Thoughts

In John 5, Jesus notices a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years, lying near the Bethesda pool, which apparently was rumored to have healing powers for the first person who could enter the water when it was stirred by an angel.

Jesus approaches this man and asks him, “Do you want to get well?”

What a question! The man answers, “I don’t have anyone to put me in the waters when they are stirred up… someone always gets there ahead of me.”

In other words, “Yes! I’d love to get well. But I am blocked from pursuing the only way I know to get well. I am excluded from ‘getting well’ according to how I ‘know’ it works.”

I find it interesting that Jesus doesn’t say, “I’ll help you get into the water.” Instead, he simply says, “Get up! Take up your mat and walk!” As the man responds to this command, he is healed, takes up his mat, and walks.

Jesus doesn’t help him get into the water, or recruit some friends to help him get into the water. Instead, he bypasses the whole system of healing as it has been established and invites the man to look to him for healing.

I read this the other day and wondered how much of my prayer life consists of trying to get Jesus to help me into the water. I have a way I “know” my healing will come. I “know” what flourishing looks like and try to recruit God to help me get there. “Sure, I’d love to get well, God, but look at all these obstacles in my way! Look at these challenges I can’t do anything about!” And so I pray and wait for God to remove the obstacles to my healing.

But what would happen if I simply looked to Jesus and opened my imagination to a completely different way of seeing the whole situation? What if the things I think are obstacles to my flourishing aren’t anything of the sort? What if I’m so locked into the “way I know things are” that I’m unable to hear Jesus telling me to get up, pick up my mat, and walk?

What if I’ve pinned all my hopes on Jesus helping me get into the water, and I’m missing what he is in fact inviting me into? What if prayer could be more like attending to his voice, gazing upon his face, and listening for his surprising invitation?

I’ve been reading the Gospel of John during morning prayer this month, and several times have been struck by how Jesus confronts us with a fundamentally different way of knowing truth than we (Westerners) typically imagine.

“How can you believe when you receive praise from each other,” Jesus asks the Pharisees, “but don’t seek the praise that only comes from God?”

In other words, your ability to know the truth, to apprehend reality and see it for what it is, is based on your intention. Your capacity to see what’s right in front of you (God’s Messiah!) is connected to your willingness to seek and submit to God’s will.

Because the Pharisees were only seeking honor in each other’s eyes, they could only perceive reality in those terms (that which brings me honor or takes it away from me). So they couldn’t see God standing in front of them because they weren’t really looking for God to be with them. Their project didn’t involve God at all, in fact. Their project (seeking praise from each other) merely used the language of God and his kingdom as a mask to make it sound more holy than it really was.

Because of this, they had no use for Jesus, because he didn’t play their game. And in fact Jesus became a threat to them, because in doing God’s will, he was attracting the attention and adulation of the crowds. They had no other way of interpreting this as Jesus “stealing” their honor in the eyes of the people.

“To believe in him means to do his will,” as Iraneaus said.

Later in the story (John 6), Jesus has begun to speak of eating his flesh and drinking his blood as the only way to have life. Many disciples leave him at this point because it is a “harsh teaching.”

Jesus, with a remarkably non-anxious presence and open-handed posture, asks the Twelve if they will leave as well. Peter’s response has become iconic (we sing this before we hear the Gospel read every Sunday):

“Lord, where would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and have come to know that you are God’s holy one.”

It seems to me the order here is important:

1. We believe, and
2. have come to know.

Even if a strong argument can’t be made from the grammar, seeing the text this way does cohere with what Jesus has been telling everyone again and again up until this point. You can only come to Jesus if the Father enables you. The people who recognize that Jesus is “God’s holy one” are those who have been listening and obediently responding to the Father already.

Again, our intention and our willingness determine the truth we are able to perceive and comprehend. We tend to think that we see things rationally, objectively, and if something can be “proven” according to these methods, then it’s worth “believing.”

Many of us automatically listen to God’s word this way, thinking that we will be able to rationally comprehend it and then make some decisions about whether to believe it or not. The modern mind wants to believe after it “comes to know” through what it thinks is “objective observation.”

But Jesus says the exact opposite. In fact the rational mind, merely operating according to the flesh, is offended (disgusted, even!) by the Word. But for those who have been listening to God with an intention to obey perceive something entirely different: Jesus the Holy One of God, speaking the words of eternal life.

They believe (they trust God with a heart to put it into action), and then, through believing, they come to know (the see the truth of who Jesus is and what God is up to)!

