Plausible Deniability (1 Kings 21:1-21a)

Our Ahab was not a fictional sea-captain, but a very real Israelite King.  He ruled the Northern Kingdom of Israel—headquartered in Samaria—a hundred and fifty years after David.  But most in-the-pew Christians don’t know his name so much as they know his wife’s: Jezebel. We think of her as the quintessential fallen woman, a scheming power-grabber who pulled her husband around by the nose.  And in fact, she seems to have had a huge amount of influence during the reigns of Ahab and his sons.  She worshiped the Ba’als and Asherah, and had tried to kill all the prophets of the Lord, and this is what got her into trouble with Elijah in the first place.  

In our story, she walks in and finds Ahab pouting, “resentful and sullen,” because Naboth refused to sell him some land.  What good is it to be king, anyway, if some mangy Jezreelite can refuse to give him what he wants?  And so when Jezebel comes in, he’s lying on his bed, and refusing to eat, acting like a child . . . and Jezebel falls for it.  She asks him: “Why are you so depressed that you will not eat?”  And far from her reputation—conniving, scheming, seducing—she seems genuinely concerned at her husband’s behavior.  And Ahab exploits that concern, using classic passive-aggressive behavior. Listen to his reply: “I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite, and said ‘Give me your vineyard for money, or else, if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard for it.’”  Very reasonable . . . and truthful.  An accurate account of what happened.  But listen to what Ahab tells Jezebel his answer was-- “‘I will not give you my vineyard.’” Which is true as far it goes, but it’s not exactly complete . . . what Naboth actually said was “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.”  And he’s not just whistling Dixie here . . . the Lord does forbid it, it’s contrary to God’s laws, the law of Moses, for him to sell his ancestral lands outside the family.  Naboth is the prototypic, faithful Israelite who will not violate God’s law . . . and that maybe why Ahab slinks away empty-handed—he’s in enough trouble with God over his wife’s idol worship.

So.  He craftily doesn’t tell Jezebel about why Naboth refused him, and she jumps to the anticipated conclusion—“Do you not rule Israel?  Aren’t you the King?”  She comes from Phoenician royal stock, where you don’t coddle tribal nobodies like Naboth. And now she commands the King: “Arise . . . eat some food . . .  be cheerful.  I’ll give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.”  And I can imagine that Ahab is pretty pleased with himself . . .  he’s manipulated his wife—who, after all, is already in hot water with God—into doing what he wants all along.  He’s got plausible deniability—“Who me?  I know nothing, nothing, I tell you . . . Jezebel’s the one who did it . . . you know how she is . . .”

And she does it.  She writes letters in the royal name and seals them with the royal seal and sends them to the royal nobles and elders and other assorted hangers-on . . . “Give a big old fast,” she tells them, “And invite Naboth to sit at the head of the whole she-bang, and seat a couple of scoundrels—you know, ruffians, scallawags, ne’er-do-wells—opposite him.  And they can bring a charge against him, bear false witness . . . that he’s cursed God and the King, or something, and then we can stone him to death.”  And even though she might not get the irony, we certainly can appreciate it—the last thing the devout Naboth would do is curse God . . . he wouldn’t even sell a measly little vineyard against the will of God, much less curse God . . . and he’d probably never curse the King, either, who’s just a little lower than God . . .

And it all goes down as planned—a mighty fast, Naboth at the head of the crowd, and he’s called out like in a gun-fight . . . “You cursed my God and my king, you lily-livered, yellow-bellied, king-curser.  Why, that’s downright unpatriotic.”  And the elders and nobles and other assorted hangers-on are shocked! simply shocked, because they had thought Naboth to be a devout man, a faithful man, who holds his God and his King in the highest regard . . . and they have no choice but to stone him, and a sad business it is, but it has to be done, and the minute Jezebel hears that Naboth is dead, she says to Ahab—“Go, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite . . . for he is not alive, but dead.”  She doesn’t tell him how he was killed, and he doesn’t ask . . . plausible deniability at its best.

Once again, he’s insulated himself from the action, once again a casual onlooker would say . . . that evil woman, she’s led poor old Ahab down the garden path, she’s like Rebekah, scheming for her son, or Tamar for her rights as daughter-in-law . . . they don’t call her Jezebel for nothing.  And the text—doubtlessly written by a guy—the text plays along, it lovingly details Jezebel’s plan, going over it twice—once when she gives the orders, and then when it’s carried out—and we’re already predisposed to think ill of Jezebel, anyway, because she tried to wipe the worship of God out by having all those prophets killed.

But there’s a funny thing about Scripture . . . the truth tends to bethere, if you just look for it, and there are hints in the narrative . . . Ahab’s passive-aggressive behavior, his less-than truthful account of Naboth’s answer, the fact that he’s never actually told what went on, all point to his manipulative behavior. In fact, the whole episode ought to remind us of another story about royal murder, another time a King insulated himself from the actual deed . . . David, of course, who falls in, uh . . . love with Bathsheba, who is inconveniently married to Uriah the Hittite . . . and he tries to do him in, but he keeps getting foiled by Uriah’s faithfulness and loyalty, and finally he gives detailed instructions to his lackey . . . “Set this guy in the forefront of the hardest fighting, then leave him alone so that he might die.”  And it’s curious that history and traditional Biblical interpretation has done the same thing to Bathsheba as it’s done to Jezebel . . . blame a woman for the misdeeds of a King.  But if we’re honest, it’s hard to find fault at all with Jezebel, at least this time.  She’s just playing her role, protecting her husband’s prerogatives as King. It’s clear that Ahab has at least an equal part of the blame, if not the lion’s share.                

