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Thursday, March 19
John 8:21-32
Again he said to them, 'I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.' Then the Jews said, 'Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, "Where I am going, you cannot come"?' He said to them, 'You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.' They said to him, 'Who are you?' Jesus said to them, 'Why do I speak to you at all? I have much to say about you and much to condemn; but the one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.' They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father. So Jesus said, 'When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me. And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him.' As he was saying these things, many believed in him.
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, 'If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.'
Imagine me standing alongside you right now, saying to you 'I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.' You might humor me. But, in all likelihood, you would make some dismissive comment intended to put me off without offending me, and walk away. If I continued to talk as you were departing, saying 'You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he,' you would very likely shake your head and make the decision that I need serious help, either counseling or hospitalization. If you are a socially conscious person - and most of us in this fellowship are - you might take the steps necessary to see to it that I get help.
Sometimes when I have read the Lenten stories, my eyes have glazed over and my mind has gone into a funk. It is all just too much too comprehend...that God whom I cannot envision let alone comprehend would send one human being to this earth to embody the story of God's love for all of humanity who ever lived in the past or would live thereafter...and then allow that person to be treacherously and painfully murdered...so I can have a future eternal life...one that my understanding of is at best fuzzy. The story is, after all, just a story...right? I'm supposed to believe this all happened two thousand years before radio and television were around to report it live...before a printing press could generate the story on parchment able to survive those millennia. There is no extant proof from the time when Christ and his disciples walked the earth that they even existed. As those of you Saturday night live fans will remember Church Lady saying, "How convenient!"
What proofs did Christ offer? Certainly nothing tangible. Christ made it a matter of believing, a matter of faith. He said "In your [Hebrew] law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. I testify on my own behalf, and the One who sent me testifies on my behalf." In the millennia that have passed since he died and came again, the witness of the apostles and others who wrote about him have multiplied into the hundreds, then thousands, and now millions upon millions. The axiom is that a person is only as good as their word. It is our choice whether to believe their testimony.
As my faith has grown that these Biblical stories have truth in them, my theological understanding that they are stories, embodiments of the truth rather than literal details, has also deepened. And that leads me into another devotional place entirely: how am I to understand these stories? How then, shall I choose to live? rw
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