Working Preacher Narrative – Sunday, 22 December 2013

Working Preacher Narrative – Sunday, 22 December 2013

Lectionary Scriptures:

John The Word Became Flesh

1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.[b]

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own,[c] and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,[d] full of grace and truth. 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.’”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,[e] who is close to the Father’s heart,[f] who has made him known.

Footnotes:

a. John 1:4 Or 3 through him. And without him not one thing came into being that has come into being. 4 In him was life

b. John 1:9 Or He was the true light that enlightens everyone coming into the world

c. John 1:11 Or to his own home

d. John 1:14 Or the Father’s only Son

e. John 1:18 Other ancient authorities read It is an only Son, God, or It is the only Son

f. John 1:18 Gk bosom

Psalm 130: 5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,

    and in his word I hope;

6 my soul waits for the Lord

    more than those who watch for the morning,

    more than those who watch for the morning.

7 O Israel, hope in the Lord!

    For with the Lord there is steadfast love,

    and with him is great power to redeem.

8 It is he who will redeem Israel

    from all its iniquities.

Commentary on John 1:1-18 by Karl Kuhn

Each of the gospels begins with an account of Jesus’ origins. Mark introduces Jesus to us as an adult, telling us that Jesus was “a man from Nazareth” whose advent fulfills the arrival of God’s salvation as foretold by the prophet Isaiah.

Matthew and Luke’s narratives begin earlier still, rooting Jesus’ very conception and birth in the prophecies of old and God’s will to deliver humanity.

John, however, pushes his account of Jesus, the Word, back to the beginning of time itself. Before anything else had been created, he was. In fact, using language that adopts yet stretches Philo’s imaginative ruminations, Jesus, as the divine Logos, was not only with God in the beginning, but was God. To further stress the centrality of Jesus in God’s identity and purpose, John’s prologue also claims that creation itself originated through his life-giving agency: apart from the Word, “not one thing came into being” (verse 3).

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this text in shaping Christian conceptions of Jesus’ divinity, the incarnation, and the Trinity. Indeed, one of John’s concerns here is to emphasize Jesus’ unmatched transcendence and authority as one who comes from the Father. Jesus originates from God not only in an apostolic sense as one who is sent, but also in an ontological sense. To borrow from some familiar terminology, John presents Jesus here as “one of being with” God. As his narrative unfolds, John will continue to stress that to see Jesus really is to see the Father. Thus, when doubting Thomas finally comes to terms with the reality that Jesus is alive, his confession serves as a fitting inclusion with the Gospel’s opening: “My Lord and my God!” (20:28).

Despite its significance for Christian reflection on the nature and person of Jesus, John’s Gospel tends not to be a favorite among my more progressively minded clergy colleagues. John’s Jesus seems too aloof to them, too regal and removed from the vicissitudes of human life. In their view, his personality comes across -- to put it politely -- just as transcendent as the exalted nature John claims for him. Now, to be fair to these colleagues, Jesus may be more “in control” and a little less “earthy” in John than he is in the Synoptics (though perhaps this point could be argued as well). But readers who zero in on this dimension of John’s characterization of Jesus must not neglect another equally critical dimension.

As do the prologues of the other Gospels, John’s opening introduces several motifs that will dominate his narrative to follow. In addition to his exaltation of Jesus as the Divine Logos, four interrelated motifs -- all speaking to Jesus’ purpose as the Word of God -- are particularly prominent.

First, as already noted, John stresses that “the world came into being through him” (verse 10). Jesus was integral to the formation of the earth and all its creatures. Though transcendent, Jesus is also intimately acquainted with every dimension of creation. Second, John presents Jesus as the source of revelation and grace for humankind: he is “the true light which enlightens everyone” (verse 9), Reflecting God’s glory, he is “full of grace and truth” (verses 14, 18).

Another key motif introduced here is the world’s tragic rejection of Jesus:

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him (verses 10-11).