If anyone has a problem with politics and religion, they’d better just steer clear of 1&2 Kings . . .  and 1&2 Samuel, for that matter . . . these books are highly politically-charged, they’re all about who’s going to rule the Hebrew people and the consequences of that rule . . . For a long time, the Israelites were a tribal people, living in loosely organized clans and ruled by local chieftains.  But then the people began to clamor for a King to protect them, to ride out before their armies and slay their enemies.  And God finally acquiesced, and gave them what they wanted—first Saul and then the house of David.  But not before Samuel, the last of the judges, warned them: “These will be the ways of the king . . . he’ll take your sons. . . and he’ll take your daughters . . . and he’ll take the best of your fields and vineyards” note the vineyards part “and olive orchards . . . he’ll take the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to hiswork . . .”  Kings take and take and take, and beginning with David, who took Uriah’s wife, that’s exactly what happened . . .

In our story, Ahab and Jezebel further prove Samuel’s prophecy: they kill Naboth and take his land because they want it and they have the power. They take his land, the one thing that gives tribal peoples stability under very uncertain agricultural conditions like Palestine.  Before there were kings, and royal households to support, peasants could take the surpluses of the fat years, the years when crops were good, and store them to see them through the lean years—and in Palestine, there was plenty of lean years. Under the monarchy, the ruling elite—the king and the nobles and elders— begun taking those surpluses to pay for luxury items—like palaces—and strategic concerns, like standing armies.  Because of this, the peasants’ surpluses grew slim, and when natural disaster struck, they had to borrow to get by, and the only ones who had any surplus were the ruling elite.  Further, he only collateral the peasants had was their land and their selves, and high interest rates insured that foreclosures were frequent. More and more land ended up in the hands of the ruling elite, and more and more peasants ended up as tenant farmers or day-workers on their own land.

As Naboth said, land was “inheritance,” passed down from generation to generation, and in the book of Numbers you can find elaborate rules for ensuring that they remain within the family.  Opposed to this is the view of Ahab and Jezebel, who see land as a commodity, liable to be bought and sold.  Sell me the vineyard, Ahab said . . . but for Naboth, land was not a commodity, but a “place to come to, as Walter Brueggemann put it,  a place of refuge, a place to provide the proverbial shelter from the storm.  For the King and Queen, it was something to be traded, to be enjoyed, perhaps, but ultimately just part of their accumulated wealth, like a gold coin.

And now that capitalism is approaching global status, all holdings are in danger of being reduced to tradable commodity.  Where peoples with a tribal, inherited notion of land come up against modern capitalists, they are at a tremendous disadvantage, and they always lose.  See South Africa—where European capitalists reduced the population to virtual slavery. See South America—where global corporations are at this moment doing the same.  John Steinbeck wrote about it in Grapes of Wrath, where natural disasters combine with predatory lending practices to create homeless, landless peasants out of family farmers, many of whose land had been in their familes for generations.  And it still goes on today, as competition and corporate farming force small farmers off the land.  Our modern Kings—global corporations and the governments that are beholden to them—behave not much differently from the rapacious king Davids and Ahabs of old.

Well.  There is good news in all of this, and it is that God is on the side of the little guy.  Look at what happens to Ahab:  the word of God comes to Elijah the Tishbite—God’s favorite prophet—and it tells him “go down to the vineyard and say to Ahab “Have you killed, and also taken possession?’” And it’s clear that despite Ahab’s wiggling, despite his misdirection and plausible deniability, God’s not confused about what went on, about who it was caused the killing . . . and God has Elijah pronounce a doom “Thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.”  Yikes! Not a very pretty fate.

God doesn’t like it when the powerful prey on the weak. God doesn’t like it when people are done out of their land and their possessions by predatory royal or corporate practices.  God didn’t like it when it happened to Naboth, and I’ll bet God doesn’t like it when it happened to Enron employees, who lost their investments and pensions—their surplus!—at the hands of their leaders.  I’ll bet God doesn’t like it when thousands of employees of IBM or Boeing or General Electric or whatever corporation is giving out golden parachutes these days, when thousands of their employees are made jobless, sacrificed on the altar of the bottom line.

The good news is that God is always on the side of the weak and the powerless and the marginal.  That salvation continues to break in with surprising, astounding grace upon the face of the earth.  And the coming of God’s Son began it all, it was the beginning of the end to systems of domination, to the oppression of the poor and the exploitation of the weak, whether we recognize it or not.  That’s the God we worship, folks . . . who loved the oppressed and powerless, loved the little guy—indeed loved the whole world—so much that he sent his only begotten son.  That’s the God we worship, and the good news we proclaim. Amen.

Go With the Flow (Trinity Sunday C)

It’s Trinity Sunday, when we’re supposed to contemplate the one-ness of the Godhead. Only problem is, of all the mysteries of the church, this may be the most mysterious . . . and at the root of it is what we sang in the first hymn: “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” How can there be three persons in one? How can we speak of one God, when in the bible it’s as if there are three? Well, the way we usually do it is . . . we don’t. We say the words but don’t really understand it, or . . . I’ll go so far as to say . . . believe it. But there it is: a bed-rock doctrine of the Christian faith. And if you ask any Christian theologian on almost any seminary campus, she’ll tell you that you can’t be a Christian without believing in the Trinity.

