The Gospel according to John tells a different story of Jesus gathering good first disciples than the other Gospels do. Elsewhere, Jesus hires his first disciples from boats around the sea of Galilee. In John, he finds them hanging around with John the Baptist and they essentially recruit themselves.
They’re actively looking for something, following John, listening to his call to repentance. John has been clear throughout his ministry that he is merely there to prepare for one who will be coming later and he’s recieved a sign that this person is Jesus.
So these disciples go to check it out. Following Jesus home and spending a day with him before inviting their friends and siblings to join them.
John’s vision of the Holy Spirit descending is familiar from the other Gospels’ description of Jesus’s baptism, but here we don’t see a baptism. We only see John speaking about the message he’s recieved concerning Jesus. We also don’t see Jesus driven out into the wilderness afterwards. He remains in the community, present for John to point out to his disciples. He’s staying somewhere nearby, participating in this community for an extended time.
(Just before this week’s passage there’s a verse that indicates all this is happening near Bethany so that’s interesting. I bet I know where he’s staying.)
The idea of Jesus calling his disciples suddenly from their everyday lives is one that we hear about a lot and that is sometimes a part of the Christian experience. In contrast, this telling shows Jesus’s first disciples following John, actively seeking the Messiah, hoping to change their lives and their world. In this version of the story Jesus appears within their existing community, as a part of their current social structures.
It seems like this way to encounter Christ is harder to understand in 21st century North American White Christianity than the sudden call from labour. (Maybe other contexts too, I don’t know them as well.) Our work is so all consuming and our social connections are so rare and weak that it’s hard to imagine them as a place to meet the Messiah.
When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”
When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”
They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.
In the other Gospels, after Jesus is baptized, he goes out into the wilderness alone to fast and get his head straight, but the chronology in John is different. In John he very quickly collects some disciples and goes to a party and miraculously creates something like 500 liters of wine.
Jesus starts his ministry here not with a sermon, or even with a healing, but with a party and a frivolous, hugely ridiculous, abundance of the best wine.
But who is watching? As far as the story goes, no one even tells the bridegroom or the banquet master what’s going on. They never even know that the wine ran out. It’s just the servants who see the whole thing. All the symbolism about the water jars for washing is lost on almost everyone there. All that the guests see is the generosity of good wine at a party and they’re giving the credit to the hosts and the banquet master, maybe some upper servants involved in the planning will get a pat in the back once everything is cleaned up.
This is a little weird, right? Unless…
What if Jesus and his mother and his disciples weren’t invited to this party as guests? What if they are the servants. Temporary serving staff hired for the big event. They would turn this whole thing around. Now it’s not Jesus providing a party for some hard drinking wedding guests who don’t even know who to thank. Now it’s Jesus protecting his fellow servants from the consequences of whatever screw up has caused the wine to run out early.
The ending is interesting here.
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.
This sign is said to reveal Jesus glory, and it’s his disciples who see it and believe. Normally when we read this passage, understanding Jesus as a guest acting for the benefit of the guests, we’d say that glory has something to do with pouring out an abundance of goodness, blessing all the guests, making sure the party continues even in the face of everything that’s wrong in the world. Those are good readings, we need those readings. There’s still a lot of things wrong in the world, and we still need space in the midst of all that wrongness to celebrate the things worth celebrating.
If we read this passage differently, we see Jesus on the side of the servants. His glory becomes one of correcting whatever failure has occurred, and preventing the consequences of someone’s error in not getting enough wine. That’s the glory of the cross, isn’t it? Just on a different scale.
We’ve jumped over into John for the Gospel passage which has a bit of an unusual understanding of Jesus calling his first disciples. Here Jesus is still hanging around the John the Baptizer’s in the wilderness and making connections with John’s followers.
Jesus is already being recognised too. In this telling, the earliest disciples are recognising him as the Messiah and initiating conversation. Some of them seem to be introduced to Jesus by John. Phillip introduces him to Nathanael as one spoken of by the prophets.
This is a radically different story than the one where Jesus is the one initiating the relationship with his disciples, coming suddenly and unexpectedly into their lives and demanding that they follow.
These are people who have come to John because they are looking for something. Answers? A better life? A more fulfilling religious practice? Political power? A revolution? I don’t know. They believe that they’ve found something important in the person of Jesus and they are the ones who initiate contact.
A little later we’ll see them confused when Jesus turns out to not be quite what they expected.
The church of my childhood tended to focus more on the other stories of Jesus calling his disciples. You know, the ones where the disciples were minding their own business but drop everything to follow Jesus after a single short encounter. In those stories it’s Jesus who has all the agency. He selects his people, calls them and they leave their established livelihoods to follow him. Without questions or motives of their own.
