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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
We have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight! We say “Alleluia”, praising the Lord and rejoicing over Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, because we know that they both have happened. The disciples in today’s Gospel Reading, on the night when Jesus was betrayed, were on the other side of those events. In some sense, perhaps they needed more than we do Jesus’s teaching of the Gospel Reading, but we also still need Jesus’s teaching of the Gospel Reading. For, like the disciples, our hearts can also be troubled, and so we also need to believe. Like the disciples, we can ask both about knowing the way where Jesus has gone and about seeing the Father. And, like the disciples, Jesus’s words about doing works greater than His also apply to us. So, this morning we reflect on this Gospel Reading under the theme “Believing, Knowing, Seeing, and Doing”.
Today’s Gospel Reading indeed comes on the night when Jesus was betrayed, as He fulfilled the Passover and brought about our Exodus from sin. Perhaps recalling Moses’s divinely‑inspired words of Deuteronomy (1:26-33), Jesus taught His disciples not to let their hearts be troubled or to be afraid, as He went before them to prepare a permanent place for them. In other contexts Jesus Himself was troubled (John 11:33; 12:27; 13:21), so troubling in general is not rank unbelief, but, in today’s Gospel Reading, believing nevertheless is the solution for the troubling of the disciples’ and our hearts.
In some sense, our hearts should be troubled, disturbed and unsettled over our sin. All of us are by nature sinful and unclean and have sinned both against God and against our fellow human beings. Even we, who repent and believe and so receive God’s forgiveness by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, in some sense still need to be disturbed and unsettled over our continual sin, so that we continue to repent and believe and so receive God’s forgiveness. But, like the disciples in today’s Gospel Reading, we have no need for agitation or confusion, fright or terror. Like the disciples, we face temptations and afflictions that show us what kind of faith we have. Too easily we give in to the temptations and let the afflictions rob us of the joy that we should have over what Jesus’s death and resurrection mean for us, as, like the disciples, we have heard Jesus speak of these things before (John 12:26). With discouraged faith or benumbed by sorrow, we too easily lose sight of what Jesus has done for us, His making possible our eternal presence with Him and the Father. Too easily we think we on our own can know the way there, or we forget that Jesus is the way, or maybe even we try our own way (Isaiah 53:6; Augsburg Confession XX:10 [Latin]).
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus tells the disciples and us that we know the way to where He is going. Thomas, who is mentioned by name in a number of places in St. John’s Gospel account (11:16; 20:24-28; 21:2), essentially contradicts Jesus, saying that they do not even know where Jesus is going and so they cannot know the way there. (Earlier that same night Peter had specifically asked the Lord where He was going, but Jesus had not specifically answered Him [John 13:36].) So, to Thomas, to the others, and to us, Jesus identifies Himself as the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. Apart from Jesus, there is no way, truth, or life. (Not all roads lead to heaven; not all religions worship the same god; and truth is not relative.) No one comes to the Father—to His love, mercy, and grace—except through Jesus. True God and true man, Jesus was rejected by men but was chosen and precious by God, as the Epistle Reading described (1 Peter 2:2-10). He died on the cross and rose from the dead for us, in order for us to have the same resurrection and life (John 11:25). As we repent and believe that He died for us and all that the Bible teaches about Him, we are forgiven of our sin, received by Him, placed into His true fellowship, and already now have eternal life with Him and the Father. To know Jesus is to know the Father and to see the Father.
In the Gospel Reading, Philip asked Jesus to see the Father, and exactly what Philip wanted we do not know. What we do know is that Jesus pointed Philip and the other disciples to the words He spoke and the works He did, for they were the Father’s words and works. Words and works are also where we find Jesus and so also when we find the Father: in His Holy Gospel read and preached; in His making people of all ages His children, by water and the word in Holy Baptism; in His forgiving those who privately confess the sins that trouble them most, by a pastor’s words of individual Absolution; and in His feeding and sustaining those who receive bread that is Christ’s body and wine that is Christ’s blood in Holy Communion. In these words and works we see the Son and so we see the Father. By these words and works, the Father and the Son make their home in us, here and now where we are (John 14:23). By these words and works, the Father and the Son enable us to be with them for eternity where they are. And, by these words and works, the Father and the Son do greater works through us, as answers to our prayers.
The older 3-year series of Gospel readings associated with our previous hymnal did not include the final two verses that today’s Gospel Reading includes, perhaps because they can be misleading. Even redeemed Christians can hear “whatever you ask” and “if you ask Me anything” and think of God as some sort of “sugar daddy” from whom we can get whatever we want. We can forget that prayers in Jesus’s Name are also to be prayed according to His will (1 John 5:14-15), and, as today’s Gospel Reading makes clear, the answering of such prayers specifically is for the glory of the Father in the Son. Sinful and arrogant petitions are not included in His command and promise. Yes, each of us who believe consequently does good works according to the vocations God gives us, as a group in a sense offering ourselves as spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, as today’s Epistle Reading makes clear (see also Romans 12:1). But the Gospel Reading’s greater works than those Jesus Himself did, which He now does through us, as answers to our prayers, are the works that pertain to eternal salvation: words and works done by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the light of the resurrection, among all people. In the Father’s house are many rooms, sufficient for all those who believe and so have the Triune God dwell in them now in order to dwell there with God later. For example, as today’s First Reading described (Acts 6:1-9; 7:2a, 51-60), Stephen was a man who did great wonders and signs among the people, saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, and presumably was received there.
We have reflected on today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Believing, Knowing, Seeing, and Doing”. Our Lord Jesus cares that our hearts are sad or frightened, even as He knows and teaches us to expect that there will be things that can potentially trouble our hearts and wants us not to let our hearts be troubled by believing in Him as true God. By the Holy Spirit’s power we know Him also as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In His words and works—His Word and Sacraments—we see Him and the Father, and They do greater works through us as answers to our prayers. As we live each day with repentance and faith, by the Holy Spirit’s power, our hearts are fixed where true joys are to be found, and so, when our Lord comes the final time, He will take us to Himself, that where He is we may be also.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +