Week 30: John 1
John 1:14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
*《道成了肉身，住在我们中间》
Truth Translates Well
One of the most amazing features of the gospel is how it seems to thrive in the process of being passed from one language and culture to another. Think about the multicultural life of Jesus and the words uttered from his mouth: a Jewish man who knew Hebrew and perhaps some Greek and Latin, spoke Aramaic with those around him whose words and life story come to us from Greek translated into English. Simply put, there is nothing simple about the linguistic and cultural odyssey the gospel has taken to get to us; and yet, truth translates well. How central is translation to our faith? Think also about Pentecost and the stunned crowds saying: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?” (Acts 2:7-8) The church was born as the gospel went out in many tongues. Truth translates well.
The Word Became Flesh
John Chapter 1 is all about translation: the transformation of The Word into a body made of the stuff of the physical world we live in, a form that humans can see and touch and hear and even smell (have you ever imagined a sweating God, perhaps even with body odor?). Not only does our God have a human body (It’s worth noting that Jesus would be considered a “person of color” in our American racial landscape) with all its inherent limitations but he also has a human story filled with ups and downs, heartache, betrayal and joy. We are not people in the abstract and our God is not a God in the abstract. Jesus has a human body and a human story and is the image of the invisible God (John 1:18 and Col. 1:15). Jesus is the translation of God into a form that we--as earth-bound humans--can better understand. When we look at Jesus, the veil has been taken away (2 Cor. 3:14).
This is My Body
The Word became flesh and lived among us and then the night before God’s body was to be destroyed by the state, he held up bread, made from water and flour, and declared: this is my body (Luke 22:19). Jesus's message was this: we can know and experience God here in this created world because God has a body and incarnation does not end with my death. This is part of what we remember every week when we celebrate The Lord's Supper together. The meal is a communion with each other, with God, and a recognition that our God through Jesus can be found in the simplest and most common things in our life (bread, wine, companionship, a walk in the park, wild flowers, and perhaps most poignantly suffering). These two declarations--The Word took on flesh and This is my body--are at the heart of our faith--pointing to incarnation--and they have massive repercussions for us.
Come and See
We should love and embrace our bodies (all of them: black, white, brown and every shade in between) and the physical world we inhabit (Christians should lead the charge for understanding and loving our physical environment). Our bodies and this created world are a part of what we have in common with God through Jesus who created them (“Through him all things were made...” John 1:3). The invitation in John 1 is clear: come and see because God has a body--he is not an idea or an abstract notion to be debated. He can be known, here and now, in this world with your senses. John the Baptist says, “Look, the Lamb of God!” (v. 29 and 36) as Jesus walks toward him and his disciples. Jesus’s first disciples' initial inquiries about his origins are met with “Come and you will see” (v. 39). Nathanael, incredulous that anything good can come from Nazareth (a very human story), is challenged by Phillip with the same message, “Come and see” (v. 46). And finally the same Nathanael, already amazed by Jesus’s power, is told that what he has seen is nothing compared to what he will see. We can see and know our God because he took on flesh and told us this (bread) is my body.
The Gate of Heaven
In John 1:50-51 as he describes the wonders Nathanael will see in his life ahead following Jesus, Jesus references a vision of Jacob, the great Hebrew patriarch, that led the patriarch to proclaim that the place where he fitfully, fearfully slept with a rock as a pillow was “none other than the house of God… the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:17). (This was a reference Nathanael was sure to get as Jesus describes him in v. 47 as "a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.") In Genesis 28, Jacob sees a “stairway” spanning the divide between heaven and earth with the LORD at the top and “angels of God... ascending and descending on it" (Gen. 28:12-13). In John 1 Jesus instead casts his body as the bridge between heaven earth (“You shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” v. 51). Jesus’s point is clear: in me there is no divide between heaven and earth; I’m the bridge. This place where I am is the gate of heaven that your forefather Jacob’s eyes were opened to see.
God’s Appeal
And there’s more. Now we are the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27), that bridge between heaven and earth. We are now in the business of translating the message, the gospel of God taking on flesh. We (collectively) are the current embodiment of Jesus with all our human stories (loves, failures, sicknesses, and triumphs) and physical bodies (tall and short, strong and weak, Black and white, Chinese and American). God is making his appeal through us (2 Cor. 5:20). We have access to God here and now (the gate of heaven) and we are now that bridge between heaven and earth. To say that God has a body is to confess to the limits of time and space, to embrace that things can be broken, burned, hurt and healed (This is my body, broken for you. 1 Cor. 11:24) and still show us the invisible God; we must embrace our stories and our bodies with all the earthbound limitations inherent. We lift up our own broken and hurt bodies and our embrace of God's creation and invite others to come and see. We pray that our eyes and that the eyes of others will be opened and we can join Jacob and Nathanael in saying:
“How awesome is this place!
This is none other than the house of God;
this is the gate heaven.” (Gen 28:17)
“Rabbi, you are the Son of God;
You are the King of Israel.” (John 1:49)
* I had my own eye-opening moment with the first chapter of John in a house church in Hangzhou, China many years ago. The translation of John 1:14 into Chinese was mind blowing for me that evening and continues to incite wonder in me about the mystery of incarnation to this day.