Passwords! How many do you have? We need them for email, our phones, too many websites and businesses to even count, and so much more. Even our doctor needs one, not to mention our car, the electronic devices controlling our locks, alarm, door bell and other such devices at home. Oh, and don’t forget to change them frequently and make certain you do not ever use the same password in more than one account/device.
My experience with passwords is that they can be absolutely exhausting some times. Too numerous, too complicated, and too necessary. Without them we have no access to much of our modern day life.
Sometimes it seems to me that many of us Christians see Jesus as our password to God. Aha! I have a relationship with Jesus! I have an access to God that many others lack. I just fold those hands and Jesus belongs to me alone. It reminds me of many sibling rivalries that seem to end with, “Mom/Dad loves me best!”
With Jesus we do have a very special access into God. But unlike passwords, this access is not secret and is not the sole possession of any one person or group. We have insight into God that those without Jesus may not have. We can indeed be grateful for that insight. Yet such insight, such access is not like many of our passwords a privilege that we have either earned or been granted just for us.
It seems to me one of the insights Jesus gives us into God is that God is God of all; God is a god who loves and cares for all with no special persons or groups. With God, as we see in Jesus, all, not just us, are special.
The insight we have into God through Jesus is not for exclusivity, privilege, or status. It is so that knowing this all-embracing God whom we worship and follow, we can be those all-inclusive children of God reaching out in demonstration of this wide embrace of God for all.
Passwords by definition must be kept to ourselves. We hide them in secure places on our computers or in small password books cleverly hidden in our home or office. Some we even commit to memory. In Jesus we see a God who is not secret and not hidden.
We see a God who reaches out to those whom many would rather avoid; a God who embraces those who make us and others uncomfortable. We see a God who works to hack our password codes to get through to us so that we might in turn get through to some others.
Jesus. We might want to know more about God, but Jesus is all we need to know about God. Even those without such a password can have access. And God can’t be hacked or disrupted.