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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 50

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 50 - John 12:3
Mary’s worship

Now we come to a quite amazing episode: “Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair.” Amazing because up to this point John has recorded many things that Jesus did and said, nothing about what anybody else did of any consequence. Everything flowed out from Jesus; nothing flowed in to him. It is Mary who breaks through in a spontaneous demonstration of an act of pure loyalty to Jesus. Of the two sisters it is the one who sat at his feet drinking in the words and ideas that he said who carries out this wonderful act of dedication. She is a good example for us - it is only as we spend much time learning from the Master that we will get to the point of true devotion to him, and as we shall see in a moment that is all important.

All four gospels record an anointing of Jesus by a woman. It is likely that this happened on 2 occasions. We have to remember that these are the first written accounts of what must originally have been verbal stories told about Jesus passed on from the people who knew him to the next generation. In this case we have 4 written accounts of what are probably 2 incidents: here, and in Luke 7, Mark 14 and Matthew 26. The one in Luke 7 almost certainly refers to a different occasion because although there are some similarities there are also some considerable differences. But the one recorded here and those in Mark 14 and Matthew 26 in spite of some differences, probably all refer to the same event. The main difference in these accounts is in what was anointed: head or feet. Most probably both head and feet were anointed. The two accounts in Mark and Matthew emphasize that it was Jesus’ head that was anointed thus emphasizing his royal standing as the King of the Kingdom. John emphasizes the anointing of the feet of Jesus as he is more interested in his humility. John has moved the event forward to before the entry into Jerusalem to suit his theological requirements rather than stay with the strict historical order. He is intent on telling us about what Mary did before he tells us about Jesus washing the disciples feet.

John seems to have been always more concerned about the order of meaning of the various passages in his Gospel than the historical order so he puts Mary’s action ahead of the very similar washing of the disciple’s feet by Jesus. We have to ask the obvious question - why? The more obvious and natural thing to do would have been to use the historical order and tell us first about the washing of the disciples feet by Jesus and then to tell us about this anointing by Mary as an act of worship. They are probably in the order they are because it is not the obvious order! The obvious order would have highlighted the act of service carried out by Jesus and therefore as something we should imitate. The unobvious order John actually used throws the emphasis of both events on Jesus. Jesus is the target of the act of worship by Mary and he is the one who carries out the act of humble service in the foot-washing incident. As always John has sought to put Jesus first and make him the focus of each event. The foot washing by Jesus is often taken in both writing and preaching to be mainly an act for imitation, but that was not how John wanted us to see it. He wanted to emphasise Jesus as Lord, and as a very special sort of Lord. We too should always place Jesus first in all our thinking - not to let even the most worthy of considerations, like concern for the poor usurp our prime focus on him. That is why this episode emphasizes the over-riding significance of Jesus above all else.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to understand what Mary’s motives were. She did not know Jesus would die so soon. She did not know he would die for many years to come. Was it an act of pure worship using what was perhaps the most expensive thing she possessed as a token of homage to him? With so much strong perfume being used some must have got onto his clothes and he would have smelt good right through the ordeals of the following week. That would have been a real encouragement to him.

The basic point in this account is to compare the importance of the worship of Jesus with the importance of caring for the poor. Perhaps rather surprisingly it is the former that is the more important. There are many who would challenge that order of priorities. Yet it is so. When you go overseas to a country that needs much help, both spiritually and practically, it is the evangelicals with their determined focus on the Lord and his Word, just like Mary, who are the active ones in all spheres. The more liberal wing of the church is conspicuous by its absence!

For us it is a great challenge to be always prepared to step out for our Lord in outrageous consecration.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 49

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 49 - John 11:44
Unbind him and let him go.

The NIV that I have been using adds in extra words in this verse 44 that have no equivalent in the original Greek. I prefer to use the shorter, more accurate and more significant wording of the NRSV, “unbind him and let him go”. Although John was clearly applying the words to the situation in front of Jesus we may see some deeper meanings in what he said. John probably intended that these were to be seen. We can think about how these refer to Lazarus, to Jesus and to us.

Lazarus must have been an amazing sight as he tottered out of the tomb. With his feet bound together and doubtful vision through the bandages round his head he will have had a fair old struggle to make any progress. No doubt he was delighted to find he was back to life with his sisters. In the beginning of the next chapter we find him feasting with Jesus. What an honour! He will have been less pleased to find himself the centre of a large crowd of sightseers shortly after. Then he had to hide away because he heard plans were being made to kill him as well as Jesus just because he was attracting that crowd. And, of course, he still had to die again – poor chap.

When Jesus called him out of the tomb he said, “let him go”. Jesus passed no comment on his spiritual state. He did not say ‘go and sin no more’ or anything similar. We may conclude that all that had happened to Lazarus, his fatal illness, was one of those things that may happen to anybody for no apparent reason. Life seems to be completely chaotic to us. Most of the time we cannot understand why a good and gracious God should allow the things that happen to us. We just have to accept that these are his characteristics and this is the way the world he has given us to live in works.

Much of what happened to Lazarus seems to be a forerunner of what was shortly going to happen to Jesus. But there is also one interesting contrast, which John may well have meant us to see. Lazarus left death behind but not his grave wrappings. When Jesus rose from the dead, not to his old life to continue for a few more years as Lazarus had to do, but to new life, resurrected life, he left his grave clothes behind. John records that when Peter went into the tomb where Jesus had been laid, “He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen”. Jesus had, so to speak, melted out through the grave wrappings. He was still Jesus, recognizably the same yet different. Even those who knew him well struggled to recognize him after his resurrection yet were quite sure it was him. He would eat with his disciples shortly after but he would no longer be in fear of his life. He did not have to hide, as Lazarus did. He was in his resurrected glory.

And then there is the message to us. ‘Unbind him and let him go’ can refer to us too. We have been unbound when we met Jesus just as Lazarus was. Paul uses a clothing image writing to the Colossians. “Put off the old self” he says, strongly suggesting an unclothing. He goes on to say, “clothe yourselves” with various good things. And, as an overcoat, put on love over everything else. And when we have done so at conversion or, pictorially, at baptism we are to return to the world to live our lives in the same place and among the same people as before but differently, as I am sure Lazarus did after his death experience. Jesus will ‘unbind us’ from our former lives of sin and pointlessness and send us on our ways to better and greater things.

What a wonderful story this culminating sign-miracle of John’s Gospel is. Jesus conquered death for himself and for Lazarus – and for us.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 48

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 48 - John 11:35
Jesus Wept

That is famously the shortest verse in the Bible but it is far from being the easiest to understand. The obvious and ultimately unanswerable question is: why did Jesus cry? The thought of the Son of God, an integral part of God, with tears streaming down his cheeks so much that other people saw them and commented on them is amazing. But so it was. Here in no particular order, each behind a single identifying word, are seven possibilities:

1. Annoyance that Martha, Mary and their friends were making such a fuss;
2. Grief; that people’s ultimate destination is death;
3. Solidarity in his mind with the grief that was going on all around him;
4. Anger at the demonstration of the work of Satan and the power of sin and death in front of him;
5. Beginning of his great conflict with the evil powers rampant in the world;
6. Foreboding at what the death of Lazarus reminded him of – the far worse things that would happen to him in his near future;
7. Strain from the stress and pressure of what he knew lay in front of him;

My first thought was to suggest that you should try to put them in some sort of order from the least to the most significant but, on second thoughts, that is probably too hard to do if you are listening to this and do not have the various words in front of you. The description of his attitude in the immediately preceding verses, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled” certainly suggests that the trigger was what he saw in the human reactions going on around him. The Greek word for ‘deeply moved’ does not suggest compassion but rather anger.

I would discount the first one on my list: annoyance at the sister’s fuss. I think he would have accepted that as the natural expected reaction in their culture and not a wrong thing to do.

The next two focus on grief; the first grief that death is always the end of human life is less likely than the next. That he was acting in solidarity with those around him is much more likely. He was human and we tend to pick up the attitudes of those around us, particularly if we know them and like them.

The next two, both concerned with the ultimate conflict with evil powers; the first in a general way, the second about the beginning of his role in that conflict must surely have played a part.

The last two both refer to his personal internal reaction to what it must have reminded him of so strongly: his own approaching passion and death. Sometimes men have shown the ability to approach the most appalling deaths with unflinching fortitude, as he was to do, but that is not to say that they have not been severely affected by what was to come even if they succeeded in hiding that from other people. Perhaps we are seeing here just a little bit of what it meant to him to die for us - a beginning of his struggle in the garden when we are told that, “being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”

The writer to the Hebrews gathers together these thoughts when he says, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are” and “he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”

What a wonderful Saviour and Lord we have. Think on these things. Jesus wept!

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 47

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 47 - John 11:25
The resurrection and the life.

From tackling the whole question of the real truth of this whole story in the last study it is a great relief to move on to this, perhaps the greatest of all the I AM statements. It was Martha who started Jesus off on this line of thought when she said, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” referring to her brother. She was reflecting a common, but not universal idea of those days. (Paul used the disagreement over resurrection when he was before the Sanhedrin to cause an ‘uproar’ and so disrupt matters that they forgot to continue to question him.) The idea was based on the verse in Daniel 12 which says, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” together with the scene in Ezekiel 37 where in the valley of the dry bones, representing the people of Israel “when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land”. What they certainly were not expecting was that one man would be resurrected ahead of everybody else.

They thought, as those Old Testament quotes suggest, that there would be one general resurrection at the end of time. What Jesus was saying in his simple little 7 word sentence was that he, alone, was the resurrection – that is that he would represent all of mankind and, so to speak, go ahead of them into the new world that lay ahead for everyone after death, for good or ill. This world would be a new revitalized earth, nothing to do with the clouds and harps of popular imagination. We gather from other scriptures that this is not entered instantaneously after death, but only after a pause of which the details are not very clear.

What Jesus said was therefore a promise, a great promise. When he adds that he is “the life” he is also promising that he will be with us and in charge of the time from now to then.
If he had been asked to explain what exactly he meant he might have said something like this: ‘when I say your brother will rise again I mean now, not at some date in the distant future long after he, and you, are dead. The resurrection is a date in that far future when the whole earth will be revitalized and all those who follow me will enjoy life in this new earth with new bodies. I am not going to tell you all the details of when that will be, what life will then be like, or what you will look like, or anything like that. It is far better for you not to know such details, which you would only think about, and worry about. I am going to go ahead of you very soon. I will die and be resurrected as a representative of what will happen. I will then be able to prepare the situation for you all ahead of the final great day. Of course there is a gap between now and then while you continue to live on this earth and then after you die before the day of resurrection. I will be with you every moment of the way through that time. I am not going to protect you from all the ups and downs of this life but I will be with you, at your side. So I can say of myself that I am the resurrection for that final day and I am the life you should live now.’ and just to make sure of his right to say these things he announces himself once again with the I AM formula.

“Do you believe this?”, Jesus asked Martha. “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” We have much more reason to believe than she had – the crucifixion, the resurrection, the ascension, the giving of the Spirit, the history of the church and our own experience.

Can you imagine the size of the smile Jesus gave Martha? And he gives you, when you join in?

Rejoice in that smile and let the power of what he said - The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die – thrill you through and through.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 46

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 46 - John 11:1-44
Coloured glass?

This study cannot be called a gem, or a jewel of any sort. More like a piece of coloured glass but there is a necessary question to ask if we are going to be honest! Did it really happen? Did Lazarus rise from the dead? Was he really dead when Jesus called him out of the tomb? We might think this harder to believe than the resurrection of Jesus because Jesus was God-man while Lazarus was only a man. John makes this the culminating sign-miracle of his Gospel, more difficult, deeper, more challenging than any of the others.
Lazarus had been in the cave for four days when Jesus arrived. If we apply modern scientific thinking to this situation we ask whether he could have survived in a coma for that long, without any water and a linen cloth wrapped round his face. The answer is that it would be unlikely but not totally impossible. But Jesus said he was dead and we would incline strongly to accept his word for it.

The natural and the supernatural are in complete collision here. Of course, they are right through the Bible so this is only a situation that highlights the problem. The natural, which is all the scientist is prepared to look at, says he must have survived even although John does not record him wobbling when he came out of the cave, as he must have done, and says that Jesus told the onlookers to unwrap him when he would have wanted a drink of water above all else. The supernatural says that it was as John describes it. Lazarus was dead, and had been for four or five days. Jesus was either able to reverse the inevitable decay or on hearing of the problem many days earlier was able to stop the decay so that Lazarus could have his life force reinstated and step out of the tomb.

The fundamental question is then – does the supernatural exist? And is there any reason to think it pervades the scripture of the Bible from beginning to end?

I think it does exist and is evident in the Bible in a way that it is not anywhere else. Why? I don’t know what the ‘official’ answers to that question might be but I will advance this for you to think about. The underlying and over-riding principle of all of scripture is Love. It is consistently held up for our consideration as the highest of all the virtues. It is the prime attribute of God himself. Deuteronomy 7: 7 – 9 says of Israel, “The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.”

At a very different level it is love that brings a man and a woman together. Why do any particular pair fall in love? He could undoubtedly find a more beautiful and more intelligent wife. She could find a bigger, stronger, more handsome fellow. But they fall in love with each other. That is something the scientist cannot analyse. Their mutual attraction is supernatural – above and beyond what is natural.

In every other sign-miracle John records Jesus did not know the people involved before hand. But on this occasion he did. It says, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus”. No wonder he was able to do something far transcending the natural and carry out a supernatural action on this man Lazarus.

I hope you find that argument convincing. Love, the sort of love the Bible talks about, more akin to the love of a parent for a child than a man and a woman for each other, is the driving force of the Bible story from first to last. Learn to know it; to treasure it; to show it in your dealings with other people.

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Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 45

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 45 - John 10:24
Believe?

The people listening to Jesus asked “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” What Jesus had said was not enough – as he points out in his reply when he says “I did tell you, but you do not believe”. Someone has wisely said ‘Jesus always gives just enough of himself to make faith possible, and yet he always hides enough of himself to make faith necessary’. What does Jesus say here to suggest how they should step past the difficulty?

First three things they should do:

1. Listen to his voice as his ‘sheep’ did. If we always put the voice of Jesus at the centre of all our concerns we will slowly and surely come to believe more deeply and more securely,
2. Jesus said he would know them. I well remember on my honeymoon looking across at my brand new wife as we walked the winter streets of Edinburgh together and wondering who she really was – did I really know her at all? More than 50 years later I know her far better than I did then but there are still hidden depths to discover. That is our task with Jesus.
3. So we walk with Jesus. The text says ‘follow me’ but it is perhaps better to think of it as ‘walking in step with Jesus’ to borrow and slightly change the expression the NIV uses in Galatians 5: 25. Walking with people is one of the very best ways to get to know them.
   

Then, according to Jesus, three things will happen:

1. We will be given ‘eternal life’. That is deep, lasting, satisfying life starting now and rolling on forever through the part of it we have some idea about – life in this world – to the part of which we have no real idea - the life after this life. That life in this world will be deep and satisfying. It will not depend on our actual physical existence, which may be good or bad, but it will be a good life whatever the detail may look like.
2. We will ‘never perish’. Of course one day we shall die, but in a real deep heavenly sense we shall not cease, we will not perish – and then just for emphasis Jesus says it again in a slightly different form,
3. We are firmly held in the hand of Jesus, or if we prefer to think of it differently, in the Hand of Father God. We may think we can walk away if we want to do so and, in many ways, we can. But it won’t be God’s doing. He will hold on to us forever.

So believing is not easy, but it is always possible. Possible for you and possible for me. Jesus, and behind him God the Father, has created us with the wonderful power to believe. Let us do so – and rejoice.

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