon dealers were there to accommodate that need, and our Lord takes it easier on them for that reason, because they served the poor.

Now we are told that Jesus bent down and made a whip of cords to drive out these animals. One would think he would have used a stick. But there was a very strict law against introducing any weapon or anything that could serve as a weapon into the temple area. The population was so volatile even at worship that to prevent the shedding of blood, which would be sacrilegious within the temple, that regulation was enforced. So Jesus takes some of the straw from the bedding of the animals and he makes a whip out of that.

The reference in the account is this: You have made my Father's house a den of thieves. Frequently throughout the Old Testament the temple is referred to as God's house. The Jews did have a sense of God's omnipresence. God is everywhere, therefore how can you speak of God in the confines of a particular building? That's a mystery, but the fact is that it was thought that one could experience God more formally, more forcefully, more significantly within the temple than one could experience Him anywhere else. That, more or less, was their thinking, and that's why they spoke of the temple as God's house. Not the house of God's people. That explains the high reverence that these people have for this building, because within these confines God lived.

Remember early on I spoke about the special meaning that the phrase the Jews has here. In this passage in verse 18 it says: the Jews addressed him and said, "What sign have you to show us, for acting in this way?"

The Jews very obviously refers to the antagonists of Jesus, to the people who were opposing Jesus. It's not making any comment about an entire nation or an entire religion but about those people who were challenging Jesus at this moment. You remember at the very outset I spoke of a special use that this author of the Gospel makes of that word Jews. It identifies the enemies of Jesus, and we see a clear cut example of that here. Elsewhere, where this account is to be found, for instance in Mark, it sheds light on specifically who these opponents were.

Then they went into Jerusalem again. And as Jesus was walking about in the Temple, the high priest, scribes and elders came up and said to him, "What authority have you for doing as you do?" (Mark 11: 27, Goodspeed Bible)

Let's now look back over the account and see what can be said broadly speaking about it all. First of all, this is a kind of prophetic protest against the profanation of God's house. I call it prophetic because the prophets are notorious for the strictures they make about the behavior of the people with respect to the temple and with respect to God generally. There is an inconsistency. This isn't the spirit that should go with genuine prayer. They very perfunctorily perform their sacrifices but don't act in a way that is in accord with a person who is devoted to God, and serious about doing God's bidding. This protest that Jesus makes is along those lines. This is God's house and it is inappropriate to use it the way you people are using it.

Throughout John's gospel you have a Jewish institution, a Jewish religious institution, which is supplanted by something that Christ brings on. This incident foreshadows the destruction of the temple. The temple was the place where people could have experienced God intimately. That's going to be replaced. We find throughout the New Testament that the replacement of the temple is nothing less than the person of Jesus himself. There would have been a time when if you wanted to encounter God meaningfully and up close and powerfully you would go to the temple. There, within the holy of holies, there was the special presence of God. But now the time would come when the temple would be razed. It actually historically happened in the year 70. The Romans took care of that.

The temple as a place for encountering God is supplanted. It's superceded by nothing less than the person of Jesus himself. God is in Christ; Jesus is God. Now if you want to make your approach to God, you don't go to the temple in Jerusalem, you make an approach to Christ. It lines up with the rest of what we've seen thus far in John of a Jewish counterpart supplanted, replaced, substituted for by something more meaningful, more powerful, that Christ brings on.

What's interesting here, and we have to give some time to this, is the placement of this incident as the second thing we read about in the actual public life of Christ. The first thing we hear about is the miracle of Cana. Then cheek by jowl with that is this account of the cleansing of the temple. We learned that in the other Gospels this is placed differently, it's placed further on. For instance, this incident is put at the beginning of Holy Week in Mark's account. And that's probably where chronologically it should be placed, because this would have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Up until this point the Jewish authorities resented what Christ was saying and doing, but then this topped it all, taking the liberties that he did with going in and making these rearrangements in the temple. That probably is what determined them to do away with Jesus, and then the events of the Passion kick in and the Crucifixion and so on.

