John (week 4)

So it's been about a week then I guess. (oops!) I guess I'm not very good with discipline. I do have to work harder. I apologize to all 2 of you who might pass by and catch this sight by complete accident. It is so hard to take time to write something you are sure is only being launched into space somewhere no one else knows about but you. But that is my deal... here is our text today (it's long). Enjoy!

John 2:12-3:36

After this he went down to Capernaum along with his mother, brothers, and disciples, and stayed several days.

When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.

Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, "Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a shopping mall!" That's when his disciples remembered the Scripture, "Zeal for your house consumes me."

But the Jews were upset. They asked, "What credentials can you present to justify this?" Jesus answered, "Tear down this Temple and in three days I'll put it back together."

They were indignant: "It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you're going to rebuild it in three days?" But Jesus was talking about his body as the Temple. Later, after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this. They then put two and two together and believed both what was written in Scripture and what Jesus had said.

During the time he was in Jerusalem, those days of the Passover Feast, many people noticed the signs he was displaying and, seeing they pointed straight to God, entrusted their lives to him. But Jesus didn't entrust his life to them. He knew them inside and out, knew how untrustworthy they were. He didn't need any help in seeing right through them.

3There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it."

Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to - to God's kingdom."

"How can anyone," said Nicodemus, "be born who has already been born and grown up? You can't re-enter your mother's womb and be born again. What are you saying with this 'born-from-above' talk?"

Jesus said, "You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation - the 'wind hovering over the water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life - it's not possible to enter God's kingdom. When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch - the Spirit - and becomes a living spirit.

"So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above' - out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God."

Nicodemus asked, "What do you mean by this? How does this happen?"

Jesus said, "You're a respected teacher of Israel and you don't know these basics? Listen carefully. I'm speaking sober truth to you. I speak only of what I know by experience; I give witness only to what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don't believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can't see, the things of God?

"No one has ever gone up into the presence of God except the One who came down from that Presence, the Son of Man. In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up - and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life.

"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

"This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won't come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is."

After this conversation, Jesus went on with his disciples into the Judean countryside and relaxed with them there. He was also baptizing. At the same time, John was baptizing over at Aenon near Salim, where water was abundant. This was before John was thrown into jail. John's disciples got into an argument with the establishment Jews over the nature of baptism. They came to John and said, "Rabbi, you know the one who was with you on the other side of the Jordan? The one you authorized with your witness? Well, he's now competing with us. He's baptizing, too, and everyone's going to him instead of us."

John answered, "It's not possible for a person to succeed - I'm talking about eternal success - without heaven's help. You yourselves were there when I made it public that I was not the Messiah but simply the one sent ahead of him to get things ready. The one who gets the bride is, by definition, the bridegroom. And the bridegroom's friend, his 'best man' - that's me - in place at his side where he can hear every word, is genuinely happy. How could he be jealous when he knows that the wedding is finished and the marriage is off to a good start?

"That's why my cup is running over. This is the assigned moment for him to move into the center, while I slip off to the sidelines.

"The One who comes from above is head and shoulders over other messengers from God. The earthborn is earthbound and speaks earth language; the heavenborn is in a league of his own. He sets out the evidence of what he saw and heard in heaven. No one wants to deal with these facts. But anyone who examines this evidence will come to stake his life on this: that God himself is the truth.

"The One that God sent speaks God's words. And don't think he rations out the Spirit in bits and pieces. The Father loves the Son extravagantly. He turned everything over to him so he could give it away - a lavish distribution of gifts. That is why whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything, life complete and forever! And that is also why the person who avoids and distrusts the Son is in the dark and doesn't see life. All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that."

I'm going to take this in three parts, not that I am going to tie them all together in one grand point, but I find it is good to see such a large overview of different aspects of Jesus' life. In one picture we see Jesus almost foaming at the mouth (my mind's picture) in rage at what is happening in the temple. In another we see him patiently trying to explain the Kingdom of God to one of the days high teachers (do you think Jesus ever got frustrated that no one was getting what he was saying?). In the last picture we see other people responding to Jesus.

Let's go chronologically. Jesus walks into the temple and sees people being taken advantage of. People who come to worship God by making sacrifices. This is the first time we see Jesus in Jerusalem since the beginning of Jesus ministry (in Luke he is there as a teenager). While Jesus' being baptized might officially mark the beginning of Jesus' ministry, and turning water into wine might be his first official act, this seems to be Jesus' official declaration of who he is.

In a tirade he refers to the Temple as his Father's house. He challenges the leaders to tear down the temple, although he is referring to himself, the leaders probably hear that of a terrorist threat. This is the single most important place in all of Jewish culture. It is where the Spirit of God rests. Who would tear it down? But this is where Jesus is beginning a new era in the Kingdom of God. Jesus is the presence of God. Jesus knows this, but no one else does at this point, even his disciples. So I guess we could say Jesus is not really off to that great of a start with the leaders of his day.

Somehow one leader we see in the very next passage is either intrigued by this Jesus. Being that Jesus isn't the most popular guy in town Nicodemus sneaks off at night to see him. After talking about the Kingdom of God Jesus drops this "born again" idea that modern Christians have been using as a litmus test of "true" Christians today.

One can hardly be a part of any Christian group for long before being asked if you are born again, or if you would like to become born again. If you ever find yourself being asked this I think you should really look at them puzzled and say "Could you tell me what that means?", but be prepared for a long conversation that probably won't unpack it any further.

I don't have a problem with the word just the use. When we read about Jesus telling this to a very educated man we see him struggle with what Jesus was saying, and yet today we have Christians use the word like it is the most obvious end all to what it means to be a Christian. The other fact is that Jesus was only using this term to describe what it is to be a part of the Kingdom of God. In all of Jesus' ministry we hear him over and over talking about the Kingdom of God. When he's not talking about it his is acting it out through healing or feeding people or calming a storm. Yet today some have latched on to this one tiny statement from one night of Jesus' 3 years of ministry. That is one night out of 1,095. In fact we might say this conversation could have been 5 hours (to be generous) out of the 26,280 hours of his ministry. Jesus never brings it up again. But what he does bring up over and over and over and over is this Kingdom of God.

How have we missed this? Being born again is no end. The Kingdom of God is the end, and this end is something that is always on the horizon. Something we are always chasing. A race we are always running. Until God brings it to its fullness.

So did Jesus mean for everyone who would read this to be baffled by it just as Nicodemus was? Maybe not, but maybe there are still ways in which we are born again or born from above that we have not seen yet. There are no doubt things Jesus meant by this we still have yet to fully understand.

Now lastly lets look at John and his disciples reaction to Jesus. I love John's disciples in this. They say "So now that you've gone and told people about Jesus, no one is coming to us for baptism anymore. He's stealing all our customers." So there has always been church growth competition?

But I love John's response. He is fully self aware and content with his place in this story. He knows his place. Now his fame is dwindling, and he only seems to be content with it. We can definitely see a contrast between him and other religious leaders who fought Jesus for power and position. May we know who has sent us into this world and may we learn to be content with the place we are given. -AMEN

John (week 3... belated)

I'm going to try this again. I still think it was a good idea, but perhaps I just didn't give it a chance to catch on at all. I usually like taking giant chunks of scripture in at a time as to get the overall context, but I also find it valuable to keep to one point. I promise I will try very hard not to use small pieces of scripture as a proof text to an idea that I want to get across. And again, I also don't want to be the only voice in this study (click on the comments link at the end), but I am resolved to being so for a time until this might catch on.

One last reminder: I might use a different translation than you might like to read. In my own reading I use multiple translations, from NIV, NASB and the Message. I probably post with the Message more to push those who have some kind of rigid loyalty to one specific version (and it is endorsed by Bono). But if you would like to read it in a different translation, just pick up your Bible or click the link on the verse. From there you can change it to whatever you like. OK now where did I leave off?

