You choose, fear or love?

 February 20 2022

John 5:1-24

         This past while I have been thinking a lot about my friends that I met through helping out with the prison ministry at Belmont Correctional. Ever since Covid reared its ugly head, the prison, understandably, has had to put a stop to a lot of the programs like Kairos prison ministry. It was through Kairos that I got to meet some really great brothers in Christ who reside behind prison walls. I hope that they remember the love that we have for them and the things they were taught while we spent time with them.

         It is interesting how the Kairos ministry is set up. Out of the prison population of around two thousand men, the chaplain will select eighteen or twenty-one men to be part of a Kairos weekend which begins on a Thursday afternoon and lasts until Sunday afternoon. During that time, a team of men who have been meeting for eight weeks prior to the Kairos weekend, come into the prison from the outside, most of whom are not pastors. The team from the outside comes in to, first, show their love to a group of men who need to be reminded that even though they have been incarcerated, God still loves them and desires to have a relationship with them. The way that this love is expressed is through cookies, lots and lots of cookies. The team bakes and asks for cookies in order that every resident gets at least one dozen homemade cookies which means that we take with us at least two thousand dozen cookies. That’s a whole lot of love.

         Yet, there is more to the weekend than just eating cookies. There are a series of talks that are given to the selected group of men that help them come to have faith in the grace offered by Jesus and how they can keep their faith after the weekend is over. The first talk that this select group of residents hear is a talk concerning the choices that these men make. Now, its seems a little strange to talk about choices to a group of men who have had many of their choices taken from them. They don’t get to choose what they will wear or what they will eat. They don’t get a say in where they will sleep which is with two hundred other men in a dormitory lined with bunk beds. In spite of most of their choices taken from them there is one very important choice they do get to make and that is that they get to choose who it is that they will run with while they are at prison. Who they hang out with is going to be one of the biggest factors of whether or not they will be able to keep their faith in Jesus alive while they do their time behind prison walls. What is interesting about this choice that the residents must make, just who it is that they will be spending time with, this choice is not only vital for them it is just as important for those of us here on the outside. The truth that is found behind prison walls is the same truth found within the walls of our homes, who a person listens to and allows to influence their life is one of the single greatest factors of keeping their faith in Jesus.

         As we come to the fifth chapter of John we see how John is now going to address just what it is that keeps the glorious future that he has described in the first four chapters from happening. The first issue John is touching on is the first subject we addressed when we spoke to the residents of Belmont, we have a choice to make. We have to choose just who it is that we are going to run with, just who it is that we are going to allow to influence us, because it is this choice that makes an incredible difference in our faith. The story that John uses to communicate this point begins when Jesus goes up to Jerusalem to attend a feast. While he is there he walks past a pool of water located by what is called the Sheep Gate. This is a place where those who were lame, paralyzed and blind would come to find healing in the pool of water. The belief was that when the water in the pool would be stirred up, perhaps by the wings of angels, then if those who suffered along the edge of the pool entered the water they would be healed. We are told that there was a man who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years. Now, right here, I believe that John is giving us a clue that unlocks this story because this is such an unusual number. As people learn pretty quick when the read the Bible, the length of time that is most often spoke about is forty, forty days, or forty years. Why is this number thirty-eight? Well, if you read the second chapter of Deuteronomy you find that thirty-eight years is the length of time that it took for the generation of people of Israel who had rebelled against God to perish in the wilderness. You see, the reason that it took almost forty years for Moses to get to the Promised Land wasn’t that he wouldn’t stop and ask for directions but rather the reason it took this long is that he had to wait for all those who angered God with their unbelief to die off. This story of the unbelief of the people that God had rescued from slavery, this plays in the background of the story of Jesus healing of this man who was paralyzed. The question John wants us to consider is this: will this man be able to hold on to his faith in Jesus?

         I love how Jesus heals this man. I mean, he first asked him if he wants to be healed, isn’t that a bit strange? Doesn’t it just make sense that if this paralyzed man is at this pool known for healing that he is there in hopes that he is going to find a way to walk again? Yet, in spite of what appears to be obvious, Jesus is there asking the question, “Do you want to be healed?” The man does not reply with a “Yes” or a “No”, he just explains that he has no one to put him in the pool when it is stirred up. Imagine the frustration of seeing the waters become stirred but being unable to move into that healing. But here is Jesus who is bringing healing to this paralyzed man right where he is at. Jesus tells the man to take up his bed and walk and just like that the man takes up his bed and he walks off.

         It is right here that we have to pause our story for a moment to ask just why did Jesus insist that this man take his bed with him? I mean, Jesus had to know that it was the Sabbath and if this man was seen to be carrying anything on the Sabbath the powers that be would have a fit. Maybe though, that was the very reason why Jesus told the man to carry his bed so that in doing so he would be proclaiming that God had come in a powerful way into this man’s life. When this man was stopped and questioned as to why he was carrying his bed he had a choice to make. Would he answer with a story of how God in his mercy had set him free from an almost forty year prison sentence? Or would he choose instead to succumb to the fear of the religious authorities? Well, it is quickly found out that instead of taking the moment to testify to God’s power this man instead takes this opportunity to throw Jesus under the bus. The man says the only reason I am carrying this dumb bed is that the guy who healed me told me to do so, this is the guy’s story in so many words. Think about what he is saying. There is no mention of God in his story. Wouldn’t you think that if you hadn’t been able to walk for thirty-eight years and then one day you had become healed that, you know, maybe God would be somewhere in the conversation? The guy is speaking to a Pharisee who is one of the religious elite, one of those who thought that God had to be pretty happy to have a guy like him on his side yet in spite of being in the presence of this supposed godly man the man who had been healed can’t even bring God up when he speaks to him. Isn’t this a little odd? Yes, it is not a little odd it is very much odd and that is what John is trying to make sure we understand about this situation. 

         This conversation of this man who was healed and the Pharisee is just as odd as the situation John has already pointed us to, the situation of the people of Israel refusing to enter into the Promised Land. The reason they wanted nothing to do with this gift that God had to give to them is that twelve spies had been sent out to check out the Promised Land and when they returned with their report, ten of them cried out that the land was full of giants and scary things and there was just no way that they would be able to conquer them and survive to live there. What they were focused on is what they could do under their own power and their own strength totally forgetting that their own power and their own strength had nothing to do with them being free in the first place. These people had totally drawn a blank about God coming down to Egypt through his servant Moses and making a way through the sea for his people to escape. They had no recollection of how God had made bread fall from heaven so that they could eat and how God had brought water from a rock so that they would not perish from thirst. No, just like the man who had been healed, the miracles they had personally experienced vanished into thin air. How could this be? The answer is that fear brings about a kind of spiritual forgetfulness. You see, when those ten spies came back from the Promised Land all they could remember were those things which frightened them. This fear made them forget all of the great things about the land, that it was a land of milk and honey. They forgot that it was a land that had been promised to them and had not God made good on all his other promises? Hadn’t God told them that he was going to set them free and then through wonders and miracles do just that? This episode is spoken of in the third chapter of the book of Hebrews where the writer of Hebrews first quotes from the ninety-fifth psalm which reads, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore, I was provoked by that generation, and said, “They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.” The writer of Hebrews says that from this we should, “Take care so that there will not be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” This is what John is telling us about this man that Jesus healed. When he encountered the Pharisees, this man was filled with fear. He was filled with fear because the Pharisees, were the rule keepers and if you break the rules then you should be afraid, very afraid. So, when this man that Jesus healed encountered the Pharisee, he was surrounded by a system which was powered by fear. The God of the Pharisees was a God who was going to get you if you step out of line, if you go against the status quo. So, there amongst all that fear it was easy for this man that Jesus had healed to forget, to forget the God who had healed him just as when his ancestors had done when they encountered the fear of the Promised Land. Surrounded by their fear they too forgot the God who had set them free and had given them a new life. When we know this it isn’t hard to understand that when Jesus finally runs into the man he healed, he had some pretty harsh words for him. Jesus tells him, “See, you are well, Stop sinning, don’t sin anymore, that nothing worse might happen to you.” Jesus knew that this man had a bad case of unbelief even though Jesus had not that long ago had healed him. This unbelief was what the writer of Hebrews calls the deceitfulness of sin, and this is what Jesus is addressing when he tells this man to go and sin no more. Jesus is trying to remind this man that when Jesus had spoken to him, it was God, the Father, who had worked in his life. Jesus pleads with this man, can’t you see that you are well, stop allowing fear to take your belief from your heart because if you don’t you will experience a greater tragedy than just being paralyzed for thirty-eight years which is that he would never enter into the rest and peace that God had to offer him. He would end up a man who had been healed of a physical paralysis only to find himself being paralyzed by fear, unable to be free from the agony of life lived under the power of fear. Yes, his his immovable legs had been healed but what he needed is for his heart to be moved by this act of God’s mercy so that now that he had experienced God’s love for him he could be set free from the fear which oppressed him.

