Friday, March 2, 2012

John 6 and lightbulbs

What do those two have in common?  Well it happened today and the look from the front of the room was priceless as nearly 20 faces, eyes, mouths, and heads moved in sudden recognition as if I had run some kind of psychology test with electric wires connected to their seats.  How, you ask, did that happen?  It wasn't planned I can tell you that much.

We began John 6 with the traditional, boring introduction such as "to my knowledge more books have been written about John 6 than any other single chapter in the Gospel," and "John 6 is one of the most important passages in the entire Gospel."  These preparatory remarks were followed by an outline indicating the flow of the chapter: miracle, transition, water, transition, discourse in 3 parts, response.  Then we began looking at 6.1-13. I worked my way through the themes of the section in perfunctory fashion: the multitude, they were following him because of his signs on the sick and the relationship to John 5. Then I introduced the Passover and the idea that Jesus wasn't in Jerusalem this time, as he should have been. But neither were the multitude!

Then somewhere out of the blue I asked a simple question: "Why is Philip mentioned?" That led to another question, "What was the context of Philip's previous appearance." Within about 10 seconds the faces at tables, previously trying not to look bored, sleepy, or otherwise preoccupied at 1:20 pm on a beautiful, sunny Friday afternoon in March started to be illuminated!  Someone said something about Nathaniel, another 'the one about whom Moses wrote' and that was all it took.  I didn't have to say a word, they knew and recognized on their own in wonderfully magical amazement that this event was relating Jesus to Moses.

It may have helped that they had just written their 6th paper of the semester, this one on chapter two of my book Moses as a Character in the Fourth Gospel, but they learned.  Information that was randomly placed inside their cerebral cortex (or some other more technically described location) suddenly collided and a new trail was forged between disparate pieces of knowledge. LEARNING had taken place, in far more potent form than anything I could have planned.

The lightbulbs were floodlights!