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Sunday, September 20, 2020

“This Is Eternal Life...”

A sermon based upon John 17
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 
Sunday, September 20th, 2020 (Growing In Grace)

One of most ‘spiritually’ informed movies in recent years was Contact, a Sci-Fi movie staring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.  Foster played an atheist astronomer and McConaughey a divinity professor, who accidentally came together to try to answer a big question:  What kind of life is out there? 

That movie had a simple plot, but it became more and more complex.  The childhood dream and lifelong work of the female Astronomer was to make contact with life ‘out there’ but the surprise is that life ‘out there’ makes contact her.  But the surprising message from ‘out there’ is not about what’s out there, but what happens to humans after they die.  That’s certainly not the contact she, nor we would have expected.  So, the major point of the story, is that both religious people and scientific people need hope beyond this life.

Near the end of John’s gospel, Jesus is praying for his disciples and he gives us a definition of the hope of eternal life.   This is eternal life…’, Jesus says.  Now,  we don’t get many direct definitions from Jesus.  But here is one: Jesus defines for us the meaning of the phrase: ‘eternal life’.  Interestingly, he doesn’t define it like we would think.  Instead of telling us what life is like after we die, as the movie intended, Jesus focuses on what eternal life means now. 

THAT THEY MAY KNOW YOU... John 17:3
Most all of us are familiar with this phrase, ‘eternal life’.  It’s a most basic part of our Christian Faith.   We know it because of John 3:16: “…’whoever believes in him shall have eternal (or everlasting, KJV) life.  

John 3:16 affirms that the promise of eternal life means through faith in Jesus Christ we are given the promise of life after death’—the promise that when we die we will live in heaven with Jesus.  Eternal life and heavenly life are one in the same.  What ‘heaven’ means, eternal life means.   We might not be able to describe this in detail nor precisely, but we trust that faith in Jesus gives us exactly this hope of life beyond death.  Eternal life affirms the promise of life everlasting and life forever with God.

But of course, such a belief and trust in the hope of eternal life goes beyond the best, most polished, and precisely proven human knowledge we have, which we call Science.  Science promises so much for our lives now and it adds so much quality to most every facet of our lives: electricity, appliances, TVs, computers and cell phones.  Who could imagine their lives without these things, humans didn’t have a generation ago, but which we take for granted and couldn’t imagine life without today?  But it is exactly this this kind of ‘knowledge’ that is unable to say anything about what happens after we die.  All that the very best science can say is that death is ‘eternal’, not life. 

For the person who only believes in human knowledge, or in science and the highest technology we have, there is no such thing as eternal life.  Eternal Life is just wishful thinking the the fictional, eternal fountain of youth, an unachievable fairytale even to possibilities and methods of science.  Science can’t prove that eternal life isn’t real as a reality beyond this reality,  but science simply ignores and disregards it, because it can’t be proven in the reality we know.  There is absolutely no scientific evidence for eternal life.  It doesn’t appear to exist in the same way you now exist, your appliances exists, or our universe exists.  While matter is eternal, the forms of matter aren’t.  Eternal life, as we are now known, resides outside of scientific exploration.

While there are, of course, people who claimed they’ve had Near Death Experiences, or say that they have returned from the dead, such claims are still not recognized by mainstream Science.  This isn’t supported by science because it could proven otherwise; they had dreams, hallucinations, or visions, or they weren’t really dead.  All that Science can prove and preach is ‘Eternal Death’; ‘When you are dead, you are dead.’

I find it most interesting that when Jesus defines Eternal Life that Jesus says nothing here about going to heaven, or what happens after we die.  In another passage, Jesus did speak about this—going to prepare a place for his disciples.  Here, however, Jesus gives a definition of Eternal Life based more on who God is, not based on where we will go when we die.  In fact, right here Jesus says that to know God is to have eternal life.  Was that the definition you were expecting—That Eternal Life begins in knowing God right now.  Eternal life begins even before going to heaven, and before being reunited with loved ones.  Eternal life is knowing God right now.

