Quiet Talks on John's Gospel Part 4

And you say, "Write a gospel? I couldn't do that. You don't mean that.

That's just a bit of preaching." No, it isn't preaching. It's so. I do not mean to write with a common pen of steel or gold; nor on just common paper of rags or wood-pulp. But I do mean--_He_ means--that you shall write with the pen of your daily life. And that you shall write on the paper of the lives of those you're touching and living with every day.

Clearly, He meant, and He means, that you and I shall live such simple unselfish lovable Jesus-touched lives, in just the daily commonplace round of life, that those we live with shall know the whole story of Jesus' love and life; His love burned out for us till there were no ashes, and His life poured out for us till not a red drop was left unspilled.

Are _you_ writing _your_ gospel? Is your life spelling out this simple wondrous G.o.d-story? I can find out, though, of course, I shall not. What I mean is this,--_the crowd knows._ The folks that touch you every day, they know. This old Bible was never printed so much as to-day, nor issued more numerously. And--thoughtfully--it was never read _less_ by the common crowd on the common street of life than to-day.

That doesn't mean that the crowd doesn't read what it supposes to be religious literature. It does. I wish we church folk read our religious literature as faithfully as this crowd I speak of reads its. It is reading _the gospel according to you,_ and reading it daily, and closely, and faithfully, and remembering what it reads, and being shaped by it.

This Bible I have here is bound in--I think it is called sealskin. I tried to get the best wearing binding I could. But I've discovered that there's a better binding than this. The best binding for the Gospel is shoe-leather. The old Gospel of the Son of G.o.d is at its best as it is being tramped out on the common street of life. Its truths stand out clearest as they're walked out. Its love comes warmest, its power is most resistless as it comes to you in the common give-and-take of daily touch in home and shop and street. Are you writing your copy of the Gospel?

You know that sometimes scholars have found some precious ma.n.u.scripts in old monasteries. They have gone into some old, grey, stone monkery in the Near East, and they have run across old ma.n.u.scripts hidden away in some dark cell, covered with dust and with rubbish, perhaps. With much tact and diplomacy they have at length managed to get possession of the coveted ma.n.u.script. And they have been fairly delighted to find that they have gotten hold of a remnant, a very precious remnant, of one of these Gospels. In just this way much invaluable light has been gotten that made possible these precious revised versions.

I wonder if _your_ gospel--the one you're writing with your life--is _just a remnant,_ a ragged remnant. And perhaps there's a good bit of dusting necessary, and removing of rubbish, to get even at what there is there. And some of the shy hungry hearts that touch you and me need to use quite a bit of unconscious diplomacy perhaps to get even as much as they do. I wonder. The crowd knows. It could throw a good bit of light here. How much of this old Jesus-story _are_ you really _living!_

Of course, there's a special touch of inspiration in these four Gospels.

The Holy Spirit brooded over these men in a special way as they wrote.

That is true. These are the standard Gospels. We would never know the blessed story but for these four Spirit-breathed little books. But it is also true that that same Holy Spirit will guide you in the writing of your version of the Gospel.

These four Gospels are different from each other. The colouring of Luke's warm personality, and of his physician habit of thought is in his Gospel very plainly. And so it is with each one of these Gospels. And, even so, there will be the colouring of your personality, your habit of thought, the distinct tinge of the experience you have been through, in the gospel you write with the pen of your life, and bind up in the shoe-leather of your daily round.

But through all of this there will be the simple, subtle, but very real, atmosphere of the Holy Spirit, helping you make the story plain and full, and helping people to understand that story as it is _lived_, as they never can simply by hearing it told with tongues or read through eyes.

Are you writing your gospel? Is your daily life spelling out the life and love of Jesus, that life that was poured out till none was left, that love that was burned out till even the ashes were burned up, too?

This is the Master's plan. And practically it is the crowd's only chance.

G.o.d in Human Garb.

Now I want to have you turn with me to the opening lines of John's Gospel. There are not many of these opening lines. The whole story is a short one. These lines at the beginning are like an etching, there are the fewest touches of pen on paper, of black ink on white surface. But the few lines are put in so simply and skilfully that they make an exquisite picture. It's the picture of _G.o.d coming in human garb as a wooing Lover._

I think it might be best perhaps if I might simply give you _a sort of free reading_ of these opening lines, with a word of comment or ill.u.s.tration to try to make the meaning simpler. It will be a putting of John's words into the simple every-day colloquial speech that we English-speaking people use. John used very simple language in his own telling of the story in his mother-tongue. And it may help if we try to do the same.

