Following "When Jesus Says What?":(John 6:53-71)... Sitting Under The Fig Tree: Encounters with jesus in John's Gospel and Now. (part 6)

For a long time now I’ve had it in the back of my mind to preach a sermon called ‘1001 reasons not to go to Church’. But I’ve been reluctant to do it, not because I can’t think of that many reasons but because I can imagine people getting up while I’m preaching and saying, “that’s a good one, I hadn’t thought of that before… I’ll see you later.”… and walking out the door. Maybe I don’t want to do it because I can think of a lot of reasons to walk away from the church and put Jesus on the back burner, it would be a lot easier, but the words of Simon Peter, from the passage we had read today, keep coming to mind “Lord, to whom should we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” 

Leading into Easter we are working our way through peoples encounters with Jesus in John’s gospel and hopefully in the gospel narrative encountering Jesus ourselves today. That is always my prayer as we look at the scriptures and open them up that we may meet with Jesus by the spirit. Last week we noticed a change in John’s gospel, that while he had received public acclaim and acceptance as he had started his ministry, now we see that he was coming into conflict with the religious authorities and powers of his day.  In the passage we had read to us today we’ve come to a point in our journey where peoples encounters with Jesus and his teaching have led many even his disciples to turn their back and no longer follow they found it too hard.  

Ok let’s put the passage in its context. A couple of weeks ago Margaret Liow looked at the feeding of the five thousand: an amazing miraculous sign of God’s ability to provide food and sustenance for his people. It tells us that at the end of this the people wanted to take Jesus and make him their king and Jesus has to go away to a mountain by himself and pray, it was not God’s plan, Jesus had come to bring the kingdom of God as the synoptic gospels focus on, not to reboot an earthly kingdom.

After this Jesus sends his disciples across the lake and we have the narrative of him walking on the water, the next day, John tells us, when they got to the other side of the lake, the crowds come and seek out Jesus and we have a discourse where Jesus challenges the crowd about why they are following him and begins to tell them the reality behind the miraculous feeding. That Jesus is the bread of life and it is only by feasting on his flesh and drinking his blood that people may find true sustenance that will bring life, abundant and eternal life. RVG Tasker says “he had not come primarily to satisfy peoples material needs but the deep seated, if not always recognised, need for forgiveness without which they could not enjoy eternal life.”  

And it’s into the middle of this discourse that we stepped with our reading today. Where Jesus turns and answers the question that his listeners had started arguing about… How can this man give us his flesh to eat? For us looking back from beyond the cross and with this section of John’s gospel so associated with communion, something that many of us find valuable and meaningful it’s hard to understand why what Jesus says here was so hard for people to swallow.

It’s not because they thought of the overtones of cannibalism, Jesus makes it perfectly clear that it is the spirit that gives life the flesh counts for nothing. Nor was it that they found Jesus teaching hard to understand, it wasn’t a misunderstanding, Leon Morris comments “ No doubt they found the discourse mysterious but it was not the parts they didn’t understand that were objecting to it was what they understood.” And it is helpful for us today to look at the things they would have found hard and wrestle with them as well. Because they are the same thing we find hard and the people around us find hard to understand when it comes to encountering Jesus.

The first thing is what we had already mentioned; people were coming to follow Jesus because in the words of Paul Metzger they were looking for a continuous supply of happy meals. “They were looking for more food rather than Jesus: They were not seeking him as an end in himself but as a means to an end.” Of course for Jesus Jewish audience, the miraculous provision of food had deep significance. They looked back to the wilderness and the way God provided manna through Moses, the key issue for the people in Jesus day was roman occupation, and there was a longing and expectation that God would send a deliverer and Israel would again become an independent nation. Even at the beginning of the book of Acts as Jesus is saying his final farewells before the ascension it is the question that somebody asks… “now will you restore Israel”.   So there was the expectation that with the provision of bread that here was the new Moses, here was the possibility of that liberation, a utopia on earth. And Jesus tells them that is not the case he points them to a greater truth that while their forebears had eaten the manna in the wilderness that they had died, but he was offering them sustenance that meant that even though they died they would have eternal life, and he would raise them up on that last day. Like with our modern day nutritionists a diet of happy meals will simply lead to death, but a diet of Jesus will lead to life.

It easy to follow Jesus when it is about what we can get out of it…When it about my needs, or my wants… Anthropologists talk about rice bowl Christians, when missionaries comes to a culture in undeveloped areas, they bring with them the technology and wealth of the west, which the people there equate with the Christian faith and they can turn to that faith to acquire that stuff.  Can I say it even happens in the west today, the idea of the prosperity gospel… come to Jesus obey God and he will richly bless you… materially… he’ll supersize your lot, or even that old evangelists message come to Jesus and everything’s going to be all right. Yes there is what Jim Anderson calls a redemptive lift for people who come to faith, if you change their life style, and priorities it will have a benefit, but Jesus is more about relationship with him in the midst of the ebbs and flows of real life, rather than lifting us to skim along to top, or to skim the cream off the top.  It’s not about going through the drive thru and getting the fast food and the plastic toy that comes with it. Don’t get me wrong there are benefits, the presence of God, peace, joy, love but Paul Metzger finishes his comments on this passage by saying “meaningful relationships,” which is what Jesus is after, “are costly and they don’t always taste nice.”

The second thing that people would have found hard follows on from that. Behind a lot of what Jesus says here are references to his death. In v.53 Jesus changes to talk not only about eating his flesh but drinking his blood as well, as Leon Morris comments the blood and flesh separate at the point of death. Then in verse 62 Jesus talks of ascending back to where he had come from and again it is talking of his death and all that takes place after that. In the synoptic gospels it is when Jesus starts talking about his death that we find even his close disciples questioning him and many stop following. They want simply a crust but Jesus offers them the cross and If people stumble at this discourse they will stumble more at the cross.

