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Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Pentecost, John 7:37-39

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On the day of Pentecost in Year A, the alternate Gospel reading is John 7:37-39.

John 7:37-39

I’ve previously written on the primary Gospel reading for the day, John 20:19-23, when it was paired with the story of Jesus’ kind revelation to “doubting Thomas” (once in 2020, and once in 2019).

This year, Pentecost happens to fall on May 31, which is the annual celebration of pregnant Mary’s visitation to pregnant Elizabeth, and I’ve written previously and at length on that text too.

So if you are praying, studying, meditating, or preaching on those, and want to get my take on them, just follow those links.

This leaves us with a tiny little text. And herewith I offer you my tiny little meditation.

An Earlier Festival

There is a mild confusion of events when you think about the Jewish and Christian calendars this week.

In the Christian calendar today is Pentecost, which most of us take as a completely Christian event — this day commemorates the outpouring of the Holy Spirit 50 days after the Resurrection, and the massive growth of the Christian community.

However, the outpouring of the Spirit didn’t create Pentecost. Pentecost was already a Jewish celebration, “Shavuot,” 50 days after the Passover. It was the annual celebration of the first fruits of the harvest.

When God decided to have the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, it was an intentional, meaningful, symbolic choice.

The old Pentecost celebrated the harvest of the fields.
The new Pentecost celebrated the harvest of the nations.

All that is by way of context.

The Gospel text, John 7:37-39, takes place on a great day of a great festival. However, it was not Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks in the Spring. It was “Sukkot,” the Feast of Booths, celebrating the ingathering of the harvest at the end of the year.

I suppose the two feasts are kind of connected logically. To the extent that they are both agricultural feasts (and they have other meanings in Scripture too) they would seem to bookend the harvest. And so maybe it isn’t a huge leap on the part of the compilers of the lectionary to place a Gospel text about Sukkot/Booths on a day when the Church is celebrating Pentecost/Shavuot.

The connection, however, is more in what Jesus says at the feast, and what John says about what Jesus says. More on this below.

A Sneaky Savior

Before I comment on the Pentecost connections of this text, however, let me say that there is a striking oddity in the larger passage from which this is taken. This is the only bit of John 7 that the Lectionary gives us, so only by looking back do we find that this is the Feast of Booths, and that Jesus had a conversation about it with his “brothers” before going up to Jerusalem.

Jesus’ brothers (whom, John says, did not believe in him) encouraged Jesus to go up to the feast in Jerusalem and do his miraculous signs there were everyone—especially Jesus’ disciples—could see.

Jesus wanted nothing to do with it. Jesus flat out told his brothers that he wasn’t going to the feast.

Then, after his brothers headed off, Jesus went to the feast. He was sneaky about it. He went incognito. Was he wearing some of those Groucho glasses?

Anyway, first he heard what people were saying about him behind his back. Then people figured out it was him, and they started talking about whether he was the Messiah.

But the thing that is fascinating is that he told his brothers that he wasn’t going to go, and then he went anyway, hiding his identity.

This explicit bit of deception on the part of our Lord and Savior should give us at least a bit of pause. We assume the One who is, as he says elsewhere, “the Truth,” can be expected to behave and speak truly at all times.

But no. Jesus sees being the Truth as clearly something that comports perfectly well with deceiving those he’s closest to.

So ponder this in your heart, my friend. Don’t expect Jesus to meet your personal standards of clarity, or simplicity, or apparent honesty.

He is the Truth, but he isn’t going to be subject to our judgment.
As God, he is utterly faithful, but not predictable.
As God, he is ultimately love, but allows and does things that feel far from it.

If we want Jesus, we get him on his own terms, by his own definitions of truth, and love, and justice.

Just sayin’.

A Promise of Life

But all of this was before the snippet the lectionary gave us.

There at the feast, after some teaching, some discussion, and I’d say some argument, Jesus stands up and shouts:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,

and let the one who believes in me drink.

As the scripture has said,

‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37-38 NRSV)

It seems like these are themes that we’re on Jesus’ mind a lot. Remember how he told the Samaritan woman beside the well that if she had asked,

…he would have given you living water.

… those who drink of the water that I will give them

will never be thirsty.

The water that I will give

will become in them a spring of water

gushing up to eternal life.” (John 4:10, 13-14 NRSV)

If you have it in mind, it sort of echoes through John’s Gospel, in the various references to water and to eternal life, as well as in passages like John 15 where he teaches us to abide in him like a branch that draws its life from him, the vine.

The interesting thing to me is John’s commentary, explaining to you and me, the readers, that Jesus was not talking about himself, but about the Holy Spirit.

Now he said this about the Spirit,

which believers in him were to receive;

for as yet there was no Spirit,

because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7:39 NRSV)

It seems like John is basically contradicting Jesus in this:

The Lord said to come and believe in him, and he would give these good things. It sounds personal, and it sounds present.
John says Jesus meant that the Spirit would be given someday. It is about someone else, and it is future.

It also sounds odd when John says “there was no Spirit.” All of Scripture would seem to indicate that there was indeed already a Spirit. See Genesis 1:2 (in most translations) for the obvious reference.

Near the end of John’s Gospel the risen Jesus breaths on the disciples saying

Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22 NRSV)

That must be what John was thinking of when he said that in John 7 “there was no Spirit.” It isn’t that the Spirit didn’t exist. It was right there in Jesus, in his very breath. The Spirit just hadn’t been given to the disciples.

And all of that happened before Pentecost, where the Spirit was sent with overflowing power to equip the Disciples and build the community.

But that’s why this Gospel text comes up on Pentecost.

Because Jesus promised to fill us with living water, not ordinary water that we would need again and again to quench each new moment of thirst. Rather the Spirit would come and dwell in us, causing the water of life to bubble up within us day after day and into eternity.

May it be so for you, dear reader, this Pentecost, in this hard season of pandemic distress, when 100,000 lives have been lost to COVID-19 in this country alone, and when we struggle with isolation, and fret with confusion over the best route to health for ourselves and for all.

May God’s Spirit dwell in you, and cause the living waters of Christ’s own life to bubble up within you to sustain you, to cause you to flourish. May he make you aware of the new and eternal life that Jesus has poured into you.

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My online reading group will soon begin reading and discussing Gregory of Nyssa’s “Life of Moses.” It’s a great 4th century theological text that can really reboot your thinking about your spiritual life. If you think you might be interested, see my Patreon page and sign up at the level titled “The Education.”

The post Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Pentecost, John 7:37-39 appeared first on Gary Neal Hansen.

Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 7, John 17:1-11

If it feels like you heard Sunday’s lectionary Gospel in church recently, maybe you are having a flashback to this time last year. Or the year before. Or any other year. On the 7th Sunday of Easter, the lectionary always gives us one chunk or another of John 17.

It is a chapter of Scripture that I dearly love.

In other passages we see Jesus heading off to pray alone or with friends, and of course he teaches them what we call the Lord’s Prayer. But in John 17 we get a full chapter recording what and how he himself prayed.

And think of the context:

He knows he has finished the long season of traveling with his disciples, teaching them their mission as he taught and healed the crowds.

He has spent this last evening with them in the four previous chapters of John, giving them the New Commandment, giving them the Lord’s Supper, giving them his last summary of his teaching.

He knows, even if they don’t understand, that he is about to be betrayed, arrested, tried, tortured, and killed.

All that is left is to pray for them.

One last time.

John 17:1-11

The reading is only the first third of the prayer. It is, of course, richer to explore the whole thing in a coherent way. I’ve led retreats working through this chapter, this one prayer, over the course of several days. But John 17:1-11 is a Sunday-sized portion.

The Request

An interesting feature of this section of the prayer is that very little it is asking for anything.

Jesus asks the Father to glorify him (verses 1 and 5).
Jesus asks the Father to protect his disciples and bring them to unity (verse 11).

Really — that’s it.

The Rest

Which should point us to something very important: prayer is more than asking God to do things.

The whole passage is prayer. The first part of the first verse sets it up, and then Jesus’ words to the Father flow for the rest of the chapter.

So what is he doing?

In this prayer, Jesus is telling God things God already knows

Some of it is about the past.

God has given Jesus authority.
Jesus’ life has given glory to God.
Jesus was alive, in glory, in God’s presence before creation.
The way Jesus gave glory to God was teaching his disciples.
The disciples have lived faithfully in light of what Jesus taught.
Jesus has been glorified in the lives of the disciples.

Some of it is about the present

The crucial time has come.
The whole work of Jesus is about bringing eternal life.
Eternal life is about knowing God.
Knowing God is also about knowing Jesus.
The disciples know that Jesus’ teaching came from the Father.
Whoever belongs to Jesus belongs to the Father.
Whoever belongs to the Father belongs to Jesus.

Some of it is about the future

Jesus is praying for his disciples, not for the rest of the people.
Jesus is leaving.
The disciples are staying.

None of this is request. Much of it is background and present context. Some is hopes and fears for the future.

In that sense it’s a lot like what I write in my journal.

And it’s all prayer.

Prayer in the Pandemic

This is a shorter and odder post than I usually do for my Monday Meditation. But here I am in the midst of pandemic craziness, and some weeks it’s hard to focus. That’s probably true for you too.

One thing I find helps is prayer—especially the kind that ends up filling pages of my journal, or flowing in my mind as I go on brisk neighborhood walks with my mask on. I remind God of a thousand things God already knows. Stuff about the past. Stuff about the present. Stuff about the future, what I hope and what I fear.

I hope you will give yourself room to pray in the ways Jesus did in this passage. If you aren’t a habitual journaller, then give it a try. You don’t even need an actual journal. Just take a piece of paper and write what you think and feel about the past, present, and future. God is listening in.

(If you’d like some stories about great journal pray-ers of history, read the chapter on “Praying with the Puritans” in my book Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers.)

Be well, my friend.

Keep praying.

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The post Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 7, John 17:1-11 appeared first on Gary Neal Hansen.

Next Up in the Reading Group: Gregory of Nyssa’s “Life of Moses”

Introducing… My Online Reading Group

For a while now I’ve been developing a project that I’m finding to be really fun. It is an online reading group on topics in Church history and theology.

I pick a subject (with input from the members) and one or more relevant cool texts from the history of Christianity.
I make the text available for download, if possible, or for purchase.
About once per month I post a video introducing the text.
I post questions to invite discussion in threads that are only visible to group members.

Some of the members use the videos and texts for church adult education classes — which is awesome.

Some participate actively in discussion.

Some stay in the background, watching, reading, and thinking on their own.

It’s all cool.

First we did four texts (with four videos) recounting martyrs of the Early Church.
Then we did four texts (with four videos) that gave windows into the worship life of the early centuries.
Right now we are reading and discussing Justin Martyr’s “First Apology” section by section. (You guessed it: with four videos).

I’ve kept it pretty quiet up till now, but I think there are a lot more people who would enjoy it. If you miss reading challenging texts and talking about them with others, this is for you.

If you are a pastor, think of it as continuing education that doesn’t require travel.

If you are not a pastor, think of it as adult education from a seminary professor.

Next Up: Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses

We are still working our way through Justin Martyr, but we decided on the next book to do together. It is one of my favorite texts from one of my favorite writers from one of my favorite centuries: Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses.

Gregory of Nyssa was one of the “three great Cappadocians,” bishops and theologians who shaped the thinking of the church on everything from the nature of God to the life of prayer.

They lived in the fourth century, the most formative time in the history of Christian teaching.

And Gregory’s Life of Moses is an absolutely fascinating read. It can kick start your spiritual life and make you rethink a whole lot of things you’ve been taking for granted.

Basically Gregory takes the biblical story of Moses’ life, and treats it as a paradigm for spiritual growth. Not a bad agenda, since Moses was the chosen leader to save Israel from their slavery in Egypt, the one to whom God spoke face to face over and over, and who received the Ten Commandments defining life under the Covenant.

He takes Moses’ life story moment by moment and squeezes out every possible drop of  metaphorical insight.

You’ll probably find yourself wanting to argue with him at times on his biblical interpretation — but along the way you’ll see a rich and coherent understanding of what it means to love God, know God, and be transformed as God intends.

You can click through this affiliate link (or the photo above) and pick it up on Amazon.

It All Happens on My Patreon Page

If you think you’d like to join us, you can sign up on my Patreon page.

There are various reward levels for pledging to support the work I do, and the online reading group comes for those who sign up for the level named “The Education” or above.

It’s currently priced, manageably, though very oddly, at $8.33 per month. That’s $100 per year if you stick with it. I hope it’s an amount that pastors could do out of even very limited continuing education budgets.

You can click through to my Patreon page for full info right here.

(This post contains affiliate links.)

The post Next Up in the Reading Group: Gregory of Nyssa’s “Life of Moses” appeared first on Gary Neal Hansen.

Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 6, John 14:15-21

Image from page 22 of “Junior topics outlined” (1898)

On the sixth Sunday of Easter of the lectionary, the Gospel continues in the same passage as last week.

John 14:15-21

The scene is the upper room on Maundy Thursday. Jesus has already washed his disciples’ feet and given them the “new commandment” to love one another as he has loved them.

Now, and in the following chapters, Jesus sums up a number of teachings about himself and what it means to belong to him — things that were a bit inscrutable at the time and which we now look back on in light of the cross and the resurrection.

There are several things going on in John 14:15-20 that capture my attention. I’ll only say something substantive about one, with a couple quick notes about others.

Love and Obedience

First is the link between obedience and love for Christ. It opens and closes the passage, framing it and setting the subject clearly. At the outset, it is

If you love me,

you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15 NRSV)

It is stated as a fact. Notice that it stands there with one foot in the present and one in the future: If this is true right now, then that will be true as time rolls on.

Say you love me now? Then through the course of your life you will, in fact, keep my commandments.

It seems to be given to help us think clearly about ourselves and our living as disciples. Of course I want to love Jesus! How can I check if I’m on the right track? Well I should take a look at how my actions match up with his instructions.

At the end of the passage it is clearly a measuring stick:

They who have my commandments

and keep them

are those who love me; …” (John 14:21 NRSV)

Here it seems to be less about getting a sense of my own discipleship, and more an insight into how God views the question.

He’s looking at all the people, and wondering who really loves Jesus. Here are all those who say they are disciples, all those who claim to love him. But the question he’s looking at is which ones are actually doing what he said. Those are the ones who clearly do love him.

And, Jesus goes on to say, these are the ones that he and his Father will love.

This is, or has been in the past, a bit of a sore spot for Protestants. We hold steadfastly to Paul’s message that we are saved by grace alone, to which we cleave by faith alone. We think anything other than receiving a promise of a free gift sounds like “works righteousness.”

We do need Paul to clarify all kinds of things about the nature of salvation.

We also do need to take Jesus at his word.

That is, Paul is right to tell us not think that we are going to win Christ’s affection by our dogged obedience to his laws. We can’t earn salvation.

But we should not go to the extreme some do, and say that trust in God’s gift is everything, and that our obedience is nothing. (Some have spoken at times as if doing good works in obedience to the law as actually a problem — I’m looking at you Martin Luther.)

Best to avoid muddling our terms and categories.

Jesus, in this particular passage, is talking about love, not about a trusting faith. But the two things connect in the Christian life.

If we have the kind of radical trust that Luther saw in Paul’s teaching on faith, it will establish the kind of relationship in which love will grow.

And how do we know if we really are growing in the kind of love for Christ that matters? Jesus says it will change our behavior.

Does verse 21 indicate that having real love that changes our behavior earns God’s love? Is that how we get forgiveness?

Actually, I don’t think so. I don’t think this passage is about forgiveness — though for many a Christian, forgiveness is all we think about when it comes to God’s love.

Rather, as in a merely human relationship, when we have the kind of love that changes the way we live, channels are open for all kinds of love to flow. Whether we started out concerned with forgiveness or not, and whether we started out conscious of faith as trust or not, we find ourselves in a transformed and transforming kind of relationship with God.

Now we love the God we once fled in fear or shame.

Now our love for God is leading us to do the kinds of things God wants us to do.

(And that includes his command to love one another as he loved us.)

And when our inner orientation to God is love, so much so that our outer actions match the life God intends for us, then the relationship is powerfully real.

As Jesus put it,

…and those who love me

will be loved by my Father,

and I will love them

and reveal myself to them.” (John 14:21 NRSV)

This is not about earning salvation. This is about the kind of transformed and transforming relationship we have with the Triune God when trust brings love, and love brings obedience.

… As opposed to starting and staying with the kind of grudging, dogged obedience that was never very appealing to begin with.

The Spirit

This relationship of love is going to lead to something amazing, at least from Jesus’ perspective: the Holy Spirit is going to come.

Jesus uses a couple interesting defining terms for the Spirit — “the Spirit of truth” and “Advocate.”

This promise of the Spirit is comforting in light of Christ’s imminent departure. And these two roles assigned to the Spirit also point to two under-attended aspects of the Spirit’s core work.

As opposed to being solely the giver of gifts (especially the flashy ones like tongues, prophecy, and healing) the Spirit is the one who stands by us to help and support, speaking to authorities or accusers on our behalf. Very much like Paul’s statement in Romans that the Spirit prays in us and for us when we don’t know what to pray.

Also the Spirit is not the source of feelings and hunches, but “truth.”

Elsewhere in the larger context Jesus will promise that the Spirit will lead us into truth and remind us of things he taught.

This is, in part, the very Reformed idea that the Spirit comes to help us in the interpretation of Scripture.

Likewise, though, it can give the Spirit a role in prompting our conscience to see the truth. Though this is not to say that everything our neurotic consciences tells us (or what our narcissistic lack of conscience tells us) can be construed as truth from God’s Spirit.

Triune Presence

I mentioned that this relationship we have is with the Triune God, because that’s one of the themes in this passage — as it is throughout Jesus’ lengthy conversation with the disciples in John 13-17.

So we love Jesus, and we receive love from Jesus and the Father, and we have with us the practical loving support of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus and the Spirit are both here promised to be not merely with us but in us.

Jesus compares the particular way he is to be in us to the way that he is in his Father .

The Spirit and Jesus are both said to be bringing God’s revelation to us.

In the way he is going to be alive, in the resurrection and in union with God, we are promised to live as well.

It is altogether a remarkable picture of mystical union, now and in eternity.

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I’d love to send you my Monday Meditations, as well as my other new articles and announcements. Scroll down to the black box with the orange button to subscribe and they’ll arrive by email most Fridays.

The post Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 6, John 14:15-21 appeared first on Gary Neal Hansen.

Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 5, John 14:1-14

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For the fifth Sunday of Easter in “Year A,” the lectionary moves, perhaps inscrutably, to Maundy Thursday.

John 14:1-14

This week’s text is John 14:1-14. In the previous chapter, Jesus washed the disciples’ feet and gave them the “new commandment.” In the following chapter, he will tell them that he is the vine and they are the branches. Here, he converses with them about who he is and what comes next. They show themselves to be, if I may be frank, a bit dim. I suppose that what Jesus taught in John 13-17 was only really understandable after Jesus rose from the grave.

Hey! That must be why we are reading it in Easter season.

There are things here that show the original disciples to have been a bit dim. There are also things that show us modern disciples to be a bit dim.

Just so we don’t get uppity, let’s start with the latter. I’ll eventually circle around to the truly amazing (though also easily twisted) bits of what Jesus says in this passage.

