I fell asleep while driving on the freeway once. It was dark out, and I probably only drifted off for a second, maybe less. It was enough to terrify me though, glancing over at the semi truck to my left. It’s possible that I have never been more awake, in every sense of the word, than in that moment of realization. My whole body was lit up with electricity and I could feel the hard surface of the gas pedal softly pressing up into my foot.
I wish it didn’t take near death experiences to feel present like this. There are many other moments, not as dramatic, where I have woken with a start. In those moments I realized that I have been taking a relationship for granted, or I had been reading with no real comprehension, or eating without any appreciation of taste, texture, or nourishment.
This last week, I had another experience like this as I was reading these words from last Sunday’s text:
And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.
It is hard enough for me to truly listen to the morning birds chirp and some distant garbage truck making its rounds. How do I take in these words I’ve heard and read since childhood, weighed down by unpleasant memories of church and the mundane or truly awful worldviews attached to texts like these by religious authorities I prefer to forget about? Why should I take the time to peel away those layers and think about these words, written down in another language thousands of years ago?
I don’t really know the answer to those questions; only that they woke me up. Since I sleep so much of the time, I cannot help but feel gratitude towards whoever or whatever can manage to jolt me awake. I’ll take it where I can get it.
I wonder about glory - the embodied and concrete kind of glory experienced here. Is it like those rare mornings where the sunrise is so breathtaking, we have to pull the car over and stare in shock? And I wonder what that glory has to do with the words grace and truth?
Those two words together served as a Greek translation of the Hebrew word hesed, referring to God’s covenant faithfulness. It wasn’t a word so much as a story. When the Psalmist sung that word in the temple, they were conjuring up the entire history of the world, in which a loving Creator repeatedly woke humanity up by appearing to them in love. The story is one where humanity then forgets about love, drifts off to sleep, only to be woken up again by this divine love. Hesed refers to the original story of unrequited love and faithfulness.
How could such a story be embodied in the words grace and truth?
I know many people have taken a stab at defining art, but I like to think of it as the pursuit of truth. An artist, more than anything, wants to express something that is true, a task that turns out to be quite difficult. And of course the intent is to then share that true expression with others, so that they can say “me too. That’s my experience as well.” The truth, for the artist, is a way to feel less alone.
But the truth is important for other professions as well. The engineer must take the truth very seriously if they are to create a bridge or a plane that is safe. One cannot just build a plane however they please. In this way, the truth is very narrow and specific. But it can also be liberating. The truth guides us out of unhealthy relationships, toxic work environments, and harmful belief systems. The narrow specificity of truth can actually come as a relief.
But if truth is a narrow hallway, grace feels more like a wide open meadow. Grace is an invitation to experiment and fail, a gift given unexpectedly, an offer of forgiveness from someone else when you haven’t yet even forgiven yourself. Grace is a sigh of relief after a long night of anxious thoughts.
Those two words together seem to deepen the divine story of hesed. They startle me awake to the possibilities present in them. Is it really possible that the truth of our reality is held up by this expansive and mysterious love? If waking up means being greeted by this, then perhaps being human isn’t as terrifying as I thought.
I am interested in continuing to read this story of Jesus as an opening - a way forward into new possibilities that I didn’t know existed. I think I already know how to read these stories as closed doors, as predictable manuals and blueprints I can navigate in my sleep. But I think that there is more mystery and possibility here than I realized, and I’m not sure I’ve ever read them as an invitation into mystery. Which is another way of talking about waking up.