Which Gospel is the True Story of Jesus?

August 4, 2024

Today’s Gospel from John introduces us to one of Jesus’ famous “Ego Eimi” or “I AM” statements that are strangely NOT found in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Gospels of Mark, Mathew and Luke).  While in today’s gospel we have the cryptic: “I AM the Bread of Life”, we find others in this fourth Gospel, like “I am the resurrection and the life” and a similar one, “I am the Way the Truth and the Life” and a few others in various parts of John’s Gospel.  The most important of these is the claim: “Before Abraham was, I am”. These are statements that have been taken up by conservatives in the Church to support their own literal interpretations of many dogmas, - like their understanding of the ‘physical’ presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic bread (since we must eat of this flesh/bread of his in order to have eternal life), or that Salvation is ‘only’ possible through Jesus (since he is the Way, the Truth and the Life) and that the understanding of Jesus being both God and Man must mean that ‘he existed since all eternity’, since he claims in John’s Gospel that ‘Before Abraham was, I am”.

 So why are these EGO EIMI statements absent in the other three gospels, as it would be quite inconceivable that these other Gospel writers knew that Jesus made these powerful statements and then chose to ignore them?  

 This brings us to the question of the significant differences between the various gospels. Scripture scholars are able to explain some of these differences by the insight that each Gospel was written for different audiences and by authors who had different perspectives. For instance, as I may have explained in passing in some previous blogs,  Mathew’s Gospel, with its repeated theme that is expressed in the idea that Jesus did this or that ‘in order to fulfil the Scriptures’, suggests that Mathew was writing for a predominantly Jewish audience, in order to ‘prove’ to them that Jesus was indeed the foretold Messiah. The author of Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles clearly says in the first few lines of both books, that he was writing down Jesus’ story, and the story of the early Church, for the sake of Theophilus, a Roman official, and so his books are geared towards a Gentile (non-Jewish) audience.  Studies seem to indicate that Mark, the shortest and earliest written of the canonical Gospels, was articulating Peter’s remembrances and insights,  and since Peter was quite an "uneducated and  untrained" fisherman (Acts 4:13) we have a kind of barebones story of Jesus in this Gospel.  However, despite these differences, these three Gospels have so many similarities that Scripture scholars conclude that these three Gospels  ‘see the story of Jesus with the same eye’ as it were (syn= same, and optic=eye or sight), and so these three Gospels are known as the Synoptic Gospels.

However, John’s Gospel is significantly different from these Synoptic Gospels.  This fourth Gospel was written around 3 to 5 decades after the other three were already circulating, and when the world had changed drastically.  In 70 AD, the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans,  (had God abandoned the Jews???), and an increasing numbers of non-Jews, more than Jews, began accepting Jesus, and they began seeing themselves as the new ‘chosen people’.  However, though their numbers were increasing, the newly formed Christian communities were facing much persecution, torture and death by the Roman Empire, and there were many who were beginning to lose hope.  And so the fourth Gospel was written at a time when the Christian community needed to be assured that though everything seemed hopeless, they would eventually conquer, because their Jesus had come from God, and would eventually overcome even the Roman Emperor and all earthly forces.  

Significantly, then, the Synoptics start with Jesus’ human ancestry (see the genealogies in Mathew and Luke) while in Mark the story starts with Jesus being baptized by a human being, John, and tempted like any other human being.  On the other hand, John’s Gospel starts with Jesus as the eternal Word of God who comes down to become flesh.  Again, the Synoptics emphasise the Kingdom of Heaven/God, (which phrase appears very very rarely in John’s Gospel), -  a kingdom which is clearly NOT an earthly kingdom, but a kingdom to be found in our hearts. John’s Gospel, on the other hand,  focuses on the eternal life that Jesus brings to his followers, and the Book of Revelation (thought to be by the same author/s) speaks of Jesus coming to rule the world. Therefore,   these EGO EIMI statements of Jesus serve this fourth Gospel’s purpose  of assuring the early Christian community that though they may be suffering persecution and even death,  the life that Jesus will give them, if they are faithful, will never end; the bread he gives to eat will never be lacking; the water he offers will never stop and will always quench their thirst, because Jesus existed from all eternity (“Before Abraham was, I am”).

This significant difference between the Synoptics’ portrayal of Jesus and that of John’s Gospel ought to bring home to us the realisation that the story and understanding of who Jesus was, and what he taught, was not static, even in the early Church.  But accepting that the Synoptics and John’s Gospels offer different perspectives on Jesus, troubles many Christians because then we are not sure which one to hold on to.  However, we may be comforted by the fact that when the Church community decided, towards the end of the fourth century, to choose these four Gospels from among the over 50 Gospels that were in circulation, they were quite aware that there were significant differences and even discrepancies in many details between these four Gospels and stark differences in the theology each espoused.  And yet they chose these four Gospels, without trying to obliterate these differences, because the Church community was willing to accept, that even at the time these Gospels were written when the authors had in their presence those who had walked with Jesus, there was always a struggle to understand the true significance of Jesus.

And so we need not be worried today if we find our own Church, and  our individual selves, too struggling with trying to understand the significance of Jesus, as we too learn from new sources of knowledge, from new experiences, from new histories, and from other religions. As parents, we would know that as our children grow, we too need to grow and change, and this is part of normal human life.  Handling such changes was often very difficult for the Church down the centuries, and so various Councils were convened at the times when the Church needed clarity from competing theologies. Our journey is, of course, not over, and never will be, for we are always making hesitant steps to understand God in some small incremental ways.

It is also a truism that as we go chronologically further and further away from the founder, all ideas (in religions, in sciences, in ways of living etc) have a way of becoming institutionalized and run the danger of many of its adherents becoming more and more black and white in their stance. Although the initial followers are more open to learning and revising, later followers tend to be more rigid and unable to see the truth outside of what was handed down to them. This is a rigidity that we should guard against. The very fact that it was as late as the end of the fourth century, when the Church community chose to accept just these four Gospels as inspired, even though they too could see that these four had significantly different theologies, and even discrepancies in their narratives, should point us to the conclusion that consciously or unconsciously the Church too accepted that no one story fully expressed the experience of Jesus.

It is because of this that I believe adult Christians need to make efforts to constantly reflect on our faith. And even though we sensibly must listen to the wisdom and knowledge we could get from others in understanding our faith, we cannot and should not be satisfied with  remaining like children, waiting for others to tell us what to believe and what not to.    Unfortunately, and this applies not only in Christianity, the large majority of followers in any religion tend to prefer not to go through this personal struggle of exploring or reflecting on one’s own faith, and would prefer to be spoon-fed with certitudes. Fr. Anthony D’mello in  his book, The Song of the Bird writes:

“A disciple once complained: “You tell us stories, but you never reveal their meaning to us.”

Said the Master: How would you like it if someone offered you fruit and masticated it before giving it to you?”

Unfortunately, the majority of religious followers prefer masticated fruit, like the mashed fruit we give to babies when they cannot be fed solid food.

 

First Reading – Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15

The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “Would that we had died at the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!”

Then the LORD said to Moses, “I will now rain down bread from heaven for you. Each day the people are to go out and gather their daily portion; thus will I test them, to see whether they follow my instructions or not.

“I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them: In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, so that you may know that I, the LORD, am your God.”

In the evening quail came up and covered the camp. In the morning a dew lay all about the camp, and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground.

On seeing it, the Israelites asked one another, “What is this?” for they did not know what it was. But Moses told them, “This is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.”

 Second Reading – Ephesians 4:17, 20-24

Brothers and sisters:
I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; that is not how you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.

Gospel – John 6:24-35

When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.  Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”

So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?  Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”