Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-march-6-2025
John 1:29-34
Jesus the Lamb of God
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”
32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”
In today’s reading, John the Baptist relates the moment when he first understood that Jesus was the one whose coming he was sent to announce. But before we dive into the passage, there are a couple of things about the Gospel of John in general we should probably stop and review.
First of all, the New Testament scholars believe that the Gospel of John was compiled, either by the apostle John (not John the Baptist) or by the apostle John’s disciples after his death. They say it was probably published between 90 and 100 AD – about sixty or seventy years after Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead and then ascended to heaven. The scholars say the gospel was compiled either by John when he was very old, or by John’s disciples after he died, to make sure they preserved what John had taught them about the life and teachings of Jesus. The understanding is that John was one of the original apostles, so he was relating things he had seen and heard personally.
Modern people are suspicious about documents that are compiled so long after the events they report. But we need to remind ourselves that the ancient Near East was mostly an oral culture, which meant that most of what people knew about the world was passed along from person to person by word of mouth. And in oral cultures, people are taught to be careful about accurately passing along what they are told. We think about the game we play at parties where a sentence is whispered around a circle and is totally different by the time it gets to the end. But anthropologists say that if you play that game in an oral culture, the message at the end of the circle might be exactly as it was whispered at the beginning. Maybe even word-for-word.
So in the case of the Gospel of John, the story of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus – as well as his central teachings – would all have been preserved and passed along with great care. And that would go for what the gospel said about John the Baptist, too. Some scholars believe there might still have been people around at this time who considered themselves disciples of John the Baptist.
In our reading for today, John the Baptist says that his understanding that Jesus was the Messiah was not something he arrived at by his own reasoning. We might wonder what John the Baptist was told about Jesus as a child, given that their mothers were relatives. But it’s possible that the family understood Jesus to have been a special person anointed by God, without specifically understanding him to have been the Messiah. In today’s passage, John says the identity of Jesus as the Messiah was a direct revelation by God, symbolically communicated by the appearance of the dove at Jesus’ baptism.
That’s probably something we should stop and think about. Contemporary followers of Jesus – and maybe especially hard-headed mainline protestants like us – we want the faith to make logical sense to us. Beliefs are supposed to be logical and reasonable. Obviously, it’s important that we thoughtfully study and carefully reflect on the things of the faith. But it’s also true that some of the deepest truths are revealed to our minds and hearts by the Holy Spirit, not just by human reason.
That’s why we stop and pray a Prayer for Illumination before we read the scriptures in worship. Part of the challenge of the life of faith is to open our hearts in prayer, to acknowledge before God that our own earthly wisdom is not adequate for the life of true faith, and to ask God to reveal his truth to us, just as he did to John the Baptist.
That might be an especially fruitful discipline for us during this season of Lent. I sometimes think one great thing to ‘give up for Lent’ would be our dependence on our own ability to figure out the truth for ourselves.
If we can learn to open our hearts and minds to the illumination of the Holy Spirit, maybe we’ll find ourselves empowered to share with others the simple message John proclaimed: “I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the faithful witness of John the Baptist, and for his willingness to receive and share your revelation, so that he really could prepare the way for Jesus into the life of the world. Open us up to that revelation, as well, so that we can join in the work of preparing a way for Jesus into our world. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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