But in this gospel it's only the second thing we read about in the public life of Christ. Why should the author of the gospel have put it in this place? We can guess that it's this. What the author of the Gospel is trying to do at this point in the Gospel is to illustrate the various reactions to Jesus that people made. The first reaction that people had, or the reaction of some people to Jesus, was totally positive. That was the wedding feast at Cana. What was the upshot of it all? Jesus' glory was manifested, and they believed in him -- full faith in Christ, total acceptance of Christ. That's the upshot of the Cana miracle.

The next thing we read about is the purification of the temple. And what's the upshot of that? By what right have you done what you did? Total rejection. In the one instance a full embrace of Christ at the miracle at Cana, and this next instance an out-of-hand dismissal of Christ, a rejection of him. The next thing that we are going to look at will give us another reaction that people had to Christ, an in-between reaction. That's what we are going to see when we look at the account of Nicodemus' visit. Nicodemus comes to Jesus, but he comes at night. He's not ready to throw all caution to the wind and be seen going in to talk to the enemy, so to say. So he is not fully in Christ's corner, but yet he makes the effort to go and visit with him. So you have an in between, a medium. Here then is the way it lines up. Cana, full acceptance of Christ in faith. Cleansing of the temple, total rejection of Christ -- no faith at all. Nicodemus' visit, half and half, trying to make up his mind. That's what you have illustrated here just by the placement of these incidents. We are taught something by the evangelist.

And now to go back and wind up our treatment of the cleansing of the temple by reading for you some Old Testament precedent to this. In the Old Testament the prophets frequently cried out against the abuses in the temple and the insincere way some people were praying in those times. Let's look at some of these. First of all we will consider Jeremias.

This is talking about the impiety of people who desecrated the temple by living a very immoral, unacceptable existence, and yet coming to the temple.

Then Zacharias 14:21.

. . . all who sacrifice shall come and take of them to boil the flesh in them. And there shall no longer be a trader [a merchant] in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day. (Goodspeed Bible)

Then Malachias 3:1.

Behold, I will send forth my messenger
And he shall prepare the way before me!
And suddenly to his temple shall come
the Lord whom you are seeking!
(Goodspeed Bible)

Finally I want to look at Isaias 56:7

I will bring them to my holy mountain,
And will make them joyful in my house of prayer;
Their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be welcome upon my altar,
For my house shall be called the house of prayer for all the peoples.
(Goodspeed Bible)

We'll bring this to a conclusion at this point and take up after this with an examination of this passage just read.

The account of Nicodemus' visit to Jesus is fraught with significance. There is very much to be learned from the account itself, even the small details of it. The first thing we note is that the man's name is Greek. Some people have the misconception that Judaism at the time of Jesus was a strictly closed society with no contact with the outside world, not having any and not desiring any. More or less that would describe the Pharisees, but that wasn't all of Judaism. There was a good bit of interest in and association with other people. Names such as Philip indicate that, which is a Greek name, and Nicodemus, also a Greek name. His people must have had some contact with the Greek culture and admired it to the extent that they gave their child a Greek name. Note also that this is not a fringe instance. Nicodemus was a member of the high Council, the Sanhedrin, so he is a person of some standing, and yet with this Greek coloration about him.

He is a member of the Sanhedrin. At times people are confused about how things went in Israel at that time, how was it governed. The Romans had come and take over this part of the world, but then here's talk about the high priest, he had something to say, and then the Roman government, Pontius Pilate, and Herod and the Holy City and other parts of the Holy Land and where he stands in all of this. Perhaps we could bring some clarity to the matter by saying that Roman rule was very flexible, very mild we might almost say. The Romans came in; they were not for just jamming things down people's throats. They would find out what people were used to, the form of government that they practiced, and go along with it to the extent that they could. They made very few demands upon the conquered people. A famous French historian put it this way, that the Romans were given to rule softly. What they would expect is that the conquered people would now not enter into any military pact with any other outside group. That made sense. They might line up with a nation that was at war with Rome, and that would be ridiculous, so that was ruled out.

