07/25/10
John 16:16-24
Hudson UMC
In this passage, the main point that Jesus wants his disciples to know is that He is going away in a little while and they will not be able to see him, but, after only a little more time after that, they will see Him again. We know that it has to be the point of the passage because it is said three times in a row. First, Jesus says it to His disciples, then they respond by asking each other about it because they do not know what it means, and then Jesus repeats it again because He is aware that they do not know what He meant and is going to explain it. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single other passage in the entire Bible where a sentence is repeated so many times in a row. It must be really important.
First, I want to try to enter into the world of the disciples at this moment. How would they have heard and understood this statement? The first part is that, in a little while, the disciples will no longer see Him. Is Jesus going to go somewhere? They are eating supper together. Will He be taking an evening stroll? Will He be going on a journey? It is not clear. It seems that Jesus means something more serious than this, otherwise He would not make such a point of saying it in the midst of this serious conversation where He has spoken of leaving them and their need for an Advocate in His absence. The question is, why won’t they be able to see Him?
The fact that Jesus is getting at is that He was about to be executed. They will no longer see Him, not because He is going on a trip or hiding from them, but because He will no longer be living. If the apostles at that moment could have understood this point, it would have caused all kinds of problems for them. In fact, it is entirely possible that, in light of the various hints that Jesus was giving throughout this last supper of theirs, that they understood that death is exactly what Jesus was talking about and it was because they understood it that they felt like they did not understand it.
Let me explain. I have said before, but it bears repeating, that we only use the Greek word “Christ” or he Hebrew word “Messiah” in relation to Jesus, and so they have a specific meaning that is governed by who Jesus is, or at least who we perceive Him to be. Because we only ever hear Christ and Messiah used of Jesus, it is easy for us to forget that they were words that had a much broader range of meaning in the ancient world than they do today. “Messiah” and “Christ” are words that are used to refer to someone who is anointed. This might be someone who is anointed as a priest or a prophet, but it was, by far, most often used to refer to a king. More specifically, not just any king, but a king who was of the line of David who was God’s very own chosen ruler for the people of Israel. The prophets of the Old Testament had predicted that there would come a time when God’s Messiah, or Christ, would come and deliver the people. According to the way most people understood those words at the time, they could have come to no other conclusion than that God would send a king to deliver them from the oppression of the Romans and they could finally be a nation like they thought they were destined to be.
And yet, even though Jesus was of the line of David, even though He was indeed the deliverer of Israel, and not just of Israel, but the entire world, even though Jesus is indeed a king, He was not the one that the people expected or even wanted. The people wanted a king that was going to come in, rally the nation, and then overthrow the Romans. Jesus is saying that He is about to die and they will no longer see Him. How can He be the Messiah who leads the people to political victory if He is dead? He can’t be the Messiah that the people wanted if He allows Himself to be killed, but He can be the one they need if He does so.
The other reason why, if the disciples grasped that Jesus was speaking of His death, they would have been confused is because He not only says, “A little while, and you will no longer see me,” but also says, “and again a little while, and you will see me.” If, when He says that they will no longer see Him, He is speaking of His death, how in the world will they see Him again? Before Jesus actually went and died and was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven and poured out the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost, the disciples could not have made any sense out of this whatsoever. Could you make any sense out of someone who has always seemed to be quite in their right mind, telling you, quite calmly, that they are about to die, but that you will see them again in only a little while? No wonder the disciples were confused.
Most of the Gospel narratives are stories about what Jesus has done, or accounts of what Jesus has said. However, they were being written by particular people at particular times and, every once in a while, we hear the author insert a thought or two to help us understand what is going on. There is one moment in John that is incredibly important and it could only have been written after all of these events had taken place. In chapter twelve, we are told that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying at first, “but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things to him.” When Jesus was with them and the were following Him, but without having the Holy Spirit dwell inside of them, they heard all the words of Christ, the same words they wrote down for us to read and hear, but they did not understand them. After Jesus was resurrected and the Spirit was given, all of a sudden, those very same words took on a whole new meaning and they understood what was confusing before.
This is a key point where this takes place. Before Jesus was raised from the dead, any talk about His resurrection would be confusing at best, but more than likely dismissed as symbolism or crazy talk. However, once it had actually happened, all of a sudden, it became clear that all those things that made no sense before, because resurrections, according to everyday experience, simply do not happen, were actually legitimate predictions that showed that Jesus knew exactly what was going on and what He was doing.
Now that we understand what Jesus is talking about when He says that His disciples will no longer see Him and that they will see Him again after a little while, we must turn our attention to His actual description of what is going to happen. “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now; but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”
The first part of this statement is that the disciples of Jesus will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. Over and over again, Jesus has told us that the “world” is very much opposed to what He is doing in their midst. This can not really be in doubt because the world, even the part of the world that we might think would be excited about what Jesus was doing, reacted violently against Him and crucified Him. In fact, just a moment ago, at the beginning of chapter sixteen, when Jesus had been explaining how the disciples would share in the hatred that people had of Him, He said that “an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.” If Jesus, this great teacher and leader, who is adored by this small group of people, is hated by so many, then if the world takes Him and crucifies Him, it would certainly be a cause for weeping and mourning for the disciples but for rejoicing for the world.
Jesus tries to put the pain of the disciples into some kind of perspective by using an image of a woman giving birth. “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.” Now I, myself, have never given birth, but those who have have insisted to me that Jesus’ words need a little bit of interpretation. It is not as though a woman undergoes a kind of amnesia after her child is born, it is not as though she literally does not remembers the pain, but that the child brings so much joy that the pain is seen as being worth it, that the benefit is so great that it is as if the pain is forgotten.
We need to be very careful that we do not push this image too far because, though he is connecting His disciples and the woman in labor in His metaphor, the source of joy that Jesus is speaking of is not something that the disciples will bring about on their own, as if the source of their joy is already inside of them and they just need to endure pain to bring it about. The thing that will transform their pain into joy, that will cause their hearts to rejoice, is the fact that, although Jesus is going away to die, they will indeed see Him again.
