25. Show Us The Father

IN this meditation also the main thought is the striking word of Jesus: "This is eternal life, that they might know thee, the Only true God." The meaning of this saying is too profound, too rich to be fully thought out at one time. So we come back to it now, and will do so again presently.

We tried to make you feel what eternal life is. We did not undertake to epitomize it in one idea, neither have we analyzed the conception of it. We tried to interpret the idea of the life that is eternal more fully than as if it were merely a life without end. A life extending without end would drive you to hopeless despair; eternal life, something entirely different, inspires and rejuvenates.

Now to the point.

It does not say that he who knows the Father shall receive eternal life. It is not said: If you are religious and zealously seek to know God, your reward after your death shall be eternal life. It states altogether differently that, to know God is itself eternal life. And you realize that the difference is heaven-wide. Eternal life, taken as a reward for your painstaking efforts to learn to know God, is a superficial, mechanical and unnatural interpretation. On the contrary an eternal life that itself consists in knowing God is a thought so deep, that you, peering into it, see no bottom.

Eternal life, interpreted as a reward for knowledge, represents it as a sort of school discipline. Much study, much memorizing, much taking notes of dictations, and then, as a reward, promotion from a mortal and passing existence into an ever-enduring, never-ending one - a kind of higher life-insurance.

It then comes to consist of a piece of memory-work. A study of a subtly composed work on dogmatics, every part of which has been traced out in all its particulars, and which presents in an orderly form what in the course of ages has been systematized regarding the Being and work, the Person and attributes of the Infinite. And when at length everything has become dry and barren to the eye of your soul, till no more fragrance of life is perceptible anywhere, then this barren, dead knowledge is to receive the reward of eternal life.

But the knowledge of God itself is eternal life. He who possesses this knowledge already possesses this eternal life now. On the other hand, he who dies without having found this knowledge of God here, will not find it in the hereafter. On him the eternal morning never dawns.

You feel, you handle it. So interpreted (for so it must, so only it may he taken) this word of Jesus presses itself upon you as a power, as a strong power that enters into your very being and conscience, and asks you: "Have you already obtained this knowledge of God?" - as a power that urges you, now. before it is too late, to reach after this knowledge, until in the stirring of your soul you feel the swell of the undulation of this eternal life.

And now comes Philip and asks naively: "Lord, show us the Father" (S. John 14:8).

This was childlike in its simplicity, and yet he took the proper starting point from which to advance. He who so asks shows that he is in earnest. He wants to attain unto the knowledge of God. It is evident, from his saying that he desires no book-knowledge but life-knowledge of God. He wants to know God, God Himself. And what more natural than that he begins by asking: "Show me the Father."

In some quarters the religious life has developed itself too dogmatically. This was inevitable, it could not be otherwise. Doctrinal expression was indispensable. But yet it is not without risk when it appears too one-sidedly in the foreground. It is the selfsame difference as between the Gospels and the Epistles; in the latter, dogmatic conflict is already in evidence. And even in the Gospels you have the same difference between the Sermon on the Mount and the controversy of Jesus with the Scribes.

The early periods of Christianity were better than the later. What rapture marks the language of early creedal statements and liturgies, and offices of Holy Communion, and how comparatively barren and emaciated are later formulas. At first, life runs like a river. Later on there is nothing more than drained river-beds, with only some weak rill coursing through the sand. Oh, who can say how greatly this has impoverished the people of the Lord!

Now, Philip knows nothing of these contrasts. He still faces it with childlike ingenuousness. God is to him really the Eternal Being. God is his desire, he seeks after God, and therefore it is the prayer of his heart that he might see God. And so in stress of soul he says: "Show us the Father."

When some person is mentioned, and you are asked, "Do you know him?" then, if you do not know him, nothing is more natural than that you say: "I have not even seen him."

Seeing is of first importance. To receive an impression by seeing, speaks for itself. This accounts for the fact that both in the Old and New Testaments this seeing of God appears always in the foreground. Even as early as Moses when he prayed: "Show me Thy glory!" and Jehovah answered: "No man shall see my face and live" (Exodus 33:18, 20). And you know how later on S. Paul exulted in the fact that: "We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory (1 Cor. 13:12). This takes place, in a measure here; but more fully hereafter. "We shall see face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known."

The life of Scripture throbs with such words as these. Here all barrenness is gone. It is full of reality. It is all for the sake of God, the living God; to see Him, to behold Him; and then ardently to rejoice in this life-giving insight.

And therefore what Philip asked ("Lord, show us the Father") was a well chosen beginning, springing from the deep-felt thirst after the living God.

But, alas! outside of you, God can not be seen, and why He can not be, is perfectly plain.

You can only see that which is outside of you, when it presents itself to you in the world as a separate object, and is sufficiently defined to fall within the range of your vision.

No one can see the world, but only such pieces and parts of it - now this part, now that - as may fall within your reach. But even if you could see the whole world, which is impossible, you would not be able to see God; for the world is finite, and God infinite, and the broadest conception you make of the world, sinks away into nothing when compared with the infinite God.

And then you can only see whatever has form, figure, appearance, and falls within your range; and "God is a Spirit, and they who worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

To see God outside of yourself is therefore impossible. To want to see Him outwardly is to belittle Him, to give Him material form, and to deny Him as Spirit.

And here idolatry comes in.

Idolatry was this: that the nations "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man" (Rom. 1:23).

This did not spring from wickedness, but from piety. It was not the worst but the best people of a nation that built temples and placed an image of God in them. From among these nations the cry went up: "Show us God." And the priest did show them their God in an image that they made.

They thought in this way to bring God closer to the people; and yet by that miserable image they caused all knowledge of God to be lost.

With every representation of God, God Himself is gone. Hence the judicious warning of S. John, before he died: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols! " (1 John 5:21).

And so the two continue to stand over against one another.

On one hand, the urgent call: "Show us the Father!" The soul-cry which is not satisfied with a dogma, a conception, a formula; which wants to possess God himself; the truly pious, childlike thirst for the living God: on the other hand, you can not represent God to yourself as an object, nor see Him with your eye. He is the Invisible One. And with every effort to represent Him in an image. you lose the Infinite and wander ever farther away from Him.

The reconciliation of these mutually excluding perceptions - that you, are inwardly driven not to rest till you see God, and that you, by representing God to yourself, lose Him altogether - lies in what Jesus replied to Philip: "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then: Show us the Father?" (John 14:9).

But how?

There is a perception outside of you, but there is also a perception within you. Not within yourself alone, but within you in your human nature.

Now, in the Son of man, God Himself appears before you in this human nature. And by your fellowship with the Son of Man you also see your God, in Jesus, through Jesus, and in yourself by the Holy Ghost.

Not the image of God in the temple of idols, but the Image of God in the Messiah !