The Gospel of Saint John

The Gospel of Saint John

Silke Beinssen-Hesse

December 2001

            When we read the Gospel of John we cannot help but notice the emphasis that is placed on the divinity of Jesus. It is not only the evangelist who starts his gospel with a proclamation to this effect and Jesus himself who stresses again and again that he and the Father are one and have been so since the beginning of time. We are also told that the divinity of Jesus was recognized instantly by John the Baptist (‘there is the Lamb of God’, 1/29), by Andrew, initially one of John’s disciples (‘we have found the Messiah’ 1/41), and by Philip (‘we have met the man spoken of by Moses in the Law, and by the prophets; it is Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth’ 1/45).

            Nathanael, however, is skeptical at first because the Messiah was not supposed to come from Nazareth but from Bethlehem, a point that is made clearly later on when the more orthodox Jews argue: ‘Surely the Messiah is not to come from Galilee? Does not Scripture say that the Messiah is to be of the family of David, from David’s village of Bethlehem?’ (7/42) Nathanael responds with the words: ‘can anything good come from Nazareth?’ (1/46), but is then persuaded when Jesus tells him he saw him under the fig-tree, a prophetic sign that Nathanael finds convincing (‘you are the Son of God; you are king of Israel’ 1/49).  Though Jesus acknowledges him as a true Israelite, he is disappointed that Nathanael needed a sign: (‘Is this the ground of your faith that I told you I saw you under the fig-tree?’ 1/50) The same point is made in the story of the Samaritan woman. When he tells her of her five former husbands, she acknowledges that he is a prophet (4/19). He then tells her that he is the Messiah. On the behest of Jesus she goes and calls the townspeople: ‘Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?’ 4/29) The people invite him to stay with them and after two days they are completely convinced: ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard him ourselves; we know that this is in truth the Saviour of the world.’ (4/42) The point that is being made very clearly is that people should not have need of signs to recognize the divinity of Jesus and that many of them do not. The writer of the gospel of John says this over and over again. When the officer asks Jesus to cure his son who is at the point of death Jesus complains: ‘Will none of you ever believe without seeing signs and portents?’ (4/48) After the feeding of the five thousand it is once more made clear that the people needed the miracle to believe: ‘When the people saw the sign Jesus had performed, the word went round, “Surely this must be the prophet, that was to come into the world.”’  (6/14)

            And Jesus admits that he performs his miracles for the purpose of convincing people of his divinity. When he gives sight to the man born blind this is said quite clearly. The disciples ask Jesus whether blindness from birth would be due to the sin of one of the child’s parents. (Illness and deformity were usually perceived at the time to be an effect of sin. This is why sick and deformed people were excluded from the temple.) Jesus answers: ‘It is not that this man or his parents sinned, he was born blind so that God’s power might be displayed in curing him.’ (9/3) The  point is made even more obviously in the raising of Lazarus. When Jesus is told of the illness of his friend Lazarus he says: ‘This illness will not end in death; it has come for the glory of God, to bring glory to the Son of God.’ (11/4) For greater effect Jesus waits for two days after he has been called by the sisters before he goes to their help, so that when he arrives Lazarus has been in the grave for four days and his body would, his sister presumes, have started to decompose. In answer to questions from the disciples Jesus says: ‘Lazarus is dead. I am glad not to have been there; it will be for your good and for the good of your faith. But let us go to him.’ (11/15) The raising of Lazarus secured Jesus a great number of followers so that the Jews actually considered killing Lazarus, the evidence of the power of Jesus, as well as Jesus. ‘The chief priests then resolved to do away with Lazarus as well, since on his account many Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him.’ (12/11) In the Jewish culture of the times the most convincing proof of divine power seems to have been the performing of miracles. So Jesus needed to perform miracles to get his message across.

            Let us look at the miracles that Jesus performed. They fall into two categories. The first category comprises those that rely on spiritual powers of a kind that have always been known to man. If Jesus tells Nathanael that he has recently been standing under a fig-tree, or the Samaritan woman that she has had five husbands and is not married to the man she is currently living with, he is manifesting what we might today call powers of extra sensory perception or ESP. We are told that Jesus was also a very good judge of people. ‘He knew men so well, all of them, that he needed no evidence from others about a man, for he himself could tell what was in a man.’ (2/25) Thus he can say to Nathanael on meeting him for the first time: ‘Here is an Israelite worthy of the name. There is nothing false in him.’ (1/47)

            Faith healing is another type of ‘miracle’ that is still widely known today. The cripple at the sheep-pool and the rest of the sick people ‘blind, lame and paralyzed’ (5/3) were waiting beside the pool because they believed that the first person who entered the pool after the waters were disturbed, which happened periodically, would be cured. These people would not have been waiting at the pool if they had not all been convinced that they could be cured miraculously. Jesus singles out the cripple for help because he had an unfair disadvantage; he could never get to the pool before the others, because he had no one to carry him and could not move quickly enough by himself. Jesus asks him whether he really wants to recover and when he answers he does, Jesus does no more than tell him: ‘Rise to your feet, take up your bed and walk.’ (5/8) The healing of the officer’s son is probably another instance of faith healing. But it could also be attributed to Jesus’ knowledge that the boy’s illness was not fatal. He reprimands the father for believing that ‘signs and portents’ were needed. Though these miracles show exceptional powers of the mind, none of them contravenes the laws of nature.

            The other category comprises those miracles that do apparently do just that. Let us have a closer look at the exact wordings of the stories. At the wedding in Cana, where water is turned to wine, the mother of Jesus appears to have prior knowledge of what her son is about to do. She draws his attention to the fact that the wine has run out. Jesus answers quite irritably, as though she had almost given something away: ‘Your concern, mother, is not mine. My hour has not yet come.’ ((2/4) Mary then tells the servants to do exactly as he tells them. And they fill the jars with water, which turns out to be wine. We are told: ‘The steward tasted the water now turned into the wine, not knowing its source; though the servants who had drawn the water knew.’ (2/9) From the way the story is told it is not difficult to image that the mother of Jesus, knowing that the bridegroom was going to have difficulty serving all those he had generously invited to his feast, including Jesus and his disciples, had decided to supply some extra wine without humiliating the host by drawing attention to this gift, and that Jesus had agreed to organize this for her, but at the same time decided to use it as a symbolic demonstration of his mission. This mission has already been explained in the previous chapter. There the gospel writer tells us that John the Baptist had informed a deputation of priests and Levites that while he, John, baptized with water, Jesus, whose way he was preparing, would baptize with the Holy Spirit. What used to be merely water would now be water charged with the Holy Spirit. What better symbol for this change than turning water to wine. Alcohol is often spoken of as spirits. Though Jesus was obviously aware of the people’s need for miracles, he was not merely tricking them (and humorously keeping his mother’s secret) by pretending he had changed water into wine, but demonstrating the central idea of his mission, which in John’s gospel is without doubt his ability to endow humans with the Holy Spirit of God. He had created what one might today call a ‘happening’, a dramatic event which people initially take at face value till they realize that while it is not ‘real’ it is meaningful.

