Holy
Tuesday St John 12:44-50
2013.3.26
Preached at Trinity
LC, Millersburg, IA
John 12:44 And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in
me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever
sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come into the world as
light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
47 If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not
judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the
world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words
has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last
day. 49 For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the
Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say
and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal
life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”
AND
JESUS CRIED OUT.
/
The
Light of Christ's Words, shattered the darkness in the hearts and
minds of those who heard Him that day.
After
departing and hiding Himself from the crowd for a short while, / with
what BOLDNESS does He come back onto the scene.
The whole world was going after
Jesus; even some of the Jews were believing in Him, even many of the
authorities, perhaps even Pontius Pilate himself. What a strange
phenomenon. Was Jesus shocked by this? It would seem that they were
actually on His side. So much for “He came to his own, and his own
people did not receive him.” They were receiving Him, even
those who were supposed to reject Him the most. What now? Is this
just a worldly kingdom teaser? Was this “believing” the work of
God, or a temptation from Satan?
Whether
Jesus was confused or not, we do know that He departed from the
crowds for a while. Probably to pray. But whatever happened in that
interim, the focus and depth of Jesus' next teaching / hits an
absolute high point.
Spoiler
alert! What Jesus is about to teach was, and is, quite offensive to
the world. On account of this Truth, the faith of many, if not all
the Jews, especially the authorities, would flounder, if not die
altogether.
With
this short sermon, Jesus puts it all out on the line; He draws back
the curtain so that the people can have a peek at the eternal
mystery. And that mystery is this: who occupies the Holy of Holies.
And Jesus cried out and said,
“Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who
sent me. And whoever sees me / sees him who
sent me.”
Blasphemy
of blasphemies! / Unless, of course, this One, Jesus, is the
One He says He is. Do you get this? “Whoever sees me / sees him
who sent me.” “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.”
“I and the Father / are One.” Or as St Paul would later teach,
Jesus is the “εἰκὼν
τοῦ
θεοῦ”;
the icon, or image of the invisible God.
//
With
these Words Jesus draws back the temple curtain / and the people /
see Jesus Himself. And, as Christians, we listen to Jesus, and
confess Him, that is, we say the same thing as He says. We say in
the Nicene Creed: “very God of very God, begotten, not made, being
of one substance (essence) with the Father.” We say this
because Jesus first said it. And He said it here in His very last
public teaching: He revealed that the Father and the Son are of the
same divine essence.
Perhaps
this analogy will help:
“Let
us imagine that a spring of water represents the Father; the river
flowing from that spring, [represents] the Son, [Jesus]; and the
water itself, is the divine nature. A man who draws water from the
river is ultimately taking water from the spring, which is its
source.”
And
so Jesus says, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me
but in him who sent me.” That is, the Source, the Father. To
believe in Jesus / is the same thing as believing in the Father.
Now
this is not to say that there is no distinction between them. The
Father, for example, did not take on flesh, but only the Son did. So
there are distinctions, but the essence is only One, that is, divine.
That is why at the beginning of the Nicene Creed we say: I believe
in One. And who is this One in whom you believe? This One is
Father, Son, and Spirit.
And
notice I didn't say that we believe the One God, but rather
that we believe in the One God. “Believing in
someone is not the same as believing someone. If you believe someone,
you believe, for example, that he is telling the truth. If you
believe in someone,
you trust in him as God. For example, it is accurate to state that we
believe the apostles, but not that we believe in
the apostles.”
“Well,
then, preacher-man, then why do we state in that same Nicene Creed
that we believe 'in' the one, holy Christian and Apostolic Church?”
“Well,
then, parishoner-man, / Who is the Church? (Not, what
is the Church, but who
is the Church?) / The Church is the Body of Christ. Of who? Of
Christ, who is God.”
When
you were Baptized,
that is, when you were born, “not of blood nor of the will of the
flesh nor of the will of man, but of
God,”
when you were born of God in Baptism, you
were brought into the Body of God, for you were Baptized 'in' the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In
Baptism, you became that man who stands at the River edge, and drinks
from that very River of Life, whose Source is nothing less than th
eFather's divine Life. / And you are what you drink. Beginning at
Baptism, you take on divine attributes and characteristics. Just
consider what “church” means: gathering. God is gathering for
Himself, a bride for His Son. In the book of Revelations, then, we
get a little glimpse of that Bride. How perfect and pure she is. In
other words, how god-like, how divine!
Of
course, individually,
you are not the church, but you are a part
of the Church, a member of the eternal Bride of Christ. This is also
a mystery, that, even though the individual members of the Church
(such as the Apostles, such as you) it is a mystery that, even though
the individual members of the Church are unholy and sinful, yet the
whole is perfect, blameless, and yes, to be believed in, that is, One
with Christ.
We,
together, as the Baptized, bear the name of the God, and thus possess
His divine attributes. This is why the early
church (that is, those who were first brought into this union with
the One God), this is why, through the mouthpiece of teachers like
Clement and Athanasius, would say such absurd sounding things like
this: “God became man, that man might become god,” or to say it
in another way: “What God is by nature, we become by grace”.
Blasphemy
of Blasphemies! / Unless, of course, you really are / who God says
you are in Baptism, / for the early church teachers were simply
teaching what St Peter himself taught in 2 Peter, chapter
1(:3-4). He wrote, “[Christ's] divine power has granted to us all
things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of
him who called us [Baptism] to his own glory and excellence, /
by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises,
so that through them you may become partakers of the divine
nature/essence.”
The Word of Christ does that.
So let the Light of Christ's Words shatter the darkness in your
heart and mind. But let us not fall away like many of the Jews. Let
us repent of ourselves and hear the Word of God and keep It. For
Jesus has a warning for those who do not listen. And these Words are
the last recorded words of Jesus' public teaching, so mark
them well. He said, “If anyone hears my words and does not keep
them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but
to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not
receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge
him on the last day. 49 For I have not spoken on my own
authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a
commandment—what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that
his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the
Father has told me.”
What
the Church says, is what the Father has told Christ. It is offensive
to the world. It must be. Let us become as children, and receive
Christ and His Word gladly. For as much as you receive Christ's
Word, you also receive the eternal Life that He has come to bring
from the Father. And this Life is true Life; life now, and life in
the eternal Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment