John 8:39-59

10/04/09
John 8:39-59
Hudson UMC

I have mentioned before that I find it amusing that from time to time, especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus bears with the people for a while, trying to give them a chance to figure things out on their own, then, when it is clear that they aren’t going to get it, finally gives up and says what He really thinks. This is one of those passages. Jesus has been spending a bunch of time trying to get the people to understand that they are not living like the children of Abraham should. They keep pushing back, dismissing His claim and saying, “Yes we do,” as if saying it somehow made Jesus wrong. Finally, when it is clear that they will never make the jump on their own, Jesus says, “Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in Him.” Strong words.

However, since we do not live in the same time and place as these people, we might not be able to understand what has just happened. Jesus is claiming that the people are not really the children of Abraham, but aren’t they? Are they not Israelites? Can they not trace their lineage back to Abraham himself? How can Jesus say that they are not children of Abraham?

What we need to understand is that there was a Hebrew idiom that referred to people as “sons of” someone or something, not to talk about their actual genealogy, but to describe their character. For example, in the story of Samuel, the sons of the high priest, Eli, were called “Sons of Belial,” which doesn’t make a lot of sense to us in twenty-first century America but would have made perfect sense at the time. Belial was a personification of worthlessness, of evil. The people were evil, so they were called “Sons of Belial.” To give an example from the New Testament, James and John, the sons of Zebedee are called “Sons of Thunder.” Now, of course, we are not talking about people who are literally sons of thunder, but people who have thunderous personalities, who are fiery and impulsive. We are basically saying, “If thunder could have children, those children would be like James and John.”

This is an important link for us to understand. In order to speak so strongly as to say that somebody is the “son of” something in this sense, we are saying that their actions are so controlled by this concept that we can talk about them having this quality, not just in their actions, but in their very being. James and John were not just thunderous once in a while, but so much that we can say that they are thunderous people. Likewise, the sons of Eli did not just do evil every once in a while, but so often that we can say that they truly were evil people. It is not so much that what we do proves what we are, but that who we are plays a controlling role in what we do.

So, because of their actions, their insincerity, their desire to kill an innocent man, their pride, et cetera, Jesus is indeed correct in saying that they are not children of Abraham because Abraham was a righteous and upstanding man, and this is not what he would do. Jesus was saying, “If The devil had children, they would be like you.” These are not comforting words, especially because the people undoubtedly saw themselves as “good people.” We talked last week about how sad is it if people are so enslaved that they think they are free even though they are in terrible bondage. How about this case? How sad is it when people are so corrupted that they think they are “good people” who do more good than bad, when they are really children of The devil?

You see, the people claimed that they were the children of Abraham, that they were the heirs of the great tradition of righteousness and the favor of God that Abraham started and so they were the people of God. And yet, despite the fact that they said it over and over again, in spite of the fact that they probably believed it deep in their heart of hearts, it didn’t make it true. They were, in so many ways, like a child who, when they are caught in the act, turns and says with a straight face, “It wasn’t me.” However, the diagnosis of the Son of God and the Son of Man was that they were the children of The devil, that, in spite of how good they thought they were, they were still fundamentally alienated from God, still attempted to be the rulers of their own lives, still tried to live the moral life by their own power.

Now, when the people were told, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did,” they should have heard, “If you are the children of Abraham, prove it by your deeds, not by words.” When we live this way, one of two things can happen. First, if we are really the children of Abraham, in this sense, we will be relieved to finally stop living a lie, to finally stop living according to the ways of the world that Peter called “a perverse generation,” and begin to live in a way that is consistent with the life that Abraham led. The other thing that could happen, which is all too often the case today as well as back then, is that, when we really put ourselves to live as truly moral people, we realize that we are altogether unequal to the task. When we strive to make the right choice every time, we realize that, often times, we want to choose the wrong thing. It is not only evil, but utterly irrational, but we do it all the same.

It is almost as if we are allergic to admitting that we aren’t as good as we should be. Our culture as a whole and our suburban and rural subculture in particular tell us that we should be self-sufficient, that we should be people of virtue and that, somehow, we are up to the task of being fully moral people. In fact, our culture values morality so highly that we are tempted to make Christian faith nothing more than morality, to make it into nothing more than a simple ethical religion. Whenever we do that, however, we almost always end up substituting some form of our secular culture into the place of true Christianity. It has happened over and over again throughout the history of the church. National pride, social principles, personal responsibility, all take Christ’s place as lord over our lives and the ultimate standard by which we are judged. The great twentieth century theologian, Karl Barth, observed how little authentic Christian faith tended to influence culture by commenting that both Hitler and Stalin were baptized, but it did not seem to make a difference. It seems that we need something more than culture, more than the standards of our fellow human beings, to set us free to really be alive to God.

In light of all this “sons of” and “children of” language, we cannot help but be reminded that we are called to be “children of God.” However, we are simply not able to become “children of God” on the basis of our own faithfulness and obedience. This cannot be a surprise to us because each of us are aware of those moments, which can last days, months, even years, where we are far from God, when we are not giving Him everything we are and we know just how far short of God’s will we fall. If we are being honest with ourselves and if we think that we can only be God’s children by working really hard and being “good enough,” then we can be nothing but depressed. If I were to ask everyone to raise their hand who is convinced that they have lived a life good enough for God, every moment of every day giving God every aspect of your life, consistently placing others above yourself, and giving freely of your time, finances, and talents for the building up of the body, sharing the good news with everyone you know, I will bet that there would not be very many hands raised. I know for certain that my hand could not be raised.

