Posts from April 2023

Posts from April 2023

Grilled fish mackerel, cooked on the grill in the open air flow

Come Have Breakfast

For the final chapter of John’s Gospel, the disciples are fishing (unsuccessfully), and a difficult-to-recognize Jesus is making a fire and breakfast on the beach. He calls out to the disciples on the water, “Cast the net to the other side of the boat!” They do so, and the haul is so great the net and boat can barely handle it. Now the identity of the stranger on the beach crystalizes. It’s Jesus after all! Like Mary Magdalene a chapter ago,…
Blue old rusty unlocked padlock on wooden door

Breathing

In John 20, when the risen Jesus finally comes to his disciples, they’re huddled together in some secret location behind a locked door. They’re afraid that the Jewish authorities that manufactured the death of Jesus will come for his followers now and finish the job. Even so, Jesus walks right through the locked door, as if to say that in the new creation wrought by his resurrection, there is no barrier erected by fear that can keep Jesus out. New…
Gardening tools and spring flowers in the garden. Gardening concept.

New Creation

As John 20 begins, three days after Jesus’ death and right before dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene approaches the tomb where her grief has brought her and sees that the stone in front of it has already been rolled away. Thinking there has been a grave robbery, she runs to tell the other disciples. Peter and “the beloved disciple” (whose real name is never told to us) now run to the tomb. The beloved disciple looks…

New Exodus

Even though Jesus never incriminates himself quite as easily as Pilate and Israel’s priests would like him to, they decide to crucify him anyway. So in John 19, Jesus is beaten, given his crown of thorns, mockingly named “King of the Jews,” and nailed to the cross along with two other criminals. In his finals moments, he says, “I am thirsty.” A sponge is filled with wine, put on a branch (from a hyssop bush) and extended up to Jesus.…