This coming Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday. The fuller story of the gospel begins at the end of John 2 where we encounter the gospel writer’s closing statement (vv. 23-25). What seems clear is that a lot more than the temple cleansing took place during Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem for this first Passover festival.  There is the one recorded sign at Cana; otherwise the record is silent. Yet, the evangelist, while recording no details, goes on to write “many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.”  Even though many began to believe in Jesus, “Jesus would not trust himself to them.”

These verses suggest that Jesus did not yet see a clear basis for an enduring relationship of faith with the people.  They were enthralled by the signs, but Jesus knows they will always want one more – there will always be one more thing in the way of commitment.  Only later does Jesus express the bases of that lasting, committed relationship:  “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father”   (John 15:14–15).

Jesus well understands human nature (2:25) – and that is perhaps the overriding narrative of this section of the Fourth Gospel: the response of human nature in coming face-to-face with the Messiah. The majority of John 3 describes Jesus’ encounter with the Jewish leader Nicodemus – a prestigious man “in the know” forms one response. John 4, the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, points to a different response of human nature.

One way these verses are connected is the double “we know,” uttered by Nicodemus in 3:2 and by Jesus in v. 11. The first person plural, “we,” indicates that both are representing groups – perhaps the distinction between Jewish and Christian leaders, perhaps the subtle difference between thinking that Jesus is just a “teacher who has come from God” or that Jesus is the one who has “descended from heaven,” who will be “lifted up,” and through believing him one has eternal life – the difference between Jesus as a human teacher or the divine savior.

Image credit: Rublev, Trinity icon, 15the century, Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, Moscow, Public Domain