You have the words of eternal life.

 

The recording may be a little odd, as I had visual aids - laminated sheets with the "I am" sayings and an image, and got some volunteers to hold them up and read them out to the rest of the congregation.  So I am interacting with them during the course of the sermon.

“Lord, to whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life.”

“To whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life.”

It was Peter who said it.
A great many people who might have liked to have been followers of Jesus have given up –
they found what Jesus was saying just simply too much to swallow.
Literally!
And then, when Jesus asks Peter and the others if they are going to disappear, too, Peter says “Lord, to whom can we go?
You have the words of eternal life!”

Peter is a pretty terrific person all round.
He does have his moments, and he gets it wrong a lot of the time, but he goes on because, whatever else happens, he knows that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

I don't know whether Jesus really knows that he is, or if he's just beginning to think so, or what.
But in John's Gospel we have those seven great sayings beginning “I am”,
that we've just sung about.
And I want us to think about these a bit this morning,
because I think some of these “I Am” sayings are, to us,
the words of eternal life.

You see, even though Jesus might not have been totally aware of it when he was saying it,
what he was doing, on one level, was declaring himself to be divine.
I expect you know the story of Moses and the burning bush,
where a voice speaks to Moses out of the bush,
which was burning up but didn't burn away.
And it told him to get Pharoah to let the Israelite slaves go.
And Moses said, “Well, who shall I say sent me?”
and the voice said “I Am has sent you”.
And Jesus, apparently used exactly the same wording.
Now I don't know how fully he was aware of this,
but certainly on one level this is what he was saying.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says “I am” seven times, and I thought that we would look at those sayings this morning. Because there really is nowhere else to go, is there. So to whom are we going?

I am the Bread of Life
Let's start with the one this chapter of John's Gospel has been expounding for the last month.
I expect you have heard several sermons on it over the past few weeks, so I won't add much, except to remind you that his first hearers reacted very differently to the way we do when we hear those words.
At first they said, “Oh rubbish, we know this man, he's Joseph the Carpenter's son, we know his Mum, too –
how can he say he is the bread that comes down from heaven?
Don't be silly!”

And then Jesus expounds a bit on it:
“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”
And he goes on like that,
and this is when most people decide he's either being totally gross,
or else he's talking nonsense, and go away.
Peter and the other disciples may not have understood what Jesus was talking about –
after all, it doesn't go into words very well, does it?
All the same, they knew that the needed to go on following Jesus:
“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”



I am the Light of the World
“I am the Light of the World.”
And in fact Jesus added that and said:
“I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness
but will have the light of life.”

“Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness
but will have the light of life.”

Here in London it doesn't really ever get totally dark, does it?
There are so many streetlights and so on that it is even quite difficult to see the stars, always assuming it doesn't rain.
But when we're in the country, it can be quite different.
I remember one Christmas when we were going to midnight service at my sister's church in Norfolk,
and we had to park the car in a field next to the church.
So there were no streetlights or anything, and we had to turn the torches on on our phones so that we could see what we were treading in!

That's the thing, isn't it.
Light, however feeble, is always stronger than darkness.
Think of the rare occasions when we have power cuts –
if you go and find a tea-light or similar candle, it doesn't produce much light, but you can still see enough not to bump into the furniture.
And the same here –
if you follow Jesus, there will always be light enough to see your way ahead in life, even if it's only one tiny step.
“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”


I am the Gate for the Sheep
“I am the Gate for the sheep”.
This one's a bit weird, isn't it?
Whatever can he mean?

