Thursday, January 2, 2003

Go into the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation... Mark 16: 15b

In my book A Message of Life and Love: Proclaiming Good News from a Johannine Perspective, I attempted to proclaim the good news as understood from the voice of the Johannine community. In this way, I sought to inject Johannine thought into the world choir and specifically into the ways that Johannine theology intersects with today's issues and culture.

This form of spirituality uplifts human life as special and seeks to understand the God of life and love in the various ways life and love are revealed. In this way,

The gospel of life and love proclaims again and again that life is special! "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:14) All life is a gift from God and is special. Regardless of gender, regardless of age, regardless of race or ethnicity, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of mental capacity or economic status, regardless of the looks of one's physical appearance, regardless of the religion or lack of religion that a person upholds, regardless if a person speaks a language different than we are accustomed to, regardless of the music (that may sound to us as noise) that one listens to. (And the list goes on and on...) (1)

The theologian Donald Senior has also raised his voice from a Johannine perspective in his book The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of John. Senior writes,

To reveal God is the heart of Jesus' mission and, for John's Gospel, the key to understanding all that Jesus says and does. Jesus takes "flesh"- that is, takes on a human nature and human history- in order that God's consuming love for the world would be visible and comprehensible to the human world. Revealing God, in Johannine terms, is not the mere dissemination of information about God. What Jesus reveals is that God will not condemn the world but intends to save it "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16-17) Thus the message Jesus embodies is active, dynamic, compelling. (2)

Later Senior writes,

The return to God-not only of the Word but of all humanity- is the final purpose of Jesus' mission in the world. (3)

John Ruiz

(1) John Ruiz, A Message of Life and Love: Proclaiming Good News from a Johannine Perspective (Morris Publishing: Kearney, Nebraska) 2001, p. 69.

(2) Donald Senior, C.P., The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of John (The Liturgical Press: Collegeville, Minnesota) 1991, p. 16.

(3) Ibid, p. 17.