You Really Must Experience It

Rev. Debbie Cato
Psalm 23 and John 10:22-30
Fairfield Community Church
May 8, 2022, 4^th Sunday of Easter 

God our Helper,  guide us into and through your word, that we will be shaped by your Spirit’s message to us today.  Transform us for service in your world.  Amen.

 

 

You Really Must Experience It.

 

Today, we begin with Jesus’ walking in the portico of Solomon, an old and revered part of the Temple.  The people gathered around him have come to celebrate the Feast of Dedication (better known to us as Hanukkah), a festival honoring the rededication of the Temple after its defilement by the Syrian Greeks in 154 BCE.

Jesus Religious opponents have come with a question.  Maybe they’ve heard one of Jesus’s puzzling parables or witnessed one of his miracles.  Or maybe, they just  want to trap him into saying something they consider blasphemous.  Whatever the motive, the question they pose is a good one:   “How long will you keep us in suspense?  If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”

It feels odd to ask for clarity so soon after Easter.  Didn’t we just celebrate the plainest, clearest, most indisputable proof of Jesus’s Messiah-ship possible?  How can we still be in suspense after the Resurrection?

On the other hand, the question, and it’s timing in our lectionary, feels spot-on.  If we are honest enough to admit it, it tells us the truth about how faith works.  Most of the time, faith is not a clean slope from unbelief to belief.  It’s more like a roller coaster or a circle from knowing unknowing, from unbelief to belief to unsure.  From “Christ is Risen,” “If you are the Messiah to tell us plainly.”

I used to think this was a weakness, this wavering faith. But, I don’t anymore.  I realize that it’s just what we human beings do.  It’s real life.  So, if you find yourself asking Jesus to “speak plainly” into the circumstances of your life on this fourth Sunday of Easter, then you’re not alone.  Welcome to the way of authentic faith.  This is how it works.

The trouble with talking plainly about the things of God is that the things of God are anything but plain.  Gary Jones, Rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, VA says, “When a person begins speaking with unequivocal certainty about God, this is a sure sign that the person is no longer speaking about God.  We can speak with unequivocal certainty about things our minds can grasp, but God is not one of those things.  God grasps us.  We do not grasp God.”[1]

It's hard to grasp God.  I think that’s why our faith can go from strong and firm to wavering and hardly existing.  Faith can be hard during a pandemic that seems to never end.  A pandemic that isolates us for months on end, takes people we love and cherish, and triggers strong emotions and opinions.  It’s hard during political times that are more polarizing than any time I remember during my life.  It’s hard when we watch innocent children and families die.  When we watch them lose their homes, their country, and their culture because a dictator decides to wage war.  Add personal health problems, family relationship difficulties, or other challenges you are facing, and we ask why?  Why God?  Where are you, we ask?  How do we grasp God during these times?  How do we hold onto our faith during such times?   Tell us plainly.

In this passage from John’s Gospel, Jesus tells his demanding inquirers that he has already plainly told them what they need to know.  The trouble is, Jesus told them through his ministry – the things he did, the way he lived.  Jesus’ role and identity cannot be reduced to a title.  Rather, his role and identity must be experienced. 

This becomes clear in the analogy of the sheep and the shepherd.  The sheep know and trust the shepherd, not because they have gone through any sort of rational, intellectual discernment, but because they have experienced the shepherd and the  way he cares for them. 

 In the same way, a child knows and trusts his or her mother, not because of reason, but because of experience.  Because of the bond and the love they share.  Because of the way the mother repeatedly meets the needs of the child. It is not an accident that Jesus says, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”[2]

 You really must experience Jesus to know him.  It’s how we get through crummy times.  Because the last time we didn’t know if we would make it, we did.  Because people show up in our lives at just the right time to remind us, we are not alone.  Because the sun comes out, flowers bloom, birds sing.  A stranger smiles and says hello.  An old friend calls out of the blue at just the right time.  All reminders that God is with us, and He loves us beyond our understanding.  All reminders of who Jesus is.  Not words, but experiences. 

When I had breast cancer, I experienced the presence of Christ in so many ways.  I felt His presence in Tracy’s gentle touch as she bathed me after my surgery.  I saw His compassionate, caring eyes in Jessica when she changed my dressing on my radiation burns.  I heard His voice in the daily text messages I got from my sister on the East Coast telling me I was her hero, or I was a warrior and telling me she loved me.  I felt his love in the many, many cards I got from friends all around the country.  It wasn’t because I went to seminary and studied theology but because I experienced His presence through other people that I knew He was with me every step of the way.

When people ask me why I believe, or they ask me about Jesus, I tell them about experiences like this – and so many others, not about the doctrines and theology I learned in seminary. It’s the experiences that make me believe and keep me believing.  And when my faith wavers, and it does, and it’s harder to feel God’s presence, I reach for these experiences to remind me of God’s faithfulness in the past and I tell myself that he will be faithful again. 

We can get caught up fighting about who believes the right things about God and who does things the right way. It keeps us tangled up with words about God and traditions about God instead of walking in the ways of God.  I’m not saying it’s not important to understand scripture, because it is.  But I do think it’s important to return to an authentic experience of God because that is what it’s all about.  Following Jesus is about living and being the way Jesus was.

The early  Church grew exponentially, not because they were convinced of creeds and liturgy – they didn’t exist!  The church grew because they experienced the living Lord and a new way of life.  In fact, the early Church was not called the Church, it was called the Way.  The Way of Jesus.  The Way Jesus lived.  The Way Jesus taught.  The Way Jesus loved.  The Way of Jesus ministry.  The Way.  We belong to the Way.  We are to model Jesus.  We are to experience Jesus through one another and allow others to experience Jesus through us. 

 The most eloquent way to talk about your faith, the best way to talk plainly about Jesus, is to talk about your faith journey.  The ways you have experienced Christ in your life.  That’s what draws people in.  It’s the stories.  It’s the experiences.  It’s when we say, I believe because I have experienced the living Lord in my life.  I know Jesus is the Messiah.  He lives in me.  Amen.

 

 

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[1] Feasting on the Word.  Year c, Vol. 2.  Lent Through Eastertide.  Fourth Sunday of Easter.  John 10:22-30.  Pastoral Perspective.  Gary D. Jones.  P. 444.
[2] Feasting on the Word.  Year c, Vol. 2.  Lent Through Eastertide.  Fourth Sunday of Easter.  John 10:22-30.  Pastoral Perspective.  Gary D. Jones.  P. 446.