Category: After Pentecost

The conversation between Jesus, the rich man, and the disciples regarding salvation or eternal life has a connection to the truth of Martin Luther’s words in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians

Therefore, whoever knows well how to distinguish the Gospel from the Law should give thanks to God and know that he is a real theologian (Luther LW Vol 26 p115.)

 What Luther is saying is that, one way or another we are all theologians, we all have views about ourselves, the world and God. These ideas come from various sources, including importantly the culture in which we live and our upbring, our parents or those closet to us. These form the basis of our deep assumptions about our relationship, or non-relationship, to whatever we identify as God. But what distinguishes true theology from fake theology is the knowledge it gives us of the difference between God’s Law and God’s Gospel. This ability consists in, what Luther calls, the right use of the Law and the Gospel.

God’s Law confronts us with God’s commands. It constantly reminded us just how far we are from knowing and loving God. It tells us that in fact we hate God, we would rather be free of God’s commands and be the judges of what is good and evil for ourselves, as is recorded in Chp 3 of the book of Genesis. How very post-modern is that!

The Gospel on the other hand is God’s Word of free forgiveness in Christ, the covering of our waywardness and hatred of God by God’s gift of Christ’s righteousness, whereby we are set free from being haters of God’s law to embracing his will for us; in this we express our thanks and love of God for His grace toward us in Christ by serving our neighbour. Our obedience to God expressing our thanks and love is our action toward our neighbour

In the scriptures from Genesis to the Gospel of St Mark read today, we see how the difference and unity between the Law and the Gospel has a very drastic effect if they are not understood or rejected.

In the garden of Eden man (Adam/Adamah means ‘earth’ from which God created man) Adam is put amid a flourishing garden planted with all manner of edible fruits which are there for his benefit and sustenance. There is however one important proviso or exception. He must not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God says, if you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, on that day, “you will surely die”. So, the fruit of this tree has fatal consequences if it is eaten. Thus, God’s command to avoid the fruit of this tree is a prohibition to safeguard and protect the Adam’s life. God’s command is life giving and life preserving. In this command God’s protective hand is stretched out over Adam. God will is obviously to protect what God has created from death, as separation and abandonment by God. God’s command therefore, concerning this tree, is a powerful promise of life and health for Adam in the garden before God.

The threat posed by the fruit of the tree, which man is forbidden to eat, is that God knows that once eaten, humans will have their eyes opened and they will have the knowledge of good and evil. For Adam this is the fatal threat that this tree poses. It promises the knowledge of good and evil. Once man has this knowledge God cannot stop the fatal consequences flowing from the decision to eat this fruit. But once the fatal step is taken Adam will become himself like God. He will possess in the knowledge of good and evil that which distinguishes the Creator from the creature. God’s act of creation consists in the establishment of that which is not God within the limits of creaturely being, creaturely being is created being. As distinct from God this limitation of the creature as created is what being a creature means, being part of the good creation that the Lord God makes and loves. God knows the creation in its earthly reality as created, limited, it is not divine, it has boundaries set by God and which God declares to be ‘good’ indeed ‘very good’.

In transgressing the commandment that is meant to save and secure the creaturely life of the creature, Adam becomes the possessor of divine knowledge; Adam become as the Bible puts it “like God knowing good and evil”. Adam wills to reject this limitation. He thus condemns himself to death, to become separated from God, ceasing to be the creature God created and becoming like God knowing good and evil and thus forever burdened with the guilt of his disobedience. Being burdened with a conscience, knowledge he should not have but which we all have.

But such knowledge, once attained, cannot become unknown. Man is burdened with it and it becomes the seed of his destruction as the creature God has made from the dust of the earth. For the creature makes the impossible attempt to be like God and therefore rejects the gracious life preserving truth of God’s command regarding the tree of knowledge. In seeking and achieving this knowledge Adam hates the limit of his creaturely being and life as the one whom God has created and wills to relate to in life preserving love. Adam insanely, instead seeks to be equal with God; man grasps the impossible possibility for a creature of being “like God”. Adam thus embraces his own death as a creature in his rejection of God’s good command to “not eat of the fruit tree of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Instead of allowing God to be God and rejoicing in the promised goodness of God’s commandment towards him that wills to preserve life; Adam and all his subsequent generations hurtle headlong to destruction in hatred of God’s commandment. For Adam then, God’s command is at one and the same time life giving and death dealing. It is both Gospel and Law. In turning now to the New Testament, we come to see how Jesus’ action enlightens this dark mystery of human life before God after Adam; his rejection of God’s life-giving commandment.

In the holy gospel reading, St Mark 10, we are presented with the difference between those who are obedient and those who are disobedient to the Law as understood by Jesus, who in Himself, for our sake fulfils all the law of God not for His own sake but for ours. He assumes Adam’s flesh from Mary His mother and puts himself in the place of sinful Adam. In this conversation with the rich man, He answers once and for all of Adams descendants who is in and who is out of the kingdom of Christ. It has two main sections: one dealing negatively with the disobedience of the rich man and the other positively dealing with the nature of the disciple’s obedience.

We shall begin by trying to see the difference by looking at the second section first: meaning of obedience of the disciples. They ask Jesus, “Who can be saved”, for they are “astounded” and “amazed” at Jesus saying that it “is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than that rich man should enter the kingdom of God”. When the rich man seeking eternal life says he has kept the commandments turns away from Jesus when confronted with the meaning of God’s commandments.

Contrary to the rich man who departs and goes away from Jesus. The saying of Peter in v.28., is not contradicted Jesus. That they indeed, the disciples, have left all and followed Jesus. They have done in fact what the rich man could not do. But to their amazement Jesus does not then say that therefore they inherit eternal life, as opposed to the rich man. But surely, we may think, Jesus is over emphasising the situation of human beings before God. Haven’t the disciples done precisely what the rich man was unable to do and in so doing, leaving all and following Jesus, haven’t they by doing this shown that entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven is after all not a human impossibility.

But Jesus words in v.27 puts an end to this illusion. For Jesus says, that even they, the disciples, the seemingly obedient ones, should enter the Kingdom of Heaven is an impossibility: for men. So, Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ urgent question, “Who can be saved” is effectively – ‘No one’ can, ‘Nobody can be saved’. The disciples, standing as they do witness the disobedience of the rich man, they are forced by Jesus words to see themselves as standing on a par with the rich man when it comes to reckoning up “Who can be saved”. They are forced to see that their only hope, as it is also the hope of the rich man, that with God, “all things are possible”, and therefore even their salvation as well is possible. For this possibility of God is standing before both the disciples and the rich man in the person of Jesus, who as God’s Son is identified in his flesh with the godforsakenness of the human condition. He is God’s possibility which excludes both the rich man as well as disciples from salvation in terms of what they have done or not done: for He is in Himself not simply the divine possibility of salvation He is its actuality, the One the only One who fulfils the Law by obedience to death before God and at the same time by doing this demonstrates His unswerving love of God His Father and so fulfilling for our sake the judgement of God on all sinners and in His resurrection being justified for our sake. 

