How Then Can We Continue To Understand Easter? Consider the Wronged Honor of God Satisfied

April 30, 2021             John 5: 23

 19 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. ²⁰The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. ²¹Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes. ²²The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, ²³so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ²⁶For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 

            So there are a number of explanations of why Jesus died on the cross.  Perhaps explanations is not the right word.  Rather, we as humans have drawn from Jesus’ death and resurrection different ways of understanding what Jesus accomplished for us.  It is not so much the result, the free gift of salvation and eternal life, but it is understanding the mechanism.  As humans, we are trying better to understand our God and what our God has done for us. 

            What is so interesting about this is not so much the divine insights we have been able to glean, but rather how we view what Jesus accomplished for us from our own places in life, from our own points of view.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I have just been reading the Confession of 1967, written by the Northern Presbyterian Church as an expression of the Reformed faith in their particular time and circumstances.  The theme that runs through is reconciliation. 

            Consider the time, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, the Peace Movement, MAD-Mutual Assured Destruction in the nuclear cold war between the US and the USSR.  What was the focus of that time?  Reconciliation.  As Presbyterian Christians, we drew that lesson to the forefront of the interpretation of Jesus’ death and resurrection, a focus on the reconciliation we have in Him.  This is not to deny the other things we can draw out of Jesus’ Passion, Jesus the final sacrifice, Jesus the Victor over Satan, Jesus providing our atonement for our sins.

            Coming out of verse 22, where we read how Jesus has taken over as our Judge from the Father, it struck me that how we address a judge parallels the language of verse 23.  We call the judge “Your Honor”.  It probably has something to do with this verse.  But that is not what led this particular train of thought.

            It is the notion of the honor of the Son and the honor of the Father.  Honoring the Father is presumed, and that offering of honor now passes onto the Son, because of the Judgeship.  Not to honor the Son is not to honor the Father.  It is the blending of the roles of Father and Son, of Son and Father, that will continue to mark Jesus’ testimony in the gospel of John. 

            This took me back to another way of understanding Jesus’ death and resurrection, that in the death of Jesus, God the Father’s honor was satisfied.  This is an understanding drawn from chivalry and codes of honor from the Middle Ages.  To sin was to blot God’s honor.  God created us, God is perfect, therefore our behavior should reflect that.  But we did our own thing, so God’s honor was wronged.  Usually, that leads to some kind of duel or something but in this case, God’s honor was satisfied in the death of Jesus.  It has to do with the language of kingship. 

            Why this discourse into theological trivia?  Because there are a lot of strands of understanding invested into Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Central Event of God’s plan.  To understand Jesus in this manner is to understand that Jesus stood as our champion before court of honor of God the Father.  Rather than fight, He submitted to death for us.  He did that out of love for us.  The better we understand that, the more deeply we can invest that knowledge into our hearts, the more wonderful our relationship is with our Lord.

            More later.

Peace, Pastor Peter

What It Means For Us That The Son Takes Over Our Judgement

April 29, 2021             John 5: 22

¹⁴Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.

19 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. ²⁰The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. ²¹Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes. ²²The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, ²³so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ²⁶For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 

            Something I had not considered before, knowing that Jesus is the Judge I will see at the End of Time.  I know God the Father passed along this authority to the Son.  This is ALL judgement, which I would interpret to mean through all of time and space.  So this is extending forward through all coming generations, but it is also extending back through all prior generations. 

            Which means the very system of judgement has changed from the Old to the New covenant.  In the Old Testament, we read of how God judged the people and praised or punished them on the spot with either ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ or external nations intervening in their affairs.  But the system of thinking evolves in the Old Testament, from one of right service as a nation to God to one where sacrifice and so on was not the important part, but the right heart was.  Sacrifice was still part of the law, was still necessary, but there was recognition that there needed to be something more personal to it.  What was implicit is made explicit.

            So what does that mean in this context?  The place of judgement is shifting.  It will no longer be executed upon the nation directly.  Rather, it is moving to the end of life, as the last hurdle before the eternal placement is finalized.  The judgement is upon the individual, not the community.  And where God the Father carried the…stigma...of being an angry, belligerent God in the face of the unfaithfulness of the people, where the Old Testament God is a scary figure, passing the seat of judgement on to Jesus is passing the seat of judgement to the one whose death and resurrection will bring mercy as the new justice.

            It is a fundamental shift in the process of revelation and forgiveness.  What is developing now is a clearer vision of what the afterlife is going to look like.  What is developing now is a system of judgement that is no longer tied to the promises of land and prosperity.  As Christianity eclipses Judaism, there is no longer a land, a nation, where the assumption is that God will rule directly.  This was the way of the Old Testament until God was effectively supplanted by the demands for a king.  So there are continuing parallels of “Christian nations” to the nation of Israel, but they are not hard and fast by any means. 

            The national identify of the nation of Israel, its prosperity and its crises were all tied to the judgement of God the Father.  What we see here is that this judgement is moved from the natural to the supernatural.  There are definitely consequences to the choices of life, but ultimate judgement is put off till the end of life.  This works in the other direction as well, bad things happening in life presently are no longer directly connectable to the judgement of God.  Because that judgement has shifted, in the persons of the Trinity and in its connection to life here on earth.

            More coming.

Peace, Pastor Peter

Jesus Teaches Us How He and God the Father Come Together

April 27, 2021             John 5: 20-21

¹⁴Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.

19 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. ²⁰The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. ²¹Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes. ²²The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, ²³so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. ²⁴Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ²⁶For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 

            So Jesus concluded our verses yesterday speaking about how the Son can do what the Son sees the Father doing.  Now he ups the ante.  The Son watching the Father, that could be interpreted as being a more passive act.  But now Jesus tells us that from love, the Father is actively showing the Son all that the Father is doing, and the Father will show the Son even greater works, not for the benefit of the Son, but so that those who are with Jesus will be astonished.  We should read this as an intro to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

            All this is to answer the charge that he, Jesus, was healing on the Sabbath.  His appeal is to the authority of God the Father, who instituted the Sabbath.  By healing the man at the Pool of Bethesda, Jesus was giving unto him a Sabbath rest from the illness, from the constant demand to watch the pool and NOT be able to get there in time to be healed.  Unless I have missed something very significant, Jesus does not do all his healing on the Sabbath, but it is enough to provoke a response.  What the Jewish leadership and Jesus can agree on is that the Sabbath is the Lord’s Day.  Where they disagree is how then should it be used. 

            To those who are heavily steeped in the language of Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons, one God, this language can feel odd.  Trinity assumes the equality of the three persons, but these couple of verses feel like there is a subordination of Son to the Father.  And there is a subordination insofar as God decided to give up Godhood to become human, on our behalf.  But there is something more to be understood here.

            Jesus is trying to explain the divine, the perfect, the eternal in a human, imperfect, very limited scope of human experience.  He is going from himself, as the Son, to God, the Father, and coming back again.  This is the unfolding of God’s Plan that is going on in the life and ministry of Jesus.  It is the basis of this and all the gospels.  In this case, Jesus is attempting to connect the divine to the ‘breaking of the Sabbath rules’ that he is accused of.

            In the next verse, Jesus moves to the extreme of Godly creative power.  The Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whomever the Son wishes.  This is the logical conclusion to the miracle of the man at the Pool.  Jesus can give life to whomever he wishes.  Now, that man was not dead, but his life was effectively at a standstill.  He was in a place where he was waiting to die, because he did not have the ability to get to the Pool and its ability to heal.  And he seems less than appreciative of what Jesus had to offer when Jesus healed him.  Jesus healed a less than fully grateful candidate to provoke this conflict over the Sabbath that has led to this explanation.

            But as we shall see, the identification of Father and Son is not complete.

            More tomorrow.

Peace, Pastor Peter

Jesus: Using Moment of Conflict to Bring Us To the Center of His Message

April 26, 2021             John 5: 14-20

  ⁸Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” ⁹At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. ¹⁰So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” ¹¹But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” ¹²They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” ¹³Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. ¹⁴Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.

19 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. ²⁰The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. ²¹Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes.

