John 17:1-11 4th May, 2008
Author: Dennis Ryle
Even the world of prayer can call us to daunting tasks.
Praying for Christian unity is one of them, yet why should this be so?
It is the Lord’s true prayer. In one of the most intimate and lengthy prayers that the Bible gives us, we see the intensity of Jesus’ passion for his followers to be enfolded in the same bonding that binds Father and Son.
The kind of unity that emanates from longing, lingering communion with one another in the embrace of the Creator’s love and purpose for all.
The kind of unity that was so essential to the dream of a new humanity that it cost the Son of Man a cross of humiliation and suffering.
The kind of unity for which Jesus’ vision was so strong that not even the tomb could destroy it. So strong that when the experience of the Risen Jesus passed from the first witnesses, the presence of the Risen Jesus in the Holy Spirit would continue with the generations to follow.
So why should praying for Christian unity be so daunting?
Is it because recurring fractures in the Body of Christ are so in our face?
This became starkly evident for me around this time last Sunday, when I was in attendance at a Roman Catholic Mass. Could I or could I not present myself for communion? It was not an ecumenical service where certain dispensations would allow participation. Official Roman Catholic doctrine precluded my participation; hospitable community life in the Spirit invited it. On other occasions, I would have gladly (possibly even rebelliously) taken part. On this occasion however, I held back, conscious of the grace in the invitation, but also of the sadness of great church rifts that seem to make such communion impossible.
Prominent in my mind was the picture of a joint celebration earlier this year between churches of two great liturgical traditions – each presenting the gifts of the Eucharist, setting the bread and wine together on the altar – then the two celebrants dramatically turning their backs on them in lament and sorrow that the respective traditions did not permit intercommunion.
This is why praying for Christian unity is so daunting – it requires heroic levels of honesty. But then doesn’t all prayer?
Specific prayer that all Christ’s followers may be one even as the Father and Son are one, however, calls for extra doses of honesty and extra doses of yearning.
Why? Because when we encounter something that tends to separate the experience and witness of my sister or brother in Christ from mine, there is a common tendency for both honesty and yearning to fade into the background.
On one hand, we can say that the differences don’t matter or that they don’t really exist. The desire to show unity is so strong that we deny important differences, and this snuffs out the possibility of honest dialogue, when we can both receive and give from our respective perspectives.
On the other hand we can say that our points of view are so different that the thought of coming to some unifying understanding that honours and respects the differences is impossible. And we do not yearn for something that is unachievable.
Prayer, specifically prayer for Christian unity, requires both honesty and yearning.
Perhaps this provides a reason for Kersten Storch’s assertion, “ Although prayer is certainly at the heart of Christian life, praying together is not an easy exercise for churches within worldwide Christendom.”
Storch’s article on the Centenary of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity provides some interesting background to this fairly recent, in ecclesiastical terms, observation:
Even today, common prayers are exceptional events rather than part of the daily life of the churches. But at least once a year it has become "normal" for many churches and congregations to pray together during the annual celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In 2008, the 100th anniversary of this most meaningful ecumenical initiative is being celebrated around the globe.
The roots of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity can be traced back to the beginning of the 19th century. Initiatives involving praying for unity together with Christians from other denominations had been taking place here and there for over a century when, in 1908, a priest and a sister, both Episcopalians, publicly celebrated for the first time an Octave of Prayer for Church Unity from 18-25 January in Graymoor, Garrison, New York. The Rev. Paul Wattson and Mother Lurana White, co-founders of a small religious community in the Franciscan tradition known as the Society of the Atonement, chose for the octave the days spanning from what was at that time in the Roman Catholic calendar the "feast of the Chair of Peter", to the "feast of the conversion of Paul".
In celebrating its 100th anniversary, this year's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity points to that historical milestone as its foundational moment. But it is clear that much has changed in the ecumenical landscape over the last century.
The Octave of Prayer for Church Unity of those days was based on a concept of unity as re-union of Christendom under the Pope's authority. For that reason, the octave was neither appealing nor theologically acceptable for Christians and churches outside the Roman Catholic Church, except for some Anglicans who were sympathetic to the idea of a reunion of Canterbury with Rome – like
Wattson and White, who joined the Roman Catholic Church themselves. While it soon became widely observed in the Roman Catholic Church, the octave was by no means the only initiative of prayer for church unity at that time.
Well before 1908, the World Evangelical Alliance, the World Student Christian Federation, the Young Men's Christian Association together with the Young Women's Christian Association, had already all launched worldwide annual weeks or days of prayer in which the aspect of unity played an important role.
As early as 1907 the London-based Times published a letter signed by an impressive list of highranking church leaders from different denominations, who called on "all the Christian ministers of religion in England […] to prepare their congregations for a united effort of prayer on Whitsunday […] for the reunion of Christians". They underlined that those prayers should not compromise the beliefs of any confession but should focus on God's will for the unity of all. The church leaders soberly declared that it was not yet the time for large schemes of corporate reunion but that churches should unite in penitence and prayer: penitence for their divisions and prayer for opening their minds to God's will for unity.
"God's will for the unity of all" became something like the leitmotif of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity through the years. Early writings of the Faith and Order movement on prayer and unity refer to that concept. Decades later, that formula made it possible to pray for unity within the Roman Catholic Church in a way that would not hurt denominational loyalties of other Christians.
And even today it is a reminder to Christians and churches everywhere that the quest for the unity of all does not depend nor is it based on different doctrinal concepts of unity; it is rather God's will for the entire creation.
…
Celebrating this year the 100th anniversary of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity [is] an occasion to give thanks for the unity, however provisional it may be, that churches already do have and live, and in which the Week of Prayer certainly has its share.
In Jerusalem – one of the places where the divisions within Christianity have often become visible in the most distressing ways – the impact of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on the life of the churches is confirmed by the fact that opportunities for common prayer multiply almost spontaneously. This is especially true for ecumenical prayers for peace, as Christian unity and peace are inseparable concerns for the Christians in the Middle East.
It was the tradition of preparing together for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity which led churches in Slovakia to the idea of preparing a special ecumenical celebration when the country entered into the European Union in 2004. The Week of Prayer is observed nationwide in Slovakia, both at the top church level as well as at the grass-roots.
Examples from all over the world could be multiplied. This year's theme – Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) – highlights the fact that Christians and churches cannot cease to pray for the unity of all. The divisions, which are still a reality between and within the churches, do not simply follow denominational lines.
They are often – at least to some extent – rooted in ethnic or national identities, in issues of race, social status, gender or sexuality, exclusion of people with disabilities or of those living with HIV/AIDS.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity cannot provide a solution to all these problems. But its celebration every year is a victory over divisions because it expresses the unity which Christians do have in Christ.[i]
Joining with Jesus in his prayer “that they all may be one” can be daunting.
The pendulum that swings across 2000 years of Christian tradition and witness describes a wide arc. Over the last week I have experienced the full swing. Three days living in silence in a Benedictine monastery, breaking it only to participate in the chanting of the psalms during the hours of prayer, were followed by three days in noisy, loud and intense conference with a large number of leaders from Churches of Christ and Baptist background.
From prayers of silence to exuberant, demonstrative charismatic styles of worship in equal measure. All Christian. All in fellowship with the One Father revealed to us through the embrace of the Son who we know in his risen Spirit. Can we trust such a miracle? I’m sure we can.
In fact we will be giving full expression to that trust next Sunday as the Centenary Week of Prayer for Christian Unity finds its local expression at our combined Pentecost celebration, 9.00 a.m., at St Paul’s Anglican church.
Remember to wear red. Remember to bring something to share for morning tea.
[i] http://www.ncca.org.au/__data/page/2215/Praying_together_over_a_century_of_changes.pdf
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Slaves and Shepherds
1 Peter 2:18-25 13th April, 2008
1 Peter 2: 19-25It is greatly to your credit if you can cop it sweet and keep looking to God when you are being treated cruelly and unfairly by others. Of course, there is no great credit in copping it sweet if you deserve the punishment, is there? But if you are being made to suffer for doing the right thing, then God will applaud you for taking it on the chin and holding your line. After all, it comes with the territory in the life to which you have been called. Christ set the example on this when he suffered for your benefit, and we should all be following in his footsteps. “He never did anything wrong, and not a word of a lie ever passed his lips.” When he was abused, he never retaliated; when they inflicted pain on him, he made no threats of revenge. He trusted God to get him through, and to judge the right and wrong of it all. He copped the consequences of our corruption in his own body on the cross, so that we could walk free with a clean slate and dedicate our lives to doing what is right. When he was wounded, we were healed. Before that we were as far off track as a penguin in the desert, but now we are back where we belong, in the care of the one who protects and guides us.
©2002 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
It seems to me there is value this morning in using Nathan Nettleton’s dynamic translation of today’s passage from First Peter.
It is addressed to a particular time in history in ancient Greek-Roman society, where the writer of the letter is seeking to encourage persecuted believers, urging them to obey the Emperor (see verse 13) and adhere to the status quo of socially accepted household structure, even if it means suffering injustices.
There are two benefits for this.
On one hand they enter the suffering of Jesus, who also endured injustice to the point of death. In this is God’s vindication and healing for us all. On the other hand, submission to the structures of society, in which they find themselves ensconced, grants them credible opportunity to “give reason for the hope that is in them.”They lived in a society in which obedience to the emperor and strict household orders were social norms. The very act of becoming a follower of the way of Jesus challenged these expectations. You could very easily cut yourself off socially, economically and politically by becoming Christian. Peter’s letter reads like a strategy on how to respond in this kind of a situation.
The question we asked when we explored this last Wednesday night’s house group was, “What principles can we find here that we can transfer to a free and open democratic society?” Particularly in Australia where Jack is as good as his master and we have a historical predilection for rolling over to no-one?
It occurred to me that Peter was trying to show his church how to walk robustly on eggshells.
This became more evident in the question that arose at the end of Wednesday night’s discussion, “How can we know when it is right for the church to silently suffer injustice and when we should speak out?”
We have two great biblical traditions – the suffering lamb that goes meekly to the slaughter and the prophet on fire with God’s righteousness and the will to storm the citadels to demand fair play.
Are these traditions in conflict?
Or are they two sides of the same coin?
And if they are simply the front and back of the same coin, how do we know in any given circumstance which side of the penny we should be attending to?
What about Zimbabwe? This is much closer than here to the scenario that First Peter describes. “Obey the Emperor” – maintain your own household order even if it involves suffering injustice – seems to be prudent advice according to our church contacts there. The odd prophetic voice from within the church has challenged the political order, but overall, the churches adherence to the spirit of First Peter in identifying with the sufferings of Christ has proved to be the glue that is holding together what is left of Zimbabwe society.
We have considered recently the example of Dietrich Bonheoffer – a strong advocate for identifying with the suffering of Christ, choosing to return to Germany at the height of the rise of Nazism. He raised a seminary where his students were trained to be pastors under the reworked application of the “cost of discipleship.” In his own demeanour, he submitted to aspects of Hitler’s regime that stripped him and his seminary of the democratic freedoms we take for granted. Yet he exercised a prophetic ministry against the laws of the regime by assisting Jewish fugitives. Some say he went too far in his prophetic activism when he was implicated in a plot to kill Hitler.
This week we learned of the sudden death of Len Wallam, Aboriginal Noongar Elder and leader of the Bunbury Aboriginal fellowship , a significant leader in our national indigenous ministries and an ATSIEC Commissioner appointed by the church at large – able to bare with dignity the injustices experienced by aboriginal people and yet speak clearly of what is needed for reconciliation in today’s climate. The shepherd and the prophet!
I offer these examples because we have some degree of personal affiliation with them either through engagement with their struggles or, as in the case of Bonhoeffer, a memory of significant challenge as we studied his mind, his methods, and his efforts.
What can we learn from them as we attempt to discern when to submit to the status quo and when to be the voice of the prophet?
To what principles from First Peter do we see them giving expression?
Remember that there are two big thrusts running though the whole of the letter.
First, the call for God’s people to be holy – to be the kind of robust people who recognise their call to be an attractive difference in any community in which they find themselves planted because they are living the way God has shown. In this way they become a conduit of blessing to all nations – all peoples.
The second is a corollary of the first – we show this calling by imitating Christ in his suffering – we integrate into our living and witness what Paul calls “the foolishness of the cross” – for in such is the wisdom of God to be found. Such integration is the true meaning of “laying down our lives” for the sake of the gospel.John Yoder is well known as commentator on the “politics of Jesus”. He spells this second flavour out very comprehensively
The cross of Christ was the price of his obedience to God amidst a rebellious world; it was suffering for having done right, for loving where others hated, for representing in the flesh the forgiveness and the righteousness of God amongst humanity, which was both less forgiving and less righteous. The cross of Christ was God's overcoming evil with good.
The cross of the Christian is then no different; it is the price of our obedience to God's love toward all others in a world ruled by hate. Such unflinching love for friend and foe alike will mean hostility and suffering for us, as it did for him.
Jesus instructed his disciples, simply and clearly, not to resist evil. He said, "Whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the left. If he sues you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well, ... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, only so can you be the children of your heavenly Father who sends sun and rain to good and bad alike" (Matthew 5:39-45).
In saying this Jesus was not a foolish dreamer, spinning out futile hopes for a better world, thinking that if only we keep smiling everything will turn out all right, with our opponents turned into friends and our sacrifices all repaid. He knew full well the cost of such unlimited love. He foresaw clearly the suffering it would mean, first for himself and then for his followers. But there was no other way for him to take, no other way worthy of God. Jesus' teaching here is not a collection of good human ideas; it is his divinely authoritative interpretation of the law of God…
"It is by this that we know what love is," says the apostle, "that Christ laid down his life for us.
And we in turn are bound to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters" (1 John 3:16).
The Christian whose loyalty to the Prince of Peace puts him or her out of step with today's nationalistic world, because of a willingness to love one's nation's friends but not to hate the nation's enemies, is not an unrealistic dreamer who thinks that by one's objections all wars will end. It is rather the soldiers who think that they can put an end to wars by preparing for just one more. Nor does the Christian think that by refusal to help with the organized destruction of life and property one is uninvolved in the complications and conflicts of modern life. Nor is the Christian reacting simply in emotional fear to the fantastic awfulness of the weapons created by the demonic ingenuity of modern humanity. The Christian loves one's enemies not because he or she thinks they are wonderful people, nor because it is thought that love is sure to conquer them; and not because the believer fails to respect one's native land or its rulers, nor is unconcerned for the safety of one's neighbors, nor because another political or economic system may be favored. The Christian loves his or her enemies because God does and he commands his followers to do so; that is the only reason, and that is enough. Our God, who has been made known in Jesus Christ, is a reconciling, a forgiving, a suffering God. If, to paraphrase what the apostle Paul said, "It is no longer I who love, but Christ who loves in me," my life must bear the marks of that revelation (Galatians 2:20).[i]
It seems to me that the question which is our dilemma is quickly resolved when we recognise the true focus in First Peter - heeding the call to holy living based on the suffering of Jesus.
This in itself is a prophetic stance against a world driven by hate, fear and greed.
The very existence of communities that base their living on love for friend and enemy alike to the extent that they are willing to lay down their lives is a very strong statement. So strong that we celebrate an empty tomb and a Risen Lord who dwells amongst us and inspires us.
Which side of the coin? The suffering servant or the fiery prophet?
It seems to me that however you use the coin - to spend it, to toss it, to scratch a gaming ticket with it, to use it as an emergency screwdriver – you can’t use one side without the other!
But it also seems that First Peter, and, I suspect, John Yoder , and our exemplars in Zimbabwe and amongst Australia’s indigenous Christian movement, and even Bonhoeffer’s Germany, would observe hat the face of the coin is that of the Suffering Servant!
[i] http://www.sojo.net/ John Howard Yoder—the author of several books, including The Politics of Jesus—Adapted from presentations in 1961 on The Mennonite Hour broadcasts in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
1 Peter 2: 19-25It is greatly to your credit if you can cop it sweet and keep looking to God when you are being treated cruelly and unfairly by others. Of course, there is no great credit in copping it sweet if you deserve the punishment, is there? But if you are being made to suffer for doing the right thing, then God will applaud you for taking it on the chin and holding your line. After all, it comes with the territory in the life to which you have been called. Christ set the example on this when he suffered for your benefit, and we should all be following in his footsteps. “He never did anything wrong, and not a word of a lie ever passed his lips.” When he was abused, he never retaliated; when they inflicted pain on him, he made no threats of revenge. He trusted God to get him through, and to judge the right and wrong of it all. He copped the consequences of our corruption in his own body on the cross, so that we could walk free with a clean slate and dedicate our lives to doing what is right. When he was wounded, we were healed. Before that we were as far off track as a penguin in the desert, but now we are back where we belong, in the care of the one who protects and guides us.
©2002 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
It seems to me there is value this morning in using Nathan Nettleton’s dynamic translation of today’s passage from First Peter.
It is addressed to a particular time in history in ancient Greek-Roman society, where the writer of the letter is seeking to encourage persecuted believers, urging them to obey the Emperor (see verse 13) and adhere to the status quo of socially accepted household structure, even if it means suffering injustices.
There are two benefits for this.
On one hand they enter the suffering of Jesus, who also endured injustice to the point of death. In this is God’s vindication and healing for us all. On the other hand, submission to the structures of society, in which they find themselves ensconced, grants them credible opportunity to “give reason for the hope that is in them.”They lived in a society in which obedience to the emperor and strict household orders were social norms. The very act of becoming a follower of the way of Jesus challenged these expectations. You could very easily cut yourself off socially, economically and politically by becoming Christian. Peter’s letter reads like a strategy on how to respond in this kind of a situation.
The question we asked when we explored this last Wednesday night’s house group was, “What principles can we find here that we can transfer to a free and open democratic society?” Particularly in Australia where Jack is as good as his master and we have a historical predilection for rolling over to no-one?
It occurred to me that Peter was trying to show his church how to walk robustly on eggshells.
This became more evident in the question that arose at the end of Wednesday night’s discussion, “How can we know when it is right for the church to silently suffer injustice and when we should speak out?”
We have two great biblical traditions – the suffering lamb that goes meekly to the slaughter and the prophet on fire with God’s righteousness and the will to storm the citadels to demand fair play.
Are these traditions in conflict?
Or are they two sides of the same coin?
And if they are simply the front and back of the same coin, how do we know in any given circumstance which side of the penny we should be attending to?
What about Zimbabwe? This is much closer than here to the scenario that First Peter describes. “Obey the Emperor” – maintain your own household order even if it involves suffering injustice – seems to be prudent advice according to our church contacts there. The odd prophetic voice from within the church has challenged the political order, but overall, the churches adherence to the spirit of First Peter in identifying with the sufferings of Christ has proved to be the glue that is holding together what is left of Zimbabwe society.
We have considered recently the example of Dietrich Bonheoffer – a strong advocate for identifying with the suffering of Christ, choosing to return to Germany at the height of the rise of Nazism. He raised a seminary where his students were trained to be pastors under the reworked application of the “cost of discipleship.” In his own demeanour, he submitted to aspects of Hitler’s regime that stripped him and his seminary of the democratic freedoms we take for granted. Yet he exercised a prophetic ministry against the laws of the regime by assisting Jewish fugitives. Some say he went too far in his prophetic activism when he was implicated in a plot to kill Hitler.
This week we learned of the sudden death of Len Wallam, Aboriginal Noongar Elder and leader of the Bunbury Aboriginal fellowship , a significant leader in our national indigenous ministries and an ATSIEC Commissioner appointed by the church at large – able to bare with dignity the injustices experienced by aboriginal people and yet speak clearly of what is needed for reconciliation in today’s climate. The shepherd and the prophet!
I offer these examples because we have some degree of personal affiliation with them either through engagement with their struggles or, as in the case of Bonhoeffer, a memory of significant challenge as we studied his mind, his methods, and his efforts.
What can we learn from them as we attempt to discern when to submit to the status quo and when to be the voice of the prophet?
To what principles from First Peter do we see them giving expression?
Remember that there are two big thrusts running though the whole of the letter.
First, the call for God’s people to be holy – to be the kind of robust people who recognise their call to be an attractive difference in any community in which they find themselves planted because they are living the way God has shown. In this way they become a conduit of blessing to all nations – all peoples.
The second is a corollary of the first – we show this calling by imitating Christ in his suffering – we integrate into our living and witness what Paul calls “the foolishness of the cross” – for in such is the wisdom of God to be found. Such integration is the true meaning of “laying down our lives” for the sake of the gospel.John Yoder is well known as commentator on the “politics of Jesus”. He spells this second flavour out very comprehensively
The cross of Christ was the price of his obedience to God amidst a rebellious world; it was suffering for having done right, for loving where others hated, for representing in the flesh the forgiveness and the righteousness of God amongst humanity, which was both less forgiving and less righteous. The cross of Christ was God's overcoming evil with good.
The cross of the Christian is then no different; it is the price of our obedience to God's love toward all others in a world ruled by hate. Such unflinching love for friend and foe alike will mean hostility and suffering for us, as it did for him.
Jesus instructed his disciples, simply and clearly, not to resist evil. He said, "Whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him the left. If he sues you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well, ... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, only so can you be the children of your heavenly Father who sends sun and rain to good and bad alike" (Matthew 5:39-45).
In saying this Jesus was not a foolish dreamer, spinning out futile hopes for a better world, thinking that if only we keep smiling everything will turn out all right, with our opponents turned into friends and our sacrifices all repaid. He knew full well the cost of such unlimited love. He foresaw clearly the suffering it would mean, first for himself and then for his followers. But there was no other way for him to take, no other way worthy of God. Jesus' teaching here is not a collection of good human ideas; it is his divinely authoritative interpretation of the law of God…
"It is by this that we know what love is," says the apostle, "that Christ laid down his life for us.
And we in turn are bound to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters" (1 John 3:16).
The Christian whose loyalty to the Prince of Peace puts him or her out of step with today's nationalistic world, because of a willingness to love one's nation's friends but not to hate the nation's enemies, is not an unrealistic dreamer who thinks that by one's objections all wars will end. It is rather the soldiers who think that they can put an end to wars by preparing for just one more. Nor does the Christian think that by refusal to help with the organized destruction of life and property one is uninvolved in the complications and conflicts of modern life. Nor is the Christian reacting simply in emotional fear to the fantastic awfulness of the weapons created by the demonic ingenuity of modern humanity. The Christian loves one's enemies not because he or she thinks they are wonderful people, nor because it is thought that love is sure to conquer them; and not because the believer fails to respect one's native land or its rulers, nor is unconcerned for the safety of one's neighbors, nor because another political or economic system may be favored. The Christian loves his or her enemies because God does and he commands his followers to do so; that is the only reason, and that is enough. Our God, who has been made known in Jesus Christ, is a reconciling, a forgiving, a suffering God. If, to paraphrase what the apostle Paul said, "It is no longer I who love, but Christ who loves in me," my life must bear the marks of that revelation (Galatians 2:20).[i]
It seems to me that the question which is our dilemma is quickly resolved when we recognise the true focus in First Peter - heeding the call to holy living based on the suffering of Jesus.
This in itself is a prophetic stance against a world driven by hate, fear and greed.
The very existence of communities that base their living on love for friend and enemy alike to the extent that they are willing to lay down their lives is a very strong statement. So strong that we celebrate an empty tomb and a Risen Lord who dwells amongst us and inspires us.
Which side of the coin? The suffering servant or the fiery prophet?
It seems to me that however you use the coin - to spend it, to toss it, to scratch a gaming ticket with it, to use it as an emergency screwdriver – you can’t use one side without the other!
But it also seems that First Peter, and, I suspect, John Yoder , and our exemplars in Zimbabwe and amongst Australia’s indigenous Christian movement, and even Bonhoeffer’s Germany, would observe hat the face of the coin is that of the Suffering Servant!
[i] http://www.sojo.net/ John Howard Yoder—the author of several books, including The Politics of Jesus—Adapted from presentations in 1961 on The Mennonite Hour broadcasts in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Getting Eastered
Author: Dennis Ryle
1 Peter 1:17-23 6th April 2008
17 If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. 18You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. 20He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. 21Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth* so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply* from the heart.* 23You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.*
The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Last week, Linda introduced a new verb – “to easter” or “to be eastered.”
On this third Sunday of celebration in the Easter season, we may consider ourselves well and truly Eastered. I hope so!
After all, every Sunday, in effect, is Easter Sunday. We gather expecting encounter with the crucified and risen one.
