Named (John 15:12-17)

"Named" (John 15:12-17)

Sunday, May 6, 2018

            “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

            How, exactly, did Jesus show love?  John’s gospel tells us. 

            In chapter 2, Jesus is at a wedding.  The wine runs out, a potential social embarrassment for the groom.  At his mother’s prompting, Jesus works his first miracle, turning water into wine – superior wine.  Not only does he keep the party going; he steps outside of convention.  Typically, the good wine is served first, but when they taste Jesus’ wine, they are shocked that what came last was the best of all.  God in human skin, Jesus, lived in everyday human life – the simple joy of a wedding.  Turning water into wine, Jesus said “no” to joylessness.

            How, exactly, did Jesus show love? 

Flip to John chapter 4.  There he met a rejected woman in her lonely, daily labor.  Set outside the social group of village women, she trekked to the well alone.  Jesus began with this woman, asking for her offering.  “Give me a drink of water.”  This solitary Samaritan woman was astounded and appalled that this Jewish man would talk to her in a public place.  No one made room for her, she five times dumped by heartless husbands and now living with a man who would not even afford her the protection of marriage.  Jesus saw her and spoke with kindness.  Getting over her shock, she talked with this strange Jew who gently led her to the moment in which she realized she was talking to her Savior.  Jesus made space for the outcast and in doing so, said “no” to the dehumanizing effects of prejudice, sexism, and chauvinism. 

How, exactly did Jesus show love? 

In John 5, he healed an invalid man who lay by the pool near the sheep gate in Jerusalem.  Temple denizens supposed the water possessed mystical powers.  Nonsense!  Jesus showed that healing comes from God.  In his act of healing the man, we hear Heaven’s resounding “no” to the dehumanizing effects of illness.”

In John 6, with a crowd gathered to feed on the words of Jesus, he would not send them away.  Instead, he accepted an offering, a boy’s simple lunch of fish and bread.  With that food, he fed 5000, with 12 baskets of leftovers to spare.  Jesus shouted “no” to hunger.

How, exactly did Jesus show love?

John 8: a woman caught in adultery is thrown down in the dust at Jesus’ feet by a blood-thirsty crowd demanding a condemning verdict.  From their vantage point, this is a contest with law and order and tradition on one side and Jesus, agent of chaos, on the other.  They show no regard for the woman they’re preparing to stone to death.  Jesus won’t have it.  He sees her.  “Whoever among you has not sinned may cast the first stone,” he says.   That woman, adulteress though she may be, is a child of God.  Every human language offers a score of scornful terms for this woman, derogatory names by which she will henceforth be known.  Jesus has a name for her too.  He calls her daughter, and he gives her peace.  Jesus closes the case with his deafening “no” to the isolating effects of sin.

In the healing of the blind man in John 9, Jesus says “no” to us when we push certain people to the margins.  In John 11, the raising of Lazarus is a foreshadowing of God’s “no” to death that will come in full force in the resurrection.  In John 13, Jesus says to “no” to the hierarchies we so willingly accept, when He, the Lord and master, drops to his knees to wash his disciples’ feet.

How did Jesus love?

He redefined life when he said “no” to all the ways we destroy each other.  

He also loved sacrificially.  “No one has greater love than this,” he said, “than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  In John 10, when Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd,” he three times promised to lay down his life for the sheep.  Now, he makes the same point as he tries to help us see what he means when he talks about love.  Godly love is the readiness to give everything, life itself.

When Jesus tells us to love each other as he loved us, we know that love is seen in his rejection of the things that destroy us and his willingness to sacrifice his own life for us by taking on himself the death sin brings.  There’s a third way Jesus loves us. He names us. 

“I do not call you servants any longer, … but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (v.15).  Nope, that woman caught in adultery is not a “slut.”  She is a beloved daughter of God.  Nope, that blind man is not to be blamed for being blind.[i]  In him, the glory of God will be seen.  He, the recipient of God’s healing, is a son of God. 

What names have been heaped on you so often you’ve begun to accept them?  Jerk?  Loser?  Failure?  Reject?  Outsider?  Stranger?  Foreigner?  Uninvited?  Bum?  Idiot?  I won’t say the more hideous derogatory epithets, but I bet you’ve heard them.  I bet you’ve heard hateful words from an overzealous relative, a racist classmate, an overbearing boss, a loudmouth on the street, or a judgmental, shortsighted pastor.  Have you heard the damning names so often, you think they might be true? 

John’s gospel tells us that Jesus has something for you.  You are named.  Jesus looks into your eyes and says, “I call you friend.”  The woman from Magdala recognized Jesus when he said, “Mary.”  The risen one knows your name.  On his lips your name becomes new – Cathy, John, Nooshin, I__, Lucio, Siqing, Alan, David, Laura.  My daughter is the only M___ in our church, but my flights back from Ethiopia a few years ago, four the flight attendants were named M__.  Maybe there are 100,000 people in the world that have the same name as you, but when Jesus looks in your eyes and speaks your name, and calls you friend, no one on earth can claim what you have with Jesus in that moment.  You are named.  You are His.  You are adopted as a child of God.

OK, that which would destroy us is rejected by Jesus. He says “No” to death.  He lays down his life for us.  And, he names us.  Now what?  Now, what?

“I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.”  If one of the new names Jesus gives us is “producer of new life,” or, “fruit bearer,” how do we understand that and live into it? 