Even though it is true of the rich man that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of as needle than that he should enter the Kingdom of Heaven, this is also true of the disciples: those who have done what the rich man seemingly could and would not do. From the point of view of their own ability the disciples too lack precisely the same thing as the rich man. This is the discovery they are forced to make when, according to the text, they exclaim, “Who then can be saved!” The judgment of Jesus on the rich man, the affirmation by Jesus of the one thing necessary applies no less to the disciples.

These words of Jesus compel the disciples to see the disobedient in an entirely new light. Jesus’ harsh words directed at the rich man and indirectly to them as well, who have left all and followed Him, that they indeed are included in Jesus saying, “With men it is impossible”. With these words Jesus binds the disciples in complete solidarity with the disobedient rich man. In Jesus encounter with the rich man and in the consequent discussion the disciples are confronted with the yawning abyss of their own disobedience, the impossibility of their salvation apart from the actuality God’s grace present for them in Jesus. The presence of God’s grace in Jesus at one and the same time excludes, judges, both the rich man AND the disciples in order that those who enter the kingdom, enter only because of the gift of grace present in Jesus. Who can be saved? Nobody can be saved, the affirmation of the one thing necessary for the rich man applies no less to the disciples.

What is it then that distinguishes the disciples of Jesus from the rich man, the disobedient. The difference does not consist in their obedience, what they have done in following Jesus as opposed to the rich man’s disobedience. What distinguishes the disciples from the rich man is not who and what they are but who and what Jesus will to be for them in His call of them. In their following Jesus, their being with Him, they testify to the possibility of grace, the fact that with God, “all things are possible” and that this includes their obedience as they remain attached to Jesus who is their righteousness by grace alone, by His call of them to be with Him. They remain disciples only in so far as they continue to acknowledge this mystery to be the basis of their existence. For the conversation between Jesus and the disciples ends with the cryptic saying, “many that are first shall be last, and the last first”.

But this gift of grace present in Jesus was there not only for the disciples it was there for the rich man as well. The gospel writer adds these critical words in the context of Jesus conversation with the rich man: “Jesus”, it says, “looked upon him and loved him”. When Jesus goes on to tell him what he lacks, the freedom from his riches, he does so in order that he, the rich man, may see that Jesus is there specifically for him. Jesus’ call of the rich man to follow him and forsake his riches shows us, as in Genesis, that the command of God is life preserving and grounded in God’s love. It is that rich man, may give up what he has chosen as giving his life meaning and value, his possessions and instead receive the gift of God’s grace as that which gives his life enduring meaning. Within the hard shell of the commandment that Jesus gives the rich man is the life preserving love of Christ which he chooses not to receive. Just as in the Garden in Genesis Adam rejected the life preserving loving commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by rejecting the creaturely limitation of his life and willing to be like God and be the judge of his own destiny.

But for who else is Jesus on the way to Gethsemane and Golgotha, none other than those who are enslaved by all that negates true human life. Jesus hard words to the rich man, the demand that he lays upon him and which causes him to turn away, this hard demand is in order that the rich man may be set free to allow himself to be loved by Jesus. This was and is purpose of the command of the law which the rich man could recite so well but did not know. The rich man can certainly reject what Jesus wills to be for him and he does so. But his actions cannot negate or overthrow the Kingdom of Christ, the fact, so poignantly stated by the gospel writer, that Jesus “looked upon him and loved him”, loved specifically him with his hard and rebellious heart.

For in Jesus God himself has taken to himself our godforsaken humanity as, condemned by the law, children of Adam, and has become the One, who as the risen crucified One promises to us the wonderful gift of His renewed transformed human life in His Word and Sacrament. Here by these means Jesus both accompanies and sustains us until our earthly journey ends in its fulfillment in Him: through death and resurrection.

Dr. Gordon Watson.
Port Macquarie.

19 Pentecost
John 9:1-12

In todays’ Gospel reading we have the beginning of the account of the healing of the man born blind. It is the sixth of the seven miracles, or signs, that John records in his Gospel. It is also the longest of any of the miracle stories in the Gospels. Here we find John at his best as storyteller. Many recognize seven distinct scenes in this story. But we can divide the story more simply into three parts.

First, there is the account of the miracle itself in verses 1-12. Second, in verses 13-34, there is the series of interrogations, first by the Pharisees, then of the man’s parents, and finally, of the man himself again by the Pharisees. In the third and final part of the story Jesus, who has not appeared in the story since verse 7, finds the man after he had been forced out of the temple and talks to him and some nearby Pharisees about spiritual blindness (verses 35-41)

Each part of this story is important. None of the parts make complete sense apart from the others.

Today, we will focus on the miracle itself.

First, we recall the previous five miracles of Jesus that John called signs. There was the turning of water to wine (2:1-11) in which Jesus performed a miracle of creation, which only God could do. Second was the healing of the official’s son (4:46-54) which was done at a distance. Something no other miracle worker in Israel had done. Third, there was healing of the lame man on the sabbath (5:1-18) which showed that Jesus was lord of the Sabbath. Fourth was the feeding of the multitude (6:1-15) in which Jesus showed that his power far exceeded that of the great miracle working prophets Elijah and Elisha. And fifth, Jesus walks on water (6:16-21) in which he shows that he is lord of the water and other elements.

The pattern is clear. Each of the miracles have shown in distinct ways who Jesus is: not only the promised Messiah, but God himself in human flesh.

So how does this sixth miracle, or sign, fit the pattern?

Importantly, the man is born blind. If he had developed blindness, then perhaps there could be some other explanation for his cure.

It was commonly held at the time that many types of miracles and healings were possible. But not healing of the blind. The man born blind attests to this believe himself when, during his interrogation by the Pharisees, he says ‘Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind’ (verse 32).

So this was no ordinary miracle. In fact, the Hebrew scriptures attest that only God would make the blind to see. For instance, Exodus 4:11 asks: ‘Who makes mortals mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’ and Psalm 146:8 says, ‘The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.’

And Isaiah noted that the healing of the blind was a sign of the coming of the Messiah. For instance 29:18, ‘On that day the deaf shall hear … and the eyes of the blind shall see.’ 35:5, ‘The eyes of the blind shall be opened,’ and 42:7, ‘I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind.’   Jesus certainly intended to remind his disciples of this last passage when, just before he healed the man born blind, he repeated the statement made in chapter eight, ‘I am the light of the world.’

Like the other signs John records, the healing of the blind man is a very specific witness not only to the fact that Jesus is the awaited Messiah, but also that he is God come among his people. Once again, John included this particular miracle because it continues to build the case for who Jesus is.

In addition to the that fact that this miracle points to who Jesus is, there are three other aspects about the account of the miracle itself in verse 1-12 that draw out attention.

First, there is the opening of the story with the question about who sinned, the man born blind or his parents.

Second, the methods Jesus used to heal the blind man.

And third, the response of the blind man’s neighbours and friends after his healing.

First, why does this story begin with the disciples asking Jesus whether this man or his parents sinned in order to cause such a condition to fall upon him? And why would they even ask such a question?