The resting image we have been using for the service this morning I think encapsulates this very well with the one way sign casting the shadow of the cross. To follow Jesus ultimately is the way of the cross, it is the way to life but that life comes from the cross, Christ laying down his life and in response to the life we receive us laying down our lives as well. We can gorge ourselves on Christianity high on glitter and glamour but low on Cross.

Thirdly, Jesus claim that he is the only way to find life, challenges what the people of his day and ours think. For the Jews their hope and identity as God’s people lay in who they were, they were God’s covenant people, by birth, and here Jesus dismisses that, he says that the flesh means nothing it is only through the work of the spirit of God, in Christ, that people can find life. Jesus exclusive claims about himself, confront their preconceived ideas and religious beliefs. Of course that exclusive claim that Jesus makes still puts people off today, with an increasing pluralistic society with its cultural diversity, we find it an affront for someone to claim they are the only way to find life.

There are some misunderstandings about Jesus claims that make it more offensive for our society that values tolerance. Jesus does not claim to have the exclusive truth. WE need to acknowledge that all religions and philosophies are able to express truth. It does not mean if we have come to put our trust in Jesus that we are right and all others are wrong. In fact Jesus comments here about the fact that no one comes to him except that the father draws him that should not only help us not be surprised that people walk away from following Jesus but also that coming to faith in Christ is not about us it is all about the grace of God, and we can share Jesus claims about himself, but we do so in a way that reflects that grace.

 I want mention almost as an aside the idea of election that comes up in this passage. Our reformed tradition is very strong on the idea of the sovereignty of God and the idea of predestination, that God has called and chosen people to follow him, so they will come to him and persevere in the faith. It too is often something that gets people all offended, to think about this kind of choosing goes against our understanding of human autonomy and freedom to choose our own destinies.  I just want to make two comments. The first is that it only seems to be with hindsight that we understand the choosing of God, and it always with the sense of God’s grace, not choosing people because they were the best or brightest or could quote the bible verbatim, in fact there is a strong sense that God chooses the poor and the foolish and the weak. The second thing is that many people have made it out to be a major pillar of the faith, trying to use it to understand Jesus death on the cross, and who he died for, the idea of limited atonement but here as in Calvin’s works we see it as a pastoral matter, its pastoral theology, that Jesus knows who will and will not receive him because it is in the nature of God to know that, the Jesus we encounter in John’s gospel always knows what is in people’s hearts. It does not stop him from reaching out to them and loving them, or willingly giving his life for the world. 

Ok I want to finish this morning by inviting us to encounter Jesus in this passage.

When we encounter Jesus there are always going to be times when we deal with that Question when we find ourselves saying “Jesus says What?” when what Jesus says challenges us and pushes us to the core, when we find it hard and maybe even offensive: Because the road following Jesus is a costly one. When we focus on who Jesus is and his claims about himself and the claim he has on those who would follow him, like with the people in this discourse, it is no longer possible to follow him unreflectively and without committing ourselves wholeheartedly. When Jesus says What?” it is often hard to swallow because it takes us from the shallow into the deep, it sifts the true from the false. It invites us more and more into relationship with Christ crucified.

The response at that time is one of two. To turn and walk away or to eat joyously, from the living bread that brings life. There are 1001 reasons to walk away from Jesus, but in the end where else can we go “you have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy one of God”.

Thanks A Lot... Some reflections from a Thanks Giving service at Titirangi Presbyterian Church for all we had received from its Ministry to Young People.

I wasn't sure weather to post this on my blog.  But I decided I would. firstly to honour my many friends, mentors, mother and fathers in the faith who had invested so much into youth ministry and young people at Titirangi Presbyterian Church where I grew up  and to thank my friends from that time for the sense of community and belonging we still share... and secondly because there is some very important and useful things here for the people of God as they look at what it means to be Church.

 

Some friends of mine decided to have a reunion from our Bible Class days and a couple of us decided it seemed right to also have a service to say thanks to the church for all that we had received from their ministry... this is the message I preached at the service. Thanks to my friend Tim Pratt for his involvement in that service and to my children for coming and being the band for the day, and putting up with hearing stories of their fathers younger days. Thanks also to the Parish Council and people at St Peter's, who gave me the Sunday off to go and be involved, and the leadership at Titirangi for allowing us to invade their service.

 

It's not my best English (some of you will say what's new) and what is missing is the wonderful testimonies of people and expressions of thanks that were shared on the day, which brought real life and meaning to these simple reflections.

 

The two passages that we looked at were Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 and Acts 2:42-47.  

 

 

Thanks a lot… I don’t know about you but it has that sort of Yeah Right Kiwi cynicism about it. Thanks a lot… yet There is also an acknowledgement in a roundabout kind of way that we have a lot to give thanks for. And we do… Thanks a lot …today is really about saying thanks a lot… thank you for all the good things in our lives from the ministry of Titirangi Presbyterian Church to Young People. 

The two bible reading we had this morning, pick up two elements of what I think is happening today and what we want to do today’… The Ecclesiastes passage paints a wonderful picture of human life, as a series of times or seasons painted on the larger God size canvas of Eternity… Seasons so stark and different, some like a beautiful summers day, or with the new growth and promise of spring, others as stark and cold as a stormy winter night, or with the harvest and return of autumn. And for most people here, this place this people, this church has been a major part of those seasons. For many of us it was part of our spring, our youth… My first date was sanding the beams of this church. The faith that I had received from my Mother came alive and very real and grew through the ministry and love of the people of this church.   But this place, this people, this church has been part of the winter seasons for many of us as well. For my Kids when they come here the memory which is foremost in their minds is saying good bye to their nana. Of the balloons we released at her funeral just hanging round because of the low clouds and mist, like they and she wanted to linger here.  There have been good times and tough times… and in those seasons we have received a lot to be thank full for from the ministry in this place, this people this church…. So Thanks a lot.  

The second reading which we’ll look at a bit more later, is a summary, it’s a summary of life of the new people of God. That first church in Jerusalem, a people who had known Jesus, seen his crucifixion experienced his resurrection and received a new vitality and life with the coming of the Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised. As a summary I think it gives us some amazing insight into how the gospel and being church, the presence of God’s spirit with his people, impacts lives then and now. Many of the things that we have to say thanks for and have received are wrapped up in what is contained in that brief summary. And It is good to hear those things and be reminded of them. It’s good because for this Church it is I hope words of encouragement and hope and new life. For those of us who have come today to give thanks it is remembering and valuing those things, honouring the people who lived out the Gospel for and with us. I’ve found it helpful just to reflect on these things because it’s easy to get caught up in doing life, everyday life and to forget them even can I say get caught up in religious life, churchy life and we forget the important precious things we were given and the important things that being church, being God’s people calls us to.

Ok this is how we are going to proceed, We are here to say thanks a lot .. so I want to give people a chance just to retell things that they want to give thanks for. Quick stories, acknowledge people, So please come on up and just share what you want to… Tell us your name when you were part of the bible class youth group, and share with us…I’m sorry I’ll have to keep an eye on time. Then after that I want to briefly work through some of the things that come from the scripture in Acts that under girth what is being shared, then My friend Tim Pratt, is going to draw all that together in a prayer of thanksgiving… he got the unenviable, but precious task of bring those things together and saying thanks a lot to God.

lots of great stuff was shared which was really the heart of the service

 

I want to draw some thoughts from the passage that I think undergird what we’ve heard here and are things that we need to value.

Community The first thing that struck me was the word community. It’s not used in the passage but it is a great word to describe the life they had together. Meeting together for the teaching of the gospel, for celebration, in each other’s homes, keeping a common rhythm of prayer and ritual together, sharing what they had and holding things in common. At the centre of the church and the Christian faith is this sense of belonging and community. In Christ we have become a new people together, drawn from across the whole spectrum of society and world. Here as you heard, we have  benefited from the friendships and the camaraderie, the shared fun and shared support in hardship that grew out of the reality of being that new community in Christ. It’s easy to think church revolves around a building or what we do on Sunday, or just keeping an institution going. but I can never forget one of John and Mia Stein’s favourite verses from another John, john’s gospel…  “ a new commandment  I give to you love one another as I have loved you”  or from the epistle of John “ This is love not that we loved God but that God loved us and gave his son as an atoning sacrifice, therefore let us Love one another”. Granted we didn’t always do it, church can be a very hard place to be a Christian, we live in the tension between being made in the image of God, and remade in Christ and still being broken and fallen….. and The bible and the book of acts is pretty upfront about that tension…  and gives the hope that in Christ we are being bought to maturity Its why forgiveness, patience, long suffering and reconciliation are so important in forming and guarding community.

In fact that sense of Community is what many in our western society miss and are looking for… Andrew Polson who is a journalist living in London and was part of the bible class here, wrote an article recently about a new move in England “Atheists doing Church”, with their new found faith, atheism is a faith by the way…   they were seeking the things that church gave them… the first was community… so they gather to sing songs… a band plays the songs from the sound track of their lives. They listen to a message… the day Andrew went it was a physicist talking about the “Higgs boson” the so called God particle, and how it was going to transform our thinking and our lives. Then they hung round together after wards and talked over bad coffee, weak tea, watered down cordial for the kids and budget biscuits. Hopefully beyond that there was a loving and caring for one another.

Hospitality The second thing that comes through to me from this summary in Acts is the idea of hospitality. They meet in each other’s homes shared meals and held things in common.  AS young people many of us benefited greatly from people opening their homes to us. Bible Class suppers were called the invasion, and you could have upwards of sixty seventy young people descend on your houses like a pack of locusts. The picture we saw of the youth fx  in 1990 was a family opening their farm for the youth group to and camp for the weekend, which rekindled the whole ,ministry to young people at this church. Hospitality as a mark of the Christian church. But not only did we get invited into people’s homes and welcomed into church, but their lives as well.

Sacrificial giving That flows on to the third thing I want to mention, sacrificial giving… inspired by my experience here at Titirangi and with a sense of call I have been involved in Youth Ministry most of my adult life.. with that perspective…I am amazed at the amount of time and effort people were willing to invest in us. during the week I have heard of the home missioner here at Titirangi Bill Martin, I didn’t know that history, and Jim Gunn, Joyce Mitchell opening her home for the senior group, David Sage and his love as a minister for children,  John Stein, who was everybody’s second dad,  Jerry T, Peter Alpe,  jack foster in fact it’s hard to start mentioning people because I don’t want to miss anyone (as there are many who have not been named here) …  But these people were willing to invest their time and energy and themselves into young people, into other people. I think Paul, the apostle sums it up well in his letter to the Thessalonians “ we loved you so much that not only did we share the gospel with you but our lives as well, you had become so dear to us.”

A rather dishevelled,
 hairy, moody teenager

The term mentoring has become a buzz word in the church and business and all works of society really and what happened here before it became cool and recognised was people who were willing to do that sort of work, investing in someone to help them to grow and mature and blossom. I am forever grateful for the people, particularly  David Strickland, who took a chance with a rather dishevelled hairy, moody teenager and gave them a chance to be involved in leadership. My wife Kris and I had lunch at the fringe café last week and I had vivid flashbacks without mind altering drugs, thirty five years ago to an early Sunday morning when a group of men met with a group of us from the bible class and talked and shared about faith and life. I remembered an outreach coffee bar being run out of there and the people there investing time and energy and prayer into my life when I made a Christian commitment at a Titirangi family camp. 

Another buzz word round the church at the moment is missional, we are a blues brothers church… on a mission from God, and can I say people have struggled to define that. I like this definition being Missional  is to see where God is at work in the world and go and join him and invest ourselves in that place… that is we invest our lives and our time into loving others.    

Scripture I could go on and talk of people opening the scripture to us, inviting us to encounter Jesus in and through them.. and to see real people really trying to live it out in real life  As I’ve been meeting with people around a diner last night and in preparation for today some have said that church is no longer part of their lives, but I can’t help but think that a sense of justice that many of them have comes from our time at Youth group and those who taught us the scriptures.

Faith in Christ But I want to finish by picking up the last part of this passage that people were being added daily who had come to trust in Jesus. One of the things that I and many of us have had from your ministry here is our faith in Jesus Christ… You shared that with us. It has been carried out from here and had a major impact. I meet many people who talk of finding their faith, having it grow, being called to ministry and nurtured through the ministry of this place, this people, this church. Hopefully that inspires you for the future, it calls you to look at community, hospitality and sacrificial giving, investing into the lives of others with love and the good news of Jesus Christ.

We have a lot to be thankful for… so thanks a lot… no seriously thanks a lot for all the good things that we have received from the ministry of Titirangi Presbyterian Church to Young people down through the ages.  

At The Pool... The Depth of the Grace of God (john 5:1-18)....

the above image was used for our service on Sunday... it is an acknowledgement of the situation in the Ukraine at the moment and a chance to stand with our orthodox brothers and sisters willing to stand in the gap and pray for peace... they are going about the work of the father and of Christ.

 

Leading into Easter we are looking at peoples encounters with Jesus in John’s gospel and now. “Under the fig tree” with Nathaniel, ‘At night’ with Nicodemus, “At the well” with the Samaritan Woman, “in the hour of need” with the royal official and last week and out of order, but it did fit in with Communion In the Wilderness without dinner, “ the feeding of the five thousand.” We are doing it to not only to learn more about Jesus, but with the hope that in these gospel encounters that we may meet with Jesus in a new way in our lives today. Part of our Vision for this church is that we may “grow as followers of Jesus, and inspire others to join us on that journey” so I’m hoping that by looking at these gospel encounters we might do that growing but also gain something of how people can encounter Jesus in and through us.

The passage we had read out to us today is the narrative of Jesus healing a man who had been lame for 38 years beside the pool at the sheep gate in Jerusalem.

This passage marks a change in john’s gospel, because now we see that Jesus 'signs' are starting to attract opposition and there is conflict. John had written these things so that we may believe and have life, but now we see that the response of the religious authorities and the order of Jesus day is that they want to get rid of him. The passage finishes with the religious authorities actually understanding that Jesus was claiming to be equal with God which they saw as blasphemy. We shouldn’t have been surprised by this conflict in the prologue to John’s gospel in John 1:11 we were told that he had come to his own and those who were his own did not receive him.

Let’s look at the narrative.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem for a festival. We instinctively think of Passover when we think of festivals in Jerusalem, but there were three big religious festivals in the Jewish Calendar, as an agrarian culture they were also tied to the seasons of harvest, and people would come from all over like a holiday after the hard work.

The pool by the sheep’s gate was a place associated with healing. People believed that an angel would come and stir the waters from time to time and the first person into the water would be healed.  Perhaps it expresses the desperation people then and now feel when they want to be healed.  But it says something about Jesus that here he was amongst the poor and the disabled in Jerusalem. Maybe people passed this place by on their way into the festival proper, but not Jesus, we find him at this place of need.

While in John’s gospel so far we have Jesus knowing, because of his divine nature, what was on people’s hearts and what was going on in their lives, here we see that Jesus finds out that the man had been lame for thirty eight years. I wonder if part of Jesus ministry here, his compassion with these people, on the edge of their society in dire need wasn’t that he spent time talking and connecting with them…Hearing their hopes and hardships. Maybe he learned about the man who had been there so long because people would have said 'well at least I haven’t been here as long as that guy over there'. But We get a sense of Jesus compassion even though it’s not mentioned.

Jesus question to the man seems on the surface to be quite insensitive and even in the Hey, Monique thinks you're dumb’ kind of category. Doesn’t it…? “Do you want to get well?”… The man is so caught up in his problems that instead of answering 'yes' to what is an obvious and straightforward question… he starts to tell the story of why he is still there. Not only is he lame but he has been abandoned by his friends and family, there is no one to help him into the water. There is no hope, and his story seems like a mantra of woe.

It’s interesting but in this story there does not seem to be any spark of faith in this man, any hope or expectation or understanding of who it is who is speaking to him.   Bible commentators have often paralleled this passage with the story of the cripple lowered through the roof by his friends in the other gospels, because Jesus uses the same words in both accounts and there is the challenge to the man to go and sin no more. In that story even if the man did not have faith his friends definitely did, but here there is none of that. Jesus takes the initiative and says “ Get up! Pick up your mat and walk!’ and the man is instantly healed. Again beyond our comprehension, again a sign that points us to who Jesus is… and  Leon Morris comments about that lack of faith “Jesus is not limited by us, as he works the work of God”.  I read the story of a north Korean women, who grew up in that strict communist country who talked of having no knowledge of God or the gospel, in a difficult situation having a dream where a shadowy figure came and bought peace and hope, it was only eight years later after suicide attempts and fleeing from North Korea to China and eventually to South Korea where she meet Christians and became a believer that she recognised the figure as Christ… Jesus is not limited by us, as he works the work of God.

