In the Name of God
Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Jesus appears in Israel
in the role of the new leader, God’s appointed leader, and through his teaching
and his miracles and the power of his presence, he is drawing a large following
but he is not drawing them to the Temple to worship or to the steps of the
Sanhedrin to be instructed by the old establishment. Jesus is leading this large
group of people into a completely new way.
It is a new way because it cares for the poor and the less
fortunate. It is a new way because it
attempts to be God honoring not just with lip service, not just with Temple
worship, but in the day to day fabric of life.
It is a new way that acknowledges God as the Everything to which we owe
our everything. It is a new way, with a
new leader and it challenges the guardians of the old way.
Now the old guard
responds to Jesus in a predictable way.
They start a campaign of lies and insinuation and rumor designed to
discredit Jesus. It is not all that
different than a presidential campaign these days. (It is sad but true that it is easier to win
votes away from your opponent by by slandering him than to win votes because of
your own worthiness.) Anyway, the old
guard begins a campaign of character assassination. They make false accusations, they start
malicious gossip and resort to out and out slander. “He is out of his mind,” they whisper. They pull people aside and say, “He is
possessed by Beelzebul.” They explain
away the miracles, the healings and the casting out of demons by saying, “His
power comes from the prince of demons.”
It’s all designed to destroy God’s appointed leader, to thwart God’s
intended purposes and to reestablish the old guard’s power and authority over
the people.
The truth was that
Jerusalem, which had once been a shining city on a hill, the place from which
God’s people reigned as a mighty kingdom, had fallen into disrepair and
ill-repute. The once proud nation of
Israel had become a vassal state, under the thumb of Rome. The old guard had failed to maintain the
legacy they had received from generations past.
They had been unfaithful to God and they failed God’s purposes but they
were still grasping onto power with every tool at their disposal. (We ought to mention that holding onto their
power was the worst possible scenario for Israel. They were failing and they were trapped in
the old way. While they may have wanted
to be faithful, they had lost the ability to listen for God’s Word or to see
God’s Presence in their midst and they had resorted to huge body of laws and
harsh rules thinking they could force their people to be good children of God.) They believed they were right and that God’s
beloved Son, this Jesus, was an imposter.
Now this is a very,
very important point. If the old guard
leadership of Jerusalem succeeds in assassinating Jesus character, if they are
successful in discrediting him, if they manage to win the battle for control
over Jerusalem, they destroy themselves and they destroy Jerusalem. Jesus is God sent. Jesus has been sent to provide God’s
salvation to God’s people and the people are faced with a decision. They may receive God’s gift of forgiveness
and grace or they may reject that gift but there is no third option. Choose Jesus or Barabbas, that’s it. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I said,
“There is no gray twilight between good and evil?” It is either one or the other. The same is true of God’s plan of
salvation: there is faith and obedience
to Jesus or there is a rejection of Jesus and disobedience. Jesus leads to life, the other leads to death
and the people of Jerusalem must decide.
And by the way, they do
and they choose poorly. When their
attempts to discredit Jesus failed, they resorted to more violent means and
they killed the Son of glory. That was
somewhere around 35-40AD and in 70AD the Romans destroyed the Temple, burnt
Jerusalem to the ground and bathed it in blood.
The people who chose Barabbas were killed en mass. Those who escaped the sword were scattered
around the world and their ancestors would not find their way back to Jerusalem
for nearly two thousand years. The
Temple which represented God’s presence among his people has never been
rebuilt. Of course we know that God does
not dwell in buildings. God’s presence
among his people is not to be found in any building but in his Son.
Now it is time to do
some application here. These stories
that we read are not just history lessons or biographical sketches of
Jesus. They are teachings. They open up the circumstances of our lives
in our day and they inform us about the errors of the past and the hope of the
future. And this particular story is
particularly applicable to our common lives.
1)
We are called to put our faith not in a
what but in a WHO. The hope of God’s
people is not to be found in buildings, properties or bank accounts. We always act as if it is but this country is
full of churches that are empty shells.
They have magnificent buildings constructed during the glory days of
Christianity. They cost a king’s ransom
to build but they are now nearly empty and in disrepair, not for lack of
money—many of them have huge endowments.
They are failing for lack of caring, lack of purpose, lack of genuine
commitment to our Lord Jesus Christ.
They got it backwards. They put
their trust in trusts, and endowments, and brick and mortar but all of that has
proven to be worthless. Genuine hope is
found in Jesus not in the Temple.
We are always tempted to believe that we are facing
an uncertain future because our buildings are at risk. It’s not true. O, it is true that our future is at risk, but
our future is only risky to the extent that we refuse to place our faith in
Jesus and refuse to serve our King. If
we choose to allow Jesus to speak to us especially when those words are
uncomfortable and challenging, if we allow Jesus us to call us into activities
that seem too ambitious or too risky, if we place Jesus’ priorities ahead of
all other priorities in our lives, then we will know genuine security because
we will be living smack dab in the middle of God’s will and God’s purpose for
our lives.
