Month: September 2024

17 Pentecost
John 8:31-47 

In today’s Gospel reading we find Jesus still at the Festival of Booths, and still at the Temple teaching and disputing with the Pharisees. Once more, he makes a statement about who he is that they completely misunderstand. And once more, Jesus argues circles around them. Jesus has just told those in the crowd who were beginning to believe that he really was the promised Messiah that if they continued down this path, and continued in his word, then they would know the truth and the truth would set them free.

But what the Pharisees heard was the implication that they were not free. And this upset them. So they jumped into the conversation. ‘We are Abraham’s children,’ they said, ‘we have always been free.’

Now, we will overlook the irony that they were at a festival celebrating being set free from several centuries of slavery in Egypt, or that their ancestors had only a few centuries ago returned from captivity in Babylon. In their view, they had always been free spiritually as Abraham’s children. And didn’t like what Jesus was implying.

So Jesus tells them that they certainly are not Abraham’s children. If they were, they would be doing what Abraham did and following God. Instead, they are trying to kill Jesus.

Then the Pharisees argue that they have only one true Father and that is God himself. And Jesus points out that if God were their Father, they would love Jesus, because he has come down to them from God.

Then Jesus suggests a third alternative as to their parentage. If they are not Abraham’s children because they are trying to kill Jesus, and if they are not God’s children because they do not love and accept the truth that God is among them, then that leaves one option. They must be the children of the devil, because he was a murderer from the beginning and the father of lies.

This stops them in their tracks, and as we will see in next week’s reading, they quickly try to change the subject.

But this whole discussion about whose children the Pharisees are is a distraction. The main topic of John chapters seven and eight to this point has been the question of who Jesus is. And that remains the case in today’s text as well.

To see this we need to go back to the start of this present debate and look at what Jeus said that sent the Pharisees so off tract.

What Jesus said was this: ‘You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.’

These are words I think we are all familiar with, and not just from our reading of John’s Gospel.

I remember the first time I heard them.

I was in year six, and was what you might politely describe as a behaviorally challenged child. I was in my first year of middle school and we had moved, together with the high school students, to a brand-new building. But neither the new building to the promotion out of primary school made school seem any less pointless. So I found every way possible to entertain myself and to make the days pass more quickly so I could go home and go fishing. One day a once in a childhood opportunity presented itself. A car had hit a skunk just down the road from the school. We had all smelt it coming in on the bus. For those of you unfamiliar with skunks, they emit an extraordinarily repugnant odour when threatened that one can smell from quite a distance and which lingers for some time.

During lunch break I decided to gather together a small group of like-minded students to help me enact the most brilliant plan ever. The idea was to find a long limb, pick up the skunk while holding our noses, come back the school, and fling the skunk onto the school roof next to the large mushroom shaped ventilation fans than brough fresh air into the school. In the end I should have simply acted along. My companions were too afraid to pick up the dead skunk, even with a long branch. So I had to do this myself and carry the skunk back to the school. Once there they all said that it would be impossible to get it up two stories onto the roof. Basic physics, however, suggested the length of the limb would provide sufficient leverage and speed to get the carcass onto the roof. So I decided to have the first go myself to show that it was possible. Perhaps it was a lucky fling, but the skunk left the end of the branch in a perfect trajectory toward the school roof and the two large air intact vents. I waited for congratulations and praise. Or at least an admission that I was right. But when I turned back to my friends they were all running as fast as they could. So I ran too.

The bell rang and we returned to class, waiting for the smell of skunk to fill the school. Nothing happened. For twenty minutes nothing happened. They a girl near the side of room near the vents said, ‘What’s that smell?’ Soon others were asking the same question. Then the teacher announced it was skunk. She moved us into the hallway to get away from the smell but it was there to. Soon other classes were emptying into the hallway. Within a few minutes 600 hundred students were being ushered to the school oval. About half an hour later the buses were called and we were sent home early. I spent the rest of the day fishing.

The level of my success, as a lowly year six, was astounding.

The next day I was summed to the principal’s office. In the room next door to his office I could see several of the ‘friend’s’ who had been with me two days earlier. None of them looked up at me. I knew they had given me up.

But the principal seemed convinced that a confession was needed. ‘Just tell the truth,’ he said. ‘The truth will set you free.’ I had nothing to lose, so I told the truth. And do you know what? The truth didn’t set me free. Unless you consider two weeks’ suspension and a family meeting with principal being set free.

So what went wrong? I told the truth and was promised it would set me free.

Well, to begin with, both the principal and myself were lousy biblical scholars. We had misunderstood these words of Jesus as badly as the Pharisees had misunderstood them when Jesus first spoke them.

