Interbeing

Wednesday, May 03, 2017

In today’s Gospel passage (John 14:6-14) we hear these words from the Lord:

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

“I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

Notice, if you will, the rather unusual description of the relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father is unfathomable, uncontainable, eternal, greater than anything we can understand or imagine, and yet despite this, He is “in the Son,” contained by a single human body living for a limited amount of time in a particular location in the world. What is this relationship in which the Father and the Son give each other everything they are and everything they can accomplish?

One word used for it is interbeing, and this word is also applied to the three persons of the Trinity. In today’s passage, John is only emphasizing the first two Persons, but I suggest that we should keep the Trinity in mind as well because the fullest scope of their relationship is realized in the interbeing of the Three.

Not only that, but the works that Jesus does are actually the Father’s works. The words that Jesus speaks are actually the Father’s words. The way Jesus thinks and acts and relates to the people He encounters are indicators to us of the Father’s way of thinking and acting.

Come to know Jesus better, and you begin to discover more and more of what God is like. You will never exhaust what is to be discovered about the Father, but might I suggest that by reading and re-reading the Gospels, we grow in our knowledge and understanding of how God deals with us in our own lives.

At this point, might I make a few suggestions:

--How does Jesus deal with those whom religious leaders consider to be outcasts?

--What does Jesus think of the self-righteous?

--How does he deal with those who neglect the needs of the poor?

--What does He say to those who are persecuted?

--What is His will for all of us at the end of time?

--And finally, what does all this say to us about thy ways of God?

God bless you.