         Sadly, it appears, that the message of Jesus could not penetrate the hardness of this mans heart. We are told that the man went away and told the Pharisees that it was Jesus who had healed him. Jesus countered this man’s story by saying that the healing was the work of his Heavenly Father and because of his heavenly Fathers work he then was able to work the miracle that he did. The miracle that happened was to be a way to bring new life to this paralyzed man not just a physical healing but a new life that had encountered the mercy and love of God. Sadly, this did not happen at all because of this thing called fear.

         The point I believe that John is making is that after you have encountered the power of God, you must be careful to not hang out with people who are fear mongers, people who think fear is a great motivator to get people to tow the line. All that fear will do is fester and become a deadly unbelief. What is needed is to surround ourselves with people who know that love is really what life is all about because as John tells us in his first letter, the fourth chapter, when we love each other then God lives in us and his love is made perfect in us. What it means for love to be made perfect in us means that this love does in us what it is supposed to do which is to drive out fear. This is what John goes on to say that this love is perfected in us when we have confidence for the day of judgment because there is no fear in love. Fear has to do with punishment so whenever we fear this means that God’s love has not achieved what it is supposed to do. There is a reason that John counters the story of fear and unbelief of the man that Jesus healed with the teaching of Jesus that whoever hears his word and believes that word will have eternal life. The word that Jesus speaks is the command to love. When we hear that command to love then God comes to live with us, his eternal life becomes ours. So, as Paul says in the eighth chapter of Romans, If God is for us, then who can be against us? And if we love then there is no need to worry about judgment day because we are already living the life of eternity. 

         You see, there’s a real danger if we aren’t in a fellowship of love where we love and are loved by others. If we just hang out with the people of this world caught up in all of the fear that’s flying around then we are going to find ourselves driven by that fear and in that fear we are going to lose sight of God. Focused on fear were going to find it easy to  forget what God has done for us, afraid to testify to the world to the greatness of our God. This is how fear becomes unbelief which is really the deceitfulness of sin. So, we need to do a fear check once in a while and ask ourselves just how much have we allowed fear to influence us? We have to ask ourselves does what we hear in the news and on social media cause fear to take over our life? If we find that fear has made its home with us perhaps its time to shut off the voices that speak of fear and instead hear again the voice of God who speaks his word, a word that commands us to go and love. Go out and love on somebody, maybe bake some cookies, and in doing so discover once again that when you love, right there, God is with you. Allow the love of Christ which was shown to you upon the cross to do what it is supposed to do in your life, cast out all your fear and in its place discover the faith which leads to eternal life. To God be the glory!Amen!

In a Relationship-with God

 February 13 2022

John 4:1-30

         My wife and I have three grown children ranging in ages from twenty-five to thirty. Our middle child, Sarah has a significant other but the other two, Elizabeth and Matt are still single. Now, my wife and I are concerned about our children being in a relationship because, you know, we would really love to have grandchildren some day. Yet we understand, dating is so different than it was when we met. I mean, now the way that you meet prospects is through a dating app. I cannot even fathom what it must be like to meet somebody like this, having to set up a profile and then having to look at somebody else’s profile and hoping that when you finally meet each other in person that the other person was as least as honest as you were.

         While I’m not real certain about the online dating that my kids use, I also realize that every age his its way of helping people get connected. My wife and I met through a mutual friend who set us up and hey, it worked out because thirty-six years later we are still happy and in love. In ancient times though, their dating app was your local neighborhood watering hole, the well where women would go and fill their jars. There, away from the judgmental glances of the young girls fathers, a young boy could strike up a conversation which might lead to something. This is the way that Abraham’s servant found a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac and also how Isaac’s son, Jacob found his wife and how Moses ended up meeting his wife. So, while it may not be evident to us, those in the original audience of John’s gospel would most likely have understood that Jesus meeting a woman at a well had undertones of a dating scene. What we know about dating is that when a person goes in search of a significant other they do so because of the possibility of a future with them. So, its reasonable to assume that this woman was there at the well in the middle of the day hoping that this handsome stranger sitting there resting from his journey might be the one who would change her future. She was searching for a future because her past had become a burden she carried with her in the present. From her own admission, she was a person who had no luck in finding someone who would love and care for her. Six times she had sought someone out to hang with her for the long haul but to no avail. The tragedy of her situation which might be hard for us to grasp is that for a woman in her world, being without a man to provide for her, to give her security, meant that she would have been constantly uncertain of how she was going to survive. She lived in a man’s world where a woman did not enjoy the rights and privileges that they have today; they were always at the mercy of men to provide. So, imagine the trauma she endured as each man she entered into a commitment with either had died or moved on, each time leaving her alone and scared, unsure of where she would go to find just the basic sustenance. Currently, we are told in our story, this woman found herself merely in the company of a man not her husband which is told not so that we might wag our finger at her but so that we might be struck with the desperation of her situation.

         It was at this depth of her despair that this woman saw Jesus sitting at the well and grabbing her jar she ran to see just who this was that was resting there. This stranger very politely asked her for a drink of water. As he spoke she could tell by his accent that he was from Judaea and she asked him why would he, a Jew, ask her, a Samaritan, for a drink. Here we begin to understand that John desires that we not only know that this story is about a woman but how this woman represents the people of Samaria. Samaria was the area that was once part of the Promised Land, the part that the people of ten of the tribes of Israel had claimed for themselves leaving the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin to have the land around Jerusalem. This northernmost land where God’s people lived became known as a land full of idolatry which had gotten so bad that God allowed wave after wave of foreigners to invade it until the people became vastly different in their beliefs than those who lived in Judaea. Just as the woman had sought someone who could ease her anxiety and worry over her existence so too had the people of Samaria sought out ways to manipulate the powers of nature so that their worries and concerns over their safety might be appeased. Again and again they chased after the different ways, different powers, offering up themselves and all that they had all to find something to give then relief from the gnawing unease of their life. Yet, just as in the case of the woman, none of these gods they chased after ever delivered on what they promised. In the end, all the people of Samaria had was an emptiness that longed to be filled.

         So, yes, this woman and her people were a people with a past but Jesus was a man who offered them a future. This future was a future where their past longings would at last be satisfied. Jesus explains to her that he is the gift of God, a present from the Present One, the one who was given to give a life which satisfied. Jesus the gift was given to save the world, to bring us into the safest place, the very life of God. Jesus offers this woman the living water, a life in the Spirit who would wash over her and lead her out into the ocean depths of the love of God. 

The woman does not understand Jesus because her life of earthly sorrows had no room for heavenly joys. How can this be, she wonders, that the love of God might come in and flood my life; I am a woman with a past. Yet, here is Jesus offering her a future. A future saturated and overflowing with the life and love of God, the life of eternity. This life and love would wash over her in wave after wave until her life would be awash with love, flowing and overflowing her life in a torrent of love. Such love, of course could not be hidden but would be a reality that could not be dismissed, just as a flood cannot be ignored. This new reality which would be so evident would be known to be true because it is a reality that would be experienced and known to be the truth. 

 What Jesus offered this woman was the true way of life, the life of the eternal God. So she could come to know that life is more than a daily struggle, of lugging water and searching for a meal. Life could be known as a life maintained and sustained by the God who loved her, a God whose love washed continually over and through her life. This is the future Jesus offers to this woman with a past, a past plagued by an endless struggle to figure out what to eat, or what to drink or what to wear or where to live. Jesus was holding out a future of love so that she could leave her anxiety and worry in the past. No earthly relationship could give her such a future that she thirsted for because what we all are thirsting for can only be given to us from heaven.

