John… At A Slow Pace

WED., MAY 17, 1995, 8:41 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM HALL

Your early morning breakfast group continues with study of this Gospel that is most important to you. Your Bible is well-marked, particularly in this Gospel, but I always encourage restudying, for new insights are always “in the potential.” The pace is slow, and that’s both gratifying and bothersome. I say… let it be the means to new or reformed insights.

This Gospel affirms immediately that I, as Jesus, was from the beginning. I came into human form in the earth, but that was not important in this story of Me and My influence. I always have been, and I am responsible for creation. I am separate from God and the Holy Spirit, but I also am One with Them. I Am with them, but I also Am Them. No beating around the bush. Identity is established right away.

Then I came to the place where John is baptizing, and his recognition of Me seems unexpectedly formal. Another Gospel suggests that he and I are cousins, but this account sounds as though we’ve never met. Actually we had been together some as we grew up, but John saw this as too important an event to “dilute” with a family friendship. He knew that I, the Holy Spirit, would come in some visible form… like a dove… and that he would send Me forth into My ministry. The story doesn’t have him actually baptizing Me, but he did, as a symbolic beginning.

In another sense, as you understand baptism today, there was no need for this rite. I was God in human form, and My Body would become the symbol for the Church. I didn’t need consecration, and I didn’t need to be nurtured by the Church, which was not yet. I was identified as the Lamb of God, with a lamb being a sacrificial animal. All “good lambs” meekly and gently went to sacrifice, with their blood an atonement for sins committed… and sin, in general. It was a barbaric custom, but your present standards and I tend to agree. But that’s how I was identified.

Then, by this account, I went to Jerusalem early in My ministry and drove those who were selling the actual sacrificial animals out of the temple, in a very unlamblike display of force. There was no reported retaliation or resistance. I showed forth power, as well as meekness. I was both, and I wanted to establish both of these natures.

You were struck with the interpretation that I knew how changeable humans could be. Some would call Me Messiah and then would desert Me. Yet I, also, could be changeable. I could accept the role of sacrificial Lamb, and I could be the powerful, angry defender of the sacredness of the Temple, with whip, even. I could, later, accept My death on the cross as My destiny… and as something thrust upon Me that I did not want. Both/and.

Then there was the brief account of the marriage at Cana, with this story calling it My first public miracle. (It was a less than public miracle for Me to see Nathaniel under a tree and to tell him of this vision, which was enough to bring him to discipleship.) I was a bit abrupt with My mother, a symbolic interchange indicating that I was now “in charge”… that My ministry had begun, and I was no longer subject to her desires. She accepted this, and then I went ahead with the generous conversion of huge jars of water into hugs jars of wine. It was good wine, and there was plenty of it. That earlier Teaching on this event still holds, and I needn’t repeat it.

I would often give generously, and what I would give could be “used” responsibly… or become part of a human “problem.” Wine is a symbol of both the best and the worst use of a beverage containing alcohol. Hear again one of My repetitive themes: humans are My highest creation, but I have given excessively. To suddenly have a great quantity of excellent wine late in a wedding celebration would be dangerous in your world of today. To allow procreation as I have in this century is dangerous. My generous nature is not always appreciated.