What is Revealed
4-19-15 (Easter 3B)
1 John 3:1-7; Luke 4:36b-48
There’s something incredibly compelling about “surprise reveals” in our culture. We thrive on surprises, on the unexpected, on the kinds of things that make us gasp, look at our neighbors, and say “I can’t believe they just did that!” We build entire experiences around those moments of revelation through shows like “Extreme Home Makeover” and “Undercover Boss” and we wait on pins and needles for the moment when the sheet is pulled away, the boss removes their disguise, or Oprah stands in front of her audience to tell them they’ve all won new cars. Shows like “Antiques Roadshow” and “Pawn Stars” captivate our attention as we watch people bring in their treasures to find out how much they’re worth - whether it’s the Babe Ruth card that ends up being a fake or the five dollar garage-sale painting that ends up being a genuine priceless Picasso, we anxiously wait to hear the results. Lots of people who have never seen Star Wars before nevertheless know the iconic moment where Darth Vader stands before Luke and says “I am your father.”
If you really want to see a medium that has truly mastered the form of the surprising, dramatic reveal, however, you really need to look no further than the soap opera. The surprise plot twist and cliffhanger have become such a staple to soap operas that, in many cases, they’ve even become so well-known and clichéd that we laugh and make fun of them when they appear - the character everybody thought was dead who suddenly shows up and turns out to have been alive and in a coma the whole time, or who has an identical twin sibling who suddenly shows up on the scene; the surprise pregnancy announcement and the confusion over who the father is; or the weeks and months of wondering “Who shot JR?” just to find out it had all been a dream all along… we can imagine these things easily and see them playing out, the melodramatic organ music building to a head as the dramatic reveal comes closer…
As we look at the passage from Luke today, it may seem easy for us to hear that organ music playing in the background in a similar way… the disciples are gathered together, listening to Cleopas and his traveling companion tell them of their encounter with Christ on the road to Emmaus… the music takes on a faster pace, a greater tension… and then, the big powerful chord hits at the peak of the drama and excitement as Jesus suddenly just appears in their midst. There’s no suspenseful knock at the door to reveal Jesus standing, soaking wet in a torrential downpour outside, no phone call from the doctors telling the disciples that Jesus has woken up from his coma… he’s just suddenly there.
Is it any wonder to see the emotional journey that the disciples take in these few moments, then? If Jesus were to suddenly appear in our congregation right here and now… what would your reaction be at that very moment? It’s one of the first things we see in every single one of these post-resurrection encounter accounts - the first reaction to seeing the risen Lord is fear and disbelief. They had seen his body in the tomb - he was dead. So how could he possibly be standing there in their midst, unless he was a ghost, an apparition, or a hallucination? And again, considering all that they’d been through in the span of just a few days, it’s understandable for the disciples to see them frayed and haggard, emotionally raw and on edge, so it would be perhaps more surprising if they were not terrified and startled by the appearance of Christ in their midst at this point.
In this scene of surprise and raw emotions, however, it’s actually more interesting to pay attention to the things that Jesus does than to place our focus on the emotions and actions of the disciples. After his initial appearance, the first thing he says to the disciples is “Peace be with you.” Of course, the reaction to his statement is anything but peaceful, but the very next thing Jesus does, then, is to set about revealing that he is, in fact, alive - that he is there in the flesh - and that the disciples should be neither afraid nor surprised at this fact, because it is the very fulfillment of the scriptures that Jesus had been teaching them all along.
Jesus could have done any number of things after his resurrection - he could have come sweeping in with fire and wrath to strike down the Roman and Jewish authorities who subjected him to torture and death in the first place. He could have berated the Eleven for their lack of vision, their inability to understand the things he’d already told them, their slowness to even accept and understand the things that he’s already revealed once before to Cleopas and his traveling companion and that they are now telling the gathered disciples, and their decision to hide in fear because they didn’t know what else to do. But instead, Jesus chooses to meet the disciples where they are, to enter into their situations of fear, of grief, and of uncertainty, and to take the time, even time after time, to show them that the promise of the Resurrection has been fulfilled. He patiently shows them again and again that he is really alive and in the flesh, proves to them that he is not a ghost by letting them touch him and see that he is real, and then when they are still afraid even in the midst of their joy, he takes it the next step further to prove his reality by asking to share a meal with the disciples.
