Whereas Our Lady, by her maternity, St Peter by Our Lord’s charge and St Paul by the Damascus Road commission are noted for action St John, is on the record rather for being with Our Lord, the beloved disciple, contemplating, discerning and sharing his contemplation with us through the inspired writings that take pride of place in the New Testament.
As our patron St John invites us to make use of quieter time after Christmas Day to be with the Lord as his beloved disciples, to contemplate and seek the gift of discernment as we look forward to a new year.
How do we see St John? Today’s feast is of St John, Apostle and Evangelist and the Collect reminds us how we are ‘enlightened by [the Apostle’s] teaching so we may [see and] walk in the light of God’s truth’. The consequence of welcoming Christ, John the Evangelist teaches is to ‘attain to the light of everlasting life’. No writing in scripture puts the invitation of the risen Lord Jesus Christ more plainly than that of St John in his Gospel, his letters, and his association with the Book of Revelation.
Today’s entrance antiphon summarises our patron: ‘This is John, who reclined on the Lord’s breast at supper, the blessed Apostle, to whom celestial secrets were revealed and who spread the words of life through all the world’.
Over my years I have been privileged to visit places traditionally associated with St John. Galilee where the Lord called him from his work as a fisherman. Mount Thabor where he was privileged to see Jesus in glory. Jerusalem’s Mount Calvary where he stood with Mary under the Cross as represented here above us. Ephesus where he lived with Mary whom Jesus entrusted to John until her passing to heaven. Lastly Patmos where one Lord’s Day he received the text of the Book of Revelation which ends our Bibles.
Textual critics find evidence of a variety of styles in the three sections of John’s writings, the Fourth Gospel, the three letters of St John and the Revelation to John. This variety evidences the so-called Johannine school which worked with the Apostle to secure his copious grasp of the things of Christ got into print. I have here an icon (show) I bought on the Greek Island of Patmos which shows this process. You might be able to see John’s head in contemplation inclined to our left where lines descend from above symbolising his discernment of the book of Revelation. The text of this book he is relaying to the scribe on the right who puts his words onto scrolls copies of which have descended to us. These scrolls were made part of the 1600 year old Codex Sinaiticus in the British Museum, the earliest Christian Bible, a text from which this morning’s passages from Exodus 33, Psalm 117, 1 John 1 and John 21 were read out.
The last two of these four passages link directly to the contemplation and discernment of our Patron who describes his closeness to Jesus: ‘We declare to you... what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life - this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us’.
In these quieter days after the Christmas Feast, what we call the Octave or eight days of Christmas, we have an invitation to see Jesus with St John, to look to the Lord, to touch him in the Bread of Communion and to welcome what he has to say to us as ‘the word of life’. As our Patron leaned on the Lord physically at the Last Supper we should have an expectation that we too can set apart some time in the days before the New Year to lean upon the Lord, now risen and present not just to the original apostles but to all who will so welcome him by his Spirit.
Holman Hunt captured the force of this invitation the Lord gives us in his painting of The Light of the World (show). It illustrates one of his most powerful invitations in scripture mediated through the Revelation to John with the words from Chapter 3 verse 20 at the bottom. They capture the nearness of the Lord to each one of us which we recall at this season:
‘Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me.’
To contemplate Jesus we need faith that he is always at the door of our soul. He is looking towards us. We need to pull off the ivy, so to speak, over the door of our heart, and open up by being quiet so we can come close to him in contemplation. We recall, as today’s collect reminds us, the Lord who ‘casts bright beams of light upon us’ scattering all darkness of heart and mind.
‘I am the Light of the World’ Jesus says through John; ‘he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life’.
So be it as we contemplate the Lord in these privileged days and grow the fruit of that contemplation in our lives.
May such fruit be gathered from us by those who engage with St John’s Church family in the coming year as so many have benefited from the contemplation and writings of St John the Evangelist whose prayers we entreat on this our patronal feast.
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