And Still You Do Not Know Me

JOHN 14:1-14 2 SAMUEL 7:12

“Have I been with you so long and still you do not know me, Philip”

“He who has seen me, has seen the Father”

St John’s Gospel is not concerned to give us a story of Jesus’ life.

It does not give us a moral code which we can either live by or be damned.

The Fourth Gospel is about knowing who Jesus is and seeing that knowledge as the basis for faith.

In John, Jesus continually testifies to the truth about himself to bring us to this important moment of theological showdown between Himself and the disciple Philip which forms the heart of tonight’s Gospel reading.

I am the Way, the truth and the Life. I am the light of the world. I am the I am the Resurrection and the life – he had said – so no wonder that on this day of divine disclosure, the truth is made crystal clear - he who has seen me has seen the Father.

The church is tearing itself apart as it decides the correct stance to take on issues of the day. This is nothing new in this and the issues cannot be evaded. It is using them as a starting point for working out authentic Christianity that is my problem.

For surely there are two interlocking principles which have to be considered before ever you can turn your attention to the rightness or otherwise about sexuality, remarriage in church, women’s ministry, just wars, globalisation and any other theological conundrum you care to mention.

It is how you understand Holy Scripture and its interpretation and then what truth about the identity of Christ and therefore reality of God you see emerging from that.

The writer of the Fourth Gospel leaves us in no doubt that Jesus is the Son of God so that to confront the truth about Jesus of Nazareth is to confront the truth about the Godhead. The Father speaks and acts in the Son – God is revealed in and by Jesus.

The people of Israel had a strict sense of monotheism and the idea that anyone could be described as God would have been blasphemous so it is not surprising that there are only three clear instances of Jesus being called God in the New Testament.

The opening section of John’s Gospel which includes the affirmation “The word was God” (John 1:1)

The confession of Thomas in which he addresses the risen Christ as “my Lord and my God” (John 20:28)

The opening letter to the Hebrews in which a psalm is addressed to Jesus as God (Heb 1:8).

But if you look wider and deeper in scripture you will find this truth waiting to be encountered in all sorts of other ways that would be closed off to those content with superficial interpretation.

In his excellent book “The Challenge of Jesus” – Tom Wright draws us back to the Old Testament where King David wants to build a house for God to live in, instead of the wandering tent left over from the wilderness period. The Lord says that such a house is not to be built now – but David will have a son after him and that son will build a temple for the Lord to live in.

Jews subsequently reading this passage would see it as a prophecy that God would raise David’s true and ultimate seed from the dead and that this resurrected seed would be, in some new sense, God’s son.

That the Temple which was seen as the building where heaven and earth actually interlocked, where the living God had promised to be present with His people, would end up only being a signpost towards a time when God would not dwell in a man built temple, but as a human being – a Messiah marked out by resurrection.

So when we turn to Jesus we find that remission of sins normally gained by visiting the temple, and then going back again and again as the next round of sin took hold on your life, this remission could now be obtained once and for all from Jesus Himself simply by welcoming him, trusting him and following him.

He was the personal embodiment of what the temple stood for.

Jesus own references to the destruction of the temple when he meant his own body, his criticism of the way temple rules had become a millstone round the necks of people. His driving out of the moneychangers and crooks who pedalled their ways through the old covenant, points to Jesus now claiming to be the place, and the means by which Israel’s God was personally present, now “tabernacling” with His people.

His actions in the Upper Room where he took the trappings of the Old Covenant and applied them to himself personally in the sharing of bread and wine takes on an extra level of significance when we see it as the setting up of an alternative to the temple cult.

It is from all this rumoured background that we finally come to the great revelation to Philip.

To have seen me is to have seen the Father….. but doing what?

Weeping at the grave of Lazarus.

Crying out in pain on the cross.

Accepting the ministrations of a fallen woman.

Promising salvation to a thief.

Having not a good word to say for those who would bind faith down amidst regulations.

Calling ordinary people without all the answers to lives of discipleship.

Have you been with me all this time and still you do not know me.

Somehow we seem intent on conjuring up a very different God in order to control and tame the wild, self giving love he pours on the world at the expense of eternal wounding.

To have seen me is to have seen the Father.

Not one who draws the circle of salvation so tight as to exclude almost everyone.

Not one whose main purpose in dying on the cross was to take on a punishment meted out by the Father.

Not one who judges mankind as failing and then closes the book on us.

Upon what reading of scripture and personal experience of God’slove are such negatives drawn.

This points to a return to the centrality of the Temple cult which was the very thing that Jesus came to overthrow and replace with himself.

And such overthrow would only be valid if the revolutionary was who he said he was – God’s Son – but more than just that – a son in whom the identity of the Father was fully present.

It is when we have grappled with these convictions that we can begin to see emerging a model for our own discipleship in our lives today which requires a sacrifice of the control and certainties we thought we would be holding to – towards one who blows our perceptions of who God is wide open – with the ever fracturing, breaking and renewing reality of His love.

Have I been with you all this time and still you do not know me.

It’s a cry from the heart of God today into the lives of his faithful people.

R 29.4.07