            Another ‘unnatural’ miracle is the feeding of the five thousand. This very large crowd of people had followed Jesus to the farther shore of the Lake of Galilee and at nightfall Jesus is worried that they will have nothing to eat after such a long walk. He says to Philip: ‘Where are we to buy bread to feed these people?’ suggesting that he is seriously considering doing this, though, according to Philip ‘Twenty pounds would not buy enough bread for every one of them to have a little’ (6/7), in other words: however generous Jesus was willing to be, he could not have afforded it. But a young boy, who has brought along five loaves and three fishes, presumably for himself and friends or family accompanying him, is willing to be equally generous. Jesus accepts his contribution and starts dividing the loaves and fishes into portions, which the disciples then distribute. And lo and behold, - this is not hard to imagine - people all over the place come out with loaves and fishes that they had obviously intended to keep for themselves and consume in secret, for it is highly improbable that of all those people following Jesus for what was going to be a considerable distance, none would have remembered to take food with them. Perhaps there was even a rich man among them who could send a servant off to buy bread that would probably have got to the people after dark, so that its source would not have been obvious. Though the fact that food was suddenly turning up everywhere may have seemed like a miracle to those who did not know where it came from and were anticipating miracles, it almost certainly had natural causes. But the people perceived it as a sign: ‘When the people saw the sign Jesus had performed, the word went round, “Surely this must be the prophet that was to come into the world.” Jesus, aware that they meant to come and seize him to proclaim him king, withdrew again to the hills by himself.’ (6/14,15) There can be no doubt that Jesus performed the miracle of making ordinary people unselfish, for without his example of intended generosity many would probably have gone hungry. The image of Jesus as the provider of  food  or even the source of food recurs throughout the gospel. On the next morning he says to the people: ‘In very truth I know that you have not come looking for me because you saw signs, but because you ate the bread and your hunger was satisfied. You must work not for this perishable food but for the food that lasts, the food of eternal life.’ (6/26,27) By showing how he cared for the people in providing real food for them, he could better make them understand that his teaching, coming from the same concern for their welfare, was the true nourishment they required. The synoptic gospels, that also relate this miracle, leave out the important detail that it is a young boy inspired by the caring concern of Jesus who initially donates his loaves and fishes and thereby sets an example to the others. 

            Another ‘miracle’ reported in the Gospel of John is that of Jesus walking on water. It is described in the following words:

At nightfall the disciples went down to the sea and got into their boat, and pushed off to cross the water to Capernaum. Darkness had already fallen and Jesus had not yet joined them. By now a strong wind was blowing and the sea grew rough. When they had rowed about three or four miles they saw Jesus walking on the sea and approaching the boat. They were terrified, but he called out, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they were ready to take him on board and immediately the boat reached the land they were making for. (6/16-21)

This incident takes place on a dark and stormy night. The disciples are obviously worried that Jesus has disappeared  (he had had to flee the people who intended to make him king) and frightened of the increasingly stormy weather. They had rowed what seemed a long way, three or four miles, perhaps more, visibility was poor and they had just had an amazing but also rather unsettling experience of Jesus ‘miraculously’ feeding the crowds and of the hysteria of these crowds. We can imagine that they were  a little ‘spooked’. Jesus had presumably found someone to row him across the lake. He awaits them on the shore, which they have almost reached though they have not realized this. The moment he enters the boat, perhaps wading through the shallow water, they see that they have reached the land they were making for. This story too is told in a way that encourages the reader to look for natural explanations.

The synoptic gospels, which relate this miracle too, again leave out a crucial detail, namely that when Jesus entered the boat they had already reached land. Mark gives the following description:

Somewhere between three and six in the morning, seeing them labouring at the oars against a head-wind, he came towards them walking on the lake. He was going to pass them by; but when they saw him walking on the lake they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But at once he spoke to them: ‘Take heart! It is I; do not be afraid,’ Then he climbed into the boat beside them, and the wind dropped. At this they were completely dumbfounded, for they had not understood the incident of the loaves; their minds were closed. (Mark 6/48-52)

While Mark does tell us about the state of mind of the disciples, he gives the impression that the boat was still in the middle of the lake and Jesus had walked right across.

A further miracle that falls into this category is the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Like the story of the wedding in Cana, this is an incident that only John relates. Lazarus, the man to be ‘resurrected’, and his two sisters Mary and Martha were not only followers but friends of Jesus. If  Jesus was planning another happening he could count on them to support him. And since resurrection from death through the agency of Jesus was the other key teaching of his ministry, along with the sending of the Holy Spirit, it is not surprising that he would have wanted to present it too in a memorable manner, that would convince even those with simple minds. When Martha, who may have been initiated, comes out to meet Jesus after her brother’s apparent death, concerned that this ‘happening’ could go wrong, he makes his message explicit: ‘I am the resurrection and I am life. If a man has faith in me even though he die, he shall come to life; and no one who is alive and has faith shall ever die. Do you believe this?’ (11/25,26) He does not say to her, don’t worry, I can raise Lazarus. He makes his general point and she confirms her trust in him. Even if things should go wrong, Lazarus will not die spiritually: ‘I now believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who was to come into the world.’ (11/27). Life after death was not a generally held belief in Judaism.

When Jesus first gets the message that Lazarus is ill he quite intentionally postpones his intervention in order to make his ‘miracle’ more sensational. He later tells his disciples: ‘I am glad not to have been there; it will be for your good and the good of your faith.’  When the disciples, who are worried about going to Judea because of the hostility Jesus has met with there, question him about the need to go he first says: ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I shall go to wake him.’ This may well have been what happened. It is conceivable that Lazarus agreed to take a sleeping draught that would have made him appear lifeless and if one of the sisters knew what was going on it would probably not have been too difficult to take him to a burial cave in that state of deep unconsciousness. But by the time Jesus arrived Lazarus would hopefully have been well and truly awake again, waiting to be released from his tomb. There is no doubt that Jesus would have been deeply concerned about what he was doing to Lazarus, his grieving sister Mary and his other friends. John tells us: ‘When Jesus saw her [Mary] weeping and the Jews her companions weeping, he sighed heavily and was deeply moved.’ (11/33) There is a certain theatricality about the way Jesus raises Lazarus which shows that he was acutely aware of his audience: ‘Then Jesus looked upwards and said, “Father, I thank thee; thou hast heard me. I knew already that thou always hearest me, but I spoke for the sake of the people standing round, that they might believe that thou didst send me.” (11/41,42) Then he raised his voice in a great cry: “Lazarus, come forth.” The dead man came out, his hands and feet swathed in linen bands, his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said, “Loose him; let him go.’” (11/43,44)  The result is easy to predict: ‘Now many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him.’ (11/45)

            The only other miracle about which John reports is that of Jesus giving sight to a man born blind. Since we do not know what the cause of his blindness was, it is hard to know whether this could have been another instance of faith healing. Jesus makes a paste which the man has to wash off at a pool that is apparently some distance away. When the man returns his neighbours are not quite sure whether he is the ‘man who used to sit and beg’. ‘Some said “yes this is the man”. Others again said, “No, but it is someone like him.” The man himself said, “I am the man”.’ (9/8-10) Since the man had to go away and return some time later, it would certainly have been possible to replace him with a look-alike. The Pharisees too are suspicious and question both him and his parents. The parents are obviously uncomfortable about having to give evidence; they do say the man was their son who was born blind but claim they do not know how he was healed. The evangelist explains their unease with their fear of being excluded from the temple as followers of Jesus. It is not inconceivable that they may have been complicit with him in creating another ‘happening’. The idea of opening the eyes of people who were, according to Jewish belief, blinded by sin (the disciples had asked whether the man’s parents had sinned and thus caused his blindness) is also quite central to the teachings of Jesus, although in John’s gospel Jesus puts surprisingly little emphasis on sin and far more on blindness and lack of faith. Once again the evangelist has made it relatively easy for his readers to find an alternative explanation for the supposedly miraculous event.

