Baptism according to John

Hello Class!

Here is a summary of recent class activity, and a preview of the coming weeks!

On Sunday, December 7 we began a rich conversation about baptism, with a view through John's "lense".

John's Gospel, at the outset, makes a particular point of distinguishing between John the Baptist's ministry and Jesus'. This may be because there remained confusion about John's identity and mission. We read several passages that highlighted this issue:

Beginning with John 1:22-34, we saw that John describes the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus in the form of a dove, and remaining there . . . but there is no mention that John the Baptist performed Jesus' baptism. In the synoptic Gospels, by contrast, Jesus receives water baptism from John. It is likely that, by not depicting Jesus being baptized by his cousin, a clear distinction between them is established, and Jesus' preeminence made clear.

In Acts 19:1-7 we read of an encounter with "disciples" who had only been baptized in John's baptism, not Jesus', which is interpreted, in line with John's Gospel, as a 'baptism in the Holy Spirit". After these followers of Jesus learned of this, they received this baptism through the laying on of hands. This supports the idea that, among some early Christians, there needed to be a clear distinction made between the ministry of John (a baptism in water to express repentance) and the ministry of Jesus (a baptism in the Holy Spirit for the purpose of empowerment).

John 16:4ff and 20:19-23 describe the work of the Holy Spirit -- the effect for believers of the "baptism in the Holy Spirit". These effects include comfort, advocacy, a leading into the fuller truth about Christ, peace, and the awesome responsibility to forgive sins.

This week, December 14:

Please review the passages listed above. We will divide into small groups to discuss these portions of Scripture.

On December 21 we will have an activity to summarize what we have studied this fall.

No class on December 28!

On January 4 we will resume our study of the Gospel of John with the story of the wedding at Cana (chapter 2).

As usual, these notes are posted for you and others at www.stpaulpastor.blogspot.com.

God bless & we hope to see you Sunday!

Dan and Laura

Preview to John the "Maverick" Gospel

Hello Everyone

Last week we continued our discussion of hermeneutics and Bible study. Thanks for a good, robust conversation. It's great to be in a group of folks who, though we have various ways of relating to Scripture, none the less unite in our love of Christ and hunger for his guidance. This is Church! We ARE the Body.

OK here's what's up next! By consensus we'll crack open the book sometimes described as "The Maverick Gospel". Which is the Gospel According to John. No, not John McCain, but I just thought of that and find it amusing! Now that's a good way to remember that the Book of John really is unique among the four gospels in the New Testament. As we get into the book I think we'll readily see why.

Some features of John to watch for:

* John often takes time to explain what an incident or teaching means -- keep an eye out for what seem like "interpretive interludes". For me it's kind of like the story is like a movie, and the scene freezes or fades while a narrator explains what just happened.

* John describes Jesus' miraculous acts as "signs", not miracles. This is very important. Also note there will seven "signs", and that all of these, except for the feeding of the multitude, are unique to John.

* The themes of light and dark, and of recognizing Jesus or not recognizing him, are linked.

* John himself is never distinctly identified in the book; he is referred to, generally, as "the disciple whom Jesus loved".

* * *
To get started, please read and ponder chapter 1:1-14, the "prologue" to John. After a short introduction to the book we'll get in small groups and discuss this part using our four guiding questions:
1. What does this Scripture tell me about me
2. What does this Scripture tell me about God
3. What does this Scripture tell me about my relationship with God
4. What will I do?

As always, these notes from class are saved at our class blog, www.stpaulpastor.blogspot.com

Blessings to you all & hope to see you Sunday, 10:00 a.m. in the parlor.

Dan & Laura

Dr. Hermen Eutic

Hi everyone

Great to be with you last Sunday. For those who missed -- we had 18 present, started and ended with prayer and sharing, and began a conversation based on the article Four Concepts for Reference, archived in this blog Thursday September 20 2007.

We talked a good deal about the relationship of "fact" and "truth" in understanding the Bible. The general drift is that what we are most interested in is "truth" in the sense of meaning -- what God is saying to us, and how to apply this to our lives.

I enjoyed our opening community builder -- sharing about the place we lived when we were ten years old, and a significant experience had in that time and place. This connected with the beginning of our discussion, identifying that our different backgrounds have a bearing on what we understand the Bible to be, and how we read and interpret it. To that end I suggested the image of glasses -- that as we all have different prescriptions (and some lucky ones none!) we all "see" the Bible a little bit differently. In assuming this we also assume that we can learn by seeing through each other's "lenses"; though it is vital to understand our own lenses and how they influence our reading of Scripture. We also learned a fancy word, 'hermeneutic', which is a 'principal of interpretation' . . . what we're talking about is that we all have one, and they vary quite a bit from person to person.

We left off at the beginning of the second paragraph of the article; we'll pick up with some discussion of the concepts of "mythos" and "logos".

We'll aim to finish this conceptual discussion on Sunday, then move on to more Bible study!

Hope to see you all this Sunday, November 16. BTW it's "Bible Presentation Sunday", where 3rd and 9th graders and few others will receive wonderful study Bibles -- those are the ones that have been on the counter eavesdropping on our class the last few weeks. So please send prayers of blessing on those books as they soon will, we hope, touch the lives of some of our children and youth.