Where We Are Dim Disciples

The things that seem to linger longest in our culture’s Christian memory are, to my mind, the most prone to being turned in un-useful directions

First, from verse 12:

…the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do

and, in fact, will do greater works than these…” (John 14:12 NRSV)

This promise of what believers will do is lovely, and in the grand scheme of things rings very true. Just compare what Jesus did in his three year ministry of teaching and healing with what the Body of Christ has done in the 2000 years since.

As well as the teaching within churches, think of the schools founded in his name — the original Sunday Schools to teach poor children to read, grammar schools, high schools, colleges and universities all around the world.
As well as the prayers for healing offered among Christians in churches, think of the work of healing done by Christian physicians and nurses, in hospitals founded by Christians all around the world.

But I think we take this message as applying individually at our spiritual peril. Even if we have remarkable gifts of teaching or healing, what we do as individual Christians falls far short of what Jesus did. We set ourselves up for frustration and depression if we measure our faithfulness by whether we can do the works Jesus did, and greater works still.

Second, from verses 13 and 14:

I will do whatever you ask in my name,

so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If in my name you ask me for anything,

I will do it.” (John 14:13-14)

It sounds so like Jesus is giving us a blank check.

In our Protestant culture we tend to think of prayer in just these terms. Prayer, we think, is asking God do do things — even if on deeper thought we say it is really about conversation with God and communion with God.

While we are thinking of prayer as asking God to do things, we sometimes slip into thinking that successful prayer, or the prayer of a mature Christian, is a prayer that God answers by providing exactly what we ask.

And once we think successful mature prayer gets its desired results, we might just find ourselves thinking that we can turn it around, measuring whether we are mature Christians by the degree to which God provides answers.

Those well into this way of thinking sometimes begin to backpedal just a bit by putting the weight on Jesus’ requirement that prayer must be “in his name.”

I think the backpedalling is good. Jesus telling us to ask “in his name” surely means more than tacking on the phrase “In Jesus’ name…” before the final word “…amen!” Surely praying “in Jesus’ name” must require something like a believable sense that the thing we ask for is what Jesus himself would want to do.

And surely, humility requires us to acknowledge that even when we ask for something that we have good reason to believe Jesus wants to do, we still might not get the answer we were asking for.

If I think God is somehow obliged to give me everything and anything I ask for, based on this text or others like it, then I’m not spiritually mature. Rather this is evidence of being a spiritual spoiled child.

Where They Were Dim Disciples

Disciple dimness is shown in two fragments of the evening’s conversation.

First, Jesus says,

And you know the way to the place where I am going.

Then, clearly rolling his eyes even if John didn’t say so, Thomas says,

Lord, we do not know where you are going.

How can we know the way?” (John 14:4-5 NRSV)

Jesus answers beautifully, in one of the most evocative of John’s “I Am” sayings:

I am the way,

and the truth,

and the life.” (John 14:6 NRSV)

I’ll say a few more things about this at the end, but for now just note that he answered. If Thomas knew Jesus, he knew “the way” to where Jesus was going: the way is Jesus himself.

The second fragment of conversation that leaves the disciples looking none too on top of things came just after.

Jesus said,

If you know me,

you will know my Father also.

Philip chimed in to ask,

Lord, show us the Father,

and we will be satisfied.” (John 14:7-8 NRSV)

Here it seems like Jesus was the one rolling his eyes. He had just said that by knowing him they knew his Father. Jesus has to repeat the point, making it all the more emphatic.

Jesus reveals the Father. This isn’t about a separate revelation, with the Father stepping separately onto the Gospel stage and Jesus saying “Ta dah!”

Jesus himself is the revelation of the Father.

The point is that in knowing Jesus we know and see and understand all of the Father that our little human minds can bear.

Or the point is that what we see in Jesus tells us reliably what can be reliably known about the Father.

Or the point is that revelation is on a “need to know” basis — and all we really need to know of the Father for salvation and spiritual growth is known by knowing Jesus.

The Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The “I Am” saying here is worth one’s lengthy meditation.

Yes, it does give a simple answer to Thomas’ question. You want to know the way to the place Jesus is going? Jesus himself is the way.

This is, I would say, the classic case where the journey is more important than the destination.

Over the centuries we Christians have been fairly obsessed with the destination: How do we get to heaven? Who’s going to get there and who isn’t?

Jesus says that he is the Way. That deflates all of the huffing and puffing about who gets in through the pearly gates and how. What really matters is drawing close to him, knowing Jesus, walking with him wherever he goes.

And it isn’t just that by following he will lead you to the destination. As he’ll point out in the next chapter, the whole enterprise comes down to being fully connected to him, like a branch to the life-giving vine.

It is not about going somewhere. It is about being in communion with Someone.

We have tended to turn this statement that Jesus is “the Way” into something of a measuring stick for the “who is in/who is out” question. And Jesus’ own words seem to point us that way when he says nobody comes to the Father except through him.

But it does not have to be so. If being “the Way” is a highway metaphor, we need to think about how Jesus takes on that metaphor.

We often seem to assume a picture where he’s sitting in the toll both, letting us pass only if we say the special words of allegiance.
It is also possible to picture him as the construction crew building the highway, or really as the highway itself, the answer to the prophet’s call through John the Baptist.

His birth, his life, his work, are all God’s effort to provide a way on which we can come back to where we were created to be, in the loving embrace of our creator.

Then whoever travels to the Father is traveling on the Way the Father provided — consciously or not.

And Jesus says he is the Truth. He is answering in advance the question Pontius Pilate will ask before sending Jesus to his death:

What is truth?” (John 18:38 NRSV)

It is the grand and paradoxical message of Christianity that truth, ultimately, is a Person.

This is far more than a statement that the church’s teachings about Jesus are true. It is more that he himself is the measure of the Truth that matters.

He shows us in his very being what is true about God, and who God is.
He shows us in his very being what is true about humanity, and what we are intended to be.

Lastly Jesus says he is the Life.

Being the Life is far more than something we get a dose of to carry us through another week — the pressure a pump provides to a tire so it can roll more smoothly.

Better, especially in this time of year, to look at the trees budding, and the flowers pressing up from the earth. He is the very LIFE that bursts forth in this world — and in us, as people, as people of faith, as people drawn to him for all eternity.

Like with saying he is the Truth, Jesus as Life is the measure of what real living is intended to be.

Like with saying he is the Way, Jesus as Life is the very thing itself that we seek, the gift of truly being rather than a destination to achieve in the future.

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Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 4, John 10:1-10

Sheepfold CC by Ameixial 2.0

In each year, on the fourth Sunday of Easter, the Revised Common Lectionary invites us to consider John 10. Why? They don’t say.

They leave behind the resurrection appearances. Maybe they want us to look back at these earlier stories about Jesus and our relationship to him with the knowledge of his resurrection firmly in mind.

