Christmas I - The God Who Wants to Be Known

Christmas I

December 29, 2013

Fr. Philip Eberhart

THE GOD WHO WANTS TO BE KNOWN

So, NOW, this morning we have a white Christmas!!  

Kind of took me by surprise this morning.

As I read our Gospel lesson for this morning I was struck

by the last paragraph of the reading.  Really the whole reading

is an amazing one, the prologue or beginning of John, the 

beloved disciple's account of Jesus life and mission - especially

His final weeks.

I was particularly struck by the last line of the reading:

It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

The purpose for which Jesus, the Son of God, came was to make known to us His Father.

Over and over again, throughout the New Testament this is the measure by which we see God measuring our lives here on earth.  We are both to KNOW HIM and to BE KNOWN BY HIM.  What do those things mean to us today?

The words that the Bible uses for To Know are two - the first is simply knowledge - up here in the head - information. The presence or absence of facts about a person or thing or situation.  It is used about 300 times in the NT.  The other word denotes an experiential knowledge, a knowing down here - I call it the 18" drop!  It is a knowing in your heart, not just your head.  And its that knowing that I want to explore this morning, because it is that knowing that Jesus came to bring. 

Jesus came to bring us an experiential knowing of the Father - the last line of our reading again, says:

It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

On Christmas Eve I spoke for a few moments at the end of the sermon about the power of our "YES" to God.  When we say YES to God the result is that He is now free to bring this kind of KNOWING into our lives.  

The first thing that we have to know ... is that this knowing is not from this world - it is not from information we have gathered or can gather.  It is entirely something that the Son of God, or as John puts it, God the Only Son, brings to us - as a result of being in a relationship with Him.

RELATIONSHIP

What does that mean?  I don't want to assume stupidity here.  How does one go about developing a relationship?  Anyone?

How did you go about the process in your own life, with your BFF or your spouse?  How does someone become your "significant other?"

It is a process - with several ingredients...

1.   TIME

We cannot expect to have a relationship with someone, in any deep sense of that word, without spending time with them.   How many of you know that "Long Distance Relationships" is really an oxymoron!  They are super difficult to have, to maintain, at any depth.

Time together is the real key and ground of growing in relationship with someone.

But you can't just be in the same room all day.  What else is needed?

2.   TALK

Oh!   You mean I have to communicate?  Well, ... duh!  How many of you have a relationship that is maintained in silence?  Anyone?  Any relationship?  A silent relationship -- it even sounds non-sensical.  We reject the possibility out of hand.

There can be no relationship without communication.  We have to talk to one another to have a relationship, and you have to talk to God, to Jesus, to have a relationship.  

Communication works two ways - Talking and Listening.  When I was first getting to know my wife Val, we spend inordinate amounts of time together - there was a pizza place where we would go and have supper and talk, for 5, 6, 8 hours at a shot.  It never got tiring.  Why?  Because we wanted to "KNOW" one another - there was something there, and we knew it was special pretty quickly - SHE'S THE ONE / HE'S THE ONE kind of stuff.  

We need two-way communication with God through Jesus Christ.  And we have been given ACCESS to God, through Jesus and by the Holy Spirit.  We have been granted an audience with the God of the Universe - at any moment, of any day.

I watched the movie LINCOLN last night on TV and I was reminded of a story that Nicky Gumbel tells in ALPHA:

      During the Civil War there was a soldier who needed to speak with the President on an urgent personal matter.  He came to the White House but was denied entry, as he had no invitation.  As he sat outside, across the street, a small boy was playing and noticed the soldier, came over and spoke with him.  The soldier explained that he had come some distance to see and speak to the President, but had been denied entry.

The boy simply said, "Come on, follow me."  So he did as they went around to the back door of the White House, equally guarded and closed, but through which they walked straight in, with no hesitation or questioning.  Up into the house and through the corridors, right into the Oval Office - where the President was in conversation with his Secretary of State.  Lincoln looked up and said, "Todd!  What can I help you with?"

At which point, Todd, Lincoln's beloved son, introduced his new found friend and granted him an audience with his father.  He had ACCESS to the Father, through the Son.

"Come on ... Follow Me."

There is something beyond TIME and TALK -

3.  TRUTH

Jesus wants to know us and us to know him INTIMATELY.  Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well,  "An hour is coming and now is, when the Father will seek True Worshippers who will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.  Indeed it is such that the Father seeks out."

We all know that truth is the foundational bedrock on which relationships stand or fall.  Truth is that which allows us to build trust, another word is faith!  Trust is the STUFF that faith is made of !!

That is why the communication piece is so crucial - God wants to know you, personally, at your own disclosing - not as an action of His omniscience!  Think of it - God wants to engage you with His love, His mercy and His grace.  To do so He wants to talk with you!  He wants to hear from you - the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God!

Jesus, back in John 4, in his conversation with the woman at the well (a conversation, by the way, that illustrates perfectly both the extent to which God is willing to press for relationship AND the need for truth in the communication) - when Jesus told her to "go call your husband and come back here."  She responded with TRUTH.  And Jesus responded to her Truth with MORE TRUTH.  TRUTH about her and her serial relationships, something that had made her an outcast, drawing water at noontime, not morning, so as not to have to run into the other women from the village.  

But Jesus engages her - a woman!   A Samaritan WOMAN.  This was way, way, way beyond the boundaries of allowed communication in Jesus day,  especially for a recognized Jewish Rabbi !!  It just was NOT done.

What's the lesson here?

God so wants to have a relationship with you, that He will go to any lengths to do so.  God will pursue you until you have to say NO! And you may have to say NO several times and loudly.  God doesn't hear NO very well !!  You almost have to shout at Him. Right in His Face !!

But you can whisper a YES, and He will hear it from across the Universe!

God is funny that way.  I guess it is His Father's Heart.

I love that phrase in our reading:    It is God the only Son, who is CLOSE TO THE FATHERS HEART.

Any parents here?  Do you understand that phrase?   Father's Heart / Mother's Heart?

Our sons and daughters are precious to us - close to our hearts.  It was the same with Jesus and His Father.  Only more so - in fact we partake of the stream in our own loves that comes from the fountainhead of His Love!  God is the source of love in the universe - and the extent to which we can experience His love for us, is often the extent to which we can share it with others.

It is that sharing that Jesus was sent to do!  To make known to us, to reveal the full extent of God's love for us - for all mankind - for all of His creation. And Jesus showed that love for us in his life, in his relating with His disciples and even with his relating with the pharisees and those who opposed him.  He showed the full extent of God's love - and God's willingness to go to any lengths - by the extension of his hands on the Cross and the words of forgiveness that came from his mouth in that moment.

"It is God the only Son, who is Close to the Father's heart, who has made Him known"

Let us pray:

Almighty god, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant
us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way,
the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his
steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ
your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity
of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.