Years ago, I worked as a schools’ worker for Scripture Union. My role was to ‘cover’ the South West working with young people in schools during term-time and running Christian holidays during the Summer and Christmas breaks. During my time on staff, SU appointed a new General Director, who as one of his first acts in his new role, came to visit a summer camp that I was running in darkest Somerset. I didn’t know him, and we had never met, so imagine my surprise when he first arrived on site, strode across the field towards me, held out his hand and said, ‘hello, you’re David aren’t you? Lovely to meet you!”.
The effect of a stranger greeting me by name was powerful. It showed he cared, and in a sense, he knew me before I knew him.
Knowing that we are known, is transformative.
Think of Nathaniel (John 2), invited to come and meet Jesus by his friend Philip. Nathaniel is greeted by Jesus with words to the effect, “Hi Nathaniel – I can see that you’re the ideal Israelite, a man of great integrity”. Some greeting!
Nathaniel is caught unawares: “How do you know about me?”, he asks.
“I saw you sitting under the fig tree before Philip found you”, Jesus explains.
I saw you, before you saw me.
The start of faith is not seeking God but knowing that God is seeking us.
Not loving God but knowing that God loves us.
Not working out God’s name but knowing that God calls ours.
It’s easy to get this the wrong way round. Even so great a Christian thinker as the Apostle Paul has to correct himself! “So now that you know God (or should I say, now that God knows you)…” he wrote to the Christians in Galatia.
God knows you, and he knows you by name. We have been “desired into life”, writes Trevor Hudson, “our very existence embodies God’s passionate longing for our friendship”.
Desired into life: let that one sink in.
For those of us for whom faith can sometimes feel like hard work, with too many demands, too much that we don’t understand, and who perhaps are far too aware of our own inability to hold onto – much less ‘work out’ – God: this should come as good news.
Like Mary, peering with confusion and distress into the empty tomb on the first Easter morning we have no hope – until we hear someone call us by name (John :16). That one word, “Mary”, was enough to open a new world of hope for her, as it does for all of us when Jesus greets us by name.
The effect of a stranger greeting us by name is powerful. It shows he cares, and that he knew me before I knew him.