The first year: the inauguration

The public life opens in Jerusalem, at the first Passover. After the desert, Jesus goes up to the Temple and there performs a gesture that already points to his death and resurrection. There follow the night conversation with Nicodemus, the last testimony of John, the meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well, a second sign at Cana, and the arrest of the Baptist that turns Jesus toward Galilee. This first year unfolds chiefly in Judea, and it is John who reports it.

The cleansing of the Temple

Going up to Jerusalem for the Passover, Jesus finds in the Temple the sellers of cattle and the money-changers. He makes a whip of cords, overturns their tables and drives them out: “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” John 2:16. Pressed to justify his authority, he answers with an obscure word: “Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up.” John 2:19. His hearers think of the building, raised in forty-six years; he was speaking of the sanctuary of his body. Destroyed in death and raised on the third day, this body is the true Temple, where God dwells: “In him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily.” Colossians 2:9. And those who are united to him become in their turn the dwelling of God: “You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you.” 1 Corinthians 3:16.

Nicodemus, come by night

A leading Pharisee, Nicodemus, comes to find Jesus by night and recognises him as a teacher come from God. Jesus at once carries him further: “Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3. The Greek word rendered as “anew”, anōthen (ἄνωθεν), means at once anew and from above. Nicodemus hears the first and wonders how an old man can be born again; Jesus meant the second, a birth that comes from God.

Of water and Spirit

Jesus makes clear of what birth he speaks: “Unless one is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” John 3:5. Water and Spirit together designate baptism, where man receives a new life he does not give himself. This birth escapes his grasp like the wind: “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes.” John 3:8. The Greek word pneuma (πνεῦμα) means at once the wind and the Spirit: one sees the effects of the Spirit without grasping its source.

The serpent lifted up

Jesus announces how this life will be given. He recalls the episode in the desert where Moses had raised a bronze serpent that the bitten looked upon to be healed (Numbers 21:8-9): “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” John 3:14-15. The lifting up on the wood saves those who raise their eyes toward him. And he gives the reason for it: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16.

He must increase

After this conversation, Jesus and his disciples baptise in Judea, while John baptises still further off. As people grow anxious to see the crowd turning toward Jesus, John gives his last testimony: he is only the friend of the bridegroom, who rejoices to hear his voice. “He must increase, and I must decrease.” John 3:30. The forerunner steps aside as soon as the one he announced appears.

The Samaritan woman at the well

Passing back through Samaria, Jesus stops, weary, at Jacob’s well, and asks for a drink from a woman who has come to draw water. She is astonished that a Jew should speak to a Samaritan woman. Jesus then reverses the request: it is she who ought to ask him for a drink. “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” John 4:10. This water, he says, “will become in him a spring welling up to eternal life” John 4:14. When the woman questions him about the place of true worship, he announces a worship that no longer holds to a sanctuary: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:24. To her, at last, he reveals himself openly as the Messiah: “I who speak to you am he.” John 4:26.

The Saviour of the world

The woman leaves her jar and runs to alert the town. The disciples, returned with provisions, urge him to eat; he answers that he has food they do not know. As they wonder whether someone has brought him some, he discloses to them what he lives by: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” John 4:34. To accomplish the Father’s design nourishes him more than bread, and this work is the salvation of men. He then points to the harvest that is coming: “Lift up your eyes and look at the fields: they are already white for the harvest.” John 4:35. The Samaritans coming toward him are that harvest: the time to gather men into the Kingdom has already come, and the disciples are sent to reap it. Many of them believe in him, first on the woman’s word, then for having heard him themselves, and confess: “This is truly the Saviour of the world.” John 4:42. The salvation refused by some at Jerusalem is welcomed by those who were despised.

The second sign

Back in Galilee, at Cana where he had changed the water into wine, Jesus is begged by a royal official whose son is dying at Capernaum. Without moving, he says: “Go, your son lives.” John 4:50. The man believes the word and learns, on the way, that the healing took place at the very hour when Jesus had spoken. This is, according to John, the second sign that Jesus performs in Galilee John 4:54.

The arrest of the Baptist

The time of John comes to an end. Learning that he has been handed over and cast into prison, Jesus leaves Judea for Galilee (Matthew 4:12). The voice that prepared the way falls silent, and the preaching of the Kingdom will now unfold around the Sea of Galilee, far from Jerusalem. The length of the ministry is reckoned from John, the only one to mention the Passovers on which Jesus goes up to Jerusalem: several are noted, hence the estimate of about three years, which these Passovers allow to be distinguished from one another.