4-25-19 - Life Through Believing

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

Where do you get life? I don’t mean conception and birth, I mean what quickens your pulse day to day? What causes energy to rise in you, excitement to tinge your voice? What – or who – could you talk about all day long if anyone would listen? That’s one way to discern where we get life.

Have you ever thought of believing as something that gives us life? Believing seems like a fairly passive activity – and yet it may just be the most courageous action we can take in a world that challenges our faith. We learn at the end of this week’s gospel reading that the reason John wrote his gospel was so that we might come to believe and have life:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Jesus’ disciples came to believe he had risen from the dead because he stood in front of them; he surprised them on roads and at tables; he made breakfast for them on a beach. Even though they did not really act on this knowledge until the Spirit filled them at Pentecost, they had the conviction of their experience, and most died witnessing to that truth.

We have to believe on less tangible evidence – and as we allow it to accumulate, as we really start to list all the “signs” of God’s power and love we have witnessed and experienced, we too can come to believe that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Son of God. And as we begin to exercise spiritual power in his name we find such abundant life, and more evidence piles up.

John says he wrote about the signs of Jesus’ presence so that his readers would come to believe. What if we started talking more often about the evidence we’ve seen of God’s movement in the world? How many might come to believe – or at least, explore Jesus for themselves. Think of the impact John’s Gospel has had on the world. Just one of your stories might change someone’s life, and allow them to have eternal life through believing. Which one might it be?

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