“What does he mean?” (John 16:16-24)

I wonder how many of you may have seen Martin Scorsese’s film Silence when it was showing earlier in the year. Sadly, it has received far too little attention and was a failure at the box office. Yet I believe it is one of the most profound films to have been released in years. I won’t tell you too much about it, except to say that it is based on a novel by Japanese Christian author Shusaku Endo.

The story takes place in the late 1600s, with two Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Rodrigues and Garupe journeying to Japan to try to find their former mentor and fellow priest, Father Ferreira, who is rumoured to have abandoned his faith in the heat of the vicious persecution unleashed against Christians. Suffice it to say, the film is gruelling to watch, as the situation becomes bleaker and bleaker for the two priests, not to mention the Japanese peasants and villagers who have embraced the Christian faith.

Here at First Congregational you have been making your way through what are almost Jesus’ final words, spoken to his disciples as they shared their last supper together in the upper room. I can’t help but think that, as in the film Silence, there must have been an overpowering, almost palpable, sense of foreboding, indeed of bewilderment, as Jesus donned a servant’s towel and washed the disciples’ feet, as he warned that there was one among them who would betray him, as sent Judas Iscariot off into the night, and not least as he used the bread and wine of Passover to speak of his own body being broken and his life’s blood being shed for them.

No wonder, then, that the evening was filled with confusion and questions: “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” “Lord, who among us would ever betray you?” “Lord, where are you going that we cannot follow?” “Lord, how can we know the way?” “Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” And now, in this morning’s passage, “What does he mean? We can’t make head or tail of what he’s saying.” (Notice that at this point the disciples’ confusion has reached the stage where they don’t even bother to address their questions to Jesus any longer, but to one another.)

So it is that into the midst of this gloom and confusion Jesus speaks once more: “In a little while you will see me no more…” “You will weep and mourn…” “You will grieve…” Hardly words to instill confidence and hope! Yet I believe that as we look into them, as we take time to examine them, we will find that they are words bursting with a richness that is scarcely possible to fathom. So let’s turn in our Bibles to John 16, verses 16 to 24.

The Wonder of the Cross

The passage begins with Jesus saying to his disciples, “In a little while you will see me no more…” As I’ve suggested already, these words must only have added to their confusion. Twenty centuries later we have the advantage of hindsight. It is clear to us that what Jesus was speaking to them about was his death on the cross. Within a few short hours Jesus would be forced away from them to be humiliated in a series of mock trials before the religious council and the secular authorities. He would be savagely beaten and then subjected to the cruellest form of execution the Roman Empire had managed to devise—the slow, painful process of hanging exposed on a cross gradually to asphyxiate to death. By the time it came to that, however, all but one would have left the scene. Both through the wicked actions of the authorities and through their own weakness, the time was swiftly coming when the disciples would indeed see Jesus no more.

In my mind’s eye I can picture them on that first Good Friday going back to the places where they were staying or possibly to the upper room, their bowed heads and stooped bodies bearing silent witness to the profound dismay and utter bewilderment that filled their hearts. “You will weep and mourn,” Jesus warned them. “You will grieve…”

Yet little did they know that as their hearts were being ripped apart, so too was the veil of the Temple, the thick curtain that separated the Holy of Holies—revered as the very dwelling place of God—from the rest of the Temple. So holy was this place that only the high priest could enter it, and he only once a year, on the Feast of the Atonement (Yom Kippur). He would have a rope tied around his waist, so that if he happened to die or become incapacitated while performing his duties he could be dragged out and nobody need enter to rescue him.

What happened that day on a physical level, dramatic as it was, was only a sign of what was also taking place on a cosmic level. Through his sacrificial death on the cross Jesus had breached the separation between God and humankind that had been a reality since the days in the Garden of Eden.

Centuries before, the prophet Isaiah had proclaimed, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you…” (Isaiah 59:2) Now, because of Jesus’ death on the cross, the church can proclaim, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain…, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings…” (Hebrews 10:19-22).

Clearly all of this was far beyond the grasp of the disciples. Indeed theologians today still ponder over it with amazement. American preacher Fleming Rutledge spent eighteen years working on her more than 600-page book The Crucifixion. New Testament scholar Tom Wright, who himself has just published a book on the crucifixion, has written, “I am under no illusions that, even if I were to write a thousand pages on the subject, I would never exhaust it.”[1] Surely in the end our response to Jesus’ death on the cross can only be one of amazement and praise. In the words of Isaac Watts,

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

The Wonder of the Resurrection

However, back to the disciples in the upper room… Jesus had warned them that their hearts would be filled with sorrow. But he also promised that they would be filled with exultation. “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me… You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.” And so the scene shifts from Good Friday to the first Easter morning, from Calvary to Joseph of Arimathea’s garden. If those first disciples could not come to terms with Jesus’ crucifixion, how were they to handle his resurrection?

It was only with great difficulty and after considerable persuasion that they came to believe the reality of Jesus’ resurrection after it occurred. They dismissed the women’s reports of the empty tomb and the angels as old wives’ tales. When Jesus appeared before them in the upper room, they at first assumed he was an apparition. So no wonder Jesus’ words about their sorrow being turned to joy and about not seeing him and then seeing him only left them befuddled and confused! I know for certain that I would have been.

