I See Jesus the Servant

 March 20 2022

John 13

Have you ever noticed that a big part of adult life is just figuring out what to keep and what to throw away? Right now, one side of my garage is filled with stuff that I am waiting to clean up when the weather is nice and I can open up the garage door and back up the truck and decide just what I am going to keep and what I am going to haul away.  The same process happened when we got a new washer. Since we had to clean out the laundry room anyway, we again had to decide if we had to keep all of that stuff that had accumulated in there or could we perhaps give some of that trash the old heave ho! Whenever I get ready to haul stuff I consider trash to the landfill I am reminded that one man’s trash is another mans treasure.  Isn’t it funny that what I consider to be worthless is worth a great deal to someone else.

That’s the way it is in life; we always have to take stock of what we have and decide is this trash or is this a treasure.We have to do a similar process with our spiritual life as well. Its amazing how our life can pickup bad habits, unorthodox beliefs and worldly attitudes and every once in a while we have to stop and do a little spring cleaning in our hearts. This is, perhaps, why the season of Lent is here, in the spring, with the days getting longer, the light being brighter, and we can see a little better, and notice our need for cleansing. As we take this time to prepare ourselves to encounter Christ at Calvary, in these days of Lent, in the stronger light of spring, we must fix our eyes upon Jesus and see him for who he really is. We often want to make Jesus something that he never really was or is because who Jesus is sometimes does not sit well with our modern sensibilities. Nowhere is this more evident than in todays scripture found in the thirteenth chapter of John where we see Jesus taking off his outer garment, and wrapping a towel around his waist, he grabs a basin full of water. Jesus kneels and begins to wash the feet of his disciples. Peter, always the one who sums up our human response, is adamant that there was no way that Jesus was going to wash his feet; his Messiah is a warrior king not some slave groveling in the dirt. Get up, Peter wants to say, quit this nonsense he wants to demand but Jesus puts Peter in his place. Peter, Jesus says, if you won’t sit down and let me wash your feet, then you’re off the team, do you get my drift? Jesus demands that we see him as a servant; any other ways of seeing him simply will not do.

We have to wonder just why it is then that Jesus does such an outrageous act, one I am sure his followers did not see coming. The answer, I believe, must be found within the central theme that John has in these last chapters of his gospel, which is the theme of the new Temple. When John writes about Jesus as the Good Shepherd in the tenth chapter, he begins using the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm, a psalm that speaks of entering the gates of the Temple. Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, is the gate of the Temple, he is the way in which we may enter into the Temple, the Father’s house. We recall that what Jesus is also doing as the Good Shepherd is uniting us all into one fold, to be his united sheep. The way that he does this is through loving God with his whole heart, loving God and loving others, loving God with all of his very life, willing to lay down his life for the sheep and loving God with all of his strength and power using that strength and power to protect his flock. 

Jesus as our Good Shepherd expects us, his flock, to follow him in his love of God. We too are to love God with all of our hearts, with all of our life and with all of our strength or power. The question for us upon finding out that this is what Jesus is calling us to do is just how will we be able to do such a thing? All of us know the stuff that rolls around in our hearts and we know that there is a lot in there that is not very pretty. What we have to confess is that what we need is a way to give our hearts a good spring cleaning, a way to get rid of all the trash that has accumulated in there. As Jesus is going to lead us into the Temple, into the holy presence of God we know that with all this trash fouling up the works, we are in no shape to follow Jesus there. We cannot forget that those who served in the Temple in the Old Testament had to be cleansed themselves before serving before a holy God. It was the High Priest who would take and cleanse the priests who served under him to prepare them to serve before a Holy God. This washing was a gesture which pointed to the fact that it was the High Priest who was to distinguish between what was clean and what was unclean, what was common and what was holy as we are told in the tenth chapter of Leviticus. Just as we do when we spring clean our houses, the High Priest had to decide what was unclean, the trash and what was clean, what was the treasure, that which was able to be used by God.

The work of the High Priest in the Old Testament was to prepare us for the coming of Jesus, who we are to know as our High Priest. He also is the one who decides just what is clean and unclean. We hear him state this in the gospel of Mark, the seventh chapter where we learn that what makes a person unclean is what comes out of a person’s heart, the evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and a lack of wisdom. Here Jesus confirms what we already must admit, that our hearts are in no shape to be of any good to a holy God.What is needed is that all this trash be cleansed away. Are you beginning to see why we need to see Jesus as a Servant, as one who can take and wash our hearts and prepare them so that we might walk on holy ground? This is what Jesus is trying to teach us as he washes the feet of his disciples. This was an action which  points us toward a greater truth that what is necessary for us to serve before a Holy God is not clean feet but rather clean hearts. 

 There is a reason why John has written this chapter so that the washing of the feet parallels the new commandment that Jesus gives, the one where his love for us is the way that we are to love one another. What we are to understand from the way that Jesus has phrased this command is that we need to experience his love and then and only then will we be able to love as he has loved us. Now, we have to ask ourselves just how is it that this love of Jesus is able to do this? The answer is that it is the love of Jesus, this is what is able to cleanse us of all the trash that builds up in our hearts. The way that the love of Jesus accomplishes this is by changing just what it is that we treasure so that what we used to treasure becomes nothing but a pile of trash to us. Jesus tells us in the sixth chapter of Matthew that it is our hearts, this is where are treasures are kept. He further goes on to tell us that people either lay up their treasures on earth or they will  be people who treasure what is in heaven. Where we choose to keep our treasures, whether on earth or in heaven, this is what determines whether our hearts are clean or whether they will be filled with all kinds of trash. When our treasures are those things of this world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eye, and the pride of possessions, then this is when our hearts will be found to be full of all kinds of uncleanness, a heart full of trash. When our hearts are full of trash then there is no way that we can come and serve before a holy God.

