who are you again?

Thursday 

in the 

Second Week of Easter

April 23rd

READING: John 3: 31-36

The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.

REFLECTION

Jesus sets up a contrast between authentic witness and demonic imitation. The most peculiar aspect of Jesus’ depiction of integrity is the hint (or stronger) “no one accepts his testimony.” Authentic witness to the gospel may on occasions come from corridors of power, but the litmus test will always be whether the proclamation and behaviour point to the Lordship of one who embodies compassion (Matt. 9:36), welcomes the outsider (Luke 4:17-19), prioritizes the  disadvantaged (Mark 5:25–34). Neon-lit faith, “look at me faith” that is a demonic parody of the faith in Jesus Christ can declare, as President Trump’s spiritual advisor Paula White once did, that “Anyone who tells you to deny your self is from Satan,”[1] without noticing that the saying is a complete reversal of the words of Jesus.

The onus is on us to be as aware as we possibly can be of the life-habits and teachings of Jesus, as revealed through the texts of our faith. Is a given statement or action consistent with the words and teachings of the one we call Lord? We are challenged to be immersed in those words and teachings to the extent that we can have some recognition of the duplicity of those who call “Lord, Lord,” but to whom Jesus replies, “Sorry, bro, sorry sis, who are you again?” (see Matt. 7:21-23, c.f. Luke 6: 46-49).

Jesus goes on to speak some stern words foreshadowing judgement: “whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.” If there are circles of dubious Christianity that champion the cause of the rich and powerful, circles of Christianity that remove a word of judgement from the narratives of faith are equally dismantling “the words of God,” (John 31:34), are equally duplicitous. John refers to the wrath of God (John 3:36), as most of the New Testament writers do. While I am unconvinced that this is speech about some enduring, eternal hell fire (Psalm 137, for one, seems to make eternal separation from God something of a contradiction, but quiz me on this another time) nor do I think divine judgement is a slap over the hands with soggy fairy floss.

Jesus, in our passage, is telling us to keep on evaluating the integrity of our witness if we are to claim to be his followers. And where we fall short (I do, perhaps you do too) we need to do a bit of sorry saying. 

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[1] Paula White, in an address a women's convention in Orlando, October 31^st 2007.

be embraced in his believing

Wednesday in  

the Second Week of Easter

April 22nd

READING: John 3: 16-21

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

REFLECTION

John has Jesus finish a strange, enigmatic statement about someone, something being “lifted up” then segues into that statement, most beloved (and rightly so) in military circles, about the reward of self-sacrifice for others. We know, perhaps, that the enigma riddling the “lifting up” is the entwining of serpent in wilderness and Son of Man somewhere-somehow: Jesus tells us that. We may even get, later (though Jesus’ original audience could not have) that the “lifting up” was itself, as I said yesterday, a brutal double entendre pun). John’s audience may have got that, even if that of Jesus didn’t. So far so good. We’ve heard lots of sermons, so we even get, probably, that stuff about Jesus dying so that those who believe in him might live, don’t we?

Or do we? You may have seen my reflection on the creed, when I ask questions about the complex little word “in.” Is “in” the subject of my belief, as in “I believe in New Zealand” or does it describe the space in which I believe, as in “I believe in New Zealand”? See what I did there! Tricky, isn’t it? The context will often make it clear, at first sight, but a little reflection on this simple word can open other dimensions. Can I “believe in” Jesus if this is not made possible by the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:9, Gal. 4:6, 1 Peter 1:11) who enables belief? And so the famous verse John 3:15-16 may suddenly not carry the weight of exclusion that it so often carries in Christian evangelism: “believe in him or burn.” Instead it carries a sense of “be embraced in his believing and live.”

Which could all sound far-fetched if it were not that Jesus goes on to say that the Son does not come to condemn, but to invite, to save. While Jesus goes on to speak of the condemnation of those who do not believe in, call on him, he does so in a vein similar to that of Roman 1. There, failure to believe or belong entails neither more nor less than being “handed over” (Rom. 1:24) to the ramifications of unbelief, to be handed over to ugly human volitions. Most of us know those volitions only too well: Paul writes of them often (e.g. Gal. 5:19-21a, Exod. 20: 1-17), and those who were the closest followers of Jesus certainly surrendered to them (Mark 14:50). Failure to believe in the light leaves us without light (and behave accordingly) – for as long as we choose to stay that way.

