I’m considering this holiday season to be a success. It’s Christmas Eve and I haven’t watched, or felt any pressure to watch, any Hallmark holiday movies; or anything similar. You know exactly what I’m talking about – those sappy Christmas spirit movies where there is some righteous cause that is in a crisis and in solving that crisis the main characters – a man and a woman, somehow both innocently but tragically single, fall in love and live happily ever after. It is always a triumph of good values and right priorities. As a result of those good values and right priorities they discover the truth and peace and love of the holidays. And of course the man and woman are played by actors who have perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect bodies, and stylish wardrobes.
All is calm. All is bright. Sleep in heavenly peace.
Bleh!
If that’s the way your Christmas is going, or if you have ever had a Christmas go that way… well, you have my congratulations. You’re a better person than me!
Almost certainly you are experiencing some version of stress right now. You’ve been cooking and cleaning and shopping and decorating for weeks. Not everything has gone smoothly and not everything has gotten done. Maybe in getting to this worship service everything went perfectly smoothly. Or more likely something went wrong: Someone was late or not ready. The thing you were going to wear got a mess on in just as you were about to leave. Someone grumbled who you had to force to come – or maybe you are one who felt forced to come. You figure the pastor better say something worth listening to or this whole affair is a complete waste of time.
Tensions are high. Tempers are short.
And while family Christmas traditions vary a lot, you probably have some version of these things going on too. There is all sorts of food to cook. Will it all be done well and at the right time? Christmas dinner will not be a calm peaceful time with everyone eager and ready and perfectly sitting down with quiet reverent joy in their hearts. At the Christmas dinner table you’ll have Uncle Fred spouting his conservative political views. And you’ll have Uncle George arguing from his liberal political views. Kids will be noisy and spill things. You’ll have Aunt Bertha show up with that horrible casserole that she makes each and every year. It’s disgusting but she wants everyone to praise her for how wonderful it is. When it is passed to you at the dinner table you stare down at the pan and you are making a careful quick calculation in your mind. You figure you have to take enough to show that you like it, but you don’t want to take too much because you know you’re going to have to choke it down while keeping a smile on your face.
Grown-ups will politely unwrap presents. Some of the stuff you get will be perfect, but some may not be what you want or you can use. You’ll put a brave face on. Someone may give you something quite expensive and suddenly the gift you’ve bought for them seems shamefully inadequate.
Kids will unwrap presents. They’ll probably be less polite about it than the grown-ups. It’ll all happen way too fast. Maybe the kids will be happy. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll get into fights.
The place will be a mess. There will be piles of dishes. There’s still tons of work to do. Not everyone is having fun. You’ll end the day feeling tired, broke, and unfulfilled.
Take that Hallmark! That’s the best we normal people can do.
Okay, I’m exaggerating. I hope your Christmas isn’t that bad. But I think you get the point. Silent night, holy night… not happening.
Or perhaps the opposite is true. If this is your first Christmas after the death of a loved one, or after a divorce, or if you’re filled with anxiety about work or something in your family, or if you’re depressed, or if you’re lonely… and all the world seems happy and bright, what are you to do? You may find yourself in a room full of happy people but you just want to cry inside. Nevertheless, you put on a happy face because you’re expected to. Or perhaps you find yourself all alone because for one reason or another you can’t travel to family, or family can’t travel to you. Maybe you didn’t get invited to anything. This is a dark and depressing season for many people. Suicide rates go up during the holiday season.
Here's good news. Hallmark’s got Christmas wrong. Way wrong!
Let’s look at the actual Christmas story. Joseph and Mary are on the move because of a census ordered by powerful people living far away. Mary is several months pregnant but she has to travel some 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem on dirty rough trails and roads. It is several day’s journey.
When they arrive there is no room for them. Biblical scholars point out that almost all Bible translations and cultures get the Christmas story wrong. The gospel does not actually say there was no room for them in the inn. It literally says there was no room for them in the guest room. Bethlehem was too small to have a commercial lodging establishment. Think about it for a minute. This census is requiring all sorts of people to travel. Joseph, along with his entire extended family is traveling back to their home in Bethlehem. The house is crowded. It is packed with people.
Peasant homes were often two stories. People lived on the upper floor. Animals were housed in the lower floor. And so when Joseph shows up with a woman ready to give birth, and then she goes into labor, what do they do? The guest room is already full. They send her downstairs with the animals.
And then there’s the birth itself. Joseph Mohr wrote the hymn Silent Night in the early 1800s. Apparently Joseph Mohr was never around when a woman gave birth. There is no silent night!
Pain, probably yelling, mess, confusion, blood, gore. All is not calm. All is not bright. All is not silent. This is a mess!
I’d like Hallmark to make a real Christmas story sometime. They won’t because people won’t like it and they won’t watch it.
But that is actually getting to the truth of Christmas!
Do not try to have everything perfect at Christmas. Do not think that if you plan far enough ahead and organize properly that you might, you just might, get it all right enough to have a sweet gentle fulfilling experience this season. …that you might actually accomplish the real meaning of Christmas.
The Bible doesn’t ask that. God doesn’t expect it.
Here’s the truth. Jesus was born into a mess. That’s all there is to it. Tired, haggard parents; an animal stable; noise, pain, confusion, fear, instability… the list could go on and on.
We humans did not roll out the red carpet for the arrival of our Savior. God came into the messiness of regular human life. And with no fanfare or dramatic pause, God revealed a new world order.
There is hope for the hopeless. There is value for the rejected. There is justice for the suffering. There is healing for the shamed. There is hope for the vast majority of people who have messed up this Christmas and who do not have their lives perfectly together.
Later in the service we will read the opening lines of John’s gospel by candlelight. You know the words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…. And the Word became flesh and lived among us…”
“All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being…” Are you a “being”? Are you here? Yes you are. You have come into being through Jesus. He knows you. He cares about you. He has saved you so that you can live a life of wholeness. That’s true even if you don’t have: perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect body, and a stylish wardrobe.
God doesn’t care one bit how your holiday plans are coming together. God doesn’t care if tomorrow is a wonderful perfect day for you, or if tomorrow is a day of chaos and pain and heartache and anger and dashed hopes and everything else. Jesus was not born into a Hallmark movie. Jesus was born into a noisy gory mess. In other words, Jesus was born into reality.
I made fun of Silent Night a few minutes ago. I probably ought to redeem it before I wrap up here. Silent Night written in haste in a bit of a crisis on Christmas Eve 1818. The organ at St. Nikolaus Church in Obendorf, Germany was suddenly not playable. Assistant pastor Joseph Mohr and organist Franz Gruber hastily threw the song together in the afternoon for the choir to sing that evening accompanied by guitar.
I roll my eyes at the first two verses of Silent Night. It’s sweet but it isn’t real. But those first two verses have a purpose. They set up the last verse. The third verse is where the truth and the power is to be found. We’ll sing its truth soon.
God does bring about a new world order. It is a world order of redeeming grace. It is a world order of peace, humility, honesty, and radical love.
Whether you feel it or not, whether your holiday looks more like a Hallmark movie or more like a horror film, God has made your being and God has come to be with you.
If that gives your heart a sense of peace and wellbeing for this Christmas season, that’s great. Maybe I’ve said something worth listening to. And if it doesn’t, that does not mean that you are lacking or that you have done anything wrong at all. You are still in God’s grace forever.
That’s the message of Christmas. Wholeness, fullness, wellbeing, and even joy are God’s promises and God’s gifts to you always.
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
Monday, December 11, 2023
December 10, 2023 - Hope in God - Isaiah 40:1-11
You’ve certainly heard the phrase, “They don’t make things like they used to.” It’s usually a lament that the quality of items has deteriorated over time. Old things were thought to be of better and more durable quality. Older people often nod their heads at that. But the saying can also go the other way around. When I was a high school student I attended a farm machinery auction where there was something I wanted to buy. It was very old and wasn’t in working condition. I was hesitant in my bidding as the price was nearly at the maximum I was willing to spend. The auctioneer’s assistant leaned over to me and said, “You know, they don’t make things like they used to.” To which I replied loudly, “Yeah, I know. That’s why I don’t want to spend much on it!”
Indeed, we forget that many things – most things in fact – have improved in quality tremendously over the years. Cars are far more dependable, safer, and last a lot longer. Houses are far more efficient. Computers are faster and cheaper. And on and on goes the list.
But some things are timeless. Some things have value forever. We see that in our reading from Isaiah 40. The prophet declares, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
Isaiah is a very complex book. It is easiest to say that the first 39 chapters of the book come to us from the 8th century B.C.E. and the prophetic activities of the historical prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem. Then the second portion of the book – chapters 40-55 comes from the 6th century B.C.E. when the people of Israel were in exile in Babylon. Then the third portion of the book comes to us from late in the 6th century or early in the 5th century B.C.E., which is when the people returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt it.
That overall schema works okay, but Isaiah is actually far more complex. And even though it was written over a period of centuries, biblical scholars note that the form it has today has been very carefully assembled and edited to have an almost timeless quality.
If we move to the time of the writing of the gospels in the 1st century we see the words of Isaiah speaking timelessly to that day. In Mark 1, which we read, Mark is very authentically using Isaiah 40 to refer to John the Baptist and anticipate the arrival of Jesus. John’s gospel does the same.
Isaiah is written so as to be timeless. This fits with what its creation is intended to do, which is to build your faith in the timeless and enduring faithfulness of God.
We read from Isaiah, “A voice says, “Cry out!” The prophet replies, “What shall I cry? All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.”
Indeed, what word can be spoken that will have lasting effect? Will it not go out of date in time? Or perhaps, do they not make things like they used to? Will the quality of the future somehow be weaker?
There is a reply. (And if I may add a couple words.) “[Yes, indeed,] the grass withers and the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” (40:6-8)
There is the timelessness the book of Isaiah is designed to create.
Fads and styles will come and go. Quality will come and go. Everything will fade, break, die, or decay. But… the word of our God will stand forever.
If this chapter from Isaiah does indeed come to us from late in the 6th century B.C.E. then let’s remind ourselves of the situation of the Jewish people. Jerusalem had been captured and destroyed decades before – maybe 50 or 60 years before. The leaders and many people were taken from Jerusalem and living in exile hundreds of miles away in Babylon. Hardly anyone alive anymore can remember what Jerusalem was like. A couple generations have gone by. Was the Jewish faith just going to slowly erode away until they became assimilated into Babylonian culture and religion? If God was real, and God’s promises were real, then when was God going to act? Again, it’s been a couple generations of waiting and getting nothing.
In that context we hear as if from God’s divine court, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid…”
So God does see. God does know. And God does care. God is still with them. They can trust in God even though there is no physical evidence to justify that trust.
In time things do change. The once mighty and seemingly eternal Babylonian Empire collapsed quicker than anyone would have thought. The Persians came in. King Cyrus of Persia allows the Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and rebuild. Time would prove that God was trustworthy.
I think we may be in a similar situation in our faith today, although in some ways the situation is opposite. While the Jewish people had their nation conquered, their capitol city destroyed and their temple reduced to rubble; and then many of them were taken off into exile, we have perhaps experienced the reverse. The United States has remained strong in power. While there have been terrorist attacks and some trivial invasions, the nation has not been threatened or destroyed. No one is tearing down churches. No one is hauling off Christians into exile. There is peace, prosperity, security, comfort and ease. And before you disagree with me on any of that, yes, I know life always takes work and there are plenty of things to worry about. But we no longer walk from place to place or ride horses as our major means of transportation. Roads are paved. Sidewalks are smooth. Cars are dependable. We have indoor plumbing, internet, cell phones, and entertainment galore – all luxuries almost unimaginable not that many decades ago.
Yet our faith faces a different threat. Perhaps it is the ease of everything that is undermining it. Churches close in this nation at an unheard of rate. All religious forms are declining, not just Christianity. The entire social fabric of the nation is coming apart. People call themselves “spiritual but not religious”, for in their affluence they create a god in their own image, and they create a morality that suits their lifestyle rather than become a part of a religious organization that will present serious challenges to their self-made gods.
Last week I gave blood at Victor United Methodist Church. Usually the Red Cross staff has music playing, and they select whatever they want. To my surprise they didn’t have someone’s playlist. They had actually tuned to a radio station. And to my even greater surprise it was a secular station that was playing all Christian Christmas music. At least that was the case at first. It later changed to all secular holiday music. Still though, I realized how completely whole it felt to have Christian music for a Christian holiday. And when the music changed I felt how utterly disjointed it was to have a religious holiday being celebrated with the religion removed.
I don’t say this to be critical. All of that has been said many times and for many years. It is what it is, but it does speak of a faith that for all intents and purposes is dying or dead. What do we do when multiple generations see no value in Christianity?
All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades…
But the word of our God will stand forever.
How long? When? What will it take? I do not know.
From a place in history, and yet with a message for all of time, Isaiah says, “’Here is your God!’ See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” (40:10-11)
Our instructions are the same as the Israelites in Babylon. Stay true to your faith. Trust in God. Do not become watered down by the easy simplicity promised by just going with the flow of society. God sees. God knows. God cares. God is acting.
Fortunately for us we can see into the entire world. And we can see that our faith is growing overall and flourishing in many lands.
The past, the present, and the future are in God’s hands. Isaiah saw that. May we see it too. And may we faithfully prepare the way of the Lord. For many live in a desert. Many live in darkness. Many who are spiritual but not religious are actually very lost. It is not our work to fix things. Fixing things is God’s work. Our work is to faithfully prepare the way of the Lord.
Indeed, we forget that many things – most things in fact – have improved in quality tremendously over the years. Cars are far more dependable, safer, and last a lot longer. Houses are far more efficient. Computers are faster and cheaper. And on and on goes the list.
But some things are timeless. Some things have value forever. We see that in our reading from Isaiah 40. The prophet declares, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
Isaiah is a very complex book. It is easiest to say that the first 39 chapters of the book come to us from the 8th century B.C.E. and the prophetic activities of the historical prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem. Then the second portion of the book – chapters 40-55 comes from the 6th century B.C.E. when the people of Israel were in exile in Babylon. Then the third portion of the book comes to us from late in the 6th century or early in the 5th century B.C.E., which is when the people returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt it.
That overall schema works okay, but Isaiah is actually far more complex. And even though it was written over a period of centuries, biblical scholars note that the form it has today has been very carefully assembled and edited to have an almost timeless quality.
If we move to the time of the writing of the gospels in the 1st century we see the words of Isaiah speaking timelessly to that day. In Mark 1, which we read, Mark is very authentically using Isaiah 40 to refer to John the Baptist and anticipate the arrival of Jesus. John’s gospel does the same.
Isaiah is written so as to be timeless. This fits with what its creation is intended to do, which is to build your faith in the timeless and enduring faithfulness of God.
We read from Isaiah, “A voice says, “Cry out!” The prophet replies, “What shall I cry? All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.”
Indeed, what word can be spoken that will have lasting effect? Will it not go out of date in time? Or perhaps, do they not make things like they used to? Will the quality of the future somehow be weaker?
There is a reply. (And if I may add a couple words.) “[Yes, indeed,] the grass withers and the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” (40:6-8)
There is the timelessness the book of Isaiah is designed to create.
Fads and styles will come and go. Quality will come and go. Everything will fade, break, die, or decay. But… the word of our God will stand forever.
If this chapter from Isaiah does indeed come to us from late in the 6th century B.C.E. then let’s remind ourselves of the situation of the Jewish people. Jerusalem had been captured and destroyed decades before – maybe 50 or 60 years before. The leaders and many people were taken from Jerusalem and living in exile hundreds of miles away in Babylon. Hardly anyone alive anymore can remember what Jerusalem was like. A couple generations have gone by. Was the Jewish faith just going to slowly erode away until they became assimilated into Babylonian culture and religion? If God was real, and God’s promises were real, then when was God going to act? Again, it’s been a couple generations of waiting and getting nothing.
In that context we hear as if from God’s divine court, “Comfort, O comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid…”
So God does see. God does know. And God does care. God is still with them. They can trust in God even though there is no physical evidence to justify that trust.
In time things do change. The once mighty and seemingly eternal Babylonian Empire collapsed quicker than anyone would have thought. The Persians came in. King Cyrus of Persia allows the Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and rebuild. Time would prove that God was trustworthy.
I think we may be in a similar situation in our faith today, although in some ways the situation is opposite. While the Jewish people had their nation conquered, their capitol city destroyed and their temple reduced to rubble; and then many of them were taken off into exile, we have perhaps experienced the reverse. The United States has remained strong in power. While there have been terrorist attacks and some trivial invasions, the nation has not been threatened or destroyed. No one is tearing down churches. No one is hauling off Christians into exile. There is peace, prosperity, security, comfort and ease. And before you disagree with me on any of that, yes, I know life always takes work and there are plenty of things to worry about. But we no longer walk from place to place or ride horses as our major means of transportation. Roads are paved. Sidewalks are smooth. Cars are dependable. We have indoor plumbing, internet, cell phones, and entertainment galore – all luxuries almost unimaginable not that many decades ago.
Yet our faith faces a different threat. Perhaps it is the ease of everything that is undermining it. Churches close in this nation at an unheard of rate. All religious forms are declining, not just Christianity. The entire social fabric of the nation is coming apart. People call themselves “spiritual but not religious”, for in their affluence they create a god in their own image, and they create a morality that suits their lifestyle rather than become a part of a religious organization that will present serious challenges to their self-made gods.