Yet within a few short weeks they would be proclaiming, “You … put [Jesus of Nazareth] to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead… Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:23-24,36). The resurrection points to Jesus as an individual utterly unique in the course of history. And that alone would have been enough to blow the disciples’ minds—or anyone’s mind for that matter. But dare I say that that is only the tip of the iceberg?

Look at what Paul writes in his famous chapter on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15: “But Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). You see, Easter was only the beginning. Because of Jesus’ resurrection we can look forward to that day when, as Paul again writes, “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

It’s Jesus’ resurrection that assures us that all the injustices, all the seemingly pointless suffering, the atrocities and the horrors that human beings are subject to will one day be gloriously, mysteriously redeemed. Climatologists warn us that human existence may come to an end when our pollution of the environment reaches the point where human life is no longer possible. Astronomers warn of a collision with a comet of the proportions of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. Still others see us all being sucked into the oblivion of a black hole. None of them is a pretty picture. But Jesus’ resurrection tells that there is more, that God has greater plans for his creation than we could ever imagine—in Paul’s words, “that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

Now that does not mean that we are not to seek justice, to minister to the downtrodden, or to care for the environment. Quite the opposite: Jesus’ resurrection calls us to be outposts of that new creation that is to come, to be glimpses, even if ever so weak and glimmering, of the light that is to be revealed.

The Wonder of Communion

If all of that were not enough, Jesus reveals a third point of wonder for the disciples. The first is the wonder of the crucifixion; the second, the wonder of the resurrection; and I was going to call the third the wonder of prayer. But on reflection I think it is better to call it the wonder of communion. Listen to Jesus’ final words in this morning’s verses:

Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.

On the surface it almost seems like some magical formula—the kind of thing we read about in fairy tales: “Make a wish and all your dreams will come true.” Yet I suspect that all of us have had enough of an experience of prayer to know that that just isn’t the case. Nor is it what Jesus is speaking about here. For prayer, as we all know, is not some mechanical formula—put a loonie in the slot and down slides a candy bar. No, prayer is a conversation, and like all conversations it is an expression of a relationship.

When we begin to see it in this way, we also begin to recognize that asking something in Jesus’ name is not just a matter of tacking those words onto the end of a petition—“… in Jesus’ name. Amen”—as though that makes our prayer valid in a way that it wouldn’t be without them. No, it seems to me that to pray in Jesus’ name is to pray the prayer that Jesus himself would pray. And that in turn means that a significant element of prayer is seeking his will. It means coming to him and allowing him to come alongside us, and to be with him in the Garden of Gethsemane as the disciples soon would be, where they would hear him utter, “Father, not my will, but yours, be done.”

In that gift of prayer, that gift of communion, of being able to come into his presence, of knowing that he is with us even when we are not conscious of it, Jesus has given us something again that we will never fathom, never understand, yet to those of us who have entered into its mysteries, a gift more precious than words could ever express.

The disciples asked, “What does he mean?” And like them, our minds will never fully grasp the mysteries into which our faith in Jesus leads us. But more importantly he who has died for us, who is the first-born from the dead, and who is ever-present with us—he has grasped us, and he will never let us go.

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[1]     “The Cross and the Caricatures”, Fulcrum, Eastertide 2007, https://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/articles/the-cross-and-the-caricatures/

“How to Lead a Double Life” (Luke 12:32-40)

A couple of weeks ago I took my grandchildren to see The Secret Life of Pets. If you find yourself in need of a good, rollicking laugh at some innocent fun (and you have some pre-teen children to take along with you) this movie is worth the price of admission. If you haven’t seen the trailers, the basic idea is that our pets—our dogs and cats, our guinea pigs and our budgies—live quite a different life when we’re not at home to see them and they get up to hijinks that we would never dream of. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

The Bible makes it very clear that as followers of Jesus you and I also, like those pets in the movie, live in two different worlds. At the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples that they do not belong to this world (John 15:19). A generation later the apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Philippi that our true citizenship is in heaven and that we are not to conform to the pattern of this world (Philippians 3:20; Romans 12:2). And St John counsels, “Do not love the world or anything in the world …” (1 John 2:15).

What does all of this mean? Many Christian people have interpreted these and other passages as though we need to withdraw as much as possible from any involvement in the affairs of the world. That has led to the formation of monastic communities in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and groups such as the Amish and the Hutterites on the Protestant side. Yet I think that the more perceptive among them would readily admit that even they have not managed to escape the world completely, both from a social and an economic perspective, and more significantly from a spiritual one. They face the same issues and fight the same struggles as you and I do.

Well, if we cannot entirely escape the world, does that mean that we are forced to give into it? A clear answer to that can be found in the words of Peter: “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:11-12). So how does this work out in day-to-day life? I believe that that is exactly what Jesus was talking about to his followers in this morning’s reading from Luke’s gospel. The passage divides into three sections, so let’s take a few moments to look at each.