Even still, we need to pay careful attention to what Jesus means when He says that the disciples will see Him again because He says that it will make their hearts rejoice in such a way that “no one will take your joy from you.” It is true that in John’s gospel, we see the disciples rejoicing more after the resurrection than we do in other accounts, but even here it seems to be more the disciples’ reaction of awe and amazement that we see, shocked disbelief that Jesus is indeed alive again and yet being confronted with the reality of God so profoundly that they cannot help but cry out, “My Lord and my God.” We are reminded in the other Gospels that the resurrection in and of itself is not enough to bring joy that no one can take away. When the women in the gospel of Mark find the empty tomb and meet the angel, we are told that they went away frightened. We read in Matthew that, even after Jesus has been resurrected for forty days and is about to give the Great Commission, “when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful.”
Let us look at Peter, even within this very gospel, in order to understand better that, when Jesus talks about the disciples seeing Him again and having a joy that no one can take away from them, He means more than the resurrection. Peter, this very night, as Jesus is betrayed and taken captive, will deny Him three times. He who seemed so strong and dedicated, who offered to die with Jesus, is revealed to be far more wishy-washy than he would have ever cared to admit. Even at the very end of John’s gospel, when Jesus tells Peter something about what will happen to him and how he will die, he finds himself very concerned with whether or not he will be alone in his fate, or whether another of the disciples will suffer the same. Jesus, however, refuses to answer his question, telling Peter to mind his own business.
The point is that, in spite of the fact that Peter seems so weak and hesitant, even at his best throughout the gospels, he does not remain so. Peter does indeed become the rock that Jesus told him he was, but when does that happen? When does he truly step forward to be the leader of the apostles? Not until the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church. Within the context of our passage, this makes perfect sense and we should not be surprised. After all, Jesus has just gone to great lengths to explain that it is good for the disciples that He goes away because He will send the Advocate who will take the things of Christ and declare these things to them.
The Holy Spirit that Jesus promised is indeed the presence of Christ in the midst of the church. It was because the Holy Spirit was given to the church that Jesus fulfilled His promise that He would not leave His disciples as orphans, but would come to them. We can rephrase and interpret Jesus’ first words in this passage like this. “A little while and you will not see me, for I go to die, yet after a little while, you will see me, not only because I will be resurrected from the dead and you will be able to put your hands in my wounds, but because the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will come upon you. This way, you will not only see me with your eyes, but will be so grafted into me that I will be closer to you than you are to yourself.”
What is absolutely amazing to me about this is that the promise of the Holy Spirit is not just given to the eleven disciples around the table with Jesus. Throughout the book of Acts, we see countless converts, indeed every convert, receiving the Spirit and being utterly transformed by it. Every single person who receives the Spirit in the Bible has a life that is changed in such an amazing and radical way that it simply cannot be explained in terms of anything but the very power of God coming and dwelling inside of them.
The good news of this gift of the Holy Spirit is that you and I are every bit as much recipients of this promise as the original disciples. We, too, have been promised the Spirit of God and that Spirit dwells inside of us. We, too, have been grafted into Christ in such a way that it is His blood that pumps through our veins. We, too, have been utterly bound up in the ministry of Christ in the world. This means that, when we gather together as the body of Christ, we should not be surprised if God moves mightily, touching our hearts and souls and empowering us to go into the world and make a difference, making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. In fact, what should surprise us is if we gather together, as the body of Christ, the ones who have received the Spirit, and we are not changed, if we are not empowered for ministry, and if we are not compelled to join in the work of Christ in the world today.
When Jesus was betrayed, every single one of His disciples scattered. Not one of them stood strong when their leader was in His darkest hour. And yet, even though there was an abundance of weakness, God did not turn away from them. In fact, because their weakness was shown for what it was, because it was more than clear that, on their own, they could not stand strong, it is an undeniable fact that, when they did indeed become strong in the blink of an eye, it was not because they got themselves all excited, but because God had fundamentally changed them. So if you are discouraged today, if you feel weak, if you are convinced that you are not up to the task of participating in God’s transformation of the world in Christ and through the Spirit, take heart that the strength you need is not your own. It is not something you can muster up, but something that God freely gives for no reason other than He loves us and wants us to be involved in what He is doing. So if the Christian life is anything less than a joy and a privilege for you, pray that God would make this same Holy Spirit that has transformed so many throughout history and so many even in this room, empower you in a new way so that you, too, can know the joy of the Lord. Let us pray.
AMEN
Monday, July 26, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
John 16:4b-15
07/18/10
John 16:4b-15
Hudson UMC
The previous chapter in the Gospel of John, chapter fifteen, is entirely concerned with the fact that we, as believers, are united to Christ as branches on the vine. As such, not only are we utterly bound up with the love, life and joy of Christ, but also with the persecution and suffering that He endures in this world. The question that might come to our minds is, “Why is Jesus going on about this?” We need to remember the context of these several chapters. Starting in chapter fourteen, Jesus began on an extended discourse, explaining to His disciples all the things that He needed to tell them. We are in the thick of this discussion and we will not be done with it until we finish chapter seventeen. The reason why this is so important, the reason why Jesus needs to say all these things to His disciples at this point is because He is going to be betrayed and die. Jesus and the apostles are at the Last Supper and Judas has already left to betray Christ to the authorities. This is His last chance to tell His disciples what they need to know in order to stay strong and endure through the trials to come.
In fact, Jesus even hints at this at the beginning of our passage. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” The point is that Jesus is going away. The leader of this group of people is going to be gone and they are going to be leaderless. Jesus leaving His disciples alone because He is going to be executed, and yet, we don’t get the sense that He thinks that they will be able to lead in His absence. After all, He has said to Peter not all that long ago that he was going to deny Him three times before that very night was over. The disciples were sad that Jesus was going to leave. “But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.”
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.” This must have completely blindsided the disciples. How in the world could it be to their advantage that Jesus was going away? If Peter, for example, who seemed to be so strong, would collapse into cowardice the very night that Jesus goes away, how could it be to their advantage that He leaves? And yet, Jesus assures them that this is absolutely true. “For if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
I think that we need to reflect on this statement here, because, if we really think it out, it will strike us as odd. Why can’t the Advocate come to us unless Jesus goes? Why can’t the God who can do anything send the Spirit to the disciples, even while Jesus is on earth? There seems to be some intimate connection with Jesus leaving and the Spirit being given. We need to think about that for a minute.
