C, Easter 5 - John 13:34-35 "Truth and Love"

Picture yourself in this situation.  You’ve being set up, falsely accused!  Your betrayer is one of your inner circle; a person in whom you have placed your trust.  It’s a person with whom you have been honest; you’ve been completely transparent and have told them the truth. 

You love them knowing they have set you up and will let you down!  They have heard the truth; the truth has revealed all things about yourself and them.  You love them anyway despite what they depart to do.

Judas Iscariot departed from Jesus to betray him.  How do you react to those who you believe have betrayed you?  This is how Jesus reacts…

“When he (Judas Iscariot) had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.” (John 13:31–32 ESV)

When I’m betrayed by someone in whom I trust, I don’t feel glorified.  I imagine, like me you don’t feel that way either!  Rather, the sense of being betrayed or deceived leaves us with feelings of debilitating disbelief and distress, at first.  Then after the shock wears off, sorrow and anger moves one to protect their self-interests, and even plot revenge.  There’s definitely not much love for the person whose betrayed your confidence!

However, Jesus knowing his mission as the Son of Man has been set in motion by Judas, testifies to the glory of God’s truth and love, and gives the commandment to love. 

As Judas leaves to betray him he charges his eleven disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34–35 ESV)

The love that Jesus brings to life just before his betrayal is a love that’s perfect.  At the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks to the truth of this love, saying, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:44–45a, 48 ESV)

Here Jesus reveals the love God expects of us and it’s a hard truth!   The love we so often submit to others as God’s love is not a love that submits to God’s truth.  Love without God’s truth can be just about any kind of passion or pleasure, desire or selfish whim, deceiving ourselves and others, with our love, opposing the love God commands.  God’s love and truth, reveals that all other “loves” fall short of God’s holy love, as imperfect, impassioned, partial, and eternally hopeless.    

The themes of truth and love run concurrently throughout God’s Word.  Paul tells the Corinthians that, “Love is patient and kind… it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth… Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8 ESV)

Love and truth are developed in John’s Gospel.  Right from the introduction, written down by his congregation we hear, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14 ESV)

John proclaimed the grace and truth of Jesus to his congregation, and through John they saw Jesus’ glory, a glory that was manifested at the cross in his death for his believers, his church.

This is the glory to which Jesus himself testifies after Judas departs to betray him.  Peter could not follow the gracious glory of God’s love and truth in Jesus Christ.  Instead, Peter denied Jesus three times and deserts him at his trial.  Jesus was the only one lifted up in glory, but for the rest of us we only see the way of the cross as a gory death killing our human glory.

Love and truth come to us in that Jesus is the personification of truth and love.  Jesus says to you who believe him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31–32 ESV)

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) And he prays for those who are his, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17 ESV)

Jesus makes us holy or sanctifies us in himself and his Word, which is truth, but with this truth he commands us to love, just as he has loved us.  He knows the heart of humanity, he knew the heart of Judas who rejected his Word, and he knew the heart of Peter who despite hearing the commandment to love, couldn’t see the love of God over his love of self in the face of death. 

Truth and love need to be bound together within us, and the only way that can occur is with external help.  We cannot keep the commandment to love, and we struggle with the truth the cross reveals about us.  We have an inbuilt inability to fear and love God, revealing us as fearful enemies of God’s glory that comes to us in truth and love.

For us to be made holy in the truth of Jesus’ glory, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit.  He says, “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.” (John 14:15–17 ESV)

Paul also agrees that the Spirit of Truth helps us to love, saying to the Romans, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5 ESV) And to the Galatians he proclaims, the fruit of the Spirit is firstly, love, then other things. (Galatians 5:22)

The theme of love and truth, developed in God’s Word, and especially the Gospel of John are pulled together in John’s three Epistles where John says, “Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.” (1 John 2:4–5 ESV)  And, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3:18 ESV)

In Revelation, Jesus Christ shows himself to John who, “saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.” (Revelation 19:11–13 ESV)

Jesus, the Word of God, is Truth and Love, and he calls his church, his bride into his truth and love.  Like Cornelius we are Gentiles baptised into God’s church of Jesus’ truth and love.   We hear the circumcised believers glorifying God that the Gentiles have been granted “repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11: 18 ESV), after Peter brings this good news to Jerusalem.

Like Cornelius and his family, we have been granted by the Holy Spirit repentance that leads to life, through Jesus’ truth and love.  God is truth!  In the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all truth is revealed by the truth in his Word of Law and Gospel.  God is love!  This love is perfect, impartial, and holy!  In his Word of Law and Gospel, he shows you your sin, is saving you from it, and is making you holy!  By the power of the Holy Spirit he works in you deeds of truth and love.  That is, to be loved by God through continual repentance and forgiveness, to love the truth of God’s Law and Gospel, to love God, and to love one another as God has loved us.

