THE
LIVING ONE
John 5:25-25 ‘Very
truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear
the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as
the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in
himself;
Terrified,
numbed,
I fall to the ground
as though dead.
Breath taken away
while fear holds sway.
Alone on Patmos,
far from those I love.
It’s Sunday
and I can’t be with my beloved
church family.
My heart breaks, yet I worship.
it’s all I know how to do now.
I have no role, no connection,
no service to lead, no sermons to
speak.
Just the raw rocks cutting into
my feet,
and the wild sea
and the overpowering sun –
all glory and power and fire.
I thought I knew
what life was.
Until now,
away from the familiar,
far from home
Here I am.
Terrified,
numbed,
because my breath is taken away
by
The Living One.
eyes like pure fire,
hair like a winter’s blizzard,
and a voice, such a voice,
like many waters.
And then,
with such power,
he hauls me up
so, I’m standing on my own two
feet.
This is worship as I have never
known.
I want to fall on my knees and
stay there,
numb and dumb.
Yet
The Living One speaks.
First words: ‘Don’t fear.’
Easier said than done.
I’ve never known such fear in
worship,
yet it seems to be the only
response I can muster
as I try to process all my eyes
are seeing.
But now, my ears are beginning to
hear through the many waters.
He speaks to me face to face.
‘I am First, I am Last, I’m Alive.
‘I died, but I came to life, and
my life is forever now.
See these keys in my hand?
They open and lock Death’s doors,
they open and lock Hell’s gates.’
Terrified, numbed, yet
here’s my new purpose.
To put into words
all the joy
and fire
and fierce love
of The Living One.
The Living One,
who all those years ago, gently
spoke,
Words of life to Martha.
Words that brought life to
another.
Words that unbound Lazarus.
Words of Eternal Life.
Words to lift all
humanity onto their feet.
I thought I knew what life was.
I thought I knew what death was.
Until I met The Living One.
In Rev 1, 18 Jesus says “behold I am alive for ever and ever!”... ‘For ever and ever’ is not our normal experience, and wrestling with it is not as simple as yesterday’s ‘Rising Sun’. But make a cup of black coffee, get a wet towel and read on.
ReplyDeleteAs I have suggested before, the risen Christ exists outside time and space, as does God. Therefore, ‘for ever and ever’, and ‘eternity’ do not refer to a very long time, many earth years. Rather, they describe a state where time and space don’t exist and have no meaning; a purely spiritual state. In the hymn ‘At the name of Jesus’, a verse starts ‘Humbled for a season’, and finishes ‘and returned victorious when from death he passed’. This implies an entry into the earthly world for ‘a season’, taking on time and space to be human. His life before his human birth as ‘Word’, and his life after his death and resurrection make him eternal, the Living One, alive for ever and ever.
Does the same apply to us? Jesus said he was going to prepare a place for us and we would follow him (John 14, 3). He was the ‘first-fruits’, leading the way: but how and where? My difficulty for over fifty years has been to picture in my mind the span of birth, life and death, together with what lies before and after. A colleague at work, a good ‘Black Country’ lad, was convinced that “When yo’m djed, yo’m djed!” He believed that was it – finis! But Christians don’t agree that’s the end. There is a promise running through the gospel of more to come for those who follow Jesus ‘here’, when they follow him ‘there’ after death.
So what picture do I find helpful? In the building where I studied, there was a ‘Paternoster’ lift. This wasn’t like an ordinary lift that stops, opens the doors, waits for you to step in and select your floor, closes the doors, and moves on to your chosen floor. That is all safe and secure. A ‘Paternoster’ lift doesn’t have doors, doesn’t stop, and comes in pairs, ‘up’ and ‘down’. As the lift ascends, you step into a compartment in the rising lift, saying a prayer as you do so, whence the name of the makers, Paternoster Lift Co. You carefully step out at the floor you require as the lift is moving on and rising upwards. Beyond the top floor something mysterious happens, and the ‘up’ lift becomes the ‘down’ lift. Only the adventurous experience the change in going over the top! So, there is a continuous stream of moving lift, which you enter ‘for a season’ and leave.
In my mental picture of human life, the lift is the continually moving world of time and space that we live in, the ‘real world’. It moves from Big Bang (when space-time started) to finish ... somehow. We humans recognise ‘time past’ with history and ancestors before our birth, the point we step on to this moving ‘lift’ of time and space. And we recognise a ‘future’ with expectations and successors which carries on after our death, the point we step off the ‘lift’. During our human life we ride this lift ‘for a season’, as the hymn says. What comes before and after that season is a matter of faith. For the Christian it still involves ‘Our Father ...’, the ‘pater noster’ in Latin. You can’t push the analogy too far, but I find it gives me a wider view of life, death and things beyond than a solely earth-bound view could ever do. When we are ‘djed’ we are not dead, but share in the risen life!
We step into this workaday ‘real’ world from a timeless spiritual world, then enjoy a human life, and then step back into that spiritual, for ever and ever, existence; the journey of the soul? That seems to be what Jesus is implying when he describes himself after his death as the ‘Living One, alive for ever and ever’. His gospel teaching suggests that there is a similar process for each of us. We can follow after him. We too can become ‘Living Ones’. What a source of encouragement to change things when the ‘real’ world of time and space becomes difficult!
[The are few paternoster lifts left now because of their danger. To see one in Prague, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro3Fc_yG3p0 ]
Scripture bears constant witness to the life of God. And so today we are confronted once again with God's life in Jesus, the Living One. It is inescapable. Life that is uncontainable, unending, eternal. It seems that wherever we look in the New Testament Jesus brings life because he is Life. There is no getting away from his life giving love. It keeps pulling us back.
ReplyDeleteBut these aren't just words to read because Jesus, the Living One, is experienced in worship. It is when we worship together, when we sing songs of worship, when we pray together, when we listen to each others' testimonies and stories of every day faith, including our shared stories of struggles with faith, that Jesus is so evidently present. Through worship we come to taste that life which lifts us from what deadens us, and Jesus' life soothes are wrestling souls. Worshipping this morning with other wrestling souls brought me into the presence of the Living One.
Yet worship is never to be merely something that makes us feel better. It leads to service and a way of life. Tonight I have been to watch the film "I, Daniel Blake", a hard hitting film about the welfare system and living in poverty in Britain today. What does worshipping the Living One look like on Monday morning away from church services? How might we treat all people with respect, as human beings not just numbers? How might we act for change so that Foodbanks are not needed any more?
May the Living One inspire us to be life givers.
Jesus , the living one gives us his life. Those who have had close encounters with Jesus are transformed by him. Yet this was not the case with everyone who saw him. The difference between those who were fired up for him and the others who were not, was that the former genuinely sought the truth. Why else would Saul, the pharisee become Paul, the apostle, while many pharisees who witnessed Jesus first hand remained unchanged.
ReplyDelete2 Cor 5: 17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
This is not so only for those who lived in Jesus' time, but for those who live now too.
I have met two people who have had near death experiences. Both speak of encountering Jesus during the period they were considered to be clinically dead. One went into priesthood, the other remained in his job. He overflows with vitality and thankfulness. He is a new man in his outlook to life. Both vitalise the people they meet in their work.
If the Living Christ dwells in us, then it is possible for us live as he wants us to because we walk by faith and not by sight. As the Bible says:
1John3:24
The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
John14 :20
On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
John12: 24
Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
Matthew 10: 39
Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.