5.2.40a 9.2.2022 How to Get Beyond

Often the books that need written have a way of choosing themselves. When I decided to extend my preaching ministry beyond the local pulpit through writing I imagined that I would complete one project and then choose another at my own pace, following my current studies, curiosity, and interest. It seems, instead that certain issues have found me. We live in a polarized age and I am convinced that the Church must be a part of the solution and not a symptom of the problem.

I fear our capacity to discern the times has become clouded by the polarizing forces running amok in our culture. The Church needs to be reminded of its purpose. The Church needs to hear anew a restorative word from God. We need deep, challenging preaching. We need a hermeneutical center. We need clarity. We need community. We need to be captured again by a Biblical vision of the power of the cross and the sufficiency of Jesus. We need a preaching and teaching that concisely and clearly diagnoses the problem and provides an applicable solution to our current captivity to culture.

This means deep engagement with the Scriptures, which should be the work of the pulpit. The temptation to leave deep study to the academy ignores two millennia of Christian experience. Historically the deep study which has informed the Church has been molded by the experience and needs of a local preacher in his own Parrish. Augustine and Barth were geniuses. Yet much of their best work, was written in a local congregational setting. Every Church should be focused on the life giving words of Gospel And Epistle. We should hear the formative stories from the Old Testament along with the community framework of the Law, the ethical mandate of the Prophets, and the artistic outcries of song and sage in the Writings. Instead most preaching conforms to shallow expectations cultivated by the whims of the chronically frantic. People are overwhelmed by information. Wouldn't challenging preaching only make things worse? No. No. No.

Sound Biblical preaching provides a framework for making sense of everything else--which is precisely what the Church lacks and the world desperately needs from us.

These words need said to a Church which seems uninterested in being reminded of our purpose. We have been invaded by our surrounding culture on several levels.

If we are to discover an appropriate response, an antidote to our current dislocation we need to recognize those factors which have negative impacts upon our life together and ministry for the world.

Factor 1

The Church is looking for easy answers to complicated questions.

We live in an age of accelerating technological progress. Our culture does not like to wait. We have become so attuned to instant gratification that we cannot imagine an age where good things really did come to those who wait. We want it now and we are willing to complain and whine when our demands are not met. This complicates the process of cumulative long-term preaching. While evangelism has, historically moved with an amazing impact as God’s Spirit moves powerfully to change lives, the process of discipleship and maturity takes much longer. In reality we take our entire lives to realize our full potential.

It can take years to become focused on what is central to the Christian faith. The Christian life does not unfold in private. It is not solitary. We live in community. Questions arise both within the Church and without. How should we live together in sharing our ministry? What are our obligations to an unbelieving world? How do we best balance personal salvation with community responsibility? These are just some of the more personal questions. There are also the complicated doctrinal and ethical issues which confront both the body and the individual Christian.

Difficult questions require well considered answers.

Complicated matters require accurate,

cumulative application of Scripture.

This requires time.

When the Church is looking for easy answers to complicated questions we are at risk of becoming increasingly shallow. We risk losing overall perspective in the hunt for the manageable and immediately applicable.

As our culture has come to rely on glib answers in the face of complexity and as we rely more and more upon the sound bite and the meme our attention span contracts and we lose our capacity for concentration. When those tendencies are pervasive in the Church it makes it nearly impossible to sustain Biblical, Theological dialogue. Important issues are reduced to memes or the captions on a PowerPoint slide, hurried through on the way to the next nugget.

Individual disciples will starve on this kind of diet. The world is complicated whether we like it or not. There are had questions which cannot be answered with a brief generic answer. The Church needs to recover the patience to listen to doctrinal sermons and set aside the time to consider the difficult dilemmas which we encounter as we live and minister in Post Modern society.

The practical sermon, the four-week self-help series, the Be the Best You approach to hunting and pecking through the Bible for unthreatening positive thoughts needs to stop. We have made the Christian Faith so simple that it no longer makes sense. We have reduced it to principles which unregenerate people can embrace because they have lost the power of God. It sit time to buckle down and get to work. This will be particularly difficult when we consider the second factor.

The Church has become lethally uncurious.

