This will change the way you read the Gospels

Reflection

What changes the way you read the Gospels is noticing what they claim to be. These are not myths polished over centuries and handed down as legend. They were written within the lifetime of the people who saw what they describe. Luke says openly that he checked the accounts handed down by those who from the first were eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1-4). John writes, we have seen his glory... and we declare it to you (John 1:14). Peter says plainly, we did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty (2 Peter 1:16). And they are four different voices, not one voice repeated four times. A tax collector, a fisherman, a physician and a companion of Peter, the early church remembered them that way, each arranging the same life of Jesus for a different reader, with different details and different emphasis. That is what you would expect from real people remembering honestly, and it is not what you would expect from a group agreeing on a line to sell. So the Gospels can be read like testimony. John's own invitation was come and you will see (John 1:39), and his letter begins, that which we have seen and heard we declare to you (1 John 1:3). Read one of them, perhaps Mark's short and urgent account, and ask the honest question: is this man who he says he is?

Questions to sit with

• When you open a Gospel, do you read it as a story that was passed down, or as someone's account of what they saw?
• The four writers tell the same life of Jesus differently. What does that do to the idea that they were coached to say the same thing?
• If you read one Gospel this week as testimony, which would you start with, and what would you look for?

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