Commentary

14 Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15 The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?”

“Not until halfway through the festival…”
1. Jesus came to the Festival of Tabernacles as a devout Jew following God’s commands, not as a public figure intending to do teachings or miracles, but he could not tolerate hearing falsehoods being taught.
2. One can imagine all of the different sects of Judaism there that might have frustrated Jesus to the point that he had to speak up:
  1. The Sadducees and their denial of the afterlife.
  2. The Pharisees and their hyper-fixation on the law.
  3. The Essenes and their ritualistic apocalypticism.
  4. The Zealots and their anti-Roman fervor.
  5. Some would-be political messiah trying to drum up support.
3. Truth was so important to Jesus that he had to speak, even when the world longed for him to be silent.
“How did this man get such learning…”
1. Jesus’s teachings were profound to the crowd. Given their location, there’s no doubt that they had heard other highly-educated rabbis speak, but Jesus’s teachings seem to have made all others look like little children in comparison.
2. Unlike other rabbis in his era like Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai, Jesus did not cite others at length. He taught with authority because he was God, the ultimate source of truth. Who could he have possibly quoted that would add even an ounce of authority to the divine “I am?”
3. Some did seem concerned that Jesus did not possess a traditional rabbinic education. Typically, there was a lengthy apprenticeship (up to ten years) under an established rabbi.
4. There can be no doubt that education is valuable, but the purpose of any education is to find truth, which is more important than any formal credentials or accolades. Jesus himself was the truth. Nothing could add to what he already embodied.

16 Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18 Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. 19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”

Jesus proves that his knowledge is legitimate in three different ways

Scripture: “My teaching is not my own…”
1. The Israelites had the word of God with them in the Old Testament Scriptures. To verify Jesus’s teachings, they could literally check to see if Christ’s words were his own, or if they aligned with the word of God.
2. Early Christians constantly pointed to the Old Testament for evidence of God’s coming work in Christ.
  1. In his famous Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr (a Christian) debates a Jew named Trypho and uses the Old Testament extensively to persuade him of Christ’s divinity.
  2. “If I undertook to prove this by doctrines or arguments of man, you should not bear with me. But if I quote frequently Scriptures, and so many of them, referring to this point, and ask you to comprehend them, you are hard-hearted in the recognition of the mind and will of God.” -Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Ch. 68.

1. 1. The ultimate authority for teaching is Scripture, not any degree or certification
    1. “In the Bible we have a perfect library, and he who studies it thoroughly will be a better scholar than if he had devoured the Alexandrian Library entire”. -Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to my Students, Lecture XIII.
Action: “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God.”
1. He tied knowledge to lived experience, asserting real knowledge changes one’s life. In embodying his teachings, you could feel the power of God.
2. Many people carry strange pet conspiracy theories about the world, but these theories go unacted on. They aren’t real enough to affect a life, and so they are not really real at all.”
3. Choosing to pray, to read Scripture, and to ask God for help are often significant moments where someone who is only theorizing about being a Chrisitan sees the power of God. Living like a Chrisitan shows the power of God in your life.
4. Wesley famously emphasized the value of living the will of God to understand it better. In his commentary, he notes on this verse: “This is a universal rule, with regard to all persons and doctrines. He that is thoroughly willing to do it, shall certainly know what the will of God is.”
Personal Witness- “He who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth. There is nothing false about him.”
1. Jesus’s motivations are selfless. He’s putting himself at risk to teach, rather than others who taught for personal glory.
2. Christ’s life was so blameless and obviously beyond reproach. He’s so confident in this fact that he asks the crowd why they dare to attack him when they all break the law.

20 “You are demon-possessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”

21 Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. 22 Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. 23 Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? 24 Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”

“You are demon-possessed…Who is trying to kill you?”

1. In this particular instance of Scripture, “are you demon possessed,” might translate to something like, “Are you crazy?” They’re saying that Jesus is wildly inconsistent with reality.
2. In verse 13, they deliberately stayed quiet about Jesus because they were afraid of the leaders that wanted to kill him. They know.
3. The crowd would rather be comfortable than brave. Openly admitting that the leaders are corrupt would be life-shattering, so they claim Jesus is crazy rather than affirming what their hearts know is true.
“…you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath.”

1. Circumcision is a ritual that does a small amount of damage to someone to keep the law of God. This was allowable on a Sunday.
2. Jesus healed someone on a Sunday and got in trouble. If a small amount of pain is tolerable for God’s sake on the Sabbath, why is a miraculous healing inappropriate? The logic is inconsistent.
3. “By this example he defends his action, although he does not merely argue from what is similar, but draws a comparison between the greater and the less. There was this similarity between circumcision and the cure of the paralytic, that both were works of God; but Christ maintains that the latter is more excellent, because the benefit of it extends to the whole man. Now if he had merely cured the man of bodily disease, the comparison would not have been applicable; for circumcision would have greater excellence as to the cure of the soul. Christ, therefore, connects the spiritual advantage of the miracle with the outward benefit granted to the body; and on this account he justly prefers to circumcision the entire cure of a man.” -John Calvin, Commentary on John, Ch. 7, 188.

25 At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? 26 Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? 27 But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.”

28 Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, 29 but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.”

30 At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. 31 Still, many in the crowd believed in him. They said, “When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man?”

“Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah?”
1. Some in Jerusalem wondered if the authorities believed Jesus was the Messiah since he spoke publicly unhindered.
2. They dismissed this based on a folk belief that the Messiah’s origin would be unknown, while they knew Jesus was born in Bethlehem, failing to search the Scriptures, which do prophesy his birthplace (Micah 5:2 )
“Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from…”
1. “Therefore Christ asks in a tone of sarcasm: “‘You know where I come from? How well you know it! For because you do not know him who sent me, how could you know me and know where I come from? To be sure, you know that I was to come from Nazareth, from Galilee and Judea, and that is true; but that is not enough to know about my origin.’” -Martin Luther, The Fifth Sermon on John 7, (1531).
“no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.”
1. When the crowd finally grasped beyond a doubt that Jesus was climbing to be the Son of God from Heaven, they dashed to seize him! Their logic had failed at every turn, and so they resorted to force. There was no room for convenient ignorance about his claimed title and purpose.
“Still, many in the crowd believed in him.”
1. “There was a certain crowd of people which quickly saw its own sickness, and without delay recognized His remedy.” -Augustine of Hippo, Tractate 31, 7.

32 The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering such things about him. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him.

33 Jesus said, “I am with you for only a short time, and then I am going to the one who sent me. 34 You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.”

35 The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we cannot find him? Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? 36 What did he mean when he said, ‘You will look for me, but you will not find me,’ and ‘Where I am, you cannot come’?”

“Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks…”
1. The leaders ensure that willful ignorance returns to the crowd. Despite Jesus talking about divine realms, they immediately pivot the conversation back to the earthly and interpret a meaning that isn’t at all rational in the conversation.
2. “The Lord was indeed about to go to the Gentiles, not by His bodily presence, but still with His feet. What were His feet? Those which Saul desired to trample upon by persecution, when the Head cried out to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ (Acts 9:4).” -Augustine of Hippo, Tractate 31, 7.

Full Transcript

Last week, we saw Jesus getting ready to go to the Festival of Tabernacles. He was going down to Jerusalem, and this week he is there. He is not going in public ministry; that is not his goal. He is not going there to officially try to teach, show off, or do miracles. He is just going to be an observant Jew. God said to go to the Festival of Tabernacles at Jerusalem, and so that is exactly what he did. Now, we are picking up here, and he is going to teach because he just can’t help himself.

As we go through, really pay attention to knowledge in this passage. I think a lot of people don’t necessarily associate knowledge with faith. They kind of think of them as different, separate things. People don’t often recognize that Jesus was brilliant. It is easy to imagine Jesus as a moral teacher—someone who came to teach people to be kind and to change the way they act. That is true. Sometimes people think he was just a peasant, a carpenter, a guy who was really folksy, and that is not necessarily untrue either. But this is also the one through whom everything was made; the whole world was made by him. He was brilliant. He knew it all because he made it all. There is no greater authority than him. Pay attention to the way he addresses knowledge throughout this passage, and the way he weaves it in with faith in a constructive way that I think can help a lot of us.

Verse 14 says, “Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach.” I think this is kind of a funny little passage, just the way it is worded. It is almost like saying he didn’t go there to teach, but would you believe it? He made it halfway through the festival before he got up there. They are surprised it took him that long. Jesus may not have come here to teach, but he could not stand by and listen as some of the nonsense being told at the temple went on.

This festival was on the temple mount. There would have been thousands of people from all over the place. Anyone who was a devout Jew would go to Jerusalem for this festival. While they were there, they would have encountered some of the religious sects of this timeframe who served as priests at this location, like the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the like. We see Jesus argue with the Pharisees all the time, so we will look at the Sadducees this time just as a thought exercise.

Let’s say there was a Sadducee priest there—and there certainly would have been. Imagine Jesus overhearing a conversation where someone goes up to this priest and says, “Excuse me, I just want to know how I can get to heaven.” The Sadducees didn’t believe in life after death, so they probably would have said something like, “Oh, you sweet summer child. There is no heaven. You’ve been taught incorrectly. Let me help explain how things really are. We’re just trying to live well in this life. Don’t worry about heaven.” Imagine Jesus standing over there, his eye twitching because he knows there is a heaven, he has seen it, and he is from there. Hearing incorrect teaching being taught to the people he came to help was more than he could bear. He makes it halfway through before he gets up and starts teaching, essentially saying, “All right, I’m going to have to set some of you straight because there are some things being said that are not so.”

Verse 15 says the Jews were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?” Notice first off that Jesus was a good teacher. The things he was saying were profound. The priests at the temple were no slouches; these were some of the foremost intellectuals of the entire society. They were spiritual leaders, but they were also responsible for the collective wisdom of their culture. The Greeks had their philosophers. Today, we have college professors as our foremost intellectuals. In Israel, they had the priests. If you had a question, the priests in Jerusalem were some of the most highly educated people you could possibly ask.

Jesus starts teaching at the temple and people listen to him, and he makes the leaders look like little children. Imagine if you were at a college lecture and one of the students stood up and said, “Professor, I think you’ve got a few details wrong. Let me just walk you through this.” Then they start writing formulas on the board, and sure enough, they know infinitely more than the professor does. That is what it was like. Jesus is brilliant. His teachings are profound in a way that others’ are not, and the way he teaches is different, too.

In this timeframe, the way rabbis taught was by pointing to all of the people who came in that tradition before them. If you were listening to a rabbi, they would say, “Well, on this matter Rabbi Hillel says this, but you also need to keep in mind Rabbi Shammai, who has a disagreeing opinion and would say this.” They were showing that they knew everyone who came before them and understood the conversation as it had gone thus far in their culture. That is not a bad way to teach. I do that. This morning I have a quote from Martin Luther for you. Why? Because he knows more than I do. I am not the authority. There are smarter, wiser people than me whom I lean on to try to make sure I am going in the right direction, and I try to show you when I am doing that.

Jesus didn’t need to do that. Jesus didn’t need to name-drop all of these other people he had learned from because he was God. He could teach with authority. He didn’t need to say, “Well, on this matter Rabbi Shammai says this, and Rabbi Hillel says this.” He could just say, “This is the way it is. Source: me. I’m telling you, that’s the way it is.” He taught with authority, and the things he said immediately rang true to people.

You see their response. They are amazed, but they also ask, “How did this man get such learning without being taught? Where are his credentials?” There was a formal education process to become a rabbi. You would need to apprentice under a pre-existing rabbi, a process that could take up to 10 years. If you really wanted to become a rabbi, you found a good one, asked to become their apprentice, and served under them until they felt you were ready. It could take a long time. Jesus did not do that. He had no formal education.

I am not one to deride education; there is no glory in ignorance. But at the same time, education is intended for a purpose. You need it to know what is true. That is the goal. If someone has 18 diplomas on their wall but they think one plus one is three, it doesn’t matter what their accolades are or how many years they spent studying. You are not looking for someone who has good credentials; you are looking for someone who can teach you what is true. Jesus didn’t have a formal education, but he knew what was true, which is infinitely more important.

Jesus shows the crowd that his knowledge and teaching are legitimate with three moves in this coming paragraph. He starts, “My teaching is not my own; it comes from the one who sent me.” They are wondering where he is getting this stuff, who he learned from, and how they can trust him. Jesus clarifies, “I am not teaching you things that are just my random opinion. I am teaching you what God says on this. That’s what I’m interested in. Here’s what God says. You don’t believe me? Go look at the scriptures. Go pore through what has been recorded by the prophets, look at what I’m saying, and match it up to see if it makes sense.”

He immediately invites them to do that, and that is the way many early Christians would evangelize. You have to keep in mind that the New Testament took some time to put together. After Jesus ascended into heaven, it is not like everything was right there. The last book, Revelation, was written sometime just before the year 100. There was a period of years where the documents were not even completed, much less canonized. What did Christians do before those were available? They would use the Old Testament. They would say, “Let’s open this up, and I’m going to show you how this is all about Jesus. Here’s this passage in Isaiah; Jesus fulfilled that. Here’s a passage in Jeremiah; this is about Jesus. Here’s a passage in Malachi; this is about Jesus.” They showed that Jesus was not some random new thing. He was doing exactly what was in line with what God had foretold. His whole ministry was not his own thing; it was what God had promised from the beginning, and you could check the scriptures to be sure of that. Jesus didn’t just want to teach his own opinions; he was teaching what God had proclaimed, and he invited people to verify that.

