B, Last Sunday of Church Year Proper 29 - John 18:37-38 What is Truth?

John 18:37–38 (ESV)  Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.

What is truth?  Pilate askes Jesus this question, after Jesus not only speaks about, what is truth, but speaks the truth of his kingdom.  God’s kingdom is, God’s kingdom was, and God’s kingdom will be as we proclaim at the end of every Psalm, “Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever more”.  And the great resurrection proclamation of the church, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!”

Yet ringing in the hearts and minds of all people from the first in God’s creation is the question, “Did God actually say?” (Gen 3:1) Tripping us up to place his Word second to ourselves and everything else.

God’s kingdom, despite its existence is not seen by humanity.  If it were so, God would not have had to speak through Moses, Aaron, and others, his priests and prophets of the old covenant.  God would not have had to send Jesus Christ to be the new Israel through which all people can be blessed!  And he wouldn’t have had to send the Holy Spirit after the Ascension, to call, gather, enlighten, and make us holy through pastors faithfully preaching God‘s Word and administering his sacraments.  Without the action of the Triune God, no human would see or seek God and his kingdom.  The only kingdom we see without God, is of this world!

However, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” (John 18:36 ESV)

The only way God’s kingdom is seen is through Jesus Christ’s atonement in God’s law.  The Son had to step into the void and fulfil what vain humanity couldn’t do!  Jesus Christ became Israel!  Out of “Galilee of the nations”, came the only one who could truly bless the nations of all time!

Yet even in Jesus’ time on earth, the disciples struggled to see his kingdom coming.  Therefore, the Holy Spirit was sent for the sole purpose to continue turning us away from our motives to Jesus’ motive, so God’s kingdom could be built, within us, with us, and for us. 

God’s kingdom is hidden, but not to those whom Jesus allows the Holy Spirit to make it unhidden through his Word.

Jesus said to Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37d)

In the English text there’s a hidden irony.  It’s partially revealed in Pilate’s response, “What is truth?”  But there’s much going on in this exchange between Jesus and Pilate, that’s missed in English translations of God’s Word!

We know the riddle of God’s kingdom, that it’s hidden and only seen by faith, generated within by the Holy Spirit when we receive God’s Word into our hearts with our eyes and ears.  However, hearing how the Greek word for “truth or true” is constructed, deepens our understanding of Pilate’s and Jesus’ discussion, and exposes the farce of Pilate’s hand washing and allowance of the Jews to crucify Jesus.

The Greek word for truth is made up of two words, “not and hidden”.  Jesus is the one who makes heaven truly known, or unhides the reality of heaven to us!   Therefore, those who are unhidden hear and heed his voice and receive the hidden kingdom not of this world.  So, when Jesus unhides us with his Word we see his kingdom unhidden in his world.

The craziness of Pilate’s action comes about, despite Pilate finding no guilt in Jesus. He found nothing hidden in Christ! Yet contrary to his conclusion, he turns Jesus Christ over to the Jews for crucifixion.

Listen to the discourse with Greek meaning of the word for truth inserted in its place.

Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to what is not hidden. Everyone who is not-hidden listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is not hidden?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.”

Pilate responds to Jesus with classic political double-speak, “What is not hidden? There’s hiddenness in everything!” Or in today’s language, “everyone has a truth!” But after this he asks the Jews if they want him to release, “the king of the Jews”. 

Regardless of Pilate being sarcastic or not, he has been allowed to see two things, Jesus’ innocence, and his kingship.  He has answered his own question, “What is truth? What is ‘not hidden’?” This innocent king is the unhidden truth! But the revelation of truth continues, not just of Jesus, but of Pilate too, who knowing the truth unhidden before him, hands Jesus over to death.

What is not hidden? Pilate’s hidden political motives for pleasure and popularity become unhidden, in the path of least resistance in his leadership over the Jews and having to answer to Caesar.

Because Jesus is not hidden, he is like no other! His un-hiddenness reveals the truth, not just of God’s kingdom and his Word, but of those who think they’re hiding their reality from him!

God is a God of love! But he is also a God of justice! As you move towards your last breath on this earth, God lovingly has placed before you his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Why? To unhide your hiddenness! All things we’ve sought to hide since Adam and Eve hid themselves in the Garden of Eden. He seeks to call you out of your knowledge of good and evil into the light of perfection found only in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.  He does this “in you” by the Holy Spirit, when you hear his Word.

