JOHN 1: 1-5, 9-14, 16-18

Jottings on John…Christmas…Revised 2018

Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures launches with its magnificently imaginative & evocative story of a Creation told into being by YHWH God: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens & the earth..…’ Is it simply a co-incidence that the writer of John also chooses to start with ‘In the beginning…’ & a magnificently & imaginative, evocatively poetic expression of how the New Creation comes into being? Can any account of Creation improve on that of the Genesis tale-teller? Any more than accounts of how the New Creation comes into being can improve on JE’s? For me, it’s always JE when it comes to Christmas Gospel & Christmas preaching! 

For one thing, it offers us the opportunity of reflecting on our own physical & spiritual beginnings. But has JE’s Hymn to the Word with its deep, meaningful, imaginative, & creative take on the Christmas event become too hard to preach? Compared with stables, mangers, & other MT & LK trimmings? Some Christmases ago, I happen to be sitting near another priest I know at a Midnight Mass. The ‘sermon’ turns out to be a kind of watered-down ‘kids’ talk’. This at one of the big, largely adult, congregations of the year. After the Dismissal, as we’re leaving, my colleague turns & whispers to me, “He sure dumbed that down, didn’t he?!” Do we really need to do that? Are we really called to do that?

I always omit vv.6-8 because they’re an interruption - by whom we don’t know - to JE’s original hymn. A distraction that destroys its integrity. They belong, with v.15, after the hymn where JB properly makes his entrance after v.18. Let’s not gazump the Evangelist’s mind-blowing, spirit-expanding verses! Is interrupting the flow of the Gospel with the insertion about JB perhaps a metaphor for us inserting ourselves in the wrong place between God & God’s purposes. A warning we need to heed all year around, not only at Christmas!

The Word who speaks Creation into being now speaks a new, restored Creation - personal & universal - into being in Jesus. God’s Divine Word, God’s ‘new beginning’ for us. Jesus doesn’t simply speak God’s language to us, He is God’s own language! Are we recognisably God’s language, God’s ‘Word’ for others?

Brian

Afterthought: Whatever else John wants us to take in from his magnificent poem he wants us to glorify God as Jesus does. If our Christmas worship, including a sermon on this passage, gives glory to God, John the Poet has achieved what he sets out to achieve, hasn’t he?

JOHN 18:33-38

Jottings on John…The Reign of Christ / Christ the King…2018

I suggest we read to v. 38, where the 2nd of two punch-lines, both from Pilate, occurs - the 1st being in v. 37. Try saying Pilate’s, ‘You’re not really a king, are you?’ & ‘Truth? What is that?’with various emphases & intonations. Get your congregation started  by doing the same.

In asking, “Truth? What is that?”, Pilate’s dismissive of both Jesus, &, Truth. Today’s political & other leaders who don’t know the difference between Truth & ‘alternative truth’ are also dismissive. Not only political leaders, but sports, business-people & other leaders. Where are we in all this? How observant are we of Jesus as the non-negotiable Truth in our lives - personal & public? Are we peddling ‘alternative truths’ rather than presenting Jesus as Truth with a capital T? Are we, even unconsciously, aligning our-selves with Pilate’s way of seeing things, rather than Jesus’; God’s Truth among us, still, by His Spirit.

At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus wrestled out in the wilderness with the Truth of Who He is. What kind of Messiah He’s to be. Tempted to follow devilish ways of being Messiah. Instead, He discerns there’s no Truth in that direction, & commits to being God’s Truth. Living out God’s way of seeing & doing things. Come what may. We need to get this ‘Truth’ issue out of our Bibles & into the pages of our lives as we write new chapters.

When someone sums us up, whatever the circumstances, are we recognisably a Jesus-like person? A follower of the True King? Is the likeness unmistakable? When we try to discern the truth about others, do we consider their Jesus-like-ness? The way to help anyone, inside or outside church, puzzling over Jesus’ kind of kingship, is by our living out the Truth of His kingship. People need to see God’s Truth as Jesus lives God out in us to ‘get’ it! Get Him! Get God!

Later, when Pilate refuses to change the wording over Jesus’ cross, has he simply had enough of the Jewish leaders & their complaints? Or, is that, ‘Truth-about-Jesus’ question still in the air? Perhaps it should be a lot more in the air today?

Brian

Afterthought: Jesus, nailed as King to His cross, is the Essence of the non-negotiable Truth of God. Personally, I can’t settle for the tame, ‘It is finished’, or ‘It is over’, translation. Jesus says, & means, “I’ve done it!” “I’ve brought it off!” And that’s God’s Truth! 

PS. Next Sunday we begin Advent, & with that, the ‘Year of Luke’. My blogspot for Luke is: laterallyluke.blogspot.com 

JOHN 11: 32-44

Jottings on John…All Saints…Revised 2018

(For Pentecost +24, see MK 12:13-34 at marginallymark.blogspot.com.

