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Episodes
Tuesday Sep 06, 2016
Tuesday Sep 06, 2016
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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Monday Sep 05, 2016
Monday Sep 05, 2016
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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Friday Sep 02, 2016
Friday Sep 02, 2016
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:
- 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,
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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,
- 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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Saturday Aug 27, 2016
Saturday Aug 27, 2016
Part 44 - John 10:16–18
Other flocks – the Gentiles.
Jesus goes on from talking about himself as a Shepherd to give a very clear, if not very long, indication that he knew that his word would go out through all the world. By ‘other sheep not of this sheepfold’ he clearly meant those who were not of the ancient people of God, the Jews. Us! The Gentiles (though perhaps a few ethnic Jews may hear or read this. If so – welcome.) This is perhaps the clearest indication we have in all the Gospels that Jesus knew his words and their effects would spread through all the world. Because he only had a man’s body he was limited to how many people he could actually contact and influence himself. After his death and resurrection his people would be able to do ‘greater works’ than he could do because they would spread through all the world in ever widening circles.
There was an explosion of activity after his death and the giving of the Holy Spirit all across the then known world. An Ethiopian returned to Ethiopia with the Good News; the apostle Thomas almost certainly reached south India with it; Paul probably reached the furthest western end of the Mediterranean area, to Spain, with it; and these are only the ones we know about.
What does it all say to us? The divide between Jew and Gentile that was the subject of what Jesus actually said is not likely to be of much significance to us. But what about all the other divides that people are so good at making between themselves and other people who are slightly different from them? The most obvious difference is between black and white and all the differing shades of brown in between. The divide between rich and poor can be just as deep if less obvious. Between accents. Between ethnic backgrounds. Between those who live one side of the tracks and those who live the other side. Between this cultural background and that one – even sometimes between generations. Between those who wear these sorts of clothes and those sorts. We have many, many ways of dividing people up and, to its deep shame, the Christian church has sometimes been at the forefront in drawing the distinctions. Yet all are clearly wrong in the eyes of Jesus. He said he had other sheep from the other side of a very deep divide. He promised to bring them in, that they would listen to his voice, and be part of his one flock. We might say, in a common English idiom, that ‘that is all that matters’. Particularly at the end of the day ‘that is all that will matter’.
The clear challenge to us is to accept all manner of people into our fellowship and friendship. If you live in a situation where there are long held and deeply rooted divisions among people that is not easy. I was going to go on to say that it is easy for those of us who do not face those particular problems to talk like this, but I wonder. Do any of us live in situations really free of divisions? Or is it just that some of the divisions are much less obvious, more subtle, harder to see? Think carefully about it – for yourself, where you are, not for other people.
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Saturday Aug 20, 2016
Saturday Aug 20, 2016
Part 43 - John 10:11-15
I am the good shepherd
Now we come to one of the most well-known things Jesus said. He compares himself to a shepherd: a good shepherd. From what he goes on to say he uses the word ‘good’ mainly because he is prepared to die for the sheep. This is the first time Jesus has made any allusion to his death in John’s gospel.
We have to be careful here. We may be so used to thinking of the leaders of Christians as shepherds - which is what pastor means - that we tend to think of Jesus here as simply the top shepherd, the boss shepherd, but Jesus is using the imagery here to emphasize his relationship to his people. He even equates his relationship to his people - that is to you and me - to his relationship to his father, to God. That is amazing! Once again we are seeing the difference between their way of thinking, dominated by the significance to them of the small group to which they belonged, and our (Western) way of thinking where the individual is much more important than anyone else or any group of people. We are, of course, fully entitled to our culture and there is nothing much we can do to escape from it but we must make every effort to grasp hold of the full import of this teaching of Jesus. We have seen it again and again in many different sorts of comments and metaphors throughout John’s Gospel.
