John 18:1-14

08/29/10
John 18:1-14
Hudson UMC

The time for talk is over. The beginning of the end has come. There is no more time for Jesus to teach His disciples. Up until this moment, there has always been more time, but now the time is gone. It is hard for us to grasp the idea that there would come a time where there is no more time. It is part of the reason that many of us fear death; we are brought face to face with the reality that, in spite of the fact that we have always had possibilities for the future, all of our possibilities will eventually come to an end. If the disciples believed, as it seems they did, that Jesus was going to be their political savior and overturn the Romans in order to establish a new, independent state of Israel, they very well would not have even begun to understand that their time with their master was coming to an end, but this is precisely what was happening.

It is believed that the earthly ministry of Christ, from His baptism to His crucifixion was approximately three years. These twelve men, including Judas, not to mention the women we are told were also with them, had followed Jesus for three full years, hearing the incredible teaching and witnessing the mighty acts of healing on all manner of people. And yet, the one that they were following was going to be taken away and executed. If nothing else, it would surely seem as though the one who seemed to be in control all those times that the people tried to capture Him and failed is finally no longer in control.

However, this is not the case. If there is one thing that we should gather from John’s account of the betrayal of Jesus, it is that Jesus is always in control. Things do not ever simply happen to Him, but He is able to stop them, even when He chooses not to. Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus told the people that nobody takes His life from Him but that He has the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again. It is in this chapter that we get to see that He really means it. It is true that Jesus is taken away, questioned by the leaders, and then put to death, but at no point is Jesus ever out of control, but knows exactly what is happening and allowing it to happen.

This kind of control amazes us and makes us feel uncomfortable because it is so very much unlike control as we and others use control. For most of us, if we found ourselves in danger and were in absolute control of the situation, we would stop the danger from coming to pass, we would assert our dominance over those who would seek to do us harm and we would laugh in the face of those who would dare to oppose us. Why wouldn’t we do this? Why would we even begin to think about suffering the evil of others if we were had the power to prevent it? This is what we think that Jesus would do. We would expect Jesus to prevent the cross, but that is precisely what He does not do. He allows the evil of humanity to rise to its highest heights and does something that only God can do; He takes the real evil of human beings and uses it for His holy purposes, the forgiveness of sins and the re-creation of the world.

But let us look at what actually happens in this scene, so we can understand the sheer control that Jesus has over His enemies. “After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples.” This, according to the thinking of the world, is Jesus’ first mistake. If there was reason to believe that He was going to be betrayed that night, why in the world would He have gone to a place where He and His disciples went all the time? It is the perfect place to find Him if someone was looking for Him, and this is exactly what happened. If Jesus had not gone to that place, Judas would not have found Him there. Jesus has not struck us as naïve before, so we cannot think that He was unaware of the danger He was walking into, but He did it anyway. Danger did not spring upon Him by surprise. He deliberately went to confront it.

“So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons.” If we just read this and don’t have a hint from the historical context, we will miss the sheer amazing nature of this statement. The word translated here as “detachment of soldiers” is the word that is consistently used in Greek to refer to the “cohort.” At the very least, this word would have referred to a group of two hundred soldiers but most often referred to a group of six hundred. So Judas has brought out several hundred trained, disciplined Roman soldiers, along with the official Jewish police from the religious authorities, all of whom are armed. Think about what a sight this must have been. Hundreds of people, a small army has been sent to arrest someone, but whom have they come to arrest? A dangerous criminal? No. Someone who has exhibited violent tendencies in the past? No. They are going to arrest a Rabbi, a teacher. It is not as though it would have taken this many people, even if we include His somewhat impulsive band of followers. After all, they had no military training, they were just a ragtag group of fishermen, tax collectors, and others who were at the bottom of their society.

Keep this image of this huge group of people who have come to get Jesus in your mind, because it makes what follows even more amazing. “Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to Him,” remember How Jesus is completely aware and in control of the situation, “came forward and asked them, ‘Whom are you looking for?’ They answered, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus replied, ‘I am he.’ Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them.” Literally, Jesus’ response is not “I am he,” but simply “I am.” That might not sound like a big difference, but it is very significant. In the Old Testament, when Moses asked God what His name was, the answer was a word that, in Hebrew, meant “I am who I am,” but also carried with it the idea of “I will be who I will be.” This word, which so powerfully expressed the essence of God, the one who truly exists and whose existence does not depend on anything or anyone else like ours does, was considered to be so holy that people refused to say it out loud. The point is that, when Jesus says “I am,” He does not use the ordinary phrase, but one that is intensified, one that would have been understood to be His taking the divine name upon His own lips. Every time Jesus has said “I am,” in John, it has been this powerful phrase. Jesus is not just saying that He is the one they are looking for, but He is declaring that He is the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who spoke from the burning bush.

“When Jesus said to them, ‘I am he,’ they stepped back and fell to the ground.” When Jesus responds with the name of God, not as a blasphemer, not as one who uses the name of God as a curse, but as the one who bears it rightly because it is indeed who He is, it quite literally knocks the people over. But who are the people who fall to the ground? Weak willed peasants who are easily impressed? No, they were Roman soldiers, trained and strong. Not only that, but they are not Jewish, which means they would not have been in awe at the name of God being spoken to them, but they were knocked down, nonetheless. The very power of the presence of God was enough to take all the strength out of these skeptical professional soldiers. Hundreds of armed men were overcome with nothing more than a word from the mouth of this poor traveling preacher.

“Again he asked them, ‘Whom are you looking for?’ And they said, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus answered, ‘I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.’” Look at the control that Jesus has here! He has demonstrated quite clearly that He has more power in a word from His mouth than this entire cohort of Roman soldiers. Nobody is pushing Him into anything. Nothing is happening to Him that He did not foresee and welcome. Even when His mere presence overpowers His captors, He reminds them of their business. He doesn’t say, “See how I can knock you over with nothing more than a word? Perhaps you should think twice about arresting me because I am more than a match for you.” Instead, He reminds them that they are there to arrest Him and take Him to the religious and secular leaders. He did not run away, hiding from those He had left in confusion, but entered as fully as possible into the danger that faced Him. Jesus knew exactly what He was doing.