I’ve commented on this somewhere before, but J.A. Swanson’s bright cover for William Willimon’s ‘The Intrusive Word’¹, vibrantly illustrates the scene in the cemetery at Bethany. An icon, really. A crowd of people wending their way to Lazarus’ grave via different paths. Carrying arms-full of bright flowers. The tomb, in the foreground. Singers & musicians are playing, &, no doubt, wailing. Children are climbing on top of the tomb for a better view of what’s going on here.

Men have rolled the great stone seal aside. Martha & Mary are there, of course, comforting one another. Jesus & Lazarus are hugging. Lazarus, a grey-looking figure, still bound in grave cloths. Jesus, in bright gold, looks to be using His free hand to remove His friend’s head cloth! This vivid portrayal is brimming with life. Brings the whole scene alive. As Jesus brings Lazarus to life. As Jesus is Resurrection & Life. This picture by Swanson has helped bring the story of Lazarus alive for me more than any sermon I’ve preached - or heard! Can we bring out in our preaching how Lazarus’ raising might speak meaningfully to us now? Can we bring ourselves to let God hug us as Jesus hugs Lazarus? And pass that hug on to others?

Let’s preach to the moment, rather than as a history lesson. Vividly, vibrantly, colourfully. No more shades of grey. Resurrection’s in the air. Not only for Lazarus back then. For us, too. Now! How can we bring the story to life so it brings us all back to life? Help us all find ourselves in the picture in a today version of the story? Jesus can still raise us up from any deadness we’re experiencing. No need to wait for any raising up on some ‘Last Day’! God in Jesus can free us right now from whatever binds us & keeps us dead & ‘grey’. Once we come to the point of owning whatever it is we need ‘raising’ from. 

The ‘icon’ I’m referring to above also illustrates the way our lives are all inter-linked: with the colourful & not so colourful all caught up together with, one way or another, everyone & everything going on. And finding them all Life-giving. Can we bring today’s story out of its past & into our own present? Can we put the ‘raising’ question in a not-back-then-but-alive-in-us-all-&-making-us-all-alive-&-kicking-with-God-in-God’s-Present-Tense? God’s Now. 

Afterthought: As I join in reciting the Creed, Eucharist by Eucharist, I find myself pondering - along with other questions - whether if we don’t find & enjoy Resurrection in this world we’ll ever recognise the one we expect to experience & enjoy on That Day?

Brian

JN 6: 56-69 

Jottings on John…Pentecost + 14…Revised 2018

Breathing a sigh of relief that we’ve come to the end of JN for this year? How about going out with a bang rather than a whimper?! Take this opportunity to end on a high that leaves us all waiting expectantly. Not only for Christmas with its ‘In the beginning was the Word’, but our next stretch of JN in 2019!

Our passage is a kind of summary of ‘Jesus the Living Bread’ theme in Ch. 6. More, there’s a progression going on here. On Jesus’ part. Progressions we might consider preaching from:

Jesus encourages His contemporaries to move on from Moses & the Manna from heaven. To  progress from Moses to Him, the Greater than Moses. Something they fail to grasp with a few exceptions. We’re told in our passage that even some of Jesus’ own disciples fail to ‘get it’! ‘Get’ Him! Make the progress He expects of them / us. It’s their turn to appreciate the role Manna plays in their Hebrew forbears’ Faith. And the unique Role Jesus plays as ‘Daily Bread’ on earth in His day.

Now it’s time for us to progress our experience guided by Holy Spirit. From seeing things as 1st C. Christians saw them & on to a new & largely unexplored 21st C. version! Scripture based, of course, & true to the Faith, but a 21st C. version in which Jesus becomes ‘true & living Bread’ for today. ‘Joining all the dots’ necessarily involves risking continuing progress into an unknown future.

Making progress in the context of JN 6, feeding on the Living Bread, entails journeying into God, as much as expecting God to journey with us. Or into us. Aren’t we often told we need to ‘internalise’ understandings these days? Is it stretching the imagination too much to explore ways we can better ‘feed on’, internalise, God the Jesus Way. As Living Bread for our journey? And find ways we can become, in our turn, & as Jesus’ disciples, ‘living bread’ (small capitals) for others round us as we journey together through today’s wildernesses? Wildernesses, as the Hebrews discovered, are for making progress against the odds.

Reading our passage I’m reminded of someone I once knew who gave the appearance of over-preaching the Word & under-celebrating the Eucharistic sharing in Bread & Wine. The very first words of this passage remind us to celebrate both & celebrate them jointly & equally. We may do this in our own style, but do them both we must. To be true to Jesus & what He says in v. 56 about being part of Him & He part of us. 

Afterthought: This is our last ‘ration’ of JN for this year’s calendar. How well we tackle John, & this passage in particular, will inevitably be a test of how our preaching comes across! This will include both preacher & congregation wrestling with the ‘hard bits’! Let’s carry out our Calling by preaching confidently & enthusiastically so we make Godly progress together.

