Message Series 2009-10: Focus on John

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Sunday, October 18th, 2009 | Tags: Latest News

Apostle St John the Evangelist by El Greco

Each year at St Andrew’s we work our way through a particular part of the Bible, delving into its message for the original hearers and what it has to say to us today. Starting from today and continuing until the middle of next year, we’re going to focus on the books of the Bible related to St John, who was one of the “inner circle” of Jesus’ first followers. We’ll be looking at his account of Jesus’ life and work in the Gospel of John, his three letters to the early Christians, and the book of Revelation.

If you weren’t in church with us this morning, you can join us on our journey with John by listening to today’s sermon.

Rowan Williams had this to say in a talk he gave about John’s Gospel earlier this year:

“The great Victorian poet Robert Browning wrote a wonderful piece called ‘A Death in the Desert’ in which he imagines the aged apostle hiding from persecution in a cave in the desert and reflecting on his Gospel and his memories of Jesus.

It’s a fantastic poem and one of the great theological poems of the 19th Century. One of the lines in it is, ‘What first was seen as points are now seen as stars.’

You see a sort of distant point in the sky, a little pinprick of light, and suddenly realise it’s a star.

It’s a whole world and Browning imagines St John looking back on his memories, each event, each saying – a sort of point of light.

And a lifetime of reflection has made him realise there’s a whole world inside each one of these tiny dots of light.

I think that’s a marvellous image for John’s Gospel. We’re not just looking at, as I say, a human tape recorder, we’re looking at the witness, the testimony of someone who has had a lifetime of praying, thinking and absorbing the life changing memory of being in the company of Jesus.

That really is the heart of the Gospel, any gospel, but the fourth gospel in particular.”