Unity In God’s Family

In our country’s history we’ve tended to value what’s been called “rugged individualism.” Each person should strive to work hard and take care of their own responsibilities. This has been a very helpful thing for our country. But this rugged individualism is misunderstood if we see community as a threat to it. Rugged individualism and communal thinking should go hand in hand and support each other. Consider a nuclear family. On the one hand, we could focus on an individual family member and what sorts of responsibilities they have. So, for example, a mom with small children may have various tasks she works to get done each day at the house. But on the other hand, we could focus on how the family members relate with one another and work together. Here we could look at that same mom and say that she also spends time with her children, teaches them to do various things by letting them help her, and perhaps has a job in the community to help provide for the family. In our lives we have our more individual and private aspects and we have our more communal aspects.

Such thoughts can help us understand our text from the Gospel of John better. In our text we have an important discussion of Jesus amidst the festival of Hanukkah. I’ve mentioned to you numerous times that I believe that holy week in John largely has Hanukkah as its context. Holy week focuses especially on the work of Jesus in distinction from the other two divine persons, the Father and the Spirit. But our text this morning is from the time shortly before holy week. Here there seems to be more of an emphasis on community and the Father, Son, and Spirit working together. For example, in John 6 through John 12 there is a clear movement from Passover at the beginning of the Jewish year to the Feast of Tabernacles at the middle of the Jewish year to Hanukkah at the end of the year. These feasts come in rapid succession so that we are encouraged to compare them to one another. Certain themes from one feast also have echoes in the other feasts. This ultimately points to the Father, Son, and Spirit working together amidst the feasts. There is a family feel to the feasts and there is a family feel to the Father, Son, and Spirit who are working with God’s people through the feasts. Here the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Spirit opens up so that we can share in it as well through the power of the Spirit. We’ll entitle the sermon this morning The Unity of God’s Family.

In previous sermons on our text I’ve emphasized how Jesus relates to Feast of Hanukkah in our text, and I won’t spend too much time rehashing that with you now. Simply put, in the Jewish calendar, Passover celebrated the beginning of the nation of Israel with the exodus out of Egypt, Tabernacles celebrated the daily journey of Israel in this world, and Hanukkah celebrated the final destination of Israel. Concerning Hanukkah, the destination of Israel was the promised land, which was centered in Jerusalem and the Jerusalem temple. Consider a first portion of our text:

At that time the Feast of Dedication [or Hanukkah] took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon.

Here Hanukkah and the temple are closely associated with each other, and Jesus seems poised to fulfill them both. As the text continues, we further see a connection with Hanukkah. Here Jesus is being persecuted. This recalls the events of Hanukkah. For in the second century BC Israel was persecuted both by the pagan general Antiochus Epiphanes as well as by certain people within Israel who treacherously sided with the invaders. The height of this persecution was the desecration of the temple. Returning to our text, Jesus is now the new Israel and the new temple who is being persecuted. The final part of our text especially struck me as I prepared this sermon. Here Jesus says,

My Father, who has given [my sheep] to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.

What do these verses have to do with what Jesus has been talking about? What do they have to do with Hanukkah and with the idea of Jesus being persecuted like the Israelites of old? I believe the answer to this question can be found in our discussion from earlier in the sermon. The great feasts in Jewish calendar were connected to one another. Passover celebrated the beginning of the Jewish nation, but Passover would not be completely fulfilled until Israel came into the promised land and worshiped at the temple, events that Hanukkah celebrates. Similarly, Israel never would have been able to worship at the temple and celebrate Hanukkah if it had not first been freed from slavery in connection with Passover. To put it simply, Passover is incomplete without Hanukkah to finish it, and Hanukkah has no foundation without Passover. And ultimately these things point us to the greater reality of the Trinity. Our heavenly Father created this world and showed his faithfulness to the world through freeing the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. But these things remained incomplete until the appearing of the Son. Jesus as the new temple and the new promised land had to be persecuted and attacked by our sins in order to pay for them and through his resurrection give us eternal life. What was begun by the Father had to be completed by the Son, and what the Son completed never would have been possible if it weren’t for the beginning brought about by the Father. I believe this is what Jesus means when he says, “I and the Father are one.” It points to the fact that the Father and Jesus are working together for our salvation. Their work has to be a unity, each of their vocations requires the other. In this way there was Unity in God’s Family