What Was on Jesus’ Mind?
Palm Sunday
John 17:20-26
April 5, 2009
We begin the observance with one of the most excellent times of the year in the Christian religious tradition: Holy Week. It begins with Palm Sunday (today) culminating in the celebration of the Easter season that begins next Sunday and lasts forty days. The kids paraded around earlier waving palm branches as part of this Palm Sunday celebration. We have a very special worship experience on Thursdays of Holy Week where we reenact some of the special moments in preparation for the remembrance of Good Friday—the day Jesus would die on the cross for us.
Here is the setting… it is the beginning of a holy Jewish celebration called Passover. Jesus is coming into Jerusalem to celebrate it as most righteous Jews (tsadiqs) would. But the people who heard the teachings of Jesus and saw the miracles that he performed anticipated the coming of God’s Kingdom in its fullness through Jesus. So they welcomed Jesus as a king. They welcomed Jesus as the Christ—the Messiah. They put him on a colt or donkey and put palm branches and coats on the road as he came into the city singing “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
On Thursday, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples, which is why followers of Jesus gather together all over the world for two thousand years for special times of worship. On Thursday evening, Jesus spent an extended amount of time giving some last instructions to his disciples. I’ve recently spent some considerable amount of time rereading all the gospel accounts. Luke gives a brief snippet of what Jesus taught on that Thursday evening while John provides us with four whole chapters of his teachings. There seems to be a theme that keeps coming up in John 14-17. Since this was Jesus’ last opportunity to pour into his disciples before he would be crucified, this is what Jesus deemed vitally important. It is what he didn’t want them to forget. It was one of the last things that Jesus had on his mind.
And as I looked at these teachings, I can see how sometimes we can get distracted from being what Jesus wants us to be. We sometimes do good stuff and wonderful ministry as Christians and as churches but we forget the primary stuff that Jesus emphasizes in John right at the end.
It is kind of like these two volunteer fire departments that I read about. In this area of Texas, the volunteer fire departments take pride in their ability to do a great job. They often are very competitive with nearby fire departments. Rivalries are common. Two departments often competed in training exercises where one would show how efficient they were to the other and vice versa. Of course, the rival would be watching for any and all mistakes. One afternoon, a drill was scheduled where an abandoned house would be set on fire and then the fire put out. The setting of the house on fire and the extinguishing of the fire had standards and regulations that were to be followed.
Both fire departments arrived as one watched the other watch the other flawlessly execute the setting and extinguishing of the fire. It was perfection. They nailed it! No mistakes in procedure even in the slightest. Everything was done in record time. Of course the performing fire department began immediately to brag to their rivals egging them on to top their flawless performance.
Suddenly the celebration ended when the owners of the house arrived. They were at the wrong house. They had followed all the details and were exceptionally efficient at their job except that they had missed their primary purpose by setting fire to the wrong house.
How often do we forget what it means to love God? How often do the people of God simply fail to focus on what is most important? Jesus understood this on the night before his crucifixion. This is why he didn’t talk about miracles and making sure that his disciples were going to teach the right doctrine or dogma. He focused on one thing: koinonia.
Throughout these four chapters of John, Jesus keeps coming back to this idea of koinonia. “Make them one.” “The world will know that we are his by the love that we show one another.” I think Jesus knows how easily we get distracted and Jesus knows what the most effective strategy of the devil to destroy the work of God: divide God’s people.
What Was on Jesus’ Mind? Koinonia
Jesus spends much of the other time describing what this looks like and what true koinonia looks like. As we prepare for to remember his crucifixion and prepare to celebrate Easter, we need to seriously consider this aspect. If Jesus placed this on such a high priority, then it seems to me that we should also be placing this as a priority if not the priority of our lives. So I have two aspects of this. First if his disciples are going to have this koinonia, which is a fellowship of love in the fullest sense, then Jesus says that we will be walking with God.
• God’s people walk with God.
And this basically comes down to one word: obedience.
Obedience
But this obedience is not doing things because we have to but following God’s ways because we love too. Jesus talks in this passage about hearing God and joining God in what God is already doing. He says the reason you do not hear is that you really don’t know God. In other words, there is a profound problem here. There is a relational problem that needs addressed. When you can’t seem to pray regularly or read God’s Word and meditate on it and join with other believers with the purposeful intention of seeking God’s presence, then there is a love problem here. There is a relationship problem with God.
Jesus talks about being in us as we are in him. Those who love Jesus will be shown the Father and God’s ways. If we really love Jesus, then we will be doing what God instructs. We will be obedient. How do we know?
1. Listen
If we love Jesus then God makes himself at home in our lives. He has full accessed. We don’t hold anything back and we don’t restrict God. When we have guests in our home, we usually close the doors in rooms that we don’t want people to go into. You know the rooms with all the mess. Jesus says that those who love him let God have full access. We don’t tried to hide our messes. We pretend that they don’t exist. We listen to how God directs us in living life because we love Jesus and we know that he desires what is best.
We listen to God’s Spirit that is with us and in us. We listen to what the Spirit says through God’s Word both the written Word and the spoken Word. We listen and reflect on the implications upon our lives acknowledging where we have failed and what we need to change.
I read a story of a pastor whose son began to drift away from God in high school. The son started to hang out with the wrong crowd changing his actions and attitude. The parents, of course, were broken-hearted. They were embarrassed. But they didn’t hide this. They cried out to God with God’s people. They wept and prayed and wept some more. They prayed that God would change their son’s heart. Then God impressed upon the father that what God was going to do through this was not change his son’s heart but change the father’s heart. The father listened to God and became fully accepting of the situation recognizing that this father could do nothing but love his son, which he did. Eventually, the son came out of this turbulent time and turned back to God.
2. Do
Obedience means we need to know what God expects but then we must do it. Jesus said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” Let me remind you of the most basic thing: love each other. Jesus says that as we are about his business then we are more than just mere servants (although it seems that this is the starting point). We are friends. He makes his home with in and literally in us.
There was a man traveling through a certain area out west and he ran out of gas. As the economy was bad, he was really struggling. He didn’t have any money and was trying to get home to his wife and kids after interviewing for a job. So he looked in the phone book and called a sister church. The pastor and an elder were there and heard the story and went to help this man. They met him at his car and picked him up. Once in the car, the elder felt God impress to him that they needed to grab lunch. “Come with us to get some lunch?” The man of course couldn’t very well refuse as he was riding with them. The three ate and got to know each other a little better with the elder buying lunch. Then they took the gas can and got a couple of gallons of gas. When they arrived back at the man’s car, the elder shook his hand and said, “The Lord impressed upon me that I need to do this.” He opened up his wallet and pulled out a hundred dollar bill and said to buy something nice for his family with whatever was left. The man tried to refuse but the elder insisted telling him that the Lord wants him to do this. With tears coming down his face, the man thanked them saying that he had never experienced such generosity and love before.
Obedience means listening and doing. And this leads into the second aspect of koinonia. It is not just enough to claim to walk with God. We must also walk with one another.
• God’s people walk with one another.
We don’t let the people that God brings to fellowship with us slip through the cracks. And this takes everybody. It takes everyone walking with one another. Jesus had on his mind not only that individuals would obey God but that corporately his people would obey God. His last thoughts were that his people, his church, would be united in love for God, love for God’s, and therefore love for one another.
Sometimes we see that when we suffer broken relationships with one another and refuse to reconcile and refuse to forgive then it results in a broken relationship with God. Jesus says as much in the Sermon on the Mount. If you refuse to forgive then God will not forgive you. But the Spirit has impressed upon me that perhaps more often broken relationships with other believers is not a cause of a broken relationship with God but it is actually a symptom of a broken relationship with God. More often than not, broken relationships with other followers of Jesus happen because the love relationship with God has already been in serious trouble.
One thing that I’ve noticed over the years from many different congregations is how easily congregations give up on people. Yes, sometimes people give up on “the church.” Sometimes, their relationship with God (if they had one) was already in serious trouble. They walk out on God’s people because they have already walked out on God. But I am plagued with the thought that perhaps this is because congregations are not truly committed to walking with one another.
A pastor received a call from a chronic alcoholic. He just couldn’t seem to stay sober. He had tried several other churches but they didn’t seem to have anything to help him. Finally he called this pastor whose church had a reputation for not giving up on people and of course the pastor told him that they would be there for him. So they did. They walked with him. They called him. They talked with him (and not just the pastor). He went up and down as alcoholics sometimes do. They kept him accountable in recovery efforts and after a few months, the man was able to trust God to save him and slowly but surely his life turned around. He was baptized and their testified to a detail that no one knew (including the pastor). When he made that desperate call, he had determined that it would be his last. If they couldn’t help him, he was on the twelfth floor of a hotel and was going to jump if they couldn’t or wouldn’t help him. Fortunately they did and received him with open arms. They walked with him and wouldn’t give up on him even though he had given up on himself. Through it all, he found himself as he found God.
And here’s the thing: the congregation knew that they needed the man even more than the man needed him. If there is anything that koinonia means to God’s people, is that. We need one another. The hurting, the lost, the broken, and abused is the lifeblood of the church. The church needs those who need us more than they need us. Without koinonia of this kind, the gathering becomes a social club.
Are you walking with God? Have you been walking with the other people that God has placed around you and that God has placed you into? If not, perhaps it is because there really is a problem with your walk with God that you need to rectify right here, right now.
