truth in the spaces between

 

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, GORE

SEVENTH SUNDAY of EASTER (May 29^th) 2022

 

 

READINGS:

 

 

Acts 16: 16-34

Psalm 97

Revelation 22: 12-21

John 17: 20-26

 

The author of the Fourth Gospel is a creative writer of enormous talent. At the time he wrote, division into chapters and verses was over a millennium away, so he knew nothing of flags like “chapter 17” or the fact that he wrote 21 chapters. Nevertheless he used flags, alerting his audience to significant dimensions of the Jesus-story he was narrating. Flags like key words, locations, themes. And we need to ask questions of the text. Who was Jesus addressing in John 17? It’s no longer the disciples, but the Father. “Father, the hour has come” (John 17:1).

We do not need to be scholars to be inspired by the fourth gospel. Actually, the author of this work would be horrified if he thought that we thought that we were inspired by him. He hints that in his final sentence (John 21:25).  

So I should put this in a different way. We do not need to be scholars to be inspired by the Jesus we encounter in the pages we know as the Fourth Gospel, or “John.” We should never, incidentally, call it the “Gospel of John” or “John’s gospel,” not only because we don’t know who wrote it, but because whoever wrote it will always emphasize that it is the Gospel of Jesus. But I, too, often forget that.

Onwards, then.

The author of John provides tools to know the mind of Jesus more closely. He does so, so that as we break open the word, we explore the teachings of the one who John calls “Word.” Word with a capital W.

Well, in English we give this a capital W. The author didn’t:  the scriptures were written all-caps. But it is similarly helpful to note some of the little flags the author does fly along the way. In the beginning was the Word, the command of God, the action of God, embodied in the man Jesus. Even in the beginning, not just in the first century or now.

So when we dig into the scriptures we encounter and explore Jesus. The Good News of Jesus. And if we look at John 17 we find that Jesus is no longer talking to his disciples, or to us. We are seeing how he talks to God – we are seeing how he prays.  And, just to confuse matters further, while the Jehovah’s Witnesses are right to tell us (as they do) that the word “trinity” does not appear in the bible, they are wrong, because the biblical writers are bravely striving beyond the limitations of the language available to them. Striving to find words for what we later came to call Trinity. As we see Jesus pray, we are seeing the internal communications of the trinitarian godhead – in conversation, discourse, on our behalf. And it remains beyond our comprehension.

So what are we left with in our small passage in John? The longing of the Godhead, creator, redeemer, giver of life, is for our unity. This is very different – and those of you who viewed the Gospel Conversations  will have seen this – very different to uniformity. The armies of North Korea march in uniformity. The armies of God live with disagreement, finding both truth and life in the spaces between letters of our language, the silences between words of our disagreements.

Now, don’t go thinking I am good at practising what I preach. If a cause I am fighting for goes down in synod I sulk in a corner until about three minutes later when I forget what I was sulking for. Amnesia is a wondrous healer.

On the other hand it’s not the deep reconciliation that the Spirit of Christ demands of us and coaxes and coaches us to. The Christ who reaches out to his betrayers and deserters after the crucifixion was exercising the deep love that dwells at the heart of God. Such love, far removed from my airy amnesia, is available to us only through the deep workings of the Spirit.

In our passage Jesus prays for unity for those who follow after him – for us.  He flagged this back at John 11:42. It is a prayer uttered deep within the heart of the triune God, Father, Son, Spirit. It is a prayer not for the militaristic and ferociously rehearsed unity of North Korean or Russian soldiers. It is a prayer that we can be a cardiac people, a people who learn to exercise the costly cardiac love, visceral love that drives reconciliation with enemies, reconciliation far beyond the limits of our imagination.

The only aspect it has in common with goose-stepping militarism is that it is borne of deep discipline, deep surrender to the transforming work of God. The prayer of Jesus ends with the plea that the divine Spirit embodied in Jesus may be embodied in his church, his on-going and Spirit-filled body.

But we must be prepared to be the answer to that prayer, and that takes hard work of the sort that most of us fall short of (or do I speak only for me?). But we are not alone – the coming of the Paraclete is always a part of this prayer of Jesus: Holy Spirit, come to us.

But come to us not in showy exhibitionism of some sad parodies of gospel, but in the hard and prickly work of transformation.

Only then will we be the people that are known by our love, the demand that Jesus highlights at John 13:35. Only then will we see gospel transform lives around us. And we will be that only by the deep and hard work of allowing the Spirit of Pentecost to touch and transform the deepest recesses of our lives. But perhaps that’s next week’s story.