Last week I gave blood at Victor United Methodist Church. Usually the Red Cross staff has music playing, and they select whatever they want. To my surprise they didn’t have someone’s playlist. They had actually tuned to a radio station. And to my even greater surprise it was a secular station that was playing all Christian Christmas music. At least that was the case at first. It later changed to all secular holiday music. Still though, I realized how completely whole it felt to have Christian music for a Christian holiday. And when the music changed I felt how utterly disjointed it was to have a religious holiday being celebrated with the religion removed.
I don’t say this to be critical. All of that has been said many times and for many years. It is what it is, but it does speak of a faith that for all intents and purposes is dying or dead. What do we do when multiple generations see no value in Christianity?
All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers and the flower fades…
But the word of our God will stand forever.
How long? When? What will it take? I do not know.
From a place in history, and yet with a message for all of time, Isaiah says, “’Here is your God!’ See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” (40:10-11)
Our instructions are the same as the Israelites in Babylon. Stay true to your faith. Trust in God. Do not become watered down by the easy simplicity promised by just going with the flow of society. God sees. God knows. God cares. God is acting.
Fortunately for us we can see into the entire world. And we can see that our faith is growing overall and flourishing in many lands.
The past, the present, and the future are in God’s hands. Isaiah saw that. May we see it too. And may we faithfully prepare the way of the Lord. For many live in a desert. Many live in darkness. Many who are spiritual but not religious are actually very lost. It is not our work to fix things. Fixing things is God’s work. Our work is to faithfully prepare the way of the Lord.
Monday, December 4, 2023
December 3, 2023 Defiant Hope and Peace Isaiah 11:1-10
The book of Isaiah is a composite work, the writings of two or more people. It covers two distinct time periods. The part of Isaiah that we read today probably comes from the 8th century B.C.E. It is a dark and fearful time. The Assyrian Empire is threatening to, or already has, conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel. Most of the tribes are lost or scattered. The future looks scary. Isaiah is writing from Jerusalem and the remaining tribe of Judah. It seems only a matter of time before the Assyrians stretch their reach a little bit farther south and take over Judah as well. There is no way Judah can muster the military might necessary to defend itself. Egypt might be talked into giving them some defense, but that can’t be counted upon.
Where is God in the midst of all this loss and destruction? What will God do? Will God protect them?
In the midst of those questions about the very existence of the nation Isaiah speaks a quiet word of defiant hope. The verses that we read from Isaiah 11 are among the best known verses in the Bible. They speak of a deep and persistent human hope for justice and peace. This is a Jewish text originally but Christians have used it to point to Jesus. Jesus, the new and ultimate king of Israel who would establish peace on earth.
Indeed a look towards the ministry of Jesus and we see someone in the line of David who spoke peace and brought wholeness.
I doubt, however, that Isaiah actually had Jesus in mind when he spoke these words of hope. He meant them fully for the people of his own time. They were to continue to trust God and to live faithfully. Their identity was not defined by the threat of an invading empire. Their identity was as the people whom God had chosen to be examples to the world. They needed to stay true to that. God indeed did see them. God would stay true to the promises. And God would bring them peace.
The peace that God would bring would not be just an absence of warfare with a more powerful adversary who nevertheless remained threatening. This was to be a deep and lasting peace even with the forces of nature. A child could play over the hole of a viper’s nest and be safe. Livestock would not be threatened by wolves or lions. Good honest farming and ranching would be predictable and secure. And God would raise a righteous ruler who would reign according to God’s promises of true justice.
It is an idyllic image. The front cover of the bulletin has the painting The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks. It’s based on Isaiah 11. In the foreground is a bunch of wild and domestic animals all together in tranquility. Young children are among them. In the background is William Penn Jr., a Quaker and founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, peacefully making a land agreement with the Lenni Lenape Indians.
Would that the world would work that way! It is a dream to be sure. And Isaiah creates this vision defiantly in the midst of fear and uncertainty.
This Bible passage was on my mind last Thursday when I was asked to pick up someone from the Rochester airport. I was to pick up Jamil Zoughbi, who was flying in from the Wartburg Lutheran Seminary in Iowa. Jamil is studying to be a pastor at Wartburg but his approval process is being overseen by the Upstate New York Synod. I was to take him from the airport to the Notre Dame Retreat Center in Canandaigua. I was looking forward to meeting Jamil because I knew he is a Palestinian Lutheran who owns a house in Jerusalem. He came to the United States just a few weeks before the Hamas attacks on Israel. I wanted to get his feelings on what was going on over there.
I was not at all surprise when the first thing he said was, “Believe nothing that you hear on the news.” He said that all of the American news sources were wrong, with one exception. He’d heard some things on the program Democracy Now that were reasonably correct. I asked him to elaborate and he said that while it was certainly true that Hamas attacked Israel (and that he condemned that), and that Israel was launching a major attack on the Gaza Strip to destroy Hamas, they were completely overlooking the real truths of what happens regularly and behind the scenes.
He said that they are overlooking the way that his family, as Lutherans living in Jerusalem are constantly needled and threatened by the Israeli government. He said that aid shipments come from time to time, even to his neighborhood. But the Israeli government gives it only to the Jewish families. And that when there are treats of missile or air attacks there are bomb shelters in the area. But they are only for Jewish people. Everyone else, including Lutheran families like his, are not welcome.
None of this surprised me. It shouldn’t surprise you. I’ve heard this stuff for decades and shared it with you. But of course we hear it as church insiders. For any number of reasons our news services ignore this stuff.
But Jamil did say stuff that surprised me. He said that his family, and the other non-Jewish families in his area, for the most part peaceably get along with their Jewish neighbors. The conflicts and taunting exist at the national level. At the level of individuals and neighborhoods the situation may be quite different.
Now don’t get me wrong. I did not say that at a personal level all Jews and Palestinians get along. That’s not at all the case! But in Jamil’s case, and probably many others, that is the case.
There is a defiance in that. His family and his neighbors are examples of people who are not letting their personal interactions be defined by what the nation says they are to be. They will live together. They will work together. They will look out for each other. They will build a constructive community for themselves together.
Jamil gave me this, a container made of olive wood with olive oil in it that was dedicated at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem.
Once again, something that does not seem to be being reported in mainstream media is that Christmas Lutheran Church and most all churches in Bethlehem have cancelled Christmas this year. It isn’t the first time they’ve done it.
Israel has built a wall that separates Bethlehem, which is a Palestinian community with many of them being Christians, from other areas. It has been joked that if Jesus was born in Bethlehem today the shepherds would not have been able to get to see him. There is now a big wall in the way!
But a bit of anointing oil makes the journey and conveys the truth in defiance of walls and policies and hostage taking and warfare.
It sometimes seems that there is forever fighting in the Holy Land. Not true. There has been recently, but if you are more than a couple decades old you remember times of peace, and permanent peace deals coming ever so close.
Jamil’s neighborhood lives in a quiet defiant hope for that peace.
The prophet Isaiah’s words were words of hope to people over 2700 years ago. He calls for patience, truth, and trust in the midst of darkness. God sees. God knows. God cares. God is acting.
Today Jamil’s neighborhood is also acting in patience, truth, and trust.
Our own land enjoys much more peace and stability. That is a blessing! Yet there is plenty of strife and violence too. Perhaps it seems like the tides and trends of the world are as big and powerful as the Assyrian Empire seemed to Isaiah and the people of his time. We, like them, know that God sees, and knows, and cares, and is acting. And so we live in defiance of all that tears down and breaks. Perhaps we do not do so in protests or rallies or anything that draws attention. But we do so in simplicity and quietness; witnessing to the hope of God that is always at work.
We pray for peace in the Holy Land. We lament that Christians in Bethlehem feel it is too dangerous to celebrate Christmas and so they are closing their churches. And we live in confidence and hope of God’s actions. We do not listen to the divisions and distinctions that powerful people try to create among us. We see in each other God’s good work, and honor it with lives of love.
Where is God in the midst of all this loss and destruction? What will God do? Will God protect them?
In the midst of those questions about the very existence of the nation Isaiah speaks a quiet word of defiant hope. The verses that we read from Isaiah 11 are among the best known verses in the Bible. They speak of a deep and persistent human hope for justice and peace. This is a Jewish text originally but Christians have used it to point to Jesus. Jesus, the new and ultimate king of Israel who would establish peace on earth.
Indeed a look towards the ministry of Jesus and we see someone in the line of David who spoke peace and brought wholeness.
I doubt, however, that Isaiah actually had Jesus in mind when he spoke these words of hope. He meant them fully for the people of his own time. They were to continue to trust God and to live faithfully. Their identity was not defined by the threat of an invading empire. Their identity was as the people whom God had chosen to be examples to the world. They needed to stay true to that. God indeed did see them. God would stay true to the promises. And God would bring them peace.
The peace that God would bring would not be just an absence of warfare with a more powerful adversary who nevertheless remained threatening. This was to be a deep and lasting peace even with the forces of nature. A child could play over the hole of a viper’s nest and be safe. Livestock would not be threatened by wolves or lions. Good honest farming and ranching would be predictable and secure. And God would raise a righteous ruler who would reign according to God’s promises of true justice.
It is an idyllic image. The front cover of the bulletin has the painting The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks. It’s based on Isaiah 11. In the foreground is a bunch of wild and domestic animals all together in tranquility. Young children are among them. In the background is William Penn Jr., a Quaker and founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, peacefully making a land agreement with the Lenni Lenape Indians.
Would that the world would work that way! It is a dream to be sure. And Isaiah creates this vision defiantly in the midst of fear and uncertainty.
This Bible passage was on my mind last Thursday when I was asked to pick up someone from the Rochester airport. I was to pick up Jamil Zoughbi, who was flying in from the Wartburg Lutheran Seminary in Iowa. Jamil is studying to be a pastor at Wartburg but his approval process is being overseen by the Upstate New York Synod. I was to take him from the airport to the Notre Dame Retreat Center in Canandaigua. I was looking forward to meeting Jamil because I knew he is a Palestinian Lutheran who owns a house in Jerusalem. He came to the United States just a few weeks before the Hamas attacks on Israel. I wanted to get his feelings on what was going on over there.
I was not at all surprise when the first thing he said was, “Believe nothing that you hear on the news.” He said that all of the American news sources were wrong, with one exception. He’d heard some things on the program Democracy Now that were reasonably correct. I asked him to elaborate and he said that while it was certainly true that Hamas attacked Israel (and that he condemned that), and that Israel was launching a major attack on the Gaza Strip to destroy Hamas, they were completely overlooking the real truths of what happens regularly and behind the scenes.
He said that they are overlooking the way that his family, as Lutherans living in Jerusalem are constantly needled and threatened by the Israeli government. He said that aid shipments come from time to time, even to his neighborhood. But the Israeli government gives it only to the Jewish families. And that when there are treats of missile or air attacks there are bomb shelters in the area. But they are only for Jewish people. Everyone else, including Lutheran families like his, are not welcome.
None of this surprised me. It shouldn’t surprise you. I’ve heard this stuff for decades and shared it with you. But of course we hear it as church insiders. For any number of reasons our news services ignore this stuff.
But Jamil did say stuff that surprised me. He said that his family, and the other non-Jewish families in his area, for the most part peaceably get along with their Jewish neighbors. The conflicts and taunting exist at the national level. At the level of individuals and neighborhoods the situation may be quite different.
Now don’t get me wrong. I did not say that at a personal level all Jews and Palestinians get along. That’s not at all the case! But in Jamil’s case, and probably many others, that is the case.
There is a defiance in that. His family and his neighbors are examples of people who are not letting their personal interactions be defined by what the nation says they are to be. They will live together. They will work together. They will look out for each other. They will build a constructive community for themselves together.
Jamil gave me this, a container made of olive wood with olive oil in it that was dedicated at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem.
Once again, something that does not seem to be being reported in mainstream media is that Christmas Lutheran Church and most all churches in Bethlehem have cancelled Christmas this year. It isn’t the first time they’ve done it.
Israel has built a wall that separates Bethlehem, which is a Palestinian community with many of them being Christians, from other areas. It has been joked that if Jesus was born in Bethlehem today the shepherds would not have been able to get to see him. There is now a big wall in the way!
But a bit of anointing oil makes the journey and conveys the truth in defiance of walls and policies and hostage taking and warfare.
It sometimes seems that there is forever fighting in the Holy Land. Not true. There has been recently, but if you are more than a couple decades old you remember times of peace, and permanent peace deals coming ever so close.
Jamil’s neighborhood lives in a quiet defiant hope for that peace.
The prophet Isaiah’s words were words of hope to people over 2700 years ago. He calls for patience, truth, and trust in the midst of darkness. God sees. God knows. God cares. God is acting.
Today Jamil’s neighborhood is also acting in patience, truth, and trust.
Our own land enjoys much more peace and stability. That is a blessing! Yet there is plenty of strife and violence too. Perhaps it seems like the tides and trends of the world are as big and powerful as the Assyrian Empire seemed to Isaiah and the people of his time. We, like them, know that God sees, and knows, and cares, and is acting. And so we live in defiance of all that tears down and breaks. Perhaps we do not do so in protests or rallies or anything that draws attention. But we do so in simplicity and quietness; witnessing to the hope of God that is always at work.
We pray for peace in the Holy Land. We lament that Christians in Bethlehem feel it is too dangerous to celebrate Christmas and so they are closing their churches. And we live in confidence and hope of God’s actions. We do not listen to the divisions and distinctions that powerful people try to create among us. We see in each other God’s good work, and honor it with lives of love.
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
November 26, 2023 What is Truth? John 18:28-40
Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” That’s an easy question to ask. It’s a hard question to answer. Then again, it isn’t a hard question to answer at all.
I think people want truth to be simple and straightforward. They want it to be something that can be expressed with the brevity of a text message, and by reading it they can then make informed decisions. Sometimes that works. If you want to know how many apples are in a basket then you count them and get an exact number. That number is true. Anything else is false. But, say you want to know the fuel efficiency of a car, and even something so simple gets complicated. The answer depends on how you drive it and what you do with it.
We also like there to be clear distinctions between good and bad. And of course we want to root for the good. Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The way it is presented to us in the news I think we’d all agree that the Russian invasion is bad and that it must be stopped. But then take the Israeli/Palestinian situation. That’s a whole lot more complicated. Who antagonized who first? Who really started it? Who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong.
What is the truth?
Pilate asked Jesus an ancient question. Philosophers had been asking it for centuries. Ethics, morals, and values all get complicated. The adult Sunday School class is watching the series The Good Place. It’s a light hearted comic show but it’s really all about ethics. It regularly points out how complex things are. And it points out that any and every ethical framework runs amok pretty quickly.
Do you want to live according to the truth?
Do you want to do what is right?
Do you want to be a “good guy”?
It turns out that’s not such a simple thing!
Our second Bible reading for today is the very famous passage from Romans 7 where Paul is grappling with wanting to do what is right. It’s complicated right from the beginning and makes our head spin. Paul says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want but the very thing I hate.” And, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” (Romans, 7:15, 21)
Paul swims through the mess pretty quickly and comes to the answer that we seek. He says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
That is the answer that we need.
When Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” he actually asked the wrong question. He should have asked, “Who is truth?” for Truth was standing right in front of him!
This is a good time to explain some more about the way John uses words. The word “Jew” or “the Jews” comes up numerous times in our gospel reading. Christians have taken those words wrongly and justified all sorts of horrors against Jewish people. Martin Luther didn’t help the situation either. He inadvertently paved the way for the mindset that the Nazis used against Jewish people in World War 2.
But we have to remember John’s gospel in its context. The early Christians were a tiny religious minority with no power whatsoever. Those who first read John’s gospel probably were Jews who had converted to following Jesus. They had been rejected by the religious leaders and thrown out of the synagogues for that decision. If there is anger toward “the Jews” that is one thing. But change the context to Christianity becoming the world’s largest and most powerful religion and you have another thing entirely.
John does an interesting thing with his words. “The Jews” does not mean what we immediately think it means. John makes some subtle but significant distinctions. Let’s go back to one of the opening scenes of the gospel. It is chapter 2 where Jesus calls the disciple Nathanael. When Nathanael is walking towards Jesus, Jesus says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Notice Jesus does not say, “Here is truly a Jew in whom there is no deceit!” And Nathanael says to Jesus, “You are the King of Israel.” He does not say, “You are the King of the Jews.”
In John’s gospel when he wants to refer to the Jewish people in general, and Jewish religion and beliefs in general, he likes to use the word Israelites. And remember, Israel is not just a word or a name. It means one who strives with God. And so John sees the Jewish people as a whole in a positive light as they are the ones who strive with God. It refers to their relationship with God.
But when John wants to refer to the Jewish leadership, for whom John holds no liking, he calls them, “the Jews.” Throughout John’s gospel “the Jews” is pejorative. But again, it does not mean Judaism in general. John has no problem with Judaism. He does have a problem with the Jewish leadership, whom he thinks should be seeing what God is doing through Jesus. But they don’t.
And then in our gospel reading today we realize that the term “the Jews” and “Jew” represent more broadly, “the world’s resistance to the revelation of God in Jesus.” (Gail O’Day, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 9, pg. 816-7) Again, “Jew” means the world’s resistance to the revelation of God in Jesus.
Keep that in mind as Pilate asks Jesus, “You are the King of the Jews?” It is a sarcastic and mocking question. Of course Jesus is not!
Jesus replies, (And again, this is about accepting Jesus as God’s revelation.) “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”
Is this about Pilate seeking to know about God as revealed in Jesus, or is this about something else?
Pilate replies to Jesus’ question with a question of his own. And be sure to realize Pilate speaks this with scorn and complete contempt. “I am not a Jew, am I?”
