disclosing new worlds

Wednesday, 07 June 2006

Trinity Year B

Moving!!!

If you've got here via a search engine query, you might like to know that this site will only be operational here for this week and next.  I have already moved it HERE, where the layout is better.  I shall cancel my subscription to blogSpirit.  I'm duplicating the blog here for the moment while the search engines learn the new site.  That may take time, though, and they won't pick it up for a while.  So if you find this helpful, bookmark the new site.  Best wishes, Lawrence. 

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Isaiah 6: 1-8                         NRSV text
Psalm 29                              NRSV text
Romans 8: 12-17                  NRSV text
John 3: 1-17                         NRSV text

Nuns on the Run is the story of two small-time crooks (played by Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle) who are on the run both from the Police and the Triads.  They hide out in a convent, disguised as nuns, where Eric Idle finds himself scheduled to teach the A-level Religious Education class.  He’s horrified.  Robbie Coltrane, a lapsed Catholic, tries to reassure him by telling him how easy it will be.  What’s your first lesson on?” he asks.  “The Trinity!”  Robbie’s face falls.  “The Trinity!  Now that’s a bugger!”

Most ministers and preachers appear to experience a similar sinking sensation when Trinity Sunday comes round.  Far from a sense of excitement and awe at a service focused very specifically on God, the overwhelming sense is one of dismay – how to explain the inexplicable!  “Trinity” means pulling out illustrations of shamrocks and sun, sunlight and warmth.  For me, it conjures up the memories of trying to get my head around Barth’s “Revealer, Revelation and Revealedness”, or of listening to Nicholas Lash expound his (helpful) notion of the Trinity as “speaking of God in three ways”.

Having worked for a couple of years in local government with a Shi’ite Muslim, it also conjures up memories of heated debates,  Shabir demanding that I explain how I can possibly call myself a monotheist when I clearly believe in three Gods!  And in parenthesis, I must say that one of the most helpful things I have discovered on the doctrine of the Trinity is Moltmann’s insistence that to be Trinitarian is what it means to be Christian, and to be neither a monotheist nor a polytheist.

The drama of salvation
But all of this is to miss the point that our texts make so clearly this week: the “doctrine of God” is not a matter for academic debate or catechesis, but the outcome of our experience of God in Jesus Christ.  The Trinity is a necessary corollary of salvation.  Jesus, in this famous chapter from John’s gospel, talks of having descended from heaven, being the only-begotten Son of the Father (who loves the world and has sent him to save it) and of the Spirit who blows like the wind, bringing new life/birth.  The Trinity, in other words.  And if our response is, “Yes, but I’ve always thought that this is a great “gospel” passage”, then the response is, “Precisely!”  Let me put this as forcefully as I can: the fundamental point to be made on Trinity Sunday is that the doctrine of the Trinity means nothing less or other than rehearsing the story of salvation!  And if we do something other than that in the pulpit this Sunday, we are taking a drama and turning it into a conundrum – and that is neither faithful to the Scripture nor is it the place of preaching!  The Trinity is the story of God’s passionate determination to be present with the world.  It’s the reminder that God’s primary disposition towards the world is of love, not judgement.  It is about the fact that the saving God is the God of resurrection and recreation, giving new birth and Life to human beings.  And it is the reminder (in the person of Nicodemus) that none of this makes sense or fits easily into good religious schemes about reward and punishment, or stringent holiness movements, because God is a God of grace! 

The Trinity, in other words, doesn’t just tell us who God is, but about what God does and what God is like!  This is the day to get into the pulpit and tell again the wonderful, joyful story of who God is and how passionately, uncontrollably, inexplicably and inescapably this world is loved.  It’s the Sunday to re-awaken a sense of wonder and to renew faith, because it is Gospel Sunday!

The “Three-in-One” stuff
If the Trinity is about the drama of salvation – about rehearsing the gospel story – what’s the point of all the stuff we usually think of in connection with the Trinity?  What about the “Three-in-One” stuff?  The doctrine of the Trinity attempts to safeguard our thinking and talking about God.  It helps us to “get it right” – not in the sense of “explaining” God, but in the sense that we don’t create an idol in place of the Living God whom we worship in Jesus Christ and through the Spirit.  I want to pick up on three aspects of the gospel story of God that the “Three-in-One” formula enshrines and protects: the fact that relationship is fundamental to the life of God; that the Spirit draws human beings into the very life of God through resurrection and adoption; and that it is appropriate to worship both Jesus and the Spirit because they are divine.

Three Persons: Love and relationship in God
The “Three Persons in One Godhead” stuff (Triunity: three in one) isn’t a cleverly-devised formula to keep Christians (and everyone else!) scratching their heads for millennia, or for keeping theologians in business!  Again, it belongs to the drama of salvation.  Look at the gospel passage.  There is the Father, the Son and the Spirit.  Three Persons.  Not one Person.  The story of salvation in Jesus Christ teaches us that it doesn’t do simply to talk about God only in singular terms.  God may – indeed must – be One, but there is relationship within God.  Three Persons in dynamic relationship.  And the “cement” holding them together is love.  There is a dynamic unity of love and will which means that God sends Jesus into the world to be its saviour, which will necessitate death.  But Jesus is no unwilling sacrificial lamb!  Jesus is a volunteer!   In John’s gospel, Jesus’ high priestly prayer does what the Gethsemane account does in the Synoptic Gospels – it establishes that there is a unity of divine will!  The love of God for the world is matched by the love of the Son in going to the cross.  The loving self-sacrifice of the Son is matched by the love (not anger!) of the Father, who abandons himself to the loss of the Son.  Which constantly makes me wonder, by the way: why does so much Christian preaching lead people to suppose that Jesus loves the world, but has to appease God who is angry with it?

The Spirit is sent in the same way as the Son is sent.  In John’s gospel, the Spirit is “Another Christ”.  Paul picks up on this, as we have seen in recent weeks, when he insists that anyone who has the Spirit belongs to Christ because the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ (as well as the Spirit of God).  In John’s gospel, the role of the Spirit is to “lead the disciples into all truth” (14:26, 15:26).  Jesus makes the Father known to them.  He does so as the Word made flesh– the one who has come from the bosom of the Father (1:18).  As such, the disciples can trust absolutely what they know of God through Jesus.  To see Jesus is as good as seeing the Father.

That is why the disciples preach Jesus!  Jesus came (in John’s gospel) to make the Father known.  However, he was rejected and crucified.  The rejection of Jesus was also the rejection of the God whom he called Father.  Yet God does not allow the crucifixion to stand as the last word.  Unknown to those crucifying him, Jesus is the Lamb of God, whose death takes away the sin of the world (John 1: 29).  This means that the disciples preach Jesus.  They don’t just repeat his message: now they have a further story to tell – the story of God walking among us in Jesus and saving us though his death and resurrection.  They can tell this story because it is God’s story!  The Jesus story is not simply the story of God acting through a man: it is the story of God as a man!  Jesus is the act of God.

“Three on one” therefore insists that we have first and always to speak about God in terms of relationality.  To be God is to be in relationship.  The relationship between God and the world flows out of the relationship of love that exists between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It means that Jesus is not just a man of God, but God as a man!  And if Jesus shows us not only what God is like, but what it means to be human, then we come to understand that to be truly, fully and freely human – to have “Life in all its abundance” – is to be related in love to God and to one another.

The Spirit of Resurrection and Adoption: being drawn into the life of the Triune God (Romans 8: 12-17)
Jesus (particularly in John’s gospel) comes to reveal the Father.  This revelation is not “facts about God”: it is to draw us into the very Life of God, so that we become in reality what we are intended to be through creation – children of the Living God.  The risen Jesus does this through the Spirit.

The primary role of the Spirit in Romans 8 is resurrection.  This is the Spirit of Life who liberates us from death (8:2).  To have the Spirit dwelling in us is to belong to Christ (8:9).  We saw this last week.  The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ.  Yet look at 8:10, and what Paul says: he has just finished explaining that if the Spirit of Christ indwells us, we belong to Christ.  Then he says, “But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness”.  Note that, in Paul’s, eyes, having the Spirit is the same thing as having Christ.  This is not because Jesus and the Spirit are the same.  They are distinct persons.  Rather, it is the Spirit of resurrection who raised Jesus from the dead and now dwells in us, so that we undergo death to the old life and resurrection to the new.  What happened to Jesus at Easter happens to us through faith in Christ: we immediately pass through death and resurrection, so that we are already on the other side of our own death!  That is why Paul can talk as he does about there being no more condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus (which is how he has begun the chapter and concludes it in vv31ff).

