Geoffrey Wainwright - "Seen One, Seen 'Em All" (June 18, 2000)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
The third reading is written in the third chapter | 0:05 | |
of the Gospel according to St. John. | 0:08 | |
There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, | 0:14 | |
a leader of the Jews. | 0:16 | |
He came to Jesus by night and said to him, | 0:19 | |
"Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher | 0:23 | |
"who has come from God. | 0:25 | |
"For no one can do these signs that you do | 0:28 | |
"apart from the presence of God." | 0:31 | |
Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, | 0:35 | |
"no one can see the kingdom of God | 0:39 | |
"without being born from above." | 0:42 | |
Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born | 0:46 | |
"after having grown old? | 0:49 | |
"Can one enter a second time into his mother's womb | 0:52 | |
"and be born?" | 0:55 | |
Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, | 0:58 | |
"no one can enter the kingdom of God | 1:01 | |
"without being born of water and the Spirit. | 1:04 | |
"What is born of the flesh is flesh, | 1:08 | |
"and what is born of the Spirit is Spirit. | 1:12 | |
"Do not be astonished that I said to you, | 1:17 | |
"you must be born from above. | 1:20 | |
"The wind blows where it chooses. | 1:24 | |
"And you hear the sound thereof, | 1:27 | |
"but you do not know where it comes from | 1:30 | |
"or where it goes. | 1:33 | |
"So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." | 1:35 | |
Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" | 1:41 | |
Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, | 1:45 | |
"and yet you do not understand these things? | 1:50 | |
"Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know, | 1:54 | |
"and testify to what we have seen, | 1:57 | |
"yet you do not receive our testimony. | 2:01 | |
"If I have told you about earthly things | 2:05 | |
"and you do not believe, | 2:08 | |
"how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? | 2:10 | |
"No one has ascended into heaven | 2:15 | |
"except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. | 2:18 | |
"And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, | 2:24 | |
"so must the Son of man be lifted up. | 2:29 | |
"That whoever believes in him may have eternal life. | 2:33 | |
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, | 2:39 | |
"so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, | 2:43 | |
"but may have eternal life. | 2:48 | |
"Indeed, God did not send the son into the world | 2:51 | |
"to condemn the world, | 2:55 | |
"but in order that the world might be saved through him." | 2:57 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 3:04 | |
- | We preach Christ crucified | 3:28 |
says the apostle Paul. | 3:31 | |
Christ crucified and risen. | 3:33 | |
The Christian message is therefore a very simple one. | 3:39 | |
What do we confess? | 3:45 | |
What is our faith as Christians? | 3:47 | |
We believe and confess that Jesus is Lord. | 3:52 | |
Again, a very simple matter. | 3:57 | |
Christ crucified and risen, | 4:00 | |
Jesus is Lord. | 4:03 | |
Why then all this stuff | 4:09 | |
about glory be to the Father, and to the Son, | 4:10 | |
and to the Holy Spirit? | 4:13 | |
As it was in the beginning, | 4:15 | |
is now and ever shall be, | 4:17 | |
world without end, amen. | 4:20 | |
Is it the theologians who are complicating a simple faith? | 4:24 | |
Especially on Trinity Sunday, | 4:32 | |
some preachers get embarrassed. | 4:33 | |
There is, by the way, | 4:37 | |
no truth in the rumor that Dean Willimon chickened out | 4:38 | |
for this Sunday. | 4:40 | |
And the embarrassed preacher | 4:45 | |
