After Jesus’ baptism, his public ministry really begins. But in John’s gospel, we don’t hear much from Jesus himself right off the bat – instead, we hear others proclaim who Jesus is and what Jesus is up to.
As we listen to this passage from John’s gospel, I encourage you to pay attention to the names used for Jesus, and the way each person describes who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing.
Scripture: John 1:29-42
The next day he saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).
There are a lot of names going on in this passage. You have the given names of everyone involved: Jesus, John, Andrew, and Simon. You also have titles: John is called The Baptist, Jesus is called ‘Rabbi’, Andrew is originally referred to as one of John’s disciples. Then you get into the theological descriptors for Jesus – Lamb of God (twice), Son of God, Messiah, Anointed, the one who ranks ahead of me, the one who takes away the sin of the world, the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
And last but not least, you have Jesus just deciding to change Simon’s name to Cephas, which means ‘rock’ or ‘stone’ in Aramaic.
Side note: how do you get from Simon to Peter? Where does Peter come from?
Well, these original conversations would have taken place in Aramaic, a language that was somewhat related to Hebrew. The word ‘cepha’ (or see-pha) in Aramaic literally means ‘rock.’ But when the gospels were written and the stories were told in new parts of the world outside of Judea, everything got translated to Greek. So the translators and missionaries decided that the /meaning/ of the name was most important to keep, so they used the Greek word for rock or stone – Petros. And much later, as the Greek was translated into other languages, that became Peter. So we go from Simon to Cephas to Petros to Peter in the course of two sentences here, but it took a while in real time.
ANYWAY–
So in the moment, John the Baptist’s words and Andrew’s words would’ve been a crystal-clear call to everyone who heard them: this man is the Messiah of God, and we all need to pay attention. John wasn’t even mad when his disciples left to follow Jesus, because that was his goal all along.
So what about us? Why is this gospel set up like this, with these words at the forefront?
I think the writer did this, including providing us the translations for a few words that were specific to Aramaic language or Jewish culture, because it allowed them to cram a TON of theological meaning into a much smaller space. These layers of names and titles aren’t just for show, but they create theological categories, baskets if you will, for us to file things away in as we read.
Jesus heals the sick and raises the dead? Makes sense, he’s the son of God.
Jesus forgives sins? Makes sense, he’s the ‘lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.’
Jesus teaches hard truths? Well, they did call him ‘rabbi.’
Jesus flips tables in the temple? Well, the Messiah was going to set things right.
This gospel writer is concerned, from the very beginning, that we know exactly who Jesus is and what to expect from him. This is still chapter one, so there’s no slow-building suspense here.
I mean, the whole thing starts with “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word WAS God.” Talk about a spoiler.
The writer puts all of this up front to make sure we understand that Jesus is not just a nice guy who did some cool things and worked his way into getting really close to God.
Rather, they want to make sure we know that Jesus was not only sent by God, but is truly the incarnation of God. In Jesus, God became human in order to reconcile us to God, to liberate and to save the whole cosmos, to wash away sin and death, to baptize us with the Holy Spirit.
Lamb of God, Son of God, Messiah, Teacher. All of these names and titles, stuffed into 13 verses at the beginning of John’s gospel, are an attempt to prepare our minds and hearts for the shocking things that are coming in the rest of the story – hard truths, impossible miracles like restoring sight to the blind, relational scandal like his conversation with the woman at the well, and even theological scandal, like Jesus claiming to have the authority to forgive sins.
While some, like Andrew and Simon Peter, were ready to follow and be part of Jesus’ story, others found him shocking, and even offensive.
Even today, the idea that God became human is scandalous.
First we have the scandal of baby Jesus, where the eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent God became human in every way, and came into the world as a fragile, defenseless, utterly dependent newborn baby. By most standards, that does not make any sense at all.
But we also have the scandal of a grown-up Jesus, where the frightening thing is not so much that Jesus is connected in a special way to God, but the idea that God is like Jesus.
NT Wright, a New Testament scholar, is a prolific writer and biblical commentator, and he has one book titled “Who Was Jesus?” In there, he writes:
“This is the really scary thing…not that Jesus might be identified with a remote, lofty, imaginary being (any fool could see the flaw in that idea), but that God, the real God, the one true God, might actually look like Jesus…a shrewd Palestinian Jewish villager who drank wine with his friends, agonized over the plight of his people, taught in strange stories and pungent aphorisms, and was executed by the occupying forces. …
To say that Jesus is in some sense God is of course to make a startling statement about Jesus. It is also to make a stupendous claim about God.”
This is the awe-inspiring thing about Jesus: he did not come into the world simply to tell us off, even if we might deserve a good finger-wagging from time to time. God did not take on flesh and move into the neighborhood just to give us a list of instructions and be on God’s merry way.
Rather, when we see Jesus at work in the gospels, we also see the character of God on display: compassionate, patient, slow to anger, hopeful, willing to meet us where we are with what we have, and walk with us from there.
I had to double-check a couple things in the Greek while I was working on this passage, and I came across one word that was not the word I expected it to be.
In Greek, there is a very simple, commonly-used word for ‘see’ – as in, “I see that tree.” That word is ho-rah-oh.
But in verse 38, where Andrew and his friends left John to follow Jesus, it says “When Jesus turned and saw them following…”
That is not h’orao. The word used there instead is they-ow-mai, which has a very different connotation. Instead of simply seeing, that word implies a connection to the person you’re looking at: it means to contemplate, to visit, to admire, to appreciate, to learn by looking. It’s used quite often in the context of shows, where you’re not just looking with your eyes, but engaging in something by watching.
Jesus turned around and saw them, yes. But more than that, he turned around and connected with them, and then invited them to come along on the journey.
The Son of God, the Messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Great Teacher, our Lord and Savior – this is not a god who sits on a throne and glares down at you until you get it right.
This is the God who jumps right in, who looks at you with appreciation, and says “come and see. Let’s go together.”
This is the Jesus we follow, the Jesus we know, the Jesus we love. Thanks be to God! Amen.