We have to grow.  Fruit is a living thing and living things grow.  Where do we grow in our relationship with God in Christ?  Generally speaking, we grow in worship, in prayer, in time alone with God, in Bible reading, study, and meditation, and in ministry and mission.  Where and when do you specifically grow in Christ, or where do I experience growth?  I think it varies from person to person. Everyone who follows Jesus, must be intentional about.  It doesn’t happen by accident. 

After that woman caught in adultery received forgiveness, the only way she would then grow close to God is to stay in the community of followers of Jesus.  If she just turned around and went back to the life in which she rejected God’s ways, then the forgiveness Jesus gave would not take root.  She moves from adulteress to daughter, from outsider to family member, from lost to saved.  We have to live into the new name Jesus gives.

Also, fruit reproduces.  Fruit is a seed and from that seed comes more fruit.  There’s no such thing as non-evangelistic Christ follower.  To be in Christ is to invite others to Christ.  We know people who have accepted the cruel names society has foisted upon them. We have friends, neighbors, family members who live into the names – idiot, loser, no-good.  To love as Jesus loved, we must help people come to meet Jesus so they can learn their new names.  We grow and we name just as we are named.

We are named.  Now what?

Just as Jesus laid down his life on the cross for us, following his lead, we learn to live sacrificially.  The only way to give ourselves for the blessing of others is to be intentional about it, but we can only live this way in the grace of Jesus.  Sponsoring a child, volunteering with the mentally disabled, visiting the jail as part of a prison ministry, mentoring troubled teens, speaking out for racial justice, advocating for the rural poor – numerous opportunities for us to give of ourselves at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.  We step into those opportunities because of who Christ has created us to be – new creations.  The disciple who does great thing on behalf of others is no super saint.  She’s simply living out of the work Jesus has done in her. 

We bear fruit. We live sacrificially. 

Finally, remember the times John’s Gospel Jesus says, “No.”  We inhabit that space created by the “no” of Jesus.  No, Jesus said, the party does not end.  More wine!  Thus, we live lives of joy; abundant, abiding joy.  No, Jesus says, the Samaritan woman will not be outcast.  We live lives of welcome – even welcoming people we previously would have rejected. 

No, Jesus says, the man will not be blamed for his blindness, the invalid will not spend his life longingly staring into waters that cannot heal, the hungry will not leave with empty hearts or empty bellies, and the sinner will not stay in sin.  Thus, in our lives, as an expression of the Gospel, we help people be healthy.  We help all people eat their fill.  We spread the word that in Christ there is forgiveness and in forgiveness, we stand before God clean, every one of us.  

No, Jesus says, humanity will not be divided into the pampered rich and the downtrodden poor who do all the dirty work.  It won’t be that way in the Kingdom of God.  In the Kingdom, the King himself will joyfully wash the servants’ feet.  And, death is the not end because death has been defeated.  Like our king, we kneel to wash others’ feet so they can know they are honored, loved, and named.  And we never stop insisting that in the coming of Jesus, the Kingdom of God has come near and all who repent of sin can have life in His name. 

Jesus came to invite us into a specific life – the life of Christ.  In that life, we are named and we are called.  Have your received the name He has for you – friend of God?  As we sing our final song, listen.  With your voice, sing praise to God.  With your heart, listen for God’s voice.  He loves you.   He wants you to know it.  He wants you to know He’s with you as you go through life. 

Jesus has named you.  Live into your name.

AMEN

---

[i] John 9:2-3.

Turning off the Light

        It was 5AM.  I was the only one up and had not turned on any lights.  I appreciated how quiet the house was.  I looked out the kitchen window into the fading darkness of our backyard.         We used to see deer a lot, but lately, not so much.  I wondered if they had moved on, but my wife Candy said, no.  She is a gardener and her half-eaten tomatoes told her the deer are still coming by.   In the dim pre-dawn gray, there he was, a buck happily enjoying an early morning salad. I could hear Candy’s voice in my head.  “Did you scare them out of my garden?”  So I open the back door and they ran.

        What if I had turned on the kitchen light before looking out?  At 5AM, it is starting to get light outside, but it is still pretty hard to see.  Artificial indoor light would reflect off the windows and make it impossible to see.  If I had turned on the kitchen light, the world outside the window would appear as black as the dead of night, a starless night.       The light that made it possible for me to read while sitting at the kitchen table would have blinded me to what was happening outside.  How does a kitchen light bring both sight and blindness?

In our world, how do darkness and light exist alongside each other?  How do these two – darkness and light – both exist in our hearts?

The Gospel of John says that Jesus is “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (1:5).  First John 1:6 says, “If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true.”

        Darkness cannot overcome the light of God.  When God is present, darkness must flee and all that was hidden by the darkness is exposed by God’s holy light.  So how can we walk in darkness once we have heard the gospel?  If we have met God in Jesus, is it even possible for us to walk in the darkness after that?  First John says it is. 

        According to Raymond E. Brown, 1^st John is first century Christian essay written for members of a church that has gone through a split.  The author, the elder, is on one side in this split.  He accuses the other side of walking in darkness.  They knew Jesus’ story – the cross, the resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit.  They knew, still they chose darkness.  They claim follow Jesus, but the elder calls them liars.

        God is the light.  First John stresses the importance of men and women living in the Lord, walking in the light.  Yet, verse 6 holds that some have done the opposite and walked in darkness.  Even after being exposed to God’s purity, holiness, and perfect love, they chose darkness over light.  They were able to choose to turn the light off.

