John 1: the Word

In my re-reading of the New Testament, I chose only 1 of the 3 synoptic gospels. I've tended to refer to Mark or Luke for “synopsis” gospel references for somewhat irrelevant reasons; my skipping of them this time is not significant. The first three gospels are called “synoptic” because they provide “synopses” of Christ's life including the same material . . . with some variation.

John is different. John's gospel—to my mind—could be called the “analytic” gospel; it tells us what happened historically as well, but the writer seems to ask himself, “Yes, but what did it all mean?” more than the writers of the synoptics did.

That's why the opening passage in John 1 reads almost like a philosophical treatise to me. In it, Christ is The Word, The Word is the truth of God: Christ, God and Creation are one. Christ (God, Creation) has come to us as a man for the purpose of shining the light on (teaching us to understand?) the unity of all that is, to bring it all back together as it ought to be.

It becomes important in John's gospel to clarify the meaning of John the Baptist's ministry; we learn from the synoptic gospels that he had a large and growing following, and his relationship to Jesus (they were cousins, probably played together as children), shall be seen for what it is: John is the preparer of the way, the one who ploughs the field for seeding, the one who comes before . . . but is not the same.

As if to emphasize his insistence that he is not The One, John the Baptist begins to turn his close associates over to Jesus, as if his work is nearing completion and the real story is about to begin.

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

In the New Testament (and in the Old, for that matter) the ability to do magic is often seen as proof of authentic power. Jesus' miracles figured heavily in Matthew's narratives and we often speak of the wedding at Cana as his “first miracle.” But the hint of earlier “miracles” appears in this first chapter of John:

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” 

He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”

Is the ability to judge a man's character really miraculous? Nathanael reads it that way but I think the narration of it in John's gospel exists in order to underline that “He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.”

John 1 establishes who Jesus is, and if the priests and Levites who came to question John on his identity didn't get that point, John makes sure that there will be no confusion in the early church about the relative identities of Jesus and John the Baptist.

The chapter ends with Jesus telling Nathanael that he will come to see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. An odd reference—but a direct one—to Jacob's dream in Genesis 28:

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

John's departing image of Jesus in chapter 1, then, is that Jesus will show himself to be a ladder, a ladder to heaven, a conduit for angels to ascend and descend, a connection between earth and heaven, the Creator and his creation.  A much greater vision than that claimed by John the Baptist, his predecessor, his way-preparer.

The real thing.