John 19

In this morning's class we looked into the final exchange between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, as recorded in John 18-19. I have become intrigued by the number of memorable lines attributed to Pilate in this passage:

What is truth?

I find no case against him.

Here is the man! (Ecce homo in Latin, which has provided the name for a well-known tourist attraction in Jerusalem)

I have written what I have written.

And those are just the ones found in this gospel.

It is also intriguing how often that this evangelist goes out of his way to impress on the reader the physicality of Jesus' time on earth. From the first miracle, turning water into wine at Cana, Jesus is described as interacting physically with his environment. That seems to account as well for the graphic account of the piercing of Christ's side with a spear. (The evangeslist writes here, "He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.") By the time this gospel was written, gnosticism had begun to eat away at the reality of the Christ as a physical being. John's gospel is a strong apologetic for Christianity as a physical expression of faith.

That is why I think it is important for us to use "stuff" when we worship. Otherwise, it is easy for Christianity to turn into an intellectual exercise. But we use real water when we baptize. And in the Eucharist, we use real bread and real (fermented or unfermented) wine. It's all part of what John tells us: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."