What we need then is to become people who treasure what is in heaven. This is what Jesus is telling Peter when he says to him that if he does not allow Jesus to wash his feet then Peter would have no share in the inheritance of Jesus. This inheritance, this share in the life to come, this is the very treasure of heaven. Yet it is a little perplexing just how this love which Jesus has for us can make a way for us to have a share in this treasure that Jesus wishes to share with us. John gives us a clue of how we can come to share in the treasure of heaven in a odd little detail that he gives us concerning John, the disciple that we are told that Jesus loved, who is reclining at the table, laying his head upon the chest of Jesus. This seems a bit odd doesn’t it, until we realize that this same image is what John uses in the first chapter to describe where Jesus came from, from the very bosom of the Father. So, John wants us to remember that Jesus has come to us from the highest heaven and here he is at the lowest he can go, kneeling at our feet. We are to be in awe of the condescension of the very Son of God, to behold the mystery of this one so intimate with the Father yet willing to leave all of that splendor to come to us to serve us. This is what Paul writes about in the second chapter of Philippians, “Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to seize hold of, but instead he made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of our humanity. As one of us, he humbled himself by being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”This is how far the love within the heart of Jesus, the very love which has been in heaven from before the foundation of the world, how far this love was willing to go on our behalf. Jesus freely chose to leave his Father’s side, to take on our corrupt flesh and to go further, to taste death for all of us, a death upon the criminals cross. This Jesus had to do because the love within his heart would not let him do anything else. Jesus is seen as a Servant because this is the only posture that his love would let him take, an extreme love that drove Jesus from heaven to kneel upon the dust of earth.

In the demonstration of this love, Jesus the very Word of God is speaking to us, communicating to us about who we are to God. We hear this message in the words that Peter wrote many years after allowing Jesus to wash his feet, in his first letter, the end of the first chapter, “You were ransomed from your futile ways inherited from your forefathers not with perishable things  such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ…” The message is clear; you were worth everything to God. You are a treasure that God just had to have, a treasure God was willing to give everything to call his own. Our Heavenly Father gave his most precious gift all so that you and I might at last know our worth to God. You see, Jesus is not just the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world; no, he is the Lamb of God who took away your sins and my sins. It is important for us to know that Jesus came from the farthest reaches of heaven to come to the lowest point of death, all for you, all for me, all so that we might know that we are treasured in heaven by God. You see, only as we fully understand that we are treasured in heaven, only as we allow this very fact to bring us to our knees, only then will we be cleansed of our treasuring the treasures of earth. When we allow the message that we are a precious treasure, that we were worth the precious blood of Jesus, to penetrate our hearts, only then will our hearts know that our true treasure is in heaven because it is in heaven that there is one who treasures us above all else. When we are overwhelmed by the love of heaven then we can agree with what Paul has written in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, that now the love of Christ has seized ahold of us because we have concluded this: that the one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died for us and was raised.” This is why the commandment that Jesus gives to us is a new commandment, even though it is the very commandment that God has always called his people to obey. This commandment is new because of what Jesus has done for us, that he has come to the very depths of our world to prove to us that we are treasures to God and when this truth hits us, how can we not be seized a hold of by the very love of God? How can we not understand that our old self, the one who lived by the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eye and the pride of the possessions, how can this person go on living seeking the treasures on earth when they know that the God who created us, treasures us and willingly gave his most precious gift to have us as his own? When Jesus died, when he gave his life for us in the greatest act of love, of course we died, because now at last we know that we must live realizing that we are forever indebted to God for what he has done for us. And how, we must ask are we to repay what God has given for us? Jesus tells us this, that just as he has loved us, we too are to love one another. As Jesus saw each one of us as a treasure worth leaving his home in glory to come and pour out his life to save, so we also must see every person we encounter as a treasure, a treasure that our Heavenly Father was willing to purchase with the precious blood of Jesus. So, our love for others does not depend at all on who they might be but rather our love of others comes out of a heart that is responding to the love of Jesus, repaying the debt we owe, one person at a time.

It is when the love of Jesus cleanses our hearts of all desires of earthly pleasures by speaking to us about our great worth to our Heavenly Father, this is when Jesus promises us that we have a share in his inheritance for when we love like Jesus we then have hope of living like Jesus for all eternity. As Jesus has come as a Servant so too we go forth as servants. As Jesus tells us, he has given himself as our example so that we are to love just as he has given his love for us. When we have experienced the truth of God’s great love for us, we are to go forth as messengers, story-tellers who tell of a God who sent his Son to give his life to ransom ours, all because of his great love for us. We go forth with this great love in our hearts because the Son of God went forth from the heart of the Father to bring the love of heaven to the dust of earth and we at last might know the treasure we have always been to God. When we know this to be our story, when we know that Jesus came to earth and gave his very life out of his great love for you and me, and now this love has seized a hold of us, this is when Jesus tells us that we are blessed. What we must understand about this word, “blessed”, is that it comes from the Hebrew word to kneel.When we kneel to serve others, to bless them, this is when we find that we are indeed blessed. We are to know that the blessing of God comes to us not simply from knowing of the Father’s love for us but rather we are blessed when this great love compels us to love others just as it compelled Jesus to love us. Only as we love others as Jesus has loved us, only then will the blessing of God be upon us. With this blessing of Jesus we come back, once again, to Jesus being our High Priest. The High Priest had to not only distinguish what it was that was holy and what was common, what was unclean and clean but he also was the one who stood before the people of God and pronounced the blessing of God over them. This is what Jesus is doing with his disciples, those who will serve in the new Temple that Jesus is bringing forth through his death. Jesus tells them that the blessing of the Lord is upon them when the serving love of Jesus seizes hold of their hearts and now they live their life for Jesus, the treasure which is ours in heaven. This is a life that knows that there is a blessing in serving others in love because we have been blessed by Jesus who came and served us in love. So, as you do a little spring cleaning during this season of Lent may you feel free to throw out all those earthly treasures that will never last and instead may you once again know the treasure in heaven, the one known as Jesus, the Servant, who loves us because he treasures us. Amen.

