Friday, 28 April 2006
Easter 3 Year B
Acts 3: 12-19 NRSV text
1 John 3: 1-7 NRSV text
Psalm 4 NRSV text
Luke 24: 36b-48 NRSV text
My apologies for posting so late this week. It's just been one of those ...
Jesus has a very busy day on that first resurrection Sunday in Luke’s gospel! He rises, walks the seven miles to Emmaus with the two disciples, returns to Jerusalem, eats a meal with the other disciples, takes the group to Bethany and then ascends. This is concentrated drama! It is not biography – it’s symbolic narrative. In Acts, Luke tells us that there was a period of 40 days between his resurrection and ascension. Here in the gospel, his concern is to make clear the significance of what is happening. By compressing everything into a single day, he is making the point that everything that happens is part of the unfolding drama of resurrection. Resurrection is a “new day” – not just chronologically, but qualitatively too. Although there will be many subsequent “days”, they, together with all of human history, take this event as their starting point. It is the dawn of a new creation. In it, the disciples meet their risen Master and learn the meaning and significance of all that has happened. The seismic tremors of resurrection are already beginning to spread from their epicentre in Jerusalem throughout the whole world.
This week’s gospel passage has two striking parallels. The first is the one we noted last week, with John 20: 19-23, which, in all likelihood, John knew and was reflecting upon; the second is Luke’s second version of this incident in Acts 1: 3-8. The essence of Luke’s message is very simple: God has vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead, so that all that Jesus proclaimed and promised will come about; Jesus is alive – alive, and not a ghost; Jesus wants his disciples to continue his work in the power of the same Spirit that came upon him at his baptism and empowered his ministry.
The message of the resurrection is startling, amazing and exciting! This is the faith by which Luke’s community lives, and is a matter of ongoing, genuine rejoicing – holy glee in the best sense! That’s reflected in the way Luke tells the story, where he almost caricatures the disciples’ inability to grasp what has happened. Here are the disciples, gathered in a room, listening to the astounding story of their two companions, breathless from having hot-footed it straight back to Jerusalem from Emmaus. This is the second bunch of possible crazies from among their number: first the women, back from the tomb in the morning, and now two of their number from Emmaus in the evening. Perhaps they’re thinking, “It’s not safe to go outdoors! It must be grief – or is it something in the water? After all, everyone who steps outside the room starts seeing Jesus! Better stay right here, where it’s safe!”
And at that moment, Jesus appears in their midst! So much for safety indoors, eh? And he says, “Peace be with you.” Yeah! As if! They’re hallucinating – seeing a ghost – and the ghost is saying, “Relax! It’s ok!” Then the ghost goes on: “Why are you frightened?” I man, come on! Wouldn’t you be? What a stupid question! Then another killer: “Why do doubts arise in your hearts?” Well, Jesus (or whoever you are), do you really expect us to just roll over and say, “Oh, it’s you! Good to see you back. Come sit down – we were just talking about you!”
In verse 39, Luke hammers his main point home: this is the risen Jesus. Not a ghost. Not his spirit. Not some wonderful hallucination. This is the flesh and blood Jesus! There’s the invitation to touch and see, and he eats with them.
Risen body
I don’t know what you believe about resurrection. I do know that the Easter message of resurrection gets lost in uncomfortable debates about whether or not the risen Jesus was actually a flesh and blood, eating, drinking, touching, human being who had been dead and was now alive again, or whether “resurrection” is a symbol of the enduring presence of Jesus, even though his body remained on the slab somewhere.
So let’s be clear: the witness of all four evangelists is that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead! They hammer that home. The notion that Jesus was actually raised bodily was as difficult for Christians in Luke’s church as it is for people in our own time. Resurrection was not common currency at the time – a characteristic of a primitive and credulous culture. Nor was it used as a clever, nuanced symbol. People then (as now) could cope with the notion that Jesus was, in effect, a “ghost” – some enduring spirit-presence. Not good enough, says Luke. This is about dead bodies being made alive again – and changed in the process. Yes, the risen Jesus is certainly different from the pre-Easter Jesus. And he doesn’t behave in the same way, relate in the same way or obey the same physical laws. But then, resurrection is not just an “event” that “happens” to Jesus! It’s something that happens to all creation – and the experience of the transformed, risen Jesus is a foretaste of what will happen to the whole world when its transformation into the kingdom of God is complete.
