John's Gospel: Writing as a Technology of Memory to Keep the Word of Jesus

6 Easter   C       May 5, 2013             

Acts 14:8-18      Ps. 67

Rev. 21:22-22:5      John 14:23-29

Lectionary Link 

    What is that both creates human lives as we know them  and then preserves then into the future?  It is our word ability.  What keeps animals from becoming extinct?  Their ability to continue to propagate their species into the future; for animals it is only a biological preservation.  With human being it involves a preservation of all that humans have attained in what we call human culture.  And human beings use word or language and language products to preserve what they can retain of human culture from one age to the next.

  What is a bee keeper?  Someone who tends to bees in hives in order to harvest the honey.  What is a zoo keeper?  A worker at a zoo who takes care of animals.  What is a house keeper?  A member of the household who takes care of the interior maintenance of a house.

  In our appointed Gospel lesson for today, we have a reference to word keeping.  “Those who love me will keep my word.”  That’s a quote from a discourse of Jesus unique to John’s Gospel.  Word Keeper?  What does that mean?   I’m as guilty as anyone in being sloppy often about word use and I think perhaps we often miss the meaning of word keeping in this Gospel lesson based upon what word keeping has come to mean in our English usage, which probably came about because of a misuse of this Gospel passage.

  In English if it is said that someone keeps their word, it means that they honor their verbal contracts but we normally only use this phrase in reference to the words that belong to the same person who is keeping them.  He keeps his word.  I keep my word.  But I don’t usually say that I keep someone else’s word.  And it would be a rare English expression for someone to ask me to “keep their words.”

  We probably are used to thinking that “keeping the word” of Jesus would mean to obey Jesus, but there is another Greek word for obey and that is not the word used in this Gospel lesson.  In earlier verses it was written that the disciples were asked by Jesus to keep his commandments.  This is a direct identification of Jesus as one who is greater than Moses when it comes to having commandments that should be regarded.

  But back to keeping the word of Jesus.  John’s Gospel is all about Word.  Word or the Greek word logos can be used in various ways.  It can mean a single word; it can be used as a collective plural as “entire” body of words; it can be used as a metaphor for what God is for us in trying to understand God.  The beginning phrase of John is “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  And that Word also became flesh and dwelled among us.

  The dilemma of the community for whom the Gospel of John was written concerned how the reality, the life, the memory, the presence of Jesus would be retained or kept in this world.  Jesus was so special his disciples were concerned that his memory could die out just as the memory of the overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived has died out.

  The words that we read today in John’s Gospel were written to a previous question.  Judas   (not Iscariot) asked Jesus, “How are you going to make yourself known to us and not to the rest of the world?”  This question is really a dialogue analysis of the “staying power” of the remembrance of Jesus within the world.  You can appreciate the doubt of the question.  Jesus, if you don’t make it on the big stage of world history, like Julius Caesar did, how are you going to be remembered?  And how can our small little band of followers keep you alive in the world?

  And the answer is?  Jesus said that he and the Father and the Holy Spirit were all going to come and make a home in their followers.  Jesus had just said that in his Father’s house there were many dwelling places.  So Jesus was indicating that each body of his followers was to become an address, a location for the residence of the life of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

  What was going on in the community of the Gospel of John?  They were taken up with the issue of the “staying power” of the memory of Jesus in their life and world.  They were well aware of the success of the Jesus Movement but at the same time they were not taking for granted the future presence of the memory of Jesus in the world.

  The punchline is this:  The quality of relationship and the re-creation of Godly presence in the life of each person wer so pronounced that it created such excitement as to be able to be transmitted through a continuous succession of words of Jesus from one disciple of Jesus to the next disciple of Jesus.

  We are so assuming about the doctrine of the Trinity that really did not become such a theological abbreviation for God until after the fourth century, that we forget the pregnant impact of the metaphor of the family of God becoming resident in one’s life as a continuing location of God’s presence in this world.

  If the Ford logo fell off one of Henry Ford’s car would it still have been made by Henry Ford?  Were the early members of John’s community worried about the label of God and Christ being removed such that their maker and originator would no longer be recognized?

  “Don’t worry” says the dialogical Jesus in John’s Gospel, “our the divine family brand is going to be all over you and in you and through you and this basic DNA of the family is going to be spirit-word within you and it will keep the Jesus-family brand alive and well for a long, long time.

  One of the major themes, in my opinion, of the Gospel of John has do with the word and how it is by the word that the identity of the community is going to remain connected with the identity of Jesus.

