How many Christmas cards do you receive? Christmas cards are an American cultural phenomenon. Perhaps other cultures have the same phenomenon. The cards start arriving in early December, from friends and family. We hang the cards in our dining room, as part of our Christmas decorations. Some cards include a letter with a recap of the person or family’s year. They might include a family photo. They might only include a family photo. Sometimes people send a card and they don’t even sign it.
I get those unsigned cards, and I wonder why the person went to the trouble to send the card. Especially if it is from a person or family with whom we are not close anymore. The people send the card because we used to have a close relationship, and they feel a kind of obligation to send a card. But the relationship has changed.
My guess is that most of us have had relationships change. That’s normal. A once-close relationship can become distant. Happens all the time. When a once-close relationship becomes distant, our hearts might ache, and we might miss the closeness we once had, but we also know that we simply can’t be close with that many people all the time. We all have different personalities with varying capacities for friendship. But even with the connection that social media offers, it is difficult to be close with more than 10 people or so.
Who are your close people? Probably some family members, probably some friends from the past, probably some church friends, probably some others. Think about what it takes for you to maintain closeness. It takes work. You must be intentional about sending that text message, “How are you?” Or setting up a lunch. It can’t just be sending the annual Christmas card that says, “Merry Christmas.”
It takes effort, intentionality, to stay close.
That is what God wants. He wants closeness. To be known in such a way that there is a regular personal experience. So evaluate you relationship with God. For those of us who have been in relationship with God for many years, Jesus’ prayer in John 17:1-5 is not only a calling out for us to examine if we are living like Jesus did, the work of offering our lives, but also to examine the experiential quality of our relationship with God.
What step will you take to move closer to him? Even if he seems distant. What will you do to open up time in your schedule for him? Ask him, “How are you doing, God?” and listen. Read his word, and pray, “God speak.” Join a small group or Sunday School class and hear him speak through the discussion. Talk with him throughout the day.
I’ve been visiting a elderly woman who is a member of my congregation, but who has been in a rehab facility for the last few months. I ask her how her relationship with God is going, knowing that she really wants to be released and go home, and this rehab is taking way longer than she ever could have imagined. She says, “Oh, I talk with God all day long.”
What step can you take to talk with God like that?
If you’re tracking the first part of Jesus’ prayer (John 17:1-5), which we’ve been studying this week, you might have noticed I didn’t talk about another theme he mentions. Eternal life. Look again at verses 2-3,
“For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Jesus is talking about himself in the third person. Personal opinion: I find it odd when people refer to themselves in the third person. “Joel is happy today, Joel is excited to be here.” Sounds like Cookie Monster from Sesame Street who is famous for referring to himself in the third-person.
I point out that Jesus uses the third-person so you know that he is talking about himself here. He is saying God the Father granted authority to God the Son to give eternal life. This is intimately connected to the idea of glory that we just learned about in verses 1, 4, and 5 (posts here and here). The Father’s granting of authority to the Son is filled with glory.
How is the Father’s granting of authority to the Son filled with glory? Because the authority the Father gives to Jesus has the purpose, the intent, the design of Jesus giving eternal life to people. People can experience eternal life. What glory! What praise. This eternal life is available to us.
But what is eternal life? Jesus answers that in verse 3. Eternal life is knowing God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ, whom God sent. We clearly see the Father’s heart here. God wants to be known. But being known can relate to many different ideas. Is this to know God in the sense of reading about God in the Bible? Is this to know God in the sense of coming to church to sing songs about him, or to hear a preacher preach about God?
No. Jesus is using a very specific word here. What it means is this: “to learn to know a person through direct personal experience, implying a continuity of relationship…it is [not] merely ‘to learn about.’ Here the emphasis must be on the interpersonal relationship which is experienced.” (Lowe & Nida)
So eternal life involves an interpersonal relationship with God that includes direct contact. That means eternal life is not only something that we have after death. God wants to be known, to be experienced, to be in relationship with us now. That brings him glory. That work of offering his life, Jesus is saying, brings people into relationship with God in a deeply personal way.
We have to be careful that we do not make the jump to individualism here. As if we can have a relationship with God that is disconnected from other people. As if God is mine, by myself, and I don’t need to be involved in a community of other followers of Jesus. Our relationship with God is personal, for sure, but it is not individual.