I don't think it's quite within living memory these days, but time was, on the Sussex Downs and elsewhere, the shepherd lived with his sheep for weeks on end.
He had a little hut that was like a tiny caravan where he could sleep and store food and so on.
During the day, the sheep roamed fairly freely on the Downs, but at night, the shepherd would build an enclosure from hurdles, and “fold” as it was called, the sheep in there.
They would move the fold each night,
so that the sheep weren't subjected to mounds of manure.
These folds were closed in with a final hurdle, but in the middle east, the shepherd himself would lie down in the gap so that wolves and stray dogs and thieves and so on couldn't get in.
And the wolves and stray dogs and thieves and so on knew that,
and would sometimes jump over the walls of the fold.
Jesus riffs on this:
“Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and bandits;
but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate.
Whoever enters by me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”


I am the good shepherd
This is the more familiar of the two “sheep” sayings, isn't it?
Actually, it happens in the next paragraph in John 10.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”

“I know my own, and my own know me.”
I think I may have told you before that my brother and his wife were shepherds, and when they went into the field where the sheep were, the sheep knew who they were and would either carry on with their own lives, or else, if they were hungry, start demanding food NOW!
But if Robert or I, or anybody else they didn’t know, went into that field, they would run away, bleating ferociously.
Jesus also points out that a hired shepherd might run away if a wolf comes, because they aren't his sheep,
so naturally he'd rather save his own skin than that of the sheep,
but Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will lay down his life for the sheep, if necessary.

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”



I am the Resurrection and the Life
“I am the Resurrection and the Life”.
This, of course, comes in that lovely story where Jesus' friend Lazarus has died, and his sisters Martha and Mary are grieving for him.
Jesus, weeping himself, says that Lazarus will rise again.
And Martha says:
“‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’
Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?’
She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah,
the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’”

“Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Do you believe this?

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”



I am the way, and the truth, and the life
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life”.
Here, Jesus is talking to his disciples only, not to the crowds.
He has reminded them that he is going to prepare a place for them in his Father's house.
But Thomas says, “Well, how are we going to know the way?”
and that is when Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
If you know me, you will know my Father also.
From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

So it is through Jesus, and Jesus alone, that we can know God as Father, that we can know ourselves beloved children of God.

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”



I am the true vine.
“I am the true vine”.
Jesus is speaking to his disciples again, here.
And this time, it's a two-way thing.
First of all, he says he is the vine, and his Father is the vine-grower.
“He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.
Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

And then Jesus goes on to explain:
“You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.
Abide in me as I abide in you.
Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.”

So this “I am” is a two way one, pointing up to the Father and down to us.
We can do nothing unless we “abide” in Jesus.
I don't know about you, but that always makes me feel that we have to strive and struggle to stay in Jesus,
but if you think of branches on a fruit tree, they don't do any such thing!
They just stay where they are put, perhaps swaying a bit if it's windy, but otherwise just relaxing, knowing that the trunk of the tree is holding them tight so that they will bear fruit in due season.
As, I expect, will we.

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”

And that's it.
The seven great sayings of Jesus.

Get the congregation to read them aloud, one at a time.

“Lord, to whom else should we go?
For you have the words of eternal life.”
Amen.

The Whole Armour of God

I finally worked out what I'd done wrong so that the recording didn't record on the last two sermons!  There were several changes from the text, so do have a listen.....

Last week, Robert and I took our grandsons to visit the museum of Jewish life, up in Camden Town. It is actually quite an interesting museum to visit in its own right, but the main reason we went was that there was a temporary exhibition about the life of René Goscinny, the man who wrote the text of the Astérix books with his colleague, Albert Uderzo.

Now, I expect you all know Astérix the Gaul, who, with his friend Obélix, lived in a little village in Brittany which refused point-blank to accept the Roman rule that covered all the rest of what is now France. And specialised in making the local troops’ lives a misery. But it’s about those Roman soldiers that I want to think this morning, and I’m hoping we can get a picture of a Roman soldier, as drawn by Mr Uderzo, up on the screen.

I’m sure, of course, that you have heard about God’s armour before! The belt of truth – truth is so vital to all our dealings with God, and with God’s people. It’s not just about always telling the truth; that too, although there are times when that is not the kindest option – you wouldn’t tell anybody that their bum looked big in this, even if it did, and you certainly wouldn’t tell a grieving widow that her husband had been the biggest crook going and you had loathed his guts! It’s about telling the truth, but it’s also about being truthful about yourself, especially to God. You see, it’s no good hiding the bits about yourself that you don’t like – God knows them all anyway.

