First Blessings

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Larger On the Inside: Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Feast
(Isa 25:1-9, Ps 23, Phil 4:4-13, Matt 22:1-14)

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Turn to page 55 in the ACNA Catechism To Be A Christian (The Anglican Church in North America, Crossways (2020)), to the section “Concerning Sacraments,” and you find this question and answer:

121. What is a sacrament?

A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. God gives us the sign as a means by which we receive that grace and as a tangible assurance that we do in fact receive it. (Genesis 17:1-21; John 6:53-58; I Corinthians 10:16, 1662 Cathechism)

The Catechism goes on to define the two Sacraments of the Gospel that all Anglicans accept — Baptism and Holy Communion — and five others that are commonly accorded sacramental status and are often called Sacraments of the Church: confirmation, ordination, marriage, absolution, and anointing of the sick (ibid, p. 56).

All of these sacraments have a common characteristic, essential to the nature of a sacrament, and I would humbly suggest almost definitive of a sacrament:

A sacrament is something that, spiritually speaking, is larger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Something that is ordinary, mundane, and small on the outside opens up to reveal the vastness of God on the inside: that is sacramental. The most iconic example of this, perhaps, is the Blessed Virgin Mary herself, called the Theotokos (the God Bearer). As an ancient hymn proclaims:

From you, our God who is before eternity, became a child!

He has made your womb His throne, making it more spacious than the heavens.

In you, O woman full of grace, all creation exults!

A Jewish woman, herself appearing ordinary, mundane, small on the outside carries within her the Son of God incarnate, the one by whom, through whom, and for whom all things in heaven and on earth, seen and unseen, were made, her womb His throne, making it more spacious than the heavens.

A sacrament is something that, spiritually speaking, is larger on the inside than it is on the outside because it opens up onto God.

Whether there are two sacraments or seven or seventy times seven is not a thing I care to debate. For the one with eyes to see and ears to hear, the world is awash with sacraments. The flowers on our altar each week are sacramental: small things of earth that — with eyes to see — open up to reveal the God of beauty who delights in diversity and complexity and color and aroma, and who delights to delight us in these things. The music of hymn and chant and chorus and praise is sacramental: small, just twelve notes on five lines and four spaces — sometimes a bit above and below — lifting our voices and hearts and eyes and ears to heaven where we see God enthroned high and holy and hear the seraphim call one to another “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa 6:3)! A Bible is sacramental: apparently nothing but a small volume of ancient religious texts like many others the world over, but for us, the very Word of God, “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

A sacrament is something that, spiritually speaking, is larger on the inside than it is on the outside because it opens up onto God.

Let those with eyes see and those with ears hear.

Our texts today point toward another common feature of our lives — often ordinary, mundane, small — that can be, and should be, sacramental, that really is larger on the inside than it is on the outside, that opens up onto God: a feast, a banquet, a meal.

With the first hint of fall in the air, I allow myself to listen to the 1998 Windham Hill compilation album Thanksgiving; it will be my musical companion from now until the holiday itself. I sat in the park recently thinking of Thanksgivings past, particularly those of my childhood. Extended family gathered at my grandparents’ home next door, far too many people in far too little space. The dining room table itself, with leaves, filled the room and forced a certain familial intimacy. The table was always set with the silver used only twice a year and with the multi-colored, radioactive Fiestaware. Look it up if you’re under sixty. Food was abundant and rich and, well, everything Southern and bad for you and delicious. But this feast was more than a meal; it was larger on the inside than it was on the outside. It opened onto this great expanse of love. It opened onto God and his love for us, his bountiful care for us. It was sacramental, though I didn’t know the word or its meaning then.

I cherish those memories, even though they are also bittersweet. Most all of the people gathered at those feasts are gone now. I pray they are all with the Lord Jesus. The few that remain have scattered with time and distance. Though we don’t always realize it or acknowledge it if we do, there is a pall cast over every such feast, a veil, a covering spread there by the unwelcome, though not uninvited guest of death. You don’t think of this as a kid — deviled eggs and pie are on your mind — but the reality dawns as you get older.

But, if this feast is indeed sacramental, if it is indeed larger on the inside than it is on the outside, if it does open up onto God, then death cannot have the final word. Death may lurk in the corner of the dining room, but there is no place setting for death at the table. The prophet Isaiah saw a sacramental feast to come for Israel and for the world, saw it from the inside. He saw the glorious end, the telos, toward which this feast and every feast is meant to point. He wrote:

6 On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

7 And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.

8 He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.

9 It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation” (Isa 25:6-9).

The time is coming, Isaiah says, the time is coming, St. Paul says, the time is breaking in even now, the cross and empty tomb say, when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, and when Death is swallowed up in victory (see 1 Cor 15:53-54). As we proclaim at the Eucharist, that Great Feast that lies at the intersection of heaven and earth, that heavenly feast that every holy human feast points toward sacramentally: By his resurrection he broke the bonds of death, trampling Hell and Satan under his feet (BCP 2019, p. 133). And, as we sing in the Pascha Nostrum:

Alleluia. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us;
therefore let us keep the feast,
Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia (BCP 2019, p. 16).

Therefore, let us keep the feast, the feast that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside, the feast that opens up onto God.

It wasn’t Isaiah only: David, the great king and sweet psalmist of Israel, also envisioned a sacramental feast. It is there in his best known and most loved psalm, Psalm 23. This psalm mixes metaphors and images. It starts as a pastorale, with sheep and shepherd and with the provision that the LORD, as shepherd, makes for his flock Israel: green pastures, still waters. But, then midway through the Psalm, we find ourselves walking in a dark, shadowy valley, stalked by death itself. Who are we at this point in the psalm? Are we still sheep? It is not perfectly clear, for the next image is that of a feast with us as honored guests. When sheep attend feasts it is typically on a serving platter and not seated as guests, so clearly a change of identity has taken place in the psalm.

“Thou preparest a table before me,” David writes, and the only “Thou” in the psalm is the LORD; we are the honored guests at the table of the Lord, a table He has prepared for us. But there is someone else in the room, too, lurking in the corner, not reclining at table: our enemies. Since the only enemy identified in this psalm is death, I must assume that death has somehow made it into the feast, not as guest but as interloper and that he has brought with him some of his compatriots, perhaps sin, perhaps hell. They crouch watching, waiting. And what do they see? They see us — you and me — seated at a place of honor and anointed with oil. And who in Israel were the anointed ones? Priests, prophets, and kings. With death looking on, the Lord — in the midst of the feast — catches us up into this great sacramental reality consecrating us as his priests, prophets, and kings, declaring that death no longer has dominion over us so that we can face death unafraid and proclaim:

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever (BCP 2019, p. 295).

This feast, too, is larger on the inside than it is on the outside because it opens up onto the Lord, and because it open up onto our consecration as his priests, prophets, and kings.

All of this — the sacramental nature of feasts, the vision of Isaiah of the removal of the pall of death, the psalm of David with the consecration of God’s people in the very presence of death and to the shame of death — all of this is in the background of Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast.

No feast is more sacramental than a wedding feast. Jesus makes that clear in his parable. While it is — on the outside — about a splendid table and an important festal gathering, on the inside it is about the kingdom of heaven. The wedding feast in the parable is larger on the inside than it is on the outside because it opens up onto God and his kingdom that is dawning in the person, in the life and ministry of Jesus.

You know the contours of the parable. A king gives a wedding feast for his son. Invitations were sent long ago, so the feast comes as no surprise to those who had been invited. And yet, when the king’s servants come to announce that the table is set and the festivities are about to begin, those invited refuse to come. Surely, there is some misunderstanding. The king sends other servants with a clear message: “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast” (Matt 22:4). Some still ignore the invitation and go about their routine. Others, for reasons not explained in the parable, seize the servants, abuse them, kill them.

Let’s pause the parable here briefly to consider the setting in which Jesus told it. We are in Holy Week and Jesus is in the temple having recently cleansed it of the money changers and merchants. He is likely teaching and healing when the chief priests and the elders of the people accost him: “With what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority” (Matt 21:23)? Rather than answering their question directly, Jesus gives them instead three related parables: the parable of the two sons, the parable of the tenants, and this culminating parable of the wedding feast. These parables have less to do with Jesus’ authority to act and more to do with the leaders’ and people’s response to his actions. In each parable, those expected to respond favorably — to recognize the in-breaking of the kingdom of heaven — do not, and those expected to continue about their business blind and deaf to what God is doing actually see and hear and embrace the good news.

Clearly, Jesus is telling the parables about those leaders who questioned his authority. Scripture says as much: When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet (Matt 21:45-46).

So, what is Jesus saying to the chief priests and the Pharisees that incites them against him? He is reminding them that the prophets — David and Isaiah and many others — have foretold the great sacramental banquet of God, prepared for all people, the banquet that swallows up death, the feast of their anointing as priests and prophets and kings in the very presence of death and to death’s undying shame. And he is reminding them that their ancestors ignored the prophets, refused to come to the feast, abused and even killed the messengers that God had sent with his invitation. And now, Jesus warns, these very leaders that question Jesus’ authority are repeating the sins of the fathers, ignoring God’s wedding feast invitation and preparing to seize and kill the one who is not only the messenger sent with the invitation, but the very son of the king who has issued it. And what will come of their rejection of the invitation? Back to the parable now: The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city (Matt 22:7). Historically, that is precisely what happened when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple just forty years after Jesus spoke these parables.

