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REFLECTIONS FROM A DECK

SHARED WITH A COMPUTER, A CAMERA, TUI AND KORIMAKO

the INTERNET and YOU

(in a friendly way)

DAY OF PENTECOST (May 31st) 2020

Okay … it is my normal practice when preaching … and since Covid-19 lockdown, now partially over thank God in my country, when floating ideas a cross an internet … to address the lectionary readings and meander around them.

Let’s not today, huh? Let’s find my inner free-spirit that a shrink told me a few years back I should release from the constraints of a restrictive church. Let’s live dangerously, think outside the triangle or whatever it, momentarily. Er … if you don’t mind?

A shrink? I’ll tell you more about that later. Or another time. Or never. But there’s been a couple of them over the years, and what angels they were. Messengers from God. That’s what “angels” means: messengers.

So what to do with Pentecost? 

For a start I’ll largely, and apologetically, ignore its Hebrew, Jewish origins in Shavuot. Shavuot too is a feast of joy, but for now I’ll avoid cultural appropriation, beyond wishing our Jewish cousins God’s every blessing at this time of sacred harvest, sacred law, sacred belonging. May we one day feast together.

Pentecost borrows heavily from Luke’s telling of the Jesus-story. An Upper Room, tongues of fire, glossolalia, that strange phenomenon that I first encountered as a young adult and am much less impressed by now, except perhaps it is a useful way to sidestep the complexities of the cerebral cortex and utter ecstasy or angst – and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

For Luke the first Pentecost was a powerful, two-fold symbolic moment. It was a reversal of the ancient tale of the Tower of Babel. There, human beings sought to build a tower to the heavens, God got grumpy, knocked the tower down, and confused human languages into the myriad mishmash that now covers the face of the earth. We might at this moment acknowledge with sorrow how many of those languages have since been eradicated in the name of colonialization: forcing indigenous persons to speak English or Spanish, Dutch or Portuguese was never going to be the way to recreate Eden on earth, and we can only lament the deep destruction that has been wrought in the name of “progress,” so-called.  

For Luke this highly symbolic moment – and I have no idea what really happened in that upper room beyond his skeletal outline – was a reversal of babel, and the beginning of the outreach of the gospel-community from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. John tells a different story: Jesus breathing on the bewildered disciples, filling them with that breath of eternity, that breath of the Creator God that filled the lungs of Adam (Gen. 2:8).  For John a new creation begins in that moment, the Spirit called close to and into us, as we let her, to enable us to be what we tend not to be, a people of love. For John, where there is love, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ is at work.

What Pentecost is not,  says I in opposition to two thousand years of tradition, is the birth of the church. If the church is the people of God, if the church is the body, the hands and the feet of Christ on earth then that preceded those first explosive, seemingly exponential outreaches from Jerusalem. And while I don’t want to be dogmatic about this, or maybe I do, we run the risk of deifying the church if we use this image with too carefree an abandon. 

You may be aware of the traditional doctrine coined by Cyprian of Carthage, “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”: outside the church there is no salvation. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t an accurate assessment of the matter even at the time of Cyprian, the third century, but it became downright dangerous once the Church and the State got into bed together. “Woe,” the beatitudes might have added, “to those churches with national flags in their sanctuaries.” It is bad enough turning the machinery of the church into a dispenser of eternal salvation, but from the time of the ironically named Holy Roman Empire, and its successors in non-Roman Catholic traditions, the message of Christendom became one of Europeanization, and later Americanization, rather than transformation into the likeness of the humble teacher-Christ.

So no, Pentecost is not the birth of the Church, at least in the sense of the Church becoming an instrument of oppression. Across the histories of Christianity there are too many damaged persons and cultures for that interpretation to have gospel-credibility. Abuse in many forms, oppression, exploitation: these are not the work of the gospel, the empowerment in love and justice that descended on the disciples. The oppressions and exploitations by the church in its many forms and many faux-forms is not the continuation of John’s locked room or Luke’s upper room or of Mark’s frightened women at the tomb or Matthew’s sky-staring disciples on a mountain near Galilee.  There are incalculable numbers of those who remain extra ecclesiam for very good reason, for whom the scar tissue of exploitation and abuse is impenetrable.