        How can one turn God off?  It is a matter of free will.  Many Christian theologians put it this way.  God gives us choices and honors the choices we make.  What makes us God’s imager bearers – those made in God’s image unlike any other animal – is our free will.  By our free will, we create.  God made the world and empowers us to live in the world He created.  God enables and expects us to make things of the world.  And we do.  We make things like cars, houses, and computers.  We are endowed with creativity by God.

        It is by our free will that we create and it is by free will that we choose to worship God.  Or, we have the option to not worship God.  I do not believe God determines choices.  God creates us with the ability to choose and some among us even after seeing God’s goodness choose to turn away and walk in darkness.

        The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says light means potentiality while darkness means death.[i]  These terms appear throughout the New Testament.  The Gospel of John and 1^st John are unique in the way they present a duality of light and darkness.  The concepts of light and dark carry theological and spiritual meanings in John not found in other works. 

Reality is comprised of both and human beings are in one or the other; we walk in the darkness or the light.  We turn ourselves so that we are oriented toward God (the light) or toward that which is not of God (the darkness). 

The Holy Spirit will help us choose.  If someone you know is in a dark place or has a heart shadowed by heavy, deadly darkness, you can pray for him. We can go to God on behalf of those we love who have turned away from the Lord.  The Holy Spirit will respond to our pleas and reach out to those lost in darkness.  Even before we pray, God pursues the sheep that are lost (Luke 15).  However, a moment of choice always comes and the individual has to decide he wants God more than the darkness that has attracted him. 

        But, why are we attracted by darkness in the first place?  If God is so awesome, why would we ever choose to turn away from Him?  This question is as old as the world.  Eve and Adam walked with God in the Garden of Eden.  Yet, they chose to turn away from God’s gift of life ever since, humans have rejected God. 

        First John 2:15-17 helps me understand how they and anyone, myself included, can do indeed do this.  The elder says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.  The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world – the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches – comes not from the father but from the world” (v.15-16).  Darkness is not appealing because it is literally dark and foreboding and scary. 

We run away from dark, foreboding, scary things.  The other night I had a dream I was being attacked by a poisonous snake.  I was literally running with my legs in the bed.  I was so shaken when I woke, I could not return to sleep.  The darkness John talks about is much worse than a snake, but it does not appear worse.  It does not appear bad at all.

“Do not love … the things of the world; … the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches.”  But we do.  Several years ago, Richard Foster named the three great categories of temptations that draw us away from God – power, sex, and money.[ii]  Last Christmas I received Andy Crouch’s latest book Playing God.  In it he covers themes very similar to those discussed by Foster.  Counterfeit Gods (2009) by Timothy Keller also deals with this.  These books are written to show followers of Jesus how vulnerable we are.  We love the things of the world.

Jesus was with the disciples in a storm at sea (Mark 4:40).  They panicked.  As long as he was with them, they should have had no reason to fear.  He was bigger than any problem they would face.  They couldn’t trust him though.  They trusted dry land.  They believed the storm.  It sinks boats.  Trusting Jesus was harder.

We are the body of Christ.  We give our tithes and do our mission projects and in different ways announce to the world around us that Jesus is Lord and in him the Kingdom of God has come.  We trust him to meet our needs and carry the message we preach.  Would it be easier if we had more – maybe $500,000 per year?  Oh, Lord, what could we do with $1 million?

I don’t know if our deacons or treasurer ever has these thoughts.  I do.  Why?  One million dollars seems reals.  I take my eyes off of Jesus and set the world in my sights.  John 3:16 says God loved the world enough to send Jesus to provide salvation from the sin and death.  But we are not to love world so that we become like the world.  We are to help the world know of the salvation we have in Jesus. 

The duality of light and dark is a violent tug-of-war in the Gospel and in First John.  Imagine God on one side.  Imagine an undefinable darkness that smells of evil, that puts out an oppressive heat on the other side.  You and I are in the middle.  In this tug of war, God is not pulling us, nor will God allow the darkness to pull us.  Rather, God’s arms are open.  Jesus invites us to come to Him.  It is an invitation of pure love and an invitation to enter into pure, unfailing, unending love.

On the side, darkness puts on the disguise of happiness – happiness that is purchased.  But, if I get that raise, then I’ll be happy.  But, oh, I needed a few thousand more.  If God sent the tither who gave a $1 million gift to the church, we would suddenly discover we really need $5 million to be God’s church.  If the disguise of money fails to attract, darkness puts up another temptation– sex.  A man feels lonely, unsatisfied, unmanly.  Darkness comes in the form of sexual temptation.  We resist greed and sex, then darkness tempts us with power, or something else. 

The temptations keep coming.  Do we turn away from God?  What form is darkness taking in the struggle for your heart? 

Each one of us needs to do some work in interpretation.  We have to examine our own lives and see our vulnerabilities.  First John 2:15 is a general teaching – do not love the things in the world.  Your work and mine is to specify that teaching.  Money is a thing of the world.  It can be managed wisely and used in God’s service.  When acquiring money is a driving force in our lives, it becomes something we love and it drags us away from God.  For one person the temptation is money, for another sex, and so on.  Do not love the things of the world because, says 1^st John, “the world and its desire are passing away” (2:17a).  Each one of us needs to figure out what of the things of the world are dragging us away from God’s light.

