A Loving Friendship With Jesus, John 15:9-17 (Easter 6 2024)

John 15:9-17

In those sadly increasingly rare times when I get to prepare a couple for marriage, one thing I impress upon them is that the success of their relationship will depend on the effort that both of them put in.

I say this, because we so often hear quotations in the media from famous couples who are breaking up, saying things like, ‘Marriage didn’t work for us.’ And it’s nonsense. Marriage is not some separate entity like a car that might malfunction. Nor do we say it in other parts of life. When a friendship ends, we are usually more honest and say, ‘We fell out with each other.’

Now why put this up front in this sermon? Because our Bible passage is about the relationship we have with Jesus and the effort required to maintain it.

Yet putting it as starkly as that will set off the alarm for some Christians. Effort to maintain our relationship with Jesus? Whatever happened to God’s grace? Don’t we depend entirely on God’s grace for all good things?

Well, yes we do, and no, I am not about to preach a religion where good works earn our salvation. In that sense, grace is certainly opposed to good works. But what I want to emphasise today was caught in the words of the late great Christian philosopher Dallas Willard, when he said that while grace is opposed to good works, it is not opposed to effort.

In other words, this is not about effort in order to be saved, but effort in response to being saved.

Jesus speaks about this in the two ways here in which he describes our relationship with him: love and friendship.

Firstly, love:

9 ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 

God’s love comes first, before any love we give. We do not love in order to be loved by God: we love because God in Christ loves us first. That’s why Jesus says here, ‘Remain in my love.’ What we do is only ever in response to what God has done for us. Our love does not earn favour with God. We love because God has already favoured us with his love. I often like to say that our love for Jesus is an act of gratitude.

So that may clear up one puzzle here, about our motivation to love Jesus. But it isn’t the only conundrum. It sounds strange to our ears to hear Jesus saying that the way to remain in his love is to keep his commands. In our day and age, we are used to the idea that a relationship of love is a relationship between two equals. So the days of a bride promised to obey the bridegroom in her wedding vows are ones we have left behind. In our marriage service, both bride and groom make the same vows to each other.[1]

We should freely admit that our relationship with Jesus is not a relationship of equals. He is Lord. We are his disciples. Yet despite that, love stretches across the gap. His lofty divine status does not stop him from loving us. Indeed, it is his very nature, for God is love.

We do see examples of this in smaller ways in other parts of life. I remember a church member who was the boss of an engineering company. Any time one of his staff was ill, and particularly if they were in hospital, he took time to visit them. He would enquire whether there was anything the employee’s family needed. He was not checking up on them; he was in a small way imitating Jesus.

And therefore since we are under the authority of Jesus it isn’t out of place for obedience to his commands to be the way in which we show our response of love to him. He has the right as Lord to command us, but his commands are characterised by his love for us. Therefore it is only fitting that our response of love is to do what he commands.

I could put it another way, although this may sound like a slightly diluted version of what Jesus says, and it’s simply to say that if we love someone then we want to do what pleases them. If we love Jesus, because of his great love for us, then we shall want to please him. You could say that of a relationship between equals, as well as our unequal relationship with Jesus.

However we express it, our response of loving obedience constitutes remaining in his love, because this is what we do on our side of the relationship in order to maintain it and keep it strong.

We move on to the second dimension of the relationship, namely friendship:

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve read verse 13 for both love and friendship. It’s the verse that acts like a hinge in the passage, for it mentions love and friendship, it talks about love for friends:

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 

Jesus has loved us into friendship. It’s still the unequal relationship, but the friendship crosses that. And it’s still the case that what maintains the relationship from our side is obedience, because on his side Jesus still has the right to command certain things of us, yet he does so from a posture of friendship, not authoritarianism. And on our side, we want to please our friend Jesus by doing what he wants. It’s not a shallow, matey friendship: it’s much deeper than that.

And that ‘hinge verse’ shows us just how deep. It’s a friendship where our love for one another is such that one would lay down his life for his friends. Of course, the primary reference here is to Jesus going to the Cross to die for his friends and for all who would become his friends. In his case, the laying down of his life accomplishes things that no other sacrificial death ever did or ever will.

But at the same time it is also a model and an example for us of what friendship looks like. It’s more than drinks together in the pub after work. It’s more than what passes for fellowship in many a church. It’s a willingness to lay down our lives, if that’s what our friends – or even our Great Friend – need.

Yet this deep, loving friendship is not wholly described by this solemn obligation. It is also described in the amazing privilege that Jesus grants to us because he has called us friends:

15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 

He gives us an inside track on the will and the purposes of God. He does not simply give us commands to follow: if obeying his commands was all there was on our side of the relationship, then we would be mere servants. But no. We are friends. He lets us in on his Father’s business. It is possible for us to know what God wants of us and of his creation.

Now of course, some Christians take this to silly extremes. I remember hearing one preacher castigating those ‘who claim to have had more words from the Lord before breakfast than Billy Graham had in a lifetime.’ I think of those who reduce the will of God to trivia – although I concede there will be the odd occasion when it’s right to pray for a parking place.

But there are others among us who act as if we don’t know the will of God and we can’t possibly know the will of God. And that is a sad state of affairs, which misses the beautiful gift Jesus offers us here, arising out of our relationship with him as friends.

There is a middle ground to be struck between those who think we should know every fine detail of our lives from God and those who don’t think we can hear anything from him.

Jesus has let us in on God’s overall plans for creation and his specific plans of salvation for the human race. He has let us in on his commands to follow so that we remain in his love. But within that overall revealing of his Father’s business he often leaves us to apply it specifically. He does not micro-manage us.

For example, I have seen too many Christians get over-wrought about finding a marriage partner. For most of us, Jesus and the apostles simply give us God’s general will in this area, and leave us to apply it. Only in a few rare cases, usually where someone has a particularly tricky calling in life anyway, do I believe God has just one particular person in mind for us. The rest of us can choose – just so long as we remain within the general will of God. That is one way in which divine sovereignty and human freedom hold together.

And all this leads us to the concluding verses:

16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: love each other.

Jesus reminds us that it all starts with him, not us, so it cannot be that we earn his love. He always makes the first move, and anything we do is in response to his love and friendship for us.

And we live out that response to his love and friendship in the church and in the world – bearing fruit and loving one another. These are the signs that we have a loving friendship with Jesus.

[1] “But what about ‘Wives, submit to your husbands’?” some will object. In Ephesians 5 where Paul says this, he also calls husbands to love their wives like Christ loves the Church – that is, by being willing to die for them. In other words, Paul calls both spouses to radical self-giving, but in different language.

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Jesus The True Vine, John 15:1-8 (Easter 5 2024)

John 15:1-8

“Did you see that?”

“Well, no, darling, I’m driving.”

That’s a common conversation when my wife and I are in the car. I won’t tell you who typically says which in that exchange!

“Did you see that?” We had it again the other evening when walking the dog. One of us could see the full moon, but the other was standing a few yards away and couldn’t see it, thanks to some houses.

Did you see that? You know the experience, I’m sure.

I think there’s a ‘Did you see that?’ moment at the beginning of our reading when Jesus says, ‘I am the true vine’ (verse 1).

At the end of the previous chapter, Jesus says, ‘Come, now; let us leave’ (John 14:31b). The implication is that they leave the room where they have had what we call the Last Supper and are now on their way to Gethsemane.

On the way, it’s likely that they would have passed the Jerusalem Temple. And when Jesus says, ‘I am the true vine’, it’s a ‘Did you see that?’ moment, because there was a

massive golden vine that adorned the entrance to the temple.

There is a description of it in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus:

The gate opening into the building was, as I said, completely overlaid with gold, as was the whole wall around it. It had, moreover, above it the golden vines, from which depended grape-clusters as tall as a man[1]

Did you see that golden vine? The disciples knew that in the Scriptures the vine or the vineyard symbolised Israel, and that’s why there was a golden vine at the entrance to the Temple. But now Jesus says that he is the true vine.

In other words, Jesus fulfils all that Israel was meant to be. And if you want to be part of the People of God, you need to be connected to him.

And further, if we don’t want the vine we are part of to be condemned like Israel the vineyard was in passages such as Isaiah chapter 5, then there are certain ways in which we need to let Jesus’ Father, the gardener, work in us. And there are certain ways in which we need to respond to his work.

Firstly, pruning:

2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

When we read this metaphor about God pruning us, we naturally think of the ways in which God needs to remove sin from our lives. I wouldn’t dispute that, but we hear a lot about that quite regularly and so I’m not going to concentrate on that today. Instead, I want us to think about other ways God works to prune us.

One is when he takes us through adversity. For me, that has been when God has used experiences of ill-health for good. One occasion came when I had a collapsed lung at college and had to face major surgery. On the weekend when it happened, one of my friends was being visited by his father, who had a healing ministry. But when I got back from A and E, Mark’s Dad Reg had gone home.

Eleven days in hospital, a month convalescing, and three months to return to full fitness were not much fun in my twenties. But when I ended up in the ministry, my experience was invaluable when getting alongside others facing major hospital treatment. I guess God had to prune the ‘quick fix spirituality’ out of me.

Similarly, I have not been shy in saying that I come from a family where there is a history of depression. However, it is only in the last twelve months that I have gone public on the fact that I too am diagnosed as someone who lives with the condition. I was very wary about saying that publicly, because I know there are callous people in the church who would say that makes me unfit to be a minister.

But the way it has given hope to others who find the black cloud over their lives means I am glad I let people know. It may be my thorn in the flesh, I wish I didn’t have it, and I’m sure my family also thinks that, but God pruned from me the shallow thinking that unless you are perpetually joyful you are not a good Christian, and this has helped others.

I believe God often prunes good things from our lives for the greater good, just as a good vinedresser will prune good grapes so that others can grow even bigger. God even does that in churches. I know congregations that many years previously began a programme that worked as an outreach. However, these meetings were still going on, even though they now only connected with existing churchgoers. These meetings needed to be pruned. The only question was whether the church would go along with it.

Secondly, remaining:

4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

If pruning is something that God does, then remaining is something that we do in response. We remain in Christ. We remain vitally connected to Jesus.

One paraphrase of ‘Remain in me, as I also remain in you’ is to say that we make our home in Jesus, just as Jesus makes his home in us. We know that Jesus has come to make his home in our lives when we put our faith in him and our lives in his hands. But there is also a question of us making our home in him. What is that about?

It is going to involve us becoming more in harmony with him. God’s work of pruning us to make us cleaner and more useful in his service is part of it, but it also means that we need to pay particular attention to the teaching of Jesus and his apostles in the New Testament. The church recognised the books that comprise the New Testament as those which faithfully convey the teaching of Jesus, his apostles, and his apostolic circle.

Do you have a programme for reading your Bible regularly, preferably daily? Please don’t be like one woman I knew in a previous church who told me that her sole exposure to the Bible was when she heard it read in church and she didn’t bother with it at home in between Sundays. We need that regular engagement in order to connect with the teaching of Jesus.

And that teaching of Jesus needs putting into practice. That’s where it’s important to involve others. Meet regularly with one or more people and hold each other accountable – kindly, of course! If our small groups really did ape some of John Wesley’s small groups, then this would be part of the meeting every week. We would each talk about how our Christian life was going, what reasons we had for joy where it was going well, and where we were struggling and needed support.

Others do it by having a prayer partner or being part of a prayer triplet. Still others have what they call an ‘accountability partner.’ In one previous appointment I used to meet regularly with the local vicar. We would each talk about how our lives and ministries were going, we would offer reflections to each other, and we would finish by praying for one another.

Please don’t dismiss this as just intense stuff for the hyper-spiritual. We are called disciples of Jesus, which means that we are learners of him or apprentices to him. We need to take this seriously in order to remain in him, to make our home in him.

For this is what puts us in tune with God. If we want the blessing at the end of verse 7, where Jesus says,

ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you

then we need to realise that this only happens after the first half of that verse, where he tells us we need to remain in him and his words remain in us.

So please, let’s take very seriously the importance of remaining in Jesus, making our home in him, by giving attention to his teaching and putting it into practice.

Thirdly and finally, fruit-bearing:

Jesus tells us in these verses that we bear fruit for him as a consequence of pruning and remaining. But what is that fruit-bearing? I want to suggest three examples.

Firstly, it’s about how we conduct ourselves socially in the world. Do we do so with righteousness and justice? In Isaiah 5, to which I referred at the beginning, where Israel is a vineyard gone wrong, the prophet says of God,

And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
    for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. (Isaiah 5:7)

How do people outside the church perceive us? Are we known both individually and as a body to be people who not only stand up for what is right in what we say, but also in what we do? Are we the people in the town who are on the side of the poor, both in our pronouncements and in our actions? Do we treat people well? If we allow God to prune us and if we remain in Jesus and his teaching, then this should be a natural consequence.

Secondly, there is the fruit of our character. You may not be surprised that here I am going to link with what Paul says in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit. If we are in a vital relationship with God, allowing his indwelling Spirit to shape our lives, then we display love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

And remember that it’s the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruits of the Spirit. It is not nine different fruits but one fruit with nine flavours. All of these things are meant to grow in our character as we are pruned and as we remain in Christ, with his Spirit at work in us.

Then finally, the most natural meaning of fruit-bearing is that of bearing seed to produce more fruit. We will have the desire for spiritual reproduction, for seeking to bring more people into that same close relationship with Jesus. It would be good if lives filled with both justice and holy character (the fruit of the Spirit) provoke questions among the people with whom we live and work. We also need to be ready to speak about our faith when the time is right.

Conclusion

Did you see that? Well, if you want to see physical vines and these principles in real life, Hampshire is a good place to be. A quick Internet search led me to a list of six in the county on the Visit Hampshire website.

But do we also see the spiritual application Jesus makes for us? He embodies the true People of God, and to be part of that people ourselves requires our submission to God’s pruning and our making our home in Jesus. What follows from such a relationship is fruitfulness in the form of just living, holy character, and the spreading of the Gospel.

Is that what we look like?

[1] Ian Paul, Jesus is the true vine in John 15

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The Good Shepherd, John 10:11-18 (Easter 4 2024)

John 10:11-18

The story is told about a group of tourists on a coach in the Holy Land.

“Oh, look,” said one excitedly, “There is a flock of sheep on the hillside. Doesn’t that make you think of all those lovely Bible passages about the sheep and the Good Shepherd?”

“Yes,” replied another, “but why is the shepherd following them shouting at them and beating them?”

The tour guide interjected. “That’s not the shepherd,” he enlightened them, “that’s the local butcher.”

On this Fourth Sunday of Easter, the Gospel reading is always a part of John 10, where Jesus says he is the Good Shepherd. The Lectionary being a three-year cycle and with us currently being in Year B, we get the second of three chunks this year, so we’re not picking up the passage right at the beginning.

Of course, this chapter is much loved, and over the centuries Christians have taken much comfort from knowing that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. I have, for one, not least when I was struggling with the pain of the neck injury that prevented me from taking my A-Levels.

But although it is comforting, it is not entirely cosy. As well as the comfort, there is also challenge in these famous words of Jesus.

Firstly, the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep:

11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

We are used to hearing that Jesus died for us, as he says here. But have you noticed how this is different from other New Testament passages? This does not couch things in terms of Jesus dying for our sins – there are plenty that say that – but as Jesus dying to protect us.

Why? The sheep need protection from the wolves, and a hired hand will not stand in the wolf’s way.

And why would Jesus say this? Because he knew there were plenty of wolves in his day, and plenty of religious leaders who would only act as hired hands who did not care for the sheep.

Indeed, you only have to go back to John chapter 9 to find wolves or hired hands in the form of those Pharisees who objected to Jesus healing a blind man on the Sabbath. They would rather sling the healed man out of the synagogue than accept that they had created rules which went beyond God’s commandment to honour the Sabbath.

In fact, you could probably say that the expression ‘Good Shepherd’ was a polemical one. It had good Old Testament precedent in Ezekiel where God says that he himself will shepherd his people, because those who were supposed to do so were not. Jesus aligns the leaders of his day with those whom God condemned six centuries earlier.

Today, some wolves are easy to spot, like millionaire TV evangelists telling poor people that their way out of poverty is to give to them in order to be blessed financially by God.

But others are less easy to spot. Like those who alter our doctrines or undermine the Scriptures, while sounding plausible and intelligent, but falsely claiming that only their view is intellectually credible. At this point, true shepherds have to protect the flock, even if it is costly.

Jesus the Good Shepherd laying down his life for the flock specifically protects his people from the wolf-like claim that lusting after power and force are the ways to change things for good in the world.

What is this like? I turn to someone who, if you know little about him, might seem an unlikely source. Many of you will remember the 1960s folk singer Barry McGuire, most famous for his membership of the New Christy Minstrels, his song ‘Eve of Destruction’, and his association with the Mamas and the Papas – the line in their song ‘Creeque Alley’ that said ‘McGuinn and McGuire were just getting higher’ was about him and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds.

Well, a few years after that, Barry McGuire found his freedom not in drugs but in Jesus Christ. And in one concert, he talked about the death of Jesus as being like a shock absorber, absorbing human lawlessness. He then said that when Christians experience the shock of evil in this world, we have two choices: we can either get mad, or we too can absorb the shock to protect others.

Secondly, the Good Shepherd knows his sheep:

14 ‘I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep.

What makes for a true sheep-shepherd relationship? Mutual, personal, intimate, knowledge.

It is thus not enough for us to say we are religious. All sorts of people believe in God – even the devil, as the New Testament tells us. And we know that religion can be co-opted by politicians and others who use it to cultivate influence and power for themselves, rather than knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Similarly, it’s not enough to be a churchgoer. It’s possible to participate in religious practices and rituals without having a personal connection with Jesus the Good Shepherd. The outward form only has meaning if there is an inward reality.

To know the Good Shepherd means to recognise that he knows us just as deeply as he knows the Father (verse 15) – as one song puts it, ‘You know me better than I know myself.’

And in response, we engage with him, and we listen to him. As far as we know how, we put aside the existing filters we place on the world to hear him for who he is, rather than squeezing him into our preferred mould.

This becomes particularly important when we are considering the ethical implications of knowing the Good Shepherd. If we lean politically to the right, we may hear more Jesus’ call to personal morality. If we lean to the left, we may more easily hear his call to social justice. But Jesus gives us no such either/or options. It’s both/and.

Therefore if we want to draw closer to the Good Shepherd – and why wouldn’t we want to be nearer to the One who repeatedly said ‘Peace be with you’ after his Resurrection? – we need to invest in the spiritual disciplines. Prayer and Bible reflection in church, in small groups, and alone. Making sure we put into practice what we have heard. Reflecting on how we are progressing as disciples. The sacraments. And so on. All these help us to know more closely the Good Shepherd who knows us better than we know ourselves.

Thirdly and finally, the Good Shepherd has other sheep:

16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 

Now before anything else let me knock on the head the idea I have often heard about this verse, namely that Jesus is opening up the possibility that there are many ways to God, in its most crude form the notion that all religions lead to God.

This is not what he is saying when he says he has other sheep not of this sheepfold. We can see that from the fact that he goes on to say that he wants to bring the other sheep into the one sheepfold under him, the one shepherd.

It would also be crazy to suggest that Jesus advocates a multi-faith route to God from a verse in John’s Gospel, where elsewhere he says he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no-one comes to the Father except through him.

Sure, the Gospel may present as many different facets of one diamond, but ultimately there is only the one Gospel: that there is a new king or Lord of the universe, his name is Jesus, and he reigns in love and mercy, not by brute force and power.

So no: by bringing the other sheep into the one sheepfold under the one shepherd here, Jesus is anticipating the Gentile mission. Gentiles will be ‘grafted in’ to the people of God, as the Apostle Paul put it in his Epistle to the Romans. The population of the sheepfold is going to increase, because Jesus has made that possible by laying down his life as the Good Shepherd.

But how was the Good Shepherd going to bring other sheep into the sheepfold? That was going to happen after Pentecost, when the Gospel would be preached in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and later to the ends of the earth. The responsibility is delegated, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to those who draw close to him.

A legend tells of Jesus returning to heaven at the Ascension and being quizzed by the angels.

“Master,” asked one of the angels, “what happens to your mission now that you have returned here to heaven?”

“I have left that in the hands of my followers,” replied Jesus.

“But won’t they mess it up, Lord? Won’t they fail you, won’t they lose courage, won’t they forget what they’re meant to do? What is your Plan B?”

Jesus replied, “I have no other plan.”

In conclusion, perhaps what sums this all up quite well is the thirteenth century prayer of St Richard, Bishop of Chichester. I’m sure you know it or will recognise it:

Thanks be to you, our Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which you have given us, for all the pains and insults which you have borne for us. Most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother, may we know you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, day by day. Amen.

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Why Does The Risen Jesus Appear To The Disciples? Luke 24:36-49 (Easter 3 Year B 2024)

Luke 24:36-49

It’s a thrill for parents when their child starts speaking. It’s less of a thrill when that child learns the word ‘Why.’ Every question becomes, ‘Why?’

As a child, I was certainly fond of asking ‘Why?’ Not only the dreaded ‘Why do I have to do this thing you are telling me to do?’ but also ‘Why’ in terms of wanting explanations for the way things worked in the world. I know I was persistent on that last kind of question, because my parents bought me a subscription to a children’s magazine called ‘Tell Me Why.’ You can still find old copies on eBay. It comes under eBay’s category of ‘Antiquarian Collectibles’, such is my age now.

As I read the familiar resurrection story from Luke, I realised that one of the questions I wanted to ask of this passage was ‘Why?’ Why did Jesus appear on this occasion to the disciples? What was this resurrection appearance about?

Going over the text, I came up with three answers to that question: why did the risen Jesus appear to the disciples on this occasion? I realised too that the reasons why Jesus appeared to the disciples here are also reasons that are relevant to us.

Firstly, the Risen Jesus brings peace:

36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’

These last couple of weeks I could have done with a dose of ‘Peace be with you’ from Jesus. Straight after Holy Week to Easter Day in which I preached or spoke eight times in eight days, I walked into a legal crisis over the text of my book, which I have had to remove from sale.

Then I had serious warning messages flash up on my car dashboard. An investigation by the dealer found that it needs repairs costing over £2000. The fault is something that the manufacturer should have put on the list for last year’s annual service but failed to do so. They are now trying to wriggle out of responsibility on a technicality.

Yes, I could have done with some peace from Jesus.

The one bright part was that I had to submit some blood pressure readings this week to the pharmacist at the doctors’ surgery, and he described my results as ‘gold standard’, so Debbie said that in fact I clearly haven’t had enough stress!

Now on the one hand ‘Peace be with you’ is a fairly standard Jewish greeting. When I flew to and from the Holy Land on El Al Airlines in 1989, every message over the plane’s PA from the pilot or cabin crew always began with ‘Shalom and good evening.’

But here, the disciples really need peace:

37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.

A ghost: something not of God. So fear is natural. It’s equally possible to be fearful in the presence of God’s almighty power – which the Resurrection indicates.

The way in which Jesus leads the disciples to peace is basically to reassure them: ‘It’s me. You don’t need to be afraid. You know me.’

It was good news for the disciples then, and it is good news for Jesus’ disciples today. The Resurrection says, don’t stay at a distance from Jesus in your relationship with him.

Do you ever feel nervous about drawing near to Jesus? Here’s a secret: I do. My current devotional pattern comes in two parts. Earlier in the day, I have a reflection on a Bible passage, then at night I ponder how the day has gone in the light of Scripture. I find something to rejoice in, and something to confess. When I keep confessing the same sins and failures regularly, I can tell you I don’t want to draw near to Jesus. But what astonishes me is the way my devotional takes me every day to assurances of forgiveness in the Bible. It’s as if every evening Jesus is saying to me, don’t be afraid, don’t stay at a distance, the best thing you can do is draw near to me.

What about you? Where is the Risen Jesus saying ‘Peace be with you’ to you?

Secondly, the Risen Jesus brings proof:

When people invite others over for dinner, the hosts will usually ask in advance if there is anything they cannot eat or dislike. When people ask Debbie and me that question, they will find out that I am allergic to artichokes and dislike roast pork and gammon. Debbie will say that she cannot face fish or mushrooms. Whenever we go out to a pub or a restaurant for a meal, it is a standing joke that I will order fish to make up for not having it at home. If belly pork is on the menu, you can guarantee Debbie will be tempted.

I take great comfort in the Resurrection narratives, because there (including the one we read today) I learn that Jesus likes to eat fish. In John 21, he cooks a fish breakfast for the disciples after their overnight fishing trip. Here, he shows them his wounds and eats some fish to eat as proof that he is bodily to calm their fears and assuage their doubts (verses 38-43).

Now you may say that what was proof for the disciples two thousand years ago is not proof for us. But it is very strong historical evidence. We do not need to doubt the bodily Resurrection of Jesus.

I never tire of emphasising that the Resurrection is bodily. On Easter Day, I told Midhurst how that was a sign that God is renewing his material creation, and that’s why as Christians we care about things like healing, social justice, and the climate.

Today, I want to say that it also means we don’t need to doubt Jesus but trust in him. It’s why we sing lustily on Easter Day,

No more we doubt thee,
glorious Prince of Life[1]

We can trust Jesus because he has conquered sin and death in the Resurrection.

I know we will doubt him still from time to time. I do. But when I doubt, I always come back to the Resurrection. It’s real. It’s true. It’s bodily. It’s what makes life worthwhile. I hold onto that in my dark times. Or perhaps more accurately, that’s what holds onto me.

I don’t know what all your doubts and struggles are. Feel free to talk with me about them, if that would help. I simply invite you to remember that the bodily Resurrection is true, and so Jesus can be trusted.

I mean, the Risen Jesus must be trustworthy. He eats fish!

Thirdly and finally, the Risen Jesus brings purpose:

The Risen Jesus has brought good news for the disciples: fear replaced by peace and doubts replaced by proof. Now they can draw near to Jesus and trust him.

But if it’s good news for them it’s also good news for the world. And Jesus the Teacher gives his class of disciples a lesson. He recaps how he had told them he would die and rise again as the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes in her Scriptures (verse 44). Then he explains how this was rooted in those Scriptures (verses 45-46) – not so much proof texts, scholars suspect, as allusions to the whole story of Israel as Stephen would tell it before his martyrdom and passages like the Servant Songs, especially the Suffering Servant in Isaiah[2].

Israel’s vocation was to be a light to the nations. Jesus had fulfilled that. Now his disciples had to be the light of the world, taking this good news of peace and trust in Jesus from Jerusalem to the world (verses 47-49).

And in our day, that’s what we continue – being light in the world with the good news of Jesus.

But often we struggle with this vocation. If we have other events in our lives that are good news, we have no problem with sharing: the birth of a child or grandchild, a new job, exam success, a family wedding. We will tell our friends without any problems.

We are more reticent about the good news of Jesus. Has it become stale for us? Are we nervous about the response we shall receive? Are we worried about being a Bible-basher? There are many reasons why we may hold back.

Jesus knows that even though his disciples ‘are witnesses of these things’ (verse 48) they are not ready. They need to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit (verse 49).

We don’t have to wait for the Holy Spirit like they did, but this is a reminder to us that the key to fulfilling our purpose as witnesses is the power of the Spirit. We pray that the Holy Spirit will work through us so that we reflect the light of Jesus in the world. We also pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us to the right time to speak about Jesus, and the right way to talk about him. We further pray that the Spirit will give us courage when we find that difficult.

There’s a catchphrase from the movie and stage musical Mrs Doubtfire, where the title character repeats the words, ‘Help is on the way.’ That’s what Jesus promises his disciples at the end of this reading. Yes, his offer of peace enables us to draw near to him and not remain fearful of him. Yes, his proofs and evidence of his Resurrection enable us to trust him rather than doubt him. And yes, we are called to share this light with the world, which we may find daunting.

But help is on the way, because Easter will connect us to Pentecost.

[1] Edmond Budry (1854-1932), translated by Richard Birch Hoyle (1875-1939): Thine be the glory.

[2] Ian Paul, The risen Jesus meets the Eleven in Luke 24.

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Doubting Thomas Overcomes Barriers To Faith, John 20:19-31 (Easter 2 Low Sunday 2024)

John 20:19-31

I gained my first experience of leading worship and preaching in a youth preaching team in my home circuit. We took services in the churches of the circuit under the supervision of a Local Preacher.

One year, we were appointed to take a service on the Sunday after Easter. The Local Preacher, a woman by the name of Win, explained to us that this Sunday was traditionally called ‘Low Sunday.’

Why was that, we asked?

Because, she said, after all the joy and celebration of Easter Day, people needed to come down a bit.

Oh, said we mischievous teenagers: Hangover Sunday!

Now I am not sure that the intoxication of Easter Day has negative side-effects at all. It’s the beginning of the whole Easter season that lasts fifty days until Pentecost. We have seven weeks of celebration!

And our Gospel reading today occurs in the Lectionary every year on Low Sunday. So what to say this year?

Well, there is so much in the reading, and given that I have been preaching on mission before Easter and will go back to that after the Easter season, I am going to leave the first half of the reading where Jesus commissions the remaining apostles to go into the world like he did in the power of the Spirit bringing the forgiveness of sins.

That leaves the second half of the reading and our good friend Thomas. Come with me as we walk with him on a journey to deeper faith in the risen Lord.

Firstly, angry Thomas:

Angry? Yes – angry. Before we ever get onto the question of ‘doubting Thomas’ we need to consider his anger.

How so? Well, part of my preparation for this week has been my regular reading of a blog by an Anglican New Testament scholar, Ian Paul. In his reflections this week on today’s passage he tells a story about how he once took a primary school assembly where he asked the pupils who their heroes were, and then told them that he had actually met each of those heroes on his way to the school that morning. The youngsters grew increasingly sceptical.

But then he asked them how they would have felt if he actually had met their heroes on the way to the school and they hadn’t. A boy shot up his hand and said, ‘I would be very angry!’ Ian Paul reflects on this incident and the Thomas story in these words:

It was an amazing insight into the things that hold us back from believing, and anger at what has happened to us and the way life has turned out seems to me to be far more common than an actual lack of evidence, even if it is evidential language that we naturally reach for.

Thomas is angry at having missed out. The other disciples are annoyingly happy, and he hasn’t had that experience. We talk today about FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out – and that’s Thomas. He has missed out, and he’s mad.

And like Ian Paul says, our anger at certain events and circumstances in life can do more to inhibit faith than our intellectual questions. I’m sure you’ve come across people who have described an unspeakable tragedy in their lives and who are angry at God about it. I’m sure you’ve met people who can’t cope with the fact that other people have received blessings that they have longed for, but they haven’t.

I’m sure many of us know how unresolved anger burns up our soul like acid. If we bury the anger, it comes out like a Jack-in-the-box in other forms. Some (but by no means all) forms of depression can happen this way. Yet if we let the anger fester, we become bitter and twisted people.

But here’s the good news. The risen Jesus appears to angry Thomas. He shows him his wounds. The Lord himself has been through unjust suffering. If anyone had the right to be angry about their treatment, it was Jesus. Yet he meets Thomas in love.

If we are struggling with anger, we have a God who can handle it. His Son has been through the most unjust suffering the world has ever seen. He understands. And he has given us the Old Testament Psalms, where so many express questioning and anger towards God about the circumstances of life. God holds us in his arms while we beat upon his chest. And in the Resurrection, he begins the work of reversing injustice.

Secondly, doubting Thomas:

It’s still true that Thomas doubts. He says,

‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.’ (Verse 25b)

Although hear the anger in those words ‘I will not believe.’

And Jesus, after showing him his wounds, says,

‘Stop doubting and believe.’ (Verse 27b)

There are some mitigating factors here. Thomas was not alone in doubting. The male disciples generally also doubted the women’s testimony until they saw the empty tomb for themselves. I have often remarked that my late father thought Thomas has been unfairly singled out in history.

Now there are some who make a distinction between doubt and unbelief. The Christian writer Os Guinness says in his book on doubt that doubt is ‘faith in two minds’, whereas unbelief is a straight-out refusal to believe. Thomas seems to oscillate between the two.

But at least he is honest. He doesn’t play pretend. He doesn’t suppress his doubts and pretend to have more faith than he does.

However, ultimately, Jesus wants to bring him to a point of faith, a place of believing.

And what is faith? Contrary to what some of the ‘New Atheists’ say, it is emphatically not believing in something that you know to be untrue.

No. Faith is knowing enough in order to trust. When we have faith, we have enough evidence about Jesus and his Resurrection in order to trust him. We do not have complete knowledge, but we have enough to say, yes, we will entrust our lives to him.

We do this in other parts of life. The point at which I proposed to my then-girlfriend, now wife, was when I knew enough about her to trust her and believe that entering into life together would be a good enterprise. Of course, I will never know her fully: what man ever understands a woman like that?

As Jesus says to Thomas, most people will not get the benefit he does of a personal appearance to lead him to that place of faith. I did have a church member in my first appointment who had become a Christian when Jesus had appeared in a vision to her at the bottom of her bed one night, but for most of us, something like that doesn’t happen.

Instead, we have enough evidence about Jesus in order to trust him. We have the testimonies of the four Gospel writers. As John writes,

31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

We have good historical evidence for the Resurrection. I don’t have time to go into that now, ask me afterwards, but it’s good. We have the testimonies of our friends.

We may not know everything about Jesus. We may still have questions. We may wobble in our faith from time to time. But we have enough in order to stop our fundamental doubting and believe.

Thirdly and finally, humble Thomas:

28 Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’

Now as an aside this is one of my favourite verses to quote to Jehovah’s Witnesses when they deny the deity of Jesus Christ. They try to say that Thomas is at this point addressing heaven, not Jesus, despite the fact that the context is a conversation between him and Jesus. That’s an amazing piece of grammatical gymnastics on their part.

But having said that, it struck me this week what a humble statement this is. After all his anger and doubt, Thomas responds to the evidence and the overtures of love from Jesus in the right way. Humility.

Not everybody does. I have heard of some atheists being asked, if you were given convincing evidence for God, would you then believe? Some still said, no, because they did not want to be answerable to anyone but themselves. Their problem was not intellectual but one of spiritual pride and rebellion.

Thomas has none of these. The right and proper response to Jesus is to bow in adoration and make an oath of allegiance to him. He doesn’t waste any time in doing the right thing.

For pride is another of the barriers to faith, but the gift of humility enables Thomas to respond to the mercy and love of Jesus. The only way we or anyone else find our way into the kingdom of God is by humbly receiving what God does for us in Christ.

I find that some of the people who have the worst problems with pride are intelligent, educated people. They point to surveys that show the higher you go up the scale of intellect, the less people believe in the existence of God. They draw the rather simple conclusion that more intelligent people think belief in God is not plausible, and therefore you should not.

But these people make a fatal mistake. They fail to see that our minds as much as any other part of our lives are affected by sin, and they have fallen victim to the temptation of pride, one of the key things that prevents belief in God. Beware that if you debate with an intellectual whose mind seems hardened against the idea of faith, pride may well be an issue.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not against intellectual endeavour. I have done post-graduate research at university and hold two Theology degrees. I believe Jesus when he said that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength.

But at the bottom line, I believe the only way to avail ourselves of God’s blessings in Christ is humility. It is to say, I cannot get to God by my own beliefs, merits, or actions. I can only hold out the empty hands of faith to receive. And when I do, I honour Jesus as my Lord and my God. What he says, goes.

Conclusion

I think we can say, then, that Thomas has shown us some of the major barriers to faith and how they are overcome.

We can bring our anger into the arms of the loving God who has embraced suffering and begun the work of destroying injustice.

We can bring our doubts to the testimony of Jesus and learn that he is trustworthy.

We can reject the pride in our own abilities that prevents us receiving from God and in humility receive his grace and mercy.

Let us remember these things in our own lives and also in our witness to people beyond the church that the risen Jesus is this world’s true Lord.

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Easter Day 2024: God Ships His Blessings On The Third Day (Mark 16:1-8)

Mark 16:1-8

Here’s a true story I heard on Thursday. Somebody was looking up on Google the famous blessing prayer from the Book of Numbers. I’m sure you’ll know the one:

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

But the top result wasn’t from a Bible site like Bible Gateway, they only came in second to Amazon, who were selling a print of that text in a picture frame. As a result, the entry read:

 The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Usually ships within 2 to 3 days.

When the person shared this, somebody commented:

I do wish more of His promises came with delivery dates and tracking!

Welcome to Easter Sunday, where we celebrate the fact that God’s blessing has shipped within 2 to 3 days! For on the third day, the tomb was empty.

What blessings ship from God to us on Easter Day? There are many! I want to share four with you.

Firstly, a new body:

You may recall that during Holy Week, a woman at Bethany has anointed Jesus’ body with expensive perfume. Jesus says she has anointed his body for burial. You might say the woman did so prematurely, but perhaps prophetically.

Now, along comes this group of women to do what? Exactly the same.[1] The Greek implies they are bringing liquid spices. This is not the same as the solid spices that John tells us Nicodemus used. The women are coming to do what the woman at Bethany had prophetically foretold.

But if the woman at Bethany was early, the women at the tomb are too late! They knew Jesus was physically dead , otherwise they wouldn’t have come. But now, the body isn’t there, because he has risen.

They weren’t expecting that. Three times in Mark’s Gospel Jesus prophesies that he will suffer and die, but be raised from the dead, yet it hadn’t sunk in. It didn’t fit their prior beliefs. They were persuaded not by the divine words of Jesus but by God’s divine action.

Make no mistake, the Resurrection is bodily. This is not about an immortal soul, this is about God raising Jesus’ body from the dead and making it new – even with new powers, as we read in other Gospels such as John.

God is interested in redeeming the physical, the material, the bodily. Our faith is not simply an ethereal, spiritual matter. Resurrection tells us that the whole of creation is on God’s agenda for renewal.

And that’s why our mission is not only to call people to repentance and faith in Christ, it is also to things like healing, social justice, and the renewal of our planet. Everything that God created has been tainted, and everything that God created is up for redemption. The Resurrection assures us of that.

The second blessing to ship on Easter Day is a new family:

Who is ‘Mary the mother of James’ in verse 1?[2] In the previous chapter, among the women at the Cross, is ‘Mary the mother of Joses and James’ (15:40), which is then shortened to ‘Mary the mother of Joses’ (15:47). It’s likely that ‘Mary the mother of James’ at the empty tomb is ‘Mary the mother of Joses and James.’

But here’s the surprising thing. There is only one woman in Mark’s Gospel who is called ‘Mary the mother of Joses and James.’ She appears in chapter 6 verse 3 where she is the mother of Jesus’ brothers. In other words, this is Mary the mother of our Lord herself.

But just as Jesus had said that his true family were those who did his will, so here at the empty tomb Mary herself is discovering that the risen Jesus is indeed making a new family. His new family is the family of believers in him.

We sometimes talk about the church as a family, and that’s absolutely right. We are the family of God, the community of the King, the sign and foretaste of God’s coming kingdom. In our tradition, we may not go in for the hackneyed way that some Christians address one another as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ and that’s fair enough, but that’s what we are. At both baptisms and funerals we refer to the subjects as ‘our sister’ or ‘our brother’, and that is because Jesus creates a new family in the Resurrection.

And his Resurrection will be ours one way. I guess that’s why he told the Sadducees during Holy Week that there would be no marrying and giving in marriage in the life of the age to come. There would be no more need for procreation, because no more would dead people need replacing in the population.

One of my colleagues recently told the circuit staff a story of how he was visiting a residential care home, and he met one resident who was dying for what would be the last time. Before my colleague left, the resident said to him, ‘I expect this will be the last time we see each other.’

He replied, ‘I’ve got news for you! I think you’ll find we’re going to be spending rather a long time together!’

So look around this morning in church. Here are members of your forever family. It’s worth us learning to get on with one another!

The third blessing to ship on Easter Day is a new commission:

Having seen the place where Jesus’ body had been laid, the ‘young man dressed in a white robe’ (verse 5) (which is just a long way of saying ‘angel’) tells the women to ‘Go’ (verse 7). They are to go with the message of the Resurrection.

Hang on – who is to go? The women. In our more egalitarian culture, that detail can pass us by. But this was a society in which women couldn’t even give evidence in a court of law. If you were going to choose witnesses to support your case, you wouldn’t select women. The fact that it’s women who are the first witnesses to the Resurrection is a sign that this is not a cobbled-together fiction.

And we might reflect on all those who still say only men can lead the church because Jesus chose twelve male apostles. He also only chose Jews. It’s apparent here that God doesn’t keep to our social conventions. Anyone and everyone who has encountered the Resurrection and wants to follow Jesus can be witnesses to Jesus.

How many of us feel disqualified from serving Jesus in any significant way? It may be through the disapproval of others. It may be through our own low self-esteem that we disqualify ourselves. We may feel unworthy or unfit. ‘I’ve let God down in the past.’ ‘I don’t have the necessary gifts.’ ‘I’m not strong enough.’

But could it be that in fact our risen Lord is giving us a poke on Easter Day and saying, the only thing that qualifies you is that you’ve encountered me and you want to follow me?

I want to invite you to consider whether there is some call you have been resisting, putting off, or filing away because you don’t think you fit the template. I certainly didn’t think I fitted the right mould to be a minister. I’ve had the odd congregation who have agreed! I still at times live with ‘imposter syndrome.’

But on Easter Day, we can put all that aside. Have we met with the risen Lord? Do we love him? If so, let’s take on a commission.

The fourth and final blessing is a new beginning:

But go, tell his disciples and Peter (verse 7)

says the angel to the women.

The disciples and Peter? Huh? Wasn’t Peter a disciple too, an apostle, even? Why mention him separately?

I’m sure we can guess. Peter is so mortified by his three denials of Jesus that he doesn’t even consider himself a true disciple anymore. He may even have returned to his old profession as a fisherman. It’s all over, especially with Jesus having been executed.

But in God’s economy, the end is not the end unless there is good news. And here we have that hint of what John’s Gospel will tell us in greater detail: that restoration is on the way for Peter. ‘No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in him is mine,’ as Charles Wesley wrote.

The new commission that I just spoke of is available to Peter as well. He has a new beginning.

This is after all the Gospel, isn’t it? That our sins and failures don’t have the final word, any more than the sins of those who conspired to have Jesus crucified had the last word. They didn’t. Jesus vacated his grave.

As the late Christian singer Larry Norman put it,

They nailed him to the cross,
They laid him in the ground,
But they should have known
You can’t keep a good man down.[3]

If anyone here thinks they have messed up so badly they can never be valuable to God, then the Resurrection says, think again. There is a new beginning for you.

If anyone here thinks they have committed the unforgivable sin, then the Resurrection says, think again. There is a new beginning for you, too.

The grace of God is bigger than our sins and failures. Even the worst of our betrayals of Christ do not have the final word in life: that place belongs to the love and mercy of God.

As a minister, I have heard respected church members privately tell me about the most awful sins they have committed. It has been my privilege to assure them of God’s forgiveness and the certainty that they, like Peter, have a new beginning with Christ. Easter Day is the reason I can do so. We all have a new beginning today.

I can’t conclude today without drawing attention to the theme of the women’s fear that is present in the reading.

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ says the angel, but despite his reassurances, the final verse says this:

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Verse 8)

I’m aware that I can give you all the arguments in the world for the joy, hope, and freedom of the Easter faith, but an encounter with almighty resurrection power can still leave us shaking.

And it seems such a strange way to end the Gospel – so much so that others have speculated that the original ending is lost, or have written alternative endings.

But maybe it all indicates that the necessary response is for us to write our own endings in each of our lives. For as Tom Wright has put it,

‘Jesus is risen, and we have a job of work to do.’

[1] This paragraph and the next are influenced by Ian Paul, The women at the empty tomb in Mark 16.

[2] Again, for what follows I am dependent on Ian Paul’s article.

[3] Larry Norman, ‘Why should the devil have all the good music?’, Only Visiting This Planet, MGM Records, 1972.

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Holy Week Meditations 2024: Isaiah’s Servant Songs (4) Isaiah 52:13-53:12, The Suffering Servant (Good Friday)

Session 4
Introduction to reading in service
This week at Midhurst I have been offering some Holy Week meditations on the so-called ‘Servant Songs’ in Isaiah. Although their immediate application was to the prophet himself and to the People of God in exile in Babylon at the time, they also helped form Jesus’ understanding of his ministry and mission, and the Gospel writers’ understanding of Jesus. Not only that, through Jesus they have application to our lives.

There are four ‘Servant Songs.’ The first three were the Old Testament readings for Monday to Wednesday in Holy Week, the fourth comes today, Good Friday. It does so, because it is the one most associated with the death of Jesus. We will hear it in a moment, before we hear from the Gospel according to Mark.

If the first Servant Song was about God’s People, Israel, in exile, and the second and third were about this prophet ministering to them, who is this fourth Song about? It’s hard to say exactly who at the time would have fulfilled this description, but we do know it found greater fulfilment in Jesus and his suffering. So it will be the framework for my reflections

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Most of us know what it’s like to be misunderstood. It can be quite innocent, when someone mishears what we have said. Or maybe they just don’t get on our wavelength. These experiences can be frustrating, but we can come through them with a smile.

It’s worse when someone wilfully misunderstands us. Perhaps they are too lazy to make the effort to listen. Worse, it may suit their purposes to misunderstand our words, our actions, or our values. Then it is a malicious misunderstanding, which can be both painful and worrying.

The fourth Servant Song and the life and death of Jesus show us One who was regularly misunderstood. Never was that more apparent than at the Cross. If he was truly the Messiah, then in the eyes of most people, he shouldn’t be suffering the fate of execution.

So we’re going to think about some of the ways the suffering Jesus on the Cross is misunderstood, to find how we might apprehend him more truly, and worship and serve him more faithfully.

The first misunderstanding is about image:

Just as there were many who were appalled at him –
    his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
    and his form marred beyond human likeness – (52:14)

If you’ve ever watched Mel Gibson’s movie ‘The Passion of the Christ’, you will know that it depicts the suffering and disfigurement of Jesus graphically. From being flogged and having the crown of thorns pushed into his head, through carrying the crossbeam, to having the nails hammered in, and the agonising death by suffocation. The Gospel writers don’t go into that detail, and I’m sure that was because people in their day knew only too well what death by crucifixion entailed. It was specifically meant to be an horrendous form of death, as a sadistic deterrent. That’s why Rome left crosses up around the countryside – to remind people.

This was not the fate of a victor. This was defeat and shame. The Apostle Paul said that it was a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks for the Messiah’s death to be central to faith.

You may know that in Islam the Qu’ran denies that Jesus died on the Cross at all. Muslims cannot accept that this should be the fate of a divine prophet.

Nothing about the Cross fits any image of a glorious, triumphant leader.

No wonder we also read that

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. (53:2b-3)

He just doesn’t fit our glossy image of a true leader.

Yet our passage began with the words

See, my servant will act wisely;
    he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. (52:13)

For what is foolishness to the Greeks and to millions of others is the wisdom of God. On Good Friday, we learn that God has an upside-down, counter-cultural way of transforming lives and changing our world. It isn’t about a gleaming image and power that rolls over others like a tank. Transformation comes as the Son of God, the True Servant, absorbs the darkness and evil of the world for us.

That’s why we also read that

so he will sprinkle many nations,
    and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
    and what they have not heard, they will understand. (52:15)

May God give us understanding of his ways which are not our ways. May we cast aside our shallow devotion to someone’s image and accept instead the substance of what Jesus accomplishes at the Cross.

The second misunderstanding is about character:

Bluntly, people think that the Servant – or Jesus – is suffering because he deserves to do so. That’s why you end up on a Cross. You have committed a crime. You are sentenced.

Think of the dialogue with the two other men who were executed with Jesus. The one who appeals to him, saying ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,’ tells the other prisoner off for scorning Jesus. And he does so by reminding him that the two of them are getting their just desserts. However, he says, Jesus has done no wrong.

Thus, we come to these verses in Isaiah:

4 Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all. (53:4-6)

‘Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.’ There is the misunderstanding that Jesus had the character of a sinner, that he had done something worthy of the death penalty. The religious leaders thought that was true, because they considered Jesus had committed the sin of blasphemy. Pilate never understood the nature of Jesus’ claim to kingship, only grasping that if he were a king then he was a usurper and a political threat.

But instead of suffering because he was a sinner, Jesus suffered because we are sinners. And he suffered for our sins. He bore our suffering. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. He was punished and wounded for us.

Some people reject the idea that Jesus could have suffered in our place. But there have been examples occasionally in courts of law where a judge has paid the fine he had imposed on someone who was found guilty. Before God, we are guilty. But in Christ he pays the penalty. The punishment that brought us peace was on him.

We need to reject the misunderstanding that Jesus was a sinner. He was not. He was instead our sin-bearer. And in that we find God’s offer to us of forgiveness, freedom, and healing, even of being in the right with him.

The third and final misunderstanding is about martyrdom:

In other words, did God kill Jesus for a good cause?

And if that language shocks you – God killing Jesus – I can assure you there are people who interpret the Cross that way. Some do so in order to make it sound repulsive and have all the more reason to reject Christianity. There are also a few Christians who even say that is what happened.

And it appears to be a misunderstanding that is present in the prophet’s day. Listen again to the closing verses of this Servant Song. You will hear both the misunderstanding and the correction:


10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors. (53:10-12)

There it was at the beginning: it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer. But what the prophet goes on to show is that this was a partnership between the Servant (Jesus) and God. For God rewards his Servant after his suffering.

And that’s exactly what salvation is at the Cross. We don’t simply speak of Jesus being our substitute, we say more than that. We say that the ‘atonement’ (i.e., what Jesus achieved at the Cross) is God’s self-substitution. God and Jesus are not opposed. They are working together.

It is as the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

God allows the Cross. God gives up his Son to the Cross. (Parents, think about giving up your children in some way.) But God does not kill Jesus, even if for a few hours Jesus feels forsaken by his Father. God and Jesus are in partnership here, bringing reconciliation to the world, to us, to you, to me.

And that is why we are here today. Not to cower before a cruel God, nor conversely to mourn a terrible mistake. But to worship the One Who loved the world so much that he gave up his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

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Holy Week Meditations 2024: Isaiah’s Servant Songs (3) Isaiah 50:4-9

Session 3
Isaiah 50:4-9a

Each day so far we’ve had to ask who the servant is in each passage. On Monday, the servant was Israel, the People of God. Yesterday, the servant was the prophet.

Today, it’s fairly easy to see that once again the servant is the prophet who is bringing this message. And so, following the pattern of the last two days, we will consider the relevance of this passage to the prophet, to Jesus, and to ourselves.

We’ve observed that Isaiah 40-55 belongs to the time when Israel was in Babylonian exile. It’s a section of the book that brings hope to a desolate people. It may date to ten or twenty years before they began returning home to Jerusalem and Judah, thanks to the policies of King Cyrus, whose Persian Empire would conquer Babylon.

But even though these chapters bring a message of hope right from the beginning – if you don’t know ‘Comfort, comfort my people’ at the beginning of chapter 40 you will at least know that Handel quotes it in The Messiah – it still takes a while for a positive message to have a healing effect on a discouraged and downcast group of people. They are ‘weary’, we learn in verse 4.

And their Babylonian captors haven’t yet given up all their old tricks, because we read in verse 6 about how the prophet has been beaten, had his beard pulled out, and subjected to mocking and spitting.

What does it take to be a faithful servant when we are surrounded by darkness and people struggle to hear and accept God’s good news? That’s what this ‘Servant Song’ is about.

Again, I am picking out three elements. Not three ‘C’s this time, like the commitment, call, and covenant of chapter 42 on Monday, or the call, crisis, and cure of chapter 49 yesterday, though. This time, it’s three ‘H’s.

Firstly, hearing:
Listen again to verses 4 and 5:

4 The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
    to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
    wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
5 The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
    I have not been rebellious,
    I have not turned away.

If the prophet is to have a ‘word that sustains the weary’, he must hear from God. He is in communion with God ‘morning by morning’ and it is a listening time: the Sovereign Lord ‘wakens [his] ear’ and ‘opens [his] ears’. God is saying, ‘Listen,’ and so I expect the prophet is silent in the presence of God to hear his word. If the word is to sustain the weary, then it needs to come from heaven.

We know Jesus took time out for prayer. He escaped from the crowds and those who would value him for being busy to spend time with his Father. Often that meant going to solitary places. Sometimes we read that he spent the night in prayer.

For us, I will not dare to suggest that we don’t pray, but I will venture the thought that for many of us prayer is a shopping list and a monologue. It is all us talking. I for one am by no means always good at leaving space and time in silence for God to speak to me during a time of prayer.

And we model the monologue approach to prayer in our Sunday services. If a preacher has a time of silence during prayers, I can assure you some people will feel uncomfortable, and may even tell the preacher afterwards.

If we approach God through Scripture and worship, though, we can tune into him. Yes, the distracting thoughts will still come our way when we are silent – so we take them captive by writing them down and leaving them for another time so we can return to silence.

And then should it be so very surprising if a heavenly Father wants to speak to his children? And should it surprise us also if when he speaks he not only has something for us but also something that will bless others in need?

Secondly, humility:
Babylon may soon be facing military defeat at the hands of Persia, but that doesn’t change its behaviour now for the better:

6 I offered my back to those who beat me,
    my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
    from mocking and spitting.

If God’s prophet is mistreated like this, then that too will have a negative effect on captive Israel’s morale. It may even be designed to have that effect.

But the prophet does not fight back. He bears his unjust suffering. He doesn’t even hide from it.

It’s easy to see the parallels in the life of Jesus here, especially in Holy Week, how he didn’t fight his tormentors. Surely indeed he could have called down fire from heaven against them, but he declined to do so.

This is tough for us. If we are attacked with words, we often become defensive. We justify ourselves, and we fight back with our own words. If we are physically attacked, we will resist as much as we can. If we are strong enough, we may overpower and disarm our assailant. Who wants to be hurt?

Into this dilemma let me offer you the words that a friend of mine once said on this subject. John was an Anglican priest from Kenya. He was used to inter-racial and inter-tribal tensions, as well as religious conflict. John said,

‘If I am persecuted for being a black man or for being a member of the Kikuyu tribe, I will fight back. But if I am persecuted for being a Christian, I will not resist. The way of Christ involves suffering for him.’

I wonder what you think of that. Does he have the balance right? Whether he does or not, it is clear that in the face of difficulties for our faith and opposition to it, we are called to a gracious humility in the Name of Jesus.

Thirdly, hope:
God’s people may be short on hope, but the hope which sustains the prophet is not the short-term, quick-fix variety. They’ve had enough of that from false prophets. How I hope our political parties will resist that approach whenever the General Election is called.

The prophet goes in for a longer-term hope that is based on the character of the God in whom he trusts. Listen again to verses 7 to 9:

7 Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
    I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
    and I know I will not be put to shame.
8 He who vindicates me is near.
    Who then will bring charges against me?
    Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
    Let him confront me!
9 It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.
    Who will condemn me?
They will all wear out like a garment;
    the moths will eat them up.

When it comes down to it, the prophet believes in a God of justice who will vindicate the righteous and the innocent, and who will oversee the downfall of the ungodly and unjust. That isn’t a five-minute job, but it is the right long-term hope. And of course, he and his ministry was proved to be right, and also Babylon fell.

Jesus entrusted himself into his Father’s hands at the Cross. He committed his spirit into his Father’s care before he died. And on the third day, he was vindicated like no-one else ever has been.

When we face discouragement, or when those around us cannot drag themselves out of a pit, we too would do well to set aside the hopes in a quick fix and instead base our hopes on the solid truths we know about the character of God. His love. His justice. His grace.

These truths will stand for ever and will strengthen us to stand in hope.

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Holy Week Meditations 2024: Isaiah’s Servant Songs (2) Isaiah 49:1-7

Session 2
Isaiah 49:1-7

Yesterday, I said that in each of the so-called ‘Servant Songs’ we had to determine who the particular servant was, because it isn’t always the same each time. So yesterday in chapter 42, the servant was Israel, but as well as thinking what the text meant for Israel, we looked at it as applying to Jesus, who perfectly fulfilled the prophecies, and then what it meant for us.

Today, the Servant is clearly the prophet himself. I am not going to say Isaiah, because chapters 40 onwards clearly come from a time two centuries after Isaiah himself lived – although in many ways they carry on Isaiah’s themes. Isaiah prophesied in the eighth century BC, when the people of Judah were still in their own land under a king. Chapters 40 to 55, however, come from the time of the Babylonian exile – perhaps ten to twenty years before God’s people start to go back home.

So our first lens today is the prophet. We shall keep Jesus and ourselves as the second and third lenses through which we view the text.

Yesterday, we looked at commitment, call, and covenant: the mutual commitment between God and his servant, the call God gives the servant, and the covenant whereby God doesn’t give up on a servant who has failed.

Today’s reading is about a crisis in the calling of the servant. Today, I also have three ‘C’s: call, crisis, and cure. We begin by going back to the servant’s original call (which is not quite the same as yesterday, because this is about the prophet, not the people), then the nature of the crisis that engulfed him, and finally the way God brings a cure for that crisis.

Firstly, the call:
Listen to the call of the prophet in verses 1 to 3:

1 Listen to me, you islands;
    hear this, you distant nations:
before I was born the Lord called me;
    from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.
2 He made my mouth like a sharpened sword,
    in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me into a polished arrow
    and concealed me in his quiver.
3 He said to me, ‘You are my servant,
    Israel, in whom I will display my splendour.’

The prophet’s call was no small, accidental thing, nor was it a coincidence. God had planned it from before his birth, just as he did with Jeremiah. God had prepared the prophet and his words to be effective – ‘like a sharpened sword’ and ‘a polished arrow.’ God had protected the prophet until the right time – ‘in the shadow of his hand he hid me’ and ‘concealed me in his quiver.’ Planned, prepared, protected: three ‘P’s this time! God had gone ahead and done all this before the prophet got to respond to the call with his ‘Yes.’

With his Servant and Son Jesus God also went ahead and prepared him and prepared the way for him to be born ‘when the time was right’, as Paul says in Galatians. There were plans, there were prophecies. People were prepared for their part. All this enabled Jesus to fulfil his call.

And God also goes ahead of us, preparing us and our circumstances for his call upon our lives. As a number of you know, when I thought God was calling me to something but I didn’t know what, I ended up studying Theology at an Anglican theological college. When the calling more clearly became one to pastoral ministry, I didn’t know whether to stay in my native Methodism or go over into the Church of England, for which I was seeing a very good advert.

In the end, I went to see a pastor friend who was neither Methodist nor Anglican. I needed someone neutral! When I explained my predicament, Colin said to me that he was a pastor in his tradition because it was the one in which he had been raised and found faith. And if I believed in the providence of God, then could I see my upbringing as an accident? For this reason and other logical arguments that he added, I offered for the ministry in the tradition in which I too had been raised. And here I am.

How do you look at the way God has prepared and ordered aspects of your life as being ways in which he has laid the foundations for your particular calling to be his servant?

Secondly, the crisis:
Despite all this, the prophet, who knows he has been called to be God’s servant, has a crisis of faith. Or perhaps we should call it a crisis of confidence or a crisis of fruitlessness. It comes in verse 4:

But I said, ‘I have laboured in vain;
    I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due to me is in the Lord’s hand,
    and my reward is with my God.’

It’s all been a waste of time. I’ve achieved nothing. What’s the point? That’s what he’s saying. Never assume that people who hold lofty callings from God just lurch from one triumph to another victory. And if they tell you they do, you have my permission to disbelieve them. A crisis in the calling to serve God is a common thing.

Later this week, we shall doubtless think about Jesus’ own crisis of confidence in his calling. It happened in Gethsemane. Father, if it is possible, please take this cup of suffering away from me. I know what it is going to involve, and I shudder. Yet not my will but yours be done.

I would guess that most or all of us at some point have had a crisis of confidence in God and in what we are meant to be doing for him. It is not just people like me who live with depression who get those feelings that it’s all pointless and we have wasted our lives.

And when we go through those dark seasons, I commend the Psalms. Some people don’t like the rather bleak and harrowing language that some of the Psalmists use. It’s not very nice, neat, and middle class, is it? But the Psalms give us explicit permission to be open and honest with God, red-raw even. As someone once said, ‘Most of the Bible speaks to us, but the Psalms speak for us.’

For when we have our crises, God is the safest place we can go. We can batter our fists on his chest, but we only ever do that while he is holding us in his arms. We are about to see in the third point that he does not have words of condemnation for his servant who is facing his crisis of confidence.

So let’s move on and hear that.

Thirdly, the cure:
The prophet has just said that things are not going well, and God’s response is compassionate, just not in the way we might expect. Is it to give him time off to rest, as he did when Elijah was stressed, running for his life from Jezebel? No: it’s very different. Hear again verses 5 and 6:

5 And now the Lord says –
    he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
    and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honoured in the eyes of the Lord
    and my God has been my strength –
6 he says:
‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’

God says, don’t put yourself down, because I rate you so highly – ‘honoured in the eyes of the Lord’, even. In fact, although you may not have confidence right now, I have every confidence in you. So much so that I am going to entrust you with even more. I so believe in what you can do with me that no longer is your calling simply to bring my people back to the Promised Land, I’m also commissioning you to reflect my light to all the nations. It’s not so much the adding of a burden as a vote of divine confidence.

Did that happen with Jesus? Well, possibly. Before the Cross his main mission was to God’s people, the Jews. Yes, he commended the faith of the Roman centurion and of the Syrophoenician woman, but he said his main focus was ‘The lost sheep of Israel.’ However, after the Resurrection, he commissions his disciples to take the Gospel of the Kingdom to Jerusalem, Judea, and all the ends of the earth.

Could it be that God might say and do something along those lines with us when we have our crises? Dare we believe that God believes in us more than we believe in ourselves? For he knows better than we do what we can accomplish when he equips us with his Spirit.

I’ll finish with some words of Graham Kendrick that I like. He once said, ‘When the odds get too big, I just remember that me plus God equals an invincible minority.’

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Holy Week Meditations 2024: Isaiah’s Servant Songs (1) Isaiah 42:1-9

Some bonus blogs for you over the next few days, since one of my churches here likes to have some Holy Week meditations. The Lectionary Old Testament readings take the so-called ‘Servant Songs’ of Isaiah, and I’m reflecting on them.

I don’t have time for an accompanying video, but here at least is the text I have written.

Introduction to series[i]
Since 1892, when a German Lutheran scholar named Bernhard Duhm published a commentary on Isaiah, the four ‘Servant Songs’ in Isaiah chapters 42, 49, 50, and 52-53 have been regarded as separate works that belong together in their own right and not in the context where they have been placed in the book.

But this was blown apart in 1983 by a Swedish scholar, Tryggve Mettinger. While Mettinger agreed that there were difficulties interpreting the ‘songs’ in their contexts, that was still less problematic than taking them out of context.

He also said they are not strictly ‘songs.’ Granted, they are poetic – but much of this section of Isaiah is poetic.

Further, they are not the only passages to reference the ‘Servant of the Lord’ in Isaiah. It is a common theme.

Another question to ask is, ‘Who exactly is the Servant?’ Answers vary, and that includes varying from passage to passage. It’s a question we’ll be asking each day in these meditations.

Nevertheless, we can see the influences of the ‘Servant’ passages on Jesus. They inform his identity and his ministry, including his baptism and his healing ministry. Considering the relationship of these readings to Jesus will make them relevant to Holy Week.

And from there we need to make this all relevant to us. So with each reading we shall look at the servant, Jesus, and us.

Session 1
Isaiah 42:1-9

In this case, the servant is almost certainly Israel, following on from references in the previous chapter. So we’ll think here about Israel, Jesus, and us. I’m going to break the themes of these verses down into three ‘C’s: Commitment/Call/Covenant.

Firstly, commitment:
It’s clear from the outset that God is committed to his servant:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him

Uphold, delight, my Spirit. All signs of God’s commitment to the servant.

But verse 1 ends with the suggestion that in response to that the servant is committed to God:

and he will bring justice to the nations.

God is committed to Israel in love and in empowering her for the reason he called her. In response, Israel is committed to God’s cause.

At least, that’s the ideal, and we know Israel didn’t live up to it. And thus when we see this in the light of Jesus, we remember that in the New Testament Jesus fulfils everything that Israel was meant to do. He is the True Israel.

So it’s not surprising that we see the same mutual commitment between God and Jesus. At his baptism, the voice from heaven says that God is delighted in Jesus, and the Spirit comes down on him there, just before he begins his public ministry.

In the light of the way we have rightly deduced the doctrine of the Trinity from the Bible, then no wonder the mutual commitment between God and Jesus, involving the work of the Spirit seems logical and even more intense than the relationship between God and Israel. Here is the basis on which Jesus set out on his mission that would eventually lead him to Jerusalem: he is dearly beloved of the Father, and he, even as the Son of God, is also a man empowered by the Holy Spirit.

When we consider ourselves, let us too wonder at the mutuality of the commitment between God and ourselves. We as his servants today are also upheld. God also delights in us – yes, really. Some of us find that hard to believe, but it’s true. He delights in us before we have even done anything for him. His commitment to us is shown in the gift of the Spirit.

Our commitment as servants is only in response to these prior commitments of love by God to us. We do not win God over by his goodness, but we respond to his commitment to us – ultimately seen at the end of this week at the Cross – by committing ourselves to him and the cause of his kingdom.

Secondly, call:
Well, the call is there in that description of our response of commitment:

and he will bring justice to the nations.

But what is that call to bring justice? John Goldingay points out that the Hebrew word mishpat that is translated ‘justice’ here has several shades of meaning: justice, judgment, and decisions[ii].

Therefore Israel was called to bring God’s just decisions to the world. This would not merely mean justice in the terms of condemning sin and sinners, this would also be in declaring what is right, and his grace and mercy, because grace is part of what he has decided and mercy is a part of justice, it is not the opposite of justice.

This was Israel’s calling from the beginning. When God called Abram and began to form a people for himself, it was to bless the nations, not simply enjoy blessing themselves. That Israel failed in this is seen in books like Jonah, which is a satire on Israel’s unwillingness to bless the nations.

Jesus, of course did bring God’s just decisions as he inaugurated the kingdom, taught God’s ways, and offered grace and mercy to sinners.

This becomes the church’s call as God’s servants. While bringing justice will involve declaring to the world what God says is right and wrong, it will not stop at that, or we shall be perceived as harsh and judgmental. It will be accompanied by declaring God’s decision to offer grace and mercy to all who will accept it and respond to him in Christ.

And perhaps we see this note of compassion in the proclamation of justice from the next words in the passage:

2 He will not shout or cry out,
    or raise his voice in the streets.
3 A bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.

The tone is quiet and gentle, not loud and strident. Is that something we can aspire to?

Thirdly, covenant:
In verses 1 to 4 God speaks about the servant. In verses 5 to 9 he speaks to the servant. It’s like he’s saying, ‘You’ve heard what the calling is. Now do you know what it is going to involve?’

He tells Israel that even though he is ‘The Creator of the heavens’ (verse 5) he will take them by the hand (verse 6) – that commitment again – as they set out on their task to

to open eyes that are blind,
    to free captives from prison
    and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. (Verse 7)

And in the midst of that, God also says,

I will keep you and will make you
    to be a covenant for the people
    and a light for the Gentiles (verse 6b).

Covenant. Light to the Gentiles. Israel had broken her covenant, and failed to be a light to the Gentiles, choosing instead to mimic them.

But God renews the call here. He does not toss his people aside. They have failed, but his grace and mercy is extended to them, too.

When we consider Jesus as the Servant, then of course we are not talking the language of failure to serve God at all, and the work opening blind eyes and freeing captives can be clearly seen in his public ministry. Of course, doing so wound up the authorities and helped bring him to Holy Week and the Cross. But these things were the work of the Servant, the True Israel.

But when it comes to us, we like Israel have failed. We are to be a blessing to the nations, but we are not always. We are to bring healing into society, but we are not consistent in doing so. Perhaps some of us think that God will have lost his patience with us after repeatedly disappointing him. If so, then look again at the renewal of the covenant and the mission here. Maybe as we dwell on Jesus the Servant we will hear God renewing his commitment and call to us, assuring us that he has not broken covenant with us. We often think of Holy Week as being about endings: could it also be about n

[i] John Goldingay, Isaiah (New International Biblical Commentary); Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 2001, p237,

[ii] Goldingay, p239.

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