John 11:1-44 – 

An interesting point in the story about Lazarus is that he never speaks. In fact, in all the accounts of him and his sisters with Jesus in Bethany, he never says a single word. One reason for this is that Lazarus was likely a very young man, probably still a teenager. The strong indication for this is that he still lives at home with his two apparently older sisters, who do all the speaking, and who would also then appear to be quite young and still unmarried. And the three of them appear to live in the home of Simon, for they serve at his house as if it were their own, yet it never names Simon as their father. Quite possibly they are orphans, which was very common in the day, and Simon would have been the closest relative, quite possibly an uncle. Somehow, the family was known to Jesus, for he stays with them in this village just outside of Jerusalem whenever he visits the city.

So Lazarus is a key figure in this story, but ironically, not one of the central characters. The central characters are Jesus and Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha.

The youth of Lazarus puts the concern and intense grief of his sisters in perspective. His death becomes all the more tragic. It also explains the reaction of Jesus and his disciples, who were all found of Lazarus. Indeed, when Mary and Martha write to Jesus they say ‘The one you love is sick.’

The actions and the words in this story are all those of the sisters and Jesus. The role of Lazarus, quite simply, is to take ill and tragically die.

When it is clear that Lazarus is quite sick it is Mary and Martha do the obvious thing. They reach out to Jesus.

I wonder for how many of us that is the first and obvious thing to do when confronted with crisis. Is Jesus the first person we reach out to, or more of an afterthought. ‘Oh yes, we should say a prayer too.”

And as an interesting aside here, they reach out to Jesus by writing him a letter, which indicated that they were literate, which was not common for women as that time and suggests the kind of upbringing they had in Bethany.

Jesus receives the letter, but then decides to wait two days before leaving for Betthany. And for those who find this unnecessary and unpastoral on the part of Jesus note that it is a two day journey form the part of the Jordan where John had been baptizing to Bethany. And Lazarus was already dead four days when Jesus arrived. So even if Jesus and his disciples had left immediately, they would have arrived two days after his death. In fact, the words of Jesus to his disciples before they finally leave for Bethany, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,’ (v. 11) indicates that Jesus knew Lazarus was dead before he began the journey.

And when he arrives it is Martha who comes out to meet him with the words, ‘Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.’  Were these words of regret or accusation? They are certainly words of despair spoken out of grief. And meanwhile Mary ‘stayed at home’ not even coming out to greet Jesus. This a sign of her anger at the delay of Jesus. And we should not be too quick to judge either Martha or Mary for their responses to Jesus’s late arrival. Jesus certainly does not judge them. He recognises that they are within the range of emotions that quite naturally come from a place of deep grief.

After talking with Martha, Jesus calls for Mary. Note how he deals with each one individually in their grief. And when Mary arrives she says the exact same thing her sister had said. ‘Lord, if yu have been here my brother would not have died.’ (v. 32). And now it does sound even more like an accusation that when Martha had said it. But again, Jesus does not rebuke her, he does not challenge her, he does not even attempt to explain his delay. What does he do? He weeps when he sees Mary weeping (vv 33, 34). Jesus again provides a model for pastoral care for those in deep grief.

It is only after he has wept with the sisters that he asks to be taken to the tomb. In fact, when Jesus asks where Lazarus is buried, there say ‘Come and see.’ It is the final time these words will be spoken in John’s Gospel. In the early chapters they were always an invitation to come and see Jesus. Now it looks on the surface to be an invitation to Jesus to come and see Lazarus’ tomb. But as the story unfolds, we see that the words, though not their intention, are once more an invitation to comes and see Jesus.

And, of course, the rest of the story is well known. Lazarus has been dead for four days, and there is a stench when the tomb is opened. This was not mistaken case of fainting or falling into a coma. And Jesus calls out to the Father not because he needed to, but as an example to all of us, that we might believe that Jesus is God, and has the power to bring life from death. We truly do come to see Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus.

And we need to be clear here that Lazarus was not resurrected. Jesus is the first and so far only person to experiences this transformation which awaits us all. Though after four days it must have been complex, Lazarus is resuscitated. He will die again some day, but not then.

And Jesus speaks to Lazarus, the dead man, with the voice of command. ‘Lazarus, come out!’ It is not a suggestion. Who can order the dead? Who can call the dead to life? Only God himself.

And so, like with Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding in Cana, his last recorded miracle in John’s gospel is an affirmation that he is in fact none other than God dwelling among us in human flesh.

Lazarus fades from history. Today he would be an insta-celeb giving talks about his experience of life after death. People have made a fortune from 10 minutes without a heartbeat talking about what their near-death experiences. Imagine the four days. Perhaps L. had nothing to say. Remembered nothing. Perhaps he did. But the point is that the story is not about Lazarus. It never was. It is all about Jeus, his divinity, his love and care for us, his compassion, his power over life and death. It’s his last major miracle before the cross as recorded by John – and it’s a big one. John doesn’t spend as much time on the miracles of Jesus as the other gospels. But the ones he includes are highly significant, as we saw in the first miracle of Jesus at the wedding in Cana. And now this final miracle in John’s gospel is again, like the first, a clear affirmation that Jesus is more than a great prophet, more than the expected Messiah. He is God.

But there is more to the miracle than that. Like the miracle in Cana, Jesus shows compassion. But this is far bigger than the embarrassment of running out of wine at a wedding. Jesus shows genuine compassion for people in the midst of deep grief.

This final miracle of Jesus is about hope in the midst of grief. The key words in this text are those spoken to Martha, when he first arrived in Bethany, the words he spoke while her sister Mary, still upset perhaps at Jesus’ delay in coming, was waiting in the house. He says to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they did, and whoever lives by believing in me, will never die.’

It’s a big statement. And it is not just about Lazarus. Jesus it telling Martha a truth that is also for her, for Mary, for his disciples, for everyone who will someday follow him. It is about us. And Jesus finishes with a question that also applies to us. ‘Do you believe this?’

Martha’s response is something evasive. ‘I believe you are the Messiah,’ she says. It conveys confidence and trust in who Jesus is, but does not quite embrace and accept the full depth of what he has just told her.

Martha, in this sense is a lot like us. We believe in Jesus. We believe he is the Christ, the Messiah. But has the full truth of who he is and what he offers us really sunk in?

There is much to learn from the story of Lazarus. And none of it is about satisfying our curiosity about life after death or near-death experiences. We learn that Jesus is compassionate and cares deeply about those in grief. In fact, he weeps with us. And we learn that Jesus himself is the ultimate response to our grief. It is Jesus himself who is the resurrection and the life.

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.

Numbers 21:4-9  Ephesians 2:1-10 John 3:14-21

The Old Testament reading brings before us a thread which runs through the whole of the Bible and it is well known that Martin Luther lay great weight upon it in all his teachings. For him it was no less a principal rule of all human knowledge of God.

It is this, that when we speak and hear about God, we are not concerned with the naked majesty of God but with a veil or covering. (velamen) At other times he speaks of a mask or (larvae) from which we get the English word lava by which is meant the embryonic form of an insect in which is hidden its fully developed form.

According to Luther we must not run away from the masks or larvae with which God clothes himself in God’s relationship with us for if we do we risk not only losing God but of finding a hostile God, the Devil. We must be thankful for these masks because if we are to know God, we must seek Him where He has sought us behind the veils and the masks which are signs of His majesty. According to Luther, apart from these veils or hiddenness of God, God is not to be found.

We can hardly understand this morning’s Old Testament reading as nothing less than a confirmation of Luther’s rule. The people of Israel are on their journey from captivity in Egypt. They had been freed by the events celebrated in the Passover. They had been preserved by God in their crossing of the Sea. As they journeyed, they became tired and weary of the seeming purposeless of their wandering. They forget that God has preserved them as his people through all the events associated with God’s actions on their behalf as they escaped from their bondage in Egypt. They begin to grumble against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.”

How in their circumstance can they know that God is with them; that they are part of God’s gracious purpose in calling them His own? Seemingly to magnify their discomfort they are set upon by a plague of poisonous snakes whose bite proves fatal to many of the people. They come to Moses and plead their case: admitting they had ceased to believe in God’s gracious purpose for them and pleading with Moses to ask God to have have mercy on His unbelieving people. There follows Moses fashioning the bronze image of a snake and putting on a pole, telling the people if anyone is bitten by a snake to look at the serpent on the pole and they will be healed. The symbol of the people’s death by snake bite becomes a life-giving sign. God fulfills his promised faithfulness to His people by being amongst them as the life giver through the sign of their death. The sign or mask of God’s presence is hidden under its opposite as to with the Cross of Christ in the NT.

As Luther points out when commenting on another biblical verse:-

Accordingly, God humbles those who are His to exalt them; He kills them to make them alive; He confounds them to glorify them; This is the art of arts and science of sciences which is not usually learned or discovered except with great toil and by a few; but it is nevertheless sure and certain, as this example shows, for what is stated in Ps. 105:21 is true: “The Lord appointed Joseph king of Egypt and lord and savior of many.” How? By having him sold, cast off, killed. These works of God are not understood unless they are fulfilled and completed. In the meantime, however, while they are being carried out, they cannot be grasped except by faith alone.

We see in this incident something of the basic configuration of the relationship between God and Israel and, representatively in and through Israel, between the church, the new Israel of God and its Lord, Jesus Christ. We now come to the NT reading with all this in mind.

St John:16; is perhaps one of the most well-known sayings written in the New Testament. It appears in isolation to be an exposition in itself and therefore has an obvious meaning; yet the reverse is true. But the verse occurs and is to be understood within a definite context. It is to be understood in terms of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus regarding the new birth – which is anything but easy to understand.

The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus brings together some of the ideas which are characteristic of St John’s vision of the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ and the meaning of His presence in the world: ideas which we have already met in God’s revelation to Moses, of how the hidden God of grace of the Old Testament is, at one and the same time, the revealed grace of God. So too is the truth of God’s revelation in the New Testament.

Jesus says to Nicodemus that it is necessary that one should be born “from above” in order to see the Kingdom of God, God’s rule on earth. To be “born from above” is to see God’s divinity, God’s Godness, in Jesus, BUT this contradicts or hides our natural understanding of the divine. To be “born from above” is to rivet our attention on that which is below. For God’s being “above” is God’s being “below” in the depths. God’s exaltation his highness is God’s humiliation. His lowness. His being lifted up of which Jesus speaks is His exaltation as the Son of God. But His exaltation, his being lifted up, (on the cross as the serpent in the wilderness) is in the form of His deepest humiliation, His nakedness and His abandonment, above all by God, on the cross.

It is this that is the primary offence to Nicodemus whose view of God is such as to exclude self abasement, humiliation and weakness. His God is the God where high is high and low is low, God and human beings live out their respective lives according to the natural view of how things are between God and the world. Thus, his view of being born from above can only be understood in terms of the natural processes of human generation. Whereas for St John, birth from above is grounded in the new humanity which comes to light in the exaltation of our humanity in the humiliation of God on the cross. His being “lifted up.”

This is the first aspect of God’s hiddenness to which St. John points – the humiliation of God is in fact God’s exaltation and those who are given to believe this truth as the source of their life before God see the contours of that life in the divinity of the Son of God present in the world in the depths of our human condition, alienated as it is, from God.

This aspect of God’s hiddenness is taken up and verified in the words concerning Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, as likewise so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. The lifting up of Jesus here not only refers to His being lifted up on the cross. But that in His lifting up we are to see the exaltation of God; God’s highness, His being “above”, His being the transcendent, is made possible by being the God who is so free in His grace toward us as to be God in the depths of His humiliation.

We see this truth through the veil of the cross. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness in the midst of the people stricken and dying by its malignant sting, that which was the symbol of the death, the destroyer, the enemy, the serpent, becomes the symbol of their healing and health. As it is still today a symbol of medical professions healing. So too Jesus, the Son of God, reveals His divinity, His exulted nature, as He shares to the limit God’s abandonment of the creature in death and the grave. This place of abandonment, the place of God’s enemies, becomes the place where the Son of God resides. Our godforsakenness is made His own. As St Paul unhesitatingly concludes Jesus is made to be sin that we may become the righteousness of God in Him. (2.Cor.5:21.)

Those who are born from above are those to whom it is given to acknowledge the divinity of the Son of God present in the world in His exaltation as the humiliated God for our sake. It is only in this context that we can begin to understand the verse which is so well known. For God so loved the world…………

This verse repeats what we have already been told. For ‘God so loved’ refers back to the reality which those who are born from above confess; God’s love is not some abstract other worldly quality but the specific action of God in which God’s exaltation is revealed in the lifting up of Jesus in His humiliation on the cross. God so loved the world – it is the world which is the object, and in Jesus, the subject of God’s love. For St John the “world” the kosmos, is not some neutral concept but is the world understood in active organised opposition to God, the world as God’s enemy is what God loves.

The manner of God’s loving brings out the inner meaning of God’s hiddenness which St John emphasises; the fact that God’s exaltation is God’s humiliation. God loves the world so much that God surrenders up God’s own Son. It is this divine self offering which is the ground swell of the earthly form of Jesus exaltation in His humiliation on the cross. In this way God exposes or hazards, risks God’s own existence as God for the sake of the stricken and benighted creature.

The Christian message is the word about this act of extravagant love of God in which God pledges God’s own self on behalf of the weak and threatened creature. To receive this as good news is to see the Kingdom of God amongst us. There is no way of understanding God’s action and our participation in it as those who believe, or who “see” the kingdom of God, from the point of view of our humanity rising up to God, of achieving unity with the divine either by an inward or outward spiritual journey which we undertake into the depths of our souls or by transcending our creatureliness.

This impossibility is equivalent to Nicodemus’ proposition that a grown person should enter a second time their mother’s womb and be born. For new birth is not accomplished by us it is accomplished for us. In the humanity of the Son of God our humanity is both judged and made anew by the humiliation of the Son of God. In Him is revealed the mystery that the humiliation of God is the exaltation of the creature. It is in Him and Him alone that we are born again. In acknowledging this, in believing this, we ‘see’ the Kingdom of God. We are born again.

God the Father is no longer veiled or hidden; His glory is revealed in the glory of His Son Jesus who in unity with the Father’s will goes to the depths of the godforsakeness of the world’s alienation from God in the cross to redeem us all.  To know and believe this is to be born again. Amen
Dr. Gordon Watson.

John 18:28 – 19:16
(Jesus before Pilate)

Pontius Pilate was never meant to be remembered by history as more than a footnote. He was a Roman bureaucrat who rose through the ranks to become the provincial governor of Judea, one of the less important Roman provinces. He served there for ten years under emperor Tiberius. But while most people know that Pilate was governor of Judea at the time, few can name Tiberius as the emperor of Rome at that time. In fact, two thousand years later, many would struggle to name more than one or two Roman emperors of any period. Yet everyone knows the name of Pontius Pilate. And his fame comes down to one day in his political life – the day he met Jesus. He interrogated Jesus of Nazareth, found him to be innocent, and nevertheless agreed to send him to his death. Because of his actions on that day his name is mentioned in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and is read out in churches across the world every Sunday. The creeds name Pilate not because he was important, but because they want to underscore that the death of Jesus was a real, historical event. To do that, they name the Roman governor who was responsible for overseeing his execution.

