Today has been our Patronal Festival at St John's and we have been reflecting on the significance of St John Apostle and Evangelist. Richard Burridge, in his important book Four Gospels, One Jesus?, tells us that: “The ninth-century writer John Scotus Eriugena’s ‘Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St John’ is usually known as ‘The Voice of the Eagle’ from its opening words. He uses the eagle to represent the evangelist, ‘the spiritual bird, fast-flying, God-seeing’ ascending higher even than St Paul’s vision of the third heaven as he sought to reveal the mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation in his Prologue (Voice, 4-5).”
In his Gospel John gives us the high-flying far-seeing perspective of the eagle when he writes about Jesus. Burridge says that, “in the other gospels, Jesus’ story takes place in the horizontal dimensions of the geography and history of Israel; John brings in the vertical – Jesus is above and beyond all that. His place is ‘with God’, his time is before the beginning of everything.” For John, “it is not enough to explain Jesus in human origins of time or place or ancestry, since he exists before all time: in the beginning he was with God, and he is God (1.1).”
John’s “story of Jesus joins creation and re-creation together: Jesus is nothing less than God, and has come from being with God in the beginning.” This is the perspective of the eagle. Looking down from the heights, the eagle sees the big picture. John, in writing his Gospel, sees the big picture about Jesus. He sees, not just what Jesus did, but also the significance of what he did. He sees, not just who Jesus was, but the significance of who Jesus was and this is what he writes so that we can know the truth about Jesus.
Often in our lives all we see is what is happening to us at the time. We find it hard to stand back and look at life from a broader perspective. As a result, we sometimes find it hard to know where God is in our lives and troubles. The Bible thought continually calls us to consider the bigger picture, to think about eternity, to remember that God works his purposes out through human history not just through our lives.
Reading John’s Gospel can help us get that bigger picture, that broader, wider perspective on life that is the perspective of the eagle. When we do, we can come to believe that God is in control and that we can trust our lives to him. John first learnt that trust at the side of Jesus, leaning close to him at the last supper. In his Gospel he shows us why we too can trust Jesus by unveiling the bigger picture of God at work in our world to save and restore us.
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Check out Bob Dylan's Ring Them Bells.
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