Fourth Sunday of Easter: The Remarkable Storytelling of the Gospel According to John
And a huge "Thanks!" to all moms today (and every day.)
Another Sunday arrives and can you believe we’re about half-way through the 50-day season of Easter. As I’ve written on previous Sundays, it’s a day where I suspend my usual format in order to focus on the liturgical scripture - especially the gospel.
Instead of looking directly at today’s liturgical gospel, I want to offer essential context we need in order to understand what John the Evangelist is doing with the way he tells the story of Jesus.
Today’s gospel from the 10th chapter of John moves us from the post-resurrection narratives to the latter part of Jesus’ ministry. In John’s chronology, it’s the winter prior to the spring during which Jesus will be crucified. Note that the 11th chapter is where Lazarus is returned from the grave and the 12th chapter includes the ride into Jerusalem we celebrate on Palm Sunday. The Last Supper begins at the start of the 13th chapter of John.
To under today’s gospel and the ones which follow on the remaining Sundays of Easter, it’s crucial to consider a major difference between John’s storytelling and what we find in the three synoptic gospels of Mark and (the two which build on Mark) Matthew and Luke.
In the synoptics, all of Jesus’ early ministry takes place in the northern region of Galilee - mostly around the “Sea” (a mid-sized lake really) of Galilee. At a pivotal point in the story, Jesus’ predicts his death on the cross. After this, Jesus and his followers head towards Jerusalem for the week that begins with his triumphal entry and ends with his death on the cross.
Significantly, in two of the synoptics, the exception being Luke and his singular recounting of the boy Jesus in the Temple, this is the only time Jesus is in Jerusalem. In many ways the one trip to Jerusalem is the focus of about 2/3rds of the chapters as the entire narrative structure is pointed to the cross and the tomb.
John uses a different narrative device to tell his version of Jesus’ journey. Immediately after performing his first “sign” at the Wedding at Cana, told in the first verses of chapter 2, Jesus goes to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. In 2:14, Jesus enters the Temple, sees the money changers, makes a whip and commences to disrupt the commerce taking place on that sacred ground.
This 2nd chapter of John ends, as translated in the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament by Terry W. Wildman:
The narrative voice, which is more pronounced in John then in the synoptics, tells the reader that Jesus performed other, unelucidated signs/miracles during this first visit to Jerusalem which led people to “believe in him.” It’s also the first time the “tribal leaders” (in more typical translations, they are identified as the leaders of “The Jews”) clash with Jesus as they are blind to who Jesus is.
[From a “Birds eye view of the gospels”]
John also can be said to frequently “break the fourth wall” as he explicitly describes a phenomenon at work in all four of the canonical gospels in our Bible.
Recall that the four gospels were written decades after Jesus lived, died and was resurrected. Most biblical scholars place the writing of Mark in the mid 60’s CE. If Jesus died in about 33 or 34 CE, then Mark - at the earliest - is at least 25 years after the events it describes. Luke and Matthew (there’s debate about which was written first) are dated to the 70’s into the 80’s CE. While scholars agree that John was the last of the four to be written, the dating of it ranges from the 80’s to as late as the 110’s.
It’s clear then that two different time “periods” are contained within the gospel stories of Jesus’ life. The Evangelist writers of the gospels know a crucial bit of truth that the “characters” in the time period of the gospel story do not (yet) know - that Jesus is resurrected and his followers are spreading this good news.
In fact, the knowledge of Christ’s resurrection and the subsequent teaching given and miracles preformed in his name is precisely why they are writing. What the Evangelists, as well as their readers, know is why Jesus of Nazareth is of utmost significance. The “characters” in the gospels sense that there’s something extraordinary about Jesus, but as the temporally later narrative voice of John tells us: “They [the people witnessing Jesus’ demonstration] did not understand…until he was raised from the dead” and they “remembered” what Jesus had said. This recalling is what leads them “to believe.”
After examining the structurally different narrative framing between the synoptics and John, an important reality should be clear. The historicity, or the timeline of events” of Jesus’ life isn’t the same among the four gospels.
In actuality, did Jesus only go to Jerusalem once - as told by Mark and Matthew?
Did he go briefly as a child and then once as an adult - what Luke tells us?
Or did he go multiple times - usually coinciding with a major Jewish festival - as John tells us?
As all three of these options can’t possibly be historically true, this reality of a foundational divergence among the stories is excellent evidence that a master story-crafter is at work shaping the story of Jesus’ life in a way to emphasize that he is the “Christ” - the “anointed one.”
We end by noting that a third temporal world exists for all readers of the gospels from the late first century across the 1900 years up to now. While the initial gospel readers knew of the earliest, amazing works done in the name of the Resurrected Christ by the apostles and other “first adopters” of the Way of Christ, you and I know so much more.
They knew of Peter, Paul, Andrew, Mary Magdaline and others. We also know of Francis (the saint and the Pope,) Ignatius, Dominic, Dorothy Day, Teresa of Calcutta and millions more in the “great cloud of witnesses” to the Resurrected Christ.
As the global Church enters a new moment with the elevation of the first American/Peruvian Pope, let us celebrate that although we didn’t physically see Jesus face to face like the apostle John did, we see so much more of what Christ has done through history and what he continues to do in you, me and all of creation.
Blessing + Good. Be well. Rick