Opening Doors

                            John 4: 39, Luke 5: 17 John 14; 12-14

         

 

          Thank you sir! How many times have I heard that over the course of my life, and all because I was taught at an early age that a gentleman opens the door for a lady.  It doesn’t matter what kind of door it is. It can be a car door or a door to your house. A gentleman gets there first, opens the door and holds it for the lady. I was taught that that is the southern way, but I think it’s more good manners than southern.

          Opening doors. It’s a simple way that we can provide for someone else to enter. And in that way, opening doors becomes a metaphor for the activity that we Christians call witness, or testimony. We open doors for others. We don’t make the doors. We don’t provide the experience that awaits on the other side of those doors. But sometimes, we get to open them. Such is the case in many places in Scripture. Today, we look at several of those passages.

          In the fourth chapter of John’s gospel we can read about Jesus’ encounter with the Woman of Samaria. Jesus was on the road. He had been in Judea and he was being followed by those who wanted to do him in. He decided to leave for a time and headed north back to Galilee where it was safer. The most direct route was through Samaria, a region of half-breeds who were not acceptable to the Jews. The Jews weren’t very acceptable to the Samaritans either. So Jesus arrives in Sychar, the town where Jacob had frequented so long ago. Jesus seeks a drink of water from Jacob’s well, and there he meets the woman.

          You are familiar with this story. Jesus talks to the woman, an act that in itself is out of line. He is a Jew; she is Samaritan. Unacceptable. He is a man; she is a woman, apparently a married woman. Improper. Nevertheless, Jesus breaks the ice,  asking her to draw him some water from the well, using it as a way to talk about living water. As they talk, and as Jesus shows her that he knows everything about her and her life, her spiritual eyes are opened. She leaves her water jar; that is, she completely abandons what it is that she came to do, and she goes to the center of town. This is what she said to all who would listen: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

          My daughter Emily called from Africa the other day. She knew I was about to take a big test and she wanted me to know she was praying for me. It wasn’t a long conversation. She just wanted me to know her prayers were with me. She was lifting me up to God. She couldn’t take the test for me. She couldn’t do the studying for me. But she could pray for me and she wanted me to know that she was doing that. Emily was trying to open a door for me.

          In the fifth chapter of the gospel of Luke, Jesus is in Galilee in one of the cities there, and he is teaching. Apparently he is teaching in someone’s house. The house is crammed full of Pharisees and teachers of the law and townspeople. There is no way get inside. But that doesn’t stop some very determined fellows who are friends of a paralytic. They have brought him to town and they are going to get him in the presence of Jesus or bust. Houses in those days had outside stairs that led to the roofs, which were usually tiled. So these guys carry their friend up the stairs to the roof, where they remove enough tiles to lower him on his bed down through the roof to where he is right in front of Jesus. You will remember that the man was healed by Jesus. Jesus first says, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” A moment later he says: “rise, take up your bed and go home.” And that’s’ exactly what this formerly paralyzed man did. He stood up, picked up his bed, and went home. In the narrative given by Luke, he tells us that that Jesus acted “when he saw their faith.”

          Another of my daughters, Ellie, called late the same night that Emily had called earlier. It was after midnight. Her voice was quivering. Her first sentence was “I need you to pray for someone.” She related a story about how her friends and neighbors, a Coast Guard couple named Matthew and Amy, had gotten a babysitter for their two young children so they could go out on a date. They went into San Juan to enjoy the celebration of San Sebastian. The night ended early and in tragedy. Matthew was shot in the stomach by a random celebrator. No fight, no argument. He was just in the line of fire. When Ellie called, Matthew was still in surgery. As I write this, I do not know the outcome. I do know that my daughter was shaken. He own husband was at sea, and she was there alone with her two young children. So Ellie did what she could. She prayed, and she called those whom she trusted and asked for more prayer for her friend. She was trying to open a door for him.

          In the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus is giving final instructions to the disciples who will carry on his ministry. They don’t know it at the time, but the Son of God is giving marching orders to a faithful few who will evangelize the known world for the sake of the gospel. One of the things he tells them is this:

               “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me

               will also do the works that I do; and greater works

               than these I do, because I am going to the Father.

               Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that

               the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask

               me anything in my name, I will do it.”