         So, yes, she was a woman with a past. Jesus knew her, he knew her past. Jesus asked her to go and call her husband to come and meet Jesus at the well. The woman replied that she had no husband to which Jesus countered with the revelation that he already knew that the one she was living with was not her husband and that she had had five husbands before this one. You see, Jesus was there with her in her pain, in her hurt, in her anxiety and worry, Jesus was there and he knew her longings. And Jesus knows not only her longings but our longings as well. This is why he was given, to take all of that pain and hurt and make it his own upon the cross. Jesus came to take all the worst that this world has to offer so that he could offer us something so much better, a future secure in the love of God. A future given so that we could leave our past in the past. 

The woman can only respond with what she knows of, the past. Thus for her such a man who knows what he knows can only be a man of God, a prophet. So caught up in what is past and passing away she believes it is her duty to dredge up the old controversies, the old hurts surrounding the worship of God in Jerusalem.These were controversies that were rooted in the insecurity of not knowing God, of somehow believing that if only they could worship at the right place, do all the right things, say all the right words and sing all the right songs then, just maybe God would show up and show his people his favor. What the problem was was that people had always been afraid to step into the ocean depths of God’s love but as we well know, the ocean cannot be known from the shoreline. Jesus came to move us from a worship of sacrifices to a worship of the offering of ourselves to be channels of God’s overflowing love. Now is the time to be drawn into the river of life, the Spirit, this is what Jesus tells the woman. Jesus says in so many words, allow the Spirit to wash over you and through you and out of you until your life becomes part of the great flood of love, a reality which cannot be hidden, a truth waiting to be experienced. When you allow yourself to be drawn into this life and love of God, to give your life to be a channel of the love of God, there you will discover God the Father who has been searching for you all along. So, when we step into the ocean what we find is that the ocean comes washing over us in wave after wave of love.

The woman Jesus encountered and the people she represented, they had searched high and low for a god that would give them a life without anxiety or worry. This was their past. But here is Jesus holding out a future, a future where we find that God is searching for us. The God who searches for us is the God who gave us Jesus, a gift sent out to seek and to save the lost, those lost in a past of empty longings and demanding thirst. To those entrapped by fear on the shoreline, Jesus searches us out and offers us a taste of that water, a taste that satisfies yet leaves us always longing for more. This longing makes us leap into the waves to be carried out, to find ourselves found by the one who gave us the gift, a gift of our future which allows us to make our past the past. What about you? Are you thirsty for more? Are you ready to leave your past in the past and take a deep dive into the wet and wonderful future Jesus is offering you? May you find your thirst quenched by God today! Amen!

 

Living in the Light

 January 23 2022

John 2:23-4:21

         As many of you know, I am a really big football fan. I watch college football, “Go Buckeyes”, as well as NFL which means during the season watching three games on Sunday, one game on Monday and then one game on Thursday; as I said, a lot of football. Last year, as you might recall, it was very unusual to watch football because there were no fans because of Covid. Some stadiums took to piping in fan noise which, I’m sorry, is just not the same. So, this year, it was such a great relief to have the stadiums packed with screaming fans. The contrast between last year and this year is really profound; the excitement level, the intensity of the players, all of it is so different. Who knew that thousands of people, many wearing their favorite fan gear, some with face paint and body paint, no matter the weather, all screaming their heads off, its truly unbelievable. Of course the fans also bring their hand-painted signs promoting their favorite players. And last, but not least, there is the always expected sign with “John 3:16” scrawled across it in some bright paint. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this sign while watching a football game. I wonder just how people decide that today is there day to carry the sacred John 3:16 sign to the game. I also wonder just exactly what is the point of it. Do they believe that some lost soul in quiet desperation will upon seeing their sign, mute their football game, go hunting for a Bible and upon finding out that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life and upon realizing this truth will at last come to faith and be saved? Of  course, you might say, this is what the gospel is all about a simple faith in Jesus. Or is it? What if I told you that this third chapter of John, where John 3:16 is from, is really about Jesus speaking out against a simple faith that you or I can conjure up with our own wherewithal. 

         You see, there’s this guy named Nick who came to Jesus by night to tell him of how he had come to believe that Jesus is from God but guess what, Jesus was not impressed. There were probably a number of reasons why Jesus was skeptical of this simple faith of Nick, the first being that Nick came at night, a time of day when most people ought to be off of the streets and the second being that Nick was a member of the religious elite, those known as the Pharisees. These two things had to send up red flags all over this visit from Nick.

         Nick, being nothing but polite, begins his talk with Jesus giving Jesus a compliment telling Jesus that he and his friends could easily tell that Jesus is a teacher from God. They have figured this much out because they have watched Jesus perform miracles and perhaps word of the wine that flowed from the water jars at a wedding, these rumors had been circulating around. All of these things that Jesus did were proof that he had to have been raised up by God, a verified prophet. God had to be with Jesus, of this Nick and his fellow Pharisees were absolutely certain.  Now, Jesus, as John points out, wasn’t swayed by the flattery of Nick because Jesus knew what was in people and Jesus most assuredly knew what was in Nick. How did Jesus know what was going on in the heart of Nick? Well, just by showing up under cover of darkness, Jesus knew that Nick was afraid, afraid to be seen by those who would not look favorably at Nick even making contact with this rebel Jesus. Fear, as Jesus knew so well, is part of a life lived solely in what Jesus calls the flesh, a life which favors the strong, the smart, the powerful which means that this life of the flesh can be full of fear if you find that you are at the mercy of those who are stronger, smarter and more powerful than you are. So, when Nick confesses that Jesus is a man from God he is also saying that he is smart enough to figure this out and since he has figured this out then he wants to align himself with Jesus because Jesus being a man of God is going to obviously be a man of power. Nick is just a man who reeks of a life lived under the power of the flesh. Faith that comes out of the life of the flesh is a faith tainted by the desires of the flesh. It is a faith that believes that if a person trusts God then God will be in a position to make them a little stronger, a little smarter, a little more powerful than those who aren’t connected to God. And if you believe that John 3:16 is a means for you to enjoy a better life lived in the flesh, well you are in for a rude awakening.

         Nick must have been sure surprised when after his admission that Jesus was surely a man of God that Jesus turned the conversation to life in the Spirit which Nick had no idea what Jesus was talking about. Nick, Jesus said, you have to be born of the Spirit, you have to be born from above. Nick can’t even fathom anything about a life from heaven and instead thinks that Jesus is talking about his Mom giving birth to him the second time. Jesus is shocked that here is a teacher of Israel who is so caught up living a life in the flesh that he hasn’t a clue that there is so much more that the God he teaches about has to offer. Jesus here is speaking about a life beyond what we are capable of doing, something that we just are not strong enough, smart enough or powerful enough to achieve on our own. This is a life where we love as God loves us. When we think about loving others in the flesh, you see, we are always going to compromise. We are going to come across those people who, for whatever reason, we are going to find that we just don’t have what it takes to love them. Instead of just admitting that we just do not have what it takes to get the job done we will instead put the blame for our inability to love on the person we cannot love. I can’t love them because they have the wrong skin color, the wrong nationality, they are mean, they are”fill in the blank”, with whatever reason you can come up with, no matter what, it’s their fault that I cannot love them. And those I find I cannot love, I also find that I am ok hurting them because  I can justify doing so as my flesh won’t allow me to do anything else.

         It is right here then, when we have this understanding of who we are, people of the flesh, this is where we at last are able to hear what John 3:16 has to say. For God so loved the world, a world filled with people who are living under the power of the flesh, these people so unable to love, these very same people are the ones that God loves. Out of his love for people unable on their own to love, God sent his only Son, to show us a life lived in the power of the Spirit. His was a life that was offered up a perfect sacrifice, an act of perfect love through the Spirit. Such an act condemned the sin of our flesh, showing us the truth that we just fail miserably at loving each other. Yet here was Jesus, offered up in the Spirit who so loved us, people who could not even respond in love if we tried. Something profound happened through what Jesus did because now the Spirit that empowered Jesus is now able to empower us. Where the flesh came up as good as dead when we tried to love, Jesus tells us that we now can live a life where we are at last able to love with the same love Jesus showed to us. This is what John 3:16 means when it says that we believe in him, Jesus. It means to believe that now if we go out to love others that the very Spirit of God will be there, so that, we are at last able to do what our flesh could not do, love everybody, no excuses.