The thought that God could have poured out the Spirit upon the disciples before Jesus had left them presupposes without any kind of proof, that it would be a good thing for that to happen. It might be argued, I suppose, that God’s presence is always a good thing, but I am not so sure. Remember when Isaiah encountered an image of the glory of the Lord in a vision. Even though there were several layers of separation between Isaiah and God at that point (he is having a vision, and it is not truly the direct presence of God he is encountering, but an image of the glory of God), his only response is to cry out and say, “Woe is me, for I am undone!” The only thing Isaiah could do is exclaim that he was about to die. All throughout the Old Testament, when people encountered an angel or a miracle, they were amazed that they had not been consumed by God’s presence.
If this is the case, if God really is the consuming fire, it might not be a great thing to have ordinary folks like you, me, and the disciples, indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. And yet, Jesus says that it is indeed a good thing, that it is to our advantage. And yet, it will not happen until Jesus goes away. As it turns out, if we allow ourselves to let the reality of God becoming a man to really impress itself upon us, we will come to realize that throughout His life, death, resurrection and ascension, Jesus is hard at work, redeeming and re-creating our humanity. When Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, He receives the Holy Spirit into our very humanity and lives with it, without being consumed. It is as if the Spirit, that would normally overwhelm us, has learned to compose Himself within our humanity in Christ.
I also want to remind you of what happens on the cross. Each of the four Gospels tells us something of what happened on the cross. Each has Jesus saying one or two things before He died. What they tell us is incredibly important. In John, the words we hear Jesus saying right before He dies are, “It is finished.” This is truly fitting, as John has made a point of speaking of the work of Christ being the work of the Father, that it is only when Christ has been put to death, when, as He has said, He leaves His disciples, that the work is “finished.” It is only when Jesus takes the curse that has rested upon humanity since the days of Adam and sin entered into the world and nails it to the cross with Him that He can say that His mission on earth, the reclaiming of humanity for God and the reconciling of the world to Himself, is finished. Then and only then, when Christ has provided the appropriate human response, throughout His life and even more so in His death, that the Spirit can come and not consume us but empower us for the trials that Jesus has just told us about.
But what will this Advocate, this Holy Spirit, do? Jesus says that, “When he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” I must admit that for a long time, this statement confused me. I understood that the Spirit would prove the world wrong about sin because they did not believe in Him because this was indeed sin, but the other two statements baffled me. I can’t say that I understand them fully today, but I think I understand it a bit better than I used to.
The Spirit will prove the world wrong “about sin, because they do not believe in me.” Jesus is not just saying that the Spirit will prove the world wrong because they have sinned by not believing in Christ, but that the world will be proven wrong about sin. Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit will show that the world does not even know what sin is and that God’s definition of sin is very different than ours often is. What do we say is sin? We think that murder, adultery, and violence is sin; we think that oppressing others is sinful, we think that when we work against the well-being of others or hate them, it is sin. Are those things destructive? Absolutely. Are they things that Christians are called to avoid? You bet. But Jesus is saying that our whole concept of sin needs to be redefined. The greatest sinner is not the one who has done a lot of things wrong, but the one who, in spite of the grace and love that Jesus has shown them, refuses to believe in Him.
This is an offensive idea, one that Paul says that is “foolishness” to the world, but is in fact the very wisdom of God. To give an example of how offensive this idea is, I want to reflect a bit on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Paul had preached among the Galatians a gospel where Jesus has taken their place, where He has done what they could not do and lives in and through them, making them more who they were created to be than ever before. It is in this letter that Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”
The Galatians had forgotten this message and had begun to listen to other teachers who told them that, once God showed them grace, they needed to work really hard and finish their salvation themselves, that, now that God had done something, it was their turn to work and bring what God had started by grace to completion by works. Paul’s message was that God will finish the work He has begun. What this means is that Christian faith is not simply an ethical lifestyle where we human beings are the judge of right and wrong. Instead, it means that, in spite of our best efforts, only the response that Christ has made on our behalf and in our place is worthy of God. Because it is Christ’s response and not our response that is pleasing to God, we must renounce ourselves, our own way of doing things, and follow Christ, pleading only the name of Christ for our acceptance by God. This is a very different way to think about sin. It is not a matter of getting your act together, but of letting Christ be your righteousness.
The next point, that the Spirit will prove the world wrong “about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer” is deeply related. When we read the book of Acts and we see the apostles taking the good news into the world, what do they do? They do the things that Jesus was doing, they say the things that Jesus was saying, and they were persecuted in the ways Jesus was persecuted. Real righteousness is not the self-discipline and dedication of human beings, but the very empowerment of God. The Holy Spirit shows that real righteousness is the righteousness of Christ, who once walked the earth and is now present in the lives of Christians through the power of the Holy Spirit. We become righteous, not because we do many good deeds, nor because we avoid evil ones, but because we are becoming ever more closely joined to Christ in every aspect of life.
Finally, the Spirit, we are told, will prove the world wrong “about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” Our way of thinking about judgment is where someone or something is declared bad and then action is taken immediately to remove that person or thing from society so they can’t hurt anyone anymore. Jesus is saying that judgment is something that is declared long before the sentence is carried out. Christians do not live with hope and joy because the world is doing well, nor because we think that the world is going to get better by human strength and creativity. Instead, we have hope and joy because we know the end of the story. We know that, in spite of the evil that we see all around us, the source of this evil, the ruler of this world, stands condemned. We do not say that Christ is Lord over sin and death because sin and death are no longer present in our world of space and time, but that they have been defeated and their days are numbered.
What I think is perhaps the most amazing thing that Jesus says here is not his radical redefinition of sin, righteousness and judgment, but what the Spirit will do for believers. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Earlier, in chapter fourteen, Jesus has promised that He will not leave His disciples as orphans, but will send the Holy Spirit to be with them. Here, he clarifies what He means when He promises the Spirit. It is not as though the Spirit, this Advocate that Jesus is promising is some stranger, even though they have not received Him yet.
The Spirit is not someone who can be separated from Christ as if the ministry of the Holy Spirit is separate from the ministry of Christ. What can the apostles expect when the Spirit arrives? The do not need to worry that they will miss the Spirit or that they will confuse it with their own spirit because the Spirit is not some random Spirit but the very Spirit of Christ taking up residence in themselves. The things of Christ will be imparted to them through the Spirit.
