Sermon for the Feast of St. John the Evangelist
“These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full”
Nowhere is the doctrinal paradox and meaning of Christmas more wonderfully and clearly stated than on the Feast of St. John the Evangelist. He is the theologian par excellence as the early Church recognized. Like the eyes of an eagle soaring high into the sun, John sees most deeply into the mystery of God. We largely see through the eyes of John. His Gospel symbol is the eagle, just as in many of our Churches, the Scriptures are read from an eagle lectern.
His witness and writings enlightened the Church’s understanding of “the light of [God’s] truth” that the Church “walk[ing] in the light of thy truth … may at length attain to the light of everlasting life,” as the Collect puts it. Life and light, just as we heard on Christmas Eve from the Prologue of his Gospel for “in him was life, and the life was the light of men.” This morning we read from his 1st Epistle and from the last Chapter of his Gospel. Beginnings and endings even as the Revelation of St. John the Divine, which might also be reasonably attributed to him, proclaims Jesus as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. It is really all about our being gathered into the life and light of God.
What that means for us is signalled in these readings. What is it? It is our joy, the joy of our fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ in the bond of the Holy Spirit. It is from John especially that we learn the meaning of the Incarnation and the Trinity. John teaches us the most about Jesus as the Son of the Father and about the Holy Spirit, sent from the Father in the name of the Son (Jn. 14.26), and sent by the Son from the Father to us (Jn. 15.26). He who is the eternally and only-begotten of the Father, comes from the Father into the world and leaves the world and goes to the Father (Jn 16.28). This exitus, going forth, and reditus, returning, is our joy and our salvation, not the “conversion of the Godhead into flesh,” thus ceasing to be God, but “by taking of manhood into God” (Athanasian Creed, BCP, p. 697). Such is the doctrinal paradox of the Incarnation that Christ is true God and true man.
Something of these deeper theological truths, born out of the writings of John, are signalled to us in these readings this morning. The Uncontainable becomes contained, the uncreated Creator becomes a created being but without the annihilation of either. The distinction of Creator and created, of God and Man is held together in the unity and truth of God. The Epistle emphasizes the very truth of the Word made flesh: “that which was from the beginning” – from the eternity of God – “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled” is nothing less than “the Word of life” to which “we have seen and bear witness,” John says. That life which was manifested, made known, is “eternal life,” made known for our fellowship in that eternal life of the Trinity. That life is light for “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all,” for this is “the light [that] shineth in darkness, and the darkness overcame it not.”