 

I See Jesus the Good Shepherd

 March 13 2022

John 10:1-18

There is no other more sentimental symbol of God than perhaps that of him being our good Shepherd. Most all of us have heard the twenty-third Psalm with its beautiful imagery which gives us great peace at those distressing times of our life. It is easy to imagine that there we are, Jesus our shepherd and we are tagging along at his side, walking through the green pastures, drinking from the still waters just us and Jesus going through life, side by side. Yet to do so, I believe, is to miss a very important aspect of this idea of having Jesus as our shepherd and that is that he is the shepherd of a flock not just one little old sheep who is us. We can never forget that when Jesus finds the one he doesn’t just head out on great adventures with this one sheep but rather Jesus brings this sheep back to the flock, to the ninety-nine. In doing so, Jesus is stating a very important yet subtle fact of his ministry which is that he is taking a bunch of lost people and bringing them together into one flock under his watch and care.

Now when we understand that what Jesus is bringing about is a unified group of people we begin to also understand the enormous work that he is attempting to do. I mean, can you imagine what it must take to round up a bunch of head strong individuals and get them to put the needs of the group over the needs of themselves? Most of us are thinking, good luck with that! We all know that division is pretty easy to achieve; just look around, it’s everywhere you look. Getting a group of people to be all on the same page, well that’s a whole different ballgame. Getting people to be unified about anything may seem to be an impossibility for us but let us not forget that what is impossible for us is very much possible for God. This is perhaps why Jesus is not just the Shepherd but he is instead the Good Shepherd, remembering that God alone is good. We might say then that Jesus is the God Shepherd because he is the one creating a unity that points to the greatness of God. The question that we must ask ourselves during this Lenten journey we are on to Calvary is this: Do we see Jesus as the Good Shepherd? Do we see Jesus as the one who is great enough to overcome the divisions that threaten to tear us apart, the one who is great enough to gather us all into one life?

Our story in John concerning Jesus as the Good Shepherd actually begins in the ninth chapter of John where Jesus heals the man born blind. Through this man’s encounter with Jesus he is healed with his blindness but more than this this man has an experience of faith where he goes from seeing Jesus as a mere man, to seeing Jesus as a prophet and finally, he comes to believe that Jesus is the Son of Man, one who has opened heaven so that the presence of God can come close at last. This man who testified that once he was blind but now he could see, this man is the first one in the gospel of John to worship at the feet of Jesus. It is this act which infuriates the religious power figures and they throw him out of the Jewish community. So, here he is, a man who is alone, torn from the ties of his past wondering nervously about his future. He is the one lost sheep that is written about in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew that Jesus finds far from the fold. He is the lost lamb that Jesus finds and places upon his shoulders and runs home with that sheep, rejoicing. So, it just makes sense that as this man who was born blind has now found himself cast out of his community on account of Jesus that Jesus would begin to tell this man of a new community where he would indeed belong.

Jesus begins by teaching us about how one goes about entering this community and in doing so gives us clues to the identity of the community that he is speaking about. John in writing his gospel account is a master of using the well known scriptures of the people of his day and taking them and subtly placing them within his account. We see this very much here in the story of the Good Shepherd where Jesus tells us that because he enters by the door, this is why he is the shepherd of the sheep. So, we are left wondering, just what is this door, that Jesus is entering? The answer is found in a well known Psalm found in all four gospel accounts, the one-hundredth and eighteenth Psalm. This is the Psalm that was sung as Jesus entered Jerusalem, what we know as Palm Sunday. Now, this was sung as Jesus entered because this song is about the people needing God to send them a Savior. The loud cry’s of Hosanna, that are so familiar to us, are the words of the twenty fifth verse of the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm which is translated as being “Save us we pray, O Lord! O Lord, give us success! The people who sung these words though believed that their salvation was to be found in a king who would destroy their enemies, the Romans. In their mad desire for a king though these who cheered for Jesus had sadly misunderstood the real beauty of the Psalm that they had sung. This is what John is attempting to point out here in this teaching of the Good Shepherd. You see, if you read through the entire one hundredth and eighteenth Psalm, you come to the nineteenth and twentieth verses which read, “Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate or the door of the Lord that the righteous shall enter it.” Here the Psalmist is speaking about the gates of the Temple, the holy place into which only the righteous can enter. So, when John states that Jesus enters by the gate or the door he is saying that Jesus is the righteous one who is able to enter through the gate or the door into the Temple. The gatekeeper of the door is the Father, because as we learn in the later verses of the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm, the place that is entered is the house of the Lord, the place Jesus calls his Father’s house. 

So, this is where Jesus, our Good Shepherd is taking us, into the Fathers house. As we continue to follow what Jesus is saying he tells us that the sheep hear his voice. Jesus tells us that he calls his sheep by their name which means that he knows us intimately. As we hear the voice of Jesus calling out to us then we are led out. Here once again, we must stop and ask, out of where? The answer is that we are led out of the world, out of the realm where people do not know God as we learned in the first chapter of John. We come out of the world and we follow Jesus because we know his voice.Well, just what does this mean? I mean what does the voice of Jesus even sound like? I believe that right here John is once again pointing us back to something Jesus has said previously, in the fifth chapter where we heard Jesus tell us, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live”. The voice of the Shepherd then is the voice who commands us to love one another as Jesus has first loved us.  So, it is those who hear this command to love and follow Jesus’s lead in loving others these are the ones Jesus opens the way to enter into the Father’s house. Jesus goes on to say that those who follow Jesus will refuse to listen to strangers. The word “strangers” means those who belong to another. This also points us back to something Jesus has previously taught us in the eighth chapter where he states that whoever is of God, whoever belongs to God hears the words of God. The reason people do not hear the words of God is that they belong to another and that other that people belong to is Satan, the one who wants nothing to do with the truth because the truth is not in him. This truth that those who know Jesus have experienced for themselves is the truth of his love for them. They know the love that Jesus has for them because when they found themselves lost and alone, far from where they should have been, this is where Jesus found them. This is where Jesus loved on them, showed them his favor and grace and it is the truth of this love, this is why they belong to Jesus and no other. It is this love of Jesus, this love we know to be true because we have experienced it, this love is the love we want to show to others because we know what this love has done for us.

