John Talks and We Get the Potential of Prepositional Mayhem.

John 1: 15                                           February 3, 2021

¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

19 This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ²¹And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the prophet?’ He answered, ‘No.’ ²²Then they said to him, ‘Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ ²³He said,
‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
“Make straight the way of the Lord” ’,
as the prophet Isaiah said.

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ ²⁶John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

            “Prepositional hell…”  I put that in quotes because hell has a much less pleasant application in the Canon of Scripture. (see the Sidebar for what ‘canon of scripture’ means.)  First, ‘John testified to him…’  Who is ‘him’?  Jesus, transferring over ‘Word made flesh’ from the previous verse.  It is easy to read this, without context, as John is testifying to this person, that John is witnessing to Jesus about Jesus.  “To” can also mean ‘about’, so John is testifying about Jesus, testifying ‘to’ who Jesus is and what Jesus is about.

            Is that way too much time spent on a single preposition?  How about what comes next?  ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’ Jesus comes after John, but ranks ahead of John, because Jesus was before John.  One of the things that a writer is supposed to have is an opening line that grabs people.  I had a ‘what if’ moment.  What if this was the original opening to the gospel?  John is sitting there on Patmos and smiling to himself as he reads what he’s finally put down on the scroll.  If Patmos was something of a colony of exiles, I imagine him turning to his fellow inmate and elbowing him, glancing back between the scroll and the inmate, almost ‘wink wink, nudge, nudge’.  Finally, he has to say, “What do you think of that?  Opening line to end all opening lines.  If they don’t get hooked by that…”

            His fellow inmate looks at the line and…maybe sighs if this is not the first time they have done this.  Maybe is plaintively honest when he says, “John, you turn a phrase, but what does it mean?”  That is a good question.  To answer that question, John rewrites his introduction.  He finds an even more powerful opening, “In the beginning was the Word…”

            Secondly, says the fellow inmate, “Who is John?  Is that you?  You said it wasn’t.  But you want to start this name with the guy with the same name as you.”

            Once the introduction is written, the fellow inmate, pressed into reading John’s notes, might observe, “So…the Word comes after John the baptizer because that is who John is testifying to, the Word came before John the baptizer because the Word was in the beginning.  And the Word is ahead of, superior to, John the baptizer because the Word was in the beginning and because he is the light and life, he is full of truth and grace, he has power to made believers children of God, and like that?”

            “Exactly,” John the Gospel guy might reply.

            “I think you should lead with that,” the fellow inmate might reply.  If this were a movie script, it might end with John looking thoughtful as the scene fades to black.

Sidebar: ‘The Canon of Scripture”.  This Canon with one ‘n’, which the search function of this term on Microsoft “Word” results in “a general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged.”  In this case, the rule under judgement is that the Canon of Scripture includes those books of the Bible inspired by God, those books which are authoritative.  This is opposed to “cannon” with two ‘n’s’ that blows stuff up. 

            Another place where ‘canon’ is referred to in literature is in regards to Sherlock Holmes.  The ‘canon’ is what was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to distinguish it from the vast amount of other writings by other authors using Doyle’s characters and setting.

            What is the Canon of Scripture?  Because there is more than one list.  For the Presbyterian Church, the sixty six books that we accept are listed in the Westminster Confession of Faith, section 2.  They also have a purpose, “All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life”.

            There is a long and involved history of defining the ‘canon’ of Scripture that requires far more than a ‘sidebar’ can provide.  For us, the New Testament was established by the 300’s AD and the Old Testament was formally listed at the Reformation. 

            Interpretively, what ties all these books together is, for us, Jesus.  It is all part of God’s plan to reveal Godself through God’s Holy Word.