Seven weeks after the Paschal candle that stands in the centre of the church was blessed and lit for the first time at the Easter Vigil, we gather once again, one last time, around it to celebrate the Feast of the Pentecost. While it is the still the same candle (albeit shorter) and the flame is the same as before, our focus has shifted from the candle representing the light of Christ breaking back into the world after the depth and solemnity of Holy Week to its reminding us today of the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit breaks into our ordinary lives.
Pentecost is a multi-layered feast day. First, it celebrates the Holy Spirit, represented by all the red we have in church. Red, the flames of the Spirit, uncontainable, filling and releasing the faithful at once, as ecstatic dances fill and raise their participants with energy and hope. Spirit… according to Webster’s, it is that which is ‘the animating principle in life; an attitude or principle that pervades thought, stirs one to action; a vigorous, courageous or optimistic attitude; vigorous sense of membership in a group; to encourage; urge on or stir up.’
The Spirit, which flowed over the waters of chaos at the moment of creation; the Spirit, which God breathed into each living creature at the moment of their creation; the Spirit, that animating force that distinguishes the animate from the inanimate, the living from the dead; the Spirit who lives in each one of us and in whom we have our being.
On that fateful day, fifty days after Easter, the Spirit descended upon the disciples, inspiring them individually and collectively to embody the ministry that Jesus had begun. Jesus had already commissioned them with the Holy Spirit on several occasions—first when, on Easter evening, he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ and again at the moment of the Ascension when he instructed them to spread the gospel to the corners of the earth. But in the moment of linguistic profusion and proclamation, something new took place.
Eugene Peterson interprets the arrival of the Holy Spirit in these images: ‘Without warning, there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks….’
With the descent of the Spirit on Jesus’ followers, the world changed. The church came into being—a process about which we have heard throughout Easter-tide through the readings from the Book of Acts.
The church began in the passionate blaze of the Spirit, when boundaries of languages and cultures were transcended for a time and all heard the good news in their own language. The consuming fervour of the disciples communicated itself to all who encountered them and allowed for the remarkable spread of the gospel throughout the known world.
So, then, Pentecost also commemorates the birth of the church—symbolised in our church by ‘Everyone’s birthday’ cakes, which delight us all at coffee hour.
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We always assume that these great feasts, Easter, Ascension Day and Pentecost, were joyous, happy occasions for the disciples, who understood right away what was going on. I can’t help but wonder if the disciples had moments in the headiness of following Jesus and being part of a new movement, when the excitement threatened to overwhelm them, when the pull of the newness and power of Spirit might not have also terrified them.
Their world was changing upside down every time they turned around. First it was the foot washing and the last supper where their master told them they were his friends and he was going to be leaving them. Then there was this bread and wine becoming Christ’s body and blood. What were they to make out of all that? If that weren’t enough, their master’s tomb was empty on the third day… as he had told them it would be. He had risen but then why did he keep appearing to them in this resurrected body? Finally, they watched him ascend into heaven.
You have to give it to the disciples—they may have fallen asleep in the garden but they stuck it out in the days following the resurrection. They may have been terrified but somehow Jesus’ words of peace—as reiterated in the portion from John’s gospel that we hear today—must have given them the strength and courage to persevere in all the craziness of the first days of the church.
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Have you ever been in on the formation of a group or organisation? The enthusiasm and energy is infectious and the participants find the capacity to put in endless hours getting the project off the ground. It’s when the project enters the maintenance stage that the enthusiasm begins to wane and people realise the long-haul implications. I often think about the early days of organisations we know well, such as Episcopal Relief and Development, formerly known as the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief. When its founders created it, did they imagine how many generations it would last? Did they create it because the need was there and, God willing, the organisation would survive over time? It has, thanks to three or four generations’ devotion.
Think of how many generations along the church is! Many, many! The Jesus movement has carried on, despite its internal controversies that raged back when and still do. Regardless the short-comings of the people involved in the church, ‘that wonderful and sacred mystery,’ I believe that it will continue on, thanks to the Holy Spirit.
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We are part of that chain of generations and generations of believers and seekers who make up the church. We may occasionally experience moments of ecstasy but we know that, really, ecstasy is only part of the story. The work of living the gospel depends on the sure, slow, steady, patient work of a life lived with attentiveness, prayer, and action. We may savour the Pentecost moment of ecstasy, being released in the dance of the Spirit, but we live in the demands and joys of steady discipleship.
Steady discipleship is like putting one foot in front of the other, not necessarily knowing where the path leads, but following and creating the path because our faith encourages us to do so. Steady discipleship is showing up and being faithful and being surprised by God when we least expect it. And most important in this day and age, steady discipleship is conveying to those around us that God loves absolutely everyone, and that through this love, we need never be afraid. Instead of living a life of fear, we are called to be a people of hope. Through steady discipleship, we will come to know the peace that passes all understanding, the shalom that Jesus imparts to us.
Those of you who were here last year on Pentecost might remember the presence of the seven candles over by the font. Each candle represents one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit: Strength, knowledge, piety, awe and wonder, counsel, understanding, and wisdom. Think of which gifts are your strongest today and which ones you would like to encourage. And then, as you return from communion, you are invited to light a candle from one of the gifts, praying that the Holy Spirit will infuse your heart in the year to come. The Spirit will bring inspiration and the peace of God which is no peace because God will lead us in ways we cannot yet predict.
With that knowledge, we can pray, Come, o Holy Spirit come. Spirit of God, take away our fear; take our lives and carry them in the wind of your powerful and life-giving energy; take our hearts and set them on fire.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Ascension Day
[This sermon was not preached because there were two small children present so rather than have them suffer through more talking, we did a conversational reflection as we do at the family service on Sundays but here is what would have been said.]
The story of the Ascension forms a bridge from Luke into Acts, from the time of Jesus into the time of the church. Luke is the only gospel writer to distinguish Jesus’ ascension from his resurrection as a separate event.
Luke tells the story twice, at the end of the gospel and then again at the beginning of the Book of Acts. One interesting aspect of the two versions of the Ascension narrative is the chronological conflict between them. In Luke 24 Jesus ascends late on Easter day itself, whereas in Acts 1 his ascension is delayed until ‘forty days’, perhaps as way to remind us of Jesus’ forty-day stay in the wilderness that takes place early on in Luke’s gospel.
Luke is clear in his narration of the Ascension that it not be used as a timetable for speculations for Jesus’ return. In response to questions about chronology, such as the question posed by the disciples today, Jesus answers: It is not for you to know the times or the seasons. Jesus specifically asks the disciples not to try to calculate the date of his return.
Luke also uses this story to mark an end to Jesus’ resurrection stories. (The lectionary has moved us over the past three weeks further and further away from those stories to a more intentional focus on the Holy Spirit, a focus that will culminate on Pentecost Sunday.) No one can hitherto claim to see the risen Jesus in the same way that Mary Magdalene and the disciples saw him. The forty days of Easter appearances are over. Paul, in First Corinthians 15 lists those eyewitnesses as though to say: These people really saw Jesus—no one else can claim that. (Of course Paul leaves women out of his list, and says he is the last person to see Jesus; Luke would disagree with him.)
What matters here is that now the way the church will ‘see’ Jesus is through the Holy Spirit, that motivating, generative, life-giving power that infuses the church, its scriptures, and people.
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And so, the Ascension is not about Jesus’ absence as some would have it, leaving us looking up in the sky, waiting to see him up there, but about Jesus’ presence in the here and now.
Brazilian theologian Vitor Westhelle says simply that earth is the place to look for Jesus’ presence. Likewise, rather than stand gazing heavenward in a state of suspended animation, we are to be Christ’s disciples and witnesses in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria and all the ends of the earth.
For Luke, you and I live at the end of the earth, in a place unimagined back then. But the exhortation to make Christ known to others and find Christ in one another still stands all these centuries later. But, o, that seems so large, so hard to do! Where do we begin?
We begin where we are. It is as simple as that. Gandhi said, ‘If you don’t find God in the very next person you meet it is a waste of time looking for God further.’ If we make one step toward God in one another, God will make ten steps toward us.
I remember my spiritual companion back in Princeton telling me that even on the days she was the most weary, she always tried to remember that the next person coming in her office might be Christ. I don’t know how she did it some days but the Holy Spirit sometimes helps us do those things we think we never could do otherwise.
If we are open to the presence of the Holy Spirit, then others might come to see Christ’s love and presence in us. Surely you’ve had what are called ‘airplane conversations’ — those conversations with an utter stranger who reveals things to you that you think no one else has heard beyond their therapist. Sometimes the conversations are off-the-wall, but sometimes the holy pops into them. They don’t always happen on airplanes, they can occur whenever and wherever the heart is open to seeing Christ in the other. I would like to think, at the risk of being presumptuous, that the Holy Spirit is present in that sort of encounter. I know enough that when the Holy Spirit is present, I am touched for a long time.