If any of us, having been unhidden, return to hide from what Jesus has unhidden, that is ourselves, we endanger ourselves, by stepping out from under Jesus’ protective Word of truth.  Jesus unhides the motive of all human thoughts, words, and deeds.  The Holy Spirit wills you to be repentant!  Those who resist repentance, resist the justice that fell on Jesus at the cross. If God’s justice doesn’t fall on Jesus Christ, then God’s justice has to fall on those who do not listen to his Word!  Being unhidden without Jesus, before God on judgement day is a bad place to be!

The feelings you feel when God’s Word of Law convicts you, makes you want to hide what’s been unhidden!  We all understand this, for sure, as it’s in our nature to run and hide.  However, the Holy Spirit comes to gather and enlighten you in God’s Word of Gospel.  So, rather than running and hiding from the light, you can run unhidden into the light and loving forgiveness of God.  Listen to Jesus’ voice saying, “Come!  The Holy Spirit wills you to come and confess your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ!

At the start of God’s Revelation to John, we hear that having been unhidden by his just love, he “has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”  (Revelation 1:5b-6)

The unhidden reality is that you are priests of God in his kingdom.  This now is seen only by faith, revealed by the Holy Spirit in God’s Word.  We call this the priesthood of all believers.  You were unhidden and given the right to be “children of God” priests in your baptism.  Now the Holy Spirit seeks to lead you out of this place, prepared to practise your faith amongst those to whom God leads you in everyday life.

When he comes, he promises all will see him, the kings, the politicians, those who have excluded him from their lives, those who have pierced him at the cross and pushed him aside and hidden themselves from their call into his baptismal priesthood.

God is the Alpha and the Omega!  The beginning and the end.  Will God find you uncovered in Christ, or will he uncover your reality hidden with this world? 

Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. (Revelation 1:7 ESV)

With Pilate, all those who have pierced Jesus, literally, “kicked him out”, will wail on account of him.  Their wailing will occur because they will be chopped, cut down in their kingdom, because his kingdom will come and discontinue all other kingdoms!  In his justice and love, God has the first and last say. 

Before this finally occurs, you and I have access to the unhidden truth, to be unhidden, so that what we seek to hide can be bound to the cross.  We now have the freedom through Christ’s blood, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be unhidden before others, so they too can have sins bound and be sinners set free by what Jesus unhides at the cross and in the unhidden truth of his Word.

What is the truth?  Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”(John 14:6 ESV)

Even so, your kingdom come! Amen.

C, The Last Sunday of the Church Year Proper 29 - Luke 23:33-43 "Jesus Remember Me"

Luke 23:33–43 (ESV)  And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.  And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.  And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!”  The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine  and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”  There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”  One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”  But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?  And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”  And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

At the place called the Skull, or in Aramaic, Golgotha, everything in creation came to a head.  The Head of our faith, the Head of the body of Christendom, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, finished everything and brought a new beginning through his resurrection.

Here, life dealt with death, holiness overcame evil, hidden love was uncovered, true love was unhidden.  The Son of God was revealed and lifted up on the cross having been concealed in the flesh of humanity.  

Saint Paul uses the word “preeminent” in his creedal statement to the Colossians.  We hear of Jesus, “He is the head of the body, the church.  He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” (Colossians 1:18 ESV)

In Greek, preeminent is “protos”.  Jesus is the first, the prototype, the one through whom all receive their identity and image. 

First, we receive our identity as human flesh.  Like Adam we are terrified by our sin, suffering, dying and death.  

Then, we get our identity as human flesh, forgiven by Jesus Christ, born in the flesh of Adam, but not prone to sin as are we.  

You do well to live with this remembrance as Jesus Christ, the Preeminent First One, remembers you!  

Speaking of remembrance, cemeteries are often referred to as remembrance parks.  On seeing or visiting a cemetery, what are you reminded of?  

When you look at the grave of a loved one, what do you remember?  Do you see their descent into the ground and remember loss?  Or do you look past the grave and funeral, seeing crosses that mark most graves and remember the resurrection?

When you remember, does the Prototype, the Risen Head of the church come to mind, welling up peace, purpose, and pleasure within?  Does the Head, fill you with delight and hope?

For those who do not believe in Jesus Christ, cemeteries are places of death, loss, and inconsolable grief and hopelessness.  The cemetery, for those who do not believe, is a place of remembering “what was – but is no more”.  In despair one might hopelessly think, “God did not save Jesus from death, nor has he saved this person in the grave.”

