A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [65]
In Exodus, God’s presence was associated with the tabernacle, a sacred tent, and John says, “The Word became flesh and lived [made his dwelling, tented or tabernacled] among us” (1:14). Moses once asked to see God, but was only permitted to see God’s aftermath, as it were (Exod. 33:18–23). John writes, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (1:18). Moses once asked God’s name, but was told only “I am” (Exod. 3:14), and this is how Jesus habitually identifies himself in John’s gospel (see especially 8:58).
John the Baptizer introduces Jesus as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29). Here John the Baptizer evokes not (or not only) the sacrificial lambs of Leviticus, but (or but also) the lamb that was slain at the Passover to protect the people from the tenth plague, the plague that finally convinced the Egyptians to liberate the Hebrew slaves. And the term “Christ” or “Messiah” literally means “anointed one,” suggesting a king or leader chosen by God to—like Moses—liberate the people from oppression.
Jesus evokes Moses directly in his conversation with Nicodemus, saying that the Son of Man (a complex term drawn from Dan. 7:13–14, which I believe suggests a new generation or genesis of humanity) will be lifted up as Moses lifted up a bronze serpent in the wilderness (Num. 21:9). Jesus’s provision of bread and fish (6:1–14; 21:4–13) similarly evokes Moses’s provision of manna and quail, suggesting that Jesus is leading the people on a new Exodus journey. Even his walking on water (6:16–21) evokes the crossing of the Red Sea.
Along with many other direct references to Moses and the Law (7:16–24; 8:4–7) and indirect references to being liberated from slavery (8:31–38) and leading the flock of God through the wilderness (10:1–18), we find Jesus giving a new command, one word (or logos) that in a sense will transcend and include the ten words (or Decalogue) given by Moses: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (13:34).
And at the end of John’s gospel, we find Jesus telling his disciples they will see him no longer, that the Spirit will guide them, and that they will now feed and tend his flock in his place—echoing, it appears, Moses’s commissioning of Joshua to lead into the promised land the people Moses had led out of Egypt and through the wilderness. Just as they followed Moses, they should now follow Joshua, Moses said; now Jesus says his disciples should follow the Spirit just as they followed him. Interestingly, John ends his gospel with the command Mark uses to begin his gospel: “Follow me” (John 21:19; Mark 1:17). It is as if Jesus is saying, “Okay, you’ve now been liberated from Egypt. My death and resurrection are like crossing the Red Sea. But our journey has only just begun. Keep following now, through the wilderness and into the promised land. Just as fire and cloud guided your ancestors, my Spirit will guide you now.”
The promised land, of course, suggests the third dimension of the biblical narrative: the peace-making kingdom celebrated by all the prophets, especially Isaiah. As we considered earlier, the narrative begins with the longing for a literal homeland—first, for Abraham, a home outside the Sumerian Empire, and later, under Moses, a place of freedom outside the Egyptian Empire, and later still, for the exiles, a return to their homeland, liberated from the Babylonian/Medo-Persian Empire. Gradually, the idea of a promised land morphs from a geographic reality into a social one; “a land flowing with milk and honey” becomes a society in which justice flows like water. This new society or kingdom is also described as a new era—a new time of shalom, harmony, social equity, prosperity, and safety.
Key to this golden time is light (Isa. 2:5; 42:6–7; 49:6; 60:1–3), and along with light the healing of blindness (35:5–6; 42:16) and other maladies. So it’s no surprise that