Sermon: John’s Different Approach
Date: January 16, 2005
Kendall H. Brown
Text: John 1: 29-42 Kendall Notebook Page 39
The first three books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels. That name points to the many similarities found among these three books. My New Testament seminary professor, Dr. Burton Throckmorton, was an avid student of all the Gospels. He compiled a tool for New Testament study called “The Gospel Parallel.” In that book, three columns appear on each page. Each Gospel has a column where the stories and sayings are lined up with each other. Reading the Gospels this way makes very clear the parallels.
Scholars have long understood that Mark is the oldest of the three, even though it was placed second in the canon or the selection and arrangement of the sacred texts in the early church. Matthew and Luke both drew from Mark as a source, but there is little evidence that either was aware of or influenced by the other in their separate writings.
The Gospel of John is another whole story. John is very different in theme, theology, language, and purpose within the community for which it was written. John is sometimes simply called the Fourth Gospel and has no with the Synoptic Gospels. Dr. Throckmorton would have had a hard time putting John in a fourth column in the Parallels because the Gospel simply wouldn’t fit. John contains a different time line. John gives us a different itinerary for Jesus’ travels. He tells many stories that are not present in the Synoptics and he omits many stories that are present in the Synoptics. The Cana Marriage Feast, the story about Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman and the story about Nicodemus are all unique to John.
John even presents Jesus’ relationship to John the Baptist and his call to his disciples quite differently from the authors of the Synoptics. The differences are both on the surface and under the surface in the deeper levels of meaning that can be found in all of the stories.
In the Fourth Gospel, the writer never specifically mentions Jesus’ Baptism. All of the Synoptic Gospels relate the story of Jesus baptism in the Jordan River, but not John. Today’s lesson from John includes the place where the story of the Baptism would be told. But John doesn’t mention any baptism. In stead, Jesus approaches John the Baptist, and walks by. As Jesus walks by, John declares, “Here is the Lamb of God.”
When reading the fourth gospel, you want to pay attention to the details. That Jesus walked by in this passage is one of those details. John the writer had too much to say to ever waste a word. I think that he never wasted one single letter. If it is found in the Fourth Gospel, the writer had a reason.
Jesus walked by. What did the writer mean by that? And what did the writer mean by saying, “Jesus walked by,” at that very spot where the synoptic writers made a big, elaborate commotion over Jesus’ baptism?
First of all, we can’t plead ignorance here for John and say he didn’t know about the stories found in Matthew, Mark and Luke. He certainly did. The Synoptics had been around for as many as fifty years before the fourth Gospel was written. John, the evangelist, as the writer of the fourth Gospel is sometimes called, was a prominent leader, writer and thinker in the church. He had to be familiar with the Synoptic stories telling about Jesus being washed in the River Jordan by his cousin.
It was a conscious choice on the part of John to omit the stuff about Jesus Baptism, and in place of Jesus baptism simply write, “Jesus walked by.”
So the question remains, “Why?” By the time the Gospel of John was being written, the community of believers was growing but still unsettled. In the community were a variety of opinions and persuasions. Among the early Christians were those who considered John the Baptist a prominent figure.
The evangelist had several goals in writing his Gospel. Along with simply preserving the story of Jesus’ life, it was important to the writer to establish that Jesus was the sole proprietor, if you will, of the early church. He was the central figure not to be upstaged by anyone else. If you read carefully between the lines, it is fairly obvious that to the evangelist no one else even belonged on the stage with Jesus. Other persons around Jesus in the fourth Gospel serve only one purpose in the Gospel. They point to Jesus and to who Jesus was. The importance of Jesus identity to the evangelist is demonstrated by the number of titles that can be found simply in the first chapter. In John 1, all of the following are mentioned as Jesus’ titles. He is the Word of God, the light, the only Son of God, the Lamb of God, Rabbi, Teacher, the Messiah, the Anointed, son of Joseph of Nazareth, King of Israel, and finally in the last verse of chapter one, the Son of Man. John one, often called the Prologue, could also easily be called the book of titles. The writer wants to make it clear who owns the titles, who is the main man, who is the star of the story. John the Baptist doesn’t even get to Baptize in the fourth gospel. The one who baptizes in the Synoptics is the one whom Jesus simply walks by in the fourth Gospel.
In fact, the fourth Gospel tells us little more about John the Baptist in the rest of the Gospel. In chapter 3, a passing reference was made to John the Baptist being put in prison, but there is no mention in the Gospel of John’s martyr’s death, nor of his heroic stand-off with the ruler of the land. There is only one martyr in the fourth Gospel and that is Jesus, the one with all the titles. The only role given to John the Baptist by John the Evangelist is the role of the witness to Jesus, made clear in the first chapter. Who Jesus is, Jesus identity as the Messiah, is central to the evangelist. Because of who he is, because of his identity, others around him have their identity. Without him, others would have no identity.
Much the same can be said of the evangelist treatment of the disciples. The disciples are not on the stage in the fourth Gospel as much as they are in the Synoptics. When they are on the stage in the fourth Gospel, the writer gives them a very distinct role. Take the story of Peter’s name change for example. The story is in today’s verses. Matthew, who wrote much earlier, gives us the story that Peter, the rock, is the rock upon which Jesus would build his church. Telling that is important to Matthew, for Matthew wanted to establish Peter’s position in the early church as a prominent leader. Matthew, too, was dealing with divisions and arguments with some of those arguments being over who would lead the flock in their day. Matthew’s choice was obviously Peter.
