The only way in

 John 10:1‑10

 “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

   7 So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

How do you go to a place you want to be? GPS answers that question easily for driving there. You enter your destination and Google Maps, for example, usually offers three different routes.

Have you ever wanted to go somewhere and found there was only one way to it? Or along the way there was a place that there was no choice but to pass through? When Cathy and I lived in Oklahoma, we found there are destinations in the Great American Desert for which there is one way to go and that’s it. Either follow it or don't get there.

In our passage for today, Jesus describes himself like that. He speaks of himself as a shepherd who guides and leads his sheep. In fact, Jesus taught that not only is he the Way, but he is also the gate for his flock. The actual gate.

The only legitimate way into Christ’s kingdom is through him. He is the gate. We may think there is another way, but we are only fooling ourselves to think that.

We are familiar with thinking of Jesus as a Good Shepherd whom we follow. But what about Jesus as the actual gate, or actual entrance to the kingdom?

The implications of that are very important. So let’s take a look.

I was stationed in Germany from 1983 to 1986. Cathy and I lived in a small farming village called Dorf-Guell, about 35 miles north of Frankfurt. Behind our house was a large, open field that lay fallow the three years we were there. One morning I opened the blinds in the back window and was startled to see a flock of sheep all over our backyard, some grazing right next to our house’s wall. At the edge of the field stood the shepherd, attired in German shepherd’s clothing just as if he had come straight from central casting. I called Cathy and we watched for awhile. After several minutes, the shepherd walked to the right. When he reached the side of the flock he turned and spoke to the sheep. Right away the sheep stopped grazing and walked toward him. The shepherd turned and walked on, the sheep following docilely behind him. The sheep dog brought up the rear, keeping the sheep in formation.

Jesus' hearers would have understood the images of ancient Judea shepherding, of course, in a way that tends to escape us. At night, shepherds in Judea would bring their flocks together for the night for security, but how to separate them in the morning? Each would simply call his sheep, who recognized their shepherd’s voice and ignored other voices.

William Barclay explained that in the fields shepherds would construct a simple pen for the flock at night with only one entrance, and the shepherd would sleep across the entrance. The shepherd literally was the gate for the sheep. Obviously, anyone having legitimate business would come to the shepherd. Anyone who went into the pen by going through the simple fence was up to no good.

But, as John explains in verse six, Jesus is speaking figuratively. His words must have called to mind passages of the Jewish Scriptures in which God describes himself as a shepherd and the people as his flock. Ezekiel 34, for example, portrays most kings of Israel as bad shepherds who through misrule and corrupt religion place the flock - the people of Israel - in danger both physical and spiritual. Ezekiel counters that God alone is the good shepherd who will rescue the sheep and place them in the care of “my servant, David” - meaning a monarchy restored to righteousness of King David.

But in Jesus' day the kingdom of Israel was gone forever. The Romans ruled Judea, so it is highly unlikely that Jesus was referring to any political entity as thieves and bandits. Nor would he have meant that the long line of Jewish and Hebrew prophets who came before him were the bad men because Jesus respected Moses and his successors.

Jesus' teaching, then operates on a religious level, and on at least three of them. New Testament scholars agree that Jesus was directly referring to the Pharisees as the thieves and the bandits. Some versions of the passage say so explicitly. John's Gospel is especially harsh toward them - the prior chapter relates their cold accusations of blasphemy toward a blind man Jesus has healed. They hardly have the best interests of the flock in their hearts, while Jesus, who removed the blindness, is a shepherd to tends to the sheep. So, at one level Jesus is contrasting himself with the Pharisees and the Pharisees come off poorly.

But there is more. If the only authorized access to the sheepfold is through the gate - and the gate is Jesus himself - then membership in the flock is determined solely by one’s relationship to Jesus. The only approved way into the fold is through Jesus.

We live in a tolerant age, and this is an intolerant passage, at least in part. On the one hand, there are no preconditions as to which sheep can be part of the flock. If they enter through the gate, through Christ, then they are part of the flock not because we say so but because Jesus says so. Their membership in the flock is assured. On the other hand, there is no way to be a rightful part of the flock except through Jesus; sheep who try to jump over the fence may get into the sheepfold, but they don't belong and are merely Christian imposters whom Jesus does not include in his flock.

There are staggering implications for churches here. It is easy to become a member of a congregation or denomination. But this passage constrains us from thinking that being listed on a church’s membership roll is the same thing as being part of Jesus' own flock. The act of joining a church does not guarantee salvation, for if the joining is done by jumping the fence, then it is religious pretension. The only thing that counts is one’s relationship to the shepherd: Christ alone gives entrance into the eternal Kingdom of God; no one else does, and there is no other way.

This is not a warm, fuzzy teaching. It's a smack upside the head. Whoever enters the sheepfold through Jesus is saved - but no one else can admit entrance nor is anyone who enters another way saved. By Christ and by Christ alone is our eternal place in the pasture both granted and assured.

Jesus is at one time the entryway into the eternal kingdom, and at the same time the true leader of the flock for abundant life. The church's identity can only be determined by the identity of Christ: if Christ is the one who saves and leads, we are those who are saved and are led.

We become members of Christ's flock by entering into relationship with God through Christ, in whom we receive abundant life. Most importantly, we are among those for whom Jesus was willing to die. By his death Jesus paradoxically opened the gate to life both abundantly Spirit-filled in the here and now and to eternal life in the presence of God.

So, we cannot understand ourselves as some of his sheep unless we keep foremost in mind who Jesus is as our shepherd. When we reflect on what and whom our church is supposed to be in the world, we should ask ourselves whether we are being sheepish enough to be part of Jesus' flock. What does it mean for us to live as Jesus's sheep? How do we manifest our sheepish identity in the world? How do we as Christ's flock point the way to Christ as the shepherd, and not merely the shepherd for us alone, but for the world?

Most urgently, perhaps, we need always to remind ourselves of whose voice to listen to. There are hundreds of different voices calling to us sheep and it is easy for the shepherd's voice to be lost in the cacophony. As author Robert Kohler wrote, there are different kinds of voices calling us to different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which voice is the call of God rather than the voice of self-interest, cultural values, or something else. "All we, like sheep, have gone astray," said Isaiah, we are all doing our own private thing (Is. 53:6). We are called by the thieves and bandits of politics, consumerism, selfishness, entertainment, inactivity, work work work work - the list is endless. Do we still hear the shepherd's voice?

What does the Good Shepherd call us to?

He calls us to love one another, John 13:34 ‑ "I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.

He calls us from labor to rest (Matt. 11:28): Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

·     Calls us from death to life (1 John 3:14): We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.