And yet … and yet …

I for one am one who needs this great unwieldy beast – and I use the word with full awareness of Yeats’ and the Book of Revelation’s warnings. I for one need the disciplines of the visible church. I need the disciplines, even if Covid-19 has reminded me that the church and its gatherings and even its rites are not in themselves the gospel. Outside of these there is still the God who I would find, the psalmist reminds me, even if I descend to the depths of hell. If I am to be honest Terry Waite’s and others’ experiences warned me of this, years before. I have seen liars and manipulators rewarded by the church, abusers ignored by the church, predators protected by the church.

But that is not the end of the story. If it were, I would not be stumbling on, hoping that, even from within the structures of the church, something called “salvation” can be found. If darkness were the end of the story, not specifically within the church but certainly there as well, I would not still be in its embrace. Yet at its best I do see this stumbling array of individuals and institutions mumbling something that is love, justice, and a hope that reaches even beyond mortality. I do see lives, not least my own, transformed by this breath of God that infiltrates locked rooms and locked hearts. 

I have seen silliness proclaimed in the name of the Spirit of Pentecost – I have referred before to those who I once discovered who felt it was their gift to crawl and bark in the name of Jesus. I’m sure it was cartharsis – and that in itself is no bad thing. But if our Spirit-experiences, real or imagined, do not lead us on to be hands and feet of Jesus in the world around us, do not lead us to proclaim and enact love, justice, and a hope that reaches even beyond mortality, then they are so much dross. And some of you will know that the Greek word translated as “dross” in the New Testament, is not a polite word.

It's Pentecost, and forgive me for taking an extra few minutes and pixels. There is much chicanery and charlatanism in the name of the Spirit, as there is the name of the Father and of the Son. That, though, is not the final word. John and Paul, two great servants of God, saw that the final word is: “love.” May the Pentecostal Spirit infuse and enthuse you anew with the power to love in word and action.

Pentecost - feast or folly?

be translucent

Saturday of the

Seventh Week of Easter

May 30th

 

 

READING: John 21:20-25

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, ‘Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?’ When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!’ So the rumour spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

REFLECTION

 

“Follow me.” They are, as it were, the last “live” words of the visible risen Lord to his followers. John reports earlier words in the following sentence, but “follow me” is the last resounding command of Jesus. Follow me, through ups, down, twists, turns, high days and lows, manic times and ennui times.

In this denouement John turns to his own credentials – credentials in Christ. Paul would do the same in his writings: “Paul, called …”. It’s the only credential that is required. “Paul … called.” “Beloved Disciple, testifying truth.”

Die to self, be translucent Christ-bearers. And that is possible, Jesus told us through John over and again, only as we surrender ourselves to the Spirit who makes Jesus present.

It’s not the last we’ll hear of John. He will write three increasingly astringent epistles, almost but not at all contradicting his call to love. Because to love is not the same as to be a doormat. If John was later somewhat acerbic it’s because his faith community were failing their call to be a beacon of truth and light and love: “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil,” John would write through clenched quill.

There is much in post-canonical[1] Christianity that would have had the beloved disciple reaching for his quill again: beloved, do not imitate the worst charlatanism of the world around you. But the “much more to tell” that John alludes to is quite simple really: bear love, bear light, bear compassion and justice, bear Christ. May the paraclete dwell alongside, within us. Thus equipped we may yet be Christ-bearers in a post-Covid-19 (but in any case a post-holocaust, post-Hiroshima) world.

Love one another.

 

[I will leave my Easter season reflections here, and return after a short break with reflections based on daily Mass readings … but perhaps not seven times a week! My interpretation of the Creed will return soon, too.]

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[1] I haven’t found a better way to say “after the close of the New Testament.”

a shovel is a shovel

Friday of the

Seventh Week of Easter

May 29th

READING: John 21:15-19

‘When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ 16 A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

REFLECTION

It is a famous passage, and deeply evocative. Peter is understandably a little hurt. Jesus is, after all, asking Peter the same question three times, albeit with a little bit of verb substitution (about which commentators used to get very excited, but in more recent decades have noticed that it is a stylistic quirk of John to play with synonyms). Three questions echoing an earlier three denials by Peter, but on the other hand there’s a few threes in John’s gospel account (Nicodemus appears three times, the Wedding at Cana was on the third day, Jesus promises to rebuild the temple in three days, this is the third time Jesus reveals his resurrected self …).  Some commentators, perhaps fresh from reading Matthew’s gospel-account, find a commissioning of Peter as chief apostle, first pope, et cetera, here ... 

Sometimes a shovel is just a shovel, and the over-riding theme of this Jesus resurrection-scene is love. Not any particular verb or even noun for love, but love itself. While I suspect most of us fall short of the proof of the pudding, it is nevertheless in the eating as we strive to open ourselves up to the Spirit of Christ who enables us to be bearers of love. As we surrender to the Spirit of Love, so we may be bearers and practitioners of the kind of love that helps all our neighbours through the labyrinths of the lives that have befallen us.

With that in mind Jesus offers his last words to his followers: “follow me.”

completely one

Thursday of the

Seventh Week of Easter

May 28th

 

 

READING: John 17:20-26

‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

REFLECTION

Poignantly,  Jesus turns his attention to us with these words. Neither Jesus not John had some sort of clairvoyant glimpse into life in downtown Tuatapere or Omarama in a Covid-conscious twenty-first century, of course. True, the  propensity of our triune God to render time meaningless by creating it in the first place could give each Person of the Trinity some chronological advantage, but I suspect the doctrine of kenosis, the “self-emptying of the Son” as depicted in Phil. 2:6-11, would preclude Jesus from having that sort of time-twisting extra insight.

But Jesus and John alike knew deep compassion, knew the struggles that many after them would experience as we wrestle with the 95% disbelief that I mentioned earlier this week.

Remember that for Jesus to engage in prayer is in a sense an unnecessary extra, merely there to guide our prayers. He and God are one. Yet in this prayer Jesus wraps us into his self and into his self’s union with the one he addresses as patēr: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.” Jesus is one with the one most of us normally address as “Father” (but can call by many other holy names). Jesus remarkably asks that we may be one with him in his oneness with the First Person of the Trinity, with God the Creator, God the Judge, God the Father and Mother of us all.

What is this oneness? Certainly it is not uniformity, as I have alluded previously, not all alike as if in some hideous cloning cult. The clue to the meaning of “unity” is to present in the long, and in Greek complex sentence of which the petition is a part. “So that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me … completely one … so that the world may believe.” The best parallels are probably with the “one flesh” made of marital union, and though that is no new metaphor, it may be prudent not to overwork it here. Still: this kind of unity transcends difference and disagreement. Can we witness to our love for one another despite differences over liturgy, sexuality, biblical interpretation? Our track record is not great.

In many ways, I wonder if our witness to the world, in Fourth Gospel terms, isn’t far more to do with how we navigate our differences than strive for similarities? Few of us are capable of negotiating personalities and theological (and other) differences on our own. Or maybe I’m the only prickly person in the Body of Christ! But it seems to me that in this time of the Thy Kingdom Come novena initiative, we could do worse that to pray that the Spirit of Unity, summoned as it were by Jesus in his Farewell Prayer, infiltrate our lives of love to one another. Come, Spirit, heighten, sharpen the integrity of our witness to the world around us so that one day we might with integrity sing “they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

 

a prickly matter

Wednesday of the

Seventh Week of Easter

May 27th

READING: John 17:11-19

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible, alt (1 word): Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

REFLECTION   

The prayer of Jesus expresses Jesus’ deep and compassionate longing for us all – for his first prickly followers and for his countless prickly followers ever since. Prayer, when we speak of Jesus offering it, is a complex matter; John 11:42 has already demonstrated that John is deeply aware of the complexities. In Jesus prayer becomes a communication of divine will for humanity and the church; one who is so inseparably interconnected with God and is God doesn’t need, in a sense, to pray. Yet we need to hear the longing of the divine heart for us: longing amongst other matters, that we be protected, that we be united, that we be a people of integrity.

History doesn’t need to be studied too closely to realize that “protection,” in the hands of God, is not some sort of insurance policy against bad things happening to us and to those we love. They do and they will. Sufferings and trauma, emotional and physical, are the risk of being human. Virus, bacteria, speeding cars, failing organs: these are a part of all our existences, and while it does seem to me, on occasion, that God intervenes inexplicably in our vicissitudes, these happenings are never on our terms, and almost certainly more rare than we might like. God does, it seems to me, often give us the strength to bear matters we never expected we could, and that is a profound answer to prayer. Yet even that is not always true, and I have known on occasions, deeply faith-filled believers broken by unbearable circumstances. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

As for being “one,” we hardly need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the Body of Christ has never achieved this – even from apostolic times: “it has been reported to me that there are quarrels amongst you,” cries Paul (1 Cor. 1:11), and matters get worse (2 Cor. 2:1). John fares no better, engaging in bitter conflict with someone called Diotrephes (3 John 9-10). Fights over liturgical practice, sexuality, the clothes the vicar wears, the car she drives … these are no new thing, no godly thing. Even given the oft-spoken wisdom that Jesus prays for unity, not uniformity, we still find many ways to thwart his longing.