But this means that the Spirit is also the Spirit of Adoption.  Not only are we raised from the dead, as Jesus was, but we are drawn into Jesus’ life as child of the God whom he addresses as Father (v15).  Isn’t it curious how much time and energy we often spend worrying about what will happen to us when we die?  It’s as though the answer to that question has yet to be settled – when Paul goes to extraordinary lengths to explain that it has already been answered!  The only person whose death was open to question in this way was Jesus himself – and God raised him through the Spirit!  Now we who have the Spirit have Christ.  We have already died with him and been raised with him – and we shall be glorified with him.  That is already settled.  We have been incorporated into the life of the Triune God!  That is what “Life in all its abundance” means!  We are incorporated into God’s family life.  That is why one of the most ancient formulas of salvation was, “He (Jesus) became a man, that we might become divine”.  And that is exactly right!  How about that for a message for Trinity Sunday, eh?  We share in the life of God!

The Oneness of God: Love and worship
I have suggested that the Trinitarian formula of “One God in Three Persons” is made necessary because of salvation.  We encounter God in three Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  And yet Judaeo-Christian faith has always insisted that God is One.  There is only One who is worthy of worship, and that is God.  There cannot be more than one God, because that could be potentially conflictual!  What if one God wanted one thing and another God another?  Where would we poor humans be?  How would we decide what to do?  We have already seen that we talk about Three Persons as a way of expressing the unity of will between Father, Son and Spirit – the unity of love.  This unity of will and purpose means that we have to do with three Persons, not three gods!  The statement “God so loved the world …” is an expression of the love of the divine family for the world.  We cannot preach or believe as though there is a difference in attitude towards the world among the three Persons – particularly between Father and Son.

I remember hearing a sermon by Rowan Williams in which he said – almost as an aside – that “We must not preach the cross as though there is a difference of attitude between Father and Son”.  Suddenly, all the unease I had felt about the gospel as I had heard it preached came into focus.  I had heard it as, “God is holy and we are very sinful.  God is angry with our sin.  By rights, God should judge us.  Yet the sinless Jesus gave his life for us voluntarily.  Jesus took the punishment from God that was ours by right, so that, if we have accepted Christ as our personal saviour, God looks at us and sees the righteous Jesus and accepts us”.  There was a sense there – no matter how often and forcefully I heard John 3:16 quoted – that the Father is basically itching to let fly with some thunderbolts, but Jesus (who is the “nice guy” in the godhead) deflects all that anger on to himself, so that God’s thirst for judgement is satisfied and we’re okay.  Now I know that that’s to caricature things – but actually, it is to do so only slightly and far less so than we fondly imagine we are doing!  Grace is as much the Father’s idea as the Son’s!  There isn’t a “playing off” of holiness against mercy within the godhead.  We are loved by God – Father, Son and Spirit – with the same saving love.  And our response to that grace ought to be love: to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength.

Love issues in worship.  What set earliest Christianity apart from other messianic Jewish sects was the insistence that it was appropriate to worship Jesus.  Now, if worship belongs only to God, then this was a very serious error … unless Jesus is as divine as the Father.  That is what John tries tirelessly to tell us in his gospel.  His is the story of Jesus that is constantly presenting us with the divinity of Jesus and the outrage that it caused.  Jesus’ claim to divinity in John’s gospel is unequivocal: “Before Abraham was, I AM!”  It is in John’s gospel that Thomas confesses Jesus as “My Lord and my God”.  This is the faith of the Church.  But it is not about playing metaphysical games, or rehearsing ancient controversies. It is saying something fundamental to everything we are and do as churches: we love Jesus and worship him as God.  So Trinity Sunday ought to be the Sunday when we worship as on no other day!  It’s a day for renewing our love and celebrating God’s story in worship.

God with us – the foundation of Word and Sacrament (Isaiah 6: 1-5/Psalm 29)
Poor old Isaiah!  He’s in real trouble – and he knows it!  He’s in the temple, and he sees the Lord, glorious and lifted up.  That is not good news!  He knows he is in mortal danger.  To see Yahweh is to die, because Yahweh’s majesty and holiness is awful.  Yahweh’s voice can smash mighty cedar trees, uproot cities, flash forth flames of fire, shake the wilderness, send huge oak tress skittering and strip the forest of its leaves (Psalm 29: 5-9).  Yahweh is no tame god!  So Isaiah’s first response is “Woe is me!  I am lost!” (Isaiah 6: 5).  That’s a very polite version of what he’s effectively saying!

Isaiah 6 and Psalm 29 belong to a venerable tradition of the threat of Yahweh’s presence.  Yahweh has no business being on earth – it’s far too dangerous for human beings.  It’s dangerous for two reasons.  The first one is moral: Yahweh is holy, and we are not.  Yahweh’s holiness is a “consuming fire”.  The second reason is one that is less dominant in the Bible but strong in the classical Greek tradition: God is God and Spirit; we are creatures and mortal.  That which is spirit has no place among the earthly.  In fact, the aim of human living is to discover how to flee the earthly into the realm of the spirit.

Here in Isaiah 6 we have a moment of the same sort of grace that we will see in spades in the Incarnation: God’s presence doesn’t destroy, but cleanses, liberates and commissions.  That Jesus is God incarnate is an affirmation that God is not the sort of god who cannot be present on earth.  Nor is God restricted to the sterile environment of the Holy of Holies. In Jesus, God enters into the depth of human darkness and living.  Neither the fact that God is creator nor God’s holiness can keep God out!  The grace of love is too passionate – too driving a force.  It is transgressive.  It bursts through the boundaries of purity and divinity with startling, life-giving energy and power.  It is a astounding because it is entirely inappropriate!  We look around, and suddenly discover, in Jesus, that God is among us!

And isn’t this precisely what we mean by Word and Sacrament?  “Sacrament” means that God can be present in created stuff.  God can be present in bread and wine and water because God was present in a human being – Jesus!  And because it is God’s incarnate presence in Jesus that is foundational, we know that God’s presence is a good thing!  It is liberating, cleansing, forgiving and saving.  It is grace, not judgement and destruction!  It means that this world is a place where we can and do expect to encounter God.

Astonishingly, it also means that this world is the place where things happen to God!  Now that is totally outside the rule book on How to be God!  Things don’t happen to God.  But things happen to the Triune God who walks among us in Jesus Christ!  God took suffering and death into God’s self.  In Jesus, God embraced human history.  And as a result, God continues to be among us, present not only in Word and Sacrament, but in people and relationships.  We meet God “in many a guise”.  And we do to God in Jesus Christ.  When we give a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, we do it to Jesus.  And when we do anything to the very least of our world, we do it to Jesus.  When we are agents of grace (we children of God), people encounter God in and through us.

God’s mission and our mission (Isaiah 6: 6-8)
Isaiah is not consumed by the fire; he is cleansed by it.  And the cleansed and renewed prophet is faced with Yahweh’s question: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  God is a missionary God.  The earliest theological use of “mission” (meaning “sent”) referred not to sending missionaries, but to the sending of the Son by the Father and the sending of the Spirit by the Father (and the Son, depending on where you lived!).  Mission is God’s idea, and God’s project.  To be drawn into the life of the Triune God is to be drawn into God’s saving project of transforming the world into the kingdom.  To be “ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven” is not only to “sing God’s praise” but to live it out in involvement in the world. 

What makes out involvement particularly special?  After all, there are many other groups and people who are involved in transforming the world – often with more commitment and to greater effect!  That is perfectly true, and it means, for a start, that Christians ought to be far more generous about recognising allies and fellow-workers, regardless of what faith (or none) they profess.  According to the parable of the sheep and the goats, we ought to recognise them as brothers and sisters, because what we do is as significant as what we say.  In other words, the disturbing challenge of mission is that it blurs our neatly-drawn boundaries of who’s in and who’s out.  It means that Christians who oppose the transformation of unjust structures (in Palestine, for example) are enemies of the kingdom, opposed to God’s salvation, while humanists and communists who deride any faith in Jesus but who do his will are worshipping the Triune God!

