St. John the Evangelist

 

 The beginning of the Gospel of John in the Book of Kells.

St. John the Evangelist

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

December 27, 2017

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these things are written so that you might come to trust that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through trusting you may have life in his name.”  (John 20:30-31)

Today is the Feast Day of St. John the Evangelist.  Though the Gospel of John in its present form comes to us from an editor a generation or two later, it is written in the tradition of the “beloved” disciple of Jesus.   It comes from a somewhat isolated community of Christians in Southern Asia Minor that had its own cycle of stories about Jesus.  As a result, it tells things a bit differently from the Synoptic (shared -view) Gospels, Mark, Matthew., and Luke. 

In the Synoptics, Jesus begins his ministry when he is about 30 years old, and accomplishes it within a year’s span, ending with a single trip to Jerusalem that results in his death.  In John, Jesus is just shy of 50 (see John 8:57) and conducts his ministry over a three year period marked with annual trips to Jerusalem.  Matthew and Luke agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the city associated with King David and his royal anointed successor “the “Messiah” coming in the end of time.  In John, Jesus ridicules the idea that the Messiah comes from Bethlehem:  what matters is that he comes from Heaven. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the Synoptics; in John, he simply bears witness to him.  In the Synoptics, Jesus cleanses the Temple early in Holy Week, and this is what leads to his death.   In John, Jesus cleanses the Temple at the very start of his three-year ministry.  Jesus institutes the Eucharist at the Last Supper in the Synoptics; in John, he simple washes the disciples feet and says a long prayer for them.  For John, the feeding of the 5,000 seems to be the scene most fraught with images of the Eucharist.    In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus suffers shameful death on the cross and only later is raised to glory; in John, Jesus is lifted up in glory on the Cross itself. 

Because John’s Gospel is so idiosyncratic, a rogue Gospel by any accounting, it almost was not included in the canon of the New Testament when the early lists were drawn up in the 4^th century.   But the early Fathers recognized that alone among the Gospels John taught clearly the divinity of Christ, and they included John so that we might read the Synoptics with this truth clearly in our minds.

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+