Philip Bess
Professor of Architecture

Today’s reading is rich, consisting of the final six verses of John’s Gospel. But it has a lead-in. The five verses preceding report the risen Jesus asking Peter three times if Peter loves him. With increasing agitation, the annoyed future saint and martyr responds in the affirmative. Jesus responds sequentially to Peter’s responses, “Feed my lambs… Tend my sheep… Feed my sheep,” and then tells Peter by what death Peter is to glorify God. Thus John’s account of the Petrine office and ministry.

Immediately after this interaction, Peter looks and sees John the disciple, turns back to Jesus, and says, “Well, what about that guy?” To this, Jesus responds, “Not your concern,” and repeats, “Follow me.” It’s clear that God has a particular vocation for us to accept or reject in which he has promised to help us. No matter how often we say it, we need to hear it again—we should each attend to our obligations and not compare ourselves to others.

John concludes his Gospel by asserting that if all the things that Jesus did “were to be described individually… the whole world [could not] contain the books that would be written.” In past encounters with this passage, I have tended to smile at the Gospel writer’s hyperbole. But here, invited to engage it more carefully, I wonder whether my previous readings were condescending and naive.

In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, he proclaims that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; [and] we have beheld his glory;” that the Word "was in the beginning with God… was God,” and “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” Maybe John the Evangelist is concluding his Gospel not with apparent hyperbole but rather slyly bookending it with his original truth claim. The world could not contain the books about what Christ did because the books (and everything else) are themselves already contained within what Christ does.