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Sermon Notes May 29th & 30th
Who Do You See in Jesus?
Prov. 8:1-4, 22-31; Acts 2:14a, 22-36; John 8:48-59
The Holy Trinity
*Have you ever closed your eyes and tried to picture a person in your mind’s eye—maybe a dear friend or a family member far away, or a loved one no longer living? It’s hard to do, isn’t it? You might try picturing them by reproducing a favorite photograph, or remembering them at a certain stage in life or special moment shared together … or you might picture that person through a repeatedly lived-out role as a mother or father, spouse or sibling, mentor or friend, or as many are calling to mind this weekend, through someone’s time and service in the armed forces. Remembrance is tied to memory and every act of memorial.
*Whether it’s through a picture in the mind’s eye, a photograph in a frame or on a phone, or live image via a web-cam, they’re all subject to change … life never stays frozen, does it, except for in memory? I was reminded of that again a few weeks back when seeing some people I hadn’t seen for a couple of years … the mother looked the same, but the little girl was now double the two-year-old toddler I’d last seen her, and her freshman-in-college brother looked nothing like I still had him pictured in my mind. When you’re in a situation like that, you instantly search past what you don’t recognize ‘til you find what you do, don’t you? You might even say, “Okay, now I see you!” even though the person as he or she now is is right in front of you, because you’re looking for the point of comparison or link with the past.
*Have you ever seen someone and known right away who that person is related to, saying, “I see so-and-so all over you”? It can be embarrassing if you mention the person and find the one you’re talking to has no idea who you’re talking about. And everybody’s seen celebrity lookalikes, right? Some might have the eyes or mouth or nose but are still a stretch, while others are really amazingly close.
*So, with all those questions, let me ask one more: Who here has seen Jesus? Even though some of us might raise our hands and say, “I’ve seen paintings or carvings of him,” or “I’ve seen him in the gospels, at least as I picture him while I hear or read” or “I’ve seen him in the compassion and love of his followers,” none of us had the privilege of being alive and seeing him in flesh-and-blood when he walked this earth carrying out his mission. So let’s ask ourselves about those who did see Jesus in person and how they saw him. Those we heard about in today’s gospel saw Jesus as the furthest thing from the Son of God, the Savior of the World, God-among-us that we know him to be. They saw him as a dirty, no-good Samaritan, as a heretic, as a man who was demon-possessed … and said it right to his face, and those were the religious people! Jesus simply responded, ‘I don’t have a demon in me … I honor my Father and you dishonor me…. I don’t seek my own glory. The Father makes his glory known in me, and you claim him as God, but you obviously don’t know him. Abraham, the father of Isaac and grandfather of Jacob, rejoiced in knowing that I, God in flesh-and-blood, would eventually come into this world. You count Abraham as the great father of your faith, but I’ve been around since before Abraham.’ They saw exactly who Jesus was saying that he was—the Lord of the universe. So what did they do? They picked up stones to throw at him and kill him! If God isn’t what you want him to be, well, get rid of him, right? And that’s eventually what happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross as a public criminal for all to see and turn their heads away from in shame and disgust.
*But not everyone saw Jesus as they did. The people who knew they weren’t perfect—the outcasts, the crippled, the destitute, the struggling, came flocking to Jesus because they saw God’s love for even them and God’s desire to work holy change in their lives instead of pushing them away as unholy. That’s the Jesus as God-among-us that Peter declared on the day of Pentecost—the one who did miracles in this world, who was killed by those with evil minds but restored to life by God the Father; he’s the one who turns this world right-side up again through his resurrection … he’s the one who shows us the love of the Father and gives us the peace of the Holy Spirit. He is the wise and loving and forgiving God calling out in all the public places of this world, as we heard about in Proverbs; he is the Creator of all the beauty and goodness and nourishment that we know in this earth who came to redeem it—to restore it and to give us life better than we know it or have made it.
*Is that who you see in Jesus? Or do you just see someone who lived a long time ago who has little bearing on your life here and now? Or do you see someone it’s good to know about, someone who’s nice but also a little boring? Someone who wants to spoil your idea of fun, someone who wants to change your plans, someone who makes demands of your time, your money, your attitude, your life? It’s been said, and it’s true, that if you see Jesus as God who affirms all your prejudices, all your opinions, all your wrong priorities, all your arrogance, and all your cruelty, you’re not seeing Jesus as he really is—you’re seeing your own skewed picture of him. The Presbyterian pastor and writer, Frederick Buechner put it so well about who see in the face of Jesus: Like the faces of the people we love, it has become so familiar that unless we take pains we hardly see it at all. Take pains. See it for what it is…. Like you and me he had a face his life gave shape to and that shaped his life and other’s lives…. With part of ourselves I think we might avoid meeting his real eyes, if such a meeting were possible, the way that at certain moments we avoid meeting our own real eyes in mirrors because for better or worse they threaten to tell us more than we want to know (The Life of Jesus).
*That’s why we gather here time and time again, looking at our failures in sorrow, desiring God’s forgiveness and holy help to change. That’s why we gather here to be reminded of who we are as people made in love and restored to joyous life through the water and grace of holy baptism in the reality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That’s why we gather and see a cross and each other through it as the rescue Jesus accomplished for everyone in this world. That’s why we gather to partake of bread and wine, in order to remember, as Jesus said, what he did for us in his earthly life and is still doing for us as God in flesh-and-blood, meeting us not as a memory but as God’s holy presence, the reality and meaning of life here and now where we are. May we see Jesus as he really is … and as we leave here and go about each moment and every day, may others see that Jesus—the loving and forgiving and restoring Savior—in us all by what we say and do as his believers and followers—Amen.