Knowing, Doing, Being Happy

If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.  -- John 13:17

We are set free by the knowledge of the truth, but for what purpose?  When the Lord washed the feet of His disciples, it was a visible lesson as to how they were to treat one another, but it also tells us something about the nature that has been imparted to us.  Service is not only something we do; we are servants. 

Jesus, we are told, “knew that His hour had come”.  He also knew that “the Father had given all things into His hands”.  The Lord knew who He was, He knew His destiny, and He knew where He was in His path.  He understood perfectly His relationship with the Father, His authority and power.  Because of this knowledge, He served His chosen ones.  He did not do it to gain their admiration, to get something from them, to impress them with His humility.  He did it because He was stepping into the messianic role of the Suffering Servant Isaiah had depicted. 

God is certainly our King.  Jesus is described as King of kings and Lord of lords.  He is worthy of our honor, our respect, our gratitude, and our reverential fear and awe.  Is that just because the King is special?  Obviously that’s the case with God who is our Creator, in whom we live and move and have our being.  We cannot exist apart from Him.  Yet, I don’t think that is what God means when He reveals Himself as King. 

An earthly king who truly understands his position and responsibility is a protector, a judge, one who will lay down his life for his people.  He is a true servant.  While he has a right to demand the service of his people, it is for their good, their freedom, their prosperity, and their happiness that he does so. 

Thus, paradoxically, when Jesus took on the role of a servant in the upper room that night, He was also taking on the mantle of His kingship.  This is what a king does.  This is who a king is.  Having been given "all authority", how many of us would be able to freely give rather than make demands, to serve rather than demand obeisance, to humble ourselves rather than compel others to bow before us?  Nevertheless, this is exactly what the King of glory did, and what He expects of us.

If some people made the rules for the cosmos, they would make all of us perfect.  There would be no need for serving anyone else because each would be sufficient unto himself.  Would there be any need to have more than one?  Surely the One knows the answer, and I think He has given it to us. 

We are not going to be happy people if we are only served.  We are a kingdom of priests – servants of the Divine, or “kings and priests” under God.  To understand our destiny and fulfill it, to live in freedom and peace and happiness, we need to do those things we know – serve one another, because we are from the One, made one in Christ, growing into One.  

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,  I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me (John 17:20-23).

One

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. – John 17:20-23

One.  It seems the world is a long way from being one, and the Church, if anything, even further from it.  The world unites from time to time in their hatred of Christ and Christians.  Christians seem ever divided and fragmented and confused.  Yet this is the prayer Jesus, as our Great High Priest, offered on the night of His betrayal, hours before He went to the Cross to redeem all of humankind.  Is it possible that it will not be answered?

Do you know why it became a joke that, to one racial or ethnic group, the members of another group “all look alike”?  The distinctive features and skin tones peculiar to a given group tend to be the first features noted by “outsiders".  Meanwhile a redhead, seeing another redhead, immediately notices what makes the individual distinctive.

So it is with churches and denominations.  While doubters and unbelievers may offer the many-religions argument against the existence of God or the claims of a given religion, that tends to be less about denominations within Christianity than about the disagreements between Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, etc.  Christians tend to be blamed for the faults and failures of any group claiming to be Christian, as if there is no difference between the annoying Saturday morning proselytizing of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the ancient rites, icons, and rituals of the Orthodox.  It doesn’t matter that Jimmy Swaggert was not Catholic or that a pedophile priest was not Assembly of God, they were both Christians. 

Those outside the Body of Christ see Christians while those of us in a particular communion often emphasize the differences in our forms and beliefs and practices.  Some of us make more of the minor disagreements than necessary.  Christians will get into arguments over Matthew 24 or when the book of Revelation was written or what Jesus meant by “this generation,” though we all agree that Jesus said that.

Bob often uses the image of a cone to illustrate how we relate to God.  It will work for illustrating, as well, the relationship of various valid revelations and traditions to one another and to the Divine.  When Lewis wrote Mere Christianity, he compared becoming a Christian to entering the hall or main room of a great house.  Denominations are then the various rooms off the corridor where one may find fellowship, refreshment, sustenance and comfort.  If one comes into Christianity in general, that makes sense. 

What, though, if we come in via a particular sect or through something that may not be considered part of the traditional revelation of Christianity?  Our entry in that case is more like entering one of the rooms from an outside door – or climbing in through the window.  We find ourselves in a communion that seems to be separated and at odds with other communions.  Here is where the metaphor of the cone is instructive.  Someone from a primitive, snake-handling denomination back in the hills would seem very distant from the altars, saints, and processions of a Catholic Latin Mass.  Indeed they are, as far as the externals are concerned.  Yet there is a core set of beliefs about the divinity of Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection where these two diverse forms converge in substance.  The snake-handler might doubt the Immaculate Conception to which the priest adheres even as the priest might question the validity of picking up a copperhead, but both will agree on the essential nature of the Virgin Birth. 

Our differences are in where we enter out on the edge of the circle that forms the base of the cone.  The closer we get to God, and the higher we are raised in our vertical relationship to Him, the smaller our disparities become.  It’s a long way around the mountain unless you are standing on the summit. 

Before being too critical of the path others take, it’s good to remember that the pinnacle and the base are one.  Like a spotlight, the revelation of Christ spreads and widens to illuminate a great circle.  Perhaps there is something right in the middle, where we all need to meet.  Perhaps, soon, we will.