 

          A woman who has spent her life in an out of bad relationships has an encounter with Jesus and her life is forever changed. And she testifies. And other lives are changed. That woman from Samaria opened the door for her fellow villagers to experience God, and a village gave Christ a chance because of her testimony. Christ did the rest. A man, a cripple, paralyzed for life, is saved and healed, not because of his own faith, but because of the faith of his friends. Those unnamed friends opened the door for that man to experience God. Christ did the rest.

          In one day, I had the privilege to hear from two daughters. One of them was appealing to God, interceding in prayer for me. The other was also appealing to God for her friend. In that appeal, she reached out to enlarge that circle of prayer, trying to intercede for him.

          Why do we do such things? Why do we call upon each other to pray? James, the brother of Jesus, reminds us in his epistle. “Is anyone among you suffering? Sick? Let him pray…The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

          It’s just opening a door. Sometimes, the ones for whom we pray won’t come through that door. But sometimes they will. Jesus will handle their response. We just need to help get that door open. Jesus said we can do great things in his name. He said the things we can accomplish in faith can be even greater works than what he did.       

          We need to claim that promise. We all know that just opening the door is not enough. Those of us who come to Christ will do so through personal experience and communion with our Lord. But how will that start? Sometimes it comes through the not so small act of someone opening a door. Sometimes it comes through the testimony of someone who once stood in front of that door and made a choice for God.

          Be a witness. Give your testimony. And keep on opening doors for others.

Grace Upon Grace

                                             John 1: 9-18

 

 

          Clement of Alexandria, one of the great second century church fathers, called John’s gospel the “spiritual” gospel. When you read all four gospels, you get a pretty good idea of what Clement meant. Matthew, Mark and Luke, called the synoptic gospels because they “see” more or less the same thing, make their case with genealogies and facts of Jesus’ mighty deeds and acts, along with parables of Jesus. John doesn’t do that. He doesn’t relate a single parable. He does talk about facts, but not in the same way. John is more concerned with the thread which connects the divinity of Jesus with the chance for eternal life for those who believe his story.

          John was Jesus’ first cousin. He and his brother James were fisherman in Galilee. They were part of the family business run by their father Zebedee. John is thought to have been the beloved disciple that the gospels, especially his, refer to. Tradition has it that he is the only disciple who died of natural causes. His gospel is thought to have been written some forty years after the resurrection. The other gospels predated John, and chances are he was familiar with them. Maybe that had something to do with how John chose to write his witness. It is a book dotted with 7 or 8 “I Am” statements, depending on how you count. It is also a book which brings a more spiritual approach to its witness. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word came and dwelt among us.” See what I mean. Now there’s a genealogy, all the way back to before creation.

          John knew Jesus as cousin, as disciple, as a member of Jesus’ inner circle, even as the caretaker of Jesus’ mother Mary after the death and resurrection. And he lived long, probably seventy years after Jesus’ death. John lived to see the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple. His gospel seems to talk about that in the way he describes Jesus as God’s living temple. God revealed himself to the people of Israel, manifesting himself to them in the desert in the tabernacle, a moveable nomadic dwelling place for his presence. When the people reached the Promised Land and made it their home, Jerusalem rose up and Solomon caused God’s temple to be built. So God’s people have known God’s presence in tabernacle and temple. With the coming of Jesus, John makes it clear that God has taken up residence in the incarnate presence of Jesus (and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us). The Greek word skenoo for “dwelt” means literally that God “pitched his tent.” So John, unlike the other evangelists, takes us beyond the facts and events to dialogue and to the metaphysical. Along the way, he uses the “I am” stories as his vehicles for the signage that points to the divinity and promise of salvation that Jesus brings.

          For me, the first eighteen verses of John’s gospel are among the most spell binding, the most revealing, of all scripture. I have always been attracted to the way John explains Jesus. We have those great lines about the Word that takes us from the beginning of creation all the way to the manger in Bethlehem. We also have a continuing comparison of Jesus to light; light as the light of men, light shining in the darkness, the true light. John will continue with this motif throughout his writings. But what caught my eye on this reading was something I had not seen clearly before. What caught my eye this time around was John’s allusion to Jesus as the image of God.

