John 18.1-14

1 After saying these things, Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley with his disciples and entered a grove of olive trees. 2 Judas, the betrayer, knew this place, because Jesus had often gone there with his disciples. 3 The leading priests and Pharisees had given Judas a contingent of Roman soldiers and Temple guards to accompany him. Now with blazing torches, lanterns, and weapons, they arrived at the olive grove.

4 Jesus fully realized all that was going to happen to him, so he stepped forward to meet them. “Who are you looking for?” he asked.

5 “Jesus the Nazarene,” they replied.

“I Am (he),” Jesus said. (Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them.) 6 As Jesus said “I Am (he),” they all drew back and fell to the ground! 7 Once more he asked them, “Who are you looking for?”

And again they replied, “Jesus the Nazarene.”

8 “I told you that I Am (he),” Jesus said. “And since I am the one you want, let these others go.” 9 He did this to fulfill his own statement: “I did not lose a single one of those you have given me.”

10 Then Simon Peter drew a sword and slashed off the right ear of Malchus, the high priest’s slave. 11 But Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Shall I not drink from the cup of suffering the Father has given me?”

12 So the soldiers, their commanding officer, and the Temple guards arrested Jesus and tied him up. 13 First they took him to Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest at that time. 14 Caiaphas was the one who had told the other Jewish leaders, “It’s better that one man should die for the people.”

Comments

In some respects, the arrest of Jesus was a typical arrest. Armed officers, a police informant, catching the perp at a location he was known to frequent, a bit of violent scuffle at the moment of taking him into custody. But in other respects, the account John gives varies from the other three and from really, probably any other arrest ever. Despite being the target of a surprise arrest, Jesus was fully aware of what was coming (v. 4), he asks the questions (v. 4, 7), and he even gives an order to let his friends go – an order the officers obey even after Peter assaults one of them.

This juxtaposition carries forward John’s central theme about Jesus being fully human and fully God. We also see this in the repeated Q&A between Jesus and the squad. Jesus asks the central question everyone approaching him has to answer: who are you looking for? Their answer points to a human: they are looking for a man named Jesus who comes from the town of Nazareth. Jesus responds to their answer with an echo of what the burning bush told Moses, a clear self-identification with the God of Israel: I AM! They were looking for a human and found God. This call and response is repeated again for our benefit so we won’t miss this important moment. We come to Jesus thinking we are looking for one thing and then we find, not that Jesus is something else, but that Jesus is more than we knew, more than we anticipated, more than we could imagine. I think it is also possible to come to Jesus looking for God (especially in our present day culture, where the church has emphasized this so strongly) to find that, to our surprise, Jesus is also human: weak, vulnerable, someone who could be tied up. Jesus transcends what we’re looking for even as he is fulfilling what we are looking for. This is the heart of John’s message to his church, not to vilify people skewing one way or another, but to affirm what they feel strongly about even while encouraging them to see their position is part of a larger whole. John learned from Jesus to be consistent and theologically gentle.

We also see this gentleness on display in Jesus’ interaction with violent Peter. As in Luke, Peter cuts off one officer’s ear, but unlike Luke, John does not record that Jesus healed this ear. Perhaps John wanted to leave us with a sober picture of how violent we can become, and how inappropriate that is for followers of Jesus. I like Dale Bruner’s take on this:

“The Arrest Story teaches two ways to deny Jesus: by handing him over to his enemies, as Judas did and as overly liberal (or weak Christological) theology has done through the centuries; and by defending him too violently, as Peter now does and as overly conservative (or militant) Christianity has done through the centuries. May the Lord protect the Church from faithlessness on the left and from fanaticism on the right, and help her to enter through the Narrow Gate and to walk down the Hard Way of the Center in authentic, faithful discipleship to the divine and non-violent Lord Jesus Christ.” (Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, p. 1039)

It takes a firm gentleness to walk down the center path. It also takes a good bit of imagination to think about these opposites together. The one who is complete control of his own arrest. The one who gets bowed to by his capturers. The I AM who is from a little out-of-the-way town. The Holy One with a rap sheet.

The willing embrace of suffering. That one is really hard because we tend to think that suffering that is willingly embraced can’t be that bad. So much so that we can come to think of words like “arrest” or “suffering” as meaning something different here from what they normally mean. This was a real arrest and real suffering. They seized Jesus and tied him up. They tied his hands, but the last thing he did before they tied him up was heal Malchus’ ear (Luke tells us about the healing). The hands of the Healer bound and led away. Led away to stop him from healing, but led away to his greatest act of healing – healing the whole world that God loves so much.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

John 17.14-26

14 “I have given them your word. And the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to this world any more than I do. 17 Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth. 18 Just as you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. 19 And fort their sake I make myself holy so they can be made holy by your truth.

20 I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever trust me through their message. 21 I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one — as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will trust you sent me.

22 I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. 24 Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!

25 O Just Father, the world doesn’t know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. 26 I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so. Then your love for me will be in them, and I will be in them.”