What is Christianly distinctive about our involvement, though?  It is because it is done in the name of the Son and in the power of the Spirit.  That is not playing games with doctrinal formulations.  All I have been saying implies that it means that our involvement in the world, its people and its transformation can never be separated from our faith in the missionary God we discover in

Jesus and through the Spirit.  Being translated, that means we cannot extract our actions, activities, the deployment of our resources, our priorities and decisions from the gospel story of God in Jesus.  Mission and Christian faith and proclamation go hand in hand – because mission is the making a reality of the Good News of what God has done in Jesus Christ to save this world. 

That means that we might be no more effective than others (although we believe that God is able to take a mustard seed and grow a mighty tree from it, so that the effects of what we do can be totally disproportionate to their size).  We might be less effective than other groups who may, for example, have a far better grasp on how structures work than we do.  The point is, though, that we believe and proclaim that the transformation of the world into the place where peace and righteousness kiss is more than a human project.  It is God’s project.  The transformed world discloses the gracious God who walks among us in Jesus and is present in and with us through the Holy Spirit.  This is the God who yearns to draw us into the divine Life itself.  We cannot but continually set out the clear invitation: come and find Life!  Come and love and worship the living God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be glory in the world and in the Church forever!

Amen.

13:05 Posted in Isaiah , John , Psalms , Romans , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Trinity Year B, John 3: 1-17, Isiaiah 6: 1-8, Psalm 29, Romans8: 12-17, doctrine of the trinity, trinity as the story of salvation

Monday, 22 May 2006

Easter 7 Year B

Acts 1: 15-17;  21-26              NRSV text
Psalm 1                                   NRSV text
Jeremiah 10: 1-10a                NRSV text
1 John 5: 9-13                         NRSV text
John 17: 6-19                         NRSV text

 

Judas has been headline news recently.  The latest issue of National Geographic devotes its cover and main article to the Gospel of Judas.  Among the popular hate figures of public consciousness, few have done more to get to the top of the list of “People I hope my sister never brings home” than the man whose name has become a cipher for betrayal and treachery.  So when Bob Dylan went electric in the so-called “Royal Albert Hall” concert in 1966 (the venue was actually the Manchester Arena), one member of the enraged audience calls out “Judas!”  It’s one of the music's legendary moments.  Dylan, who has shrugged off the barracking and animosity of the audience till then, reacts to that particular call with fury.  He can live with being misunderstood, and can play on unappreciated.  But to be called a Judas is something else.  “I don’t believe you!!!” he responds.  Then turning to his band, he orders them, “Play f***ing loud!”  The drummer hits the snare, and Dylan breaks into his stunning “Like a Rolling Stone”, howling his contempt at his audience.  It’s wonderful!  You can hate him, ignore him, barrack him and slate him – but don’t call him “Judas”!  Okay, I’m being very self-indulgent here!  It’s a treat when the texts give me an excuse to talk about His Bobness (Dylan!), but it’s relevant.

What is so despicable about Judas’ actions, as Peter reminds the fledgling New Israel in Acts 1: 16ff, is that he was the one “who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus”.  The agony is that “he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry”.  Judas sold out Jesus – and the whole band of disciples – for money.  There was no high ideal at work, despite the sophisticated and more sympathetic portrayals of him in films as diverse as Jesus Christ Superstar and Franco Zeffirelli’s epic Jesus of Nazareth.  Certainly, Peter would have no truck with the notion in the Gospel of Judas that Judas was in any sense being courageous and faithful!  Judas is the man who will sell his closest friends for money if it suits him.  Judas was simultaneously one of them, but not of them.

This dynamic of “being part of them, but not of them” is present in this week’s section of Jesus’ High Priestly prayer in John’s gospel.  They are part of the final transaction between Jesus, the Father and the disciples.  This is Jesus tying up any last loose ends – a checklist, if you like, of his mission.  And so he comes to the crunch: he is leaving, returning to the Father.  The disciples (the Church) will remain in the world, however (v11).  They will need protection, and Jesus asks that they may enjoy the same care from God that he has enjoyed.  The world is a dangerous place for heaven-dwellers.  It is not a place that is friendly to messengers from God (cf 1: 11).  Jesus is “in the world” because this is where he has been sent by the Father.  He is here, fully, yet does not belong in the world.  And astonishingly, neither do the disciples (v16).

 

“In the world but not of the world”

What does Jesus mean when he says that neither he nor the disciples “belong to this world”?  And if he came from heaven, is returning to heaven, and says that this is where the disciples belong, isn’t this precisely the escapist, world-denying sort of theology I have constantly being saying John isn’t engaged in? 

We need to engage with the double-edged nature of “the world” in John’s gospel.  On one level, the world is created reality (John uses the Greek word kosmos) and, as such, the object of God’s saving love in Jesus (3:16-17).  Jesus’ mission is to the world and in the world.  At his crucifixion, he is proclaimed king of the world.  His purpose in returning to the Father is in order to return as the world’s ruler in all his glory.

But the world is simultaneously disordered because of sin and human rebellion against God.  It is the realm of “the evil one” (hence Jesus’ prayer for protection).  It is inimical to heaven-dwellers because it is set against heaven.  Created to be part of heaven, it is a self-declared republic and “no-go” area for God (at least, as far as the intention of its inhabitants is concerned!). 

One possible response to this by God is judgement, condemnation and annihilation.  God’s actual response is love, grace and eternal life, manifested concretely in Jesus.  This is the truth about God that Jesus has come to reveal.  It is not information, but relationship.  It is to this that Jesus refers in vv 6-8 – not some sort of Gnostic mystery, or some doctrinal “facts” about God, but the nature of God and God’s saving work in the world.  God’s mission, in other words, enacted in Jesus and now to be continued through the disciples.

To be “in the world” is thus to be in a hostile place.  To be a child of God through Jesus is to orphaned in “the world”, or better, to be in exile, because “home” is heaven.  The spatial metaphor of heaven (“up there”) and earth (“down here”) expresses the reality of human rebellion against God and human determination to make our world apart from God.  Sin, in effect, makes of creation a divided kingdom.  It makes it a place different from heaven – ie different from the place where love rules and God is known and worshipped.  It is not the realm of “life in all its abundance”.

This is why Jeremiah and the psalmist both talk about different ways of living in the world.  Psalm 1 is a psalm about the two ways: delight in the ways of rebellion, or delight in the ways of Yahweh.  Jeremiah similarly encourages his hearers not to “learn the ways of the nations”.  The very existence of the separate nations is a sign of disorder and fragmentation, its origin traced back through the mythical story of Babel (to which Pentecost will be the divine saving corrective).  Yahweh has created one “kind” of people – human beings.  Sin leads to conflict and fragmentation, seen in the existence of separate nations and the constant attempts to become “empires”.  The political processes of the world are thus the drama of sin and rebellion against God.  Religiously, this is mirrored in the worship of idols – themselves creations of the worshippers.  There is a subtle play here on the notion of the divine image: human beings are made in Yahweh’s image; these same human beings reject Yahweh and instead create gods in their own image.  The “words” these gods speak are (scarcely surprisingly) “no better than wood” (Jeremiah 10:8).  They have no word of salvation to speak; no challenge; they open up no alternative to the cycles of death and despair in which the people live.

Note the movement in John’s writing, though.  The story does not stop here.  Jesus has come from the Father, been rejected, has returned to the Father and will return again.  The picture in Revelation 21 is of the new heaven and earth (Revelation 21:1), which are reunited when (and this is important!) heaven comes down to earth (21:2).  That reuniting is not about rescuing us from the world, but the transformation –conquest – of the world into a place of life and joy (cf 21:3-4 – some of the most beautiful words in the bible, I reckon!).

