For sure?
A few verses before today’s scripture passage, the brothers of Jesus urge him to join them on a pilgrimage to the Festival of Tabernacles taking place in Jerusalem. Jesus tells them he’s not going, then follows on his own later, though in secret.
This seven-day festival commemorated the Exodus and how God provided for the Israelites after they escaped slavery in Egypt. (Culpepper, 165) It took place during the harvest season, and during the seven days of its duration those who participated would “live in booths reminiscent of the temporary dwellings in which the Israelites lived during their forty-year wandering in the desert.” (Reinhartz, loc. 43744) Thus, it is sometimes referred to as the Festival of Booths.
The festival was a major affair, and contained rituals and traditions, some of which conjured imagery of water and light. (Culpepper, 165) In one custom, “a golden pitcher of water from the pool of Siloam [is carried] to the temple as a reminder of the water drawn from the rock in the desert (Num. 20:2–13) and as a symbol of hope for messianic deliverance (Isa. 12:3).” (Reinhartz, loc. 43768)
Perhaps it is around this point that Jesus chose to speak in the temple about the living water he had to offer. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ ”
Can you imagine what it must have been like to hear this? In the midst of one of their biggest celebrations of the year, this out-of-towner begins making proclamations suggesting people should believe in him. No wonder the crowd became agitated. Perhaps they also remembered his prior visit to Jerusalem, when he dumped out the coins of the money-changers and overturned tables in the temple.
Regardless, it’s quite a story, and one that the author of John thankfully included in the fourth gospel. (It’s not found in the others.) I say “the author of John” because biblical scholars are not certain whether it was John the apostle who wrote it, or if it was people close to him. Some suspect it might even have been Lazarus.
John’s gospel was written later than Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s, and it contains several other stories that are not included in those earlier writings. When I read John, I sometimes picture the apostle at the end of his life, reflecting on everything that has happened since the resurrection of Jesus. He’s lived through the conflict between those Jews who considered Jesus to be the Messiah, and those who did not. He’s living in the context of the temple having been destroyed by the Romans, and the scattering of its leadership. The other apostles have been martyred, and those Christians who survive are at risk of being persecuted and executed by the Romans.
And this gospel contains the details he chose to pass on. That Jesus had a three-year ministry; not the single year suggested by the other gospel writers. That he made multiple trips to Jerusalem, rather than one at the end of his life. That he was crucified before the Passover, rather than on it. (Smith & Kim, loc. 3687)
I’m grateful for John’s gospel, because it shares things we wouldn’t otherwise know. For fans of certainty, though, I suspect it introduces some challenges.
“The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” You might have heard that statement before. When I do, I wonder how those who subscribe to it might explain the discrepancies between the life of Jesus as shared in John and as shared in the other gospels. Or if you want to start at the beginning of the Bible, do they believe God created Eve first or the non-human animals first?
At this point I should own up to the fact that I used to be quite an apologist myself. As a young person, I was brimming with certainty. As time has gone by, though, I’ve learned that certainty often doesn’t serve us well. Sometimes we need to be open to other perspectives and ideas; when we’re not, we might be closing ourselves off to relationships or developments that would improve our own lives and the lives of those around us.
Certainty has certainly been problematic for the church. While I understand the need — especially in the early days of Christianity — to determine what it meant to be a Jesus-follower in a culture where other traditions were dominant, since that time our certainty has often led to division.
What have we disagreed about over the years? One of the biggest issues was over whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from God the heavenly parent alone or from both God and Jesus. Another was whether unleavened bread should be used for Communion. That division came to a head about a thousand years ago, at which point the Great Schism split the Catholic church from the Orthodox church. Now the world’s roughly 200 million Orthodox Christians worship separately from their Catholic siblings, whose numbers exceed a billion.
Five hundred years later came the Protestant Reformation. It not only resulted in many people leaving the Catholic church, but due to differences in belief that exodus resulted in the creation of an ever-splintering number of denominations. Opinions differed over theology, worship, scripture, music, and other issues, and sometimes the disagreements were so intense that violence ensued.