And you know all this stuff, too. You know about the breastplate of righteousness – God’s righteousness, not ours. You know about the shoes of the Gospel of Peace – for although we are called to fight against what St Paul calls “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”, although we are called to fight against them, we are called, above all else, to be peacemakers.

You know about the shield of faith – how it is used, not just to protect ourselves, but to protect each other, too. The Romans knew about that, and Mr Uderzo drew at least one picture of them in “tortoise” formation. Could we see that picture?

Although in one book I read, it is described thus: “The Company had tried that formation—practiced it often, used it rarely—but the sergeant remembered how it felt, how it hindered the troops, blinded by the shields, crowded together. It was hard to walk without bumping into someone, hard even to breathe when they'd done it in the hot southern climate. She didn't think cold would make it easier.”

Moon, Elizabeth. Deeds of Honor: Paksenarrion World Chronicles (p. 94). Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

So not easy – but if it protects your friends? Anyway, once again, you know all about this; you will have had sermons on this passage many times. The helmet of salvation, too, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, St Paul tells us.

Our Roman legionary had all these things – well, their earthly equivalents, anyway – and both St Paul and his readers would have been familiar with them, as they would have seen the legionaries out and about in their towns, perhaps garrisoned there, perhaps just marching through. But it was a picture they all knew. This is what a soldier looked like. They knew all about belts and breastplates, shoes and helmets, swords and shields in ways that we can only know from pictures and cartoons. Although we do see our police with riot shields sometimes, and we know they wear bullet-proof vests and helmets on occasion, so perhaps it’s not quite so strange to us, if we can put it in modern terms.

But how do we get this armour? How do we “put on the whole armour of God”? Where do we find it? Are we terrible people when we find we don’t have much faith, or much righteousness?

Um, no! The clue is in the name – the whole armour of God! It is God’s armour, which God gives to us as we need, when we need.

I am sure you’re familiar with the phenomenon where a phrase of Scripture simply jumps out and hits you in the face, even though you have read that passage many, many times before. The other week, I was preaching on the story of Daniel and Bathsheba, and while someone was reading the story to the congregation, this verse jumped out at me. This is God speaking to David through Nathan the Prophet: “I made you king of Israel and rescued you from Saul. I gave you his kingdom and his wives; I made you king over Israel and Judah. If this had not been enough, I would have given you twice as much.”

“If this had not been enough, I would have given you twice as much.” Sometimes we struggle – well, I say “we”, but I know it’s true of me, and thus tend to assume it’s true of everybody – sometimes I struggle to think of God as generous, of God as the one who gives and gives and gives! We only have to ask! It’s not like that awful prosperity theology which says you have to “prime the pump” by giving, usually to the preacher, vast sums of money so that God can bless you. God doesn’t work like that. God gives and gives and gives, because God loves us.

And so it is with the armour that we need to protect us. God gives and gives and gives more than we need. We don’t have to plead and beg with him, but just say “Help!” and the help is there. Jesus has won the victory over the powers of evil; we may struggle to resist temptation, and perhaps we feel we lose more often that we’d like. I know I do….

But the point is, we need to practice all this. I’ve said this before, I think – we choose to be God’s people, we choose to let God love us, but so often we don’t practice it. We don’t spend time with God – and St Paul tells us, in our reading from Ephesians, that prayer is the best weapon there is. We don’t spend time with God because spending time with God very often involves looking at ourselves, and really not liking what we see! So we avoid God, rather like Adam and Eve did in the garden after they had eaten the fruit.

And, of course, that is totally the wrong thing to do. What we ought to do – and I’m speaking to myself every bit as much as to you – what we ought to do is to spend more time with God, look at the bits of ourselves we hate, and give them to God, too! And then spend as much time with God as we can – not necessarily praying in words all the time – we couldn’t, anyway – but being aware of God’s presence with us.

It isn’t always easy. In our Gospel reading, we heard how many people found Jesus’ teaching about eating his Body and drinking his Blood far too difficult to cope with, and went away. We have grown up with eating his Body and drinking his Blood through Holy Communion, so it doesn’t disgust us the way it did his first hearers, but we all have our own sticking-points. But when Jesus asked the Twelve whether they, too, wished to leave, Peter replied on their behalf: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life!”

