John 21:20-23

00:00:00:32 – 00:00:25:25
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us again at this start of the week. We’re grateful to have you with us on this Monday. We are very near the end of the Gospel of John here in the 21st chapter. Just a recap of where we left off last week. Jesus has essentially reinstated Peter and called him to faithfulness.

00:00:25:30 – 00:00:46:39
Clint Loveall
Do you love me? Feed my lambs. If you didn’t get through that, you might want to go back and pick that up. That and we now, in this last part of the gospel, if you’ve been with us, you’ll realize that there have been two disciples that have kind of come to the forefront. Peter and the disciple Jesus loved.

00:00:46:39 – 00:01:13:46
Clint Loveall
That’s the label that gets applied to one of the disciples. And as we’ve said pretty consistently, not everyone agrees, but almost everybody agrees. That is probably John himself. And so today, as we now had sort of a wrap up with Jesus and Peter, we now get a kind of wrap up about John, though it still involves conversation with Peter.

00:01:13:46 – 00:01:36:18
Clint Loveall
So, let me read a few verses here and we’ll come back and flesh them out. Peter turned around and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved, following them. He was the one who reclined next to Jesus at supper and had said, Lord, is it I, that is, who is going to betray you? When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, what about him?

00:01:36:23 – 00:02:01:21
Clint Loveall
Jesus said to Peter, if it is my will that he remain until I come, is that what is that to you? Follow me. So the rumor spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but he said, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

00:02:01:26 – 00:02:39:16
Clint Loveall
So, so I don’t know. It’d be an interesting conversation with a Bible scholar, Michael, in terms of the function of this passage, evidently in this community, if this is in fact, John, perhaps there was some conversation. John is one of the disciples we we know that did live into older age was not martyred. And perhaps there is this idea that Jesus had proclaimed or that John takes on significance and is going to live until Jesus returns.

00:02:39:21 – 00:02:58:41
Clint Loveall
And and maybe that’s the idea here of sort of squishing that a little bit. But, here we at least have the origins of something that must have mattered to them that I suspect maybe since then we haven’t found particularly important.

00:02:58:46 – 00:03:29:39
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, there is a continued theme here that we see that we saw before where you see a lot of bookends happening, a lot of tying things up and I think that that is, way that the, the sort of summary work being done by John here remains the case. I think, you know, specifically we see that in this idea that we have the repeat of the question that comes up at dinner, the statement of, you know, who’s the person reclining?

00:03:29:43 – 00:03:54:45
Michael Gewecke
You know, that’s the sort of work that’s being done here to summarize the characters stories. You’ve got Peter’s story because he’s been important as a disciple. But make no mistake about it, we’ve had this sort of subtext of the writer of John here, the disciple who Jesus loved. We even running to the tomb. We’ve had that kind of behind the scenes almost look as to the story.

00:03:54:50 – 00:04:15:43
Michael Gewecke
And so I do think that there is some wrapping up of this character’s theme happening here that’s helpful and that’s meaningful. That’s understandable in light of the patterns that we’ve already had up to this point. But, Clint, to your point, I do think that there is speculation here, and I think that we should call it out as speculation.

00:04:15:48 – 00:04:42:18
Michael Gewecke
When you come to the end of a book like this and you have these kinds of comments that there’s this conversation, I mean, literally, our translation uses the word rumor spread that this beloved disciple would not die, that that’s going to cause us to speculate as to what’s happening, or it’s just built into what it is, whether or not that is a kind of squashing or whether that is a kind of theological corrective to something that went wrong.

00:04:42:23 – 00:05:04:28
Michael Gewecke
Or you could go all day, right? That John just died and that there was some significant question about that. And this sort of became part of the story as a clarification, you know, that that is literally made up. That stuff that shouldn’t be repeated is simply to say, though, that this likely did serve a purpose to the first Christian community to receive this.

00:05:04:28 – 00:05:24:49
Michael Gewecke
And we sometimes as Bible readers, forget that this is Scripture, not because it was written with the intention of being delivered in your Bible to you today by the first author, but because the Spirit of God is able to work within these text to have a word for us today, even if we’re reading it in a letter that was intended and sent to someone else.

00:05:24:54 – 00:05:27:18
Michael Gewecke
And I think that that’s coming to the top here.

00:05:27:23 – 00:06:07:01
Clint Loveall
Yeah. You know, and there is you have to be careful with this, that this is a sort of grounds of speculation for Bible scholars and professors and such. But there, there at least is potentially a thread of competition or a sense of the question of who is the chief, the primary disciple. And there is some idea that the Gospel of John is written to a community or comes from a community that, you know, obviously celebrates John.

