-Christ in the Winepress, Bavaria, ca. 1500. Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich.
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. John 5:6-8
I
love this passage in John because it talks about thinginess.
Thinginess is my (slightly facetious) way of referring to the tangibility of the world. We crunch apples and climb mountains and admire Christmas trees because they’re real things that exist in the physical reality we know best.
Here, of course, John is not talking about Christmas trees, but about Jesus becoming a human being. Jesus came “by water and blood,” we are told, and then, just in case we didn’t get it the first time, John reiterates: “He did not come by water only, but by water and blood.” This description of the Incarnation is very striking, because water and blood tend to be two of the less pleasant aspects of human thinginess. Both would have poured onto the stable floor during the birth of Jesus. And John himself likely saw the water and blood that flowed out of Jesus’ side after his excruciating death on the cross. Water and blood are powerful reminders of the messiness and permeability of physical existence. Incarnation is not always fun. And it is not for the faint of heart.
I have thought a lot about thinginess in my life, because I have a spinal deformity that has meant I’ve lived with bouts of pain for a long time. It is hard to live in a body that is in pain. Pain pulls you from whatever you would rather be doing or thinking about and places you firmly back into your nerve endings. This is a big reason why I love the messiness of the Incarnation that John talks about. This Incarnation is not a neat picture of a rosy baby in a suspiciously hygienic manger. Jesus comes through the pain and bleeding that having a body often entails.
But another element is at play. “And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” The distracting, debilitating reality that Jesus was born into is shot through with the Spirit, who proclaims that this thingy human is also God. And because of this Spirit, the cross is not the end of Jesus’ existence on earth. Jesus comes back with a new and improved body that bears the scars of its old death proudly but is not limited by them. We tend to imagine heaven as some purely spiritual realm, but the only glimpse of an afterlife we see in the Bible is when Jesus comes back here to go on walks to Emmaus and cook breakfast on the beach. The Incarnation and Passion and Resurrection all tell us that our physical being is filled with the Spirit and is tied in some mysterious way to eternity, even when it is inconvenient, distracting, and painful.
Right now, thinginess is particularly complicated. Our planet is warming. Our messy and permeable bodies emit aerosol droplets and endanger one another. But good meals and arthritic joints and the sound you make when you slap your leg because someone told you a really great joke are all still sanctified. Being thingy is a very hard thing to be, but Jesus’ advent to us through water and blood is a binding and eternal promise that our thinginess is far more than we can ask or imagine.
Thanks
be to God.
- Rachel Robinson
