Year B
7th Sunday of Easter
May 17, 2015
Cross~Wind
Title: Written in Red
Going deeper
The
theme of I John 5:4b-12 is faith as conqueror. In verses 4b-8 the
Christological content of faith is given in terms of water, blood, Spirit,
while verse 9-12 is God’s testimony concerning the division of believers from
nonbelievers. This last unit is suggested by the dialogues emphasis on a
testimony that brings life and by John 20:31 with emphasis on believing and
life.
Verses
4b-8 have the theme of water, blood and Spirit.
6 This is the one who came by water
and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the
blood.[The statement has received much discussion. The focus is on
the historical witness to Jesus Christ. John 19:34-35 witnesses to the blood
and water flowing from the side of Jesus, indicating that he truly died. Yet,
John thinks symbolically, and he may well be thinking of the life-giving
quality of the death of Jesus. The mention of the blood, understood in this
way, is almost certainly to Jesus’ crucifixion and so to the reality of his
physical suffering and death. Water marked the beginning of Jesus' public
ministry, the moment of his baptism. Blood, Jesus' own blood spilled on the
cross, marked the completion of the historic incarnation with Jesus' death. One
cannot separate these two witnesses. It becomes a short step, then, to view the
mention of “the water and the blood” as a symbolic reference to the rituals of
baptism and the Lord’s Supper respectively. The reference back to the acts that
embrace the public ministry of Jesus is important for John, as is the present
reality of the risen Christ in baptism and the Lord’s Supper. John clearly
believed in an ongoing spiritual presence of Christ with and leading the
community (cf. John 16:4b-15), but that ongoing presence was only possible because
of what Jesus had begun when he “became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14)].
And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. [That testimony continued to be given through the Beloved
Disciple and the Spirit. The third witness, identified as part of God's divine
testimony, the Spirit, is in fact the witness‑bearer ‑‑ the one who translates
for us the meaning behind the water of baptism and the blood of the
crucifixion. The Spirit "is the one that testifies" ‑‑ an ongoing
identity ‑‑ forever keeping the historical evidence of the water and the blood
intelligible to each new generation of believers.] 7 There are three that testify:
8 the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.
I John 5: 9-12 have the theme of God’s testimony. 9
If we receive human testimony [that of John the Baptist], the testimony of God [an interior
witness, or eternal life] is greater; for
this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. [John reflects on the difference between the "human
testimony" and the "testimony of God." God has demonstrated the
greatness of God's testimony to humanity in Jesus.] 10 Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in
their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not
believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. 11 And
this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does
not have life. [The various human
responses to the proclamation in verse 9 is the focus of verses 10‑12. In the
face of this divine witness, what is the impact on human beings? I John offers
the results of both a positive and a negative response. Three times in verse 10
the author uses the verb "believe" to define the most necessary
ingredient in the human response to God's witness. While the witness God offers
has been given by external events ‑‑ the water of baptism, the blood of the
cross ‑‑ the witness of a believer will result when these externals are
internalized as an experience of faith in God's testimony. Just as I
John does not hesitate to discuss such messy marks of faith as blood and water,
he does not shy away from describing the loss that awaits the one who
"does not believe in God." To deny God's witness in Christ means
calling God "a liar." If we declare God's witness is false, God's
essence must be false as well. To take such a stance cuts one off
from the mission and sacrifice of Christ. The unbeliever who does not accept as
truth the witness God gives about the Son cannot expect to receive the gift
that this God's testimony bears witness to ‑‑ that is, the gift of eternal
life. The witness of the water, the blood and the Spirit do not point toward
the identity of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, only for Christ's own
sake. These witnesses work together to open our eyes to the divine gift God is
offering humanity through Christ's sacrifice. Verse 11 makes the point of this
final testimony of God's witnessing clear ‑‑ that "God gave us eternal
life." Just as verse 10 assures us that the believer already has an
internalized relationship with God, verse 12 declares that this relationship is
characterized by the gift of eternal life. To have belief is to have life.
Likewise, I John unabashedly claims that for those with no belief in God's
witness to the Son, there is no life.]
