Reading: 1 John 5:12 It is not often these days that I find a new gem within the scriptures. I`ve been reading them now for about 65 years and most of the gems have been unearthed. But in today`s reading, there is a gem that sparkles like a diamond. `Whoever has Jesus has life.` Life is to be found in Jesus of Nazareth. It reminds me of similar sayings of Jesus as `the way, the life and the truth`, and that `fullness of life` is to be found in him

Let me then point up some of the facets of the gem in our reading today.

The first facet is that the Christian faith is about life here and now. It is not about life in some ethereal heaven after death. That idea rests on a complete misunderstanding of the words `eternal life`. As I have said almost ad nauseum, the phrase eternal life is about quality of life not its length – quality of life here and now, a quality of life the significance of which goes beyond death. `Whoever has Jesus has life.` Jesus is about life here and now, not some future life – about which I frankly am neither concerned nor interested.

The second facet of this gem of scripture is that it brings together life, God, and Jesus. As most of you know I have of late been refining my understanding of God, not as a being in the heavens but as the ground of our being. I see God in terms of life itself. Bill Loader speaks of God as `the life energy of the universe`. I like that. God as the ground of our being, the Spirit of life, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Think God, think life. God for me is the evolutionary invitation to fullness of life, the energizing force of evolving life. God did not create the universe and you and me. God is creating the universe and we are called to love it into being. Without God we would not be! To be or not to be really is the question!

And if that is the question then Jesus is the answer in that he shows us what it means to be a human being. The story of Jesus is the story of a life, and life itself. Whoever has Jesus has life. Jesus is the direction in which the universe is/should be heading as far as humanity is concerned. The Christian faith is not about ethical imperatives, as important as they may be. The Christian faith is about the nature of life itself. Being precedes doing – and I find it ironic that Pilate may well be remembered for his unconscious words as he presented Jesus to the crowd: `Behold, the man`

Every one of us one of us knows the experience of life, but fullness of life is a different matter. This is something we ponder and question. `What constitutes fullness of life? What must I do to experience life to the full?` This, if you will excuse the phrase, is `the eternal question`. – and of course there are many, many answers to it, ranging from perpetuating the species in a one night stand, to being successful in one`s profession, to making money and enjoying the lotto life. I hope you will excuse the note of cynicism in my voice. It is because I am pretty cynical of life as we know it today in the light of life as it could be if we took this verse at its face value. Our culture gives us one answer to what it means to be a human being. Jesus gives us another – and the two are very different. We here this morning are counter cultural in that we see in Jesus what life is about.

Think God, think life, think Jesus!