            There is one final miraculous event that needs to be discussed; it is the resurrection of Jesus. John’s description is simpler than that of the other evangelists. He first tells of the sign that Pilate had affixed to the cross asserting that Jesus of Nazareth was in fact the king of the Jews and his refusal to change the wording. It appears that Pilate was among the many people who were convinced of the genuineness of Jesus’ claim. He also had Jesus dressed as a king, though his crown was symbolically of thorns, in an attempt to put it to the Jews that Jesus might in truth be their king. John then describes how the clothes of Jesus were distributed among the soldiers in precisely the way the Old Testament scriptures presage. Among the witnesses standing by the cross he lists the three Marys and himself, ‘the disciple whom he loved’. It appears that he was the only one of the disciples who was an eye-witness to this event. Lastly he mentions Jesus asking for a drink ‘in fulfilment of Scripture’ and being given a sponge with sour wine, whereupon he says ‘it is accomplished’, as though a difficult task had been completed, and gives up his spirit. In a recent BBC documentary on the life of Jesus the suggestion was made that the wine, which almost seems to have been instrumental in his ‘death’, may have contained mandrake, a powerful anaesthetic in use at the time. Perhaps Lazarus had tried out the effects of this anaesthetic for Jesus. Jesus certainly ‘died’ before the other two men executed with him, which could suggest that he was not actually dead but merely appeared dead at the time. Consequently his legs were not broken to hasten death. His body was then requested for burial by a ‘secret disciple’, Joseph of Arimathea, and released by Pilate who, as we have seen, was apparently sympathetic to the claims of Jesus. It is conceivable that Jesus was merely unconscious when he was placed in the tomb. When Mary of Magdala, who knew Jesus well, sees him outside the empty tomb early on Sunday morning, she does not recognize him but thinks he is the gardener. If he had in fact regained consciousness and been helped out of his shroud, presumably by the ‘two angels in white’ that John mentions (angel meaning messenger), one sitting at the head and one at the foot of where the body had lain, he would not have had his well-known clothes to wear and may even have been somewhat disguised to make him less recognizable. John does not mention the grave being guarded by soldiers. Though Jesus would have been very weak after his ordeal, under the care of a wealthy patron like Joseph he may well have survived for another forty days and been able to appear to his disciples on a number of occasions. John twice mentions Jesus appearing to his disciples: ‘Late that Sunday evening, when the disciples were together behind locked doors, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them.’ (20/19) John does not say that Jesus entered a locked room miraculously, simply that the disciples were afraid. A week later he comes back to the same room to let Thomas feel his wounds. Thomas was not there on the first occasion and had said: ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails on his hands, unless I put my finger into the place where the nails were, and my hand into his side, I will not believe it’, (20/25). On this occasion we are again told: ‘Although the doors were locked Jesus came in and stood among them.’ (20/26) According to John there can be no doubt at all that the crucified Jesus actually met with his disciples. There is a third occasion ‘by the Sea of Tiberias’. (21/1)  The gospel of John does not talk about an ascension, though Jesus does say to Mary after his resurrection: ‘Do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the Father’, which could mean that he was still alive and therefore weak and sore. John ends his narrative with the commissioning of the disciples and the gospel writer’s identification of himself as a very aged John. He mentions, and this must be taken as another clue, that Jesus, when questioned by the other disciples, had said of him, John: ‘If it should be my will that he wait until I come, what is it to you’, and that this was taken by some of the brotherhood to mean that John would not die. But John himself makes it quite clear that this is not what Jesus said and this is not his own interpretation of the words of Jesus. Though Jesus may appear to be promising eternal life on this earth, his message concerns a spiritual resurrection and eternal life. In keeping with this idea the gospel of John begins by stressing the spiritual reality of Jesus Christ. He is the Word, the message that God has sent to his people on earth and this message brings light in the form of hope and understanding to the world.

            To sum up: as distinct from the synoptic gospels, the gospel of John makes a point of suggesting, though ever so subtly, realistic explanations for the miracles that he reports. Though John clearly did not want to put off the large group of readers with a literal belief in the supernatural nature of Jesus, it would seem that he was worried that faith in Jesus Christ had come to be based on a misunderstanding that had the potential to be very destructive. (The destructiveness is only too visible today with large numbers of people rejecting Christianity because elements of it contravene the laws of science, while fundamentalists claim that a literal belief in all the Bible tells us is required, in spite of the fact that this is unrealistic and the Bible gives convergent reports.) John gives us many instances of quite intelligent people, who considered themselves to be followers of Jesus, taking statements literally that were intended to be understood symbolically. There is the Pharisee Nicodemus, ‘a member of the Jewish council’ (3/1) who cannot grasp the idea of spiritual rebirth. He says: ‘But how is it possible for a man to be born when he is old? Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?’ ((3/4) Jesus’ response is: ‘What! Is this famous teacher of Israel ignorant of such things?’ (3/11) The disciples are little better. Jesus responds to an offer of food they make with ’I have food to eat of which you know nothing.’ At this the disciples said to one another, ‘Can someone have brought him food?’ But Jesus said: ‘It is meat and drink for me to do the will of him who sent me until I have finished his work.’ (4/32-34) He seems to miss no opportunity to draw attention to the existence of a spiritual dimension. Talking to the Samaritan woman whom he had asked for a drink Jesus says: ‘If only you knew what God gives and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’ Again she does not understand what he is talking about. ’Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have no bucket and this well is deep. How can you give me “living water”? ‘ (4/11,12)  When Jesus, who has just driven the traders from the temple in Jerusalem is asked to show his authority for such an action he answers:

‘Destroy this temple [...] and in three days I will raise it again.’ They said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple. Are you going to raise it again in three days?’ But the temple he was speaking of was his body. After his resurrection his disciples recalled what he had said, and they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. (2/19-22)

These examples show that many people misunderstand the message of Jesus because they take his words literally. Nevertheless, the confusion and questioning caused by literal understanding can be a first step towards true understanding.