Every gathering at this table is the culmination of a weekly Emmaus walk, where the risen Christ is discovered in the breaking of bread, and we are equipped by his presence to swiftly take good news back to our various Jerusalems and beyond.
In this season that we call Easter, however, we are taking opportunity to focus on how the historic event of the disciples’ experience of the losing and regaining of Jesus impacts on our orientation and perspective as a vibrant Easter people.
If the gospels give us perspectives built around reported and interpreted eye-witness accounts, it is the collection of particular pastoral letters circulating the early church that spell out the implications of the death and resurrection of Jesus for those generations who, having not seen any of this, nevertheless believe and trust.
First Peter is one of these general pastoral letters. It was not written in a vacuum or in some lofty theological tower. Ordinary households were paying the price to Roman government authorities and a fickle and compliant population for daring to follow the tenets of a new way of living based on rumours of an executed Jewish subversive who allegedly refused to stay dead. They had been eastered, and the document we have in our hands as First Peter, tells us how.
From this we can extrapolate some apostolic advice for what it means for us to be eastered in our own setting and with the particular and peculiar challenges and opportunities that confront us in the here and now.
Get a picture now of the bridge that connects us with those households of faith whom First Peter is addressing.
Notice the strong allusion to those things that tug us one way or the other and the urge to awaken our awareness.
The self is hungry and it looks in conflicting directions for food to satisfy that hunger – some food is perishable, like silver and gold, stocks and property, power and influence. Other food is imperishable and everlasting – and the dynamic of the risen Christ points us towards the redeeming act of sacrificial love on the cross followed by an empty tomb, a tomb powerless to contain the pulsating energy of life that overcomes the despair and defeat of death’s darkness.
David Bartlett writes:
“this portion of the epistle implies what the whole letter will make clear: those who set their hearts on the perishable will perish; those who set their hearts on what endures will endure.”[i]
It’s the whole point of resurrection.
To paint a picture of this reality, he introduces us briefly to two characters from Jonathan Kozol’s novel set in New York’s Bronx district. You may notice the similarities to Perth’s dilemma as we deal with unprecedented boom times and the underclass that its economies create. Confronted with such enticing material opportunities and the misery for those who miss out, how do we respond? This was as real a question for the well-off Roman citizen who had decided to opt for the way of Christ, thus cutting themselves off from accepted society mores, as it is for today’s denizen of richly resourced income streams.
One of Kozol’s characters is a newspaper columnist who has given up on invisible realities and idealistically driven hopes. She writes:
All right…Out there, someone is sleeping on a grate… and the emergency rooms are full of people… [Still] cruelty is as natural to the city as fresh air is to the country… I used to feel this cruelty was wrong, immoral… Now I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fuel that powers the palace.[ii]
While this woman revels in the cruelty–fuelled palace, a boy called Anthony grows up with not a fraction of her material security and wealth. Anthony has his heart set elsewhere, though he too aspires to be a writer. But he writes of his hope for God’s kingdom:
God’s Kingdom…God will be there. He’ll be happy that we have arrived.People shall come hand-in-hand…God will be fond of you…[iii]
Such distinction, in First Peter, defined by one’s orientation to that which decays or that which lasts, is what defines holiness.
If you stay with Peter you have to get used to the word “holiness”. Culturally we have dressed this word up with all sorts of accoutrements that, in the popular mind, render holiness both undesirable and unreachable.
For the sake of us gaining from the richness of First Peter’s writing, let me reclaim the word!
Peter draws strongly on the Leviticus code of the Hebrew people when he would have us embrace holiness. The purpose of this ancient code was to craft a community dedicated to becoming a conduit for the grace and blessing of the Creator to the whole of creation.
For Peter, those caught up in Christ’s resurrection are the heirs of that purpose.
Rather than a namby pamby “don’t get your hands dirty” withdrawal from the community, such holiness calls for robust and muscular engagement with life around us. We do this, however, from the perspective of those who are dedicated lock stock and barrel to God’s purpose. To borrow a thought from Stephen Curkpatrick, we are “free to choose what God has willed to be chosen.”[iv]
The side effect of such a will to dedicate oneself to God’s purpose is not focused in God alone or even in one’s devotional exercises. “Holiness builds community, the community of mutual love and support.”[v]
Or as Peter puts it by urging the households of God dotted throughout the metropolis of Rome and its districts, and indeed throughout Perth and its suburbs,
22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth* so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply* from the heart.*
This is the measure of holiness. This is resurrection faith. This is what turns the world upside down. This is what being eastered is all about.
[i] David Bartlett, ‘The First Letter of Peter’ in The New Interpreter’s Bible¸ Vol XII, (Abingdon, Nashville, 1998) 261.
[ii] Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace:The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (Crown, New York, 1995) 113-114.
[iii] Ibid., 237-238.
[iv] http://www.cctc.edu.au/will.html
[v] Bartlett, op.cit., 261.
1 Peter 1:17-23 6th April 2008
17 If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. 18You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. 20He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. 21Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.
22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth* so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply* from the heart.* 23You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.*
The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Last week, Linda introduced a new verb – “to easter” or “to be eastered.”
On this third Sunday of celebration in the Easter season, we may consider ourselves well and truly Eastered. I hope so!
After all, every Sunday, in effect, is Easter Sunday. We gather expecting encounter with the crucified and risen one.
Every gathering at this table is the culmination of a weekly Emmaus walk, where the risen Christ is discovered in the breaking of bread, and we are equipped by his presence to swiftly take good news back to our various Jerusalems and beyond.
In this season that we call Easter, however, we are taking opportunity to focus on how the historic event of the disciples’ experience of the losing and regaining of Jesus impacts on our orientation and perspective as a vibrant Easter people.
If the gospels give us perspectives built around reported and interpreted eye-witness accounts, it is the collection of particular pastoral letters circulating the early church that spell out the implications of the death and resurrection of Jesus for those generations who, having not seen any of this, nevertheless believe and trust.
First Peter is one of these general pastoral letters. It was not written in a vacuum or in some lofty theological tower. Ordinary households were paying the price to Roman government authorities and a fickle and compliant population for daring to follow the tenets of a new way of living based on rumours of an executed Jewish subversive who allegedly refused to stay dead. They had been eastered, and the document we have in our hands as First Peter, tells us how.
From this we can extrapolate some apostolic advice for what it means for us to be eastered in our own setting and with the particular and peculiar challenges and opportunities that confront us in the here and now.
Get a picture now of the bridge that connects us with those households of faith whom First Peter is addressing.
Notice the strong allusion to those things that tug us one way or the other and the urge to awaken our awareness.
The self is hungry and it looks in conflicting directions for food to satisfy that hunger – some food is perishable, like silver and gold, stocks and property, power and influence. Other food is imperishable and everlasting – and the dynamic of the risen Christ points us towards the redeeming act of sacrificial love on the cross followed by an empty tomb, a tomb powerless to contain the pulsating energy of life that overcomes the despair and defeat of death’s darkness.
David Bartlett writes:
“this portion of the epistle implies what the whole letter will make clear: those who set their hearts on the perishable will perish; those who set their hearts on what endures will endure.”[i]
It’s the whole point of resurrection.
To paint a picture of this reality, he introduces us briefly to two characters from Jonathan Kozol’s novel set in New York’s Bronx district. You may notice the similarities to Perth’s dilemma as we deal with unprecedented boom times and the underclass that its economies create. Confronted with such enticing material opportunities and the misery for those who miss out, how do we respond? This was as real a question for the well-off Roman citizen who had decided to opt for the way of Christ, thus cutting themselves off from accepted society mores, as it is for today’s denizen of richly resourced income streams.
One of Kozol’s characters is a newspaper columnist who has given up on invisible realities and idealistically driven hopes. She writes:
All right…Out there, someone is sleeping on a grate… and the emergency rooms are full of people… [Still] cruelty is as natural to the city as fresh air is to the country… I used to feel this cruelty was wrong, immoral… Now I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fuel that powers the palace.[ii]
While this woman revels in the cruelty–fuelled palace, a boy called Anthony grows up with not a fraction of her material security and wealth. Anthony has his heart set elsewhere, though he too aspires to be a writer. But he writes of his hope for God’s kingdom:
God’s Kingdom…God will be there. He’ll be happy that we have arrived.People shall come hand-in-hand…God will be fond of you…[iii]
Such distinction, in First Peter, defined by one’s orientation to that which decays or that which lasts, is what defines holiness.
If you stay with Peter you have to get used to the word “holiness”. Culturally we have dressed this word up with all sorts of accoutrements that, in the popular mind, render holiness both undesirable and unreachable.
For the sake of us gaining from the richness of First Peter’s writing, let me reclaim the word!
Peter draws strongly on the Leviticus code of the Hebrew people when he would have us embrace holiness. The purpose of this ancient code was to craft a community dedicated to becoming a conduit for the grace and blessing of the Creator to the whole of creation.
For Peter, those caught up in Christ’s resurrection are the heirs of that purpose.
Rather than a namby pamby “don’t get your hands dirty” withdrawal from the community, such holiness calls for robust and muscular engagement with life around us. We do this, however, from the perspective of those who are dedicated lock stock and barrel to God’s purpose. To borrow a thought from Stephen Curkpatrick, we are “free to choose what God has willed to be chosen.”[iv]
The side effect of such a will to dedicate oneself to God’s purpose is not focused in God alone or even in one’s devotional exercises. “Holiness builds community, the community of mutual love and support.”[v]
Or as Peter puts it by urging the households of God dotted throughout the metropolis of Rome and its districts, and indeed throughout Perth and its suburbs,
22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth* so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply* from the heart.*
This is the measure of holiness. This is resurrection faith. This is what turns the world upside down. This is what being eastered is all about.
[i] David Bartlett, ‘The First Letter of Peter’ in The New Interpreter’s Bible¸ Vol XII, (Abingdon, Nashville, 1998) 261.
[ii] Jonathan Kozol, Amazing Grace:The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (Crown, New York, 1995) 113-114.
[iii] Ibid., 237-238.
[iv] http://www.cctc.edu.au/will.html
[v] Bartlett, op.cit., 261.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Three Cheers for Thomas
Author: Dennis Ryle
John 20:19-31 30th March, 2008
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
If you’ve been here longer than a year or two, you will well know the temptation of today’s text for me to launch a long and spirited defence of Thomas, demonstrably one of the most loyal and committed disciples of Jesus. Long tarnished with the sobriquet “Doubting Thomas”, this disciple is considered by a consensus of fourth gospel scholars to be a model for the second and third and subsequent generations of the early church – those Christians who were not present at the first resurrection encounters of the apostles with Jesus.
For me, Thomas bridges the gap – himself a benefactor of eventual tangible encounter with the risen Christ, and also a vehicle of blessing for those who “believe having not seen.”
I note that Bill Loader differs here. He sees Thomas as a figure of ambiguity. He says in conclusion on this passage,
Ultimately John's celebrations in narrative of the Easter message point to life as its message. Before and after Easter it is still life. The change is that now there are new bearers of that life and the Spirit given without measure to Jesus (3:34) now operates without measure among the disciples and makes Jesus' presence real to them (14:22-26). Thomas needs to get there and until he does (if he does), he remains on one of the roads of religious distraction which robs him and others of life but keeps them very busy, saying even the right things.
My temperamentally conditioned bias for Thomas fights such a negative suggestion, probably because I recognise myself to be a figure of ambiguity. I think there are many desperadoes like me!
My fascination for Thomas was fed at yesterday morning’s meeting of the WA Council of Churches hosted by the church in Claremont that is, happily, dedicated to St Thomas.
A stained glass window depicts Thomas’ quest for tangible evidence that Jesus has appeared bodily to his colleagues in his absence, and how this quest is dramatically qualified by an “up close and personal” encounter with the crucified and risen One – an encounter that unmistakably catapults Thomas into the company of believers. That it came through a route that has endured continuous criticism does not lessen his participation in the congregation of the faithful.
He believed because he saw, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
For me, Thomas is not so much a figure of ambiguity but of tension. It may be the intention of John’s gospel to use the tradition of Thomas to help a later generation of Christians see clear choices between believing and not believing, but the drama of the narrative leads me to a place where I see Thomas seeking to hold doubt and trust together with integrity. And that’s not easy for people embarked on a journey where the faith muscle is getting a continuous workout.
This tension was ably illustrated in the homily given by the parish priest in yesterday’s opening prayers. He addressed the difficulties Christians find, when, coming from a range of backgrounds and traditions and theological understandings, they seek to express the unity for which Jesus prayed in John 17. The unity we seek is there – but so much blinds us to it. Unless we see we will not believe.
