Based on Acts 17:22-31, 1Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21
One of the keys to understanding how medications work in living bodies is to first understand how the body is put together and how all the parts interact. I learned early on that it wasn’t enough to know how many bones, muscles and nerves there were in the body, I had to fully understand not only what’s in us, but how all that miraculous stuff works together with other cellular processes to keep our bodies functioning well. Only when I figured out how that complex interaction was dysfunctional was I able to recommend medicines to help the healing process.
All of us are involved in that complex process of figuring out how our bodies are working, what’s missing, and what we need to do to keep them functioning as well as possible for as long as possible. Some are dealing with chronic illnesses like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc. Some are dealing with cancers or other changes in mental, physical or spiritual functioning – and most are dealing with the effects of many decades of life on bodily systems that are designed to wear out. Into this mix come the “snake oil” salespeople who promise to cure all that ails you with this or that over-the-counter chemical or combination of substances to give you back what you’re missing. They promise the moon and end up taking your money and goodwill and leaving you with broken promises. They never provide what’s missing from our lives.
If the quick fix folks aren’t the answer, then how do we discover what is missing in our lives? What is it that we are seeking that will lead us to a place where we can live our lives abundantly and well and with a sense of peace, meaning and purpose? In order to answer those questions, I believe we all have to use a similar process to the one I used as a clinical pharmacist. We first have to figure out what we’re made of and then we will come to understand what’s missing and how to fix that.
An understanding of our scripture readings for today will be helpful in pointing us toward the answer to what’s missing. The Apostle Paul is in Athens, seeking to evangelize the Greeks. Paul engages the Athenians in a philosophical discussion of their gods versus the unknown god that they worship. Paul’s diagnosis of what’s missing in their plethora of gods is an understanding of the One True God – the God who created all things and all people. This God, Paul teaches, is a God who created all things so that all would “…seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’….”
The writers of 1Peter and of John’s Gospel both emphasize what Paul taught is missing in our lives. In the letter we know as 1Peter, the writer teaches that when we revere the Christ in our hearts as Lord, then nothing on earth can touch us; even if we suffer for our Christ-like actions, we are blessed by God. Jesus speaks to his disciples in the Gospel of John and tells them what is missing from their lives. Jesus teaches that He will send them an advocate, the “Spirit of truth” that will live in them forever. He tells them that they already have what they need for abundant life saying, “Because I live, you also will live…you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me, and I am in you….”
Christians over the millennia have missed this teaching or come to understand it metaphorically instead of as a lived reality. Paul realized from his own interaction with the Risen Christ that what was missing from his life and the lives of most other people was the profound reality that Christ was in him…that the Christ is in you and me and everything we interact with in this life. Father Richard Rohr, in his book entitled “The Universal Christ” helps to unpack the revelation that we don’t have to go looking for the Christ, He is already inside us.
To do this, Rohr starts with how Saul came to be Paul and his conversion following his “Road to Damascus” experience writing, “…In Paul’s story we find the archetypal pattern, wherein people move from what they thought they always knew to what they now fully recognize. The pattern reveals itself earlier in the Torah when Jacob ‘wakes from his sleep’ on the rock at Bethel and says in effect, ‘I found it, but it was here all the time! This is the very gate of heaven’ (Genesis 28:16-17)…In his letters, Paul rarely, if ever, quotes Jesus directly. Rather, he writes from a place of trustful communication with the Divine Presence who blinded him on the road. Paul’s driving mission was ‘to demonstrate that Jesus was the Christ’ (Acts 9:22b), which is why we are called ‘Christians’ to this day, and not Jesuits! Describing the encounter (with the Risen Christ) in his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes a most telling line. He does not say ‘God revealed his Son to me’ as you might expect. Instead, he says, ‘God revealed his Son in me’ (Galatians 1:16)….”
Rohr goes on to teach that “…Paul’s primary criterion for authentic faith, which is quite extraordinary (is): ‘Examine yourselves to make sure you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you? If not, you have failed the test’ (2Corinthians 13:5). So simple it’s scary! Paul’s radical incarnationalism sets a standard for all later Christian saints, mystics, and prophets. He knew that Christ must first of all be acknowledged within before he can be recognized without as Lord and Master…God must reveal God’s-self [himself] in you before God can fully reveal God’s-self [himself] to you….”
The Apostle Paul knew that the Christ was in him. This was the bedrock of his understanding of how to live as followers of the Christ; it was so important that he used the term “en Christo” a total of 164 times in his letters to his church plants. Rohr picks up on this writing, “…En Christo seems to be Paul’s code word for the gracious, participatory experience of salvation, the path that he so urgently wanted to share with the world. Succinctly put, this identity means humanity has never been separate from God – unless and except by its own negative choice. All of us, without exception, are living inside a cosmic identity, already in place, that is driving and guiding us forward. We are all en Christo, willingly or unwillingly, happily or unhappily, consciously or unconsciously….”
I posited earlier in this reflection that in order discover that which will lead us to a place where we can live our lives abundantly, well and with a sense of peace, meaning and purpose, we first had to figure out what’s missing and then move to put that in place. Our scripture readings for today, and really the whole of the Bible’s witness and teaching, emphasizes that God is not only always with us but is in us! God placed God’s image inside us so that we would simply have to look inside to find that “in which we live and move and have our being”. Yet, the Church has done a really poor job of teaching that and helping people move to that place of self-recognition. Case-in-point, we have been blessed by God with the addition of 27 people to our Charge over the last 16 months! Each time we have added persons to membership, I have asked you whether or not you believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You have all answered affirmatively by quoting the corresponding sections of the Nicene Creed.
What I should be asking you, and what we should be asking ourselves, is what Paul wrote to the Galatian believers…“Examine yourselves to make sure you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you?” If we did this, intentionally and routinely, then we would come to understand that what’s missing in our lives is not the Christ, but our understanding of Christ’s abiding presence in you, me and all creation. That discovery would help us live out of the Christ in you and in me and in all of creation. That intimate knowledge will enable us to fully live as people of the Resurrection and to help every other human recognize that they too are made in the likeness of God and have God’s image placed inside them. Father Rohr put it well in his analysis of Paul’s writings stating that what’s missing from our lives is the movement from what we thought we knew to what we now fully recognize. Through God’s grace we come to recognize that when we’re in Christ, nothing is missing from our lives. Amen and amen!