Skipping the Buffet

Skipping the Buffet--May 1, 2018

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that that Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." [John 17:1-3]

Let's face it--as a species, we humans tend to be suckers for quantity over quality.  Or at least, we tend to focus on "how much" of something we will get, rather than "how good" the something is which we are getting.

As Exhibit A, let me offer the vast abundance of all-you-can-eat buffets across our fair land, which all advertise in one way or another that they offer a "great deal" on their food, because they promise you can get a large quantity of food for relatively little money.  And I will not dispute their math at all--indeed, you can get a lot of food at your average all-you-can-eat-buffet, and spend relatively less than you would at many sit-down restaurants.  But whether that is a "great deal" or not, in truth, depends in the end on whether it is of greater value to have a lot of mediocre food, or a sensible amount of very, very good food.  In other words, the question is whether we should be so focused on defining worth in terms of quantity (how much) rather than quality (how good) in the first place.

As Exhibit B, let me offer a brilliantly funny line from an early episode of the quirky sitcom, "The Good Place."  Kristen Bell's character is talking with Ted Danson's character about how popular frozen yogurt places are in their neighborhood, even though they both admit they prefer the richer taste of good old-fashioned ice cream.  And Danson's character Michael says, "There's something so human about taking something and ruining it just a little bit so that you can have more of it."  There's something spot on about that, isn't there?  We reach for quantity rather than quality.

Surely plenty of other examples abound, all of which would confirm the dictum of a writing teacher I recall from high school, who said, "Sometimes more isn't better;  sometimes more is just more."

So here's why I wanted us to spend a moment owning our tendency to define "good" in terms of "increased quantity" rather than "higher quality."  It turns out that when Jesus himself talks about the kind of life he has come to give us, it is more about a certain quality, while we have all just been taught somewhere along the way only to think of it in terms of quantity.  We hear the phrase "eternal life" and tend to assume that it essentially means "more" of life--that is, life basically like what we know now, but for years and years and years and so on--when Jesus actually talks about a different (better, you could say) quality of life when it is lived in God. But we get hung up on quantity and just assume that the whole point of what we call "eternal life" is just getting an infinitely long supply of minutes to live, like we have just arrived at the Chinese buffet of existence and can have as many helpings of sweet and sour chicken with fluorescent orange sauce as we would like.

But for a moment, humor me.  Let's actually look at how the text reads here in John 17.  Before we bring any of our baggage or assumptions to how understand "eternal life," let's hear how Jesus describes it.  (We won't even have to get bogged down in the weeds of the Greek today--suffice it to say that the word translated "eternal" here in the New Testament is the Greek word "aiōnos," which means in a woodenly literal sense, "of the age" or "of the ages," in which case we still have to figure out what "life of the ages" means to Jesus.)  Here's what Jesus says:  "And this is eternal life--that they may know you..."  Huh.  How about that.  It is a kind of life, a quality of life, a set of circumstances, that Jesus has in mind.  And it is profoundly relational.  

Honestly, if Jesus had wanted to stress that this thing called "eternal life" was a quantity thing more than a quality thing, you would have expected him to say something like, "And this is eternal life--living, for a long, long time..." or "And this is eternal life: an infinite number of years of the same ol', same ol'..."  For that matter, if Jesus' primary concern were streets of gold or gates of pearl, or getting to go fishing up at your favorite fishing spot, or free sports cars and fancy mansions, this would have been a place to mention any of those.  Jesus doesn't describe the life that is eternal in terms of stuff, or time, or the endless shrimp cocktails on the lido deck.  It is about the kind of life lived knowing the One who is Love, the One by whom we are already fully known.  The life we call "eternal" is about relationship, and the way that relationship changes everything else.  This is the life that Jesus gives us.

When John the gospel writer gives us Jesus' words saying, "This is eternal life--that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent," it isn't simply "knowing" in the sense of facial recognition or name recall.  Knowing someone isn't really just about putting a face with a name, but about the other sharing some of their own self with you, and inviting you to share your own self back.  To "know" another person is to let your soul touch theirs.  That's probably why, after all, a favorite biblical euphemism for procreation is "to know" someone, as in "Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived a son..."  He didn't just recognize her face.  

The life that is eternal is, at least as the Gospels themselves describe it, first and foremost a particular kind of life--a quality, you could say.  Sure, part of that quality is that is no longer confined by the grip of death.  But it's not just an infinite loop of more, more, more, like an all-you-can-eat-buffet of Being.  It's about a life worth living--a quality that takes shape by knowing the One who knows us.  What we call "eternal life," then, is really a life "lived within God," so to speak--a life where my being touches right up against God's, so that I come to see everything through the light of God's own presence, like a lens. And to see everything in light of God is to see everything around me as a gift of grace, every person around me as bearing the face of Christ, every moment I live as a precious treasure I did not earn, and each day as an opportunity to share in God's kind of self-giving love.  To "know God" means, too, that I come to realize that I am known by God already... and beloved all the while.  It is not that God is still forming an opinion of me, waiting to see how I turn out, or whether I'll do enough good in my life to win a spot in the club, but rather knowing that God sees me precisely as I am and says, "You are mine."  That frees me from all the stupid game playing we do in this life trying to impress others, to find some other connections that will make us feel acceptable, or to puff ourselves up.  Knowing God frees me to see that I am beloved... and so is the person next to me, whether I like them myself or not.  Knowing God means knowing that God loves both me and my enemy, the people I like as well as the people I can't stand, and that changes how I use this life, with every breath I get.

Funny how we get all excited about what a great deal it is to pay $5.99 for repeat trips to a buffet that we will end up regretting after we eat, but we overlook the sheer goodness of a home-cooked meal made by someone who loves you enough to know what you like and don't like on your plate, and who gives it to you for free.  That's us, though--suckers for quantity over quality.  

Perhaps, just for a change, we might skip the buffet and listen to Jesus on this one today, and embrace the life that is eternal in quality--the life lived knowing God in Christ.

Lord Jesus, you give us life--not just in minutes, years, and decades, but in beauty, justice, grace, and truth.  Grant us to live in this "eternal" life you make possible, right here and right now.