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2
FROM BELIEVING TO KNOWING
On one occasion towards the end of his life, St. Paul is in prison in Caesarea awaiting transfer to Rome for trial. The governor, Festus, is explaining to a visitor, King Agrippa, the curious charges being brought against Paul. ‘His accusers did not charge him with any of the crimes I had expected; but they had some argument or other with him…about a dead man called Jesus whom Paul alleged to be alive’ (Acts 25:18-19) For Festus and Paul’s enemies, Jesus was a ‘dead man’, no more. But for Paul and the Christian believers, Jesus is alive and among them, their living Lord and Friend whom they can know and love and for whom they are joyfully prepared to die.
So for us Christians today, Jesus is alive and with us. We not only believe in him, we can know him, have personal friendship with him and experience this friendship as the source of our deepest joy and power. Peter’s words to the first believers should apply to us. ‘You did not see him, yet you love him; and still without seeing him, you are already filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described, because you believe’ (1 Peter 1:8-9). Our faith must touch the whole person and not just the mind only. The risen present Lord offers his love to our hearts. After the crucifixion of Jesus, two of his disillusioned disciples are on the road to Emmaus, certain that their Jesus was a dead man. But then he joins them on the road and their eyes are opened. This is how they described their experience. ‘Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road?’ (Luke 24:32). Believing should lead to knowing and knowing must touch the heart.
We live in anno domini. We believe that Jesus is risen, alive and with us as we journey on the road of life. Yet many do not seem to experience his presence warming their hearts. Hopefully, it is not that they think that Jesus is a dead man. But many would say that for them he is distant and not so ‘real’, not as real as family or friends, or as real as the daily cares and problems, or the joyful recreations that make life happier. Believing in Jesus does not bring the ‘glorious joy’ of which Peter speaks. The duties of Christian life often seem irksome. Prayer, charity, parish involvement and communal worship are mostly seen as ‘duties’, activities imposed by outside authorities rather than a real experience of something going on within the person, a friendship with the living Lord deep within, which should provide the inspiration, joy and power to enable us to follow him. Often, believing does not lead to this ‘knowing’ experience.
I wonder why this is so. Why do so many stop at believing, and have only a kind of intellectual relationship with Jesus? Why do so few progress to knowing the Lord personally and to enjoying a heart experience? I suggest it may be something to do with the way they are introduced to Jesus. Many Christians first meet Jesus in a catechism or creed rather than in the gospel story. They meet Jesus as true God in the Creed and have little experience of him as true man in the gospel. And most who meet Jesus in this way were introduced to him in a school setting, in a Christian doctrine class. This relatively dry and shallow encounter seldom progresses to a deeper, more personal relationship.
From classroom they progressed to Christian practice in a parish community where faith was meant to be nourished chiefly by attendance at Church devotions and services. This attendance was often motivated by a spirit of conformity rather than any deep personal conviction. This is an over-simplification, but many readers will agree that it reflects their general experience. This road of faith led many good, devout people to lives of great fidelity. But, for today, faith will have to be more personally experienced if it is to meet the challenges of our time. And Christ wishes us to have this experience. He came that we might have life and have it to the full. He wishes to reveal himself to us and lead us to joy in knowing him. How might this happen?
Let us look at those Christians Peter writes to in the letter we have quoted. Like us they did not see the Lord in the flesh. They met him in faith by believing. Peter observes that this faith knowledge led to love and this love filled them with a joy so glorious it was hard to describe. How were those believers introduced to Jesus? We might say they had an advantage over us since they were introduced to Jesus by the very first followers who had known him in the flesh. But we have to remember that even those first followers who had known Jesus in the flesh had to progress to a faith relationship with him. Not all who met Jesus in the flesh accepted him or believed in him. He had his enemies. Not all who were attracted to him followed him. We think of the rich young man. And some who started as disciples fell away when he proposed teachings they could not accept. When he said he would give himself as food and drink, we are told, ‘After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’ (John6:66)
I suggest it can help if we go back to those very first followers and recall their experience of meeting the Lord and how they handed on that experience to those Christians Peter is writing to. I think this will help us believers of today to achieve a closer affinity with our first brothers and sisters in the faith and to a more personal experience of Jesus in our own faith lives. The very first followers did not meet Jesus in a creed. They met a man of flesh and blood. John writes: ‘Something…that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eye; that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word who is life – this is our subject’ (1 John 1:1) This Jesus they met was an unusual man who, by his words and lifestyle, provoked many questions. ‘Whatever kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him’ (Matthew 8:27) ‘What authority have you for acting like this?’ (Matthew 21:23) ‘Why does he eat with sinners?’ (Mark 2:16). ‘How did he learn to read? He has not been taught’ (John 7:15). ‘Who are you claiming to be?’ (John 8:54). Some who met this strange man and listened to him were deeply attracted. They became his disciples, ready to learn more and adopt his lifestyle. Of course they had lots of unanswered questions, plenty of wrong ideas and false hopes. But in time they would learn the deeper reality and meaning of this strange and fascinating man.
This deeper understanding came, paradoxically, through the totally unexpected trauma of Jesus’s suffering and death. This tragedy devastated his disciples. It appeared to be total catastrophe and it came very quickly, within a matter of a few years. Their master, their hero who had made claims which sounded as if he was invulnerable, suddenly broke down completely. One night he went to pieces before their very eyes. He was forcibly taken prisoner, was rejected by the people, apparently abandoned by God and handed over to a colonial government. He was tortured and crucified. All their hopes were dead, as dead as the corpse they laid in the tomb.