He told of long childhood road trips across Dismal Swamp in the south of the USA. One dare not stop mid journey – the hazards of the swamplands were too great. The tension of the journey was broken by loud singing.
The trip could not be avoided, it had to be made. But the song carried them forward and made the journey easy to bear.
Perhaps this reflection resonates with Thomas and those of us who are like him. The journey has to be made. It is hazardous.
Jesus is determined to return to Bethany and the sorrowing household of Lazarus. It is Thomas who says, “Let us also go that we may die with him.”
A little later, Jesus waxes lyrical about the destination of this journey, comforting his friends by telling them he is going to be with the Father and he knows the way and they know the way. Thomas, in frustration, blurts out, “How can we know the way?” Jesus honours his challenge – “I am the way, the truth and the life…” And the way is dangerous, risky and has the shadow of a cross falling across it. It is indeed “Dismal Swamp!”
And the risen Christ appears to Thomas and shows him how to sing,”My Lord and my God!” Now Thomas sees, there is a song to carry us on the journey through. It is the song of the presence of the crucified and risen one.
Is Thomas not blessed, just because his belief came through seeing ? “Believing” is the burden of John’s gospel. “Believing” through sight or touch, or coming to belief without the benefit of “seeing” all results in “blessedness”, because “believing” is that which expresses the abundant life that is in Christ.
For John’s gospel, “incarnation” and “touch” are also in tension. The”Word made flesh” touches us. He walks amongst the poor laying hands on the untouchable leper, stretching his fingertips to the sightless eyes of the blind, wrapping his arms around the young and infirm. In the garden outside the tomb, he says to Mary Magdalene, “Don’t touch me.” To Thomas he says, , “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” Ambiguity? Thomas doesn’t have the monopoly on that!
Thomas believed in and followed a Lord who was very tangible. Here’s some of what Rose Marie Berger in “The Sense of Touch” says:
Elias Canetti opens his powerful collection Crowds and Power with these lines: "There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it."
At Christmas, we encounter the terror of touch. God runs a finger tenderly along the face of the world. Human flesh flashes with the fire of the Divine. It burns. It is ecstatic. For a moment we are fully human, not just hominid…
…It took a while for the modern world to catch on to what the ancient world already knew. What were those Christmas moments like when Mary’s hands first caressed the impossibly soft skin of her newborn? Gazed into his eyes? Felt him pull, tug, and bite at her breast? She was not just a vessel of Divine intent. Mary shaped Jesus into a human being through the force and affections of her body.
Jesus learned Mary’s lessons well. Touch was significant to his ministry throughout his life. He touched lepers, the blind, the lame. He gathered children into his arms and touched their heads. With loving care, he ran his hands along the feet of his disciples…
… In Jesus’ life, touch was also vibrantly political. He allowed himself to be touched by the bleeding woman who reached him through the crowd and the woman anointer at Bethany. He received Judas’ ambiguous kiss and the violent soldiers’ blows.
After his death women touched him, washed him, rubbed oil into his skin, and wrapped his body in linens. Even resurrected Jesus said to Thomas, "Touch me and see. No ghost has flesh and bones like this…"
… We fear the unknown touch, says Canetti. And that may be true. But we crave the affectionate intimate touch that comes with incarnation. "An ordinary hand," writes poet Anne Sexton, "just lonely for something to touch that touches back… [Then] Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours."
Is Thomas so wrong to crave the touch that brings belief?
Susan Guthrie reminds us:
For 11th-hour laborers and others who are slow-of-heart, Thomas's caution makes him a more credible witness. Furthermore, after the invitation to touch the wounds of Jesus, he penetrates even beyond the superficial excitement of the moment. It is Cousin Thomas who delivers the punch line that kicks off the next 2,000 years of professional Christology: "My Lord and my God!" The beatitude that follows is not meant as a whack at Thomas, the doubter. Rather, Jesus encourages those of us who did not witness these events for ourselves to discover the truth alone in the prayer room, or in struggles for justice, by serving the weak, by worshiping in spirit and in truth, or by schmoozing with the Bible people at family reunions.
Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so fresh. Late have I loved you. Behold, you were within and I was outside, and I was seeking you there. I, deformed, was pursuing you in the beautifully formed things that you made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Those things held me far away from you, things that would not exist if they were not in you. You called and clamored and shattered my deafness; you flashed and gleamed and banished my blindness; you were fragrant and I drew in breath and now pant for you. I tasted and now I hunger and thirst for you; you touched me and I have been set ablaze with longing for your peace. (St. Augustine, Confessions [10:38], translated by Scott MacDonald)
It’s the song that carries us along the hazardous journey that we call life.
John 20:19-31 30th March, 2008
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
If you’ve been here longer than a year or two, you will well know the temptation of today’s text for me to launch a long and spirited defence of Thomas, demonstrably one of the most loyal and committed disciples of Jesus. Long tarnished with the sobriquet “Doubting Thomas”, this disciple is considered by a consensus of fourth gospel scholars to be a model for the second and third and subsequent generations of the early church – those Christians who were not present at the first resurrection encounters of the apostles with Jesus.
For me, Thomas bridges the gap – himself a benefactor of eventual tangible encounter with the risen Christ, and also a vehicle of blessing for those who “believe having not seen.”
I note that Bill Loader differs here. He sees Thomas as a figure of ambiguity. He says in conclusion on this passage,
Ultimately John's celebrations in narrative of the Easter message point to life as its message. Before and after Easter it is still life. The change is that now there are new bearers of that life and the Spirit given without measure to Jesus (3:34) now operates without measure among the disciples and makes Jesus' presence real to them (14:22-26). Thomas needs to get there and until he does (if he does), he remains on one of the roads of religious distraction which robs him and others of life but keeps them very busy, saying even the right things.
My temperamentally conditioned bias for Thomas fights such a negative suggestion, probably because I recognise myself to be a figure of ambiguity. I think there are many desperadoes like me!
My fascination for Thomas was fed at yesterday morning’s meeting of the WA Council of Churches hosted by the church in Claremont that is, happily, dedicated to St Thomas.
A stained glass window depicts Thomas’ quest for tangible evidence that Jesus has appeared bodily to his colleagues in his absence, and how this quest is dramatically qualified by an “up close and personal” encounter with the crucified and risen One – an encounter that unmistakably catapults Thomas into the company of believers. That it came through a route that has endured continuous criticism does not lessen his participation in the congregation of the faithful.
He believed because he saw, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
For me, Thomas is not so much a figure of ambiguity but of tension. It may be the intention of John’s gospel to use the tradition of Thomas to help a later generation of Christians see clear choices between believing and not believing, but the drama of the narrative leads me to a place where I see Thomas seeking to hold doubt and trust together with integrity. And that’s not easy for people embarked on a journey where the faith muscle is getting a continuous workout.
This tension was ably illustrated in the homily given by the parish priest in yesterday’s opening prayers. He addressed the difficulties Christians find, when, coming from a range of backgrounds and traditions and theological understandings, they seek to express the unity for which Jesus prayed in John 17. The unity we seek is there – but so much blinds us to it. Unless we see we will not believe.
He told of long childhood road trips across Dismal Swamp in the south of the USA. One dare not stop mid journey – the hazards of the swamplands were too great. The tension of the journey was broken by loud singing.
The trip could not be avoided, it had to be made. But the song carried them forward and made the journey easy to bear.
Perhaps this reflection resonates with Thomas and those of us who are like him. The journey has to be made. It is hazardous.
Jesus is determined to return to Bethany and the sorrowing household of Lazarus. It is Thomas who says, “Let us also go that we may die with him.”
A little later, Jesus waxes lyrical about the destination of this journey, comforting his friends by telling them he is going to be with the Father and he knows the way and they know the way. Thomas, in frustration, blurts out, “How can we know the way?” Jesus honours his challenge – “I am the way, the truth and the life…” And the way is dangerous, risky and has the shadow of a cross falling across it. It is indeed “Dismal Swamp!”
And the risen Christ appears to Thomas and shows him how to sing,”My Lord and my God!” Now Thomas sees, there is a song to carry us on the journey through. It is the song of the presence of the crucified and risen one.
Is Thomas not blessed, just because his belief came through seeing ? “Believing” is the burden of John’s gospel. “Believing” through sight or touch, or coming to belief without the benefit of “seeing” all results in “blessedness”, because “believing” is that which expresses the abundant life that is in Christ.
For John’s gospel, “incarnation” and “touch” are also in tension. The”Word made flesh” touches us. He walks amongst the poor laying hands on the untouchable leper, stretching his fingertips to the sightless eyes of the blind, wrapping his arms around the young and infirm. In the garden outside the tomb, he says to Mary Magdalene, “Don’t touch me.” To Thomas he says, , “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” Ambiguity? Thomas doesn’t have the monopoly on that!
Thomas believed in and followed a Lord who was very tangible. Here’s some of what Rose Marie Berger in “The Sense of Touch” says:
Elias Canetti opens his powerful collection Crowds and Power with these lines: "There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it."
At Christmas, we encounter the terror of touch. God runs a finger tenderly along the face of the world. Human flesh flashes with the fire of the Divine. It burns. It is ecstatic. For a moment we are fully human, not just hominid…
…It took a while for the modern world to catch on to what the ancient world already knew. What were those Christmas moments like when Mary’s hands first caressed the impossibly soft skin of her newborn? Gazed into his eyes? Felt him pull, tug, and bite at her breast? She was not just a vessel of Divine intent. Mary shaped Jesus into a human being through the force and affections of her body.
Jesus learned Mary’s lessons well. Touch was significant to his ministry throughout his life. He touched lepers, the blind, the lame. He gathered children into his arms and touched their heads. With loving care, he ran his hands along the feet of his disciples…
… In Jesus’ life, touch was also vibrantly political. He allowed himself to be touched by the bleeding woman who reached him through the crowd and the woman anointer at Bethany. He received Judas’ ambiguous kiss and the violent soldiers’ blows.
After his death women touched him, washed him, rubbed oil into his skin, and wrapped his body in linens. Even resurrected Jesus said to Thomas, "Touch me and see. No ghost has flesh and bones like this…"
… We fear the unknown touch, says Canetti. And that may be true. But we crave the affectionate intimate touch that comes with incarnation. "An ordinary hand," writes poet Anne Sexton, "just lonely for something to touch that touches back… [Then] Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours."
Is Thomas so wrong to crave the touch that brings belief?
Susan Guthrie reminds us:
For 11th-hour laborers and others who are slow-of-heart, Thomas's caution makes him a more credible witness. Furthermore, after the invitation to touch the wounds of Jesus, he penetrates even beyond the superficial excitement of the moment. It is Cousin Thomas who delivers the punch line that kicks off the next 2,000 years of professional Christology: "My Lord and my God!" The beatitude that follows is not meant as a whack at Thomas, the doubter. Rather, Jesus encourages those of us who did not witness these events for ourselves to discover the truth alone in the prayer room, or in struggles for justice, by serving the weak, by worshiping in spirit and in truth, or by schmoozing with the Bible people at family reunions.
Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so fresh. Late have I loved you. Behold, you were within and I was outside, and I was seeking you there. I, deformed, was pursuing you in the beautifully formed things that you made. You were with me, but I was not with you. Those things held me far away from you, things that would not exist if they were not in you. You called and clamored and shattered my deafness; you flashed and gleamed and banished my blindness; you were fragrant and I drew in breath and now pant for you. I tasted and now I hunger and thirst for you; you touched me and I have been set ablaze with longing for your peace. (St. Augustine, Confessions [10:38], translated by Scott MacDonald)
It’s the song that carries us along the hazardous journey that we call life.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Resurrection Day
Author: Dennis Ryle
John 20:1-18 23rd March, 2008
Early on Sunday, the first day of the week, even before it began to get light, Mary Magdalene went to visit the tomb where Jesus had been buried. When she got there, she discovered that the stone had been removed and the tomb was open. She fled as fast as she could, and found Simon Peter and the disciple whom Jesus had been closest to. Mary blurted out, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have taken him.”
So Peter and the other disciple set off on the double. They were both running at full tilt, but the other disciple was faster than Peter and reached the tomb first. He didn’t go in, but he bent down to peer inside and saw that the linen burial shroud had been unwrapped and left behind. Moments later, Simon Peter arrived, and barged straight into the tomb. He too, saw the unwrapped shroud lying there, and noticed that the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head was not with the rest of the shroud, but had been rolled up and left in a different spot. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, followed Peter in. They had not yet got their minds around the scriptures that said that Jesus must rise from the dead, but what he saw was enough to convince him that this was no grave robbery, but something far more extraordinary.
The two men left, and headed off to their homes, but Mary stayed behind and stood weeping outside the tomb. A little later she bent down to look into the tomb, and through her tears she saw two angels dressed in white. They were sitting where the body of Jesus had previously been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
She replied, “Someone has taken away my Lord, and I have got no idea where they might have put him.”
Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing behind her, but she didn’t realise it was him. Jesus asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”
Mary assumed that he was the cemetery gardener, so she said to him, “Mister, if you have removed his body from the tomb, please tell me where you have put him, and I will take him off your hands.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She spun around and said, “Rabbouni!”, which is a Hebrew word meaning ‘Dear Teacher’.
Jesus said to her, “Don’t try to hold on to me, because I have not yet fully risen to the Father. But go now, and tell my whole family of disciples that I am rising up to the one who conceived me and conceived you, to my God and your God.”
So Mary Magdalene went straight to the disciples, and was the first to make the announcement, “I have seen the Lord!”
She went on to fill them in on all that he had said to her.
©2003 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
What does one say on this day that gave great consolation to Mary Magdalene but left the disciples speechless and running hither and thither in confusion?
How do we talk about this matter of resurrection without sounding disingenuous or looking foolish? Is this even the right question for people of faith?
Today I can do no better than use the words of Diana Butler Bass (author of Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith) when she says
In the early '90s, I lived in Santa Barbara, California, and attended a dynamic, renewing, spiritually vital liberal congregation, Trinity Episcopal Church. There, I was fortunate enough to meet the Rt. Rev. Daniel Corrigan, an aged Episcopal bishop who was also the first bishop to ordain women to the priesthood. Dan Corrigan was a unique breed: one of those mid-20th century liberal princes of the pulpit, a Protestant minister whose stirring preaching and passionate commitment to social justice pushed Christians to enact God's shalom toward the oppressed and the outcast. He was both pastor and prophet. Even at the end of his life, Dan Corrigan wore the Holy Spirit like a mantle around his shoulders, always ready to speak for God.
One year, as Easter approached, I overheard an exchange between this octogenarian liberal lion and a fellow parishioner. "Bishop Corrigan," the person asked, "Do you believe in the resurrection?" Frankly, I could not wait to hear the answer – like most of his generation, there was no way that Bishop Corrigan believed in a literal resurrection. He looked at the questioner and said firmly, without pause, "Yes. I believe in the resurrection. I've seen it too many times not to."
Progressive Christians often stumble on the resurrection. Many will sit in churches this Easter Sunday, silently doubting or questioning the minister's sermon. They may like the music, appreciate the tradition and liturgy, and delight in the feelings of joy – but they will not really believe the resurrection. One of the great theological problems of old-style Protestant liberalism was the doctrine of the resurrection – it defied logic, reason, and human experience that a man would be raised from the dead. Having rejected the idea of the miraculous, the liberal tradition turned resurrection into an allegory or a spiritual metaphor.
As a writer, I happen to appreciate the power of allegory and metaphor. And I thought that was the theological tack Bishop Corrigan would take with the parishioner. However, he did not. Instead, Bishop Corrigan headed right for the dicey territory of historical witness: I've seen it too many times not to.
The problem with trying to prove – or disprove, for that matter – the resurrection is that actual historical evidence of the event 2,000 years ago does not exist one way or the other. In his popular book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell goes through a torturous process of picking and choosing facts to establish a legal case that proves the resurrection. On the other side of the theological ledger, the recent book, The Jesus Family Tomb, likewise picks and chooses from meager data to intellectually establish that Jesus died and stayed dead. Both sides of this street are an intellectual and historical dead-end, an argument with no solution – only overheated opinions.
Bishop Corrigan's comment – a comment upon which I have meditated for some dozen years – points to a different way of embracing, of believing, the resurrection. His answer both defies the conventional approach to the resurrection (as a scientifically verifiable event), and maintains the truthfulness (the credibility) of the resurrection as historically viable and real. The resurrection is not an intellectual puzzle. Rather, it is a living theological reality, a distant event with continuing spiritual, human, and social consequences. The evidence for the resurrection is all around us. Not in some ancient text, Jesus bones, or a DNA sample. Rather, the historical evidence for the resurrection is Jesus living in us; it is the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, bringing back to life that which was dead. We are the evidence.
Diana goes on to say:
There is a woman in my church in Washington, D.C., who was homeless for 15 years. Several years ago, she came to Epiphany Church and was welcomed by the congregation's ministry to homeless people.
"It was the first time," she told me, "that I came into a church and no one looked at me as if I was going to steal something." Epiphany's people respected her humanity, fed her, listened to her, and helped her – all in the name and power of Jesus. Eventually, she moved off the street into [assisted] housing, secured both work and support, and pulled her life together. An active member of Epiphany, she helps run the homeless ministry, serves as a Sunday reader, and usher.
When I see her on Sunday, she is a living, breathing, historical witness that the resurrection is true.
Like Bishop Corrigan, I, too, can say that I believe the resurrection. I've seen it too many times not to.
This Easter Sunday, consider all the resurrections you have seen. If you are anything like me, those resurrections are not only stories of homeless people who find a home in Christ. They will be stories of your own life, of your myriad deaths and rebirths – of all the times you thought God had deserted you only to discover that God was finding you anew. The resurrection cannot be intellectually proved; it goes well beyond allegory and myth. It is the continuing, transforming power of God to bring back from death all that was lost – that ever-renewing love at work changing ourselves, our communities, and our world. Go ahead: believe.
John 20:1-18 23rd March, 2008
Early on Sunday, the first day of the week, even before it began to get light, Mary Magdalene went to visit the tomb where Jesus had been buried. When she got there, she discovered that the stone had been removed and the tomb was open. She fled as fast as she could, and found Simon Peter and the disciple whom Jesus had been closest to. Mary blurted out, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have taken him.”
So Peter and the other disciple set off on the double. They were both running at full tilt, but the other disciple was faster than Peter and reached the tomb first. He didn’t go in, but he bent down to peer inside and saw that the linen burial shroud had been unwrapped and left behind. Moments later, Simon Peter arrived, and barged straight into the tomb. He too, saw the unwrapped shroud lying there, and noticed that the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head was not with the rest of the shroud, but had been rolled up and left in a different spot. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, followed Peter in. They had not yet got their minds around the scriptures that said that Jesus must rise from the dead, but what he saw was enough to convince him that this was no grave robbery, but something far more extraordinary.
The two men left, and headed off to their homes, but Mary stayed behind and stood weeping outside the tomb. A little later she bent down to look into the tomb, and through her tears she saw two angels dressed in white. They were sitting where the body of Jesus had previously been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
She replied, “Someone has taken away my Lord, and I have got no idea where they might have put him.”
Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing behind her, but she didn’t realise it was him. Jesus asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”
Mary assumed that he was the cemetery gardener, so she said to him, “Mister, if you have removed his body from the tomb, please tell me where you have put him, and I will take him off your hands.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She spun around and said, “Rabbouni!”, which is a Hebrew word meaning ‘Dear Teacher’.
Jesus said to her, “Don’t try to hold on to me, because I have not yet fully risen to the Father. But go now, and tell my whole family of disciples that I am rising up to the one who conceived me and conceived you, to my God and your God.”
So Mary Magdalene went straight to the disciples, and was the first to make the announcement, “I have seen the Lord!”
She went on to fill them in on all that he had said to her.
©2003 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
What does one say on this day that gave great consolation to Mary Magdalene but left the disciples speechless and running hither and thither in confusion?
How do we talk about this matter of resurrection without sounding disingenuous or looking foolish? Is this even the right question for people of faith?
Today I can do no better than use the words of Diana Butler Bass (author of Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith) when she says
In the early '90s, I lived in Santa Barbara, California, and attended a dynamic, renewing, spiritually vital liberal congregation, Trinity Episcopal Church. There, I was fortunate enough to meet the Rt. Rev. Daniel Corrigan, an aged Episcopal bishop who was also the first bishop to ordain women to the priesthood. Dan Corrigan was a unique breed: one of those mid-20th century liberal princes of the pulpit, a Protestant minister whose stirring preaching and passionate commitment to social justice pushed Christians to enact God's shalom toward the oppressed and the outcast. He was both pastor and prophet. Even at the end of his life, Dan Corrigan wore the Holy Spirit like a mantle around his shoulders, always ready to speak for God.
One year, as Easter approached, I overheard an exchange between this octogenarian liberal lion and a fellow parishioner. "Bishop Corrigan," the person asked, "Do you believe in the resurrection?" Frankly, I could not wait to hear the answer – like most of his generation, there was no way that Bishop Corrigan believed in a literal resurrection. He looked at the questioner and said firmly, without pause, "Yes. I believe in the resurrection. I've seen it too many times not to."
Progressive Christians often stumble on the resurrection. Many will sit in churches this Easter Sunday, silently doubting or questioning the minister's sermon. They may like the music, appreciate the tradition and liturgy, and delight in the feelings of joy – but they will not really believe the resurrection. One of the great theological problems of old-style Protestant liberalism was the doctrine of the resurrection – it defied logic, reason, and human experience that a man would be raised from the dead. Having rejected the idea of the miraculous, the liberal tradition turned resurrection into an allegory or a spiritual metaphor.
As a writer, I happen to appreciate the power of allegory and metaphor. And I thought that was the theological tack Bishop Corrigan would take with the parishioner. However, he did not. Instead, Bishop Corrigan headed right for the dicey territory of historical witness: I've seen it too many times not to.
The problem with trying to prove – or disprove, for that matter – the resurrection is that actual historical evidence of the event 2,000 years ago does not exist one way or the other. In his popular book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell goes through a torturous process of picking and choosing facts to establish a legal case that proves the resurrection. On the other side of the theological ledger, the recent book, The Jesus Family Tomb, likewise picks and chooses from meager data to intellectually establish that Jesus died and stayed dead. Both sides of this street are an intellectual and historical dead-end, an argument with no solution – only overheated opinions.
Bishop Corrigan's comment – a comment upon which I have meditated for some dozen years – points to a different way of embracing, of believing, the resurrection. His answer both defies the conventional approach to the resurrection (as a scientifically verifiable event), and maintains the truthfulness (the credibility) of the resurrection as historically viable and real. The resurrection is not an intellectual puzzle. Rather, it is a living theological reality, a distant event with continuing spiritual, human, and social consequences. The evidence for the resurrection is all around us. Not in some ancient text, Jesus bones, or a DNA sample. Rather, the historical evidence for the resurrection is Jesus living in us; it is the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, bringing back to life that which was dead. We are the evidence.
Diana goes on to say:
There is a woman in my church in Washington, D.C., who was homeless for 15 years. Several years ago, she came to Epiphany Church and was welcomed by the congregation's ministry to homeless people.
"It was the first time," she told me, "that I came into a church and no one looked at me as if I was going to steal something." Epiphany's people respected her humanity, fed her, listened to her, and helped her – all in the name and power of Jesus. Eventually, she moved off the street into [assisted] housing, secured both work and support, and pulled her life together. An active member of Epiphany, she helps run the homeless ministry, serves as a Sunday reader, and usher.
When I see her on Sunday, she is a living, breathing, historical witness that the resurrection is true.
Like Bishop Corrigan, I, too, can say that I believe the resurrection. I've seen it too many times not to.
This Easter Sunday, consider all the resurrections you have seen. If you are anything like me, those resurrections are not only stories of homeless people who find a home in Christ. They will be stories of your own life, of your myriad deaths and rebirths – of all the times you thought God had deserted you only to discover that God was finding you anew. The resurrection cannot be intellectually proved; it goes well beyond allegory and myth. It is the continuing, transforming power of God to bring back from death all that was lost – that ever-renewing love at work changing ourselves, our communities, and our world. Go ahead: believe.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Have This Mind...
Author: Dennis Ryle
Philippians 2: 5-11 16 March 2008
Model your attitude on the attitude of the Messiah, Jesus. Although Jesus was the same as God in every way, he did not think of his God-like privileges as something to milked for all they were worth. Instead, he laid it all aside and, with no more privileges than a slave, was born as a human being.Having become a human being, he was the model of humility. He didn’t demand his own way but let God set the agenda; even when it included his own death,and a gruesome public death at that.
Because of all this, God has raised him to the status of number one and honoured him more highly than anyone else in the universe.
So now, just the mention of the name ‘Jesus’ should bring everyone to their knees; everyone who has ever lived or ever will. Everyone, everywhere will honour God by openly acknowledging that Jesus the Messiah is Lord of all!
©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
Palm Sunday heralds the final week of our Lenten journey. From this point on we become very focused on the processes that both condemn Jesus in the eyes of popular opinion and offended authority and also bring about the climactic accomplishment of a mission that is more far reaching than our poor intellects can fully comprehend.
This drama is re-enacted year after year, not only in the traditional liturgies of the church, but in the misunderstanding of the populace as the message of Easter once again makes its powerful impact, with the paradox of its confronting offense and foolishness and, at the same time,
its promise of hope and the fulfilment of dreams and visions that almost dare not be spoken, because we do not know if our poor frames can contain the promised abundance of life.
To sift through the media at such a time is to once again, see this tension being played out. Amongst the pious editorials we will find reports that sensationalise particular aspects of religious life and thinking, as if to say, “Aren’t those followers of Jesus a ripe old mob. Watch us stir them into frenzy! We’ll make them madder than a cut snake”
Hey look! The Vatican’s now decreed that there are 14 deadly sins, not seven (they have not).
Hey look! A local theatre production which portrays Jesus as a semi-naked female on the cross has received almost $28,000 in State Government funding. (They have – but so what!)
Far more telling is the exhortation from the apostle Paul as he addresses the distracted church at Philippi.
“Have this mind among yourselves…”
“Model your attitude on the attitude of the Messiah, Jesus...”
Well known Ignatian spiritual director, Margaret Silf, is visiting Perth. At yesterday’s workshop at Dayspring, Margaret posed the possibility of Jesus modelling the fully evolved state of our humanity. Exploring the evolutionary concepts of progress from hominid to homo sapiens, we were invited to reconsider the Genesis accounts of Adam and Eve, the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the eviction from Eden as a universal story of extinction and rebirth. “When the time was right”, the Son became incarnate and dwelt among us, expressing the fullness of human nature to which we are called.
A significant and core element of the story of the salvation of the universe is the realisation of the Divine in Jesus that calls us to our full humanity.
“Have this mind among yourselves…”
“Model your attitude on the attitude of the Messiah, Jesus...”
Although Jesus was the same as God in every way, he did not think of his God-like privileges as something to milked for all they were worth. Instead, he laid it all aside and, with no more privileges than a slave, was born as a human being.Having become a human being, he was the model of humility.
In more familiar language, Jesus “emptied himself” of all that would get in the way of modelling what perfect humanity looks like.
No rule book to follow except the rule of the heart to love God and love your neighbour as you love yourself. All else is laid aside.
Margaret offered a very helpful illustration from her Canadian canoeing experience. In the vast lake system there, it is possible to navigate hundreds of miles by canoe, even though not all the lakes are linked by water ways.
There are portage paths, that is, dry land links.
You paddle your canoe in the direction you are heading, and you come to a bank. You can paddle no further, but, nearby you will see a sign with an arrow and the word “portage”. The sign indicates the best path by which you can carry your canoe to the nearest shore of the next waterway.
The most efficient way to carry the canoe is to turn it upside down and carry it over your head.
What happens to the contents when you turn it up? It empties itself.
To continue the journey to answer the divine call to the full expression of our humanity, we have to decide to pay the cost of continuing the journey. We have to get out onto dry land, empty our canoe, and carry it.
How did the portage paths appear? The first peoples of the land put them there? How did they know where to place them? Their pioneers explored and scouted the land to find the best routes and signed them – not with written signs as are there now.
The tallest tree on the shoreline at the beginning of the portage route was selected. Its foliage, except for the crown, would be trimmed. This encouraged greater growth, so that its height could be seen from a distance.
A canoeist could easily see the portage point while still paddling some distance out on the lake.
Happily for the sake of our allegory, such a marker bears some resemblance to a cross.
If we are to progress on our human journey, the cross is a critical marker:
Having become a human being, he was the model of humility. He didn’t demand his own way but let God set the agenda; even when it included his own death,and a gruesome public death at that.
There are many layers to the explanation of the meaning of Jesus’ death. They are all well rehearsed in and through first the gospel accounts from Mark’s stark almost tabloid depiction of the events of Calvary to John’s more reflective treatment couched in the popular Greek idiom of his audience. And then from Paul’s exhortations to those of the early Church Fathers.
Even so, the passage of time tells us that however we view the significance of Jesus’ death, the cross stands as a marker in the evolution of how we human beings see ourselves.
We can stay in the lake and assert that nothing ever changes, we humans will continue to employ our wit and knowledge to exploit, defeat, deceive and corrupt one another or, we will get out of the lake, turn our canoes up, and using the guidance of the portage sign, carry our load to the next waterway.
There we will embark on the next stage of the journey, driven not by our wit, but by a humble heart.
Because of all this, God has raised him to the status of number one and honoured him more highly than anyone else in the universe.
Bill Loader tells us what this means rather succinctly
2:9 speaks of God exalting Jesus. This is a commentary on the resurrection which sees it as an act of God which vindicates and rewards Jesus. People regularly misunderstand the statement about the name in 2:9-10. It is not the name, 'Jesus'. Rather Jesus receives a name. That name is none other than the name which is above all other names: the unspoken name of God, represented by the word, 'Lord'. 2:11 also makes that clear. Everyone will acclaim Jesus Christ with his new name: 'Lord'. It is a way of saying that Jesus really does reveal God and the way God is. Bearing someone's name was like bearing their responsibility and being recognised as able to represent them. In Judaism angels could sometimes be given Yahweh's name. At one level we have a story with a twist. Jesus did not chance his arm to try to usurp God. Instead he chose to do what God wanted. As a reward for that God actually gave him what he had originally contemplated and had rejected as an option: he was called 'Lord' (or God). We could then trivialise it into a piece of common wisdom. Don't be too ambitious about promotion.
Do your job and see: you'll get there. It is possible to reduce the passage to an account of Jesus' cv. As such it becomes a piece of divine, self indulgent PR. But this skews its function. Paul is using it to expound an attitude. That attitude is not about how to get promoted, but about what the will of God is and what Jesus was doing. Paul would not be imagining that the act of lowliness was just one of those things Jesus had to go through to get to the top, but something paradigmatic. It said something about the heart of Jesus and the heart of God. He is 'Lord' now not because he has left all that behind, but because God names him as representing the way of divine being. It is in that sense even paradoxical to speak of exaltation and enthronement. Elsewhere we see that paradox expressed in an enthronement of Jesus on a cross with a crown of thorns.
And paradox it is. The way of humility by which Jesus models our calling to full humanity is not well understood – both outside and inside the church.
A number of movies lately have explored the ambiguity both of self-made sufficiency and selfless service, perhaps reflecting a culture which is suffering self-doubt.
‘Let there be blood’ tells a story of the symbiotic relationship between a pioneering oil monopoly and ambitious churchmanship.
Rambo has a taciturn Sylvester Stallone rescuing Christian missionaries caught in the Burmese genocide of the Karen hill tribes, declaring “Nothing can change”.
One gets a sense of people out on the lake in their canoes. The rising mists obscure the portage sign. But are the mists from the lake or our own foggy miscomprehension of the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us?
The writer of the Philippian hymn is more hopeful. This is how he finishes his ode of praise.
So now, just the mention of the name ‘Jesus’ should bring everyone to their knees; everyone who has ever lived or ever will. Everyone, everywhere will honour God by openly acknowledging that Jesus the Messiah is Lord of all!
Philippians 2: 5-11 16 March 2008
Model your attitude on the attitude of the Messiah, Jesus. Although Jesus was the same as God in every way, he did not think of his God-like privileges as something to milked for all they were worth. Instead, he laid it all aside and, with no more privileges than a slave, was born as a human being.Having become a human being, he was the model of humility. He didn’t demand his own way but let God set the agenda; even when it included his own death,and a gruesome public death at that.
Because of all this, God has raised him to the status of number one and honoured him more highly than anyone else in the universe.
So now, just the mention of the name ‘Jesus’ should bring everyone to their knees; everyone who has ever lived or ever will. Everyone, everywhere will honour God by openly acknowledging that Jesus the Messiah is Lord of all!
©2001 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
Palm Sunday heralds the final week of our Lenten journey. From this point on we become very focused on the processes that both condemn Jesus in the eyes of popular opinion and offended authority and also bring about the climactic accomplishment of a mission that is more far reaching than our poor intellects can fully comprehend.
This drama is re-enacted year after year, not only in the traditional liturgies of the church, but in the misunderstanding of the populace as the message of Easter once again makes its powerful impact, with the paradox of its confronting offense and foolishness and, at the same time,
its promise of hope and the fulfilment of dreams and visions that almost dare not be spoken, because we do not know if our poor frames can contain the promised abundance of life.
To sift through the media at such a time is to once again, see this tension being played out. Amongst the pious editorials we will find reports that sensationalise particular aspects of religious life and thinking, as if to say, “Aren’t those followers of Jesus a ripe old mob. Watch us stir them into frenzy! We’ll make them madder than a cut snake”
Hey look! The Vatican’s now decreed that there are 14 deadly sins, not seven (they have not).
Hey look! A local theatre production which portrays Jesus as a semi-naked female on the cross has received almost $28,000 in State Government funding. (They have – but so what!)
Far more telling is the exhortation from the apostle Paul as he addresses the distracted church at Philippi.
“Have this mind among yourselves…”
“Model your attitude on the attitude of the Messiah, Jesus...”
Well known Ignatian spiritual director, Margaret Silf, is visiting Perth. At yesterday’s workshop at Dayspring, Margaret posed the possibility of Jesus modelling the fully evolved state of our humanity. Exploring the evolutionary concepts of progress from hominid to homo sapiens, we were invited to reconsider the Genesis accounts of Adam and Eve, the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the eviction from Eden as a universal story of extinction and rebirth. “When the time was right”, the Son became incarnate and dwelt among us, expressing the fullness of human nature to which we are called.
A significant and core element of the story of the salvation of the universe is the realisation of the Divine in Jesus that calls us to our full humanity.
“Have this mind among yourselves…”
“Model your attitude on the attitude of the Messiah, Jesus...”
Although Jesus was the same as God in every way, he did not think of his God-like privileges as something to milked for all they were worth. Instead, he laid it all aside and, with no more privileges than a slave, was born as a human being.Having become a human being, he was the model of humility.
In more familiar language, Jesus “emptied himself” of all that would get in the way of modelling what perfect humanity looks like.
No rule book to follow except the rule of the heart to love God and love your neighbour as you love yourself. All else is laid aside.
Margaret offered a very helpful illustration from her Canadian canoeing experience. In the vast lake system there, it is possible to navigate hundreds of miles by canoe, even though not all the lakes are linked by water ways.
There are portage paths, that is, dry land links.
You paddle your canoe in the direction you are heading, and you come to a bank. You can paddle no further, but, nearby you will see a sign with an arrow and the word “portage”. The sign indicates the best path by which you can carry your canoe to the nearest shore of the next waterway.
The most efficient way to carry the canoe is to turn it upside down and carry it over your head.
What happens to the contents when you turn it up? It empties itself.
To continue the journey to answer the divine call to the full expression of our humanity, we have to decide to pay the cost of continuing the journey. We have to get out onto dry land, empty our canoe, and carry it.
How did the portage paths appear? The first peoples of the land put them there? How did they know where to place them? Their pioneers explored and scouted the land to find the best routes and signed them – not with written signs as are there now.
The tallest tree on the shoreline at the beginning of the portage route was selected. Its foliage, except for the crown, would be trimmed. This encouraged greater growth, so that its height could be seen from a distance.
A canoeist could easily see the portage point while still paddling some distance out on the lake.
Happily for the sake of our allegory, such a marker bears some resemblance to a cross.
If we are to progress on our human journey, the cross is a critical marker:
Having become a human being, he was the model of humility. He didn’t demand his own way but let God set the agenda; even when it included his own death,and a gruesome public death at that.
There are many layers to the explanation of the meaning of Jesus’ death. They are all well rehearsed in and through first the gospel accounts from Mark’s stark almost tabloid depiction of the events of Calvary to John’s more reflective treatment couched in the popular Greek idiom of his audience. And then from Paul’s exhortations to those of the early Church Fathers.
Even so, the passage of time tells us that however we view the significance of Jesus’ death, the cross stands as a marker in the evolution of how we human beings see ourselves.
We can stay in the lake and assert that nothing ever changes, we humans will continue to employ our wit and knowledge to exploit, defeat, deceive and corrupt one another or, we will get out of the lake, turn our canoes up, and using the guidance of the portage sign, carry our load to the next waterway.
There we will embark on the next stage of the journey, driven not by our wit, but by a humble heart.
Because of all this, God has raised him to the status of number one and honoured him more highly than anyone else in the universe.
Bill Loader tells us what this means rather succinctly
2:9 speaks of God exalting Jesus. This is a commentary on the resurrection which sees it as an act of God which vindicates and rewards Jesus. People regularly misunderstand the statement about the name in 2:9-10. It is not the name, 'Jesus'. Rather Jesus receives a name. That name is none other than the name which is above all other names: the unspoken name of God, represented by the word, 'Lord'. 2:11 also makes that clear. Everyone will acclaim Jesus Christ with his new name: 'Lord'. It is a way of saying that Jesus really does reveal God and the way God is. Bearing someone's name was like bearing their responsibility and being recognised as able to represent them. In Judaism angels could sometimes be given Yahweh's name. At one level we have a story with a twist. Jesus did not chance his arm to try to usurp God. Instead he chose to do what God wanted. As a reward for that God actually gave him what he had originally contemplated and had rejected as an option: he was called 'Lord' (or God). We could then trivialise it into a piece of common wisdom. Don't be too ambitious about promotion.
Do your job and see: you'll get there. It is possible to reduce the passage to an account of Jesus' cv. As such it becomes a piece of divine, self indulgent PR. But this skews its function. Paul is using it to expound an attitude. That attitude is not about how to get promoted, but about what the will of God is and what Jesus was doing. Paul would not be imagining that the act of lowliness was just one of those things Jesus had to go through to get to the top, but something paradigmatic. It said something about the heart of Jesus and the heart of God. He is 'Lord' now not because he has left all that behind, but because God names him as representing the way of divine being. It is in that sense even paradoxical to speak of exaltation and enthronement. Elsewhere we see that paradox expressed in an enthronement of Jesus on a cross with a crown of thorns.
And paradox it is. The way of humility by which Jesus models our calling to full humanity is not well understood – both outside and inside the church.
A number of movies lately have explored the ambiguity both of self-made sufficiency and selfless service, perhaps reflecting a culture which is suffering self-doubt.
‘Let there be blood’ tells a story of the symbiotic relationship between a pioneering oil monopoly and ambitious churchmanship.
Rambo has a taciturn Sylvester Stallone rescuing Christian missionaries caught in the Burmese genocide of the Karen hill tribes, declaring “Nothing can change”.
One gets a sense of people out on the lake in their canoes. The rising mists obscure the portage sign. But are the mists from the lake or our own foggy miscomprehension of the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us?
The writer of the Philippian hymn is more hopeful. This is how he finishes his ode of praise.
So now, just the mention of the name ‘Jesus’ should bring everyone to their knees; everyone who has ever lived or ever will. Everyone, everywhere will honour God by openly acknowledging that Jesus the Messiah is Lord of all!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Leapin' Lazarus
Author: Dennis Ryle
John 11:1-45 9 March 2008
A man named Lazarus became dangerously ill. He and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, lived in the town of Bethany and were good friends of Jesus. Mary was the one who is remembered for having massaged the Lord’s feet with perfumed oils and dried them with her hair. When her brother Lazarus got sick, she and her sister sent a message to Jesus, saying, “Lord, your good mate Lazarus is gravely ill.”
When Jesus got the message, he said, “This illness is not going to result in death, but in great credit being given to God and to the Son of God.”
Despite his great love for Martha and her sister, and for Lazarus, Jesus did not drop everything the minute he got the message and head off to be with them. It was another two days before he finished up what he was doing and got ready to go. When he was ready he said to his disciples, “Let’s make tracks back to Judea.”
But the disciples said, “Rabbi, you’ve only just fled Judea because they were trying to kill you there. Why on earth would you be wanting to go back?”
Jesus replied, “There is a time for working and a time for sleeping. If you go about your business during the daylight, you won’t stumble, because your world will be full of light. But if you wait until its dark, you will fall flat on your face because you will have no light to guide you. Our good mate Lazarus has gone to sleep, and I am going down there to wake him up.”
The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he is getting plenty of sleep then he will be back on his feet in no time.”
Jesus had really been saying that Lazarus had died, but the disciples had taken him too literally, so he spelt it out for them: “Lazarus is dead. I’m glad, for your sakes that I wasn’t there, because this will toughen up your faith. So let’s go and join him.”
Thomas the Twin turned to the other disciples and said, “Come on. If he is going to get himself killed, we might as well be killed with him.”
When Jesus arrived in Bethany, he discovered that Lazarus had been buried four days earlier. Many people from nearby Jerusalem had come to town to comfort Martha and Mary and pay their last respects to Lazarus. Martha heard that Jesus had arrived and ran down the street to meet him, leaving Mary at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if only you’d been here. I know my brother wouldn’t have died if you had been here. But I know that, even now, God will do anything you ask.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will be raised to life again.”
Martha replied, “I know that he and all the dead will be raised to life at the end of time.”
But Jesus said to her, “I am the one who raises the dead and gives life. Those who put their trust in me will have life, even if they die. Those who live trusting in me, will never succumb to death. Will you take my word for this, Martha?”
“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God; the one whose arrival the world has been waiting for.”
Having said this, Martha went back to the house and spoke in private to her sister Mary, saying, “The teacher is here and he wants to see you.”
When she heard this, Mary wasted no time in getting up and hurrying out to meet Jesus. She found him where Martha had left him, just outside the fringe of the town. When all the visitors from Jerusalem who had been with her in the house saw her hurrying out, they assumed that she was going to the graveyard to mourn and leave flowers, so they followed her. When Mary saw Jesus, she embraced him and sobbed, “Lord, if only you’d been here. I know my brother wouldn’t have died if you had been here.”
Jesus was stirred up, deep in his guts, by her tears and by the crying of the people who were with her. “Where did you bury him?” he asked.
“Come and we’ll show you, Lord,” they said. As they went, Jesus too began weeping. This prompted some of the people to say, “He must have really loved Lazarus,” but others were more cynical, saying, “If he loved him so much, how come he didn’t do something to keep him from dying? After all, he had no trouble giving sight to a blind man.”
Jesus arrived at the tomb, and by now he was quite worked up. The tomb was a cave with a big rock sealing the entrance. Jesus gave orders for it to be reopened. Martha, the other sister of the dead man, protested saying, “Lord, it will stink to high heaven. He’s already been dead for four days.”
But Jesus said, “I told you, didn’t I, that if you believed, you would see things so amazing that they could only be credited to God?”
So they went ahead and removed the rock from the entrance of the tomb. Jesus paused to pray, saying, “Father, thank you for hearing my prayer. I know you always do, but I want this crowd to hear me giving the credit to you, because then they might believe that it was you who sent me.”
Having said that, he raised his voice and bellowed, “Lazarus, get out here!”
And sure enough, the dead man came out, still wrapped up like a mummy from head to toe. Jesus gave the order to unwrap him and set him free.
This was the turning point for many of the people who had accompanied Mary. When they saw what Jesus did, they put their trust him.
©2002 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
Nathan Nettleton’s paraphrase brings the narrative of this part of John’s gospel right into our laps.
Earlier this week I was called upon to take a funeral service for a man, not yet fifty, who had died alone. His family and friends were, understandably, distraught.
It has also been said by some of you that we are in that part of the cycle of our lives where farewelling friends and family, often people with whom we have shared a life time, is becoming a frequent occurrence.
The story of Lazarus has many points of connection with our human processes of grieving.
We have the confusion of the disciples as they alter their travel plans.
There is the sisters’ displaced remonstrance that their family friend was not where he was supposed to be when he was needed.
And let’s not forget Jesus’ own public engagement with the full humanity of his passion and emotion, leaving him exposed variously to the compassion and cynicism of the crowd.
Sometimes there is no rational or even faith-based response to the experience of the loss of someone with whom you are deeply connected. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus. Standing at the tomb, confronted with the reality of Lazarus’ death, Jesus wept.
Before this however, there had been a very interesting tête-à-tête between Jesus and Martha – a theological discussion that sounds almost out of place in the raw emotion of the situation. We need to remember that the writer of the fourth gospel is not merely reporting an event; he is seeking to give us understanding as we go.
In the discussion between Jesus and Martha, the writer of John’s gospel brings to the fore the new orientation to the human experience of life and death that the church in its infancy is struggling to comprehend.
Yes dogma does point to a time when all the dead shall be raised. Lazarus shall live again at something called the end of time. But dogma is not a meal that satisfies.
Jesus asserts that he, not the dogma, is the one in whom Martha can direct her trust. In him alone is the authority and authenticity that defeats the darkness, even the darkness of death. Martha assents by naming him as the one that God has sent into the world.
This is the crux of the message of John’s gospel.
When Jesus bellows for Lazarus to come out of the tomb, and Lazarus come forth and is set free, John dramatically underlines his message.
In Jesus, we see the one who points us to release from fear of all that the powers of defeat and darkness can dish up – even the fear of that final obliteration that death is waiting to deal out.
“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus declares. “Those who put their trust in me will live, even though they die.”
It is the genius of John’s gospel that the message of the resurrection is first given to us at an everyday graveside and not the world-shaking event that is the focus of Good Friday and Easter Sunday commemorations. It was Lazarus who walked in resurrection before Jesus did, albeit by Jesus’ authoritative word.
This serves to make the hope of resurrection faith accessible to us. And it has everything to do with living resurrection life now, not in some ethereal future on the other side of the grave.
Listen to Suzanne Guthrie, Episcopal chaplain at Cornell University and writing for the Christian Century.
I didn't want to come back. My consciousness hovered somewhere above the body lying on the gurney. It was all over, I thought. The last sensation I remembered had been incomprehensible pain, then a tunnel, and a grinding noise as described in other "near death experiences." But unlike other people who tell of "NDEs," I saw no lights, no angels, no dead relatives, no friendly saints; rather, I found myself very much awake in a weightless, imageless, gray hyperreality. I experienced a blessed clarity, freedom and relief, and a stunning sense of the illusory nature of the life I'd left behind.Then the recovery room nurse enforced an alternative plan for my life.
Someone was shaking my body and calling me by name. No! NO! Unprepared and inept, I slipped, as if falling on ice, into that lesser "reality" in a helpless panic of anguish and anger.
Suddenly I was back in the confines of that little life of mine. Now I carried a memory of the futility of this "fake" life. It was as if I hadn't had time to drink the magic "forgetting potion" that makes you immune to truth. I came to consciousness disappointed, frustrated, unspeakably sad—and in excruciating pain.
How did Lazarus feel about coming back? How far had he traveled along the way of clarity, truth and reality in those four days? How deeply had he journeyed into eternal life? How transformed had he become as time and space separated soul from the prison of blood and bone and brain?
When Lazarus heard his name did he want to shout, "No! Not even for you, my friend and Master! Please, NO!" With what sense of contempt or ambivalence did he slip through his grave clothes into his body and back to his troubles? Could he have refused to respond?
That Jesus did not go into the tomb to touch him or shake him awake or draw him out puts the resolve upon Lazarus himself. Jesus stood outside calling. And Lazarus responded, now double-bound by winding sheet and by the limits of the old life. He brought himself out, burdened with the fetid grave clothes he would need again and the feeble body which would die again.
Unbind him and let him go, said Jesus. But go where? Home? Could Lazarus dwell contentedly at home again in the house of Mary and Martha? If you come from eternal life, how do you settle for anything less than eternal life? But Lazarus, the ultimate human witness to the way, the truth and the life, is called forth from eternal life . . . to mere everyday life. That is, in Johannine terms, to engage again in the ominous final struggle against the powers of darkness over the Light. And the world cannot bear the Light.
By a cruel irony, Jesus will be put to death because he brought Lazarus back to life. After the raising of Lazarus, the Sanhedrin gathers in that famous meeting where Caiaphas presents his troubling prophecy. Worried about the Roman occupiers and the attention drawn to Jesus by the people, they ask, "What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation." But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish." So "from that day on they took counsel on how to put him to death" (John 11:47b-50, 53).
