Here’s the sermon for St. Peter Lutheran Church in Greene, Iowa for May 17, 2020. At this point, our worship is still entirely online, due to the pandemic.
This week, we return to the lectionary readings, so the readings text for this week are Acts 17:22-31 and John 14:15-21.
Here’s the podcast sermon recording:
And the video of the full online worship service:
Grace to you and peace from Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we live and move and have our being. Amen
In the weeks since Easter, we’ve been focusing on the theme of isolation, stories of God meeting people in times and places of loneliness. This week, we return to the lectionary readings, where our appointed Gospel reading comes from John 14. Unfortunately, we’ve missed hearing the first half of the chapter, where Jesus has been telling his disciples that he is about to leave them.
It’s that wonderful passage where Jesus says don’t worry, I’m going to leave you, but it’s to prepare a place for you, and you know the way to the place where I am going, and it turns out the disciples don’t understand what he’s talking about. He’s trying to explain something about heaven to them, to give them hope of living forever in his Father’s house where there is a place prepared for everyone, but all the disciples hear is that their teacher Jesus is leaving.
The setting for this conversation in John, by the way, is at the last supper, so even though the disciples don’t fully understand what’s coming, there is a definite sense of urgency. The disciples are worried about the future. What’s going to happen to them? Is Jesus really leaving? Wait, isn’t he supposed to be the Messiah, the savior? Isn’t he supposed to make everything right? How can he leave?
So, in today’s section, as Carol just read, Jesus comforts them, promising that even though he will not be present with them in the same way, they will not be left alone. God their heavenly Father will not abandon them. God—and I love this image—will not leave them orphaned, but will give them a comforter, a caretaker, an advocate, whom we know as the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ promise is for you and me too.
Have you ever heard of Derek Redmond? Maybe you don’t know his name, but you may have seen his famous moment in 1992 in the Barcelona Olympics. Since we’re doing this online, I can just show you. Take a look.
[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynhD-vq2DUE”]
Just ignore the bit at the end there about the magic continuing at the 2020 Olympics—maybe next year.
Now, calling God our heavenly Father is not a perfect image. For one thing, God is not male. Also, for people who’ve had not-so-great earthly fathers, that language of “Father” can be off-putting.
But I think this video shows a great picture of what Jesus means by referring to God as “Father.” Jim Redmond, Derek’s father, coming out of the stands, off the sidelines to help him across the finish line is a pretty good picture of a Creator God who refuses to leave us alone when we fall down, who refuses to leave us orphaned, who loves us too much to let us stumble through life on our own, who personally comes down to us and says, as Jim said to his son, “We’re going to finish this together.” It’s the opposite of being orphaned or abandoned.
Do you know about deism? Deism is a theological concept that says there is a God who created the world, but then left it alone. God is the creator, but that’s all. Deism says God just sits back and watches the world to see what happens.
The classic deism image is of God as a watchmaker who designs the world and its intricate governing mechanisms like physics and chemistry, winds it up like an old-fashioned clock, and then leaves it alone to run.
Deism says there must be a god to have designed everything and gotten it started, but the only way we know about this god, this initial cosmic force, is because it fills in the holes in some mathematical equations. Our only knowledge of this supreme being comes from studying nature.
That’s very different than the Christian God. In Athens, Paul comes across this statue to an unknown god, and he says, “Look, God the creator doesn’t have to be unknown! What you worship as unknown, I proclaim to you. There is a God who created the world. But that God didn’t just set up the world and leave it alone. No, the same God who made the world and everything in it continues to be the Lord of heaven and earth. God is personal, and loving, and active in the world. It is in God that we live and move and have our being. Our very life is bound up in God.
Calling the Athenians deists is an anachronism, but Paul’s arguments apply to the more modern philosophical ideas of deism as well. God is not unknown, or just vaguely out there somewhere, sort of a nice idea, but not anyone we have to pay attention to. I bet you know people who think of God that way. As Christians, though, we know who God is. We know God is active in the world around us, even through us, claiming us.
As we’ll sing in just a moment, I know that my redeemer lives. The one who saves us, our redeemer, isn’t some abstract idea, or amorphous concept. Our Savior is not a secret, or a mystery, a philosophical concept or answer to an equation. We know our redeemer. Our redeemer is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
God has not left us abandoned; God has come to live with us in the person of Jesus Christ, God made flesh. Sure, studying creation can teach us something about the Creator, and that’s good and important, but our true understanding of God comes from knowing Jesus. In Jesus, God’s true nature is revealed.
Jesus reveals to us that we don’t have to perform for God, or try to live the best lives we can according to some set of mysterious rules so that we can make it to a higher plane of existence—some might call that heaven. God didn’t leave some set of parameters for us to meet, conditions for self-improvement where if we follow the right formula, we’ll meet the requirements of the world and we’ll be good.
Exactly the opposite – God loved us first, setting us free to love God back, setting us free not to seek after some unknown deity, but to follow God’s law, to live the abundant life God has always intended for us. And when we fail, God doesn’t just sit back and watch, or sit back and poke at us to see what happens; God intervenes. God steps in, again and again, calling us back, forgiving us, giving us new life, new freedom, new opportunities.
Even after the Son Jesus is no longer with us in person, God is still present with us. God is still knowable. Jesus promises another Advocate, another Helper, whom we know as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, Jesus says, will abide with you, will be in you, will fill you and nudge you and draw you back again and again and again to God.
God is personal. God’s love for you is personal. Whether or not you know God, God knows you and God loves you and God wants to be known and loved by you. May you know the love of your redeemer, your savior, your Heavenly Father. May you know the one in whom you live and move and have your being, and may the Triune God, Creator, Savior, and Sustainer bless you now and forever.
Amen