I thirst for truth

I am sure some of you will have experienced this sort of thing yourselves, but one of my sons once came home from primary school talking about: “Lord Jesus Price” and: “Deliver us from Eagle.” And the other son is at that stage where he has that insatiable thirst for knowledge which can be infuriating. Knowledge isn't always the full picture.

Every answer you can give just creates another busy question. The other day he asked us: “Why do people have foreheads?” That one wasn't too hard to deal with but I did struggle more with: "What is DNA"? I answered this one by talking about brown eyes and brown hair, but then came the killer punch: "But how come I have your DNA if I came from Mum?" Then there was a very long pause as I was floored..... Then: "Oh I know," he said, "when you were kissing!" I felt so relieved I started talking all about test tube cloning and Dolly the sheep, until another of the children suddenly said: "Oh, so I understand now. Mum is going to turn into a sheep."

I had failed miserably to properly satisfy the thirsty quest for knowledge, but I am working on it. This thirst is a great thing though because it isn't always easily put off. I know some of you have experienced the really thirsty children ask you: “But who created God?"

This is another infuriating but brilliant question, although it IS a little easier for me to tackle than explaining human DNA transfer without mentioning any of the details.

But to answer: "Who created God?" we need to remember why we can't get away with saying that the universe has just always been around in a sort of spiritual steady state - Because we know that the universe had a beginning if we are to trust our astrophysicists, who agree that the Big Bang happened about 14 billion years ago. The fraction of the universe that we can actually see is still expanding outwards as a result, and we call 75 per cent of the stuff of the universe dark energy -- because we don't know where it came from. But it is driving the expansion out which could mean everything will eventually cool down so much it will all die.

Of course the Big Bang doesn't prove the Big Banger, but let's follow the thirst for knowledge and think about this. Each of us knows that our individual human life had a beginning and will have an end, and we each know that all natural life is much bigger than our own lifespan. In the same way, eternal life could be much bigger than the natural lifespan of our universe. But this eternity we call God did not begin like the universe began. Creator God is beyond the universe and beyond our created thought processes. I know I have tried to bring myself to accept that before birth and after death there is only oblivion, but I cannot. Again, no-one can prove any of this with the thirst for knowledge alone, but as human beings, the thirst for knowledge is not our only thirst. We also have a thirst for truth, to use a high-folluting phrase.

And contrary to what Richard Dawkins wishes to say, Biology isn't the only way to explore truth. "Seek Truth" said the Greek philosopher seeker Plato. "What is truth?" said the Roman governor politician Pontius Pilate. And, according to John's gospel, "I am the Truth" said Jesus.

But maybe this truth talk is all a bit too grand for you. Yet God’s thirst for us is an experience, not just our statement of faith. It is a thirst which can be quenched provided we act on the statement of faith and walk the Christian truth. As the early church Father Irenaeus once put it: "God became human so that humans could become God".

But a word of caution for us human beings too, because we like to settle for a different thirst on the way -- our thirst for power. We don’t have to look far to see the effects of this today and every day. And in his own day, Jesus ran into trouble by publicly acknowledging a quite different source of power to the power humankind seeks, a quite distinct power to the power which the occupying Roman forces and the Jewish religious authorities were concerned with. As he broke bread and drank wine it wasn’t the worldy empire or the temple transaction kind of power he proclaimed. It was a higher claim on us, which he called the Kingdom. What good did it do him though? Did it quench his thirst? How would we know? Well when he was about die for his trouble in living out God's power, he did speak about his thirst - according to John 19:28:

“Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said: 'I am thirsty.' A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit."

What is this scripture which was fulfilled? A reference to Psalm 22, the cry to God for help. Jesus the Hebrew God man would have known this scripture well. It goes like this:

“Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none. They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”
So did he quench his thirst? Vinegar is the very last thing a thirsty person needs - I am not a farmer but it is like giving gall - which is a parasitic growth on a plant - to the hungry. Unsatisfying. In his own suffering thirst during death, cheap vinegary wine is all he was offered.

I may not be accquainted with countryside terms like gall but I am told that alcohol is dehydrating and not hydrating. I must try it one day :)

But it wouldn't have helped Jesus much.

When the boy of God suffered and died, as all of us here will also suffer and die, perhaps it was a different type of thirst altogether which was being quenched.

Jesus' life on earth had been transparent to the transcendent creator of our natural universe. What he did represented the meeting of our human thirst for God and God’s thirst for us humans. And we are told that Jesus said to a fellow sufferer on the cross: "Today you will be with me in Paradise".

We may not ever be crucified on a cross but none of us can avoid being fellow sufferers, and we certainly can't avoid death. But we can choose to seek to live out the eternal life which can contain and fulfill our natural lives, so that we too will be what we were intended to be - images of God – people guided by a power beyond our tiny little lives and beyond the beginning and end of our wonderful but unreliable natural universe.

I want to thank you for reading, and ask that all of us as a Royal Priesthood pray through our lives as we live and love and suffer and die. More than that I pray that we will all watch and experience the resurrection who quenches a thirst for a truth altogether different to the truths of DNA transfer.

So may the power who acted on Jesus raise us to life in him.