Maybe it begins with disappointment.  Because the world is a fallen world, the goodness of God’s original creation now corrupted, there is pain.  Pain is a part of life and failure is something everyone faces.  The greatest danger of it is it may be the thing that draws us to the darkness.  In the Gospel and in 1^st John, the way of darkness is the way of death: permanent, separated-from-God-for-eternity death. 

But the light is always there. 

I have dealt with disappointments, but God always kept me in His grasp.

I did not get the first big job in ministry for which I applied.  There were weeks between that rejection and graduation from college that I did not know what was coming.  My dad had warned me of how difficult it would be to graduate without employment.[iii]  Before I had a job or knew what I would end up doing, I knew God was with me and I was in His light.  I was disappointed but, I was in the light.

Through the decade of my 20’s I failed in romance.  I was lonely.  Before I knew Candy and knew she would marry me, I knew God was with me and I was in His light.  The loneliness hurt.[iv]  At times I was sad, but always in the light.

I had big dreams for my first pastorate and many never came to fruition.  I thought I knew what the church should be and it did not become that.  There was disappointment and I did not know what God would do in my life as a pastor.  But, I knew God was with me and I was in His light. 

When we were adopting children, there were interruptions in the process, years of waiting, and times when it seemed it would never happen.  In the anxiety, we knew God was with us and we were in His light.  There were agonizing stretches, but the light continued to shine.

Each person has the option of stressing over successes that are really desires of the world. We can fall apart over our temptations that originate in the darkness.

There is another way.

We look to Jesus.  We give ourselves to him.  He rules in everything in our lives.  And that is when we live into an joy-filled God fellowship, the abundant life we are promised by Jesus.  As 1^st John says, “Walk in the light as he is in the light.”  We do, and we have “fellowship with one another” and the assurance of eternal life (1:7; 2:17b, 25).

AMEN

---

[i] G. Bromiley (1985).  Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume, Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds.  William B. Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), p.1049.

[ii] Foster (1985). The Challenge of the Disciplined Life.

[iii] I do not mean to be crass and conflate any old job with the calling to ministry.  But, work is important.  A job, whether secular or religious is something all people need for income but also to be a means for the individual’s contribution to the good of society.  If your work has zero cultural or social or human value, is it work you should be doing?

[iv] This season included a realization upon my 30^th birthday that I could not accept that “singleness” was a happy condition, not for me anyway.  I was single.  And generally speaking, I was happy.  But not content.  I know many singles who like I did long to find love.  It never comes to them and the sadness becomes a part of their lives.  But, it is only a part.  Even in that state, the unmarried individual can be in light of God and have the joy of God.  

Good Friday Message - 2014

God on the Cross (John 19:28-30; Psalm 69)

Friday, April 18, 2014 (Good Friday)

        As Jesus was dying on the cross he said “I am thirsty.” The author of the 4^th gospel adds the editorial comment that he said this in order to fulfill the scripture.  That notion, that Jesus did things to fulfill scripture, is sprinkled throughout the gospels.  What scripture was fulfilled when he said, from the cross, “I am thirsty?”

          Psalm 69:21.  It is from a prayer of David who says in this verse, “they gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” 

          The Psalm begins “Save me, O God, from the waters that come up to my neck” (v.1).  Early in David’s life, he stared down lions as he protected his flock.  He battled the Philistine giant Goliath.  Then, as he rose to prominence, the jealousy of King Saul led him to repeatedly attempt to kill David. 

          After Saul’s death and David’s rise to the throne, problems continued.  He fell into deadly conflict with his son Absalom.  At times, Saul had armies hunting for David.  Later, it was Absalom with armies on the hunt.  More than once, surrounded by enemies David felt himself to be as good as dead unless God saved him.  And God did.

          The Messiah was to be a descendant of David.  Raised by Joseph who was in the line of David, Jesus met the requirement.  As a ‘son’ of David, Jesus had the qualification needed to be the Messiah. 

Jesus was also David’s Lord.   He lived differently than the great king.  David, in desperation, prayed that God would save him.  God did as David made it through many treacherous scrapes.  In the end, David died of natural causes.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus likewise asked God to take the cup of suffering from him (Luke 22:42).  This time, God did not. 

Another difference was the attitude toward tormentors.  Both had enemies intent on killing them.  Who was it that hated David (Psalm 69:4)?  The Psalm does not say but in his life, we see many candidates.  Any number of people might be opponents who David, in the Psalm, asked God to punish severely. 

Let their table be a trap for them, a snare for their allies.
²³ Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually.

²⁴ Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them.

²⁵ May their camp be a desolation; let no one live in their tents.

²⁶ For they persecute those whom you have struck down, and those whom you have wounded, they attack still more.^[b]

²⁷ Add guilt to their guilt; may they have no acquittal from you.

²⁸ Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous.

        When the mob came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter using a sword, cut off the ear of one of the men.  Jesus healed the man as he rebuked Peter (Luke 22:51; John 18:10-11).  When the soldiers whipped Jesus, crowned him with thorns, and nailed him to a cross, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).  Unlike David, he did not pray “May their camp be a desolation … let them be blotted out of the book of the living.”  Jesus did not ask for God’s wrath to fall on those who were so cruel.  He asked God not to hold their sins against them.

