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By the time you read this Advent will be here and preparations for Christmas well underway. And I’m sure that during Advent we will hear again the familiar passage from John’s Gospel that begins: “In the beginning was the Word…” (John 1:1). It’s a wonderful passage but one that leaves many people struggling to understand it. But if we are to engage with it we need to know something about the readers for whom John originally wrote. John wrote for both Jews and Gentiles two groups who held diametrically conflicting ideas about God and God’s relationship with the world. And so for Jews John’s opening words make appeal to the Old Testament resonating as they do with echoes of Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created…” (Gen1:1 KJV). What John sought to do was reassure his Jewish readers that Jesus did not conflict with Old Testament prophecy but fulfilled it. For Greeks a different approach was necessary not least because it was unthinkable for them that God would stoop to become a man!
And so John makes appeal to the “Word” (Grk. logos) which would have grabbed the Greek imagination, steeped as it was in abstract ideas and philosophy, making people sit up and take notice. The logos was believed to be the divine principle that pervaded everything (including man) keeping the universe in harmony and on track. We can think of it as something akin to a thought expressed. So what John managed to do was pull off a work of pure genius in that it cut across ideological barriers so that people were able to think and talk about Jesus from an informed perspective!
John differs from the other Gospels in another way too. John doesn’t have any birth stories nor is there a star to follow. For John Jesus is the “Star” period. But, then John switches attention away from this opening scene of cosmic proportions bringing us down to-earth with a bump! For he then tells us that Jesus (the divine principle), who was there with God at the beginning as co-creator, became flesh, i.e. he came down from heaven to earth and was born as we are born. How cool is that! But this is John’s “Good News” and why the incarnation is a significant, life-changing event that shouldn’t be misunderstood, misrepresented or minimised!!
As for the rest of John’s Gospel all roads lead to Jesus. Jesus is the door, the vine, the light, the bread of life, the good shepherd, the way, the truth and the life. No matter which way John’s Gospel is approached Jesus is there before us. He is the one to believe in, to come to, to follow and accept. Why? Because, there is no other way to God except through him; that’s John’s message pure and simple. Jesus is the one who takes away the sin of the world and through whom we are born again in the spirit; and it is in the spirit that we Christians relate to Jesus today.
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Soon the Christmas trees, cards and stockings will be going up followed by the tinsel and presents. These things are fun of course but we shouldn’t let them obscure the truth that John sets before us; that the true light has come into the world. And so may that light, who is Jesus, expel from our world, our church and our lives all darkness, doubt and dismalness this Christmas. And in the new year may he light the way ahead that we might walk in it without wavering! A happy Christmas to all our readers both on-line and in Focus from Linda and me.
In Jesus’ name
Derek Marsh
December
2009
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