What cost are you willing to pay??

This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday and so we'll be looking at John 12 on Sunday. As I have been preparing I'm struck by the different reactions to Jesus.


We first have Mary, who anoints Jesus with the costly perfume, which we are told was worth about a year's wages. Let's put this in perspective. "Bethany" the village where this takes place means "House of the poor." It was located just a short distance outside of Jerusalem and so it was kind of like the little suburb where people who can't afford to live in the city live. This was not a village that was known for extravagance. Further, a year's salary, if we assume even a day labourer was a substantial sum. Today in BC the minimum wage is $8.75 which is $70 a day, $350 for a 40 hour work week, $17,500 for a 50 week work-year. That's a lot of money! Even more if that is all you've got. Where Mary got this perfume or how she managed to pay for it we're not told but she poured out this extravagant gift on Jesus without any expectation of anything in return. You see, she had already figured out who Jesus was and was willing to give Him the very best of what she had.


Judas on the other hand didn't understand who Jesus was. He had followed this guy for three years figuring He was going to lead a revolt & overthrow the Romans and when that happened, Judas would be in His inner circle. Judas had been getting impatient however, he wasn't seeing a return on his investment. Three years of following Jesus, going where ever he took them hadn't amounted to much yet so Judas had begun skimming a little out of the collective funds of the group. In the end he would betray the one he'd followed.


Then we see the religious leaders who, we are told in vv 9-10 were no longer content with getting Jesus out of the picture but were plotting to kill Lazarus as well. We've got to remember that political games and opportunism are nothing new. The religious leadership was made up primarily of two parties, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who didn't get along all that well. Lazarus was causing trouble for both of them though because many people were believing in Jesus because of him. Lazarus also caused big problems for the Sadducees because they didn't believe in a future resurrection of the dead and the presence of someone who had risen from the dead posed a slight problem for this conviction. These leaders were willing to go to any length to ensure that their way of thinking and the power they held were not challenged.


Finally, we have the crowds that welcomed Jesus with great fanfare as He came into Jerusalem. They waived palm branches and cried Hosanna! They were welcoming a king. They thought He was going to liberate them from political oppression. They missed that Jesus was coming to free them from a much greater oppression. When it became clear that Jesus wasn't going to do what they wanted Him to, His support quickly vanished.


The question is, do we give all we have? Do we hedge our bets and unscrupulously set aside for our best interests? Do we plot the downfall of anyone who opposes us or threatens our way of thinking, rather than consider we might be wrong? Do we enthusiastically cheer with the crowd and quietly scatter when it doesn't go the way we thought it would?


What cost are we willing to pay?

Lazarus, come forth! and its OK to cry

This week I'm preaching from John 11, the raising of Lazarus. This is an interesting passage with Jesus' escalating conflict with and rejection by the religious leadership. Given all that had happened in the previous chapters and the escalating attempts on His life He's headed out into the countryside for a little while. While He's gone, His dear friend Lazarus falls ill, very ill. 


What strikes me most in this passage is that well known verse, "Jesus wept."  Here is the God of the universe, weeping, not just at the death of His friend, He knew He was about to raise Lazarus, but for His fallen creation. It is a reminder that Jesus has experienced the pain of loss, much greater than we can imagine. As well, He is not some distant, uncaring God. Our fallen state grieves Him so much that He came to earth to live as one of us and die for us. 


The writer of Hebrews tells us.


Hebrews 4:14-15 (ESV)
¹⁴ Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.




Jesus wept. He still grieves the lost. He is still God. He understands what we face in life far better than we can imagine.

A few good flakes

Today's weather forecast is pretty typical for Metro Vancouver in March. Rain, with a chance of snow at higher elevations. Well I live above the lower but below the higher, right smack in the middle so as I looked outside this morning I saw rain and lots of it. As I was dealing with the garbage & recycling I noticed that there was a few snow flakes fluttering down. It got me thinking about how those few hearty flakes made it to the ground when so many of their compatriots had melted into simply large rain drops.