However, not all of His followers knew exactly what He was doing. “Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus.” Peter did what most people in his situation would have done. He saw His master being attacked and mistreated and so he was going to fight. In the face of danger, Peter’s response was natural. He was not going to be pushed around; he was going to fight and resist, even if it meant that he would be killed. So far, he is keeping his promise that he had made, that he would stand strong, even if everyone else abandoned Jesus. Remember this because next week we will see that, in the very next passage, Peter denies the one he was so bold to defend here. Peter wants to defend Jesus by worldly means. The problem with this is that he presupposes two things; that Jesus needs to be defended in the first place and that this defense can be achieved by violence. Neither of these is the case.

“Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?’ So the soldiers, their officer, and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him.” Now Jesus is being taken out to be tried. Now the Lord of the universe is going to be interrogated by human beings. The first step is to be taken to the religious authorities. “First they took him to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it was better to have one person die for the people.” Jesus was brought to the one person who should have understood the work of God in their midst. If even the high priest does not recognize God when he sees Him, how much trouble are the people in?

But in any case, we need to remember where we have heard the name of Caiaphas before because John felt it was important to remind us. After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and the leaders were getting particularly excited about this troublemaker, Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year, suggested that they capture Him and put Him to death because it is better for one person to die than to put the whole nation in danger. We read that, even though Caiaphas did not realize he was saying it, he was speaking the very truth of God, because Jesus was going to die, not just on behalf of the nation of Israel but on behalf of the entire world. The time for that amazing act to take place had come.

So, in light of these events, these dramatic times two thousand years ago, how should we live? Do these things actually have anything to say to you and me in modern America? Indeed they do. We need to remember that, when we look at the big picture, the center of the universe is Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Everything that happens in all of creation looks to that point for its meaning. At that particular time and in that particular place, the Son of God was betrayed by a human being, who had seemed to be one of His best friends. He had willingly walked into danger and suffering, while protecting those who belonged to Him. He showed us just how powerful He really is in the midst of this difficult time.

If Jesus were nothing more than a great human teacher, this passage would simply give us a profound example of compassion and courage in the face of death. However, Jesus is not just a man who lived once upon a time and has been dead and gone for millennia. Instead, Jesus is the risen Lord, who is alive today and forevermore and we are able to meet Him in our daily lives. And He is the very same Jesus now as He was then. He is no less powerful, no less courageous, no less in absolute control than He was then. It is true that this control looks a little different than we might expect. Just as Jesus does not prevent the crucifixion, He does not prevent other events that we might think He should. And yet, even though these things are not prevented, we are not presented with a Jesus who is overcome by those events, but one who maintains His sovereignty, even while suffering and dying.

The power of God is not like the power of human beings. We have seen over the years that, when human beings get power, they tend to use it in a selfish way, protecting themselves and getting themselves more power at the expense of others. This is not the power that we see in Jesus. We see an incredible power of suffering love, a power that is not afraid of the brokenness of this world and life, but a power that, through suffering, death and resurrection, proves itself to be stronger than the greatest fears that we have.

We live in a country where, thanks be to God, there is not much persecution for our faith. Sure, some people have been convinced that faith in God is intellectually shallow, some are prepared to make fun of the kid in school who talks about actually liking church, but it is not like in other places where people are attacked and cruelly treated because of their faith in Christ. Because our lives are not in danger every time we meet together to praise the Lord, we might forget how amazing it is that God has endured all these hardships on our behalf and in our place. And yet, the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ reminds us that God is not overcome by human cruelty, but stands strong above the worst treatment that we can ever imagine. Even though we may not ever have to experience that in this country and at this time, surely the God who can overcome such evil can give us strength to live in this world with confidence and joy in spite of the fact that things don’t always go so well. This Jesus that we see in the Gospels reminds us of what really matters, fills us with joy and gives us an inward drive to go forth and share what we have received with the rest of the world. Jesus does not just offer us some wise teaching or some ethical code where doing more good than bad is all that is asked of us, but takes our place in our relationship with God, offering what we never could. Let us give thanks to God and allow Him to fill us with the passion, the excitement and the joy that He is and let the Holy Spirit fill this place and transform us. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 17:20-26

08/22/10
John 17:20-26
Hudson UMC

At the end of Jesus’ longest prayer, He prays for unity; unity among the disciples and unity of the disciples with Him and the Father through the Spirit. Before we spend too much time on what Jesus says and what it implies, let’s take some time and think about the whole problem of unity.

If we look around at the world around us, it is not difficult to see the disunity that is rampant in our society. It seems that our country is becoming more and more politically polarized, with the conservative getting more conservative and the liberal getting more liberal. We talk on an international scale about how there are some countries that hate us and we hate them in return. Even within the state of Iowa there is some tension between those who were born and raised in cities as opposed to growing up on the farm. If we wanted, we could sit here and make quite a list of things that we, as human beings, are in disunity about.

When we think that Jesus places a high value on unity within the church, we might expect that when we look at Christians, we would be struck by their incredible unity in light of the disunity in the world. However, unfortunately, that is not the case. There are many Christians who perpetuate the harsh feelings between Catholics and Protestants, but that is not all. Among the first wave of Protestant churches, we have Lutherans, Presbyterian or Reformed, and Anglican or Episcopalian. There has been some effort to have some kind of unity between these bodies, but there is still much that divides them. Even the Methodist movement quickly became its own separate denomination, no longer organically connected to the Anglican church out of which it came. Outside of the mainline, it gets even less united. There are a countless number of different Baptist denominations, not to mention the overwhelming flood of non-denominational churches, who are bound in no organic way whatsoever to the larger tradition of the church.

All of this is more than just a little bit embarrassing when we remember that Jesus prays here for unity among His disciples like He does, in such strong and moving terms. And if that were not enough, think back to chapter thirteen. Right after Jesus had washed the feet of His disciples, including the one who was going to betray Him, after He had abased Himself to the dust and been willing to serve those who were far beneath Him, He told them, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” According to Jesus, and He is the one person that we ought to listen to, we are called to love one another with the very love of God, the same love that God showed us by going to the cross and suffering and dying on our behalf and in our place. We are called to have this love for no other reason than because they also belong to Christ and follow Him. It is not because we agree on every point of doctrine or practice, nor because we think they are worthy of our love, but simply because Jesus loves them.

