Spoken Gospel

Six days before Passover, as all Jerusalem prepares lambs for slaughter, Mary pours out a pound of costly perfume over Jesus' feet at a dinner in the slum of Bethany, and the whole house fills with its fragrance. In this single extravagant act, Jesus is revealed as the Passover lamb, the consecrated priest, the anointed King, and the Bridegroom on his way to the grave. David and Christine walk through Jesus' anointing in John 12, tracing how Mary's offering prepares the body of Life himself to carry the aroma of resurrection down into the tomb.

Three times in John 6, Jesus retells the story of the Exodus: he feeds a hungry crowd near Passover, crosses a stormy sea, and declares himself the true bread from heaven that came down to sustain his people. Beneath the miracle of the loaves and fish lies a web of echoes—the manna in the wilderness, the bread of the presence, and the tree of life in Eden. David and Christine walk through this dense chapter and the good news that Jesus is the true Passover meal, offering his own life so that all who feed on him will be raised up on the last day.

Water shows up in nearly every chapter of John's Gospel, and it's almost never simple—sometimes death, sometimes life, sometimes the boundary between them. Having spent the last episode tracing the theme of water through the Old Testament, David and Christine return to John to watch all those waves crash together into one story. They walk through Jesus' baptism, the wedding at Cana, the woman at the well, the storm on the sea, and the water that flows from his pierced side, showing how John presents Jesus as the living water who has come to cleanse an unfaithful people and make a dead and thirsty world new.

Water flows through nearly every chapter of John's Gospel. From Jesus' baptism to the woman at the well, from healing beside a pool to walking on the sea, John uses water imagery to describe Jesus' ministry.

David and Christine dive into the Old Testament to trace the theme of water through the biblical story and how rescue from chaotic depths and provision of life-giving streams are images that prepare us for Jesus, who invites all who are thirsty to come to him and drink.

The Gospel of John is structured around seven signs that build toward an eighth—the resurrection of Jesus. To understand what John means by a "sign," David and Christine walk through the biblical story, tracing where and how signs appear in Scripture. From the heavenly lights of creation to the plagues that fell on Egypt, John shows that Jesus' signs reveal that he is God in the flesh who has come to bring new creation and salvation to humanity.