John 15:18-27
Preached at North Valley Friends Church
March 31, 2019
I was out walking the other day, thinking semi-random
thoughts, and this one came to me: “Give us this day our daily bread” does not
refer to my daily need for approval. In point of fact, needing approval has
been a weakness of mine that has given others the opening to manipulate me,
even into doing things I disapprove of.
I would give examples but they are too embarrassing.
I remember when I had just gone through an involuntary detox
from approval seeking, and found myself in contention for the job of yearly
meeting superintendent, and getting that job required the APPROVAL of the
YM. Quakers call for “approval” in our
non-voting decision-making. It sets some of us up for pathology.
So it comes as an unpleasant shock to hear Jesus say as
reported in Luke in the anti-beatitudes: “Woe to you when all speak well of
you, for that’s how their ancestors spoke of false prophets” (Luke 6:36).
And here, in this passage from John, Jesus says, “I chose
you from this world, and you do not belong to it; that is why the world hates
you.” That’s even worse than having a few detractors, even worse than failing
to win universal approval.
So I have some questions. Who is this “world” character,
anyway? The Gospel of John has at least 58 verses with Kosmos (the Greek for
“world”) in it, sometimes twice, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke combined have
around 16. The world is a constant presence in John’s Gospel, and it is almost
always what we might term the human world—the world of crowds, of politics, of
religion, of nations, of money, of education, of culture. It is the world
humans always build around them—all the ways humans find to organize themselves
and set up expectations with rewards and punishments. We can hardly move in a
day without encountering systems, and we violate their norms at our peril.
And this world is hostile to Jesus and to Jesus’s followers.
Why?
When Jesus came into his calling and mission, he was not the
first Messenger from God, the first wonder-worker his people had seen. He was
not the first charismatic leader that crowds followed around. But he was the
first one to do so with the public designation from God, “This is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
It isn’t clear how much of the crowd heard this as Jesus
came up out of the water of the Jordan. His cousin John, who was baptizing,
witnessed it. “I have seen it,” he said, “and I tell you that he is the Son of
God.” Taken up in his spirit by God’s Spirit, John said, “Behold the lamb of
God who takes away the sin of the world.” But some time later, from a jail
cell, John sent messengers to Jesus and asked, “Are you the one? I thought you
were, but now, you’re not what I was looking for.”
Jesus answered, “The blind can see, the lame can walk, the
lepers are cured, the deaf can hear, the dead are raised to life, and the good
news is preached to the poor. Happy are those who have no doubts about me!”
(Luke 7:22-23, Good News Bible)
We think from our vantage point, how sad that John couldn’t
continue believing in Jesus as the chosen and sent one, the Son of God. If we
saw a guy with these abilities, we think, we wouldn’t doubt that God had sent
him. But just like then, today Jesus would act or refuse to act in ways that
raised questions. I think we too would wonder.
In this gospel of John, Jesus frequently confronts
expectations from his followers and pours cold water on the fire of their
enthusiasms.
His mother asks him to do a little miracle regarding wine at
a wedding to spare the hosts embarrassment. (This reminds me of a lot of my own
prayers for Jesus to intervene in my life.) Jesus tells her, “You must not tell
me what to do. It isn’t the right time.” The most baffling part of this story
is that Jesus does do the miracle, and his mother appears never to doubt that
he would do what she said. But even in the doing of the miracle, Jesus upends
religious practice by using water containers set aside for ritual washings,
which were so important to observant Jews. Suddenly, these are full of great
wine (John 2). Christianity as it could be is, to quote Jacques Ellul, “an
explosive ferment calling everything into question in the name of the truth
that is in Jesus Christ, in the name of the incarnation.” (39) Note that
phrase, “calling everything into question in the name of the truth that is in
Jesus Christ.” Might that make anyone you know uncomfortable?
Jesus visits Jerusalem at Passover. When he comes to the
outer courts of the Temple, he drives out the animals brought there to sell for
sacrifices, and he turns over the tables of those who exchange money so that worshipers
had the right coinage for religious purposes.
The marriage here of commerce and religion is one we can recognize when
we look around our Christian subculture. Jesus said, “Stop making my Father’s
house a marketplace” (John 2). The authorities said, “What miracle are you
going to do to show you have the authority to reorganize the Temple?” And Jesus
was right back at them, “Tear down this Temple and I will raise it up in three
days.” He baffled the authorities rather than complying with their demand. Later,
his followers realized he was talking about his body and the resurrection, but
at the time, how preposterous! And notice how in identifying his body with the
Temple of God, Jesus overturns the tables of religion as well.
Nicodemus visits Jesus at night to ask some questions quite
respectfully. But Jesus says to him, “You have to start over, you have to be
born all over spiritually. You can’t bring all this religion and whatnot with
you if you want to follow me. Just like
the wind blows without your input or expertise, God’s Spirit moves me, and will
move you too if you are reborn in your spirit” (John 3).