I wonder if perhaps part of the reason that we have such a hard time being united in anything as human beings is because we think that the source of unity should be in all kinds of things except Jesus. We look to culture or ethnicity or socio-economic status or common interests to unite us and they work, to a degree. Most of us are not likely to, on our own initiative, go our of our way to associate ourselves with people who are radically different from us, or with those with whom we know we disagree. And yet, something that transcends all of our differences with one another is that we are all bound to Christ. One of the things I think is great about being a relatively small church in a relatively small town where there aren’t a huge number of other churches is that it forces people who are not all alike to be together and get to know one another. Not everyone in this church agrees on everything, but we get practice, if only a little bit, in getting along with others who are not like we are.

This last section of Jesus’ high priestly prayer is focused on unity. Who is Jesus praying for here? “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” Jesus is praying for everyone who is reached through the witness of the apostles, which is every Christian in the world. There is not a single Christian who was not reached by the witness of the apostles. Even if you were on a deserted island and a Bible washed up and you became a believer, it would have been through the written witness of the apostles. When we look at all the Christians in the world, we realize that we are something of a mixed bag. There are rich Christians and poor Christians, there are Christians of all different races and languages, on every continent, with a multitude of varying traditions, all of which are dedicated to the glory of God through Christ and in the Spirit.

So Jesus is praying that all the Christians in the world would be united. It might seem like an impossible goal, since the church is so splintered, but let us continue and see what else Jesus has to say. “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Twice, Jesus speaks of the world’s understanding changing because of His disciples. He says that, just as the Father dwells in the Son and the Son dwells in the Father, if the disciples dwell in the Father and the Son, the world may know that Jesus is sent by God. He also says that, because He has given to His disciples the same glory that the Father has given to Him, they may be one as the Father and Son are one; and if this is the case, the world may know that Jesus has been sent by God and that God truly loves them.

Brothers and sisters, if this is indeed true, that being united to one another as God the Father and God the Son are united is how the world will come to know God, it has tremendous consequences. It means that the very most important thing that we need to do, aside from our own loving of God, is to be united to those other people who love God. According to Jesus, this is the key to reaching the lost, for sharing the good news. In spite of the fact that Jesus comes out so powerfully and emphasizes the evangelistic power of the unity of believers, we can look around and see that most churches don’t use this as their main focus for outreach.

As a pastor and seminary student, I have met quite a few pastors and church leaders from a variety of churches and denominations. Most of their churches seem to have one of a handful of strategies for outreach. One is to not do anything, hoping that people will just walk in off the street. We might call this the “Field of Dreams” approach, because we are hoping that, simply because we have built it, whether it is our church building or a particular program, people will come. Another major strategy is to come up with clever marketing and advertising that will help to develop a church’s branding and recognition, making their church more widely known throughout the community. This is not necessarily bad, but it tends to be focused rather narrowly on a view of the gospel as a commodity, where we show someone their need and then offer to fill it.

A third method of outreach is to get really involved in people’s lives, either on a one-on-one basis or by doing extensive volunteering with various organizations or working to establish events to help people. Again, there is nothing wrong with doing these things, but, if we take Jesus seriously at this point, we need to realize that it is secondary.

According to Jesus, here and earlier, the chief mark of being a disciple is not your written statement of faith, nor is it your list of programs in the church, nor is it even the number of things you do in order to foster justice in the world. The chief mark that you are a disciple is that you love other disciples, that you are one with them like Jesus is with His Father. Jesus says that the world will know that we are His followers if we love each other. The flip side to this, of course, is that, if we don’t love one another, if, in spite of Jesus’ express declaration that we are to be united with all other believers, we insist on doing whatever we can to not be united to Him and to each other, what will the world think?

There is a church in Israel called the church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is supposedly built on the site of the empty tomb. It is here that Jesus was buried, it was here that the resurrection took place, it was here that God worked out the salvation of the world. If there was ever a place where Christians ought to be united, it is here. And there is plenty of opportunity for the people to practice being united because there are Christians from every tradition who worship there and they take turns leading worship. However, they do not take turns because they want to; every tradition thinks that they should be in charge. There is so much conflict between the believers there, at the very site where God raised Jesus from the dead, that the key to the church had to be given to the care of a Muslim. It is a depressing thought that even the resurrection does not always reconcile Christians with one another.

However, in spite of disunity, in spite of the fact that it seems that we have so long to go before we achieve any kind of outward unity in the church, there is a sense in which we are already united. After all, as those who believe in Jesus, we are united to Him as branches on a vine, and, guess what, every other believer is also united to Christ like a branch on a vine. This means that, regardless of whether our church structure shows that we are united to every other believer or not, that is precisely what we are. In Christ, we are truly one body. Now, it is something of an unusual body. It sometimes seems like, in the body of Christ, we have arms going one way, legs going another, eyes and ears not cooperating with one another. And yet, even in the midst of our dysfunction, we are indeed still one body, whether we like it or not. We are forever bound to all other believers; not just the ones we like, but the ones who drive us up the wall. We’re stuck with each other, so we’d better get used to the idea.

I want to direct your attention to one of the very last things that Jesus says here. We need to be very sure that we understand this because it is the last thing that Jesus will say to His disciples until He has been crucified and raised from the dead. He says, “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

This is one of the very most hopeful things that Jesus ever says. He has pointed out over and over again that He has declared the name of God to the people during His ministry on earth. What He has done here is promise that He will continue to do so. This is Jesus’ solemn assurance to us that He will not ever abandon us to our own disorder and conflict. Even if we continue to fail and continue to allow our petty likes and dislikes to divide us, even in the church, where we ought to be the most unified, Jesus will not abandon us, will not leave us to our own destruction, but will continue to make the name of God known in our midst.

There have been many times throughout church history where it has seemed that the word of God had departed forever, that God had abandoned His church. There was a time when it seemed that grace was being sold for money and the church was using salvation and condemnation as weapons to ensure that the people were obedient to them. And yet, God raised up people who dared to listen to God Himself and used them to remind the world of the power of grace and the love of God for us, even when we seem unlovable. There was a time when it seemed as though the Bible was under so much attack from all sides, with people twisting the text one way or denying its authenticity in another way, and even trying to bind up authentic Christian faith with political allegiance so that to stand against the government was made to be the same thing as standing against God. However, God has stood strong throughout those times and is now making it ever more clear that He will speak, even when we do not want to listen.

