C, Maundy Thursday - All readings "Feasting and Foot Washing"

There is a greet paradox in the readings for Maundy Thursday.  The Old Testament reading tells us of what happened when God passed over Egypt and handed out judgement on the gods of Egypt.   This is a powerful picture of the destroyer, passing through Egypt, killing the firstborn sons of those who did not paint the blood of the Passover Lamb over the door frames of their homes.  The Israelites who did, were spared death as God moved to free them from slavery under Pharoah, four hundred years after Israel found a haven from famine under Joseph in Egypt.

Then we have the picture of Jesus washing feet.  Not a glamorous picture by any stretch of the imagination.  This is a picture of servanthood.  A picture of stooping down in vulnerability without much clothing, taking off other’s footwear, and washing their feet.  Washing someone else’s feet today might seem humiliating enough, dealing with body odour or fungal rashes.  But washing the feet of those who walked in the dusty filth of Roman roads in footwear such as sandals, washing feet was a very unsavoury task.  This was a job for the lowest of slaves.

So, we have this pictorial paradox before us.  God passing over Israel, but God the Son stopping over the feet of his apostles, to wash their feet.

Simon Peter pridefully shuns Jesus in his attempt to enact a servant’s cleansing of Peter’s feet. According to Peter, this was not a job for the Messiah!  But little did Peter understand that this was a demonstration of the duties the Messiah needed to perform physically and spiritually, so all would have a part in the cleansing of the cross.  Little did Peter know, Jesus would commission him and the apostles, after the resurrection, in sharing the glorification of God in what Jesus taught them, how he served them, and in what they witnessed at the cross.

Little did Peter know that Jesus would have to pass over Peter’s sin of denying him three times and then restore him to lead the church in “feeding the lambs”.  Peter and the apostles in their witness and proclamation of what happened to Jesus would cleanse those who allowed Jesus to cover and cleanse their hearts with his blood.   

Beginning the start of the three-day event of Jesus’ death and resurrection always occurs near the Jewish Passover.  This is why Easter Sunday is not nailed down to a single date.  Easter Sunday is a movable feast in the church calendar year.  It occurs after the Paschal full moon. 

The Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar, and the Passover occurs on the 15^th day of the month of Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew Year.  This relates to the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere; that is the 21^st of March, in our calendar.  Therefore, the Easter festival begins on the first Sunday, after the first full moon (that is, the Paschal full moon) after the 21^st of March.  Easter Sunday always falls between the 22^nd of March and the 25^th of April.

Maundy Thursday means mandate or commandment Thursday and it’s connected with Jesus’ foot washing in John’s Gospel and Jesus’ institution of the Last Supper in the synoptic Gospels. 

The time of the Passover differs between John’s Gospel and the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The Passover begins in John at six pm Friday evening and concludes at six pm Saturday.  Therefore, John refers to the Passover occurring on the Sabbath in his Gospel as a high day.  In the synoptic Gospels the Passover begins on Thursday evening and ends at six pm Friday when the Sabbath (Saturday) begins.

This means the Passover feast in John’s Gospel occurs when Jesus is already in the tomb, after 6pm on Friday evening (the Sabbath).  Hence, John’s Gospel brings to the fore, the theological truth of Jesus’ servanthood in the foot washing.  Also in John’s Gospel account, the Passover preparation of slaughtering the Passover Lamb is aligned to the same time as Jesus is crucified on the cross, so our sin is passed over with the spilling of his blood.

In the synoptic Gospels the Lambs were slaughtered for the Passover on Thursday evening, where afterwards Jesus shares in the Passover meal, come Last Supper, with the twelve disciples.

Peter and the disciples did not understand the significance of the foot washing, nor what Jesus did at the Last Supper.  They thought they were just remembering the Israelites’ escape from Egypt and following God’s command to remember and eat the Passover.  But this supper of remembrance was the Last Supper they had with Jesus Christ before his death and resurrection, and the first celebratory communion where our being passed over, from death to life, would be connected eternally to Jesus’ death and resurrection.  But even more so, this celebratory commanded meal, looks forward to the heavenly eternal feast after our eternal resurrection from death.

