THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN: Introduction to Series

John 1:24-27, 29-34
The Pharisees sent to John the Baptist and asked him, “Why are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”  And John answered, “I baptize with water.  Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.”  
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! ….. And he testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.  I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’  And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.”

Following a few weeks spent moving somewhat randomly around in the New Testament, primarily within the four Gospels, in search of understanding as to why we read the scriptures as we do, how we read them through the veil of 2000 years of cultural change, and what we learn from them, our in-person group has decided we want to spend some time focused on the fourth gospel – the one attributed to John the Apostle (or John the Evangelist) as he is also known.

I’ll be digging into the thoughts of two respected and well-known bible scholars, Gerard Sloyan and Marcus Borg, to gain insight into what this gospel account offers us.  Sloyan, a Catholic priest, will offer us a more traditional interpretation, while Borg, a former fellow of the Jesus Seminar, will generally bring us a more progressive. View.  Between the two, I think we can learn quite a lot.

We get brief glimpses into John throughout the liturgical year, but they are few and randomly scattered compared to the dedicated year-long study the other three gospels each receive in their lectionary settings.  Some of what we end up discussing here will sound familiar because we have come across it in recent “fill-in” days when John readings were inserted into the lectionary schedule. Hopefully, when we finish this series, we’ll understand more how all these bits and pieces fit together to form a powerful and affective gospel.

John’s gospel has caused division from its earliest days primarily because it IS different.  While there are many similarities between this gospel and the three synoptics, it is the differences that get the most attention. Sloyan shows us just how it has befuddled and annoyed scholars in this long quote from his volume of the Interpretation commentary series:

• The Fourth Gospel continues to baffle, to enrich, to infuriate, and to console as it has done for centuries. It is worthless as history, say some. It is more dependable as a source on Palestinian life than the Synoptics, say others. It had to have been written after the last of the Synoptics, the majority holds. It could have been composed as early as A.D. 50, a small minority maintains. Its author was a Platonist who was committed to the gospel tradition, said one group of scholars earlier in this century. It was written by a diaspora Jew whose milieu was the Hellenist Judaism characteristic of those who followed the line of the martyred Stephen, more modern scholars claim,.
• John was the document of a local church that had broken finally with the synagogue, we are assured. Alternatively, it comes from a Jewish believer in Jesus, one of a circle of the like-minded whose high Christology repelled equally other Jews who believed in Jesus and Jews of the synagogue.

We can see how frustrating it can be for those who are looking for a clear direction from John.  Is this gospel one man’s opinion or is it the legitimate testimony of a larger community?  Is the writer really quoting Jesus or simply saying things they wish he had said and done?  While Sloyan’s questions come more from the academic side, Marc Borg offers us a few specific points where John clearly differs from Matthew, Mark, and Luke:

• John’s Jesus talks -- a lot.  His teachings come in the form of long, multi-page discourses, as opposed to the short, pithy parables that are Jesus’ primary teaching tools in the synoptics.
• In the synoptics, Jesus is an exorcist, routinely expelling demons in the process of many of his healings.  In John there are no exorcisms – none.
• In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus’ public ministry takes place in the northern area surrounding Galilee, heading south into Jerusalem only in the final week before his death.  In contrast, John’s Jesus moves back and forth between Jerusalem and the north several times.

There are more differences to cite, but these are enough to make our point and get us started, because the point, after all, isn’t to just find differences but to recognize that that these differences in the gospel accounts do exist.  And since they exist, do they in any way alter our understanding of the whole Jesus story or are they simply the viewpoints of different communities and nothing more?

That’s why we’re heading into deeper study of this gospel.  We know the high spots – the Prologue, John 3:16 – now we need to read the rest of the story and find what this different gospel says to us about Jesus and our lives as followers of Christ.