Sermon of the Month - March 2010
In the Garden
Introduction
It’s back to the gospels today. Next week is Palm Sunday, and the Sunday after is Easter Day. So we’re going to follow the Easter story through the last four chapters of John’s gospel, over the next four Sundays. Today is Passion Sunday, when we remind ourselves of the suffering of Jesus for us, and so we look at the whole of John 18.
John’s gospel is written differently to the others, both in style and resources. And what all four gospel writers tell us speaks with great power, so let’s have the space to hear the story. Chapter 18, which starts in the Garden, called Gethsemane in the other gospels.
I read this chapter, and saw the many people with their different failure. And through it all, we see Jesus, serenely displaying the truth in person. And what this chapter showed me is Jesus, as the light shining in the darkness. In John 8:12, Jesus already declared, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Even more clearly in John 9:4b-5, Jesus said: Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. The darkness is all too clear in the characters of John 18, but in the midst of it all, Jesus shines as the light of life: In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.
So I was rather taken when I read the greatest commentary of all on John, William Temple’s Readings in John’s Gospel, because Temple entitles this section from chapter 18 as “The Conflict of Light with Darkness”. We are going to take this chapter in three separate parts.
First of all then, we read: John 18:1-11
1. Judas and Jesus
Judas is the central character in this scene. Our translation states, Now Judas, who betrayed him... but the Greek is better rendered as Now Judas, who was betraying him... in other words Judas, who was right now in the process of betraying him... This is the moment when Judas defines himself as the betrayer. This is his moment of treason against Jesus, treason against everything he has believed in.
For me, this is the hardest revelation: sometimes people have seen and known God at work in their lives, yet turn their backs on it. Jesus healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, even raised the dead, and for Judas it was no rumour: he was there! Jesus sent the 12 out in pairs, and they, too, teaching, and healing the sick. Jesus sent out the 72, again in pairs, and they returned with an even stronger sense of the miraculous power of Christ with them. According to Luke they were exultant, saying, Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name. And Judas was among those 12; he was in that group of 72. Imagine you were there, and you had been the partner of Judas. You had been with him, and the two of you had prayed and seen great miracles of healing and deliverance. And yet now! Now Judas was defining himself forever as the betrayer. For here he was, entering the scene as the one who delivers Jesus, the Messiah, into the hands of those who want to kill him, who prefer such darkness to this light of the world. Why? Why does Judas do this? John’s gospel provides two of the many answers people give.
In John 13:2, John tells us this: the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Judas had seen Jesus defeat the devil and free people from the effects of evil; but now, despite all this, Judas let the devil in, he was open to the tempter, who drove him to this evil course. There is a spiritual dimension to Judas’ act of betrayal.
And earlier, in John 12:4-6, John tells us something that motivated Judas strongly. Mary extravagantly anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume, and Judas objected vehemently to this. And John comments that Judas was not as concerned about the poor, as he had so loudly professed; rather, he had got into the habit of stealing from the common purse for his own personal benefit. There was a personal dimension to Judas’ act of betrayal. And the spiritual and the personal sides go together: the devil didn’t just take Judas’ heart without permission: Judas had strayed from the true path, he had given space for the devil to gain access, both by allowing greed to corrupt him, and then to let anger at the loss of the money he had wanted corrupt his response to Jesus.
Judas betrayed Jesus. And his terrible failure did not come from nowhere. How could a man who had seen Jesus raise the dead align himself without those who wanted to kill him? It didn’t happen for no reason. It didn’t happen against his will. It happened because he had allowed himself bit by bit to stray from the path of Jesus, the way of compassion. Selfishness, greed, anger, self-righteousness. He even challenges Jesus. ‘Jesus you are wrong!’ he explodes. ‘You have allowed waste and the poor to suffer!’ Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
This is the hardest truth about all this. It is possible for Christians, for followers of Jesus to turn their backs on Jesus, it is possible for them to judge and condemn Jesus, it is possible for them to betray Jesus. Judas is the most terrible warning to us all in the Garden. We must never allow ourselves to become complacent, and say, Well we have walked with Jesus and seen great miracles, we have prayed and God has acted in great power. For Judas had done all that. We must continue to walk in the light as he is in the light. We must look to Jesus, for he alone is the author and perfector of our faith.
