The Dinner that Changed a Disciple

An excerpt from The Characters of Easter

As we approach Easter and set our minds on the cross and the Resurrection, I thought I would offer an adapted section from my book, The Characters of Easter. Below is from the chapter: The Beloved: John. I pray it draws you toward worship this season.

We find John in the same place we found Peter, plying his trade as a Galilean fisherman. He and his elder brother James ran a successful fishing enterprise in Capernaum owned by their father, Zebedee. John was the other disciple who accompanied Andrew in following John the Baptist, the wild wilderness prophet who barnstormed Israel with his unconventional lifestyle and an even more unconventional message of repentance (John 1:35-42). John was among the many disciples who were captivated by John the Baptist. New Testament Scholar, DA Carson describes his ministry:

John resembled the Old Testament prophets who sought to call out a holy remnant from the descendants of Abraham and anticipated Jesus’ insistence that his messianic community would transcend the barriers of race and depend on personal faith and new birth[1].

Ultimately, it would be the one to whom the Baptizer pointed who caught John’s attention. One day the wilderness prophet pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” and thus John began listening to the teaching of this itinerant rabbi from Nazareth.

John and the others who were intrigued didn’t know then that Jesus would have a plan for them than to be mere bystanders. John didn’t know that the day he left the Baptizer’s entourage and went to listen to this new teacher, that he would be part of history, of God’s eternal, redemptive plan to save his people. He couldn’t have comprehended what he was signing up for by taking those first, few casual steps toward Jesus.

This rabbi was no ordinary one. One day showed up on the beach, in the middle of a workday, mending their nets for what they assumed would be another day at sea. (Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:14-20). We know from the Bible that this is often how God comes to us. For Abraham, it was on an ordinary day in Ur. For Moses, during another run with the sheep on the backside of nowhere. For Paul, on a routine trip to Damascus. You might have your own story of conversation, where God came to you in an otherwise unremarkable conversation with a friend, or after a game in the locker room or in the middle of a shift in a busy restaurant. “Follow me,” Jesus beckons, “And I will make you fishers of men.”

We know today what it means to be “fishers of men.” We’ve sung it as kids and have seen the flannel graph in Sunday school or VBS. But for Jesus, this was more than just a clever play on words. Of course, he’s using maritime language for those who have spent their lives on the water, but he’s doing more than that. Jesus is reaching back to the story of the people of God. As faithful Jews, John would understand that this is the language of the prophets who communicated God’s call to his people to righteousness and judgment and repentance. They would be familiar with the divine call in Jeremiah: “I am about to send for many fishermen—this is the Lord’s declaration—and they will fish for them” (Jeremiah 16:16).

Jesus’ call to be “fishers of men” was a seamless sequel to John’s message of repentance and the coming judgment. Jesus is announcing that the kingdom of God has dawned and that the Son of Man is now is calling disciples to declare the message of salvation. Scholar William Lane says that “The summons to be fishers of men is a call to the eschatological task of gathering men in view of the forthcoming judgment of God[2].”

Let’s stop and consider what Jesus is asking of John here. This was not only a decision livelihood and his future. It was a call to break from his most important community: his family. To leave father and mother behind and follow Jesus would be to give up everything he had ever known.

Sure, he’d seen Jesus perform miracles already. He’d seen friends healed, demons exorcised, and the blind given back their vision, but Jesus is now making a personal ask: to choose the kingdom of God rather than the security of his comfortable life in Capernaum.

Jesus was asking, well, everything. John would hear Jesus say “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:25-27). Even in the 21st century, where family ties are not as binding as they were in the 1st, this seems extreme. Today we like to be near Jesus, to observe his teaching and gawk at his miracles, but we’d rather he leave us with our nets and our safe way of life. We like Jesus who forms himself around our comforts.

But following him is costly. “It does cost something to be a real Christian,” J.C. Ryle says, “according to the standard of the Bible. There are enemies to be overcome, battles to be fought, sacrifices to be made, an Egypt to be forsaken, a wilderness to be passed through, a cross to be carried, a race to be run.”

At first, to pull James and John from their parents would seem to violate the law of God that Jesus came to fulfill, to break the commandment to “Honor father and mother.” Yet what the kingdom of God demands is not neglect of family and estrangement from loved ones. God is the one who designed the family unit as a beautiful signpost of Christ’s relationship with the church. No, what Jesus is asking is deeper. He was wrenching John away from and he’s wrenching us away from an idolatry of our family, of holding our loved ones so tight we make the mistake of worshipping them, which isn’t good for them, isn’t good for us, and doesn’t glorify God. And we know that the brothers left the work in the hands of hired hands in the Zebedee fishing enterprise, so they took care of their obligations before embarking on this journey with Jesus (Mark 1:20).

