This Sunday
the Gospel takes a short excursion from Mark’s Gospel to John, in order to have
Advent blessed once again with these sublime words:
From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. God’s only Son, close to the Father’s heart, he has made him known. [John 1:16-18]
Last week the gospel reading announced good news – and the good news could scarcely have been more momentous. It was nothing less than a radical shift in our understanding and encounter with God. John dwells on exactly that contrast here. The law was given through Moses -- grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. It is not that the law is set aside as though it is now abolished. Law and behaviour matter as always. God however judges us not by the law but by love, by grace and truth. We know this, because grace and truth are what we encounter in Christ. They are what we encounter when in silence and stillness we cease our attempts to justify ourselves. And grace and truth are what we encounter in other people who open themselves to God.
Grace, the lovely Greek word χαρις, usually goes with
truth, as though they are twins. After
the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa they needed some serious justice
mechanism to deal with the monstrous crimes of the past. Under leaders such as Desmond Tutu they
constituted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This was never perfect, and is still
criticised by some, but it has remained a remarkable exercise in grace and
truth. The principle was, if you told
the truth about all you had done, and heard the truth and accepted it from your
accusers, then, knowing the truth, you might petition to be free of the legal consequences
of the past in an act of grace. Month
after month, at immense cost to themselves, the commission heard these testimonies. Truth and grace went together, belonged
together, depended on each other.
So John can write:
From his fullness we have all
received, grace upon grace. It is as
though God has nothing other to give but grace – love independent of merit or
worth. “Fullness” is a special word in
Greek which scholars go on and on about.
It reminds me however of the now frequently heard colloquialism,
“like”… I was like, O my god! It
denotes that everything in me was just that and nothing else. We can borrow this colloquial adverb – God is
like…grace upon grace.
John goes on to write:
No one has ever seen God. It is
God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. God is absent from our sight. The best and primary view of God we have is
Jesus. John informs us, Jesus is close to the Father’s heart… he has made God
known. “I learn of God from nature,”
announced the formidable chair-woman of a Garden Club, informing me where true
revelation was to be found. She knew how
to fertilise her petunias. I thought of
Tennyson, and of nature “red in tooth and claw”, nature often just as beautiful
as she sees, but just as often devouring its young, destroying cities and
villages, growing malignant viruses…
It is Jesus who draws aside the veil. The view we get is partial, tantalising,
perhaps. But we do see the way to walk,
the path to follow. And to stop, be
still and silent, is to check that we are once again, still, on that path.
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