One of the interesting things that modern science has shown is that the universe fits into a single huge pattern. The same laws that control the fall of an apple, control the orbit of the moon. The same equation that describes the behaviour of an atom, can explain the inferno of the sun. This is why Stephen Hawking and others are looking for a theory of unification. We live in a universe, not a diverse.
Power. Jesus’s signs in John’s Gospel give us pause. The power at work in each event reflects the kind of power that lies behind the universe. Jesus’ creative ability to turn ordinary water into top quality wine in a moment, his healing from a distance of young boy at death’s door, his healing of a man paralysed for thirty-eight years, are all signs of a power far beyond the ordinary. It is supernatural. It all suggests that Jesus who walked in ancient Israel might be the logic, the intelligence, the wisdom who gives the universe its existence and rationality.
Read – John 6:1-15
1 After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. 2 A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. 3 Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. 5 When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. 7 Philip answered him, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” 10 Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. 11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” 15 When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Reflect – On the occasion we read about here, Jesus stunned everyone by producing sufficient food for a crowd of 5,000 from five loaves of bread and three fishes. It was Passover time, the time when everyone remembered the liberation from Egypt God had provided for his people.
We can only begin to feel the significance and impact of the crowd’s response: “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” They saw Jesus as a ‘Moses’. Could he liberate them from Roman rule? But, in his withdrawal from the crowd (6:15) we see he had another plan.
SPIRITUAL FOOD
More than a prophet.…You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, Jesus commented, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you (John 6:26-27)
There are two kinds of bread, Jesus is saying – bread for our physical bodies and bread for our spiritual existence. One day our physical bodies will die. Jesus knew that because we are much more than the sum of our material parts, we need someone to provide food for our spiritual sustenance. Jesus doesn’t just see empty stomachs, but empty souls, empty lives.
Food. The miracle of turning the bread and the fish into more than sufficient food to feed the crowd was a sign of Jesus’ capacity to feed our deeper spiritual need and give us food for life.
Prayer – Raise up your great power, Lord, and come among us to save us; so that, although through our sins we are grievously hindered in running the race that is set before us, your plentiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through the sufficiency of your Son our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP, Advent 4 – adapted)
Have you ever found that someone has misinterpreted something you have said? You say one thing and they hear you say something different. Often we are misunderstood because others haven’t listened carefully or because they have come to the conversation with their own preconceptions. It can be disappointing, frustrating and sometimes hurtful.
JUST A GOOD MAN?
People’s estimate of Jesus Christ often falls into this category. Many agree he is a good man, even a great man. They may agree he is the most impressive teacher who has ever lived. Who would want to quarrel with his ethic, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself;’ ‘Turn the other cheek;’ or ‘Sell what you have and give to the poor…’? And, the quality of his life was consistent with his teaching. Here was a leader worth learning from, and following. The question we are asking this Lent is whether he is more than a good man.
Read – John 5:2-9
2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha,which has five porticoes. 3 In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 4/5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Reflect – Seeing emergency rooms full of sick people is heart wrenching. We want someone to do something. The opening scene in John 5 tells the sorry story of many invalids – blind, lame and paralyzed gathered around a pool in Jerusalem. Archaeological research suggests that it is a complex of pools with five porticos known as Bethzatha, located near St. Anne’s Church in the Arab quarter today in the Old City of Jerusalem. The pool was thought to have miraculous powers.
On the day Jesus was there, John tells us, there was a man who had been lame or paralyzed for thirty-eight years. Seeing the man and knowing his plight, Jesus asked him a simple question: “Do you want to be made well?” But the man’s response was circumlocutory: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up…” Perhaps he reckoned that if he was healed he would lose the support and companionship he enjoyed and on which he had come to depend. He’d have to make a new start in life…He’d have to get a job! Without discussing whether the pool had healing powers or not, Jesus took the initiative and, at a word, cured him. The bed that had carried the man could now be carried by the man.
WELLBEING
The man’s hesitant response illustrates the way we sometimes respond to Jesus. He asks us, ‘Do you really want to be changed?’ So often we don’t want him to intrude on our lives and lifestyle. But, in a world that fears the future, men and women need hope, not platitudes; salvation, not sentimentality. Jesus is not offering us affirmation of human dignity in the face of an indifferent universe. He offers each one of us personal access into a new and better universe because he is divine.