It is nearly impossible to grow intellectually without curiosity.Curiosity has motivated explorers, scientists, and yes, even the church for untold generations. Curiosity, when rightly channeled has helped the Church to understand foreign cultures and to penetrate new worlds with the Gospel. Curiosity is what drives Biblical scholars to dive deeper and deeper into the scriptures. Curiosity opens our eyes to the beauty as well as the fallenness of the world. Curiosity is self-motivating. Curiosity is generative. Curiosity is always leaning into the future.

In the age of the meme we are confronted with an avalanche of information. Contemporary culture has become adept at dodging information and only absorbing the necessary or the scurrilous. Instead of being driven by a need to understand, many in our culture are driven by a need to control. Control is best accomplished by controlling the flow of all this information. The internet is awash in partial, inaccurate, and misdirected information. It is not new, but the velocity is much greater. Throughout human history it has been the curious who have helped us to sort out these intellectual messes and aided us in solving challenging puzzles. Now the goal is dominance.

In an incurious age no one needs to learn anything. No one needs to specialize. No one needs to dedicate years to master a topic and to be mastered by its mystery. We have all become experts. There is no specialized knowledge which cannot be acquired, over the internet, in mere minutes, by any clever surfer. Yet many, if not most of those who do this kind of “research” on the internet are not driven by a desire to know, or a purposeful intent to dive deeper. Our world has taken the greatest repository of human knowledge ever created and reduced into a cult de sac of confirmation bias. It is crippling our world and puts severe limits on the Church.

A curious Church will place an importance on broad, deep education.

The curious are fearless. When you lack curiosity you will also come up short in courage, pluck, and a sense of wonder. The church needs all of these character traits if we are to continue to evangelize the fallen culture and if we are to produce mature disciples. Countless times when reading the Gospels are we confronted with the confused disciples asking questions. Often times Jesus responds to their questions with His own. The reason? He is driving their spirit of inquiry. His creative use of parable, allegory, performance, and humor drew His audience deeper into the message. Much of what He did was designed to create an atmosphere of learning, discovery, and growth. This is the pathway of curiosity. It is a path that the Church and those who provide its preaching and teaching need to rediscover.

Curiosity breeds broad reading and deep thinking.

Curiosity makes connections.

Curiosity seeks to understand the what’s, and why’s, and where’s of the world.

When the preacher is not curious and the preaching lacks depth the Church will look for substitutes to that depth. The constant beating of the drum of “contemporary” issues and felt needs, is mistaken for creativity, when it is actually an inditement of shallow, pragmatic, empty, thinking of those who lack curiosity.

The Church is confused about its purpose.

The mission of the Church is set forth by Jesus numerous times in the New Testament.

“Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Matthew 28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Matthew 28:20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”” (Matthew 28:18–20 ESV)

In Acts of the Apostles.Luke frames the same basic concept this way.

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”” (Acts 1:8 ESV)

John puts it this way, and I include him last because our focus will be upon more of his words as we address the topic before us

21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” John 20:21 (ESV)

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.John 20:30–31 (ESV)

The emphasis is clear. The Church has a mission which requires us to

know our message

to personally and corporately live out the consequences of that message,

and to engage the surrounding, fallen culture with that message.

Jesus had cast the same vision and mission prior to this. When Jesus talked about “Kingdom,” when He reminded His colleagues that He came to “seek and save the lost.” His personal engagement with the least and the lost, all of these foci for His own ministry were to serve as a model for those observant disciples.

In Book of Acts there were times the Church needed the goading of internal conflict or external pressure to take the next step. There were times that they misapplied concepts they had learned from Jesus or became fixated on peripheral emphases (circumcision, foods, and other racial identity markers). Keenly aware of he Holy Spirit the early Church pursued it’s mission. It was constantly engaged in the teaching of and learning from the Scriptures. It clung so tenaciously to the Words of Jesus and His teaching example that the end result was four Gospel documents that preserve His story and message. So through that first century the Church was on mission.

The Church continued to grow during the next two and a half centuries of intermittent persecution, social isolation, and cultural penetration.

So well did the Church inhabit the teaching of Jesus that the threat of Martyrdom became a mark of mission-driven focus.

So effective was the ministry of the Church that the Pagan Empire began to accept the ministrations of those who they had marginalized and held in contempt. Rather than fighting back the Church turned the other cheek, lifted its voice in prayer, and its hands in service.

The Church stayed on and that mission changed the world. The church suffered but grew. Ministry was difficult but effective. The Church understood its role in the world and was uncompromising in its proclamation of the Gospel of the risen Christ.

