You are good and do good; teach me your statutes. (Psalm 119:66)
I sincerely wish that everyone could have the experience of learning from at least one great teacher. Not the cool teacher or the nice teacher, but one who awakened a thirst for knowledge beyond facts, and quenched that thirst with more than wise words well said. I wish everyone could know someone whose goodness taught as much or more than the lessons that students would drink as from a clean, cool stream.
I was blessed to have one such instructor in high school and a few in college. These were people I wanted to talk to outside of class and get to know because their lives seemed connected to the great ideas I encountered through them, and I wanted to be good (often in a secular sense, but sometimes in a spiritual one) because they led me to believe I could, and the universe would be better with even the attempt.
Jesus taught his disciples (and us if we are willing) in such a way that they (and we), once awakened, could not desire anything but to sit at His feet. But, He was frequently telling them, He had to go to His Father. And of course, they were baffled, just as we are baffled when we find ourselves in deserts and wildernesses, seemingly alone, clinging to the words, our inner beings yearning for the Holy Spirit to connect all the disparate dots in front of us.
Jesus told his disciples, “you know the way where I am going.” Thomas asked what the rest of the class, as it were, wanted to know: How could we know how to get there if we don’t know the place? And Our Lord’s answer is perhaps as famous as it may have been cryptic: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” I can imagine some of the disciples writing this down, shaking his head, and trying to gather the courage to ask if this would be on the test.
Our Great Teacher was telling his students that they knew more than they realized, and had learned what they needed. He told them, in the same discourse, that the Holy Spirit would help them, not only to remember to live what He taught. They (and so often we) were looking for a map. Christ said that the map is the life, a life of love so great it meant giving up oneself to sojourn in the joy of the Father.
O Great Master, so fill us with the Holy Spirit that you love may always be present in our hearts as it is in all things, and may we be so full of your teaching that we overflow, and give your Way, starting with those we touch, to all humankind. In the holy and precious name of Jesus, Amen.
