Revelation 1:1-6; 1 John 1:1-2:2; St John 21:20-25
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
In a popular children’s book, which some of your may have read, or, as in my family, seen the movie, young Bastian Balthazar Bux is chased by bullies into an old and mysterious book store. As he hides inside Bastian discovers an intriguing book: The Neverending Story. On the cover is an oval, formed by two snakes, each swallowing the tail of the other. After learning the book isn't for sale “at any price,” Bastian steals it and runs all the way to school. Instead of going to class, he hides in the attic and begins to read the book.
At first The Neverending Story seems normal enough. But as Bastian continues to read, he begins to notice the unusual intensity of the book: how gripping it is. How realistic it seems. At one point, startled by an event in the book, Bastian cries out in fear - and the characters in the story hear him! Gradually Bastian feels as though he has become part of the story. At last Bastian finds himself reading his own story in the pages of the book and he realizes he has become one of the characters.
After some initial fear and hesitation, Bastian plunges headlong into the story. And so it continues. For the remainder of the book he is no longer reading the story, but living it for himself. The Neverending Story became the story of Bastian Balthazar Bux.
Of course this is a fictional children’s story. Fantasy, nothing more. But the Apostle and Evangelist, St John, has written a real never-ending story for you, which is not only historical non-fiction, but the very Truth Itself. It is the story of the Holy Son of God in human flesh and blood. For He who was, and is, and is to come, who was in the beginning with God, who is God, by Whom all things are made, He has taken your life to be His own, so that you might receive His Life and partake of His divine nature by His grace through faith in His Word of the Gospel.
This is the divine Glory of the Holy Trinity, that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given His only-begotten Son for you and for all. That the Son has come down from heaven, become flesh of the Virgin Mary, humbled Himself as a Servant unto the death of His Cross. And that the Holy Spirit now reveals to you and shares with you the Love of God in Christ within His Holy Christian Church through the Holy Apostolic Ministry of preaching and the Sacraments.
It is that ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in making Christ known to you and sharing Him with you that we celebrate with thanksgiving the Festival of St John, the Apostle and Evangelist. For it is by and through the ministry of St John and the other Apostles that the story of Christ Jesus has not only been given to you, but given in such a way that you may live that story in and with Him.
St John was well-equipped to serve in this way because of his relationship with Jesus Christ. He is an eye-witness of Christ and His story, as he describes so eloquently in both His Gospel and Epistle. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life - the Life was made manifest, and we have seen it! and testify to it and proclaim to you eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.
Along with his brother James and Simon Peter, St John is one of those “inner three” who were privy to the great catch of dish, the healing of Peter’s mother in law, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, the Transfiguration, and the agony of Jesus in the Garden.
Even before his Divine Call and Ordination into the Holy Offie of Apostle and Evangelist, St John was called to be a disciple of Christ Jesus. And to be such a disciple, beloved of the Lord, is that way that you are also called to learn the story of Jesus, to receive His story as your own, and to enter into that story as your new and never-ending real life in Him.
St John never refers to himself by name in his Gospel and Epistles and scarcely in the Revelation. Throughout the Gospel he is simply, the disciple whom Jesus loved. And as such St John provides a place for you to find yourself in the Gospel, that you should be a recipient of Jesus’ love and follow after Him as a disciple.
For you have been created by the Blessed Holy Trinity to be loved by Him, and to love one another in His divine Image and Likeness. It has never been good for the man to be alone, nor the woman either. Even in your selfishness and sin you know that. You still retain some sense of your need to live in a fellowship of love with God and your neighbors. To love and to be loved.
Knowing your need for love is one thing, though. You cannot find it or manage it on your own. Left to yourself you will not attain the love that you need because your sin and unbelief have separated you from the Lord your God and from one another.
The remedy, the solution, the Love that you need, are find only in Jesus Christ, in being the disciple whom He loves. But what does that even mean? And how does that happen?
First, to know that you are already loved by Jesus! Not because of who you are nor what you have done, but because of who He is and all that He has done for you. You are called to be His disciple, not to earn His love, but because He loves you. His desire is that you should be Him with where He is, living with Him in the bosom of His Father together with His Spirit.
CS Lewis suggests in his book, The Four Loves, that we are not able to love or to even know how to love until we have learned to receive and rely upon the Love that God has for us in Christ Jesus. As St John writes so beautifully later and you heard Christmas Eve: In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 4:10).
That very Lord which defines the Holy Trinity has been lived and written for you as the most perfect Love Story of all, in the flesh-and-blood Story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh and suffered death for you and for your salvation. It is written for you in His Flesh and with His Blood: In His Incarnation and Nativity, upon His Cross and in His Resurrection. It is written for you in the Holy Scriptures, as by St John and the other Apostles and Evangelists. And it is written for you in the ministry and preaching of the Holy Gospel, in the means of grace, as you are baptized into Christ, absolved in His Name, and given to eat and to drink His Body and His Blood.