This is truly an amazing miracle. If we were not overwhelmed by the idea that the God of the universe, who created everything that exists out of nothing, who has manifested Himself throughout history in mighty miracles, signs and wonders, has entered into our brokenness and taken our limitation upon Himself in order to redeem it, this idea, that this very same God would enter into, not just the one man Jesus of Nazareth, but into absolutely every single person who comes to believe in Christ, should knock us over. Did you know that being a believer in Christ is not an agreement to live according to a list of “dos” and “don’ts,” it is not a matter of believing all the right things in just the right way, it is not even a matter of being at church every Sunday of your life and helping on all the committees, though all those things might happen. Instead, believing in Christ is a radical transformation where you are given the very Spirit of God, who is the fullness of God so that you might be made to live more like Christ day after day.
Think about what this means. It means that God has not abandoned you, even during the times when it might feel like it, but has taken up residence so that God is even closer to you than you are to yourself. It means that you have not been forgotten, but bound to Christ with the very power and presence of God. It means that you are not left to your own devices to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work really hard in order for God to love you, but rather that Christ has already offered that perfect sacrifice that you are searching for and offered it to God on your behalf and in your place.
Brothers and sisters, we have not been left as orphans; instead, we have been given a family that will never end, that will never be broken, and will never cast us out. We have been adopted into the family of God and God has given His very self as our pledge that He will not turn His back on us. Everything that belongs to the Father also belongs to Christ and the Holy Spirit takes those things and gives them to us. As those who have received the great things of God, let us go out and let Christ live His life in and through us, that the world might know the transforming power of God manifest in our lives and in the lives of others. Let us pray.
AMEN
John 16:4b-15
Hudson UMC
The previous chapter in the Gospel of John, chapter fifteen, is entirely concerned with the fact that we, as believers, are united to Christ as branches on the vine. As such, not only are we utterly bound up with the love, life and joy of Christ, but also with the persecution and suffering that He endures in this world. The question that might come to our minds is, “Why is Jesus going on about this?” We need to remember the context of these several chapters. Starting in chapter fourteen, Jesus began on an extended discourse, explaining to His disciples all the things that He needed to tell them. We are in the thick of this discussion and we will not be done with it until we finish chapter seventeen. The reason why this is so important, the reason why Jesus needs to say all these things to His disciples at this point is because He is going to be betrayed and die. Jesus and the apostles are at the Last Supper and Judas has already left to betray Christ to the authorities. This is His last chance to tell His disciples what they need to know in order to stay strong and endure through the trials to come.
In fact, Jesus even hints at this at the beginning of our passage. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’” The point is that Jesus is going away. The leader of this group of people is going to be gone and they are going to be leaderless. Jesus leaving His disciples alone because He is going to be executed, and yet, we don’t get the sense that He thinks that they will be able to lead in His absence. After all, He has said to Peter not all that long ago that he was going to deny Him three times before that very night was over. The disciples were sad that Jesus was going to leave. “But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.”
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away.” This must have completely blindsided the disciples. How in the world could it be to their advantage that Jesus was going away? If Peter, for example, who seemed to be so strong, would collapse into cowardice the very night that Jesus goes away, how could it be to their advantage that He leaves? And yet, Jesus assures them that this is absolutely true. “For if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
I think that we need to reflect on this statement here, because, if we really think it out, it will strike us as odd. Why can’t the Advocate come to us unless Jesus goes? Why can’t the God who can do anything send the Spirit to the disciples, even while Jesus is on earth? There seems to be some intimate connection with Jesus leaving and the Spirit being given. We need to think about that for a minute.
The thought that God could have poured out the Spirit upon the disciples before Jesus had left them presupposes without any kind of proof, that it would be a good thing for that to happen. It might be argued, I suppose, that God’s presence is always a good thing, but I am not so sure. Remember when Isaiah encountered an image of the glory of the Lord in a vision. Even though there were several layers of separation between Isaiah and God at that point (he is having a vision, and it is not truly the direct presence of God he is encountering, but an image of the glory of God), his only response is to cry out and say, “Woe is me, for I am undone!” The only thing Isaiah could do is exclaim that he was about to die. All throughout the Old Testament, when people encountered an angel or a miracle, they were amazed that they had not been consumed by God’s presence.
If this is the case, if God really is the consuming fire, it might not be a great thing to have ordinary folks like you, me, and the disciples, indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. And yet, Jesus says that it is indeed a good thing, that it is to our advantage. And yet, it will not happen until Jesus goes away. As it turns out, if we allow ourselves to let the reality of God becoming a man to really impress itself upon us, we will come to realize that throughout His life, death, resurrection and ascension, Jesus is hard at work, redeeming and re-creating our humanity. When Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, He receives the Holy Spirit into our very humanity and lives with it, without being consumed. It is as if the Spirit, that would normally overwhelm us, has learned to compose Himself within our humanity in Christ.
I also want to remind you of what happens on the cross. Each of the four Gospels tells us something of what happened on the cross. Each has Jesus saying one or two things before He died. What they tell us is incredibly important. In John, the words we hear Jesus saying right before He dies are, “It is finished.” This is truly fitting, as John has made a point of speaking of the work of Christ being the work of the Father, that it is only when Christ has been put to death, when, as He has said, He leaves His disciples, that the work is “finished.” It is only when Jesus takes the curse that has rested upon humanity since the days of Adam and sin entered into the world and nails it to the cross with Him that He can say that His mission on earth, the reclaiming of humanity for God and the reconciling of the world to Himself, is finished. Then and only then, when Christ has provided the appropriate human response, throughout His life and even more so in His death, that the Spirit can come and not consume us but empower us for the trials that Jesus has just told us about.
But what will this Advocate, this Holy Spirit, do? Jesus says that, “When he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” I must admit that for a long time, this statement confused me. I understood that the Spirit would prove the world wrong about sin because they did not believe in Him because this was indeed sin, but the other two statements baffled me. I can’t say that I understand them fully today, but I think I understand it a bit better than I used to.
The Spirit will prove the world wrong “about sin, because they do not believe in me.” Jesus is not just saying that the Spirit will prove the world wrong because they have sinned by not believing in Christ, but that the world will be proven wrong about sin. Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit will show that the world does not even know what sin is and that God’s definition of sin is very different than ours often is. What do we say is sin? We think that murder, adultery, and violence is sin; we think that oppressing others is sinful, we think that when we work against the well-being of others or hate them, it is sin. Are those things destructive? Absolutely. Are they things that Christians are called to avoid? You bet. But Jesus is saying that our whole concept of sin needs to be redefined. The greatest sinner is not the one who has done a lot of things wrong, but the one who, in spite of the grace and love that Jesus has shown them, refuses to believe in Him.
