Jesus replied, "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word.
.....Though you do not know him, I know him
The passage begs a question doesn't it ?
"What is it that Jesus uniquely knows, that we need Him to tell us about?"
There are three pictures in my mind. The first is a man, an exile, a refugee, many thousands of years ago, in the wilderness of Sinai, with a herd of sheep. He is watching a fire that burns and burns and burns. His name is Moses. The second is man standing in a woodshed looking a beam of light coming through the cracks in the roof. The year is 1945 and his name is C.S. Lewis, an Oxford don. The third is an old man, a monk in a detective story by William Broderick, watching a bonfire. A stranger watches him and watches the fire and asks him, What is it you monks do? There is a silence and in the end the old man replies, "We tend a fire that never goes out"
There are a number of instances in the growing relationship with Jesus and the band of followers where they see something in him which is extra-ordinary. He taught, ate, walked, did miracles, explained, told stories, partied. Then there were the times he scared the pants off them. They saw something in Him and through Him which was a portal to something vast. John describes these moments in his first letter:
"what we heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life - this life was revealed and we have seen it and testify to it and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us"
And in another place,
"and we beheld his glory"
In the ordinary things of life, in the relationship with this man Jesus who we saw day after day, we touched him, held him, shared with him, we saw something no one had ever seen in a human man before. The fire that never goes out. The fire that burns in the wild darkness but which is irrepressible. The light of the world. And mostly they fell on their knees. He took their breath away. And he said wild and scary things that first century Jews were unused to hearing.
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father and no one knows the Son except the Father or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Luke 10
I want to leave in your mind at this point the thought of two men, Moses and Jesus. Both of them saw something which no one else saw. The leadership of Moses was built on a unique relationship with the mysterious God who spoke out of a inexhaustible fire. The leadership of Jesus was built on a relationship He had with the Father that was unique to him. They both knew something that changed everything.
OK. Now let's go to another place.
What is people want? Well, I mean apart from a roof over their heads and food and relationships. What have we sought after in philosophy and religion?
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· There is the question of what we are -. what defines us, what is our identity.
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· There is the question of where we are - the anxiety about where we are heading.
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· There is the question of whose we are - is there anyone accompanying through the
journey of life.
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Here's the first point. I want to put it to you that when the disciples asked Jesus, as they appeared to have frequently done," Who is the Father? Show us the Father?" that this was the way first century Jews would have asked our three questions. The questions of identity, anxiety and emptiness. The Jews were not philosophers. Remember Paul said The Greeks seek wisdom and the Jews seek a sign. Greeks were the philosophers, always asking questions. Big questions. Great questions. Jews wanted to see evidence of God working. Paul said, To them both we offer Christ crucified, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Second point. Jesus is saying that what He is offering to us is the knowledge of He has of the Father that we lack. To put it another way, living by faith is having Jesus continually showing us the Father. If we knew who the Father was then we would know three great things:
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· If Jesus was showing us the Father we would know the source of our being, that we were made in the image of this God, the source of love and creativity and joy. That whatever the mechanisms of how the world came to be, it was willed by a vast and mysterious being and that we have a unique place in this world. We are the creatures in whom God has invested something special. We look like him in a way nothing else does. That is the deepest source of our humanity. Our questions about identity would be resolved
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· If Jesus was showing us the Father we would have a proof against all anxiety because we would know that we are on the way to the Father. That life's meaning is bound up in this amazing thought that each of us is on a special journey. We are journeying through this life with its mixture of joy and sorrow and frustration and success to another place. In that place we shall be welcomed, comforted, healed. Our anxieties about life's meaning would be resolved.
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· If Jesus was showing us the Father we would know whose we were. That our deepest meaning was not in finding out who we were but whose we were. Our identity is shaped by our belonging to the Being who made us. I interviewed a lady called Maggi about her spiritual journey. She struggled to find the right words, she was a lapsed Catholic, a nursery worker. I said to her, "Maggi, what does your heart tell you is true?" She filled with tears and whispered, "He's always with me". Jesus was showing her the Father, who will never leave us or forsake us. Our fear of being alone or abandoned would be resolved.
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Jesus encouraged the disciples to have an energetic faith. A spirit of vigorous inquiry. They should ask and seek and knock on the door. The asking faith would receive. The searching faith would find. The faith that beat on the door would find it opened. What did he assume they were looking for? The knowledge of who the Father is. Who is the Father? Who has sure and certain knowledge that will tell us who we are? Who can tell us where we are going? Who can assure us that we are not alone?
If we ask Jesus, it is His joy to show us the Father. He knows uniquely who the Father is. He has access that is privileged. He is the way to follow and door to knock on.
A man enters a woodshed and muses as he looks on the shaft of sunlight piecing through the gloom. It is 1945 and his name is Jack Lewis, the beloved Christian teacher and academic. He wrote an article about his experience for the Coventry Evening Telegraph. This is what he wrote:
"I was standing today in a dark woodshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.
Then I moved so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly, the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no tool shed and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside, and beyond that, ninety odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam and looking at the beam are two very different experiences."
There are two sorts of knowledge. Knowing about things - looking at the beam of light. Knowledge of things - looking along the beam of light. If Jesus is going to show us the Father in a way that answers our questions we must move from a relationship with Christianity which is knowing about it to a relationship with Christianity which is a direct knowing, looking along the beam of light to the beauty and immensities that exist outside of this small space. It is as though Jesus were this beam of light and when we look along it we see the wonder of His and our Father. We shall know who we are - beloved children. We shall know where we are going - to His love. We shall know we are not alone - He is always with us.
Why do we regularly come to this place, why sit so often cold, in its vast space? Because more is going on here than meets the eye.
Like the elderly monk tending his bonfire, we too tend a fire that never goes out.
Because when we look in that certain way, along the light, Jesus is showing us the Father.
Tim Marks
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