Well Pilate, no. You aren’t a Jewish person. Not by bloodline. Not by belief. Not by religion. You are as non-Jewish as a person could be. But actually Pilate, as John defines it, you are a Jew!
This little exchange between Jesus and Pilate takes us to a clash of world views. It is not a clash of religious beliefs. It is not a clash of races. It is a clash between Jesus, the Truth, and the ways of the world.
Pontus Pilate is an historical person. He enters into Christian scriptures at the trial and execution of Jesus. But we know plenty about him from other historical sources. Pilate was a tough no-nonsense ruler the Romans appointed to govern the region. By all accounts he was cruel and ruthless.
He didn’t care one bit about truth. He didn’t care one bit about justice or fairness. He’d have a person executed simply to simplify things. Pilate was driven purely by political and militaristic expedience.
The clash of world views between Jesus and Pilate is the clash between God’s love and human greed. What is Truth? You’re never going to answer that as long as you come at it from the world’s perspective. You’ll go round and round with endless complications and exceptions.
But if you answer it from the perspective of God’s love, you do get a solid answer.
Truth is that God loves this world and wants to be in a meaningful relationship with it. That is especially true for the species called humans. Now, are you going to base your life on your relationship with God, or are you going to base your life on the world?
I did not say that basing your life on the truth of God’s love would be easy. And I did not say it would be simple either. It’s still pretty complicated and hard. But it is the way of life.
Jesus, truly and fully alive, is willing to die as the fulfillment of his existence. Pilate, worldly pragmatic to the point of cruelty, will kill Jesus just to make the day easier.
Let me end with these words. To understand the death of Jesus and the truth of who he is, you must recognize that the man who died on that cross was the loving shepherd, the witnessing judge, the servant king, the full witness of Divine Logic, who did not hesitate in laying down his life for those he loved. And in doing so was fullest expression of human life there is.
I think people want truth to be simple and straightforward. They want it to be something that can be expressed with the brevity of a text message, and by reading it they can then make informed decisions. Sometimes that works. If you want to know how many apples are in a basket then you count them and get an exact number. That number is true. Anything else is false. But, say you want to know the fuel efficiency of a car, and even something so simple gets complicated. The answer depends on how you drive it and what you do with it.
We also like there to be clear distinctions between good and bad. And of course we want to root for the good. Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The way it is presented to us in the news I think we’d all agree that the Russian invasion is bad and that it must be stopped. But then take the Israeli/Palestinian situation. That’s a whole lot more complicated. Who antagonized who first? Who really started it? Who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong.
What is the truth?
Pilate asked Jesus an ancient question. Philosophers had been asking it for centuries. Ethics, morals, and values all get complicated. The adult Sunday School class is watching the series The Good Place. It’s a light hearted comic show but it’s really all about ethics. It regularly points out how complex things are. And it points out that any and every ethical framework runs amok pretty quickly.
Do you want to live according to the truth?
Do you want to do what is right?
Do you want to be a “good guy”?
It turns out that’s not such a simple thing!
Our second Bible reading for today is the very famous passage from Romans 7 where Paul is grappling with wanting to do what is right. It’s complicated right from the beginning and makes our head spin. Paul says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want but the very thing I hate.” And, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” (Romans, 7:15, 21)
Paul swims through the mess pretty quickly and comes to the answer that we seek. He says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
That is the answer that we need.
When Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” he actually asked the wrong question. He should have asked, “Who is truth?” for Truth was standing right in front of him!
This is a good time to explain some more about the way John uses words. The word “Jew” or “the Jews” comes up numerous times in our gospel reading. Christians have taken those words wrongly and justified all sorts of horrors against Jewish people. Martin Luther didn’t help the situation either. He inadvertently paved the way for the mindset that the Nazis used against Jewish people in World War 2.
But we have to remember John’s gospel in its context. The early Christians were a tiny religious minority with no power whatsoever. Those who first read John’s gospel probably were Jews who had converted to following Jesus. They had been rejected by the religious leaders and thrown out of the synagogues for that decision. If there is anger toward “the Jews” that is one thing. But change the context to Christianity becoming the world’s largest and most powerful religion and you have another thing entirely.
John does an interesting thing with his words. “The Jews” does not mean what we immediately think it means. John makes some subtle but significant distinctions. Let’s go back to one of the opening scenes of the gospel. It is chapter 2 where Jesus calls the disciple Nathanael. When Nathanael is walking towards Jesus, Jesus says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Notice Jesus does not say, “Here is truly a Jew in whom there is no deceit!” And Nathanael says to Jesus, “You are the King of Israel.” He does not say, “You are the King of the Jews.”
In John’s gospel when he wants to refer to the Jewish people in general, and Jewish religion and beliefs in general, he likes to use the word Israelites. And remember, Israel is not just a word or a name. It means one who strives with God. And so John sees the Jewish people as a whole in a positive light as they are the ones who strive with God. It refers to their relationship with God.
But when John wants to refer to the Jewish leadership, for whom John holds no liking, he calls them, “the Jews.” Throughout John’s gospel “the Jews” is pejorative. But again, it does not mean Judaism in general. John has no problem with Judaism. He does have a problem with the Jewish leadership, whom he thinks should be seeing what God is doing through Jesus. But they don’t.
And then in our gospel reading today we realize that the term “the Jews” and “Jew” represent more broadly, “the world’s resistance to the revelation of God in Jesus.” (Gail O’Day, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 9, pg. 816-7) Again, “Jew” means the world’s resistance to the revelation of God in Jesus.
Keep that in mind as Pilate asks Jesus, “You are the King of the Jews?” It is a sarcastic and mocking question. Of course Jesus is not!
Jesus replies, (And again, this is about accepting Jesus as God’s revelation.) “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”
Is this about Pilate seeking to know about God as revealed in Jesus, or is this about something else?
Pilate replies to Jesus’ question with a question of his own. And be sure to realize Pilate speaks this with scorn and complete contempt. “I am not a Jew, am I?”
Well Pilate, no. You aren’t a Jewish person. Not by bloodline. Not by belief. Not by religion. You are as non-Jewish as a person could be. But actually Pilate, as John defines it, you are a Jew!
This little exchange between Jesus and Pilate takes us to a clash of world views. It is not a clash of religious beliefs. It is not a clash of races. It is a clash between Jesus, the Truth, and the ways of the world.
Pontus Pilate is an historical person. He enters into Christian scriptures at the trial and execution of Jesus. But we know plenty about him from other historical sources. Pilate was a tough no-nonsense ruler the Romans appointed to govern the region. By all accounts he was cruel and ruthless.
He didn’t care one bit about truth. He didn’t care one bit about justice or fairness. He’d have a person executed simply to simplify things. Pilate was driven purely by political and militaristic expedience.
The clash of world views between Jesus and Pilate is the clash between God’s love and human greed. What is Truth? You’re never going to answer that as long as you come at it from the world’s perspective. You’ll go round and round with endless complications and exceptions.
But if you answer it from the perspective of God’s love, you do get a solid answer.
Truth is that God loves this world and wants to be in a meaningful relationship with it. That is especially true for the species called humans. Now, are you going to base your life on your relationship with God, or are you going to base your life on the world?
I did not say that basing your life on the truth of God’s love would be easy. And I did not say it would be simple either. It’s still pretty complicated and hard. But it is the way of life.
Jesus, truly and fully alive, is willing to die as the fulfillment of his existence. Pilate, worldly pragmatic to the point of cruelty, will kill Jesus just to make the day easier.
Let me end with these words. To understand the death of Jesus and the truth of who he is, you must recognize that the man who died on that cross was the loving shepherd, the witnessing judge, the servant king, the full witness of Divine Logic, who did not hesitate in laying down his life for those he loved. And in doing so was fullest expression of human life there is.
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
November 19, 2023 Two Failures and a Success John 18:1-27
Let’s call our gospel reading, “Two Failures and a Success.” We’ll start with the success. That is, ironically, Jesus.
Throughout the gospel of John Jesus has been talking about his hour; or more that it is not his hour. But now his hour has come. Jesus has completed the last supper with the disciples and he’s gone to a garden to pray. The story unfolds as if Jesus is powerless and is unable to stop what is happening to him. But we the readers know that Jesus has predicted this. And that despite all appearances, Jesus is still actually in charge.
The scene of Jesus’ arrest is nighttime. Throughout the gospel we have been hearing about a contrast between light and darkness. Jesus has said that he is the light of the world. But we’ve also heard that people preferred darkness. We met Nickodemus, a leading Pharisee and religious expert, who has come to Jesus at night. And we’ve met an unnamed Samaritan woman who Jesus meets by a well in the middle of the day.
Now as Jesus, the light of the world, is praying in darkness we are told that Judas leads a cohort of Roman soldiers and some police from the chief priests and Pharisees to find him. We’re told that this cohort of soldiers and the police are carrying lanterns and torches. It’s a subtly twisted thing to have to arrest the light of the world in the darkness, and having to bring your own source of light to see!
Now don’t read things into this text that aren’t there. The other three gospels say Judas identifies Jesus with a kiss; a gesture of friendship. But that part is not here. Instead, Jesus takes the initiative and says, “Whom are you looking for?” They reply, “Jesus of Nazareth.” To which Jesus responds, “I am he.”
What should happen next? The next thing that should happen is that these soldiers and police seize Jesus and take him into custody. Instead, John tells us they stepped back and fell to the ground.
When Jesus says, “I am he,” it is better translated as “I AM,” the name of God from the Old Testament. The situation is almost laughable even though it’s not intended to be funny. Picture it: We’re told that Judas came with a Roman cohort and police from the religious leaders. A Roman cohort is 600 armed men. Romans do not believe Jewish faith. They are not about to step back and immediately fall to the ground at the words, I AM.
Biblical scholars say we are not to take these words literally but instead realize John is writing in the style of a heroic tale. Here we have unarmed Jesus at night in a garden and at two simple words from him hundreds and hundreds of foreign and domestic soldiers who are there to arrest him step back and fall to the ground!
Who’s in charge here? It’s certainly not the soldiers! All is going according to Jesus’ intentions.
The scene swings to Peter, who is one of the two failure stories here, but eventually we return to Jesus who is by then being questioned by Annas, the father-in-law of the high priest. Jesus is not exactly defiant in his answers but he challenges Annas in return. He says, “If I have spoken wrongly testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
Jesus is the ironic success story here because he does not back down in the face of wrongful arrest and abuse. He is in charge of every moment and his opponents unwittingly do exactly God’s work even as they destroy Jesus. Jesus is the example we want to follow in our own lives. We do not face persecution in our society today but we do want to live in a way that witnesses to our faith in God even as our society thinks it foolish.
Quite likely though, we will not be as faithful as Jesus. So let’s turn to the two failures. The first one is Judas. Judas is the example of someone who has utterly forsaken what God is doing. Judas has been given an insider account of who Jesus is and who Jesus reveals God to be. He has been with Jesus all along. He has heard the teachings. He has seen the miracles. Judas was at the last supper. Just hours before he had his feet washed by Jesus. Despite all that he walks away and even betrays Jesus.
I doubt we realized this, but there are details “missing” about Judas in John’s gospel. Now is the time to point that out. In the other gospels we are told that Judas sells Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver; the value of an injured slave. It’s a paltry amount and it’s pathetic. But there is no such detail in John’s gospel. In the other gospels we may think Judas pathetic, but we can at least understand him being motivated by greed. There is no such understanding here. John’s gospel does not tell us why Judas betrays Jesus. If we stick to just what John tells us we realize there are no ulterior motives for Judas. As commentator Gail O’Day notes, Judas’ actions are simply evil. There is no logic or justification for them. Earlier in the gospel we were told, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”
What does evil look like? Judas. Judas, treated with love and humility by Jesus, simply walks away and then betrays him.
Believing in “evil” is passe these days. But John’s gospel simply accepts that there are destructive dynamics at work in the world that defy all reason. People just don’t want God’s love. Period.
Hopefully we cannot relate to Judas. But we most likely can relate to the other failure story – Peter.
Peter has been bungling everything plus putting his foot in his mouth. We see that continue here. In the children’s sermon we talked about the way Peter cutting off the right ear of the high priest’s slave was an act of cowardice. He almost certainly had to have struck from behind. And even at that, what a feeble hit it was. Not that I would want to have my ear cut off at all, but Peter doesn’t even manage to get in one single deadly blow!
But his failures of courage for the night are only just beginning. He follows Jesus along with another of the disciples who is unnamed. The unnamed disciple goes with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. That disciple is potentially in trouble depending on how things go for Jesus. But where is Peter? He’s standing outside the courtyard at the gate. He’s basically in the street looking in. The other disciple ten invites Peter in.
I find it interesting that there is a woman who is guarding this gate. A woman as a gatekeeper is certainly not usual for those days! But I have found nothing in commentaries about it. What is clear though, is that she is the first to question Peter about his discipleship to Jesus. This is not some big burly guard from the Roman cohort. And this is not some powerful police officer from the religious leaders. This is an unarmed and powerless person. Remember, in those days women’s testimony wasn’t considered worth much in a court of law. This person could do Peter no harm. Yet even at this Peter denies being a follower of Jesus.
The scene shifts to Jesus being questioned and then back again to Peter. We the readers are to understand Jesus’ questioning happening at the same time as Peter’s questioning. But while Jesus remains 100% faithful, Peter is failing at a rate of 100%. In the courtyard when questioned by the slaves and police Peter denies Jesus again. And then the third denial comes when he is asked by a slave again.
This text is a success story and two failure stories. I suspect the story we most strongly relate to is Peter’s. I believe that is the author’s intention. He knows we fall short of Jesus. He also knows that if we were as evil as Judas we wouldn’t be reading this gospel in the first place! So that leaves us to be like Peter.
Despite his failings Peter is eventually restored. Unlike Judas, Peter stays with Jesus. Peter fails. He fails miserably and shamefully. But he does not walk away into the darkness.
It is the act of staying that redeems Peter. I think that is how God’s grace works. It is great if we never fail and never lose courage. But we know that we do. We fail. We get angry. We act out of fears, greed, and ignorance. We hurt ourselves. We hurt others. We hurt God’s creation. But as long as we keep returning to God we are returning to our source of salvation. We are returning to the light.
That is imperfect discipleship. But that is authentic discipleship. It is where we find our faith authentically growing and abilities becoming stronger.
Throughout the gospel of John Jesus has been talking about his hour; or more that it is not his hour. But now his hour has come. Jesus has completed the last supper with the disciples and he’s gone to a garden to pray. The story unfolds as if Jesus is powerless and is unable to stop what is happening to him. But we the readers know that Jesus has predicted this. And that despite all appearances, Jesus is still actually in charge.
The scene of Jesus’ arrest is nighttime. Throughout the gospel we have been hearing about a contrast between light and darkness. Jesus has said that he is the light of the world. But we’ve also heard that people preferred darkness. We met Nickodemus, a leading Pharisee and religious expert, who has come to Jesus at night. And we’ve met an unnamed Samaritan woman who Jesus meets by a well in the middle of the day.
Now as Jesus, the light of the world, is praying in darkness we are told that Judas leads a cohort of Roman soldiers and some police from the chief priests and Pharisees to find him. We’re told that this cohort of soldiers and the police are carrying lanterns and torches. It’s a subtly twisted thing to have to arrest the light of the world in the darkness, and having to bring your own source of light to see!
Now don’t read things into this text that aren’t there. The other three gospels say Judas identifies Jesus with a kiss; a gesture of friendship. But that part is not here. Instead, Jesus takes the initiative and says, “Whom are you looking for?” They reply, “Jesus of Nazareth.” To which Jesus responds, “I am he.”
What should happen next? The next thing that should happen is that these soldiers and police seize Jesus and take him into custody. Instead, John tells us they stepped back and fell to the ground.
When Jesus says, “I am he,” it is better translated as “I AM,” the name of God from the Old Testament. The situation is almost laughable even though it’s not intended to be funny. Picture it: We’re told that Judas came with a Roman cohort and police from the religious leaders. A Roman cohort is 600 armed men. Romans do not believe Jewish faith. They are not about to step back and immediately fall to the ground at the words, I AM.
Biblical scholars say we are not to take these words literally but instead realize John is writing in the style of a heroic tale. Here we have unarmed Jesus at night in a garden and at two simple words from him hundreds and hundreds of foreign and domestic soldiers who are there to arrest him step back and fall to the ground!
Who’s in charge here? It’s certainly not the soldiers! All is going according to Jesus’ intentions.
The scene swings to Peter, who is one of the two failure stories here, but eventually we return to Jesus who is by then being questioned by Annas, the father-in-law of the high priest. Jesus is not exactly defiant in his answers but he challenges Annas in return. He says, “If I have spoken wrongly testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
Jesus is the ironic success story here because he does not back down in the face of wrongful arrest and abuse. He is in charge of every moment and his opponents unwittingly do exactly God’s work even as they destroy Jesus. Jesus is the example we want to follow in our own lives. We do not face persecution in our society today but we do want to live in a way that witnesses to our faith in God even as our society thinks it foolish.
Quite likely though, we will not be as faithful as Jesus. So let’s turn to the two failures. The first one is Judas. Judas is the example of someone who has utterly forsaken what God is doing. Judas has been given an insider account of who Jesus is and who Jesus reveals God to be. He has been with Jesus all along. He has heard the teachings. He has seen the miracles. Judas was at the last supper. Just hours before he had his feet washed by Jesus. Despite all that he walks away and even betrays Jesus.
I doubt we realized this, but there are details “missing” about Judas in John’s gospel. Now is the time to point that out. In the other gospels we are told that Judas sells Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver; the value of an injured slave. It’s a paltry amount and it’s pathetic. But there is no such detail in John’s gospel. In the other gospels we may think Judas pathetic, but we can at least understand him being motivated by greed. There is no such understanding here. John’s gospel does not tell us why Judas betrays Jesus. If we stick to just what John tells us we realize there are no ulterior motives for Judas. As commentator Gail O’Day notes, Judas’ actions are simply evil. There is no logic or justification for them. Earlier in the gospel we were told, “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”
What does evil look like? Judas. Judas, treated with love and humility by Jesus, simply walks away and then betrays him.
Believing in “evil” is passe these days. But John’s gospel simply accepts that there are destructive dynamics at work in the world that defy all reason. People just don’t want God’s love. Period.
Hopefully we cannot relate to Judas. But we most likely can relate to the other failure story – Peter.
Peter has been bungling everything plus putting his foot in his mouth. We see that continue here. In the children’s sermon we talked about the way Peter cutting off the right ear of the high priest’s slave was an act of cowardice. He almost certainly had to have struck from behind. And even at that, what a feeble hit it was. Not that I would want to have my ear cut off at all, but Peter doesn’t even manage to get in one single deadly blow!
But his failures of courage for the night are only just beginning. He follows Jesus along with another of the disciples who is unnamed. The unnamed disciple goes with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. That disciple is potentially in trouble depending on how things go for Jesus. But where is Peter? He’s standing outside the courtyard at the gate. He’s basically in the street looking in. The other disciple ten invites Peter in.
I find it interesting that there is a woman who is guarding this gate. A woman as a gatekeeper is certainly not usual for those days! But I have found nothing in commentaries about it. What is clear though, is that she is the first to question Peter about his discipleship to Jesus. This is not some big burly guard from the Roman cohort. And this is not some powerful police officer from the religious leaders. This is an unarmed and powerless person. Remember, in those days women’s testimony wasn’t considered worth much in a court of law. This person could do Peter no harm. Yet even at this Peter denies being a follower of Jesus.
The scene shifts to Jesus being questioned and then back again to Peter. We the readers are to understand Jesus’ questioning happening at the same time as Peter’s questioning. But while Jesus remains 100% faithful, Peter is failing at a rate of 100%. In the courtyard when questioned by the slaves and police Peter denies Jesus again. And then the third denial comes when he is asked by a slave again.
This text is a success story and two failure stories. I suspect the story we most strongly relate to is Peter’s. I believe that is the author’s intention. He knows we fall short of Jesus. He also knows that if we were as evil as Judas we wouldn’t be reading this gospel in the first place! So that leaves us to be like Peter.
Despite his failings Peter is eventually restored. Unlike Judas, Peter stays with Jesus. Peter fails. He fails miserably and shamefully. But he does not walk away into the darkness.
It is the act of staying that redeems Peter. I think that is how God’s grace works. It is great if we never fail and never lose courage. But we know that we do. We fail. We get angry. We act out of fears, greed, and ignorance. We hurt ourselves. We hurt others. We hurt God’s creation. But as long as we keep returning to God we are returning to our source of salvation. We are returning to the light.
That is imperfect discipleship. But that is authentic discipleship. It is where we find our faith authentically growing and abilities becoming stronger.
Monday, November 6, 2023
November 5, 2023 John 16:4b-33
Introduction to the text:
I want to take some time to introduce our gospel reading before we read it. It’s a confusing text at best. It’s one of those things where if it makes sense to you while you’re hearing it you probably aren’t paying close enough attention! And if you’ve been in worship the last few weeks it’s also going to sound repetitive. You’ll find yourself thinking, “Didn’t Jesus already say that?”
In John’s gospel Jesus does repeat himself many times when he’s talking to the disciples at the last supper. Some biblical scholars suggest this may be a case where we have the same speech recorded from multiple points of view. They’re all included one right after another. There’s merit to this idea. There are many places in scripture where we get multiple points of view of the same event. They don’t always agree with one another. That always becomes challenging for those who want to say that we should just live by the “plain sense” of scripture. That’s a well-meaning idea, but with all the points of view and all the contradictions, finding what the “plain sense” is gets complicated! Let’s keep in mind for later though.
The approach we’re going to take with this text is the one most biblical scholars take. That is that it is just one point of view. What Jesus is doing is returning to the same few ideas over and over again, but each time pointing out an additional conclusion or meaning.
Still though, it’s easily confusing. It probably made more sense to the original readers as they knew its context, but it was still difficult to understand.
John’s gospel throws its readers a number of curves. Two of which we’re about to read. One thing John does is have people talking past each other; thinking they understand but not really. We’re about to read the disciples saying to Jesus, “Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! Now we know that you know all things, and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God.” But we the readers know that they don’t really understand at all. Jesus says in reply, “Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone.” No, the disciples don’t really understand at all!
The second thing John does that is confusing is that he uses the same words that we find elsewhere in the Bible but he defines them different. We’ll hear Jesus say, “And when [the Spirit] comes he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.”
We think we know what words like sin and righteousness and judgment mean. I suppose we do, but not the way John uses them.
For John, sin is not a moral category. There is not a list of good things and bad things, with God standing about tracking our actions adding tick marks to a chalk board of our good and bad actions. For John, sin is a theological category. To sin is to not believe Jesus, or to not believe that Jesus is God’s ultimate revelation to the world. For John, any action done in faith is not a sin regardless of the outcome. And, any action not done in faith is always a sin. Again, regardless of whether the outcome is good or bad.
“Righteousness” also gets a different definition. When we think of righteousness we usually think of piety and living a prim and proper life; perhaps annoyingly so. People who are too righteous are no fun.
But again, that’s not how John uses righteousness. Righteousness in this passage means the rightness of God. What God does is right. And inasmuch as we have righteousness of our own, it is about being in relationship with God.
And finally, judgment. When we hear judgment in a church sense we think of someone being sent either to heaven or to hell. Not so in John’s gospel. In John’s gospel God has already judged the world. In verse 11 Jesus will say that God has condemned the ruler of this world. For John, judgment has already happened. Judgment means that the ways of the world have been proven wrong by God. By ways of the world I mean things like a desire for power, status, money, and success.
And that’s how we’ll introduce this text. Jesus is telling the disciples that through his upcoming death, resurrection, and ascension, God will make the most complete revelation of God’s nature to humanity. In Jesus giving away his life he reveals the truth of God’s nature as loving. In the resurrection he reveals that love is stronger than death. And in his leaving in the ascension he creates the space we need for God’s love to mature in us. Through all of that God is shown us righteous and the world is exposed in judgment for its wrong direction.
So, the text will still confuse us, but we’ll come back to interpret it with a message for All Saints Sunday.
Sermon:
I used to believe in progress. I thought that every day with enough work and discipline the world could be made a better place. But there was always the risk that ignorance or laziness could send the world backward.
I remember my first email address. It was 1992 and I could connect to this new thing called the internet through the mainframe computer at Penn State. Of course, email was just green letters on an otherwise black screen. But it was an exciting new thing! It was fresh and pure. There were any number of rules, all of them about keeping this new form of connection clean and good and safe. If you sent something that was meant to be funny you were supposed to create a smiley face with a colon and parenthesis to make sure the receiver knew it was intended to be funny.
But of course the internet did not stay so pure and fresh. In a few short years there were viruses, misinformation, and whole new industries of less-than-wholesome content.
It seems that for every good thing we humans create there is a bad potential to it. Even innocent things can lead to problems. Theologian, medical doctor, and professional organist Albert Schweitzer is among the most prominent people of the 20th century. He probably did more to lower infant and child mortality rates in Africa than any other person. And yet what are the results of his work?
Lowering childhood death rates means that more people reach adulthood. And with more people reaching adulthood there are more people competing for limited resources. And with more people competing for limited resources there is more violence and warfare. And so, as the Poisonwood Bible points out, what Schweitzer really did is allow the children to grow up so that they can now kill each other in wars.
It seems as if no matter how good and loving and selfless we want to be, evil is right there. In Romans 7 Paul even says, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.”
Is there any way at all to escape from this?
That is what our gospel answers. Let’s go back to sin, righteousness, and judgment.
God’s judgment is not about condemning the world so much as it’s about proving that the ways of the world are wrong. Self-gift leading to death is not the end. It is actually the death of death.
Righteousness is about being in relationship with God. And sin is about believing that Jesus is God’s revelation of relationship. And so, for our own lives we are confident to live as Jesus lived. To us it doesn’t matter if sin distorts everything we do into a mess. We know that sin does not have the final word.
Why do we spread the gospel? It is not so much about making sure people can get to heaven after they die. That is God’s business. We spread the gospel because the only real hope this world has is for people to live in hope of God’s promises. The only way that a good thing does not immediately start to turn to something bad is when whole communities and societies build their principles around God’s love.
That sort of thing can’t be legislated. It has to be lived and believed. That is the only way the constant disasters and messes will ever stop.
That sort of thing only comes through close community; just as the community Jesus built among the disciples.
Summing up the entire gospel reading in one sentence, (and giving it an All Saints Sunday interpretation) Jesus has shown us the way, and as we live we trust it to be the way this world can be a truly good place.
I want to take some time to introduce our gospel reading before we read it. It’s a confusing text at best. It’s one of those things where if it makes sense to you while you’re hearing it you probably aren’t paying close enough attention! And if you’ve been in worship the last few weeks it’s also going to sound repetitive. You’ll find yourself thinking, “Didn’t Jesus already say that?”
In John’s gospel Jesus does repeat himself many times when he’s talking to the disciples at the last supper. Some biblical scholars suggest this may be a case where we have the same speech recorded from multiple points of view. They’re all included one right after another. There’s merit to this idea. There are many places in scripture where we get multiple points of view of the same event. They don’t always agree with one another. That always becomes challenging for those who want to say that we should just live by the “plain sense” of scripture. That’s a well-meaning idea, but with all the points of view and all the contradictions, finding what the “plain sense” is gets complicated! Let’s keep in mind for later though.
The approach we’re going to take with this text is the one most biblical scholars take. That is that it is just one point of view. What Jesus is doing is returning to the same few ideas over and over again, but each time pointing out an additional conclusion or meaning.
Still though, it’s easily confusing. It probably made more sense to the original readers as they knew its context, but it was still difficult to understand.
John’s gospel throws its readers a number of curves. Two of which we’re about to read. One thing John does is have people talking past each other; thinking they understand but not really. We’re about to read the disciples saying to Jesus, “Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! Now we know that you know all things, and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God.” But we the readers know that they don’t really understand at all. Jesus says in reply, “Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone.” No, the disciples don’t really understand at all!
The second thing John does that is confusing is that he uses the same words that we find elsewhere in the Bible but he defines them different. We’ll hear Jesus say, “And when [the Spirit] comes he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.”
We think we know what words like sin and righteousness and judgment mean. I suppose we do, but not the way John uses them.
For John, sin is not a moral category. There is not a list of good things and bad things, with God standing about tracking our actions adding tick marks to a chalk board of our good and bad actions. For John, sin is a theological category. To sin is to not believe Jesus, or to not believe that Jesus is God’s ultimate revelation to the world. For John, any action done in faith is not a sin regardless of the outcome. And, any action not done in faith is always a sin. Again, regardless of whether the outcome is good or bad.
“Righteousness” also gets a different definition. When we think of righteousness we usually think of piety and living a prim and proper life; perhaps annoyingly so. People who are too righteous are no fun.
But again, that’s not how John uses righteousness. Righteousness in this passage means the rightness of God. What God does is right. And inasmuch as we have righteousness of our own, it is about being in relationship with God.
And finally, judgment. When we hear judgment in a church sense we think of someone being sent either to heaven or to hell. Not so in John’s gospel. In John’s gospel God has already judged the world. In verse 11 Jesus will say that God has condemned the ruler of this world. For John, judgment has already happened. Judgment means that the ways of the world have been proven wrong by God. By ways of the world I mean things like a desire for power, status, money, and success.
And that’s how we’ll introduce this text. Jesus is telling the disciples that through his upcoming death, resurrection, and ascension, God will make the most complete revelation of God’s nature to humanity. In Jesus giving away his life he reveals the truth of God’s nature as loving. In the resurrection he reveals that love is stronger than death. And in his leaving in the ascension he creates the space we need for God’s love to mature in us. Through all of that God is shown us righteous and the world is exposed in judgment for its wrong direction.
So, the text will still confuse us, but we’ll come back to interpret it with a message for All Saints Sunday.
Sermon:
I used to believe in progress. I thought that every day with enough work and discipline the world could be made a better place. But there was always the risk that ignorance or laziness could send the world backward.
I remember my first email address. It was 1992 and I could connect to this new thing called the internet through the mainframe computer at Penn State. Of course, email was just green letters on an otherwise black screen. But it was an exciting new thing! It was fresh and pure. There were any number of rules, all of them about keeping this new form of connection clean and good and safe. If you sent something that was meant to be funny you were supposed to create a smiley face with a colon and parenthesis to make sure the receiver knew it was intended to be funny.
But of course the internet did not stay so pure and fresh. In a few short years there were viruses, misinformation, and whole new industries of less-than-wholesome content.
It seems that for every good thing we humans create there is a bad potential to it. Even innocent things can lead to problems. Theologian, medical doctor, and professional organist Albert Schweitzer is among the most prominent people of the 20th century. He probably did more to lower infant and child mortality rates in Africa than any other person. And yet what are the results of his work?
Lowering childhood death rates means that more people reach adulthood. And with more people reaching adulthood there are more people competing for limited resources. And with more people competing for limited resources there is more violence and warfare. And so, as the Poisonwood Bible points out, what Schweitzer really did is allow the children to grow up so that they can now kill each other in wars.
It seems as if no matter how good and loving and selfless we want to be, evil is right there. In Romans 7 Paul even says, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.”
Is there any way at all to escape from this?
That is what our gospel answers. Let’s go back to sin, righteousness, and judgment.
God’s judgment is not about condemning the world so much as it’s about proving that the ways of the world are wrong. Self-gift leading to death is not the end. It is actually the death of death.
Righteousness is about being in relationship with God. And sin is about believing that Jesus is God’s revelation of relationship. And so, for our own lives we are confident to live as Jesus lived. To us it doesn’t matter if sin distorts everything we do into a mess. We know that sin does not have the final word.
Why do we spread the gospel? It is not so much about making sure people can get to heaven after they die. That is God’s business. We spread the gospel because the only real hope this world has is for people to live in hope of God’s promises. The only way that a good thing does not immediately start to turn to something bad is when whole communities and societies build their principles around God’s love.
That sort of thing can’t be legislated. It has to be lived and believed. That is the only way the constant disasters and messes will ever stop.
That sort of thing only comes through close community; just as the community Jesus built among the disciples.
Summing up the entire gospel reading in one sentence, (and giving it an All Saints Sunday interpretation) Jesus has shown us the way, and as we live we trust it to be the way this world can be a truly good place.
Monday, October 16, 2023
October 15, 2023 John 14
Have you ever gotten lost? I suppose we all have at one point or another. If you’re driving your car and you get lost it’s no big deal these days. The maps apps on our phones can usually quickly get us back on the right course. They’ve gotten a lot more sophisticated too. Not that many years ago you used to have to put in your destination and you had to stick to the route. If you got off the route it would tell you to make a U-turn. Or else there would be a pause and it would say “recalculating” as it took several moments to figure out a better way.
Of course there is also getting really lost. Like wandering off the path in a forest and losing your sense of direction. Every tree looks the same. You can’t tell what’s a path and what’s not. This quickly goes from being annoying and into being dangerous. The world seems like a small place until you realize just how vast the forests of the Catskills and the Adirondacks really are. The risks of not ever being found are significant.
Have you ever gotten lost in a familiar place? That probably sounds odd, but I think of the way my grandfather would not take his boat out fishing in the Susquehanna River if it was foggy. He had a small airboat, so basically a flat bottom boat with an engine and airplane propeller mounted on the back to blow you around. At his house the Susquehanna River was a mile wide. It was very shallow. In some places you could walk across it. But there were also many partly submerged rock ledges. And there were also many places where there were deep holes and swirling currents. Other places it was flat and calm but still with a current. Of course the fish aren’t too interested in the flat calm areas. They like the holes and rocks. So that’s where you head for fishing. One morning my grandfather and a friend went out in fog; counting on their familiarity with the river to guide them. But pretty soon they were lost. There were rocks and ledges but none of them looked familiar. My grandfather thought they had traveled upstream. His friend thought they had traveled downstream. It turns out without the broader perspective of landmarks all the rocks and ledges looked alike. Of course they were never in real danger. They just had to throw out the anchor and wait for the fog to clear, but he said it was disconcerting to not know where you are despite being in familiar territory.
That takes us to our gospel reading from John 14. Like all of these chapters, there’s a lot going on here. I want to look at just one part. It is probably the most troublesome verse of it all, and it has been misinterpreted and misapplied for ages.
Jesus says in 14;6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” What does that mean? Is believing in Jesus the only way to eternal life? Are all non-believers doomed to eternal damnation? What about everyone who lived before Jesus? Is the salvation of God limited to a very small number?
Those are all good and fair questions. And to answer them we need to go back to being on a river lost in the fog.
It is difficult…, no, it is impossible for us to fully understand the lives of the original readers of John. We live in a society where Christianity and overall Christian philosophy has dominated for centuries. Even if you are of a different religion, or a staunch atheist, you still live in a society where the thought patterns are built around Christianity. We cannot hear this text in any other way.
But for the original readers life as a Christian was a fog. They knew the world in which they lived. It was familiar to them. And yet it is as if they were lost in it. If the original readers were, as many biblical scholars believe, Jews who had been thrown out of the synagogue for believing in Jesus, then their lives had little to hang on to. There were no creeds, no scriptures, no social philosophies that they could look to. There were no Christian buildings or facilities. There was nothing really tangible they could attach their faith to. They had their old Jewish faith, but what did that mean in light of Jesus? They probably had families that were torn apart by faith issues so they probably couldn’t turn to relatives for guidance. All they have is a new small fragile community that is scared.
Into that lost scaredness comes the news of Jesus which gives them light, direction, and something solid to hang on to.
They have discovered that God is not some far off generic deity. God has come in a definitive way they could see, hear, and touch. When Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” don’t interpret it as this is your only hope for eternity and all depends upon you finding it. It is more of here is a joyous solid reality that has been revealed to you. If you want to know what God is like, here’s the solid answer.
Commentator Gail O’Day notes this in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “It is important to try to hear this joyous, world changing theological affirmation in the first-century context of the Fourth Gospel. This is not, as is the case in the [twenty-first] century, the sweeping claim of a major world religion, but it is the conviction of a religious minority in the ancient Mediterranean world.” (Volume 9, Pg. 744) She goes on to say, “It is possible to hear an element of defiance in the proclamation of [this chapter], a determination to hold to this experience and knowledge of God against all opposition and all pressure to believe otherwise… [John’s gospel] declares where it stands in the first-century intra-Jewish debate about the character of God and the identity of God’s people.”
Or let me put that into my own words. Jesus saying that no one comes to the Father except through him is not a theological statement about salvation at all. It is saying that if you want to know about God, if you truly want to know about God, if you truly want to know what God is like, then Jesus is your answer. Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension reveals God’s nature better than anything else ever has or ever will.
You’ve heard me say before that other religions in the world talk about God being loving. That’s fine. I agree with that. But what example of love is there? How do you know? And what form does that love take? What does it look like?
Each religion has its own answer. But if I can humbly but boldly confess John’s answer – Christianity’s answer is to point to Jesus. Jesus is the master and teacher who washes the disciple’s feet, who turns water into wine and can feed a crowd of thousands with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish. Jesus can still the forces of nature and raise a dead man from the grave. And Jesus will himself go on to die, and because of his self-giving love, be raised again.
That takes us to the final thing.
People ask me to pray for healings and sometimes miracles. I gladly do so, but I also know what the Bible tells us about God’s love.
God’s love cannot be counted upon to make us immune to reality. Death still happens. Pain and unfairness still happens. God does not help us escape. But God’s love guides us to live through it.
As many of you know, for the last year I’ve been regularly visiting an elderly woman from Syracuse who was placed in Monroe County Hospital because it was the best place that could give her the care she needed. Since she lived in Syracuse it made little sense for her pastor to make the trip to Rochester. And so I filled in as a professional courtesy.
This woman died a week an a half ago. It was a relief. She’d been on a ventilator for over a year. That was her choice. She had no quality of life, and that was her choice as well. And every time I would go in to see her I would ask God what I was to make of this. She could hear what I said but she could not reply. What should I pray for? For her to die? For her to somehow be miraculously cured despite suffering two severe strokes which put her in this situation?
Given that God through Jesus has revealed Godself in such a way that God did not stay immune from the pains and problems of life, and even was willing to die an unjust death, what does that tell me about God and about what God is likely to do?
Should I expect or pray for a miracle? No. Sure, God can do it. But if I look to Jesus as the example that would not be God’s way of expressing love.
God works in ways that are simultaneously weaker and more powerful than we expect. For God is not a divine vending machine of supernatural cures. God is one who comes with us, deciding to be with us as the world does its thing.
As to paths to eternal life. That’s God’s business and we don’t worry about it. As to what God is like, there God has given us answers. And God has told us to rejoice in that and to share in that so that others know God too.
Of course there is also getting really lost. Like wandering off the path in a forest and losing your sense of direction. Every tree looks the same. You can’t tell what’s a path and what’s not. This quickly goes from being annoying and into being dangerous. The world seems like a small place until you realize just how vast the forests of the Catskills and the Adirondacks really are. The risks of not ever being found are significant.
Have you ever gotten lost in a familiar place? That probably sounds odd, but I think of the way my grandfather would not take his boat out fishing in the Susquehanna River if it was foggy. He had a small airboat, so basically a flat bottom boat with an engine and airplane propeller mounted on the back to blow you around. At his house the Susquehanna River was a mile wide. It was very shallow. In some places you could walk across it. But there were also many partly submerged rock ledges. And there were also many places where there were deep holes and swirling currents. Other places it was flat and calm but still with a current. Of course the fish aren’t too interested in the flat calm areas. They like the holes and rocks. So that’s where you head for fishing. One morning my grandfather and a friend went out in fog; counting on their familiarity with the river to guide them. But pretty soon they were lost. There were rocks and ledges but none of them looked familiar. My grandfather thought they had traveled upstream. His friend thought they had traveled downstream. It turns out without the broader perspective of landmarks all the rocks and ledges looked alike. Of course they were never in real danger. They just had to throw out the anchor and wait for the fog to clear, but he said it was disconcerting to not know where you are despite being in familiar territory.
That takes us to our gospel reading from John 14. Like all of these chapters, there’s a lot going on here. I want to look at just one part. It is probably the most troublesome verse of it all, and it has been misinterpreted and misapplied for ages.
Jesus says in 14;6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” What does that mean? Is believing in Jesus the only way to eternal life? Are all non-believers doomed to eternal damnation? What about everyone who lived before Jesus? Is the salvation of God limited to a very small number?
Those are all good and fair questions. And to answer them we need to go back to being on a river lost in the fog.
It is difficult…, no, it is impossible for us to fully understand the lives of the original readers of John. We live in a society where Christianity and overall Christian philosophy has dominated for centuries. Even if you are of a different religion, or a staunch atheist, you still live in a society where the thought patterns are built around Christianity. We cannot hear this text in any other way.
But for the original readers life as a Christian was a fog. They knew the world in which they lived. It was familiar to them. And yet it is as if they were lost in it. If the original readers were, as many biblical scholars believe, Jews who had been thrown out of the synagogue for believing in Jesus, then their lives had little to hang on to. There were no creeds, no scriptures, no social philosophies that they could look to. There were no Christian buildings or facilities. There was nothing really tangible they could attach their faith to. They had their old Jewish faith, but what did that mean in light of Jesus? They probably had families that were torn apart by faith issues so they probably couldn’t turn to relatives for guidance. All they have is a new small fragile community that is scared.
Into that lost scaredness comes the news of Jesus which gives them light, direction, and something solid to hang on to.
They have discovered that God is not some far off generic deity. God has come in a definitive way they could see, hear, and touch. When Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” don’t interpret it as this is your only hope for eternity and all depends upon you finding it. It is more of here is a joyous solid reality that has been revealed to you. If you want to know what God is like, here’s the solid answer.
Commentator Gail O’Day notes this in the New Interpreter’s Bible, “It is important to try to hear this joyous, world changing theological affirmation in the first-century context of the Fourth Gospel. This is not, as is the case in the [twenty-first] century, the sweeping claim of a major world religion, but it is the conviction of a religious minority in the ancient Mediterranean world.” (Volume 9, Pg. 744) She goes on to say, “It is possible to hear an element of defiance in the proclamation of [this chapter], a determination to hold to this experience and knowledge of God against all opposition and all pressure to believe otherwise… [John’s gospel] declares where it stands in the first-century intra-Jewish debate about the character of God and the identity of God’s people.”
Or let me put that into my own words. Jesus saying that no one comes to the Father except through him is not a theological statement about salvation at all. It is saying that if you want to know about God, if you truly want to know about God, if you truly want to know what God is like, then Jesus is your answer. Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension reveals God’s nature better than anything else ever has or ever will.
You’ve heard me say before that other religions in the world talk about God being loving. That’s fine. I agree with that. But what example of love is there? How do you know? And what form does that love take? What does it look like?
Each religion has its own answer. But if I can humbly but boldly confess John’s answer – Christianity’s answer is to point to Jesus. Jesus is the master and teacher who washes the disciple’s feet, who turns water into wine and can feed a crowd of thousands with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish. Jesus can still the forces of nature and raise a dead man from the grave. And Jesus will himself go on to die, and because of his self-giving love, be raised again.
That takes us to the final thing.
People ask me to pray for healings and sometimes miracles. I gladly do so, but I also know what the Bible tells us about God’s love.
God’s love cannot be counted upon to make us immune to reality. Death still happens. Pain and unfairness still happens. God does not help us escape. But God’s love guides us to live through it.
As many of you know, for the last year I’ve been regularly visiting an elderly woman from Syracuse who was placed in Monroe County Hospital because it was the best place that could give her the care she needed. Since she lived in Syracuse it made little sense for her pastor to make the trip to Rochester. And so I filled in as a professional courtesy.
This woman died a week an a half ago. It was a relief. She’d been on a ventilator for over a year. That was her choice. She had no quality of life, and that was her choice as well. And every time I would go in to see her I would ask God what I was to make of this. She could hear what I said but she could not reply. What should I pray for? For her to die? For her to somehow be miraculously cured despite suffering two severe strokes which put her in this situation?
Given that God through Jesus has revealed Godself in such a way that God did not stay immune from the pains and problems of life, and even was willing to die an unjust death, what does that tell me about God and about what God is likely to do?
Should I expect or pray for a miracle? No. Sure, God can do it. But if I look to Jesus as the example that would not be God’s way of expressing love.
God works in ways that are simultaneously weaker and more powerful than we expect. For God is not a divine vending machine of supernatural cures. God is one who comes with us, deciding to be with us as the world does its thing.
As to paths to eternal life. That’s God’s business and we don’t worry about it. As to what God is like, there God has given us answers. And God has told us to rejoice in that and to share in that so that others know God too.
Monday, October 9, 2023
October 8, 2023 Foot Washing John 13
When I think about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet I think that washing someone’s feet has got to be among the more disgusting things a person could do. Feet stink. Period. And they seem to collect dirt and lint, even if you always wear shoes and socks when you’re outside. Of course feet often don’t look very pretty either.
Indeed in Jesus’ time foot washing was not something you’d do for someone else. I understand that standard hospitality for guests was to offer them water and a towel to wash their feet when they arrived. It makes sense. Roads were dusty. And roads were muddy. And, given that the primary horsepower for transportation was,… well,… horses, you also have lots of other dynamics present in the roads as well. So, when you’d get home or to someone’s house you’d wash your feet!
You’d usually wash your own feet. Or I understand that in some cases a very rich person would have a very low-ranking servant wash people’s feet. Whatever the case, a wealthy person, or a person of status like a rabbi would not wash other people’s feet!
Jesus washing the feet of the disciples was an act of love and an expression of humility. He, their rabbi, their leader, was voluntarily washing their feet.
We don’t have this regular foot washing in our culture today, but I wonder what it’s like for those who give pedicures? I’ve never had one so I don’t really know anything about it. I know men sometimes get them but I think it’s primarily women. I can imagine any number of women who when going for a pedicure will make sure their feet are clean, and whether they wear socks or not, they may even have rarely worn shoes that look good and haven’t accumulated a smell. All of that so as not to offend the person giving the pedicure.
I suppose that’s a sign of respect, and that’s good. But I think about the way some workers in nursing homes care for the people they look after. Or perhaps those who do pedicure-like work for elderly people in general.
I remember Knute Halvorson talking about how good his feet felt after he’d go to the podiatrist and someone would work on his toes and nails. He said he couldn’t believe how good his feet felt – as if every step was a joy to take! If you knew Knute you know he was not one to throw away compliments! The last years of Knute’s life he had many back, leg, and foot pains. Watching him walk was watching him wince in pain with every step. So someone who could actually make his feet feel good was giving him a great gift indeed!
Jesus’ disciples certainly felt weird about Jesus washing their feet. Peter’s response to him saying, “You will never wash my feet,” is proof of that. And yet it was a wonderful act of love. It was individual, personal touch and attention from their rabbi.
There are lots of things going on in our gospel reading. I want to make sure we recognize two of them. The first one is quick and easy. It is Judas.
Despite Jesus knowing full well what Judas is about to do, Jesus still washes Judas’ feet. Judas is loved. He is not criticized. He is not thrown out.
Later in the chapter Judas does leave. Again, he is not thrown out. You can still hear the love in Jesus’ voice when he says to Judas, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” There’s no anger or rejection there. It is still a statement of care.
Then Judas leaves.
The gospel writer John throws in very important detail when Judas leaves. “And it was night.”
Thus far through the gospel we’ve heard about light and darkness. The beginning of John’s gospel includes these familiar words, “What has come into being in [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
Yet here Judas himself makes the conscious decision to leave the light and head out into the darkness.
There’s a whole sermon right there! And we’re going to get at it by looking at the second thing. That second thing is a disciple who stayed.
In John 13:23 says an interesting thing about one of the disciples. Hear that verse again, “One of the disciples – the one whom Jesus loved – was reclining next to him…” Historians and scholars have wondered for centuries who this beloved disciple was.
It wasn’t Judas! He’s about to leave.
It wasn’t Peter either. The very next verse refers to Peter as being someone else. Otherwise there’d be a good case for Peter because the other gospels present Peter as the sort of leader of the disciples.
Many have concluded that the beloved disciple is the disciple John. And that John then actually wrote the gospel. The next-to-the-last verse of John’s gospel: Chapter 21, verse 24 reads, “This is the disciple who is testifying these things and has written them…”
I’m not going to get into it here, because the logic is intricate, but a close reading of John’s gospel shows that the beloved disciple is definitely not John, nor his brother James either.
While over the ages many have incorrectly said the beloved disciple is John, it is also true that across the ages many have said the same person who most scholars today agree is the beloved disciple.
The beloved disciple is you.
In Luke’s gospel, you the reader is called, “Most Excellent Lover of God.” In John’s gospel, you the reader is called, “the beloved disciple.” And don’t be so quick to dismiss this as just a cute literary device created by the author. It’s not. The author is serious. He means it.
He has written the gospel so that you, the disciple Jesus loves, has been given a first hand look at everything that happens – everything from the call of the first disciples to the miracle of turning water into wine, and all the way to the resurrection.
In John’s gospel who is the first person to enter the tomb of Jesus and discover that it is empty? According to the author who is the very first witness of the resurrection? You are.
That may not sit well with our understanding of historic reality, but it gets at the key thing the author is trying to get at.
From your perspective does it really matter who sees the empty tomb first? No. It doesn’t matter. But what does truly matter is that you are given first hand direct access to the nature of God as revealed in Jesus.
Where is the beloved disciple during the Last Supper? A literal translation of John 13:23 reads, “One of his disciples the one whom Jesus loved- was reclining in Jesus’ bosom.”
The author wants you to imagine Jesus kneeling down and washing your feet. The author wants you to be touching Jesus, literally leaning against him, throughout the last supper. One of the most used words in John’s gospel is the word abide. It is about Jesus’ presence abiding in you.
When you read the gospel of John you are meant to feel cherished by God and immediately and fully in God’s presence.
It is as if the author knows we are going to feel distant from God. It is as if the author knows we’re going to have doubts. It is as if the author knows we’re going to wonder where God is, what God is up to, and what we are supposed to do with our lives. In answer to all of that he says you are loved.
Maybe that doesn’t sound like an answer at all. But let’s conclude with a look back at Judas. Judas has left. He has rejected abiding in Jesus. He has chosen to go out into the darkness.
We are to stay in the light. So when you don’t feel God, or you don’t know what to do, or when you have doubts, go back to the core of Chapter 13. You are loved. You are beloved. Let that guide your thoughts and actions.
I don’t think God is into giving us rules and expectations, as if life were a puzzle to figure out. God says, “I abide with you. Let that guide you. Let that be your light.” And it will guide you well. Easy, it will not be. But blessed it will be. Rejoice at being chosen and loved by God.
Indeed in Jesus’ time foot washing was not something you’d do for someone else. I understand that standard hospitality for guests was to offer them water and a towel to wash their feet when they arrived. It makes sense. Roads were dusty. And roads were muddy. And, given that the primary horsepower for transportation was,… well,… horses, you also have lots of other dynamics present in the roads as well. So, when you’d get home or to someone’s house you’d wash your feet!
You’d usually wash your own feet. Or I understand that in some cases a very rich person would have a very low-ranking servant wash people’s feet. Whatever the case, a wealthy person, or a person of status like a rabbi would not wash other people’s feet!
Jesus washing the feet of the disciples was an act of love and an expression of humility. He, their rabbi, their leader, was voluntarily washing their feet.
We don’t have this regular foot washing in our culture today, but I wonder what it’s like for those who give pedicures? I’ve never had one so I don’t really know anything about it. I know men sometimes get them but I think it’s primarily women. I can imagine any number of women who when going for a pedicure will make sure their feet are clean, and whether they wear socks or not, they may even have rarely worn shoes that look good and haven’t accumulated a smell. All of that so as not to offend the person giving the pedicure.
I suppose that’s a sign of respect, and that’s good. But I think about the way some workers in nursing homes care for the people they look after. Or perhaps those who do pedicure-like work for elderly people in general.
I remember Knute Halvorson talking about how good his feet felt after he’d go to the podiatrist and someone would work on his toes and nails. He said he couldn’t believe how good his feet felt – as if every step was a joy to take! If you knew Knute you know he was not one to throw away compliments! The last years of Knute’s life he had many back, leg, and foot pains. Watching him walk was watching him wince in pain with every step. So someone who could actually make his feet feel good was giving him a great gift indeed!
Jesus’ disciples certainly felt weird about Jesus washing their feet. Peter’s response to him saying, “You will never wash my feet,” is proof of that. And yet it was a wonderful act of love. It was individual, personal touch and attention from their rabbi.
There are lots of things going on in our gospel reading. I want to make sure we recognize two of them. The first one is quick and easy. It is Judas.
Despite Jesus knowing full well what Judas is about to do, Jesus still washes Judas’ feet. Judas is loved. He is not criticized. He is not thrown out.
Later in the chapter Judas does leave. Again, he is not thrown out. You can still hear the love in Jesus’ voice when he says to Judas, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” There’s no anger or rejection there. It is still a statement of care.
Then Judas leaves.
The gospel writer John throws in very important detail when Judas leaves. “And it was night.”
Thus far through the gospel we’ve heard about light and darkness. The beginning of John’s gospel includes these familiar words, “What has come into being in [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
Yet here Judas himself makes the conscious decision to leave the light and head out into the darkness.
There’s a whole sermon right there! And we’re going to get at it by looking at the second thing. That second thing is a disciple who stayed.
In John 13:23 says an interesting thing about one of the disciples. Hear that verse again, “One of the disciples – the one whom Jesus loved – was reclining next to him…” Historians and scholars have wondered for centuries who this beloved disciple was.
It wasn’t Judas! He’s about to leave.
It wasn’t Peter either. The very next verse refers to Peter as being someone else. Otherwise there’d be a good case for Peter because the other gospels present Peter as the sort of leader of the disciples.
Many have concluded that the beloved disciple is the disciple John. And that John then actually wrote the gospel. The next-to-the-last verse of John’s gospel: Chapter 21, verse 24 reads, “This is the disciple who is testifying these things and has written them…”
I’m not going to get into it here, because the logic is intricate, but a close reading of John’s gospel shows that the beloved disciple is definitely not John, nor his brother James either.
While over the ages many have incorrectly said the beloved disciple is John, it is also true that across the ages many have said the same person who most scholars today agree is the beloved disciple.
The beloved disciple is you.
In Luke’s gospel, you the reader is called, “Most Excellent Lover of God.” In John’s gospel, you the reader is called, “the beloved disciple.” And don’t be so quick to dismiss this as just a cute literary device created by the author. It’s not. The author is serious. He means it.
He has written the gospel so that you, the disciple Jesus loves, has been given a first hand look at everything that happens – everything from the call of the first disciples to the miracle of turning water into wine, and all the way to the resurrection.
In John’s gospel who is the first person to enter the tomb of Jesus and discover that it is empty? According to the author who is the very first witness of the resurrection? You are.
That may not sit well with our understanding of historic reality, but it gets at the key thing the author is trying to get at.
From your perspective does it really matter who sees the empty tomb first? No. It doesn’t matter. But what does truly matter is that you are given first hand direct access to the nature of God as revealed in Jesus.
Where is the beloved disciple during the Last Supper? A literal translation of John 13:23 reads, “One of his disciples the one whom Jesus loved- was reclining in Jesus’ bosom.”
The author wants you to imagine Jesus kneeling down and washing your feet. The author wants you to be touching Jesus, literally leaning against him, throughout the last supper. One of the most used words in John’s gospel is the word abide. It is about Jesus’ presence abiding in you.
When you read the gospel of John you are meant to feel cherished by God and immediately and fully in God’s presence.
It is as if the author knows we are going to feel distant from God. It is as if the author knows we’re going to have doubts. It is as if the author knows we’re going to wonder where God is, what God is up to, and what we are supposed to do with our lives. In answer to all of that he says you are loved.
Maybe that doesn’t sound like an answer at all. But let’s conclude with a look back at Judas. Judas has left. He has rejected abiding in Jesus. He has chosen to go out into the darkness.
We are to stay in the light. So when you don’t feel God, or you don’t know what to do, or when you have doubts, go back to the core of Chapter 13. You are loved. You are beloved. Let that guide your thoughts and actions.
I don’t think God is into giving us rules and expectations, as if life were a puzzle to figure out. God says, “I abide with you. Let that guide you. Let that be your light.” And it will guide you well. Easy, it will not be. But blessed it will be. Rejoice at being chosen and loved by God.
Monday, October 2, 2023
October 1, 2023 John 12:20-50
It feels like advertisements for lawyers are inescapable these days. They’re all over television. There’s lots on billboards along the road. I used to laugh last year on Route 31 coming from Lyons into Newark that there were multiple billboards within view all at once with competing messages from lawyers. There don’t seem to be as many ads on the internet though.
Based on how many ads there are you’d think every third person you meet is the victim of a jobsite accident, car crash, asbestos exposure, or some other sort of tragedy. The ads have all sorts of clever sayings and catchy jingles. You can probably easily run a handful of them through your head right now! All of these legal ads promise the same thing – lots of money.
Pharmaceutical companies spend their share on advertisements too! While they don’t promise lots of money, they do also have catchy ads and sayings. Everyone looks happy and vibrant; as if the medicine has cured all their life’s problems. It is funny though that the ads for pharmaceuticals also have to list the side effects, which can be just has horrible as the original condition; or may even cause death. Notice they don’t have scenes of funerals in their ads though.
And that takes us to Jesus’ message of, “Take up your cross and follow me.” It’s hard to put a jingle to that one, and it’s hard to create a picture for a billboard that has someone looking vibrant and happy!
The children’s sermon today focused on John 10:24, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” And now we continue with the very next verse, “Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
Ironic, isn’t it. It’s as if Jesus’ main ads would say that life is going to be difficult, painful even. And then the fine print at the bottom would say, “Side effects are an eternal life of bliss.”
But that is not why we follow Jesus. Jesus never intended his message to be one of suffer now in order to be rewarded later. That’s not how God works. That’s just scheming and leveraging God. I’d like to see the lawyer who things he or she can take God to court and win!
If you’ve been in worship a lot these last months you’ve realized that John’s gospel feels very different from the other gospels. One thing that is noticeably different is that they’re aren’t exorcisms. We don’t meet demon possessed people. There are miracle stories, yes. And some of them are great miracles! But, for the most part, John’s gospel is quite at home in our worldview today. With the issue of demon possession and exorcisms, it is notable that there is only one exorcism in the entire story. That exorcism is at the crucifixion when Jesus delivers the world from the power of evil. Jesus himself says in verse 31 of our gospel reading for today, “Now is the judgment of this world: now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
There you have it. The only exorcism.
John’s gospel gives us a very important perspective when it comes to what has become known as atonement theory. Atonement theory is how does Jesus’ crucifixion actually take away the effect of sin. How does it connect to our lives today. Atonement theory is a tough territory. It is fine to say Jesus died for your sins. Or that Jesus sacrificed himself for you as an act of love. But how do they connect? We haven’t met Jesus in full literal form. We have not done bad things and Jesus literally stepped in and said, “I’ll take the punishment instead.”
Over the centuries many have said that in order for there to be justice in the universe, in order to make up for the brokenness of humanity, Jesus had to suffer and die. But is there some great eternal judge beyond God that needs to be satisfied somehow? God created this universe. God created the ideas of cause and effect, and fairness, and justice. Why would God create something where God himself would have to suffer for the sake of God’s own justice? You can see how that quickly gets us into a logical trap.
John’s gospel helps us out. Why does Jesus have to die? And how does Jesus’ life and death impact our own lives today, and our relationship with God?
First of all, Jesus does not have to die, even though he knew he would from the very beginning. Jesus’ death in John’s gospel is not about making up for the world’s sins. It’s about God showing such abundant selfless love that God is willing to die for the world that has turned its back on God and gone astray.
And as Jesus dies he is not setting some moral example that we are to follow. Jesus does not say, “Do what I do. Here’s an example for you to build your morality from.”
No, the death of Jesus is an expression of love that, ironically, leads to wholeness of life.
The lawyers ads are lies. A big payout will not lead to wholeness of life. Although I will say that a highly developed threat of civil lawsuits does keep powerful people and companies from becoming too careless. And the pharmaceutical companies are not giving wholeness of life either. Although any number of medications do significantly improve the quality of life. But Jesus does give wholeness of life. It is not wholeness of life by being sacrificial in life; although it may take that form. It is wholeness of life because Jesus is revealing the enormity of God’s love for you and for the world around you. And he invites you to live in that love.
In other words, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus invites you into relationship with God every step through life. It invites you to look to God as the example of love and trust that living in that love will indeed bring you value.
That love is counter to the way the world works. And that love is counter to the way our minds think.
Sure, I can’t help but imagine what my life would be like if suddenly a vast fortune were dumped into my lap. What would I buy? What trips would I take? It’s easy to imagine joy at knowing that you could spend a lot on happiness today and still have plenty to spend on happiness tomorrow and the next day and the day after that forever. Yet that would lead to emptiness.
The failure of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden story is that they thought they could find fulfillment on their own terms apart from God. The success of Jesus is that he shows how fulfillment comes by turning back to God and realizing that God already made you good.
How does living that love look in real life? It is seeing problems and challenges and then being willing to work to engage them.
I don’t know where all I’ve come across this fact, but the truth is the greatest satisfaction comes from seeing a task you don’t know how to accomplish but then learning the skills to accomplish it, and then doing it. If everything is too easy all the time life gets boring. If everything is too hard all the time then you suffer burnout. But when you do not shy away from problems, and when you approach tasks with God’s love in your mind, you will succeed at them, and you will feel truly good.
The grain of wheat cracks open and a new life sprouts from it. We do not wait until we die and our bodies decompose or are burnt in order to have that new life sprout. Jesus wants us to know that the new life sprouts right now, and here in this world. A life of self-gift in relationship with God is true life. It is available to all. It is available right now.
We don’t run TV ads or pop-ups on the internet, or put up billboards along the side of the road. But we do let the light of Christ shine from our own lives into the world. Perhaps we aren’t exorcists, but we do drive the darkness and the demons of ignorance away so that all may know true life.
Based on how many ads there are you’d think every third person you meet is the victim of a jobsite accident, car crash, asbestos exposure, or some other sort of tragedy. The ads have all sorts of clever sayings and catchy jingles. You can probably easily run a handful of them through your head right now! All of these legal ads promise the same thing – lots of money.
Pharmaceutical companies spend their share on advertisements too! While they don’t promise lots of money, they do also have catchy ads and sayings. Everyone looks happy and vibrant; as if the medicine has cured all their life’s problems. It is funny though that the ads for pharmaceuticals also have to list the side effects, which can be just has horrible as the original condition; or may even cause death. Notice they don’t have scenes of funerals in their ads though.
And that takes us to Jesus’ message of, “Take up your cross and follow me.” It’s hard to put a jingle to that one, and it’s hard to create a picture for a billboard that has someone looking vibrant and happy!
The children’s sermon today focused on John 10:24, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” And now we continue with the very next verse, “Those who love their life will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
Ironic, isn’t it. It’s as if Jesus’ main ads would say that life is going to be difficult, painful even. And then the fine print at the bottom would say, “Side effects are an eternal life of bliss.”
But that is not why we follow Jesus. Jesus never intended his message to be one of suffer now in order to be rewarded later. That’s not how God works. That’s just scheming and leveraging God. I’d like to see the lawyer who things he or she can take God to court and win!
If you’ve been in worship a lot these last months you’ve realized that John’s gospel feels very different from the other gospels. One thing that is noticeably different is that they’re aren’t exorcisms. We don’t meet demon possessed people. There are miracle stories, yes. And some of them are great miracles! But, for the most part, John’s gospel is quite at home in our worldview today. With the issue of demon possession and exorcisms, it is notable that there is only one exorcism in the entire story. That exorcism is at the crucifixion when Jesus delivers the world from the power of evil. Jesus himself says in verse 31 of our gospel reading for today, “Now is the judgment of this world: now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
There you have it. The only exorcism.
John’s gospel gives us a very important perspective when it comes to what has become known as atonement theory. Atonement theory is how does Jesus’ crucifixion actually take away the effect of sin. How does it connect to our lives today. Atonement theory is a tough territory. It is fine to say Jesus died for your sins. Or that Jesus sacrificed himself for you as an act of love. But how do they connect? We haven’t met Jesus in full literal form. We have not done bad things and Jesus literally stepped in and said, “I’ll take the punishment instead.”
Over the centuries many have said that in order for there to be justice in the universe, in order to make up for the brokenness of humanity, Jesus had to suffer and die. But is there some great eternal judge beyond God that needs to be satisfied somehow? God created this universe. God created the ideas of cause and effect, and fairness, and justice. Why would God create something where God himself would have to suffer for the sake of God’s own justice? You can see how that quickly gets us into a logical trap.
John’s gospel helps us out. Why does Jesus have to die? And how does Jesus’ life and death impact our own lives today, and our relationship with God?
First of all, Jesus does not have to die, even though he knew he would from the very beginning. Jesus’ death in John’s gospel is not about making up for the world’s sins. It’s about God showing such abundant selfless love that God is willing to die for the world that has turned its back on God and gone astray.
And as Jesus dies he is not setting some moral example that we are to follow. Jesus does not say, “Do what I do. Here’s an example for you to build your morality from.”
No, the death of Jesus is an expression of love that, ironically, leads to wholeness of life.
The lawyers ads are lies. A big payout will not lead to wholeness of life. Although I will say that a highly developed threat of civil lawsuits does keep powerful people and companies from becoming too careless. And the pharmaceutical companies are not giving wholeness of life either. Although any number of medications do significantly improve the quality of life. But Jesus does give wholeness of life. It is not wholeness of life by being sacrificial in life; although it may take that form. It is wholeness of life because Jesus is revealing the enormity of God’s love for you and for the world around you. And he invites you to live in that love.
In other words, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus invites you into relationship with God every step through life. It invites you to look to God as the example of love and trust that living in that love will indeed bring you value.
That love is counter to the way the world works. And that love is counter to the way our minds think.
Sure, I can’t help but imagine what my life would be like if suddenly a vast fortune were dumped into my lap. What would I buy? What trips would I take? It’s easy to imagine joy at knowing that you could spend a lot on happiness today and still have plenty to spend on happiness tomorrow and the next day and the day after that forever. Yet that would lead to emptiness.
The failure of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden story is that they thought they could find fulfillment on their own terms apart from God. The success of Jesus is that he shows how fulfillment comes by turning back to God and realizing that God already made you good.
How does living that love look in real life? It is seeing problems and challenges and then being willing to work to engage them.
I don’t know where all I’ve come across this fact, but the truth is the greatest satisfaction comes from seeing a task you don’t know how to accomplish but then learning the skills to accomplish it, and then doing it. If everything is too easy all the time life gets boring. If everything is too hard all the time then you suffer burnout. But when you do not shy away from problems, and when you approach tasks with God’s love in your mind, you will succeed at them, and you will feel truly good.
The grain of wheat cracks open and a new life sprouts from it. We do not wait until we die and our bodies decompose or are burnt in order to have that new life sprout. Jesus wants us to know that the new life sprouts right now, and here in this world. A life of self-gift in relationship with God is true life. It is available to all. It is available right now.
We don’t run TV ads or pop-ups on the internet, or put up billboards along the side of the road. But we do let the light of Christ shine from our own lives into the world. Perhaps we aren’t exorcists, but we do drive the darkness and the demons of ignorance away so that all may know true life.
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
September 24, 2023 John 12:12-19
Our gospel reading is a text we usually think of for Palm Sunday, but I think it is good to see it outside of that context too. When we focus just on Jesus’ humble but triumphal entry into Jerusalem for the Passover holiday that does indeed set us up for Holy Week, but it misses the clouds that John’s gospel puts over the whole thing. Today’s gospel reading shows that Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead is what is going to get him killed. The crowds are going after him. The religious leaders see the world that they have created and worked for crumbling.
It is easy to look at these religious leaders and criticize them for their blindness, for their unwillingness to recognize what God is doing. But before we go after them too harshly, we have to remember what they are facing. And we can see in them some of our own selves.
While we know pretty well who Jesus is, they did not. We do well to remember that from their perspective Jesus had nothing to recommend himself. Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee. Galilee had a reputation for sloppy religious and moral practices. So that’s a strike against him.
Jesus also has no proper pedigree, at least not that the religious leaders knew. In time the biblical authors would create genealogies to show Jesus as a descendent of King David, and remind us that God promised the Davidic monarchy would last forever. But the religious leaders of that time had nothing of that before them. And so, what if Jesus did claim to be a descendent of David? Lots of people probably made that claim!
Add to this the fact that Jesus did not have a formal education, and he did not have any notable contacts, and you have an upstart preacher from an area with a poor reputation for theological quality, and he’s preaching a message that upends the fundamental tenants of a religious system that upends centuries of theological development, and of course they didn’t believe him!
Perhaps think of the movie Leap of Faith where Steve Martin plays an evangelist who has a traveling tent revival operation. One of his busses breaks down in a little town and he decides to set up shop and fleece the locals for what he can get out of him. The town cop is the only one who really sees the whole show is a scam and an act. But the population rejects him for the appeal of Martin’s character. Now as the movie draws to its close Steve Martin’s character experiences a real miracle, and you have to watch the movie to see how it all works out, but I believe the religious leaders saw Jesus as a charismatic fly-by-night operation that at best challenged the carefully created orthodoxy they had scraped together under Roman rule, and at worst could bring down the Romans upon them.
They’re already anxious about the way the crowds are drawn to Jesus for the raising of Lazarus, and then when the crowds welcome Jesus into Jerusalem for the Passover holiday with proclamations of, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord – the King of Israel!” they fear real trouble. What if the Romans get wind of this entrance proclamation by the crowds? What if the Romans crack down?
What appears to be lost to both the crowds and the religious leaders is that Jesus rides in on a donkey. He does not come on some great warhorse and his followers are not showing any sign of military might. Jesus is coming with humility and no desire to threaten anyone. But the flocking crowds misunderstand, and they could be a threat. And, even if they don’t cause problems with the Romans, they are still a threat to the religious leaders.
I said earlier that we can see in the religious leaders some of our own selves. That’s why I’ve chosen to focus on them as we read this text. Their actions towards Jesus raise the question in us of what in our lives have we heavily invested in? And because of that, it could cause us to lose sight of what God is doing?
For example, it has long been said that a person’s biggest lifetime investment is their home. Home ownership is the best way to build and pass on wealth. If you own a home it is likely that you spent a tremendous amount of money for it, even if it is a fairly humble place.
Owning a home also requires a lot of money to maintain. Appliances are always getting older, even as we’re sitting here your washer and dryer, dishwasher and refrigerator, furnace and hot water heater, are all aging and drawing closer to the time when they need to be replaced. All of them are expensive. Plus there’s roofs, siding, lawn care, maybe some structural repairs along the way. There’s also complex electrical and plumbing systems, maybe an air conditioning system too.
Those who own houses have spent a lot to get them, and they spend a lot to maintain them. And then add insult to injury, you have to pay a lot in taxes and insurances too!
Houses cost a lot, and we invest a lot in them!
The one thing a home owner absolutely positively does not want to happen is to have their home’s value drop. If you own it outright that’s a loss of your hard-earned money. If you’re paying a mortgage, the bank or credit union is not going to reduce the amount you have to pay just because your house’s value tanks.
You know the acronym NIMBY – not in my backyard. Sure, heavy industry or a landfill or a wastewater treatment plant has to exist somewhere, but not in my backyard. Don’t build an airport or super-highway or shopping center right next to my house!
You don’t want the demographics of your neighborhood or community to change all that much either. What if people moving into your neighborhood somehow cause home values to fall instead of rise? What if you live in Victor, and a great deal of the value of your home rests on the quality of the school, and the school’s performance starts to fail? What if you own lakefront property in Canandaigua and the lake somehow becomes toxic? Lots and lots of your hopes, dreams, and hard earned money can go down the drain fast.
The religious leaders in Jesus’ day had worked hard to create and maintain the religious systems, buildings, and bureaucracy that they had. And Jesus could very well be a threat to all of it. He was popular with the crowds and not at all under their control. They couldn’t see beyond what they had poured their lives into. They had inadvertently become blind to the fact that God could do new things; and that God was doing a totally new thing yet still within the framework of the old.
And so we ask ourselves, what are those things in our lives that we have poured a lot of time, money, and hard work into? What do we work hard to protect? What do we fear because if something fails our way of life would be at risk?
I just used the example of home ownership. But I used it just because it was an easy example. Many of us don’t own homes, but I believe that we all have things where we’ve invested a lot in the status quo. Any change could be a threat to it. Those things could be: our jobs, or retirement accounts, or our educational accomplishments, or our network of friends, our physical beauty, or any number of things. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus said that where your treasure is there your heart will be as well. (Matthew 6:21) Where is the treasure in your life?
Those are the places where we can most easily become blind to God’s actions. If God comes in, even in a humble way riding on a donkey, will we recognize it? Or will the threat be too great for us?
The idea of judgment in John’s gospel doesn’t really have an idea of hell or damnation for those who fail. But it does teach that to miss Jesus’ presence is to miss out on fullness of life. It is to continue to live in darkness. God’s coming to you is a coming that will bring your life meaning, purpose, and contentment. In John’s gospel we see the failing of the religious leaders. They continue to live in darkness and miss fullness of life. But we learn from them and keep our eyes open to the new things God is always doing, even when those things challenge what we have worked long and hard for in our lives.
It is easy to look at these religious leaders and criticize them for their blindness, for their unwillingness to recognize what God is doing. But before we go after them too harshly, we have to remember what they are facing. And we can see in them some of our own selves.
While we know pretty well who Jesus is, they did not. We do well to remember that from their perspective Jesus had nothing to recommend himself. Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee. Galilee had a reputation for sloppy religious and moral practices. So that’s a strike against him.
Jesus also has no proper pedigree, at least not that the religious leaders knew. In time the biblical authors would create genealogies to show Jesus as a descendent of King David, and remind us that God promised the Davidic monarchy would last forever. But the religious leaders of that time had nothing of that before them. And so, what if Jesus did claim to be a descendent of David? Lots of people probably made that claim!
Add to this the fact that Jesus did not have a formal education, and he did not have any notable contacts, and you have an upstart preacher from an area with a poor reputation for theological quality, and he’s preaching a message that upends the fundamental tenants of a religious system that upends centuries of theological development, and of course they didn’t believe him!
Perhaps think of the movie Leap of Faith where Steve Martin plays an evangelist who has a traveling tent revival operation. One of his busses breaks down in a little town and he decides to set up shop and fleece the locals for what he can get out of him. The town cop is the only one who really sees the whole show is a scam and an act. But the population rejects him for the appeal of Martin’s character. Now as the movie draws to its close Steve Martin’s character experiences a real miracle, and you have to watch the movie to see how it all works out, but I believe the religious leaders saw Jesus as a charismatic fly-by-night operation that at best challenged the carefully created orthodoxy they had scraped together under Roman rule, and at worst could bring down the Romans upon them.
They’re already anxious about the way the crowds are drawn to Jesus for the raising of Lazarus, and then when the crowds welcome Jesus into Jerusalem for the Passover holiday with proclamations of, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord – the King of Israel!” they fear real trouble. What if the Romans get wind of this entrance proclamation by the crowds? What if the Romans crack down?
What appears to be lost to both the crowds and the religious leaders is that Jesus rides in on a donkey. He does not come on some great warhorse and his followers are not showing any sign of military might. Jesus is coming with humility and no desire to threaten anyone. But the flocking crowds misunderstand, and they could be a threat. And, even if they don’t cause problems with the Romans, they are still a threat to the religious leaders.
I said earlier that we can see in the religious leaders some of our own selves. That’s why I’ve chosen to focus on them as we read this text. Their actions towards Jesus raise the question in us of what in our lives have we heavily invested in? And because of that, it could cause us to lose sight of what God is doing?
For example, it has long been said that a person’s biggest lifetime investment is their home. Home ownership is the best way to build and pass on wealth. If you own a home it is likely that you spent a tremendous amount of money for it, even if it is a fairly humble place.
Owning a home also requires a lot of money to maintain. Appliances are always getting older, even as we’re sitting here your washer and dryer, dishwasher and refrigerator, furnace and hot water heater, are all aging and drawing closer to the time when they need to be replaced. All of them are expensive. Plus there’s roofs, siding, lawn care, maybe some structural repairs along the way. There’s also complex electrical and plumbing systems, maybe an air conditioning system too.
Those who own houses have spent a lot to get them, and they spend a lot to maintain them. And then add insult to injury, you have to pay a lot in taxes and insurances too!
Houses cost a lot, and we invest a lot in them!
The one thing a home owner absolutely positively does not want to happen is to have their home’s value drop. If you own it outright that’s a loss of your hard-earned money. If you’re paying a mortgage, the bank or credit union is not going to reduce the amount you have to pay just because your house’s value tanks.
You know the acronym NIMBY – not in my backyard. Sure, heavy industry or a landfill or a wastewater treatment plant has to exist somewhere, but not in my backyard. Don’t build an airport or super-highway or shopping center right next to my house!
You don’t want the demographics of your neighborhood or community to change all that much either. What if people moving into your neighborhood somehow cause home values to fall instead of rise? What if you live in Victor, and a great deal of the value of your home rests on the quality of the school, and the school’s performance starts to fail? What if you own lakefront property in Canandaigua and the lake somehow becomes toxic? Lots and lots of your hopes, dreams, and hard earned money can go down the drain fast.
The religious leaders in Jesus’ day had worked hard to create and maintain the religious systems, buildings, and bureaucracy that they had. And Jesus could very well be a threat to all of it. He was popular with the crowds and not at all under their control. They couldn’t see beyond what they had poured their lives into. They had inadvertently become blind to the fact that God could do new things; and that God was doing a totally new thing yet still within the framework of the old.
And so we ask ourselves, what are those things in our lives that we have poured a lot of time, money, and hard work into? What do we work hard to protect? What do we fear because if something fails our way of life would be at risk?
I just used the example of home ownership. But I used it just because it was an easy example. Many of us don’t own homes, but I believe that we all have things where we’ve invested a lot in the status quo. Any change could be a threat to it. Those things could be: our jobs, or retirement accounts, or our educational accomplishments, or our network of friends, our physical beauty, or any number of things. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus said that where your treasure is there your heart will be as well. (Matthew 6:21) Where is the treasure in your life?
Those are the places where we can most easily become blind to God’s actions. If God comes in, even in a humble way riding on a donkey, will we recognize it? Or will the threat be too great for us?
The idea of judgment in John’s gospel doesn’t really have an idea of hell or damnation for those who fail. But it does teach that to miss Jesus’ presence is to miss out on fullness of life. It is to continue to live in darkness. God’s coming to you is a coming that will bring your life meaning, purpose, and contentment. In John’s gospel we see the failing of the religious leaders. They continue to live in darkness and miss fullness of life. But we learn from them and keep our eyes open to the new things God is always doing, even when those things challenge what we have worked long and hard for in our lives.
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
September 17, 2023 John 11:45-12:11
I have been watching the show Unforgotten on Masterpiece Mystery, which is on WXXI on Sunday nights. Now, I’ve said I’ve been watching it. I didn’t say I like it. I’ve liked previous seasons and so I started watching this one, but so far I’m not all that impressed. I suppose I could say that if nothing else it has given me an illustration to open a sermon today!
Unforgotten is about fictitious murder cases from the past. New evidence comes to light which reopens the investigation. The series start off slowly introducing the audience to what seems like a diverse and unconnected cast of characters. As the investigation goes on the detectives link the characters and their pasts, and ultimately solve the mystery.
That’s the way John’s gospel may have felt as we read it today. A couple weeks ago I said John’s gospel could be seen as having two acts. In the first act we meet Jesus, we experience his signs, and we discover things about God through them. In the second act we have the final week of Jesus’ life, which includes his anointing, the Last Supper, and his arrest and crucifixion. We are still near the beginning of this second act. We have a whole lot of characters whose connections aren’t readily apparent. There’s: Jesus, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, the “Jews”, chief priests and Pharisees, Caiaphas the high priest, and last but not least, Judas.
John’s story is complex, and we could take a sermon any number of directions from here. But for the sake of focus, we are going to look at the contrast between two: Mary and Judas.
John has already shown us that traditional racial and gender expectations are not going to be followed in this story. In fact, John will use them as a foil to teach about Jesus. For example, in chapter three we met Nicodemus. He was a solid, theologically educated man in a position of leadership. We expect him to accept and understand Jesus. But he didn’t. Then in chapter four we met an unnamed Samaritan woman. She was an outsider by race, gender, and social acceptability. We expect her to reject Jesus. But she does not. She believes in him, accepts who he is, and spreads the word about him. We’re going to see some broken expectations with Mary and Judas.
It is very helpful for us to read about the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary only a week after reading about Jesus raising Mary’s brother Lazarus. You’ll remember from last week that Lazarus had died and was buried. Jesus was somewhat far away, and didn’t seem too fused about it when he heard that Lazarus had died. In fact he deliberately stayed put for a couple days. Only after that does he travel to Bethany, which is the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. Mary is upset, and for good reason! When Jesus finally gets there Mary says, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Jesus asks to be taken to the tomb. When he gets there he commands it to be open. Mary’s sister Martha points out the obvious, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” But the stone is removed. Jesus cries out, “Lazarus come out!” The dead man came out still wrapped in burial cloths.
This is the foundation for Mary’s gratitude towards Jesus that we read today. Many people have thought her devotion to Jesus was one of sexual desire. But as John tells the story, Mary is overjoyed by what Jesus has done. Her brother is alive again! She is deeply grateful and no social boundaries or norms are going to stop her.
With a foreshadowing of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper some time later, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with a pound of pure nard, and wipes them with her hair. John tells us the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Indeed dumping out a pint of an expensive perfume would fill a house with the smell to the point of being overwhelming! But let’s notice the contrast John has made. The tomb of Lazarus was said to have a stench from his decomposing corpse. Now the home of Lazarus is overwhelmed with the scent of fine perfume. Dr. Richard Carlson, my one seminary professor, said, “Lazarus had stinking life. Mary brings Jesus the sweet smell of death.” When Judas objects to the waste of this perfume Jesus says, “Permit her; it will keep to the day of my burial.”
With the mention of Judas, let’s turn to him.
Judas is an easy character to hate. He sells out Jesus for 30 silver coins, not a lot of money. He does more than sell out Jesus. He sells out all the disciples of Jesus as well.
And yet as we hate Judas for what he does, we can’t help but feel like we’re like him. Is he not being practical, hard-working, and responsible when he says, “Why was this perfume not sold for a year’s wages and the money given to the poor?”
Good point Judas! If Mary loves Jesus and wants to show her gratitude, that’s fine. If she wants to stretch social boundaries and anoint Jesus’ feet with perfume and wipe them with her hair, well, that may not be totally fine, but it’s an acceptable expression of gratitude for bringing her brother back to life. But to dump out a whole pound of costly perfume!!! That’s ridiculous! It’s pointless. It’s just waste, pure and simple. An ounce would have been more than enough. An ounce would have been extravagant. But a whole pound? I almost want to say in disgust, “Come on Mary, grow up! Learn to have some responsibility!”
But then I’m thinking and speaking like Judas.
Almost as if John knows we’re going to be feeling guilty because we’re thinking exactly like the guy who sells Jesus out John gives us some relief by saying, “He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.”
Okay, that is a bit of relief. We may be thinking like Judas at least somewhat but we are not going to outright steal from others! But there is more to it than that.
Can you remember where else we’ve heard about thieves in John’s gospel? You probably have to think hard. It was back in the Good Shepherd Discourse. There in Chapter 10 Jesus says he is the gate to the sheepfold. But in referring to the religious leaders he says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”
Now we’re seeing that Judas as a thief is in the same league as the religious leaders. In what we read today we see that the religious leaders are concerned not so much with God’s work but with their own position and power. Jesus is a threat to it. We aren’t surprised at all then later in the story when Judas shows himself in the same league as the religious leaders when he sells out Jesus to them.
But that’s in the future. There’s something to be learned from the scene as we have it today. John has created a contrast between two people who are very close to Jesus, and in a common community with him.
Mary, deeply grateful to Jesus responds to him without being told. She shows love and appreciation for Jesus without regard for social norms, how it looks to others, or how much it costs. Commentator Gail O’Day notes in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, “[Mary] gives boldly of herself in love to Jesus at this hour, just as Jesus will give boldly of himself in love at his hour.” (Volume 9, Pg. 703)
Judas, a long-time follower of Jesus who has seen quite a bit from Jesus, shows disdain for what he is seeing. He is driven by perceptions, pride, and limitations. Think back over the story. We aren’t told where Judas comes to be a disciple of Jesus. But he certainly had heard about the turning of water into wine; 120 to 180 gallons of excellent wine! And he certainly was there when Jesus took five loaves and two fish and made them be enough to feed thousands of people. So, based on his first-hand experience of Jesus being able to produce abundance and extravagance, Judas has no reason to focus on limits and waste. He should be faithfully enjoying Jesus’ abundance and accepting those who want to abundantly give to him. But he doesn’t.
That’s the contrast that we take away from this text for our own lives. It is not a contrast between propriety and impropriety, or stinginess vs. lavishness. It is the heart of discipleship.
Are we like Judas, seeing our relationship with God like we see life in the world – transactional, strategic, and limited. Do we give to God in order to receive in return? Is God’s promise of eternal life a reward calculated to make us live righteously?
Or, are we like Mary, living a new life as a child of God, embracing God’s endless love and generosity? That is not strategic to get eternal life. It is living fully now because of the promise of eternal life. Obviously we want to be like Mary
Unforgotten is about fictitious murder cases from the past. New evidence comes to light which reopens the investigation. The series start off slowly introducing the audience to what seems like a diverse and unconnected cast of characters. As the investigation goes on the detectives link the characters and their pasts, and ultimately solve the mystery.
That’s the way John’s gospel may have felt as we read it today. A couple weeks ago I said John’s gospel could be seen as having two acts. In the first act we meet Jesus, we experience his signs, and we discover things about God through them. In the second act we have the final week of Jesus’ life, which includes his anointing, the Last Supper, and his arrest and crucifixion. We are still near the beginning of this second act. We have a whole lot of characters whose connections aren’t readily apparent. There’s: Jesus, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, the “Jews”, chief priests and Pharisees, Caiaphas the high priest, and last but not least, Judas.
John’s story is complex, and we could take a sermon any number of directions from here. But for the sake of focus, we are going to look at the contrast between two: Mary and Judas.
