Gospel of John 09.vp

Session 6 Our Lover, Our Way-Truth-and-Life, and Our Vine (John 13-15)

The “Weirding Ways” of a True Disciple of Christ: The Principle of Reversal

A truly odd number. A real Christian is an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passeth knowledge. ~ A. W. Tozer. The Root of the Righteous . 1986, p.156. What really lies behind. Beasts talk and flowers come alive and lobsters quadrille in the world of the fairy tale, and nothing is apt to be what it seems. And if this is true of the creatures that the hero meets on his quest, it is true also of the hero himself who at any moment may be changed into a beast or a stone or a king or have his heart turned to ice. Maybe above all they are tales about transformation where all creatures are revealed in the end as what they truly are – the ugly duckling becomes a great white swan, the frog is revealed to be a prince, and the beautiful but wicked queen is unmasked at last in her ugliness. They are tales of transformation where the ones who live happily ever after, as by no means everybody does in fairy tales, are transformed into what they have it in them at their best to be. ~ Frederick Buechner. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale . San Francisco: HarperSanFransisco, 1977, pp. 79-80.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I. The Love of the Master for the Disciples, 13.1-20

John 13-17 marks a significant transition in the ministry of Jesus – the completion of his public ministry, and his private dialogue with his disciples, his circle of friends who were witnesses of his majesty from the beginning. Jesus dialogues with his disciples in an upper room setting connected with the celebration of the Passover, the memorial that acknowledged God’s deliverance of his people Israel

137