JOHN 1: 1-14

Jottings on John…Christmas…Revised 2017

There are various options for the Gospel at Christmas, but I’m an avowed & unapologetic traditionalist. John for me every time - as it once was! Has the Evangelist’s great Hymn to the Word, with its deep, imaginative, & creative ‘take’ on the Christmas event become too hard to preach, compared with stables, mangers, & other MT & LK trimmings? Another  priest & I happen to sit in a pew together at Midnight Mass a few Christmases back. The Gospel isn’t John. The ‘sermon’ isn’t a sermon either! It’s a talking down, we suspect from an earlier ‘children’s service’. This to the biggest congregation of the year! My colleague whispers to me, “He sure dumbed that down, didn’t he?” We can do better than that!

The bit about John the Baptiser may be someone’s attempt to give the context, but is an interruption of the original hymn; a distraction that spoils its integrity. Whoever inserted it, these verses would better precede v.19 where JB properly makes his entrance. It’s a kind of vandalism to gazump JE’s spirit-exalting, mind-blowing verses with these interruptions. Or a ‘children’s talk’! Mind you, interrupting the flow of JE’s hymn of the New Creation in Jesus Christ may be a sermon in itself. An example of the way we can insinuate ourselves between, interrupt, be distracted from, God & God’s purposes. Choosing to ‘fall’ in another Eden of our own making, rather than becoming part of the Restoration and Renewal Jesus the Logos, the Christ, comes to bring. Not just at Christmas, but all day, every day! 

The Word who speaks creation into being in GN1 now speaks a new, restored, creation into being in Jesus. God’s ever-new beginning for you & me. Jesus doesn’t simply speak God’s word. He is God’s Word, speaking to us across all divides, like light from darkness, & life from death, core thrusts of John’s Gospel. Jesus is God’s in-house, in-Person, Word with us & for us. Inviting us into an en-Spirited Body raised & restored to life as God has intended from eternity. In the world at large, preachers have often acquired a reputation for being ‘wordy’ rather than ‘of the Word’. Jesus, on the other hand, lives out God. Not just ‘talking’ God, but Being the Word, ’Doing’ God.

Human languages are often barriers rather than a means of communicating meaningfully & lovingly. As ‘social media’ turns anti-social & divisive when we misuse it. The Word God speaks to us & our world - God’s world, actually - in Jesus made flesh then, & dwelling among us now by His Spirit, speaks across all such barriers. Time itself, darkness & light, life & death…  Jesus is God’s Word speaking to us across, over, & through them all. 

Whatever else JE wants us to take into our souls from his great Hymn of the Word, of a New Creation, he wants to glorify God & God’s Grace & Truth Jesus embodies. If our worship at Christmas, including a meaningful sermon on this passage, gives glory to God, & speaks of God’s Grace & Truth in Jesus, JE, the Hymnist, will achieve his purposes.

Advent

Christmas and Epiphany

JOHN1:29-42

Jottings on John…2nd S after Epiphany…Revised 2017 

From the poetic heights of the Word becoming flesh, we’re back down at ground zero. Where the politics of God & humans play out. Not always in the harmony that is God’s will from before the beginning of time. A harmony to which we need, desperately, to be restored. ‘Restored’ refers us back to that state of grace Eden represents, & has the air of healing about it. Compared with some words that have a whiff of a questionable transaction about them! 

This passage links the Evangelist’s creatively imaginative & poetic account of the Word becoming flesh, & Jesus’ down to earth ministry living that out. Jesus’ baptism has already taken place. William Temple¹ suggests Jesus is in fact returning from His testing in the wilderness where He recognises Himself as Messiah. Putting the Baptiser out of contention, as some had wondered, (not John himself!) & instead putting Jesus squarely in the frame! 

The Evangelist tells us [v.33] the Baptiser has been given discernment to recognise the One on whom the Spirit descends as God’s Son. In life, as in Scripture, till God’s end of things & our human ends connect, & we recognise & discern that, the story can never continue as God intends. It’s always & only God who gives true meaning to ‘baptising with Holy Spirit’ [v.33] & being so baptised. It always involves recognising the things & people of God. There are few things in life as important as recognising what & who is of God & who or what isn’t! Don’t let’s buy a ‘pig in a poke’ in any matter of importance to God.

‘Recognising’ - I’ll stay with that word - sums up the focus of this short passage. John recognises Jesus as the ‘lamb of God…’. Jesus has been out in His own wilderness recognising Himself as a Messiah of a completely different kind from that expected by the people. Now we see John pointing two of his followers in Jesus’ direction. Intriguingly, we’re told one of them is Andrew; the other remains un-named; all we know is that it’s not Simon. Andrew & the other John-follower recognise enough about Jesus on their reconnoitre to make them want more. Note, by the way, that Jesus has asked them, “What are you looking for?”, not, ‘Whom?’ Andrew goes on [v.41] to recognise Jesus as Messiah & introduce his brother, Simon, onto the scene to do the same. Jesus then recognises Simon as a future ‘Rock’. Andrew’s original companion has dropped out of the story by now. Is he simply lost to the story now that Simon has appeared; or has second thoughts about Jesus’ Messiahship? Others recognise Jesus in the verses that follow. Are we relevant to where the Jesus story wants to take us today; are we among those many having second & more thoughts; are we at least on the way to becoming a rock?  

If we’re unsure, uncertain about God, Jesus, Holy Spirit along our journey, maybe a godly soul-friend, an anamchara (to use the Gaelic term), could help us recognise our personal ‘What are you looking for?’ & act on that?

1 Readings in S. John’s Gospel, Macmillan, NY, 1955, p.23