Sunday, March 25, 2018
Sermon Audio
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I have a mild addiction to the television program Jeopardy!  If I don’t see it live, I tape it, watch it, follow it.  I probably see more of Alex Trebek than I do of my spouse in the course of a week!  This past couple of weeks there was one particular episode where there was an answer that caught my imagination: “What is Robinson Crusoe?”  I realized that I haven’t read this great and historic book for some twenty-odd years and I had forgotten a great deal about it.  I actually didn’t get the question right on that particular occasion.  So I went back and I took it down from my library and started to re-read it.  It is incredible, powerful, and very pertinent today.  
 
The story of Robinson Crusoe is a story about a man who grew up in affluence and wealth, had all the benefits of life, but turned away from it and moved in another direction.  Like the Prodigal Son in some ways, living a profligate and sinful life.  Eventually, he decided to take a voyage, his ship capsized and he ended up on a deserted island.  Only a few material things had been swept up to that island with him, but one was a copy of the Bible.  Reading it probably more for entertainment than anything else, he realized that he had a companion with him: God.  Then one day he goes to a beach, and sees some footprints in the sand and is terrified.  He thought there might be cannibals or dangerous people on the island.  He knew that he wasn’t alone, and for a moment all he had was God and fear, and then Friday comes along and they develop a friendship.  But for a moment all he had was God and fear.
 
I can’t think of anything more indicative or more illustrative of what was happening in our text this morning from the Gospel of John, where the disciples are talking to Jesus and it seems all they have is God and fear.  You see, in many ways this passage from John’s Gospel is a seminal one, a defining one.  As John Marsh, the great Oxford biblical scholar says, “It is one of those passages that in many ways defines and redefines our faith”.  It was the encounter between Peter and Jesus, and you can understand why the disciples and Peter are frightened.  They were astonished that the Messiah would wash their feet.  They had just been told by Jesus that one of them was going to betray him and Judas had left the scene.  Then Jesus predicted that Peter was going to deny him three times.  What happened to Peter and the disciples here was terrifying.  
 
Up until that moment they had a fairly cozy religious life with Jesus.  They celebrated Palm Sunday with great sounds of “Hosanna in the Highest!”  They came into Jerusalem as the conqueror and believed that their nation was going to be redeemed and re-established as a power.  They believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and would overthrow the power of Rome.  They had witnessed – and John goes to great lengths to show this – the wedding at Cana where he turned water into wine.  They had been there for all his instructions and wise words and felt that Jesus had some tremendously good things to say.  This has been in John’s Gospel, “signs and wonders”.  They had seen spectacular miracles and all manner of tremendous acts, and were duly impressed.  They were his followers, they were on the bandwagon.  They had witnessed Levi/Matthew being transformed and following Jesus.  They had seen Jesus go through Samaria, and the sort-of disciples: the impulsive one, the procrastinator, and the irresolute one.  They had seen all of this, and things were good.  
 
Now, suddenly, the tide seems to be turning.  What they thought was a magnificent trip was turning into a capsized boat, and they really didn’t know what was going on.  Jesus took them aside and said, “Now is the time for the Son of Man to be glorified… I am going to a place that you cannot go now, but you might well later”.   He then gave them commandment to “love one another” and told them that “Only later are you going to understand these things” so you can see why the disciples were frightened.  He was offering to leave them to be glorified, to go to a place they couldn’t go.  They are being told to love one another, which is always an ominous sign.  They saw all of this as a turning of the tide, and all they really had at that moment was God and fear.  Why does the encounter between Jesus and Peter mean so much in light of that experience?
 
I think to understand it we need to ask two questions.  The first question we need to ask is: “What did Peter want to know from Jesus?”  He wanted to know why he was leaving them.  Why?  Why after three years of following, why after a triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, why when we finally arrive in the big city and everything is going our way, why when we have dedicated our lives to you, why now would you leave us?  It seemed utterly absurd!  Peter could not comprehend this.  He had committed himself to Jesus.  He and the disciples had given up their fishing to be with Jesus.  It seemed that everything they believed in and held dear they had given up for Jesus and now he is talking about leaving them.  
 
There was more, he wanted to know what “glory” he is talking about.  For Peter and the disciples, the glory was pretty easy to understand.  The glory was the triumph of Israel, the rising of the Messiah, the power of Israel, and the restoration of Jerusalem.  “We know what it is, we have an idea of what it is, but what is this “glory” that you talk about?” says Peter, “And why are you so concerned about leaving us to go and get this glory?  We should be participating in this glory.”  So Peter is stunned and frightened.  But as John Marsh rightly says, “There is an agenda behind Peter as well, and in many ways Peter speaks for all of us.”  When someone from our congregation who has a great sense of humour saw the title of my sermon in an e-mail last week, he sent me an e-mail telling me I might be able to use this in the sermon: “What is the most popular radio station?  It is WIIFM.”  I then you had to scroll down, and saw: “What's in it for me?”  He said most people are really interested in what is in it for them when it comes to faith and religion.  Peter wanted to know what was in it for him.  He was not willing to take Jesus at face value; he was not willing to listen to the Lord that he followed.  He wanted things his way. “What's in this for me?” was the real question behind all the other questions by Peter.  
 
Is that not the case with so much of religious literature even today?  Do you not find Christian books sitting side-by-side with self-help books, and hardly discerning any difference between them?  It is all “What's in it for me?”  Quite a lot of contemporary music these days, we ministers talk about this, tends to be a bit centred on, what is in it for me?  It becomes an obsession with the self!  Many times, I am sure we’ve asked ourselves that question, whether we honestly believe it or not, but we do ask the question, “Lord, what is in this for me?  What am I going to get out of it?”  Well, that was what was motivating Peter.  Jesus knew that.  But to try and cover it up, Peter is full of bravado.  He says, “Oh, I’ll lay down my life for you.”  And Jesus, you can imagine thinks, “All right Peter, sure you will, you think you will but maybe not or maybe later, not now.”  All of this troubled him.  Often, the words of Jesus trouble people.  When we are in it for ourselves, we think “What is it about Christ that he is truly meaningful and powerful?”
 
We find that with the second question:  What did Jesus want Peter to know?  What Jesus wanted Peter to know is what he wants us to know. The first thing Peter had to learn was that he couldn’t do it himself; he couldn’t trust in himself.  Peter thought he could, “I will lay down my life for you”, just like the guy I looked at last week, who said: “I will go wherever you lead.”  Jesus knew that wasn’t true, and Jesus says to Peter, “Three times you will deny me.  Before the cock crows, three times you will deny me.”  What Jesus means is do not get caught up in yourself and what you think you can do for me, that is not actually the thing.  Many times, with our religious impulse we tend to think that it actually does depend on us, that it is actually all about us and what we do. If we have the sacraments, if we ascribe to a certain creed, if we ascribe to a certain denomination, if we practice a certain ritual, if we do certain things, then we ourselves are masters of our own religious fate.  But, you know and I know, and Peter certainly found out that as human beings, as disciples, we are fallible, and that we have let God down.  We are not perfect, and despite all our attempts at a religious and spiritual approach to life we fall far short.
 
Is that bad news?  No, because Jesus is saying, “Peter, where I am going you can’t go.”  That is what he wanted him to know. The glory that is coming is not something you can do, but it is something that I can do.  What Christ was doing was going to the Cross; what Christ was doing was for the forgiveness of sin; what Christ was doing was to defeat death; what Christ was doing was to be raised to life. Only Christ could do it.  Peter could only go so far in Holy Week; the rest remained with Christ.  Peter could only control the agenda so much; the rest relied on Christ.  It is that trust and that reliance on Christ that constitutes the power of faith, and here is the irony:  ultimately all is done for us!  It is not “What's in it for me?”  It is not WIIFM!  It is what Christ has done for us, and has done it because only he could.  Only the Son of God could do what Christ did, and the Cross and its power was because of who was on it.
 
Jesus does not leave the disciples without a job to do and a life to live or a conviction to hold.  Jesus says, “I leave you with a new commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.”  As many Jewish scholars point out as well as many other commentators, there is nothing new about what Jesus said on the surface of it.  In fact, it sounds very much like Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind and all thy strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself.”  It is not new.  But it is!  It is new because Jesus said, “I want you to love one another as I have loved you.”  There is the newness!  There is the power!  There is the transforming nature of love!  The love of God is manifested in what I have done for you, now go and love one another as I have loved you.  The love that Christ showed was a sacrificial love, it bore the cost of the pain of the world. It was a triumphant love that overcame the power of death and evil. The love of Christ was the love of God seen in a person who was willing to die for the other.  Love was redefined, put in a new key, given a new power.  This is not a love that is passive, that sits back and waits for things to happen, it is not a series of words. It is an actual all out, flat out commitment. It is not indifference, nor apathy. It is engagement with the whole of yourself into the life of the other.
 
One of my favourite authors, and I have quoted him before, is Elie Wiesel, the Jewish scholar who has written so much about the Holocaust and how Jews deal with the pain.  Wiesel wrote: “The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference.  The opposite of art is not ugliness; it is indifference.  The opposite of faith is not heresy; it is indifference.  The opposite of life is not death; it is indifference.” 
 
The love of Christ was anything but indifference!  The love of Christ was in fact the very self-giving of commitment.  That is what Jesus wanted from his disciples.  He wanted it right there and then.  Never mind all the bravado and the triumph and the glory and the argument, just “love one another as I have loved you, and then be patient and you will see where this is going.”  It must have been hard!  My heart goes out to Peter.  Would I be any better than he?  Would you?  Probably not!  Let’s give Peter a break.  Peter was us in many ways, but he had to wait and then finally see the glory of that first Easter day.  
 
Many years ago, I visited my uncle who lived in an historic town in Lincolnshire, just on the border with the Thames.  There was a wonderful old church there and I saw that they had one of these meters, you know, when they are trying to raise money for a church that shows what level of fund raising they have achieved. They had reached 30 percent.  There were some men working on the steeple.  I introduced myself and asked what they were doing.  They said they were working on the steeple, but would need some more money, and asked if I would like to make a contribution.  So I gave them five Pounds.  I felt righteous.  Everything was good, and I left them to their work.  Three years later, I went back to visit my uncle, only to find the same guys working on the steeple.  I noticed the barometer had gone up maybe another five percent, and I said to them, “Gentlemen, I was here three years ago and you were working in exactly the same place as you are now.  Why?”  I have never forgotten the answer.  It was classic!  One of them said to me, “You do realize that this church is 800 years old, and we are not really in a great hurry.”  Then another one said, “Actually, we quite like doing this work.”  A third one said, “Yeah, and we like going to the pub afterwards.”  I figured that by the year 3010 it would be completed.  What I mean is that they enjoyed the process, but they had a sense of time.  They had a sense that something wonderful would happen and eventually it would be done.
 
What Jesus wanted Peter to know was that he needed to be patient, wait for God to do something.  Don’t always feel that you have to have control.  Peter didn’t; we don’t.  Sometimes, just wait, and glory will be revealed.  So it is with us.  But if we ask always “What's in it for me?” then we will never get the answer.  The answer lies in what has been done for us and how then should we now live. Amen.