Jesus says ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ and then goes on immediately to say that he will lay down his life for the sheep. This leads us to some important made up words for the way the Gospel should be presented. First we get ‘Christocentric’ which clearly emphasises that our Gospel must be centred on Christ. Then we get Cruco-Christocentric which says that our Gospel must be centred on the Crucified Christ. This is important. We must not place the emphasis on the Social Jesus by seeking to emulate him in his many good works - important though those are and our imitation of them is; we must not place the emphasis on his work in outreaching to other people which we copy in evangelism; not even on his divinity as that would lead us to try to emphasise his Glory in pageants of glorious worship and praise. No! Our sole emphasis is to be on the great work that he accomplished on the Cross, for our redemption, our salvation, our growth in purity and holiness, and our eventual glorification with him in the eternal kingdom. There is nothing in what he did that we can emulate at all. He alone did those things and achieved those purposes. That may seem to be an almost useless abstraction. Should we not concentrate on doing things to the glory of God and the benefit of his Kingdom? No! Our central core emphasis must always be on Christ and him crucified. We must be Cruco-Christocentric. Only Jesus, his death and the resurrection that validated that death, are to lie at the centre of our thinking and all our activity. Only then will our motivations be right and acceptable to the Lord God.
Then will we be good and obedient sheep at the centre of his flock, following his guiding, living the sort of lives as we go in and out to the Kingdom pastures that are the best and greatest of all lives to live. Note here how much in this Gospel the emphasis falls not so much on sin, though it is a consideration, but on the importance of the continuing life that is opened up for the Christian as they set out to follow him. Jesus was always looking forward to his follower’s futures, not deeply concerned about their pasts. His was an orientation to the future not the past. Even to the woman caught in adultery he said “go now and leave your life of sin”. As we saw last time .‘Jesus is the gate’; he is about us going in and out to find pasture - it is our continuing lives that are now the prime concern of our most gracious Lord. To keep them strong we must always centre and focus all our beings on Christ and him crucified. We must be Cruco-Christocentric in everything.
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Saturday Aug 13, 2016
Saturday Aug 13, 2016
Part 42 - John 10:7
Jesus is the Gate.
When we move on to the second picture in this sequence on Shepherds in v 7 - 10 we find that Jesus says he is the Gate. In fact he says I AM the Gate for the sheep, one of the seven I AM statements with a description following. This one is often overlooked because it is so close to the next I AM statement – I AM the Good Shepherd – which is both more striking and more easily understood. In fact it is quite surprising that he does not call himself the ‘gatekeeper’ that he mentions in the previous verses. Perhaps the Holy Spirit is the ‘gatekeeper’.
What Jesus did say about himself was “I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture … I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” He is clearly moving towards his striking statement in chapter 14 “No one comes to the Father except through me.” There is only one way to a full life worth living and Jesus is that way.
Neither the word ‘focus’ nor the word ‘centre’ appear in the New Testament. It is this statement here that has to stand in place of them. Jesus is the focus of all that goes on in the life of a Christian, a true Christian who follows Jesus. He is there when we go out and he extends the ‘going out’ metaphor to include grazing in the green pastures that he leads us to. He is also there when we ‘come in’ to be saved. All that happens in a Christian’s life, or a Christian church, is to be centered and focused on him.
That is not quite as easy as it might appear to be. People can invent hundreds of ways to concentrate on something else other than Jesus. We can emphasize being good, being regular at church, being careful to evangelize at every possible or inappropriate opportunity, enjoying all the most exciting special gifts of the Spirit, going to every big event that a great many people are at that we ever hear of, and so on.
But if you think about those things, what might you find? Being good is more about the individual’s smug goodness than anything else; being regular at church only demonstrates to other people the consistent loyalty of the person; evangelizing at every opportunity is another way of holding oneself up in front of other people; enjoying all the special gifts of the Spirit is simply exciting; going to special events is an attempt to get an extra jag of spirituality; and so we could go on. There is virtually no human activity which cannot be used for the holding up of a person to an admiring world!
The only thing that should possibly compete with Jesus for the Christian’s attention is the Bible, the Word of God.
If we are to enjoy the rich presence of Jesus throughout our daily living we must concentrate on him. We can do many other things to keep ourselves occupied and to help other people but one, and only one, person and no thing must stay at the centre and the focus of our thinking and our whole lives. That person is Jesus.
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Saturday Aug 06, 2016
Saturday Aug 06, 2016
Part 41 - John 10:3
Who are the true shepherds?
We come now to the passage about shepherds. The NIV labels all of 10: 1 – 18 as ‘the good shepherd and his sheep’. But any even half critical look at this passage will leave one puzzled by its apparent inconsistencies. That is because it is actually four different passages put together because they all feature shepherds even although they are about very different uses of a shepherding metaphor (notice too how the ‘Pharisees’ of v1 have become ‘Jews’ of v19 suggesting that Jesus did not say all this one just one occasion). They are:
- v1 – 5 - - who are the acceptable sub-shepherds of the Lord’s people?