This definition of Eternal Life comes in the form of a prayer.  Do you see that?   Jesus prays; ‘...this is eternal life, that they (his disciples) May know...the only true God and Jesus Christ whom (God) has sent.”   Do you catch it?   Eternal life is not what you must wait on; Eternal life isn’t just about where you go when you die, but again, let me repeat, to be perfectly clear, or at least as clear as this can be; according to Jesus, Eternal Life is also about knowing God right now.  Through Jesus the Eternal has entered into our very temporary lives now, right now!   When we come to know and live in God, and when we let Jesus live in us, the eternal is here; the eternal is in us now!

I realize this sounds a bit strange to our modern ears.  We live in a world that doesn’t think a lot about God or much about eternity either.  We’ve kind of pushed thoughts about God and eternity to the ‘back burner’ of the many things we want and need to do ‘now’.  We don’t have much time left to think about God until something tragic happens; like it did when basketball great, Kobe Byrant, and his young daughter, Gianna were tragically killed in a helicopter crash.  When Kobe’s wife spoke at their memorial service she spoke sorrowfully, but also hopefully about how she had to believe God took them both so they could look after each other in heaven. 

Besides trying to comfort ourselves in times of tragedy, our world normally pushes God out.  There’s hardly any room left for God in public spaces.  There’s also hardly any room left for God in many private lives.  Where do we even have time to even encounter an eternal God in our own ‘now’?  How often do we speak of the eternal or seek God right now?  But here, Jesus prays for his disciples to know the Eternal God, revealed through himself, into their own lives and in our own lives too, right now?

I realize we don’t think in these terms of looking for the ‘eternal’ in our own now, so let me share a story of how practical could be.   Pastor Will Willimon tells “while he was once traveling home one night after a speaking engagement in a remote part of South Carolina, his car began to sputter, to falter, and finally rolled to a stop.  It was ten or ten thirty on a summer evening. The stars were out, but otherwise no light could be seen anywhere.  

He said: ‘I had no idea where I was. I got out and stood beside the car in the darkness. Five, ten minutes passed. At last, I could hear a car in the distance. I could see its lights now, and yes, here it came. I looked into its lights, smiled hopefully, as it . . . passed on by, barely slowing for me. Well, at least someone is on this road tonight, I thought. But it was another fifteen minutes, a virtual eternity, before another car came. And it, too, passed by. I got in the car, put my tie back on, straightened my hair, and resumed my post beside my stricken auto. It was late now. Who in their right mind would stop for me at midnight on a country road? Would I be stranded here all night?

Again, I saw lights coming toward me. As they came closer, I could hear music, loud music, emanating from this car. It was coming at a high rate of speed. I could tell that this car was really flying. No chance of them stopping. But as its lights shined in my eyes, the driver of the car put on brakes and skidded, finally coming to a stop a hundred or so feet beyond me, sliding all the way around on the pavement. Then, throwing the car into reverse, he backed up nearly as fast as he had come, screeching to a stop when he was even with my car. I gulped. It was a multicolored old Lincoln with fender skirts, some part of some sort of animal waving from the radio antenna, and two little red, blinking lights on the back of the rearview mirror. Oh, no, I thought. What now? Here I am in the middle of nowhere; I’m gonna die.

 I could see two large men in the car. The one on the driver’s side was wearing a T-shirt; the man on the passenger side was bare chested. He held a large can of beer and looked at me through a pair of dark glasses. “Hey, man,” he shouted at me from his window. “You got trouble?” Now, I’ve got trouble. “I’m just resting, counting stars, letting my engine cool; don’t trouble yourself over me.”

Before I could say anything else, these strangers were out of their car, had my hood up, offered me refreshments, and were tinkering with my motor. Nearly an hour later, long after a dozen other cars had passed by on the other side, with the moon well on its way down the western sky, the two shook my hand, bid me farewell with, “Take it easy, neighbor,” and squealed off into the darkness of a low country summer night. I headed home.

