[CatherineTorpey]

Victor Greene is preaching and the title of his sermon is “The Floating Village.” His text is John 21:1-4, 9-17. Today’s passage is from the final chapter of the gospel according to John. Jesus has been crucified and been raised, and this is his final appearance to the disciples.

The gospel according to John is the latest of the four gospel accounts, written around the year 100. Those who compiled the New Testament put the four gospels in the order in which they believed they’d been written, and modern scholarship mostly agrees with the order (except that scholars now say that it was Mark which was written first, not Matthew). As the one written latest, there are a couple of things to note. Although this account is attributed to John, the son of Zebedee (who, along with his brother James, was one of the 12 disciples who were very close to Jesus). If we are to believe that John wrote this gospel, we have to believe that he would have completed it around the age of 90 years old (assuming he was about 20 when he Jesus died), and that he had learned the Greek language so well that he could write this account. Possible, but seems unlikely.

What seems evident is that communities of Christians developed around various followers of Jesus, each community having some differences in theology. (Paul complains of this in his first letter to the Corinthians, where Christians describe themselves as “followers of Paul” or “followers of Apollos.”) One such community based their understandings around the teachings of John of Zebedee (also called John the Apostle or John the Evangelist — a different person than John the Baptist). That community is called the “Johannine” community by modern scholars (as Jacqui mentioned in her sermon last week). So, in that sense, although it’s not written (in the opinion of most scholars) directly by John, it may reflect the understandings which that particular disciple passed down to those whom he had evangelized. Other books of the New Testament are also considered part of the “Johannine” tradition, including the 3 very short letters from John, and the book of Revelation. The name “John” in the Greek New Testament is “Johannes.” This in turn was a Hellenization (Greek-ification) of the Hebrew name Yehohanan. Traditionally, it was believed that the book of Revelation was written by the same John who had written the gospel, but modern scholars don’t believe that to be true. However, because of some similarities in theology and tradition, they are grouped (with the letters from John) in the “Johannine” tradition.

The gospel of John portrays Jesus very differently than in the other 3 gospels. It is from the gospel of John that we get the idea that Jesus had a 3-year ministry, since it mentions 2 Passover festivals prior to the final Passover festival, during which Jesus is crucified. Jesus in this gospel speaks about himself in a way which reflects a “high christology,” meaning that there is an emphasis on Jesus as divine. (A “low christology” emphasizes Jesus as human.)

A fun aspect of this gospel is that it refers regularly to “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” or “the beloved disciple.” This is a coy way of saying “Jesus loved John the most.” There are a couple of places in particular where “the beloved disciple” is shown to be smarter or faster than Peter. This is a bit of a clue that in the time when this was written, there was a bit of competition perhaps (or at least different understandings) about Peter’s role and authority versus John’s.

[Author]

Posts