Baton-change

In the last chapter of Luke’s gospel, we are told of two of Jesus’ disciples who are walking away from Jerusalem towards Emmaus on the day Jesus rose from the dead. As they walk, Jesus comes into being alongside them, but they do not recognise him. He asks them, what are these words you are exchanging? and one of them responds, are you the only resident alien dwelling in Jerusalem in these days who has not heard about the things that have come into being, concerning Jesus? (They go on to tell him all about Jesus; and Jesus responds that they haven’t joined-the-dots.) It is when they invite Jesus to stay the night with them in their home that it comes into being that their eyes are opened to recognise him. With hindsight, they describe the experience of being with him as one which caused their hearts to be consumed with fire.

If you then turn over the page, you come to the prologue to John’s gospel. It concerns the word that comes into being in the world. Though the world came into being through the word, the world did not recognise the word. The word came to his own people, and his own people did not recognise him. But those who did welcome him came into being, through him, as children of God. He came and dwelt alongside them, as a resident alien, a tent-dweller on the edge of the city. He was seen by them, a supernatural seeing, one described at least in hindsight as beholding glory, a majestic brightness.

In other words, John begins his gospel exactly where Luke ends his. It is a perfect baton change.

John wrote later than the other gospel writers, possessing a familiarity with them, and apparently believing them to be true as far as they went but having left out too many of the good bits. But he did not write with any expectation that, at a later date, others would collate these writings in such an order that one might come to the end of Luke, turn the page, and begin reading John.

Yet the third-to-fouth-leg hand-over is absolutely flawless.

BOOM!