13 I
write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that
you may know [reassuring
the believers that they do have knowledge] that
you have eternal life.[They can have confidence in spite of their sin. They
have the assurance of eternal life before God. Theological nuances and
arguments may come and go, but I John assures his readers that they may find
enduring strength and comfort in a single promise.]
Introduction
I John 5:9-13 refers to those
who do not believe in God have made God a liar by not believing the testimony
that God has given concerning the Son. Those who do not have the Son of God do
not have life. John 17:14 says that while Jesus gives them the word from the
Father, the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as
Jesus does not belong to the world.
I have an admission to make.
Something in me would like for the church and the world to get along. John is
teaching me that what I might like to happen is not realistic.
Scientists are excited about
GUT's and TOE's, that is, Grand Unification Theories and Theories of
Everything. In 1988, Stephen Hawking
spilled the beans by talking about the search for GUTs and TOEs in his surprise
best seller A Brief History of Time.
Instead of trying to dissect every cosmic movement down to its smallest
unit, certain scientists admit they are looking for some theory, some concept,
some intentional design that pulls everything in the universe together. A scientific quest for cosmic unity is under
way.
Such a vision may well be
appropriate for scientists to seek in terms of the physical unity of the
physics of it all. Yet, members of the Body of Christ have already found the
GUTs and TOEs for their lives. Unity of
faithfulness does not come at the cost of our connectedness to the world. The church as the body of Christ is called to
be in the world, not of it, but not out of it either.
H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ
and Culture, said the church has four ways it can respond to the culture
today. ANTI-CULTURAL, such as the
Amish. You have to live in the world
somewhere. The gospel must be incarnated
in some culture. EN-CULTURAL, the church
is so anxious to fit into the world that it has lost any distinguishing
particularity and becomes of the world.
The culture throws a stick and they go bounding after it. Worship has a "flavor of the week"
mentality. COUNTER-CULTURAL,
aggressively isolationist language, such as "let the church be the
church," and the church as beachhead, outpost, colony, resident aliens, or
anachronisms. The problem with the
counter-cultural model is that it creates an artificial wall between Christians
and the world God loves so much God sent Jesus to die for it. IN-CULTURAL, the aim of the in-cultural
church is incarnation, not enculturation or acculturation. The in-cultural Christian uses the knowledge,
the ignorance, the strength and weaknesses of current culture to incarnate
Christ for this age. The challenge of an
in-but-not-of faith is knowing when to stand timeless and transcendent as a
rock and when to surrender and let go, releasing oneself to be swept along by
the relevant currents.
These are practical issues.
The church wrestles with them through the ages.
Hugo
of St. Victor wrote long ago:
Those who find their homeland
sweet are still tender beginners; those whom every soil is as their native one
is already strong; but those who are perfect regard the entire world as a
foreign place.
I find it increasingly hard to
justify the easy relationship between church and culture that I would like to
see. This text gives us the opportunity to reflect upon the ways in which the
church is in the world, yet not at rest or peace in the world. If you sit down and talk to people for over
fifteen minutes about their lives, their families, their work, it is like
talking to people who are under attack.
The world can be a rough place for those who love God more than the
world.
Here is a simple example of
relatively recent experience.
A student at Duke called the
pastor, William Willimon, and needed to talk.
He began by saying: I have had the worst night of my life. Last night, after the fraternity meeting, as
usual, we had a time when we just sit around and talk about what we did over
the weekend. This weekend, during a
party we had on Saturday, I went upstairs to get something from a brother’s room
and walked in on a couple who were, well, in the act. I immediately closed the door and went back
downstairs, saying nothing. Well, when
we came to the time for sharing at the end of the meeting, after a couple of
brothers shared what they did over the weekend, one of the group said, “I understand
that Mr. Christian got a real eye full last night.” With that, they all began to laugh. Not a good, friendly laugh; it was cold,
cruel, mean laughter. They were all
laughing, all saying things like, “You won’t see nothing like that in
church! Better go confess it to the
priest.” Stuff like that. I tried to recover, tried to say something
light, but I could not. They hate me! They were serious. I walked out of the meeting, stood outside,
and wept. I have never been treated like
that in my life. The pastor responded:
that is amazing. Moreover, you are not
the greatest Christian in the world, are you?
And yet, just one person running around loose who can say “No” is a
threat to everyone else, has to be put down, ridiculed, savaged into silence.”
All
of this reminds me of an often-quoted statement of Luther.
If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest
exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point
at which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking. I am not confessing Christ, however, boldly I
may be professing him. Where the battle
rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to the steady on all the
battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.[1]
Malcolm Muggeridge once put it this
way:
The
only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves to be at home
here on earth. As long as we are aliens
we cannot forget our true homeland which is that other kingdom You proclaimed.
I need this reminder today.
Application
It is ironic that the church has chosen this precise
moment in history to reject its own heritage of blood imagery.
The United
Church of Christ denomination in 1995 published its new "politically
correct" The New Century Hymnal that, among other editorializations,
deleted all references to Jesus' blood from a host of old familiar hymns. Now
you will not find hymns like "Nothing but the Blood," or "There
Is a Fountain Filled With Blood," or "Heal Me, Hands of Jesus."
Or when you do find the blood songs, the language is changed (verse 3 of
"The Old Rugged Cross" gets changed from "stained with blood so
divine" to "which bore love so divine"; or verse 2 of "O
How I Love Jesus" gets changed from "It tells me of his precious blood,
the sinner's perfect plea" to "Whatever problems may befall, we'll
live in dignity"). The UCCs should
not be singled out completely here. At least they are honest. Most of the other
old‑line traditions have dealt with blood‑soaked songs by simply never singing
them. When was the last time you sang "There Is a Fountain Filled With
Blood," or "Nothing but the Blood," or "Heal Me, Hands of
Jesus"?
For a long
time now, the church has sent out a message that all that blood imagery is
gross and disgusting, messy and maudlin.
What the UCC hymnal did with all these blood images was both botched and
brilliant. By substituting "love" for "blood," this new
vocabulary demonstrates in an ironic but profound way that in Jesus Christ's
blood, there is love. Love and blood are intimately connected. The UCC hymnal
admits that relationship when it consistently replaces "blood" with
"love." However, it misses the power of this connection by wiping
away bloodstains from the pages of their hymnal.
I John 5:6‑13
refuses to clean up the messier moments that make up the whole of God's
redeeming work through the Son. I John makes it clear that salvation was not
achieved through a bloodless coup. It took water, blood and wind (Spirit) to
make the promise of eternal life a reality. God's testimony of love is written
in red. The church must not sanitize the realness of sacrifice for the sake of
being "politically correct." In a violent world, Christ's loving
sacrifice has never been so powerful.
People are
spiritually starved and frantically searching for any crumbs of hope and
compassion.
Yet, the
church has often settled for sloppy, feel-good spirituality, something vague
that costs little. To those caught in the midst of this world's deepest troubles,
to the denizens of our most violent neighborhoods, our most hopeless
situations, the church has always had an answer as gritty and real as the
nightly news.
‑‑ Christ knows about blood.
‑‑ Christ knows about death.
‑‑ Christ knows about violence.
‑‑ But Christ knows no defeat.
Jesus Christ
experienced these portals of pain. Nevertheless, through the cleansing,
healing, transforming power of divine love, Jesus broke their hold over
humanity forever. Jesus' love for you and for me and for the world is
"written in red."
"Written in Red" by Gordon Jensen
((c)1990 Word Music), sung by Janet Paschal (1996):
Verse 1
In letters of crimson, God wrote His love
On the hillside so long, long ago;
For you and for me Jesus died,
And love's greatest story was told.
Chorus 1
I love you, I love you
That's what Calvary said;
I love you, I love you,
I love you, Written in Red
Verse 2
Down through the ages, God wrote His love
With the same hands that suffered and bled;
Giving all that He had to give,
A message so easily read.
Chorus 2
I love you, I love you,
That's what Calvary said;
I love you, I love you,
I love you.....
Bridge
Oh, precious is the flow, that makes me white
as snow;
No other fount I know, nothing but the blood,
The blood of Jesus.
Chorus 1
I love you, I love you
That's what Calvary said;
I love you, I love you,
I love you, Written....In Red (hold out)
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