The point is that God is more ready to bring unity than we are to let Him, He is more ready to speak than we are to listen, He is more ready to move in our midst and regenerate us than we are to let Him. Indeed, God is ready to heal anyone and any group of people and often works much of this healing long before they notice it. This means that God’s grace is alive and well, even when it doesn’t seem like it, even when the world seems to be getting worse and worse, even when our world is ravaged by war and our economy has gone down the tubes. Remember, even when human beings were so evil as to crucify the Son of God who had come among them to heal them and make God’s name known in their midst, God’s grace was at work; in fact, it might have been more at work there than it ever has been before or since.

Brothers and sisters, there is hope for the future, and there is hope for today. It is not a hope that is based in our programs, nor is it a hope in our own creativity and our ability to solve problems. It is not a hope in ourselves at all, but a hope in the almightiness of grace, a hope that, in spite of all the evidence against it, this world is still God’s world and He will not let it go. Jesus could pray with this kind of confidence that the relations between people like you and me, believers who are grafted into Christ would begin to resemble the relations between the Persons of the Trinity, who are absolutely united in their differentiation, right at the moment of His betrayal. In the very next passage, Jesus is going to be betrayed, He is going to be taken away to die. In the midst of the bleakness, Jesus is confident that, as Paul has said, that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Let us join in that confidence in our lives. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 17:9-19

08/15/10
John 17:9-19
Hudson UMC

Today we are in the second of three Sundays digging through Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John chapter seventeen. Once again, as I was preparing to preach on this passage, I was astonished with how much information is packed into a relatively short chapter. The problem with passages like this, that are so completely full of content, is that they are sometimes so complicated that it is hard to really get into them and piece together what we need to know for today. Sometimes, all we want is a simple, straightforward passage, where we don’t have to work very hard to understand what it says and we can apply it to our lives without much trouble and without having to think much. However, it is precisely the passages that make us think, that push us to dig further than we might want to, that force us to submit ourselves to the text rather than submitting the text to ourselves, that we really begin to be open to God speaking to us.

Last week, when we considered the first part of this prayer, I emphasized the incredible solidarity that Jesus has with the Father. It was important because it means that, when we encounter Jesus, we are not just encountering a human being, or as is often said these days, “a great human teacher” like a Ghandi or a Mother Teresa, but the very living God, who had spoken to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets of the Old Testament. If this is the case, it changes the way we live. We do not just follow someone who is going to teach us a good way to live or someone who is going to teach us about God, but we follow God who has come to us as a human being. The stress last week was about the fact that it is God who has come to us as a human being.

This week, the stress is on the fact that God has come to us as a human being. If the last section of Jesus’ prayer showed us over and over again how Jesus is in absolute unity with the Father, this section shows us over and over again how He is in incredible solidarity with us. We talk about the fact that God loves us and that He came to earth, to walk with us, to teach us, and ultimately, to die and be raised for us, but is it possible that we have allowed this to become something we have heard and said so many times that we have let ourselves miss the absolutely astonishing thing that we believe?

I don’t know about you, but if I were the Lord of the universe, I don’t think I would be the same kind of God as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think that, because I like to spend a fair amount of time by myself, that I might have thought twice about creating the universe and people to live in it. When Adam and Eve couldn’t follow simple directions and not eat the fruit from the one tree, even when there were countless other trees to eat from, I don’t know for sure that I wouldn’t just say, “enough is enough,” and be done with it. When Cain killed his brother Abel out of jealousy, I don’t know if I would have had the compassion to protect him from avengers. If I got so mad that I would destroy the earth through a flood, I quite possibly would not go out of my way to save one particular family, especially if I realized that human nature hadn’t changed and things would probably just start all over again. In short, I could come up with a whole list of reasons why I wouldn’t do what God has done, and that is before I even begin to think about the whole history of Israel and their incredible stubbornness and sin.

When I think about the most amazing act of God, the coming to earth in and as the man Jesus, I really start to squirm. Why would God do that? Would I do that if I were God? Probably not. Why would I ever want to willingly limit myself like that? It would like a human being becoming a cockroach, only more so. Why would I intentionally endure all the hurts and trials of a human life, finally enduring some of the most savage treatment that human beings have ever committed and nailed to a cross to die? I can’t say that I would. When I think about this, I could begin to question if this is really what God has done. However, because I can no more doubt of truth of the gospel than I can doubt that I am alive, I instead am overwhelmed with the mercy, love, and patience of God and with the incredible conviction that is a very, very good thing that I am not God and that God is not like me.

So, in spite of the fact that our minds are overwhelmed at the fact that the almighty God of the universe would do what He has done, we rejoice because He has indeed done it. Even the psalmist, writing long before God made His compassion on humanity so clear and evident in Christ, wrote, “When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”

Just as I lifted up three statements of Jesus last week that showed His unbreakable connection with the Father, I want to lift up three statements of Jesus that show His incredible solidarity with us. “All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.” Jesus has spoken all throughout the gospel of John that He has glorified the Father by His deeds and words. When we remember that Jesus is truly God, we can understand this. After all, it is not surprising that God could glorify God. However, He then goes on and says here that He is glorified in His disciples, and not just the eleven He has around the table, but everyone who follows Him.

Imagine that. Jesus, God in flesh, is glorified in us. Again, I don’t know about you, but when I look at my life, I can come up with a whole list of reasons why I could imagine that God would not, or at least should not, be glorified in me. And yet, He says that it is the case. We might try to dismiss this amazing claim by saying, “Oh, he’s actually talking to the disciples, who were such mighty pillars of faith. Maybe, if I lived like they did, I could glorify Christ, but I don’t.” However, we need to remember that it was not until Pentecost that the disciples had any kind of real faith. Jesus is saying that He has already been glorified in his followers, even when they have shown over and over again that they do not get it, even when they are going to scatter that very night, even when one of them is going to directly deny Him three times before the sun came up.

I think that it might be good to think about it like this. Instead of the weakness of the disciples being any kind of hindrance to their ability to glorify Christ, maybe it is precisely because they are weak that they glorify Him. After all, as amazing as it might seem for God to be glorified by the best of the best, how much more incredible is it that God can take even our weakness and brokenness and transform it into His glory? Any fool can be made to look good because they surround themselves with the powerful. Only God almighty can show just how good He really is by surrounding Himself with the weak, transforming them. If someone was strong before they met God and continued in strength, nobody would ever know that God made a difference. However, if weak people like you and me encounter God and we are powerfully transformed so that our weakness is left behind and we live from day to day in the strength of God, it should be clear to everyone that our transformation is not our own but came from God. And if God can take someone like me and bring some good out of him, truly He is a glorious God.

