We arrived back from California last night and I jumped into teaching my Thursday class on the Gospel of John.
The Gospel itself is fascinating enough. But I have become even more interested in John himself — writer, theologian, artist, churchman.
We’ve gone to great lengths in this class to describe just how different John’s Gospel is from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Differences in timeline, tone, and content. John arranges all his material to reinforce the purpose statement of the book in 20:31: “… but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
When you know that is his reason for writing, you’ll see clues in almost every section of the book. Believe. Life. Life. Believe. The purpose defines what stories John includes and in what order he includes them.
All of which gave rise to an interesting question in our class: “Is Jesus in John’s hands in the gospel, serving to advance John’s agenda? Or is John in Jesus’ hands, serving to advance his agenda?” Hmmmmm.
Or is there some of both?
When you learn to read the bible not only for its teaching but also with an eye to its artistry, you get to wrestle with questions like that again and again.
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First, welcome home. The Lord answered prayer again with safe travel.
A couple of things about John for me.
First, my favorite scripture comes from the gospel of John.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
John 14:1-4
What promising words!
Secondly, his death. I know, a little morbid huh?
But it’s the way he died that helps when I may want to question why?
It should be noted I have no where near the theology education or knowledge of my church (GSUMC) leaders.
What I’m coming to find out, is that out of the twelve, John is nearly the only one that died a peaceful death.
Most of the others were, crucified(upside down), speared, stoned, beheaded, etc. Jesus chose these twelve personally and loved them. Why would they die such horific deaths?
Is it because Jesus’ love for John was greater than the others.
John 20:2
Or was it really a peaceful death at all? Cast away on an island, all alone, so he could longer spread the word of Christ. He didn’t even have a ball to called wilson ( I’m pretty bad at humor too).
When I get to that point of asking why? I have to remind myself of the twelve. They did not ask why, they stood up, proclaimed the name of Jesus (so we would know) up to the point of death.
Would I or can I be that strong?