So he invites us to make a decision. ‘Do you want to be made well?’ he asks. We may join the ranks of the skeptics and deny him, or we may place our faith in him and join the ranks of those believers who are proving the truth of his promise. Like Thomas, who doubted when he saw Jesus taken away and put to death, we come to worship him: “My Lord, and my God.”
Prayer – Blessed Lord, you have caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, so that, encouraged and supported by your holy Word, we may embrace and always hold fast the joyful hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. (1662 BCP, Advent 2)
The New York author, Madeleine L’Engle, once commented:
‘I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.’
As we continue to examine the portrait of Jesus in John’s Gospel, we read of the time when he was approached by a father whose young son was dangerously ill. The man who was an officer in Herod the Tetrarch’s service, lived in Capernaum. Hearing that Jesus was in Cana, he went to see him.
Read –John 4:46-54
Then Jesus (he) came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51 As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” 53 The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54 Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
Reflect – Jesus regularly challenged people around him with the unexpected. Consider his response to the official’s question: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” With these words he was throwing out a challenge to everyone listening (you,is plural) to ask themselves whether he was someone they could really trust – not just in life’s good times, but also in the tough times. It is the question Jesus asks each of us. Is he worthy of our trust? Can I trust him at the deepest level?
Look at the official’s response: “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” And what did Jesus say? “Go; your son will live.” Apart from his words, Jesus gave the man no assurance. Yet the father believed him. What a test of the father’s faith! Would we have had such a faith?
As he went home the man learned that his son was completely healed at the hour Jesus had spoken – 1:00PM. Jesus had the extraordinary power to heal a sick boy, even at distance. The repetition of “Your son will live” in verses 50 and 53 emphasizes this. Consequently, the whole family believed. For them Jesus was more than a miracle worker.
This was a second sign pointing to Jesus’ unique power, a power we can only associate with God. John wants us to know that Jesus is God in the flesh – glory personified. God welcomes anyone whose faith in Jesus is real, small though that faith may be.
Prayer – Almighty God, you wonderfully created us in your own image and have now more wonderfully rescued and restored us. Grant us, we pray, that as your Son our Lord Jesus Christ was made in our likeness, so may we share his divine nature; we ask this through Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (1978 AAPB, Second Sunday after Christmas — adapted)
The call by extremists within Islam for individual terrorist acts against the West gives us pause. ‘Is it safe to go anywhere these days – even shopping?’ we ask. Rightly, governments charged with the responsibility of ensuring the security of their citizens, will want to take steps to do so. But the rise of radical Islam also challenges us to consider better ways to help Muslims understand the core statements of Christianity. Sadly, for centuries contact between Christianity and the Muslim world has been unfortunate. Ancient churches that survived in the Middle East tended to be weak and ineffective; and with the Crusades of the Middle Ages the followers of Jesus Christ took up arms in a way that Jesus himself condemned. Further, in times when they did succeed in battle, their witness was little different from that of their foes.
As well as developing a lifestyle consistent with the New Testament ethic and praying for opportunities to ask people around us what they believe, we need to have a clearer understanding of our own faith so we can share it. Indeed, we need an ever-clearer understanding of Jesus and a confidence in him. This is one reason I am addressing the ‘signs’ of Jesus that we find in John’s Gospel.
Read
John 2:1-11
1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
Reflect
Quality wine. The wine at a wedding in Cana of Galilee had run out and Jesus’ mother approached him to do something about it. He protested, saying his ‘hour had not yet come’.
But he did go ahead with an astonishing miracle that day, providing the best quality wine from water. Just imagine how this event might be tweeted today.
A Sign. John the Apostle tells us that Jesus’ act of turning water into wine was the first sign he performed. Seeing God’s handiwork in this remarkable event (2:11), Jesus’ first followers began to understand that he was God’s Messiah. As they grew to know him better – it was for them, as it is for us, a process – they recognized the miracle that day pointed to his unique power as well as the glory and joy of the coming messianic age.
