William Loader
Palm Sunday: 24 March Matthew 21:1-11
Palm Sunday is also Passion Sunday. The Palm Sunday passage moves us towards the Passion. It has its genesis in Jesus' strategy to bring himself and his message to Jerusalem. This was much more than a PR opportunity not to be missed because of the concentration of people in Jerusalem during Passover. Rather it belongs to the body language of the message of the 'kingdom'. It is an expression of hope for change. Just as Jesus reflected the Jewish roots of his passion for change by choosing twelve disciples, so also his march on Zion reflects his people's vision that God would bring about a change beginning with Jerusalem. To affirm the vision of the kingdom and to live out its hopes in the present in action and symbol meant challenging existing structures of authority, both those of the temple leadership and those of Rome. This is the backdrop for the drama which follows. To journey with Jesus still means espousing a challenge to the powers which hold sway in our world (and our church).
Palm Sunday invites play, serious play. Here is the procession to end all processions. Here is adulation. The creative imagination can place the hearer among the crowd beside the road, reluctant, fully adoring, standing aloof in confusion or alienation, perhaps remembering key events from Jesus' ministry. Let the imagination run!
It is important, however, not to cut story from its moorings so that it becomes a triumphalist celebration. In Matthew, as in Mark, whom Matthew closely follows here, this is the fateful entry which will take Jesus to his death. The dramatic irony which celebrates Jesus as king and reaches its climax with Jesus crowned king of the Jews on the cross, is beginning. The acclamation of the crowd is, therefore, at least ambiguous. They will, in Matthew, call Jesus' blood upon themselves and their children. That will have fateful consequences - according to Matthew in the destruction of the temple and the widespread slaughter of its inhabitants, according to subsequent history in the annals of anti-Semitic hate. The scene is full of danger and denseness. John's gospel shows some sensitivity to the problem when he adds the footnote that the disciples did not really understand what was happening or what it meant until after Easter (12:16).
Nor should we picture an historical event in which the whole of Jerusalem lined the streets, thronging the new Messiah. An actual entry with some shouts of praise doubtless occurred but would have been sufficiently lost in the Passover crowds as not to warrant the military's attention, who would have been swift to put an end to what could have seemed like a potential disturbance. Whatever the event, it became highly symbolic. Perhaps it had this quality from the start, especially if we imagine a provocative act on Jesus' part in emulating Zechariah's prediction, which Matthew now fully cites; but this is doubtful. Throughout the passion narrative it is difficult to know where reports gave rise to scripture elaboration and where scripture gave rise to stories. Most echoes of scripture (especially the Psalms) probably began as allusions and subsequently became quotations, as here in Matthew. Matthew's concern for precise fulfillment has Jesus ride on 'them', that is, both the ass and its foal, one of the funniest results of 'fulfillmentism' in the New Testament!
Matthew begins, as does Mark, with the finding of the animals, a miracle similar to the finding of the upper room a little later on. Hearers of the evangelists would recognize in this a sign of divine involvement; it worked for them. Matthew dwells on it less than Mark. The actions of the crowd are as they are reported in Mark. Their acclamation, using the words of Psalm 118, which finds it echo in the Eucharistic liturgy, is more than heralding a Passover pilgrim. It is heralding the Davidic Messiah. Matthew simplifies their cry. It becomes: 'Hosanna to the son of David.' 'Son of David' is an appropriate title for Israel's Messiah, a hope modeled on selective memory of his achievements. It is found on the lips of the Canaanite woman, two sets of two blind men (20:29-34; 9:27-31; cf. Mark 10:46-52), and a few verses later on the lips of children who also cry: 'Hosanna to the Son of David' (21:15). Matthew uses acclamation by outsiders, marginalized and little ones, to shame Israel for its failure to acknowledge him as 'the Son of David' of Jewish hopes.
According to Matthew Jesus' presence sets Jerusalem in turmoil. One is reminded of the consternation caused there by the magi (2:3). To describe the turmoil Matthew uses the word for earthquake (eseisthe), which will reappear at Jesus' death (27:51) and again at his resurrection (28:2). The event was 'of earth shattering significance' - certainly in world history, in retrospect - so Matthew writes this into the scene. It is his own creative addition to Mark's account.
The crowds in Jerusalem have not really grasped who he is, stopping at 'the prophet from Nazareth' (21:11). This nevertheless forms a good transition to what immediately follows in Matthew, the attempted reform of the temple (21:12-13). Matthew has removed from the scene the cursing of the fig tree which encapsulates the event in Mark (11:12-14; 20-21; Matthew brings it later: 21:18-19). Instead we see the true Son of David performing in the temple acts of healing which in Matthew appear strongly linked with Jesus as Son of David and may reflect popular traditions about the first Son of David, Solomon as a source of medical wisdom. They may also reflect fulfillment of the great prophetic hope that in the end times there will be healing on Mount Zion. The presence of 'the Son of David' in the episode immediately preceding the entry (20:30,31), in the entry and in the episode which immediately follows (21:15), has the effect of making the whole a celebration of his identity as Israel's Messiah, as the bringer of wholeness and healing.