Despite all the lines from movies and all the times in police interviews this line from Jesus has been used, it was never meant to suggest that telling the truth will set you free from punishment. In fact, the saying has nothing at all to do with telling the truth – though telling the truth is generally a good thing. Nor does it have anything to do with being set free from punishment.

This is what Jesus actually said. ‘If you continue in my word, you are my disciples; and you will know the truth (not tell the truth) and the truth will set you free.’ (v. 32).

And in case anyone had missed the point, Jesus goes on in verse 36 to stay ‘if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.’

The first mistake we often make when we hear these words is that we miss the fact that it is the Son, Jesus, who is the truth. Recall also John 14:6 when Jesus declares ‘I am the Way, the truth and the life.’ We do not set ourselves free by telling the truth. But we are set free by knowing the truth, that is, by knowing Jesus. It is Jesus who sets us free. And he can do this because of who he is, the only Son of the Father. Chapters seven and eight in John’s Gospel, in which Jesus is teaching and disputing with the Pharisees and priests in the Temple during the Festival of Booths, is all about the question of who Jesus is.

In today’s text, Jesus takes that question a bit further. We learn that Jesus is the truth, and that he is the one who sets us free.

The second way we misunderstand this text is that we think it is talking about being set free from some sort of punishment or perhaps imprisonment. But it is sin which we are being set free from – sin which rules in us and drives us. But when Jesus sets us free it is now the Son who is the guiding power in our lives, not our sinful desires. For Jesus has truly set us free.

The words of Jesus in today’s text are not about the importance of telling the truth. They are bigger than that. They are about knowing the Truth. And that truth is Jesus. If we know Jesus, then, and understand and accept the truth of who he is – God in flesh with us and for us – then it is Jesus who sets us free. And what he sets us free from is ourselves. From our own enslavement to our self-centredness, and all of our wrong thoughts and actions. Jesus sets us free to longer be bound up in our sinful desires, but to follow him. And as he tried to explain to the Pharisess, ‘if the Son sets us free, then we are truly free.’

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.
Port Macquarie.

 

16 Pentecost

John 8:21-30

Today’s text begins with a bit of déjà vu. Jesus tells the religious leaders that he is going away, and that they will search for him. But where he is going they cannot come.

Sound familiar? It should. It is almost the exact thing Jesus said earlier, quite possibly that same day, when the Pharisees and priests sent the temple police to arrest him (7:32-36) ‘You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.’  On that occasion those listening wondered what he was talking about. They decided that perhaps he was saying that he was going out into the diaspora, among the Greek cities.

Now Jesus has said almost the same thing again. The game of hide and seek with the religious leaders continues. And once more, Jesus eludes them. They miss the point and go off in entirely the wrong direction. This time they are thinking not that Jesus is going to leave Judea and Galilee and go off into the Greek cities, but that he is going to take his own life.

Jesus talks to the religious leaders, but they fail to hear what he is saying. In fact, almost everything he says they misunderstand, and that by a wide margin.

The reaction of the Pharisees and priests to Jesus’ words is a sign of how this conversation is going.

Have you ever had a discussion with someone that you just couldn’t get through to? No matter how hard you tried to explain something they just could not or would not accept what you were saying. At some point, exasperated, you give up. You wondered why you even bothered. You may as well have been speaking to a brick wall.

This is the situation Jesus finds himself in in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus, once again, is telling the Pharisees and the other religious leaders who he is. He has already told them he is the messianic light of the world prophesied in Isaiah (verse 12). He has told them that if they knew him, then they also knew the Father (verse 19). Now he says that he is ‘from above’ and is not of this world (verse 23). Finally, he says that to find forgiveness of sins they must believe that he is the ‘I am’ (verse 24), referring to the name God gave Moses when he asked his name (Exodus 3:14,15). On top of all the other things Jesus has done and said, it is hard to imagine how he could have been any clearer about who he is. He is the promised Messiah. More than that, he is God himself. He is the great I AM.

And how do the Pharisees and other religious leaders respond to this series of increasingly blunt statement from Jesus about who he is?

They ask him: ‘Who are you?’

Can you imagine that? After Jesus tells them as plainly as he can who he is, and in more than one way, they respond by asking him who he is.

How else could Jesus have said it? At this point he is clearly exasperated.

So he simply says: ‘Why to I bother to speak to you at all?’ (verse 25)

Jesus admits that he seems to be wasting his time with them.

Yet Jesus does continue to speak. He tells them he has much to say. And much of it they will not like. He has much to condemn in what he sees and hears from them.

Finally, he tells them that they will eventually understand who he is. ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realise that I AM,’  he tells them.

