Life In Christ

"We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.' For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragment grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I telly ou that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy." (Romans 15:1-8)

In his instructions to the First Century Christians, Paul made some powerful statements about ethics and holy living. The ethics of Paul is deeply christological--that is, it is not based merely on reasoned arguments or quarrels about logic, nor is it merely a list of rules. Human reason has failed ethically for milennia. And time and again, Jesus showed the Pharisees how they had manipulated holy rules in unholy ways. This does not mean that Christ wanted us to abandon reason or God's commandments for living, either. Paul says here that we need instruction in what was written in the former days--that is, the Biblical writings available to the early church. It is these Scriptures that give us encouragement and hope. What does he mean?

What was the ethical landscape like in the Roman Empire of the 1st Century? Not terribly different from what we have today. Life was cheap, people bought and sold each other on slave markets, tax farmers--or publicani--exploited the populace in much the same way that banks and creditors exploit people today, powerful families called negotii bid for government and military contracts to increase their capital and overseas holdings, the Roman Army opened up new markets and made more countries dependent on the imperium, local leaders competed for power in political blood sport, revolutionaries died by the hundreds in failed attempts to glorify themselves or replace Roman imperium with their own tyranny. War, romanized urbanization and other causes wrecked the environment in some places. Abortion, murder, theft, wrongful lawsuits, adultery, infanticide, forced prostitution, alcohol and drug abuse, arms dealing--all of these existed in supreme degree in the empire that crucified our Lord Jesus. In other words, the situation seemed as hopeless then as it does today. The Roman writers Juvenal, Petronius, Martial, Catullus, and Ovid give quite a lurid picture of Roman life. And despite certain historical differences, it can be like looking into a mirror of our times.

Despite the seemingly hopeless situation, however, Paul writes that through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Why? Is Paul merely talking about the family values, virtues, or social teachings in the Gospels that give us our ethics? I do not think so. I think that the Scriptures have rich wisdom in terms of ethics, but trying to read Scripture as a textbook on ethics won't help us at all. Paul is hinting at something much more scary, something much more challenging. Paul says that Christ is our ethics, because Christ became a servant to humanity, to take away our reproaches, to show God's truthfulness, and to teach us to be servants, too. When we are clothed in Christ, we are clothed as servants--all of our ethics must be about the Cross and cross-bearing. Since Christ did not live to please himself, but to please others, we too are called to live in a same manner of self-sacrifice and love of others.

What will be the benefits of such an ethics? What are we actually doing? It means to build our neighbors up, whoever they are; to show God's truthfulness, to live by drawing hope from the Scripture, to have one voice, and to welcome each other into the glory of God that Christ has welcomed us into. Paul's ethics is thus not merely a christology that leads us into glorification, but it is one that is unmistakably about relinquishing self and power, taking on the role of servants and carrying our crosses in love for God and for all people that God created.

As the Morning

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. Then thou shalt call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am." Isaiah 58:6-8

Sometimes we feel the absence of God, a sense of desolation. Where is God? Why is he not listening to us? All we see around us are signs of trouble, a physical and spiritual famine eating away at the world. Our despair and sinfulness blind us to His presence in the world. Isaiah makes a most provocative statement in the 58th chapter: by doing the things God does, we will know His presence. The passage above bears close similarities with the Messianic prophecy in chapter 61: "The Spirit of the LORD GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD" (Isaiah 61:1-2). This is the very passage Jesus claimed as his own, saying: "This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:21) after reading the very same scroll (Luke 4:18-20). James, the Lord's brother, reminds us of this duty, when he said: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27).

To know God is to know Jesus (John 14:1-11). And if we are to know Jesus, to be in Jesus and have his Spirit in us, we must do the works he does: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (John 14:12). What were Jesus works and what were they for? We know that He came to teach, to show the Way, to give us faith, forgiveness, and the hope of resurrection, to destroy the distance between God and us through his being as Immanuel, but we so often forget that Jesus came to heal, to free, to take care of, to show solidarity, to feed and to love the unloveable. Isn't His grace the fact that we are able to do his works? The works of Jesus are signs to the world of what is concretely meant by "faith, hope, and love" (1 Corinthians 13:13). Unless we clothe the naked and feed the hungry, unless we listen to the lonely and share with strangers, unless we lovingly meet the Other, how will the world know what faith is, what hope is, what love is? Jesus calls us to show the world who He is.

