Chapter 2 (Part 3 of 3)
We’ll conclude our section on chapter two and present the text of chapter three in this post. In chapter two we have seen the juxtaposition of two major elements of the Gospel message: the wedding feast miracle and the cleansing of the temple. Both elements really go hand-in-hand so to speak.
As we have seen the wedding feast miracle can be understood as the essential first step of discipleship. This miracle tells of the joining of the body and spirit elements of the person. The spirit and the body are joined and become one. This joining then is blessed with the good wine of divine life as a result of being open to the presence of Jesus in the marriage.
The cleansing of the temple can be viewed in a different way. In this scene Jesus is essentially the unwelcomed aspect (at least unwelcomed by the temple authorities). He is not invited by the religious authorities and his very presence and action is questioned by them. As we see, Jesus has the authority, right, power, and privilege to dismiss the questions and claims of authority of the religious leaders. His very presence gives him divine rights.
How are we to understand the presentation of the two scenes in scripture in this way? In the one scene Jesus demonstrates the abundance of God’s love and blessings in the joining in love of the couple at Cana. In the text notice that this miracle is worked without the couple themselves even knowing about the wine running out. I have always found this point to be of interest.
Jesus acts to bring blessing and joy to the couple and the celebration and it seems that God required no action on the part of the couple. Why is that? Can it be because the reality of God’s great love is shown explicitly in this essential miracle of discipleship? Is it not the case that God desires our happiness and the fulfillment of our love without requiring anything from us in return but for an open heart? I believe it is.
When we see the reaction of Jesus to the request of his mother we are given an important clue to the personality---if you will---of God. His “time” has not come and by his own words the fact that the wine has run out has little to do with him or his mother. Translation: it not by his doing that the wine is gone. Yet, the very idea that children of God are in need of help in order to make their lives happy is enough to bring the abundant flow of God’s miraculous love upon the people. (Of course we should understand that the couple are acting in response to love and so they are given love in return)
Compare this reaction to Jesus’ reaction to the scene in the temple. Here the people are attempting to barter with God. The authorities have created a system of exchange that is profitable to the temple and one that endorses the burdensome system of sacrificial offering to God. Can we not see that God’s reaction through Jesus is evidence of his true desires for his people?
In keeping with the imagery that we have used to help the reader mediate on and experience the Gospel, I ask this: If the wedding scene represents your total self---united and happy in God’s joy---what does the temple scene represent? If it represents your institutional religious practice, I ask you: do you agree with the actions of Jesus? That sounds like a “loaded” question, right? Perhaps it is. Let’s examine further…
Are you a part of a religious institution where you experience the Jesus of the wedding feast? Is your institutional experience one that brings you the richness of God’s blessings simply because you are a loving child of God inviting Jesus into your life or do you feel as though you are burdened and taxed by your religious experience? Do you feel that Jesus reacts to you as he did to the people in the temple? Is he driving you out of the temple?
Do you think that Jesus was right to drive the moneychangers and people out of the temple in that way? Was he doing this to punish or judge them or was he simply looking out for their best spiritual interests? If your child is reaching for a hot stove-top, what do you do? Was Jesus not reacting in a similar way when he turned over the money tables? or was Jesus simply treating those in the temple the way they were treating each other...just as he did at the wedding feast (where everyone was loving and blessing each other)?
I invite you to ponder these questions and also to let the Holy Spirit open up the meaning of the second chapter of the Gospel to you in more intimate ways. What is this chapter saying to you? How can you experience the freedom of Jesus in your own self and your own life through the words of this chapter?
What scenes do you bring to the Gospel of your life? How does Jesus react in your life scenes?
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I will post now the first part of chapter three without commentary. Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus continues the ideas presented in chapter two and expands those ideas in many ways. In about a week I will post a commentary with reflection questions connected to the verses that follow:
Chapter three
1. There was a certain man from the Pharisees whose name was Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
2. This man came to The Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you were sent from God as a teacher, because man is not able to do the miracles you do unless God is with him.”
3. The Jesus answered, “So be it, so be it indeed: I say to you that if a man is not born from the start again, he is not able to see the Kingdom of God.”
4. Nicodemus said to him, “How is an old man able to be born? Is it possible to enter the womb of his mother and be born a second time?”
5. The Jesus answered, “So be it, so be it indeed: I say to you that if a man is not
born from water and the Spirit he is not able to enter into the Kingdom of God.
6. The thing which is born from flesh is flesh. The thing which is born from spirit is spirit.
7. Do not marvel that I have said to you that it is necessary for you to be born again.
8. The wind will blow were it desires and you hear its voice but you do not know from where it comes or to where it goes. It is the same for everyone who is born from spirit.”
9. Nicodemus answered, “How is it possible for these things to be?”
10. The Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and these things you do not understand.
11. So be it, so be it indeed: I say to you that we speak the things we know and testify to the things we see and yet you do not receive our testimony.
12. If I have told you about worldly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about Heavenly things?
13. No man has ascended into Heaven except he who descended from Heaven, the Son of Man who is in Heaven.
14. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, in that manner the Son of Man is about to be lifted up.
15. So that everyone who believes in him will not be destroyed but will have eternal life.”
16. For in that manner God loved the world and would give his only-begotten Son that whoever would believe in him would not be destroyed but have eternal life.
17. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to give life to the world by his own action.
18. He who believes in him is not judged and he who does not believe is already judged because he does not believe in his name, that of the Only-begotten Son of God.
19. This is the judgment: the light has come into the world and men loved the darkness more than the light because their works are evil.
20. Everyone who does hateful things hates the light and does not come into the light because his works will not be hidden.
21. He who does truthful things comes to the light that it may be known that his works are done in God.
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