00:06:07:01 – 00:06:44:01
Clint Loveall
And so all of a sudden he’s generally here, the disciple whom Jesus loved and not I don’t I don’t think that it’s blatant. I don’t think that he’s set against Peter in the gospel, but I think there is maybe a thread of comparison between the two. And so as we get to the end of the book and we get told, you know, that, just in the passage preceding this, that something was said to Peter to anticipating what kind of death he would glorify God through.

00:06:44:06 – 00:07:16:03
Clint Loveall
Now the question turns to, well, what about John? What about the other one? What about the one Jesus loved? What happens to him? What happened to him? And I suppose maybe in some sense this is an answer to that question. I think the word community here is really interesting. I think in Greek that maybe says something like the brothers, which is an early idea of church.

00:07:16:08 – 00:07:40:30
Clint Loveall
So the author appears to be aware that there has been a kind of speculation about this disciple and what would happen to him. And so there’s a word of clarification here. Fascinating that even here at the end of the gospel, there’s a little bit of fire fighting going on and, and squelching ideas that aren’t helpful to the community.

00:07:40:30 – 00:08:10:27
Clint Loveall
So, yeah, I don’t know exactly what we make of this as we get the almost final appearance of the disciple whom Jesus loved and Jesus essentially says, you know, this is my business. Even here at the end, he kind of rebukes Peter, if it’s my will, what is that to you? Follow me. And, oh, again, some course correction here, which is interesting this late in the gospel.

00:08:10:31 – 00:08:33:00
Michael Gewecke
So, Clint, I don’t want to take this too far, but I do think we and certainly Western Protestantism, if you’re a Christian in America, I think we miss that. There was even in the early church, regional realities that, you know, you’ve got the church in Ephesus is living a very different kind of experience than the church in Philippi, than the church in Rome, than certainly the church in Egypt.

00:08:33:00 – 00:08:56:00
Michael Gewecke
And so we miss some of that. I think we kind of think of it from the perspective of being one whole thing, and it’s easier to look back through thousands of years and see that, you know, in the same way that we affirm that in our place, if you’re local to our congregation, you know that even though Milford is very close to Arnolds Park, they’re not the same.

00:08:56:00 – 00:09:26:11
Michael Gewecke
They have different cultures and they have different restaurants that have different ways of doing things. You know, certainly the same Spirit Lake and and Lake Park, you know, whatever. So just because you have something that is set in the same time frame does not mean that it always shares the same characteristics. And the point I want to make with that is John is historically thought to be in sort of the Upper East, part of the known Roman Empire at the time of his, retirement, that of his later life.

00:09:26:24 – 00:10:03:09
Michael Gewecke
A lot of that is legend. And but that being said, Peter is occupying very different positions of leadership and conversation in the later church. And so it seems striking to me that with the competitive tone between these figures that we’ve already seen in this gospel, and we pointed out multiple times, you know, there is a way in which you could see the the church of one region recognizing that its teacher, its chief place of discipleship, and the one who is steward of the faith in that place, that that there’s a distinctive kind of vision of his contribution of his orientation to Christ.

00:10:03:14 – 00:10:20:40
Michael Gewecke
You could read that as being cynical and skeptical. I don’t think that you have to, though. I think you can say that there’s a unique gifting that John has had, and John is seeking to give this gift to his community. And I make no mistake about it, I think there’s a reason why John’s the last character of the story.

00:10:20:45 – 00:10:30:00
Michael Gewecke
Because I think there is a privileging of him in his discipleship in that place. And I don’t know that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I think it might play into this conversation.

00:10:30:05 – 00:11:02:04
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And I think tomorrow, as we move to toward the closing words of this gospel, this gets a little more clear because you have a conversation with Jesus and Peter about how Jesus is going to be glorified by Peter even in his death. And in John inserts that parenthetically. And then you turn to John. And what is his contribution and what is the way that he’s going to glorify Jesus and not to steal tomorrow’s thunder?

00:11:02:04 – 00:11:34:46
Clint Loveall
But it’s this book. It it’s the telling of the story. It’s the preaching of the gospel. And so I, I do think there is a celebration of both contributions, but not surprisingly, maybe for a gospel that gets named for John and for a community that was particularly, enamored with John or indebted to John, it not a not a surprise that they want to have their person included and celebrated and that that they see that as a as high praise.