Brian

JN 6: 51-58 

Jottings on John…Pentecost + 13…Revised 2018     

In the very first verse Jesus tells us He’s life-giving Bread; that He’s come (down) from Heaven; that those who ‘eat’ Him will live for ever; & that He’ll give His humanity for the sake of the world! Pretty Deep Stuff! This verse may be a key to opening up the passage. Help us bring all this out of the 1st C. & into ours.

Themes we might build on: 

What does it mean in practice for us to become life-giving bread for the world around us? How many things happening round us are masquerading as ‘life-giving’? Is anyone for whom we have a personal concern caught up in any of these falsehoods? Can we become life-bringing for them? 

How far does Jesus expect us to go / how far are we prepared to go, in giving our humanity for those round us? What might doing so involve? Can we go that far? Do we need better equipping to take that as far as we may need to? Can we identify what any of that equipping may be?

We can’t ‘come down from Heaven’, but do we need to come down from some of our more ingrained theological ‘high horses’ & live & preach at ground level? How down to earth /earthy Jesus is! Can we learn from the approaches He takes to people, to help us help others find heaven on earth? Now, rather than at some ‘last day’? 

What might it mean in today’s language & today’s situations - for people to be able to ‘feed on us’ so they find eternal life? Can we discern any ‘entry points’ for ‘them’ or us? Entry points are really important to discern.

By God’s Grace, preach what Jesus says here as intensely practical! Jesus is no theorist. ’Living Grace-fully’ may well be the key to understanding (& preaching) all this.

Peter Gomes¹ puts it simply: ‘we may need food for our body, & have food for our body; but that in itself won’t satisfy us with life.’ That’s where Jesus being Life-giving Bread comes in. Sharing bread together in our homes, our congregation, & the wider community, is one way we could play our part in bringing this passage to life. Sharing in being raised to new life in the here & now. As a foretaste of being raised at the last day as only Jesus the Christ can raise us!

Afterthought: Yesterday, my wife & I came across a couple - good & religious, in the best sense - folk who need to be helped through a really ‘bad patch’ so they can enjoy God better in more fulfilling lives. Would you, as part of your preparation for preaching this passage, pray that a simple invite to coffee - eagerly accepted - may become a starting point in Jesus becoming life-giving bread beyond the level they’ve been experiencing for some time? Thank you. 

Brian

¹ Sermons, Harper, SF, 1999, p.142  

JN 6: 35 & 41-51 

Jottings on John…Pentecost + 12…Revised 2018. 

Though “I AM the Bread of life” is the first of Jesus' “I AM”s recorded, I do wonder if He may also have said, unrecorded, “I AM the Wine of life” at Cana? A Celebration not only of a wedding, but of Life. For those who don’t normally have much to celebrate. Today, Jesus Himself IS life! Essential as the daily bread He has us pray for. Surely He means we’re to pray for Him, too, to be as much our daily bread as the flour & water kind.

In ancient & widespread tradition, Bread is so at the heart of life that it should be respected & never wasted. Today we might focus on respecting Jesus, the Bread of Life, & never wasting Him. Never being disrespectful of God in any way. Never wasting God in any way. 

Multiple choices of food, & many other things available today to those of us who live in affluent societies, can be a confusing phenomenon of our times. Whereas the only choice for people like Jesus was poor quality bread from the poorest quality flour. Jesus may be one of the ordinariest of us so far as His humanity is concerned, but He is still the Very Best Bread available, i.e. the Bread of life. Do today’s multiple choices in so many areas play their part in our losing focus on God, the Essential at the heart of Life? Bread, representing God, as Jesus represents Himself as Bread, is a great & powerful symbol of God at the heart of Life. Those of us who make our daily bread can vouch for how much better it tastes than much of the mass-produced kind. As God tastes so much better than the many mass-produced idols on offer!

Jesus’ “I AM"s have taken on a deepening significance for me since I began to understand them in Capitals. Jesus can Word-play on the divine “I AM” because YHWH is "I AM”. The Essence of BEING. Because YHWH is “I AM”, Jesus is therefore “I AM”. Because Jesus is “I AM”, I am, too. When I live on Jesus, the Bread of God.

As we celebrate God & our relationship with God & each other in Eucharist we re-enact Jesus telling us He’s the Bread of Life. And, as He is at Cana, the Wine of Life, also. So, do look me in the eye when you pass the Peace to me as we share God in Bread & Wine.

A story from the days of the Desert Fathers - Anthony de Mello has a version - tells of a monk advised by his Abbot not to try any harder to keep the faith, but instead, become fire! Do we need to talk less about bread &, instead, become Bread? For God, for each other, for a hungry world?

Afterthought: Was it Mother Theresa who said, “To pray ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ & then refuse to share it is blasphemy”? 

Brian

JOHN 6:24-35

Jottings on John…Pentecost + 11…Revised 2018. 

