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JESUS REVEALS A LOVING FATHER
TO YOU.
JOHN 14:1-11
In the name + of Jesus.
M: Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
C: He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
When St. Paul preached to the philosophers in Athens, he said, “From one man, [God] made every nation of mankind to live over the entire face of the earth. He determined the appointed times and the boundaries where they would live. He did this so they would seek God and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27). In other words, everyone is religious. Everyone has an innate desire to know who God is. The atheist is the exception, not the rule.
You can travel all over the world and find
people who practice many different religions.
They all have the same goal—to get on God’s good side. The way that people try to get on God’s good
side is through some act of obedience.
The specific acts of obedience vary from religion to religion, but they
all focus on being good and doing something to appease God for the evils they
have done. This is why people insist
that all religions are the same. Do
good. Appease God for your sins. And hope that you have been able to make God
happy enough with you that you can enjoy a good life after death.
Everyone has this innate desire to know
who God is and what he wants. But how can
anyone know he is right? On what do they
base their hopes and their beliefs? If
an eternity hangs in the balance, this is no time to guess.
The Lord Jesus makes a bold claim. Jesus declared, “I am the Way and the
Truth and the Life. No one comes to the
Father, except through me” (John 14:6).
Some may say that all religions are just different paths to heaven,
Jesus rejects that completely. Jesus states
emphatically that the only way into that kingdom is through him. Jesus rejects every other religion on
earth.
Jesus said, “‘No one comes to the
Father, except through me. If you know
me, you would also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have
seen him.’ ‘Lord,’ said Philip, ‘show us
the Father, and that is enough for us’” (John 14:6-8). Philip’s request resonates with all
mankind. Of course, the problem is that
we don’t see God. As a result, people
end up trying to reach up into heaven to envision what God wants, what God
likes, and what God does. Often, the
result is that we craft a god who is just like we are. God likes what I like. God hates what I hate. If I despise someone, God must hate him
too. If I like that person, she must be
going to heaven. This god is nothing
but a mirror. It is also a great deception
because it leads people to believe that they stand on a good footing with God
even though they do not know what God says or wants. It comes down to, “I’m okay with me, so God
must be okay with me.” This is idolatry
and blasphemy.
“Lord, show
us the Father, and that is enough for us” (John 14:8). Our conscience gives us some idea what God is
like. There is fairly common agreement
on what is evil and what is good. But
what about appeasing God when you have failed to live up to the dictates of
your conscience? What would be
acceptable? Sacrifice? And if so, what kind of sacrifice? And how often? And how do you know that it would actually
appease God? This is where people are
left groping for hope and for comfort.
There is no comfort in guessing.
Rather
that remain hidden, God the Father has chosen to make himself known. He revealed his words in the past through
Moses and the Prophets. But to give us
the most vivid and accurate depiction of himself, God the Father sent his Son
into the world. If you consider what
Jesus said, what he did, and how he interacted with other people, then you can see
what God the Father is like. Jesus said
it: “If you know me, you would also know my Father. From now on you do
know him and have seen him. The one who
has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:7,9). Jesus reveals a loving Father to you.
What
evidence does Jesus present? He said, “Believe
me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. Or else believe because of the works
themselves” (John 14:11). Jesus
performed many miraculous signs. They
are called signs because signs point you to something. They point you to the fact that Jesus is God
in the flesh. Nicodemus recognized this
when he told Jesus, “No one can do these miraculous signs you are doing
unless God is with him” (John 3:2).
But the signs point to more than Jesus doing what only God can do. Through these signs Jesus reveals a loving
Father.
God the
Father Almighty is the Maker of heaven and earth. He created a perfect world filled with
beauty. He crafted holy people to dwell
in it. And even though sin has sullied
this world and produced many handicaps in people, God the Father still creates
people with sound bodies, with sight, with hearing, with speech, and various
abilities as he sees fit. Does the fact
that some are born blind, deaf, or with birth defects negate the Father’s
goodness? Hardly! Most are not blind, deaf, or crippled. Even though sin corrupts us, the Father still
produces new lives with sound bodies.
