Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Jesus came to your house for dinner? How would you feel? What would you cook for him? Would you clean your house to spotless perfection the likes of which it’s never seen before? Would you be worried? Would you try to make a good impression?
And yet, what does it matter. Over and over again the Bible says Jesus knows what’s in people’s hearts and minds. What’s the point of putting on a good show when Jesus already knows what your normal is like? And yet, would it feel right to just let your house be in its usual state without making any effort. (Or perhaps you are a person whose house is always spotlessly clean and in perfect order. If you’re one of those people I’d say I both jealous and also live a little. There’s more to life than a spotless house.) Would you try to hide clutter in the closets. But again, what would be the point? You might be able to hide things for normal visitors. They can’t tell what you’re hiding. But what if they could?
Would you be anxious about what Jesus would say to you? Would you be afraid he’d take you aside and give you a list of the sins of your lifestyle? What would he think of our spending choices: clothes, cars, food, furniture, luxury items? What would he think of our jobs? Would he tell us to sell everything and give it all to the poor, and then come, follow him?
What about us would Jesus praise that we didn’t consider praiseworthy? And what about us would we think we’re doing well only to have Jesus criticize it?
Imagine Jesus sitting across from you at the dinner table. What would be going through your mind, knowing that Jesus knows your thoughts? Would you try to think only good, pure, wholesome things? How would you keep improper thoughts out. But of course he also knows what you’re trying!
It’s impossible not to think of something. If I say, “Don’t think about elephants,” you’ll immediately think about elephants. And all because I suggested it. I assume you don’t usually daydream about elephants while I preach, but you are thinking about them now. The more forcefully I say don’t think about elephants the more likely you are to do just that!
Our brains are complex and hard to control things!
I suspect dinner with Jesus will create great anxiety for us. There’s just no way to get it right no matter how hard we try. At the exact same time Jesus is the model of love and grace.
I started with us thinking about a visit from Jesus because it reminds us of how much we know about Jesus. We know him as Messiah, Lord, Savior. We know him as somehow both fully human and fully divine. He is fully God and yet in a way that defies logic, only part of the Trinity.
All of these thoughts and realizations about the nature of Jesus took years, centuries even, for people to put into words. To the people of his day he was just an ordinary guy. Or perhaps to those closest to him who had seen him perform miracles, they saw him as a miracle worker. That was pretty spectacular, of course! But it was still far short of some of his claims; especially, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” Then the gospel writer adds, “For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.” (John 5:17-18)
That Jesus was making himself equal to God was only half the scandal. If you’ve grown up a Christian and know the Bible reasonably well that claim won’t shock you much. But it was, and still is, quite a remarkable claim.
There is a second thing going on that is even more scandalous, and that goes for both people of that day, and today; and for us whether we’ve grown up in Christian faith or come to it more recently. That second more scandalous thing is the nature of God that he is revealing.
Put yourselves in the shoes of the people the gospel writer calls, “the Jews”. It is always important when reading John’s gospel to remember that “the Jews” does not mean all of Judaism. It means the religious leaders. Christians have persecuted Jews too much for mistaking what Jesus meant in John’s gospel. Anyway, if you’re a religious leader you have probably grown up learning and following the law of Moses. That law revealed the nature of God. It showed God to be orderly and just. It showed what God liked and what God did not. It showed how to make up from sin and how to be in a good relationship with God. The law had a good amount of kindness and forgiveness built into it too. We often overlook that.
Most importantly, the law put you in charge of your journey of faith. Being a good person that God liked was up to you. It took discipline and work. It took faith and the right priorities. Those who lived that way had God’s favor. And what bad things inevitably happened, God was sure to eventually bring about rightness.
To explain it as Lutheran theology, it was a Theology of Glory. A theology of glory is any time you relationship with God is up to you and your own abilities. It is relying on your strength and commitment.
The nature of God that Jesus was revealing was not a theology of glory. It was a theology of the cross. In the theology of the cross it is all about what God did for you. It is God choosing you when you don’t especially deserve to be chosen. If you say that you have faith, then that faith is God’s creation in you. And it is God who is maintaining it in you. It may feel like a struggle. But the ability to maintain that struggle is also God’s work in you. Basically, in the theology of the cross it is all about God and you are along for the ride.
We could easily slip into a discussion about free will and all of that but that would take us nowhere. Simply put, Lutherans do believe that there is such a thing as free will, and there is quite a bit of it too. But there is no free will when it comes to important things. Martin Luther said God gave him free will over unimportant things, like his taste in beer. But when it came to salvation, he knew that God created him, called him, drove him, and sustained him entirely. Remember Luther’s explanation of the third part of the Apostles’ Creed:
“I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy, and kept me in the true faith.” It’s all about God’s actions. There’s nothing about your work. There’s nothing about God offering you the gift and you deciding to accept it or not. And if you accept it then you’re good. And if you reject it then you’ve made your choice and have to accept the consequences. Nope. That’s heresy. Luther would say that if you decided to accept God’s gift then it was God’s own work that made you accept it.
This is the nature of God that Jesus reveals. It is scandalous to our own sense of free will. And it was scandalous to the religious leaders then. How can God work this way? How can God be so unpredictable and uncontrollable? Where are the rules and laws and norms and predictability?
Let’s go back to our opening example of Jesus visiting for dinner. What if everything we’d think about simply didn’t matter at all?
What if our attitude was simply, “Jesus, everything that I have and ever will have is yours. I know that you love me unconditionally and that you’ll never ever let go of me. You created me. You gave me value. You made me good. I trust you.”
That is the beginning of an honest, true, and sincere loving relationship. God does not want to hurt us or hinder our independence. When I say there is no free will I’m speaking in philosophical terms. In ordinary terms it is God’s promise of safety and goodness for us. That safety and goodness give us freedom. It is freedom from religious laws and structures. It is freedom from rituals and ceremonies and “must dos”.
I want to end with an example from a book I’ve recently read at the suggestion of some colleagues. It is called Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune. I don’t recommend it. Critics have called it a naïve romantic fantasy. I’ll add that I found it tedious. But the reason we were reading it was because it is about death, or more specifically what happens after death.
Like many recent books it makes plenty of unfair stabs and Christian beliefs, but that doesn’t bother me. Where it goes wrong, but where it hits a theme that is sure to sell books, is that it plays with the idea that after you die you have a chance to redeem yourself by good works, or works of courage and commitment. Ultimately it suggests the human will and strength is supreme in the universe.
Our gospel reading would say no. God’s will is supreme. God’s will is not bound by the limits of human logic, but it is good, very good.
Rejoice that God is at work in you. Rejoice that it is not up to your own strength to save yourself. It is not laws or rules or strength. It is God’s work that you can count upon securely.
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