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Scripture Reading
John 15:18-25
This morning's gospel is taken from the book of John, chapter 15, beginning at verse 18. If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me, hates my father as well. If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen and yet they have hated both me and my father. But this is to fulfil what is written in the law. They hated me without reason.
John 15:26 - 16:4
When the advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the father, the spirit of truth who goes out from the father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning. All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue. In fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the father or me. I have told you this so that when their time comes, you will remember that I warned you about them. This is the gospel of the Lord.
Misleading Promises and the Reality of Faith
There are moments in life that come with a promise of fun and delight that turn out to be, well, misleading. Go camping, they said. It'll be fun, they said. And then you wake up in the night to the sound of scratching at the tent and you really hope it wasn't that spider making that scratching because then it would be ginormous. Go watch baseball, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Have kids, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Some experiences are sold to us as joyful and refreshing only for us to discover that they are also uncomfortable, inconvenient, alarming or dangerous.
Now we come to a passage in John's gospel where Jesus has been telling us of the great richness that will come from abiding, remaining in his love. Here at Deep Creek we say faith is refreshing, life-giving. This year our theme is that Jesus is good and good for you. And suddenly Jesus comes out with this clangor. If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. Remember what I told you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.
We might be forgiven for wondering whether sometimes the Christian life is a bit of a bait and switch. You thought you were getting something delicious and suddenly you were being given a Brussels sprout. Is Jesus saying that the life he offers is good? Or is he saying that the life he offers is going to make our experience here on earth much harder? Or is it possible that these things can be true at the same time?
A History of Opposition
History tells us that in predicting opposition, persecution and resistance to Christianity, Jesus was not exaggerating. From the earliest days of the church, following Christ has brought opposition. The Apostle Paul, when he was known as Saul, was indeed one of those who felt that in killing Christians, he was offering a service to God. This is the first anti-Christian graffiti that we have found, or at least that is extant to us. It is from about 200 AD. It was found in Rome. The text says, Alex, Aleximenos, worships his God. Poor old Alex is having this very unflattering picture of his devotion scratched into the wall with a donkey-headed naked saviour on a cross.
Now graffiti in many ways was the least of the Christians' worries around that time. We have heard the stories of Nero, Diocletian, these emperors who not just imprisoned but tortured, really played with for the entertainment, the brutal entertainment of the crowds and executed Christians. Even when Christianity was legalised in the 4th century, Christians living beyond the Roman regions were persecuted, facing pressure and discrimination, and particularly as the Islamic world started to grow from the 7th century. Of course in some times and places where Christianity has been in power, Christians have persecuted themselves. Where there is difference and confusion over how to express our faith, we have made the lives of each other difficult.
In the modern era, of course, the persecution is linked to political ideologies that are hostile to religion in general, like communism. So we see that still today in China, even in Russia outside the sanctioned church, and also in places where Christianity is considered the incorrect religion, and that could be under Islam, it could be under Hinduism, or even under Buddhism. Many believers in parts of the Middle East, and in Africa, and in Asia, still face harassment, imprisonment, violence or death for following Jesus.
Now our situation here in the West has obviously been quite different from that, but we do continue to find a social friction and a resistance in our culture, particularly as we no longer share some of the foundational understandings of morality, how one should express their faith in the public square, and what it means to say something is true. We might be dismissed or ridiculed, viewed with suspicion, made fun of. But actually, at the same time, the landscape is shifting with legislation that might make it harder for Christians to talk about what they believe. Things around speech, professional conduct, education, employment, laws beginning to create situations where Christians could face professional or legal consequences for acting according to their convictions.
Why Following Jesus Brings Resistance
So why does this happen? Why does following Jesus, if Jesus is good and good for you, why does Jesus tell us to expect persecution? Why does it bring resistance or hostility? Well Jesus begins just with the bold facts that it will happen. Because it is the pattern of his life, it will be the pattern of ours. The why is broad. Remember what I told you, a servant is not greater than his master. If Jesus experienced rejection, it should not surprise the disciples that the world will reject those who belong to him. To be joined to Jesus is not to share only in his life and love, but it's to share in the pattern of his existence. We're called to sacrifice ourselves for others. We're called to depend on our Father God like he did, and we will also share the pattern of the opposition that he faced.
You can be the coolest, kindest, most generous, most intelligent, most nuanced Christian there is. But if you are a Christian, a Christ follower, a disciple of Jesus, then the pattern of his life will shape yours too, for good and for hard. But once we look at the rest of John's Gospel, we start to see why being a Christian and why Jesus faced so much opposition. I think that in John's Gospel we see the opposition to Jesus and ultimately the persecution and death of Jesus comes from these three reasons.
- First of all, Jesus exposes what people want to keep hidden.
- Secondly, Jesus claims authority that people don't want to give.
- And thirdly, Jesus disrupts the systems and agreements of the present order of the world.