          Yes, David lamented that his tormentors gave him vinegar.  Obviously he spoke poetically using metaphor to pour his heart out to God.  Yes, Jesus fulfilled that line from David’s poem, not in metaphor but literally.  As he hung dying on the cross he said “I am thirsty.”  A soldier jammed a vinegar soaked rag in his face.  The Fourth Gospel rightly sees the threads of Israel’s scriptures in Jesus’ story. 

          David was a man of his times, an era of visceral, up close violence.  He could not launch missiles that would kill his enemies who were 100’s of miles away.  He could not stay safely out of sight as warriors do today.  He had to look them in the eye as he stabbed them in the heart.  David’s prayer that God blot out his enemies may not sound holy, but it was honest.  The Bible calls him the one after God’s own heart; but not the Savior.

          That’s Jesus.  Yes, as John says, his actions fulfilled scripture.  What he demonstrated in word and deed and heart also re-imagined the Bible.  Jesus cast a new light on everything humanity thought about God.  In Jesus, we see God working in new ways.  People knew of God’s mercy and love prior to Jesus but he brought God closer than ever before.  Because of him, the path to God was opened to all people.

          “It is finished,” he said.  Then he died.  The old day was done. 

          In our somber remembrance we are painfully aware that like David we would like to call down curses on our enemies.  Like the religious authorities who killed Jesus as a matter of convenience, we would remove anyone who obstructed our path and foiled our personally made planes.  Like the Pilate, we are blind to truth.  Like the rage-filled Roman soldiers, violence pumps in our veins.  Jesus hangs crucified because of sin – because of my sins.

          Remembering, we grieve how our sins crucified him.  We also do well to set our hearts’ attention on the one who died for us.  Think about whom he was, who he is.  He did not die so much as he, as the gospel says, bowed his head.  Even in this moment, nailed to the cross, seemingly immobile, shamed, and beaten, it is Jesus who is in control. 

          Jesus provided for his mother’s care as he hung cross (John 19:25-27).  Nothing more happened until he determined it would.  He said, “I thirst,” and then scripture was fulfilled.  Jesus declared, “It is finished.”  Only after making that statement did he give up his spirit (v.30). 

Yes, God is the one who flooded the earth but protected Noah, split the Sea so Moses could pass through, stopped the sun in the sky for Joshua, and closed the lions’ mouths for Daniel.  God is the mighty God of the whirlwind in the book of Job, the God praised by the most powerful forces of nature in the most thrilling of Psalms, Psalm 148.

          God is also the humble savior who washed his disciples’ feet, who healed the ear of one of the guards sent to arrest him, who shared truth with the governor who tried to intimidate him, and forgave the soldiers who mocked and crucified him.  We can see God in the scriptures leading up to the Gospels but we are invited closer in the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. 

          Good Friday is a day to be as honest as David was.  We come fully clothed in sin and hang our sins on him as he hangs.  Naked we stand before him.  He drapes a robe of light onto us, his divine light.  We shine because his name is affixed to us.  It is a day of sadness on one level.  We enter that sadness and do not minimize it.

But, it is a remembered sadness, not a felt one.  We know where story goes.  More importantly, entering it at this point, at the cross, we know that is a day that we see God.  This is a day we understand how it is that God loves us. 

          The gospels tell us nothing of the Saturday after the crucifixion.  I do not know the proper spiritual practices for that day.  I do not believe there is any one way to observe ‘holy Saturday.’  I offer this.  Why not spend that Saturday quietly, fixing our minds on the crucified God.  Do it early, so that the sense of Jesus being for you sets in.  Do it intensely enough so that truth that you are forgiven and free becomes so real, you live it.  Saturday is a day for washing; Jesus cleanses our hearts, polishes our souls, renews our minds.  He brightens our smiles.  We are bathed in the redeeming, creating love of the crucified God.  We come out new because Jesus makes all things new including you and me. 

AMEN 

Maundy Thursday Message - 2014

Jesus the Giver (John 6:35-51; 13:1-11)

Thursday, April 17, 2014 – Maundy Thursday

            Nelson Mandela spent years and years in prison in South Africa, yet he survived that ordeal, made it out, became president, and forgave those who unjustly imprisoned him.  He gained a reputation for courage, grace, focus, and great inner strength.  Martin Luther King Jr. is known for non-violence.  He dreamed of an integrated America before it happened.  He spoke with charisma and people wanted to follow him; or kill him.  They did both.

            Here in our own town, there are stories of men and women of great character and integrity.  One example of many is former basketball coach Dean Smith.  He is known as much for his faith and social conscience as his brilliance as a coach.  He is respected for his character.

            I could go on with examples.  The one thing others cannot take away is integrity, yet people compromise their own values far too often.  Though it cannot be taken, we give our integrity, we forfeit our reputation, and as a result we struggle to trust one another.  Jesus’ character was never in question.

            This may sound like an example of stating what is ridiculously obvious – Jesus was a good man.  Well, no kidding!  Was that even in question?  And yet, to look closely at why we accept this without question helps us know how to stand before Jesus.  We take up a vulnerable posture in which all we can do is present ourselves fully exposed, our souls completely bare, and then receive whatever he dishes out.

            Why?  It begins with what Jesus did in gathering his disciples for a meal the night he would be arrested.  The gospels indicate strongly he knew what was coming.  Whether he knew it would be that evening or sometime very soon, he knew.  His actions were intentional, done so that after the crucifixion/resurrection dust had settled; his disciples could look back, remember, and learn from what he did.  

