by Karen Turner.
Each week I bake a cake and bring it to campus at the University of Bath and theological discussion ensues, like sugar-fuelled magic, where both the questions and the answers are student-led.
One topic this week was whether or not people thought the Bible (or parts of it) might be ‘the word of God’. The various answers given by the students were probably not that different from the answers you would get from a random sample of Methodists. Some wanted to throw out the tricky bits, or even the entire Old Testament, while others protested that ‘God wrote every word in it’.
After a few moments, Ethan spoke up. ‘I wonder if we are in danger of limiting the Bible to our time in history, when the Bible is for all time? What I mean is, some bits of the Bible speak to me and some don’t. But what if those bits spoke to people thousands of years ago in ways I can’t understand today? And anyway, even in the span of a human lifetime, the same passage at different times might speak in totally different ways.’
His comment caught my attention. I was just back from a few days of silent retreat where I recognised my own foolish impulse to try to squeeze the Logos into a box. As a chaplain, I’ve felt drawn to John the Baptist; a person speaking from the wilderness, pointing to Jesus, offering a way in from the edge. So on the retreat I chose to spend time with the first chapter of John’s Gospel, where, in my mind’s eye, John stands near the river alone, as his companions leave him and follow Jesus. The message I expected to hear was that John loves people and lets them go on to better things.
But instead I found myself with more questions than consolation. I read on to chapter 3:
After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptised. John also was baptising at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptised[1]
The only reason given for Jesus and John baptising at the same time (and this after John very clearly sent his own disciples to follow the Lamb of God[2]) is because of the abundance of water. The parallel baptising doesn’t make sense. It’s messy. It feels like an awkward timeline oversight that someone should have edited – especially since it isn’t mentioned in the other gospels.
Why is the untidiness there? What would it feel like to stand between them on the riverbank at that point of timeless incongruity? John offering ‘the way of righteousness’[3] as people come out to find freedom in God’s forgiveness and a new start, knowing all the while that this baptism isn’t the whole story, but carrying on. Meanwhile Jesus is also baptising. The waters are abundant.
John had such a prolific ministry that, later on, as far away as Ephesus and Corinth, Paul encounters people who had received the ‘baptism of John’.[4] Priscilla, Aquila and Paul fill in the gaps and explain about the baptism of Jesus and they receive the Spirit.
Before and after. Decrease and Increase. End and Beginning. Die and live. How does the timeless God meet us in our time captivity? David Ford writes that the whole Gospel of John ‘can be read as an education of desire’.[5] What are we looking for? Are we ready for this baptism? John knows what it will mean.
If there is ever a sense that Christ is present ‘at the still point of the turning world’[6] in scripture, they are moments that jar us from our sentimental or even logical assumptions. God’s love breaks out of my boxes. God is on the move in ways we cannot predict and throughout time in ways we cannot fully understand.
Last month I attended the confirmation of a former Bath student who, in his testimony, spoke movingly of the way he had found a home in his local Methodist church[7] because his doubts were welcomed. He asked me afterwards if I could have predicted his faith journey. ‘In all honesty, no,’ I replied. God was at work in ways I could not see. God is always at work in ways we cannot see. Let’s go where the water is abundant and work out what it means afterwards.
[1] John 3. 21, 22, NRSV.
[2] John 1.29, NRSV.
[3] Matthew 21.32, NRSV.
[4] Acts 18 and 19.
[5] David F Ford, The Gospel of John p. 54.
[6] T S Eliot, Four Quartets, ‘Burnt Norton’ p.5.
[7] Castle Street Methodist Church, Cambridge seems like a community of abundant water.
Theology Everywhere 
A tribe had lived and flourished on the banks of a river for generations. The water was used for drinking and cooking; it irrigated their crops; it was full of fish and it drew animals to it and thus helped to provide good hunting. But then the water started to dry up. Instead of a healthy flow of water, the river became a small, slow stream. Life for the tribe became difficult and they entered a period of scarcities.
A group of young people decided to try to find out what had gone wrong. They found that, a few miles away, the main river had changed its course and was now bypassing the village by some distance. They reported back to the tribal elders that, if they relocated to the new banks of the river, they could have once more all the advantages of the abundant water. The tribal elders were scathing in their response. “Our tribe has lived here for centuries. The sacred writings of the tribe all refer to us living here. How dare you suggest that we should relocate, that we should change the ways we have always done things? Do you think that you know better than our revered ancestors?”
Realising that there was no hope of changing the elders’ minds, the group of young people talked to some families and explained the situation. The result was a small exodus as the more adventurous left the tribe to set up a new community on the new banks of the river, where they flourished again. But the elders and their faithful followers stayed where they had always lived, fully expecting that one day soon the river would resume the level and power of the abundant flow that it had had in the past and the increasing decline of the tribe would then be reversed.
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