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it." Now there were six stone water pots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing twenty or thirty gallons each. Jesus said to them, "Fill the water pots with water." So they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter." So they took it to him. When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom, and said to him, "Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now." This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.

When I was planning on following this study up a year ago I had trouble with this piece of text. I kept thinking, "Why does this miracle matter?" No other gospel writer had found any importance of incorporating it, why does John? It seems the only significance is that it is the beginning of Jesus' ministry. But why does John choose such a miracle to start with?

Since then I have heard and read a few different ideas on this piece from others. Most things I've heard just use it to back up an idea that Jesus throws a good party. I kind of like that idea. Jesus isn't just a rule giver (he actually gave very few); Jesus loves the company and celebrations of people. I find it interesting that God built celebrations and festivals into the life of his people from the beginning. We need reasons to celebrate and a call from Jesus into the Kingdom of God is a call to a celebration.

Another idea ignited in me from a book by Rob Bell called Velvet Elvis. In the book he parallels this miracle with a Greek myth of Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of wine and a well-told story was how he turned water into wine. The culture John was writing this gospel for would have been quite familiar with this story and so John uses it quite deliberately to capture his readers' attention. Rob writes:

The first three miracles in the book of John are directly related to the three major gods of Asia Minor, the region John writes his gospel to. Dionysus was the god who turned water into wine, Asclepius was the god of healing, and Demeter was the goddess of bread. So how does John begin his story? With Jesus turning water into wine, healing, and then feeding thousands of people. John has an agenda. He wants these people in this place and this time to know that Jesus is better than their gods.

I don't bring this up to say that Jesus' miracles may not have actually happened (I truly believe they did). I am more interested in the possibility that John purposefully used the parallels from these Greek myths to tell the story of Jesus. He reached into a foreign culture and used Jesus to redeem it.

I wonder where we lost this kind of thinking? We now define the Christian culture as that of leaving everything you knew before and trading it for something with a "Christian" label. We replace anything "secular" with something similar (but usually lacking significantly in quality) labeled "Christian". The only films we can watch are "Left Behind" and "Passion of the Christ". The only music we can listen to is Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman.

I once heard a preacher at a Youth Conference go into how all the kids knew quotes from Britney Spears Songs and the American Pie movies, but knew much less about the Bible. I get his point. We probably have a pretty significant imbalance between our time with God and our time with other things. To conclude his point, however, he preceded to call the thousands of youth in the auditorium to a fast of all music, magazines, radio, TV, and film for 30 days. My heart broke as I thought of all the kids who would go home and turn on the TV or listen to the radio and think that they must not be good Christians.

It seems John is able to offer redemption to a culture that does not have Jesus. He does so in their own language, using their own symbols. He transforms them and by adding Jesus makes them whole. Jesus is the restorer of all things to God. This passage (even without the Dionysus parallel) shows that Jesus did not come to create some kind of Christian subculture. He came so that all people from all places would come to know him.

The separation from the secular and the holy is imaginary. The truth is that we must contribute to the world at large, not just our Christian subculture. We must engage it rather than retreat from it and hide ourselves in some Christian parallel universe. God has created all things for his glory. If we join with Jesus in his death than we work to continue to redeem all of creation. We do not own Jesus, and therefore he is definitely at work in more places than just the US brand of Christianity. As missionaries to the world our job is to find him at work in the rest of the world and call attention to it and show others that it is God.

John (week 2)

Ok so the almost daily thing didn't really work like I wanted it to. It wasn't all about me not doing the work. I really desired for this website to have a dialogue value that perhaps it might never have. People that seem to read either of my blogs don't seem to care about it's dialogue possibilities. Perhaps because most of these people have much more to do than spend all day in front of a computer hooked up to the internet. I appreciate your coming to read none the less. So in the Spirit of giving others a chance to speak I have moved it to an almost weekly format. That being said we'll move on.