Finally, John’s prologue, with eloquent simplicity, reveals that the Divine World became incarnate among and within humanity: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (verse 14). Together, these themes help us to recognize that the extraordinary ontological claims John makes here and throughout his narrative about Jesus -- while significant on their own terms -- are inextricably connected to the claims he makes about why Jesus is sent from the Father into the world.

John’s exaltation of Jesus as the transcendent Word is only one side of story. The other is his claim that the Divine Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. John’s exaltation of Jesus to unimaginable heights of transcendence serves his even more crucial interest of proclaiming that in Jesus, the barrier between the divine and human realms are breached to a degree never before realized. In the Word, John claims, God’s mercy and truth now flow in measures never possible before: “from his fullness, we receive grace upon grace” (verse 16). In Jesus, knowledge of God, connection to God, far transcends the wisdom and relatedness mediated through the law: “the law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (verse 17).

But in order for Jesus to serve as this conduit of God’s grace and truth, he must be of God in the fullest possible sense. And, in order for the Divine Word to serve as this conduit of grace and truth, he must also become en-fleshed within a human being who could walk, talk, share table, laugh, and mourn with us. More extraordinary still, he must suffer the rejection and bloody outrage of his own who choose not to know or accept him.

For John, the scandal of particularity is not just that in Jesus the Divine becomes incarnate and dwells among us. The scandal is also that the transcendent Word becomes so deeply enmeshed in our twisted affairs, that he is even willing to endure the humiliation and hatred embodied in the cross. The Word condescends to this, no, embraces this, to enlighten all those who would receive him. He comes to his own, and loses his life for them, that they too might become children of God (verses 12-13) and, like him, close to the Father’s heart (verse 18).

For God so loved the world…

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John Wesley’s Notes and Commentary for:

John 1:1-18

Verse 1. In the beginning - (Referring to Gen. i, 1, and Prov. viii, 23.) When all things began to be made by the Word: in the beginning of heaven and earth, and this whole frame of created beings, the Word existed, without any beginning. He was when all things began to be, whatsoever had a beginning. The Word - So termed Psalm xxxiii, 6, and frequently by the seventy, and in the Chaldee paraphrase. So that St. John did not borrow this expression from Philo, or any heathen writer. He was not yet named Jesus, or Christ. He is the Word whom the Father begat or spoke from eternity; by whom the Father speaking, maketh all things; who speaketh the Father to us. We have, in the 18th verse, both a real description of the Word, and the reason why he is so called. He is the only begotten Son of the Father, who is in the bosom of the Father, and hath declared him. And the Word was with God - Therefore distinct from God the Father. The word rendered with, denotes a perpetual tendency as it were of the Son to the Father, in unity of essence. He was with God alone; because nothing beside God had then any being. And the Word was God - Supreme, eternal, independent. There was no creature, in respect of which he could be styled God in a relative sense. Therefore he is styled so in the absolute sense. The Godhead of the Messiah being clearly revealed in the Old Testament, (Jer. xxiii, 7; Hosea i, 6; Psalm xxiii, 1, ) the other evangelists aim at this, to prove that Jesus, a true man, was the Messiah. But when, at length, some from hence began to doubt of his Godhead, then St. John expressly asserted it, and wrote in this book as it were a supplement to the Gospels, as in the Revelation to the prophets.

Verse 2. The same was in the beginning with God - This verse repeats and contracts into one the three points mentioned before. As if he had said, This Word, who was God, was in the beginning, and was with God.

Verse 3. All things beside God were made, and all things which were made, were made by the Word. In the first and second verse is described the state of things before the creation: verse 3, In the creation: verse 4, In the time of man's innocency: verse 5, In the time of man's corruption.

4. In him was life - He was the foundation of life to every living thing, as well as of being to all that is. And the life was the light of men - He who is essential life, and the giver of life to all that liveth, was also the light of men; the fountain of wisdom, holiness, and happiness, to man in his original state.

Verse 5. And the light shineth in darkness - Shines even on fallen man; but the darkness - Dark, sinful man, perceiveth it not.