On this Feast of the Ascension, let us remember that Christ has not left us behind or abandoned us. Christ is still in the midst of us — in one another, in the person next to us. Pray that we can see them and Christ — together, at the same time, here.
The story of the Ascension forms a bridge from Luke into Acts, from the time of Jesus into the time of the church. Luke is the only gospel writer to distinguish Jesus’ ascension from his resurrection as a separate event.
Luke tells the story twice, at the end of the gospel and then again at the beginning of the Book of Acts. One interesting aspect of the two versions of the Ascension narrative is the chronological conflict between them. In Luke 24 Jesus ascends late on Easter day itself, whereas in Acts 1 his ascension is delayed until ‘forty days’, perhaps as way to remind us of Jesus’ forty-day stay in the wilderness that takes place early on in Luke’s gospel.
Luke is clear in his narration of the Ascension that it not be used as a timetable for speculations for Jesus’ return. In response to questions about chronology, such as the question posed by the disciples today, Jesus answers: It is not for you to know the times or the seasons. Jesus specifically asks the disciples not to try to calculate the date of his return.
Luke also uses this story to mark an end to Jesus’ resurrection stories. (The lectionary has moved us over the past three weeks further and further away from those stories to a more intentional focus on the Holy Spirit, a focus that will culminate on Pentecost Sunday.) No one can hitherto claim to see the risen Jesus in the same way that Mary Magdalene and the disciples saw him. The forty days of Easter appearances are over. Paul, in First Corinthians 15 lists those eyewitnesses as though to say: These people really saw Jesus—no one else can claim that. (Of course Paul leaves women out of his list, and says he is the last person to see Jesus; Luke would disagree with him.)
What matters here is that now the way the church will ‘see’ Jesus is through the Holy Spirit, that motivating, generative, life-giving power that infuses the church, its scriptures, and people.
+
And so, the Ascension is not about Jesus’ absence as some would have it, leaving us looking up in the sky, waiting to see him up there, but about Jesus’ presence in the here and now.
Brazilian theologian Vitor Westhelle says simply that earth is the place to look for Jesus’ presence. Likewise, rather than stand gazing heavenward in a state of suspended animation, we are to be Christ’s disciples and witnesses in Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria and all the ends of the earth.
For Luke, you and I live at the end of the earth, in a place unimagined back then. But the exhortation to make Christ known to others and find Christ in one another still stands all these centuries later. But, o, that seems so large, so hard to do! Where do we begin?
We begin where we are. It is as simple as that. Gandhi said, ‘If you don’t find God in the very next person you meet it is a waste of time looking for God further.’ If we make one step toward God in one another, God will make ten steps toward us.
I remember my spiritual companion back in Princeton telling me that even on the days she was the most weary, she always tried to remember that the next person coming in her office might be Christ. I don’t know how she did it some days but the Holy Spirit sometimes helps us do those things we think we never could do otherwise.
If we are open to the presence of the Holy Spirit, then others might come to see Christ’s love and presence in us. Surely you’ve had what are called ‘airplane conversations’ — those conversations with an utter stranger who reveals things to you that you think no one else has heard beyond their therapist. Sometimes the conversations are off-the-wall, but sometimes the holy pops into them. They don’t always happen on airplanes, they can occur whenever and wherever the heart is open to seeing Christ in the other. I would like to think, at the risk of being presumptuous, that the Holy Spirit is present in that sort of encounter. I know enough that when the Holy Spirit is present, I am touched for a long time.
On this Feast of the Ascension, let us remember that Christ has not left us behind or abandoned us. Christ is still in the midst of us — in one another, in the person next to us. Pray that we can see them and Christ — together, at the same time, here.
Easter 6C
The gospel reading for this morning prepares us for Ascension Day (this coming Thursday), and moves us further away from the bewildering events of Easter morning at the empty tomb to the equally bewildering events of Pentecost (which occurs in two weeks). At the same time, our focus shifts from the second person of the Trinity, Jesus the Son, to the third person, the Holy Spirit… another not so-subtle way of making us begin to think about the Holy Trinity, which we will remember on Sunday 3 June. So as you hear these readings, remember that we are being pointed in some specific directions.
We also have to remember another layer: we tend to hear the Farewell Discourse from the Gospel of John (reintroduced last week) with its promise of the coming of the Counsellor or Paraclete, as discourses given by the risen-and-not-yet-ascended-Christ, as promises given as though it were during the forty days in preparation for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. But that it not what is going on here: for John, these words of Jesus are said while Jesus still lived and walked among the disciples and they were said during the last supper, a moment of extreme anguish, a moment standing in between life before the crucifixion and resurrection and life after these world-changing events. In John’s mind, these words look through and beyond the death of Jesus to his glorification that releases the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the early church, even, the fifty days of Easter included the celebration of the gift of the Spirit, not just on the day of Pentecost.
Recall that in the chapter preceding this one, Jesus gives the disciples the following commandment: ‘That you love one another. As I have loved you, you also should love one another.’ This commandment is an important guidepost that Jesus gives the disciples. For, in loving one another, they will love Christ. Jesus continues to say that he abides in God and God in him. By extension, if one loves one’s neighbour, one will meet Christ in that neighbour, and since Christ dwells in our neighbour, we are then joined with Christ. Christ will dwell in us and we in Christ.
So now, Jesus answers a difficult question from Judas (not Iscariot) in which he asks: ‘What has happened that you are going to manifest yourself to us and not to the world?’ This question is what sets off this morning’s gospel passage. Jesus answers beginning with words very familiar to us: If you love me, you will keep my word, my commandments.
What Jesus is really saying here is: If you love me, you will preserve and treasure not only me, but also my essence, my divine being, my connection with God the Father. If you love me, you will be open to the presence of God in and with you. If you love me, the Spirit whom I send will teach you everything you need, and remind you of all I have taught you. If you love me, you will receive my peace.
Remember the gospel from a few weeks ago? Remember that back and forth questioning between Jesus and Peter in which Jesus asks Peter, Do you love me? And Peter answers, Lord, you know I do. Jesus asks Peter a second and a third time, Do you love me? By the third time, Peter is frustrated, even miffed: Of course I do. Why do you keep asking me? Jesus’ response to him: Feed my sheep. Jesus is asking and then entrusting a crucial task to the very one who denied him three times.
We think we are not like Peter. Jesus is our beloved. Why else would we be here? We love Jesus because we know Jesus loves us. Our response is automatic when asked, ‘Do you love Jesus?’: Of course we love Jesus. Ah… but how come, then, Jesus needs to send us a Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who will remind us what to do and how to act? Who or what is this ‘paraclete’ person? And what does it mean to love one another and live within the Spirit of God?
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First, who is this Comforter? Two examples, totally unrelated, image for me this Spirit of God.
The first is that of a comforting blanket. Now, the world is divided between those who like a lot of blankets on top of themselves at night and those who don’t. I am one of those who love on those minus 20 or 30 degree nights to have three blankets (and three cats) on top of me. It feels comforting, safe, protective, sort of like having that weird heavy lead covering to protect your innards that technicians put on you before your having x-rays.
Years ago, a person said to me after I anointed him pre-surgery, that the sacrament of anointing felt to him like a protective blanket of God’s Spirit enfolding him and that before he went under, it was the last thing of which he thought. I have often remembered that image of the Spirit, the Comforter, that one who makes us feel safe.
The other image of this Spirit is that sixth sense that sometimes pops into our hearts and we write, phone or visit someone or do some other activity without exactly knowing why, but we just do because we feel we must.
Many times I have gotten the sense that I need to go visit someone, phone someone, not tomorrow but today, now. And as happens in these circumstances, the timing was critical — either arriving as the person takes his or her last breath, or calling to find out that she or he needed to hear words of solace and share a prayer. These moments of intersection have happened enough times now that I truly believe that the Spirit, the great prodder and agitator, is at work.
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The harder piece of the question is how do we live in this Spirit? Frankly, the rest of the year in our lectionary helps us to answer this question so to try to answer it today in one short sermon cannot do justice to the question.
Again, Jesus gives the disciples the following commandment: ‘That you love one another. As I have loved you, you also should love one another.’ It’s not erotic love he’s talking about. It’s not even the love of friendship, really. It’s a greater love: charity, mercy, kindness, a love that does not depend on liking. It’s a harder sort of love to master.
Love — in the sense that Jesus calls us to — is to be present to one another, vulnerable, open, reconciling, faithful and steadfast. Couples in long-term relationships, married or otherwise, know of the ups and downs their love has taken. They know of the struggles when they have come off the mountaintop and are facing daily reality. They know what it is to be present in the worst and best of times. Communities are like that, too.
What does it mean for us to love as Christ has called us to do? If, as the gospel of John suggests, by loving Jesus we keep and treasure Jesus’ essence, Jesus’ connection with God the Creator, then it follows that we also seek Jesus in one another.