Aware of the threat, Jesus withdrew into hiding in Ephraim on the edge of the wilderness. But people kept coming to see Lazarus. So the chief priests planned to put him to death, because on account of him many were going away and believing in Jesus.
Double irony. Lazarus comes forth from death for death, this time not by disease but perhaps by the disturbed Sanhedrin—to be put to death for responding to life. Just as Jesus would be put to death for bringing forth life.
"See how he loved him!" said the crowd. Indeed, Lazarus is the type for the lovers of God, along with his quick-witted sister Martha and the intuitive Mary. Jesus' love for the family represents God's love for us. But the love we return is not without sacrifice. In small ways we practice dying: dying to sin, dying to shame, to prejudices, opinions, stagnant ideas, dying to one old life and then another, ever striving toward new life. You consciously practice rising from whatever tomb you have holed yourself up in lately.
(See full article at http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=2940 )
For John’s gospel, the eternal impinges on the here and now.
When you think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense, for the only way you can relate to what is eternal, that which is from everlasting to everlasting, that which runs to very depths and the core of who we really are – is when we are fully engaged with the present moment.
I don’t think the writer of John’s gospel was too concerned about the practicalities of Lazarus post-tomb life.
He was concerned that his community in Christ grasp the reality of fullness of life and that they grasp the courage to walk the path with its attendant risks and threats so that this reality might find full expression.
Our Lenten walk begins the ascent to Jerusalem and the Golgotha that casts its shadow over it.
Perhaps the story of Lazarus reminds us that a shadow does not exist without a light to cast it.
John 11:1-45 9 March 2008
A man named Lazarus became dangerously ill. He and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, lived in the town of Bethany and were good friends of Jesus. Mary was the one who is remembered for having massaged the Lord’s feet with perfumed oils and dried them with her hair. When her brother Lazarus got sick, she and her sister sent a message to Jesus, saying, “Lord, your good mate Lazarus is gravely ill.”
When Jesus got the message, he said, “This illness is not going to result in death, but in great credit being given to God and to the Son of God.”
Despite his great love for Martha and her sister, and for Lazarus, Jesus did not drop everything the minute he got the message and head off to be with them. It was another two days before he finished up what he was doing and got ready to go. When he was ready he said to his disciples, “Let’s make tracks back to Judea.”
But the disciples said, “Rabbi, you’ve only just fled Judea because they were trying to kill you there. Why on earth would you be wanting to go back?”
Jesus replied, “There is a time for working and a time for sleeping. If you go about your business during the daylight, you won’t stumble, because your world will be full of light. But if you wait until its dark, you will fall flat on your face because you will have no light to guide you. Our good mate Lazarus has gone to sleep, and I am going down there to wake him up.”
The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he is getting plenty of sleep then he will be back on his feet in no time.”
Jesus had really been saying that Lazarus had died, but the disciples had taken him too literally, so he spelt it out for them: “Lazarus is dead. I’m glad, for your sakes that I wasn’t there, because this will toughen up your faith. So let’s go and join him.”
Thomas the Twin turned to the other disciples and said, “Come on. If he is going to get himself killed, we might as well be killed with him.”
When Jesus arrived in Bethany, he discovered that Lazarus had been buried four days earlier. Many people from nearby Jerusalem had come to town to comfort Martha and Mary and pay their last respects to Lazarus. Martha heard that Jesus had arrived and ran down the street to meet him, leaving Mary at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if only you’d been here. I know my brother wouldn’t have died if you had been here. But I know that, even now, God will do anything you ask.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will be raised to life again.”
Martha replied, “I know that he and all the dead will be raised to life at the end of time.”
But Jesus said to her, “I am the one who raises the dead and gives life. Those who put their trust in me will have life, even if they die. Those who live trusting in me, will never succumb to death. Will you take my word for this, Martha?”
“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God; the one whose arrival the world has been waiting for.”
Having said this, Martha went back to the house and spoke in private to her sister Mary, saying, “The teacher is here and he wants to see you.”
When she heard this, Mary wasted no time in getting up and hurrying out to meet Jesus. She found him where Martha had left him, just outside the fringe of the town. When all the visitors from Jerusalem who had been with her in the house saw her hurrying out, they assumed that she was going to the graveyard to mourn and leave flowers, so they followed her. When Mary saw Jesus, she embraced him and sobbed, “Lord, if only you’d been here. I know my brother wouldn’t have died if you had been here.”
Jesus was stirred up, deep in his guts, by her tears and by the crying of the people who were with her. “Where did you bury him?” he asked.
“Come and we’ll show you, Lord,” they said. As they went, Jesus too began weeping. This prompted some of the people to say, “He must have really loved Lazarus,” but others were more cynical, saying, “If he loved him so much, how come he didn’t do something to keep him from dying? After all, he had no trouble giving sight to a blind man.”
Jesus arrived at the tomb, and by now he was quite worked up. The tomb was a cave with a big rock sealing the entrance. Jesus gave orders for it to be reopened. Martha, the other sister of the dead man, protested saying, “Lord, it will stink to high heaven. He’s already been dead for four days.”
But Jesus said, “I told you, didn’t I, that if you believed, you would see things so amazing that they could only be credited to God?”
So they went ahead and removed the rock from the entrance of the tomb. Jesus paused to pray, saying, “Father, thank you for hearing my prayer. I know you always do, but I want this crowd to hear me giving the credit to you, because then they might believe that it was you who sent me.”
Having said that, he raised his voice and bellowed, “Lazarus, get out here!”
And sure enough, the dead man came out, still wrapped up like a mummy from head to toe. Jesus gave the order to unwrap him and set him free.
This was the turning point for many of the people who had accompanied Mary. When they saw what Jesus did, they put their trust him.
©2002 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net
Nathan Nettleton’s paraphrase brings the narrative of this part of John’s gospel right into our laps.
Earlier this week I was called upon to take a funeral service for a man, not yet fifty, who had died alone. His family and friends were, understandably, distraught.
It has also been said by some of you that we are in that part of the cycle of our lives where farewelling friends and family, often people with whom we have shared a life time, is becoming a frequent occurrence.
The story of Lazarus has many points of connection with our human processes of grieving.
We have the confusion of the disciples as they alter their travel plans.
There is the sisters’ displaced remonstrance that their family friend was not where he was supposed to be when he was needed.
And let’s not forget Jesus’ own public engagement with the full humanity of his passion and emotion, leaving him exposed variously to the compassion and cynicism of the crowd.
Sometimes there is no rational or even faith-based response to the experience of the loss of someone with whom you are deeply connected. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus. Standing at the tomb, confronted with the reality of Lazarus’ death, Jesus wept.
Before this however, there had been a very interesting tête-à-tête between Jesus and Martha – a theological discussion that sounds almost out of place in the raw emotion of the situation. We need to remember that the writer of the fourth gospel is not merely reporting an event; he is seeking to give us understanding as we go.
In the discussion between Jesus and Martha, the writer of John’s gospel brings to the fore the new orientation to the human experience of life and death that the church in its infancy is struggling to comprehend.
Yes dogma does point to a time when all the dead shall be raised. Lazarus shall live again at something called the end of time. But dogma is not a meal that satisfies.
Jesus asserts that he, not the dogma, is the one in whom Martha can direct her trust. In him alone is the authority and authenticity that defeats the darkness, even the darkness of death. Martha assents by naming him as the one that God has sent into the world.
This is the crux of the message of John’s gospel.
When Jesus bellows for Lazarus to come out of the tomb, and Lazarus come forth and is set free, John dramatically underlines his message.
In Jesus, we see the one who points us to release from fear of all that the powers of defeat and darkness can dish up – even the fear of that final obliteration that death is waiting to deal out.
“I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus declares. “Those who put their trust in me will live, even though they die.”
It is the genius of John’s gospel that the message of the resurrection is first given to us at an everyday graveside and not the world-shaking event that is the focus of Good Friday and Easter Sunday commemorations. It was Lazarus who walked in resurrection before Jesus did, albeit by Jesus’ authoritative word.
This serves to make the hope of resurrection faith accessible to us. And it has everything to do with living resurrection life now, not in some ethereal future on the other side of the grave.
Listen to Suzanne Guthrie, Episcopal chaplain at Cornell University and writing for the Christian Century.
I didn't want to come back. My consciousness hovered somewhere above the body lying on the gurney. It was all over, I thought. The last sensation I remembered had been incomprehensible pain, then a tunnel, and a grinding noise as described in other "near death experiences." But unlike other people who tell of "NDEs," I saw no lights, no angels, no dead relatives, no friendly saints; rather, I found myself very much awake in a weightless, imageless, gray hyperreality. I experienced a blessed clarity, freedom and relief, and a stunning sense of the illusory nature of the life I'd left behind.Then the recovery room nurse enforced an alternative plan for my life.
Someone was shaking my body and calling me by name. No! NO! Unprepared and inept, I slipped, as if falling on ice, into that lesser "reality" in a helpless panic of anguish and anger.
Suddenly I was back in the confines of that little life of mine. Now I carried a memory of the futility of this "fake" life. It was as if I hadn't had time to drink the magic "forgetting potion" that makes you immune to truth. I came to consciousness disappointed, frustrated, unspeakably sad—and in excruciating pain.
How did Lazarus feel about coming back? How far had he traveled along the way of clarity, truth and reality in those four days? How deeply had he journeyed into eternal life? How transformed had he become as time and space separated soul from the prison of blood and bone and brain?
When Lazarus heard his name did he want to shout, "No! Not even for you, my friend and Master! Please, NO!" With what sense of contempt or ambivalence did he slip through his grave clothes into his body and back to his troubles? Could he have refused to respond?
That Jesus did not go into the tomb to touch him or shake him awake or draw him out puts the resolve upon Lazarus himself. Jesus stood outside calling. And Lazarus responded, now double-bound by winding sheet and by the limits of the old life. He brought himself out, burdened with the fetid grave clothes he would need again and the feeble body which would die again.
Unbind him and let him go, said Jesus. But go where? Home? Could Lazarus dwell contentedly at home again in the house of Mary and Martha? If you come from eternal life, how do you settle for anything less than eternal life? But Lazarus, the ultimate human witness to the way, the truth and the life, is called forth from eternal life . . . to mere everyday life. That is, in Johannine terms, to engage again in the ominous final struggle against the powers of darkness over the Light. And the world cannot bear the Light.
By a cruel irony, Jesus will be put to death because he brought Lazarus back to life. After the raising of Lazarus, the Sanhedrin gathers in that famous meeting where Caiaphas presents his troubling prophecy. Worried about the Roman occupiers and the attention drawn to Jesus by the people, they ask, "What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation." But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all; you do not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish." So "from that day on they took counsel on how to put him to death" (John 11:47b-50, 53).
Aware of the threat, Jesus withdrew into hiding in Ephraim on the edge of the wilderness. But people kept coming to see Lazarus. So the chief priests planned to put him to death, because on account of him many were going away and believing in Jesus.
Double irony. Lazarus comes forth from death for death, this time not by disease but perhaps by the disturbed Sanhedrin—to be put to death for responding to life. Just as Jesus would be put to death for bringing forth life.
"See how he loved him!" said the crowd. Indeed, Lazarus is the type for the lovers of God, along with his quick-witted sister Martha and the intuitive Mary. Jesus' love for the family represents God's love for us. But the love we return is not without sacrifice. In small ways we practice dying: dying to sin, dying to shame, to prejudices, opinions, stagnant ideas, dying to one old life and then another, ever striving toward new life. You consciously practice rising from whatever tomb you have holed yourself up in lately.
(See full article at http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=2940 )
For John’s gospel, the eternal impinges on the here and now.
When you think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense, for the only way you can relate to what is eternal, that which is from everlasting to everlasting, that which runs to very depths and the core of who we really are – is when we are fully engaged with the present moment.
I don’t think the writer of John’s gospel was too concerned about the practicalities of Lazarus post-tomb life.
He was concerned that his community in Christ grasp the reality of fullness of life and that they grasp the courage to walk the path with its attendant risks and threats so that this reality might find full expression.
Our Lenten walk begins the ascent to Jerusalem and the Golgotha that casts its shadow over it.
Perhaps the story of Lazarus reminds us that a shadow does not exist without a light to cast it.
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