Jesus was not entering a foreign city, nor entering the city of 'the Jews'. He was a Jew. He was entering the city which symbolised in his faith and his scriptures God's promise to Israel. To confront one's own faith and its traditions is painful. This is part of the drama of the event, both in Matthew's account and in the earlier forms of the story, not least in the event itself.
Thus Jesus' approach to Jerusalem has become for many a symbol of the confrontation they must make, including the confrontation with themselves. The issues at stake are not ultimate control or power, though it is easy to give this impression: Jesus is the rightful king! For then might dictates the terms and we reinforce the theme that might is right and right is might and reproduce its abuses in the swirl of deduction. The children acclaim the true signs of messiah ship and they have less to do with palms and crowns, which ultimately must be subverted into irony on the cross, and more to do with acts of healing and compassion. Without them the entry story is ambiguous, a potential disaster, which realises itself in every generation in the name of piety. A radically subverted model of power exercised in compassion challenges the temple system and Rome in its day and their equivalents in our own, around us and within us.
William Loader
Passion Sunday: 24 March Matthew 27:11-54 (26:14 - 27:66)
Passion Sunday is also Palm Sunday. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ appearance before Pilate and his execution follows Mark closely, but with significant variations. It is also a narrative which has its own integrity and makes its own dramatic sense of the events.
As in Mark the trial before Pilate begins with the leading question: ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ It is easy to miss the dimensions of this encounter: the major power of Rome through Pilate its representative confronts suggestions of an alternative. You can almost sense that a callous turn of the thumb would be enough to squash this stray ant which dared to raise itself as an alternative. The power imbalance is enormous, but the stakes are high, though not from Pilate’s perspective.
The conflict has been transposed from one of impatience with another bit of Jewish nationalism to a meeting of rival claimants: Rome and God. For Matthew’s hearers the ghost of Herod might be raised. They had heard Matthew tell of the cruelty inflamed by whispers of a claimant to be ‘king of the Jews’ and the resultant slaughter of the infants. Whether through fear or impatience with the untidiness of people’s aspirations, Herod and Pilate help us make sense of Jesus’ execution. With no human rights conventions to take into account the priority was peace and stability. Dissent likely to invite dissatisfaction with the system had to be quashed swiftly. The finer nuances which could distinguish one source of dissent from another were not worth bothering about. Jesus, Barabbas, and the two brigands on either side, were all basically after the same thing: radical change which would unseat Rome (and others). It was an unnecessary abstraction to discuss how their strategies differed. Can you really respond to that? Jesus remained silent - admirable even from Pilate’s perspective and wise.
Matthew reworks the scene with Barabbas. It becomes Pilate’s initiative (not the crowd’s) to bring Barabbas into the equation. Choose Jesus Barabbas (Aramaic: son of the father) or Jesus (Son of God). The effect is to lay the blame squarely on the crowd. By inserting a report about the wife of Pilate and her dream (27:19), Matthew suggests that she, like Joseph and the magi of the birth stories, has a special connection with the divine. It could even indicate that he wants to exonerate Pilate. Washing his hands and declaring Jesus innocent (27:24) might point in that direction. Matthew certainly points to the bloody consequences for Jerusalem and its inhabitants (27:25). But, standing back from the picture, we cannot overlook Pilate’s role. Whatever game he is playing in the narrative, as such leaders are wont to do, he does not escape responsibility. The fundamental conflict remains: God’s way and Rome’s.
As in Mark the irony works itself out as we see the mock coronation. It is more than cruel ridicule. At a deeper level it subverts the emblems of power and will portray a new kind of human (and divine) value about leadership (and about God!). The narrative plays out what Jesus had already explained: true greatness is not enjoying control over others and exploiting them, but living with compassion and caring towards others. Here is a different understanding of leadership and greatness. The passion narrative weaves together images from the psalms, especially Ps 22 and 69, to portray Jesus’ innocence and brokenness not as a derailment of the divine strategy, shortly to be rectified by resurrection and triumph, but as God’s way and ultimately as God’s being (when we reflect beyond Matthew).
In Matthew the mockery is slightly tweaked to evoke earlier scenes. He adds, ‘If you are the son of God’, in 27:40, to remind hearers of the temptations in the wilderness. The accusations about destroying the temple will be thrown back on the assailants when the temple curtain is torn, a sign of God’s judgement on its authorities.