We appreciate you! Thanks for being in this class and being such a blessing to us.

Dan and Laura

Greetings Bible Study class!

After a week break for the celebration of Trinity's 125th anniversary, we will be back together this Sunday continuing our study of the New Testament. It will be great to be back together again.

The last time we were together we had the opportunity to look at the 6 different gospel accounts of the Feeding of the Multitude (two different versions in Matthew and Mark as well as one each in Luke and John). We had a fun activity that stretched our thinking on the differences found in each of the gospels. We broke into four small groups and were given envelopes with line by line accounts of the Feeding of the Multitude. Each group was to reconstruct the story and try to determine which gospel account they had been given. It was a lively room! All the groups did well and most groups found surprises in terms of which account they were studying. As a large group, we then compared and contrasted the accounts with some great insights.

This week we will continue our study of the Feeding of the Multitude. We will again be dividing into small groups to discuss our four questions:
1. What does the story tell me about me?
2. What does the story tell me about God?
3. What does the story tell me about my relationship with God?
4. What will I do?

The particular passages to read this week are:
Matthew 14:13-21
Mark 6:31-44
Luke 9:10-17
John 6:5-15

See you Sunday!

Pastor Dan and Laura

New Testament Made Easy Feeding the Multitudes I

Hi everyone!

Thanks for an enriching class on October 12. We broke into 3 small groups of six and pondered our four questions, applied to the Beatitudes in Matthew and Luke. Each pod had it's own lively conversations about these teachings from Jesus. At the end of class we heard a few nutshell reports -- one poignant observation was that this passage isn't comfortable in some respect for any of us, and this is a good thing -- Jesus takes us out of our "comfort zone" of complacency, and this is how we grow.

For next week, we'll take a look at the only miraculous event reported in all four Gospels: the feeding of the multitude. There are, actually, two separate feedings of multitudes; let's focus on the "First Event" described in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I am attaching some material from Wikipedia below, which I think is about as concise and helpful as it gets in setting up our study of these sections. For this material and more, go to wikipedia.com and search "Jesus feeding the multitude".

So, to prep for October 19 please read through the material attached, at the least. If you are feeling ambitious, by all means read the separate accounts for yourself and begin pondering. The chapters and verses are included in the first paragraph of wiki notes below.

This story, to me, is one of the most picturesque and compelling in the Bible. I expect we'll have a great time and learn a lot from each other.

I'll miss you all very much on the 19th, as I'll be in Portland on Annual Conference business -- I'm on a committee which oversees our various campus ministries. One of the things I'm sure we'll be talking about is lack of funds . . . kind of like we only have five loaves and two fishes, is what I'm thinking. So maybe this particular story has an application where I'll be! Coincidentally (?) it's also stewardship emphasis day at St. Paul's this Sunday.

God bless

Pastor Dan

* * *
Feeding the multitude (also known as The miracle of the loaves and fish) is the name of two miracles attributed to Jesus, the first of which is reported by all four of the canonical Gospels of the Christian religion (Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15), while the second is reported by Mark (8) and Matthew (15) but neither Luke nor John. The first is the only miracle (apart from the resurrection) present in both the narrative of the Gospel of John and that of the Synoptic Gospels.

First event

According to the narrative of the Gospels, the first event happened after Jesus had been teaching in an area away from the towns, and insisted that the people be fed where they were, rather than sending them to the nearest towns. The Synoptics state that the location was a "desert place" near Bethsaida, while John does not state a specific location, only specifying that it was very grassy.

The canonical Gospels all report that, upon investigating the provisions of the crowd, the disciples were only able to find 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, and the Gospel of John adds that these came from a single boy in the crowd. The Gospels state that Jesus blessed the food, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, who distributed it to the people present - 5000 not counting women and children - all of them being fed. The disciples, therefore, distributed great multitudes of food among the people, much more than the original 5 loaves and 2 fish, implying that Jesus miraculously created more food. The Gospels also state that after the meal was over, the disciples collected the scraps, filling 12 baskets.

. . .

Explanations in the New Testament


The Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha is the site where some Christians believe the miracle to have taken place.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus is described as using the first event to illustrate a lesson to his disciples, arguing that the disciples look for him not because of the miracles, but because they ate the loaves and were filled up, and then instructing the disciples not to seek the meat which perishes but that which endures to everlasting life. This has often been interpreted[citation needed] as a veiled criticism of people who consumed the teachings of Jesus (ate the loaves) but did not value a miraculous nature of Jesus himself.
Mark, however, presents a much more esoteric explanation, implying by emphasis in the text that there is something significant about the numbers involved. After the second event, modern texts of Mark state that the disciples left in a boat for Dalmanutha, but some early texts of Mark state that it was Magdala, home of Mary Magdalene, that they went to, and Matthew states that they went to the similarly named Magadan. Once there, the Pharisees are described as requesting a miracle from Jesus, but Jesus criticises the request, and states that no miraculous sign will be given to that generation. The ancient Gnostics argued that this implied that the resurrection of Jesus was not an actual physical event, since it would otherwise clearly be a miraculous sign, but that it should instead be understood as allegory or doceticly. However, sources not sympathetic to Christianity like Josephus also mention Jesus's ability to perform miracles.
Mark goes on to state that, after this response, Jesus and the disciples leave in a boat and at the other side of the lake discover they have only one loaf of bread with them, to which Jesus responds watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod (Mark 8:15). Mark states that the disciples interpret this as criticism of them for not bringing enough bread, but Jesus soon corrects them, and criticises their lack of understanding. In Mark's gospel Jesus is then described as giving a rather cryptic explanation of the food miracles, by asking the disciples how many baskets of scraps were collected at each event, and then questioning do you still not understand?. This can be viewed as asking how they do not yet understand who he is, given the miracle that has just occurred; this seems appropriate given that Peter's confession of Christ, the turning point in Mark's gospel, occurs just a few verses later.

