After introducing herself, our instructor told us about the upcoming Diocesan Mass for Victims at Our Lady of Refuge. We were invited to distribute brochures to anyone who has lost a loved one do to violence. She went on to express her hope is that we can internalize the Gospel of John, so that we can use it in our personal lives and ministries. She also addressed the course requirements which are attendance, class participation, and a 3 page double spaced reflection paper, submitted in hardcopy on the last day of class. Although she likes the assigned book, and certainly wants us to read it, she intends for us to read it at a later time. There will be no assignments or requirements from the book during the semester.
She had three general suggestions for the paper: 1) Discuss an insight that we gained from the class, either from reading the text or through discussion, and the significance this insight might have in our life and ministry. 2) Reflect on a major or minor character or a group in the text, and discuss how this person or group relates to our life. For instance, what surprised you or disturbed you about this character and how do you identify with this character. 3) Reflect on the passion of Jesus and interpret that passion according to the life of an imagined person by applying it to a real or imagined pastoral situation.
Our instructor began the lecture by pointing out that the miracles of Jesus were performed in the presence of the disciples but not in our presence. Then she asked us to discuss the question, “Do you think this puts us at a disadvantage”? She also asked, “What if this was the only book that we have to understand who Jesus was”. My small group decided that we aren’t at a disadvantage: The disciples are presented by the author as pretty much clueless during their time with Jesus. We decided that it was because the disciples didn’t have the Holy Spirit at the time they were living with Jesus. We, on the other hand, have the advantage of being blessed with the Holy Spirit as a result of our baptism.
The writer acknowledges other miracles and exorcisms of Jesus which tells us that this evangelist had an approach to Jesus that is unique. He writes “Now Jesus did many other signs" suggesting that he believes these other signs are not crucial. He goes on to say, "But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” (John 20:30-31). In other words, what the author has written in this Gospel is sufficient and all that is necessary. He locates the encounter with Jesus not in the experience of Jesus' life, but through the revelation within the text that is available to all of us. Every time we read and re-read the text we should get something else from it because (hopefully) we've been changed by the previous reading.
By the time the Gospel was written, the early Christian church was a faith community separate from the Jews, and they believed that Jesus was the personal embodiment of God in the world. Coming to "know who Jesus is" is the essence of the Gospel of John, unlike in Matthew who stressed following the teaching of Jesus and observance of the law, or Mark who stresses suffering as the essence of his Gospel. For the Johannine community, theological concern was more important than their identity in relation to Judaism. They believed that individual readers may have life in Jesus name by applying the same things that Jesus was heard to ask of God, "That they may be one as we are one". The community was made up of Galileans, a large contingent of Sumerians, gentiles, and of course Jews of the diaspora that almost never went to Jerusalem for feasts.
The group was threatened by disunity by those who didn't want their community to include "others", such as Jewish believers of Jesus that didn't want to completely break away from the synagogue, or persons who they considered to have inadequate faith, or the Samaritans that were considered to be failed Jews, and the “other sheep” which is what they called those who followed the twelve apostles. Because they struggled to stay faithful to their original makeup, they faced dissension from within and persecution from without.
Today we might better understand this community as a cult or sect within the overall Christian movement. Like modern day cults, they isolated themselves by withdrawing from outside influences, which made them stronger as a community but isolated the development of their theology. As modern day sects, it allowed each member to have a stake in the community which in turn allowed each member to make a total commitment to the group. This Gospel presents an interesting look at one (of the many) variations in the early church.
As a result of their independence this community saw things differently and found no need for the primacy of Peter. They considered all characters in the gospel to be disciples, not just the twelve. Nevertheless they didn’t deny the primacy of Peter or the hierarchy of the church, and they didn’t resist the church as it was developing under the twelve apostles or deny the orthodoxy of the universal church. The Gospel, however, never stresses the leadership of the twelve apostles.
The Gospel of John omits the beatitudes, many of the miracles, the infancy narratives, the baptism of Jesus, the temptations in the desert, the parables, the institution narrative in The Last Supper, and the agony of the garden. The author uses long discourses that represent us, such as the stories of Nickodemus and the Samaritan woman.
What it presents is the knowledge of Christianity as it was given and written for believers. The challenge is the belief in one God. The author’s purpose was to deepen the faith of believers, finalize the break with the synagogue, and to reveal who Jesus is. The focus was to introduce Jesus as both the revealer and the revelation. The book should be read as a text about Jesus, as a text about the early church, and as a text about the community in and for which this gospel was written.
The distinct universalism found in John’s Gospel is for the whole world, because the Good News was given to all: Women, Sumerians, and Gentiles alike. According to them Peter was told to feed the lambs but was not meant to be the universal shepherd. Office and titles were not significant since all disciples were equal. They were concerned with their own community, life in abundance, and the idea that all received the spirit from Jesus.
The exercise of leadership and power, or alternatively service and love, was represented by the washing of feet and dying on the cross. Because the risen Christ appeared to all of the disciples, not just the apostles, John’s community believed that we are all given the power to receive sin.
There is no moral instruction in this Gospel other than the single commandment “to love one another”. Although the Jews are representative of all those who hated Jesus it was not actually only the Jews. This group is symbolic of all those who refused to believe in Jesus, and it isn’t intended to demonize a specific group of Jews or Jews as a whole, but is meant to represent an attitude of refusing to believe in Jesus.
John’s Gospel stresses a reflection on revelation, by emphasizing what has been revealed by Jesus. John is constantly giving us the revelation of Jesus, in the Words that are spoken and the Words that are shared. He wants us to understand that God wants us to speak back those words. If the theology of Jesus is the relationship of God in the world, "I am in God and God is in me", then the spirituality of Jesus is the application of God in the world, "God is Love". Spirituality is a personal commitment by each of us to the One who is giving us the Word.
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