Maggie Ross, an Anglican solitary, writes in The Fire of Your Life:
‘I know a Franciscan friar who was fond of saying that after the Eucharist we should genuflect to each other because we are all walking tabernacles. His half-joking perception is true, and not only in the half-hour or so following the Liturgy, for by our baptism we are bearers of the living Word, having passed with Christ through death to life.’1
Martin Luther put it more simply: ‘O God, grant us grace to receive Jesus Christ in every person and to be Jesus Christ to every person.’2
Whether on a daily basis you spiritually genuflect to one another or receive Christ in one another, and to Christ to every person, know that it is the Holy Spirit, God’s comforter, God’s holy agitator, the paraclete, that lives and moves in you, giving you the grace to do far more than you would think possible and to love one another as Christ has loved us.
END NOTES
1 Maggie Ross, The Fire of Your Life (New York, NY: Seabury Books, 2007 [1983, 1992], 40.
2 John Carden, A Procession of Prayers (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 305.
We also have to remember another layer: we tend to hear the Farewell Discourse from the Gospel of John (reintroduced last week) with its promise of the coming of the Counsellor or Paraclete, as discourses given by the risen-and-not-yet-ascended-Christ, as promises given as though it were during the forty days in preparation for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. But that it not what is going on here: for John, these words of Jesus are said while Jesus still lived and walked among the disciples and they were said during the last supper, a moment of extreme anguish, a moment standing in between life before the crucifixion and resurrection and life after these world-changing events. In John’s mind, these words look through and beyond the death of Jesus to his glorification that releases the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the early church, even, the fifty days of Easter included the celebration of the gift of the Spirit, not just on the day of Pentecost.
Recall that in the chapter preceding this one, Jesus gives the disciples the following commandment: ‘That you love one another. As I have loved you, you also should love one another.’ This commandment is an important guidepost that Jesus gives the disciples. For, in loving one another, they will love Christ. Jesus continues to say that he abides in God and God in him. By extension, if one loves one’s neighbour, one will meet Christ in that neighbour, and since Christ dwells in our neighbour, we are then joined with Christ. Christ will dwell in us and we in Christ.
So now, Jesus answers a difficult question from Judas (not Iscariot) in which he asks: ‘What has happened that you are going to manifest yourself to us and not to the world?’ This question is what sets off this morning’s gospel passage. Jesus answers beginning with words very familiar to us: If you love me, you will keep my word, my commandments.
What Jesus is really saying here is: If you love me, you will preserve and treasure not only me, but also my essence, my divine being, my connection with God the Father. If you love me, you will be open to the presence of God in and with you. If you love me, the Spirit whom I send will teach you everything you need, and remind you of all I have taught you. If you love me, you will receive my peace.
Remember the gospel from a few weeks ago? Remember that back and forth questioning between Jesus and Peter in which Jesus asks Peter, Do you love me? And Peter answers, Lord, you know I do. Jesus asks Peter a second and a third time, Do you love me? By the third time, Peter is frustrated, even miffed: Of course I do. Why do you keep asking me? Jesus’ response to him: Feed my sheep. Jesus is asking and then entrusting a crucial task to the very one who denied him three times.
We think we are not like Peter. Jesus is our beloved. Why else would we be here? We love Jesus because we know Jesus loves us. Our response is automatic when asked, ‘Do you love Jesus?’: Of course we love Jesus. Ah… but how come, then, Jesus needs to send us a Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who will remind us what to do and how to act? Who or what is this ‘paraclete’ person? And what does it mean to love one another and live within the Spirit of God?
+
First, who is this Comforter? Two examples, totally unrelated, image for me this Spirit of God.
The first is that of a comforting blanket. Now, the world is divided between those who like a lot of blankets on top of themselves at night and those who don’t. I am one of those who love on those minus 20 or 30 degree nights to have three blankets (and three cats) on top of me. It feels comforting, safe, protective, sort of like having that weird heavy lead covering to protect your innards that technicians put on you before your having x-rays.
Years ago, a person said to me after I anointed him pre-surgery, that the sacrament of anointing felt to him like a protective blanket of God’s Spirit enfolding him and that before he went under, it was the last thing of which he thought. I have often remembered that image of the Spirit, the Comforter, that one who makes us feel safe.
The other image of this Spirit is that sixth sense that sometimes pops into our hearts and we write, phone or visit someone or do some other activity without exactly knowing why, but we just do because we feel we must.