Isaiah says that the proper "fast" or religious observance that God will accept is to live the life of love, to look after the hungry and naked. When we do this, our light will break forth as the morning, and when we pray God will say: "Here I am". And the very glory of God will be our rearguard (rereward in the old King James English). Wouldn't it be lovely to live in the glory of the Lord, to live in Jesus by accepting his invitation to follow Him and do the works that He did? Wouldn't it be lovely to show the world that we need no longer suffer the absence of God, that we can know God here and now through our lives of loving each other and loving God? Let us pray together:

Our Father in Heaven,
May all nations come to know you and praise your holy name,
May your kingdom come into the hearts and lives of individuals and communities throughout this fractured globe,
May your will be done on this earth, as it is done in heaven, that we work the works of Your Son, that we live peacefully, cooperatively, lovingly, sharing and looking after each other, forgiving each other and striving to live by your gracious commandments which reveal You to us, that we no longer treat your earth as a garbage can or an unmarked grave for the dead we have tried to ignore or forget, that we no longer treat the world as the arena of our prideful competition or the stage of our lustful and suicidal dramas, but as the fields for sowing your Word and harvesting souls to eternal bliss,
May we receive our daily bread from You Lord, so that we can share it with others, and not just the physical bread that feeds our frail bodies, but also your spiritual bread, Jesus, who came down from heaven to give us light and life.
May we receive forgiveness of our sins, Lord, as we forgive others, may we never dare to stop forgiving others and trying our utmost to remember that all of us haven fallen short of Your glory so that the Son of God died for our sins that we might be united in Him into his Body,
May we be protected from every kind of evil--from the evil desires in our hearts that defraud and do violence to our neighbors, from the greed, oppression, rapaciousness, hypocrisy and lying of corporations, governments, and tyrannical individuals who follow the first tyrant, the Devil, from all those evils that thwart the glorious radiance of your Light and the spread of the Gospel,
For the glory and the kingdom and the power are Yours, Lord, always and forever,
And where you are, there is hope for us in this world and in the world hereafter.
Amen

The Very Form of the Cross

"The very form of the cross, extending out into the four winds, always told the ancient Church that the Cross means solidarity: its outstretched arms would gladly embrace the universe" (Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Heart of the World 13)

Without a cross you cannot design a compass to orient yourself and direct your navigation. Without a cross, you could not build a structure of many stories. Building and navigating are pivotal to the mission of Jesus when we consider what He accomplished through his death and resurrection. There is nothing more global than the passion of Jesus our Lord. As Paul writes: "Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, growns into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:12-22).

What is wrong with the world? Paul speaks of two major problems. Man is estranged from man, and more importantly, man is estranged from God. Through Jesus Christ, man may now rejoice with man, and find love in God. Jesus Christ builds us into a temple, makes us into one united kingdom of holy citizens, triumphing over the death of this world, over the running down of the universe! Sometimes people ask me, "Are there extra-terrestrials? If there are, would Jesus have to die on every planet?" I have even heard a similar comment made in a recent film or television program, the exact name of which escapes me at the moment. I do not know if there are extra-terrestrials other than angels and demons, "cosmic powers" and "spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12), but I do know that if there are, they are subjected to Christ, and that Christ's one redeeming death conquered the entire universe. Christ embraces the universe, because it is to save the universe that He died and rose from death.

