Lection and Liturgy

In the first of these two posts on John’s gospel, I looked at some of the ways he differed from the other gospels. We saw how much he organised his writing around Jewish festivals in Jerusalem, and also took a look at the problems his language created for Christian attitudes to the Jewish people. Today I want to go on to explore, especially, two key themes that are have a significant impact in the life of the church and are well reflected in the lectionary’s choices. John the Evangelist as represented by François-André Vincent. Via Wikimedia Commons One is the way John deploys the language of the courtroom. This begins in the prologue, with the description of John as a witness. Normally, a witness, when giving evidence, confesses what they did do or who they are, and denies what they didn’t do, or who they aren’t. The evangelist turns this on its head for emphasis: This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who...

I expect this to be the first of two posts on John’s gospel. But anyone coming to this version of the story after reading the other three immediately sees significant differences in both style and content. Short pithy sayings are out, and long meditations are in. There are no exorcism stories from Jesus’s ministry, but the cross is portrayed as a casting out of Satan, described as “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31). Disciples who occur as significant characters in the synoptic gospels, like James and John the sons of Zebedee, don’t get a mention, while others like Philip and Thomas, who only appear as names in the first three gospels, get speaking parts in John. St John: one of four paintings of the evangelists in Venice’s San Sebastiano church by Paolo Veronese. Via Wikimedia Commons . Tradition has identified John the son of Zebedee with the beloved disciple and the author of the gospel. Most scholars feel there are various problems with that, not least that the ch...

In my first post on Luke , I noted how important Jerusalem was for the way he tells his story. The story begins in Jerusalem with Zechariah’s temple service, and ends there too with the disciples in the temple praising God. From the time of the transfiguration, Luke talks of Jesus journeying to Jerusalem, arriving there on that first Palm Sunday. And in his second volume, Luke tells the story of how the good news is carried from Jerusalem at the beginning of the story, to Rome, the heart of the empire, at the end. The story of the transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36) is a key moment. Unlike the other gospels, Luke provides some content for Jesus’ conversation with Moses and Elijah during the transfiguration. This story in all three synoptic gospels should be read as owing much to the literary genre of apocalyptic: a conversation with heavenly figures that (explicitly only in Luke) reveals the significance of what is happening in history. While all three synoptic evangelist...

The comedian Emo Philips used to have a great one-liner: When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me. St Luke has more about repentance and forgiveness in Jesus’ ministry than the other gospels, and in a way his take on it is as strange as Emo’s. Luke’s Jesus is very much the friend of sinners. Detail from an icon of St Luke in Great Lavra monastery on Mt Athos; via Wikipedia It should be said straight away that Judaism was very much in favour of repentance, and was always happy to see sinners engage in it. It’s just that some of those who clashed with Jesus didn’t recognise people’s responses to Jesus as repentance. Repentance was laid out clearly in the law. It involved making sacrifices and reparation, and amendment of life. Partying with Jesus didn’t look much like that kind of serious acknowledgement of sin. I want to look at three specific exampl...

If (as I noted yesterday) Mark feels rushed, Luke feels well-paced. Unlike Matthew he does not collect Jesus’ teaching into long sections, but intersperses it with stories. He describes his work as an “orderly account” and implies that he knows of others which aren’t! Perhaps because he is such an accomplished story-teller himself, he makes a point of including more parables than the other gospels, including two which usually number among people’s favourites: the Good Samaritan, and the parable often referred to as the Prodigal Son. Luke includes quite a wide range of material, and seems to be aiming for a rounded picture. Perhaps sometimes he includes a story because he thinks it’s too good to leave out. But this wealth of Jesus-tradition means that it is sometimes harder to detect his key themes than it is with Matthew and Mark. Because of this wealth of material, I’m going to break this section on Luke into three blog posts, over three days. Anonymous 18th century Russian icon o...

