On the Consideration of Jesus as "Son of God" with a Consideration of How This Runs in Contradistinction to His Title as "Son of Man"

John 1: 29-34                                      February 26, 2021

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ ³²And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

            This is the Son of God.  John the baptizer has seen him, he is testifying to him.  Almost like he is going to conclude “Nuff said”.  And given all that John the baptizer has testified to, it makes sense.  From the Word was God to the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, it is an incredible introduction.  It is certainly ingrained in Christian technobabble, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”  Interesting how they all come together in this opening chapter of the Gospel.

            But here is a new thought for me.  It so happens that this week in church, the lectionary reading from the gospel is from Mark 8, where Jesus self-refers as the “Son of Man”.  Now I have grown up with these titles for Jesus, known them my entire life.  I will admit, I have confessed to Jesus as Son of God in the worship service, but I do not believe I have ever used “Son of Man” in the context of worship, at least not consciously, not in the resources I gather.

            I have also never been really clear on why one title is used in one place and one is used in another.  It is like someone looking at how they walk and trying to analyze their pace and step.  It is something one is so used to, it is a mental exercise to take a ‘step back’ to consider. 

            So here is the theory of “Son of God” versus “Son of Man”.  We have come to understand Jesus, as revealed by God in the Bible as ‘fully God and fully Human’.  There is a line in the Scots Confession that really touched me.  To paraphrase, God cannot die and yet, due to original sin, humanity cannot live.  Except for Jesus, who encompassed both.

            So what if these titles are shorthand for Jesus’ teachings?  In Mark 8, He spoke of the need of Jesus to suffer, to be rejected by the leadership, and to die-rising three days later.  In John 1, this is the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world.  This is the one on whom John the baptizer witnessed the Spirit coming down upon in the form of a dove.  This is the one about whom the entire introduction of John is setting up as God come down. 

            Now, there is a lot more work to be done to see if this theory holds water.  But it does raise a powerful question in reading the Bible.  What does it mean when Jesus self-refers as the “Son of Man”?  How is this different from John’s identification of Jesus as “Son of God”?  I never really thought about it, just put it down to ‘stylistic preferences’.  But I think it is something more.

Pastor Pete

John Shares With Us How Jesus is an Upgrade to his Own Ministry

John 1: 29-34                                      February 25, 2021

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ ³²And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

            So John the baptizer is reiterating, summing up what he has said.  Did John the baptizer not know Jesus personally?  Or did John not know Jesus was going to be HIM?  That is a distraction from what John continues to say.  The one who sent him to baptize had instructions for him, something to watch for.  Watch for “he on whom John the baptizer sees the Spirit descending AND remaining upon.”  This one has a different mission.  This one does not baptize with water, but with the Holy Spirit.” 

            The one upon whom the Spirit descended and remained, so the Spirit is not a temporary fix.  This may seem odd, in our experience we know that the Holy Spirit comes down to remain on us.  But that is not the experience in the Old Testament.  There are times when the Spirit came down and when the Spirit was withdrawn, as upon King Saul, before David rose up.  Or on the workmen who built the tabernacle, the Spirit came upon them to do a job on the Holy Place of God that was beyond the means of simple mortals. 

            But there is a change happening in Jesus.  The Holy Spirit came and it remained upon him.  But He is not simply a holder of the Spirit, but he will pass it along as well, as He will baptize in the Spirit.  This is an upgrade from John the baptizer’s water baptism.  People came to John and, when they repented, they were baptized.  Now, in Jesus, they will come to repent and they shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit.  The implication is more staying power.  Baptizing in the Holy Spirit seems to fulfill that which John the baptizer leads with in these verses.  This is how the world will be included in the company of those whose sins were taken away by the Lamb of God.

            The one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit, that is the new piece added to Jesus’ ‘resume’ in this passage.  It also establishes the importance of the Spirit in the message that John the Gospel Writer is sharing.  Later, in the chapter that contains Jesus’ hope for the afterlife, “in my Father’s house there are many mansions…”, Jesus will expand on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the disciples and the church after his return to heaven.

Pastor Pete

What John Saw That Made Him Know Jesus Was THE GUY

John 1: 29-34                                      February 24, 2021

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ ³²And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

            John saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove.  Did anybody else?  The rule of oppositions.  If the text tells us one thing, does it rule something else out?  Why is this important?  In the celebration of Jesus’ baptism, I have always considered it a miracle in front of the crowd.  There were all the people coming to John to be baptized, then, in a Hollywood move, the crowds part and there is Jesus.