But, the story continues. The king sends still other servants out to the main roads to invite all and sundry to the feast, both good and bad. That is you and me, by the way, and all those Jews and gentiles who will, throughout history, hear the Gospel and respond to it. So the wedding hall is filled with guests (Matt 22:10). You see, this feast is sacramental: it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside because it opens up onto God. The Jewish leaders were certain that the banquet hall was small and that the guest list was limited to them and to those like them. When they began to catch a glimpse of the vast extent of the king’s generosity, when they began to suspect the sacramental nature of the wedding feast, they refused the invitation and chose death’s banquet instead. And so death cast his pall over them. Death stalked them through the valley of the shadows and took them unawares. Their city was destroyed and they died in it.

That was and is a tragedy because it is still going on. The invitations are still going out. Some who should know better, who have every reason to know better, are ignoring them and abusing the servants who deliver the invitations. But there are also those with unlikely backgrounds in unlikely circumstances and places who make their way to the wedding feast. And, since it is larger on the inside than it is on the outside, there is always room for more.

I would like to stop here, and it would be safer to do so. But Jesus doesn’t and so I can’t with any integrity. When all the unlikely guests are gathered in to the feast, the king himself comes in:

11…and he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen (Matt 22:11b-14).

No wedding garment. Cast into outer darkness. Many called but few chosen. What are we to make of this? St. Gregory the Great offers this insight:

But since you have already come into the house of the marriage feast, our holy church, as a result of God’s generosity, be careful, my friends, lest when the King enters he find fault with some aspect of your heart’s clothing. We must consider what comes next with great fear in our hearts. But the king came in to look at the guests and saw there a person not clothed in a wedding garment.

What do we think is meant by the wedding garment, dearly beloved? For if we say it is baptism or faith, is there anyone who has entered this marriage feast without them? A person is outside because he has not yet come to believe. What then must we understand by the wedding garment but love? That person enters the marriage feast, but without wearing a wedding garment, who is present in the holy church. He may have faith, but he does not have love. We are correct when we say that love is the wedding garment because this is what our Creator himself possessed when he came to the marriage feast to join the church to himself. Only God’s love brought it about that his only begotten Son united the hearts of his chosen to himself. John says that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for us (Forty Gospel Homilies 38.9).

We have been invited to this great, sacramental wedding feast of the kingdom of heaven where death is swallowed up in victory, where death is shamed through our anointing as priests, prophets and kings. We have been invited to this great, sacramental wedding feast of the kingdom of heaven through no merit of our own, but through the grace, mercy, and love of the king. We dare not presume upon that grace, mercy, and love. We must clothe our hearts in the love that reflects the love he has for us. And so we pray:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.

And so, clothed in the wedding garment of love, let us come to the feast. Amen.

“Bring back the electric chair.” This was Senator — and gubernatorial candidate — Marsha Blackburn’s response to the Tennessee Department of Correction’s failed attempt to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike by lethal injection earlier this week. The response was quick; it evidenced no thoughtful moral deliberation in real time. Perhaps Senator Blackburn had grappled with the moral implications of the judicial taking of a human life in the past and had reached an accord with capital punishment. Perhaps it was an unreflective reaction. Perhaps the senator is simply more interested in “how” the deed might be done effectively than in whether the deed should be done at all. I make no judgment because I do not know Senator Blackburn’s heart.

But, I do know her public position on a related issue, and that makes her “electric chair solution” all the more confusing. Senator Blackburn is adamantly anti-abortion. In fairness to her, she would — and does — describe her position as pro-life. In fairness to logic and semantics, I cannot describe it that way. A consistent pro-life ethic defends the sanctity to life — all life — from conception to natural death, and that precludes capital punishment.

I wonder if Senator Blackburn has pushed her positions to the limit, which is where all positions are tested and often come undone. Toward this end, I propose a thought experiment. Suppose it had been humanly possible to know — from the moment of Christa Pike’s conception — that she would murder Coleen Slemmer eighteen years later. Would Senator Blackburn advocate, or approve, a preemptive abortion or would she let nature take its course? Clearly, the Senator has no qualms in punishing murder by state sanctioned execution of the offender. But, would she murder preemptively to prevent the murder — again, if it were humanly possible to know, with certainty, that such murder would ensue? That is a moral quandary, isn’t it? What does pro-life mean in such a situation?

Of course, this scenario is entirely hypothetical. Except, it is not. Christians — all but a relatively small contingent of open theists — assert that God knew the trajectory of Christa Pike’s life from before the foundations of the world. Her murder of Coleen Slemmer did not take God by surprise. And yet, God allowed for Pike’s conception and birth. God did not preemptively abort her, not even to prevent Coleen Slemmer’s murder. Multiply this one murder by six million, change the name from Pike to Hitler, and the same ethical dilemma applies; only the magnitude differs.

All this is a mystery beyond my understanding. And that suggests — I would say it demands — a certain humility, the humility of recognizing that the giving and taking of human life — both in abortion and in capital punishment — belongs solely to God and neither to the individual nor to the state. The preeminent Christian symbol — the cross — was Rome’s version of lethal injection or electric chair, of the power of the state to mete out the death penalty. It was used against the earliest Christians, not by them. Christians today should not blithely accept the use of its modern equivalents in the name of justice.

Eat My Flesh, Drink My Blood

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

The Gospel According to St. John: Chapter 6, Part 2 (John 6:41-71)
Eat My Flesh, Drink My Blood

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

O God, you make us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious resurrection of your Son our Lord: Give us this day such blessing through our worship of you, that the week to come may be spent in your favor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 676).

The book caught my eye on my recent visit to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia: Searching for and Maintaining Peace — A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart. Its author Fr. Jacques Philippe is a Roman Catholic Priest, spiritual director, and retreat director, and the author of several other books, one of which we have recommended and used here at Apostles, Interior Freedom.

In considering the reasons we most often lose our peace of heart Fr. Philippe writes:

The most common reason for which we could lose our sense of peace is a fear caused by certain situations which touch us personally and in which we feel threatened, apprehensions in the face of present or future difficulties, fear of lacking something important, of not succeeding in such and such a project, and so forth. The examples are infinite and touch all sectors of our lives: health, family and professional life, moral life and the spiritual life itself (Fr. Jacques Philippe, Searching for and Maintaining Peace, St Pauls (2002), p. 23).

He continues to say that what is needed to maintain peace — at least in part — is a firm conviction in and experience of the providence of God: that God is good, that he cares for us, that he is wisely and rightly ordering all things so that we will lack nothing that we truly need to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this life and the life to come — in other words, that God is the Heavenly Father that Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount.

But there are obstacles to maintaining that conviction. Again, Fr. Philippe writes:

The first obstacle is that, as long as we have not experienced concretely the fidelity of Divine Providence to provide for our essential needs, we have difficulty believing in it and we abandon it. We have hard heads, the words of Jesus do not suffice for us, we want to see at least a little in order to believe! Well, we do not see it operating around us in a clear manner. How, then, are we to experience it (ibid, p. 28)?

In other words, it is difficult to maintain the theological conviction of divine providence necessary for peace of heart if we have not concretely experienced divine providence sustaining us. Words and theory simply won’t do. Then, Fr. Philippe gets down to the brass tacks:

This is where the problem lies. Many do not believe in Providence because they’ve never experienced it, but they’ve never experienced it because they’ve never jumped into the void and taken a leap of faith. They never give it the possibility to intervene. They calculate everything, anticipate everything, they seek to resolve everything by counting on themselves, instead of counting on God (ibid, pp. 28-28).

Let’s reformulate that statement as a question: Have you ever done something so audacious, so daring, so beyond your own means and capability — in the name of God — that unless God is in it and shows up you will fail spectacularly? Those are the moments in which divine providence can be experienced most concretely.

The Old Testament is replete with examples of people doing that: people stepping so far beyond themselves — because God called them, drew them — that there was no reasonable human hope for success. Divine providence had to make the way.

There is Abram. Leave your home and go where I will lead you. I will give you a good land and fill it with a vast multitude of your offspring. Abram knows, and we know, that none of that will happen by Abram’s power; unless God does it, this covenant will fail utterly.

There is Moses. Go tell Pharaoh to let my people go worship me, and I will deliver them from their slavery with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Well, none of that will happen if Moses is left to his own devices, not even with Aaron’s and Miriam’s help. Divine providence has to make the way.

One of the greatest examples of divine providence in the story of Israel — and the one that is most germane to our text today — is God’s care for the people through the forty years in the wilderness. We see this from the moment the Hebrews leave Egypt until they cross the Jordan into the promised land some four decades later.

This event happened even before the Hebrews first reached Sinai on their way out of Egypt:

1 They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. 2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Exodus 16:1-3).

Notice that despite everything God had already done for them, the people’s response was to grumble. In spite of that, the provision of manna starts here. Then, just a bit later:

1 All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst” (Exod 17:1-3)?

Even with all they have seen, empty bellies and parched lips make it hard to trust in divine providence. They lose their peace of heart. They grumble. They quarrel.

John 6:41-51 The End of Exile and the Bread of Life

This is the backdrop for Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand and the conversations and discourse that follow in John 6. Let’s read the first portion of the text, John 6:41-51.

41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Notice how our text for the day begins.

41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’” (John 6:41-42).

The Jews grumbled. This brings us right back to the Hebrews in the wilderness grumbling against Moses over lack of bread when, ironically, Jesus has just fed over five thousand people with bread and fish. The problem is not with the food itself, but with Jesus’ insistence that he is the true bread that came down from heaven. “We know his people, his mom and dad,” the Jews say. “How can he say he came down from heaven?” They grumble at Jesus over bread.

When the Gospel writers say the Jews did this or the Jews did that, they are often speaking not of the general populace, but rather of the leaders of the people: sometimes the Scribes and Pharisees, sometimes the Sadducees, sometimes the priests. I suspect that is the case here because of what Jesus says next.

43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— (John 6:43-45).

The crowds have flocked to Jesus: for healing, for teaching, now for food and perhaps because of what they misconstrue as possible kingly aspirations. That, I suspect, is the basis of the Jewish leaders’ complaint and grumbling. This new rabbi is garnering attention, gathering a following, and making startling claims about himself. In the best case scenario, the Jewish leaders are concerned that Jesus is leading the people astray. In the worst case scenario, they are just jealous of his popularity. Either way, they grumble against God incarnate as the Hebrews in the wilderness had grumbled against the God of the Exodus.

Jesus’ response is interesting. The people come because the Father has drawn them, and that is in accordance with the prophets. The text that Jesus quotes, “And they will all be taught by God,” is from Isaiah 54. Significantly, the whole of that chapter is about the end of exile, how God will one day gather all people to himself — he will be their husband — and will bless and teach them and establish them in righteousness. This is what Jesus says is happening in their presence, in his person. God is calling his people home from exile; those who hear God are coming to Jesus and those who don’t are not. But, to those who come, Jesus offers eternal life. He offers living bread, toward which the manna pointed, that one may eat of it and not die. That is controversial enough, but then Jesus takes a step that is just too far for many, even for devoted disciples. He says, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51).

John 6:52-59 Unless You Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood

Let’s read John 6:52-59, a very challenging text.

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

These words of Jesus have divided people from the moment they were first uttered, and they divide people still: Protestant from Protestant, Protestant from Roman Catholic, Roman Catholic from Orthodox. Even Jesus’ disciples said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it” (John 6:60). And they were divided over it. We’ll have more to say about that response later.

We — the Church —understand this saying of Jesus eucharistically, and that is almost certainly how St. John intended it. By the time he wrote his Gospel, the Church had been meeting together on the Lord’s Day for fifty to sixty years precisely, in part, for the breaking of the bread, for the Eucharist which is a partaking in the Body and Blood of Christ. This is what St. Paul taught us:

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor 11:23-26).

Until the Reformation, the Church never shied away from Jesus’ words, never allegorized them or made metaphor of them: This bread is my body; this wine is my blood. The Church always believed that. We Anglicans still do and we speak of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament. In our best moments we do not argue over precisely how Jesus is present in the elements, how the bread is his body and the wine is his blood. We accept it as true because Jesus said it and because we have received that faith from the Church.

The question that I’d like to think about with you this morning is why that matters. Why is it important that the bread is not just bread but the Body of Christ, and the wine not just wine but the Blood of Christ? And, that brings us to another question that divides the Church today: what do we have in our chancel — an altar or a table? Most Protestants, I suspect, will answer a table. Roman Catholics and Orthodox will answer an altar. Anglicans will just argue about it. I will tip my hand up front and say that the question presents a false dichotomy, that the real answer is simply “Yes.” I want to explain that in a way that those who first heard Jesus talk about eating his flesh and drinking his blood could have — and perhaps should have — understood his meaning.

Let’s think about sacrifices under the Old Covenant. What was the purpose — or what were the purposes — of the sacrifices? Of course, we have to speak generally since where several types of sacrifices.

There was a two-fold purpose to the sacrifices: (1) to purify a sinful people so that the holy God might dwell among them without destroying them and (2) to bring man and God into right relationship to one another, a relationship typified by fellowship with one another.

So, the purpose of a sin offering, for example, was purification for the tabernacle and for the people. Spiritually speaking, sin left a residue, a taint, that had to be cleansed if God were to dwell among his people. And, what was the cleansing agent? Blood. With this, the author or Hebrews agrees:

18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb 9:18-22).

So, the blood purifies people — and things — from sin. The purpose of this is ultimately to obtain peace between God and man. And, here, the peace offering becomes significant. In that offering, part of the sacrificial animal was burned in a offering to God, part was given to the priests for their food, and part was returned to the offerer to be used in a communal meal with family. The flesh was to be eaten in a great act of fellowship that joined into one great community God, the priests, and the people.

Again, generally speaking, the main purposes of the sacrificial system was purification of sinful man — through the blood of the sacrifice — and fellowship (union) between God and purified man through the flesh of the sacrifice. Eat the flesh, sprinkle — or apply — the blood. And that, I suggest, is one way in which Jesus’ words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood must be understood. Because he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, his blood purifies all things, as St. John says in his first epistle:

1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:1).

Now, there is a subtlety here, that we need to explore for a bit. For Jews, the idea of blood sprinkled or applied was perfectly acceptable, but not blood consumed. That was forbidden by God. So, Jesus’ words that they, and we, must drink his blood were scandalous. With that in mind, listen to the writer of Hebrews:

11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Heb 9:11-14).

Notice the distinction the author makes. The blood of bulls and goats was for the purification of the flesh, an exterior matter. But, the blood of Christ is for the purification of the conscience — or we might say the purification of the heart. And that is an interior matter. If we intend to purify the exterior, sprinkling will do. But, if we want to purify the heart, we must take the blood inside us by drinking it.

So, do we have an altar or a table? Yes. In our churches we have an altar where Christ’s blood purifies us: not that we sacrifice Christ again on that altar — his sacrifice was offered once for all (see Heb 10) — but rather that we participate in the one, finished sacrifice of Christ with each Eucharist.

Then, having been purified by his blood, we can have fellowship with God and with one another, just as in the peace offering; for Christ himself is our peace (see Eph 2). We share the fellowship meal of his body just as Israel shared the fellowship meal of the peace offering: God and man eating together, men who were once alienated from one another eating together. The altar has become a table.

Since purification and fellowship are prerequisites for life, for the abundant life that Christ offers us, we now understand what he means when he says,

53 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:53-54).

Just as St. John’s readers would have understood Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus in John 3 as pertaining to baptism, his readers would understand Jesus’ words here as pertaining to the Eucharist. The Church from the beginning to the Reformation, maintained that both baptism and the Eucharist are generally necessary for salvation: one gives new life and one sustains and nurtures that new life. That is still the doctrine of the Anglican Church.

John 6:60-71 Grumbling and Peace of Heart

How did the people respond to Jesus’ words? Let’s read John 6:60-65 to see.

60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” 61 But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? 62 Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him (John 6:60-66).

There is that word again, the one we started with today: his disciples were grumbling. They have become the Hebrews in the wilderness. And just like those grumblers in the wilderness would have left Moses and returned to Egypt and slavery had it been possible, so these disciples of Jesus turned back into slavery. There is an implicit warning here for us about the dangers of unbelief, hardness of heart, and grumbling. The warning is made explicit in Hebrews.

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,

8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,

9 where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.

10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’

11 As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” (Heb 3:7-15).

Now, we will end where we started: with the notion of peace of heart and how having peace of heart depends on the experience of casting yourself into the void trusting solely in the providence of God.

As many of his disciples are abandoning him because of this difficult Eucharistic teaching, Jesus turns to the Twelve and very poignantly asks what they plan to do.

67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” 70 Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” 71 He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him (John 6:67-71).

How might we paraphrase Peter’s answer? Lord, we have cast our lot with you; we have left everything to follow you. There’s no going back for us. And, we’ve seen too much, we’ve come to know too much, we’ve come to trust you too much to back out now.

This is exactly what Fr. Jacques Philippe was writing about. These men — eleven of them, at least — have cast out into the void with Jesus and they have found him worthy of their trust. Listen to Fr. Jacques’ words again:

This is where the problem lies. Many do not believe in Providence because they’ve never experienced it, but they’ve never experienced it because they’ve never jumped into the void and taken a leap of faith. They never give it the possibility to intervene. They calculate everything, anticipate everything, they seek to resolve everything by counting on themselves, instead of counting on God (ibid, pp. 28-28).

Do the Apostles understand Jesus’ difficult words any better than the masses who are turning away? Probably not. But, they don’t need to: they no longer need to calculate everything, anticipate everything, seek to resolve everything by counting on themselves. They have learned to count on Jesus, and they have learned that by experience.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What words of Jesus do you find particularly confusing and disturbing? What keeps you holding fast to Jesus even in the face of these difficult words? How might you learn to trust them?

2. Can you think of a time when you stepped out into the void to follow Jesus? What happened? What did you learn?

3. What effect, if any, does what you’ve heard in this lesson have on your view of the Eucharist?

4. How do our Anglican Eucharistic liturgies reflect Jesus’ teaching in John 6?

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Worthy of the Gospel of Christ
(Jonah 3:10-4:11, Ps 145:14-21, Phil 1:21-27, Matt 20:1-16)

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ (Phil 1:27a).

