1. Baptism into the Kingdom
- John 3:3-8 ~ transformed
"... be born again of water and Spirit ..."
While Jews knew what a baptism of repentance meant, the idea was mostly reserved for when the whole nation was called to repent. For an individual, dunking yourself in water was for ritual purity, being "clean" in God's sight. This is why Jesus mocked them, saying that they washed the outside of the vessel but the inside was still full of filth and dead bones. The Temple sacrifices for sin did nothing for repentance or changing people's lives. So when John came to preach a baptism of repentance, it stirred up lots of people. They knew that God was planning to divide the nation, choosing a holy remnant to preserve, because Judaea was to be chastised. They came to listen, and to get right with God.
Then when Jesus started baptizing people, He added a new twist. Yes, it was for repentance, but the emphasis rested on the individual, and it came with a command: "follow me." This time, baptism became the door through which one would enter the Kingdom of God. This was meant to be such a radical break with the old ways, it came to symbolize a dying to the world and being raised to new life - leaving this old kingdom, and entering the Kingdom of God here on Earth. But Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is spread out upon the Earth, yet you do not see it." Something was still lacking ... for a while.
People were beginning to change, a few who were close, as they were getting to know Him. They listened and did what He said, and they tried to understand his stories of the Kingdom and how people are supposed to treat each other, but it was hard for them. They couldn't explain it to others. They still held fast to their own perspectives. They couldn't see things the way God sees. This was because Jesus had yet to fulfill the prophecy of John. He was not yet baptizing us with the Holy Spirit and zeal for the love of God and neighbor.
So when Jesus met to talk with Nicodemus, He told him the rest of the story. In order to truly enter the Kingdom, we must be born again. Not according to the flesh, but by water and the Spirit. It takes both, dying to the world and rising to new life, and being filled with the Holy Spirit so that we become compliant to God's will. And even so, it's still a learning process. Babies need to grow and learn to walk and talk, then to play and study, and finally to work alongside the parent, who spends years teaching them. It is the same with new Christians. That is why we need to have faith. We trust our teachers, even when we don't see the point of every lesson. Then one day, we may be given a task to do, and we have to remember how it should be done.
And what is that task? It is to follow the Father's will, implementing it here on Earth, just as Jesus followed the Father's plan. "Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven." And just like Jesus, it starts when we get baptized.
2. Establishing the Church
- Matthew 16:13-17 ~ identity
"Who do you say that I am?"
From the very start, the identity of Jesus has been a central, critical issue. John the Baptist did not declare that "He who comes after me" was going to be the promised Messiah. It was left for those who knew them, and were familiar with the Scriptures, to discern just how much faith to place in their messages. That is why, alongside his proclamation of the Kingdom, Jesus did signs and wonders, to show that the Father gave witness and authority to his mission. Even so, John sent his own followers to inquire of Jesus, "Are you really the One?" And Jesus told them to report to John what they had seen Him do and heard Him say. The message and the mission were meant to stand on their own for credentials. It was up to those who saw and heard to grasp the Good News by faith.
But now, with John so recently killed, Jesus would have to depend on his own disciples to tell his story. So he called them together and asked, "Who do the people say that I am?" And they answered, "John the Baptist, Elijah, or Jeremiah, or another of the prophets." "So then, who do you say I am?" And Simon spoke quickly, "I say you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!" Jesus nodded, "Simon, no one has said this. You had to receive it from my Father. So now, I shall call you Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my 'church' (literally, a called-out community). The gates of Hades shall not stand against it, and I will give you the keys of the Kingdom."
But what, in Heaven's name, is Jesus saying here? Peter is the first to make the Church's declaration of faith. Jesus is the divine Son of God. Aside from referring to God as the Father, Jesus has not explicitly made this claim. Indeed, He keeps saying, "Don't tell," when He's healed someone. It's only after this that He decides to go public.
Now that his disciples have seen enough to understand, He starts to reveal some basic theological challenges to the established teaching of mainstream Judaism. From now on, his teaching seeks a deeper meaning that the Pharisees and Sadducees have pointedly ignored. They wanted a political Messiah, a leader to elevate the nation to prominence, while He reads all the way back to Exodus and Judges, where God Himself wants to be their King.
Yet even this twist takes second place to his mission to free us from bondage to sin. The very next thing He tells them is that He's going to suffer and die, and rise again. And Peter can't handle that. Not until he sees the resurrection does he really believe. But in the end, he does, and that is what Jesus was rewarding. Peter gets to decide what a real Christian is supposed to believe, and how the Gospel is to be spread to the world. He is the arbiter of the disciples' consensus for the story they will tell about Jesus.
3. Faith beyond understanding (move to #6)
- John 6:57-69 ~ dividing
"the Words of eternal life."
In the 6th chapter of John's gospel, Jesus declares something completely outrageous and unacceptable to Jewish orthodoxy. "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you." And many in the crowd concurred with the opinion, "This saying is too hard. Who can listen to it?" Many of His followers drifted away, presumably thinking He was mad. Then Jesus turned to his handpicked disciples and said, "Do you too wish to go?" But Peter spoke up, "Master, to whom should we go? You have the words of eternal life." They stayed with Him, but there is no explanation for his teaching.
"Eat my flesh, and drink my blood" stands as a mystery, totally contrary to the teachings of Moses. It is impossible to think of this literally without saying that Jesus was a false prophet. Jesus was in the habit of teaching those who couldn't readily understand by using simple parables and metaphors. This time, however, it was different. He wants to tell us something beyond our capacity to grasp, and He knows that we will never get it. This time, He just wants us to have faith, to trust Him.
