Feasting on the Gospels--John, Volume 1

A Feasting on the Word Commentary

Cynthia A. Jarvis, E. Elizabeth Johnson

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781611645576
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Feasting on the Gospels follows up on the success of the Feasting on the Word series with all new material on the most prominent and preached-on New Testament books, the four Gospels.

With contributions from a diverse and respected group of scholars and pastors, Feasting on the Gospels covers every single passage in the Gospels, making it suitable for both lectionary and nonlectionary use. Moreover, these volumes incorporate the unique format of Feasting on the Word, with four perspectives for preachers to choose from for each Gospel passage: theological, pastoral, exegetical, and homiletical.

John 1:1–9

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

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

Theological Perspective

The prologue to John is high Bible, full of majesty and complexity. Some of the complexity is theological. Within the prologue’s eighteen verses the evangelist sets in motion some of the biggest theological issues in the Bible: the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, mediation of creation, the antithesis between light and darkness, salvation by grace, incarnation, and the revelation of God the Father by “God the only Son.”

Verse 1 unfolds the majesty and mystery with a classic declaration: “In the beginning was the Word.” Ho logos (the Word) had deep resonance within Greek philosophy, representing the rational principle or power that is the glue of the universe. “In the beginning” also echoes Genesis 1, where God’s first action is to speak—in fact, to speak light into darkness. So the first clause of verse 1 is AC current to Greeks and DC to Jews.

A third resonance of verse 1 has to do with “the word” itself. In John’s Gospel Jesus will say at least five times (3:34; 7:16; 8:26; 12:49; 14:24) that his words are not his own, but reproduce the words of his Father who sent him. Just as he is “the way” and “the truth” (14:6), he is also “the word.” He speaks for God.

For patristic writers who framed the church’s doctrine of the Trinity, verse 1 was irresistible. If the Word is both God and with God (Gk. pros, “toward,” God, suggesting intimate fellowship), then this being is simultaneously the same as God and also distinct from God. In a second verse, John repeats for emphasis that the Word is not a creature: “He was in the beginning with God.” (See also 17:5.)

At the outset of John’s Gospel, there are two who are eternally God, really intimate and really distinct. The Word was with ho theos (the God), and the Word was theos (God). The Word is not the same object or person as God, but is, nonetheless, whatever God is. (Verse 18 will disclose further that the two belong, roughly speaking, not only to the same genus, but also to the same family.)

Theologians have always spotted here a living root of the doctrine of the Trinity. Frederick Dale Bruner remarks how the epistles and the other Gospels build up their testimony to the divinity of Christ by increments.¹ Yet for John, Wham! He needs only two verses to give us Trinitarian distinction-within-unity and the eternality of the being he will identify in verse 17 as Jesus Christ and in verse 18 as “God the only Son.”

In verses 3 and 10 John states that the Word/Son is mediator of creation. This is a biblical and theological angularity attested in major strands of Hebrews (1:1–3) and Paul (1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:15–17) and here in John. What does it mean? One theological suggestion is that he is called “the Word of God” because he reproduces the words of the One who sent him. At least twice Paul calls him “the wisdom of God” or its kin (1 Cor. 1:24; Col. 2:2). The intertwined concepts of word and wisdom suggest that the work of Jesus Christ represents the intelligence and expressiveness of the triune God.

John’s Gospel will go on to show that the Father is “in” the Son and the Son “in” the Father, and that the Paraclete represents the life and intelligence of both. The Gospel tells us that between the Father and Son and, by extension, the Paraclete, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt each other, commune with each other, defer to one another. Each person, so to speak, makes room for the other two. Early Greek theologians described the glorious Trinitarian dynamism with the term perichoresis, stating that each person harbors the others. In a constant movement of overture and acceptance, each person envelops the other two. You might say that the Trinitarian persons show each other hospitality in this way of thinking.

If hospitality thrives within God, how does it spread to creatures? The one who spreads it is a “mediator,” a person who works “in the middle.” We ordinarily think of Jesus Christ as the mediator of salvation, but John 1:3 reveals that the agent of redemption is also the agent of creation. Christ is the person designated to work in the middle both times.

“Word of God” and “wisdom of God” are profound metaphors for the Godly intelligence and expressiveness of the Holy Trinity spread to creatures through both creation and redemption. According to God’s intelligence, the way to thrive is to cause others to thrive; the way to fulfill yourself is to spend yourself. Throughout the Gospel, John will show the self-spending Jesus going to work for others: he will make wine for them, wash their feet, hand them bread, and carry his cross to The Place of the Skull (19:17).