Was the Reformation a good thing? I suspect most Protestants think so. Were some of the disagreements within the churches that came out of the Reformation important? Of course. But in the ensuing years, it seems we’ve perhaps put a greater emphasis on what we believe at the expense of how we should live our lives. In fact, we often value belief so much that it has become a gateway to being involved in the church.
Some, like Diana Butler Bass, identify this as a problem. In her book Christianity After Religion, she describes it this way:
There is . . . something odd about this pattern. Other than joining a political party, it is hard to think of any other sort of community that people join by agreeing to a set of principles. Imagine joining a knitting group. Does anyone go to a knitting group and ask if the knitters believe in knitting or what they hold to be true about knitting? Do people ask for a knitting doctrinal statement? Indeed, if you start knitting by reading a book about knitting or a history of knitting or a theory of knitting, you will very likely never knit.
If you want to knit, you find someone who knits to teach you. Go to the local yarn shop and find out when there is a knitting class. Sit in a circle where others will talk to you, show you how to hold the needles, guide your hands, and share their patterns with you. The first step in becoming a knitter is forming a relationship with knitters. The next step is to learn by doing and practice. After you knit for a while, after you have made scarves and hats and mittens, then you start forming ideas about knitting.
Long ago, before the last half millennium, Christians understood that faith was a matter of community first, practices second, and belief as a result of the first two. Our immediate ancestors reversed the order. Now, it is up to us to restore the order. (Bass, 202–203)
Does that mean we abandon our core convictions? Of course not. We’re called to continue the work of Jesus on earth, guided by his teachings and the themes of love and justice found throughout scripture. Of that we can be certain. What we should avoid, however, is becoming so married to more granular certainties that we’re distracted from how the Spirit might be moving in our communities.
Returning to today’s scripture passage, some in the crowd became so immersed in squabbles about their assumptions and beliefs that they missed the message of the messiah in their midst. Some believed him to be a prophet in the Hebrew tradition, others believed he was indeed the Messiah. Others recognized him as being from Galilee (apparently unaware that he was born in Bethlehem), and were certain that disqualified him from being the Messiah, who was to come from Bethlehem. Some even wanted to arrest him, although the words he was speaking were so profound they hesitated.
This mention of the Messiah makes John stand out from the other gospels; Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not use that term. Jesus also references the Holy Spirit, laying the groundwork for the instructions he would give his disciples during John’s retelling of the Last Supper.
If you want to spend some time wrestling with scripture, note that some translations of today’s passage (including the updated NRSV) state that “as yet there was no Spirit.” Taken at face value, that might disrupt our understanding of the Trinity, as well as several references to the Spirit in the Hebrew scriptures. Thankfully, I think the other references to the Holy Spirit in John offer some clarity on the issue.
One thing that’s not immediately clear in John is why the author makes mention of “the Jews,” as they do later in chapter 7. If your reaction to such designations is to ask, “weren’t they all Jews in this story?,” you’re on the right track. Who else would be in the temple during the Festival of Tabernacles besides Jews? In those instances, it’s good to remember what has transpired between the events being retold in the gospel and when they were recorded. Even after the resurrection of Jesus, the debates over whether he was the Messiah continued. Those who called themselves Jews before recognizing Jesus as divine continued to call themselves Jews after they believed. They still worshiped in the temple, at least for a while. We don’t know all of the details of the conflicts between the temple authorities, the Pharisees, and those who came to be known as Christians, but the manner in which John refers to them speaks to an ongoing tension. As Biblical scholar Gail O’Day writes, the “Fourth Gospel simultaneously addresses two historical periods. It presents the messianic debate as occurring among Jesus’ contemporaries but shades the debate to reflect the messianic controversies in [John’s] own time period.” (O’Day, 527)
O’Day also offers thoughts on the responses of those who heard Jesus in today’s passage:
Each conversation in John 7 underscores the contrast between the reality embodied in Jesus — that he is sent from God — and the crowd’s and the authorities’ perception of that reality. Instead of allowing what they see in Jesus to redefine their understanding of God in the world, those who resist Jesus judge him according to pre-existent systems and structures that both cause and provide justification for their misperception. Jesus is measured against professed knowledge of who the Messiah will be, of what Scripture says; the rigid certitude with which those expectations are held determines the judgment reached about Jesus. . . . Jesus’ coming into the world as the incarnate Word of God requires that one perceive reality differently. (O’Day, 531)
Some recognized Jesus as God in their midst. Some weren’t sure. Others couldn’t overcome their certainty, and thus couldn’t accommodate a change in their perception.
