Beeson podcast, Episode 333 https://www.beesondivinity.com/podcast/2017/The-God-Who-Kneels Doug Webster March 28, 2017 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Well, this is the week in the podcast series when we get to hear a preacher, and the preacher we get to hear today is our own colleague Dr. Doug Webster. You know, I'll never forget, Dr. Smith, the first time I ever heard Dr. Webster preach. He was then the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in San Diego, California. I happened to be in the city for a meeting. We went to church on Sunday morning, and what a powerful sermon. It was on the Trinity. Dr. Smith: My, my. Timothy George: I thought how can a Presbyterian preacher preach on the Trinity in a way that’s so engaging? Well, since then, I've heard Dr. Webster preach many times because he is Professor of Pastoral Theology and Christian Preaching right here at Beeson, our beloved colleague and friend. We're going to hear a sermon that he preached in our chapel, Hodges Chapel, on John 13 called, “The God Who Kneels.” Tell us about it. Dr. Smith: Dr. Webster is a pulpit scholar who preaches and does theology in the pulpit. His passion builds, and it is carried out throughout the entire sermon. However, his passion is not because of extroversion. No, it's because the text has been illuminated within his own mind and, therefore, it's something that has consumed him. He develops this sermon around four tensions which he calls four fault lines: our familiar reading of the text and John's intended meaning; Judas' betrayal and Peter's denial; the humiliation of Christ and the incarnation; and the exaltation of Christ in the resurrection, ascension, and enthronement. Finally, the familiar interpretation of the text, which he's performing corrective surgery on. I think that he is acting like a person who is a cameraman. He is picturing frame by frame the scenes in John 13. The interpretation of the scenes and taking and re-correcting our misperceived thoughts and notions about it. I like his knee-ology. He says that we have to see that God is God who comes to us on the knees, and the proper posture for us is to be on our knees like shepherds and Magi, et cetera, and finally one day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. He's challenging popular apologetics who wants a God who is not on his knees, a God of power, because that reflects what we really want. We want to be people of power, et cetera, but he closes, Dean George, with a powerful remark, and it is this, that gives praise to God, that Jesus took on God's forsakenness that we may not have to ever experience it. It's a powerful message that speaks to us in terms of the kind of ministerial posture that we must have and be on our knees before God, who has already bent his knees for us. Timothy George: A God-forsaken Savior who died in our place- Dr. Smith: Yes, sir. Timothy George: ... so we would not be forsaken. Dr. Smith: Absolutely. Timothy George: It's a wonderful sermon. Tension in the text, that’s the theme of so much of Dr. Webster's- Dr. Smith: Absolutely. Timothy George: ... work, and you'll hear it in this wonderful sermon preached in Hodges Chapel, “The God Who Kneels.” Let's listen. Doug Webster: Will you turn with me in God's Word to the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John. We had a discussion in pastoral theology not too long ago as to the importance of vestments and what vestments signify. In the Presbyterian tradition, sometimes pastors will wear a Geneva robe, a black robe, sometimes with a shawl or not. But I always see that as the black robe covering up the pastor and pointing to the authority of God's Word. For my preference, though, probably the best vestment pointing to the authority of God's Word is a tattered Bible, your own personal Bible that you cart with you when you listen to God's Word preached. I think that may be the best vestment that speaks of a church's understanding of the Word. Now, John 13 is a great text describing ministry of the believer, and I especially think it's a great text for those of you who will in just a few weeks be graduating. There's about 20 of you. And so this is your pre-graduation commencement address, John 13. It comes at a pivotal point in the Gospel of John. The 12th chapter of the Gospel of John ends Jesus's public ministry. It ends on kind of a negative note. Jesus quotes from the prophet Isaiah about unbelief. It's almost as if he's wrestling with the lack of response to all of the signs that have been delivered and all of the preaching that has been given. His presence has not invoked the response that should have been, and there is a hardness of heart and he turns to the prophet Isaiah to explain this unbelief. So he's wrestling on several levels with the purpose of the Father's will, and in the 12th chapter we read, "Now is my soul troubled and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose, I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name, and then a voice came from heaven, 'I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.'" But then in the explanation of the lack of belief, this unbelief, having turned to the prophet Isaiah, in Verse 43 it concludes on this note, "For they love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God." We come to the Upper Room and this celebration of a meal that has a lot of Passover characteristics to