Baptismal identity [Easter 5]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 12:1-6

• James 1:16-21

• St. John 16:5-15

 

Grace, mercy, and peace [are yours] from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Tim 1)
 
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Service, saying: 
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”
 
We had began to talk about identity last week and how the Lord must give us our identity, because the world will too, but it won’t let us have just one. It will overwhelm us with the many identities it says we must have in order to be accepted.
 
We also made the point that we are not having our identity taken from us. No one is going to come and take anything from you. You have to give it away. And we are giving it away, freely. In joyful sinfulness, we gladly give our identity away for fear of being alone, or weird, or unwanted. Our true fear.
 
Today, Jesus continues to talk about His identity and, more importantly for us, His identity in relation to His Church. In the first place, Jesus is He Who is Crucified. In the second place, the church is She who is Baptized.
 
When Jesus talks later in St. John 16, He speaks of the little while when you won’t see Him and the little while when you will see Him. The disciples didn’t understand what He was talking about, because of the “see Him again” part. They knew Jesus had been predicting His passion, so they wouldn’t see Him after He dies and is buried, but they didn’t really think He would come back from the dead and be seen again.
 
Today, Jesus asks the same question when He says, “now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” The Apostles don’t ask where Jesus is going, because they know He’s going to die, so why would they? Every one who dies goes to the ground. No point in asking.
 
But Jesus apparently wanted them to ask because apparently He is going somewhere different. He is going to Him Who sent Him. Who is that? Jesus tells us in St. John 20:31, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”
 
It is the Father Who has sent Jesus. All well and good. But what did He send Jesus for, that Jesus has to return to Him? St. John 6:38, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”
 
Jesus seeks the Father’s Will, not His own (Jn 5:30). It is Jesus’ food, He says, “to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (Jn 4:34). So now God’s Will and God’s Work are joined together. Imseperable.
 
And what does Jesus teach us about that work? St. Luke 24:46, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead” because “it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt” (Isa 53:10).
 
So it is the will of God to Crucify His Son, that Jesus suffer according to His Will. Jesus is the Crucified, as the angels declare on Easter in St. Matthew 28:5, Who has gone to His Father’s Will joyfully, enduring the cross, “despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).
 
From that, we get that the Father’s will does not end with the Tomb, but continues on. The Father’s will does not stop just because of the sleep of death, it goes on to everlasting life. Jesus says in Acts 13:34-35, “And as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way, ‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.’
Therefore he says also in another psalm, ‘You will not let your Holy One see corruption.’”
 
Thus, in the first place, Jesus is the Crucified Who is raised from the dead. The “where He is going” He wants His Apostles to ask about is the Resurrection. Jesus is going to the tomb, but He is going on, in deathless life, to the Resurrection of all flesh, and we honor Him and identify Him in that way only.
 
For us today, we not only ask where Jesus is going (bc we already know), but we also ask if we can go too. So what is God’s Will for you? The Father’s Commandment is eternal life, Jesus says in St. John 12:50, “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another” (1 John 3:23).
 
Thus, in the second place, the true Church is the gathering of those who believe. Those who believe and are baptized for their salvation, as God commands in St. Matthew 28:19-20, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
 
So it is Evelyn who today gets to teach and to show you God’s Will for your life, fully and perfectly accomplished in Christ, and fearfully and wonderfully handed over to you, by the Helper Whom Jesus sends. You even got to ask Evelyn Who it was that sent her to us here and to this Sacrament of the water and the Word and her faith responded: Jesus Christ, Crucified.
 
In Christ, we are the Baptized Church of the Holy Ghost, brought into being and cleansed by the Water and the Blood, testifying of Christ’s great work on the Cross. We make it a point to learn from the Apostles and constantly ask Jesus where He is going.
 
Throughout the Church Year, we follow Him each time He answers. In Advent: to the flesh of man, He says. In Christmass: to the Virgin Mary. In Epiphany: to His divinity. In Lent: to His cross. In Easter: to His Resurrection. In Trinity: to His Church in Word and Sacrament. 
 
We hear our Shepherd’s voice, know Him, and follow Him. He has made His promises and He has kept them. And His Will is for a lifetime, says Psalm 30:5. It does not go away when you leave here and it doesn’t go away if you forget. Such that, having been born of the water and the Spirit, “no longer shall you be called Forsaken and your land, Desolation. For you shall be called My will and your land Lived In. For the LORD took pleasure in you and your land shall be lived in together” with Him (Isa 62:4). 
 
So when you want to ask God for something in His Name or what His is will for your life, the question you are really asking is “Where is Jesus going?” For where Christ Crucified goes is God’s Will for you and your destiny.
 
Where are you going Jesus? To my church. To my Body and Blood. To my resurrection of all flesh. To my everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness for you.
 
Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!