You may have heard that when pastors write sermons, they’re often writing in part to themselves. That’s certainly true today, and I offer the following story as evidence: We recently had a young man join us for the first time at one of our evening Intertwined gatherings. He is a self-described Catholic, but attends a large evangelical church. He frequently travels for work, and when he does he seeks out a place to offer confession.
Admirable, right? But guess what my initial reaction was. I asked how he reconciled Catholic theology with evangelical theology. I was focused on the discrepancies between Catholic and evangelical beliefs rather than how his faith manifested itself in his life. I was certain he couldn’t hold those differing traditions in tension, but his knitting told a different story.
Do our perspectives ever prevent us from perceiving reality differently, even in the face of a changing society and world? Does our certainty ever threaten our relationships or our willingness to make space for new ideas? Has it contributed to the often-cited polarization that seems to have increased in recent years?
Again, I’m not suggesting today that we abandon core beliefs, such as the importance of gathering in community in the name of Jesus, the need to show love to our neighbors and even our enemies, and the pursuit of justice as defined by Jesus and the Hebrew prophets. But maybe some of our beliefs about what all that looks like should be revisited at times.
Those of us who grew up in the church have ideas about what worship looks and sounds like. One of the challenges I’ve faced in developing Intertwined is determining what the essential elements of a gathering should be, especially for those who didn’t grow up attending church. I’ve looked at how worship is described in the book of Acts and early Christian writings like the Didache, and come to realize that most of the items listed in church bulletins are not mentioned. They are practices that have developed over time and have a theological basis, but aside from Communion they are, ultimately, optional and replaceable. It might be hard for us to image doing church without a prelude or Call to Worship or hymnals or handbells or piano or praise band or children’s message or offering or even a 15ish-minute sermon. But you certainly can, and it will still qualify as a gathering of the faithful.
What about our acts of mercy? Many faith communities do admirable work in showing love by donating clothes or providing meals to those in need. But how active are we in addressing the systems and policies that cause people to be in need of clothing and food in the first place? What would it look like for us to join in community in addressing the sources of injustice in our city, state, and country, rather than just the symptoms?
One thing I like about the Presbyterian church is that, for those who are interested, our beliefs are clearly and carefully spelled out in the Book of Order and Book of Confessions. The foundations of our practices and theology can be found there, along with attributions to scripture. But one does not need to read either of those books to follow Jesus. As Mitzi Smith and Yung Suk Kim write, “The way of transforming the world is not by knowledge about Jesus but through the discipleship that follows his teaching rooted in the love of God and love of the world. This kind of discipleship does not demonize others or other religions because God loved the world and the people in it. God’s love is bigger than any human thought. Thus Jesus’s disciples are invited to engage in dialogue with others and walk with them through the love of God. If the Logos mission is performed through this careful engagement in the world, [John’s] Gospel will be a gospel of inclusion rather than of exclusion.” (Smith & Kim, loc. 3866)
Siblings in Christ, rather that being suspect of threats to our certainty, let’s hold our certainty in suspicion while we concentrate on knitting the continuing story of the Spirit’s movement in the world.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Works Referenced
Bass, Diana Butler. Christianity After Religion. New York City: HarperCollins, 2012.
Carey, Greg. “John.” NT100: Introduction to the New Testament (class lecture, Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster, PA, December 6, 2019).
Culpepper, R. Alan. The Gospel and Letters of John. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1998.
Gafney, Wilda C. A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W. New York City: Church Publishing, 2021.
McGrath, Alister E. Christian History: An Introduction. West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
O’Day, Gail R. “The Gospel of John.” In New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VIII. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015.
Powell, Mark Allan. Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2018. Kindle edition.
Reinhartz, Adele. “John.” In Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The Old Testament and Apocrypha, edited by Gale A. Yee, Hugh R. Page, Jr., Matthew J. M. Coomber. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. Kindle edition.
Smith, Mitzi J. & Yung Suk Kim. Toward Decentering the New Testament: A Reintroduction. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2018, Kindle edition.
