An Invitation to Know Christ
Third Sunday of Easter
I rarely preach on the epistles, primarily because I love the Gospels so much. Given the choice between a story about Jesus or a letter reflecting on Jesus, I’m going to go with the story about Jesus. Don’t take this to mean I don’t like the epistles, but rather that I am aligning myself with the epistle writers who also loved the stories of Jesus - so much so that they wrote these profound letters to faith communities urging them to live their faith well in light of the Gospel stories.
Despite my preference for the Gospels, this Easter season I found myself captivated by the lectionary selections from 1 John, a letter written with deep pastoral concern that the readers/listeners would live their lives well in light of God’s character. 1 John 1:1-2:2, the epistolary text assigned the day before the eclipse, starts with John’s thesis that “God is light” (1 John 1:5).
John opens his letter by claiming he is writing reflections on his first-hand account of the life of Jesus: “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1). There have been disagreements about Jesus since the church’s beginning. John’s opening claims of first-hand knowledge highlights disagreement on Christ’s metaphysical makeup: “In the Johannine community, belief in Christ’s humanity became the criterion for true orthodoxy…the Christians to whom John wrote still struggled with Christ’s true humanity and the seeming incompatibility between his divinity and humanity.” In short, folx couldn’t agree if Jesus was fully human (his divinity wasn’t really up for discussion).
Some of John’s readers could not fathom that God could suffer (which Jesus clearly did), others that God could be divided (which seemed to have been required if God was more than one person), and others that God could change (and Jesus came part way through God’s own history). For John’s opponents, divinity and humanity couldn’t be mixed in the way John claimed they were in Christ.
You see, Jesus had a human body, which was always a problem (and still is in an era where bodies are spaces for political control). When John says, “hey, listen to me, I have actually touched him,” he isn’t just claiming first-hand knowledge, he’s also rejecting any claims that Jesus wasn’t fully human or only seemed to be human (including docetism and gnosticism). No, Jesus had a real body, Jesus was God, and Jesus revealed God to us. Jesus is the light at the center of the circle, illuminating the path we ought to walk as Jesus-followers, sure and certain as the sun that rises each day.
When we get to this week’s epistle reading in 1 John 3:1-7, we get to another image John uses to make claims about God’s character and how we ought our lives. Here John turns to the family; “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1). I have deep respect for John’s ability to challenge his readers toward holiness and at the same time make immeasurable space for God’s grace to catch us. In 2:1 he tells his readers they should not sin - BUT, if they do, Christ will be their advocate. Here in chapter 3, he similarly admonishes them not to sin and also holds up before them the eschatological truth that even if they do sin now, the day will come when they will be revealed as real and full children of God. They may sin now, but that sin doesn’t get to define their eternity. Only their status as God’s children can do that.
While the image of light doesn’t create space for intimacy (after all, who can even look at the sun?), the image of family removes all distance between us and God, leaving only a knowing and being known by the divine parent. And, John claims, when that space is removed - as one glad morning it will be - then all the struggles and realities of this world as we experience it now will be removed as well. “The truth is,” Ronald Cole-Turner argues, “that God’s love has staked a claim on us that overwrites the truths we think we know from experience. We experience our brokenness, but God’s truth declares us whole. We experience the lingering grip of sin, but God’s truth declares us holy. We experience impurity, but God is purifying us.”
Although one might expect the Gospel of John rather than Luke to be matched with the Johannine letters in the lectionary, what we find here in Luke is a Gospel reflection also concerned with knowing and being known by Christ. In Luke 24:36b - 48, we find the disciples gathered in fear after their world had been rocked by Jesus’ crucifixion. (Although, one does wonder if they might have felt differently had they believed the women’s report that morning.) In that space filled with fear, Jesus showed up with a greeting of peace and an invitation to calm their nervous systems by knowing his resurrected body.
“Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see” (Luke 24:39).
Jews of Jesus’ time hadn’t settled on whether there was life after death, so it is no surprise that Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand the empty tomb and then that Jesus had to eat in front of them to prove he wasn’t a ghost! Are you afraid I’m a ghost? Here, give me a snack and I’ll show you otherwise!
Jesus always impresses me with his willingness to meet people where they are. He showed up that first Easter evening and they were terrified of him, so he put himself forward for them to touch and look at so their racing hearts could calm down. He put himself in front of them and offered them multisensory ways of knowing him even while he showed that he knew them well enough to offer them the grace of peace before offering them the gift of teaching. Jesus shows us what it is to calm someone’s fears before we can teach them new truths.
What lessons might these two readings lead us to, both concerned with being known by and knowing God through Christ? John’s concern is that his readers might better know God’s character so that they might better live out their Christian faith. If we take a page from his book, we might ask: if we know Christ as bodily resurrected and willing to meet us in our fear (fear of traumas or the unknown, or fear of sinning), how might we live now?
If we believe ourselves to be intimate with a God who meets us in our fears, that should profoundly change how we preach about sin and holiness. If we read behind the lines, we see that John’s readers were afraid of losing their salvation because they couldn’t achieve perfection, and John reminds them that their salvation depends on a God who will advocate for them even in their failures. Luke gives us a story of Jesus where he doesn’t chastise the disciples for failing to understand his earlier teachings, but rather greets them with peace and offers what they need to abate their fear. Calling our communities to holy living while not pulling away the safety nets of God’s grace and Christ’s calming presence is an art and a calling. But, just like Jesus offered his disciples his resurrected body to see and touch, so too must we offer our congregants Christ, fully present and embodied and ready to advocate on their behalf when their faith falters under the pressures of life in this world.