This is an offensive idea, one that Paul says that is “foolishness” to the world, but is in fact the very wisdom of God. To give an example of how offensive this idea is, I want to reflect a bit on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Paul had preached among the Galatians a gospel where Jesus has taken their place, where He has done what they could not do and lives in and through them, making them more who they were created to be than ever before. It is in this letter that Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”
The Galatians had forgotten this message and had begun to listen to other teachers who told them that, once God showed them grace, they needed to work really hard and finish their salvation themselves, that, now that God had done something, it was their turn to work and bring what God had started by grace to completion by works. Paul’s message was that God will finish the work He has begun. What this means is that Christian faith is not simply an ethical lifestyle where we human beings are the judge of right and wrong. Instead, it means that, in spite of our best efforts, only the response that Christ has made on our behalf and in our place is worthy of God. Because it is Christ’s response and not our response that is pleasing to God, we must renounce ourselves, our own way of doing things, and follow Christ, pleading only the name of Christ for our acceptance by God. This is a very different way to think about sin. It is not a matter of getting your act together, but of letting Christ be your righteousness.
The next point, that the Spirit will prove the world wrong “about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer” is deeply related. When we read the book of Acts and we see the apostles taking the good news into the world, what do they do? They do the things that Jesus was doing, they say the things that Jesus was saying, and they were persecuted in the ways Jesus was persecuted. Real righteousness is not the self-discipline and dedication of human beings, but the very empowerment of God. The Holy Spirit shows that real righteousness is the righteousness of Christ, who once walked the earth and is now present in the lives of Christians through the power of the Holy Spirit. We become righteous, not because we do many good deeds, nor because we avoid evil ones, but because we are becoming ever more closely joined to Christ in every aspect of life.
Finally, the Spirit, we are told, will prove the world wrong “about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” Our way of thinking about judgment is where someone or something is declared bad and then action is taken immediately to remove that person or thing from society so they can’t hurt anyone anymore. Jesus is saying that judgment is something that is declared long before the sentence is carried out. Christians do not live with hope and joy because the world is doing well, nor because we think that the world is going to get better by human strength and creativity. Instead, we have hope and joy because we know the end of the story. We know that, in spite of the evil that we see all around us, the source of this evil, the ruler of this world, stands condemned. We do not say that Christ is Lord over sin and death because sin and death are no longer present in our world of space and time, but that they have been defeated and their days are numbered.
What I think is perhaps the most amazing thing that Jesus says here is not his radical redefinition of sin, righteousness and judgment, but what the Spirit will do for believers. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” Earlier, in chapter fourteen, Jesus has promised that He will not leave His disciples as orphans, but will send the Holy Spirit to be with them. Here, he clarifies what He means when He promises the Spirit. It is not as though the Spirit, this Advocate that Jesus is promising is some stranger, even though they have not received Him yet.
The Spirit is not someone who can be separated from Christ as if the ministry of the Holy Spirit is separate from the ministry of Christ. What can the apostles expect when the Spirit arrives? The do not need to worry that they will miss the Spirit or that they will confuse it with their own spirit because the Spirit is not some random Spirit but the very Spirit of Christ taking up residence in themselves. The things of Christ will be imparted to them through the Spirit.
This is truly an amazing miracle. If we were not overwhelmed by the idea that the God of the universe, who created everything that exists out of nothing, who has manifested Himself throughout history in mighty miracles, signs and wonders, has entered into our brokenness and taken our limitation upon Himself in order to redeem it, this idea, that this very same God would enter into, not just the one man Jesus of Nazareth, but into absolutely every single person who comes to believe in Christ, should knock us over. Did you know that being a believer in Christ is not an agreement to live according to a list of “dos” and “don’ts,” it is not a matter of believing all the right things in just the right way, it is not even a matter of being at church every Sunday of your life and helping on all the committees, though all those things might happen. Instead, believing in Christ is a radical transformation where you are given the very Spirit of God, who is the fullness of God so that you might be made to live more like Christ day after day.
Think about what this means. It means that God has not abandoned you, even during the times when it might feel like it, but has taken up residence so that God is even closer to you than you are to yourself. It means that you have not been forgotten, but bound to Christ with the very power and presence of God. It means that you are not left to your own devices to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work really hard in order for God to love you, but rather that Christ has already offered that perfect sacrifice that you are searching for and offered it to God on your behalf and in your place.
Brothers and sisters, we have not been left as orphans; instead, we have been given a family that will never end, that will never be broken, and will never cast us out. We have been adopted into the family of God and God has given His very self as our pledge that He will not turn His back on us. Everything that belongs to the Father also belongs to Christ and the Holy Spirit takes those things and gives them to us. As those who have received the great things of God, let us go out and let Christ live His life in and through us, that the world might know the transforming power of God manifest in our lives and in the lives of others. Let us pray.
AMEN
Monday, July 12, 2010
John 15:18-16:4a
07/11/10
John 15:18-16:4a
Hudson UMC
Over the past few years, I have become something of a stickler for context. I find that, if you take a quotation out of context, you can make it mean something very different from what the author intended. We have all experienced the confusion and difficulty when our words get taken out of context. However, the danger is never greater than when we are dealing with the Biblical text. Our culture today loves sound bytes, we love brief, simple statements and we don’t always have time to listen to a whole paragraph, just to make sure we understand the context clearly. The problem with this is that, when we do not take the context of a quote from the Bible very seriously, we will separate what God has joined together; we will rip the words away from their meaning.
Today’s text is a wonderful example. If we consider only the words of Christ here, we will come to some conclusions about what Jesus is getting at. We might not like what Jesus has to say; we might even decide that He is wrong or that it doesn’t apply to us, since His words of warning that those who follow Him will be hated are somewhat uncomfortable. However, we cannot make a line down the middle of chapter fifteen and say that the first half has nothing to say to the second half. The two halves are deeply related and we need to allow them to speak to one another.