The gospels also each give a fair bit of attention to the role of Pilate on that Friday morning, even though he plays no part in the story of Jesus before that day.

Several important things happen in the sequence of events when Jesus comes before Pilate. In fact, there is enough sermon material in today’s text for an entire Lenten series of its own, the comparison and contrast with the trial before the high priest, Pilate’s ‘What is truth?’ question, the people’s choice of Barabbas, Pilates three-fold declaration of Jesus’s innocence (perhaps meant as a parallel to Peter’s three-fold denial of Christ), to name some of the themes that standout. But perhaps the most intriguing part of the role of Pilate is his interview with Jesus, the first part of which we find in John 18:33-38, and the second part in 19:9-11.

During his interview with Jesus Pilate asks Jesus six specific questions. In short:

1. Are you the king of the Jews (18:33)
2. What have you done to cause your leaders to hand you over (18:35)
3. So, you are a king, then? (18:37)
4. What is truth? (18:38)
5. Where are you from? (19:9)
6. Do you know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you? (19:10)

Now, after having heard this text read out, how many of Pilates questions does Jesus answer? Many of you will say none. He does seem vague and evasive. Others might say one or two. The reality is that Jesus answers all six questions. Anyone reading through a transcript of the interview later would see this, though it is not immediately apparent. For instance Jesus answers Pilates first question as a response to his second question, and answers his second question in response to Pilates third question. Similarly, Pilates fifth question is answered in response to his sixth question. So the answers Jesus gives are out of sync with the questions, and in one instance, the question about what is truth, Jesus had already answered it. And admittedly, some of the answers Jesus gives would not have been immediately clear even to Jesus’ disciples, let alone Pilate. But they are all there.

When Pilate asks Jesus his first question, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Jesus asks him if he has come upon the idea that he is a king on his own, or if he has heard this from others. Jesus turns the question back on the questioner, which he often did. In this case he seems to be asking whether Pilate is just going through the formalities of his prepared notes, or whether he really wants to know. Jesus seems to decided for the former, but he doesn’t respond to any more of Pilates questions with questions. He tells him the truth, even though he knows he will not understand.

Pilate, rather than becoming angry at Jesus response to his first question, moves to his second question. ‘What have you done that the leaders of your own people are so upset that they have brought you to me asking that you be put to death?’ Pilate clearly saw that there were political undertones to what was taking place. He appears to be giving Jesus the chance to tell his side of the story. But Jesus declines. Instead, he comes back to Pilate’s fist question about his being a king. ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ he says. ‘If it were, my followers would be fighting for me to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities.’

Pilate, in the role of interrogator, senses an admission. His third question to Jesus therefore is: ‘So you are a king?’

Just as the high priest unintentionally fulfilled his role of accepting Jesus as the sacrifice for all people, so too Pilate, representing the Roman authorities, confesses Jesus to be king.

In response to Pilate’s question, Jesus makes his clearest statement yet on the matter of his kingship. He simply tells Pilate: ‘You say that I am a king.’ The sense here is ‘You have said it, not me.’ That this is not meant as a denial we see in Jesus’ further explanation: ‘For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ And for those following the conversation, in response to Pilate’s third question, Jesus now appears to answer his second question, namely, what has Jesus done to upset the Jewish authorities.

Jesus has been testifying to, or proclaiming the truth. That is why he came into the world. And those who belong to the truth have been responding by listening to his voice, that is to say, by following him. That is what he has done to so upset the Jewish leaders.

The theme of testimony and witness has come of repeatedly in John’s Gospel. And now, as the Gospel comes to his climax, Jesus himself says that he came into the world to testify or to bear witness. And what he is testifying to is ‘the truth.’

And if it seemed before this that Pilate and Jesus were having two separate conversations, or perhaps a conversation that is entirely out of sync, this exchange underscores that point. The attentive reader will remember that ‘truth’ has also been a theme of John’s Gospel. Most pointedly, John tells us that Jesus has said that he himself was ‘the truth’ (John 14:6).

Jesus is telling Pilate that he came to testify to the Truth, that he came to proclaim who he himself is. It is a concept even the disciples were still struggling to understand. Pilate, of course, was never going to work it out. Yet Jesus nevertheless tells him bluntly who he is and why he has come. And so Jesus has now answered both of Pilate’s questions. Are you a king? And, ‘What have you done?’

The end of the first interview with Pilate strikes us as odd. Pilate, picking up on the concept of truth simply asks: ‘What is truth.’  It is Pilate’s fourth question. And that is the end of this part of the interview.

Did Pilate really wonder what truth was? It is unlikely, as he uses the question to finish his interview. He was not expecting an answer from Jesus. When the topic of truth came up, he felt perhaps on more familiar ground. He had enough of an education to know that this was a philosophical question. And a big one. The best of the philosophers could only agree that the question was important, not on its answer. His question, ‘What is truth?’ bears more than a hint of cynicism. It is meant to end the discussion, not to take it further. And this is perhaps Pilates’ biggest missed opportunity. If Pilate had been listening closely he may have picked up that Jesus had already answered this question. He had come to witness to the truth and those who belong to the truth follow him. The truth is not an abstract philosophical concept. The truth is embodied in a single person. And that person was standing directly in front of Pilate.

Later, after learning that he claimed to be the Son of God Pilate becomes even more worried and calls Jesus back for further questioning. Now he genuinely wants to know more. And Pilate’s fifth question is this: ‘Where you really from?’ by which he means, not are you actually from Nazareth, but ‘Where are you really from?’ ‘Just who are you?’ But the moment seems to have passed. Jesus is done talking. He has his face set on the cross.

But Pilate persists, threatening Jesus. And here is his sixth and final question: ‘Do you know that I have power to release you and the power to crucify you?’  In other words, do you have any idea just who I am? And Jesus finally speaks. ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above.’ And so Jesus, true to the pattern of this entire dialogue, answers Pilate’s fifth question as the sixth. He tells Pilate where he comes from. The reader already knows this. The theme ‘from above’ is used earlier in John’s gospel to highlight that Jesus is God. Jesus tells Pilate that he is ‘from above’, that is, from the heavenly realm. And in response to his early question, he tells Pilate that his own kingdom and authority supersedes that of Pilate. Basically, Pilate asks Jesus ‘Do you actually know who you are speaking to?’ And Jesus responds in kind, ‘Do you realise just who you are speaking to?’

Whether Pilate simply believed Jesus was innocent, or was superstitious and did not want to offend any of the gods, even the foreign Jewish god, or whether he and some inkling of who Jesus actually was, is not clear. What we know is that despite grave reservations, despite three times declaring Jesus to be innocent, Pilate fulfils his role. The sacrifice, the Lamb of God, has been examined by the high priest and found acceptable. He has now been sent to be killed. And Pilate, ‘handed him over to be crucified.’

 Now here’s the thing about Pilate.
Pilate is us.

More than most of the characters who encounter Jesus, we can identify with Pilate. It is hard to put ourselves in the place of the high priest, or the scribes and pharisees, or members of the Sanhedrin, or even perhaps the disciples. But Pilate? Here is someone who is an outsider. He has little knowledge of God or the Bible when he encounters Jesus. Have any of us had that experience? And when he encounters Jesus suddenly Pilate needs to make a decsion – actually two decisions. First, who is Jesus. And second, what is he going to do about it? Again, this is something we can all relate to. When we hear about Jesus we cannot help but wonder just who he is. It is the obvious question. And once we hear more, once we begin to suspect, as Pilate did, that he just might be who he say he is, then we have a second decision to make: We have to decide what we are going to do now that we have met Jesus, now that we know who he is.