It got me thinking about these chapters of John I've been working through over the past number of week. In John 6 - 9 there are several points where many of those who have been following Him either turn away from Him and/or begin to have difficultly with His teaching. One of these times is in chapter 8 where in verse 31 He addresses those who believed in Him and as He challenges them, by the end of the chapter they are picking up stones to stone Him.

We see this throughout the Gospels, people follow Jesus, it gets hard, they flee. Few places is it more evident than at His arrest when his disciples scatter. This is true throughout church history and the history of many churches. When things get hard, when the heat is turned up, too many just melt into the masses.

Of course there has always been those who have stood firm and not turned away. Those are the disciples God is looking to use. It amazes me how God continues to use a few good flakes.

Is religion getting in the way of Jesus?

As I have been preparing messages over the past few weeks as I am moving through John chapters 5 - 9 I have been struck by the opposition Jesus faced from the religious. As I study the text and the background to it I am constantly challenged by the reactions of the Pharisees in particular. If one spends any amount of time reading through the Gospels you will see being labelled as"Pharisee" as bad. The thing is the Pharisees were very zealous for holding to the Law. It is likely that their movement is at least partly rooted in the reforms of Nehemiah who was disgusted with how far those who had returned from the Babylonian exile had back-slid. Judaism was in an interesting place by the time we come to Christ's ministry on earth. Israel was under foreign rule, pagan Greek & Roman religion was clearly present and the Jewish people had had to figure out how to live in the midst of all this.

Another group we encounter in the Gospels is the Sadducees. This group's way of dealing with the prevailing culture was to figure out how much of their faith could be boiled down to the basics so they could fit in. They held that only the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses, were actually scripture. They also were quite accommodating to the ruling powers. When the Romans invaded to put down rebellion in AD 70 this group disappeared through being viewed as sell-outs by their own people or simply walking away from what part of the faith they kept.

The Pharisees on the other hand held to the whole of the First Testament. They were so concerned with keeping the law that they created their own set of laws to build a fence around the Law. They viewed the Law as a kind of cliff that you didn't want to dance on the edge of so they built fences to keep you away from the edge. They used these rules to clearly determine who was in and who was out. Transgressing their law meant you weren't holy enough or faithful enough, you didn't care enough about God's law to keep a safe distance from breaking it. You had to do the right things at the right times and in the right way. You also had to not do certain things, or go certain places or interact with people that weren't part of the religious "in" group.

It breaks my heart to be able to recognize booth of these groups in the church modern church. There are those who will boil our faith down to bare essentials, systematically taking away piece after piece until there is nothing left. There are those who set up rules, to help determine whose in and who is not.

I'm preaching from John 7 tomorrow and I was challenged by Gary Burge's comment on the chapter in his commentary on John. He says that there are two ways to approach this passage. The first, and most common is as encouragement to those who are also facing persecution. The second he says "Can Christians become religious debaters? Can they ever oppose a new thing God may be doing? Are they genuinely affected by the sinful impulses that permeate the audiences of John 7? John understands that even those who claim to  believe in Jesus sometimes choose to reject his word and deny his way (6:66). As an interpretor bringing this passage to my generation, I have to wrestle with the sobering truth of this possibility and its implications" (p.233)

Jesus challenged the religious norms of the day. He challenges us today. What will we do with that challenge?

Let in the light

I've been preaching through the Gospel of John for the past couple months and pondering some of the key images found in it. One is of course the Light/Darkness and the dichotomy between them. Christ came into the world as light into the darkness and if we have placed our faith in Christ we are to be walking in the light. The trouble is we like the darkness. We like the world and all it has to offer.

The trouble with darkness however is that our eyes adjust to it and we get used to it. Living on the West Coast we get pretty used to darkness during the winter. Living up against the mountains we don't see a lot of sun between September and May (OK I exaggerate a bit) and we kind of get used to being in the dark. This morning when I got up however, it was sunny so I opened wide the blinds. When my wife sat down with me for breakfast the sun was shining right in her face so she got up and closed the blind. It got me thinking about how often I close the blinds. In what areas of my life have I adjusted to grey skies with a 70% chance of greyer skies so that I can't handle direct Son-light.

"In Him was life and the life was the light of me. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" John 1:4-5