  In John, Jesus is the Christ, who is the Word of God, the same word that was spoken when the world of human beings came into being.  Jesus did not write books; Jesus spoke words.  Spoken words are harder to remember forever.  How do spoken words remain?  Oral tradition is passed on in spoken words that are reduced to mnemonic devices such as metaphors and stories.  Metaphors and stories are units of memory in oral traditions.  They help the listener be able to retain the gist of the conversation.  Oral traditions are not always precise and exact; they get slightly altered in transmission due to inexact human memory.  John’s Gospel is about anchoring spoken word of Jesus into a written word of teachings that Jesus would have said to help his followers to retain the importance of the mission of his life.  The punch line of John’s Gospel is about word as written word or as a more precise technology of memory for retaining exact words into the future.  This is what the Gospel of John has done; writing has retain exact words and these words limit the possible number of interpretations for these words and the faith meanings that they can come to have to people who read and hear them. You cannot say that John’s Gospel is written about Julius Caesar.

  The gist of the appointed Gospel is that the quality of the life of Jesus is so special that it could go from face to face contact; to personal witness existing in oral transmission and then into written word and the life of Jesus could be transmitted across history into the next generation.  And this has happened; we ourselves still try to account for the staying power of this transmission of the presence of Christ to us and in the many and varied way in which we have come to confess that God is Emmanuel, God is with us.

  Let each us accept that fact that we are individually a crowded house; God has taken up residence in us, set up home and it started because we were made in God’s image and now we just get to flat out confess it because God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Word, Comforter, Wisdom or the Great One by any name resides in those whom the Divine one has designed and created.  Jesus made this known is a special way and the memory of him has been retained in a profound way.  We may not understand the staying power of Jesus even as atheist, agnostic and all have to admit that Jesus has hung around for a long time.

  Without trivializing God’s presence in our lives let us accept it as the basic Mystery of our lives that we revere and live towards each and every moment.  Let us not be too proud about how we know God; let us be more grateful that we have the privilege to be humble dwellings for God in our world.  Amen.

Gospel Puppet Show: Dove as the Holy Spirit

Gospel Puppet Show

May 5,  2013

6 Easter

Characters:

Dovey the Dove

Fr. Phil

(Pictures of the Dove of Noah's Ark and the Dove of the Baptism of Jesus are posted on front of the puppet theatre)

Father Phil:  Today I want to introduce our guest for today.  Welcome please Dovey the Dove. 

 Dovey: Coo, Coo, coo, coo, coo, coo.  Hello, I’m a bit of a shy bird but I like to coo.

Father Phil:  Dovey, welcome!  You don’t have to be shy with us.  These children are very friendly.  Aren’t you friendly children?  Dovey, aren’t doves usually seen in pairs?  Isn’t that why you’re often called love birds?  So where is your love bird?

Dovey:  We do go around in pairs.  My husband is having a day out with the boys.  They know a farm that has just planted some new seeds and so they have gone to have a big feast.  I’m sure that he will put on some pounds today.

Father Phil:  I invited you here today to tell you that you are a very famous biblical bird and I wanted these children to know what you symbolize.

Dovey: Symbolize?  Sounds like a disease.  I don’t know if I want to symbolize.

Father Phil:  No, it’s a good thing.  It means that doves are so gentle and kind that they can teach us about the very best things about God and life.

Dovey:  Okay but what do I symbolize?

Father Phil:  Well, a dove was very important in the story of Noah’s ark.  The dove was like the first scout who left the ark after the flood and when the dove came back with a olive branch, Noah knew that the water from the flood had gone down enough to get out of the ark.

Dovey: Well, I did not know that a dove was a famous scout, though is that something like being a canary in a deep mine?

Father Phil:  No, it was a good thing to be a messenger for Noah and all of the animals on the ark.  It was good news to know that they could finally get off the ark.  But you have an even more important value in the Bible.

Dovey: What’s that?

Father Phil:  You are a symbol for God the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God’s presence in this world that Jesus promised us after he left.  And there are lots of famous pictures of doves.

Dovey:  What kind of pictures?

Father Phil:  Well, the most famous one is when you fly down and light upon the head of Jesus at his baptism.

Dovey:  Doves don’t do that.  We’re too shy and frightened.  Occasionally we accidentally drop some stuff on people but we don’t land on people.

Father Phil:  I wish you hadn’t mentioned dropping stuff on people in church.

Dovey:  Oops….Sorry.

Father Phil:  But Jesus was so wonderful and doves are so gentle that a dove was the perfect symbol for God’s Spirit.  So that makes you very famous, being a symbol for God the Holy Spirit.

Dovey: Well that is pretty special.

Father Phil:  Jesus wanted everyone to know that God would still be with us after he left and so he said that God would remain with us as a gentle comforting dove, sort of singing a sweet coo, coo song to keep us peaceful.

Dovey:  Well, we do coo a lot.  And we are gentle.  We don’t like to fight.  Thank you for teaching me about the biblical doves.  I feel better about being a dove now.