That makes me think a little bit about those of you who have been in my office before. I have my diploma hanging up behind my desk from Duke University. It feels wrong to mention the Blue Devil during a sermon in church, so I won’t, but it was a good experience. I hesitated before I hung that on the wall, though. Ultimately, I did it because when you pay that much for a piece of paper, you want to put it somewhere. It is expensive paper.

At the end of the day, that is not the cornerstone of my ministry. I don’t want people to listen to me just because I have a fancy paper on my wall. There are a lot of other people who have fancy papers on their walls; some of what they teach is good, and some of what they teach is not good. Ultimately, sound doctrine and good knowledge do not come from a random person’s teaching just because they have a diploma. It comes from scripture. Insofar as knowledge is rooted in scripture, it is good. That is the source of real authority when you are teaching, not a diploma. Good though it may be, and though it may indicate that you have studied, the truth of legitimacy is rooted here. That makes all the difference: knowing that teaching is not just coming from some random person, but is rooted in what God said.

I think that is true for all disciplines, too. It is not just a pastor thing. Every discipline imaginable comes from God. What is math but the logic that underpins God’s creation? What is biology but an expression of the way he created everything? What is agriculture but the continuing work that was laid out in Genesis when God gave Adam the Garden of Eden to take care of? All of these pieces of knowledge are not just random pieces of trivia that don’t matter. All of them are things that were set forth by God when he made all of this, and all of them point to him. The end of every piece of knowledge points back to God. Insofar as it does that, it is good knowledge. Insofar as it doesn’t, it is trivia and nothing more.

Jesus says, “You want to see if my teachings are legitimate? Check them against God. See if they’re in line. See if my teachings align with the Scriptures.”

Then he moves on to a second point: “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” Notice the way he is moving here. The second way he invites verification is by looking at your actions. He knows that knowledge is not just random theory floating out there in the ether. Real knowledge is something that is lived, something that makes a difference in our lives. That is real knowledge.

Sometimes people divorce those things entirely. They have these wild theories, but then you look at their lives and they live the same as anybody else. I know some people who have wildly conspiratorial ideas. They have crazy theories, but they live just like everyone else. They get you one-on-one and say, “Did you know that the pigeons are government drones sent to do surveillance on us?” and you just say, “Okay.” Then you get back in public, and they live just like anybody else. They have these weird pet theories, but they don’t live any differently. If they really believed that pigeons were government drones, wouldn’t they try to smack one out of the sky? Then they would see, “Oh, shoot. This isn’t a robot. I was wrong; I just killed a random pigeon.” They could verify this if they tried to live it, but they don’t. To them, it is just a theory, a fun experiment to think about in their spare time.

If you really believe something, it changes the way you live because you can test it. You can see: Is this true? Does this work? Is it honest? Is it real? Jesus says it is the same thing with his doctrine. He says if you want to understand it, if you want to get it, live it. Try to please God and see if what I am teaching is true.

I can personally verify that. I know when I was still a sort of “proto-Christian,” I started to think about Christianity but thought the Bible had a lot wrong with it. I thought Jesus was a nice guy, but wrong about a fair amount—though still pretty admirable in the grand scheme of things. I thought there was a bunch of stuff that made no sense. Prayer? Nonsense. It doesn’t work. Scripture? Full of errors. It couldn’t possibly be worth too much of my time. What changed me was trying it. Jesus said I should do this, so I thought maybe I should try it and see what happens. I started studying scripture more, and it wasn’t what I thought it was; there was more to it than I understood. I tried praying. It didn’t make any sense to me, and I thought it was crazy. How would closing my eyes, folding my hands, and saying some things make a difference? But I tried it. It was not what I thought it was; there was more to this than I realized. The more I tried to live what I found in the scriptures, the more I found them to be true. By trying to live something, you can see if it makes sense.

Jesus invites people to live in a God-honoring way, and you will understand his doctrine more than ever. It will blossom right in front of you. If you have some part of the Bible, some book, or some doctrine that you think is crazy—where you like the rest of it, but not that one because it is just out there—maybe a way to start making some headway is to look at your life. Look at your life and ask, “Am I trying to honor God? Where are the places that I’m not willing to trust God yet? And what would it look like to start living in a way that honors God?” If you address that sin, sometimes when you come back to those things that made no sense before, it is like a veil has been lifted. You will understand them in ways that you didn’t think were possible previously.

Jesus began by saying, “Look at what God said. See if what I’m saying lines up.” Then he moves on and says, “Try to live a righteous life. You will see that my teachings are true.” Now he moves to his third and final validation that his knowledge is legitimate. He says in verse 18, “Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth.” There is nothing false about him.

Jesus says, “Look at my personal witness. Look at my life. See if my life is worthy of your time.” He says it pretty boldly. He points out that there are a lot of people out there who are just trying to sell you something. There are a lot of people who want to get famous and build their own careers, so they are trying to convince you of something for their own sake. Jesus, on the other hand, says, “I have no reason to be doing this unless I cared about you. I am at risk talking to you here. The leaders hate me. They’re waiting for something like this, but I need to tell you this. I am teaching you selflessly. Look at my life! There is nothing false about me!”

Can you imagine saying that in front of a group of people? If you are full of it and just making things up, someone is going to say something, right? Can you imagine if I stood up and said, “You can trust me because I’ve never done a thing wrong in my life”? If my wife were here, she would be able to tell you a few things. I do not have a perfect track record. Jesus says he does: “Look at my life.”

Then he compares and contrasts that with the people who are in charge. He says in verse 19, “Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law.” You are listening to these people who teach you that the law is good enough, and that if you can keep the law well enough, that is going to be good for you. How is it working? Are you keeping it? Are they keeping it? No. They are living lives that fall short, but you are listening to them, while I am living a life beyond repute. What are you doing? Why are you listening to them and not me? Why are you trying to kill me?

The crowd responds in verse 20, which can be a little confusing for some people. They say, “You are demon-possessed! Who’s trying to kill you?” In context here, it clearly means, “You’re crazy! What are you talking about? No one’s trying to kill you.” Part of what is confusing is that if we look back at verse 13, just a little way ahead, we know that the crowd was quiet about Jesus because they knew that the leaders were trying to kill him. They didn’t want to talk about him because they didn’t want to get in trouble.

How do we resolve this? There are a couple of different ways. The most popular view, which is not what I agree with but is what a lot of commentators accept, is that the Feast of Tabernacles drew Jews from all over the world. They were all over the Roman Empire—people from the furthest reaches of Latin-speaking areas and Greek-speaking areas. Not all of them had heard of Jesus. A lot of them had never heard of him before because they weren’t from there. When they see this guy saying, “They’re trying to kill me,” they are just confused. It is legitimate ignorance: “No one’s trying to kill you! You’re up there talking, and no one’s doing anything!”