To be loved by the Lord in this way is how and why you love Him in return. And you learn from Him, as a beloved disciple, to live and love as He does: to love your neighbor not only as yourself, but as Jesus loves you.
To be a disciple of Jesus is far more than learning rules and regulations. Far more than memorizing facts and information. To be a disciple of Jesus is a way of life, yea it is Life itself. Of truly living a life in this world as a child of God in Christ, living by faith in Him and fervent love toward one another.
As CS Lewis goes on to say: “Our imitation of God [and His Love] in this life must be an imitation of God Incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine Life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is the Divine Life operating under human conditions” (Kindle Edition p6).
You live and love as a disciple within your own place in life. It was not the same for Peter as it was for John. One will suffer and die for the glory of God, the other will live to be an old man to the glory of God. So it is for you. It is not the same for you as it is for your neighbor. It is hard to live content with what you have been given (and not given) and what you are called to do (and not do). The Lord knows.
It is so commonplace to restate the inspired words of the Apostle, God is love as “love is god.” We feel such sentiments lurking in the depths of our hearts, the back of our minds. The envy and jealousy and covetous desire to have what others are given. This is idolatry and is the root of all temptation and sin. It is the polar opposite of love for God and for your neighbor. And it goes to show us how impossible it is for us to live and to love as a disciple of Jesus by our own effort. We cannot live in faith and love except that He comes to love us with His forgiveness and give you Life in His own flesh and blood.
St John was called to his own office and station in life as an Apostle and Evangelist. It was not like St Peter or St Paul. He was not given to be martyred, but entrusted with the care of the Blessed Virgin Mary until her life’s end.
And He was called, ordained, and sent to be a ministry of Christ and a pastor of His Church. Not of a single congregation, but of the whole Church on earth, as part of the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles in Christ, especially through his recorded Word of the New Testament Scriptures - the Holy Gospel, three Epistles, and the Book of Revelation.
It is by this Word of the Lord, which St John and his fellows have written, that pastors to this day and to the close of the age, preach one and the same Lord Jesus Christ to His Church. It is by this Word of the Lord that pastors follow in the footsteps of the Apostles, baptizing and catechizing the disciples of Jesus, handing over His Body and pouring out His Blood for you to eat and to drink. The world could not contain the books that would have needed to be written concerning all that Jesus said and did, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name (Jn 20:31).
This great gift of Life with the Lord your God is what your true Love gives to you on this Third Day of Christmas. For it is by this Word of the Word-made-Flesh that His story is your story.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
In a popular children’s book, which some of your may have read, or, as in my family, seen the movie, young Bastian Balthazar Bux is chased by bullies into an old and mysterious book store. As he hides inside Bastian discovers an intriguing book: The Neverending Story. On the cover is an oval, formed by two snakes, each swallowing the tail of the other. After learning the book isn't for sale “at any price,” Bastian steals it and runs all the way to school. Instead of going to class, he hides in the attic and begins to read the book.
At first The Neverending Story seems normal enough. But as Bastian continues to read, he begins to notice the unusual intensity of the book: how gripping it is. How realistic it seems. At one point, startled by an event in the book, Bastian cries out in fear - and the characters in the story hear him! Gradually Bastian feels as though he has become part of the story. At last Bastian finds himself reading his own story in the pages of the book and he realizes he has become one of the characters.
After some initial fear and hesitation, Bastian plunges headlong into the story. And so it continues. For the remainder of the book he is no longer reading the story, but living it for himself. The Neverending Story became the story of Bastian Balthazar Bux.
Of course this is a fictional children’s story. Fantasy, nothing more. But the Apostle and Evangelist, St John, has written a real never-ending story for you, which is not only historical non-fiction, but the very Truth Itself. It is the story of the Holy Son of God in human flesh and blood. For He who was, and is, and is to come, who was in the beginning with God, who is God, by Whom all things are made, He has taken your life to be His own, so that you might receive His Life and partake of His divine nature by His grace through faith in His Word of the Gospel.
This is the divine Glory of the Holy Trinity, that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given His only-begotten Son for you and for all. That the Son has come down from heaven, become flesh of the Virgin Mary, humbled Himself as a Servant unto the death of His Cross. And that the Holy Spirit now reveals to you and shares with you the Love of God in Christ within His Holy Christian Church through the Holy Apostolic Ministry of preaching and the Sacraments.
It is that ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in making Christ known to you and sharing Him with you that we celebrate with thanksgiving the Festival of St John, the Apostle and Evangelist. For it is by and through the ministry of St John and the other Apostles that the story of Christ Jesus has not only been given to you, but given in such a way that you may live that story in and with Him.
St John was well-equipped to serve in this way because of his relationship with Jesus Christ. He is an eye-witness of Christ and His story, as he describes so eloquently in both His Gospel and Epistle. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life - the Life was made manifest, and we have seen it! and testify to it and proclaim to you eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.