The cry of forsakenness with which Psalm 22 begins has been rendered in a form which reflects the Hebrew more closely (27:46). Matthew distracts us from reflection on the questions its raises by depicting a scurrying about under the cross to quench Jesus’ thirst and a mishearing that Jesus was calling for Elijah, reflecting a common belief that he would come to save people (see also 16:10-13). Matthew’s Jesus was not recanting or abandoning faith, but, like Mark’s, crying out in faith, not on the assumption God was not there, but in the awareness what God was not rescuing him. I doubt that Matthew would press it to the point of disillusionment. The Psalms are used to depict real suffering and real need and a choice to be there (Matthew suggests a choice in 26:53).
To Mark’s account of the tearing of the temple curtain Matthew adds an earthquake and reports of holy people coming from their tombs and making appearances after Easter. The timing is awkward. The risings would have fitted better after the earthquake of 28:2. Matthew is probably merging older traditions which had not yet settled on a three day sequence of events. The point for Matthew is that this event is more than just an incident on a hill far away. It is something of cosmic significance. Like the star at Jesus’ birth, the earthquake makes an earth statement: this killing and dying is representative. It focuses into itself the violence of all people against all people, against the earth and against God. As the heavens declare the glory of God so, here, the earth declares God’s pain. It provides the instrumental music for the lament which the execution evokes.
With these new swathes of meaning on the canvass, Matthew now has the centurion joined by his companions witnessing not only how Jesus died (Mark 15:39), but also the earthquake and its sequels and declaring to all the world that Jesus is truly the Son of God (27:54). As in Mark, here the Gentile response gets it right, but in Matthew the focus is primarily on the fact that Jesus is ‘Son of God’, a designation he has added in both 27:49 and 40. That drives the poetic and had already done so in Mark who surrounds the moment of death in darkness.
The killing of love, the killing of Jesus, becomes the would-be killing of God. It is paradigmatic for all time. ‘Son of God’ is Matthew’s way in part of claiming that what happened here happened to God in some sense. This event became a point of revelation of God and evil, of love and hate. It will be mythologised far beyond Matthew’s earthquake and Mark’s darkness and spawn the imaginations of faith. Some will be helpful, some, unhelpful; some, fitting the event back into the values of deals and transactions, some, simply allowing the blood to flow and finding it in all violence and sin; some, putting it into competition with others’ insights, some, seeing it as a light which seeks its companions universally.
We stand under its impact and mystery. Our role is not to explain it down, but to open it up so that people will have an opportunity like generations before them to find in it their own story and find it in their own story.
William Loader
Lent 5: 17 March John 11:1-45
This another great narrative in John’s gospel, a well chosen sequel to John 4 and John 9 in the previous weeks. The verses which end the previous chapter (10:40-42) take us back to where the earthly ministry began: Jesus and John the Baptist. The effect is twofold. We are reminded of the difference between Jesus and John; John did no ‘signs/miracles’ (10:41). Jesus is greater - a major concern of the author. And, secondly, Jesus really is the one whom the Baptist predicted (10:41). The broader impact of these two verses is that they prepare us for the climax of the account of Jesus’ ministry. We are heading towards death and resurrection!
The story of Jesus and Lazarus, like the other great narratives of John 4 and John 9, operates at two levels - at least two! At the basic level (Nicodemus’s level) it tells the story of bringing a dead person back to life (who will eventually die like other human beings). Like the healing of the blind man in John 9 or the lame man in John 5 it is a miracle. John believes in miracles and is able to convey to us a sense of what the death meant for the people involved. It was real: Jesus wept! That verse alone is worth a sermon in contexts where the gospel is understood as all light and joy.
As the drama unfolds at the basic level we have a number of scenes. Martha and later Mary affirm that if Jesus had been present Lazarus would not have died. Jesus responds to the distress of Mary and her friends. Jesus is very fond of the family and of Lazarus, which has led some to speculate whether Lazarus might be the enigmatic ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ of whom we hear elsewhere. Jesus had deliberately postponed his response for strategic reasons. In the larger story the raising of Lazarus will set off a chain of events leading eventually to Jesus’ journey through suffering to glory. All these and other details fit the story at the basic level.
We do not have to travel far into the story before we see that something else is also going on here. Jesus’ response that Lazarus’s sickness was not terminal may reflect an earlier form of the story in which Jesus really did assess the situation wrongly, but it is not the case here in John. ‘This sickness will not lead to death’ eventually becomes true. That it takes place ‘for the glory of God’ interprets the sickness (and death) as having a purpose (with all the theological issues that raises), but the outcome will be: Jesus, ‘the Son of God, will be glorified’. Passages like John 17 show that John portrays Jesus’ path of suffering and death as leading back to the Father’s glory, ie. his glorification. Jesus knows that. The hearers of the gospel know that. His disciples and others in the narrative do not. This creates irony in the passage.
The irony is apparent in 11:8-10 where the disciples (cannot help but) miss the point, because going up to Jerusalem to suffer and die is Jesus’ plan. Jesus’ response about light and darkness reminds us of his affirmation that he is the light of the world. The period of his ministry is coming to an end. Darkness is coming! A similar irony follows in 11:11-16 where again the disciples are missing the point and Jesus is speaking in riddles (from their perspective), but we the hearers know it all makes sense! We smile sadly at Thomas’s words in 11:16: some will die with Jesus - or, at least, for him. Indeed they will.
