John 1-10

John 1-10 begins with a reflection of Genesis and then continues with Jesus' teachings. The early life of Jesus is skipped over along with most of John the Baptist's story. John the Baptist is mentioned as denying that he is the Christ, but that's about it. We jump from the Word Became Flesh to Jesus' teachings.

Chapter 1 is very interesting. The connection that we have discussed in class as to this first part of John and Genesis fascinates me. Up until this point, there seems to be a lot of connections randomly thrown in the gospels to connect to the prophesies such as Isaiah. To start John off, we immediately reflect back to Genesis. For Jews I would think that this is a powerful statement and a hard thing to argue. I think it is interesting that the last gospel is began this way instead of the first. Why is this?

The miracles Jesus performs in John seem to be the miracles that make him more well known and destroy his time on earth. This gospel doesn't seem to have the tag of "do not tell anyone" to the end of the miracles. Water to wine is a famous miracle that seems so insignificant. Wine isn't comparable to healing the sight of a blind man or having a paraplegic get up and take his mat-at least not in today's society.

John is also an interesting gospel because we see Jesus get angry when they have turned the temple into a market. We also see him approach specific people like Philip, Nathanael, Nicodemus, and the Samaritan woman. We also see specific references back to Abraham and the testimony of John the Baptist. It seems like John spends a lot of time trying to convince people that Jesus is the Christ-more than just by telling stories or testimony.

The last thing I want to point out for the first half of John is the idea of spiritual blindness followed by the sheep analogy and disbelief of Jews. It seems at the end of chapter 9 that Jesus is saying that because we see our sin it makes us guilty. This reminds me again of Genesis 1 in the idea that Adam and Eve did not know they were naked until they sinned... The sheep analogy has always fascinated me. The good shepherd is a great image of Jesus. Watching over us as we sleep. Finding us if we are lost. This image definitely is a comfort as a Christian and a great way to explain Jesus to non-believers. On another note, it has always seemed so easy to believe that Jesus existed so the disbelief of the Jews astonishes me still. It seems interesting to me that he was persecuted as the King of the Jews, yet the Jews didn't believe in him...