Reading: John 16-18, Psalm 110

So Jesus has just upended the disciples’ understanding of power, authority, and the means by which everything they want will come to pass. He has accepted their designation that he is the master and teacher. Then, as master and teacher, he says to serve one another. Serve in a low place, do the necessary work, and don’t worry about the fact that you might be serving someone who will betray you. Jesus does it, and no servant is greater than his master, so we should do as he does.

I don’t know about you, but this is one of the most intimidating stories in Scripture to me. I do not see any way around the high calling that Jesus is putting on those who would call him teacher and master. We are to do as he has done. I think the disciples were probably feeling some of this as well. Jesus continues by telling them not to worry, it will be much worse than they think. They will put you out of the synagogue. Followers of Jesus will be shunned by their society. Those who kill you will think they are offering service to God. Society will think that offing you is a righteous act. It is one thing to be excluded from and hunted by a society that at least has a conscience about it. Not pleasant, but at least you can appeal to the better nature of your opponents. But Jesus is saying the better nature of their opponent will say to kill them. That is a really bad situation to be in.

It is all very depressing, but Jesus is not done. John 16 contains the most specific teaching on the Holy Spirit in the Story of Scripture. Jesus issues a preview of what will happen when he completes his mission- the Spirit of God will come to these shunned people that society wishes to kill, and who are to live their lives in service to one another. And it will be a new age. A new world. Jesus compares the suffering of the present to a woman about to give birth. It is difficult, but the result is literally new life. The call of Jesus is high- serve instead of rule, accept becoming outcast, live as a dying people- but the promised reward is just as high- a new world, a new life, and new way of being human. Jesus makes no bones about the difficulties: In this world you will have tribulation– but he also makes no bones about the final outcome: I have overcome the world.

This claim to have overcome the world stands at the center of the Scriptural story. Jesus claims to have taken on the human problem and to have defeated it. Way back in Genesis 2 God imparted spirit to the human and made him a living being. Jesus says that now God’s Spirit will be imparted to human beings and they will gain a new kind of life. An eternal life. John’s portrayal of Jesus ultimately lines right up with that of Matthew and Mark. Matthew showed us the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Son of David. Mark showed us the Son of God, the King who is above even the Emperor of Rome. John is showing us the new Human, who overcomes the world.

When Jesus says to live as he lives, he carries the authority to command it. John gives us the same take from another angle in the next chapter. Here we get a truly incredible look into a conversation between Jesus and the Father. Most of our Bibles put in a heading “The High Priestly Prayer.” It is about belief. This is eternal life: that they might know you, the one true God, and Jesus the Messiah whom you have sent. It is about the new world: They are not of this world, just as I am not of this world. It is about the erasure of the human problem and it’s consequences of division and death: The glory you have given me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one. I honestly think I could read this chapter every day for a lifetime and not scratch the surface of what is going on. Yet it carries the simplest of messages: I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them.

Today’s reading closes on the arrest and trial of Jesus, which in the book of John plays out rather quickly until we get to Pilate. After all this buildup of the authority of Jesus and high status as the Son of God who is actually one with God, John shows us a confrontation with the High Priest Caiaphas and the representative of the Empire, Pilate. In both cases Jesus acts more like the character he is set against than they do. He confronts the High Priest with the law: If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong; but if what I said is right, why do you strike me? The High Priest has nothing to say. He confronts Pilate with authority: You say I am a king. For this was I born into this world- to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate can only ask, what is truth?

Here is the collision of powers. Jesus has commanded a kingdom of service, generosity, and unity through the Spirit, rooted in his own authority to tell the humans who they are and how they are to behave. The highest expression of the kingdom of this world can only ask what is truth?