This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder John 1:1-18. The English Standard Version supplies the heading “The Word Became Flesh.”
Have you ever wondered why people wrote “gospels”? What does the word “gospel” mean?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, which is British, “gospel” means “the record of Christ’s life and teaching in the first four books of the New Testament.”
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which is American, “gospel” means “the message concerning Christ, the kingdom of God, and salvation.”
Usually, when preachers say “gospel,” they mean good news. They mean an account of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, who was crucified to death in Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago. They mean an interpretation of those events as fulfilment of promise.
Although, for convenience, we often say “Matthew’s Gospel” or “John’s Gospel,” what we really mean is “the Gospel according to Matthew” or “according to John.” Because the Gospels were written for a purpose.
John is most explicit. Towards the end of his Gospel, John tells us he wrote so that we,
“may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing [we] may have life in his name.”[1]
John is explicit even at the beginning of his Gospel. Matthew begins with genealogy. Mark begins with John baptizing people. Luke begins with the miraculous conception of John the Baptist. But John begins with theology, with interpretation, with evaluation of meaning.
John tells us things he saw Jesus doing and saying. He tells us how people responded to Jesus. He tells us that much of what happened in Jesus’ life and death was fulfilment of prophecies in the Old Testament.
I return to my question: Have you ever wondered why people wrote “gospels”? I add to it the question, “why did they write so differently?”
We share the gospel because the story of Jesus meets a deep need within each one of us. Because we believe that every one of us is looking for something. Because we want to share effectively with others.
C S Lewis, the British professor who wrote the hugely popular Narnia Chronicles, heavy tomes on literature, and simple accounts of Christian faith, summed it up very well.
Lewis said we take delight in earthly beauty and pleasure. And that such delights persuade us that there is something more, that such delights are “scents of a flower we have not found.”
Blaise Pascal, one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time, also wrote about Christian things. He said that we, even if we have great wealth, fame, and relationships, have a deep, unsatisfied longing. He called it a God-shaped vacuum which only God can fill.
The more I read the Gospels, the more I believe that I – and most Christians I know – fail to read them correctly. We read portions of the Gospels, for example Jesus’ story of “The Good Samaritan,” and ask ourselves what lessons the story contains, what we must learn and do.
It’s not wrong to do that, because Jesus told his stories in order to get people to understand how they should live. But it’s an incomplete understanding of the Gospel.
What’s a more complete understanding of the Gospel?
I think the more complete understanding is for each one of us to be Evangelists, proclaimers, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. To adopt as the greatest passion of our lives answering the question, “Who is Jesus?” and to live out the answer.
I think the more complete understanding is for each one of us to prepare our own Gospel to share with people in our circles: to persuade them that their innermost longings – their desire to follow to the source the scent Lewis spoke of, to fill the vacuum Pascal spoke of – are satisfied in Jesus.
The remarkable thing is this: we look to find something. But instead, we are found.[2] And gripped. And then we struggle to explain it.
Like John, we become abstract. We turn to art, to poetry – to things people in our circles are familiar with – to point the way. And we add testimony: we add stories about being gripped and going along the way.
It’s called repentance; rejecting other ways; conversion. Accepting the certificate of adoption. Becoming children of God. In our passage, we hear John saying:
“to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”[3]
When I see myself in the mirror, I see my earthly father. I wonder how I reflect my father in heaven. How about you?
Peace be with you.
[1] See John 20:31.
[2] I’ve discussed this in God’s Relentless Pursuit: Lessons from the Rich Shepherd and the Poor Widow.
[3] Verses 12, 13.
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