Secondly, the Romans asserted their right to collect taxes, and that wasn't so terribly unreasonable when one thinks of it, because with the coming of the Romans came all sorts of improvements in the quality of life in any particular area. The Romans were the ones who devised networks of roads that made possible increased business opportunities. The Romans would build these acqueducts to bring fresh water to areas that were dry. So the taxes were well spent by and large.

The third requirement that the Romans made was that they have the right of life or death, the right of capital punishment. In other words, that no lower court could condemn a man to death. They could pass judgment on him, but the Romans would have to review the case and see whether they judged that the person was worthy of death. They did this to protect themselves and to protect their friends, because it would be easy enough if having taken over a realm then the population would systematically get rid of all these people who are cooperating with Rome by killing them off. So to prevent that from happening, very wisely, the Romans had this discretion that they would decide who had to be put to death.

But beyond that life went on as usual, and if the place did become Romanized it was only because people recognized that the Romans had a better way of doing this particular thing and so it made sense to adopt it. When the Romans came to Palestine they asked how the people were ruled and the answer they got was we live by the rule of God. We have a theocracy; God rules. And the mouth piece for God is the Sanhedrin, which was a council of seventy members composed of a certain number of priests, certain outstanding men in the community, wealthier individuals, and presided over by the high priest. It was pretty much the governing body that included the executive, the judicial and the legislative, all three combined.

Nicodemus is a member of that group, so he is a very prestigious individual. We are told that he comes in to Jesus at night and our first impulse is to think he is sneaking in not to be seen. That definitely is a factor here because by this time later on in the career of Jesus the lines were drawn and the government, the Sanhedrin, was on one side and Jesus was on the other. He was the enemy, so it was not judicious, not wise for anybody connected with government to be seen consorting with Jesus, because that's dealing with the enemy. Hence Nicodemus comes in at night. Now it is to be said that he's not so strong in his acceptance of Jesus that he's throwing caution to the winds and saying come hell or high water I'm going; I don't care who likes it or not or what the consequences are. He's not that convinced of Jesus. Later on, however, it appears that he does move squarely into the community of faith, or to put it another way fully accepting Jesus. In the account of the burial of Jesus he has a part to play. He and Joseph Arimathaea, throwing caution to the winds, not caring what people thought that he has so clearly identified himself as a disciple of Jesus at that point. There is also another point in the Gospel where his voice is heard saying something to slow down the opposition growing against Jesus. If you didn't know the background of his interest in Jesus you might think that doesn't indicate much. But it does show that he is attempting to soften things a bit. So what you see happening in this man's life is going from a tentative faith in Jesus to full faith in Him.

We have more to say about night. That's significant that he should come at night because night traditionally among the Jews was the time for studying the Torah, the Law. When you stop to think about it, there's a certain appropriateness to that. At night there is quiet, sometimes that eerie quiet in which even the small noises that one hears during the day die down, and you have a near absolute quiet that you would want for high-powered concentration. That's the time to focus on the most precious gift that God has given to his people, the Law, the Torah. You can't overstudy it, you can't overdo that, and you study it under the best of circumstances, night. Not that that was the only time they studied it, but it was thought a very appropriate time to study. (In the Dead Sea Scrolls we have an indication of people studying the Law right through the day, twenty-four hours. There were a certain number reputed to be busy about studying throughout the daylight hours and a certain number that would be studying through the night.) Here is Nicodemus coming to confront Jesus about these very matters of the Law, so it's quite suitable that he should choose this time when day becomes night: this is the time dedicated to the study of the Law.

