ministers, clergy, and lay people who care about both biblical reading and pastoral care;
those who need material to help reading and interpreting John, and
who wish also to extend development in pastoral care based on biblical insight;
those who, in a Christian context, teach pastoral depth and need it in themselves, and are willing to value a psychodynamic approach to both text and person.
The book is intended both for the general user, and also for those who already know John well. But we start where we start. One member of a teaching class asked, “Who is this person Frayudd that everyone is writing about?” That is how she pronounced Freud! We all start where we are! The chapters provide a mixture of simple and more advanced material, so that readers and group members can take what they can out of each section.
So two themes surface, exegesis and pastoral insight, and they are not to be separated, but run together. They are two sides of the same coin. Neither stands alone from the other. Brave biblical interpretation and brave personal interrogation coalesce. My experience over very many years in varied church situations is that this approach deepens the fellowship, the koinonia, of the church substantially. Not only are skills of interpretation learned, but with them are also learned skills of self-awareness, of care for each other, and of group work. These constitute a solid foundation for the continuance of church life.
It is the word “psychodynamic” that unites the process. It, and the critical approach advocated, are explained in two rather lengthy introductions. They outline the possibilities of the methods suggested. They are essential because some readers will not be acquainted with a reader response approach, and some readers will not be acquainted with a psychodynamic approach to the “living text” of our lives. The content can be “drip fed” as the groups progress, at points of relevance. The chapter numbers correspond to the Gospel chapters. My experience is that many in church (and emphatically not just the academically minded) rejoice in acquaintance with literary theory, the text of John read afresh, and the newness of sharing experience and mutual care. We should never dumb down content or method. We can all be stretched.
Of key importance is the fact that the aim of the group work that, along with following the “story,” makes up the practical substance of each workshop, is not discussion, but sharing, not “topic orientated” but “personality orientated.”1 The inner world of the text addresses the inner world of the reader; and the inner world of the reader addresses the inner world of the text. And this happens in the outer world of those gathered in the presence of Christ. The gift of “hovering attention” is offered mutually to each other in the space created by attention to the text, the skill of the facilitator, and the goodwill and grace of each person. This is the work of the Holy Spirit.
The thematic focus throughout is answering the question, “How does Jesus give himself to us?”
The landscape of the Fourth Gospel is indeed like a landscape, with strong contours and outstanding features, and with an evanescent quality as the light changes, the cloud comes and goes, the mist hides, and the sun reveals. The road (the “way”) stretches ahead. And there is the figure of our Lord, deep in the valleys, standing on the tops, sitting by, striding ahead. As we read, “once under way the story is dominated by the powerful presence of Jesus, who keeps introducing fresh variations on the single theme of life giving revelation.” As character after character moves from incredulity to faith, they invite “a similar response from the readers of the Gospel.” 2 Jesus is the figure we follow.
Sadly, it is impossible to read all the commentaries, books, and articles on John. And each one has its own point of view. My actual work is a shadow of the dream, but I hope focus can be made on the attempt at an achievement, and I hope the activities can be used to let John speak to you. Writing this book has been a bit like doing a giant jigsaw, dimly perceived at first with a picture in mind, but taking shape as the pieces were arranged and inserted, but with endless additions as the image became deeper and richer. Jane Campion writes, “A lot of time writing is spent wondering if you’re a failure.” True, but I still have hope that this humble effort will enable the enjoyment of John and lead to an awareness of the brilliance of John. I hope it will connect John’s picture of Jesus with current life, promote understanding of the interconnections between reading it and the psyche, and facilitate flow between the person of Jesus and the personality of you the reader. This coalescence between who Jesus is and who we are is not new. As early as 1925 one could read, “The emphasis of the Fourth Gospel on the central place of personality is a welcome anticipation and encouragement of one of the healthiest tendencies in modern thinking. For John, the highest revelation is in the person of Jesus—in His words and works as part of himself.”3 I live in hope that what will be facilitated is an enrichment of language and of the exchange of feeling supportively in the human encounter, a “baptism” of emotion in shared Christian experience, and, finally, a connectedness between “emotional being, personal identity and ‘spiritual life’”4 so as to make for growth in person and group.
The aim is to encourage honest reading, honest speaking, and honest encounter, the three dimensions—seeing (a key Johannine word), that is, perceptively, the text, seeing oneself, and seeing the other. As Charles Elliott wrote, “We shall never encounter the text (or be encountered by the text) as long as we allow ourselves to be ‘distorted’, to tell our self-narrative the way it is not.”5
One impossibility is to embrace the vast expanding universe of scholarship that represents John to us. I have tried to let notes in each chapter point to avenues of thought leading to fascinating worlds. They are as signposts only, in an attempt to convey the excitement of travel in Johannine space. The same applies to the other discipline of psychodynamic studies. How hard to do justice to either. The aim has also been to highlight language that enhances the affect, the feel of the text, so that it may permissibly be aligned with our own affect, our feeling.
We need therefore to be aware of the nature of the material we read.
John’s Gospel is a proclamation of faith in narrative form, paradoxically recounting Jesus’ earthly career in order to persuade its readers to accept him as their Risen Lord. This means that it has to be read on two levels, first the story level and secondly the level of spiritual understanding. The riddles of the Gospel, its symbols and its ironies are all aimed at reinforcing this purposeful ambivalence.6
It is helpful, if one can, to make some sort of contact with the Greek, familiar to some and strange to others. One needs to be alert to John’s repeatedly used nuanced words, sometimes only visible, or rather audible, in the Greek, and I have tried to signify them in italics—a clumsy device, but it highlights John’s use of words for sequence and impact of thought. John’s language has a rich teasing quality. To understand it a little helps to facilitate overcoming the difficulty of the way John combines theological statement with a sequential narrative.
Then also we need to embrace ourselves, and our own reactions to the text. We were once studying the story of the man in chapter 5 who had been ill for thirty-eight years. One member of the group, who died a year or two after my writing this, sitting in his wheelchair, said, “Perhaps he was tired!” Many have been kind and patient and brave enough to make this journey with me, and the contribution of their thought and words, and of themselves, has been a perpetual grace.
It will be essential to have the Gospel of John in one hand whilst reading, and to continually refer to the passages in John in order to make the fullest sense of what is written.
The chapters represent workshops. The content of each is meant to be used selectively. There is vastly more in each chapter than could be used even in a whole day’s workshop, let alone in a couple of hours’ session! Take your pick! The aim is to convey knowledge of John, the excitement of John, the pleasure of sharing, and personal growth with the reassuring sense of the presence of Christ.
1. Cox, Structuring the Therapeutic Process, 152.