            Knowing Jesus, I am certain he would have waited his turn, but when he got down to the water, as he was baptized, the heavens opened (although Mark says they were torn apart) and down comes the Spirit in the form of a dove.  Then John and the crowd are dumbfounded because they know they have seen something special. 

            But this is not a record of that scene.  This is a record after the fact of the baptism of Jesus.  It is the recollection of John the baptizer, who is recognizing that this particular baptism was unique.  It was the reason for his ministry.  He, John, was the one who would recognize the Lamb of God sent to take away the sins of the world.  He is apparently in Bethany, where the Jewish leadership had come to grill him and, just walking down the street, he saw Jesus coming and he shared what he knew to be the truth.  If Bethany was a typical town of the era, very small, it was probably the equivalent of a ‘one horse’ town today, a main street, grocery store, gas station, and post office.

            What John the baptizer is recounting is the historic moment of when he knew he had achieved the prophecy of being one who cried out in the wilderness, “Make straight the Way of the Lord.”  His entire testimony hinges on this particular event. 

             “Like a dove” has led to that image being the metaphoric representation of the Spirit in art down through the ages.  We have stained glass windows in our church with the dove in a few places.  There are also birds that could be the dove in others.  Makes one wonder when a dove is just a dove and when it is the Spirit.

            It seems that this was a private event, the way John the baptizer describes it.  He saw the Spirit come down in the form of a dove.  Jesus, as the recipient, probably saw it too.  

            The coming of the Spirit upon Jesus marks the beginning of his public ministry.  It came when he was baptized by John at the River Jordan.  The Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove.  What is missing from John’s gospel is God the Father’s statement of approval of the Son to “seal the deal”.  But tomorrow, in the next verse, we will have the fuller background that John the baptizer received for this event.

SIDEBAR: Did you know that in the gospels it is explicit that Jesus never baptized, only his disciples?

Pastor Pete

I Never Really Considered the Question Before of Why John Was Baptizing at the Jordan in the First Place

John 1: 29-34                                      February 23, 2021

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ ³²And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

            It’s like John the baptizer is saying, “Hey guys, remember that really confusing time and value sentence I threw at you back when?  You know, the one who comes after was before and ranks ahead of me?  Yah, yah, that’s him!”  I have this picture of Jesus, suddenly stopping and looking around, the expression on his face saying something like “You mean me?”  We spent some time with the formulation of that sentence, so I will not go there again.  This is why I continue into the next verse.

            John the baptizer and Jesus are related, we know that from Luke’s gospel.  But that may not look clear from what John says next, “I myself did not know him…”  Is John the baptizer saying that Jesus was a stranger when he showed up to be baptized?  Maybe, but consider the rest of this verse.  John the baptizer had a reason for his baptism.  He was baptizing precisely so the special one, the Messiah, the new Elijah, the prophet, that this person might be revealed in Israel.  I do not think that John says “I myself did not know him” because his cousin was a stranger.  I think he said that because John the baptizer did not know his little cousin Jesus was the Chosen One. 

            The next verses will show us the prerequisites that Jesus fulfilled in his baptism that gained him this recognition from John.

            But before we get there, let us take a moment to answer a question I had not thought of before.  Why was John baptizing at all?  These are the introductions to Jesus’ ministry.  He pops by to lend support to his cousin’s ministry.  Nice thing for him to do.  But according to this verse, what John is doing is deliberate.

            John the baptizer was there so that Jesus’ coming could be properly recognized, so that John could single him out as the ‘one who came before’ and not just before, but from ‘the beginning’.  Maybe this is why John seems so exuberant to point Jesus out in the street.  “This is the one!  This is the guy who came before and ranks ahead even though he came after!!”  Or something like that.  It was his little cousin Jesus (or his big cousin, maybe John is 5’7” and Jesus is 6’2”). 

            I would invite you to read Luke 1 to get the background on John’s birth.  He was a miracle baby himself, a foreshadowing to Mary, the mother of Jesus, of her own miraculous birth.  There is a scene described there that when Mary showed up and found John’s mother, Elizabeth, very pregnant with him, that John leapt in the womb.  It makes the gospel narrative very personal to me to consider the possibility that the ‘womb-jumping’ story was part of the lore of the extended family.  Maybe John heard that story his whole life growing up.  Maybe as a kid, he got sick of hearing about it.