I haven’t been here for two weeks, so let me remind you of what was in the very last passage before this one. Jesus had used the powerful image of a vine and branches to explain how we are related to Him. When we think about how we are related to God, we cannot think of it as if we are over here and Jesus is over there. We are utterly united to Christ in such a way that we are bound to Him; we are, as Paul loved to say, in Christ. At the end of the day, the life of Christ has been implanted into us and we cannot be separated from Him. Our lives only make sense when considered in light of who Jesus is. This idea that we are united to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is not something that is a nice thing to think about once in a while, but the primary language in the New Testament for being a child of God. Our being bound to God through Christ is more basic, more fundamental, even than our being forgiven.
The reason I wanted to remind you of the first part of this chapter is because of the direction Jesus takes in this passage. His main point is that the disciples, those who were following Him, who were giving their lives to His teaching and his message, were going to suffer. The last few statements Jesus makes in this passage help us understand what is going on here. “I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.”
Jesus has some uncomfortable things to say to us but we need to remember that He is not telling them to us to make us squirm, or to make us second-guess our faith, or to put us down in any way. Instead, He is telling us these things because they are true, whether we know them or not and He wants us to be well-informed about them. He wants us to know that the Christian life is not a life of peace where everyone loves us and we all just get along. No, the Christian life is marked by persecution by others, by being hated by those who hate God. We don’t like that idea, but Jesus wants to let us know, so we are not taken by surprise when the road gets hard.
But why does Jesus say that people will hate us? What is it about the followers of Christ that is so irritating to the world? Why should our following of Christ result in tensions with other people? The reason that Jesus gives is rooted in what He has just said about being united to Him like branches on a vine. By calling ourselves Christians, by calling ourselves by the name of Christ, we are proclaiming that we are indeed united to Christ like a branch on a vine. We cannot be separated from Him, whether we want to or not. We are bound up with Him in every way. If we keep this in mind, Jesus’ words make a lot of sense.
“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.” If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own.” These two statements from the mouth of Christ work together to tell us that how we will be treated is absolutely tied up with Him. If the world hated Christ, it will hate those who follow Him. The fact that the world hated Christ cannot really be doubted because when Christ came into the world, the world responded by putting Him on a cross and killing Him. Jesus is not threatening us, but is giving us warning. He is more or less saying, “If you are hoping that, by following me, you are going to become people of power and influence, who will live in luxury because you are my closest friends, you will be sorely disappointed. Do not be surprised that the world hates you, because it hated me first. Do not be surprised when you are treated as I am treated.”
Indeed, how could we expect to be treated differently than Christ? After all, as He has just said, we are grafted into Him like a branch on a vine; His blood pumps through our veins, we are, by grace, utterly united to Christ. Because we are in Christ, we have become participants in every part of Christ; not just the love and joy of God manifest in our lives, but also the difficulty and struggle and even pain of Christ. You can find many examples in the New Testament where the apostles’ took this warning of suffering seriously. It was not simply an academic question like it sometimes seems to be for us. We can question the universality of Christ’s statements that His followers will suffer because we find ourselves so often not suffering at the hands of others, especially those who do not love God. However, for the early church, and for many groups throughout Christian history, this hatred and mistreatment has been all too real, all too close to home. Nearly all the apostles died nasty deaths, but they were not surprised, because they heard Christ’s warning long beforehand.
Jesus goes on to explain a little more about why this persecution will come to those who follow Him. “Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.” Those who have been chosen by Christ live according to Christ’s commands, as Jesus Himself has said several times in the last few chapters. That means that from day to day, the life of the Christian is not governed by what they want and desire, but by what God wants and desires. This is something that the rest of the world cannot stand. The world and the dominant culture says that we need to go out and get everything we can, that we need to do our own thing, that we need to be the ones who take control of our lives and shape our own destiny. The Christian says, “No. I will not take that kind of control of my life, where I am the one who finally calls the shots. I won’t do that because I know that, left to my own devices, I don’t always make good choices. However, the God who loves me more than I love myself has given me a better way to live. A way that is centered, not on myself, but on Him and, therefore, on others. I will ruthlessly tear down any remnants of self-assertion in the face of God and allow God to shape me into the person I was made to be.”
In light of that kind of humble attitude, the world’s ways of selfishness and destructive pride are exposed for what they are. Those who do not love Christ do not hate those who do because they do terrible things, but precisely because they are being transformed into the image of Christ. Those who hate Christ do not do so because God has not chosen them as well but that, in spite of God’s choosing them and giving Himself to them in such a radical way, they have done the irrational. They have refused Him. We are not dealing with a God who chooses some and rejects others, but a God who loves us to the uttermost and a humanity that rejects Him, though to reject God’s love is the most nonsensical thing we can imagine.
“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.” Here we find ourselves back into the warnings that we will face persecution in this life. Christ is the master and we are the servants. If someone hates our master, they are going to hate us as well. Because of the intense solidarity we have with Christ and Christ with us, we cannot expect different treatment than Christ. Indeed, if we were to receive different treatment than Christ, it would mean that we do not belong to Him and that we are not in Him. I also find it interesting that Jesus says if they persecuted Him. Jesus is not asking a hypothetical question that may or may not be the case. He is not saying, “You might be persecuted,” but “you will be persecuted.”
We come now to what might be the most troubling and yet the most powerful statement in this passage. “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” Here we have Jesus saying that, in a sense, He has caused the sin of those who hate Him. He is saying that, if He had not come and spoken to the people, they would not have sin; but He has come and spoken to them so He has brought about their sin. When we think about the fact that it is because Jesus has come and spoken to the people that they hate Him, persecute Him and will finally execute Him and that, because He has done this, people will hate us, persecute us and execute us because we are not greater than our master, we might be tempted to ask, “Jesus, if your coming makes so many problems for you, not to mention the problems it causes for us, why did you come at all?”
We need to think about this seriously, because here we are getting to the heart of the Gospel. As we listen to Jesus and as we consider what He has said and what He means, we are probing into the very problem of humanity in relationship to God, we are entering what is at the same time the most difficult and also the most glorious part of the good news of Jesus Christ.
Jesus has pointed out to His disciples and to us that it is only because He came that those who persecute Him have sinned in this way. After all, if Jesus never came, they could not have hated Him, they could not have persecuted Him and they could not have killed Him. You cannot hate, persecute and kill someone who does not exist. Because of this, if Christ had not ever come, Christ’s followers could not be persecuted or killed because there would have been no Christ to follow. Because God has acted so decisively and has come as the man Jesus, there really is no other option, no other choice other than what has actually happened and cannot ever be undone. However, the other conceivable option was for Jesus not to come at all.