So we can see some reasons why following Jesus might be
dangerous. First, Jesus undermines the power of religion. He violates the
norms, he disrespects the system, and he asserts that he is as holy as the
center of worship itself, and that God’s spirit tells him what to do and when.
He is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and righteous. People who are reborn and free from the rules
of morality, religion, and hierarchy, but instead are obeying the whimsical Spirit
of God rip the fabric of the human Kosmos. They are new wine in old bottles and
the bottles burst. They are new cloth on old clothing and they tear holes
rather than mend them. The systems of
the Kosmos, of the world, see them rightly as destroyers, and they hate,
persecute, and kill them.
And it isn’t just religious leaders who recognize the threat
that God’s Holy Spirit poses to the systems in place. The masses have their own
systems that they want Jesus to fit himself into. They want a wonder-worker,
and when Jesus makes wine out of water and feeds crowds of more than 5000 using
some kid’s lunch, they know they’ve found their man. They like the healings and
the resurrections. But Jesus refuses to let their desires be his guide. He
calls them petulant children in the marketplace, complaining because they piped
and he didn’t dance.
He tells them that he knows why they are following him—bread
and miracles—and that unless they eat his body and drink his blood they have no
part in him. He offers them springs of living water in themselves, the Spirit
of God. He says he is the bread of life, he says he is the light that God sends
into the world, and he says he is their only help and hope for freedom.
They shocked and appalled—they deny needing help—we have
never been slaves—this saying is too hard—God is our father, too—come on, just
tell us if you are the Messiah.
Jesus does not offend for his own ego reasons, his need to
look special and chosen. He’s not speaking truth to power because he likes to
annoy people. He says, and we can believe him, that everything he does and says
is in obedience to what his Father tells him to do and say. His radical
obedience to God is what is so upsetting to the systems he finds himself in
conflict with.
And this passage we have before us from John 15 tells us
that Jesus is sending the Spirit to fill us, the Spirit who reveals the truth
about God and comes from God. This is the Spirit who moved Jesus through his
days, from whom Jesus heard what to say and do and when to say and do it. No
system in the world is going to welcome a person or group that bases their
lives not on what the powers-that-be want or expect but on a relationship with
the living and present God.
I want us to keep two verses in mind as we listen today.
“Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you
will find rest for your souls.”
And, from the same Jesus: “You who want to be my disciples
will take up your cross daily and follow me.”
Jesus says, Put down your heavy loads and all the
expectations of your country, your religion, your family, your followers, and
just follow me. Listen to and obey God’s Spirit. This is your freedom and your
daily cross.
I was pushed to read portions of Jacques Ellul’s The Subversion of Christianity as I
thought about this passage in John 15. Ellul challenges us with the idea that
the death and resurrection of Jesus has set us absolutely free. Both Jesus and
Paul teach that those led by the Spirit are free in every respect. As Ellul
phrases it, “a risk with no cover, a joyful and perilous acrobatic feat with no
net!” (43)
He goes on to say that this radical freedom is not what
humans are looking for. Freedom from hunger, freedom from fear, freedom from
war, freedom from conflict, sure, but radical freedom? Not so much. Here’s how
Ellul describes it:
[Radical freedom] carries
frightening social risks and is politically insulting to every form of power.
…On every social level and in every culture, people have found it impossible to
take up this freedom and accept its implications. (43)
The freedom acquired in Christ
presupposes perfect self-control, wisdom, communion with God, and love. It is
an absolutely superhuman risk. It devastates us by demanding the utmost in
consecration. Free, we are totally responsible. We constantly have to choose.
(42)
For there is freedom only in
permanent self-control and in love of neighbor. (167)
I agree with Ellul that absolute freedom is hard to embrace.
I want habits, norms, guardrails, laws, insurance, peace treaties, and so on.
But it is clear that Jesus was working without a net, living each act in
obedience to God, finding himself not satisfying anyone and not being
understood or approved of by anyone, even his mom. Now who wants to follow
Jesus?
Well, a small determined part of many people does in fact
want to follow Jesus, to be set free by the his life, death, and resurrection. For
instance, I want to live in contact with God, I want to do what God tells me, I
want this relationship to be alive, not static. Maybe you want that, too.
My good dead friend, George MacDonald, challenges me every
day with his insistence on charismatic obedience.
“Do you ask, “What is faith in [God]?” I answer, The leaving
of your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of [God’s way and God’s
self]; the leaving of your trust in [humans], in money, in opinion, in
character, in atonement itself, and doing as [God] tells you. I can find no
words strong enough to serve for the weight of this obedience.”
“Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask
yourself whether you have this day done one thing because [God] said, Do it, or
once abstained because [God] said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you
believe, or even want to believe, in [God], if you do not do anything [God’s
Spirit] tells you.”
So let me end by asking myself and you as well to consider
that Jesus wants to partner with us in our daily lives and to lift from us the
burden laid on us by human systems. Jesus wants us to be free. And as we learn
to live in freedom, we ask God’s Spirit for help, we listen, and when we hear, we
obey.
