John 14:23-29
Easter 6 - Year C
Those who love me will be connected with me. Those whom I love (G*D/Neighb*r/Y’all/“Them”) I connect with. In all of this we hear more than words. We see more than hope delayed. We sense a Presence that aids our connection and we find ourselves at rest with one another, even in the midst of a next death and on-going sifting and winnowing of what we test and find real.
This Presence is all too easy to call Holy. When doing so we mask death and connection and are able to hide a fear-starter next within our sourdough. We hear of and desire peace, all the while still fearful.
If we were at peace, goings and comings would be a source of rejoicing. If we rejoiced in a larger view, peace would be right there. These polarities wind back and forth between one another—rejoice/peace/rejoice/peace.... Or, since we know not of chickens and eggs—peace/rejoice/peace/rejoice....
This we know before we know it. It is deeply remembered even if deeply buried. Come let us remember together that we might live forward.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/04/john-1423-29.html
Peace beyond the world's ability to give is a great gift indeed. One of the places this breaks into the open is when the relational precedes the institutional.
The in-valids, the in-compatibles, are imaged as waiting for some validation, some invitation to come along and join in. (This is not an entirely helpful image for many are not so waiting, but claiming that very language is invalid and incompatible with their experience of a peace and wholeness that far exceeds the artificial limit of being defined by another.)
Then we see the transformation of the Sabbath from rules against (in-valid, in-compatible) to simply a background against which to see the freedom of G*O*D at work all around us.
Those who had been knocked down, time after time, by folks discrediting them until they had no more reason to stand and claim the needed healing, found themselves standing as though it were the most natural thing in the world and, picking up a memento of their dark night, they trundle off to see what else this boundary-breaking peace that is no standardized concept will offer.
Knowing what we do about miracles, the standing is less miraculous than the walking off. Wouldn't you be tempted to stick around and simply follow, follow, follow? Here, however, the person, full of peace, follows the new pattern of Sabbath-breaking in order to reveal the miracle of a fullness of life right smack dab in the middle of constraints.
Where are you hearing the Helper cry out, "Over here, quick, listen, see, remember, a new thing!"?
What keeps you open to that cry so you won't miss it?
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I have found Tom Ehrich's comments to be helpful to my journey. If you try them and appreciate them, you can subscribe via the link at the end of this posting.
DIFFERENCES
ON A JOURNEY: Meditations on God in daily life
May 10, 2004
Jesus answered him, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." (John 14.23, from the Gospel for next Sunday)
By Tom Ehrich
Now that Methodists have joined other denominations in dancing close to schism over sexuality, the question arises: Can the center possibly hold?
Also, why doesn't the sexuality issue run out of steam, as liturgical revision did?
Perhaps sexuality is a stalking horse for other issues, both personal and institutional. Perhaps sexuality is a symbol for all that seems wrong and dangerous, or right and life-giving, about modern religion. Perhaps sexuality is a final line in the sand, expressing cumulative resentment over issues we stopped debating but didn't resolve, such as women's changing roles or 1960s cultural rebellion. Perhaps sexuality is the perfect wedge issue, opening the way for a power grab.
I see two other possibilities. One is that this issue exposes a fundamental flaw in American Christianity, namely, we don't have an operative paradigm for who we are.
Despite our slogans, we aren't "family," for healthy families argue but remain intact. We aren't "community," for community seeks common ground and shared sacrifice.
Despite our creed, American Christianity has never been "one," in Paul's sense of "being of one mind." Or "holy," in the Biblical sense of awe and wonder before God. Or "catholic," in the sense of all-embracing. Or "apostolic," in the sense of being sent out to do what Jesus did. We seem more intent on gathering briefly with the like-minded and getting our way.
Secondly, the sexuality issue reveals fundamental differences in the ways we think about faith. For example, how do you read the first line of this week's Gospel: "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them."
Do you hear an "or else"? Was Jesus saying, If you love Jesus and obey his word, God will love you; and if you don't, God won't love you? Or was Jesus saying something different? For example: Loving Jesus will lead to keeping his word, because love transforms the will; and God also will love, either because that is God's nature or because God's will also is being transformed by the Son.
I'm not saying one is right and the other wrong, but they certainly are different. One looks to set boundaries, to name the conditions for attaining a desired end, and to manage a settled community, in the way cities define streets. The other looks at possibilities, promises and expansiveness, and imagines something beyond the mountain.
One values adherence to community norms, because the alternative is mob and madness. The other values change and challenge, because what we know couldn't possibly be God's destination.
One looks back to inherited wisdom and history's often bitter lessons. The other sees all knowledge as emerging and evolving.
Every argument brings forth bigots and brigands, the lazy and loutish, shallow and shouting. But let's imagine that this argument isn't degeneracy in action, rather an honorable, albeit acidic, difference of opinion, worldview and thought-process. Let's imagine that one's opponent isn't a bad person.
What could we do better? First, we could stop demonizing each other. None of us is so perfectly attuned to the mind of God that we can pass judgment.
Second, we could look at our Sunday School class or Sunday assembly, and say, "These people are dear to me. I must not put this asunder. Whatever they do at convention, I have a duty to my faith friends."