So to be “in the world, but not of the world” is, in John’s sense, to have switched allegiance.  In his terms, this is about our relationship to God in Jesus Christ.  His controlling metaphor is “abiding”, which leads him into the curious and poetic refrain of “being in”: “I in them and you in me” (17:23).  That is where ultimate loyalty lies.  This is the new community whose life is characterised by love.  That is a different way from the way of the world.  It is the commerce of heaven.  Yet the task – the mission – of the new community is to live this out “in the world”, as Jesus did.  This is where love is made concrete – where the rubber of faith hits the road.  The eternal life we enjoy in Jesus Christ is meant to be lived out here.  It is the “abundant life” of God that has been made possible in Jesus.  So being “not of this world” is not about condemnation of the world, but about proclaiming that this place is where love can and ought to rule.  It points forward to the destiny of the world: the present rebellion has a limited life!  The earth’s destiny is to be reunited with heaven – with God.  This is the place where God wishes to dwell with us.

 

The reality of resistance

The hyper-Calvinists taught the doctrine of Irresistible Grace.  If God had elected only a few to salvation and predestined them for fellowship with “Him” (that sort of God can only be male!!!), then grace and salvation are inevitable.  Yet Judas reminds us of the depth of human resistance to God.  Of course, the crucifixion does as well.  We must never forget that the story of the cross is the story of the utter failure of Jesus’ mission.  Not only is he crucified, but he is abandoned by those closest to him.  That is why the Spirit makes such a difference, and why the Spirit is so central to the post-resurrection accounts of Jesus.  The Spirit is transformative.  She is the power of resurrection.  Incarnation alone is not enough (“water and blood”, in terms of 1 John 5:6).  The presence of Jesus alone – even as the incarnate Word – is not enough to ensure that grace is able to do its work of liberation, forgiveness and transformation.  The Spirit is also necessary.  Where the Spirit is, there is the possibility that a Peter who denies even knowing Jesus can become the Peter of Acts.  The Spirit makes us children of God.  The Spirit empowers and protects us in the world as we try to make the eternal life of God a visible reality in “the world”.  And the Spirit “makes our joy complete”.  Jesus prays for his disciples – and God’s answer to his prayer is the Holy Spirit.  It’s time to be waiting actively on God for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.  Let’s do so with a deep sense of excitement and anticipation!

 

Amen.

14:04 Posted in 1 John , Acts , Jeremiah , John , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study

Tuesday, 16 May 2006

Easter 6 Year B

Acts 10: 44-48                  NRSV text
Psalm 98                           NRSV text
Genesis 35: 9-15              NRSV text
1 John 5: 1-6                    NRSV text
John 15: 9-17                   NRSV text

 

There are all sorts of interesting pairings in the lectionary passages: love and obedience, abiding and joy, self-sacrifice and friendship, being chosen and bearing fruit, faith and the Holy Spirit, parents and children, belief and birth, name and nation-building.  The common factor is the “if this, … then that …” dynamic.  It’s about consequences.  Matters of faith and theology – belief and spirituality – are not meant to be confined to the head and heart, to the interior, psychological life of believers.  They are to make a difference here and now, otherwise they are empty and not “true”.  I have said it before, but it needs saying time and time again: it needs to make a difference because salvation is for this world!  It needs saying because we inhabit a tradition that has spiritualised and individualised salvation, focussing on “If you died, where would you be tonight?”  It’s as though the only interesting and important question is what happens to us after this life, when we have escaped from this world.  Then this life is nothing but preparation for death and beyond, and this world an unfortunate waiting place where we have to kick our heels until real life and reality kick in.  That is an easy response from people who have an easy life and little to fear from this world: poverty, despair, oppression and starvation.  But it is also a temptation for those whose life is a living hell and who have given up hoping that God’s promises of life in Jesus Christ are Good News to the world in which they struggle desperately to live to see another day.  Both are faithless in the same way, albeit for different reasons.

John’s gospel, more than the others, has lent itself to this sort of dualistic, world- and body-denying interpretation.  The problem is that it is the most explicitly “theological” of the gospels.  That is not to say that the other gospels are in any way less theological: it is just that theology comes even more to the fore in John’s gospel than in the others.  If there is a “Messianic Secret” in the synoptic gospels, for example, John is at pains to leave the readers in no doubt as to who Jesus is!  But that has meant that generations of exegetes have been able to ignore John’s dynamic connection between theology and practice at the expense of theology.  To “believe” thus becomes a matter of “getting your head around doctrine”, rather than to trust.  It becomes enough to talk at length about the inner relations of the Godhead, without recognising that John intends these “truths” to become incarnate – to take flesh in the world in Jesus-like actions.

 

Theology and Jesus-shaped living

For John, good theology results in more faithful living.  That is as it should be.  Look at what he says in vv 10-11, for instance: obedience (a thoroughly Jewish concept) is good an proper – but if we understand that Jesus is God incarnate (the concrete manifestation of divine love), we will begin to realise – and experience – obedience as love and joy, rather than cold duty.  And that results in a very different sort of spirituality and experience of God!  It means, furthermore, that we begin to understand faithful living differently: our Christ-like actions are not just about “doing the right thing”, but disclose God, because they are instances of God’s “love in action” (just as Jesus was).  Obedience is “lived love” – and it is joyful! 

John wants us to discover the abundance of life that God has for us in Jesus.  Joy is a vital part of that.  Isn’t it ironic that the picture most ordinary people have of Christians is of dour, joyless, duty-urgers, whose first words always seem to be “Thou shalt not …”?  We are still plagued by a Puritanism that stifles abundant life.  Someone once characterised a Puritan as “a person haunted by the suspicion that someone, somewhere, is happy!”  That could well describe so many church-goers today.

Love, says John, is Jesus-shaped (v12).  It is self-sacrificial.  It is seen in laying one’s life down for one’s friends (v13).  Jesus here points back to the foot washing (chapter 13) and forward to the crucifixion.  John hammers the point home again: Jesus laid his life down.  It was voluntary self-sacrifice.  He didn’t have to do it and wasn’t forced to do so. 

This leads on to the new relationship with the disciples that the resurrection has made possible.  The disciples move from being servants to friends.  There’s something deeper in John’s gospel about friendship, though.  “I call you my friends,” says Jesus, “because I have made known everything I have heard from my Father” (v15).  Friendship in this case means being drawn into the family life of God.  The “our Father”, in John’s gospel, is Jesus saying, “Your Father and mine”.  As Jesus’ friends, we move from being followers and learners to friends and family.  We are to be Jesus in the world.  And we share in Jesus’ intimate access to God: in the task of saving the world (3:17), we, like Jesus, can ask God for what we need in the confidence that God hears us obedient children.  God delights in us, and gives us delight.

 

Parents and children (1 John 5: 1-6)

John closes the previous chapter by reminding us: if love is about concrete actions, we cannot claim to love God if we hate our brothers and sisters.  If we accept less in life for them than we do for ourselves, we do not love them.  They are not “them” – they are “us” (brothers and sisters).  Now he swings the equation round.  If you love God, you will love others.  If God is the parent, we will love God’s children.  Further, we know we are children because we are obedient – we obey God’s commandments.  And God’s commandments are summarised in love. 

 

Conquering the world

This is dangerous language!  Human beings are always up for conquering the world and imposing themselves on others, and Christians are no exception!  But John means something different from world dictatorship by the Church!  “Conquering the world” is about overcoming all that is ranged against God.  In his gospel, John refers to that as “darkness”.  Jesus is Light.  The Light has come into the world, and the darkness has never been able to put it out/defeat it.  Note that this form of “conquest” is not about annihilation!  It is about transformation.  Jesus has come not to condemn the world, but to save (transform) it.  The transformative power of God – the power that death cannot vanquish – is the power of love.  Jesus on the cross in John’s gospel is King of all the world.  The power by which he reigns is the power of love.  That is the conquest – the triumph of Life, Light and Love. 

But that only happens, says John, because Jesus is the Word made flesh.  Jesus was truly human.  He didn’t only appear to be human (as though he was actually God and not human at all): he was a real person.  This is what John is driving at in the rather mysterious verse 6.  Some in John’s church were denying that Jesus was a human being whose entire life was that of a fully human being.  There were two different mistakes being made, both of which had profound consequences for  salvation and life in the world. 

