Quiet Talks on John's Gospel Part 11

Here's a mother calling to her little son, "Come here and let me wash your face." And he calls out, "It isn't dirty." "Yes, dear, it is very dirty, come at once." "Why, no, mother, it isn't dirty; you washed it this morning." And the child's tone blends a hurt surprise and a settled conviction that his mother is certainly wrong _this_ time about the condition of his face.

And if the mother be of the thoughtful brooding kind, she says nothing, but gets a hand mirror, and holds it before the child's face. That will always get a child's attention. And the boy looks; he sees his dirty face reflected. The blank astonishment on his face can't be put into words. It tells the radical upsetting revolution in his thought on that subject. How could it have happened that his face got into that condition! And the was.h.i.+ng process is yielded to at least; possibly even asked for.

That's what the law did and does. It showed man his face, his heart, his need. It brings upsetting revolutionary ideas regarding one's self.

There it stops. That's its limit. Then the Man who in Himself is grace and truth does the rest.

The Spokesman of G.o.d.

Then John quietly, deftly draws the line around to the starting point in that first tremendous statement. He completes a circle perfect in its strength and beauty and simplicity, as every circle is. If we follow the order of the words somewhat as John wrote them down, we find the bit of truth coming in a very striking, as well as in a fresh way. "_G.o.d no one has ever, at any time, seen_."

That seems rather startling, does it not? What do these older pages say? Adam talked and walked and worked with G.o.d, and then was led to the gate of the garden. G.o.d appeared to Abraham, and gave him a never-to-be-forgotten lesson in star study. Moses spent nearly six weeks with Him, twice over, in the flaming mount, and carried the impress of His presence upon his face clear to Nebo's cloudy top.

The seventy elders "saw the G.o.d of Israel, and did eat and drink," the simple record runs. And young Isaiah that morning in the temple, and Ezekiel in the colony of exiles on the Chebar, and Daniel by the Tigris at the close of his three weeks' fast,--these all come quickly to mind.

John's startling statement seems to contradict these flatly.

But push on. John has a way of clearing things up as you follow him through. Listen to him further: The only-begotten G.o.d who is in the bosom of the Father--_He_ has always been the _spokesman_ of G.o.d. Look into that sentence of John's a little. It seems quite clear, clear to the point of satisfying the most critical research, that John wrote down the words, "the only-begotten _G.o.d_." The contrast in his mind is not between "G.o.d," and the "only begotten Son." It is a contrast whose verbal terms fit with much nicer exactness than that. It is a contrast between "G.o.d" and the "only-begotten G.o.d."

There is only one such person whichever way unity. They tell the whole story hanging at the end of John's pen. This little bit commonly called the prologue is a gem of simplicity and compactness.

It is John's Gospel in miniature, even as John's Gospel is the whole Bible story in miniature. You can see the whole of the sun reflected in a single drop of water. You can see the whole of both Father and Son in the action of love in these simple opening lines of John's Gospel.

Have you ever been walking down a country road till, weary and thirsty, you stopped at an old farmhouse and refreshed yourself at the old-fas.h.i.+oned well, with its bucket and long sweep? And as you rested a bit by the well you wondered how deep it was. It didn't look deep at all. The water was near, and it was so clear and sweet and refres.h.i.+ng, and so easy to get at for a drink.

_Is_ it deep? So you fish a rather long bit of string out of your pocket, and tie it to a bit of stone you find lying close by. And you let the stone down, and down, and down, till you are surprised to find that the well is deeper than your string is long.

Well, John's opening bit is just like that. It seems very simple, easily understood at first flush in the mere statements made. The water is near the top. You easily drink. And you are refreshed. But when you try to find out how deep it is, you are startled to find that it is clear over your head.

But it is _never over your heart_. It is too deep for you to grasp and understand. You never touch bottom. _But_ it's never beyond heart-understanding. You can sense and feel and love. You can open the sluice-gates into your heart, and have the blessed flood-tide lift and lift and bear you aloft and along. You can _love._ And that is the whole story.

Was John an artist? Is he making a rare painting for us here? Is he studying perspective, shading and s.p.a.cing, to an exquisite nicety that is revealed in the very way he puts words and sentences and paragraphs together? I do not know. And if any of you think the thing I am about to speak of is due to a mere mechanical chance of the pen, I'll not quarrel with you. Though I shall still have my own personal thought in the matter.

