John 10.22-30
At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ Jesus answered, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.’
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Somebody one told me that ‘God is God, and we are not.’ Now, this seems so obvious, but we miss it. We are not the creator; we are a creature. We are not all powerful, we are limited, our knowledge is limited, our abilities are limited our minds are limited. We can’t snap our fingers and make things the way that we want them to be; we don’t know what it’s like to be infinite.
Now, this is going to sound strange, but go with me for a moment. In my job as a Priest, I have had the privilege of conducting many funerals, many of which have happened at crematoriums. Once or twice I have been allowed ‘round the back’ so to speak to see the furnaces where bodies are cremated. I have actually seen a body in the process of being cremated. And when I saw that, I had a remarkable sense of peace. It was like, I could ‘see’ what I was, and at that moment I realised deep down, that ‘God is God, and we are not;’ that we are creatures, we are not God, we are but human, frail humans at that, here but for a time, the destination of all of us, is ultimately the same. Whoever is born, will one day, pass away.
There is a very famous line from the book of Genesis; Dust you are, and to dust you shall return. The song Presto, by Rush has the same kind of message. ‘I am made from the dust of the stars And the oceans flow in my veins.’ We are made of material things. All the elements in side of us were made inside stars. We have saltwater running through our veins.
God is not us, he isn’t like anything in the created order he has no like, nothing in the created order is or indeed could be similar to him. He is no a part of the created order at all. He is eternal. He has life ‘in himself’ and dwells in his eternity,. He is not reliant nor does he need to be reliant on anything at all.
Yet, here we have Jesus speaking of eternity, as if he has access to it. As if he is eternal himself? Jesus upset a lot of people when he became an itinerant preacher because he said that, somehow, God’s eternity is a part of him, the author of John’s Gospel says the same thing in his prologue, ‘the Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us.’ He says that those who follow him, will be given eternal life. What does that mean, it means that eternity is in Jesus, and he gives that eternity, God’s very life to those who follow him. I have spoken before they what we are doing when we come to worship God as a community on Sunday mornings
For those who follow him the very being of God exists within them. We are not just mortal. No, we are also eternal beings. I talk about this at weddings, at the wedding I did last weekend. I said to the couple that, what they are doing on that day when they marry each other. They aren’t ‘just’ ‘getting married’ they are doing something that has eternal significance, a marriage is a foretaste of the great future which we read about in revelation chapter 21 where the writer says this:
‘Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Here the image, the metaphor, is of God marrying his creation, his bride The gospel is God’s desire to share his eternity with all of his creatures, to marry his creation. We who are temporal, who break down and die and decay, live eternal lives with our Heavenly Father. There is more to life than this. There is life beyond the grave.
This is why the resurrection is so important. It is why it is central to Christianity. Because the promise that we have in the resurrection is that there is a future beyond this life. I’m not saying this life is not important, but what I am saying, what the church has said for centuries, is that in the resurrection of Jesus, the way became possible for us all to share in the life of the living God. Jesus offers that to us today, he is both the model, and the one through whom we can share in the eternal life of God. To quote the end of our passage from John again:
‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.’
We belong to eternity, if only we remembered it and knew it day by day, how our lives would be different, how much fuller our lives would be. But it’s hard to remember this, that when we leave church and get into our cars or walk home and the mundane hits us. We can easily forget just what we have been given by God.
The Christian message is, quite seriously is that we have access to God’s life, God’s very being itself, through Jesus, it’s through him we become the true image bearers of God they we are meant to be.
A friend of mine recently lost his wife to cancer. I didn’t know her too well but I knew that she was a wonderful person, the outpouring of love for her on in tributes on Facebook was really quite something. He posted this poem on facebook a few days ago after she has passed away;
“You only are immortal, the creator and maker of all:
and we are mortal, formed from the dust of the earth,
and unto earth shall we return.
For so you ordained when you created me, saying:
'Dust you are and to dust you shall return.'
All of us go down to the dust,
yet weeping at the grave we make our song:
ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA.”
Alleluia, for Christ is risen, and we will rise with him, because we have faith in him, in who he is, and in what he came to do; to destroy death and to share God’s eternal life with us.
Amen.