The crowd begins with a rather trite question: “When did you come here?" Aren't they game to come straight out & ask for more bread & fish? They haven’t often eaten so well! Jesus, though, knows what they really need is to go beyond trite questioning to opening up to their real needs. As He knows what we really need, too. Worth pondering in a sermon?

It’s easy to 'spiritualise' our own, or others’, needs so we don't have to do much about them. After all, spiritual things are God's realm, aren't they, so we can leave that kind of thing to God! Here, Jesus is trying to re-connect people & their physical need (they rarely had a decent feed!) with their spiritual needs. Connect them back with eternal life, or, as I have come to appreciate, ‘real' life (‘Complete Gospels’)¹. Real life includes feeding body, mind, & spirit! How to close these gaps between the physical & the spiritual is worth keeping in mind.

When pressed, the people ask Jesus “What must we do…?:” Jesus’ reply is, “Believe in the One God has sent!” Don’t we ask that same question; perhaps often? What if it’s a matter of helping folk understand the difference between believing about, & believing in, that One God has sent?

In ‘feeding the more than 5000', Jesus is connecting himself back to Elisha. Now He goes further still & connects himself back to Moses leading the people through a wilderness that is both physical & spiritual. (Are all wildernesses both?) In the process Jesus invites us all to re-connect with our spiritual ancestors, & through & beyond them, to God-self. Is any-thing more important in any putting together process than that we ‘join up the dots’?

In his inimitable way, JN wants us to see that putting the physical together with the spiritual isn’t just a miracle, but a Sign. Of Who this is ‘putting things - & people - together’; not so much by any outside act, but by dwelling within us. As a Sign of God's love & compassion. Restoring us to that state of Grace from which our mystical / mythical ancestors fell. Man & Woman. As a Sign we’re re-connected to, restored to, that relationship with God & each other intended from the Beginning. Each time we celebrate Eucharist, bread & wine become Signs of His ‘putting together’ presence in us & among us. So we, too, become Signs of God's loving active presence in the world - God’s world. Enjoy! 

Afterthought: ‘Across the world, across the street / the victims of injustice cry for shelter & for bread to eat / and never live before they die.’ From a Lutheran (?) hymn.

¹ Polebridge, Harper, ’94

Brian

JOHN 6:1-21

Jottings on John…Pent + 10…Revised 2018

Returning to John for a period gives us the opportunity of appreciating how he sees things through ‘spiritual eyes’ different from those of the synoptists. How John interprets the stories he’s telling. Seeing things like the great feeding not just as ‘miracles’, but ‘Signs’ 

 [vv. 2, 14]. This helps us, like him, to discern Jesus, God’s Word, who tells creation into being [JN 1, cf. GN 1], come among us in the Person of one of us. Helps us discern what others refer to as miracles, being in fact Signs calling us into being, as Creation was once called into being. You may find a theme to develop among the following:

Sick people cry out for healing. How can we answer their cries? What do we, simple disciples of Jesus, & mostly not professional healers of any kind, have to offer them as a Sign of God’s eternal love for them, & ours? Whatever & wherever their circumstances.

Hungry people cry out for feeding. In so many places; some of them close to home. Are we sharing what we have, or keeping it to ourselves, for ourselves? Let’s call today’s lad Benji to keep his face & his loaves & fish before us. Reminding us there are still ways God can make small amounts of anything, given generously, a Sign of His eternal love & ours. More, challenging us to offer whatever our little may be.

Our simplest resources - like Benji’s barley loaves & tiny fish - cry out for sharing among those who need them. Is there anything so small it’s not worth sharing as a Sign of God’s eternal love & ours? 

They may be only ‘fragments’ of this or that, but, as God’s gifts to us, they deserve to be preserved for sharing; somewhere along life’s journey with someone crying out for them. What are only ‘broken pieces’ to us may be just what someone else is crying out for as a Sign indeed, of God’s eternal love & ours. 

Women & children who ‘don’t get into the count’ in this story might stand for all those in life situations who ‘don’t count’. Representatives of that Orwellian, ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others’ way of looking at people. Who do we hear crying out to be recognised as an equal, as a Sign of God’s eternal love for us all, &, unselectively, them? 

Are we hearing those physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually drained crying out for replenishment in their need? Maybe what they, or we, really need is God-Space of one kind or another which they / we can experience as a Sign of God’s eternal love for us all?

After thought: Can we discern God Himself crying out His eternal Name: “I AM - It’s Me” when even He needs a Sign He’s recognised among us? Reassuring us - & God-self? 

Brian     

JOHN 3:1-17

Jottings on John…Trinity Sunday…Revised 2018

+ Michael Curry’s amazingly daring sermon on Love as a Relationship between God & us & each other during that Royal wedding sounds pretty Trinitarian to me. Without being boringly doctrinal. OK, we need doctrine. But ‘Trinity’ isn’t a doctrine; it’s a relationship. In heaven & on earth. ’Nick’, of today’s passage - may I call him Nick for the sake of this exercise? - he isn’t on about doctrine either. He’s on about God, & relationship with God. Nick knows in his spiritual bones he doesn’t have the kind of relationship with God that he discerns Jesus represents. Sound doctrine is important, but without Relationship, it can lead astray!

Nick is a genuine seeker after the Truth of God & a meaningful Relationship with this God of Truth. He discerns that if anyone can help him, Jesus can! As a leading Pharisee, Nick’s obedient to YHWH according to his religious party’s doctrines, but now he discerns sound doctrine, & obedience to it, isn’t enough by itself. He’s been led - by Holy Spirit - to come to a point, where doctrine isn’t enough. He needs a relationship with God he isn’t experiencing. In their ‘deep & meaningful’, Jesus, God the Son, begins a process of moving him on from any darknesses Nick may have as a result of ingrained cultural & religious understandings.

Hildegard of Bingen somewhere says, ‘God stirs everything into quickness’. Today we hear Nicodemus being stirred by God the Spirit into coming to Jesus, God the Son, that night. When the time is ripe God stirs! In Holy Spirit we experience God as a Stirrer by Divine Nature! In Jesus, the Son, we experience God as One of us. A God who knows us from inside out! YHWH God, Father, is the I AM; the Eternal Essence of Being. Who calls us in many & various ways & times, & places. Jesus the Son of Humanity opens us up from our human ‘inside’ of things to that servanthood at the heart of God & discipleship. Holy Spirit, ‘the Love that flows between the Father & the Son’ gathers us up, with the raised Christ, inside God. Opens us up to that love flowing between the Persons of God so we become persons of God, too. Family! No longer outsiders; insiders gathered up by Grace into a unique relationship by All Three.

All God does is done by all of God. No playing favourites, as it were! Nicodemus, well versed in YHWH as ‘Father’, begins to experience the fullness of God when quickened by the Spirit, the Paraclete, the Dis-Comforter. He visits Jesus, the Son, & begins to find the Wholeness of God in a new & quickening way. I can’t see any reason not to take it that Jesus is still exploring & sharing the things of God with Nicodemus when He refers to the ancient episode of serpents in the wilderness. The incident of a bronze snake being lifted up on a pole is always stirring in Jesus’ psyche. Does that connection begin to stir in Nick, too, that night? When, later, Nick sees Jesus lifted up on the cross & then raised from death, does it stir further still? Readying him to burst into life with Pentecostal blaze?

PS: Next week it’s back to St. Mark. (My blog is: marginallymark.blogspot.com.au.)

JOHN 15:26-27 & 16: 4b-15

Jottings on John…Pentecost…Revised 2018 

To start on a negative, normally a no-no in preaching, the translation of Paraclete I like & trust least is ‘Comforter’. Dis-Comforter, yes; but it’s hard to see ‘Comforter’ - in the usual sense of that word - much help in approaching Pentecost! ‘Advocate’, or even better, ’Paraclete’, the ‘one called to our  side’, is the one to preach.

I’d just decided ‘Paraclete’ was to be the emphasis of this blog, when in one of those ‘God-incidences’, I finished Tim Winton’s great new novel, ‘the shepherd’s hut’¹ (that’s the way it’s printed on the cover!) That confirmed my choice. For almost at the end of the story, thrown together in outback Australia, Fintan, the old, failed priest says to young runaway Jaxie, “…I suspect that god is what you do, not what or who you believe in……when you do right, Jaxie, when you make good - well, then you are an instrument of God. Then you are joined to the the divine, to the life force, to life itself. That’s what I  believe. That’s what I hope for. And it’s what I have missed.” 

On the surface this may seem an odd slant on theology, but each of them has been led to the side of the other. To help get them both through vastly different & impossibly testing circumstances. To give each other a life. To bring each other back to life; newly resurrected with Christ, depending, maybe, on our theological ‘take’ on all this. The Paraclete is God in action. In you & me & others. Practical Theology indeed! 

What happens at that original Pentecost isn’t the fire of Religious enthusiasm, but the Fire of Love expressed in Servanthood. It’s not the wind that takes us where we will, but the Wind of God that blows us where it will; blows us to the side of some person as part of God’s purpose & provision for them. And for us, too! ‘Paraclete’ may often appear to be spelt with a very small ‘p’!  Tim Winton, a man of deep spirituality, expresses that in his Fintan & Jaxie characters.

So, let’s celebrate this Pentecost for those in the Good Book, by all means, but also in & for ourselves & others in our own book or books; the ones we’re co-writing with our own Fintan or Jaxie. And the Paraclete, of course!

¹ Penguin - Hamish Hamilton, Melbourne, 2018, p.233 (Don’t be put off by the ‘bad language’!) 