It is this love of Jesus, this is what has opened the door for us to enter into our Father’s house. Yet, as Jesus goes on to explain not everyone understands that love is the way that leads into the Father’s presence.  Jesus speaks of those who had come before him that were nothing but thieves and robbers, those that the sheep refused to listen to. This quote about thieves and robbers is from one of the favorite chapters of  Jesus from all of the Old Testament scriptures, the sixth chapter of the book of Hosea. There, in the eighth and ninth verses we read, “Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together; they murder on the way to Shechem; they commit shameful crimes…” What’s going on here is that priests, the very servants of God, had no problem with committing serious crimes against people. You see, there was a disconnect within their heart. They thought they could love God, bring him the sacrifices he required and in the same breath be very unloving toward people in general. This is why in the verse that comes before in this chapter of Hosea we hear God proclaim that he desires steadfast love and not sacrifice; the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Its not enough to say, hey, I love you God, I give sacrificially, I offer up everything I have to show you just how much I love you God and then in our dealings with the people around us be a horrible person full of hatred, refusing to be merciful to others. What God commands is that his people love him with his whole heart, a heart that loves God and loves others. God will accept nothing less. Those who enter into the presence of their Heavenly Father with a heart united in their love of Jesus, perfectly God and perfectly human, these are the ones who will find safety in their Father’s house.

Well, Jesus goes on to say that the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. Here the central idea Jesus is addressing is life; are you one who takes life or gives life? To steal is to take what another person needs to live. To kill is take another’s life outright and to destroy references the union of two becoming one, such as in marriage but in this instance it also refers to the union of God, who is life, with his people. Those who do not trust God to provide and give them life will believe that the only way to have life is to take life from others. How very different is Jesus who assures us that he came that those who are united with him will have life and not just any life but a life pressed down and overflowing. This life Jesus offers us is a life so secure that it can be given away, all of it can be laid down for the sake of others. This is how one is to love God with all of their soul or life as God commands.

This generous act of Jesus, to give up his life so that those he loves might have life, how very different his actions are from those who seek to control others in their quest for fame and fortune. Jesus calls these people who only act to receive power over others, “hirelings”, people who only watch over others if there’s something in it for them. These are the one’s who want to lord it over others, to feed their lust for power. Their true motives become oh, so evident though the minute that danger arises because it is then that they look out for number one, leaving those under their watch to fend for themselves. These guns-for-hire know nothing of real power which is the power to lay down ones life in the service of others. Jesus, in contrast to these hirelings, says that he knows us, he has a bond with us that cannot be broken. This bond with us is just like the bond that Jesus has with his Heavenly Father. In other words, as Jesus and the Father are one so Jesus is united with us. He is not going anywhere when trouble comes; no, he is going to stick around and destroy trouble even if to do so means letting that trouble destroy him. This is what it means to love God with all of your strength. It means to use all the power you have to serve the ones God loves.

So, have you figured out the way Jesus our good Shepherd is uniting us into one? He is doing it the way that God always expected his people to be unified and that is through their love of him. Everyday when God’s people would wake up what was supposed to be on their lips was this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God , the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your soul or life; you are to love the Lord your God with all of your might. This is the way of unity because as there is one God there will be one people, one flock. When Jesus says that we are to follow him he doesn’t mean that we are to just wander around after Jesus; no, he is saying that now that he has loved God with all that he is so also we are to do likewise. As Jesus loved God with all of his heart, loving God by loving others so that those in his care could find safety and security in his presence so too we are to hear the voice of Jesus and create safe places for others through our love for them. As Jesus loved God with all of his soul or life we too are to hear the voice of Jesus and do likewise. We are to know that we have life, an abundant life, a life overflowing with goodness therefore we do not have to take more than we need, we do not have to take another’s life or destroy another’s life in order to keep the life we have been given. No, like Jesus we can take this life we have been given and give it for the sake of all. As Jesus loved God with all of his strength and power we too are to hear the voice of Jesus and do likewise. We are to not lord ourselves over others for the power and strength we may receive but rather we are to remember that just as Jesus is united with his Heavenly Father we too are to be just as united in service and love to one another. We are to use all of our strength and power to hold the unity together even using our power to lay down our life for the sake of the unity if the need arises.

Jesus is the good Shepherd. Is this the way that you know Jesus, is he your good Shepherd? If you see Jesus as your good Shepherd then you will also know that it is his voice that we are to be listening for when our eyes open and our feet hit the floor. Jesus, our good Shepherd, is telling us, hear me, listen to me. Jesus calls us to remember that as we love the God who is one so also we as his people are to be one as well. Jesus our good Shepherd is speaking, telling us to love God with all that we are. Yet, as we well know, there are many voices that speak to us everyday, just why should we hear the voice of Jesus speaking to us above all the noise that rushes at us? The answer is that we are to lean in to hear Jesus because we remember that when we were so very lost, so alone and scared having no one but ourselves to rely upon, in our desperation we lifted our voice in despair. Jesus heard our voice. Jesus heard us and Jesus listened to us because Jesus knows us. There we realized that Jesus, better than anyone else, understood our longings, our hurts and our fears and he came to lift us up and carry us into a place of safety, security and abundance. This is why we listen because Jesus first listened to us. This is why we love because when we wondered if we were even lovable at all, there was Jesus and in his arms we experienced the truth of his love, a love that transformed our hearts. It is the love of Jesus that creates in us a listening heart, a loving heart, a heart willing to follow him all the way to Calvary. To God be the glory! Amen!