00:11:34:46 – 00:11:54:48
Clint Loveall
And they so, yeah. Interesting. You get a little bit more of this in a book like acts where you actually get. Yeah. Some of the competition between Saint Paul and Peter, I don’t know that John’s involved in that as much. Right. Here we, we have just a little bit of that. And, and I think it’s wise, as you say, Michael, there’s room for that here.

00:11:54:48 – 00:12:22:40
Clint Loveall
This isn’t animosity. This isn’t over against. It is just to say that there were disciples in this early part of the church’s history that recognize the authority of Peter, but for whatever reason, they just love John. And this book probably was special to them. And so the question of what happens to John and what is John’s contribution to the gospel is especially important to them.

00:12:22:40 – 00:12:24:36
Clint Loveall
And and maybe we see some of that here.

00:12:24:41 – 00:12:46:48
Michael Gewecke
I think scholarship really helps us there to understand that the people who wrote these books of the communities that received them were real people, and I think there’s just the humanity of the books that really shines through. And when you pause and you really reflect, wow. There was a group of people who the only copy of the story of Jesus that they had was this book that we called John.

00:12:46:48 – 00:13:04:40
Michael Gewecke
You know, it’s so easy to just get into the practice of of assuming that all Christians of all time have had the book that you have in front of you, but that’s simply not true. And in those earliest days, you know, a church would only have the benefit of one letter or a couple letters. And and ultimately that progressed.

00:13:04:40 – 00:13:36:14
Michael Gewecke
And actually historically, it was was surprisingly quickly how fast those letters and writings came together. But there was a point for one community where John was the only thing that they had. And when that was the case, this was the authoritative telling of Jesus’s life and his story. And there’s a real human element to the fact that that group of people with all of their quirks and all of their emphasis and all the things that were meaningful to them, that this book summarized that in real human ways, that that’s the gospel, the gospels for real people.

00:13:36:21 – 00:13:59:09
Michael Gewecke
That’s why I think these books still speak to us today. It’s because they record real people, Peter, who’s, you know, rushing ahead, Peter who’s impetuous, John, who’s sometimes caught behind the scenes and not always noticed, but yet loved. Right then he’s the disciple who is loved. I mean, if you allow us to lean into the text that way, I actually think it animates it.

00:13:59:09 – 00:14:18:31
Michael Gewecke
I actually think that it draws a little closer to home into our hearts, because we can relate to the humanity of these disciples, to these people, to these earliest Christians navigating what it means to be a disciple in a world in which no one has done that before, no one has been a recipient of the gospel of Jesus Christ before them.

00:14:18:36 – 00:14:39:57
Michael Gewecke
And so here they are, living it out, trying their best. And we see that in words like this that may not direct. This isn’t devotional reading, Clint. Nobody reads this, I don’t think, and goes home and think, you know, wow, that really equips me with what I need to do today to be a disciple. But I think it humanizes this gospel in such a way that we we remember this is for us as it was for them.

00:14:40:06 – 00:14:43:10
Michael Gewecke
So it is for us, and we seek to be open to that leading.

00:14:43:21 – 00:15:05:09
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And the last thing I would just have to say is, it’s very much a secondary part of the text, but notice that Jesus, up until the very end, is still trying to get Peter to focus on. Just pay attention to what I need you to do. You know, what about him? And Jesus says, why are you why are you asking about him?

00:15:05:24 – 00:15:47:47
Clint Loveall
You just follow me and I think there is a wonderful word. If we tried to read this text devotional, there’s a wonderful word here to Christians about not comparing ourselves to others, not worrying about others. We have enough on our plate to simply follow Jesus. And so the idea of of looking at others and taking our eyes off of Jesus to compare ourselves with other followers, other believers, is, I think unfortunately still very applicable and a good correction for all of us as we encounter these words here.

00:15:47:47 – 00:15:56:31
Clint Loveall
I don’t I don’t think that’s what the text is about fundamentally. But if you were looking for a lesson in it for our day and time, that may be one that you could pull.

00:15:56:31 – 00:16:15:38
Michael Gewecke
Out as well said. I think it’s a great place to end our conversation here today. Thanks for being with us. If you’ve like this section of John, probably no one’s favorite. I give it a like it helps others find it in their own study, and certainly subscribe for other studies like this. We will be back tomorrow as we come now to bring conclusion to this book and a long journey we’ve had together.

00:16:15:43 – 00:16:16:19
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.