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