God wants to be experienced and known. He is relatable. We can have that kind of relationship with God now. Eternal life, in other words, starts now. Jesus completes the work of offering his life sacrificially so that we can be in intimate relationship with the Father, with Jesus, with the Spirit now.
Jesus has one more bit of work to do. Not a small bit either. It is the final offering. Jesus would be offering his life through his beating, his crucifixion and his death.
Astoundingly, as Jesus tells us in his prayer in John 17:1-5, his offering brings praise to God. In fact, Jesus in verse 5 envisions the glory, the praise that he had when he dwelt in the presence of God before the world the began. Jesus reminds us that he is God, that he was not created, and that he shares glory with the Father and always did. He not only brought glory to God on earth by completing the work God gave him, but through his work of offering he amplifies or increases the glory of the presence of the father.
What Jesus is saying about glory in this prayer is kind of a lot to take in. We so rarely talk like this. But think about it this way. In all that Jesus is and does, from before creation, before his incarnation, throughout his life on earth, Jesus and the Father share glory and they increase one another’s glory. Jesus’ work of offering his life increases the glory and praise given to the Father because so many more people will respond to Jesus by choosing to become his followers and give praise and glory to God. When we talk about giving praise and glory to God, we are not primarily talking about singing worship songs. That is part of it. An important part of it. But we are talking about something more. Jesus’ act of praising God, of giving God glory was his work of offering his life. We’ll talk about how that relates to us in just a moment.
Before we get to how Jesus’ work of offering his life relates to us, I want us to see that while there is quite a lot of glory and praise in this first part of Jesus’ prayer, there is something else we need to remember. Jesus has not yet gone through what will be awful, horrible pain and death before he returns to the presence of the Father. So even though he sounds so positive here, so much glory and praise and joy, we shouldn’t read Jesus’ prayer as devoid of pain. He had obeyed God, but Jesus’ obedience was very, very difficult. Glory came through suffering. Praise came through pain.
The reality that praise came through pain is how we can relate to Jesus’ work of offering his life. Jesus is the example for us. Jesus’ example of sacrificial living, the work offering of his life is the pathway to bring praise to God. Yes, we can and should sing songs of praise, and we can often serve God faithfully in ways that we enjoy. But let us not avoid being willing to live sacrificially like Jesus did. When we embrace the work of offering our lives, we will be amazed to find that giving is living.
I didn’t make that phrase up. Giving is living. The writer Mitch Albom learned that phrase from his professor Maurie. You might have heard of the book Tuesdays with Morrie. Albom wrote that book after numerous weekly visits with his college professor who was suffering failing health. Albom would watch as people came to visit the professor, thinking they were going to lift his spirits, but they would leave surprised to have him lift them up. Morrie, the professor, was the one who was dying. Morrie was the one we would normally think of as needing encouragement. Instead, he did the encouraging.
When Albom asked him about this, he said, “Morrie, all these people come to encourage you, to help you. But every time you ask them about how they are doing, and you talk with them, and you end up lifting them up. What gives?”
Morrie responded, “I am dying, but when I give, I feel alive. Giving is living.” That’s the Jesus way. That’s the work of offering our lives. When we embrace the work of offering our lives in service to Christ and the mission of his Kingdom, while it will require sacrifice, we will find it brings praise to God, and that we will experience the truth that giving is living. If you’re tracking the first part of Jesus’ prayer, you might have noticed I didn’t talk about another theme he mentions.
On family vacation, we were having a prayer time where one person would share a prayer request, and then another person would pray for them. It was getting late into the evening, and I was sitting next to my wife, Michelle, on a sofa. Someone shared a prayer request, and Michelle volunteered to be the one to pray for them. As she prayed, I listened, silently agreeing in prayer with her. Suddenly I heard a loud thud, and my neck snapped up to attention. I had fallen asleep, and my head fell backwards, slamming into the wood chair rail on the wall behind me. My 13-year-old nephew, sitting on the other side of Michelle, was freaked out by it, and my son across the room was laughing hilariously. It was truly funny.
Jesus’ disciples famously fell asleep one time when he was praying. I’m referring to the “Not my will, but yours be done” prayer, where we are told that sweat is pouring off him like drops of blood, while the disciples were asleep. It is a very intense moment.
Jesus’ betrayal and arrest is just moments away. He has taught his disciples some final important teachings before he is ripped from them, and they will be alone. They are in the Garden of Gethsemane, just a short walk outside the city of Jerusalem. The Gospel of Luke tells us that each evening of this last week of his life, Jesus has been visiting the garden, spending time alone in prayer. This last night he brings his disciples with him.
