THE beauty of this book is how David Ford marries serious scholarship with an infectious passion for a Gospel that enables people to meet God through Jesus, “open to the superabundance [one of Ford’s favourite words] of life that he gives”. Ford understands John as “a community book that can introduce us to Jesus for the first time and also draw us deeper and deeper into its meaning and truth over time”. The book is pitched for the same broad audience, seeking to inspire individuals and communities “to become habitual rereaders of the Gospel”.
Part 1 takes the form of a conventional Lent book, with manageable chapters for five weeks of Lent. Ford introduces the “big picture” of “Meaning, love, Jesus”. He then explores themes posed by some of the first questions of the Gospel: “Who are you?”, “What are you looking for?”, and “Where are you staying?” The final chapter, to be used on the cusp of Holy Week, explores the theme of Glory, which is “John’s main way to the heart of God’s life and to the heart of a life trusting and loving God”. The questions for discussion and reflection which conclude each chapter are crafted not by Ford but by an accompanier; it is a nice touch, because they don’t simply ask the questions to which the author has already given the answer.
Ford explains in the preface how Meeting God in John became a “Lent-plus” book, joyfully spilling out into Holy Week and Easter. Parts 2 and 3 allow for the possibility of a Lent group that continues beyond Lent, or of participants’ continuing their encounter with the Gospel under their own steam. Part 2 focuses on the three “happenings” of Holy Week: the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. Part 3, “The Ongoing Drama”, thrusts us into “Jesus happening in the twenty-first century” and how the three essential practices of learning, praying, and loving are to shape those who are “being disciples” of the resurrected Jesus today.
Ford’s longing to encourage and enable people to enter deeply and prayerfully into John’s Gospel makes this a gem of a Lent book. There is a (presumably editorial) quirk that Ford repeatedly refers to the practice of “praying the Lord’s Prayer in the light of John 17” as if it had been introduced in the introduction, although it is only at the end of the conclusion that the reader is signposted to the appendix in which this is outlined. But it is precisely these practical insights from someone so steeped in the Fourth Gospel which will benefit groups and individual readers alike. “To meet God through the Gospel of John”, Ford writes, “is to meet in Jesus the glory of God, who unites the deepest meaning and the deepest love.” This book helps us to do exactly that.
The Revd Daniel Sandham is Vicar of St Paul, Winchmore Hill, and Area Dean of Enfield, in the diocese of London.
Join David Ford, Malcolm Guite, Carys Walsh, and other authors of Lent books published this year at the Church Times/Canterbury Press online pre-Lent retreat on 14 February. churchtimes.co.uk/events
Meeting God in John: A companion for Lent, Holy Week and beyond
David F. Ford
SPCK £10.99
(978-0-281-08963-5)
Church Times Bookshop £8.79