Christ-bearing is no simple exercise. But there are signs of hope along the way. Just occasionally in our journey we find those whose Christ-love is so deep that they transcend almost all division, or moments when unity trumps division, love trumps hate. The biretta-doffing anglo-catholic, fundamentally au fait with every jot and tittle of Percy Dearmer’s The Parson’s Handbook, praying at the bedside of the Franklin Graham devotee who has lost a child, or the Spong-chanting post-modernist engaged deeply in pastoral care with a fierce creationist at a time of Pandemic: these are glimpses of a deeper unity that Jesus longs for and that will, in my simple faith, be a hallmark of that Day when we no longer see through a darkened glass, and is occasionally glimpsed even this side of the Parousia.

And all the while our task remains one of seeking Christlight in the darkest recesses of out lives. That way in our lives at least the prayer of Jesus may be answered, and we may be comfort bringers, union-bringers, integrity-bringers in our small spheres.

Not Tim Tams

Tuesday of the

Seventh Week of Easter

May 26th

READING: John 17:1-11

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

REFLECTION

Jesus concludes a long discourse with his disciples with a prayer. In John’s hands, Jesus’ great prayer is narrated as Jesus enters the “hour” of suffering and defeat. That, of course, is the great victory, but if we are hearing this for the first time we don’t know that. And Jesus anchors his prayer in awareness of his union with the Creator-Father.

But here Jesus recognizes that his relationship with the one he calls Abba, (though John has him address God as “pater,” more gender specific) is different to ours. It is one time we almost need to speak of a transition in Jesus’ perspective. His perspective glances, as it were, shifts from his all too human nature, mutable (able to experience physical and emotional pain and thus to change), to the immutable divine nature. (I wouldn’t push that suggestion too far: heresy trials have abounded in Church history, and while the presence of two natures in the Incarnate Son is orthodox, any explanation of if and how he transitioned between natures will invite a quick visit to the fires of execution).

So, recognizing that while his forthcoming journey to the depths of non-being is, as Joseph Conrad might have put it, “horror” beyond imagining (Matt. 27:46, Psalm 22:1), Jesus also recognizes that the cost for his followers, after the empowerment by the Spirit, will not be a basket of Tim Tams either.

That has hardly been the case for most of us. Yet a glance though history, as I have often mentioned here and elsewhere, reminds us that the cost of following Jesus is often enough martyrdom. I tend often to cite the story of the 21 Libyan martyrs,[1] but the list of those dying for their Christian faith has never stopped growing.

Jesus places all this, his own unimaginable impending horror, and the suffering of his followers thereafter, into the context of glory. “Glory” – without wanting to be too theological about it – is primarily the domain of God. God doesn’t belong on a cross; God doesn’t belong in suffering. The Hebrew tradition had – has – long produced its martyrs, glorifying God. Jesus senses, perhaps knows, that his own followers will add to that. And in their senseless, crazy, needless deaths for their compassion, their justice, their commitment above all to his name, God will paradoxically be glorified.

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[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_kidnapping_and_beheading_of_Copts_in_Libya. I reflect on their martyrdom and that of other modern martyrs in my Entertaining Angels, 129-137.

that pesky, blessed 5%

Monday of the

Seventh Week of Easter

May 25th

READING: John 16: 29-33

His disciples said, “Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! Now we know that you know all things, and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God.” Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

REFLECTION

John will later use Jesus’ strong affirmation of those who of us whose task it has been to believe without seeing. Many of the communities addressed in the New Testament writings were struggling with questions around believing by word alone, rather than by eye-witnessing the Jesus events. That, and the thwarted expectation of Jesus’ imminent return. Both remain issues for believers today, disturbing some more than others.

John has no hesitation then in depicting the disciples with brush-strokes that makes them appear, well, at times a little dull. He probably was one, the beloved disciple so-called, so he is allowed to. His point is theological: without the invasion of the Paraclete-Spirit we lack the eyes of faith and therefore are a little dull. We may have doctorates in astro-physics or theology, be masters of quantum theory or epistemology (and it really doesn’t matter at this point what that might be): without the eyes of faith, eyes re-calibrated by the invasion of divine breath (John 20:22) we are not going to get this.

