One of Us

Scriptures:       Acts 7:55-60,  1 Peter 2:2-10,  John 14:1-14

You may remember the Joan Osborne song from a few years ago:

“What if God was one of us. Just a slob like one of us.  Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home…………….”

While Joan Osborne recorded the song, the song “One of Us” was actually written by Eric Bazilian, from the Hooters – also from Philly, born and raised, a local boy who made good.  The success of “One of Us” was surprising, in a way, because in our highly secular culture, where increasing numbers of young people identify their religious affiliation as “none of the above”,  here is a song about God…or particular images of God….that got traction.  All this tells me that underneath our culture’s indifference to organized religion, there’s still a hunger for God, a wistful longing to see and feel and touch God’s presence.  “If God had a name what would it be and would you call it to his face/If you were faced with him in all his glory, what would you ask him if you had just one question…..”  What indeed?

Our Gospel reading this morning gives us a scene of Jesus at the Last Supper, surrounded by his disciples, who are looking on his face and asking lots of questions.  Jesus has just told the disciples that he would be with them only a little while longer, that he is going to the Father…..and the disciples are full of questions – “where are you going?” being at the top of the list, and “why can’t we come with?” probably  second on the list.  In the course of the conversation, Philip pops up with the words, “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  And then Jesus says something truly remarkable…..”If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”    Jesus is saying that there’s complete transparency between himself and the Father; that if you want to know what God is like, observe what Jesus is like.

It’s a remarkable claim – especially among Jesus first disciples, all of whom were Jewish.  A primary, foundational part of Judaism, right after the affirmation the God is one, is that one should not try to make images of God and worship them – essentially that God is beyond our ability to understand and portray.   In ancient times, the cultures surrounding Israel made all sorts of images to depict their ideas of God – and when Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the commandments from God, even the people of Israel at the bottom of the mountain fashioned the golden calf.  The golden calf image would have been an attempt to portray God’s strength – but what can a calf tell us about God’s wisdom, or God’s lovingkindness.  Other idols used by the tribes surrounding Israel portrayed God’s life-giving power through various fertility rites.  But again, this image leaves out more about God than it includes.  Thus, the Jews have always been forbidden to create images to try to portray God, because such images always reduced God to less than God’s totality, always shrunk God to a size that humans could presume to understand.  God was understood to be transcendent, beyond human comprehension – a God whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways.

And yet, as humans I think we all want more than a God who is afar off, a God we cannot see.  .  Moses once asked to see God in all God’s glory, and I’d like to read what happened; it’s just a few verses from Exodus chapter 33:  Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” ¹⁹ And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’;^[a] and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. ²⁰ But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” ²¹ And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; ²² and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; ²³ then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”

“My face shall not be seen”, God told Moses.  But in our Gospel reading, Philip asks, “Show us the Father” – essentially Philip, like Moses, is saying, “We want to see God.”  And Jesus tells Philip, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  In other words, if you’ve seen me – and you’ve seen me this whole time you’ve been traveling with me – you’ve seen God.”  Jesus is the Word made flesh, God with skin on – God with us. 

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”  If we want to know what God is like, ask what Jesus was like.  And what was Jesus like?  Jesus was one who went about doing good, who taught and healed, who confronted those in power and hung out with the poor and lowly and those who were shunned by others.  Jesus had great power, but he did not use his power to show off or to make a spectacle of himself, but only to feed and heal and cast out demons.  And Jesus was willing to lay down his life to save us, in all our ingratitude and with all our sinfulness.  “What if God was one of us,” Eric Bazilian wrote and Joan Osborne sang – and the essence of the Christian faith is that in Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, God was one of us, just a slob like one of us, experiencing all that it is to be human – all our human limitations, our moments of weakness and exhaustion and pain – and still living in perfect obedience to God.  When we ask ourselves – and we likely all have at one point or another – “does God far away in heaven have the foggiest idea what it’s like to live here on earth”, we can look to Jesus, who experienced all that it is to be human, and answer “yes”.

Jesus told his disciples that he was going to the Father, to prepare a place for his disciples and Thomas told Jesus, “We don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?”  And Jesus said, “"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."  So in Jesus, we not only see the Father but know the Father – and in turn we are known by the Father.

Jesus goes on to say that, because the disciples know Jesus, they will do even greater works than Jesus did, to the glory of God the Father.  Our other readings give us pictures of what this looks like – Stephen, stoned to death for his faith in Jesus, and as he’s dying, praying for those who killing him – just as Jesus did on the cross.  Our reading from Peter gives us images of what it’s like to live as those who know Christ – stones formed into a spiritual temple built on Jesus, the stone the builders rejected that was made the cornerstone.  Peter also calls followers of Jesus a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, chosen in order that we may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called us out of darkness into God’s marvelous light, who though once we had not received mercy, are now receiving mercy. 

“What if God was one of us, just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home….”  Jesus lived long before there was a bus….but indeed, Jesus made his way home….and not only for himself, but he made a way home for all of us, bringing all of us along with him, bringing us all home.  And until we are home, Jesus, God with us, the Word made flesh, who knows what it is to be human, intercedes for us with God the Father.  And unlike the song’s image of, “nobody calling on the phone, ‘cept for the Pope maybe in Rome”, we all have access to God through prayer.  Through prayer, we’re all calling on the phone.

There’s a challenge in this passage that I was sorely tempted to avoid talking about, but I felt like not to say anything at all about it would be a copout.  There are those words of Jesus, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”   Of course, we know that we’re surrounded by neighbors of many faiths, and neighbors of no faith.  Where do Jesus’ words leave them?  I think that, for Christians, these words unfortunately present a temptation for Christians to feel smug and superior – we’re right and they’re wrong.  Nyah nyah nyah.  Or, if we have a loved one of another faith or no explicit faith, we may be tempted to despair – is my loved one going to hell.  And what about all those people who have never heard of Jesus? – remember that at the time Jesus said these words, Jesus was believed in and followed by probably about as many people as were at our auction yesterday.  So Jesus’ words are breathtaking if we think about them.  Theologians call this “the scandal of particularity” – that this man named Jesus, who lived in this particular place in this particular time, claimed to be the only way to the Father.   People have struggled with these words in a variety of ways.  Elsewhere in John’s Gospel, Jesus said that “And I, when I am lifted up [on the cross] will draw all men to myself” – and of course Jesus included women in that as well.  All men and women – not just Christians.  And we remember Jesus’ parable in Matthew’s gospel of the sheep and goats, in which those who fed and clothed the poor served Jesus without even knowing it, while those who assumed they were serving Jesus weren’t.  The Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner looked at these passage and other such passages and asked the question, can persons of other faiths be drawn to Christ without their even being aware of it.  That is, can Jesus be way, truth, and life for those who follow his teachings unknowingly.  Rahner coined the phrase “anonymous Christians” to describe his notion of people of goodwill of other faiths or of no explicit faith, whose lives reflect Christ’s teachings without their knowing it, whom Christ is saving.  Long before Karl Rahner, the second century Christian theologian Justin Martyr said that pre-Christian philosophers like Socrates, while they did not know the name of Jesus – Jesus hadn’t been born yet - knew the Word – the logos, though God’s gift of reason.  And John Calvin – much closer to our Reformed tradition – spoke of the visible church – the one of which we’re members, baptized, communing, with our names on the roll and such – and the invisible church – the community of the saved, the boundaries of which only God in God’s sovereignty can know. 

It’s a question with which we all struggle – me too – and it’s a question without any pat answers – if Justin Martyr and John Calvin and Karl Rahner and others had no definitive answers, Pastor Dave here in Bridesburg sure doesn’t. John’s  Gospel sets passages that say we can only be saved by faith in Jesus side by side with passages that say that Jesus will draw all people to himself, and the whole witness of Scripture sets passages with messages of particularity – this chosen people and no other, this Savior and no other – side by side with messages that God desires all to be saved.  It’s a paradox, the full answer to which we won’t know this side of heaven.  What we do know, ultimately, is that God is sovereign – God is in charge, and ultimately God can do what God wants – and that God wants humanity to be saved, wants it enough to have become one of us, just a slob like one of us, to live and die and rise again in hopes of saving as many of us as possible.  This is the good news of the Gospel – the good news we live by and the good news we are to share with others – the good news about the God who became one of us so that salvation might come to all of us. Amen.