            But now, in his adulthood, he sees that story fulfilled in Jesus.  Such delight seems to backstop the telling of these verses. 

            Because the Bible is not a cold law book.  It is far more.  It is a collection of stories, including laws, that speak of real people and a real nation and a real God who works out a plan of redemption through them.

Pastor Pete   

So John Spoke, then, When He Saweth the Lord, He Sayeth, "Thus is He of Whom I Doth Speaketh, the Lamb of God", in the Englith of Shakesthpeare

 John 1: 29-34                                      February 22, 2021

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ ³²And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

            An important consideration in Scripture is understanding when one part ends and another begins.  This is particularly important for sermons, since one of the presuppositions is that it is based on a unified portion of Scripture.  Using an un-unified, or a select bit can create a situation where the truth of Scripture can be manipulated, something done far too often across Christian history.

            In this case, our passage today is divided between what comes before and what comes after by the passing of days.  Vss. 29 and 35 both mark the passing of days.  But where are they?  The common assumption is Jerusalem, but we have not been given that information in the text.  The only geographic mark we’ve been given so far is “Bethany, across the Jordan from where John the baptizer was baptizing.”

            It makes sense that they are still there.  That Jesus would be in proximity after John spent the last verses being grilled by priests, Levites, and Pharisees.  Maybe they are still hanging about, and here is John, in Bethany, when he sees the man that is the subject of his prophetic utterances.  Imagine a Pharisee walking next to John the baptizer, trying to dig a little deeper into the theological mind of this itinerant (wandering) baptizer.  Even preachers run out of things to say (hard as that is to believe) and, in the moment, John sees Jesus walking toward him.  A picture is worth a thousand words so he holds out his hand and

            HERE is the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world!  In other words, maybe, here is the man you should be talking to. 

            The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  I hear that line most often when I have the privilege of attending a Catholic Mass (usually weddings and funerals) in their call and response.  The Lamb of God is a recurring metaphor of Jesus in John’s writing.  It shows up fairly often in Revelations. (Yes, I am taking it as a presupposition that John the gospel writer wrote both). 

            The lamb is powerful symbolically in the Old Testament as a sacrifice to God.  But its particular significance (as opposed to all the other animals that were ‘legally’ sacrificed at the Temple), the Lamb’s particular significance comes at Passover.  It is at Passover when Jesus will be sacrificed on the Cross.  Passover was the moment when the Angel of Death passed over the houses of the Israelite slaves in Egypt while it went about killing the first born of the Egyptians in the Tenth plague.  It passed over their houses because of the blood of the Lamb painted on the lintel and doorposts. 

            Which is really a gruesome image by our modern sensibilities.  But we have lost touch in a powerful way with where our food, particularly our meat, comes from.

            The Lamb takes on a combined meaning from the Law of Moses.  It is the Passover lamb, as just described, but it is also the sin offering, a sacrifice made on a recurring basis so that the sins of the Israelite would be forgiven by God. 

            None of that has yet taken place in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but John the gospel writer lays down these truths from the very beginning of his writing.

Pastor Pete

On the Jogfree of the Land where John Baptized

John 1: 28                                           February 19, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            Maps.  I love ‘em.  Many people could not have a higher degree of indifference to them.  But this is an important consideration to our gospel reading today, because there was Bethany, and then there was Bethany. 

            One of the staples of my childhood was “All in the Family.”  Took place in Queens.  Urban racist and bigot Archie Bunker and his family.  Yes!  A situation comedy!!  He worked a blue collar job and there was an episode that rotated around an order from the plant gone terribly wrong, London instead of London.  London, England, across the Pond, the Atlantic Ocean, versus London, Ontario, in Canada, 10 hour drive.  I remember him griping about places with the same name when his deeply wise, ‘dingbat’ wife Edith reminded us of one ‘close to home’ for them: New York, New York! 

            Because if you are a bible nerd, you might remember a different Bethany, one right outside of Jerusalem.  A few things happen there.  Lazarus, and his sisters, Mary and Martha, live in Bethany.  Without looking it up, I recall Jesus coming through Bethany on his way in to Jerusalem for what we celebrate as “Palm Sunday”.  But this isn’t that one. 

