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.
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
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.
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