Which used to tick my friend Daniel off mightily, because he claimed to be a Christian without believing in the Trinity, and who am I to argue? As far as I’m concerned, the only one who gets to determine who’s a Christian is God’s own self. Daniel was an official in a denomination called “The Church of God, General Conference, Morrow, Georgia,” and when I knew him he was publications editor. He was a classmate of mine at Columbia, which just happened to be the nearest seminary to . . . you guessed it, Morrow, Georgia. And the reason he didn’t believe in the Trinity is that it isn’t in the Bible. Really . . . it isn’t in the bible. As far as members of the Church-of-God in Morrow Georgia are concerned, if it ain’t in the Bible, they don’t believe in it. If God were really three-in-one, they imply, God would have told us so in the Bible. And so, my friend Daniel would wince every time somebody in our theology class—usually the teachers—would make some snide comment about non-Trinitarians. Of course, Church of God, General Conference, Morrow Georgia-ites don’t accept the divinity of Christ, either, and for the same reason, but that’s another story . . .

But for orthodox Christians, the Trinity is a foundational idea, even though it isn’t in the Bible, a fact that I know surprises some folks, they say what do you mean, it’s not in the Bible, look—here it talks about the Spirit, and over here the Son, and it’s just fullof talk about the Father, and of course that’s right, in the passage I just read—the lectionary passage, by the by--Jesus talks about God the father and the coming of God the Spirit, the Spirit of truth, but what’s missing is the idea of three in one and one in three.

That idea had its genesis in the early days of the faith, as people reflected on the scriptures and their own experience with the divine. For his earliest followers, encountering Jesus was somehow encountering God; at the same time, Jesus spoke of God as both distinct from him (as when he prayed to God, or spoke of God as the One who sent him) and yet nevertheless “one” with him. There was both a “two-ness” and a “oneness” in play, and so Christians looked for ways to express this mystery with poetry and precision. At the same time, early disciples experienced encounters with the Spirit as encounters with God—and at the same time, Jesus spoke of the Spirit as a guiding, challenging presence distinct both from him and from the One to whom he prayed.

And as the early Christians meditated on all of this, the doctrine of the Trinity emerged: the idea that God is properly thought of as both Three and One. Not three Gods, because for that would miss God’s oneness. And not merely One, because that would miss God’s three-ness, and wouldn’t do justice to the sense of encountering God in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And we can see that far from being an esoteric, metaphysical picture of God somewhere “up there,” the teaching casts a vision of God down here and everywhere, continuously redeeming and creating and sustaining the universe. As Luke puts it over in Acts, it is a God “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.”

But its foundation in real, theological wondering doesn’t mean it didn’t serve apologetic purposes as well . . . early Christianity was having to defend itself from critics who said “What’s all this about a Father, Son and Holy Spirit? I thought you were monotheistic . . . sounds like three Gods to us.”And the doctrine became a political football as well, as several Roman Emperors sought to force the church to come to a definitive doctrine, the better to use Christianity to stabilize the Empire by.

But as things got more complex, as the doctrine matured, it didn’t filter down to the people in the pews. It gained a reputation as esoteric, and un-understandable, and it became largely unknown and ignored, even in theological thought. As prominent Jesuit scholar Karl Rahner observed, “Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists.’” Note the word “mere.” He continued: ”We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.”

We can understand having three of something: three jobs, or three ideas, or three cars, but actually being three things? Even worse, three persons?  A person is the basis of who we are as individuals, who each one of us is. How can God be three people?

First of all, there’s confusion introduced by translating the Latin word personaas “person.” It’s derived from the verb personare, which implies a process, not a thing. And the process it points to is “to sound through.” As Richard Rohr puts it, members of the Trinity were considered a personas, or “faces,” of God. “Each person of the Trinity fully communicated its face and goodness to the other, while fully maintaining its own facial identity within itself. Each person of the Trinity ‘sounded through’ (per-sonare) the other.” Each member of the Trinity is thus a “sounding-through,” as in a note or even a full symphony. I like to think of the God-head that way, as a simultaneous, polyphonic, joyful noise, or maybe a jazz trio, riffing off of one another through eternity.

Of course, any way of thinking about the Trinity is a metaphor—Richard makes a joke in one of his books when he says “metaphors be with you” (get it? May the force be with you?). Any way of talking about the Trinity is using words to describe about something beyond words, or as Buddhists put it, a finger pointed to the moon. And another metaphor has been around for millennia, though largely forgotten until just recently. That’s the metaphor of a “circle dance,” referenced in the word perichoresis: the picture of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer in an endless dance, an eternal pas de trois, where the members prance and leap and sashay joyfully one around another, personaring—sounding through—one another with abandon.

Eastern theologians likened the interaction between the members in the eternal dance to an endless flow, circulating throughout the dance from Father to Son, Son to Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit to Father, and so on, like and endless, cascading stream with no beginning or end. And what flows between the Comforter, the Redeemer, and the Creator? Life. Vitality. Creation.  What flows in never-ending pools and eddies, currents and rapids, ripples and cascades, is the motive-force of the universe, round and round. In short, what flows between the Father and Spirit and Son is nothing less than an endless waterfall of love.

Note that the members of this joyful dance are together the Godhead, they are collectively God.  So the thing about the dance metaphor is it’s not that God is participating in the dance, not that God is dancing, but that God is the dance. God is not a noun, not a thing, but a verb. God is process and motion, God is a dance. And what it the defining thing about a dance?  The relationships between the dancers. In fact, it can be said that that’s what God is: interaction. Communication. Relationship. And what is that relationship? Love. Remember what First John said? God is love? Could that be what he meant?

Andrei Rublev’s fifteenth-century icon The Hospitality of Abraham has three figures that represent the three angelic visitors of Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre. Because there are three of them, and because they together represent the divine, the painting has also been called, and interpreted as, The Trinity.  The winged individuals are gathered around a table, and the perspective is such that it almost draws an onlooker in. On the end of the table facing the viewer is a square patch of what spectral analysis has found to be glue, and what may have been glued there was a mirror. Placed there by Rublev himself or by a later hand, taken together with the perspective, it indicates there’s room at the table for a fourth:  the observer. You. Me. We participatein the divine economy, we dance in the perichoretic flow.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, Jesus said he abides in us and we in him, and we know the Holy Spirit dwells deep within our hearts. So it makes sense that the divine flow goes right, smack dab through us as well. We stand in the flow, bathed in God’s love . . . unless we block it. Unless we refuse to participate. And how do we do this? By drawing into ourself . . . the flow is love, relationship, and we block the flow—through us, not the universe—we block it when we cut off relationships, when we despise another person, when we refuse to forgive.

Richard Rohr is convinced that when we “try to stop this flow moving through us, with us, and in us, we fall into the true state of sin—and it is truly a state more than a momentary behavior.  It is the state of being closed down, shut off, blocked . . . By a hardened heart or a cold spirit, by holding another person apart in hatred” we cut ourselves off from the flow.

And here’s where I loosen my collar like Rodney Dangerfield and admit that too often I do this, too often I stopper up the flow with my petty prejudices and dislikes, that I become a blockage to love rather than a clear conduit. But the good news is that we don’t have to do that, we can let ourselves be open to it, we can let down our guards and let others in. It’s not necessarily easy, it’s not necessarily easy to be vulnerable, to cast aside our prejudices and open ourselves up to our neighbors. But when we do, we not only open ourselves to others, we open ourselves to God’s ever-flowing energy and love. Amen.

Babble On (Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-13)

If you hang around Pentecostal churches long enough, you’ll hear somebody speaking in tongues. And if you hang around even longer, you’ll learn that the phenomenon—called “glossolalia”—can be divided into two broad categories. The first is speaking in an unknown language, as in unknown to anybody.Pentecostals tend to believe that these are divine languages, completely unknown to the user or anyone else on earth. I’ve heard it just a couple of times, and it seemed to me highly repetitive both times. Wikipedia, may its name be blessed, helpfully provides an example: “Orawashia dela sende.”

The other broad category is sometimes called “xenolalia” or “xenoglossy” (again, thanks Wikipedia!), and it refers to speaking in a language unknown to the speakerbut that is nevertheless a known, world tongue. Like, if you’re speaking in Russian but you’ve never been to Russia or studied Russian or knowna Russian, etc. It’s a known language but you don’t know it. I’ve never heard this second kind, but I have it on good authority that it does still happen. When I was working as a research biologist, another scientist—a good friend and co-worker—swore up and down that he attended a service where this happened. As usual, my response to this sort of thing is “well, if God can create the universe then God ought to be able to make one guy talk in Slovenian. Or Romanian. Or Litvak.”

As you’ve probably figured out, our passage from Acts is about the second kind of glossolalia, and it’s very practical. Peter and a hundred and twenty of his closest friends—that’s the disciples plus those converted in the seven weeks since the crucifixion—Peter and the others were hanging out on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, maybe watching some fireworks or a football game, snarfing up some chips and dip, when whoa, Nelly! Here comes this gosh-awful sound that was so loud they’d have thought it was an on-coming trainif trains had been invented yet. As it was,some of them thought “a tornado?I never even heard a siren. . .”

But of course, it wasn’t a tornado, or even a train,and it filled the entire house where they were sitting—the sound, not the wind. Not a hair on anyone’s head or a chip in anyone’s bowl was disturbed. And if thatwasn’t weird enough, tonguesappeared resting on each of them—not hovering over them, as it’s usually pictured, but resting on them. And though we always think of them as tongues of fire, and it could be, it really doesn’t say that. It says the tongues were as offire, that is, divided,and does this allude to the Babylon passage that was read earlier? Were they really big, slurpy tongues that got the disciples all wet and stuff?

And although some commentators call it a reversal,what actuallyhappened was, like, a workaroundof the Tower of Babel. In that story, as we heard, people were punished for getting too big for their britches—aka, reaching for the heavens—and God smote them so that they all began speaking different tongues.And of course, this divided them forever, at least until the introduction of on-line language programs, and thus the tongues are divided.And Lo! After the tongues had settled on the One-Hundred-and-Twenty, they all started speaking other languages, presumably about a hundred and twenty of them. Or maybe they spoke the languages two-by-two, like the animals on Noah’s ark, or maybe there was a bank of Hindi speakers over here, a bunch of Arabic species over there, whatever . . . Luke doesn’t tell us.

What’simportantis that while the state of things after the Tower of Babel wasn’t reversed, that group of Jesus’ followers—aka, the Church—was given the tools to dealwith the whole thing. And it was all due to that rushing tornado/freight-train called the Holy Spirit. It seemed Jesus had been correct—and had anybody really doubted him?—when he predicted the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the church and its members. Here at Pentecost that was demonstrated in the most dramatic way possible.

Let’s stay with the image of the mighty wind, as it’s called in the King James, for just a little. If you’re a land-bound, newly-minted Christian, who might never have seen the Sea (it was 60 miles away), the most powerful thing you might ever have seenwas a violent storm, perhaps howling out of the desert, or driving fishing boats before it like so many matchsticks. Naked, raw power, power enough to sculpt the earth, leveling temples and dwellings and killing sheep and cattle and fishermen alike. Couple that with the Genesis image of a wind from Godthat blew over the earth, creating land and light and human beings, and you get a picture of the Spirit as energy, as vitality,as force.And to Luke, the author of Acts—and to Matthew and Mark as well—that’s what the Holy Spirit is: power. And after Jesus left the planet, it was given to Christians, symbolized by the freight-train wind and those big, fat tongues.