The man is healed and does what Jesus had asked and automatically this brings him into conflict with the religious authorities. Carrying ones bed was in direct violation of the Sabbath laws. The sabbath had been set aside as a day of rest and to focus on remembering the things that God had done. It was a revolutionary concept of setting aside one day a week where there was a break from work. Down through Jewish history it had been a struggle to keep that day separate and different, in Nehemiah 13: 15 there is a mention of people trading on that day like it was any other, so the Jews had built up a series of dos and don’t to try an protect the day and determine what you could and couldn’t do and the man was deemed to be working and breaking the Sabbath because he was carrying a load through the streets. Even his wonderful story and great news does not seem to pacify the authorities. It’s easy to go "tisk, tisk" at them but this challenges me that we can allow our religious shaped boxes to stop us seeing the depth and breadth of Jesus compassion and power. Again Leon Morris comments “ Jesus act of compassion has not been limited because of the scribal regulations forbidding doing works of healing on the Sabbath’, in the other gospels Jesus will say that he is the Lord of the Sabbath. While we need to be reminded of Sabbath today in the ace of the encroachment of secularization and business as usual, we also need to be reminded that to Sabbath does not mean to simply do nothing, some of you probably remember the prohibitions against games and outdoor play on Sundays, I remember one of the rules at Hunua Falls Camp was no games on Sunday, but that the Sabbath is not a rest from our compassion or the work of God.

It is again interesting that the man did not even know who Jesus was, and later in the temple, Jesus finds the man and we have this jarring word from Jesus, “now that you are well, stop sinning or perhaps something worse will happen to you.”  Now you may feel like saying what could be worse than thirty eight years of lameness and despair. So what does it mean?

Firstly, this passage is not making a connection between tragedy and suffering and sin… ‘the bastard had it coming’ is not a biblical understanding of life. In fact in John 9:1 Jesus disciples point to a man born blind and asked Jesus, in the understood wisdom of their day, "who sinned this man or his parents" and Jesus dismisses that understanding of the world…

Secondly, after this narrative Jesus begins to speak to the Jewish authorities that the greatest sign he will perform is to bring people from death to life, from judgement to life with his Father and this is the context that we should understand Jesus' words in. Do you want to be well was not just about physical wellness, but being whole, being bought into a right relationship with God and through that with the world around us, in Christ. The man’s lack of faith and acceptance of Jesus, means that while he is standing now, he may find himself standing in God’s judgement, a worse place to be. Jesus had come that he may be made completely well, Jesus has come that we may have life, abundant life now, lived in relationship with God and eternal life, a relationship that will carry on after death. A relationship that calls us to change and be transformed, to live differently… This is the greater gift that Jesus has for us, it is the work of God that Jesus is about... and as we move toward Easter in John’s gospel  we see his last words from the cross being “it is Finished’ it is completed.

Ok two quick things for us today…

The first is that Jesus still initiates healing and wholeness in our lives, Jesus is still doing the work of His Father. I can’t help but hear that same question from the poolside today “do you want to be well?” We sang John Newton’s amazing lament ‘beside the gospel pool' earlier in the service and maybe you could identify with the feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness in it. But from this narrative we see the depth of the grace of God… do you want to be well? Maybe it’s a physical thing that has dogged you for years, maybe deeper than that it is the knowledge that you need to open your life up to the work of God… “Even the stop sinning” if I may be so bold… because Jesus is in the business of making people whole… It may not be instantaneous… you’ll notice that in the narrative while the man is restored physically that move to wellness and wholeness, the Hebrew idea of shalom is a process, we don’t even know if the man actually progressed along it. He goes and tells the authorities hostile to Jesus about him… maybe desirous of pleasing them and finding the social acceptance he had been denied so long rather than seeking to follow Jesus. But also there is that glimmer of hope of change as instead of focusing on being told to break the Sabbath regulations he does refer to Jesus as the one who made him well. Are we willing to open our lives to the question do you want to be well and allow Jesus to do the work of the father.

Lastly, and I don’t want it to sound like a clique, but as a church we have made a commitment to being missional, that is to go and find what God is doing in the world and to go join in... to go and be where Jesus is and to do the things that Jesus is doing…. And  that is a call to be At the pool…  where ever that might be for you.  Being willing to stir the water for people a bit by asking  the question…’do you want to be well… .  Yes that will put us into conflict with people and can I say Christians are sometimes the worst folk at showing Jesus compassion to people, evangelist remind people of shonky used car salesmen. But I know people will encounter Jesus as we ask “do you want to be well’ ‘do you want to be whole?’… do you want that peace that shalom?  and ask God to work in and through us.

At The Well... Jesus and the Smaritain Women: An Encounter Across The Barriers (John4:1-42)... Sitting Under The Fig Tree (Part 3)

 

In Journalist Phillip Yancey’s book “The Jesus I Never Knew” he talks of being part of a group which looked at the various film presentations of the Jesus story alongside the gospels. One comment that Yancy makes that has always stuck with me is this.  ‘AS we watched the movies about Jesus’…”we noticed a striking pattern: the more unsavoury the characters, the more at ease they seemed around Jesus. People like these found Jesus appealing: a Samaritan social outcast,(which we are looking at today) a military officer of the tyrant Herod, a quisling tax collector, a recent hostess of seven demons.’… “In Contrast, Jesus got a chilly response from more respectable types. Pious Pharisees thought him uncouth and worldly, a rich young ruler walked away shaking his head, and even the open minded Nicodemus sought a meeting under the cover of darkness.

