The Urgent vs. the Important

It's easy to say that it's essential, if we want to live a good and full life, that we must not let the urgent things in our lives squeeze out the important things.   It's easy to say this, but it's often hard to live this way.

As a priest in a parish that is quite tiny so that I am what passes for the secretary as well as the Priest in Charge, this is especially true.  I try to make a bulletin that is attractive and has some sort of decent and interesting and relevant art on the cover.  But really, if I let this urgent and deadline-driven task take precedence over the regular study of the Bible and regular and wide reading that make for better preaching, I have probably let the urgent rule over the important.

Pastors used to have a room they called their "study."   Now we have offices.  I love the small room in my house, where, surrounded by books and a desk and a comfortable chair or two, I can meet a parishioner, confer with my clergy colleagues, or spread out reference books.  But I'm afraid it would be pretentious to call it my "study," because I don't make the time that I should for this important but seldom urgent work.

Today I have some time to study the first chapter of John's Gospel.  We will be reading John 1:43-51 on Sunday as our Gospel reading.  On the Sunday after Christmas, we always read the prologue to John, the first 18 verses of this chapter.  And in Advent, we read verses 19-28.  As much as I love our three year lectionary, it's a weakness of the Revised Common Lectionary that we read the Gospel of John in segments over the course of the three years, but focus in each of the three years on one of the Synoptic Gospels.  On the other hand, it might be terribly tedious, if we had a 4 year lectionary cycle, to have to preach from John every week.  The narrative and discursive rhythms of John don't easily lend themselves to being carved into short liturgical readings.  The creators of our lectionary recognized this and there are some VERY long, but magnificent gospel readings from John in Lent during Year A, for example.

So… I'm taking time to delve into tho 1st chapter of John, reading from The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford, 2011) where, in her introductory essay, Adele Reinhartz writes that John's Gospel "presents a sublime vision of a future salvation that is also in some inexplicable way already a present reality."    Yes. Yes. Yes.

She continues:  "Many readers love this Gospel because of its sublime language and imagery, and its ability to lift its readers out of the historical moments of Jesus' life to the lofty heights of the cosmos.  Others dislike it because of its insistence on the exclusive truth of its message, and the absence of space for any other way of viewing the world" (p. 152).    And she notes that "John's Gospel has been called the most Jewish and the most anti-Jewish of the Gospels."

Her description of "the Johannine narrative" is helpful:
As a "life" of Jesus, the Gospel of John tells what we might term a "historical tale," in that it situates Jesus' story in its historical context of Galilee and Judea, during the decades leading up to the first Jewish Revolt against Rome.  The Gospel also tells a cosmological story of the preexistent Word of God who enters the world, conquers Satan, and returns to the Father.  This cosmological tale exists within and behind the account of Jesus' words and deeds.  The historical tale, which describes his interactions with his followers and his opponents, is evident primarily through the platy, which traces Jesus' life from the moment of his identification by John the Baptist (1.19-36) through to his crucifixion (ch 19) and his resurrection appearances to the disciples (cha 20-21).  The cosmological tale is told both by the narrator and by Jesus, in their comments and reflections upon Jesus' life and death" (p. 156). 

As we move from the prologue to the narrative portion of John 1, the first question that "the Jews" ask is "WHO ARE YOU?"  They ask the question, not of Jesus but of John (the Baptizer)  (1:19).

John's Gospel does not present a narrative of the baptism of Jesus, but rather introduces a dialogue about Jesus as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world"  (1:29).

Reinhartz notes that John's Gospel makes a distinction between those he calls "the Jews" who tend to be the ones that reject a notion of Jesus as the Messiah--and those he calls "Israelites" who tend to be faithful followers of the LORD God.

For some completely incomprehensible reasons, the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary separate 1:35-42 from 1:43-51.  The former is read in Year A on the second Sunday of Epiphany, the latter in Year B.  And both passages are separated from the passage where Jesus is first identified as the Lamb of God and where the question "Who ARE you?"--so important in the Gospel of John--is first introduced.  

This is why I think it's important for followers of Jesus to read and study the Bible outside of the context of Sunday morning worship.  It's just not possible to get these connections and appreciate them in a typical Anglican 10 - 15 minute sermon.

It's clear that a notion of call is an important theme for Epiphany.  The actual feast day has twin emphases: that God called the Magi via the star and they followed; and that God calls and welcomes Gentiles as well as Jews to worship and follow Jesus as Savior of the World.    The First Sunday after the Epiphany always invites us to consider the baptism of Jesus, how God identifies Jesus as "my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased" and how God may, at our baptism, welcome us into a relationship of sonship.   Then, once we are baptized, what is expected of us as children of God?  We are invited to heed the call of discipleship.  We are invited this year to remember the importance of listening, as we reflect in this context on the story of the young boy Samuel, whom Eli instructed to respond to God's very personal call with the words: "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening."