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Episodes
Saturday Feb 11, 2017
Saturday Feb 11, 2017
Part 87 - John 20:17
The ultimate Purpose
Mary eventually recognised Jesus. Her initial failure to do so is in line with what happened when other people met the risen Jesus. Luke reports that the couple who met him on the road to Emmaus also failed to recognise him, at first. It seems that he was at one and the same time both recognisably the same Jesus and distinctly different.
This ties in with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: 42 - 44, “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (I find this very encouraging. Perhaps we will be raised not with the bodies in which we die which may be old and bent and wizened but with something a bit more like the way we were in our prime!)
Matthew says that the women, presumably Mary as here, clasped his feet as they fell to the ground in adoring worship. But Jesus, although he might be touched as happened with some others, did not want to be held. That would have suggested a too permanent relationship when he was due to ascend back to his Father. And his ascension was a vital part of the journey he was on. He had left his heavenly home, descended to earth to be a man as well as God, completed his work in his death on the Cross, announced ‘it is finished’ and was now on his way back to the right hand (the place of honour) next to his Father. There it would be as the writer to the Hebrews says in his 8: 1, 9: 24 - 25, “We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary … now to appear for us in God’s presence. … to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”
This is the ultimate purpose for which Christ came and died - that he might make continual intercession for us in the judicial throne room of heaven and we should have total confidence in him. Nothing must hinder that, not even the heartfelt worship of Mary, the most faithful disciple of them all. Let us rejoice and be glad on what has been done and is being done for us - even now.
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Saturday Feb 04, 2017
Saturday Feb 04, 2017
Part 86 - John 20:8
Strange believing
This is a strange verse. “He saw and believed”. What did he see and believe? Surely not just an empty tomb and a few clothes lying there. We must think a bit more deeply of what must have been involved - reading between the lines as we call it.
Perhaps first and most certain is that not all that was said was recorded in these few words that we have here. Mary Magdalene was not alone when she saw the stone had been rolled back. John concentrates on her because he wants to tell us about her encounter with the ‘gardener’, but the other Gospel-writers tell us there were others there as well.
(It is at first sight strange that there seems to be so much variation in the four accounts of the events at the tomb. These are eyewitness reports and each eyewitness remembered and related the things that struck them most forcibly when they were asked what happened - as eyewitnesses do. The basic stories are in agreement about all the main events. Only the details are different. There is no point in trying to make one story out of all the accounts. They wrote with a different emphasis from what ours would be. They were more interested in the theology of what happened than in exact correspondence with all that actually happened. Let us concentrate on their theology and smile at their differences.)
What was i saying? Oh, yes, about what must have happened which was not recorded. There must have been much talk between the three main characters: Mary, Peter and the other disciple. It will not have been just a quick glance and then a turn and return to base. Look, they will have said, ‘the clothes are all in a neat heap, and there is his turban lying separately. It wasn’t like that with Lazarus - he came out of the tomb all swaddled up so that he had difficulty walking and had to have help to unwind himself. This is different. Anyone taking the body away would never bother to do that. This must be part of what Jesus said so many times - he was going to rise again.’ Wow! I wonder how it actually happened.
It is recorded that it was the other disciple who believed. That is because he was writing this account so, of course, he knew exactly what happened in his thinking in a way he did not know about the other two. He knew that at that point he put together all that he had heard Jesus say, all that had happened and all that he could see in front to him and, in a flash, he knew that it had all come true. Jesus had been, and still was, the Son of God, the Messiah, the one he was going to follow the rest of his days.
We too can now put together all that we have learned from the account of John, and the others, and say YES, this is the Son of God, the Messiah, the one I am going to follow the rest of my days.
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Saturday Jan 28, 2017
Saturday Jan 28, 2017
Part 85 - John 19:25
The foundation of the church
There are three strange verses in John’s account of the crucifixion that do not fit into the rest of the story. Much of it is the straight-forward account of what happened to Jesus. There are also four events mentionied because they are all direct fulfilments of prophetic statement. But then there are these three verses:
John 19:25 – 27, “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.”