- v7 – 10 - Jesus is the Gate who controls the lives of the shepherds and the sheep.
- v11 – 13 - Jesus is the Good Shepherd who is prepared to give his life for the sheep.
- v14 – 18 - who are the sheep in the flock the Good Shepherd cares for?
They are closely linked to the story in the previous chapter about the blind man who was healed, which ran into so much opposition from the Pharisees because Jesus had carried out the healing on a Sabbath day. Jesus said in that story that they were blind to the realities of what the Lord’s work was really all about.
Now he goes on to say they are like thieves and robbers who break into a sheepfold to steal some sheep. This was a very challenging thing to say because of the many places in the Old Testament where many prophecies promise bad things for shepherds who fail to look after their flocks properly.
Typical of these is Ezekiel 34 where we read, “Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, … Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.”
So, when Jesus talks about shepherds who break into the overnight sheepfold to get some sheep he is clearly referring back to passages like that. No wonder he wasn’t popular amongst the leaders of the people in Jerusalem!
When he goes on to talk about the sheep following the shepherd he is talking about the standard Middle Eastern practice of the shepherd leading the sheep, as opposed to the Western practice of driving them from behind, usually with sheep-dogs. He also talks about the sheep following the known voice of their shepherd. The voice here refers to a particular call or whistle that each shepherd will have had. The difference arises because the Eastern shepherds lived with the sheep so that as soon as they were born they saw him and heard him. They grew up as close to him as to their mother sheep. They knew what he looked like and sounded like.
The whole picture fits the situation Jesus is describing very well. The shepherds that were ‘thieves and robbers’ were the Pharisees who were so concerned about the religious detail of Sabbath observance but not interested in the wonderful miracle that had given the man his sight. Or, to bring it into our day, those pastors (the very word means shepherds) who consider their job to be just a job and who have no real interest in the people they are supposed to be looking after. They just want to be looked up to. They like to be able to tell people what to do. They like to preach without contradiction from high in their pulpits. It might be it is one particular set of character traits, not very desirable ones, that take people into the ministry.
Beware of such people. Avoid them if you can. You have this word of Jesus to justify doing so
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Saturday Jul 30, 2016
Saturday Jul 30, 2016
Part 40 - John 9:39
Who can see?
This verse is one of the most remarkable things Jesus ever said. Here it is, ““For judgement I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”
It is very reminiscent of the episode in the book of Numbers (Ch. 23) where Balaam and his donkey encounter the angel of God with a drawn sword in his hand barring the way. The joke in that story is that the famous Seer could not see what his donkey could see. We may well ask of this comment of Jesus – who could not see, and who could see? Who, in John’s mind and therefore in his selection of stories about things Jesus said, is it that cannot see?
The answer, I think, is not that obvious. There are two basic reasons why people start to follow Jesus. One, the one preachers like the most, is that someone comes under conviction of sin, deep moral sin, and turns with a leap of faith to the Savior on the cross who died for our sins. What the preachers often forget is that a jump of faith from next to no knowledge of things spiritual is rare; more commonly the people who react to that sort of call to repentance and thus to conversion have a background in Sunday School or regular church attendance that has brought them to that point.
The second reason folk come to faith is from a general feeling that there must be a better way to live than the one they have been living and that following Jesus promises to be that better way. That is why this previously blind guy came to faith. There is no hint of him being conscious of sin, or being in any way sinful beyond the usual average sort of sinfulness we are all guilty of. He comes into contact with Jesus and clearly is not only healed of his blindness but deeply attracted to this guy who has healed him, even before he knows who he is.
And this is the common position of most of the people John tells us stories about. Nicodemus was exploring what this new teacher was saying, presumably from a feeling of inadequacy he had about the standard teaching of the spiritual leaders in Jerusalem; the woman by the well seems to have been happily living with her rather unethical lifestyle until she met the man who seemed to be pointing her to something better; only in the story of the cripple by the pool of Siloam is there any hint of sin – when Jesus tells him to go and sin no more.
The Pharisees that Jesus was implicitly condemning thought that all that mattered was being morally good. Tales were told by some Rabbis that there were different types of Pharisees: some walked with exaggerated humility, some were so anxious not to look at a woman they kept their heads bowed and ended up walking into walls, some were only seeking material rewards, some were frightened of punishment and so on.
Jesus said, “For judgement I came into this world,” implying that it was, and is, his very presence in the world that led to an automatic judgement through people’s reaction to him.
Of course, not everyone in the world has met Jesus or heard about him. How those people will be treated in the final judgement is not all that clear in the Bible, partly at least because we cannot tell to what extent all the frequent talk about hell fire and other undesirable ends is metaphor and which is to be taken as real actual fact. But it is no concern of ours how, and who, will be judged in that sort of way. Our job is to be concerned about ourselves. What really matters is that we should follow Jesus, ourselves, now. We have been blind, now we see.
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Saturday Jul 23, 2016
Saturday Jul 23, 2016
Part 39 - John 9:38
A journey to faith
This chapter 9 contains the wonderful story of the blind man’s journey to faith. It gives us one of the best of all the stories of the Gospels rated as stories and he stands out as one of the most interesting people of all those that Jesus met. It is too long a passage for me to read it all out so do find a Bible and read it for yourself.
He is quite a character this blind man. Being able to see for the first time will have been quite a difficult experience. Mark tells us about another man who saw for the first time and says that at first he confused men and trees. Only a day or two later this man John tells us about gets hauled in front of a group of learned men who try to trip him up with their questions. But he is having none of it. He answers back in a very clever but straightforward, blunt and truthful way. He is careful not to say anything that can make matters worse for Jesus. He minimizes the number of things that Jesus did on the Sabbath as much as possible. He does not implicate him in anything he thought to be dangerous.
Through it all he comes to faith. Like many people he comes through a journey taking several days. There is a tendency in many quarters to think that coming to faith ought to happen in an instant, on one occasion, but it is not so for many people. Like this guy we may get there only in days, or weeks, months or even years. Our faith is no less valid for that; in fact it may even be stronger.
We can trace where he had got to on his journey by the things he calls Jesus. In verse 11 he says ‘the man called Jesus’. In verse 17 he says ‘he is a prophet’. In verse 33 he is ‘ this man from God’. In verse 38, having been told that Jesus is ‘the Son of Man’ he says ‘Lord, I believe’.
In it all he demonstrates three of the major things Jesus said about himself. These are: I am the light of the world; I am the way, the truth and the life; and I am the resurrection and the life.
The most obvious of these is the first – with a twist. It is all very well Jesus being the light of the world, but what about us? Is he also the light of the individual believer? Yes, he is, and never more so than to this blind man to whom he gave sight. That will have been light flooding into his life not only spiritually but also very physically. And, of course, that is a picture for us, for you, for me. John has recorded how Jesus brought light to the lives of Nicodemus, the learned man, to the woman at the well, the country woman, to the cripple by the Bethesda pool, and to many people on a hillside in Galilee. But this one trumps them all. No one got more light and made better use of it than this guy.
The second thing this story illustrates is the value of truth. In the often forgotten verses that follow 3:16 John says “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” This guy came to the light, willingly and eagerly. We don’t know what his background was but the way he carried himself after he entered the light suggests it was very good. He pursued the truth. I think we can assume that he was also good at finding the way and the life in the days and years after this encounter he had with the Lord of the Universe.
The third thing is perhaps a little more difficult to see. When challenged about the things he was saying he said, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. … Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” That is he said, “look at the facts; he opened my eyes; you can argue all you like but I know what is what because he opened my eyes.” Ultimately if we are challenged about our faith we too must go back to the facts. Two in particular are important. One is the resurrection of Jesus. It stands there in history, a better attested fact than the existence of Julius Caesar, or 1066 (sorry, those of you who are not British – it is the date of the defeat of the Old English by the Normans, the last successful invasion of these islands by a conqueror). But the resurrection can be challenged and is challenged by many people because it seems so unlikely and happened so long ago. The other fact that stands in our history – if we have set out to follow Jesus – is the effect it has had in our lives.
A lovely story is told of a Welsh miner who was converted and began to follow Jesus. Some of his fellow workers teased him rather mercilessly. One day they asked him in jest, “you don’t really believe that Jesus changed water into wine, do you?” The man’s reply was, “ I don’t really know whether Jesus turned water into wine,; I wasn’t there. But this I do know, in my house Jesus changed beer into furniture.” That refers to the second half of what Jesus said. If we can’t be convincing enough about the resurrection before an unbeliever we can be about the second part. Jesus said, “I am the life” and that ‘life’ can be demonstrated in our life.
Jesus was light, truth and life to the man who had been blind. He is still light, truth and life to us if we let him.
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Saturday Jul 16, 2016
Saturday Jul 16, 2016
Part 38 - John 9:32
Consequences
The first few verses of this chapter are very interesting as they are one of the two places where Jesus comments on the relationship between sin and suffering, or rather the lack of relationship between them. The disciples of Jesus thought, like most other people in those days, that if someone was suffering as this man was this had to be the effect of sin. Since he had been blind from birth it could not be his sin so whose was it? His parents seemed to be the obvious answer.
No, said Jesus. It doesn’t work like that. In what he went on to say I don’t think he meant that the man was blind just so that the works of God could be displayed in him. Rather he was saying that since he is blind it is possible for those works to be displayed in him.
The other place where Jesus says something which has much the same implication is Luke chapter 13: 1 – 5 where he says that neither the Galileans who had their blood mixed with their sacrifices nor the people of Jerusalem on whom a wall fell suffered because they had sinned.
In all these cases people were assuming that they were being punished for something they had done. In other words that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Or, to put it another way, that cause and effect operate in the moral and social sphere much the same way as they do in the physical. Their misunderstanding is excusable because a great deal of the Old Testament is written on that assumption. But not all of it! Israel, as a nation had to go into exile in Assyria because of the wickedness of the people.
But Job did not suffer because he was a sinner. In fact most of the book of Job is taken up with an argument between Job and his friends. They say look at all these bad things that have happened to you – you must be bad. Job is occupied with saying ‘no, I am not’. We know, but they didn’t, that what had happened to Job was not a punishment, if anything it was a test. In the end the word from the Lord to Job is roughly speaking ‘I know what I am doing, you don’t. How dare you argue with me?’ Cause and effect do not operate in the moral world.
Not much has changed since. The disciples of Jesus thought the same way. So they asked the question, ‘we can see the effect, so who was the cause of this man’s blindness.’ ‘No’, said Jesus, 'it does not work like that.’
Not much has changed since then. Every time someone confronted with someone’s suffering says ‘ they didn’t deserve that!’ or ‘why has God allowed that to happen to them (or me)?’ or something like that they are implicitly assuming that good things happen to good people and bad things only happen to bad people. And what Jesus said and what the whole book of Job is saying is ‘no, it doesn’t work like that!’
Unfortunately the prevalence of that line of thinking, often perpetrated by well meaning folk trying to encourage other people, causes untold damage to the faith of those who believe them and swallow their teaching. We were at a school for the children of missionaries where many of the staff encouraged the children to think their parents were safe on the roads because the Lord would look after them since they were good people. Those staff had a real problem when the mother of some children in the school was killed by a falling stone as they walked one of the nearby paths.
We have to accept, as the book of Job teaches, that the world that the Lord created is a basically chaotic place, or more accurately, as we look at it it is a basically chaotic place. The Lord knows it is not a chaotic place because he controls it, but we do not have any knowledge of what his plans are so, for us, it is a chaotic place. That is a great mystery, but it is far better to recognize that so that, when we get caught on the wrong side of some chaos, we do not despair and lose our faith.
Why the world should be a chaotic world we do not know. The only comment I can offer is, that if we stop and think about it, a completely ordered, controlled world would be a very boring place to live. No sooner do people in the most favored countries and societies find themselves living in a pleasant ordered world than they start going off looking for excitement, a hint of danger, and even some risk on holiday! I suppose some people like a completely ordered boring existence, but certainly not everyone does.
Of course, it is tough if we are on the wrong side of the difficult things of this world but that is the price we must pay for an interesting, sometimes dangerous, sometimes painful world. Jesus makes it very clear that this is our world. We must learn to enjoy it – even when what happens isn’t exactly to our liking. It is quite clear from the rest of this wonderful story of the blind man that he had not lost his strength of character, his wisdom, his spiritual sense just because he was blind.
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