This self-spending principle also explains the role of John the Baptist. Like Jesus, John was “sent from God” (v. 6), but not to be the light of the world. John’s role was to point to the light of the world—to exalt him, glorify him, defer to him. He is witness and then martyr. John had to display humility to display the glory of Christ. He had to hide his little light to testify to the true light that was coming into the world.

In an age of self-acclaim (we used to have the Me generation, but after three generations of self-exaltation it is now the Me Me Me generation) John shows one of the virtues we seldom prize. John the Baptist shows us the virtue of voluntary obscurity.

Nevertheless, in the end, obscurity eluded him: just Google John the Baptist.

CORNELIUS PLANTINGA JR.

Pastoral Perspective

Bob Woods tells the story of a couple who took their son and daughter to Carlsbad Caverns. The tour of this wonderful national park includes a dramatic moment at its deepest point underground. Upon reaching the lowest point, the guide turns off the lights, to show just how dark darkness can be. Enveloped in complete darkness, the little boy began to cry. Immediately was heard the quiet voice of his sister, “Don’t cry. Someone here knows how to turn on the lights.”¹

Verse 5 is our affirmation that there truly is Someone who “knows how to turn on the lights.” One could go so far as to say that the true power of the Christian faith is grounded in the simple statement, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Not only does Someone know how to turn on the lights, Someone has. In response, questions that follow for us are: Do we live in such a way that the inextinguishable light is evident? Are we able to bring assurance to those who are overcome by the darkness of this world? Are we willing to enter into the dark and unfriendly parts of our communities in order to bring hope to those who feel “overcome” by darkness?

Frequently the church is more like the little boy than the older sister: trembling at the depths of the darkness, instead of remembering that there is One who not only knows how to turn on the lights, but who truly is the Light. For people in the post-Christendom context of the West, it is much easier to feel overwhelmed by the darkness than to recall the power of the Light.

The old Christendom assumptions caused many to believe that the church would always be at the center of society. People would always flock to the church because of its cultural importance. From this confidence, it was easy to believe that anyone who did not belong to a faith community was strange and a problem to be solved. Some went so far as to assume the stranger to be the enemy. Now a different reality has come. The church no longer is central. Instead, it is surrounded by strangers who do not look or behave like those in the church. This new context may even cause some to believe that the darkness is returning.

However, the Gospel tells us that the darkness cannot prevail (v. 5) and that we never meet anyone who is completely unenlightened by the true Light (v. 9). In other words, no one can be a stranger to Christ. He has already met them and touched them in some way. If that is true, no one need be a stranger to those who are in Christ. With the dawning of this Light, all should be approached and all should be welcomed. With the dawning of the true Light, we may begin to see the strangers not as dangerous but as magnificent creatures already touched by the power of God.

C. S. Lewis expressed this insight memorably: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”²

How different would our congregations be, how different would we be, if we took seriously the reality of John’s words that the true Light, that is Jesus Christ, has intervened, has touched everyone who comes into this world? This is not a call to naiveté, not a summons to ignore the realities of sin in ourselves and others. Far too often we have succumbed to that false gospel of progressiveness, that self-delusion that we are all basically good and doing the best that we can. That is not John’s message.

John reminds us that there is a darkness that would overwhelm us if we were left to ourselves and our own efforts at self-improvement. The glorious good news is that we are not alone, that there is Someone who knows how to “turn on the lights.” Most importantly, a light that is Light, the Light that was in the beginning, has dawned in the fullness of time over two thousand years ago. Jesus Christ is the Light who has triumphed over the darkness that causes us to fail to recognize strangers as our brothers and sisters and simultaneously renders us unable to properly grasp our own value in him.

If Lewis is correct that there are no ordinary people, that includes those who are in the church as well as everyone else. We are free to explore the splendor of living when we walk in the Light that dawns in Jesus. We are empowered to refuse to take the destructiveness of human sin as the final answer. That darkness has been overcome by the divine intervention of the Triune God. We are therefore invited and enabled to live life in a new way that insists upon the triumph of God’s Light—the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

How do we allow the light to shine in us so that we may see strangers as people who have also been touched by the true Light? The answer to that is to begin in the beginning. Before any problem ever presented itself, the Word had been spoken and the Light had dawned. All our sin, all our problems, are significant. At the same time, they are only plot twists in the grand narrative of the gospel, which promises the triumph of the Light and grants us the grace to live as those who believe God is the One who, in Jesus Christ, has “turned on the light.”