This offends the modern mind, but, according to Jesus and classical Christianity, it’s the only way to life.

It’s interesting that the angel didn’t just preach the gospel to Cornelius the Centurion in Acts 10. Instead Cornelius is told to fetch Peter, and of course at the same time an angel told Peter to allow himself to be fetched.

It’s interesting that it was important for Peter to go to Cornelius’ house, to be present with this Gentile in order to preach the gospel. Peter’s presence mattered in this encounter. Why?

Because the gospel isn’t just “information.” Because God is creating one new humanity in Christ out of all the ways we come up with to divide ourselves. And the oneness of this new humanity must not remain an abstract concept but must become an incarnate, embodied reality.

Peter must cross the threshold of a Gentile home. He must preach to them, lay hands on them, baptize them with water, and then stay with them. The church’s unity is not a nice ideal, it is a sacramental reality, enfleshed in the bodies of Peter, his companions, Cornelius, and his household.

So of course Peter must be present for the gospel to truly be preached in its fullness. If the angel had just given Cornelius the gospel “information” there would have been two parallel churches. This would be a bastardization of the gospel.

The church is the one new humanity that God is creating. This is not a nice ideal for us to think about, it is an incarnate, embodied, sacramental reality. It requires that human bodies learn to be together, stay with each other, and love one another.

I’ve started reading St. Maximus the Confessor during my morning prayer time, and I found myself caught up in wonder, love, and praise when I read this quote:

Everything will cease its willful movement toward something else when the ultimate beauty that satisfies our desire appears…

St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, p. 53.

We imagine our “free will” lies in our ability to choose against God, against the Good and Beautiful, but I wonder if in fact that thought is evidence that our wills are not truly free.

For what could be more “rational” than choosing Ultimate Beauty? And yet we do not. Does this not speak of the constriction of our wills? Is not the inability to see and choose the truly Good evidence of unfreedom? Slavery to untruth? Bound in lies?

I wonder if we choose something other than God not because we have “free will,” but because our wills have not yet been fully freed? We do not yet fully see the “ultimate beauty that satisfies our desire” and therefore we are yet fully free.

True freedom will be the ability to see God for who he is and say YES to him and move toward him. When the ultimate beauty that satisfies our desire is revealed, what could freedom mean except that we cease our “willful movement toward something else…” for God will be all in all.

I haven’t come to any concrete conclusions about all this, but I want to wrestle with it, because I’ll admit that this is a much more beautiful and compelling picture to me of the eschaton than one where I could hypothetically still move away from God if I wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something.

For there is no other end toward which all free movement is directed than the rest found in total contemplation by those who have reached that point.

St. Gregory Nazianzen

What we think of as “freedom,” then, is perhaps in fact the constriction of freedom. (What a pernicious lie!) When we move toward something other than God, we manifest our slavery and blindness and unfreedom. And when we move toward God, we manifest our true freedom.

(This relates, by the way, to some of the discussion I’ve seen about David Bentley Hart’s new book That All Shall Be Saved.)

“Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness,
and your law is truth.” – Psalm 119:142

“Your law is truth.” We aren’t used to thinking like this. We think of laws as rules, so how can rules be truth? We read our own assumptions about what laws are back into the text and thus can’t really hear the text. We need a deeper vision of God’s law to understand what the psalmist is getting at here.

God’s commands are truth because they reveal reality, and they guide us in the path of true human flourishing. God’s law is truth because it co-inheres with what really brings life. God’s law is truth because it warns us away from paths that would lead us astray into death and destruction, for ourselves and others (even while promising life). God’s law is truth because it tells us the truth about life, and the path to true flourishing.

As Dallas Willard said, “The law is never the source of righteousness, but it is forever the course of righteousness.” That is, God’s law is the path we walk as justified people who have been co-crucified with Christ. God’s commands are the path of our participation in Christ and the mode of our transformation into Christlikeness.

It’s a bit like a dare: Try living your life this way and see what happens! That’s trusting Jesus: putting his teaching into practice. We participate in his life not by merely thinking about his teaching or articulating an understanding of how formation works, but by actually walking the path of God’s commands. By actually putting Jesus’ teaching into practice in concrete, practical ways.

God’s law is truth (especially and specifically as interpreted and proclaimed by Jesus)! It reveals to us the true nature of reality, and illuminates the path of true human flourishing. So we walk it out, not because we’re afraid of punishment if we don’t “follow the rules,” but because we trust the One who is guiding us, that he knows what’s best for us, wants what’s best for us, and is able to accomplish what’s best for us.