will then start to talk about shamrock leaves. | 4:49 | |
I happen to have one here. | 4:57 | |
If you can't see it in the back, | 5:01 | |
here's an even bigger one. | 5:02 | |
Three lobes, one leaf, | 5:08 | |
all of it green. | 5:13 | |
The divine nature as chlorophyll. | 5:16 | |
No, we won't talk that route today. | 5:22 | |
Or the preacher starts to talk about water. | 5:27 | |
Well that's a bit more promising, | 5:32 | |
we might be getting towards baptism | 5:33 | |
if he talks about water. | 5:35 | |
But no, the preacher will say, | 5:37 | |
well water exists in three forms. | 5:40 | |
Liquid, steam, and ice. | 5:43 | |
The divine nature as H2O. | 5:49 | |
No, we're not going that route either today. | 5:54 | |
The Holy Trinity is not a metaphysical puzzle, | 6:00 | |
not a mathematical puzzle. | 6:05 | |
St. Basil, one of the great theologians | 6:11 | |
in the fourth century, | 6:13 | |
when the whole matter was under debate. | 6:14 | |
St. Basil of Caesarea very wisely said, | 6:18 | |
that number belongs to created things. | 6:22 | |
Number belongs to created things. | 6:27 | |
So let us go another route. | 6:35 | |
The text to bear in mind, all along this morning is this, | 6:39 | |
"He who has seen me, has seen the Father," | 6:45 | |
saying of Jesus, in the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel. | 6:51 | |
Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father. | 6:57 | |
You remember the episode, perhaps. | 7:02 | |
Jesus is instructing his disciples | 7:04 | |
that he's about to leave them | 7:07 | |
and go to prepare a place for them. | 7:09 | |
They don't understand. | 7:12 | |
Thomas puts the question, Phillip puts a question. | 7:14 | |
Phillip said to Jesus, | 7:19 | |
"Lord, show us the Father and we shall be satisfied." | 7:20 | |
Jesus said to him, | 7:27 | |
"Have I been with you so long | 7:29 | |
"and yet you do not know me, Phillip? | 7:32 | |
"He who has seen me, has seen the Father." | 7:36 | |
How can you say show us the Father? | 7:39 | |
Do you not believe that I am in the Father | 7:44 | |
and the Father in me? | 7:48 | |
Sam Hammond reminded me, earlier this past week, | 7:55 | |
that the verse to think about this morning, | 7:58 | |
whoever has seen me has seen the Father, | 8:01 | |
was said by William Temple | 8:05 | |
to the great archbishop of Canterbury | 8:07 | |
in the middle of the last century. | 8:09 | |
That verse was said by William Temple | 8:11 | |
to be a verse from which | 8:14 | |
you could unfold the whole of the Christian faith. | 8:15 | |
Whoever has seen me, said Jesus, | 8:21 | |
has seen the Father. | 8:25 | |
We're not going to begin quite there though. | 8:30 | |
Let's begin with the Holy Spirit. | 8:32 | |
Last Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, | 8:36 | |
you saw the Holy Spirit come down, didn't you? | 8:38 | |
Or did you? | 8:43 | |
You heard a sound as of | 8:47 | |
a mighty rushing wind. | 8:54 | |
You saw light, | 8:59 | |
tongues of fire, | 9:02 | |
come down on the heads of the apostles. | 9:05 | |
Thunder and lightening. | 9:11 | |
The Lord makes the oak trees whirl, | 9:16 | |
it said in the Psalm for today. | 9:20 | |
Yet, the wind, you don't know where it comes from | 9:26 | |
and you don't know where it's going to, | 9:30 | |
said Jesus in our Gospel reading. | 9:32 | |
I remember when we were in West Africa, | 9:40 | |
when a great tropical storm would brew. | 9:44 | |
We'd go and sit out on the porch and watch the mighty wind | 9:50 | |
swing the palm trees, bend them over. | 9:55 | |
A mighty wind, you don't know where it comes from, | 10:01 | |
you don't know where it goes to, | 10:06 | |
but you kind of see it | 10:10 | |