Those stories are, perhaps, convenient. They match up pretty well with the official church doctrines around calling and salvation for one thing. They’re also easily used to reinforce existing authority structures. At the same time, it makes things simple. There’s no need to worry about people’s motivations. Only calling and obedience to a calling matters.
The disciples in this week’s passage have agency and they are pursuing a relationship with Jesus with their own agendas. We get to see a more human view of Jesus early ministry. I find that fascinating.
There’s also potentially a warning here. People may have complicated motivations for the things they do, including their decisions to be a part of a Christian community. Sometimes those reasons are rooted in religious commitments. Sometimes they come from a desire for power or some other benefit of access to the community. I suspect it’s often a complicated mixture of many things. That’s just human.
Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
I find the connection between Jesus’ ministry and John’s to be really intriguing. That’s partially because it’s something I’ve only noticed relatively recently. John is often just a footnote in the story of Jesus. He’s just this weird guy out by the river dressing funny, insulting people, and preparing the way. I always got the impression that John and Jesus had only this fleeting connection. Like they meet briefly during Jesus’ baptism and then go their separate ways. It’s part of a view that sees Jesus as disconnected from the religious landscape of his time. This idea of Jesus sees his message as entirely new and his ministry as entirely his own.
But when I go back and actually read these passages, that’s not true. Not at all.
John and Jesus knew each other well. Of course they did, they were family. But more than that, it seems that Jesus ministry was, in very important ways, a continuation of John’s. Look at what the author of Matthew does in this week’s reading.
When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:
“Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”
From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Matthew 4:12-17 (NIV)
And previously, taking about John
In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Matthew 3:1-2 (NIV)
That repetition is no mistake. Whether or not these two men actually had the same message, the author of Matthew wants us to notice the connection. We’re supposed to read Jesus’ preaching as a continuation of John’s ministry. I’ve got some wild speculation that I’ll get to shortly, but I’m trying to focus here. Why is it so important to the author of Matthew, and all the other Gospels for that matter, that Jesus is placed in the context of John and his thing by the Jordan? And on the flip side of that question: What are we missing when we see Jesus as disconnected this way?
It occurs to me that minimizing Jesus’ connection to John might be a function of the society that I live in. We expect everyone to stand alone and be judged on their own merits. It’s not supposed to matter who your family is or who your teachers were. Your ideas are supposed to be unique, developed independently of anyone else. That’s an interesting idea that I might have to keep mulling over.
Ok. Wild speculation time. It looks to me like Jesus was a part of John’s ministry. Perhaps the plan was that it would not be a one person act, but a two person act. John and Jesus, repentance, miraculous healing, God drawing near to God’s people, the whole thing, all there in that significant place by the Jordan River. But then John is arrested, and ultimately executed and the plan changes. Jesus is going it alone and the whole thing ends up traveling around Galilee. Also, seeing John’s arrest and execution, Jesus knows exactly where he’s heading and chooses that path deliberately. Even all the way back here at the beginning.
When I was a teen, by parents went to a workshop about spiritual gifts and my mother returned home having been told she had the gift of hospitality.
I have no idea why I remember this. But for some reason it stuck with me and I thought of it again reading this week’s Epistle passage. Perhaps it was because even as a teenager, the classification didn’t seem quite right.
It’s not that my mother isn’t hospitable, it’s just that my experience of my mother’s strengths point strongly to other skills. With all this other stuff my mom is great at, why did hospitality of all things dominate the portions of the conversation that I overheard?
I asked my mom about it this week and she pointed me to the source of the workshop, and what do you know, they now have an online questionnaire where you too can discover your gifts.
So I took it.
And well…I have thoughts.
I don’t have the whole 72 page student workbook of course but just from the eighty questions I answered, and the resulting categorization I noticed some things that I think are interesting.
First off, the list. This classification is using gifts of
Administration, Creative Ability, Discernment, Encouragement, Evangelism, Faith, Giving, Healing, Hospitality, Intercession, Knowledge, Leadership, Mercy, Miracles, Prophecy, Service (Helping), Shepherding (Pastoring), Teaching, Tongues (Speaking and Interpretation), and Wisdom
Twenty potential gifts, eighty questions, each one gets 4 questions. They’re in order throughout the survey. You can tell. Simple addition gives the scores for each.
The language in these questions indicates a very particular kind of religious expression. Healing in this view is more about praying for people to be healed than providing any kind of medical treatment. Knowledge is presented as being more about insights coming from God than actually knowing things.