The first was what came to be known as adoptionism.  Jesus was an ordinary human who, at his baptism, received the Spirit and was adopted as God’s Son (as Paul says we are).  They would say that Jesus “came by water only”.    However, for these believers, it was inconceivable that Jesus on the cross was divine.  The Spirit left him at the crucifixion, and Jesus died as an ordinary human being.  This isn’t just some quaint theological tiff from the second century.  The significance is that these people denied that God could be involved in death and darkness.  The Spirit’s leaving Jesus was a divine “escape plan” from human sinfulness.  But then salvation is something radically different.  This world isn’t saved by Jesus – it is abandoned by God!  Darkness does overcome the Light!  Jesus is not ruler of the world – the powers that enslave are!  And while we might be rescued from this world and the powers at death, salvation is for somewhere else.

The other, opposite error is docetism (from dokeo, meaning “to seem”).  Here Jesus only seems human, but is in fact divine and not subject to human error and weakness.  Then the cross is about God triumphing – but salvation can’t have anything to do with transformed human living!  It is meaningless to urge people to “live like Jesus” if that is impossible for humans to do!  It is pointless and cruel enjoining us to “obey God’s commandments” if human beings, filled with the Spirit, are unable to do so.  It is because Jesus was human that he shows us what abundant life means for human beings – life we are meant to experience here and now. 

No, says John, neither of these will do.  Jesus is God incarnate as a human being.  The Spirit doesn’t make us “superhuman” but truly human – able to live as Jesus did and relate to both God and the world as Jesus did.  It also means that human destiny is to be children of God.

 

Names and mission (Genesis 35: 9-15)

We need to read the incident of the renaming of Jacob in this light.  Jacob the individual is to be Israel, father of nations.  This personal blessing from Yahweh is not just for Jacob to enjoy personally here and now.  What Yahweh is doing for Jacob is in order to bless the whole earth.  Symbolically, Jacob is representative of a nation under Yahweh and thus of the whole earth under Yahweh.  The blessing is not exhausted in Jacob’s lifetime, but will be fulfilled over millennia. 

How often do we take the long term view in our instant world of today?  Our consumerist society tells us the key question to ask is, “What’s in it for me?”  Yet when God calls us – chooses us, as John reminds us – God’s purposes are global.  Our salvation is part of the wider picture of the salvation of all creation.  We are either obsessed with the here-and-now (by which we mean “today, and maybe as far head as next week”) or the hereafter.  Neither of these is Christian.  The images of mustard seeds and huge trees, and parables of growth encompass huge lengths of time.  God’s long-term is long!   After all, if we think in terms of days, the bible reminds us, God thinks in terms of 10,000 year increments! 

What does this mean?  It means we ought to be encouraged when we see very little effect from our actions in the world.  Jesus didn’t, after all!  We ought not to be discouraged or depressed, but to keep the faith.  But more significantly, it means that we ought to be concerned with the world as it will be long after we’re gone!  There is no place in faithful living for the short-termism that exhausts our natural resources now and leaves nothing for our great-grandchildren.  Global warming, as the adverts tell us, is not a problem for this generation, but for our children and grandchildren.  When we squander the earth’s resources, we squander our children’s salvation!

 

It’s the Spirit … (Acts 10: 44-48)

Salvation for the world.  The whole world!  We talk about it, and make it sound wonderful.  And in the back of our minds, we usually have the unspoken assumption that it means everyone becoming like us.  It’s comfortable.  The reality is different.  The world is not just “us and ours” writ large – it encompasses people radically unlike us.  Those differences are differences of culture, “race”, political persuasion, sexual orientation, gender … all the things that cut us off from sections of humanity.  Salvation is uncomfortable, because God doesn’t accommodate God’s saving purposes to us.  Salvation does not mean that the things we find offensive, scary, foreign, alien and incomprehensible about other people and places will be done away with.

That was the very thing that the Jewish Christians found so utterly impossible to comprehend when Gentiles received the Spirit.  Their assumption was that the Gentiles first had to become good Jews – or at least, Jewish imitators!  They were looking for converts who would gradually become more and more like them.  After all, surely God didn’t value all those foreigners as much as God valued them?  This couldn’t be happening!

But it was!  And it changed the face of Christianity.  Instead of being a form of Jewish messianism, it became an international phenomenon – particularly with Paul’s ministry.  There were radical differences in its forms, too.  The Church in Corinth was as unlike the Jerusalem Church as it was possible to be.  The gospel became incarnate in other places and cultures – and faith took on those same different hues.

We want people to join our churches.  What is it that we expect to happen?  Do we expect them to become “assimilated” into our ways, and become like us?  Or are we open to the work of the Spirit, so that we might become more like them?  We hear the same sorts of protests about “foreigners” in the UK: “We wouldn’t mind if they behaved and thought like the British, but they don’t!  They expect to be allowed to dress differently in schools, and demand we take account of their customs!”  A world faith celebrates diversity and difference.  It wrenches us out of the comfort of the familiar and the assurance that what we have known is how things ought to be.

But does God intend these differences?  It is the question of difference that has so agonised Christians over the centuries.  The issue of slavery is rooted in racial difference, as was Apartheid and the Civil Rights struggle.  The Cold War was about competing socio-political differences.  The issue of the ordination of women is a question rooted in gender difference.  And the hot potato of our time – the sexuality debate – is about differences of sexual preference.  How are we to find our way to discovering the mind of God?  We ought to take a leaf out of Peter’s book, and the debate over the place of Gentiles in the Church.  It’s the same test that ahs proved so decisive in the struggles over difference down through the centuries, and is devastatingly simple: to whom does God give the Spirit?  And if God pours out the Spirit upon black people, poor people, people of other cultures and on homosexuals, who can withhold the recognition that these all are our brothers and sisters in Christ – equal participants in a salvation that encompasses the world?

 

Amen.

23:22 Posted in 1 John , Acts , Genesis , John , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study

Friday, 12 May 2006

Easter 5 Year B

Acts 8: 26-40 NRSV text
Psalm 22: 25-31 NRSV text
Exodus 19: 1-6 NRSV text
1 John 4: 7-21 NRSV text
John 15: 1-8 NRSV text

 

Apologies for the late posting! I shall try and post Sunday/Monday next week to ensure I don't lose my writing window. Please bear with me and come back early next week!

 

Vines, branches, fruit and pruning – and “abiding”. This is one of those “purple passages” from John’s gospel that most of us know well. It’s a time to expound parables of grafting, pruning, getting rid of excess foliage so the grapes are plentiful and fat … and stuff about “abiding” that hovers constantly on the edge of twee and a bit precious. Any tendency towards twee and precious should cause us to pause. It’s Christian Aid Week this week and we dare not forget that this world is a brutal, death-dealing place. Most inhabitants of this planet live below the breadline. The scale of global poverty is staggering; the magnitude of starvation is terrifyingly obscene. What makes the statistics significant is not simply the scale. The scale is tragic. Yet if it was inevitable and unpreventable, that is all we could call it. It is the fact that it is preventable that is significant. The world has never been globally richer, not has it ever
produced more food. Global poverty is not an accident but a deliberate human creation. It is deliberate not in the sense that we set out to cause starvation, but in that we build a global economy that give those of us in the west a particular standard of living that necessarily means that two thirds of the planet live in abject poverty. And “we” – the people with the power and decision-making ability – reckon that is an acceptable cost. That is what makes the global statistics so obscene.

We’re talking about John’s gospel, and my point is this: even were John writing about other-wordly, beautiful soul-thoughts in which we could lose ourselves in mawkish sentimentality, the state of the world would demand that we leave the gospel alone in favour of other passages that speak more directly, compellingly and challengingly to the world we inhabit. There simply isn’t time to do anything else. People are dying, and in a world of disease, despair and death, sentimentality is a luxury. More than that, it is a deadly distraction. Stanley Hauerwas was asked
what he thought is the greatest danger facing the Church today, and replied, “Sentimentality!” He went on to explain that sentimentality allows Christians to substitute fluffy feeling and token action for the sort of sacrificial, transformative engagement with the world that the situation demands and that discipleship of the crucified Jesus requires.

 

Incarnation and mission

However, John’s gospel is not that sort of opiate. It has certainly been read in that way. And it is possible to read it through dualistic spectacles that see ultimate reality as “somewhere else” and non-corporeal. Reading this passage in Christian Aid Week requires that we consciously adopt a reading strategy that is deeply true to John’s own writings and intentions, and equally deeply engaged with the world. It seems to me that one of the mistakes that allows us to read John dualistically is that we ignore the fact that John is the theologian of the Incarnation. Incarnation is about heaven coming down to earth and taking concrete shape in human living. Truth is not “apprehended” or “thought”: it is born and lives. Eternal life – the gift of God – is to be seen and touched, heard and followed in Jesus Christ. The abundant life that is God’s intention for the world is for the here and now. To “believe” (as John tirelessly exhorts us to do) is not about escape from this world, but to echo the motto of Christian Aid: “We believe in life before death!”