John 1:37-51

The two disciples heard him and went after Jesus. Jesus looked over his shoulder and said to them, "What are you after?" They said, "Rabbi" (which means "Teacher"), "where are you staying?" He replied, "Come along and see for yourself." They came, saw where he was living, and ended up staying with him for the day. It was late afternoon when this happened.  Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard John's witness and followed Jesus. The first thing he did after finding where Jesus lived was find his own brother, Simon, telling him, "We've found the Messiah" (that is, "Christ"). He immediately led him to Jesus. Jesus took one look up and said, "You're John's son, Simon? From now on your name is Cephas" (or Peter, which means "Rock").

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. When he got there, he ran across Philip and said, "Come, follow me." (Philip's hometown was Bethsaida, the same as Andrew and Peter.) Philip went and found Nathanael and told him, "We've found the One Moses wrote of in the Law, the One preached by the prophets. It's Jesus, Joseph's son, the one from Nazareth!"  Nathanael said, "Nazareth? You've got to be kidding." But Philip said, "Come, see for yourself."  When Jesus saw him coming he said, "There's a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body."  Nathanael said, "Where did you get that idea? You don't know me." Jesus answered, "One day, long before Philip called you here, I saw you under the fig tree."  Nathanael exclaimed, "Rabbi! You are the Son of God, the King of Israel!"  Jesus said, "You've become a believer simply because I say I saw you one day sitting under the fig tree? You haven't seen anything yet! Before this is over you're going to see heaven open and God's angels descending to the Son of Man and ascending again."

As we move on we are reading about Jesus calling his first disciples. It is a bit different from how we read about it in Matthew. In Matthew we find Simon and Andrew fishing. Here we find Andrew and another (most likely the author) as disciples of John the Baptist. Andrew then leads Jesus to Simon. In any account what is interesting is the fact that Jesus calls them. In their tradition, disciples were those who had made their way through the jewish education system, proving that they were the best of the best at each new level. It was of ultimate hope that one would become a rabi. One would apply to a rabi much like one would apply to a school today. Those that could not prove themselves worthy were sent back home to learn the family trade. (This makes it prety interesting where we find Jesus' disciples in Matthew before he calls them).

Jesus was only one of two rabi's in Jewish history that called disciples. My own speculations cause me to believe that perhaps this was because of what the "professional" religious circles had built up as the answers. They seemed to know what they wanted the Messiah to look like, act like, and on what side of every argument he would fall. It seems that Jesus is proving that we just don't get it right from the start. It wasn't about being completely full of knowledge, wisdom, or spirituality that counted in the Kingdom of God, it was heart that mattered. Perhaps this is what Jesus was seeking in his disciples. In John's account, however, these people were seemingly very educated. Two were disciples of John the Baptist. We should not assume that knowledge, wisdom and spitituality count for nothing.

One last thing I want to address, when Jesus tells Nathanael "Before this is over you're going to see heaven open and God's angels descending to the Son of Man and ascending again." It seems to be somewhat cryptic. However, as a Jewish person that had gone through even the most basic level of education at the time, this is one of Jesus' first references to himself as the Messiah. It is taken from a dream that Jacob had in Genesis 28. In it he saw a stairway (or ladder) reaching from the earth into heaven. On it were angels ascending and descending. It seems then that Jesus is referring to himself as the ladder. What is also interesting in that God changed Jacob's name to Israel because he struggled with God. Israelites, then, carry the name as a people who struggle with God. Perhaps, when Jesus describes himself symbolically as the ladder in Jacob's dream, he was answering that struggle. Not in a way that would relieve everyone of that struggle, but more in a way that was to lead people through him in that struggle. That is, we now struggle with God through Jesus. Jesus being the stairway to heaven... the perfect medium between humans and God.

This afternoon, I was talking with someone from my past. He voiced certain concern for his brother who was feeling more of a universalist, wondering why any religion is better than any other. He was concerned that his searching would lead him away from Christianity. I told him that I would be more concerned if his searching stopped. Even as a Christian it should be a concern for anyone to conclude that their search is over. The search never ends, the struggle with God never ends. We constantly need to seek the ways of God. The struggle always continues. We are the people who struggle with God because through Jesus we are a people of God.

