Making Joy Complete

1 John 1:1-4

Open Journal resumes with a launch into the letters of John. John is believed to have been writing to Gnosticizing Christians – who denied the physical, historical reality of Jesus Christ. So he begins by emphasizing just what a real, direct experience he and others had had of Jesus.

The beginning of this letter is very similar to the beginning of John’s Gospel, but now he speaks not of the one who was “in the beginning” (John 1:1), but he who is “from the beginning.” The former is poetic language about the pre-existence (before his earthly life as a man) of Christ. Now he begins his witness from the direct experience.

John craves a fellowship centered on the experience of the living Christ. He concluded his Gospel by noting that such experience, and such fellowship, does not depend on everyone having had first-hand experience of Jesus as he walked this earth. See the dramatic encounter of Jesus with Thomas in John 20:24-31 and especially verse 29 in that passage.

Joy in that fellowship is made “complete” (1 John 1:4) because true fellowship, such as today we seek especially in a church whose life and very structure is based on small groups, brings together the horizontal and vertical dimensions of relationships, i.e., it combines human relationships and the divine-human encounter in such a way that we live our faith life in full recognition that one aspect is not “complete” without the other. In belonging to Christ we belong to one another. Fellowship that begins and ends with this recognition will be lost in the perpetual energy and joy of seeking to know, love, serve and share Jesus Christ more fully every day, with one another; full of passion to enlarge the experience exponentially, increasing the joy until it finally will be made complete in that fellowship to come, of which all other true Christian fellowship is anticipation.

Prayer:
Lord, increase our appetite for real fellowship in which we learn more about you, honour you with worship in simple fellowship settings, are moved to serve you by serving others, wrapping it all up with a deep and abiding concern for others similarly to be fed and enlivened. Encourage the disaffected. Embolden the hurting not to wait for someone to notice their hurt, at the same time we all seek out where those and others are hurting and ask how we can help. How has someone been offended? Am I withholding some hurt and nursing it? Am I withholding what you have given me to share of myself, afraid of being hurt, again? Am I holding material resources that could be used to grow fellowship that seeks completion in its dimensions resembling the shape of the cross itself? So many questions, so many needs. No one of us can address them all for even one other. Let us be a fellowship that seeks completion in you, and truly grows, together. In Christ. Amen.