Tag Archives: John

Advent 3: Silenced

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Zechariah was doing what he was supposed to do. He was a priest in Israel. He was at the temple for his annual season of work. On this particular day, he was feeling pretty proud, in a humble sort of way. On this day, he was at the pinnacle of his religious career.

There was an altar of incense in the temple in Jerusalem. Lots were drawn among the priests each day for the privilege of going in and burning the incense. It was a once in a lifetime event. And some people never got the chance. Today Zechariah won.

And Z is in there, in front of the altar, in the geographic representation of the presence of God and suddenly, an angel.

The angel says that Elizabeth, Zechariah’s wife, will get pregnant, long after it ought to be possible.

Zechariah is in THE holy place. He sees an angel. He clearly hears a message of hope. His response is, “How will I know?”

Of course, he wasn’t saying “How will I know she’s pregnant?” Duh. That was obvious–or would be. No, I think what he was saying was, “How will I know, how can I be sure, that you are telling the truth, that you will do this amazing thing? How do I know that you really are going to work this time? How can I know that you are talking to me?”

When the message that he hoped for came, he was pretty unconvinced that it could actually happen. And for the next several months (at least nine) he couldn’t talk. The angel said so.

That’s how I am. Tell me something, and I’ll say, “really?” People should slap me. But when the thing I’m hoping for is promised, I still wonder, I still think, “This couldn’t be an angel, not really.” I couldn’t be happy. God couldn’t be really planning to work in and through me, could He?”

And so we are in a place of not being able to talk. Of being stuck in our disbelief, our uncertainty. Even after we see God starting to move, we can’t talk.

But the truth? Miracles happen.

Advent 2: Lost

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The collection of books we know as the Old Testament ends with a very wistful image.

“He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers,” Malachi writes about a prophet who will come.

Imagine the sense of lostness that a child abandoned by his or her father feels. Or maybe you don’t have to imagine. Whether the father actually leaves the family or merely allows his attention to be consumed by activity is pretty irrelevant. The child, with her nose pressed against the window or clinging to the promise to fly a kite or go for Hawaiian ice, has a deep sense of longing.

In Luke 1, when Zechariah is told what his son John will be doing, he is told that “he will turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children.”

The voice right before Jesus, the voice of John, is going to be tapping fathers on their shoulders and pointing to those broken-hearted children and saying, “That’s where repentance starts.” God says, “Go take care of your kids. Go raise them. Go love them. And then they will understand what a father’s love is like, and maybe it will help them understand Me.”

It’s an interesting thing. For people who have found church irrelevant or unsatisfactory, the time when they are most like to reconsider is when they have children. Their attention turns to values, to trying to figure out how to raise kids who live for significance.  The prophecy has a glimmer of fulfillment.

The challenge is that their own experiences with church leave a tension: “I know it’s the thing to do, but if it’s like it was when I was young, it’s the very thing not to do.”

And so we live, noses pressed to the window, wondering. If we could find the church where Jesus would go to church, would it be any different?

a scorecard

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Nope. It’s not what you think.

When we hear the word “scorecard” and the topic on the table is “Bible” many of us start to think about how we’re doing, about who’s keeping track.

In this case, however, I’m thinking more about the phrase, “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” The roster of players, the list of characters, the directory.

In the first sentences of the book called John, we see the Word, God, the Light, and now, in the sixth verse, we have a man whose name is John.

If you don’t know the story, you might guess that this is the introduction of the title character. As you read on, you might discover that you were inaccurate.

But you only discover that if you read.

Reading the first few sentences of this book can feel confusing, For the first time-reader, nothing here is obvious. It’s like walking into the middle of a conversation without knowing the topic. Everyone is really intense, really engaged and you can’t quite figure out where you are.

Word and Light are two metaphors the writer uses to talk about Jesus. That connection will become clearer later. The John of verse six is someone we know as John the Baptist. The John of the title, that’s going to be John, one of the twelve disciples, the person acknowledged as the writer of this book.

In these first sentences, rather than starting with the Baby Jesus, John (the writer), starts with theology. He goes to the beginning of time, then jumps to the overall life purpose of Jesus, explains that John (the Baptist) is an announcer, and then will start narrative work next week.

Why explain these obvious details? Because they aren’t obvious without a scorecard. And not everyone got one when you did.

Starting backward

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Some of us start writing to see what we think. As the words come, we begin to realize what was in our head. The words come in fits and starts and then in a rush. We grin and weep as we begin to understand our hearts.

John didn’t write that way, at least not for the works we know. He knew exactly why he was choosing the stories he chose. He sorted carefully through all the possibilities, all the memories, all the images.

And then he wrote twenty-one chapters for one reason:

…that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)

For John, this is not a collection of interesting stories about Jesus. John wants the reader to come to understand that Jesus was about life, about hope, about God. And he will pick stories of miracles with that in mind.

In all the times I’ve read through the book called John, I haven’t considered the flow of stories as, well, as a flow. That’s because when it comes to the Bible, we pick out bits.

I’m good at telling the stories, pieces at a time. All of us (and I hardly ever say “all” about church stuff) who have watched football or baseball or basketball or Olympics or other large events have seen “John 3:16” on cardboard, which is just one bit. When we prove perspectives, when we embrace or condemn, we pick out bits.

John already picked out bits. He took the whole of his time with Jesus – which was, it seems, three years – and chooses a few pages worth of miracles and messages. With them he tells the story that gave him a life’s work and struggle.

Let’s see what he picked.

really good seats

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If you want the good seats, you have to get in line early. You have to spend the night. You have to pay extra to get really close.

Unless, of course, you are going to a messy show.

If it’s a messy show, where the person up front sprays water or smashes watermelons, you want to sit back far enough to be safe. There is a very fine line between “up close” and “in your face.”

For Mrs. Zebedee, the mother of James and John, the goal was to be as close as possible. She asked Jesus if her boys could have the best seats in the house, right next to Jesus. (It’s interesting to me that she was pretty sure that Jesus was going to have a kingdom.)

She missed the previous conversation. She missed the part about Jesus being killed when he got to Jerusalem. And her boys apparently hadn’t filled her in.

Look at this as a time of prayer. The mother kneels. She requests blessing for her children.

Jesus was pretty gentle with the three of them. He could have criticized the request, but he didn’t. Instead, he led them in a conversation that they probably didn’t understand. He asked if they could drink from the cup he was going to drink from. Probably imagining a royal goblet, they agreed. Probably talking about a cup of suffering, Jesus agreed with them and then said that the seating arrangements were up to the host of the party, not him.

They were going to end up in the messy seats, the ones right next to the blood, James within a couple years. John, late in his life, was going to get a preview of the royal cup and the throne.

Her request was answered. God’s way. Not hers.