            They would have reclined around a table kind of at the height of a coffee table.  And Jesus washed their feet.  I thought why is it such a big deal that he washed their feet?  Along with that question, I wonder, why do I feel compelled to wash feet just because Jesus did it?

            In his culture it was an act of service done by a servant or in many cases by a slave.  It was a lowly chore.  That was a world where people traveled by foot; they walked dirt roads; and they wore sandals.  I would guess those feet were a kind of dirty we rarely see, we of shoes, sock, carpets, pavement, and bathtubs.  It was lowly and here the master lowered himself in a shocking way.

            In our culture the issue is intimacy and self-reliance.  I’ll wash my own feet, thank you.  I’ll do it at my house and then I’ll hide them.  If you must look down there, notice my shoes.  I love you, but I don’t know if I want us to move to that level of intimacy in our friendship.  I’m not sure I want my foot in your hands.

            In Jesus’ day, they did not want to wash the feet of others.  In our day, we don’t want others to wash our feet.  In both cases, the act is a significant step out of normal.  And there’s the genius of it.  Jesus said to his contemporaries in this act, you are no better than the servant who washed feet.  In our day he says to us, you need to open your hearts and let me in and let your brothers and sisters in Christ in. 

            Sure, we are capable of washing our own feet.  But are we vulnerable enough to let people into our hearts to the point that we truly are a family in Christ.  Will we allow him to smash down the barriers we erect to keep everyone, sometimes even our spouses, at a safe distance?  Can we invite Jesus so deeply that we have the intimate love here in our family of believers that Jesus insisted be what defines us?

            In the account of the foot washing in John 13 and in our acting it out, we see Jesus character.  He, the Lord, is a servant.  He models servant-love and demands that we give servant love to one another, to those society would call the ‘least of these,’ and to our enemies.  The foot washing is one way Jesus breaks us down so he break into our lives, our hearts.

            Because of his willingness to show servant-love as he calls us to servant love is one reason we admire Jesus’ character.  Another is his sacrifice.  When we gather around the communion table, we take the bread.  We hold it up and say, ‘this represents the body of Christ.’  We eat it because he said, ‘do this in remembrance of me.’  The broken bread is his body, broken by our sins.  The wine or grape juice represents his blood – the blood of the New Covenant.  Because he died for us and because we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, we have life in the New Covenant. 

            The Gospel of John is abundantly clear that Jesus the man knew exactly what he was doing.  Yes, he was fully God.  At the same time, he was fully human.  When nails drove through his hands, it hurt as much as it would hurt you or me.  Yet, he knew it was coming and went to it for the world, for you and me.  In chapter 10, he says, “I lay down my life.  … No one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord” (10:18). 

            In John 19, having been arrested, the beaten, poor Galilean rabbi stands before the splendor and might of Rome, an inquiry from Governor Pontius Pilate.  Yet, Jesus seems to control the entire dialogue.  Frustrated, Pilate asks, “Do you refuse to speak to me?  Do you not know that I have the power to release you and the power to crucify you?”  Already bloodied from the thorns and the whip, Jesus says back, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” (19:10-11). 

            Jesus chose the cross.  It was God’s plan from the start.  I don’t think God forced Judas to betray him or forced the chief priests to hand him over to Pilate.  I think each player in the drama made his own choices.  But God knows the human heart and the human weakness when it comes to sin and temptation.  Jesus took the sin on himself. 

            When we talk about his great character, we can say many things.  I have chosen to focus on how he expressed servant love, and how Jesus gave of himself as an act of sacrificial love.  Service and sacrifice:  these attributes are what Jesus is all about and they indicate how we are to stand before him. 

            When Jesus knelt, Peter protested.  “You will never wash my feet,” he told his master (13:8).  “Unless I wash you,” Jesus responded, “you have no share with me.”  There is nothing we do.  We present ourselves as we are in all our dirtiness, shame, and failure before God.  There’s no initiative from us; no skill or exceptional achievement.  There is no gain or hard work that gets us there.  Broken, we come and Jesus is the actor, the doer.  He washes.  If we do not come in this way, receiving what the giver gives, we never can be one with him.

            Similarly he says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”  Nothing in any of the four gospels means literal cannibalism.  Joined with the bread and cup accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we know that here in John 6, Jesus meant we eat the bread and cup as a symbol of us taking him into ourselves.  But when I say, “taking in,” I mean receive.  We accept that we are sinners, but that his body scarred and blood spilled make a way for us.  If we do not, then we do have the eternal Jesus gives. 

            At the foot washers’ basin and at the communion table, we are receivers and Jesus the giver.  Our hands are open as are our hearts.  Nothing is held back or hidden.  We come acknowledging that we belong to him.  We are his and the best that is in us is what he gives. 

            This is not necessarily easy.  People who work hard and achieve a lot want take pride in standing on their own accomplishments.  Taking on the posture of receiving may be one of the biggest obstacles blocking the path to life-changing faith.  We are forced to trust.  Many will not.  Pride is a root cause of sin, yet many of the proudest people in the country sit in churches every week.  We are proud of our children, proud of our families, proud of churches, and proud of ourselves.  Nothing any pastor says will dent that pride in the least.  That entrenched pride produces unmovable wills which is sad because it means people bearing the identity of a Christian are in fact keeping themselves from God.

            I pray tonight, Maundy Thursday, you and I would not be among the proud.  I know we have been.  I wrestle with pride and tonight, I am asking God to help me let it go.  Would you do that?  Would you ask God to free you from having to stand on your own?  Would you look to Heaven and in your spirit confess your sins and your helplessness?  Having confessed would you then open yourself to Jesus and receive what he gives?  In washing feet and being washed, we honor our servant God and we are cleansed by him.  In eating bread and drinking juice, we take him into us as we admit that we are nothing without him.

            He is the great giver, giving life to all who will die to self and receive from him.  Can we do that tonight?

            We will have silent prayer and then be invited forward for the Lord’s Supper.

Jesus Pauses for the Woman at the Well

Jesus Pauses (John 4:3-30, 39-42)

            “Jesus pauses.”  It is not as commonly quoted as “Jesus wept.”  In fact, it is not actually a Bible verse at all.  But it is something Jesus does.  He pauses.  Jesus moves with intention.  His actions have purpose and, it appears, he always has a plan.  Sometimes though, he steps off book, out of the plan.  Sometimes, he delays his movement.  He pauses because we need him to pause.  Whenever we see Jesus do something to help people, something seemingly spontaneous, we ought to know he is in the act of showing what God does.  God pauses to help.

            I thought about saying “Jesus stops.”  It certainly wouldn’t be wrong to say it that way.  Jesus and the disciples were headed North on the road and in fact they did stop.  “Jesus stops” is not radically different than “Jesus pauses.”  However, this is such a brief rest stop and even more than brief, unexpected, that I thought ‘pauses’ gets more to the heart of what we see of God in this story.

            Note verse 3 and the beginning of 4.  “Jesus left Judea and started for Galilee again.  This time he had to go through Samaria, and on his way he came to the town of Sychar.”  From later in the story and also from other accounts in this Gospel and also in Luke’s Gospel, we know there was tremendous animosity between Jews and Samaritans.  Samaritans were descendants of the intermarrying of Jews and the ancient Assyrians.  Thus, the Jews hated them for making the race impure.  This all sounds awful to us but we are far removed from that time in history.  It made sense to the people back then.  “You are a Jew,” she said to Jesus.  “And I am a Samaritan woman.  How can you ask me for a drink of water when Jews and Samaritans won’t have anything to do with each other” (v.9)?

            She did not question the reality of racism.  She accepted it.  She did not blame the Jews nor accept any blame on Samaria’s behalf.  Jews and Samaritans hated each other.  That was reality.  She knew it.  Jesus knew it.  There were Jew in Northern communities and the capital and center of Jewish life was Jerusalem, in the south.  For Northern Jews like Jesus to come from their homes in Galilee to festivals at the temple in Jerusalem, they had to pass through Samaria.  And to get back home, they had to pass through Samaria again.  This was all normal.  Jesus, the disciples, the woman – each knew this was life in their time.  To hate, that was life.  To walk in the region of the people we hate, that was life.  To be thirsty from hours of walking in the hot sun, that too was life.

            What did verse 3 say?  Jesus was on the moved, headed for the work God prepared for him in Galilee.  Samaria was not on the agenda.  He had come to Israel.  This was such an unimportant stop; it seems there was no reason for John to write about it. 

            Then Jesus stepped out of character.  He, a Jewish man, made the most normal of activities, drinking water while thirsty, an extraordinary thing when he asked for that drink from a Samaritan woman.  She pointed out the absurdity of his request.  Men don’t talk to unaccompanied women in the public square.  Jewish men don’t address Samaritan women in any circumstance.

            Jesus responded by pointing out the absurdity of the existence of hate among people.  He dared to announce that the emperor had no clothes.  “You don’t the gift God wants to give you.”  He replied.  “If you did, you would ask and I would give you living water.  Life-giving water.  Water that would quench your thirst forever” (paraphrasing v. 10, 13).  This was exactly when Jesus paused.

            She did not know that.  She could only see him as some kind of loopy prophets.  Prophets and doomsayers were forever coming along from the Jews.  She was bored enough to enter the fray.  She turned from nonsense talk of living water to theology.  She, rightfully, claimed the great Patriarch Jacob, as her ancestor.  She, like the Pharisees, would nail Jesus with deft theological reasoning.  “Are you greater than Jacob,” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

            Theology can be really safe when it is not personal.  When it is removed from my life and serves as an intellectual abstraction, theology never has to matter.  I love theology.  I read heavy doses of theological writing.  It informs my preaching and my living.  But it becomes irrelevant if it goes silent when I close the book.  The theology Jesus lived could not be contained in a book.  He would not let this woman escape his gaze by retreating to theological strongholds. 

            “No who drinks the water I give will ever be thirsty again.” He responded.  “The water I give is like a flowing fountain that gives eternal life” (v.14).

            Cue her eye roll.  She was sure he was a prophet.  A clamoring, impotent false prophet.  He wouldn’t be swayed by her attempts that theology, so she would play along.  If he wanted to be ridiculous, she’d join this odd, out of place Jew and have a little fun.  “Sir, please give me a drink of this water.  Then I won’t have to get thirsty and keep coming back to this well, day after day” (paraphrased, v.15).