Father Phil:  Thank you Dovey for helping us to learn about God the Holy Spirit.  Children, let’s give Dovey a big hand.

Merely Anthropomorphizing in the Best Possible Way

5 Easter   C       April 28, 2013

Acts 11:1-18     Psalm 148

Revelation 21:1-6 John 13:31-35

 Lectionary Link

  Do you ever talk to your plants?  Do you talk to your pets?  Why do you do it?  Do you understand your pet’s language?  Do you understand your plants?  Do you believe in animal whispering?  Plant whispering?  Can you do this without your sanity being called into question?

  We do lots of things in this life that are meaningful to us and yet we do not have the full scientific justification for doing them.

  We are but prisoners of human experience?  I am but a prisoner of Phil’s human experience?  How can I know non-human experience as a non-human? A dog’s life as a dog?   How can I know non-Phil human experience as non-Phil persons?  Your life and as you know it?  Even if I have “whispering” gifts, I end up translating the assumed experience of others into my own language of understanding.

  What is the nature of inter-species relationship?  What is the nature of inter-personal relationship?  What is the relationship between differences?

  From our prison of human experience and from my particular prison of Phil’s personal human prison, we confront the world with some questions.  Should the world feel what I feel or should I feel what the world feels?  Are both impossible?   The impossible assumption is that I can know what you experience and how you experience or that I can know how a dog feels or how my plants feel.  Yet the experience of faith is to live by the impossible; by believing and acting as though we can know how another being actually lives and feels.

   I love the expression of this assumption in the 148^th Psalm.  This Psalm is an expression anthropomorphism gone wild.  The Psalm is conducting the orchestra of all Nature and imploring everything in heaven and earth to “Praise the Lord.”  Sun, moon, stars, wild beasts, wind, rain, fruit-trees, hills, mountains, young, old, men and women, kings and people of all kinds, Praise the Lord.  Can there ever be any more presumptuous anthropomorphism than this?

  But we live by this meaningful presumption all of the time.  And when we really do the impossible we live the very best.   Compassion and love represent the extreme faith event of empathy, presuming to walk a mile in the shoes of another person in such a way as to be able to honor their life with the high sense of adoration, veneration and care.  And all of this is based upon this impossible presumption, of being able to live beyond the limitation of Phil’s human experience.  Projecting myself as being in the skin of another.

  In the Gospel lesson, there is a reference to glory.  Glory is the kind of intensified fame, adoration, regard, or veneration that is given and received between different beings.  We give glory when we confront excellence and greatness.  When we can say, “Wow, this is so wonderful that I must confess its greatness.”  In the experience of praise or adoration, checking the ego at the door is not difficult.  These experiences happen to us when we have a brush with what we call the sublime; it happens in artistic performance, it happens in the experience of love, it happens at the oceans, in the mountains, in the forms of beauty in this world, in extraordinary performance, in heroism and in myriads of moments of the ego being caught off guard.  When we encounter the sublime, our egos are checked, we can offer voluntary praise and worship and adoration.

  Sometimes we are forced to check our egos through oppression, through suppression or through humiliation; but the best way for our egos to get checked is through an encounter where we can naturally confess excellence as it casts a spell over us wins us and whispers our ego to forget itself.  And in that moment we make room truly for another person and other beings in our life.

  Jesus gave an eleventh commandment, a new commandment, the commandment to love one another as a new standard of living.  The standard of love is the invitation to the impossible.  It is the invitation to live as though we can actually walk in the shoes of someone else and feels as they feel, even though we know the sheer impossibility of complete coincidence with the consciousness of another being.  What is the mystical event of passing over into the experience of another such that we can treat them with a different sense of care than we would if we did not experience this sense of empathy?

  I believe that what makes the biblical wisdom tradition an impossible scientific tradition is this impossibility of empathy; this sense of going out of ourselves into others and being with them in such a way that lets them know the experience of care.

  We certainly agree with science about the validity of empirical experience but in our mystical tradition we marvel that there is any ability at all for beings to have mutual experiences conducted between us.  And not only conducted between us but done so in a way that has generated words from experience such as sharing, caring, empathy and love.

  There is something about the ego and sense of self that often would like to make the epidermis an impenetrable barrier of separation, but there is something about the experience of greatness that can massage the ego to admit connection among all orders of being.  In this great order of being from the sub-atomic and molecule to all the unseen orders of the imagination we are able to experience the belonging of togetherness.  We assume that we are enough like each order of being enough to speak on behalf of all orders of being, and so as human, and in being human we speak on behalf of other orders of being.  We speak on behalf of animals and plants and angels and demons and God, and we do so as human beings, because we believe that connection is basic to our lives.  And we extend this relatedness to all orders of being; why indeed do we go to Mars and to the moon and send our eyes into outer space as far as we can reach..  We are curious about the full reach of how we might relate to all things.

  That is how we are made; we are made for the impossible to believe that we can speak for all things because in some way we are like all things and all beings. We believe that all things and beings are like us in some way.

  And that is where God comes in; we need a confession of a great Totality to exorcise the individual egos of all things and to convince us that we are not separate but all together and that we live best in living together well.

  So the Psalmist anthropomorphizes all Nature as we all do because we believe that we share enough in common with all of creation.  And we as people of faith believe that for all of nature to recognize God through worship and praise is the very best way for all of us to check our tendency towards separation before God’s greatness and believe that we are called to be together in the mutually beneficial ways of love and creativity.

  I believe that we can anthropomorphize, that we can treat everyone in a humanly way, because we share enough in common with all orders of life.  We as Christians, believe that God, theomorphized in the Jesus Christ, that is, God treated humanity as though it could be seen through the divine point of view.  In Jesus, we believed that God walked in human shoes so as to allow us to be merely human, but call us to be merely human in the very best way that we can.

  And we are human in the very best way when we do the impossible, when we have the creative imagination to go out of ourselves and into each other and into our world with empathy, compassion and that great eleventh commandment, Love one another.

  Let us continue to keep at doing the impossible; for me, it means escaping Phil’s world to be in your world, with you and for you.  Escaping our individual worlds to reach the impossible but mystical state of empathy and compassion.

  It begins when we can all encounter the greatness of the sublime and when humility comes easy when our adoration is won by the experience of One who is greater.  The greatness of God gives us reason to do the impossible; to go out of ourselves and into the realm of empathy and love.

  Let us go forth and anthropomorphize…I’ve got news for you.  That all we can do, be merely human, but let us do it the best way, let us do the impossible.  Love one another.  Amen.

  

Jesus, the Peripatetic Wisdom Teacher in the Stoa

4 Easter   C       April 21, 2013           

Acts 9:36-43 Ps.23

Rev 7:9-17  John 10:22-30

  Being among good Christian folks such as yourselves and as people who are well-informed about your faith, I would like to pose some questions seeking short answers of the one word variety, yes or no.   Is Jesus the Good Shepherd?  Yes?  Is Jesus the Lamb of God?  Yes?  Well, now you have me really confused?  Can Jesus be both Shepherd and Lamb?  Is that acknowledging contradictory metaphors?

  It is indeed and it is no problem for language users.  We do amazing things with language.  Such contradictions only show the limits of any metaphor but it shows how versatile we are as metaphor makers and users as we continuously look to receive and create new metaphorical insight about our faith in the art of living.

  We use language to transform geography.  We use language to relocate cities.  By the time the Gospel of John was coming to significant textual form, the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed.  Members of the various religious parties of Judaism had to flee Jerusalem.  Some Jews went to Jamnia and they began a program to purify Judaism of all Hellenistic influences.  Other members who were following the teaching of Rabbi Jesus were forced out of Jerusalem and other parts of Israel as well. 

  Some scholars believe that the chief writing agents of the Gospel of John ended up in Ephesus.  Ephesus was an ancient city that was the largest city in the Roman Asia province.

  How does language recreate geography?  Some say that followers of Jesus in Ephesus referred to that city as a New Jerusalem.  In the migration of people resettling in a new location, we are well aware of people bring the location names of their native countries to their new place of residence.  People love their homelands; even though economic conditions and hostilities drive them from their lands they have enough nostalgia for the homeland to try to remake it in the new place.

   Ephesus as Jerusalem is quite a stretch though.  Unlike the Jewish purists who tried to restore their religion to a purity without Hellenistic influence; the followers of Jesus in Ephesus as we know them from the writing of the Gospel of John did exactly the opposite of the Jewish purists.  They sought to find a way for cultural aspects of the Greco-Roman world to be baptized and used in the presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  One of the ways to resist the world was to take methods of the world and baptize them for the presentation of the Gospel.  This was an engaging method of evangelism and it has accounted for the greater success of the various forms of the Christian faith in comparison to the worldwide success of the spread of the Jewish faith.

  We find in the appointed Gospel lesson a scenario that mixes a cultural presentation with a seeming historical event.  It would seem as though Jesus is walking in the portico of Solomon at the Temple in Jerusalem and he is in dialogue with Jewish interlocutors.

  Does anyone find it strange that Jesus is presented as being questioned by the Jews?  In his own time, it really would be just one Jew, Jesus talking with other Jews.  But how does it happen in the Gospel of John that Jesus is talking now to “Jews?”  Suddenly the Jews were presented as foreign enemies of Jesus.  This presentation should tell us how Gentile the Christian movement had become even while there were some Jewish patriarchs of the Jesus movement who were trying to translate the Judaic context in ways so that it could be grasped by the larger number of Gentile persons who were following Jesus.

