1 John 1.1 – 2.2 & John 20
Two sermons preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral Good Friday and Easter Day April 2022
Why did Jesus die? Some have said he didn’t: perhaps he revived and escaped somewhere to live on into old age. This is silly. A Roman crucifixion was an effective way of killing someone—slowly, and with the maximum amount of pain. John was there; he saw that Jesus was dead. The soldiers came to break the legs of the three crucified men, but there was no need to break Jesus’ legs because he had been dead for over two hours. There is a footrest on a cross so you can support the weight of your body; otherwise you cannot breath, and die very quickly. Jesus had not breathed for more than two hours. One of the soldiers speared him to make sure. He was dead alright.
Muslims also believe that Jesus never died. They think God would never have allowed such a righteous man to suffer a horrible defeat; he took him straight to heaven. They thought they killed him, but that was an illusion. That is Good Friday through the eyes of Muhammad. But John was there. He testifies that it was Jesus who really died. In his first letter he says Jesus came by water and blood. (1 John 5.6) Water stands for natural life. When a child is born, its mother’s waters break; there is a rush of fluid. Jesus was born in the natural way we all are; he was a real human being. But he came by water and blood. Blood stands for death. John says that when the soldier speared him there was a rush of water and blood.
But why did he die? Why did he not use his powers to escape? Why did God allow him to die? Why did God even require it?
At the beginning of this first letter John says, “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purifies us from all sin.”
Why did he die? To purify us from sin! That is the first answer. It doesn’t mean we don’t sin any more. John says anyone who says they don’t sin is a liar. No, it means the guilt of our sin is removed. The stain is wiped away.
But how could the death of God’s Son cleanse away our guilt? John goes on to say that we shouldn’t sin, but if we do we have an “advocate” with the Father (that is someone who speaks up for us, and defends us), Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, and he is the propitiation for our sins (that means Israel’s sins), and not for theirs only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
This word “propitiation” is so uncommon today that most Bibles translate it some other way, but it is an important word if we are to understand what is in John’s mind.
Propitiation is what you do when someone is angry with you, and you want to make them happy again. When a man upsets his wife, and buys her flowers—he is trying to propitiate her—make her happy, restore the relationship. Where I lived in Africa many people believe their parents and grandparents become spirits when they died and can make trouble for you; you need to keep them happy. If things are not going well for you, you will ask a sanghoma to speak to your ancestors and find out what was wrong, and what you need to do. Usually, he says you need to offer a sacrifice—a chicken maybe. Then the ancestors will be happy. That is called propitiation. You make them happy towards you.
There is a famous story in Greek mythology where the king accidentally kills a sacred deer belonging to the goddess Diana. The Greeks are about to set sail on their journey to attack Troy, but there is a terrible storm, which goes on day after day. They consult a seer, who tells them what is wrong. The goddess is angry and must he propitiated. King Agammemnon must sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia. When he does, the storm stops and the Greek fleet sets sail. This is propitiation: making an angry god happy, usually by means of a sacrifice. It was common in the ancient world, and is still practiced in many parts of the world.
It is not a nice thought that God is angry with us, but it is true. In the Bible we learn that the true God is angered by our many sins. His anger is not like ours, but it is real; he is not indifferent to what is happening in Ukraine, or what is happening on our streets, and in some of our homes. His anger mean loss of relationship, and finally, condemnation and banishment from his new world. So, the question whether there is any way he can be propitiated and his anger removed is an urgent one. The Bible laughs at the idea that humans can just give God a gift, and make him happy in that way. Psalm 49 says
Truly no man can ransom himself, or give to God the price of his life, forthe ransom of his life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever andnever see the pit.
But a little later it says,
But God will ransom my life from the power of Sheol, and he will receive me.
It was impossible for Israelites to escape from God’s anger by their own efforts, but God said he would do it in his own way. He set up a system by which he could be propitiated. This was the animal sacrifices we read about in the Old Testament. It enabled the Israelites to continue in an uneasy relationship as his people, but it was symbolic, not real. It taught them how serious sin was: if you turn away from God, who is the source of life, you die. It is as simple as that. Nowhere was this taught more clearly than at Passover time. God would strike Egypt and all the firstborn sons would die. They were the heirs; it was a way of judging the whole nation without completely destroying it; there is always mercy mixed with God’s judgement. Even the Israelite firstborn sons and animals would die, if they did not kill a lamb and paint its blood over the doorway of their houses. A death had already taken place, and the angel of death would pass over, and that household would be spared. As they remembered this year after year, they were reminded that sin was lethal, but also that God had a future for them. It left them wondering how he would ultimately deal with their problem. That he would, was clear, for he was liberating them then, and promised over and over that one day he would save them fully, so they would walk together; they would be his people and he would be their God.
Jesus did for the human race what it could not do for itself. He said he had come to give his life as a ransom for many. He became our king and in a great class action took responsibility for us, stood in our place, took on his own shoulders the guilt of our sin. God accepted his sacrifice, and we are able to go free, to enter his kingdom, to be his beloved children for ever.
Two weeks ago we saw Jesus declare that because of his death the ruler of this world would be cast out, and that he, when he was lifted up would draw all people to himself. (John 12) We asked how his dying would achieve this. The answer is propitiation. He discharged the debts of all who come to him. When he does this, Satan no longer has any hold over us—nor will the judgement of God. We are free to walk with God— forever.
It sounds strange, but the whole Bible testifies that this is the way God saves us. Our service of Holy Communion says that God, our heavenly Father, out of his tender mercy gave his only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption. It goes on to say, “he made there … a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world…” His death was a sacrifice. It was presented as an offering to God—that is an oblation. And it satisfied the demands of God’s outraged law, bringing peace and reconciliation—that is satisfaction, or propitiation. It did this fully and perfectly, once and for all when Jesus died. There is no need for anything else. No need to sacrifice another animal ever again for sin. All those who belong to Jesus are safe forever. That is why we call it Good Friday.
I remember a night—we were building a cottage high on a ridge overlooking the town of Lancelin. A storm was forming out at sea and moving towards the town. There was lots of lightening. It passed over the town and began to march towards our ridge. Lightening was flashing to the ground all along its path. I became afraid. Here were we perched on our ridge, the only building all around, our iron roof just asking to be struck. I rushed out into the rain and found a long piece of steel guttering, and dragged it to the front of the house, pulled it upright, and lashed it to the wall. Only then, I could go back into the dry and the warmth, and know we were safe.
Jesus hung on the cross with arms outstretched, gathering the accumulated guilt of human sin from the world’s beginning to its end, and inviting God’s judgement to fall upon him. That is propitiation: a strange idea, but it is how John saw it, and that’s how the early Christians understood it. How else could we have been saved? Safe in the arms of Jesus; that is the only place you can weather the storm of judgement which is surely coming. Good Friday is good—very good.
Easter Through the Eyes of John
John 20
John tells us it was when he saw those grave clothes lying in a funny way, like Jesus had disappeared and they had just collapsed—that was when he began to believe Jesus was alive. This is odd, because Jesus had told them a number of times that God would raise him from the dead. The problem was, they believed God would raise everyone from the dead—at the end of the age. They didn’t dream anything would happen so soon. Jesus even said God would raise him on the third day, but they thought that was symbolic, Old Testament stuff. Death is such a final thing. Dead people just don’t come alive—not in this world.
John was an old man when he wrote his Gospel. He lived in Ephesus in what today is called Turkey. He had been telling people Jesus’ story for more than sixty years, and knows he won’t live much longer. Some people thought Jesus would return while John was still alive, but John knew that was not likely; he knew he would die soon, and he did not want people to forget about Jesus, especially that Sunday after they saw him die.
This was not just because it was an interesting story. What happened that first Easter Sunday changed the world, and would change the life of anyone who knew about it, and believed it.
One of my heroes is James Clark Maxwell. He was a Scotsman who lived about 150 years ago. He made the first ever colour photograph. He invented the colour wheel that is still used to match paint colours. He worked out the mathematics of trusses that underlies modern bridge and building design. He was the first to realize that light was a form of electromagnetic radiation; etcetera, etcetera. He founded the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. He was fascinated by electricity. They didn’t know much about it then. He reasoned that if you could get an electric current to go backwards and forwards (oscillate) it would produce an invisible wave of electromagnetic energy, like when you make the end of a rope go up and down, or crack a whip, a wave goes along the rope. Where would this energy go? Well, it would just go out into space. People thought he was crazy. What would be the point of it anyway? Maxwell died about the same time my granddad was born—he was 48. No one thought to test his idea out for another 20 years. If someone hadn’t believed him—thankfully Heinrich Herz eventually did— we would have no radio, no television, no cell phones, no lasers, no radar, no microwave ovens, no remotes, no GPS’s, no video games—the world would be a very different place.
People in Jesus’ time believed death was a one-way street. “The dead do not rise,” was one of the fundamental laws of Greek understanding. That didn’t mean they didn’t believe in life after death; most people did. But it wasn’t exactly “life after death.” It was more like “death after life.” The dead were not alive as we are. They were spooks; that’s how they thought.
When Ulysses (that’s Odysseus) returned from the victory at Troy, he sailed his ship down to Hades to find his mother. They had to entice her with a pool of blood; dead spirits love blood—that is what Homer thought. She eventually came: a jibbering ghost. People believed the dead went somewhere; they didn’t just cease to exist. But no one wanted to go there; people felt that life was better than death, and everyone agreed there was no way of coming back. Then Jesus returned, victoriously, gloriously, permanently alive. This was something quite different.
What do we do with it—that is the question? Perhaps it is just one of those freaky things you argue about, but does it really change anything? When Herz tested Maxwell’s predictions, and succeeded for the first time in sending a radio wave, people asked him about how it could be used. “It’s of no use whatsoever,” he said, “this is just an experiment that proves Maestro Maxwell was right—we just have these mysterious electromagnetic waves that we cannot see with the naked eye. But they are there.” When he was asked about the application of his discovery, he replied,”Nothing, I guess.” Little did he know that a new age was about to begin.
Jesus’ resurrection is like that; it reveals something about the fundamental nature of reality. You need to put it together with what he said in his lifetime:
ForI have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. Andthis is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6.38–40)
Jesus saw it as his mission to bring resurrection life to all God’s people. If he had not been raised himself, what he said would remain like an untested prediction. We would argue about it, but nothing else. Against it would stand our universal experience of death as a one-way street. Most people would not believe it could be any different. But now it has been tested and confirmed. Death is not the universal reality it was once thought to be. God has proved his mastery over it.
I want to try out a picture: the empty tomb—what does it mean? From outside looking in, it is the gate of death. You enter, you do not return. But see it as Jesus did, from inside! Trapped among the dead, a night, a day, a second night, and then he stands up and looks out. Looks out into what? Into light, not just the fading light of a dying world, but into the light of life, into the light of God’s new creation—emerging into eternal life! Try to imagine Jesus’ tomb, not as the doorway to death, but from the other side, as the gate to life immortal.
Jesus lives!—henceforth is death
But the gate of life immortal;
This shall calm our trembling breath
When we pass its gloomy portal:
Alleluia!
Jesus’ resurrection is the guarantee of yours and my resurrection at what the Bible calls “the last day,” but it is more than that. The New Testament speaks of it as “first-fruits.” First-fruits were the first fruit to ripen in an orchard. They were seen as the guarantee of a harvest, and were given as a special offering to God. But they were part of the total harvest, and this is important. Jesus’ resurrection is seen in the Bible as the beginning of a great harvest. That there is now a 2000-year gap between Jesus’ resurrection and ours is immaterial; the harvest has begun. Whether this has anything to do with the state of Christians after they die, I do not know. But mainly it is about our coming alive on the last day. This is as closely connected to that first Easter morning as the gathering of the rest of the oranges from the orchard are to the first pick, though this may have been a month earlier. Jesus’ escape from his tomb and ours are both the immediate consequence of his sacrificial (propitiatory) death. As one writer put it, the resurrection of the dead on the last day is as connected to Jesus’ death on the cross as the fall of a shell is connected to the firing of the gun; the one inevitably follows the other. Jesus died to make our resurrection possible.
This means that we live in a most exciting time, what the New Testament calls “the last days.” The one thing that matters is that we be part of this harvest of life. John doesn’t imagine for a moment that everyone will share it. Yes, Jesus said that all would be raised, but not all to the resurrection of life:
An hour is coming whenall who are in the tombs will hear his voice 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)
And in another place he says,
Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easythat leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow andthe way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7)
How then may we be sure we are among those who will share in this resurrection to life? Jesus is quite clear about this.
This is the will of my Father, that everyone wholooks on the Son andbelieves in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6)
John puts it in his own words at the end of his Gospel:
Now Jesus did many other signsin the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;but these are written so that you maybelieve that Jesus is the Christ,the Son of God, and that by believingyou may have life in his name.
Maxwell’s prediction was no use to anyone until it was believed. Until you believe, you remain a dying person in a dying world—without hope.
Put your trust in the resurrected one, and do not delay. Hold to him—follow him—he alone has travelled the road from death to life. Your future will be secure, and your path through life will be lit by the light of resurrection life.