If you can’t see God in another human person, where else can you find him?  And if you only see the eternal in what happens after you die,  or only in the true God you can’t see, and never see or look for God in the person or people you do see, don’t you miss something (-one) very important?  Didn’t you miss knowing the eternal, here and now, in another person, and even knowing how the eternal can be known in you?

THAT THEY MAY HAVE MY JOY.... John 17:13
So, what’s the big deal about the ‘eternal’ coming into our now; about God being known by us and being known through us? 

At the core of our Christian Faith is the story of how God becomes flesh and lives among us through Jesus Christ; the incarnation we name it.   But the incarnation is only half of the good news.  The other half is the atonement, which is about how Jesus remains alive in flesh and blood through us, and dies for us, to restore our relationship with God so that God can be restored and reflected in our lives right now.   God is revealed in Jesus so that the Spirit of Jesus can be alive in us.  The incarnation becomes the way that restores our own relationship with God.   Is that so difficult to understand?  I hope not.  Because the Jesus way of dying for us, also relates to Jesus’ desire to live in us now, and this for the living of our own days, here and now.

A good example of how challenging it can be to have Jesus alive in us can be understood in the growing challenge to show Christlike love and compassion in this world bent on division, confusion and hate.  Recently, a very sad story was told in the news about a Hispanic Transgender child who was living on the streets.  It appeared that the family and community had disowned the child.   As the teen was encountered to be living from McDonalds to McDonalds, homeless and hopeless, rumors got out in social media that this child was threatening others.  That warning for avoidance created fear, and fear created rumors and the fear turned to hate and this confused, abandoned and lost teen, who found no human pity or compassion, was eventually found beaten, and murdered.  When the family refused to have any kind of memorial or remembrance for their child, it became clear just how ‘lost’ that child had been.   Only one person tried to help.  No one else cared.  No one else tried.  They all seem to be overtaken by fear and hate, rather than to be filled with compassion and love.

Jesus would have cared.  Do you doubt that?  If you do, then you don’t really know Jesus.  One of the hardest things to do is to separate the person whom God loves, from the behavior; or as we say in church, to separate the sin from the sinner.  Jesus was able to do that.  Jesus was able, as Dottie Rambo wrote, ‘to look beyond my fault, and see my need ‘.    And he doesn’t only do this for you, Jesus can do it in you, and Jesus also does it for ‘them’ too.  And for us to do this is still hard to do, whether you are looking at another person who is struggling through life, or you are looking honestly at yourself.  It’s hard to look, to see and not feel the fear and resist the truth, that left unredeemed, can become cruel, cold hate.   That’s part of what it means to be living in a broken, fallen, and complex world. 

A lot of people want to say they love, but they can’t get beyond the flaw, the fault, or the sin.   Other people say there they have love, and they say they show love, because there see no flaw, no fault and no sin, but what does that kind of ‘blind’ love do toward bringing universal hope or healing?  Musn’t brokenness still be acknowledged for full healing to come?  Isn’t it only when we see flaws, see the wounds, and acknowledge the hurts and the needs, that genuine help and the fullness of healing comes?  If we become like Christ, we can be the person who sees the sinner, but how is still given the strength to love, and to overcome with love.  Only in God’s strength can we overcome sin with love.   This is still the only way that healing and hope break into the hurt and brokenness of the world. 

Jesus sat and ate with sinners, but he loved them too, just as he loves us, even as we are still sinners; either righteous or unrighteous sinners.  Jesus came to call all sinners to turn toward God’s love find hope and healing. While I don’t think any sinner can overcome all sin in this life, I do believe that God’s love can transform our lives ‘while we are still sinners’ beginning with us, right where we are, here and now, ‘warts and all’. 