JN 17: 6-19 

Jottings on John…Easter 7…Revised 2018

What an amazing privilege to hear Jesus praying for our forebears in Faith, & us, too. (I’m anticipating v. 20). As He gets ready to leave them. Though not to their own devices. Does God ever leave us to our own devices? (Including our I.T. ones!) Do we have a personal story of thinking God had left us to our own ‘devices’? Is it unreasonable to think of Jesus’ praying here as ‘thinking aloud’ to God? How does this sit with Him Himself being One of the indivisible Trinity? Aren’t we really listening to God thinking aloud to God? Doesn’t this in itself make thinking aloud to God a legitimate kind of prayer for us, too? From a pray-er who’s reached that stage of development? Not to be confused with me ‘praying to myself’ - a real spiritual trap! 

Praying at such a deep level doesn’t come easily to most of us. A fortnight ago, blogging on JN15:1-8, I drew attention to Luigi Gioia¹ & his comments about Jesus praying from inside God. His suggesting that praying the Lord’s own Prayer is the key to unlocking this stage in our spiritual growth. I take him to mean that this stage of growth stems (!) from the vine imagery - living in Jesus - of the last couple of weeks. It goes something like this: If we live in Jesus, any praying we do must surely come from ‘inside’ God in some sense. If this sounds a bit at the mystical end of the scale, stick with it! If anyone ever prayed from inside God, it’s Jesus Himself! Doesn’t it follow, then, that if we’re living in Jesus, in some sense we’re praying from inside God, too - even if that takes some mystical thinking (& praying!) Understanding prayer as bringing us that close to God, we can hold the kind of conversation with God Jesus does. Doing as Jesus does here should be a great encouragement to us as we pray! Ever been there, done that? Today we might legitimately focus on praying: Jesus’ prayer & our own praying. 

Praying as above may also help us sort out the difference between thinking of ourselves as ‘volunteers for Jesus’ (as we can do!) &, instead, recognising our discipleship as a gift of Grace from God (v.6). Do we have a personal story of such a discovery? Can we also see that praying together as one in Christ is a way of fulfilling Jesus’ prayer that we become one (v.11). At ground zero. Theoretical prayer doesn’t cut any ice any more than theoretical discipleship does. Is there any such thing as praying in theory? Any more than that we can be disciples in theory? Jesus praying the way He does here just before His passion shows what hard work it is being the Messiah or a disciple of the Messiah. 

More, are we experiencing joy in our relationship with God & each other (v.13) ? How’s our own joy quotient? Have we yet discovered, experienced for ourselves what ‘joy’ is? How do we discern the Truth Jesus is praying for here, as opposed to - & it is opposed to -  the ‘fake news’ some are peddling & thriving on (v.17) ? Any personal story to share here? Even if it’s an embarrassing one? 

¹ ‘Say It To God’, Bloomsbury, London, 2017, p.78 et al.

JN 15: 9-17 

Jottings on John…Easter 6…Revised 2018 

Jesus is making a last pitch to His disciples. Not to ‘the’ disciples. They’re His disciples. So important to Him! And to His mission! He’s only hours away from His Passion & death. What does He feel He still needs to get through to those still with Him? What’s vital to Jesus here is helping His disciples grasp what’re discipleship’s all about; how deep & personal it is. (Is there such a person as a ‘theoretical disciple’?  So He expands on last week’s true vine & branches imagery; with its imagery of discipleship being a matter of remaining in Himself as the True Vine; living in Him & through Him. Using ‘imagery’ recalls to heart & mind that we’re made in the image of God. As basic a theology as one can get! Here are three thrusts I see that stem (!) from today’s passage. Perhaps you can see more? The ones I see are: a) Loving one another; b) Being called Jesus’ friends; &, c) Being chosen so we may bear fruit. They’re all a matter of relationship with God & each other, & each relies on the other!

Let’s start with c) : Being chosen so we may bear fruit. To live in Jesus. The initiative is taken by God. This, & our response of choosing to live in Him - are gifts of Grace. As we bear the fruits of right living, the effect of this is to bring Grace to others, too. This gift of Grace to us (& through us, to others) hangs on (!) our continuing in that relationship with God that living in Jesus by His Spirit makes possible. As we hang in there on the Vine & bear fruit. In every-day life at ground level. On earth as it is in Heaven. This Way Holy Spirit keeps Jesus’ imagery alive & well & ongoing. In us & for others. 

To take a), now: Loving one another, like living in God, is a further re-statement of the Two Great Commandments Jesus has already distilled from the Ten YHWH has given Moses long before. It’s the ongoing response to the question ‘But what does God want me to do?’ 

With regard to b): Being called Jesus’ friends, somewhere I once came across mention of a person who felt so honoured to have been counted a friend by a certain noted & godly person that they directed that when they them-self died, all that was to appear on their grave-stone was, ‘Here lies a friend of ……’ . Let’s respond to the honour Jesus bestows on us in calling us His friends by letting that show in our lives, rather than one day on our gravestones.

