May 18, 2014 – John 14:1-14
John 14:1-14
Image isn’t Everything – Or is It?
Fifth Sunday of Easter – May 18, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
So I’m driving back from St. Boniface hospital early on Friday afternoon.
I’m turning a corner, and coming towards me is a van that that has advertising for a
sign company on it.
The company’s slogan, painted in huge letter across the front and side of the van reads,
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING.
Surface is everything.
What you see is all there is.
To the world. And to people. Image is everything.
I was reminded this week of a story that
the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer tells somewhere.
A girl is summoned before her class by a cruel teacher in order to humiliate her.
“Is it true,” the teacher asks, “that your father is a drunk?”
The girl knows that her father often comes home late at night.
And she knows, too, the condition he is in when he arrives.
And yet she says, “No. My father is not a drunk.” (Mark Ralls, The Christian Century, May 14, 2014, 22)
What are we to make of the girl’s statement?
Is it a blatant lie? Or is it something else?
Bonhoeffer says that the girl was simply speaking a truth that was deeper than
the teacher or classmates could understand.
A drunk is not all her father was. There was more to him than that.
There was more to him than the image of a drunk.
The image of drunk was not everything there was to tell about him.
And it was not his fundamental identity.
The father was much much more to her than someone with a drinking problem.
Today both the author of First Peter and Jesus speak in a similar way to their audiences.
The person who wrote the first letter of Peter is addressing a people who lived
in the northwest corner of Asia Minor,
an out of the way and unimportant part of the Roman Empire.
Recent Christians, these were people who had little social standing in the empire.
They were not important.
They were subject to prejudice and even persecution.
They were often even deemed unworthy of being defended by the empire,
as if that were too much trouble to go to for them.
And yet, listen to what the author of First Peter says to them:
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.
Wow: to say that that didn’t really fit the facts as they were known is
the understatement of the first century.
Is that a laughable thing to say? Is that a lie? Is that a patent untruth?
As we might say: is the author just blowing smoke up their bottoms?
Or, let’s turn to Jesus, whom we normally don’t associate with lying.
Jesus says a lot of astonishing things.
And today he says maybe the most astonishing thing of all.
It’s the night before he dies. His ministry is nearly complete.
He’s telling his disciples what they need to know.
He looks at them and says,
Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact,
will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father.
And you’ll notice that he emphasizes the great truth, the great reality of these words by
introducing them by saying, “Very truly” and again halfway through by saying, “In fact.”
In Jesus’ mind, there is no doubt that we will do greater works than he did.
I know we don’t believe it. But Jesus does.
What he says doesn’t really fit the facts as known.
Within hours of his saying this, Judas will betray him,
and the rest of the disciples will abandon him.
Is what Jesus says laughable? Is it a lie? Is it a patent untruth?
What are Jesus and the letter writer of First Peter saying?
They are saying that image isn’t everything.
They are saying that there is more to us than others say there is.
They are saying there is more to us than we tell ourselves there is.
They are saying that there is more to us than our failures.
They are saying that image is not everything.
And maybe they are saying that there is a deeper truth about us.
That the image the world has of us, and the image we have of ourselves,
is not the whole truth about us.
That our true image is something else.
Scripture insists that we are made in the image of a loving generous merciful God.
And scripture also insists that Jesus is the very image of this invisible God.
Therefore, What we are meant to look like is Jesus.
Young Gunnar baptized this morning has been given a new birth in order that throughout his life
he may grow more and more into the very image and likeness of Jesus.
For that is what we were created to be: the very image of a loving generous merciful God.
A chosen race to love the unlovely and include the excluded.
A royal priesthood to bear the problems of all people together with them.
A holy nation to feed the hungry.
God’s own people to forgive the sinful.
That is the true image of ourselves – even though is doesn’t seem like it to the world or to us.
We are meant to grow more and more into that image – to do the works that Jesus did,
and even greater ones, for he was just one, but we are many.
Image isn’t everything.
But maybe the image of God working in us and through us is.
Globally we are part of the Lutheran World Federation that offers assistance to
millions of refugees and displaced persons. It is the 5th largest such agency in the world.
Nationally our national church the ELCIC through its partner Canadian Lutheran World Relief
collected and sent 35,000 sweaters from congregations across Canada to send to
keep Syrian refugees warm in a refugee camp. 35,000!
Synodically the Lutheran Urban Ministry ministers in various ways to hundreds and hundreds of
the homeless and the poor right here in Winnipeg.
And at First Lutheran Church, among many other things, our Food Banks handed out
well over 5000 hampers of groceries to those in need last year.
These things are more than the earthly Jesus alone could have done.
We are making a difference, a huge difference in the lives of people:
locally, synodically, nationally, and globally.
We are not nothing.
We are not just a few people who get together on Sundays to escape from reality.
We are not identified by our failures.
There is so much more to us. There is so much more to you.
Somehow, mysteriously, Jesus ascends to the Father in the thinking of John’s Gospel so that
he can pour out his mercy on us week by week by week so that we can pass it on
others in our ministries, so that he can be everywhere, through us.
It’s a funny way to redeem the world.
But that’s the way God has chosen to do it.
A few years ago someone said to me that it didn’t matter if we engaged in our
Food Bank ministry or our Kids Club ministry because
if we don’t do it someone else will.
But who would, I wanted to know?
We will soon be the only mainstream congregation left in the West End.
Who will do this kind of work? There is no profit in it, except the profit of serving Jesus.
I read recently about a congregation in a similar context as ours.
The pastor had almost despaired of getting any local ministry going.
In a last attempt he preached one more time on mission and ministry.
And in one throw away line said, “If this congregation disappeared from this town,
would anybody note the difference.”
The next day one of the most senior members of the congregation called the pastor and said,
I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night. I just couldn’t get your sermon out of my mind. When you asked whether anybody would note the difference if we disappeared I just couldn’t get that out of my brain. I want you to know I’m ready to work with you to make this church make a difference in this town. When can you meet me at the church building? (https://www.logosproductions.com/content/may-18-2014-even-greater-works)
That one woman inspired by one throw away line in one sermon gave the congregation a
totally new lease on life and today, like First Lutheran, runs a food bank and
other outreach ministries in its neighbourhood.
Because someone heard that the image they had of themselves wasn’t everything.
Because someone heard that their true image was something more. Something greater.
Because someone heard that their primary image wasn’t that of consumer, or spender,
or individual, or this, or that, or the other thing.
But because someone heard that they were created in the image of the God of all grace,
made for works of mercy, made for growing into the very image of Jesus.
There is more to you than your failure.
There is more to you than the image you have of yourself.
There is more to you than the world tells you there is.
And there is more to those around you and more to this whole world than we often hear there is.
That is reason for great thanksgiving. And that is reason for us all together to say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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