To Luke, the Spirit represents the power to spread the gospel. Power to heal those who need healing and feed those who need feeding. Power to overcome the powers-that-be, who are always arrayed against the truth of the Divine. And there’s nothing better than Acts at showing the power of the Spirit in the life of the church. Peter and Paul and their cronies are—repeatedly—busted out of prison, where they’ve been locked up for preaching the word. Person after person is—like the Ethiopian Eunuch—converted by Spirit-filled apostles. And those same apostles heal repeatedly in the name of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It’s interesting to compare Luke’s conception of the Spirit with that of John, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Remember? John describes the Spirit with the word “Paraclete,” a word only he uses. And we saw that Paraclete means “one who goes alongside to help,” and boy! That’s certainly what it did at Pentecost! It went alongside the One-Hundred-and-Twenty to empowerthem to fulfill Jesus’ great commission, found over in Matthew, to make disciples of all nations. And you can see the parallel symbolism here, can’t you. Luke uses the same language as in the great commission: devout Jews from every nationare living in Jerusalem, and note that they aren’t pilgrims. They’re livingin Jerusalem and through the power of the Holy Spirit they hear the Gospel of Christ in all their separate tongues.

And thus the division symbolized by Babel’s Tower is not reversedbut overcome,by the Spirit being bestowed upon, coming alongsideof, the baby church. And oh! are the onlookers astonished. Oh! are they bewildered. “Aren’t all these people Galileans? Aren’t they shepherds and shop-owners and fishermen and slaves?They haven’t gone to language school, have they? They haven’t gone to university. . . we’re Parthians, Medes and Elamites, oh my, and a whole boat-loadof other nationalities as well. How can each of us hear in our own native tongue? That’s better even than Rosetta Stone.”

But there’s always someone, isn’t there? There’s always someone in the crowd who refuses to believe their own eyes, who thinks—sometimes through sheer, cynical cussedness—that it’s all an act—get it? Acts?—or that they’re taking really good psychedelic drugs. And while lots of folks exclaimed in wonder, and came away with questions and maybe even life-changing answers, some just sneered and said “they’re drunk on new wine.” And I don’t know about you, but if there’s a wine that enables one to speak in a multitude of languages without even going to school, I want some of that.

Well. As is often the case, doubts and questioning drives good, theological thinking, and this prompted Peter to give his first sermon, which begins “these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning,” proving that Peter didn’t know some of the people I’veknown. But that’s another sermon, and here at Pentecost, I just want to marvel at the gift to the church symbolized by that mighty wind.

And every year it gets me thinking about where I see it working in mylife, and sermon-writing always comes quickly to mind. I think of all the times that I’ve been stuck, that I can’t think what to write next—it’s embarrassing how often that is Saturday night—and then it comes to me as if by magic, I thank the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is a good time for allof us to do that, to think and remember and watchfor it, because as good old John says, the Spirit goes where it will and no-one can say where it’ll end up next. It might even end up with you.Amen.

Unity Matters (John 17:20-26)

When I was in Seminary, way back in the dark ages—actually, it was 1998—we were told that you shouldn’t preach during a prayer. That prayers were for God, for praising and thanking and supplicating, not for trying to make theological points, or any other kind of points, for that matter. No “help us to understand, O Lord, that you are one in three persons” or “Lord, we know that you are always with us” or even “Increase our understanding of our church needs so we can make our pledge accordingly.” Save the preaching to the sermon, my teachers said, it’s bad enough there.

If Jesus was ever taught that, he didn’t listen, because this prayer at the end of the Last Supper is full of preaching. It’s as much about conveying information and comforting his disciples as it is about communicating with the Creator. It’s also his last prayer before the passion, before his arrest and trial, and it’s interesting to compare it to his last prayer in the other Gospels. The contrast is sharp—rather than an anguished plea to “let this cup pass,” Jesus is poised and compassionate. He prays not for himself, but for his friends. In fact, earlier in John’s gospel he says, almost sarcastically, “And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have cometo this hour.” This kind of contrast, far from discrediting the gospels, show how they encourage a vibrant, living debate about Jesus’ life and ministry.

We join his final prayer about two-thirds of the way through. In the first part, he asked God—whom he calls “Father”—that his joy be made complete in them and, crucially, that they be protected: “protect them in your name”, he says. “While I was with them, I protected them in your name . . . I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” Remember that his disciples had just been told that he was leaving them; this straightforward prayer for protection cannot help but comfort them and calm their fears of being left on their own.

Not only did they have to worry about the “evil one,” but also what Jesus calls “the world”—not the physical creation (which God, remember, called “good”), but oppressive social structures, fallen systems of control and governance, what Paul would call the “powers and principalities.” And the important thing to remember here is that Jesus is not setting up a crude, us-versus-them division. The word Jesus uses here for world—kosmos—is the same one he uses in the iconic “For God so loved the kosmos,the world, that he gave his only Son . . .” For Jesus, kosmosrefers to reality in all its brokenness, ignorance, violence, and sin. And God lovesthat broken world, and has sent his Son—who in turn sends the church—into it to redeem it.

And as our passage opens, Jesus clarifies on whose behalf he’s asking God for protection, and this is key: it’s not just his disciples with him in the upper room he’s praying for. He asks “not only on behalf of these”—that is, his current disciples—“but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.” Those futuregenerations who will believe because of the testimony of the currentbunch. And that, of course, includes (a) the Ephesus community for which John is writing sixty years later and (b) us. And what is he asking God? “That they may all be one.”

