St John the Evangelist

Sermon – 2 May 2010, St John the Evangelist
Acts 11: 1-8, Rev 21: 1-6, John 13: 31-35
May my words offer hope and inspiration to live your Gospel. Amen
Are you bored? Do you want something new? We seem to tire so easily of the ordinary in life. Many of us are constantly looking for something new, something exciting. We want to be entertained by life and to have the latest of everything. We are often taken in by the advertisements that insist: This is really new, and you can’t live without it!

Advertisers are not the first to make such claims. Nor are they completely misleading. We are certainly living in times of rapid change. In many cases, we purchase an item one week, and there is a new and improved version the next. Furthermore, it is often extremely difficult to live, much less advance, without some contemporary devices. We are always faced with questions like: How new and improved does everything have to be? And what can I live without?

The readings for today make precisely this claim: This is really new, and you can’t live without it! But the biblical authors are not talking about something that is merely new and improved today but will probably be replaced tomorrow. When they speak of “a new heaven and a new earth,” “a new Jerusalem” or “a new commandment,” they are referring to eschatological reality. The Greek word used here indicates the extraordinary character of this newness. This is an act of God that lasts forever and ever Amen.

The reading from the Book of Revelation talks about this newness. The vision found there is rich in symbolic language. The new heaven and new earth represent all of reality. The scene is really a vision of the new age after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus completely altered the powers of both heaven and earth. He invited his followers to enter into a new way of being, where they would dwell with God in their midst. It might be better to say that they would dwell there in the midst of God. This awe-inspiring vision declares that everything has been transformed, and continues to be transformed by the power of God. So if we are looking for something new, then look no further than our readings today.

And of course today is special for us at St Johns Campbells Bay because this week we celebrate the life and faith of St John the Evangelist – our patron saint, and even though we may ask ‘what is new in all that?’ we may just be able to find new perspectives on life when we think about what and who St John is for us today. So who is St John?

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly who John is. Although one Gospel, three epistles, and the book of Revelation all bear his name, it is far from certain that one and the same person wrote them all. On the other hand, there are striking similarities in style and outlook that encourage us to describe this literature as at least having John as the one who contributed through the oral tradition.

In the West, we tend to find John portrayed as a young, beardless figure. In the East, he is shown as a venerable figure with a long white beard. Let’s stay with our Western identity, and enquire further into the youthfulness of this Evangelist. He was the youngest of the apostles. A Galilean fisherman, who worked with his father Zebedee and his older brother James, was called by Jesus from the Lake to be a disciple. They were nicknamed ‘Sons of Thunder’, which suggests he had a fiery temperament – not scared to challenge and express emotions. He is known as being the fittest and the one Jesus loved. When the woman came reporting the resurrection of Jesus John was mentioned as the one who reached the tomb first – the fittest of all of them. Paul refers to John as the pillar of the church in Jerusalem. So John was a young man with lots of spark.

In contrast with other apostles, whose legends are about how they died a martyr’s death, legends about John are about how he survived martyrdom. The symbol of John holding a chalice out of which comes a snake or dragon relates to the attempt to poison him using the eucharistic chalice. But it was the assassin who died. There is also a story that John was boiled in oil, but he emerged unscathed, rather like the three young men in the book of Daniel (Daniel 3), and, in John’s case, looking younger than ever.

The point I think here is that John did live until he was an old man, and his experiences with Jesus were what formed him as a young man, and indeed transformed him as he experienced the death and resurrection of Jesus. As an older man he proceeded to spread the gospel, establish the church and write the story down. He was a man of depth and great theological insight.

So that is all very interesting, you might say, but what relevance does he have to us today and especially here at Campbells Bay? My first response is let’s explore for a moment what may have inspired him in his amazing faith journey? May be it was the miracles Jesus performed? May be it was the way he was treated as a young man, and called by Jesus to be a follower? May be it was Jesus great acceptance of a man with a fiery temper? May be it was simply his evolving reflection and appreciation of what Jesus offered and who he was? Certainly his theological reflections on a new heaven and the new earth must have been formed by Jesus death and resurrection. There were probably many more things that inspired John, but none of them were simply just a short term fix. It involved transformation and new beginnings over a whole life time of experiences with Jesus in John’s case. And this too is the case for each one of us. All our experiences of Jesus collectively are transformative and life-changing. Just imagine if we, like John, wrote down, or told, our stories of faith. I am sure others around us would be inspired, and we too would certainly be inspired and excited as we put our faith story together.

But I have not answered the question - So what is new?
In the Gospel from St John this morning, Jesus talks about a new commandment; a new way – this is radical – you can’t get better than this in terms of new and amazing and exciting theology! Jesus instructs his disciples to “love one another.” Here he speaks of agápe, a love that requires total commitment and trust. It is the kind of love with which God loves us, a love that should be the model of the love we have for others. When we examine the demands of this love, we realize just how revolutionary it is and what a change in attitude it requires. This is new, not because it is the first time that Jesus mentions it but rather because love is a permanent creation, a daily innovation, the ongoing search of ways to get out of ourselves and make the other the centre of our lives. I am sure John was inspired by this.

The new kind of love that Jesus holds out to us might require us to open doors that we have closed against others, to respond to appeals that cry out for our help, to forgive oversights or mistakes that someone may have made. This love opens our eyes to facts that we might otherwise overlook: that the poor in the world belong to our family; that those who live in despair might be saved by our care of them; that peace can come to the world through our efforts. “This is how all will know that [we] are [his] disciples, that [we] have love for one another.” Old stuff in one sense but potentially radically new, according to how we practice such love.

John’s vision of the new heaven and the new earth remains in the future only because we have failed to live it in our present. Jesus has risen from the dead, and now all things are new. “The old order has passed away.” We have entered the age of fulfilment. It is within our power to fashion a world, a country, a neighbourhood, a family where there is genuine love for one another and sincere concern for the well-being of all.
We have the power through our relationship with Jesus to create a new world for people around us.

And of course many people are doing just this. That is why people who do live this extraordinary love stand out from the crowd. They might be ridiculed for their manner of living, but they nonetheless show by it that they are God’s people and God does indeed dwell with them.

We are Easter people and it is this that brings new and exciting aspects to our lives. We have been raised with Jesus from the dead; we are indeed alive!
So do not hold on to a belief that a new heaven and a new earth is to be reserved for life after death, or a future age; we this very day can experience such a promise. Newness is not always about trying to keep up with the latest things, it is also about trying or striving to bring forward that which is valued by past generations, such as John, that deserve our attention. It is about looking at our world, our creation, the people around us in a completely new way; because the love God is talking about never runs out and it brings new insights and new dynamics and relationships every day. The potential never runs out.

So next time you feel bored with the every day life stuff….think about loving just a little bit more! And who knows, anything is possible where we live in world where God offers us an experience of a new heaven and a new earth everyday. Let us love one another as God loves us.
Amen.
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