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Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, July 21, 2013


The Good Life: Intimacy with Jesus


Text: Luke 10:38-42

When you want to open a conversation with a non-believer about the Christian faith, it has long been suggested that you ask them this question: "If you were to die tonight, do you know if you would go to heaven?" That used to be a very effective attention getter. But more and more nowadays, a person is likely to respond, "I don't really care that much about going to heaven. I want to know what difference being a Christian is going to make in my life right now." That is one of the things that motivated me to preach these last few weeks about "The Good Life." Everyone has an image of what the Good Life is. But I have been talking about the Good Life of a Christian. You might call it kingdom life. Kingdom life has a quality that only God can give it, and He gives it that quality because He loves us, and He saved us for a life of meaning, purpose, joy and love, both now and for all eternity.

The aspect of the Good Life we will look at today is intimacy with Jesus. God has made it possible for us to be intimate with Him through our relationship with Jesus. As you have no doubt heard many times, Christianity is not a system of dogma. It is a relationship with the living God.

We read a moment ago from the Gospel of Luke the story of Jesus's two dear friends, Mary and Martha of Bethany. Their home was more than just a stopping place for Jesus. He was very close with them and their brother, Lazarus. Luke tells us about this one occasion, and he lets us in on a personal conversation between Jesus and Martha. Her sister, Mary, was sitting at Jesus' feet, enjoying some special time with Him. Meanwhile, Martha was rushing around the house fixing a meal and making things just right for their houseguest. Although she loved doing things for her friend, Jesus, she was feeling a bit put upon. Mary was letting her do all the work. And she said so to Jesus. We never hear what Mary said, if anything. But we do hear Jesus' reply:

Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. [Luke 10:41-42]

What is this better thing that Mary had chosen? What is it that was so important that it will not be taken from her? What was Martha missing out on? The answer is, intimacy with Jesus. Mary and Jesus were alone, enjoying their friendship and talking about something that was meaningful to both of them. I'm quite sure Mary must have loved Jesus as much as I do. And when I think of spending such a moment with Him, it makes my heart soar. Intimacy with Jesus is a precious aspect of the Good Life that God gives us.

There was a psychologist named Abraham Maslow in the mid–20th Century. He was famous for his theory on the hierarchy of human needs. Maslow identified the things human beings need for a quality life. His theory was that these needs come in a certain order, and that the first things we need are physical needs, such as air, water, food and sleep. Next we need security and shelter. And he theorized that, as you go up the pyramid of needs, the other things that make for quality of life become important only after the basic needs are met.

Maslow's ideas sounded logical. But over the years, his theory was tested, and it was found that the need for intimacy, love and friendship are just as critical to life as the need for air, food and water. One reason there is so much promiscuity in modern culture is that people are trying to meet their needs for intimacy through sexual involvements. Giving your body to another person is an intimate act. And so people simplistically think they can skip all the things that are part of true intimacy and get what they need through sex. Isolation is a big problem in the modern world. In the urban environment, where more and more people live, you can go for years without knowing your neighbors. And in the electronic world in which we live, a larger and larger proportion of your day is spent in interaction with a computer, or a smart phone or a PlayStation or an HD TV. It is easy to become lonely. It is easy to hunger for some human companionship. Without intimacy, our lives become empty and dry.

God, of course, knows that about us. He made us for Himself. Therefore, His plan for rescuing us from our fallen condition includes giving us intimacy. But it isn't just any intimacy. It is intimacy with God Himself. Intimacy is the opposite of alienation. And the fallen condition of human beings is, at its very root, our alienation from God. So what God has done is to restore us to intimacy with Himself. And we can enjoy that intimacy by coming to know Jesus Christ, surrendering our lives to Him, and spending time with Him.

I will come to how we do that in a moment. But first, let's look at what intimacy is. Intimacy begins with a love that two people have for each other, whether it be friends, family or spouses. When their lives are a blessing to each other, their love, expressed in openness, acceptance and trust, becomes intimacy. Openness, acceptance and trust: those are three qualities of intimacy on which I want to focus.

Openness: People who are truly intimate are confidantes to one another. They can share their private thoughts, their secret fears, their hopes and dreams. And they can be confident that what they share will be treated with respect and tenderness. That kind of honesty that two people have with each other, and that kind of safe place to be honest is what I have called openness. It is an essential component of intimacy. We have that intimacy in our relationship with Jesus.

