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  THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS
  by Graham
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Graham's study of Jesus as portrayed in the four Gospels, examining His life and
ministry through the distinctive perspective of each evangelist. The work
analyzes how Mark presents Jesus as a worker of miracles, demonstrating His
divine mission and authority through powerful deeds.

  Chapters: 4

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 1-The Jesus of Matthew: A Prophet
    2. 2-The Jesus of Mark: A Worker of Miracles
    3. 3-The Jesus of Luke: A Man of Prayer
    4. 4-The Jesus of John: Lover of Men and Women

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  CHAPTER 1: 1-THE JESUS OF MATTHEW: A PROPHET
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Graham, Ronald W. "The Jesus of Matthew: A Prophet." Public Lecture. Glen Iris,
Vic.

1984.

THE JESUS OF MATTHEW A Prophet By Ronald W. Graham "Herod feared the people,
because they held Jesus to be a prophet." (Matthew 14:5, RSV).

Introduction I have three words of introduction. 1) Versions Many times the
scripture I shall cite In the course of these lectures will be from the first
edition of the Revised Standard Version, which I have been using regularly since
the New Testament translation published in 1946. At other time s we shall be
hearing the 1971 second edition, the 1968 edition of the Jerusalem Bible, the
1970 edition of the New English Bible, the 1971 edition of Today’s English
Version, the 1973 edition of the New International Version, and on occasion the
1 611 edition of the King James Version. These are respectively denoted in my
manuscript but will not be distinguished in this oral presentation. 2) Inclusive
language When the wording is mine I shall refer to men and women, her as well as
him. When I am citing the writings of others, including scripture, I shall
nearly always respect the past by sticking with what is there in the original
and we shall time and again understand "man" and "men" and "he" to be generic,
including women as well as men. In referring to Jesus, I shall always use "he"
because I am at a loss to know what we are saying if we deny the scandal (if you
like) of his historical particularity, namely, his maleness. In my text I have
lower cases for "he" and "him" when used of Jesus because we are thinking of him
as the human face of God. The scriptures refer to God in both masculine and
feminine terms, though, to be sure, the masculine predominates, especially in
the "Father" language. "As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities
those who [reverence] him" (Psalms 103:13)--that is the Psalmist’s imagery, and
it is there; like as a nursing mother comforts her child, so God comforts those
who are depressed, disconsolate, and afraid (cf. Isaiah 66:13)--that is the
imagery of "Isaiah," and that is there too. God may be personal--that may be how
God is best, though nonetheless inadequately, described. We are shut up to using
human words and human experiences to describe God; and the language of
personhood is the best we have and it is the most honoring. Better that God be
"he" or "she"--it matters not which--; better that God be he or she than that
God be mindless, heartless, uncaring, unfeeling, uninvolved it. But to speak of
God in personalistic terms does not make God a Person, much less a male person.
God has no sexuality--he is not male, nor is she female; God is just, well, God
is just God. We attribute to God the highest attributes found in humankind:
attributes found sometimes in this man, sometimes in this woman; found in the
greatest, most fully human, women and men, men and women. For one thing, I shall
use the term "God" as much as possible. For another, I shall on occasion use
"Him" and not switch from "Him" to "Her." Third, in the text I have capitalized
"He" and "Him" in order to hint that the Deity is not anthropomorphically
masculine. 3) Procedure Now to get down to the main business on hand this
evening. First of all I should like to say a word about the gospel, the Gospels,
and the human face of God. Second, we shall pay attention to Matthew’s portrayal
of Jesus as a prophet. Third, we shall draw five conclusions.

1. The Gospel, the Gospels, and the Human Face of God a. The New Testament The
only thing Jesus of Nazareth had to show for his matchless life, and cruel,
undeserved death, and surprising resurrection was the church and the scriptures
that the church wrote to explain and define itself. Those scriptures--what,
around the end of the second century, Tertullian of North Africa first called
the "New Testament"1 are primarily a body of documents witnessing to the
revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth. The New Testament is the record of what
the early church knew (or thought it knew) about Jesus, what it believed and
taught, and what implications for life it drew from its memories. The books that
make up the New Testament "enshrine for us the comment and exposition and
application of the teaching and the significance of Jesus by some of the
earliest Christians, [people] who lived very near indeed to the historical
source of light, [persons] who had known the apostles or known others who had
known them."2 The Jesus of the Gospels is Jesus as seen by his contemporaries.3
What we have of Jesus is not what he said but what he is remembered as saying or
is thought to have said. What we are given is the impression Jesus left. What
emerges [from a study of the Gospels] is a lively picture of the kind of thing
that Jesus did, the kind of attitude which his actions revealed, the kind of
relations in which he stood with various types of people he encountered, and the
causes of friction between him and the religious leaders.4 b. The Gospels As far
as the New Testament is concerned, we can make Dodd’s affirmation chiefly on the
basis of the Gospels. The early church produced some twenty or more books that
go by the name of "Gospel of ... :" the Gospel of Thomas as well as the Gospel
of Matthew, the Gospel of Peter as well as the Gospel of John 5:1-47 But from
early in the second century four such writings were being singled out from all
the rest as of pre-eminent authority. Why four--these four--and not five or
three? "The Gospels could not possibly be either more or less in number than
they are" is the answer to that question made by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons,
toward the end of the second century. "Since there are four zones of the world
in which we live, and four principal winds, ... the foundation of the Church
[which] is the gospel, fittingly has four pillars."6 It would be simpler, and
perhaps nearer the mark, to say, "There are four Gospels in the New Testament
because there just never were any others like them." They are four, and not one.
Yet there is a oneness to them. Irenaeus immediately proceeds to say this:
"[God] gave us the gospel, fourfold in form but held together by one Spirit."7
Fourfold--but one. One. It is said that a church member in the late third
century would not have possessed the New Testament in one complete volume, as we
do. The first and most important volume would have been the EVANGELLION "The
Gospel," for it was the singular that was regularly used of the fourfold gospel,
and it was a century later before people "began to speak of each Gospel
separately as a Gospel, and to use the plural of the four."8 One Gospel. Tatian,
an Assyrian Christian, confronted with the fact that the first three Gospels
contain much that is represented twice and three times over, conceived the
notion of combining all that was contained in the four Gospels, without
repeating any part common to two or more, into a single connected narrative. So
he took a Greek text of the Gospels current about A.D. 170 in Rome, where he was
living at the time, and rearranged it--a scissors and paste job, as we would
phrase it. It came to be called the Diatessaron--dia tessaron "out of four,
[one]." On his return to his native country, it became the Gospel for many
churches up and down the valley of the Euphrates. It is a loss that neither the
Greek nor the Syrian texts survive.9 In a sense the church does live with only
one Gospel. For one thing, the first three Gospels have been known as the
Synoptic Gospels, and each of the first three Evangelists as a synoptiker, "a
synoptic writer," for the last two centuries now.10 Synoptic, because Matthew,
Mark, and Luke may be seen together; synoptists, because all were writing from
the one general view. One consequence of that is that few commentators on, say,
Matthew, can resist comparing Matthew’s Gospel with those first of Mark and then
Luke. A commentary on one of the Synoptics tends to become a commentary at one
and the same time on all three. For a second thing, experientially and
devotionally the church’s image of Jesus tends very much to be a composite one,
in large measure a harmony of all four Gospels. The Western church might have
banned the Diatessaron--one connected story in written form--as heretical, but
West, as East, has lived with the Jesus of "the Gospel," rather than the Jesus
of Matthew, as distinguished from the Jesus of Mark, as compared with the Jesus
of Luke, as contrasted with the Jesus of John. But that one gospel--the good
news of the fact of and the significance of the fact of the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth--takes a fourfold form, as Irenaeus clearly
saw and as the Roman church rightly judged, as against Tatian. Even with all the
emphasis on the threefold tradition, there is the gritty fact of the Gospel of
John: the "Fourth Gospel," as it used to be called at the height of its
disparagement. And it is the fourfoldedness of the form that is going to be set
before us these four nights. c. The human face of God Matthew’s Gospel begins:
"The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ [i.e., Jesus as Messiah], the son of
David, the son of Abraham" (1:1). According to a number of ancient manuscripts,
Mark’s starts: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God"
(1:1). Luke writes that he is going to tell the story of the Jesus who
"increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man" (2:52). John
commences with a Prologue about "the Word [that] became flesh and dwelt among
us, full of grace and truth" (1:14), but at the end he says that his purpose was
to bring people to believe, and nurture them in the conviction, that "Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God" (20:31). Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham, Son
of God, the Word, one who stood high in the estimation of both his peers and his
God--each of these is a category for interpreting the significance of Jesus of
Nazareth. And the list could be greatly lengthened. In his 1953 study, The Names
of Jesus, Vincent Taylor listed ten principal names and titles of Jesus in the
New Testament and then went to consider a further thirty two.11 In his 1959
statement on The Christology of the New Testament, Oscar Cullmann discusses
nine, or perhaps ten, categories: a list not quite identical with Taylor’s.12
The fact is that no single category exhausts all that a given Evangelist
testifies to about Jesus. Which is understandable. The more significant the
person and the richer the personality, the more numerous the categories of
understanding need to be; the deeper the mind and the broader the spirit, the
greater the variety of people who appreciate that person. I am therefore being
quite limiting, highly selective, and somewhat arbitrary in choosing to speak
about: The Jesus of Matthew: A Prophet; The Jesus of Mark: A Worker of Miracles;
The Jesus of Luke: A Man of Prayer; and The Jesus of John: Lover of Men and
Women. What will be said may constitute a beginning for looking at the Jesus of
Nazareth, whom we confess as the human face of God; it is by no means intended
to depict, much less define, the end of such a description. There is mystery in
Jesus, depths beyond depths, as in every human being--as there is mystery in
God, height beyond heights.

2. Jesus as a Prophet in Matthew

As a Book, the Old Testament has three divisions: the Law, the Prophets, and the
Writings. In general, the writers of the New Testament feel closer kin to the
Prophets than to the other two, though Matthew has a greater respect for the Law
than the other three. Jesus might have been a teacher, a prophet, a sage, or an
apocalyptist. (By apocalyptist I mean "a seer whose main task was to enable his
contemporaries to understand the signs of the times in which they were living,
... and to inculcate the qualities of vigilance, endurance and steadfastness
which were demanded by such a moment in history."13 More than any other
Evangelist, Matthew has an interest in the relation of Jesus to the prophetic
tradition and the role of the prophet in Judaism. a. Fulfillment For one thing,
there is the motif of fulfillment. Matthew is convinced that many of the
happenings in the life of Jesus took place in order to fulfill some word by a
prophet. "This took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet"
(Matthew 1:22): it is almost a formula. These are the events that took place to
fulfill prophecy:

Mary’s conceiving and the naming of her child;14

the place of Jesus’ birth;15

the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt;16

Herod’s killing of the two-year olds;17

Jesus’ being brought up in Nazareth;18

Jesus’ spending some time in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, across the
Jordan;19

