Metaphors
Metaphors
I have often heard that if you want to understand the Bible, you better be a poet. It takes imagination and curiosity to understand many of the verses in the Bible. But once unleashed, the Bible can be a life transforming, life long, reading.
We are currently studying the Gospel of John in my Thursday Day Bible study class. We do more than just read. We seek to understand. In the Gospel of John, you must understand metaphors and step out of your literalness. John attacks literalism in his telling about Jesus. Metaphors express something deeper that words alone cannot express. John is deep and rich, full of meaning and quite revolutionary with what John does to the story of Jesus.
In many places, John diverges from the Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic means, syn=same, optic=view, “same view” Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. You can study these 3, side by side, they share a common story line. Not John. John is unlike the synoptics. There is no ability to place John side by side with Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Let me show you two of many differences between John and the synoptics. I encourage you to check out these verses yourself. When you stop reading the Bible and studying the Bible, you too will realize that whoever wrote the Gospels, and I say ‘whoever” because they were all anonymous when first written and decades later various names of the disciples were attached to them. Whoever wrote the Gospels put their own spin on Jesus’ life, in retelling the Jesus story. Yes, you too are encouraged to put a spin on Jesus’ life that makes sense to you. If your spin does not center on loving others and making this world a better place, your spin needs some work.
The Last Supper. In the Last supper of the synoptics, Jesus breaks bread and shares wine with the disciples. It takes place in the upper room the night before he is executed. These Passover meals including the “Words of Institution, with the bread and wine, ‘This is my body broken for you, this is the blood of the new covenant poured out for many. Do this in remembrance of me”
Matthew 26:20-29 (NRSV) 9 verses
Mark 14:17-25 (NRSV) 8 verses Luke 22:14-38 (NRSV) 24 verses John Chapters 13-17 5 Chapters JOHN uses 5 chapters!!!!! And in those 5 chapters, there is no breaking of bread or sharing the cup of wine.
John has 5 chapters dedicated to this last meal, which is not a Passover meal, as in the synoptics. Which brings me to a second interesting aspect of John. Jesus is dead before Passover.
Jesus dies on a different day of the week from the synoptics. WOW!!! John 19:14, 31, 42. makes it very clear that it was the day before Passover, the day of Preparation, when he wrote that Jesus was Crucified.
Is John writing history? Are any of the Gospels historical? They are best understood as a confession of faith of what the authors believed, not a biography of Jesus.
Why would John have Jesus killed on a different day of the week? It’s a METAPHOR…let me know if you can find the answer and discover for yourself why John has Jesus die on the Day of Preparation for the Passover, and not the day after Passover in the synoptics.
I’d love to hear from you.