First Sunday After Easter
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
– Deacon Peter Vogel
Last week was THE day, the day that ultimately defines Christianity, the day that separates Christianity from all the other religions, even those that seem to focus on the same God the Father that we do. It is the event we celebrated last week, the evening of which we see in today’s Gospel reading, that represents the fulfillment of God’s promises to us, those made by God the Father in the Old Testament and those made to the disciples by God the Son.
Just as the disciples took time to understand what had happened (as verse 9 tells us, “they did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead”), I think that people need to take time to fully understand and comprehend the story we hear today in our Gospel reading. I think in many ways this chapter of St. John’s Gospel encapsulates the stages of a person’s awakening of Faith. At first, we approach the stories that convicted Christians tell us with skepticism; we treat it as a fabrication, impossible to believe, much as Peter and John didn’t believe Mary Magdalene at first and had to go and see for themselves what had happened. Next, we may check out the facts (read history, read the Bible with a skeptic’s eye, etc.). Having checked out the facts, as Peter did when he walked into the empty tomb, we may still be puzzled about what happened. For many of us, our first (and in my case my second, and third) encounter with Scripture leaves us confused, not sure of its meaning; we see this in John’s admission that he and Peter did not yet understand from Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. If we read on a little bit in this Chapter of John, we see the next stage in the evolution of our belief, as we see Mary Magdalene experiencing a personal encounter with Jesus and finally being able to accept the fact of His resurrection (verse 16). The final stage is when you commit yourself to the risen Lord and devote your life to His service; that’s when you begin to fully understand the reality of God’s daily presence with you, and Thomas did so in verse 28 as he says to the risen Jesus, “My Lord and My God”.
Where are you in your walk of Faith? What will it take for you to take the next step?
Today I’d like to start us on that next step by focusing on our first lesson, John’s letter, written not to a specific Church as Paul’s epistles were, but to all believers: regardless of where you are in your personal faith there is important testimony here. John’s letters were written to combat several heresies that had begun to form, in particular those that disputed one or the other of Christ’s two natures – heresies that continue to crop up even today, particularly in the opportunistic documentaries that get trotted out after movies like “The Passion of the Christ” or “The Davinci Code”, or the latest one to start the fervor: “Angel’s and Demons”. Some of these heresies argued that Christ had no human nature, others that he had no divine nature, and others still that he had two natures but that the two never mixed: he had been a man up to the point of baptism at which point he became divine up to the point just prior to his death upon the cross when he once again became a man. If you think about it for even a few minutes, you will see the subtlety of Satan in those heresies: sure, go ahead, believe this new religion but believe it with this twist that completely invalidates what Christ did for you…. John’s letter is written with these heresies in mind, but the lessons we can take from it apply to us all in our walk of faith.
Our reading opens as John explains to us how to take that next step in our walk of faith, how to take our minds off earthly things and overcome the world, including the worldly teachings of the Gnostics that Jesus was not born of the flesh. John tells us that God gives us the victory in Christ, more precisely as John puts it: God has already given us the victory through Christ. When we accept the salvation offered to us by Christ, at that very moment we are given the victory. We can lose it only by denying Christ. In case we didn’t get it, John asks the rhetorical question: “who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God”. It is our faith that gives us the victory over Satan.
The remainder of our first reading is using the cultural requirement of the times, which came from Moses’ law that to convict anyone of anything there must be three or more witnesses who agree to the events (the very law that the priests of Jerusalem violated in order to convict Jesus in order to fulfill God’s plan). John is going to present us with three heavenly and three earthly witnesses to Jesus Christ as the Son of God, a human man with both a divine and a human nature; it is this testimony that we are to believe, and when we believe this testimony we will be prepared to take another step in our walk of faith.
John writes, “For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and the three are in agreement”.
Every time that we read God’s revelation found in the Scriptures, the Spirit is testifying that Jesus was born of the flesh and that he was fully God and fully mankind – not only in scripture but in the preaching of the apostles, in the signs and miracles which Jesus gave to us throughout his life, and in the inspiration given to the writers of scripture that testify to everything that Jesus was, and is, and is to come.
The water testifies to the incarnation of Jesus. It speaks to us through the baptism which is required of all who would believe Jesus. Every time that we see someone being baptized, that person is saying, in essence, “Watch me; my baptism testifies that I am dying to sin, that I am being buried as Jesus was, and that I am being raised from the dead.”
The blood, which is the third witness, testifies every time that a Christian eats the Lord’s Supper. For when we eat the bread and drink of the cup, we are saying to the world: “I am testifying to you that Jesus died and was buried for my sins, and I declare this by my partaking of the Communion.
John mildly chastises those of us who will believe what men testify but who do not accept God’s testimony. The testimony that God gives to us is stronger than any testimony mankind could give. First, it is the testimony of God! Should we not accept God’s testimony simply because it is God’s testimony? What else would we need than assurance from God. Second, when we look at God’s testimony, we have far greater evidence for its truth than we do for what mankind testifies to us. John, more than once, has given the two or three witnesses required by the Law of Moses; and then God has given us an additional. Paul declared that more than five hundred had seen God’s testimony. In the first chapter of I John, John declares that “we” have seen, heard, felt and experienced Jesus. The “we” to whom he refers is certainly more than two or three. So, we have more than ample reason to believe that God has given his Son through the incarnation to be our Savior.
John is giving great emphasis to the testimony of God. He mentions testimony at least eight times. And he states that if one believes in God, he has this testimony in his heart. Some commentators would infer that God has given a special message into the heart of those who believe him. It is my understanding that this is not the force of his argument. I would be surprised if John would use that type of argument to the Gnostic heretics since this is their argument: that God has given them a special knowledge. What John seems to be saying here is that it is in one’s heart because believing has come from hearing, receiving, and obeying God’s message. One who does not believe God is making God out to be a liar because that person has not received nor believed in the testimony that God has provided.
John now uses one of the greatest motivations for us to believe or accept God’s testimony. God’s testimony is greater than mankind’s testimony. God’s testimony is that God has given us eternal life. John is not indicating that this life eternal is ours regardless of what we may do in the future. We can sin by denying Christ and lose that life, but God has already given eternal life to us. Life eternal is a “here and now” possession, not a “there and then” promise. We already possess it!
The testimony that we have been given eternal life is based on our relation to the Son. If we accept and obey Jesus as the Son of God — both his human and divine character — then we have been given eternal life. The gift to us is not a blind, meaningless gift. It depends on our faith, our love, and our obedience to his commands. John gave his assurance: He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Now let me turn briefly to our Gospel lesson where we will find some application of this to our lives today. One application is referred to in my Father’s favorite hymn by Martin Luther: “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing”.
In our Gospel lesson Jesus again identifies himself with the Father, telling the disciples by whose authority He is doing the work he is doing; then he passes on the tremendous job of spreading the Gospel around the world. Let’s apply that to ourselves — we all have jobs which we have been given by God to help fulfill his plan for us and for the world. What God has asked you to do, even if it is something as simple as going to school and doing our best — whatever God has asked you to do, Jesus demonstrates to us in our reading today the way to accomplish that job. To do God’s work we need the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit; we must avoid — and this is always a struggle for me — trying to do God’s work (and it’s all God’s work) in our own strength; therein lies failure. It is when we accept the guidance and strength of the Holy Spirit in our lives that our greatest successes come to us.
What are you trying to do in your own strength? Will you commit to asking for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in all that you do this week?
Amen.
