John 11:45-57

01/31/10
John 11:45-57
Hudson UMC

Today’s reading shows us more than any passage so far in John just how much Jesus was hated by the leaders and a portion of the people. Earlier, we had heard that Jesus and His followers were threatened by those in authority, that conflict tended to show up wherever He went, and that, while the people who benefited from His miracles clearly loved Him, there were those who thought He was a threat. We read that, shortly after Lazarus was raised from the dead, some people went and told on Jesus to the Pharisees. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now, Jesus had gone too far. Now He had, in their minds, put the entire nation in danger.

If the Gospel were a fairy tale or a Disney movie, we would expect at this point to have an evil plot like this. The bad guys would all get together and start to brainstorm how they can get rid of this newly arrived troublemaker who only did nice things for people and, by His very actions, exposed their hypocrisy and lack of integrity. Finally, when the conflict has escalated to its highest point and other ways of getting the job done failed, the bad guys would decide that there is no other choice but to get rid of this man permanently.

But if this were a fairy tale or a kids movie, somehow or other, the hero would escape. Either there would be such a grassroots movement in favor of the good guy and against the evil rulers that they would leave in shame, or the oppressed group would somehow achieve military victory, in spite of being outnumbered and poorly equipped. Even if the hero is captured by the enemy, it would only be a matter of time before He was liberated by His followers who were so encouraged by His example that they worked really hard and achieved what nobody thought possible. In any case, in the end, the hero would remain alive and well and able to step in and be installed as the noble ruler that the people so desperately wanted.

However, anyone who knows the Gospel, who has read the story of the people of God and seen how Jesus was actually treated, knows that the Gospel is no fairy tale. The so-called “bad guys” are not prevented from exercising their evil intentions. They gather together in this text to try to find a way to kill Jesus and we need to remember that they are not stopped, there is no miraculous deliverance, but they continue on and bring their plans to fulfillment. They do indeed kill Jesus. In this story, the evil of humanity is allowed to come against God with all its force. The resistance that we all have to God because we are sinful humans came to its most extreme expression.

We need to ask, why do the people want to kill Jesus? The leaders say this. “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” Now, why would they get that impression? Was Jesus organizing a political revolution? Was He publicly criticizing the Roman occupation of Israel? Did He ever mention the Romans in any way? Not in the Gospel of John. This is the very first time that the Romans are mentioned. Clearly, Jesus has embarked on a spiritual mission, a mission that will make some social changes, but He has not said one word about politics.

And yet, the people who want to kill Jesus want to do so because of political reasons. Why would they think that Jesus was a political threat? The main reason that the people thought of Jesus as a political figure is because for Jews at the time, the word Messiah did not mean “The Son of God who will die for our sins.” To most people, it meant, “Political leader who will come to overthrow those who are oppressing us and resume the Davidic kingdom.” Now, if Jesus were to organize a militia and attempt to do what most people thought the Messiah or Christ was going to do, the Romans would get nervous, they would have good reason to try to stop Jesus from doing what He was doing and they would indeed destroy Israel to keep them in line.

But even if we remember this, I don’t think that this is the real issue at stake. If Jesus was indeed the Messiah that the people were expecting, who would liberate the people, why wouldn’t the Jewish leaders, who want to be free from foreign rule more than anyone else, want Him to succeed? The reason they wanted to get rid of Jesus is because they don’t really want Rome to be overthrown. While the status quo is maintained, the chief priests and the Pharisees have a certain amount of power over the people. They have cushy jobs with lots of prestige. If Jesus takes over, their lives will be thrown upside down. If Jesus were to overthrow the Romans, He would become king. No longer would the people look first and foremost to the priests and Pharisees because they would have a son of David who can bring actual results sitting on the throne. The priests and Pharisees show that they are not really concerned with what is best for Israel because they are willing to keep the people under foreign rule rather than give up their positions of privilege.

Whatever has happened, Jesus has managed to unite the priests and the Pharisees, two groups of people who absolutely hate each other, because, in every other instance, if one group gets their way, the other one gets upset because it is the last thing they want. It is like they say, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” Imagine two of the most opposite groups you can think of. Maybe it’s Republicans and Democrats, maybe its Christians and Atheists, maybe its men and women, or maybe its something else altogether. Think about what could possibly get both of those groups so worked up that they completely join forces to get something done. It seems that it would take something incredible to unite such different groups of people, and yet this is precisely what we see. People who can’t agree on anything are able to agree that Jesus needs to die.

However, even though Jesus was not the political figure that the people thought He would be, even though He was not there to actively overthrow the government or make clear condemnations on one side or the other, there is some truth to the suspicion that He is a political threat. On the one hand, Jesus is not political. He does not fit into the political structures of His day nor does He fit into ours. On the other hand, Jesus is extremely political. The things that Jesus said, the kind of life He advocated and the one actually put into practice by the apostles, has far reaching political significance. Things cannot continue “business as usual” if Jesus is the controlling center of our lives. Jesus stood against both the Romans and the way the Jewish leaders were doing things. Even today, neither the Republican or Democratic parties remain unchallenged by the radical nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. By refusing to fold into any political categories, Jesus was seen as dangerous to the social order as it stood, and indeed He was and still is.

