There are many in the world
today who believe in God – Jews and Muslims for instance. So how are we to understand Jesus
teaching in today’s gospel which seems to suggest only Christians can know God?
The answer is found in two key words that Jesus uses – “knows” and “Father”.
To know someone implies person-to-person
encounter. The word here is “gnosis”. I know for a fact that
Justin Trudeau is the prime minister of Canada. I have been given a lot of information about
him through other’s reports, but I cannot claim to really “know” him until I
meet him, interact with him, spend time with him, experience him personally.
The second key word Jesus uses is “Father”. To
know God as your Father is profoundly more significant than knowing there is a
God. Imagine someone who grew up never knowing their father – separated for
some reason – then one day it happens, a man comes and stands in front of him as another
says, “James, here is your father that you do not know.” James may know a lot about what fathers are
to other people, but now he knows his father, and begins a whole new life with his father.
When Jesus says these
words: “No
one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him." This is what he means by "knows" – real, encounter,
person-to-person, filial, tender, intimate, loving. The Hebrew word for Father
is “Abba”.
One of
my scripture teachers told a story of how this word Abba, hit home for him. He
was visiting the Holy Land, and was in a busy marketplace. A little child was
there with his father, shopping. Then the little boy lost sight of his father,
and began to call out, “Abba, Abba, Abba, Abba, Abba”, (father, father,
father,) – “here my son, here I am”, the father replied. It was then that the
teacher appreciated in an intimate, personal way what Jesus meant by “… knowing the
Father.”
We are like lost children who don’t know our true
Father, our tender, loving and protecting Father, until that graced encounter, when Jesus says to us, “come now, look and see, here is Abba, your Father”.
Do
you know your Father, your heavenly Father? Is he your Abba, your loving,
protecting, life-giving Father? If not, then ask Jesus to help you to know the
Father as he knows him.
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