But when John wrote his Gospel, he simply told that Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, but made no reference to the rock stuff. In John, the omissions are as important as additions. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus identity is so important, that the simple presence of Jesus in Simon’s life changes Simon’s name. Anything that Simon might have done on his own is not a part of the story. Jesus, and only Jesus, does all the doing in this Gospel. Jesus names Peter, but nothing that Peter has done is offered as a reason other than Peter’s witness or pointing to Jesus.
There is a different dynamic in the story of the disciples’ call in John from what we find in the Synoptics. In Matthew, Mark and Luke Jesus’ call results in the disciples becoming fishermen of others.
We are told in that how the call does something to the disciples, changes them, even rewards them with a greater calling than that of tending their nets on the Sea of Galilee. All that fishermen stuff is remarkably absent in the fourth Gospel. In each case in John 1, the disciples’ response to the call is presented as a recognition of who Jesus is. They recognize Jesus as the Lamb of God, or the Son of God, of the Messiah.
The disciples along with John the Baptist, play the role and are limited to the role of witnesses to Jesus in the fourth Gospel.
There is another important literary device in the first chapter of John that is important to notice. Along with all the titles for Jesus to be found in the first chapter there are also a number of verbs. Those verbs are: follow, see, seek, stay, find, come, hear, and bring.
From the remarks I have made so far, one might start to think that the disciples are unimportant to the Evangelist. That is hardly true. By the verbs employed in the first chapter, John tells us what life as a disciple, what faith, is all about. Following, seeing, staying, joining, bringing others. Verses 19 to 51 (the end) of the first chapter is one long dialogue between Jesus and others. Faith in John is a matter of joining in a conversation with Jesus, a dialogue. Faith for John has movement and process and flexibility. Faith in John is all about being in relationship with Jesus.
Expressive of the relational quality of faith, is how the Evangelist writes most of the first chapter as a conversation with Jesus or dialogue. Faith is a matter of engaging with Jesus. Faith is still such a matter. Faith is not a dead set of beliefs in correct formulae.
Faith is a relationship. Faith is not a static belief in the words of a book. But as John reminds us with his opening line, faith is a dynamic engagement with the one who is the word. Faith does not close doors with all the clean and clear-cut answers. Faith opens doors to all the questions our hearts may have. John 1, is filled with questions. There are easily as many questions in that chapter as there are answers.
Although the Fourth Gospel is easily the most Christo-centric of all the Gospels, the Fourth Gospel also leaves the door open for open mindedness and inclusiveness. It is John who gives us the prayer, which is the slogan of our denomination, that they all may be one. That same verse about oneness was central to Martin Luther King’s preaching a dream about children, poor and rich, black and white being one in this land. It is John who makes a strikingly different statement from anything in any of the other Gospels or even in Paul. In John 10 verse 16, John has Jesus saying that he has other sheep in other folds who also listen to his voice. John is the first Christian writer to acknowledge other religions in the world and that there is a connectedness between them and Jesus himself.
In these things there are powerful and needed messages for today’s world. Martin Luther King once said that he came to Gandhi through Jesus. If one engages with Jesus, one doesn’t stop there, but moves on through and with Jesus to others. King found the connections between Gandhi’s philosophy and Jesus; teaching about non-violence as the way to the transformation and recreation of the world.
Gandhi wrote: “Non violence is the law of the human race and is infinitely greater than, and superior to, brute force. ”
King wrote: ''One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.''
Martin Luther King saw and followed his Lord as much as any disciple. If anyone engaged with his Lord, it was Dr. King in all of his struggles with his own call to leadership in the civil rights movement.
I was prompted to do this study sermon by something I ran into this week in the process of an internet search to gather some information about Dr. King. I came across a Website, where the writer of the Christian persuasion, was denouncing King as a heretic. The reason given was that King would have been truly serving his Lord if he had preached the Gospel instead of a Social Gospel. Because he did not use his charismatic powers and national prominence to preach how the Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God he is to be judged as a heretic. As a heretic that means he is not to even to be given credit as a Christian.
That website reminded me how the very divisiveness that King, Gandhi, John the author of the Fourth Gospel and Jesus all worked to overcome the divisions that divide human beings and that are still very much alive in the world. In John’s putting Jesus at the center of his Gospel to the point of not giving attention to John the Baptists and the disciples claims to fame, we find a deep humility. That humility is so great and John the author does such a good job at putting Jesus in the center, we don’t really know today who John the Evangelist was. There is some mystery around his identity. But when we read his Gospel, there is no mystery about who his Lord was. There is no mystery in his words abut the identity of Jesus of Nazareth.
When we read and remember the story of Martin Luther King this weekend, we are left with no mystery about who his lord was either, even if he was expansive enough in vision and faith to embrace the non violent teachings of a Hindu. God was speaking in Martin Luther King. If we have among ourselves, the spirit of Christ that was in him and in the fourth Gospel, God will still be speaking in us. Amen.