Then came something totally new, resurrection from the dead. These first followers meet Jesus again. They are slow at first to recognise and believe it is really he. Gradually the truth dawns on them. He is alive. He is risen from the dead. He is the same Jesus they had known and lived with. He is the same and yet in some way different. He is the same gentle, compassionate, loving person, but there is some strange new quality about him. And now a new relationship blossoms, a deeper awareness is reached about their master and friend, a deeper understanding of his relationship with God. He is the Messiah, but no mere prophet: he truly is the Beloved Son of God.
They have met and known the man, but have now come to know that he is the Son of God. And this Son of God, who called them friends, has brought their humanity into a new and glorified existence where they are to follow. Once they had accepted this great mystery, that the one they had known as a man was truly God, they became transformed people and began to see the true meaning of everything. Their own lives now took on an incredibly new and beautiful depth. Their humble lives are suffused with extraordinary meaning and beauty. These simple followers begin to enter into the mystery of love, to be open to the truth that love is possible in our world, that it conquers even death and is for ever. They begin joyfully, excitedly, to share this discovery with others.
These first witnesses are driven not by duty, but by love, the love of Jesus in their hearts and the new love they now feel for all others because of him. They are not looking for converts to a new religion. They are sharing incredibly good news. They are sharing a friend who, they believe, is the Son of God. All this they share with those around them who, in turn believe. These are the people Peter is writing to. They, in turn, share the news with their friends and acquaintances. So the Christian tradition of handing on began, and eventually reached us. Now, as the sharing of this good news spread, there arose opposing voices which rejected this or that part of the message. False teachings and heresies appeared and the early Christian community had to deal with them. Church councils were called to refute the heresies and protect the good news. Dogmas were worked out and creeds formulated to try to put the mystery of Jesus into words. New Christians were then introduced to Jesus through the creeds and teaching and faith life of a Christian community.
It has to be this way, but we must always be aware of the inevitable danger inherent in this process, that a dogma or creed could take the place of the living person of the Lord. The Christian revelation in Jesus is more than a set of teachings or a creed. The Christian revelation is a person. The good news is Jesus who came not so much to start a new religion as to put us in touch with the living God, and, even more, to share the very life of this God with us. ‘I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full’ (John 10:10). This very Jesus is risen and among us now, drawing us into the fullness of God. Yes, we meet Jesus in the Creed and believe. But somehow we must meet him in person and know him. He became flesh for this. He was born among us to be close, to win our hearts. The word became flesh. The possible danger of creeds is that the flesh might become words and that a creed might replace the living risen Lord.
Also, when we meet Jesus in the Creed, there is a subtle tendency to stress his divinity. We meet Jesus as true God who is to be adored and obeyed. This can make him seem distant and less real. A further complication is added by our assumption that we know what it means to be divine. For us, divinity means to know all, be all-perfect, have all power, be immune from all suffering. We then impose all these qualities on Jesus and thus push him still further away and widen the gap between him and our ‘real’ world. Whatever our salvation means, we feel it was accomplished by Jesus exclusively as God. But our faith teaches that Jesus became man to save us. The story of that salvation is in the Gospel.
We have that gospel today. Jesus lives there and speaks his living words to us and reveals himself to us. There we can meet Jesus the man, whom we can come to know as our friend, as one of us, saving us through our humanity which he shares. Then, like our first brothers and sisters in the faith, we are led by Jesus the man to Jesus the Son of God. We do not talk of a ‘dead man called Jesus’. We speak of the Lord who is the first risen man, the first of our human kind to pass over into glory. This risen Jesus, still true man, is able to understand our human heart, our struggle, our temptations, our searching. He can listen to our story and speak to our deepest selves so that our hearts too can burn with us as we walk the road of life with him. And this Jesus is true God, not any idol or small god of our fashioning. He is true God, revealing himself as the mystery of love in Jesus, who invites not just the obedience of our intellect, but also the surrender of our heart. We believe in him, but, much more, we claim we can know him.
Is it not presumptuous for us to speak so confidently about knowing Jesus the Lord, about knowing him who Paul says is ‘beyond’ all knowledge (Ephesians 3:19)? It would be presumptuous if we were claiming we could know the Lord by our own unaided reasoning or desiring. But it is not so. We are given the Holy Spirit precisely to make this possible. We said that the first witnesses knew Jesus as God by faith and that the first generation Christians, who received the good news from those witnesses, also knew and loved Jesus by faith. This was possible only because they had received the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit is given to us today. Jesus tells us what the Spirit will do for us. ‘He will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you’ (John 14.26). And again, ‘He will be my witness’ (John 15:26). The work of the Holy Spirit is not to take the place of an absent Jesus. It is something more wonderful. His work is to make Jesus present in his new and glorified state. The Holy Spirit comes, not to start a new cult of devotion to himself, but to lead us to Jesus. He witnesses to Jesus and makes Jesus ‘real’ for us. It is the Holy Spirit who enables you and me today to pass from believing to knowing. With the help of the Holy Spirit, then, let us seek to know and love Jesus, true man and true God.