It’s not what happened to Jesus that is as significant as why, and what it all means for the world. Resurrection faith is not “believing in bodily resurrection rather than enduring presence”. Conservative Christians who believe in bodily resurrection are no more “Christian” or faithful to the resurrection than liberal Christians whose faith would remain unaltered, were Jesus’ bones to be discovered tomorrow. Belief in resurrection is not something akin to whether or not one believes in fairies or the Loch Ness monster. It’s not even a question of whether or not one believes in miracles. The stress on faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus in the gospels is the question of whether or not one believes in salvation as the transformation of this world.
The key question is whether this world and these bodies of ours have a future with God. It’s a question, therefore, about the meaning and content of salvation. Resurrection says that salvation is recreation – salvation for this world. God could have done at least two things differently. The first is to have abandoned us and our world because we rejected God. Resurrection says that God doesn’t do that – even when we have resisted God’s companionship to the point of murdering God’s Son! The second is to abandon creation but not human beings. In this case, salvation would be escape or rescue from the world. God could say, “You are not your bodies. The ‘real you’ is non-material. And this world isn’t ultimately ‘real’ – ultimate reality is another place altogether, called heaven. So let me rescue you from all this mess of creation (bodies, earth etc)”. God, in other words, could be a dualist.
But resurrection is anti-dualist. God isn’t a Hindu, or Buddhist, or classical Greek deity. The Hebrew and Christian God is a God who is inextricably linked to creation by love and a determination to save what has been created. Matter matters! Bodies matter! God embraces body in Jesus (Incarnation) and enters into our world. God becomes part of our world. And God does so in order to save it by transforming it into all that it was always intended to be.
That is why God is so concerned about what happens to the earth and to human beings. That is why God is distressed and angry when people starve, or are mistreated, or murdered. Suffering matters – not just because it is unpleasant and distressing, but because our bodies are integrally us. How we treat our bodies and the bodies of others is therefore enormously significant. That is why Jesus healed people, rather than telling them not to worry about suffering and this life and concentrate on pie in the sky when they die. That is why Jesus says that giving a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, or clothing someone who is naked, is ministry to him.
It’s also why John says what he does about sin. If matter and bodies don’t matter, then what we do with our bodies here and now is hardly significant. We are already God’s children because of resurrection (1 John 3: 2). Our bodies are made for living differently from the way we used to live. Hence John’s concern with authentic, Spirit-inspired Christian living. We are in a process of becoming (v2b). We and the world – because as we are being re-made through the Spirit, we are to be involved in remaking the world in the shape of the kingdom of God. Our hope is in a transformed world, in which there is no more sorrow, or sighing, or pain, or death; in which those things have passed away. But not one in which those things have merely passed away: one in which everything has been made new!
This earth and these bodies have a future with God. That is why there is resurrection: it is recreation. Salvation, in other words, is a physically real and significant as that from which we are saved – disease, despair and death. It is not some other world, or some sort of ghost-life that is the substance of salvation. That is why Jesus is raised from the dead. There is life for human beings beyond death – and human beings are both body and spirit equally. Those transformations to the body are no less important and can be no less physically real than the transformation of this world into a place where peace and righteousness kiss.
That, at least, is what Luke wants to tell us.
It was all meant to be …
All that happened to Jesus happened as a direct result of his actions and message, and the opposition it created. Jesus came to bring about the kingdom of God. That was his task and mission. Tragically, our response was to crucify him. And yet, the risen Jesus is at pains to explain, there is a sense in which it was all meant to be. God was not wrong-footed and caught out. The resurrection is not some last-minute rescue job, dreamed up during some divine three-day emergency summit! It was a “fulfilment” of everything that had gone before. Jesus is the one who, first on the Emmaus road, and now in the room with his disciples, begins the “Christian read-back” of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is the literal beginning of the “new” testament – the new way of understanding all that has gone before.
Does this mean that we can ultimately blame God for the crucifixion? After all, if it was God’s plan, who are we to thwart it? And are we not simply pawns in some gigantic, cosmic chess-game being played in a divine realm? That is not what “fulfilment” is meant to suggest. Prophecy in the bible is not some sort of Christian horoscope. To be human is to have choice and to create our own world. We are not determined by fate or even by the gods. That is part of the divine image in human beings.