it. What we must not do, though, is take this text and kind of lift it up, this illustration of Jesus on bended knee washing the disciples' feet, as simply a really great story of a wonderful man condescending to do something nice. This is not about a great man doing something nice for people that were lower in status than he was. And yet, this is a text that’s been pulled out in a corporate world to show that. There are four fault lines in this text that I see. The first is between our familiar reading of the text and John's intended meaning, by the spirit of this teaching and illustration from the life of Christ. Our familiar reading and God's intended meaning. The second fault line is between the doctrine of the atonement and the praxis of discipleship. These two are woven together here in this text in a remarkable way. The third is the fault line between Judas's betrayal and Peter's denial. The fourth is between the humiliation and the exaltation of God. The familiar interpretation of the text. I heard a very sincere pastor use this text as an illustration of loving ministry. He did a great job of working out the Near Eastern custom of the need to wash people's feet before they reclined to sit at the dinner table. And he, I think, captured really well the scene of kind of embarrassment, of arrogance, of the disciples not willing, any one of them, to humble themselves in order to prepare the whole group to partake of the Supper. And he made a really good observation that Jesus didn’t need to be needed. Sometimes our ministries flow out of the need to be needed. Jesus didn’t need to be needed. Then, to illustrate his point of loving service, he said it's like a senior high, high school girl who humbles herself to look after that girl that nobody respects. Then, he kind of backed into the tension of the text by saying, now I couldn’t say a junior high girl or a middle school girl because the moment that she would humble herself to help out the estranged girl that nobody liked, she would immediately become as unpopular as the unpopular girl. Well, you see, I think that gets right at the heart. Jesus does something here that the disciples do not respect him for but struggled to understand why on earth he would do this. That gets us to this doctrine of the atonement and the praxis of discipleship. Now notice how John sets the scene. There are six ways that he says this is not just a great illustration of somebody humbling themselves to help somebody else out. Now, before the Feast of the Passover, and who does John see Jesus to be? The Passover Lamb. Goes right back to, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." When Jesus knew that his hour, his kairos timing ... And you know this is patterned right through the Gospel, isn't it? The hour. This kairos moment has now arrived, this grace-filled, God-appointed, God sovereign, working, redemptive moment has come. Jesus knowing that the hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own. I see this love as the third feature of this in-depth, theological understanding of the act that is about to be performed. Loving his own who were in the world, He loved them to the end, and here's one of those joint ___ double meanings: loved them to the utmost and loved them to the end.] ___ going in both ways, the fullness of the act of love and that eschatological understanding of the completeness of it. “During supper, when the devil” ... How easy it is in a moralistic interpretation of the text to ride quickly over the devil, but it's the Passover, it's the hour, it's the everlasting eternal fullness of God's love, and it's the devil. The principalities and powers and rulers of darkness are present here. The devil is seducing and inducing Judas to do something that is anti-human. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him. And Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going back to God rose from the Supper. I just want you to catch the significance of the deliberate act. That the self-understanding, knowing what the Father, knowing the relationship with the Father, that he had come from the Father and was going to the Father, that that self-understanding is absolutely critical to the self-sacrifice. You and I will be able to function as disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, bearing our cross, if we know who we are in Christ. But if life is a forever identity search and an identity crisis and a constant need for adoration or for some kind of commendation or some kind of note that we are significant, then we will always live in that difficulty of struggle over sacrifice. All of this theology is so crucial to the ethic that follows, the self-understanding in relationship to the self-sacrifice. And finally, he laid aside his outer garments. He laid aside his outer garments. Now you cannot just take this word as casual, because it points us back to John 10 and the lesson on the Good Shepherd. Laid aside his outer garment? "I am the Good Shepherd and the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I lay down my life for the sheep. For this reason, the Father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again." That laying off or laying aside ties in with this, the shepherd that lays down his life for the sheep. The church has always seen the Christ hymn of Philippians 2 closely connected to John 13, and while in the Greek there's not a lot of verbal similarities between the two, thematically it's very close. He lays aside his clothes. He laid aside his divine nature. He takes a towel and wraps it around him. He takes the form of a slave. He humbled himself and washed the disciples' feet. He humbled himself and became obedient to death. When he finished, he returned to his place. When he finished, God exalted him to the highest place. "You call me Teacher and Lord and rightly so. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." These two are so closely knit together. The deliberate act. He lays aside his outer garments. He takes a towel, he ties it around his waist. He pours water into a basin. I find it striking because there's so many details of this Upper Room experience that we don’t know, but John deliberately takes each phase of that as if now there's a still shot, and a still shot, and a still shot, and a still shot so that you and I see this. He poured water in a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He's on his knees, but it doesn’t say he's on his knees, does it? But you just can't do this without being on your knees. You can't just stoop over and do it. You’ve got to get down and do it. The shepherds were on their knees. The Magi were on their knees. Peter with that great catch of fish fell to his knees and said, "Depart from me for I'm a sinful man." The woman who snuck into Simon the Pharisee's home, on her knees with her tears washing the feet of Jesus and wiping his feet with her hair. In just a few hours, Pilate's troops will be on their knees in mockery of Jesus. They will have put a crown of thorns on his head. They will have had him hold a staff, a shepherd's staff, which will count as his scepter, and they will beat him and they will get on their knees to mock him. Jesus is on his knees, holding in his hand the dirty feet of the disciples, knowing that he came from the Father, and he who made feet now cleaned feet. He came to Simon Peter, and it's interesting. Augustine on this text, he has to argue at this point that Peter was the first disciple to be washed. I don’t think so. The text does not imply that, because he's washing the disciples' feet and he comes to Peter. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, do you wash my feet?" Now I would love to have known the tone of this question. This is the common sense question. Don’t you love working in a divinity school that has no common sense reason for existence? There is no worldly reason for your existence here at Beeson Divinity School. We cannot get there by common sense. We can only get there by divine revelation. If Christ has not been raised from the dead, if the resurrection is not real, then there's absolutely no point to your education whatsoever. Peter's trying to work this out commonsensically, and it's not going to work that way. Peter, as you know, he had a firm grasp by the power of the Spirit of God as to the identity of Jesus. In Matthew 16, we have that critical passage where Jesus has been asking the disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" and then, "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter responds, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God," and Jesus responds, "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." And then moments later, moments later while Jesus is explaining his route to the cross, Peter speaks up and says, "Never, Lord," and rebukes. He gets the confession right, but he doesn’t get the commitment right. That is so typical of us. We get the confession right, but we struggle over the commitment and what that looks like. Popular apologetics struggles with a God who kneels and a God who's going to work out his plan of salvation on his knees and at the cross. Popular leadership struggles with a Jesus on his knees. We so quickly want to aspire to a position of power, to a position of prestige, to a position where the world will respect us. God did not design it that way. Scott Rodin in 2001 stepped down from the presidency of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary after five years. He said, "The idea of leadership that I had going into this position has been radically transformed." He said, "When I went in, I felt well-prepared, well-gifted, ready to take this, feeling very much that it was God's call in my life. I claimed what Nathan said to David when David wanted to build the temple, 'What's in your mind, God wants you to do.'" But he said, "Now, after five years, I claim that line in Philippians 2 in the King James Version that "Jesus made of himself no reputation." We struggle with this in a very honorific culture. The South is a very honorific culture. We struggle with the look of what it would be like to really follow the Lord Jesus without the compliments, without the praise, without the lifting up, but instead, the laying aside. We struggle with that. May each one of you and I join in that struggle to be comfortable, as it were, on our knees, knowing who we are in Christ, the self-understanding, establishing the self-sacrifice. The fault line between the familiar reading, John's intended reading, between the divine atonement and the praxis of discipleship. In Verse 12, you’ve got a sermon that’s given, and this is where I think you cannot take the illustration without the text. In Verse 12, when he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, "Do you understand what I've