The two meetings, first of Martha, then of Mary, with Jesus sit neatly in the centre of the narrative. They have the effect of highlighting Jesus’ proclamation that he is the resurrection and the life (11:25-26). Martha typifies faith: she believes in Jesus’ power; she believes in a day of resurrection. We should assume the same for Mary (whose quieter character is reminiscent of what we read in Luke). The Jewish crowd is also important for the basic level of the narrative. Their reports and the controversies which ensue will bring Jesus to death - and then to resurrection! On the way we pass through the description of distress, of weeping, of the smell of the corpse, of the dramatic emergence of the embalmed body, and of wonder and excitement. But, above the drama at that basic level, hovers a higher meaning which comes to expression in Jesus’ response to Martha.
Jesus declares: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone believing in me, even if they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die’ (11:25-26). At the basic level it is not, in fact, true: Lazarus will eventually die. But it is not meant to be understood as applying to that level. Rather, like the statements that Jesus is the bread of life and the light of the world, it is making a different point. It is typical of John’s gospel that it can be read at both levels. Because it uses the words, ‘even if they die’, we might think of what happened to Lazarus. ‘Will live’ introduces the point of ambiguity. At the level of the narrative this is also true of Lazarus (until he dies again!), but the implications of such a statement would be that any believer who dies will be similarly brought back to life for a while in a literal sense. That is about as absurd as when Nicodemus thinks literally about being born a second time (3:3-5).
The point of the saying, and ultimately of the narrative as a whole, is to make and celebrate the claim that people who believe in Jesus find life. It is eternal life, which includes timelessness or eternity in the temporal sense, but the focus is quality not quantity. It is sharing the life of God here and now and forever. The claim made in 11:25-26 uses the narrative as a springboard to jump to a different level of reality that leaves the original story behind and no longer applies to it. People who remain at the basic level of the story will have a faith like that of Martha and Mary. They need to move beyond that. If they do not, they will be left looking for the next miracle and failing to see, that from John’s perspective the miracles are signs of something else.
As we retell the story today we will have some who are as happy with the miracle as John was. We will have others who find such reports problematic and question the point of telling them if they are not repeatable in other situations of need. For the former an event becomes the setting for a claim which goes far beyond it. For the latter the narrative is a mythical drama, but to make the same claim.
To acclaim Jesus as resurrection and life is ultimately to say something about God and to do so we need to ensure we think theologically. How do we understand this God who through Christ is shown as life and nourishment? We then find ourselves talking about compassion and challenge. John’s gospel keeps doing this: making claims which need careful exposition because the content is implied. At worst the claims become slogans of propaganda which are made also about others (that they are truth, the way, etc). At best we tell the whole story and know its summary: God so loved the world; God is compassion. That is the light that challenges the darkness, the truth that challenges the falsehood, the caring that challenges the abandonment - and so leads from death to life.
William Loader
Lent 4: 10 March John 9:1-41
It is a refreshing reminder to hear again Jesus’ rejection of a necessary causal link between disability and sin. While it is clearly outrageous to think otherwise, it often appears to inform attitudes and has been given broad application. So we will hear that people for whom life does not go well are at fault, whether that is about a disability, unemployment or sickness. Its corollary usually holds such an attitude in place: people who prosper are blessed; people blessed are good people. Other people are bad people! Biblical texts can be cited to support the claim.
In the drama which John unfolds here for his congregations the rime and reason for the disability was a matter of promoting the importance of Jesus. Whether the historical Jesus would have seen the needy as opportunities for promotion is doubtful. We need not have an explanation of others’ ills in terms of God’s benefit. God more likely weeps at others’ ills than sees an opportunity for enhancing reputation. But then as now people found many ways of detracting from the dignity of others.
Coming through the narrative is the strength of its source which doubtless portrayed the deed as an act of Christ’s compassion. John’s story lifts our eyes to a wider perspective. Jesus is not just a healer, but light for the world’s darkness, which was another language for saying: God so loved the world! The response of Jesus in 9:4-5 also reminds the hearers that even Jesus would fail. That, too, would not mean he is bad!
Perhaps the old tradition John used contained the details about how the healing took place. It is not unlike techniques used by others in the ancient world (see also Mark 8:23). John cannot help lifting our attention again to the symbolic level when he translates Siloam. The scene which follows in 9:8-12 playfully repeats the story of the healing and ends with a typically Johannine ambiguity: the healed man does not know where Jesus is. It reminds us of the saying about the wind/spirit in 3:8. Finding Jesus is much more than finding his location.