Of course, because this prayer’s also a sermon, he’s tellinghis disciples—as well as all those future Christian’s converted through their words—to be unified, to beas one. But from the beginning, that ’s been very much easier said than done. In the first century, there were a whole boat-load of ways to be Christian. As we saw last week, there were many gospels written that presented very different pictures of Jesus and his ministry. When John was written, it wasn’t considered scripture, of course, and the way he shaped the story, again as we saw last time, was specific to his time and place. And because they’d just been evicted from their own synagogue community, Jesus’ words tell themto maintain a united front, to not go running off in different, perhaps destructive, directions. 

Unity was a major driving force behind the rise of the Church in the next few centuries. The Church Father’s—and they were all men—knew that unless they were unified, they couldn’t stand against the dominant power and principality du jour, the Roman Empire. But even after that, Christians have been a fractious lot. There have been multiple popes—at the same time—and religious wars raged across the land. But the fact that there were state churches, in Europe at least, kept things tamped down a bit.

Of course, now that in this country, at least, there is religious choice, and vernacular Bibles what everyone can own and form an opinion about, it’s a cornucopia of internecine infighting. Take our own Presbyterians: if you look at a chart of the all the church splits just in this country, it’s almost unreadable, kind of like a plate of spaghetti. American Christians are always fighting and splitting over something or another; most recently in our denomination it’s been over gay marriage and ordination. And sure enough, about eight years ago, our denomination split, on the surface, at least, over these policies.

This receives lots of bad press, and sets the unchurched to wonder if anybodyin the church follows Jesus who, after all, was called the Prince of Peace, and who—in this very passage—called for unity so that the world might believe that he was sent by the Holy One. And sharp minds will recall several weeks ago, when we talked about the great commandment—love one another as I have loved you—sharp minds will recall that it was for the same reason: as a testimony to Christ. It damages the church’s witness to be seen feudin’ and fussin’ and fightin’ among themselves all the time.

But given human nature, how might all this unity come about? Jesus puts it like this, still talking to God the Father: “As you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.”The union shared by redeemer and creator will be shared by the communityif Jesus’ disciples—then and now—are in them.In fact, the glory that God has given Christ—that peculiar glory of a life anddeath, given up to God—the glory the Creator has given to the Redeemer has been given to his disciplesin order for them to be one. God in Christ and Christ in his disciples, they will be completely one, and why? So the powers and principalities might knowthat it was Godwho brought everybody together, who brought everyone to the dance.

Even though the the powers and principalities know who God is, they don’t knowGod, they don’t have an intimate relationshipwith God, they’re not on speaking terms. But his disciples—then and in the future—do. They know and willknow God’s name, and that name confers power, it is the almightyname, the name above everyname. And we know that name, too, it is written in our hearts and minds and souls.And all this for love . . . the love with which God the Father has loved God the Son, the love that God pours out into the Christ, can in turn pour out into us,in and through the power of the Advocate and Comforter, the Holy Spirit.

And that’s where we are today . . . God’s love is in us, both in the community and within each and every one of us. God’s love is in us and through us. We are swathed in it, bathed in it, soakedin it. And it is inus, just as is is Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Keepers of the Flame (John 14:22-31)

Ever since Easter, we’ve been dipping into the Gospel of John. The first couple of readings were post-resurrection appearances —one in the upper room with Thomas and the others, the other on the beach where he cooks his followers a little fish breakfast. The last two weeks have given us pre-resurrection stories, motivated in part by the need to squeeze as much of a fourth Gospel into a three-year lectionary as possible. But in addition, these scriptures provide a look at what Jesus’ ministry is all about from John’sperspective, which is very different from that of the other three Gospels.

One of the reasons it’s so different is the time in which it was written: some ten to twenty years after the other three. The Christian landscape had been changing rapidly since the crucifixion; many, diverse interpretations of the Jesus phenomenon were floated and many sects—some small and some larger—rose and fell. We think there were many gospels written during that period, some—like the Gospel of Thomas—with very different conceptions Jesus and his mission.

Because of all this change, the environment in which Matthew, Mark and Luke were written was very different than when John was written, only a couple of decades later. The first three were written just before and just after the failed Jewish uprising of 70 C.E. As one Biblical scholar put it, they are war-timedocuments—within them, you can read material anticipating and reacting to this tragic and cataclysmic event. The Gospel of John is a very different animal, in part because it was written in Ephesus—far from the Jerusalem nexus— afteranother critical event: the eviction of the Christian house-church communities from the Ephesus synagogue. This conflict with the Jewish religious establishment provides the context for the Farewell Discourse, the teaching Jesus gave at the last Supper, which appears only in John. The disciples’ questions in the discourse reflect questions members of John’s community had, and Jesus addresses members of the house churches at the same time he does his own disciples.

And none of the questions reflect that situation better than the one from Judas—notthatJudas, he’d already left—which begins our passage: “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” It must have been a question much on the minds of John’s Ephesus community, especially in the face of Jewish non-acceptance of the gospel—why did they reject you, Lord? More to the point, how is it that you reveal yourself to us, but not to everyone else? His disciples had believedbecause he’d revealedhimself to them; why hadn’t he done so with everyone else?

Another way to put this question, and it makes more sense in terms of an excluded minority: why do you favor us, Lord? What makes us special enough to receive your special blessing? It must be ‘cause we’re more righteous, more holy, more faithfulthan those whom you have not favored by this revelation. After all, it was their own communitythey’d been cast out of, they were all Jews, there must be somereason . . . John’s Ephesus community needed the answer at leastas much as Judas did sixty years before. They were trying to construct an identity that was different fromand superior tothose who’d thrown them out. It was about community self-esteemas much as anything.

