Sermon - 7th Sunday of Easter (5/24/2020)
Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35; 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11
And the angels said to them, “Men of Galilee, why are you looking up?”
One of the recurring themes of the gospels is that the disciples of Jesus almost never seem to get anything right. Over and over again they miss the point of what Jesus is telling them. Yes, we heard you, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, but can we be the ones who sit at your right and left hand when you come into your glory? Yes, we heard you, share what you have and trust in God’s generosity, but come on, we can’t feed all these people with only five loaves and two fish. Yes, we heard you, everyone is welcome in the kingdom of God, but let me just tell these people to leave you alone and go away, and get those kids out of here!
And now, even after Easter, even after 40 days during which the risen Jesus appears to the disciples and teaches them how all of the Scriptures were pointing to the cross and God’s coming renewal of the whole creation by entering the human condition, accepting powerlessness and abandonment and death, defeating the death-dealing powers of this world not with vengeance but with forgiveness and mercy. After 40 days of all this teaching, Jesus gathers the disciples on the Mount of Olives and they ask: So, is this the time when you are going to restore the kingdom of Israel? Are you going to bash some heads and kick the Romans out now? Is this when we get to take over? Even then, they still don’t get it.
I suppose on one level, it is reassuring if the disciples of Jesus, who spent three years with him before Easter and 40 days with him after Easter, were still so clueless. Perhaps we can be forgiven if we are still a bit clueless ourselves. We also are prone to miss the point of Jesus – to still think that some particular church structure or way of doing things gets us closer to God, to still think that God will only love us or care about us if we do something to earn it, to still think that some genders or nationalities or skin colors matter more to God than others. After all, if the original disciples with all their advantages were still confused and missed the point, perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves, or on our fellow Christians, when we mess up too.
But I wonder if the original disciples had such a hard time understanding Jesus when the events of the New Testament were happening in real time for another reason. I wonder if they didn’t fully understand at the time because the story was not yet finished. Think of a movie like the Sixth Sense. The movie is very confusing the first time you watch it, nothing seems to make sense. And at the end the kid says – OK, I know you’re not supposed to give away the ending, but come on, you’ve had 20 years to watch the movie already. Well, you know what the kid says, and then suddenly everything makes perfect sense.
I wonder if the gospel isn’t like that – until you know the ending, until you know that Jesus ascends to heaven and sits at the right hand of God, that in Jesus God became fully at home in this world so that human beings could become fully at home in the presence of God, that God’s will can now finally be done on earth as it is in heaven because Jesus is fully present both in heaven and on earth in the people filled with the Spirit. Until you know that’s how the story ends, it doesn’t completely make sense.
After the Last Supper, when Jesus prays for his disciples and the disciples who would come after them, Jesus prays, “I glorified you, Father, by finishing the work that you gave me to do.” Jesus taught his disciples to love God and love neighbor, to turn the other cheek, to practice forgiveness and love of enemies, to welcome strangers, to take up our crosses and follow him. But until he had finished the work he came to do, those were just rules, and difficult rules to follow at that. Why do we have to follow them? What’s the point? What do we get out of it?
But then on the cross, Jesus finally can say: It is finished. In Jesus God took on human flesh right from the beginning, already at Bethlehem – but until it was finished, he hadn’t yet experienced all of human life, God hadn’t yet experienced death. God didn’t yet know what it means to come face to face with abandonment and loss and suffering and humiliation. But then, Jesus finished the work. And then God raised him to life, and now God’s kingdom has truly arrived in the world. Now we know the ending. Now we know where the way Jesus taught us to live goes. Now we know why he taught us to do the things he taught – not as rules for us to keep and be judged on at the end, but as a picture of what it means to live in the world as a fully human being, as God created us to be.
This is eternal life, Jesus says in his prayer in today’s gospel, to know God, to know the Father and Jesus Christ, the one the Father sent. Odd, I thought eternal life was going to heaven and not dying again. Well it is, and they are the same thing. Philip Melanchthon, the associate of Martin Luther who wrote the Augsburg Confession and many of the key documents of the Lutheran movement, is perhaps best known for the saying that to know Christ is to know his benefits. To know Christ, and to know the Father who sent him, is to know that his way of self-giving love, his way of forgiveness and mercy, his way of healing and peace is a way that leads, yes, to suffering and the cross, but ultimately to life and to God’s kingdom. Until you know Christ’s benefits, until you know how the story ends, you can walk every day with Jesus and still not know Christ.
Until the story was finished, the first disciples were confused because they didn’t yet see how the way of Jesus leads to life and to God’s kingdom. Even as Jesus ascends to heaven, they stand looking up with their jaws open and a thousand questions running through their heads. And then, left on their own, together with one another, men and women, family and strangers, waiting for the coming of Spirit, they came to understand and to believe.
In the first letter of Peter today we read: Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you, as though something strange were happening to you. How often, when we face a “fiery ordeal,” do we feel that God has abandoned us, that God can’t possibly be present, that God’s mercy must somehow have disappeared. Peter spent three years with Jesus and when the test came, when the fiery ordeal came, he failed. But that wasn’t the end of the story, not for Peter and not for Jesus, and not for us either. Writing his letter, from the perspective of Easter faith, Peter can say: Of course, if you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, you can rejoice, because if you are following the way enough to share in Christ’s sufferings you will also share in the revelation of his glory. So, Peter advises, “cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.”
When we feel confused, when we feel lost, when we feel anxious, may we cast all of our anxiety on him. Because he lives. Because at God’s right hand, he still cares for you.