1. Jesus Exposes What Is Hidden
So firstly, Jesus exposes what people would rather keep hidden. John writes that Jesus says, Jesus says, If Jesus is the light of the world, he's actually exposing the things that we want to keep hidden. Things about our selfishness, things about our priorities, things that we do when nobody is looking. Our motives. If Jesus understands what is in a person's heart, then I am really on show. There's a reason why we have nightmares about being exposed. Turning up at school or at church without our clothes on. Because we fear. We fear this exposure. It is not welcome to us.
And Jesus brings uncomfortable truths. And as he shines a light into the darkness, we actually see that maybe we weren't as fresh and flourishing as we thought. And we don't like it. I don't like it.
2. Jesus Claims Ultimate Authority
Secondly, Jesus claims an authority that people do not want to give. It might be okay if you say that Jesus is one teacher among many. Maybe you won't be opposed. But if you actually read the Gospels, and you hear Jesus say things like, I am the bread of life. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth and the life. I have claim over your life. I am the authority, the ruler for human life. This is not one teaching among many. This is a claim to ultimate authority over human life. And that claim collides with my desire to have authority over my human life. And it's always been thus.
Although, of course, in modernity, post-modernity, in the West, we have really doubled down on individual rights, on my own authority and autonomy. It's my life. It's my choice. I'm to find who I am, and I'm to live in my identity. But Jesus says that he, as the way, the truth and the life, has the right to rule our lives, to say what is good, to tell me where to go and what to do. And in John's Gospel, people say exactly what we say. Who does he think he is? How dare he tell me what to do? And John's Gospel answers, well, who does he think he is? He thinks he is the son of the father, the one with full authority sent into human life to bring us to God.
3. Jesus Disrupts the World's Systems
The third reason why I think we push back against Jesus, and the world pushes back against Jesus and Jesus' followers, is that Jesus disrupts the systems and agreements or allegiances of the present order. So in John's Gospel, the word world doesn't refer to just kind of creation or the physical planet or even all the human beings that are on it. It's human society, the human system organized apart from God. It's networks of power, reputation, status, belonging. And what we agree with each other and these systems about how you live the good life, how you are accepted.
So it might be under totalitarianism. It might be the state telling you this is how it works. It might be under capitalism, the market telling you this is how it works. And when someone begins to follow Jesus, well, something ultimately shifts. Their allegiance to that, the agreements that they are making, how they understand who they are and what it means to flourish and who gets to tell them what to do and who to buy. No, not who to buy, what to buy. Jesus says, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.
Ultimately, of course, the greatest disruption to the world's systems is the cross itself. The cross overturns everything that we would normally understand about power and success, wisdom. The Apostle Paul reflects on this in 1 Corinthians 1, and he says that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, a stumbling block. And the language that he's using, the words in Greek are where we get our words for moron. It's moronic and scandal. It's scandalous. The world looks upon a crucified Messiah and says, this is moronic, this is stupid. Religious people look upon a crucified Messiah and they say, how? Where is the victory? And they stumble.
Crucifixion was humiliation. Like Cicero, who was a Roman writer before Jesus was born, talking about it, said, you can't even mention it. It is disgraceful to talk about crucifixion in polite society. And yet, we've embraced it to the point that we wear it around our neck and we put it on our biggest buildings and we love the cross because the cross has revealed a completely different world, a different kind of wisdom, a different kind of power, a different kind of victory. Instead of conquering through force, God overcomes evil through sacrificial love. Instead of saving through dominance, God saves through self-giving.
The cross exposes how easily human systems confuse power with violence, with taking, with wisdom, how it confuses wisdom with pride, confuses success with status, and who dies with the most toys or the most oil wins. Unless someone is willing to embrace this upside-down wisdom and power of God, the cross is always going to seem like foolishness and scandal, a disruption to the world that has to be opposed and resisted. Jesus does not simply offer a slightly improved version of the world order. When we say Jesus is good and good for you, it would be dangerous for us to think that what we meant by that was we were going to get by following Jesus at a slightly improved version of what we are already enjoying. More peace, more abundance, a smoother way of being what we already are. Jesus actually is opposed because he reveals an entirely different kingdom where power is expressed through love, life comes through surrender, where we belong to one another in service and sacrifice, where to give is better than to receive.
The Power of Witness
But of course, Jesus goes right down to the root of the opposition in the next part of his teaching. And he says, ultimately, it's without reason. It's because God in the world is opposed by fallen human hearts. He says, I have come and spoken to them. I have given my words of truth and life. I have done my works amongst them. I have turned water into wine. I have raised people from the dead. I have healed a man born blind. And they have seen it and they have heard it. And even with this evidence, their hearts are turned against me. It is only through the revelation of God's spirit in making us alive that will one day turn us from opposition, from resistance to receiving him. It is the human heart that is in opposition to God until it has received his life through the son and the spirit.