Seeing and Believing

 March 6 2022

John 9

         Do you see that? Over there, don’t you see it, its right there?Don’t you hate it when someone asks you that question and you have no idea what it is that they want you to see? This usually happens to me when ever I’m in the car with Jennifer. She usually drives and so when she spots something she wants me to see she will shout out, “Hey, look at “fill in the blank”. For whatever reason, when I hear those words I automatically look out the passenger window and promptly miss whatever it was that she wanted me to see, so, no, I did not see whatever it was that she wanted me to see. So, even something as simple as looking out the window and seeing the same thing someone else wants you to see can be a bigger challenge than most people realize. And don’t even get me started with the seeing that is found in the phrase, “Do you see what I mean…”, I mean, most of the time I am probably going to struggle to see what a person means, at least until I have some time to process just what it is that I’m supposed to understand. So, while seeing seems so natural and easy when you try and see what others see and try and see what others mean when they try and explain something to you, this is when seeing gets a lot more complicated.

         The gospel of John is a story that is shot through with seeing, both the actual seeing and the seeing as in us understanding just what it is that Jesus is trying to communicate. When Jesus invites his disciples to come along for the venture of a lifetime he uses the phrase, “Come and see”. The disciples obviously thought that this was a pretty cool way to invite others because when their friends get curious about Jesus they too are told to come and see. Then when Jesus meets Nicodemus he tells him that if Nicodemus wants to see the kingdom he would have to be born of the Spirit. So, in the first three chapters we have this idea of come and see and also this idea that the Spirit is needed to see the kingdom. To see the kingdom means that we are to see the king, to see Jesus and this new reality that he has brought into our world, the new reality of light in the darkness. Today is the first Sunday in Lent, the forty days before Easter when we are to walk with Jesus to Calvary. This Lent, I want us to consider how do we see Jesus. As we will hear today, all of us at one time were blind, blind to who Jesus is, but now we see, we see with a new vision. We now see Jesus in the fullness of who he is. As we walk to Calvary our hope is that we will see Jesus in an ever greater clarity, to see him in all of his majesty and glory.

         So, we begin our Lenten journey remembering that once we were blind but now, because of Jesus, we see. We have been healed so that we might see as Jesus could see. Jesus could see his Father working and because of that he could join his Father in his work. Jesus called his disciples, and us, to see these works and to join him in this work . The crowds, and the Pharisees are quite oblivious and don’t see anything because their dependence on the flesh limits what is possible for them to see and understand. This blindness of the Pharisees becomes evident in this ninth chapter of John where  Jesus works a miracle which gives a man eyes to see. This story though is more than just one isolated miracle because we are to understand that this story is a story of us. We too are people who have been met by Jesus right where we are at, and like this man born blind we at last can see, we can see Jesus and his kingdom that has been right in front of us all along.

         Jesus at this point in the story has made a few enemies. So, he has to hide and goes out of the Temple where he was teaching and as he walks beyond the Temple walls he passes by a man who was blind from birth. The man is most likely begging for money for there is not much else he can do to survive. It is the disciples of Jesus who bring the blind man to the attention of Jesus because they ask Jesus just who is to blame for this man being born blind, himself or his parents? Now, their questions seem a bit crass, don’t they, this seeking out just whose fault is it that this man is in the shape he is in but to be honest, don’t all of us do the very same thing? I mean, doesn’t everybody try and figure out just why for some people that if it wasn’t for bad luck they would have no luck at all? We want answers because we want the world to make sense. The problem is that we try and make sense of the troubles of this world on our own as if we were somehow capable of doing so instead of listening to the answer that Jesus gives. Jesus corrects his disciples telling them that this man’s blindness was not because of this man’s parents sin or because of this man’s sin; no, this man’s blindness was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Are you beginning to put the story together, now? Jesus has already told us that he does nothing of his own accord but  he does only what he sees the Father is doing which begs the question, just what is the Father is doing? The answer is that the Father is working at the place where people have been broken by sin. Our heavenly Father has taken the ugly work of sin and transformed that mark so that it becomes the means for us to see the beauty of his glory. The question is do we see what Jesus means when he tells us this? You see instead of spending all our time assessing blame we should instead be joining God in his work, the work of bringing healing to the brokenness of people. Jesus tells his disciples that they too are to join him in doing the works of the Father, they are not just to see what Jesus is doing but they are to become those who others see are working with God.

         Well, Jesus wastes no time getting to work. We are told that Jesus spits on the ground and makes mud balls and plasters this mess in the blind mans eyes. The God who loves us is not afraid to get his hands dirty, just as he did in the beginning when instead of calling us into being God instead made us out of the earth and gave us life. So, here is this blind man, his eyes smeared with mud but can he now see? Not at all, because we are told that what he must do is to take and wash his face in the pool of Siloam. Think of the irony that the man is sent to a pool of water whose name means sent! We have to wonder just how this man, who can’t see a lick is going to find this pool which he has never been to and has not seen?  A map really is not going to help. It is obvious that he is going to need help.  It is here the underlying message of this story begins to shine through because as we think of this blind man we cannot help but think of Saul who we later would come to know as Paul who when he encountered Jesus rather than being healed of blindness became blind instead. His physical blindness was God’s way of telling Paul of how spiritually blind he had been when he persecuted the early church. As we are told in the eighth chapter of the book of Acts, Paul, in his blindness, needed others to lead him and pray over him so that he might regain his sight and then he was baptized. As the man who was born blind comes to the waters of Siloam we can’t help but think of the waters of baptism where we confirm that Jesus has touched our life, we have entered his new creation and now we will be at last able to see the kingdom which has always been there all along.