or don't see it. | 10:14 | |
You see it in its effects. | 10:16 | |
The Holy Spirit is the wind from God like that. | 10:22 | |
You see the Holy Spirit, | 10:27 | |
and yet you don't see the Holy Spirit. | 10:29 | |
You see the effects of the Spirit. | 10:35 | |
You might say, perhaps, | 10:38 | |
that you see through the Holy Spirit. | 10:39 | |
They Holy Spirit enables you to see what you do see. | 10:46 | |
That great hymn by Charles Wesley | 10:53 | |
that at last has found a place | 10:55 | |
in the United Methodist Hymnal. | 10:57 | |
"Spirit of faith, come down, | 10:58 | |
"reveal the things of God, | 11:02 | |
"and make to us the Godhead known, | 11:03 | |
"and witness with the blood. | 11:05 | |
"'Tis thine the blood to apply | 11:07 | |
"and give us eyes to see." | 11:09 | |
Give us eyes to see. | 11:14 | |
That's what the Holy Spirit does. | 11:19 | |
We see him and we don't see him. | 11:25 | |
We see the Holy Spirit in what the Holy Spirit | 11:28 | |
enables us to see and do. | 11:31 | |
And what the Holy Spirit enables us to see, above all, | 11:38 | |
is Jesus. | 11:44 | |
Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. | 11:49 | |
The Holy Spirit said Jesus, | 11:57 | |
continuing his final conversations with his disciples, | 11:58 | |
the Holy spirit will take what is mine | 12:02 | |
and declare it to you. | 12:06 | |
The Holy Spirit brings Jesus to mind. | 12:10 | |
How does the Holy Spirit do that? | 12:18 | |
How does Holy Spirit enable us to see Jesus? | 12:21 | |
Well, by various tracks. | 12:27 | |
The Holy Spirit enables us to undertake faithful reading | 12:32 | |
of the scriptures and above all, of the Gospels. | 12:37 | |
It's a commonplace, running right through | 12:44 | |
the history of spiritual writing and of theology | 12:46 | |
that the scriptures must be read | 12:49 | |
in the same spirit as the spirit in which they were written. | 12:52 | |
The Holy Spirit presided over the recording of those things | 13:00 | |
which are in our scriptures. | 13:06 | |
That same spirit gives us eyes to see | 13:08 | |
when we read those stories. | 13:12 | |
And at the heart of those stories, is of course, Jesus. | 13:16 | |
prophesied in the old testament, | 13:19 | |
promised in the old testament, | 13:21 | |
come in the flesh, in the new. | 13:24 | |
The Holy Spirit enables us to see Jesus | 13:30 | |
as we read the scriptures. | 13:36 | |
Read them on our own, | 13:38 | |
read them with a group of Christian friends, | 13:40 | |
hear them read in church, study them. | 13:42 | |
The Holy Spirit takes what belongs to Jesus | 13:47 | |
and declares it to us. | 13:52 | |
Or another way in which the spirit allows us to see Jesus. | 13:56 | |
There's a phrase I like very much | 14:00 | |
in the Lord's supper service | 14:02 | |
of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. | 14:05 | |
There the presiding minister calls upon God | 14:09 | |
to send the Holy Spirit to show | 14:11 | |
the bread and wine to be the body and blood of Christ. | 14:16 | |
The Holy Spirit enables us, | 14:25 | |
when we gather at the Lord's table, | 14:27 | |
to take that bread and to receive that wine | 14:29 | |
as the body and blood of Christ. | 14:32 | |
What a shame that we are not doing it | 14:35 | |
in the main service today, | 14:37 | |
but you are invited afterwards, into the side chapel. | 14:38 | |
The Holy Spirit enables us to see Jesus | 14:46 | |
in the midst of us, | 14:51 | |
as we gather at his table. | 14:53 | |
It's an old cry, isn't it? | 14:59 | |
Sir, we would see Jesus. | 15:00 | |
That's what the Greeks said, | 15:06 | |
who came up to Jerusalem | 15:07 | |
and heard about this strange character. | 15:10 | |