But they also began to learn that before the messianic age came in all its fullness, other things had to happen first. The wine at the wedding was only Scene One in God’s drama. Supremely, Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God needed to deal with our deepest need – the restoration of our broken relationship with God, something we cannot achieve ourselves.
We live on the other side of the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection. As we wait for his return in all his glory, he expects us to take up opportunities to introduce others to him as more than a prophet, God’s true Messiah, who came and lived amongst us as one of us.
Prayer
Lord Christ, eternal Word and Light of the Father’s glory: send your light and your truth so that we may both know and proclaim your word of life, to the glory of God the Father; for you now live and reign, God for all eternity. Amen. (1978 AAPB, A Prayer for the Gospel)
Today is known in the church calendar as Ash Wednesday – the first day of Lent. Traditionally, it is an important time of preparation for Easter. In the northern hemisphere it is when the season changes from the darkness of winter to the delights of longer days and the new life of spring. It can be a time to reflect on what God has done for us in bringing us from the winter of life without him to the new life he holds out to us through the events of the first Good Friday and Easter. Some people find it helpful to make Lent a time of going without (fasting), enabling them to be more focused on their life with God. It begins with Ash Wednesday and continues through to the Saturday before Easter – this year from today, Wednesday, February 18 until Saturday, April 4.
ANGLICAN LENT
Given the increasing readership of the ‘Word on Wednesday’, I am preparing a weekly ‘Word’ this Lent on the ‘signs’ we find in the Gospel of St John. Following an introduction, I will include the relevant text from John, after which I will make a brief comment. Each week I will also include a prayer, a collect, adapted from the English 1662 Book of Common Prayer. You might like to use the season of Lent to read through the whole of John’s Gospel – when did you last do this? You may want to read half a chapter a day – which will take you through to Easter.
While I would not normally encourage anyone to read the last pages of a book before they begin, let me make an exception, because it is helpful to know what St John the Apostle had in mind when he wrote his Gospel. He tells us this in chapter 20:31:
These things are written so that you may know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Ash Wednesday – 2015
Last week I indicated that church attendance in the USA is in decline. Currently it is less than twenty percent. What is more, this percentage is significantly lower amongst the ‘millennial’ generation. Yet there is a ray of hope amongst the millennials, for just under eighty percent believe the orthodox statements of Christianity, including the belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. At a point when the pundits want us to believe that science is in the ascendancy and Christianity is in serious decline, the reality is that many people still believe the facts. So, how do we move people from ‘knowledge’ to a vital faith and involvement in God’s church?
The starting point must always be helping them to meet the Jesus of the Gospel records, for Christianity is not about our search for God through reason or experience, but our encountering God through his revelation to us.
Read
Come with me to John 1:1ff:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 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…. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
Reflect
With his opening verses, John introduces us to ‘the Word’. John tells us who the Word is and from where he comes. We learn that he is truly God (1:1), eternal (1:2), the creator of all things and the source of our existence (1:3); he opens our eyes as well as opening the way to the spiritual dimension of life (1:4). He was God, and yet with God – by himself the Word is not the full complement of the Godhead.
With such a profound theological preamble, verse 14 is shockingly tangible! The Word of God, whose very nature and existence is eternally divine, has taken on human form. John is telling us that he and his fellow apostles saw what Moses only glimpsed, namely, the glory of God personified. For the first time in history, God had revealed himself in person (1:18). The grace and truth of God had become incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.
But there is an ironic tragedy: left to ourselves we reject the Word and his light. We prefer to live in the darkness of our own egos. We need God’s work of grace within us to open our eyes to the truth (1:5-13).
In his opening section (1:1-14), John introduces us to a counterintuitive idea: the religion of the Bible is not about our search for God, but God’s search for us. He is telling of a ladder that God has let down from heaven to us (1:51). Christianity is not a religion of our discovery but of God’s initiative. It is not about our attainment, but God’s reaching out to us. It is not about our research but God’s revelation. It is a religion, not of works, but of God’s mercy.
Prayer
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made, and you forgive the sins of all who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts, so that we, lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain from you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, Ash Wednesday)
