Series III Lesson 4
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CATHOLIC SCRIPTURE STUDY
Catholic Scripture Study Notes written by Sister Marie Therese, are provided for the personal use of students during their active participation and must not be loaned or given to others.
SERIES III
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
Lesson 4 Commentary John 2:12 - 3
Lesson 5 Questions John 4:1 - 54
JESUS: TEACHER, LIFE-GIVER, AND LORD
John 2:12-3
Series III Lesson 4
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I. INTRODUCTION
Here the evangelist begins his Good News of the public ministry of Jesus. He has finished the witnesses to Jesus, from John the Baptist to the first apostles: Andrew and his companion, whom tradition sees as John the Apostle, Simon Peter, Andrew’s brother, and Philip and Nathanael. These witnesses’ experience of Jesus are the first 6 days of the new creation, paralleling the Genesis “days.” The first eleven verses of Chapter 2 are the seventh day, when the new Creation is set in motion with Jesus’ first public “sign,” a word which John will use in his Gospel for the wondrous deeds of Jesus. The synoptics (writers of the first three Gospels) call them miracles, from the Latin word for “wonders.”
II. THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE (John 2:13-24, Matthew 21:12f, Mark 11:15ff, and Luke 19:45f)
A. Jerusalem and the Temple. In this Gospel, John shows little attention to the Galilean ministry since the earlier Gospels emphasized it, but he centers his attention on Jerusalem. In John 2:13 he begins with a Passover at Jerusalem and a dramatic cleansing of the Temple, re-built by Herod the Great in 19 B.C. John’s mention of the “46 years of building” dates its completion at about 28 A.D. (often A.D. is now called C.E., “common or Christian era”), and makes this one of the few historical facts we have on the date of Jesus’ birth (4 B.C.).
This temple of Jesus’ time was splendid and sparkling, though scholars agree that it did not equal Solomon’s Temple which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia burned to the ground and despoiled when he destroyed Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 36:15-21).
Jesus’ anger here is not due to the selling of sheep and doves and the changing of coins, say some scholars, which was a necessity for those coming from the “Diaspora”—Jews returning to Jerusalem at Passover for the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb. No, some say, it was the cheating, the injustice to the poor, the avarice of the rulers, and the dishonor given to God by such practices, in the holy area. John places the event here as another witness to Jesus’ authority, who He is. The Synoptics place the event just before Holy Week.
His remark as He spilled the coins and drove out the animals with a whip explains His action. “Stop turning my Father’s House into a marketplace!” His words here, as at the end of Luke’s Finding in the Temple story, are an important clue to His self-awareness as a son of the Father. In John, the “Jews” may mean, not the people, but the Pharisees and Sadducees in Jerusalem and elsewhere who allow this and who become His enemies (Psalm 69:10a). Some commentators believe that they may mean the Jewish contemporaries of John’s later Ephesus community of Christians. In Ephesus at that time there was severe opposition from Jews loyal to the synagogue.
B. The Christian Temple. The theology that John sees in Jesus’ words, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it up,” and “...He was speaking of the Temple of His body” (John 2:19 and John 2:21), is that from then on the true temple is Jesus’ body; to destroy it as in the Passion, and its being rebuilt as in the Resurrection, was foretold in the Old Testament, as the Apostles later realized. For example, Jesus said the first verse of Psalm 22 on the cross. John 2:15-19 describes in a graphic way, His “destruction” on Good Friday. John 2:19 refers to His resurrection. In this temple incident, the Apostles later realize that Jesus was prophesying His resurrection here.
But the temple incident also reveals other New Testament realities. God dwelt in Jesus; His human body was always a temple of God. This fact elevated our human nature far above what Adam in his innocence was. St. Paul proclaims this in Ephesians 1:23. Further, of Christians, Paul says elsewhere: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?...Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit within you?” (1 Corinthians 6:15-20). What can this mean for us? “Glorify God in your body” (Ephesians 2:22). Are you the temple where others can find God? Do you witness to this to your children, teaching them to reverence their bodies and to treat others’ bodies with reverence? Especially, your teen-agers...Are we pure and shining to the eyes of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, or do we willingly clutter and demean our “temple” as the Jews were doing to their temple?
Again, a “New Creation” reality is that the Church is the “Body of Christ,” the temple where the Holy Spirit dwells, filling it with truth and love, and making all one with Christ (Ephesians 2:19-22). To the church at Corinth, Paul wrote this beautiful truth also (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). This is the result of the sacrament of Baptism, and is one reason why early adult Christians began to have their children baptized, so the family all had inward grace to live by.
In the verses with this conversation, John again uses his literary style of an unclear statement of Jesus which is misunderstood by His listeners, and He then clarifies with His real meaning. John adds here that only after the resurrection did the disciples remember and understand His words here.
These early days in the public life brought “many” in Jerusalem to believe in Jesus. He knew that some of these later fell away and may have been in the crowd that followed the Pharisees’ instructions to ask for Jesus’ death, when Pilate appealed to the “crowd” waiting for a prisoner to be released at Passover. Is our faint-heartedness about Jesus sometimes similar? Is it lip-service and Sunday service that we return to Jesus, or do we ponder His teaching in the Scriptures and live by them, so that others see our light, the salt that we are in society?
In the recent biography of a young French girl, a cloistered Carmelite nun for only five years, we read: “Like Mary, Elizabeth of the Trinity keeps in her heart what she hears and reads in Scripture. She nourishes herself on the Word of God and the prophets which are given for our teaching; she assimilates it in her own flesh. When she brings forth the Word again, it has become her own, soaked in her heart, sometimes in the blood of her suffering.” This young sister wrote letters to her mother and sister and a young friend, so beautiful spiritually that they preserved them. The month before she died at age 26, she wrote notes each day on her “last retreat.” These writings have caused the Church to declare her a saint, (her beatification process was in 1986) and theologians call her a “theologian,” a term which means one who studies, is wise, about God.
