A New Creation
The Beloved
The name John means “God is gracious” or “God’s gift.” And to the confusion of many new Christians, God is so gracious that he gives us multiple John’s of much importance to the early Church. So many that we now decorate their names with prefixes (i.e., Saint) and suffixes (e.g., the Beloved, the Baptist) to distinguish them from each other. In this book, two John’s will be mentioned frequently. Both earned the honor of having Saint before their name. One was the gospel writer, the other baptized Jesus. The gospel writer is also known as Saint John the Beloved. This is the Saint John we will discuss in this section.
What an honor! That the Church would see God so clearly through your life that everyone refers to you as Saint and adds Saint before your name every time they say your first name. Can you imagine?! That has to be the highest honor bestowed on any human that walks God’s green earth. And God’s gift to us today is to have a history of humanity where God gifts us so many saints that we all find some saint that helps us grow in unique ways and holiness. A model of Christ adapted from the many molds of humanity.
In Saint John the Beloved’s case, he had his own model who shared the same birthname. Saint John the Baptist not only baptized Jesus, but the Baptist was also a mentor and teacher to Saint John the Beloved. John the Beloved is also known as John the Revelator, John the Evangelist, and even as one of the Sons of Thunder, among many other names and nicknames given to our beloved Saint John. As we know, nicknames are most often given to those we love, and it makes sense the one known as the beloved likewise had many lovely nicknames.
And as for me, never in my life had I read anyone who writes like Saint John the Beloved. He is a poet who writes prose. His writings are circular, reminding me of songs, where the chorus comes in again and again. He revisits themes to expand on them. He foreshadows and gives us preludes. He reminds me of music where the same notes are revisited and hit on in different wavelengths and frequencies. And my favorite part of all, he reminds me of an old grandfather distilling a lifetime of wisdom in the most efficient way possible, not efficient because he is brief or direct, but the opposite. Efficient because he wanders and meanders and finds insights in so many things that he brings back to Christ. He has a wide weave yet always finds the way of the Lord. His stories hit on many levels – the eternal, the personal, the communal. The literal, the spiritual. He has layers. He may walk the straight and narrow path, but that path weaves through a wonderful and intricate tapestry that wanders and traverses thru highlands and lowlands and islands and waterways in the most adventurous way possible, and all to find and know God. Or, more accurately, to finally learn to see how God finds and loves us. He deeply understands, we are all God’s beloved.
Saint John is deep. I had never heard anyone write so much about eternal life. He was quoting the words of Christ, of course, but while Jesus spoke to them, he was the wise man smart enough to write them. He made Christ’s words a record for us to listen to for all eternity.
And I personally love the way he introduces himself into the story at key moments. Simply calling himself the Beloved who reclines on the breast of Christ.
When Jesus had thus spoken, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was lying close the breast of Jesus; so, Simon Peter beckoned to him and said, “Tell us who it is of whom he speaks.” So, lying thus, close to the breast of Jesus, he said to him, “Lord, who is it?”
What a joy, to open oneself up to the love of the eternal God in such a profound and innocent manner. Because he is close to Jesus’s heart, he is free to ask the eternal Word the hard questions about his betrayal and betrayer. Lying close to Jesus’s heart, he spends the Last Supper with him, and did not leave him on his journey to the cross. Close to his heart, and at the cross, the Beloved disciple is the one Christ entrusts his mother with. What an honor, to take the mother of our Lord into his home as his own mother! Truly, a model for all of us.
Saint John has an artist’s eye for detail. He has written possibly the greatest sentences in all of literature. “Jesus wept.” Can you imagine? God in the flesh, crying, weeping for his lost friend. Weeping at sin and death, at his grieving sister, at the pain of this world. Jesus wept. What a beautiful line, sentiment, truth. God cares. God loves. Jesus wept.
Saint John, my Beloved Writer, communicates more in 2 words than whole books of theology. He communicates more in 2 words than the greatest authors do across whole canons of writings. Who else has a God like ours? One so close to us that we can touch his flesh, receive his love, and see him weep not only for his friends but for all humanity. The creator of heaven and earth weeps with us because he truly dwells with us. He understands us. He loves us. No other god does this. Only our Immanuel. God dwells among us. And our God loves us.
And of course, Saint John records so many other beautiful lines and phrases. I still can’t fathom his subtle, “And it was night.” What incredible imagery to capture the coming betrayal of Judas, given over to Satan for the evil deeds done and about to be done. It sets the stage for the whole of the passion narrative, the whole of the story that kicks off with “let there be light” is about to truly prove that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” But at that moment of the Last Supper, it was night. What a poet and storyteller Saint John is!
Appropriate to his literary genius, I think he has best ending to any story I have ever heard. Even better than “the end” or “and they lived happily ever after” common end to our many modern stories and fairy tales. Yes, the best ending to any piece of literature is from the gospel that bears his name. It is an ending that captures the eternal magnificence of our Lord, one that isn’t simply an ending but a new beginning. Hear his ending at our beginning,
This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
He wraps up the story about Christ Jesus in a way that we learn it’s not simply myth or legend. It’s a true story. It’s news. We are gifted with a biography. A gospel. News of our king! It happened. And it happened for a purpose. And there is so much more to tell, so in a sense we might end hearing Saint John’s gospel, but we won’t end thinking about his gospel or experiencing it. The gospel starts again. It is new and renewed. Written in a particular time and place, yet the gospel is eternal. For there was so much more that happened that couldn’t be written or compiled or mentioned in his gospel. Only by re-reading might we begin to grasp some of the divinity that had to descend into human flesh, the word made flesh so that we could hear him, know him, be taught by him. Be loved by him.
I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.