What Matters

Resurrection Promise

"Take away the stone," he said.  "But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odour, for he has been there four days." (John 11:39)

This chapter is knee-deep in emotion and filled with evocative spiritual imagery.  The open and raw grief of Mary and Martha and all who mourned the death of Lazarus is all too human.  The rituals surrounding death, while peculiar to a culture far removed from us, are strangely familiar.  In raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus pushed the religious leaders to the point of openly plotting his assassination.  Paradoxically, Jesus raises a man from the dead, in so doing making certain his own death. 

Coming immediately soon after Jesus making a promise of 'abundant life' (John 10:10), it is too easy to 'spiritualize' a message out of the resurrection of Lazarus.  But the story and Jesus himself will not let us do that.  Yes, when we live 'believing in him' our dead spirit is brought to life.  But Jesus doesn't raise the spirit of Lazarus, he brings back to life the rotting, smelly corpse of Lazarus.

Resurrection is the promise of a new physical reality.  In Jesus, God came to redeem, rescue and restore all creation, which necessarily includes the physical realm, including our bodies.  We now live in mortal body.  At the resurrection we will be given a new, immortal body.  In Jesus the last and greatest of enemies has been vanquished - death itself.  While in this world we still feel the pain of death, as followers of the Resurrected One we are able to shake our fist at death and taunt it is Paul did, "Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Corinthians 15:56)

Safe and Secure

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. (John 10:29)

A child looks up and reaches for the familiar hand of a parent.  It is an image of sercurity sought and found.  It speaks of the inherent desire in all of us, no matter our age, to find a safe and secure place in this often dangerous world.  

Jesus continues to enrage religious leaders with claims of unity with the Father.  The Father has given him, the Good Shepherd, sheep to care for.  In 1st century Palestine this was a vivid and familiar image.  The Judean hills and plains were scattered with shepherds tending sheep, protecting them from many and varied dangers - wild animals, thieves etc.  Sheep were precious and a Good Shepherd would do all they could to maintain their safety and security.

Our world is filled with spiritual danger, from the idolatrous spirit that haunts the human heart to the crafty and manipulatve schemes of the the evil one.  In this world we will have trouble.  But in this world we also experience the protective care of a Father who refuses to let us go.  We cannot, will not be snatched from the loving, vice-like and yet tender grip of God.  We find shelter in the shadow of his wings (Psalm 91)

I reach for the Father's hand to find fingers always open ready to receive mine, and once closed over mine, never to be loosened.

Stubborn Blindness

To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!"  And they threw him out.  (John 9:34)

The religious leaders interrogated the once blind man at length.  They probed and they prodded.  They desperately looked for the smoking gun, the incriminating evidence that would prove once and for all that Jesus was a dangerous crackpot.  The progress of their investigation has an increasingly desperate air about it. They ramp up the pressure on the man to give them what they want - just cause to rid themselves of this pesky Rabbi.

The spiritual blindness of the Pharisees more than matched the physical blindness of the healed man in its destructive power.  Before Jesus healed him, the man was closed off from much of the physical world.  In their obstinacy, the Pharisees could see the physical realm, but were blind to the things of God. 

Like the religious leader of the 1st century world, our culture is filled with enlightened people who nonetheless are spiritually blind.  They cling desperately to their particular 'ism' (atheism, secularism etc,), refusing to believe that any truth could exist outside the nice, neat ordered world they have constructed.  But then, perhaps the most dangerous form of spiritual blindness is suffered by good, observant, religious people like the Pharisees.  The conservatives of their day, they had in some ways reduced the mystery that is God down to a set of burdensome rules and rituals.  In the church we can do the same.  And so Lord, open our eyes that we might see you in your holy perfection and us in light of that perfection - people who like the man born blind, are in desperate need of your healing power.

If, then

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

One of the most quoted, affirmed and loved verses in Scripture is John 8:32; 'You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'  Reading the context of the verse, that which precedes and follows it, clearly demonstrates the inherent danger of lifting a verse out of the ground in which it is planted.  On its own, Jesus' promise that we will know the truth sounds like a wonderful unconditional promise.  But it is anything but that - it is a conditional, 'if...then' promise.

 

Jesus says that if we hold to his teaching - that is we, believe who he says he is (e.g. 'the light of the world') and we obey his commands - this then will lead us into knowing and experiencing the truth that will set us free.  Orthodoxy (right thinking) and orthopraxis (right behaviour) in discovering the liberating truth of the gospel.  We cannot ignore Jesus' commands to love neighbor and say that we have the truth in us.  We cannot dismiss claims of Jesus' divinity and still call ourselves 'Christian'. 

Between the 'if' and the 'then' is the path of discipleship.  If we hold to Jesus teaching, we are his disciples - his followers, and then as his disciples we will plunge further and further into Truth that sets us free.  Discipleship is a journey of fits and starts, of false turns and slow lanes, of blinding revelations and fumbling around in the dark.  But Jesus leads us, and he leads us somewhere good - eventually to that place where all the scales will fall from our eyes and we will know all things.  What a destination we can look forward to.  What an adventure the journey towards oir destination is!

Living Water

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said withe a loud voice, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water shall flow from within them." (John 7:37)

 

The Feast of Tabernacles, or Festival of Booth is the seventh and last of the great Jewish festivals.  It celebrates the forty year sojourn Israel experienced in the wilderness between the exodus out of Egypt and the entry into the Promised Land.  A cornerstone activity of the festival was for each family to construct a temporary both or hut that they would then live in as a reminder of the wilderness wanderings and God's provision in them.

 

During the Feast of Tabernacles celebrations a water pouring ceremony would be performed in the Temple.  The High Priest would lead a procession down to the Pool of Siloam, draw water and them march back up to the temple where the water was poured out.  This would happen seven times, over the seven days of the festival.  Prayers would be offered for rain to fall for the next harvest.  Psalms would be sung by the crowd as the High Priest poured the water. 'Save us, we pray, O LORD! O LORD, we pray, let us thrive! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD! We bless you from the house of the LORD." (Psalm 118:25-26).  This, and other Psalms sung during the Feast were pregnant with messianic expectation.

 

It was into this high drama that Jesus enters the story and speaks of the living water he offers those who believe in him - rivers of living water.  In a dry Mediterranean climate, water was life.  Jesus' claim was breathtaking.  The Life people longed for was present in him and available to all through faith.  Only Jesus can quench the heaviest of spiritual thirsts.  Only Jesus can replenish the dryness otherwise evident in the human heart. 

 

 

Hard Teaching

Many of his disciples said, "This is hard teaching. Who can accept it." (John 6:60) We can easily gloss over the shock and horror experienced and felt by those who first heard Jesus' teaching in the sixth chapter of John. We have the privilege of reading these words through the lens of the Easter events and the institution of the sacrament of holy communion. Cut from these anchors, Jesus seems to be advocating a perverse form of cannibalism as he speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. This was hard teaching indeed. Often in my discipleship Jesus confuses me as much as he comforts me. At times I am drawn to his teaching; on other occasions I am repelled by it. Following Jesus and seeking to embed his teaching into ones life is not for the faint of heart. For example, I have not ever really got my head fully around having to hate father and mother, wife and children in order to follow Jesus (Luke 14:36) I get hyperbole, but really...? There is hard stuff in the gospels. There is dense and confusing arguments in Paul's writings. There are disconcerting images of God in the Old Testament. The temptation is to skip past the teaching I do not understand to wrap myself in the familiarity of the bits I (think I) do. But, 'All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.' (2 Timothy 3:16) And so I need to wrestle with scripture like Jacob wrestled with God; until I receive a blessing. I must chew on scripture like a dog slowly devours a bone; eager to scavenge every nutritional morsel.

A Strange Question?

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he has been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?" (John 5:6)

 

I had the amazing privilege of spending a few hours at the Bethesda Pool site in the old city of Jerusalem.  The remains of the pools include the steps that led down to the waters which were thought to have healing power when mysteriously stirred.  On my visit I could imagine in my minds eye the scene that unfolds in John 5.  The clamour around Jesus.  The desperation of those waiting and hoping for healing.  The necks straining to see or hear what this strange Galilean Rabbi would do or say next.

 

Then Jesus asks a man disabled for 38 years a strange question.  Did he want to get well?  Of course he did!  Didn't he?  He was waiting at the pool after all.  But his response to Jesus' question betrays another possibility.  He confesses that even if the waters were stirred, he had no-one who could carry him down to receive their healing power.  Perhaps he was at the pool's edge out of habit, or to meet others expectations?  Perhaps he had given up any real hope?

 

Jesus asks all of us the same question.  Do we want to get well?  Do we really want healing and wholeness?  Perhaps in a similar way to the the disabled man we too can become used to the mundane monotony of our lives stained by sin.  Do we really desire the radical spiritual surgery ( a heart transplant) that Jesus offers to those who truly want to get well?  If we do, again like the disabled man we will need to be ready to hear and then respond to the call of Jesus.  He offers us life, but we must receive it with our obedience.  As we get up and follow, then we will know what it is to 'walk in the light.'

 

 

The Main Thing

"My food", said Jesus, "is to to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work." (John 4:34)

 

Jesus was deliberate and intentional about everything.  His burgeoning popularity in the Judean wilderness captures the Pharisee's attention and so Jesus and his disciples head north back to Galilee.  A 'chance' encounter with a Samaritan woman becomes the opportunity to expound the profound nature of his mission, not to mention the occasion for new territory to hear and respond to his Good News.

 

In the meantime the disciples were caught up in more mundane things like securing food in an unfamiliar and even inhospitable land.  Jesus contrasts their focus on physical food with his on spiritual food.  Just as our bodies are nourished and sustained by a healthy and regular diet of food, so Jesus' life and spirit was sustained by his commitment to do what the Father sent and commissioned him for.  As it is for Jesus so too it is for us.  We will not find spiritual food that satisfies apart from Jesus and doing the Father's will.  We will not quench our spiritual thirst other than gulping down the living water Jesus offers.

 

This all begs the question, 'What is the Father's will?'  First, it is to particpate in the harvest.  Jesus has sent us the reap what we have not worked for (v. 38).  In short, aware that God has gone before us and is present in lives around us, we are to give reason for the hope that is in us and opportunity for others to embrace that hope for themselves.  This is gospel work - to tell others the Good News and call them to response.  The Father's will is more than this, but it is never less than this.  The main thing must always be the main thing.

Real Self Awareness

He must become greater; I must become less. (John 3:30) John the Baptist was clearly a charismatic leader to attract the crowds he did to the Judean wilderness. His message was hard to hear and his appearance theatrical. He gathered not only a crowd, but also a core of disciples dedicated to promulgating his teaching. John the Baptist, by design or default, had established a new and flourishing religious movement at the fringes of the mainstream Judaism of his day. It was this new movement that his disciples perceived was threatened by the emerging phenomomenon of Jesus. They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan---the one you testified about---look, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.” (John 3:26). John's response was telling. Rather than diminish the burgeoning ministry of Jesus, he magnifies it. Rather than defend his own religious status, he elevates the status of Jesus. He must become greater; I must become less. He must come to the foreground; I must ease to the background. Given by God, John had a remarkable level of self-awareness. This enabled him to not strive to be something he was not, nor never would be. It seems to me that a healthy self-awareness is grounded in first, a growing knowledge of the character and nature of God, second, in a relationship with God, and third, out of that relationship with God, a gut-level understanding of how God sees and loves us. We only truly know who we are in relation to God. Such self-awareness frees us from the desperate need to place our lives a the centre our universe, instead making Jesus the centre of all things. Paradoxically, as he increases and we decrease, so we find true and eternal life.

Heart Surgery

Jesus would no entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person. (John 1:24-25) Conflict marked the beginning of Jesus' ministry. He demonstrated reluctance to acede to his mother's demands to do something about the shortage of wine at the wedding at Cana. Then, on traveling to Jerusalem, he violently confronts the exploitative economic practices of the temple system. Understandabl he was directly challenged as to the authority he had to do these things. At the heart of Jesus' public ministry was a painfully accurate assessment of the capacity of human heart for deceitful evil. Jesus knew what was in each person, and it was not (and is not) good. 'The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?' (Jeremiah 17:9) Jesus knew that the sickness of the human heart could only be healed with radical surgery. This defined his earthly ministry. This is God's promise: 'I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.' (Ezekiel 26:26). The life,death and resurrection of Jesus made this possible. I am so thankful that God has made this possible for me. But there is something else. I can learn from the wisdom Jesus exercised in his interactions with people. While he was remarkably open to people, he also looked past the masks people wore to see the spiritual illness that stained their hearts. He knew the destructive and dangerous nature of this illness. Jesus said it his disciples, including us: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." In ministry I am to approach people with discerning openness. Apart from God, the human heart is a destructive idol factory. Only with God can It be healed.