Even if we have the eyes of faith, or at least even so in in my experience, much of our faith will seem weirdly unbelievable. That is why I often describe myself as 95 per cent atheist, or at best 95 per cent agnostic. But oh, the 5 per cent! That 5 per cent is held to tenaciously by God, and God ain’t letting go.

In the five per cent, where God is allowed to break in and cling tenaciously, there dwells the peace that Jesus speaks of. The peace that is the foretaste of the coming Reign of God. The peace that passes all understanding (Phil. 4:7). The peace that is present when we glimpse an eternity in which “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:7). The peace that is a glimpse of the view no longer through a darkened glass (1 Cor. 13:12). The peace when God shall be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28 – and that’s a phrase well worth experiencing if you want to explore a doctrine of universal salvation).

“Take courage: I have conquered the world.” The world of suffering, injustice, ecological collapse, economic exploitation, disease, death … “I have conquered the world.” We too must work to overcome (“we shall overcome”) but Jesus hints ahead to a more complete overthrow of all that is evil. More than we can imagine (1 Cor. 2:9).

Eros of a Triune God

SERMON PREACHED in a DOWNSTAIRS ROOM

to a COMPUTER, a CAMERA, a DOG

an INTERNET and YOU

(in a friendly way) on the 

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (May 24th) 2020

READINGS

Acts 1: 6-14

Psalm 68:  1-10, 32-35

1 Pet 4: 12-14, 5: 6-11

John 17: 1-11

It is helpful, if for some perhaps a little confrontational, to get away from the prudishness of so much Christian reflection when we’re breaking open John’s words of Jesus. The author describes the source of his material, probably but not necessarily himself, as “the beloved disciple.” We don’t need to read the name through hedonistic eyes and ears, or with voyeuristic fascination.

John – we’ll give him that name as shorthand – John wants us to know that, as an eyewitness to the events of Jesus’ life, he has unparalleled integrity (John 21:24). His writings are, in many ways, as well-crafted as any in religious, perhaps all literature, but he is adamant that he is not crafting a fiction. His Greek, I am told, is not sophisticated, but like those of mark, his writings are those of instinctive brilliance. He takes us deep into the inner recesses of the mind of Jesus, and finds there the costly work of love. There is absolutely no need to define the nature of that love beyond that greatest of definitions, love made possible by the Creator of Love. What it was, it was (the same must be said of the love Mary Magdalen held for Jesus).  Where God is, there is love.

John then is enabled to help us dive deep into the sensual energies of Jesus’ love: Jesus’ love for God who he sometimes calls, so familiarly, “Abba,” beloved parent. Jesus’ aching love for his followers: for his mother Mary, for Mary Magdalene, for Mary wife of Cleopas and the other loyal women, for the inner sanctum and the Twelve, for the lost and the aimless and broken. And – and we should not be afraid of this – John leads us into that deep sensuality of Jesus’ prayer life.

Paul Tillich frightened Christians when he spoke in terms of God’s “eros” for the world. We tend to be more comfortable in Christian circles to speak of God’s agape for the world, so much safer because more abstract. Yet there is yearning and drivenness in God’s desire to redeem creation that echoes deeply the tenderness of human sexual longing (and indeed created it!). God created as an act of love, God redeems as an act of love. Jesus is the embodiment of that love in all its brutal cost.

As Jesus enters his time of agonized prayer in John 17 he is, in John’s hands, caught up in that love of which he is the human expression. “Father, the hour has come.” It is an hour that he will speak of in terms of glorification, yet it is absolute degradation.

John’s Jesus moves on to speak of the Creator’s love in the same terms we use of sexual love. We speak, prudishly perhaps, in legal and literary contexts, of “carnal knowledge.” Jesus speaks of eternity as the knowledge of God, as union with God, as experience of the glory, the doxa of God.

There are echoes here of that powerful psalm, Psalm 24: The Lord, the Sovereign of the Earth, Sovereign of impenetrable Glory, this God is the one who will bring vindication and blessing (Ps. 24: 5) to God’s people, to you and to me, however dimly we glimpse it yet, for it is hidden in pure light. In the sovereignty of God we find comfort and hope and joy and glimpses of eternity, like that we have a peek at in the surreal language of the Ascension.

