"Alive"

 

John 14:15-21, 6th Week of Easter, May 14, 2023

The Gospel of John was written in the last decade of the first century. The situation of the church at that time was characterized by two things. One is the fact that Christians had been ousted from the synagogues, and the other is the fact that Gnosticism was beginning to flourish within the church community. The first fact concerns the survival of the church, and the second concerns the nature of the church. In the 90s, about 60 years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and about 30 years after the deaths of James (Jesus' brother), Peter, and Paul, the outstanding leaders of the early church, the church was at a crossroads: whether it would survive history, disappear without a trace, become a subset of Judaism, or be reduced to a syncretistic sect. The anxiety of the church members was palpable. John 14:1 comes from that historical context. "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God; believe also in me."

Life in Jesus Christ

Being told not to worry doesn't make you not worry on its own, and being told to believe in God and believe in Jesus doesn't make you believe on its own. You have to be given a reason to believe. The Gospel of John, as a whole, is a document that gives that rationale, and if you boil it down to one word, it's "life in Jesus Christ." Christians are "alive" in Jesus Christ, and if that's true, no matter how difficult your circumstances, you won't be anxious. Let's read 14:19.

A little while, and the world will not see me again; but you will see me; because I am alive, and you will be alive.

Two words are key here. One is "see," and the other is "alive." Together, they become "see alive. John 13-17, which includes today's sermon text, is categorized as "Jesus' farewell address to his disciples. After these words, Jesus is arrested, crucified, and buried in a tomb. You could say that the world will no longer see Jesus because he is about to leave this world. But the disciples say they will see him. If the world doesn't see him, but the disciples do, it means that the word "see" doesn't have the usual meaning here.

In Zen Buddhism, there's a concept called bosheng, which is a combination of the Chinese characters for "seeing" and "nature". It means to see the ultimate reality of all things. It refers to a kind of great enlightenment. Not everyone can enter that realization. Why? Something similar happens in our daily lives: we see the same mountains, we see the same rivers, but some people see the mystery of existence there, and some people just pass by. Some politicians see the people as an object to be used or shown off, while others see them as an object to be served. Even in Jesus' day, some people felt God's presence in his words, while others rejected them, saying, 'This is too difficult, I don't know what you mean.

When Jesus says the world will not see, but the disciples will, he is referring to the risen one. The Jesus of Nazareth was recognizable to everyone, but the risen Lord was not a phenomenon that anyone could recognize. 1 Corinthians 15 lists the witnesses to the resurrection: Cephas, the twelve disciples, the five hundred brothers, James, all the apostles, and Paul. Women are apparently excluded from this list, in keeping with the custom of the time. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that anyone who was not part of the church community saw the risen Lord. Paul was an early persecutor of Jesus' followers, but his inner life was already inclined toward Jesus. In any case, no one in Jerusalem, including Caiaphas the high priest or Pilate the governor, experienced the risen Lord. The implication is that unless the Christian "eyes of faith" were opened, they could not see the risen Lord.

People outside the church won't take the phrase "eyes of faith" seriously; they'll say it's too subjective, and so is the view I illustrated above. You don't mechanically enter the dimension of steadfastness the way money can buy you an apartment or a car. The eye of faith doesn't happen on its own in a day or two, or because you go to church. The disciples were people who had a special relationship with Jesus. They were people who left all their possessions, jobs, and families and obeyed Jesus' words, "Follow me." They accompanied him for nearly three years. They had walked with Jesus for nearly three years. Through Jesus, they had a new perception of God and the kingdom of God. Their idea of life, or as verse 19 puts it, "being alive," had taken on a new dimension. So the text could say that after Jesus' crucifixion, the world would not see Jesus, but the disciples would.

What is alive?

Let me ask you this straight up. What on earth does it mean to be alive, or what is life? Are we actually alive right now? Once we know that, then we can see what the text is talking about when it says "alive." A crude way of putting it is, "It's no big deal to be alive, it's just to be well fed in this world. It's enough to be a little healthier and a little happier than other people, and you can't say that's wrong - you've got to get by here, at least with a roof over your head. The problem is that modern people have fallen for infinite growthism - not just poor countries, but already rich ones, strive to achieve endlessly high levels of economic indicators. But my friends, when life is outwardly abundant, when it's prosperous, there's a deeper emptiness waiting for you. Where the mountains are high, the valleys are deep. Experts tell us that wealth beyond a certain point doesn't make much of a difference to a happy life. And yet, we live as if we're cursed to grow and prosper and gluttony and consumption, as if we're cursed to never go hungry no matter how much we eat.

The Bible tells a different story. The Bible says that God is the author of "living," or life. God is the one who created life, sustains life, and will complete it. We are creatures. No matter how brilliant we are, we are powerless in the face of life events. By analogy, consider Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum in France. No matter how much artistic inspiration the painting provides to many people, it cannot surpass Leonardo da Vinci, because the painting was created by the artist's inspiration and ability to paint. If the Mona Lisa were to be disconnected from Leonardo da Vinci, it would no longer have authority as a work of art. The Bible says that humans, as creatures, cannot have life on their own because our relationship with God has been broken by sin. Paul writes that no one can be justified before God by 'the works of the law' (Romans 3:20). When the world hears this, they may say, "Aren't you guys crazy?" What kind of God are you talking about when we've created artificial intelligence and, if we're lucky, we'll be able to immortalize humans through the power of science in the future. What do you say to these objections? We can't convince them because we see things differently. We can reduce disagreements, but we can't see complete agreement. The best we can do is explain and defend the teachings of the Bible and then live them out in real life.

