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“Your
God”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: John 20:1-18
“I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your
God.”
DEAR FRIENDS, SISTERS AND BROTHERS, on this past Thursday evening,
Maundy Thursday, we heard about Jesus telling his true disciples, his
mother, and probably his dear friend Mary, whom we just read of, that
when the Holy Spirit was going to be newly present in their lives, they
would know that they were not alone.
And it was not merely that they would have the mental light that
they were not alone; they would know in their hearts and souls of their
intimate, personal union with their loved Brother Jesus, and God, their
divine Father.
These were the last words of close personal talking Jesus had with his
loved ones. He knew he was about to offer his life for them, and so,
these were some of the most important thoughts he would ever have with
them.
We are never alone. And the
most personal truth that God shows us, out of unconditional love, is
that we are really united within the relationship disclosed to us in the
life of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the passage we just read, laid out in The
Gospel According to John, the first words Jesus spoke in his
resurrected humanity were to Mary Magdalene, “I
am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Some of the most important words to Jesus, before he died, spoken to his
loved ones were about our being included in his relationship with God.
And, the selected words that Jesus spoke for the first time in
his new humanity, referred to his God, and to yours and my God.
His God, Your God, and my God; what does that mean?
Does God belong to us? We
think we know of God as the ground of all being, the sovereign power
over the entire universe, the one beyond any horizon we can imagine.
Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Let
the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in
the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be
exploited, but emptied himself taking the form of a slave, being born in
human likeness.”
In the situation where a man or woman is very poor and are so totally
homeless that they belong to someone else, that is one aspect of being a
slave. God, in Christ,
entered into, and identified with the lowest aspect of humanity.
The highest divine ground of all being is at the same time in the
lowest form of created humanity. Does
that seem like a contradiction, or what?
How are we to believe or even try to understand something like
that?
In the middle of last night, if you were standing in your house, looking
at a clock on the wall, at the very instant, when the long hand, the
short hand, and the second hand were all laying against each other,
pointing directly too and maybe even touching the number 12, is that the
last time of the old day, or is it the first time in the new day?
Is it both? Or is it
neither?
From the perspective of human logic, this kind of situation is often
called a paradox, a seeming contradiction.
And we all may want to ask, “Well, Pastor, why on Easter
Sunday, of all Sundays, are you talking about paradoxes?
If you cannot explain something directly and plainly today,
please do not talk about that. Share
something clear and simple and understandable, so that I can believe in
it.”
Mary Magdalene is being encountered by Jesus, after his death and
resurrection but before he returned to his Father, her Father, and your
Father. She was meeting
Jesus between the old time and the start of the new time, or maybe
within both of the new and old time, or who knows, maybe neither times.
But, she was talking to Jesus and did not know that it was Jesus
until the Spirit of God opened her eyes to recognize him.
Where John writes, referring to himself, “Then
the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in and he saw
and believed;” he is not talking about believing in the
resurrection, he is talking about believing in Mary’s word that “They
have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have
laid him.” Even John
admits that at that present time they did not yet understand that the
scripture said Jesus must be raised from the dead.
The way we understand certain things may be paradoxical.
God is mysterious. God’s
ways are not our ways. But,
my friends, as surprising as it might be, Christ’s Father is your
Father and Christ’s God is your God.
That is your truth.
I cannot scientifically explain the resurrected humanity of Jesus
Christ. But, this we may know and believe, the Son of God is in the
eternal form of human nature that we will are be given, and he is loving
and being loved by God the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with
the mind and the emotions and actions of our new humanity. And he is closer to us than we have any idea of, and he is
using his love and his wisdom to open our eyes to see him, so that we
know the only thing that can explain the wonderful mystery is the
resurrected Jesus Christ.
The only way to see an amazing coincidence with a real purpose behind it
is as God belonging to us.
One morning last week, as I was driving to school, where I teach in
Dallas, I turned my radio off so I could have a time of prayer.
After I prayed to God about some things on my heart, I then
decided I was going to pray the Lord’s prayer, and pause at each
phrase, contemplate it, and then word it in my own words.
I said the first word “Our” and spent some time, I’m not
sure how much, but some time pondering the widespread inclusive nature
of this claim. Then when I
came to the next word “Father” I spent almost the rest of my prayer
time here.
Jesus was the first prophetic human being who ever called God his
Father. I personally
support the traditional language of the Triune God as God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But, still this is human language which is revealing to us
that the most personal being in our lives is God.
We have many words for loving personal relationships, friends, brothers,
sisters, wives, husbands, and many others.
And for many of us, probably one of the most loving experiences
we have ever had is with our mothers.
Every loving experience we have in each of these relationships is
parallel to the love of God who is yours.
After I was so engaged in the truth of God as our personal divine
parent, when I arrived at school there was an assembly that day of
senior insignia, where the graduating seniors gave each other popular
style awards. There was an
invocation prayer, and it was given by Philip Fagan, one of my favorite
students, and as he prayed, I bet he repeated “Father” a dozen
times. With that having
been on my mind and in my heart during my prayer time, I can’t help
but to admit that I believed that was from God.
Then after the assembly I went back to my room, it was my planning
period. I was in my room by myself; I took my Bible out of my book
bag for a moment. I
randomly opened it. And it
turned directly to Galatians 4:6,
“And because you are children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our
hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”
This coincidence has so much meaning.
When I got home, I felt like this was so amazing that I wanted to
tell Caroline, my wife, the story.
As I told her the story and how it all began by saying the
Lord’s prayer, pausing at each word and phrase, rewording it and
thinking through it, and praying it in my own words, Caroline told me,
in her own surprise and astonishment, that she had prayed that same way
that morning.
To me, there is only one way to see this, and that is to see Jesus
resurrected from the dead, alive in our new humanity and ministering to
us, in our lives, regardless of where we are, that God is your God, my
God, our God!
Let us pray…
Amen
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