Coloe, Mary | A Friendly Guide to John’s Gospel

A Friendly Guide to John’s Gospel
Mary Coloe

Paperback: Garratt Publishing, 2013, 44pp.

Introduction

A Friendly Guide to John’s Gospel is a thin book, but one whose small size belies its rich content. Mary Coloe’s work in general, as a New Testament scholar, is focused on illuminating the context of Scripture in order that we might better understand it and live according to its teachings. In particular, she focuses on illuminating the Judaic frames within which John’s Gospel was written and the Jewish community for whom the Gospel was written. “Unless we know the questions faced by the communities at the time of the Gospel,” she writes in the book’s introduction, “then what we read will not make much sense to us living 2000 years later and in a very different cultural and religious context. This guide will provide you with some of the background and give you tips about where to find out more” (3).

The first ten pages of the book (almost a full quarter of the whole text) are devoted to introducing the context of John’s Gospel. This context includes explanations of who wrote the gospel, when it was written, and where it was written. Another section of this introductory material traces the history of the Johannine community, the particular group for whom this gospel was written, through the first two centuries. One distinctive element of this context is that, in spite of the fact that the Gospel was written by and for Jews, the Johannine community – although ethnically Jewish – was trying to distinguish itself from “the Torah-centered synagogue” (7).  One final section of the introduction is a brief overview of John’s relation to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).  

Coloe is working from a theological vision of Christ indwelling communities of his followers, which is not unlike the vision that Michael Gorman articulates from the Pauline epistles in Participating in Christ, and other works. [Note from editor: a summary of Michael Gordon’s Participating in Christ will be distributed to the COP in the next two weeks.] This vision of participation in Christ is central to our understanding of what it means to live the Word. We live the Word because the Word lives in us and among us and bears witness through us to the reconciling work that God is doing in creation. The following observations on the Live the Word practices are rooted in Coloe’s perspective of participating in Christ.

Participatory Worship

One distinctive element of Coloe’s reading of the Gospel of John is that, following from her convictions about our participation in Christ, she opts to translate the phrase usually rendered as “eternal life,” as “eternity-life.” She notes that Jesus “will frequently speak of a gift he offers which he names eternity-life. Most translations will say, ‘eternal life’, but I prefer to speak of ‘eternity-life’ to emphasize that Jesus is not just offering ordinary life extended in time, but a whole new quality of life – the life that God lives in eternity” (12-13). Because we belong to the household of God, and are invited to participate in the eternity-life of God here and now, we bear witness to the life of God and worship God as we discern the shape of a faithful life together that embodies Christ among our neighbors.  Focused on the text of the Gospel, Coloe doesn’t say much about the worship gathering as churches know it today and our participation in that as a body. However, her theological rendering of the life and work of Jesus in this Gospel bears witness to the reality of our participation already on earth in the “eternity life” of Christ, which undergirds the logistics of how we participate together in our gatherings (and throughout all of our life together in Christ).  

Radical Kinship

One of the crucial stories in Mary Coloe’s reading of the Gospel of John is John 13-14, in which Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and then talks to them about “his father’s house.” Coloe argues compellingly that in contrast to common understandings of John 14:2, the house that Jesus refers to is not some heavenly mansion that Christ’s followers will ascend to after their death, but rather a household, a family that God will descend upon and indwell as a taste of “eternity life” on Earth. Although Coloe does not explore this facet of this passage, the many rooms in God’s household allude to its breadth and the diversity of those contained within it – that is, those of diverse ethnicities who are made kin through their participation in Christ, a central hallmark of which is God’s reconciliation (as Michael Gorman emphasizes in Participating in Christ.)

Table Fellowship

In her reading of John 13-14, Mary Coloe suggests that the meaning of the foot-washing in chapter 13 is illuminated by Jesus’s depiction of the household of God in chapter 14. In short, she interprets this story as: “Jesus washes the feet of his disciples to welcome them into his Father’s house” (36). She proceeds to highlight verse 15 of chapter 13, in which Jesus tells his disciples that he has given them a model and that they should do as he has done. Coloe notes that the washing of feet is an act of love that the disciples should imitate. In the context of the supper that would follow, foot-washing is also an act of hospitality. Just as Jesus welcomed his disciples to table fellowship in a manner that upended the social conventions of his day, so for us too, we imitate Christ when the table that we celebrate in Christ’s remembrance becomes a place of radical hospitality.

Mary Coloe’s A Friendly Guide to John’s Gospel is a simple and profound guide to understand the life and work of Jesus, through the text of John’s Gospel. It orients us toward the eternity-life of God, in which we have been invited to participate. The four Live the Word practices offer us practical imagination for how the eternity-life of God flows through us in our local church communities.