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Readings (click here for full text of the readings): Whenever I read the first chapter of John’s Gospel – commonly called the “Prologue” – I’m always transported back to my old parish in New York City, to the Easter Vigil from a few years ago. Different people were assigned to read each of the lessons that night, and the person who got the Prologue of John was very theatrical, and he took his job very, very seriously. By the way he read, it was obvious that he thought that each and every word was critically important and needed to be heard, and pondered, and digested. After introducing the reading, he began: “In … the … beginning.” Full stop. Time for reflection. And anticipation. Nearly enough time to pop out for a cup of coffee before he started up again. “Was … the … Word.” At that point I found myself calculating how many words per minute he was working on – about seven – and wondering whether we’d get done with that service by the time the next one rolled around the following morning. The Easter Vigil was rapidly becoming the Easter Marathon. Eventually, though, he finished, and we had the other readings, which seemed like mere snippets by comparison. And the service went on just fine, and to my knowledge he was never asked to read the lessons again. As I think back, though, I realize that he might’ve sensed something that I didn’t: that of all the readings we heard that night – and perhaps of all the readings in the Bible – the Prologue to John really does require us to hear every word. When we compare it to the beginnings of the other three gospels, we can see that it’s much denser, and more unique. Matthew starts off by listing the genealogy of Jesus stretching back to Abraham, and if you end up skipping one of the forty-two “and so-and-so was the father of such-and-such,” you won’t have missed much. Mark starts off with John the Baptist predicting the coming of the Messiah, which is found in all the gospels, and which we’ve heard many times before. Luke starts even further back with the prediction of the birth of John the Baptist, but even there we have a sense that this is background. John the Baptist isn’t the star of the show; he’s not the reason we’re all here today. Luke is setting the stage for the drama that will come later. Not so for the Gospel of John, which begins not with history or prophecy, but with theology. Literally, in fact, since the Greek word for God is theos (qeoV) and the Greek word for Word is logos (logoV), and so the Prologue, which is all about God and the Word, is pure theos/logos, theology. And it makes sense that it is, because if Mark was the first gospel written, and Matthew was written to the Jews and Luke to the Gentiles, John was the last gospel written, more than fifty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. By that point, the other gospels were already well-known, as was the story of the life and ministry of Jesus. John didn’t need to rehash what had already been said; instead, he tried to explain and emphasize and interpret. In so doing, he diverged a great deal from the first three gospels. They include several exorcisms where Jesus casts out unclean spirits; John doesn’t mention any of those. All the parables Jesus told the disciples? Not a single parable in John. And the Last Supper, the basis of our communion service? There’s no Last Supper in John; instead, on that last night, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, which none of the other gospels mention. Because of these differences, we don’t read John through from beginning to end, like we do the other gospels. In the lectionary, Year A is Matthew, B is Mark, C is Luke, but there’s no Year D. We get brief glimpses of John through all three years, at special times, like Maundy Thursday, where we wash one another’s feet. And today, the first Sunday after Christmas, when everything seems new, and we are at one of the many beginnings of the church year. As we begin again, as we read the Prologue of John, I find myself wondering what we would have written – what we would have said – if we’d been in John’s position. If the people around us knew the basics of Jesus’s life and ministry – or at least thought they did – yet didn’t believe. How might we communicate the importance of it all, so that they’d realize that it’s not just words, but the meaning of life, that we’re talking about. Actually, we are in that position, because the world seems to think it knows what Jesus is all about, yet ignores His message. In the coming weeks we’re going to be looking a bit more closely at how to share God’s love with others – call it welcome, evangelism, whatever you like. And the Prologue of John gives us some good advice on how to do precisely that. First, John doesn’t start from scratch. He starts with something that people are familiar with, and expands on it. All this “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” stuff might seem like mystical mumbo-jumbo to us, but it would’ve been very familiar to his listeners. The Greek word logos means much more than the spoken word – it refers to the principle of reason. As such it hearkens back to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, where “wisdom” is described in personal terms, as existing with God before the beginning of time, and eventually coming to earth to teach God’s children. This is what wisdom says in one passage:
So when John writes that the Word “was in the beginning with God,” his audience would realize he was talking about Wisdom. And they’d know that he wasn’t making this stuff up on the fly; instead, he was talking about the fulfillment of promises made long ago. Second, John tries to correct some misconceptions right off the bat. Around the time he was writing, there was a version of Christianity called Gnosticism floating around, which, among other things, denied the Crucifixion and also denied that Jesus was fully human. The Gnostics thought that Jesus only appeared to be human, because for them spirit was good and matter was bad, so nothing physical could be good, let alone divine. John uses a lot of Gnostic imagery – like the stuff about the light coming into the world – but he also takes their misunderstanding of the Incarnation head-on. He says that the “Word became flesh and lived among us.” No mincing words there; no room for misunderstanding. Jesus was fully human, as well as fully divine, John argues. You can’t have one or the other – it’s both, or none at all. And, finally, John, more than Matthew, Mark, or Luke, is a writer. He starts us off with a hook that makes us want to keep on reading. So while Matthew is so concerned about proving that Jesus is the Messiah that he risks boring his readers to death at the very beginning by listing forty-two generations of fathers and sons, John spins a tale. He tells us in symbolic terms who Jesus is and what He did. He generates suspense, because just from the Prologue we know that his own people didn’t accept Jesus for who He really was. And so we start off with questions: Who accepted Him, and who didn’t? Which category do I fall into? And what’s going to happen to me, especially if I’m one of those who rejected him? John does three things: he starts off with something we have in common; he corrects misconceptions; and he makes us interested in reading on by building dramatic tension. And he does so in a mere eighteen verses, with not a single word wasted, and with perhaps every word deserving the lingering attention paid to them that protracted Easter Vigil a few years back. Perhaps. We have much to learn from John, and especially from the Prologue, particularly when it comes to sharing our faith with others. First, we should start with commonalities. Rather than speaking in potentially unfamiliar or technical terms – like logos, which few people would understand nowadays – we have to start with real-life examples. To say that Jesus is the personification of wisdom that the Old Testament spoke of doesn’t mean a whole lot if your audience doesn’t buy into the Old Testament. Rather, we have to start with things that people in our world long for, like peace, and fulfillment, and meaning. John isn’t so concerned about proving to everyone that he’s right; he’s more concerned with showing people that he’s got something valuable to offer them. And so should we, too. What has God done in our lives? What does God, and the church, mean to us? Why do we come back week after week? However we answer those questions, that’s what we have to share with others. Second, we have to address misconceptions. Some people might think of Christians as prudish and judgmental – prove them wrong. Some people might think that wealth is a sign of God’s favor, when, in fact, the Bible teaches that wealth is a barrier to God, who cares more about the poor than the rich. Some people might think that all God asks of us is that we be good people, which is really just common sense and common courtesy. When, in fact, the gospel of Jesus Christ is revolutionary and counter-intuitive and nonsensical and foolish and humbling. Finally, it has to be interesting. The gospel is far more than a boring set of rules that need to be followed. As Paul wrote in Galatians, “Now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian.” But in order to spark people’s curiosity, our faith must be interesting to ourselves. If our faith is drudgery and obligation and ho-hum and same-old/same-old, then it’ll bore others, too, no matter how much we try to jazz it up. Only when our faith is precisely that – faith – will others want to understand it. Only if we admit that we don’t know everything – or even anything – for certain; only if we admit our doubts and misconceptions and trust God to lead us into the light; only if we accept with fear and trembling that we stand on holy ground, where each of us has a leading role in the drama of love and redemption that God is directing, only then will we see the gospel for what it is, and invite others to do the same, just as St. John did so long ago.
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