What God tells the people through the prophets is about the results and consequences of those choices. And what God does in terms of salvation is to save us from those consequences. We chose to reject God and the kingdom God offered in Jesus. We chose to crucify Jesus and have nothing more to do with God in our world. The consequence of that is that God ought to reject us – but chooses instead to save. Our rejection is simply the climax of the long history of human rebellion against God. Every small act of rejection and resistance pointed towards the ultimate act – the crucifixion. Likewise every saving act of God pointed towards this ultimate act of God in Jesus: resurrection. Resurrection means that even this can be forgiven, so that there is now nothing in all creation to stop God forgiving. This is the good news. It is what Peter tells his hearers in Acts 3: 12-19. We need not be bound by our choices and actions. We can repent – because God is the God of resurrection! God intends Life, and even death will not be allowed to thwart that divine passion!
That is the message we have heard, and believed. This is the Life we have experienced in the Spirit. And now the task of witnessing to it is ours.
Amen.
14:38 Posted in 1 John , Acts , Luke , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Wednesday, 28 December 2005
Holy Name Year B
Numbers 6: 22-27 NRSV text
Psalm 8 NRSV text
Philippians 2: 5-11 NRSV text
Luke 2: 15-21 NRSV text
What’s in a name? When it comes to the name of Jesus, pretty much everything! Jesus – which means “God saves” – is the means by which God has chosen to save all of created reality. All of creation will be summed up in Jesus as Paul tells us in Philippians 2:10-11. It is at this name that every knee shall bow and this person that every tongue confess as Lord. “Jesus” is therefore not only a name, but a cause. It is the shorthand for God’s project of salvation.
But this means that “Jesus” is an intensely disputed name. It is disputed, not in the sense that there is lack of clarity about which individual is being designated, but in the sense of the “how” and the “what” of God’s salvation. What does God intend by “salvation” in Jesus? How is this salvation to be accomplished? There is also the disputed sense of “who”: who is the God that is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth? What kind of God is this? The fact that God intends this baby to be the means of salvation puts Jesus on a collision course with the powers of his day – religious and political – from the moment of his public ministry. It is a ministry that will end in death on the cross. Ironically, it is precisely because it does so that God exalts Jesus (Phil 2: 9). This is a salvation that is effected by God’s humility – in taking flesh and being prepared to suffer the total rejection and humiliation of the cross. In Luke’s account of the cross, it is through the radical grace and forgiveness of God in Jesus: when human beings have fully, finally and ultimately rejected God, Jesus speaks the words of promise and forgiveness – “Father, forgive them …” and “This day you will be with me in paradise”. Salvation in Jesus happens because there is nothing that we human beings can do to cut us off from God’s love, and when we have spoken our last word on the subject, God has still another Word to speak: the Word of Resurrection.
But what sort of salvation is this? If Christian history shows us anything clearly, it shows us that there are many Jesuses, in the sense that Jesus is claimed by various opposing groups in history to be on their side because their cause is part of God’s saving actions in the world. South African Christians claimed that Apartheid was the manifestation of God’s saving grace – the way in which God was apparently “blessing and keeping” South Africa, “being gracious” to its people and “making his face to shine upon them”! The German Christians saw Hitler similarly. As did the Inquisition, and the white supremacists in the United States.
One of my Christmas presents was the DVD The Kingdom of Heaven, which told the story of the capture of Jerusalem from the Christian king by the great Moslem leader, Saladin. Those of you familiar with the history will recall that what was so remarkable was that, whereas a generation before, the Christians who captured the city had massacred every Muslim in the city, Saladin spared not only the inhabitants but the Christian army, as well. It raised acutely the question of who was more Christ-like: those who fought in Christ’s name, or who acted mercifully? Put differently: which is the real Jesus – the Jesus who commands and blesses the slaughter of so-called infidels, or the one in whom we see God’s grace, peace and justice made a reality on earth?
What is important is not that people do things in the name of Jesus, but what they do in his name. Bob Dylan wrote With God on our side, a military history of the United States, as an ironic reflection on the ease with which Jesus is commandeered as a justification for militarism and conquest. His final verse exposes his own disquiet: “Through many a dark hour/I’ve been thinking about this:/that Jesus Christ was betrayed by a kiss./Now I can’t think for you,/you’ll have to decide/whether Judas Iscariot had/God on his side!” This is a song that is informed by the same gospel tension where Jesus says that there will be many who say to him on the last day, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we cast out demons and perform many miracles in your name?” and he will reply, “Depart from me. I never knew you!”