Societies of all stripes are becoming more & more unstuck & unstable. ‘Commandments’ of any kind are being more & more poorly observed except by extremists who bring neither their God nor themselves credit. For a good society, a God society, is what we need not so much cutting God’s commandments down to our size, but instead, letting God stretch us up to His size? There’s nothing bigger or better than Love as God sees it & practises it.

In a recent book, Bp. Tom Wright¹ says, ^‘our present challenge is to see the world with different eyes. To see God with different eyes. To see our neighbour with different eyes. To see ourself with different eyes. This is the challenge of the good news for today & tomorrow.’ A good summing up of today’s passage is that not?

¹ N.T.Wright, Simply Good News, HarperOne, NY, 2015, pp.4-5, 150-151.

JOHN 15: 1-8

Jottings on John…Easter 5…Revised 2018 

Jesus’ "I am the true vine" has more than one cutting edge to it. Pruning is important in our gardens & in our faith journey. We’ve given up growing grapes. It’s not the pruning that’s the trouble! It’s the parrots that abound where we live getting most of the grapes. As they still do our Olives; with a goodly share of mulberries & pomegranates thrown in for good measure. All in due season, of course! Maybe spiritual journeys, faith journeys, have seasons, too? A time to prune, a time to carry out other nurture? Might that be a useful question to ask of ourselves & our flocks?

As important a thrust of today’s passage as pruning, is, ‘remaining’ in Jesus. However we may interpret that; including remaining in His earthly Body, the Church. Even if we find the latter hard going sometimes! Ten times in ten verses Jesus uses, ‘remain’, one of the more frequent translations. (‘Abide’ smacks too much of a certain hymn often sung at the funerals of older people!) Are we helping our hearers understand that everything in our Gospels is translation? And a matter of interpretation?

 The translation I respond to most positively is, ‘live in’. Sydney Carter put this particularly well in his hymn, ‘Lord of the dance’.  Jesus, Himself the ‘Lord of the dance’, has it: “I’ll live in you as you live in me…” In another work, though, ‘The Present Tense’, Carter says, ‘Your holy hearsay is not evidence, Give me the good news in the present tense. So shut the Bible up and show me how The Christ you talk about is living now’. Some may find this a bit too radical; but for me, in these two contributions, Carter is helping us come to grips with both thrusts of today’s passage.

Another helpful insight comes from Luigi Gioia, OCSO, ¹ who tells us that praying the Lord’s Prayer (he stresses it is the Lord’s prayer, not ours) introduces us into ‘His relation with the Father through the Holy Spirit’. What Fr. Luigi, appears to be telling us from his own experience here, is that praying then becomes an ‘inside job’; not that of an outsider. We find ourselves participating in that Relation-ship that is God’s own Life, that Love that flows between the Father & the Son by the Spirit. Jesus doesn’t say, ’I Am the Life’ just for the sake of having something to say! What’s at stake here is the difference between talking about living, & actually experiencing being alive! When we live in Him & pray in Him as He teaches us, we are embraced in a God-us relationship. Dare one say, a kind of Holy Quadrilateral? That way we become more & more ‘insiders’ as God - all of God - becomes more real as we live in Him.

¹ ‘Say it to God’,  Bloomsbury, London, 2017, p. 78 

JOHN 10: 11-18

Jottings on John…Easter 4…Revised 2018.  

When is a gate not a gate? When it’s a shepherd! Our passage is alive with nuances of the stories of Israel of old. Over time I’ve come to think of Jesus, the gate of the sheep & at the same time their Good Shepherd, as One with Attitude. An Attitude flowing  from the heart of God & expressing itself in aptitude. Do we sometimes expect the reverse in our flock; aptitude finding expression as attitude? Does that work?

What started me off down this track long ago was a painting of Jesus the Good Shepherd above the altar of the parish I joined when I was a teenager. The Jesus of that painting has no attitude. I began to question, even then, whether a Jesus with no attitude has any aptitude for dealing with His sheep? My case firmed up just a few years ago, when a magazine published on its cover a photo of an OZ shepherd in oilskin coat & with a waterproofed bushman’s hat jammed down on his head, carrying a bedraggled lamb to shelter in his arms during a storm. This time, a portrait of a shepherd full of attitude; demonstrating his aptitude for the job! On many of our vast sheep runs the situation is of course much changed today. Shepherds ride trail-bikes, quad-bikes, & fly helicopters for round-ups! The quality of shepherding, though, even the mass-production kind, still depends on these modern driving / flying shepherds having the right attitude to their sheep. (Or, more likely, someone else’s sheep; or some big company’s sheep!)

How do we translate Jesus' Middle Eastern imagery (still alive & well, & still hard-going, in some parts of the world) into shepherding the sheep of today’s congregations? How to turn Jesus’ imagery into relevance for the many sheep astray & lost in the world’s wildernesses, shying clear of being corralled within organised religion? I’ve no specific answers. But let’s have Faith to expect & find some. When we & our flock are given the Grace to be shepherds with a Jesus-like Attitude & a Jesus-like Aptitude we will reach out to each other, & beyond our closed ranks. Making not just Jesus' imagery, but Jesus Himself a reality. 