Jesus meets the disciples in the midst of their fears and anxieties and invites them to move through their fear by touching, tasting, and seeing - he speaks peace to them, and then proceeds to give them the peace that he proclaims. And in the power of that revelation, the disciples are enabled to receive the rest of what is revealed through Christ - the meaning and power of the Scripture and the divine drive to go out and to reveal Christ to the rest of the world.
We see that same power of revelation, even in the midst of uncertainty and fear, at work in this reading from the letters of John - John writes to a community that is many years distant from the community of the original Eleven. He writes to a church that is once again plagued by uncertainty - false teachings and divisions in the church itself seem to have created a lot of tension in the church to which John writes. John writes to a people who seem to be seeking reassurance and guidance in a community that isn’t sure what to believe in a sea of different teachings and interpretations. It seems that just as quickly as the disciples had been given that complete understanding of the scriptures, that understanding faded away and the church has been left once again to its own devices, trusting solely in the power of the Spirit to help determine the message and meaning of the Gospel in a world where everyone has their own explanation and understanding.
And so it is interesting that as John writes to this community of confusion, he doesn’t write with any specific certainty, himself - in fact, John follows in the same tradition of Christ by meeting them in their own uncertainties and acknowledging them: “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” We don’t know exactly what the future will look like, how our ministry will ultimately culminate in this world and how we will go about seeing the Kingdom come that we continually pray for in our lives, but John reminds his community that what we do know is that we have received the promise that it will happen - that Christ has been revealed, that Christ will be revealed again, and that Christ continues to reveal himself in our midst through the power of the Spirit on a regular basis. John reminds his people that, above all else, we are children of God, loved dearly by our own heavenly Father. And that should be enough to continually give us hope.
And so here we find our own model for ministry, as well - just as we have been met by Christ in our own situations with love, everything we do as followers of Christ should be shaped by that same love. God’s love for us revealed through Christ is the only ground on which we can stand firmly, and so it must be always at the center of what we do. We won’t always know what that entails for us, nor can we always know what that’s supposed to look like, but as we continue to look toward Christ’s love for us and strive to emulate that love in all that we do, we can be confident that Christ will continue to meet us in that sacred space, reminding us that we are loved and encouraging us to go out and reveal that same great love of God to the world, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1 John 3:1-7; Luke 4:36b-48
What Is Revealed
There’s something incredibly compelling about “surprise reveals” in our culture. We thrive on surprises, on the unexpected, on the kinds of things that make us gasp, look at our neighbors, and say “I can’t believe they just did that!” We build entire experiences around those moments of revelation through shows like “Extreme Home Makeover” and “Undercover Boss” and we wait on pins and needles for the moment when the sheet is pulled away, the boss removes their disguise, or Oprah stands in front of her audience to tell them they’ve all won new cars. Shows like “Antiques Roadshow” and “Pawn Stars” captivate our attention as we watch people bring in their treasures to find out how much they’re worth - whether it’s the Babe Ruth card that ends up being a fake or the five dollar garage-sale painting that ends up being a genuine priceless Picasso, we anxiously wait to hear the results. Lots of people who have never seen Star Wars before nevertheless know the iconic moment where Darth Vader stands before Luke and says “I am your father.”
If you really want to see a medium that has truly mastered the form of the surprising, dramatic reveal, however, you really need to look no further than the soap opera. The surprise plot twist and cliffhanger have become such a staple to soap operas that, in many cases, they’ve even become so well-known and clichéd that we laugh and make fun of them when they appear - the character everybody thought was dead who suddenly shows up and turns out to have been alive and in a coma the whole time, or who has an identical twin sibling who suddenly shows up on the scene; the surprise pregnancy announcement and the confusion over who the father is; or the weeks and months of wondering “Who shot JR?” just to find out it had all been a dream all along… we can imagine these things easily and see them playing out, the melodramatic organ music building to a head as the dramatic reveal comes closer…
As we look at the passage from Luke today, it may seem easy for us to hear that organ music playing in the background in a similar way… the disciples are gathered together, listening to Cleopas and his traveling companion tell them of their encounter with Christ on the road to Emmaus… the music takes on a faster pace, a greater tension… and then, the big powerful chord hits at the peak of the drama and excitement as Jesus suddenly just appears in their midst. There’s no suspenseful knock at the door to reveal Jesus standing, soaking wet in a torrential downpour outside, no phone call from the doctors telling the disciples that Jesus has woken up from his coma… he’s just suddenly there.
