ATTENDING THE PLAY 

CALLED “THE GOSPEL 

ACCORDING TO JOHN.”

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Attending the Play Called, ‘The Gospel According to John.’”

We’ve all attended a musical play and the lights start to dim - and there is a medley of music - streams of sounds - themes from each of the songs in the show. And if we’re familiar with the songs, with the music, each tiny piece touches the whole of the musical and its different songs.

THE PROLOGUE OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

Today’s gospel is the Prologue of the Gospel of John. In it we hear a medley of the sights and sounds from the whole gospel of John - and not just the gospel - but the Jewish scriptures starting with the opening words in Genesis, “In the beginning….”

The listeners would know - Jesus is here to start a new creation.

Jesus is the New Beginning. He’s here for a new Genesis.

And as Genesis sings it: And God spoke - God’s word - roamed the darkness - and God sang, “Let there be light - and there was light.”

And in 6 days in Genesis - science now telling us - these days took billions and billions of years - and in fact, God is still creating this great big universe / universes - however big this theater is. We have on stage what we have on stage so far - and we assume there is a lot much more to come.

Let there be light! And there was light.

So in today’s prologue we hear about Word and Light - about beginning and choice - and that Word became flesh and lives among us - and that Light is Christ, the Light of the World.

THEN THE PLAY UNFOLDS

And as the Play called the Gospel According to John unfolds we see come on stage John the Baptist and then a cast of characters - a woman named Mary who didn’t want to see a marriage feast run out of wine - or a group of people run out of bread - and then were fed the bread of life. We meet Nicodemus - a man who comes to Jesus in the night and a Samaritan woman whom Jesus meets at high noon - not knowing whom she has run into. We meet a man paralyzed for 38 years and a man born blind. We hear about a woman caught in adultery and a Jesus walks on water and later washes feet with water. We discover Jesus walks on water - and tells everyone that if you thirsty, you can come to me because rivers of living water flow out of me. We find out Jesus had close friends - a man named Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary.

In the Book of Genesis we hear about freedom and choice - and how Adam and Eve - as well as their son Cain - choose evil. In the Gospel of John we hear about Jesus the New Adam choosing freedom and love and how Mary and we are called to continue those choices for life.

In the Book of Genesis we heard don’t eat forbidden fruit - don’t sit under the tree of evil - but find the tree of life. In the Gospel of John we hear about eating the body and drinking the blood called Jesus and that the tree of life is also the tree of death. It’s the cross..

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “Attending the Play Called, ‘The Gospel According to John.’”

Today we heard the opening song - the Prelude - the Prologue - hints and sounds from the rest of the gospel. And each time we hear this gospel - we pray that these words - and the word becomes flesh in our flesh and dwells among us - grace upon grace.








Picture on top is that of Papyrus 52 - a 2nd century papyrus piece of the Gospel of John. It can be found in the John Rylands Library in England.