JN 14: 23-29 

Jottings on John…Easter 6…Revised 2019

That magnificently & imaginatively evoking of how everything came into being in the first Creation story in Gn1 has YHWH-God saying again & again, “Let there be…..” God tells everything into being. Telling can be so Creative! From that point, ‘Word’ becomes a key word in the Scriptures as they develop. Just for fun I did a rough count of how many words Jesus speaks in our passage in the NRSV. About 238 in English by my count. (These weekly blogs are normally c. 500 words!) How many words are we going to speak in this sermon we’re about to preach? What new life are we going to tell into being?

In that Gn1 account we’re not told God gets as far as ‘loving’ what He’s bringing into being. Though again & again as Creation comes into being, ‘day’ after ‘day’, the ancient story-teller has God seeing everything is ‘good’. ‘Good’ is a starting place for the Love God will later tell into the story in the Person of, & earthly presence of, Jesus. Now it’s our turn to go on beyond merely ‘good’ to tell of, tell on, that love. More than by preaching about it; by living lives that tell it out loud & clear. How can we best share this with our congregation?

Love is always as self-giving as YHWH God is in Jesus & by His Spirit. Self-giving tells God’s love into being in us, over & over again, as we Love as God-in-Jesus loves.  

Nor is ‘Word’ shorthand for 'wordiness', a trap it’s all too easy to fall into! Being ‘wordy’, rather than ‘of the Word’, can too easily be ‘telling’ in another, wrong sense; can put at risk our being productive for God. 

The Paraclete, God's 'Living Reminder' (who first used that expression?) is called by God to our side to make Jesus, God’s Love in us & for others, possible.

Do you & I, & our congregation & the peoples of the world, need more than anything else for God’s ‘peace that passes all understanding’ to break out, rather than wars? 

What is it that troubles us? Or should that be ‘who’ is it who troubles us? Is the true answer more often than not, “I am!”? Where to from here in our story telling? 

Do we experience much rejoicing when & where we worship? If not, should we leave & go somewhere else? Surely God’s Word tells us to stay & play our part in making rejoicing happen? Might voting with our feet, & going off to another congregation, mean transferring our problem with us? How telling would that be?!

Brian

Afterthought: No matter how well we preach Christ’s ‘coming again’ at ground level, the Creeds' often appear to ‘futurise’ it, &, therefore Him, in people's hearts & minds. The Spirit is our Present, Living Reminder that there’s no future Jesus without a Present One.