Intensifying Sermons: A Lesson from John 8:48-59

Lent is intense. It arrives with its own forces. There are Lenten disciplines, both fasting and serving, engaged by the faithful with heightened intentionality. Seasonal catechesis purposely drives through these forty days toward baptisms on Easter Vigil and the Resurrection of Our Lord. Then, there are the texts of Lent. They come with their own intensities. And of all of this building to the greatest of moments, the crucifixion and resurrection of the Son of God.

Preaching the intensities of Lent and Holy Week’s gospel pericopes means dispensing with romanticized interpretations and allowing the texts to self-present, be they ever so uncomfortable or forceful. Their weight serves the proclamation of the Gospel and amplifies the good news of God’s grace toward us in Christ Jesus. John 8:48-59 is one such text which provides an example of first-century Judean hostility toward Jesus and His intensification of a dispute with them, leading the reader from this tense altercation to the apex moment when the Son of God suffers crucifixion, only to have the suspended tension of the rest in the tomb shattered by divine revivification.

Intensifying a sermon may include these aspects:

            (1) Embracing the persuasive intent of a Gospel sermon.
            (2) Immersing auditors in the text’s drama.
            (3) Highlighting and/or employing vocabulary and commentary which accentuate the text’s tension and extremity.
            (4) Bringing all these things to bear on a disclosure of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ in the service of the Gospel                          itself and, further, the Gospel’s pro nobis dynamic through primary speech.[1] Without (4) there is no sermon.

(1) Embrace the persuasive intent of a Gospel sermon.

It is a cop-out for people to say, “I have my position and you have yours, so there is no point to argue about it. You are not going to change my mind.” As preachers, our line of business is the Gospel. The Gospel of God is the property of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to revivicate and illumine once dead and darkened souls (Ephesians 2:1-8). Its potency toward “persuasion,” if we can call it that, lies in the faithful proclamation of the same. This is why we herald it as news, not as opinion or preference. Neither is it the preacher’s task to engage in rational argumentation, formulating syllogisms to yield a logical conclusion, as if this were the power of the Gospel unto salvation. The same can be said regarding emotional manipulation.

Instead, it is the preacher’s business to report on news which really happened and the ongoing manifestation of that news in the here and now. The Holy Spirit employs the Gospel, heralded to persuade, where persuasion may be understood as repentance, faith, salvation, and sanctification. All of these are engendered not by skillful rhetoric, but the power of God. This is what makes preaching the theatrum salutis, and nothing else.[2]

In this sense, a faithful Gospel preacher is less like a news anchor and more like an on-scene reporter with a live feed to the happening itself. And what is happening is the King, through His ongoing speaking and acting by His Word and Sacraments, continues to impact and shape our moment-to-moment reality based upon who He is and what He accomplished from the moment of the Annunciation through the Ascension. A preacher stands as one sent-out by the newsmaker Himself: The world’s rightful king, Jesus. It is His message, His doings which are broadcasted. They are facts that are indifferent to all other “positions,” whatever positions they may be. Rather, we herald this is what the King did, and what the King is doing. It is public, and now it is headline news to be aired to everyone. And because the news is so big, so world-altering, it affects even you.

A faithful Gospel preacher is less like a news anchor and more like an on-scene reporter with a live feed to the happening itself.

The on-the-scene reporting entails this: Jesus of Nazareth said He spoke for and was acting on behalf of the Creator God, reconciling humanity to Himself and reclaiming His global Kingdom. Humanity basically said He was a liar, convicted Him of treason for claiming to be the king of the world, beat Him mercilessly, and nailed His naked body to a tree to suffocate to death. Certifiably dead, this same man got out of the grave with what a thousand people over the space of a month and a half were happy to testify was a transformed, resurrected body. No one has ever done that before, or since. What is more, Jesus defined every aspect of His life as representing and fulfilling Israel’s obligations and destiny, stating that His death would be a blood atonement for sin, effecting propitiation. It was all done in public, in a hostile setting, and turned everything said about Him upside-down. By this resurrection event, He has been vindicated about everything he said concerning being the Messiah, accomplishing redemption, inaugurating God’s Kingdom, initiating a new creation, and crushing our enemies. Now, everything is going to be different because the impact of His rule in the world is turning individuals, families, and cultures upside-down as they, and as we, embrace the news. Jesus the Christ is God and Savior, and He is even now bestowing life through the gospel Word and gospel Sacraments. That is the news. Tune in next week for more on this developing story.

