The Apostle John.

          People talk about Paul and Peter a lot. Great men! Deserving of just about any good thing people might say of them. (For the record, Peter was not the first Pope. He died in Rome as a prisoner, not as the Bishop of Rome.) But John…. now there is someone to model one’s life after, especially if you are a Pastor.

          In the famous painting ‘The Last Supper’ by Leonardo da Vinci, we see John portrayed as a very effeminate man, no facial hair and an almost frightened look on his face. The painting is supposed to be the moment Jesus tells the disciples that one of them will betray Him. They all start talking at once to each other except for Judas and John. Judas sits there staring at Jesus and John has drawn away from Jesus. The reason John looks very womanish is because Leonardo used the same female as his model that he used for Mary in some other paintings. It is because of that painting that we have come to think of John as a slightly built, quiet man of little consequence.

But John was a fisherman. Not the kind of fisherman who drops a line into the creek now and again, but a man who hauled nets and fought storms every day. A man who lived a physical life. And a man who, later in life, took whatever the Roman officials threw at him and endured it, all in the name of Jesus.

So, I have been thinking of John. Historically we know he was actually a pastor of three or four churches. First, Second and Third John are all written to those churches. We also know that he was in his late eighties or early nineties when he died. In thinking about this wonderful man of God, I began to wish he and I could sit down and talk for a while. Some day we will be able to do that, but for now one can only wonder.

I think if we could bring John here for that sit down, he would be fascinated by our world. Personally, I think that throughout the prophetic portion of the Book of the Revelation, he is seeing our world. He describes things he can’t understand but in our time are easily recognizable. However, people have been saying that he is describing their time frame for hundreds of years, so I think I will just let God sort that out. Anyway, if we could bring him here for a while, think how he would react.

We would want to put him in our style of clothes so he wouldn’t feel like people were staring at him. Imagine his reaction to a zipper. How would you explain that little device that is in so much of our clothing? Could you explain Velcro to the Apostle John? And how would you explain boys wearing their pants halfway down their rear ends? What would this disciple who was beloved of Jesus think of a young lady in very short shorts? Or, worse yet, yoga pants? Would he be hesitant to climb into a car? Almost everything that we find common place he would find unusual, even fantastic. Unbelievable. A toilet! A shower! A washing machine! I wonder what his thought would be when you explained your cell phone and what it could do. Even the most ordinary of us has luxuries and technologies that even the Caesars didn’t have and couldn’t dream about. What a rush it would be.

          I think at some point, John would want to get away from all the new stuff. Maybe head out to a farm and just relax with something he could understand. Only the farm wouldn’t help him. How would he process a tractor? What would those big rolls of hay in a field mean to him? Could his mind even begin to cope with tens of thousands of laying hens in an egg producing facility? John would be out of his depth.

          Well, he was a fisherman. We could turn him over to Ed Fitch to take him fishing. Only, would that work? He had fished with big nets. He would have no idea how to use one of Ed’s rod and reels. (Ed would have given him one of the cheap ones to use. Ed has to be pretty sure of the person before he turns over quality.) Would the Apostle John even know how to bait a hook? And a boat that could glide across water without a sail of a bank of oars…. Pure amazement. With his head spinning      and all his senses just about fried, we would try and get him calmed down. We would tell him that in a few days we were going to be celebrating Easter. Surely he would like that.

          Except he would have no clue as to what we were talking about. Easter would sound to John like a holiday some of the pagans observed during his time. Why would we want him to observe Easter? So we would explain that Easter was all about the Resurrection of Jesus. This would be even more confusing. The Easter he knew was a fertility festival. What did that have to do with Jesus? But, eventually he would agree.

          By Sunday he would be anxious to get to a worship experience. Entering the church would be, for John, an incredible experience. There would be much he wouldn’t understand. Actually, there would be nothing he would understand. What was the purpose of windows with colored glass in them? What were the benches for? Why was the preacher elevated above everyone else? The music coming out of those big boxes would be totally different from anything he had ever heard. Not that it was unpleasant, just different. We would explain that people all over the world could, if they so choose, watch the service, and that fact would completely amaze John. And so, finally, we would get started.

          But this wouldn’t be the worship service he was used to experiencing. That is not to say it would be bad, just different. As John would sit there and listen, his mind would puzzle over it. And then it would hit him. Somehow, with all the trappings and all the amazing technology and all the music and everything, we were just not quite connecting with the Resurrection. Clearly we knew the story, but we were missing something.

          Almost apologetically, the dear friend of Jesus would rise to his feet. The shoes he had to wear to be like us would be causing him pain. The shirt and pants he was wearing would be irritating and uncomfortable. Slowly, John would come up the steps to the pulpit, and begin to speak. Instead of a polished sermon it would be the words of a fisherman who had witnessed the greatest events ever. He would tell us about Jesus healing the sick and blind and diseased. He would tell of those who hated Him, and those who loved Him. He would tell us of the joy and the feeling of expectation when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and yet how odd it was that Jesus Himself wasn’t expressing joy. He would explain the emotions at what turned out to be the last supper with Jesus. How they felt when they found out it was Judas who betrayed their Friend. And then, the fear. The guards had come to take Jesus away. He would tell us how they fled and how awful he felt because he couldn’t stop his feet from racing away. They all went into hiding. They knew that the people who hated Jesus also hated them. They went and escaped into the darkness. And then John would tell us of the streets of Jerusalem. Dirty and dusty as Jesus struggled with the Cross. We would hear, sitting there in our sparkling clean church, all about the people who spit on Him as He went past, how on Golgotha they nail Him to a Cross and dropped it into a hole. John would tell us how, while standing there with Mary, he heard Jesus charge him with caring for the woman who had brought Jesus into the world.  He would tell us of the darkness that came, of the final words of his Friend and how they brought Him down with no care for His wounded body. Standing there in a nice, orderly church, John would describe how blood and water sprayed when the spear ripped into His heart.

          After pausing to collect himself, John would go on. About how he and Peter wound up together. Cowering in their fear, they would have tried to figure out their options. And then, just at sun up, the other Mary came to them. Jesus was risen! No longer in the tomb. She had spoken to an angel. John would have told the church that day how he and Peter          raced for the tombs. How they looked into the tomb where Jesus had laid. How the grave cloths were neatly folded. How Jesus Himself was gone.

          John’s story would have gone on for a bit. Eating with the Resurrected Jesus. Spending time with Him. Watching Him ascend into heaven. Hearing the angels give them their instructions. And then John, an old man, really, would have looked out at the congregation and taken a deep, ragged breath.

          “And that’s the way it happened. You can believe it or not, but that is what happened. He died, He was buried, He rose from the dead and He is coming again. And all who believe that simple truth, will go home with Him. Amen.”