In that day it was a common belief that if some terrible calamity or condition fell upon someone, it was their fault. Surely such a person was being punished for some sin. People wanted some explanation for evil and suffering in the world. Blaming the sufferer seemed to be a convenient way to do this. So the disciples are reflecting a common belief. But this man’s situation is complicated by the fact that he was born blind. So did God anticipate some sin of his, or more likely, was he being punished for some sin of his parents (which was also a widely held belief at the time, based upon Deuteronomy 5:9 ‘I am a jealous God, punishing children to the third and fourth generation for the iniquity of parents who reject me.’)  So the question the disciples ask seems to be a theological one.

But Jesus does not buy into the either/or argument. He says that neither is the case. Note that he is not saying that sinful actions will never result in bad things. Jesus is not making a blanket statement. He is pointing out to his disciples that things are not so simple as they might like to make them. In the particular case of this blind man, he tells them that his condition exists so that, ‘God’s works might be revealed in him.’ The man’s healing is about to become yet another sign of the coming of the Messiah.

But again, this is also not meant as a blanket explanation for the problem of evil and suffering. Jesus avoids any simplistic or one answer fits all explanation for evil and suffering. We do not find here an explanation for human suffering from Jesus. What we find is a caution not to jump to conclusions or to try to force an explanation onto every situation.

The next point of this story that will strike us as odd are the methods employed by Jesus to heal the man born blind. When Jesus healed the official’s son he did so at a distance. When he healed the lame man he simply told him to get up and walk. But now he spits on the ground, makes mud, then rubs it onto the man’s eyes. Then he asks him to go to the pool of Siloam, which is near the Temple. There is a considerable amount of ritual and action and work involved in this miracle. But we know from previous miracles John has recorded that none of this is necessary. Jesus could have simply said, ‘Open your eyes.’ So why does he do all of this?

Rubbing saliva on injured eyes was a recognised treatment of eye conditions at the time. So this is made to look, perhaps, like a physician going about his work. And making mud, even with one’s spittle, was technically considered work according to the interpretation of the law. And so was walking more than a certain distance, or causing someone else to do so.

We learn in verse 14 that this healing occurred on the Sabbath. And Jesus has done at least three things that are clear violations of Sabbath law. And none of them were strictly necessary. So we are left with the conclusion that Jesus is bating the Pharisees, the guardians of the Sabbath law. He is deliberately provoking a confrontation and creating a dilemma for them. For the first time in history they are going to see a man born blind who has been healed. But the healing itself, a clear sign of the coming of the Messiah, is done in fragrant violation of Jewish Sabbath law. This sets up the lengthy interrogation of the man who was blind as well as his parents in the coming section. So that is likely the explanation for why Jesus went through the elaborate ritual.

Finally, there is the reaction of those who knew the man when he returns from the pool of Siloam with his sight. It is one of disbelief. And this is a natural reaction. Afterall, as the man himself later testifies, never since the world began has such a thing occurred.

The neighours of the man, which might mean his literal neighbours, or perhaps his fellow beggars who sat near him, are desperately seeking an explanation for the impossible. And they soon come upon one. This man simply looks and sounds like their friend. But it is clearly not him, because their friend is blind, and this man can see. Problem solved. Except that the man who was born blind now begins to insert himself into the story. And he will become the central focus of the story until Jesus reappears in verse 35. The man insists that he really is their blind friend.

So they ask him how this is possible. He tells them that a man called Jesus (who by this stage they would all have heard about) opened his eyes. And he tells them what actions Jesus did to accomplish this.

Finally, the Gospel reading for today ends with a question. The man’s friends ask him concerning Jesus: ‘Where is he?’ The man replies that he does not know.

Perhaps they want to see Jesus themselves. Perhaps they want to ask him just what happened. Perhaps they want to seek healing themselves, which would make sense if these ‘neighbours’ were those who sat beside him begging.

But whatever their reasons, it was the wrong question. In the preceding two chapters, which related the discussion between Jesus and the religious leaders in the Temple, the focus was on the question of who Jesus is. And that is again the focus of this account.

The question the man’s friends should have been asking is this: ‘Just who is this Jesus?’ But they instead want to know where Jesus is. The man doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem bothered by this. As the story unfolds we see that he himself is much more interested in the question of who Jesus is. In fact, his journey throughout the story is not just one of gaining physical sight, but spiritual sight. As the story progresses his understanding of who Jesus is grows.

In this first section of the story the man refers to him simply as ‘a man called Jeus.’ When he is interrogated the first time by the Pharisees in the temple and is pressed about who Jesus is he says, ‘He is a prophet.’ This is a significant step up in recognition. In his second interview with the Pharisees, he argues that Jesus is ‘from God.’ This represents a further progression in faith. And at the conclusion of the story, when Jesus seeks out the man after the Pharisees have driven him from the temple, he accepts Jesus’ revelation as the ‘Son of Man,’ a Messianic title. The man accepts this, but takes his faith a step further by calling him ‘Lord,’ confessing belief, and worshipping him – which is something reserved for God alone.

Jesus is progressively revealed, through the words of the man who had been born blind, as a man, a prophet, someone from God, the Messiah, and finally God himself.

And here is the real miracle. The man truly has had his eyes opened. He sees Jesus for who he really is.

And that is a miracle that each one of us can experience. We do not need to receive physical sight or some dramatic healing to experience the power of God in our lives. Like the man born blind, we simply need to open our eyes and see who Jesus really is.

And we, too, like the man born blind, will be transformed by the Light of the world.

Amen.

18 Pentecost
John 8:48-59

Have you ever been travelling or out to eat at a restaurant and bumped into a famous person? What did you do? If you got a chance to speak to them, what did you say? When I was young the most common response was to ask for an autograph. These days, the request is usually for a ‘selfie.’

You might think that if you bumped into a famous person and were able to say a few words to them that you might ask a question about their latest movie, or one of their famous feats on the sporting field, their last book or recent newspaper editorial, or their life in politics, etc.  But hardly anyone ever asks any of these things.

Our first thought instead is usually this: I need proof that I really met them. Hence the old form of the autograph, and these days the even more convincing ‘selfie.’

Perhaps this has always been the nature of people. In the Old Testament reading for this Sunday we heard part of the account of Moses meeting God for the first time at the burning bush. And does Moses ask any of those famous questions that people always say they would like to ask God if they had a chance? Of course not. He straight away thinks that people will not believe he has really met and spoke with God. So he asks for some kind of proof. And in that day and culture, before the selfie and the autograph, if you met and really knew a person, they would tell you their name. Their true name. The one that had power. The one that not everyone would know. The name that defined who they were.

So that’s what Moses did.

Moses tells God that the people might not believe God had spoken with him unless he had proof. ‘What if they ask me what your name is?’ he said.

Then we have the famous passage where God says, ‘I am who I am,’ and tell them that ‘I am sent you.’ It seems to be in part an explanation of the meaning of Yahweh, the name by which the patriarchs had known God, and which the people would have themselves known. The name Yahweh, used in this text but translated, according to custom, simply as LORD, is most often taken to mean ‘he who will be,’ or something similar. In this case, God’s own explanation is his name is not simply the one who will be, but the one who is, the ‘I am’. The one who simply is and who needs no other explanation. And it is the kind of information that Moses could only get from God himself. It is the name behind the name.