done for you?" Now he had earlier just sort of said in Verse 7, "What I'm doing, you're not going to understand." Now, in Verse 12, he said, "Well, do you understand what I've done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet for I have given you an example that you should do just as I have done." Not a right but an example. Luther was very big on this, "For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him." We who are academics also need to understand here that there's no way in the study we can escape the call to do this kind of ministry. None of us can. None of us can claim a position or a calling or a task that evades this kind of on our knees, handling the dirty feet, ministry person to person. All of this should really govern how we teach. Twelve times Jesus uses the first person, and this is what I find so striking is that the deliberate act in the light of his identity, leading to self-sacrifice, and then when he finishes washing the disciples' feet, he puts on his clothes, his outer garment back on. He takes his position and then he teaches. This is what we struggle with, this combination of authority and humility. But where you have a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have, as Niebuhr would say, "this humble pride, this proud humility." This is a humility that will not bow the knee to Baal, will not bow the knee to Caesar, but kneeling has to do with what will respect the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the cleansing, the soul deep-cleansing that is needed. This is what he explains to Peter, "You need this cleansing." What an interesting analogy that Jesus would draw between washing the disciples' feet and this whole history of cleansing. And nothing can be cleansed apart from the blood, "What shall wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." This soul deep-cleansing, this atonement and this discipleship woven together so that theology and ethics can hardly be parted. I'm going to rush to my fourth fault line. There is a third, the betrayal of Judas and the denial of Peter, and that may be another message. I want to get to the fourth, the humiliation and the exaltation of God. Sometimes we are inclined to separate the theology of the cross from the theology of glory, but John doesn’t allow us to do that very easily because glory is found in the cross. Glory is found upon Jesus on his knees. Glory is found in the giving of the new commandment, that you would love one another. As Augustine said, "Well, you know, we all love. Husbands love wives. Parents love children. Adulterers love adulteresses." What makes this a new commandment? Haven't we been told from the beginning to love God with all our heart, mind, strength, and soul? Haven't we been told to love our neighbor as ourselves? What makes this a new commandment? Exactly this, that "You are to love," Jesus says, "as I have loved you." You know, we sometimes struggle with that line in the Sermon on the Mount, "To be perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect." Well, I think this is an equally extreme statement, to love as Jesus loved. That’s how we are to love one another. “The Word that was made flesh dwelled among us and we beheld his glory,” the glory that takes in the deliberate act of a Satan-induced betrayal by Judas, a glory that takes in, oh, that very typical weakness of a Peter denial, the glory that takes in the new commandment to love as Christ would have us love. In Verse 31, look at these words with me. With this, we'll come to our conclusion. "When he had gone out, Jesus said, 'Now, now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.'" That glory extends right from moment one of the incarnation, right through the resurrection and to the ascension and beyond. That glory extends in every aspect of the life that God has called us to live in the light of his truth and his glory. One of the things I like so much about this passage is that you can find your ministry somewhere on the continuum between washing feet and dying as a martyr on the cross, and the whole thing is the Passion narrative. The Passion narrative has begun with God on his knees, washing the disciples' feet. And to me, that sanctifies and makes significant those acts which maybe the world would find totally trivial, but in the eyes of God are so significant. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. And God has laid on him, God has laid on him the iniquity of us all. This is where the text takes us to the Table, where the humiliation and the exaltation of God so conjoined to speak of this truth that is so revolutionary for us in every aspect of our being. There are three rejections here. There is Judas's anti-human rejection of Jesus. There is Peter's rejection which is so typical of our weakness, of our timidity, of our lack of courage to follow. But then there is the Father's rejection for the sin of humanity, and that’s what's troubling Jesus' soul more than anything else, that God-forsakenness. But Jesus took upon himself the Father's rejection and that God-forsakenness so that you and I would never, ever, ever, ever experience that God-forsakenness. Amen. Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational, evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast. beeson-podcast-episode-333-webster-sermon Page 11 of 11 Need Help? mailto:support@rev.com Get this transcript with table formatting