            But in our passage, we are in a different Bethany, one where the priests and Levites and Pharisees were meeting up with John, across from where he was baptizing.  Trying to decipher that is a pain in the neck until you can look at a map.  The Jordan River is a traditional boundary of the Promised Land.  The closest point of the Jordan to Jerusalem, where the gospel says the priests and Levites were dispatched from, is due east, where the Jordan meets the Dead Sea.  This is where John the baptizer was baptizing, the closet, most convenient spot of flowing water to the Capital.  The other gospels record people coming down from Jerusalem to be baptized by him.

            In this case, John the baptizer seems to have crossed the River to meet these leaders in Bethany (Bethany-on-the-Jordan).  There is no indication of why he crossed the River to meet them there.  It might be implied that he wanted out of the political jurisdiction of these leaders in case it was not questions but an arrest warrant that they brought.  But it was certainly on his own terms.  He was not at the place where he was baptizing when he met with them, but across the River. 

            Why does it matter?  These are names on a page and dots on a map.  There is some truth to that question unless you have the privilege of ever being there, in Israel.  America is huge!  One can drive, at highway speeds, for over nine hours in Florida alone.  Israel, not so much.  My single biggest OMG moment was when the tour bus we were on pulled over, apparently at random, along one of the main roads in Israel, we all got out, and our guide pointed out the Dead Sea and Jordan River coming out its northern end ‘downhill’ and the skyline of Jerusalem ‘uphill’.  Both visible, without binoculars, from that midpoint.  The Gospels take place in a geographic area roughly the size of New Jersey, the fourth smallest state in the Union.

            Why does it matter?  You can walk to where John the baptizer was baptizing from Jerusalem, and back again, easily in less than a day.  And to get to Bethany-on-the-Jordan, it is downhill all the way. 

            It will also be helpful (I think also interesting) to track Jesus’ travels through the gospel of John.  In the other three, it seems to be Jesus in Galilee, then to Jerusalem for Holy Week.  There is a fair bit more travel in John’s Gospel.

Considering What John Claimed in His Obedience to Jesus and How It Might Provoke American Sensibilities

John 1: 26-27                                      February 18, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            So the challenge was, John the baptizer, you are NOT the Messiah nor Elijah nor the prophet (by John’s own admission), why do you baptize?  John’s response seems a little odd on the face of it.  “I baptize with water.”  This seems to be his rationale for why it is okay for him to baptize at all, not being one of the ‘big 3’.  If baptizing with water is okay, is there a baptism of some other form that is not okay?

            So it is something to watch for, to consider.  Where else does John the gospel writer, or the New Testament for that matter, talk about baptism that is not directly in regards to water baptism.  There is discussion of baptism of the Spirit.  But the Spirit has not been introduced to this narrative as yet.

            And, as we noted yesterday, the focus here is not on John the baptizer’s ministry except where it points to Christ.  So his answer is focused on Jesus.  He talks about the water, but then goes into far more depth about the one they do not yet know.  He returns to the refrain that this is the one who is coming after him.  I feels to me like John is saying that these discussions about the Messiah, about Elijah, about the prophet, will be far more fruitful with the ‘one who is coming after him’. 

            Now it is one thing to read John, separated so far from us in time and distance, when he says “I am unworthy to tie the thong of his sandal.”  

            For example, in “Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon”, a martial arts flick set in the US, an indulgence from my youth, there was a scene where the young hero is in his karate school surrounded by his students.  In walks the bad guy with his goons.  The bad guy shames the young hero by telling him to ‘kiss his Converse’ (his fancy sneakers) or, the implication was, his goons would hurt the students.  The hero bowed down before the bad guy, but got kicked in the face before he actually came in voluntary contact with the Converse.  Putting your face by someone's shoes is shaming behavior

            When we talk about being unworthy, it is in a satirical environment, as in the SNL sketch and movies about “Wayne’s World”, where Wayne and Garth would proclaim “We’re not worthy, we’re not worthy” when they met a rock star.

            John is embracing what we, in America, would consider to be shameful behavior between people as here, ‘all people are created equal’.  But on a superficial consideration, we can let this comment pass because it is not between people created equal, but a person and the Son of God.  I do not know about you, but this kind of obeisance, obedience shown to a superior through bows and kneeling and so on, is one of the things that I reject, as an American, as a vestige of a corrupt monarchical system.  But while I do not reject what John the baptizer is saying, because he is talking about Jesus, that kind of behavior is WAY out of my comfort zone. 