The subtlety here is really beautiful. Listen to the way it puts this: this man went to Jesus one night; he is coming from the darkness outside into Jesus, the Light of the World. Later on in the Gospel it's speaking about Judas who leaves Jesus at the Last Supper. He leaves Jesus and goes into the darkness outside. The Gospel makes a point of that, that he got up from the table and left, and it says it was night. So here is one man coming from the darkness outside, namely Nicodemus, to the Light of the World who is Jesus. Later on there is Judas who is leaving Jesus, the Light of the World, to go out into the darkness outside. It's very pointed when you stop to think about it.

He starts out in a flattering way that is appropriate in the Near East. You compliment the person that you come to visit.

". . . we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can show the signs that you do, unless God is with him."
And Jesus answered him,
"I tell you, unless a man is born over again from above, he can never see the Kingdom of God!"
And Nicodemus said to him,
"How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb over again and be born?"
(John 3:2-4, Goodspeed Bible)

Nicodemus asks how can a man be born again? First of all we want to make a comment about the way it's put here. I tell you unless a man is born. There's a Greek word that's used here that cannot be put into English, because if you go to the dictionary and look up this word you are going to find one meaning is again, another meaning is from above. Which of these do you choose? It's interesting in the different translations of the New Testament that you can find scholars lining up on each side of the line. Some say unless a man is born again he cannot enter it. Another translation is unless a man born from above he cannot enter it. So they all make their decision. Then you have a fence straddler, such as my translator, who uses both expressions, and I think that's as it should be.

It means born again through Baptism and from above; this is not a birth of the flesh, not a birth coming from a woman's womb to create another human body. No, it's like a birth in the Spirit, so that the creature that emerges from this is the Christian who leads his life on two planes, a natural and a supernatural one. The natural plane is the existence that he enters upon when issuing from his mother's womb, a physical existence. But the supernatural level of life that he led, that's from above, that is the doing of God, the result of Grace coming from Baptism that puts this person alive on another plane of existence. That's part of the richness, or at least it suggests the wealth of truth that is in the reply that Jesus makes,

". . . unless a man is born over again from above, he can never see the Kingdom of God!"
And Nicodemus said to him,
"How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother's womb over again and be born?"
Jesus answered,
"I tell you, if a man does not owe his birth to water and spirit, he cannot get into the Kingdom of God. Whatever owes its birth to the physical is physical, and whatever owes its birth to the Spirit is spiritual."
(John 3:3-6, Goodspeed Bible)

Do not wonder of my telling you that you must be born over again from above. The wind blows wherever it pleases, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. That is the way with everyone who owes his birth to the Spirit. (John 3:7-8, Goodspeed Bible)

I might point this out that the words in Greek there is a play on words here that can't come out in English, and it has to do with wind. The word for wind in Greek is also the word for spirit. And the word for sound is also the word for voice. So you see though it's speaking of sound and wind, it's also speaking of voice and spirit. It's a very adroit expression of this whole matter. The Holy Spirit of God is like the wind.

Nicodemus said to him,
"How can that be?"
Jesus answered,
"Are you the teacher of Israel and yet ignorant of this? I tell you, we know what we are talking about and we have seen the things we testify to, yet you all reject our testimony."
(John 3:9-12, Goodspeed Bible)

If you will not believe the earthly things that I have told you, how can you believe the heavenly things I have to tell? . . . just as Moses in the desert lifted the serpent up in the air, the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone that believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:12,14, Goodspeed Bible)

This puts people in mind of the Crucifixion because there is a different matter. It's not a question of being spared being bitten by serpents, but a question of salvation for the whole human race. That sort of small scale salvation that took place surrounding the brazen serpent is the background to and suggestive of the large scale universal salvation that results from Jesus on the cross.

This is a classic instance of the phenomenon of people coming upon Jesus, getting to know Him, and gradually having their understanding of Him expand, expand greatly. She meets Jesus as just another Jewish person period, but she ends up this encounter actually entertaining the possibility that he is the Messiah. During this dialog you can see her understanding heightened. Consider the use of the word sir. It starts out as a respectful enough address for some person that you suspect is a person of some attainment. But then the second time around it seems charged with even more significance and still more the third time. The author is strongly suggesting an increase in awareness of the meaning of Christ.

