Bible Reflection - John 1

By Bishop Charlie

‘You will see greater things than these…you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

Sometimes an old friend says or does something disconcertingly surprising. Even if it’s a good and enriching something, at first the shock of the new is disorienting. Is this who they always were, and just how does this change the meaning between us?

Longstanding readers of John know signs Jesus did are written in this book so we may come or continue to believe and have life in Christ.ⁱ From the beginning John’s elevated language evokes how after coming to life in Christ, continuing in it is not static. Disciples of Jesus can have John as a life companion in hoping to come ‘farther up and farther in’ abundant life in Christ.ⁱⁱ

After the lyrical prologue comes a story in four days. The possible identity of the Messiah disconcerts expectations and questions the status quo. Encounter and reflection might lead to surprising responses.

Everyone in this story is a Jew. Owning that John has been used to justify profoundly unjust Christian antisemitism, it helps me as a religious leader to imagine priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem by Pharisees as earnest in their commitment to controlling the bounds of faith in their expression. That doesn’t mean they are not mistaken and cast here as opponents of Jesus from the outset.

There’s a contrast between the Jerusalem authorities and John the Baptist. In his testimony he’s not the Messiah but a voice…straightening the way for him, John relinquishes control and gains authority.

On the second day, John introduces Jesus as the Lamb of God. It’s hard to hear how disconcerting this image is applied to a human, evoking as it does the temple animal sacrifice system. And this Jesus John says was before him, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven remains on him, the chosen one. Anybody listening to John must wrestle with how a sacrificial lamb can also have the authority of heaven, and what has this got to do with any traditional expectations of the chosen one anointed to reign? These categories have not been juxtaposed this way before. And here John attaches them all to the specific person Jesus.

The third day across the Jordan, John points two of his disciples away from himself towards Jesus. Presumably John has baptised them. They’re looking for something to change. Who knows what they expect and what dissatisfactions have motivated them to follow John. Clearly, they’re open to John’s prompt and a bit open to what they might learn from Jesus. They elect to address him teacher, not Lord, not Christ, not yet. John has told them, but the dots are yet to join.

‘What are you looking for?’ They don’t know that yet either, but they know there’s something to look for and the text intrigues hearers something like, ‘do you know yourselves to be looking for something, someone too?’ if it’s not our first time through the story, something in us knows that remaining with Jesus for life might yet change our perception and so our language and even our orientation to life.

Andrew doesn’t find Simon to tell him we’ve found another teacher John knows, but ‘We have found the Messiah.’ I think John’s gospel invites us to see that much more than staying where Jesus is camping by the river, Andrew and the unnamed first disciple have had an inkling about staying with Jesus who the prologue has told us ‘is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s bosom/heart who has made him known.ⁱⁱⁱ

The fourth day sounds great read out loud. Jesus and Nathanael sound like they’re pulling each other’s leg to me, but not frivolously or dismissively. Nathanael is weighing whether this is the real deal. Nathan wrestles with ‘Son of God’ and ‘King of Israel’ attached to Jesus from Nazareth nowhere. Jesus contrasts this true Israelite without guile with that other wrestler, Jacob the trickster, original ‘Israelite’.^iv Then Jesus replaces Jacob’s ladder from the dream. ‘You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending [not on the ladder but] upon the Son of Man.’

And there’s an echo of the elevated language of the Word who was in the beginning…and came down from heaven, earthly among us that we might come to live in him and have surprising inklings of earthly things drawn heavenward towards abundant life.

 i John 20:31 NRSVUE footnote e.
ii C.S. Lewis The Last Battle, 1973 Penguin paperback.
iii John 1:18 NRSVUE footnote g.
iv See Brendan Byrne Life Abounding: a reading of John’s Gospel pp50-51