We should also not fail to see that John couldn’t have gone if Zebedee hadn’t first released his son and blessed this call of God upon his life. Patriarchs didn’t give up their sons easily in those days  Scholars N.T. Wright and Michael Bird write that “families were extended household entities . . . the household head, paterfamilias was the ultimate source of power and identity for the household, and largely determined the social, economic, and religious activities of the family[3].” Notice how often James and John are described in the gospels as “The Sons of Zebedee.” Zebedee could have kicked up a fight and held his young apprentice sons tight, refusing to let them go. Instead, the wise father had to have his own moment of following Jesus. He is an example for every father and mother, torn often between our closely held dreams for our children and the mission of God for their lives. It’s easy, of course, for me to write this. My oldest child is 17. Right now she’s home, though soon I will be sending her to college, and perhaps someday I’ll be walking her down the aisle or seeing her move to another state or perhaps another country. I’m already feeling it as I write these words. I don’t like letting my kids go. Every parent feels the tension, the weight, the gradual pulling away.

Somewhere in that moment between Jesus’ words and John’s response, Zebedee decided to not fight God, to let loose of his own desire so that his two sons could walk into the wild with Jesus. In an instant, he had to trust that the Son of God cared more for his sons than he did.

And this would be a costly choice. Zebedee would see John live a long life, outliving every other Apostle, writing a gospel, three letters, and the book of Revelation—more ink in the New Testament than any other writer. But James’ John’s brother would die a martyr’s death, felled by Herod’s sword, punished for being a “fisher of men.”

He and his wife Salome seemed to embrace the risk of Jesus. Their son’s ministry became their ministry. We see them present at various points in the gospel narrative. Salome makes a rather bold motherly request of Jesus (more on that later) and then present with the other women at Jesus’ empty tomb.

Obeying the voice of God seemed to be a family value, an instinctive trait. John, upon hearing Jesus’ words, didn’t delay or navel-gaze or read ten books about finding God’s will. The text in Mark and Matthew says John immediately went.  

A Son of Thunder, Apostle of Love

What an act of courage it was for John to leave everything and follow Jesus and yet, when John became a disciple, he was far from qualified for spiritual leadership. This is a reminder that Jesus didn’t choose his disciples because of their impressive resumes. I like what one commentator says about Jesus’ inner circle: “They “showed little potential even for dependability, much less for greatness[4].” Yikes, imagine that written in your high-school yearbook?

Jesus, in choosing John, bypassed the traditional places rabbis found their protégés. Jesus chose rough, unpolished young men who possessed only one qualification: they answered yes.

We know Peter’s reputation for impulsiveness, but it was actually John who earned the most unflattering nickname from Jesus: “Son of Thunder.” Normally, the names Jesus gave meant something profound, a kind of window into someone’s future. But with John, this new moniker was a window into his present. It was a not-so-subtle reminder of John’s least desirable trait: hot temper and a tendency toward harsh legalism. The church leader most known for his love started out as a self-righteous scold.

The gospels have several examples of this on display. Once, John ran breathlessly to Jesus with allegations of counterfeit ministry (Mark 9; Luke 9). It seems someone else in some other place was doing gospel ministry in Jesus’ name that wasn’t officially sanctioned by the inner circle. John was ready to write that cease and desist letter, to protect the brand. But Jesus rebuked John and said to him that “whoever is not against me is for me.” Of course, Jesus was concerned about false teaching and repeatedly warned of wolves among the sheep (Matthew 7:15). But Jesus also could see the false teaching in John’s own heart. To this young guardian of the gate, this other group was competition, a siphoning off of the spiritual market share. Apparently, he hadn’t quite listened back when John the Baptist, when asked about disciples leaving him and joining Jesus, said “He [Jesus] must increase and I must decrease].”

To this Son of Thunder, the concern is not about purity, but about power. This temptation has beguiled Christians in every age. The future Apostle of Love had a lot to learn. I like what Warren Wiersbe says, “Believers who think that their group is the only group God recognizes and blesses are in for a shock when they get to heaven[5].”

It’s not surprising that this episode happened in the context in which he and James cornered Jesus with an idea: Could they flank Jesus, in the future kingdom, one on the right and one on the left? Matthew’s gospel offers a bit more detail, writing that it was Salome, their mother, who first approached Jesus (Matthew 20:20-22). We don’t know if there were two moments like this or if Mark, in his more succinct account, cut to the chase and let us know that while Salome was asking, it was really a scheme cooked up by her two ambitious sons.