  There are specific presentation elements that would give us an indication of a marriage between Athens and Jerusalem.  John is written in the koine or common Greek that was left over from the conquering of the world by Alexander the Great.  Alexander tried to bring the Greek polis to the entire world.  Local residents would speak their own native language but would learn a common Greek for politics and commerce.  This low Greek, lingua franca became the language of choice for writing the New Testament.

  The Greek world for portico is Stoa.  Stoa or porch was the place where the founder of the Stoic philosophy began to do his public teaching.  Jesus was walking and discussing in the stoa, a colonnade walkway that ran the length of one side of the Temple complex.  The Greek philosophical school of note occurred in the colonnade walk ways called “parapatoi.”  The philosophers eventually were called the Peripatetic school or those who taught by walking about.  This is the very Greek word used for what Jesus was doing in the portico of Solomon; he was walking and in dialogue. (περιπατέω peripateō )  This image would have recognizable symbolic meaning for the Gentiles of Ephesus.

  The Peripatetic School was the classical graduate school of Greek philosophy.  A student or disciple would gather around a known teacher or philosopher who held court on the porch as he walked and taught.  And one can see the conscious blending of teacher from the Greek wisdom perspective with the Hebraic notion of the shepherd.  David was the quintessential shepherd but in the Gospel of John, Shepherd and Sheep is presented as this intimate relationship between master and devotee, teacher and student.  And this notion would find a hearing in the Gentile Greco-Roman world that had this long tradition of graduate school for advanced learners.

  In the Gospel of John, Jesus was presented as the wisdom teacher par excellence.  None of the other Gospels has the long teaching discourses like the Gospel of John does.  The Gospel of John presents to the readers an occasion to identify with the disciples as they progressively learn to follow their teacher and come to understand the inner wisdom of his teaching.  The Gospel of John is founded upon a blend between the Hebraic and Greek wisdom traditions.  The chokmath or Sophia of the book of Proverbs is seen as the eternal word or logos in the Gospel of John.  In the beginning was the Logos, the Word.  There are few words that are more directly from the Greek wisdom perspective than the word logos.  And John’s Gospel is built around the Logos.

  Logos is so pervasive and so versatile it allows the full play of metaphors for evocative purposes; purposes of evoking insights to influence and change our life and help us live better.  So indeed, Jesus can be a wisdom Shepherd of God but also a Lamb whose life expresses the essence of sacrifice, of laying down his life for others as a way of celebrating a relationship with God.

  John the Divine in his vision of the end sees irony; the Lamb in the center will also be the Shepherd.  Being a shepherd comes through sacrifice.   Sacrifice or laying down of our lives for each other is what rises to the top of all value.  Sacrifice or giving of one’s life is what makes the Shepherd worthy of the sheep.  A teacher who shares all is what makes a teacher worthy of the student.

  If Jesus was the Good Shepherd who had sheep who knew and heard his voice; it is also true to say that his sheep went on to be shepherds and wisdom teachers.  They too made disciples; the end and teaching of their lives was to bring salvation or health.  In the story of the rising of Dorcas one finds the essence of the dynamic purpose of shepherd; it is to restore people into the conditions of service.  Dorcas’ life was characterized by service and she lost it but with Peter’s ministry she was restore to being able to serve.  This parable is metaphorical of the function of those who are trained in the wisdom tradition of Jesus.  We are called to enable each other to serve.  We are truly unhealthy when we do not serve.  Health is being able to serve.

  The Gospel of John is a successful wedding of Jerusalem and Athens; it is a blending of Hebraic wisdom tradition within the language forms of the Greek wisdom tradition.  This blending accounts for the long success of the Gospel.

  We are still blending the good news in the wisdom tradition as it can be made relevant to our lives within our post-modern world.  I am committed to this blending of the Gospel of Jesus Christ within our current time and place.  Let us be in the wisdom school of Jesus today and let our lives express the wonderful health of service.  Amen

Puppet Show for Good Shepherd Sunday

Gospel Puppet Show

April 21, 2013

4 Easter

Characters:

David the Shepherd

Sheep, Lion, Crocodile

Fr. Phil

Father Phil:  Boys and girls, today is good Shepherd Sunday.  And a long time ago when the Bible was written, there were lots of sheep to take care of.  When the people of the Bible tried to teach about being a good leader, they said being a good leader was like being a good shepherd.  And Jesus was a good shepherd because he was a good teacher and leader.  But there was also a famous shepherd boy who became the King of Israel.  His name was David.  David, hello, do you have time to talk?

(David is busy rescuing a sheep from a lion)

David, are you there?

