The First Day of Our Lives--May 14, 2024
[Jesus prayed:] "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." [John 17:3]
The world has no lack of love songs, but one of my all-time favorites echoes in my ears when I read these words from John's recounting of Jesus' prayer for his followers. It's by Conor Oberst, going by the performance name "Bright Eyes" for this one, and it goes like this:
"This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They're spreading blankets on the beach...
Yours is the first face that I saw
Think I was blind before I met you
I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been
But I... know where I want to be..."
It gets me every time. (Go ahead and search it up; it's a simple acoustic guitar, finger plucked beneath Oberst's earnest vocals, and it just might change your world.)
Okay, everybody back now?
The reason I direct you to that love song in particular is the recurring idea there in the opening verse that loving this person is like coming to life--it's like feeling you had never really seen anything before, until the beloved walked in. It's like you had been standing in the rain only to have the sun break free of the clouds in an instant. It's like feeling that you were never really alive... until you knew your beloved. This song is what it feels like, at least in terms of romantic love, to say to someone, "Knowing you makes me more alive than I was before." And, dear ones, if your life should allow for that possibility, savor and hold onto it; it is a gift.
But I wonder--have we ever considered the possibility that knowing God brings us more fully to life? Maybe at an even deeper level than our spouses and significant others?
I ask because that's how Jesus describes it here. "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Once you get over the weirdness in our ears of having Jesus seemingly talk about himself in the third-person (although that may be a quirk of John our narrator here), the idea is like the song lyric: the eternal kind of life is knowing God. Or, put the other way around, knowing God--like in a relational sense, rather than memorizing facts--is what makes us really and fully alive. Sure, our hearts might keep beating and our lungs might keep breathing in and out whether or not we are consciously aware of our connection to God (this is one of God's shows of kindness all around to us, it turns out). But some part of us is permanently unsatisfied, even if we can't quite put it into words, apart from the awareness that we are forever and unconditionally loved. And of course, the name for the One who loves us forever and unconditionally--is God.
As Saint Augustine put it so beautifully, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." It's the 5th century equivalent of singing to God, "Yours is the first face I saw--I think I was blind before I met you." And, again along the lines of the song, "The First Day of My Life," knowing God feels like we are being given direction and fulfillment in our lives; we might well pray, "I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been, but I know where I want to be."
It's funny, in that sad way, that we don't often talk about knowing God in these terms--that the reason it's worth getting to know God is that we are more fully alive from the relationship, not some guilt trip or heavenly transaction to get into the afterlife. All too often, when door-knocking evangelists or sandwich-board-wearing street preachers ask, "Do youuu KNOWWW the Lorrrrddddd?" it is with the heavy-handed implication that "knowing God" is a subject you must learn in order to achieve a future status of life in heaven, as though God is only really worth knowing as a means to an end. Usually the pitch goes something like this: "If you know the Lord, then you will be able to believe the correct facts about God in order to profess your faith on judgment day and thereby get into the pearly gates. But if you do not know enough facts about God to pass your post-mortem theology exam, you will be cast into the outer darkness." And that makes it sound like God is just a stepping stone to getting something else that we want--like saying, "I have to know enough from the driver's ed class so I can get my license," or "I am only going to memorize the periodic table so I can get a good enough grade in chemistry that I can get into a good college." In other words, God is reduced to being just a tool for getting something more interesting or valuable, but once we've gotten what we really wanted, we can forget what we learned.
And that's just not how Jesus talks. He is never interested in reducing God to being just a means to an end or a tool for our ulterior motives. Jesus is convinced that knowing God is what brings us to life--it is the rest for the restlessness inside us, and yet it is also the vitality that heightens our awareness and deepens our experience of the world. As we've noted, the phrase "eternal life" is about more than mere quantity--it is a quality of life that is given to us even now, even here, because we are conscious of our relationship to the One who loves us unconditionally. When we know we are loved--and when we have at least some inkling of Who it is that loves us--it feels like we are at last, alive, in a way we never knew before. It's like this is the first day of our lives.
When people ask us why we are Christians, if all we have to say is that "Church is where I learn facts about God so that I can go to heaven after I die," it will sound like endless drudgery on our part, and like God is just being used on God's part. And if we reduce this faith of ours to saying, "Heaven is the reward for people who know enough about God," it makes it sound like God is only important as a way of getting somewhere else, rather than the One whose love for us here and now makes this life more beautiful, more compelling, and more joyful--you know: more alive.
If you know what it is in this life to have met and loved someone who just made you feel more alive than you were before without them, then you know it's not about using them in order to get something else. The time spent in their presence is the gift itself. The quirks you learn about them, the laughter you share with them, the tears that come as a part of the twists and turns of a journey together, these are what make life itself worth living, rather than how you can get a free car out of them or a trip to the Caribbean. Loving someone isn't a means to getting something else--that's not love. But when you love someone--or when you discover you are loved and get to know the one who calls you beloved--you are alive in a way you were not before. That's what it's like to be alive because of our knowing God. And that's what we invite people to experience for themselves as we share our faith with people: it's much less about heavenly fire-insurance and much more about life in the fullest. That's what Jesus gives us. That's what his presence has always been about.
Today, be fully alive. Be conscious of the One who calls you beloved.
Lord God, help us to know you more deeply and thereby to come alive more truly.
No comments:
Post a Comment