“It is true that no one has ever
seen God at any time. Yet the divine and only Son, who lives in the
closest intimacy with the Father, has made him known.” John
1:18, PHILLIPS
“Then Philip said to him, 'Show us
the Father, Lord, and we shall be satisfied.'”
“Have I been such a long time with
you,” returned Jesus, “without your really knowing me, Philip?
The man who has seen me has seen the Father.” John
13:8-9, PHILLIPS
A few weeks ago I
subbed a few days at the middle school serving as the aide who
travels around with a young Venezuelan boy who moved to our town in
September. He speaks little English and I speak hardly any Spanish so
his teacher suggested I download Google Translate to my phone. “It
will be helpful,” is how she put it. So I did and as she was right.
Frequently during those two days Justin and I were making ourselves
clear to each other through that app on my phone. Two people from
different parts of the globe being able to communicate through a
little hand-held device. How cool is that?
On the Saturday
following my subbing assignment we were in the Cities having
breakfast with our daughter and her roommate who happens to be a
Spanish major. I was estatic about finding Google Translate and was
having fun speaking into my phone and hearing my words “magically”
transformed into Spanish with a soothing Latin lilt (or firm
Icelandic bark). That's when Katie, Emma's roommate, gently popped by
bubble: as far as Spanish goes, she explained, the words may be
correct but the grammar and syntax are frequently incorrect with a
program like Google Translate. That must be why “Seniora”, our
high school Spanish teacher and presumably every other Spanish
teacher out there, strictly forbids their students from “cheating”
by using it. I suppose just like everything else there are no
shortcuts to mastering a language no matter the path you choose.
But as
Katie was kindly setting me straight I had a thought: Google
Translate may not perfectly bridge the communication gap between two
cultures but Jesus perfectly does. Jesus translates the
Father's heart and nothing
is lost in translation.
The
way John tells it, the night before his death Jesus spent a long time
with his closest followers sharing with them his “last lecture.”
Somewhere in the middle of it, Philip timidly raises his hand and
makes a request: “Show us the Father and that will be enough” to
wit Jesus replies, a bit incredulously, “What? Do you still not get
it? [Okay, that's my paraphrase] The man who has seen me
has seen the Father.”
It's a pretty
audacious statement for anyone to make unless you can stand by those
words. So what do we learn about the holy, invisible and mighty God
by reviewing the life of Jesus?
We learn what breaks his heart,
for starters. He hates it when the strong pick on the weak or use
their power to lord it over those who are powerless whether they are
women, the infirm or the poor. He really
hates it when religious people who should know better do nothing to
alleviate the sorrow or the spiritual poverty of others. After all,
we never read of Jesus running sinners out of town but at least on
one occasion he made a whip and wasn't afraid to use it when part of
the Temple was egregiously being used in an irreverent fashion.
We learn that while he has no
favorites he cares especially for the poor in spirit, the humble of
heart, the outcast, the sick and the unclean. Jesus
wasn't afraid to touch the leper. He sent demons packing out of
oppressed people. He made blind men see again and lame men walk –
no, leap! - once more. He restored a dead son to his grief-stricken
widowed mother and a dead daughter to her heart-broken parents. But
Jesus wasn't throwing around healing virtue like some light saber
toting heavenly Jedi just because he could; he did so, he said,
because he saw his Father doing the same
(John 5:19).
We learn that God took the
initiative in saving us. We were
so lost. Never in a million years could we have fixed what was
broken. We are the lost sheep, the lost coin, the wayward son, the
traveler waylaid by bandits, dead Lazarus laying stone cold in his
tomb. We are all of them – and more! God took the initiative in
sorting out this horrible mess we landed in when our original parents
chose to ignore the ban on the fruit of the tree. He sent us his Son,
Jesus, to pay the ransom for our sin, to find that which was lost, to
resurrect that which was dead. To save us.
Ultimately, we learn that God loves
us. Jesus said as much in the
first Bible verse that so many of us committed to memory when we were
children: “For God loved the world so much that he gave
his only Son, so that every one who believes in him shall not be
lost, but should have eternal life. You must understand that God has
not sent his Son into the world to pass sentence upon it, but to save
it—through him” (John 3:16,
17, PHILLIPS).
Of
course, these things are but bullet points on what is most definitely
a far longer list but all that to underscore my original thought:
with Jesus nothing is lost in translation.
He speaks fluidly the wisdom of heaven and conveys perfectly the
Father's heart for us all.
I still have Google
Translate on my phone. Why not? If I'm out for dinner with my family
there's more than one way to pass the time while we wait for our
order to be filled. And Icelandic sounds so very, very cool.
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