         Our belief then comes through looking upon Jesus who was lifted up upon the cross. We who have been bitten by the serpent, Satan, and believe the lies he tells us, that life in the flesh is all that matters, we must look to the cross.There we see Jesus who did not rely upon his own strength or his own power but instead yielded his life to the power of the Spirit. Jesus put himself at the mercy of those who were born of the flesh, those who thought of themselves as smarter, stronger and more powerful than everybody else even the very Son of God. They had done the very worst that those in the flesh could do, they killed the gift of God given to save even them. Three days later, it was the power of the Spirit that gave life to the body of Jesus. Do you get how those who believe in Jesus, they are people who also believe in a life born of the Spirit? They understand that when the Spirit works in them they shall not perish but they will have everlasting life because of Jesus.

         So, are you beginning to see how the simple admission of Nick that he knew that Jesus was one who was tight with God, that there was so much more that the presence of Jesus demanded? To be born of the Spirit meant that Nick had to leave behind his notions that he was able by his own smarts, his own strength and his own power to be right with God. 

         We are left never knowing whether Nick came to leave his life in the flesh behind and allowed his life to experience the life beyond the confines of the flesh, to feel the wind of the Spirit move within his life. We just don’t know if Nick had come to know Jesus as more than a mere prophet, to know Jesus as the gift given to him by his Heavenly Father to save him from trying to just continue to live in the power of his flesh. We really can not be sure if Nick had come to believe that God had given him the gift of his Son to set him free from such a life and that God had given his Spirit so that Nick could love even the most unlovable. Oh, that Nick might have come to know of what Jesus had done for him, that he would have come to know that he was free from the constraints of what his flesh could do, reaching out to love all around him and in astonishment discovering that God in the Spirit was there with him in that moment, the very love of God surging through him. You see, missing out on such an experience is, as Jesus tells us, to be condemned  because of our unwillingness to believe such a thing is possible. To be condemned is to refuse to believe that there is a life waiting for us that goes beyond the possibilities of what we can do in our own strength and power. It is to be condemned to live forever stuck in the small little cage called ourself.

When we then understand the tragedy of what it means for us to be condemned, to never have the experience of a life of the infinite experiences offered to us by the Spirit, we can understand why Jesus goes on to speak of judgment. You see, judgment is no longer to be thought of something that is going to happen at the end of time but instead judgment happens in the here and now. The judgment happens, Jesus tells us, when people are faced with this new reality that Jesus is bringing about and they simply refuse to be apart of it. This new reality is what Jesus calls the light and it is a little hard to wrap our heads around just what is meant by this. Fortunately for us, John writes more about what life in the light is all about. In his first letter, in the second chapter, we read, “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in the light there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” So, the judgment is that Jesus has done everything possible for people to be loving yet what some people do instead is continue to hate because they are people who refuse to confess to the limits of their flesh, their own abilities. When people continue to stubbornly hold fast to doing only what they are capable of doing then it just figures that hatred is going to be part of who they are because the flesh just does not have what it takes to love as God loves us. People who cling to the notion that the flesh is all there is will have no other choice then to become people who hate the light, people who find it quite acceptable to hate others. What happens then is that this acceptance of hating people will end up filling your life with darkness until you simply refuse to be part of the light. The light is this new reality that Jesus is creating, a new reality where people are at last able to love.  So, when you trust in the flesh you will eventually become a person who is too accustomed to the dark, choosing  hate as being just a part of the human experience. And when you become a person lurking in the darkness then the judgment has already come upon you; you don’t have to wait until the end of times to experience it. You will become a person on the outside looking in, all alone in the darkness while the party is going on in the light.

         So, as we come to the end of our scripture passage, we are reminded that Nick came to Jesus in the dark. This is where those who trust in the flesh are living. They are living within the limits of who they are, quite unable to fathom that there might be a way out of the prison that they find themselves in. A simple faith statement acknowledging that Jesus is a person connected with God will not set a person free from the confines of themselves. What is needed is knowing that Jesus has already opened the door; the wind of the Spirit is blowing into the jail cells of our life. Are you ready to put your faith in what Jesus has done for you?Are you willing to acknowledge that Jesus has been given to save us from the limits of what we can do so that we can experience the infinite possibilities that are ours through being empowered through the wind of the Spirit? This life in the Spirit is the everlasting life, the life of endless moments that God has given us to love others. And this is what must be understood when we hold out John 3:16. We cannot allow people to believe that placing their faith in God is about giving them a better life in the flesh because if we do we will just be condemning them to a life that is thought of by its limitations instead of its possibilities. Jesus through what he has done for us on the cross has created a new reality where we are at last able to feel the winds of the Spirit blowing upon our cheeks. The limitations of our life have been destroyed and now the moments to love are as endless as the people that we encounter who need our love. 

How tragic it would be that if people would believe that they can simply confess their faith in Jesus and continue to think that they are still limited in what they are able to do so that in their life, hatred and malice and vengeance towards others can still be thought to be acceptable! This is not an eternal life but it is a life which is passing away. The eternal life Jesus speaks of is the life of our eternal God whose love has existed eternally, a life which we are now invited to be apart of. The love which has always been a part of the life of the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son is now a love which is ours to experience through the pouring out of the Spirit upon us through the work of Jesus. So, when we go out to love those in the world, they we clearly see our love is a love that is more than should be expected. They should see that our work has been carried out in God, in the very life of God. They can see our love is different because the light really has come into the world and the light is shining through us. When they see a life no longer confined by what our flesh is able to do they too will want to be born of the Spirit and experience for themselves the infinite possibilities that are theirs when they live and love through the Spirit of God. This is how they will come to believe in Jesus so that they will not perish but have an everlasting life. Amen!

Committed to a Future

 January 16 2022

John 2:1-12

         Have you ever thought how funny it is that there are things we do at certain holidays that is only done then, during those holidays, and no time else? Every time I sit down to Thanksgiving dinner I think to myself, this is the last time I will probably eat turkey, cranberries, and pumpkins pie for a whole year. Nobody even thinks that it’s the least bit weird that these very good foods are just simply, for lack of a better way of putting it, off the table, as far as what to eat for a whole year. Then there is Christmas where we bring a living tree into our homes and place it in a tub of water like it’s a giant flower in a very oversized vase. Try bringing any other kind of a tree into your house any other time of the year and I guarantee you, people will think there is something wrong with you. Then we come to New Years and you find that only on this one night is it acceptable to sing “Auld Lang Syne”. I mean, it’s a beautiful song, a song about about not forgetting the old times, those things that have past, the acquaintances that should not be forgot ; it’s a really great song yet if you try and sing it any other time of the year, you will probably get a few strange looks. I suppose, the reason for this is that this song is our way of having one long look back over the year that is giving way to a new one. This song is saying, yes, we must not forget the past as we get ready to head into a new year, into an unknown future which a year from now will be the days will remember as we sing this song once again.

         So, Auld Lang Syne, while a great song has a purpose which is that it allows us to have one last look back at the past, to remember and then we have to lay that past to rest so that our focus becomes the future, what lies ahead of us. Now, as I have been pondering on what possibly could lay ahead of us in this new year, I came across something that I had never considered before. The author of an article I read by the name of John Puddefoot, wrote that entering into a loving relationship is committing ourselves to a future which goes beyond our understanding and yet it is a future which we are passionately devoted to. Isn’t that deep? I love it! As I read this line what came to mind is that this describes being married to a “T”, doesn’t it? I mean, there you are with your significant other, saying vows of commitment before all of your friends and family and then comes that part, where you promise to stick together for better or worse, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part. What these are saying is that we don’t know the future, we don’t know if we are going to be eating steak or hotdogs, we don’t know if its going to be walking on the sunny side of the street or a lot of rainy days we can’t seem to get out from under, and we don’t know how our bodies and our minds are going to hold up, but regardless of what the future brings, we are going to face that future together. Even though this future is beyond our understanding nonetheless we begin our journey into that future passionately devoted to seeing what happens no matter what.

         This idea that love means that we are committing ourselves to an unknown future really helps me to figure out this story of Jesus and his followers at a wedding in the little town of Cana. And this idea of love committing ourselves to an unknown future also helps explain why John, in writing his gospel account, decided to begin this journey of Jesus and his followers here, at a wedding of all places, a wedding where we can’t help noticing that the wine only ran out after Jesus and company showed up. The reason it seems kind of a strange way to begin our story of Jesus and his disciples is that as we might recall, the issue that seems so evident in the first chapter of John’s gospel is this idea of knowing God. Those who followed Jesus are those who knew deep in their hearts that even though they were God’s people they had this nagging feeling that they really did not know this God that their people had a covenant with. Oh sure, they knew a lot about him, they knew his Law and they knew the scriptures, they knew all the rites and rituals but still, they couldn’t say with any certainty that they actually knew God. If they actually knew God then why were they so terrified at the very thought of God coming suddenly in their midst? This is what lured them out to the Jordan, to be baptized, as an admission that they weren’t where they needed to be in their relationship with God.

