To Know Christ Personally

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

March 21, 2010

Text: Philippians 3: 8-14 and John 12: 1-8

At my fingertips is a breadth of knowledge unavailable to the ordinary person 20 years ago. Many libraries available in one laptop hooked up to the internet! A marvelous advantage.

Such access to knowledge is now considered as valuable as electricity. In the early 1950’s in rural Texas, people away from the metropolitan areas did not have electricity: I know this first hand because my grandparents still cooked on a wood stove or butane; and light was by coal oil lanterns. It was only when Rural Electrification Cooperatives were established by the government that this service became available to them.

(For that matter, they also did not have a phone, until, when I was a teenager, my dad had poles set westward from the King farm, some 2 miles away and climbed the poles to attach the wire, all the way to my grandparent’s home, which set on the crest of a hill 300 yards off the dirt road.

Today, there are efforts being made to extend wide band access to rural areas: such is the need for those in outlying areas to have greater and faster access to information.

Knowledge is power. Knowing about things helps us immensely. And, we can connect with friends and strangers on the same devices. We can become “friends” with people we have never met in person. We can, in a sense, know them.

In fact, one could make the case that we have come to know celebrities----as in identifying with them----more deeply than we know our neighbors in the house next door. And we can and do communicate with people at a distance even while we are surrounded by the physical presence of people we have not met and have no desire to meet.

I do not say this as a criticism of life now. It is simply a fact that the ways in which we know things and people have changed radically. And oddly enough, though we may be in touch (see how this word has changed! A whole different meaning to the sense of touch.) with more people than ever before, we may yet be terribly lonely. And though we may have access to a wide world of information, we may be so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and opinion that we hardly know where to begin, or how to weigh the relative merits or truthfulness of what we are taking in. In fact, the very word “truth” sounds almost quaint. With Pilate, we ask, “What is truth?”

These musings came to mind this time around for me when I read the two texts which have been read today from John and from Philippians.

Here is the apostle Paul writing that he “counts(s) everything [else] as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus [his] Lord.” His hard-won religious and ethnic credentials and knowledge are like so much trash in comparison with knowing Christ.

So far as we can tell, Paul never meet Jesus in the flesh. Christ appeared to him, Paul says (The story is recounted three times by Paul in The Acts of the Apostles, in chapters 9, 22 and 26.) “Why are you persecuting me?” And “Why are you kicking against the goads?”

Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, tells us that he goes into the wilderness for three years to sort things out before he goes to Jerusalem. There was much that Paul had to learn about Jesus before he came to know Jesus personally.

The canonical Gospels, the letters and essays; writings of the ancient theologians and pastors; more contemporary credible biblical scholars-----all of these give us multifaceted facts and interpretation of Jesus life, death and resurrection.

Thus with us, wonderful resources at our fingertips (in books and on line!) Lots to learn both before and after we come to know Christ experientially.

But, as important as knowledge about Jesus is, such knowledge is no substitute for personal, experiential knowledge of him.

Think about it: someone may read your resume, letters who have written, even your autobiography, and not really know you as a person.

 Mary and Paul know Jesus.

In John’s account of an incident in Jesus’ life, Mary, the sister of Martha and of Lazarus, treats her guest Jesus with the spa-like treatment of rubbing his feet with an ointment, the going price of which was 300 days wages!

To add to the drama of her action, she then wipes his anointed feet with her hair!

Treatment of the feet at all was the job of slaves, not friends. Washing feet was often offered to guests as an act of hospitality; but this action, by a member of the host family, was extraordinary indeed. One can only imagine Lazarus and Martha, with their mouths open: “Here is Mary, going overboard again!” And, of course, Judas Iscariot, the treasurer of the disciples, objecting to the waste of money, though his character as a thief makes his objection ring false.

Now the story of the anointing by Mary has a larger meaning, but this time I want to call attention to the fact of Mary’s knowing the man Jesus in such a way that she would risk criticism to show him her love for him.

The same Mary who had sat at Jesus’ feet listening to him teach, is now the same Mary who knows Jesus as more than simply a rabbi: she knows him as the resurrection and the life. Her place in the household is as nothing compared with her knowledge of Christ as savior and friend.

“To know Christ,” reformer Phillip Melancthon wrote, “is to know his benefits.”

The benefit of knowing Jesus, which is the same as having faith in him, is to receive the gift of “righteousness” Paul writes. A quaint word indeed! What is meant by it?

To be righteous is to freed and empowered to fulfill the purpose for which you were created. It is to be free from defeat by sin and death. It means to have life in abundance----not simply breathing in and out, but filled with resilient joy and hope.  

And all of this, not because of your list of accomplishments, as important as these may be. But as a sheer gift. Knowing Christ with such intimacy is like having your life in him-----like Christ living in you.

For with the gift of this knowledge comes the awareness that Christ knows you! And loves you! And chose to go to the cross rather than to forsake the ultimate expression of God’s love for you and for the whole world!

To know Christ in this way Paul says, means that the price-tags on things we hold dear get changed. (Texts for Preaching, Lent 5, Year C)

What seemed of most importance fades into insignificance.

 What seemed to be folly----all this talk of faith and love----becomes priceless wisdom.

 What seemed to be signs of weakness becomes the very definition of strength.

 Whereas you and I once pictured ourselves as being thrown into life now see our lives a wonderful gift.

 And the flux and chance of life now seems to us the sign of a creative and boundless power.

 We find that we no longer trust in ourselves but in God. We experience strange new inrushes of life, freedom and hope. Our previous life seems like half life.

 We cannot say exactly how this has happened. But we come to believe that Christ has made this difference.  (Van Harvey)

College degrees? Yes, important.

Expertise in your field of endeavor? Yes.

Serving others in works of mercy and justice. Yes.

But when we know Christ, really believe in him, none of these wonderful things are done in order to make ourselves significant (or righteous) in God’s eyes.

 God has already loved you, and forgiven you, and is saving you----leading you ever deeper into the mysteries of faith, hope and love! And because God loves you this much, your degrees and your expertise and your good works are your answer to God in Christ Jesus, in gratitude for all that God has done and is doing.

Jesus becomes the “still point” in the fulcrum of your life. You move in and out of battle in this world, securely held by God’s love.

Clarence Johnson in The Cotton Patch Version of Paul’s Epistles expressed this kind of knowing this way:

“I keep on struggling, trying to catch on to why Christ Jesus caught hold of me.”

Will you and I join Mary at the feet of Christ, overwhelmed with love for him and trusting in his resurrection power to bring new life to us now?

Will we join with Paul in approaching Christ in faith, just as we are, accepting God’s acceptance of us, willing to experience the surpassing worth of knowing him?

In the prayer of George Herbert:

Come my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a way as gives us breath,
Such a truth as ends all strife,
Such a life as killeth death.

Come my Light, my Feast, my strength:
Such a light as shows a feast,
such a feast as mends in length
Such a strength as makes his guest.

Come my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a joy as none can move,
Such a love as none can part,
Such a heart as joys in love.

(George Herbert, 1633; hymn 164 in UMH)