the ministry of healing and casting out of demons;20

Jesus’ withdrawal from the people at one stage and his ministering incognito;21

Jesus’ teaching in parables;22

his entry into Jerusalem;23

Judas’ burial in the potter’s field.24

Three times the theme of the fulfillment of scripture appears on the lips of
Jesus: in relation to the purpose of his ministry,25 the reason for his not
calling to his defense twelve legions of angels,26 and his betrayal and
arrest.27 On the one hand, each of these citations lacks the formula shape that
all the others have, although the idea of fulfillment runs through them. On the
other hand, they are quite vague and general--"the law and the prophets," "the
scriptures," and "the scriptures of the prophets": they lack the quotation of
scripture and the reference to a particular prophet. Just what scripture is in
mind in the last two of them is unknown. Five brief comments may be made on this
aspect of Matthew’s Gospel. One, the idea that specific events in the life of
Jesus took place in order to fulfill some prophetic word is never placed on the
lips of Jesus. This is an explanation of Jesus that we owe to the Evangelist,
not to Jesus, and Matthew may very well be aware of that fact. Two. every single
one of these fulfillment formula statements is peculiar to Matthew. Three, what
is fulfilled, with the exception of the virgin birth, is not at the center of
what is most significant about Jesus. Four, the scriptures cited are from
Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Exodus, and the Psalms, with the stress on
the prophetic books. Jesus is made to stand within Israel’s prophetic tradition.
Five, Matthew has a notion of the prophets and the Law belonging together and
Jesus’ teaching was the climax to the prophetic interpretation of the Law.28 b.
A Moses typology Moses occupies an incomparable position in the history of
Israel. None among his contemporaries could match him, none among his successors
equal him. He was prophet, priest, and lawgiver--without peer as a prophet, says
the writer of Deuteronomy, capsulating his achievement: "There has not arisen a
prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face."29 There is
something of a Moses typology in Matthew. There is in the birth-story of Jesus
what is also there in the birth-story of Moses: a perceived threat to a king
triggers an infanticide.30 There is the sojourn in Egypt, and God’s calling his
Son out of Egypt is like Moses’ leading Israel out of the land of slavery.31 The
temptation in the desert of the Jordan has something of the character of the
proving of Moses before the establishing of the covenant with Israel.32
Furthermore, the teaching of Jesus given in five blocks is perhaps parallel to
the five books traditionally ascribed to Moses.33 All of this is found only in
Matthew. c. John the Baptist 1) The Evangelist regards John the Baptist as a
wilderness preacher who has been sent to prepare the way for Jesus Christ and in
this he was fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 34:1-17 2) John was held in high
regard by the populace as a prophet and it was for that reason that Herod the
tetrarch feared to put him to death.35 3) When Jesus was questioned once about
the character and source of his authority, Jesus rejoined: "I will ask you just
one question, and if you give me an answer I will tell you what right I have to
do these things. Where did John’s right to baptize come from: from God or from
men?" They started to argue among themselves, what shall we say? If we answer,
’From God,’ he will say to us, ’Why, then, did you not believe John?’ But if we
say, ’From men,’ we are afraid of what the people might do, because they are all
convinced that John was a prophet."36 4) In this passage by inference and in two
others explicitly Jesus expresses his appreciation of John as a prophet. He had
occasion to say this to the crowds one day about the Baptist: "When you went out
to John in the desert, what did you expect to see? A blade of grass bending in
the wind? What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in fancy clothes? People
who dress like that live in palaces! Tell me, what did you go out to see? A
prophet? Yes, I tell you [and] you saw much more than a prophet."37 5) Herod the
tetrarch might have feared the people but he feared even more breaking his
impulsive promise to his wife’s dancing daughter38 and so he had John beheaded
after all, and Matthew adds this at the end of his grim story: "And [John’s]
disciples came and took the body and buried it; and they went and told Jesus."39
On the way down the mount of Transfiguration, Jesus had conversation with his
intimates, Peter, James, and John about the coming of the Son of Man. The three
said to him, "Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?" To which
Jesus replied, "Elijah has already come, and they did not know him, but did to
him whatever they pleased." "The disciples," adds Matthew, "understood that he
was speaking to them of John the Baptist."40 d. The disciples 1) Jesus is
represented as regarding his disciples as prophets. By implication, in the
Sermon on the Mount, they are the new prophets who are destined to suffer
persecution as had the old: "Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in
heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you."41 2) Of the
ministry of the Twelve Jesus said this: To receive you is to receive me, and to
receive me is to receive the One who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet as a
prophet will be given a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a good man
because he is a good man will be given a good man’s reward.42 3) In the context
of chapter 23, they are the prophets who are scourged, or who will be scourged,
in the synagogue of the Pharisees during the time of the early church.43 4) As
in the Old Testament so in the New, there are both true prophets and false
prophets and not all who claim the name deserve it, as Jesus points out in a
saying that is peculiar to Matthew: "Not everyone who calls me ’Lord, Lord’ will
enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only those who do the will of my heavenly
Father. When that day comes, many will say to me, ’Lord, Lord did we not
prophesy in your name, cast out devils in your name, and in your name perform
many miracles?’ Then I will tell them to their face, ’I never knew you; out of
my sight, you and your wicked ways!44 e. Jesus as a prophet in the eyes of
others 1) The common people took Jesus to be a prophet. The Evangelist says that
at one time when Jesus came to the territory near Caesarea Philippi, which was
an important Greco-Roman city on the Southwest lower slope of Mount Hermon, he
put this question to the disciples: "Who do people say the Son of Plan is?"
(NIV). They said, ’Some say John the Baptist, ... others say Elijah, while
others say Jeremiah or some other prophet." (TEV). Then Jesus asked, "What about
you? ... Who do you say I am?" (TEV).45 The multitudes were not totally off
target! 2) When Jesus was entering Jerusalem, "triumphantly" as the tradition
has it, the crowds answered the city’s agitated question, "Who is this?" by
saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee."46 3) Jesus entered
the city, cleansed the Temple, and returned in the evening to Bethany, which is
a mile or so to the east of the Temple. The next morning he returned to the
Temple area and began to teach. When the chief priests and the Pharisees saw the
direction his teaching was taking, says Matthew in a passage that is peculiar to
him, "though they would have liked to arrest him they were afraid of the crowds,
who looked on him as a prophet."47 4) The people’s welcoming Jesus as a prophet
receives some derisive confirmation in the trial before Caiaphas the high
priest, the scribes, and the elders. At the end, writes Matthew, in an account
which in essence is found in all three Synoptic Gospels: "They spat in his face
and beat him; and those who slapped him said, ’Prophesy for us, Messiah! Guess
who hit you!’"48 f. Jesus and the prophets At a number of points, Jesus is
represented as having a deep appreciation for and a sense of affinity with the
prophets. 1) One time when some scribes and Pharisees came to him asking for
some tangible sign that would validate his message he responded with a word of
commendation for the moral preaching of Jonah.49 2) Some four chapters further
along (chap. 16), there is a repetition of this question, perhaps more
threatening this time, by Pharisees and Sadducees, and again the example and
experience of Jonah is set forth in response.50 3) In the predictive passage in
chapter 24, one of the signs to be looked for is one that the Jesus of Matthew
sees the prophet Daniel as having written about.51 4) On a day when Jesus found
himself taking issue with Pharisees and scribes over moral priorities in
religion-assiduous attention to the cleansing of cups and the washing of hands
coupled with neglect of and disrespect for parents--he is said to have expressed
a fellow feeling for a frustrated, disappointed, and disheartened Isaiah: "Well
did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said ..."52 5) The persecution that Jesus
foresaw for at least some of his followers he perceived as being as wrong for
them as it had been for prophets of old.53 The thought of it called forth the
lament: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are
sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen
gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold your house is
forsaken and desolate.54 6) The so-called Golden Rule: "In everything do to
others what you would have them do to you"--regarded by some as the be-all and
end-all of Christianity--is said by the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount to be
nothing but a summing up of "the law and the prophets."55 7) The answer that was
given to the question, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" was
this: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a
second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself."56 And then comes
the clincher, found only in Matthew, "On these two commandments depend all the
law and the prophets."57 8) Jesus’ teaching in parables and the disappointing
response he often encountered is seen as a repetition of Isaiah’s experience and
in that sense a fulfillment of prophecy (propheteia).58 9) What Jesus taught and
what he accomplished was of such a character that "many prophets and righteous
men," he said, ’longed to see what you [disciples] see, and did not see it, and
to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."59 10) In a saying found only in
Matthew, the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount affirms that he in no wise came to
abolish the law and the prophets: on the contrary: "Truly, I say to you, till
heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until
all is accomplished."60 11) In Jesus’ summing up of the Law and the
prophets--not simply the Law; in his feel for Isaiah and his situation; in his
evaluation of his own life and ministry; and In his affirmative and creative
stance toward the Law and the prophets. we have already begun to move beyond
Jesus’ affinity with and appreciation for the prophets of Israel to his viewing
himself as a prophet.61 g. Jesus viewing himself as a prophet 1) In two places
in Matthew, Jesus straightforwardly and unambiguously identifies himself as a
prophet. At the end of extensive instructions to his disciples, Jesus speaks
with the prophet’s poetic parallelism: "To receive you is to receive me, and to
receive me is to receive the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet as a
prophet will be given a prophet’s reward.62 (The saying is peculiar to Matthew.)
Plainly Jesus was referring to both himself and his disciples, who had just been
granted authority to conduct healing ministries of their own and preach the good
news of the Kingdom of heaven as prophets.63 2) Likewise, in consequence of a
visit to Nazareth where his own people--friends and neighbors--stumbled at his
well-known, familiar background and persistently questioned his authority,
finally rejecting him,64 Jesus was led to exclaim, "A prophet is not without
honor except in his own country and in his own house."65 (And, incidentally, the
upshot of that was that "he did not do many mighty works there, because of their
unbelief."66 These two unequivocal statements which Matthew places on the lips
of Jesus come at the end of two important sections of the Gospel: the
commissioning of the disciples to heal and preach and Jesus’ own teaching in
parables. The Jesus of Matthew understands his healing and teaching ministry to
be the work of a prophet living within and out of Israel’s prophetic tradition.

Conclusion67

1) In August 1928 there was a conference of British and German theologians at
which C. H. Dodd delivered a paper entitled, "Iesous ho didaskalos kai
prophetes." It was later published in expanded form as a chapter, "Jesus as
Teacher and Prophet," in Mysterium Christi.68 We have concentrated on Jesus as
prophet in Matthew but he really should be viewed, perhaps above all in Matthew,
as a teacher who is also a prophet: a teacher--a teacher among teachers, an
expert in the Law who possessed the skill of the scribe; a prophet--speaking out
of and addressing himself to particular circumstances in history, like the
prophets speaking out of a sense of direct communion with God and therefore
speaking with a certain intransigence, authoritativeness, and urgency as well as
with their freedom and directness; and perhaps we should add to teacher and
prophet, a touch of the charismatic, esoteric seer thrown in. But to say that
Jesus was a teacher who was also a prophet should not be allowed to obscure the
fact that he was not just a teacher among teachers but that as a prophet he was
a religious figure in his own right.69 What do I mean by that?70 2) For one
thing, fundamental to Jesus’ life and ministry was his baptism, which is best
understood as an expression of a vocational decision akin to the seminal "call"
to prophesy felt by Men like Moses, Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.
Advocates of a doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus are regularly puzzled by
Jesus’ being baptized by John, when John’s was a baptism signifying
repentance.71 It seems to me that Jesus’ baptism expresses his response to a
"call," a call to a vocation, in this case "sonship" and all that that entailed.
As Matthew depicts our Lord’s baptism., it is a highly personal. deeply
spiritual, that is, a religious, experience: And when Jesus was baptized, he
went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he
saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a
voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well
pleased.72 3) Second, the prophetic vocation involves the possession of--if
"possession" is the most appropriate word--a divine revelation that is received
in intimate communion with God. So Matthew has this, as also has Luke: "All
things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except
the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the
Son chooses to reveal him."73 And to that only the Jesus of Matthew adds: "Come
to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke
upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will
find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."74 4)
Third, the Hebrew prophets thought of themselves as not merely declaring the
Word of God, but as playing a part in the fulfillment of that Word. The prophet
believed that his ministry had actual consequences in history, under God’s
Providence. (This was something that distinguished the prophet from the "mere"
teacher.) Jesus is in this tradition, with its concomitant sense of self-worth.
He speaks as though his life and work was the decisive event in history.
Especially, so it seems, did he expect momentous consequences to follow from his
death. Matthew has it that from the time of the Caesarea Philippi incident,
"Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many
things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the
third day he raised."75 Moreover, Jesus foretells that death, not as an accident
that may happen to him but as an event held within the Providence of God whose
intention it is to save: "Drink of [this cup], all of you," said Jesus at the
Last Supper, "for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many
for the forgiveness of sins."76 5) Finally, to say that Jesus was a prophet is
to say something about his personal religion, if it be permissible for me to put
it that way. His communion with God is direct, personal, childlike. He brings to
God unshakable faith in his goodness and power as a "living God."77 His prayer
is a serene acceptance of God’s will, whether it call him to do or to suffer. He
repudiates the notion of prayer as a meritorious religious exercise and insists
instead that it is essentially converse with "your Father who sees in secret."78
In addition, he bids his followers do what he himself does: "ask ... seek ...
knock," in the assurance that the child who asks the parent for bread will be
given bread and not a stone.79 His own prayers, in lonely places and in the
crises of life, are surely of this character. "His final prayer in the Garden,
reasserting faith in the boundless power of God, craving help in desperate need,
and rising to unreserved acceptance of His will, represents the ideal to which
all prayer of the prophetic type tends."80 Jesus recognized in John the Baptist
"a prophet, and more than a prophet." If Jesus was so persuaded of John, how
much more we of Jesus. But that dimension of his Person and Work--"a prophet,
yea, and more than a prophet"81--lies beyond the scope of this survey.

FOOTNOTES

1 Alexander Souter, The Text and Canon of the New Testament, rev. C. S. C.
Williams, 2nd ed. (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1954), p. 144. 2 R. P.
C. Hanson, Tradition in the Early Church (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1962), p. 249. 3 Cf. Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Man from Nazareth: As His
Contemporaries Saw Him (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1950); Etienne Trocme, Jesus: As
Seen by His Contemporaries, trans. R. A. Wilson (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1973). 4 C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (London: Collins, 1971),
p. 36. 5 M. S. Enslin, "Apocrypha, NT" in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the
Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 199-2), A-D, 166-69. 6 Irenaeus, Against
Heresies, ed. Cyril C. Richardson, in Early Christian Fathers, Vol. I, Library
of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), iii, 11, 8. 7
Ibid. 8 Souter, p. 11. 9 Ibid., pp. 50-51. 10 Johann Jakob Griesbach
(1745-1812). See Richard N. Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism, 2nd ed.
(Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), pp. 79-80 and "Synoptic Question,"
Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible, 2nd rev. ed., Louis F. Hartman, C.S.S.R.
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1963), col. 2376. 11 Vincent Taylor,
The Names of Jesus (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1953). 12 Oscar Cullmann, The
Christology of the New Testament, 2nd ed., trans. Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles
A. M. Hall (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1963). 13 A. E. Harvey, Jesus and the
Constraints of History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982), p. 57. 14Matthew
1:22; Isaiah 7:14. 15Matthew 2:5; Micah 5:2. 16Matthew 2:15; Hosea 11:1; Exodus
4:22. 17Matthew 2:17; Jeremiah 31:15. 18Matthew 2:23; what prophets? 19Matthew
4:14; No. 9 = M; Isaiah 9:1-2. 20Matthew 8:17; No. 48 = M; Isaiah 53:4.
21Matthew 12:17; No. 71 = M; Isaiah 42:1-4. 22Matthew 13:35; No. 99 = M; Psalms
78:2. 23Matthew 21:4; No. 196 = M; Isaiah 62:11; Zechariah 9:9. 24Matthew 27:9;
No. 243 = M; Jeremiah 32:6-15; Jeremiah 18:2-3; Zechariah 11:12-13. 25Matthew
5:17; No. 21 = M. 26Matthew 26:54; No. 240 = M. 27Matthew 26:56; No. 240: Mark
14:49. 28 Cf. Matthew 5:17; Matthew 7:12; Matthew 11:13; Matthew 22:40.
29Deuteronomy 34:10. 30Matthew 2:16-18; Exodus 1:1-22. 31Matthew 2:13-15; Hosea
11:1; Exodus 4:22. 32Matthew 4:2; Exodus 24:18. No. 8: Mark 1:13 and Luke 4:2
have only forty "days." 33Matthew 5:1-48; Matthew 6:1-34; Matthew 7:1-29;
Matthew 9:36-38Matthew 10:1-42; Matthew 13:1-52; Matthew 17:22-27, Matthew
18:1-35; Matthew 23:1-39; Matthew 24:1-51; Matthew 25:1-46. Each block is
preceded by narrative material and the conclusions are marked by the formula,
"When Jesus finished these words," or "these parables," or "this teaching"
(Matthew 7:28; Matthew 11:1; Matthew 13:53; Matthew 19:1; Matthew 26:1).
34Matthew 3:3; Isaiah 40:3; No. 1: Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4-6. 35Matthew 14:5; No.
111: Mark 6:20. 36Matthew 21:24-26 (TEV); No. 202: Mark 11:32; Luke 20:6.
37Matthew 11:7-9 (TEV); No. 65: Luke 7:26. 38 Whose daughter in fact she was is
a matter of debate. Cf. Francis Wright Beare, The Gospel according to Matthew: A
Commentary (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), p. 324. 39Matthew 14:12. 40Matthew
17:10-12 a, 13: No. 125: Mark 9:9-13. 41Matthew 5:12; No. 19: Luke 6:23.
42Matthew 10:41 (NEB). 43Matthew 23:34. 44Matthew 7:21-22 (NEB). No. 42.
45Matthew 16:13-14; No. 122: Mark 8:28; Luke 9:19. 46Matthew 21:11; No. 198.
47Matthew 21:46 (JB); No. 204. 48Matthew 26:67-68 (TEV); No. 241: Mark 14:65;
Luke 22:64. 49Matthew 12:38-41; No. 87. 50Matthew 16:4 (tou prophetou in some
manuscripts of Matthew); No. 119: Luke 11:29. 51Matthew 24:15. No. 216, IIa.:
Mark 13:14; Luke 21:20. 52Matthew 15:7; No. 115: Mark 7:6. 53Matthew 23:29-31;
No. 210: Luke 20:47-48, 23:34. No. 210: Luke 24:49. 54Matthew 23:37; No. 211:
Luke 13:34. 55Matthew 7:12 (NIV); No. 40. 56Matthew 22:37-39; No. 208:cf. Mark
12:31; Luke 10:28. 57Matthew 22:40. 58Matthew 13:14; Isaiah 6:9-10; No. 91.
59Matthew 13:17; No. 92: Luke 10:24. 60Matthew 5:17. 61 The saying, "for all the
prophets and the law prophesied until John [the Baptist]; and if you are willing
to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come" may also fall into this category. Cf.
11:13; No. 65. 62Matthew 10:40 (TEV). 63Matthew 10:1; Matthew 10:7-8. 64Matthew
13:57 : eskandalizonto: "took offense at" (RSV, NIV); "rejected" (TEV). "fell
foul of" (NEB). "offended" (RJV). No. 108: Mark 6:4. 65Matthew 13:57. 66Matthew
13:58. 67 I have devoted my attention exclusively to those passages in Matthew
in which prophetes, propheteuo, and propheteia appear. In his study of "Jesus as
Prophet in Matthew" in the class on Matthew at Lexington Theological Seminary in
the fall of 1983, Homer Hecht helpfully drew our attention to a number of
"beneath the surface" prophetic dimensions to Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus.
These are barely hinted at in this conclusion. 68 C. H. Dodd, "Iesous ho
didaskalos kai prophetes," Theology, 17 (1928), 205-208; "Jesus as Teacher and
Prophet," in Mysterium Christi, ed. George K. A. Bell and D. Adolf Deissmann
(London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1931), pp. 53-66. 69 Harvey, p. 59. 70 In
what follows, see Dodd, "Jesus as Teacher and Prophet," pp. 63-65. 71 3:2, 6, 8,
11, 14. 72 3:16-17. 73 11:27; No. 67: Luke 10:22. 74 11:28-30. 75 16:21; No.
122: Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22. Matthew has "he," meaning Jesus, whereas the others
have "Son of man." 76 26:28. 77 22:29-32. 78 6:4, 16, 18. 79 7:7-11. 80 Dodd,
"Jesus as Teacher and Prophet," p. 65. 81 Cf. 11:9 (KJV).