This is the one and only time in the Hebrew scriptures that God names himself. In subsequent Jewish history, the name ‘I am’ is held as the most holy and the most important name for God, because it is the name that God himself gave when asked his name by Moses.

This account of Moses meeting God at the burning bush is the background to Jesus’ dramatic statement in today’s Gospel reading. ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’

For the best part of two chapters in John’s Gospel we have found Jesus teaching in the temple during the Feast of Booths and arguing with the Pharisees. And the theme of this teaching and his arguments with the Pharisees continues to come back to the question of Jesus’s identity. Jesus tells the people that he is from above and that if they know him, then they know the Father. He has told them he is living water, the light of the world, and the truth will set them free. When the Pharisees, after all these statements, asked him ‘So who are you?’ Jesus responded by saying, ‘Why do I even bother talking to you.’ How could he make it any clearer to them?

Then the discussion turns to Abraham. We saw in last week’s text that Jesus once again argued circles around the Pharisees. So they changed the subject, or rather, simply resorted to slander and accusations. ‘You must be a Samaritan and demon-possessed,’ they claim. Jesus doesn’t respond to the accusation of being a Samaritan. It was irrelevant. And a trap. If he doesn’t deny it then he must be a Samaritan heretic, but if he strenuously denies it, as if being a Samaritan is a terrible thing, then what of the woman at the well and the other Samaritans he has taught and who have believed in him. So Jesus simply points out that he is not demon possessed, and then takes the subject back to Abraham.

Abraham died, he points out, but whoever believes my words will never see death.

Now the Pharisees think they have him. This could be a charge that could stick. ‘Do you think you are greater than Abraham? Just who are you claiming to be?’

It is the second time they have asked Jesus directly who he is. Again, Jesus tells them. But this time his answer is so direct and shocking that it leaves no room for misunderstanding.

He says Abraham, who they are proud to have as an ancestor, looked forward to his coming.

To this the Pharisees respond in mockery. You talk as if you knew Abraham. He lived many centuries ago and you are clearly not even yet fifty years old.

Then Jesus makes the strongest statement in the Gospels about who he is.

‘Before Abraham was,’ he said, ‘I am.’

There could be no mistaking his meaning.

A bit earlier in his discussion with them he has said ‘You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am,’ and again, ‘When you see the Son of Man lifted up, then you will realise that I am.’ (8:24,28). But these words could perhaps be understood as short for ‘I am the one’. But this latest statement leaves no such room for any alternate understanding.

Jesus was claiming not just to be the promised Messiah, but the Creator himself.

This is the moment John has been building to over the past two chapters.

It is the dramatic conclusion to the long dialogue of Jesus with the Pharisees in the temple. And lest the reader thinks Jesus’ odd phrase, ‘Before Abrahem was, I am’ could be understood in some other way, we are told the Pharisees immediately take up stones to throw at Jesus, executing him for blasphemy.

They understood exactly what Jesus was claiming. They knew well the story of God revealing his name to Moses.

But Jesus slips away from them and leaves the temple.

This final line in the chapter is amazing in itself. Jesus has just revealed that he is the Creator God himself, come to them in flesh. He had been with them discussing who he is in the very temple they have built for him. And now, God leaves the temple.

It is a very symbolic statement. Jesus chooses the temple, built to honour and worship him, to reveal in the most dramatic and unmistakable way possible who he is.

Moses had many centuries earlier asked God for a name that he could give to prove to the people he had really spoken to God. That name was ‘I am’. The name was never repeated in the biblical account. It was never used to validate the identity of the God who spoke to Moses. Until now.

Now God chooses to use the name he gave to Moses. He chooses to use it in the very temple built to honour and worship him. And when he does, the religious leaders try to execute him for blasphemy.

So God leaves his temple.

The reader of John’s Gospel will not be surprised to learn who Jesus is. We were told in the very opening of John’s Gospel that Jesus, the Word, was in the beginning with God and was God, and came to dwell among us. We have been shown through the miracles Jesus performs and things he says that he is God in human flesh. Jesus has said it many times in indirect ways. Now he states it bluntly.

The Pharisees and high priests finally get to meet the God they worship- and in the very temple in which they worship him.

Have you every wondered what you would do if you met God face to face? We might have some big question we had long wanted to ask. Some of us have a whole list of big questions! We might simply want to fall down in worship. But the response of the Pharisees and priests is a shocker. They try to kill him. They had not been accept that Jesus, being from Galilee, could be they Messiah. And they certainly could not accept, however many miraculous signs he performed, that Jesus is God in flesh, come to them.

So they try to kill him for his audacious claim.

But at least they react. They did not ignore Jesus’ claim.

So back to us. What do we do when we discover that God has come in flesh to live among us? What do we do when we learn that Jesus is the creator himself? We might judge the Pharisees and priests for their reaction, but many of us simply shrug and say, ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ we think, and head off to whatever we have to do next as if nothing unusual has happened.

Do we miss the life-changing and world-changing nature of what Jesus has just revealed to us? Do we miss the significance of God coming and actually dwelling among us as if were an everyday occurrence?

This is the challenge put to each one of us. We have followed the story in John’s Gospel thus far. We have seen who Jesus is through what he says and in what he does. We have been told by John form the beginning who Jesus is.

Now, we hear it from Jesus himself.

So how will we respond to Jesus’ dramatic revelation, ‘before Abraham was, I am.’

How will we respond to meeting God himself in Jesus Christ.

Will we reach for stone like the Pharisees? Will we reach for our autograph pads or our phones for a selfie? Will we pull out of our pocket our list of questions to ask God?

Or will we respond like Thomas does at the end of John’s Gospel when he finally realizes who he has been spending the last three years with. Will we say in awe and worship, ‘My lord and my God,’ and devote our lives to following him?

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.
Port Macquarie.

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.

14 Pentecost
John 7:37-44 

Jesus, who arrived late to the Feast of Booths, has been teaching at the temple. The people have been trying to decide whether he might really be the Messiah whom they have long awaited. The religious leaders have been preoccupied with seeking to arrest him. Now on the last day of the festival, which John calls the great day of the festival, Jesus stands up in the temple courts and addresses the crowd in a loud voice. And what he says is this:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture says, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’

It is a statement that seems to come out of the blue, which does not flow from what he has said in the preceding text, or from what the people, the priests and the Pharisees are saying and asking.

But Jesus’ words are far from lacking a clear context.

Consider what John makes a point of telling us. It was the last and great day of the Festival of Booths. This was the festival in which the people built make-shift booths and set up tents on their roof tops, in their inner courtyards, along the streets, and in the fields and open spaces in and around Jerusalem. They camped out like this for seven days, taking their meals and many also sleeping in these shelters. It was a reminder of the journey of their ancestors in the wilderness after the exodus from slavery in Egypt. And it was also a harvest festival, giving thanks for the crops that were dependent upon the rain and flowing streams.