And if, as many scholars believe, Salome was Mary’s sister, this makes the sons’ request all the more interesting. Were they attempting to play on family sentiment, using their mother to play on Jesus’ affection for his mother to grease the wheels for a promotion?

What we do know is that the two brothers weren’t content with being part of the “Peter, James and John” triumvirate who experienced more of Jesus than any of the other disciples. Jesus had just finished revealing to them his special future mission for them. In Kingdom, they’d “sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matthew 19:28). They would be part of the foundation, along with the Old Testament prophets, upon which the church would be built (Ephesians 2:2). But this wasn’t enough. They wanted more. The brothers wanted a higher position, a different title, a seat closer to the inner ring of power. Perhaps their eyes were still misty-eyed from the scene they witnessed at the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus had appeared in glory, with Moses and Elijah on either side. Was this James and John signing up to be the next Moses and the new Elijah?   

It was a baldly selfish request, one that really angered the other disciples. Though it seems James and John weren’t the only ambitious ones. Position and power were a hot topic on those long walks and late nights (Matthew 18:1-4; Mark 9:33-36; Luke 9:46-47). Yet all of this talk about greatness and titles is so incongruent with what Jesus was actually saying about the kingdom of God.

Jesus had just finished explaining what the road to glory would look like for him. He would be arrested unjustly and would endure suffering and crucifixion and would rise again. It’s like they fast-forwarded through this teaching and skipped ahead to the part where they’d be ruling on twelve thrones. Jesus answered John and James’ question with a question of his own, one in which you can almost hear the sarcasm in his voice: “Do you know what you are asking? Are you able to drink the cup that I’m about to take or be baptized with the baptism I’m baptized with?” (Mark 10: 38). It’s not unlike a response I often give to my eleven-year-old son when he does something foolish, Are you serious?

They were dead serious. Of course, they could handle it. They’d just climbed a mountain and saw Jesus and Elijah and Moses together. They’d been with Jesus as he fed the five thousand, walked on water, and healed the sick. Didn’t Lazarus just rise from the grave? This was getting fun. How hard could it be to handle being Jesus’ wingmen?

James and John were affected by a malady that hurts a lot of young Christian leaders. They were young and self-assured. A lot of good things had happened in the last three years of ministry. So now they thought they knew everything. They thought they were invincible.

I know this disease because I’ve suffered from it. I’ve sat around conference tables and have stood in green rooms with young, cocky leaders seemingly on top of the world. But what John didn’t understand in this moment, what most of us don’t understand, is that Jesus’ pathway to glory wound through suffering and sacrifice.

The cup Jesus would take—that nobody else could endure—was the cup of God’s wrath. The disciples would see a glimpse of this when they accompanied him to the Garden of Gethsemane and saw him emerge from a time of prayer, sweating drops of blood. The cup John thought he could endure in order to follow Jesus to glory was the one Jesus himself begged the Father to take away (Matthew 26:39). What’s more their foolish bravado in saying, “I can” is the response of every religious person who thinks they can earn their way to God’s favor. The truth is, John couldn’t bear that cup. You can’t bear that cup. Only Jesus could bear that cup and thankfully in his moment of agony in the Garden, Jesus would say, “Not my will, but your will be done.” He took the cup so we wouldn’t have to.

What’s more, Jesus was teaching the disciples that he would not only take on their sins as their substitute, he would not only endure the cup of God’s wrath that they couldn’t possibly swallow, but because of his life, death, and resurrection, they’d be able to endure their own smaller cups of suffering. This is the new way of leadership in God’s counter-cultural kingdom: the way to greatness runs through trails infested by thorns and pain, the way to greatness is self-sacrifice and selflessness. This isn’t about aestheticism or intentional self-harm, but a denial of self, made possible only by Jesus’ victory over sin and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The two brothers would learn this. James would lose his life and John would endure the social stigma and persecution of the church in the first century, seeing his family and friends felled by Nero’s sword. He would eventually be exiled to the remote island of Patmos.

It is still shocking for us to read, 2,000 years later, the audacity of John’s request for a prominent place in Jesus’ kingdom. It seems so ill-mannered. Today, if this conversation leaked out, it would be widely mocked on social media and by late-night comics. And yet we engage in the same kind of jockeying for power, if in more subtle, quiet, acceptable ways.

What’s interesting is that Jesus didn’t actually rebuke them for their desire to be close to him or even for their desire for greatness. Instead, he explained to them the new way success would be measured. The kingdom of God has a different set of metrics. The way up is now down, the way to power is through giving it up. The path to glory through service and self-sacrifice. God would raise up Jesus from the grave and would exalt him and “give him a name above every name (Philippians 2:9).

