Way back in the days before package holidays overseas, most people took their holidays in this country. I remember a family friend, going to Nigeria and following the holiday, she showed her slides from her holiday at an event in the Church. I remember being enthralled by a picture she had taken out of the window of the aeroplane as she flew out of Yeadon Airport (as it was in those days) and seeing an ariel view of our village.
We spent time trying to see what our homes looked like from the sky, it was at the time one of the most amazing pictures I had ever seen. I found it incredible looking at our house from a completely different perspective. Looking back, I guess that the picture wasn’t the best quality, but the thought of being in the sky and looking down impressed me and even now I enjoy looking at Google maps and seeing ariel views of places.
In a similar sort of way, I find the four Gospels fascinating. Mathhew, Mark, and Luke often referred to as the synoptic gospels do a very specific job. They tell the story of the Jesus experience to three specific groups of people because time has passed since the time of Jesus and there is concern that the stories need to be recorded so that they are never forgotten. So much of our Christian teaching comes from these four accounts as we try to understand what happened during the three years of the ministry of Jesus.
The Gospel according to St John is different. There are differing views today about who the author of the gospel is, and I have experienced quite heated debates about this in the past. Whatever your point of view, the narrator of the story here has become known as “The Beloved Disciple” and this story is very different to the synoptic gospels. What happens in John’s gospel is a reflection on the life of Jesus and the story tries to address the question “what does all this mean?
As I get older, I find myself looking at scripture from a different perspective and asking, “how does this inform my living today?” I have been a preacher for almost forty years and a minister for eighteen years and over the years I have reflected on large parts of the Bible, with this different perspective. We are setting out on our Lenten journey once again and during the next few weeks we will visit familiar places. Let us look from a new perspective, try to get beneath the skin of the stories we read and allow God to speak to us in fresh and creative ways, so that we might see things from a different perspective.