The Jesus Experience

 

An American missionary was hiking in the wilderness of New Guinea, through the forest, up the mountain. Two Guineans served as guides and companions on the rigorous trek. When they arrived at their destination, a mountain village, the villagers brought them water and food and asked about their journey. Each of the guides took turns telling the story of the hike, and as they told it the American was wondering if he had been on the same journey! The story the guides told was, to put it politely, embellished, to put it crudely, pure bull$*@#.
When the villagers left the travelers to their rest, the missionary asked the guides how they could lie like that. “What do you mean?” they asked.
“None of that stuff actually happened.”
“We spoke the truth,” the guides insisted.
But as the missionary settled in and became accustomed to village life, he learned that the kind of stories they people told each other were true, in the way that poetry is true, in the way that folktales are true. The guides were trying to convey to their listeners the experience of the journey. Not a map of the journey, but the experience. Their story was meant to convey what it was like to climb the mountain that morning.

...an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus in our lives.

The gospel of John stands in sharp contrast to the other three gospels. I remember reading the gospels in canonical order for the first time, starting with Matthew, then Mark and Luke, chapter one verse one until the end. When I got to John, I thought, “Is this the same Jesus?” John’s Jesus talks differently, thinks differently, relates to people differently than the Jesus of the other gospels. It really bothered me. For a long time it has bothered me.
But, perhaps the gospel of John is to the other gospels as a ballad is to a historical novel.
I think the gospel of John is an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus. It is not another collection of the sayings of Jesus, not another collection of the letters of apostles, the church already had those by the time the gospel of John was created. I think this gospel was an attempt to convey the experience of Jesus to people who had never met him in the flesh. It was an attempt to say, “This is what it is like to meet Jesus.”
The people we meet in the gospel of John, Nicodemus, the Samaritan Woman, the man born blind, and Lazarus, are each, in a sense, an "Everyman," or "Everywoman." Their stories are examples of how we might experience the Christ in our lives.
Having the Christ in our lives is like
-- being re-born. (March 20)
-- drinking water so pure and refreshing that you are never thirsty again (March 27)
-- seeing the world clearly for the first time ever (April 3)
-- coming back from the dead (April 10)
That is what I am calling “The Jesus Experience.” It is an invitation to contemplate the presence of Jesus, the Christ, in our lives.