There is no other story known to man as powerful as the Good News. The Good News is a story about the Son of God, who lived a perfect life, helped people, and taught us the meaning of life and the truth about our being. Though he was murdered unjustly, he then conquered death through resurrection. Just as an electrical cord will only fit into its proper socket, so the Good News is the one story that fits our cosmic and personal problems. Jesus Christ is not an answer to life; Jesus Christ is life (John 14:6) and the only answer to life. He is embracing you whether you know it or not, and wants you to open the door and invite him into your life. Again, it may sound minimalistic, and it may sound childlike, but make no mistake: the New Testament teaches us that Jesus Christ is the answer to all global problems, all natural problems, all existential problems, all personal problems: "There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

Let us draw near to God through our Lord Jesus that we might be transformed, that our thoughts might take on the very form of the cross, that we too might reach out to embrace the world in love, faith and hope and thus be the true children of God.

Do Not Be Silent

"O God, do not remain quiet; do not be silent and, O God, do not be still" (Psalm 83)

Many theologians, mystics and spiritual writers speak of silence as an essential part of spiritual formation. One of the prophets says: "But the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him" (Habakkuk 2:20). There is a time to be silent and a time to speak (Ecclesiastes 3:7). Sometimes we need to just be still and know that our God is Lord (Psalm 46:10). In this vast silence, when we have hushed the clamoring of our cluttered brains, when we have drowned out the noise of chaotic modern living, or when we have taken time to be alone and remember who we are and what we were created for, we can begin to feel God's presence and appreciate his love. We are ready to pray. And yet, sometimes we pray and all we receive for an answer is silence.

There are times when God is silent, to teach us deep truths. God's name, for example, is never mentioned in the Book of Esther, and yet what a spiritual treasure that book is. God works through words of life (John 6:68) and through silence--sometimes lasting some 400 years, as during the inter-testamental period. Perhaps God speaks to us with silence when we have belabored Him with our vain words: "You have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet you say, 'How have we wearied Him?' In that you say, 'Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and He delights in them,' or 'Where is the God of justice?'" (Malachi 2:17); "Your words have been arrogant against Me,' says the LORD." (Malachi 3:13). Sometimes, after reading of the visions and experiences of the prophets and apostles, it is easy to feel that we have lived in a long period of silence--a period without miracles, visions, and direct communication with God that has lasted since about 100 AD. And yet, this is the era of the Scriptures, the era when God has spoken the most. Every day new Bibles roll of the press in newer translations, in newer languages. God is speaking--but have we entered into our own silence to listen to Him?

I wonder if we do. There are more scholarly journals, reference books, professional associations, debates, radio shows, televisions shows, documentaries, online resources, bookstores, libraries and conferences dedicated to Christianity than at any other point in our 2000 years of history. Trying to research a religious topic can be overwhelming from the sheer volume of materials available. Can we hear God speak through all this print? As Solomon once said, "The writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body" (Ecclesiastes 12:12). And John wrote, "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:25). This was no exaggeration. This was a well-thought out, calculated and prophetic statement. Of books, we have no shortage, but we hunger for God more than ever before. We can surgically analyze and comment on the texts of the Bible, but we cannot hear the Word speak. The cacophony of theological literature has brought us a different kind of silence from God.

I do not think God wishes to always be silent with us. The way he conversed with Adam (Genesis 2) and the way Jesus conversed with his followers amply shows the desire of God for conversation (Isaiah 1). This conversation happens not just through the reading of the Scripture, but also through humble prayer. And there are many ways to pray. Abraham respectfully argued with God (Genesis 18:22-33), Jacob wrestled with an angel (Genesis 32:24-32), Hannah cried and prayed silently (1 Samuel 1:12-18), Paul and Silas sang hymns in prison (Acts 16:22-40). And how did Jesus pray? With joy and confidence (John 17), with tears and sweat drops of blood (Luke 22:44), with an agonizing cry in the midst of crucifixion: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34). In various ways, people of faith have lifted up their voices to heaven for one thing, and one thing only: to hear and know the Word (John 1).

Our God speaks to us through Jesus, and it is through Jesus that God will not remain silent and will not be still, but will stretch forth His hand to touch your life and change you forever. Jesus will be there with you when you cry, because he cried. Jesus will be there when you bleed, because he bled and died for you. Jesus will laugh and rejoice when you are happy, because he knew that God works good for those that love Him. And Jesus will teach you how to pray and how to come to the Father.