            When Jesus comes back, I feel like I will certainly be obedient in whatever way is appropriate because I will be so overjoyed, but, frankly, John’s comment about being unworthy to tie the thong of Jesus’ sandal, that’s not my favorite.

            And yet it foreshadows one of the most well-known episodes in the Gospel of John.  At the moment of the Last Supper, faithfully recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John does not speak to that.  Rather, he tells us about an episode leading up to that meal, how Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, taking on the role of a slave in that moment.  Does John the gospel writer include this piece of John the baptizer’s speech to deliberate connect to what Jesus will do?  I cannot say with absolute certainty, but it is a powerful reminder of what Jesus was willing and what Jesus did do for each of us.      

It Seems that the Ministry of John is Tied to Who John is, According to the Pharisees

 

John 1: 25                                           February 17, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            So the Pharisees are not questioning who John is, but what John is doing.  Implicit in their question is that if John were one of these aforementioned prophesied individuals, it would be appropriate for him to be baptizing. 

            This is interesting.  It is not only the Gospel of John that records the ministry of baptism that John the baptizer was engaged in at the Jordan River.  But here, in the Gospel of John, the Pharisees are challenging him on this practice, because of, pardon the inverse, who he’s NOT.  But what is not explained is why John is here baptizing in the first place.  In the other accounts, we know that John is calling on the people to repent, and baptism is a sign of that repentance.  It is so powerful, that even Pharisees and other leaders of the Jews were coming down to John to be baptized.  But that information is not shared in this gospel.

            It is not the focus of John the gospel writer to lay down those details.  John the baptizer’s testimony is all about Jesus, the ministry of baptism as well, is all about Jesus.  So this background of John’s ministry loads the question that the Pharisees are asking with more weight.  The Messiah, Elijah, or the Prophet, those figures, when they come, will come also, apparently, with a call to repent.  A call to return to right relationship with God.  This seems to be in the minds of the priests and Levites as well, as they ran down their list.  Something from God is going to occur.  That is their presupposition.  Is John the one to do that something?

            It is not a question of skepticism.  Their presupposition is not that this guy out in the desert is a fraud, and it must be proven.  Rather, that there is something divine in the ministry, and we have to figure out what it is.

            Why baptism?  In the bible, it is mentioned here and then it goes on to become the sacrament of ‘initiation’ into the Christian faith.  But it seems that this was a more common practice in the days of Jesus.  An interesting explanation was given while I was there soooo long ago.

            Israel is basically a desert.  Water is either scarce or violent.  In the dry season, it is scarce.  In the rainy season, the wadis and gullies that cut through the landscape can flood to drowning strength in what seems like the blink of an eye.  The bodies of water that they are familiar with in Jerusalem are the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean.  The Mediterranean is a violent body of water for someone who has no experience with it.  The Dead Sea is rather self explanatory.  To be dipped into water in baptism is to be dipped into death.  To be brought back to the surface is to be returned to life.  This is why baptism is described in parallel to Jesus’ death and resurrection.  But, more generally, it seems to be a widely used ritual in this time period to mark repentance, old life to new life, separated by the death of going under the water.

            It is not a ritual described in direct terms in the Law of Moses (although there are hints of it as in the story of Naaman being cured of leprosy). 

            What I am getting at is there is a background to baptism.  It seems as though John the gospel writer is taking it for granted that his readers will have some sense of what that background is.  They may not have the lengthy explanation that I have been given, but they do know what John the baptizer was seeking to accomplish in this ministry. 

            Thus, we have an explanation, in part, for why there are four gospels.  Their writers have different experiences with Jesus, they are inspired to bring forward similar and different details of Jesus’ life and ministry.  Taken together, they provide for a richer understanding of our Lord and Savior.

Pastor Peter

Next Up to Question John, The Pharisees, the Teachers of the Law.

John 1: 22                                           February 16, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            The Pharisees, next round of experts come to see John to get some answers.  These folks need to be distinguished from the priests and Levites.  Those guys were from the establishment leadership, from the temple in Jerusalem.  Politically, the High Priest was the most powerful ‘accepted’ position among the Jewish people.  The king was viewed as an outsider imposed upon them.  The High Priest is at the center of the Jewish leadership.