Do you want to conquer and be a part of God’s one holy eternal and apostolic church?  Jesus, the faithful and true witness speaks his great word of the Amen, the Yes, the Truth and the Love, calling us from being lukewarm in God’s truth and love,  saying, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.’” (Revelation 3:19 ESV) Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father, God of truth and love, remove all half-truths and  lukewarm love from our hearts.  Work in us the burning desire of Jesus’ truth and love, with the Spirit of truth and love, your Holy Spirit. Amen.

B, Midweek Lent 1 - Mark 14:1-21 "Not Passed Over"

Mark 14:1–21 (ESV)  It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him,  for they said, “Not during the feast, lest there be an uproar from the people.”  And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.  There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that?  For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her.  But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.  For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.  She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.  And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”  

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.  And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.  And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”  And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him,  and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’  And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.”  And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.  And when it was evening, he came with the twelve.  And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.”  They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, “Is it I?”  He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me.  For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”

Coming up to the Passover, Jesus was not passed over!  The chief priests and the scribes, not usually conversant with each other, have joined forces plotting to kill Jesus.  The two parts of the Mark narrative we have heard tonight, begin and end with the coming reality of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, and death at the hands of the Jewish leaders.

Housed within the desires of the Jewish leaders and Jesus’ proclamation of his betrayal, are two very different pictures of belief and unbelief. 

First, Jesus and his apostles are in the home of Simon the Leper at Bethany.  A woman presents herself with expensive oil and proceeds to pour it on Jesus’ head.  The oil was pure nard, from the spikenard plant, and most likely came from traders to the east.  Nard grows in the Himalayan region, so this oil was not common or cheap. 

Those present who witness the event, literally snort with anger at the woman, claiming the ointment could have been sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor.  With no understanding, Jesus’ apostles seek to shame the woman for doing what she had done.

Three hundred denarii are three hundred days wages, almost an annual income.  Would you tip your yearly wage on someone’s head?  At face value it makes no sense to pour out all this perfume on someone’s head.

That is not unless you knew why you were pouring the perfumed oil on the person, who that person is,  and what they were about to do! 

Today, knowing that Jesus is our Saviour, most of us would still consider passing over Jesus, believing pouring a year’s wage over his head, a waste!

Arguably, this woman is demonstrating the greatest faith of anyone Jesus ever met, in his ministry or march to the cross.   It might seem one would have to be ludicrous to do such a thing with such reckless abandon.  Waste not want not, seems to have given way to wanting to waste!  But there was no waste here!

This woman believed what Jesus had said about himself, that he was the Messiah, but that he was also going to die to be the Messiah.  Her seemingly wasteful actions, reveals a faith, second to none.  The Holy Spirit has taken a hold of this woman to value Jesus’ life and death, more valuable than the expensive nard, with which she honours him and pours on his head.  Jesus affirms her Holy Spirited faith and action, saying to those who snort in anger, “she is working a good work on me”.

The woman did not pass over Jesus.  What is Jesus, worth to you?  Is he worth passing over, in a bid to waste not, want not!  We, like this woman, are called to see the worth of what Jesus has done for us.  To not pass over Jesus.  To allow the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and minds.  So, looking into the core of our being, we hand over to Jesus what is wasting us away.  Like the woman, we pour all our sin on Jesus with reckless abandon, giving him the full debt of our sin!

To God the Father, Jesus Christ his Son, and the Holy Spirit, this is the sweetest most fragrant offering we can pour onto our Saviour, justifying God the Father working a good work through Jesus Christ, having been led to the cross by the Holy Spirit.  And the Holy Spirit working a good work in us as we pour our sin in confession on the Son of our salvation.

In having Jesus in this way, in pouring our sin on him, in emptying ourselves of the idols of our hearts, allows us to truly serve the poor.  Having seen the poverty of our hearts through trusting in these idol (idle) riches, allows God to use us in seeing and serving the poor, as Jesus serves us, in his death and resurrection.  In not passing over Jesus, the Holy Spirit will work a good work in us, allowing us to pour Jesus on the poor with the reckless abandon of God’s love!

The second picture,  is that of Judas Iscariot, selling Jesus for thirty shekels of silver.   We find out the amount from Matthew’s Gospel account in chapter twenty-six.  A shekel is two denarii, two days wages.  So, Judas betrays Jesus for sixty days wages.  

In contradiction to the apostles snorting with anger over the woman’s costly faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the chief priests are glad to pour riches on Judas.  But these riches, are a loss of faith in Jesus as the Messiah.  Judas, one of the twelve, having been sent as an apostle, no longer trusts Jesus. 