Our world needs two things: Christianity that is actually interested in Christ and his teachings and a Christianity that respects the Word of God. Our world needs Jesus: "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world" (Hebrews 1:1-2).

The photograph above is by Kuwabara Shisei, and depicts someone suffering from Minamata disease. Sometimes when we have time to pray, we think we do not know what to pray for. If you ever have this experience, pray for any number of the people suffering in this world, such as the person in that photograph; you will never run out of things to say to God, and He is waiting for you to speak to Him so that He may in turn speak to you.

A Glass of Water

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman began with a simple request. Our Lord wanted to drink some water. If there had not been any cultural tensions between the Jews and Samaritans, she probably would have complied immediately, hospitality being an important part of the ancient way of life (Genesis 24:10-33). Even today, most citizens we meet are helpful with our simple requests, when we ask for directions, when we ask to borrow a telephone, or when we need a glass of water or some small favour from a neighbour or friend. We think nothing of asking, and hopefully we think little of granting these requests made of us. Common courtesy is expected in the Bible to such an extent that Jesus warns us not think of good deeds as being merely a matter of manners: “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:46-48). As Christians, we have learned that granting requests is an important part of our walk of faith. Or have we? We are good at granting human requests, it seems, but what about the requests of our Lord?

The disciples, who became the Lord’s apostles, were only too happy to do as their Master bid them, whether it was finding the donkey for the triumphal entry (Mark 11:2-6) or making preparations for the Last Supper (Mark 14:13-16). If they were willing to follow Him in such little things, how much more were they willing to obey when it came to deep spiritual matters (Luke 9:17)! And yet, today, there are many who find a commanding Jesus offensive to their taste, impossible to reconcile to their preconceived image of a suffering servant (Isaiah 53). This is nonsense! Jesus clearly suffered and came as a lowly servant for our sake—but that does not mean He invites us to be His master! On the contrary, He invites us to be servants, too, to follow His example. How can a servant learn to serve without following the commands of the Master? We are willing in our daily lives to comply with so many requests from the world, can we not also comply with the commands of our loving Saviour? Jesus makes this request to us every day: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:3). This is not law—this grace! It is through his commandments that we know Him more and experience His freedom more each day.

To understand the request Jesus makes to the Samaritan woman, we need to read the text more closely. Jesus says, “If you knew the gift of God...you would have asked him”. Our loving Jesus is the gift of God, and when we do not wish to respond to Him, whether it be in prayer, in service, or in keeping his commands, then we show that we do not know Him, or do not understand His gift. Since He is the gift, His requests and commands are also gifts by which we drink more deeply of the living water. He commands in order that we may have life and light. He requests in order that we may drink and be refreshed: “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Tomorrow's History

"And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days...Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Mark 13:20-31)

General Motors, one of the greatest manufacturers of modern history, faces bankruptcy. This is a serious blow to the United States of America and Canada. Many will lose their jobs. Cities that depend on automobile plants and related industries will suffer. Our identity as North Americans will suffer, even if temporarily we spitefully think that it is about time one of the giants came tumbling down. Even the enemies of the West and its economic power will find themselves hurting if the recession continues to grow. Critics of industry should remember that it is easy to forget how in so many ways we depend on the giants. And an even more shocking thought--we often depend on our enemies. This is why Jesus taught us to pray for our enemies, and not revile them (Matthew 5:43-48). The anarchist naturalist Peter Kropotkin discovered that nature achieves far more through mutualism and interdependence than it does through adversarial competition. Times of sorrow remind us of how much we need other humans, even the ones we do not especially like.