Christian faith is not simply a matter of naming the name of Jesus – even in worship! It is not enough to be baptised in his name, or belong to the community of faith that exists in this name. Christian faith is about discipleship, which means following in the way of Jesus and doing as he did. It is Jesus-shaped living and acting in the world. Or, as he himself put it when asked by his disciples how to pray, it is doing God’s will on earth.
Jesus’ mission was the means by which God was saving the world. The community in which Jesus lived was under military occupation. They expected the imminent intervention of God – by which they meant the overthrow of the Romans, the purification of Israel and a newly-established theocracy in Jerusalem which would be their vindication to the whole world. Yet the saving activity of God in Jesus was something radically beyond all that Jesus’ contemporaries – including the religious leaders – could possibly imagine. God had a bigger agenda than the salvation of Israel. God’s agenda was nothing less than the salvation of everything that had been created! Its scope reached far beyond the narrow confines of Jerusalem. It was global. Indeed, as Paul reflects, it is cosmological in breadth.
Yet its beginnings and its means are astonishingly, ridiculously small and insignificant. It begins in the stable in Bethlehem, witnessed by shepherds. And while we are clearly meant to understand that Luke is telling us, “This is the Shepherd of Israel”, we are also meant to understand that the incarnation – heaven come down to earth – is first and foremost Good News to the despised, the marginalised and the unimportant. Jesus, we are reminded, is the name given to Mary at the annunciation. It is Mary’s song of praise – the Magnificat – that reminds us of the how of God’s salvation. This is a God who will lift up the lowly, cast down the mighty from their thrones and bring in a new order of human living and relating. Jesus is the Liberator, the Hope of the hopeless and Voice of the voiceless. The kingdom that he proclaims and inaugurates is the kingdom of peace and justice longed for through the ages and promised through the prophets. It is the world as it ought to be. And it begins with the very least first.
That is why Jesus’ is the way of radical humility. It is the way of selflessness, the abandonment of our own interests and the embracing of those of the very least. It is committing ourselves to the struggle for a world where justice makes war and violence redundant, and where poverty, disease and starvation will be a thing of the past. It is the way of the cross. But it is the way to Life, because it is the way of Jesus and there is no other name under heaven by which God is saving the world.
Amen.
14:25 Posted in Luke , Numbers , Philippians , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study, Holy Name Year B, Luke 2: 15-21, Philippians 2: 5-11, Numbers 6: 22-27, RCL, lectionary resources, commentary on lectionary texts
Tuesday, 13 December 2005
Advent 4 Year B
2 Samuel 7: 1-11; 16 NRSV text
Psalm 89: 1-4; 19-26 NRSV text
Romans 16: 25-27 NRSV text
Luke 1: 26-38 NRSV text
It seems that Christmas and Easter are the two points in the Christian year where we are made most aware of the extent that we are prisoners of the Enlightenment! Resurrection and virgin birth – anyone would think that the key question to be asked is, “Do you believe in miracles, or don’t you?” It’s as though Christian faith suddenly boils down, not to issues of commitment and discipleship, but to how our heads work. Is there room for the supernatural or isn’t there? And, if you think I’m exaggerating, note just how many Christian groups within the Church require assent to bodily resurrection and virgin birth as tenets of faith and whether or not one can belong to them. Then, on the other “side” of the debate, look at how much time and energy and ink and thought is devoted to explaining how it is possible to hold to the historic creeds which affirm both of these, while not being required to commit what appears to be intellectual suicide. And lastly, look at how many ministers dread Easter and Christmas – because it apparently means entering the lions’ den of “did it happen?” and therefore requires incredible wisdom and care to find a form of words that is both sufficiently faithful and sufficiently non-committal to avoid offence!
The point is that the question of the historicity of miracles is a question that is shared by both sides of the argument. The “ground rules” are the same – it’s only the answers that differ. And those are the ground rules laid down by our post-enlightenment views of fact and truth. I am thankful in the extreme that both post-liberal and post-evangelical exegesis has broken out of the sterility of the old historical-critical paradigm and found new vistas. They challenge us with the important questions that have been marginalised for so long: not so much “What happened?” but “What does it mean?” Advent is, above all, a time of waiting on the latter answer: “What is the Truth of what happens at Christmas?”
