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