There it was again: “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
I was reading the “Seven Last Words” of Jesus from the cross, and had come to the Third Word – “Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother” – and there it was again.
“The disciple whom Jesus loved.” (John 19:26)
The common assumption is those words have come from the writing voice of John the Apostle, the author of the gospel in which we find these words repeated several times.
“The disciple whom Jesus loved.”
Usually when I read those words in the setting of a bible study group, someone will remark, “Well, that John sure thought a lot of him himself, didn’t he?”
The longer I have read that passage though, I do not think so.
This is John – John, as in the brothers, James and John, who Jesus named “Sons of Thunder.” (Mark 3:17)
This is John who, with his brother, came boldly to Jesus demanding to sit in authority with Jesus in his kingdom. (Mark 20:37)
This is John who wants to call fire down to consume a Samaritan village that has rejected Jesus. (Luke 9:54) This is John who gets it wrong again and again.
“The disciple whom Jesus loved.”
I’ve come to read these words differently, especially if this is, indeed, the apostle John.
What I hear now is this.
I hear John writing: “The disciple whom Jesus loved? Can it be? After all I have gotten wrong? The disciple whom Jesus loved! Can it be? Jesus loves even me!”
That’s me, too. I see my life and all that I have done and left undone.
I see hopes fulfilled, and dreams left empty. I see successes and failures.
I see where I have not lived up to the standard set by Christ resident in me, Christ, “the hope of glory.”
I look in amazement at his face at the cross and say, “The disciple whom Jesus loved?”
Yes, even me.
Even you, too.
Grace and peace,
