Palm Sunday
Confirmation of Jessie and Jonah.
April 4, 2004
John 12:37-43.

The Power to Confess Your Faith.

  How important is it to be accepted, appreciated and even praised at home, at school and at work? Has peer pressure ever kept you from doing or saying what is right, or caused you to do or say something wrong? Has it ever kept you from admitting or confessing your faith in Christ? I’m sure it has. We have all succumbed to peer pressure. A group’s demand for conformity can be overwhelming; it can exert amazing social and economic pressure that can literally crush a person.

  For example, an old fable tells about an elderly man who was traveling with a boy and a donkey. As they walked through a village, the man was leading the donkey and the boy was walking behind. The townspeople said the old man was a fool for not riding, so to please them he climbed up on the animal’s back. When they came to the next village, the people said the old man was cruel to let the child walk while he enjoyed the ride. So, to please them, he got off and set the boy on the animal’s back and continued on his way. In the third village, people accused the child of being lazy for making the old man walk, and the suggestion was made that they both ride. So the man climbed on and they set off again. In the fourth village, the townspeople were indignant at the cruelty to the donkey because he was made to carry two people. The frustrated man was last seen carrying the donkey down the road.

  Do you ever feel like your carrying a donkey on your shoulders? Wouldn’t it be great to have the power to resist peer pressure? Wouldn’t it be great to feel so confident about Jesus that we never shied away from openly and gladly confessing our faith in him? Our Gospel lesson offers some good news! We will have the courage and power to openly confess Jesus once we have seen his glory. Once we have known Jesus and the power of his resurrection, nothing else compares. That glory gives us the power to confess our faith!

  John has recounted several signs Jesus performed and a good deal of his teaching. Now before he tells us of Jesus’ passion and resurrection he makes an important observation about so many of the people who had seen and heard Jesus.

  ³⁷Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him. ³⁸This was to fulfill the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “Lord, who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” ³⁹And so they could not believe, because Isaiah also said, ⁴⁰“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they might not look with their eyes, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.” ⁴¹Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him. ⁴²Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; ⁴³for they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God. (John 12:37-43. NRS).

  Here were some Jewish leaders with a donkey on their back! They were afraid to say that they believed that Jesus was the Messiah or Saviour for whom the Jews had been waiting. They were afraid because the Pharisees had already decided that Jesus was not the Messiah. Therefore they decreed that anyone who confessed Jesus as the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That is, such a person would be black-balled, discredited and excluded from normal social life. It meant that people would no longer do business with you, call on you and the like. If permanent, it meant that you were no longer part of the Jewish people and so no longer had a part in the age to come. No wonder that people became secret believers of Jesus, afraid to say anything. No wonder it seemed like only the riffraff of society, some fishermen, the sinners and tax collectors openly followed Jesus. They were often already excommunicated and had nothing to loose!

  Perhaps we can sympathize with these men, because they did not yet have the ultimate proof that Jesus was the Son of God. I mean of course the resurrection and then the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. They hadn’t yet seen the power and glory that way outweighed the Pharisees’ threats. Yet it wasn’t just a matter of the fear of being wrong about Jesus and suffering social, religious and economic consequences. John says that the real problem was that they loved human glory more than the glory that comes from God. In other words, they were fully human like you and me. They valued a good reputation among their peers more than having God’s approval. It was more important to be praised by people—whom they could see—than by God—whom they could not see.

  We can also sympathize with these men because we carry our own donkey. We have our own Pharisees who ridicule faith in Christ and who will do what they can to force us to give up that faith. It usually hits us in a subtle way. It’s not so much faith in Christ that is censured as it is the positions that result from that faith. For example, a university professor or scientist who admits that he believes in creation will almost certainly face ridicule. He will risk loosing his place and most often his research will not be published. “Publish or perish!” is the rule, so it’s often easier to keep quiet under such pressure. A politician who says too much against same-sex marriage risks being charged with hate crimes. That can land you in jail! Again it’s often easier to keep quiet than try to carry that beast on your back!