That means now the church gathers regularly for a new feast to continue the remembrance of what Jesus did, what happened to him after he did it, and what’s in store for you in receiving and believing what he did and commands!

With his word, Jesus connects the Last Supper with a new commandment!  To take, to eat, and to drink, the bread and the wine as his body and blood.  The blood of the lamb that covered the lintel of the doorframe of the Israelite homes in Egypt, now, physically and spiritually covers the frames of believers in the consecration of the bread and wine.  Jesus commands us to consecrate the bread and the wine in remembrance of God’s action in Jesus’ incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension to his right hand.  We are commanded to do all this in remembrance, but we also do it in celebration of our forgiveness of sins, the life we receive from Jesus through faith, and the hope of our resurrection and salvation.

The other command Jesus gives on this Last Supper at the first Maundy, mandate, or commandment Thursday is the church’s command to love as he has loved us.  The servanthood love of Jesus’ foot washing and the celebration of the Sacrament of Holy Communion are now connected with our forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.

In the Early Church the celebration of the sacrament was called a love feast.  Those outside the church were suspicious of it as some kind of debaucherous orgy of human pleasure seeking.  Indeed, Paul had to correct the Corinthians when the love feast began to turn into a pursuit of personal pleasures to the detriment of the community gathered in Christ.

Tonight, we continue the celebrations of having our sin passed over and covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.  Paradoxically, we also have Jesus’ command not to pass over our neighbour in sharing that same love, which he shares with us at the cross and continues to do so as we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation in the mandated meal of his body and blood.

Our meal is one of remembrance, but not just that.  It’s the refuelling of our being to be outwardly looking!  We’re not hidden away from the world as the disciples were on the day of Jesus’ resurrection.  But rather, God prepares us for his service as we leave this place, each time we receive his love in the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  God empowers you and me to take that forgiveness to the world as have the apostles and countless disciples ever since.  Amen.

B, Easter 6 - John 15:9-12, 1 John 5:1-6 "Joy-Full"

John 15:9–12 (ESV) As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.  These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

God’s love flows down the vine through his Son, Jesus Christ, to us, the branches.  The Holy Spirit flows through Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, and he works in us through God’s holy written word and holy sacraments.  The promise of God is that if we abide in this flowing love, if we do not cut ourselves off from the conduits of Christ’s commandments, his joy will be in you and your joy will be full.

Yet as we travel along the road through parched places, it seems there’s not much occasion for joy!  The joy of being known by Jesus Christ, shimmers like a mirage on the horizon.  But weariness wears us down as we work getting to that mysterious place of joy.

Like seeking the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, we peer into the future, driving hard to get to the place of joy, getting to where we think it is, only to find it’s moved away from us, to somewhere else.

There’s a real temptation to think remaining in God’s love is like a donkey walking while working to eat that proverbial carrot from the end of the string.  Is God dangling a carrot in front of us, leading us through life, without us ever receiving the carrot of joy?

But we know that God temps no one to think this way.  In Luke’s Gospel Jesus tells us, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  (Luke 12:32 ESV)  So what’s going on with the joy, always seeming to be as elusive as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Or thinking joy is just a vain expectation in an oasis mirage, seen only to move with the horizon on our weary walk?

The Apostle John adds yet another dimension to what he teaches us here in chapter fifteen of his Gospel with what he says in his epistle…

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.  By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.  For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.  And his commandments are not burdensome.  For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.  And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.  Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?  This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.”  (1 John 5:1–6 ESV)

The love that flows through Jesus from our Father, does so because Jesus is born of God.  Jesus is eternally begotten of our Father.  That is, he is eternally being born of God through God’s being of love.  The Holy Spirit is the great and holy proxy in this work of creating the love of God within us.  He helps us on our way, by helping move our works out of the way, so he can help us in Jesus’ way through the wilderness.

As John tells us in his epistle, this victory is not burdensome.  Which tells us immediately, where the task of loving others is a burden, then we are toiling for the wrong victory.  A burdensome faith is something other than the one true faith!  A burdensome faith is not one that overcomes the world but is a faith in the world that creates a world of burdens, within us, within itself.

However, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth, he carries out the true work of Jesus within, creating faith, helping us to believe in God’s word and sacraments, with God’s word and sacraments, to remain and abide in the only Saviour in this world, Jesus Christ!  Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to remove the burden so we can delight in God’s word of law and gospel!

Here the Holy Spirit helps you get back on the horse, as it were!  We’ve been donkeys running in the midday sun, like the mad Englishmen who sought to survey and explore the Australian wilderness in our early colonial days.  But even worse than these madmen, we’ve sought to run by our own effort when the horse has been following us with the water wagon of God’s word in tow!

The joy has been right there with us the whole time.  It’s been under our noses!  We’ve chased the mirage of water, while the refreshment walks with us.  Indeed, God works to refresh us and seeks to carry us in love towards the final goal.  The oasis of a heavenly paradise. 

It’s sinful fear that tempts us to get off the horse in the first place and then run with delirious anxiety in the wilderness.  The call to remain in the shade of God’s love seems unreasonable to us.  Perhaps it’s impatience!  Perhaps it’s contempt for what’s familiar!  Perhaps it’s just plain old donkey stubbornness!  Which does reveal a foolish irony, in that, we stubbornly got off the wagon of free food and transport, only to need a carrot dangled in front of us to make us walk in our stubbornness towards a mirage of freedom from the true joyful freedom we’ve just abandoned!

Loving God and his commandments is remaining in him, trusting him, believing in his word, with the means of transport he has given us through the wilderness.  We trust his way, his work, and his help.

Throughout this sermon, a picture has been painted of moving through a parched place towards an oasis, a paradise.  Most likely you have formed a picture of trekking in the wilderness by yourself.  And rightly so if you picture loving God as a toilsome and burdensome task. 

But climbing back on the transport God provides to bring us to him and his kingdom, the Holy Spirit driven church, we realise when Jesus says, “I have loved you!  You, abide in my love!  If you keep my commandments you will abide!  My joy is in you!  And, your joy may be full!”  The “you or your” is not singular!  It’s not just me on the journey but it’s a community on the move.  The “you” is the gathering of the Holy Spirit.  It’s not just me in which the Holy Spirit works one faith.  Rather one faith is worked in we who are the body of Jesus Christ.

Joy, therefore, is not an individual thing, strived for now or in the future!  If it is, it’s a fruitless futile joy.  It’s a transient happiness in oneself, that exhausts itself, and dies in the expectations coveted and idolised in the wilderness of this world.

However, true joy, is unhidden joy!  It’s the joy of God’s holiness!  It’s the joy of faith in knowing God’s kingdom has come, and God is doing his will, here, right now, in our midst, while we wait patiently in hope for it to be unhidden after death!  True joy is the “yes yes”, “truly truly”, and “verily verily”!  The amen amen!

Before he went to the cross, Jesus openly said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.  You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.”  (John 16:20 ESV)

True joy is trusting Jesus finished your journey, when he said on the cross, “it is finished!” 

You are not alone!  Not only does the Holy Spirit call you through Jesus, to Jesus, to enlighten you with his gifts, setting you apart as holy, and faithfully keeping you as a baptised holy believer, he does it with the whole hidden church, gathering it around Jesus, inside and outside of time!

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,  looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”  (Hebrews 12:1–2 ESV)

Jesus is no mirage!  You are the pot of eternal gold, like him, already in his possession!   So, may the Holy Spirit grant you a restful race in the fullness of Jesus’ joy, enduring in the peace of God, which wins out over all our understanding and transient happiness, so your hearts and minds are kept in the joy of your baptismal eternal journey.  Amen.

B, Easter 4, Good Shepherd Sunday - John 10:11,17-18 "The Good Shepherd's Power"

John 10:11, 17–18 (ESV)  "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.  No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father."

The kingdom and the power and the glory are God the Father’s.  In Jesus’ victory over death in his death and resurrection, God the Father has given Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, the kingdom, the power, and the glory.  The Father did this, “when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places”. (Ephesians 1:20 ESV)

Here in the Good Shepherd narrative, Jesus refers to the power he has, as a result of the “command”(literally in the Greek), or “charge” he has received from God the Father. 

As we just heard in Ephesians chapter one, Jesus’ resurrection is usually referred to as passive.  In all but a couple of instances, we’re told Jesus “was raised” from the dead by God the Father or God the Holy Spirit.

Here in John ten, Jesus tells us he has authority to lay his life down and to take it up.  Also, in John chapter two, after he clears the temple and confronts the Jews, he says of his own body, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  (John 2:19 ESV)

Humanity has the power to lay down its life but taking it up again is somewhat problematic!

Many valiant individuals have thrown themselves in harm’s way, to save the life of another.  Many parents or spouses have given their lives for each other or their children.  Soldiers in active combat, in service to our country, have laid down their lives on the battlefield, some even taking their own lives to protect national secrets from the enemy.  Others, blinded by hopelessness, lay down their lives through suicide.

None of these though, who have laid down their lives, honourably or otherwise,  have been able to take their lives back up again!  Once you’re dead, you’re dead!

Jesus’ authority is different.  He has the authority to lay down in death, and he has the authority to take life back up.  He has the power to give himself unto death, and he has the power to return from the dead.  Having been commanded by God, he had the right to die on the cross, and having died a sinless death, pleasing the Father, he had the right to take his sinless life back up!

As a human being, it might seem Jesus’ power to take back his life, as being on an unequal footing with us.  After all, the great claim of Jesus being our Saviour, is that he became like us in every way.  If Jesus is like me, how is it that he can raise himself from death, and I can’t!  Since when I die, despite how noble a cause my death might serve, I still can’t raise myself back to life.

We know that the majority of biblical sources tell us that Jesus “was” raised, and he did not raise himself!  Even in John chapter two after Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  (John 2:19 ESV)  John notes in verse twenty-two, “When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”  (John 2:22 ESV)  They don’t remember Jesus as raising himself but rather that he “was raised”, and they believe!

How do we reconcile Jesus being raised and Jesus raising up himself?  And in understanding this anomaly, what is God’s word to us who live in our Good Shepherd’s resurrection power and authority?

The Gospel of John takes up the new commandment of God in the work of Jesus Christ his Son.  This work was done with authority and power, and he had the  right to do so. 

Be reminded of what we’re told in John chapter one.  “He [The Word who was God] …came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.  But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”. (John 1:11–12 ESV)

This right to become children of God is the power or the authority to become children of God.  Just as Jesus had the right to take up his life, we have the right to take up our Christian life as the children of God.  In fact, just as Jesus was commanded by our Father, Jesus commands us, saying, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15:12 ESV)

So how Jesus takes up his life, has a very real bearing, on how we too are to take up the commandment to love as Jesus has loved us!

Jesus laid down his life and took it back up again.  But what was this life, and from where did its power come?

Jesus’ authority, power, or right, comes from the Holy Spirit who proceeds from God the Father and God the Son. 

In love, the Father and the Holy Spirit, work through the Son’s vulnerability in the flesh of a human body susceptible of sin.  He was made incarnate in the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit was caused to be seen resting on Jesus when he was baptised in the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness throughout his ministry, where angelic messengers from God ministered to him.

Commanded by God, Jesus willingly, and for the joy set before him, walked the way of the cross, laying down his life. 

When Jesus lay down his life, he lay it right down into the lowest depths on Holy Saturday, the depths of hell!  We hear in First Peter, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,  in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison”.  (1 Peter 3:18–19 ESV)

The Holy Spirit gave Jesus Christ life within his spirit.  So, even in death and descent into hell, the light of his life, shone in hell’s darkness, exposing sin.  Jesus Christ’s sinless life shone in hell!  Not for salvation!  But, as reminder to those who chose not to receive God, that they no longer have access to a Redeemer or redemption.

Jesus lay his life down and took it up again.  Jesus has the power and authority within himself, of himself, but not for himself.  This is no selfish or individualistic whim!  No!  This is Jesus’ freedom in obedience to the command and will of the Father.  He has the power to raise himself, yet he allows the Holy Spirit to raise him, despite having the authority and power to do it himself.

