Good Friday 3rd April by Dr Desiree Snyman
Opening comments: How do we reform and deepen communion and community?
John’s Passion Gospel differs from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic Gospels. In the synoptics, the final meal between Jesus and his disciples takes place at Passover. In John’s Gospel, the events occur before the Passover. The suffering that is so apparent in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is largely absent in John’s account of the trial and crucifixion. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus prays, “may this cup pass from me” in John Jesus prays “give me the cup”.
Each of the Passion narratives offers a different spiritual practice for a different human question. John is not offering history but spirituality. For this reason, John is the least historically focused account. He invites us to go deeper into the Passion so that John 13, 18, and 19 are not simply history or literature, but the landscape of your soul and the map of your inner spiritual life in God and with God. Each Gospel carries its own purpose. Matthew shows us how to wake up and begin again. Mark teaches us how to endure trial and resistance. Luke forms us into mature disciples and apostles. John turns to union, showing how, in the midst of diversity, we are drawn into oneness. We unpack some verses from the passion narrative of John 18-19.
John 18:1 — “After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out… to a garden.”
When John18.1 says “Jesus spoke these words” we ask, what words? The answer is obviously from John 17 which is Jesus’ prayer of unitive, nondual consciousness that ends with: “I made your name known to them and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
John 18.2
John begins the Passion in a garden. After crossing the Kidron Valley, Jesus enters a garden with his disciples. John does not name it Gethsemane. He simply calls it a garden, and this is not incidental. The garden evokes the first garden in Genesis 1. John’s Gospel opens with creation, “in the beginning was the Word… in him was life.” Now, at the end, we are brought back to a garden. Creation and new creation meet here. What unfolds is not simply the death of Jesus, but the beginning of something new. The garden also evokes the landscape of Song of Songs where the union of lover and beloved is a metaphor for God’s union with us. The key phrase of Songs is “Set me as a seal upon your heart, for love is as strong as death.”
John 18:4–6 — “Jesus… said to them, ‘I am.’”
When Jesus is approached for arrest, he says, “I am” and people fall down, much like Moses did at the burning bush. The “I am” are the words of YHWH, the divine name, revealed in Exodus. In John, the inner divinity of God and the inner reality of Jesus are one and the same; the I am of YHVH and the I am of Yahweh are the same. This extends the prayer of John 17, that we may be one as God and Christ are one.
John 19:5 — “Here is the man.”
When Pilate presents Jesus to the crowd and says, “Here is the man,” the words carry a deeper resonance. They echo the earlier moment when Jesus says, “I am.” Here stands the human being, not triumphant or in control, but vulnerable, exposed, and given. In this moment, John redefines what it means to be human. To be fully human is not to dominate but to love. This is precisely what Jesus embodies.
John 19:25–27 — “Woman, here is your son… Beloved, here is your mother.”
This is the heart of what we are meant to hear in John’s Gospel: community and communion.
At the cross, a new family is formed. Jesus says to his mother, “here is your son,” and to the beloved disciple, “here is your mother.” You are the beloved disciple. I am the beloved disciple. If you take Mary as your mother and I take Mary as my mother, then we are not only brothers and sisters to Christ, but brothers and sisters to one another. In the midst of the world’s crucifixions, this is our spiritual practice: community and communion.
The early followers of the way developed Christianity as both a spiritual practice and a new movement in human consciousness. It was marked by a radical, inclusive vision that crossed tribal boundaries and included both Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free sitting around the one table. The truth it embodied was that we are one community before God, and therefore brothers and sisters to each other. Before the first century, there is little evidence of communities gathering as equals around a shared table. Many traditions, including Judaism at the time, maintained separation, particularly between men and women. Against this, the idea of sitting side by side at one table is strikingly new. In Jesus, we see the emergence of a different kind of family, shaped by shared belonging rather than separation. John’s Passion narrative is a spiritual practice that supports this vision of unity in diversity.
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John 19:28–30 — “I am thirsty… It is finished.”
After this, knowing all was complete, Jesus said, “I am thirsty,” fulfilling the scripture. He was given sour wine on a branch of hyssop. In John’s Gospel, Jesus receives the bitter wine. It becomes a sign that he takes in the world’s bitterness and transforms it into grace as he breathes out The Spirit. We are invited not to avoid suffering but to face it, allowing it to be transfigured in us.
When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” He bowed his head and gave up his spirit. As Raymond Brown notes, this may mean not only that Jesus dies, but that he gives the Spirit. In this moment, death, resurrection, and Pentecost are held together. His final breath returns us to the beginning, the breath of God moving through creation.
John 19:34 — “Blood and water flowed out.”
When the soldiers saw he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, his side was pierced, and blood and water flowed out. This is birth imagery. From Christ comes a new creation.
As Genesis begins with creation, John’s Gospel ends with creation renewed. What is finished is also beginning again.
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Living the Resurrection
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are Lenten Passion narratives, but John is an Easter narrative. John assumes the resurrection and then offers a spiritual practice for living the reality of resurrection moment by moment and day by day. When resurrection becomes an inner reality experienced in the heart, life takes on the character of John 13, where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.
As I have been washed, I want to wash others. I want to bend low before all people and be a servant of the God of love. This may help awaken that same experience in their hearts.
John’s Gospel presents the Passion as an eternal present reality. It is something happening now.
The truth of the Passion is found in lived experience. We translate the Christ story into our own lives, wherever we find ourselves. What then does Easter look like in marriage, in family life, and in community? It looks like relationships that continually move through death and resurrection. It looks like praying together, because the great Easter experience is the living grace that emerges when we do. It also means recognising that diversity is both our greatest challenge and our greatest gift. Communities of uniformity are easier, but that is not the path we are called to. We are called to discover a deeper oneness beneath difference, to recognise that beyond all superficial distinctions, we are brothers and sisters of one source.
“Love is as strong as death.”
Jesus’ yielding to the cross is a declaration that love is as strong as death. Redemptive love means there is nothing that love cannot transform. Jesus enters the garden with this prayer: “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them.” That love is in us. It has never died and will never die. The love of Christ lives in us now.