It’s a different hunk of John 10 each year.

This year (Year A) we get John 10:1-10, including Jesus saying “I am the gate for the sheep.”
Next year it will be John 10:11-18, in which Jesus will shift the metaphor and say “I am the good shepherd.”
In Year C it will be John 10:22-30, in which Jesus moves on, but will refer back to these teachings, saying that his sheep hear his voice and follow him.

I won’t blame you if you have trouble keeping hold of the thread of the discussion in mind from year to year.

John 10:1-11

In this year’s passage, Jesus teaches about himself as the gate of a sheepfold. He talks about the shepherd, but doesn’t yet claim that title. In fact his use of the metaphor of the gate seems to leave someone else in the role of shepherd. He tells us,

Very truly, I tell you,

I am the gate for the sheep.” (John 10:7 NRSV)

But he has already said,

The one who enters by the gate

is the shepherd of the sheep.” (John 10:2 NRSV)

And the personified gate opens up for this non-gate shepherd.

So it sounds like somebody else, but when Jesus is playing with metaphors, in parables or in “I Am” sayings, such matters are flexible.

I remember hearing or reading someone who said that the two images are actually the same. The writer envisioned the walls of a sheepfold having an opening without a physical gate. The shepherd would, so it was said, lay down across this opening to sleep at night. So the shepherd is the gate. Who knows?

I’m just going to comment on a couple features of this passage.

Jesus is really concerned with false shepherds

Woven through the passage are warnings about false shepherds. Their real identity is thieves and bandits, people who endanger the sheep — they aim to steal the sheep and use them for their own purposes, killing them and destroying them.

And when you think about it, aside from wool and milk, most things people use sheep for do require the death of the sheep.

His complaint is most explicitly about the past (see verse 8) but it seems to apply to our time as well.

Look at the horrid band of thieves and bandits who have purported to be Jesus’ own shepherds.

Some have used their followers sexually and financially.
Some have led their followers to their deaths.
Some keep the sheep following along with zeal while the shepherds enrich themselves and destroy the sheepfold, the grassy pastures, and whatever else would protect the sheep’s long term well-being.

Jesus, on the other hand, seems to be more concerned with keeping the sheep alive and, without really stating the reason, helping them and relating to them.

Clearly we sheep need to beware.

Caveat sheeptor

The real sheep know the real shepherd

But the flip side of this, also woven throughout the passage and also relevant to the past and the present, is Jesus’ statement that the real sheep know the voice of the real shepherd.

Jesus’ sheep hear the voice of the thief and bandit, and run away.
They hear the voice of Jesus and they follow.

That ought to be good news for us sheep. It also includes a call to listen closely, to know the biblical Jesus extremely well, so we can spot the fakes, and recognize the voices of non-shepherds.

But heaven help those who claim to be Jesus’ sheep and go following thieves and bandits.

We seem to need a warning about this on a regular basis.

There seems to be a symbiotic relationship between false shepherds, ready to use their offices and roles to enrich and empower themselves, and those would-be sheep who don’t notice that their “shepherds” are leading them to destruction.

So my prayer for those seeking to be Christians in my country is to pay very close attention to the truth and falsehood spoken by those purporting to have their best interests at heart.

The real Jesus’ intentions are good and generous

Jesus’ intentions are good. In fact, Jesus’ intentions are extremely generous.

He doesn’t come to ensure his own hold on power.

He lays down his own life for the sheep.

He comes that the sheep may have life, and have it abundantly.

Let the reader understand.

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The post Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 4, John 10:1-10 appeared first on Gary Neal Hansen.

A Children’s Sermon on Luke 24:13-35 — The Walk to Emmaus

This children’s sermon on Luke 24:13-35 is a bit long, to be quite honest. But the story of Cleophas and the unnamed disciple meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and again at table in the breaking of the bread, is so lovely I wanted to tell it all.

And I suspect that if a pastor goes long in an on-topic children’s sermon, it will be of benefit to all. If time is a genuine issue, one could trim a couple minutes from the grown-ups’ sermon — but again, only if the children’s sermon is on topic rather than being a bit of random comedy or moralization.

I didn’t want to just read it to the kids. I wanted to tell it, in my own words. Then I wanted to wonder with them about it, so that they can internalize it and respond inside themselves. That’s what makes it a children’s sermon!

Feel free to use it, whether in your church’s streaming service or as a bedtime story. And if you do, I’d love to hear how it goes.

A Children’s Sermon on Luke 24:13-35 — The Walk to Emmaus

Today is the third Sunday of Easter. For six Sundays in a row, we celebrate that Jesus is alive again. Now he is with us always.

That first Easter day, Jesus friends were sad and confused.

Early in the morning, some of the women who followed Jesus had discovered the tomb was empty — but they didn’t see Jesus.

Then some of the men who had followed Jesus ran to the tomb to look, and found it really was empty — but they didn’t see Jesus either.

Most of the disciples stayed in Jerusalem. But two of them were so sad that Jesus had died that they decided to leave.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Cleophas.

“Yeah,” said his friend. “This is depressing. Let’s go back home to Emmaus.”

So the two of them took off to walk the seven miles to their home town.

They were so sad about losing Jesus. Being with Jesus had filled them with joy — but now he was gone.

It was hard to comfort themselves as they walked along. The only thing they could do was tell stories about their time with Jesus.

“Remember when he taught us about the mustard seed?”

“Remember that time when he healed those people with leprosy?”

“Remember when he fed 5000 people with just five loaves of bread?”

“And two fish! Don’t forget the fish!”

“Yeah, that was amazing. Hey did you bring something to eat? I’m getting hungry.”

“We’ll get something when we get home to Emmaus.”

It turned out that they weren’t the only people on the road to Emmaus that day. A stranger was walking along and came to join them.

Now here’s the funny thing: The stranger walking along with them was actually Jesus! It was still Easter day, remember, and Jesus had risen from the grave.

But here’s the even funnier thing: Cleophas and his friend were so sad that they couldn’t even recognize Jesus — and they were talking about Jesus at the time.

They told the stranger about the Jesus they loved, and how he had died. They told Jesus that now they were sad and hopeless, and they didn’t know what to do.

Then Jesus did a surprising thing. As they walked along Jesus talked to them about a whole bunch of Bible passages written by the prophets centuries before. Jesus explained how the prophets had said the Messiah would be arrested, and accused, and hurt, and killed — and then the Messiah would rise from the grave and death would be conquered.

Cleophas and his friend had a funny feeling while this stranger talked to them about Jesus. It was like their hearts were burning — I think they were so excited to feel hope again.