You will quickly see how very simple this free translation will be. Yet, let me say, that though homely and simple it will be strictly accurate to what John is thinking and saying in his own native speech. I mean of course, so far as I can find out just what he is thinking and saying.

Let us turn then to John's Gospel, at its beginning. And it will help very much if we keep our Bibles open as we talk and read together.

Listen: _in the beginning there was a wondrous One_. He was the mind of G.o.d thinking out to man. He was the heart of G.o.d throbbing love out to man's heart. He was the face of G.o.d looking into man's face. He was the voice of G.o.d, soft and low, clear and distinct, speaking into man's ears. He was the hand of G.o.d, strong and tender, reaching down to take man by the hand and lead him back to the old trysting-place under the tree of life, down by the river of water of life.

He was the person of G.o.d wearing a human coat and human shoes, hand-pegged, walking in freely amongst us that we might get our tangled up ideas about G.o.d and ourselves and about life untangled, straightened out. He was G.o.d Himself wrapped up in human form coming close that we might get acquainted with Him all over again.

This is part of the meaning of the little five-lettered word in his own tongue that John chooses and uses, at the first here, as a new name for Him who was commonly called Jesus. It was because of our ears that he used the new word. If he had said "Jesus" at once, they would have said "Oh! yes, we know about Him." And at once their ears would have gone shut to the thing that John is saying.

For they didn't know. And we don't. We know _words_. The thing, the real thing, we know so little. So John uses a new word at the first, and so floods in new light. And then we come to see whom he is talking about.

It's a bit of the diplomacy of G.o.d so as to get in through dulled ears and truth-hardened minds down in to the heart.

Nature always seems eager to meet a defect. It seems to hurry eagerly forward to overcome defects and difficulties. The blind man has more acute hearing and a more delicate sense of feel. The deaf man's eyes grow quicker to watch faces and movements and so learn what his ears fail to tell him. The lame man leans more on other muscles, and they answer with greater strength to meet the defect of the weaker muscles.

The bat has shunned the light so long through so many bat-generations that it has become blind, but it has remarkable ears, and nature has grown for it an abnormal sense of touch, and a peculiar sensitiveness even where there is no contact, so that it avoids obstacles in flying with a skill that seems uncanny, incredulous.

I remember in Cincinnati one night, sitting on the platform of a public meeting by the side of a widely known Christian worker and speaker who was blind. As various men spoke he quietly made brief comments to me,--"

_He_ doesn't strike fire." And then, "_He_ doesn't touch them." And then, "Ah! _he's_ got them; that's it; now they're burning." And it was exactly so as he said. I sat fascinated as I watched the crowd and heard his comments. The sense of discerning what was going on in another way than by sight had been grown in him by the very necessity of his blindness. Defect in one sense was overcome by nature, by increase in another sense.

When Queen Victoria was in residence in Scotland at Balmoral it was her kindly custom to present the various clergymen who preached in the Castle chapel with a photograph marked with her autograph. When George Matheson, the famous blind preacher, came she showed the fine thoughtful tact for which she was famous. Clearly an autographed photograph would not mean much in itself to a blind man. So the Queen had a miniature bust-statue made and presented to him as her acknowledgment of his service. And so where his eyes failed to let him see, his sense of touch would carry to his mind and heart the fine features of the gracious sovereign he was so glad to serve.

Jesus was G.o.d coming in such a way that we could know Him _by the feel_.

We had gone blind to His face. We couldn't read His signature plainly autographed by His own hand on the blue above and the brown below. But when Jesus came _men knew G.o.d by the feel_. They didn't understand Jesus. But the sore hungry crowds reached out groping trembling fingers, and they knew Him. They began to get acquainted with their gracious Sovereign.

All this gives the simple clue to this word "_Word_" which John uses as a new name for Jesus. Man had grown deaf to the music of G.o.d's voice, blind to the beauty of His face, slow-hearted to the pleading of His presence. His hand was touching us but we didn't feel it. So He came in a new way, in a very homely close-up way and walked down our street into our own doors that we might be caught by the beauty of His face, and thrilled by the music of His voice, and thralled by the spell of His presence.

G.o.d at His Best.

