Tag, You're It!

(based on John 14:1-14)

I wish we knew more about John. His gospel is so deeply loved and cherished, it would be nice to know just who this man was and how he came about recording this special view of Christ and his teachings. I referred to him as a "he", but we don't even know that for sure. The name has been added to the Gospel later, it has not been verified anywhere in the gospel itself - or anywhere else for that matter. All that we think we know comes from tradition about the Gospel and could be quite wrong.

But putting aside such questions for the moment and just reading the gospel as a piece of literature, it is so different from the other three gospels, one wonders how it got written this way in the first place. Much of what it reports does not occur elsewhere. And much that does occur is presented in a totally different light. Who is this mysterious author and where did he get his information? Again, we simply do not know.

We can infer some things. It appears to have been the last of the gospels to be written. It seems to have been written for new Christians who needed a word of encouragement in a time of cruel persecution. And it seems to call on us to look deep into the inner workings of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who knew Jesus and those who now are striving to keep faith with him now that his physical body is gone. While Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the story of Jesus, John preaches the story, striving to get at the relevance of it to our lives. Without realizing it, readers are drawn to John's gospel for it's direct appeal to us to have faith, believe, trust this mighty Son of God, so that we might have life, real life, a full and fruitful life, as God originally intended for us to have. We move out of theoretical belief into living action. If our creed tells us Christ is alive, John tells us because Christ is alive, we are too.

The center of the gospel is chapter eleven where we are told the story of the raising of Lazarus. I don't think it's a coincidence that John chooses this point for this story. It is the apex of the gospel, it is the miracle of miracles Jesus performs, and it is the entrance into the life of faith we are urged to discover for ourselves. Put simply, we believe in Jesus so that we can be fully and completely alive, people who had been dead before but are now vibrantly alive, and not just frantically busy as are many people who think the more they put on their calendars, the more important they are. No, in a quite incredible turn of events, we find ourselves more completely alive in order that we might take up the work Christ was doing and carry it further than he did.

Christianity is not a "feel good" joy ride at Disneyland. It is a transformed existence fraught with exhilaration and challenge. It is true living and also genuine danger. It is glorious and terrible in its opportunities for distortion and destruction. The film "Bruce Almighty" tries to get at this in a comedic way. Bruce is given the job of being God for a day to see how well he can handle the infinite number of problems in the world. The result is chaos.

John's gospel shows us what that job looks like. He does his best to sort through all the qualities that made Jesus God in human flesh and then points his finger directly at us and says "Tag: you're it." The movie is just a movie, and Bruce is let off the hook in the end. We don't get let off the hook. We're more like Tim Allen's character in "The Santa Claus" who has no graceful way out of the job. Try as he might to shed the uniform, it keeps coming back.

"You will do the work I do" Jesus cautions us. And what's more, we will do even greater work than Jesus did. You don't hear that verse preached very often, do you? My God, we cry out in dismay, this is too much. You better believe it's too much. That's why we are promised a helper, a Holy Spirit, a safety net of friends of faith who will sustain us when the storm gets too heavy, who will enlighten us when our eyesight is too feeble, who will comfort us when our defeats - and there will be defeats - are too painful. The church is God's ark, if you will, our last place of refuge and safety in a storm that threatens to overwhelm us.

The TV series "Joan of Arcadia" tried to get at this truth and stumbled. The concept made it one of the most important and relevant "Christian" TV series ever attempted, but the writers and producers just weren't up to the task. They stumbled and the public soon sensed the hokeyeness of it. Joan was not asked to be "Joan Almighty" but she was challenged to be a living presence of God in the world. It did not take long for her to realize just how inadequate she was for the job, and we - the audience watching her - were invited to discover just how weak and ineffective we are too. Unfortunately, a TV series couldn't quite offer the hope Jesus offered. There were friends surrounding Joan but they didn't seem to have what it takes to be a Holy Spirit, if you will.

You and I have a job we didn't look for and can't see how we have the qualifications to fill. It's only training is "on the job". There will be no retirement from it, unless you consider death as the final resting place. (Frankly, I have an uneasy suspicion that it's more like the next level in a video game where new challenges, new lessons, new opportunities emerge.) Jesus' appearances to the disciples after his resurrection suggest as much to me. I'm still alive, mates, I'm still working, the Kingdom is still coming. And now YOU are that Kingdom, you are the living, breathing presence of a vibrantly alive God in a world that is infinitely more challenging and complex than the one Christ knew or could even imagine. Think what Christ might have accomplished if he'd had Facebook and Twitter to work with!

John tells us that Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. But the kicker in this "good news" is that the life we now have doesn't really belong to us. It's God's life. It's God's work in the world. It's the continuing revelation of Almighty God taking on human flesh.

You may have read the story of the student who watched a new boy in school get bullied and teased and shunned and saw him knocked down, spilling has backpack of books all over the ground. He went to the aid of the boy, helped him pick up his books, and started to get to know him. What was a mere moment of kindness turned into the start of a genuine friendship. And what had been a shy, introverted school untouchable became a strong, confident student and at graduation the one who was chosen to be class valedictorian. Imagine how he must have felt when he heard his friend begin by telling of that awful moment when he was knocked to the ground. All those books, they were not a sign of a bookworm nerd, he had just cleaned out his school locker and was taking his possessions home where he intended to kill himself - an intention that was avoided by the spontaneous act of kindness of another boy who had been picked by God to do a work God needed to have done.

Now that is a pretty dramatic example, but please believe me, God is alive and well and working in the world, and he's at work in simple human beings just like you and me. We rarely know when we've done our job - or where we've failed to do it for that matter! But we are on the job all the same. When Marilyn died and I discovered grief in ways I had never even thought of before, I once remarked to a kind friend, "I don't know if I can do this. I don't even know if I want to do this. It's too hard." My friend only looked at me and listened with patience and understanding. And after a moment, I added, "But I don't have a choice, do I?" He smiled and nodded. "That's what I was thinking too." That smile, that acceptance, that patient understanding was God at work offering me the help I needed, the only help that could sustain me in that dark place called grief.

"The works I do, you will do," Jesus tells us, "and not only my work, but even greater work than I could ever do. But don't worry, you won't have to do it alone. The Holy Spirit will be there helping you." That's what John believed. That's what I believe too. Amen.