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Introduction

I think it was the writer Robert Fulghum who told of his recurring nightmare. In it, he is standing in line for the final judgment, making his way slowly, person by person, to the pearly gates and to St. Peter for a verdict on his eternal destiny. Directly in front of Fulghum in the line is a tiny, stooped, old woman dressed in blue and white. When she finally makes it to the front of the line with Fulghum next up behind her, St. Peter looks down at her, shakes his head sadly and says, “I’m sorry, Mother Teresa, but you just should have done more. Next.”

Perhaps I should have continued our focus on St. Matthew’s Gospel this morning, but St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians kept attracting my attention. It was just one verse — one part of one verse, actually.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ (Phil 1:27a).

I know this much about lectio divina, about sacred reading. When a word speaks to you, you do well to pay attention.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ (Phil 1:27a).

For some reason, I thought about Fulghum’s dream when I read these words of St. Paul, his imperative to his brothers and sisters in Philippi to let their manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. The linguistic image that St. Paul paints is that of a citizen living in such a way as to bring honor and glory to his people and nation. We Americans do not have the best reputation abroad; the description “Ugly Americans” was coined to describe the arrogance and thoughtlessness of many American tourists. We too often fail to live up to the highest ideals of our national creeds. St. Paul says, “Don’t be Ugly Christians. Don’t give Christ a bad name in the culture. Live up to the faith you profess.”

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ (Phil 1:27a).

What does it look like, what does it entail, this manner of life worthy of the gospel of Christ? There are many valid ways to answer that question. But, since it is St. Paul writing, it seems reasonable to take his own life as an answer. There are three characteristics in St. Paul’s manner of life — Well, there are more than three, but sermons are only allowed to have three points; more than that and people get fidgety. So, I have reduced it to three. — there are three characteristics, three commitments in St. Paul’s life that are central to a manner of life worthy of the gospel of Christ: conversion, vocation, and suffering.

Conversion

The conversion of Saul the Pharisee to St. Paul the Apostle, beginning on the road to Damascus, is to many people the archetype for all conversions: a great moment of in-breaking truth, a brilliant light illuminating the spiritual darkness, a radical disconnect between one manner of life and another. John Newton, slave trader turned Anglican priest, expressed it this way:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
was blind, but now I see (John Newton, Amazing Grace, Public Domain).

Do you see the radical nature of Newton’s conversion: wretch to saved, lost to found; blind to seeing?

Was this also the nature of Saul’s conversion — a radical disconnect from all that went before, a repudiation of one life and the embrace of another? Well, yes…and no. Saul was a good Jew before his conversion, and Paul was a good Jew after. Saul was zealous before his conversion, and Paul was just as zealous — less the violent aspect of zeal — after. Saul was a man with a mission before his conversion, and Paul was a man with a mission after. Post-conversion Paul bore a great resemblance to pre-conversion Saul. So, what did change? Just this: Saul had no place in his life for Jesus; Paul had no life in himself apart from Jesus. Saul’s great conversion was to Jesus as Lord. And that is a profound disconnect. The central conviction of Saul’s life, his core belief, was the great creed of Israel, the Shema:

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut 6:4).

And Saul the Pharisee could see no place for Jesus in this confession. But, after his conversion, after encountering the resurrected Jesus in his vision on the way to Damascus, Paul the Apostle saw Jesus right at the heart of that confession. Listen to how he reinterprets the Shema in his letter to the Corinthians:

5 For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist (1 Cor 8:5-6).

And that is the nature of Saul’s conversion: to see Jesus at the center of all things, to see Jesus as the one in whom we live and move and have our being.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. That means conversion. That means placing Jesus at the center of all things. That may mean parting with all lesser pearls for the sake of one pearl of great price. Again, St. Paul, this time in writing to the Philippians:

4 If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith (Phil 5:4b-9).

That is conversion: the complete reorientation of oneself toward Jesus. My experience — the experience of the Church — is that such conversion is not one-and-done, not accomplished in an instant — but rather is a lifelong process. It is, as the Benedictine vow expresses it, a conversatio morum, a conversion of life to the end of one’s days.

Put a weight on a string and spin it overhead in a circle. At each point in its path the weight seeks to fly off in a straight line tangent to the circle and away from the circle’s center. It is only the constant tug of the string that keeps the weight in its proper orbit. That is a picture of conversion: Christ at the center, man circling but always seeking to fly off tangentially, and the tug of the “string” always pulling man back toward the center. What is the string? The Holy Spirit? Yes, certainly. Faith? Yes. The Church which offers the Word of God and the Sacraments? Yes. The spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting and almsgiving? Yes. The cultivation of the virtues, especially the virtues of faith, hope and love? Yes. Repentance and confession? Yes. The string of conversion is rope of many cords.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. This is a call to conversion.

Vocation

A man goes to the doctor to receive some potentially serious test results. The doctor enters the exam room, double checks the chart, smiles and says, “No need to worry. Everything came back normal. It seems you have many good years ahead of you.”

The man looks pensive, shakes his head slowly and says, “Well, don’t worry about it Doc; it’s not your fault. You’ve done your best.”

The doctor, now a bit flustered, says, “I don’t think you understand. You’re fine — perfectly healthy.”

“No, I get it,” the man says. “I was just sort of hoping that this was my time. I’m ready to go be with the Lord. That’s far better than living a long life here. But, if that’s not God’s will, I’ll accept it and get back to work. There is much to be done for the kingdom, you know.”

Can you imagine a conversation like that? St. Paul did not have to imagine it, nor do we. He was writing to the Philippians from prison, awaiting a verdict that might well mean his execution. He says:

19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again (Phil 1:19-26).

St. Paul tells the Philippians that they have just prayed too well for his deliverance and that the Lord has granted it. And, while he would rather depart to be with the Lord, Paul accepts that it is not yet his time, that, instead, he has fruitful labor yet to do for the sake of the kingdom and its people.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. For St. Paul, that means vocation. It means going out into the world to do the work he had been given to do, to love and serve the Lord with thankful heart, not only with his lips but in his life.

“Well, that’s alright for St. Paul; he was an Apostle. But, I don’t have a vocation,” you may be thinking. “I’m just a [fill in the blank].” Not so. Every person baptized into Christ Jesus — no exceptions — has a vocation by virtue of baptism. While there are many ways to describe that vocation, here at Apostles you will often hear this: every baptized believer has the threefold vocation of priest, prophet, and king.

As priests, you are to bless, to sanctify, to make holy every hard moment, every dark place into which the Spirit leads you: by your presence, by your prayers, by your sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, by your entering into the pain of the world with lament and hope and a cry for godly justice.

As prophets, you are to capture and cultivate God’s vision for God’s world and then to proclaim it in word and deed in every way possible. You are to be a living answer to the question: What would it look like if God were in charge here and now? You may be called to speak God’s truth — Jesus is Lord! — to the dark powers who still think and act as if they run this world, as if it is theirs. You may be called to show love to those whom this dark world has cast aside: the poor, the widows, the orphans, the refugees, the prisoners, the powerless, the mocked, the lonely, the forgotten, the dregs of society disdained by the rich, the powerful, the prideful.

As kings, you are to bring order and justice to those shadowy places where chaos and injustice abound. But not as the rulers of this world do: through intimidation and violence, through power and privilege, through ill-gotten money and the influence it purchases. No. Your model is the King who welcomed tax collectors and sinners, who knelt to wash feet, who reigned from a cross, who said to his disciples:

25 “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 26 It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, 28 even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:25b-28).

You have this vocation by virtue of your baptism: priest, prophet, king. And you also have lives: family, school, job, retirement. So, the question becomes: How do I exercise my baptismal vocation as priest, prophet, and king in my life as mother or teacher or scientist or plumber or manager or artist or administrator or retiree or caregiver or [fill in the blank of your own circumstances]? Only be certain of this: that you can and that it is God’s will that you do. There is no state of life in which you cannot offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. There is no circumstance in which you cannot promote order and champion justice. There is no place where you cannot serve.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. This is a call to vocation.

Suffering

St. Paul specifically mentions one other characteristic of the manner of life worthy of the gospel of Christ. These are his words.

27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have (Phil 1:27-30).

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. This is a call to suffering.

It is true to say that Christ died for us: true, provided we understand that “for” does not mean “instead of.” If Christ tarries, I will experience bodily death, as he did, as you will. To say that Christ died for us means that we now die in him, that our death is now united to his death, so that his victory over death becomes our victory over death. We will all die, but it has been granted to us to die in Christ.

It is true to say that Christ suffered for us: true, provided we understand that “for” does not mean “instead of.” To live at all is to suffer. The Buddhists are wrong about this: suffering is not illusion. It is real and we all must experience it sooner or later. But we — those who are in Christ Jesus — have been uniquely given the grace of suffering for him, with him, and in him. And that makes all the difference.

There is great mystery here; we are at the limits of understanding and language. But of this I am certain, though I have no good words to explain it or to persuade you. Just as Jesus’ own suffering was redemptive — brought life and reconciliation to the world — so our suffering for his sake, our suffering united with his, our suffering offered up to him, partakes of that redemption, becomes part of his redemptive work for the world. Surely, St. Paul had something like this in mind when he wrote this to the Colossians:

24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church (Col 1:24).

