Standing Under the Scriptures
January 4, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Ephesians 1.3-6, 15-19a: Paul, or the Pauline writer, celebrates what God in Christ has done for the Ephesians, and thankfully prays for them.

Matthew 2.13-23: Joseph, in obedience to the angel’s warning, takes the Holy Family to Egypt and thereby avoids Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.

Whether through insight on the part of the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary or through accidental brilliance, our two readings for last Sunday well complemented each other.

The first, from Paul’s letter to the Galatians (3.23-25, 4.4-7), began by speaking of the law in a not wholly negative sense. (We noted Paul’s variegated view of the law, à la Richard Hays, as Israel’s identity-marker, as bringing Israel and the nations under judgment, as pointing to Christ.) Instead he spoke of it as a custodian such as anciently conducted a child to and from school. But as with the child’s growing up, Christ the Son’s coming “in the fullness of time” brought release of believers from the law and their adoption as sons and heirs. To appreciate the significance of the passage, though, we needed to bear in mind the burden of the whole letter. This was that the Galatians, who initially welcomed with joy Paul’s gospel, had under the influence of other teachers reverted to a degree of legalism. Thus his concern in writing was to deliver them from their “foolish” deviation and bring them back to their original enthusiasm. And this raises the question of the extent to which we too have strayed from our earlier devotion to the gospel, as individuals and as a church.

Our second reading was the Prologue, in full, of John’s Gospel (1.1-18). It is arguably the most sublime passage in the New Testament. And it complements our Galatians passage particularly in its account of darkness and sonship. Further, it may be seen as programmatic of John’s Gospel as a whole and of Jesus’ ministry itself.

We saw it as consisting in three basic moments, which may be seen also in these others. Firstly, it sets out the divine glory of the Word: as being “in the beginning” (cf. Genesis 1.1), as being God as well as with God, as being the agent of creation, the source of life, and the light of men. Secondly, after an interjection about John the Baptist as witness, it speaks of the light coming into the world and of there encountering darkness. The nature of this darkness is indicated in the following.

“He was in the world and the world was made though him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own (Gr. neuter plural, hence things), and his own (Gr. masc. plural, hence people) received him not.”

We might have spent more time on how the darkness is manifested to us. Surely we can see it in the world today, in the wars and civil strife that are now disrupting or extinguishing the lives of so many millions, in the darkening of once-bright economic horizons, in the individual difficulties, failures, and tragedies that we experience. These and not just the formal law are those things which Paul in Galatians saw Christ as delivering us from. And if we, albeit otherwise unscathed, have lapsed in our embrace of this deliverance, then we too are participating in this darkness.

But, thirdly, the darkness has not overcome the light. Instead the Word, as light, has triumphed over it, although the means of this, namely Jesus’ cross and resurrection, is not here made explicit. For some indeed received him, believing in his name. And to them “he gave power [or better authority; the preference also in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christmas sermon] to become children of God.”

And becoming children of God means being born “not of blood nor of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” This is the rebirth, or birth from above, which Jesus envisages in his exchange with Nicodemus (John ch. 3). And the cause together with the consequence of this rebirth is: “The word became flesh and dwelt (literally tented, emphasizing transience) among us. And we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Here is what Paul in his account in Galatians of our sonship leaves only implicit: this perception is the instrument by which our adoption is accomplished.

In the remainder of the passage (vss. 15-18) John the Baptist appears again, reaffirming his subordination and role of bearing witness. It concludes with, “No one has seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known”---or exegeted him, the underlying Greek word being the root of “exegesis.” But we should not overlook the penultimate verse either: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Here, in contrast, to the generality and ethereality of the foregoing, is the naming of names, the setting in the context of history. This is to show that we are not simply to marvel at the sublimity of John’s Prologue, we are also to take it to heart, in the here and now.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted