John
1: 6-14 January
25, 2021
6There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to
testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into
the world. 10He was in the world, and the world came into
being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people
did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to
become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will
of man, but of God. 14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his
glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
The true light.
That which John is testifying to.
That which John is not. The
entire opening retelling of the creation is to come to that descriptor of
Jesus, the Light. If you know John’s
message as it is generally known, as he is going to tell it, he quotes from Isaiah,
to make straight the path in the wilderness.
He will say that he comes before another whose sandals he is not fit to
tie. This is because he identifies Jesus as so much more, as the Light. We are going to begin to see that
testimony coming in verse 19, when the story moves to direct observation of
John’s activity.
What is happening here is that the story of John's gospel is being given
its context. This is the broad ministry of
Jesus. The true light was coming into
the world, that which would enlighten everyone.
Again, this presumes the darkness.
When there is a need for a light, it is because things are dark. And if the light is for everyone, the
darkness is upon everyone.
It is from my own knowledge of Scripture, being raised in
the church and being sent to Christian school for most of my life, that I know
there is a very highly developed sense of what the origins of this darkness is, from the fall
of humanity through and original sin.
The readers of the gospel of John of a Jewish background would have that
knowledge.
That is an assumption that is commonly made, and one I
subscribe to, because of the Roman occupation of the Promised Land, of Israel. The reasoning goes that there was a political
occupation, therefore the heritage and the identity of the Jewish people were
found in their religious and cultural roots, that which they would have been
taught. Thus, beyond having the Temple
leadership mentioned in the bible, the priests and scribes, there is the group
called the “Pharisees”, religious teachers in positions of leadership because of
what they taught. Especially outside Jerusalem,
the center of Jewish life and learning was the synagogue, where the learned
would come and teach from the Hebrew Bible, what I know as the Old Testament.
This assumption may also be made about early church folks
using the gospel. Another assumption
that is made, and another I subscribe to, is that in the earliest church, the
gospel stories were an oral tradition. As
missionaries went out, as recorded in Acts, their first groups were small
groups in the cities and communities they visited. There seems to have been a pattern of development
in the early church.
At first, she was a part of the Jewish tradition. Jesus was Jewish, he preached and proclaimed within the Jewish tradition. So, the earliest
missionaries began at the local synagogue in the communities where they
visited. Unlike today, where houses of
faith seem to be segmented to appeal to their own members, it appears things
were different in that age. Acts speaks
of a group of people called ‘the devout’, non-Jews who found great appeal in
the truth of the Jewish faith. But
because it seems that the Christian faith is the one that perfected the notion
of conversion, there was no easy path to ‘Jewishness’ in the synagogue.
So, it seems, that the message of Jesus’ followers found
great appeal in the devout, because outreach to Gentiles was part of the
work. And the barriers to membership of
the Jewish faith were not in place.
Eventually, Jesus’ followers would separate from the synagogue, and “Christianity”
would become its own faith. It is reasonable
to me that this was the impetus to begin writing down the spoken stories of
Jesus’ life and teachings.
In so doing, the understanding of ‘darkness’-well, the
need for the light unto everyone-could have changed. The idea of ‘everyone’ could be John making
Jesus’ work inclusive of Jew and Gentile.
But it opens up a new thought for me.
People who have no background in Genesis or the creation
story or original sin, all these things I have been talking about, I hope it
would provide a useful backdrop in how the whole Bible interconnects and
focuses on Jesus. But when John is the
starting point for someone coming into the faith, knowing all this background
is not necessary. Recognizing the
darkness into which the light of Jesus shines, this is a
self-identification. We live in a sinful
world is not just a generic abstraction about everyone. There is darkness in the life of the individual
and the light of Christ shines in.
It is fine to know where the darkness comes from, but
that is not the point John is making.
The assumption is that the reader sees the darkness in their own
life. Through that darkness, they find
hope, they find light in Jesus. It is
light for everyone because everyone lives in the darkness of their own life.
And unlike all those other promises to feel better or to
be better, Jesus is the true light.
Pastor Peter
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