Fourth gospel: precompressed helical spring

Tuesday in  

the Second Week of Easter

April 21st

READING: John 3: 7-15

Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

REFLECTION

To understand John – or at least to help do so – picture a slinky. I first encountered slinky as a child, furloughing in England from Ghana. We were staying in a two-story house in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. For a slinky to work there must be stairs, and because there was, I enjoyed hours of fun. A slinky makes its way down the stairs, I am told, through delicate balances of momentum and gravity. Technically it is a “precompressed helical spring.” That might have interested me had I been able to comprehend the words at six years old. Or not.

But it’s closer to my meaning now: a slinky is a coil. So is John’s gospel account – which is why it is so hard to take slices of it for liturgical reading. John moves around and around in circles, building words, dropping key words in as signposts, repeating, enlarging, developing. Did you notice how, for example, Nicodemus develops as the gospel moves forward?

John’s narrative moves relentlessly towards the lifting up of the Son of Man on the cross, and to glimpses of an incomprehensible beyond. That “beyond” is briefly, famously referred to in Jesus’ speech to Mary Magdalene at 20:17, and is part of the “bookends” of the slinky. These bookends are the overall, “big picture” descent and ascent, from heaven to heaven via suffering, psychological and physical, and brutal death. But Jesus’ final words in these spirals of his meaning are “follow me” (John 21:22). Follow me: as the Son of Man is raised up, and all within his embrace are invited to follow, to an eternity beyond sight and understanding.

In this slice of John 3 we cross two cycles of John’s story, though the cycles are always thematically inseparable. Nicodemus, something about being “born from above,” and an enigmatic association between Moses and his rod and the lifting up of the Son of Man. This is the second time John has used the phrase-title “Son of Man.” It’s a title pregnant with meaning throughout John’s gospel-account. Borrowed from Daniel, it seems to emphasize the humanity of Jesus, but it’s never that easy: for divinity is lurking, too, granting something called “eternal life,” made available to us because of, through, Jesus’ descent and ascent.

In John 1:51 the Son of Man is marked as destined for a particularly vivid visitation of divine blessing and glory. Later we will discover that “lifted up” is a brutal double entendre. Between now (John 3) and the end of the machinations of “lifting up” we will learn much about the cost of being “born again / born from above.” The divine Son who is the human son, enters into all our grot and darkness and lifts us, born anew in him, into some incalculable mystery that Jesus, in John’s telling, calls “eternal life,” made available to us by the wind who blows where she wills.

Fourth gospel: emerging hinted themes

Monday after Easter 2

April 20th

READING: John 3: 1-8

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

REFLECTION

As we flick back in John’s gospel-account[1] we find an enigmatic little passage that seems to raise three themes that are cyphers for the many chapters that follow.

Nicodemus emerges as a fascinating “exemplar” whose appearances in the text are never to be ignored. My own suspicion is that he was very close to the John who was source of the Fourth Gospel, but that’s merely a hunch. Still: over three appearances Nicodemus stumbles owards and upwards from this secretive night-time visit to Jesus. This is a visit during which he does not exactly reveal his inner-Einstein. Do any of us? Yet he appears with more gumption in John 7:50–51; tentative still, but willing to try to persuade the Sanhedrin that this emerging rabbi, Jesus, should be given a fair go. The third time he emerges his actions surpass words: his love for dead Jesus overcomes intellectual confusion. At great cost, Nicodemus pours out heart-broken love for the dead Teacher. He is weighed down not only by fifty kilos or so of spices, but by grief and, we might guess, a sense of failure. And Easter dawns.

Nicodemus’ somewhat sub-par comprehension in the night visit (night is never just night in John’s hands) allows the author to introduce two other great themes. Nicodemus’ obtuseness allows Jesus to labour his theme of rebirth – a theme seized in some quarters of the church as the be all and end all in relationship between humans and God. In reality, as Nicodemus demonstrates, this Jesus-saying demands more subtlety: we ultimately leave Nicodemus pouring out spices and love on a dead man’s body. Nicodemus is a stark reminder of where we find Christlike love around the world in Covid-19 days (and in all days), as family members and loved ones mourn friends, relatives and lovers who have died in isolation (and I for one am constantly reminded of the days when HIV-AIDS first swept across the surface of God’s earth).

Finally, this strange passage hints at another theme that will swell through the gospel-story: the promise of a coming Spirit-Comforter. As we journey towards Pentecost that theme will grow in our consciousness, and as an Easter people we will find more and more cause to dance thanksgiving for an empty tomb.