So, the chief priests and the Pharisees needed to find a solution. We read, “But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.’” What Caiphas meant when he said this was that, since this one man is stirring up all kinds of problems, potentially even bringing about the destruction of Israel, it would be better for everyone if Jesus died. If Jesus died, the problems would go away, or so they thought. Caiaphas was trying to cover his own greed and desire for power by making the benevolent claim that he was looking out for the best interest of the people.

What is amazing is that, though Caiaphas was by no means a person who intended to follow the Lord and had no right at all to speak the word of God, this is precisely what happened. John tells us that, “He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God.” Now this, of course, is not what Caiaphas meant when he said this, but John is telling us that, even though the high priest didn’t fully understand what he was saying, he said something that shed light on the death of Christ.

So we read that Jesus no longer walked openly among the people. Now, we are only about halfway through the Gospel of John as far as chapters are concerned, so we might get a somewhat skewed idea of how time is passing. As best as we can tell, John’s Gospel covers about three years of time. What is interesting is that from this point on, this book only covers about a week. We will have Jesus giving long teachings to His disciples, summarizing what He wants them to know, highlighting the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church when Jesus is no longer on earth, and making some of the most amazing statements that have ever been recorded, but we will not have a whole lot of stories about Jesus going places and doing things. As far as our journey through John is concerned, we have just entered Holy Week and we will be there for quite a while.

The reason that I emphasize the short period of time between this decision to put Jesus to death and the actual execution of Christ is because I want to make sure we remember that this is in the background of everything else that happens. We read about a plot to kill Jesus and it would be easy for us to think that He spent a prolonged period of time running from the authorities when, in reality, once the people made up their minds that Jesus needed to die, they did just that in only a matter of days. They did not waste any time.

So what can we learn from this? I think it is important that we are reminded that, in spite of the fact that Jesus was helping the people, in spite of the fact that all He wanted to do was to show the people that, in Him, the kingdom of God had broken into the world we live in, the people still did not like Him and wanted to kill Him. Why would anyone want to kill Jesus? It is hard for us to think of good reasons, and yet we have people doing whatever they can, even falsifying evidence, just so they could get rid of Him. There are reasons rooted deep inside of us and of other people that we cannot rationally account for that drive us to resist the work of God. When God sets up His kingdom on the earth and in our hearts, our human kingdoms begin to crumble and collapse. If we can realize that God’s kingdom is better for us, is what will bring us real life and real contentment, we can welcome the work of God with joy and gladness and see it for the good news it really is.

If, however, we cling tightly to our own ways of doing things, if we refuse to let the Lord of the universe challenge and overthrow our control over our lives, then we will very quickly get upset at God and think that it would be better for everyone if He would just go away or if we would all just stop talking about Him and thinking about Him. This is the position that the chief priests and the Pharisees were in and this is the position that countless people have been in through the history of the world. In fact, it is this same attitude that has given rise to a growing movement of atheism throughout Western culture. Did you know that you can order a certificate from a group in England that will allow you to publicly renounce your baptism and any kind of relationship with God and the church? Why would someone want to do that? I think that people would only want to renounce Christ if they truly believed that He did more harm than good. In light of the Gospel, we can see that this happens, but it is rooted in placing ourselves where only God ought to be.

What is important for us to take from this idea today is that not everyone in the world likes Jesus. There will always be people who hate Jesus, not because they do not understand Him, but precisely because they do understand Him. They understand Him so well that they realize that accepting the Gospel and becoming a Christian means that they have to give up control, that they can no longer live how they want to but only as God wants them to. Jesus tells us that people will hate us for loving Him. In fact, He reminds us that servants are not greater than their master and that, if He is persecuted, the world will treat us even worse. When we remember that Jesus was talking about being put to death, it puts rather a fine point on it.

So, we go out into the world, sharing the good news, bringing hope to the hopeless, being friends to the friendless, and being Christ in our community, not because we think that people will appreciate it, not because we will get thanks from people or even recognition from them. We do not do it because we hope we will be repaid or because it has a good return on our investment. We do it, or at least we ought to do it, simply and completely because God has loved us so much that we love others. We have no problems loving people who do not love us in return because God has loved us before we ever loved Him. John says in one of his letters, “This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

The Gospel is not a fairy tale, it is not a sweet, comforting bedtime story, but it is the most disturbing and candid account of human sinfulness that has ever been. That sin can only be understood for what it is in light of the incredible lengths that God went to redeem us from sin and death. Jesus is not just a character in a story, but a real incarnation of God, who lived, died, rose again and ascended to heaven and is, even now, seated at the right hand of the Father. The Gospel is, more than anything else, real. So, since God’s grace is not just a story, but is present and real in our lives today, let us go and share that good news with others. Let us pray.

AMEN