The thing that really hit home was Yancy’s reflection on the church today from that… “How strange this pattern seemed, since the Christian Church now attracts respectable types who closely resemble the people most suspicious of Jesus on earth. What has happened to reverse the pattern of Jesus day? Why don’t sinners like being around us?’ Ouch…I thought…that hurts… right.

Yancy illustrated that point by talking of a prostitute and drug addict who when some asked her why she hadn’t gone to the church for help responded “Church why should I go there? They’d just make me feel even worse than I already do!”… ouch…ouch, that really hurts doesn’t it.

My experience is that while there is some truth in that comment and illustration, it is more a caricature of Church, not the reality… people generally find us here and this church a welcoming and healing place. However, we can put barriers up from inside and outside the church, real or imagined… that can keep us and others from Jesus… and as I looked at Jesus encounter with the nameless Samaritan women I can’t help but be aware that Jesus is not put off by the barriers, either the big social barriers or the personal ones we put up, he is prepared and able to cross those barriers to encounter people with love and bring life.

We are working our way through people’s encounters with Jesus in John’s gospel and today. So far we’ve looked at encounters ‘Under the fig tree’, and  ‘at night’, today we are going to the well. They are all encounters with Jesus in the everyday life of the everyday people of Jesus day. They show Jesus encountering people from across the spectrum of society in his day. They all show us Jesus offering life and love and revealing the truth of who his is to all these people, and John retells them that we may believe and have life.

 

If Nicodemus was the ultimate insider at the heart of the religious and social life of Jesus day, the Samaritan women could be said to be the ultimate outsider.  Samaria was the old northern kingdom of Israel, when the Assyrians came and conquered it in 722bc they took most of the population into exile and imported other peoples from all over the empire. Those who remained in Samaria intermarried and also there was a intermingling of the various religions that came in. In 2 Kings 17 it tells the story of the Assyrians sending some exiled priests to Samaria to help the people living there to worship the God of that land. But the Jews always considered them an unclean people. They would avoid contact with them. The narrative in John 4 starts by saying that Jesus was almost fleeing Jerusalem for Galilee and so ‘needs must they went through Samaria, the shortest distance to Galilee, whereas pious Pharisees would have travelled the long route. They would not have shared an implement for food or water which is why the Samaritan women is surprised when Jesus asks her for a drink of water.

Secondly she was a woman.  Pious Jewish men would not normally talk with women who were not family members in public. It was a segregated patriarchal society. Like many places round the world today it was the women’s roll to go and get water for the family.

Lastly she had come to Jacob’s well which wasn’t the closest to her village, at noon, the normal time for getting water was in the cooler hours of the day. AS her story unfolds we find that she had had five husbands and the man she was living with at the moment was not her husband. She was ostracized for that. Maybe she came at this time and to this well to avoid the painful jibs and down nose looks and cold shoulder silences of the other women. Historically it’s been hinted that this was about sexual immorality, but as Paul Metzger says in an environment where a women’s welfare was dependant on her marriage, and divorce was easy   all we know is that she had had a tough life. He sums it up in the classic country song “she’d been looking for love in all the wrong places” and there would have definitely been a barrier when it came to trusting men’s promises.

Jesus is prepared to crosses all those social barriers. Firstly we meet a very human Jesus who is tired and worn out from his time in Jerusalem, and he is left by the well while his disciples go to find food, and he is thirsty in a desert land without the means of drawing water.  He is prepared to ask for help. I can’t help but reminded of the parable of the sheep and the goats, where we see that one of the ways people encounter Jesus in the world is in the least, the hungry, the poor, the thirsty, the imprisoned.

The woman is amazed that Jesus would even ask her this. We may have lost some of the satire in her reply… “oh now you a Jewish man will ask me for help when you are in need.” She throws up the barrier of conflict between Jew and Samaritan almost like a defence mechanism.  And Jesus reply changes the conversation, he tells her that if she knew who it was talking with her she would ask him for water and he would give her living water.

The Women can’t think beyond the physical and for a desert people  living water meant running water, a secure source of life giving water, Psalm 1 picks that up by talking of the people who base their lives in hearing and doing the word of God as being like trees planted by living water, a flowing stream. Jesus is basically saying the same thing to the Samaritan women as he does to Nicodemus. That he is the source of spiritual life, of life for the spirit. He does not say he is the living water because later in John 9 he says the Holy Spirit is the living water that wells up in our lives and fills us and over flows to bring that life to the world around us. But it is Jesus who gives that living water. It’s not that we drink it once and that’s it we will never thirst, but rather that it is the only truly reliable and constant source of new life of abundant life, we do not need another, but we do need to continually allow ourselves to drink from it and let it refresh us.

Maybe some hope has been birthed in the women as she hears Jesus offer. She says she would like that water. Weather she understood it as talking about new life, spiritual water or weather she simply wanted a better more reliable water source we don’t know. But Just like with Nicodemus and Nathaniel Jesus cuts to the heart of the matter. “Where is your husband?” It’s not condemning it’s not the mocking of others, rather as John talked about in John 3 it is bringing light and truth to bear so healing and transformation can happen. Living water, flowing water was preferred in Jewish religious practise for purification and that is what Jesus offers here. The women will later tell people that Jesus had told here everything she had ever done.  Her identity and all she was had been caught up in these failed relationships and Jesus is saying that there is life beyond that. Just like we may build our identity round things that don’t give us life… what we have done in the past… our education or our work our mistakes or even our strengths… Jesus points to a life source beyond that. Being accepted and loved by God, finding God dwelling in us by his spirit, bringing new life a chance of the slate wiped clean, health and wholeness, sustenance in the desert lands of our soul.

