Mark 11:2-6; John 14:1-14 

With the decidedly Christmas theme of the hymns and service music this morning, you may think that I anticipated the snow cover we have on the ground. Well, I did not, but rather it reflects the theme of incarnation that I want to pick up on from this morning’s text from John.  

Have you ever built up an image or ideal of a famous person or someone you greatly admire but haven’t met, only to find when you meet them, that you wish you could have stayed with your fantasy? Many people do that with the person they are going to marry. Somehow, they date their fantasy of that person only to discover the real person after they are married! 

I remember in college being very excited when I had the opportunity to meet the well-known and brilliant educator, Paulo Friere. He did a great deal of writing and has been a major influence on education throughout the world particularly in South America. An opportunity came for me to meet him as part of a small group of only 8 – 10 people in Ann Arbor, while I was a student nearby in Ypsilanti. We sat expectantly awaiting his arrival. Finally, in shuffled this wizened little old man, stooped with thinning hair, coke-bottle glasses, and watery eyes. He did not look at all like the image of the robust and powerful man I had expected. 

A man had an appointment with a Judge Murray about an important legal matter. He came into the outer office and asked the somewhat mousy looking woman at the filing cabinet if she would please tell Judge Murray that John Williams was here to see him. She gave him a nod and went into Judge Murray’s office, around her large mahogany desk with the name, Barbara Murray on it, seated herself in her black leather chair and spoke into the intercom to her secretary, “please tell Mr. Williams that Judge Murray will see him now.” 

Sometimes our expectations are way off! 

Sometimes our expectations of how others will treat or regard us are off as well. Sometimes we expect to be fussed over, treated with more deference than we are. We want to see the head honcho not an underling or assistant no matter how well they represent the “boss.” 

I remember my excitement on the first day of class in one of my college courses. The professor was known to be brilliant in her field, had published several books, and was reported to be a great teacher as well. So there we were on the first day of class, eagerly awaiting the renowned Dr. White, and in walks this young guy who says, “Hi, I’m Dr. White’s Teaching Assistant, I will be doing all the lectures for this class.” I felt pretty cheated! 

Or you go to lobby a congressperson, set the appointment and everything, only to meet with an aide. You feel cheated, no matter how well the aide represents and reports to their boss. (Even though a lot of them I’ve met have a lot more on the ball than their boss does!) 

You may remember the story in 2 Kings 2 about the healing of Naaman. Namaan was a brilliant and successful army general for the King of Aram, Israel’s neighbor. There was one really big problem. He had leprosy. Naaman got word that there was a prophet in Israel, Elijah, who could cure him of his leprosy. So, with a great many attendants and expensive gifts he eventually arrives at Elijah’s hut. Elijah doesn’t even bother to go out to see Naaman. He sends his servant with the instructions, “Just tell him to wash in the Jordan seven times, that ought to do it.” Naaman was incensed. “I thought,” he said, “that he could at least have come out himself!” Well, do you want to be healed, or do you want to be fawned over? 

I think some of this is going on in relation to Jesus in the New Testament, and in the church ever since. 

John the Baptist asks, “Are you the one, or are we to look for another?” Are you it, or are we to look beyond you, behind you? Jesus says, “Look at what I do.” This is how God is revealed. 

In chapter 14 of the Gospel of John, Jesus is preparing his disciples for life in his absence. It appears to me that his disciples were pretty disappointed with his answers. I believe the disciples thought that if Jesus’ earthly reign was about to end, this was good news because it meant that his heavenly reign was about to begin. Maybe the issue was not so much that they could not imagine God in human form. They had certainly witnessed Jesus’ divine power in his healings, teachings, and authority. I am wondering if it was not Jesus divinity that they had trouble with, but rather his humanity! Perhaps they saw his power, his connection to God, as only a glimpse of what was to come. It was but a prelude to the more glorious things, the revelation of the truly supernatural God, yet to come. 

I think the disciples wanted to see God directly. Their thought was, “If Jesus is the revealer of God, must be he will open the heavens and we will see the heavenly being of God!” The disciples wanted to see God in God’s supernatural being. They wanted to enter the Holy of Holies, that place in the temple where even the priests were forbidden to enter. They wanted more than Moses was allowed, which was simply a retreating view of God’s back. 

The disciples seem to have accepted Jesus as divine, which meant for them that he would move into heavenly glory and take them with him. Remember the request of the disciples James and John that Jesus grant one of them to sit at his right hand and one at his left when he entered into glory. They wanted a front row seat when Jesus comes into glory, when the heavens open up and God in all mystery is revealed. Jesus says to them, “Nope, no can do, but you will do what I do in this earthly realm.”  

On the one hand, Jesus statement about God in him provides great assurance. He says, “You have seen God, God is here. All of who I am reveals God. Following me is a way home—being with God, God being with you, as I am with God.” To trust like Jesus, to act like Jesus, to love like Jesus is to be in relationship with God. It is to be in God’s presence, so much so that whatever they ask in Jesus name, as if talking to the earthly Jesus, God will grant. Whatever they would have asked of Jesus their earthly brother, that he would have granted, God will grant. I think that is what Jesus means when he says, “Whatever you ask in my name will be given you.” 

Though Jesus response provides assurance, it also provides a very clear limit. Jesus is saying, “What you see is what you get.” It may not be all we want or all we expect, but it is all we are going to get! 

In Jesus, God is as revealed as God is going to get. Can we live with that? I think it is troublesome for us too. 

Look at the text. The text does not linger over the hidden nature or mystery of “the Father.” It focuses on the visibility, the accessibility of “the Son.” Ours really is not a very spiritual faith, especially in terms of spiritual speculation. There is no escape from concreteness into metaphysics. Jesus is quite intolerant of theological speculation. One of his criticisms of both the Pharisees and the Sadducees was their absolute confidence in their speculative systems. 

Ours is a religion of proclamation (you are saved, God is at hand), far more than it is a religion of education, meditation, or supernatural revelation. 

I am not sure that many Christians today are any more satisfied with the limit of God’s revelation in the person and work of Jesus than his disciples were. 

In many ways, the church now and through the ages has over “divinized” Jesus in so exalting him to a person with the God of the cosmos. The few hymns we sing at Christmas not withstanding, the emphasis has been on seeing Jesus as God, rather than seeing God as Jesus. Look at so much of Christian art: halos on Jesus even as an infant and a beatific smile on a cherubic face rather than the “dried apple” face of the typical infant, Mary haloed and holy, endless scenes of the triumphant Jesus sitting on a heavenly throne. Doesn’t this say that we are not satisfied with the work he did do, with what he did choose to reveal about God? 

Look at us. Look at what we want. It too is more than Jesus gives. We too want a direct encounter with God in a supernatural way. (Often we think there is something wrong with us if we haven’t had some clearly “spiritual” encounter.) We too want angel visitants. We want the voice of God speaking directly in our ears. We are not satisfied with the profound love, trust, and self-giving of an earth-bound figure as being an adequate revelation of “the Most High God.” Like Jesus’ first disciples, we too want the world to be transformed by the supernatural, otherworldly intervention of God, rather than by doing what Jesus did—loving one another, letting the oppressed go free, confronting the powers of death and destruction, and trusting in the presence of God. 

I have always wondered about people and religious movements (and they are legion) that are so caught up with the “Second Coming.” What was so wrong with the first one? Such a focus seems to reveal a profound dissatisfaction with Jesus and what he did on his earthly sojourn. It is simply unfaithful in the highest order! What! Jesus didn’t do enough? God didn’t come in the way we think God should? Must be God will have another try and do better next time! 

No, my friends, the whole text stresses that God is revealed in the works of Jesus. Then Jesus says, “God is revealed and encountered in the works that ‘you will do’ which will be even greater than my works.” Remember that Jesus is speaking to the whole group of disciples. The writer of John is directing these words to the church, those who are now Christ’s body, his presence in the world. Their works are far greater, greater in number, as they multiply Jesus’ works hundreds fold. 

Jesus says that God is seen in the work and word of Jesus and in what his followers do. What is it that we don’t get about… 

“Lo, I am with you always.”

“Feed my sheep.”

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

“Fear not little flock, it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

“If you have seen me, you have seen God.”

“What you have done unto the least of these you have done unto me.”

“Behold, I will not leave you desolate.”

“Love your enemies.”

“God so loved the world that God gave the only Son…not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved…”

 My friends, we are Christians. Jesus will have to do!