Judas is not the only character in this opening section. There are soldiers, officials of the chief priests, and Pharisees, those hostile to Jesus enter the scene. They enter with a mixture of violent anger and superstitious fear. And we also have the other disciples, including Peter, who is already acting out of mistaken bravado, with him using his sword. The shocking truth about the greatest of all Jesus’ followers is about to be revealed. We read John 18:12-27.
2. Jesus and Peter
For now, let the spotlight fall on Peter – and see the terrible truth about him. Judas failed because he wandered far from Jesus, but Peter tried to stay as true as it was possible to be. The shocking truth about Peter is that even good, great, brilliant Christians can fail. We can mess up, we can let down our Lord and Saviour big time. For the truth about Simon Peter is also the truth about us as Christians.
Judas thought to know better than his Lord; he thought to correct him on the issue of compassion for the poor. Peter now also acts outside the Lord’s will. John 18 spells out Peter’s mistake. Jesus has just spoken – he has said, “let these men go.” So we don’t miss how important this is, John spells it out. This fulfils the words of Jesus’ prayer (in John 17:12) that none of the disciples had been lost except the one who would betray him. They are safe. They don’t neeed to die in a fight with the armed soldiers. And what does Simon Peter do? He picks up his sword, as if he alone can protect Jesus, attacking Malchus, cutting off his ear. While Luke tells us that Jesus reversed this wrong, by healing the man, John homes in on Jesus’ rebuke to Peter: Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me – in other words the cup of suffering. And as Matthew adds, Jesus told him all who draw the sword will die by the sword.
Peter believed he could stand up for Jesus, whatever the challenge. But what this first scene showed is that he was relying on his own strength, his own all too human strength. What the rest of John 18 shows is that the moment that is put to the test, he fails miserably. The question, the test, the “Are you a Christian” does not come in the manner Peter had chosen. He had wanted to stand up, as a macho Christian. He would stand up to intimidation, torture, murder. He would stand up to all the soldiers in the world, and fight for the tuth and die in the process. He would never desert his Lord. But the test did not happen in the amphitheatre, in the boxing ring, in the scene of battle, with its challenge to remain steadfast in face of the charge of a battalion of armed soldiers. The test for Simon Peter came in the casual question of an unarmed and insignificant woman, a door-keeper, a servant-girl. You know, there’s a touch of dismissive irony about her question. John tells us that the other disciple with Peter was known personally to the high priests, and no doubt this servant also knew him, and knew he was a supporter of Jesus. He was allowed in, as a familiar face, and now he was seeking admission for this Galilean fisherman too. And the woman’s question was asked in that negative form, with that dismissive tone, “Oh, you’re not another of those disciples of this man are you?” the question expects the answer ‘No’, and before he can check himself, Peter has already responded accordingly: “I’m not,” he said. It was so simple, so small, so easy. Not facing an armed legion but a silly question. But he crossed the line. Now each time the question returns, it comes back with added bite, and Peter has crossed the line. He can’t contradict himself and lose face. Each time the denial gets more serious. And then there is that moment of recognition, the fulfilment of Jesus’ word of prophecy: before the cock crows you will deny me three times. The shock of his failure hits him – and he wept bitterly.
Christians fail. And it’s not only the sinful Christian who goes off the rails, who gives up the Christian life for selfishness like Judas. It can be the best of us; it can be Simon Peter. This is a deeper truth of the story in the Garden and the Courtyard: when we follow Jesus truly, sometimes we can get complacent, we think our faithfulness is up to us. But sometimes it’s when we have been closest to God that the danger gets strongest. You can see this with Elijah. After his greatest success, after the three years drought he prophesied, after his greatest victory defeating all the prophets of Baal, after God consumed his sacrifice with fire from heaven while Baal did nothing, it was then, after his greatest triumph, which it still didn’t stop Jezebel, it was then, that he went on the run. He felt an utter failure, defeated. But God transformed him, not through fire from heaven, but in a gentle whisper.
You can see this with King David. After he had defeated Goliath, after surviving Saul’s many attempts on his life, after becoming Israel’s greatest ever king, after received God’s covenant promise, after victories over Philistines, Edomites, Ammonites, and all the rest, after the Bible sums up his reign as doing what was just and right for all his people, it was then that he got complacent, and at the time when kings go to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men... It was then, victorious and complacent, that he strayed far from God in taking Bathsheba – another man’s wife – and arranging for that husband to be killed.
And some people may want a nice little sentence in this sermon on how to avoid all this. Some simple thing we can do, that I could tell you. Something which means that you and I will be far truer to God than Elijah, David and Simon Peter. But the truth is that these are the greatest human heroes in the Bible, and yet they fail. Not for nothing does Proverbs 16:18 say, Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. The Bible tells these stories to remind us that none of us is immune to failure. There is no simple trick to make us immune to sin. Beware spiritual pride! And always look to Jesus!
John 18:28-40
3. Caiaphas and Pilate
Here we see the men of power, Annas and Caiaphas who want him dead, and Pontius Pilatewho has the power to order his death. These men do not claim in the slightest measure to be Jesus’ followers. As the darkness darkens, how will they respond? Here we enter the world of politics. How does Jesus stand in the world of politics?
First he is taken before Annas, father-in-law to Caiaphas the high priest. Annas had been high priest himself, and he remained the power behind the throne of Caiaphas and other high priests while he was still alive. He was not the official high priest, but to many Jews he was the true high priest. You see, he was deposed by the Romans for imposing the death penalty on prisoners without permission, so he above all would know that simply executing Jesus without Pilate’s permission was not an option. It is John who tells us that Jesus was tried before Annas – in the middle of the night. Annas tried to trick Jesus into incriminating himself, but failed. Jesus has not been training a rebel army in secret, he has proclaimed his radical message in the open, and it is not a call to arms, but a call to repentance and a call to follow him, a call to love God and to love your neighbour. And the tricks failed – trying to implicate him in a plot to destroy the Temple and the rest. It is only the direct question which Matthew, Mark and Luke record that gives them what they need, the question as to whether he is the Messiah, which Jesus does not answer in their words but his, declaring that the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God. John also lets us know about this, later, when the priests tell Pilate, that Jesus must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God. This is not a strictly political charge, but they know they can twist this into a charge of sedition. So Jesus is taken past Peter in the courtyard, during that moment of cock-crow, to Caiaphas, the official chair of the Sanhedrin, and from there Caiaphas leads the charge for Jesus’ execution to Pilate.
But what does this secular politician, the law in the land, the military man, what does Pontius Pilate make of Jesus? To start off with, not a lot! The emphasis of the Greek means we should read Pilate’s question to Jesus this way: “Are you – you! – the ‘king of the Jews’?” He clearly sees Jesus as far from the political trouble-maker he is familiar with. All his questions follow this through: “Do you think I am a Jew?” (a contemptuous thought to him). And finally: “What is truth?” To Pilate, Jesus is no power-hungry rebel, but an irrelevant religious philosopher. Pilate was woken up at about four in the morning, and then required to come out to the priests just so their scruples weren’t jeopardised. He is deeply irritated with them. But in his final banter he trips up over the skilful trickery of his opponents. Jesus is not guilty. So, alright then, let me release him as part of that annual release scheme you like! But he had not allowed for the response: ‘Not Jesus, Barabbas!’ Barabbas was a terrorist to the Romans. But the priests find it easy to whip up support for a man that the Jews treat as a freedom fighter, a patriot, instead of Jesus.
And here, in the moment when darkness is darkest, the people make a choice. It is a choice that reveals the dark truth: given a choice between the king of love and a murderer, they choose evil: “A murderer they save, the Prince of life they slay.”