Preview to John the "Maverick" Gospel

Hello Everyone

Last week we continued our discussion of hermeneutics and Bible study. Thanks for a good, robust conversation. It's great to be in a group of folks who, though we have various ways of relating to Scripture, none the less unite in our love of Christ and hunger for his guidance. This is Church! We ARE the Body.

OK here's what's up next! By consensus we'll crack open the book sometimes described as "The Maverick Gospel". Which is the Gospel According to John. No, not John McCain, but I just thought of that and find it amusing! Now that's a good way to remember that the Book of John really is unique among the four gospels in the New Testament. As we get into the book I think we'll readily see why.

Some features of John to watch for:

* John often takes time to explain what an incident or teaching means -- keep an eye out for what seem like "interpretive interludes". For me it's kind of like the story is like a movie, and the scene freezes or fades while a narrator explains what just happened.

* John describes Jesus' miraculous acts as "signs", not miracles. This is very important. Also note there will seven "signs", and that all of these, except for the feeding of the multitude, are unique to John.

* The themes of light and dark, and of recognizing Jesus or not recognizing him, are linked.

* John himself is never distinctly identified in the book; he is referred to, generally, as "the disciple whom Jesus loved".

* * *
To get started, please read and ponder chapter 1:1-14, the "prologue" to John. After a short introduction to the book we'll get in small groups and discuss this part using our four guiding questions:
1. What does this Scripture tell me about me
2. What does this Scripture tell me about God
3. What does this Scripture tell me about my relationship with God
4. What will I do?

As always, these notes from class are saved at our class blog, www.stpaulpastor.blogspot.com

Blessings to you all & hope to see you Sunday, 10:00 a.m. in the parlor.

Dan & Laura

Dr. Hermen Eutic

Hi everyone

Great to be with you last Sunday. For those who missed -- we had 18 present, started and ended with prayer and sharing, and began a conversation based on the article Four Concepts for Reference, archived in this blog Thursday September 20 2007.

We talked a good deal about the relationship of "fact" and "truth" in understanding the Bible. The general drift is that what we are most interested in is "truth" in the sense of meaning -- what God is saying to us, and how to apply this to our lives.

I enjoyed our opening community builder -- sharing about the place we lived when we were ten years old, and a significant experience had in that time and place. This connected with the beginning of our discussion, identifying that our different backgrounds have a bearing on what we understand the Bible to be, and how we read and interpret it. To that end I suggested the image of glasses -- that as we all have different prescriptions (and some lucky ones none!) we all "see" the Bible a little bit differently. In assuming this we also assume that we can learn by seeing through each other's "lenses"; though it is vital to understand our own lenses and how they influence our reading of Scripture. We also learned a fancy word, 'hermeneutic', which is a 'principal of interpretation' . . . what we're talking about is that we all have one, and they vary quite a bit from person to person.

We left off at the beginning of the second paragraph of the article; we'll pick up with some discussion of the concepts of "mythos" and "logos".

We'll aim to finish this conceptual discussion on Sunday, then move on to more Bible study!

Hope to see you all this Sunday, November 16. BTW it's "Bible Presentation Sunday", where 3rd and 9th graders and few others will receive wonderful study Bibles -- those are the ones that have been on the counter eavesdropping on our class the last few weeks. So please send prayers of blessing on those books as they soon will, we hope, touch the lives of some of our children and youth.

We appreciate you! Thanks for being in this class and being such a blessing to us.

Dan and Laura