  I’m sure you can think of other examples, moments in your life, when you have been afraid to confess faith in Christ or to support one of his teachings. We too are guilty of loving human glory more than the glory that comes from God. God has a right to be angry with us.

  But there is a way to get this donkey off our back! Besides these leaders who were afraid to confess their belief in Jesus, there were others who just outright rejected him. John says that this fulfilled something the prophet Isaiah had said. Listen to the passage from Isaiah.

  In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. ²Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. ³And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." ⁴The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. ⁵And I said: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" ⁶Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. ⁷The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." ⁸Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!" ⁹And he said, "Go and say to this people: 'Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.' ¹⁰Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed." ¹¹Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; ¹²until the LORD sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land. (Isaiah 6:1-12).

  Isaiah had a vision of God on the throne. God’s glory terrified him! Then one of the angels touched his lips with a burning coal and took away his guilt and sin. And then, God sent him on a very difficult mission. Isaiah had to go to his people with the one message they didn’t want to hear. If they didn’t give up idolatry and stop making military alliances with foreign powers—alliances that always involved reception of foreign gods, then God was going to send them into exile. How could Isaiah do such a thing? How could he have the courage to face the king of Israel and his army and tell them what they didn’t want to hear?

  Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke about him. Having seen God’s glory, and having had his guilt and sin removed, the fear of people was gone. The donkey of peer pressure was off his back! John implies that Isaiah saw Jesus’ glory and so spoke about Jesus. That’s because John already knows who Jesus is. He began his Gospel with these words. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.(John 1:1, 14a). God’s glory is Jesus’ glory because Jesus is God. So Isaiah had the power and the courage to speak a message that people didn’t want to hear, because he saw Jesus’ glory.

  The New Testament gives us an almost identical example in Paul. He, a devout Pharisee, persecuted the church until the day Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Then, having seen Jesus’ glory and having been baptized to wash away his sin, he too had to speak. He became an ambassador for Christ, proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, even though this now made him the object of persecution. His old friends tried to lynch him more than once.

  Isaiah and Paul show us, not how to take the donkey of peer pressure off our own back, but how God takes it off our back. He shows us Jesus’ glory! Not in a vision, like Isaiah and Paul, but like hundreds of millions before us, through his Word. There we see the man born of a virgin, who performed amazing miracles and spoke like no man ever spoke. We see the man who told the people that he would die and rise again on the third day. We see this Jesus who took responsibility for our sin, suffered a horrible crucifixion for it, and then rose the third day just as he said, just as Isaiah said! He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6).

  That is the glory we see, the glory of one who died for you and for me. And rather than carry a donkey on our back, we now carry Jesus and his glory. At our Baptism, we were joined to Christ, baptized into his death and resurrection. In Holy Communion we receive his body and blood. He has even put his Spirit in us as a guarantee that he will raise us from the dead and give us eternal life. We don’t just see Jesus’ glory off in the distance; we carry it in our body!

  Like Isaiah and Paul, we have seen Jesus’ glory. The donkey is gone; the fear of confessing Jesus is gone! Not because you and I are so great, the trend setters of the world, but because we know that no glory of the created world compares with the glory of Christ. At the name of Jesus every knee will bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11). That pretty much takes the wind out of everyone’s sails! Whether a peer group at school, my employer or colleagues at work, or the government itself, they will all one day confess Jesus Christ as Lord. So I need not fear doing it now and showing them the way!

  In just a few minutes, Jessie and Jonah will confess their faith in Jesus and their intent to maintain that confession even in the face of death. They will thus confirm the grace of their Baptism. In invite you to join them in that good confession. That is perhaps not so hard here in the safe confines of the Church. But outside these walls, at school and at work, it will be more difficult. So make it your priority to use the means of grace that he has given you. Read and hear his Word; remember your Baptism; partake frequently of Holy Communion. Through those means, you will see Jesus’ glory and have the power to confess his name.