May 21 2006 Lectionary Reading

Reading: “Because you have committed yourselves to love and trust in me, believing I came from the Father, the Father loves you………” John 16.27(The Message)

It is, some say a miracle that the Book of Kells still exists – a wonderful handwritten copy of the gospels produced sometime in 680 or 690. A copy of the gospels written, painted, in breathtaking beauty. A wonder that it has survived. It has survived robbery - The little Abbey of Kells in Ireland where it was kept was robbed and plundered seven times; and someone stole it and buried it for three months; it has survived the loss of its covers and binding, when somebody tore the gold plating from the front of it, and it survived a Victorian bookbinder who, with a guillotine, sliced off the edges of the pages to make it nice and neat and square.

At the beginning of the gospel of John, the artist shows John, on a throne,

not unusual, you might think, until you notice that the artist has depicted John with the biggest halo you have ever seen, it is almost the size of the apostle himself……..

But this is a clue to the honour and reverence this gospel was held in…….

and several pages on, there is the drawing of an eagle, in red, gold, and blue,

the eagle is the old symbol of John’s gospel, because of the way the John’s gospel soars like an eagle to such great heights………

As in these words of Jesus in John 16: where Jesus says “Because you have committed yourselves to love and trust in me, believing I came from the Father, the Father loves you………”

“Because you have committed yourselves to love and trust in me,

says Jesus to the disciples, its that that we see in Peter all the way through the gospels… Peter was the one who had insisted he would never fail Jesus, never abandon, never deny Jesus – Peter, would always be committed to loving and trusting Jesus. Yet, when it came to the test, we read that his faith couldn’t stand up under the strain. When it came to the test Peter put his own life, his own safety, put himself before everything else. When we see him at the end of John’s gospel he is out in a boat fishing – perhaps to take his mind off all that had happened………...

then, that meeting with Jesus. And a conversation.

The Lord asks Peter – do you love me ? three times………

And Peter is restored by the Lord to a living relationship with Him… Jesus the Good Shepherd drawing back Peter, the sheep who has wandered, leading Peter back to Himself, to life, and so restoring Peter’s soul, to life again………

sometimes our faith can bend, bend low and break under the strain of things,

sorrow can do that, or guilt, or the pressures of life…..

but we always find, when we turn to Jesus Christ, that He restores us,

leads us back to life………

that’s what carries Peter all through the years ahead, that’s what draws him, that’s what lifts and draws him on…….. that relationship with Jesus - the love of Jesus Christ…

you have committed yourselves to love and trust in me……….

Jesus adds to this

“Because you have committed yourselves to love and trust in me, believing I came from the Father

To read the gospels is to see at once that Jesus is a very special human being – unique, unique in His relationship with God, in the things He says, in the powers He has. Isn’t it extraordinary that out of all the billions of people who have ever lived…….. we are still speaking about Him ? Still talking about this man, this carpenter born in Bethlehem, brought up in Nazareth, where He was a carpenter. He is a man on whom the Spirit rests, dwells in Him, even in a special way, a prophet of exceptional insight and power,

But some, maybe many, have left it just there….

that Jesus was a human being, special, a special person, but just a human being……..

that’s what the Da Vinci Code both film and book, say of Jesus – He is a human being…….like ourselves.

Long ago a there was a great struggle in the Church

that tore friends apart, nearly split the Church too, over just this

it started sometime around the year 300 with a priest called Arius in Libya

who was a cultured man, a popular preacher, the old records say that he was tall, handsome, very religious, and very eloquent.

He thought that it would be better, simpler all round, if

he just told people that Jesus was special, very special indeed, of course, and left it at that…

at this point there began a real struggle in the Church………

over this this question……..

Do we take a human point of view, and see Jesus as someone just like ourselves - very special, yes, but a human being like ourselves ?

or

Do we see Him as the gospel reveals Him as….

the beloved Son, sent by the living God ?

the great Christian thinker Athanasius…. often in great danger

his church building was at one point surrounded by soldiers, and he just managed to slip unnoticed from a small side door….

Athanasius held out for the truth of the gospels

the truth declared in Philippians ! where we see all the fullness of Jesus,

this truth:

Christ Jesus, always had the nature of God, but he did not think that by force he should try to remain equal with God, instead of this of his own free will, he gave up all that he had, and took the nature of a servant, he became like man, and appeared in human likeness, He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death, his death on the cross. Therefore God exalted Him.. (Philippians 2.6-9)

The words of Jesus himself “Because you have committed yourselves to love and trust in me, believing I came from the Father

Only God could do what has been done for us……

the salvation of the whole world, the change in the relationship between the human race and the living God. So great, so immeasurably great is all this that only God Himself could have done this

What has been done for the world, could only be done by God Himself

that is the declaration of the Gospels

“Because you have committed yourselves to love and trust in me, believing I came from the Father, Jesus continues…. to greater fullness still…..

the Father loves you………”

where do we see the Father’s love…..?

we see the Father’s love:

In Jesus’ birth in that manger in Bethlehem, the Father has sent His own Son into the world. Looking at the manger, we know that the Father shares, knows, sympathises with our suffering, with the limitations of human life, with the threat of death, and has sent His son into the world for us that’s how great the Father’s love is.

Pope John Paul once said that our minds cannot grasp how God could possibly have loved us to such a degree. Jesus born among us in a stable, laid in a manger.. in such a poor place. Such a thing baffles us. That the Father should send His Son, into such lowliness and humility, the child in the manger speaks to us of the love of God for human life, for human beings, for men and women, for us…...........

We see the love of the Father at the cross – the Father who so loved the world that He sent His own Son…… for us……

and we see the love of the Father in the words of Jesus, the story of the son who was lost…

The Father who runs and takes the boy to himself, and hugs him, embraces him, before the son has even started to speak. the Father has found him in love, waiting, seeking for him.

This, Jesus reveals to us, is the way God is, this is what God is like. A Father who comes seeking us, and has come in Jesus himself. Both the Father and the Son, the living God and his son Jesus welcome us into fellowship - a thing done at great cost, at great self emptying cost. And this work of God's seeking sinners in grace and love will continue until completed in the great banquet in heaven.

To draw to a close………

Simeon the theologian, wrote these verses:

I know that He who is far outside the whole creation

Takes me within himself and hides me in his arms,

And I know that I shall not die, for His life is mine,

Life springing up as a fountain within me.

AMEN.