A sermon on John 13:31-35 and Acts 11:1-18 by Nathan Nettleton

One of the lines in the Bible that most makes my heart skip a beat with eager longing is the line “Well done good and faithful servant.” It wasn’t in our readings tonight, but in one of Jesus’s parables, and he uses it to evoke an image of somebody being publicly commended by God for a job well done or a life well lived. It is about having one’s worth affirmed by God. The craving to hear such affirmations of our worth goes back to early childhood, and it is there in all of us, but those of us who didn’t receive much of it from our parents as children crave it all the more deeply. After many years of wondering what it was about certain sporting moments that brought a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye, I realised that it was this. It is that moment of triumph when a reputation is made in front of everyone, believers and doubters alike. The moment when the Olympic marathon runners, burning with pain, burst into the stadium and a hundred thousand people rise to their feet in acclamation does it to me every time. And my most recent experience of it wasn’t even a person, but horse. It was Black Caviar’s final race. Because she was from Melbourne, the Sydney crowds have always been a bit dismissive of her reputed greatness, suggesting that she had mostly run against sub-standard opposition, but her final race was in Sydney and against Sydney’s best, and as she surged to the front and left them in her wake as she always did, the race caller, Gerard Whateley, cried, “Believe, Sydney, believe!” It’s the reputation thing. It’s the longing for a moment when, however many people have dismissed us and put us down and ridiculed us and written us off, God calls us out in front of everyone and says, “You are my beloved child, and with you I am well pleased. Well done good and faithful servant.”

Now the reason I’m bringing this up is that this issue of reputation is front and centre in two of our readings tonight. In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard Peter explaining what happened in the house of Cornelius, but the reason that he’s explaining it is because his reputation has been challenged. It says, “the circumcised believers criticised him, saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’” He’s being accused of doing the wrong thing, of behaving disreputably. I’ll come back to that, but first let’s look at our gospel reading. The most obvious comment about reputation is when Jesus says, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Or in other words, “It is your love for one another that will make or break your reputation as my disciples.”

But our gospel reading had more to say about reputations than that. It is a bit hidden in the usual translations though, so it is easy to miss. In the opening verses, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.” But as the theologian James Allison has pointed out, the Greek word that is being translated “glory” there is the word “doxa”. It doesn’t really have an exact English equivalent, but its basic meaning is “opinion” or “reputation”. So listen to Jesus’ words again if I retranslate them accordingly:

When Judas had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man’s reputation is made, and in him, God’s reputation is made too. If God’s reputation has gone through the roof because of him, God will publicly shower him with honours and establish his reputation at once.”

So Jesus is talking here about his own reputation and God’s public reputation, and the relationship between them. He is saying that what he does reflects on God, and that God will act to establish or restore Jesus’s reputation. And, of course, Jesus’s reputation is no small issue in the overall story of his life and death. Notice the relationship between the word “reputation” and the word “reputable” and then of course, its opposite, “disreputable”. Because Jesus was always being accused of fraternising with and accepting disreputable people. He had quite a reputation for eating, drinking and partying with prostitutes, traitors, and various assorted sinners, with every imaginable category of disreputable person. In fact, it was his refusal to maintain the religiously prescribed boundaries between the reputable and disreputable, and his continuing to eat with those who law and custom and common decency said he should not eat with, that more than anything else roused the hostility and hatred that led to him being lynched and killed.

Now this, of course, is precisely the issue at stake for the Apostle Peter in our first reading as he seeks to defend his reputation against the criticisms from the circumcision party in Jerusalem. He has been eating with the wrong people, with uncircumcised people. Now don’t get this wrong. These people who are criticising him are not the Pharisees or some other strict Jewish group outside the Church. These are Christian believers who simply believe that everything their Bible required of the Jews remains just as much the word of God for those who would be God’s people through following Jesus. They are the conservative right wing of the Church of the first century, and nobody was saying they didn’t belong in the Church. But they are accusing Peter of letting standards slip, of fraternising with disreputable people and thus polluting himself and those around him and tarnishing the reputations of Jesus and indeed of God. Somehow when I think of these people, I always remember the old Irish poem which was also popular in the Australian folk tradition, and which I think I learned when I was about Ellen’s age.