The obvious question to ask and try to answer is ‘why are they included?’ There seem to be two reasons: first to emphasize the importance of the disciple Jesus loved, and second to point to a particular call that all the future disciples of Jesus should follow.
John, who was probably the loved disciple, is keen to highlight the importance of his witness to the crucifixion and the resurrection that he was in a specially privileged position to bear. He was there. It seems that most, or all, of the apostles had disappeared from sight, presumably because of the risk that they would be caught and imprisoned, or worse, as followers of Jesus. A small group of women, of whom some of the most important are named in most of the gospels, had continued to stay close to the cross, reckoning they were not in the same danger. (What a terrible time that must have been, particularly for Mary the mother of Jesus.) John may have been so young that he was able to join with the group of women without too much danger.
In 19: 35 he says, “The man who saw it has given testimony”. Later we read in 21: 24, “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.” Those words were written by somebody else who knew John really well and was most probably the person who actually wrote the gospel down as John dictated it, or compiled it from his letters and documents.
If we turn to John’s first letter, in 1 John 1: 1 – 4 we read, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched —this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.” This all emphasize s the importance of what John knew and how anxious he was that we should all understand the true significance of what he was privileged to see and be involved in.
The second reason John has included these verses in his Gospel is his desire to ensure that the church, still a young church as he wrote, should follow the example that he had been able to set. It is almost possible to say that this is the practical beginning of the church, not the spiritual beginning which was still to come after the resurrection, but the simple practical first move. One believer is to look after the mother of another.
How much this example is followed where you live will depend on your culture and how strongly and well within that culture believers carry out this part of the Christian commission. In our culture people are reasonably quick to support members of their family who have fallen into difficulty, but are nowhere near as quick to do so for those who, although fellow believers, are not part of their natural family. Perhaps yours does better.
So there is much to think about in these few verses. How firmly have we grasped the strength of the witness of John and the rest of the New Testament people and made it part of the central core of faith? And how ready are we to help other members of the Christian faith and church to whom we are not related?
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Saturday Jan 21, 2017
Saturday Jan 21, 2017
Gems in the Gospel of John
Part 84 - John 19:23-24
The Witness of Four Prophecies
John’s account of the crucifixion is thin in the extreme. He says very little about what actually happened and what he does say is mainly centred round prophecies from the Old Testament. There are four of them, giving witness to what happened and the truthfulness of the account. We have:
1. John 19:23 - 24 where we read: “When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
‘Let’s not tear it,’ they said to one another. ‘Let’s decide by lot who will get it.’ This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said, ‘They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.’”
This is a quotation from Psalm 22: 18. Many people have seen this as a reference to the unity of the church as Jesus wished it to be. Sadly there are now many pieces of that original garment floating around the world.
2. John 19:28 - 30 where we read, “Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” Jesus became very thirsty - very natural given his circumstances. Two references from the Psalms, 22: 15 and 69: 21 are here fulfilled. They are, “My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death” and “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.”. Jesus told the woman at the well “whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” But he did thirst - that we might never thirst, spiritually speaking of course, not practically.
3. John 19:31–33 - Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have their legs broken and the bodies taken down. In John 19: 31 – 33 we read, “The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.” It sounds incredibly cruel but breaking the legs of those being crucified speeded death as they were then no longer able to push themselves up to get some air into their lungs. They would suffocate relatively quickly - what a horrid thought. Because Jesus was already dead, having given up his spirit, as he was able to do because of who he was, they did not break his legs. Thus Psalm 34: 19, 20, “The righteous person may have many troubles,
but the Lord delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.” It also places Jesus alongside the Passover lambs of whom it is said Exodus 12: 46, “Do not break any of the bones.”.
4. In John 19:34 we read that “one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. It was not usual for a soldier to stick his spear into a crucified man as one did here. The result, the flow of water and blood, or possibly body fluids and blood, has caused much argument as to its meaning. Perhaps the most likely is that it referred back as does 1 John 5: 7, “there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood”. This is one of John’s many references to both water and blood as signifiers of the spiritual life that would flow from Jesus. They reflect many Old Testament places where the same equation is made.
Hold tight to the reality of our Saviour’s cruel death – for you, for me.
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Saturday Jan 14, 2017
Saturday Jan 14, 2017
Gems in the Gospel of John
Part 83 - John 19:19
Identification
Pilate was more right than he ever realised when he insisted on 19: 19, which reads “Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”
Pilate went on to say, “What I have written, I have written” in 19:22. It is a striking example of the irony that John used so much in what he wrote. Pilate meant something relatively simple in what he had written but was actually saying far more than he realized. Throughout the centuries since his words have been understood to be saying that faith in Christ is to be for the Jews who spoke Aramaic, the Romans who spoke Latin and the common people who spoke Greek. In brief for all the world. Of course there were many other languages spoken in the world of that day but they were far beyond the knowledge of the people of this world in which Jesus lived and died. Pilate’s words were a form of prophecy. They are the equivalent of the words of Jesus in Acts 1:8, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” It is a prophecy that is becoming increasingly true in our day.
And there is no more potent reminder of that than you guys out there reading this. Dave Roberts can get some idea of how many of you there are by looking at how many ‘hits’ on this site there have been but that is only an indication of the total number, with some folk making multiple hits and perhaps others sharing these thoughts with others. No matter - there are certainly thousands of you and maybe tens or even hundreds of thousands..
Hey - why didn’t Pilate include English in his list of languages? (I suppose English is a descendant of both Latin and Greek.)
Well done all you who have had to learn English as a second or third language! Let us all rejoice together in all that Jesus accomplished on the Cross for us all of many different nations and mother-tongues.
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Saturday Jan 07, 2017
Saturday Jan 07, 2017
Part 82 - John 19:18
Crucifixion
The early church took some time to work out what it all meant and why it had happened. When Peter addressed the crowd ar Pentecost he talks about the fact that Jesus had been killed but does not say why. Stephen also does not say why Jesus died. It was left to Paul to work out the main implications of this death, which he presumably did during his time in Arabia that he mentions in Galatians 1:17, 18. If he was able to live there in a monastic situation where he had access to Old Testament documents he will have been able to work out the implications of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and relate them to the whole Biblical story and particularly many prophecies. John will have benefited from his conclusions and we see the results in the many places where he tells us that something that happened to Jesus on the cross fulfilled prophecy.
The argument about what the cross meant continues to this day. The dominant idea for evangelical, Bible believing Christians is that it means Jesus died a substitutionary death in our place. We deserve death, like everyone who ever lived, because we are sinners, in rebellion against the Lord God and his just requirements of us. The death of Jesus was an atoning sacrifice, enabling us to be reconciled to God and become his friends, members of his Kingdom and members of his redeemed family.
I am very conscious that I have needed to use several words that are not part of everyday speech to try to express that. Here are some brief explanations:
- substitutionary - one who takes the place of someone else as a football substitute does when he replaces someone who has been playing up to that point in the game;
- atoning - paying a sufficient price to restore a situation to what it should be (the Bible never explains to whom that penalty is paid. It is not the devil);
- sacrificial - for some reason that, again, the Bible never explains, something, an animal or a human, has to die to be the sufficient price to effect that restoration and then only temporarily unless they are themselves God;
- reconciling - restoring a relationship that has been in part at least broken by the action of one of these in the relationship; redeemed - basically something bought back with a price;
reconciled - brought back into the previously broken relationship.
Wow, there is a lot of hard work involved in really getting your head round all those ideas. But it is worthwhile because this is the very heart and core of our faith. It is what we live and die by. Spend some time thinking and praying about these things.
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Saturday Dec 31, 2016
Saturday Dec 31, 2016
Part 81 - John 19:16
Who is involved?
The discussions, bordering on arguments, between Jesus and Pilate come in two sets of three each. In both of them Pilate moves in and out of his palace in a quite extraordinary way. One would expect a Roman governor, lord of all in that area, to require people to come to him rather than him going to them. But it is not so in this case. Such was the power and authority that Jesus wielded.