There are doubtless deliberate echoes of the healing in John 5, also linked to a pool, when John 9 tells us that a deed of healing by a Jerusalem pool took place on a the sabbath and that this upset the Pharisees. The to-ing and fro-ing of the drama in 9:13-17 and 9:18-23 expose the Pharisees as obsessive about their laws. 9:22 mentions the parents’ fear that becoming off side with the Pharisees could lead to expulsion from the synagogue - probably a real experience for many in John’s congregations.
The drama heightens in 9:24-34 as the Pharisees urge that glory be given to God. It had been Jesus’ intention all along according to 9:3 to glorify God’s works (see also 11:4). The Pharisees profile themselves as righteous and Jesus as a sinner, but in the process further expose their obsession. Hearers of the gospel thus far would know that rather than remaining faithful to Moses and the Law these Pharisees betray it. Its sole function now was to point to Christ’s validity. The former blind man makes simple responses which unmask the critics. For that he is expelled. All it needs is for Jesus to find him and tell him the truth about himself as the Son of Man (9:35-38). The drama is nearly over.
Jesus’ final words are about judgement, which probably explains why he referred to himself as the Son of Man in speaking with the blind man. In a different way Matthew shows the two are closely linked: the Son of Man will be the judge. It is then scarcely subtle when the Pharisees ask: ‘We are not blind are we?’ Answer: a resounding: yes! They are the sinners! The situation has been reversed.
This carefully crafted piece would have reassured John’s hearers who had experienced the pain of being forced out of the synagogue communities. Their claims about Jesus had gone too far. They had in effect set aside the biblical Law or, better, redefined its role as now to function only as a witness to the Messiah. They now attributed to him claims once made of the Law: that he was the (in fact the only, the true) light, life, truth, word and bread.
It is not difficult to see the passage mirroring the experiences of John’s community. Here were Jews in conflict with Jews. Like many passages in John the images, loosed from their Jewish moorings, can sail off to join the armada of anti-semitism. The Pharisees, like Nicodemus in John 3, are stereotypes. Once we see this other doors open and we recognise conflicts of our own day - also within Christianity. Wherever rules matter most and people take second place, we have darkness, even if they are divinely warranted in scripture.
Obsession with observance is a characteristic of religion which makes it very dangerous, as many forms of fundamentalism have shown, not least the recent most violent. Such rigidity at the expense of people is not, however, limited to certain widely acknowledged types, but can flourish on both the left wing and the right, among the biblicists and among those serving other ideologies. It is also at home where people read John and the Bible as vehicles for propaganda for their Jesus and their God, to ‘win’, instead of as testimony to divine compassion which puts people first. As the blind man might have said: ‘Well I don’t understand much about all of that, but I know when I see people getting helped and I’ll run with that!’
William Loader
Lent 3: 3 March John 4:5-42
What would it have been like hearing this story in the first readings of the gospel? One can imagine a group of believers, already attuned to the subtleties of its story tellers who had developed special skills which enabled them to give simple stories many dimensions and address the audience at many levels. The listeners would have already smiled at the character of Nicodemus whose stage presence was that of the fool who could think only at one level.
This daring retelling of a story of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman invites audience applause and knowing nods at many points. If it required a stage setting we might see drapes flanking the scene with hints of the great courtship meetings of the patriarchs at desert wells. The marriage theme is in the air here, too, but the focus is different. Some cultural features would need little explanation. Jews in John’s audience - and their friends - would know about prejudice against Samaritans. Perhaps some had known of Jesus’ parable which subverted the norms by making a Samaritan the hero. The respectable would sympathise with the disciples’ concern (4:27) that Jesus was conversing with a woman in public space. Women were part of the community but had their place; it was not really to be speaking openly with men in this way.
They would also be familiar with the wrangles about the location of the temple and would have certainly sided as good Jews with Jesus’ assessment that the Samaritans were wrong in their claims and that the Jews were the channel for God’s blessings to the world (4:22). While Samaritans had their hopes that God would send an agent of change, a prophet and teacher, a messiah, they were at most an echo of Jewish hopes.
Now fights can be left behind. The drama transcends the rivalry. For Jesus brings something that went beyond both their expectations and makes both claims to holy places redundant. John’s hearers know that well. So they would have laughed when the woman began just like Nicodemus: thinking Jesus was offering literal water (4:15). Like Nicodemus she mouths profound truths without knowing it: Jesus is indeed greater than Jacob (4:12); and certainly the right response is to pray: ‘Give me this water!’ (4:15). But she is still seeing it just as relief from the daily grind.
Recent expositions have argued strongly that John wants us to see the woman only in a good light, sometimes I suspect because that is more comfortable than to dissent from John’s picture. It is hard to read the reference to husbands (who may all have died) and to her unmarried partner without at least catching some whiff of cultural disapproval, which some have suggested explains why she came to fetch water not in the cool of the day when most would come. I suspect she had three things counting against her: being a Samaritan, a woman and a ‘sinner’.
