I.

We Americans have a veritable mania for privacy. We like to erect and ensure that there is a clear barrier between the selves we project to the world, and what we do in private. It is part of our individualism, I think. Maybe it is rooted in our belief that we can always reinvent ourselves. So many people came here from other lands to develop new lives unencumbered by old traditions and habits. We want people to evaluate and accept us on the basis of the new images we consciously project, not because of interior things we can’t control.

Unfortunately, this sometimes means we also have a problem with accountability. Otherwise one particular city would not spend so much advertising money convincing us that what happens there stays there. What happens there will not follow us home. We are free to indulge our fantasies there, confident that this will not mess up the image of respectability, responsibility, sobriety, and adulthood we try to cultivate in our normal lives. We don’t want to have to answer for anything we do there. What a place that must be!

Hence, one of the things we tend to fear is exposure. If people find out who we really are, what kind of movies we really like, the way we really behave when we’re not in public, what we really think... then we fear that that will reveal our hypocrisy and contradictions, our fakeness and the fact that we are impostors.

At the same time, our privacy is under constant attack by the marketing industry and the government. It is alarming what you can find out about someone from a simple Google search. They seem to know what we buy, what we want, what we like, what we feel, and what our political opinions are, in great detail. And as these technologies get more sophisticated, this is only going to get more intense.

On the other hand, one of the most corrosive things that can happen in any relationship is the keeping of secrets. I’ve seen families where some were deliberately kept in the dark about some issues. Maybe they convince themselves they are trying to be protective. Most families still keep some secrets from the children, and sometimes this is for their own protection. But secrets are absolutely devastating in a relationship which is supposed to be based on trust. Some things even children need to know. And most secrets are kept for the sake of protecting the keeper, and no one else... as is clear when it comes to most secrets the government would like to maintain.

And, let’s face it, most secrets are secrets because they are not particularly flattering to the one who wants the secret kept. We keep secrets because we are convinced it is the path of least resistance; being open and up front about something would be, in our estimation, far more costly.

So, we crave our privacy. We don’t want to be answerable to anyone else for what we do. We would rather exercise complete control over our own image.

II.

But here, in the fourth gospel, Jesus gives us a very different approach. He has come to Earth as the revealer. He has come to expose God’s nature and Presence to people. It is very clear who Jesus is from the beginning of this gospel. He tells you.

Jesus has no secrets. He is always making big statements beginning with the words, "I Am." It is a conscious reference to the very Name of God. When Moses asks God what God’s Name is, God says: I Am Who I Am. When the Samaritan woman in the next chapter starts talking about the Messiah, Jesus states, "I am he, I who am speaking to you." John’s gospel is full of memories of Jesus using I am statements: "I am the true vine." "I am the bread of life." "I am the gate." "I am the resurrection and the life." "I am the way and the truth and the life."

Jesus pulls no punches. He has nothing to hide. You could place listening devices near him, you could place hidden cameras around him, you could photograph him from a satellite, you could hire a detective to tail him around, it wouldn’t have mattered. He couldn’t have said in private anything more offensive and outrageous than what he says for all to hear. Things like, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

Jesus’ whole career is about ripping away the curtain that has shrouded God in mystery, and laying bare God’s very heart before everyone. The culmination of Jesus’ work would be when he is "lifted up." For he would fulfill and prove his true identity by dying on a Roman cross.

Remember that crucifixion was not just a torturous and excruciating way to die, it was also deeply humiliating. The Romans usually crucified people practically unclothed, and stuck them up in the air for everyone to look at. It was intended to strip every last shred of dignity and personhood from a person, and leave them hanging there as an inanimate, helpless object, like a butterfly specimen, or like roadkill. They wrote your crime on a piece of wood and nailed that above your head, so everyone would know what you had done. To be crucified was to have no secrets.

This is what Jesus means when he talks about being "lifted up." He means being nailed to the cross and literally raised up into the air. He also means being lifted up in resurrection and finally being lifted up as he ascends into heaven. This gospel is very clear in understanding that this is all one coherent, integrated, continuous movement, one great lifting up of God’s life for the life of the world.

And in this lifting up, Jesus says that God’s love will be fully and finally revealed for all to see. In this act we will perceive the depth and breadth of God’s love, as if Jesus says, "I love you this much," as he spreads his arms wide.

III.

God’s nature will no longer be a secret. It will no longer be the domain of theologians, scholars, and priests. Now he will be lifted up for all to see and believe. What they will see is a broken, humiliated, dying man, convicted of blasphemy and sedition. What they will believe is that this is God’s only-begotten Son, the Light of the world, by whose death the whole world is saved from destruction.

Jesus says that when he is lifted up it will be like Moses during the sojourn of God’s people in the wilderness. At one point he lifted up the bronze image of a snake, and all who looked at it were miraculously healed of snakebite. So now all who look at the crucified Christ and believe and trust in his saving work will be healed of their mortality. They will be healed and set free of the power of death. They "will not perish but have eternal life."

If you look at this man and see both your own broken self and at the same time the self-offering in love of the God who created all things, then you have grasped the heart of Christianity. God identifies with us in our broken places, and our broken places are where we become identified with God. Far from being the ignoble termination of our life, death is just the beginning of our being lifted up. Death is the beginning of our resurrection. That is why we sing, when we bury someone, "Alleluia!"

Frankly, God calls upon us all to "take up our cross and follow" Christ. God calls upon us all to be "lifted up." God calls upon us all to live without secrets a life of honesty and directness. Because whether we like it or not we will be lifted up. Our lives will be subject to examination and evaluation. We will have no secrets, in the end. Most of us, especially politicians, could benefit from following one easy rule: Don’t do anything you don’t want to see on the front page of the Washington Post.

Our lives will also be examined and judged by God at the end. And from God we have absolutely no secrets. Not even the imaginations of our hearts are exempt. With God there is no such thing as privacy. God knows things about us that we don’t even know. We will all be lifted up to the light and have our true selves exposed.

But the good news is that God is not looking for dirt. God is not giving us the white glove treatment here. God is not concerned with cataloging the sordid details of our secret sins. The good news is that when God looks at us, God sees only Christ. When God looks at us, God sees the beloved, only-begotten, Son. "God is light and in him is no darkness at all;" God doesn’t know or want to know our shadow side. God sees us like a lover who only knows and accepts and embraces the good in us.

IV.

That’s the covenant God has with us. For our part we need only to step into the light with our very souls laid bare... which seems a risk until we realize that in Christ God only sees the good in us.

God’s true nature as self-giving, sacrificial, infinite love is revealed on the cross, when Christ is lifted up. And when we trust in him our true nature is also revealed... in the same person, Christ, in whom we see our true humanity. God searches our hearts and knows us in full, in every detail. And what God sees in us is not the mangled, broken, sinful, corrupt, lost beings we think we are. But God sees in us Christ, the true image of the people God made us to be.

"God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." God promises us that "Those who believe in him are not condemned." No one who trusts in the Son is lost. Because in trusting the Son we become one with the Son. In trusting him we conform to his image. Then God sees Christ and loves us for his sake, just as we see Christ and love God for what he does for our sake.

"Those who do what is true come to the light so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God." If we come to the light God will see us. God will see our true, blessed, and created nature. God will see the Christ in us.

Do not fear the light. Do not try to maintain secrets in the dark. Because "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." +++++++