This week in Advent we enter into Mary’s time of waiting. It is hardly a peaceful time! The curtain opens on Mary, who is waiting to be married. She is a virgin. Let’s be clear: however we might legitimately translate the word “parthenon” as “young woman” (or even take it to refer to a widowed woman who had not remarried) Luke intends us to understand that Mary is a virgin. This, like Matthew’s, is a story of virgin birth. But the point is not to give us biological facts about Jesus: it is to explain the significance of this one who is to be born – and the fact that he is greater than his cousin, John the Baptist (whose birth is also miraculous). She is told that she is about to conceive a son, whom she (rather than her husband-to-be) is to name Jesus – and do so now, during her time of waiting.
We need to understand that virginity, in her culture, was not something to be prized – certainly not to be perpetuated. Human beings were meant to breed – and do so fast enough to ensure the survival of the human race in the face of war, famine, disease and death. Virginity was therefore a sign of a waste of good breeding stock; it was valuable only to ensure that women weren’t “shop-soiled” before marriage, so that a man could be absolutely sure that any child was his and not someone else’s. What Mary is faced with is the choice of saying “yes” to a God who is doing something at least as shocking and offensive as it is miraculous: she is being asked to place herself in the most extreme place of social and economic vulnerability. This is a “yes” with an enormously high price tag! She is being asked to put her and her illegitimate child’s future on the line.
Let me say that I find convincing the arguments of the scholars who find in all the gospels clear traces of a widespread question mark over Jesus’ parentage. If I’m asked what I think actually happened, it seems to me clear that Jesus was Mary’s son and not Joseph’s. That, of course, is true on any reading of the infancy narratives (unless we are to think of Jesus as Joseph’s son, about whom theological stories are told): Jesus is a bastard. But what is the Truth of this angelic proposal? The truth is twofold, and ties in with two of Luke’s important emphases. The first is that all that God is doing in Jesus happens on the margins. The Galilee is not the centre of events: Jerusalem, - and particularly the temple – is the centre. Jerusalem is the centre both of Jewish religious power and also the epicentre of Roman occupational power in the region. Now, in Nazareth, the birth of a king is announced, whose power, authority, message and kingdom will challenge the existing powers. But it is happening in political, religious, social and geographical obscurity. And it is certainly happening on the margins of respectability! The friend of sinners has much common cause with those whom he chooses as table companions!
The second is the vulnerability of God, which parallels the vulnerability of Mary. The question running through Luke’s narrative here at the beginning is, “Where will God find room in our world?” It is answered at the end, where Jesus is rejected and crucified. In Luke’s gospel there is no one to shout for him when Pilate is faced with calls for his murder. He asks, “What then shall I do with Jesus?” and they answer with a single voice: “Crucify him!” The way of Jesus Christ is the way of a God who is given no room in the world. That is what Jesus tells a would-be follower in Luke 9:58: “Even foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to call home”. The story of Jesus is of the God who comes to us but finds no room and no welcome, save on the margins of society and among those who are despised and rejected as sinners. No room – save in Mary’s womb. That is what Mary’s “Yes” means: “I will give you room, God!”
The lectionary passages link Gabriel’s announcement about the royal status of the child with the Old Testament passages about the Davidic covenant. David is promised an enduring dynasty and perpetual kingdom, with his ancestors ruling from Jerusalem (2 Samuel 9: 9ff). Moreover, David and his descendants are called (derivatively), “sons of God” (v14). The Davidic dynasty lasted some 400 years, and then disappeared. In time, the longed for restoration of the Davidic monarchy became part of Israel’s hope and messianic expectation (cf Psalm 89).
What are we to learn to wait for in the coming messiah, Jesus, who is the king in David’s line and who will rule forever? Obviously, Luke (and the lectionary!) is reminding us that “one greater than David” is here. Jesus is not great because of his Davidic lineage: David is great because he is the ancestor of Jesus! This is why, when Jesus is questioned about the source of his authority (Luke 20: 2ff) he challenges them to recognise that he is greater than David because David worships Jesus (20:41-44). Jesus turns the significance of the relationship with David on its head: it is not that he should be regarded as David’s son, but as David’s lord (20:44).
