John 1:1-18 NRSVue
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
6There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.,
10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) 16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace., 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
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Some thoughts on this scripture
Reflection
The crib gives us one perspective on Jesus: on a human scale, easy to imagine
and love. The Fourth Gospel gives us a cosmic perspective: Jesus as the power
and intelligence with which God created and sustains the world, existing
before time and space. Jesus is the Logos, the word, the source of life,
which is the light of all people.
Reflection
John's Gospel opens with a Prologue, a hymn that sums up John's view of who
Jesus was. John asserts, in opposition to the synagogue leaders, that Jesus
was a divine being. In trying to explain what he meant, he drew on ideas from
the Old Testament that spoke of God's Word, or God's Wisdom, present to God
before the world was created. God's Wisdom was 'the fashioner of all things.'
(Wisdom 7:22) From John's point of view, Jesus was God's Word spoken to the
people of Israel.
Reflection
At his birth, Jesus was truly God, but he no longer knew it. In the same way,
each of us is born male or female -objective fact - but it take us a long
time to grasp even a hazy understanding of what that means. So it was with
Jesus. Just as with each one of us, his lifetime was a series of new insights
into who he was.
Reflection
The crib gives us one perspective on Jesus: on a human scale, easy to imagine and love. The fourth Gospel gives us a cosmic perspective: Jesus as the power and intelligence with which God created and sustains the world, existing before time and space. Jesus is the Logos, the word, the source of life, which is the light of all people.