That is possible. However, I think a better way to resolve it is to acknowledge that the crowd is simply being inconsistent. Rather than attributing it to them being from out of town, why don’t we just acknowledge they are being hypocritical? They were afraid to talk about Jesus earlier because they knew people were trying to kill him. When Jesus points out that the system is rotten, that he is teaching truth, and that the leaders are teaching falsehoods, he asks, “Why are you okay with this?” What do they do? They go back to what is comfortable: “Who’s trying to kill you? Our leaders are trustworthy. You’re crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Is that true? No.

How much would it totally shatter the lives they were living if they acknowledged, “Yeah, the leaders are corrupt. They are on a campaign of censorship. The things they’re teaching are wrong, and this random rabbi they’re persecuting is right”? That would change everything. That would be a deeply uncomfortable, life-shattering truth to accept. So some of them say what is comfortable: “Nah, I’m pretty sure it’s okay. Pretty sure it’s fine. They’re fine. You’re crazy, Jesus. It couldn’t possibly be true.” They know it is true; they just don’t want to confront it.

In verse 21, Jesus says to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry at me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances. Instead, judge correctly.”

You are comfortable with the status quo. You are comfortable with the way things have always been, and that is all you want. Think it through. Think logically about what is happening here. Look at this: your leaders will circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. According to the book of Leviticus, a boy should be circumcised on the eighth day after he is born. If that fell on the Sabbath, that was the eighth day, so they would do it. Does the process of circumcision hurt? Sure, it is certainly not a pleasant one. They hurt someone on a small scale. Jesus is not saying the ritual is unhelpful or illegitimate; he is just pointing out that it hurts. He says, “You’re willing to hurt someone on that day, but when I healed someone’s whole body on the Sabbath…”

He is talking about when he healed the man by the pool at Bethesda, which was the last time he was in Jerusalem. That act made the authorities very angry at him. He says, “The last time I did this, everyone was angry at me. So it’s okay to hurt someone on the Sabbath, but not to heal them? Does that make sense? Is that logical?” No. Stop judging by what is comfortable, by what is easy, and by what you are used to. Instead, judge correctly.

He turns it back over to the people, and they are almost on the cusp of something here. At that point, the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they’re trying to kill? Here he is speaking publicly, and they’re not saying a word to him. Have the authorities concluded that he’s the Messiah? But we know where this man is from. When the Messiah comes, there will be no one who will know where he’s from.”

This was a common folk teaching in that timeframe. There were a lot of people who believed this, and there are small scriptural passages that hint at it. There are verses in the book of Malachi and the book of Isaiah that say things like suddenly the Messiah appeared and went about his business. They took those passages to mean that you can’t know where the real Messiah is from because he just drops out of heaven at the temple, does his thing, and that is it. They believed that was how it really worked. If they had sincerely searched the Scriptures, they would know that is not the case because the prophecies about Jesus being born are right there. If they had really looked, they would know that everything laid out in Scripture—the whole of Jesus’s incarnation and life—is also there in a way that resolves that tension. But they didn’t look. They were comfortable with what was normal, with the standard, and with what other people told them the Bible said. They didn’t feel the need to look for themselves: “I hear the Scriptures say this. That’s fine. That’s close enough. I think that’s probably right.”

Jesus responds, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. But I am not here on my own authority. He who sent me is true. You do not know him, but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.”

Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, gave some really good insight on this. He says there is sarcasm in Christ’s voice as he asks, “You know me and you know where I am from, do you? You don’t know the one who sent me, so how could you really know me and where I am from?” Jesus is telling them, “You don’t know nearly as much as you think you know. I am from heaven. My Father is God. That’s where I am really from.”

At this point, people know what he is saying. This is not lost on them. The claims he is making—the claim to not only be the Messiah but the Son of God from heaven—cause the alarm bells in their heads to go off. Verse 30 says, “At this they tried to seize him.” They tried to reason with him, and they repeatedly found different ways to remain comfortable, but Jesus has not let them stay comfortable. Now that their logic has failed, they resort to force. They tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come. Still, many in the crowd believed in him. They said, “When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man?” There are some people who look at Jesus, listen to him, reason through his teachings, and realize they cannot imagine someone better than this. They can’t imagine a Messiah coming who somehow does all of this even better. This is the best it could possibly be; he must be right, in spite of the fact that most of the crowd is furious.

Now the leaders get involved. From here on out, we see the leaders step in. Verse 32 says, “The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering such things about him. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him.”

Jesus said, “I am with you only for a short time, and then I am going to the one who sent me. You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.”

The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we cannot find him? Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? What did he mean when he said, ‘You will look for me and you will not find me; and where I am you cannot come’?”

This immediately follows his clear claim: “I’m from God. I am from heaven,” which people literally tried to attack him for because they found it blasphemous. Following this up, he tells the leaders that he is only here for a short time, that he is going back to where he came from, and they won’t be able to follow. The leaders are even more ignorant than the people. The people were uncomfortable and frustrated by what he said, but they knew what it meant. The leaders seem unable to even make sense of it. They ask, “What is he talking about? Do you think he’s going on vacation to Greece? Is that what he means?” No, that obviously isn’t what he was talking about. Most of us in this room can see pretty plainly what he is saying, and most of the people in the crowd could see it, too. But the leaders are so attached to the way they think things ought to be that they are not willing to reexamine them or sincerely listen.

Looking at the way different people reacted takes us back to what we were discussing a couple of weeks ago regarding Augustine and Faustus. Why wasn’t Faustus able to see the truth clearly? Because he did not come sincerely to Jesus. If you want to understand Jesus, a level of sincerity is necessary. In this passage, we have a crowd where some people just wanted what was easy and comfortable. They wanted the same old routine. Jesus is teaching this profound, incredible truth, but they don’t want it; they just want what they know. We have to avoid that mindset, because if you just go with what is easy and familiar, you will miss the Messiah.

Then there are the leaders—people who are so attached to their pet theories on how things work that even when they are taught basic truths directly and clearly, they can’t make heads or tails of it. When you get too attached to your own ideas and your own teachings, you miss what the Messiah is bringing.

There is only a small group of people in the crowd who listen to Jesus and think it through. They ask: Is what he is teaching compatible with scripture? Is it a pure expression of what God has said? Yes. As I live a righteous life, does it make sense with what this guy says? Yes. As I continue to try to work through this, does this make sense? How could there be someone better than this? They look at his behavior, and it is beyond reproach. Here is someone who embodies what God is doing. How could there be a Messiah more loving than this? How could there be one who works greater miracles than this? How could there be a Messiah better than this? They sincerely listen to Jesus, and they find the Messiah.

