The pharisee and the tax collector and you and me
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Even a pure secular humanist, would have to admit that the “Farewell Discourse” of Jesus as reported in John 14-17 is one of the most heart-warming messages from a leader who is about to take leave of his followers. Although the words are addressed to God the Father, they are clearly intended for the Apostles to hear. Jesus talks to the Father about “them” - those gathered at the table with Him.
Jesus proclaims His intense love for His close friends. These are the friends he made as much as three years earlier. We can see His real concern for them. He knows what can happen to them. He spoke about it metaphorically, saying that if you strike the shepherd, the flock will scatter. He feared that His followers would become the flock without a shepherd.
That’s all fine for those close friends. What about us?
Have you ever wondered whether He cares that much for us now, living twenty-one centuries after He ascended to His Father in Heaven? It’s easy for the secular humanist to conclude that He does not care. He couldn’t possibly care for us like that. Could He? He couldn’t have a vision that would see twenty-one centuries or more into the future. No teacher, or prophet, or cult leader could ever look so far into the distant future like that, so why – or how – could Jesus?
The answer is clear. Jesus is/was not just an ordinary every-day teacher, or prophet, or cult leader. Jesus is the incarnate Son of God – who knows everything in every time and place.
From our perspective as, believers, we read these four chapters of the Gospel according to John with the light of our faith to help us. We can remind ourselves that Jesus was talking to His close group of friends, and that those friends of Jesus are our forefathers in faith so the message must be for us, too.
Even as we try to convince ourselves of that, some of us tend to dismiss the wisdom coming from our own parents who heard it from their parents. We can say it’s a fable, or a legend, or it’s irrelevant to our time. If we can do that to the traditional wisdom of one or two generations ago, what might we be tempted to do with wisdom of two-thousand years ago? Fable? Legend? Irrelevant to our time?
Brothers and sisters – Believers, look prayerfully into two verses, very near the end of the four chapters. In John 17:20-21 we find:
“I pray not only for them {the Apostles}, but also for those who will believe in me through their {the Apostles’} word, so that they who believe in me through their word may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.”
In His eternal wisdom and knowledge, Jesus cared for all of us then, and cares for all of us now. He was then, and is now, aware of us and of our needs. His love does not know the limits of time or place. Only our faith is limited that way; His love is not! He knew, and knows always, what challenges His followers did face and do face, and will face, whether next month, or next year, or in another millennium.
His love is for us in our time and place.
Look in faith at John 17:15.
“I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.”
We are in the world - here and now. We are in the care of the one eternally loving God.