            Why then does Jesus constantly use symbolic language to make his points, when he knows this will almost certainly be misunderstood? At the very end of his life, just before he is arrested, John has Jesus saying to his disciples:

’Till now I have been using figures of speech; a time is coming when I shall no longer use figures, but tell you of the Father in plain words. When that day comes you will make your request in my name, and I do not say that I shall pray to the Father for you, for the Father loves you himself, because you have loved me and believed that I come from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world again and going to the Father.’ His disciples said: ‘Why, this is plain speaking; this is no figure of speech. We are certain now that you know everything, and do not need to be questioned; because of this we believe that you have come from God.’ (16/25-30)

It appears from this that being spoken to in plain language is a mark of coming of age and developing a direct unmediated relationship to God. The symbolic language Jesus used earlier had forced people to ponder about his meaning and discuss it among themselves. When Jesus tells the Jews: ‘For a little longer I shall be with you; then I am going away to him who sent me. You will look for me but you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.’ (7/35) they discuss this with one another; ‘Where does he intend to go to, that we should not be able to find him? Will he go to the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? What did he mean by saying, “You will look for me but you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come”?’ (7/35,36) In this process of discussion the sheep are separated from the goats and those who earnestly seek understanding gain a deeper knowledge of very difficult truths. 

            It is clear that Jesus very consciously distinguishes between figures of speech and plain language. The figures of speech, and the ‘happenings’ must be counted among them, inaugurate an important process that should eventually lead to understanding. But those who take them literally are in error. What Jesus teaches his disciples does not imply an overcoming of the laws of nature as God the Father created them. John asserts, again and again, that Jesus, the ‘Word’, was at one with his Father who had created the earth. He actually begins his gospel with the following statement: ‘When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word then was with God in the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life.’ (1/1-3) Jesus also repeatedly makes the point that he will not do anything that is not the will of his Father.  ‘In truth, in very truth I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he does only what he sees the Father doing: what the Father does, the Son does.’ (5/19) These statements can be interpreted as saying that Jesus works within the natural parameters set in the creation. This again suggests that the events that people took for miracles were in fact happenings in which the message of God had been given symbolic expression in a dramatic genre. In miracles like the resurrection Jesus had turned himself into the word of God that conveyed God’s message to men. This can be seen as the reason why John introduces Jesus by describing him with this baffling term, the ‘Word’.

            To suggest that Jesus was actively directing and using his death to convey the message of God, or perhaps even provoking and choosing his agonizing martyrdom as the most effective way of getting this message across, for he makes it clear that it is he who will choose the time of his death, should under no circumstances be seen as an accusation of trickery or dishonesty, just as little as the use of symbols is a dishonest use of language. The intentionality of the death of Jesus does not alter the fact that it was in a very real sense our way to salvation for, as John tells us, it alone enabled Christ to send us the Holy Spirit.

On the last and greatest day of the festival Jesus stood and cried aloud, ‘If anyone is thirsty let him come to me; whosoever believes in me, let him drink.’ As Scripture says, ‘Streams of living water shall flow out from within him.’ He was speaking of the Spirit which believers in him would receive later; for the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. (7/37-39)

Incidentally, the quote from the Jewish Scriptures shows that symbolic language had always been used to convey religious ideas and the fact that so few of the Jews understood it was an indication that they had lost contact with their own religious tradition. Jesus’ approach to teaching was in complete conformity with that of the Prophets and the Psalmist of the Old Testament with whose writings he was very familiar.

            John makes it clear that Jesus was conversant with the various prophecies relating to the Messiah and that he knew that he would have to be seen as conforming to them in order to be accepted as the Messiah. John does not follow the synoptic evangelists in trying to ‘bend the facts of Jesus’ life to meet Jewish expectations. He knows nothing of a birth in Bethlehem or of Joseph being a descendent of David. There is no mention of a miraculous conception and virgin birth, while there is mention of Jesus’ unbelieving brothers. In the way John represents the facts it would seem that as far as Jesus was concerned the only truly significant part of the prophecy was the sacrificial death and the raising of  the Messiah on the cross and he knew he would have to fulfil this. His fear of the torture awaiting him before he sends Judas off to ‘hand him over’ (a more accurate translation than ‘betrayal’) with the words ‘Do quickly what you have to do’, is particularly understandable if he has planned his ordeal and knows that the success of his mission is likely to depend on it. ’Now my soul is in turmoil and what am I to say? Father, save me from this hour. No, it was for this that I came to this hour. Father, glorify thy name.’  (12/27,28) In John’s gospel he receives an answer to this prayer: ‘I have glorified it and I will glorify it again’ (12/28) as a reassurance. John tells us: “The crowd standing by said it was thunder, while others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’” (12/29) It is important that in John’s gospel the agony and the reassurance come before Judas has gone off, at a time when it would have still been possible to avoid the ordeal, and not after the betrayal as in the synoptic gospels. Jesus makes sure that he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey: ‘Jesus found a donkey and mounted it, in accordance with the text of Scripture: “Fear no more, daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, mounted on an ass’s colt.”’ (12/15) This is a fully intentional act, as is Jesus’ request for a drink before his death ‘in fulfilment of Scripture.’ (19/28) There is also no reason why Pilate might not have given his soldiers permission to distribute the clothes of Jesus amongst themselves ‘in fulfilment of Scripture’ drawing lots for the tunic: ‘And thus the text of Scripture came true: “They shared my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing”.’ (19/24)  In John’s account, it appears that Jesus knew that to be accepted as the Messiah in the Jewish tradition he had to fulfil certain traditional expectations, and that he went to the trouble of doing this in order to create a hearing for the God he knew he was representing, whose message the Jews themselves seemed to have forgotten.  

            Though Jesus knew himself to be representing the Jewish God, the God of Abraham and Moses, and though he followed Jewish festival observances and taught in the Jewish temple and synagogues, he was critical of the current state of Judaism. He considered the teaching that illness and deformity were invariably punishments for sin and thus impurities that justified exclusion from the temple a nonsense, as his retort to the disciples with reference to the man born blind shows. Even in the case of the cripple the warning not to sin comes after the healing, when Jesus meets the man a second time. At that point the one-time cripple had just been accused of ‘sinning’ by the Jews, because he was carrying his bed on the Sabbath, in obedience to Jesus’ command. It is quite possible that Jesus was referring, even jokingly, to this incident when he said: ‘Now that you are well again, leave your sinful ways, or you may suffer something worse.’ (5/14) The original healing makes no mention of forgiveness of sin; none of the healings that John relates do. As John portrays him, Jesus is well aware that those who give themselves the appearance of being righteous are often by no means doing ‘the will of the Father’, which is the only true standard he recognizes. This is illustrated by the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery (this story has no fixed position in John’s narrative), a sin punishable with death by stoning. Jesus’ response in this case is: ‘That one of you who is faultless shall throw the first stone.’  Jesus was clearly of the opinion that the accepted legalistic understanding of sin did little towards reforming the world. What it did do was create distinctions between the haves and the have-nots. For Jesus all human beings, male or female, following the traditional or the Samaritan Israelite practice, priest or tax collector, Jew or Gentile, healthy or ill were potentially children of God and deserved the same care and love. He was disgusted by the legalistic righteousness of the priests and Pharisees, for whom observing the Sabbath according to the letter of the law was more important than helping people in need. Again and again the Pharisees try to catch him out by accusing him of healing on the Sabbath. On one occasion: ‘He defended himself by saying, “My Father has never yet ceased his work and I am working too”.’ (5/17) and on another Jesus points out that if circumcision can be performed on the Sabbath then healing is also a permissible activity. (7/22) And finally, Jesus was outraged by the corruption prevalent in the temple where those in power could enrich themselves by charging the common people for the ritual sacrifices that religious observance required of them. In John’s gospel the incident where Jesus drives the traders from the temple is one of the first in his active life:

As it was near the time of the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. There he found in the temple the dealers in cattle, sheep, and pigeons, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Jesus made a whip of cords and drove them out of the temple, sheep, cattle, and all. He upset the tables of the money-changers, scattering their coins. Then he turned on the dealers in pigeons: ‘Take them out,’ he said: ‘you must not turn my Father’s house into a market.’ His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, ‘Zeal for thy house will destroy me.’ (2/13-17)

He wanted to build upon the Judaic tradition but he also wanted to reform it and move beyond it to a religion that excluded no one and embraced all who desired a true relationship with God. This is given expression in the conversation Jesus had with the Samaritan woman:

            ‘Believe me,’ said Jesus, ‘the time is coming when you will worship the Father      neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship without         knowing what you worship, while we worship what we know. It is from the Jews            that salvation comes. But the time approaches, indeed it is already here, when   those that are real worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Such             are the worshippers whom the Father wants.’ (4/21-23)

            What then was the teaching of Jesus as presented by John? About himself Jesus says repeatedly that he is the Messiah, (4/26) whom the Jews have been waiting for and whom they also spoke of as the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, the king of the Jews, the ‘man spoken of by Moses in the Law, and by the prophets’. (1/45) But what is a Messiah? The Jews listening to Jesus on the shores of Lake Galilee wanted to crown him their king; Jesus had to escape from them to avoid this. After the raising of Lazarus the priests and Pharisees deliberate: ‘This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone like this the whole populace will believe in him. Then the Romans will come and sweep away our temple and our nation.’ (11/48) making it clear that they also saw Jesus as a political figure. When Caiaphas persuades Pilate to condemn Jesus to death it is also on the grounds of Jesus threatening Roman political authority: ‘If you let this man go you are not a friend of Caesar; any man who claims to be a king is defying Caesar.’ (19/12) But when Pilate questions him, Jesus makes it quite clear that he has not come as a worldly king:

My kingdom does not belong to this world. If it did, my followers would be fighting to save me from arrest by the Jews. My kingly authority comes from elsewhere.’ ‘You are a king, then?’ said Pilate. Jesus answered, ‘”King” is your word. My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this was I born; for this I came into the world, and all who are not deaf to truth listen to my voice.’(18/36,37)

Another expectation the Jews had of their Messiah was, as we have seen, that he should perform miraculous signs: ’When the Messiah comes, is it likely that he will perform more signs than this man?’ (7/31)  Jesus himself, however, did not put the emphasis on signs but on deeds. ‘If I am not acting as my Father would, do not believe me. But if I am, accept the evidence of my deeds, even if you do not believe me, so that you may recognize and know that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.’ (10/37,38)

And again: ‘My deeds done in my Father’s name are my credentials.’ (10/25)

            Again and again Jesus identifies himself as the Son of the Father, who has been with him since the beginning of time. There are a number of passages in which he tries to define his relationship to the Father. He is at one with the Father (‘My Father and I are one’ 10/30), he is obedient to the Father (‘my aim is not my own will but the will of him who sent me.’ 5/30 and ‘I do nothing on my own authority, but in all that I say, I have been taught by my Father. He who sent me is present with me and has not left me alone; for I always do what is acceptable to him.’ 8/28) the Father is greater than he is (‘for the Father is greater than I’ 14/28) and he has authority from the Father (‘The Father loves the Son and has entrusted him with all authority’ 3/35) and this authority is based on love. The frequency with which these statements are repeated mirrors the extreme difficulty Jesus had in getting the idea of his oneness with the divine across to people.

            His deeds, or to put it differently, his ethical approach are marked by two things: love of his Father and his fellow men and zeal for his mission. In his last hours he explicitly gives his disciples a ‘new commandment’: ‘love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another. If there is this love among you, then all will know that you are my disciples.’ (13/34,35)  Again it is deeds and not signs that will distinguish them as disciples of Jesus. Jesus’ ministry of preaching to, feeding and healing the people who sought help and enlightenment from him is an indication of this love. The humility with which he served those for whom he felt responsible, given memorable expression in the ritual washing of his disciples’ feet before the ‘last supper’, was another aspect of this love. ’You call me “Master” and “Lord”, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Then if I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example.’ (13/13,14)

            A mark of this love is his assertion that he has not come ‘to judge the world but to save the world’. (12/47) He also tells his disciples: ‘the Father does not judge anyone, but has given full jurisdiction to the Son’. (5/22) According to the Old Testament, God was a God of judgement, who sent terrible punishments to those who had transgressed. Jesus refutes this view: God does not punish ‘sin’ with such things as illness and disaster and particularly not the illness of someone who did not commit the sin, like the man who was blind from birth. If people read their Scripture intelligently they would discover the same message: ’Do not imagine that I shall be your accuser at the Father’s tribunal. Your accuser is Moses, the very Moses on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses you would believe what I tell you, for it was about me that he wrote. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how are you to believe what I say?’ (5/45) According to Jesus it is not always easy to distinguish right from wrong. Jesus tells his disciples that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, which he will send them after his death, will help them to know what is sin. ‘When he [your Advocate] comes he will confute the world, and show where right and wrong and judgement lie.’ (16/8) As far as Jesus is concerned, the only real sin is to reject the offer God the Father is making to man through Jesus Christ.  

Speaking of the enemies the disciples will have to encounter after his death, Jesus reassures them that their Advocate, the Holy Spirit, ‘will convict them of wrong, by their refusal to believe in me; he will convince them that right is on my side, by showing that I go to the Father when I pass from your sight; and he will convince them of divine judgement, by showing that the Prince of this world stands condemned.’ (16/9-11) It should be noted that the Holy Spirit will not only convict the unbelievers of wrong, but will also convince them of what is right. Again God, through the agency of Jesus, is there to save rather than to judge. All the same, Jesus admits that there is such a thing as judgement: ‘There is a judge for the man who rejects me and does not accept my words; the word that I spoke will be his judge on the last day. I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself commanded me what to say and how to speak. I know that his commands are eternal life.’ (12/48-50) Zeal, the other outstanding characteristic of Jesus, was clearly shown in the courage with which Jesus confronted the priests and Pharisees again and again, though he knew they wanted to kill him, the tirelessness and inventiveness with which he disseminated his message, and the extreme hardships which he took upon himself as the ‘Word’ of God. 

            But the mission of Jesus goes beyond merely setting an example. He is the only human being on earth who incorporates the spirit of God or the Holy Spirit. The first to recognize this is John the Baptist:

I saw the Spirit coming down from heaven like a dove and resting upon him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize in water had told me, ‘When you see the Spirit coming down upon someone and resting upon him, you will know that this is he who is to baptize in Holy Spirit. I saw it myself and I have borne witness. This is God’s chosen one.’ (1/32-34)

This account is different from that in the synoptic gospels where it is Jesus himself, rather than John, who sees the spirit descending. Baptizing with the Holy Spirit is the first step towards drawing the Spirit of God down onto men. It is a ritual that very soon the disciples are also performing. Their own baptism together with the example and teaching of Jesus seems to give the disciples at least intermittent insights.