As we continue to look at the questions we bring, the things that confuse us, the knowledge we have, and the knowledge we hope to gain, bring it sincerely before Jesus. Listen to him, and you will find the truth of his teachings. Amen.

Shall We Suffer?

March 25, 2024 ~ Vincent

This entry is part of a series called “The Gospel in a Postmodern World.” Learn more about the series here.
Preached on November 27, 2022
Scriptures: Genesis 32:22-32, 1 Thess. 5:12-24

Hedonism has a pretty bad reputation. Just hearing the word brings certain debaucherous ideas to mind. Hedonism is eating the most expensive, decadent chocolate cake you can find. It’s wild partying with every illicit substance imaginable. It’s unbridled sensuality. Hedonism is wild living without any thought of future consequence. And that’s more or less what the word actually means anymore. Someone that calls you a hedonist isn’t trying to give you a compliment. But what did it mean? Because it used to mean something more. It used to be a legitimate school of philosophy, and its teachings are more compelling than you’d probably think.

Let’s look at what may be the most famous hedonist philosopher: an ancient Greek man by the name of Epicurus. Judging from our modern associations, you’d think Epicurus was some kind of wild party boy. His life must have had a lot of sex, drugs, and the ancient equivalent of rock-and-roll. Not so, actually. Epicurus was a really decent guy. His life wasn’t customized by wild excess. It was simple. He loved good friends, rural living, basic cooking, and that was about it. He was a simple man with a simple philosophy: life is hard because we’re all too busy being afraid of losing what we have. The solution? Enjoy the little things. Spend your time doing what actually matters and avoid wild excess, because if you get used to fancy things, you’ll spend your whole life being afraid that you’ll lose them. Avoid the fear of loss, seek the simple pleasures, and you’ll be happy.

You’ll notice that there’s not a lot of room for God in that equation. If simple pleasures are the route to happiness, who needs God? To be fair to Epicurus, he actually does include God in his writings. He doesn’t say a lot about him, but he includes him. You can see right here in your bulletin a quote I pulled from Epicirus’s writings:

“First believe that God is a living being immortal and happy, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of humankind; and so of him anything that is at agrees not with about him whatever may uphold both his happiness and his immortality.”
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

What two words does he use to describe God? Immortal and happy. God is happy! Don’t worry about him! He’s up there, doing his thing. At the end of the day, he’s a happy guy that wants you to be happy too.

Can you imagine if Epicirus was around today? Think about a message like that: God wants YOU to be happy. I think he’d sell quite a few books. Maybe get an appearance on Oprah. He’d be a big deal!

But we have to ask ourselves, why didn’t his philosophy endure through the ages? If the message resonates today, but most of us have never heard of this guy and his school of philosophy, what banished him to obscurity? Well, Christianity. Some of the people that denounced Epicirus’s teachings were Christian. Augustine thrashed it in his writings. Justin Martyr and Tatian did the same long before him. Christians generally saw Epicureans as the worst available school of philosophy. And why?

Because the happiness that Epicurus was selling wasn’t true happiness.

True happiness isn’t about managing to lower your expectations to the point that they’re no longer relevant. It’s not about maximizing your pleasure. It’s not about avoiding fear. It’s not about the pursuit of dopamine.

Happiness, true happiness,the kind that lasts longer than an afternoon, isn’t about pleasure. It’s about fulfillment. Being what we’re supposed to be! Doing what we’re supposed to do! And that’s why life isn’t just one long pleasure trip. There are other emotions besides pleasure-based happiness. There’s sadness, fear, obsession and grief. There’s panic, courage, annoyance and joy. There are a million different emotions under the sun! And all of them are on the table while we’re pursuing fulfillment. And all of them are good. All of them are important.

Last week, we spoke of how our engagements with history have grown far too cynical. The inclination to view the world through the lens of power has made the whole of history little more than wolves and sheep, tyrants and the oppressed. That’s too shallow. Christianity says that there’s more to the world around us than the selfish pursuit of power. There’s love. We Chirstians know that the world is driven by more than selfishness. God himself is love, and he’s in this world at work.

If last week was about saying that the readings of the world around us have grown too shallow, this week is affirming that our readings of ourselves have suffered the same fate. We have also become far too shallow in our own eyes. Mind you, the readings of history focused on what was ugly, whereas the readings of our lives tend to focus on what’s good. We focus on pleasure. We’d like more money. We’d like more stuff. We’d like fewer jerks in the spaces around us and more friends. When God gives us anything other than pleasure, it tends to be frustrating. Why God? What did I do to you? We define success within our lives by the acquisition of pleasure. We long for more dopamine. Most of us have become functional hedonists. But that does a great disservice to what life really is. When we go through hard things, that’s when we tend to grow the most. God isn’t trying to make us happy. God is trying to make us holy.

Our first Scripture reading today, Genesis 32:22-32, is a famous one that points to this exactly: Jacob wrestling with God. And what a weird story it is! This is the Old Testament at its finest! Let’s look at this a little:

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.

First off, why is any of this happening? Jacob is going to see his brother Essau. When he was a kid, he stole Essau’s blessing and ran away. All these years later, things aren’t going so well. He has to go back to Esau for help, and he has no idea how Esau is going to respond. Is he going to welcome him? Begrudgingly allow him to stay? Chase him off? Kill him? Here, he’s crossing a river. This is the point of no return. If Esau decides to attack Jacob and his people, they can’t just retreat if there’s a river at his back. But God told Jacob to go to Esau. So this is where he has to make that choice. Does he really trust God? This is the last stop. There’s no turning back after the River Jabbok. And he crosses it.

So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.

Notice that Jacob doesn’t start to wrestle with God. He’s not out there picking a fight. The Bible says that God picked a fight with Jacob. What did God want from him? Everything. Jacob is a character that’s constantly scheming. He’s manipulative. He’s clever. He usually plans on figuring things out for himself, rather than waiting around for God. And how has that gone for him historically? Not great. He’s won a few, but he’s lost more. This is a man that has to go back to the brother he cheated to beg for help, for crying out loud, he’s not in a good place. His self-reliance has gotten him nowhere. And now? Now comes God. And God wants the last shred of faithfulness that Jacob has been holding back on.

A really common reading of this passage is to say that this figure is a pre-incarnation of Jesus. Some people say that anytime we see God in a human form, that’s Jesus. I’m not a hundred percent on that one, but I think it’s really interesting at minimum. How often have we wrestled with Jesus? How often have we held out because we feel we can figure things out on our own? Until Jesus hunts us down and wrestles that last bit of pride out of us.

When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.