But Jesus doesn’t answer either Judas or any future member of John’s community, at least not directly. The disciples are speaking on one level—that of the kosmos,the world, the powers and principalities—and Jesus is speaking on another, a more spiritual level. This happens a lotin John. And the effect here,as it often is, is to undermine the question by ignoring it—there’s something more important than strengthening egos, than building up walls between us and them. And it’s what those who love him—aka, his followers—do when they arehis followers.

Another way to put it is: Judas asks what sets them apart, what makes them worthy to be chosen, to be revealed-to, and Jesus turns it around and tells them what they will do if they are his followers. Never mind those others, he’s saying, never mind what they might do or what they might lack, that’s none of your business. Whoever truly loves me, whoever is my disciple, keeps my word. And notice that it’s not a command, particularly, not a “you’d better keep my word or else,” it’s simply descriptive. Those who are like thatdo this,like if they’re horses, they run; if they’re accountants, they count; if they love me, they keep my word.

Of course, Jesus isn’t stupid, he knowsthat this will set his disciples to fretting about how well they’re keeping his word: they thinkthey love him, they feellike it, anyway . . . and hadn’t they followed him all over kingdom come?Isn’t that a strong indicationthat they love him? Doesn’t that proveit in a way? And just what does he meanby “keep his word,” anyway? “Keep” can have several, overlapping meanings . . . it can mean “guard,” as in “protect” or “preserve,” or “hold onto” as in “I’m keeping this for myself.” But it can also mean “obey” or “observe” as in observe the law. Only in John does Jesus use the term “keep my word,” and it seems to encompass all of these senses, with the emphasis on “observe” or “hold to.” Thus, Jesus seems to be saying “those who love me follow my teachings,” and since so much of Jesus’ teachings are encoded in his ministry, in his actions,keeping his word amounts to “live as I taught, both in word and in deed.” Those who love me live out my teachings.

But even though what Jesus says no doubt makes his disciples—both in Judas’ and John’s times—a little nervous, I don’t think that’s Jesus main purpose here. I think his primary purpose is pastoral,he’s consoling his disciples—both during his own time and in John’s—who have been confronted with the fact that he is soon to leave them. Remember last week? In our discussion of the “great commandment?” He knewthat even though his disciples didn’t fully understand, they would be bereft and bereaved, saddened and grieving at the news. They’d had such hopes, such dreams, even if some of them were misguided . . . and Jesus had compassion for them so that he called them his “little children . . . I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, but . . . where I am going you cannot come.” And much that comes after can be read as Jesus’ compassionate reassurance that (a) they will see him again eventually and (b) he will not leave them without resources.

And that last is the theme of our passage today: Jesus is telling them how it is to be after he has physically left the planet, and reassuring them that they will notbe—and in the case of John’s Ephesus congregants, that they are not at the time—alone. In fact, God and he will come to them and make their home with them. Jesus will say this in different ways in the remainder of John’s gospel: he urges his followers to abide in him as he abides in them. He tells them that he is in God the Father, and in the same way God and he are in them.It speaks of a radical mutuality, an intimateindwelling of God and Jesus and human beings.

And what is the vehiclefor this indwelling, this stunningly close relationship to the divine? It’s theParaclete, whom God will send, and in our version it’s translated as “the Advocate,” but it could just as easily be “Comforter” or “Helper.” The Greek word “Paraclete” means “one who goes alongside to help;” Jesus identifies it as the Holy Spirit, and can you see the beginnings of the Trinity? That doctrine, famously notin the Bible, pictures the God-head as consisting of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Here, the Father and the Son—Creator and Savior—make their home within one who loves the Son, and the Holy Spirit advocatesfor them, mediates between them. And the Spirit, this indwelling entity, sent by God the Father, will teach them everything and remind them of all that God the Son has taught them. After all, as Jesus has told them already the Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and abides within them.

And you know? Maybe this gives an idea of what it means to love Jesus . . . he hinted at it over in Matthew: “Just as you did it to the least of these . . . you did it too me.” Here in John, he fleshes it out a bit: if God—Christ, Creator and Comforter—is in each of us—in allcreation, as Paul put it, holding it all together—then is not loving one another, loving all of creation,loving Christ? Howsoever you’ve loved the least of these, you have loved me.

Jesus is drawing a pictureof what life will be after he is gone. It’s one of radical unity, stunning intimacywith the divine in all its aspects—God the Creator, God the Savior and God the Advocate, dwelling within the believer, within those who lovehim. Far from leaving his followers orphans—in his own time, in John’stime and in our own—we are endowed with a divine light, a holy fire, that can help us to see and do the Lord’s will. Those who love him keep his word, but we’re not to do it alone, nor are we to do it without help. As Paul said “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!”

Sothisis the peace Jesus leaves for us, thisis the peace he gives us: that we will never be without his presence, we will never be without his guidance, if we just trust that God is alive and present and within. So, do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid. Amen.

One Thing to Rule Them All (John 13:31-35)

Did you ever notice that Jesus speaks about himself in the third person a lot? It’s most apparent when he talks about the Son of Man, as in this passage: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified,” he says, “and God has been glorified in him.” And of course, he himself is the Son of Man, he’s referring to himself. And the phrase is of enormous importance in the New Testament; Jesus uses it some 80 times; he only calls himself the Son of God, like, twice, and it’s in the same place.

But despite the apparent importance of “Son of Man,” nobody really knows what Jesusmeantby it, other than as a reference to himself. The debate among biblical scholars has been going on for almost 200 years: is it a Messianic title,an honorific like “Messiah” or indeed “Son of God?” Or is it descriptive, is Jesus calling himself just another human being, as in Son of Humanity, or perhaps thehuman being, the archetypical, modelhuman being?