David (out of breath after rescuing a sheep):  Sorry, I had work to do.  I had to chase the lion away from my sheep.

Fr. Phil:  David, that is dangerous.  You could get hurt by the lion.  You must be very brave.

David:  Well, I want to take care of my sheep.  I get to know all of my sheep and so I don’t want them to get attacked and hurt.

Fr. Phil:  So, you are good shepherd.

David:  Well, I try to be.  I like to be out in valleys and mountains with the sheep.  It gives me time to pray.  And also I can write some poems too. 

Fr. Phil: Have you ever written a poem?

David: Yes, I wrote one that begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want for anything.”  I wrote that because I am out alone with the sheep and I have come to know God.  And so I feel like God, the Lord is my shepherd; and because I feel like God takes good care of me, then I want to be a good shepherd and take good care of my sheep too.

Fr. Phil:  Well, you were a good shepherd.  And God noticed because God made you to be King of Israel.

David:  Being a good king is like being good shepherd.  You have to care for people.  A good King, a good leader is like a good parent.  A good leader takes care of people who need care.

Fr. Phil: Well, people and sheep often need lots of care.  Babies need care, sick people need care, and hungry people need care.

David:  Yes, since the Lord God is good shepherd, God wants all of us to be good shepherds.

Fr. Phil:  Do you mean that these boys and girls can be good shepherds too.

David:  When they help their moms and dads they are good shepherds.  When they take care of your younger brothers and sisters they are good shepherds.  When they do their chores they are good shepherds.

Fr. Phil: So some times we are sheep and some times we are shepherds?

David:  Yes, that is true.  When we need help, we are like sheep.  And when we help others we can be shepherds.  Oh, Oh, I have to go.  I see that a sheep has wandered near the river and I see a crocodile.  See you later.

(David leaves to rescue the sheep from the crocodile)

Fr. Phil:  Boys and girls, David was a good shepherd because he discovered that he sometimes was like a sheep and God was his good shepherd.  God sent Jesus to be a good shepherd for us.  So when we need help we can ask for help.  And when we are strong, we can be good shepherds too.  Can you remember to be a good shepherd?

Saul Converted; Peter Restored

3 Easter     C      April 14, 2013    

Acts 9:1-20       Ps. 30

Rev. 5:11-14        John 21:1-19    

 Lectionary Link

  Sometimes when we put the Bible on such a pedestal of supernaturalism, we can miss what truly endears it to us with the profound insights that makes the Bible an inspired books.  If one makes the Gospel just about supernatural, scientific law defying events, then the Bible gets put upon a shelf of not actually being relevant to our lives because you and I don’t live scientific law defying events in our lives; we must be content to be all too human.  Frankly I like it better that way and I like the fact that the Bible is all too human as well.  It is brutally honest about the foibles of all of the heroes, two of which we’ve read about today.  The Bible has gone the way of classic literature; it is very popular but increasingly unread.  Looks good in Moroccan bound leather on the shelf.  The efforts of my sermons are about how we can read the Bible and hint at its relevance to potential “original” readers and to us today.

  In Christian tradition,  Peter and Paul were leaders of churches in Rome.   The churches in Rome pre-existed Peter and Paul. The Gospel had already resulted in house churches before Peter and Paul arrived in Rome. Christian writers in the second century write that Peter and Paul probably died in Rome during the Nero persecution in mid 60’s.   Nero was the Caesar who “fiddled” while Rome burned and supposedly blamed it upon Christians.

  Peter was the one who denied Jesus three times at the time of his arrest and interrogation.   His denial was a bit more dramatic since he had so loudly proclaimed his fearless devotion.      Peter  had a significant restoration encounter with Jesus.  He had a reputation to reestablish if he were to be a worthy leader of the church.

  Paul was the once-known Rabbi Saul who persecuted the followers of Jesus.  He was complicit in their stoning deaths.   Saul had a dramatic encounter with the Risen Christ.  The story of Paul was told for reasons of establishing his reputation in Christian communities.

  The Gospels and the writings of the New Testament are literature that were created because the death of Jesus did not end his influence upon the lives of his followers.  In various ways, they continued to experience the presence of Christ.  The New Testament writings are evidence that writing had become the  media of the spirit-words and that through these writings, people could come to belief.  These writing served very pragmatic purposes in the Christ communities.  They served as evidence of the success of the Christian communities even as they helped to extend and consolidate the success.

  In any religious movement the question of succession to the founder is crucial.   No one could really succeed Jesus as his equal.  But who would continue the mission that Jesus started in this world?   What did Jesus stand for?  How could the genius of the message of Jesus continue in this world  he was gone?  Who would best be able to do this?   And how would the legitimacy of their leadership established?