But how? How then, if we don't want to live in a world where absolutely everybody is just opposed to God all the time, what is the answer, Jesus? Well, Jesus' answer is this one word, and it's key in the gospel of John. It's testify or witness. When the advocate, the Holy Spirit comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. You will, in your heart, continue to be encouraged as the spirit tells you that Jesus is indeed who he says he is and you will testify about that to the world. You must witness to me. You must testify concerning me, and that is where you will see God reveal himself in the world and people move from resistance through revelation to receiving.
Examples of Witness in John's Gospel
The idea of witness is a backbone in the whole gospel of John. When we use the first chapter of John in Christmas services, and we want to have all this really kind of high incarnational theology, we want to say, ah, the word became flesh and God has made his dwelling place among us, and if you've seen Jesus, you've seen the Father, and there's these really inconvenient parts for those that are organizing the readings. Um, ah, that keep interrupting about John the Baptist, and I don't know if you've ever thought, why is this so weird? We've just had this massive kind of, Jesus is the word of the living, and then, and there was a guy, but he wasn't Jesus, but he came to be a witness to Jesus, and the whole shape of John's gospel says, this truth that has come among you, ah, Jesus himself witnesses to the truth of the Father and not exactly who he is and how you can get to know him and be accepted and belonging in his family, ah, but those who find him bear witness to others, and that is how the power of the truth of Jesus is experienced in the world.
- So, you've got John the Baptist right at the start, but then you've got, um, this is me, the disciples, you know, Philip and Nathaniel, and, oh, yeah, come and see.
- You've got the woman at the well, who meets Jesus, he reveals himself, he spends this time with her, and she goes and tells the whole of her village, and they come and they say, ah, now we believe not just because you told us, not just because of your witness, but because we've seen for ourselves.
- Ah, there are people who are healed in John's gospel and particularly in chapter 9, there's a guy who was born blind, and Jesus heals him, and there's a very tense aftermath, where the Pharisees are very concerned that Jesus has been doing this healing work and possibly on the Sabbath and doing things that he shouldn't have been doing, ah, and the guy that was blind and his parents are really nervous about it, and basically they know they're under threat of being excluded from their religious community if they own up to what has happened, and they ask the parents, and the parents say, ah, we do know that he was born blind, we don't know how he now can see, but they did know, and the scripture says that they wanted to stay in darkness, they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, but the man born blind knows the opposition, and he starts to witness, to testify, that well, I don't know how it happened, but I can tell you this, I met this guy, and I once was blind, but now I see, and as the opposition to him grows, he knows what's coming, he actually doubles down, he's like, no, I definitely know that Jesus healed me, ah, I now have received what I longed for my whole life because of Jesus.
This is what witness looks like. It doesn't always look like running to tell the whole town, sometimes it looks like just with your friend, come and see, come and meet this one, sometimes it looks like just saying the truth, just saying Jesus did this thing, Jesus is helping me in this way. You don't have to have every argument in your head, you don't have to be able to dredge up the most intelligent and nuanced and winsome and whatever else it is, apologetics, it's just about not lying when you know that Jesus did something for you, even when you might be being opposed or resisted for that. But in John's Gospel, we know that in spite of opposition, it is this witness that will bring the revelation and ultimately the receiving of Jesus' life to others.
I also love and am fascinated by the characters of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea in John's Gospel. You might have heard of Joseph of Arimathea because he was the one that donated the tomb for Jesus' body to be put into, rather than being taken outside the city and sort of dumped with the criminal's bodies. Jesus gets this new tomb that Joseph probably owned for his family. And Joseph is actually in the Gospel earlier than that as someone who is, well, afraid of the Jews. And along with Nicodemus, he's part of the leadership and he knows that Jesus is good, but he's very afraid. But ultimately his witness in this is that he would give what he had, that he would start to move from the darkness to the light, even when it was costly. So I think of people who don't find it easy to talk about Jesus, maybe in their workplace, maybe in their family, but that they would give, that they would use what they have to align their resources with kingdom resources, that they would do strange things with their time or their money or the stuff that they have or inviting people into their homes. And that in itself is a witness.
Bearing Fruit in Hard Places
So Jesus promises us opposition, yes. But he tells us this so that we will not fall away and continue to testify to him. Knowing Jesus is worth it. It will be hard and it can be hard at any age and particularly when you're in school and uni, when you're looking for a partner, it can be very hard, let alone if you want to take a stand more publicly or of course in a country where you are legally not allowed to worship Jesus. It will be hard, yes. But it is good. He is the way, the truth and the life. And if you remember this picture if you were here last week, this is a picture of my sister's passion fruit vine and this is inside her shed. The vine itself is outside getting all the sunshine and the light and the goodness. But actually in this dark, dusty, rat infested, no water place, this is where fruit is being born. And so Jesus would say if we abide in him, as we remain in him, in the goodness of his life, that even in the hardest of places we can be a witness bearing fruit, seeing hearts opened and the truth of Jesus revealed and received. We're going to sing about this Jesus now and during this song I encourage you to take this time to say how can I be a witness and to bring all that you fear and all that you are experiencing as his disciple to the man of sorrows, our pattern and our saviour.
