Easter 3 Why the Self-Conscious Moment is So Important

[HKHaugan]

Eternal Life is the never-ending self-conscious present moment of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and all the family of God. That is what we are being prepared for. Jesus said before He was crucified, “I go to prepare a place for you that where I am you may be also (Jn.14:3).” Yesterday’s Cross is today’s way to be raised into the present which is our future. What we do with every present moment sets the stage for reconciling the world to the ‘I AM.’ Jesus was the ‘I AM’ revealed, the ‘I AM’ present in the Holy Spirit and the ‘I AM’ of the Father.

Eternal life is personal, interpersonal, spiritual and always present. Jesus declares in so many ways the importance of every present moment. It is as though He cancels time in every statement He makes about Himself. He says, I am the light of the world, I am the bread of life, I am the good shepherd, I am the way, the truth and the life. The way He says it is always in the present tense, ‘I am…” He can’t be any clearer capping it off by saying, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.” It is no coincidence that Jesus sees Himself as the ‘I AM’ Moses meets prior to his meeting with Pharaoh.

When He teaches it is always with the idea that each moment a person lives in the world is an opportunity to be an image of the “I AM.” When Jesus performs a miracle or a healing it is always with the idea of removing an obstacle that prevents people from being an active ‘I AM’ image of God’s eternal presence.

Every generation before us has heard the same message of the eternal presence of Jesus. Just as He was present in Creation so He is present now and will always be present even after this world has passed. “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Jesus constantly demonstrates how His self-conscious moments are always with His Father, His Spirit and His Word in mind and heart. It is that consciousness He is promising us forever. It is a consciousness that transcends time, that crosses the border from arrogant sin to humble holiness, from evil to goodness, from being wrong to being right, from being insecure to being justified, from compromise to confidence and anxiety to peace. It is a consciousness that is consumed in the perfection of mind communicating totally and completely with the open heart of God that no longer thinks in time but loves in a constant present that has no beginning and no end.

That is the state of Resurrection not into a consciousness of time but into an eternal timeless present where there is no memory of sin and evil, no regret and remorse, no hesitant shame and self-incriminating guilt, only the present sense of relating to God and the risen family of God in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not an endless procession of days and years but the unchangeable consciousness of Jesus, which Scripture can only describe as the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb.13:8).

When we live in the context of the self-conscious moment as a moment when God is always there we are living in the Kingdom of God and that Kingdom is established every time we self-consciously let Him be the center of the moment. And one never-ending guarantee, the gates of hell cannot prevail against that self-conscious moment.

Our mission is to make every moment an opportunity to bring all our interpersonal contacts into God’s present moment for them. That is what worship, evangelism, mission and ministry are all about. Every person we meet, believer and unbeliever, is met in a self-conscious moment, conscious of God, conscious of the other person and conscious of the moment to open the Kingdom for that person. The love of God is the quality that makes the moment eternal. It is God’s grace that provides the patience to bring us out of self-centeredness into God-centeredness, the eternal present, and show God’s love. The question for us therefore is this, “What are we doing with our self-conscious moments?”