|
||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
|
|
|
Readings: Tonight we come to John’s version of the last days of Jesus. In the past week we’ve heard from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and so we can see that John is almost, as the saying goes, a different story. John is unique among the gospels in a variety of ways: there are no parables in John; there’s no Last Supper in John – instead we have the only Biblical account of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet; and the character of Jesus is a bit different in John. In the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – Jesus sometimes seems unsure of what the future holds. He says things like “only the Father in heaven” knows the answer to such-and-such a question. And in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the first three gospels, Jesus asks the Father to remove the cup from Him. Not so in John, which doesn’t have any of the famous Gethsemane stories with the disciples falling asleep when Jesus goes off alone the pray. And Jesus never asks God to remove the cup from Him. The closest John comes to that is a few days earlier when Jesus says this: “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” (12:27-28) John’s Jesus knew how everything was going to work out from the very beginning – He even predicted Judas’s betrayal way back in chapter six – and He had total confidence that just as He had been with God in the beginning – to use the famous words of the Prologue to John – that’s exactly where He is returning to. This obviously divine, omniscient Jesus is evident at His trial, as well. Instead of standing before Caiaphas, the high priest, as in the other three Gospels, in John Jesus is brought before Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas. And instead of the silence we saw in Mark and the terseness of Matthew, Jesus waxes eloquent before Annas. He runs logical circles around Annas, and in this trial Jesus has the last word. Peter’s denials are even more dramatic in John. Only in John is the disciple who cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave in the garden identified as Peter. Which makes it all the more stark that Peter denies having been in the garden in the first place. And John introduces another character into the mix – the mysterious “disciple whom Jesus loved” – who is sort of Peter’s opposite. Where Peter misunderstands, this disciple gets it. When Peter runs away, this disciple stands fast. To understand this character we have to look at the history surrounding the book of John. We’ve already talked about how Mark was the first gospel written, in the 60s of the first century. Then came Matthew and Luke, each using Mark to some degree when they composed their gospels. John came latest, around the year 100 AD, at a time when the Jewish Christians were not only battling the traditional Jews, they were also fighting against each other for control of the new Church. Because when Jesus had been alive, He’d predicted that some people wouldn’t taste death before the kingdom came, but by the time John was writing even the people who’d just been kids when Jesus had been crucified were old men. Christians realized that they must have misinterpreted what Jesus had said, and so they needed to make plans for how the Church was going to function – and who was going to lead it – until Jesus really did return. And whereas the Synoptic gospels cast Peter as the most likely leader, John offers another option, another tradition, following this “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Whoever he was, you can bet that the author of John thought he was the right person for Christians to follow. John’s anger toward the Jewish authorities shines forth in his description of the trial before Pontius Pilate. As we’ve already seen, as you move through the gospels, from Matthew to Mark to Luke and to John, the description of Pilate becomes more and more positive. In John, Jesus and Pilate have quite a little conversation, leading Pilate to ask Jesus, “What is truth?” But the essence of that question depends on how you say it: if you say it sincerely and look for an answer, it can be rather noble; but coming from a ruthless dictator like Pontius Pilate, most likely it was a sarcastic and dismissive statement. It’s as if Pilate was questioning whether truth existed at all; and even if it did, what did it matter? Then Pontius Pilate proclaims three separate times that he thinks Jesus is innocent, and according to John Pilate basically gets railroaded into condemning Jesus by the Jewish mob. Of all the gospels, the Jews get the worst rap in the book of John, and there’s a reason for that. By the time John was writing, it was very clear that Jewish Christians weren’t welcome anymore in the synagogue. The traditional Jewish leaders had basically kicked them out, and that left Christians very vulnerable. If you were a law-abiding Jew, the Romans pretty much left you alone. But not so if you were a Christian. Christians were seen as subversive, a potential threat