The culmination of the festival featured public readings and speeches in and around the temple precinct. The two most prominent readings during the festival, and especially on that final day were the account of Moses striking the rock and bringing forth flowing water found in Exodus 17:1-6; and the description of the river that flowed from the temple in Ezekiel’s description of a future glorious kingdom found in Ezekiel 47:1-12.

The first reading recalled the time the people of Israel spent in tents in the wilderness, which the festival was commemorating. It recalled how God had provided them flowing, or living water, that brought them life. The second reading was a description of the awaited reign of God, associated with the coming of the Messiah, in which water would flow from the Temple itself toward the Dead Sea, bringing it to life and producing trees of life-bearing fruit all year round whose leaves would bring healing. (This passage is the foundation of the vision in Revelation 22 in which the trees bearing food and healing leaves are the tree of life, and the water begins flowing not from the temple, but from the throne of God himself and the Lamb.)

To commemorate this emphasis on life giving water and its flowing from the temple, water was brought in a great and joyous ritual procession on each day of the feast from the pool of Siloam, near the temple, into the temple and poured into a silver basin until if overflowed to the altar itself.

It is in the context of these readings and this symbolic bringing in of water to the Temple until it overflowed, that Jesus stands up, gains the crowd’s attention, and speaks the words we find in today’s text.

The words Jesus speaks will be familiar to the readers of John’s gospel. They echo his offer to the Samaritan woman at the well from chapter four who was offered living water. Jesus had said to her: ‘Everyone who drinks of the water of this well will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’ (John 4:13-14).

Similarly, when Jesus told the people during his sermon at the synagogue at Capernaum after the feeding the multitude that he was the true mana from heaven and the bread of life, he also said, ‘whoever believes in me will never thirst’ (6:35).

That is the background to Jesus’ words. But what do they mean?

Let’s take a closer look.

‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.’

The first reading from the Hebrew scripture read at the festival was about God’s provision of living water in the past, in the wilderness. The second reading from Ezekiel was about God’s provision of living water in the future. Jesus is now declaring that he is God’s provision of living water in the present.

Here Jesus tells us that he is the source of life, the source of water. It is yet another way of telling people that he himself is the God who delivered his people from Egypt. It is God who provided water from rock in the wilderness. It is from the throne of God at the heart of the temple that the river of life flows. And it is from Jesus that living water comes..

And is this statement Jesus also extends an invitation. He extended it to the Samaritan woman at the well. Now he is offering it to everyone. Let anyone who is thirsty come. That is the call which he shouts to the crowds, gaining their attention.

‘And let the one who believes in me drink.’

The ancestors of the people to whom Jesus was speaking did not trust God. They did not believe God when they were in the wilderness. God provided for them both water and food. But God did this not because of their faith, but despite their lack of faith. Now Jesus is calling us to come to him on a different basis. He is calling us to come to him in faith. He is calling us to come and drink if we truly believe he is who he says he is.

‘As the scripture says’

Jesus introduces his next words with this phrase. But we will look in vain to find the precise words that Jesus cites in any particular Old Testament text. This is because Jesus, as was the custom of many rabbis, often cited or referred to several texts at once, giving a general summary and gist of their meaning. And that is clearly what he does here, drawing particularly on several texts from Isaiah and the Psalms having to do with God being the source of life-giving water, and the transforming impact of this water on those who drink of it.

‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’

Firstly, the word most English translations render as ‘heart’ is actually the Greek word for stomach, or bowels. In the ancient world this was symbolic of the seat of emotions and the innermost being of a person. But we don’t think of intestines in quite the same way today, so the word heart is used instead as it better conveys the meaning. But the difference is important. It is not out of the heart that this water flows, but from the middle or the side.

Many have taken this to be an allusion to the water that flows from the pierced side of Jesus, along with blood, which is mentioned only in John’s Gospel (19:34).

If God and the Lamb, as Revelation clarifies the vision of Ezekiel, is the true source of the river of life, then it is the body of Jesus given for us that is the ultimate source of life. For those familiar with John’s use of imagery and metaphor, the allusion here is likely intentional. When we read a few chapters later about water ‘flowing’ from the pierced side or middle of Jesus, John would like the reader to remember the words Jesus spoke on the last day of the Feast of Booths.

Also of note is that this living water is said to flow from the heart of those who have faith. This is reminiscent of what Jesus said to the woman at the well, that the living water he gives would well up within the one who drinks of it, becoming a spring.

Jesus likely has in mind here Isaiah 58:11 which says we will be like ‘springs of living water whose waters never fail,’ and Isaiah 44:3 and 4 which says that when God pours out his Spirit upon us we will ‘spring up like green tamarisks and like willows by flowing streams.’

The point is that the quenching of our spiritual thirst is not an end in itself. Once our thirst is relieved, we become a source (or conduit) of living water to others, pointing them to Jesus.

‘living water’ is what Jesus offers, and what flows from those who believe. It was the term used in the ancient world for flowing water. It is a rich image and another of Jesus’ many sayings with layered meanings. Flowing water is the best and cleanest water. It is the best source of plant growth and life. It implies a source that does not run out.

God’s grace to us in Christ is flowing. It does not run out. It is active and moving and life-giving.

Finally, John adds his own comment on Jesus’ words. He explains that Jesus was speaking here about the Holy Spirit.  His words remind us of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in chapter three in which water and Spirit are connected. It also draws upon Isaiah 44:3 where pouring water upon the thirsty ground is equated with the pouring out of God’s Spirit.

John is telling us that the life-giving water that Jesus offers, the water that flows into us and through us to others, is actually a description of what God gives us through his Spirit.

In the context of the texts read at the festival, and the daily performance of the ritual or drawing water and bringing it to the temple where it was poured into a basin until it overflowed, made sense to the crowds. Hence we read in the very next verse that when the people heard what Jesus had said many were saying that ‘this must be the prophet’ and others; ‘This must be the Messiah.’

But others were concerned that the Messiah must be a descendent of David and born in Bethlehem to fulfil the scripture, but Jesus was from Galilee of all places.  John was very much aware of the irony of this objection, for Jesus, unbeknownst to the crowd, actually met both of these criteria.

And others still, chiefly the Pharisees and priests, wanted to arrest him.

Jesus’ simple offer of himself as living water was not enough. The people still needed to take up his offer in faith. … We still need to respond in faith. We still need to take up the offer of this living water.

And that is still the choice that stands before us today. Do we reject Jesus as the religious leaders did? Do we quibble over words? Do we find reasons to put off taking up Jesus’ offer? Or do we take up Jesus’ offer and drink from this living water? Do we let it transform us through the power of the Spirit, welling up in us and flowing out from us to others with the good news of what Jesus has done?

Just like two thousand years ago, Jesus stands in our midst and calls us to come and drink the living water that he offers us.

‘If you are thirsty,’ Jesus says, ‘then come to me and drink.’

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing
Port Macquarie.

Pentecost 13
John 7:25-36

Have you ever played the children’s game ‘Hide and Seek’? One of our children, when very small, used to close his eyes and assume that if he couldn’t see anyone, then no one could see him. I have seen other children who could not stop laughing while hiding, or would give themselves away by the large bulge behind the window curtains. Good parents, when ‘it’, will pretend to look in several odd places, often bringing forth more revealing laughter, before finding the hiding child.