News like this persuades people because “it is the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16).

One way in which the Gospel suffers distortion occurs by romanticizing the biblical narrative with intent to mute its intensity. Reading exchanges between Jesus and the Pharisees through the rose-colored glasses of fashionable tolerance ethics, interpreting them as dispassionate discourse, betrays faithful preaching. There are no pericopes from the Evangelists which self-present like a polite and politically correct Ivy League luncheon. We never see Jesus on one side of the table, hands folded, exhibiting a broad smile, and the Pharisees on the other, returning pleasantries and warm handshakes, exchanging perspectival papers in a genteel fashion on a topic that is really indifferent because any truth assertions have to give way to a higher principle of diversity and neighborly niceness. In this scenario, Jesus would neither argue for truth, nor His contenders fight for reality. Rather, both might offer musings on spiritual encounters. It could be a friendly exchange of speculations on unverifiable concepts, where they are not opponents but fellow villagers, not antagonist but enlightened educators. “Shall we discuss the doctrine of God?” “Why yes, a fascinating subject, don’t you think, Rabbi Jesus?” “Indeed, a most interesting idea. Please tell me, what are your feelings on the subject and how might it relate to increased awareness and neighborliness? Hmm. Yes, yes.”

Commendably, “The Chosen” series has resisted tempering the eyewitness and divinely inspired testimony about Christ. It has resisted exchanging a passionate and intense Lord for a kinder and gentler Jesus, a very malleable and congenial Jesus, like we find in the sentimentalist paintings of Warner Sallman which drain every ounce of intensity from God’s Messiah.^[3] Compared to the Evangelists’ reports, Sallman’s romanticized Jesus approximates fantasy, but so does the “Jesus” refashioned in liberal theology’s bloodless redemption. Therefore, preach with an understanding that the Holy Spirit is engaged in the ministry of divine persuasions, engendering repentance, faith, and devotion.

(2) Immersion in the text’s drama.

Immersion in the drama of the Gospel narrative yields quite a different depiction than romanticism and sentimentalism, namely one of intensity. Preachers can use not only isagogics but common knowledge to evidence the fact that Mediterranean Semites have never been a dispassionate people. Why are they not a flaccid and placid ancestry? Answer: Passion for truth. The truth matters to such people, preeminently Jews of Second Temple Judaism, including Jesus. Unlike most Westerns, who have forfeited truth for opinion, facts for feelings, conclusions for choice, and things which matter for things that flatter, this is not the case in the Middle East. The truth matters and it is worth arguing over and even fighting for. It has been this way since our first ancestors ventured toward the Levant from the Euphrates. That is how we are to understand the exchange in John 8 and most, if not all, of the chapters from the Evangelist. So, sink parishioners into these texts.

In John 8, the topic is God and who knows Him rightly, whether the Jews who say they have Abraham as their father or Jesus who says He and the Father are one? The topic is intense and so is the exchange, bearing life-and-death implications. Preachers who expound on this text would do well to convey the episode’s heightened tension, the shouting, the distain for Jesus’ ministry and message, and how the combative posture of Jesus’ disputants triggers physical outrage: “So they picked up stones to throw at Him” (John 8:59). This scene contains the potential for murder. That is intense.

(3) Highlighting and/or employing vocabulary and commentary which accentuate the text’s tension and extremity.

Preachers do well to emphasize and word-smith their language and analysis of the narrative to heighten the stress and acute nature of the conflict. Use familiar words to today’s auditors that not only covey meaning but also bring emotional import, immersing parishioners in the text and its drama. Consider the following use of descriptives (in italics):

The Jews, who have been getting more agitated and livid with Jesus throughout the scene, are ready to take whatever Jesus says and use it against Him and, if possible, lay hands on Him to do violence. They seem to think His words about Abraham knowing Him imply that He has been time-traveling or something, and they openly mock Him for it: It is crazy-talk. They sarcastically quip, “He is not yet fifty years old” (verse 57), and Abraham lived thousands of years ago! They want the crowd to feel their offense and dismissiveness toward Jesus and be offended themselves because He insults their intelligence and disrespects their religion. Jesus is insane. Do not listen to Him.

