“Do You See Him?”
John 15:26-27, 16:12-16
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
10/26/14
It’s almost time for Jesus. The hands of the past are
pressing him into hands of the future. His disciples don’t understand this, of
course. There’s no failure or shame in that. Their Jesus experience is simply incomplete.
Had we been there, we would have shared their bewilderment.
When reading chapters 14 through 17 of John, the Farewell
Discourse, I imagine faces that looked like mine when I sat through a high school
physics or chemistry class. I stared at all those formulas with glassy-eyed detachment.
They were like recipes for some casserole you couldn’t eat. I see that same
confusion and frustration on the disciples’ faces when Jesus says things like,
“He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is
mine and declare it to you.” So much of what Jesus says in this long speech is
so dense it that it seems to do more to conceal him than to reveal him.
Things are somewhat different for us. Jesus’ words can
still be dense and challenging, but because you and I inhabit a post-Easter
world, we read them with a much different spiritual memory. Our Jesus
experience may not be complete, either, but when retrospect allows us to see
how God has been our shepherd, we can interpret that as Jesus fulfilling his
promise to be with us always. Commenting on today’s passage, Fred Craddock affirms
hindsight saying, “[T]he Christian life is to a large extent an act of memory.”1
Now, that is not to say that we live in the past. We live
in a dynamic creation, the gift of a dynamic God. To try to live in the past,
or to sit back waiting for some cosmic pendulum to return things to the way
they were is to choose a kind of living death. So, to describe the Christian
life as “an act of memory” is to say
that as the church, we are a community of people whose vocation is to generate new
experiences through which, in time, the Holy Spirit creates and deepens faith. These
experiences are not about imposing doctrine. They are about growing stories,
stories which flower into awareness, and awareness which produces the fruits of
memory and hope. When remembrance becomes a spiritual discipline, we encounter
a vibrant storehouse of images and language that help us to recognize the
presence of the risen Christ, who reveals to us God’s unfolding future.
“A little while,” says Jesus, “and you will no longer see
me, and again a little while, and you will see me.”
Do you see Jesus? More specifically, do you see Jesus here?
Some years ago at a celebration for graduating high school seniors,
a father shared a story about his son. The young man had been a very active,
curious, and mischievous boy. One Sunday morning, the boy, his name is Brandon,
had crafted a perfect paper airplane out of his bulletin. During the pastoral
prayer, the father kept a quiet eye on his son. He saw how proudly and
carefully Brandon put the finishing touches on each crease. Dad waited for the
“Amen,” intending at that point to remind his son what was and was not
appropriate to do with a paper airplane in church, during worship on Sunday
morning. He waited too long. As people raised their heads from the prayer, they
all witnessed the long, silent, graceful flight of Brandon’s paper airplane as
it swept forward from the back of the sanctuary, buoyed by the thermals rising
from the congregants who were all warm with the Holy Spirit. The plane sailed
all the way to the front of the church where it came to rest at the foot of the
pulpit. Oh, it was a thing of beauty –
to everyone except Brandon’s mama.
“I remember that time,” said the father, “that time when my
son almost met Jesus right here in this sanctuary.”
He referred, of course, to the mother’s suddenly less-than-nurturing
desires toward her little darling. But the father’s teasing comment raises a
relevant question: “Is this a place
where Jesus is alive, at work, and real to us? Or is this a place where we almost meet Jesus?”
Is this a place where we tell the stories of faith, biblical
stories and our own stories, in such a way that we see Jesus in our worship, our service, and our fellowship? Or is
this simply a place where we talk about Jesus, where we are polite and nice to one another, but where, all-in-all, Jesus is someone whom
we almost meet?
I will tell you this: It is much safer and much more
comfortable if this is a place where we almost
see Jesus. He is no meek and mild milquetoast. He’s not even feral. Jesus is the
Ruach, the Wind of God. He is wild,
untamed and untamable. He does not let us remain comfortable and satisfied. He is
that loving energy who continually goads us toward the heights and depths of
human life, the joys and the sufferings, places we will never fully appreciate if
all we do is almost see him.
In his famously pithy confession of sin, British writer G.
K. Chesterton wrote: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has
been found difficult and not tried.”2
The truth is, you see, this church, like virtually all others,
is a place where we both see and almost see Jesus. As imperfect creatures, we
often conceal, disguise, and even disfigure him. But we do have our moments, moments
of vulnerable and transparent faithfulness when with joy and gratitude we see and
make seen the risen Christ.
Next Sunday is Consecration Sunday. We will make our
commitments of time, spiritual gifts, and money to God through Jonesborough
Presbyterian Church. What we do next week is not to make some kind of graceless
payment, or to fulfill some sort of moral obligation. And in asking for
everyone’s support of the work of this part of the body of Christ, we are absolutely
not selling indulgences. What I hope that all of us do next week when we make
our commitments is to say, “We have seen Jesus in this place, with these people.
And we want to be an active part of a community who sees Jesus and is helping
to make him seen. We want to continue becoming an Easter community, a place
made vibrant through the feisty promise of resurrection.”
Faithful and generous stewardship of our lives and
resources proclaims to the world that yes,
we are and want to be known as stewards of a Pentecost household, a place where
Jesus is alive, active, and real.
1Fred Craddock, Preaching Through the
Christian Year: Year B, Fred Craddock, et al, Trinity Press International,
1993 p. 284.
2http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/gilbertkc102389.html
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