Journeying with John

Hearing the voice of John's Gospel in Years A, B and C

James Woodward

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780281070817
• eBook ISBN: 9780281070824
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

Readings from the Gospel of John are brought into all the other years, for major occasions like Christmas or Easter, and to help reflection about the meaning of Jesus' life and teaching. There are also several miracles (or 'sings') which are not mentioned in the other Gospels and can only be found in John, such as the wedding at Cana. A large proportion of the Gospel of John appears in Years A, B and C. The series' unique slant is that it asks readers to use their imagination 'to bring the Gospel to life.' It asks them to visualize themselves in the scenes that John describes in order to see the Gospels in a fresh and exciting way.

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Advent and Christmas

John’s incarnational theology

Exploring the text

John 1.1–18 as poetry and prose

The Prologue of John is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing in the whole of the New Testament, and no carol service would be complete without the rolling lyricism. So iconic is it that many people can quote its opening verses from memory. In the Greek the language and vocabulary of parts of the Prologue are strikingly rhythmic and poetic, and this has led many people to suggest that it is derived from a hymn sung by the early Christians.

This is not to say that the Prologue in its current form is a hymn. One of its oddities is that the poetry is spliced with sections of prose, which raises the question of how the Prologue reached the form that it has. Some suggest that the Prologue is made of up of an early hymn adapted to the contemporary context of John’s Gospel by the addition of prose elements about John the Baptist, elements that mean that John’s Gospel effectively begins in the same place as Mark’s Gospel does, with John’s message of repentance. Others are of the opinion that the Prologue was written later by the Gospel author(s) in order to pick up the themes of the Gospel at its beginning, and deliberately mixed poetry with prose as a means of grabbing the reader’s attention.

The crux of the argument lies in the use of ‘the Word’ (Logos) to describe Christ. The Prologue is the only place where ‘Logos’ is used to describe Christ. Some argue that this is an indication that the poem already existed and was adapted to fit on the front of John’s Gospel, while others maintain that the Prologue is attempting to do something different at the start of the Gospel and hence it is natural for them to use a descriptor of Christ that is only picked up implicitly in what follows.

Whether the poem element of the Prologue was newly written for its context or borrows from an earlier poem, its lyrical nature is clear and there is a good argument for laying out the Prologue in poetic form to emphasize its rhythm and feel. The paraphrase below illustrates this well.

John’s Prologue: 1.1–5, 10–12, 14, 16–18

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.

¹⁰He was in the world,

and the world came into being through him;

yet the world did not know him.

¹¹He came to what was his own,

and his own people did not accept him.

¹²But to all who received him,

he gave power to become children of God.

¹⁴And 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.

¹⁶From his fullness

we have all received,

grace upon grace.

¹⁷The Law was given through Moses;

grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

¹⁸No one has ever seen God;

it is the only Son,

close to the Father’s heart,

who has made God known.

Jesus as Word and Light

When we look at this paraphrase, the inner structure of the Prologue is easy to see.

• 1.1–5: The Word and his relationship both with God and with the world he created
• 1.6–8: John the Baptist’s witness to the light
• 1.9–13: The world’s response to the light
• 1.14–18: The world’s response to the Word.

Laid out like this, it is easier to see the two interwoven themes in the Prologue: Jesus as Word and Jesus as Light, and the response to Light and Word by those he came to dwell among. It is striking to note that each is encountered by a different sense: light with the eye and word with the ear. Jesus, eternal Word and Light of the world, then, is to be encountered and responded to; the Prologue prepares the reader for the need for this encounter and response.

The images of Jesus the Word and the Light meet in the Wisdom tradition and it is probably this that stands behind the theology that we find so carefully woven together in this passage. The opening of John 1.1 is widely accepted to be an echo of Genesis 1.1 – ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ – but it is an echo that comes to us through numerous other Old Testament passages: passages such as Proverbs 8.22–23, ‘The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth’; and Psalm 33.6–7, ‘By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth. He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle; he put the deeps in storehouses.’ The Prologue picks up this concept of wisdom, God’s Word, being present at the start of all things and connects both in the person of Jesus Christ.

When one weaves Jesus the Word together with the theme of light (verses 4–5 and 7–9), then light’s ability to ‘enlighten’ and bring wisdom shows us the relationship between these concepts. Jesus the Word and Jesus the Light is Jesus the Wisdom of God, who brings wisdom into the world.

This observation draws our attention to John 1.5, which talks how the darkness encounters the light. The King James Version translates this verse as ‘the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not’; in the NRSV it reads instead, ‘the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’. There appears to be a rather big leap from ‘comprehension’ to ‘overcoming’. What is interesting is that both translations are possible: the Greek verb katalambano can mean either ‘to comprehend’ or ‘to overtake’. The connection is clear: comprehension involves overtaking with the mind.

The reason why most modern translations use the word ‘overtake’ is contained in John 12.35: ‘Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going.”’ The meaning here seems to point more obviously to ‘overtake’, and so by extension implies that overtake is the better translation in 1.5. However, the importance of wisdom and Jesus the Word and the Light bringing wisdom into the world suggests that, at least in 1.5, John might have chosen katalambano advisedly to mean both overtake and comprehend; in other words, he is pointing to the fact that darkness simply cannot grasp the light when it encounters it.

The primary theme of the Prologue, then, concerns the source of true wisdom. True wisdom, the Prologue suggests, is to be found in the person of Jesus Christ. Those who respond to the Light, who recognize and welcome the Word made flesh dwelling among us, are those in whom wisdom is to be found. John 1, then, in its poetic way, sets up many of the themes that recur many times through the Gospel; light, wisdom, witness, belief and glory are explored here and then returned to again and again as the Gospel unfolds. As with all poetry, the Prologue needs to be savoured and reflected upon if we, unlike the darkness, are to comprehend the light it reveals to us.

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Imagining the text

John’s Prologue bears witness to the truth about God revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the one through whom all things come into being, the Light who enlightens every person. John draws our attention to John the Baptist sent by God as the prophet who bears witness to the Light (1.6–9); his mission and ministry are an inspiration for all Christian disciples as they witness to the Light who shines in their own situations. We are called to look for the light in the darkness of a broken world, even within the dark places of our own selves, our families, churches and communities. This dram...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author information
• Title page
• Imprint
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Table of contents
• Preface: What is this book about?
• Introduction: Getting to know the Gospel of John
• 1. Advent and Christmas: John’s incarnational theology
• 2. Epiphany: Revealing glory: signs and wonders
• 3. Lent
• 4. Passion and Holy Week
• 5. Easter
• 6. The Easter season: Knowing, belonging, loving
• 7. Pentecost: He breathed on them
• 8. Ordinary Time
• Further reading and resources