JN 18: 37-38  & 19: 16-30  

Jottings on John…From the Good Friday Gospel… 2018  

In asking Jesus, “Truth? What’s that?”, Pilate’s dismissive of both Jesus & Truth. Leaders who don’t admit the difference between ‘truth’ & ‘alternative truth’ are also dismissive. Now the leaders of the Australian Test Cricket Team appear not to know the difference between Truth & not truth - in their case, by cheating. Whenever we settle for alternative truths, or cheating, over Truth with a capital T, we’re aligning ourselves with Pilate & how he sees things, rather than with Jesus, God’s Truth.

Truth goes to the heart of Jesus' mission & kingship. At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus has had to wrestle out in the wilderness with the Truth of Who He is. What kind of Messiah He’s to be. He’s been tempted to hand Himself over to devilish ways of being Messiah, but discerns there’s no Truth in that direction. Instead, Jesus commits to being God’s Truth; living out God’s way of seeing things & doing things. How can we explore this?  

When Jesus appears before him, Pilate doesn’t ‘get’ Him! “You’re not really a king, are you?” he asks. (Try that with differing emphases!) When Jesus replies, “You’re the one saying I am”, Pilate’s response is,“You don’t look like a king to me!” Pilate’s unable to see the God possibilities in Jesus, God’s very own person standing in front of him; most certainly different from any king he’s seen or known, or likely to. Pilate is genuinely puzzled by Jesus, but unwilling to go beyond his own conundrum: When is a king not a king?’ Is it worth asking, too, ‘When is God not God?’

The way to help anyone, inside or outside the church, puzzling over Jesus’ kind of kingship is by our living out the Truth of His kingship. So they can see God’s Truth as Jesus lives God out in us, and ‘get’ it! Get Him! Get God!

Jesus tells Pilate, “Everyone who belongs to the Truth can hear my voice”, echoing what He’s earlier said to antagonistic fellow Jews [8:47]. Later, when Pilate refuses to change the wording over Jesus’ cross, has he simply had enough of the Jewish leaders & their complainings? Or, is this Truth-about-Jesus question still bothering him? Perhaps it should be bothering us more today?

Jesus, nailed to His cross, is the Essence of the non-negotiable Truth of God. He Himself puts the seal on that in His last words before He dies. Personally, I can never settle for the tame, ‘It’s finished’, or ‘It’s over’, kind of translation. I’ve no doubt Jesus is saying, & meaning, “I’ve done it!” “I’ve brought it off!” And that’s God’s Truth!

JOHN 12: 20-33

Jottings on John…Lent 5…Revised 2018 

The ‘Greeks’ who come to worship at the feast ‘want to see Jesus’. Are they among the ‘god-fearers’ attracted to the monotheism of Judaism? We don’t know for sure if they’d get past the Court of the Gentiles, but that’s OK if that’s where Jesus is teaching. What happens to those who come to our church hoping to meet God? Do they face barriers of any kind: structural, people, or attitudes, that may keep them from ‘seeing God’? Keep them from coming face to face with Jesus as these Greeks here want to do?

Why does Philip feel he needs to ‘get the nod’ from Andrew before approaching Jesus about the Greeks? Is there any hesitancy in the way we meet new people- opportunities? Dare we ask, “If someone were to come in here among us today saying they ‘wanted to see Jesus’ how would we approach them? Would we ‘pass the buck’ to someone else? A starting point might be to ask something like, ‘How well does our ‘front of house’ function. Long personal experience shows me how important the way we greet & receive people to worship, both regulars & strangers, is.

If we were to ‘mark’ our congregation on our performance as a people of God gathering to meet Jesus, how would we fare at this point? If the result is not too encouraging, can we learn anything from this passage to help us improve? 

  

We don’t know if these ‘Greeks’ of our story do actually get to meet Jesus. Neither Jesus nor John makes any further mention of them. Their arrival on the scene, though, seems to precipitate Jesus into recognising the climax of His mission on earth has arrived ¹. He speaks accordingly. Are we making as much as we might of ‘climaxes’ - in our liturgical observances, in on-going parish life, in our personal life? May it be time we discerned climactic possibilities God is creating under our noses, & grasp them?! Might the arrival of some new-comer onto our scene just be a God-sent game-changer for us?

