If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.
John 14:7 (NIV)
Known Before It Feels True
The ceremony took twenty minutes, and he’d been a citizen from the second the judge finished the sentence. He walked out into a cold parking lot and drove home, and for about a week it kept catching him out in the middle of other things, the fact that the thing was already done and had been for days, whether it had sunk in yet or not.
Something like that happens at the table on the last night. If you really know me, Jesus says, you will know my Father as well. Then he gives it a date. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. He says it as something already true, spoken to a room of men who would be scattered before morning.
Nothing in that room had changed for them yet. Philip asks to be shown the Father, the exact thing he has been told he already has. Jesus doesn’t take it back. He answers the question, and then he says it plainly: anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
The date holds whatever the night felt like. That matters for anyone who has prayed about the same thing for years and can no longer tell whether he believes it or is only used to saying it.
Philip had a face across the table. We have what those men wrote down afterward, so there is still somewhere to look, and it starts with what he said to them that evening.
From now on, you do know him and have seen him. Such a long time, he says to Philip, who had stood close enough to touch him for all of it and hadn’t worked it out yet.
A Prayer to Remember
Jesus, this morning I said the same words I say every morning and heard nothing back, and I’ve started to expect that. Tell me on a day like this one, when I cannot feel any of it, what you told them at that table.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
