St
John 16.16-22
Jubilate (Easter 4)
St
John's Ev LC, Victor, IA
2013.4.21
Alleluia!
Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
We
will see Jesus again. / And it is when we see Him, that
we will know Him fully. / And when we know Him fully,
then (and only then) will we experience the joy that continues
on, without end.
/
How
we obtain worldly knowledge (knowledge about creation: about people
and animals and all the details of this place), how we obtain
worldly knowledge / is not all that different from how we obtain
heavenly knowledge (that is, knowledge about the Kingdom of
heaven).
If
you want to know about the Grand Canyon, for example, / you can look
at pictures in a book, or read about what other people have observed
about it, / but your knowledge / will be incomplete / until
you go there and experience it yourself. Then /
(and only then) can you truly say you have a complete and full
knowledge of the Grand Canyon; once you've seen it for
yourself.
The
Kingdom of God is like that. Although we don't have pictures of it,
yet we do have some descriptions of It: the evangelists recorded many
teachings of Jesus that begin like this: “The Kingdom of God is
like.”
But
if this teaching / was all that was needed to fully know the Kingdom
of God, / then why, after hearing Jesus Himself speak about
it, were the disciples and others so confused (and ignorant) about
it?
/
Why?
Experience. There was yet something missing from their training:
experiencing the Kingdom of God themselves, first hand.
“But,
pastor, this is the very thing that both Jesus and John the Baptist
preached about. They said, 'Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at
hand.' Didn't the Kingdom of God come in the person of
Jesus? In other words, weren't those who were encountering Jesus, /
also encountering and experiencing the Kingdom of God?”
Very
good. And that is an important point, / that when those people
encountered Jesus, they were encountering the fullness of the
Kingdom of God. And yet, why did some not see it? He was right
there. Why did some still reject Him? Or, let me ask it in another
way: what was it / about those who did recognize Jesus for who
He truly is?
The
answer, / is faith. Those who saw Jesus face-to-face during His time
on earth (if they had faith, that is, if they had eyes of
faith to see who Jesus truly was), notice how those people
reacted. Do this exercise this week: look through the Gospels for
all the times when Jesus says to someone, “your faith has saved
you” or “your faith has made you well”. I want you to notice
how those people (who have true faith) react to Jesus when
they see Him. Because they react differently / than those who
don't have faith.
Now,
to make my point here, I'll have to spoil it for you: they either
fall on their face at His feet, or kiss and hug Him, or persistently
nag Him, or something quite eccentric like that. The reason
for this eccentric behavior / is that their faith is allowing them to
see something altogether different that than those who don't
have faith. And because they are seeing something different,
they are also experiencing something different. They are
experiencing (at least a bit) of the eternal joy
that comes from knowing and encountering the fullness of God by
faith.
Let
me explain that by going back to the illustration with the Grand
Canyon. / Consider this: / there are three men. The first
man is quite old, and has been studying the Grand Canyon his
whole life. From his study he has learned about every detail
of that place: its history, its rock formations, its animal and plant
life; and he's given thousands of lectures and written dozens of
books and hundreds of articles all about that place, // but he / (for
whatever reason) has never actually gone there and seen the Grand
Canyon himself. But finally, after a lifetime worth of study, the
opportunity presents itself, and he's able to go there.
The
second of the three men has planned a vacation to the Grand
Canyon with His family. He said to his wife one day, “Honey, you
know what?” His wife says, “No, what?” He says, “We've
never been to the Grand Canyon, let's go there on vacation this
year.” His wife says, “OK, fine, but we better do a little
reading about the Grand Canyon before we get there.” He says, “OK,
that sounds fine.” And they do, they get a tourist guide from the
local library and read a little bit about the Grand Canyon.
The
last of these three men / doesn't even know the Grand Canyon exists.
He's never heard of it, never even considered that such a
place exists. But, one day / he decides to go rafting down the
Colorado River and just keeps going and going until finally he makes
it all the way down to Arizona, where the Grand Canyon is.
/
Now
consider their response, when each of these men are standing at the
edge of the Canyon and seeing it for the very first time. The
initial response (for all of these men) / will probably
be the same: “Wow!” If all these men were standing next to each
other, their conversation might be something like this:
- The last man (who hadn't ever heard of it before) might say something like, “Wow, / that's a big hole!”