I never played hide and seek like that. I took hide and seek, from a very young age, to be a serious competitive sport. I was always last to be found, and often the seekers would be forced to give up. As I grew, my skills at hiding became more advanced. In year six I was old enough to attend church youth group activities. One of our first Friday night activities was hide and seek. I arrived at our large, three level church building with about 40 other eager youth aged 11-14. The game was explained and, apart from the person chosen to be the seeker, we were all sent out to hide. The trick was not to let anyone else see your hiding spot, because once a person was found, they joined the hunt.

I was determined to display my hiding abilities to this new group, so I made my way into the church kitchen when I was certain no one was looking. I climbed up onto the countertop from where I was able to lift a ceiling tile and pull myself up into the ceiling cavity. Once up, I carefully replaced the tile and made my way carefully across the metal beams until I came to the edge of the building. There I pulled a batt of insolation over me and waited. And waited. The groups coming through the kitchen grew larger as most of the youth were found. I grew hopeful as I was determined to be the last found. So I waited. And I waited.

Finally, I heard the voices of my parents and the youth leader calling out my name from somewhere in the large church building. I climbed out of my hiding place, back down through the ceiling tile and onto the counter, then out of the kitchen where I found my parents and a very worried youth leader. Everyone else had left more than half an hour ago. The night had ended and the group had finished with pizza and prayer. This was back in the day before anyone bothered to count children. So only when all the other youth had come out to the carpark did my parents came into the church and the youth leader realised that I had never been ‘found.’

I was told that I should have known the game was over and came out. He could not believe anyone would stay in hiding for over two hours. And, he wanted to know, just where I had been hiding? I said I was in a broom closet. There was no way I was going to give up a hiding place that good.

In today’s Goepel reading we find the Jewish authorities playing something akin to a deadly game of hide and seek with Jesus. They are looking for him to come to Jerusalem for the Festival of Booths so they can arrest him. But when he finally shows up, Jesus hides in plain sight. He openly teaches in the Temple. And the people begin to ask: Isn’t this the man the authorities are seeking? Why are they not arresting him? Anyone could find him. Perhaps they know he is the Messiah and are afraid. Others said, when the Messiah comes, will he do more miracles than this man is doing? Perhaps he is the Messiah.

The authorities tried to arrest Jesus but were unable. Perhaps because of the support of the crowd they couldn’t get near him. Finally, they sent in the Temple police to arrest Jesus. When they arrived Jesus told them that they time would come when they would seek him and not be able to find him.

They wondered what Jesus was talking about. Was he going to play a game of hide and seek with the authorities? Was he going to go into hiding among the Jewish diaspora who lived in Gentile lands?

But Jesus was not talking about going into hiding. He was pointing out that they claimed to be looking for him. And here he was. He was very near. But they could not find him. That is, they could not understand who he was. Jesus had just explained this the crowd, who thought they knew who he was because they knew he came from Galilee. He told them that they might know where he grew up, but they did not know the One who had sent him. Therefore, they really did not know him. They had not yet found him.

When Jesus challenged the Temple police and the authorities who sent them, he was not tipping them off that he was about to go into hiding. Jesus was well aware of their very public failed attempts to ‘find’ him.

When Jesus says the them, ‘you will seek me and not find me because you cannot go to where I am’ (verse 36) he was calling to mind a famous passage from the Prophet Isaiah 55:6”:

‘Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.’

It was a verse that every devout Jew knew. It was a plea and a warning to not miss the opportunity to make peace with God when he is near.

And God would never be physically nearer to the people or the religious leaders than he was at that very moment. God in flesh stood right there in the Temple courts and taught the people. And, as Jesus had just pointed out, the people did not know him because they did not know the One who had sent him. They were seeking the Messiah. They were seeking God. But they had not found him.

But Jesus would not always be so immediately and physically present among them. There would soon come a time when the leaders of the peple would desperately seek him, not to arrest him, but to find his mercy. But Jesus would no longer be near to them. They had an opportunity unlike any Jewish religious leaders before them to seek and find God while he was near, while he walked among them. But they missed the opportunity. They failed to recognise him. The authorities only wanted to find him so they could arrest him.

But was Jesus seeking to allude the authorities? Was he hiding from them? If Jesus was playing a game of hide and seek with the authorities, he was doing a pretty poor job of hiding. That is because, unlike me as a youth, Jesus was not trying to remain hidden. Jesus wanted to be found. You might say he was playing reverse hide and seek with the authorities. He was teaching openly in the temple. He was performing the signs and miracles that the Hebrew scriptures said the Messiah would do. He said plainly that he was from above.

And the authorities continued looking for him, failing repeatedly in their attempts to ‘find’ him in order to arrest him.

Losing an adolescent at a church hide and seek event is embarrassing. Losing the chance to find God when he is teaching and healing in plain sight is an epic disaster.

That was the mistake of the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ time.

But what about us?

Are we heeding Jesus’ advice?

 Have we heard the words of Isiah?

Are we seeking God while he may be found?

Are we calling out to him while he is near?

Do we see Jesus when he is right before us?

Are we seeking Jesus while he may be found?

Jesus may no longer be physically walking among us, but he is very near to us. He is calling us. And he wants to be found. He wants us to call out to him.

Let us not be like the religious leaders of Jesus’ time. Let us seek Jesus while he may be found and call upon his name while he is near.

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.
Port Macquarie.

Pentecost 12
John 7:1-24

In my last congregation we had a regular stream of people coming into the church off the streets and asking for help. We gave out blankets and jackets in winter and food all year round. Sometimes I would take people across the road to the shops for some particular item. But most people wanted cash, usually $50, for a ticket somewhere or petrol for a car that ran out of fuel just down the road. When I offered to go to the bus station with them or to their car they would get quite aggro as in most cases their was no planned bus trip and no car. They simply wanted cash. We had five or six such people come by most weeks. One week had been particularly busy and by Friday three people had already stopped by who wanted cash. So when about lunch-time a man who had clearly been sleeping rough on the streets came to the door I had become a little impatient. I opened the door and said rather curtly: ‘Listen, we can help with a blanket or jacket or a food voucher, but we do give out cash and do not keep any cash at the church. So sorry, but we are not able to help you.’

The man starred at be for a moment then said. ‘That’s okay. I’ve got enough food for today and a place to sleep tonight. I just wanted to know if you would be willing to say a prayer with me. It’s been a long time since anyone prayed for me and I really need it today.’

I apologised for my curtness and sat him down in the church. I asked him what was going on in his life and then prayed for him. Then returned very red-faced and humbled to my office.

I had judged the man by his appearance. I thought I knew exactly what he wanted. But I had been wrong.

Today’s reading finishes with Jesus’ famous call to not judge by appearances. It reminds me of the time I judged the homeless man at our church door by appearances. And the other times I have judged someone by appearances, and found later how wrong I had been. In this text, Jesus is calling the people to not judge him by appearances.

But what was the context of this call?