            The Pharisees are a different group.  They are still a part of the ruling elite of the Jews, but not directly involved with the Temple crowd.  Rather, a Pharisee was a teacher of the law, an expert in matters of Moses and the Old Testament.  They seem to have arisen as leaders of the synagogues, the meeting places for Jews on the Sabbath when not in Jerusalem.  Jesus served in this role a number of times when he would go into the synagogue on the Sabbath and interpret the Scriptures. 

            It seems this was a class of leaders seeking to keep the Jewish people informed and living by the Law of Moses.  They had their own ways of doing things.  The gospels will record Jesus clashing with this class a lot because it appears they used the Law to their own advantage, making themselves important in the community around themselves, imposing their interpretation on how people should understand their ‘bible’, the Old Testament.  

            Jesus, identified as a ‘rabbi’, as a ‘teacher’, seems to find his roots in this class.  The way in which Jesus interpreted the whole law, Love God and Love Neighbor, that finds its roots in the teachings of a Pharisee.  While not necessarily political leaders, they were religious and cultural leaders.  This goes into the difference between being Jewish and being Christian.

            Christianity is a religious identity while Judaism is a religious identity, a cultural and political identity as well.  There are secular Jews.  A secular Christian is a non sequitur.  If the temple leadership was concerned that the Jewish population followed the proper rites and ritual of the Jewish faith, the Pharisees were concerned that the Jewish population understood the wider implications of life and living as governed by the Jewish faith.  

            These various leadership castes mark the different groups operating at the time of Jesus.  It is into this diverse ‘marketplace’ of religious ideas that Jesus will be introducing his own, as part of the Plan of God.  As I said, there will be no shortage of conflict that is raised between Jesus and these various groups.

Pastor Peter  

John finally says, "I'll tell you who I am, who I really really am."

John 1: 21                                           February 15, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            So there is a strain of thinking that wants to brand the gospels as fraudulent.  Basically, what this thinking argues is that the writers of the gospels were knowledgeable about the Old Testament, so they took all the prophecies that they found pointing to a Messiah, and they stitched together a ‘fiction’ that accounted for them as they wrote the story of Jesus.  John the baptizer is one of these frauds, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness…”  There was no John, there was no voice crying in the wilderness, this is just the biggest fiction written about Jesus since Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”. 

            OR this is John.  He is in the wilderness.  Connoisseur of locusts and wild honey.  Scratchy leather fashion statement.  Enjoyed dunking people in the River Jordan for religious reviving reasons.  John tells us, “Make straight the way of the Lord.”

            John is not the Messiah.  John is not Elijah.  John is not THE prophet.  John is the one who makes the way straight for the Lord.  Or this is a pack of lies.  Entertainment wrapped up as religious literature.

            This is the trouble.  Doubt gets in your head, doubt creeps into your heart.  Read the Bible, be filled with the hope, and then have that hope turned aside.  I do not believe the Gospels are some fiction-writer’s attempt at a giant hoax.  I believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises made across the bible in regards to the Messiah.  What I also believe is that the Messiah is something more than then writers of the Old Testament knew.  Revelation from God is progressive, meaning more is revealed as time goes on.  So when John says he is to make straight the way of the Lord, what that means, in part, is that the plan of God is going to be revealed in a way that the glimpses we have been given to date cannot fully explain.

            He is quoting Isaiah here and this is what a prophet does, he or she prophecies things.  They speak in God’s name about things are going to come to pass, and those things come to pass.  

            Otherwise, the “fiction” approach to the gospels is dependent upon the ‘prophecies’ of the Old Testament being fallacies.  And if the Old Testament prophecies are fallacies, then God did not give those predictions to God’s prophets.  Maybe they were high or something.  But it is a systematic undercutting of the entire Bible. 

            Some people like the ‘ethical’ Jesus that they find in the Bible.  Love neighbors and things like that.  So instead of taking the whole gospel, they need to edit it down to their preferred bits.  President Thomas Jefferson did this.  Did not like ‘the divine’ bits so he cut them out.  But here is the problem.  If you only take the ethical bits as what you believe about Jesus, then Jesus is insane.  Because here it claims that he was at creation, in the beginning, with God.  And now, he’s got his crazy cousin involved, who is now quoting a guy whose been dead for seven hundred years or so, and saying that this connects to Jesus.