The second thing that Jesus says that ties us together with Him in a serious way is, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” In previous sermons, I have spent a fair amount of time talking about what Jesus means when He talks about the world hating Christians and why that is, so I won’t emphasize that right now. Instead, I want to focus more on this idea of not belonging to the world.

In John, “the world” is a negative term. To speak of the world, or of things that are worldly is to already to interpret them in terms of hostility to God. Over and over again, Jesus says that the deeds of the world are evil, that the world hates Him, that He came into the world for the sake of judgment. However, there are other places where John talks about the world. He calls Jesus the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every person. John the Baptist exclaims that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that He is indeed the savior of the world. However, these two different uses of the concept of the world are not in conflict. It is not as if saying that Jesus loves the world while the world hates Jesus and His disciples are contradictory. Indeed, Jesus loves the world in spite of the fact that the world hates Him.

The point that is being made here, though, is that Jesus is not of the world. Indeed, He has come from His Father in heaven. He is not part of the evil in the world that is in contradiction to God, but is on God’s side in everything, because He is God in our midst. What is astonishing is that He declares that we are not in the world like He is not in the world. There is part of us that wants to say that we are in the world because we live here and we can look around and see the world all around us. And yet, in spite of all the evidence against it, Jesus assures us that we are set apart like He is, that we, by faith, have come to participate in His separation from the evil of the world. It is an interesting thing to remember. Jesus is saying that, even though it is our business as the church and as individual Christians to be about the business of reaching out to the world, we are not to let the world call the shots about what we say and do. The world is hostile to God. If the world calls the shots, God will be excluded from all our dealings with them. God is calling us to be involved in His ministry.

This leads us to our last major thing that Jesus says that shows us that we are bound to Him in a profound way. In fact, this might very well be the most important part of this part of the prayer for us. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Throughout the entire New Testament, the idea of participating in the mission of God is addressed in many different ways. Sometimes it is spoken of in terms of building the kingdom of God, sometimes it is spoken of as being involved in the transformation of the world. In John, the primary language to speak of our being involved in mission is our being “sent.”

Jesus was sent into the world by the Father, to become a human being, a specific man, to enter into our condition, to bear it upon Himself, to take what is ours from us and to give us what belongs to Him. He came to give of Himself for our benefit, even laying His life down for us. This is what it means for Jesus to be sent by the Father. That is the content that we should keep in our mind when we read, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” We have been sent into the world, but it is not as though we have our own mission that is somehow separable from the mission of Christ. It is indeed the mission of Christ being worked out in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit, who grafts us into Christ like branches on a vine.

There have been those who, when they have read the incredible ethical implications of the teaching of Christ, have said, “It is a great idea in theory. However, nobody could actually live like that,” and so they effectively dismiss Christ’s ethical teaching. The teaching that gets the most attention is from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

It is indeed true that Jesus’ teaching demands more of us than we often feel prepared to give, and yet, in spite of that, the life He describes is not truly impossible. After all, Jesus Himself lived that way. And yet, when we really look to see how it plays itself out, we realize that, even if it is possible to live this way, we may not want to. After all, all of this not resisting the evildoer resulted in Jesus being crucified. He prayed for His enemies, by saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” as they nailed him to the cross. It is possible to live like Jesus tells us to, but it just might mean that we will be mistreated and even killed.

The same is true of being sent by Christ like He was sent into the world. His mission had a lot of hardship, He was abused by many, and He did not have a whole lot of security and stability in His life. This is a very real picture of what our participation in His mission might look like. We might feel that this is above and beyond what we are capable of and we would be right. Nobody who is left to their own strength, or rather, their weakness, can do what Jesus calls them to do. And yet, Jesus has done it and has given us His Spirit so that we might join Him in His mission.

Jesus lived on earth as a particular human being, but now He has been resurrected and ascended into heaven. And yet, He is not just spiritually present in the world but is physically present in this earthly-historical reality. He is present in you and me. It is not impossible for Jesus to call people by a human voice, because He calls them through our human voice. It is not impossible for Jesus to reach the lost in this country or abroad in the midst of our humanity, because He does so every time we reach out to the lost or go to minister to people of foreign lands. We as the church are indeed the earthly-historical correlate to the act of God in Jesus Christ. What Christ has accomplished once and for all two thousand years ago, He is accomplishing continually in and through His people in the church.

We have been sent into the world, a world that is hostile to God, but we do not need to be afraid that we will fail in this mission because it is the very mission of God, it is a mission that, in the objective sense, God has already completed. We are walking on a difficult path, but is a path that Jesus Himself has walked already and so we can trust that we will not stumble or fall because it is the Lord’s path that we have been graciously allowed to walk. So, since we already have been sent into the world, let us go out and allow Christ to work out in our own life and community what He has already worked out once and for all in His life, death, resurrection and ascension. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 17:1-8

08/08/10
John 17:1-8
Hudson UMC

For the last several weeks, in fact, since right after Easter, we have been in the middle of John’s account of the Last Supper. Jesus is gathered together with His disciples, sharing the Passover meal and giving some final instruction. This one part of this one evening takes up a five full chapters. As we arrive in chapter seventeen, we might wonder if we are ever going to get past this seemingly endless stream of talking. Indeed, we will. In fact, once this prayer of Jesus is over, once this chapter is completed, the action will pick up tremendously. In fact, it almost feels as if we get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus. However, before all that takes place, Jesus prays. This is the longest prayer in the entire Bible and is commonly known as the “high priestly” prayer of Christ, where He speaks to God on our behalf. It is really a very exciting chapter, because it gives us a window into the relationship between the Father and the Son that we do not get anywhere else.

If you get nothing else out of this sermon and this passage, I hope that you are more and more convinced that it is impossible to completely separate Jesus from the Father. According to Jesus, He and the Father are joined with an unbreakable bond. He basically says this over and over again in this passage, but in different ways, looking at the same reality from different angles. I want to lift up three important ways that Jesus points out that He is utterly tied to the Father.

First, Jesus says, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” Jesus is saying that, when He is glorified, God is glorified. Some people will claim with great conviction that the man Jesus who walked the earth two thousand years ago never claimed to be God and that this was something that the church read into the simple life and teaching of Christ. There are only two ways that we can come to the conclusion that Jesus did not think He was God. The first is by doing what a group of people called the Jesus Seminar have done, which is go through the gospels and decide what Jesus certainly said, what He may have said, what He probably didn’t say and what He surely didn’t say. The problem with this way of doing things is that the scholars began by presupposing a radical separation between Jesus and the faith of the church and so they eliminated everything that Jesus said that might go against that presupposition. The other way that we might miss Jesus identifying Himself with God would be if we did not understand the full implications of what He said in places like this.

