You can make a good argument for any one of the four Gospels being your personal favorite. They’re all that good. But if the category were “most influential Gospel on the Church’s understanding of and teaching about Jesus,” I’d argue that the hands-down favorite would be John. With his deep, mysterious themes of light and darkness, bread and flesh, water and life, John tells a story that seems to skip across the surface of an unfathomable mystery, a round stone flitting across a pond, catching glimpses of the boulders on the bottom.

Now, having said that, I am not proud to admit that John has this one habit that has always bugged me. It may just be my problem, but I feel John’s Gospel should come with a blinking red light, labeled “Spoiler Alert.” As you may know, a Spoiler Alert is what considerate book- and movie-reviewers use to warn you, before they blow a surprise ending. Perhaps you know someone personally who should come with a Spoiler Alert, or maybe just a mute button - because they are so likely to blurt out the secret that ruins the whole story. I once had a roommate who shared with me who won Gold in Women’s Figure Skating at the 1994 Winter Olympics - the instant I sat down to watch the long-awaited climax of the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan show. Even if they have no real evil intent, and they usually don’t, I am still no fan of serial story-spoilers. And John is one of them!

Because if you haven’t noticed it, as he builds to the climax of the Cross and Resurrection, John cannot resist interrupting the story with a running commentary. We sit down to watch Jesus walk his road to the Cross, and John pops up to whisper, “Psst - there’s Judas again. Don’t trust him for a minute. He’s going to sell out his master!” Moments later, John breaks in again: “Don’t think for a minute that Jesus doesn’t know how he’s going to die. He knows. And it’s on a cross, by the way.”

Do you mind, John? After all, it’s the Sunday before Palm Sunday. We’ve already read the book, so we know all about the Cross, and don’t need the ‘pop-up video’ version. Next Sunday, through story and song, we’re going to retrace Jesus’ footsteps all the way from the parade of Palms to Golgotha, and then walk with those who carry his body all the way to the Tomb. It’ll be a path we’ve followed many a time.

But among all the Gospels, John just will not let us take this for a ride. Why not? Is he a compulsive story-spoiler - a guy who just cannot hide it when he knows something we don’t? No. Not at all. You see, John tells the Story as he does because is a man of otherworldly faith - of conviction that life is lived out on two levels. There’s the ordinary, and the extraordinary; the natural, and the supernatural. More than any other Gospeler, John is in touch with both plotlines: he is utterly convinced, and keeps reminding us, that in darkness, there is light. In suffering, there is healing. And in water, wine. All that is needed to bring forth these invisible realities is the Spirit of the Living God, Who is present in Jesus Christ.

I don’t think it would surprise John that today, many people are on the edge of Easter, their lives unshaken by the Cross and the Resurrection. It’s not that they think Easter is about bunnies and baskets. They know it’s about the empty Tomb. They watch Jesus at the table with his friends, in the Garden alone, in the street carrying his cross. They know this story - on at least some level.

But as anyone who has ever water-skied knows, there’s zipping over the water, and there’s going beneath the surface. The ski only works because of speed and inertia - overcoming our natural tendency to disappear below the surface. Like skiers behind a noisy speedboat, we tend to dash across the surface of life. We are preoccupied with ordinary things, daily things, like errands, nuisances, the little triumphs and defeats we encounter all the time.

Only rarely do we hit the wake, or maybe even let go of the line, slip through the ordinary, and get at the deeper story. In our baptism, we have a standing invitation to penetrate the surface and plumb the depths of God’s love for us. It is not easy to break through and live in response to the deeper reality, the flowing current of the Eternal and Holy around us. There is plenty to distract us, to keep us flitting across the surface. Life is like that.

In these two weeks before Easter, this time associated with awakening to what Jesus has done for us by his atoning death, we may just be able to let go for a moment, and glimpse what John is showing us. While no one in the pages of his Gospel understands the nearness of Jesus’ death, Mary, the sister of the man whom Jesus raised from the dead, probably comes the closest. Awash in grief and gratitude, she anoints Jesus’ feet with a spectacularly expensive perfume, imported across the continent of Asia from the high plains of Tibet. Characteristically in this Gospel, even those who know Jesus best, his closest friends, do not understand Mary’s gesture. At least one of them is offended by the extravagance, the waste. But Jesus, whose feet will soon know the bite of the nails, is living life in full awareness of his approaching death. Death is like that. It is an invitation to perceive life on a deeper, timeless level. Jesus looks and sees a sign of Mary’s love, a fragrant offering dropped into the midst of an ordinary day.

Perhaps you, too, are acquainted with the holiness of life, made visible by the nearness of death. I think of a man named Ezra, whose wife had said I should stop by a local nursing home to meet her husband. It would have been nice if she’d told me that Ezra was a life-long, non-practicing Jew, who waited all day to make mincemeat out of little Methodist preachers and anyone else who wandered into his side of the room.

Ezra informed me that my time would be better spent “wasted elsewhere with somebody who needed the delusions of religion,” but he seemed genuinely (if not pleasantly) surprised when I showed up for more the following week. After a few, never-very-lengthy visits, Ezra asked me what I’d need to baptize a man. Not much, I answered, since God does most of it. I’d need to talk with that person about his desire to turn from sin and trust in the power of Jesus Christ to save us from our sins. We’d need to pray for Jesus to restore that man to a saving relationship with the God Who made him.

I will never forget what he said then. “Well, I expect you believe that. But I’m going to meet the Man Upstairs soon, and I need it to be true. I’ve got no Plan B. And I’ve been thinking for a long time that I need Jesus to introduce me, when my time comes. A man my age shouldn’t wait around too long - so I guess you’re the best I’m going to get.”

It took me about two hours to get back with a bowl, a towel, his amazed wife and the church’s Lay Leader. I didn’t get by to see Ezra the following week, which I regretted the instant I heard his wife’s voice the following Friday. Ezra was in trouble, she said: could I go and see him? When I arrived, too late, the medical staff had just left. Ezra’s eyes were open, as if gazing out the window at the late-day sun. For the first time that I could remember in the brief time that I knew him, he seemed to be smiling.

As for you and I, baptized with Ezra into the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ – how do we experience this story today? Do we have the courage to contemplate the meaning, for us, of one holy death? Does the darkness of his death focus the light in our lives? Next week, we’ll see. We’ll listen again to the Story that is the beginning and the end of all our stories, and perhaps we will sense, for a moment, how deep is the Love that flows beneath.

For this fleeting moment, for all eternity, thanks be to God.