            Except that John says he is the voice of one crying in the wilderness to make straight the way of the Lord, to cut through the ‘selective’ love of Christ to lay out the whole package for us.  Jesus, the Word, the Messiah, the Christ, the whole bowl of salad. 

            Then, as now, there were people trying to figure John out.  The priests and Levites had their categories, “messiah”, “Elijah”, “the prophet”.  We have our categories today, full on dismissal of the gospel truth, picking and choosing what bits of Jesus one likes the best.   Take the gospel of John.  Some like to cut it away from the other gospels because it is the one that refers to Jesus as God.  Well, it is the one that refers to Jesus as God the most, but those references are elsewhere in the gospels.

            These priests and scribes have come to John because they do not know what is going on.  People come to the bible, to the gospels for answers, which means they have questions they cannot answer, which means they do not know what is going on.  And there is a world of sin out there that is going to do whatever it can to pull those who take their bible seriously away from that truth and away from Christ. 

            Far too many people do not even bother with their bibles, do not even bother to explore God’s revelation for themselves and are most easily led astray by the next story or theory or debunkment that comes along.  But that is not going to work.  Because John the baptizer is the voice in the wilderness crying out to make straight the way of the Lord.

Pastor Peter

           

Who are you? What do you say about yourself? Some questions never change.

John 1: 21                                           February 12, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            The priests and Levites are stumped.  This blue ribbon panel is not able to carry out its assignment.  They have run through the categories they know about Godly predicted leaders coming along.  John has admitted to being none of these.  They need an answer for the Jewish leadership, the ones who sent them.  It has been my experience from years of church leadership that when somebody says “they”, it is a cover in large part for what they want to know themselves.

            This verse speaks to the skeptic, the one who does not know, the one who wants to know about Jesus and what John is even talking about.  When I read this exchange, I believe I am reading about something that really happened.  This is not a news report where the anchorman can say something like “Roll the tape” to show us what happened.  But this is John the narrator, the Gospel Writer, inspired by God to set down from his own experience that which is about Jesus.

            And if I believe that, then arguments that say “No no no no”, obviously John is much later, the last of the gospels written…not even by John…the point of the gospel has shifted.  No longer is the gospel an accurate accounting of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but it is a contentious document whose origins need to be debated and argued over so that the content can be set aside as suspicious. 

            What brought that to the surface was the very questioning nature of the priests and Levites.  “Who are you?”  “What do you have to say for yourself?”  When scholarship makes pronouncements about the Bible, about who wrote what when because they have applied the very best of human scholarship to it, to take it seriously asks these same questions.  Who is John?  What does John really have to say about Jesus?

            On the one hand, the church accepts, on faith, the contents of the Gospel of John.  On the other, academia has come to the conclusion that the Gospel of John is not an accurate representation of what happened at that time and we can learn nothing about Jesus as a figure of history from it.  At best, Jesus is a figure of legend, a figure who has been twisted to fit John’s desire to create Jesus into a divine figure.  Whoever “John” really is.

            Essentially, a ‘take it or leave it’ duality is thrust upon the text.  Accept it in faith because human study does not accept its possibilities.

            Here is the difference in how one comes to the Bible.  Do we accept that the Bible is a gift given from above?  That God, through the work of these authors and those who gathered these books together, is laying down for us the Word of God in all its messy glory?  Or do we approach it from down on earth, looking up?  Do we decide that ‘this is a book’, therefore we will subject it to all the literary analysis and skepticism that the sciences would demand of us?  Yes, we see what the book has to say, but, what is unsaid?  “You”, meaning believers, take this book on faith, how about taking it on reality? 

            This is not all scholarship, not by a long shot.  But this is the scholarship that comes from the ‘unbiased’ secular academic world.  Some incredible research and analysis of the Bible is done in the Seminary, but we come to that faith issue again. 

            I believe that Jesus as presented to us in the gospel is who he was in history, the Messiah and the Lord of my faith.  This is what Jesus came to do.  Academic research that “undercuts” the validity of the written Word is going to shake that faith, but ultimately make it stronger.  Because I am not in a ‘faith neutral’ position when I come to analyzing this kind of academic work.  But it is an easy rabbit hole to fall into.  It is really easy to let go of the faith that binds me to accepting the Words of Scripture when the ‘smart research’ says something else.      

            Who are you?  What do you have to say for yourself?  These questions do not go away.  There is always a challenge going on to what we believe as Christians.  It is why the study of Scripture is SO critical to us.