Less obviously, we need to recognise the intensely politically charged implications of Gabriel’s announcement. If Jesus is the king who will rule from Jerusalem, what about the existing powers there – the powers of Herod, king of the Jews, and Rome? In other words, in the opening verses of the Jesus story, Luke highlights an element of his story that will be developed more fully and very carefully throughout the gospel: the way of Jesus Christ is a path that will lead to direct confrontation with the vested powers in Jerusalem. That is why he constructs his gospel using the device of the Lukan Travel Narrative (from 9:51 onwards). Jesus’ person and message of the kingdom is one that sets him on an inevitable collision course with the powers of his day, because his kingdom will prevail forever and ever. Both the impregnability of Roman power and the endurance of Jerusalem are myths that will be shattered in the near future. Jesus’ kingdom requires conflict with the powers because it is not a privatised, individualised, spiritualised and psychologised message of inner peace and private relationship with God: it is about a transformed world. And it is a transformation that begins with Good News to the very least (cf Luke 4: 16-21), just as it has begun in an obscure hamlet in the Galilee, heard first by a soon-to-be unmarried mother and then later by shepherds near Bethlehem.
I want to return to the Truth about Jesus that the story of the virgin birth tells us in closing. It is clear that Luke intends his story to tell us two things: firstly, that Jesus of Nazareth was fully a human being! Luke traces his ancestry back to Adam, and has him (presumably) recorded in the census. This is no phantom, or heavenly apparition who appears in human guise as an “adult” messenger (as the biblical stories tell), but who spends the first 9 months of his life in the womb. He has a human history from conception to death.
Yet is tells us something further. This human being, alone of any other, is to be offered worship. However special any other human being’s relationship is to God; whatever marvellous things God has done through any other human being, it is Jesus alone who can be appropriately worshipped. The Jesus for whom we wait with Mary, and prepare him heart room as Mary gave him womb space, is not just a man of God. He is not just the son of God derivatively. He is the Son of God – God as a man – to be worshipped, adored and followed. He is the Lord – David’s Lord and ours.
Amen.
15:40 Posted in 2 Samuel , Luke , Psalms , Romans , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Monday, 05 December 2005
Advent 3 Year B
Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11 NRSV text
Psalm 126 NRSV text
Luke 1: 47-55 NRSV text
John 1: 6-8, 19-28 NRSV text
This is John’s beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Whereas Mark’s gospel last week pulsed with Mark’s characteristic impatience, energy, and hurry, John takes us to the time before time: to the very beginning of everything. Here is the christological reprise of the opening verse of the Bible. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, says Genesis 1:1. But John tells us (in effect), “In the beginning … Jesus!” Of course, what he actually says is that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God! In verse 3 that John goes on to rehearse the opening verse of Genesis, with the creation of all things. This is quite deliberate. To get into the “mood” of John’s gospel, we need to imagine ourselves sitting comfortably at the feet of an old man. And when we’re all sitting comfortably, he begins. With those two short sentences (vv 1-2) John tells us that the story we know from Genesis is not the full story. It is actually a Christian story – the story of God and God’s Word. It is only when we have learned that we cannot think of God apart from the active presence and companionship of God’s Word that we can re-member the creation story truly. The Word is a “him” – a person. Of course, we know that the Bible uses symbolic language about Word and Life and Light. We know that Wisdom is spoken about as a woman who is present at the creation. Yet there’s something tantalisingly suggestive in John’s prose that awakens anticipation. This is a story about Someone – not just a story about beginnings! The point about going back to the beginning is surely that this is going to be a story that discloses the truth of all things. Who is the Word – if, indeed, we are right to trust out intuition that this is going to be the story to end all stories?
With that preamble, just look at how anticlimactic verse 6 is! Here we are, in the swirling mists of pre-time, with God and the Word moving and active … and then the stark, “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John”. What a let-down! Here was a story that began so well and promised so much – and now here we are, back on familiar territory. God sends some bloke. Okay, that’s not insignificant. And certainly, if God sent him, we ought to pay attention to him. But we know about prophets and stuff. More of the same. So all that good stuff about the Word is just symbol! And as we settle (metaphorically) into a well-worn groove about how God acts in the world, John (with the glint of mischief and the gentle conceit of the master story-teller who knows just how to press the audiences’ buttons) goes on: “Oh no. This isn’t a story about John! John is just the Prologue. He comes on stage to introduce the main character – the Light. John has already come – but just you wait: the Light is on the very threshold!”