My guess is that when we think of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed, we think of the prayer as recorded in the other three Gospels. John, however, doesn’t include that prayer or the fact that he and the other disciples were struggling to stay awake.
Furthermore John wasn’t asleep the whole time Jesus prayed because as you scan your eyes across all of John chapter 17, you’ll see the whole chapter is a prayer. Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is quite different from the “Not my will, but yours be done” in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In John 17, Jesus prays for three people or groups of people: himself, his disciples, and all believers. As we study his prayer over the next few weeks, we’re going to look for themes. What is on Jesus’ heart and mind that night? What does he pray to the Father about?
This week we’re covering verses 1-5, his prayer for himself,
“Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”
What concept is repeated most often in this first part of the prayer? Glory. We talked about this a few weeks ago here. The word Jesus uses for glory is the word doxa, where we get our English word doxology. Doxology technically means “a word of praise.” It fits then as a title for a song of praise. That’s the focus of the song, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” That’s a lot of praise. That’s doxa. That’s glory, to bring praise to another.
So Jesus is saying that the time has come for an outpouring of praise. The Father praising the Son, and the Son praising the Father. What outpouring of praise is Jesus referring to? Is he going to hold a worship service in the Father’s honor? Are there going to be praise songs and sermons? No, none of that. But there will be an offering. No one is going to give money though. Jesus is talking about the outpouring of praise that will burst forth through the offering of his life.
Look at verse 4. Jesus brings an outpouring of praise on earth by completing the work God gave him to do. This work is the offering. What work? What offering is he talking about?
God gave Jesus the work of offering his life to become a human, to live a perfect human life, to show us what it looks like to live the Kingdom life of God here on earth. The work of offering his life includes a lot. It includes preaching good news, telling good news stories, and living good news, especially among the needy, the hurting, the oppressed. But there is one more bit of work to do, and we’ll talk about that in the next post.
Imagine you are on vacation, sightseeing in a country where Christianity is illegal. You might think, “Joel, I wouldn’t travel there in the first place.” Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you just might. I did. There are plenty of places where Christianity is illegal but there are amazing sites, and Christians are allowed to travel there to visit. Christians just have to be guarded about the practice of their faith.
When my wife and I visited her sister and brother-in-law in Malaysia in 2016, we experienced something like that. It is illegal for Malaysians to be Christian, so my pastor brother-in-law had to post a sign at the front door of their church saying that it was illegal for Malaysians to enter there. But as non-Malaysians, it was okay to participate in a church. Christians could not, however, openly share Christian faith and try to invite or convince Malaysians to become followers of Jesus.
So let’s go back to my opening sentence. Imagine you’re in a country like that. For whatever reason the authorities decide to go the extra mile, in a bad way, and they arrest you, accusing you of proselytizing, meaning they are charging you with the crime of sharing your faith. They imprison you, try you and convict you. They declare you guilty of sharing an illegal faith. The punishment is death, and they set your execution date for 24 hours from now.
I know this story sounds like a stretch, and of course I hope you don’t have to experience anything remotely like facing an execution for being a Christian. But try to place yourself in that position for a moment. Here’s why I want you to attempt to feel the emotions of being on the brink of execution: as we read what he says in John 17, that’s the situation Jesus found himself in.
This is the final chapter of his long teaching that took place on the night of his arrest. We’ve been studying John chapters 13-17 for a few months now. First we learned about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. We then watched as Jesus predicted Judas would betray him, and as Judas left the room. We heard Jesus declare the Peter would deny him three times before morning. We listened as Jesus taught about leaving the disciples and about sending the Spirit in his place. We followed the disciples and Jesus as they left the room and walked to the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus teaching them about peace, joy, love and obedience, even when the world might seem to be against them. Now the end is near. What will Jesus say in his final words before their world turns upside down?
He stops teaching, and he prays. In fact, John chapter 17 is one long prayer. This is what Jesus does on the eve of his execution. He prays, and his prayer is very instructive for us. Take a look at John 17 ahead of time, and then on the blog next week we’ll study verses 1-5.
All week long we have been discussing Jesus’ distressing final words to his disciples that they might face pushback, oppression, and persecution. As we continue into the beginning of chapter 16, Jesus explains why he has been telling his disciples that it is possible that some people in the world might hate them. Look at the very sobering verses 1-4.