17th century icon of St Mark via Wikimedia Commons Unlike Matthew’s carefully introduced and triumphantly concluded story, Mark begins fairly abruptly and ends even more suddenly than it begins. That beginning reflects a sense of pace that Mark injects into his gospel; Jesus is constantly on the move, and his mission is presented with a sense of urgency fitting to a figure who is announcing that the kingdom of God has come close. When I looked at the book of Daniel , I commented that it helped establish a new literary genre. That genre, where the secrets of God’s heavens are revealed in visions so that people know how to live faithfully in the present, is called “apocalyptic”, from the Greek word for uncovering, or unveiling in the sense of revelation. Mark begins and ends Jesus’ story with unveilings. In the account of his baptism, Jesus sees a vision and hears a voice. He sees the heavens torn apart, and God’s Spirit coming down; he hears a declaration that h...

In yesterday’s post on Matthew , I looked at some of his key themes. Today I want to develop that further, by looking at what seems to be a fairly complicated relationship between what we would nowadays call Christians and Jews. In Matthew’s context, both communities are made up of Jews, one a community that believes in Jesus as the Messiah, and one that doesn’t. Matthew’s group of Jesus-believing Jews may include some non-Jews, but his book seems mainly directed to Jewish believers in Jesus. Matthew – page from the Lindisfarne Gospels As he writes, Matthew seems keen to refute any suggestion that Christianity is a more relaxed approach to God’s demands for a holy life. He is quite clear that the new covenant promised by the prophets, and sealed by Jesus’ death and resurrection, is a more perfect way of obedience to God. In the polemics between Jesus and various Jewish teachers, we probably hear an echo of arguments between Matthew’s church assembly and his local s...

This will be the first of two posts on Matthew’s gospel. As he tells the story, Matthew showcases both his admiration for, and frustration with, Mark’s version of Jesus’s life. We see his admiration, because he adopts Mark’s basic idea, and often follows him almost word for word. We see his frustration because while Mark describes Jesus as a teacher, he includes very little of Jesus’ teaching. Matthew, by way of contrast, has gathered together a wide range of Jesus’ teaching, which he often presents in extended teaching sessions, beginning with the collection we now know as the sermon on the mount. 1 St Matthew and the Angel, attr. Karel van der Pluym (c.1660) via Wikimedia Commons However, Matthew does not begin there, but with an introduction skipped over by most modern readers, which is also omitted from the lectionary. Matthew begins with that Old Testament standby, a stylised genealogy. Jesus, who do you think you are – a potted family history. This neatly divides ...

The order of the biblical books is is not accidental but deliberate. The Old Testament ends with prophecy. The New Testament begins with the gospel that puts the greatest stress on Jesus as the fulfilment of prophecy. This is Matthew’s version of the story of Jesus. The canonical order is almost certainly not the order in which the gospels were written. In a rare instance of near universal academic agreement, biblical scholars think that this sub-genre of ancient biography was invented by Mark: the first person to write a gospel. The four evangelists, gospel book cover. Photo © Philip Barrington There is also universal agreement that the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are in some way interrelated. After that scholars begin to part company. The majority think that one key relationship between the gospels is that Matthew and Luke both adapt Mark in different ways. They tidy up his story (and his grammar!) and supplement it with a range of additional stories they val...

As a priest who regularly provides cover in a range of churches round our diocese, I often find myself asking people: “How do you do it here?” The almost inevitable answer is a variation on “Just the normal way.” The problem is there are almost as many normal ways as there are churches. One of those points where there is considerable variation is the question of who reads which reading. As always, perceptive humour from the excellent Dave Walker at CartoonChurch . The image is © Dave Walker and Cartoon Church and is used by kind permission of the artist. These differences are mainly focussed on the reading of the Gospel, where Roman Catholic, Anglican and other Protestant traditions differ. Before I get to the differences, I start with what they should all have in common, but all too often don’t. The chief commonality should be that those who read do so clearly, audibly, and in a way which allows the listener to grasp the meaning of the reading. People complain fairly quickl...

Yesterday I looked at public reading in Nehemiah 8. Today we’re jumping forward to the gospels, and Jesus being invited to read the lesson. At the beginning of his account of Jesus’ ministry, Luke chooses to emphasise and elaborate the story of Jesus preaching at Nazareth. The first part of the story (before it all turns a bit sour) goes like this. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then h...