The Courageous Gospel. Robert Allan Hill
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heads. John is polemicizing here. Luke has no hostility to brothers. What view would readers have had of the brothers? And why would he call Mary “woman”? Jesus addresses all women as woman. Does this refer to the book of revelation? Is Mary here in the Eve mode? Jesus “resists using his power in a merely practical way.”
Are there seven days in the first two chapters? For instance, the author of the Revelation is honest about his sevens. Is this a retelling of the Genesis story in which Adam chooses the will of the father? RB thinks not.
There is very little about Capernaum in this gospel, as opposed to the Synoptic tradition. The Cana scene ends with the disciple and his inaugural glory. But they will not understand everything. Understanding and belief “take a long time.” God puts them on the road to faith and belief, but not full belief for the disciples (except for the beloved disciple).
At the end of chapter 2, scripture and the word of Jesus are put side by side. 2 Peter (~130 AD) contains the first mention of Christian scripture.
Now the Passover of the Jews was near. There are three Passovers in John. This is where the notion of Jesus’ three-year ministry comes from. These feasts may be more symbolic than chronological. Also, the ministry itself may have lasted 10 years. Jesus must go to Jerusalem and to the feast. Paul celebrates Passover, but not John. The cleansing of the temple and the destruction of the temple have no connection in the Synoptics. Here, they do. Who is right? This is far from a minor issue. According to the Synoptics, this is the issue which brought Jesus’ death. The temple is an identity point, and so is a very sensitive point. The teacher of righteousness at Qumran is dumped on for the temple attack.
But in John, Caiaphas kills Jesus over the raising of Lazarus. Here Jesus starts his ministry where he ends it in other books. The real goal is the replacement of the temple with Jesus’ body. There is a different cast to Jesus’ direction. The changing of water into wine is meant to symbolize that the old is over, and something completely new has come. God is present in the temple, the space for God’s name and glory. So it is with Jesus.
In each of the four gospels there seems to be some sense of replacement. Mark has the temple of hands contrasted with the temple not built with hands. The physical vs. the spiritual. The others struggle to interpret this. To get his own interpretation in, John has to play with the base saying. The Body of Christ becomes the Temple of God. In John’s mind, the Jews brought the temple destruction upon themselves.
6 / Two Births
John 3:1–16
“These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
This year we are scaling a great promontory, the highest peak in the Bible, which is the Gospel of John. With every cut-back trail, at every rest point, atop every lookout, with every majestic view, this spiritual gospel will address you with the choice of freedom, with the ongoing need to choose, and in—choosing—to find the life of belonging and meaning, personal identity and global imagination.
The interpretation of the Gospel of John is a dangerous job. Luther recalled most carefully what the church has realized most generally, which is that for the Bible to be rightly heard, for the preacher to handle the word of truth, one first needs some understanding of what the passage meant in its first hearing. What did its writer mean to say, and what did its hearers or readers first hear or read? To the extent that we have some handle on this first incarnation of truth, we may be able to apply the meaning of the Bible to our own time and place.
It helps us to understand the prophets of Israel to learn the history through which they lived. We can appreciate the wisdom books when we know a little about their background. The first three gospels become meaningful to us, as we come to grips with their historical struggles. The letters of Paul take existential shape for us when we know something about his life, his missionary journeys, his relationships with others.
John’s history is in many ways the toughest for us to understand. Two primary theories have been advanced in the last hundred years, and I am an interpretative child of both. One emphasizes Judaism, one Hellenism. One emphasizes Gnosticism, one apocalypticism. One emphasizes space, one time. How are we to judge? This year I propose we use them both and hope for the best.
Grace During Dislocation
Nicodemus is a ruler of Israel. He is a teacher and a religious leader. He has stayed by the mother tongue, the mother tradition, the mother religion. He has stayed in the womb. He has never left home. But you cannot become yourself if you never leave home. To become who you are you have to go somewhere else. Not always geographically. Jesus never traveled more than fifty miles from Bethlehem.
John is concerned with Spirit, not speculation; with the artistry of the everyday, not with Armageddon; with the church, not with calamity.
You have already learned the heart of this text: that Nicodemus and Jesus are representative types of religion—past and future, law and liberty; that the word for Spirit and wind is the same word and that John can and does mean both; that the command to be born from above is plural, you all, or as they say in the South, “all y’all.”
John turns his gaze now away from inherited religion to focus on culture, away from Judaism to address the Gnostics, who wanted fervently to be saved by knowing “whence we come and whither we are going.” Says Jesus, “The Spirit blows where it wills.”
Cultural religion says, “You know whence you came.” Spirit says, “You do not.”
A pre-Christian culture says, “You know where you are going.” John says, “Not so: Those who are born of the spirit, of them you do not know whence or whither.”
John’s neighbors affirm: we know whence and whither. John replies: not so of those born of the spirit. You are left with confusing liberty, the assorted decisions of a complex life. You are free. In Christ, you are set free. In Spirit, you do not know, you believe.
Here stands Nicodemus, a man in full. A religious leader, really a representative of the best in spiritual inheritance. He ventures out at night, choking from the challenge of truth, new truth, full truth. Where he has been will not take him where he needs to go. He is a person on the edge of a great dislocation: he is about to make up his mind to change his mind about something that really matters.
Some years ago the Christian Century ran a series of articles by nominally great religious leaders, titled “How My Mind Has Changed.” A disappointing series. One found really little significant change of mind in any of them. Typical of preachers—stubborn, self-assured; it takes one to know one.
But here stands Nicodemus, a courageous soul. He is facing the great heartache of maturity. You face it too. He is facing out over a great ravine, a great gorge, a great precipice. On a matter of mortal meaning, he is making up his mind whether to change his mind. That takes real courage.
Benjamin Franklin found this courage when he left behind his beloved Europe and his confidence in diplomacy to take up arms with his fellow colonists. Abraham Lincoln found this courage when he finally moved to side fully with the abolitionists. Robert F. Kennedy, then the junior Senator from the Empire State, found this same courage when he left the Cold War mind of his own past and of his dear brother to oppose the war in Vietnam. Sometimes you get to a point where you have to make up your mind whether to change your mind. To face facts, as Nicodemus courageously faced the works, signs, deeds of Jesus the Christ. It takes great courage to change your mind about something of mortal significance. In fact, it may not even be humanly possible, apart from grace.
It means admitting error. We would sooner be proven sinful than stupid. John takes us to higher ground. We have an easier time receiving forgiveness for sin than we do receiving grace for change.
Yet did not Samson finally see the error of his ways with Delilah? Did not David finally see his mistake with Bathsheba? Did not Peter break down and weep on understanding his betrayal? Did not Paul find the courage, in earshot of unmistakable evidence, to cease persecution, and in fact, to suffer it for Christ’s sake? The Gospel of Jesus Christ is one of persistent failure,