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1) The four Gospels are our principal resource for understanding Jesus; they are the foundation documents of our Christian community. Few of us, however, were first introduced to Jesus through reading the Gospels. Most of us were introduced to Jesus through people who passed on to us the living tradition they had received: in that sense the first Gospel we encountered was probably people. The theologian Walter Kasper insists that the starting-point of anyone’s faith journey is “faith as it is actually believed, lived, proclaimed and practised in the Christian churches. Faith in Jesus can arise only from encounter with other Christians” (Jesus the Christ, p.28). People pass on the faith, they retell the Jesus story “so that you may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing this, you may have life in his name” (Jn 20:31). As the fourth evangelist reflects, the purpose of passing on the tradition is to give life. Who first introduced us to Jesus? What were our first images of Jesus? Where did those images originate?
Head of Christ: Leuven, twelfth century
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2) Looking at our own first images of Jesus First images of Jesus ? ? ? ? Yeshua
Source? parents grandparents parish church school evangelists
3) Looking at the above panel, you can fill in images of Jesus that were passed on to you from family or institutions. It takes most people time before they meet the Jesus of the evangelists, the one known as Yeshua to his contemporaries. Most people first inherit the images of Jesus that are popular in their family, local tradition, culture, etc. The writers of the Gospels were part of this people-centred process, and they too share their first images of Jesus. If none of the evangelists knew Jesus personally, all of them were introduced to Jesus through an earlier generation of preachers and teachers. Each of them emerged from a different community of faith; each of them passed on, in his own creative way, the living tradition he had received. The Church gave birth to the Gospels, not vice versa. 4) Looking at the evangelists’ first images of Jesus At the beginning of each written Gospel, the evangelist connects the new Jesus story to a larger story. Each places the Jesus story into a larger frame: the prophetic story (Mark); the Jewish story (Matthew); the human story (Luke); the divine story (John). Also, the four evangelists have different first images of Jesus: this is understandable because they begin the story of Jesus in different places. Mark begins with an adult Jesus; Matthew and Luke begin with the conception and birth of Jesus; John begins before the world was created. These different beginnings mean different first images.
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