On the other hand, those who believe in Jesus Christ, cemeteries are places of sadness too!  But it is a sadness being overcome with hope and joy.  The graves of those who have died believing in Jesus Christ, have been made holy by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

We remember this of those who have died in faith and now rest from the troubles we still endure.  We remember Jesus’ death.  We also welcome our rest in the grave, glorious resurrection, a perfected creation, and worship face to face before Jesus Christ.  In cemetery remembrance gardens we look forward to, and remember Jesus’ promised garden of, paradise.

We also remember the Head of the Church has crushed the head of the evil one at the place of the Skull, Golgotha, and through death brings life. 

St Paul encourages the Colossians to remember in the Holy Spirit that our Heavenly Father, “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13 ESV).  

So too, we are called to remember the work of God, by the Holy Spirit.  We are continually being transferred from kingdoms of darkness and hopelessness to his kingdom of light and eternal love.

However, in our weakness, we humans struggle with the reality of death.  The human spirit wants to avoid death.  The Old Adam does not want to trust what he cannot see and experience for himself.  He wants to continue taking and re-taking control.  He wants to double back on himself, like a deceptive fox, avoiding the revealing light and love of God’s work of forgiveness and love.

Like the first thief on the cross, your Old Adam, our sinful human spirit, wants the Son of God to sin by saving himself from death and then free us from impending suffering and death as well.  But cheating death like this, like criminals on the run, we would always have one eye over our shoulders knowing we cannot hide from God.  Death will return to enslave if Jesus didn’t die to pay our debt.

Like the other thief, we do well to remember our sin and guilt.  To know that God cannot be mocked, or shamed, into dismissing our sin.  If he did, he would no longer be God, my sin would desecrate his holiness, my debt would go unpaid, and knowledge of eternal destruction would make living seem like being on death row.

This thief knew his debt would bring him to his death.  Unlike the other criminal, he knew a last expenditure of power taunting Jesus to save himself from death, would not save Jesus, him, or the other criminal from death.

Something in this second criminal, made him believe that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, the King of the Jews, and that through death, Jesus would overcome death.  

Did he hear the blasphemous taunts of the soldiers, Jews, and other criminal and believe the truth hidden in their taunts?  Did he read the inscription above Jesus that he was the King of the Jews?  Did he hear Jesus’ word somewhere else in his ministry before the crucifixion? 

We don’t know!  But we do know, he remembered his sin, he remembered Jesus had done nothing wrong, and he also looked forward in hope to Jesus coming into his kingdom!

In faith and hope he said, “‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’  And he [Jesus] said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’”

What a wonderful promise!  Today you will finish up with me, out of pain and suffering, past death in paradise!  Jesus then gave up his spirit and died on the cross.  Death was finished, full atonement was made, all righteousness was fulfilled.

Earlier before Jesus died, he said, “For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31 ESV)

But when he was crucified and as they cast lots to divide his garments, “Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’” (Luke 23:34a ESV)

Today the wood is very dry.  There seems to be not much greenness in the cross, devoid of power, little hope is seen in the future of the church; dissolution and death of denominations within Christendom looks real.

We might want to cry out to God in disbelief, “If Jesus is the Son of God, let him save us and our church!”

But Jesus has saved the church, he is saving the church, and he will save those who are his church.  Those who are his church remember their sin, know Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Chosen One, to die in payment for sin.  

The wood of the cross has long dried.  But the power of the cross is still green.   Like Aaron’s staff in Moses’ hand covered in blossoms, Jesus’ death still oozes resurrection life.   

Jesus Christ is the evergreen verdant “Tree of Life” in the centre of Paradise.  The Holy Spirit wills you with the sword of God’s word to remember and trust in Jesus, to death, and through death.  He wills you to hope in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  He is the Head of your salvation, the Chosen one!  He is the King of kings, and Lord of Lords!

Know and remember that God is with you through death.  That to death and through death, we believe, therefore confess, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, remember me.”  Amen. 

B, Last Sunday of Church Year, Proper 29 - Daniel 7:14 & Revelation 1:7-8 "Jesus Please Finish the Cheese"

 

Adam Cheeseman loves cheese.  For Adam, too much cheese seemed never to be enough. Cheese was Adam’s beginning and end.

To ask when cheese came into Adam’s life, showed that asking the question, meant one did not really know Adam.  Cheese was always there for Adam. It was a part of his being.  He lived for cheese. Without cheese, life had no purpose for Adam. 

It’s hard to know when cheese first became known to Adam.  It seemed that from the time his mother weened him off the breast he had a piece of cheese in his mouth.  As he grew and his mother asked what he wanted to eat, he would say, “cheese please!”

Because he loved cheese so much, he loved what his family did – milk cows!  To Adam it seemed that God put cows on earth for one purpose, and that was for milk to make cheese for Adam to eat. 