            Was it the crowd that separated them?  Did Jesus move off intentionally?  For whatever reason, Jesus was not there to finish his conversation with the man he healed at the pools.  But the man went up to the temple, and there Jesus did run into him again.  But Jesus’ words are a little different from his last miracle, healing the son of the royal official.  In that moment, the official begged Jesus to come, Jesus healed the boy from afar, and John records that the man believed what Jesus said. 

            Now Jesus does not refer to the man having faith.  It is a warning.  You are healed, sin no more or worse could befall you.  This is not an encounter that ends with gratitude.  What is the man’s reaction?  He goes and reports to the Jewish leadership that is was Jesus who healed him in the first place!  He seems to be more concerned with not running afoul of the authorities than with what Jesus has done for him. 

            The situation then seems to transcend the healing as John tells us this begins conflicts between the Jewish leadership and Jesus’ propensity to do “such things”, miracles, on the Sabbath.  Because that is what the man was in trouble for, Sabbath breaking.  If I understand the rules of the time, the total distance someone was allowed to walk on the Sabbath was to the synagogue and back. 

            The official rules about the Sabbath are developed from the Ten Commandments, from Exodus 20 it reads 8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁹For six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ¹¹For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.   It is from here that the rules like how far someone can actually walk, actually labor, have been derived.  So it was not about the healing that the Jewish leadership came into conflict with Jesus, it was Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath.

            And when they get up in Jesus’ face about it, Jesus responds with one of the central messages that will come from the Gospel.  It begins with ‘Very truly I tell you…’, which is the signal that something profound is coming.  Jesus, the Son, is only doing what He sees His Father doing, because He can do nothing on his own.  Jesus heals on the Sabbath because of what He sees His Father doing on the Sabbath.  According to how the Sabbath was established, at the end of creation, the Son sees His Father has done three things with the Sabbath.  First, the Father rests on that Day.  Secondly, the Father blesses that day.  Finally, the Father consecrates that day, the Father declares it Holy for the people to rest on as well. 

            So what is the Son seeing His Father doing?  The practice of the Sabbath is to do the Lord’s work.  To go to synagogue, to hear the Word shared, to be renewed in the strength of their God.  It is what we do, as Christians, on the Lord’s Day, which we have established as the Sabbath on the First Day of the Week-recognizing Jesus’ resurrection.  As the Son, Jesus does the work of the Father on the day that the Father set aside. 

            This healing then becomes the setup for the centerpiece of Jesus’ message.

            More tomorrow.

Peace, Pastor Peter

Jesus and the Anonymous Healing

April 22, 2021             John 5: 8-13

 ⁵⁴Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ²Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. ³In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. ⁵One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” ⁷The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” ⁸Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” ⁹At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. ¹⁰So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” ¹¹But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” ¹²They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” ¹³Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. ¹⁴Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.

            Jesus told him to take up his mat and walk.  The man has just finished describing the deficiencies of the medical delivery system of Roman Judea and Jesus just cuts through all the red tape.  This story is in contrast to the one that sticks in my head.  I had to look up the exact reference, Luke 17:19, where there is another man whom Jesus tells to “Rise and walk”, but in this instance, Jesus adds the qualifier, “Your faith has made you well.”  There is no such qualifier here.  Immediately, the man was able to do as Jesus commanded, he got up, took up his mat, and walked out of there.  I wonder if he looked down at the pool, realizing he’d never get cut off trying to be cured again.

            But there is a qualifier to this healing.  It is the Sabbath.  But before we consider that, I am reminded of a small segment named for a Canadian televised news magazine show, “What bugs me?”  The promo for that had somebody in a cheesy bee costume.

            Bethesda is a holding area for a large number of ‘invalids’.  It is another conversation to talk about what makes someone valid and someone invalid in the culture of Jesus’ time and the culture of today.  Jesus did not clear the place out.  John specifies that there this is only this one guy from among the crowd.  If Jesus wanted to make a bigger statement, he certainly could have.  But he does not.  In the logic of the gospel, this single healing (instead of a mass healing), seems to track back to what he said in Galilee, about people coming to see him only for the signs, only for the carnival.  And while that makes sense in the gospel’s structure, it still provides me with an edge to work on for better acceptance.