When they got to their home town, they invited the stranger to come in for dinner. When they sat down, the stranger did things they had seen Jesus do over and over.

They had seen the same things when Jesus fed the 5000.

They had seen the same things when Jesus served them the bread and wine at the Last Supper.

And you have seen the same things when the minister has served the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, in church.

Jesus took the bread in his hands.
Jesus blessed the bread in a prayer.
Jesus broke the bread into pieces.
Jesus gave the bread to them to eat.

Then another really surprising thing happened. When Jesus took the bread, and blessed, and broke, and gave it to them, suddenly they recognized the stranger. It was Jesus!

And then one last surprising thing happened: Jesus vanished.

I wonder if you’ve ever been so sad that you just wanted to give up?
I wonder if you’ve ever been cooped up for too long and just wanted to get away?
I wonder if you’ve ever been for a walk with a friend and felt like Jesus was there?
I wonder if you’ve ever heard a story from the Bible and felt like Jesus was there?
I wonder if you’ve ever had a meal with people you loved, and felt like Jesus was there?
I wonder if you’ve ever had the bread and wine of communion in church and felt like Jesus was there?
I wonder whether sometimes Jesus is with you even when you don’t feel like Jesus is there?

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And come back soon! I’m doing a children’s sermon each week on the upcoming Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary.

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Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 3, Luke 24:13-35

Luke 24:13-35

I love this Sunday’s Gospel text. To me, among all the resurrection appearances in the Gospels, Luke 24:13-35 evokes something of the way you and I still encounter the risen Christ.

Two disciples on a walk to Emmaus, talk about Scripture with Jesus unawares. Then at table when they get there, they find Christ in their midst. We often meet him in similar places.

We don’t expect to see him bodily. We know he ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of his Father.

But we do expect him to be present. As he said over in Matthew, just after giving the Great Commission,

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20 NRSV)

Sure, in the common piety of North American Christianity Jesus is there in our hearts, just where we asked him to be. And sure, we are called to at least try to see him in the face of those we encounter and who, hopefully, we treat with his kindness (cf. Matthew 25:31-46).

This text is about another kind of encounter — maybe two, actually — that we still have and wake up to say “Hey! That was Jesus!”

On the Road

You and I will hear or preach this story on the third Sunday of Easter, but within Luke’s Gospel the scene is still the very day Jesus rose from the grave.

In the morning the women went and found the tomb empty. Then Peter ran to the tomb, finding it empty as well.

None of them, at least in scenes recorded by Luke, had actually s the risen Christ.

Now, later in the afternoon, one disciple named Cleopas, and another unnamed, walk away from Jerusalem.

That fact is worth pondering. It seems like the rest of the disciples were all sticking together. They were behind locked doors in John, and at the end of this text that’s where Cleophas and old what’s his name will find them.

So why did these two high-tail it out of there? The text says they were sad (cf. verse 17). Were they so bummed that they decided to bag the whole “following Jesus” thing? It does sound like they were kind of packing it in.

The predominant mood sounds like grief — and that should not surprise us. Jesus died two days before, and they had set all their hopes on him. To their knowledge, despite the tale of the empty tomb, nothing about their loss has changed.

When people are grieving, often they wand to talk about their loss, chewing over memories both good and bad, processing hopes dashed, what might have been, what should have been. And that’s just what they were doing. They were

…talking with each other

about all these things that had happened.

… talking and discussing…” (Luke 24:14-15)

When a stranger joins them on the road, they are amazed that he appears not to know about Jesus and how he was arrested, tried, tortured, killed. That’s like grief too: the loss is so consuming that it can be a shock to find that anyone is unaware of it.

What we know, but Cleophas and his chum do not know, is that this ignorant stranger is actually Jesus himself, risen from the dead.

You might think that when the person they are talking about at that very moment shows up they would be startled, relieved, filled with joy. But no. They are utterly oblivious.

… but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:16 NRSV)

My first instinct always assumes it was Jesus himself who “kept” their eyes from seeing the obvious. Today, however, it sounds like another symptom of grief. When you are overwhelmed by your awareness of a loss, you just can’t see the rest of the world accurately. It can seem like a kind of madness.

But the fact remained: Jesus was there with them in their grief, known or unknown.

And Jesus met them in their confusion. As they walked the miles to Emmaus, he helped them understand the biblical hints, allusions, and outright predictions that the Messiah would suffer, die, and only then rise again to glory.

In the words of the NRSV,

…he interpreted to them

the things about himself

in all the scriptures.” (Luke 24:27 NRSV)

The same word is rendered, in other translations and other biblical contexts, “explained,” “expounded,” or even “translated.” The Greek word is a variant on the one from which we get “hermeneutics,” the rules, and principles, and practice of “interpretation.”

In some circles (not the best educated circles) the word “interpretation” is not held in favor. I’ve heard people say, “That’s just interpretation,” meaning “you are twisting the text away from its actual and obvious meaning.”

Really, though, “interpretation” is simply what we do when we encounter a text and try to draw meaning from it. Interpretation is unavoidable. The point is to interpret wisely and well.

And that’s what Jesus did for Cleopas and Disciple Doe. The particular term for “interpretation” here is sort of an emphatic form. Jesus interpreted soundly, guiding them to the particular meaning God had intended in those texts he pointed out,

…beginning with Moses

and all the prophets…” (Luke 24:27 NRSV)

Chances are they were quite familiar with those texts. We may be familiar with Scripture as well, from Genesis to Revelation. But this text is telling us that to really get what Scripture is trying to give, we need more than our own skill as readers and scholars.

That is to say, to find Jesus in the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and through all the prophets, just like these grieving disciples we need Jesus to help us.

Historically, Christians have tended to say that Jesus has in fact helped us, all of us, the Church. We have a shared Christ-centered understanding of the Bible, or at least of a vast swath of the Bible, including an Old Testament that points to Jesus, Gospels that show him in the flesh, and the rest of the New Testament that shows how he was revealed and understood in the working and thinking of the Apostles.

So this is one way that we still encounter the risen Christ. In the midst of our grief, our anxiety, our confusion, our self-referential obsession, we hear the Church and the Spirit teach us how Jesus is present in the through-line of Scripture.

And surprisingly often, after spending time listening closely to Scripture, we wake up and say

Wow! Jesus was here! He spoke to me somehow.

It was like that for these disciples on the Emmaus road.

Were not our hearts burning within us

while he was talking to us on the road,

while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32 NRSV)

At the Table

Then they arrived at Emmaus. Jesus seemed to be heading farther down the road, but they asked their new friend to stay for dinner.

The disciples are the hosts if Emmaus was their home town, or perhaps as artists have often portrayed it, they were inviting Jesus to join them at an inn.

