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.