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. 

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