We see the depth of Judas’ poverty here!  We do not know the reason for Judas betrayal, but we know he passes over Jesus, no longer pouring his trust on him.  What Judas “expected” was something far different to what the woman hoped in Jesus.  She trusted Jesus unto death, but Judas handed him over to death, no longer having faith in him as the Messiah.  If Judas had believed Jesus’ word of promised resurrection, he would not have solved a short-term problem with the eternal remedy of the hopelessness of his human spirit.

The story of Judas’ poverty stands as a warning to us, to not pass over Jesus!  We are called to put our expectations of Jesus under the magnification of God’s Word, leading us to repentance.  In this Lenten season the exposure of (idle) idol expectations of Jesus, can occur within.  Not to pass over Jesus, but to pass onto Jesus our confession of sin.

Two pictures of faith!  Faith in Jesus, and unbelief in Jesus.  Human spirited faith in the self, and Holy Spirited faith in someone greater than the self.  The woman did not pass over Jesus, but Judas passed over Jesus!  The woman poured her trust onto Jesus with reckless abandon, but Judas poured his trust onto other things and abandoned Jesus as his Messiah.

In this Lenten season, it’s an easy temptation to pass over what Jesus did for us, and why he did it.  It’s easy to forget about Lent and go straight to the sweetness of the Easter eggs that have been furnishing the shelves of shops for about the past sixty days. 

But the forty days of Lent give us time to stop, reflect in God’s Word, the work of God, the work done for you and me, where God did not pass over Jesus, but stopped with him,  causing him to be our Passover Lamb, who covers the poverty of our hearts with his holy and most precious blood.  Amen.

A, Maundy Thursday - John 13:15–17,34 "Holy or Hardhearted Passover"

John 13:15–17,34 (ESV)  For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.  Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

God always seeks to save humanity.  His focus is on life.  God’s intention to bring life to us, is his work of redemption.  For his work to be effective in the lives of those called as his church, it depends on one’s response to the salvation he seeks to give! 

Having been made holy by the blood of Jesus spilt on the cross, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, if one responds with holiness, this is allowing the Holy Spirit to generate faith within.  So, the person humbles their heart and lives a life of repentance.   This life gives the freedom to confess one’s sin and forgive others knowing this pleases God our Father. 

All these are a participation in the good works of holiness, as the Holy Spirit wills within each the desire to be what God has recreated his reborn to be.  “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10 ESV)

Those who know this, allow the Holy Spirit to bring them to confession, believe in their absolution, and are blessed.  Forgiven, one can forgive!  Loved, one can love as Jesus loves!

However, some do not respond positively to God’s work of salvation in sending Jesus to the cross.  They reject it outright, claiming they are good, not evil, and don’t need God’s work.

Then there are those who appear to hear and believe God’s work of salvation, but when push comes to shove, they do not allow the Holy Spirit to bring their human spirit to repentance in the blood of Jesus Christ. 

These two groups, those who reject Jesus Christ completely, and those who reject the Holy Spirit bringing them to Jesus Christ, participate in the works of hardheartedness and are not blessed. Without receiving forgiveness, one cannot forgive.  Without receiving Jesus’ love, one cannot love as Jesus loves!

In the lead up to the initial Passover in Egypt, Pharaoh stands as one whose heart is hardened. 

God gives room for Pharaoh to change his mind and repent.  But each time the hardness returns Pharaoh back to his original state of being. 

But Pharaoh, who stubbornly considered himself the earthly representation of the Egyptian sun god Ra, was no match against God our Father, who spoke through the seemingly weak and flawed mouth of Moses.

In fact, in Moses, God was using the weak things of the world to shame the wise and powerful, so God’s almighty glory would shine all the more.

God made Moses like God to Pharaoh.  (Ex 7:1)  But God also makes Pharaoh hardhearted so he would not listen to Moses.  Moses spoke with “uncircumcised lips”.  (Ex 6:30)  In other words, he did not speak with eloquent ability so Pharaoh might be persuaded by gifted rhetoric. 

God made this inarticulate Israelite like God to Pharaoh, so that God’s glory would shine all the more brightly over the hardhearted Pharaoh as Egypt descends deeper into darkness.  Each time Moses approached Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s retreat to hardness became easier and stronger. 

Like Pharaoh, all who resist God, do so each successive time, with greater ease and increased hardheartedness.  The stakes become so high, one completely rejects God in favour of one’s own goodness and godliness.