Transformation for any of us, can begin now, in he Spirit of Christ’s own compassion, Christ’s own understanding, Christ’s own acceptance and his healing love and hope offered to us, and alive in us, any and all of us, right now.  We all ‘fall short of God’s glory’.   We call can be restored to his glory, even in our own brokenness by learning to acknowledge and live in the healing ‘truth’ that only God can fully save and heal us from our own sin.  We certainly can’t get over sin, any sin, all by ourselves through our own determination in this world.  We all need to accept our brokenness, that we must learn to live with, and we have to learn to accept God’s love that none of us can live without, either now or in eternity.  As John himself wrote of the hope of God’s transforming love and hope: ‘It does not yet appear, who we shall be, but we know, that when Christ shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

There are so many things ‘breaking’ up in our world today (families, traditions, relationships), that it can become easier to live in fear, out of hate, than it is to choose to live with Faith, Hope and love.  But it is important for us to choose faith, hope, and love in every situation because only through this ‘eternal’ perspective breaking into our ‘now’ can we receive the joy that Christ can give us, even in troubled, challenging, and difficult times. 

Do you see that joy is also why Jesus was praying for his disciples to know the eternal God here and now?  The joy Christ prays for us isn’t a prayer for perfect happiness or for the removal of all life’s troubles and challenges.  The joy Christ desires for us is his own ‘joy’ which included his own struggle in life and his suffering on the cross.  There is no wishful thinking, and no illusion (or delusion) in Christ’s prayer for us.  What here in Christ’s prayer is a prayer for the ‘glory’ that God revealed through Christ’s own life to also be realized as God’s eternal now revealed in and through us.  What is this ‘glory’ that comes to be ‘joy’ known to us in our own here and now?  Can we also name it?  Can we name the ‘joy’ that God can give us right now; that we don’t have to wait on heaven to know and to receive?

THAT THEY MAY ALL BE ONE...  John 17:21
I find it interesting that the ‘eternal life’ Jesus names as God becoming known to us now, is also named the joy Jesus owned for us and wishes for us.  This prayer aimed at the very source of how we receive knowledge of God and joy through Christ, is named, not once, but twice as the ‘glory’ that is found when ‘they may be one, as we are one’,  Do you see what Jesus is praying as the key that unlocks it all; knowledge of God and the joy of Christ?   All this talk of eternal life, all this talk of God, and all this talk of fulfillment and joy, comes down to finding God’s glory in the ‘oneness’ and ‘unity’ we can have in each other, which reflects the oneness of God the Father and God the Son.  

Now, I realize that this is mysterious, spiritual and religious talk---to speak of how God the Father and God the Son are one.   It is a mystery so great it took several hundred years for the Church to come to grips with it.  But what did that really do?  For as soon as the church settled on what they should believe about the Trinity, the church lost its own unity and eventually broke into East and West, then Catholic and Protestant, and then finally, as we have today, into all the many different kinds of Christian religious expression we find in our world.  Looking back at what the Church and Christians have argued and divided over, often looks silly and ridiculous.  Can’t we look at it and understand that it is much more important and Christlike for us to stay united in our differences, than to be divided by them? 

If there is any hope of answering the ‘oneness’ prayer which Jesus offered, which is also meant for us, here and now?   It’s so easy to get stuck on the sin, on the differences, focusing only on our own ideas and ideals, rather than having to face, and deal with what’s real.  It’s so easy, in a fallen world, to let remain divided by the ‘us’ verses the ‘thems’, rather than to see how we are all more alike than we could ever be different.   How can Jesus prayer for knowing God, receiving joy and becoming one through him, be realized by us in our own here and now?

In the middle of this entire passage is part of the prayer, that we must decide for our own lives, if this happens.   Right in the middle of everything Jesus says in this prayer, he asked, hopes and prays to the Father, that he will ‘sanctify them (his disciples) in the truth.   This is clarified by God’s word (John 17:17).  