The poetic language of John’s gospel is premised upon an incarnational view of truth. It is hard-edged and challenging. This is no more clearly articulated than in this passage about vines and branches. Look at what John has Jesus say: “I am not interested in braches that do not bear fruit. God is at work in the world, transforming it. That is God’s purpose. It is to save the world – this world! If you want to be part of me, you are necessarily part of that mission. And unless you get stuck in, you are of no use. You are sapping time and energy and resources. You are a distraction. You are a problem. You are of no use and you will be pruned ruthlessly and burned with all the other rubbish! (vv 1-6)” On the other hand, “If you are doing what you ought, and are overwhelmed by the scale of the task, all you have to do is ask for what you need and God will supply it! God will ensure that you are equipped. That will be evident – and people will be given a glimpse of God! (vv 8-9)”

Jesus goes on: “Make no mistake: the sort of love I am talking about issues in obedience. I have called you for a reason: to make love real! Your task is the same as mine: to bring heaven down to earth. When life for the world is abundant, you will sense my joy and share it. You will find greater joy in this than any you might have previously believed possible! (vv 10-11). Although these are not part of the lectionary passage, they nevertheless make clear what Jesus is driving at and steer us away from “soft” readings of the passage. This is Good News for the world as we have made it.

 

Vines, braches and the Image of God

Vines and braches is also about the deep connections between ourselves and Jesus – connections that run deeper than action and following. It’s about what it means to be human: to be connected to God as God’s children (an image John uses elsewhere). In other words, the image of vines and braches belongs to human beings as made in the image of God. Jesus the man is the “icon” of God. He shares that in common with us – or rather, we share it in common with him.

“Image” is multidimensional. Firstly, it tells us that we may not treat anyone else as less than a person in God’s image. If we treat anyone as less important than we and ours are, we do violence not only to them but to the God in
whose image they are made. That is why John urges us in the epistle to “love one another”. If there is an integral relationship between our relationship with other people and with God, we cannot claim to love God and hate our brother or sister (v21). Truth is what is seen on the ground. If we say, “God is ok – it’s people that I can’t abide! But God’s different!”, then John tells us we have misunderstood God. To see others is to see God. God is not “different” in the way we imagine God to be. Persecution, oppression, global poverty, indifference to the AIDS crisis or other human rights issue all depend on being able to see others as less than human – less in the image of God than we are.

Secondly, the image of God is about our own transformation. It’s about what people “see” in us – the picture we give to the world. Discipleship of Jesus – “loving” and “believing” in John’s terms – is about becoming more and more visibly like Jesus. That obviously isn’t about physical appearance, but it is no less physical. It’s about actions. If God is saving the world in Jesus (John 3: 16-17), then people will see God in our actions to make the world a place of Life and hope. And we will be changed in the process. That is part of what John means by “God abiding in us” (1 John 4: 13-16). It isn’t some theological theory: it is something we are supposed to be able to see and recognise as true because the changes in us ought to be observable!

 

It’s communal …

We live in a very individualistic age and culture. Spiritually, this often presents as though Christian faith was about “me and Jesus” – as though all that God has done and is doing in Jesus is just for “me”. That sort of individualism would be incomprehensible in the world of the Bible. It is not only alien, but hostile to the communal nature of faith and salvation. Jesus and John speak to the disciples as a group. The images of Church are communal. The disciples of Jesus are to be a new community. When Jesus speaks of love as the defining characteristic of that new community, he speaks communally.

Similarly, when Yahweh calls a new community into being at Sinaii (Exodus 19: 1-6), they are to be a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation”. Is there any theological significance to this communal understanding of faith beyond its cultural shaping? Yes! The point is that the new community is not just about changed individuals, but is a sign of a transformed world. And isn’t that precisely what we so desperately need salvation to be? It isn’t enough just to make a few individuals better – or rescue them from reality. If salvation is to be life for the world, as God intends and promises, then it has to be able to deal with the questions and dynamics that shape human history and existence in this world.

It has to be that because resurrection says that rescue from this world is not God’s intention nor is it an option. If it were, God would have wrapped human history up after the crucifixion and given up on the world as a bad job! But God raised Jesus from the dead. That means that God hasn’t finished with the world – in fact, there’s a sense in which, on Easter Sunday, God was just starting!

 

The hard edge

Vines, branches, pruning, love, abiding … these are hard-edged words. They are Good News at the onset of Christian Aid Week. They depend on Jesus, who is God become human. “Word here becomes flesh, sovereignty becomes compassion, weakness becomes strength, foolishness becomes wisdom, suffering becomes hope, vulnerability becomes energy, death becomes life”! (Walter Brueggemann).

 

Amen.

14:40 Posted in 1 John , Acts , Exodus , John , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study

Thursday, 04 May 2006

Easter 4 Year B

Acts 4: 5-12                   NRSV text
Psalm 23                        NRSV text
1John 3: 16-24               NRSV text
John 10: 11-18               NRSV text

What a gift these texts appear to be! Psalm 23 – we’ve known that since childhood. Good! That’s the children’s slot taken care of! Peter and John before the Sanhedrin, defending the healing of the crippled beggar – chance to wheel out Silver and gold have I none! And get the congregation singing and doing the actions! Then there’s the epistle – all about love and abiding and the Spirit. Very comfortable, hovering on the edge of sentimentality (it’s always good to be able to give the heartstrings a tug, isn’t it?) and finally the gospel passage itself – Jesus the Good Shepherd! And of course, if you live in this part of the world, it’s lambing time – and Cumbria is awash with fields of newly dropped lambs. Great chance to show some pictures of cute, woolly little wobblers taking their first tentative steps …

That just shows how thoroughly we’ve domesticated the gospel. Images of shepherds were hardly “cute”. Shepherds were pretty cut off from human society, spending all their time (as they did) out on the hills with the sheep. At night time, they herded them into pens and, if they were seriously committed to their task (in the manner evoked by Jesus in the first 11 verses of this chapter), they slept out on the hills, too – usually across the gate of the pen. Their job was to find water and grazing for the sheep (cf Psalm 23:2) – not an easy task in the semi-desert. Most importantly, they had to be kept safe from the predators that lurked in the rocks and caves where skittish or complacent sheep walked in “the valleys of the shadow of death”. Leading, feeding and protecting. Shepherding was not a job for the weak. It was one of the most powerful images used to describe Israel’s experience of Yahweh as protector and provider.

And Jesus, in John 10, picks up on the “frontline” aspect of shepherding: “I am the gate” (10:7) and, in our text this week, “I am the good shepherd”. Note that this follows on immediately from the verse, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly”. Jesus then moves immediately into the image of the shepherd whose “goodness” is seen in laying down his life for the sheep. Jesus is not saying, “I am the good shepherd because I am prepared to lay down my life for the sheep”. This is not about risk-taking. Jesus is the shepherd who will give abundant life to the sheep at the expense of his own life.

This is one of the Johannine “passion predictions”. If Epiphany is about revealing the meaning of the Incarnation, the Easter cycle is about discovering the meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection. As the first disciples only came to understand the meaning and significance of Good Friday after Easter Sunday, so we contemporary disciples are led by the lectionary readings into the meaning of Easter during these post-Easter weeks.

We must not forget just how shocking and meaningless the crucifixion renders all of Jesus’ ministry. We have had 2000 years of faith and preaching about the cross. We write sentimental songs and hymns about “The Old Rugged Cross”. We wear crosses around our necks as items of jewellery. And yet the cross, as Jurgen Moltmann reminds us, can never be loved. It was an instrument of torture. It was reserved for the dregs and the most dangerous – it was a political death machine. Those who died in this way were cursed and regarded as sub-human. How was it remotely possible that this would be the fate of God’s Messiah? It was unthinkable. The cross was the final verdict on Jesus: he was a messianic pretender; a blasphemer; a political agitator. He was a sham – and moreover, a deadly sham, because he had so many people fooled into thinking that what he said and did was blessed by God. And the source of his power? People’s gullibility, Jesus’ own personal charisma, and demonic possession. That was how any good Jew had to see Jesus when they looked at the cross. It was a sign that triggered revulsion.