Many times I have gotten the sense that I need to go visit someone, phone someone, not tomorrow but today, now. And as happens in these circumstances, the timing was critical — either arriving as the person takes his or her last breath, or calling to find out that she or he needed to hear words of solace and share a prayer. These moments of intersection have happened enough times now that I truly believe that the Spirit, the great prodder and agitator, is at work.
+
The harder piece of the question is how do we live in this Spirit? Frankly, the rest of the year in our lectionary helps us to answer this question so to try to answer it today in one short sermon cannot do justice to the question.
Again, Jesus gives the disciples the following commandment: ‘That you love one another. As I have loved you, you also should love one another.’ It’s not erotic love he’s talking about. It’s not even the love of friendship, really. It’s a greater love: charity, mercy, kindness, a love that does not depend on liking. It’s a harder sort of love to master.
Love — in the sense that Jesus calls us to — is to be present to one another, vulnerable, open, reconciling, faithful and steadfast. Couples in long-term relationships, married or otherwise, know of the ups and downs their love has taken. They know of the struggles when they have come off the mountaintop and are facing daily reality. They know what it is to be present in the worst and best of times. Communities are like that, too.
What does it mean for us to love as Christ has called us to do? If, as the gospel of John suggests, by loving Jesus we keep and treasure Jesus’ essence, Jesus’ connection with God the Creator, then it follows that we also seek Jesus in one another.
Maggie Ross, an Anglican solitary, writes in The Fire of Your Life:
‘I know a Franciscan friar who was fond of saying that after the Eucharist we should genuflect to each other because we are all walking tabernacles. His half-joking perception is true, and not only in the half-hour or so following the Liturgy, for by our baptism we are bearers of the living Word, having passed with Christ through death to life.’1
Martin Luther put it more simply: ‘O God, grant us grace to receive Jesus Christ in every person and to be Jesus Christ to every person.’2
Whether on a daily basis you spiritually genuflect to one another or receive Christ in one another, and to Christ to every person, know that it is the Holy Spirit, God’s comforter, God’s holy agitator, the paraclete, that lives and moves in you, giving you the grace to do far more than you would think possible and to love one another as Christ has loved us.
END NOTES
1 Maggie Ross, The Fire of Your Life (New York, NY: Seabury Books, 2007 [1983, 1992], 40.
2 John Carden, A Procession of Prayers (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 305.
Easter 5C
Anyone who has studied French literature has run across Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie — Jealousy or Window Blind, depending on how you want to translate the noun. It is a bizarre book with a story-line that loops back around to tell the same snippet of a piece of life over and over again. It’s sort of like listening to certain pieces of music by minimalist composers like John Adams or John Cage that consist of a never-ending loop.
I sometimes feel as though the lectionary does the same thing for us. It presents the same story over and over but seen through slightly different lenses. In this case, we are hearing a loop that encompasses many themes and many fragments of the larger story.
Today’s gospel reading throws us back into Holy Week and John’s description of the last supper. By the time John’s Jesus reaches the last supper, he has done all the signs he was meant to do. Consequently, Jesus seems to orchestrate his last hours. Part of this preparation comes in words in what is known as the ‘Last Supper Discourse,’ which follows Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.
So much of the Last Supper Discourse focuses on the great commandment: ‘If I, your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you must wash one another’s feet. I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. Everyone will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another.’
Central to the theology of the Fourth Gospel and its companion, the First Letter of John, is the theme of God abiding in us and we in God. Loving one another as God loves us becomes our way of manifesting God in the world. The First Letter of John reiterates this idea in its words, ‘God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them.’ Abiding in and remaining in God’s love becomes the central mark of discipleship in John’s thought. Serving one another as disciples, washing one another’s feet, defines us as people of the Way, of Christ.
How can it be, then, that in Jesus’ glorious statement of love, two sharp and dissonant notes strike?
First, Jesus knows — even before instructing the disciples to love one another — that one of them will betray him. Even in the midst of this intimate, intense moment of communion, someone is out of place. Judas’ betrayal is so discordant that the writer of John has to add that Satan enters into Judas at the time of his receiving the morsel of bread as if to say, the action is so heinous, that it cannot come from a human’s soul but from the devil.
The other discordant note sounds in Jesus’ statement, ‘Little children, I am with you only a little while longer. You will look for me… and where I am going, you cannot come.’ Jesus softens this announcement with the term of endearment, ‘Little children,’ but it cannot soften the underlying sense of total abandonment.
