Knowing versus Experiencing

            Two years ago my eldest daughter started a new school—a very large school.  Throughout the year she talked about various people, and as a mother who was trying to be invested, I tried to keep everything straight.  One of these friends of SK’s was a young lady named Lauren.  Whenever SK would mention her I would go through the litany of who she was, the blonde soccer player who lives in Anchorage, parents are engineers, has an older brother—you get the drill, I was trying to place Lauren, but I didn’t really know Lauren.  And you can imagine that when I got something slightly wrong, I got the eye roll, but I kept trying.  Early  last year that Lauren began to spend more and more time at our house, and now I not only know all these things about Lauren, (and have corrected some of my mistaken identity terms) but I also know Lauren—I know what she sounds like when she laughs; I know what things make her sad; I know what things make her happy.   I know her; I love her, and now I claim her as half of my own.

            Nathaniel in today’s Gospel knew a lot of things about who the Messiah was supposed to be.  He uses multiple titles—Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel, Son of Man.  You should know that just prior to today’s verses Nathaniel has scoffed at the idea that Jesus is the Messiah—he said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  Nathaniel had a preconceived idea of who the Messiah would be; he had a litany of descriptors—he had a head knowledge.  Nathaniel was probably a very good Jew; he knew what the Scriptures said about the coming Messiah.  He knew what the Jewish people were expecting and because of what he knew, or thought he knew—because of his preconceived ideas--he could not see the divine in front of him.  He could not see, that is, until he had an experience.  Nathaniel’s initiation—his first experience with Jesus was Jesus recognizing him—and Jesus tells Nathaniel there’s so much more.  And so Nathaniel joins in the following of Jesus.

            What we as the readers of the Gospel of John, of all the Gospels, know is that although these disciples follow Jesus, know that they experience the Divine, they still don’t always get it. (Bless their hearts) Throughout their time with Jesus, they are still learning, still experiencing.  They are front row observers; they learn; they experience who Jesus is over and over, and they build a relationship with him; they build  relationships with Jesus the man, the ordinary man; the son of Joseph and Mary who comes from Nazareth, and they build a relationship--they experience Jesus the Incarnate God.  They build a relationship with a Jesus who is not only the messenger of God, but is God.  It is through the relationship with  Jesus that there is a means by which disciples then and now can have a divine encounter.  Jesus is the means, the way.  As we deliberately and intentionally become disciples, we too can move into a relationship that begins to understand the titles, but that also moves beyond the titles into experience.  We don’t always get it, (really, how can we?  God is too big for any box we try to put Him in) but as we continue through life desiring to love and serve God, taking the time to study and worship and pray, more and more is unfolded.  As we move deeper, we see greater things than we could ever imagine.  Just as Jesus promised Nathaniel.

            The more we learn who Jesus is through our personal study and encounters, the more we learn what it means to follow Jesus—to be disciples of Jesus here and now in the 21^st century.  The more we know and experience God the more we begin to see the divine in our lives and in the lives of others.   As our relationships with God become more and more authentic, become more and more about knowledge combined with experience, we begin to see the divine in more places—in the ordinary and the extraordinary.  We can begin to see the divine working within the church and out in the ordinary world.  We understand that a simple carpenter’s son can be and is  the Messiah—is the Divine in the flesh, and so we learn to see the Divine in the simple, in the ordinary, in the priest celebrating the Eucharist, in the daughter sitting next to you, in the cashier at the grocery, and even in the homeless person you pass by day after day.

            As we seek to love and serve God, we are not only building our own relationships with God, but we are also helping to illuminate the Divine in the ordinary for others.  As we serve in the name of God, we are gently saying to those around us, “Come and see”  Come and move beyond what you think you know about God and instead experience the love of God—know God, love God, and claim God as your own.

            All of those titles for God, all those descriptors help us to know something about God.  They help us to identify, to classify, but to experience God, to have a personal relationship with God helps us to know—to know the God who loves us so much that he sent his son, in the flesh to live and work among us.  And those encounters did not end with the ascension of Christ.  No, Jesus’ coming opened the heavens and the path to and from heaven remains open, we just have to look and see, to notice.  As we move closer and closer in our relationship with God, we begin to have fewer sporadic, Aha moments of God and instead we live in a world full of the divine and those aha’s become AHH’s.