In the beginning. . .

Given the many good writers and interesting perspectives that make St. Francis a vibrant and interesting community, members' reflections are highlighted in this space from time to time.  Today Philip Calabrese prods our thoughts:

John 1:1-18 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

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

 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. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

 And 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. (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.”’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
On Sunday, December 30, we read 

the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John, one of the most inspiring passages in the Christian Scriptures.  John was the last of the four gospel volumes that came to be admitted to the canon.  Letters/Epistles that are considered to be genuinely authored by Paul, while not gospels per se, are also an important witness to the earliest Christian confessions.    An easy to remember

heuristic is that-give or take a few years--the historical chronology is as follows:

60 CE for Paul 

70 CE for Mark
80 CE for Matthew
90 CE for Luke
100 CE for John

It is interesting to note that the later the text, the earlier is the claim for what we might call the moment when Jesus' divinity is recognized and/or proclaimed by each witness.  Paul says Jesus was, "designated Don of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Rom.1:3-4).  Mark writing later, has that moment at Jesus' baptism, as he rises from the waters and the heavenly voice says, "Thouart my beloved Son; with thee, I am well pleased" (Mk 1:11).  Matthew and Luke, writing later still, place this moment within their birth narratives.  And finally John, writing in his first chapter, places the moment of divinity "in the beginning." That famous line from Genesis presaged God's inauguration of his creation, humanity. John's genesis is the very beginning of the cosmos. Jesus was there with God from the "logos." the fourth evangelist tells us.  Jesus' sonship did not happen by human agency, nor at any point in human time.  Jesus was co-existant from all eternity, incarnate NOT from the virgin Mary, for John, but forever incarnate of and with the father. 

What this all is a succession of ever higher Christology, which is a fancy term for the evangelists' several claims of the meaning of Jesus' identity, and the place of that identity in God's promise of salvation to Israel, "spoken through the prophets" as we confess so many Sundays. There is a certain amount of one upsmanship" going on.  In a secular analogy, it is a little like a bridge game where each successive evangelist plays a higher "trump."  Just as the Christological confessions for divinity increase, so do the attempts to trace Jesus' ancestral humanity back in time.  Mark leads with a low card, and calls Jesus "Son of David."  Matthew plays a higher trump, and traces Jesus' lineage back to Abraham, Israel's first patriarch.  Not to be outdone, Luke plays his highest card, and develops Jesus' ancestry to the very "Ur" of humanity, Adam himself.  But it is left to the Fourth Evangelist to take the trick.  He slaps down the Ace, with the declaration, quite simply, that Jesus always was. 

These first eighteen verses of John are usually called the prologue, a summary of the gospel author's understanding of Jesus' place in relation to God the Father.  It precedes his narrative of Jesus' public ministry.  Looking behind the text, it is impossible not to note that in addition to elevating his Christology, the Fourth Evangelist takes extra pains to reduce John the Baptist to a subordinate role.  Mark, Matthew and Luke all report that Jesus was baptized with water, and have the Baptist say that someone greater (Jesus) is coming, who will baptize with the holy spirit.  Only John' gospel does not directly tell of Jesus' baptism; instead, it is only referred to obliquely.  The question we might ask is, simply, why?  Why go to all this literary trouble to make him inferior? 

Remembering that Christianity began as a solely Jewish movement in the time we now call Easter, in the years following the crucifixion, as Jesus' disciples wrestled with the meaning of his life and death,  the facts of his life and ministry--so recently known and impossible to deny--were at odds with the expected "warrior king" of Jewish prophecy.  While the Jesus movement at first co-existed within Judaism, and with some Jewish Christians preaching the good news within synagogues, Judaism came to reject Christian claims for Jesus in the years following the fall of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE.  The Jewish understanding was that Jesus was, at best, only a prophet.  The gospel writers all wanted to dispel such an understanding, and looked through the Hebrew Scriptures to find verses that supported their Christological claims.  Perhaps more than any other text, this prologue of John's gospel became part of the foundation of what would become the theology that Christians confess to this day as we, too, wrestle with who Jesus is for each of us.

Thank you, Philip.

Blessings,

Mark