Shortly before Jesus dies he then raises his disciples to another level.

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I call you servants no longer; a servant does not know what his master is about. I have called you friends because I have disclosed to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me: I chose you. I appointed you to go on and bear fruit, fruit that shall last; so that the Father may give you all that you ask in my name. (15/15,16)

This raising of the disciples to the status of friends with the power of prayer is linked to the prediction that they will be persecuted as his followers and missionaries.

As they persecuted me, they will persecute you; they will follow your teaching as little as they have followed mine. It is on my account that they will treat you thus, because they do not know the One who sent me. (15/20,21)

            But it appears that Jesus cannot fully send the Holy Spirit to men till after his death. ’If I do not go, your Advocate will not come, whereas if I go, I will send him to you.’ (16/7) and: ‘He was speaking of the Spirit which believers in him would receive later; for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified.’ (7/39) Shortly before his death he promises his disciples: ‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another to be your Advocate, who will be with you for ever - the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive him, because the world neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, because he dwells with you and is in you.’ (14/16,17) With the help of the Holy Spirit they will no longer have problems understanding and believing: Your Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will call to mind all that I have told you.’ (14/26)  And again:

However, when he comes who is the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but will tell only what he hears; and he will make known to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, for everything he makes known to you he will draw from what is mine. All that the Father has is mine, and that is why I said, ‘Everything that he makes known to you he will draw from what is mine.’ (16/13-15) 

Not only will the Holy Spirit give them wisdom and understanding but ‘he who has faith in me will do what I am doing; and he will do greater things still because I am going to the Father. Indeed anything you ask in my name I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name I will do it.’ (14/12-14) In possession of the Holy Spirit, the disciples will be one with Jesus in the same way that he is one with the Father. ‘In a little while the world will see me no longer, but you will see me; because I live, you too will live; then you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you.’ (14/19,20) Jesus prays to his Father: ‘The glory which thou gavest me I have given to them, that they may be one, as we are one; I in them and they in me, may they be perfectly one.’ (17/22,23) But to achieve this union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it inhabits the disciples of Christ, Jesus had to suffer crucifiction. When Jesus appears to his disciples after his crucifiction but before his ‘ascension’ (meaning, I am suggesting here, his physical death) to send them on their way as missionaries in his cause, he imparts his spirit to them in a further stage of their investment as carriers of his message. “‘As the Father sent me, so I send you.’ Then he breathed on them, saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit! If you forgive any man’s sins, they stand forgiven; if you pronounce them unforgiven, unforgiven they remain.’” (20/23)

            Recapitulating: What John’s gospel makes clear again and again is that the realities Jesus is concerned with are realities of the spirit. When he talks about food and drink he is talking about spiritual sustenance; when he talks about his kingdom he means a spiritual kingdom; and when he talks about eternal life it is a life in the spirit he has in mind. That does not mean that he does not have a compassionate view of the bodily needs of men, such as hunger and sickness. The life of the spirit, as Jesus understands it, a life in unity with God, is however not an idea or a figure of speech or a fairy-tale but a very real thing that has powerful effects on the lives of people. Though John’s gospel does not give us an account of the dangerous and self-abnegating missionary activities of the disciples that were to follow and their unexpected commitment, courage and clarity of purpose - described by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles - considering their cowardice, worldliness and uncertainty before receiving the Holy Spirit, he hints at it with Jesus’ prophesies of the persecution and martyrdom they will have to undergo. ’They will ban you from the synagogue; indeed, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will suppose that he is performing a religious duty.’ (16/2) 

            John’s views also affect his account of the Eucharist. While the synoptic gospels all introduce the meal of Holy Communion as the central event of the Last Supper and present it in the nature of a sacramental institution, John speaks of it in the context of an earlier occasion where Jesus was asked to provide a sign comparable with the manna that had fallen to feed the Children of Israel in the desert:

What sign can you give us to see, so that we may believe you? What is the work you do? Our ancestors had manna to eat in the desert; as Scripture says: ‘he gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ (6/30,31)

Jesus answers:

I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead. I am speaking of the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat, and never die. I am that living bread which has come down from heaven; if anyone eats this bread he shall live for ever. Moreover, the bread which I will give is my own flesh; I give it for the life of the world. (6/48-51)

Again his listeners take his words literally.

This led to a fierce dispute among the Jews. ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ they said. Jesus replied, ‘In truth, in very truth I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you can have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood possesses eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. My flesh is real food; my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells continually in me and I dwell in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me shall live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven; and it is not like the bread our fathers ate: they are dead, but whoever eats this bread shall live for ever.’ (6/52-58)

In spite of Jesus’ statements that his bread is not like the bread their fathers ate but rather ‘real food’ and ‘real drink’, which can only mean spiritual as opposed to physical food and drink, people still take his words literally and go away disgusted: ‘This is more than we can stomach.’ (6/60) To the disciples, who are ‘murmuring about it’ Jesus says: ’Does this shock you? What if you see the Son of Man ascending to the place where he was before? The spirit alone gives life; the flesh is of no avail; the words which I have spoken to you are both spirit and life.’ (6/62,63)  In John’s account the blood of Jesus is not represented by wine to be drunk from a cup and there is no ritual meal. It is simply another instance where Jesus has spoken of spiritual things using the images of earthly things. It is entirely in keeping with John’s emphasis on the spiritual that we do not have the institution of a sacramental meal, which would again run the risk of placing spiritual things in the power of a self-seeking priestly caste, much like the sacrificial animals which Jesus had earlier driven out of the temple at Jerusalem. Instead we are given a powerful symbol which we can call to mind as we eat our daily meals. This is only one of many instances in John’s gospel where Jesus uses the images of food and drink to get his message across. (John’s account should not necessarily be understood, however, as a condemnation of eucharistic rituals that have proved important Christian practices in many churches.)

            John’s gospel is sometimes criticized for its undue emphasis on the divinity of Jesus. This was necessary because of the extreme difficulty of getting such an idea across to people. But it is counterbalanced by the humanness of the character that John depicts. Right from the start of his public life when he chases the traders out of the temple (an incident that comes much later in the other gospels) Jesus is involved in a struggle. He is hassled by the priests and Pharisees, by his family who do not believe in him, by the people who want to use him as a political figure-head, by his own disciples who are timid and doubting much of the time, and he knows that he has only limited time to preach his message before he is killed by his enemies. While he believes firmly that God will help him, he also knows that the responsibility for the success of his mission rests with him alone. It is he who has to achieve almost impossible feats of mental and physical endurance. The stress of all this can at times make him irritable, sarcastic and exasperated. On the other hand, the long reassuring farewell address to his disciples gives expression to all his compassion and caring concern and foresight. 