In all this, do we need to learn to ‘let go & let God’ as Jesus does? Matthew Fox paraphrases Meister Eckhart on this passage as: ‘Jesus is so full of letting go He was able to let go of life. So free of letting go was the Divine Word that it could become human.’ ²  A thought to discern, deeply, & put into practice?

¹ Leon Morris, St. John, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1971, p. 590  ² Breakthrough, Doubleday, NY, 1980 p. 349 

JOHN 3: 14-21

Jottings on John…Lent 4…2018 

This old story of the bronze snake from hundreds of years before is seared deep into Jesus’ psyche. So much so that He takes the story & beats it into shape like the smiths beat that original snake into shape. Jesus beats it into representing Himself & what’s going to happen to Him. Beats it into representing Himself & how He’s going to be beaten. Beats it into how He’s going to be hung up on the pole of the cross. Beats it so all who will look up to Him will find their healing; in every sense of that word.

It’s not clear whether this passage is still part of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, but it makes sense to take it as being so. Look at how Nicodemus is later so moved at Jesus being beaten & hung up to die, that against the odds, he assists Joseph of Arimathea in giving Jesus a decent burial. Had the snake-on-the-pole story begun to sear itself into Nicodemus’ psyche, too, after this conversation with Jesus? 

It’s easy to focus so much on the popular appeal of v. 16 that we skip over 14 & 15 in our haste to get to it. To do this is to fall into the trap of selectively choosing texts rather than taking each as part of a whole. Jesus undergoes His own ‘being lifted up’ experience so we might find our healing through His loving us so much (our beloved v.16). He’s prepared to prophetically re-enact & fulfil His being the antidote for all that’s biting us as we journey towards our Promised land.

At the start of Lent we learned that wilderness may be hard going, inhospitable, & a challenge to body, mind, & spirit, but it’s never God-forsaken; though we may refer to it as such. Today we have Good News about finding our healing from the things that bite us as we journey onwards with God through life on earth, including our various wildernesses. How can we lovingly, patiently, & confidently encourage those being ‘bitten to death’ by the various scourges of today’s society to take this Gospel into themselves? Taking this story as deeply as Jesus takes the original story into Himself may produce healing at a deeper level than a lot of other ‘remedies’ on offer. Are we up for it?

Jesus Himself is healed through being raised to new life. Whatever happens to us, whatever bites us, He’s our guarantee of the deepest healing of all. 

JOHN 2: 13-22 

Jottings on John…Lent 3…New for 2018 

The Jewish leaders asking Jesus for a sign (v.18) is central to this passage. They are unable to grasp that He Himself is The Sign come among them! The Sign of God’s judging on the way people are, things are, & offering God’s grace for a better way of being human beings, looking at things, & doing things. Is this the point John wants to make by placing the cleansing of the Temple so early in Jesus’ ministry, whereas the other Evangelists place it towards the end? (Unless, that is, we accept two cleansings?)

If the Temple is ‘the central shrine of political religion in Jerusalem’ ¹ in Jesus’ day, what have become shrines of ‘political religion’ for us? Flags? War Memorials? Anthems? Baseball caps? Windows in our churches? Lapel Badges? All, & more, now stamping grounds for politicians who exploit this kind of religion in the interests of gaining voters. What is Jesus the  Sign of in such cases? What prophetic input are we making into this scene? Or, will doing so cost us too much?

Has the time come for us to explore ways of reaching beyond our sanctuaries & out into the margins? Where so many people disaffected from religion are struggling to survive? Difficult as the challenge may be, is this where we need to be in-putting some Christ-like political & religious energies - at ground zero? Does it catch the eyes of our hearts that much of Jesus’ work out there is being done by people who lay no claim to being religious, yet are being a Jesus-like sign where it’s needed? What can we learn from them?

When he drives out the ‘crooks’ dealing in animals for sacrifice, Jesus literally puts the Temple out of business ² at least temporarily, by  shutting down the animal sacrifices at the heart of operations. When Jesus challenges those who put Him down, & says He’ll “raise up this temple in three days”, they take cover behind arithmetic with their “Forty six years…” Jesus is still open for God’s business as the New Temple; but without any hint of corruption. As the old one ought to have been.

Have we developed distractions of our own, even the mis-use of Scripture, to avoid Jesus issues facing our churches? Are we trying to take cover behind any such distractions? There’s also a reminder here that God’s kind of triumphalism is far from the kind the leaders of Jesus’ day are imagining in a Messiah? To be ‘raised up’, as Jesus prophesies here, begins on a cross!  

To be a sign, as Jesus is, that human beings in their need matter more than politics or religion as it’s commonly practised, is the most positive step we can take in His Name & in His footsteps. Through sharing Eucharist we become the Body of Christ that His Spirit being with us makes us. When we gather round the altar to share Eucharist we’re staring great possibilities in the Face. Jesus, the Sign God’s world needs so much, still offers Himself today - or wants to - in us & through us!  

¹ Malina & Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on John, Fortress, Minneapolis, 1998, p. 75 

² Shore, Sermon, Working Preacher, ad loc., 2018. 

JOHN 1: 43-51

Jottings on John…Epiphany 2…Revised 2018 

The ‘next day’ crops up in vv. 29 & 35 & now here it is again in v. 43. Ch.2 begins with ‘On the third day’. Is John simply sketching a time line, or is he conveying a sense of urgency (like MK with his persistent, ‘immediately’)? In Church circles, doing things the ‘next day’, or even ‘on the third day’ may result in accusations of irreverent haste! Maybe this is about the distinctions between God’s kairos & our chronos? In v.41 Andrew goes off & brings his brother, Simon, to meet Jesus. Now Philip brings Nathaniel (Bartholomew?) JE appears to be highlighting some urgency in bringing family & other contacts to Jesus. Without being dismissive of anyone!

The fig tree in vv.48-50 appeals to me as an icon here. In a corner of our back garden is a large feral fig tree. Many years ago some bird drops a seed in that spot. For most of those intervening years, though our tree grows & grows, it produces not one fig! A few years ago we have a tree expert inspect it with a view to taking it out; his verdict is, “Let it be; one day it may come good”. No such thing! A couple of years later we call in another tree-man. The outcome? “Give it another year or two just in case”. The next year our fig does actually produce some fruit. We begin to get excited. Dry as chips! Totally inedible! Five years ago when the land behind us sells for a new estate, our fig tree comes into its own, but not in the way we’d hoped. When it’s in leaf, which is most of the year, it gives us & the folk behind us privacy from each other!

Would you believe, three years ago, after producing its usual inedible crop, lo & behold our fig produces a 2nd crop of small, but edible figs. And it’s been doing that since. God is good! Even if sometimes we have to wait for things to happen in God’s time rather than ours!

 What does all this have to do with our passage? Try this: Nat is in the 1st instance dismissive of Jesus simply because He comes from Nazareth! “Can anything good come from that place?” But Jesus is not in return dismissive of Nat, even though he comes from up the same way! Jesus instead discerns Nat’s ‘a true Israelite, who hasn’t a trace of deceit in him’ & tells him so! Nat doesn’t go all, “Shucks I’m not really that good!” He takes Jesus & what He says at face value by responding, in some puzzlement, “How do you know me?” What does Jesus respond? “I saw U under the fig tree…” This incident related by JE points to the importance of making right judgments based on godly discernment & personal experience, not on being dismissive of people or situations. Nat immediately - not the next day or even on the third day - says to Jesus, “Rabbi, You’re God’s Son; You’re the King of Israel!”

That fig tree of long ago, & our fig tree of today are both of them icons inviting us in to discern people & opportunities, lest we dismiss God & the God in them. God can make not only unpromising fig trees fruitful, but even unpromising human beings like us.

JOHN 1: 6-8 (15-18) 19-28

Jottings on John… Adv.3…Revised 2017 

Many see these verses, or some of them, as insertions into, interruptions of, a distraction from the flow of John the Evangelist’s(?) magnificent Hymn to the Word. A reminder to those of us who preach to put neither ourselves, nor JB, so centre-stage as to distract from the One who is coming. The Baptiser is to be respected, revered, even, but not, under any circumstances allowed to become a rival to Jesus (as many of JB’s followers continued to see him for some time). It goes without saying we shouldn’t be, either. 

