Identity [Easter 4]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 40:25-31

• 1 Peter 2:11-20

• St. John 16:16-22

 

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: 
“So they were saying, ‘What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We do not know what he is talking about.’”
 
One of the points Jesus is trying to make today is that of distraction. The disciples are distracted by this “little while” and the pregnant woman is distracted by labor. In both cases, Jesus resolves the issue. You will see Jesus after just a little while of not seeing Him and you will have joy after just a little while of labor pains.
 
But, you are distracted. You all have attention deficit. You all have been conditioned by your overlords and mega-media to subsist in tiny fractions of information, since man’s ability to globally communicate. 
 
Famous author George Orwell, who wrote the book 1984 which if you haven’t read, read today, is quoted all the way back in the 1930s when reporting on the Spanish Civil War. He commented how in 1936, journalism died. He said this because battles were being reported where there were none, heroes being made of pretend actors, and mass casualties where not a shot had been fired.
 
This is all done to distract the people. If we don’t like one side, we tell how evil they are with spurious evidence. If we like one side, we make it every able young man’s patriotic duty to sign up and fight for them. Never mind that there’s a great depression, never mind that your family needs you at home, never mind that you won’t have a home when you get back home.
 
Just follow the leader.
 
And this is what we’ve done to ourselves. We have thrown out our own responsibility to self and to family and to identity. We have given up our identity in the social and political arena, letting party chairs and talking heads give us new identities every day, and we wonder why our children and grandchildren aren’t around anymore.
 
As the “outrage-do jour” rages across headlines and news feeds, we get behind those who appear to think like us and demonize those who don’t, without a rational shred of proof. It never enters our head that someone could reasonably have a disagreement with us. No matter. You are distracted. The issue is not important, just so long as you’re not paying attention to what is important.
 
Repent. We are the once possessed man from St. Matthew 12, who sweeps his house clean and puts it in order, but does not fill the cleaned space. The demon comes back with several of his buddies and fills it for him and “…the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation”, Jesus says (v.43-45).
 
So it will be if we continue to be distracted. So it will be that we will miss Jesus, because for a little while we will not see Him and if we don’t know what comes after that, then we’ll just have to create our own Jesus and our own religion.
 
But that is not what used to take place among Christians. What used to be here was community. Community that could throw pot-lucks and laughter at that empty darkness and madness overcoming the world. Family that understood what the world wanted us to believe and rejected it completely in favor of Christ’s Church.
 
Jesus appears, today, to promise to leave, after having cleansed His house on earth. The disciples then remember that Jesus had been talking about His Passion quite often and that He will die. They don’t remember that He also said He will rise again, because no one comes back from the dead.
 
So they are distracted and frantic, such that they cannot stay awake in the garden of Gethsemane and neither can they remain by Jesus’ side as He is arrested and taken away. 
 
Is this what Jesus is producing in His religion? 
Don’t get distracted. Christ says we will see Him again. Are you in labor pains real or imagined? Jesus says joy comes in the morning. You don’t have to pretend to clean up your house, sweep it, and get things in order. Jesus says in Ephesians 1, “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (v. 22-23).
 
Jesus already fills all things. You are not left comfortless, as orphans, or empty and left to fill up yourself with some sort of earthly crusade where only you and God are players. Jesus leaves and comes back and fills His church. He comes back to His believers in His resurrection.
 
It is in the Resurrection that our true hope, our true identity begins. It is in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ that we see God’s true ability. That He can take death and make it produce life. That He can take invisible-ness, ascending to the Right Hand of God, and make it visible-ness in Word and Sacrament. That He can take apparent emptiness, and make it complete fullness.
 
This is the Gospel of Christ that needs to be preached, because we need reminding. It is the Word of the Cross that is God’s power of salvation, but without faith it is foolishness. So much so, that when an unbeliever comes to church and sees empty pews and, maybe, empty words he immediately thinks this place is not any better than a host of other places or things with which he may fill himself with whatever.
 
It is only with the eye of God-given-Faith, that anyone sees the fullness of God, because faith hears God’s promise that He will fill all in all, that He will fully forgive sins, and that He has completed His entire history of work on His cross, and believes.
 
God does not leave us to fend for ourselves as some sort of test. He completes the project and hands it over to us for free. He did not leave Adam and Eve naked, but clothed them with His sacrifice (Gen 3:21), giving them His cover, His identity. For, as Adam and Eve were clothed, we too are clothed by the Almighty with the robe of Christ’s righteousness.
 
Isaiah 61:10 says, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness”
 
And Galatians 3:27, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”
 
We are now sons, in Christ. We are no longer sinners or empty vessels, but filled with Christ. We are sons of God, chosen to inherit all the Father gives. Chosen to be His believers on earth, His royal priesthood, so that while we’ll go through life wondering what will be the next thing we are to be outraged at in hopes of finally standing somewhere as myself, there will be no question as to who we are.
 
In putting on Christ in baptism, as Galatians 3 told us, we receive Jesus’ identity that He hands to us. With His identity, we also receive His inheritance. We do not have to kill, as the vineyard workers did in St. Matthew 21, we do not have to scheme, or sweep our lives clean. 
 
It happens in a simple declaration from Him. The objective declaration, having nothing to do with us, of justification by faith alone (Rom 3:24-26). Jesus says, “I said, ‘You are gods, And all of you are children of the Most High’” (Ps 82:6) and you are sons indeed. Jesus says, “ have set you free” (Jn 8:36) and you are free indeed. 
 
Free from the cares, concerns, and distractions of the world which promises all fullness, a real ID, and utter happiness, but fails, every time, to give it.
 
So, in order to fight back against this world that wishes to strip the Christian of his identity in Christ, and his values and his place, we rest in His justification, His resurrection, and plainly declare, “I am a Christian.”
 
In front of governors, blood-thirsty mobs, and fake news with “I am a Christian”. In the face of tragedy, sorrow, and an apparent decrease in attendance: “ I am a Christian”. When the world asks for your defense or your credentials, or when they demand to know why you aren’t mad like them: “I am a Christian.”
 
And finally, when the devil closes his case against us proving that we do not deserve to be here and that we do not merit the love of God, but deserve to be cast into the lake of fire, you say “I am a Christian.”
 
We don’t need war, plandemics, legal opinions, or voting to have an identity. That is not how we want to be treated and it is not how we should treat our neighbor. Instead we trust in God’s Word in our lives, God’s Word in their lives, pray for God to work, and continue to love them and invite them back home, to the Church Christ calls His own and fills to overflowing with His true Gospel and true sacraments. 
 
Jesus has already told us the next big distraction. But every distraction is the same: Doubt God, stay away from Church, hate your neighbor. Every single time. Will we see Jesus again? Yes. At the end. In a preliminary way today in Word and Sacrament. 
 
But read the end of the Gospel reading again. Jesus does not say, there, that you will see Him and rejoice. He says, “So you will have sorrow now, but I will see you…” I will see you and you will rejoice.
 
Dear Christians, Jesus sees us. Jesus knows us. We are not forgotten. We are where God wants us to be. We are seen and we rejoice. We know He is among us in Word and Sacrament and our joy will not be taken. 
 
Alleluia!  Christ is Risen!