·     Calls us from bondage to liberty (Gal 5:13)

·     Calls us out of darkness into light (1 Pet. 2:9)

·     Calls us from bondage to peace (1 Cor. 7:15

·     Calls us to the fellowship of His Son (1 Cor. 1:9)

When we faithfully answer the call, here is what happens:

·     We become children of God (John 1:12)

·     We become the servants of God (Matt. 25:21)

·     We become God's witnesses (I Thess. 2:10)

·     We become workers together with God (2 Cor. 6:1)

·     We live a holy calling (2 Tim. 1:9)

These are merely some of the things that come to mind from this passage. But foremost always we have to remember:

·       the only valid way into God's kingdom is through Christ. To think we have a place apart from going through Christ is lethal self-deception.

·       only Christ is the shepherd; the sheep must heed only his call and follow where he leads.

·       that is the way to life more abundant.

Remember what Paul wrote in Galatians 5.13: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self‑indulgence, but through love become servants to one another.”

When Jesus forced the issue

The eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John begins with Jesus learning that his friend, Lazarus of Bethany, had fallen ill. Despite the news, Jesus stayed two more days where he was.

Then he told his disciples they were leaving for Bethany, which was only two miles from Jerusalem. The disciples want none of it, reminding him that he and they had almost been killed in Jerusalem less than a week prior. Finally, they agreed. When they arrived, Lazarus had already been in his tomb for four days. Many people had come to console Martha and Mary, Lazarus’ sisters; some had come from Jerusalem.   

Martha went to Jesus [and said], “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Martha went to her sister Mary and told her that Jesus was here. Mary quickly went to him. There were many people nearby.

Mary said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

The story of Lazarus perplexes and confuses almost as much as it enlightens. Jesus showed no sense of urgency about Lazarus’ illness. He seemed strangely unconcerned when he got the news. He responded, “This illness does not lead to death,” yet Lazarus had died either the day the messenger arrived or the day before. “Rather,” Jesus continued, “it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 

This statement almost makes Jesus seem cold or calculating. First, he dismisses the seriousness of the report, then he says that Lazarus’ illness is not really about Lazarus at all – it’s about him, Jesus. Despite the apparent callousness of Jesus’ attitude, I think this statement really holds the key to understanding the whole story.

The Lazarus story is the pivot point in the life of Christ as John tells it. The raising of Lazarus is the last miracle Jesus performs in John. John says that many of the people who saw Lazarus come forth from the tomb put their faith in Jesus, but others went to the Sanhedrin and reported what had happened. “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him,” said one of its members, “and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

Caiaphas, the high priest, said, “It is better for you that one man dies for the people than that the whole nation perishes.” So, from that day on the Sanhedrin plotted to take his life (John 11:48‑53).

Jesus almost certainly knew how those things would work out if he went to Bethany. Tempers were flaring all over about him. Jesus must have known he was the center of potentially deadly controversy. Then he got the message of Lazarus’ illness and said that the illness would not lead to death, but it would serve for God’s glory, so that he, Jesus, might be glorified through it.

I don’t think that “glorified” refers to the raising of Lazarus here. In every instance where John uses the word glorified, he means Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. I think Jesus understood as well as the Sanhedrin that the Romans might respond violently to his ministry. Jesus was well connected, with friends who were members of the Sanhedrin itself. Lazarus himself was probably wealthy and also well connected. They well understood Pilate’s mass murdering record and so did Jesus.

If so, then it may make sense to understand Jesus’ words this way: “This illness does not lead to death [of the Jewish nation at Pilate’s hands], rather it will lead to my death, which will glorify God.” The resuscitation of Lazarus’ corpse, then, may be seen as a powerfully symbolic act of Jesus preserving the life of his people. Jesus is probably less focused on Lazarus himself than on the big picture. Maybe that’s why he waited two days before setting out for Bethany, to think, ponder, and pray whether it was the right time to force a decision by the Jewish hierarchy about who he was. Could he, by bringing Lazarus forth from the tomb, force the Sanhedrin to recognize him as the Messiah? Or would the act drive them to turn him over to the Romans for their perceived good of the nation?

Whether these questions and considerations were actually ones that Jesus pondered we cannot know. But he finally made up his mind to go to Bethany.

The sacrificial scene is set. Jesus goes to meet Martha and Mary and tells them that he is personally the resurrection and the life. But at that time and place, in the cemetery, surrounded by death and wailing and grief, words are cheap. His acts are required, and they will prove decisive. 

 Often you will hear preachers try to humanize Jesus with the verse that says, “Jesus began to weep.” It seems a sentimental scene: Jesus, disturbed in his spirit, deeply moved, weeping in sympathetic grief with Mary and Martha. And no doubt that was part of it, but not the main part. As John wrote it, which doesn’t translate to English very cleanly, different language describes the mourners’ crying and Jesus’ weeping. The mourners are wailing in despair, but Jesus’ tears are of anger and frustration. John says some people comment on Jesus’ tears by saying, “See how he loved him.” In John, the crowd never understands what’s really going on. Jesus did love Lazarus, but his love moves him to action, not weeping.

Perhaps Jesus is “greatly disturbed” to tears because no one gets it. The disciples didn’t get it back across the Jordan when Jesus told them Lazarus’ illness would bring Jesus to be glorified. Martha doesn’t get it when Jesus tells her plain as day, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Her response is rote repetition of religious affirmation. Mary doesn’t get it. She sees Jesus as nothing more than a divine rescuer from the troubles of this world: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” Mary says, accusing him of dereliction of duty. Jesus weeps because everyone, including his disciples, so profoundly misunderstand what he is all about. Jesus is not a divine knight in armor who rides in to shield tragedy from our lives. Rather, he is the walking proof of God’s promise that despite the troubles of the world, we should take heart because Christ has overcome the world.

Maybe Jesus is troubled and weeping also because he knows that to bring Lazarus out of the tomb will irrevocably set him on the course to Golgotha. If people tried to kill him for saying who he is, then to raise Lazarus will make them go bananas. But he can’t back out because he knows why he came into the world. He calls Lazarus forth from his tomb and within a day or two Jesus is marked for execution.

You know, Jesus’s religious talk with Martha pretty much goes nowhere. When a loved one dies no one is in the mood for theology, not right away, at least. People who cry in anguish when their children or spouses or other loved ones perish are reacting appropriately to the tragedy. And yet, we do not accept death as the final reality. Our real desire is not things that never end, but that when they end, they end well. After all is said and all is done, is everything going to be okay? That is the problem of the grave.