Comments

Jesus finishes his prayer by praying for the followers he already had and then praying for everyone else who would follow him because of them. Here we have one specific instance where Jesus prays for you and me. There are a few key themes here. One is stated there at the end (and a few times before). Jesus declares he has revealed the Father to his followers. Because of what Jesus has shown them, his followers know that God is loving, just, trustworthy, and interested in a close relationship with us. So close that we can share in the unity Jesus says he has with the Father. The key revelation is that the Father loves us, that God loves the whole world so completely that God is willing to do the unthinkable – die – for that love. You can find statements in the Hebrew Bible that talk about God’s unfailing love, but that is not the general picture of God a lot of people get from those scriptures. Jesus comes to show us what we would otherwise not understand – that God loves us like the Father loves the Son. God’s love is a selfless, unconditional love. And that love is the very nature of God’s presence; God’s existence is defined by love.

1 John 4.8 tells us that “God is love” that unconditional, selfless love is not just part of God’s nature but is the one thing that defines the entirety of God’s nature. Agape, the Greek word for ‘divine love’ was a word in Greek before Jesus was born, but it only meant this vague notion that sometimes love felt stronger than eros (physical love) or philia (friendship love). Sometimes love is so strong it can only be described as spiritual, when you give yourself completely to a moment and become lost in that moment, when self-love fades, where you move beyond objectifying and reciprocating. But then the moment is gone and you’re back to this realm. The notion was there but it was not tied so much to any of the Greek gods (the closest was Aphrodite, but her name means “sea foam” which evokes the ephemeral quality I was just describing), and certainly not to the God of Israel. It is the Incarnation that we celebrate at Christmas, God coming down to earth, laying aside all divine self-perogative and becoming fully human that begins to show us what selfless love looks like. It is the suffering and death on the cross that will complete that picture, that new revelation that God is love.

I said this idea of God as agape was new with Jesus. It was new in that no one had understood it before then, but it had actually always been true. Isa. 63.7-9 says:

7 I will tell of the Lord’s unfailing love.
I will praise the Lord for all he has done.
I will rejoice in his great goodness to Israel,
which he has granted according to his mercy and love.
8 He said, “They are my very own people.
Surely they will not betray me again.”
And he became their Savior.
9 In all their suffering he also suffered,
and the messenger of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them.
He lifted them up and carried them
through all the years.

The “messenger of his presence” is Isaiah’s way of pointing to Jesus. Agape is suffering with those who suffer. Agape is lifting up and carrying those who cannot stand, who cannot walk. Agape is healing the sick. Agape is giving sight to the blind. Agape is feeding the hungry, giving clothes to the naked, visiting those in prison. Agape is dying for the sins of the world. Agape is presence, the Spirit, that fills all who trust in the One who came, was born of Mary, died on the cross, and rose again. Agape is empowerment to follow the command of Jesus: love your neighbor as yourself. At their best moments, eros and philia include some measure of selflessness. But that is not their nature. They always involve some love of self. Love of neighbor is different. Love of neighbor is agape, because it is loving the one we do not choose, loving the one we do not desire, loving the one who cannot or will not reciprocate love with us. It is the love of God come down and born among us that we celebrate in this Advent season. It is the love of God we are called to extend to our neighbors.

And it is this love that Jesus prays about here. He asks the Father that our community be fundamentally marked by this love. That looks like two things: being radically present to the world around us and living in unity with other followers of Jesus. Both of these communicate the selfless, unconditional agape love of God to the world that God so loves. The trouble is both are kind of hard. It is hard to live in unity with people we have significant disagreements with. We don’t teach the same theology, we don’t organize our communities in compatible ways, and most of all, we don’t seem content to follow Jesus in our own way and allow others to follow Jesus in their way. We feel a persistent need to argue everyone else into agreement with us and vilify those who don’t. When a church or a leader uses “biblical” as an adjective to describe themselves, that is what they are doing. Not-so-subtly stating that anyone who disagrees with them actually disagrees with the Bible, and therefore God. That sort of stuff doesn’t help us live out the love of God.

It’s also hard to love those arounds us. But we have been called to love our neighbors. This is not a matter of preference, choice, likes, taste, or common interests. Just proximity. The only thing a neighbor shares with you is space. And it’s not easy because this is divine love we’re talking about. It goes against the grain of our culture and nature. Loving enemies. Loving unlovable people. The love of God is radical. The grace of God is offensive.

In cities all over the United States, local government officials, many of whom are Christians, are making it illegal to share food with homeless people. This past Saturday, the Wake Forest Christmas Parade passed right in front of our little downtown storefront/old house church. It was cold and rainy, so we set up a canopy and a table giving away coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. People assumed we were trading the drinks for donations. When we told them it was just free, you could see on their faces, “does not compute.” Why? Because agape love is not natural. It is divine. It is how God loves us. It is how God calls us to love those around us so they can begin to understand how God loves them. Jesus prays we will accept his radical, offensive love and give it away to others. I hope his prayer keeps getting answered.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.