John 1:29-42
The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel."
And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God."
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon.
One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter).
I like to use John the writers’ gospel whenever I can because it doesn’t come around in the lectionary all that often. Matthew. Mark, and Luke each get a full year in our three-year lectionary cycle, but John only gets scattered bits at some of the high points of the liturgical year.
We hear from him mostly in Easter season but also in Holy Week leading up to Easter, and occasionally, as in this year, during Epiphany. John can be difficult to read at times because he is very wordy and talks about philosophical positions rather than physical actions, but he is well worth spending time with.
Last week John the writer introduced John the Baptist as one who was not himself the light, but one called to announce the coming light, to point him out to those who would listen. Between the ending of last week’s reading and the beginning of this week’s there was an episode in which some Pharisees sent servants to ask John who he was.
He told them no, he was not the messiah nor was he Elijah. So who then are you, they asked, and he answered them “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” quoting from Isaiah’s prophecies. The next day they came again to ask why he was baptizing people and he answered, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”
This is where today’s reading picks up, with Jesus walking toward him and John announcing that this is the one he’s been talking about. And here I have to admit something pretty embarrassing for myself, considering how long I’ve been doing this preaching thing. I just noticed this week, for the first time, as best I can remember, that in John’s gospel, Jesus is never actually baptized. There is conversation between John the Baptist and Jesus, and John mentions seeing the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus looking like a dove – but no actual baptism, no water. Perhaps it’s implied by Jesus coming out to where John is baptizing others – but maybe not. As I said earlier about John the writer, here there are more words, less action.
By the end of today’s reading, Jesus has called his first two disciples, and by the end of chapter one they have become four. Here we find another major difference in this version of the story. There is no mention at all of any forty days alone in the desert, no satanic temptations.
Here, instead, Jesus goes from his meeting with the Baptist to, in the next two days, accruing four disciples – Andrew and Phillip, who were followers of John, who then in turn brought in Peter and Nathaniel. The very next action in John the writer’s gospel is the wedding at Cana – which, by the way, is only found in John’s gospel. None of the other three mention it.
Any reading of John’s Gospel is a reminder to us that none of the gospel accounts was written as the events happened. They were all written well after the event and are each the much edited and rewritten accounts of a specific community of believers – not only their memories but the lived experiences of that community’s members.
It’s easy to get lulled into thinking the Synoptics are all the same, but they are decidedly not. While there are similarities there are also major differences among them. There is posited the existence of the currently non-existent Q document because of the number of times the three gospels appear to all be quoting from another document which apparently has not survived into our times. So here, for instance, we are depending on a source that we are not even sure ever existed.
Every one of the four gospels has also been edited and probably re-edited. The people who make it their work to analyze and decode written syntax and dialects speak of all written work as having a “voice,” and this voice can be “heard” by those who have the training to recognize such things. Whole sections of the writings are often written in a different voice, sometimes smoothly enough to pass with those of us not trained to hear the differences, but sometimes done quite clumsily, leaving us thinking “huh?” at a piece that doesn’t seem to fit, because it was clearly inserted into the text at a later date.
I’m not trying to get into literary criticism here but simply to point out that every gospel has been written by a disorganized committee over a span of time rather than a single author at one point in time. And every gospel has a particular history and a particular agenda.
Shortly after Jesus’ death, for instance, there was an uprising staged against Rome by Jewish zealots, which ended with Judah being squashed by Rome and with Jerusalem and many other locations being left in much worse shape than before.
Rome, like so many major powers that had ruled for a long time, was beginning to rot from the inside. Roman dominance was over-extended and beginning to crumble, and other outsiders were seeing their chance to break free. It was a slow-motion collapse, as such things often are, but while it was happening it was a turbulent time.
While these gospels were written at the very beginning of this collapse, some of the communities which produced the gospels were suffering persecution, while others were not so much. Each came to their communal experience of Jesus from a distinct direction.
This is why it is so important that we read the whole of the gospel account and not just bits and pieces. We cannot, for instance, just read Matthew’s gospel and decide that we now have the whole story -- we need to be familiar with all four gospels. It’s also important to read Paul’s letters, because so much of what we take as “gospel-truth” actually comes from Paul, as his writings reflect various communities of faith, each expressing its own story about Jesus.
There is an axiom which says that “the winner gets to write the history." I would add that this also applies to the loudest. This is true here as in any other case.
What we have in scripture is theological truth, not necessarily historical truth. What is needed here is for us to read all of it and for us to attempt to hear it from various directions, from various authors, speaking for various communities who have had various experiences of the Christ.
And then we have to realize that we today, as much as John or Matthew or Paul are hearing it through our own experience of Jesus. The more we bring to the mixture, the more we know of Jesus and of the who, what, when, and why of Jesus. And the better we can understand why our hearts call us to follow the way of this one who left us so few clues about himself.