You see, Jesus is saying that, if God glorifies Him, He will glorify the Father. He is not saying this like you and I might. You and I might say, “God, if you make me popular, or if you make people listen to me, or if you give me lots of influence with people, I will let people know about you.” This way of speaking is almost like saying to God, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” as if God needed us to help Him out or else He would be in trouble. Jesus is saying that the glory of His name is absolutely tied up with the glory of God. If Jesus’ name is not glorified, it is not possible for God’s name to be glorified. More specifically, He says that it is because He has authority to give eternal life to human beings. By people like you and me coming to know God, and receiving eternal life, the world comes to know that God is not just a figment of our imagination but is real, living and powerful and has transformed our lives. But God did not do that in some way other than in and through Christ. It is not as though Jesus is simply a messenger that we listened to and met a God that we could have met some other way. In and through Christ we came face to face with God Himself. When we look deeply into the face of Christ we see the face of God. When we give praise to God, we do not give praise to some kind of abstract God, whatever that might be, but give praise to the one who has come to us as a human being, we give praise to the Father through Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

The next thing that Jesus says that binds Him to the Father is about how He understands salvation and eternal life. “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” This is really important for us to grasp. The question can be asked and has been asked, “What exactly is eternal life.” Throughout the gospel of John, Jesus has spoken about eternal life many times, but we might still walk away from the text confused, wondering if that is it. After all, Jesus has mostly spoken in such a way as to identify eternal life with believing in Him. Here we have Him saying that what eternal life is, is to know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom that one God has sent. So, we are supposed to know God, but doesn’t that seem a bit oversimplified? What about living a transformed life, what about having compassion on the poor, what about all the other things we talk about in the church and society? Doesn’t it seem that just knowing God is a little too easy, a little too simple?

It might, but we need to remember that the idea of “knowing” in the Bible is considerably more potent than it often is in modern society. When most of us talk about knowing something, we think in terms of information, knowing about something. We think about knowledge in terms of giving and receiving information that we can take or leave. When we learn about something we are not fundamentally changed. The knowledge can go into our heads and leave our hearts and lives alone.

This is not the case with knowing God. In the Old Testament, to “know” someone did not just mean that you met them, shook their hand, and made some small talk. It meant that you were united to them, that you had intimate, personal knowledge of them in such a way that you were forever bound to them. It is because of this that the Bible uses the word “know” to talk about marriage relationships. To truly know God is to be bound to Him in a deep and personal way. We need to remember what Jesus said in the very heart of this time with His disciples. He told them that, as those who followed Him, they were bound up with Him like branches on a vine. To know Christ is to be bound to Him so profoundly that you cannot be separated from Him. To know the one true God is not something that can be done in the abstract, it is not something that we can do without receiving the Holy Spirit, the very presence and being of God, into our lives and being grafted into Christ by that same Spirit.

When we understand the need to “know” God in this way, everything begins to make sense. We begin to see that all the different facets of the Christian life that we want to make sure are not ignored and left aside are caught up together in this knowing of God. Our knowing of God is not static, lifeless information, but dynamic, powerful, and personal interaction with the divine. When we receive the Holy Spirit into our very lives, the holiness of God presses up against our own unholiness and we begin to see that our lives are not all they could and should be, that we have not been as faithful as we are called to be, that we have ignored and even been a part of the oppression that reigns in so much of contemporary society. We begin to have our hearts and lives molded into the very image of the heart and life of Christ, where we begin to see through His eyes and feel with His heart. By being bound up with Christ, we do not become any less who we are, but more who we were meant to be than ever before because now our hardness of heart has been overcome by the love and mercy of God that has replaced our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh that can receive and return the love of God.

There is one more point I want to draw out in regard to what Jesus says in this passage. He said, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.” It is extremely important that we understand that Jesus is the one who makes the name of God known to us. Again, when the Bible speaks of us knowing the “name” of God, it does not mean simply that we know a word by which to call God, but that we actually have personal and intimate knowledge of God. Jesus is saying that it is He who has made God’s name known among the people of the world. What we need to understand is that this is an absolute claim.

It might help us to get our heads around what Jesus is saying if we take a moment and consider some of the things that He is not saying. Jesus is not saying that God is someone who lives inside of each of us simply because we are human beings and that He has simply awakened us to the potential that each of us already have and so is a savior in this way, because He has helped us to help ourselves. He is not saying that God is some immanent being that is so close to each of us that we have an intuitive knowledge of God already and that He just helped us to make sense out of the religious experience we have already had. Jesus is not the incarnation of our highest ideals of humanity, nor is He the incarnation of our moral code that we already believe. He is the incarnation of God, and, as the presence of God in our midst, turns our world upside down and teaches us what we never would have been able to teach ourselves.

A particular story from the Old Testament has been laying heavily on my heart recently. There is a moment in the life of Abraham where he is commanded by God to go to a mountain in the land of Moriah and sacrifice his son Isaac, the one that God had promised to give him and Sarah, and whose birth was an utter miracle. To the horror of many modern readers, Abraham obeys and takes Isaac on the journey. However, right before Abraham followed through, while the knife was raised, God stopped him and provided a ram to be sacrificed instead. There are many aspects to this story, several of which are fundamental to the development of the Jewish understanding of God which is so important to us as Christians, but the one that I think is the very most important in light of all that God has done, and the most important for us to understand today is the fact that Abraham did not have anything better to offer than his son. If Abraham were to think of what he could offer to God, nothing was dearer to him than his son, born to him in his old age and bearing the promise of God. And yet, when God interrupted Abraham and provided a substitute, it is as if God was saying to Abraham, “Even the best you have is not good enough. In fact, nothing that you come up with can satisfy me. However, I will not abandon you because of this, but I will provide a sacrifice of my choosing. Because it comes from me, I will accept it.”

When we encounter Jesus, we see that God is not interested in what we think is the best we can offer. It isn’t about us coming up with the great sacrifice, the great gift, the great and impressive donation. Instead, He provides for us, He spells out the terms of our relationship and, when we can’t live up to the standards that God Himself has laid out for us, which we can’t, He provides a substitute in Jesus and takes our place, offering Himself up for us and our salvation.