Thanks to Ronald W. Graham for permission to publish this lecture as an
electronic text. The electronic text has been produced from a roneoed typescript
distributed by Mr. Graham.

Copyright © 1984, 2000 by Ronald W. Graham.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 2: 2-THE JESUS OF MARK: A WORKER OF MIRACLES
========================================================================

Graham, Ronald W. "The Jesus of Mark: A Worker of Miracles." Public Lecture.
Glen Iris, Vic. 1984.

II. THE JESUS OF MARK A Worker of Miracles

"Which is easier to say to the paralytic, ’Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say,
’Rise, take up your pallet and walk’?" (Mark 2:9)

Introduction

As far as we can best determine, the earliest writings in what is now the New
Testament are Paul’s Letters. The first of them precede the Gospel of Mark by
perhaps 15 years, although the traditions enshrined in Mark go back some 20
years beyond the penning of Paul’s first Letters. Paul has few citations of, but
a number of allusions to, the teaching of Jesus. He holds him up as an example
for the Christian. His ethic is close kin to the Galilean’s. He is sure that the
Christ whom the church worships is the Jesus whom the church remembers. But for
all that, there must have been a felt need for a more tangible account of Jesus.
Hence the Gospels. Unless Paul and the rest of us can put some content into
"Jesus" in the confession, "Jesus is Lord," we do not know what we are saying or
why we are saying it. Hence, I repeat, the Gospels. Tonight we are going to
isolate in Mark’s Gospel the portrayal of Jesus as a Worker of Miracles. The
Gospel story is a narrative of words and deeds and life and there is no strand
of the early traditions about Jesus that does not include the deeds. I am going
to consider the stories as they are, for it is "as they are" that for the most
part the church lives and has lived with them. First, I should like to say a
word about the terms used. Second, we shall look at the miracles in each of
their four categories: exorcisms, healings, nature miracles, and raising from
the dead, summarizing some findings as we go along. Then I should like to make
six concluding comments.

1. Terms and Comparisons First, then, a word about the terms used and some
comparisons between the Gospels. In the Synoptic Gospels, the usual term for
"miracle" is dynamis. It means "might," strength," authority," "a force." "a
mighty work," a "powerful deed." It is used ten times in Mark and not at all in
John. The NIV renders the word "power(s)," five times; "mighty work(s)," three
times; miracle," only once. The RSV translates it as "power(s)," seven times and
"mighty work(s)," three times; never as "miracle." The NIV has "miracle(s)" or
"miraculous powers" four times, and the TEV and NEB three times each. None of
them have "mighty work(s)"; all have some feel for "power(s)."1 In John, the
parallel term is ergon, "work" or semeion, "sign," when used by Jesus; semeion
when used by others. Except in the book of Acts, the wondrous, astonishing,
amazing, marvelous aspect of the deeds of Jesus is played down. The word for a
wonder or a marvel is teras. In the Gospels it is found only in the expression
"signs and wonders"; once in Mark, and the parallel passage in Matthew 2:1-23
and once in John 3:1-36 and in every instance it is used disparagingly. All the
Evangelists play down the sheerly astonishing, the merely marvelous, in the
deeds of Jesus. The figures that I am now going to cite are practically the same
for Matthew and Luke respectively as for Mark. In Mark, there are seven accounts
of exorcisms (casting out of demons); in John, none. In Mark, there are 11 or 12
healings; in John, three. In Mark, either four or five nature miracles; in John,
three. In Mark, perhaps one raising from the dead, the daughter of Jairus; in
John, certainly one, Lazarus.

2. The Miracle Stories in Mark

Second, then, let us look at the mighty works of Jesus in their respective
categories, making some summaries as we move along. a. Exorcisms To begin with,
the exorcisms. 1) 1:21-28: The man in the Capernaum synagogue. (No. 12: Luke
4:31-37; Matthew 7:28-29) Jesus’ first public appearance was at Capernaum, on
the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was the Sabbath. He entered the
synagogue, which was a lay institution, needing neither priest nor rabbi. As an
acknowledged competent interpreter of scripture, he was invited to expound the
Word of God. There is no record that Jesus ever said "thus saith the Lord." He
expected his teaching to be given a serious hearing either because its truth was
self-evident or because it was his word. His teaching was felt to be with power.
And there was a man there with an unclean spirit, a demon (Luke 4:33). The demon
cried out to "Jesus of Nazareth," whom he calls "the Holy One of God." But Jesus
cut the demon short and told him to hold his tongue and come out of the man.
Which he did, convulsing the man. Whereupon the possessed man let out a loud
shriek. The onlookers were astonished and saw this happening as a confirmation
of the fact that Jesus taught with authority. And his fame spread through that
region. 2) 1:32-34: A summary of exorcisms (No. 14: Matthew 8:16-17; Luke
4:40-41) At twilight of that same day, perhaps still at Capernaum and possibly
in the house of Simon and Andrew (vv.29-31), the sick and the demon-possessed
were brought to Jesus. The Sabbath was ended and so it was lawful to carry the
sick to Jesus. The demons, viewed by Mark as spiritual beings, recognized Jesus,
but what they recognized him as, Mark does not say. Part of the usual technique
of exorcism was to force the demon to speak, but Jesus does not allow them to do
so. Jesus is no ordinary wonder-worker who must follow a prescribed procedure.4
Why only "many" of the demon-possessed were cured Mark does not indicate. 3)
1:39: Another generalized summary (No. 16: Matthew 4:23-25; Luke 4:44) This is
another generalized summary: Jesus travelled all over Galilee, preaching in the
synagogues and casting out demons. 4) 3:7-12: A third generalized summary (No.
71: Matthew 12:15-21; Luke 6:17-19) This is the third generalized summary. Jesus
withdrew from the villages and towns and the controversies of the synagogue to
the Lake. But the crowds followed him from all parts of Palestine inhabited by
Jews. They came even from parts beyond: from east across the Jordan and from
northwest, from the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon. 5) 5:1-20: The Gerasene
demoniac (No. 106: Matthew 8:28-34; Luke 8:26-39) This mighty work took place in
Gentile country somewhere east of the Lake: in the territory of the Gerasenes or
the Gadarenes. The manic-depressive psychotic, as sore identify him, was
probably himself a Gentile. He was a self-punishing, tomb-dwelling deranged
person of prodigious strength. He ran to Jesus, did him reverence, and with
considerable trepidation appealed to him, "Son of the Most High God." And Jesus
cast out the demon or demons that possessed him. Jesus did not use any formula
of exorcism but he did ask the demon his name, as exorcists were accustomed to
do. The answer came back that his name was "Legion," that is, there was not one
demon, there were five or six thousand. Then the demon begged and begged Jesus
not to send him out into the desert, the home of demons, but to let him remain
among human beings where he could continue his activity. Then the unclean
spirits asked Jesus for permission to enter a herd of pigs feeding on the
hillside. Permission was given and the pigs rushed into the sea and were
drowned. Mark does not debate whether demons could rise to the surface and swim
to safety. Nor does he raise the question of the morality of destroying one
man’s herd of 2,000 pigs--whether the man were Gentile or Jew--in order to ...
In order to what? The herdsmen spread the word abroad, in town and country, and
folk carne out to see the former demoniac, "clothed and in his right mind," and
the sight scared the wits out of them, and so they pleaded with Jesus to leave
their territory. The former psychotic implored Jesus that he might companion
with him, but Jesus sent him home to what had not been home to him and to
friends who had found it difficult to befriend him to testify to God’s mercy.
And thus it was that the gospel was proclaimed among people in the Decapolis,
the ten Greco-Roman cities situated around Lake Galilee.5 6) 7:24-30: The
Syrophoenician woman (No. 116: Matthew 15:21-28) One day Jesus was found
somewhere up in the direction of Tyre and Sidon. He was travelling incognito,
perhaps in exile. And a Greek woman, by nation a Syrophoenician, got to hear
that he was in her vicinity and came to him and fell at his feet, entreating him
to drive the demon out of her little daughter. Jesus responded with this
seemingly harsh statement: "Let us feed the children first; It isn’t right to
take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs" (TEV; "children" being
understood to refer to the Jews, "dogs" to non-Jews). The desperate mother,
stubbornly humble, refusing to be rebuffed, was open to receive whatever help
Jesus was prepared to give. "Sir," she retorted, "even the dogs under the table
eat the children’s leftovers" (TEV). At that, Jesus answered: "For such an
answer you may go home; the demon has gone out of your daughter" (TEV). Verse 27
has long presented difficulties, first at the point of the suggestion that the
Jews must be given the bread of the gospel before it can be shared with the
Gentiles, and second, the sharpness of Jesus’s response. These are attempts that
have been made to tone down Jesus’ seeming rudeness:

(1) He spoke in half-jest, referring playfully to house dogs or puppies. (The
Jerusalem Bible translates the word, kyrania, as "house dogs.") But that is not
very funny humor.

(2) He spoke sharply to put the mother’s faith to the test.

(3) His response was not intended as an insult but was a reflection of his own
uncertainty: was he obliged to give to the Gentiles that which in large measure
he had not been able to give to his own people?

(4) His response was all the more harsh because his understanding of his own
mission had a growing edge to it: it was now becoming acutely clear to him that
the good news could not be confined to his own nation.6

This pagan woman’s faith--or her confidence, or desperate hope, or stubborn
refusal to be put off, or humble openness--found reward in her little girl’s
restoration to a sound mind in a healthy body: "she went home, and found the
child lying in bed, and the demon gone." 7) 9:14-29: The epileptic boy (No. 126:
Matthew 17:14-21; Luke 9:37-43 a) A father had a son who had a "dumb spirit"
(RSV), that is, an evil spirit that had "robbed him of speech" (NIV). He took
the boy to the disciples of Jesus, but they were not able to drive out the
demon. Then he brought the lad to Jesus, describing his pitiful condition, which
he had had from childhood, and said: "If you can do anything, take pity on us
and help us" (NIV). Jesus responded, not in terms of his motivation, compassion,
but in terms of his power released through another person’s faith. "Everything
is possible for the person who has faith" (TEV). To which the anxious father
said: "I do have faith, but not enough. Help me have more!" (TEV). Whereupon
Jesus cast out the unclean spirit, forbade it to ever enter the boy again, and
set the youngster on his feet, well. At that the disciples asked why they could
not cast out demons to which Jesus replied: "Only prayer can drive this kind
out; nothing else can" (TEV).