"Sir, we would see Jesus." | 15:13 | |
So then we kind of see | 15:19 | |
and kind of don't see the Holy Spirit. | 15:20 | |
We see through the Holy Spirit | 15:25 | |
and we see the one to whom the Holy Spirit points us, Jesus. | 15:29 | |
Who do we see or what is it that we see | 15:40 | |
when we see Jesus? | 15:44 | |
Looking backwards this time in St. John's Gospel, | 15:50 | |
to the very first chapter, | 15:53 | |
after that glorious beginning, | 15:56 | |
in which John talks of the word | 15:58 | |
by whom everything was made | 16:00 | |
and this word became flesh as Jesus Christ. | 16:02 | |
Then, to sum it up, the Gospel writer says, | 16:07 | |
No one has ever seen God. | 16:10 | |
But the only son who is in the bosom of the Father, | 16:15 | |
he has made him known. | 16:21 | |
One of the few successful bits of translation | 16:26 | |
in the New English Bible is that verse. | 16:28 | |
Where it says that the Son, the only Son, | 16:31 | |
who is closest to the Father's heart, makes him known. | 16:34 | |
If you look at the Greek, | 16:44 | |
it says that the Son gives the exegesis of the Father. | 16:45 | |
He explicates, unfolds, makes the Father known. | 16:50 | |
Looking in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus himself says, | 16:57 | |
no one knows the Son, except the Father. | 17:00 | |
No one knows the Father, except the Son | 17:03 | |
and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. | 17:05 | |
Son, Jesus, the word made flesh, | 17:13 | |
allows us to see the Father. | 17:19 | |
(speaking in German) | 17:27 | |
As the Germans say. | 17:29 | |
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. | 17:31 | |
We speak about people as the spittin' image | 17:37 | |
of their parents. | 17:41 | |
That's exactly what the letter | 17:44 | |
to the Hebrews says about Jesus. | 17:47 | |
He's the spittin' image of the Father. | 17:50 | |
In Jesus, the incarnate Son, | 17:57 | |
we see the Father. | 18:01 | |
Who then or what is this God whom we see in Jesus? | 18:05 | |
He's the one whom Jesus addresses | 18:14 | |
throughout his ministry as Abba, Father. | 18:15 | |
A reverent, but affectionate form of address. | 18:21 | |
Kind of thing I always wanted my children to say to me, | 18:27 | |
but they somehow never managed to. | 18:30 | |
That combination, it's Father's Day, after all. | 18:32 | |
I have to mention that somehow. | 18:35 | |
That combination of respect and affection, Father. | 18:38 | |
Who is that Father? | 18:50 | |
That Father is the God who so loved the world. | 18:53 | |
Now today's Gospel reading, | 18:59 | |
that he gave his only Son, | 19:02 | |
that whoever believes in him should not perish, | 19:05 | |
but have everlasting life. | 19:07 | |
The Holy God he is, the Holy God who so hates sin, | 19:13 | |
that he wants to deliver the sinner from it. | 19:19 | |
I came to invite sinners, says Jesus. | 19:24 | |
Luke's Gospel, chapter five. | 19:30 | |
I came to invite sinners to repentance. | 19:32 | |
Just as I am, but not as I mean to stay. | 19:40 | |
The love and mercy and wrath of God, | 19:48 | |
against all that disfigures, | 19:53 | |
God's plan for the world and for humankind | 19:56 | |
is revealed in Jesus. | 20:00 | |
But there's always a plus | 20:01 | |
on the saving side. | 20:05 | |
He came so that the world might not be condemned, | 20:08 | |
but so that those who believe in him, | 20:13 | |
might have everlasting life. | 20:16 | |
We see and we don't see the Holy Spirit. | 20:25 | |
We see through the Holy Spirit to Jesus. | 20:29 | |
Testified to in the scriptures, | 20:33 | |
and coming to meet his people, | 20:35 | |
day by day, Sunday by Sunday, year by year. | 20:38 | |