Adam met a girl in the cheese pavilion at the local show.  He fell in love with her from the moment he laid eyes on her, carrying a platter of cheeses for sampling.  Her name was Yvonne Curdle.

The Cheeseman and Curdle families were soon celebrating a wedding.  At the breakfast they toasted the speeches with the finest cheeses to ever come from the Cheeseman and Curdle family farms.

Adam and Yvonne lived on the Cheeseman farm, they milked cows, they made cheese, and soon there were little cheese men running around as they continued to live a cheesy life.  But sadness came when Adam’s parents died. At their wakes, they ate cheese.

But the life of Adam Cheeseman was not all that it seemed.  Those who didn’t like cheese were unacceptable to Adam.  He could not understand why folk didn’t like cheeses.  And soon all hell broke loose when Yvonne wanted to make a cheese with fruit in it.  This was sacrilege, you don’t put fruit in cheese, it’s just not right! 

But things grew worse when the children did not want to eat cheese anymore.  They became cheesed off and  loathed the sight of cheese.  They wanted to make the milk into blancmange, custards, and puddings.  For Adam this was nonsense.  The Cheeseman children eventually deserted the farm to follow their craving  for the sweet desire of desserts.

Life went on day in day out dairying, churning out cheese.  Adam could not stop making cheese and eating cheese.  When he closed his eyes to sleep there was cheese, when he had a dream, it was about cheese. When he had nightmares, what was it about?  Not having… cheese!  He never went on holidays and soon enough the cheesy lifestyle caught up with him.  One might say he was addicted to cheeses.

So, he died and was laid to rest in a cheese-coloured coffin.  But even in the afterlife there was an eternity of cheese.  Was this heaven or was this hell?  One thing for sure, it was more cheese.

What is the cheese in your life? To where do you run for comfort?  What competes inside of your secret self for supremacy?  Does the cheese you choose end up cheesing your off?  What cheese do you consume? The one you can’t stop eating, despite the desire becoming sour!

What is your choice of cheese in your life?  Is it pleasurable feelings from food, drink, or sex? Is it the need to be in control, to manipulate others with your will, or any other lust for power, ordering others from your ideals of goodness?  Is it amassing wealth or assets, or other things that profit you and enslave you in this life?  Or is it position and popularity where you act to be seen, and are seen to gossip, propping up and cutting down the poppies around you.

There is nothing wrong with pleasure, popularity, profit, and power in themselves.  They are all gifts from God.  But when they become like the cheese in Adam Cheeseman’s life, they are idols that wrestle one’s attention away from he on whom our attention needs to be focused, as we move towards the end of life here on earth.

Adam’s imbalance to cheese might seem silly.  But there’s nothing silly about our sin which turns the way we live, into evil.  Despite how good we believe it to be.  So significant is the seriousness of sin that Jesus hung in the balance to save us from sin.

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.  (John 19:30 ESV)

The sins that seem sweet at first and end up souring our lives need to be stopped, they need to be finished.  These sins are kingdoms that temp us away from God, just as Adam and Eve were tempted to start their own kingdom only to be thrown out of the Garden and God’s presence.

The question for you today?  As God’s Kingdom comes, are you for his Kingdom or are you building your own kingdom of cheeses like Adam Cheeseman?

God works to end your cheesy kingdoms that serves only to constipate your life, so you become bound up within yourself.  God wants to cleanse you from within.  He wants to finish you, your old Adam, so you give up your spirit and he can fill you with the Holy Spirit.

Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.  “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:7–8 ESV)

Life is not about what pleases us!  No one has ever come or will ever come to God the Father through nice cheeses.  Rather Christ Jesus is, and he was, and he is coming.  He is the Son of Man who saves us and had ended and finished all the cheeses that we seek to please us.

And to one like a son of man is given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:14 ESV)

The greatest temptation in this life is to be deceived into believing God’s Kingdom is not coming.  This leads one into false belief, despair, and other sins.  But God’s Kingdom has come to you.  God is giving you his Holy Spirit; he has and will continue to do so. So, by Jesus finishing sin on the cross we can live a godly life of confessing our evil, letting Jesus win the battle over the cheeses that please us.

Finally, I encourage you with these words written by Gloria and William Gaither.

Yet in my heart, the battle was still raging. Not all prisoners of war had come home. These were battlefields of my own making. I didn't know that the war had been won.

It is finished, the battle is over. It is finished, there'll be no more war. It is finished, the end of the conflict. It is finished and Jesus is Lord.

To that we can all praise God and say, “Amen”.