In Jesus Christ

The Bible says that we, as creatures, have life only when we are in God, our Creator. The same is true for real life. It's not just gracefully eating well and living well every day, but only in relationship with God do we actually live life. Now does this make sense? Does this sound believable, or is it just religious platitudes? Today's text says in verse 19, "I am alive, and you are alive," and then it goes on to tell us what that "aliveness" is, or how we can be alive, in verse 20: "In that day I will be with you.

In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

The preposition "in" is repeated in this sentence. It says ἐν τῷ Πατρί (in the Father), ἐν ἐμοὶ (in me), and ἐν ὑμῖν (in you). One of the concepts of the Trinity is "perichoresis" (mutual indwelling). This means that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit exist "in" each other. The above verse is similar to the concept of co-indwelling. Jesus Christ is in God, the disciples are in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is in the disciples. Now the disciples are in God through Jesus Christ, which is why early Christianity called Jesus 'Immanuel'.

The link between these three units - God, Jesus Christ, and the disciples - is the "resurrection" of Jesus Christ. Resurrection doesn't just mean living again, it means being transformed into the life that will be consummated at the end of time. In his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (Das Glaubensbekenntnis), Fannenberg writes, "The resurrection of Jesus was understood as the final rush, the beginning of the eschatological reality of God's reign over all human beings" (p. 144). By "beginning of the eschatological reality," he means that the eternal life of God that will take place at the end of time began in the destiny of Jesus Christ. Having experienced the apocalyptic light in the destiny of Jesus, the disciples were no longer caught up in the political propaganda of the Roman Empire and could no longer remain in the Jewish legal faith. They waited intensely for the eschatological consummation of life, and that waiting is Advent faith. For the disciples, living in that Advent faith was the reality of being "alive." Is that right, or is it just too religious? If so, where do you find the fact that you are "alive?" You have a choice to make. To seek and wait for the light of the eschatological life that began in the destiny of Jesus Christ, no matter what the world says, or to follow only the standards of life that this world presents as plausible. To hope for the reign of God, or to be consumed by self-aspiration.

Those who love me

Here's an everyday analogy for the faith that waits for the eschatological reign of God. Forgive me if this is a very common analogy. A man leaves for a year-long space trip in six months. He doesn't know for sure if he'll come back in one piece. What he does know is that for the next six months, he'll see the world and see people in a completely different light than he ever has before. If people around him get annoyed, it won't bother him so much. He'll be able to embrace and love everyone. If we lived here and now, actually feeling and experiencing the life that God will consummate at the end of time, wouldn't that solve a lot of problems in our lives? We could actually have grace and peace. So why doesn't that work out? Why doesn't the light of eschatological life fill our souls?

The answer is quite obvious. The answer is that we haven't deepened our relationship with Jesus Christ. For those who don't have a deep relationship with Jesus, the eschatological life that occurred in a pre-emptive way in the destiny of Jesus seems very far away because their relationship with Jesus Christ is formal or shallow, just as the Lord of the resurrection did not appear to them. It's as if the trees, flowers, clouds, and birds are all unreal if you don't have a loving heart. That connection to Jesus is what verse 21 of our text says.

He that keepeth my commandments is he that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.

Keeping the commandments here doesn't mean keeping the law, it means following what Jesus says. It's about being a real disciple of Jesus, about setting your heart on the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, about letting go of your worries about what you eat, drink, and wear, about trusting God as completely as you would a father. It's about having a loving relationship with Jesus, because Jesus is one with God, and when you have a loving relationship with Jesus, you have that relationship with God. It is to these disciples that Jesus promised, "I will reveal myself to you."

Some of you have been Christians for 10, 20, or even a lifetime, and you're frustrated that your faith hasn't deepened. You go to church out of habit, you immerse yourself in church programs, or you focus on relationships. These are all good, necessary things. Your faith should bear fruit in those forms, too. But no matter how much fun you have at church, if you don't deepen your relationship with Jesus, if you don't experience Jesus Christ as "alive," or as verse 20 puts it, if you don't realize that you are in Jesus Christ - if the teachings of Jesus Christ don't weigh as much as gold - your Christian faith won't stay healthy. Even in the best case scenario, your faith will remain at an intellectual level.

Consider again the Lord's promise in verse 21: "He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him." The phrase "manifest myself" is used here. The phrase "I will manifest myself" means that the disciples will have life; that they will realize and experience a tangible glimpse of the eternal life that will come at the end of time. To put it in familiar terms, they will realize that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that He is the way, the truth, and the life in our lives. Has He manifested Himself to you, so that you have felt the light of end-time life, so that you are not troubled by all the troublesome things you are going through here and now? Or maybe you've had very few of those experiences and you're just dozing through life. It depends.

Even in the days when John's Gospel was written, some people were living their lives through the eyes of faith and love, and others were not at all. It's true that faith and love are, after all, the grace of God, which is why Jesus Christ repeatedly said in our text that he would pray to the Father to send the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete (the Comforter, John 14:16; 16:7; 1 John 2:1). Paracleteos will defend and comfort the disciples, so that they may have a real realization of being 'alive' in Jesus Christ (kenosis) and live in the fullness of joy in whatever circumstances they find themselves. Amen.