It is the second time in this text that Jesus says that he is the ‘I am.’ Our English translations often translate his words as ‘I am he’ so that they make more grammatical sense. But they were just as awkward in John’s Greek, where Jesus simply says ‘ego eimi’ (‘I am’). The awkwardness of the construction is intentional. Jesus did not forget to finish his sentence. He is making the strongest and clearest claim possible to being God. For ‘I am’ was the name God gave to Moses when Moses asked God for his name.

And this second time Jesus makes the claim to be ‘I am’ in our text he does do with reference to being ‘lifted up from the earth’ by his questioners.

But this statement about being lifted up from the earth has a history in John’s Gospel. Jesus has said this before. He said this to Nicodemus. And we know from the end of the last chapter that Nicodemus is there among the Pharisees who are questioning Jesus.

Jesus had told Nicodemus, when he came to him at night, that, ‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life’ (John 3:14,15). It was an image from the wanderings of the people of Israel in the wilderness, which was being celebrated at the Feast of Booths, which Jesus was attending when he said these words. So the allusion to Moses and the serpent in the wilderness makes sense in this context.

But it is also a reminder to Nicodemus that once Jesus is lifted up on the cross, there would be no more doubt about who he was. And of course, we read at the end of John’s Gospel, when Nicodemus makes his third appearance, that after Jesus is lifted up from the earth on the cross, he finally comes forward as a follower of Jesus. The words Jesus spoke about showing everyone that he is the Messiah when he is lifted up from the earth would have stuck in Nicodemus’ mind.

When Nicodemus sees Jesus on the cross, he knows.

There is no more doubt.

There is no more hesitation.

Even though Jesus’ own disciples are in hiding and the movement seems lost, Nicodemus comes forward publicly as a follower of Jesus.

But Nicodemus was not the only person in the crowd that day. There were many other Pharisees and religious leaders with him. They were experts in the scriptures. They were the ones who should have understood what Jesus was saying. They should have understood who Jesus was. But Jesus warns them that by the time they see the truth, it would be too late. They would ‘die in their sins because they did not believe that Jesus was the great I AM, God in flesh come to them.

For Jesus if must have been frustrating explaining over and over to the religious experts who he was. But he was not wasting his time. There were others in the crowd who were listening. And we are told that many of them understood and believed.

Jesus tells us plainly who he is. He tells us plainly that he is the light of the world. He tells us plainly that only in him do we find forgiveness of sins and peace with God.

The question for each of us is this: Are we listening? Do we believe him? Or, like the Pharisees, are we still asking Jesus: ‘Who are you?’

Jesus tells us that not only is he the promised Messiah, the light of the world, but he is also the I AM, the creator of all. And he has indeed been lifted up on the cross for everyone to see.

He is not hiding. He is not keeping his identity a secret.

As John told us as the beginning of his Gospel; God, the true light of the world, has come to dwell among us.

So – Are we listening? Are our eyes open?

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.
Port Macquarie.

15 Pentecost
John 8:12-20 

If we read John’s Gospel as it was written and as it stood for several centuries, before the spurious account of the woman caught in the act of adultery was added, then we move directly from Nicodemus’ attempt to ask for a fair hearing for Jesus, to Jesus’ statement: ‘I am the light of the world.’

This is significant for a couple of reasons. First, it means the context is still the Feast of Booths and Jesus is continuing his conversation in the Temple. Not only was water a theme at the festival, as we saw in the previous text, but so was light. The cloud of light that led the people of Israel during their sojourn in the wilderness was one of the themes of remembering the time in the dessert. And candles were also lit in significant quantities at the feast as part of this theme. So not only has Jesus gotten the attention of those assembled by saying ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,’ now he has proclaimed, ‘I am the light of the world.’

And secondly, it is significant that this text follows immediately upon the end of chapter seven when Nicodemus shows up for the second time in John’s Gospel. It reminds us of the first time Nicodemus met Jesus. There, in chapter three, Jesus’ final words to Nicodemus were these: ‘The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light and do not come to the light … but those who do what is true come to the light.’

The theme of Jesus as the light of the world will be familiar to the reader’s of John’s Gospel. John began his Gospel by declaring that the Word which has come into the world is ‘the light of all people. It is a light that shines in the darkness and no darkness will overcome it.’

The Pharisees and others gathered around would, of course, not be aware of these words not yet written. But there was at least one person present who had heard something like this before. And that was Nicodemus.

Could this have been partly a special message and call to Nicodemus? Possibly. For it is also in the context of the this same talk the John mentions the importance of testimony, the terminology of coming ‘from above’, the linking of belief with salvation, and most obviously, the repeating of the prophecy that the Son of Man will be lifted up off the earth.

If Nicodemus had been mulling over in his mind his earlier conversation with Jesus, he would have likely taken much of what was said as a personal reminder and challenge to him. (But that’s another sermon!)