This statement then leads us into the following chapter, 14, which begins with Thomas’ poignant question, But, Lord, where are you going? And can we come too? We know well this story because it is one often chosen for the gospel at the burial office. Jesus answers in words that tell Thomas that where he is going, they cannot yet come but that in his father’s house are many rooms and Jesus is going ahead to prepare one for them.
In fact, then, this morning gospel sums up for us with its backward and forward looking what this season of Easter is about. We are more than halfway through it; we only have two more Sundays of Easter before moving to Pentecost.
And, lurking in the back of our mind, should also be the gospel we heard on Easter morning where Mary Magdalene finally recognizes the risen Jesus, drops to his feet, grabs onto them, only to be told by Jesus to let go of him because he has not yet ascended to his father.
In ten days we will observe the feast of the Ascension, hinted at by the suggestion of chapter 14 of the gospel according to John and then by the recollection of the gospel from Easter, John 20.
We hear all these themes and overarching them are this morning’s words that go round and round in a circle:
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 at once will glorify him.
They are a mouthful!
What John is getting at is simply this (in the words of Jean Vanier):
Jesus is the glory of God; the glory of God is the manifestation of who God is: it is God’s almightiness and love, it is God’s littleness and humility, it is God’s love and deep respect for each one of us. The glory of God is Jesus walking serenely towards the total gift of himself in love.1
Or, as Iranaeus wrote in the second century: The glory of God is the human person fully alive. I have that quotation on a bookshelf in my bedroom so I can see it on a daily basis as a reminder of how to respond to others in my midst. I fail every day all the time to see God in everyone, of course, and I have to pick myself up and keep trying, but in my heart I know that Divine Glory dwells in everyone.
Desmond Tutu writes in God Has A Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time:
The divine shines through material that was thoroughly unpromising, unlikely, improbable. So we were brought to see that no one is untransfigurable, no one is a totally hopeless case. God does not give up on any one of us. It is truly tremendous.
When you go to heaven, you will say to me, should I be there, too, “Gee whiz, man, I didn’t know you were so beautiful.” You will see the divine light that shines through me, and not just this guy with a large nose. All the people you thought were just mere flesh-and-blood humans, with all their physical flaws, will be revealed to you as filled with divine light. We are meant to be godlike; that is why we were created in the image of God. But we really don’t know what God is like except when we get glimpses. When someone is wonderfully generous or compassionate, we do sometimes stand in awe of that person, and that gives us a glimpse of the glory that is God. And if we had the eyes to see, we would look at one another and see the beauty of God, and we would treat each other with appropriate reverence and awe.
Many people ask me what I have learned from all the experiences in my life, and I say unhesitatingly: People are wonderful. It is true. People really are wonderful. This does not mean that people cannot be awful and do real evil. They can. Yet as you begin to see with the eyes of God, you start to realize that people’s anger and hatred and cruelty come from their own pain and suffering. As we begin to see their words and behavior as simply the acting out of their suffering, we can have compassion for them. We no longer feel attacked by them, and we can begin to see the light of God shining in them. And when we begin to look for the light of God in people, an incredible thing happens. We find it more and more in people — all people.2
If Desmond Tutu can find that glory of God in all people, despite the misery which he lived in apartheid South Africa, then surely we can too.
The glory of God is the human person fully alive. When we find the glory of God in another person, then we also see God’s love incarnate and abiding in another person, for God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them.
Then go out and tell everyone — the people who today will sit on our lawn and buy our chicken barbeque, the people with whom you work, your children, your parents, your friedns — that they are God fully alive in them. Tell them. Tell them.
END NOTES
1 Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus (Mahway, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 250.
2 Desmond Tutu: God Has A Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2004), 96-97.
I sometimes feel as though the lectionary does the same thing for us. It presents the same story over and over but seen through slightly different lenses. In this case, we are hearing a loop that encompasses many themes and many fragments of the larger story.
Today’s gospel reading throws us back into Holy Week and John’s description of the last supper. By the time John’s Jesus reaches the last supper, he has done all the signs he was meant to do. Consequently, Jesus seems to orchestrate his last hours. Part of this preparation comes in words in what is known as the ‘Last Supper Discourse,’ which follows Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.
So much of the Last Supper Discourse focuses on the great commandment: ‘If I, your Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you must wash one another’s feet. I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. Everyone will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another.’
Central to the theology of the Fourth Gospel and its companion, the First Letter of John, is the theme of God abiding in us and we in God. Loving one another as God loves us becomes our way of manifesting God in the world. The First Letter of John reiterates this idea in its words, ‘God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them.’ Abiding in and remaining in God’s love becomes the central mark of discipleship in John’s thought. Serving one another as disciples, washing one another’s feet, defines us as people of the Way, of Christ.