Any one of those counts would be enough for some to shun her. Jesus does not. That may have been the force of the original account which lies behind the dramatic presentation we now find. It would have been its own three point sermon against racial, gender and moral discrimination. But as we have seen, John wants to give us more. While affirming and preserving the message of inclusion implied in Jesus’ actions, John also wants us to celebrate Jesus as the giver of the water of life, the new holy space, which transcends all prior religious claims and aspirations, including legitimate ones. Does John show the woman making that transition?
To some extent that is left to our imagination, but she certainly goes further than Nicodemus. She hesitatingly contemplates: perhaps this is the Messiah (4:29). The grounds she offers do not exhibit much depth of understanding: he told me everything I ever did (4:29). But she is heading in the right direction. Her achievement is to bring others to hear Jesus. It is a positive response on her part with a positive outcome. The people come and acclaim Jesus the saviour of the world (4:42). It may remind us of one of those sermons which we felt was not quite on target, but then we heard later that it led to positive change in someone. God uses even our less than adequate responses. The people make it for themselves and are not dependent solely on the woman’s testimony (4:42). Her act empowered them.
4:31-38 provides an interlude which shows the disciples also beginning at the level where Nicodemus and the woman began, in focusing only on the literal (4:33). 4:27 had highlighted the latent sexism of the disciples (4:27). They are not doing well, but then Jesus goes on to shift the focus from the literal, ‘food’, to food as a metaphor for our task and mission and to involve them in the task. In the process Jesus makes a point about solidarity between workers in mission. Some sow; others reap. It is as though a commentary is being provided on the woman and the people of her village. Each action counts, including hers. We don’t have to do everything or be everything. We do not need to control everything. We are not called to be the saviour of the world. We will not always be adequate. It is a good theme for reflection when contemplating clergy burnout. Even Jesus could not do everything - and could not be everywhere: when he was in Capernaum, he was not in Bethsaida, even though people in Bethsaida needed him too, but that was OK. We all live with limitations and it is OK to be human. We damage ourselves when we want to be like gods: leave that tree alone!
This wonderful piece of drama has many levels of meaning. As always in John its central character is God and God’s gift of life through the invitation to live in the holy space of love, the true worship in the Spirit, which is also the living space of the Father and the Son. That love, embodied, cuts across racial and cultural prejudice, affirms women, engages and loves sinners. In a man’s world a woman is the supreme example, exercising ministry, but doing so with the fragility and hesitancy and perhaps inadequacy which happens when ordinary human beings engage in ministry. That is also cutting across a prejudice of perfectionism with which we plague ourselves. The fruit of such faithfulness is the setting free of others from what binds them (including us). It is bringing to birth and caring with that as the goal. The stereotype, Nicodemus, the teacher, will not see this either.
William Loader
Lent 2: 24 February John 3:1-17
This is one of the favourite passages of the Bible, but also one regularly misunderstood. It is best to begin with 2:23-25. There we hear that many people ‘believed in his name’, a term for becoming a believer, as 1:12 shows. Using the same word for belief, the author then tells us that Jesus did not reciprocate: he did not ‘believe in’ (in the sense of ‘trust in’) them. This is shocking. Why did he reject such ‘believers’? 2:25 tells us that he didn’t need to be told what was going on in people; he knew. But already 2:23 had intimated the reason: they believed in Jesus because they saw the miracles which he was doing.
What was the matter with that? The answer comes in what follows in chapter 3. The end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3 are closely connected. 2:25 uses the Greek word for a human being, anthropos, twice. Jesus didn’t need help to know what was going on in a human being (anthropos), because he knew what was in a human being (anthropos). 3:1 then begins: Now there a human being (anthropos) called Nicodemus. Nicodemus is an example of this kind of faith. His is not a bad confession of faith: ‘We know that you are a teacher come from God, because no one can do these miracles which you do, unless God is with him’ (3:2). Jesus does not reciprocate Nicodemus’ faith, he does not ‘trust in’ him (like in 2:24). On the contrary he confronts Nicodemus with the need for a totally new beginning, radically portrayed as starting life all over again: ‘Unless you are born from above you cannot see the kingdom of God’ (3:3).
Nicodemus has often been portrayed simplistically as the unbeliever who need to be converted. At one level this is true, but it somewhat misses the point, that really Nicodemus is a believer in Jesus who believes the wrong way and so does not see what Jesus is on about. This is a theme elsewhere in John. John 6:2 tells about people who followed Jesus because of his miracles. In 6:14-15 they want to crown him king. Jesus will have none of it. In 4:48, in an aside, Jesus complains about people who want to see miracles before they believe.
The kind of faith (in Jesus) which is ‘wowed’ by the miracles is inadequate. Such ‘believers’ (including those who take the same stance today) need to be born again (including those who try to make ‘born again’ Christians by such appeals!). John’s gospel is not anti-miracle. Its point is that you have to go beyond that level of faith to something deeper; the value of miracles is that they can evoke such deeper reality. Matthew’s gospel makes a similar point when it tells us in 7:21-23 that as doorkeeper of the kingdom Jesus will not welcome people with that kind of Christianity and those who have even performed such miracles themselves in his name. Paul makes the same point in his famous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13.