A second aspect of intimacy is acceptance. Those who love you know you best. And you are blessed when they accept you so thoroughly that you can be totally yourself without fear of ridicule. That is not to say they enable all your bad behavior. Those who love you have an obligation to help you be a better person. But most of us do things at home with our family, or alone with our friends, that we wouldn't want the world to see. Sometimes Lynne thinks I am funny, sometimes disgusting, sometimes downright annoying. But always, I feel her acceptance.

Our intimacy with Jesus includes this kind of acceptance. True enough, nobody calls us to a higher standard than Jesus does. But nobody knows us better than He. He knows our inmost thoughts. He knows when we sit and when we rise. When there is a word on our tongue, He knows it even before we speak. (From Psalm 139) And yet, we are His joy and His delight. He is the one who said, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you." (John 15:9) If we have accepted Him as our Lord and Savior, He accepts us as His own.

Trust is the third thing I want to point out about an intimate relationship. Because of the love you have for each other, you can count on each other to be there in your need. In the ideal intimate relationship, your friend or loved one "has your back." Because they want you to know you can trust them, they do what they say they are going to do. They always tell you the truth. They don't hide things from you. They don't play games with you. So you are never confused about who this person really is. Well, this is how it is with Jesus. When you are intimate with Jesus:

How amazing it is that God has chosen to come to us in this kind of intimacy. He could have just saved us from afar. But what He wants is a living, loving, thriving relationship with us. And how do we pursue our end of that relationship? We are familiar with all these things, so I won't dwell long on them.

First, we enjoy our intimacy with Jesus in prayer. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus modeling this for us in His intimate relationship with the Father. Jesus is always ready to hear from us, any time of day or night, in any circumstance, and any place. He wants to guide us, forgive us, encourage us, heal us and address the concerns of our hearts. That is why the Bible tells us to pray at all times. (2 Thessalonians 5:16) To pray continually means to be aware at all times that Jesus is with us.

Second, we enjoy intimacy with Jesus in our relationships with other Christians who know God and who have surrendered their lives to Him in a desire to be like Him. Jesus gave us the Church to provide intimacy, friendship and support. We feel it when we come together as a congregation, and in our home groups and Bible Studies. Our relationship with one another is not just social. It is a sharing of our intimacy with Jesus. For we are His hands and feet.

Third, we enjoy intimacy with Jesus when we read His Word. The Bible is not just a book. And reading the Bible is not just reading. It is feasting on the precious Word of God. As the Bible tells us, every word is "God-breathed." (2 Timothy 3:16) And as we sit attentively with the Word of God, He speaks to us, and always with something fresher and deeper than the last time we sat with Him. It is a time of intimacy with Jesus.

Fourth, we enjoy intimacy with Jesus in our worship. When we worship God, He is here, as Jesus promised. We should expect to encounter Him in our worship. We should expect to feel His nearness, in our praise, in the Word, and in the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist, or Communion, is not just a ceremony. It is not just symbolic. The Eucharist is a sacramental moment when Jesus acts in our lives. He does several things:

Every time I stop to think about it, I am amazed that God wants to have a relationship with us. He knows everything about us, and still He loves us. And not only does He love us, He wants to be intimate with us. He made that happen by sending His only Son into the world to live and die as one of us. And not only did His sacrificial death and His rising again give us the hope of eternal life. But it gives us the Good Life, right here and now, manifest in our intimacy with Jesus. He is as close to us as our own brainwaves and our own heartbeat.

There is a story in the Gospel about the time Jesus met a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well in Samaria. He knew her heart, and he prophesied to her that she had had five husbands, and was living with a man who was not her husband. Obviously, this woman had been looking for intimacy in one bad relationship with men after another. But Jesus offered her something new. He offered her true intimacy. He said to her,

If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.... Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. [John 4:10, 13-14]

That is what He offers to everyone who will give their lives to Him. Come, drink from the water of life. Come, enjoy the intimacy with the King of kings and Lord of lords. For this is the Good Life. And once you experience it, you will never again say, "I don't care much about going to heaven." Your eternal destiny really will matter to you, because the kingdom life will be so good, one lifetime won't be enough.

©The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2013

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