Of course, the Bible can be used to be divisive too, as we all might see portions of it differently, but Jesus isn’t speaking simply about the Scriptures, but he is speaking the main ‘truth’ of the Bible, that guides us to God, to fullness of life and joy, and to seeking unity with each other and for God’s great dream for this world.   This ‘Word’ of ‘truth’ is, of course, Jesus, who once challenged the experts of his own day: “You search the Scriptures for eternal life; but the Scripture speak of me, and you do not come to me?”  

What this means is that Jesus is praying for is ‘unity’ around himself, nothing and no one else.   “I in them, and you in me”, he prays.   So, in order to have unity in the church, and in the world, we have to seek him, and only him, and we must also allow Jesus to be Lord in everything, especially in how we love others who are different.

The year was 1939 and trainloads of Jewish children with pale, thin faces and sunken eyes were piling into Sweden. These boys and girls, mostly only three or four years old, would file off the trains with nothing except a large tag around their necks stating their name, age, and hometown. Most of them had already seen and experienced more than anyone should see or experience in a lifetime.

Swedish families were taking the children in for the duration of the war. One of the Swedes who opened his home to them was a man by the name of Johann Erickson, a middle-aged man who had no children of his own. When he learned that a frightened nine-year-old named Rolf needed a home, he responded and the little Jewish boy began to adjust to life in his new Swedish Lutheran home. At first, any knock on the door or loud voice outside would drive Rolf to the closet where he would hide and cover his head, but slowly the warmth and love of his new Swedish home began to change him. He put on weight and a spark of life returned to his eyes. Eventually, he even began to laugh and trust again.

Later after the Nazi invasion of Sweden, men at the machine shop where Johann worked warned him that he would lose the boy, that the Nazis would come and take him away. "They'll never take a child of mine," Erickson declared. "Not as long as I'm alive."

In keeping with the promise the Swedish government had made, Johann tried his best to respect Rolf's religious heritage. Even though he took Rolf to Lutheran services with him, he also saw that the boy learned his Jewish traditions and when the time came, he arranged for Rolf to be bar mitzvahed. For when the war ended, Johann wanted to be able to return to Rolf's parents a son who had been raised as closely as possible in the way they would have raised him themselves.

But when the war ended, the family was not reunited. Rolf's parents and all of his brothers and sisters had perished in the Holocaust, their fate one with the millions of others who had not survived the war. Rolf did not leave Sweden. Instead of returning to Germany — to the hometown scribbled on the note around his neck, Rolf remained in Sweden and became part of Johann's family. He was the son Johann never had. And over the years that followed, Rolf became a successful businessman and whenever Johann needed someone, Rolf was there. He took him to the doctor. He cared for him when he was ill. And when he lay on his deathbed, there was Rolf at his side to comfort him still. For in his time of need, Johann had offered him the love of God — and they were one in service.

As the candles of the Passover meal were burning short, as the meal drew to a close and Jesus’ time on earth way fading, Jesus gathered his disciples around and prayed for them in the time to come.  He prayed that God be known to them, that God’s joy would still come to them, and he also prayed that they would be one.  He prayed for them and he prayed for us.

Remember that great Old Testament text: “Trust the Lord with all your heart, and lean not upon your own understandings.  In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths.”  I memorized that text young, because I needed it then.  And I still need it now.  You do too.  This is true guidance for anyone, anywhere, and anytime who always must face the limits of who we are and what we know. 

If we really want this kind of unity, which brings this kind of joy, and reveals this kind of God, who is here, right now, we too, will have to grow up to become who God has called us to be.   This is exactly what ‘sanctify’ means, that we become more like the God who created all of us, rather than thinking only about ourselves.   Oneness and unity does not mean we have to give up expressing ourselves, but unity in Christ determines how we express ourselves and how we live together for the sake of the eternal glory of God.  This is the very God who asks us to ‘humble ourselves’ so we will one day be fully, finally, and rightly exalted by him.  

This is how eternity breaks into the our own now, and how we become ‘one’ not only with each other, but we find ‘oneness’ with the eternal, true, redeeming, loving God who is still being revealed in Christ’s spirit; in whomever that Spirit of is found.  Amen. 

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