We must trust that He knows what He is doing. Like a small child trusts a parent, or a big brother, to lead through a dark forest or across the dry desert, we assume that he is right. So when Jesus gives us this peculiar rite of the Eucharist, we decide to always "do this in memory of Me," whether we understand it or not. If Jesus says it, then in some sense it must be true. We cannot question it. If we do, we risk losing our trust. In some mysterious sense, it IS his body and blood.
It doesn't matter if we think of this as a miracle of "trans-substantiation," or some kind of poetic metaphor, or maybe as a symbol of his eternal resurrected body. We just don't know, but it's what He said we should do. We know that He has the words of eternal life, and we follow, wherever He is going. All we know is, it's not merely bread and wine. He said, "This is my body," and "This is the cup of my blood," which He sacrificed for us, and we shall never forget.
When Moses raised the bronze serpent on a pole in the desert to cure those who were bitten, there were those who were offended, but the ones who trusted were saved. It was remembered as a miracle, but it was simply a demand for trust. When we trust God, that is the "faith" He keeps asking us for, and He accounts it to us as righteousness. If it is hard, just remember how we followed Him for forty years through the desert, but those who trusted Him finally arrived in the promised land.
4. Revealing his Divinity (new #3)
- John 10:22-42 (v.30) ~ Triunity
"I and the Father are one."
This is actually a deep theological issue, related to the relationships of the Holy Trinity. When Jesus tells where his authority comes from, He says that the Father is his witness, as shown by the power of his signs and wonders. As the law requires two witnesses, clearly this establishes a distinction between the Father and the Son. But here, Jesus is saying that He is in complete agreement with the Father's will, doing nothing but whatever He is directed to say or do. Indeed, He goes so far as to eliminate all separation, saying that the Father is in Him, and He is in the Father. Just as we are supposed to have the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts, Jesus is claiming that the Father dwells within Him, and more, that the Father keeps Jesus in his own heart, as his beloved Son.
This is in fact a proactive validation of Jesus' sayings and actions. The Father gives the Son authority to describe their relationship in human terms, because He alone understands it so well that He can define what we otherwise could never grasp. And that is why the Jews reached down to pick up stones to throw, the very idea of any identity between a man and God was blasphemy. But Jesus was more than just a man, more than "a man after God's own heart" like King David. Jesus is God Himself, come to be King, to lead his people the way the Father wanted to lead the children of Israel after they left Egypt.
Jesus is the example for us to follow, as He follows the in the very footsteps of the Father, just as Moses followed the pillar of smoke and fire through the desert. He lives by the trust that God desires of us, and follows wherever He is led, saying and doing all that He is asked. And He does it without failing, because He loves the Father above all things, even his own life. Thus, the Father accounts his whole life, everything Jesus does, as true righteousness.
This is how Jesus abides in God's heart, because He keeps God abiding in his own heart, without going astray. If we would do that, neither would we go astray. If we would continually love Him, neither would we sin. But the human heart is fickle, and we do not always desire what we know we should desire, and we don't want what we want to want, nor do we do what we would wish to do. That is why we need to always take refuge in the promises Jesus made to us. We come to Him for forgiveness, as we know we have failed. And we continue to fail because we don't keep our eyes on Him, and we wander from the path in which He leads us through this world - this wilderness of Sin, where we are tempted to seek our own sustenance rather than trusting in God. But when we return to Jesus, we can trust in Him, because we believe when He says, "I and the Father are one, because I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me."
4. Institution of the Eucharist (moved here)
5. Staying connected with Him
- John 15:1-17 ~ abiding
"If you abide in me, and my words ..."
These teachings from the Gospel of John, in chapters 14 and 15, are those which promise the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is by the power of the Spirit that we are able to abide in Jesus and to allow his Word to abide in us. It is because we love Him and desire to be with Him that we dwell on the things He said to us. We remember and keep his commands in our hearts, so we may endeavor to do them as He wished, and we meditate on his stories and sayings so that we might more nearly grasp what He was explaining for us. It is this helping us to remember that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus sent us the Spirit so we would not forget the many things He taught us, and so that we would be able to teach others about Him.
The Spirit also teaches us how to follow in Jesus' footsteps, and to listen as He did for the Father's voice. She is the sap that runs through the vine and into the branches, to pass on to us the life and power of Jesus, and to connect our prayers back to Him. Thus, whatever we ask in accord with the Holy Spirit, and in Jesus name, will be done for us, so that the Father may be glorified. It is by the power of the Spirit that we are both motivated and able to do good works for his glory, and to grow in Love.
She is the one who reminds us to love one another, to feel compassion for our brothers and sisters in Christ, so that we will find ways to provide for their needs, sharing what God has given us to sustain us. When we do that, we find that our sustenance is multiplied, going farther than we expected, just like when Jesus fed the multitudes on a few loaves and fishes. Indeed, Jesus said that we would do his works, and even greater, when led by the Spirit. We need only seek to love one another as He has loved us, to be willing to lay down our lives for their salvation, in order to see the glory of God manifest before our eyes and the miracle of faith enkindled in new hearts. Because we believe in God, let us also believe in Jesus, and in his promises.
It is because we were chosen and called out of the world by Jesus, and given the gift of the Holy Spirit that we are able to hear his Voice. We know what He taught us, and still listen to his guidance as He shepherds us according to the Father's will. The Spirit hears and helps us to recognize the Son's voice, so that we will not follow another. She defends us against those who would mislead us, and keeps us safe in the Father's arms. By her reassurance, we know that if we abide in Jesus, and his Words abide in us, we can ask what we will and He will do it, for the glory of God the Father.
Alternate Reordering:
1. Baptism into the Kingdom
2. Establishing the Church
3. Revealing his Identity
4. Institution of the Eucharist
5. Abiding in Him
The meditation on "the Words of Eternal Life" may be dropped, or used for an extra, if six meditations are needed.)
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