Soaring with the Eagles/Running with the Bulls

There's an old Christian tradition that connects the Four Gospels of the New Testament to the four "living creatures" that John of Patmos saw in the Throne Room of Heaven (Revelation 4:7). If you remember, a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle all cried praise to the Lord, in a vision that seems to draw pretty heavily on Ezekiel's earlier glimpse of the four heavenly creatures surrounding the chariot of Yahweh, each with the face of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle.

The symbolic connections here, I suppose, would have been irresistible to the imagination of an early Christian: four cherubim with four faces draw God's chariot in Ezekiel's vision of heaven; later four creatures cry an incessant trisagion around the throne of God in Revelation; and then four canonical Gospels proclaim the Good News about God's love for his creation as expressed in Jesus Christ-- and so there's this old Christian tradition that associates the Gospels with the four "living creatures" of Revelation 4:7. Matthew is the Man, Mark the Lion, Luke the ox, and John the eagle.

And I mention it here because I've noticed that, while the Gospel of John has always been my favorite gospel to read (and I would have rated Luke third or fourth), practically speaking I've preached far more Lukan texts this past year than Johannine (2 to 1); in fact I'd go so far as to say that Luke is my favorite gospel to preach while I often find preaching John a challenge. I humbly confess this here, hoping that all this talk about having a "favorite gospel", or ranking the Word of God like some short list for the Booker Prize doesn't come off as a total act of hubris on my part: it seems I'd read John before Luke, but I'd preach Luke before John.

I'm not sure why this is, exactly, except that Luke seems pretty determined to give us just what he promised Theophilus at the outset: a "carefully investigated" and "orderly account" of the Good News (see Luke 1:1-4). So he's always leaving helpful signposts to his "point" in any given passage, dropping key words and other semantic cues like bread-crumbs to help the preacher on his way. John, by contrast, lays out these convoluted labyrinths of words-- about a word, for instance, that was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God, and was with God in the beginning, and was the source of a life that was a light that shone in an uncomprehending darkness and came in grace-filled flesh with the truth to his own who did not receive him... I mean, these are exhilarating to wander, but hard to know when you've reached the end. As N. T. Wright once put it, John just leads us to the top of the mountain and then says: look, on a clear day you can see forever.

Or, as ancient Christian tradition once put it, Luke's the ox; John's the eagle. And I find it's true: preaching John is kinda like trying to point out an eagle circling way off in the blue while we all squint into the sun together ("No over there... no just to the left there... look... see that cloud shaped like an angel?... well that black speck just to the right of it...); whereas with Luke, I'm learning, it's kinda like running with the bulls: just keep every one's feet moving together because he's coming through, and after he passes we'll all feel the thrill having brushed just a bit too close for comfort with very stuff of life.