The apostle Paul wrote that all things finally work for the good. He does not mean that tragic deaths are somehow actually good, he means that death and evil and suffering are not powerful enough to prevent God from bringing creation to its final, good fulfillment. The present life of good and evil, pleasure and pain, is eventually resolved beyond this world. When God brings creation to its final fulfillment, the promise is not a point-for-point reward for suffering, but “an infinite good that would render worthwhile any finite suffering endured in the course of attaining it” (John Hick).

Jesus told Martha that he is the resurrection and the life, and that those who believe in him, even though they die, will live. Everyone who believes in him will never die. Then he went to the tomb of a man dead for four days and told him, “Come forth!”

I think John has done us a favor by downplaying the humanity of Jesus in this story. If Jesus, the Son of God, in whom all things were made, responded to the sisters’ plea, and wept at the cemetery from nothing but sympathy with their grief and sorrow at Lazarus’ death, then we have put our faith in a mighty small god. Even we, finite in understanding, can see that there are cosmic dimensions here, such as the pervasiveness of suffering and tragic death in a world we say is governed by a wholly good and infinitely powerful God. Martha’s faith is at best ambiguous, and considering the circumstances, we can identify with that. I would hope these issues, at least, occurred to Jesus.

Do we really want the Christ to approach the graves of our loved ones merely as a sympathetic friend who helps us cry? We can do that on our own quite well. No, we want someone with the power to order them to come forth, who can demonstrate that we do not die, period, we die, comma. And if the Lord is sometimes frustrated at us while we cope with what life throws at us, that’s quite okay. By such things we can come to understand him more fully. In faith, we can turn pain to power, tragedy to triumph, and crucifixion to resurrection, even though it may not be an easy or quick thing to do.

There was a decidedly unordinary day in Bethany about two thousand years ago, a day in which Lazarus came forth, wrapped in grave clothes. “Unbind him, and let him go,” said Jesus. We are no longer bound by death, in this life or the next. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. We shall not reckon our lives by the power of death, but by the fact that in Christ we have the sure promise of eternal life with God.

Was Judas actually Christ's accomplice?

Or was Judas truly a traitor to Jesus after all?

One of the most deeply-rooted traditions in Christian faith is that one of Jesus' disciples, Judas Iscariot, cruelly betrayed Jesus in Jerusalem, guiding Temple soldiers to Jesus and identifying Jesus to them. Jesus was immediately seized and taken away. He was shortly condemned by both the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

John's Gospel relates the beginning of the betrayal thus, John 13:21-30:

21 After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”

22 His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. 23 One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. 24 Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”

25 Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

26 Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. 27 As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.

So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” 28 But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. 29 Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. 30 As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.

 

A documentary on Discovery Channel some years ago examined the last week of Jesus' life. One scholar posed the idea that Judas did not betray Jesus, but was Jesus' accomplice in carrying out a course of action that went bad in ways Judas did not foresee, but Jesus did.

I don't recall the scholar's name, but his position was based almost exclusively on word studies of the Greek texts of the Gospel's accounts of the events, especially the word translated "betray," which is translated elsewhere as hand over or deliver up - about which more below.

The idea that Judas was traitor has very ample evidence, not least of which is the testimony of the Gospels themselves. Luke identifies Judas as a traitor early:

Luke 6:16: Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. [There were two disciples named Judas. The infamous Judas was termed "Iscariot." This term refers to his hometown of Kerioth, in southern Judah. Hence, Judas was the only one of the Twelve who was not a Galilean.]

John's Gospel also identifies Judas as a traitor:

John 18:5: "Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "I am he," Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.)

There are other such specific attestations as well. (The Greek used for "traitor" is prodotes, which has no other connotation.)

"Traitor" is not the only pejorative term used about Judas in the Gospels. He is also called a "thief" in John 12:6; as the "keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it."

So an attempt to paint Judas in more favorable terms has very strong scriptural obstacles to overcome, to say the least. There are, however, some questions that intrigue:

How did Jesus know that Judas would betray him? None of the other disciples knew. Like the other Gospels, John 13 relates that Jesus gathered his disciples for a meal on his last evening as a free man. After an instructional discourse to them, Jesus informed them, "I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me" (v. 21). Jesus identified the traitor as one who with whom he would share bread, then handed bread to Judas.

As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. "What you are about to do, do quickly," Jesus told him, but no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him.

Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the Feast, or to give something to the poor [v.27-29].

How did Jesus know he would be betrayed in the first place, and that Judas would be the traitor? The Gospels give no clue.

The Greek word used for betrayal, paradidomi, does not mean only a traitorous action. It can also be translated, according to Strong's Greek Dictionary (a standard reference) as "to surrender, yield up, entrust or transmit," without necessarily implying underhandedness. My Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon indicates the word is multivalent (as are so many Greek words) and betrayal is one of several meanings the word implies. Context is everything.

The King James version translates paradidomi as "deliver up" in other parts of the Gospels. The modern NIV translates it in other uses as "hand over." In Mark 10:33, Jesus foretells that the Jewish authorities will "hand him over" to the Romans, and the word used there is paradidomi, the same word translated as "betrayal" when referring to Judas' deeds.

The ambiguity of the word at least leaves open the possibility that Judas' actions were not actually traitorous. In fact, the NIV translates paradidomi as "hand over" in Matt 26:15-16. Judas went to the chief priests and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over."

(According to some historians, the money Judas was paid was standard bounty money paid to good citizens who identified wrong-doers.)

After Judas left the Upper Room, Jesus completed the Last Supper. Then he and his disciples went to the Mount of Olives, outside the city. Matthew and Mark say they went to there and then to "a place called Gethsemane," where he was arrested. Luke says he was arrested at the Mount of Olives and does not mention Gethsemane. John merely says they went to an olive grove across the Kidron Valley from the city. (The Gospels never refer to a place called the Garden of Gethsemane.) John confirms, though, that the place was known to Judas "because Jesus had often met there with his disciples" (John 18:2).

After a period of prayer and speaking to his disciples, Judas arrived with soldiers from the Temple, sometimes called Temple police because they were more a constabulary than a fighting force. (The synoptic Gospels say it was "a crowd" armed with clubs and such. John is probably more accurate.) Judas identified Jesus to them, and they apprehended him.

 

Events then proceeded apace. After a tempestuous confrontation with the Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas, and at least some members of the high Jewish council (the Sanhedrin), Jesus was charged with the religious crime of blasphemy for claiming messianic identity. This crime was one for which the Jewish law required death, but Caiaphas and others were already on record as fearing riots in Jerusalem if they even arrested Jesus, which is why they had done so at night. 

Caiaphas is recorded in John's gospel as willing to sacrifice Jesus to the Romans, but he knew that Pilate didn't much care about what religious offenses Jews committed. So he persuaded Pilate that Jesus was actually attempting insurrection against Rome. For that, Pilate sentenced Jesus to be crucified, a standard punishment for insurrection against Roman rule. The sentence was carried out.