These are my thoughts. How about yours?

John (Week 1)

John 1:1-36

The Word was first, the Word present to God, God present to the Word. The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one. Everything was created through him; nothing - not one thing! - came into being without him. What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by.

The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out. There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light. He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in. John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light. The Life-Light was the real thing: Every person entering Life he brings into Light. He was in the world, the world was there through him, and yet the world didn't even notice. He came to his own people, but they didn't want him. But whoever did want him, who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, He made to be their true selves, their child-of-God selves. These are the God-begotten, not blood-begotten, not flesh-begotten, not sex-begotten. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

John pointed him out and called, "This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word." We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift. We got the basics from Moses, and then this exuberant giving and receiving, This endless knowing and understanding - all this came through Jesus, the Messiah. No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God-Expression, who exists at the very heart of the Father, has made him plain as day. Thunder in the Desert

When Jews from Jerusalem sent a group of priests and officials to ask John who he was, he was completely honest. He didn't evade the question. He told the plain truth: "I am not the Messiah." They pressed him, "Who, then? Elijah?" "I am not." "The Prophet?" "No." Exasperated, they said, "Who, then? We need an answer for those who sent us. Tell us something - anything! - about yourself." "I'm thunder in the desert: 'Make the road straight for God!' I'm doing what the prophet Isaiah preached." Those sent to question him were from the Pharisee party. Now they had a question of their own: "If you're neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet, why do you baptize?" John answered, "I only baptize using water. A person you don't recognize has taken his stand in your midst. He comes after me, but he is not in second place to me. I'm not even worthy to hold his coat for him." These conversations took place in Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing at the time.

The very next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and yelled out, "Here he is, God's Passover Lamb! He forgives the sins of the world! This is the man I've been talking about, 'the One who comes after me but is really ahead of me.' I knew nothing about who he was - only this: that my task has been to get Israel ready to recognize him as the God-Revealer. That is why I came here baptizing with water, giving you a good bath and scrubbing sins from your life so you can get a fresh start with God." John clinched his witness with this: "I watched the Spirit, like a dove flying down out of the sky, making himself at home in him. I repeat, I know nothing about him except this: The One who authorized me to baptize with water told me, 'The One on whom you see the Spirit come down and stay, this One will baptize with the Holy Spirit.' That's exactly what I saw happen, and I'm telling you, there's no question about it: This is the Son of God." The next day John was back at his post with two disciples, who were watching. He looked up, saw Jesus walking nearby, and said, "Here he is, God's Passover Lamb."

I took out verse numbers so we would focus less on separating each statement for each verse's meaning and focus more on the unveiling of the complete story. As we go through this, hopefully we will not isolate or freeze text in order to prove our own points, but rather we would take in a more complete unfolding of God's story.

I chose to start with the Gospel of John for one sincere purpose and perhaps one selfish one. Sincerely, I want us to begin with an account of Jesus' life where we can study his ministry and learn directly from his example. Selfishly, perhaps, I chose this one because I believe it has the most powerful beginning of any book. So powerful of a beginning that I have meditated long on this passage and studied deeply on its meaning. So I perhaps come a little more prepared on this specific occasion than I will in the future.

The Word
What has always captivated me about this passage is how it begins. It's almost cryptic. As if the author is writing in some kind of code. His use and reuse of "the Word" was something that took much time for me to understand. In my first readings years ago, I always understood the Word to be the term we use for the Bible. This seemed confusing to me, because the Bible was something I knew was created much later. I thought perhaps God held its contents with himself from the very beginning. I thought the actual book of the Bible was something God knew word for word and his ultimate plan was to give it to humanity. Even still, I thought it was a strange statement to say that the world was created through it. This first part of John remained a mystery to me through many years of my Christian life.

