Blog

By Bill Lawrence

President of Leader Formation International

Greetings.

My name is John, and I was once the youngest of the Apostles whom Jesus chose to be with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem for nearly three years, but now I’m the oldest of His men, just over ninety, the only one left after the cross. However, I am still able to communicate His truth and make Him known and write about Him. I have already written three short letters, now known to you as I, II, and III John, and I am also writing the Gospel of John, though it’s different from the other three Gospels, as you know. They were biograhies, all very accurate and uncommonly well done, but mine is focused on a set of signs and I want you to know that I remember very well and that I taught about in Jerusalem, Roman Asia, and now in Ephesus. I have just written them and now I am focused on our last night together when we were in the Upper Room as we gathered in Jerusalem and I am communicating about the cross, the resurrection, and our Lord’s commission.

Step back now as a reader and think of John the Apostle who became an elder in Ephesus. He remem- bered back to the Upper Room and what happened that fatal night sixty years before he wrote these wrods when Jesus spoke to them from His heart to His men, even the betrayer. Jesus had great passion for them as He worked through the struggle and tension of the opening words recorded for us in chapter thirteen when He dressed himself as a slave and strove to reach the betrayer only He had to give him up. Once He was forced to release him to his evil task, Jesus sought to reach the hearts of His men. Yet first He had to go to His own heart and give His passion to His men as He taught them to the depth of their beings. He starts with RADICAL Love as He washes His men’s feet and reaches out to them.

I wonder if John struggled as he wrote about that  painful night sixty years after Jesus, his best friend on earth, was very different than He had ever been. The host never took off his outer garments and put a towel around himself and got on his knees and washed his guests’ feet, yet this is exactly what Jesus did. Peter said what all of them surely felt, but only impetuous Peter had the impulse to say it. Lord, do you wash my feet , . .?

John had to struggle as he wrote his Gospel so long after his youth. His Gospel was different from the other three with seven signs and then an intense word in what we know as the Upper Room Discourse followed by Jesus’s prayer for a different way for Him to pay for sin. No, not the cross. No horrible suffering and pain. Surely there is another way to pay for sin!

The Apostle was thinking back to his youth when he was wrestling with tension, stress, and distress all at once. He would not have understood what he faced with his Friend as he was so intimate with him at the Passover meal the third time that they were together. He could not grasp what His Friend meant when He took off his outer garments and wrapped Himself with a towel and washed his feet. This was Jesus the promised Messiah who would overthrow the Roman Empire and rule the world, and he, John, along with the other twelve, would rule in Rome’s place. He remembered the stress that came upon him and he feels it once again even though he understood it sixty years later.

Think of what it must have been like to discover that a traitor was in your midst, that a man whom all of you trusted totally and you gave all of your funds to him and made him the treasurer of your move-ment, a man who shared your vision and your values and for whom you had high regard

I now ask you a question. Have you faced such a situation in your life?

It is impossible to think that you faced a situation like the cross, although some live in places where the government turned on you because you are a Christian. Some of you are in places where being a Christian has cost you more than anyone can possibly imagine.

Attack. Shame. Persecution. Hatred. Rejection. Even death.

We know that this is what the early believers faced starting with Jesus Himself and going to the first apostles and moving to early believers, known and unknown, and continuing to our very time. It has never ceased.

But there have been other struggles.

Rejection. Divorce. Mockery. Deception. Dishonesty. Cheating. Bribery

How does this impact you? Do you have memories from the past caused by someone you loved and trusted who turned in you and let you down? What do you do with such a person now? Do you dwell on those memories and allow them to be the center of your life?

Is there someone in your life who has had a profound role and has distorted your life? Has there been a Judas in your life who took advantage of you and took truths that matter to you and turned them against you so you had to pay a great price just to hang on to your life? That does happen to many when there is no just reason for it.

Or can it be that you have entered into uncertain leadership, and you’re not sure what you are going to actually accomplish? You’re like John, on the edge of loss more than gain and you don’t understand what God is allowing to happen to you? You do your best, but everything is uncertain and you’re not sure what you should do? Why isn’t life clearer? That can happen. Paul did trust the Lord, but surely he wanted to strengthen churches in Spain rather than be beheaded in Rome, yet he trusted Jesus.

John, like the early church’s leaders, had to deal with much uncertainty as they had to face overcoming attack and resistance as they made Jesus known. They took their risks, established their churches, built their elders, wrote their Gospels and epistles, and, eventually, The Revelation,  equip their elders, proclaimed their message, expanded their numbers, and while they were constantly resisted, they grew.

What about you? Are you seeing God work through you? Can you join John, even at ninety, and see the Lord of the cross and the grave work through the darkness of what looks like defeat. Can it actually be the resurrection of triumph? So it is that I finish with this question.

Is the darkness of defeat actually your resurrection of triumph through the resurrected Lord Jesus?

Think about it.