         Now what is so very true is that any time one has an encounter with Jesus their life is dramatically changed and this was especially so for this man who was born blind. His neighbors and those who had watched him sit at his same spot day after day, now wondered just why it was that he was no longer crying out for alms. They could see this man but they could not understand how it could be that he could now see. In our world, the blind stay blind they just don’t suddenly get new eyes and start seeing, that’s just the way it is. Yet here he was staring them in the face and they had no answers for what they were seeing. All this poor guy could say is hey, its me, I am that guy that used to spend my days begging, the same guy who used to sit in the darkness and wonder just what it must be like to have light flood into my life only now all that I hoped for has at last come true. The response of the crowd who had gathered around him was well, how can this be so? They had questions that needed answers because people just naturally want a world that they can explain, a world they can figure out until suddenly into this world comes Jesus and then the world becomes very disorienting. The man could not explain just how his eyes were opened; all he knew is who it was that had given him his sight and that one’s name was Jesus. Jesus is the one who had touched his life, who had told him to wash and be cleansed and here he was seeing for the first time in his life. Where this Jesus was now, this man did not know.

         The people rightly understood that what had happened to this man had to have been done in the power and consent of God. So, of course they went and sought out their godly leaders and brought them to check out this man who had lived his whole life in darkness but could now see. Surely they would be thrilled that here they could see that God had worked a miracle, wouldn’t they? Well no, they weren’t happy about all this miracle business because it happened on a Sabbath. If Jesus performed a miracle on the sabbath then he just had to be a law breaker and law breakers can not perform miracles. Or so they thought! All that the blind man could do in the face of their unbelief was to just keep telling his story of what Jesus had done for him. The Pharisees had concluded that Jesus was an outlaw but is this really who Jesus was? The man who was born blind paused for a minute, and he came to the conclusion that this Jesus was certainly not an outlaw nor was Jesus just some guy off the street as he had earlier thought but instead he stated that this Jesus surely had to be a prophet.This man Jesus fit the bill of who a prophet is, as stated in the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, one who God had raised up from his people who God would put his words in their mouth and speak all that God commanded him. Yes, this had to be who Jesus is thought this once blind man because only one so connected to God could have done what he had done.

         The Pharisees though, they were not ready to concede that Jesus was a prophet. No, there had to be some other explanation. Maybe this guy was just concocting this story up out of thin air. Was he really blind, they thought? So, they go and track down his parents and ask them, was your son really born blind? Yes, this man’s parents replied, he was born blind. Then they added but we have no idea how it is that he can now see. You see, the Pharisees were great at instilling fear in people so much so that this man’s parents wanted to avoid a confrontation with the Pharisees at all cost.

The testimony of the man’s parents put the Pharisees in a real bind because if he really had been born blind then what were they going to do about Jesus. This is the problem all good religious people have: just what are they going to do about Jesus. Jesus has a bad habit of coloring outside of the line, of re-writing the script those in authority think everybody is supposed to follow. The religious people all know God the best so its no wonder that when these Pharisees catch up with the blind man who could now see, and they tell him to give God the honor due to him and agree with them that this man who had healed him was indeed a sinner. Now, this man replies with a wise rebuttal saying that he did not know whether Jesus was a sinner or not all he knew is that he once was blind but now he could see. Unbelievably, these thick headed control freaks ask this man to explain again, just what happened. You have to imagine that this poor guy has reached his limit and he asks them, “Why do you want to hear this again? Do you want to be his disciples? You can only imagine the look on the faces of these religious authorities when they were asked if they wanted to be followers of Jesus. Their faces must have blazed red, their eyes shot daggers and sweat poured off of their foreheads. They shouted at this man you, you are his disciple not us. We are disciples of Moses. What we know is that God spoke to Moses. This man, Jesus, we don’t even know where he comes from. In other words, Jesus is in no way a prophet because unlike Moses this Jesus does not speak the words of God and he most assuredly has not been raised up from the people of God. 

The man who Jesus healed just could not believe what he was hearing from these so called religious authorities. You can hear his voice ring with sarcasm when he replied to them, “This is amazing!You don’t know where Jesus is from but the one thing you do know is that he opened my eyes. What you also know is that God does not listen to sinners and you know that if a person worships God and does the will of God, this is a person God listens to.  So, if all of this is true, then how did Jesus do something that the world has never seen before, taking a man born blind and giving him sight? I mean, if this Jesus is not from God then he would not have been able to do this. Can’t you see this?

The Pharisees had reached their limit. They did not take kindly to this sinner telling the likes of them about God and who God listens to. They grabbed this man by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to the city gates and gave him the boot.  Yet even though this man had not fared very well at the hands of the religious authorities all was not lost because once again, this man was found by Jesus. This time Jesus ask this man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”Here once again, John brings up a title of Jesus that he has written about numerous times before. Jesus, we might recall, in the first chapter of John’s gospel, told Nathanael that he would see heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Jesus as the Son of Man has opened heaven, brought what was once beyond our reach close for us to touch, the touch we feel in the hand of Jesus. Jesus, the Son of Man, the one who stands before the Ancient of Days in the seventh chapter of Daniel now stands also before us, bringing us into that closeness with the one who has always been, the Father in heaven. This is what Jesus asks this man who once was blind but who now sees, did he now believe that Jesus is the one who has opened heaven so that the Father might touch his life? The man stated that he did believe and then he did the most remarkable thing, he bowed at the feet of Jesus and he worshipped Jesus, the first person in John’s gospel to do so.

         So, in this story of the healing of the man born blind, can you see yourself in this story? Do you see that it was us who once sat in the darkness, begging and groping our way through the dimness of the life we found ourselves in. Then, Jesus came. Jesus touched us, the new Adam making a new creation out of us. The church, those who also had met Jesus, were there to lead us to the waters to be cleansed. Transformation happened and many wondered just where the old us had gone. They could not see Jesus had touched our life. All we could do is to reply, I was blind but now I see. What else is there to say. Of course, there were those who knew how God worked and they knew that God most assuredly could not do anything to change us to which we again, replied, “All I know is that once I was blind but now I see.” And yes, the new us just didn’t fit in our old places, the old haunts had become to small for us to be confined in so out we had to go. We had met the Son of Man and he was the one who had opened up the doors of heaven and with new eyes we could see the light of heaven shining everywhere we looked. Now we can see that all of the earth is truly filled with the glory of God. This is what John is trying to say that when you see it how can you not believe it. I pray that during this Lenten season that Jesus will open your eyes so that with new eyes you might see Jesus in ways you have never seen him before. To God be the glory! Amen.

         

What do you want?

 February 27 2022

John 6:25-59

         Have you ever thought about how life is a series of just figuring out just what it is that you want? Its time for breakfast, what do you want, eggs or cereal? Then you have to figure out what do you want to do, do you want to watch TV, or a movie or instead just read a book, again, what do you want? On and on it goes, from what to wear, to where to be employed, to what to do with your life, the question remains, what do you want? Once you figure out just what it is that you want then you can at last go and make a game plan as to how you will get just what it is that you want. As you keep asking yourself just what do you want you will also find that some of the things that you want are going to conflict with other things that you want and then you will have to decide just what it is that is most important to you of the things that you want. So, you see it is easy to see that life is a series of decisions that ultimately all comes down to just what is it that you want.

         In our scripture for today, it isn’t hard to see that the people who come to Jesus are on a mission to get what they want. Just one day earlier these same people had eaten at the all-you-can-eat buffet Jesus had whipped up for a few thousand of his favorite friends and out of that experience these people had decided that what they wanted was the secret to making this all-you-can-eat buffet a daily event. So they sought out Jesus, finally finding him on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. It might not be clear from how the story is translated in John’s gospel but the gist of what it is that they wanted is the right formula so that they could do miraculous works just like Jesus had done when he took five barley loaves and two small fish and somehow managed to lay out a banquet in the wilderness for more than five thousand people. After they had feasted there, when these people asked themselves just what it was that they wanted, they answered by saying that they wanted the inside scoop that Jesus had so that they never had to worry about being hungry ever again. They wanted Jesus to give them the five easy steps to get God to work for you. Now as crass as this might sound, the truth is that this is a common way that people come at their relationship to God. When they ask themselves just what it is that they want, there are people who answer by stating that what they want is a life that’s comfortable. They want a life that has no worries about food, about money, about the very security of life and they want God to get on with making that happen. You see, what they want is for God to bring the blessings of heaven into the world that’s on this side of heaven. In other words, what they want is heaven but they don’t want to wait for it. Now, this sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it, to experience the security and joy and blessings of heaven, right here and right now but if this is what you want, be forewarned such a life is fraught with danger. You see, such a life that only seeks only to be comfortable will end up being a life that becomes consumed with protecting those things which make that life comfortable, a life that becomes more and more ingrown upon itself. What is forgotten in the euphoria of a life of blessing is that at some point this life will end. Just as the food that we love to eat spoils and rots if we aren’t careful so too this life will fulfill the maxim that you are what you eat, something that likewise will perish. As Jesus told his disciples as recorded in the eighth chapter of Mark, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but in the end end up with a life that will spoil and rot just like the food that was used to sustain it? You see, when we desire to have the life of heaven now, when we are unwilling to wait for the security, joy and blessings that are promised for later, then life will become defined as just staving off death for as long as possible. We have to ask ourselves, is this all that life is really about? Is this the life that we really want?

         Jesus is desperately trying to get these people who had come to him in search of the way that could manipulate God to bless them now, to see the tragedy of their shortsighted desire. So, you are blessed by God for a time, then what? After you have labored and worked to make a comfortable and secure life, then what, what will be the meaning of all of it? As we ponder the answer to this question, we hear Jesus offer an alternative. Instead of stuffing our faces with food that is basically dead, Jesus asks us if we might want food that is full of life, food that is life-giving.  This food is the food that Jesus, the Son of Man, wants to give to us. Jesus himself is the presence of the life which has been ongoing for all time, from before the very foundations of the world. Where Jesus is there is the God-three-in-one, God the Father having set the seal of the Holy Spirit upon his life and it is into this ever flowing fountain of life and love that Jesus invites us into.

         Yet, is this life that Jesus is holding out, is this what we really want? Those who had come to Jesus could not see that what he offered them was so much greater than what they had asked for. No thanks, they seemed to say, we are just interested in figuring out the way to be blessed now, this is what we really want. So Jesus turns their request on its head and he tells them that what God is working at is not going around filling random lives with blessings to make those lives more comfortable and secure but rather what God is working at is to work in the lives of people to get them to have faith in Jesus. Incredibly, the next thing that these people who had come to Jesus state that they wanted is a sign, something that would prove them that Jesus was in fact legit. You have to wonder if they could hear themselves. I mean, just one day earlier they had been there, out on that vast plain with thousands of people and they had eaten their fill with leftovers beside and now what they want is a sign? Are you kidding me? They say that they need a sign, something that they can lay their eyes on, in order for them to have faith in Jesus. Come on Jesus, do something spectacular, so that we can at last trust you! This is, after all, what Moses had done, isn’t it? Wasn’t he the one who had made it rain down manna every day so that our ancestors did not starve in the wilderness? It was because Moses had done this spectacular miracle, this is why our ancestors trusted Moses and followed his leadership. So, Jesus what is it that you are going to do so that we can trust you? This is what these people were getting at when they said that what they wanted was a sign. After Jesus had listened to their argument, he decided to correct them. First, as Jesus pointed out, it was not Moses that had given them manna from heaven as a sign that they should trust him and follow his lead. No, Jesus says if that’s what you got out of the whole manna business then you totally missed the point of the whole exercise. No, as we are told at the beginning of the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, God humbled his people and he let them experience hunger so that he could feed them with manna, the bread from heaven, a way of sustaining them that no one had had ever experienced before or since. The whole reason as to why God had done so was so that his people might understand that people should not live by bread alone but instead life is found by every word that comes from the mouth of God. God had told them that he would send bread from heaven to feed them and true to his word, this is exactly what happened. God told them that if they tried to horde manna, taking two days worth instead of what they needed for the day then it would be found to be full of worms when the woke up the next day. Sure enough this is what happened just as the word of God said. When they were told that they could gather two days worth on the day before the Sabbath so that they would not have to work on their day of rest, they found that only then did the manna not spoil, just as God had told them would happen. So, day by day, week by week, God’s people were sustained by God just as he had told him that he would do. This is what the whole manna business was all about. So, when Jesus corrects these people who had come to him, he tells them that it was their Father who had given them the true bread from heaven, the true bread. This true bread that Jesus referred to was the life of God’s people that they experienced through obeying what God had spoken to them. Life comes through every word spoken to us by God and thus we are reminded as to just how John describes Jesus in the beginning of his gospel, that Jesus is the Word, the Word who was with God and the Word who was God, in this Word was life. This Word became flesh and pitched his tent in our neighborhood, John tells us, and it is this Word that speaks to us about our life lived day by day just as the word of God spoke to his people in the wilderness, how they were to live day by day. Yet, Jesus did not come that we should live life believing that life is merely staving off the inevitable death for as long as possible; no, this life is given so that we might hear the words of God and find in them a life anchored in eternity.

