Readings for this week
Monday: John 16
Tuesday: John 17
Wednesday: John 18
Thursday: John 19
Friday: John 20
Saturday: John 21
Sunday: Jonah 1
Introduction to John 16-21
Chapter 16
Jesus again says that in a little while the disciples won’t see him anymore, but the disciples are still confused as to what Jesus is talking about, so Jesus tells them that very soon the world will rejoice while they mourn. He tells them that they will grieve, but they will see him again and they will rejoice when they see him and the joy they will receive is not something that the world is able to take away from them. He also tells them that one day he will no longer speak to them figuratively about the Father, but will speak plainly about Him – and not only because Jesus has an in with the Father, but because they love and know Jesus, they also have an in with the Father… because they have met him in Jesus.
The disciples are like, “Finally! You’re not speaking in metaphors anymore! Now we know that you know all things! You know our questions before we ask them!” Jesus is like, “So you believe me now, do you? We’ll see about that. Pretty soon all of you will be scattered and leave me all alone… but I’m not alone… because my Father is with me.”
Chapter 17
Jesus prays that he will be glorified as the Son so that the Father may also be glorified. He says that the Father gave the Son the authority to give people eternal life. But what is eternal life? Jesus says it is to know the only true God and to know Jesus Christ whom he sent. Jesus prays, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began!” Jesus then prays for the disciple that God had given him, saying that they have helped to bring him glory, and they will need protection from the world when he is gone. He prays that the disciples will be one as he and the Father are one. “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.” Jesus then prays for everyone who will one day believe the message of the disciples – that they will all be one as he and the Father are one.
Chapter 18
After praying, Jesus crosses the Kidron Valley with his disciples and they stop at a garden. Judas knew that Jesus would go there, so he also shows up leading a group of religious leaders and soldiers to arrest Jesus. Jesus goes up to them and asks, “What do you want?” They ask for “Jesus of Nazareth” and he says “I am.” When he says “I am” the mob falls over backwards… including Judas. Then he’s like, “Who did you say you wanted again?” And they stand up and say “Jesus of Nazareth” and he says “I told you I am,” and he tells them that if its him they want then they should let the disciples go. But Peter runs forward with a sword and cuts off the right ear of the high priest’s servant – a guy named Malchus. Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”
Then they arrested Jesus and bound him and brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jewish leaders that it would be good if one man died for the people.
Peter and another disciple were following Jesus. Because this disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard, but Peter had to wait outside at the door. The other disciple came back, spoke to the servant girl on duty there and brought Peter in. She asked Peter if he was also a disciple and he denied it. It was cold, and the servants and officials stood around a fire they had made to keep warm. Peter also was standing with them, warming himself.
Meanwhile, the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Jesus replied, “I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.” When Jesus said this, one of the officials nearby slapped him in the face. “Is this the way you answer the high priest?” he demanded. “If I said something wrong,” Jesus replied, “testify as to what is wrong. But if I spoke the truth, why did you strike me?” Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.
Meanwhile, Peter was still standing there warming himself. So they asked him, “You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?” He denied it, saying, “I am not.” One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?” Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a rooster began to crow.
Jesus is then taken to Pilate, the Roman Governor, but the Jews refuse to enter the palace because that would make them ceremonially unclean for the Passover meal… they apparently didn’t think plotting m**der would also make them ceremonially unclean. So Pilate has to come out to them to see what in the world they want at that hour of the morning, and he asks them what the charges are against Jesus. And they say his charge is that he is a criminal. Seeing as how they can’t find an example of any Roman law that Jesus broke, Pilate tells them all to go away and settle their own problems themselves. But they protest, saying they want permission to execute Jesus.
So Pilate has Jesus brought inside where they can talk alone. Pilate asks, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus responds, “Did you come up with that yourself, or did you hear that from someone else?” Pilate’s like, “Am I a Jew? Your own people handed you over to me! What did you do?” Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” Pilate is like, “So you are a king, then!” Jesus says, “You say, ‘You’re a king!’ but in fact, the real reason I was born and came into this world was to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Pilate’s like, “Oh, what is truth anyway?” And he goes back out to the Jews to reason with them.
