2019 August 25 - National Youth Sunday sermon - Listening, learning, walking
Old Testament reading: Psalm 119:105-112 (NIV)
105 Your word is a lamp for my feet,
a light on my path.
106 I have taken an oath and confirmed it,
that I will follow your righteous laws.
107 I have suffered much;
preserve my life, Lord, according to your word.
108 Accept, Lord, the willing praise of my mouth,
and teach me your laws.
109 Though I constantly take my life in my hands,
I will not forget your law.
110 The wicked have set a snare for me,
but I have not strayed from your precepts.
111 Your statutes are my heritage forever;
they are the joy of my heart.
112 My heart is set on keeping your decrees
to the very end.
Gospel reading: John 14:1-14 (NIV) Jesus Comforts His Disciples
1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Jesus the Way to the Father
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
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Good morning. Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O Christ, our Strength and our Redeemer, amen. Today’s theme is ‘Listening, learning and walking’. Both scripture passages describe Christianity as a life of listening to, learning from and walking with God. The difference is that, in Old Testament times, people revered the Law as God’s light, but the Gospel gives us the revelation of Jesus Christ - a person who embodies God’s light.
The first reading is a short extract from Psalm 119. Verse 105, “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” uses night and day imagery to describe two aspects of God’s Law: the personal and the universal. First, the psalmist uses very down-to-earth imagery of someone traveling at nighttime. They are holding an oil lamp. If they held the lamp too high, they wouldn’t be able to see the ground. So, they hold the lamp low to the ground, making practical use of it. This image reveals the personal use of God’s Word, which is a practical tool for everyday tasks and challenges.
The second image, ‘a light on my path’, describes someone traveling during the day. The Sun lights up everything around the traveler, who is clearly able to see not only where they are going but also where everyone else is going. This image reveals the universality of God’s Word, which is capable of guiding and directing entire nations. From these two images of night and day, the psalmist tells us that God’s Law was the most precious thing to the nation of Israel. They revered his Word and obeyed it to the letter.
The remaining verses of Psalm 119 further reinforce the theme of listening, learning and walking. The psalmist asserts that, although they have suffered much, they will continue to obey the Word of God in all things, in all places and times. They recognise God’s Word as the most reliable guide for living in this world: it not only strengthened the bond between them and the divine Father, but also the bonds between them and the rest of this world. Again, the psalmist believed that the Law was the most important connection between humanity and God.
Now, the common thread in each verse is the psalmist promising to keep God’s Law. The priests would conduct many rituals to remove sins from the nation of Israel. For example, the priests would sacrifice animals, and there were many ways to purify the body and perform ritual atonement. In the Gospel, the revelation of Jesus Christ changed everything.
The Gospel reading relates a dialogue Jesus had with his disciples after the Last Supper. His followers are very worried about the future, but Jesus tells them not to worry, because he is the future. First, he promises them that they will live with him forever in God’s kingdom. Secondly, Jesus declares that he is the only way to God the Father. Finally, he equates himself to God the Father. This is a radical departure from Old Testament laws. Later that night during his trial, the priests - the very priests who were responsible for eliminating Israel’s sin - would accuse Jesus of heresy for saying that he is the Son of God. He was subsequently tortured and then executed in a public place.
Why did God permit these things to happen to his Son? The German theologian Meister Eckhart said, “Jesus became a human being because God the compassionate One could not suffer and lacked a back to be beaten. God needed a back like our backs on which to receive blows and thereby to perform compassion as well as to preach it.” God looked upon us in our fallen state of sin and felt compassion for us. As an invisible spirit, he could not suffer as we do, so the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. After spending much time speaking to us through the prophets, he came here in person as the Son of God to act upon his words. He followed through; he talked the walk and then he walked the talk. All of it led to Calvary Hill, the Cross, and the borrowed tomb.
However, that was not the end of Jesus. Before the world was made, God the Father gave eternal life to God the Son, so on the third day after his burial, Jesus rose from the dead. Before, when Jesus perished on the Cross, all our sins died with him. Then, when he walked out of the grave, he conquered both sin and death as a human being. Neither death nor sin will touch him again. He, on the other hand, has a very strong hold on us, because we are his children, and he loves us. If we believe in Jesus, if we trust him, we too shall receive the gift of eternal life. That is God’s grace. We depend entirely on Jesus to save us. He has done all the work of salvation already. We can do nothing to save ourselves; all we can do is hold his hand and walk with him.
In Matthew 5:17 Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” This means that all of history was leading up to the incarnation of the living God as Christ Jesus. In the Old Testament, God gave the nation of Israel the Law and appointed priests and kings as placeholders until the Messiah arrived. Jesus is now our prophet, priest and king. We obey his commandment to love one another as he loved us. The way, the truth and the life is no longer just words on paper, but a living person.
We trust Jesus to guide us, and so Jesus may alter the path we walk along. He may very well be saving us from the path of destruction, a path we blindly followed before meeting him. Wherever he leads us, it will be to a path of service. He will bring us to people rejected by society and the world at large. As he embraced humanity, so too must we embrace humanity and help our brothers and sisters in need. Love becomes service. To put it another way, there is no love that does not become service. Love is not merely a feeling, it is action; it is what we do that defines our love. As Jesus promised the kingdom of God to his disciples, so too does he promise a place in his kingdom for us when our journey is done. Let us listen to him, learn from him and walk where he goes. Amen.