Week 41 John
I finished reading the gospel of John today.
I noticed that even at the end of the gospel, even after the Lord has come back from the dead and actually physically, visibly, materially appeared to the disciples that they’re still having trouble figuring things out.
I look back at the end of chapter sixteen. I remember it because the disciples seemed to have kind-of-arrived. The moment arrives right in the middle of that long it’s-time-for-me-to-leave conversation the Lord has with his eleven disciples. The talk – John thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-sixteen-seventeen – has roughly 110-verses of the Lord speaking. And he’s not telling bedtime-stories. It’s heavy going. Complex. Dense. Semi-penetrable. Puzzling. Intricate.
In spite of that there’s a point where the lights seem to go on for the disciples. They say to the Lord: at last you are speaking plainly and not in parables. Now we understand that you know everything and don’t need anyone to tell you anything. From this we believe that you came from God.
So in sixteen they’ve arrived. Now they know. Now they believe.
But then in chapters twenty-&-twenty-one it seems like they’re baffled. They seemed pretty sure, now they seem pretty unsure.
I think John is very interested in the progress of belief. And it looks like he’s also showing that the road to belief takes time. That there’s a bit-by-bit-ness to belief. That my two-steps-forward get intermittently stalled with my one-step-back.
Note: quote from John 16:29-30 (NLT)