In our passage, written originally in Greek, there is a nice play on double meaning, typical of the author’s method. The word which follows ‘born’ in 3:3, anothen, can mean either ‘again’ or ‘from above’. Both meanings are swinging into the statement of Jesus. Poor Nicodemus is pictured as hearing only the meaning, ‘again’ (3:4). The sense, ‘from above’, misses him completely - and that is the problem. Nicodemus serves as a stereotype of people who remain stuck with one level of thinking and can’t see beyond it. He needs to become a different kind of person to be able to see.
What should Nicodemus (and other such believers) be seeing? Funnily enough the answer comes from Nicodemus’ own words: that Jesus is ‘a teacher come from God’ (3:2). If Nicodemus had meant that in the way that 1:18 means it when it tells us that Jesus is the Son who makes the Father known, then he would have it all. For that is the main message throughout John’s gospel. We are to find in Jesus the one who makes God known. John regularly describes Jesus as the Son sent by the Father or who has come from the Father. The miracles are OK, but unless you get beyond them, then Jesus remains just an interesting teacher who performs impressive stunts and deserves a following, a magic son of God.
For John’s gospel the focus is on God and our relationship with God. That ongoing relationship is what matters most. That relationship is modelled, embodied in Jesus through his relationship with God. That is a relationship of love flowing in all directions - including out into the world to all people as the famous 3:16 reminds us. To be born ‘again’, ‘from above’, means to have grasped the gift of this knowledge and the gift of this relationship. It is John’s gospel’s way of reinterpreting the historical Jesus’ characteristic term, ‘the kingdom of God’, which becomes something like the love nexus which brings life.
By bringing in the traditional language of water and rebirth in 3:5 John’s gospel shows it is talking about what true conversion entails which baptism celebrates. To see and enter the love nexus which brings life is to start something radically new. In another of his word plays, in 3:8 John uses the word pneuma, which means both wind and Spirit, to say that to live in this love nexus is to live by the Spirit. Like the wind you will see the impact of such life, but unless you’re in touch with it, you will not see it. You won’t understand at all. Your religion will remain at a naive level of somewhat superficial wonderment and market propaganda. Paul also had to emphasise that the fruit of the Spirit was love (Gal 5:22-23; 1 Cor 13), not sensation.
The passage is not meant to be historical reporting. It is rather one of those typical scenes in John which draw on the tradition and make from it a drama which both has enduring value and addresses what must have been issues of his time. These obviously included challenging inadequate responses to Jesus which resulted not only in failing to understand what his coming mean, but also (as 3:12 suggests) the meaning of his death and return to the Father’s glory as the exalted ‘Son of Man’. The eyes of inadequate faith see the death as a disaster when Jesus was lifted onto a cross of shame, only to be compensated for by another miracle, the resurrection, so the show could go on. John’s faith sees through these appearances to the fact that really Jesus was being lifted to God and that as a result of his return the life he brought would abound in all the world through the Spirit and the Spirit-bearing disciples who would succeed and serve him.
The famous John 3:16, like 3:17, is about the life which his
coming brought as it opened our eyes to a new way of seeing and engaging with
God. When the love nexus which brings life becomes the central theme
(such that 1 John 4:8 can simply say, ‘God is love’!), then the story of Jesus
becomes a well of meaning. He feeds 5000, but this is a pointer to that deeper
reality: he is the bread of life. He heals a blind person; but the truth that
matters is that he is the light. So he is also the life, the truth and the way.
These must not be reduced to a set of slogans for a Jesus fan club. For all
direct us to God as the ultimate and only source of such life.
William Loader
Lent 1: 17 February Matthew 4:1-11
What could be more fitting
than to begin the season of Lent with this passage. The passage is rich in
images and ideas and lends itself to be extended in so many directions. It is
probably good from the start to note some directions which would be a long way
from where it appears to be heading. One is to reduce it to a lesson about
facing temptations in the area of private morality: I shall resist the
temptation to swear or watch X rated videos or some other such trivia. The
little world of little things is not the focus of the passage. There is an
immorality about such morality because it neglects the weightier matters (see
Matt 23:23!).
Even trying to hear the passage in its first
century setting confronts us with a rich variety of possibilities. One is to
see Jesus in the wilderness, the outback, living off what nature provides,
almost an idealistic, paradisal picture, ministered to by angels. Locusts and
wild honey, John’s fare, were, if anything delicacies, not the strange diet they
are to us. It fits well with the Q sayings of Jesus about trusting providence in
nature, as John the Baptist did. Consider the flowers of the field or the birds;
trust (Matt 6:25-34).