But what would be the case if Jesus had never come? What would be our situation if God had never become a man and lived among us? We would never have been pressed to kill Him, we would never have had the opportunity to place the Son of God on a cross, but it would also mean that God’s love has not really touched our very humanity and brokenness. God’s love would have stopped short of becoming one of us and one with us. We would never be able to truly know God’s love for us. We would remain broken and without hope of redemption. God would always remain “out there.”
If God had remained distant, if God had never come so very close to us and our evil, our sin would never have been exposed for what it is; but if that were the case, it isn’t as though we literally would not have sin. Our sin would remain and we would remain alienated from God; we just wouldn’t realize it. We would never know the fearful depths of evil of which humanity is capable, but that evil would remain; unredeemed, un-atoned for, and we would remain to this very day the enemies of God.
The crucifixion is at once the very most evil act of human history as it is the final rejection of God by humanity and yet the very most extravagant display of God’s goodness and mercy, as it is the event that binds us to Christ and through Christ to the Father. It is both the final rejection of God by humanity and the final claiming of humanity by God. God has loved us in spite of ourselves. Just as this is the case, our own personal and private sin is exposed by Christ; just compare yourself to Christ and you will see that your sin stands out when held next to His sinlessness, and yet this judgment, this calling sin what it is, is the bond that binds us to Christ for Christ came to save sinners. Every single sinner is implicated. By revealing our sin, God is simultaneously offering forgiveness that is so complete that, if we will believe, we are already forgiven.
When we consider all of this, it means that the persecution that was suffered by Christ, the persecution that the saints throughout the ages have endured, and the persecution in which we too participate, is the reaction of people who want to do things their own way against the God who wants to love them in spite of themselves. It is the result of human evil in the face of God’s redemptive compassion. So, when we are persecuted, in whatever form it may come, it is not something to get mad about, as if it were unexpected or if those who persecute us were people we should hate. Instead, it is something to pray about. Something that should break our hearts in such a way that we pour ourselves out in prayer on their behalf, that they might not be forever imprisoned to themselves but set free in Christ. Brothers and sisters, we have chosen a difficult road. A road marked with suffering, a road that seems like it may consume us, and yet a road that we can walk by faith, because Christ has walked it first. In spite of the rejection of God by humanity, God has not let us go, but has loved us with a love that is beyond any of us. Let us rejoice over what God has done. Let us pray.
AMEN
John 15:18-16:4a
Hudson UMC
Over the past few years, I have become something of a stickler for context. I find that, if you take a quotation out of context, you can make it mean something very different from what the author intended. We have all experienced the confusion and difficulty when our words get taken out of context. However, the danger is never greater than when we are dealing with the Biblical text. Our culture today loves sound bytes, we love brief, simple statements and we don’t always have time to listen to a whole paragraph, just to make sure we understand the context clearly. The problem with this is that, when we do not take the context of a quote from the Bible very seriously, we will separate what God has joined together; we will rip the words away from their meaning.
Today’s text is a wonderful example. If we consider only the words of Christ here, we will come to some conclusions about what Jesus is getting at. We might not like what Jesus has to say; we might even decide that He is wrong or that it doesn’t apply to us, since His words of warning that those who follow Him will be hated are somewhat uncomfortable. However, we cannot make a line down the middle of chapter fifteen and say that the first half has nothing to say to the second half. The two halves are deeply related and we need to allow them to speak to one another.
I haven’t been here for two weeks, so let me remind you of what was in the very last passage before this one. Jesus had used the powerful image of a vine and branches to explain how we are related to Him. When we think about how we are related to God, we cannot think of it as if we are over here and Jesus is over there. We are utterly united to Christ in such a way that we are bound to Him; we are, as Paul loved to say, in Christ. At the end of the day, the life of Christ has been implanted into us and we cannot be separated from Him. Our lives only make sense when considered in light of who Jesus is. This idea that we are united to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit is not something that is a nice thing to think about once in a while, but the primary language in the New Testament for being a child of God. Our being bound to God through Christ is more basic, more fundamental, even than our being forgiven.
The reason I wanted to remind you of the first part of this chapter is because of the direction Jesus takes in this passage. His main point is that the disciples, those who were following Him, who were giving their lives to His teaching and his message, were going to suffer. The last few statements Jesus makes in this passage help us understand what is going on here. “I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.”
Jesus has some uncomfortable things to say to us but we need to remember that He is not telling them to us to make us squirm, or to make us second-guess our faith, or to put us down in any way. Instead, He is telling us these things because they are true, whether we know them or not and He wants us to be well-informed about them. He wants us to know that the Christian life is not a life of peace where everyone loves us and we all just get along. No, the Christian life is marked by persecution by others, by being hated by those who hate God. We don’t like that idea, but Jesus wants to let us know, so we are not taken by surprise when the road gets hard.
But why does Jesus say that people will hate us? What is it about the followers of Christ that is so irritating to the world? Why should our following of Christ result in tensions with other people? The reason that Jesus gives is rooted in what He has just said about being united to Him like branches on a vine. By calling ourselves Christians, by calling ourselves by the name of Christ, we are proclaiming that we are indeed united to Christ like a branch on a vine. We cannot be separated from Him, whether we want to or not. We are bound up with Him in every way. If we keep this in mind, Jesus’ words make a lot of sense.
“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.” If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own.” These two statements from the mouth of Christ work together to tell us that how we will be treated is absolutely tied up with Him. If the world hated Christ, it will hate those who follow Him. The fact that the world hated Christ cannot really be doubted because when Christ came into the world, the world responded by putting Him on a cross and killing Him. Jesus is not threatening us, but is giving us warning. He is more or less saying, “If you are hoping that, by following me, you are going to become people of power and influence, who will live in luxury because you are my closest friends, you will be sorely disappointed. Do not be surprised that the world hates you, because it hated me first. Do not be surprised when you are treated as I am treated.”