The fall of an industrial giant seems tragic, and history often seems to wear the tragic mask. Empires rise and fall. Philosophical systems come and go. Jesus explained this to his disciples: "And Jesus said to him, 'Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'" (Mark 13:2). This makes many people uneasy. Is our time up? Will we make it? What is going to happen? All of these questions contain a kind of absurdity: the attempt to know the history of tomorrow. For mankind, history is not about tomorrow, though. Only the Lord may speak of the future in the past tense, as we read so often in prophets, because His will is perfect and accomplished, and He presides over the world and the entire universe in His eternity without our mortal limitations. Our Lord, however, teaches us some important things about history, even tomorrow's history, that should give us hope as Christians.

First, the most important thing in history will always be the death and resurrection of Jesus. Not only is this true for Christians--it is true for the entire human race, whether or not men acknowledge him as Lord. As John Lukacs the renowned historian has written, "And now--especially, but perhaps not exclusively for Christians--I must argue for the recognition of our central situation not only in space but also in time. In sum, that the cmoing of Christ to this earth may have been? no, that it was, the central event of the universe; that the greatest, the most consequential event in the entire universe has occurred here, on this earth. The Son of God has not visited the earth during a tour of stars or planets, making a Command Performance for us, arriving from some other place and --perhaps--going off to some other place. And: only two thousand years ago!" (At the End of the Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. 223). Though Jesus' mortal life ended two thousand years ago, He continues to live and advocate for the human race, especially for Christians. And because He never changes, Jesus is relevant to every age. Every generation faces the same trials and sorrows, and is bothered by the same absurdities--especially, the dark questions of sin and death. And only Jesus can give life to those who are dead. Thus, Jesus is forever relevant, because He never changes, and He always offers life. Only if life is irrelevant can He be irrelevant. As Scripture says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). As history progresses, His Cross will continue to be the sign of hope and the sign of His Lordship.

Second, history--the past that we may know to an extent through investigation as well as the unwritten history of the future that we may not know--belongs to Jesus Christ. The Cross and Resurrection placed all things under His feet: "And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:8-11). The universe, and all of the time and history therein, belong to Jesus. Jesus is the meaning of history, "the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to the saints" (Colossians 2:26). We cannot understand our existence, our mystical yearnings, our clumsy attempts at religiosity, our philosophical, artistic and scientific endeavors, our wars and economic struggles, our plagues and our renaissances, without knowing who Jesus is and what He did. Without Him, history is just an absurd tragedy, and all things should be damnatio memoriae. Nevertheless, thanks be to God our Father who sent Jesus Christ to save the world and to invite us out of the death of history and into everlasting life! Only death and sin should suffer damnatio memoriae; our lives will be kept forever in His glory.

Our last thing to remember is that history, especially tomorrow's history that we face, is shaped by Christ for the sake of the Gospel. This is why Jesus said that the days of trials were shortened, "for the sake of the elect" (Mark 13:20). Jesus warned us not to speculate about apocalyptic things (Mark 13:5-8; 13:21-23), nor to live in fear. Our path is one of faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13). As Jesus told the disciples, God intervenes in historical events for the sake of the elect. Who are the elect? They are those who believe in Jesus the Son of God. It is the believers whom God chooses to be His own. Moreover, the words of Christ, the light that breathes forth from the Gospels, will endure and continue to illuminate generation after generation: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Mark 13:31). Nothing can strip the Gospels of their power to convert, transform and enlighten people. Tomorrow's history is in the work of the Gospels. After Jesus came into history, history became a part of Jesus' work (John 3). It is no longer the story of mankind alone. It is the story of the Son of Man, bringing all things into reconciliation with God (2 Corinthians 5). And where is this history going? As Paul said, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28).

Our Savior Jesus is real. The photograph above is of the gate where Pilate said Ecce homo! Behold the man! when presenting the Son of Man to the angry crowds that called out for his crucifixion.