The Shepherd: Be fearless (32-34)

Jesus’ first words to his followers in this morning’s reading are, “Do not be afraid.” As the events in the months that followed would prove, those disciples would have plenty to fear. Jesus had already warned them at least twice that he would be rejected and suffer and die at the hands of the religious authorities and that they too would be called upon to take up their cross. Besides that, in recent days his words had begun to take on a darker, more sombre tone—about a wicked generation that refuses to repent, about people who killed the prophets and then erected their tombs, about those who have power to destroy the body but not the soul…

Admittedly we do not live under the looming shadow of the cross as the disciples did. Nor do we live beneath the menacing eye of Roman oppressors. Nevertheless, it seems to me that one of the dominant motifs of our current age is fear. You have only to look at some of the most popular films over the past few years—Mad Max, Extinction, Hunger Games, Oblivion, Resident Evil, and The Maze Runner, to name just a few—all of them depicting the future world in grim, dystopian terms. You and I may not have gone to see them, but somebody did. These titles alone grossed over $225 billion at the box office. Think of how long it takes to board an airline flight since 9/11. Think of the climate of fear that has engulfed many European countries after the recent ISIS attacks, not to mention the fear which I believe is the overriding theme in the U.S. election right now, no matter which side you may happen to be on. It’s all over Facebook and the media, in the news columns and the op-ed articles, combined with positively frightening images of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton with headlines to match.

In the midst of this Jesus says to us, as he said to his disciples, “Do not be afraid.” And notice how he refers to them. In spite of their being grown men, accustomed to the rough and tumble of the world, Jesus addresses his followers as lambs—“little flock”. Can you think of anything more vulnerable and defenseless than a little wooly lamb? At the same time we recognize that God has not placed us in a fierce and hostile world without any protection. That is precisely why Jesus speaks to his disciples as his “little flock”. He wants them to know that he is their Good Shepherd, and ours too. “Uncertainties are no cause for alarm or anxiety,” wrote New Testament scholar Fred Craddock.[1] We do not need to join in the prevailing paranoia that surrounds us because we know that we are in the hands of one who loves us more than we can ever possibly imagine, whose purposes for us and for his creation are only good, who will lead us even through the valley of death, and whose goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our life. Immersed in an environment of anxiety and paranoia, Jesus says to us, “Do not fear.”

The Master: Be faithful (35-38)

In the second section of this morning’s passage Jesus gives us a picture. It is of a large household whose master has gone off to join in the celebration of a marriage. In our society that might mean an absence of a few hours—or if the wedding happened to be at some distance, perhaps a weekend or a few days. But in the context of ancient Near East you need to think big—bigger than an Italian wedding or even “my big fat Greek wedding”. We are thinking of festivities that could last for a week or longer, and so if the wedding were at any distance the master could be absent from his household for a considerable span of time. At best it would be a temptation for the servants to take a little time off. At worst it might provide an opportunity for an extended party time as long as the master was away.

It seems that that was exactly what Jesus had in mind. When Peter asked him about this parable, Jesus explained, “Suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk” (Luke 12:45). Obviously the parable is about the time between Jesus’ ascension and his coming again and the call to us to remain faithful during that time. Yet the pressure is always on us not to. We live in a society that less and less has any sense of moral responsibility to any power beyond ourselves. In that sense, the twenty-first century is not markedly different from the first, when the apostle Paul urged his fellow believers in Rome not to “let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but [to] let God re-mould your minds from within. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2). Listen to How Eugene Petersen puts this in The Message:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Much along the same lines, Paul wrote these words to his fellow believers in Ephesus:

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit…(Ephesians 5:15-18)

A few sentences later he reminds Christian masters that they have a Master in heaven—and both they and we are called to be faithful to him as we await his return. What shape that faithfulness takes will vary according to the gifts and responsibilities that God has entrusted to each of us. But the call remains the same, in the power of the Holy Spirit seeking to make God’s love and God’s good purposes realities in this world.

The Coming Son of Man: Be focused (39-40)

In the final couple of verses of this morning’s reading, Jesus shifts to a third image. This time it involves the owner of a house and a gang of thieves. You never know when thieves might try to break in, says Jesus, but you can make yourself ready in case they ever do. In the same way, he warns us, “You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” And so, if you will pardon the alliterations (but as a preacher I find myself powerless to resist them!) in the course of this morning’s reading Jesus has told us to be fearless, knowing that he is our Good Shepherd whose purposes for us are only good. He has encouraged us to be faithful to him as our Master, seeking to carry out his will in the world. And now he cautions us to be focused, as we know neither the day nor the hour of the coming of the Son of Man.

Back in biblical times protecting your belongings from a thief probably meant putting a bolt on your door. Nowadays it seems that most theft takes the form of white-collar crime and protection means using adequate security codes on your credit cards and computer. Not long ago that involved 56-bit encryption, which employs codes using more than 72 quadrillion (15 zeroes) permutations. However, nearly twenty years ago it was shown that a little desktop computer could hack it, and so the standard had to be increased to 128-bit. Yet even that hasn’t prevented the major security ruptures that we have witnessed in the last few years.

