Troubled waters...

I have been watching "Bones" since the beginning of the series.  Today, in season 5, it just occurred to me that the closing theme music is piano music with orchestral instruments.





So, perhaps is is not that I do not like the piano in a symphony performance, but that I have not heard the right piece yet.  For, you see, I really think that the initial piano playing and the instruments (strings and woodwinds???) blend beautifully together in the closing theme.

Too bad that I do not know a piano aficionado who could tell me just the right piece to hear.  As it is, I feel a bit like something is wrong with me that I cared not for the concerto on Saturday.

In an episode that I recently watched, one guy said that after careful consideration, he and another agency guy agreed that everyone's reports should be carefully worded, as in without words.  I laughed, but the idea had stuck in my head.  I think, because, as I read Michael Card's commentaries, I have thought about so many church services I sat through in the past that were Word-less ... and so many online writings about faith that are Gospel-less.  Carefully worded without the Word.

Thankfully, that is most certainly not the case with the commentaries!  Although ... I sure do wish my brain was the way it used to be.

I will note that, through practice, I am learning to identify patterns in John more quickly than I did in, say, Mark.  Of course, I should get better at that being on my fourth commentary.  For example, the theme of misunderstanding is patently clear.  Take Nicodemus.  He simply doesn't understand what Jesus is telling him, but Michael Card points out that as a member of the Sanhedrin and a Pharisee, ht spent his time studying Scripture.  The pronoun "you" in verse 10 of chapter 3 is singular.  You, Nicodemus ... Ezekiel 36:36 speaks of the radical new birth ... Nicodemus should have understood, but he didn't.

Jesus was misunderstood about being born of the Spirit.
Jesus was misunderstood about the temple being torn down and raised again in three days.
Jesus was misunderstood about being/giving living water.

The later was another great Michael Card title.  You do not read of the "Woman at the Well," but of "Misunderstood Water."  I really appreciate his fresh approach to titles of segments of Scriptures, once that focus more on Jesus.

But the whole water thing ... two bits I have been reading over and over and over, not quite grasping. If Mary were not utterly overwhelmed with her babies and all that is happening in her life, I would ask her to read the commentary and explain.  I really, really, really need a translation and Mary is ever so talented at sharing the Gospel in Myrtle Speak.

...Water is a spiritually charged term in John, with all sorts of connotations.  Baptism and birth are only two of them.  Water has healing associations (Jn 5:2; 9:7) as well as divine associations (Jn 6:19).  Jesus' first miracle involved water (Jn 2:7).  When Jesus is crucified, only John refers to the water that flows from the wound in his side (Jn 19:34).  Most often water in John's Gospel is connected wtith the identity of Jesus and the promise of new life through the Spirit. Of the twenty times John uses the word water, more than all the other Gospels combined, nine of those occur in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (Jn 4:1-26).  The most striking pronouncement in regard to water comes in John 7:37 when Jesus says if a person is thirsty to they must come to him and drink.  The water is a symbol of what Jesus promises to provide.  In his last long discussion with the disciples, Jesus will make it clear that this promised provision will be the Holy Spirit (Jn 16:1-16).

In this light, Jesus' statement about water and the Spirit is repetitive, like his "amen, amen."  A person must be born of the water that is the Spirit, the unique promise and provision of Jesus.... [emphasis mine]

So, I read this and think ... the Living Water is the Holy Spirit????????  I thought Jesus, Himself, was the Living Water?  I'm confused.

Then:

The "you" of verse 7 is plural.  Jesus is addressing Nicodemus and all of his powerful friends:  "you all should not be surprised."  What follows is a beautiful play on words that works both in Hebrew and Greek.  In Greek the word pneuma means both Spirit and wind.  The same is true of the Hebrew word ruah.  The Spirit, which is like water, is also like wind.  You can hear it and see its effects, but it remains invisible.  You cannot see where it is coming from or where it is going.

Okay ... uhm ... I am not quite clear.  I mean, you can see water, but not wind.  You cannot see the Holy Spirit (except for those few times when He first came upon folk).  But the Holy Spirit is the Living Water Jesus promises.

If you go back to the introduction and Michael Card's tale about discovering the depth and importance of when Jesus spoke up at the synagogue about come to Him when thirsty, the quenching He was speaking of was the Holy Spirit??

So, the misunderstood water with the Samaritan Woman was not Jesus giving Himself but her receiving the Holy Spirit??

And ... Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine ... could you not also say that His last miracle was, again, turning water into wine?  By that I mean, blood and water poured from His side on the cross, His bodily fluid sustaining life, and in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, once more water is turned into wine.

I don't know, maybe I am just talking in circles, making no sense.

I did so appreciate the "temple city contrast" in the commentary on John 3:10-21, demonstrating again what John's first audience might have heard and understood ... the profundity of the perfect testimony reclaiming false teaching to rightful truth.

