Readings: Proverbs 8 and John 1
What an attractive picture of the world we see in Proverbs! Our passage this morning reads like an extended commentary to that optimistic refrain to the account of creation in Genesis; \”God saw what he had done and it was good\”. We may perhaps hear a hint of irony in that, but the writer of Proverbs does not. For him it is good because it is founded on Wisdom; on order, restraint and definition; the elements know their place and act as the creatures of a beneficent ruler. The result is the stability and moderation for the human race, in which God delights.
This essentially happy commentary on Genesis continues in our Psalm; the world is full of good things and God rejoices in them; even the terrifying strength of the whale is treated lightly; just a plaything before the greater power of God. The existence of darker damaging forces is acknowledged, but they are aroused, and extinguished by a God who intends no harm. The message is reassuring; the world is safe and benign; good for human kind and its fellow creatures and that is how God intends it to be.
The beginning of St John\’s Gospel echoes those first verses of Genesis; the spirit, the breath of God that moved over the chaotic waters is remembered as the Word- which is also the breath of God-. Speaking is origin of creation as God speaks and creation happens. The groundwork for creation is the ordered and meaningful logic of language; sounds and ideas arranged to make sense and express meaning, just as the elements of the inchoate world will be separated and put in a meaningful place. And as for the Old Testament writers that meaning is Wisdom, for John its meaning is Love, a love which takes human form in Christ; as St Paul puts it the firstborn of all creation; the image of an invisible but creative and loving God.
And yet there is a big divide between John\’s account and the Old Testament version; the creation in which the Word abides, and becomes human in Christ, is dark and threatening one.; the darkness threatens but cannot –or does not- overcome the Light, or the Word, or Love. And we sense that as the light becomes human, so the darkness takes on the destructive blindness and ignorance of humanity. John\’s Gospel is story of Love struggling against the forces of disbelief, ignorance and darkness concentrated, or exemplified, in the Jewish religious establishment which cannot or will not see the signs that Jesus gives them. Perhaps the most telling occasion which contrasts the small but glowing light within a close community, surrounded by darkness, is that devastating sentence that follows Judas\’ departure from the Last Supper; \”It was night\”. Despite the lessons of sacrifice and service within the upper room the light is betrayed from within and the forces of darkness are closing on it.
That is not, of course, the end of the story; and you might think that this depressing world view should be radically altered, turned on its head, by the resurrection; there is no trace of night on that morning, with clothes gleaming in the sunshine and the witnesses\’ eyes blinded and human wits so befuddled the divine brilliance that they can\’t recognise their former companion. This is the new triumphant Eden. But this atmosphere doesn\’t seem to last. There is certainly a triumphant impetus behind the expansion of the new church- and it hasn\’t quite fizzled out even Hampstead two thousand years later -but we infer that the Christian community for whom John was writing was somewhat enclosed, cautious in it relations with the outside world; secure in its sheep-fold but fearful of the wolves and robbers prowling outside. Perhaps the hostility of \”the Jews\” in John\’s Gospel is a projection of this hostility back to the days before the church was founded. The resurrection has changed our view of the world, but it continues to be a dark and dangerous place, often blind to the glory of the risen Christ.
The other Gospel writers share this ambiguity about the new creation. Salvation has arrived, the Kingdom of God is at hand, but we are still waiting; waiting, watchful and ready for the night to turn into morning. This sense of expectation and the need for preparedness pervades the Gospels and St Paul\’s writings and it was no doubt fuelled by the intermittent persecution and hostility which the new Christians encountered in their world.
Which version would you prefer to believe? The picture of an essentially good and settled world pictured by Proverbs? Or the darker but more dynamic world of John?
The world of Genesis Proverbs is complete; God has created it and it is good. The difficulty in this for us is the lack of any sense of evolution; this isn\’t so much of a problem from a scientific point of view (none of this is very scientific!) but it does matter that that we miss any sense of growth, and our own role as both creatures and co-creators. A static world takes away our sense of responsibility. Equally, development and growth imply change, pain and decay. A worldview that ignores, or underplays the cycle of death and regeneration, may be more comfortable but is ultimately unsatisfying.
The world of John, on the other hand, is a struggle; not in the natural world but in the human sphere. I don’t think John ever comments on or notices the natural world in which Jesus moves and the physical environment has only a small place in the other Gospels (and none at all I think in Paul’s letters). John\’s world is one of human forces struggling; light and love and life against blind ignorance, envy, pride and selfishness, and deadly violence. But it is one in which after great suffering, love and life triumph; and while more disturbing, this story is in the more fulfilling.
We inhabit a world less certain of the goodness of nature; our efforts seem to have at last upset the benign equilibrium but we also know that our power to destroy is matched by a power to increase the bounty and beauty of the natural world. We are, however, still surrounded by dangerous people; people blinded by ideologies which have grown out of greed, despair and fear; the ideologies of the Free Market, the refugee camp and the perceived corrupting effect of western values. I don’t think we can afford to lose either Proverbs’ or John’s models. The world both human and physical is essentially good capable of bounty and boundless love and we should be optimistic, but it’s also capable of corruption and violent outbreaks; the natural ones, the earthquakes and floods, we cannot understand, but we can understand, and can hope to remedy, those which come from the faults in our own nature. And while we may be able to restore the physical world with respect, restrain and wisdom, it will require imitation of the sacrificial love shown by the Word made flesh to win back man to the peaceful and loving state which is meant for him. Amen