April 20, 2008
Text: John 14:1-14
Pr.Robert Goldstein
Greater Works Than These!

The disciples are upset! Jesus has told them that he’s leaving, but they don’t understand that a crucifixion lay ahead and then the whole new reality of resurrection would break in. All they know is someone they love is leaving them. I was only 16 and Andy was leaving. We went to high school together in Melbourne, Australia. He came from America, from Texas, with the most extraordinary accent to Australian ears. We went to the same church and when his last day at church came, there were the usual well wishes and farewells.

I was so overcome with emotion I walked outside and wept bitterly. Andy was straight as an arrow and I thought I was too. The tears revealed to myself a love so deep. In my adolescent world Andy, whom I later realized had awful faults, was my peerless source of wonder in the relentlessly dull blue collar suburbs of Melbourne. He was leaving and I was so upset.

I think this picture captures the disciples’ feelings at the time. Someone they have come to know, who lives in their hearts and they in his, this Jesus, is saying goodbye. Where is he going? Not to the United States -the pope is there already. No, Jesus says he is going to the Father and Mother of us all, and going to make ready for them when they come too. Does any of this make sense to you? Well, it didn’t to Phillip. I suppose he was standing next to Thomas, both with their arms crossed, when he asked, "Show us the Father and Mother?" Jesus’ response is powerful, but before we get to that, we need to look at the Greek words here. Phillip’s word for 'show' is equivalent in our language to showing someone a car or what’s down the grocery aisle. But Jesus responds,
Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?

Now the word for 'know' here is not as in I know Pastor Robert’s car, because I have seen it. The word 'know' here is how you would describe a car you have had for many years and grown to love it. That knowledge isn’t just a list of things about the car. It is a remembrance of driving that car over the years. The 'know' here would be translated into, 'I love that car.' This is how Jesus is responding to Phillip, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?'

Jesus is not scolding Phillip, but allaying his separation anxiety by reminding him of their life together - not a list of chronological events, but their struggles, their vision, the simplicity and the complexity of getting to that simplicity, their successes and their disappointments, but above all Jesus’ extraordinary love for every human being that broke down so many barriers that they had taken for granted.

The disciples remembered this story and it was written down to remind us that we know Jesus in the same way - perhaps not as perfectly as Phillip really did. Our knowledge of Jesus, that deeper knowledge, is not a set of commandments or instructions, but our relationship with Jesus. It’s as if he lived with us too, but has never left any more than he never left the disciples. In our communing together, in our singing and praying and listening to the Spirit bring Scripture alive, in the coffee hours, in the visioning, in all the implementation of that vision and in the course of the our daily lives, Jesus continues to abide with us. This is what Jesus means when he says those who have deeply seen him have truly seen the Father and Mother of us all.

But there’s more. As we live in this relationship with Jesus, in the Mother and Father Creator and in the Spirit, we will do the works that Jesus did when he was enfleshed on this earth. Indeed, Jesus says, we will do greater works than even he. Isn’t this extraordinary! Are we ready to fulfill that promise? As we live for Jesus in the depths the Spirit will cause great works to occur. Death will no longer have its shadowy gloom over us. Life will become more than the consumption and acquisition of things. Life will bring a deep hunger for a better world, a just world, a hunger that is filled by really knowing Jesus in our hearts as a true friend. If we really let ourselves go in the arms of Christ great things shall happen through us.

At adult forum this morning someone mentioned that St. John’s assertion is false that God will answer anything we ask for. I think that if we are on the factual level like Phillip, then yes. But St. John is on a mystical plane and it is in that context that we need to understand John’s words. When Jesus says I am the Way, John uses a feminine form for the word 'way', which the early church called the way to wisdom, Sophia. So there is wisdom, rather than fact, in John’s assertion. Believing in this promise of Jesus that he will answer our prayer is on the path of wisdom, even if factually the prayer may not appear to have been answered.

Pope Benedict is in our country. In our love for Christ, our brother Pope is, well, in a different space than we. I mean we are so tiny compared to that immense institution with its great churches, universities, diplomatic corps and wonderful social services. And yet we have something powerful and graceful to say. The Christian spaces we inhabit, sadly, are far apart. And while we have a lot to learn from the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, it seems that they are not ready to learn anything from us. I say these things not out of malice but only in deep prayer that the gulf between us would end and that the unity Christ prayed for in his depths would become realized.

I wrote to a blog on the New York Times about a commentator’s theme that the Roman Church is not embracing the modern world. I made the proposition that this great church has spurned the modern world, not only because there are things to be spurned, but also because such a Catholic embrace, as the church has done with new cultures and new situations many times before, such an embrace would imperil the power and privilege of the princes of the church. Power is devolved in modern societies from the ground up, just as bishops were elected by the people in the early church. As expected, I received a well-written reply from a good Roman Catholic boy, named Adam, who reiterated in the doctrinaire way the assumptions of the space they live in that the Holy Mother Church cannot change as it has to protect the deposit of faith. It was consistent and showed how he had met God in Christ through his church, but certainly in a far distant space from me.

In the Pope’s sermon in New York Benedict called strongly for unity in his American Catholic church. The fact he needed to say that so strongly indicates to me that others in that church body are also asking for a Catholic version of the modern world. Many want priests to be married. Women want to be ordained and gay and lesbian Catholics want to be included as created and blessed by God for whom they are.

So great works of faith are being done inside and outside the Roman Church. When that great and ancient church let’s go of its love affair with the Roman empire of 1700 years ago, then perhaps it will begin to see itself as others, both religious and secular, see it so well. God will make possible great works to accomplish this, works of faith strongly seasoned with justice. I am confident about his, even though I may not live to see it. But in the embrace of God, the Father and Mother of us all, we too shall sing praises in heaven on that day. For you see, Christ has not left. Christ is really and always present so that greater works than even these will come. Amen