         The words of God are words which speak of a promise, a promise that if we look upon Jesus, if he is the only sign that we need from God, the only reason to trust the words of God, then Jesus promises that we will be raised up on the last day. Yet, the good news is that we do not have to muster up this trust of God as if we even had the ability to do so. No, Jesus tells us that it is our Heavenly Father who draws us to his side because we are simply unable to do so on our own. Now, we have to wonder just how does God draw us, in the Greek it literally says that God drags us into his life! The answer is found in the Greek version of the Old Testament, from the thirty-eighth chapter of Jeremiah, where we read that God loves us with an everlasting love and he draws us with compassion. So, it is the love of the Father which overwhelms us and destroys all of our defenses, a love and compassion for us that captures our hearts. This is a love which causes us to have a new answer to just what it is that we want because when we experience the reality of God’s love for us, then what we want is a life with this God who loves us.

         This life with God is the life of Jesus which Jesus wants us to experience. Jesus came to us from the very heart of the Father all so that we might experience the Father’s love so that we too might be drawn into that same place. As Jesus and his Father know each other intimately so too the Father who searches our hearts wants us to know the depths of his heart. This is why he speaks and teaches us. We can’t but help but hear the words of Paul found in the second chapter of First Corinthians, where he tells us that the Holy Spirit searches everything even the depths of God and it is through the Spirit that we can come to comprehend the thoughts of God. This is the life, the very life of Jesus, the very life that has eternally existed, this is the life Jesus wants us to experience. This is a life that will, Jesus promises again and again, that will be raised up on the last day. This is telling us that this life is one where the security, comfort and blessing that we hunger for and thirst for will finally be given to us. The question then becomes, is this what we want, to wait for these to be given to us at some later date?

         You see, if this is indeed what we want, then at last we will have a life that has meaning. We need to understand that what Jesus is pointing us to when he begins to speak of when he says that the bread that he gives us is his flesh, that the life of Jesus is one where his very flesh and blood was offered up to give the world life. What this points us to is that this laying down of the life of Jesus was not just about what Jesus has done for us but rather it is about how this describes the life which Jesus is offering us, a life which is now ours to live. You see, once we understand that our life is anchored in the life and love of the Father then we are free to follow Jesus in doing the greatest acts of love, the freedom to lay down our life because we have the assurance that we will be raised up on the last day. So, rather than our life just being our attempt at seeing how long we can stave off death now life can be understood as our opportunity to love extravagantly, to love as Jesus loved, to love in the greatest way possible. Now we can understand that instead of wanting a life full of blessings with which to comfort ourselves now we can have a life where we pour ourselves out to be a blessing to others, in love being a source of life to those in need. In the death of the flesh of Jesus, in the pouring out of his blood, here we find the source of our life of sacrificial love. When we love like Jesus, then we can be assured that Jesus lives in us and we live within the life of God. The life of the Father which flowed through Jesus flows through us as we pour out our life in the service and love of others. This is the grand purpose which gives our lives meaning. 

         So, the question again is what do you want? Do you want a life of blessing, comfort and security here and now, a life which turns more and more inward, a life which is nothing more than striving to live the most days possible? Or do you want more, do you want the life of Jesus? Do you want a life where you are dragged out of your complacency by the love and compassion of your Heavenly Father? Do you want a life where the God who searches hearts, the God who knows all about you, desires to open himself to you so that you might know the depths of the heart of God? Do you want a life anchored in the eternal life of God which sets you free to love in great and extravagant ways? Do you want a life which fulfills the great purpose that it was created for, to be a life which is a conduit of the very life and love of the God who created it? The bottom line is this, do you want to be like Jesus?

         You see, Jesus promises us that when we want to be like him then we have the hope that we will be those who will be raised up to life on the last day. But it is difficult to imagine just what that day will be like. Here again, John in his letter to his church helps us to grasp the wonder of what that life beyond this life will be like. In the third chapter of John’s first letter we read, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when Jesus appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as Jesus is pure.” You see, when we are like Jesus now, when his life is our life, when his love is our love, when his willingness to find his joy beyond the shame of the cross is the way we too live our life then guess what? On that last day when he comes, and we are at last raised up, we can be assured that if we have lived and loved like him then when he appears we will be like him. This is our hope, Jesus, he is our hope of glory. When we know this then doesn’t it just make sense that when we consider just what is it that we want that we would answer, I want to be like Jesus. If I hope to be like Jesus on the last day then I should want to be like Jesus now. I should want to know Jesus as my very life, the daily bread of life, the life marked by no regard for flesh and blood but rather a life that is ours to give away as we bring life and love to others. This is a life which glorifies our Heavenly Father and if we glorify him now we know that he will glorify us on that last day. The question that only you can ask is this: Is this what I really want? To God be the glory! Amen.

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!