Advent Week 4: John's Gospel

John's gospel, like Mark, fails to have a distinct advent story. In fact, John differs greatly from any gospel in the aspect that this godpel fails to really anticipate the coming of the Christ. Rather John is more concerned with saying something like this,"Hey, this Jesus Guy, He has been around all along, He has existed since the beginning, He was around before your father's father, and he will be around long after your kid's kids." 

It does however make sense that John begins differently, seeing as he was writing a book that was heavily influenced by Greek thought or at the very least written to people that were influenced heavily by Greek thought. And one of the things Greek thought  abhorred was new things. A bad advertising strategy to get Greek thinkers to buy your product back then would have been, "hey buy this item it is new and improved." Rather a better strategy may have been, "try the same old comfortable thing, it's the same as it was 2,000 years ago!" Sounds like some of our churches, so the concept shouldn't be too hard to grasp.

 But I digress, John really wanted to say, hey this Jesus guy has been around, and guess what, He is a light to the dark world, and he can't be overcome! Which is true, because as one preacher pointed out, dark and light never can compete against each other, because light will always shine in the darkness, and darkness can never exist once light becomes present. Now the question remains is this, where does Jesus shine? Where does His light exists? Well it is supposed to exist in His followers, after all His followers are a light that is not to be extinguished, and they are to be a great city on a hill. 

So what can we learn from this gospel in the season of advent? It's that yes we can wait for the Christ to come again in bodily form, but it is also that we need to live as Christ is still present as He has been from the beginning, and that we are to be the bearers of His light. So don't let advent be a time where we stop being a light because we are so focused on waiting for the light to re-enter the world. Rather, remember that Christ is still present  (as he has always been) and that He calls us to be His light, or do His will.