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13 = 1 Prologue (John 1:1-18) John’s Prologue raises the issue of understanding who Jesus was and what he was saying in a very powerful way. It falls into three parts, which, much like the three stanzas of a poem, work together to focus the reader’s eye on the claims John wants us to consider. John lays many of his positions out in advance, giving us a kind of outline to be filled in later, but he crucially leaves one question unanswered—how Jesus gives life to the world. When we hear ourselves addressed by the Gospel in the narrative that follows, it is that question to which it will be formulating an answer.1 1:1-18 The first part of the Prologue describes Jesus from the broadest perspective imaginable, positioning us outside of space and time: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (1:1-5) As most readers notice, John is deliberately echoing the first verses of Genesis here. Rather than name Jesus directly, he begins with a way of thinking about him. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” Genesis 1:1 reads. The earth was “formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.” Into that darkness and emptiness, God spoke and life was created—“Let there be light” being the first words uttered. What 14 John in the Company of Poets John now claims is that when God spoke, the Word through which he created all things was actually a separate being, there with him from before all time, co-eternal, a part of his identity.2 This Word, capitalized in all translations to show his standing, was both separate from God (“with” him before all things began) and the same as him (he “was” God). This is an extraordinary claim, of course, and arguments for and against the divinity of Jesus will rage throughout the Gospel. But just as extraordinary is the metaphor itself—hardly a metaphor at all—the title that John uses: Word. Two things stand out. First, John is claiming that Jesus represents God. Just as our words spell out and make visible our thoughts and intentions, so Jesus speaks God forth and makes visible his very nature, first of all to himself. Our words, of course, constantly disappoint—they do not fully represent what we actually think, or they represent something not there at all, and so forth. John’s point is that in Jesus God spoke himself forth fully—he was separate from God, as our words are from our hearts, let us say, but at the same time he “was” God. When God spoke Jesus to the world, Jesus was everything he intended to say. He spoke forth his whole heart. Second , and this is why John begins with the Genesis reference, as God’s Word spoken once again into the unformed darkness of the world, Jesus had within himself the power to create life. John spells this out. “In Him was life,” and “by Him” all things that “came into being” were given form and shape and existence. What was once true is true again, for now, says John, God has spoken into a deeper darkness—a spiritual darkness—but with exactly the same intent: to create life where there was none, bringing into existence an inner responsiveness to God. These two ideas come together in the last verses of this first section of the Prologue. When God spoke Jesus into the world, he said, “Let there be light,” bringing life to darkness. But, John adds, what God said and did through Jesus had to be “comprehended” in order for that life to come about. That gives us the charged fifth verse: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [or overcome] it.” The light that God spoke into the world through Jesus still “shines,” John remarks. It still makes visible God’s heart. It is still the way he shows himself to the world. And this is true even if the darkness “did not comprehend it,” past tense...

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