So what about the coming of the Son of Man? Jesus is going to come again and you and I need to be prepared. And what does that involve? Certainly not abandoning the world, as some might suggest, but quite the opposite: plunging into it, seeking to make God’s new creation a reality in the here and now. It could be through the beauty of art, literature or music. It could be in the social or political realm. It could be through such seemingly mundane occupations as farming, driving a bus, managing finances, teaching a class, raising children, caring for the elderly or any other of a million and more activities that human beings are engaged in. We speak of all of these pursuits as “secular”. Yet as they are offered up to Christ and his kingdom they take on a worth and a significance that are eternal. And it goes without saying that by necessity it will also mean praying, seriously seeking God’s will and cultivating our relationship with him, loving our neighbours, striving to know the mind of Christ and to reflect the heart of Christ in all we are and do.

As we seek to be people of God’s kingdom in the midst of the kingdoms of this world, may we be fearless, faithful and focused, as we rely on “him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)

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[1]        Luke (Interpretation Commentaries) 165

“Unfinished Business” (John 21:15-19)

In the Gospel of John Jesus’ last words from the cross were these: “It is finished.” At that point, as he prepared to give up his spirit, Jesus had accomplished all that he had come to do—to offer up his life as what the Anglican Book of Common Prayer calls the one “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world”. The curtain of the temple (reputed to be as thick as a man’s hand) was about to be ripped apart, from top to bottom. The impenetrable wall of separation between sinful humankind and the all-holy God had been breached. Yet, in spite of the colossal nature of the cross, there still remained some loose ends that needed to be tied up.

For the past couple of weeks we have been having some renovations done to our house. Very soon I am hoping we will be able to say that the project has been completed. Yet, as with almost any undertaking, there will undoubtedly still remain a few details that will need to be attended to. Without wishing to be in any way frivolous, the same was true in those days following the crucifixion. Yes, Jesus’ mission was completed on the cross. “It is finished.” Yet there were still some important matters that needed to be dealt with. There were mourners like Mary Magdalene and Cleopas and his friend, who needed to be consoled and delivered from their grief. There were doubters like Thomas, who needed to be convinced that Jesus had indeed conquered death. And then there was Peter, who needed to be relieved of the terrible burden of guilt he carried about with him following his cowardly denial of Jesus outside the high priest’s court.

That last story is found only in the fourth gospel. It almost seems, at the end of chapter 20 and Jesus’ dramatic appearance to Thomas in the upper room, that John has come to the end of his account—and what a high point to end on! And so he concludes, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). I can imagine John putting down his pen with a great sigh and then saying, “Oh! I almost forgot to tell you what happened with Peter…” and picking up his pen again to add the twenty-first chapter.

“It all happened like this…” he begins. The scene this time is to the north, in Galilee, where the disciples’ adventure with Jesus had begun. Seven of the disciples had gone out to fish. The first glimmers of the rising sun were beginning to appear on the horizon when they heard a voice from the shore. “You wouldn’t have anything to eat, would you?” Their annoyance at having caught nothing in spite of having been in the boat all night was evident in their monosyllabic reply: “No.” “Well, toss your net over to the right side of your boat and you’ll find some.”

Now you would think the disciples should have started to become a little suspicious. The scene was remarkably similar to something that had happened three years before. That time Peter had objected. This time, however, there was no demurral. The net had barely sunk into the water before it was bursting with fish. It was at that point that the penny dropped for John at least. “It’s the Lord,” he stammered. No sooner had the words left his mouth than Peter was pulling on a tunic and splashing into the water.

“Do you love me?” – Discipleship, not competition

It was after they had eaten that Jesus turned to Peter with the painful question, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” The question was painful for two reasons. First, Jesus was addressing Peter by his formal name, not the nickname—Peter, Rock—that Jesus himself had given him. Secondly, Jesus’ question harked back to a conversation that had taken place on the eve of his crucifixion. “All of you are going to desert me,” Jesus had warned them. But Peter objected, “Even if everyone else deserts you, I never will” (Mark 14:27-31). I don’t think it was intentional, but Peter was implying that his devotion to Jesus was greater than that of any of the other disciples. Now Jesus was asking, “What do you think about those words now, Peter? Do you really love me more than these?”

Jesus’ penetrating question reveals one of the most insidious dangers for the followers of Jesus. It is the temptation to turn discipleship into a competition. It is a very easy rut to fall into, to begin to compare ourselves (either favourably or unfavourably) with other Christians. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that it isn’t good to have role models or saintly examples of Christian living that we look up to. Nor am I suggesting that there are some people (and, sad to say, Christians among them) whose lifestyles we should avoid. No, this is something considerably subtler than that. In the New Testament we see it in the church in Corinth, where some people were under the impression that their spiritual gifts were more valuable to the life of the church than those of others. No, says Paul, such comparisons have no place in the Christian community. To get his point across, he uses what has to be the most powerful image of the church in all the New Testament: the body of Christ, where every part, no matter how large or small, visible or hidden, plays a vital part in the functioning of the whole.

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work… The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ … But God has put the body together … that its parts should have equal concern for each other. (1 Corinthians 12:4-6, 21,24-25)

We find our Lord Jesus enunciating the same principle more than once in the course of his teaching. Remember his absurd picture of the man attempting to remove a speck from someone else’s eye when there is a great beam protruding from his own (Matthew 7:3-5). Or how about his story of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple? Do you recall the Pharisee’s prayer? “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:9-14). It is a trap that good, well-intentioned people can easily fall into. I have seen it in the churches where I have served. I have seen it in myself.

“Feed my lambs…” – Discipleship as service

“Simon son of John, do you love me?” “Simon son of John, do you love me?” “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Three times Jesus addresses Peter with this painful question. Peter could hardly have failed to grasp the significance. Three times he answers: “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” “Yes, Lord, I love you.” And three times Jesus comes back with a commission: “Then feed my lambs.” “Take care of my sheep.” “Feed my sheep.”

What was the point that Jesus was at pains to get across? It is that the essence of discipleship is not competition but servanthood. Once again, turning to Paul and his words to that contentious, competitive bunch in Corinth: “To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). And of course Paul is really only echoing the same principle that Jesus had emphasized to his disciples during his earthly ministry. It was when James and John had come to Jesus asking to sit at his right and his left in his kingdom. When word of this got to the other disciples, their blood rose. But Jesus’ words put a stop to any indignation they might have felt:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25-28)

Jesus’ injunction to Peter was a call to servanthood. More than that, those words, “Feed my lambs,” would have taken Peter back to an earlier time when Jesus had declared of himself, “I am the good shepherd.” And the good shepherd’s faithfulness to his flock would lead him to give his very life for his sheep (John 10:11).

I recently received an article from a friend in Cairo about a remarkable example of Christian servanthood.

In 1969, the governor of Cairo created the slum by relocating the mostly Coptic Christian trash pickers [to the city’s squalid garbage dump…] Women and children pick through 15,000 tons of the city’s collected refuse, sorting out recyclable waste from the biodegradables useful for wandering livestock. Men haul burlap trash bags twice their size into garbage trucks poised to tip from overfill… By 1974, the community of Manshiat Nasser had grown to about 14,000 Copts, living without electricity, plumbing, or church. Alcoholism was rampant. Crime was common. A reluctant Orthodox layman was asked to visit with an eye toward ministry… One day Farahat Ibrahim was walking in the area, feeling overwhelmed. “Lord, I'm just a drop in the ocean,” he prayed. “There are many people here and they are very hard and wild. What do you want from me?” Ibrahim bought a pair of boots and a flashlight, and trudged out in visitation to his unreceptive adopted flock. One man attacked him with a knife. Another hid in the pigsty. But in an abandoned cave above the slum, in a tin hut with a reed roof, nine people attended the first church service… [Forty-plus years later Ibrahim, now ordained in the Coptic Church as Father Simon, continues to minister there.] Six churches have been planted and serve the poor. Patmos Hospital serves the sick. Ninety percent of all trash gets recycled, as NGOs market creatively designed garbage-turned-crafts.[1]

Tragically, I fear that we Christians are probably better known for what we are against than for that kind of servanthood. At the same time, I don’t think you have to scratch too far beneath the surface of almost any church to find people who are feeding the hungry, offering shelter to the homeless and engaged in countless other ways in taking care of Jesus’ lost sheep.

“Follow me!” – Discipleship as a response to God’s love in Christ

It is a compelling picture—and Peter would indeed find himself serving in that very way, even going to the death for it. Yet I believe it still misses what is at the heart of genuine discipleship. I believe we need to go a level deeper—and that comes to us in Jesus’ final words to Peter in this morning’s passage: “Follow me.” “Follow me”—the same words Peter had heard addressed to him as he had stood casting his net for fish three years before.

You see, at its core discipleship really has nothing to do with what I can do for Jesus. It begins with what Jesus has done for me. Discipleship is a response—a response to God’s love for me in Christ. We will inevitably falter and fail in our service to Jesus and to others, just as Peter did. But there is one who will never fail, one who says to each of us, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness” (Jeremiah 31:3). Again I am reminded of the apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians when he writes of his own ministry, “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance beautifully illustrated what I want to say when he reminisced of an experience he had with his daughter. He wrote,

Many years ago I recall thinking of the marvellous way in which our human faith is implicated in the faith of Jesus Christ and grasped by his faithfulness, when I was teaching my little girl to walk. I can still feel her tiny fingers gripping my hand as tightly as she could. She did not rely upon her feeble grasp of my hand but upon my strong grasp of her hand which enfolded her grasp of mine within it. That is surely how God’s faithfulness actualized in Jesus Christ laid hold of our weak and faltering faith and holds it securely in his hand.’[2]

Discipleship just isn’t about us. It’s about Jesus taking us, feeble and fault-ridden as we are, and working through us. May what we have read and heard this morning encourage each of us to be grasped by that strong hand of Jesus to draw us more deeply into himself, so that forgiven, restored and impelled by his love, we may go out to serve him in the world. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).

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[1]        Jayson Casper, “From Garbage to Glory”, Christianity Today, April 2016

[2]        Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, page 83

“He Stretched Out His Hand” (Mark 1:40-45)

Allow me to begin by saying what a great privilege it is for me to occupy this pulpit this morning, and to express my gratitude to your presbyter, the Rev. Immanuel Devakadatcham, for his gracious willingness to allow me to share God’s word with you today. I have long held the Church of South India in great admiration. In 1947 you embarked on a journey that to this day is very nearly unique in the world, bringing together Christians from four different traditions into a common worship and witness to Jesus Christ as Lord. The church in my part of the world has much to learn from you.

Our Bible readings for this morning are gathered under the theme “Being with Outcasts and Marginalized”. In the Old Testament Mordecai approaches Queen Esther with the dire circumstances of his people the Jews, who are threatened with extermination, and Esther risks her life to save them. In Psalm 43 the singer comes into the presence of God oppressed by his enemies, in loneliness and near despair. He knows that God alone is his refuge, his joy and his praise, and that God will help him. In Acts 15, Barnabas and Paul share with their fellow believers in Jerusalem the wonderful ways in which they saw God drawing people from all nations (and not just the Jews) into his saving grace.

However, it is upon the Gospel reading that I would like us to focus our attention for the next few minutes this morning. We are in the final verses of the first chapter of Mark, which has to be one of the fastest-paced chapters in the Bible. In the space of thirty-nine verses, Mark has told us about the ministry of John the Baptist; of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan; of Jesus’ calling of his first disciples by the Sea of Galilee; of Jesus’ intervening in an outbreak by a man inhabited by an evil spirit in the synagogue; of Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law; of an evening when dozens, if not hundreds, of the sick and the demon-possessed came to Jesus for healing; and finally of Jesus getting up early in the morning, before the sun had risen, to spend time alone with his heavenly Father and then going on to teach and to heal in the neighbouring villages.

It almost leaves us breathless. And now, as though things were not busy enough already, a man suffering from leprosy approaches him, falls on his knees before him and pleads to him with the words, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

Jesus’ power

On our way here from Bangalore we passed by Vellore. Although I have never been there, Vellore means a great deal to me because early in my Christian life I was introduced to a little book by Dorothy Clarke Wilson called Ten Fingers For God. In it she recounts the story of Dr Paul Brand, an orthopaedic surgeon practising in Vellore, who did pioneering research into leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, and the rehabilitation of leprosy patients.

In one of his own books Brand recounted a frightening occasion in his own life when a patch of his heel began to lose sensation he suspected that he had contracted the disease. This is what he wrote:

A dread fear worse than nausea gripped my stomach. After seven years of working with leprosy patients, had it finally happened? Was I now to be a patient myself?

My mind roiled. I would have to separate myself from my family, of course—children of patients were the most susceptible group. Perhaps I should stay in England. But what if word somehow leaked out? I could envision the headlines. And what would happen to my leprosy work? How many would now risk becoming social outcasts to help unfortunate victims?

I lay on my bed all night, fully clothed except for shoes and socks, sweating and breathing heavily from tension. Scenes flickered through my mind—poignant reminders of what I would lose as a leprosy patient.

Although I knew that sulfone drugs would probably arrest the disease quite quickly, I could not avoid imagining the disease spreading across my face, over my feet, and to my fingers.

I would no longer feel the pleasing softness of petting a dog, or the flutter of a June beetle cupped in my hands, or the prenatal stirrings of a caterpillar throbbing ominously against a rough cocoon. Feathers, frogs, flowers, wool—touch sensations filled my world.

When the next morning arrived, he was relieved to find that sensation had returned to his foot. The loss, it appeared, had been due to confinement on a long train journey over a number of hours. “I laughed aloud,” he recalls, “and shook my head at the foolishness of the night before.”[1]

For those who suffer from this dreadful disease either in our own day or in biblical times, leprosy was no laughing matter. Its victims were required to live apart from the rest of society. They had to worn tattered clothes, to leave their hair unkempt and dishevelled, and to cry aloud, “Unclean! Unclean!” whenever they came within hearing distance of another human being (Leviticus 13:45,46).

Now I want you to try to imagine three things. First, can you imagine the courage it must have taken for that man to do as he did? He knew that his act would meet with disapproval, perhaps even punishment. I don’t know what the penalty was when a leper disobeyed the law, but I can only imagine it was severe. I can’t imagine that he bounded up to Jesus, but that his faith was mixed with a good measure of hesitancy and of fear.

Secondly, can you imagine the chill that must have gone through the disciples’ hearts as this man came right up to Jesus? He was defying all the laws and conventions and precautions of hundreds, if not thousands, of years. He was putting them all at a terrible risk. Yet what do we find Jesus doing? Recoiling in horror? Scolding the man for disobeying the law? No. Jesus does the unthinkable. He reaches out his hand and touches the man.

Now, can you imagine how the man felt at that moment? He had not experienced the nearness, let alone the touch, of another human being, for weeks or months, perhaps years. Just to have someone touch him as Jesus did must have brought a new joy, a refreshment, a sense of hope, to his weary heart. Yet of course Jesus’ touch did far more than that. It was not just that the man’s heart was refreshed, his leprosy was cleansed. He was a new man and a whole new life lay before him.

Jesus’ anger

In these six short verses (just under a hundred words in the original) Mark has given us an unforgettable picture of Jesus’ compassion and his power to heal. And I am quite certain that those who set out the Scripture readings did so because they want us to demonstrate the same love and compassion in our lives as Jesus showed to that leper—“being with outcasts and the marginalized”, as they put it. And of course India has had a towering example of that in the twentieth century in Mother Teresa.

Few of us will ever live up to the almost impossible example of that amazing woman. Yet almost every day there will be someone in our lives with a need, large or small, to whom we can reach out in compassion. Sometimes it will mean defying convention as Jesus did, or moving outside our comfort zones. Yet more often than not God is not calling us to heroic measures, but simply to open our eyes and our hearts to the needs of others, to offer a word of encouragement, to lend a listening ear even when we may not have time for it, to come alongside another person in their loneliness or grief.

Yet the story also leaves us with some lingering questions. Most English translations of this passage describe Jesus, when he looked at the man, as being moved with pity or moved with compassion. But there are some early gospel manuscripts that tell us that Jesus was moved not with pity but with anger when the man approached him—and most biblical scholars today would agree that that is the more likely text.

To add to that, when Jesus sends the man away, Mark tells us that “he sternly warned him”. The word Mark uses quite literally means “snorted”. We find it again in John’s gospel as Jesus stands outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus.

Why, we must ask then, would Jesus display such anger? Was he upset at the leper for doing as he did—for disobeying the law and putting other people at risk? I don’t think so. No, it seems more likely to me that Jesus was angry not at the man but at the disease that had ravaged his body, that had caused him to live a life of isolation and squalour.

Jesus’ cross

I know there are many people today who recoil at the notion of an angry God. Yet what kind of God would Jesus be if he were not angry at a disease that gnaws and cripples people and reduces them to the life of animals? And what kind of God would not be angry at the injustices that are happening at almost every moment in our world today, to the point where newspapers and television and the other media can only cover the smallest proportion of them, where people even hate and mutilate and kill in the very name of God?

In the midst of this we cry aloud with the leper, “Lord, if you choose, you can make us whole.” “Lord, stretch out your hand and touch this world. Cleanse it of the vile things that make it less than it should be, that cause tears and grief and pain and death, that gnaw away at our very souls.” And if we find ourselves praying like that, we will discover that there is a hand that stretches out to us and embraces us, and that it is a hand that has been pierced by nails.

On the cross Jesus has taken all the world’s wrongs, all its injustices and cruelties, all its evil and rebellion, into himself. As we read in Isaiah,

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6)

If we are to be with the outcast and the marginalized (and if we are followers of Jesus there is no “if”) it will be because there is one who has first stretched out his hand to us. It will be because, poor and wretched and lonely, Jesus has touched us and we are being made new by his love. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). May that love not stop with us, but may we be its channels, reaching out in Jesus’ name to a lost and needy world.

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[1]        Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, pages 108-110 (122,123?)

“We told him to stop” (Mark 9:38-50)

My dictionary defines the word “paranoia” as “a serious mental illness that causes you to falsely believe that other people are trying to harm you”. It also gives this secondary definition: “a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others”. I just wonder if that isn’t what we see among Jesus’ followers in our reading from Mark’s gospel this morning.

Once again, we find them making their way through the towns and villages of Galilee on their way towards Jerusalem. I can imagine, as it was the pattern of his ministry right from the beginning, that people of all kinds continued to besiege Jesus from every direction. There were the sick and the handicapped, begging to be healed. There were those with all kinds of questions about God and about their relationship with him, desperate to find answers. And then there were the doubters and the skeptics, forever casting about for an opportunity to get a jab in here or a poke there, always wanting to shed doubts on Jesus’ credibility.

I suspect that at those times the disciples must have found themselves acting as crowd marshals, trying to make sure that those really in need had an opportunity to see Jesus and to keep things from getting out of control. (For example, do you recall how, when faced with a hungry crowd, Andrew brought a young lad to Jesus with a few loaves and fish; or how they had been pestered by a Canaanite woman whose daughter was in terrible suffering?) I suspect that there were also times when the disciples found themselves with nothing to do, when they could kind of kick about town. Had there been a tavern, they might have found themselves sitting down for a rest over a pint or two.

Stopping

However, on this occasion I imagine the disciples somewhere on the edge of town when they see something strangely familiar happening. A little cluster of onlookers has gathered and as they come up closer they discover that their interest is focused on a man who is casting out evil spirits. Not only that, he is doing it in Jesus’ name. What are they to do? Who gave this man the right to do this? What was he doing stepping into Jesus’ territory?

Now let me ask a question: Does any of this sound the least bit familiar to you? I suspect that we don’t have to scratch too far beneath the surface to find the same kind of paranoia (if you want to call it that) in the church today. I come from a family of died-in-the-wool Anglicans. My great aunt was a member of the Chancel Guild of the cathedral in Ottawa for forty years. When my uncle announced that he was planning to marry a woman from the United Church, the best that she could do was to mutter, “Well, at least she isn’t a Catholic.”

How contrary such an attitude is to the spirit of Jesus! When the apostle Paul was in prison in Rome, there were those who tried to take advantage of the situation. Different people vied to fill the leadership vacuum that he had left behind. Some of the would-be leaders were motivated by selfish gain. Others thought that they could climb to power by denigrating Paul’s ministry. How did Paul react to all of this? Did he curse them? Did he call for their destruction? No. Here is what he said: “What does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice” (Philippians 1:18).

We may not raise our hands and clap and shout “Hallelujah!” all the time in worship. But let us not be critical of those who do. We like to use a Prayer Book. But let us not look down on those who prefer to be more spontaneous. We prefer simplicity in our services. But let us not write off those whose worship involves elaborate ceremony and incense and icons. The key question is, is Jesus being honoured? Is the gospel being proclaimed? Are men and women being drawn into a living relationship with him? Let’s not confuse style for substance. Let us take to heart Jesus’ words to his disciples, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Stumbling

I wonder if you’ve ever heard the old saw that whenever you point a finger at someone else, there are always three pointing back at you. In the conversation that follows this incident, Jesus cautions the disciples not to be quick to criticize others without first taking a careful look at themselves. And the language he uses is stark and uncompromising.

In those days there were at least a couple of ways of grinding grain into flour. Much of the time this was done using a small hand mill, usually turned by women. However, that is not the kind of millstone that Jesus was referring to. What Jesus was talking about was an enormous flat, circular stone weighing hundreds of pounds that had to be turned by a donkey or an ox. Imagine having one of those tied to your neck and then being hurled into the sea!

And if that image were not powerful enough, Jesus goes on to speak about being cast into the fires of hell. The word which our Bibles translate “hell” is actually Gehenna, and Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom, which runs along the west and south of the old city of Jerusalem. In Old Testament times this was where the worshippers of Moloch had thrown their children onto sacrificial fires. For that reason it was regarded ever after as cursed. In later years it became used as burial ground and in the time of Jesus the Romans used it as a site for cremation. And so you can picture this desolate place, abandoned and putrid with the odor of death.

Neither one is a pretty picture. And it’s not as though Jesus is threatening us with that kind of future. What he is saying is how high the stakes are—how important it is that we attend to the quality and purity of our own personal lives, not only for our own sakes but for the sake of those around us. Being a follower of Jesus is a round-the-clock, twenty-four-hours-a-day assignment.

How crucial it is, then, that we use all our faculties in ways that bring glory to God—and Jesus lists a few of them for us in this morning’s passage: our mouths, our hands, our feet, our eyes. The Bible elsewhere warns us how with the same tongue we can praise God at one moment and slice another person to ribbons at the next (James 3:9). We can raise our hands in worship and quickly use them to hurt and destroy. The same feet that bring us into the sanctuary can also lead us into places of darkness where we never ought to tread. And Jesus’ final warning about the eyes is particularly relevant to our own time, when pornography is so readily available from so many sources. We need to have in mind the words of Frances Ridley Havergal’s hymn of a century and a half ago:

Take my hands and let them move
at the impulse of thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my voice and let me sing
always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
filled with messages from thee.

Salting

With this we come to what are some of the most difficult words in this morning’s reading, and perhaps some of the most difficult to understand in the whole of the New Testament: “Everyone will be salted with fire.” What did Jesus mean when he said this? Far better minds than mine have pondered over this for centuries. To get at what Jesus was saying you have to understand how salt was used in biblical times.

First of all, salt was used as a preservative and a purifying agent. In a hot climate where there were no refrigerators, salt was what was used to keep food from going bad. Salt could also be used destructively. If you wanted to ruin your enemy’s fields so that they could not produce crops, the way to do it was to spread salt over them. Then nothing would be able grow there until the salt had been washed away by several rainy seasons. Thirdly, salt was used in sacrifice. “Season all your grain offerings with salt,” we read in Leviticus 2:13. “Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.”

So what was Jesus getting at when he said, “Everyone will be salted with fire”? When you think of it, fire also can have the same three uses. We roast meat and cook vegetables over a fire to purify and preserve them. We all know the destructive properties of fire, particularly after the wildfires this past summer that wiped out thousands of hectares of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. And of course fire was almost invariably used in sacrifice.

Now, if we put all three of these uses together, I think we can begin to arrive at something of an understanding of what Jesus was saying. First of all, then, there are the fires of trial and suffering that are a part of human life and not least of the Christian life. Yet painful as those trials may be (and I do not want to underestimate that in any way) the Holy Spirit is mysteriously able to use them in our lives to produce in us more of the character of Christ. Again and again in my pastoral experience I have been humbled to see how by God’s grace and through his power men and women have emerged richer, stronger and deeper as they have come through even the most terrible tragedies.

This morning we read from the book of Job in the Old Testament—and if you want to see an individual whose life was afflicted by tragedy, Job is the place to look. Through the loss of his property, his wealth, his children and finally his health, Job is reduced to the point where all he wants to do is die. Yet somehow Job can affirm, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the last day… My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 19:25; 42:5).

Yet I believe that there is also a deeper meaning. And it comes in the question that Jesus puts before his followers in the final verse of this morning’s passage: “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?” How does salt lose its saltiness? It doesn’t happen today when we buy it neatly packaged from the grocery store. But in Jesus’ time, salt was taken from the deposits around the Dead Sea, and those deposits were filled with impurities. Gradually over time the salt would leach out, so that all that remained was a tasteless white powder—and that was what Jesus was talking about.

So let me ask, how do we become the salt that brings flavour and life to the world? Certainly not by criticizing others or writing them off as the disciples did. It will be as we put him who is life at the centre of our lives, as we allow Jesus to live in and through us, as we give ourselves wholly and entirely and without reservation to him.