 John’s mistake wasn’t that he aimed too high with his ambition, but that he set his sights far too low. What John wanted—a temporal earthly position in a short-lived revolution—pales in comparison to what Jesus wanted for him.  This is always the temptation of one who follows Jesus, to substitute the fleeting, the cheap, the temporal for the greater reward in Heaven. And those of us who are built on the foundation of the Apostles will also one day rule in God’s final, consummated kingdom when Jesus returns in glory.

A Dinner That Changed A Disciple

So how did the Son of Thunder become an Apostle of Love? When we open the Bible and read the letters of John, it is hard to imagine that we are reading the words of a young, legalistic, self-righteous young man. In the early days, John was known less for his love than his legalism. And no one bore the brunt of his lack of grace more than the Samaritans. For one, Samaritans were heretics. They worshipped on the wrong mountain. They didn’t accept the full canon of Scripture, only the first five books of Moses. Oh, and they intermarried with Gentiles who settled there during the exile. And according to Luke 9, the antipathy was mutual. When Jesus sent ahead a group of disciples to see if they could stay there on the way to Jerusalem, they were rejected. So John did what a Son of Thunder does. He asked Jesus, rather casually, if the Master wanted him (John) to take care of these recalcitrant folks, once and for all.

I like the way the text in Luke records John’s words, “Do you want us to call down fire . . .” In other words, “Jesus, I can make this problem go away.” Here is John again with a bit of an Elijah complex. Fresh off of seeing the prophet at the Transfiguration, he sees himself in that same role. He looked in the mirror and all he saw was a good guy in the epic confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18). This action makes sense too if you are angling to be Jesus’ right-hand man in the kingdom, a sort of Secretary of Defense in the coming revolution. It sure would be nice to take care of these heretics once and for all.

But Jesus didn’t indulge John’s fantasies. Instead, he rebuked the Son of Thunder. We don’t know what was said here, but perhaps Jesus refreshed his friend’s memory. Did John so soon forget Jesus’ encounter with the women at the well? The Samaritan women who had a trail of broken relationships and a heretical belief system? Jesus intentionally passed through her part of town, not so he could bring down hellfire on a lost soul but so he could bring her living water.

At this moment, John couldn’t see Samaritans or any other people the way Jesus saw them. John saw sinners. Jesus did too, but Jesus saw future citizens of the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ mission to seek and save the lost didn’t just mean lost Jewish people, but the lost from every nation, tribe, and tongue. Jesus even had the audacity to cast a Samaritan, a despised member of the outgroup, as a hero in a story about a victim of violence (Luke 10:25-37).

Perhaps Jesus’ rebuke was ringing in John’s ears still as they made their way into Jerusalem and on toward that fateful week that would change all of their lives forever. In John’s life, it seems that the last scene in the Upper Room would be the dawn of a new disciple, where the Son of Thunder would become an Apostle of Love.

John and the other disciples assumed this meal, in a rented upstairs room in the old city of Jerusalem, was just another Passover, the annual spiritual and religious ritual where Jews all over the world reflected on God’s miraculous rescue from the Egyptians. What they couldn’t yet understand was that the blood splattered on Jewish doorposts so long ago a mere signpost to the shedding of Jesus’ blood, splattered across the doorposts of their hearts and an invitation to escape death find eternal life.

This scene in the Upper Room was likely etched in the minds of every Apostle in the room, but it seems it had an especially profound effect on John. John gives us the lengthiest record of Jesus’ words here, in some of the richest passages of Scripture in the entire Bible: John 13-17. This was Jesus’ final will and testament: a sobering prediction of his future arrest, of betrayal by one of them, and of God’s future presence in them in establishing the church.

Jewish people had adopted the Roman custom of eating while reclining, head toward the table, rested against the left hand while the right hand was used for eating. John, then, did get a place on Jesus’ right hand after all, but this was proximity to a new kind of power. He saw the strength in self-sacrifice as Jesus picked up the basin and towel and slowly washed each of the disciple’s dirty, dusty feet. Jesus predicted a future kingdom that would not march through the streets of Jerusalem in victory over the Romans, but away from power toward an ugly instrument of execution and torture.