More important than that language and subculture stuff though, I think this survey is fundamentally designed not to tell anyone anything new. Let’s look at a particular example to see what I mean. Here are the questions asked about Leadership:
12. I can present the vision for a project in a way that attracts others to get involved.
32. God has used me to motivate others to work together in a ministry or program.
52. I can set goals and find ways to provide what others need to get a project done.
72. At times, God has given me a sense of vision for a new task or project that attracted others to get involved.
At least half (and arguably, all) of those questions can only be answered with a strong affirmative by a person is already operating in a leadership role. Someone who has not had opportunities to act as a leader will not score highly here. This survey is safe for use by church leadership that doesn’t want to be challenged because it isn’t really identifying anyone’s gifts. It’s just identifying the roles that people are already playing within church communities and painting them over with some fancy spiritual paint.
Let’s compare to the questions for Service:
16. I sense when others need a helping hand, and I am eager to help.
36. I enjoy doing tasks that help others be more effective in their ministry roles.
56. I am eager to help others in any kind of work for the church.
76. I find practical ways to help others and enjoy doing so.
Honestly, I think I’d prefer to have the person who answers affirmatively here in a leadership role than someone who scores highly on Leadership.
I have to acknowledge that, when I took the test myself, I often interpret the questions a bit differently than what I suspect the original intent was. I get Teaching, followed by Discernment. Teaching is pretty straightforward and not at all unexpected. (Especially since actual experience seems to be weighted heavily) Discernment though… Given my above conclusions about the value of the survey, Discernment is hilarious. Here are the questions:
3. I detect phoniness or false teachings in situations where others are swayed and misled.
23. I can tell whether a person’s words, actions, or motives are godly, sinful, or from the evil one.
43. I can see when hidden motives are present in people’s words or actions.
63. I can tell the difference between spiritual truth and error.
I suspect I disagree vehemently with the person who made this survey on what constitutes spiritual truth, godly actions, and false teachings, but I’ll just be over here using my gift of Discernment to notice the hidden motives that may be present in this survey.
I don’t want to be entirely negative here. This survey, could definitely be used to entrench an existing hierarchy, but used carefully, I don’t think it has to. Careful facilitators could probably tweak this with some appropriate discussion and prompting.
That list of 20 different possible gifts is a lot and using such an expensive idea of spiritual gifts, including Hospitality, and Service, and Encouragement, and Administration and all the rest, does a reasonable job of making the point that everyone has something to contribute to a community of faith. It’s not just the Leaders and the Pastors who count for something. This part is well aligned with the Epistle reading for this week.
As my mother tells the story, the workshop offered her a useful insight for her back in the 90s that hospitality could be a spiritual gift. For all my skepticism about the results people are likely to get from this survey and the ways it could be used, it’s important to remember that something simple like taking care to ensure people feel welcome is a valuable contribution to a community.
Even the simple things can be gifts from God.
Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.
Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.
The Gospel text for this week is the story about Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding. That very simple act of taking care of people seems connected, but this is already long so I’ll leave it for now.
A long time ago, I was sitting in a church service where they did the whole “greet your neighbour” thing and at that part of the service the woman sitting next to me turned to me and asked,
“Are you visiting today?”
It’s long enough ago that I don’t remember exactly the incident that lead to me never going back to that church, but it might have been this one.
You see, I had been regularly attending this church for nearly a year. Not every week, sure, but two or three times a month. I’d sat in that same place on that exact pew at least a couple dozen times. Tried repeatedly to go to their exceedingly awkward coffee time. Had dozens of awkward conversations about who I was and where I was from.
This reminder again that I was not really part of the community and maybe never would be was nearly the last straw.
Another church, another city, another year. We had just moved. Looking for a church in the new city meant going to a whole bunch of churches and then several months later, going back to the ones that seemed promising.
I walked in to St Albans on September 14th and again on November 30th. On that second visit the priest greeting people as they entered remembered my name.
As life goes when you’re a certain kind of under-employed, we didn’t get to stay in Ottawa long, but I remain grateful for the welcome we received at St Albans. There’s something holy about being seen. Noticed.
And so we come to this week’s passage.
Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”
Peter and his brother are out fishing and Jesus shows up and gives that whole speech about fishing for people and changes the whole course of their lives.
Right?
Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.
This is, in fact, a completely different back-story for Peter and Andrew. Not minding their own business fishermen. Not suddenly dragged off to bigger things. They’re hanging around with John in the wilderness looking for answers.
I’m not going to make any attempt to reconcile the two stories. They both exist in tension with each other. Nothing needs to be solved about it.
But seeing these two as active seekers of the Messiah…That gives a perspective I’m not used to. Perhaps it clarifies why they were so confused when the Messiah they found didn’t behave as they expected.
Or perhaps it gives everyone permission to seek actively, to go off into the desert after some wild preacher who might turn out to be the wrong one. To try again. To not just maintain the status quo while waiting for a sudden calling or a clear flash of insight.
Lectionary Out Loud 