John has already shown us that traditional racial and gender expectations are not going to be followed in this story. In fact, John will use them as a foil to teach about Jesus. For example, in chapter three we met Nicodemus. He was a solid, theologically educated man in a position of leadership. We expect him to accept and understand Jesus. But he didn’t. Then in chapter four we met an unnamed Samaritan woman. She was an outsider by race, gender, and social acceptability. We expect her to reject Jesus. But she does not. She believes in him, accepts who he is, and spreads the word about him. We’re going to see some broken expectations with Mary and Judas.
It is very helpful for us to read about the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary only a week after reading about Jesus raising Mary’s brother Lazarus. You’ll remember from last week that Lazarus had died and was buried. Jesus was somewhat far away, and didn’t seem too fused about it when he heard that Lazarus had died. In fact he deliberately stayed put for a couple days. Only after that does he travel to Bethany, which is the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. Mary is upset, and for good reason! When Jesus finally gets there Mary says, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” Jesus asks to be taken to the tomb. When he gets there he commands it to be open. Mary’s sister Martha points out the obvious, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” But the stone is removed. Jesus cries out, “Lazarus come out!” The dead man came out still wrapped in burial cloths.
This is the foundation for Mary’s gratitude towards Jesus that we read today. Many people have thought her devotion to Jesus was one of sexual desire. But as John tells the story, Mary is overjoyed by what Jesus has done. Her brother is alive again! She is deeply grateful and no social boundaries or norms are going to stop her.
With a foreshadowing of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper some time later, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with a pound of pure nard, and wipes them with her hair. John tells us the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Indeed dumping out a pint of an expensive perfume would fill a house with the smell to the point of being overwhelming! But let’s notice the contrast John has made. The tomb of Lazarus was said to have a stench from his decomposing corpse. Now the home of Lazarus is overwhelmed with the scent of fine perfume. Dr. Richard Carlson, my one seminary professor, said, “Lazarus had stinking life. Mary brings Jesus the sweet smell of death.” When Judas objects to the waste of this perfume Jesus says, “Permit her; it will keep to the day of my burial.”
With the mention of Judas, let’s turn to him.
Judas is an easy character to hate. He sells out Jesus for 30 silver coins, not a lot of money. He does more than sell out Jesus. He sells out all the disciples of Jesus as well.
And yet as we hate Judas for what he does, we can’t help but feel like we’re like him. Is he not being practical, hard-working, and responsible when he says, “Why was this perfume not sold for a year’s wages and the money given to the poor?”
Good point Judas! If Mary loves Jesus and wants to show her gratitude, that’s fine. If she wants to stretch social boundaries and anoint Jesus’ feet with perfume and wipe them with her hair, well, that may not be totally fine, but it’s an acceptable expression of gratitude for bringing her brother back to life. But to dump out a whole pound of costly perfume!!! That’s ridiculous! It’s pointless. It’s just waste, pure and simple. An ounce would have been more than enough. An ounce would have been extravagant. But a whole pound? I almost want to say in disgust, “Come on Mary, grow up! Learn to have some responsibility!”
But then I’m thinking and speaking like Judas.
Almost as if John knows we’re going to be feeling guilty because we’re thinking exactly like the guy who sells Jesus out John gives us some relief by saying, “He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.”
Okay, that is a bit of relief. We may be thinking like Judas at least somewhat but we are not going to outright steal from others! But there is more to it than that.
Can you remember where else we’ve heard about thieves in John’s gospel? You probably have to think hard. It was back in the Good Shepherd Discourse. There in Chapter 10 Jesus says he is the gate to the sheepfold. But in referring to the religious leaders he says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”
Now we’re seeing that Judas as a thief is in the same league as the religious leaders. In what we read today we see that the religious leaders are concerned not so much with God’s work but with their own position and power. Jesus is a threat to it. We aren’t surprised at all then later in the story when Judas shows himself in the same league as the religious leaders when he sells out Jesus to them.
But that’s in the future. There’s something to be learned from the scene as we have it today. John has created a contrast between two people who are very close to Jesus, and in a common community with him.
Mary, deeply grateful to Jesus responds to him without being told. She shows love and appreciation for Jesus without regard for social norms, how it looks to others, or how much it costs. Commentator Gail O’Day notes in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, “[Mary] gives boldly of herself in love to Jesus at this hour, just as Jesus will give boldly of himself in love at his hour.” (Volume 9, Pg. 703)
Judas, a long-time follower of Jesus who has seen quite a bit from Jesus, shows disdain for what he is seeing. He is driven by perceptions, pride, and limitations. Think back over the story. We aren’t told where Judas comes to be a disciple of Jesus. But he certainly had heard about the turning of water into wine; 120 to 180 gallons of excellent wine! And he certainly was there when Jesus took five loaves and two fish and made them be enough to feed thousands of people. So, based on his first-hand experience of Jesus being able to produce abundance and extravagance, Judas has no reason to focus on limits and waste. He should be faithfully enjoying Jesus’ abundance and accepting those who want to abundantly give to him. But he doesn’t.
That’s the contrast that we take away from this text for our own lives. It is not a contrast between propriety and impropriety, or stinginess vs. lavishness. It is the heart of discipleship.
Are we like Judas, seeing our relationship with God like we see life in the world – transactional, strategic, and limited. Do we give to God in order to receive in return? Is God’s promise of eternal life a reward calculated to make us live righteously?
Or, are we like Mary, living a new life as a child of God, embracing God’s endless love and generosity? That is not strategic to get eternal life. It is living fully now because of the promise of eternal life. Obviously we want to be like Mary
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
September 3, 2023 John 10:22-42
(Begin with showing several inspirational memes, but ones that ultimately leave you on your own to cope: Believe in yourself; Don’t just fly, soar; Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know there is something inside you that is greater and every obstacle; Attitude is everything; Let whatever you do today be enough; Even if you make the wrong choice, God will change it for good, so you can’t loose; You got this.)
Perhaps these little sayings give us a bit of a boost when we feel down, but are they actually helpful? Sometimes when someone shares with me some of the problems they are facing I’m tempted to say to them, “Hang in there.” But of what value is that? I’m telling them to find within themselves whatever strength is necessary to do what needs doing, but I’m not offering any actual help myself.
Or when you say to someone who has suffered a loss or is in crisis, “I’ll help any way I can,” you are certainly sympathizing with their situation, but are you really offering help? How much are you really going to inconvenience yourself for the sake of the other? Perhaps quite a bit, but I suspect that most often when we say things like that we really aren’t offering to rearrange our lives or schedules all that much. We’re willing to help as long as it is easy and convenient. Otherwise, we’ll have excuses.
Let’s keep that in mind as we turn to our gospel reading for today. It is about God coming to us and truly meeting us where we are, whether that is convenient or not, or even downright horrible and painful. That is the core teaching of Christianity that sets it apart from the world’s other religions. Other religions may teach that God is loving, and wants us to be the same. Well that’s all fine and good, I guess. But only Christianity says that God’s love has gone from just words and into tangible action.
We’re about at the halfway point of John’s gospel. We’ve completed chapter 10 and there are 21 chapters. (It probably actually originally stopped at 20 chapters, putting us at exactly the halfway point. But most biblical scholars think the original author added Chapter 21 at a later time.) I’ve said in the past weeks that John’s gospel is structured a lot like an ancient Greek play. And indeed, perhaps it is helpful to think of it like a modern-day play or a musical with two acts. We’ve just completed Act 1, which is all about Jesus’ public ministry. The curtain is closing and it’s time for an intermission. Next week we begin Act 2, which is all about Jesus’ Last Supper, arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. Indeed fully half of John’s gospel is about the last few days of Jesus’ life. But for now, Act 1 is about to end and the author gives us a recap of the major themes:
-Jesus is God, the all-powerful, everlasting Creator of all that is, seen and unseen,… come to live on earth.
-Jesus is revealing the ultimate nature of God the all-powerful as deeply loving, even being truly loving towards those who hate God.
-Jesus is the good shepherd who will lead people to eternal life.
-Jesus can perform miracles, or signs, all of which reveal something about God’s nature and offer proof of who Jesus is.
-Despite this, many people reject Jesus. They prefer darkness to light. Why? They prefer their own ways to God’s ways. And, especially when it comes to the religious leaders, they just cannot accept that God would come in human form.
-There is a divided response to Jesus. Some believe him. Some do not.
-And a final theme. Everything is happening according to God’s design, even though it may appear that Jesus is not in control at all. That theme will be developed greatly in Act 2. The whole second act is filled with irony.
If you’ve grown up as a Christian none of Jesus’ claims will strike you as all that unusual. It’s just what you know. That’s unfortunate. For the central tenant of Christianity is, and always has been, radical and scandalous. That list of things I just made is the core of it. In Act 2 of John’s gospel we’ll see all of that list put into action even more deeply.
In order to help us realize the radical and scandalous nature of Christianity let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the religious leaders in the gospel.
They know that God is patient, forgiving, loving, and even gracious. There’s nothing new or challenging there. The Old Testament has plenty of stories about that.
But…
God’s love is limited. God loves those who do good things. God hates those who do bad. God rewards hard work, smart decisions, and faithful living. And while God isn’t necessarily bound by human rules of justice, for the most part God does not have warm and kind feelings towards those who are sinful dirty people. God just can’t do that! How could there be any justice or accountability if God loves everyone?!
Those are all very good points. But they miss the fundamental nature of God. That fundamental nature is what our faith seeks to make known.
God carefully and loving created this universe. It is vast – incredibly vast! It is so complex as to boggle anyone’s mind. Biological life is nothing short of miraculous. And the complex interdependence of the environment is rich, beautiful, and astounding. And when it comes to humans, there we have God creating one being, in the bigger part of the creation, that has the ability to have an awareness of God’s presence. In God giving humanity that awareness God has invited a new level of relationship with the creation.
That is a Christian ethic and philosophy of the universe. Of course God loves every person! Of course God wants to be in relationship with every being able to develop an awareness of God’s love. God wants the creation to be big and vast and lush and healthy as possible.
We humans, with our ability to sense God, also have the ability to reject God. And so we make a mess of things. But God is not done with us. While God always reserves the right for judgement, God wants it to be otherwise. And God works endlessly and tirelessly and selflessly to make it otherwise.
All of those memes we started with aren’t the kind of thing God would do. God is one to get right there into the mess and be a tangible presence beside us. And in such a way God invites us to be God’s real presence to each other.
I’ve used this example before but I’m going to use it again because it fits well. Imagine you’re lost in the woods and it’s night time. A storm is coming. How are you going to get out? Islam would say that God is loving. It would say that God will show God’s love for you by giving you a map of the forest, and maybe a flashlight. Those things will help you to find your way out to safety. It’s a good image. It’s a comforting one. But, with all respect due to Islam, it is not a Christian message.
The Christian message is that you are lost in the woods and it’s night time. A storm is coming. How are you going to get out? Yes, God will give you a map of the forest and maybe a flashlight. But God will also come to be with you in the midst of the fearful darkness. You will not be alone. If you stumble over a stump and fall flat on your face in the mud, God will be right there with you. God won’t laugh. God will help you up. If you’re scared, God knows what it is to be scared and God will be scared with you. If you feel exhausted and hopeless, God will be with you in those feelings as well. It will not be judgment. It will be accompaniment. For God loves you and wants to be with you always, even if you get lost in the woods again and again.
Act 1 of John’s gospel closes. Act 2 begins next week. Jesus performs his greatest miracle. He raises a dead man to life. But that will be the final straw for the religious leaders. And ironically in Jesus giving life to someone it will cost him his own life. But that is also God’s love.
May you feel God’s presence within you through good times and bad. And may God send you companions so that God’s presence may be tangible to you in your life. Similarly, may God honor you with getting to be God’s tangible presence to others. For God’s love is relentless and endless. It makes good on its promises to bring light to everyone’s life.
Perhaps these little sayings give us a bit of a boost when we feel down, but are they actually helpful? Sometimes when someone shares with me some of the problems they are facing I’m tempted to say to them, “Hang in there.” But of what value is that? I’m telling them to find within themselves whatever strength is necessary to do what needs doing, but I’m not offering any actual help myself.
Or when you say to someone who has suffered a loss or is in crisis, “I’ll help any way I can,” you are certainly sympathizing with their situation, but are you really offering help? How much are you really going to inconvenience yourself for the sake of the other? Perhaps quite a bit, but I suspect that most often when we say things like that we really aren’t offering to rearrange our lives or schedules all that much. We’re willing to help as long as it is easy and convenient. Otherwise, we’ll have excuses.
Let’s keep that in mind as we turn to our gospel reading for today. It is about God coming to us and truly meeting us where we are, whether that is convenient or not, or even downright horrible and painful. That is the core teaching of Christianity that sets it apart from the world’s other religions. Other religions may teach that God is loving, and wants us to be the same. Well that’s all fine and good, I guess. But only Christianity says that God’s love has gone from just words and into tangible action.
We’re about at the halfway point of John’s gospel. We’ve completed chapter 10 and there are 21 chapters. (It probably actually originally stopped at 20 chapters, putting us at exactly the halfway point. But most biblical scholars think the original author added Chapter 21 at a later time.) I’ve said in the past weeks that John’s gospel is structured a lot like an ancient Greek play. And indeed, perhaps it is helpful to think of it like a modern-day play or a musical with two acts. We’ve just completed Act 1, which is all about Jesus’ public ministry. The curtain is closing and it’s time for an intermission. Next week we begin Act 2, which is all about Jesus’ Last Supper, arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. Indeed fully half of John’s gospel is about the last few days of Jesus’ life. But for now, Act 1 is about to end and the author gives us a recap of the major themes:
-Jesus is God, the all-powerful, everlasting Creator of all that is, seen and unseen,… come to live on earth.
-Jesus is revealing the ultimate nature of God the all-powerful as deeply loving, even being truly loving towards those who hate God.
-Jesus is the good shepherd who will lead people to eternal life.
-Jesus can perform miracles, or signs, all of which reveal something about God’s nature and offer proof of who Jesus is.
-Despite this, many people reject Jesus. They prefer darkness to light. Why? They prefer their own ways to God’s ways. And, especially when it comes to the religious leaders, they just cannot accept that God would come in human form.
-There is a divided response to Jesus. Some believe him. Some do not.
-And a final theme. Everything is happening according to God’s design, even though it may appear that Jesus is not in control at all. That theme will be developed greatly in Act 2. The whole second act is filled with irony.
If you’ve grown up as a Christian none of Jesus’ claims will strike you as all that unusual. It’s just what you know. That’s unfortunate. For the central tenant of Christianity is, and always has been, radical and scandalous. That list of things I just made is the core of it. In Act 2 of John’s gospel we’ll see all of that list put into action even more deeply.
In order to help us realize the radical and scandalous nature of Christianity let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the religious leaders in the gospel.
They know that God is patient, forgiving, loving, and even gracious. There’s nothing new or challenging there. The Old Testament has plenty of stories about that.
But…
God’s love is limited. God loves those who do good things. God hates those who do bad. God rewards hard work, smart decisions, and faithful living. And while God isn’t necessarily bound by human rules of justice, for the most part God does not have warm and kind feelings towards those who are sinful dirty people. God just can’t do that! How could there be any justice or accountability if God loves everyone?!
Those are all very good points. But they miss the fundamental nature of God. That fundamental nature is what our faith seeks to make known.
God carefully and loving created this universe. It is vast – incredibly vast! It is so complex as to boggle anyone’s mind. Biological life is nothing short of miraculous. And the complex interdependence of the environment is rich, beautiful, and astounding. And when it comes to humans, there we have God creating one being, in the bigger part of the creation, that has the ability to have an awareness of God’s presence. In God giving humanity that awareness God has invited a new level of relationship with the creation.
That is a Christian ethic and philosophy of the universe. Of course God loves every person! Of course God wants to be in relationship with every being able to develop an awareness of God’s love. God wants the creation to be big and vast and lush and healthy as possible.
We humans, with our ability to sense God, also have the ability to reject God. And so we make a mess of things. But God is not done with us. While God always reserves the right for judgement, God wants it to be otherwise. And God works endlessly and tirelessly and selflessly to make it otherwise.
All of those memes we started with aren’t the kind of thing God would do. God is one to get right there into the mess and be a tangible presence beside us. And in such a way God invites us to be God’s real presence to each other.
I’ve used this example before but I’m going to use it again because it fits well. Imagine you’re lost in the woods and it’s night time. A storm is coming. How are you going to get out? Islam would say that God is loving. It would say that God will show God’s love for you by giving you a map of the forest, and maybe a flashlight. Those things will help you to find your way out to safety. It’s a good image. It’s a comforting one. But, with all respect due to Islam, it is not a Christian message.
The Christian message is that you are lost in the woods and it’s night time. A storm is coming. How are you going to get out? Yes, God will give you a map of the forest and maybe a flashlight. But God will also come to be with you in the midst of the fearful darkness. You will not be alone. If you stumble over a stump and fall flat on your face in the mud, God will be right there with you. God won’t laugh. God will help you up. If you’re scared, God knows what it is to be scared and God will be scared with you. If you feel exhausted and hopeless, God will be with you in those feelings as well. It will not be judgment. It will be accompaniment. For God loves you and wants to be with you always, even if you get lost in the woods again and again.
Act 1 of John’s gospel closes. Act 2 begins next week. Jesus performs his greatest miracle. He raises a dead man to life. But that will be the final straw for the religious leaders. And ironically in Jesus giving life to someone it will cost him his own life. But that is also God’s love.
May you feel God’s presence within you through good times and bad. And may God send you companions so that God’s presence may be tangible to you in your life. Similarly, may God honor you with getting to be God’s tangible presence to others. For God’s love is relentless and endless. It makes good on its promises to bring light to everyone’s life.
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