            Throughout the entire gospel of John we can sense a kind of frantic urgency that finds expression, among other things, in the many emphatic repetitions. How does one get people to accept the idea that God, who in Jewish religion was so far beyond comprehension that he could have no name, is a father who is willing to enter into an intimate relationship with man? And furthermore, how is one to get this message across to people for whom religion is either a set of rules and regulations which must be blindly followed, or a set of prophesies which must be fulfilled literally down to the last detail, or alternatively, whose understanding of divinity is linked to an expectation of the miraculous and supernatural which does not respect the natural world that God has created. Jesus argues with the legalistic priests and Pharisees, showing his profound knowledge of the Scriptures as well as his ability to quibble, as they do; when accused of calling himself the Son of God he points out that the expression ‘sons of the gods’ has been used in the Old Testament to refer to human beings. He argues that one must distinguish between unessential and essential ‘work’ and that such things as healing are worthy of the Sabbath and should never be postponed. In this respect it deserves to be placed in the same category as circumcision, which is permitted on the Sabbath. With respect to the Old Testament prophecies, Jesus makes a point of fulfilling them to the extent that this is possible. And as far as the miraculous goes, he tries to use it to convey his message. People must be given time to get used to unfamiliar and extraordinary ideas. Once they have experienced the Holy Spirit their faith should no longer need these crutches. But until then they can only judge on the basis of the deeds that Jesus and his disciples perform and have faith.

            Faith in itself is of course a dangerous force that requires discernment. You must have faith in the ‘good shepherd’ and not in the ‘thieves and robbers’ that Jesus speaks of as coming before him who were out  ‘to steal, to kill and to destroy’ (10/9,10). How can one recognize the good shepherd? He has two characteristics: in the first place the sheep know him and he knows them. ‘Whoever has the will to do the will of God shall know whether my teaching comes from him or is merely my own.’ (7/16) But beyond that, the true shepherd is prepared to lay down his life for those in his care and to do it voluntarily. John quotes Jesus as saying:

I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep and my sheep know me - as the Father knows me and I know the Father - and I lay down my life for the sheep.[...] I lay down my life to receive it back again. No one has robbed me of it; I am laying it down of my own free will. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to receive it back again; this charge I have received from my Father.  (10/14-18) 

What Jesus will do is not suicide but an extreme form of self-sacrifice. ‘There is no greater love than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.’ (15/13) He is not hunted down and killed; he decides voluntarily to do what he knows to be the only thing that will ultimately give him legitimacy and recognition and persuade people of the genuineness of his claims. ‘A grain of wheat remains a solitary grain unless it falls into the ground and dies; but if it dies, it bears a rich harvest.’ (12/25) Thus the crucifiction of Jesus is necessary in three respects; firstly it is the seal of his absolute commitment to his message, secondly it will give visible and persuasive representation to the idea of resurrection, again in a ‘happening’ of kinds, and thirdly it will enable Jesus to send his followers the Holy Spirit. Jesus makes it clear that the Holy Spirit will only come after he has died. We can therefore deduce that the Holy Spirit must be his spirit. The crucifiction will unite his followers with God the Father, whose will is the sole purpose of Jesus’ life, and with Jesus the Son in a ‘Communion of Saints’, a union which will guarantee them eternal life and, on a daily basis, convince them of God’s truth and help them to preach it while living a life worthy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Throughout thousands of years of human history there have been people who believed that the human spirit can survive death and that spirits can commune with the living in helpful but also in destructive ways after death. In some cultures the spirits of the dead have to be chased away to stop them interfering with the living. The synoptic gospels speak of such interfering, vampire-like spirits. There are of course also cultures in which the spirits of ancestors are worshiped.  Even in today’s agnostic world there are many people who secretly feel they have contact with the spirits of people who have died; there are others, of course, who have never had that experience and may even consider it ludicrous. The gospel of John does not regard spiritual survival after death as an unnatural or miraculous event but as something accepted as a fact by many. What is new in the religion Christ teaches is that we can rely on his spirit to be holy and a worthy guide to God.

            John sums up his message very succinctly in the following statement: ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life. It was not to judge the world that God sent his Son into the world, but that through him the world might be saved.’ (3/16,17) Like Jesus himself, John obviously had great difficulty in preaching this message. He needed to get it across to as many people as possible, people with very different backgrounds and expectations, without losing any of the ‘sheep’ placed under his care. It is not hard to empathize with him. Christianity is still not an easy message to preach; this is obviously one of the main topics of the Gospel of John.

            How does the message of John compare with the other three gospels whose messages are so similar to each other that they can virtually be seen as one? While the synoptic gospels on the whole aim at being as comprehensive as possible, John makes no such claim: ‘There is much else that Jesus did. If it were all to be recorded in detail, I suppose the whole world could not hold the books that would be written.’ (21/25) But John generally recounts the individual events in greater detail. One is tempted to believe that he was actually a witness, as he claims. The synoptic gospels place more emphasis on Jesus fulfilling all the Old Testament prophecies traditionally associated with the Messiah. Matthew is particularly thorough in this respect. For Mark Jesus is above all a faith healer who cures vast numbers of people, many of them possessed by evil spirits, some of which actually recognize Jesus as the Son of God. There is no mention of ‘possession’ in John’s gospel. In the synoptic gospels mental and physical illness are almost always associated with sin and their healing with repentance and forgiveness, or they are evidence of possession. As we have seen, sin is not important in the gospel of John.

           

            Another point of divergence is that in the synoptic gospels the teaching of Jesus centers upon the notion of the ‘kingdom of God’ which is thought to be close at hand. While this is not intended to be seen as a return to Jewish political autonomy, as some of the crowd would like it to be, it is envisaged as a kind of future utopia. Mark quotes a statement of Jesus in support of this idea: ’I tell you this: there are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the kingdom of God already come in power’ (Mark 9/1), words that suggest that this might happen within the life-span of some of the people around. John brings a different version of the same statement. He claims that Jesus was referring to John himself when he said: ’If it should be my will that he wait until I come, what is it to you? Follow me’ (21/23) and insists that this did not mean that John would not die, as the ‘brotherhood’ intended to interpret it; but he does not say what Jesus could have meant by his ‘coming’. The phrase ‘the kingdom of God’ is clearly avoided by John. One might surmise that for John, who so consistently stresses that the message of Jesus is a spiritual message, the coming of Christ would be identical with the working of the Holy Spirit within the hearts of the followers of Jesus.

All four gospels are in no doubt that the message of loving your fellow men is of central importance in the teaching and above all the practice of Jesus. However, they differ strongly in their emphasis of the miraculous. In John the crucifiction is not accompanied by the miraculous, but simply by the loving act of Jesus asking John to look after Mary his mother, showing that Jesus was capable of thinking of others even in the midst of his agony. In Mark’s account it is just the curtain of the temple that is torn in two upon the death of Jesus. In the gospel of Matthew, which borrows heavily from Mark, there is also an earthquake and a resurrection of the dead:

There was an earthquake, the rocks split and the graves opened, and many of God’s saints were raised from sleep; and coming out of their graves after his resurrection they entered the Holy City, where many saw them. And when the centurion and his men who were keeping watch over Jesus saw the earthquake and all that was happening, they were filled with awe, and they said, ‘Truly this man was a son of God.’ (Matthew 27/51-54).

