so I would not let it go. I was still at it the next Christmas. Finally, Al took me out to lunch and said, “Bob, drop it.” So I did.
Until this summer. At a June graduation party in the old neighborhood, something marvelous happened. Marvelous like Spirit, full of surprise. Marvelous like real church, beyond any naming or denomination. Marvelous like life, true and good and present. Marvelous like love. I ran into Sue, who asked about Ben, and then said that Stan, her husband, a lawyer, a sometime Catholic, a quiet, quizzical guy, the last person on earth you would call religious, she said that Stan would like to know about Ben for a host of reasons, and, as she ended, “Well, all the way back, you know, to the train that Christmas. . . .” Stan was really angry with Sue for spilling the beans. I, though, was grateful.
This is what we are hoping for, what we imagine at our best: an experience of being alive, an experience of love, an experience of God.
The Gospel of John is not focused on ethics. There is only minimal ethical teaching here. One looks in vain for a Sermon on the Mount or Plain. One searches without result for a parable with a point. One hungers without satisfaction for a wisdom saying, an epigram, a teaching on virtue. In John we have the teleological suspension of the ethical. In John, only the command to love remains.
These things are spoken that you may believe that Jesus in the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
This week you can choose to grow in faith, and so find a fuller part of your second identity. This week you can choose to grow in love, and so open a fuller part of the world’s imagination. This week you can fight through dislocation, like that known by the Bride of Cana, and discover your own courage to be. This week you can fight through disappointment that things aren’t simpler, like that known by the Bride of Christ, and learn to simply live.
Faith is personal commitment to an unverifiable truth. It involves a leap.
Faith is an objective uncertainty grasped with subjective certainty. It involves a leap.
Faith is the way to salvation, a real identity and a rich imagination. But it does involve a leap.
Now is the time to jump.
And all of us are better when we are loved.
Notes from Raymond Brown’s Lectures on John
Union Theological Seminary
Spring 1978
March 9, 1978: The Wedding in Cana of Galilee
The Cana miracle could have been an earlier narrative. In the final form of the narrative, Mary takes on another significance. John brings Mary back at the end of the gospel. This is not a complete rejection of Mary (as in Mark). There is no attempt at all to reclaim the physical mother in Mark. John brings her back at the end. The beloved disciple takes her under his wing. Then the mother of Jesus and the brothers depart. The brothers return in chapter 7. “His brothers did not believe in him.”
James became a great figure for Jewish Christians. John was not in that group. There is a great deal of apocryphal material about James. Paul mentions James in 1 Cor 15. The voice here is hostile to Jewish Christianity. Ignatius of Antioch has very bitter relations with Jewish Christians. This hostility is expressed toward Jesus’ brothers. But Jesus’ mother is connected to the beloved disciple, and at the very least is put into another category. This is interesting: in Luke and John, Mary becomes a part of the Christian community. We do not know that from Mark. So there is reflection about Mary going on in the early Christian tradition.
Who were Jesus’ brothers? They are mentioned in all the gospels. Mark and Matthew also mention sisters. And what about Joseph? Some explain Jesus’ brothers as step-brothers. Tertullian vs. Jerome. Jerome says Jesus could not have had siblings. Jerome’s position prevailed past the Reformation. This, says RB, was not a very good argument, not an authentic NT argument. James, Simon, Jude, Jospephus: the first three are supposed to have been early church 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