Along with his brother James and Simon Peter, St John is one of those “inner three” who were privy to the great catch of dish, the healing of Peter’s mother in law, the raising of Jairus’ daughter, the Transfiguration, and the agony of Jesus in the Garden.
Even before his Divine Call and Ordination into the Holy Offie of Apostle and Evangelist, St John was called to be a disciple of Christ Jesus. And to be such a disciple, beloved of the Lord, is that way that you are also called to learn the story of Jesus, to receive His story as your own, and to enter into that story as your new and never-ending real life in Him.
St John never refers to himself by name in his Gospel and Epistles and scarcely in the Revelation. Throughout the Gospel he is simply, the disciple whom Jesus loved. And as such St John provides a place for you to find yourself in the Gospel, that you should be a recipient of Jesus’ love and follow after Him as a disciple.
For you have been created by the Blessed Holy Trinity to be loved by Him, and to love one another in His divine Image and Likeness. It has never been good for the man to be alone, nor the woman either. Even in your selfishness and sin you know that. You still retain some sense of your need to live in a fellowship of love with God and your neighbors. To love and to be loved.
Knowing your need for love is one thing, though. You cannot find it or manage it on your own. Left to yourself you will not attain the love that you need because your sin and unbelief have separated you from the Lord your God and from one another.
The remedy, the solution, the Love that you need, are find only in Jesus Christ, in being the disciple whom He loves. But what does that even mean? And how does that happen?
First, to know that you are already loved by Jesus! Not because of who you are nor what you have done, but because of who He is and all that He has done for you. You are called to be His disciple, not to earn His love, but because He loves you. His desire is that you should be Him with where He is, living with Him in the bosom of His Father together with His Spirit.
CS Lewis suggests in his book, The Four Loves, that we are not able to love or to even know how to love until we have learned to receive and rely upon the Love that God has for us in Christ Jesus. As St John writes so beautifully later and you heard Christmas Eve: In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 4:10).
That very Lord which defines the Holy Trinity has been lived and written for you as the most perfect Love Story of all, in the flesh-and-blood Story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh and suffered death for you and for your salvation. It is written for you in His Flesh and with His Blood: In His Incarnation and Nativity, upon His Cross and in His Resurrection. It is written for you in the Holy Scriptures, as by St John and the other Apostles and Evangelists. And it is written for you in the ministry and preaching of the Holy Gospel, in the means of grace, as you are baptized into Christ, absolved in His Name, and given to eat and to drink His Body and His Blood.
To be loved by the Lord in this way is how and why you love Him in return. And you learn from Him, as a beloved disciple, to live and love as He does: to love your neighbor not only as yourself, but as Jesus loves you.
To be a disciple of Jesus is far more than learning rules and regulations. Far more than memorizing facts and information. To be a disciple of Jesus is a way of life, yea it is Life itself. Of truly living a life in this world as a child of God in Christ, living by faith in Him and fervent love toward one another.
As CS Lewis goes on to say: “Our imitation of God [and His Love] in this life must be an imitation of God Incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine Life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is the Divine Life operating under human conditions” (Kindle Edition p6).
You live and love as a disciple within your own place in life. It was not the same for Peter as it was for John. One will suffer and die for the glory of God, the other will live to be an old man to the glory of God. So it is for you. It is not the same for you as it is for your neighbor. It is hard to live content with what you have been given (and not given) and what you are called to do (and not do). The Lord knows.
It is so commonplace to restate the inspired words of the Apostle, God is love as “love is god.” We feel such sentiments lurking in the depths of our hearts, the back of our minds. The envy and jealousy and covetous desire to have what others are given. This is idolatry and is the root of all temptation and sin. It is the polar opposite of love for God and for your neighbor. And it goes to show us how impossible it is for us to live and to love as a disciple of Jesus by our own effort. We cannot live in faith and love except that He comes to love us with His forgiveness and give you Life in His own flesh and blood.
St John was called to his own office and station in life as an Apostle and Evangelist. It was not like St Peter or St Paul. He was not given to be martyred, but entrusted with the care of the Blessed Virgin Mary until her life’s end.
And He was called, ordained, and sent to be a ministry of Christ and a pastor of His Church. Not of a single congregation, but of the whole Church on earth, as part of the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles in Christ, especially through his recorded Word of the New Testament Scriptures - the Holy Gospel, three Epistles, and the Book of Revelation.
It is by this Word of the Lord, which St John and his fellows have written, that pastors to this day and to the close of the age, preach one and the same Lord Jesus Christ to His Church. It is by this Word of the Lord that pastors follow in the footsteps of the Apostles, baptizing and catechizing the disciples of Jesus, handing over His Body and pouring out His Blood for you to eat and to drink. The world could not contain the books that would have needed to be written concerning all that Jesus said and did, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His name (Jn 20:31).
This great gift of Life with the Lord your God is what your true Love gives to you on this Third Day of Christmas. For it is by this Word of the Word-made-Flesh that His story is your story.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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