But will you notice this? John begins his prologue with a description of a wonderful personality. He ends it with another description of this same personality. Both descriptions are rare in beauty and boldness, in simplicity and brevity. And right midway between the two, at almost the exact middle line of the reading, at what is the artistic center, stands the word "_came_."

That word "came" gathers up into itself and tells out to you the whole story about this twice-described personality. "He came" John says.

That's the whole thing. First the _He_ fills your eye, and then what He did--_came_. And as you step off a bit for better perspective, and change your personal position this way and that to get the best light, you find the picture standing out before your awed eyes.

It is a Man coming down the road with face looking into yours. He is truly a man, every line of the picture makes that clear to you. But such a man as never was seen before, with the rarest blending of the kingly and the kindly in His bearing. The purest purity, the utmost graciousness, the highest ideals, the gentlest manner, n.o.bility beyond what we have known, and kindliness past describing,--all these blend in the pose of His body and most of all in the look of His face. And He is in motion. He is walking, walking towards us, with hands outstretched.

This is John's picture of Jesus. He came to His own. He came because His own drew Him. Out from the bosom of His Father, into the womb of a virgin maid, and into the heart of a race He came. Out of the glory-blaze above into the gloom of the shadow, and the glare of false lights below, He came.

Out of the love of a Father's heart, the Only-begotten came, into contact with the hate that was the only-begotten of sin, that He might woo us men up, and up, and up, into the only-begotten life with the Father.

Jesus was G.o.d on a wooing errand to the earth.

III

The Lover Wooing

_A Group of Pictures Ill.u.s.trating How the Wooing Was Done, and How the Lover Was Received_

"Still with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy Came the following Feet, And a Voice above their beat-- _Naught shelters thee, who will not shelter Me_.'"

--"_The Hound of Heaven_."

"O thou hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in the time of trouble, why shouldst thou be as a sojourner in the land, and as a wayfaring man that spreadeth his tent for a night?"--_Jeremiah xiv. 8_.

He came unto his own home, and they who were his own kinsfolk received him not into the house, but left him standing outside in the cold and dark of the winter's night. But as many as did receive him he received into his home, and gave each a seat in the inner circle at the hearthfire of G.o.d.--_John i. II, 12. Free translation_.

III

The Lover Wooing

(John i. 19-xii. 50)

The Mother of all Love-Words.

Brooding is love at its tenderest and best It is love giving its best, and so bringing out the best possible in the one brooded over.

Look into the nest where the word itself was brooded. It is a warm something, warm in itself, not a borrowed warmth. The warmth is its chief trait. It is a soft tender unfailing cuddling warmth. It cuddles and coos, it glows and floods a gentle comforting stimulating warmth.

And the best there is lying asleep within the thing so brooded over awakes.

It answers to that creative mothering warmth. It pushes out, against all obstacles, and comes shyly and winsomely, but steadily and strongly, out to the brooding warmth, growing as it comes and growing most as it comes into closest touch with the warm brooder.

Brooding is the mother of all love-words,--friends.h.i.+p, wooing, pitying, helping, mothering, fathering, witnessing, believing. It is the mother-word, from out whose warm womb all these others come, warm, too, and full of gentle strong life. Its mother quality is so strong that we are apt to think of it only in connection with actual mothers, mothers among animals and birds and of our human kind.

But this is only one meaning, really a surface meaning, though such a fine deep meaning in itself. Its real heart meaning lies much deeper.

_Brooding is the mother of all love._ It is its warmth that draws out that fine feeling that makes and marks friends.h.i.+p. It is its tender warmth that draws out that finest degree of friends.h.i.+p which knits with unbreakable bonds two lives into one.

It reaches out most subtly to knit up again the ends that have ravelled out under the sore stress of life. It bends compa.s.sionately over those hurt in body, and hurt yet more in their spirit by the greedy rivalry of life, and nurses into newness of life the s.h.i.+vering shredded hurt parts.

In the more familiar use of the word it fathers and mothers the newly minted morsels of precious humanity, coming into life with big wondering eyes.

And it warms into highest life that highest love that, through the process of hearing, a.s.senting, trusting, risking, giving the heart's devotion, comes to know G.o.d as a tender Father, and Christ as a precious personal Saviour. Whether in close friend, or ardent lover, gracious philanthropist, devoted parent, or earnest witness, it is the same warm thing underneath, at its fine task--brooding.