Saint John the Apostle
The four evangelists are often represented in symbols by the figures of the four animals that the writer of the Revelation saw around the throne. (Rev. 4. 7). There has always been differences of opinion about which creature represents which evangelist. According to Augustine of Hippo the man stands for Mark, because his is the most straightforward and the most human of the gospels; the lion stands for Matthew, for he saw Jesus as the Messiah and the Lion of the tribe of Judah; the ox stands for Luke, because it is the animal of service and sacrifice and Luke saw Jesus as the great servant of men and women and the universal sacrifice for all people; and the eagle stands for John, because it alone can look straight into the sun and not be dazzled, and, of all the New Testament writers, John has the most penetrating gaze into the eternal mysteries and the eternal truths and the very mind of God.
This is true because John’s gospel was written well after the others. John had seen the three gospels of Mark , Luke and Matthew and approved them all as being true accounts of the good news of Jesus Christ, but John wrote much later (or at least one of John’s disciples wrote under his instruction). It is believed that John was asked to write his gospel in Ephesus in about the year 100AC by the bishop’s of Asia against the heretics. If John had been 20 when Jesus called him, that made him at least 90 years old when he had actually got down to writing the story of Jesus. More than 70 years is a long time to ponder the events. We can imagine him sharing his memories with the Christians in Ephesus, remembering how he was the beloved disciple of Christ, how he had travelled by his side, how he witnessed the miracles, the healings and later the trial, the death and resurrection of Jesus,
John’s gospel is very different to the other three. Jesus gives long speeches, some things are absent like the baptism of Jesus or the last supper, there are no parables. The stories are not the same; the form is not the same.
This is because John had had so long to ponder. He had not forgotten anything and he had thought about all that Jesus had ever said and done; he had thought about all he had ever seen and in the end he had been able to write, not what Jesus had said or done, but what Jesus had actually meant. He had, in the power of the Holy Spirit, been able to say who Jesus was and what the story of Jesus really meant to the world. For John, the miracles were not just events, but windows into which the truth of God could be seen. For example, John was there at the feeding of the five thousand, but for him this meant that Jesus is the bread of life. In John’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus leads Jesus into saying that he is the resurrection and the life.
This deeply spiritual and deep thinking man is not the same as the one we see in the other gospels. Here he appears as a leader of the apostolic band, one of the inner circle, but also as someone with a turbulent and fiery temper. He and his brother James were intolerant and exclusive as, for example, when they try to stop someone casting out demons in Jesus’ name. In Luke chapter 9 they want to command fire to come down from heaven and consume a village of Samaritans who do not want to welcome Jesus. He and his brother James are ambitious men. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” they ask.
70 years had done much to change John. He had better understood what happened in Galilee, seeing real and deeper truths in the short time he had spent with Jesus. He had changed from an impetuous and ambitious man to a spiritual man and a brilliant theologian.
He had also understood that, as a great majority of Christians were now Greeks, he had to use their language and their philosophy to explain Jesus to them. This is what we see in John’s gospel; a text which speaks to Jew and Greek alike and which uses the culture of the day to express the gospel message. I wonder what language we might use today to speak of Jesus to the millions of westerners who have no idea about Jesus or Jewish and Greek culture? Perhaps we will have to think about it for another 70 years, but that might be a little too late! We should certainly follow John’s example here for how will people be able to know Jesus if we don’t have the words to tell them?
On Christmas day and yesterday, we read the great prologue of John’s gospel which really sums up John’s theology and today we have read the very end. Peter has just been called to follow Jesus. This was the task which had been given to Peter, but to John it was given to stay behind and to live a long life and die in peace. This was his calling: to ponder all he had seen and to write his testimony 70 years later.
We give thanks for the apostle John; for the time which was needed for him to give us this vision into the being of God and his Son Jesus Christ. We ask God that, if we are given time to ponder the moments when we have met Jesus, we may be given grace to understand what these encounters mean in the eternity of God. We ask that if we have something to say about our faith, we may be filled with the Holy Spirit, as John was, to tell, in words that can be understood, the wonders and mercies of our God. We ask also that as the years go by, we may change as John changed into men and women of wisdom and gentleness.
The great Biblical scholar Jerome tells us that when John was dying his disciples asked him if he had any last message to leave them. “Little children,” he said, “love one another”. Again and again he repeated it; they asked him if that was all he had to say. “It is enough,” he said “for it is the Lord’s command.”
Amen
27th December 2009. Christine Bloomfield. Strasbourg Anglican Church
Exodus 33.7-11a; Psalm 117; 1 John 1; John 21. 19b-25
Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist
