Life

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
1 John 1 (click the link)


KEY VERSES:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1:1-4, NIV)


REFLECTIONS:
In reading some of NT Wright's books (particularly Surprisedby Hope), I've come to understand that the ancient Jews believed that world history was divided into two periods, or "ages." There was "the present age," which was full of misery and suffering, injustice and oppression; and there was "the age to come," the time when God will sort it all out, would put everything right, and would rescue his people from the evil they have suffered.

Unfortunately, the word for "age" has often been translated as "eternal" or "eternity." What makes this unfortunate is that we, as modern readers, typically get the idea that John and other New Testament writers who referred to God's new age, were thinking of something "eternal" in the sense of "purely spiritual," something that has nothing to do with the world of space, time, and matter. That's what people often hear when they read the phrase "eternal life," which is what most translations have at verse 2. But this is mistaken. John, like Paul, and indeed like Jesus himself, is thinking of the new age, the age to come, which God has promised.

Amazingly, God has provided a sneak peek of this new age! God has kept the age to come under wraps, waiting to reveal it at just the right time. But the secret at the heart of the early Christian movement was that the age to come had already been revealed. The future had burst into the present, even though the present time wasn't ready for it. The word for that future was Life… Life as it was meant to be… Life in all its full, rich, and vibrant meaning… Life which defeated the darkness of death… Life itself had come to life, had taken the form of a human being, had come into the present from God's future, had come to display God's coming age. And the name of that Life-in-person is, of course, Jesus. That is the very heart of what John wants to say.

Of course, the very idea of God's new life becoming a person and stepping into the present is so enormous, so breathtaking, that a tone of wonder, of hushed awe and reverence, becomes appropriate. That is what we find in these opening verses. That which was from the beginning [… pause and think about that for a moment…] which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at [… pause again: your own eyes? Yes, says John, and what's more is…] our hands have touched [… you touched it, this Life? You touched him? Your hands touched him? Yes, repeats John.] We heard, saw and touched this from-the-beginning Life. We knew him. We were his friends.

And we still are his friends. Once the future has come into the present, the present is transformed forever. The Life has "appeared," has been put on show for all to see. And we who saw it, who knew it, who knew him, are now like witnesses in a court of law, speaking to a jury about the amazing things which we have encountered. And let me tell you, we can talk about Jesus and what he did and said. As John says at the end of his gospel, if you tried to write it all down the world would explode with the books that would be written (John 21:25). But when you reflect on what it means, then you have to say this: we have seen the future, and it is full of life and light and joy and hope.

The rest of the letter will explore all this. But for the moment, John explains his purpose in writing. Those who have seen this Life, and have been captured by its beauty and promise, find that they have come to belong to a new kind of family, a "fellowship" far more wonderful than words can describe. The Greek word commonly translated "fellowship" in verse 3 is sometimes used of a business partnership, but John means much more than that. It can also refer to the "sharing" of particular goods and benefits between people, and that comes into it, but John means much more than that, too. He seems to mean (stretching the word to fit the new reality, as the early Christians often had to do), that there is a new kind of life, a quality of life, which is God's very own life, and which God himself is now sharing with the people who have heard and seen the Life-come-to-life called Jesus.

Indeed, John sees God's own life as already a shared fellowship: the fellowship between the Father and the Son. Jesus, as Messiah, has been marked out as "Son of God," both in the sense that this was his rightful royal title as Israel's true King (Psalm 2; 2 Samuel 7), and in a deeper, richer sense previously unimagined but now celebrated by his followers as the only possible way to explain the extraordinary things they had seen, heard, and touched. As his life, death, and resurrection demonstrated, Jesus was clearly the Life-in-person of God's coming age. He was, in fact, God's own new Life, both the life of God himself and the gift of life from God to the world. The earliest believers quickly seized upon the words "Father" and "Son" as the simplest and clearest way of saying the unsayable: that there was a common life, a deep sharing of inner reality, between God and Jesus, enough to take your breath away at the thought of such a human being. And, indeed, of such of God.

But it doesn't stop there. It gets even more breathtaking. This deep sharing of inner reality—this "fellowship" between Father and Son—has been extended. It extends to all those who came to know, love and trust Jesus while he was alive, while he was, so to speak, on display as God's public unveiling of the common Life. And now (this, it seems, is the main point of the letter) this "fellowship" is open to others too, to others who didn't have the chance to meet Jesus during his period of public display. This "fellowship" can be, and is being, extended to anyone and everyone who hears the announcement about Jesus. They can come into "fellowship" with those who did see, hear, and touch him. And they, in turn, are in "fellowship" with the Father and the Son, with the two who are themselves the very bedrock and model for what "fellowship," in this fullest sense really means.

It may seem strange that simply telling people about Jesus is the appointed means by which such a momentous thing as this "fellowship" can be extended to include new members. But John is very much aware that the opening move in the whole game was made by God himself as an act not of silent display but of verbal communication. (And God said, "Let there be light…") Jesus was not only Life-in-person: he was (verse 1) "the Word of Life," Life-as-Word, Life-turned-into-speech, God's speech, God's self-communication to his people and, through them, to the wider world. In John's gospel he refers to Jesus simply as "the Word," the Word who became flesh (John 1:1-4, 14). The point is this: God has spoken through Jesus; and God now speaks, through the words which Jesus' friends speak and write about him, to others also, in the intention and hope that they will come to share this same "fellowship." This is the point of the whole letter. This should also be our prayer as we read.


PRAYER:
We praise you, Father, for sharing your Life with us. Thank you for sending Jesus into the world to reveal your Life to us. We know that you were "pleased to have all your fullness dwell in him." And when we try to contemplate the fullness, the richness, the beauty, the vibrancy of your Life-in-Jesus, we are left standing in awe. Thank you for inviting us into the fellowship of the Father-Son-Spirit. We yearn for greater intimacy with you and we hunger for the fullness of your Life in us. Draw us nearer, we pray, in Jesus' name.


WHO AM I?
I am Tres Sansom, and one of the greatest experiences of my life was serving on the wheat harvest. In the summers before my junior and senior years in high school, I worked with my aunt and uncle's small harvesting company. We traveled throughout North Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, helping farmers get their crops to market. For the first time in my life, I was entrusted with a huge amount of responsibility. As we traveled, I drove our service truck and pulled an RV. At each stop, I helped to service all of the equipment (fuel, oil and lube, belts, tires, etc.). While in the field, my primary responsibility was to drive a tractor and a grain cart alongside my uncle's combine in order to allow him to offload his cut wheat as he continued cutting wheat. Then I would drive back to our trucks, offload all of the cut wheat, and cover the trucks with a tarp. It was long and exhausting work, but it was fun and full of adventure. It's something I'll never forget. (In the attached photo, I am driving "Snoopy" the tractor.)