Judas attempted to return the silver coins to the chief priests, then hanged himself. (Acts says, though, that he bought a field with the coins, fell headlong into it and was disemboweled.)

Those are the bare facts of what Judas and Jesus had to do with each other the last week of both their lives.

So - did Judas actually turn traitor against Jesus, or did Judas do what he did at Jesus' bidding?

The claim that Judas was a traitor has the substantial weight of text behind it, as I have explained. But it does not answer four key questions:

1. How did Jesus know he would be betrayed, and betrayed by Judas, and why were the other disciples clueless about it?

2. How did Judas know exactly where to lead the Temple police to arrest Jesus?

3. Why didn't Jesus escape away from Jerusalem when he had the chance? The Mount of Olives was the near edge of safety for him, from there he could have easily gotten away across Jordan River, which land John 11 identifies as safe haven for Jesus.

4. Why did Judas try to return the money and why did he commit suicide? Judas was no fool, he surely knew his betrayal would risk Jesus' life and could not have been surprised when Jesus was condemned.

Postulating that Judas has gotten a bad rap and that Judas was actually doing what Jesus wanted answers these questions. So consider some pluses and minuses of the "Judas as accomplice" theory:

A. As the only Judean, Judas was the only choice to be Jesus' messenger or intermediary with the high priests. The people of Jerusalem considered Galileans to be hicks from the sticks - John 7:41 records the incredulity of Judeans that Jesus was a Galilean: "How can the Christ come from Galilee?"
Advantage: accomplice.

B. Passover week in Jerusalem was always a tempestuous time. Tempers against the Roman occupiers ran high then, so high in fact that Pilate left the resort city of Caesarea and moved to Jerusalem for the duration, where he could control his forces on scene. Jesus was loved by many of the ordinary people. That would explain why the high priest didn't want to arrest Jesus during the daytime when the crowds could see.

But it does not explain why Jesus would arrange, via Judas, to meet with Caiaphas at night, nor for that matter why he didn't arrange to meet Caiaphas himself, without using Judas. If Jesus wanted to meet Caiaphas all he had to do was walk into the Temple and say hello.
Advantage: betrayal.

C. If Judas was Jesus' accomplice, why did Jesus tell the disciples, including Judas, that one of them would betray him? They all understood what he meant. For Jesus to call Judas a betrayer while actually being in collusion with him makes Jesus deceptive.

Not only that, Jesus threatened that it would be better for Judas had he never been born (Mark 14:21).
Advantage: betrayal (a major advantage at that).

D. But Jesus knew what Judas was going to do.
Advantage: accomplice.

E. Jesus went to exactly the place where Judas led the Temple police and did not attempt to evade them.
Advantage: accomplice.

F. If he was working at Jesus' initiative, Judas had no reason to believe that the Jewish high council harbored lethal intent toward Jesus. Thus, when Jesus was condemned, Judas was overcome with grief and remorse at having had a part in delivering up Jesus to that fate. So he killed himself.
Advantage: accomplice.

G. Judas took the silver coins from the high priests because he was avaricious and wanted to be paid for betraying Jesus,
or
the 30 pieces of silver were "market rate" and a routine matter for the high priests to pay for cooperating with them.
Advantage: neutral.

Outside the Gospels, Judas is mentioned a couple of times in Acts, written by the author of Luke, but that is all. The rest of the New Testament is silent about him. But the Gospels' record is uniformly negative. Clearly, there was an apostolic and early church understanding that Judas was a traitor.
Advantage: betrayal.

The idea that Judas was an accomplice of Jesus rather that his betrayer rests on too thin evidence to be accepted. The verdict of the early witnesses is upheld.

Update: I see I neglected to explain what the reason would be for Jesus to send Judas on a secret mission to have him delivered into the hands of High Priest. According to the ruminations of a couple of scholars on the Discovery Channel, Jesus wanted to force the issue of who he was with the High Priest and the Sanhedrin. Judas, being the sole Judean among them, could most easily act as intermediary with the Temple.

By this idea, the notion to see Caiaphas by subterfuge would have to be a very late idea in Jesus' mind. We could say the Jesus had tried to force the issue of confronting the Sanhedrin by his violent cleansing of the moneychangers from the Temple earlier in the week. And according to Matthew 23, Jesus launched into verbal broadside against the Temple class that we bloggers might say was the mother of all fisking of their religious practice and indeed, their very identity. He actually called them sons of Hell, not a move calculated to win their affection.

But these events did not cause the religious authorities to apprehend Jesus, forcing Jesus to arrange his "betrayal" to them by Judas. Judas thus would have been faithful to the end; he committed suicide from shock that his faithfulness had led to Jesus' death.

What this theory fails to explain is why Jesus was so desirous to stand before the High Priest. It could not have been merely to respond affirmatively to Caiaphas' question that he was indeed the "Son of the Most High." Jesus had been declaring his Messianic identity openly for some time; in fact, driving out the moneychangers was a Messianic act. He had personally forgiven sins in front of scribes and Pharisees for a couple of years or so, angering them because they knew that only God can forgive sins.

Nor does it hold up that Jesus expected the High Priest to confirm his Messiahship, for the Gospels are full of Jesus saying that judgment would fall upon "this generation" (meaning his own contemporaries) for not recognizing him.

There is one reason, though, that Jesus could have sent Judas to do what Judas did: Jesus intended to force his own execution. His death, then, was not the result merely of a good disciple gone bad, but the actual objective Jesus had in mind all along. And in fact, the Church has usually been quite comfortable with the idea that Jesus’ death was a cosmic necessity. But with Judas a true traitor, Jesus' death can seem practically accidental - it might not have taken place if Judas had reconsidered and heeded Jesus' warning, for example. And a near-accident is a mighty thin lifeline upon which to hang the redemption of humanity! So this part of the Jesus story is a buttress of the notion that Judas was Jesus' agent rather than his betrayer.

But there is an even stronger argument against the theory: Jesus kicked Judas out of the Upper Room before he instituted the Eucharist. Jesus and the disciples gathered there for a meal (not necessarily the Passover Seder; John says it was not, the other three Gospels say it was). It was only after the meal was done that Jesus took the bread, gave thanks for it, blessed the bread and gave it to his disciples. Likewise, it was after the supper that Jesus took the cup of wine and proclaimed it was the cup of the new covenant.

