Month: March 2021

John 13.8b

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

As I read these words of Jesus I hear them in a Scottish, ‘Rebus’ like, accent and I want to hear him end the sentence with a clipped, “Jimmy.” It is one of those, there is no arguing with me, statements. It might be construed as a threat although I expect Jesus actually said it with soft patient compassion. The thing is, what Peter really did want was a part of Jesus. He was desperate for it. Jesus was saying there is only one way you are going to get it. I’m going to have to wash you. So, what’s so hard about that then?

Consider Naaman, back in the days of Elisha he was the commander of the Syrian army. A powerful, successful general. ‘He was a mighty man of valour, but he was a leper.’ ^{2 Kings 5.1} Sometime previously Naaman had captured an Israelite girl child and made her his wife’s servant. She told her mistress about Elisha, who, she said, could cure Namaan. Naaman’s wife told Naaman, who told the king, who gave him permission to seek out Elisha. Off went Naaman to the king of Israel with huge amounts of money and gifts and a letter from the terrifying king of Syria demanding the king of Israel cure Naaman of leprosy. The king of Israel, knowing he could do no such thing had a full-blown panic attack. Up steps Elisha and says stop panicking and send him to me. ‘Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.’ ^{2 Kings 5.8} Naaman turns up and is told to wash seven times in the Jordan. Naaman loses his temper and says Syria’s rivers are better than your river. ‘I want full blown, dramatic prophecy and ceremony,’ and storms off. Once again, it was servants who had wisdom and persuaded the ‘great man’ to do the simple thing he was asked to do. He did, he was healed and immediately believed in and trusted in the God of Israel.

The hard, hard thing was that there was nothing about him or his capabilities that he could bring to his own cleansing except obedience. It took a slave girl to point the way out of kindness. It took other servants to recognize who God was speaking through. He had to come to the point where he laid aside his ego. Perhaps that is why Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. All those things we value the highest and have placed in the place God should have in our life have to be forsaken as useless to enter the kingdom of God. We cannot buy our way to forgiveness, we cannot earn our way to forgiveness, we cannot deserve forgiveness, we cannot prove ourselves to God through overcoming trials, we cannot gain forgiveness through religious ritual and tradition. The only way to forgiveness is through humbly allowing Jesus to wash us. Josh Moody wrote, “There is no other way to heaven but through the basin and the towel of Jesus’ sacrifice for us.” D.A. Carson wrote, “Unless the lamb of God has taken away a person’s sin, has washed that person, he or she can have no part with him.” No one is excluded unless we exclude ourselves.

We can be washed by Jesus by humbly asking and trusting in his promise to forgive and cleanse our lives.

We can be a servant and humbly point others in the direction of Jesus.

Here I am – Chris Bowater

John 13.2-11

What do we imagine God sees when he looks at us? What is the true me? Does it actually reflect what others think of us or even what we choose to think of ourselves? There is a strong inclination to be self-deceiving but the bottom line is that it is what God sees that counts. Personally, I would like to pick the time God can see and rub out the other times as just embarrassing. But that isn’t how it works; my honest self-evaluation is despite some good things there is a great deal that might be described as dressed in filthy rags. Peter knows that, even though he had been as close a friend of Jesus as anybody. He didn’t want Jesus to wash his feet because his view of the world was still the world’s view. ‘Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet. ^v8 He understood rank as it was commonly practiced around him by the Romans and by the Jewish religious leaders. Servants served, leaders were served. Worth was determined by perceived rank. Contrast Peter with Jesus.

‘Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, ⁴ rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it round his waist. ⁵ Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped round him.’ ^{John 13.3-5}

Jesus the man, fully conscious of divine status, knowing his equality with God the Father, aware of the path immediately in front of him and his eventual glorification because of his death on a cross, chose not to be served but to serve. His enactment of the servant’s role, washing the feet of his own disciples, was also a picture of their sins being washed away. Instead of being dressed in filthy rags in the sight of God, because of him, they were to stand as people who are clean in the eyes of God.

When Jesus said to Peter, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no share with me,’ ^v8 he was meaning that without the forgiveness and cleansing that comes from the trusting in him and his forthcoming death on his behalf, Peter could not be acceptable to God the Father and be part of the kingdom of God.

Only through his cleansing, now symbolised in baptism, can we be seen as clean in God’s eyes. Peter had already confessed that Jesus was the Christ. His faith, however wobbly it was about to be in a few hours’ time, was already rooted in Jesus and Jesus knew that. The initial trusting in Christ is a once for all matter. However even so the normal human condition is that we repeatedly rebel and place other things in our heart where the love of God should be. Jesus’ feet washing was a picture of the disciples regular need to confess and be forgiven for the sake of the ongoing relationship with him.

It is an excellent feature of the Anglican liturgy that confession is placed early in every act of worship. Spiritually as we confess we come to Jesus’ foot bowl to have the obstructions to our relationship removed and only he can do it. It is something often omitted from ‘nonconformist’ services. Is that because we want to miss out the embarrassing things that expose our dependence upon him or is it because we still want to pretend that we are better than we are?

For our own spiritual life, we need to learn the humility of Christ and value it as something of great worth. He who had no need to be humble expressed ultimate love and humility.

Do you think it is sometimes hard to “allow” Jesus to wash us?

What particular form of pride can prevent us from accepting our need of forgiveness?

Lord, I need you.

John 13.1

‘Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.’ (ESV)

Chapter 13 begins the second half of John’s gospel. In the first half John records signs and key moments from Jesus’ three years of ministry. He included the great ‘I am’ statements connecting him to Yahweh’s name in the Old Testament. He opened the gospel with the words, ‘In the beginning’ placing Jesus as the creator of all things, ‘through him all things were made,’ and now here he was, God living with us. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us’ ^{John 1.14}

At this point in John’s gospel the focus changes from a broader overview to narrow down in detail to the few hours before Jesus dies on the cross. The next chapters up to the end of chapter 19 all follow Jesus’ deliberate choice to obey his Father, to go through death to glory. Jesus knew what was to come and what he was doing.

Here lies the essential difference between Christianity and all other religions. Christianity at its core is not a set of teachings to learn and follow. It is the person of Jesus who loves us to the end. It is his relationship with us. He is God made flesh and he loves us. He loved us before we loved him. He loved us when our lives rejected him and caused him great offence. He loves us when we continue to offend him with our sin. He loves us to the end. If we are suffering, he chose to suffer more because he loves us.

His love is not a hopeless love without direction. It is a love that carries a certainty about its destination. He left this world to go to the Father to prepare a place for his own. His own are those who have trusted in him, whom he loves. He came to this world that he had created because he loves us and that love will not end. God created humankind to be in relationship with him and now, at the last supper, just before the Passover festival, Jesus knew the time had come to complete his saving work in the ultimate act of love.

It is God’s great desire to be in relationship with us. How can we not respond to such love?

The love of Jesus – Nathan Taylor

Psalm 85

If the spiritual auditors were to arrive at the local church how would they draw up the balance book? Does even the suggestion of that strike you as shocking? Would you be outraged if someone made judgements of a spiritual nature? What would you look for in the final report, perhaps pleased if there were more positives than negatives? If that was the case would you expect a well done? Possibly responsibility for any negatives could be passed on to the leadership, after all simply for an attender or member it would not be reasonable for responsibility to be apportioned in their direction – would it?

The church in Ephesus received such an audit report, ^{Revelation 2.1-7} highlighting eight commendations, each one in an important area of spiritual life. It only had one point on the debit side. ‘But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.’ ^{Rev 2.4} The consequence of this would be the Holy Spirit would withdraw his presence from them and the church would wither and die. The church was called to repent, remember what their first love was like and return to it again and revive the works that their love led them into. The score, good against bad, might have been 8 to 1 but it was still a losing score line. The leadership may have particular responsibility but it was the church as a whole that was being held responsible.

In the same way as the nation had lost their first love in Psalm 85 and incurred God’s anger so that picture is applied to the local New Testament Church. We need to remember what our salvation was like at the beginning. ‘Lord, you were favourable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger.’ ^{vv 1-3} But for the psalmist that was in the past. Now they were experiencing the discipline of the Lord. So, he prays, ‘Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again.’ ^{vv  5-6}

There were two stages to the revival of the relationship between God’s people and God himself. Firstly, it was the hearing of God’s voice. Secondly, it was repentance. ^v8 This would lead to the glorying of God and a restored relationship of steadfast love and faithfulness. ^v10

How do we contribute to our church’s relationship with the Lord?

Would we describe the relationship as one of steadfast love and faithfulness?

Love divine all loves excelling

Psalm 84

On our first touring caravan holiday with the children in France we arrived in the Loire Valley feeling very intrepid. We were off to explore the chateaus of France and so on the first day we decided to walk to the nearest one. As we crested a small rise there was a spectacular vision of Chambord, perhaps the largest of the Loire chateaus. It’s setting, elegance and scale took my breath away. I stood and stared. Psalm 84 invokes that image in my mind. The Psalm is a celebration of pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship at the temple set upon Mount Zion. It is a song of delight at being a welcome guest in the home of the Lord. For the psalmist no wickedness or pleasure of the world can compare with being in his presence, in his home. ‘How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God …. Blessed are those who dwell in your house ever singing your praise.’ ^vv1-2,4

The temple structure dominated the landscape, it was a justifiable tribute to Almighty God, built to strike awe in the ancient heart. But it wasn’t the architecture that primarily excited ancient pilgrims, it was that here they were in the presence of the Lord of Hosts. It thrilled them and filled them with joy. When joyful, the most natural thing to do was to sing, not a solitary song but songs sung as a community, the people’s choir. Everybody and everything was welcome, even the lowly sparrow. ^v3

Here was a place where one could find refreshment and new strength ^v5 no matter how worn down one might have become. The journey was worthwhile. There is no known valley of Baca but the word Baca is also the name of a tree that grows in arid areas. The image of the Valley of Baca ^v6-7 is one of arid places becoming a fertile place where nature flourishes and strength returns because of springs of water. (Frequently a simile for the Holy Spirit.)

The psalmist then picks up repeated themes. It is in the presence of the Lord that prayers are heard. ^v8 His presence is the pilgrims shield. However, the psalm at this point takes on prophetic notes as it pleads with God to look upon his anointed. In context almost certainly the king but also with the coming of Jesus it pertains to him.

The temple is a place where the pilgrim wishes to remain, however lowly the position. ^v10 Why? Because being in the presence of the Lord is both a place of blessing and protection, accessed by faith alone. ‘For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favour and honour. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you.’ ^vv11-12

For the Christian Jesus is that temple set on Mount Zion. Time in his presence brings joy, safety and blessing. He is the anointed one but he is also the one who anoints us with the Holy Spirit. He is the one to whom we can address our prayers. Praise comes naturally from our mouths as individuals but is a special blessing when we can praise him together as his family. He is the object of our pilgrimage. Blessing comes in response to faith.

Do we know the joy of being in the presence of God or do we just know about it?

Do we miss out on the pleasure of worshiping together with other disciples of Christ or do we treasure the times we can praise him together?

Better is One Day