Daily Devotion for Friday 11th July 2025
St John 15: 18 – 27
Jesus said: ‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It was to fulfil the word that is written in their law, “They hated me without a cause. When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”
Reflection
The Australian novelist Patrick White wrote “The truth is often truest when others call it lies.”[i] This powerfully resonates through Jesus’ words in today’s reading which make clear that aligning ourselves alongside him as disciples will be costly.
Flying in the face of the world’s values will court vociferous opposition and opprobrium. We increasingly appear to live in an age of misinformation where the words of the noble are twisted and the humble who dare to speak truth to power on behalf of Christ are condemned as arrogant and subversive. When, in the most gentle and kindly of tones, the Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde pleaded at the inauguration of President Trump for the marginalised who, she said, were feeling afraid in the face of the sweeping changes being made by his administration, she was pilloried as being “nasty,” a term which ironically exactly befitted her accusers.
In these words from John’s gospel, Jesus sets out with marvellous clarity that the way to combat the sin of the world is for Christians to identify with Christ – and thus in turn, through him, with God. This sense of belonging to Jesus, rather than the world, of walking in his way, may very well bring us into conflict with those at odds with the path we tread.
But living the life of Jesus does not mean cutting ourselves off from the world. In an essay to be published soon, Beverley Clack echoes this sense of Jesus being our living model: “in the life of Jesus, God is found in the patterns of ordinary, daily life.” She concludes:
“This is not about withdrawing from the world to the comfortable illusions of ‘self-care’ where the painful political world is shut out and the suffering of others ignored. This is about cultivating a world in which love is able to thrive, because we take seriously our obligations to each other.”[ii]
References
[i] From Patrick White’s novel Riders in the Chariot.
[ii] Clack, B. (2025) Embracing Uncertainty in a Chaotic Age in Brown, C. and Handscomb. G. (2025) Demagogues, Misinformation and Populism: A Guide to Combating Dark Ideas. Emerald publishing.
Prayer
Dear Lord,
we know that we belong to you
and that this may come at a cost.
Fortify us to walk your way.
Give us courage
to engage with the world.
to model your saving presence to the world
and to take seriously
the obligations we have for each other. Amen.