This all changed in the second decade of the fourth century when Constantine concluded that the Church had too much influence to be ignored and he hitched his Imperial wagon to the strong missional drive of the Church. He became Emperor and the destinies of Empire and Church became intertwined. This strengthened the Empire but has, to this very day, crippled the Church.

Seventeen centuries later there are still vast numbers of Christians who cannot disentangle the things of earth from the things of heaven. They hear the phrase “Kingdom of God” and they envision the imperial ambitions of human governing bodies. After the Churches struggle in the first five decades to lay aside all focus on race, class, and boundary markers believers gladly embrace ever-evolving shibboleths to separate we who are chosen from the riff-raff and pretenders: excluded from both ministry and mission.

The Church does not exist as a branch of any human government.

The Church is larger than any single, nation.

The Kingdom includes and engages people from all tongues, tribes, and nations.

We know that when we follow Jesus we might be shunned by those who are of our own family and despised by our neighbors.

We are not here to collect the governments dime or to beg the governments time.

The aims and goals of human regimes, established by God for the purposes of social order, are not the aims and goals of the Kingdom of God.

We are not here to advance the cause of Caesar or to ridicule the cause of the lawmakers.

We have a mission.

Our mission is to make disciples.

Our mission is to proclaim the Cross of Christ.

Our mission is to challenge the fallen world with the promise of the Risen One.

Our goal is to “gospel” the place, to spread the good news as broadly as we possibly can.

Yet the Church still remains largely confused about its Mission. There are too many shiny things to distract our attention. A bright, charismatic leader can begin with the Biblical Mission and begin to torque and twist it slightly so that it has many of the marks Biblical mission but focuses on different outcomes. Discipleship of a congregation gives way to the enlistment of masses. What was Kingdom was, seeks to become a little empire, emphasizing the genius not of Christ but of the visionary whose marketing plan succeeded so wildly.

For others the Mission of the Kingdom has been set aside for the twin temptations of Money and Power.

For In a polarized age the

The Church has compromised allegiance.

The language of faith is easily appropriated by the shiny thing of good, noble, and enabling causes. Because engaged discipleship requires us to care for those around us and to affirm the justice of God within the fallen world it is easy to allow those good things to overwhelm our biblical mission.

If you were to ask any group of American “evangelicals” to list the basic elements of the Christian faith and mission the answer would consist of a list of social, political, economic, and class-derived positions which have little to do with the stated mission of the Church.

How have these causes come to so dominate the conversation by those who claim to be Christians? How has the conversation shifted?

The short answer is that the Church has allowed conclusions about national, political, party, race, sex, and class to first dominate and then dismiss conversations about the Bible and theology.

The Church has always ministered to the poor, the outcast, the widow, the orphan, the alien, the disenfranchised. The motivation for this behavior has always been simple. Be like Jesus. Loving those around us is the simple working out of the principles of the Gospel. God loved us in Jesus Christ. We extend that love to others. Some, perhaps many of those who have needs will not call upon the name of Christ. They will not reciprocate His love. Having not earned it, many conclude that they don’t need it.

Agreement has never been a criteria for extending the love of God for the Church. The Kingdom comes with the behavior of individual Christians serving in Churches embedded in real communities. Kingdom extends God’s love even where, even when it is not wanted.

Then, suddenly, the Church decided Jesus alone was not enough. Our good works became causes. Opposing evil and injustice became crusades. The lost became the enemy. The purpose was no longer proclaiming the truth, seeking the lost, or serving the hurting. Power became the goal and allegiances were mixed.

This is not the first time that the Church has had to make difficult navigational decisions while moving through the rising and falling waters of contemporary culture. During the Reformation there was a point at which the movement was simply an internal struggle for control of the German Church as Luther and his allies became a symbol for rising german national identity. During the age of Nullification the cause of abolition became a central organizing principle for all varieties of Christians in the Northern United states uniting various denominations and theological outlooks in opposing slavery. The very opposite occurred in the South where the churches united in opposition against abolition and perceived northern overreach.

In each of these circumstances and countless more throughout history the Church has been captured by a cultural, political, economic, or socially driven cause which ended up betraying the gospel.

