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.