Some twenty-five years ago I was asked by a contact to offer spiritual support to a woman who was dying of cancer.  She was, at the beginning, able to travel the ten miles from her home to see me and we probably had around five sessions together before her illness made this impossible.  I recall these meetings as I recently asked myself the question, why I chose the Gospel of St John as a text we could read together, and which would provide ‘homework’ between our meetings.  Just recently, I have begun to recognise better that, although the fourth gospel author is probably not attempting to provide anything like an exact biographical record of his Jesus’ ministry, he does allow the reader to feel that he/she is being brought into intimate contact with the Master.  The other gospels give us some insight into the personality and teaching of Jesus, but John’s aim seems to be to create a spiritual immediacy, a meeting place, between the Lord and those followers who immerse themselves in his words. This immediacy is found especially in and through the ‘I am’ sayings which the evangelist gives us.  These are unique to the fourth gospel.

To remind my readers, much of the text of the fourth gospel outside the Passion Narrative is a series of thematic meditations linked to a series of ‘I am’ sayings.  The events and encounters recorded around each ‘I am’ saying are linked to it as a kind of commentary.  Together they are each designed to reveal a distinct aspect of Jesus’ work and the way he becomes united to his followers in what might be described as a mystical fusion.  All the sequences of teaching and discourse that we find in the first section of the fourth gospel seem to be tied in to one or other of these key ‘I am’ sayings.  The ‘I am’ sayings introduce us to the well-known fourth gospel themes of Jesus as Good Shepherd, Bread of Life, Living Water and True Vine etc.  Thus, when Jesus declares himself to be the Light of the World, the teaching that given in this part of the gospel is completely focussed on exploring this image.  This section contains a discourse about the contrast between darkness and light and also tells at some length the linked story of the healing of a blind man.  Adding into the drama of the story, we hear the formerly blind man making a spirited response when the religious leaders try to make him deny his healing and condemn Jesus as a sinner.  To paraphrase the healed man’s words, ‘I don’t know who is responsible for what has happened, whether God or the one you claim is a sinner. One thing I do know, once I was blind; now I can see’.

 When we become aware of the literary and thematic structure of the fourth gospel, we are forced to note that it is highly improbable, even implausible, that Jesus taught his disciples in such a structured way. Is it really likely that Jesus’ teaching was as tidy and ordered as John’s gospel sets it out for us?  The idea that Jesus, rather than the author of the fourth gospel, divided up his teaching into these tidy and ordered sections is, we would suggest, a nonsense claim.  The gospel author whom we call John, had, as we have suggested, a much more ambitious aim, to introduce his readers to a close relationship with the Risen Lord.  Jesus’ task both as a teacher on earth and as the ever-present divine being who lives within us through the Spirit, will be for the believer the one who leads us to all truth and offers to humankind and the gift of ‘eternal life’.

I imagine that many of my readers have used John’s gospel in the way I am suggesting – as a source of profound material for meditation about the meaning of Jesus as well as a focus for understanding how to enter into an ever-deeper relationship with him.  The fact that the Jesus who is presented to us in the fourth gospel has a different feel about it from the other gospel accounts, does not force us to declare that one or other version of Jesus’ life is somehow more authentic and true.  It is enough that Christians, through the centuries have, successfully felt able to draw out of John’s words a sense of divine encounter.  That is what we today are invited to do and it forms the main intention of the original author.  The variety of proclamations made by Jesus, the ‘I am’ sayings make this process possible.  Inspiration in Scripture seems to work just as well even when no detailed historical claims are made for a particular passage in the gospel text.

In my title for this blog post, I used the heading ‘Advent a season of symbols’.  It seems to be true that the fourth gospel version of Jesus’ life, the one that is least likely to be factually true as history in the account of his ministry, should also be the one able to bring his followers the closest to him.  The ahistorical symbols in the gospel, water, light and darkness, bread etc., are probably not historical memories; they are the means through which we are brought into a place of intimacy with the Risen Master.  In Advent we are also presented with certain powerful visual symbols that, like the fourth gospel, bring Christ close to us.  On one Sunday in Advent we do focus on the ministry of John the Baptist but most of the time, we are immersing ourselves in ahistorical symbols provided by our liturgy in a not dissimilar way to readers of the fourth gospel.  Particularly powerful is the Advent symbol of light breaking into the darkness.  This image or symbol evokes our own experiences of disorientation in a place of darkness before we were rescued by a light-switch or a torch.  The lived experience of being highly vulnerable or frightened of the dark is one that is real to us and it feeds into our ability to imagine and thus encounter the one who, in a spiritual sense, drives away the darkness.

The other powerful symbol explored liturgically and devotionally in Advent is that of longing, waiting and expectation.  We all know what it means to wait for something with passionate intensity.  One place to observe such longing and expectation is the sight of children fingering presents under the Christmas tree.  Another place is the arrival section of a large international airport.  Here people are waiting to be reunited with loved ones after maybe months, even years, of separation.  Is not our Advent observance being fed by some of this passionate intensity, which our imagination can evoke for us in this season of symbols?  To repeat, symbols, such as we find in John’s gospel and the commemoration of Advent are not events or facts. But their status as symbols still allows them play a crucial role in allowing us to experience and connect with the reality of God in Christ reaching out to us . The season of symbols, as I call it, draws our attention, not to historical events in Jesus’ life, but to powerful aspects of what we believe about him.  It also helps us, as Christians claim, to form a personal relationship with him, one that reaches beyond the grave to all eternity.

Writing this Advent reflection has helped me to understand better how this gospel in the New Testament that strays (apart from the Passion narrative) the furthest away from the detailed historical record, is also the one that I turned towards to help someone facing death.  My attachment to the fourth gospel is shared by many of my readers as we seem to be entering the realm of eternity, timelessness and the experience and promise of what we call, however we interpret it, eternal life.