My friend Ian from College days, is amongst other forms of art, a very good cartoonist. He used to entertain us in class by drawing on the blackboard between classes. Sadly, these quickly drawn illustrations of the lectures were always rubbed off, and in the days long, long before we had digital cameras to capture such transitory genius. I remember one lecture on the Gospel of John, and the discussion around which John wrote the Gospel. Probably John the Elder of Ephesus seemed to be the leading candidate (in the early 1970's). In a minute or two we had an entire scene drawn, with the pillars of a Temple, and standing on the steps, the dominant figure stood with a zoom lens camera poised, dressed in first century Greco-Roman clothes, bald and bearded. The caption read, "John collecting material at Ephesus." Fifty and more years on, that is still a smile trigger of an image.
When I left College I asked Ian if he world draw me a particular image, my favourite passage from the Gospel of John. That moment, when Jesus takes Peter aside and asks him, "Peter, do you love me?" Three times, the same question, but each time more searching. Three times Jesus didn't take Peter's "Yes" at face value. It's a story that the author of John's Gospel had to get in, and it sits there as the climax of a Gospel that began with the Eternal Word of the Creator God, and now ends with the confession, "Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you." The three times denier has just confessed and owned Jesus three times, and life can begin again.
The image above is now a bookmark on many of my books. I had several hundred of them printed and used them for years. It still moves me when I look at it. The strong tenderness of Jesus, the insistence that Peter be honest with himself as well as with Jesus, the breakfast meal of fish sizzling away as the background accompaniment of words that restored a friendship and a faith.
I've written here before about my long immersion in the Gospel of John, ever since working through the Greek text in 1975, using C K Barrett's now venerable commentary. I still have Barrett's commentary, for me irreplaceable as the first expert guide through the narrative landscapes and theological mountains of the Fourth Gospel. More than once I have preached through the Prologue as an Advent series; Holy Week is impossible for me without time spent in the Passion story of John; the Farewell Discourse, and our Lord's Prayer for his followers and the Church from my first serious exegesis of it, has shaped both my spirituality and formed and sustained in me an ecumenical spirit, a lifelong desire for fellowship with all those who stand as I try to do, with John and Peter and all the rest of them, beneath the Cross and beside the now empty tomb in a garden in the early morning. And to share the wonder, gratitude and fellowship of those who have come to know the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Then there's the woman at the well, the man at Bethesda, the wedding in danger of running out of wine and street credit, the man born blind and Nicodemus who had a different kind of visual impairment. And Peter, loud, confident in his own force of personality, impulsive to a fault, a repeat offender at promising more than he could deliver, but never more than he intended. And Jesus, the friend of sinners, the conversationalist with a woman at a well, the tough teacher rebuking the obtuse or timid Nicodemus, the weeping friend at Lazarus's grave, the silent interrogator of Pilate, the risen Lord mistaken by Mary as the gardener. This is a Gospel that is infinite in range and scope as readers behold (a favourite Johannine semantic domain) its treasures of story and sign, characters and conversations, and enduring capacity to transform the way we see the world, God, ourselves, and what Jesus promised when he said, "I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly." (John 10.10)
So, yes, John sits at the top of my canon within the canon, a document that Has taken more of my time and thought than any other part of the Bible – even the Prison Epistles,1 which incidentally, operate on the same cosmic scale of reconciling love that reaches out to and embraces "all things…making peace by the blood of the cross."
Later this month our reading group will meet. This happens every second month, we choose a book, and along with the good conversation of long-time friends, discuss said book. This time round it's a book by one of our own circle, pictured above. Conversations By the Sea. Reflections on Discipleship, Ministry and Mission, Andrew R Rollinson. (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 2023). I'll do a separate post reviewing this after our Reading Group has met. For now, this is yet another profound and searching opening up of the last chapter of John's Gospel, where 'both the miracle and the meeting provide assurance of a new future and a new fruitfulness." (p. 8)
1 Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon.
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