When Christ cried out on the cross, “It is finished!” he meant that his work was finished, not that the kingdom work was complete, not that there was nothing left to do. Just fifty days later, he poured out his Spirit upon his people at Pentecost to empower them for the gospel work left to do, for the gospel work he left them — and us — to do. And St. Paul insists that part of that gospel work is suffering for the sake of Christ, and that we should count that suffering as gift. Suffering, when united to Christ’s suffering, is purifying and perfecting; even Christ himself was made perfect through suffering (see Heb 2:10).

St. Paul does not call us to be masochists, to seek out unnecessary suffering. But, he does call us not to fear it. He calls us see it for what it is, to accept it for what it is or what it can be: an expression of God’s great love for us and for the world, a means of purification and witness, a gift that unites us to Christ.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. This is a call to suffering.

Conclusion

I don’t think the final judgment will look much like Fulghum’s nightmare. But, if it does, I hope I am behind him in line and not behind Mother Teresa. A bit of buffer would be nice. Until that time comes though, we know our calling; St. Paul has made it clear.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. That is a call to conversion, to vocation, to suffering. Amen.

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Holy Cross Day (14 September)
(Is 45:21-25 / Ps 98 / Phil 2:5-11 / John 12:31-36a)

Collect
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself: Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Both here and in all your churches throughout the world,
we adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The siege began on 14 April, in the year 70 AD. Four years earlier the Jews had rebelled against Rome, and Rome had finally had enough of that irritation. From that moment, Jerusalem was doomed. The siege lasted only four months, four difficult, horrible months for the Jews trapped in the city. The walls were breached in August, and by 8 September the Roman General Titus — soon to be Emperor — had razed the city and the temple. All was ruin and rubble.

Some sixty years later, circa 130, the Emperor Hadrian began to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman city, Aelia Capitolina. This reconstruction altered the landscape of Jerusalem; many holy sites were lost — some covered with fill dirt and rubble, some buried under new construction — Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre among them.

Fast forward to the reign of Constantine (AD 306 – 337) who ended the formal Roman persecution against the Christians in 313 and declared Christianity a tolerated religion. Surely, Constantine had political motives for this, but his own conversion to the faith seems genuine, so that he may rightly be called the first Christian Emperor. He built churches and supported the clergy. He called the Council of Nicaea to deal with heresy and to define and unify the orthodox faith. And he turned his attention toward the holy city of Jerusalem.

The holy places in Jerusalem needed churches to mark them and to serve as sites for pilgrimage, so Constantine thought; he set about the task of locating those sites and building those churches. None were more important than Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, sites lost during the building of Aelia Capitolina. Pious legend tells how Constantine awarded his devout Christian mother Helena the honorable task of locating those sites and directing the building of the churches. The early Church historian Eusebius wrote this about Helena:

Especially abundant were the gifts she bestowed on the naked and unprotected poor. To some she gave money, to others an ample supply of clothing; she liberated some from imprisonment, or from the bitter servitude of the mines; others she delivered from unjust oppression, and others again, she restored from exile. While, however, her character derived luster from such deeds … , she was far from neglecting personal piety toward God. She might be seen continually frequenting His Church, while at the same time she adorned the houses of prayer with splendid offerings, not overlooking the churches of the smallest cities. In short, this admirable woman was to be seen, in simple and modest attire, mingling with the crowd of worshipers, and testifying her devotion to God by a uniform course of pious conduct” (The Life of Constantine, XLIV, XLV).

The stories of how Helena located Calvary and the true cross of Christ are many and varied. I’ll mention just two that I like. While searching for Calvary, Helena noticed a large patch of an aromatic herb unknown to her. She felt compelled to dig in that spot and there she uncovered the wood from three separate crosses, those of the thieves and Jesus. As an aside, that herb is now named basil, from the Greek basileus meaning king. Many churches are decorated with basil plants in observance of Holy Cross Day.

So far, so good; Helena had discovered Calvary and wood from three crosses. But which one was the true cross of Christ? A woman suffering from a terminal illness was brought to the spot and asked to touch the wood from each of the crosses in turn. When she touched the wood of the last one, she was miraculously healed; that must be the true cross of Christ. And so began the veneration of the Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus. The church built on that site to house the cross was completed on 13 September 335 and formally dedicated the next day, 14 September, which we now observe as Holy Cross Day.

Holy Cross Day is an occasion to think deeply about the cross, to venerate it: not to worship it but to reverence it, to honor it as the instrument on which and through which the Lord Jesus triumphed over sin and death, trampling hell and Satan under his feet. This is a day perhaps to sit silently before the cross, to gaze at it in wonder, to sing its glory. In the church of my youth we had no custom of venerating the cross, but we did sing this:

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross
The emblem of suffering and shame
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross
Till my trophies at last I lay down
And I will cling to the old rugged cross
And exchange it some day for a crown (The Old Rugged Cross, The Rev’d George Bernard)

In the Anglican Church, as part of the Good Friday liturgy, we may observe Devotion Before the Cross. A covered wooden cross is brought into the church in the sight of the people. As it is uncovered, this antiphon is said or sung:

Behold the wood of the Cross, on which was hung the world’s Salvation.
O come, let us adore him.

Anthems follow:

We glory in your Cross, O Lord,
and praise and glorify your holy resurrection;
for by virtue of your Cross
joy has come to the whole world (Anthem 1, BCP 2019, p. 574).

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you,
because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world (BCP 2019, Anthem 2, p. 574).

Those who are not Christians are sometimes puzzled at our devotion to the cross. Why take a murder weapon and make it the symbol of the faith? Why venerate the cross? This is a good day to reflect on those questions.

The Roman Empire was certainly one of the world’s greatest civilizations, but, at its core, it was based upon violence — threatened and real — and upon power, brute force exercised by the government. Its military instilled fear and obedience. Its justice did likewise.

As an expression of its power and with the purpose of instilling fear, Rome devised the most brutal form of execution then known: crucifixion. Its purpose was not merely to physically torture and destroy the victim, but to publicly debase and humiliate the victim as a deterrent against similar crimes. Through the beatings, the forced march through town, the nailing of hands and feet, the stripping naked of the victim, the hours of agony suspended between heaven and earth, the mocking by the gathered crowds, Rome was declaring the victim to be sub-human, vermin, worthy only of being exterminated. All this came to Jesus not for anything he had done, not for any sin he had committed, but for us and for our salvation. He bore our sins on the cross in our stead. So the cross tells the great truth about us. Look at Jesus; this is what sin had done to us, what sin had reduced us to. That was our true state. When Pilate said, “Behold, the man,” he wasn’t just speaking about Jesus beaten, bloody, and shamed. He was speaking about mankind — about all of us and each of us — under the burden of sin. We sometimes wink and smile at sin: white lies, harmless infidelities, petty thefts, small betrayals, momentary anger — little things that everyone does. But the cross will not tolerate that self-deception. Look at Jesus on the cross. That is the result of your white lies, your harmless infidelities, and all the rest. That is what your sin has reduced you to. We venerate the cross because it confronts us with the damnable truth of our sin like nothing else can do.

But the cross also reveals to us the length, the depth, the breadth, and the height of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus, the willingness of God, in Christ, to sacrifice himself for us and for our salvation. The cross declares that those created in the image of God, though beaten, marched through town, stripped naked, nailed to a tree, mocked by evil powers through their own sins, are nevertheless the beloved of God in whose image they may be restored. We venerate the cross because it reveals to us the self-sacrificing, unfathomable love of God for us like nothing else can do.

There is no way to explain this, no words of human wisdom adequate for the mystery of the cross. There is only proclamation, adoration, veneration. As Paul writes:

1 Corinthians 1:18–21 (ESV): For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

1 Corinthians 2:1–2 (ESV): And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

We venerate the cross because we worship Christ Jesus and him crucified.

Holy Cross Day also marks the beginning of the Fall Ember Days, the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday following Holy Cross Day. These are days to fast and pray for those called to ordained ministry in the Church.

Almighty God, the giver of all good gifts, in your divine providence you have appointed various orders in your Church: Give your grace, we humbly pray, to all who are [now] called to any office and ministry for your people; and so fill them with the truth of your doctrine and clothe them with holiness of life, that they may faithfully serve before you, to the glory of your great Name and for the benefit of your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 634).

Even as we pray for those in ordained ministry, we remember that the Church has four orders of ministry: the three ordained orders of bishop, priest, and deacon and the vastly larger and more fundamental order of the laity whose ministry is given in and through baptism. Along with the ordained orders, the laity share in the baptismal vocation of priests, prophets, and kings: priests who exercise a ministry of worship and reconciliation, prophets who have the vision of God’s truth and can say to the world “Thus says the Lord,” and kings who labor to bring God’s righteous rule to bear on earth as it is in heaven.

Why the close connection between Holy Cross Day and the Ember Days? Historically, it may simply be a matter of symmetry: one set of Ember Days in each of the four seasons corresponding to prominent feast days in the Church — Christmas, Lent, Pentecost and, yes, Holy Cross in the autumn. But, theologically? There is an intimate connection between the cross and Christian vocation. Vocation is, after all, nothing more or less than taking up the Cross of Christ and following him, nothing more or less than continuing/implementing the work begun on the Cross.

As another hymn from my childhood asked and answered:

Must Jesus bear the cross alone
And all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for ev’ry one,
And there’s a cross for me (Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?, Thomas Shepherd).

Amen.

The Book of Signs: Chapter 5

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

The Gospel of John, Chapter 5: The Healing at Bethesda

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

Go before us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name, and finally, through your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Introduction

I have never been to the town of Lourdes in France. Millions have visited, making pilgrimages there since 1858 when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous and the miraculous healings began. Currently, it is estimated that some six million people descend on Lourdes annually, including sixty thousand sick or disabled persons seeking healing through taking the waters. There is a spring at Lourdes in the Grotto of Massabielle that purportedly has healing powers; in the original apparition the Blessed Virgin Mary instructed people to “drink at the spring and bathe in it.”

Some two hundred million people have visited Lourdes since 1858, many of whom came specifically for healing. Of that total, there have been roughly 7000 reported healings. For lovers of statistics, that is 0.0035 percent. Of those 7000 reported healings only 70 have been verified and certified by the Roman Catholic Church. One hundred seventy years, two hundred million pilgrims, seventy certified healings: not to be crass or irreverent, but your odds of being healed at Lourdes are only marginally better than those of winning the Power Ball Lottery. Still, people play the lottery, and still millions come to the waters at Lourdes, some for devotional intent only, but many with terminal diagnoses and many carried by friends, many praying for healing.

Belief in healing waters is nothing new. In fact, it is the basis for the third of Jesus’s signs recorded by St. John.

The Healing at the Pool on the Sabbath

Let’s read the account of the sign, the healing of a lame man.

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked (John 5:1-9a).

This sounds very Lourdes-like, doesn’t it, people coming to the water that has a reputation for healing powers. Some few manuscripts of St. John’s Gospel — not the oldest or most reliable ones — include an additional verse that explains the source of healing and the source of the particular dilemma faced by this lame man:

4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred the water; whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had.

Whether we believe this explanation or not doesn’t matter; people came expecting or at least hoping for healing.

Notice the question Jesus asks: “Do you want to be healed?” What do you think about such a question? Is it rhetorical or actual inquiry? Why might Jesus ask it?

A healing will change this man’s life profoundly in ways that he is perhaps not ready for and maybe won’t like. I have tried to help a few homeless persons get off the street and into stable housing. The efforts have always been unsuccessful. They were either unwilling to take the few steps necessary to start the process — sometimes as simple as a phone call — or else psychologically unable to make themselves do so. It was and is a mystery to me, but change is hard, and I have never been in their state before so I have no cause to judge. Do you want to enter a rehab program? Do you want to get off the streets? Do you want to be healed? These aren’t unreasonable questions. And, the man doesn’t answer directly. He simply explains to Jesus why he is still disabled; he has no one to help him into the water.

It is not, after all, the water that he needs, but rather a word of healing from Jesus.

8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked (John 5:8-9a).

Now, if we take this healing at face value as one of St. John’s seven signs, what is it a sign pointing to? What more do we know about Jesus or his mission through it? After all, we have seen Jesus heal before: the official’s son in John 4. What does this sign add?

Now, I must confess that I have cheated you a bit in my telling of the story. I have given you only the first part of verse 9 as if that concludes the account.

9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked (John 5:9a).

Stopping here implies that the physical healing is the sign. But, let’s hear the whole verse.

9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath (John 5:9).

Does that detail — that the healing took place on the Sabbath — change things, perhaps even change the nature of the sign? If you read the remainder of the chapter, the fact that the healing took place on the Sabbath is the only thing of importance to the Jewish authorities. They seem to take the actual healing with a grain of salt. But the Sabbath — that’s another matter entirely. So, I might suggest that we consider just the possibility that the timing of the healing, on the Sabbath, was the most important part of the sign. To explain that, I need to backtrack to John 2, to the cleansing of the temple.

What was the significance of the temple to the Jews? It was the focal point in space of the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven. It was where the glory of God resided or at least used to reside. It was the nexus of forgiveness and worship and prayer. It was the closest thing the Jews had to the kingdom of God in physical space. That is why it was so significant when Jesus cleansed the temple and called it his Father’s house. He was claiming authority over the kingdom of God in space.

What was the significance of the Sabbath? It was the focal point in time of the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven. It was the intersection of the age to come with this present age, a foretaste of that time when the world will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. What the temple was in space, the Sabbath was in time. Now, keep in mind the earlier cleansing of the temple as you listen to the rest of this healing story play out.

Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’ ” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God (John 5:9b-18).

When he cleansed the temple, Jesus identified it as his Father’s house. Here, when Jesus answers the charges of violating the Sabbath by saying, “My Father is working until now, and I am working,” he identifies the Sabbath as his Father’s time. Put both of these accounts together, and we have Jesus acting as God, laying claim to God’s kingdom in both space and time. Where Jesus is, when he is there, that is the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God. The Jewish authorities knew exactly what he was claiming, and they sought to kill him for his blasphemy. So, I think we need to take our cue from the Jewish authorities as we read this text: the sign is not merely the healing of a disabled man, but the timing of the healing: on the Sabbath.

Discourse: Part 1 — The Father’s Work Given To the Son

Now, following the sign, we have an extended discourse, Jesus speaking directly to the authorities.

Jesus defended his healing on the Sabbath by saying, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” In this discourse he details some of the work of his Father that he is participating in. As we read the text, let’s identify that work, the mission the Father has given the Son.

19 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. 21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. 22 For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:19-29).

What is the work the Father has given the Son?

Giving Life: As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will (John 5:21). This takes us back to St. John’s Prologue:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:1-5).

This also takes us back to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus:

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” (John 3:16-21).

In this passage, Jesus mentions both life and judgment. He came to bring life, not to judge. But, let’s return to our passage in John 5 to see what Jesus says about that.

Bringing Judgment: 22 For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life (John 5:22-24).

Judgment is part of the work the Father has given to the Son. But, it seems to be a rather “passive” sort of judgment. By that I mean that Jesus’ purpose — his mission — is not judgment/condemnation but rather life. He comes offering life for all who will accept it. Those who refuse life, those who will not believe, embrace death instead by their own choice. In doing so, they judge/condemn themselves. Jesus’ very presence engenders differentiation, not so much through Jesus’ judgment of us, but through our own judgement of him. Again, St. John’s Prologue pointed toward this:

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:9-13).

Defeating Death: If we read Genesis 3-11 carefully, we will notice not just one fall of man, but at least three — Adam and Eve, Cain, and the builders of Babel — with distinct consequences: death, bondage to sin, enslavement to the fallen powers. The power of death and corruption has spread to all creation; see Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus assures us in this discourse that the last enemy, death, will one day be destroyed; that is part of the work his Father has given him to do.

26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:26-29).

Resurrection and life is the telos — the end/goal — of all people, the righteous and the unrighteous alike; not one person will be left in the tombs because Jesus has come to destroy death. His own resurrection is the firstfruits of that victory, a sign pointing toward the complete destruction of death to come.

We have a canticle that we sing at Morning Prayer in Eastertide that captures this victory over death beautifully: the Pascha Nostrum (Christ Our Passover).

Pascha Nostrum (Christ Our Passover)

Alleluia. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us; *
therefore let us keep the feast,
Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, *
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia.

Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; *
death no longer has dominion over him.
The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all; *
but the life he lives, he lives to God.
So also consider yourselves dead to sin, *
and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Alleluia.

Christ has been raised from the dead, *
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since by a man came death, *
by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, *
so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Alleluia.

Giving life, bringing judgment, and defeating death: this is the work the Father has given the Son to do, and he is doing that work even on — and perhaps especially on — the Sabbath, the focal point in time of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

Discourse: Part 2 — Witnesses To the Son

When we consider the seven signs in St. John’s Gospel, we generally focus on those things that Jesus did to inaugurate the Kingdom and to establish his identity and authority. But, there are other signs as well; Jesus calls them witnesses that bear testimony to him, reasons that the people and the authorities should believe. Jesus details several of these witnesses in the final part of this discourse. Let’s scan the text to see if we can identify the witnesses.

30 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. 31 If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. 33 You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. 34 Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. 35 He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36 But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. 39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. 41 I do not receive glory from people. 42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words” (John 5:30-47)?

Jesus identifies these witnesses: John the Baptist, the works that Jesus does, the Father, the Scriptures (Moses and his writings).

John the Baptist: Again, we find this in the Prologue and throughout the first chapter of the Gospel.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light (John 1:6-8).

What was John’s testimony to Jesus? “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)! We know that the people considered John a prophet; the heart of his prophecy was pointing toward Jesus, decreasing himself that Jesus might increase.

The Works: Do you remember what Nicodemus, a teacher of the Jews, first said when he came to see Jesus?

1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him” (John 3:1-2).

If, as Fr. Jack mentioned in his class on John 3, Nicodemus was not coming solely of his own volition, but rather as a representative of the Sanhedrin, then these authorities were acknowledging the works that Jesus was doing, even if grudgingly. So, the works bore witness to Jesus.

The Father
How did the Father bear witness to Jesus? Though it is not found in St. John’s Gospel, we have this from St. Luke, an event that would still be in many people’s memory:

21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:21-22).

The Scripture/Moses

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life (John 5:39-40).

46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words” (John 5:46-47)?

These Scriptures remind me of two others, both from St. Luke’s Gospel, one a parable and one a post-resurrection appearance.

Do you remember Abraham’s response when the rich man begged him to send Lazarus to his brothers so that they might escape his fate?

29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead’ ” (Luke 16:29-31).

Moses, rightly understood and rightly believed was the only witness the Jews needed to Jesus.

And then there is Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27).

It is all there in Moses and in the Scriptures for those who have the eyes and heart and will to see and to believe.

So, there are the signs that Jesus does — the seven that St. John gives us — and then then are the signs, or witnesses, that point toward Jesus: John the Baptist, the works of the Father, the Father himself, and Moses and the Scriptures. These are sufficient for anyone, especially for the Jewish authorities. And yet there is this sad commentary: “yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (see John 5:40). And that, too, is precisely what St. John noted in his Prologue: He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him (John 1:11).

Discussion

I would like us to close our time together with a further consideration of the witnesses to Jesus, the signs that point toward him. In particular, I’d like you to discuss these questionable with your table groups:

What would it look like for the Church to bear credible witness to Jesus today, to be a sign to the world of the Lordship of Jesus and of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God?

What would we have to start doing, or at least start doing better?

What would we have to stop doing?

What tangible steps can we — you, Apostles — make toward that?

The Verble app offered to write my sermon — with my theology, my translation, my voice — and to prepare slides. I simply had to answer a few prompt questions and the homiletical AI assistant could complete all this between verses one and two of the sequence hymn. Until that offer, I had never intentionally interacted with AI. I have no idea how to query ChatGPT or Grok or any other AI assistant. But that very day I had just finished work on my own sermon — a difficult piece of work — and I suppose I was both tired and curious. So, I answered Verble’s prompts about a desired sermon: Philippians 1, ESV, 20-30 minutes, challenging, theme idea/verse, and a few other bits of information. I pressed the button. Verble generated a sermon in seconds. Was it good? It wasn’t bad; I’ve read worse. Some might argue that I’ve written worse.

Now, understand, I did this as a test only with no intent to use or even to draw from the AI sermon. What I have written, I have written. Our bishop has, very wisely in my assessment, forbidden use of AI for writing sermons. Even so I felt a bit sullied, like I needed to take a bath or go to confession.

That was Friday, I think, and I have been pondering the matter since. Writing this post is part of that pondering, a thinking “out loud” on digital paper. Much is demanded of a priest; this is not a complaint, just a reality. In any given week a priest might offer pastoral care or spiritual direction to several parishioners, make hospital visits to others, prepare lessons, meet with staff or budget committee or vestry, deal with building maintenance issues, perform house blessings, offer last rites, and tend to countless other important matters. In the midst of that, he finds time for prayer and study and lectio. “Finds time” is wrong but sometimes true. If a priest — or anyone else — does not make these disciplines primary and set aside sacrosanct time for them, they will inevitably be crowded out by things that are less important but more urgent. Oh, yes, I had almost forgotten. Most priests have families — Anglican priests, that is — that they must, and long to, spend time with. And then, relentlessly, there is the sermon. Imagine a week where many of these legitimate needs collide. Imagine it is Friday night when the priest realizes he has not seriously begun work on his sermon. What would be wrong, in such an extreme situation, with using AI to (at least / at most) draft a sermon? Much, I think, in every way.

Though many protestants tremble at the T-word — Tradition — ours is inescapably a traditioned faith. What we have received from others, we make our own, and we pass on to others. We have that from St. Paul:

1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you — unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve (1 Cor 15:1-3).

Delivered, received, preached: that is the traditioning of our faith. It is this process of traditioning that renders AI incompatible with preaching or catechesis or pastoral care or — Lord, have mercy — prayer and confession. What is delivered, received, and passed on is not mere information. The traditioning of faith that made me a priest and consecrated me to preach included study — much study, yes — and careful examination, but also the laying on of hands by a successor of the Apostles, his prayer of blessing and consecration, anointing with oil, epiclesis and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a Priest. Here is the very prayer that was offered:

Receive the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed to you by the imposition of our hands. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld. Be a faithful minister of God’s holy Word and Sacraments; in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Book of Common Prayer 2019, p. 493).

This is the way faith is delivered, received, and, yes, preached. Verble cannot tradition the faith in this way. What bishop imposed hands on it? Is that even possible? When was it anointed? Is it filled with the Holy Spirit for any office or work? Even to think this way is to commit a category mistake.

There is something iconic in this traditioning. An icon does not primarily seek to convey information about its subject. The icon draws one into the tradition by ushering one into the presence of Christ as revealed in the life of its subject. It can do so, in part, because it was written in keeping with the tradition, by one who was immersed in repentance, in prayer, in fasting, in submission to the great tradition. It is Spirit and truth that the icon manifests. And that is precisely what AI cannot do. It is Spirit and truth that a sermon must manifest. AI cannot pass on what it has not received.

The Book of Signs: Chapter 4

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

The Gospel of John, Chapter 4: The Samaritan Woman and the Official’s Son

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

KONTAKION OF ST. PHOTINI (Adapted)

Almighty Savior who poured forth water for the Hebrews from a solid rock: You came to the land of Samaria and addressed a women whom you attracted to faith in you, and she has now attained life in the heavens everlastingly. Grant that, with her, your Spirit may be unto us living water that wells up to eternal life. Amen.

Foreword

The book of signs, John 2-12, contains more than just the seven works of Jesus that uniquely fulfill the purpose of John’s gospel:

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:30-31).

As Fr. Jack mentioned last week there is often a literary pattern in St. John’s narrative:

Jesus Event: An action or sign

Symbol: A central image associated with the sign that encodes its meaning

Teaching: An explanation of the sign and symbol

So, in addition to the signs that are central to John’s purpose, we have discourses, extended sections of teaching and explanation. And there are discussions, dialogues between Jesus and hosts of different people. All three of these — signs, discourses, dialogues — work together to generate belief. Jesus does something, then he explains it either by teaching or by conversation. Or, perhaps the conversation comes first followed by a sign that challenges people to respond in a certain way. The order is variable.

In the text today, we encounter both an extended dialogue — with the Samaritan woman — and a sign, the healing of an official’s son.

Background

You can’t fully understand the racial dynamics and tensions in our nation or the mutual suspicions and even antipathy between the northern states and the southern states without some knowledge of history: the institution of slavery, the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the KKK, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, Affirmative Action and DEI and the recent pushback against those programs. Likewise, we won’t fully understand the dynamics of John 4, Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, without some knowledge of the history of Israel and Judah around the time of their exiles, and, in Judah’s case, its repatriation.

2 Kings 17 describes the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel, which is identified with its capital Samaria. The last king of Israel, Hoshea, acted treacherously against Shalmaneser king of Assyria; he refused to pay the required tribute and he attempted to make a political and military alliance with Egypt to escape Assyria’s demands. As a result:

5 Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria, and for three years he besieged it.

6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes (2 Ki 17:5-6).

This left the land of Samaria largely empty and non-productive for Assyria; probably only the elderly and infirm Israelites were left behind. So, the king of Assyria populated Samaria with other captured peoples from other lands to work this land and to pay tribute: people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. These people brought their customs and their foreign gods with them into the land of Israel. Here is how the situation is described in 2 Kings 17.

25 And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord. Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. 26 So the king of Assyria was told, “The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the god of the land. Therefore he has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them, because they do not know the law of the god of the land.” 27 Then the king of Assyria commanded, “Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there, and let him go and dwell there and teach them the law of the god of the land.” 28 So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord.

29 But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived. 30 The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima, 31 and the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. 32 They also feared the Lord and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. 33 So they feared the Lord but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away.

34 To this day they do according to the former manner. They do not fear the Lord, and they do not follow the statutes or the rules or the law or the commandment that the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel (2 Ki 17:25-34).

This is the origin story of the Samaritans: pagans who feared the Lord, but who did not worship him exclusively or purely, people in the land but not of the land. That’s one strike against them.

Nearly two centuries later, when the Judeans, the remnant of the southern kingdom, were allowed to return to rebuild Jerusalem following their Babylonian captivity, the Samaritans offered to assist in rebuilding the temple. This is how Ezra records it:

4 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” 3 But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”

4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build 5 and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia (Ezra 4:1-5).

Through intermarriage and adoption of some Israelite customs, the Samaritans considered themselves as children of Abraham, as worshippers of the one true God. The Judeans thought of them as gentile pagans. The rejection of the Samaritans’ offer of assistance became a point of conflict; Jewish scorn produced Samaritan opposition. This opposition to the Judeans was the second strike against the Samaritans. Memory is long in the Middle East. So, grudges were held five centuries later, in the time of Jesus. There was ongoing tension between the Judeans — the Jews — and the Samaritans. That doesn’t mean that there was no interaction between the two groups; there was, in fact. Geographically, Samaria lay between Galilee in the north and Jerusalem in the South so that Jews going from one region to another needed to pass through Samaria and probably overnight there or else add days to their journey using a longer, alternate route that bypassed Samaria. The Pharisees did not consider Samaria or its people inherently unclean. They could eat Samaritan food, for example, but they had to use their own vessels — plates, cups — to do so. It’s fair to say that the Jews and Samaritans eyed one another with a certain disdain and suspicion, if not hostility. But, they made do with one another as necessary.

Jesus was a Jew and, humanly speaking, he was formed by his culture. I don’t believe he was limited by cultural prejudice, but he knew of it. Certainly his disciples were products of that culture and they did exhibit its values for good and ill. That emerges in the well known text today, Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman.

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria (John 4:1-45)

While ministering in Judea, Jesus begins attracting some unwanted attention from the Pharisees, and he decides to return to Galilee for awhile. He and his disciples take the short route through Samaria. They reach the town of Sychar around noon where Jesus stops at the town well — Jacob’s Well — while the disciples go off to buy food.

Jesus is weary from the journey, an interesting details in the text that emphasizes the true humanity of Jesus — not God in disguise as a man, but God truly incarnate. While he is resting beside the well, a woman of Samaria arrives to draw water. It is not the usual time of day to do that, so she appears to be alone as is Jesus. That already builds a bit of tension into the story. Jewish men were not to be alone with women other than their wives nor speak to them, and here we have a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman alone together. There are all kinds of social taboos at work here, and all of them broken when Jesus asks her for a drink.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water” (John 4:7-15).

To say the least, the woman is surprised by Jesus’ request: he shouldn’t be talking to her in the first place, and, by tradition, he couldn’t accept a drink from her — using her vessels — even if she offered him one. The discussion that follows resembles Jesus’ earlier discussion with Nicodemus. It takes place on two different levels with the Samaritan woman speaking of physical matters while Jesus is getting at things of the Spirit. It’s as if she is playing checkers while he’s responding with chess moves.

You should be asking me for water — living water, Jesus says. She replies with the obvious: You have nothing to draw water with, and there is no living water — running water from a spring — around here anyway — just this well.

I don’t know the proper tone of voice to use when reading the rest of the conversation. Was Jesus being playful? Was the woman serious or perhaps a bit sarcastic?

So, you think you’re greater than Jacob and your water better than his? she asks.

Well, if you get water from Jacobs’s well, you’re going to have to come back here tomorrow and do it again. I can quench your thirst forever. The living water that I can give will become a perpetual spring of living water in you.

I read a book in 2006 about a group of free church evangelicals who converted to Orthodoxy. I think about that book, and particularly its title, whenever I read this conversation: Thirsting for God in a Land of Shallow Wells. That describes very well what is going on here. This woman, though she doesn’t seem to know it, is thirsting for God and not just for water. And while Jacob’s well is sufficient to quench her bodily thirst, it is far too shallow — her entire life is too shallow — to satisfy her spiritually. That requires the living water — the Holy Spirit — that only Jesus can provide.

So, she asks for this living water:

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water” (John 4:15).

Again, I have trouble reading the proper tone of voice here. The following dialogue makes two things clear: this is an intelligent woman — so it seems unlikely that she thinks Jesus is really talking about well water or spring water — and this is a woman who has reasons to be suspicious of men — five husbands and a current illicit relationship. So, what in the world is this Jew babbling about and why should she trust him anyway? So, I can just about hear some sarcasm in her voice: Yeah, right, then give me this water so I can stop trudging to this well every day. But, perhaps there is some hope there, too: I don’t really know exactly what you’re talking about, but I am deeply thirsty, so give me whatever it is you are offering.

Now, Jesus seems to change the topic abruptly: “Go, call your husband, and come here.” Why might Jesus do that?

He is moving the conversation into deeply personal territory. He’s gone from preaching to meddling. Five husbands, and now a sixth man who is not husband. I know your life. I know the brokenness of it, the emptiness of it. I know the depth of your real thirst. That is what I am offering to quench.

This is too close to home for the woman, too raw, and she changes the subject to theology.

19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he” (John 4:19-26).

So, let’s talk theology, the woman says. We Samaritans worship on Mt. Gerazim but you Jews worship on Mt. Zion. What do you say about that?

Well, salvation is from the Jews and not from the Samaritans, but in forty years location is not going to matter anyway. The Romans will destroy the Temple in Jerusalem. What is important is not so much where we worship but how we worship, not geography, but Spirit and truth. And that — Spirit and not well water — is what Jesus is offering her.

She seems to dismiss Jesus’ response, to wave it off. Well, we’ll never sort this out between us, but, when Messiah comes, he will make it all clear.

There is scholarly debate about what Jesus claimed for himself in the Gospels, about his self-identification. But this much is clear: in response to this woman, Jesus claims unambiguously that he is the Messiah, the one through whom God will fulfill all the covenant promises to renew Israel and to bless all the world through Israel. He is the one in whom all God’s promises are answered yes. This is enough for the woman. She leaves her water jar and heads into town as an evangelist: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” And the whole town came, and many believed that Jesus was the Savior of the world. He stayed with them for two more days before resuming his journey to Jerusalem.

So far, the disciples have been largely absent from the story. Now, they return from buying food just in time to catch the end of the conversation between Jesus and the woman. They are surprised by it, but they don’t bring it up. Instead, they turn to mundane matters: Here, Jesus, eat some lunch. His initial response — I have food that you do not know about — is confusing to them, so he explains after a fashion.

34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor” (John 4:34-38).

John is a subtle writer. While the synoptic evangelists — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — approach things head on, John comes at the same matters at an angle. For example, John does not include the institution of the Lord’s Supper directly as the synoptic writers do; instead, he has the great Bread of Life discourse in John 6: Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you. That is the way John approaches the Eucharist. And, John does not include the Parable of the Sower as the others do. But notice how the same ideas emerge here. Look around here in Samaria. A sower has sown good seed and it has landed on good ground and borne fruit — thirty, sixty, a hundred fold. And it is now ready for harvest. That will be your job. Who would have thought the good ground would be in Samaria? Certainly not the disciples. But those reading John’s gospel careful shouldn’t be surprised; there were hints from the beginning, from the Prologue:

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:9-13).

That’s the account of the Samaritan woman. Now, just a few observations.

First, we are only in chapter four of the Gospel, and already water has figured as a major symbol of Jesus’ ministry four times, once in each chapter: the water of John’s baptism, which sets the tone for everything else; the water turned to wine at Cana; the water and Spirit of new birth that Jesus announces to Nicodemus; and the well water and living water in the conversation with the Samaritan woman. Baptism is the through-line of the symbol: baptism and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Second this: there are at least three times in his gospel when John presents women as evangelists. The first is Mary at the wedding in Cana; she gives a great evangelistic message to the servants: Do whatever he tells you. The last is Mary Magdalene when Jesus sends her to tell the brothers (the Apostles) the news of the resurrection and of his coming ascension. The middle account is here, when the Samaritan woman tells the entire town of Sychar what she has seen and heard from Jesus. She sows the word among her people and a great harvest ensues.

Third: the Holy Spirit is always at work sowing the seed of the Gospel, sometimes in places that are quite surprising to us. Our task is to look out over the fields to see which ones are ready for harvest and then to get busy reaping what has grown there.

Fourth: no one is excluded from the Gospel — not a woman with a disturbing past and questionable sexual morals, not a people that we might deem as somehow unworthy of the Gospel or of our acceptance.

Now, we turn to the sign in this chapter, the second of those recorded by John, the healing of the official’s son.

Jesus Heals an Official’s Son

The account is short enough that we can read it.

46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee (John 4:46-54).

We noted earlier how John often has his own take on events recorded by the synoptic Gospels. This account may well be John’s telling of the healing of the Centurion’s servant (see Matt 8:5-13).

This is a story of life and death: the child is ill and at the point of death. Unless Jesus intervenes, the child will die. The official has heard of Jesus as a healer and learns that he is near. It isn’t likely that the official is interested in theology at all. Whether Jesus is the Messiah — and whether the official even knew what a messiah was — probably didn’t enter into the picture at all. The official is desperate and has nothing to lose — except pride, perhaps — asking Jesus for help.

In what follows, I am grateful to Lesslie Newbigin for these insights from his commentary on John, The Light Has Come. After the official’s first appeal Jesus seems dismissive. The text is interesting here. Jesus speaks to the official, but he speaks in the plural; so, Jesus is really speaking to all the people through his response to the official.

48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you (plural) see signs and wonders you will not believe” (John 4:48).

This implies that their belief is conditional; it is on their own terms. Do us some signs, then we might believe. Notice how St. John turns this around to make an essential point for his own readers.

49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way (John 4:49-50).

Here is the key: the official believed — and acted on — the word that Jesus spoke to him without having yet seen any sign. Later, when he learned that the child was healed in the same hour that Jesus pronounced the word, the official’s own belief was deepened and his household came to believe. But, it all started with the official believing Jesus’ word: with hearing, not with seeing.

Why is this important? John tells us near the conclusion of his Gospel.

24 Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:24-31).

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. John is writing to people — and we are amongst them — who have not and will not see the signs that Jesus worked. What we have is the word: the words spoken by Jesus and about Jesus, and the words written by John. Just as the word was sufficient to engender faith in the official it can be and must be sufficient for us. The word has its own authority and its own power independent of signs and wonders. This story of the official’s son is a resurrection story of sorts, a story of life from death. It is, in the true sense of the word, a sign pointing toward resurrection. It is a sign that links word and life. And that brings us right back again to John’s Prologue: Jesus the Word of God, became flesh and dwelt among us that we might have life. Jesus not only speaks but is the life-giving word. That is the nature of this second sign: the sufficiency of the word to engender faith. But these [words] are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (see John 20:31).