            Jesus was done playing games.  He told her to call her husband.  And she had had it.  She was done with the games too.  “I don’t have a husband.”  Who cares if this crazy Jew ridiculed her?  The women in town came to the well in community, but she, a woman discarded by too many men, was no longer welcome in that community.  Her Samaritan sisters disregarded her as much as they disregarded the Jews.  This coo-coo Jewish man was showing her more kindness than anyone had in a long time.  What the heck?  Just tell the truth.  “I don’t have a husband.”

            Prophecy is only from God when it matters, when it is true, and when it is personal.  Jesus delivered blunt, prophetic truth.  “You don’t have a husband.  Five have cast you out.  Now, the man with whom you live doesn’t even bother recognizing you as a wife.  He satisfies himself with your company.  He gives you no regard, no respect.”

            She was completely bare before Jesus.  Oh, her clothes were still on.  But he sees everything.  He saw right to her heart.  He saw her deepest pain. That’s what Jesus does.  He is always, always on his way somewhere.  And he always, always, pauses to look us right in the eye and pierce our souls with truth and love.  Jesus did that with this woman, and we see what God does with us. 

            For her part, the woman was not laughing anymore.  She again raised issues of theology, but this time, she was quite serious and ready to listen.  Then she moved from theology to faith.  “I know the Messiah will come,” she said, “and he will explain everything” (v.26). 

            Jesus responded, “I am he.”

            To review, Jesus paused along the way to Galilee and asked a Samaritan woman for water.  As he did he told her God wanted to give a gift, a gift of living water that would give eternal life.  They carried on a conversation that was times amusing and at times quite serious, personal, and even invasive.  But in the end, she said, she believed in God’s Messiah.  Jesus responded he was that Messiah and he already told her two things.  First, he told her God wanted worshipers to worshiper in spirit and in truth.  It did not matter where worship happened as long as it happened in spirit and in truth.  Second, Jesus told her he could give things only God could give.  And she believed, at least partly.  She believed as much as she could and that bit of faith was enough.  Jesus met her where she was.  He paused on his predestined journey for someone who was in deep pain and who was open to the truth.

            Does that describe us?  Is there pain in me?  Oh yeah.  You?  Definitely.  We live in the legacy of sin.  To be human is to be created “very good.”  To be human is to bear the image of God.  We are the pinnacle of God’s creation.  But, the fall has damaged what God has made.  In our own lives, we re-create Eve’s moment of choice in the garden.  In our own lives, we stare at the forbidden fruit.  And we choose to bite it.  Not every time.  Sometimes we heroically win the victories Jesus won when he resisted Satan’s temptations in the desert.  Sometimes, we choose not to sin.  Too often it goes the other way.  We are sinners.

            Sin hurts.  We are hurt by our mistakes.  We suffer pain from the sins of people who have come before us.  We are injured by sins of people around us.  And our friends and neighbors and the people who we pass daily are wounded by our sins.  This is the legacy of the fall.  Jesus Paused for someone in pain.  Are we individuals and collectively a people in pain?  There is no doubt.

            The woman at the well, though, was not only one in pain.  She was also open to seeing God.  She made not have known just how ready she was to receive salvation.  She wasn’t intentionally seeking.  She was just about the drudgery of a toilsome daily task – hauling heavy buckets of water from the well to her cottage.  That’s where God shows up.  People want “mountain top experiences.”  People want to come to church and to be lifted out of their seats by the majesty of the music.  People want to be carried to the heavens by the fury and brilliance of the preaching.  Maybe that happens in some places.  But what preacher in history could top Jesus?  And what was his genius opening line with this woman?  “Can I have a drink of water?”

            God meets us in our plain, everyday, mundane places.  God meets us where we live.  There God acknowledges the pains and disappointments we live with.  God does not deny or minimize the harder parts of life.  God brings living water to our thirsty lives.  God pauses so that we can see Him if we are willing to believe there is something more than what our eyes see. 

            Remember the beginning of this passage.  Jesus left Judea and started for Galilee.  He had to pass through Samaria.  But that region was not a scheduled stop.  His mission was to announce the Kingdom of God among the Jews.  That mission did not include a side trip in Samaria.  However, he met a woman who listened and received the gift God wanted to give.

            In the epilogue of this amazingly simple yet deeply profound story, the woman ran to the town who shunned her for circumstances she most certainly could not control.  In such a tight-knit community, a woman 5 times divorced would be known and scorned.  Everyone knew who she was and avoided her.  But here she was shouting in the center of town.  She was so excited to be that close to God, she told the very people who had been cruel to her.

            For their part, they investigated and Jesus was so compelling and inviting, they asked him to stay with them and he did.  Remember, he was on his way somewhere and just paused to get a drink and share the good news of God’s coming with a woman who was in deep pain and was willing to hear him.  From that pause, John tells us, “he stayed on for two days” (v.40). 

            The people said to the woman, “We no longer have faith in Jesus just because of what you have told us.  We have heard him ourselves, and we are certain he is the Savior of the world” (v.41).  It does not matter how many husbands she has had.  It does not matter if Jesus is Jewish and they are Samaritan.  This is bigger than all that.  Upon hearing, they realized the gift God wanted to give.

            God still wants to give that gift.  The story of Jesus – cross and resurrection – is the story of God coming because God wants to give people life.  God wants to give you and me eternal life as adopted sons and daughters of God.  God pauses and comes beside us because he loves.  That’s what God does.  When God pauses, be ready for the unexpected.  Be ready to receive love and grace.  When God pauses, we also pause to listen to Him that we might receive the abundant life he offers.

AMEN