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[1] At my theological college in Melbourne the director, Dr John Gaden, once delivered an impassioned (to the extent that this introspective wise man was even impassioned) soliloquy explaining why we should never refer to the gospels as “Gospel of [purported author’s name].” As we observe in the liturgy, the gospel is always “the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (the exact wording differs from country to country). I have never forgotten John’s wise words, and do my best to uphold them.

light out of every darkness

SERMON PREACHED IN AN UPPER ROOM

TO A COMPUTER AND AN INTERNET

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 19^th) 2020

READINGS

Acts 2: 14a, 22-32

Psalm 16

1 Peter 1: 3-9

John 20: 19-31

It is often noted – or should be – that John carefully crafts his narration of the resurrection to emphasize the New Creation that is initiated in the upper room of faith. Jesus enters a place of fear, and there reconstructs the actions of the Creator. He breathes, indeed in New Zealand we might, if it’s not cultural appropriation, say “gives hongi to” – the timid huddlers in the room there.

Their timidity is understandable. Few of us are terribly brave, and having seen one’s leader brutally executed, and recognised one’s own failure to stand by him in his hour of need, few would be finding strength to do much more than huddle. Greed, shame, fear ... there’s a lot of emotions clustering in the hearts of those gathered in the upper room. It’s only a few nights since they celebrated Passover there, and while that was the beginning of the trauma, and Jesus’ behaviour had been a little strange that night, it was bliss compared to the tragedies that have unfolded from then on.

Unlike Luke, John doesn’t indicate a lull period before the commissioning of the New Era. For Luke it’s more a reversal of the Tower of Babel, but we’ll look at that another time. What is important is that for the New Testament people of God there was a powerful experience of new start, of reversal of dreadful past wrongs, and of empowerment. As we shall see at Trinity time, the embodiment of God in Christ became extended, universalised, and the first Christians and all since were enabled, as the hymn rather awkwardly puts it, to “try his works to do.”

In John, Jesus speaks specifically about breaking cycles of resentment and hatred, forgiving sins, rectifying wrongs. The Jesus sayings about forgiving sins can be terribly misunderstood. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.” As we face up to a Royal Commission into sexual abuse we should be reminded once again that forgiving sin does not entail airily waving the past away, but acknowledging it, rectifying it, emboldening survivors of abuse to find footholds and stand tall once more. The people of God are called to forgive, and to model all that forgiveness and restitution, perhaps we might even use the word “reconstitution,” entails.

The resurrection scenes in the upper room, spanning two Sundays, address, in passing, questions of doubt and faith. Thomas becomes a symbol of doubt, and in his mythical, and perhaps actual subsequent career, a model of empowerment, for it is traditionally Thomas who heads East and takes the gospel to the Indian subcontinent. But perhaps we often do Thomas a disservice. Few of us would easily believe the experience that the disciples narrated – perhaps few of do even now, despite the invitation to be amongst those who believe without seeing. 

Certainly belief is no easy task, and I for one have often to silence the rationalist monkeys on my back as they cry “nonsense, nonsense.” As you may know, I will often refer to the six impossible things to believe before breakfast, and while Carroll was an enigmatic, strange figure, there is a lovely sense in which his deep but troubled faith and a fiercely mathematical mind coexisted in glorious, creative tension. For me too there exists a glorious tension between the irrationality of resurrection belief and the indelible hold the experiences of those first post-Easter days have had not only on the first disciples but their successors for nearly two thousand years. “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief” might well have been Thomas’ mantra, as well as that as the father of the possessed child of Mark 9. We might play with the idea that Thomas was that man, wrestling with faith and doubt and yet gradually enabled to carry the resurrection-gospel to world’s unimagined. We might seek for ourselves faith that stumbles on, spirit-infused despite the darkness through which most of us lurch.

The scene from the upper room seems to steer a circuitous path through doubt and end with something faith. Throughout the scriptural witness there is a difference between intellectual assent and faith, belief, trust. These latter, interchangeable words belong in the realms of grace. Lord, help my unbelief, Lord, save my unbelief, Lord, save me. Intellectually I cannot even begin to hold to resurrection doctrine, and many of the other complex teachings that emanate from that mysterious upper room. Teachings about the person and work of Jesus, his humanity and divinity, the complexity of the Trinity that we explore in the weeks to come: these are the language of love for and from the God who, in Christ, seized the fear of huddled disciples in John’s upper room, or the frightened women at Mark’s empty tomb account, and transformed it into the witness of martyrs and believers against all odds, through time and across our globe.

Despite the tumult all around us, not only of Covid-19, but of social and ecological and economic collapse, of disintegrating certainties, these promises of faith-beyond understanding can continue to whisper light in darkness, hope in despair, joy despite grief. Our task is to continue, against all odds, to surrender our hearts and minds and selves to that source of new creation who invaded and transformed the lives of the first frightened witnesses. Our task is to let ourselves be loved and transformed by the God who creates light out of every darkness.

a woman!­

Saturday in Easter Week

April 18th

READING: Mark 16: 9-15

Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.