Indeed, how could we expect to be treated differently than Christ? After all, as He has just said, we are grafted into Him like a branch on a vine; His blood pumps through our veins, we are, by grace, utterly united to Christ. Because we are in Christ, we have become participants in every part of Christ; not just the love and joy of God manifest in our lives, but also the difficulty and struggle and even pain of Christ. You can find many examples in the New Testament where the apostles’ took this warning of suffering seriously. It was not simply an academic question like it sometimes seems to be for us. We can question the universality of Christ’s statements that His followers will suffer because we find ourselves so often not suffering at the hands of others, especially those who do not love God. However, for the early church, and for many groups throughout Christian history, this hatred and mistreatment has been all too real, all too close to home. Nearly all the apostles died nasty deaths, but they were not surprised, because they heard Christ’s warning long beforehand.
Jesus goes on to explain a little more about why this persecution will come to those who follow Him. “Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you.” Those who have been chosen by Christ live according to Christ’s commands, as Jesus Himself has said several times in the last few chapters. That means that from day to day, the life of the Christian is not governed by what they want and desire, but by what God wants and desires. This is something that the rest of the world cannot stand. The world and the dominant culture says that we need to go out and get everything we can, that we need to do our own thing, that we need to be the ones who take control of our lives and shape our own destiny. The Christian says, “No. I will not take that kind of control of my life, where I am the one who finally calls the shots. I won’t do that because I know that, left to my own devices, I don’t always make good choices. However, the God who loves me more than I love myself has given me a better way to live. A way that is centered, not on myself, but on Him and, therefore, on others. I will ruthlessly tear down any remnants of self-assertion in the face of God and allow God to shape me into the person I was made to be.”
In light of that kind of humble attitude, the world’s ways of selfishness and destructive pride are exposed for what they are. Those who do not love Christ do not hate those who do because they do terrible things, but precisely because they are being transformed into the image of Christ. Those who hate Christ do not do so because God has not chosen them as well but that, in spite of God’s choosing them and giving Himself to them in such a radical way, they have done the irrational. They have refused Him. We are not dealing with a God who chooses some and rejects others, but a God who loves us to the uttermost and a humanity that rejects Him, though to reject God’s love is the most nonsensical thing we can imagine.
“Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.” Here we find ourselves back into the warnings that we will face persecution in this life. Christ is the master and we are the servants. If someone hates our master, they are going to hate us as well. Because of the intense solidarity we have with Christ and Christ with us, we cannot expect different treatment than Christ. Indeed, if we were to receive different treatment than Christ, it would mean that we do not belong to Him and that we are not in Him. I also find it interesting that Jesus says if they persecuted Him. Jesus is not asking a hypothetical question that may or may not be the case. He is not saying, “You might be persecuted,” but “you will be persecuted.”
We come now to what might be the most troubling and yet the most powerful statement in this passage. “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” Here we have Jesus saying that, in a sense, He has caused the sin of those who hate Him. He is saying that, if He had not come and spoken to the people, they would not have sin; but He has come and spoken to them so He has brought about their sin. When we think about the fact that it is because Jesus has come and spoken to the people that they hate Him, persecute Him and will finally execute Him and that, because He has done this, people will hate us, persecute us and execute us because we are not greater than our master, we might be tempted to ask, “Jesus, if your coming makes so many problems for you, not to mention the problems it causes for us, why did you come at all?”
We need to think about this seriously, because here we are getting to the heart of the Gospel. As we listen to Jesus and as we consider what He has said and what He means, we are probing into the very problem of humanity in relationship to God, we are entering what is at the same time the most difficult and also the most glorious part of the good news of Jesus Christ.
Jesus has pointed out to His disciples and to us that it is only because He came that those who persecute Him have sinned in this way. After all, if Jesus never came, they could not have hated Him, they could not have persecuted Him and they could not have killed Him. You cannot hate, persecute and kill someone who does not exist. Because of this, if Christ had not ever come, Christ’s followers could not be persecuted or killed because there would have been no Christ to follow. Because God has acted so decisively and has come as the man Jesus, there really is no other option, no other choice other than what has actually happened and cannot ever be undone. However, the other conceivable option was for Jesus not to come at all.
But what would be the case if Jesus had never come? What would be our situation if God had never become a man and lived among us? We would never have been pressed to kill Him, we would never have had the opportunity to place the Son of God on a cross, but it would also mean that God’s love has not really touched our very humanity and brokenness. God’s love would have stopped short of becoming one of us and one with us. We would never be able to truly know God’s love for us. We would remain broken and without hope of redemption. God would always remain “out there.”
If God had remained distant, if God had never come so very close to us and our evil, our sin would never have been exposed for what it is; but if that were the case, it isn’t as though we literally would not have sin. Our sin would remain and we would remain alienated from God; we just wouldn’t realize it. We would never know the fearful depths of evil of which humanity is capable, but that evil would remain; unredeemed, un-atoned for, and we would remain to this very day the enemies of God.
The crucifixion is at once the very most evil act of human history as it is the final rejection of God by humanity and yet the very most extravagant display of God’s goodness and mercy, as it is the event that binds us to Christ and through Christ to the Father. It is both the final rejection of God by humanity and the final claiming of humanity by God. God has loved us in spite of ourselves. Just as this is the case, our own personal and private sin is exposed by Christ; just compare yourself to Christ and you will see that your sin stands out when held next to His sinlessness, and yet this judgment, this calling sin what it is, is the bond that binds us to Christ for Christ came to save sinners. Every single sinner is implicated. By revealing our sin, God is simultaneously offering forgiveness that is so complete that, if we will believe, we are already forgiven.
When we consider all of this, it means that the persecution that was suffered by Christ, the persecution that the saints throughout the ages have endured, and the persecution in which we too participate, is the reaction of people who want to do things their own way against the God who wants to love them in spite of themselves. It is the result of human evil in the face of God’s redemptive compassion. So, when we are persecuted, in whatever form it may come, it is not something to get mad about, as if it were unexpected or if those who persecute us were people we should hate. Instead, it is something to pray about. Something that should break our hearts in such a way that we pour ourselves out in prayer on their behalf, that they might not be forever imprisoned to themselves but set free in Christ. Brothers and sisters, we have chosen a difficult road. A road marked with suffering, a road that seems like it may consume us, and yet a road that we can walk by faith, because Christ has walked it first. In spite of the rejection of God by humanity, God has not let us go, but has loved us with a love that is beyond any of us. Let us rejoice over what God has done. Let us pray.
AMEN
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