Verse 6. There was a man - The evangelist now proceeds to him who testified of the light, which he had spoken of in the five preceding verses.

Verse 7. The same came for (that is, in order to give) a testimony - The evangelist, with the most strong and tender affection, interweaves his own testimony with that of John, by noble digressions, wherein he explains the office of the Baptist; partly premises and partly subjoins a farther explication to his short sentences. What St. Matthew, Mark, and Luke term the Gospel, in respect of the promise going before, St. John usually terms the testimony, intimating the certain knowledge of the relator; to testify of the light - Of Christ.

Verse 9. Who lighteth every man - By what is vulgarly termed natural conscience, pointing out at least the general lines of good and evil. And this light, if man did not hinder, would shine more and more to the perfect day.

Verse 10. He was in the world - Even from the creation.

Verse 11. He came - In the fulness of time, to his own - Country, city, temple: And his own - People, received him not.

Verse 12. But as many as received him - Jews or Gentiles; that believe on his name - That is, on him. The moment they believe, they are sons; and because they are sons, God sendeth forth the Spirit of his Son into their hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Verse 13. Who were born - Who became the sons of God, not of blood - Not by descent from Abraham, nor by the will of the flesh - By natural generation, nor by the will of man - Adopting them, but of God - By his Spirit.

Verse 14. Flesh sometimes signifies corrupt nature; sometimes the body; sometimes, as here, the whole man. We beheld his glory - We his apostles, particularly Peter, James, and John, Luke ix, 32. Grace and truth - We are all by nature liars and children of wrath, to whom both grace and truth are unknown. But we are made partakers of them, when we are accepted through the Beloved. The whole verse might be paraphrased thus: And in order to raise us to this dignity and happiness, the eternal Word, by a most amazing condescension, was made flesh, united himself to our miserable nature, with all its innocent infirmities. And he did not make us a transient visit, but tabernacled among us on earth, displaying his glory in a more eminent manner, than even of old in the tabernacle of Moses. And we who are now recording these things beheld his glory with so strict an attention, that we can testify, it was in every respect such a glory as became the only begotten of the Father. For it shone forth not only in his transfiguration, and in his continual miracles, but in all his tempers, ministrations, and conduct through the whole series of his life. In all he appeared full of grace and truth: he was himself most benevolent and upright; made those ample discoveries of pardon to sinners, which the Mosaic dispensation could not do: and really exhibited the most substantial blessings, whereas that was but a shadow of good things to come.

Verse 15. John cried - With joy and confidence; This is he of whom I said - John had said this before our Lord's baptism, although he then knew him not in person: he knew him first at his baptism, and afterward cried, This is he of whom I said. &c. He is preferred before me - in his office: for he was before me - in his nature.

Verse 16. And - Here the apostle confirms the Baptist's words: as if he had said, He is indeed preferred before thee: so we have experienced: We all - That believe: have received - All that we enjoy out of his fulness: and in the particular, grace upon grace - One blessing upon another, immeasurable grace and love.

Verse 17. The law - Working wrath and containing shadows: was given - No philosopher, poet, or orator, ever chose his words so accurately as St. John. The law, saith he, was given by Moses: grace was by Jesus Christ. Observe the reason for placing each word thus: The law of Moses was not his own. The grace of Christ was. His grace was opposite to the wrath, his truth to the shadowy ceremonies of the law. Jesus - St. John having once mentioned the incarnation (ver. 14,) no more uses that name, the Word, in all his book.

Verse 18. No man hath seen God - With bodily eyes: yet believers see him with the eye of faith. Who is in the bosom of the Father - The expression denotes the highest unity, and the most intimate knowledge.

Psalm 130:5-8

Verse 5. I wait - That he would pardon my sins.

Verse 6. They - Whether soldiers that keep the night-watches in an army, or the priests or Levites who did so in the temple.

Verse 7. Israel - Every true Israelite. Plenteous - Abundantly sufficient for all persons who accept it upon God's terms.

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