2 January – First Reading
Commentary on 1 John 2:22-28
Again today we discuss the ‘fourth condition’ for ‘walking in the light’, which continues the warnings about the antichrist and false teachers in the community.* In today’s text, an “antichrist” is defined as someone who denies that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. The antichrist is a “liar”; he is totally opposed to Jesus Christ, who is the Truth:
I am the way and the truth and the life. (John 14:6)
The writer says:
No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also.
This comment seems to refer to the Gnostic Cerinthus. He taught that the Son of God entered the man Jesus only at his baptism and left before the Passion. But Jesus emphatically affirms elsewhere:
The Father and I are one. (John 10:30)
The reading continues:
As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, so you do not need anyone to teach you.
This needs to be properly understood. Since the Bible constantly advocates teaching (Matt 28:20; 1 Cor 12:28; Eph 4:11; Col 3:16; 1 Tim 4:11; 2 Tim 2:2,24), John is certainly not ruling out human teachers and in fact he refers to them (“…what you heard from the beginning…”). At the time when he was writing, Gnostic teachers were insisting that the teaching of the Apostles needed to be supplemented with the ‘higher knowledge’ that the Gnostics claimed to possess.
John is saying that the teaching the Christians have received from their Spirit-guided teachers is not only enough, but is the only reliable source of the true message. The author appeals to his readers to remain faithful to the teaching they heard from the beginning and not to be led astray. And it is not enough just to have heard the teaching or to know its content (for the Gnostics, knowledge was everything). The message of the teaching has to be totally assimilated so that it becomes part of ones’s whole life—words, actions and relationships. As Paul said to the Galatians:
I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Gal 2:19-20)
Through this assimilation one becomes a ‘new’ person.
The promise being given is that of eternal life. And that life is not just at some future time, but begins immediately we attach ourselves to Jesus and his Way. Using a favourite expression, the writer of the letter says:
…you will abide in the Son and in the Father.
That is the source of the life to be experienced here and now.
Through that union with Son and Father, one is ‘anointed’ by the Holy Spirit who helps us to understand all we need to know to live the life that Jesus proposes to us. It is for us to remain in him, and then and only then will we be ready when he comes to call us to himself:
…so that when he is revealed we may have confidence and not be put to shame before him at his coming.
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*The first part of John’s Letter describes four conditions for ‘walking in the light’. See 1 John 1:5—2:28.
2 January – Gospel
Commentary on John 1:19-28
From today until January 5 inclusive, we will be reading from the beginning of John’s Gospel after the Prologue and up to the story of the wedding at Cana. This corresponds to Chapter 1 and the beginning of Chapter 2. It begins with John the Baptist’s testimony about himself, and then Jesus’ revealing himself to his first disciples. It finishes with the wedding feast at Cana, described as the first of the ‘signs’ performed by Jesus. There are seven such ‘signs’ altogether in John’s Gospel. The whole section covers just one week, which reflects the first week of creation in the book of Genesis. Here there is a new creation under way.
The section is divided as follows:
- John the Baptist’s negative testimony about himself.
- His positive testimony about Jesus.
- The revelation of Jesus to Andrew and Peter (in that order).
- The revelation of Jesus to Philip and Nathanael (also in that order).
- The wedding feast at Cana.
Today we look at the first section, John the Baptist’s ‘negative’ testimony about himself. It is clear that John the Baptist was causing something of a stir with his preaching. As such, officials were sent out from the Temple in Jerusalem to make some enquiries. Because he said he was not the long-awaited Messiah, they wanted to know who he was. He said he was not Elijah come again (whose re-appearance was expected to signal the imminent arrival of the Messiah), nor was he a Prophet like Moses. But his questioners persisted, as they had to bring back some information to the authorities in Jerusalem. John answered them with a modified version of words from Isaiah:
I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord’. (Is 40:3)
This still does not satisfy, and now some Pharisees—distinct from the priests, who were all Sadducees—want to know why John is baptising when he is neither the Messiah, nor Elijah nor the Prophet.
John says that he is just baptising with water:
I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal.
By these words, he implies that someone who is really a Prophet is on the way, and bringing with him a much greater baptism. John is simply preparing the way by a baptism whose emphasis is on purification and repentance. The new baptism will bring the power of God’s Spirit.
Obviously, there is much in John the Baptist’s role with which we can identify. John preceded Jesus in time, and prepared people for his coming. We, rather, are called to precede Jesus in other ways by making it possible for other people to come to know him and to follow him. We are not the Light, but we are called to give constant witness to the Light. Jesus said that he was the “Light of the World” (John 8:12), but he also said to his disciples:
You are the light of the world. (Matt 5:14)
And so we must ask, do I see myself as reflecting the light of Jesus to others?
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