The “Ta dah!” moment is, of course, verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth!” All right! This is something else altogether! We’re not just getting a story about some prophet (however special) who does some of the usual stuff (however unusual and marvellous). This is a story of something never before conceived, imagined or paralleled: God’s one and only Son becoming a human being and living among us. Not just visiting, mind, but living! And, lest there be any confusion about who the main character in this story is, we are told that this is the one about whom John testified to as being greater than he (John) was (v15).
This becoming flesh of the Word takes us places we’ve never been before in the whole, long story of God’s saving love affair with the world. Verse 18 is our (the audience’s) line: “Hey, hang about here! No one has ever seen God! That’s an absolute rule! God doesn’t present God’s self to human eyes and experience. God is above all that! God doesn’t get involved in time, in change, in decay, in darkness! The bad bits – those are no-go areas for God! So how can you (John) claim to be telling us a story that is the Truth not only about our world but about God?” And the next sentence is John’s reply: “Ah, but you see, God the only Son, who comes from the very heart of the Father, is the one who has made God known!”
Of course, vv9-18 are omitted by this week’s lectionary. We’re looking at the testimony of John the Baptist to Jesus. But we won’t understand that John’s opening section focuses time and again on John only to make the point that the focus is actually Jesus, not John! The Baptist’s role in John’s gospel is to say, again and again, “I am not the One! Stop looking at me. Stop wasting time asking me questions about who I am, and what I’m doing here, and instead look at him, and ask yourselves who he is and what he’s doing here!”
All this is, in all probability, against a background of some sort of conflict between the Christians and disciples of the Baptist. We ought not to underestimate the reality of the effect of John’s ministry. He was a very public figure, with an astonishingly and disturbingly successful ministry down in the Jordan outside Bethany. Crowds flocked. He was an uncompromising figure with an uncompromising message. He was fearless when it came to telling the truth. It didn’t matter if you were peasant or royalty: you got your shortcomings and sins right between the eyes! No wonder there was frenetic speculation about who John might be. That he was a prophet was clear: just how significant a prophet was the important question! After all, it seemed possible … no, likely – that he was actually tied up with the kingdom! Perhaps he was the sign of God’s saving power that seemed about to break in?
What John gives us, then (being the storyteller that he is), is the most remarkable downgrading that any messenger from God has ever received! What he effectively has John say is, “For goodness sake! What’s wrong with you people? Stop getting hung up on the warm-up act and get ready for the Performance!”
And to the obvious question (“So what’s all your preaching and baptism about, John, if we’re not to focus on what God is doing through you?”), John will go on to make clear in vv29ff: “it’s all about preparation! My job is to reveal the Word made flesh to you all! And to whatever degree I’m special, this will serve only to show how much more special the Word made flesh is! So with my baptism: yes, it’s important. Yes, it’s of God. But it’s all preparation for the Word who will baptise not with water but the Spirit! And that’s how we’ll know him – it will be the one on whom the Spirit descends and remains! That’s how we’ll know he’s more than mere prophet: the Spirit will remain on him because it is the Sprit of God and he is the Son of God!” (vv 33-34)
John gives us what has been termed by scholars as a “Christology from above”. It begins with the divinity of Jesus as the incarnate Word and Son of God. That is Jesus’ importance: he is “from above”, as the gospel endlessly reminds us. He is the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world – the world’s saviour as well as its creator. That is John’s first word of testimony about Jesus (1:29). In other words, we are told about Jesus’ divinity not as a lesson in correct metaphysics, or to describe the mode of being of the Godhead, but in order to understand that it is God who has come among us to save us! In John’s gospel, Jesus time and again uses the divine name formula, “I am …” These are statements which, in pointing to Jesus, point to God. This is how we are to understand God to be like. Whatever he is in these statements – the Good Shepherd, the Bread of Life, the Way, the Truth and the Life etc – is metaphorical, save in the astounding declaration, “Before Abraham was, I AM!” We can trust that God is as he is in Jesus (cf David Jenkins!) because Jesus is God! And it is in John’s gospel that we have the only non-metaphorical statement about the nature of God: “God is Love”.
In other words, the importance of John’s story about Jesus is that this is the story of God coming into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save the world (3:17). John’s high Christology is actually only to emphasise God’s saving love. Theologically, Christology in this gospel is always controlled by soteriology.
But John’s gospel does not only emphasise the fact that Jesus is Son of God by virtue of his pre-existence and heavenly origin. Jesus is also Son of God for tow other reasons: he is indwelt by the Spirit and is obedient to the will of the Father, thus showing us that he is the legitimate Son of God. And these are modes of being for Jesus as the Word made flesh – the human Jesus. In other words, John is showing us that we discover in Jesus not only what God is like, but what it means to be truly human! To be truly human is to share in Jesus’ relationship to God as Father, to be indwelt by the Spirit and to be obedient.