Her perception of Jesus changes, she acknowledges that he is a prophet and almost to deflect Jesus attention away from herself, but also because it was one of the burning issues of the day. She asks who was right about where one should worship, Jerusalem or the mountain where the Samaritans do.   Again Jesus isn’t willing to let that be a barrier for life giving water… he is not going to let those cultural and religious barriers stop this women from receiving living water. His reply is that while the Jews know who they worship and Samaritans do not that because God is spirit that true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth. It’s not the place but it is in knowing God. Again the women throws up a barrier that of time…That this will be a future reality when the messiah comes. Her hope as with all of Israel is that God would send a saviour, a king and Jesus breaks through that barrier with self-disclosure that he is the messiah, the son of God and that the time is now.   He is inviting the women and us into the new reality of knowing God in Christ. 

The disciples suddenly turn up at that moment and it gets a bit uncomfortable. But we see the women go and tell what she knew of Jesus, she changes from being outcast and ostracised to being the source of life giving water to her community and they come and Jesus spends a couple of days in that village. God’s love, the life Christ has to offer, new creation cannot be contained it will always well up and over flow even the barriers we put up, with an invitation to receive that new life in Christ and to Come and know and worship the God who loves us.

The question that comes to mind is where do we stand in this story?

I couldn’t help but find myself standing with the disciples, in a sort of uncomfortable foot shuffling, reluctant way. There is that “hey what is Jesus doing talking with that women?” there is that “what are you doing talking with Jesus?” thing happening.  I became aware that I put up these barriers around Jesus and his love and who he lets in and Jesus just won’t let that stand. Jesus love and grace is for everyone, it will even overflow the barriers of my comfort zones and prejudices and imagination and you yours. Even though Jesus disciples would have remembered his encounter with the women at the well, in Acts it took persecution of the church in Jerusalem for Jesus disciples to go back to Samaria, where they found that the gospel was readily accepted. If the spirit is that life giving water it will move us along in its flow even beyond the barriers we want to rise to contain it.

Secondly I can’t help but wonder as the people round Jesus that when we feel a spiritual thirst or hunger, that we think it has to do with going to the well to find the living water, we need to dig more and more into God, use spiritual disciples to listen and drink of what the spirit of God has for us. There is truth in that.  But maybe also we need to sit at the well… as well. To be in unfamiliar territory and do the will of God, share what we have found, show the grace we have been given, be the living water and we like Jesus will find sustenance in doing that.

Maybe today you find yourselves like the Samaritan women standing on the outside in a desert place, even in the plush suburbs of sub-tropical Auckland, and what you have in your life does not satisfy your thirst. What you have built your identity is dry or leaks. Can I say Jesus is wanting to meet with you and give you that life giving water today. He’s even willing to work through the barriers we put up.

Finally, in way of an answer to Philip Yancy’s critique of the church… a vision of what could be, not my own but that of Ezekiel in the old Testament. Ezekiel is taken to the temple in Jerusalem it is the centre of a restored and new Israel and out of the temple, which symbolised God Presence and which Jesus had told the Pharisees he would destroy and rebuild in three days a spring bubble up. A river starts to flow shallow at first but getting deeper and deeper as it flows from out of the city, into the desert land beyond it, allowing the desert to bloom and grow and have life. May we as a church allow Jesus to take the living water of his spirit and let it flow out of us , pushing down the barriers that stand in it way and bring life to this place and this city, this nation and this world that God loves and has called us to witness to.

At Night... You Must Be Born Again Nicodemus and Jesus (John 3:1-21)... Sitting Under the Fig Tree (Part 2)

Preaching on the passage we had read out today feels like handling a much valued family heirloom… It contains one of the most well known and loved verses in the New Testament… John 3:16. Even Non-Christians may no longer know what it says or that it’s a bible verse but they know John 3:16… it’s made its way into popular culture….even onto the Simpsons.

It also contains that troublesome phrase ‘born again’ which has become a bit of a clique and a very loaded term in Christianity and culture today: so much so that we can lose the amazing truth of God’s love and grace that it encapsulates. And I want to do it justice today because it is as enigmatic and challenging and life giving for us as it was for Nicodemus.  .

This year leading into Easter we are working our way through a series called Sitting under the Fig Tree… looking at encounters with Jesus in John’s Gospel and today. The passage we are looking at from John chapter 3 lends itself very well to this. In verse 1-15 we have the narrative of Nicodemus coming to see Jesus at Night and then in verse 16-21 we have the reflection on that encounter by John, applying it to the wider context, to the world and so to us.

Ok having said that let’s have a look at Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee.  The Pharisees were a group within Judaism. Their relationship with God was based on their birth right as the people of Israel, and they believed that identity needed to be lived out in meticulous obedience to the Law of Moses in all facets of life. The only chance they saw of getting rid of the Romans, becoming an independent nation and being blessed by God was by that observation of the Jewish law. Nicodemus was also a member of the ruling Jewish council the Sanhedrin, he is a political and religious leader, and Jesus is right to call him Israel’s teacher.

Nicodemus comes at night. It could have been he was anxious as an official rabbi coming and seeking out this unofficial Rabbi, this rabble rabbi from the sticks. Or as he has seen enough of what Jesus had been doing to see the hand of God in it, like with the disciples of John the Baptist, that we looked at last week, he comes to see and the only quality time he can get with Jesus is at night, away from the demands of the day.  