It may not be far fetched to suggest that what the author of the Gospel is hoping for, even anticipating, is that the reader of his Gospel will have that same experience. That starting with a bare general awareness of Christ we will ever be growing in our appreciation and comprehension of Christ. This is a lifelong pursuit: to be finding out more about Christ today than one knew yesterday and looking forward to tomorrow knowing still more than one knows today. I think that's the big lesson to be derived from this account.

The first thing I want to comment on is in the point of grammar. It says here that Jesus had to pass through Samaria, and actually, geographically, he did not have to pass through Samaria. So what could this mean? It's not an error. Normally the way Jews went North and South was this. Palestine is roughly an oblong shape. Judea is in the South, Galilee is in the North, and Samaria is in the middle. Now Jews coming South to North would have regularly gone East to the Jordan River Valley and then North. If they were going to Nazareth then would have gone West again to Nazareth. In the other direction they would have gone East from Nazareth to the Jordan Valley, South, and then West to Jerusalem.

Here Jesus is down in the Jordan Valley already so what He would normally have done, what Jews normally did, was to go straight North up this valley and then go West to Galilee. But the gospel said no, He had to pass through Samaria. That is known as the Divine Passage. It is a device used in syntax, and just in Hebrew thinking. To avoid saying God wills that you do this or that, it will say you have to do this or that. You have to because God wills it. It's part of that very commendable high respect for God and a restricted use of God's name that the Jews make to this present day. A Jew might say, He wants it. Who is He? That's a reference to God. It is a carryover from the Jewish practice, going back to very ancient times, of avoiding the mention of God's name. A Jew today would most certainly never speak of Yahweh, and in those days didn't either. Here's an upshot of that whole thinking of saying he had to pass through Samaria, meaning God willed that he pass through Samaria, and there the scene is set.

It says here that it was by a field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph in this region. Jacob is frequently spoken of, in Genesis particularly. You see at that time, Jacob's time, God's people were semi-Nomadic; they moved from place to place. These people would come for some time, a couple of months, a year maybe or so, and then move on again. That was the life situation at the time of Jacob. At one point they had more or dug in in this area of Samaria. So Jacob's name is associated with this area to this day. At this place there is Mount Garizim where it is reported in the Old Testament that Jacob sacrificed to God.

In the time of the gospel story there was bad feeling between Samaritans and Jews, which explains why the Jews normally made the detour that I described earlier, going up the Jordan Valley so as to avoid going through Samaria, because they were very unfriendly to Jews. This hostility was reciprocated in spades by the Jews, so they were really at odds with one another. Nonetheless Jesus makes his way through Samaria, as unfriendly as it was to all Jews.

There is this well here which I spoke about at the very beginning of the course, a well about a hundred feet deep, first mentioned by Christian pilgrims in the Fourth Century, in the 300s. Early Christians were encouraged to go to the Holy Land to experience the place where Jesus had lived, and there is an account from somebody going in the 300s, going to the Holy Land and visiting this well.

So Jesus, tired with his journey, sat down by the well. That is really an inaccurate translation: it shouldn't be by. The Greek preposition that is used in this sentence is not by the well but on the well. But you can imagine the translator thinking how can you sit on the well, mostly because of the American impression of wells with a pail and a winch and maybe trimmed with rambling roses and so on. But a well in that part of the world would is simply a hole in the ground with fresh water in it, and what one did as a regular procedure was to pull a stone over the opening of a well so that animals wouldn't fall into the well and pollute it, or so the children might not slip into the well and drown. That's where Jesus sat -- on this stone -- so the correct translation would be, he sat on the well rather than he sat by the well.