Summary What is it that catches your eye in these stories of exorcisms? 1)
Whether Jesus was convinced of the reality of the spirit world, angels and
demons, we do not know. Many Jews lived with good and evil spirits impinging on
their lives, but not all. In a statement to the Jerusalem Sanhedrin Paul said
that the Sadducees denied, while the Pharisees affirmed, the existence of angels
and spirits, presumably evil spirits.7 The Jesus of John is not presented as
driving out a single demon. In Mark, it is the smaller number of cures of human
ills that is recounted as exorcisms. Perhaps on occasion an insightful Jesus
found it necessary to begin, not with reality as such but with a given
individual’s perception of reality.8 2) There was no shingle swinging outside
his carpenter’s shop announcing that he was an exorcist on the side. He is never
depicted as taking the initiative in effecting these miracles: the man in the
synagogue cried out; people are brought to Jesus; the Gerasene demoniac ran to
him; the Syrophoenician mother came to him on behalf of her daughter; the father
brought the epileptic lad to Jesus. 3) Some recognition of Jesus as a person of
unusual power and personality is made by demons and a demon-possessed man, but
Jesus is not comfortable with this. I take it that it is a fully personal
response that most delights his spirit. 4) To be sure, those who came to Jesus,
or appealed to him, or were brought to him had some expectation of a significant
response, though faith as such is not underscored. Where faith is noted, it is a
mother’s for the sake of her daughter and a father’s on behalf of his son. 5)
Jesus is portrayed as a person of extraordinary power. He impressed people as
being a dynamic person, a man of authority. And it is not to be wondered at that
Mark says they were astonished. 6) Jesus was not the only exorcist at work in
Judaism in his time. There is a scene in Mark in which it is said accusingly
that Jesus is able to cast out demons only because he is in league with the
prince of demons. To that he said, with devastating logic, "How can Satan cast
out Satan?" Matthew and Luke have Jesus driving home the point with a second
question: "If I drive out demons by [the prince of demons], by whom do your
people drive them out?" (NIV).9 b. Healings Now, the healings. 1) 1:29-31:
Peter’s mother-in-law, a fever (No. 13: Matthew 8:14-15; Luke 4:38-39) This took
place on the Sabbath, probably in Capernaum. Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was
sick with a fever. Jesus was informed of this. "He took her by the hand, and
helped her to her feet. The fever left her and she waited upon them" (NEB). 2)
1:32-34: The sick healed at evening (No. 14: Matthew 8:16-17; Luke 4:40-41)
These twilight healings took place the same day, or rather, by Jewish reckoning,
at the beginning of the new day. All the sick were brought to Jesus and many of
them were healed. More than that Mark does not say. Why "all" the sick were
brought but only "many" were healed he does not indicate. 3) 1:40-45: The leper.
(No. 45: Matthew 8:1-4; Luke 5:12-16) In some undesignated place a leper came to
Jesus and said, "If you want to, you can make me clean" (TEV). Jesus was moved
with compassion and reached out and touched this untouchable and said: "I do
want to. Be clean!" (TEV). And straightway the leprosy left him and he was
healed. Jesus thereupon dismissed the man with instructions that had an edge to
them: "Be sure you say nothing to anybody. Go and show yourself to the priest,
and make the offering laid down by Moses for your cleansing; that will certify
the cure" (NEB). But the healed man could not contain himself; blabbed it all
out in public so that crowds gathered about Jesus. He retreated to "the
country," but still they came. 4) 2:1-12: The Paralytic (No. 52: Matt. M-8; Luke
5:17-26) This healing took place In Capernaum, either in Peter’s house or in
Jesus’ own house. It is packed so tight that when four friends brought a
paralytic on a mat, they could not get through the front door. It was probably a
one-room dwelling with an outside stairway to the roof, so the four men carry
the sick man up on to the roof, tear up part of the roof, and let down the
paralyzed man. When Jesus saw their faith, he said: "My son, your sins are
forgiven." Healing and teaching with authority might cause astonishment but they
would not necessarily arouse hostility, but this aggressive word of forgiveness
could be, and was, regarded as an invasion of God’s prerogative. The statement
by Jesus implies not that he has forgiven the man but that he knows that God has
forgiven him. However, it is understood by some critical scribes to mean that
Jesus claims to be an intermediary between God and the paralytic. According to
Judaism, forgiveness depends on true repentance, and by repentance is meant:
"sorrow for sin, open acknowledgement of it, and resolute turning away from it,
together with such restitution as may be possible. Where these conditions are
present, God forgives sin unfailingly without the need of any human mediation or
absolution."10 But Jesus pronounced this man’s forgiveness without any evidence
of repentance. The sensitive and perceptive Jesus, reading his critics’ body
language, put this question to them: "Is it easier to say to this paralyzed man,
’Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ’Get up, pick up your mat, and walk’?"
(TEV). Obviously if all that is involved is saying, it is easier to say, "Your
sins are forgiven," than to say, "Get up and walk." So to begin at the level of
the questioners’ perceptions, Jesus said to the paralytic: "Get up, pick up your
mat, and go home" (TEV). And the people "were all astounded and praised God
saying, ’We have never seen anything like this"’ (JB). 5) 3:1-6: The man with a
withered hand (No. 70: Matthew 12:9-14; Luke 6:6-11) This was another example of
Sabbath activity by Jesus. He went to synagogue and there was a man there who
had a "shrivelled" hand (NIV). And there were those present who watched Jesus
with a jaundiced eye, ready to lay a charge against him should he infringe a
Sabbath law. He goes on the offensive and poses this question: "What does our
Law allow us to do on the Sabbath? To help, or to harm? To save a man’s life, or
to destroy it?" (TEV). But for the critics of Jesus, that was not the question.
The Law of the Sabbath is divine decree; it is clear enough; and the question is
obedience or disobedience. But to Jesus the first question is: Is God active in
our lives for good, or is he not? Does God seek to heal and therefore save, or
does God not heal and therefore destroy? Jesus looked around at those who took
issue with him, angry and sorry at the same time, because their hostility kept
them from judging the case on its own merits. So he said to the man with the
"crippled" hand (TEV), "Stretch out your hand." And the fellow did; and his hand
was well again. Whereupon the Pharisees--and perhaps in synagogue that day there
were present some fanatical Pharisees--took counsel with some of those who were
close to Herod Antipas, how they might destroy Jesus. There is Markan irony in
this story: Who is right? The one who would heal on the Sabbath or those who, on
the same Sabbath, would plot the death of the healer?11 6) 3:7-12: A generalized
summary (cf. "Exorcisms," No. 4) This is a generalized summary. People came to
Jesus from all over, and of some importance in the tradition of the healings
effected is the fact that Jesus touched the afflicted. 7) 5:25-34: The woman
with a hemorrhage (No. 107: Matthew 9:20-22; Luke 8:43-48) This incident took
place when Jesus was on his way to the home of Jairus, a ruler of a synagogue,
on the northwest or northern shore of Lake Galilee. A woman had had a hemorrhage
for twelve years. She had suffered on two counts: one because of the disorder,
the other because she had used up all her resources going unsuccessfully from
doctor to doctor, getting worse rather than better in the process. She had heard
reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak in
the hope that if only she could touch his clothes she would get well. She did,
and the source of her bleeding dried up. Jesus perceived that power had gone out
from him and turned and looked around at the crowd and asked, "Who touched my
clothes?" His disciples told him that in view of the number of people pressing
upon him that was a dumb question. But Jesus kept on looking around until the
woman, knowing what had happened to her, came to him, trembling with fear, fell
at his feet, and told him the whole truth. To that Jesus said: "My daughter,
your faith has restored you to health; go in peace and be free from your
complaint" (JB). 8) 6:53-56: Healings at Gennesaret (No. 114: Matthew 14:34-36)
This is a generalized statement of healings that took place south of Capernaum.
Wherever Jesus went people were magnetically drawn to him, bringing sick
neighbors and relatives on mats laying them out in the busy marketplaces in the
belief that if only they could touch the tassel on his cloak, they would be
healed. "And as many as touched it were made well." 9) 7:31-37: The deaf mute
(No. 117: Matthew 15:29-31) This healing took place somewhere in the region
surrounding Lake Galilee. In or between the region of the Decapolis is how Mark
puts it, but we do not know the territorial boundaries of these ten Greco-Roman
cities. The man, who was a deaf mute, was brought to Jesus. Jesus took him aside
privately, then put his fingers into his ears, spat, touched his tongue, and
said, "Ephphatha" ("Be opened"), and the man spoke clearly, the embarrassing,
inhibiting impediment gone. There is almost something secular about this story.
"The use of saliva, the groan uttered by the healer, and the healer’s word in
the original language, are all marks of ancient miracle tales."12 Jesus told the
onlookers and hearers not to say anything about this, "but the more he insisted,
the more widely they published it" (JB). "Astonished beyond measure" is how Mark
says they reacted to the healing. 10) 8:22-26: The blind man This cure took
place at Bethsaida, which may have been located on the east side of the Jordan
north of the point where it opens into Lake Galilee. Some people brought a blind
man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. Jesus took him by the hand and led him
outside the village. Then he spat on the man’s eyes and placed his hands on him
and asked him "Can you see anything?" The ran looked up and said, "Yes, I can
see people, but they look like trees walking around" (TEV). Jesus placed his
hands on the man’s eyes a second time. "This time the man looked hard, his
eyesight came back, and he saw everything clearly" (TEV). Whereupon Jesus sent
him home, ordering him not to re-enter the village or, perhaps, not to tell
anyone in the village (NEB). 11) 10:46-52: Blind Bartimaeus (No. 193: Matthew
20:29-34; Luke 18:35-43) The last of the healings took place in Jericho, at the
beginning of the journey--the last journey--up to Jerusalem. His disciples and a
great crowd of people were accompanying him. There was sitting by the side of
the road out of Jericho a blind man, by name Bartimaeus, and when he heard that
the center of all those goings on was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out,
"Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me!" (TEV). Some of the bystanders scolded
him and told him to keep quiet, but he only shouted the more loudly, "Son of
David, have pity on me" (JB). "Jesus stood quite still and said, ’Call him
here.’ So they called the blind man, saying, ’It’s all right now, get up, he’s
calling you!’ At this he threw off his coat, jumped to his feet and came to
Jesus. ’What do you want me to do for you?’ he asked him. The blind man
answered, ’Oh, Master, let me see again!’ (Phillips). "Go on your way then,"
responded Jesus; "your faith has healed you." Immediately the man’s sight
returned and his way became the way of Jesus: he followed him along the road.

Summary What is it that invites your attention in these stories of healings? 1)
Once again, Jesus is never portrayed as taking the initiative. Others inform him
of Peter’s mother’s fever; the leper came to him; the four friends carried the
paralytic to him; the woman with a hemorrhage touched him; the blind man at
Bethsaida and the deaf mute in one of the ten Cities were brought to him; blind
Bartimaeus of Jericho called out to him. He was no promoter, busy advertising
himself. 2) Those who cried out to Jesus for help had some hope in his power;
those who carried others to him were anxiously expectant; those who laid their
sick in the marketplace thought there was magic in the mere touch of the tassle
of his cloak; but only of two--the woman with the hemorrhage and blind
Bartimaeus--does Jesus say, "Your faith has restored your health." On the other
hand, Mark does say that Jesus stood in awe at the unbelief that shuts out the
grace of God: "He could do no mighty work there [meaning Nazareth?], except that
he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled
because of their unbelief" (6:5-6). 3) Jesus’ power was not used for himself. It
was used with the interests of others at heart. One can sense in these stories
the longings, the fears, the despair, the hope of a whole people who had little
or no access to medicine, and amongst whom disease was constantly present in
every form. Jesus was concerned for people, especially the simplest and neediest
folk of the Galilean countryside, and it was thus that he found a way to their
hearts. 4) The wondrous healings have something in common with accounts of other
such miracles in the ancient world: the saliva, the healer’s groan, the word
uttered in the original language, but there was also much that was different:
the interest in the Good News, of which the healings are but one expression; the
demand for faith in God; Jesus’ human compassion; and his fundamental conviction
that in the totality of our existence God is for us, not against us, active for
our good, seeking to heal and restore and therefore save. c. Nature miracles
Third, the nature miracles. 1) 4:35-41: Calming the storm (No. 105: Matthew
8:18; Matthew 8:23-27; Luke 8:22-25) Jesus and his disciples, or some of them,
were going by boat across Lake Galilee. It suddenly "began to blow a gale and
the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But [Jesus]
was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. [The disciples] awoke him and
said to him, ’Master, do you not care? We are going down!"’ (JB). Jesus awoke
and rebuked the wind, telling the waves to be still. "The wind dropped and there
was a dead calm" (NEB). And he said to the disciples, "Why are you such cowards?
Have you no faith even now?’ They were awestruck and said to one another, ’Who
can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him"’ (NEB). 2) 6:30-44: Feeding the
5,000 (No. 112: Matthew 14:13-21; Luke 9:10-17) The "apostles" (disciples) and
Jesus crossed Galilee by boat to get some rest from the demands of the crowds,
but they were observed and people followed around the shore on foot. They made
better time than he. When Jesus arrived where the people were, "he had
compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd": "a nation
without a national leader, ... a Maccabean host with no Judas Maccabaeus."13
Then Jesus began to teach them. When it grew late, the disciples came to Jesus
with the suggestion that he dismiss the people so that they might go to villages
and farms to buy food. Jesus’ response was to ask them to give the people
something to eat. They asked if they might go and buy "two hundred denarii worth
of bread and give it to them to eat?" (A denarius was the wage a day laborer
would earn. Nothing is said about where the money would come from. Apparently
the intention was to give, not sell, the bread.) Then Jesus instructed them to
find out how many loaves could be secured then and there. "Five, and two fish"
was the answer, after searching. Then the people were asked to sit on the grass
in orderly fashion, in groups of hundreds and fifties. Jesus took the five
loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, broke the bread and had it
distributed, then divided the fish. All ate and were filled. Twelve baskets full
of scraps were gathered up. Five thousand people were fed that day. (In 8:1-10
there is the account of the feeding of 4,000. if Matthew and Luke used Mark,
both turn to the account of the feeding of the 5.000 [Matthew 14:13-21; Luke
9:10-62, but only Matthew uses the second Markan feeding [15:32-39]. (The chief
differences between the first and second Markan accounts are: 5,000 as against
4,000; five loaves and two fish as against seven loaves and a few small fish;
and twelve baskets full as compared to seven.) 3) 6:45-52: Walking on water (No.
113: Matthew 14:22-33) This miracle takes places after the feeding of the 5,000.
Jesus withdrew into the hills that run down to the Lake to pray. Some time
between three and six in the morning, looking down on the Lake, he saw that the
disciples, who had set out for Bethsaida by boat, were straining at the oars. He
came to them, walking on the sea, making to pass them by. The disciples thought
it was a ghost and were terrified. Jesus said, "Take heart, It is I; have no
fear." And then he got in the boat with them and the wind dropped. Why Jesus
wished to pass by the distressed disciples or was on the point of doing so is
problematic. Some think it was to test their faith; others, to show that he was
master of the wind and the waves. Mark has three comments on this miracle: the
disciples were "utterly and completely dumbfounded" (JB); they had been
oblivious to the meaning of the feeding of the 5,000; and the reason for their
lack of comprehension was the fact that their hearts were hardened. The
Evangelist does not say how he thinks their hearts became hardened, nor does he
suggest how hardened hearts can be "unhardened." If they were insensitive and
lacking in insight, what would be the use of performing a miracle? For the
person who expects nothing, nothing comes to pass. 4) 11:12-14: The cursing of
the fig tree (No. 199: Matthew 21:18-19) Jesus and some of his followers were
going into Jerusalem from Bethany when Jesus got hungry. (Bethany is a mile and
a half east of Jerusalem, on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Orientals of
that time

- 20 - ate little for breakfast.) In the distance, he saw a fig tree in leaf and
went to it to see if it had any fruit. (Fig trees bore fruit ten months in the
year around Lake Galilee; in Jerusalem, only in the summer.) If whatever
happened took place at Passover, then this was not the season for figs--not in
Jerusalem.

Jesus found leaves but no fruit. Mark says "it was not the season for figs"--an
obvious reason for there being no fruit on the tree. So Jesus cursed the tree
into fruitlessness--and Mark concludes with: "And his disciples heard him say
this" (JB).

Summary What is it that arouses your notice in these stories of nature miracles?
1) None of these miracles were performed in Jesus’ own behalf. 2) In each
instance, what he did was evoked by other people. 3) Every one bears testimony
to his power. 4) In one account, the disciples are taken to task for unbelief,
in another, for being hard hearted. 5) Condemning the fig tree to lifelong
barrenness for not bearing fruit out of season is the only curse miracle
attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. It strikes us as vindictive and unwarranted
punishment and therefore out of character. Perhaps what we have here is a
parable about a barren fig tree, found subsequently in Luke 13:6-9, turned into
a "miracle" that symbolizes the rejection of either Israel or the priesthood. In
Luke (19:41-44) it is replaced by Jesus’ weeping over the city and predicting
its destruction. d. Raising from the dead 1) 5:21-24, 35-43. Jairus’ daughter
(No. 107: Matthew 9:18-19; Matthew 9:23-25; Luke 8:40-42; Luke 8:49-56) In the
Gospels, Jesus is portrayed as effecting three raisings from the dead: in John,
Lazarus; in Luke, the son of the widow of Nain; and in each of the first three
Gospels, the daughter of Jairus. There is some question as to whether Mark means
for this to be understood as a raising from the dead or a healing, since Jesus
says to the mourners, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead
but asleep" (NIV). In the Old Testament and elsewhere "sleep" is often a synonym
for death. In the New Testament, early Christians looked upon death as a
temporary sleep in hope of the resurrection. If Jesus used "asleep" as a synonym
for death, he must have meant something like, ’She is not dead, not really; she
only appears to be dead." The incident took place on the shores of Galilee.
Jairus, a ruler of the local synagogue, came to Jesus on behalf of his
twelve-year old daughter, who was at the point of death, pleading for him to
come and place his hands on her so that she would get well and live. Jesus set
out in response, followed by a crowd. On the way, messengers came with word that
the girl was dead, and saying that there was no need for the Teacher to trouble
himself any further. (There is a touch of Markan irony in that: they do not
realize the depth of the Teacher’s compassion or his power to act when
everything seems lost.14) But Jesus said to the president of the synagogue, "Do
not be afraid; only have faith" (NEB). Then he took with him Peter and James and
his brother John and went to the house, put the professional wailers out of the
house, took in with him the father and mother and (probably) the three
disciples, took the youngster by the hand, and said, "Talitha, koum," which
means, "Little girl! Get up, I tell you!" (TEV). And she got up and started
walking around. Those who saw it were overcome with astonishment. "But Jesus
gave them strict orders not to tell anyone, and said, ’Give her something to
eat"’ (TEV).

Summary What is it that awakens your mind in this story of a raising? 1) Again,
Jesus moves at the bidding of another. 2) Once more, he is antithetical to the
publicizing of his miracle-working. 3) As before, what is contrasted with faith
is fear. 4) Yet again, whether this was a healing or a raising, a father’s
concern for his daughter, his expectation of Jesus, and his faith in the active
goodness of God play a part in the little girl’s being set on her feet and sent
on her way.