         Well, into this situation that these men found themselves there came one day, one who was baptized who was very different. As this one was baptized, a voice was heard, the sky’s were opened, and there came the Spirit like a dove and from all of this, John, the one who was doing the baptizing, knew that this one was the long awaited Servant as written about by Isaiah. This was the one that John the Baptist would now refer to as being the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world, the one so designated in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. John the Baptist would also know this one he had baptized, who the Spirit of heaven anointed, as being the Son of God, the one God would anoint to be king in the line of David according to the promise of God. So, the disciples of John the Baptist who were hungry to really know God didn’t have any trouble figuring out that this one, the one John the Baptist referred to as the Lamb of God, this is the one who would be able to teach them all they needed to know in order to know God. In their minds, they would ask this one called Jesus where he lived and then they would show up at his house and through some intense lessons around a campfire they would soon have all the knowledge that they needed. 

At least that was the idea. So, imagine how strange it must have been for these who desired to sit at the feet of Jesus to find him knocking at their door one morning telling them to get cleaned up, they were off to a wedding. They probably thought, a wedding, really Jesus? What about our lessons? Now, just in case we might not get the point that the future is the focus of this field trip, John begins our story, “On the third day…” Ok, John, on the third day of what? John never gives us what this third day is in reference to so we must take this as a clue from John which points us in the direction of the resurrection which as we recall was on the third day. The resurrection is the future of life beyond death which is the foundation of our hope. Here then is where this idea that a loving relationship means committing ourselves to a future beyond our understanding comes into play. Here John begins by pointing us to a future beyond our understanding which is a good way to describe the resurrection. John then tells us about Jesus and his followers being invited to a wedding which is as well we know is two people in a loving relationship making a commitment to one another. It is also this idea that a loving relationship means committing ourselves to a future beyond our understanding that is perhaps why God uses the theme of a wedding to describe his relationship with his people. In the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, we read of how the Servant exclaims, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robes of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress as a bride adorns herself with jewels.”  And further in the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah, this theme is continued where God, speaking about his people declares, “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be call My Delight Is In Her, and your land Married, for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married. …as the bridegroom rejoices over his bride so shall your God rejoice over you.” Here it becomes clear that God has a love relationship with his people and he is committed to experiencing a future with his people that is beyond their understanding. All of this has to be kept in our minds as John casually states that on the third day Jesus and his followers attended a wedding.

Well, as Jesus is there at the wedding with his friends, laughing and rejoicing, eating and drinking, having a great time along comes his mother, Mary, with a horrified look on her face. She pulls Jesus over to the side and whispers in his ear, “They’ve run out of wine.” Now, we’re not sure just what she expected Jesus to do, maybe stop drinking so much and tell his friends to take a water break, we just aren’t sure. Even Jesus isn’t certain why his mother has come to him. His response to her though seems rather cryptic though, “My hour has not yet come.” And to top it off the way he addresses his mother seems rather blunt as well, calling her simply, “Woman”. What are we to make of this strange conversation between Jesus and his mother?  The answer is found when we take into consideration what Jesus accomplished through his shutting down of the sacrificial system of the Temple which we looked at last week. There we learned that Jesus drove out all of the bulls and sheep and the pigeons along with all of the money-changers because the Temple had become obsolete with the coming of Jesus.  All these sacrifices at the Temple served to do was to remind the people that they were enslaved to sin and that they were in need of a Savior. Jesus, is that Savior, he is the Servant, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus took the sins of the world away by being obedient to the will of his Father and because of the obedience of Jesus we are set free from sin so that we too might be able to be obedient to do the will of God just like Jesus.

It is this being able to do the will of God which is the key to understanding the rather rude response Jesus gives his mother at the wedding. Just what was he thinking when he replied to his own mother, “Woman…”? Using the other gospel accounts to help shed some light on this we find in the third chapter of Mark that while Jesus is inside of a home his mother and his brothers show up. Someone bursts in to where Jesus is at and tells him that the mother and brothers of Jesus are waiting for him outside. Jesus responds to the messenger, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Looking at those gathered around him Jesus goes on to say, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother!” To us this also sounds rather rude, that Jesus would not address his own mother and his brothers instead saying that those who are willing to listen to his word and do what that word commands that these are now who are his mothers and his brothers. Yet, what Jesus is pointing to is that in the past family was defined in terms of the people who gave you life, whether through birth or adoption, family were those people who cared for you, watched out for you, the ones who taught you, and committed themselves to you because they loved you. Now, Jesus is saying that with his coming, family is going to be re-defined because of him. Family would now be those who committed themselves to doing what Jesus commanded them to do out of love for him. Anyone committed to loving others no matter if this meant that the future was beyond their understanding, these were the ones who were the family of Jesus. So, when Jesus bluntly called his mother, “Woman”, this is John’s way of telling us that Jesus was bringing a new way of relating to one another into the world. It was those committed to doing the will of God, these are what defined the family of God. This is what John writes about in the first chapter of his gospel, stating that to all who received Jesus, who believed in his name, these Jesus gave the right to become children of God, those who are born not of blood, not of will of the flesh nor of the will of man but born of God”. This is what Jesus gives a subtle nod to when he refers to his mother as “Woman”.

This understanding that Jesus has introduced doing the will of God into the conversation is important as we watch as Jesus takes care of this crisis at the wedding of Cana. The mother of Jesus tells the servants who were at the wedding to do whatever Jesus tells them to do which is also a subtle nod that this is about the will of God, the doing of what Jesus tells us to do. Jesus tells them to fill the six stone jars that were for the rites of purification. These were the jars which had been filled with the water necessary for the bathing of the groom and the bride before their wedding. Again, this is a subtle allusion to the bathing recorded in the first chapter of John where Jesus and his followers had bathed, been baptized, in the Jordan. The servants filled these jars with water as Jesus had instructed them to do and then just as Jesus instructed them, they drew some of it out and took it to the master of the feast. When the master of the feast tasted the water, he wondered where it had come from because the custom was that you always served the best wine first so that as they went along and the wine began to work the people didn’t care so much what the wine tasted like. This is what confused the master of the feast because the wine the servants had brought him was the good wine. Somehow, the best wine was here being served at the last not the beginning as was customary.

So, yes there was a miracle but just what was the significance of this miracle? We are told that this was the first of the signs that Jesus did but just what did these signs point to? What we know is that when Jesus stopped the workings of the Temple the powers that be would not accept that now that the Lamb of God had arrived that all other sacrifices became obsolete. They just could not accept that Jesus was and is the new age that had come right in the middle of the old age. Jesus was the new that did away with sacrifices by his once for all sacrifice for us, a sacrifice that made us holy and perfect, free at last to do the will of God. Yet, Jesus is not only the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world he is the Son of God, the anointed king, the long awaited Messiah who has ushered in a new age. This is the age that Isaiah foresaw as recorded in the twenty-fifth chapter of his book, where we hear this, “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. God will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. God will swallow up death forever…” This is how Isaiah saw the age the Messiah is going to bring about when he comes yet here is Jesus who John the Baptist declares is the Son of God, the Messiah, but where is the feast, where is this rejoicing, where is death swallowed up like well-aged wine from a cup? In this miracle at Cana, Jesus is telling those who are able to hear it that right there in their midst this is where the feast is at. Gathered around Jesus are those Jesus is going to set free to do the will of God so that they as well as us can at last love as Jesus has first loved us. This new found freedom to be able to love has profound implications. I mean, listen to what has changed now that we are at last being able to love as Jesus’ loves from what is written in the third chapter of the first letter of John. There we hear, “Now we know that we have passed from death into life…” How do we know that death has been swallowed up? We know this John continues because we love. It as John wrote earlier in this letter that whoever does the will of God abides forever. So, we do not have to wait to some unknown future to drink the aged wine and eat the delicious food because death is swallowed up whenever we do the will of God. 

