The Near Eclipse of the Son

 

This summer I was fortunate to have a break and, for a little while, along with Marial, walk through the cloistered halls and the streets of Oxford. It was fascinating to take in as a tourist rather than a student; to listen to all the sounds and all the people.

 

As is often the case at Oxford, there are signs welcoming tourists: Balliol College welcomes visitors, Christchurch College welcomes visitors, etc. But one sign stood out from all the others. It was outside Jesus College and said, “Jesus is closed today.”

 

Marial and I were disappointed but resolute, we would go to Magdalen College, our favourite, and we walked through the cloisters and saw another sign with a quote from famous African, Albert Luthuli saying, “The way to freedom is via the cross.” 

 

Luthuli was one of the great South African leaders of the twentieth century. He was a Congregationalist minister and one of the founders of the African National Congress. There were divinity schools, one of which I attended, named after him. He was one of the great peacemakers, and one of the great promoters or freedom in Africa.

 

And there it was, “the road to freedom is via the cross.” I couldn’t help but be struck by the contrast: “Jesus is closed today,” and “the road to freedom is via the cross.” Irony. 

 

If there were two signs ever put up that symbolise the inherent conflict and tension in our text today, this is it. If anything sums it up, it is Jesus is closed today, and Jesus is the way to freedom.

 

Why? Because that inherent tension is all the way through this text. You can see it. There were those who were of Jewish descent, who had come from Abraham, who wanted to, in a sense, to use a phrase from the summer, eclipse the son. Shut out Jesus, close the door, make sure that the light of his revelation is not seen by others.

 

Then there is Jesus, who is speaking so passionately, so if the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. One wanting to shut Jesus out, the other, Jesus, wanting to open the doors to freedom. Complete contrast, complete tension. 

 

Now, some have suggested that this text has anti-Semitic overtones, that what we find here, in fact, is a conflict from the early church being played out in the gospel of John. But as we shall see, that is not the case. Jesus under no circumstances is trying to suggest that Abraham and Abraham’s ministry and true descendants of Abraham are anything but worthy of God’s grace and goodness. But there were those, as we’re going to find out, who were using it to shut out Jesus and his revelation. The background to it makes a lot of sense of the text itself.

 

You see in the passages that precede it, Jesus had entered Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, a very important emotional and powerful moment for Jews. Jesus, as a faithful Jew, had come to worship in the temple at the Feast of Tabernacles. There, he is confronted by a number of very disturbing realities that caused him to reveal who he really is as the Son of God.

 

He talks openly about being the light of the world, as pictured in this incredible window here. He talks about himself being the bread of life, as we celebrate with the Lord’s supper. And then, in a cataclysmic moment, he comes into the midst of a potential dangerous execution of a woman who had been caught in adultery, with those around her, wanting to stone her and says, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.” Knowing of course, that no one was without sin.

 

And then he says, “Go, your sins are forgiven. Go, and sin no more.”

 

Those who wanted to stone this woman saw in Jesus a rival. They thought that they were carrying out their religious duty, and Jesus was coming along and speaking the word of God and the word of forgiveness, and liberation to this woman, near the moment of execution. Then Jesus tops it all off by saying, oh, and by the way, I have come from above, I am even greater – greater than anything that you can claim.

 

You can imagine the resistance to this. There were those who thought this was absurd; that they were being threatened; they said, “We are followers, we are descendants of Abraham.” As if Jesus was saying that they could not fulfill the works of Abraham. 

 

Nevertheless, they claimed they were followers of Abraham. They were threatened by Jesus, who came and exposed their sinfulness, and revealed the freedom and the liberation and the love of God. They found that to be tyranny and rejected him. The text suggests they even wanted to kill him, the son of God, and they did it hiding behind the fact that they were descendants of Abraham. 

 

Jesus said, “You are not doing the work of Abraham, you are not doing the work of God. You are following an evil path, and doing the devil’s work. Rather than opening the doors of freedom, liberation, hope and forgiveness, you are trying to shut the door on me.” And then he says these immortal words: “If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed.”