This is where things get a little complicated. How can one possibly correct the Church when the errors committed are committed in over exuberant good faith? Abortion is a wrong. It is not clear from the New Testament that abandoning the study and application of Scripture to focus upon it is a correct guiding principle for the Church. There are many similarly good causes which have kept the Church distracted with the shiny things of goodness at the expense of living the witness before the world we are called to live.

Fifth the Church has confused novelty with creativity.

Life does not provide for time-outs. We have to recalibrate on the run. We have to learn as we go. Likewise, it would be helpful if we could locate a single source that tells us what God wants us to know. We of course have that already in the Bible. We need a simple message that cuts through the cruft and releases us from our cultural captivity. We have that as well.

The issue is not really knowledge. It is a matter of determination and execution. We have the message and we have the mandate. What we lack is a thing which used to be called the “courage of our convictions.” The desire to appear innovative has led the Church to tinkering with a message which is not broken. The Church is constantly looking for ways to appear on the cutting edge and this desire has led us to a basic misunderstanding. We think that new, shiny things must be better because they are new. We confuse mere novelty for innovative and creative approaches to ministry. Our appeal to the surrounding culture not only is clothed in the forms of that culture, it often adopts the assumptions of that culture.

Even a cursory glance at Christian history demonstrates the false assumptions of such a naive conclusion. Was there anyone in the history of Christendom more creative than Bach, or Luther, or the Puritans? They were able to balance their creative impulse whilst still proclaiming the story of scripture in a relevant and meaningful way.

There are several emblematic, pithy passages of scripture which can serve as that wake up call. I have chosen one.

And you know it's words by heart. This series did not come to me by accident I have already decoded that I will have a major focus on the Gospel of John next year. John, his Gospel, epistles, and Apocalypse have been on my mind. That also means selecting the resources I will need to preach well from a book I have preached through at least 8 times in forty years of ministry. I know that work is coming but even in this preliminary stage thinking about John's story of Jesus informs my thoughts here.

For a confused Church ina distracted age there is one clear starting point. Let's find the way forward together.

While the need for this book seems to have fallen into my lap, its development has been shaped by my own current preaching needs. It happens that I am writing my sermon calendar for next year. (2022) As I survey what I have preached in the recent past and what I will preach next year I have determined that next year I will be preaching from the extended Johannine corpus. The requirements for preparing a year’s course of preaching requires detailed preliminary study and planning. During my planning time my pulpit needs and the requirements of the present work merged like two hi-ways going the same direction.

The passage which speaks most eloquently to our current situation, the passage I have chosen for this extended study is one of the most memorable in John’s Gospel. The spirit of the age threatens the Church. At times we seem like Lincoln’s general who under distressed was described as “wobbling around like a duck which had been hit on the head.” The thinking of the Church is often disordered. Both local congregations and the broad Church seem, at times, perilously close to being blown off course by the overwhelming winds of cultural compromise. We seem at times to forget the dynamic qualities which have defined us throughout our history are not of terrestrial origin. We are not merely confused we are negligent, belligerent, and indigent. A drifting church is in no position to be of much help to a derelict culture.

John can help us. Or, more specifically, Jesus can help us. John’s story of Jesus ponders and reflects upon the impact of Jesus incarnation and engagement with the world. Though theological, John wrote in a context of continual engagement with the culture of Empire on one hand and the expanding doctrinal conversation within the church on the other. As the first generation of disciple-leaders, the Apostles were bequeathing their legacy to the next generation of earliest Christianity, old questions were being formalized, and new dilemmas were arising. John’s theological reflection upon the life and ministry of Jesus was an engagement with both the internal culture of the Church and the external culture in which its life and ministry were unavoidably embedded.

The same circumstances pertain today. However the answers the Church seeks are increasingly unable to either speak words of redeeming comfort to a fallen world or reforming conviction to a flailing church. John has answers to questions we have not considered asking ourselves, perhaps within recent memory.

Jesus’ own ministry was conducted within the sort of a mixed society that confronts His disciples today. Our culture gives continual evidence of confusion regarding both the theory and practice of social cohesion. Significant questions regarding the sources of human and humane values, which seemed to have been solved structurally and practically are constantly being called into question. The seeming transcendence of technology to eliminate cultural confusion and incoherence has become a major driving force behind very trends to which it once seemed the answer. The hubris of PostModern assumptions about human understanding has collapsed into a confused tribalism in which the promised virtues of pluralism have collapsed into vices of antagonism. The socio-cultural disciplines which seemed to offer such promise in the twentieth century are proving bankrupt in the twenty-first. There are no easy answers because every question is clouded by disagreement over facts, context, interpretation, bias, and ideology.

