All on board?

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/050317.cfm
1 Corinthians 15:1-8
John 14:6-14

After hearing, reading, and studying John 14:6-14, can we finally agree that Jesus identified himself as not just the Christ, but the incarnation of God? Are we finally done here? Jesus is the actual, factual human embodiment of the creator. His declarative conversation with Thomas and Philip seals the deal. 

These verses present a masterful flow of deduction, induction, and reduction. Here’s the deal, he deducts. He induces us, showing how it looks. Reduced to a final conclusion, he asks what else can be true?

Jesus waxes emotional, articulates in compact statements. He convinces and loves. 

So, now we are all on the same page. We’re all on board, right? 

Probably not. 

Even though Jesus eliminates confusion about who he is, a vast number of folks still don’t and won’t buy in. Few “got” Jesus then. So, why would we be any better at getting him now?

In the fourth decade of the first century, Jesus stood among his friends. He walked with them through thick and thin. Jesus earnestly wanted them to grasp his identity. “Come on, guys. Do the math. See the truth.”

Jesus left them, and leaves us, no wiggle room for escape from his contention, his insistence, and his pleading. He says that he is God. How can he say these things? They are either true, or balderdash. Maybe the words are made up? We can conclude that some, if not most, of his followers were unclear on the veracity of his logic. So if made up, why throw Philip and Thomas under the bus? If not made up, these people appropriately struggled to believe. Even at his death, resurrection, and ascension, the acceptance of Jesus’ divinity gets lodged like a fishbone someplace between the eyeballs and the heart. 

It took the Pentecost, filled with drama and cosmic, windswept preaching, to finally lift the veil and awaken the hearts of the apostles and the disciples. They could finally grasp the unbelievable reality of God’s fantastic plan for salvation and for all of creation. After the oohs and ahs, the evidence and the passion lined up properly into an “Aha moment” as the Holy Spirit lit up their hearts and minds. 

Heaven was probably filled with “Whews” from half of the folks, uncertain that humanity would ever understand Jesus’ divinity; and, from the rest, “Really? Now they get it? The Holy Spirit enters their hearts and they go, ‘Aha’? Sheesh!”  

But, no, the awakening then was not complete, and is barely open-eyed today.

We, 2000 years later, have the advantage of exceptionally improved hindsight and two eons of catalogued cardiovascular heartening. A panoply of evidence confronts our eyeballs, and a limitless supply of grace overwhelms our hearts. The data and grace increases more and more with each ensuing year of the Spirit in creation. God eliminated the catastrophe of death, and is converting creation cell by cell into an eternal Kingdom. 

What else could be true? It should be enough to bring peace and submission, glory and honor, and celebration in the streets, which is certainly happening. Nonetheless, we are not yet convinced. 

We don’t have Jesus’ human visage, the face-to-face recognition of the Father. But we have everything else. More, even, than the first Christians could imagine. We have history, revelation, scripture, Spirit-filled saints recorded and uplifted, and communities of faith both here and in heaven. We have moment by moment interplays with the miraculous — from lucid testimony to sane witness; from inspirational deaths to remarkable births. 

We’re in a much better position to grasp Jesus’ divinity. Right?

Er, … not that you’d imagine. No matter how certain the witness and testimony — definitive truth that the divine places in our path — we inevitably look for a crack in the apparent, smooth, seamless wall of Jesus’ hand drawn plea for recognition. After seeing his portrait, a detailed visage, we scan edge to edge and top to bottom, insisting that a flaw exists. 

Jesus’ words, though, are formidable.

• I am the way, the truth and life
  
• No one comes to the Father except through me
  
• If you know me, then you will also know the Father
  
• Whoever has seen me has seen the Father
  
• I do not speak on my own
  
• The father who dwells in me is doing his works
  
• Believe me
  
• Or, else, believe because of the works

Each of these lined out data points, which Jesus presents all over scripture, pack together here like one of those paint-by-the-numbers canvases. Jesus presents to Philip the drawing and the paints. Written into the script noted by John’s Gospel, Jesus supplies the numbers. He lays out the portrait and shows us how it all fits together.