And that Jesus is the one who reveals the Father. | 20:43 | |
Now what's all that mean for us? | 20:50 | |
Here we need to look at it | 20:52 | |
in the terms of our Epistle reading for this morning. | 20:54 | |
Romans chapter eight, | 20:57 | |
'cause that's one of the great passages | 21:01 | |
that allows theologians to build up | 21:05 | |
the doctrine of the Trinity. | 21:09 | |
The Holy Spirit, Paul tells us in that passage, | 21:14 | |
the Holy Spirit liberates people. | 21:17 | |
The Holy Spirit liberates people from slavery to sin. | 21:20 | |
The Holy Spirit leads people, says St. Paul. | 21:25 | |
In the paths of righteousness and all that jazz, | 21:31 | |
as Louis Armstrong used to say. | 21:34 | |
The Holy Spirit liberates us, leads us, | 21:38 | |
witnesses with and to our spirit, | 21:43 | |
and tells us that we are sons and daughters of God. | 21:47 | |
Those who are in Christ, by faith and baptism, | 21:50 | |
we are sons and daughters of God, in the Son, Christ. | 21:53 | |
And we have the great privilege | 22:01 | |
of being able to address the Lord of heaven and earth | 22:04 | |
as Father. | 22:08 | |
This Holy Spirit going on in chapter eight of Romans, | 22:12 | |
is the same spirit who is at work throughout the world. | 22:16 | |
Prompting dis-satisfactions | 22:21 | |
with the present state of affairs. | 22:23 | |
Starting to bring about changes, | 22:27 | |
so that the whole creation may one day be filled with God. | 22:29 | |
For us, the Holy Spirit is starting to transform us | 22:39 | |
into the likeness of Jesus. | 22:46 | |
That's probably the hardest work | 22:51 | |
that the Holy Spirit has to do. | 22:52 | |
Much harder than spreading the heavens and the earth. | 22:56 | |
Transforming us, giving us the mind that was in Christ, | 23:01 | |
enabling us to walk as Christ walked, | 23:06 | |
so that one day | 23:11 | |
we may, this time, perhaps, really see the Lord. | 23:14 | |
The Lord, without whom, | 23:24 | |
without holiness, you cannot see, says Hebrews. | 23:26 | |
The Lord, himself, is of purer eyes, | 23:34 | |
than to behold in equity, says the prophet Agatha. | 23:38 | |
This Lord who dwells in unapproachable light, | 23:44 | |
says Paul writing to Timothy. | 23:47 | |
Isaiah sort of got a glimpse of him, | 23:51 | |
high and lifted up. | 23:57 | |
But it was smoky in the temple. | 24:01 | |
Incense burning, seraphim getting in the way. | 24:05 | |
Isaiah, sort of saw | 24:11 | |
the Lord in the temple. | 24:15 | |
He was being serenaded by the seraphim. | 24:21 | |
Holy, holy, holy. | 24:26 | |
The threefold holy that we sing | 24:31 | |
every time we gather at the Lord's table. | 24:34 | |
You see, the three divine persons, here I am now. | 24:39 | |
Finally, as a theologian. | 24:42 | |
The three divine persons in-dwell one another. | 24:43 | |
Did you not know, Jesus said to Phillip. | 24:51 | |
That I am in the Father and the Father in me. | 24:56 | |
Extrapolate a little bit from that to the Holy Spirit. | 25:02 | |
We have the mutual in-dwelling, as we say in the trade. | 25:06 | |
The mutual in-dwelling of the three persons, | 25:12 | |
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. | 25:16 | |
They receive a single worship | 25:23 | |
because they are one God. | 25:27 | |
One day, we'll get a better view. | 25:33 | |
But meanwhile, | 25:40 | |
turn your eyes upon Jesus. | 25:44 | |
Look full in his wonderful face. | 25:51 | |
Seen one? Seen 'em all. | 25:58 | |
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, | 26:03 | |
and to the Holy Spirit, | 26:06 | |
as it was in the beginning, | 26:09 | |
is now and ever shall be, | 26:11 | |
world without end, | 26:13 | |
Amen! | 26:15 |