It was the pig show last September
As best as I remember
I was walking up and down in drunken pride
When my knees began to flutter
And I sank down in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side
As I lay there in the gutter
Thinking thoughts I could not utter
I thought I heard a passing lady say
You can tell the man of breeding
By the company that he’s keeping
And at that the pig got up and walked away

When you think about that sort of thing, what Jesus says about his reputation reflecting well on God’s reputation becomes all the more startling, because he was regarded as highly disreputable by more than enough people to get himself killed. The company he was keeping was deemed to reflect very badly on him indeed. And now the Apostle Peter is facing the same sort of questioning of his reputation, from within the Church. People are genuinely disgusted by his behaviour. This is not just a matter of theological disagreements. The pig comparison is apt because we know about the Jewish aversion to pigs, and if you talk to most Jewish people, they will tell you that they don’t feel deprived by not eating ham or pork, because they feel the same way about eating pig meat as most of us anglos feel about eating dog or cat meat. It’s just not food and it seems revolting. And to those of Peter’s day who had been raised on a strict Jewish worldview, the idea of eating with gentiles was equally revolting. And you can hear very similar sentiments being expressed by many on the religious right today when they talk with revulsion about gay people or muslims or liberals. And if we’re honest about it, the left wing progressive types are just as prone to thinking and talking with similar revulsion about boguns and fundamentalists and Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, John Howard and Tony Abbott. And perhaps we’d better throw in Maggie Thatcher as well after seeing supposedly caring and compassionate types exultantly singing ‘Ding, dong the witch is dead’.

Let my show you from tonight’s gospel why I’m quite sure that Jesus wasn’t rejoicing over Maggie’s demise and joining in the mocking refrains of ‘Ding, dong the witch is dead’. Did you notice the first words of our reading? What had just happened that prompted Jesus to say, “Now is the moment when the Son of Man’s reputation is made, and in him, God’s reputation is made too”? It said, “When Judas had gone out…” The scene is the last supper. Jesus has just washed their feet, and then they are sharing the meal and it specifically mentions Jesus dipping some bread in the dip and handing it to Judas. So even though he knows that Judas has given up on him and is ready to betray him, Jesus is still eating with the wrong people. And so when Judas goes out to tip off the authorities about where they can grab Jesus that night out of sight of the public, the last domino has fallen, and Jesus knows it. His end has come. And it is that moment that prompts Jesus to say, “Now the Son of Man’s reputation is made, and in him, God’s reputation is made too. If God’s reputation has gone through the roof because of him, God will publicly shower him with honours. It’s all happening right now.”

So what’s that about? Why does he say that his reputation and God’s reputation are covered in glory at this moment, at the beginning of the end when his fate is sealed and he is about to die a thoroughly disreputable death on the grounds of a thoroughly discredited reputation? Well perhaps the answer lies in what he goes on to say, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” You see, Jesus’s commitment to love others has just been put to the ultimate test. It is one thing to preach about loving your enemies, but it is quite another to sit there and warmly share food with someone who is pretending to be a friend but who you well know is now a sworn enemy who is about to rat on you to an armed mob who fully intend to torture you to death. And if there is one thing that really makes or breaks a reputation, it is the ability to live up to our own words, to practice what we preach when it really counts. And Jesus has maintained his unswerving love for Judas all the way to the end. No doubt Judas was among those he had in mind the next day as he prayed while dying, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t understand what they are doing.” And had Judas not gone off and hanged himself, I have no doubt that the risen Jesus would have welcomed him at breakfast on the beach and invited him to eat with him again and, just like he did with Peter, given him the opportunity to revisit and undo his denial and betrayal. “Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, do you love me? Feed my sheep.”

That’s what is “new” about Jesus’s new commandment. The Hebrew Bible contained commands to love others long before Jesus came along. Jesus has quoted such commands before, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” Hear that? “So that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” It’s the reputation thing again. Love like this, love with an absolute disregard for any and every boundary, and you will be children of your Father in heaven. “You are my beloved child, and with you I am well pleased. Well done good and faithful servant.”

Of course, it won’t do your reputation any good among the social sets that surround you. Express your love and best wishes for Tony Abbott and your left-wing peace and justice type friends probably won’t commend you as obviously a child of your Father in heaven. Make friends with some Muslim neighbours who are deeply hostile to all things western, and your reputation among most of your Anzac pinned anglo-Aussie neighbours will not be enhanced. Hang out with some gay and lesbian friends and listen non-judgementally to their stories and give them your unconditional love, and your reputation among evangelical Christians will be shot. Invite a few outer suburban bogan friends to a party with some of your inner city sophisticate friends, and you probably won’t get many more party invitations, from either group!

But this is precisely the sort of boundary breaking love that Jesus was lynched for and that he commands us to imitate in him. And it is precisely the sort of boundary breaking love that he says makes both his reputation and God’s. God’s? Yes, God’s, for Jesus is saying that what he does reflects on God. Or in other words, forget the tangled theological question of how much Jesus is like God. The real revelation is that God is like Jesus. That God loves as Jesus loves and accepts as Jesus accepts and welcomes as Jesus welcomes, without boundaries and without conditions and without limit and without the least concern for what others think, for reputation.

At the end, it will be because we have given up caring about our own reputations, either about maintaining decent ones or about self-consciously cultivating scandalous ones, that we will be set free to love as Jesus loves, recklessly and abundantly, and so, ultimately find ourselves with him and in him when the great cloud of witnesses rises to its its feet cheering and the voice of God rings out, saying, “You are my beloved child, and with you I am well pleased. Well done good and faithful servant.”