Jesus put deep thought into his lessons, and it takes our deep thought to grasp those lessons.

Monday, 5/18/15

In today’s reading from John’s Gospel the Apostles complimented Jesus on talking plainly for a change. That has us sympathizing with them. Sometimes Jesus is a little too deep for us.

My thinking about that made me remember a set of lessons on John’s Gospel that I wrote for our Eighth Grade thirty tears ago . So, I got out those old lessons, and in the introduction I found something about this matter of Jesus saying things that are hard to understand. Let me quote two short paragraphs from the introduction to my lessons for John’s Gospel.

“It will be like digging clams where you have to grope a foot into the heavy sand – It’s no good just scraping around on surface gravel. But here we will not be digging clams, we will be digging for the deep meanings in John’s Gospel.”

“Take another example. All winter long people take shortcuts over a frozen pond, never once peering down at the swirling plant and fish life below. So too, we slide over John’s Gospel, without ever bending for a prayerful study of the hidden mysteries.”

Jesus put much thought into his lessons, and it takes much thought to grasp his meanings.