And for those who believed in him? The cross was the nadir of all their hopes. Jesus did not deliver! All his promises proved worthless. The incredibly powerful vision of the kingdom turned out to be a pipe dream and a hallucination. And all the promises of liberation – of smashing the powers that bound human beings? Well, so much for the great “Rumble in the Jungle” (or in this case, in Jerusalem). Jesus just didn’t even feature. And at the end of the day, he wasn’t worth following – not worth putting one’s own life at risk for. What a waste of 3 years! What stupid, gullible fools they had all been! And now, how were they to live, not only with the death of Jesus but with all the unrealised hopes that he had stirred up and failed so spectacularly to deliver on? How does one live with standing on the edge of the Promised Land, seeing it laid out, and then have it all taken away? How can one ever live with what is when one has been made so utterly dissatisfied with it – and yet with no alternative? Hardly abundant life, eh?

Jesus’ point here in the gospel is that it is precisely through his own death that abundant life will come! Far from the crucifixion undermining any hope in Jesus’ promises coming to be realised, it is, ironically, the guarantee of those promises! The “abundant life” that Jesus promises was the lived experience of the post-Easter community: life in the power of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

“You crucified him; God raised him!” (Acts 4: 5-12)
There is a clear link between the raising of the crippled beggar to his feet and resurrection. That much is clear to the priests, the Saducees and the captain of the temple (v1). They are “highly annoyed (frothing at the mouth!)” because the apostles were teaching and proclaiming “that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead”. The Saducees, of course, are particularly incensed, because they differ theologically from the Pharisees over precisely this question. They object to the preaching of the resurrection, and haul Peter and John before them. Yet their question is not “Why are you teaching that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead”, but rather, “By what power or in what name did you do this?” It’s the same question! Peter is “filled with the Holy Spirit” (v8) – resurrection power – and declares that it is “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth”.

And here’s the point: this is Jesus, the one “whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead!” (v10). It’s the same formula that appears in Peter’s Pentecost sermon: “You crucified and killed [him] .. but God raised him up” (2: 23-4). You did one thing, but God did another! You killed him, God raised him; you declared him to be a false prophet and messianic pretender, but God declared him to be both Lord and Messiah; you declared him to be a blasphemer, but God declared him to be the Son of God; you rejected him like a stone unfit for use, but God declared him to be the most important stone in the whole edifice; you declared him to be a political agitator, but God has made him king of the universe!

This is what salvation is: it is what God does in grace, despite all we do in sin and rebellion. That is why Jesus is the name by which we are saved. There is no other because it is Jesus who died and whom God raised.

Not murder, but self-sacrifice
Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life. Laid down voluntarily and deliberately, rather than taken. This is a constant emphasis in the gospel accounts of the post-Easter appearances. It wasn’t some terrible disaster because God had it planned. It wasn’t some terrifying defeat of Jesus because Jesus chose the way of the cross.

John is at pains to tell us, throughout the passion narrative, that Jesus is in control. In his account of Jesus before Pilate, John has Pilate ask Jesus, “Don’t you know that I have the power to have you crucified or let you live?” (19:10) Jesus quite explicitly tells Pilate, “No you don’t! It’s only because God has given you that power that you do. Without it, you are absolutely powerless in this matter!” John’s crucified Jesus is not the God-abandoned, soul-shattered Jesus of Mark’s gospel, but the king who is enthroned. He is in control on the cross.

Why this particular portrayal? It has led to all sorts of difficulties and a sense that the cross “wasn’t really so bad after all”. But that’s only because we’ve missed John’s point. He is trying to hammer home what emerged after Easter Sunday: the contrast between what appears to be the case when we look at the crucified Jesus, and the truth that God is deeply, marvellously and savingly active in the very midst of this act of deepest sinfulness and self-destructiveness on the part of human beings. We are to look at the cross, then, in the light of the resurrection, if we are truly to see what it tells us about Jesus and God.

As I said last week, there is no sense in which those who crucified Jesus can plead divine planning as some sort of excuse. The “You crucified him!” is an accusation that they did it all on their own. It’s not good practice to try and read John as though he is saying the same thing as Mark, or trying to take a “the Bible says …” approach. It destroys the integrity of each evangelist’s particular “take” on Jesus, and flattens an enormously rich and varied biblical witness. But it is not doing violence to John’s theology to say that, in becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ, God abandons God’s self and Jesus to all the human processes and consequences of sin. The “powers” (in Mark’s terms) are given free reign to do their damndest (as seen in Jesus’ exchange with Pilate). God, in other words, doesn’t act to skew the outcome of Jesus’ ministry and message. That means that God neither protects Jesus, nor does God force people to act against their will.

The “divine plan” that is revealed after the resurrection is not that God “engineered” all this, but rather that the “plan” is grace! God is acting to save the world in Jesus (John 3: 17). And that means that Jesus has to be a volunteer. And whatever humans do – however bad it is – there is the “but God …” which is grace and salvation. And that “but God” is seen no more clearly than in the resurrection.

World-transforming love (1 John 3: 16-24)
Love is tough. It is the sort of love that is embodied (literally) in the shepherd who provides for the sheep and protects them with his life against wild beasts. We know love, says John, when we see it – and we see it in Jesus laying down his life for us (v16). But that means that those of us who live because of that love ought to live by it. So John goes on, “… so we ought to lay down our lives for one another!” Concretely, that means providing for their needs (v17) – just as a shepherd does for the flock. Love is made real, not in words and fluffy feelings, but in truth and action (v18).

We symbolise love by a heart. Not so, says John. That may be appropriate insofar as it seeks to convey that love is depth-language (“heart vs head”), but it won’t do as a criterion for love. Feelings and intentions are not a sure enough guide. Only love that is made incarnate – takes concrete shape in actions – will do. Feelings – heart, or conscience – can lead us wrongly. If we’re particularly sensitive, we are likely always to beating ourselves up because we’re aware of how great the needs are and just how little we seem to do in comparison with what we’d like to do. When that happens, says John, we need to take a steer and encouragement from actions. When we can see that we have shepherded others – provided for their needs at cost to ourselves – then we need not feel “condemned by our hearts” (vv 19-21).

If we’re particularly insensitive to the needs of others, we will be able to ignore the needs for food, shelter, clothing, liberation and a cup of cold water and still sleep at night, comforted by our general feeling of “universal love”. Not good enough, says John. Then we’re using the word in a completely different way from the way in which he means it, and from the content that Jesus gives it.

To be “in Jesus” and to have Jesus “in us” (abiding) means that we will be those who, having experienced God’s love in Christ, live it out in world-transforming, community-shaping actions that are the work of the same Spirit that was “abiding” in Jesus. If we follow the Good Shepherd, we will be shepherds to others and to the world.

Amen.

14:37 Posted in 1 John , Acts , John , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study

Friday, 28 April 2006

Easter 3 Year B

Acts 3: 12-19                     NRSV text
1 John 3: 1-7                      NRSV text
Psalm 4                              NRSV text
Luke 24: 36b-48                NRSV text

 

My apologies for posting so late this week.  It's just been one of those ...

Jesus has a very busy day on that first resurrection Sunday in Luke’s gospel! He rises, walks the seven miles to Emmaus with the two disciples, returns to Jerusalem, eats a meal with the other disciples, takes the group to Bethany and then ascends. This is concentrated drama! It is not biography – it’s symbolic narrative. In Acts, Luke tells us that there was a period of 40 days between his resurrection and ascension. Here in the gospel, his concern is to make clear the significance of what is happening. By compressing everything into a single day, he is making the point that everything that happens is part of the unfolding drama of resurrection. Resurrection is a “new day” – not just chronologically, but qualitatively too. Although there will be many subsequent “days”, they, together with all of human history, take this event as their starting point. It is the dawn of a new creation. In it, the disciples meet their risen Master and learn the meaning and significance of all that has happened. The seismic tremors of resurrection are already beginning to spread from their epicentre in Jerusalem throughout the whole world.