To do the will of God is to enter into a loving relationship with God where we commit ourselves to a future beyond our understanding yet even though this is much like a marriage the difference is there is no better or worse in our relationship with God; no, there is always only better. Yes, in committing ourselves to God we may face afflictions but as Paul tells us, these are momentary what is eternal is the glory that awaits those who are committed to a life with God. So, when we drink the cup in remembrance of Jesus we remember that we do so at the feast where death has been swallowed up through the death of Jesus. Through his death we have been set free from sin to do the will of God and when we do the will of God we will abide in the house of God forever. Amen!

 

Getting Ready for a New Age

 January 9 2022

John 2:13-25

         One of the things that fascinates me is that even though we have entered into a new year it still feels like the old year. Yes, we have left 2021 behind yet it is hard to convince ourselves that this is indeed a new year. I mean, how many of us when we go to write out what year it is have to consciously keep telling ourselves that this is indeed 2022 otherwise we will write 2021 and have to scratch that out and start all over. Maybe its that it is just hard for us to see any thing new about a new year but whatever the reason most of us will not really embrace the idea that it is 2022 until probably March.

         Well, if it is any comfort, people have always have trouble accepting that the old has gone and that the new has indeed arrived. It could be that people simply like the old things, the old ways, because over time these markers of an old life are for us a source of comfort. We enjoy the old chair that has become conformed to our shape, the old shoe that no longer binds our foot or that old pair of socks which has become soft and fuzzy from many cycles through the wash.This comfort that we get through all of our old stuff only lasts though until the springs break in the chair, the shoe loses its heel at the worst possible time and the pair of socks is found to have a hole big enough for our toes to poke through.We know it all to well that old always leads to obsolete; this truth is just the way it is no matter if we’re talking toothbrushes or Temples. This is the truth, the truth that the old had become obsolete now that the new had come, this is the truth that Jesus was attempting to get across when he entered the Temple as part of his celebration of the Passover with his new found friends.

         These friends of Jesus, as we may recall from our study of the first chapter of the gospel of John belonged to the nation of Israel, the people who thought of themselves as being God’s people. Yet, in spite of being known as the people of God, John in his gospel account makes it clear that they did not know God. The whole world was filled with people, God’s people as well as those who had no history with God, still, none of them knew God. So, we find that in John’s gospel, knowing God is the whole reason why Jesus came as one of us. The readers of John’s gospel begin to know something about Jesus and his Heavenly Father when they hear how Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. At that moment when the water was poured over the head of Jesus, we are told that the heavens opened and the voice of the Heavenly Father spoke saying, “This is my Beloved with whom I am well pleased”. Then the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove. So, here the knowing of God begins because in these words heard from out of the blue there were echos of verses from Isaiah where God revealed to Isaiah that one day there would come one called the Servant, God’s beloved with whom he is delighted.  John the Baptist understood that Jesus was the Servant Isaiah had hoped for and he also knew that this Servant was also the one who would willingly go like a lamb to slaughter as he took upon himself the sins of his people in order that through the knowledge of what the Servant had done that many would be declared righteous. This is why John the Baptist repeatedly calls Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

         So, we first know that Jesus is the long awaited Servant figure promised in Isaiah but John the Baptist also witnessed the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus and he understands through this anointing of the Holy Spirit that Jesus is not only the Servant but he is also the one God promised David would be a king in his lineage, the one known as the Son of God. This Son of God is the long awaited anointed one, the Hebrew name for anointed is Messiah and the Greek name is Christ. So, knowing that Jesus is the Messiah also means that the long awaited king had come who would usher in an age of justice and righteousness.

         Yet, there is still more that we come to know about Jesus in this first chapter of the gospel of John. In a conversation with one of his followers, Nathaniel,  Jesus tells him that because of his belief, Nathaniel was going to see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. Here, Jesus is referencing a vision that had been given to the ancestor of their people, their namesake in fact, Jacob also known as Israel. Jacob one night had a dream where he saw angels ascending and descending on the very stone where he laid his head. In this dream, Jacob heard God speak to him promising Jacob that he would bless him and multiply him and through his descendants all of the families of the earth would be blessed. When Jacob awoke from this dream he was in awe of God and he knew that where he had slept was none other than the house of God, that here was in fact the very gate of heaven. So when Jesus tells Nathaniel that he was going to see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man it isn’t hard to figure out that what he is in fact saying is that he is the Son of Man and that he himself is the house of God, the very gate of heaven. This idea of Jesus being the gate of heaven goes along with who the Son of Man is as he is the one who will preside over the court which will sit in judgment, the one who will decide who will enter in and receive the kingdom of heaven.

         As we go through the gospel of John, we need to hold on to these three different ways that we know Jesus. We can’t just say, well, we came to know Jesus in three different and unique ways in chapter one and now we can move on to other matters concerning Jesus. No, the rest of the gospel of John is the working out of all of the ramifications of these three understandings of who Jesus is, that he is the Suffering Servant, that he is the Son of God, the Messiah, and that Jesus is the Son of Man. Nowhere does what we know about Jesus become so evident than in our scripture for today, what is commonly known as the cleansing of the Temple. This story comes after Jesus takes his followers to a wedding at Cana but because of what happened at the Temple, that so much becomes clear in what Jesus did there, I felt that we would understand what happened at the wedding at Cana in the light of what we learn from what Jesus did at the Temple.

         Last week we also stated that John’s gospel is very different than the rest of the gospel accounts and nowhere is this seen than here in what is known to us as the cleansing of the Temple. The rest of the gospel accounts record that what happened at the Temple occurred at the end of the ministry of Jesus yet here in the gospel of John we find that it is found at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. There is much speculation as to why John has placed this incident of Jesus at the Temple where he did but understanding the John is concerned with our knowing Jesus then what better place to know who Jesus is then here in the Temple, the place Jesus referred to as his Father’s house. 

         The story begins with us being told that the season of Passover was at hand. We are told that Jesus went by himself to Jerusalem. As Jesus came to Jerusalem and entered into the Temple he saw there the hustle and bustle of the activities going on there. There was mooing of cattle, and bleating of sheep, doves beating their wings against the bars of their cages. Bartering and bickering could be heard, a price demanded, coins placed in hands, priests moving about, the chatter of many voices and languages. This was nothing out of the ordinary but rather it was just business as usual, sacrifices being sought, and bought; currency from distant lands being exchanged into suitable coins for giving to the Temple treasury. This is just the way it had been for hundreds of years. That was until that day Jesus came to the Temple. There he sat with three cords and taking them in hand he braided them together methodically as the machinery of the Temple whirred about him. Then when the whip was at last finished he set to work. You see, the detail of the making of the whip lets us know that this act of Jesus was no spur of the moment, tempers raging event but a calculated action, thought out ahead of time. Everything had to be chased out, the mooing cows, the bleating sheep, the sellers with their wares, the buyers and their needs, out of the Temple they ran, the crack of the whip close behind. Then Jesus turned to the wide eyed money changers and grabbing their bags of coins he dumped their contents out on the floor, the crashing and banging of scattered coins filling the air. He upended their tables so they too had no choice but to follow the others out of the Temple. Then he turned to those who kept the pigeons cooped in their cages, the sacrifices of the poor,  and shouted for them to take their cooing, fluttering mess out of the Temple because, after all, this was his Father’s house. So, there went all of the sacrifices, the cattle and the sheep out into the streets of Jerusalem, their owners struggling to corral their frightened beasts. There went the angry money-changers whose tables lay scattered, whose coins needed gathered, out they too went into the street. Behind them came those with cages of pigeons in their hands, muttering under their breath, the Father’s house, indeed! And then their were the casual observers, the priests who ran for cover and for help, the people on the street hearing the ruckus and the shouts and the bellowing cattle charging down the streets. All of them had but one thought, Jesus what have you done and why have you done it?

