Opposition

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:

18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. 24 If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

16 “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. 3 They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. 4 I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, 5 but now I am going to him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. 7 But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8 When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because people do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11 and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. (John 15:18-16:11, NIV)

REFLECTIONS:

On Palm Sunday Jesus was, outwardly at least, a success—perhaps more than at any time in his life. People were waving Palm branches and shouting, hailing him as the conquering hero as he rode into the city on a donkey. And yet, as we know from Luke's Gospel, he was writing in tears because he knew that the city was rejecting his way of peace. During the following week, the crowds that had shouted "Hosanna" gradually fell away from him until his last night when only his disciples were left with them, and even they abandoned him at the end. What Jesus was offering was deep and rich, but strange—too much of a challenge to their way of life, denying all that they would have expected to gain from victory over their enemies. They could not take the message that he offered, and so he had to come to terms with rejection. He speaks of that rejection in our passage today.

Jesus came to his own, but they did not receive him. He was in the world, the world that he had made, but it did not recognize him. When he commissioned his disciples to be the branches of the vine that was his own life, his own work, he knew from the beginning that they would face the same opposition as he did. He was hated by the world because he was different, showing up the shallowness and triviality, the deficiency and destructiveness of so much that passed for human life. Jesus could see that if his followers, even for a moment, lived by his command to love one another, they would encounter the same thing, hatred: "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first" (verse 18). If they had simply belonged to the world, if they were simply offering a new religion—and the world was full of new religions—that would have been different. But Jesus has chosen them out of the world, and therefore the world will be deeply threatened. And when people are threatened, they hate.

The disciples were commissioned to challenge the whole structure of their world—the way people went about their business, the way they organized their personal and communal lives. They were to live differently, and that was bound to cause trouble. Jesus reminds them again in verse 20 that servants are not greater than their master. People persecuted Jesus, and will persecute his followers. Likewise, looking on the positive side for a moment, if they kept Jesus' word, they will keep the disciples' word also. And when the disciples are hated because of their allegiance to Jesus, they must cling on to one thing: this is happening to them because of Jesus' name (verse 21). When we pray in his name, and according to his will, we can be sure that our prayer is heard and answered. Likewise, when we act in Jesus' name, then just as people opposed him, so they will oppose us.

In verse 22, Jesus puts in a mitigating clause: if he had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have less than no excuse for their opposition and they are condemned for rejecting God the Father when they reject his Son (verse 23). Jesus has embodied the Father's will, so if somebody is hating him, that person is hating God as well. He repeats the message in verse 24: if he had not done in his unique works among them, they would not be guilty of sin. If Jesus had simply come to give good advice, people could have remained interested, but mainly skeptical. But the works of Jesus recorded in John's Gospel—from turning water into wine to the raising of Lazarus—left people no choice. They could accept that he was who he said he was, or denounce him as in league with Beelzebub, working with the authority of some occult power.

All this has happened (verse 25) to fulfill a word that was written in the Psalms (35:19; 69:4), which testify to the anxiety and struggle caused when people oppose the children of God. They hated Jesus without a cause. What had he done? Given the blind their sight, made the lame walk again, raised the dead—and yet, people turned on him. People had so much cause to love him, and yet, because he had shone the light of God into the world, those who preferred the darkness were bound to reject him as a threat.

Then Jesus sets out, as it were, a court case between his followers and those who will hate them without cause. How can his followers cope when they find themselves in court, literally or metaphorically? What they need is an advocate, and that is what Jesus promises them: "When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me" (verse 26). In other words, whenever they are in the position of having to bear witness to Jesus—a position we all find ourselves and sooner or later—we can rely on God's gift of the Spirit. The Spirit of truth will enable us to tell the truth, and people will hear it, whether they like it or not.

And we are called to testify (verse 27). The disciples must tell the world what they have seen and heard, having been with Jesus from the beginning. We in our day testify in the power of the Spirit because of all that we have seen and heard of Jesus, not just in the Gospels but through the many other "greater works" that are done in his name, whether by St. Francis or Mother Theresa or Pastor Greg or Jennifer Babb or Max Peeples or whomever. A new form of life has been let loose in the world. No doubt we are very imperfect witnesses to it. But we glimpse it, we taste it, and by God's grace we are sometimes able to partake in it. As we do so, we are confronting the world with the love of God.

There is a deep paradox here, because we don't think of love as confrontational, and we often have to learn that to love someone truly may involve confronting them when their way of life is destructive to them or to others. The way of mere tolerance is a very low-grade substitute for true love. Genuine love helps the beloved to see the truth, the way things really are, as Jesus did.

In chapter 16 Jesus continues warning his disciples of what will happen if they follow him. As he says throughout the Gospels, if anyone wants to come after him. They must be prepared to take up their cross and follow him. That was more than a metaphor. In Jesus' world. Crosses were a routine method of keeping the population in a state of fear, and nobody who had seen a crucifixion would willingly risk going that way themselves. But Jesus says that that is precisely what they must do.

Even before the opposition from Roman officials, however, they will run into hostility from their fellow Jews. Jesus warns them in verse 2, that they will be put out of the synagogues. Although this seems not to have happened until the end of the first century, there were plenty of moves afoot during Jesus' lifetime to have him labeled as a false prophet and thus not only banned from the synagogue but even put to death. Here Jesus warns that the hour is coming when those who kill them will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. Very shortly after Jesus' resurrection and ascension, Saul of Tarsus was hotly pursuing the early church, believing passionately that by taking them to prison and having them executed he was being loyal to God and zealous for God's law. He, like so many other persecutors, was acting in ignorance of what God is actually like, what he is really doing. Paul says in Romans 10:2 that they have a zeal for God, but it is not according to knowledge (clearly describing his own state before conversion). But Jesus tells his disciples these things so that when the hard times come, they will remember and be confident that they have not taken a false step along the way (verse 4). They will realize, rather, that the steps they have taken are in the footsteps of Jesus himself.

As the disciples realize that Jesus is leaving them, their hearts grow heavy and sorrowful (verse 6). He still has to explain to them that ultimately it is to their advantage that he goes away, because it is only when he is gone, that the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will come.

Above all else, the disciples need the Spirit in his work as Advocate so that they can witness to the world, testifying to where it has gone wrong. The world is wrong, Jesus says in verse 8, about sin, about righteousness and about judgment. Although the world has some vague ideas about sin, the disciples, by the witness of their lives and the power of the Spirit, must show that the most fundamental thing wrong is that the world has looked at Jesus and rejected him. The world likewise, has the wrong idea about who will be vindicated by God. The view of the world in general is that "the Lord helps those who help themselves," which some people assume is in the Bible. More seriously, the Jews of Jesus' day assumed that God would vindicate all those who were Jewish. Far from it, Jesus says in verse 10. The disciples will bear witness to the fact that Jesus is going to the Father—he is the one who will be vindicated on behalf of them all.

Finally, the world is wrong about judgment. The world thinks that judgment is what happens when the one with the most political or military might condemns those who defy him. On the contrary, Jesus says: the witness that you will bear to me and the power of the Spirit will show that the ruler of this world has himself been judged (verse 11). And here we understand "the ruler of this world" to mean both the present political structures and the dark spiritual forces that stand behind them. The church must declare by its very existence that there is a different way of being human—a way that owes nothing to the rulers of this world, but everything to the Father, who has sent the Son to glorify his name.

PRAYER:

Gracious Lord, be near this day to all who suffer rejection and persecution because they are loyal to your name. Spirit, strengthen and inspire us to testify to the truth of Jesus, both with our way of life and with our words. And, Father, glorify your name as the bear witness to you before the world.

WHO AM I?

I am Tres Sansom, and I am deeply challenged by today's passage.