Entering into Life (A sermon from John 10:1-18)
I little introduction to the reading today. It doesn’t take a seminary or religious degree to notice that the way Jesus teaches in the Synoptics – Mark, Luke, and Matthew – is very different than the way Jesus teaches in John. The style, language, vocabulary, imagery, and structure is very different. The consensus of mainline biblical scholarship is that the Synoptics give us a more reliable historical picture of how Jesus actually taught. The discourses of Jesus in John, they say, are more reflective of the interpretations and understandings of John’s church. In other words, these discourses in John by Jesus are most likely expositions of short sayings of Jesus by the author of this Gospel and the community from which it came and to whom it was written. That doesn’t mean these discourses in John are any less important or meaningful than the teachings in the Synoptic Gospels; it just means these are not the actual words of the historical Jesus. They are meditations, expositions, and p...