Things look pretty evenly matched there for a while. Both men are struggling. Jacob is doing well. The mystery man is doing well (remember, we don’t know it’s God just yet). Nobody can quite get the edge over the other. And then? Out of nowhere, boom! God touches Jacob’s hip and changes everything. The fight isn’t as even as it looked. God was always in control. With one little touch, he could have won at any point. A good reminder that no matter how things look, God is in control. It might look like he’s evenly matched, but it’s all just a show. God wins. God always wins.

Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

At this point, it’s over. Jacob can’t win with his wounded leg. The man basically says, “Hey, move on. It’s over.” But Jacob doesn’t move on. He may be defeated, but he’s not letting go.

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

The clever Jacob. The man who always relied on his abilities. His cleverness. Has been humbled. He’s held on for what? God’s blessing. He’s now someone that seeks only to be blessed by God. This is a turning point for him. He’s no longer good ‘ol crafty Jacob. He’s someone new.

The man asked him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he answered.

Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[a] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”

But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.

Some people like to say this whole fight was metaphorical; just something representative of the inner drama that’s going on in Jacob’s mind during this challenging period. I don’t think it is. Because during the fight, God messes up Jacob’s leg. And at the end of the fight, Jacob walks with a limp from then on. It’s almost like a movie: there’s a really weird sequence where something absurd happens and after it ends, the main character looks back on it and thinks, “I must have been dreaming. There’s no WAY that actually happened!” But then they realize that they have a bruise or a scratch of something in their pocket from the time in question and they realize that maybe… maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe something bizarre just happened.

Jacob wrestles God. And he’s never the same after that. Physically. Mentally. Spiritually. It was a painful experience. He bears the scars from that battle for the rest of his life. But somehow, a Jacob that has experienced frustration, fear, desperation, and injury is better than the Jacob that we knew. Through suffering, Jacob grows. And hasn’t that happened to you?

Our second Scripture, 1 Thess. 5:12-24, is a little more direct. Paul writes:

Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other.

Here, he’s talking about Church leadership. Not just pastors, but others in your community that are leaders. Leadership team members. Choir directors. Food pantry operators. All kinds of leadership within the church. And how does he describe them? People that work hard. People that care for others when times are hard. People that scold others when the behavior within the community becomes inappropriate. None of that is fun. Who wants to work hard, deal with weird situations, and scold people that are out of line? Nobody. That’s the worst! But Paul says, those people that are putting up with all that nonsense? Give them extra respect. They’re going through all that for you. The true leader is a servant that suffers on the behalf of others. THAT’S what makes them worthy of note. Not because they have a fancy title or a nice degree or whatever other nonsense we come up with.

And now, Paul turns to everyone else and says:

And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

In other words, be like your leadership is supposed to be! Work hard. Don’t turn a blind eye when someone is being disruptive. Take care of people that need help. The work that leadership does isn’t just for leaders. They may be the one that takes on a greater share institutionally, but that’s EVERYONE’S responsibility. Everyone has a responsibility to do the tough stuff! And he ends with the worst part: Don’t pay back evil for evil. When someone does wrong, it’s natural to want to get them back. It’s not just natural, it’s fair! It’s reasonable! But we’re not supposed to do that. Be better than fair. Be merciful. Take the high road.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

GIVE THANKS IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. It’s easy to give thanks on Thanksgiving. Most of us have a nice meal in front of us. A bunch of family around us. Who couldn’t be thankful on a day like that? But when our thanks is just driven by that, it’s just pleasure-based happiness. It’s easy. Anyone can get that. It’s meaningless. It’s here today and gone tomorrow. We don’t just give thanks on turkey day. We give thanks on EVERY day. The good ones. The bad ones. The boring ones! And we pray. We pray continually in our hearts. That’s a verse that’s so deep that I can’t even scratch the surface of it today, so I’ll just leave it at that and come back at some point in the future. And we rejoice.

It doesn’t say that you have to rejoice and give thanks for the bad things that happen. That would be absurd, wouldn’t it? “God, thank you for this broken leg.” A broken leg is a bad thing. We don’t have to thank God for the bad things. But even in those moments defined by bad things, God is at work, making us better. Making us shine brighter. God’s will for us in Christ is to accept these moments, all the while praising God with joy and thanksgiving. What a gift. Now we move on to a passage with a theme very similar to last week:

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.

Again, not every religious idea is a good one. Don’t hear something from your leadership and just assume it’s good because they’re good. Don’t endure a tough situation and internalize some weird meaning because it feels like God wants that. Just as with last week, we test the spirits. We have to check to see that what we get actually lines up with what God has told us in Scripture. Because we can develop wrong, even when we’re doing everything right. We have to be discerning on this journey of growth.

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

There’s our goal. That’s true happiness right there. Sanctification. That’s God making us holy. That’s fulfillment. All of the pain we endure. The hard work we get through The insults we bear. It’s God at work, sanctifying us. God doesn’t want to make us happy. He wants so much more than that. He wants to make us holy. That’s why any turn to epicureanism, popular though it may be, is ultimately a lost cause. We’re more than dopamine centers. We’re beings capable of a full range of emotions, even negative ones. And enduring suffering isn’t pointless. Epicurus was wrong. The wholeness of our lives can’t be found in avoiding pain and collecting pleasures, because God has a way of helping us grow through suffering. Who knew that a God who died on a cross might end up expecting his followers to suffer now and again? So what will we do? Will we rely on ourselves? Will we back away from the Jabboks of our lives, avoiding any painful wrestling in the process? Or will we cling and beg for a blessing?

The History of Mary Veneration: A Protestant Perspective

November 29, 2021May 26, 2022 ~ Vincent ~ 3 Comments

My wife and I went to the Cleveland Museum of Art a few weeks ago. As a theology nerd, I went straight to the Christian art section hoping to have a little bit of a mini-retreat there in the gallery. Unfortunately for me, a MASSIVE portion of the art focused on Mary:

And this one that really took the cake…

Mary’s coronation as the Queen of Heaven.

It was hard to have a spiritual response when everything was so Mary-centric! When I looked up, Mary’s gaze was the first thing I encountered. Jesus wasn’t even looking at me most of the time! If he wasn’t looking off in the distance, he was looking up at Mary, drawing even more attention to her. Naturally, that led to the question, “when did Christians start venerating Mary and why did Protestants stop doing it?” Some Protestants might agree that Mary is uniquely worthy of admiration, but even the most intense Protestant admiration is a far cry from the veneration that she enjoys in Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. So what happened? Did we ditch something that was passed down from the beginning, or did we actually manage to strip away a medieval innovation that had little to do with the Christianity of the apostles?

