I have discovered that sometimes the best way for me to understand what I am reading in the Bible is to try get a better understanding of when the passage was written and to whom.  

John wrote his Gospel between 90 and 100, approximately 30 years after the synoptic Gospels and long after Paul’s letters.   Sometimes when I think of biblical “time” 30 years is not long, but in reality, it’s almost a full generation. Think of all the things that have occurred in your life over the span of 30 years. This gap between the synoptic Gospels and John’s writing seems insignificant when we consider the 2000 years that have passed since then, but taking a moment to remember how long 30 years really is helps with our understanding.

At the time of John’s writing, Christianity was spreading, and churches were being established throughout the Roman empire. John lived in what is today Turkey but at the time very much a part of Greece, and he wrote his Gospel at the request the leaders of the Hellenistic Christian church. Just to give you perspective of the Greek world at the time of John’s writing, the Temple to Zeus was not completed until around the year 120  – 20 years after the completion of the Gospel and almost 600 years after construction started.    

Greek mythology wasn’t an elective class in college or a few episodes of Percy Jackson on the Disney Channel.  To Greek society, their mythological gods were very real and embedded in the culture.  For lack of a better description, these gods provided the people with a heavenly connection.     

I told you at the start I seem to get a better understanding of what I’m reading if I know when something was written and to whom it was written, and this mini history tells me something important about God that I think we take for granted or overlook at times. Specifically,  why did God pick this time for John to write? Why did God pick this audience? Were early Greek Christians struggling with making the connection between Jesus and his divinity?  I have taken enough Greek mythology classes and admittedly watched enough Percy Jackson to understand what was embedded in Greek society over hundreds of generations , so it is not lost on me that God knows what we need and when we need it better than we do or think we do.  This Gospel is a reminder that God can and does provide for us at the exact right moment in our lives even when we may think otherwise.  The early Greek Christians needed something, and God provided the Gospel of John. Our lives are no different – maybe not on a scale as grand as having Gospel written for us – but God will always provide.  For John’s audience, he provided the right message at the right time. 

So what is the message tonight? 

Jesus said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” The Pharisees challenged him because they did not understand.  They did not follow Jesus, so they did not walk in the light.   

So here we have Jesus whom the Pharisees see not as divine but as a man, a man they probably thought no different than themselves.  But it’s here that Jesus specifically shares his divinity. In other words, Jesus is not like any of us, and he went to great lengths in this passage to make this point clear:  “I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going.”     In maybe a point view the Hellenistic Christians could understand, Jesus comes from the world above, so he alone understands who he is. Our faith in Jesus as the manifestation of God, and sacrificed for our sins, allows us to see this light.  In this season of Lent – this season of reflection – we are preparing ourselves to “see the light” by accepting Jesus in both his death and resurrection.  Our prayer practices train us to sense this light, so we never lose sight of the fact that even in our darkest times, the light of Jesus will shine the brightest because it is a divine light not of this world.  It cannot be extinguished.  It cannot be stolen. It cannot be given to someone else more deserving.  It belongs to each one of us because we follow Jesus and know we will not walk in darkness.

Learn more about other important updates in the latest church newsletter: The Epistle – March 7, 2024