John's Ephesian readers would have had a different image in their imaginations when they heard of the serpent on the pole.  In the heart of the city of Ephesus was the temple to Asclepius, the God of Healing.  His symbol was a staff with a serpent wrapped around it.  Live serpents were released in the temple at night while the sick were left sleeping on the floor.  In the morning they would report their dreams to the priest who would then prescribe a cure, which usually included a trip to one of the local bath houses.  Again we see the connection to water and healing.

John's first listeners would have understood once more that the power for true healing was being reclaimed exclusively by Jesus, even as he had robbed Dionysius of his power.

I've mentioned that I saved for many years and took Becky and myself to Italy.  This is a photo looking down on the Forum in Rome.  It is impossible, from here, to grasp just how massive the area is.

All along the road are the remains of government structures, shrines and temples.

Being down amongst them was too much to take in.

It was a massive place filled with massive structures and massive meaning.

I read a lot of fantasy books, some of which are low fantasy stories set in worlds with various belief systems, oft including may gods and goddesses.  It is a familiarity to me that breathes life into all Michael Card's commentary on Ephesus and the distinctions between how JOhn's first audience would have received his words, versus how we might now.  I am awed by the perfection and complexity of his testimony, made richer with the depth of time and experience of a life long lived, a pastoral life.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the talk about water and Spirit is confusing to me, as if I am listening from a different or at least skewed belief system, but yet cannot actually put words to my confusion, to explain it.

In Madeleine L'Engle's book An Acceptable Time, the main character Polly finds herself time-slipped to a when 3,000 years ago.  Forgive the simplicity of a complex story in my observation, but as a reader of fantasy, I found it believable that Polly, a teenager, did not blame the indigenous folk when they thought to offer herself up as a sacrifice to ease their draught problems.  She would not condemn either their beliefs or their ignorance, because in that time and place what was happening was acceptable.

In L'Engle's book The Arm of the Starfish, Polly is livid ... hurt, angry, and confused, really ... that her father was willing to help the daughter of the man who caused the death of a dear friend.  Her father's response to her was that if you are going to care about the fall of the sparrow, you cannot pick or choose who the sparrow is going to be.

The Pharisees, with their oral tradition created to box in and make executable the Law, were choosing the sparrows.  The disciples, too, with their dismay that Jesus was talking to a woman and at the children who came to him.  Again, I think the single greatest "chewable" observation that I, personally made whilst reading the Gospels themselves, was this habit of naming certain folk as sinners, implying that not all people were.  And sinners were not sparrows about which Jesus should care.

Maybe—wending my way back—the problem is that I thought of water speak in the Bible as referring to baptism, not to the gift (and subsequent work) of the Holy Spirit.  I find it confusing and yet, oddly, fitting. I mean, the only way that we are quenched by Jesus is by the Holy Spirit working through the Word and through the Sacraments.

I think ... I fear ... that I have mostly written nonsense.  But, I will finish by noting one of the bits of Michael Card's commentary that resonates so strongly with me that I took it in without thought or hesitation.  In speaking of healing the official's son in chapter 4, he noted:

"The miracle is not the point; it never is. The harvest is all that matters [to Jesus].

Moses' miracles were ... a bit ... flashy.  Jesus' were not.  I really like Michael Card's moniker of them:  unmiraculous miracles.  For the most part, folk were not waving and pointing and shouting in awe when Jesus performed a miracle.  Consider the two feedings of the great crowds.  Both were miracles that virtually went unnoticed.  Jesus Himself was not flashy either, often merely speaking a word or two and that was that.  No wild gestures.  No grandstanding.  His word was enough, and, quite often, His word was not even a command, but merely a pronouncement.  

I think about Jerusalem, which is prominent in John as opposed to the other Gospels, being a temple city devoted to God.  In a way, however, the oral tradition had made it a Word-less city.  Ephesus, another temple city, devoted to many gods and goddesses, was also Word-less.  Opposites and yet the same.  And, in both, the audiences were confused, were facing a world turned upside down.

My waters are troubled about Living Water.  Were they not so, I might try to write out the ... well ... what I think I am learning about Jesus being the Bread of Life.  For that I am worried about getting to certain parts of John, I will admit that I am genuinely surprised by how much I am learning that I thought I knew and understood and yet did not.

Again, I do wish, dearly, that my brain were what it once was, that I might hold in it all of what I have learned about Mark and Matthew and Luke.  Perhaps, then, I might be less confused ... or not.  I do finally understand what was meant that John's testimony is so very different than that of the other Gospel writers.  His "onlys" are greater than all the rest, and yet His testimony is still the same.

Jesus, come for man, who understood Him not, with a plan and a purpose far and above mere healing of body and mind or being a good teacher.