“All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of thev 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. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you.”
Bleak, isn’t it? But the disciples are just a few months away from this happening. Jesus wants to prepare them for the possibility of persecution. Notice, though, Jesus’ clear teaching: though persecution might be coming, his followers should not run in fear. The disciples will be mistreated by religious people who they know God and are doing what God wants them to do. But Jesus says the opposite is true. People who persecute others show they do not know God.
But Jesus’ followers do not persecute others. Instead we welcome disagreement, conversation, difference of opinion, and we maintain fellowship. We work hard to remain unified without requiring uniformity. When people, though they are claiming to be followers of Jesus, require uniformity, refuse conversation with different points of view, they show they are followers of Jesus in name only.
If I were one of the disciples, I could be thinking at this point, “What??? This is not what I signed up for Jesus. What is this bait and switch. You said, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.’ You talked about the Kingdom come. You never said anything about ‘Follow me and you might be persecuted.’ This a raw deal. What’s going on?” If any of the disciples were thinking this, Jesus says, “You’re right, I didn’t tell you about this from the beginning. But here’s why. I have been with you.”
Things have changed. He is about to leave them. Not alone. The Holy Spirit will be with them. But it will be different. They might face persecution. But they will have God the Spirit with them and in them, and that is amazing.
How is that amazing? It is amazing because we need not fear. We can follow the way of Jesus, lovingly pursuing the mission of his Kingdom, even if it means we will receive pushback, because the Spirit is with us. Do you feel fear about living for Jesus or speaking for Jesus? Know that the Spirit is with you.
What can you do to step further into the way of Jesus? What can you do to step further away from complacent, nominal Christianity? Living the way he did? Caring for the things he cared for?
I urge you to take action. First pray about it. Ask the Holy Spirit where he is moving and working in and around you, so that you can participate with him. It might be a new way, a way that you find uncomfortable or awkward or scary. But where the Spirit is, you are in good hands! So listen for the Spirit to lead you, invite you and guide you.
Second, review the Gospel of John. Read through it again. Observe the way of Jesus.
Third, talk it over with others who love you and are loving, gracious followers of Jesus. Ask them to discern with you. Start having sessions with a spiritual director.
Fourth, make an action plan. Dates, times, steps. Plan it out. Get realistic. Start with one task. We don’t make change by saying we want to. Do one thing. What is one action you have seen Jesus do that you feel him asking you to make more a part of your life? None of us are fully like Jesus. We all have something we can strengthen, out of our love for Jesus. He’s given us gifts, talent, ability, experience, even if we are young. How has he made you? How can you serve him with the gifts he has given you?
Fourth, talk it over with an accountability partner. Show them the plan, and say, “I believe the Holy Spirit wants me to so ___________, and though I’m nervous, I want to follow through. Will you hold me accountable to my plan?”
Fifth, take a step…and keep praying along the way. Remember that he says he is with us, he is for us. His ways are for the best. His ways are good. Even if they result in pushback.
A few weeks ago we talked about the Holy Spirit, and I already discussed verses 26-27. I think it would be good to read it again, now that we are reading it in context.
“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.”
Jesus wants to assure the disciples that though they might face difficulties, they are not alone. He will leave them, but he will send the Holy Spirit to be with them. As the Spirit testifies about Jesus, so the disciples will also. Testifiers are storytellers. You and I are testifiers, storytellers. Tell the stories about Jesus’ good news. Tell the stories about God’s faithfulness in your life. Tell the stories about the work of the Holy Spirit.
Remember that when we tell our stories about the work of the Spirit, our life choices, our actions are telling a story all their own. If our actions and our stories are not in line, we will have discredited ourselves, and people are right to not believe us. Michelle tells stories of serving people at a restaurant who pray before their meal, but are very fussy and particular, extremely difficult to serve. People who leave a gospel tract with their tip, but it’s not a great tip. Good news, if not matched up with Jesus’ way actions, is not going to sound like good news.
We evangelicals would do well to recover that which is embedded in our name. Did you know that the word “evangelical” means “to proclaim good news”? Tell good news stories. Invite people with tales of the amazing work of God. Know that the story-telling Spirit is with you, in you. You are not alone.