Is it any wonder to see the emotional journey that the disciples take in these few moments, then? If Jesus were to suddenly appear in our congregation right here and now… what would your reaction be at that very moment? It’s one of the first things we see in every single one of these post-resurrection encounter accounts - the first reaction to seeing the risen Lord is fear and disbelief. They had seen his body in the tomb - he was dead. So how could he possibly be standing there in their midst, unless he was a ghost, an apparition, or a hallucination? And again, considering all that they’d been through in the span of just a few days, it’s understandable for the disciples to see them frayed and haggard, emotionally raw and on edge, so it would be perhaps more surprising if they were not terrified and startled by the appearance of Christ in their midst at this point.
In this scene of surprise and raw emotions, however, it’s actually more interesting to pay attention to the things that Jesus does than to place our focus on the emotions and actions of the disciples. After his initial appearance, the first thing he says to the disciples is “Peace be with you.” Of course, the reaction to his statement is anything but peaceful, but the very next thing Jesus does, then, is to set about revealing that he is, in fact, alive - that he is there in the flesh - and that the disciples should be neither afraid nor surprised at this fact, because it is the very fulfillment of the scriptures that Jesus had been teaching them all along.
Jesus could have done any number of things after his resurrection - he could have come sweeping in with fire and wrath to strike down the Roman and Jewish authorities who subjected him to torture and death in the first place. He could have berated the Eleven for their lack of vision, their inability to understand the things he’d already told them, their slowness to even accept and understand the things that he’s already revealed once before to Cleopas and his traveling companion and that they are now telling the gathered disciples, and their decision to hide in fear because they didn’t know what else to do. But instead, Jesus chooses to meet the disciples where they are, to enter into their situations of fear, of grief, and of uncertainty, and to take the time, even time after time, to show them that the promise of the Resurrection has been fulfilled. He patiently shows them again and again that he is really alive and in the flesh, proves to them that he is not a ghost by letting them touch him and see that he is real, and then when they are still afraid even in the midst of their joy, he takes it the next step further to prove his reality by asking to share a meal with the disciples.
Jesus meets the disciples in the midst of their fears and anxieties and invites them to move through their fear by touching, tasting, and seeing - he speaks peace to them, and then proceeds to give them the peace that he proclaims. And in the power of that revelation, the disciples are enabled to receive the rest of what is revealed through Christ - the meaning and power of the Scripture and the divine drive to go out and to reveal Christ to the rest of the world.
We see that same power of revelation, even in the midst of uncertainty and fear, at work in this reading from the letters of John - John writes to a community that is many years distant from the community of the original Eleven. He writes to a church that is once again plagued by uncertainty - false teachings and divisions in the church itself seem to have created a lot of tension in the church to which John writes. John writes to a people who seem to be seeking reassurance and guidance in a community that isn’t sure what to believe in a sea of different teachings and interpretations. It seems that just as quickly as the disciples had been given that complete understanding of the scriptures, that understanding faded away and the church has been left once again to its own devices, trusting solely in the power of the Spirit to help determine the message and meaning of the Gospel in a world where everyone has their own explanation and understanding.
And so it is interesting that as John writes to this community of confusion, he doesn’t write with any specific certainty, himself - in fact, John follows in the same tradition of Christ by meeting them in their own uncertainties and acknowledging them: “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” We don’t know exactly what the future will look like, how our ministry will ultimately culminate in this world and how we will go about seeing the Kingdom come that we continually pray for in our lives, but John reminds his community that what we do know is that we have received the promise that it will happen - that Christ has been revealed, that Christ will be revealed again, and that Christ continues to reveal himself in our midst through the power of the Spirit on a regular basis. John reminds his people that, above all else, we are children of God, loved dearly by our own heavenly Father. And that should be enough to continually give us hope.
And so here we find our own model for ministry, as well - just as we have been met by Christ in our own situations with love, everything we do as followers of Christ should be shaped by that same love. God’s love for us revealed through Christ is the only ground on which we can stand firmly, and so it must be always at the center of what we do. We won’t always know what that entails for us, nor can we always know what that’s supposed to look like, but as we continue to look toward Christ’s love for us and strive to emulate that love in all that we do, we can be confident that Christ will continue to meet us in that sacred space, reminding us that we are loved and encouraging us to go out and reveal that same great love of God to the world, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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