Sermon on the Mount/Plain October 5 2008

Hi Everyone!

Blessings to you all & hope your Monday is a good beginning for a great week.

Here's what we did Sunday, October 5 in 'New Testament Made Easy':

Welcome to first time folks, Willa, Dave, Carolee, Mary, Laura, and Greg. We missed some of you -- Steve & Melanie (thanks for serving in the nursery!), Mark & Melanie (thinking of you visiting your church family in Tri-cities), Dan & Melinda (crashing from college tour!), and Eric & Angela (in the midst of moving).

The subject for today, and next week, is Jesus' wonderful sermon. This is most often referred to as "The Sermon on the Mount". This is Matthew's version, who places Jesus on a hillside as he preaches to his disciples. Most scholars believe this is a deliberate association with Moses, who brought the gift of God's law from the mountain. Jesus' sermon in Matthew covers three whole chapters, 5, 6, and 7. In Luke the sermon is commonly known as "The Sermon on the Plain", because there Jesus comes down to a level place among his disciples and many people gathered to hear and to be healed. Luke's version is also shorter, taking place in chapter 6 of that book.

We noted some of these differences, and others. In Matthew ('The Rabbi') Jesus is portrayed in the primary role of teacher (Rabbi!) in the tradition of Moses, the most revered teacher of the Israelites and Jews. The focus in Matthew is the meat of the message. He is speaking to the disciples, but in such a way as anyone would overhear. In Luke ('The Chronicler') Jesus is portrayed as someone who positions himself to be more in touch with common people, as he stands not above them but in their midst, and speaks directly to them. In the landscape of Luke, Jesus' presence is the ultimate 'leveler', challenging the class system and oppression of the poor in his day.

These profiles in Matthew and Luke are not contradictory, but do present Jesus seen through different lenses of interpretation.

It is possible that these two sermons represent two different occasions; or that they are constructions by the authors, based on source material at their disposal and written to emphasize their respective understandings of Jesus.

We noted that these sermons are powerful, and hard to digest all at once. As we move toward not only understanding Jesus' message, but putting it into practice, we will have much to think about and some definite challenges.

We moved into studying one portion of the sermons, known commonly as "The Beatitudes", which we think means "blessings". Next week we'll do a bit more comparison/contrast and move into small groups where we can ponder our four questions: 1) What does the passage tell me about me 2) What does the passage tell me about God 3) What does the passage tell me about my relationship with God 4) What will I do?

God bless you all; we love our class and look forward to seeing you every Sunday.

Pastor Dan & Laura

Healing of the Paralytic II

Hi Everyone

Great class last week, with 17 of us Bible studying the story of the healing of the paralytic. Thanks, Laura, for great facilitation. We used most of the time in class for small group discussion, answering our five questions: What does the story tell me about me? What does the story tell me about God? What does the story tell me about my relationship with God? and . . . What will I do?

I appreciated the sharing in our corner; and the opportunity to ponder those questions. For me, the part of the story that kept drawing my eye was when Jesus forgave the man's sins. I'm sure God is telling me I have further to go in fully understanding that amazing love, for myself. What I will seek to do is fully accept that unconditional love; an internal, attitude "do". Relaxing a bit more this week in the reality of God's delight in me (and you), knowing sins within and without me are taken care of by Jesus Christ's love -- what a wonderful experience. Laura and I hope each of you are finding new closeness to Christ as you "do" what God is leading you to do through this Bible study.

For this week -- we will begin a study of Jesus' great message, presented in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, and in Luke.6:17-46. Please read through this material prior to class; no need for in depth study, just a quick scan with an eye to subject matter and any particular differences that easily stand out. We'll begin class with a short overview, comparing the contrasting the versions, then proceed to more in-depth study in smaller groups.

New participants are always welcome, so feel free to invite anyone you may think would enjoy and benefit from this class and study.

As always, class notes are also posted at www.stpaulpastor.blogspot.com. Feel free also to refer your friends, family and acquaintances to this site, whether or not they can or wish to come to class on Sunday. By the way, all the notes from last year's study "The Old Testament Made Easy" are also archived and available at this blog site.

God bless & look forward with excitement to being with you on Sunday

Dan and Laura