And yet, though we are called to be something which we are utterly incapable of being, there is still hope for us. God has not abandoned us in the misery of our sin. I want to help you see that, though we have not been good enough, God still wants us, even us to be with Him for eternity. And I want to do this by helping you see what God has done for us, on our behalf and in our place, in Jesus Christ.

If you remember from the many times in this Gospel, Jesus routinely calls God His Father. Now, this does not seem so odd for us today because we are used to calling God Father. However, we need to remember that, in the Old Testament, nobody called God their Father. When God is called “Father” in the Old Testament, it is always as a title and always with reference to all of Israel; that is, God is the Father of the entire nation of Israel. There is not a single person in all of the Old Testament that calls God their Father; nobody claimed that kind of intimate personal relationship with God for their own. However, Jesus comes out with this absolutely radical idea that God is His Father, and that He can call Him by the familiar term, “Abba,” or “daddy.” This was such a radical idea that the Jews wanted to execute Jesus several times for blasphemy, because He was getting just a little too chummy with God.

Jesus was the only person in the entire history of the world who lived in such a way that He could be called, not a true son of Abraham, or a true son of Israel, or a true son of Moses, but, staggering as it may seem, a true son of God Himself. What is amazing is that, in Jesus, God had entered into our broken and diseased humanity, which is hopelessly alienated from God, and lived in such a way that He, in our own humanity, could offer real, true, and perfect devotion to God. Again, if you don’t realize how intense this is, let me remind you of Benjamin Franklin, who set himself to become perfect. He divided up the moral life into thirteen virtues and focused on one of those a week. He figured that since, after all, he was well educated and had a strong moral sense, he could always choose virtue over vice and, simply by putting himself to it, he would quickly become perfect. The experiment failed miserably and, rather than lamenting the fallen state of humanity, simply said, “Nobody likes a perfect person, anyway.”

And yet, this task which the best and brightest human beings in the history of the world were not able to perform, living a life that was so characterized by devotion and love that the person could be truly called a “child of God” was not only attempted but actually achieved by Jesus Christ in our humanity, in our place, in our stead, and on our behalf.

Let us think for a while about what that means. It means that, though we have no claim based on our deeds to be considered the children of God, God has taken our place, has entered into our brokenness, made it His very own, and brought our very humanity into reconciled relationship with the Father. God does not need us in order to be God, God was quite fully God long before human beings were created. And yet, this shows us how much God loves us. Out of pure love, and for no other reason, God created the universe out of nothing, making it just the right way, placing Earth at just the right distance from the sun so that the planet is neither too cold nor too hot to sustain life. Then, He created human beings, not because He had to, but because He wanted to, because He wanted to have creatures who were made in His own image, who were able to enter into loving relationship with Him, and to whom He could offer eternal life.

When those people that God created rejected Him, set themselves up as the lords over their life, as their own gods, we could say, God did not turn away. He began a loving relationship with Abraham and his children, guiding them, delivering them, interacting with them, preparing their ways of thought and life to be able to ever increasingly understand His will for their lives and His intent to love them with the very love that God is. Even when they fought against Him and rejected His leadership, He raised up prophets and used even Israel’s failure to bind them to Himself. The Scriptures tell us that eventually, at the fullness of time, God Himself entered into our midst as the man Jesus Christ. The almighty God of the universe endured the helplessness of infancy, the difficulties of growing up, the frustrations of adolescence, and the trials of adult life, not because He had to, but because it was the only way to really undo the power of evil in our lives. He had to take all of our brokenness upon Himself so that we might be truly freed from it.

Even when the people, when faced with God in flesh, chose not to embrace Him, but to crucify Him, God did not turn away. The most entirely evil act that human beings ever committed, the murdering of God, was transformed into the means by which we are accepted and renewed. The Triune God, before whom the angels veil their faces, did not consider His own death on a cross to be too high a price to pay for us. Indeed, we see in the man Jesus, that God loves us so much, God even loves us more than God loves God’s own self.

And so, it is because of God’s great love and mercy, and not because of our own worthiness, that we dare to come before Him. Jesus Christ was the Son of God in every way. And by the activity of the Holy Spirit, we are united to that Sonship and we are made real children of God. As impossible as it is for us to become God’s children on our own, when God the Holy Spirit unites us to the real Sonship of God the Son, we are indeed made real children of God the Father. And so, as we prepare to celebrate communion, cast aside any feelings you may have of personal unworthiness; push away any guilt you may feel for past sins, and come to the table with open hands, receiving the amazing love that God has for you.

Jesus criticized the people for claiming to be the children of Abraham, when they did not live like Abraham did. The problem wasn’t really that they weren’t good enough, though they weren’t. The problem was that they refused to admit it. If they could only see that, not only were they not children of Abraham, but that they, by insisting they were in charge of their own lives and not yielding to the guidance of God, were actually children of The devil, they might have realized that they actually needed God. We are the same way. The single greatest thing that will stop us from coming to God is our own perceived self-sufficiency. God does not love you because you do all the right things; He does not love you because you have strong faith; He does not love you because you come to church every week; He does not love you because you tithe. God loves you simply because God, in God’s own being is self-giving love. And this is not some sentimental love, but a love that places you above God’s own Son. Let us feel our need and see that God is not pointing a finger at us, but is opening His arms to receive us. Let us join together in the Lord’s Supper and be made ever more into a community of love. Let us pray.

AMEN