2)
When we make a decision to be faithful
to Jesus, not to the world, not to our stuff, the next problem we face is one
of evaluation. How do we know that we
are being faithful? We can’t judge based
on how easy life is. Lots of faithful
people endure hard lives. We can’t know
based on material gain. Jesus never
suggests that faithfulness will lead to an abundance of things. So how can we know that we have placed our
hope in Jesus and are serving him.
There is a way. We can know positionally. Here is what I mean. If you look at the gospel this morning there
are several groups of people representing several different spiritual
positions. I see three possible
positions: Opposition, Ambiguity, and
Acceptance:
There are those who are opposed to Jesus. They are accusing Jesus of being a
fraud. Some go so far as to say he is
evil. They are actively fighting against
Jesus, arguing against his teachings, and disputing his miracles. They refuse to value the things that Jesus
values or to do the things that Jesus does.
And Jesus says, ‘When you set your heart against the Spirit of God you
have placed yourself in a unpardonable position. Unless you change your mind and allow the
Spirit room to work, you are damned.’
There is a group who
are living in ambiguity. They are
listening to the opposition. They are
considering the possibility that Jesus is a fraud. They are seriously entertaining the
possibility that their best interest is to be found somewhere other than with
Jesus. It’s no accident that the people
representing this position in the gospel are Jesus’ family, the people who
should be closest to him, who should have no doubts and who should be “all
in.” Notice that they are not in the
room with Jesus. They stand
outside. They are not heeding his call
to come. They are calling Jesus to come
to them. They are ‘concerned’ for their
son and brother, but their concern is based on bad information and an
unwillingness to recognize that their own doubts are at the bottom of their
refusal to accept Jesus. Jesus’ family
refusing to accept Jesus as Lord is a metaphor for Israel, God’s family,
refusing to accept God’s plan of salvation. May I suggest, as gently as I can,
that Jesus’ family refusing to accept Jesus wholeheartedly is a metaphor for a
so called “church” not accepting Jesus as Lord too.
The third position is
Acceptance and it is represented by a third group. These are those who are being healed by
Jesus, who are answering his call, who are sitting at his feet, listening to
his Words, going out to spread the word, and serving Him and one another
unselfishly. These are the ones Jesus is
referring to when he says, those who do the will of God are my mother, brother
and sister. Jesus says that our
relationship to him is not so much a blood relationship as a positional
relationship. We become family, we enjoy
intimate relationship with him, and we become co-heirs in the Father’s kingdom
not as an accident of birth, not because we are genetically linked to the
chosen people but by believing in God’s plan of salvation whole-heartedly.
Now I want to put a
ribbon around this and tie it up in a bow.
There is only one person who can choose what you believe, where you go
and what you do. That person is
you. WE love to blame others for the
messes in our lives but they are not to blame.
Most of the time, I am the source of the problems in my life. Most of the time, you are the source of the
problems in your life. Each of us
chooses and we then harvest the fruit of our choices. This is most especially true in regards to
our spiritual lives.
Your position to Jesus
is a decision that you choose to make. Many
choose to reject Jesus and his teachings.
They choose to live by a different set of values and they serve
different “Lords,” the Lords of this world.
There are certain short term benefits to opposing Jesus but ultimately
this decision ends in eternal isolation from God and God’s grace.
Many, many choose to
live in an ambiguous relationship to Jesus.
In fact, even many church people choose to listen to the doubters,
entertain their own doubts and fears, and live outside the room, calling Jesus
to come outside, calling to Jesus to honor their doubts. Our gospel this morning is clear. Jesus will not come outside to entertain our
doubts no matter what sort of claims we want to make about being his family.
True closeness to Jesus
comes through a genuine, and repeated, choice to accept Jesus as our Lord and
Savior. It is a choice that I have to
remake every time an opponent of Christ challenges his authority or maligns his
goodness. It is a choice I have to make
every time the culture demands that I put something ahead of my Lord. It is a choice I have to make every time my
selfish interests are prohibiting me from acting in the way that Jesus would
have me act. It is necessarily a radical
choice. Half a commitment is no
commitment at all.
In our gospel reading
this morning Jesus faces opposition from those who seek to be in control and in
charge, and seek to destroy his influence.
Many, including Jesus’ own family are entertaining the criticism and
they are seeking to get Jesus to be more moderate, less committed, a little
more compromising. They stand apart from
him too. But there are those who accept
Jesus as the Lord and Savior, who submit to his teaching and who devote themselves
to the work of God’s Kingdom and it is these last ones who are intimate family
members of the Son of God. Amen.