There is no question that Jesus saw the Eucharist as a defining ritual for his followers. He told them to practice it often and that he would share it with them again at the eschaton. That Jesus dismissed Judas from the room before the sharing of the bread and cup must be considered, I think, as proof that Judas was free-lancing, not secretly abetting Jesus' plans. To use a later religious term, Jesus excommunicated Judas from discipleship, and discipleship identity in Christian faith is practically defined by partaking of the Eucharist.

So, in my mind, the idea that Judas was actually Jesus' ally rather than his betrayer is refuted.

More plausible was the show's examination of just who was most responsible for plotting for Jesus to be executed, about which another post to follow.

Palm Sunday and Crowds and Mobs

Matthew 21.1-11 

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

5 “Say to Daughter Zion,

    ‘See, your king comes to you,

gentle and riding on a donkey,

    and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”

11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Jerusalem was an emotional place during Passover season. Jewish pilgrims from all over the Mediterranean poured into the holy city to make sacrifices at the Temple. There was enormous religious fervor in the city, so much that the Roman garrison there went on special alert since the Jews’ hatred of the Roman occupiers reached a fever pitch during Passover week. 

There may have been as many as two hundred thousand pilgrims in the city on that day. We don’t know how many of them greeted Jesus with palm fronds. There might have been only a couple of hundred people gathering at the gate to welcome Jesus or there may have been several thousand. Certainly, Jesus was famous enough by then to draw a large crowd. In fact, that Jesus attracted crowds was the reason the high council later arrested him late at night, when everyone would be in bed.

Whatever the number of people waving palm fronds was that day, they had a definite expectation of Jesus. Instead of entering triumphantly on a charging stallion, Jesus rode into town on a colt; other Gospels say a donkey. This was no act of humility on Jesus’ part. He was asserting kingly authority and messianic identity. Matthew’s account of the day refers to the prophecy of Zechariah that says that Jerusalem’s king would come “triumphant and victorious ... humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Mark, however, doesn’t make much of this. Like Matthew, Mark does not say the crowd waved palm branches, but instead “leafy branches.” John’s Gospel says they waved palms, a practice the Jews of the day observed for a number of important celebrations. Even so, the crowd who preceded Jesus into Jerusalem shouted its excitement of his arrival:

“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

The crowd was proclaiming Jesus as their messiah who would deliver them from Roman rule and restore the glories of King David’s ancient kingdom of Israel. So let’s jump ahead five days, to when Jesus, under arrest, is brought before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate:

6 Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. 7Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection. 8So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. 9Then he answered them, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 10For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. 11But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. 12Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” 13They shouted back, “Crucify him!” 14Pilate asked them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him!” 15So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. 

The difference between a crowd and a mob is thin. Crowds cheer, mobs riot. It is important, though, to know that the people who cheered Jesus on Sunday were not the people who demanded his crucifixion on Thursday. The Sunday crowd was of ordinary people who lived near, but not in Jerusalem, and probably many pilgrims from elsewhere who may have been there mainly out of curiosity. 

However, the crowd that demanded Jesus’ execution was hand-picked by the high priest. They were men whose position and livelihood depended on Pilate’s favorable opinion of them. Indeed. The high priest himself took that office only with Pilate’s approval. 

The men of that crowd – and they were almost certainly all men – may have watched Jesus’ Sunday entrance, but they did not wave a leafy branch. Jesus claiming messianic authority alarmed them rather than gave them hope.

And yet, I wonder: how many of the Sunday people would have joined the Thursday men if they had been given the chance?

For centuries Christians have commemorated Palm Sunday by waving palm fronds in a celebratory processional into the sanctuary. I have read that this church tradition began in Jerusalem as a way that pilgrims there could learn of Jesus’ last week. It was an early form of interactive learning. 

 But is it really such a great thing to pretend we are part of that palm-waving crowd? One thing about the way the Gospels tell their story is that crowds in the Gospels are almost always clueless. They just don’t get it. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a colt, the crowd cheered him. Why? 

No one, including the disciples, had the slightest notion that the messiah would be anything other than political figure. Devout Jew, of course, but a political leader who would return Judea to full independence. That meant a kingly military leader. 

That the messiah would never think of such a thing was not part of the picture. And that the messiah would be executed by the Romans would have been thought impossible. 

Importantly, that the messiah would save Israel by his death and then bodily resurrection would have struck them as insane. The gospels are clear that even after Jesus had explained this to his disciples on the way to Jerusalem, they simply dismissed it.

So on Sunday, the crowd cheered Jesus mostly from their own selfish ambition of what they wanted him to do. They hoped first that he would reclaim the throne of David, which was contested by Herod the Great’s three sons and daughter. Then they hoped that Jesus, divinely assisted, would lead an uprising against the Romans that would drive them from Judea. Jesus planned to do neither. After all, he already had possession of the true throne of David, which the angel Gabriel had told Mary, Jesus’ mother, in Luke chapter 1. As for raising an army, what use would that have been to someone who could summon unnumbered legions of angels to his side? 

Jesus surely knew what the crowd expected and just as surely knew he was not their man, not like they wanted.

But let us not be too hard on those cheering Jerusalemites. We cannot blame them for wanting to be free of oppression. Nor should we scorn them for not knowing that Jesus was destined to be crucified, dead and buried, and on the third day to rise from the dead. That was still several days away and who could have imagined it, anyway? All the Palm Sunday people knew about Jesus was that he loved God, he spent a lot of time with the unlovable people of society, he was known to work miracles now and then, and he was a compelling preacher who verbally fought with the powerful people of the Jewish nation. 

There really was not much more to know about Jesus, five days before he was executed as a religious heretic and political insurrectionist. Everything that makes us know Jesus as the Christ springs from Easter, not Palm Sunday. It is Easter, not today, that defines our faith. Unlike the crowd calling Hosanna! two thousand years ago, we know Jesus as the Risen One, the King of Kings whose throne is infinitely more glorious than that occupied by David or his descendants. 

 That being so, why on earth would we celebrate that crowd of two millennia ago? Perhaps we should do so to remind ourselves that all earthly glory is fleeting. Gratitude does not last forever, sometimes not even for a few days. Disappointments or worse always follow from staking one’s well-being on any mortal human being. 

The ugliness of fickle faith will never be more nakedly displayed than during Jesus’s last week in Jerusalem. One crowd cheered him, another crowd jeered him and called for his death. For the Palm Sunday crowd, Jesus turned out not to be who they hoped he was. For the Good Friday crowd, Jesus was all too potentially who they feared he was. Jesus entered the city riding as prophecy foretold the King of the Jews would ride, being greeted to uninhibited acclaim, yet the final calls of a crowd Jesus heard were calls for his execution only a few days later, people yelling to Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar!” and “Give us Barabbas!” instead of Jesus. Then finally, they will scream, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

If we are to commemorate the Sunday crowd, it can be only to admonish ourselves not to be like them. They cheered sincerely and earnestly, but they cheered in vain. The lesson they teach us is only to stake our lives on something other than mere human aspirations or merely human leaders. It is to remind us not to define the Christ by our own mere wishes, but by God’s revelation.