The uncomfortable truth about Mary veneration is that the historical evidence is a lot less black or white than most parties would like it to be. The veneration of Mary started waaaaay earlier than your average Protestant would hope, but it also happened waaaay later than your average Catholic assumes. First and second century Christians would have found any prayers to Mary a totally alien practice, but in the midst of the raging battles against heresy in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries, it started to develop as a way of preserving the same orthodoxy that Protestants and Catholics share today. In the centuries that followed, it continued to grow and intensify, leading to eventual skepticism from Protestants that wanted to go back to the basics. Even though our tradition ceased the practice of Marian veneration (and had a reasonable claim on recovering early orthodoxy in doing so), a study of how the practice came to be can help us appreciate how that veneration helped our theological ancestors cling to orthodoxy at a time when the nature of Jesus was under fire.

Let’s start our journey with the first century. Easy enough, since there’s no evidence for Marian veneration in this era at all. If we take the Scriptures as the clearest evidence of first-century Christian thought and practice, there’s just not much there. The gospels bring up Mary sparingly, usually during the birth narrative, and the epistles only reference her a handful of times, usually indirectly (for example, Galatians 4:4 reads “God sent forth his Son born of a woman“). If you’re going Sola Scriptura, Mary is a relatively minor Bible character that exists within the narrative as Jesus’s mom. You can definitely find some commentaries out there that try to push the mystical importance of certain passages. For example, some Catholic commentators make much about John 19:26-27: “When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ You can read that to mean that Jesus is mystically speaking to every disciple today, encouraging them to accept Jesus as their own mother… or you can conclude that Jesus was worried about his mom and sent her off with John. The latter seems a great deal more likely than the former. Emphasizing the small passages that Mary does appear in doesn’t solve the big problem: nobody in the Scriptures is venerating Mary or explicitly telling others to do it.

There aren’t a ton of indisputably first-Century Christian documents readily available outside of the Scriptures. We could look at documents like the Didiche (also known as The Teachings of the Apostles) and the Epistle of Barnabas (both of which tend to be considered first-century) and note that neither of them mention Mary at all. First-century Christians just don’t seem particularly concerned with the place of Mary within the order of Christianity. She was Jesus’ mom and that’s about it.

So, onwards to the second century… in which evidence is still pretty scant, all things considered. The Catacomb of Priscilla has the first recorded painting of Mary and Jesus:

There’s a few other paintings from the second century as well, all of which depict Mary as the mother of Jesus. Nothing really new here, but they do speak to the broader concern regarding Mary in this era: was Mary actually Jesus’ mom? The big heresy in the second century was docetism; the belief that Jesus wasn’t really human, so much as he was a spiritual being that looked human. Was he born? Not really. Spiritual beings can’t be born. There wasn’t a consensus among the docetists as to where Jesus did come from. Some claimed that Jesus only appeared to live among us while others suggested that Jesus was just an average man that was born by Mary and the spirit of the Christ descended upon him at his baptism. One famous heretic by the name of Marcion went so far as to totally remove all birth stories from the Scriptures, solving the problem of Jesus’ birth by just having him show up on the scene as a fully-grown man. Regardless of the specifics, the basic message of docetism was the same: Jesus Christ wasn’t really a man, but he was really God. Mary starts to garner more interest from orthodox Christians because she establishes both the human-ness and the divinity of Jesus.

The big theologians in this era reference Mary while they’re making arguments against the docetists. For example, take this passage from Tertullian’s On the Flesh of Christ:

Why is Christ man and the Son of man, if he has nothing of man, and nothing from man? Unless it be either that man is anything else than flesh, or man’s flesh comes from any other source than man, or Mary is anything else than a human being?
Ch. 5

One popular technique used to emphasize the crucial role of Mary is recapitulation (retelling the story of humanity but with all of the bad things from the fall being fixed by similar events during salvation). For example, here’s Tertullian again: “As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel,” (On the Flesh of Christ, Ch.17). And here’s a longer example from the famous second-century apologist, Justin Martyr::

[Jesus] became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, ‘Be it unto me according to your word,’ (Luke 1:38).
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Ch 100

Recapitulation holds to that same anti-docetist thought pattern: if Eve sinned and humanity was doomed through the error a woman, how can humanity saved without the faithfulness of a woman? We need a Mary that genuinely participated in the story of salvation to reverse the damage that was done during the fall. Similar ideas float around in the works of other theologians in this era (Irenaeus, for example) and even start to pop up in some of the apocryphal writings. The Gospel of James, for example, is a retelling of the story of Christ’s birth which explicitly includes a (really uncomfortable) section in which a midwife inspects Mary’s hymen after the birth to make sure that she was genuinely a virgin. Jesus isn’t just a regular baby; he’s a miracle baby! He’s a man that’s also God! She’s genuinely his mother, but the birth is miraculous and mysterious.

Onward to the third century! Mary continues to increase in stature. The teacher of teachers, Origen of Alexandria is supposedly the very first person to write the word “theotokos” (mother of God) down as a title for Mary. Not only would this be remarkable because of the level of authority a title like that naturally bestows upon the listener (it’s a fair bit more impressive sounding than “disciple” or “deacon”), but because this is the exact title that will start to normalize Mary veneration in the 5th century. Tying this title to such an ancient and dignified teacher would lend an incredible amount of legitimacy to the practice! But in all of his recorded writings, Origen never used the word “theotokos.” Not even once. A 5th century author, Socrates of Constantinople, made that claim while he was attempting to dismiss the objections of someone named “Nestorius”:

Origen also, in the third volume of his Commentaries on the Apostolic Epistle to the Romans, gives an ample exposition of the sense in which the term Theotokos is used. It is therefore obvious that Nestorius had very little acquaintance with the old theologians[.]
Ecclesiastical History 7.32.17

Unfortunately for Socrates of Constantinople, we have a copy of Origen’s commentary on Romans and can clearly see that no such passage exists. Not only does it not exist, but Origen never uses the same language of high veneration that later authors will use. Despite some poor claims that continue forward into modernity, Origen’s writings don’t have any real jumping off point that naturally leads to the veneration of Mary.

I bring up this false claim because it indicates that things are really starting to get moving. The water is starting to get muddied. Even though the claims don’t have much legitimacy, the fact that someone made such a claim specifically targeting this era reflects that Mary’s status within the faith is growing. Origen may not use that particular power-phrase, but he does focus on Mary even more than most previous theologians. We start to see Mary stuff start to pop up more and more in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. Somewhere in this timeframe (depending on which person is doing the dating), we even see see the Sub tuum praesidium hymn pop up for the first time:

Beneath your compassion,We take refuge, O Theotokos [God-bearer]:do not despise our petitions in time of trouble:but rescue us from dangers, only pure, only blessed one.
Sub tuum praes., earliest manuscript of which is from a Coptic fragment known as John Rylands papyrus 470

We still regularly see theologians say that Mary was sinful and there are very few clear recommendations of praying to her from leading Christian figures, but language about perpetual virginity that started popping up in the second century is carrying forward. She is not only a mother, but she is a mother that remained ever-virgin. And again, we have the odd scraps of evidence (like the Sub tuum papyrus) that seem to suggest that some communities are starting to pray to Mary and hold her in particularly high esteem. As we get more thoroughly into the fourth century, big-name theologians like Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus start using the phrase “theotokos.” The mother of God has officially arrived.