One of the things that John emphasises in his gospel is how Jesus knows what is on people’s hearts and Jesus here cuts straight to the quick. ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again’. Paul Metzger says that Jesus saw that Nicodemus had been playing the religious game for so long and that he had a flawed faith based on the traditions and testimonies of the old boys club rather than true faith based in God’s word and spirit’ and Jesus moves to stripe this away

What Jesus says can be translated both born again and born from above. And the focus here is that the Kingdom of God is not about the effort of humans but the divine action of God. Nicodemus does not understand this he can only think in terms of physical things.  How can an old man be born again, it’s impossible. In that Nicodemus has captured half of what Jesus is saying that yes it is humanly impossible. But we need to remember from Mary’s encounter with the Angel, with God all things are possible.  Jesus coming is God’s answer, is God’s grace, is God making a way.

Jesus goes on to elaborate for Nicodemus. He says ‘you cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you are born of the water and the spirit.’  Now that has been interpreted in different ways. Some see it as a reference to Christian water baptism, with its emphasis on purification and repentance, and the Spirit, receiving God’s Spirit. That fits but in the context I wonder if it does not push the emphasis here a little bit back towards what we do not what God does, not focusing on God’s grace. The other way people understand it that Jesus may simply here be saying you need to have a natural birth, water, and commentators point to a lot of water metaphors in Jewish writing to do with birth, and also a spiritual birth. That our lives are regenerated, made new by the spirit through Christ.

Remember John’s gospel starts ‘in the beginning’ it starts with creation, the emphasis in the gospel can be seen as ‘new creation’ the resurrection narrative starts in the garden on the first day and Jesus is talking of that new creation, that new life coming into our lives from above. In the prologue to John’s gospel it is phrased in terms of being born into the family of God. Not by natural means or a father’s will, but by God’s grace, given as a gift to those who received Jesus, the word made flesh.

 

Jesus says that Nicodemus should not be surprised by what Jesus had said. In the passage we used as a call to worship today in Ezekiel 36 (24-27) there is that promise that God would renew the hearts of his people, that God would bring transformation, regeneration. That it would be a divine action that would enable them to keep the law, not simply by human effort, but out of a new life.

But Jesus then goes on to use an Old Testament illustration to help Nicodemus understand that, the story of the bronze snake in Numbers 21. In response to the people of Israel rebelling against God a plague broke out, that threatened to wipe out everyone. In response to Moses prayers for mercy, God saws grace and tell Moses to fashion a snake of bronze and everyone who looked to it would be saved and healed. It was by divine action and grace, not that they were suffering from a lack of seeing bronze snakes.  So it is says Jesus with the son of man, when he is lifted up, which refers to Jesus crucifixion, which in John’s gospel is associated with Jesus being glorified  he will bring all people to know life in himself.

We don’t know how Nicodemus responded to this encounter with Jesus. He is only mentioned twice more in the New Testament.  Both times being positive about Jesus… In John 7 as the Sanhedrin discuss what to do about Jesus he suggests they should go and see for themselves.  In John 19 he is with Joseph of Arimathea as they seek permission from Pilate to bury Jesus and helps prepare Jesus body for death. Maybe he became a follower of Jesus at the least he is prepared to be identified publicly with Jesus.

How does this encounter with Nicodemus relate to us today?

The good thing is that John does not leave us wondering about that. He moves from a narrative of Jesus and Nicodemus, to tell us what it means for the world and us. He tells us that salvation and life are gifts from God in Christ. God loved the world, the word world gets repeated four times in the space of two verses to emphasise that, and gave his only begotten Son so that all who would believe in him, should not perish but have everlasting life. The truth for all of us is that Christ came so that you and I may know the new life the new birth that Jesus is talking about to Nicodemus. It’s for us. We must be born again, and we can be because of God’s love shown in Jesus Christ. God aim is not that people perish and are condemned but that we may find new beginnings and new life in him.

In fact says John, the sad truth is that despite in Christ the light coming into the world, people prefer the darkness. Because once you step into the light all that we do is exposed and we are aware of our need for transformation and change.

If we were to bring it even more down to us today, I think the call is the same as it was to Nicodemus. Oh and if you’ve been wondering what that is a picture of.. It’s Auckland city at night from space. I've seen so many images of the earth from space associated with John 3:16 and haven't really related to them, they are usually northern hemisphere orientated, but this one is not, in fact I can point out where the church is and probably where I live. For me it symbolises that this  passage connects here and now with us.

You see we We must be born again. Some of things that have stopped this being life giving to people in the past have been that it is connected to an experience in life. It is tied into responding to an altar call or making a commitment or praying a particular prayer. It can start at those particular times. But as we look at peoples encounters with Jesus in John’s gospel it manifests itself in people’s lives in different ways. But the truth is that Christian life is from divine activity, divine grace rather than from what Christ has done for us, from the love of God rather than human effort.

WE must be born again, the fact that it is based on God’s love and God’s grace and god’s reaction does not mean that we do not have a part to play. It’s not automatic, it’s not universal, John’s reflection is that many will prefer to remain in the dark, we do need to respond, to believe to put our trust in Jesus and his grace.

We must be born again. One of the things that has put people off this is the idea is that for some it is seen as a destination, that people equate being born again as having made it. Having an insurance for an afterlife with Christ, ‘pie in the sky when you die,’ but in John’s gospel the idea of life is about quality not just quantity. Westcott expresses it like this “it is not an endless duration of being in time, but being of which time does not measure.” It is eternal because it is life lives in relationship with Christ, the eternal one, life in Christ.

We must be born again. The idea of being born again also does not indicate a destination but a beginning, a new start, a new life where we grow into maturity in Christ; it’s a journey through this world in the light and love of the one who gave his life for it.

We must be born again. It is God’s gracious gift to find new life in Christ.