Obviously the miracle was needed to convince people of the divine mission of Jesus, just as it convinced the centurion. Luke, for his part, introduces the miraculous events around the birth of Jesus; we have come to associate them with Christmas. It is to be assumed, and modern theological scholarship would agree, that these are on the whole inventions that draw on a variety of myths current at the time, though this does not mean that they do not contribute to our understanding of what the birth, life and death of Jesus might mean to humankind or that they are not useful in publicizing the message of Jesus.

What the synoptic gospels do thankfully provide us with to a far greater degree than John, is the sayings and teachings of Jesus, in particular the parables, stories which illustrate the message of Jesus in an indirect way. Though John’s Jesus is constantly using symbolic language to disseminate his ideas, and though, in our interpretation, he enacts ‘happenings’, John does not recount a single one of the parables that the other evangelists attribute to Jesus.

One of the most significant differences between John and the synoptic gospels is that John’s Jesus is always proclaiming his divine origin and mission and has no inhibitions about making this known, whereas the Jesus of the synoptic gospels, though obviously also aware of his spiritual mission since his baptism, spends the first years of his public life as a preacher and healer trying to keep a low profile and telling those he has healed not to give him away. Thus it needs his supernatural affirmation in death.

A telling incident in Mark’s gospel, that in my view shows that Mark has not fully understood the message of Jesus, is this: When Jesus is approached by a Gentile woman ‘a Phoenician of Syria by nationality’ who begs him ‘to drive the spirit out of her daughter’, he says to her:

‘Let the children be satisfied first; it is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’ ‘Sir,’ she answered, ‘even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.’ He said to her, ‘For saying that you may go home content; the unclean spirit has gone out of your daughter.’ (Mark 7, 27-29)

It is hard to imagine John’s Jesus, who talks freely to the Samaritan woman in complete contravention of Jewish custom and who tells his disciples:  ‘there are other sheep of mine, not belonging to this fold, whom I must bring in; and they too will listen to my voice. There will then be one flock, one shepherd’ (10/16) saying something so discriminatory to a Gentile woman.

            Finally, we should perhaps ask: ‘Who or what is GOD in the gospel of John?’ In the first place we will have to acknowledge that he stands in the tradition of the Jewish Jehova, the creator of the world and among nature deities the god of thunder. Later this god evolved into the God of Abraham, and as such a tribal God. Still later he becomes the God of Moses, who devised or recorded, along with many specific laws relating to food, health and custom, the Ten Commandments: a moral law to regulate and govern human society and teach men to live together respectfully and productively. Thus the Jewish god evolved from a nature god to a moral instructor and often a harsh and punitive judge of imperfect human society.

           

            But the God that Jesus speaks of is most frequently conceived as a ‘father’ and therefore as an ongoing generator of life whose offspring resemble him and are understood by him and have the capacity to understand him. As the father of humans this is a human-like God, accessible to us through empathy, a god who values whatever will support good relationships between human beings. Creation is no longer a one-time event but a continuous, evolving but also guided process of socialisation and maturation. God, as we humans can conceive him, is simply the highest and most perfect being we can imagine and in so far as we aim at perfecting our own beings we are ‘sons of God’ and at one with God. It is perhaps not only a matter of ‘believing in God’, though John’s gospel stresses the importance of faith, but also of listening to God and making the effort of envisaging God and approaching him with our human capacity of mind that links us with God. We are encouraged to trust that this god, through the man Jesus, who is like us, and ultimately through all those loving spirits, who are joined with him and us in the ‘communion of saints’, can help us and even intervene in our lives. This god is the god of love. According to John, the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’, love is the highest most human and therefore most divine value we know. Christian ethics are based on love and no longer on the pre-Christian Jewish god’s predominant concern with justice and obedience.

            All in all, it seems to me that John’s gospel with its greater sense of real life as distinct from ‘signs’ or ‘figures of speech’, its apparently greater authenticity of detail and its greater coherence of thought and purpose is more conducive to a modern understanding of the life and significance of Jesus than the earlier synoptic gospels. I do not think that John’s gospel requires us to believe in the ‘supernatural’. What it does demand is faith in an invisible fatherly creator God who is still deeply concerned for the welfare of his creation and, as Jesus puts it, ‘has never yet ceased his work’ (5/17), a God who reaches out to us through the exemplary life and teaching of Jesus and who can enter our hearts through his Holy Spirit, a God who draws us into himself and makes it possible for us to live our lives in conformity with his sacred will. 

Postscript 2018:

           

            I wrote this essay eighteen years ago on a sudden hunch, almost under dictation, and without having studied the gospel of John at any depth before, though my professional familiarity with interpreting texts was an advantage. The insights it contains were not primarily a revelation for me personally, as I tend to be guided by my own experience rather than scientific probability. But I am surrounded by people, many of them very close to my heart, for whom the miraculous and supernatural of the gospels is an insurmountable obstacle to the message of Christ. In this respect I did have a personal stake in writing this text.

            At the time I would have found it difficult to sum up its arguments. But rereading it now, it seems to me quite plausible that Jesus could have used the ‘happening’, much like he used symbols or the cryptic parable, to convey his message in a form that would shock his listeners out of complacency and forced them to think deeply about difficult ideas. It seems to me that the message conveyed by John’s gospel, if we read it in the way I am here suggesting, does not differ in essence from the traditional and sanctioned Christian message. Jesus is still the teacher using unorthodox means to get his message across to us and he still does this as the ‘son of God’ who preaches an ethic of love and eventually sacrifices his life for us.

            Not quite knowing what to do with this text I sent it to a couple of theologians in the wider family who, I thought, would read it with an open mind. Their reaction was one of shock and horror. Another friend, an intelligent and devout person, reported that someone she had shown it to had been appalled at the mendacity of my Jesus (suggesting, between the lines, that she was appalled too). As an artistic form the ‘happening’ does of course rely on the audience’s confusion between what is real and what is symbolic. And it is nothing new for unfamiliar theatrical art forms to be suspected of serving willful deception.

In consequence of these reactions, I have up to now done nothing with this essay. I am not qualified to defend it theologically nor am I in a position to deal constructively with either negative or positive reactions. And since I do not feel entitled to delete this worrying text, it will just have to await what, if anything, happens to it in the future.

            But I would like to add the following note: I do not think that in our modern world the strength of Christianity lies in universal conformity and group solidarity, a belief that was still very strong in my younger days. Religions have always been a dangerous adhesive for groups and still are. Since I wrote this text there has also been a spectacular loss of faith in the integrity and therefore authority of the priestly, regulatory caste, whose office-bearers have been widely unmasked as abusive, dishonest and power-hungry in almost all the churches. In addition there is now a very widespread objection to anything unreal or miraculous that causes confusion by masquerading as reality and not being clearly marked as an invention or fantasy. The miraculous may have fascinated people in pre-scientific times but it has become repellent to many of today’s more educated and thoughtful. At the same time, education in Western countries has reached a standard that gives ordinary people the confidence to interpret what they read in their own way, making them much less reliant on dogma. In this new context my text should perhaps no longer be as dangerous and disturbing as it once might have seemed.

Note: For biblical quotes I have used The New English Bible, The Bible Societies in association with Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, 1975.

 

   

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