Jan 5, 2003

Mindekirken Jan. 5, 2003
Pr. J. A. Dale

The Word Became Flesh

Everything is in a state of flux. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said. Maybe he had teenagers at home and got the idea when he saw their room. Anyway, he developed the idea that everything is in a constantly changing state of flux. One of his illustrations was like this: Step into a river. Step out and then step in again. But you do not step into the same river, for the water has flowed on and it is a different river. In that way, Heraditus described how everything in life changes in a state of flux. But why, then, was life not complete chaos: To that, Heraditus answered that everything was controlled by the reason of God, and his principle of order he called the Logos. Logos was the great reason, an impersonal principle of order that was the pattern of all things, not only in the physical world, but also inside man. The Logos gives man the ability to think reasonably and to judge between right and wrong.

Heraclitus lived in Ephesus 500 B.C. The Greeks never forgot what he said. 600 years later, Ephesus was still one of the most important cities of that time, but even more important and longer lasting a new idea from this city would be. John was a teenager when he saw Jesus die on the cross. As the only one of the disciples, he avoided a martyr’s death. At the end of the first century John was an important church leader and he wrote what we today know as the fourth gospel, the gospel according to John. He’s the last of the evangelists, but the one with the biggest overview. The church gave him the eagle as a symbol, the only creature who can look straight into the sun and not be dazzled. John penetrates deep into the eternal mysteries and tells the story of Jesus in a new way, totally different from the other evangelists. Here is nothing about the birth of Jesus, baptism temptation, or nothing about the communion. Gethsemane or the ascension.

Exorcisms are omitted and perhaps most surprisingly, there are none of the parables of Jesus. But what we have got from John is gigantic, many hold the gospel to be one of the highlights of world literature. It has convinced millions that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. John has given us immortal portraits such as Nicodemus, the woman at the well of Sychar, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The three first evangelists wrote at a time when Jews were a substantial part of the Christian church. But at the time John wrote, gentiles made up for the biggest part of the church. He lived and wrote in a hellenistic culture where Jewish ideas were unfamiliar. One example: The Greeks had never heard about the Messiah, the main point of the Jewish faith and expectations. How should John present the Christian message in a culture so different from the Christian? Did he have to force Greeks who wanted to become Christians to go through Judaism to understand the message of the Messiah correctly?

It’s one of history’s coincidences that John worked in the same city as Heraclitus. John found an ingenious way to connect Greek and Jewish thought. Logos, that Heraclitus had described so well, can mean two things in Greek: word and reason. John uses the same term as Heraclitus, but he puts another meaning into it. Maybe you remember from the O.T., the story of Esau and Jacob. Jacob came to his blind father Isaac, and tricked him into giving him the blessing. Esau got furious when he discovered that, but it was impossible to undo it even if Esau was the older heir. Words are not empty noises, they create what they say. We especially see this in Creation. God spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. Psalm 33:9. The words of God are powerful, creative and dynamic. The two first words of his gospel John borrows from Genesis. In the beginning…was the Logos, the word, but not in the sense of impersonal reason which Heraclitus described. The Logos was a person, no less than Jesus himself. In that way, John describes the pre-existence of Jesus, that Jesus was the Son of God from before any material thing was created.

He is the creator that provides us with days and nights, the changing seasons and the thoughts and consciousness of men. In this way, John gets started with something which was familiar to the Greeks. So far, they could follow his thoughts, but John would soon say unheard things about Logos. But before we go that far, we have to say some more about how the Greeks understood the world. Plato said that the material world in which we live, is only like a shadow of the perfect world, the world of ideas. The soul is captured in the prison of the human body. It needs to be freed from this. Only the invisible world is perfect, the material world was inferior. The body should be despised.

John does away with this way of thinking in what many regard as the most important verse in the NT. The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s son, full of grace and truth. The logos became flesh, it says. That was totally unacceptable and limit-shaking. God has become flesh and blood. Here, there is no trace of despising of the body.

Creation is not inferior. Rightly understood Christianity is a surprisingly earthly religion.

The beauty of nature mirrors the power of God, the Creator. The glory of God is visible in the baby in the manger and the man on the cross. Here, John uses a word that literally means see, it’s not in a spiritual way we may see the glory of God. We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands , concerning the word of life. 1 John 1:1

So offensive was this thought that a teaching very quickly developed that said that Jesus only appeared to have a body. Docetism, of the Greek word dokein, to seem to be, said that Jesus was God , but not really a human. Jesus was a phantom, a skin body. They believed it was an insult of the godly to pull Jesus down to an earthly stage. But how then would Jesus be able to be a savior for us mortals if he had not been like one of us., John would have asked.

And then he draws a picture of Jesus that touches us, because it’s so human. Jesus got angry at those who traded in the temple, he got physically tired of travelling, he got hungry, and thirsty. By the grave of Lazarus, he wept like one of us, and from the cross he cried out that he was thirsty. In his letter, John says that it is the spirit of Anti-christ who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and blood.

1 John 4:2

The Greeks were concerned that the soul should be freed from the earthly prison and come to the perfect world. But John teaches us the perfect life is here among us, in Christ Jesus. When Plato asks for the true world, it’s like Jesus protesting by saying that it’s he who is the true light, the true bread and the true vine. No one has ever seen God. On that, John and the Greeks agreed. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known, John says, and torpedoes the Greek world picture totally. John doesn’t only give us facts, for instance about the raising of Lazarus. He also tells what it means. I’m the resurrection and the life. All who believe get a part in the perfect life.

One little girl heard some of the most bloodthirsty stories of the OT and commented: That must have happened before God became a Christian. God has been a Christian all the time. But first from Jesus, we have learned fully how he is. The law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Glory be to God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.

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