            Because from what comes next, it appears that Jesus is not so much healing a man as picking a fight with the Jewish leadership.  Because He heals the man on the Sabbath.  And as the man walks home, he is challenged by the “Jews”, read, the Jewish leadership.  “Why are you carrying your bed?  It is illegal to carry your bed on the Sabbath!”  The man’s response is consistent with what he told Jesus when Jesus asked if he wanted to be made well.  He does not so much answer the question as tell the story of his circumstances.

            A guy healed me and told me to pick up my mat and walk.  The implication is that if a man has the power to heal him and then tells him to pick up his mat and walk, the man is going to obey, Sabbath or no Sabbath.  So the Leadership, they want names.  Who is this man who defies the Sabbath?  That’s a hanging offense…sorry, that is the influence of watching too many westerns.  It is a stoning offense.  But the guy does not know who healed him.  Jesus did not self-identify and then apparently faded away into the crowd.  It seems as though the man put his mat down, or took it home, or something, because the leadership does not stay on his case. 

            We will wind up the story next time.

Peace, Pastor Peter

A Glimpse into the World of Long Term Care in the Era of Jesus

April 21, 2021             John 5: 1-7

 ⁵⁴Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ²Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. ³In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. ⁵One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” ⁷The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” ⁸Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” ⁹At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. ¹⁰So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” ¹¹But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” ¹²They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” ¹³Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. ¹⁴Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. ¹⁶Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the sabbath.

            So, there is no precise time stamp given here.  “After this”, after Jesus was in Galilee, he returned to Jerusalem for a festival.  This festival is not named.  Jesus went ‘up’ to Jerusalem.  This is how Jerusalem is referred to throughout the Bible, one goes ‘up’ to it.  Geographically, this is true because it is built on a hill.  David captured it from the Jebusites, long after the occupation of the Promised Land by the Israelites, so it was a well-defended fortress, built on a rocky spur. 

            Theologically, one climbs ‘up’ to Jerusalem because it is the City of God.  The Temple is located here, this is where the worship of God is centered. 

            The pools of Beth-zatha (from the Hebrew), usually transliterated as Bethesda, are north of the City of Jerusalem.  They are located north of the temple, outside the City Walls.  The Sheep Gate, as referred to here, appears to be the gate through which the livestock were brought in that were used in the animal sacrifices in the Temple. 

            What are these pools?  Honestly, I think they are a place where the handicapped-the blind, the lame and the paralyzed-were parked to keep them out of mind and out of sight.  It seems to me to be the nearest thing to a 'long term care’ facility that they had in those days.  Does not strike me that it is in the ‘good part’ of town, being located over where the animals were herded into the Temple.  We do not know exactly what the porticos were, we assume they were areas under roofs for the people to have some shelter from the elements.

            From the entire assemblage under these five porticoes, Jesus singles out a single resident.  It says the man has been ill for 38 years.  How many years he has spent at the Pool is not specified, except that Jesus knew he’d been there a ‘long time’.  Why is that even important?  It probably isn’t, but I wonder if this man’s illness began 38 years ago but he was moved out to the pools once he was no longer manageable at home. 

            The question Jesus asks looks like an obvious one.  “Do you want to be healed?”  The man-and I should acknowledge here that he too is unnamed-interprets Jesus’ question in light of the current medical avenues open to him, the miraculous healing associated with the pool.  Seems that when the water stirs up, first one there gets a miracle.  I can hear the bitterness in his voice as he describes how he tries to get down there, but there is always another who cuts him off and gets to the healing first.  That is why, in my mind, when I am telling this story, I think he may not always have been here.  His response is one of bitterness.  Makes me think there might once have been people to help him.

            As I read this, I need to rethink something about naming.  This man is not named, neither was the woman at Sychar named.  I stand by my statement of misogyny in the bible, but I need to temper that statement too.  The gospel story is the story of Jesus.  Leaving those with whom he interacts nameless keeps them out of the center of the story.  It is about the healer, not the healed, about the ‘converter’, not the converted.  This does NOT mean I am walking back what I feel about misogyny.  But the line to walk to one of recognizing the truths of how the Scripture was written with the recognition of the time in which it was written. 

More later.

Peace, Pastor Peter