Love Set Free. Martin L. Smith

account of Jesus’ last days also differs in many ways from the other Gospels. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple is not the climactic event that it is in the other Gospels, because John daringly chose to transfer it to the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Nor does his account of the last supper make any mention of Jesus’ actions and words over the bread and wine that were the origins of the Eucharist. Instead, the evangelist makes the dramatic sign of self-giving love in Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet the focus of the event, and pictures the supper as the final opportunity for Jesus to instruct and initiate the disciples. It concludes with the serene and magnificent prayer in which Jesus offers to God a summary of his mission and prepares for his return to God’s presence.

      Throughout the Gospel John portrays Jesus not as the victim of a plot, but rather as one who retains the initiative right to the last. ‘For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again’ (10.17–18). Jesus is able to discern when ‘the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified’ (12.23). He is not immune to pain and horror in the face of his betrayal and rejection – ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – “Father, save me from this hour”?’ (12.27) – but he remains aware of his union with God and this carries him through his arrest, interrogation, torture and death. The awesome authority with which this awareness invests Jesus is conveyed dramatically in the thrilling simplicity with which he identifies himself to the soldiers who have come to arrest him: ‘I am’ (18.5). As on all the other occasions where Jesus identifies himself in this way, John wants to remind us of God’s disclosure of his identity to Moses in the burning bush, I AM WHO I AM. So John has the soldiers stepping back and falling to the ground at these words, as if instinctively recognizing that in Jesus they are dealing with more than a mere mortal.

      The following six meditations are not meant to be read through at one sitting. Each one is best appreciated and used when it can be followed by a time of reflection and prayer. The first meditation is based on the beginning of Chapter 19. In preparation you might find it helpful to read the whole of John’s Gospel up to that point, or at least from Chapter 12, verse 20 on, when the movement towards the cross begins to gather momentum. Some of you will spread your use of these meditations over a long period, perhaps during the whole season of Lent, allowing several days for each one to sink in. Others may want to set aside periods of reflection during Holy Week. If you are unable to take part in worship on Good Friday, you may want to find some time alone that day and use all the meditations together as the vehicle for your prayer.

      The meditations are not exercises in biblical interpretation. Rather, they are invitations to allow the images that John has gathered together in a unique way to resonate deeply in your imagination. Think of them as similar to the comments that an art critic would write for the catalogue of a show of paintings, which are intended not to dictate the response of the viewers, but rather to help stimulate and clarify the feelings to which the paintings give rise. My hope is that these short meditations, with the scripture passages and poetry selections, will bring the images of Jesus’ passion into sharper focus for you and act as a stimulus to prayer.

      At the very end of his Gospel John himself says that no account of the mystery of Jesus can ever be complete: ‘There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written’ (21.25). These meditations are offered in the belief that all of us who are prepared to be caught up in the story are the authors of these unwritten books, using the language of prayer.

      1

      Embodiment

      ‘Here is the man!’

      John 19.1–16a

      Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ and striking him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to them, ‘Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.’ So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Here is the man!’ When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.’ The Jews answered him, ‘We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.’

      Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever. He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, ‘Where are you from?’ But Jesus gave him no answer. Pilate therefore said to him, ‘Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?’ Jesus answered him, ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.’ From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, ‘If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.’

      When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge’s bench at the place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, ‘Here is your King!’ They cried out, ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!’ Pilate asked them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but the emperor.’ Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

      The Gospel of John is the only one that identifies an eyewitness source for the narrative of Jesus’ passion. The narrator could have revealed the identity of his source at the beginning of the story, but he waits until a particular moment to reveal that it is the disciple whom Jesus loved, the man who dared to keep company with the mother of Jesus at the foot of the cross, who speaks to us. John tells us, ‘He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth’ (19.35). This moment of identification comes after Jesus’ death on the cross, as soon as his body is pierced by the soldier’s spear, letting forth a stream of blood and water.

      This image of penetration from outside to the inmost place of Jesus’ own heart is a mysterious sign of the character of the fourth Gospel. This Gospel penetrates the surface of the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection to reach into the hidden depths, the insideness of it all.

      The story of Jesus’ passion can be told as a drama, a passion play, whose impact comes from the way it seizes our imaginations and stirs up our feelings through the unfolding of vivid scene after vivid scene. Lurid details can draw us into the events as spellbound spectators. But John’s Gospel is not an invitation to undergo the pathos and catharsis of a dramatic spectacle like the famous passion play of Oberammergau, with its wrenching re-enactment of the crucifixion. Instead, it is an invitation to surrender ourselves to a movement into the hidden depths of it all.