Like Pilate, we could try to simply walk away, washing our hands of the matter. But we know how that story ends.

Like Pilate we could say, I’m not Jewish, I don’t read the Bible, how could I be expected to know. The modern equivalent might well be: ‘I’m not religious.’ ‘What concern is Jesus of mine’. ‘I don’t read all that stuff in the Bible. So how could I ever really know who Jesus is?’

We could use some trite comment like ‘What is truth’ to end the conversation or to avoid talking about Jesus. How many of us have simply said, ‘I’m an agnostic. I don’t believe it is possible to know.’ Or perhaps ‘What about all the suffering in thew world? Explain that to me.’ Or, ‘I know some people who go to church and they don’t do a very good job of following Jesus, so why should I bother?’ Or even ‘I don’t think Jesus ever even existed.’ If we have not used comments like these ourselves before coming to faith, we certainly have heard them from others. Like Pilate’s ‘What is truth anyway? Who could ever know,’ they are meant to end the discussion, to avoid any more thought or conversation about Jesus.

But these tactics didn’t work for Pilate and they do work for us.

Like Pilate, we cannot avoid the question of who Jesus is. And once the truth of who he is begins to settle upon us, we cannot avoid the question of how we are going to respond.

So we really do find ourselves in Pilate’s shoes. We all face the same basis questions once we encounter Jesus.

But what will we decide?

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.

The Text: John 2:13-22 

Signs are everywhere; they block out the scenery and distract our minds as we pass by them on the roads with slogans like: “Do this, don’t do that, buy this, try this”

And I reckon Jesus was probably thinking the same as He entered into the Temple courts at this high point of the Jewish yearly celebrations; the Passover.

And it seems that Jesus sees some disturbing signs around the Temple.

Just imagine if Jesus turned up today and threw all of the contents of the church outside! (brandishing a whip at the same time)… Most politically incorrect indeed!

Surely there’s no harm in a book stall or a trading table? After all, we’re only doing these things to promote the work of the church…

Which raises the question for us; “WOULD Jesus do the same thing today?”

If He did, I am sure we would be just as perplexed and demand some sort of explanation, just like those of Jesus time did; “Prove to me that You have the authority to do this?”

And to give us this proof, why not show us a little party trick; something to prove TO US that You have the credentials.

Now if we unpack all of this ‘tongue in cheek’ rhetoric, the point that this sermon is trying to make is that the people Jesus was criticising in our reading today were presuming authority over God, the God who worked through both the system of rites of the Jerusalem Temple and also through Jesus himself. The Jewish people of Jesus day are an example of this presumption, but people today still suffer with the same problem.

Humanity has always been easily deceived to think that we have the authority, because we believe we are keeping God’s law. What underpins this belief is a poor understanding of the nature of our sin.

The Temple system served well, as it provided a means for dealing with the problem of sin. But the system suffers from the same issue that has plagued humanity from the fall – we do not understand the true nature of our sin and think that we can simply deal with it like this: “If I am a good person, if I attend to my religious duties, then I will be OK.” And so we fool ourselves into thinking that we can keep in good with God, by our ‘own effort’…. Or, we despair of any hope at all.

But today’s text is full of human presumptions. It is exactly what Jesus is dealing with; people PRESUME that it is OK to buy and sell in the Temple precincts. They think that they are alright with God BECAUSE of the Temple system. But this should be a warning sign for us. Everywhere there are signs, but the signs are pointing to the systems devised by humanity and not to the real sign of what the sacrificial system means, as it deals with sin and who we are before God.

But, we might argue; “isn’t all of this sacrifice business commanded by God in the first place? Is there not a need for sacrificial animals and the right money to pay the Temple tax?” (And even Jesus agrees to pay the Temple tax in Matthew 17:26, 27, so as not to offend…) So just what are the signs for us in this story?

Well, Jesus is offended that this necessary business of sacrificing animals and the money changing is occurring within the Temple complex itself. Afterall, it is taking up space in the Temple precinct – God’s meeting place with humanity. And because all the sacrifices and money changing used to happen in the court of the Gentiles, that means less space for them to worship God. So everything (the sacrifices and money changing) that was supposed to bring people into the temple was now excluding people; specifically those who are not Jewish.

And at this time of the Passover, we could well expect a vast amount of trade going on, through simple necessity. If any of us were a Gentile at the time, and we wanted to pray before the Lord in His Temple, we simply would not be able to because ‘there would not be any room in the Inn…’

So, part of Jesus’ anger is directed at these practices which denied people (specifically the non-Jews) access to worshipping God.

And so, a good question to ask ourselves today is; “Am I robbing people of access to God through my own attitude, actions and behaviour?” (pause)

But there’s an even deeper message to be found in this story of the cleansing of the Temple. Jesus, through this action, is preparing His people for the new covenant agreement. As He takes hold of the whip and drives out human corruption from this, His body of worship, so He is preparing the way for Himself. Jesus is giving us a sign of what is to come…

The Jerusalem Temple was the divinely given means of humanity to have access to God. A place where Israel could be sure of God’s presence with them. A place where they could meet with God and plead for their sin to be taken away. And also, a place where God’s people could and should, pray for the whole world.

And because the non-Jews had been denied a place of access to God because of the clutter of all the sacrificing and money-changing, God has now come to provide greater access for all; not just those who think they’re in God’s good book; and it is a sign of new things to come…through Christ!

Signs, signs, everywhere there are signs…and it seems no one is looking! When the Jews demanded a sign from Jesus, He gave them and us the only real sign that we could ever need; His own resurrection, His own body torn down and raised up again in three days. But of course, this is not the sign that humanity wants or expects, is it? In fact, it would be far more believable and faith building for Jesus to tear down and rebuild the temple in three days, than to believe in His resurrection from the dead after three days.

As St Paul tells us, this is the foolishness of God. The sending of His Son Jesus to die on a shameful cross is not what the proud, self-secure, human heart wants to see! It’s not the sign that we want to believe in! It is an offence to our pride and condemns our very being. It is a sign that is still rejected today. But it is very much the sign that is given by God to us…and thank God that it is! For what the proud human heart actually needs, is the heart surgery that our Lord brings through this very means of the cross!

As our Lord clears the Temple and makes way for Himself, so He gives the very sign of His suffering and death that we, as His very own people, might see and recognise! As He takes up the whip in the Temple, so He foreshadows His own flogging; another sign for us! When Jesus, the Word of God, says that He is the Way and the Truth and the Life, so He is showing us that it is THROUGH Him that we now have access to God the Father. Through Jesus bodily suffering, death, resurrection and His bodily ascension into heaven, we now HAVE ACCESS to God! Jesus replaces the old Temple system with Himself!

We know that the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in 70AD, and never rebuilt or replaced.  We know that our own bodies, the new temple, will likewise be destroyed. But just as the Word says, they will be replaced with something far greater and grander! Because the more glorious sign, the second part of what Jesus says, is His resurrection!

The old system of sacrifices at the Jerusalem Temple were only a foreshadowing of Jesus, the living Temple as God with us, God incarnate! It is Jesus’ sacrifice that deals with our sin, once and for all. It is in Jesus’ Name that our prayers are heard. It is in Jesus’ Name that we gather before the altar of God each and every Sunday. It is through Jesus’ resurrection, that all of this, is opened up for US!

Jesus’ body replaces the old Temple system, and we are invited to follow into Jesus’ new temple system –  through our baptism. Helped on our way, through receiving His Word and His body and blood.

And so now that our sin is DONE WITH through Jesus’ sacrifice, we are also called into His resurrection living. Each Sunday we confess our sin and are forgiven. As Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, so we are now called to follow in this “new temple system” and our bodies have even become God’s very own little temples of the Holy Spirit!

And, this brings about change. For our old Temples have now been swept clean! We are set free from the burden of those sacrifices and money changing to SIMPLY BE GOD’S HOLY PEOPLE!

We are no longer bound to sin, no longer focussed on ourselves. We are free to be the living presence of God for others through our daily living. Free to love as God first loved us. Free to seek this constant sweeping clean by Jesus’ Holy Spirit. We are a new creation – a reflection of Jesus Himself; perfect love!

And so each of us, now have become a walking, living billboard for the saving grace and love of God! We are all signs, no longer blocking out the scenery or distracting our minds, but pointing others to Christ.
Amen.
And now may the peace of God that passes all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, Amen.

Sermon 2 Lent:
John 11:45-53; 18:12-14, 19-24

Interspersed with the story of Peter and his denial of Jesus that desperate last night of Jesus’ life is the story of Joseph ben Caiaphas, the high priest of the Jewish people, a man of the tribe of Levi who stood in the succession of Aaron. Caiaphas was an important person in the final week of Jesus’ life. He was not a follower of Jesus. Not a friend of Jesus. Not an admirer of Jesus. In fact, it is not clear he had even given Jesus much though until that last week. But he had a role to play. In God’s great divine drama, now about to come to its climatic conclusion, Caiaphas, as high priest, had one single job to perform. He had one key line to deliver. It didn’t even matter whether he understood it or not. His job was to announce, after more than a thousand years of the sacrificial system that he and his predecessors had presided over, the last sacrifice that God would ever accept was to be offered up. The final, ultimate sacrifice.

But before we look more deeply into the part played by Caiaphas, and the meaning of his words, we need to understand a bit more of who he was, and of what the role of the high priest was.

At the time of Jesus the high priest was principally concerned with overseeing the sacrificial system of the temple, and of being a part of the Sanhedrin, or ruling council. But this had not always been the case. Originally there was no ruling council and the role of the high priest was not political. Also, there was in early Israel a much stronger emphasis on the high priest as a teacher and as an oracle or mouthpiece for God than on his role in the temple sacrificial system.

The role of the high priest was inherited, usually passed on from father to son. And the appointment was for life. But by the time of the Romans this had changed. The role of the high priest had become very political. For this reason the Roman governors took an active interest in who was high priest and often deposed those they were not happy with. For this reason many high priests during this period served often for a year or less, and some for a matter of only days. Caiaphas was an exception. He served during the entire time that Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor. But this didn’t earn him any praise or respect among the people. Instead, many saw it as a sign of complicity with the Romans, and of Caiaphas’ ability to do whatever was asked of him in order to stay in power.

Like every other priest, Caiaphas was born into a priestly family from the tribe of Levi. But more than that, he had had the good sense to marry the daughter of the most influential and wealthy priest of the era, Annas. Whether this was a result of his own ambition or that of his parents, is not clear. Annas had spent time as high priest and when he was made to step down by Pilate’s predecessor, he had one of his sons appointed in his place. When after a year his son was forced to step down, he had his son-in-law Caiaphas appointed to the role. And when Pilate was replaced as governor of Judea and Caiaphas was deposed so that the new governor could put his own new team in place, Annas managed to have a succession of four more sons serve for brief periods in the role of high priest. So for many years, including the entire ministry of Jesus, Annas was the power behind the high priesthood and the de facto high priest, even though it was Caiaphas who was technically high priest during this period. Hence the reason that both men are referred to in the gospels and in contemporary records at the time as being ‘the high priest.’

John, who shows more awareness of the role of the temple and of the priesthood than the other gospel writers, gives us much more detail about what happened after Jesus’ arrest. For instance, we find that Jesus was taken to Annas’ house first for his trial, and then afterward as a formality to the house of Caiaphas, the actual high priest. For it was Caiaphas who needed to officially hand him over to Pilate, probably under instruction from his father-in-law Annas. It is also John that tells us that Caiaphas was ‘high priest that year’, making is sound as if the office was transferred annually. But John knew that it was not an annual office. It was meant to be held for life. But as many high priests served only a year or less, this had become something of a running joke in Jerusalem. John is not giving incorrect information here, as some have supposed. He is using a hint of sarcasm to remind his readers what a mess the office of the high priesthood had become in its final years. Possibly for the same reason he makes a point of the fact that two different men (Caiaphas and his father-in-law Annas) were acting as high priest at the same time, having the guard with Annas refer to him as the high priest, and then John immediately tells us that Annas, who has just been called the high priest without correction the guard, has Jesus sent to Caiaphas, the high priest.

John knows the system of the priesthood very well, and he is critical of it. But how does John know it so well? And how does John know the high priest, (whether he meant Caiaphas, Annas or both is not clear) so well that he is able to gain access to the trial of Jesus and get Peter into Annas’ courtyard? Why also is John so concerned with the temple and its worship (hence putting the story of its cleansing at the beginning of his gospel?) Why is John at the Jordan river as a disciple of John the Baptist, the son of a temple priest from the hills of Judiah, instead of being with his family fishing?

These perplexing questions have one improbably solution. And the answer comes from one of John’s successors as leader of the church in Ephesus.

Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus in the late 2^nd century, just under a century after John’s death, knew in his youth old men who had known John. And stories of John would have still been very well known in the Christian community where John had spent his last decades.  And it is bishop Polycrates who tells us not only that John is the beloved disciple and the author of the fourth gospel. But that he was one of those faithful priests, referred to in Acts 6:7 who wore the sacerdotal plate’.

But how could this be possible. John was a fisherman from Galilee, not one of the thousands of priests living in Jerusalem. But what we often forget is that not all priests resided in Jerusalem. In fact, only about half were required to. The rest were to live spread around the country. After half of these congregated in Jericho (hence the priest in Jesus’ story of the good Samaritan was going down to Jericho), the rest were spread throughout the rest of the land, like Jesus’ relative Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who was a priest living in the hill country of Judea. Others would have lived in Galilee.

And because there were so many priests, they were assigned to come to the temple with their group only twice per year, and sometimes also for high holy days, to assist. But many did not come every time and remained home and offered prayers during their week of service. And when they were not serving in the temple, they were expected to dress as everyone else, so as not to make a show and stand out.

Of course, the temple could not support so many priests financially. The records of the time speak of priests who were poor and how those who were not should assist them. So very many priests, especially those outside Jerusalem, worked most of the year in some ordinary, non-priestly job.

What seems then quite probable, if the early church tradition is correct, is that John and his family, though priests, worked as fishermen. But John would have been sent to Jerusalem as a young man to do the required training to serve as a temple priest. There he would have met other young priests in training, as well as the high priest and his family.

A further indication that John may well have been from a priestly family is that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was from a family with priestly links. Hence her cousin Elisabeth was married to a priest. And priestly families tended to look for daughters from priestly families to marry.

As an aside here, this would well mean that Mary was not only a descendant of King David, but of Aaron. This would mean Jesus has family links to both the David line of kings and the Aaronic line of priests. This is significant as Jesus is called in Romans a priest after the order of Melchizedek. And while we do not understand what all this entails, we do know that part of the uniqueness of Melchizedek is that he was both a king (of Salem, which would become Jerusalem) and a priest.

In any event, with Mary’s family connections to the preisthood, it is not impossible that her sister, Salome, was not also married to a priest. And we know Salome was the name of Mary’s sister because she is one of the women at the cross with Mary (Mark 15:40), identified in Matthew as the mother of James and John, and in John’s gospel simply referred to as ‘Mary’s sister.’ (Mt 27:56, Mark 15:40; John 19:25). If the best solution to the puzzle of why this list varies with the different gospels is that Salome, the mother of James and John, and the sister of Mary are ways of referring to the same person. And John, as was the custom of authors at the time, would speak of his mother as he spoke of himself (the disciple whom Jesus loved) in the third person and not by name. So this means that John is Jesus’ cousin. Which by the way helps to explain why James and John had the audacity, at the urging of their mother, to ask Jesus to give them positions at his right and left hand in his kingdom, and why John was the disciple whom Jesus loved (he was his young cousin whom he had grown up with) and why Jesus gives his mother over to John’s care at the cross.

But those are all stories for another time.

For now, it is enough to understand that, for whatever reasons, John had a great interest in and understanding of the priesthood and the temple. And he was very disappointed in what it had become. But John also wants to highlight that God still used the institution of the priesthood, and he used it one last time in the old sense of what it has once been, of being also a prophetic office.

When the Sanhedrin first begin to conspire to put Jesus to death, after they learn of the raising of Lazarus (11:45-53), it is the actual official high priest, Caiaphas, who is there. And in the midst of their discussions he suddenly states: ‘Don’t you people understand anything. It is better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.’ And John points out that he made this prophecy about Jesus even though he did not understand what he was saying. So the high priest himself prophesies the final sacrifice that will be for all people. He announces the end of the sacrificial system, and indeed the coming of a new high priest. And this statement of Caiaphas is so important that John reminds us of it again in chapter 18 (verse 14).

The high priest has one final role to fulfil in the divine drama. Despite the low state of affairs in the current priesthood, the fact that the high priest has become a political role and a puppet of the Romans, there was still a high priest in Israel at the time of Jesus. And this is important.

A bird or animal could not be sacrificed until inspected and approved as spotless by one of the priests on duty. For Jesus to be brought before the high priest and examined before being handed over to the Romans to be killed is a symbolic moment that John does not want us to miss. Hence John reminds us again of the words of Caiaphas when he spoke of Jesus in the meeting of the Jewish ruling council a week earlier.

So it was that the high priest had one last role to fulfil. The high priest was to the announce the one sacrifice that would end all sacrifices. The high priest would declare that Jesus, God in human flesh, was the acceptable sacrifice not only for the nation, but for all people. For John it didn’t matter that Caiaphas and Annas did not understand what they were saying and doing. That was not necessary. God used them to fulfil the true role of the high priesthood. The high priesthood of Israel, established at the time of Moses, and working through the period of the Tabernacle and two separate temples, finally comes to its fulfilment. The sacrifice was examined and accepted. One man, Jesus, was to die for all people.

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.

The Text: Mark 8:31-38 

To be at the crossroads is a figurative term, meaning that we have arrived at a critical intersection in life where the direction chosen will have profound consequences for the future, just like arriving at an unmarked or unknown intersection and having to decide which way to go.

“Is your faith at the crossroads?” That could well be a question Mark’s Gospel poses for us today. The disciples were at the crossroads that day when Jesus taught them that it was necessary for him to suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Up until this point there has been a breath-taking succession of miracles in which Jesus’ divine powers are on display. He had cast out evil spirits, miraculously healed lepers, the blind, the deaf, and the chronically ill, and exercised mastery over creation. Jesus has triumphed over every opposition, even showing that he has authority over death itself, with the raising of Jairus’ daughter. Just before today’s text, they had just confessed Jesus to be the Christ.

How suddenly they had arrived at the cross-roads! Jesus makes the astonishing claim that he must suffer and die, one that smacks of failure, defeat, and compromise of God’s mission. How can suffering and death possibly happen to the One who is the agent of salvation? How can Jesus succumb to the very forces that he’s just overcome? Surely there will be peace for Israel and earthly grandeur and triumph for Jesus, certainly not terrible suffering and being killed!

For Peter, things really seem to be at the crossroads―if Jesus goes ahead with whatever crazy plan he has, it will be the end of him! What’s he thinking!?!? So Peter wants to set things straight. It’s not too hard to picture him putting his arm around Jesus, gently ushering him aside and speaking firmly in his ear―our text says that Peter rebuked him. We don’t know exactly what words, but in effect perhaps something like: “Um…Jesus, let’s just get things straight. You’re the Messiah. Messiahs don’t suffer. Messiahs don’t die. Messiahs take control. Messiahs are victorious!”

But Jesus gives a rebuke of his own to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan, for you do not care about the things of God but the things of men!” And having called the crowd with his disciples he said to them: “If anyone wants to follow me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life on account of me and the Gospel will save it. For what will it profit a person to gain the whole world but to have lost their soul? Or what can anyone pay for their soul?”

Peter has to deny himself―deny his understanding, plans and schemes of what should transpire next. He has to deny his own reason and listen to what Jesus has just said: that Jesus must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise up. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that this was the very way that Jesus did triumph. The cross was Jesus’ throne where he conquered sin, death and the demonic realm before triumphing with the greatest miracle ever: rising from the dead. Jesus has to go to the cross. It is necessary that he experience the valley of the shadow of death so that he can die the death that should have been ours.

Jesus must die. But what’s more, Jesus calls those who follow him to die as well. He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them: “If anyone wants to follow me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life on account of me and the Gospel will save it”. Jesus is not only talking about his own suffering and death but now talking about all of his followers losing his lives! It’s in this context that Jesus talks about bearing our crosses. This metaphor of taking up one’s own cross is not to be made into an exhortation merely to endure any kind of suffering patiently. Often we talk about “everyone having a cross to bear” when we think about those who are ill or having some kind of trouble in their life.

Jesus isn’t meaning this at all. He is talking about taking up our cross and following him. He carried his own cross as he walked to Golgotha to be crucified. To die. When Jesus is talking about us taking up our cross and following him, he is calling us to follow him to death too. To die to ourselves. Which is nothing other than what daily living in our baptism means, just as Paul says in Romans 6: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Luther says this means that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil desires, should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance and be put to death, and that a new person should arise daily to live in righteousness with God forever.

That’s what Jesus means by denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following him. Jesus is not merely calling us to endure discomfort, but to put to death that within us which is in complete contradiction to God’s love; that which is inconsistent with what he commands. “If anyone wants to follow me, they must deny themselves, take up their Cross and follow me”.

Dying doesn’t sound so good, does it? All of a sudden, then, we are at the crossroads. Maybe we should skip over this text and fast forward ahead to next week. But Jesus won’t have it. Like Peter we are challenged by Jesus to make an either/or decision: who is to be your Lord and master? Is it to be yourself or is it to be Christ? Jesus goes on to say: “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life on account of me and the Gospel will save it.” We’re there at the cross roads. It doesn’t sound a popular message. A life without carrying the cross seems very attractive.

But if you stop and think about it, so can dying to the self and following Jesus. For what does that look like? It means letting God be God over our whole lives, rather than the parts of the lives we invite him to be. It means no longer running to the idols we cling to for comfort whenever we are anxious or hurting. It means freely forgiving others rather than using our anger in the wrong way by clinging to bitterness and un-forgiveness. It means no longer comparing ourselves to others or trying to win their approval but comparing ourselves to Christ and resting in the approval God already has for us in him. It means no longer trying to justify harmful thoughts, actions, or things we do or failed to do but handing them over to him as we rest under God’s Word. It means choosing to be gracious and compassionate to others because everyone needs grace and compassion. It means speaking well of everyone in the kindest way possible so that reputations and emotions are not damaged.

Today, Jesus stands with us at the cross-roads. Are we going to follow him? Are we going to live according to every word that comes from the mouth of God, or only those that don’t trouble us too much or place heavy demands upon us?

Jesus’ challenge to us to take up our cross and find our life by losing it is a heavy demand. It is hard law. But the good news is that Jesus has done it for us. The good news is that his cross is the very power to do what we would otherwise be powerless to do ourselves. Let us all say that our faith is at the cross roads―walking on the road under the shadow of Jesus’ cross, as he takes us by the hand. As we follow him we walk behind the One who carried his cross for our sakes. Only his cross-bearing can empower the cross-bearing he calls us to endure. Only his death and resurrection can enable us to die to the old Adam in us and rise to new life. As he brings his death and resurrection to life in us personally through his word and sacraments we are indeed freed to lose the world and its ways and even our own as Jesus strengthens us in faith and living that faith out in loving service to others.

It is for this very reason that Jesus came into the world. No one can give anything in exchange for their soul. No one except God, who paid the price to make you his very own, alone, by giving up his only Son. He took up his cross, walked to Golgotha and was crucified so that his shed blood would purify and free you from all your sins. He joined you to his death and resurrection in your baptism, where he washed you clean and forgave you all your sin, poured out His Holy Spirit on you to give new birth and to consecrate you for life and service with Him. Rejoice that you are at the crossroads. For everyone who bears their cross is marked by it as a follower of Jesus and everyone who follows to the Cross follows also to the empty tomb and the ascension into heaven, where riches greater than all the earthly kingdoms await you from your Heavenly Father. Amen.

1 Lent

John 13:36-38; 18:10-18, 25-27

We all wonder how we will react in a crisis, or a character defining moment. When I was younger and the second world war was not quite such a distant memory, I recall many conversations in which people confidently proclaimed that if they were in Germany in the 30’s and early 40’s they would have stood up for the Jews. They would have hidden Jews, or helped them get out of the country, or even publicly protested. History, of course, tells us that the majority will go silent in order that we, too, do not attract the ire of those filled with hate.

Whenever there is a shark attack or a swimmer in trouble and we hear of a single person who jumps in the water to help, we like to imagine that in such a circumstance, that is what we would, ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority stood on the shore watching, fearful for their own safety.

We admire those who take a stand, or take a risk to help someone in need. And we all like to think that is what we might do in similar situations. Most of us, thankfully, never have the opportunity to find out.

Peter, the leader of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples, felt certain that he would choose fight over flight in a dangerous situation. So confident was he, in fact, that when Jesus indicated that life-threatening danger was upon him, and that he was about to follow a path that would lead to death, Peter spoke up and vowed that he would follow him, even if it meant his own death. We might look upon this as another example of Peter speaking too quickly or too confidently, but he was the only one who spoke at all. And Jesus tells him quite bluntly that when things got really difficult and Peter felt genuine fear for his life, not only would he not go to the death for Jesus, but he would deny that he even knew him.

Peter must have been devasted to hear these words, and even more determined to stand by Jesus, whatever the cost. Perhaps that is why, later that night, when Jesus and his disciples leave the relative safety of the upper room they had rented and head to the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley, to pray, Peter armed himself with a sword. None of the others had thought to do that, even though they had heard the same dire warnings of trouble to come.

And trouble did indeed come. Almost immediately upon entering the garden, or what today we would call a public park, a group of armed men arrive, guided by Judas, to arrest Jesus.

And Peter?  Well, Peter stood firm. More than that, he threw himself into the breach against overwhelming odds. He drew his sword and cut off the right ear of one of the armed servants of the high priest, a man, we are told, who was named Malchus.

Now, we need to pause a moment to consider what happened here. Just how does someone cut off another’s ear? Did Peter ask Malchus to hold still while he grabbed his ear and sliced it off? Unlikely.

The most likely explanation is that Peter was not trying to cut off Malchus’ ear at all. He was trying to take off his head. He drew his sword and swung it wildly at the nearest armed man. Malchus leaned hard to his left, and the sword missed his neck but took off his ear. Peter’s was a desperate act. He was ready to fight to the death. He had passed the test. He had not run off. He was willing to die for Jesus.

Jesus then steps in and orders Peter to put his sword away. And we learn from Lukes’ Gospel that Jesus says to Peter, ‘enough of this.’ Then touches the man’s ear and heals him. As an interesting aside, this helps explain why we know the man’s name. The Gospel writers seldom give a name, especially of such a bit player as the high priest’s servant, unless they were well known to the early Christian community for whom the gospels were written. Malchus, having been the last person healed by Jesus during his earthly ministry, would have begun asking questions about who Jesus was. And it seems he eventually came to follow Jesus – and to sit under the leadership and ministry in Jerusalem of Peter, who had once tried to kill him. We can imagine that this would have become a well-known story.

But back to Peter. He had not turned and run in the face of danger. And now, when most of the other disciples fled, he and another disciple, whom we presume to be John, follow Jesus to the high priest’s residence to see what happens. Given that their teacher has just been arrested and is being charged with sedition and who knows what other trumped up charges, this is a very brave act on their part.

But once the adrenaline of the moment has passed, once Peter finds himself, unbelievably, inside the courtyard of the high priest, sitting by a fire to keep warn while he waits to find out what will happen, the full realization of the danger of the situation, and his own folly in trying to kill one of the high priest’s men, begins to dawn. And it is in this moment that Peter, who had acted with great courage up to this point, is put to the test.

Three times Peter is confronted with being one of Jesus’ followers. And each time the stakes are raised.

The first time would have been the easiest for him to stand up and admit that he was one of Jesus’ disciples. It was, after all, only the woman who was letting people through the gate, who asks him. And she is not suggesting that he was the leader of the disciples, or the one who had used a sword against the high priest’s men. We learn from the other gospels that she had simply noticed Peter’s Galilean accent. But it was enough to provoke panic in Peter, a panic he had not felt earlier. And he denies being one of Jesus disciples.

Next, Peter, getting away from the woman who had spotted his accent, goes to a fire where others are keeping warm. Once there he notices that they are the high priest’s men. Some he would have recognized from the arrest of Jesus earlier that night. He now begins to feel panic. They also ask him whether he is one of Jesus’ followers. Again, he denies it. Now he was really sweating it. The panic is rising further within him. Then he is confronted again, this time by a relative of Malchus, whose ear he had just severed in a botched attempt to decapitate the man. Just to make the context clear, Peter had attacked an armed officer of the high priest with a sword and wounded him. A capital offense. He has been recognized not just as a Galilean, not just as a disciple of Jesus, but now as that man who is wanted for armed insurrection. The final question has raised the stakes considerably. It is not simply, are you a follower of Jesus? Or even, aren’t you one of his disciples, who was with him when he was arrested? But, ‘Aren’t you the man who took up a sword to attack one of us?’ Peter denies vigorously that he is that man. He denies that he knows Jesus at all.

And then the cock crows.

And Peter remembers what Jesus had said.

But what is the point of this story? For the full implications of this three-fold denial of Jesus we will have to wait for the story’s sequel, when Jesus and Peter speak again after the resurrection, and Jesus presses Peter, three times, to confirm whether he really loves him.

One might think that this is the end of the story for Peter. He had denied Jesus three times in quick succession. He has gone from brave warrior to wanting to run away and hide. If he were in a modern reality show competition, he would be eliminated. Next contestant, please.

But that is not how God works. Peter’s failure was not the end of his story of discipleship. In many ways it is the beginning. Peter had to learn that he couldn’t do it on his own. He needed to be aware of his shortcomings and faults. And he needed to understand that none of this disqualified him from Jesus’ love and from serving him.

Like Peter, we all fall short. We fall short of God’s glory (Romans) and we fall short even of our own expectations. Most of us would not have made it as far as Peter did before cracking under the pressure.

Peter actually was willing to die fighting physically to save Jesus. He took the risk of going the high priest’s house when all but one of the others fled. I don’t think I would have had the courage to do any of those things.

For many this story recalls Peter attempting to walk on water. He lost sight of Jesus and began to sink and needed to be rescued. And we say, ‘Well, that’s Peter, always overestimating himself.’ But he was the only one of the disciples to attempt to come to Jesus across the waves.

So Peter was anything but a coward. He showed courage in so many ways. But he had his limits, and needed to learn to rely on Jesus, and Jesus alone.

And that’s the bit of the story that I take heart from. That someone as courageous and committed as Peter could still fail – and that Jesus continues to love him and continues to have a plan for him.

We all have limitations. We all fall short. We all have our moments of letting Jesus down. We achieve so much less than we had hoped to achieve. But none of that means that God is finished with us. Jesus picks us up again, builds on our weaknesses, and continues to love us and use us to build his kingdom.

Amen.

Pastor Mark Worthing.

The Text: Mark 1:9-14

 Last week, on Ash Wednesday, the church arrived at the season of Lent. There we began another 40 days of journeying with Jesus to the Cross. Today’s Gospel reading now draws us into Jesus’ own 40 days in the wilderness.

Usually when we hear the word ‘wilderness,’ we picture a dry and harsh wasteland; a place of emptiness and loneliness, a place of vulnerability with little shelter or protection from the dangerous elements. It’s a place without hope and without much of anything. It’s a dangerous and threatening place, and, in Mark’s account, complete with wild animals. This is the place where Jesus is to be exposed to the harshest of conditions – physically and spiritually speaking.

Why was Jesus in the wilderness? This was the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry that the Father had commissioned him for. Because of his inestimable love, God sent his Son into the world in order to rescue us from the kingdom of darkness. Mark tells us that at Jesus’ baptism, as he was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending upon him.

This is most significant because in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit anointed specific individuals to perform their callings: the Judges, the prophets, priests and the kings, and people like Simeon who were waiting for the consolation of Israel. All of these roles are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus. He is the great deliverer, rescuing us from the Kingdom of darkness. He is the greatest of the prophets because he proclaims the gospel and works through it. He is our Great High Priest interceding for us and by his own sacrifice reconciling us to God. He is our King through whom the Father sends his Spirit to rule over us with his grace.

Mark shows that the Father has held nothing back in order to save the human race; the heavens were torn open. We are reminded of the appeal to God in Isaiah 64: “O, that you would tear the heavens and come down”. Then here, at the baptism, the Lord and giver of life, that is, the Holy Spirit comes in all his fullness, anointing Jesus for his ministry of the Gospel on earth.

As soon as Jesus was baptised, he was sent by the Spirit out into the wilderness, being tempted by Satan for 40 days. We’re reminded of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness for 40 years on the way to enter the land that God had promised them, and how they fell to the temptation of grumbling against Moses, the leader God had given them, and therefore against God himself. They doubted God’s plan for them and weren’t at all keen on doing his will at that point, and fell to the temptation of idolatry. But whereas Israel of old failed, Jesus doesn’t. Jesus did not just go through this testing time so that he could sympathise with our weaknesses. He went through this to overcome it for us and win the victory over the devil. It’s a part of the Great Exchange: your failures exchanged for Jesus’ success, imputed to you through faith.

It’s hard for us to appreciate what spending 40 days in a wilderness might be like—we who live in ordered communities, with people all around, lush greenery, plentiful food and water.

Yet in another way today’s western society as a kind of wilderness too. The spiritual supermarket of our current time offers all sorts of philosophies and worldviews from which to pick and choose from, all promising meaning and fulfilment, but leaving spiritual consumers in a hungry and thirsty wasteland of un-fulfilment. There is a wilderness of addiction, pain and breakdown from substance abuse which promises an escape from pain but only fuels more pain. There is the wilderness of the materialistic West as marketers promise their customers that they can buy their way to popularity, which is always out of reach so that the costly treadmill of retail therapy does little to change the loneliness within. There is the wilderness of self-loathing, depression and despair of attaining self-worth through physical appearance, leaving the masses with an unachievable goal because the computer corrected images displayed everywhere are not real.

Our society lives in the wilderness of Twittersphere, where everyone has the right to be authors of truth, and where personal opinion determines moral standards. Tolerance is the great sermon that rings forth, yet on the other hand, those same preachers lead the charge to cut down anyone who dares disagree with ideas posted that are different to their own. There is the moral wilderness devoid of true love with the absence of any concern for anyone other than the great ‘me’. Relationships are understood in contractual terms, commitment is viewed as irresponsible, and relational success is measured by the number of partners one has, no longer an enduring marriage relationship between one husband and one wife. There is the wilderness of aimlessness, not only amongst the youth, but now their parents are also searching for something to fill in the boredom, which usually results in abuse of others property, abuse of others, or abuse of themselves.

Though the devil is defeated by the death and resurrection of Jesus, Satan still tempts us to live the wilderness way—to go and find meaning, fulfilment, peace and satisfaction apart from God and his word. Then when we do fall, the Devil tempts us to doubt God’s word in another sense: to disbelieve that the promises God makes could ever really be for us. He tempts us to believe that what we have thought, said or done is unforgivable. He tempts us to believe there is no way God could love us. He tempts us to doubt our standing before God as his children, and tricks us that we now have to do something in addition to Jesus’ work to try to win God’s approval all over again.

Perhaps that’s why Mark glosses over the detail and moves straight to what comes next: Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

Jesus doesn’t say the Kingdom of God will come soon. He has already said in today’s text that the time has come. What Jesus says is that the Kingdom of God has come near—it is close by. What is needed for a Kingdom? A King! And he is the Divine King, the King from heaven of whom Psalm 95 speaks:

For the Lord is the great God the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.

 Come, let us bow down in worship,
 let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
 for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.

In Jesus the Kingdom of God has come near. In Jesus, God has come to earth to pour out his grace, to bring rescue from Satan, to bring forgiveness of sins, freedom and fullness of life.

Every other King would have his subjects defend him. Instead, Jesus our King, defends us all by bringing about what he says in his Gospel, working forgiveness of sins, life, salvation and peace for us.

As we, his church, are surrounded by the wilderness of today’s world and still beset by Satan’s temptations, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the King of kings, has won the victory. In him the Kingdom of God has come near…not just 2,000 years ago in Galilee. He has won the victory for us all and he comes to us to give us all the benefits of his triumph. In the person of Christ, the kingdom of God has come as near to us “as near gets:” at the baptismal font, as he proclaimed the Good News to you through your pastor: “I baptise you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Just as the Father held nothing back at Jesus’ baptism, he also gives us the fullness of his Spirit, and he declares: “You are my son/you are my daughter whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” No matter how many times we fail and need to seek forgiveness, through Christ, we remain God’s very own dearly loved child. May he, each day, grant us strength to drown the sinful nature and rise again to newness of life.

In the person of Christ, the kingdom of God has come near again this day. He stands amongst us and says, “‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.’ (Matthew 11:28). He says, “Peace be with you!” not as a sincere wish, but as statement that bestows what it says. In baptism, at the Lord’s Supper and anywhere and everywhere the Christian proclaims and announces God’s free forgiveness in Christ, there Christ is among them. This announced and enacted Good News is from God himself. It alone actually frees us and forgives us. It alone provides the strength, as well as the secure hope needed to resist caving in out in the wilderness of the world.

In Christ, as we, his body, gather in worship, we have come into the sanctuary in the midst of the wilderness of the world; here is the Kingdom of God present and at work in with his victory for us all! Amen.