So, in 18: 28 - 40 Pilate ‘came out’ in v29; ‘went back inside’ v33; ‘went out again’ v38. In 19: 4 - 13 he ‘’came out’ v4; ‘went back inside’ v8; and finally ‘he brought Jesus out’ for judgement v13.
All that is very clearly laid out to get our attention - to two things in particular. The first is that we should see that neither the Jews, that is the leaders of the Jews in Jerusalem at that particular time, nor Pilate, as the representative Gentile non-Jew, was exclusively responsible for the condemnation and death of Jesus. John has sometimes been accused of laying the blame for what happened on the Jews and that has contributed to the persecution of Jewish peoples at certain times throughout history - some of which still goes on. This is clearly very unjust. John could not have laid out the sequence of what happened more clearly to show that although Pilate was acting as a tool of the Jews he did not need to do so and would not have done so if he could have avoided the serious political blackmail he was subject to.
The second thing John would have us see is what he emphasizes at the centre, the focal point, of his account. In 19: 1 - 3 we read: “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’”. Jesus is king. But not the sort of king we, and they, expected him to be. It is all in very conscious imitation of Isaiah 53, where we read, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. … he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. … He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
All of which John must have had in mind as he wrote his description of the suffering servant king. It is strange, but clearly deliberate, that up to this point John has said very little about the kingship of Jesus and about the kingdom, so very unlike the other three Gospel-writers. He makes up for it at this point.
This is who we follow and serve: this totally unique figure, the great King of all creation, the servant of all mankind, the bruised and bleeding one.
Stop. Think. Wonder.
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Saturday Dec 17, 2016
Saturday Dec 17, 2016
Part 80 - John 18:38
The man of Truth
Then in discussion with Pilate Jesus claims to be the leader of truth, which provokes Pilate to his famous question ‘what is truth?’ in John 18:38. Of course, he does not get a direct and simple answer from Jesus. His answer comes from the events recorded in the next few verses where he is forced by the manipulations of the Jews to condemn Jesus and release Barabbas, the murderer, bandit and revolutionary who should have been executed. Finally he is forced to give judgement from the judge’s seat a place that is sharply defined by the giving of 3 names to the one place in 19:13 where we read “When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha).”
The most important place for truth to prevail is in the court of law. It can be difficult to make sure that the truth is reached and acted upon. Those of us who live in countries where this is done as far as possible scarcely comprehend the problems of the many other countries where bribery and corruption, and politically motivated results are common place.
But through all this we have to recognize that what John means by ‘truth’ and the associated word ‘true’ is rather more than we usually do when we use them. Our usual use of the words is to mean that a verbal statement is an accurate representation of something that happened or an idea someone had.
John goes much deeper. He says:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth. (John 4:24)
Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. (John 7:17)
All of which make his reply to Pilate, “In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:37) meaningful.
For John truth is about connection with God and that connection can only be made through Jesus. One writer says, “In a world that often refers to |God but rarely mentions Jesus, the fact that it is specifically in Jesus, rather than more generally in God, that Truth is found is profoundly significant and intensely relevant. Not only this, but in this world, the Truth, like Jesus, will always be called to suffer. The cross therefore ought to serve as a repeated reminder that, in this world, the only truth is a crucified truth. In this world Jesus could not be the truth without ending up being called to die for the truth, and as the truth. It will be the same for his followers.”
There is much to think about there.
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Saturday Dec 10, 2016
Saturday Dec 10, 2016
Part 79 - John 18:37
The ironic King
My dictionary says irony is ‘the humorous or mildly sarcastic use of words to imply the opposite of what they usually mean’. In his account of the trials of Jesus John uses irony all the time, particularly in relation to the role of Jesus as King. His interrogators are saying he is a king in a spirit of mockery, but he IS a king, in fact the king. It is John’s rather odd way of making sure that his readers and listeners get it firmly into their heads that Jesus is the King.
He does that through a very carefully structured account of what happened. It is in many ways difficult to follow. Unlike the other Gospel-writers he tells us that the interrogations started in the home of Annas, rather than that of Caiaphas. This is because, in a way, both of them were the high priest. Annas was the senior and had been the high priest several years earlier. That made him the high priest for the rest of his life in Jewish eyes. But the Roman authorities reckoned they had the power and authority to appoint the high priest overriding the Jewish choice and did so regularly, so they had appointed Caiaphas. To complicate matters the two of them were related, Caiaphas being a son-in-law of Annas. They may have lived in the same complex of buildings so both accounts would be correct. It seems likely that these are accounts of pre-trial interrogations in the middle of the night, which were not legal and would have to be followed up by a full session of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jewish people, first thing in the morning.
That event is not clearly recorded by John. It seems likely that the Jewish authorities had made a prior arrangement with Pilate, the Roman governor so as to get him out of bed early in the morning, which he would be reluctant to do! He was the senior authority, the only one with the power of life and death - death in the Roman way by crucifixion, which was the way Jesus had to die to fulfil prophecies by being lifted up, rather than the much less painful death by stoning which was all the Jews could use. Presumably they reckoned they had all the false charges against Jesus well organized, but they did not work out as they expected. In the end, as the other writers record, they could only say that he had said he would destroy the temple and build it again in 3 days - which, taken literally didn’t make much sense - and that he was guilty of blasphemy which would be of no interest to the Romans. Hence he is eventually condemned for no crime but purely for political reasons. And so a completely innocent man and king was condemned to death. He was to die for no crime of his own but for yours, and for mine! Consider: how much are you worth if a king, the king of the ages, died for you.
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Saturday Dec 03, 2016
Saturday Dec 03, 2016
Part 78 - John 18:27
Peter’s failure – individual effects
“One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, challenged him, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?” Again Peter denied it, and at that moment a cock began to crow.”
We looked last time at the effect Peter’s denials should have had on the corporate identity of the church. We turn now to the effect it must have had on his personal life.
He was tripped up in such a silly way. Presumably he wanted to go into the high priest’s courtyard so that he could speak in defence of Jesus. That would probably have meant that there would have been 4 crosses on the hill and little would have been accomplished, but Peter would have demonstrated his bravery. He must have had some idea what he would say in the court to the officials but the rather casual comment of the servant-girl at the entrance caught him out and he just tried to turn her aside - a mistake which led him into the sequence of three apparently small lies.
But we must not lose sight of the consequences of what he did. Had he died then who would have led the apostolic band through those first few weeks? Who would have spoken at the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost? Who would have received the visions that led to the acceptance of non-Jews into full membership of the infant church? Of course, in the plan and purpose of the Lord God somebody else could have done so but if we think and say that it is also necessary to admit that what did happen was in the plan and purpose of God and Peter was his chosen one for these tasks.
There has often in the history of the church been a choice like this, between a complete open expression of faith in Christ and an attempt to so fit into the surrounding culture that we live for another day. We might call these the straight and the crooked positions respectively. In those early days of the church they were sometimes faced with a demand to say ‘Caesar is Lord’ rather than ‘Jesus is Lord’, with death as the penalty for not doing so. It is now more than 300 years since there was any equivalent in this country when some Scots had to say ‘God save the king’ which implied king James was head of the church and not ‘king Jesus’, as they believed. If they said the wrong thing they died on the spot.
Our world divides into two parts. In most of the Western world it is accepted that people may choose who they worship and serve, or nobody. But there are other large parts of the world where they are not supposed to make such choices. Some of you are in the same privileged position that we are. Others are faced when challenged with the very difficult choice between a statement that may lead to martyrdom or one that is a less than completely honest reply.
One thing is for sure: those of us not facing this sort of dilemma should never criticise those who are, whichever decision they take. There has always been a strong tendency for those who have had the choice and have taken the straight position - the ones that survived anyway - (and those who have not had to choose and assume they would have taken the straight position) to criticise and totally reject those who did not. Yet those who were not straight are probably the ones that have sustained the church most over the centuries.
Let us all be careful and not be the ones to judge - leave that to the Lord.
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