The account in chapter seven begins approximately six months after the events described in chapter six of the feeding of the multitude, Jesus walking on water, and his confronting sermon in the synagogue in Capernaum where he told the people that he was the bread of life. We are told that these things took place around the time of the Passover.

Now, six months later, Jesus is still in Galilee and the third of the yearly pilgrimage feasts is taking place in Jerusalem. It is the Feast of Booths, which celebrate the exodus from Egypt and was also something of an autumn harvest festival. The people were all meant to built shelters make of branches, wood, and other materials to remember their ancestors living in tents and shelters after they left Egypt. People in Jerusalem build these shelters in their courtyards or in the streets in front of their homes. Pilgrims, if they could not find space in the city, built shelters outside the city. The festival lasted seven days while people took all their meals and also often slept in these shelters (or booths). The entire city would have resembled an oversized caravan park during the peak of summer holidays with wall-to-wall shelters and tents. And the atmosphere was festive. Also popular with the crowds was going the temple courtyards to listen to various preachers.

It is this festival that Jesus’ brothers ask him to accompany them to, in order to show his followers, especially those in Jerusalem, what miracles he could do.  Their invitation seems to come from a perspective of skepticism rather than faith. His younger brothers seem to be daring him to go to Jerusalem and repeat his miracles if he is who people say that he is rather than hiding out in Galilee. Jesus declines the invitation, saying his time has not come. He says to them, ‘God to the festival yourselves, I am not going to this festival.’ So hie brothers head off and he remains in Galilee.

But then, after they leave, Jesus discretely heads to the festival himself, arriving about halfway through the week.

So what is going on here? Why does Jesus tell his brothers he is not going and send them off without him, then a few days later follows them? Did he change his mind? Unlikely. Did he mislead his brothers? Also a difficult view to hold. Perhaps he meant he was not going just then, though he seemed to imply he was not going. With the crowds looking for him showing up with his brothers, who were at this stage skeptical of who he was, it would have been risky for Jesus to travel with them. And this seems to be born out by the fact that he travels discretely to Jerusalem, only making himself known when he shows up at the temple and begins teaching.

The people were looking for Jesus. Some were for him and others against. Many were asking where he had gained some obvious learning, as he had not studied in any of the major schools in Jerusalem.

And he picks up where he left off when he was last in the city and healed a lame man on the Sabbath (chapter 5).

He picks up the argument from his last visit to Jerusalem, which would have been at least more than six months previously. On that occasion he had healed a lame man and was accused of violating the Sabbath. Because of this the Jewish authorities intensified their plans to kill Jesus.

Now when Jesus returns they are arguing whether about how he could ‘have letters’’ or be so educated and also whether he was a good man (not exactly an endorsement as Messiah) or a fake. Then Jeus reminds them that the authorities are had threatened and are seeking to kill him.

The crowd claims ignorance. Who is trying to kill you, they ask. We don’t see anyone trying to kill you.

Perhaps they were visitors from outside the city who knew nothing of the politics and plotting of the religious leaders. Perhaps others are conveniently feigning ignorance. They respond to Jesus’ claim by saying that it is proof he has a demon. It was their way of saying he was crazy.

Then Jesus reminds them of his last visit to Jerusalem and the temple. One miracle, he says. That is all I did last time. And you were all astonished. Notice he doesn’t take his brothers’ advice and do some more profound miracles. He simply reminds them of what he did last time and how the authorities responded.

He broke the Sabbath, they had claimed.

How hypocritical, he points out. The leaders are concerned about the law of Moses. The circumcise on the Sabbath when if fall eight days after the birth of a male child. And no one complains. They make one part of the body right in accord with the law. But Jesus reminds them that he has healed an entire man on the Sabbath, and the law of Moses is deemed to have been broken.

The lesson?

Jesus says, ‘Do not judge by appearances, but judge with a right judgement.’

His whole talk builds to this point.

Let’s unpack what Jesus means by it.

Who has judged by appearances in this chapter?

First, Jesus’ brothers have judged Jesus by appearances. To them, Jesus appears to be a preacher and miracle worker with much unrealized potential. He is the emerging social media sensation of his day. But he is not managing his talent well. He needs to take the show to the big stage in Jerusalem.

Next, the crowds in Jerusalem judge Jesus by appearances. Some thought Jesus appeared to be a good man. But he was much more than that.

Others, at looking at his claims, jumped to the conclusion that he was a charlatan. But they did not consider that Jesus was legit.

Neither group saw Jesus for who he was. They judged him by appearances.

Then the educated teachers in the crowd asked how Jesus came to appear to be so learned. He was from the academic and cultural backwater of Galilee. So they judged him by appearances. They assumed he would not be well-educated and struggled to get their heads around how a clearly uneducated man knew so much and spoke so well.

When Jesus pointed out that the authorities were planning to kill him some in the crowd thought this made him appear paranoid. So they accused him of having a demon. Which was there way in that age of saying he was crazy. But they had not judged Jesus truly. In fact, they should have known better. Six months earlier Jesus had to leave Jerusalem because the authorities were plotting to kill him. And a few verses after this the same crowd asks: Isn’t this the man the authorities want to put to death?

The Jewish authorities judged Jesus to be a law-breaker because he had healed the lame man on the Sabbath.

And finally, there is us, the readers. Since the beginning of this section we have been judging Jesus for saying he was not going to the festival and then going.  We have been trying to decide if Jesus changed his mind about it being his time, or if he lied to his brothers about his intentions. We, too, have been caught up in judging by appearances rather than looking beyond appearances to see who Jesus is: the one who came down from heaven, the holy one of God.

At the end of a series of incidents in which it seems everyone is making assumptions and judgments about Jesus based on appearances Jesus challenges his hearers and he challenges us: Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

We all know the dangers of judging by appearances. Like my judging the intentions of a homeless man based on how he looked and how he was living.

Judging by appearances is never a good idea.

But Jesus is specifically cautioning not to judge him by appearances. He reminds us who he is and from where he has come. He is truth. He is life. He is the bread of life. He is the one who has come from above. He is the creator himself.

But the people of his day saw only a carpenter from Nazareth. They saw only a trouble-maker. They saw only someone who was not careful about the finer points of keeping the Sabbath. They saw only a good man. They saw someone who must be crazy. And in doing so they missed who was standing before them.

Today we also judge Jesus. He appears to be simply a good teacher. He appears to be someone who was simply a very good person. Perhaps he appears as someone who expects to much of us, or who wants to meddle in our lives. Maybe we judge him based upon all the paintings and images of Jesus we have seen in Sunday School books and other religious art. So meek and mild and gentle and harmless that he really doesn’t merit much attention in our rough and tumble world. Or maybe we judge him according to hellfire and brimstone sermons we remember from our youth, and cower at the mention of his name. Maybe he appears as another riddle to solve. Maybe we are too caught up trying to judge such questions as did he or did he not deliberately mislead his brothers about his travel plans.

There are so many ways that we, like the people in Jesus’ own day, judge him by appearances.

But Jesus calls us to look beyond appearances. To look beyond our assumptions, our prejudices and our fears. He calls us to judge him truly. He calls us to recognize who it is who stands before us and calls us to himself.

