March 2016 – Page 2 – 300 words a day

What Jesus said he was doing.

Sometime before Thursday night of Holy Week, Jesus summarized his work. And when John writes the story, he puts this summary between the time Jesus walks away from the crowd and walks into the upper room, the place where he’s going to eat supper with his disciples. You can read it in John 12:37-50. It’s […]

by Jon Swanson

Jesus disappears.

We’re working our way through John 12 this week. John’s been building tension into the story. And in today’s passage, John 12:20-36, Jesus seems a little overwhelmed. Some people in town (Jerusalem) for the big religious festival want to see Jesus. Makes sense. He’s one of the tourist attractions, one of the controversial and popular […]

by Jon Swanson

Building the tension

We’re looking at John 12 this week to understand the tension of Holy Week, the week that starts with Palm Sunday and ends on Easter. Yesterday we read John 12:1-11. Today, take a look at John 12:12-19. Because John identifies people in tension with each other as a way of getting us ready to hear […]

by Jon Swanson

Setting the scene

The Gospel ofJohn contains a lot of teaching. There are no parables, which is one way Jesus taught. But there is a lot of dialogue, of teaching in the form of conversation. Someone asks a question and then Jesus carefully and challengingly lays out an answer. And for the dialogue, there is drama. John takes […]

by Jon Swanson

Resting to get ready.

I was working the overnight shift, 7 pm Sunday to 7 am Monday. It wasn’t my normal shift. And so I took a nap on Sunday. You can’t store up sleep. But you can strengthen yourself a bit to focus better during the upcoming exertion. So I’m taking this week off 300, the week before Holy […]