- The second man (who had done a little bit of studying and knows a few of the details about what he is seeing) would respond, “Are you kidding me, that's not a hole, that's a canyon.”
- Finally, / the first man / (as He stands there with tears welling up in his eyes because of how joyful he is to finally behold the thing he has dedicated his whole life to, the one thing that has been on his mind ever since he first heard of this place, / his true passion in life) / he would respond, “Yes, / you're both right; your eyes see a big hole, and your books teach you that it is called a canyon. But this / this is the one and only / Grand / Canyon. There is none other like it in all the world, / and it is marvelous in our eyes.”
//
Jesus
said, “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a
little while, and you will see me...you have sorrow now,
but I will see you again, and your hearts / will rejoice,
and no one will take your joy from you.”
The
second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ will be much like the
experience of these three men. It will truly be magnificent. And
the initial response will be the same for all: “every knee shall
bow,” as Scripture says. To some, who have no prior knowledge of
Christ or His Kingdom, they will say simply, “Wow, that's powerful
man, he speaks with so much authority.” / Others, who have heard
and studied a little about Christ will respond, “Are you kidding
me, that's not just a man, He's God and man.” / And still
others (with tears of joy welling up in their eyes, those / who, as
the Psalm says, “have meditated day and night” upon the Word of
God and upon the mysteries of this heavenly Kingdom which their own
eyes now see) / they will say, “Yes, you're both right: /
your eyes see a man, and your books teach you that this man is also
God. But this / this is the
One and Only, my God
and my Lord. There is
none other like Him, He
is marvelous in our eyes. He is my light and my salvation, my joy,
my love, my Life.”
Dearly
beloved, / we have something to look forward to. We have a joy to
come that we can't now
know fully, / because we can't now fully experience
it. But when we are brought to that time when our
Lord and God, Christ Jesus, will come again, at that
time, our joy will be
full and complete, because we will finally know Jesus
fully, because we
will see Him in all
His glory.
Jesus
/ isn't some character in a book. Jesus is a person. God, yes, but
also fully man. Just like you come to love and enjoy those whom you
get to know the most, so also with Jesus, especially
with Jesus. The more you know about Him, the more you encounter Him,
the more you love and enjoy Him.
And,
despite the fact that we can't fully
know Jesus yet, in fact, because
we can't fully experience Jesus yet, He has given us at least a
foretaste of that fullness even now: the Blessed Sacrament. Hidden
in that bread and wine, we encounter our God,
we physically come into His presence, / and we rejoice! Some /
rejoice more than others. None of you come up here like the last man
in the illustration, for all
who commune at this altar are Baptized and have been given the eyes
of faith to believe Jesus' words regarding this holy Meal.
But,
dearly beloved, there's more than what eyes behold. There is, in
this Sacrament, a joy like the joy of that first man, who was so
passionate about the thing which he so diligently studied. / With
deeper and deeper study of this Blessed and eternal Meal, there also
comes a deeper and deeper enjoyment that is beyond human
expression;
/ and so, thankfully, God has given us divine
expression in the Psalms. This is what today's Introit
says,
“Shout
for joy to God, all the earth. Sing
the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise! Say to God, 'How
awesome are your deeds! So
great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you.' / Come
and see what God has done:
he
is awesome
in his deeds toward the children of man. Bless
our God, O peoples;
let the sound of his praise
be heard,
who has kept
our soul among the living
and
has not let our feet slip.”
We
were once those enemies of God, and when we sin we act
like enemies of God again. Let us, with the Psalmist, fall to our
knees and come cringing back to God in fear and trembling. / And what
we will find, is not a hard and demanding man, bent on justice at
every cost, // but a compassionate, loving, and all-merciful God and
Lord. What we will see, are His awesome actions of grace toward us
and all the children of man. And we won't be able to help ourselves;
the sight of what God has done will drive us to join in the heavenly
chorus of praise and blessing for the very One who has not destroyed
our soul (as we very much deserved), / but has, instead, kept our
soul among the living, / and bringing us from our knees to our feet,
he will establish us on the firm ground of His Truth, and by the
power of His own Spirit, He will lead us to that eternal place of
peace and rest, the place where joy will never end, / in the eternal
Kingdom / of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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