In addition, nobody but Jesus—and several times, the author of a gospel, aka the narrator—callshim that. There’s no outside recognition that he is Son of man like there is regarding Son of God. After he walks on the water, the disciples don’t say “Truly you are the Son of Man,” nor do the demons exorcised from the Gadarenes shout “What have you to do with us, Son of Man?” They all call him “Son of God;” Son of Man is an entirely self-described . . . name. Or title. Or whatever it is. 

But whatever it means, Jesus uses it in our present scene, which takes place at what would be called the Last Supper. And it’s kind of a transition between the scene with the foot-washing, and Peter’s reluctance to have his feet washed, and what scholars call the farewell discourse, Jesus’ last teaching before the crucifixion. And just before our passage Judas leaves the table to betray him to the religious authorities for, it is said, thirty pieces of silver. And right after our passage, Jesus foretells that Peter would betray Jesus, denying him not once, not twice, but three times.

So our passage is embedded in betrayal, it’s soaked in it . . . we cannot escape the fact that the commandment to love one another is forever colored by it . . . and when that first betrayer Judas goes to sell him out, Jesus says “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Note the past perfect tense: the Son of Man has beenglorified, and God has beenglorified in him. It’s not, as is often assumed, the crucifixion, which was yet to come . . . was it the betrayal itself? The abandonment? Or was it, as some folks say, all that has come before, all the signs that point to Jesus’ character, and through him, that of God?

At its root, glorymeans reputation, and to be glorified means to acquire good reputation. When it refers to God,it takes on aspects of heavenly splendor and the wonders of God’s kingdom. So when Jesus refers to God’s glorification and his own, he’s referring to the manifestation and recognition by the world of their proper heavenly status. And how ironic isit that it is through betrayal and the cross that this occurs? Thus, Judas’ disappearance into night while plotting betrayal the anticipation of Peter’s denial are not unfortunate, extraneous additions to the story of Jesus’ glorification. Death and betrayal belong to the core of Jesus’ glory.

So it’s only fitting that after announcing his glory, Jesus immediately announces his departure. And such is his compassion for them that he tenderly calls them—grown men every one—“little children.” Where I’m going you cannot come, little chidden, and immediately they start to wonder where that might be: some far off land, perhaps, or another city? They’d steadfastly refused to listen when he’d told them about his arrest and execution, they must’ve thought he meant a physical place.

And in fact, Peter asking that question—Lord, where are you going?—leads to the prediction of his betrayal. But first, Jesus gives them one last command: Love one another, just as I have loved you, you should which has generated debate almost from the beginning. After all, Leviticus 19:18, part of the Hebrew Law, had alreadycommanded Israel to love its neighbor as itself; just exactly what was new?Was it a difference in kind,a different typeof love that Jesus commanded? Augustine thought so . . . another theologian, Cyril of Alexandria, said “no, it’s a difference in degree.” The law said love others as ourselves, Cyril said, but Jesus took it one notch further by telling us to love one another as he loved us.And being Jesus, his love was of coursemuch more intense love than ours . . . 

Another, more practical problem is that the command is to love one another, that is, other believers.This conflicts with other versions—Matthew’, Mark’s and Luke’s say love your neighbor—and stories, like the Good Samaritan in Luke, not to mentionthe love-your-enemy passages. In those texts, Jesus is clearly speaking of, anddemonstrating,a love for those outside the “family,” a love beyond our own backyard.

Perhaps this is a hint as to what’s newin the command: this is a command—a plea,really—to practice love within themselves..Jesus is establishing a new communitywith this command, a community defined and centered around just one thing: love. In fact, it’s how everyone will know that this community is his,that those within it have love one for another.

Almost from the beginning, the church started to move away from that one criterion. The earliest creeds of the Church mention things you have to believe in, but rarely things you have to do. The Apostle’s Creed is the oldest one, put together from sayings in the Gospels and hymns of the early church. Does it mention love, a defining mark of the church community? No.

Over the years, entire listshave been drawn up of things you have to believe to be a Christian. The most famous recent examples are lists of five—or sometimes, six—essential Christian beliefs that circulated in the early 20th Century. These lists were called “fundamentals” and were, in fact, where the term “Fundamentalist Christian” came from. If you didn’t believe all the items on the list, you weren’t considered a Christian. Here’s one such list: the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement (that’s the notion that Jesus substituted for us to satisfy God’s wrath), the resurrection of the body, the miracles of Jesus, and the inerrant nature of God’s Word. Notice that not one of them mentions love at all, much less love thy neighbor or one another.

On the surface, Jesus’ instructions to love our fellow Christians—and our neighbors and our enemies—seem almost impossible. How can we love people who dismiss us, who oppose us, or simply rub us the wrong way? It seems that in any group, there are going to be folks we just don’t get along with, much less like. As always, Jesus shows us the way: what he’s talking about isn’t emotion, it’s action.In John, they’re called signs:changing the water into wine. Feeding the five thousand. Healing the man blind from birth. And here, in the last days of his life, washing one-another’s feet—aka servingone another—and, ultimately, dying for one another.

Maybe that’s why Christians have taken to measuringour Christian-ness via sets of dry, sterile beliefs. Maybe this loving one another business is just too hard—or in the case of foot-washing, too icky. But of course, that’s just another sign, a pointer to the kind of self-effacing, self-sacrificing action Jesus is talking about. And besides, we don’t have to do it by ourselves: Jesus is with us, around us and most importantly, within our hearts. Amen.