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it. We have chosen to serve God, we have chosen to put on the whole armour of God. We have chosen to be God’s people. And God himself will give us what we need to enable us to be God’s person in a largely secular society. What we need, and more than what we need – the whole armour of God, in fact.

We didn’t have our Old Testament reading earlier, but I’m going to have it now, to end this sermon, as in it, Joshua asks the people to choose whether they want to serve God or not. And the people choose to serve God. So Nike and I are going to read the beginning of the reading, and then we are all going to join in the verses where the people reply. They’ll be up on the screen. It’s from Joshua chapter 24. And let us use the people’s words as our prayer of recommitment to God.

Narrator: Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem.  They stood before Joshua and before God.  Joshua retold the whole story of their people. He started with Abraham, reminded them of the hardships of slavery in Egypt, and recounted the way God led them out of slavery.  He reminded them that God had been with them while they wandered in the wilderness and had given them their new homes in the Promised Land.  Then Joshua said to all the people,

Joshua:  Now therefore honour the Lord, and serve God sincerely and faithfully.  Put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.  If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Narrator:  Then the people answered,

People: Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight.  The Lord protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.  And, the Lord drove out before us all the peoples who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for the Lord is our God.

Therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for the Lord is our God. Amen.

You have the words of eternal life

This service was a little different to usual, since it was August and many people, including the music leader and the older young people, were away.  And we don't have Sunday School in August.  So I laminated the "I am" sayings and put six of them round the church, and got members of the congregation to find them and hold them up when relevant....




“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

“To whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

It was Peter who said it. A great many people who might have liked to have been followers of Jesus have given up – they found what Jesus was saying just simply too much to swallow. Literally! And then, when Jesus asks Peter and the others if they are going to disappear, too, Peter says “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life!”

Peter is a pretty terrific person all round. He does have his moments, and he gets it wrong a lot of the time, but he goes on because, whatever else happens, he knows that Jesus is the Holy One of God.

I don't know whether Jesus really knows that he is, or if he's just beginning to think so, or what. But in John's Gospel we have those seven great sayings beginning “I am”, that we've just sung about. And I want us to think about these a bit this morning, because I think some of these “I Am” sayings are, to us, the words of eternal life.

You see, even though Jesus might not have been totally aware of it when he was saying it, what he was doing, on one level, was declaring himself to be divine. I expect you know the story of Moses and the burning bush, where a voice speaks to Moses out of the bush, which was burning up but didn't burn away. And it told him to get Pharoah to let the Israelite slaves go. And Moses said, “Well, who shall I say sent me?” and the voice said “I Am has sent you”. And Jesus, apparently used exactly the same wording. Now I don't know how fully he was aware of this, but certainly on one level this is what he was saying.

---oo0oo---

I am the Bread of Life

Let's start with the one this chapter of John's Gospel has been expounding for the last month. I expect you have heard several sermons on it over the past few weeks, so I won't add much, except to remind you that his first hearers reacted very differently to the way we do when we hear those words. At first they said, “Oh rubbish, we know this man, he's Joseph the Carpenter's son, we know his Mum, too – how can he say he is the bread that comes down from heaven? Don't be silly!”

And then Jesus expounds a bit on it: “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” And he goes on like that, and this is when most people decide he's either being totally gross, or else he's talking nonsense, and go away. Peter and the other disciples may not have understood what Jesus was talking about – after all, it doesn't go into words very well, does it? All the same, they knew that the needed to go on following Jesus: “Lord, to whom else should we go? For you have the words of eternal life.”

Now then, who can remember another “I am” saying of Jesus? We just sang them in the hymn there now. And round the Church you will find some laminated sheets with the sayings on them. Will someone go and find one of them, and bring it to me, please? One of you younger ones?

---oo0oo---

I am the Light of the World

“I am the Light of the World.” And in fact Jesus added that and said: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

“Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

Here in London it doesn't really ever get totally dark, does it? There are so many streetlights and so on that it is even quite difficult to see the stars, always assuming it doesn't rain. But when we're in the country, it can be quite different. I remember one Christmas when we were going to midnight service at my sister's church in Norfolk, and we had to park the car in a field next to the church. So there were no streetlights or anything, and we had to turn the torches on on our phones so that we could see what we were treading in!

That's the thing, isn't it. Light, however feeble, is always stronger than darkness. Think of the rare occasions when we have power cuts – if you go and find a tea-light or similar candle, it doesn't produce much light, but you can still see enough not to bump into the furniture. And the same here – if you follow Jesus, there will always be light enough to see your way ahead in life, even if it's only one tiny step.

“Lord, to whom else should we go? For you have the words of eternal life.”

---oo0oo---

I am the Gate for the Sheep

“I am the Gate for the sheep”. This one's a bit weird, isn't it? Whatever can he mean?

I don't think it's quite within living memory these days, but time was, on the Sussex Downs and elsewhere, the shepherd lived with his sheep for weeks on end. He had a little hut that was like a tiny caravan where he could sleep and store food and so on. During the day, the sheep roamed fairly freely on the Downs, but at night, the shepherd would build an enclosure from hurdles, and “fold” as it was called, the sheep in there. They would move the fold each night, so that the sheep weren't subjected to mounds of manure. These folds were closed in with a final hurdle, but in the middle east, the shepherd himself would lie down in the gap so that wolves and stray dogs and thieves and so on couldn't get in. And the wolves and stray dogs and thieves and so on knew that, and would sometimes jump over the walls of the fold. Jesus riffs on this: “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

“Lord, to whom else should we go? For you have the words of eternal life.”

---oo0oo---

I am the good shepherd

This is the more familiar of the two “sheep” sayings, isn't it? Actually, it happens in the next paragraph in John 10.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”

“I know my own, and my own know me.” I think I may have told you before that my brother and his wife are shepherds, and when they go into the field where the sheep are, the sheep know who they are and either carry on with their own lives, or else, if they are hungry, start demanding food NOW! But if Robert or I, or anybody else they don't know, goes into that field, they run away, bleating ferociously.

Jesus also points out that a hired shepherd might run away if a wolf comes, because they aren't his sheep, so naturally he'd rather save his own skin than that of the sheep, but Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will lay down his life for the sheep, if necessary.

“Lord, to whom else should we go? For you have the words of eternal life.”

---oo0oo---

I am the Resurrection and the Life

“I am the Resurrection and the Life”. This, of course, comes in that lovely story where Jesus' friend Lazarus has died, and his sisters Martha and Mary are grieving for him. Jesus, weeping himself, says that Lazarus will rise again. And Martha says: “‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’”

“Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Do you believe this?

“Lord, to whom else should we go? For you have the words of eternal life.”

---oo0oo---

I am the way, and the truth, and the life

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life”. Here, Jesus is talking to his disciples only, not to the crowds. He has reminded them that he is going to prepare a place for them in his Father's house. But Thomas says, “Well, how are we going to know the way?” and that is when Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

So it is through Jesus, and Jesus alone, that we can know God as Father, that we can know ourselves beloved children of God.

“Lord, to whom else should we go? For you have the words of eternal life.”

---oo0oo---

I am the true vine.

“I am the true vine”. Jesus is speaking to his disciples again, here. And this time, it's a two-way thing. First of all, he says he is the vine, and his Father is the vine-grower. “He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

And then Jesus goes on to explain: “You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.”

So this “I am” is a two way one, pointing up to the Father and down to us. We can do nothing unless we “abide” in Jesus. I don't know about you, but that always makes me feel that we have to strive and struggle to stay in Jesus, but if you think of branches on a fruit tree, they don't do any such thing! They just stay where they are put, perhaps swaying a bit if it's windy, but otherwise just relaxing, knowing that the trunk of the tree is holding them tight so that they will bear fruit in due season. As, I expect, will we.

“Lord, to whom else should we go? For you have the words of eternal life.”

---oo0oo---

And that's it. The seven great sayings of Jesus.

“Lord, to whom else should we go? For you have the words of eternal life.” Amen.