August 9, 2009
John 1:1-18

Rev. Lawrence Stratton

"A Comforting Word"

 
On July 22, 1620 on a ship named the Speedwell at the harbor in Delft Haven, Holland, an exiled English Separatist Minister gave a sermon to members of his congregation who would travel to England and board another tall wooden ship whose name you may recognize, the Mayflower.  The minister, the Rev. John Robinson, is depicted in Robert Weir's painting in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. entitled, "The Embarkation of the Pilgrims."  The painting of Robinson preaching to his parishioners is also on the back of the Federal Reserve's original $10,000 bill, if you ever noticed.

Robinson, the pastor to the pilgrims, who was educated and later taught at Cambridge, rejected the Anglican religious rituals required by King James I, as being too tainted with lingering elements of Roman Catholicism.  Robinson left the Church of England and fled with his Puritan congregation to the Netherlands, where he studied theology at Leiden University.  At Leiden Robinson courageously disputed his professor, Episcopious, over the fine points of free will and predestination.  Future Plymouth Plantation Governor William Bradford later recalled that the Lord helped Robinson, "to defend the truth and fail his adversary, and put [Episcopious] to an apparent non-plus in this great and public audience."  

Robinson was a prolific writer during this period.  His defense, "A Justification of Separation from the Church of England," was the most famous of over 60 published essays.  His works were reprinted in three volumes in 1851.

Getting back to the boat, Robinson told his departing flock to follow Christ wherever he would lead, and to be ready to receive anything that God would reveal to them.  Robinson then expressed his confidence that "The Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his Holy Word."  

He then "bewailed" the condition of the Reformed Churches who could not see beyond what Luther and Calvin saw.  "[Y]ou see the Calvinists," he charged, "They stick where he left them, a misery much to be lamented." Robinson then laid out the outlines of his covenant theology whereby, "we promise and covenant with God and one another to receive whatsoever light or truth shall be made known to us from his written Word."

As the Pilgrims faced the vicissitudes of the North Atlantic and the challenges of establishing their colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, they drew inspiration from Rev. Robinson's sermon and the subsequent letter he wrote to them on the Mayflower. The Pilgrims continued to remember and confidently believe his sermon's expectant central theme that "The Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his Holy Word."

Robinson's declaration is engraved in the front wall of the Chicago Theological Seminary in Hyde Park.  University of Chicago historian Martin Marty recalled in the Christian Century a year ago that during his doctoral work he "daily passed the CTS wall” and often ran his finger along Robinson's statement.  Remembering Marty's column, I ran my fingers over Robinson's quotation in June, touching every word.  

In fact, Marty pondered what would become of Robinson's words now that CTS had sold its building to the University of Chicago's new Milton Friedman Institute. Marty lamented, "Now the holy word will be that of Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek."

Robinson's confidence that more truth and light are "yet to break forth" from God's Holy Word resonates within the Gospel of John's opening prologue.  Union Presbyterian Seminary President Brian Blount says that the focus of these verses is "on how we are to understand God's engagement with us in our world."

That engagement occurs through our own interaction with the Word of God, whatever that Word of God is.

Commentators such as Rudolf Bultmann argue that the Book of John’s 18 verse prologue is a hymn that summarizes the Gospel and was added to it.  Regardless of whether his claim is true, Bultmann's hypothesis underscores the value of examining and experiencing the prologue as a unified whole. I wish we knew the hymn's original tune.

Echoing the Bible's first verse in Genesis---"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"---John's hymn begins: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

This bold declaration continues by affirming that the word was in the beginning with God, and that all things were made by him.  Moreover, in him was life, and that life is the light of all people.  The hymn proceeds by introducing the contrast between light and darkness, that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness "comprehended it not," as the King James Version says, or “The darkness did not overcome it” as the NRSV text reports.

This Word has power over darkness, just as light dispels darkness.  Indeed that Word is light, the hymn states.  John the Baptist bore witness to this light, "the true Light which gives light to every[one] coming into the world."  It is here that the hymn connects the Word and the Light to a person: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."  This person, named in verse 17, is Jesus Christ, who embodies grace and truth, in contrast to the law given by Moses.

The hymn ends with the confession that “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.”  The King James Version says, "No one has seen God at any time," but that "The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him."

John Calvin wrote that the passage's human metaphor that the Son was "in the bosom of father" is significant because a person "admits to their bosom those to whom they communicate all their secrets."  "The breast is the seat of counsel," Calvin says.  Just as the Son knew the hidden secrets of the Father, "we may know that we have, so to say, the breast of God laid open to us in the Gospel."  Calvin’s insight amplifies the hymn’s theme that we have been given power to become children of God.

Little or possibly nothing in this hymn is open to empirical verification.   Nothing within it directly answers or refutes the prevailing critiques of faith of any age.   However, the poetic hymn's sweeping claims, if true, provide comfort that there is a power, a light, a comprehension prior to our own understanding, which gives life meaning and hope, especially since God became human flesh and “dwelt among us,” providing “Grace upon grace.” 

According to Christopher Morse, who holds the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair in Theology and Ethics at Union Seminary in New York, "The most basic element of faith affirmed in church doctrines of the Word of God is that God as self-communicating has spoken and continues to speak with human beings."  "Ultimate reality confronts us in such a way that we are addressed," Morse states.

Let us recall the Rev. John Robinson's confident and forward looking declaration, "The Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his Holy Word."

In whatever difficult situation we may find ourselves, whether academic challenges endemic to Princeton, such as summer Greek or Hebrew at the Seminary, physical or mental health concerns, tensions with family or friends, financial uncertainty, vocational issues, or general concerns about the troubled state of civilization and the polarization of society and institutions within it, including the church, let us prayerfully and expectantly seek out whatever truth and light God has yet to "break forth" in every dark circumstance.   It will be a comfort to find that gracious light and truth and follow it.

 

 

 

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