A couple of years ago, I listened to a talk on CD that I picked up from the Emergent Convention in San Diego by Rob Bell. Though he did not address this specific passage, some of his talk gave me quite interesting insight into this cryptic language. First of all John starts out the passage "In the Beginning", a seemingly direct quote from Genesis, connecting God's work through Jesus with God's original work. Secondly, the Word of God has very deep yet familiar meaning in the Jewish language of Jesus' day. Where we as Christians have developed Trinitarian language in describing the attributes of God, I believe Jews have always believed in a communal nature of God.

The Kabbala (though a fairly marginal discipline within the Jewish tradition) believes in the 10 sefirot, which is the ten emanations or "lights" through which God interacts with, and relates to, His world. Even without this tradition we know Old Testament Jews believed in multiple attributes of God. It was the Name of God that was to be revered. The Holy Name of God. This was the mystery of God. A formless mystery. Then there was the Word of God. It was God's Word "light" that began the creation process. It was God's Word that created manna, which Jesus references in his temptation in the wilderness, "man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word of God." So it seems then that the Word of God is much more than the Bible. It is in this aspect that we can refer to God's word as one that is living. It is the Word, then, that is the very power and action of God in the world.

This perspective takes on an amazing life when we now use this to read our passage in John. So it is then that Jesus is the very power and action of God in the world (the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood). It is now the author’s testimony to that power and action that we now continue to read. This is an amazing hook for us as the reader to continue on in the story.

The author uses "life" and "light" as descriptors of Jesus more than any other writer in the New Testament. Perhaps we will find more insight in this fact as we continue to read through this book. For now it is an interesting note. Somehow contrasting the light and life found in the Christ with the darkness and death found outside him.

John the Baptist
As we now move into the story of John the Baptist, I feel it is interesting to note the similarities between John and Elijah (lived in the desert, ate locusts and honey, camel hair coat, leather belt), yet he denies that he is Elijah. In the Jewish tradition of Passover (one of the most important holidays in the Jewish religion) a cup of wine is set aside for the return of Elijah to announce the end time. So he denies it. He also denies being the Prophet from Duet. 18:15. It was the Prophet (or a series of prophets) that was to come and announce the coming of the Messiah. Is it the fact that John was, in fact, none of these? Perhaps, John knew his place in God's plan very well. His place was to testify of the coming of the Messiah, yet everyone wanted to know about him.

John's humility in his response is tremendous. It was, perhaps, not to deny so much the identities people assumed he was, but to dismantle any extra attention he might receive for admitting such things, thus stealing the thunder from the true Messiah Jesus Christ.

Immediately following this account is John seeing Jesus and announcing him as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." I will end with this thought/question. What does it mean for Jesus to take away the sins of the world? In Matthew 1:21 the angel of the Lord tells Joseph that he will save his people from their sins. What is it about sin that we need saving? Is it merely that sin condemns us to Hell, so Jesus came to save us from the wrath of God caused by our sins? Or is there, perhaps, an oppressive nature inherent in sin? Our sin, and the realization of that sin, therefore the realization of our imperfect nature, and even more so our horribleness, do hold us down and keep us from what God always intended for us. Is this the oppression God desired to free us from? At least in part?

An Almost Daily Bible Study

Why almost daily? I'll just be honest that I may not have time to post everyday. The entire point of this site is to center our lives around the Bible. I will not be posting anything but thoughts specific to biblical passages. Hopefully there will be some kind of methodology to this. I will post the section in a version I still have yet to decide (perhaps The Message), but will include a link to a website where you will be able to choose whatever version you desire. I'll do my best to understand background information whether it be historical or cultural. I will try to put out as much info as I can, but I specifically chose this blog hosting website from others for the purposes of people being able to comment without becoming members of this site.

Ideally then, this will become a creative dialogue. I will not hold all insight into our discussion, and I will encourage a variety of varying thoughts. I hope and pray we will all be able to allow any thought or viewpoint sit with us for a while before we jump to any kind of defesive. I hope and pray we will respect differences of opinion and validate those differences in a nonargumentitive way. My hope is that this will enable everyone I consider a part of my community (even those yet to join) to connect in spiritual community from all different parts of the world (or maybe just the country). I look forward to a lively discussion.