Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 16 December 2014 "Life: from eternity to where we could see and touch it"

Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Tuesday, 16 December 2014 "Life: from eternity to where we could see and touch it"
Daily Scripture: 1 John 1:1-2 From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.
3-4 We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!
Reflection Questions:
John used lofty, nearly ecstatic language as he reflected (probably several decades later) on his experience of knowing and following Jesus. Commentator Glenn Barker captured John’s central point: “This message is from the beginning because it is of God. It precedes creation, time, and history. But in God the message of life also draws near to humanity and finds its culmination in Jesus. In him the Word of life becomes incarnated [made flesh], manifested, and hence can be seen, touched, and even handled.”
• John’s claim was (and is) amazing. He said he had heard, seen, looked at and touched “the Word of life” which was “from the beginning”: i.e. God, the creator and savior! How can John’s simple, direct eyewitness testimony give you a firmer basis for your faith? How, without the same physical experience John had of Jesus, have you been able to trust that Jesus is “the eternal life that was with the Father”?
• John wrote that sharing the good news about Jesus as “God with us” draws us into fellowship (community) with one another and with God. Do you value connections with people that have come about because of your shared faith in Jesus? How can you keep your heart and life open to inviting others into this worldwide, centuries-old fellowship?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, sometimes I think of you as a figure in a painting or a statue. But witnesses like John said they actually knew you as a real man. Help me to grasp, and live out, the reality that you are still really with me today. Amen.
Insight from Rev. Glen Shoup
Before I offer a brief reflection on today’s reading, I want to share just a quick bit of contextual information to address a question that could arise in reading today’s passage: you will notice that the author (whom Christian tradition holds to be John, the author of the 4th Gospel) throughout the verses in our reading today uses the first person plural “we”.  This “we” likely refers to a circle of teachers who had been converted to “The Way” (one of the earliest names for those who believed in and followed Christ)—either directly through Jesus’ ministry or through John’s preaching and teaching of Jesus’ ministry.  So perhaps the easiest way to think about what this “we” might have looked like is to think of John as the senior pastor/missionary and these other teachers as the associate pastors/missionaries.  Thus, when our reading today talks about “we”, it most likely refers to the collection of teachers and leaders whom John had, to some degree, trained in the Christian gospel.
As I read today’s passage I’m captured by the magnitude of the opening phrase of the opening verse: We announce to you what existed from the beginning…
Have you ever stopped to consider that there has never been a time when God wasn’t?  Have you ever stopped to consider that time is margined and both inside and on the other side of those margins is God? [Now we’re beginning to bump up against what that opening phrase is naming.]  Have you ever thought about the fact that the mind-blowing phenomenon of the story of creation is not how or when the trees or the animals or even humankind came into existence but rather that time and space itself was created?  The whole time/space continuum (and this is where my 3lbs of brain matter starts to feel woozy)—in which the sum total of all reality we can conceive of resides—time and space are nothing more than the creative impulse of the One we call God.  I wonder what else God has created outside of time and space…and lest you think I digress or have been hitting the hallucinogens…let me quickly point out that I raise all this simply to push us toward the mystery and indefinable magnitude of what’s captured just in that opening phrase of the first verse: We announce to you what existed from the beginning…
So it is none other than the One who thought the time/space continuum into existence; it is none other than the One who is outside of time and space and has origined who knows what else (other than Him) beyond time and space; it is none other than the One we call God who has come to us in Jesus Christ and tells us “if you have seen me you have seen the Father for I and the Father are one” (and I’ve not even touched on the incredible notion that, prior to Jesus, it was unthought-of that the likes of us could not only know this God but call God Abba…Father…parent)—this is [one small portion] of the magnitude of the Incarnation–of what it means that God has come to us born to us in Christmas [Emmanuel]…that is narrated in today’s reading:

We announce to you what existed from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have seen and our hands handled, about the word of life. 2 The life was revealed, and we have seen, and we testify and announce to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. 3 What we have seen and heard, we also announce it to you so that you can have fellowship with us. Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

Rev. Glen Shoup is the Executive Pastor of Worship and a Congregational Care Pastor.

____________________________