That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. – 1 John 1:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 9, 2015): 1 John 1

We are starting to have a picture of the man we have dubbed “Jihadi John,” the masked executioner of the Islamic State responsible for the on camera beheading of numerous hostages of ISIS. He is a Kuwaiti citizen whose family immigrated to Britain in the mid-nineties – and who in 2009 had a struggle with British Intelligence. British Intelligence seems to believe that he was already looking for a revolution to fight in 2009. But others have openly wondered if it wasn’t this brush that sent what had been a good boy up until this time to fight for the other side. The reality just might be somewhere in the middle. He might have already been a youth searching for a way to put his ideals into practice, but the events in 2009 simply narrowed his field of focus to the Islamic State. But, whatever his reasons were, knowing the identity of this masked executioner has made this drama even more real, as if we needed that with the videotaped executions appearing frequently through social media. The Islamic State wants there to be no doubt that what is happening is real, it makes the terror real – and instilling terror in anyone who opposes them is the purpose behind the killings in the first place. The message is that this is real, and therefore the world should be very afraid. Their hope is that because we are afraid, the world will eventually capitulate to their demands.

It is another John who opens up his letters with a similar message. This thing that we are writing about, I know it. I have heard it, I have seen it, I have studied it, I have touched it, and I understand it. This is what is real. The message is important. We are not positive who wrote the letter, but we suspect it might have been the Apostle John partially because of this opening. The Apostle John was in place to do exactly this - to hear, to see, to have studied and understood, and to have touched this Word of life. And the Word, according to the Gospel of John, was Jesus.

The message is important because it debunks the Gnostic message that was infiltrating the church at the time. Their message was that this Jesus was not actually a Messiah or the Son of God, but rather that he was either an phantom who appeared to be human or someone who had attained some lower state of divinity through what he had come to know and to teach his disciples. But John gets to say clearly that this interpretation of Jesus is wrong - because he was there. He knows what is real because he experienced it.

Both John’s are witnesses to epic events of history. Jihadi John is a witness to the power of hate and the way that terror can shape the world. The John of this letter is about to unfold the opposite story, about a God who loves the world so much that he allowed his Son to come and die on a cross, taking our place so that hate would no longer has any effect on us. The message that John wants his readers to understand about Jesus is simple, love defeats hate - every time.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 John 2