What does this have to do with Jesus revealing the name of God to us? It has everything to do with it, because in Jesus we see the very face of God and it is a face that we have not seen anywhere else and, indeed, can not see anywhere else. We see the face of a God who takes our ways of doing things, shows us that they are not sufficient, and then takes our place so that He would not have to be without us. We see a God whose mercy and compassion are not at all like we expect but are far greater than we would ever have dared to dream.

This is the very core of the Gospel. As Jesus Himself has said, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” We have been given to Jesus Christ and empowered by the very power of the Holy Spirit. I don’t know how often we really allow the absolute power of this idea sink in and change our lives. Do we really live from day to day in the knowledge and joy that the God of the universe, who has created everything that we can see and everything that we can’t, has not remained apart from us but has come among us as one of us and one with us, all at tremendous cost to Himself? He didn’t have to do that, but He did. God has existed since eternity past and lived for quite a long time before He chose to create the universe and people to live in it. God could have gone on forever without ever creating human beings like you and me, but He did create us for no other reason than that He wanted to, that He did not want to be God forever by Himself, but wanted to share His eternal and joyful being with you and me.

We always need to remember the fact that we do not live in a necessary world, that things could have been quite different than they are, that they might not have been at all, and yet they do exist and God does interact with us and make us His own. Just as there is nothing about us and about this created universe in which we live that could have forced God to create it, there is nothing that could ever have forced God to become incarnate, to come among us, to live, suffer and die, just for us, people that, strictly speaking, God does not need, but that He loves. Nothing we have done or could do could ever tie God’s hands, could ever make Him do something for us. This makes the mercy and compassion of God all the more glorious and amazing. Jesus did not have to come, but He did, God did not have to take on human flesh and live in the pain and limitations of this world, but He did. Certainly God, who is immortal and can do anything He wants to do and does not have to do anything He doesn’t want to do, did not have to die, but He did. It wasn’t something God did because He had to, but because He wanted to, because He loves us that much, that He was willing to put His very self on the line for us and our salvation.

This is how much our God loves us. What greater joy could there be than the fact that we, though so little and insignificant in the comic view of things, are the beloved of God the almighty? What more can we ask than that God has entered into our suffering, taken it upon Himself, and promised that the pain of this life will be done away with someday and that we will dwell with Him in a new heaven and new earth forever, continually being amazed at the riches of the depths of God? Let us encourage one another and pray that God would impress Himself upon us so fully and so consistently that we would live day by day in the knowledge that God has loved us more than He loves Himself. Let us pray.

AMEN

John 16:25-33

08/01/10
John 16:25-33
Hudson UMC

In this passage, we have the very last conversation that Jesus has with his disciples before He is crucified and resurrected. All of chapter seventeen will be the prayer of Jesus, but as soon as that is over, Jesus will be betrayed and taken captive. The disciples will not have any more opportunities to interact with their Lord. These words are the last things we hear the disciples say to Jesus until after the resurrection. Though Jesus’ words are comforting and powerful, we might wish that the disciples had made a better showing.

“I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father.” What things has Jesus been saying in figures of speech? He has been speaking of being in the Father and the Father being in Him, He has spoken of how He will not leave the disciples as orphans, He has spoken of the bond between Him and His disciples as if it were like branches on a vine. He has said many things figuratively and, because we live on the other side of the resurrection, because we live in an age where the Holy Spirit has been given, we can probe into those figures of speech and begin to make sense out of them, where the disciples were clueless at the time. Jesus is saying that there will come a time when He will speak and there will no longer be need for figures of speech. As we will see, clearness of speech is all that the disciples wanted, or at least, all they thought they wanted.

“On that day you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” This is really a marvelous promise for us. It would be one thing to say that Jesus will ask the Father for us because He is the Son of God who must seem a whole lot more important in the eyes of God than ordinary folks like you and me. In fact, since Jesus has shown us how much He cares for us, it really wouldn’t be that bad a thing at all to have Him ask the Father for us for whatever we need. And yet, Jesus wants to make it absolutely clear to us that He is not the only one who is loved by the Father. The Father loves us, too. It is true that, when we pray to the Father, we do so in the name of Christ because, as Paul says, Christ is the one mediator between human beings and God; however, we get to pray to God and God has promised to hear our prayers. God is asking for us to pour ourselves out to Him in prayer. We do not need to worry that we are not good enough because, as we are united to Christ, we are loved by God with a love that will not let us go.

“I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.” This is one of those times where Jesus explains, just a bit more clearly, who He is and why He matters. There have been several times when Jesus has made statements like this and the Jewish authorities wanted to have him killed on the spot, because He was making Himself equal to God. He had said things like, “Before Abraham was, I am,” taking the divine name from the Old Testament upon Himself. “The Father and I are one,” which made the people take up stones to kill Him, saying that they were stoning Him “for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.” If Jesus had said this in public, that He came from the Father and has come into the world and that He was leaving the world to go to the Father, the people would surely have tried to kill Him again. People just don’t say these kinds of things. For someone to say things like this is to say that they have some kind of special connection with God. This simply did not fit in with the Jewish mindset.

“His disciples said, ‘Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! Now we know that you know all things, and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God.’” This sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Isn’t this a great declaration of faith, of confidence in Jesus? It sure seems to be, and it seems to be clear that the disciples thought so as well. They are so proud that they finally get it, that they finally can see clearly who Jesus is and why He has come among them. They realize now that, as the one who has come from the Father and is returning to the Father, they have no business questioning Him, making Him answer their questions, as if they held any kind of authority over Him. Now, the disciples are absolutely convinced and certain that Jesus is not just an ordinary man, but one who has come from God to them.

And yet, in spite of how good this confession seems, in spite of all the good things the disciples have to say, in spite of the overwhelming faith and piety they seem to have, Jesus is not totally convinced. “Jesus answered them, ‘Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone.’” Another one of the things that Jesus has done several times throughout the gospel of John is allow people to make claims that show that they think that they or their circumstances are not really so bad and then respond in such a way that shows that Jesus knows the truth and knows it better than the others do. He does this when He asks the Samaritan woman at the well to bring her husband. She says that she does not have a husband and Jesus responds, saying, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband;’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”

Another wonderful example of this kind is when the Jewish leaders were challenging Jesus. Jesus tells them that they should do what they have heard from the Father. They respond by saying, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus corrects them a bit, saying, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did.” They back and forth a bit more and finally Jesus comes out and says, “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” Even though the leaders truly thought they were the rightful heirs of Abraham, they behaved as though they were the children of the devil. Jesus knew what the people could not.