After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country.  And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.

Later he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were sitting at the table; and he upbraided them for their lack of faith and stubbornness, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.

REFLECTION

There is little doubt that these verses of Mark’s gospel-account were added to the author’s original ending. Later even more were added. When I first encountered that observation a few decades back I wasn’t particularly surprised: as someone with a bit of a “lit crit” bent they felt different for a dozen reasons. But I assumed at the time Mark had been dragged off mid chapter, probably to face a martyr’s death. Later, much later, I was made aware of the profundity of the original ending. That was probably when I encountered the writings of Ernest Best and so-called reader-response criticism from the early 1980s onwards. If Mark’s gospel-account ended at Mark 16:8, as most scholars agree, then we are left knowing that the women were afraid, unable to say anything, yet that they did say something, and so we heard it. As a gospel-stutterer I find that deeply profound and deeply encouraging.

But by the middle of the 2^nd century c.e. someone wanted to flesh out the subtleties, and so we have two longer endings. Here we get some interesting insights. For example, by now 150 years after the event, the later author notes that the disciples would not believe “inadequate” witnesses. The word of a woman had no legal weight, unless corroborated by a male. Mary Magdalene’s word (almost) sank. Then two more tell a bizarre tale of an empty tomb. No explanation is given (no gender) but their word too (almost) sank. Finally Jesus turns up, gives the eleven a good bollocking, and they get their “aha” moment. And so do we. Eventually.

The second century writer – I suspect a woman’s hand – was no fool. The gospel message that had begun with an empty tomb, death conquered, was first entrusted to the vulnerable and powerless. Hadn’t Jesus generally shown a bias towards the powerless and broken? A centurion wants a miracle for his daughter, and fair enough too, but a socially rejected woman – a woman!­ ­gets first dibs (Mk. 5: 21-43) Yes the girl was a future woman too, but it’s her dad who tries to pull rank. The vulnerable are the authentic Christ-bearers in Mark’s gospel (Luke speaks of rich being cast down, too …) but all too often we have cast the gospel in terms favourable to the slick and the powerful and the ornate and the neon-lit.

Covid-19 has stripped the world of much pretentiousness. We, the Church (alongside all humankind – no favouritism when viruses are involved), are being stripped of so much that protected us from harsh realities of a decaying society and planet. Much that we have taken for granted is being pared away to bedrock. Perhaps it’s only a temporary state but, as we are renewed in resurrection hope we might let ourselves be reminded that the resurrection was not a glamour show, but a whisper that transformed the hearts of a handful of frightened, powerless, but deeply authentic women.

And even so we heard of it.

gone fishin'

Friday in Easter Week

April 17th

READING: John 21: 1-14

Then Jesus showed himself again to the disciples, by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way: Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.  Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ They answered him, ‘No.’ He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the lake. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.

When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.’ So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

REFLECTION

In yesterday’s reading, too, something happened with a fish. It was no accident that it became a symbol of Christianity early in our history. The Greek letters of the familiar title that Christians soon gave to Jesus Christ were absorbed nicely into the Christian fish symbol, ICQUS. Fish came to appear as a symbol associated with Eucharist, through the narrations of the feeding miracles, and associated with the Resurrection as an allusion to the fish references around the resurrection narratives, as well as the reference by Jesus to the “sign of Jonah.” The fishers, Simon Peter and Andrew, were warned that their career would later be taking on the new dimension of mission and evangelism, for which the fish symbol can also stand as shorthand.

So there are some powerful metaphors running here: “you have no fish, have you?” The disciples are woefully inadequate in their task until such time as they surrender to the command and will of the risen Lord. Even then though the task of bringing the net ashore is arduous – obedience to the whispers of God may sometimes be described as a light yoke, but they might also, at least to this long-term erstwhile Australian resident, have undertones of “hard yakka.”

John and Luke alike are conscientious in their attempts to convey the “solidity” (I sometimes prefer the word “thinginess”) of the resurrection. I reflected yesterday on the “denser reality” of resurrection. We can never expect to understand all dimensions of this, any more, I suspect, than the tui and korimako in my garden understand why I put sugar water out for them. Sometimes, by faith, we needs must say “it is what it is” and enjoy the good tucker of life that the risen Lord provides. Not a waltz in the park, as current events in the world warn us. But life invaded by the unexpected and inexplicable nectar (sugar water) of faith.