But it was these haunting words: “One of you will betray me (John 13:21)” John and the others couldn’t imagine this. Who would betray Jesus? They loved him. They’d given up everything to follow him. Like Peter, John believed Jesus was the Christ and knew there was nowhere else to go for the words of eternal life (John 6:68). As soon as Jesus’ words escaped his mouth, John and Peter gave each other knowing glances. Longtime friends and business partners, these two knew each other’s body language. So John whispered to Jesus, “Who is it?” To which he said to both of them, “The person to whom I give bread.” Jesus broke off a piece and gave it to Judas and both Peter and John reclined motionless, stunned. How could it be?

This experience must have changed John’s perspective. This was a different kind of leadership and a different kind of kingdom. Jesus had just washed the feet of the one who sold him out. He was submitting, not resisting, to the forces that were bringing him down. As if the unjust arrest, the whispered conspiracies, the skullduggery of his feckless opponents were all part of some grand plan, the Father’s plan.  

This is where following Jesus took John. A place at Jesus’ right hand meant not calling down fire from Heaven but calling up love, Calvary’s love for those far from God. It is interesting that it is in the Upper Room where John is first referred to as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

John’s gospel, written decades after the other gospels, is the only one to refer to John this way. John isn’t implying that Jesus loved John more than the others. What I believe John is saying is that at this moment is the first time he saw, up close, real otherworldly love and that nobody at that table, including Judas, needed Jesus’ love more than he. Charles Spurgeon is right when he says “to be loved as John was, with a special love, is an innermost form of that same grace with which all believers have been favored. He, like all the rest of his brethren, was loved by Jesus because Jesus is all love, and chose to set his heart upon him[6].”

I think it was in the Upper Room where John began to shed his worldly ambitions. A Son of Thunder may have entered that rented space but a new Apostle emerged. Writing in his gospel years later, John could only revel in God’s love for him. And in his letter to the church, he’d write these words:

See what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children—and we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn’t know him. (1 John 3:1).

At the Foot of the Cross

John’s transformation in the Upper Room is why, I believe, we find him at the foot of the cross when everyone else left. The rest of the disciples fled in fear. Peter denied Jesus. But here is John, with Jesus’ mother in the last moments of Jesus’ life.  

It’s easy for us to sentimentalize the cross today, even on Good Friday. We are so far removed from the reality of the bloody, disgusting scene on that hillside outside Jerusalem. People walked by and mocked. Others watched the spectacle of a disgraced outcast get their due. Soldiers gambled and waited for the prisoners to die so they could finish their shift.

What horror John must have witnessed that night. This was his best friend, beaten beyond recognition, body lashed open, nails penetrating his hands and feet, lungs struggling to gather oxygen. The cross is not a pretty scene. There is no way to sanitize what John witnessed.

How John must have wept in anguish as Jesus cried out to the Father, “Why have you forsaken me?” What must John have felt as the sun darkened, and the earth split open, and as Jesus shouted those final words: “It is finished.” It is true, John must have thought, only Jesus could take this cup.

And yet in his final hours, Jesus even had a kind word for John, the one who had so often been foolish and misunderstanding, harsh and unkind. “Behold your mother,” Jesus whispered, through labored breaths to John and then to Mary, “Mother, behold your son!” This was Jesus entrusting to John his most treasured earthly relationship to the care of his best friend. But it was more than him fulfilling the command to honor his mother.

Jesus was also inviting John into a new kind of family, one that transcends even our earthly alliances. This is how disciples can leave “father and mother and sister and brother” to follow Jesus. At the foot of Christ’s cross, we gain new sisters and brothers, new mothers and new fathers. And what a joy it is, to be received into the worldwide fellowship of saints, on heaven and earth and around the world, not based on our family status or lineage, but because we have God’s seal of approval and Christ’s blood stamped on our spiritual birth certificate.

I imagine it is here, in the darkest moment in human history, when the Son of God gasped for air, when blood ran down his body, when the shame and humiliation of the worst kinds of evil rested on Jesus, where John first had the words to write what would become Holy Spirit-inspired scripture about the gospel he would spend his life proclaiming:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— that life was revealed, and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us—  what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:1-4

Photo by Juliette F on Unsplash

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[1] D. A Carson, The Gospel According to John (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Inter-Varsity Press ; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 146.

[2] William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark: The English Text With Introduction, Exposition, and Notes, 2nd Revised ed. edition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974), 68.

[3] The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians, 113, accessed May 13, 2020, https://www.christianbook.com/testament-introduction-history-literature-theology-christians/n-t-wright/9780310499305/pd/499305.

[4] John MacArthur and John MacArthur, Matthew 1-7, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1985), 117.

[5] Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Compassionate (Luke 1-13): Let the World Know That Jesus Cares (David C Cook, 2010), 128.

[6] Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved,” Spurgeon, May 23, 1880, http://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-disciple-whom-jesus-loved.