It must be to ask ourselves, even if only once per year, “What do we expect from Jesus?” Consider what Jesus endured during Passion Week. He was – 

Hailed by the people, 

feared by the powerful, 

watched by the Romans, 

loved by his disciples, 

then betrayed by one and abandoned by the rest, 

arrested by the Jewish police, 

beaten by his countrymen, 

tried and convicted by the Jews and the Romans, 

flogged by the Romans,

scorned by the people, 

crucified by the Romans,

buried by some friends.

With a record like that, what do we expect of him? Is it sensible that we should expect Jesus simply to give us more of what we already have? Was the mission of Jesus Christ simply to assure us that he’s okay, we’re okay, just keep doing what we’re doing, living like we’re living, wanting what we’re wanting, and Jesus will just smile approvingly at us and make sure that everything works out all right? Or should we imagine that the Son of God has a different agenda than we do, and his agenda might topple our own as certainly as the ancient temple in Jerusalem came tumbling down forty years after Jesus entered the city? 

These are questions to ponder this Holy Week. The answers are not found on Palm Sunday. They begin in earnest later during Passion Week, reaching their crescendo Sunday morning. 

The Right People for the Wrong Crowd

Luke 15 begins:

1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.  2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 

When you read the gospels, you discover that wherever Jesus was, there were usually a lot of the riffraff of society right there with him. One of the remarkable things about Jesus is that he accepted and even sought the company of people considered socially undesirable. In fact, Jesus once even invited himself to dinner at a hated tax collector’s house. 

Then, as now, the influential and powerful people didn’t like the wrong crowd and they didn’t like the way Jesus hung out with the wrong crowd. They thought there was a character defect in a man who would welcome sinners and eat with them. 

Usually we set up the Pharisees as the bad guys of the gospels. After all, Jesus criticized them frequently. But I will tell you: the closer my children got to high school the more I became like the Pharisees. I examined their friends closely. I wanted to know who they spent their time with and what they did together. I remember my own parents wanting to know these things and warning me not to keep bad company.

None of us would ever say to our children, “Go downtown and hang out with the drug pushers and shoplifters.” And if our kids did so, we’d certainly think they had gone terribly wrong. We are socially a lot more like the Pharisees than Jesus. We try to keep the wrong crowd at arm’s length or out of sight. 

The Pharisees wanted to avoid the wrong crowd. That’s not inherently a bad thing. The Pharisees believed that the separation of good and bad was necessary for the well being of the community. We believe that, too. It's why we have jails, after all.

But the Pharisees went too far. In their eyes, the people Jesus welcomed were beyond the margins of proper society and were to be scorned and rejected. And Jesus even ate meals with them! The Pharisees objected strenuously. So, Jesus told them parables about three lost things: a sheep, a coin, and a father who had two sons. He started this way:

4 “Which one of you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go look for the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 Then when he has found it, he places it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 Returning home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent.”

A shepherd has a hundred sheep counts only ninety-nine. So, he leaves the ninety-nine to find the lost sheep. He brings it home and calls his friends to rejoice with him. "Just so," Jesus concludes, "there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

Then he told of a woman who lost a coin and tore her house upside down to find it. When she did, she threw a block party to celebrate. “Just so,” Jesus said, “I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” 

This is a play in three acts, and the third act Jesus told was a story of a young man who demanded of his father his share of his inheritance now. Dad gave it to him, and the young man moved far away. But he went broke and wound up slopping hogs for a living, which for a first-century Jew would be as far down the ladder as you could get. He remembered that even his father’s hired men lived better than that. So, he set off for home to ask for a job as a ranch hand. 

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 Get the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. 

But the elder son refused to join the party. The father went to him, but the elder son said, 

"Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has wasted your property on prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’” 

When we hear these stories, we imagine that we are the lost sheep or the wayward child. Sometimes we feel lost even now since we can still move away from God. We are comforted by the image of a God who keeps looking for us no matter how far we stray. All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. When you are on the receiving end of the God who seeks you out, these parables are good news. 

But we should hear these parables with a cautious ear. Something strange is going on. “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until you find it?” 

Now, our usual reaction to Jesus’ question is a sort of warm, mushy feeling as we envision a kindly shepherd searching high and low and gently bearing the lost lamb back on his broad shoulders. But that’s simply ridiculous! Which of you, having a hundred one-dollar bills in a crowded park, and losing one of them, would leave the other ninety nine on the park bench and go after the one that is lost until you find it? No one!

No shepherd would leave the flock to be easy prey for wolves for the sake of one lost sheep. A shepherd’s livelihood can survive the loss of one sheep, but not the loss of the many which would be killed if he abandoned the flock. It seems silly for the woman to throw a big party for finding her coin. Surely the party cost far more than the value of the coin. 

These parables make no obvious sense. There is no moral lesson for the lost. The sheep and the coin are found not because of anything they do but because someone is determined to find them. A lost sheep doesn’t know it is lost. It’s quite likely to wander away again. The coin is just an inanimate object. The son returns home to a place of honor, which reveals deep rifts within the family. What’s going on here?

Maybe the central point about these stories is not the lost sheep or coin or the wayward son. Maybe the stories tell us practically nothing about the lost ones, but an awful lot about ourselves. Jesus speaks of repentance in the first two stories but not the third. The wayward son is never said to repent, though he does have a carefully rehearsed, syrupy, and probably insincere speech. He starts to give it to his father, but his father interrupts it and tells his servants to prepare a banquet. 

Why does Jesus talk about repentance in the first two parables but not the third? No repentance is even possible for a coin or a sheep. And yet Jesus said at the end of each that all heaven rejoices when a sinner repents. So: who’s the sinner and what’s the repentance? 

For Jews of Jesus’ day “repentance” meant, “a fundamental change.” Who else could that be true of other than the shepherd and the woman? Whatever they had planned for the day got discarded because they lost count of what was valuable to them. So, they made a fundamental change to make the count include everything. Maybe that is what heaven celebrates: those who make a fundamental change about what counts. 

The older son, angered by the mercy of his father and the inclusion of his admittedly dishonorable younger brother, scorns the celebration. After all, the younger brother’s return is not characterized as repentance at all; it might be nothing more than a quest for free meals. The older son followed all the rules, did everything right. He neither asked for nor received dad’s favor. Now he feels cheated. And the father botched being a father because he didn’t remember, apparently, how to count to two sons, not just one. He never tried to find his wayward son, he just waved goodbye and good luck. Unlike the stories of shepherd or the woman, there was no fundamental change by anyone in the third parable. There is no one to admire in this parable. 

