20 Apr 2016
Saint John writes that: “Jesus cried out and said” (John
12:44) these things—but it’s not clear to whom.
His words are kind of like those explosions we see in science fiction
movies: they just fly out into open space and keep going and going. And whoever has ears to hear them will be
affected by what Jesus says.
Maybe that’s how “the word of God continued to spread and
grow” (Acts 12:24). The apostles,
prophets, and teachers just kept proclaiming Jesus—and proclaiming Jesus, and
proclaiming Jesus—as the answer and the fulfillment of their questions about life,
faith, worship, and so on. And, as we
know, Jesus “did not come to condemn the world but to save the world.” And that message of salvation has never stopped
echoing through the ages.
So, there’s something like a double-explosion here sent out
into the world. There’s Jesus’ crying
out that, indeed, God has come among us, and the door to human fulfillment is
opened to us. And there’s also the
message of God’s mercy; the message of a “perpetual second-chance” for those
who believe in Jesus Christ.
And what does God ask of us, but that we keep the proclamation
of Christ rippling through our own time, and that we let ourselves simply be in
awe of the great mysteries of our faith . . . mysteries opened up for us by the
explosive Word of God.
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