What do you mean when you talk about the ‘structure’ of John’s Gospel?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Four Journeys to Jerusalem’ (2009).
What I mean by structure when talking about John's Gospel are the journeys to Jerusalem and back that we saw lying as the framework of the book. I would call the signs in John's Gospel a 'dominant theme'. And then, because of their inner relationship, I would call them a 'pattern', but they are a dominant theme. The stories about women in John's Gospel are another dominant theme. And the one at the wedding in Cana of Galilee coincides with the first miracle, the first sign. That doesn't matter in one sense. The two dominant themes don't destroy each other.
The women in the Gospel are a dominant theme; it is not just that they are all women. Look at the content: it concerns questions of relationship.
Each one of those stories is different. If you had six sessions for expounding the word, and you had six sessions about these women, you wouldn't be just repeating the same thing every night—not if you see what the differences are.
Mary and Martha at the death of their brother: it is the breaking of their relationship through physical death.
Mary and the death of her son: that is what the world does. It is the meaning of the cross. 'Take up your cross', even if it means going against your family. But there is a compensation. We may lose our families, as many Muslim converts do in some countries, if they escape with their lives, but there is a compensating factor in the new family of God. Our Lord commented on it:
there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first. (Mark 10:29–31)
I have hundreds of them all over this earth—personally, now, already—fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters!
