Mark 9:38-40
We forbade him
He reports stopping a man casting out devils in that name because he was not one of us. The answer is that whoever is not against us is on our part.
People of the Bible
John
Never names himself in his own gospel, and calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved instead.
Also called The beloved disciple
John is the younger son of Zebedee and one of the inner three. In the other gospels he is a son of thunder who wants fire called down on a village and the best seat in the kingdom. In his own book he is never named, and appears only as the disciple whom Jesus loved: leaning on him at supper, standing at the cross, outrunning Peter to the tomb, and recognising him from a boat. He is given the care of Mary from the cross, and takes her home that hour.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of John
- 01
- 02
John 13:23-25
Leaning on Jesus’ bosom
At supper Peter beckons to him to ask who the betrayer is, because he is closest. He lies back and asks quietly, and gets an answer nobody else at the table understands.
- 03
John 19:26-27
Behold your mother
He is standing by the cross with the women. From that hour the mother of Jesus goes to live in his house, which is the only domestic arrangement made from a cross.
- 04
John 20:1-8
He outran Peter
Two men running to a tomb in the dark. He gets there first and stops at the entrance and looks in. Peter goes straight past him and inside, and then he follows and believes.
- 05
John 21:24-25
The world could not contain the books
The gospel closes by naming its own witness and then admitting its own limits, which is an unusual way to finish a book about someone you loved.
Why it matters
The gospel he writes is unlike the other three: seven signs instead of many miracles, long conversations instead of short sayings, and a prologue that starts before Genesis does. He is also the one who says the quiet thing at the end, that if everything were written the world could not contain the books. Tradition gives him the longest life of the twelve and the last book in the Bible, written on an island.
19 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11; John 1:35-51
Leave the Nets
John 20:24-31
Blessed Are They That Have Not Seen, and Yet Have Believed