It seems that the social order has lost all orienting points of reference and the only thing left are the echoing shouts of misaligned constituencies vying for the fragmented attention of both potential leaders and followers. The institutions are compromised. Universities try to maintain a facade of viability and superiority by escalating cost of attendance while elevating the standards of admission. This is done at the very time when the target audience of a college education is shrinking as fast as their financial capacity to fund attendance. Government and industry are linked by lobbying which is so intense that there is now little districting between governing and money laundering. Local embodiments of the government and education have become drawn into protected battles over social and economic issues for which the traditional boards of oversight are typically incapable of adjudicating. The big picture is tilted and the colors of the small picture would appear to be fading.

For two millennia the Church has spoken order into the social chaos of a fallen world. Increasingly the church has lost its voice as it latches onto short-term, socially-driven solutions to the problems it encounters. Strategic thinking has replaced the sermon. Purpose-driven planning has replaced pastoral care. Preachers have become executives; and the sheep have become scattered.

The World is lost and the Church is distracted. The solutions is not new. In fact, the constant search for unique approaches to the problem of a fallen world and an unfocused Church is a part of the problem.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. 9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.John 1:1–18 (ESV)

This world creating, life bearing, light bringing Word which spoke our world into existence came to us in flesh bringing the ultimate disclosure of God to us. This message has been the heart of Christian living and Christian theology since the inception of the Church. This is the message which brought the Roman empire to its knees by living righteously and loving universally in that dark time and place Why would we, so many centuries hence think that new approaches and novel strategies could do now what was not attempted then?

Jesus is the answer to questions which were answered long ago. The Church has failed to faithfully follow; having become infatuated with he techniques of the times and the failed strategies of the fallen world. The answer is the same. What we must find is the courage to act again upon the principles upon which the Christian faith was founded. That means that we must listen more closely and investigate more diligently what Jesus said, how His disciples understood Him, and how His Church applied His lessons in ever expanding cultural contexts.

Students of Scripture are aware of the differences between the Gospel of John and the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Each Gospel has a unique perspective on the life of Christ. Each Gospel brings Jesus to life with subtle differences from the others, while contributing to the overall Biblica testimony to His life and ministry. I preach ever week. I have do so for many years. Each year from Christmas to Easter my preaching focuses on one Gospel, one approach to the story of Jesus. In preparing my Gospel messages for the year I address the theme which frames my preaching for that year. In 40 years I have surely repeated myself. Given a career spanning four decades that means I have preached through each of the four Gospels at least 10 times. That is a lot of preaching from each of them. By connecting these messages to the overall theme of each year I am able to trace different arcs through the same material highlighting and emphasizing different aspects of the story of Jesus.

The themes addressed arose in my mind as I was studying to preach from John’s Gospel. The current environment of our world is as contradictory as it is discouraging. How should the Church address the rising tide of mendacity and propaganda? What is the proper response to a culture which is increasingly gullible and easy duped by the most transparent of falsehoods? How did we get to the place where the most advanced scientific age in human history, with advancements and achievements previous generations would have thought magic, abandon those advancements to believe in actual magic?

Asking these questions over and over again serves to frame the answers we need to find and to crystalize a reasonable response to our current crisis. Some believe that the primary issue to be faced requires addressing the ways the culture is putting pressure on the Church. It may fall to others to make that argument and to pursue that line of investigation. I don’t have a dog in that fight. I have spent my time as a culture warrior and am not fully convinced that it is the place of the Church to constantly harp on and criticize the fallen culture for what is, in effect, fallen behavior. The proper response of the Church to fallen culture is not fear, complainant, or attack. The Church is called to engagement, encouragement, and evangelism.

No, my issue is not the world and the way it behaves. My concern is the Church and how she behaves. We are called to be a part of solving the problem and we have become so embedded in the ongoing culture wars and debates about societal mores that our voice is no longer understood to be an appeal from God. The voice of Christ has become lost in the tiresome noise of a culture in constant conflict. We only love those who are like us. Grace is an attribute which we need not distribute widely in the world. The peace Jesus promised has been outshouted by the voices of the angry and conflicted.