How can it be, then, that in Jesus’ glorious statement of love, two sharp and dissonant notes strike?
First, Jesus knows — even before instructing the disciples to love one another — that one of them will betray him. Even in the midst of this intimate, intense moment of communion, someone is out of place. Judas’ betrayal is so discordant that the writer of John has to add that Satan enters into Judas at the time of his receiving the morsel of bread as if to say, the action is so heinous, that it cannot come from a human’s soul but from the devil.
The other discordant note sounds in Jesus’ statement, ‘Little children, I am with you only a little while longer. You will look for me… and where I am going, you cannot come.’ Jesus softens this announcement with the term of endearment, ‘Little children,’ but it cannot soften the underlying sense of total abandonment.
This statement then leads us into the following chapter, 14, which begins with Thomas’ poignant question, But, Lord, where are you going? And can we come too? We know well this story because it is one often chosen for the gospel at the burial office. Jesus answers in words that tell Thomas that where he is going, they cannot yet come but that in his father’s house are many rooms and Jesus is going ahead to prepare one for them.
In fact, then, this morning gospel sums up for us with its backward and forward looking what this season of Easter is about. We are more than halfway through it; we only have two more Sundays of Easter before moving to Pentecost.
And, lurking in the back of our mind, should also be the gospel we heard on Easter morning where Mary Magdalene finally recognizes the risen Jesus, drops to his feet, grabs onto them, only to be told by Jesus to let go of him because he has not yet ascended to his father.
In ten days we will observe the feast of the Ascension, hinted at by the suggestion of chapter 14 of the gospel according to John and then by the recollection of the gospel from Easter, John 20.
We hear all these themes and overarching them are this morning’s words that go round and round in a circle:
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 at once will glorify him.
They are a mouthful!
What John is getting at is simply this (in the words of Jean Vanier):
Jesus is the glory of God; the glory of God is the manifestation of who God is: it is God’s almightiness and love, it is God’s littleness and humility, it is God’s love and deep respect for each one of us. The glory of God is Jesus walking serenely towards the total gift of himself in love.1
Or, as Iranaeus wrote in the second century: The glory of God is the human person fully alive. I have that quotation on a bookshelf in my bedroom so I can see it on a daily basis as a reminder of how to respond to others in my midst. I fail every day all the time to see God in everyone, of course, and I have to pick myself up and keep trying, but in my heart I know that Divine Glory dwells in everyone.
Desmond Tutu writes in God Has A Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time:
The divine shines through material that was thoroughly unpromising, unlikely, improbable. So we were brought to see that no one is untransfigurable, no one is a totally hopeless case. God does not give up on any one of us. It is truly tremendous.
When you go to heaven, you will say to me, should I be there, too, “Gee whiz, man, I didn’t know you were so beautiful.” You will see the divine light that shines through me, and not just this guy with a large nose. All the people you thought were just mere flesh-and-blood humans, with all their physical flaws, will be revealed to you as filled with divine light. We are meant to be godlike; that is why we were created in the image of God. But we really don’t know what God is like except when we get glimpses. When someone is wonderfully generous or compassionate, we do sometimes stand in awe of that person, and that gives us a glimpse of the glory that is God. And if we had the eyes to see, we would look at one another and see the beauty of God, and we would treat each other with appropriate reverence and awe.
Many people ask me what I have learned from all the experiences in my life, and I say unhesitatingly: People are wonderful. It is true. People really are wonderful. This does not mean that people cannot be awful and do real evil. They can. Yet as you begin to see with the eyes of God, you start to realize that people’s anger and hatred and cruelty come from their own pain and suffering. As we begin to see their words and behavior as simply the acting out of their suffering, we can have compassion for them. We no longer feel attacked by them, and we can begin to see the light of God shining in them. And when we begin to look for the light of God in people, an incredible thing happens. We find it more and more in people — all people.2
If Desmond Tutu can find that glory of God in all people, despite the misery which he lived in apartheid South Africa, then surely we can too.
The glory of God is the human person fully alive. When we find the glory of God in another person, then we also see God’s love incarnate and abiding in another person, for God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God in them.
Then go out and tell everyone — the people who today will sit on our lawn and buy our chicken barbeque, the people with whom you work, your children, your parents, your friedns — that they are God fully alive in them. Tell them. Tell them.
END NOTES
1 Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus (Mahway, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 250.
2 Desmond Tutu: God Has A Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2004), 96-97.
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