          How do you see God? John says what we all know, that no one has ever seen God. Oh yes, some have seen his presence, like the pillar of clouds that moved across the desert by day and the pillar of fire that hovered over the camp of  the people at night, or like Moses being practically blinded by the burning bush. Abraham was said to have walked with God, though nowhere does it say that he looked at him. God came to Adam and Eve in the garden, but it was his presence, not his person, that ministered to his creation. In his letter to the Romans, Paul told them that God’s attributes are clear enough to see all over his creation. But those are God’s attributes, not his person.

          And yet, as John tells us, God has been made known by Jesus. Jesus, God’s Son. Jesus; who is at the Father’s side. Later in the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel, the disciple Phillip asks Jesus for a sign from the Father. Jesus answers him: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” No, we have not seen God the Father, but there were those who saw God the Son. And Jesus himself tells us that he is the image which we have longed to see.

          What is God’s image? If we look at Genesis 1, we see God making man (Heb.: Adam - mankind) in God’s (that is, the Trinitarian God) image and likeness. Here in John 1, John says that we have seen his glory. John could have meant a lot of things by that statement, from the Transfiguration to the Ascension to just plain seeing Jesus’ presence. But with John, he makes clear that he, John, has seen. He is an eyewitness to what he speaks.

          So what is God’s image? It is physical. It is spiritual. It is emotional. It is God in man, man in God. It is, according to John, glory as of the only Son from the Father. John and others saw that firsthand and John writes about it here. While we cannot see physically who John saw, we can see it spiritually. To do that, we would do well to try to capture the words from John. He calls Jesus full of grace and truth. But what does that mean?

          This has been quite a year in the United States. It has been a year in which everyone has struggled to see the truth. It is a year in which yet another new phrase has been coined to describe what is going on. Now we have to deal with “fake news.” It’s a new term, but an old idea. It used to be called propaganda. In John’s time it was called false teaching. So while the term is new, the idea has been with us for ages. John tells us a story as an eyewitness, and in the truth he tries to convey, he describes Jesus as full of grace and truth.

          Have you ever heard anyone other than Jesus described in such a way? I have grace, sometimes, but I’m sure not full of it. I make my life about telling the truth, but Jesus was full of truth. Now we can begin to see the image of God. It is full of grace and truth. If we could look at Jesus as John and his disciples did, we would both see and feel Jesus’ fullness. John says from that fullness we can all receive grace upon grace. Think about that. Grace is that unmerited, completely free, bestowing of forgiveness and assurance, acceptance. It cannot be earned. It is unconditional and given for the asking. And John says that Jesus gives those who believe grace upon grace. It’s sort of like getting a heaping helping of all your favorite things, then getting it again and again and again. The Psalmist knew something about grace upon grace when he wrote “my cup runneth over.”

          John goes on to emphasize what has happened with the coming of Jesus. Moses gave us the law. That is, through Moses, we were shown a basic set of rules. Don’t do this. Do that. We were given a set of definitions by which we could measure ourselves for society with each other and most notably with God. But what the law did most of all was to show us the fence. Anything outside of the fence was bad or dangerous or disobedient. Jesus both changed that and clarified that. This is John’s revelation shared with us, that Jesus was not about fences. He was all about making God’s true nature known. John says that through Jesus Christ, we were made acquainted with grace and truth. We were introduced to the image of God, and it is an image of love.

          Love is who God is, and love is what God looks like. That is the image of God and that is the image in which he made us. John tells us that when Jesus came and lived among us, those who saw him were privileged to see that image face to face. To see that image was to see grace and truth in action, in the flesh.

          That kind of vision came only once. Jesus lived among us and showed us the image of God. John saw that. He spent his life ministering to the truth of what he saw. While we do not have the physical presence of Jesus as John did, we do have the word and witness of John, the beloved disciple. John said Jesus made God known. Jesus lives not only in the words of the evangelist in Scripture, but in the Holy Spirit, whom he sent to us to guide and comfort us.

          Jesus has been called the image of the invisible God. But Jesus is also now invisible to the naked eye. Unless. Unless your vision is making use of the Holy Spirit. If you are there, then you don’t even need these words. You can already see. If you are not quite there, then keep reading. Invite the Holy Spirit to guide you. Grace upon grace can be yours too.