Last Sunday I had the opportunity to speak for South Bend City Church via their podcast, since they are foregoing large gatherings amid Covid-19. The assignment was simple: pick a favorite story about Jesus and reflect on it. Easy, right? (Well, easy so long as you aren’t bothered by 2000 years of people preaching the passage, and you aren’t worried about repeating what everyone already knows!)
I settled on John 21 (the gospel’s final chapter), where the resurrected Jesus invites his disciples to breakfast and then confronts Peter about his betrayal. I love the vulnerability and fear and anxiety that hang over the scene. Jesus seems more profoundly human in this passage than in any other in John, and the intensity of his humanity after the resurrection intrigued me. So I approached the passage as I always do—as a reader of stories.
Because the text of the Bible is good and beautiful as it is—with all its apparent contradictions and obvious development, its clearly ancient worldview and foreign contexts—it sustains literary readings really well (despite the preference for historical-critical exegesis in many circles). What I mean is that the very complexities and difficulties of the text aren’t problems to be glossed or ignored, synthesized or harmonized. The difficult, weird, strange parts of the text are invitations, reading clues that call us into a richer engagement with the Bible and a deeper understanding of God.
Like all good literary scholarship, the sort of literary exegesis I enjoy most recognizes history, development, editorial hands, cultural contexts, intertextuality, and first audiences. But my readings are also grounded in the text as a revelatory piece of literature that has something important to say in its aporia and contradiction, surprising turns and moments that don’t make sense in our pre-determined systems. In this sort of reading, my attention is typically drawn to things like characterization, setting, and broken patterns that shape a passage’s tone.
So, in John 21, when Jesus suddenly seems more human and even vulnerable in a new way when compared with the rest of the gospel, I wanted to think about that characterization and what it might tell us about Jesus, his friendship with Peter, and even about us.
Listen-in via the Podcast Stream above.
grace & peace,
Follow me @
I also joined Pastor Jason Miller & the South Bend City Church Community via Instagram LIVE to talk more about John 21, give an update on my family’s move from South Bend to Oregon & share a little about the new book project I am working on with Beth Graybill from South Bend City Church.
It’s a 22 min watch, I join the conversation @ the 5 min mark.
image credit | Cerezo Barredo