The same is true with what He says here to His disciples. The disciples truly thought that they believed that Jesus was the one who came from God. To their credit, they probably were more convinced of this at this moment than they ever were before. To them, it seemed like a total life-changing revelation to have Jesus speak plainly for once. And yet, Jesus knows what the disciples could not. “Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed, it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone.” Jesus calls into question the faith that His disciples think they have. Do they really believe that Jesus is from God? Do they really? If they really believed that Jesus was from God, would they run away from Him in His darkest hour? Would they scatter, each one to their home in fear, if they really believed that Jesus was from God? If Jesus was from God, there should be no need to panic because God is greater than the schemes of human beings.

Jesus is saying that, in spite of their own diagnosis, the disciples do not really believe like they think they do. The pressure will come and, instead of standing strong in faith, truly being willing to share in Christ’s sufferings, even here and now, it will be revealed that they are weak and broken people like you and me, who are afraid of trouble, who do not want to suffer, and who do not always follow through on their promises.

It is easy for us to romanticize the apostles, who first took the word of God to the people. We read about their ministries in the book of Acts where we see them healing the sick, raising the dead, and standing boldly before mighty leaders, declaring the good news to them. They endure beatings and hardships the like of which we have never seen. It is easy to marvel at their faith, to think that there is something about who they are as human beings that makes them so faithful, so responsive to God’s call. However, the gospels tell us over and over again that the disciples who followed Jesus were nothing special. In fact, they might even have been less qualified to be leaders of God’s people than most. They had no formal training, they were not well-known for their deep spirituality, they were not particularly outstanding at anything. And yet God took people like that, people who were no better than us, and transformed them into His messengers, into people who would carry the Word of God to the nations and transform the world by their witness. When we see the apostles doing their miraculous ministry, we should be encouraged because there is nothing about you and me that would stop us from doing the very same things, because we, too, are disciples of Christ, who are filled with the Holy Spirit and bound to Christ like branches on a vine.

One of the glorious things about the gospel is that it shows us that the moments where human beings come off at their worst are the very same moments where God comes off at His best, and, because God’s grace has penetrated into the very depths of humanity and raised it up to new heights of glory, it ends up being the best thing for humanity. It sounds somewhat paradoxical to say that, when humanity is at its worst, it ends up being the best for humanity, but it is true. If the good news of Jesus Christ came to us in such a way that we were not exposed to the depths of our evil and shown to be not as good as we try to convince others that we are, we would always be in doubt as to whether or not God meant to make those promises to us. So long as we think that there are skeletons in our closet, so long as there is still a doubt as to whether or not God really knows how bad we can be, there will be doubt as to whether God’s grace really covers all our sins.

It is important to notice that this is exactly what Jesus is doing here. He is pointing out that they do not have nearly as much faith as they think they do, but He is not mocking them, He is not poking fun at them, and, perhaps most important of all, He is not disappointed in them, as if He expected them to have gotten it by now and that they are failing Him and letting Him down in that failure. Jesus does not say that they will scatter to their houses and leave Him alone and so prove to be unworthy of Him. Instead, He says that, even though His disciples, His closest friends, will leave Him alone, He will not truly be alone. “Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.” Even though it will seem, to all observers, that Jesus will be completely and totally abandoned, it is not so. Jesus knows that, even when the best that humanity can offer fails, God is still strong, God is still faithful, and God will be with Him, even when His best friends aren’t.

Listen to the last thing that Jesus says here. “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” Let us take this bit-by-bit. Jesus is saying that He has told His disciples that they were going to fail, that they were not even going to be able to keep the promises they made so confidently that very night in order that, in Him, they would have peace. Even though the disciples are still convinced that they are going to be strong enough, Jesus knows better. He knows that they are going to fail and He wants to make sure they know that ahead of time so that they do not lose hope when they do fail. He says that it is in Him that they are promised peace. They are not granted to have peace in themselves, as if they could have peace in the face of their failure. Instead, they are granted peace because they are in Christ and Christ is victorious in spite of our failure.

“In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” This must have sounded odd in the ears of the disciples, who were just told that Jesus was going away to die and that, in spite of their best efforts, they could not prevent it. I wonder if these words rang in their ears when they saw Jesus on the cross. What a paradox, to have a man who is actively dying at the hands of his enemies, assuring his friends that he has conquered the world. And yet, in spite of this foolishness, this is exactly what Jesus is saying.

I think that we need to hear the words that Jesus shared with His disciples today. We live in a culture that measures us by how well we achieve, by what we accomplish and by our reliability. If we make too many mistakes with too many people, people begin to get the idea, for right or wrong, that we cannot be trusted, that we might let them down and we become something of an outsider. We want to make sure that we are seen as reliable, strong and committed people. If we promise something, we want to make sure we can follow through with it. We get offended if anyone calls our sincerity or faithfulness into question. And yet, this is exactly what Jesus is doing here. He is calling the faith of the disciples into question. In a sense, He is actually undermining their confidence in themselves. But He does not do that to depress them or to make them feel like they are failures. Instead, He does this to make them redirect their faith and hope. It is as if Jesus is saying to the disciples, “You think that you really believe now, but you will all run away. Don’t feel bad, but take courage because I have conquered the world! Therefore, put your trust, not in yourself, not in your ability to do good or to stand strong, but in me, even when I appear crucified before you, for though I will die, I will be raised from the dead and the Advocate will continue my ministry in you.”

What a blessing and a relief to be included in a promise like this! What a relief to know that our standing in the eyes of God is not dependent on how well we get our act together, but on the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. What a joy to know that we have been united to Christ, who has already conquered the world. He was the victorious one even before He was crucified, even when it looked like He was defeated. In the midst of this world of space and time, where it so often feels like things are against us and that we have nowhere to look for hope, we can cling to the fact that our Lord has conquered the world, even when He is hanging on a cross, so that, in spite of our failures and shortcomings, in spite of our desire to do more and our constant disappointments, we trust that our victory is not in us at all, but in the one who has bound us to Himself with a love that will not let us go. Let us leave this place and live lives of praise for the one who calls us to do the impossible and then does it in and through us. Let us pray.

AMEN