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Mar 01, 2020

The Real Question

The Real Question

Passage: John 18:28-38

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: House Calls

We all know what it is to long for healing of various kinds--of physical afflictions to be sure, but more than that of deeper inner unrest. Often Jesus styles himself as a healer, asking “what do you want me to do for you?” But that question is in service to a greater one He puts before us all. We begin Lent near the end of the season’s storyline: when Jesus appears before a cynical Roman governor in a clunky but pivotal exchange that gets to that more fundamental question in which we’re to find our deepest healing.

Order of Worship

PRE SERVICE: John 1:9-14
CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 84:1-3; 145:1
OLD TESTAMENT READING: Isaiah 59:12-20
PASTORAL PRAYER, concluding with The Lord’s Prayer
CENTRAL TEXT: John 18:28-38a
MESSAGE: The Real Question
BENEDICTION: 1 Timothy 1:17

03.01.2020 Slides

Illustrations

Justin Bieber - Who Jesus Is

Readings & Scripture

PRE SERVICE: John 1:9-14
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 84:1-3; 145:1
LEADER: How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
2 My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.

PEOPLE: Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my King and my God.
ALL: I will extol you, my God and King,
and bless your name forever and ever.

OLD TESTAMENT READING: Isaiah 59:12-20
For our transgressions are multiplied before you,
and our sins testify against us;
for our transgressions are with us,
and we know our iniquities:
13 transgressing, and denying the LORD,
and turning back from following our God,
speaking oppression and revolt,
conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.
14 Justice is turned back,
and righteousness stands far away;
for truth has stumbled in the public squares,
and uprightness cannot enter.
15 Truth is lacking,
and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
The LORD saw it, and it displeased him
that there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no man,
and wondered that there was no one to intercede;
then his own arm brought him salvation,
and his righteousness upheld him.
17 He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
and a helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on garments of vengeance for clothing,
and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.
18 According to their deeds, so will he repay,
wrath to his adversaries, repayment to his enemies;
to the coastlands he will render repayment.
19 So they shall fear the name of the LORD from the west,
and his glory from the rising of the sun;
for he will come like a rushing stream,
which the wind of the LORD drives.

20 “And a Redeemer will come to Zion,
to those in Jacob who turn from transgression,” declares the LORD.


PASTORAL PRAYER, concluding with The Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father, who are in heaven,
Hallowed be your Name.
Your Kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth, As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom, The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.

CENTRAL TEXT: John 18:28-38a
Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor’s headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover. 29 So Pilate went outside to them and said, “What accusation do you bring against this man?” 30 They answered him, “If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.” 31 Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” 32 This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

John 18:33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” 35 Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.

BENEDICTION: 1 Timothy 1:17
LEADER: To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever..
PEOPLE: Amen

Related Scriptures

  • Mark 3:13-15
  • John 1:9-14
  • John 8:32; 14:6; 17:17
  • John 11:49-50; 18:14

MEDIA

InView Media Album 03.01.2020

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Think for a minute: trace the development over time of how you’ve understood who Jesus is. (Though maybe that’s been a consistent thought for as long as you remember!) If there was development, what moments or experience (or otherwise) prompted new thoughts about Him? What’s at risk in having distorted images of Him?
  2. Venture a guess: why do you think Pontius Pilate, of all people, is included in the Apostles Creed?
  3. There are several ironies--words or actions in direct contrast to what one would expect--in this dawn encounter. What are some? Why might have John seen fit to include some of those ironic details? Of all the ironies you find which most stands out?
  4. What might C.S. Lewis have meant by saying the first sin was a “turning of God to self”? Why might that be so? What follows from such a turn? How does Jesus’s characterization of Himself mean to turn us back from that sin?
  5. In “testifying to the truth” is Jesus an embodiment of the truth or in submission to it?
  6. We can only speculate what Pilate meant by his question “what is truth?” What might he have meant? Why might he have thought so? How might he sound like someone today?
  7. How is what we learn of Jesus meant to offer both rest for us and direction to us?

Quotes

If we were never alone or always too busy,
Perhaps we might even believe what we know is not true:
But no one is taken in, at least not all of the time;
In our bath, or the subway, or in the middle of the night,
We know very well we are not unlucky but evil,
That the dream of a Perfect State or No State at all,
To which we fly for refuge, is a part of our punishment.
Let us therefore be contrite but without anxiety,
For Powers and Times are not gods but mortal gifts from God;
Let us acknowledge our defeats but without despair,
For all societies and epochs are transient details,
Transmitting an everlasting opportunity
That the Kingdom of Heaven may come, not in our present
And not in our future, but in the Fullness of Time.
Let us pray.
W.H. Auden, For The Time Being; A Christmas Oratorio

Rabbi Ben: It’s a fundamental difference in the way we view the world. You see it as harsh and empty of values and pitiless. And I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t feel it with all my heart a moral structure, with real meaning, and forgiveness, and a higher power, otherwise there’s no basis to live. . . .It’s a human life. You don’t think God sees? Judah: God is a luxury I can’t afford. - From Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors

The mere existence of a self—the mere fact that we call it ‘me’—includes, from the first, the danger of self-idolatry. Since I am I, I must make an act of self-surrender, however small or however easy, in living to God rather than to myself. - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

The genius of cynicism is that it is a voice in your ear [that] does not usually hang around long enough to be interviewed. It is usually expressed in innuendos, passing remarks, moods, cartoons, hints, insinuations, unacknowledged assumptions, and jokes. - Dick Keyes, Seeing through Cynicism

Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right. - Abraham Lincoln

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. - C.S. Lewis

A church too wedded to its own age will find itself a widow in the age to come. - William Temple

There is no politics that isn’t ultimately religious. . . .Our most revolutionary political act is to hope. - James K.A. Smith, Awaiting the King

. . .Christians in the latter decades of the twentieth century focused on politics as the best way to enact cultural change, dedicating much time, energy, and money toward that end. It’s not clear, however, that cultural change works the way those Christians assumed it did. Too often, they prioritized politics to the neglect of other formative cultural institutions and the callings of everyday Christians to engage in those institutions.
- Kristen Deede Johnson (citing the thought of James Davison Hunter) in the soon to be published book Uncommon Ground (download the introduction!)

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.
- from T.S. Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday”

BOOKS / DOCS

Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies, David Koyzis

SERMONS / TALKS