Jesus has been talking with his disciples, and as we saw in the previous post, he gives them a warning. If the world loves them, it could be a bad thing. What Jesus meant is that his disciples might be nominal, “in name only,” saying they are his followers, but actually not living like he lived. Jesus’ way of life brought him into conflict with the religious elite, because he called them to account for their hypocrisy. Jesus is warning his disciples that the same conflict withe religious elite will likely happen to them when they live like he did.
I wonder if the disciples were sitting there wondering if he is talking about any of them. Are any of them disciples in name only? There was at least one, right? Just a few moments earlier he had shocked them by declaring that Judas was going to betray him (see post here). My guess is that most, if not all of them, had a feeling Judas was a nominal disciple. But when Jesus said that Peter was going to deny him three times before morning, that might have been a shocker. Jesus had previously said that Peter was the rock! If bold, passionate Peter was going to deny Jesus, who else would Jesus reveal to be a nominal Christian?
If that is what they are thinking, he has some assurance for them in the rest of verse 19, “You do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
Well, ok, then. So on the one hand he assures them that they are truly his followers, including Peter who was still there, who had yet to deny him three times. That had to be reassuring. Especially when he affirms that he chose them. But on the other hand, Jesus confirms that the world hates them. And in verse 20, he gets even more intense.
“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.”
There’s a bit of whiplash here from Jesus as he gives the disciples conflicting “if” statements. If they persecute me, they’ll do the same to you. If they obey me, they’ll obey you. Jesus’ point is to assure the disciple that they are currently in line with Jesus. They are not nominal disciples. But because they are his true followers, they can expect to get the same treatment as he did, which is sometimes awful, sometimes good.
If people treat Jesus’ followers poorly, why do they do so? It is interesting to think about how a movement based on love, grace and truth could receive pushback. You would think that a movement of love, grace and truth would be extremely attractive. But Jesus is right, again, if we think about how Christians have been mistreated over the centuries.
Of course, a significant portion of mistreatment of Christians is because Christians behaved in ways that are unlike Jesus. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is saying that his followers just might be persecuted precisely because they are living the loving Kingdom way that he himself lived. Why does the loving Kingdom life attract persecution? Look at verse 21.
“They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.”
No doubt, Jesus is attuned to a complex reality. The religious leaders of his day, though they claimed to know God, actually didn’t. The religious leaders were exceedingly religious, performing all sorts of rituals and following a plethora of laws. But they missed the heart of God. In fact, their allegiance to their religion was motivated by their greedy hearts. They wanted to remain in power, to have control, to have access to wealth and privilege.
That greed meant they could not accept Jesus. Jesus said that the religious elite were wrong, missing the heart of the father. To accept Jesus they would have to accept his teaching, his way of life, and that would mean they would have to change their way of life, their beliefs. They couldn’t lower themselves. So they had to persecute and eliminate him. Jesus tells his disciples to expect the same treatment from those who are not his followers.
Notice how he wraps up this teaching in verses 22-25:
“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 fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’”
You can almost hear the sadness in Jesus’ voice. He fulfilled the mission the Father gave him. Teach the truth. Do the miracles. Make the way of the Kingdom abundantly clear. Jesus did that repeatedly. His life was a pleading to the people to know the truth about God.
Of course, many did hear his teaching, see his miracles, and choose to give their lives to follow him. After he was crucified and resurrected, and after he ascended back to heaven, we read in Acts 1:14-15 that there are 120 followers. Among that number were at least a couple religious leaders. Nicodemus. Joseph of Arimathea.
But Jesus’ point here is to say that the people of the world, the people who willfully chose not to follow him and his ways, and my guess is that he primarily has the religious power-holders in view here, those people have no excuse. They had every opportunity to choose to follow him. But they refused.
Jesus refers to the Old Testament to support his point. He quotes a line that appears in at least two of the psalms. “They hated me without reason.” Psalm 35 and Psalm 69 both include the line, and of the two Psalm 69 is quite messianic. Read it and notice how many times it seems like it is talking about events in Jesus’ life, yet it was written a thousand years before him.
How about you and me? Will we choose to follow Jesus, even if it puts us in conflict with religious power-holders? Will we choose to follow the heart and way of Jesus even if it is risky?
What Jesus says in John 15, verse 19, causes me to wonder about the quality of Christianity in a place like the USA. He says, “If you belonged to the world, it would love you.” Sounds good. I want people to love me. Is Jesus saying that belonging to the world is good?
The word that the NIV translates “belong” in verse 19 is technically saying, “If you are of the world.” To be “of something” is to be part and parcel of it. This is not just membership to Costco. Jesus is referring to what we give our allegiance to, what shapes us, and how we live. Are we of the world? Or are we of him?
Jesus here presents to us the possibility of a Christianity that is so unlike Jesus that it is acceptable to those who are not followers of Jesus. Of course the world would love the people, whether they call themselves followers of Jesus or not, who give their allegiance to the world.
What I’m referring to is a version of Christianity that is not Christianity at all. It is nominal Christianity. Nominal means “in name only.” Anyone can call themselves “Christian.” Anyone can take the label. Nominal Christianity is a totally different situation to actually living like Jesus. This is a major concern.
This is a version of Christianity that, though it calls itself Christianity, it abandons Jesus’ ways in favor of using worldly means and worldly power. In our day and age, evangelical Christians in America have placed hopes in political maneuvering, in financial power, in church growth strategy, when God says, “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit.” Or “Some trust in chariots, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” Where does our hope truly lie?
Do you call yourself a Christian? What do your actions reveal? In our study of Jesus in the Gospel of John, he has taught about our actions frequently. We show that we are his disciples by how we love one another, by how we follow his teachings. Yes, we believe in him. But much more importantly, our actions, our life choices show the content of our beliefs. Our actions reveal who we truly are.
The world is changing. American society and culture is changing, at least in most places across the nation. Certainly some places buck trends, but as I said in the preview post here, even my Amish neighbors, famous for resisting change, are themselves embracing incremental change. Amish from 25-30 years ago would be aghast at how some in their culture have changed. Where we see dramatic change, however, is in the wider culture. In the throes of change, some American Christians say they are facing persecution. They believe that our nation was one the bastion of religious freedom, and now Christians are being targeted.
I think people who say Christians are being persecuted in America are wrong. Here’s why.
In John 15:18, Jesus and his disciples have just had the last supper, and they are walking just outside the city of Jerusalem to the nearby Garden of Gethsemane, where the Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus has been spending time each evening in prayer that week. Along the way to the Garden, Jesus continues teaching the disciples, a teaching he started in the upper room.
He knows what they don’t know, that he has at most a few precious hours left with them before he is betrayed by Judas, arrested, denied three times by Peter, abandoned by the rest of his disciples, tried, beaten, and crucified to death. These are precious last words that we have been studying for weeks now starting in chapter 13 and which have a few more weeks yet as he teaching continues through the end of chapter 17.
Scan backwards in chapter 15 to verses 11-17. There Jesus emphasizes the command he started this long teaching with in chapter 13 (see that post here), “love one another.” Now he makes a rather sudden transition to the idea of hate. Look at John 15, verses 18-19,
“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.”
The world hates you? What is Jesus talking about? Doesn’t that seem exaggerated? Does the world hate Christians?
Notice that Jesus starts with the word “If,” meaning that whatever he is talking about is not a guaranteed or permanent situation. It might happen. It might not. It’s nothing like what I hear some bombastic preachers, writers and radio personalities suggest, that the world hates Christians. That’s not what Jesus said. He used the word “if”. Jesus is conditional, measured, explaining a possibility.
Furthermore, when Jesus uses the word “world”, he is not speaking of every single person in the world. Not everyone hated the disciples. Not everyone has hated Christ-followers through all the centuries. Some do, for sure. But not all. We need to understand Jesus with some nuance here.
So who or what is Jesus talking about? When he is referring to the world, one scholar believes he means “people associated with a world system and estranged from God.” (Louw & Nida) When Jesus mentions the world, therefore, he is talking about people who are not his followers.
In his day, he faced plenty of opposition. The religious elite, particularly, were not fans of Jesus. That’s where it gets tricky because the religious elite believed they knew God, but their heart and actions showed otherwise. Particularly their opposition and persecution of Jesus revealed their lack of knowledge of God, because Jesus is God. Jesus is saying to his disciples that they would be wise to prepare for the possibility that they, too, will face opposition.
But how should the disciples prepare their hearts and minds for potential opposition? Jesus says they should prepare for opposition by remembering that the world hated him first. His followers should not be surprised if opposition comes their way. Though Jesus lived the beautiful, abundant, flourishing Kingdom way of life, not everyone saw his way of life as good, primarily because he called the powerful and wealthy to account. When his followers likewise strive to live the Kingdom way of life, they could face similar opposition to what Jesus faced.
Looking back on 2000 years of the history of the church, we see plenty of examples of this. The first followers of Jesus would face persecution within weeks or months of the start of the church, as we read in Acts chapters 4-8. When they proclaimed the good news about Jesus, and then invited people to enter the Kingdom, the disciples were arrested, jailed, beaten, and one of the first deacons, Stephen, was killed. Mistreatment of people because they are striving to follow the way of Jesus has been happening ever since.
From time to time I hear people make veiled threats like “Well, okay. That kind of persecution isn’t here in America yet, but it’s coming.” I find that sentiment of “persecution is coming” to be inflammatory, dramatic, and misleading. We American Christians need to get to know about real persecution worldwide before we make statements like that.
It still happens today, and that is why we have Persecution and Voice of the Martyrs magazines in our church lobby. You and I live in a land of freedom of religion, where we face no threat from our government. I know that people suggest that Christians are persecuted in the USA. But it is not true, because we are not being jailed, beaten or killed for following the way of Jesus. We are not being asked to deny Jesus publicly or face the consequence of arrest or worse. Pushback and difference of opinion is not persecution.
Over the last 30 years, in fact, the US Supreme Court has not only upheld, but it has expanded protection for freedom of religion. This past week in fact the high court made numerous rulings in favor of protecting freedom of religion. One was in favor of a postal worker who did not want to work on Sunday, and the other was in favor of a website designer who did not want to create websites for certain weddings. Whether you agree with the postal worker, the website designer or not, the point remains. The court expanded protection of freedom of religion.
I am not saying there is zero religious persecution in the USA. I’m saying that religious persecution is illegal in the USA, and if it exists, it can be fought for and won. Certainly, the postal worker and web designer could say they were facing persecution, they sued for protection, and they won. I disagree with both of these individuals’ claims about persecution, but I will defend their right to make interpretations about religious freedom. Thus I support the Court’s expansion of religious freedom, as long as it is freedom for all religion. I say all that to confirm my larger point here. We Americans are not being persecuted. Not even close.
So do Jesus’ words not relate to Americans? Should we just skip this passage? No. I think Jesus’ teaching relates in a significant way. Here’s how. My sense is that if we are people who try to live like Jesus lived, his beautiful, flourishing way of life, calling injustice, oppression and marginalization to account, serving the least of these, prophetically confronting the power-brokers and wealthy, the less popular you will be, and you could face backlash. In this consider who persecuted Jesus. The Religious Powerholders. In other words, when we live like Jesus lived, we should expect to face backlash from religious people, from other Christians.
What I am referring to is the role of prophetic truth-telling. Jesus was many things, and one of things was a prophet who told the truth about God, about humanity, society, culture, and life. He confronted the wealthy, the religious, the powerful, the hypocrites, the spiritually apathetic. And it did not go well for him. The role of the prophet is not an easy role. But we need prophets. We need people who are willing to speak the truth in love, even if it costs them.
I think of Shane Claiborne and the Simple Way Community in Philadelphia. Search them and study how they attempt to live the Jesus way of life in their urban neighborhood. Read Shane’s books. He is provocative. You might not agree with some of his political stances, but you cannot deny that he is seeking to live the Jesus way of life in our world.
For example, he has supported an organization called Raw Tools, where they accept gun donations and then cut up, melt down and refashion the guns into tools for gardening, attempting to address not only the problem of gun violence, but also that of food deserts, all while following the teaching of Jesus to put away the sword, because his Kingdom is about beating swords into plows. Raw Tools is quite literally beating guns into garden tools.
My sense is that some, maybe many, followers of Jesus are neglecting this part of Jesus. What I am referring to is a bold, gracious, kind, generous, loving, Fruit of the Spirit, speaking about the marginalized, the hurting, the poor. I am referring not just to speaking, but also a life of serving those outcasts, those downtrodden, the fatherless, the widow, the foreigner, the refugee. The very people Jesus welcomed and spent time with.
Because so often our life choices speak far more powerfully and clearly than our words. Speak and live the Jesus way, and you just might face pushback. I think we could go so far as to say that if we speak and live the Jesus way of life, we can expect to face pushback. Even in a culture where we have freedom of religion.
So while we might face pushback, we do not face systemic persecution, but many others in our world today have and others do. Jesus says to them, “So did I. I know what it’s like, and I am with you. I am for you. Take heart.”
Engaging Scripture 