A New Creation
In the Beginning
Saint John’s gospel starts off with a powerful prelude. The first 18 verses of Chapter 1 function as a prelude not only to the whole of the gospel story but also to the whole of the canon of sacred scripture. This is why if a gospel is read after mass, it’s this prelude. In only a few verses, it captures the essence of the whole story. And Saint John lets us know how much he builds on the message of the prophets before him by remaking the first words of sacred scripture and interpreting them in the light of Christ. For the Scriptures are about Christ.
But, what is a prelude?
In music, it’s an introductory piece of music that is played before a greater work. In poems or other literary work, it is the introductory part. In general, it is an action or event that serves as an introduction to something more important. It comes from the root of two Latin words that combine “before” and “to play,” so preludes are an opening to joy – whether music, literature, or otherwise. There is the hint of something greater to come.
And in Saint John’s gospel, it is all those things and more. For it also fulfills the whole of history and sets us into a new era. Time is literally now divided based on the moment Saint John records when “the Word became flesh.” Time is now told as either “before Christ or “in the year of our Lord.” Humanity now has a divine standard, and we’ve divided all of time by that divine standard, the birth of our King, the moment when the Word was incarnated.
What is remarkable about Saint John’s prelude, is that it is not simply an introduction, it is also a conclusion, a fulfillment. The way Saint John approaches this is by redrafting the words of Moses. Saint John takes the most important words in literary and religious existence and makes them new in Christ. He explains the ancient words of Moses in their fullness. That was John’s prelude.
So, whereas the Prophet Moses wrote,
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Saint John interprets,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Whereas the original trinitarian mystery was hidden and dim in Moses’ account, John shines a light into the mystery so very clearly, “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” More would be explained later, but this is the essence – the Word was both with God and was God.
Whereas the original words of Moses had a definite actor, God in Spirit and Word, John confirms the trinitarian mystery in saying the Word was with God and the Word was God. The perplexing mysteries of the Old Testament like the high priest Melchizedek or the angels Abraham entertains take on new meanings in light of these mysteries. For now, the light is only beginning to shine into the darkness, it will shine more fully soon enough and enlighten mankind.
Yes, Saint John’s prelude is not simply an introduction but a fulfilment. It is a commentary on the whole of human history. Up until that time, Moses’s words were the most important words in human history. John takes a weighty theme to expand upon! His theme is the divine Word incarnate, a mighty theme to weigh in on!
Moses’s words were crucial as they give us meaning to creation, universe, and existence. The first 10 words answer so much. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” those words capture the who, what, when, where and how of our universe. The who? An eternal being called God, existing outside of space and time. The what? All that is within the heavens and the earth – in short, everything. The when? At the beginning of it all. The where? The whole of the universe. The how? God created by his Word. He spoke things into existence, and they happened. On one hand, the explanation seems vague, but it is only because God’s ways are so much higher than ours. Our mere words can only shine a light into this eternal mystery, not understand the divine in its fullness.
Moses’s account would go on to describe what was created and how in a way that gives structure to our world and answers key questions for all of humanity. Every people and culture who hear Moses’s story get good and clear answers about what is important. We learn how to structure our lives in seven day weeks, working six and resting one. We learn all was created by God. We learn we have dominion and that being created male and female allows us to fulfill the command, “be fruitful and multiply.
In short, Moses’s story captures the essence of all that matters and functions as a great introduction to the rest of human history, a story that the ancient Jews would continue to capture and share across the many covenants between God and man as recorded in their sacred traditions and holy writings.
Moses, by the power of the Holy Spirit, wrote a great introduction to the story of God and man. The story that the rest of the bible takes as its theme and expands upon.
And this first story between God and man starts with God but culminates with the introduction of mankind, male and female. The great story is in fact a love story, not simply between man and woman that are gifted with life and commanded to bring forth more life by being fruitful and multiplying, but between God and mankind. For God created us to be like him, which means we are to love, care, and bring forth life. God makes us in his image and likeness. Out of love, he brings forth a universe, creates the earth, fills it with abundant life, and ends when he’s made family in his image and likeness to care for all He created. We join with God to fill his home with life by caring for creation and by making love and making children, that is, making more sons and daughters of our Creator.
Moses’s account is a love story about God, who creates a home and fills it with life abundant, including humanity brought forth in his image and likeness to be guardians over His home and all within it.
At a very basic level, the story Moses told communicates important truths about God – that he is infinite, intricate, and intimate. He is infinite in that he exists outside space and time. He is intricate in that he creates all the heavens and the earth in incredible detail. And he is intimate, for he creates us in love and knows us by name - His name.
Saint John sees this love story. And by taking Moses’s ancient words, Saint John evokes the original story and embeds the whole of his gospel story with a depth that spans all of history. That’s right, Saint John encodes the traditions, hopes, covenants, and scriptures that span the whole story of humanity into his story, and does so with the simple words, “in the beginning.” By doing this, he’s rooted his story in a much larger story, the story of God and man testified by the many covenants of the people of God.
This is key. Saint John has encoded a backstory that now functions not only as a commentary, but also a fulfillment. Something new. Again, this cannot be overstated. John encapsulates thousands of years of history (and probably many more) by evoking the phrase “in the beginning” and all that the people of the earth at the time had attached to those words and all the stories built upon those words.
This is how Saint John sees that love story and teaches us to see, by starting his gospel off with those now famous words, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” In the prelude, Saint John also notes the tragic component of humanity’s rejection of our Creator, spoken of in detail in the witness of the many prophets of God, for John’s prelude includes the heartbreaking lines,
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, but his own people received him not.
Humanity didn’t receive our Creator, the true lover of our souls. The star of the story is rejected… for a time, at least. This is what the prophets had been communicating over thousands of years. The one, in whose image and likeness we are fashioned after, has been neglected. But thankfully God’s love knows no bounds, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
And so, Saint John continues in his prelude,
But to all who received him,
who believed in his name,
he gave power to become children of God;
who were born,
not of blood nor of the will of the flesh
nor of the will of man,
but of God.
And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth.
John tells the whole of the creation story in not only the world being created through the Word, but also the Word dwelling among us. So, the infinite God, outside space and time, is the intricate God who carefully crafts a home, the earth to one day dwell in, and is the intimate God who takes on human flesh to dwell with us in a state of perpetual and eternal love.
For what God does is eternal. “But by envy of the devil, death comes into the world, and those who belong to his party experience it.” But Christ came to conquer the works of the devil so that we might have life – life abundant and life eternal.
Again, this is part of the power of how Saint John takes old scriptures and makes them new in Christ. Saint John doesn’t just tell us to look at the old stories. He assumes and absorbs the old into the new story of Christ. He implies it and asks us to see what he sees. He takes the Prophet’s words as his own and makes them a new creation in Christ. He shows that the whole of scripture is summed up in the Messiah; the whole of humanity finds our beginning and end in Christ Jesus; the whole of history starts and ends with the Word of God. He who said, “let there be light” tells us about Christ that “the true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.”
So, for the people of God, Saint John starts off with a powerful statement. We cannot underestimate how powerful it is that Saint John takes the most famous words in all the Old Testament and locates them in Christ Jesus.
There is so much more we could say, but that’s the point of a prelude. It’s simply an introduction. An invitation into the joy of something more to come. As Saint John truly notes,