Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church
Chasing Time
Come and Have Breakfast
Throw Down Your Cloak
Look Up
Come Back Seeing
Argue With Him
Choose the Good Portion
Heed Wisdom's Children
Follow His Working
por Walter Henegar
We often find ourselves attempting to control time and the seasons that come and go in our lives. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes reminds us that life is full of varied seasons and none of us can predict or control the seasons that come and go. We do not happen to time, time happens to us. God alone stands beyond time and only what he does in the world and in and through us will endure. The call of Ecclesiastes is not to passivity, but rather to engaging presence as we respond to the changing seasons of life knowing that God is at work in history. We do not suffer or rejoice alone, but we follow Christ’s footsteps as the one who has suffered and rejoiced for and before us.
Peter’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus shows us how his grace works. Rather than punishing Peter for denying him three times, Jesus cooks him breakfast, gently leads him to face his sin, and challenges him to love – also three times! In the same way, Jesus continues to show merciful compassion toward all who believe in his death and resurrection, entrusting us with his supreme calling to love our fellow “sheep.” Suffering doesn’t stop us, and stumbling doesn’t disqualify us, because the grace of Jesus continues to carry us.
Everyone wants a king: someone or something we willingly allow to tell us what to do, because we believe they will make our lives better. Jesus’ triumphal entry confirmed that we do indeed need a king, just not the kind we think. We want a king who gathers all the most impressive people, but Jesus seeks helpless people who need their hands held even to believe. We want a king who promises to fix our lives fast, but Jesus humbly plods into the mess of our lives, empowering us to participate in our own redemption. And we want a king who prevents pain, but Jesus leads us through the ultimate pain of crucifixion into a resurrected life. Like the disciples on the first Palm Sunday, people who welcome Jesus as their king are marked by exuberant praise and eagerness to use their most precious possessions so that more people would love and serve him.
Although we usually think of Judas as the evil villain in the Jesus story, this scene provides a different picture. If the disciples were uncertain—more like shocked—about which one of the twelve would betray Jesus, that tells us that Judas looked just like the rest of the disciples. It turns out, Judas was a good person. But being a good person doesn’t save you, no matter how impressive your spiritual resume is. We all need a new resume—Jesus’ resume—to replace our own, and that happens when we direct our trust at Jesus and not at our own performance. Because this happens by faith, the only difference between Judas and the Christian is God’s grace.
Jesus gives a blind man both physical and spiritual sight, while a group of Pharisees grows increasingly spiritually blind. At the same time, the man’s neighbors and even his own parents struggle to grasp the reality of what’s happening. John frames the account this way to helps us see, believe in, and worship Jesus. Like he did with the blind man, Jesus is writing our stories long before we were born, pursuing us by grace and inviting us to participate in our own redemption as we gradually gain spiritual sight. As the light of the world, Jesus also exposes the blindness of unbelief in a way that confirms the wisdom of trusting him.
Jesus makes an exclusive claim of being “the light of the world.” To argue with Him, as the Pharisees tried to do, would be to question His authority and the truthfulness of His claim. As the Pharisees argued and wrestled with Jesus in His imposing truth, we also must wrestle with Jesus’s imposing truth in our lives; the hard truths and the good.
This scene, which contrasts two sisters in relationship to Jesus, is easily misinterpreted. Jesus is not saying that active physical service is bad and passive spiritual contemplation is good; both of them are. He’s not saying that Mary is a special exception to the general rule that women belong in the kitchen; both men and women do. And he’s not saying that the only thing women should do is listen; just like men, they should both apply and share their theology. The “one thing necessary,” the “good portion that will not be taken away” is Jesus himself. Whether serving or studying, suffering or singing, our perpetual challenge is not to miss Jesus. When we keep him in view, it changes everything else we do.
Jesus says in v. 35 that “wisdom is justified by all her children” – in other words, that truth is validated by its outworking in human lives. He taught a related principle in Luke 6:43-45: a tree is known by its fruit. The life of John the Baptist raises three challenging questions for applying this principle: 1) What if following Jesus causes us to suffer? 2) What defines a truly great person? and 3) How happy or serious should we expect the Christian life to be? Jesus orients each of his answers around the Kingdom of God, which is already present, but not yet in its fullness. This kingdom of grace frees us to expect diversity in our Christian experiences, including sacrifice and celebration, triumph and defeat – yet always producing lives that show compelling resemblance to the person of Jesus.
Jesus loves us just as we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way. Here he hand-picks one invalid man out of a crowd of sick people, apart from any evidence of faith – a beautiful picture of the Gospel! Later on he pursues the man again, challenging him to “sin no more” – yet another picture of the Gospel! Sadly, both the healed man and the Jewish leaders suffer from the same basic problem: In the face of their suffering and limitations, they try to make life more controllable, sorting people into winners and losers, righteous and sinners. Ultimately, Jesus claims his healing work is an extension of God the Father’s active rule over all creation – which, as the Jewish leaders rightly conclude, implies his equality with God. While our sin is indeed real and consequential, our living wholly and holy must always be a response to the prior and gracious working of God.
Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus reveals an essential teaching of the Christian faith: No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he or she is born again – or more accurately, born from above. Theologians call this regeneration: the gracious and mysterious act of God’s Spirit that makes us alive to God and able to trust him by faith. But why would Jesus emphasize this truth to Nicodemus, a scrupulously moral, highly educated and influential man? Because his very religiosity was getting in the way of knowing his desperate need for grace. Likewise today, we who tend to rely on religious knowledge or activity must learn to renounce our own religiosity, living instead by the dynamic new ways of life in the Spirit. Though the Kingdom of God is not yet here in its fullness, everyone born of God begins to experience it already in this life.