Conclusion

There are many teasing questions that these miracle stories raise and many
fascinating comments that may be made. I must draw some conclusions within
narrow limits. 1) These miracle stories show an extraordinary restraint in the
accumulation of any kind of detail. Emphasis sometimes is laid, as might be
expected, on the amazed reaction of the bystanders. But this emphasis is almost
never reinforced by the addition of details that would heighten the miraculous
impression. 2) To our surprise, compassion is infrequently designated as Jesus’
motive for action. He is said to have stretched out his hand and touched the
leper out of a sense of pity (1:41); twice it is written that he had compassion
on the crowds in general (6:34; 8:2); once he is appealed to on the basis of his
compassionate nature but he responds not in terms of pity but of power
(9:22-23). Mark allows for pity, but not as the primary motive in the majority
of miraculous incidents. 3) It might be that Jesus performed miraculous deeds in
order to acquire fame, popularity, and authority but Mark does not share that
reading of things. The deeds evoked astonishment but they are never presented as
being performed for the sake of this reaction. 4) As with the teaching in the
parables, so with the miracles, the meaning was not immediately apparent. The
restored and the observer were expected to reflect and perceive; and even to the
disciples, says Mark, the feeding of the 5,000 was an enigma (Mark 6:52). 5) One
of Mark’s emphases is that it is the glory of God, not that of the wonder
worker, which is the consequence of the mighty deeds of Jesus. That is in
keeping with the accounts of the miraculous deeds of Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and
others in the Old Testament. It is summed up in the claim by the Jesus of Luke:
"If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God
has come upon you."15 C. S. Lewis contends (in Miracles: A Preliminary Study)
that the Christian works with two basic assumptions, neither of which should be
subsumed under the other: one, the data offered by our senses recur in regular
patterns, and miracle, therefore, has to be viewed against the normal stability
of nature, and two, Christianity begins with the conviction that there is some
reality beyond nature. 6) Five of Jesus’ healing miracles are cures of the deaf,
the dumb (Mark 7:31-37), the blind (Mark 8:22-26; Mark 10:46-52), and the lame
(Mark 2:1-12; Mark 3:1-6). But these were without precedent in his own culture,
either in the Old Testament or in subsequent Jewish writings.16 One explanation
we are faced with is that Jesus was demonstrating the possibility of overcoming
those constraints and limitations which we instinctively feel stand as
intractable and inexplicable barriers in the way of our attaining a better life
and a fairer world. Jesus’ teaching has retained its power because ... it
contains an invitation to undertake what normally seems to lie on the far side
of what is possible for human beings. It challenges us to do the impossible. The
same is ... true of [his] mighty works ... [Mark’s Jesus goes] beyond the limits
of the possible, [he pushes] back to a significant degree the constraints of the
impossible.17

FOOTNOTES

1 "Miracle(s)" or "miraculous powers": 6:2, TEV/NIV/NEB; 6:5, TEV/NIV/NEB; 6:14,
NIV/NEB; 9:39, TEV/NIV. 2Mark 13:22; Matthew 24:24. 3John 4:48. 4 Sherman E.
Johnson, The Gospel according to St.Mark 2:1-28 nd ed., reprinted with
corrections (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1977), p. 50. 5 Ibid., pp. 100-103.
6 Ibid., p. 137. 7Acts 2:38. The statement may very well be true, regardless of
the historicity of the defense depicted by Luke. 8 Cf. Raymond E. Brown, S.S.,
"How Much Did Jesus Know?" in his Jesus: God and Man (Milwaukee: Bruce
Publishing Company, 1967). 9Mark 3:23-30; Matthew 12:25-37; Luke 11:17-23. 10
Johnson, p. 56. 11 Ibid., pp. 71-72. 12 Ibid., p. 139. 13 T. W. Manson, The
Servant-Messiah: A Study of the Public Ministry of Jesus (Cambridge: The
University Press, 1953), p. 70. 14 Johnson, p. 108. 15Luke 11:20. 16 A. E.
Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1982), p. 115. 17 Ibid., p. 118.

Thanks to Ronald W. Graham for permission to publish this lecture as an
electronic text. The electronic text has been produced from a roneoed typescript
distributed by Mr. Graham.

Copyright © 1984, 2000 by Ronald W. Graham.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 3: 3-THE JESUS OF LUKE: A MAN OF PRAYER
========================================================================

Graham, Ronald W. "The Jesus of Luke: A Man of Prayer." Public Lecture. Glen
Iris,

Vic. 1984.

III. THE JESUS OF LUKE A Man of Prayer

"He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples
said to him, ’Lord, teach us to pray"’ (Luke 11:1).

Introduction

I should like to speak this evening about The Jesus of Luke: A Man of Prayer.
First of all, we shall consider some facets of the church’s classic confession
about Jesus, namely that he was "truly God, truly man."1 This as the context for
viewing Luke’s portrayal of Jesus as a religious person. Second, we shall look
at every passage in the third Gospel that presents Jesus as a man of prayer. We
shall be looking at those that include proseuchomai, "to offer prayers," "to
make vows," "to worship," proseuche, "prayer," deo "to ask for [a thing] from
[someone]," "to beg [a person] to do [something]," "to beseech," and deesis, "a
prayer," "an entreaty," "an asking," "a beseeching." From time to time we shall
have to glance across at Matthew and Mark, because without that contrast, we
cannot appreciate the nuances of what Luke has to say about Jesus as a man of
prayer. Third, we shall draw four conclusions to our study.

1. "Truly God, truly man"

The church has long defined the significance of Jesus of Nazareth in terms of
"truly God, truly man." In doing so, it has found that it has had two tasks of
major proportions on its hands. One has been to define what is meant by the
"godness" of Jesus; the other has been to keep Jesus fully human. a. The godness
of Jesus Let us begin with the godness of Jesus. The godness of Jesus has
traditionally been defined in either or both of two ways: he is unique in his
person; he is unique in his works. One answer to the question of his godness is
that he did what no other person has done: he performed miracles, he was
crucified for our sins, he was raised from the dead. A second answer to that
question is that he was what no other person has been: he was the Son of God, he
was born of the Virgin Mary, he lived out his life sinlessly. Sometimes "truly
God" has been interpreted as meaning that Jesus is totally and absolutely other
than what we are and also that he exhausts the being of God--there is no more to
God than what we have seen and experienced in Jesus Christ. That interpretation
is not without some problems. These are some others that the church’s thinkers
have put their fingers on: 1) Jesus is not the only one for whom the performance
of miracles has been claimed. 2) It was not the fact that Jesus died but the
fact that it was Jesus of Nazareth who died that was significant. Two others
were crucified with him that day and their deaths are not remembered as
important. We are therefore dealing with the moral significance of the central
man who was crucified. 3) Jesus is not the only one in the Bible designated as a
"son of God," though he is the one described as the "only" ’Son of God," that
is, Son of God in some special way. The question is, What way? 4) Virgin birth
has been claimed for others than Jesus in the course of human history. 5) Jesus’
sinlessness is difficult to prove. Easy enough to claim, hard to prove. Paul in
one place, the writer of First Peter in another, and the author of Hebrews in
yet another2 make the claim that Jesus was sinless, but the claim does not make
him so. Only God could know for sure whether Jesus was in fact sinless. Among
other things, sinlessness has to do with the secret places of the heart.
Furthermore, none of these writers seeks to back up his claim. Whatever
sinlessness might mean, it did not signify, according to the Evangelists, that
Jesus was not tempted to sin nor did it mean that he was incapable of sinning.
In addition, what the Evangelists do depict is not something negative,
sinlessness, the absence of sin, but something positive, goodness. As the Peter
of Acts puts it to Cornelius, there was in Jesus of Nazareth an unquenchable
"energy of goodness."3 That was why he spent his life "going about, doing good."
6) Whatever the resurrection of Jesus may mean, it cannot signify something of
worth that he did. "God raised him from the dead" is the way the writers of the
Testament account for that surprising event. Furthermore, the Evangelists
nowhere portray Jesus as making divine choices one day and human choices
another, as thinking like God in some circumstances but like other human beings
in different circumstances, in praying like a god--however the gods pray--in one
crisis but praying like a human being in another. He is simply--if simply is the
appropriate word--depicted as one whole person. b. The humanity of Jesus Let us
move on, then, to the humanity of Jesus. Truly God, truly man. The second issue
that has occupied the church’s attention has been the full humanity of Jesus.
John in the Gospel defines his humanity in terms of his dependence, especially
his dependence on God. You and I are dependent upon the created order, on
others, and on God, because we need what the other supplies: the conditions for
living, knowledge and skills beyond our own, greater wisdom than is ours, deeper
insight, friendship, richer compassion, and so on. God and the other meet needs
that we cannot meet out of our own resources. Dependence upon others is one of
the marks of our humanity. At point after point John depicts Jesus as reaching
out to God, dependent upon God, his Father. John also shows Jesus as reaching
out to his disciples, looking for their appreciative response and sympathetic
support. On the other hand, John defines the divinity of Jesus in terms of his
self-giving love. If God is love--if that is the central truth about God--then
what is central about God must be central about Jesus too, if we are to regard
Jesus as divine. We cannot have two kinds of divinity. Truly man in his
dependence; truly God in his loving. That leads me to say a word about Jesus as
a religious man. We have real difficulty if we understand that he was commending
a trust in God, a confidence in God, a faith in God, a commitment to God which
he did not first of all have and make himself. Jesus can only with integrity
encourage us to cast all our cares on God in confidence that God is for us--God
has our best interests in mind, and God is trustworthy--if that is how he
himself found God to be. Luke and Matthew are the Evangelists who have the
stories of the infancy of Jesus. They each employ a different cycle of stories.
Luke seems to be at pains to emphasize that Jesus was brought up in a devout,
upright family. He learned as we all learn. He learned to smile because loving
parents smiled at him. He learned to talk because parents talked to him, with
some feel for words, their beauty and their power. He learned as we all do by
observation and by drawing conclusions from observation and experience--his
parables are plenteous with illustrations of this fact. He learned to pray
because his parents prayed. He took pleasure in synagogue and Temple because
Joseph and Mary did. To underline that, it has been suggested, is at least one
of the purposes Luke had in mind in his stories of the childhood of Jesus, the
conclusion of which reads: "Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in
favor with Cod and man" (2:52). Christians sometimes talk about Jesus Christ as
though he had walked down the stairway from heaven a ready-made man, with a
complete outfit of true ideas and most worthy values in his head; as though he
only pretended to be a baby in a cradle. Luke’s stories, however, imply that
without Mary and Joseph, Jesus would not have been anyone on earth. As Austin
Farrer put it in one of his Oxford sermons: The divine life came to earth in
Jesus, he was the heart and centre of it: but the divine life could not live or
act in Jesus alone. The divine life had to use his parents, his kindred and his
friends, to., make Jesus a man; and had to use his disciples and associates to
keep hip, being a man; for we cannot go on being human, any more than we get to
be human, without other people ... Jesus could only be Jesus, by having Peter,
James and John to be himself with; ... Jesus became the saviour of his friends,
by attaching them to himself; but the attachment was mutual. When it came to his
hour of trial, he did not want to be alone; he took them with him when he prayed
in Gethsemane, he begged them to keep awake and see him. through his agony of
spirit.4 2. Jesus, Man of Prayer, in Luke In the second place, then, let us take
up what Luke has to say about Jesus as a man of prayer. 1)Luke 1:10:
(proseuchomai) Zechariah was a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem. His turn came
to burn incense in the Temple. An Angel of the Lord appeared to announce that
his wife Elizabeth would bear a son, named John. This took place when "a whole
multitude of people were praying outside at the hour of incense." The coming of
Jesus, for whom John was the forerunner, is thus set within Judaism’s devotion
to the Lord. 2)Luke 1:13: (deesis) That Zechariah’s wife would bear a son is
said to have been in answer to his prayer: "Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has
heard your prayer" (TEV). 3)Luke 2:37: (deesis) When Jesus was eight days old,
his parents had him circumcised. There was a prophetess at the Temple, named
Anna. She was up in years: she was either 84 years old or she had been widowed
for that length of time.5 "She never left the temple, but worshipped day and
night, fasting and praying" (NEB). And this presentation of Jesus to the Lord
she saw as an act of great significance for Jerusalem, for all who were looking
for the holy city’s redemption. 4)Luke 3:21-22: (v.21, proseuchomai) (No. 6:
Mark 1:9-11; Matthew 3:13-17) We do not know why Jesus was baptized by John the
Baptist. John’s baptism was for the remission of sins. Had Jesus committed sins
that he needed to repent of? Was he a "born again Christian"?! ... Or was it
that he reckoned that John’s movement represented the best chance for Israel at
that time and, by being baptized, did he want to show whose side he was on and
where his sympathies lay? ... Or, rather, did baptism for Jesus signify his
decision to enter upon a public ministry, the nature of which eventually led him
to his death? Whatever his baptism signified for Jesus, it did mark his "going
public." It was an occasion, moreover, that is reported to have had God’s
commendation: "Thou art my Son, my Beloved; on thee my favor rests" (NEB). Only
Luke among the Synoptists has it that this approval was given by God while Jesus
"was praying." 5)Luke 5:12-16: (v.16, proseuchomai) (No. 45: Mark 1:40-45;
Matthew 8:1-4) The first three Evangelists each tell of a man who was covered
with leprosy--an outcast from society, to touch whom rendered one ritually
unclean--who came up to Jesus, "threw himself down and begged him, if you want
to, you can make me clean!’ Jesus reached out and touched him. ’I do want to,’
he answered. ’Be clean!"’ (TEV). And straightway the leprosy left him. Jesus
commanded the man to go to the priest and make an offering for his cleansing so
that he might get certification that he was rid of his leprous condition, but
not to noise abroad what had happened. But naturally enough, the man with skin
now healed and clean could not contain his joy, and talked freely about the
Healer. This mighty work was followed by others so that crowds came to hear him
and to be healed; but there was something about a ministry of working
miracles--or something about people’s understanding of that ministry and their
response to it--that troubled Jesus, and so "he would ... go off to some place
where he could be alone and pray" (JB). Jesus did not come just to be a miracle
worker and he was not at ease with a response that was merely wonder and
astonishment, without the reorientation and commitment of the life. 6)Luke
6:12-16: (v.12, preuchomai, proseuche) (No. 72: Mark 3:13-19; Matthew 10:1-4)
The choosing of that inner circle of Twelve to whom Jesus most fully gave
himself was not something that he did light-heartedly. Matthew says simply and
succinctly that Jesus made the choice. Mark writes that he went up into the
hills to make his decision. But Luke says, "He went out one day into the hills
to pray, and spent the night in prayer to God. When day broke he called his
disciples to him, and from among them he chose twelve" (NEB). No doubt the
prayer had to do with the character of his own vocation, the nature of his own
mission, and what it was that should be looked for in those who would be invited
or challenged to join him in that mission. 7)Luke 6:28: (proseuchomai) (No. 75:
Matthew 5:44) There is a saying attributed to Jesus in Matthew’s Sermon on the
Mount which runs like this: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you." It is found in strengthened form. in Luke: "Love your enemies, do good to
those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." It
is an injunction which Jesus binds to his own heart--but only the Jesus of
Luke--in the word from the cross: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what
they do" (23:34). The narrow way that Jesus enjoins he walks also himself. The
cross he calls upon others to carry he too carries. 8)Luke 9:18-22: (v. 18,
proseuchomai) (No. 122: Mark 8:27-33; Matthew 16:13-23) By all accounts, the
confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi, "You are God’s Messiah" (TEV, NEB),
was a turning point in the ministry of Jesus. Luke has it that shortly after
this, Jesus "made up his mind and set out on his way to Jerusalem" (v. 51, TEV).
The King James Version’s phrasing of this, "he steadfastly set his face to go to
Jerusalem," has held the attention of the church for generations. Although
Peter’s confession--if that is the best word to describe it--is recounted by all
three of the first Evangelists, it is only Luke who says that the question "Who
do the people say I am?" (NEB) arose "one day when Jesus was praying alone in
the presence of the disciples" (NEB). 9)Luke 9:28-36: (v. 28: proseuchomai) (No.
124: Mark 9:2-9; Matthew 17:1-8) Following on the heels of the Caesarea Philippi
confession, Jesus took Peter, James, and John up a "high mountain." (Mount
Tabor, visible from many parts of Israel, is the traditional scene, but Mount
Hermon, 9, 100 feet high, would be nearer Caesarea Philippi.) It became the
mountain of Jesus’ transfiguration when, as Luke puts it, "the appearance of his
countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white," and out of the
heavens there came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to
him." The transfiguration is pictured by each of our first three Evangelists,
but it is only Luke who tells us that the reason why Jesus was on the mountain,
in company with Peter, John, and James, was that he took them up there with him
to pray. 10)Luke 10:1-16: (v.2, deomai) (No. 139: Matthew 9:37-38) Both Luke and
Matthew tell of a mission on which Jesus sent his disciples-not simply the
Twelve, but a wider group of some 70 persons. They were to proclaim the gospel,
and at the same time they were encouraged to beseech God--God who is "the lord
of the harvest"--that he would send even additional laborers into the field.
11)Luke 11:1-4: (vv.1-2, proseuchomai) (No. 146: Matthew 6:9-13) The Lord’s
Prayer is found in two places in the Gospels: in the Sermon on the Mount in
Matthew and in a different setting in Luke. Only in Luke is it said that the
disciples came to him asking him to teach them how to pray because he himself
was praying. His life was transcendent, victorious over circumstances, because
he tapped depths deeper than himself, he aspired to heights that rose in majesty
above him. Prayer meant so much to Jesus that what he had they wanted too; what
it did to him they wanted done to them also. These are the features of the
response that Jesus made to the disciples’ request: The focus of all prayer is
first of all on God. The first question in the Shorter Catechism of the
Westminster Confession of the 17th century is, "What is the chief end of man?"
And the looked-for answer is, "Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy
him forever."6 That gathers up Jesus’ first teaching about prayer. It is God’s
rule of love, justice, mercy, and truth that comes first, in women and men. To
give ourselves to the achievement of that: that is how God’s name is hallowed.
That is how we show respect for God and how we express filial obedience to God.
Second, the need for daily bread to sustain and nurture our life is a legitimate
need. It is right and proper to pray for the meeting of that need. Third, we
people do wrong, and what is wrong needs to be set right. And so the prayer
moves on to a petition for forgiveness of sins. But the nature of the process of
forgiveness is such that we are not able to receive what God has to give and is
willing to give, unless we are willing to grant to others what we ask of God.
Finally we are taught to pray not to enter into temptation--or not be brought to
"the test" (NEB, JB) or to "hard testing" (TEV)—which probably means: "Cause us
not to succumb to inward temptations and seductions and the kind of outward
tribulations and trials which can overthrow faith." 12)Luke 19:45-48: (v.46,
proseuche) (No. 200: Mark 11:15-19; Matthew 21:12-13) The cleansing of the
Temple by Jesus is a story told by Luke, Mark, and Matthew. There are some
differences among the three accounts, but in all three what distressed Jesus was
that worship had been perverted. Its primary purpose had been to glorify God--it
was to have been "a house of prayer," say all three; to join people together in
an ecumenical fellowship--"a house of prayer for all the nations," as Mark put
it;7 and to achieve and sustain justice in people’s dealings with other people;
but it had been turned into a place for raising and making money. 13)Luke
22:31-34: (v.32, deomai) (Nos. 237c, 238: Luke 22:39; Mark 14:26-31; Matthew
26:30-35) The accounts of the last days of Jesus reveal that the disciples were
tense, apprehensive, anxious. One disciple who the Master felt would be
especially tested by the events at hand was Simon Peter. Of him Jesus said:
"Satan demand[s] to have you, that he right sift you, but I have prayed for you
that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your
brethren." That Jesus had this special concern for Peter and took this extra
thought for him is something that is said only by Luke. 14)Luke 22:40-46:
(vv.40, 41, 43, 44, 45, proseuchomai, pnoseuche) (No. 239: Mark 14:32-42;
Matthew 26:36-46) If in the Gospel of Luke we are looking at Jesus as a man of
prayer, the most moving incident of all is the one which, by every token, was
the experience that was of greatest importance to Jesus, namely, the prayer in
Gethsemane’s garden. It is a prayer uttered under threat of death. The
circumstances were such that Jesus sought the company of those closest to him to
sustain him. It was a prayer for knowledge of God’s will--often, in the
particular, not easy to come by--and for strength to do that will. It was a
costly prayer--costly in its praying, costly in its outcome. The heart of the
matter is expressed variously by each of the Evangelists: Plen ouch hos ego
thelo all’ hos su--is what Matthew has; all’ ou ti ego thelo all’ ti su--is how
Mark has it; plen me to thelema mou alla to son ginestho--is what Luke writes.
But the meaning is as Luke has it, "Not my will, but thine, be done." What made
Jesus God’s Son and earned him God’s commendation was his willingness to seek
out and do the will of God. What makes us sons and daughters of the Most High is
that same search, dedication, and commitment.