It was Jesus, though, who took the lead.

Jesus took bread in his hands.
Jesus blessed it.
Jesus broke the bread.
Jesus gave the bread to them.

And those four actions should sound very familiar. That’s what Jesus did at the Last Supper.

Perhaps Cleophas and Bob had been there in the upper room with the twelve and whoever else.

Those actions also harkened to the times when he fed the 5000.

Whatever context came to mind, it was when Jesus took bread, blessed, broke, and gave it to them that their eyes were opened. For a split second they saw, they knew, that this stranger was Jesus.

I hope that experience has at least a tingle of familiarity to you.

It is at table that we are most likely to have palpable and mysterious encounters with Jesus.

Often it is when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Even in churches that don’t celebrate the Eucharist frequently or have a strong emphasis on Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, people encounter Christ in that sacred meal. Ask around. You’ll find people who will tell you that their closest and most prayerful encounters with God are when they receive the sacrament.

But it also happens when we share an ordinary meal with ordinary Christians. Sharing table fellowship — and I’m meaning an actual meal at home or at a restaurant, not snacks at coffee hour — can break down barriers, build common ground, and reveal the image of Christ in your companions.

I’ve had many meals like that. I remember one in particular, when I was first living on my own. I had a couple dear friends over and made something that seemed especially complicated. My friends helped me bring it all together. When the table was set and the food was finally before us, we sat, just as the record on the stereo clicked to a John Fisher song.* He sang,

Rest, rest in him; your work is through…

It was our grace. Christ was in our midst!

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*John Fisher was a really wonderful Christian folk/pop singer back in the day. He’s still alive, writing and speaking, though he doesn’t seem to have done any new recordings in a long while. I tried to get you a YouTube of him singing the song I mentioned, but couldn’t find one. Alas! It seems his music is now very hard to find in digital or even used in vinyl form. (If you happen to see this, Mr. Fisher, please upload those albums to iTunes!)

The post Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 3, Luke 24:13-35 appeared first on Gary Neal Hansen.

A Children’s Sermon on John 20:19-31 — Doubting Thomas

I love the stories of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, and especially the two related to “doubting Thomas.” But writing a children’s sermon on John 20:19-31 could go a couple different ways.

That’s because there are two separate but related resurrection appearances here:

Jesus appears to the Apostles, without Thomas, on Easter evening.
Jesus appears to them again, with Thomas, a week later.

I decided to focus mostly on the first of these appearances this time around. Usually the second gets all the attention, with its focus on Thomas’ resistance to believing and getting his own resurrection appearance.

But the first appearance deserves a closer look: It is John’s version of the “Great Commission” and has a lot to tell any Christian about what we are called to be and do in the world.

Feel free to use this, whether as a children’s sermon or as a bedtime story for your kids. But be sure to include the wondering questions at the end! That’s where you see the wheels turn as the integration of a great Bible text begins.

A Children’s Sermon on John 20:19-31

Last week we celebrated Easter, when Jesus stopped being dead and was alive again. Well Jesus being alive again is such a big, wonderful thing, that we are still celebrating it. In fact, we’ll be celebrating Easter for five more Sundays.

Today the Gospel reading tells about two more times that the risen Jesus came to visit his friends.

On the evening of that first Easter Sunday, Jesus’ friends had locked themselves inside one big room. They were afraid. They didn’t know what to do. They had heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus was alive again, but none of the Apostles had actually seen Jesus.

They were trying to stay safe by staying inside together. But sometimes, when you are all cooped up inside together, it just makes you feel even more scared.

Thomas, he was one of the Apostles, was starting to feel like one more hour stuck in that room would drive him CRAZY.

So he said, “I’m going for a walk.”

They asked, “What? Out there? Aren’t you scared?”

And Thomas said, “I’m more scared that if I stay in this room I’ll go completely bonkers! Plus, we need groceries.”

So Thomas went out.

But just then, when the doors were all closed and locked, Jesus walked in.

Well, you can just imagine how startled they all were.

“Hello, my friends!” Jesus said. “I have something for you.”

“What is it?” they asked.

“Peace!” said Jesus. “You don’t have to worry or fight any more. I’m alive! Peace be with you! And guess what? I have a job for you to do.”

“What is it you want us to do?” they asked.

“Two things: First, I want you to be at peace inside yourselves and between each other.”

“Didn’t you already mention that?” someone asked.

“Yes,” he said, “but it’s so important I didn’t want you to forget.”

“What’s the other thing?” someone asked.

“I’m sending you out of this room,” said Jesus. “I want you to go out into the world in the same way my Father sent me into the world.”

“Um… how did your Father send you again?” someone asked.

“Good question,” said Jesus. “The Father sent me with the Holy Spirit so that I could bring God to the world. Everywhere I went, God was there. And now I’m sending you the same way.”

“But Jesus,” someone asked, “we don’t have the Holy Spirit.”

“Good point,” said Jesus. “Come here!” and as they came close to him, he breathed on them and said “Now you have the Holy Spirit! God’s own breath has come over you to fill you up. Now you can go and bring God in the world too. But hey: Where’s Thomas?”

“He went out for groceries,” someone said.

“Well tell him about how I came by and everything I told you.”

Well, Thomas felt bad that he didn’t get to see Jesus that day. But a week later, Jesus came again and talked specially with Thomas.

And you know Thomas took the message of Jesus seriously. According to the earliest records, the apostle Thomas traveled a long way to bring the good news of Jesus. He carried the presence of God with him all the way to India — where there are Christian churches named after him to this day.

I wonder what it felt like to be cooped up in that room with the apostles.
I wonder what they thought and felt when Jesus came through their locked door.
I wonder whether they felt peaceful when Jesus said “Peace be with you!”
I wonder what could help you and me feel more of the peace Jesus wants to give.
I wonder what they thought and felt when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit onto them.
I wonder where you will go, and who you will bring the presence of God to in your lifetime.

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Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 2, John 20:19-31

Peter Paul Rubens, The Incredulity of St Thomas (public domain)

In all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary, on the 2nd Sunday of Easter the Gospel text is the same: John 20:19-31.

You can catch my thoughts from this time last year through this link. Today’s situation is different (oh my, how different…) and so I’m sharing new thoughts. Similar, really, but current.

John 20:19-31

One can speculate a couple possible reasons for the lectionary’s annual repetition of this text.

Perhaps the compilers thought we needed to maximize the resurrection appearances of all the Gospels, since if they stuck to just Matthew in Year A they would run out of material before the season ended.
Perhaps they thought we Christians of later centuries find ourselves aptly reflected in the story of “doubting Thomas,” looking in on the scene like the patrons of the painting by Rubens in the side panels of the triptych, full of their own doubts.
Or perhaps they knew that the Sunday after Easter has extremely low attendance, and repeating this great text would improve the odds of it being heard at all.