Third, we could seek larger perspective, not to "correct" our views, but to turn down our volume.
Fourth, we could ask with all innocence and neediness what "one, holy, catholic and apostolic" actually would look like. If not what we have, then what?
Finally, we could understand that God's love is the foundation for all that matters. Not right opinion, not victory in religious war, but mercy, compassion, healing, acceptance and hope.
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"On a Journey" meditations are e-mailed seven days a week to interested readers. For correspondence write tehrich@earthlink.net. Or visit www.onajourney.org.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/may2004.html
Do you want to be better? Will it! Thus says the Positivist.
Do you want to be better? Take a first step, says Jesus.
We get caught looking at completed actions while still in the midst of action and claiming that only the complete is what is real while the steps along the way aren't good enough.
Was the man made well by Jesus giving his encouraging word? Was the man made well by his acting? I can imagine a war being fought between these questions. I can imagine that war being quite bitter because the words and action were made holy by their context of Sabbath. We can't simply use human words in such a setting, much less living out their consequence lest we subtract something vital and profane the sacred.
Somehow we keep constraining the Advocate, a Holy Spirit, from acting as it will to teach us beyond our bounded, sacred language. We keep missing this Helper because it does not speak the language we expect (other) but only speaks within our every-day (here-and-now) language.
Even being clued in that all of this is going to take place in a different manner than the world works, we miss it because it challenges our world that perpetually combines power and tradition as its religious mantra.
The Friend reminds us to care for and set people free in the midst of a structure that cares for and maintains itself first. The religious world needs to constantly hear this and that is why John Wesley, talking about spreading "scriptural holiness" across the land, appended the necessary caveat that it "begin with the church" and its tendency to raise itself over everything else with its own Sharia-Sabbatarian limitations.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/may2004.html
The Holy Spirit is to teach us beyond what we know. A part of that presumes being an invalid - blind, lame, paralyzed in our knowing.
We keep waiting for insight and thinking it need come from the outside, that there should be authorization for standing up with a vision. So we wait for credentials that never seem to come and get weaker and weaker. Someone else is the lucky one to break new ground, to get the part we wanted. We're just not lucky enough to catch opportunity's time and place.
As a result we are not at peace. Our hearts are troubled and we are afraid the assurance we need will never be granted. Our anxiety at not being specifically chosen gets in our way of taking any part at all.
One of the invalids in our still patriarchial culture are mothers. You may want to check out "Motherhood Manifesto" CD and PBS program. Mothers are hearing the healing word to pick up their lives and walk on without getting their healing certified. [To see this portrayed, try Bev Betters and rise up.]
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M is for maturing past past limits
O is for opening options beyond heritage
T is for teaching truth from experience
H is for healing hopes from the inside out
E is for exciting escape to a preferred future
R is for radical reform needed now and always
papa Institution counsels a mother of all wars
mama Jesus leaves us with the mother of all peace
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
Who did Jesus respond to and what question was he dealing with? Pericopes that begin as this one did, "Jesus answered...." are beginning too late. Every response has a context and without that specific the response attaches strangely anywhere it lands.
Jesus has said that he would be seen by his friends after he was no longer seen by others. A Judas by any other name asks about this limitation. Is it a voluntary decision on Jesus' part or a blindness by others?
As per usual, Jesus steps aside from the direction of the question to better respond to it. The bottom-line is that, as a result of learning from their experience of Jesus after he has gone, they will be able to reframe the question and act in a different way. They will grow congruent in their past experiences of Jesus and their present experience of G*D (spirit teaching talk here), which will lead them to trust the arc of the future so strongly that they will act in the present in light of what they yet expect. Responses by others will not raise a question about willful blindness or a limited, predestined, rejection. The focus will be upon what Jesus' followers have continued to learn and enact.
Peace is connected with a teaching of how to remember and anticipate. In this connection comes a strength and focus of action that would otherwise be dissipated over too much time, space, and opportunity. Want peace? Trust your action to make a difference, whether or not you can see it.
This kind of peace lets you see not only Jesus, but to recognize every other saint in any other tradition.
Try this song by Small Potatoes,
and see if it is close to what you understand some Holy Spirit has taught, is teaching, and will teach you.
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GARDEN WALK J. Manning
There is peace in every garden
There's a universe in every flower
There is holiness in every footstep
Every moment, every hour
Oh, let us walk the dappled pathways
And elect one single bloom
Then bring your face so close
That you can smell its sweet perfume
Then look -- oh, really look inside
And you will understand
Just how infinity can fit
Within your hand, within your hand
CHORUS
Oh, see the waterleaf, the meadowsweet
Bloodroot and spiderwort
Trilliums, delphiniums
Joe Pye and hellebore
And that blue guy -- I don't know its name
But I don't really care
It doesn't matter what it's called
But that it's there, it's there, it's there!
CHORUS
Oh, let us walk ---------
No need for talk -------
Breathe in ---------------
And breathe out again
Call it the work of Mother Nature
Adaptation over time
Or an act of God -- my god!
It's all a miracle sublime
And though we can't know how it got there
I think we can agree
It's not important that you know
But that you see, you see, you see ...
CHORUS -- tag
Oh, let us walk ----------