John goes on: _and this wondrous One was with G.o.d_. There were two of them. And the two were together. They were companions, they were friends, fellows together. _And this One was G.o.d_. Each was the same as the other. _This is the same One who was in the later creative beginning with G.o.d. It was through this One that all things were made. And, of all things that have been made, not any thing was made without Him_.

You remember that John's Gospel and Genesis begin in the same way,--"in the beginning." But John's "in the beginning," the first one, is not the same as the Genesis "in the beginning." John's is the beginning before there was any beginning. It is the beginning before they had begun making calendars on the earth, because there wasn't any earth yet to make calendars on. Then this second time the phrase is used John comes to the later creative beginning with which Genesis opens. This is what John is saying here.

"_In Him was life_." Out of Him came life. Out of Him comes life. There was no life, there is none, except what was in this One, and what came, and comes out from Him all the time. How patient G.o.d is! There walks a man down the street. He leaves G.o.d out of his life. He may remember Him so far as to use His name blasphemously to punctuate and emphasize what he is saying. Yonder walks a woman in the shadow of the street at night.

And her whole life is spent walking in the dark shadow of the street of life. And her whole life is a blasphemy against her personality, and against the G.o.d who gave her that precious sacred personality.

Take these two as extreme ill.u.s.trations. There is life there; life of the body, of the mind, life of the human spirit. Listen softly, all the life there is there, is coming out all the time from this One of whom John is talking. It is not given once as a thing to be taken and stored.

It is _being_ given. It is coming constantly with each breath, from this wondrous One. This is what John is saying here.

How _patient_ G.o.d is! Only we don't know what patience is. We know the word, the label put on the outside. We don't know the thing, except sometimes in very smallest part. For patience is love at its best.

Patience is G.o.d at His strongest and tenderest and best.

I think likely when we get up yonder, we'll stop one another on the golden streets. There'll be a hand put out, gripping the other hard. And we'll look into each other's eyes with our eyes big. And we'll say with breaking voices, "How _patient_ G.o.d was with us down there on the earth, down there in London and New York."

In Him was life. Out of His hand and heart is coming to us all the time all we are and all we have. We may leave G.o.d practically out. So many of us do. But He never leaves us out. The creating, sustaining touch of His Hand is ever upon each of us, upon all the world.

Though He cannot do all for us He would except as we gladly come and let Him. What He is giving us is so _much_. It's our _all_. Yet it is the smaller part. There's the fuller part. This is the whole drive of John's story, this fuller part. Out of Him Jesus, into us will come the newer, the better, the abundant quality of life, if He may have His way.

And John adds,--"_and the life was the light of men."_ He was what we _have_. He gives Himself; not things, but a person. With G.o.d everything is _personal_. We men go to the impersonal so much, or we try to. We do our best at it. We have a great genius for organization, especially in this western half of the earth.

As I came back from a four years' absence from my own country, I was instantly conscious of a change. Either my ears were changed or things about me were. I think likely both. But the wheels were going faster than ever. There were more wheels, and their whir seemed never out of ear-shot. Commercial wheels, and educational, philanthropic and religious, political and humanitarian, thicker and faster than ever, driving all day, and with almost no night there.

And the whole attempt is to make the machine do the thing with as little dependence as possible on the human element, even though the human element was never emphasized more. Contradictory? Yet there it is. We men go to the _im_personal. Yet deep down in our hearts we hunger for the human touch, the warm personal touch. This after all is _the_ thing.

We all feel that. Yet the whole crowding of life's action is to crowd it out.

But with G.o.d everything is personal. The life is the light of men. What He is in Himself--that is what He gives. And this is all the light and life we ever have. Men make botany. G.o.d makes flowers breathing their freshening fragrance noiselessly up into your face. Man makes astronomy.

G.o.d makes the stars, shaking their firelight out of the blue down into your wondering eyes on a clear moonless night. Man makes theology. And theology has its place, when it's kept in its place. _G.o.d gives us Jesus_.

I don't know much about botany. My knowledge of astronomy is very limited. And the more I read of theology, whether Western or Eastern, Latin Church or Greek, the first Seven Councils or the later ones, the more I stand perplexed. It's a thing fearsomely and wonderfully manufactured, this theology. But I frankly confess to a great fondness for flowers, and for stars, and a love for Jesus that deepens ever more in reverential awe and in tenderness and grateful devotion. The life was the light of men. He Himself is all that we have. We go to _things_. We reckon worth and wealth by things. He gives _Himself_. And He asks, not _things_, but one's self.