This week’s gospel passage has two striking parallels. The first is the one we noted last week, with John 20: 19-23, which, in all likelihood, John knew and was reflecting upon; the second is Luke’s second version of this incident in Acts 1: 3-8. The essence of Luke’s message is very simple: God has vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead, so that all that Jesus proclaimed and promised will come about; Jesus is alive – alive, and not a ghost; Jesus wants his disciples to continue his work in the power of the same Spirit that came upon him at his baptism and empowered his ministry.

The message of the resurrection is startling, amazing and exciting! This is the faith by which Luke’s community lives, and is a matter of ongoing, genuine rejoicing – holy glee in the best sense! That’s reflected in the way Luke tells the story, where he almost caricatures the disciples’ inability to grasp what has happened. Here are the disciples, gathered in a room, listening to the astounding story of their two companions, breathless from having hot-footed it straight back to Jerusalem from Emmaus. This is the second bunch of possible crazies from among their number: first the women, back from the tomb in the morning, and now two of their number from Emmaus in the evening. Perhaps they’re thinking, “It’s not safe to go outdoors! It must be grief – or is it something in the water? After all, everyone who steps outside the room starts seeing Jesus! Better stay right here, where it’s safe!”

And at that moment, Jesus appears in their midst! So much for safety indoors, eh? And he says, “Peace be with you.” Yeah! As if! They’re hallucinating – seeing a ghost – and the ghost is saying, “Relax! It’s ok!” Then the ghost goes on: “Why are you frightened?” I man, come on! Wouldn’t you be? What a stupid question! Then another killer: “Why do doubts arise in your hearts?” Well, Jesus (or whoever you are), do you really expect us to just roll over and say, “Oh, it’s you! Good to see you back. Come sit down – we were just talking about you!”

In verse 39, Luke hammers his main point home: this is the risen Jesus. Not a ghost. Not his spirit. Not some wonderful hallucination. This is the flesh and blood Jesus! There’s the invitation to touch and see, and he eats with them.

Risen body
I don’t know what you believe about resurrection. I do know that the Easter message of resurrection gets lost in uncomfortable debates about whether or not the risen Jesus was actually a flesh and blood, eating, drinking, touching, human being who had been dead and was now alive again, or whether “resurrection” is a symbol of the enduring presence of Jesus, even though his body remained on the slab somewhere.

So let’s be clear: the witness of all four evangelists is that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead! They hammer that home. The notion that Jesus was actually raised bodily was as difficult for Christians in Luke’s church as it is for people in our own time. Resurrection was not common currency at the time – a characteristic of a primitive and credulous culture. Nor was it used as a clever, nuanced symbol. People then (as now) could cope with the notion that Jesus was, in effect, a “ghost” – some enduring spirit-presence. Not good enough, says Luke. This is about dead bodies being made alive again – and changed in the process. Yes, the risen Jesus is certainly different from the pre-Easter Jesus. And he doesn’t behave in the same way, relate in the same way or obey the same physical laws. But then, resurrection is not just an “event” that “happens” to Jesus! It’s something that happens to all creation – and the experience of the transformed, risen Jesus is a foretaste of what will happen to the whole world when its transformation into the kingdom of God is complete.

It’s not what happened to Jesus that is as significant as why, and what it all means for the world. Resurrection faith is not “believing in bodily resurrection rather than enduring presence”. Conservative Christians who believe in bodily resurrection are no more “Christian” or faithful to the resurrection than liberal Christians whose faith would remain unaltered, were Jesus’ bones to be discovered tomorrow. Belief in resurrection is not something akin to whether or not one believes in fairies or the Loch Ness monster. It’s not even a question of whether or not one believes in miracles. The stress on faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus in the gospels is the question of whether or not one believes in salvation as the transformation of this world.

The key question is whether this world and these bodies of ours have a future with God. It’s a question, therefore, about the meaning and content of salvation. Resurrection says that salvation is recreation – salvation for this world. God could have done at least two things differently. The first is to have abandoned us and our world because we rejected God. Resurrection says that God doesn’t do that – even when we have resisted God’s companionship to the point of murdering God’s Son! The second is to abandon creation but not human beings. In this case, salvation would be escape or rescue from the world. God could say, “You are not your bodies. The ‘real you’ is non-material. And this world isn’t ultimately ‘real’ – ultimate reality is another place altogether, called heaven. So let me rescue you from all this mess of creation (bodies, earth etc)”. God, in other words, could be a dualist.

But resurrection is anti-dualist. God isn’t a Hindu, or Buddhist, or classical Greek deity. The Hebrew and Christian God is a God who is inextricably linked to creation by love and a determination to save what has been created. Matter matters! Bodies matter! God embraces body in Jesus (Incarnation) and enters into our world. God becomes part of our world. And God does so in order to save it by transforming it into all that it was always intended to be.

That is why God is so concerned about what happens to the earth and to human beings. That is why God is distressed and angry when people starve, or are mistreated, or murdered. Suffering matters – not just because it is unpleasant and distressing, but because our bodies are integrally us. How we treat our bodies and the bodies of others is therefore enormously significant. That is why Jesus healed people, rather than telling them not to worry about suffering and this life and concentrate on pie in the sky when they die. That is why Jesus says that giving a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, or clothing someone who is naked, is ministry to him.

It’s also why John says what he does about sin. If matter and bodies don’t matter, then what we do with our bodies here and now is hardly significant. We are already God’s children because of resurrection (1 John 3: 2). Our bodies are made for living differently from the way we used to live. Hence John’s concern with authentic, Spirit-inspired Christian living. We are in a process of becoming (v2b). We and the world – because as we are being re-made through the Spirit, we are to be involved in remaking the world in the shape of the kingdom of God. Our hope is in a transformed world, in which there is no more sorrow, or sighing, or pain, or death; in which those things have passed away. But not one in which those things have merely passed away: one in which everything has been made new!

This earth and these bodies have a future with God. That is why there is resurrection: it is recreation. Salvation, in other words, is a physically real and significant as that from which we are saved – disease, despair and death. It is not some other world, or some sort of ghost-life that is the substance of salvation. That is why Jesus is raised from the dead. There is life for human beings beyond death – and human beings are both body and spirit equally. Those transformations to the body are no less important and can be no less physically real than the transformation of this world into a place where peace and righteousness kiss.

That, at least, is what Luke wants to tell us.

It was all meant to be …
All that happened to Jesus happened as a direct result of his actions and message, and the opposition it created. Jesus came to bring about the kingdom of God. That was his task and mission. Tragically, our response was to crucify him. And yet, the risen Jesus is at pains to explain, there is a sense in which it was all meant to be. God was not wrong-footed and caught out. The resurrection is not some last-minute rescue job, dreamed up during some divine three-day emergency summit! It was a “fulfilment” of everything that had gone before. Jesus is the one who, first on the Emmaus road, and now in the room with his disciples, begins the “Christian read-back” of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is the literal beginning of the “new” testament – the new way of understanding all that has gone before.

Does this mean that we can ultimately blame God for the crucifixion? After all, if it was God’s plan, who are we to thwart it? And are we not simply pawns in some gigantic, cosmic chess-game being played in a divine realm? That is not what “fulfilment” is meant to suggest. Prophecy in the bible is not some sort of Christian horoscope. To be human is to have choice and to create our own world. We are not determined by fate or even by the gods. That is part of the divine image in human beings.

What God tells the people through the prophets is about the results and consequences of those choices. And what God does in terms of salvation is to save us from those consequences. We chose to reject God and the kingdom God offered in Jesus. We chose to crucify Jesus and have nothing more to do with God in our world. The consequence of that is that God ought to reject us – but chooses instead to save. Our rejection is simply the climax of the long history of human rebellion against God. Every small act of rejection and resistance pointed towards the ultimate act – the crucifixion. Likewise every saving act of God pointed towards this ultimate act of God in Jesus: resurrection. Resurrection means that even this can be forgiven, so that there is now nothing in all creation to stop God forgiving. This is the good news. It is what Peter tells his hearers in Acts 3: 12-19. We need not be bound by our choices and actions. We can repent – because God is the God of resurrection! God intends Life, and even death will not be allowed to thwart that divine passion!

That is the message we have heard, and believed. This i