Before rubbishing this as naive idealism (or
suppressing this thought!), let us, at least, note its alternative character. It
is an alternative lifestyle which implicitly protests against the common
lifestyle of the day (our day, too). Much of Jesus’ behaviour had this kind of
protest element to it: his abandonment of home and possessions and his
questioning of the priority they generally received. The itinerant lifestyle
enjoined by Jesus on his group of followers was not sustainable once the
movement grew; nor was the idealised diet and living off nature’s provisions.
That accepted, is something then lost which need not be lost, when such practice
is left behind? There is a sense in which protest against norms is of the
essence of Christianity (and terribly difficult to sustain when it, itself, sets
the norms, but then even more urgent - to protest against itself!).
Perhaps the above approach matches Mark’s
brief account (1:12-13) better, which does not imply fasting and has more of
nature about it - though the animals may have been thought of as a source of
threat and danger. Mark’s Jesus wins the battle against Satan (it was not a
battle against the animals!) for God and God’s reign. This is a significant part
of the good news (1:14-15). Matthew follows Mark’s order at this point but, like
Luke (4:1-13), incorporates the account which he found in Q. In Matthew the
focus is primarily on Jesus as the obedient Son - this is also why God was well
pleased with him, as the voice at the baptism had just announced (3:17). The
quotations from Deuteronomy in Jesus’ responses, the location, the time (40
days) all recall Israel’s time in the wilderness when Israel failed. This Jesus,
already linked typologically with Israel in the birth narratives, stands in
stark contrast to Israel. He continues to fulfil all righteousness.
The sequence of temptations is different here
from what we find in Luke. What Luke has second, the temptation to accept from
the devil dominion over the nations, comes as the climax of the three
temptations in Matthew. What the devil offered will be given by the Father, as
28:18 indicates: that power will be exercised through the teaching of all
nations (28:19-20). Matthew creates another significant echo of the scene when
he expands the mockery of Jesus on the cross. The mockers repeat the phrase, ‘If
you are Son of God..’ (27:40). The parallel is instructive. Jesus refuses to
exercise the power which Matthew assumes he has, because he remains obedient to
his call, his mission. Matthew makes the same point quite dramatically in the
arrest scene, where Jesus reminds his supporters that he could summon legions of
angels to his aid, but chooses not to (26:53). Matthew assumes the alternative
was there (we may not); but the major focus is what Jesus did choose: to follow
the path of obedience, the path of servanthood.
In Matthew the focus of the temptations is
clearly vocational rather than a lesson about private morality. They are a
symbolic testing of Jesus of a kind not uncommon in the accounts of the lives of
great heroes in the ancient world. Take time out to face who you are and what is
your calling. Face up to the alternatives! In Lent, in particular, we are
reminded of the importance of doing so for ourselves. This is something not just
for heroes. What agenda drives us?
While Matthew’s major focus is on Jesus as
faithful in contrast to Israel, the narrative invites further reflection. You
could read it as a lesson in christology. Jesus says no to certain models which
might have been options (for christology at that time; also for Jesus, himself,
and for any who sought to execute God’s will with success). One is to gain
followers through stunts/miracles, a common option in christology, then and now
(against which many New Testament writers protest, while not denying miracles;
see Matt 7:21-23; John 2:23-25; 1 Cor 13). It is very much alive today. Another
is to take the military option - achieve dominion by force or at least achieve
rule, the opposite of weakness and failure. Would the third temptation have been
heard as a commentary on the revolutionary movements of the day? Is it the
approach of Peter who confesses Jesus, Christ, and then immediately rebukes
Jesus for contemplating suffering and death (16:13-23; Mark 8:27-31; John
6:14-15)? Is the food supply miracle another option? Certainly the place is
significant in Israel’s hope and especially in the first century where would-be
saviours and liberators retraced the great epic of crossing the Jordan and
entering the land, often with fantasies of miracles of manna and the like, but
also often connected with predictions of wonders at the temple itself. Such
traditions and expectations colour the gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry. We
can be sure that many would have listened to the fantasy of Jesus’ great trial
with such things in mind.
Like a parable, a fantasy narrative such as
the temptation story invites elaboration and creative reflection. Its historical
truth is doubtless based on the conviction that Jesus must have faced such an
ordeal and did have connections with John and the wilderness lifestyle. The
narrative has been a favourite place of reflection on options facing every age:
the will to power (OK; but whose power? what kind of power? what for?); the
materialism (usually extrapolated from the temptation to turn stones into bread
- a distant connection); the spirituality of the sensational.
Ultimately the focus is what it is in Matthew:
doing the will of God alone and saying no to other gods. But doing the will of
God needs unpacking: what is God’s will? What is God about? What then am I
about? There are plenty of spiritualities, including within Christianity. Which
is the way to go? This calls for critical, theological reflection, because
ultimately it depends on who and what we understand God to be. Within
Christianity we find all the options, including those attributed in the passage
to the devil. - and more!