as one large and complex painting, filled with brilliant colors and images. If we try to interpret the lower right-hand corner of the picture without understanding what role it plays in the total theme of the painting, we do violence to both the part and the whole. For those reasons, we devote our attention in this second chapter to the theological heart of Johannine theology in the conviction that as preachers we can ground ourselves in a grasp of the whole in order to preach individual passages.