That We May Know

SCRIPTURE TEXT:  John 17:1-11; PREACHER:  Rev. Monte Marshall

Christina M. H. Powell, is an ordained minister, author, medical writer, and a research scientist trained at Harvard Medical School and Harvard University.  She writes: “Science defines life as the possession of self-sustaining biological processes.”[1]  This sounds reasonable enough to me; but apparently, not reasonable enough to satisfy other scientists.

For example, in 2002, Astrobiology Magazine published an article entitled “Defining Life.”  The article asks: “What is life, exactly?”  The article then notes that “This is a question that keeps biologists up at night.”  Really?  This was news to me!  The article then states that “The science of biology is the study of life, yet scientists can’t agree on an absolute definition.”[2]

Now I’m not a biologist, but I hope I’m not too far off base to say that over the past 64 years or so of my existence, I’ve been alive, biologically speaking.  However, I’m also aware that even though I’ve been alive, biologically speaking, I’ve still been searching for life—a life of meaning—a life of purpose—a life of depth—a life that is far more than biology can grasp.

Come to think of it, this morning’s scripture passage from John’s gospel speaks of life and at a moment in the story when Jesus is preparing his followers for his death and its aftermath.  Since chapter 13, Jesus has been delivering what scholars call, the Farewell Discourse.  Now, at the beginning of chapter 17, Jesus begins to pray.  He looks up to heaven and says: “’Abba, the hour has come!  Glorify your Only Begotten that I may glorify you.”  As the prayer continues, Jesus acknowledges that God has given him authority “over all human kind” to bestow eternal life on all those given to him by God.

Jesus then defines “eternal life:” Jesus says, “’And this is eternal life: to know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent, Jesus, the Messiah.’”  I think we’ve moved beyond biology here into theology!

The kind of life envisioned here is life with God—a life united with God.  John Shelby Spong speaks of “the oneness of the human with the divine.”[3]  Indeed, it’s God’s presence in this mystical union that gives life its eternal dimension.

New Testament scholar, Jamie Clark-Soles, notes that in contrast to what many of us have been taught, eternal life in John’s gospel has nothing to do “with escaping fiery flames of hell or singing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ with the cherubim and seraphim at some future glorious appointment…. No,” she writes.  Eternal life is about “being in relationship with God and Christ.”  And this relationship is “available in its entirety now.”[4]

So what’s the key to experiencing this kind of life?  It’s knowing.  Commentator Nancy Ramsey writes that in this morning’s text, “’Knowing’ describes a powerful, active, confessional, and intimately relational claim on our lives.”  “Knowing God,” she adds, “is an experience that draws believers into a new reality in which the new order that will be eternally shaped by God’s vision for love and justice and service can also be realized in relationships and communities now.  Knowing God will be evident in our obedience to love, the singular commandment of [John’s] Gospel.”[5]

So what’s the role of Jesus, the Messiah in this experience of knowing?  Marcus Borg writes: “Jesus is what can be seen of God embodied in a human life…. Jesus is, for us Christians, the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like.”[6]  And I would add that “a life full of God” is in fact, what our text means by eternal life.

In my search for a life of meaning, purpose and depth that’s beyond biology, I’ve chosen to follow Jesus.  In the midst of many distractions, I’m learning to know ever more intimately, this Abba God, “the one who sent, Jesus, the Messiah.”  And if John’s gospel is right, then it’s in this knowing that I experience eternal life, here and now.

In fact, this “knowing” is available to us all, but in a variety of ways.  This is the story of how Douglas Burton-Christie came to experience eternal life.  He writes: “I was raised Catholic and participated in every meaningful part of a young Catholic’s life:  I was baptized, received first communion, and was confirmed.  I went to Catholic school and even served for many years as an altar boy.  Surely, some sense of faith, some feeling for God had been instilled in my soul during that time.  I think it had.  But somehow it faded and I lost hold of that thread.  I could not really say who or what God was or how I imagined my own life to be connected to God.

With these confused and ambiguous feelings, Douglas joined a group of his friends and classmates for a weekend retreat in the mountains outside Los Angeles.  He continues: “I was full of bravado as I boarded the bus to go up to the retreat center; I was going to do this on my own terms.  As the retreat unfolded, I maintained this tone, not as a conscious act of defiance, but more as an unconscious gesture of resistance.  I sensed that there was something compelling at the heart of this whole experience and I was both drawn to it and afraid of it.  I suspect I knew, in the way one can know something without being fully aware of it, that to open myself to this world of faith would cost me something…. So I protected myself.”

When the retreat was over, Douglas and his friends boarded a bus to return home.  Douglas was in a “wistful mood:” “I had survived the weekend,” he writes.  “Nothing had changed.  I had successfully resisted all attempts to win me over to a life of faith.  But I did not feel happy.  Instead I felt uneasy, agitated, confused.  I had become aware of a strange longing for something I could not name.

“Then something strange happened.  I felt what I can only describe as a strong sensation of warmth coursing through my body.  No conscious thought accompanied it…. I was now completely in the grip of this sensation—a feeling of warmth as if a fever was coming on.  But I knew I was not getting sick.  It felt completely different than that.

“A few moments later, the bus pulled off the highway and into a rest stop…. I was one of the first ones to get off the bus and I wandered over and sat down against a brick wall a few feet away…. Sitting against the wall, with the late afternoon sun pouring down on me, I watched as my friends and classmates climbed down off the bus.  It was extraordinary.  I found myself gazing at them, drinking in their faces.  And I was aware of only one thing: their beauty.  Each one of them appeared to me radiant, bathed in a kind of light.  This was noticeably different from my usual way of perceiving people—more critical, more aware of their flaws and foibles—and I sensed the difference without being able to account for it.  In that moment, I saw only their goodness, their beauty.  They were transfigured.”

Douglas came to understand his experience “as the birth of the Word in the soul.”  This language he borrowed from a German mystic named Meister Eckhart, but it’s also language that owes much to the gospel of John.

Douglas concludes: “To open oneself to the birth of the Word in the soul is to recognize that everything has been given to us, is being given to us through the gift of the Word.  It is to realize that we are alive in God, in eternity.  This is an utterly simple and encompassing vision of reality, breathtaking in its sweep, both comforting and thrilling in what it suggests about who we are and what our lives mean at the ground of our existence…. Here is everything we long for, God poured forth in the ground of the soul not once but always.”[7]

This, it seems to me, is but one example of life beyond biology—one example of what it means to experience eternal life—one example of what it is to know God, and the one whom God sent.  Now the question is:  How do we experience life beyond biology?  This story is ours to write.

It’s my prayer for us this morning that we each come to know “God poured forth in the ground of the soul not once but always,”[8] for to know this, is “to realize that we are alive in God, in eternity.”[9]  Thanks be to God!  Amen.