         It was fairly obvious what Jesus had done because in chasing out of the sacrifices, the cattle and the sheep along with the sacrifices of the poor, what Jesus had done was throw a monkey wrench in the workings of the Temple machinery. With a loud crash, what had been continually running for some five hundred years had suddenly come to a screeching halt. For a brief time, in this outer court, there was an unusual silence. There was no mooing, bleating, cooing, bantering or bickering, no coins clanging, no chitter chatter of any kind nothing to be heard but silence. And that silence was perhaps the whole point of what Jesus did and the why he did what he did. If we look throughout the Bible we can see quickly that this act of Jesus was a prophetic act. A prophetic act was something that the prophets would do to dramatically get the attention of God’s people in order to wake them up from their forgetfulness that the old always becomes the obsolete. God is never satisfied with the same old, same old, business as usual attitude because God is all about making all things, the big things and the little things, the Temples and the times, to make them all new. Jesus, here in the Temple, stood in the long line of the prophets, the ones Moses spoke about in the eighteenth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, that God would raise up from among his brothers. This is the one, God says, that God will put his words in their mouth. This prophet would speak all that God would command them to do. In doing such an over the top act, it wouldn’t be hard to understand that this Jesus stood in the long line of those called up by God to be his mouthpiece. Though Jesus spoke very little he communicated much. Jesus was telling God’s people that the old had indeed become obsolete, the Temple with all of its grandeur and beauty was on its way out. A new age was coming and this act that Jesus did in the Temple was the final warning. The people may not have been able to see that there was much different from the old and the new, much like we are at the beginning of a new year. To be honest, there is only one difference that divided the old age from the new age and that difference was Jesus.

         Here is where knowing Jesus becomes oh, so important. You see, when Jesus took and formed his whip and then chased those bellowing cattle and bleating sheep out into the street, he did so knowing that, as John the Baptist was so aware, he was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. If the sins of the world are taken away through this Lamb of God then what need does anyone have for a sheep or a cow or even a pigeon for that matter? The old Temple had found itself obsolete when Jesus came and ushered in a new age.

         It is the writer of the book of Hebrews who has captured so well, how the coming of Jesus has made everything new but he has made everything better as well. Listen what is written in the tenth chapter of the book of Hebrews: “The law is but a shadow of the good things to come instead of of the true form of these realities. This is why it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshippers once cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? In these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings, these are according to the law. Then Christ says, “Behold, I have come to do your will.”Christ does away with the first, the old, the sacrifices in the Temple in order to establish the second, the new, which is a people who will do the will of God.  Jesus, who did the will of his Father by offering himself up for the sins of the world has set us free from sin so that we now are able, like Jesus, to do the will of God. 

         The old way of sacrifices could only re-establish the peoples relationship with God year after year which meant that they were in fact enslaved to sin. This was the very purpose of the Temple, to serve as a reminder of the peoples need of a Savior, one who in his freedom from sin would at last be the one who could set them free from their sin. This is what Jesus meant when he told the authorities that when the Temple is destroyed, three days later he would raise it up. Here again, Jesus is the prophet speaking the words of God the Father, speaking of his death, foretelling of the destruction of the true house of God. Yet death would not have the last word because three days later God the Father would raise Jesus to life, the glory of the New Temple visible for all to see. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we now have confidence to enter into the holy places through the blood of Jesus, a new and living way into the house of God. Now, we can enter into our Father’s house and the presence of the Father can reside in us. All of us then are Temples who together are united together into the Holy Temple of God.

         Isn’t it interesting that what the disciples remember about that day when Jesus shut down the Temple were two things, the first is how fitting the sixty ninth Psalm was to the life of Jesus. This was a song of David and to get the full affect we must read more than what is recorded in the gospel of John. We have to read how David wrote “it is for your sake, O God, that I bear reproach, that dishonor has covered my face. For zeal for your house has consumed me and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.” You see, telling people that the old is on the way out because the new has come is not always seen as good news to everybody. The old way is comfortable, even if that old way is a way of slavery. To shake things up, even if it is about being set free from the shackles of sin, doesn’t always sit well with some. You see, if this new age has come and we are indeed free from the power of sin then what excuse do I have when I remain in sin? So, it is better to kill the messenger than to embrace the message.

         Yet, the zeal of Jesus for his Father’s house, zeal that put him in the crosshairs of the old guard clinging to the past, this is not all that the disciples remembered. They would remember that in three days Jesus promised to build his Temple. Three days, and the world would see a new life in the power of resurrection. Three days and all people would be declared holy, perfect, at last able to do the will of the Father, to be the place where the Father and the Son might dwell through the Holy Spirit. This is what we remember that Jesus has done for us. This is what it means to know Jesus as being the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world but not just the sins of the world but the Lamb of God who takes away my sin and your sin as well. I hope that you know Jesus as the Lamb who has set you free from sin, free at last so you and I might be indeed the Temple of God! Amen!

Well, what do you know?

 January 2 2022

John 1:29-51

         Happy New Year to everyone! Can you believe that this is the year 2022? Did you know that this is the year that George Jetson will be born? This means that it won’t be too long until we will all be driving around in flying cars. Though this may be a wonderful hope, what we really are hoping is not for flying cars or any other new technology but rather, I believe, what we hope for is that this year will be different, I mean, isn’t this what we always wish for at the beginning of every new year? This is when we take one long look back and we see all that has happened and we take stock of our life, the good, the bad and the ugly and we vow to make some changes. Maybe its that we have gained a few too many pounds and we decide that all those Christmas cookies that have added to our waistline, this has got to stop. Or maybe this is the year to get those finances under control, to create a budget and stick to it, this year. You see, it could be any number of things that we realize that aren’t right with our life and now, right here at the beginning of a brand new year this is the time to alter the course of our life. So, in that same spirit, might I suggest a change you might want to make, and that is that this year that you think about getting to know Jesus a little better than you did last year this time. I mean this is the time when, you know, you might want to consider just how well do you know Jesus? I’m not talking about what you know the Bible says about Jesus, which is important, but rather I’m asking how well do you know Jesus, himself? And in a similar way, I might also ask, just how well does Jesus know you?This is a good time, at the beginning of a new year to ask ourselves questions like these.

         The reason I bring up this question as to just how well do you know Jesus is that knowing Jesus is a central theme of the gospel of John which we are going to dive into in the next several weeks. John’s gospel, if you haven’t had an opportunity to read it, is written very differently from the rest of the gospel accounts. There is a lot of thought which suggests that John’s gospel is the last gospel account. So, it may be that the difference of John’s version of things is that he has had a lot of time to meditate on the wonder and splendor on this one we call Jesus and this gives his account a unique perspective. We see this perspective immediately as we read the introduction of his account of things in the first verses from the first chapter. There John speaks of the world which may not mean anything to us but in John’s world, God’s people, the people of Israel, thought of themselves as being separate from the rest of the nations, the ones referred to in the other gospel accounts as being the Gentiles. The other gospel accounts record this division often writing about God’s people as the people who lived in Judaea, also known as the Jews and everyone else as being simply the Gentiles. John, though, does not record this division but rather he lumps everyone together in one collective humanity known simply as the world. Now, what defines the world is that it is a world of people who do not know Jesus nor God, the Father who sent him into the world. So, right here John begins with his theme of knowing Jesus, knowing God. No one, including the one’s who thought of themselves as being God’s people, could be said to have known God. 

         This idea that not even the people who thought themselves as being God’s people actually knew God, this is what was behind the strange phenomenon of John the Baptist and his bathing of people in the Jordan river. John being the son of a priest as recorded in Luke would have been a priest himself. Yet, in spite of being a priest he was not working within the Temple as one would imagine a priest would do but instead John is found out in the wild places, at the banks of the Jordan. Here John is performing the ceremonial bathing ritual required of those who were Gentiles who desired to be declared one of God’s people. Yet, John was not performing this ritual on Gentile people but he instead was performing this rite on his own people, the people of Israel. What they were declaring by doing so was that they considered themselves no different then the rest of the nations, that even though they considered themselves people of God they were not certain that they were people who knew God. If they had some personal knowledge of God then they would not be terrified at the thought of his coming suddenly into their midst as they now were. John the Baptist was crying forth the message that now was the time to make straight the way of the Lord meaning that God was coming and people had better be ready. But how could they be ready when they had this nagging feeling that they really did not know this God who was coming?