“You still do not know me, Philip?”
“Do you not believe?”

Without the Holy Spirit, Jesus knows the men and women before him are incapable of belief, but it still hurts. You can imagine his face contort with frustration and chagrin as he pleads for recognition. “The Father is right here. We are one!” And, then, like the brother who will love too much, he knows that his identity requires substantiation. Even with the Holy Spirit, who will soon dwell with his followers, they will need his unflinching support, a steady flow of his love.

“Whatever you ask in my name, I will do.”

And then he doubles down on how that is to be so, particularly noting that he honors the Father that lives in him. The divine God is one. There is no contentious will between the Father and the Son.

“If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

Still none of this is enough for us.

We prepare escape plans from Jesus' hold on us, because we anticipate that his claims will be proven false. John’s scripture could eventually be deemed as a fraud, we tell ourselves. Jesus never said these things. Jesus’ body will be found, we imagine. So, he was never resurrected. The church drips of scandal and lies. You can’t believe anything they say. 

We expect trap doors in the floor of faith, afraid that God's hold on us is more spider web than falling in love. Divinity, like every other thing, eventually falls apart under the weight of convincing and devastating realities. 

We can't trust in the premise of God’s Trinity; in the notion of God choosing to be flesh and blood; in God’s judgment of sin and goodness; In God’s assurance that all sin are forgiven; in God’s sexual and biological design; and in God’s love for creation. Divinity falls apart under the weight of convincing and devastating realities. He can't be the real deal.

We conjure up objections, au contraire debates, to pick apart the definitive statement by Jesus that, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” We say he never meant to be so specific about himself. John has mischaracterized the great prophet’s words. Any of us can be the same window into the Father, we tell ourselves. Jesus is simply urging us to be fully human, and follow his lead. That’s all he means.

Why? Because, a man cannot be God. No matter how we say it, if we don’t believe that Jesus Christ, a man, can be God, we can’t accept the logic of Jesus’ statements to Philip and Thomas. Something has gone awry.

Maybe Jesus is an alien from another planet. His Father is some sort of Darth Vader character, concocted from the dark side, who sends Jesus off to his death. Or, maybe the “Father” is a secret code for the place of conglomeration for all of our souls. Jesus has somehow managed to crack the code. Yes, that must be it. “We’re all the same! We can live forever like gods! Do as Jesus does! Be the best Jesus you can be!” 

Oh, wait a minute, here’s something better. This is what’s really going on. There are multiple universes, and in this one, Jesus dies. In universe 666 he’s a really bad guy. It’s the worm holes we’ve got to worry about.

Nope. None of those things is remotely true. Jesus clearly is unique. He knows it, and if we hear him out, we can know it too. His person stands as a singularly, radically superior human being, because he is the incarnation of God, on par with the creator. The Father and the Christ are one and the same. Jesus is not an Einstein, a Gertrude Stein, and an Abraham Lincoln all rolled into one. He tells us what he is.

I am the way, the truth and life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus wants to be taken at his word. His word as God incarnate should be enough for us. 

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. 

Not quite good enough? OK, then. Jesus understands our reticence. Jesus grasps our need for evidence. If we cannot believe what he says, then he asks us to believe what he does.

Or else, believe because of the works themselves.

His love goes so far as to convince us even from our own perspective. What do we see, and hear, and feel about Jesus? Look at what he has done. We surely cannot ignore his words with all these piles of evidentiary holiness and love.

The angels wonder if that will be enough for us. The saints fret for us, praying for our awakening. Our ancestors, our families that reach back into the first born of creation, moan over us, yearning for us to join them.

“Don’t give up on them,” they cry to Jesus.

Jesus hears them, and he speaks to us softly, asking us to remove our hands from our face and our ears and open them to him.

“Do not be afraid.”