Amen.

Pastro Mark Worthing.
Port Macquarie

11 Pentecost
John 6:60-71

Today’s Gospel reading is the final section of chapter six of John’s Gospel. As the entire chapter is interconnected it is worthwhile to refresh briefly what has already occurred over the previous, eventful 24 hours in the life of Jesus that this chapter narrates.

In scene one, you will recall, Jesus is with his disciples on the Eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. Pilgrims are making their way to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. It is these families that form much of the large crowd that gathers to hear Jesus teach. When it becomes clear that the crowds are hungry and have nothing to eat, Jesus feeds upwards of 20,000 with five barely loaves and 2 fish provided by a young boy. In surpassing the feeding miracles of Elijha and Elisha are well as recalling the feeding of the people of Israel in the wilderness with mana, Jesus highlights that he is the long-awaited Messiah – and more.

In scene two Jesus sends his disciples in their fishing boat back across the Sea to Capernaum while he remains behind. When a big storm comes up as the disciples are rowing against the wind and waves in the middle of the sea and in great peril, Jesus comes to them – walking on the water – and brings them suddenly and safely to their destination. By showing his power over the wind and the waves, and by surpassing Moses and Elisha, who simply parted water, Jesus again shows that he is not just the Messiah but the one who commands the seas because he is their creator.

In scene three Jesus has arrived the next morning at Capernaum on the other side of the Sea of Galilee with his disciples. He goes to the synagogue, and is soon followed there by some of those who had experienced the feeding of the multitude, and who hac taken boats across the sea the next morning after the storm had subsided. They ask Jesus how he had gotten there before them, as they knew he was not on the boat with his disciples. The words of Jesus that follow are part of his teaching in the synagogue with based on the two Scripture texts for that season of Passover, one from the Pentateuch and the other the Prophets. The Pentateuch text was about God feeding the people mana from heaven. The people wonder if Jesus will feed them again. Or provide food every day, like in the time of Moses. Jesus explains that if they are looking for mana, or bread from heaven, then they need look no further. He is the bread from heaven. Then he says the shocking and astounding words that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will have eternal life. For John’s readers, decades later, this will make sense in light of the regular celebration of the Lord’s Supper. But for the congregation that day in the synagogue in Capernaum, it was a shocking statement.

In the final scene in this series, which we have just heard today, Jesus appears to have left the synagogue and is now speaking to his disciples. Many who were following him have walked away. What he said was simply too radical and crazy. The disciples are arguing among themselves about what Jesus means and how they should respond. Jesus knows what they are talking about and challenges them: ‘Are you also planning on leaving me?’ he asks.  It is a confronting question. And it comes on top of perhaps the most eventful 24 hours they have spent with Jesus.

It is at this point that Peter makes his famous confession of faith in Jesus. It is this confession that draws together not only this scene, but the entire sequence of miracles and teaching of Jesus in this chapter.

And this is what Peter says in response to Jesus:

‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God!’ (verses 68-69).

Many of you will be familiar with the first part of Peter’s confession. These words are traditionally song in the Western liturgy before the reading the Gospel. Singing these words of Peter before we hear the Gospel reading remind us that it is in the words of Jesus that we find eternal life.

But what is Peter actually saying?

The context of his confession, remember, is the shocking and confusing teaching of Jesus that he is the bread from heaven, and that only in eating his flesh and drinking his blood can we have eternal life. At best it was an impossible statement.  But claiming to be from heaven was claiming deity, which was blasphemy. And talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood – well, we don’t even need to start to explain the problems associated with these words. So it is no surprise that many who had begun to follow Jesus now decide that they had had enough and leave.

When Jesus sees that his inner circle of twelve are also concerned and confused by his words he does not come to them to explain what he meant. He doesn’t try to salvage the situation and get them back on side. Instead, he asks them if they, too, now plan to leave.

And it is to this that Peter responds: ‘Just where would be go?’ asks.

Some years ago my wife and I were travelling in the rural South Australia and decided to spend the night at a small caravan park. We asked the woman at the park office where she would recommend we eat tea that night. The local hotel, she said, just down the end of the main street. Is the food good there, we asked. It’s okay, she said. What are our options we asked. Well, if you want to wait ‘til morning there’s a café across the road. But if you want to eat tonight, there’s just the hotel.  So the hotel it was. There wasn’t any other option.

That’s perhaps a bit how the disciples felt. At the moment was Jesus was offering was looking very difficult. But there was no other choice. There was no other way to peace with God and eternal life. Jesus was their only option.

It was no longer necessary for the disciples to have an explanation from Jesus about what he meant or what he was doing for them to stay with him. They were committed to him. They knew who he was and what he offered. They understood, at last, that they do not need to understand everything he says in order to trust him.

This confession from Peter is a confession of true faith. The disciples do not choose to continue to follow Jesus because he has persuaded them by force of argument. They do not choose to follow Jesus because what he says makes sense. They do not choose to follow Jesus because he feeds them. They do not choose to follow Jesus because what he says impresses the crowed.

They choose now to follow Jeus even when what he says is confusing and impossible. They choose to follow Jesus even when others fall away. They choose to follow Jesus because they trust him.

And the reason for this trust can be seen in the second part of Peter’s confession: ‘We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’

There is something of a parallel to this account in John in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In these Gospels Jesus asks the disciples who they say that he is, and it is again Peter who speaks for the twelve and says, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.’ It is a strong confession of Jesus as Messiah.

But what we have in John’s Gospel is a much stronger statement. Consistent with the theme that has been running through his Gospel, John wants to make it clear that Jesus in not just the Messiah. He is God himself. And this confession of Peter shows the conclusion to be drawn from the two big miracles they had just witnessed as well as from Jesus’  claim that he himself was the bread from heaven.

Jesus, Peter confesses, is the Holy One of God. Only God is holy. Peter is saying that the disciples have come to not just believe, but to know, that is, to be certain beyond any doubt, that Jesus is God. And it is Jesus alone and his teaching that offers them eternal life.

There are no other options.

So for Peter and the disciples there is no choice.  No matter how difficult things might be, no matter how difficult Jesus’ teaching might seem, how can they do anything other than follow him.

Peter’s words demonstrate what true faith looks like. Last week we saw in the previous text that many of those who were in the synagogue that day in Capernaum wanted to follow Jesus in the hope that he would continue to feed them, providing for their physical needs. Another group wanted more miracles. They wanted to be entertained, to be constantly amazed as a condition of following Jesus. But Jesus pointed out that that is not what true faith in him looks like.

Peter’s confession that shows us what true faith looks like. It is believing and knowing that Jesus is the Messiah. That Jesus is God and Creator. It is trusting Jesus so completely that we will follow him no matter what happens. Our faith does not depend on his feeding us. It does not depend on his providing always more miracles. And it does not depend on our ability to understand what he is teaching or doing. Our faith simply depends on Jesus, and our unconditional trust in him.

‘Lord, to whom else could we go. You alone have the words that bring eternal life. You alone are the Messiah, the Holy One of God.’

Amen

Pastor Mark Worthing.
Port Macquarie.