         It was into this situation at the Jordan that Jesus enters the picture. John, when introducing Jesus, describes him as being the one who came from the Father’s side, the one who intimately and throughly knows the Father, this Jesus is the one who has come into our world in order to make the Father known to us. What is interesting is that it is the Heavenly Father who makes Jesus known to John the Baptist. We hear the Baptizer exclaim when he saw Jesus that here was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. When we hear this, we must ask ourselves just how does John know this about Jesus? The answer is that when John baptized Jesus in the Jordan river the heavens opened and a voice from heaven, the voice of the Father spoke, stating that this was his beloved with whom he was well pleased. What is heard in these words from heaven are echoes of a verse from the beginning of the forty-second chapter of Isaiah, where God tells Isaiah, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.” This is the one we are told that the Spirit of God will be placed upon exactly as what happened at the baptism of Jesus. So, John the Baptist, being a priest and familiar with the prophetic writings, would have known the various servant passages from the book of Isaiah, and he would have remembered that in the fifty-third chapter we read that this Servant would be oppressed and afflicted, that he would be like a lamb that is led to slaughter, like a sheep before its shearers would be silent. This Servant is the one who would be taken away by oppression and judgment, cut off from the land of the living for the transgressions of his people. This Servant would make his life an offering for guilt. Out of the anguish of his life, this Servant would see and be satisfied; through his knowledge this righteous one, the Servant, will make many to be accounted righteous for he will bear upon himself the iniquities of his people. This is what John the Baptist understood about Jesus when he heard the words from heaven. And John, the writer of this gospel account, perhaps wanted his readers to be aware of this connection as well because it is through the knowledge of this righteous one, the Servant, this is the means whereby many will be accounted righteous. 

         This theme of the importance of knowing Jesus continues as John states that before his encounter with Jesus he had no knowledge that it was Jesus who was the long awaited Servant prophesied by Isaiah. But it was through this encounter that John came to understand that the whole purpose for his bathing people in the Jordan was so that Jesus might be made known to Israel, the very people of God. So, it goes without saying that this knowing Jesus is what this gospel account is focused upon. Keeping that in mind, we too should want to know Jesus. We come to know Jesus through all of the clues that John provides for us through his story. The first of these clues is that Jesus is the Servant, the one who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The second of these clues that John the Baptist gives us is that Jesus is the Son of God and the reason for this conclusion is that John saw Jesus be baptized with the Holy Spirit and because the Holy Spirit of God rested upon him then he would be the one who would pour out this same Spirit upon those willing to receive it. It is this anointing by God, the Father, that is the seal of God upon Jesus, stating that Jesus is the king in the line of David as we hear of in the second Psalm, where God tells David, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.” So, in stating that Jesus is the Son of God, John the Baptist is telling us that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to David that his house and his kingdom would forever be before God, that God would ensure that the throne of David will be established forever. Jesus then is not only Servant but he is God’s anointed king as well. In Hebrew, the word “anointed” is known as Messiah, so that when we say Jesus is the Messiah or Christ, from the Greek word for anointed, what is being said is that Jesus is God’s anointed king.

         John the Baptist then is the first one to know Jesus first as the Servant of God and then also as the Son of God, the anointed king of God. Yet he would not remain the only one for long because as he continued to address Jesus as the Lamb of God, John the Baptist’s words caught the attention of the disciples of the Baptizer. They too would have read of this mysterious Servant figure and they would have been amazed that John would now be proclaiming that this Jesus who had been baptized by John was the very one Isaiah had written about so long ago. Since they were ones who simply by being with John were admitting that did not know God, and as such they were those who were longing to know him, they of course began to tag along after Jesus. Jesus, of course, couldn’t help but notice that he had followers in the very literal sense of the word, so he turned to them and asked them just what it was that they were after. They replied by calling Jesus their Rabbi, their teacher and then asked Jesus just where it was that he was staying. By calling Jesus their Rabbi they were acknowledging that Jesus had knowledge of God that they longed to know and they wanted to come and sit at his feet and learn from him. Jesus, understanding this longing, invited these spiritually hungry souls to come and see. Now, this seems like a straight forward invitation but when you study the word John used that we understand as “see”, what you find is that this is a word which means to see with the mind, to spiritually perceive. You see, where the disciples were thinking that Jesus was inviting them to come and see an actual physical place, Jesus instead is inviting them on a journey to see that where he abides, where he dwells securely, is everywhere because of his relationship with his Heavenly Father who he is in a constant relationship with because of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We are told that one of those who followed Jesus was Andrew, brother of Simon. Andrew had begun to know Jesus and we know this because he told Simon that the one they had found was none other than the long awaited Messiah. Here we have another title for who Jesus is, that he is not only the Servant, but he is the Son of God, he is Rabbi and now they know him as the Messiah. The title Messiah, as we already learned, means that they knew Jesus as God’s anointed but this term also meant something more to these followers because they also understood that when the Messiah came he would be the one who would usher in a new age where justice and righteousness prevailed. In their understanding there was two ages, one before the Messiah and the age after which the Messiah would come and establish his kingdom upon the earth. Andrew, in stating to his brother that the Messiah was here in this one he knew as Jesus, was testifying to his hope that, at last, this new age had finally arrived. This is why Simon would have been willing to drop everything to go and see for himself if Jesus was really the one he had been hoping for. As much as Simon wanted to know Jesus, we can only imagine how surprised he was to discover that Jesus, in some way, already knew him, because Jesus told Simon that he was going to be called Rock, in the Greek, Peter. Thus we learn that as we come to know about Jesus that this knowing is a two way street in that Jesus is going to know us as well. This is the very foundation of our personal relationship with Jesus. He makes himself known to us and we, in return become aware that Jesus already knows us because our Heavenly Father is the searcher of hearts. We find then that the God we long to know already knows us intimately.

         This intimate knowledge of who we are is further witnessed in the account of Nathaniel who is a friend of Phillip. Phillip took up Jesus on his invitation to follow him and then Phillip went and found his friend Nathaniel, and exclaimed that this Jesus of Nazareth was the one written about in the Law of Moses and the prophets. Nathaniel’s first question was could anything good come out of Nazareth, which seems a bit harsh. Phillip now extends the invitation of Jesus, that Nathaniel should come and see for himself. As Nathaniel approached Jesus we are told that Jesus said of him that in Nathaniel was a person of whom there was no deceit, no trickery, he was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get, kind of guy. Of course, Nathaniel is a little weirded out that this guy that he has never met is making judgments about him and he wants to know just how does Jesus know him. So, again, here is this theme of knowing and being known. Jesus tells Nathaniel that he knows him because Jesus saw Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree. What Jesus was admitting to was that he knew what was going on around him at a different level than just your average Joe. Just as our Heavenly Father knows when a bird falls to the ground so too Jesus knows this random guy who just happens to be sitting under a fig tree. Nathaniel in some way is able to put the clues together and he understands that the way Jesus knows is the same way that God knows; for Nathaniel this Jesus has to know God and be known by God. Nathaniel then confesses his belief to Jesus, that he believed that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, the King of Israel! Here again, the proclaiming of a title upon Jesus, the taking of the clues from scripture and discovering that these clues point to Jesus.

         Jesus loves the fact that simply because he told Nathaniel that he saw him under the fig tree, Nathaniel responded with a statement of faith. Jesus tells Nathaniel that because he believed in something as inconsequential as Jesus noticing him sitting under a fig tree then Nathaniel was going to see greater things. Here, Jesus is helping us connect our act of knowing with our being able to see, to perceive spiritually, greater things than we have ever perceived before. Knowing and faith are the means that enable those who follow Jesus to see and understand the true reality that is Jesus. What they would see, Jesus told them was that heaven would be opened to them and they would see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. This is a direct allusion to the vision that was seen by Jacob in a story told to us in the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis. Jacob was on his way to his uncle Laban to take a wife and on his journey he came to a place to stay the night. He took a stone for a place to lay his head and as he dreamed, he saw a ladder that reached from the earth to the heavens. Upon this ladder there were the angels of God ascending and descending and God stood above this ladder. Jacob heard God promise to bless him so that the whole earth might come to be blessed. When Jacob woke from this dream he exclaimed that where his head slept was none other than the house of God, the very gate of heaven. So, when Jesus tells us that they, his followers would see this same vision of angels ascending and descending and that its origin on earth would be him, the Son of Man, it isn’t hard to understand that he was telling them that they would come to know that he himself was the very gate of heaven and that he was indeed, the very house of God. So, here we have more clues that help us to know Jesus. John in his gospel will take these clues, that Jesus is the Servant, that he is the Son of God, the Messiah and that he is the Son of Man, the gate of heaven and the house of God and in his story help us his readers come to know Jesus in a greater and deeper way. The question is this, do you desire to know Jesus in a greater and deeper way this year? To those who desire to know Jesus, his invitation still stands, Come and See! Amen.