Conclusion Now let us put down some things by way of conclusion. a. Luke and
Mark and Matthew The first three references to prayer and praying in Luke have
to do with the quality of the environment into which he was born. They are found
only in Luke. Of the remaining 12, Including "Father, forgive them" prayed as
Jesus hung from the cross, two are found in Matthew as well as Luke (Nos. 7 and
10) and two occur in all three Synoptic Gospels (Nos. 12 and 14). The other
eight are peculiar to Luke. New Testament scholars sometimes think in terms of
various strands in the Jesus tradition: what is there in Mark and has been made
use of by Matthew and Luke; what is found in the "Q" (Quelle) source that is
common to Matthew and Luke though not found in Mark (although that cannot
establish the boundaries of "Q"); what is peculiar to Matthew ("M"); and that
which occurs only in Luke ("L"). The portrayal of Jesus as a man of prayer owes
something to Mark and "Q" but most of all to "L". How much Mark had available to
him but for one reason or another did not use, but which was known to Luke and
used by him, we do not know. How much derives from Luke’s special source(s) we
cannot say. How much is Luke’s invent ion--finding it necessary to account for
Jesus in terms of some ultimate Source beyond himself--we cannot be sure of.
What we can say with confidence is that Luke at least found it impossible to
tell the Good News about Jesus without underlining the fact that he was a man of
prayer. b. Prayer 1) After the temptation in the wilderness, graphically
depicted in both Luke and Matthew but referred to only in a single verse in Mark
8:1-38 Jesus began a ministry of teaching in his "home town" (TEV/NIV/NEB) of
Nazareth. They all three say the teaching regularly was given in synagogue. But
Luke’s is a fuller, richer statement: "And he came to Nazareth, where he had
been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath
day."9 Jesus was an active participant in the life of the synagogue and the
Temple. The first of these is evidenced in the invitation extended to him that
day in Nazareth to expound the prophet Isaiah. He was a critical loyalist. He
set out to reform and build up what they stood for at their best, not reject and
tear down. Regular, public worship--or regular, private prayer, for that
matter--will not guarantee that on every occasion we shall have a deeply moving,
significant, uplifting, life-clarifying experience of God. But the chances are
that it will make such experiences more likely. On the 26th of February, 1943, I
bought my first book of prayers: The Temple, by W. E. Orchard.10 After forty
years and many books since, I still cherish it as one of the greatest. In the
Introduction, Dr. Orchard said: The setting apart of regular times of prayer,
however short, is most desirable, and the value of them is not to be judged by
the fact that these will rarely be the times of greatest devotion or when the
heights of communion are attained; but they may be preparations for the great
times. In the writer’s very limited experience of these higher reaches of the
life of prayer he has always found that any great visitation of God, which has
surprised the soul when it was not consciously seeking, has nevertheless nearly
always followed some more assiduously disciplined season of prayer.11 Baron Von
Huegel, the Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher (1852/1925), engagingly
linked together the relationship between form and life, life and form, in this
word: "I kiss my child not only because I love it; I kiss it also in order to
love it."12 There is profound wisdom in the habit of life that is pictured by
Luke of Jesus in this statement: "he went to the synagogue, as his custom was,
on the sabbath day." 2) What follows is some indication of the range of Jesus’
interests and concerns in prayer. We have already taken account of the fourfold
movement in the Lord’s Prayer on putting God first; on our need for bread day by
day; on forgiveness; on asking not to be put in situations where the forces
against us are so great that faith is likely to be put to rout. I would argue
that what the Jesus of Luke taught he first of all practiced. On putting God
first: That is there in the character of synagogue worship and teaching and
Jesus’ giving himself to both; and it is there also in the "Not my will, but
thine, be done." What William Temple said about worship includes what needs to
be said about prayer, for prayer is at the heart of worship: It is the opening
of the heart to receive the love of God; it is the subjection of conscience to
be directed by Him; it is the declaration of need to be fulfilled by Him; it is
the subjection of desire to be controlled by Him; and, as a result of all these
together, it is the surrender of will to be used by Him. It is the total giving
of self.13 On Jesus’ need for daily sustenance: That is seen in the praying that
centers on: the meaning of life, the choice of vocation, and the spirit in which
that vocation is to be lived out--these decisive issues especially (Nos. 4, 5,
8, 9, 10, 14); the choice of friends (No. 6); the well-being of those friends
(No. 13); and the quality and the character of the people’s religion, especially
that it should have God in mind first, that it should be ecumenical in outreach,
and that it should aim at the achievement of justice in people’s dealings with
people (No. 13). On forgiveness: That is found in Jesus’ extending forgiveness
to those who without just cause were making that young life ebb away on a cross:
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." It was the living out in
his own circumstances of that saying that occurs only in Matthew’s Sermon on the
Mount: "So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that
your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar
and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your
gift."14 On asking not to be taken unawares by some overpowering temptation or
some overmastering trial: There is no indication in Luke or the others that the
strong Son of God prayed such a prayer or needed to, although the saying from
the cross that is found in Mark and Matthew, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani" ("My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?")15 may suggest that such a prayer would
not have been inappropriate in the heart and on the lips of Jesus. c.
Christology Finally, we may draw a conclusion that has to do with Christology,
our doctrine of Christ. In their definition of Jesus, the writers of the New
Testament move between the poles of his union with God and his being distinct
from God. Three comments may be made about this polarity, the last of which
especially has to do with our study tonight. First, much, of course depends on
the character of Jesus’ union with God. Second, taken one by one and overall the
authors of the New Testament do not stake out the claim that Jesus of Nazareth
exhausts the being of God: that there is no more to God than what we have seen
and experienced in Jesus Christ. Third, if Jesus is totally identified with God,
it is difficult to make sense of Luke’s depicting Jesus as a man of prayer. He
would be but a god who prayed to himself, self-centered, if not narcissistic in
his concentration on himself. How do we account for: "[when Jesus ceased
praying], one of his disciples said to him, ’Lord, teach us to pray’"; "Father,
hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come"; "Simon, Simon, I have prayed for you
that your faith may not fail"; "Father, forgive them; for they know not what
they do"; "not my will, but thine, be done"16 if Jesus is in the fullest and
most literal sense God? Better to look upon Jesus as the human face of
God--dependent upon God for daily bread and for guidance and strength in all the
great crises of life, devoting himself to the will of God, at one with God in
loving obedience--with God taking pleasure in a person of Jesus’ character and
disposition, and affirming, "You are my Son, whom I love" 3:22, NIV).

FOOTNOTES

1 We believe in ... the one Lord, Jesus Christ, ... true God from true God ...
He came down from heaven: ... and became man": The Nicene Creed--Contemporary
Translation, in The Proposed Book of Confessions in the Presbyterian Church in
the United States (Atlanta: Materials Distribution Service, 1976), p. 10. 22
Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:22; Hebrews 4:15. 3Euergeton, which C. H. Dodd
somewhere suggests should be, or might be, translated as I have it. Most
translations have Jesus "going about doing good." 4 Austin Farrer, A Celebration
of Faith (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), pp. 104-105. 5 Cf. NEB. 6The
Proposed Book of Confessions in the Presbyterian Church in the United States, p.
133. 7Mark 11:17. 8 No. 8: Luke 4:1-13; Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13. 9Luke
4:16. 10 W . E. Orchard, The Temple: A Book of Prayers (London): J. M. Dent and
Sons Ltd., 1913). 11 Ibid., p. ix. 12 Friedrich Von Huegel, Essays and
Addresses, First Series, p. 251, cited in D. M. Baillie, The Theology of the
Sacraments (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957), p. 54. 13 William Temple,
The Church and Its Teaching Today, p. 15, cited in Daily Readings from William
Temple, compiled by Hugh C. Warner (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1948), p. 29.
14Matthew 5:23-24. 15 No. 250: Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46. 16Luke 11:1; Luke
11:2; Luke 22:31-32; Luke 23:34; Luke 22:42.

Thanks to Ronald W. Graham for permission to publish this lecture as an
electronic text. The electronic text has been produced from a roneoed typescript
distributed by Mr. Graham.

Copyright © 1984, 2000 by Ronald W. Graham.


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  CHAPTER 4: 4-THE JESUS OF JOHN: LOVER OF MEN AND WOMEN
========================================================================

Graham, Ronald W. "The Jesus of John: Lover of Men and Women." Public Lecture.

Glen Iris, Vic. 1984.

IV. THE JESUS OF JOHN Lover of Men and Women

"When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said
to him, ’Do you want to be healed?’" (John 5:6).

Introduction

I should like this evening to speak about the Jesus of John and concentrate on
his presentation of Jesus as a lover of men and women, of women and men. We
shall begin by putting back to back the statement by the author of the First
Epistle of John (whom we shall call the Epistler, a term that goes back to the
17th century), "God is love,"1 and the assertion by the writer of the Fourth
Gospel (whom we shall designate the Gospeller, a term that goes back to the 10th
century), "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."2 Then, second, we
shall consider certain individuals in the Gospel of John whose lives move into
the circle of light whose center is Jesus of Nazareth: Nicodemus, the scribe, of
Jerusalem; the much-married Samaritan woman; the Jerusalem woman caught in
adultery; and the Bethany friends, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. Finally, we shall
gather up three conclusions.