The Spirit gives Jesus’ life; and Jesus takes up this life once again at his resurrection.  Our Good Shepherd’s servanthood in power and authority continues today having been raised.   Jesus our Good Shepherd actively became passive so that passively he became, and now is, active.

Because this is so contrary to who we are, and how we think and work, let me say that again! Jesus actively became passive, so that passively he became, and now is, active.

You now live in the life that Jesus has picked up in power and authority.  You now have the right to be children of God.  The Holy Spirit, who brings you to Jesus in his word and sacraments, authorises you and empowers you to live in the life of Jesus.  To serve as he serves, to love as he loves, and to forgive as he forgives!

You no longer can be condemned, as Paul reminds us in Romans, “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”  (Romans 8:34 ESV)

Jesus now eternally serves and shepherds us with life.   In his power and authority, by faith, see him interceding for you before our Heavenly Father. 

But Jesus, our Good and Risen Shepherd, is not only before the Father in heaven, but he’s amongst and within us, his body.  He serves and shepherds us!  So, through us, he might serve and shepherd others with his power and authority!

It is now our right as Christians in the power and authority of Jesus Christ, to serve others as he and the Father continually send the Holy Spirit, to raise us up in newness of life in him, our Good Shepherd.  Amen.

A, Easter 6 - John 14:12-21 "The Spirit of Truth"

John 14:12–14, 15-21 (ESV) “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.  Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,  even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.  “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.  Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.  In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.  Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

For the best part of two thousand years, the church has struggled to understand what the love is,  into which God calls us.  And, to know the Holy Spirit and his function in our lives, in the wake of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. 

Love has been misunderstood, and the Holy Spirit has been buried, time and time again, as one looks back through the history of the Christian Church.  This should not surprise us, as the forces of evil confront us and seek to suppress what love truly is and what the Holy Spirit seeks to do for us.

It also might surprise you that Luther’s battle in the Reformation centred on the misunderstanding of love which stood at the heart of the mistaken function of justification and righteousness before God.

Because righteousness and justification were being wrongly centred on what the individual did before God, the Holy Spirit was then the forgotten third member of the Trinity.  But more on that in a moment.

Firstly, love; how does one love God?  How can you love God?  The gospel reading begins with Jesus saying, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Then ends, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.  And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”  (John 14:15, 21 ESV)

This call to love, seems like a riddle.  The Israelites and Jews could not keep the commandments which are summed up in loving God, with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, and with all one’s mind, and loving one’s neighbour as oneself.  (Matt 22:37-39, Deut 6:5, Lev 19:18b)

In fact, this is the reason for Jesus coming!  He came to love God and love humanity because under the Law the Jews couldn’t.  He found the Jews and the rest of humanity debased, and rebased us, by doing what we could not do, he perfectly pleased God by keeping the Law, and made atonement for humanity by dying for our sin.  He did not sin, yet he suffered to save us from our sin.

Despite this, the church struggled to stand under this love, to understand this love, and many throughout history and still today think the order of salvation is that Jesus died and now we must obey with self-focused good works.  They forget, “we are his (God’s) workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10 ESV)

The love to which God is calling us is a love that always comes down in creative, and re-creative power.  It finds the unlovable, and those incapable of love, and loves them.  This love is a receptive love, and it has to find us because, like the Jews, we cannot love God or our neighbour as ourselves!

So now we return to the third member of the Trinity.  God sends the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, because he knows without him, Jesus’ death and resurrection, would have just faded into history, and been forgotten, and so would our opportunity to ever love God.

Yet having sent the Holy Spirit, the church struggles to receive and submit to the Holy Spirit, even though he is the only reason, generation after generation remember Jesus in the first place! 

Instead of recognising we are recipients of God’s love, generation after generation, have sought to climb up to God, through the “greater good” and love him.  This type of ego-centred love crept into the early church through Greek thinking.  From that, the grace of God is turned about so it becomes a man-made method of salvation.  Jesus came and did the right thing, and now through his example, we too must do the right thing, and climb up to God.  However, this only returns a person to a law that one cannot perfect.

