Click here or on main heading
to display John's Gospel here.

Here the Gospel turns away from the crowd to his disciples.
Each of the Gospels presents a similar transition.
However the nature of the teaching is very different here,
for it moves from dialogue, with another, to monologue.

The issues are those faced by the Johannine community
at the time that the Gospel was written, over 60 years after Jesus died.
They are suffering from persecution and the pain of separation from the synagogue.

17 THE COMMANDMENT TO LOVE 17 THE COMMANDMENT TO LOVE


Such love is called "agape" by Paul and defined as love without limit.
It is love that is selfless and thus produces and enhances life.
It opens a new dimension of what it means to be human.
John is determined to show Jesus as showing the divine love,
to the community through his passion, death and the Easter experience.

These themes come together at the meal in Bethany, where the central character is Simon Peter,
and the principle is demonstrated through Jesus's washing of the disciple's feet.
It is a story that only appears in John's Gospel.
Thereby the structures of life and the boundaries of status and power, are undermined.
All human images of the security of protective barriers are removed.
Peter is said to have the vision to see what this means and he recoils.
It would take him into a place where he would no longer know where he stood.
Maybe it would undermine his concept of being the leading disciple>

Jesus tells him that such rejection would reject the God that he is revealing.
Peter submits, but in literal terms.
Jesus then clarifies the meaning of what he is doing,
and the role, in the story, of Judas, as the evil alternative, becomes clear.
Bishop Spong takes a traditional view of the role of Judas, which I would challenge.,
but appears to be a feature of John's community. He is the scapegoat, perhaps, for their insecurity.

Jesus points out what he has done to the disciples.
This is what I have done. This is what love does.
When my love lives in you, you will serve the world.
There are no master-servant relationships under the embrace of divine love.
John then introduces another character "the one that Jesus loved",
who takes a major role in the rest of the story.

The final section has Jesus tell the disciples that he will go where they can not go.
and points to the path, of self-giving love, that they need to take,
if they are to really be his disciples.

Oneness with God lies in our willingness and ability to love one another.
The Cross is where the love of God is most dramatically displayed.


18 NOT ATONEMENT BUT GLORY 18 NOT ATONEMENT BUT GLORY


Remember that Jesus never actually said any of the words
atributed to him in these discources, nor any fo the teaching found in them.
The words represent the meaning of Jesus, as seen some hundred years later.
However there is no hint of the "doctrine of Atonement",
initiated by Paul and picked up by the Synoptic Gospels.
This was promoted by Augustine (4th Century) and Anselm(12th Century),
who had a very rudimentary, inerrant and literal view of scripture,
ignoring the discrepances between different accounts,say of Creation.
This was followed both Luther and Calvin (16th C) on to Alpha today.
and thus became a main thrust of Evangelical doctrine.

This atonement theory has permeated Christianity throughout,
yet is it what Paul meant when he wrote "Jesus has died for our sins"?
It could be that he was referring to a Jewish liturgical practice
and this was taken by his Greek readers who were ignorant of Jewish ways.

Jesus was identified within Judaism as the Passover lamb
but we miss the symbolism of the two lambs, the sacrifice and the scapegoat
if we ignore the role of Barabbas (meaning son of the Father) in the story.
In the liturgy, one lamb is killed and offered as a symbol of our yearning to be with God,
the other is loaded with our sins, through confession, and then driven into the wilderness,
to carry the people's sins away. Surely it is the former that Jesus represents!

Finally there is the story of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53.7,
which might seem to support either concept!

Jesus repeatedly tells the disciples that
only by looking at him they are able to see God.
God is in Jesus and works through him.
They will find God only by doing what Jesus does;
by obeying what he has told them to do; by following him.
The world can not kil him.

19 GOD IS INDWELLING 19 GOD IS INDWELLING


John continues to challenge the Atonement doctrine
which is beginning to appear in Christianity.
It assumed a deep and eternal separation of God and man.
The early biblical narrative is clear that God was in heaven
and could come to earth, but man was confined to earth.

The role of Jesus then had to be explained as God coming to earth
and the purpose could only be to bridge the gap of human sin
that separated man for God.

A number of theories were developed around this idea,
which we can see being framed in the earlier Gospels.
In Mark, Jesus becomes synomymous with God at his baptism.
In Matthew/Luke he is divine from his very birth.

The death of Jesus did not bring about the end of history
nor did it inaugurated the arrival of the Kingdom of God,
and the second coming did not materialise.
This was later re-imagined, in 'Acts',
as being the emergence of the church.

John, however, interpreted the presence of God in Jesus differently.
Jesus was the way that God shone into the world, "The Light".
In this way God and Jesus were one.
There was no time when God and man were separated.
God was not an external being, but integral with Life.
The concept of Jesus as a sacrifice to God made no sense.

God, for the mystic, is, and was, a permanent presence.
God was that life-giving power that embarces all those
who are willing to accept the vulnerability of love.
Our existence depends on our willingness to
understand and grasp this new experience of Jesus.
Jesus is the vine through whom the world is blessed.
You are the branches that carry that blessing to the world.
The world is blessed with the fruit of the juices from the vine.

Jesus points out that the greatest love is found
through the freedonm to give our lives away for others.
This frees you from earthly desires and passions.
Those who don't walk in this light will not understand.
They will see you as judging their insecurities.
They will persecute you.

The Gospel goes on to address very present problems of the Johanine community.
"in this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer." (John 16:33)

20 GETHSEMANE TRANSFORMED 20 GETHSEMANE TRANSFORMED


So far Jesus has communicated with words. Now he speaks through his life.
In the earlier Gospels, prior to his arrest,Jesus prayed in Gethsemane.
Those Gospel accounts were essentailly the same:
"Father all things are possible with You. Please remove this cup from me,
yet not what I will, but what You will." (Mark 14:36)
John's Gospel rejects such an approach, for this is the whole point of Jesus's life. (John 12:32)

John's version of the prayer is key to understanding the whole Gospel.
Rather than being an execution, The Cross becomes a throne through which Jesus is to be lifted up.

The so-called "High Priestly Prayer" is in three parts.
Firstly a prayer for Jesus himself, secondly for the disciples and lastly for the Church.
It is a prayer for unity; for the coming together of the barnches of the vine.
That unity lies in understanding that God is not an external being,
but the very essence of life; a "oneness" which we may experience.

In praying for his disciples, Jesus calls them into a new Being,
in which a new dimension of life is entered and the transcendent experienced.
Jesus has opened the door to new life. Keep them in that essence.
They have been lifted out of the boundaries of survival mode.
They have new eyes, love with new hearts, understand what it really means to be human.
They are different and the world with find that threatening; will hate them.
Believing does not mean that pain will not come,
but that one has the strength to endure it.

The prayer turns to the future and a further prayer for unity.
The death of Jesus will not be the end of his life, but
the moment when God's meaning will be revealed.
We are not "fallen" but simply incomplete.
We do not need to be rescued, but
to realise the divinity within us.

The ultimate freedom is being able
to give your life away for others.