Sermon 5/16/21 7th Sunday in Easter
Just what is Eternal Life?
As many of you are intimately familiar, cancer treatments are not fun. There is a wide spectrum, and wide degrees of tolerance. Initially, I was pretty tolerant, but as time dragged on, with no end in sight, I got seriously discouraged.
I was pretty young, 29, and young in my faith, so like many before me who are faced with difficult situations in life, I decided to turn my attention to working to make my faith stronger. I’d been given one of those little pocket New Testament and Psalms books people used to hand out on street corners. They have indexes that have Where to Find Help passages pertaining to life’s problems like when you are sick, or in pain, discouraged, anxious, lonely, etc. I started there, and then began to read study bibles and commentaries. I really dove in.
At some point, I came to a hard realization. Nowhere did it say in this greatly heralded book that God would deliver me from my suffering. Oh man! That was a rude awakening. I wanted to escape this brutal regime of surgeries and chemotherapy – to be bailed out. Talk about disappointed! God wasn’t going to save me from this misery? What the heck was he good for then? Sorry, I know this sounds a bit irreverent… I’m just being honest about my feelings!
I began to search for what God did promise. One of those promises I found was that God promised Eternal life.
Eternal life. That was an abstract idea that I couldn’t really wrap my head around. So, I began to pray regularly for the spirit of God to reveal to me what eternal life is, so that this “great gift” would mean something to me – so that I could appreciate it!
You know, it wasn’t until I started to prepare for this sermon that I realized the fullness of how God had answered that prayer.
Like a lot of people, I initially thought that Eternal Life had to do with the duration of life – life beyond the grave. And this alone, was a tremendous blessing to me as I was told there was no cure for the cancer I had, and helped me to accept the prospect of an early bodily death. And it isn’t wrong to understand we will have life beyond this world, it’s just… incomplete.
The reading from First John this morning refers to Eternal life. “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
I don’t know about you, but to me that is pretty nebulous. Clear as mud, so to speak. The good thing about being nebulous is that we are motivated to look deeper.
We read in the passage just before today’s gospel that Eternal Life actually has less to do with time than with quality of life.
Earlier in John 17, Christ is praying, speaking of himself. Quote: “For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.” And then he clarifies what he means by eternal life. “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Eternal Life is knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ? We don’t have to wait for death to experience it! This kind of knowing isn’t just “a casual,
‘Oh yeah, I know God, I know Jesus.” Knowing God and Jesus is a lifelong journey, not a casual introduction.
Jesus, praying to his father said, “I made your name known to those whom you gave me.” The word NAME in the bible means much more than just what something is called. The word Name implies true nature and true character. Jesus’ great accomplishment was to show the disciples, and all his followers the true nature and true character of God.
As children of God we must be constantly growing in Him. Knowing him means spending time with him. As we grow to spiritual maturity it is the power of God that starts the work of making us more like Christ every single day. We can be transformed daily into His likeness.
The message of the gospel is a message of radical transformation of our life.
What I would tell my 29 year-old self today is this. Christianity does not offer us a release from problems, but a way to solve them. It does not offer us an easy peace, but triumphant warfare. It does not offer us a life in which troubles are escaped and evaded, but a life in which troubles are faced and conquered.
By being willing to suffer death on a cross Jesus brought God glory. As Christians, we too, bring glory to God by bearing our crosses, looking to him for guidance on how he bore his. What crosses do you bear?
I fought feeling that cancer could in any way be compared to Jesus’ suffering. My suffering wasn’t noble like his. I wasn’t dying for anybody. Yet, the way he accepted God’s will, emptying himself of what might have been his own agenda, putting one foot in front of the other, he modeled how we are to be. His closeness with the father was not only enough, but more desirable to him than any short-lived comfort.
As we follow Jesus, we can grasp that eternal life is available to us in the here and now. We can live this life in such a way that we are not chasing things that don’t last but chasing the things that do last and have eternal significance. This type of life has eternal impact not only for us but for untold others around us.
When Jesus says he came so that we might have life, and have it more abundantly, he is giving us a better way to live our lives. He is showing us that following him daily in faith, will lead us to a better, richer, more meaningful life than we could ever find on our own.
This gospel passage calls us to set ourselves apart for God’s purposes in the world. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
The purpose of the Gospel message is not that we withdraw from society to be set apart, but that we speak truth, create justice and offer mercy. This is the example that Jesus sets for us in his life, death, and resurrection.
Jesus did not ask for his disciples to be taken out of the world. He sends them - and us - INTO the world, and gives us the power to CHANGE the WORLD!