Lent with St John's Gospel

I'm working on a series of Holy Week addresses that I'm giving at Chester Cathedral. Once again I'm immersed in the Gospel of St John. Not specifically the Passion story this time (I preached through it a few years ago, which is how my book The Eight Words of Jesus originated). This year I decided I would offer addresses on the seven "I am" sayings in the Fourth Gospel. In the order in which they occur, they are: the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the Door, the Good Shepherd, the Resurrection and the Life, the Vine, and the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Believe it or not, I have never preached specifically on any of these great sayings, though I've often alluded to them in sermons on St John - you can hardly avoid it when they illuminate so much of his gospel. (Actually, that's not quite true. I did once write a sermon on the Way, the Truth and the Life,  but had to abandon it when some big event in the parish supervened and I needed to preach in a different way.) So this has been a voyage of discovery for me. It's been inspiring and stimulating to research the Greek text of St John with the commentaries, something retirement gives me time to do (even if it also brings the despondent reminder of no longer possessing key books I'd have been glad to consult because they were left behind in Durham when downsizing my library).

We've been companions for half a century, the Fourth Gospel and I. I blogged about the St John Passion a few years ago and said something about the part it played, together with the music of J.S. Bach, in my coming to conscious faith. In that blog, I wrote about the last word from the cross in the gospel, "It is finished" and how significant that single Greek word tetelestai is for the author. The cry of accomplishment, triumph even, because Jesus has completed the work God gave him to do, strikes an entirely different tone from the last words in the other gospels. There, it's much more a case of abandonment and desolation ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" in Matthew and Mark), or resigned trustfulness ("Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" in Luke). In John, Jesus is not the tragic victim who is "done to" by others. He is the sovereign Lord who lays down his own life as an act of the will. It makes all the difference to the way we hear the story.

My challenge this Holy Week is to show how the "I am" sayings point towards the cross - and towards the resurrection as well, for in John, the cross-and-resurrection is a single hyphenated event as Jesus "goes to the Father" as John puts it. The ancient liturgies of Easter celebrated the cross and resurrection, not as two separate moments in Jesus' career, but as a unified redemptive event, the Pascha, the Lord's Passover. As it happens, at Chester they were keen that my addresses should remind congregants that Holy Week represents the last phase of our Lenten commitment to prepare for the celebration of Easter. That seemed to fit well into the way St John handles and interprets the "I am" sayings.

To do this properly, we need to look carefully at each saying's background in the Hebrew Bible. Take for example the saying "I am the bread of life" (John 6.51). This was the obvious text to assign to Maundy Thursday evening and the liturgy of the Last Supper. Here is John's key eucharistic text ("Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them"), this in a gospel that unlike the others does not record Jesus breaking the bread and sharing the cup in the upper room. That's already a substantial sermon in its own right. But I couldn't do it justice without noticing how Jesus' feeding of the crowd that introduces this saying is intended to remind them of how God fed their ancestors in the wilderness with manna from heaven. Much is made of this in the dialogue between Jesus and the crowd that forms the substance of this chapter. Once we grasp the significance of Jesus' saying "I am the bread of life" at Passover time (John 6.4) when that wilderness journey was remembered in a ceremony of the breaking of bread, we realise how profound the symbolism is.

In a way I find miraculous, this is how the text of the Fourth Gospel works from start to finish. It is the most densely textured of the four gospels, with layer upon layer of symbolism, key words and phrases (including the "I am" sayings), and references to the Hebrew Bible not only through direct quotation but by allusions that trigger associations in the mind of the reader. These are a bit like Wagnerian Leitmotiven - musical themes that associate to particular characters, objects, events or destinies. Their role is subliminally to enable listeners to navigate a long and complex story by reminding them of the past, foreshadowing the future or setting the appropriate mood. In St John, certain words function as archetypes that are present throughout the text: explicitly here, implicitly there, for example light, life, love, glory, work, end (as in purpose), ascent (being "lifted up"), way, king, water, bread, wine and so on.

And I am is one of those. As I shall try to explain during Holy Week (no easy task!), those words derive from the story of Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3.1-15). As he takes off his shoes (for this is holy ground) and gazes into the fire that burns without being consumed, he hears God addressing him. The voice discloses God's name: "I AM WHO I AM....Thus shall you say to the Israelite, I AM has sent me to you." This is the origin of the divine name in Hebrew, YHWH, or in its debased English form, Jehovah. What does it mean? That God can only be spoken about or described in terms of himself. For he is the essence of what it means to exist, to be alive. The theologian Paul Tillich spoke about "the ground of being". So when Jesus takes the emphatic Greek words ego eimi on his lips, "I am", John takes him to be identifying directly with the God worshipped by the Hebrews, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus does this explicitly in a passage that records an argument with the community's leaders who accused him of blasphemy. He makes the extraordinary claim, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8.58). No wonder they tried to stone him there and then!

Enough for now. In this blog, I only really wanted to point to the infinite richness of this wonderful Fourth Gospel. I'm looking forward to being in Chester Cathedral for Holy Week and preaching through the "I am" sayings as a small act of gratitude for what has felt like a lifetime of friendship with St John. I'll publish the addresses as I give them (at http://northernambo.blogspot.com) and put the links on social media.