The H.B. with its host of references to shepherds, sheep, & shepherding, & the often great if flawed figures involved, is a sound basis for the new understanding of shepherding Jesus Himself personifies & spells out. Is that Attitude of Love that flows between Father, Son, & Spirit flowing on & into us, & our relationships with God & each other? That One-ness of the Trinity embodying the Attitude & Aptitude we need to minister to today’s sheep inside & outside our churches? So there is more & more redeeming love for more & more ‘sheep’?

Be confident God’s Grace will point a way to counter the over-supply of ‘cowboys' we often seem to be lamenting! When we preach this passage let’s work positively with Attitude towards the building up of a greater supply of shepherds with godly Aptitude!

JN 20: 19-31 

Jottings on John…2nd S. of Easter…Revised 2018. 

How Jesus 'broke into' that room isn’t nearly so important as how you & I break out from it. Are broken out! From behind whatever’s locking us in & preventing us becoming the person God knows we could become. Jesus, resurrected from behind that great rock door of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb is our freedom, too, from our various prisons. Or, as Paul says, 'we are of all people most miserable'. Perhaps that's why so many of us are miserable today! Help is at hand!

‘Breaking & entering’ is an everyday crime these days. Cracks-people break in to steal things of value. Imagine God as the Great Cracks-person, though One who only has our well-being in mind! Breaking into Jesus’ tomb as He does; breaking Jesus out from death to new, raised life in a new dimension. God in Jesus then breaks into the room the disciples have shut themselves up in, & breaks them - or at least begins to break them - out from behind doubts & fears.

Another form of ‘breaking & entering’ today is ‘hacking’. Breaking into our computer programmes to steal personal information, including our credit card details! The programme we use will from time to time offer us ‘up-dates’, including ‘fixes’ for security issues; fixes that will keep us a step ahead of those who would break & enter our I.T. world. Imagine God as the Great Hacker, but only so as to be our spiritual up-date! 

God not only breaks & enters, hacks into Jesus’ tomb. God breaks into & hacks into Death itself! Plants a virus into its programme so its power to hold is destroyed. The disciples go on to be freed in a variety of ways, & raised to a new quality of life as a result. The same goes for us. Sure, we expect to be raised at that ‘Last Day’, but we don’t have to wait till then. Choose to be raised with Christ to a new quality, a new dimension of life, here & now.

No-one, says JN, could 'write down all the signs in this book'. Someone else, though, does choose to add another chapter later! Easter is both reminder, & opportunity, for us all to be writing new chapters of our own by becoming those new chapters as we’re all raised by the Spirit of Jesus.

John 20:1-18

Jottings on John…Easter Day…Revised 2018. 

Easter Day falling on April 1st this year reminds us we are ‘fools for Christ’s sake’.

That God has the imagination to raise Jesus the Christ from what His people, &, notably, their leaders, have done to Him, invites us to use our imagination too in our preaching. Imagination may not be on Paul’s list of spiritual gifts, but who can deny it is one?!

Finding the raised Christ can be a very elusive business in any half-light in which we go looking for Him. Mary M is first to be baffled, then at her behest, Peter, & the ‘other disciple Jesus loved’. (Surely, He loves all of them?) The two respond to Mary’s angst, one reaching the tomb just ahead of the other as it happens. This ‘other disciple’ appears to take in the truth of what’s taken place sooner than Peter; even though the latter, typically impulsively, has gone into the tomb first. After these two have gone home, rather chastened, one suspects, Mary M, who’s returned to the tomb with them, remains. In turn she meets up with two angels, then unwittingly, with Jesus Himself. 

Our trio, &, later, other disciples, may imaginatively represent stages of belief some others have reached, or still suffer angst over on the way to reaching a discipleship raised with Jesus. Why not imagine & explore such possibilities:

Darkness, or even half-light is no substitute for the Light Christ is in Himself   & by His Spirit when we find Him raised & able to raise us with Him.

Someone telling us, or even speculating Jesus is raised, is no substitute for meeting Him personally. 

How thoroughly are we seeking? Fleetingly? Haphazardly (as I might look for a ‘lost’ sock!)? Persistently? Theologically? Or, most important, expectantly.? Always be on the look-out for angels, whatever their guise. They are always pointing us in the direction of the raised Christ.

Are we searching in company, within the Body? God is no solitary. Any more than a person raised with Christ can be one.

As the stories of the raised Christ develop over the days & weeks & more, some angst continues. But the more Jesus-raised-from-the-dead stories are shared, the more all the dots are joined, the more belief & joy break through in the reality of the communal experience. As joy, in the Person of & Presence of the Raised Christ Himself, takes over their company. As He needs to take over ours today.