It was about noon. The woman has come to draw water at this time. This was most unusual. People are very custom bound in the Near East to this day, and women would come to the well only twice a day -- at daybreak and then at late afternoon -- in consideration mostly of two things: when the household needs would be greatest, but also the heat of the day. If one were going to walk a good distance to the nearby well one wouldn't want to do it at high noon when the sun is scorching. So those were the two times, and they were very tradition-bound, and regularly would have come only at those times. But here it was noon and Jesus was seated by the well.

Why would this woman be coming for water at this time? Some people thought perhaps time was calculated in some other way than we have thought. The Roman way of calculating time was something like this. It began at six in the evening, then there were four watches through the night dividing the night into four segments, and then six a.m. would be the start of day. That would be the first hour; noon would be the sixth. Some people have thought maybe this was at daybreak. Then what remains to be explained is how Jesus would have been tired from the journey. He would hardly have been traveling through the night.

So we settle for it being noon with this possible explanation of why this woman is coming at this unusual time to draw water: we find out subsequently that she has a rather mixed up marital situation having married five times. Very possibly people have gossiped about this. At the wells women would meet and trade gossip. To avoid all of that she comes to the well at an off time, twelve noon. It is also noted in this gospel that it is twelve noon when Jesus is dying on the cross. There was this very beautiful hymn that used to be sung at Requiem Masses all through the years that pictured Our Lord sitting tired at the well and then going on to redeeming us having experienced the sufferings of the cross -- connecting these two incidents, these two happenings, Jesus seated at the well at noon and Jesus dying to redeem us at noon.

This coming to draw water might be thought of as an experience similar to going to the mall these days, a social happening with a exchanges of news. It's worth getting a sense of that by looking at Genesis 24:11. Toward evening, at the time when women came out to draw water, he made the camels kneel by the well outside the city. People go to the Near East to see this very scene. It is pictured many times in art: a woman with a veiled face carrying on one shoulder a beautiful urn. All that gets shattered when you see the reality of it in this day and age. Women still come to the well, but carry no artistic urn but a Pennzoil can to fill with water. So here's an instance out of the story of the Old Testament of this man waiting at the well. He's out there to choose a wife for his master. He is there waiting by the well at this hour of the day and he makes this prayer,

"Oh LORD, the God of my master Abraham . . . pray give me success today, and so be gracious to my master Abraham. Here I am taking my stand beside the spring, as the daughters of the townsmen come out to draw water. Let the girl, then, to whom I say, 'Will you please let down your pitcher for me to drink?' and who says, 'Drink, and let me water your camels as well' -- let her be the one whom thou has allotted to thy servant Isaac." (Genesis 24:12-14, Goodspeed Bible)

Looking around, he saw a well in the open, with three flocks of sheep lying beside it; for it was from this well that the flocks were watered, but the stone over the mouth of the well was so large that it was only after all the shepherds had collected there that they could roll the stone off the mouth of the well, and water the sheep, after which they would replace the stone over the mouth of the well. (Goodspeed Bible)

When Pharaoh heard about the matter, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to the land of Midian, and sat down beside a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, who came to draw water, and fill the troughs to water their father's flock, but some shepherds came and drove them off. So Moses went to their rescue and watered their flock. (Goodspeed Bible)

Remember the animosity between Jews and Samaritans, which is the background against which this whole thing happens. How unusual that Jesus should be speaking to a Samaritan woman! It would be most unusual even to be speaking to a Samaritan man because of the strong feelings that existed in both groups one against the other. The Samaritans continue to worship in this one place, the top of Mount Garizim, because Jacob had worshiped God there, and their thought is you can't top this. If it was good enough for Jacob it should be good enough for us. But subsequently in Jewish history the Jews worshiped rather at the temple in Jerusalem and this the Samaritans resented. They thought this was out of order. It should be Garizim. That's one thing that poisoned the atmosphere. Another was that the Samaritans were a group that had resulted from a mixture of races, Jews and Babylonians. When the Babylonians had carried off the Jews to Babylon they had brought some of their own people back to the Holy Land and they intermarried. The resultant race was the Samaritan, and the resultant religion was different from Judaism.