A reading of the holy gospel according to John. Jesus said to his disciples, he who obeys the commandments he has from me is the man who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my father. I too will love him, and I will reveal myself to him. Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said to Jesus, Lord, why is it that you will reveal yourself to us but not to the world? Jesus answered, anyone who loves me will be true to my word, and my father will love him.
And we will come to him and make our dwelling place with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words. Yet the word you hear is not mine. It comes from the father who sent me. This much have I told you while I am still with you.
The paraclete, the holy spirit, whom the father will send in my name, will instruct you in everything and remind you of everything that I have told you. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Often enough, you hear the Catholic church, the Christian church, referred to along with Islamism and maybe one or two other religions as a religion of the book.
Meaning, that you have a collection of writings, of revelation, or what have you, as the foundation and the basis of that religion. That is not quite true of the of the Christian church at all. Christ never wrote a book. He never told anybody to write a book. He never gave his approval upon a book that had been written.
He never saw one that had been written about him. The earliest writings about Christ at the earliest are about twenty years after his death, between that and about a 100 AD. So this is a point which I think we have to keep in mind and especially in mind these days. Because I get a feeling more and more that there is a strong tendency to look upon the church of Jesus Christ as a church exclusively of the book. Now that's the way Martin Luther wanted it.
That's the way Calvin wanted it. But you know, whatever else you may say about Luther and Calvin, they came on the scene a little bit late, sixteen hundred years later. And the book they're talking about was not the book that Christ wrote. It's not the book that he told anybody to write. It's not the book that he ever gave his imprimatur on.
I'm not in the least saying that the bible is not inspired word of god. I'm just saying that it is that I'm saying just what I said, precisely what I said. So when we think of the Christian church, what do you think of primarily? It's a living institution. It's not a book.
Our blessed lord, when he with his command to his disciples, what did he tell them? He said, going out there for teach ye all nations and teach what I've taught you. And notice what is said today. This is what brought this to my mind. That they will teach not only what Christ taught them, but they will get that teaching in an amplified form by the Holy Spirit, and they will then go out and disperse it.
And again, Christ never said, put this down in writing. Don't transcribe it. He never told him to go out and buy an electronic device to tape it. He didn't even ask anyone to do it in shorthand. What he did do, without the shadow of a doubt, was to establish a living organization.
And I mean organization now. It may not have been complete, it may not have been as perfect and as detailed and specified as we might like it, but he did found some kind of an organization. He had a handful of his apostles. That means they were sent. And to them, he gave a command that they should teach what he taught them, and they should teach what they would have revealed to them by the holy spirit.
Well, was it to die with them? Was it to stop with their death? He never promised them immortality. Quite the reverse. And we see this very clearly in the book of of the of the acts of apostles, which we've been reading these days.
And so what we need to do in in our times is to reaffirm our conviction about the church of Jesus Christ. This living body. The body of what? Of the faithful. The living body of Jesus Christ.
Living. Living. It has a voice. It speaks. This needs to be reaffirmed.
I was just over the weekend, I was reading a commentary by a very well known Catholic scripture scholar, and he speaks of the Catholic church, the Christian church, as a church of the book. It isn't. Not in the sense in which Islam is a church of the book or in the sense that Judaism is a religion of the book. It is not the same. Now it is true, and I repeat, the Catholic the Christian church was built and accepted the Old Testament.
Of course, it did. Christ said, I'm not going to change the tiniest little bit of that old testament. What Christ said was, I have come to fulfill it. To fulfill it. In what?
In giving us another book. Now you'll say, you're downgrading the New Testament. I am not downgrading the New Testament. I'm only saying Christ didn't write it. Christ never saw it.
Christ didn't tell anybody to write it. What he did do was to command that handful of insignificant, poorly educated, socially very low level human beings. Paul was a little different. He's the only one, and he wasn't one of the original 12. He told them that he was giving them a body of truth, and they were to teach it, a living voice.
And this is what we have to, I think, bring home to ourselves, that the church of Christ is a living institution. For all times, it speaks in a contemporary voice. And that voice at times is not so clear. It may be distorted. There are all kinds of things go on with it, of course.
But I'm saying that this is what Christ did. This is what Christ established, and we must be attuned to it. It isn't enough to read a book. What we have above all is to have our ears open and our minds open that we hear the living voice of Jesus Christ speaking the language of the twentieth century, facing up to its problems, not to solve them all by a long shot, but to bring Christ, the living Christ, the speaking Christ, into the milieu of our daily lives. And that cannot be done by a book.
It is done by the living voice of Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.