III. NICODEMUS COMES TO JESUS SECRETLY (John 3:1-21, and 1 Corinthians 15:45-50)
One of those attracted by Jesus’ signs was a man called Nicodemus. In John 3:25 the author of this gospel suggests that the heart of man is dear to Jesus. This will be shown in the man who comes to him at night, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin (John 3:1-3). Coming at night seems to be a symbol of the half-light of his faith in Jesus. He was also a Rabbi, the quintessence of Judaism. His kind of darkness, shared by many in Jerusalem and in official Jewry, grips many of our own times who have placed themselves in the darkness rather than in Jesus’ light. He told this cultured Jew that the kingdom of God can be entered only by a “rebirth from above.” Nicodemus cannot follow Jesus’ thought. Jesus humbles him a bit; “even a teacher in Israel does not know these things?” (John 3:10).
The evangelist seems to leave Nicodemus in darkness here, and he begins in John 3:11 a sort of homily, a teaching on Jesus as he had come to know Him and who He is. Scholars believe that this section (John 3:11-21) is a monologue by John. They cite clues such as the change from the Greek singular in “you” to the plural here, as though Nicodemus and all the world are included. John thinks of the desert incident when an image on a pole was lifted up and saved all who looked at it during a plague or scourge of God in the desert, for their rebellion (Numbers 21:9). The words “be lifted up” are repeated again in John 8:28, 12:32, 34. There is a Joannine double meaning here. “Raised up” in the sense of crucifixion and “raised up” in the sense of resurrection and ascension. They are both strongly connected in John as the one Paschal (Pasch means Passover in Hebrew) mystery (a spiritual reality, a divine meaning, in an event) that Jesus did. They are both referring to the death on the cross which saved all of us, and to the raising from death and the tomb, to new life.
“Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life” is the dynamic principle of world salvation. The word “world” in John’s writings has different senses. Here, it is a neutral—all of creation and the human race. In other places, it is used for those who refuse to believe, as in John 3:19 “Men loved darkness rather than light.” Watch John’s use of darkness and light from here on. Underline these two words in your Bible as you read John. They are main themes of John about Jesus and His opponents, including Satan.
Salvation is belief in Jesus, accompanied by “deeds done in God.” Condemnation comes from within us, non-belief results in deeds of darkness. There is no third alternative. This is the same theme as in the prologue (John 1:4-5). We must remember here that as St. Paul says, “Faith comes by hearing about Jesus.” Those who haven’t heard but choose good over evil in their lives are, some theologians believe, choosing God. God knows how to judge them. But, Jesus wants all to know and follow His teaching—so incalculably greater than self-guidance and ignorance of Him, with its many eternal blessings. That is the reason why so many missionaries have left families and homelands to go to those who haven’t heard of Jesus. Many lay people are giving a year or several, to work in missions, alongside of priests and sisters. Jesus is a Divine Teacher, Life-Giver, and Supreme Lord.
IV. FINAL WITNESS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST ABOUT JESUS (John 3:22-36)
This section is a break in continuity, but John the evangelist might have wanted to clarify with baptismal references the words of Jesus above, “being begotten of water and Spirit.” It is John’s last testimony to Jesus. He again stresses Jesus’ superiority over the baptism of John. It is thought to be also the evangelist’s declaration to members of his own Christian community at Ephesus for whom he is writing. These had much opposition from faithful followers of John’s baptism and teaching, believing them as equal to Jesus. In John 3:31, is John’s own testimony to his followers about Jesus being superior to him. We may turn here to Jesus’ own testimony to His forerunner, John. “I tell you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John.” Then He added, “yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” Jesus has already taught that being “born of the Holy Spirit” is greater than being born of women, which is a natural gift, not a supernatural one. John was the last of the Old Testament prophets and he had the honor of announcing Jesus, the Messiah (Luke 7:28).
The discourse in Nicodemus’ story continues with strong statements of Jesus’ sonship and the Father’s wrath to “whoever disobeys the Son.” We see the emphasis in this Gospel of Jesus’ divine nature, right from John 1:1 “And the word was God.”
Notice that in these last words of Chapter 3 the persons in the Trinity are all mentioned, with their relationship to one another. We are so privileged to know the true God, to be instructed by one who knew and walked with Jesus the Son during His earthly life. We need every word of Jesus, every word of the Gospels, to know Him as we know our best friends, our closest relatives. We need to carry them to our world, to our neighbors, to help them and us to live by them, to be strengthened by them, to receive hope for earth and for the real future.
In the next lesson, we will see Jesus having conversation with another unbeliever, a woman from a different religion and country, who receives great graces from Jesus through listening to His words.
Series III Lesson 4
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QUESTIONS FOR LESSON 5
John 4:1-54
Day 1 Read the Notes. Underline or check any items which are especially meaningful to you. Be prepared to share them with the class.
Day 2 Read John 4:1-42.
a. In verses 1 and 2 how are the baptisms by John the Baptist and by Jesus’ disciples different from our Christian baptism instituted by Jesus in Matthew 28:16-20?
b. In John 4:6-8, 31, what do we learn about Jesus’ human nature?
c. In verse 10 can you detect in Jesus words His real reason for “having to go” through Samaria?
Day 3
a. In John 4:10-15, Jesus and the woman are on two different levels. What is Jesus teaching about Himself? Underline the words referring to water.