Light in the darkness...

4^th Week of Easter (W): Acts 12.24-13.5 and John 12.44-50
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

This is how Jesus ends his public ministry: “[He] cried out and said. . .what I say, I say as the Father told me.” We might think that this is somewhat anti-climatic given some of the more dramatic preaching he’s done not to mention the occasional flash of impatient tempter and the miracles. Why not go out with a BANG!? Leave them stunned and wanting more. Peak the crowd’s curiosity, give them something to remember and gossip about. Well, as we have seen before, especially with his odd tendency to tell people not to keep silent about their miraculous healings, Jesus is not particularly inclined to the dramatic, the flashy, the Media Event. He definitely needs a P.R. makeover! Jesus trusts the Word of his words to do the work. And so, it is absolutely necessary that those who follow him in the crowds understand that when he speaks, he speaks the Word of God as the Word of God. In other words, Jesus the Christ himself is the Event. . .and as an Event, it is Jesus the Christ who must be remembered. . .and preached and celebrated and given over and over again in gratitude and admiration.

How perfectly fitting then that paired with this concluding lesson on the nature of the Word is that scene in Acts where Barnabus and Saul are selected and ordained as apostles. Just as the Father sends his Son, Jesus the Christ, so the Son sends his disciples into the world as apostles, and those apostles, obedient to the Word of the Spirit, pick out two among them to become “Ones Sent Out”—apostles. The message here is crystal clear: the end of Jesus’ public ministry is the beginning of the Church’s apostolic push into the world. The fire of the campaign—the energy, the fuel for the “work to which [God has] called them”—is not drawn from public spectacle, staged theatrics. The apostles are driven out to preach and teach the Word by the Word, by the divine authority that commanded Jesus himself to “say and speak” what needed to be said and spoken.

Notice the lead up to Jesus’ concluding revelation. “Whoever believes in me…whoever sees me…I came into the world…everyone who believes in me…anyone who hears my words…whoever rejects me…does not accept my words…the words I spoke…I did not speak on my own…the Father who sent me commanded me…I know…what I say, I say as the Father told me.” Can we safely deny that Jesus the Christ himself is The Apostolic Message? Not and do so with any integrity. Had Jesus continued in his public ministry, as the principle preacher of the Word Made Flesh, we might come to conclude that there is something or someone else more important than the Messiah—our focus drawn beyond the Word Made Flesh to some distant subject, some faraway time and place for our salvation.

John the Baptist trumpets the coming of the Christ. The Christ arrives in the person of Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus the Nazarene preaches and teaches the Good News of the Father’s mercy contained and delivered in the Word Made Flesh. There is nothing “beyond” this message. No where for us to go but to him, nothing to do but do as he did. And so, we are thrown out there, “sent forth by the Holy Spirit” to proclaim with the words of our mouth and the work of our hands that Jesus is the Christ! The wait is over: there is no other. Those who reject him, reject the Father. Those who accept him, hear the merciful Word; they come to him for life eternal and receive his healing gift. Jesus says, “I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness. . .So, what I say, I say as the Father told me.”