1. The Epistle and the Gospel a. "God is love" (1 John 4:16) John the Epistler
says that "God is love." Like Biblical writers in general, he believes in a
living God, a personal God, a God active in history, a God who means well and
does good, a God whose characteristic activity is loving.3 God, for this writer,
is "love-in-action." As a statement, "God loves" can stand alongside other
statements, such as ’God creates,’ ’God rules,’ ’God judges’; that is to say, it
means that love is one of His activities. But to say ’God is love’ implies that
all His activity is loving activity. If He creates, He creates in love; if He
rules, He rules in love; if He judges, He judges in love. All that He does is
the expression of His nature, which is--to love.4 It is obvious, I trust, that
the theological consequences of this principle are very far-reaching indeed. If
the reality of love is absolutely central, and if all other so-called divine
attributes are secondary to that love, then it is no longer adequate to think of
God in terms of absolute power, or stark, dictatorial moral demand, or a
metaphysical first cause never Itself--I say Itself advisedly, because Himself
or Herself would be inappropriate to such an understanding--a metaphysical first
cause never Itself affected by us men and women. If we begin with God
self-disclosed in human affairs as love-in-action, then we have to begin to
think in terms like these: God as love-in-action is more than any particular
expression of His love (hence He is transcendent); God as love-in-action is
always available (hence He is omnipresent); God as love-in-action is able to
envisage every situation in its deepest and truest reality and accommodate
Himself to it, so that He can indeed achieve His loving ends (hence He is
omniscient and omnipotent); God as love-in-action is unswerving in His love,
unfailing in its expression, unyielding in His desire to confront men [and
women] with the demands of love (hence He is righteous).5 John the Epistler does
not define in any comprehensive way what he means by love though he does
disclose a few of the understandings he is working with. 1) The first thing he
says is that the most significant expression of God’s love-in-action is Jesus
Christ--an active expression of God’s readiness to forgive sins.6 I take it that
Jesus is no abstract principle for him, but an enfleshed spirit: one whom "we
have seen with our eyes, [whom] we have looked upon and touched with our hands."
His was a "life [that] was made manifest; we saw it, and testify to it, and
proclaim that which we have seen and heard."7 His conviction and point of view
are like the Apostle’s: "God shows his love for us in that while we were yet
sinners Christ died for us"; and "God was in Christ reconciling the world to
himself."8 2) The second word the Epistler has to say is that the person "who
loves is born of God and knows God."9 He repeats that: "No [one) has ever seen
God; if we love one another, God abides in us."10 The reverse of that is that
"[the one] who does not love does not know God, for God is love."11 This too is
repeated: "If any one says, ’I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar;
for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he
has not seen."12 3) The Epistler’s third word is that when we say "God is love"
we are being profoundly human though not humanistic. "We love because he first
loved us"; "in this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us."13 4)
The fourth thing the Epistler writes is that we prove that we love God in two
intimately related ways: "This is the love of God, that we keep his
commandments; and this [is the] commandment, ... that he who loves God should
love his brother also."14 And the other side to that he also keeps in mind: "he
who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not
seen."15 5) Fifth, it may be that the Epistler has the loving Christian reaching
out no further than fellow members of the church--"the brother," and "the child
of God"16--but that is defensible. If the gospel is that God is love, then that
Good News has not only to be proclaimed but has also to be given hands and feet;
it has to be seen not only in individuals but in the community of faith and hope
and love. Deriving from the fact that God is love, the church not only proclaims
the Good News but is itself the Good News. b. "God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son" (John 3:16) John the Epistler claims that "God is love" and
then spells out some, but not all, of the conclusions to be drawn from that.
John the Gospeller does not begin with where the Epistler does. We may phrase it
like this: "God is love, such love as is seen in ..," and the Gospeller is all
taken up with the "as seen in ..." It is not that the Gospeller just takes for
granted that God is love and is ready to pass over that and move on to something
else. Not that at all. If there is something about Jesus that is everlastingly
true, true about God, then "the Word was with God," "the Word was God," "[the
Word] was in the beginning with God."17 If Jesus was experienced as full of
grace and truth, it is because God is a God of grace and a God of truth.18 For
both Epistler and Gospeller it is a fact of great importance that "no one has
ever seen God."19 But neither rests content with that as all that can and should
be said. For the one, it is crucial that "if we love one another God abides in
us," and for the other it is definitive that "the only Son, who is nearest to
the Father’s heart, he has made [God) known" (NEB).20 God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but
have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the
world, but that the world might be saved through him.21 The Gospel, then, is a
gathering up of traditions about the creative and revelatory22 life of the man
in whom God acted definitively. c. Agapao, agape; phileo; philos The Gospeller
uses these three words to denote love: the verb agapao, "to love," which he uses
36 times; the verb phileo, "to love," 13 times; the noun, agape, "love," seven
times. In addition, the word philos, "friend," occurs six times. He obviously
has a marked preference for the verb forms, that is, for "love-in-action."
Furthermore, he uses these three words in a variety of relationships. so
interrelated that it is somewhat artificial to separate their and categorize
them. For example, in John 14:21 the Jesus of John says: Anybody who receives my
commandments and keeps them will be one who loves me; and anybody who loves me
will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and show myself to him (JB).
And again, in John 15:9-10; John 15:12 : As the Father has loved me, so have I
loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my
love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. This
is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you (JB). And yet once
more, in John 17:23 : With me in them and you in me, may they be so completely
one that the world will realize that it was you who sent me and that I have
loved them as much as you loved me (JB). In spite of my reservation, let me
distinguish the various facets of "love" that we find in the Fourth Gospel: 1)
God is presented as one who loves. God loves the world; God loves those who love
Jesus; God loves Jesus.23 If Jesus is God’s idea of a human being, in whom He
therefore takes pleasure, It follows that God will delight in those who are at
home in the company of Jesus. 2) Often it is said that God loves Jesus as a
Father loves a son--or a parent a child.24 If parental love is one of the great
loves of our human experience, it is right and proper to think of God in terms
of a value that we rate among the highest. 3) The most frequent
references--about two-fifths of the total--are to Jesus as one who loves. If God
so loved the world that he gave his only Son; if God is love; then Jesus must
pre-eminently be one who loves. If God, who cannot be seen, is love; and if
Jesus of Nazareth who can be seen is an expression of that love; then it follows
that it is of crucial importance that Jesus be seen or be portrayed as one who
loves. John, I take it, understands the implication of what he is claiming for
Jesus. Only once is it said that Jesus loves God the Father.25 That may reflect
something immensely significant about Jesus, namely, his reticence with respect
to his deepest personal religious experience. Rightly understood this reticence
is positive evidence of two things: the intense reality and deep sacredness of
the experience itself, and the true manhood of Jesus. We are so made that we
cannot lightly speak of the things that most profoundly move us: and for every
man the Holy of Holies in his life is hedged about with silence. The thoughts
that lie too deep for tears do not easily clothe themselves with words: and, if
they do, the words are not such as can be shouted from the housetops. Such
things as these may be spoken of--or hinted at--only to those who know to take
their shoes from off their feet because the place whereon they stand is holy
ground. In this matter the Jesus of our [earliest] records is at one with us.26
Only once is it said that Jesus loves God but many times is it written that
Jesus loved people: Martha of Bethany; the circle of intimate friends; the
disciple who reclined on the couch close to him at the last supper; those who
keep his commandments; and Lazarus;27 and twice folk are spoken of as friends:
Lazarus and the disciples.28 4) Often enough the disciples are described as
those who love Jesus.29 If God is love; if what is at stake in human history is
the triumph or the tragedy of the love of God; if God so loved that he gave his
only Son; and if Jesus loved as he was convinced that he was loved by God, then
what he looked for supremely was a beloved community made up of women and men
who loved him and each other as he loved them. That is all love asks for:
recognition, and a loving response. 5) A number of times the disciples are
enjoined to love one another.30 These, then, are the five facets of the language
of love in the Gospel of John. Strangely enough it is never once said that the
disciples love God.31 The movement is from God to Jesus to the disciples, and
from the disciples to Jesus and to one another. When Jesus is said to be doing
the loving, it is most commonly the disciples who are loved. How Jesus loved
them is not stated in so many words. It is in the friendships, the teaching and
sharing, and the laying down of his life for them. But for the most part it is
not particularized, much less dramatized: not for any one of them. How did he
love Andrew? How did he love Philip? How did he love Nathanael? John does not
say. So I should like now to turn to certain persons--Nicodemus, the scribe of
Jerusalem, the much-married Samaritan woman, the Jerusalem woman caught in
adultery, and the Bethany friends, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha--whose encounters
with Jesus constitute a significant part of the Gospel and study these
narratives to see what they disclose about Jesus as a lover of men and women, of
women and men.

2. Jesus as Lover of Men and Women in John a. Nicodemus, the scribe, of
Jerusalem:John 3:1-15;John 7:45-52;John 19:38-40 1) Nicodemus of Jerusalem
appears on stage three times in the Fourth Gospel, the first occasion being more
germane to our purpose than the other two. The first is found in chapter 4, the
second in chapter 7, and the third in chapter 19. In John 7:45-52, we read that
the command was given for Jesus to be arrested by the Temple police but they
returned to the chief priests and Pharisees empty handed. Understandably they
were met with the question, "Why didn’t you bring him in?" (NIV). The officers
weakly replied, "No one ever spoke the way this man does" (NIV). To which the
authorities said, "Is there a single one of our rulers who has believed in him,
or of the Pharisees? As for this rabble, which cares nothing for the Law, a
curse is on them" (NEB). Then it was that one of their rulers indeed, Nicodemus,
raised a lonely voice in protest on behalf of Jesus, "Does our law permit us to
pass judgement on a man unless we have first given him a hearing and learned the
facts?" (NEB). In John 19:38-42, we come to the first sequel to Jesus’ being
tried, convicted, and crucified. It was the day for preparing for the holy
Sabbath and there was a hurried up burying of the bodies broken on the cross.
Joseph of Arimathea, secretly a disciple of Jesus, asked for his body and was
given permission to take it and bury it. "Nicodemus," writes the Gospeller,
"went with Joseph, taking with him about one hundred pounds of spices, a mixture
of myrrh and aloes. The two men took Jesus’ body and wrapped it in linen cloths
with the spices." They paid their last loving rites to the body of a crucified
man which was regarded as a sheer pollution, and then laid Jesus in "a new tomb
where no one had ever been buried" (TEV). That brings us to John 3:1-15, which
tells of the visit of Nicodemus to Jesus. It is what in John leads up to "God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son." The Gospeller says that Nicodemus
was "a man of the Pharisees, a ruler of the Jews." By that no doubt he means
that Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest governing body of the
Jewish people. Its 70 members, presided over by the high priest, came from
priests (Sadducees), scribes (Pharisees), and lay elders of the aristocracy. He
came to Jesus on the strength of what John calls "signs" and which Mark
describes as "mighty works." It seemed to him that Jesus might be engaged in a
mission that had God’s approval and that the presence of God was with him.
Presumably (vv. 3, 5) there was also in the foreground of his mind the stir
aroused by the preaching of John the Baptist and the early preaching by Jesus.
He addressed Jesus as "Rabbi." Nicodemus might have been brought up in the
schools, trained to expect to find God’s activity in the conventional, "the
tradition of the elders,"32 but he had managed to keep a certain
open-mindedness. He apparently felt that there was something here in Jesus or in
the "Jesus movement" that was not to be dismissed out of hand but should be
looked at with care and at firsthand. He came to Jesus by night. Perhaps because
by nature he was a cautious man. though subsequent events would somewhat qualify
that, unless his meeting with Jesus that night invested him with a courage that
he had not been wont to manifest prior to that. Perhaps because he was conscious
of being a leader of the people and therefore had no business following on
impulse every seeming prophet and plunging enthusiastically after every last
cause. He therefore felt obliged to meet Jesus face to face and base his
decision not on carried stories but on firsthand experience. Or perhaps his
coming by night reflected the rabbinic custom of staying up at night to study
the Law and Jesus was acquiring a reputation for being an interpreter of that
Law.33 "Rabbi," the scribe said, "we know that you are a teacher sent by God; no
one could perform these signs of yours unless God were with him" (NEB). "Jesus
answered" is how his response is introduced but if there was a question it is
unvoiced in the narrative. The scribe’s address has to do with Jesus as a person
of authority; the Teacher’s first word has to do with the rule of God in the
human heart. There is the assumption here that the rule of God is all about
life, new life; and the substance of the Teacher’s word is, "if the new life is
ever to be lived, there rust be a wholly new creature-mere tinkering at oneself
is of little or no use." The Teacher goes on to say that in the renewing of a
person’s spiritual nature, there is a certain spontaneity to the divine action
that is akin to the wind’s blowing "where it listeth" (KJV). The scribe is
puzzled by the assertion that a new spirit in a person has to come from Someone
beyond the self. "How can one be born anew? How can one come to shrink from evil
as from pain, to deeply feel the hurts of others, and be sensitive to God’s
touch?" And the Teacher said to the scribe: "Are you a ’famous teacher of Israel
[and yet] ignorant of such things?"’ (NEB). In his pouring over the scripture,
had the scribe been deaf to God’s word to Ezekiel: A new heart I will give you,
and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the
heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within
you;34 and had he never stood where the Psalmist stood: "Create in me a clean
heart, O God, and put a new and steadfast spirit within me"?35 One is left with
the feeling that the scribe was stumbled at the idea of starting anew. The
commentaries on the scripture had already been written, and what was written
must stand: there was no revising. There is no going back to live things over
again. Character has been shaped and cannot be reshaped. Not even the miracle
worker can make an old wan young again. On the other hand, one is given the
impression that the younger Teacher did not agree with the older scribe. God is
a freshening, cleansing, invigorating Spirit, so he was persuaded, who can break
in--who can guess where, who can tell when?--to make over dull flesh into
spirit, with new spiritual dreams and purposes and deeds. 2) Wherein do you see
the Teacher loving the scribe? First, no teacher can really teach unless there
is the expectation that the other wants to learn, to grow, to at least entertain
the possibility of change. To live by that expectation is how every teacher
loves his or her students. So did Jesus love Nicodemus. Second, every good
teacher begins where people are and teases, entices, prods them to move beyond
the known to the unknown, the familiar to the unfamiliar. In this case, a scribe
had become so at home in the familiar scriptures that he had become blind to
some of their deeper thought and further reaches. And the Teacher sought to lure
him out of his place of dull safety. That is how Jesus loved Nicodemus of
Jerusalem. b. The much-married Samaritan woman:John 5:5-30; John 5:39-43 1)
There is a Galilean emphasis to the ministry of Jesus in the first three Gospels
and a Jerusalem/Judean stress in the Fourth Gospel. As the Gospeller puts it,
Judea is "his own country" (4:44). According to the Synoptists, it is Galilee.
In the first three Gospels, Jesus makes but one visit to Jerusalem during the
days of his ministry: the last visit, which results in his crucifixion. In the
Fourth Gospel, he makes at least three. After one of these, perhaps the first,
Jesus returned to Galilee and did so by the way of the patriarchs, up through
the hill country that constitutes Palestine’s backbone, rather than by the
Transjordan. So "he must needs go through Samaria" (KJV). He came to Sychar
(Shechem), some 40 miles (60 kilometers) north of Jerusalem. Sychar was at the
crossroads of the Jerusalem-Galilee road and the East-West road that led from
the Mediterranean, 25 miles away, through the pass down to the valley of the
Jordan. To the southwest was Mount Gerizim, the Samaritan rival to Mount Zion
(Jerusalem), and to the east lay a fertile valley.36 Jesus stopped by Jacob’s
well, a place of holy memories.37 It was about one hundred feet deep: both a
spring (pege, vv. 6, 14) and a cistern (phrear, vv.11-12), as the Gospeller
says. It was high noon and Jesus, tired out and thirsty, sat by the wellhead.
The disciples, meanwhile, had gone to town to buy food. And a woman came to draw
water. She was a Samaritan. The usual time for drawing water was the cool of the
evening, when the women gathered to get water for sure but also to hear and tell
the news. Strange that this woman should have come at midday. Perhaps it was to
fetch water for the men working in the fields close by. Perhaps she was a
bedraggled person, always behind-time, her whole life disordered. Or perhaps her
seamy life had made her unpopular in the town, and the other women pointedly
ignored and shunned her. And rather than be publicly snubbed, she had taken to
going out to the well when it was reasonably certain she would meet no-one. For
whatever reason, there she was. And it was Jesus who made the first move. He
threw himself upon her courtesy, asking something of her, "Give me a drink."
Simple though the request was, the woman was taken aback by it, and responded,
"What! You, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?" (NEB). (The
Gospeller’s comment on this runs, "Jews will not use the same dishes that
Samaritans use" [TEV].) And the Jew looked pityingly at this faded Samaritan, so
eager for what she took to be a colorful life yet with only this drab, blemished
thing to show for it, and said, "If only you knew what God gives, and who it is
that is asking you for a drink, you would ask him and he would give you living
water" (TEV). Naturally enough, the Samaritan woman could not see how this
thirsty Jew sitting there without bucket or rope could possibly give her water
from a deep well, and "perhaps with a flicker of the old archness of long ago
she attempted to rally him as one talking boastfully or without meaning":38
"Sir, ... you have no bucket and this well is deep. How can you give me ’living
water’?" (NEB). To which he answered, "Every one who drinks of this water will
thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never
thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life." Understanding him prosaically, the woman responded
eagerly, feeling that if there were any substance to what this Jew was saying,
here was a possible end to her trudging through the glare of the noonday
sunshine, and her tiring carrying of heavy waterpots, "Sir, give me this water
so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water" (NIV).
Then comes an abrupt shift in the conversation: "’Go call your husband,’ Jesus
told her, ’and come back here"’ (TEV). She hesitated, but answered honestly
enough, as far as it went: "I have no husband." But then Jesus pressed her
further, reminding her of the fact that she had had five husbands and that her
present husband was indeed a live-in companion. The woman, feeling that things
were growing too probing and uncomfortable, tried to escape by beginning a
conversation about religion--hers and his, the Samaritans’ and the Jews’. She
raises the question of the relative merits of worship centered in Mount Gerizim
and worship made local in Mount Zion, and asks Jesus as a prophet who knows the
mind of the Lord to settle the issue. Jesus accepts the role and responds that a
new day is dawning when the religions of both Mount Gerizim and Mount Zion will
be superseded by a knowledge of God as universal Father (or parent) and when Cod
will be worshiped accordingly: Believe me, woman, the time will come when men
will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You
Samaritans do not really know whom you worship; we Jews know whom we worship,
because salvation is from the Jews. But the time is coming, and is already here,
when the real worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. These
are the worshipers the Father wants to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who
worship him must worship in spirit and in truth (TEV). (I take it that when the
Jesus of the Fourth Gospel says that "salvation comes from the Jews" he has in
mind the universalism that is found in a number of the prophetic writings like
Isaiah and Malachi which the Samaritans, who regarded only the first five books
of the Old Testament as scripture, did not accept.39 The woman was impressed
and, looking at Jesus, began to size him up afresh. A prophet, with eyes that
had seen clearly and deeply into her life? That for sure, but perhaps more than
that, the thought half-phrased in her words: "I know that the Messiah ... will
come. When he comes he will tell us everything" (TEV). To which Jesus said, "I
who speak to you am he." Whereupon the Samaritan woman left her water pot, went
back to town, and said to the folk there, "Come and see the man who told me
everything I have ever done. Could he be the Messiah?" (TEV). In consequence of
which people left the town and made their way out to see Jesus. Two other facets
of the Gospeller’s story we must take note of: one, when the disciples returned,
as the Samaritan woman was on the point of leaving, they were astonished to find
Jesus talking to a woman; and two, many of the Samaritans living in Sychar came
to believe in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony. 3) Wherein do you see this
Jewish man loving this Samaritan woman? First, it could be that Jesus’ taking
the first step in the conversation was an honoring thing for him to do. There
are people who are convinced that Jesus loves their because they feel he has
asked them to do something for him. They are attracted to him not because he
gives but because he asks. Here was a woman being asked to hold a pitcher to
Jesus’ lips to make him. less tired and thirsty. Second, the fact that this Jew
asked a drink of this Samaritan, this man of this woman, transcended the
barriers of religion and sex. Jesus related to this Samaritan woman as a person.
To show respect for the other as person is one of the most significant ways in
which any one of us can show love toward that other. There is a freedom and a
sanity to Jesus’ chance encounter at Jacob’s well with this Samaritan woman from
Sychar. Third, according to the narrative, it was enormously releasing for this
woman to face herself, get the facts out in front of her eyes, see herself
honestly and realistically, and not hide any longer behind subterfuge: Jesus
said to her, "You are right in saying, ’I have no husband’; for you have had
five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said
truly." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet." Fourth,
Jesus related to this woman hopefully. He was attempting to arouse in her a
thirst for some quality of life that she had never envisaged before. She was
being incited by Jesus to reach out further and further for some higher level of
spirituality, some broader ecumenical fellowship, some more searching
genuineness in her religion, and resources to sustain such a life: Whoever
drinks of the water that I shall give will never thirst; the water that I shall
give ... will become in [her] a spring of water welling up to eternal life ...
.The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father
in Spirit and truth, God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spirit and truth. Fifth, at least as far as the Fourth Gospel goes, for Jesus to
respond to "I know that the Messiah will come" with "I am he" (TEV) was the
clearest revelation, up to that time, granted to anyone. And it was made to this
faded failure of a woman--a most unlikely person indeed. So did Jesus love the
much-married Samaritan woman from Sychar. c. The Jerusalem woman caught in
adultery:John 7:53; John 8:1-11 1) I am running a risk in including in a study
of the Jesus of John the narrative of the Jerusalem woman caught in the act of
adultery and brought to Jesus. The translators of the RSV put the passage, John
7:53; John 8:1-11, in small print at the bottom of the page. The TEV has it in
parenthesis. The NIV says, "The most reliable early manuscripts omit [it]." The
Jerusalem Bible has this: "The author of this passage is not John; the oldest
[manuscripts] do not include it or place it elsewhere." The NEB has this note:
This passage, which in the most widely received editions of the New Testament is
printed in the text of John, 7:53-8:11, has no fixed place in our witnesses.
Some of them do not contain it at all. Some place it after Luke 21:38, others
after John 7:36, or 7:52, or 21:24. In the end, the NEB chooses to place it
after John 21:24. It is a "happy chance" that this passage has been preserved in
the manuscript tradition of John and a fact that all five modern versions
include it in John. Its being a piece of "floating tradition" does not make it
any the less authentic, for it is a passage whose portrayal of Jesus is all of
apiece with what we see in a number of different strands of the tradition:

the call of Levi the tax collector, which is in Mark (No. 53: Mark 2:14) and
then Luke (Luke 5:27-28);

the feast that follows this call with tax collectors and irreligious folk (No.
53: Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:29-32);

the recognition of the worth of Zacchaeus, which is in Luke’s special source
(No. 194: John 19:1-10);

the woman who had lived an "immoral life" (NEB) and who in the house of Simon
the Pharisee anointed Jesus’ feet with ointment, which story is primarily
teaching on forgiveness and which also is in Luke’s special source (No. 83: Luke
7:36-50);

the parable of the lost sheep, which deals with the grace of God and is in "Q,"
the source common to Matthew and Luke (No. 133: Matthew 18:12-13; Luke 15:4-7);

the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, which also comes from Luke’s
special source and is teaching on prayer (No. 186: Luke 18:9-14);

the parable of the children in the market place, from "Q," the source common to
Matthew and Luke (No. 65: Matthew 11:16-19; Luke 7:31-35) and the saying, "the
tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you," which is
from Matthew’s special source (No. 203: Matthew 21:31), both of which are simple
comments on the actual situation in the ministry of Jesus.

"All of [these] in their different ways exhibit Jesus as an historical
personality distinguished from other religious personalities of His time by His
friendly attitude to the outcasts of society."40 The incident recounted in this
passage is set in the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus was seated, teaching, with a
crowd gathered around him. Some teachers of the Law and some Pharisees
interrupted his teaching as they brought to him a woman caught committing
adultery. They stood before her "in full view of everybody" (JB). They reminded
him that in the Mosaic Law it was commanded that such a woman be stoned to death
and they put the question, "What have you to say?" (NIV). The narrative
continues: "They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis
for accusing him" (NIV). What was it that Jesus was being asked to decide? One
(unlikely) suggestion is that the woman had been tried but not sentenced and
Jesus was being asked to decide the punishment. A second is that the woman had
not yet been tried because the Sanhedrin had lost the power to decide cases that
might call for capital punishment. If in accordance with Mosaic Law Jesus
declared that she be stoned, he would be deciding contrary to Roman Law. If, on
the other hand, he decided the case in the woman’s favor and advocated her
release, he would be contravening the Law of Moses. A third suggestion is that
in spite of Rome’s restriction on the Sanhedrin, some Pharisees and others were
about to exercise lynch law and stone the woman. But there was an unresolved
point of law which Jesus was being asked to settle: Was it necessary for the
woman to have been warned about the punishment that committing adultery would
entail?41 For a time, Jesus made no reply, save what he wrote with his finger on
the ground. His critics pressed their question. Whereupon he sat upright and
said: "That one of you who is faultless shall throw the first stone" (NEB). He
then bent over again and once more wrote on the ground. Unable to pass the test
that Jesus put to them, they slipped away one by one, the elders making the
first move. Then Jesus, left alone with the woman still standing before him,
said to her: "Where are they? Has no one condemned you?" Her reply was pointedly
brief: "No one, sir." In response to this Jesus said: "Nor do I condemn you. You
may go; do not sin again" (NEB). 2) Wherein do you see the judge, Jesus, loving
this woman? First, Jesus was most unwilling to pass judgment either on the woman
or on the case. He "bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground." But the
accusers "continued to press their question" (NEB). They had first of all
trapped the woman and now they sought to entrap Jesus. Finally he "straightened
up" (TEV) and said to them, "Whichever one of you has committed no sin may throw
the first stone at her" (TEV). Then he bent over once more and again wrote on
the ground. Jesus took no pleasure in being dragged in on such a situation.
Second, there were the questions of fairness and mercy. In order for the case
against the woman to be sustained, there would have to be two witnesses who
could testify that she had willingly had intercourse with the man who was not
her husband. However could that have been brought to pass? Had the husband,
perchance, cynically arranged to have his wife caught by carefully prearranging
that there be witnesses to her sin, perhaps witnesses who were scribes and
Pharisees? That, instead of seeking to win her back by love? Jesus’ judgment on
his critics and her accusers was that they were zealous for the letter of the
Law but had little or no concern for its purpose: they were all for justice with
nothing of compassion for her and only malevolence toward him. Third, Jesus
accepted the woman as she was and affirmed her as a person. He did not play
games and pretend that she had not sinned. He did not condone or explain away
her adultery. He did not throw it up at her. But whereas her accusers probably
only made her bitter and afraid and defiant, Jesus challenged her to a new self
-understanding, a new dignity and self-respect, and a new way of life: "Go now
and leave your life of sin" (NIV). So did Jesus love the Jerusalem woman who was
caught in the act of adultery. d. The Bethany friends: Lazarus, Mary, and
Martha:John 11:1-44 1) Lazarus, the brother of ’Martha and Mary, appears only in
the Gospel of John. In chapter 12 he is present, on the eve of the Passion, when
Jesus and at least Judas were guests in the Bethany home. The sisters served,
Lazarus reclined at table with the guests, and Mary at one point anointed the
feet of Jesus with fragrant, costly perfume. According to chapter 11, Lazarus
fell ill and his sisters sent for Jesus. Lazarus died and for some unstated
reason Jesus did not come until he had been in the tomb four days. When the
grieving sisters heard that Jesus was on his way, Martha went to meet him. There
may be rebuke in her greeting to Jesus: "If you had been here, sir, my brother
would not have died" (NEB). Martha went and got Mary and they returned to Jesus,
still strangely where Martha had left him. Mary reiterates Martha’s rebuke or
plea. Then all three made their way to the tomb and Jesus raised Lazarus,
restoring him to life. The narrative centers on Jesus and his being "the
resurrection and the life" to every person who has faith in him (John 11:25),
but what it says about his relationship to this family of three is not without
importance. Martha could converse with Jesus about her belief in the
resurrection (John 11:21-27), indicating that her mind was not confined to the
kitchen. When Martha and Mary went to Jesus, weeping, he was deeply moved and
burst into tears (John 11:31-35). At the tomb, it was Martha who protested
rolling away the stone that sealed it on the ground that smell and sight would
be too much to bear. After the raising of Lazarus, "many of the Jews who had
come to visit Mary [after her brother’s death] ... put their faith in [Jesus]"
(John 11:45, NIV). The way the Gospeller presents it, first one sister, then the
other, Is featured and each has her identity. 2) Wherein do you see Jesus loving
his friends, Lazarus, Martha, and Mary? First, the Jesus of John can refer to
Lazarus as friend (John 11:11). That Jesus needed and had friends is itself of
huge importance in understanding him and seeking to discern the lineaments of
his loving. Later, in chapter 15, he will speak of his disciples not simply as
servants but as friends (John 15:14-15) and friends by definition are givers as
well as receivers: mutuality is of the essence of friendship. Discipleship has
become a transforming friendship. Jesus loved Lazarus (John 11:3) as a friend
loves a friend. Second, there is an astonishing openness in the relationship
between Jesus and Martha and Jesus and Mary. Martha felt free to rebuke him,
even though, or because, she respected him. Jesus could take issue with her
without condescension. Feelings between them could run deep. From the two women
Jesus could receive; to them he could give. Tension, sorrow. and joy they could
openly share. So did Jesus love these two sisters.

Conclusion

First, the passages we have studied, albeit from one point of view only, all
bear testimony to a Jesus who did not relate to people in any formalistic or
mechanical way. People are not all lumped together and treated alike; no one is
dealt with as a stereotype. There are a thousand different ways to love and the
Jesus of John manifests love’s knowledge of the other, respect for the other,
sensitivity to the uniqueness of the other. Second, in the first three passages,
each of these persons is related to hopefully. Love is at work broadening
horizons, arousing new expectations, stirring people to learn, to grow, to
change. These are illustrations of the fact that love is infinitely resourceful,
unfailingly creative, and always ready to believe and hope for the best. Third,
human beings are magnificently important to Jesus of Nazareth. If it is true
that "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son," then the Good News is
the trouble that God took to fashion a world of people. God seemingly values
people enough both to make them and save them. The work of Christ was never a
raid on an alien world universe; God saves what He first created ... The
fulfilment of human beings, whatever that means exactly, is wanted by God even
at a great price.42

FOOTNOTES

1 John 4:16. 2John 3:16. 3 Cf. Leon Morris, Testaments of Love: A Study of Love
in the Bible (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1981). 4 C.
H. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles (London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1946), p.
110. Italics in the original. 5 Norman Pittenger, ’The Last Things’ in a Process
Perspective (London: Epworth Press, 1970), p. 109. 61 John 3:5; 1 John 3:8; 1
John 4:9-10. 71 John 1:1-3. 8Romans 5:8; 2 Corinthians 5:19. 91 John 4:7. 101
John 4:12. 111 John 4:8. 121 John 4:20. 131 John 4:19-20. 141 John 5:3; 1 John
4:21. 151 John 4:20. 161 John 5:1; 1 John 4:20. 17John 1:1-3. 18 Cf. John
1:16-17. 191 John 4:12; John 1:18. 20 Ibid. 21John 3:16-17. 22 Cf. what John has
to say about the Word in the Prologue, John 1:1-18. 23John 3:16; John 14:21;
John 14:23; John 17:23; John 16:27 (phileo); John 15:10. 24John 3:35; John
10:17; John 15:9; John 17:24; John 17:26; John 5:20 (phileo). 25John 14:31. 26
T. W. Manson, The Teaching of Jesus: Studies of Its Form and Content, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge: At the University Press, 1935), p. 108. Manson has "earlier" where I
have "earliest" because he has the Synoptics in mind. What I have pointed to may
suggest that at this point the Jesus of the Synoptics and the Jesus of John are
one. 27John 11:5; John 13:1; John 13:34; John 15:9; John 15:12; John 13:23; John
19:26; John 21:7-20; John 20:2 (phileo); John 14:21; John 15:10; John 11:3; John
11:36 (phileo); John 11:11 (philos). 28John 11:11; John 15:14-15. 29John 8:42;
John 14:15; John 14:21; John 14:23-24; John 14:28; John 21:15-16; John 16:27
(phileo); John 21:15-17 (phileo). 30John 13:34-35; John 15:12-13; John 15:17. 31
Only the negative is found with God as the object of "love": John 5:42. 32Mark
7:3; Mark 7:5; Mark 7:8. 33 Raymond E. Brown, S.S., The Gospel according to
John, I-XII (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966), p. 130.
34Ezekiel 36:26-27. 35Psalms 51:10, RSV mg. 36 D. C. Pellett, "Sychar,"
Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), R-Z,
471; W. L. Reed, "Shechem," Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (New York:
Abingdon Press, 1962), R-Z, 313-15. 37 Reed, ibid., p. 314. 38 Arthur John
Gossip, "Exposition of the Gospel according to St. John," Interpreter’s Bible
(New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952), 8:523. 39 Cf., e.g., 1 Kings 8:27;
Isaiah 66:1-2; Isaiah 66:18-23; Malachi 1:11. 40 C. H. Dodd, History and the
Gospel (Digswell Place, England: 1938), p. 94. 41 Brown, ibid., pp. 333-38;
Barnabas Lindars, ed, The Gospel of John (Greenwood, S.C.: Attic Press, Inc.,
1972), pp. 305-312. 42 Helen Oppenheimer, The Hope of Happiness (London: SCM
Press Ltd., 1983), p. 5.

Thanks to Ronald W. Graham for permission to publish this lecture as an
electronic text. The electronic text has been produced from a roneoed typescript
distributed by Mr. Graham.

Copyright © 1984, 2000 by Ronald W. Graham.


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