When Jesus
encountered people with these handicaps and hardships, they appealed to him for
mercy. And just as your Father in heaven
is good and merciful, so was Jesus. He
brought healing to the diseased and relief for the oppressed. The Father sent Jesus to do this work because
the Father loves his creation. He does
not discard this world or its people in disgust; he redeems it in love. The miraculous signs that Jesus performed
also point us to a greater future. When
all things are restored, the blind will see, the lame will walk, and the deaf
will hear. Bodies will be whole and
spirits will be refreshed. Jesus reveals
that you have a loving Father; for Jesus does what the Father sent him to do.
We can
also see the Father in the way that Jesus dealt with sinners. One example: Jesus had been invited to feast
at the home of a Pharisee named Simon.
Being a Pharisee, he was a devout and religious man. He would have been moral and decent and knew
how to keep polite company. Jesus
reclined at the table in his home, laying with his left arm on a pillow with
his body stretched away from the table.
While he was there, a sinful woman came up to him. We don’t know what particular sins she was
guilty of, but she apparently had developed quite a reputation for
herself. She wept over Jesus’ feet as
they extended away from the table. She
washed them with her tears. She dried
his feet with her hair. She kissed his
feet and anointed them with perfume.
Simon’s
reaction was disgust. He questioned
Jesus’ credibility as a prophet of God.
Simon said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would realize
who is touching him and what kind of woman she is, because she is a sinner”
(Luke 7:39). Simon wasn’t wrong in
labeling her. Her reputation seems to
have been earned, and he judged her according to her sins. For Simon, the way to make God happy was by obedience. Simon believed he had done this; the woman
had not. Simon expected each to be
judged by their own merits. For Simon,
sadly, he was. Jesus, on the other hand,
did not kick this woman away. Rather,
Jesus may have been the first person to not treat her like a sinner. While Jesus does not excuse sins, neither
does he treat us as our sins deserve.
And rather than rub her face in her sins like Simon did, Jesus came to
scrub her clean of all her sins.
Jesus
reveals a loving Father to you. For, the
Father has compassion on sinners. He longs
for us to be freed from them—free from the shame of our past, free from the
weight of our guilt, free from the fear of punishment and death. In fact, the Father wants us to be free from
the fear of him! And to bring such
consolation to us, the Father sent his Son into the world to rescue us from all
our sin and to reconcile us to himself.
To do
that, Jesus had to be treated as our sins deserve. The Father does not excuse our sins anymore
than Jesus does. Sins bring consequences. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23),
St. Paul reminds us. Sin produces a
curse, as the Lord had decreed to Adam and Eve when they first brought sin into
the world. Sin brings consequences to
everyone—whether jail time, fines, a broken home, a loss of trust or friendship
or a job. But even if you think you are
getting away with your sins because they are done in secret, your own
conscience afflicts you. It testifies to
the one consequence that all people face—God’s wrath and judgment. All religions know it. We have not done good. We cannot appease God. Does he even have a good side to get on?
Jesus
reveals a loving Father to us. In love
for sinners, the Father sent his Son to take on all the judgment, the
punishment, the curse, and the death for our sins. God the Son did this on behalf of all
sinners, so there is no need for different nations to have different religions. St. John wrote in his first epistle, “He
is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the
whole world.” (1 John 2:2). Jesus’
sacrifice has appeased his Father. Jesus’
sacrifice atones for all sins. Jesus has
done what no other religion can do or promise.
This is why Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father, except through
me” (John 14:6). Only Jesus brings a
full pardon for all sin. Only Jesus has overcome
death. Therefore, only Jesus will reveal
to a loving Father to you.
Some get
the idea that God the Father is an angry Lord who is eager to strike people
down, but that God the Son stepped in to calm him down. If that were the case, then God the Father
and God the Son would be of two different minds. But they are not. Jesus made that clear: “If you know me,
you would also know my Father. … The one who has seen me has seen the
Father” (John 14:7,9). If our threat
was God the Father and our hope was in Jesus, Jesus would have promised to take
us far away from the Father.
Instead, Jesus promises that we will be taken to the Father. This is his promise: “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me, so that you may also be where I am” (John 14:2-3). Jesus has ascended to heaven to prepare a place for us there. For, God the Father wants us to be with him permanently—without terror, without troubles, and without end. Jesus promises to take us to his Father’s house. And, thanks to Jesus, he is your Father too. Jesus reveals a loving Father to you. He has made you his blessed children. And he is eager to have you home.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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