“Getting To Know You…”

1 John 3:1-10

“The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know God” (1 John 3:1). I wonder about this verse in light of our contemporary culture. I realize that when it was written there was an enormous majority of people who had never heard of Judaism, let along Christianity. But what does this passage mean today?

The fact is that there are few people who do not know something about the Jewish and Christian faiths, but the issue lies in how that knowledge the way people live. A list of the 10 best speeches in history ranked Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” as number 2 (right behind Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech). Jesus’ “speech” was ranked second purely because of it’s value as moral instruction, not because it was spoken by the Son of God. How many people in the western hemisphere do not know the significance of Easter and Christmas? Yet where is most of the emphasis placed? On gift giving and retail sales. When the Cadbury Co. can say “No bunny knows Easter like we do” it provides an interesting commentary. And the familiar Christmas song “Here Comes Santa Clause” includes the line, “Say your prayers to the Lord above, ‘cause Santa Clause is coming tonight.” How have those two concepts become related? I even remember a time when one of the major oil companies used Noah’s Ark as a promotional giveaway: fill up the tank and receive a set of two animal figures.

The world knows about God. But the world—and too many people of faith—seem content to allow a skewed version of the story of salvation to pass as truth. Easter and Christmas remain profoundly significant without gifts or major purchases. Jesus is the Word of God incarnate; what he says is life-giving not merely instructive. And the stories of faith should do more than prompt consumer choices. They should compel us to reexamine who we are and what we hold as essential. So maybe it isn’t that the world doesn’t know us, maybe it is that we do not know ourselves.

Prayer: Lord help us to live as your people and not according to the world’s version of who you are. Amen.