Waking up and Rising up
If I were to summarize much of my early understanding of what it means to be a Christian, I would simply say it was calling on and calling to God. It was largely about asking and pleading with God to come near, asking Jesus into one’s heart.
Which places the Divine somewhere else, somewhere that is not here, with us.
This raises all sorts of questions of what it takes to get God to come near, because it was also clearly communicated how bad I was, how utterly shameful humanity is, and how totally depraved people are. This leads to anxiety over whether our not I said the right words, or said those words the right way.
I can see my twelve year old self standing before an elder, in the basement of our church building that smelled like a nursing home, and crying because I just didn't know if it stuck. Did Jesus come into my heart? I have been asking him to come into my heart… every day… for the last two weeks. I was petrified that he hadn't arrived. Was I too dirty? Was he too busy? I remember thinking how Jesus was a carpenter, so I wondered if in his building mansions in the sky, was he simply too busy or tired to visit totally depraved me?
In the book of Beginnings, what we call Genesis, there is a guy named Jacob, and he ran away from everything. Which he assumed also meant running away from the Divine. One night, as he laid down for a night’s sleep, he had a dream that involved the Presence of the Divine. When he was awakened from his sleep, he also speaks of waking up.
Surely the Divine is in this place, and I was not aware of it.
God has been present the entire time, and I was not aware of it. The word ‘aware’ is the Hebrew word ‘yada.’ Powerful little word, as it means an experiential knowing, an intimate grasping and understanding. It’s also a Jewish idiom for sexual intercourse. It’s an attempt to describe the deepest, widest, and most soul shifting experience of the Divine.
In Luke’s biography of Jesus, there is a series of stories that Jesus tells in chapter 15, which we often refer to as A Lost Sheep, A Lost Coin, and A Lost (Prodigal) Son.
But the stories are not really about being lost, rather they are about being found.
The sheep is found. The coin is found. And the son?
When he came to his senses… he got up and went to his father.
The “came to his senses” is to yada, and the “got up” part… it’s where we get the word Resurrection. The son awakens to the ever present love that has always been and will always be, and he resurrects to a new way of living.
In the story, he was never not a son. He was simply selfish and entitled, which blinded him to the love of his father.
We’re forever found. Will we awaken to the love that IS? Will we step into new life, in this life, which is the full life that has no end.
We don’t have to convince or coerce the Divine to come near, because the Divine has been here the entire time.
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
Welcome home.