Nothing comes together for that highly dysfunctional family even at the end. We do not learn whether the rifts between the father and his sons, or between the brothers, will heal. The only redeeming fact of this story is that the banquet is well justified, because there was one who “was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” 

[All] The parables end with a party. Jesus doesn’t invite us to be rescued by God, but to join God in recovering the things God treasures. The parables reject the idea that there are certain conditions the lost must meet before they are eligible to be found, or that there are certain qualities they must exhibit before we will seek them out [New Interpreter's Bible]. 

Here is a true story: One winter when I was about twelve years old, two orphaned brothers walked from their temporary foster home to my neighborhood to ride their homemade sled down the steep hill near my house. My neighborhood group was at the hill riding our store bought Flyers. The two orphans’ sled had wooden runners and it tore the snow up. Frankly, we didn’t want to play with them. They were a rough pair, kind of crude and brash and obviously poor. They were the “wrong crowd” for us middle-class kids. I dropped several hints for them to go tear up some other hill with their lousy sled. Lunch time came, so I went home. While my mother was fixing me a sandwich, there was a knock on the front window next to the door. There stood the younger orphan boy, peering inside my house. My mother opened the door. “Can I have a sandwich?” the boy asked.

My mother brought him inside and took his wet outer clothes and put them into the dryer. She sat him at our dining room table and gave him my sandwich. “I’ll make you another one,” she told me. She heated some chicken soup—which she had not offered me—and set it before him. I wasn’t very happy about all this. I didn’t want to come to the table where that beggar sat. I retreated to the kitchen. My mother followed. I told her, “You gave him my sandwich! You didn’t heat any soup for me, but you did for him!”

My mother said, “Don’t be a stick in the mud! Come have lunch.”

Jesus said, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you…. . For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

Jesus invites us to become shepherds who seek the lost because they are precious to God and are worth being found. Restoration and wholeness become possible when we treat others according to how they are valued by God, not according to what the world says they are worth. The canyons that separate us—good from bad, worthy from unworthy, lost from found—are bridged by a searching love which embraces us all and invites us all to celebrate. 

Jesus asked the Pharisees to join the search and host the party. He wanted them to think about who counts and who’s counting them. He urged them not to write the wrong crowd off, but to be the right people for the wrong crowd. He challenged them to care deeply about all the people they had given up on and to be willing to take risks to find them. We cannot classify people according to what we think they are worth. The value of a single sheep or a lost coin or a wayward child cannot be computed according to conventional market standards. 

We know who the wrong crowd is, but we also need to know, thanks be to God, that we are the right people for the wrong crowd. 

Water into wine

 Jesus at Cana

 John 2:1-11

1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”

4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it.

9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. 

Have you ever seen water turned into wine? My wife and I have, many times. When we were stationed in Germany, we lived less than an hour’s drive from the Rhine River. The central part of the Rhine is the heart of wine country in western Germany. If you drive or cruise along the river, you pass mile after mile of vineyards. Germans grade their wine according to three main categories: tafelwein, or table wine, the lowest grade; qualitätswein, the middle grade, and prädikatswein, the highest. It’s the sugar content that makes the grade. The highest grade may not have sugar added by the vintners; the lowest two grade may have added sugar. Within each category there are several grades as well – Kabinett, Auslese, Spätlese, Riesling, and so forth.

The highest-grade wine, and the rarest, is called Eiswein, which means just what it sounds like: ice wine. A good produce of ice wine comes along only about every four years, and then in small quantities. It is the sweetest wine made in Germany. The longer grapes stay on the vine, the more natural sugar they have. The growing season ends with the first overnight frost. If the first frost is too severe, grapes on the vine are ruined and must be thrown away. This happens on average three years of every four, so vintners leave relatively few grapes on the vine that late. But if the first frost is mild, the grapes just barely freeze and the next day are harvested to make ice wine, which is so intensely sweet that I couldn’t abide it. Ice wine commands high prices.

So, to drive along the Rhine is to see water, in the form of rainfall, made into wine. Rain soaks the ground, enters the vines, fills the grapes, is harvested, and made into wine. It happens all the time. We do not wonder at it. It “has lost its marvellousness by its constant recurrence” (Augustine).

A fellow officer named Ed Schmidt lived a kilometer away from us in a house he and his wife rented. They made a number of German friends in their village of Grüningen. Ed didn’t speak a word of German, but he had a German last name and looked like a poster boy for Aryan purity, so the Germans liked him. One weekend Ed and Barbara threw a wine-tasting party under a big tent on their lawn. Most of our battalion’s officers came, along with many of Ed’s German neighbors. Everyone brought at least one bottle of wine. One lieutenant had gone to the Army’s Class VI store and bought some Mad Dog 20-20 and Thunderbird, which are about the cheapest rotgut wine made in North America. Ed didn’t know what to do about the MD 20-20 and the T-Bird. He just knew that if the Germans saw the skid-row stuff surely they’d laugh at the cheap, unsophisticated American palate. So he put them behind everything else and started with the good German wine, figuring that after everyone had partaken of a number of samples of prädikatswein they’d forget about the rotgut.

But the Germans had already seen the cheap stuff and after the rest of the wine had been uncorked and passed from table to table, they asked about the Mad Dog and the Thunderbird. Reluctantly, Ed opened it – not “uncorked” it, because it was so cheap it had a screw-on top. His ego deflated, he handed the bottles to the Germans. Amazingly, the Germans loved it! The bottles never left their table. They drank every drop and complimented Eddie for leaving some good wine for the end.

We couldn’t believe it. In fact, we never did believe it. We agreed that they told each other jokes about the idiot Americans and their terrible wine for weeks afterward.

Wine is a fascinating subject. According to Guinness, the most expensive bottle of wine ever was a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite that sold in 1985 for $136,248 at auction at Sotheby’s in London. It was engraved with the initials of Thomas Jefferson. In 1986, its cork slipped, and the wine was ruined. No word on how much the empty bottle is worth.

The first mention of wine in the Bible is in the Noah story. After the flood receded, Noah planted a vineyard, made wine, and got so drunk he passed out naked.