Jesus names the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of truth”.  The Greek biblical word for truth is “that which is not hidden”.  The Holy Spirit is he who reveals, he is God who unhides and opens our eyes and ears to the reality of God the Father and God the Son.  He also puts in plain sight who and what we are before God, as sinner, and as saint.

One may have claimed ignorance before Jesus ascended and sent the Holy Spirit.  In Acts seventeen Paul proclaims to the Greek thinkers of Athens, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,  because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30–31 ESV)

In other words, Jesus’ resurrection, ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit, gives one the opportunity to be returned to Jesus’ righteousness and victory over death, from self-designated good works.  These are the works one does to earn their righteousness before God.  Or works that fail when seeking to climb up to God and love with a love that desecrates his holiness. 

This does not please God because it’s not in accord with his plan of salvation, and once seeking entry into God’s presence through partial goodness, Jesus’ death and resurrection is treated with contempt.

Added to this, once goodness is elevated to holiness, then love becomes presumptuous, conceited, and full of vain glory.  The Holy Spirit is no longer allowed to uncover the truth.  There is no longer need for God’s love in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, and the Spirit’s call to repentance.

But what pleases God is when we turn from our own efforts and trust in him:  in the resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, who gives faith and gathers us in faith. 

God is pleased and glorified when we daily drown our human spirit, with its knowledge of good and evil, and trust in Jesus Christ, having been given a knowledge of him by the Spirit of Truth, as he wills us, and returns us, time and time again, to hear God’s Word.

Finally, I draw your attention to the verses just prior to the Gospel reading for today.  Jesus proclaims  something quite peculiar.

He says, in John fourteen verses twelve to fourteen, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.  Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”  (John 14:12–14 ESV)

So, the believer does the works of Jesus because he goes to the Father and the Holy Spirit comes to uncover Christ within.  We pray as Jesus prayed for others, we help others as Jesus helped others, we bear our cross as Jesus bore his cross.  And we do so only because the Holy Spirit comes from God the Father, and God the Son to bring us to the Father and the Son.

But this is not all!  Jesus says, “whoever believes, does greater works than him because he is going to the Father”.  What are these greater works?  In Greek, these are mega works.  How can we do greater works than Jesus?  It seems incorrect, but Jesus said it, so it’s not!  What are these mega works?

One might ask themselves what Jesus did, which we could not do?  The answer is to be perfect and holy in a God pleasing way.  But in addition to this he suffered and died to atone for our sin, even though he did not sin.

Jesus doing no sin is the hint!  The greater work that Jesus could not do, because he was without sin is to confess sin and ask for forgiveness.  We certainly need the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, to confess and ask for forgiveness!  This is because it costs our human spirit its pride, to allow the Holy Spirit to uncover the truth of our sin, which reveals us as debased and unholy before God.

Confession and seeking forgiveness are so counter cultural to human nature.  Every child since Adam hides sin rather than confesses it.  Since the beginning, the devil has been making us guilty because of our sin, telling us our sin is too great for God to forgive.  Or he tells us our sin is not really that bad and to ignore what God says in his Word about sin.

Yet, the beauty of the resurrection is that despite the debased nature of every human being, we now have access to God, without fear of desecrating his holiness, or being annihilated by his holiness.  The Holy Spirit may allow us to feel guilt, but only so we rush to the cross in confession asking for forgiveness.

This work is a mega work of God the Holy Spirit in us, as it demonstrates faith in God, when we are led to turn from ourselves, to do the works God has prepared in advance for us to do. 

In addition to this, it also justifies God sending his Son to the cross, it justifies Jesus’ suffering and death for our sin, it justifies the work of the Holy Spirit, leading Jesus in servanthood as the Son of Man.  It also glorifies the Holy Spirit in raising Jesus from death and raising us daily, so we can die to self and live in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and in the peace of God our Father.

Having been forgiven, we love God in sincere appreciation for what he did and continues to do.  So much so, the Holy Spirit makes us bold enough in our death of self, to risk ridicule and loss of name in proclaiming to others our sin and why God has forgiven us.   Amen.