Past and Present Tents
In years past I have spent too many family holidays in tents that are being battered by the wind and rain. Driving tent pegs back into soggy ground for fear of being blown away by the time the sun comes up – I know just how vulnerable, fragile, and collapsible a tent can be!
I sometimes remember this when I read the opening chapter of John’s Gospel. Rich in imagery and more symbolic than the other three Gospels in the New Testament. John’s Gospel is often cosmic in its outlook and full of ‘mini-epiphanies’. John wants us to know that through Jesus, God becomes one with us, as one of us. Or as John’s Gospel poetically puts it:
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…“ (John 1: 1-14)
‘Dwelt’, is an interesting word in John’s Gospel. A modern translation of the Bible called ‘The Message’, translates this verse: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood”. This is striking because the word ‘dwelt’ in Greek derives from the word for ‘a tent’. So we could say, “God became human and pitched his tent among us.”
There is much speculation today about what it means to be human. Genome Research, Gender Studies, Cryogenics, Carbon Footprints, Artificial Intelligence, and more. In 2008 at the age of 94, Anglican priest and theologian, Rev Professor James Atkinson wrote a book called Understanding the Incarnation. In it he said:
Fred Hoyle, the popular mathematician and cosmologist (who in sardonic terms invented the phrase “the Big Bang”), said (in conversation), “I have always thought it curious that while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.” This is certainly true in my own experience for, since Einstein, the New Physics has opened up immense possibilities for theologians to find new creative insights. The scientists are aware that their researches on the beginnings of the universe involve its meaning, even direction; its purpose and end; and its relationship to space and time, and eternity; and that they are plunged directly into the realm of the theologian. This is a most happy and creative development, for it is along these lines that we will discover a unitary, integrative understanding of the meaning of this universe, even of creation, and humanity’s place in it (on the assumption that we will not destroy its delicate, awesome ecology, and all our research and thinking, before this century is out).
The unique message of Christianity is that God has moved into the neighbourhood in the frail and vulnerable tent of humanity; exposed to the elements, and at the mercy of the environment of human nature. As a result, John provides an epiphany. God is not a theological doctrine, but a relationship. Jesus is not a principle, but a person. God becomes our neighbour through Jesus: knowing the loneliness, the grieving, the hopes and fears of all the years, the hurting and rejoicing.
In using the term “Word” (λόγος), John was fusing the Science and Theology of both Jews and Greeks. For the Greek mind the “Word” referred to the rational principle that governed the universe. To the Jew, “Word” was a reference to God through the prism of the Wisdom literature tradition. Although the conclusion is not ‘rocket science’. God entered our world and gave us the blueprint for how we could walk with God and one another. The big question is: “What difference does it make that God became human and pitched a tent among us?”
No Fixed Abode
There is more going on in John’s Gospel than theological poetry. It is an irony of history that the United Kingdom, deeply shaped by Christianity, continues to possess a collective bias and mistrust of ‘tent dwellers’, ‘travellers’, or anyone who can be described as possessing, ‘no fixed abode’. This happens on both a systemic and personal level and was poignantly described by Raynor Winn in her critically acclaimed autobiographical book, ‘The Salt Path‘, recounting the experiences of wild camping for both her and her husband. A summary article in the Church Times put it like this:
One of the most striking themes of the book is the attitude of those whom they met on the road. When they told people how far they were intending to walk, a common response was admiration, even jealousy. They were told that they were an inspiration. That changed when people discovered that Ray and Moth were homeless: almost without exception, fellow hikers winced and took a step backwards. They were suddenly beyond the pale.
Camping is not and never was, easy. It leaves light footprints on the landscape. It is open to the elements and its environment, but in turn respects them. It is a risky way of life. But this, John says, is also God’s way and our Way to discover what it means to be fully human. Using the verb πιστεύω, usually translated believe, 98 times in 85 verses of his Gospel, John nevers use the noun πίστις, usually translated as faith. Why? The simple answer is that faith is more than what we think. It is what we do, who we help, how we live, and the way we choose to live. Or to put it simply – it’s about the journey, not the arrival.
Faith as a Verb
The first chapter of John’s Gospel is often associated with Christmas due to its rich poetry and play on themes of light and darkness. But I think it can equally be applied to Easter. This too has rich themes of light and darkness with the dawning of Easter Day. John’s Gospel presents faith as a verb, not merely a noun. A mode of existence, not merely a mode of thought. Easter becomes a way of life, not just a day in the calendar. “What’s in a word?” The poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins answers this perennial question well when he says:
Let him easter in us, be a day spring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east, More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls, Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest, Our hearts’ charity’s hearth’s fire, our thoughts’ chivalry’s throng’s Lord. (Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘Wreck of the Deutschland’ 1875)
