Plain talk about Jesus, or "Come on, baby, light my fire"

7^th Week of Easter (M): Acts 19.1-8 and John 16.29-33
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St. Albert the Great Priory

PODCAST!

Let’s speak plainly this morning about Jesus and his Father. Late last week Jesus is talking to the disciples about his Father and about what he, Jesus, is preparing himself to do in the coming days. He says to his friends, “I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.” The first movement here—coming from the Father into the world—we call the Incarnation and celebrate at Christmas. The Son of God is made man. The second movement—leaving the world and going back to the Father—we call the Ascension and we celebrated it just yesterday on Ascension Sunday. The Son of God is taken up into heaven. So what? Plainly speaking: why do these two movement matter to us? Let’s see.

Today the disciples respond to Jesus’ plain spokeness with a simple admission of their own. They say (paraphrasing): “Now that you’ve stopped using figures of speech to teach us, we know that you know everything and that we don’t need to test you anymore. We believe that you come from God.” And here’s the kind of question that Jesus loves to ask: “Oh really? Do you believe now? Do you?” He asks this question b/c he knows why he came. He knows the trials that lie ahead. And he knows that his disciples will have to follow him through those trials—not immediately, not even soon, but eventually—they will have to follow him in order to call themselves “followers of the Way.”

Knowing his end and that they must follow, he asks, “Do you believe now?” Well, they believe that they believe! Jesus predicts that when his hour arrives their belief will leave them and that they will leave him, scattering to their homes. He says to them, “You will leave me alone.” This bit of news can’t be very comforting for his disciples! Is he accusing them of being cowards?! Jesus eases their anxiety: “But I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.”

In Christ we find perfect divinity and perfect humanity; he is fully human and fully divine. Two natures, one person. Son of God made Man. This is the Incarnation. If all things human are to be healed in Christ, then Christ must become all things human. The imperfect cannot heal the imperfect. If Christ becomes all things human in order to heal all things human, then he must also be fully divine. Only the perfect heals the imperfect. When we unite the gift of our lives with the gift of his sacrifice, our lives become a sacrifice as well and his love is made complete in us. We will follow him not of any necessity—we are saved by the cross and the empty tomb, not by our works!—but b/c having God’s love perfected in us makes us Christ. And Christ has risen to the Father, ascended to His right hand. Though he was beaten, crucified, and buried—by all accounts, defeated by injustice and death—he rose from the grave, lived among his friends, and ascended to his Father: a victory over the world and the fulfillment of his promise to us that we too will live with him forever when we rise on the last day.

His peace, the certainty of his success, eases our troubled hearts. But there is no guarantee in his peace that we will not face the same hour he faced. In fact, we are promised persecution, trial, and death. We cannot follow half-way or only follow those paths that run straight, wide, and downhill. Ask Peter or Paul or Andrew. Ask any of the Church’s martyrs. Ask our brothers and sisters in Christ who live in the Sudan, China, Vietnam, most anywhere in the Middle East. To follow Christ always brings peace; Christ’s peace does not always put an end to strife.

Do you still believe? Speak plainly then of the One who saved you. Do not fret over abandoning him. He is never alone. He is with the Father always. . .as we are and will be. Be ready for his fiery gift. Be ready for the conflagration that sets all of creation ablaze. . .