St. John Evangelist, Wed Dec 28, 2011 (transferred)

Preached at the Convent of Saint Helena, Augusta GA
Exodus 33:18-23; Psalm 92; 1 John 1:1-9; John 21:19b-24

We know of St. John as the “disciple whom Jesus loved”. I always assumed that Jesus loved him because he was such a sweet and gentle young man. I painted the icon of “The Beloved Disciple”, I showed John as a very young man, perhaps even in his late teens, and Jesus as a father figure to him.

If John was called “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, was there a subtle jealousy and envy, because Jesus seemed to love him the best? Was he the favorite disciple; the golden haired boy?

But then, this is a complicated picture: why then would Jesus have given him and James a name like “sons of thunder”? This implies that James and John were not sweet and gentle, but rather loud, impetuous, maybe even troublemakers. Were they the kind of brothers who got into enough mischief by themselves, but when they were together feed off each other and became even more naughty? In another era, might Jesus have given them the name “Double Trouble”? Did Jesus invite James and John to go with him at certain times, not because they were especially honored, but rather to keep an eye on them?

This presents a much different picture: when John was called “the one whom Jesus loved”, perhaps it wasn’t because he was the most handsome, sweet, loveable disciple.

So we might speculate that John was a “son of thunder”, loud and boisterous, with lofty ambitions and with a pushy mother, and still Jesus loved him. Maybe this was said with more amazement than envy!

John grew up in Jesus’s love and we can speculate further that Jesus saw in him the potential to put all that thunderous energy into his writing as an evangelist, poet, mystic. Perhaps he gradually outgrew his exasperating and impetuous behavior. Perhaps he grew into adulthood as Jesus was dying on the cross, and Jesus trusted him with the care of his aging mother

According to tradition, John grew up and grew old, and over the years he would have witnessed the persecutions, martyrdoms, and growth of church. Perhaps he was one of very few to have been close associates of Jesus to live into old age and to live to see the establishment and spread of the early church. Perhaps he did write or dictated the Gospel of John, and the letters, and perhaps the Book of Revelation was based on his visions.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus said that John might “remain until I come”. Perhaps he didn’t mean that John would not die at all, but rather that he would not die an early martyr’s death. Rather, perhaps he meant that John would live to see Jesus come again in the establishment of the church.

Since he was a mystic, I don’t think John would mind if we speculate even a bit further. As he grew into old age, perhaps John the obstreperous, became a sweet and gentle old man, after all, because he knew the power of God’s unconditional love.

I imagine him as an old, gentle man, with a long white beard, wrapped in robe even on a warm day. When people would come to see him, he would tell of Jesus, not through precise chronological detail, but in captivating words, in metaphor and poetic images.

At the end of their visit, the people might ask for final words of advice to the churches. And John would say, in a slow, husky, shaky voice: “Little children, love one another.”

All speculation aside, we can be sure that the one who had known the love, and kindness, and attention, and nurture of the living Jesus, and had known the light of his presence, was able to hand down to the next generation the core message of Christian life to others: just “love one another”.

St. John knew personally of this love, and therefore he knew that in Jesus the divine came into the world because “God so loved the world…”

In the words of the Rabbi Hillel, after that, all the rest is commentary.