 

What is going on here? Why does it have any bearing on the world and on our decision to walk with Christ as his disciples? I think it’s a clash of passions. The stakes are high between those who were religious leaders wanting to eclipse the work of Jesus, and Jesus, doing the will of his Father.

 

The first of these passions is fear. What was behind those who rejected Jesus? Fear. They were frightened that their position would be usurped; they were frightened that they would be no longer be needed; and they were frightened that they were losing their power.

 

Like a lot of people who act in fear, they become dangerous and offensive. The passion of fear was so strong, they said, “Why do we even need you? We are the children of Abraham and we have never been enslaved. Why do we need you to set us free?“

 

On the one hand they’re speaking the truth. There’s no doubt that from the very beginnings of Scripture, as the great Craig Evans, the New Testament professor, puts it: “The Word of God was a word of liberation from beginning to end.” Abraham and his walk with Sarah into a land that was unknown, in faith, was the beginning of a walk of freedom.

 

It is true that the people of Israel and Abraham’s descendants were the ones who were held servile in Egypt, and because of the exodus and the Passover and the protection of the tabernacles, were free. 

 

They were right. In a sense they didn’t need Jesus; however, they weren’t telling the truth. In fact, they were telling a lie, for indeed many times they had been captive, many times they had been enslaved. The Babylonians had set them free eventually through Cyrus the Persian, but the Babylonians were the ones who had imprisoned them.

 

The Assyrians had imprisoned them, and now the irony of all ironies is, they were prisoners, servile to the power of Rome. Right in front of them were all the symbols of Roman power and oppression. They weren’t free at all, they were just as much slaves as they had ever been.

 

Here was the irony: They thought they were free when they were not. They were discarding Jesus for speaking the word of freedom, even though they knew deep down in their hearts that what he was saying was in keeping with Abraham and the God of Abraham. But they’d decided to follow another path, an angry path, a violent path, one that stones women, one that crucifies Christ. They’d chosen the path of death and sin and evil, because they were frightened.

 

My friends, it has ever been thus. When people have lived in fear, they have done terrible things. It’s a powerful passion, and when fear is let loose on the earth, it can be so destructive. In an article not long ago in The Guardian, Margaret McMillan, the great Canadian writer, said that we are living in a time of immense insecurity. Maybe it is due to the fact that we still have a hangover, particularly in North America, from the events of 9/11 all those years ago.

 

Maybe it’s because we see terrorism on our doorsteps, and you can’t go to a beach in Nice or in Spain, or walk across a bridge in London without possibly encountering terror. Maybe it is because of the financial decline in 2008, when people lost money and were uncertain about the whole business world, even though we’re coming out of it. Maybe it is because we see the power of the climate changing around us and we have no control over it, as is evidenced this very moment in Florida. Maybe it’s because there are megalomaniacs in positions of power, and those who are immature with their hands on the button to destroy human life. Maybe we’re insecure and maybe we are frightened, and maybe we’re fearful because the world is changing and people are migrating moving, cultures are shifting, and the sands of what we know are changing. When people are frightened they can do terrible things - fear is a terrible passion. 

 

But there is also the passion of freedom. Jesus knew that fear is a result of sin. Let me say that again: fear is a result of sin. Fear comes from not trusting in God, from looking with suspicion upon the other. Fear is not having any hope in the future. Fear comes from being obsessed with self and with protection. Fear is a result of sin.

 

What Jesus was saying to those who were claiming to follow Abraham was, you might be the descendants of Abraham; you might claim to have him as your father, yet you sin. A sign of that sin is that you want to kill the Son of God. A sign of your sin is the very fear that you have of what I am bringing, as God incarnate, into the world. The sin of rejecting the Son is the sin of all sins, and the beginning, in a sense, of all other sins.

Sin is what Jesus had come to set us free from. For if the Son will set you free, you shall be free indeed. You shall be liberated from the very sin that causes you to have fear, and the very fear that causes you to be destructive. When you really look at it, so many of the great tyrannies in the world are really born, are they not, out of sin. Maybe not the individual sin of a person per se, but definitely the sin of a culture and a collection of people – people who are frightened, and therefore, because they have the sin of greed, see what they may lose. Or because of the sin of lust, think of what they may be able to conquer. Or of the sin of pride, because they think that they are better than everyone else.

 

Or the sin of race and ethnicity, which thinks it is superior to someone else’s, or the sin of avarice, that goes into the midst of the weak and the poor and takes from them. Whatever it is, sin is at the heart of so many of the wretched things in this world. 

 

Maybe the new tribalism happening in the world right now, and maybe the new sense of religious and cultural and ethnocentricity that is taking over certain groups in our world, is a result of that very sin itself. And it’s a sin that can destroy.

 

Jesus said even to them, “Put that sin away, for if the Son will set you free, you shall be free indeed.” You do not need to live with your fears of a changing world, you do not need to live with the fears and the uncertainties that are around you. You do not need to get into little groups and start taking on other little groups because of the fear that you have and the comfort that comes from simply being with people who are like you. You don’t need to do that.

 

No, that doesn’t give you your freedom; it’s the Son who sets you free and then you are free indeed. It’s a message this world needs to hear desperately. Had I been here on the Sunday when the events in Charlottesville were occurring, I would have said that I’ve seen that fear before – thirty seven years ago on another continent, and it is dangerous.

 

Albert Luthuli was right: “Freedom is via the cross,” which comes to the power of faith and the passion of faith. Albert Luthuli knew that “if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.” Within his own lifetime, he did not see the liberation of his people, the Zulus. He did not see the liberation of the nation that he loved, but he knew that Christ and his cross were greater than all those who claim some kind of descendants, or special status. It is the cross and the cross alone that is the liberation and the strength.

 

During the antebellum period and the civil war in the United States, there were some great poets who wrote in New England prior to and during the period when the slaves were being set free. James Russell Lowell is one that I love in particular, and I suppose if I might be personal for a moment, because I lived in one of his rooms in Brattle Street in Cambridge for a while and I couldn’t help but start to read Lowell, if I’m going to be in Lowell Hall.

 

I read what he wrote during the liberation of the slaves, and in one of his poems he had this to say: 

 

Is true freedom but to break fetters for our own dear sake, 

and with leathern hearts forget that we owe mankind a debt? 

No, true freedom is to share all the chains our brothers bear 

and with heart and hand to be earnest to make others free.

 

If the Son sets us free indeed, then is it not upon those who follow him to be the bearers freedom for others too? It is. And where does the freedom come from? It comes from those who know that they have nothing to fear themselves. It comes from those who know that their sins are forgiven. It comes from those who have no fear of the other. It comes from those who are committed truly and solely to only one word, and that is the word of the cross, the word of forgiveness, the word of freedom.

 

As I watched the incredible coverage of the terrible storm in Houston and the flooding, there was one moment, and it was a peach of a moment: Lisa Laflamme of CTV was on a boat, sailing down one of Houston’s main streets with Bowie, the man who owned the boat. You could tell that Lisa Leflamme, God bless her, did not know how to handle Bowie; she was trying to interview him and get him to talk about the storm, and all he wanted to talk about was setting people free. What he wanted to talk about was the saving of lives and how for days, he had been in this boat, taking people to safety. And all the time he did it, he talked about God, and he kept talking about the Lord and the Lord helping him and giving him strength. Dear Lisa Laflamme didn’t know what to say, and she just listened very carefully and nodded knowingly as Bowie talked. 

 

Then at the end, there were these words – and I’ve got it right from CTV themselves – Bowie said to her,” I have faith in God, so that when you’ve gone through enough challenges in life, you gain more faith. And I think trials are faith-builders, and faith saves lives. Faith saves lives.”

 

“If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed.” No eclipse of the Son, never. Amen.