If you missed this past Sunday’s message, I closed off the series on Revealing the Jesus of the Centre by considering the means in which we take all of these great, beautiful, inspiring truths we’ve been learning about who Jesus is and have them move from a bunch of facts we hold in our heads toward something that we hold in our hearts that changes us, transforms us, does something to us toward inhabiting these same traits of Jesus ourselves.

I noted that on one level, the mechanics of transformation will always be a beautiful mystery. That being transformed into the likeness of Jesus is not some empirical, step-by-step formula to simply be followed and “arrived at.” Yet at the same time, there are practices and perspectives for us to hold that would certainly lend us to being changed and I shared 3 of them on Sunday: 1. Lean into God’s unconditional love because any time we realize we are loved, whether by a human or by our Creator, something tends to change within us; 2. Look to the Spirit, because the reminder of this Divine love is a work of the Spirit and ultimately any transformation is a work of the Spirit; and 3. Put it into practice, because if we begin trying to live as Jesus lived in our day to day interactions–monitoring our hearts in the process–I think it’s like that we’ll begin to notice something change within us over time. 

There are certainly a number of other observations that make the likelihood of being forever changed by the person of Jesus a likely potential after encountering his Truth, and indeed entire volumes of work have been written toward this so to assume we can get it all in a sermon or article is, well, ambitious. But I did have one other observation I wanted to add to the conversation that I think has potential for us being open to change.

I think again about my relationship with my wife and how in order for it to move from merely knowledge about her to relationship with her, there was this moment in which I had to let down my guard. And to be fair it wasn’t really a moment. It was more a posture that has been maintained now for 20 years. At the heart of every relationship that matters to us, every relationship that we care deeply about, there is a desire for to be KNOWN by the other person. For that other person to not just know facts about us, but for us to know them for who they are. And when Rhonda knows me – when she knows my heart, my struggles, my joys, my inner most sense of self – then I’ve entered into something profoundly deeper than a laundry list of facts.

The only way for Rhonda to get to that part of me, though, is through a willingness on my part to be vulnerable. To allow her access. And I think there has to be some kind of parallel here in our relationship with Jesus. For us to move beyond the knowledge part of all this, in addition to leaning into love and looking to the Spirit and just practicing these traits of Jesus in our day to day lives, there needs to be a posture of vulnerability that reveals our true selves, including our weaknesses and insecurities and all the things we’re ashamed of. A vulnerability that is raw. Honest. Sometimes even ugly. But ultimately the real us.

What does that look like? I think it can be any number of things but one way of framing vulnerability before God is through confession. So it might look like confessing to Jesus that it’s not that I can’t love my enemies, it’s that I straight up don’t even want to love my enemies. Or maybe, in a profoundly real and humbling way, telling him, “Jesus I don’t care for the “least of these” because, frankly, I think I’m better than the poor and those on the fringes.” Or “I hate that you love everyone, Jesus. I hate that your love is not limited to the same people >I< know deserve it.” However it looks, whatever it’s revealed as, it all boils down to the same thing: it’s a recognition that we prefer to elevate ourselves and our ways over Jesus and his Way.

In order for us to be known by our partners/spouses/other humans that matter deeply to us, the only way is through a willingness to open our deepest selves to them, flaws and all. How much more so the God of the universe who already knows the darkest corners of our hearts and is merely waiting for us to acknowledge it and stop deceiving ourselves? So would you mind adding this one to the list as a 4th observation/practice/perspective to be held in our quest for knowledge to become transformative?