John, Apostle and Evangelist

Wallace and Gromit, the famous plasticine figures, have topped the viewing figures on Christmas Day, attracting 14.4 million viewers. Their latest adventure, called A Matter of Loaf and Death, featured the inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit converting their house at 62 West Wallaby Street into a bakery called ‘Top Bun’, complete with ovens, robotic kneading arms and an old fashioned windmill on the roof. But there is something sinister in the air: a dozen local bakers have all gone missing in the last year. Wallace is too in love with beauty and fellow bread enthusiast Piella Bakewell to notice, so it’s left to Gromit the dog to turn sleuth and discover what’s happening in the bread baking business.

Bread baking may not be in the mind of most people celebrating Christmas but there is a surreptitious link with the Nativity Story. Bethlehem literally means ‘House of Bread’ – very symbolic for us who know Jesus as, amongst many other things, ‘The Bread of Life.’ It’s a title that takes up the content of a whole chapter of the gospel according to John whom we celebrate today. John has no account of the nativity story in his gospel yet it is the prologue to his gospel that we proclaim at the Mass on Christmas Day with the profound declaration that ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’ John is the one who takes Mary the mother of Jesus to his own home as his own mother after he has been given the charge to do so from Jesus on the cross.

He is the beloved disciple, one of the inner three apostles (along with Peter and James) who were closest and most intimate with Jesus, an intimacy that pervades the writings of John. It is John who leans on the chest of Jesus at the Last Supper, and it is John who races with Peter to discover the empty tomb on Easter Day. And here, in this Eucharist, we too are called to be intimate with Jesus. He invites us to sit and eat, to listen to his words, and to receive the food and drink, which is his body and blood. We are invited to become one with him, to receive Jesus. This place too, then, is the House of Bread for here we have received and will receive again Jesus the Bread of Life.

Lectionary:1 John 1: 1-4; John 20:2-8
The illustration for the homily may be found here