to Roman authority. And they had no official protection from the synagogue or respected religious leaders. John was not only angry that other Jews didn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah; he was also angry that they had put Jewish Christians in such a dangerous position. When we read John’s harsh treatment of the Jews and his equally kind treatment of the Romans, we need to understand all of that, and understand that his condemnation was of the Jewish authorities of his time, not Jews in general. After the scene with Pontius Pilate, the drama that is the book of John continues in grand style. In contrast to the other gospels where the purple robe and crown of thorns are put on Jesus after He’s condemned and then only in the presence of the Roman soldiers, who put His own clothes back on Him for the walk to Calvary, in John the robe and crown and thorns are part of the lead-up to the trial. So when Jesus is brought before the frenzied crowd, and Pilate gives them the choice to release Jesus or Barabbas, He’s wearing them. And He continues to wear them on the walk to Calvary, so when we imagine Jesus carrying His cross (and note that there’s no Simon of Cyrene to help him carry it in the book of John), and wearing a crown of thorns and a purple robe, those images come only from John. The crucifixion scene is also different. In the other gospels the women looked on from afar and the disciples had scattered far and wide. But in John, the women stood by the cross, and the beloved disciple was there, as well. Once again John is laying the groundwork for a church founded not on the famous confession of Peter, but on the proclamation of Jesus from the cross that Mary and the beloved disciple are now mother and son, and on them will the church be founded. The scene of Jesus on the cross is all about imagery and control. John brings up specific images that fulfill Old Testament prophecies. He alone among the gospels specifies what kind of tunic Jesus was wearing, so everyone can be clear that the soldiers really did cast lots for his clothing, as predicted in Psalm 22. And only in John is the sponge of wine put on the end of a hyssop branch, hearkening back to the book of Exodus, where hyssop branches were used to sprinkle water on the doors of the Israelites, so that the angel of God would pass over them and spare their lives, on the first Passover. And in John Jesus is always united with the Father, even and especially during the crucifixion. There’s no “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as in Matthew and Mark. Instead, Jesus is in control. He instructs his mother and the beloved disciple as to how they should view each other. He expresses thirst in simple terms. And his last words are, “It is finished.” “It” meaning the grand plan that had been in place since the very beginning, that Jesus had known about all along, and that was finally coming to completion that first Good Friday. The symbolism that follows Jesus’ death is as powerful as that which came before. John specifies that the soldiers did not break his legs, again drawing a parallel to the sacrificial lamb, which the book of Exodus commands must not have its legs broken. Instead of being laid in a tomb covered with only a linen cloth (as in the Synoptic gospels), in John Jesus is buried like a king, wrapped in a cloth lined with a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes. The other three gospels mark Jesus’ death with acts of great power: the curtain in the Temple is torn in two; the tombs open and bodies of the saints come forth; and a Roman centurion proclaims that Jesus was, indeed, the Son of God. None of that happens in John; instead, the soldier pierces Jesus’ side with a spear, and blood and water come out. That symbol is remarkably rich. In John 7 Jesus spoke of streams of living water – hearkening back to the book of Numbers where Moses struck a rock with a staff and water poured forth, nourishing the Israelites during their wanderings in the desert. But there Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit, which would not flow until after He had died. So there on the Cross, the water of life spilled forth, for the Holy Spirit had come, just as Jesus had promised. Some scholars think that the water and blood mixed together might also refer to the two sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, symbolized as they are by water and wine. And we should remember the sacred mystery at the center of our faith – the Holy Eucharist – where the wine is poured into the chalice, and then water is added to it. The origin of that is Jewish tradition, where wine was always cut with water. But often things that begin in practical ways come to take on symbolic meaning, and so when we drink from the cup of water mixed with wine, we should remember the sacrifice of Jesus that made it possible, and the river of living water mixed with the blood of Christ that flowed forth that day on Calvary, and brought salvation to all of us. |
|
|
|
[Home] [Worship] [Sermons] [Youth] [Mulch] [Projects] [Info] |