John: a Gospel for Tumultuous Times 1 Introduction

photo by Liam Edwards (unsplash) 

I don’t think anyone would argue that the times we live in are not divisive, antagonistic, uncertain and polemical.  An historian might tell us that times of upheaval and rapid, radical change are always so.  

The societies that lived around the Mediterranean Sea in the first century were experiencing such a time.  A quick google search will tell you that the first centuries were a time of Pax Romana, but that peace was gained and maintained by violence and the exploitation of most of the population.  In far-flung Palestine at the turn of the era as the republic was crumbling and the empire was being established, the rural population to which Jesus spoke knew not peace and prosperity but economic upheaval backed by political and military oppression.  There gap between the rich and poor widened as wealthy landowners drove small farmers off their ancestral lands.  The competing politicians of Rome used Israel as a pawn.  Failed attempts by Jewish rebels to overthrow the Romans led eventually in 70 AD to the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersal of the Jews through Europe, North Africa and Asia.   During this tumultuous time, the countries that surrounded the Mediterranean were trading widely both economically and culturally.  

I doubt that anyone would have predicted that the dominant religious and cultural force for the next two millennium would come from a small group of Jews who followed the teachings of an executed peasant. 

The writer of the Gospel of John was leading a community through these tumultuous times.  There were several groups of people trying to find their way towards a new equilibrium: Jews desperate to survive and to preserve their religion without their land, holy city and temple, followers of John the Baptist who continued to preach in his name even after his execution, Gentiles who were drawn to the moral and religious teachings of Judaism but who did not want to become Jews, the Jews who were gathering around the twelve disciples whose story is in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the followers of Jesus who made up the Johannine community which probably included some Samaritans. These groups did not always agree on what the future would or should be.  

I wonder what we will discover if we read the stories in John’s Gospel through the lens of these competing groups.  I wonder what we might discover about how we can negotiate the discord and divisive contentiousness that we are experiencing as we navigate the crises of our time.