(If we regard these verses as ’interruptions’ it may be an interesting exercise to extract them & place them, instead, at the end of v.18, after the Hymn.)

Like JB in his day, now it’s our turn to point to Jesus as the Word made flesh & live a Christ-like life in response. A testimony as faithful today as JB’s was in his way in his day. Later, JB clearly has doubts. Many of us & our people have too, about this, that, or the other aspect of belief. There’s nothing wrong with honest doubt; only with not working through them. This in itself could be a useful approach to our preaching. Do we need to ‘straighten out’ our theology, & help people straighten out theirs, so we can all live lives like those JB encourages us to straighten for the Coming One? The One who is Coming, yet always Come! 

Today, we’re the ones facing questions like those JB was asked; ‘Who are you?’ &, ’What do you say about yourself?’ Do we know as well as JB does - at this stage, at least - who we are? Have we grown into our Baptism to become the person God has always known we could become? To play the role God has for us in His plans?

It’s easy in today’s world to feel we’re voices crying in today’s wildernesses of the heart. Living as Christ’s Body today means building on what’s gone before, as JB & JS Himself do, by being faithful to our past without getting bogged down in it. God, I AM, is always our present, too; never someone else’s past. God’s Spirit of Wisdom will help us see the difference, make a difference, be a difference.

We’re long past being able to assume even a basic knowledge of God, Scriptures, all that goes with & adds up to faith. Even many of us who think of ourselves as ‘faithful Christians’ can be more religiously ignorant than can reasonably be excused. In all honesty, though, how many people bother us with serious questions about Faith? Not to mention the growing numbers who dismiss us & what & Whom we stand for, out of hand in favour of home-made remedies for today’s ills. How can we preach, what do we need to preach, to encourage our congregation to get beyond that same trap? 

As well as other gifts of the Spirit we praise JB for, think of his humility, like Jesus’ own. A gift neither widely sought nor practised in our narcissistic & ego-centric world. How do we best turn all this into positive preaching, rather than negative carping? How can we help others discover humility not as a down-side, but an up-side, in life?

JN 7:37-43

Jottings on John…Pentecost…2017 

Does v. 39 seem a bit odd? We know from many passages of Scripture how Holy Spirit in one way or another has been active - under various ‘guises’ - from the very beginning. Does whoever adds v. 39 do so because they’re puzzling over how to protect John’s doctrine that it’s God’s Word who tells creation into being? Go too far, though, in any direction, here, & we may end up ‘confounding the Persons & dividing the Substance’ of the Trinity as Athanasius warns us against doing!

Two Jewish scholars¹ have just published a book on how the ancient Hebrews come over time to believe in YHWH rather than a collection of gods like other nations round about them. Much of their work is over my head, but I’m excited when they begin by saying things like the Bible being a network of contributions in which we can hear conversations between stories & poetry & prophecies & laws & biographies & so on & so forth. So far as Christians are concerned, JS then comes on the scene in His turn & adds His words that as often as not build on those that came before & that He inherits as His Jewish Faith. What Shinan & Zakovitch are saying is surely a participation in this very same continuing ‘conversation’. When we were mulling over this, my wife suggested it’s a bit like electricity. There’s always been electricity, but humans weren’t able to catch it, store it, harness it, & energise with it till it was ‘discovered’.

Try this for starters: Holy Spirit has always existed as One of the Persons of God, but isn’t publicly identified & revealed & made widely available till Pentecost. When we celebrate the giving of the Spirit to the Apostles & the early Church, & now to us, we’re keeping all the above connectivity alive & energising. By continuing that on-going conversation, building on that network of connections as living participants. 

Are we conscious of Holy Spirit choosing us, & calling us, as preachers & people to keep this ongoing conversation between the written word & ourselves alive & well? Are we all alive to God, to ourselves, to each other, in continuing the connections through which contributors & contributions go on talking to each other, still? Are we letting God’s Spirit join up all the dots?

¹ Shinan & Zakovitch, From Gods to God, Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2012 p.1