Not all the time: we cannot bear it yet (John 16:12), cannot stay on the mountain top. Yet even so I have found in my own journey that doses of the touch of God, the touch of the Paraclete-Spirit of God, have turned up in inexplicably poignant times, sometimes at critical times, sometimes crazy ridiculous grace note times, that hint of the over the top and utterly beyond-necessity love of God.

Jesus prays that we might, as it were, bask, be saturated in that glory, that immeasurable love. He prays that we might remain (that important word in John’s hands) remain in the name, the presence, the very dwelling place of God, manifested by the Spirit whose coming we will rejoice in a few days from now.

This is all the more poignant because in the hour that is now upon him, all the strong and flamboyant followers will betray Jesus, flee from his sorrow and suffering. Almost all will flee: the powerless women and the bewildered beloved disciple will remain as close as they can (John 19:25). Yet even so the healing love of Jesus will reach out and onwards, to us and through us and on to others, too, if we let it.

 In the hour that is upon Jesus he will show that his love reaches to “every strung-out person in the whole wide universe.” To the frightened, the unlovable, the broken, even you and me. Jesus prays that we may never be lost, and Jesus’ prayer and the will of God are one and the same. Our mostly un-glamorous footsteps might even become vehicles by which good news is taken to the ends of the earth, energized by the persuasive, magnetic love of the triune God who yearns for the last sheep to come in.

endless lark ascending

Saturday of the Sixth

Week of Easter

May 23rd

READING: John 16: 16-28

‘A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.’ Then some of his disciples said to one another, ‘What does he mean by saying to us, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me”; and “Because I am going to the Father”?’ They said, ‘What does he mean by this “a little while”? We do not know what he is talking about.’ Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, ‘Are you discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me”? Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. When a woman is in labour, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

‘I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures, but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.’

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

REFLECTION

After a strange discourse about seeing and not seeing, going and returning, about pain and comfort, Jesus explains that he has used “figures of speech” in these conversations, and that all will remain somewhat confuzticated until the events about to unfold are complete. It is highly probable that John has undertaken a fair bit of editorial mix-n-match here, but the general thrust of these sayings are that the paradoxes of the disciples’ relationship with Jesus will be unknotted in the hours – and the “hour,” to come. “Hour” is another significant word in John’s usage, (see John 2:4) denoting the “moment” in which the full impact of the Christ-event reaches completion.

John plays fast and loose with actual chronology in order to represent sacred, divine time, (kairos time), so that the words “moment” and “hour” loosely covers a sweep of time from the arrest of Jesus to his ascension. In that moment the Incarnation of the Son travels through a maelstrom of physical and emotional turmoil. He experiences desertion and death. His experience of trauma is God’s entrance into all physical and emotional turmoil, desertion, death – as the Word completes the work of salvation.

The “lifting up,” which what the words “hour” or “moment” encapsulates in John’s use, is a kind of oscillation, a sweep from incarnate, human existence, through psychological and emotional and physical torment, actual “lifting up” on the cross, descent to the tomb and all tombs (other writings will express this as decent into and harrowing of hell), ascent to resurrection, and final ascent to the Creator-Father – imagine a sort of fallen over S, but with more twists and turns, and the final serif flicking upwards and onwards (eternally). And as the Spirit descends to us she invites us to join that upward flick to eternities unimaginable, where the footsteps of Jesus are still warm.

That extra upward flick of the fallen-over S, that final flight, that endless lark ascending in song and beauty and joy, that is the final word the triune God speaks to all creation, to you and me and all who we love and pray for. “I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.”

But at this stage Jesus is only glancing forward, and there is a humanly inconceivable hurdle or two to cross as yet. “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.” We will journey a little further yet with John and his Lord and ours.

soaring hope

Friday of the Sixth

Week of Easter

May 22nd

READING: John 16: 12-15

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

~~~

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

REFLECTION

There is great tenderness in Jesus’ concern for the weight of grief that is about to descend on the shoulders of his followers. The sensitivity to his followers’ impending sorrow leads Jesus to home in on the Paraclete’s role as Comforter and guide … she “will guide us into all truth.”

The truth hinted at here is the truth of resurrection hope, transcending the Cross, transcending the suffering that some Jesus followers will experience, transcending the vicissitudes of human existence. “All that the Father has is mine.” The Father-Creator, Abba, gives life transcending all death, all suffering, all hopelessness. This hope is the gift that the Spirit will manifest whenever we seek her giving. Hers is the hope-filled perspective that soars above mere mortality.