Wine was a significant trade item in ancient Israel. Solomon traded wine for timber. Legal fines were sometimes paid with wine. The Hebrews sometimes used wine in worship, offering libations to the Lord. The offerings of first fruits required a quantity of wine, as did the sacrifice of a ram. Psalm 104 says that wine to gladden the heart of is a gift of God. People offered wine to others as gifts of honor, as when David took wine to Saul on the battlefield. Three tribes brought wine to David as gifts when he was made king. Wine was said to revive the faint in 2 Samuel and Proverbs said it was suitable as a sedative for people in distress. Jesus said the Good Samaritan poured oil and wine on the wounds of the injured traveler. Roman soldiers offered Jesus wine mixed with gall when Jesus was dying. Paul admonished Timothy not to drink only water, but to drink wine also.

Yet the Scriptures also recognize the dangers of wine. The Bible condemns drunkenness, beginning with Noah’s tale, and prophets sometimes accused national leaders of being more interested in drinking wine than tending to affairs of state. Paul cautioned the Ephesians to be filled with the Holy Spirit rather than wine. On Pentecost, the disciples glorified God and Christ so energetically that onlookers accused them of drinking “too much wine,” a charge Peter brushed off by responding that they were not drunk because it was only nine in the morning.

And of course, Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding at Cana. According to John, this miracle was the first Jesus performed. Actually, this miracle is misnamed as turning water into wine. When Jesus began, the six stone jars were empty. The servants filled them with water at Jesus’ direction. Jesus really turned emptiness into wine. He made wine out of nothing.

It is a story of extravagance. John leaves out details we would usually think important in order to emphasize the over-abundance of Christ’s work. For example, we don’t know why Jesus and his disciples and Jesus’ mother were invited. (As an aside, John never calls Mary by name – she is always called “the mother of Jesus.”) The wedding itself is never described; we don’t even know the names of the bride and groom. The bride never appears. The groom appears briefly but does not have a speaking part.

The story begins and ends with wine. There’s a wedding. The wine runs out. Mary tells Jesus, who professes not to care. He doesn’t even call his mother, “Mother,” but “woman,” as if she were some kitchen help come out to give him a message. But then again, John says Jesus called her “woman” when he hung on the cross, so it doesn’t appear to have been disrespectful.

“There’s no more wine,” Mary says. Jesus replies, What does that have to do with you and me?

Mary doesn’t say anything. She has been rebuked, however mildly, because Jesus isn’t subject to her beck and call – not hers, not anyone’s. John makes this clear throughout. Jesus acts on his own initiative, guided by the Spirit of God. Ordinary human beings can’t order him around. “Jesus’ actions will be governed by the hour set by God, not by anyone else’s time or will” (NIB).

But they can ask, and Mary does, leaving the solution up to Jesus. Mary tells the servants to do whatever Jesus says, which, Mary must have known, might have been nothing. Or Jesus might have told the servants to hightail it down to the Food Lion before it closed to pick up a few cases of Mad Dog 20-20 and Thunderbird. After all, when his disciples told him much later that a few thousand people had nothing to eat, Jesus just said, “Well, you give them something to eat.”

Instead, Jesus orders about 150 gallons of water brought in. The modern equivalent of the ancient Jewish measurement isn’t certain. It’s somewhere between twenty to thirty gallons per jar. Call it twenty-five, for a total of 150 gallons. That’s – let’s see – nineteen thousand, two hundred ounces, so if a serving was six ounces, like ours are today, that’s three thousand, two hundred cups of wine. This must have been a great party!

No matter how many guests were there, a few or many, thirty-two-hundred cups of wine is a lot of wine! Everything about this episode is overdrawn: the capacity of the jars, the amount of wine, even the number of words John spends describing the miracle. But as for the exact moment of the chemical transformation of the water into wine, there is no notice. It just happens sometime between the filling of the jars and the drawing out of a serving for the chief steward. There is an abundance of good gifts available through Jesus, but exactly how and when always remain mysterious.

The chief steward doesn’t know the wine’s source; he just assumes the bridegroom kept it back all along. “This is good stuff,” he exclaims, commending the bridegroom for continuing to serve fine wine even after the guests have had plenty to drink.

“In the Old Testament, an abundance of good wine is an eschatological symbol, a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age.” Both Amos and Joel used the image of the hills dripping with new wine to describe God’s favor. The miracle at Cana is more than “the first act in Jesus’ ministry. It also stands as the fulfillment of Old Testament eschatological hopes, as the inaugural act of God’s promised salvation” (NIB).

I refuse to get hung up on arguments such as whether this miracle quote-actually-unquote occurred. Discussing it on such a scientific-materialist basis robs it of its real power and meaning. Neither can we arrogantly assume that the people of the first century were so simple-minded that they easily embraced the miraculous. The steward assumes that the wine he drank, while excellent, had been obtained by the bridegroom in the usual way. What he finds unusual is the groom’s hospitality, not the wine itself.

But the servants and Jesus’ disciples know how the wine came to be. Isn’t it interesting that they don’t drink any? Maybe the wine isn’t the point after all. Maybe what the disciples see is that God’s presence is truly among them in the person of Jesus. Jesus offers a new category of understanding reality, and the disciples “believed in him.”

The Reverend William Sloane Coffin once said, “Jesus turned water into wine, but we in the Church have become very good at turning the wine back into water.” The new wine of Jesus – the fulfillment of the hopes of God’s people – is what we long for and hope for. Yet when we look about us, we can see oldness at every level. We carry old fears and anxieties despite our faith in God; we are weak stewards of God’s gifts to us; we see career-minded clergy; we are mired in bureaucratic church structures to do the church’s business. Sometimes it’s hard to see the newness of life, and like the chief steward, even when we do, we mis-attribute it to the usual sources.

Author Mary Collins wrote of attending a Catholic Mass in Bologna, Italy. The church was very poor. Instead of the usual pews, the church had only cast-off chairs from school lunchrooms. The worshipers were mostly broken down, elderly men showing signs of alcoholism and disease and poverty, plus a few poor, old women.

She wrote, “The liturgy progressed as usual. The homily proclaimed the mystery of the Trinity as a mystery of divine love so limitless it is poured out even to the poor of Bologna. Then it was time for the offering. The ushers went forward. We reached for our bundles of lire. Then the unexpected happened. The ushers also reached for stacks of bills, and they moved through the assembly making the church’s offering by giving them small amounts of money. Later, on the street, we learned that the gifts to the poor were given weekly: a token of God’s graciousness and eschatological fullness, something to celebrate the Lord’s Day. In the presence of Christ, not enough becomes plenty for all; in the presence of Christ, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary.”

If we are truly to perceive God’s abundant grace, our response must be thankfulness and generous sharing. The wedding party found itself with so much wine that all they could have done with it was just give it away. Everything we have is a gift from God. Let us believe in Christ! Let us let go of our old ways and old things. Let them go, let them vanish! The newness of life in Christ won’t come until they are gone – BUT . . . in the newness of Christ, the best is yet to come!