The constant barrage of lies, disinformation, propaganda, paranoia, pretended, and ridiculous must be countered by reasoned, detailed, theological teaching. This is the work of pulpit. This is the vocation of the scholar-pastor. This should be a process of properly educating and forming the spiritual character of the Church. Unfortunately it has become a process of deprogramming those who have not been properly taught and for whom accurate theological thinking has become the special province of the professionals. Though it is easy to criticize the immaturity of Christians who no longer know the basic, essential theological truths of scripture, perhaps we should first say “shame” of the preachers who hav stopped the systematic preaching of the Word of God for the tricks and tradecraft of the entertainment industry. Yes, there is enough blame to go around. It is my fault for not doing a better job preaching. It is the congregant’s fault for demanding shallow, pragmatic sermons. It is our collective fault for not trusting Jesus implicitly and listening to Scripture intently.

Well, we’ve made some headway toward identifying the problem. Now, what are we going to do about it? For my part, at this time, I intend to discuss one passage of scripture. I am going to exegete it as accurately as I can. I am going to explain how it spoke to Jesus’ disciples during the last phase of His ministry. I am going to explain how it has helped the Church to understand its faith journey throughout history and then I’m going to exhort the twenty-first century Church to stop listening to the conflicting intellectual strategies of our age and recommit to joining Jesus, and one another on an intellectually honest, theologically balanced, and spiritually mature journey of discipleship. The load we are called to bear can be heavy. We share our journey with brothers and sisters who have burdens which we are occasionally called to help bear. Some endure heartbreak and setbacks which wear upon our souls. And ultimately, this road we walk in following Jesus is about the disciple-defining requirement of cross-carrying. If we are to do well what we are called to accomplish, perhaps we should listen to Jesus, who bore His cross first both as expiation and example.

John’s story of Jesus seems designed to provide space for readers such as us to ponder the message as we assimilate it. We shall spend some time investigating some of the central features of this unique gospel in a subsequent chapter. Suffice it to say that John is organized differently. The plot is dramatic but does not feature the same details as do the synoptics. The characters are richly detailed and the conversations as well as the dialogues are weighted differently. John reads like a story whose author has had many years of reflection upon the story he wishes to tell. He knows what others have written regarding Jesus. The biographical details were already a part of the Churches official records. Now John is able to carry us along in a more theological reflection upon on the words, journeys, conversations, controversies, friendships, betrayals, and yes, the Cross of Jesus.

But let us pres the question a bit deeper. Why now? What does John offer us in this particular time of our collective faith-journey that can help us process a time of deep personal divides, conflicting definitions of truth, and theological shallowness? Time. Space. Reflective depth. John’s Gospel offers us now exactly what it offered at the end of the turbulent first century, the founding era of the faith. John, through Gospel, Epistle, and Apocalypse gave the Church reflective space. John gave the Church the opportunity to systematize and organize its thought as the time between the first and last comings of Jesus grew wider.

We need similar space. Despite the obvious technological differences there are times when our century seems identical to the first. We live in an age of increasing distrust of structure, authority, and decisive statements of truth. We live in an age that combines this skepticism of institutions with a broad, naive credulity which makes conversations about truth, at times, nearly impossible. We live in the post-Enlightenment age in which the great strides of science, learning, and progress are called into question by newly arising authoritarianisms which seemed poised to plunge our culture into yet another age of darkness. People seem to be incapable of determining the direction our individual lives and our collective culture ought to take. In short we are truth compromised, lost, and perishing. John offers us Jesus in such a way that we wade deeply into the story and find a thorough washing of the cruft and crud that has accumulated around our thinking.

For generations Christians have turned to passages from this beloved Gospel not only for comfort in trying times but for direction when distracted. The Church today does not need to engage in endless and fruitless cultural debates. The culture war may not be lost, but it certainly is a loser from the standpoint of the Gospel. Cultural conflict is the crack-cocaine of the Evangelical world. Why convert the lost when you can ridicule, razz, castigate, denigrate, and otherwise attack them. Interestingly John, like the rest of the Gospels, shows us a Jesus who was frequently opposed, not to the lost He was seeking to save, but to the religious (dare we say Evangelical Elite?) leaders who did not wish to sully their hands with the dirty work of loving their neighbors.