From the Daily Lectionary for Tuesday in the Tenth Week after Pentecost
John 3:22-36
After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized—John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison.
Now a discussion about purification arose between John’s disciples and a Jew. They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” John answered, “No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.’ He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.
Again, John, the writer, implicitly discloses that there is some competition between the disciples of Jesus and those of John the Baptist. Historians Philo and Josephus imply as much. As the Jesus movement developed, there became more and more distance between the so-called people of “the Way” and the following of John the Baptist. Here, John, the writer, is explicit in the proclamation that Jesus is the greater; that Jesus is the true light, whereas John the Baptist is a mere herald of Jesus’ coming. I think this dichotomy is emblematic of the break in early Christianity from its regional and Semitic roots; a widening theology grounded in the cosmopolitan ethos of the Greek philosophical academy.
The writer even has John the Baptist, himself, speaking of this theology in this passage: “The one who comes from heaven is above all.” He is speaking of Jesus’ divinity, which is quite a departure from the Synoptic accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry. We are seeing here the expansion of the Jesus movement beyond just a teaching and healing mission in Palestine, into a wider movement that ultimately, in less than three hundred years, will convert the emperor, and become the religion of state. Such is the power of language. It was as if the Jesus movement came about at the same time that there was a language in existence that could articulate it. Timing is everything.
We see such radical theological shifts in the church today. For example, salvation, which has for so long been described by the church as something intimately personal… the means by which “I” will go to heaven; now is being articulated as the means of restoring community. Moreover, salvation is now much less about the afterlife, but about the well-being and dignity of those without power and privilege. Salvation is about restoring justice to our common life. This really isn’t anything “new,” but a reclaiming of the public witness of the early Jesus movement; and certainly germane to our own age in its disenfranchisement of the powerless.
Another shift has to do with the doctrine of “substitutionary atonement,” which holds that in order for humankind to be rescued from its sinful depravity, God must sacrifice his Son by torture and execution to pay the price. Now, the church is more and more speaking of atonement owing to the life and ministry of Jesus; his commitment to the poor, the outcasts, and the shamed. Jesus’ sacrifice is his passion for the good of his neighbor, not his death.
All this to say that theology is always speculative and evolving. Some would say: “So, Is it ‘anything goes’?” The answer is a provisional… no. We have scripture as our guide; we also have science and new knowledge; we have our life’s experience, and the collective experience of our history. Surely God is still revealing Godself. Truth evolves, but truth will always find a way into the hearts of people who love. Love is perhaps our greatest ally in discerning the truth. If it is not Love, it is not of God. Amid the pandemonium in which we find ourselves, I think that is quite enough, at least for now.
A Prayer for All Baptized Christians (BCP p. 252)
Grant, O God, to all who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, that, as we have put away the old life of sin, so we may be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and live in justice and true holiness; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