PHILIP D. JAMIESON

Exegetical Perspective

“In the beginning was the Word.” With this opening phrase, the Gospel of John intentionally evokes Genesis. The first two Greek words of John, en archē, repeat not only the first two words of Genesis in the Septuagint (or any other Greek translation of the period), but also the book’s title, since the opening words of a biblical book served as its title. The connection between the opening words—and perhaps title—of John and the first book of the Jewish Scriptures is unmistakable. John intentionally and explicitly places the beginning that he is narrating alongside the beginning that Genesis narrates. His story is a retelling of the story of creation.

To take the connection between Genesis 1 and John 1 as our interpretive starting point invites us to think about John 1 first and foremost as a story, as Genesis is a story. Nevertheless John 1:1–18 is rarely interpreted as a narrative. Instead, John’s opening verses are most commonly interpreted as an introductory hymn and read loosely as poetry instead of prose. In this common way of reading, John 1:1–18 does not belong to the unfolding of the Gospel narrative, but is a “prologue” to the Gospel narrative. John 1:1–18 is read as a self-contained unit that stands apart from the rest of the Gospel. The crucial interpretive focus is then on the nature of the hymn, its origins, and its function as a prologue to the Gospel. Is the hymn a pre-Christian hymn to Wisdom/Logos that John has adopted for a Christian context? How do verses 1–18 divide into strophes (hymnic verses)? Where in the hymn does the focus shift from a hymn to Wisdom to a hymn to the incarnate Word? How do the prose “insertions” about John the Baptist fit with this hymn?

However, this interpretive bent ignores the shaping role of the cadences, form, and content of Genesis 1 on the Gospel’s “beginning.” Nowhere else in the Gospel is there a self-contained liturgical piece, but there are many places where John repeats the cadences, form, and content of a biblical story to tell the story of Jesus (e.g., the connections between manna and Passover texts in John 6). The same narrative pattern and technique of retelling a biblical story shapes John 1:1–18. These verses are a midrash on Genesis 1:1–5, not a hymn.¹

A midrash is a retelling of a root biblical text for a homiletical purpose, often with a secondary text to inform the retelling. For John, the root biblical text is Genesis 1:1–5, the secondary text is Proverbs 8:22–31 (Wisdom’s role at creation), and the homiletical purpose is to show how the story of the incarnate Word of God continues the story of the creative Word of God. The story of the creating power of God’s Word in Genesis provides the form and the content for John’s midrash; John’s repetitions and rhythms echo the repetitions and rhythms of the Genesis 1 text.² Genesis 1:1–5 tells the story of God’s creation of light and so demonstrates the creating power of God’s Word; John 1:1–5 remembers and retells the story of that creating Word. Where Genesis shows God speaking (Gen. 1:3) and calling (Gen. 1:5) creation into being, John repeatedly names the creating power and presence of the Word (logos) with God (vv. 1–3). Genesis 1:4–5 tells the story of the separation of light from darkness, and this same creation story is repeated in John 1:4–5. John 1:1–5 is a reimagining of Genesis 1:1–5.

John begins the Gospel with a celebration of the God whose Word has ultimate creative power. By retelling Genesis 1, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Editorial Board
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Series Introduction
• “The Jews” in the Fourth Gospel
• John 1:1–9
• John 1:10–13
• John 1:14–18
• John 1:19–28
• John 1:29–34
• John 1:35–42
• John 1:43–51
• John 2:1–12
• John 2:13–25
• John 3:1–8
• John 3:9–15
• John 3:16–21
• John 3:22–30
• John 3:31–36
• John 4:1–6
• John 4:7–15
• John 4:16–21
• John 4:22–30
• John 4:31–38
• John 4:39–42
• John 4:43–54
• John 5:1–9a
• John 5:9b–15
• John 5:16–18
• John 5:19–24
• John 5:25–29
• John 5:30–38
• John 5:39–47
• John 6:1–15
• John 6:16–21
• John 6:22–29
• John 6:30–40
• John 6:41–51
• John 6:52–59
• John 6:60–65
• John 6:66–71
• John 7:1–13
• John 7:14–24
• John 7:25–31
• John 7:32–36
• John 7:37–52
• John 7:53–8:11
• John 8:12–20
• John 8:21–30
• John 8:31–38
• John 8:39–47
• John 8:48–59
• John 9:1–12
• John 9:13–17
• John 9:18–23
• John 9:24–34
• John 9:35–41
• Contributors
• Author Index