19 May 2013                “Jesus as God”                  John 14:8-17

  We who have faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior should never take our faith for granted.

  Rudy wasn’t a close friend. He had been my brother’s neighbor for years, so we would see Rudy and his wife Mary now and then. I knew from my brother that Rudy was a good guy. He was a successful realtor, steady family man, he had played football at Alabama, and loved to kayak.

 Suddenly and unexpectedly Rudy died. He came home from work, mowed his front yard, and was found slumped over sitting on a bench.

 Swirling in the struggle with the raw ending of his life we discovered Rudy did not have a home church. Actually, he nor Mary even knew a pastor. Mary didn’t know anyone to call to help with Rudy’s funeral. Anyone the funeral home mentioned would be a stranger. She had no one.  

 Staring at the death of her husband, Mary realized she desperately needed help with more than a pastor for a funeral. She needed God’s presence to help her make sense of this shock. As if death can be understood.

 We who have faith should never ever take our faith for granted.

 That faith we cherish recently took a turn when Jesus sat down to eat what would be his last meal on earth before he took up his cross. He knew what was coming. He knew the end meant he would never have his beloved disciples with him at table again. He knew his time had come.

 But we seldom do. We will not truly know when our last supper will be. How could we know when it is time to say all the things we will wish we had said? What will that last time be like that will be played over and over again in our memory?  Will we be like Rudy, doing what we have always done? Mowing the yard, tending to our chores, rising to do what we have always done, then searching for meaning in the most desperate of times.

  With memories flooding our every thought of those we have loved and lost it is hard not to want another get together, just one more day. Jesus must have wanted just one more day too as he offers one last bit of hope to his disciples.

Jesus began this 14^th chapter of John with words of comfort. He said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”

 His friends must have known something was up. They must have sensed their time with him was about to end.  Yet they did not really know. Rudy had come home after work like so many other days. He wasn’t planning on a last supper.

 We recreate Jesus’ last gathering each first Sunday. Here at this table we gather round to hear his words again in hopes that he will still be here with us.  Perhaps that is when we will want to take the opportunity that was lost, the opportunity to truly see Christ and pray to him, speak to him, say those things to Jesus we intend to say all along, yet don’t.

 We will have tomorrow, we think. My fear, my worry, my sadness, my confusion, my longing to know “what next” with my life, can wait. It can wait. It can all wait, for surely there will be time for sharing our joy and our playfulness and our thanksgiving and our love. We have all the time we will need; the world is still filled with light. Darkness is far away. Jesus is here for us, that is why we come to church; we have Sunday’s to seek him.

 Frederick Buechner has written about this light and dark world of seeking Jesus in the story of a Christmas pageant as told by the rector of an Episcopal church.

 The manger was down in front at the chancel steps. Mary was there in a blue mantle and Joseph in a cotton beard. The wise men were there with a handful of shepherds, and of course in the midst of them all the Christ child was there, lying in the straw. The nativity story was read aloud by the rector with carols sung at the appropriate places, and all went like clockwork until it came time for the arrival of the angels of the heavenly host as represented by the children of the congregation, who were robed in white and scattered throughout the pews with their parents.

At the right moment they were supposed to come forward and gather around the manger saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men,” and that is just what they did except there were so many of them that their was a fair amount of crowding and jockeying for position, with the result that one particular angel, a girl about nine years old who was smaller than most of them, ended up so far out on the fringes of things that not even by craning her neck and standing on tiptoe could she see what was going on. “Glory to God on the highest and on earth peace, good will among men,” they all sang on cue, and then in the momentary pause that followed, the small girl electrified the entire church by crying out in a voice shrill with irritation and frustration and enormous sadness at having her view blocked, “Let Jesus show”.

 There was a lot of service left to go, but the rector knew to end everything right there. “Let Jesus show”, the child cried out, and while the congregation was still sitting in stunned silence, he pronounced the benediction, and everybody filed out of the church with those unforgettable words ringing in their ears.

 There is so much in our lives that hides Jesus from us. Even here in church some Sundays run the risk of becoming only a performance. Only rarely does anything take our breath away like a little girls cry, “Let Jesus show”, when we realize we got lost in our life and our thoughts of other things and suddenly we lost our reason for coming to worship. To be here with God, to hear Jesus’ words and remember him, to feel his presence in the love felt in this congregation. Suddenly Jesus wasn’t here for any of us.

 In despair we cry out. “Let Jesus show, let the light to the world be present, has he gone and we will never see him again.” Are we so terribly lost?

 “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he said in the midst of his own sadness at leaving them. I will ask my Father and my father will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.

 This is the Spirit of truth Jesus promises. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I am here with you, your heart will not be broken forever. “Believe in God”, he said, “Believe also in me.”

 Earlier in the gospel Peter had asked Jesus, “Lord, where are you going?” And Jesus answered, “I go to prepare a place for you…that where I am you may be also.”

 For Jesus’ disciples and for those who grieve the loss of a loved one it is not unusual to hear them say, I wish I could just hear their voice once more, just a word. To hear the sound of their voice, the sound of their laughter, to call them on the phone and know with that pick up, they are there.

 We know there won’t be anyone there to answer and yet of course we couldn’t know for sure because nothing in this world is for sure. So we hold onto that phone and let it ring and ring and ring.

 Did they answer? How wonderful to be able to say that by some miracle they did and that we heard their sweet voice.  But, of course they didn’t, and all we heard was the silence of their absence.

 Yet who knows? Who can ever know anything for sure about the mystery of things? “In my Father’s house are many rooms,” Jesus said, and I would not be the one to doubt that in one of those many rooms the phone rang and rang true and was heard. We believers in the mystery believe that in some sense our loved one’s voice was in the ringing itself, and that Jesus’ voice was in it too.

 Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you…that where I am you may be also . .  . The Father will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth” we know as we celebrate this Pentecost day. The day the Advocate, the Holy Spirit fills our church, abides with us and answers Philip’s plea, “Lord, show us the Father.”

 As Buechner asks, “If there is a realm of being beyond where we now are that has to do somehow with who Jesus is, and is for us, and is for all the world, then how can we know the way that will take us there?”

 “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” is how Jesus answers. Even on this day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit comes to the church Jesus does not say the church is the way. He does not say his teachings or what others teach about him or even religion is the way. Jesus says he alone is the way.

 Jesus himself, not his words nor anyone else’s words. It is the fact of his being truly human and at the same time truly God that is the way. Jesus the person. That carpenter fellow who fixed our broken chair. He is the one. There is no other way.

 How then do we go where he is? How do we who cannot find our own car keys find the way that is Jesus’ way? We don’t know, is our response. Life is too raw, too unpredictable. Yet we search and we pray that Jesus will be shown to us. Shown to us any way he chooses.

 Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  To this end we do our daily practice and cultivate a kind heart. We abandon impatience and instead we are content creating the causes for goodness knowing the results will come when God has them ready.

 And we keep on ringing and ringing and ringing. Calling for him, Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life, keeping that ringing in the air, creating the music of our way, our truth and our life as we draw near to Jesus and to each other any way we can. Because that is the last thing he asked of us in John 15, “that you love one another as I have loved you.”

 By believing against all odds and loving against all odds, that is how we seek him. That is how we let Jesus be shown in our own hearts and from our hearts to those with no church like Rudy, with no God like many we know, with no one to tell them the good news of hope and comfort.

 “Do not let your hearts be troubled, I go to prepare a place for you, I will take you to myself for I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

 If you aren’t sure, “Let Jesus show,” take a chance, give him a call.

 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen                                          

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