At this point we learn that it was traditional for a prisoner to be released once a year at the request of the people. We also learn that there was at this time a known terrorist and murderer locked up in prison named Jesus Barabbas. Pilate uses this opportunity to ask the crowd who they would like to release – Jesus Barabbas or Jesus Christ? But the crowd was like, “No! Give us the terrorist! Set Barabbas free!”
Chapter 19
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe, slapped him in the face, and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” Pilate brings Jesus out to the crowd again, insisting that there is no grounds for the death penalty. But as soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!” But Pilate is like, “You crucify him! I don’t want to!” The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.” When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.” When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement. John tells us that it was about noon at this point on the Day of Preparation for the Passover. Pilate says, “Here is your king!” and the people scream, “Crucify!” Pilate asks them, “Shall I crucify your king?” And the priests cry out, “We have no king but Caesar!” So finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.
So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle. Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.” Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. John says that they liked the undergarment so much that they cast lots to see which one of them would get it and that this fulfilled what was prophesied in Psalm 22.
Near the cross of Jesus stood three Marys - his mother Mary, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and “the disciple whom he loved standing nearby (probably John),” he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Later, Jesus says, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. Jesus says, “It is finished.” And he dies.
Now the Jewish leaders didn’t want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, so they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they didn’t break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. John writes that he himself witnessed this event and he is writing about it so that the reader will come to believe. He also says that all these things happened to fulfill what the prophets had said: “Not one of his bones will be broken” and “They will look on the one they have pierced.”
Later, Joseph of Arimathea (who was a secret disciple of Jesus) asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. He and Nicodemus come and take the body away and cover it with myrrh, spices, and aloes, and wrap it in strips of linen. At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Chapter 20
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. Finally the other disciple also went inside and he saw and believed even though they didn’t understand.
The disciples leave Mary Magdalene crying at the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Then Jesus spoke her name, and she looked at him and cried, “Rabbi!” Jesus tells her not to hold on to him, but to go and tell his brothers that he is going to ascend to their Father. So Mary goes and tells the disciples that she has seen Jesus and delivers his message to them.
That evening, the disciples are hiding behind locked doors in fear, when Jesus suddenly appears. He says to them, “Peace be with you.” And he shows them the wounds in his hands and his side. And the disciples are filled with joy. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Now Thomas was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
John writes that Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in his book. He also says that he wrote what he wrote so that his readers will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing they may have life in his name. This is the first ending to John’s Gospel, but another ending was added to it.
Chapter 21
In this appendix to the appendix, seven of the disciples – Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, the sons of Zebedee (James and John), and two others – are back in Galilee after the resurrection of Jesus and decide to go fishing one evening, but catch nothing that night. Early the next morning, Jesus (whom they had not recognized) calls out to them from the shore: “Friends! You haven't any fish, have you?” When they reply in the negative, Jesus responds: "Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some." After doing so, "they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish." Realizing the identity of their adviser, the disciple whom Jesus loved says to Peter, "It’s the Lord!," at which Peter jumps into the water to meet him, while the remaining disciples follow in the boat, towing the net, which proves to be full of 153 large fish. At the time of the composition of this Gospel, it was believed that there were 153 different kinds of fish in the world. The writer is making a point when he says that the disciples caught 153 fish – they will be “fishers of men” to all the peoples of the world. Everyone is included!
Jesus cooks the disciples a breakfast of fish and bread over a charcoal fire. When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.
Jesus then goes on to say that one day, when Peter is an old man, he will stretch out his hands, and someone else will dress him and lead him where won’t want to go. Jesus is saying that one day Peter will be crucified, too, and according to church tradition, Peter was in fact crucified… upside down even. And Jesus says to Peter, “Follow me!” Jesus and Peter were walking along the shore, and Peter turned back and saw the Beloved Disciple following them, and he asked, “Well, what about him?” Jesus is like, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what’s it to you? You must follow me!” John then writes that because of these words Jesus spoke, a rumor arose among the early church that the Beloved Disciple (probably John) would not die, but John points out that this wasn’t what Jesus actually meant.
The writer (probably John) then reveals to the reader that he himself is the Beloved Disciple, and that he witnessed and heard all these things himself, so the readers should be reassured that they have heard the truth. The Gospel ends a second time with these words: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”
