The Rev. Dr. Karoline M. Lewis, homiletics professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of “John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries” and “A Lay Preacher’s Guide: How to Craft a Faithful Sermon,” recently delivered the Synod of the Covenant’s online monthly preaching webinar on the Gospel of John.
“I am a bit passionate about the Gospel of John,” Lewis said once she’d been introduced by the synod’s executive, the Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick. “I am delighted to share this with you.” Her presentation is here.
Lewis offered this summary of John’s gospel:
- Where does Jesus come from? This is also where he is going.
- What is his relationship with God like? This is the believer’s relationship, too.
- Who is Jesus? Answer: The “I AM.”
Lewis dates John’s gospel around the same time as Matthew’s and Lukes, 75 or 85 CE. It’s “a gospel that wants to bring in believers,” she said. “It’s apostolic, and it’s written for a community that was likely excommunicated for believing in Jesus.”
Central to John is our relationship with Jesus, she said. “Believing is synonymous with being in relationship with Jesus,” Lewis said. “It’s an active thing, not something you get.”
John 1:1 “is one of the most famous verses in Scripture,” she noted, with claims “we’ll keep coming back to over and over.”
“In the beginning” hearkens back to Genesis 1:1 in the Septuagint, and “was the Word” is a claim of Jesus’ origin, part of Creation. “Jesus is coming as the Word to create, to give new birth, to create this relationship with God,” Lewis said. “Relationship is so key with this gospel.”
“The Word was with God,” and the believer is invited into this relationship, which is “absolutely at the heart of why Jesus has come.”
“The Word was God.” There is “no other New Testament book that makes such a profound claim on Jesus’ identity,” Lewis said.
Lewis calls John “Not the Baptist.” “He’s not a messianic figure, but a witness, the testifier,” she said, citing John 1:15. For John, testifying is the key characteristic of a disciple. “We see lots of portraits of John pointing,” Lewis said, displaying one. Those preaching on John’s gospel in the coming weeks can “invite our listeners into a theological image they may not be used to, but it’s present in the text.”
In John 1:14, the Word becomes flesh, and Eugene Peterson’s The Message says the Word “moved into the neighborhood.” The verb is “tent” or “tabernacle,” Lewis said. “It’s a unique word here. John is recalling the wilderness wanderings in the Book of Numbers.” Since the gospel comes out after 70 CE, “the theological crisis is, where is God if the Temple is destroyed and Jerusalem is razed?” God “is tenting in a human body,” she said. Jesus “enters into the fullness of what it means to be human.”
John 1:18 completes John’s Prologue by restating the first verse. In the earliest translations, the word “son” is not found here. Jesus is “the only begotten, the one and only.” Who’s the “beloved” disciple in John’s gospel? Many believe it’s John himself, but Lewis thinks “it’s you and me, the unnamed believer. This is what we’re invited into. We are the disciples whom Jesus loves.”
John “is so different, and that’s one of the challenges in preaching John,” she said. It has different soteriology, Christology and eschatology, “and a different understanding of what the Spirit is. We learn to appreciate its particularities and preach that for all it’s worth.”
Learn more about the Synod of the Covenant’s monthly series of preaching webinars here.
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Sonia Prescott, Reference & Outreach Archivist, Presbyterian Historical Society
Kim Pryor, Director Trust Relationship Services, Presbyterian Foundation
Let us pray:
Loving creating God, we thank you for your presence in our churches. We ask your blessing for those who care for each other. Give us energy, vitality, and vision to continue to be your hands and feet to a hurting world. Help us recognize the beauty of resilience and the value of each one of your churches and your children. Amen.
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