The Good News of Peace

I am struck today by Jesus’ message to his anxious followers. There they were, hunkering down in a locked room like there was a global pandemic or something. And in pops Jesus, in the resurrected flesh, and he says to them,

Peace be with you.” (John 20:19 NRSV)

Just in case the message didn’t stick the first time, he repeats it:

Peace be with you.” (John 20:21 NRSV)

So first of all, notice that this is the Good News of the resurrection: we are invited into peace.

And like them, we need peace. They were terrified, bereft of their friend and Lord. And we are terrified, or angry, or both — and with good reason as the virus sweeps through the world, and the attempts to contain it put millions and millions out of work.

Oh yes, we need peace. We need that good news. We need to hear Jesus say,

Peace be with you!

And we need it not to be mere words and best wishes.

In a crucial sense, this peace is his substantive gift to us. Victory over death is peace in the ultimate conflict all must face, and that is what Easter, his resurrection, is all about.

But why did he repeat the message?

After he said it the first time he showed them his scars, and so they knew full well he was there in their midst.

I think it was his perceptiveness, and his kindness.

Jesus knows that anxious people, whether in grief or in a pandemic, forget the possibility of peace — and that means we forget his Good News, the very gift of peace which he came, and died, and rose to provide us.

I hope that Jesus’ resurrection promise of peace goes deep into your heart in the midst of the present conflicts.

We all need peace as we shelter in place, isolate, and keep social distance. It’s crazy-making, this situation, filling individuals with conflict and creating conflicts aplenty between us and those we live with.

But am I at risk of “psychologizing the Gospel”?

Well, I don’t want to turn our salvation to a mere matter of psychology, if that means merely feelings and individual inner states.

But the “psyche” in psychology is your soul — your self, the inner and real you that must go through the world and live the life we are given. If the Gospel doesn’t actually reach your psyche, your soul, then it is hardly good news.

I don’t want to say the Gospel is “merely” psychological, any more than I would say that the Gospel is “merely” forgiveness.

The Gospel is the good news that salvation has come to us in Christ — forgiveness of sins, and the rebirth of our lives, our very souls, selves, psyches, to a life in which there is peace.

Jesus says, to you and to me, as well as to his first disciples,

Peace be with you!

And a Mission

But once Jesus confirmed his message of peace, he did something more.

Jesus gave his disciples a mission.

When you think of Jesus defining his mission you probably remember Matthew’s version:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20 NRSV)

(There’s actually more to it in Matthew: Jesus’ starts by declaring universal authority, and follows up with the promise that he will be with us always. All of that is part of the Great Commission in 18-20. It isn’t intended to make us activists who think it all depends on us.)

Or perhaps you think of Luke’s version from Acts 1:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8 NRSV)

(There’s a bit more to the Great Commission in Acts as well: Jesus frames this call with his declaration that the disciples don’t get to know anything specific about the timing of the end times. Alas, Christians often fail to take that bit to heart.)

But this is John’s “Great Commission,” the risen Christ giving his disciples their marching orders, just like in Matthew and Luke/Acts. Here it is:

Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me,

so I send you.” (John 20:21 NRSV)

Sounds much more simple than the Synoptic versions. But it isn’t.

Just as the Father sent Jesus, so Jesus sends us.

You have to ask, “How was it that the Father sent Jesus?”

God was incarnate in Jesus. By sending Jesus God came in person.

The Father sent Jesus to reveal the Father’s own nature and will, to do the Father’s own acts of redemption — to be the Father’s own presence.

John is emphatic about this point, really. Take a look through John some time and see how many ways Jesus says that he came to reveal the Father, to do the Father’s will, to speak the Father’s words. He was so fully the presence of God in the world that he could tell people that if they’d seen him, they’d seen the Father.

When you think about it, that’s a much bigger calling than “be witnesses” or “make disciples … baptizing … and teaching.”

In John we have a calling not merely to “do” for Jesus, but to “be” something.

We are to be so filled with Jesus that we are as united to him as he is united to his Father. (If you don’t believe me, give John 17 a good close read.)

With that as our calling, nothing is hindered by our pandemic plight.

Draw close to Jesus, like a branch is close to its vine.
Live in the one who is Resurrection and Life; find his life and show it to others.
No matter how much or how little you can go about in the world, you are the light of the world because he who is the Light of the world is within you.

The Holy Spirit given and described

And that’s why he then breathed on them and gave them the Holy Spirit.

That’s how the Father sent him into the world. Remember how the Spirit in the form of a dove descended on him at his baptism? Now, from this early resurrection appearance, we too get this Spirit and are equipped to be for him in the world.

(What happened at Pentecost was not the first coming of the Spirit, but a coming with power, and a coming more broadly to those who follow in faith.)

The surprise here, in our era when the Holy Spirit is expected to come bringing gifts of tongues, and healing, and prophecy, is the purpose Jesus defined for giving the Spirit.

“…he breathed on them and said to them,

‘Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them;

if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’” (John 20:22-23)

That’s a very different kind of empowerment.

That’s probably more authority than most of us actually wanted.

So much easier to go and preach and teach than to have responsibility for other people’s being forgiven or not…

Maybe the whole point of this story is to get us to finally take seriously what he said earlier in the gospel about abiding in Christ.

Thomas and Us

I have to say something about Thomas here before I go. He gets such a bad rap for being a “doubter.”

All he really wanted was the same evidence the others got while he was out buying groceries (surely wearing his home-made face mask like you and I do when we have to go out).

When the rest of them saw the risen Christ,

…he showed them

his hands

and his side.” (John 20:20 NRSV)

So when Thomas came back, he wanted that too:

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.” (John 20:25 NRSV)

To me it sounds quite reasonable. And Jesus provided.

But the Gospel is clear, both in Jesus’ words and John’s editorializing, that this isn’t going to be the case for everybody.

When they go out as he sends them (in the same way he went out sent by the Father) they’ll tell people Jesus rose. But most people will hear about it after his ascension.

Blessed are you and I who hear from trustworthy witnesses, down the centuries’ long chain of testimony.

Blessed are you and I who hear the inner testimony of the Spirit affirming the outer testimony of friends and the Word.

Blessed are we who believe because, as he did with Thomas, Jesus brought us revelation in just the way we needed at just the right time.

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Stay healthy, my friend.

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The post Monday Meditation: RCL Year A, Easter 2, John 20:19-31 appeared first on Gary Neal Hansen.