We turn, therefore, to the other lectionary texts this week. The Old Testament passages and the Magnificat all link to the connections between the prophets, the Spirit of the Lord and the passionate concern for justice. Isaiah 61, in particular, is one of the great deliverance texts that affirms that Yahweh is God-who-delivers. Walter Brueggemann comments, “The God who delivers is the God who can disrupt any circumstance of social bondage and exploitation, overthrow ruthless orderings of public life, and authorize new circumstances of dancing freedom, dignity and justice. The verbs of deliverance refuse to accept as a given any circumstances of oppression (Theology of the Old Testament p208)”.
To call God God-who-delivers is to link God with the Exodus. If God’s name was revealed at Sinaii, God’s character and fundamental predisposition towards the world is revealed in the Exodus. The God of Isaiah and the God of Mary (Luke 1: 47-55) is the God of the Exodus – of liberation and of justice for the least first. Indeed, Brueggemann has argued compellingly in a chapter in The Covenanted Self, entitled “Justice: the earthly form of God’s holiness”, that the Exodus narrative shapes Israel’s sacred texts. There is a 3-fold dynamic in the story, the movements of which are repeated again and again and are certainly clearly visible in this week’s texts: (a) Israel, powerless, yearning for an alternative, ever again an exploited, oppressed community in need of a deliverer. (b) Israel’s antagonist is Pharaoh, the cipher in the Bible for every ruthless agent of exploitative power, a type who appears in many guises in Israel’s historical experience. (c) The third character is Yahweh, who enters the drama inexplicably (and therefore graciously), appearing in response to Israel’s voiced hurt and need. Yahweh’s characteristic role is to stand over against Pharaoh with enough power and authority to overturn the oppressive structures. Israel escapes its oppressor, exercises freedom for its own life and becomes “the subject of its own history” (The Covenanted Self, pp 48-9).
This is where God’s preferential option for the poor is to be located: in God’s love, grace, mercy and determination to deliver. So God’s Spirit empowers the prophets of old to speak on behalf of the voiceless. And we are meant to recall that John’s Jesus, on whom the Spirit descends and remains, is also Luke’s Jesus who makes Isaiah 61 his manifesto in Nazareth. Have you ever wondered what it is that makes Jesus Christian? Or makes the kingdom he preached and made present truly Good News? It is the fact that the Good News he brought is to the least first. The best of our systems is geared to the greatest good of the greatest number. But in all of our human systems, the ones who lose out are the weakest, most vulnerable and most marginalised. It is to these – the ones who always lose out and remain excluded – that Jesus comes first. For, if it is to the very least first, then it is truly good news to all. But that means, for those of us who are not the least, taking sides with them! It means denying our own interests in their favour, but in the knowledge that their liberation is actually also our own as it is for all people. When the powers that imprison the captives are broken, the captors, too, discover the extent to which they were held captive. That sort of solidarity with the poor and suffering is only possible through the Spirit.
One way of anticipating the advent of the Word made flesh is to consider again our own baptism. Christian life for us is, as it was for Jesus, a life of dying to self and rising to new life. It is about being transformed by the Holy Spirit, who, in Paul’s words, makes us sons and daughters of God. But being filled with the Holy Spirit has a particular, Jesus-shaped content. It is not the ultimate consumer product or kick – getting high on Holy Spirit – nor is it about self-sufficiency. The Holy Spirit is the power by which we, like Jesus, live lives of obedience as children of God. That obedience is seen as we, like Jesus, become involved in the struggles for justice and peace – the holiness of God on earth. We are to become the answers to the Advent prayers of those who hunger and thirst after justice, who cry out for liberation and who yearn for the promise of the Word made flesh, because the God who comes to us in Jesus is the One who “brings down the powerful from their thrones, lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty”. If we do so at no other season of the year, let us be reminded that our Advent hope is Jesus, hope of the hopeless, voice of the voiceless, liberator of the captors and wealth of the poor. For Advent, as our texts remind us, is their season, precisely because it is God who comes to walk among us in Jesus, the Word made flesh.
Amen.
19:45 Posted in Isaiah , John , Luke , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this