Judas Iscariot, unlike Pharaoh, believed in God.  However, he believed for his own advantage.  Like Pharaoh he too was hardhearted.  Over time, as Jesus neared Jerusalem and the cross, Judas became more distant from Jesus Christ.  Like the increase of Pharaoh’s heart being hardened in each successive plague, so too was Judas’ heart, as Jesus did less and less in being the Messiah Judas expected. 

Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, of which Judas was one.  And after dipping the morsel of bread and giving it to Judas, Satan enters him and Jesus says,  “What you are going to do, do quickly!” (John 31:27)  After Judas took the bread and ate it, he left to betray Jesus.  The Gospel of John records after he left, “It was night.”  (Jn 13:30) 

Judas, like true believers, knew, but unlike true followers, did not want to do what the Master was doing.  In his hardheartedness, he sought to bless himself in what he was doing and entered the darkness of eternal death in doing so! 

Judas and Pharaoh stand together in their hardheartedness and life passes over them.  Their love was for themselves, and not as the love God had for sinful humanity.

Thousands of years apart, these events begin and end the old covenant Passover!  The alpha and omega of Passovers.  The first and the last of effective Passovers!  Now, Jesus Christ has absorbed the Passover in his death and gives us life in the Holy Spirit by his resurrection.

Death did not pass over Pharaoh, Judas, and Jesus.  Whose love out of the three is worth following to receive life?  The new mandate from where we get the name, Maundy Thursday, is to love as Jesus has loved us.  For us to love as Jesus has loved us, we need to be washed and forgiven!  Unless Jesus washes us and gives us his Holy Spirit we have no share with him – no salvation and no ability to love as Jesus loves!  (Jn 13:8)

Jesus’ mandate is a clear warning to all in the church to continue allowing God the Holy Spirit to bring us to God the Son, so what was won on the cross does not pass over us!

God our Father is patient with us, but testing his patience is dangerous.  Do we wish to place ourselves in a position of hardheartedness, where we have passed the point of no return, and contribute to our final destruction?  As did Pharaoh and Judas?  Just as the Lord made a distinction between Israel and Egypt in the Passover, those who persist in their defiance and pride in resisting the Holy Spirit will be plagued with death and won’t be passed onto eternal life with God our Father.

God seeks to glorify Lutherans in Australia who follow and listen to him.  He wishes to bestow upon all believers in Jesus Christ, life.  Because of our sinful human nature, we would return to being like Pharaoh or Judas, if, after receiving Jesus Christ we did not receive the Holy Spirit, to engender faith within and continually gather us and return us to Jesus Christ.  God wants to pass over us with eternal death, so we are passed onto eternal life, this is why we receive the Holy Spirit.

The Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand is an organisation in which God’s church exists as a part of God’s kingdom.  But it depends on how those in the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand (LCANZ) respond to his work of love, which saves and makes each individual holy.  In short, you need Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, for you to be at peace with God the Father.

For the best part of twenty years the LCANZ has been asking if we should ordain women along with men.  Five times we have prayed and voted.  God has said,  “No”, through the vote, upholding what he says to us in his Word.

After each vote there has been increased hardheartedness towards God saying, “No”!  With ease new motions are put to synod, with increasing desire and deception, God’s love is being redefined to that of the world’s definition of love and equality.  In equalling ourselves to God, we have not humbled ourselves, confessed, received forgiveness, and sought to love others as Jesus has loved us.

Plagued by renewed motions of disobedience against what God has intended through our prayerful votes, the LCANZ is now in a dangerous position as we gravitate the way of hardheartedness, grieving the Holy Spirit, and putting our holiness in jeopardy.  If we walk out on God’s will, we can expect the night of darkness just as Judas did!

Jesus is our example, despite not having a hard heart, he put his divinity aside, and entrusted his human spirit to the Holy Spirit.   We are understudies of his humility, so we might receive and live in his holiness.

The men who wilfully allow disobedience to happen in our church do so to their detriment.  God cuts to the core of our existence, dealing with life and death.  When Pharaoh was judged by God, it was the oldest males who died in the Passover.  If God was about equality as the world defines it, the oldest females would have died too. 

So too called male leaders will be judged who seek to subvert the male office of Christ’s love and servanthood, with a love that is self-centred and hardhearted.  Just as throughout history all men called into the ordained ministry in God’s church have been accountable to the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Pray for the LCANZ, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” (Hebrews 13:17a ESV)

Let the Holy Spirit bring us all back to the foot of the Cross, and live peacefully in God’s forgiveness, with God’s words of caution, “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”  (Hebrews 10:26–27, 31 ESV)

Let us pray.  Lord God Holy Spirit soften our hearts, help us receive forgiveness, believe forgiveness, and share Christ’s forgiveness with each other, so we might not only receive your bread for today, but having passed over death, receive it from you at the table of the Father’s eternal feast forever.  Amen.