May 16, 2004
Acts: 15:1-2,22-29 + Revelation 21:10-14,22,23 + John 14,23-29
During these Sundays between Easter and Pentecost, there is no way of escaping reflections on identity: the identity of Christ the Risen the Lord, and the identity of his followers. We have heard this more clearly than ever the last two Sundays, and it comes again today.
Sometimes we identify a thing by its properties or a person by their gifts. We examine components, how they work and fit together, and then give a name based on those properties. Sometimes we do this by contrast. We look at one thing and then another, we observe what is different between them, and we name them by distinction. That is what is going on at this point in John’s Gospel.
John identifies Jesus as “Truth” by looking at his properties. “Truth” in John’s gospel has nothing to do with intellectual research. It is not the opposite of a “lie.”
“Truth” in Old Testament literature means the fidelity of God to His people. As the word develops in later literature, it came to mean the revealed mystery of God. “Truth” then, in John’s Gospel raises the issue of God’s faithful presence revealed.
When Jesus calls himself “The Truth” he is not speaking of honesty, he is speaking of his relationship with the Father. Those of us who live in the “truth” are people who live in the presence of God. To have the “truth” is not to possess something, but to be something. At the same time today, we consider identity the other way – by contrast to something else. The difference between disciples of Jesus and the world is precisely the love that consists in faithfulness to his word. We shall know who we are, and others shall recognize us by what we are not of this world.
In these weeks since Easter, we have walked with the disciples of Jesus into the mystery of what has happened to us because of the Resurrection. We have gone deeper into the mystery of what it means, and what our lives mean because of that Resurrection. A church, you and me, (not an institution), is filled with the presence of God. This world may not yet understand, believe, nor see God in us because too often we are more like this world than we are like the God whose life and whose spirit fills and sustains us. We are too slow to believe in the resurrection and what it means for us. We spend too much time thinking it is about Jesus, and that becomes a way of avoiding what it means for us. We spend too much time waiting for something to happen rather than making something happen with the gifts we already have. It is not a matter of having more or anything. It is a matter of doing something with what we have.
We are the Spirit filled Church. We are now all that Jesus has been. Our mission, our purpose in this time and in this life is identical to his. It is about Glory – about seeing the Truth in each other. It is about being the Truth. That truth is a principal of moral living. It guides our decisions.
It guides our relationships It guides our vision of what we shall be. As long as there is revenge rather than forgiveness, there is no faith, no obedience to the Word, no life. As long as there is violence rather than peace, there is no faith, no obedience to the Word, no life. It has nothing to do with anyone else or “the world.” It has to do with us. When we are living in the Truth and filled with the Spirit, we will be different from the world, and only then will the world have hope, because without us standing in contradicion, the world is left to its violent, empty, desolate ways. It is Jesus, risen who speaks to us today. It is the Spirit that we hear in this place. It is God who says: “I will not leave you.” I will not leave you to kill and isolate, to alienate and destroy. I will send my Spirit to remind you, to teach you again what I have said through my Son. We do not have the luxury of amnesia – we do not get the excuse that we “forgot.” Baptized and raised with Christ Jesus, the presence of God will be made known in this world through us, or there is no God at all.