  Since the New Testament writings have been around for a long time and we are recipients of their “taken for granted” status.  It is hard for us to get a sense of their original setting to understand the pragmatic purposes that these writings held for the early communities that read them for the first time.

  The Jesus Movement was successful but  all of the Christian communities did not have easy  contact with each other.  Communication was slow; churches were separated by great distances.  Traditions and practices grew in one community that were not present in another. 

Travelling prophets and preachers were the ones who brought a cross-pollination of ideas and practices but such travelling prophets were also a source of division.  Paul was known to warn his congregations about prophets who were teaching them  Gospel that was different from what he preached.   There were disagreements too.   Paul and Peter had a major dispute about the interactions of Christ Communities that still kept Jewish customs and the Gentiles Christ communities that didn’t.

  You and I are tempted to idealize the ancient Christian communities as being really pure and holy since they were so much closer to the dates of Jesus living on this earth.  What we find from reading Church history closely is that there was lots of diversity and that some teaching and writing of influential teacher did not suvive.  Their writing  was destroyed or not preserved by competing groups that came to gather around other influential church leaders.

  One can understand the Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles as writings that were intended to establish the profile of leaders who were to be regarded as the rightful heir in the succession of the message of Jesus Christ.

  The 21^st chapter of John is about the leadership of Peter and the beloved disciple whom some believe is John, son of Zebedee. The portion that we read from the Acts of the Apostles recounts the dramatic conversion of St. Paul.  Some scholars believe that the Acts of the Apostles was written as a way to bring credibility to the letters of Paul and to promote their acceptance within the churches.

  The New Testament is a collection of writings written for pragmatic and specific purposes, one of which was to establish the credibility of leadership and doctrinal teaching within the churches.

  John or the beloved disciple is associated with the church that developed in the city of Ephesus.  Peter and Paul are associated with the churches in Rome.  In a subtle way, the Gospel of John is both promoting Peter’s role but at the same time hinting at a special role of the beloved disciple.  In the account of the Gospel of John, Peter denied Jesus three times.  What did the beloved disciple do?  He went into the trial location with Jesus.  He was given the charge of the mother of Jesus at the Cross and while Peter hid in fear, the beloved disciple stayed with Jesus at the Cross.

  The writing of the early church had to show how the leadership of Peter was rehabilitated.  Peter, seemed to be one who after the resurrection was ready to be practical about going back to being a fisherman, or perhaps he thought that his denial of Jesus left him unqualified to be a disciple of Jesus.  In our appointed Gospel we have a scene that is set up to indicate the direct rehabilitation of Peter into the good graces of Jesus.  Peter denied the Lord three times before the rooster crowed; Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him as a way to get Peter to counter each denial with a confession of his love for Jesus.    Peter was restored in his relationship with Jesus and his reputation was established as a legitimate leader in the church.  This portion was written after the death of Peter because it gives an indication that he would have the strength to go where he was unwilling to go before with Jesus, namely to his own crucifixion.

  In this same post-resurrection encounter, Peter was seen as being nosy about what would happen to the beloved disciple and Jesus said to him, “What is that to you, follow me.”

  The Gospels present the disciples as students of Jesus who learn in ways that we can identity with.  Peter, John and Paul could be like any of us in the church.  We can be petty and we can be profound; we can live sacrificially and egotistically.  We can be heroic in faith and at other times denying the significance of God in our lives.

  And what is the point?  Leadership comes from being rehabilitated, reconciled and received by a loving Christ, who simply says, “ Feed my sheep.”  Get to work and help the vulnerable.  We don’t have time for all this petty competition drama.  Get to work, take care of the lambs.

  The lessons for today invite all of us to be leaders in the church.  Let us lead because we know that we are restored in our relationship with God through Christ and we know that we are called to take care of those who are vulnerable in this world.   Amen.

Orange Emergency Triangles on Amish Buggies to Protect Tradition from Progress

2 Easter Sunday  Cycle C      April 7, 2013  

Acts 5:27-32 Psalm 150
Revelation 1:4-8  John 20:19-31

 Lectionary Link

  There is an interesting dilemma in Amish country.  Should the Amish buggies be required to display an orange emergency triangle when they are on public highways?  The modern triangle on the buggy represents a violation of their tradition; one just cannot mix the modern and the Amish way of separating themselves from the world.  On the other hand, the law requires it for the safety of the buggies and so most Amish comply with the law.

  The orange emergency triangle is a sign of irony.  It says, “If you’re going to try to be present in the post-modern world in Amish ways, then you are going to have to bear our mark of protection so our modern vehicles will not hurt you.  We are going to have to protect traditional people from the Modern World.

  If you are not going to move with the time, we are going have to mark you with emergency triangles so that we do not harm you when we interact.