Come and See

"The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples; and he looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God!' The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned, and saw them following, and said to them, 'What do you seek?' And they said to him, 'Rabbi (which means Teacher), where are you staying?" He said to them, 'Come and see.' They came and saw where he was staying; and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour." (John 1:35-39)

Who is Jesus? This is the question that drove Andrew and the other disciple--perhaps John the evangelist and apostle--to follow Jesus and spend the day with him. They had heard John the Baptist speak of him; they had seen Jesus be baptized, but they wanted to know more. That they were curious seems clear from Jesus' own question: "What do you seek?" What are we seeking as human beings? There are many questions that we can ask about the world, in our walk of faith, in the numerous issues we can struggle with, but more often than not, we will feel disappointed when our questions bring no answers, or they bring answers whose impact on our life is so small as to be disappointing. On the other hand, the question Who is Jesus? when asked by an honest heart, brings about life-changing results. Something about Jesus captivated Andrew and the other disciple. Christ is contagious. Andrew went to tell his brother Peter (John 1:40-42). When Jesus called Philip with the simple words "Follow me", Philip went and found Nathanael to tell him about Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:43-45). When Nathanael asked if anything good could come out of Nazareth, Philip repeated the Master's own words: "Come and see" (John 1:46).

And that is all Jesus is asking of you. He is asking you to come spend time with him, to come and see for yourself who he is, what he offers, and how he changes your life. Many people have come to me at various times with deep and painful questions, questions far too big for my limited experience, miniscule wisdom, and weak heart. Most of the time, the only advice that I can give them is to "Come and see" Jesus Christ--to spend time with Jesus. Most often, this advice is discarded as being too simplistic. Some Christians are surprised when their faith suffers, even though they are not spending time with Christ in prayer, searching his character in Scripture, and seeing his presence in other Christians. Why should they be surprised? It is ridiculous to suppose that one can know anything about a subject without spending time with it. My poor skills in mathematics are the result of years of neglect--starting very early in school. The less time you dedicate to knowing someone or something, the poorer your results will be. Many relationships end because friends cease to communicate, spend time with each other, or continue to explore one another's characters and virtues. Without curiosity, without a desire to dedicate time, it is very difficult to find intimacy and communion with the Lord, and it is impossible to gain any kind of knowledge, wisdom or faith without the desire for the presence of Christ.

Andrew and the other disciple wanted to see where Jesus lived. Where does Jesus live? First of all, if you are a baptized believer, Jesus lives in your heart, and you can speak to him anytime you want through praying: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:6). Jesus said that there is a reward for praying to the Father as individuals in secret. This is the personal aspect of our relationship with Jesus, the rewarding life of communing every day with a loving Lord who gave his life for us, and wants to be with us at all times: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3:20). When we pray to the Father, we are speaking to Jesus, because He is in the Father and the Father is in him (John 14:6-14). There is another aspect to our spirituality, and this is the corporate worship, or communal prayer, as we see in church. Jesus is present in our worship: "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20). More importantly, Jesus is present in the church, because the Holy Spirit is in each of us, and as we share in the Spirit, we are united into the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12). Moreover, by celebrating the Lord's Supper and proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus, we participate in Jesus' presence: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" (1 Corinthians 10:16). Though Jesus lives in heaven at the right hand of the Father (Acts 1:11, Acts 7:56), he also lives in those who have been saved, and in the communion of the saints. Come and see where Jesus lives, spend time with Jesus, and you will know more to the question Who is Jesus? More importantly, you will want to continue to know more and more. Through fellowship with Jesus and God the Father, we have fellowship with one another (1 John 1), and come to know that God is love (1 John 4:8). And what is more important, more beautiful and more sustaining than love?

Are you an unbeliever? Is your faith weak? Have you lost your faith? Remember that faith is not just belief. It is also curiosity and desire. It begins with something small, and grows into something wonderfully expansive: "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches" (Matthew 13:31-32). Come and see Jesus of Nazareth. Commune with Jesus both privately and publicly. Following him and sharing with him is like the planting of the mustard seed. For those of you who do not know him, you will discover a man without flaws, a man like none other. For those of you who once believed, remember how loving and kind Jesus is, remember his grace and his truth, and the words of life he shared with humanity. Moreover, remember that he came to this world and died for our sins, because of his great love for us (John 3).

The photograph above is of a carpenter's shop in Capernaum, the town where Jesus lived when his ministry began (Matthew 4:13).