But there was another greater and more obvious context to these words of Jesus that the Pharisees and other religious leaders clearly did not miss. And that was the several messianic texts in Isaiah in which the coming Messiah is said to be the light of the nations. Most famously we think of Isaiah 9:2, ‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.’ And also Isaiah 49:6, ‘I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’ And Isaiah 60:1-3, ‘Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. … nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn.’

Jesus was clearly claiming to be the Messiah. And the religious leaders reacted strongly. They accused him of testifying on his own behalf that he is the Messiah.

And this brings us to the second significant aspect of this text: a revisiting of the legal argument that we occurred at the end of chapter five. As you will recall, in that text it was Jesus himself who said, ‘If I testify about myself, my testimony in not true’  (5:31). He then went on to bring out John the Baptist, the Scriptures as represented by Moses and God the Father as his witnesses.

Now we seem to have a repeat of this legal dispute over witnesses. But with a twist.

This time around Jesus appears to take the opposite point of view. Instead of conceding that he cannot testify about himself, and bringing instead three other witnesses, it is now the Pharisees who tell Jesus that he cannot testify about himself. Perhaps they remembered their last verbal sparing match with Jesus some months earlier. Perhaps they had wondered what else they could have said. Quite possibly they workshopped various responses they could use when they next met. It was common in the rabbinic schools to hold debates, and for disputants to take the other side to see who they would conduct the argument. Now their chance has come for a rematch. Jesus is back in Jerusalem and back in the temple teaching and they are once again trying to challenge him. And when he says he is the light of the world, someone among them remembers that in their last matchup Jesus had said he could not testify on his own behalf.

They had him.

Or so they thought.

But Jesus shifts tack rather than conceding.

From the standpoint of rabbinic debates this is quite significant, because Jesus now seems to be obliging by taking the opposite position to what he took the first time. He will now argue that he is indeed testifying on his own behalf and that this testimony is valid.

He makes two crucial points. First, he knows who he is and where he comes from, and they do not. Hence he is uniquely qualified to say who he is, whereas they have absolutely no idea and have nothing to say on the matter.

And to the legal point in question, Jesus points out that the testimony of two witnesses is accepted in legal proceedings. So technically he is not testifying about himself alone. He is testifying that he is the light of the world, the Messiah. And he is making this testimony together with his Father. That makes two. Hence a valid testimony.

At this point the Pharisees know they are in trouble. They are having a repeat of their earlier debate and Jesus is now besting them taking  opposing point of view, namely, that he can testify on his own behalf. They are running short on options.

So they ask Jesus to produce his second witness. ‘Where is you father?’ they ask (v. 19). They had done their research on Jesus. They had earlier said ‘we know this man’s mother and father. They knew Joseph was no longer living. So they thought once again that they had him because he had named a witness that could not be produced.

But Jesus cuts them short here. He tells them that they do not know who he is (a point he has already made) nor do they know his father. Because if they knew one, they would know the other. So they do not know who Jesus is, therefore they cannot say he is not from above. And they have not understood who his second witness is. Not only that, Jesus points out that they do not personally know his second witness.

And there would seem to be a double meaning here, as there so often is in Jesus’ words. On the one hand, the Pharisees think they are talking about Joseph of Nazareth, and Jesus has pointed out that they do not know who Jesus’ true father is. But also, Jesus has pointed out that they do not know God their own Father and creator. They think they know God, but when God in flesh is standing before them, they have no idea who he is. They do not recognise him.

And this text is all about who Jesus is. The legal arguments illustrate an important point about the intransigence of the Pharisees and high priests. But we should not let these legal arguments cause us to forget what started this particular exchange.

Jesus claimed to be the light of the world.

Everyone present knew from their reading of Isaiah that this was a claim to be the Messiah.

So this debate was always about who Jesus was.

In the course of the legal arguments, the question continues to be about who Jesus is.

He is the one from above. He is the one who is known through the Father and through whom the Father is known.

And as Jesus says at the end of the argument, in his summation if you will, ‘If you knew me, you would know my Father also.’

So the point is that they had no idea who Jesus was. And because they did not know Jesus, they did not truly know God the Father.

Jesus is the light of the world. But the unbelief of the Pharisees was keeping them in the darkness.

Jesus continues to be to the light of the whole world. He is the light that no darkness can overcome. But if we close our eyes to who Jesus is. If we do not know him, then, like the Pharisees, we will continue to stumble about in darkness even though we have the promised light of the world right before us.

To Jesus’ debate with the Pharisees in not simply about proving that he can testify that he is the light. It is a call for them and for us to open out eyes and let this light in, so that we no longer walk in darkness.

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.
Port Macquarie.