We could spend ages looking at the slow evolution of the practice of Marian veneration, but I think I’ve already established the trend— Marian veneration slowly developed as a way of battling heresies that claimed that Jesus was not both all-man and all-God. She established both realities; her miraculous birth established Christ’s divinity, while her humanity established Christ’s humanity. But the fifth century offers one more large leap in the history of Mary veneration: the Council of Ephesus and their official endorsement of the title “theotokos.”

A fifth-century archbishop by the name of Nestorius didn’t approve of the title “theotokos” that some Christians had started using (yes, this is the same Nestorius that Socrates of Constantinople made up a fake quote to argue against). Mary couldn’t have given birth to God. God is eternal! God has neither beginning nor end! So he recommended the title “Christotokos” (mother of Christ) as a more accurate title for Mary. She gave birth to the human aspect of Jesus, but was not truly the mother of the divine trinity. The ancestors of orthodox Christianity noted that this effectively split Jesus into two parts: the human and the divine. The human part was born, but the divine part wasn’t. Mary was the mother of half of Jesus, but the other half descended after the fact. If Jesus’ divinity and humanity could be isolated and held responsible for different events, did Jesus work miracles, or was that just his divine half? Did Jesus die on the cross, or was that just his human half? A split Christ was no Christ at all. They insisted that Jesus had to be both God and man, not two separate aspects that could be split for the sake of certain events. Cyril of Alexandria, acting in accordance with both the Pope and a synod of Egyptian bishops, wrote the famous Twelve Anathemas Against Nestorius, the first of which openly affirmed the language of the theotokos:

If anyone will not confess that the Emmanuel is very God, and that therefore the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God, inasmuch as in the flesh she bore the Word of God made flesh [as it is written, The Word was made flesh] let him be anathema.
The First of Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas Against Nestorius

When Nestorius didn’t relent, the Council of Ephesus officially followed through on Cyril’s anathemas. There’s a lot of politics and lofty theological argumentation behind all of that, but note the true focus of the argument: the nature of Christ. While Mary’s title is the most obvious sticking point, in all of the official documentation surrounding this controversy, almost all of it is primarily concerned with the nature of Christ. Only the first of the twelve anathemas mentions Mary, and none of the canon judgements of the Council of Ephesus mention her at all. What we’re seeing here is that same tendency to use Mary to establish Christ’s divine and human nature, but elevated to the highest point thus far. Now Mary has been given an obligatory title, and one that carries a fair amount of prestige at that.

Now, you might say, “Wait, that just establishes that it’s legitimate to call Mary the mother of God. What about the veneration? That’s what we’re here for!” It continues to ramp up over time after this decision. We’re still a long way off from our Salve Reginas, Hail Marys, and the title “the Queen of Heaven,” all of which start popping up between the 11th and 13th century, but the Council of Ephesus really does kick off a period of renewed emphasis on Mary and the first really decisive evidence of large-scale veneration. After this event, churches started being named in honor of Mary and influential theologians like Augustine of Hippo started focusing even more time and attention on doctrines elevating the position of Mary. What was born out of a conflict regarding establishing Christ’s nature resulted in new titles, new theological lines in the sand, and new heresies defined around Mary. In the following centuries, the veneration of Mary would continue to increase. Devotional practices would be oriented towards Mary. Theologians would continue to make even bolder claims about Mary’s importance. Monasteries especially would introduce worship practices to appeal to Mary. What we’ve observed here in the fifth century is the first bud that would eventually bloom into full high Marian veneration during the Middle Ages.

Now onto the big question: why did Protestants reject Mary veneration? If it was built up over centuries specifically to avoid certain heresies, why get rid of it? Perhaps the simplest reason is that they were trying to reform the faith in the pattern of early Christianity. They thought the medieval church had strayed too far from the pattern set out by early Christianity, and so they turned to the Scriptures and tried to get back to the basics, but now they weren’t asking the same questions they were 500 years before. There was no doubt that Jesus was both God and man. Nobody wondered if he was some kind of purely spiritual being or a really nice guy who was acting in cooperation with a divine spirit. Conversations about Mary were no longer necessary to battle active heresies about Christ’s nature, and with the new radical emphasis on Scripture, a suspicion of tradition, and an emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, many of the core tenants of Mariology were completely removed. Why should anyone pray to Mary? It’s not modeled in the Scriptures or in the writings of the early church fathers. Besides that, what would make her more important than anyone else? In Luther’s words:

Your prayers, O Christian, are as dear to me as hers. And why? Because if you believe that Christ lives in you as much as in her, then you can help me as much as she.
Luther’s 1522 sermon on the Feast of our Lady’s Nativity;
Unfortunately, there’s no good English translation readily available, but excellent details are available through Grisar’s work on Luther: “Werke,” Weim. ed., 10, 3, p. 321 f. 499. as Cited in Hartmann Grisar, Luther, trans. E. M. Lamond (Project Gutenberg, 2015) p. 503.

There was a radical equality being emphasized in Protestantism, and the elevation of Mary did not fit. The hundreds of years of debate that crafted this practice seemed more like years of embedded pagan influence and error than compelling doctrinal formulation.

As I poured over articles to gather all of this info, I found more than a few cries from within Protestantism that Mary needs to be returned to a prominent role (if not her rightful historic role) within our theology. Perhaps… and perhaps not. There can be little doubt that there’s no harm in emphasizing the role of Jesus’ mom within the Scriptures. It is doubtless that she was a person of outstanding faith and moral character on top of being a person intimately involved in God’s work of salvation. At the same time, I don’t know that I’m eager to return to praying special prayers to the “high queen of heaven.” The major Protestant creeds all keep Christ enshrined as both 100% God and 100% man. While I readily concede that there are plenty of self-proclaimed Christians today that disagree with that basic point of orthodoxy, they’re certainly not uniquely Protestant. The early Protestants set out to turn away from medieval innovations and return to the basics Christianity while preserving Christian orthodoxy, and I think they did a reasonably good job of it in the case of Mary veneration. I think it’s lovely that the first few centuries of Christians share our view of Mary and could pray alongside us without any qualms. At the same time, I like to think we can appreciate where some of the emphasis on Mary came from in the case of our Catholic and Eastern Orthodox siblings. Their practices were born out of a defense of the same orthodoxy that we hold dear. Even if we don’t agree with their specific expression of piety, I think we can at least appreciate where those practices came from and how they’re trying to preserve orthodox Christianity in their own way.

Mind you, I’m still probably not about to have a spiritual experience at the Cleveland Art Museum.

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The History of Mary Veneration: A Protestant Perspective