(4) Bring all these things to bear on a disclosure of the revelation of God in Christ in the service of the Gospel.

The Apostle John shows us the way by evidencing how Jesus speaks at a higher plane, one of fulfillment. The Lord’s antagonists are in the dark regarding how God will bring fulfillment of the Scriptures for Israel and the world, but Jesus brings light. One commentator observes:

“The point He (Jesus) has been making throughout the chapter – the point which is His defense against the capital charge that some are seeking to mount against Him for His breaking the sabbath — is that ‘the Father,’ Israel’s God, the one whom the Judaeans claim to worship, to know and to serve, is operating in and through Him in a decisive and unique way to summon Israel back to a genuine knowledge and allegiance to Himself.”^[4]

John means to convey through the intensity of the episode that the ones who are in real danger are Jesus’ disputants, the Jewish crowd. The announcement of fulfillment should move them to repentance and faith in the One who fulfills... before it is too late. “The Father” alone dispenses salvation and redemption through His Word, and Jesus is that Word-made-flesh. This makes Him alone the Way, the Truth, and the Life, so much so that for the one with faith in Jesus, death has lost its sting (verse 51). The Father has publicly declared Jesus to be the Messiah, substantiating His declaration with many miraculous proofs and Scriptural fulfillments. Jesus’ responses challenges His auditors to grapple with the fact that they are actually undermining every core belief within Judaism about the revelation of God and His promises laid out from Genesis to Malachi, promises to which Abraham himself pointed.

The Lord’s antagonists are in the dark regarding how God will bring fulfillment of the Scriptures for Israel and the world, but Jesus brings light.

Having navigated the drama of the text with the purpose of serving the Gospel of fulfillment, the preacher sets the stage for the Gospel’s pro nobis dynamic through primary speech by intensifying the sermon, employing points (1), (2), and (3). Here is an example:

Jesus turns the tables on His opponents. It is not about Him, per se, but, “The Father who sent [Him].” They are engaged in self-condemnation because of their unbelief in the promise-making Father, now engaged in promise-keeping through the Son... and they sense it. They perceive He has exposed, from His viewpoint, the real issue, their hypocrisy and unbelief, and they are hotly offended. Their tone and accusations become nasty: “Now we know You have a demon” (verse 52)! They are shouting now, saying in effect, “You are a devil. Satan owns you!” The scene has become raucous. Then, more abuses: “You are a Samaritan!” This was no compliment, as in, you are a “Good Samaritan.” The charge that Jesus is a “Samaritan,” the offspring of half-Jews/half pagans, was a way of saying He comes from inferior, sub-humans, and that is why He speaks devilish blasphemy. God is never with the Samaritans, the demons are. So, it is worse than mockery. They are literally name-calling Jesus in the Temple precincts with the vilest racial slur they know. Their defamatory hate-speech aligns Jesus with the most detested people, possessing the most despised religion, within the domain of the most zealously prized sacred space in Judaism, the Temple. Their purpose is to turn the crowd into a lynch-mob. One more word from Jesus could trigger them to “justified” violence.

Jesus is at a critical moment. He must respond to their question, a question which has suspended the agitation of the crowd for a moment. It is a question for which the answer will either send them into a frenzy or move toward diffusing intensity: “Are You greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do You make Yourself out to be” (verse 53)?  

Jesus could have given a politically correct response and offered a situation-pacifying comment by backing down from His assertion or offering a spectrum of interpretations with ambiguity. But no, the moment of suspense gives way to Jesus intensifying the confrontation to the point of no return. He straightforwardly sets them in opposite camps: Jesus speaks truth, they are “liars” (verse 55). He calls them liars to their face. Jesus throws down for the truth because the implications about God’s reality and what He is doing in the world through Jesus is infinitely more important than pandering to their opinion of Him or capitulating to their groupthink. The truth matters about God because it is a life and death issue for each and every person confronted with Christ Jesus. So, Jesus states in verses 54-56 that the one and only true and living God works in and through Him, and how Abraham himself rejoiced that he would witness the day of Jesus as God’s presence and promised answer to the world’s crisis of sin, judgment, and death. Jesus says it is the Father who bears witness to Him and Abraham confirms this fact. “This seems to mean that Abraham, in trusting God’s promises that through his family all the peoples of the earth would be blessed, was actually looking ahead to the day when Jesus would bring that promise into reality.”^[5] Stunned, they stammer out, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Wasting no time, Jesus exceeds all notions of intensity to bring the episode to a point of epochal significance, and monumentalized by the Spirit as Holy Scripture, it becomes the Gospel itself: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (verse 58).^[6] 

