John Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries

283 Pages·2014·1.69 MB·English

by  Karoline M. Lewis

PROCLAIMING JOHN’S INTERPRETATION
OF THE CHRIST EVENT
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Karoline M. Lewis draws together the strengths of two exegetical approaches to the Gospel of John
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in this volume of the Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries series. Lewis takes a broad thematic
approach to the Gospel while at the same time giving exegetical and homiletical insights about individual I
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pericopes. Readers, preachers, and their parishioners will have a deeper appreciation of the book’s
unique interpretation of the Christ event and how that influences their approach to living the Christian
faith in today’s world.
PRAISE FOR JOHN
“This excellent commentary on John rests on a mountain of solid scholarship. Karoline
Lewis does not direct her gaze only downward to the text, however, but outward to the
church. She stands on the crest of her exegetical wisdom and tells her readers what the
Gospel of John enables her, and all of us, to see—about the identity of Jesus, the power
of the gospel, and the claim of both on human life. The theological vistas in this volume are
breathtaking, and the insights for preaching are stunning.”
Thomas G. Long | Candler School of Theology, Emory University
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“There is a kind of common agreement that commentaries are not meant to be exciting
reading. Lewis’s John not only breaks that premise, it shatters it. John, in Lewis’s hands, O
becomes a writer of great skill and subtlety, one whose Jesus is more direct and power-
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ful and complete than I, at least, had ever perceived before. This book, which is filled with
wit and sharp insights and brilliant turns of phrasing, should be in the hands of every lay
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Christian, as well as in those of the ordained. Here is a John most of us have not seen be-
fore and, as a result, a Jesus whom many of us have also never before been led to fathom.”
Phyllis Tickle | author of The Age of the Spirit (2014)
“In this innovative approach to the Gospel of John, Lewis acts as curator of texts, placing
and layering them against one another in unexpected ways, so that we are constantly
astonished at how many fresh insights can and do emerge from such familiar stories.
A brilliant and original book, drenched in wisdom.”
Anna Carter Florence | Columbia Theological Seminary
KAROLINE M. LEWIS is associate professor of biblical preaching
and the Alvin N. Rogness Chair of Homiletics at Luther Seminary in
St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of Rereading the “Shepherd
Discourse”: Restoring the Integrity of John 9:39-10:21 (2008)
and the introduction and study notes for the Gospel of John in
the Lutheran Study Bible (Augsburg Fortress, 2009) and co-
author of New Proclamation: Year B, 2009, Easter through Christ
the King (Fortress Press, 2009). She is a contributing writer to
WorkingPreacher.org and co-host of the site’s weekly podcast
“Sermon Brainwave.”
RELIGION / PREACHING
Additional Praise for JJoohhnn
“There are many books on preaching John, but Lewis offers something
different: John read thoroughly and intentionally through the lens of the
preacher.ThegoalofthisapproachisnotsimplytoimprovesermonsonJohn,
butrathertoallowaguidedencounterwiththetheologicalworldoftheGospel
of John to reshape how we understand the very work of preaching.”
Gail R. O’Day
Wake Forest University School of Divinity
“Growing up as a young fundamentalist, I memorized a lot of verses from
the Gospel of John. And I was sure I knew what those verses meant. I got
older and began to question a lot of what I had been taught, especially when
I began to preach from John and was forced to read the text—the whole
text—closely. What I needed back then was exactly what Karoline Lewis has
provided in her new commentary: an honest, intelligent engagement with
the Fourth Gospel. If you want commentary on others’ commentary on John,
go elsewhere. But if you want thoughtful, thorough, and practical help in
grappling with the content and meaning of John’s gospel for people today, be
surethiscommentaryisopenonyourdesk.Ilearnedalotandhadseverallong-
standing questions answered.”
Brian D. McLaren
Author and Speaker

JOHN

JOHN
FORTRESS BIBLICAL
PREACHING COMMENTARIES
KAROLINE M. LEWIS
Fortress Press
Minneapolis
JOHN
Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries
Copyright © 2014 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in
critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit
http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/ or write to Permissions, Augsburg
Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.
Cover design: Laurie Ingram
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Print ISBN: 978-0-8006-9924-6
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4514-3095-0
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Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984.
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CONTENTS
Series Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xi
Preface xiii
Index of Passages from the Book of John in the Revised xvii
Common Lectionary
Introduction 1
1. The Prologue 13
A Summary of the Fourth Gospel (John 1:1-18)
2. The Calling of the Disciples, the First Sign, and the Temple 27
Incident (John 1:19—2:25)
3. A Tale of Two Disciples and the Second Sign (John 3–4) 45
4. The Healing of the Man Ill for Thirty-Eight Years and Jesus as 75
the Bread of Life (John 5–6)
5. Conflict with the World (John 7–8) 105
6. The Healing of the Man Born Blind and Jesus as Door and 123
Shepherd (John 9–10)
7. The Raising of Lazarus, the Anointing, and the Last Public 151
Discourse (John 11–12)
8. The Foot Washing, the Last Meal, and the Farewell Discourse 177
(John 13–17)
9. The Passion Narrative (John 18–19) 215
10. The Resurrection Appearances (John 20–21) 237
Suggestions for Further Reading 263
vii

Series Foreword
A preacher who seeks to be creative, exegetically up to date, hermeneutically
alert, theologically responsible, and in-touch with the moment is always on
the hunt for fresh resources. Traditional books on preaching a book of the
Bible often look at broad themes of the text with little explicit advice about
preaching individual passages. Lectionary resources often offer exegetical and
homiletical insights about a pericope with little attention given to broader
themes and structures of the book from which the lection is taken. Fortress
Biblical Preaching Commentaries provide the preacher with resources that draw
together the strengths of these two approaches into a single text aid, useful for
the moment of preparation halfway between full scale exegesis and a finished
sermon.
The authors of this series are biblical scholars who offer expositions of the
text rooted in detailed study and expressed in straightforward, readable ways.
The commentators take a practical approach by identifying (1) what the text
invited people in the ancient world to believe about God and the world and
(2) what the text encouraged people to do in response. Along the way, the
interpreters make use of such things as historical and cultural reconstruction,
literary and rhetorical analysis, word studies, and other methods that help us
recoverhowatextwasintendedtofunctioninantiquity.Atthesametime,the
commentariesofferhelpinmovingfromthentonow,fromwhatatextmeant
(inthepast)towhatatextmeans(inthepresent),byhelpingaministeridentify
issues, raise questions, and pose possibilities for preaching while stopping short
of placing a complete sermon in the preacher’s hands. The preacher, then,
shouldbeinapositiontosetinmotionaconversationwiththetext(andother
voices from the past and present) to help the congregation figure out what we
today can believe and do.
The commentators in this series seek to help preachers and students make
connections between the various lections from a given book throughout the
lectionary cycle and liturgical year in their sermons and studies. Readers,
preachers, and their parishioners will have a deeper appreciation of the book’s
unique interpretation of the Christ event and how that influences their
approach to living the Christian faith in today’s world. The most life-giving
preaching is nearly always local in character with a minister rooted in a
particular congregation, culture, and context encouraging listeners to think
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