  How often do we see these signs of clash between traditional religion and their cultures of residence?  How many times has this been replayed in the history of the world?  Traditionalists look out because Progress is dangerous to your safety if you try to interact on the highway of Progress.

  We ourselves could be wearing all sorts of these emergency triangles as religious Luddites of all sorts.  My vestments are older in origin than Amish clothes; my alb is but old Roman underwear and yet I am still wearing them today.  Emergency triangle.  The Bible, the language, the hymns, all need protection if we are going to interact with the post-modern world.  But we are not like the Amish, we have not really tried to promote ourselves as being that much separated from the world, even though this magic little time capsule on Sunday mornings does probably need to have an emergency triangle as we try to integrate everything that we do here with what with try to do in our lives outside of church.

  As we read the Doubting Thomas story, do not think of it as an eyewitness report; think of it as a parable of the Gospel writer who is writing at the end of the first century.  This Gospel writer is aware of changes; the writer is aware that there is a new reality of Christian success that they were not totally prepared for.

  Why is it that there are no Shakers around today?  Today we know Shakers as pieces of furniture and as music?  Why no Shakers?  The Shakers were celibates; they did not believe in procreation.  Unfortunately birth is the most successful means of evangelism for all religious groups and so the Shakers died out.

  Could the Jesus movement have gone the way of the Shakers?  Could the Jesus movement go the way of the Amish?  If you limit Christian baptism to the Jordan River, then the Jesus Movement could not have moved very far away.  If the effectiveness of the witness of Jesus depended upon live witnesses to Jesus of Nazareth, how long would the Christian religion last?  And what if the first generation of witnesses died out; what do you do?  You might say, you have to know somebody who actually walked and talked with Jesus.  But what about the second and third generation and what about people who began to be spread throughout the Roman Empire?

  How could the Jesus Movement survive the absence of Jesus and the absence of his eye-witnesses?  That kind of religious limitation needed to have emergency triangle placed on it by a new understanding.  And that is what the parable of Doubting Thomas is about.

  The Gospel of John is a Gospel about word and about how word use diversifies.  In the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh.  It became flesh in Jesus Christ.  And Jesus spoke words and what did he say about his words?  He said that his words were spirit and that they were life.

  The speaking Jesus assumes that one is physically present with Jesus to hear him speak.  The apostles, disciples, friends and companions of Jesus were those who were with him and heard him speak.  But they soon were dying, dead and gone and how could there be a contact and transmission of this message about Jesus?  There was a crisis; if one did not hear and speak with Jesus but relied upon the message of another who had heard Jesus and spoken with him, then one was that much further removed from Jesus in both time and space and here is the crisis:  Your experience of Christ was inferior to the experience of those first order Christians who walked and talked with Jesus.  So, Shakerism, here we come.  The intensity of the Christ presence would surely dissipate and thin out in each succeeding generation and the movement would run out of Christ-gas and not be able to go on.

  And this is the point of the parable about doubting Thomas.  Thomas was symbolic of every first generation face to face encounter with Jesus.  He is presented as wanting to have proof that his Christ experience was valid.  The church of the Gospel of John was thriving and it was fueled by something other than first generation testimony.  The intensity of the Christ encounter in the Johannine community was great; it was not inferior to the encounter of Thomas-like first generation eye-witness believers in Jesus.

  And the spoken word was now being put into written words and these written words were spirit and they promoted the continuing presence of the risen Christ and this presence was not an inferior presence, in fact, it was an even more blessed experience because it did not rely on mere physical presence.

  The writer of John’s Gospel is putting an emergency triangle on the old limited way of knowing the presence of the risen Christ; get out of the way because writing is here and “these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. “  The Doubting Thomas parable is set up to show this progression; In the beginning was the Word; the word was made flesh in Jesus;  Jesus spoke words and his words were spirit and life.  And these words animated the lives of people.   And these words about Jesus became written words and these written words were spirit and they were able to accompany people knowing a real and valid presence of the risen Christ even if they were not eye-witnesses.

  And that is how the Jesus Movement has survived for two thousand years.  Words can still make the Risen Christ present today.  Words are still Spirit and they are still life and they can constitute and order our lives in such a way that we come into an interior remaking of our word life such that the sublime presence of the risen Christ is known afresh to us within the particular details of our life.

  So the hymns, detail of culture, the albs, the chasubles and all of the details of our piety that are a part of the aesthetic of our worship, they are but current furniture for the real guest, the risen Christ.  Let’s not get hung up on the style; enjoy what prepares our hearts to experience the risen Christ, but if we know the risen Christ, we will not feel threatened by the high speed of our post modern times.  The risen Christ can always be known within the new details of our culture through words which are spirit and life.  Receive these words of spirit and life today.  Amen.