SHOW US GOD
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Text: John 14:1-14
In preparation for preaching, I often look at more than one translation of the text. One of those sources is the Inclusive Language Lectionary. Though I most often use the New Revised Standard Version as the text, this week I was struck by the Inclusive Language volume’s translation or paraphrase of verse 8 of John 14. Where the NRSV has Philip say to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied;” the Inclusive language Lectionary translates Philip’s statement as “show us God.”
Is this difference significant? Perhaps not. The phrase, “show us God,” may rob the passage of its intended intimacy, but it also invites us to consider in wonder the amazing intimacy to which Jesus leads his followers. For us, Father is - or has been - a familiar and favored term for God. It has sometimes led us to sentimentalize God and to reduce God to our own limited images of fatherhood. It is also fair to note that for too many the image of father evokes harshness, cruelty and abuse. For a people steeped in the majesty of the great God of the universe, a God too holy to even be called by name, the familiarity inherent in Jesus referring to God as father brings God close in ways that were heretofore unimagined for his disciples. For us, there may be value in moving away from any somewhat easy, sometimes casual, view of God in order to re-acquaint ourselves with what it means to stand in the presence of the Holy One.
One illustration I know I’ve used before is a vivid memory I still retain from my own father’s ministry. I can see him standing in the pulpit of First Baptist, Boise, as he preached on respect for the Holy. He referred specifically to a popular song of the time, which advanced the idea, “I’m gonna’ talk to the Man upstairs.” In spite of his own evangelical leanings, my father took exception to this imagery. He thought it was disrespectful and failed to recognize the awe with which one should approach God.
I am sure that there are aspects of my memory of my father, standing tall in the pulpit, preaching with passion, power and authority, which to this day influence my understanding, and even my image, of God. Still, I think he was on to something here, to which this alternate reading of the text brings us back. The amazing thing that Jesus offers his followers is an intimate relationship - not with some “Man upstairs” – but with the very Creator of Heaven and Earth. Father - it is language that Jesus uses frequently in John’s gospel - is a father like none we have ever known. The image of father is one of the ways that Jesus attempts to show us God in all God’s infinite complexity.
The passage we read this morning is the beginning of what are known as “The Farewell Discourses.” In John’s gospel, the three chapters beginning with chapter 14 and running through chapter 16, are a compilation of teaching and reflecting that come immediately after the Last Supper and Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet. There they are, still spread out around the upper room, some reclining, bathed in candlelight and the lingering glow of the meal, sharing around the table, and listening intently to their beloved rabbi as he speaks to them.
“Don’t be troubled,” he says. Does he sense that there is anxiety, tension, disquiet in the room, beneath the warm surface of the meal’s afterglow? Troubled here does not just mean sad; it means disturbed, agitated, distressed. Though Jesus is pretty sure of what lies ahead, the disciples are not nearly as clear as he about what will transpire in the next few days. However, they do have an inkling that something big is about to happen. Jesus is talking about leaving and this is surely distressing. After all, they have left their homes and families and jobs to follow him. What is to become of them if he goes away? You can imagine the kind of anxiety this might cause.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” he attempts to reassure them. “Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?…And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Ah, dear doubting Thomas, perhaps a little dense, but unafraid to ask the proverbial “dumb question,” is right there, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”
I wonder if this was hard on Jesus? Did it try his patience to have spent so much time with them and still they did not get it? In spite of the imminence of his departure and the urgency of his message, he seems to respond with infinite patience and deep devotion to these disciples. “I’ll try it one more time, perhaps with some different imagery,” he thinks. “I am the way.” No, this is not a geographical reference. He wants them to understand what his life and ministry have been about. In his commentary, Gail O’Day says that “way” refers to lifestyle. It is a metaphor for life with God. “Way” is the expression of a faithful person’s unity with God. Jesus is both the access to and embodiment of life with God. (See New Interpreter’s Bible: John.)
Nor is Jesus’ comment about the many dwellings in God’s house a geographical reference. Jesus is talking about relationship here. He’s talking about his relationship to God and how it is available through him - the “way” - to his followers. That’s what his life and ministry have been about - to link these followers of his back to God who made them and loves them and desires to be in close relationship with them. “If you know me, you will know my Father also.”
Philip, perhaps Thomas’s equal in slowness of wit, chimes right in. “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied. Give us a glimpse of God and we will be content.” Now the frustration and the longing begin to show. “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and still you do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” For the writer of the fourth gospel, there is a direct link here back to the prologue of the gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” The story comes full circle. What is promised in the prologue is now fulfilled in the farewell.
“I am the truth” he says, “and the life.” These affirmations clarify how it is that he is the way. Again, O’Day argues that “To recognize Jesus as the truth is to affirm that as the Word made flesh, Jesus makes the truth of God available to the world. It is to acknowledge that one’s relationship with Jesus is relationship with the liberating truth of God, that Jesus’ life and ministry are the ultimate witness to God’s truth. Jesus is the ‘way,’ the promise of the possible unity with God, because in him one meets the truth of God.” He goes on to say that “Jesus is life, because Jesus brings God’s gift of life to the world. Jesus is the ‘way’ because he is the access point to God’s promise of life.” Abundant life! (See New Interpreter’s Bible: John.)
“Show us God,” Philip entreats. “Open your eyes man! It’s right here in front of you. You’ve been with me all this time and you’ve listened to me. You’ve watched as I healed the sick and cast out demons and ministered to the needy and blessed the children and even raised the dead. Can’t you see it? I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves.”
Seeing and believing. “I have taught you and shown you, walked with you and worked with you, prayed with you and served you, now my time is almost up and the last step on the way is to believe. I can’t do that for you. The witness is here before you, God in the flesh. How will you respond?”
During Lent I shared the powerful tale told by Elie Wiesel of another’s desire to see God. Remember, he recounts an incident from a Nazi death camp, where three men were hanged for who knows what minor offense, what trumped up charge. One of them was a 15-year-old boy. The two older men, being exhausted and emaciated, died rather quickly, but the boy, with some youthful vigor remaining, lingered long in dying. The narrator, standing in the crowd watching the ordeal, asks himself over and over, “Where is God? Where is God in this tragedy? Where is God in the boy’s agony? Where is God in all this suffering? Where is God in the face of the evil that has brought them to this hour?” Finally, a still, small voice sounds somewhere deep in the narrator’s soul, “He is here; God is here hanging on this gallows.”
Show us the Father; show us God. God is here in sunshine and in sorrow, in peace and disquiet, in life and in death. God is here among us, walking with us, suffering with us, rejoicing with us, drawing us with infinite love and patience to her side, leading us home. This is the gospel. This is John’s message. This is Jesus’ response to Phillip’s request that he “show us God.” “Right here, right now, the great God of the universe, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Lord of Life and Death is with you because I am here.” Like a Father loves his son, like a Mother loves her daughter, like a lover loves a lover, like no other loving relationship we have ever known, Jesus shows us, in fact, is for us, the way the truth and the life. He will surely bring us home. Amen.