He identifies Himself so immediately with the Father that He can speak of Himself as being “before Abraham existed,” in just the same way that only God could say it. Jesus states plainly what John recapitulates in 1:1-2: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And with His antagonists on the verge of exploding, Jesus drops this bomb on them which carries a double implication. First, that although they claimed God as their Father (verse 41), they did not know Him at all, because there He was standing in front of them and they reviled Him and condemned Him as demon-possessed. Second, Jesus Himself is that self-same God in the flesh, for, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:6). The God of creation, the God of Abraham, the God of the Exodus, He was saying, stands in front of you as the fulfillment of the Scriptures, to bring about the Scripture’s promised redemption, victory, and recreation of Israel.

Parenthetically, sermon auditors should have their imaginations enlivened by the quick-moving drama of the text, in its full intensity and impassioned interchange, to envision expressions of shock and horror on the faces of Jesus’ antagonists.

That was it. It was a word too much, a bridge too far. The pot had boiled over, and the infuriated mob commits to action with rocks and stones. Kill Him. Kill Him now. 

However, John slips in this one decisive word: But. It is a strong adversative, announcing the story is not going to end here. It is not the mob, but rather Jesus who is in control. Jesus, not the crowd, has a destiny to fulfill, although yes, it will bring Him into a face-to-face confrontation with crowds, Temple authorities, demons, and climatically death itself. Put differently, John says, yes, that was intense but follow the story and its escalations because it will lead to a moment of maximal intensity in which you emerge in the drama. He is betrayed by Judas, your brother. He is condemned by a mob that includes your voice. He is condemned, beaten, and scourged not for His own high treason and sins, but in fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah, he was wounded for your transgressions. He was crushed for your iniquities and from the ultimate intensification of His blood atonement on Golgotha comes His cry of dereliction: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” He is given into death for you. He accomplishes perfect obedience for you. He propitiates your sins, and the Lord has laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all so that the chastisement upon Him brings you peace. With His stripes, you are healed. You have been washed in His blood and are a new creation. You are forgiven.

The intensity of John 8 drives us to the crucifixion of Jesus the Son. Here, all of us look up to His mangled, blood-soaked body under the darkness of the skies and the forbidding judgment of Almighty God, as the shock and horror deigns upon us that it is our sins, our fault He hangs there. As we finally begin to grasp how we warrant such a death and eternal death as more, all the intensity, all the tension, is instantly shattered when He speaks these words from the throne to which He is nailed: “Father, forgive them.” Now an entirely new kind of welcome intensification rushes in, bringing relief and peace. This is because, in fact, you are forgiven, so says the King.

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[1] “Pro nobis” is Latin for “for us.”

[2] “Theatrum salutis” means “theater (or forum) of salvation” in Latin.

^[3] See David Morgan, Ed. Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Salmon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

^[4] N.T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (London: SPCK, 2002), 129.

^[5] Ibid., 130.

^[6] The contrast between the verbs “before his existence/I existed” is unmistakable. It repeats the same contrast and significance of Psalm 90:2: “Before the mountains came into being... from age to age, O God, You are.” Generations of biblical scholars, such as Graham Stanton and S.R. Driver, have pointed out that the Greek declaration used by Jesus (εγω ειμι), “I, even I am,” is the equivalent of the Hebrew declaration by God the Father at the burning bush: “I am,” which is also the self-designation of Yahweh throughout the writings of the prophets. The upshot of this was not missed by Jesus’ opponents. The fact that they attempted to stone Jesus to death after hearing the words “I am” shows they understood Jesus was taking on Himself the divine name so translated in the LXX, Exodus 3:14, where God disclosed to Moses the holy title by which the Hebrews were to call Him. It is clear Jesus offers here a one-to-one identification with the timeless being of the deity revealed at Creation and during the historic event of the Exodus.