The Lovers and the Search, Part 3
What God will do to win the world.
Everyone is to feel the joy of being found. Personally adopted, not by paperwork or agencies, but in the intimacy of tailor-made encounter. Yet mankind’s search for meaning is not only about identity. It also requires relevance. In a thought-provoking message on the future of the church in the 21st-century (at 38:00), Dr. William Curtis relates one familiar story in an altogether unfamiliar way.
Moses said to the voice from the burning bush, “If I go down to the sons of Israel, and say, the God of your fathers has sent me, and they ask, What is His name, what should I tell them?”
It is an interesting question, because he knows that he is being called to go back to a people who have been crying out to the God he is now announcing is coming to deliver them. But, if you look at the culture of the time period, we find that the issue is not really about identity. The issue is about relevance.
In the Eastern world, your name, your good name, your family name meant your renown, your reputation, what you were known for.
So it is not, What should we call Him? The people are wondering, What is your name, among us, after all this time? That name hasn’t freed us. That name hasn’t lessened the severity of our oppression. That name didn’t stop us from having to make bricks without straw. So what good is that name around here, now?
Knowing relevance is the issue, God replies,
I AM THAT I AM. Say this to the sons of Israel, I AM, has sent me to you.
Which is to say, the same relevance I had when they arrived in Egypt is the same relevance I had in their slavery and the same relevance I will have when I usher them into freedom.
As Dr. Curtis concludes, today, our culture is asking the same question.
Jesus Swerves Across Three Lanes
“No, they are not drunk as you suppose, it’s only 9 in the morning.” — Peter
Of all the gifts given to the church upon Christ’s ascension, it is probably the evangelist who best embodies The Search. As the first evangelist, then, Jesus of Nazareth is both prototype and paragon. The question is, how do we see him reaching out, relationally, to the lost?
Jesus says to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.”
Religious exclusivists and connoisseurs, those self-confessed “watchmen”, tend to hover like impersonal generals over the “spiritual” battlefield in their mission to remind “unbelievers” that there is only one. way. to. God. The result is predominantly a balkanization of the human spirit.
Be honest, in a lot of cases when people say Jesus is the only way to the Father, what they mean is the expression of Christianity that they subscribe to is the only way. Those who reject this perceived “arrogance” opt for either agnosticism or atheism which (especially the latter) cling to logical errors at least as problematic.
But, as usual, there is a third way, and that is a personal hunger for knowing the man Christ Jesus and his Spirit. This opens one up to a heightened awareness of a lot of things to which one was formerly blind. The hidden-in-plain-sight wonders of the created universe. The forgotten echoes and image-prints in one’s fellow man.
The error of relativism is in believing that the nature of Truth changes according to the viewer's perspective.
Exclusivists delight in John 14:6’s, “no one comes to the Father but through me.”
But, in all our truth-telling, might some of us have forgotten what Jesus, the Truth made flesh, is like? Was the passage understood, “Until you see what the Father is truly like, in me, no one can know Him, nor would even want to.”
Jesus possesses such a marvelously creative empathy, that in reaching Him, on the way to the Father, humanity is given three avenues:
For those crying out for direction and purpose, he is the Way.
For those paralyzed by deception and lies, he is the Truth.
And for the sick, the dying, for those who feel like they’re sinking into their own personal grave, he is the Life.
But “reaching Him” and the giving of avenues is not really the right way to say it. It gives the wrong impression, for what we see in the Gospels, and even as far back as Genesis, is something like this exchange seen in Wm. Paul Young’s novel, The Shack:
MACK: Does that mean that all roads lead to you?
JESUS: Not at all. Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.
Put another way, the Son of Man identified with humanity so completely, he knew that not everyone was ready for full-on another’s life.
So he first led the Way.
“Come, follow me.”
And, knowing that not everyone has trust to stand, much less walk in the Way, he spoke Truth.
“I am the true vine, you are the branches.”
And for those with no voice, where it’s too dark, too painful even for knowledge, he offered Life.
“Lazarus, come out.”
“Do you grasp the difference here?” said Watchman Nee, “Whatever Christ gives is His very own self.”
From this perspective, there can be no such thing as a generic gospel message. Just as each human being is born with unique fingerprints and a peculiar genetic code, it is as if God is saying, You came into the world an original — you will be born again into mine the same way.
Unity with the Father, Son and Spirit means to become one without losing yourself. To realize and thence actualize, in relationship with God, how you were always meant to be.
And so, in a world teeming with voices (often of a contradictory kind), each one of us is meant to experience our own burning bush. As seen in the life of Moses, Gideon, Joshua, Nathanael, and Peter, one thing God is completely on about is the awakening of lost identity and worth.
Lord, I see you inviting us to join you on your great quest. If you place The Search for mankind uppermost in your mind, and have spread your heart eight billion different ways, then so will I.
The more I learn, the more I discover just how vast a landscape of histories, languages and cultures feature in the Bible. It’s not easy! Where does one start? That’s why I made a deck of ultra-convenient cards unlocking a rooted understanding of the world’s most treasured book, one card at a time. And, while you’re at it, becoming a patron unlocks even more useful New Covenant stuff!
The Lovers and The Search, Part 2 ← P R E V I O U S
N E X T → The Surprise Source of Our Alphabet
