What’s New?

JOHN 13:31-35

When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

I’m starting a new church

NALC

Never Allow Losers Church.

This church won’t be like those others. 

We won’t have ANY of those folks who are so disagreeable.
Just uniformity here. 

We’ll find unity in the Bible. 

Yup

Now, one great advantage about starting your own church (I know you're in with me here)
-- in addition to being unburdened by that terrible difficulty, diversity --
would be that you could start your own lectionary.

No more RCL for us, no sir. 

The NALC will use the official NALC lectionary, which will have a few basic rules. 

Rule #1 - If it is from the Gospel of John - we use it once every three years.
EXCEPTION: We’ll use John for the Passion Reading on Good Friday, and the Christmas Day reading. 

That’s plenty of John. In fact more than enough.
Rule #2 - If it is read for the Passion Reading in ANY of the three years, you won't have to read it in Easter.

From there it is pretty dang easy to make a lectionary. Must be.
We’ll take the RCL, and when there’s a text from John, replace it with something else.

And, I guess, we'll keep John 3:16 when it shows up in Lent Year A, OR when it shows up 4 Lent Year C Or Holy Trinity Year B.  We’ll decide on that.
AND we’ll have complete agreement. No dissension. That will be easy.

Done.

You know, as annoying as I find John to be, the one good thing about having this text for Sunday, not much can get me to preach from Revelation. It’s something I wouldn’t do, without John’s . . . .  encouragement.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Interesting, isn’t it, that I don’t really feel like preaching on that.
Sorta seems like what we’re supposed to be about.

I got yelled at the other day. Seems the folks who run the preschool at our building opted to upgrade the sand box in the play area. Poured concrete around it. Didn’t ask for permission.

They should have. That’s true.

They didn’t.

Hmmmmmmmmm

Yell at the pastor.

Makes sense in someone’s world.

Don’t feel like preaching love to him though.

Revelation's "Behold I make all things new" proclamation seems fitting.
Need to be made new.

Its sorta cynical to say that. 

Sorta cynical of you to agree with me.

Heckity.

Love one another.

What’s new about that?

That’s the question, isn't’ it?

I Hear Voices

John 10:22-30

At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." Jesus answered, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one."

Good Shepherd Sunday Does anybody really care about such designations? 

I do. 

But does anyone who is normal?

Will any people walk in to worship on Sunday morning having thought to themselves on the way; “I wonder what the preacher will say about the Good Shepherd”?

No.

Which, I guess, is fine. 

I don’t know why I started this way.

Let me say this. . . 

I like Good Shepherd Sunday. 

I think it is a chance to proclaim the abiding promise of God’s presence in our world and in our lives. 

I have found this exchange to be compelling 

"If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." 

Jesus answered, "I have told you . . . My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me."

What is compelling is that while the question of Jesus is essentially about terms and titles, a theological question; Jesus’ answer is about relationship.

His sheep hear his voice and he knows them.

A lot of the claims that we will make about Jesus are that WE know HIM. 

Yet Jesus proclaims that what matters is the he knows us. 

Interesting.

I ran across this;  by Duane Olson in a Word & World piece. “Our security is found not in what we have or who we are but in whose we are. It is located in the faithfulness of the shepherd.”

That’s pretty dang basic, but maybe that is what Good Shepherd Sunday is about. Basics.

While the Girardians can get pretty dang earnest - and they may border on a sort of gnosticism - I liked this from Preaching Peace:

Today we must ask: Is God like Jesus? This is what our text does and in so doing asks us to reconsider who we think God is and what God is like.

This was after complaining about GW Bush leading us to war. I think that the conclusion is that Jesus would vote Democrat.  (actually, it might not have concluded that)

I saw this:  

The word for 'one' is the neuter hen not the masculine heis: Jesus and his Father are not one person, as the masculine would suggest, ...Rather, Jesus and his Father are perfectly one in action, in what they do: what Jesus does the Father does and vice versa. D.A. Carson The Gospel According to John

This might visit with the Girardian rumination on what God is like.  Does God use power? Is omnipotence the primary attribute of God? Or does Jesus show forth different attributes that might be more definitive of who God is?

What was that bumper sticker?

“My Jesus thinks your Jesus isa greedy war monger” 

In many, many, contexts, I believe that there are important issues around the voices we are listening to.

I will ask people who are beating up on themselves for some perceived inadequacy: “Is God the author of that thought?” 

I think that can be a fitting way to unmask (sound Girardian?) some of the destructive voices that are out there. 

Well. This may be a start. 

May we listen to the Shepherd’s voice. 

Might we find that shepherd to be the slaughtered lamb, who loves us to the end.

Can We Talk About Something Else Now?

John 21:1-19

After [he appeared to his followers in Jerusalem,] Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." They said to him, "We will go with you." They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. 

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, "Children, you have no fish, have you?" They answered him, "No." He said to them, "Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off. When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught." So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." 

A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, "Follow me." 

Imagine how uncomfortable Peter must have been.

Maybe some of you have heard this story. 

One night I was reading to my son, and our dog, Bingo was lying there.
He reached out to pet the dog, and the dog growled.
I scolded him, (NOT THE DOG!) and said “What have you done to cause Bingo to growl like that?”
“Nothing!”
“Oh yes, you did something, Bingo never growls.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Well, I have to say, I’m disappointed in this.”
We read for a few minutes, then he said, “Dad, let’s not tell mom that this happened.”

Makes sense. 

Peter probably would have concurred. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

There is so very much in this story.

It seems to me to really brings us up against the fact that sometimes forgiveness is a difficult thing. 

Willimon tells a great story. (As with many of his stories, one wonders if it actually happened that way.) (and, as with many things I write or say, this is how I remember it. . . ) 

One Sunday, after preaching on the forgive 70 times 70 text, a woman walked out of Church and accosted him. She said; “Are you telling me that I am supposed to forgive my ex-husband who abused me for years until I was able to leave him? Are you telling me I am supposed to forgive HIM?”

Willimon then stutters that, having only fifteen minutes, it is hard to cover every possibility, but in the end, the answer is “Yes, it seems that Jesus is saying you are to forgive him.” 

Then, Willimon says, the woman hiked herself up to her full height, looked him in the eye and said; “Thanks, just checking.”

Willimon’s point, in part, is that we should not protect people from Jesus, that where he saw a victim, Jesus saw someone with whom he is going to change the world.

Some questions. 

In what ways does this speak to the fact that love hurts? 

That to live in community is to be in need of forgiveness? (I think of Bonhoeffer in Life Together, saying that the key to Christian community is disappointment.)

In what ways does forgiveness give rise to mission?

In what ways might forgiveness be about more than relieving my own sense of guilt and shame?

Does the encounter with the risen Jesus go hand in hand with a sending to share and tell, to live and love?

Idle Tales, Errant Searching

Luke 24:1–12

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

This telling of the Easter story is quite stark.

Take a look. No exclamation points.

Not one!

Save those for the liturgy and the hymns, I guess. 

I note two rich things in this telling of the story. . . 

"These words seemed to them an idle tale."

Lest you forget, the idea of resurrection is a bit out of the ordinary. A tad unexpected. . . 

And then this: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?"

Looking for love in all the wrong places.

Seeking the Gospel in the Law.

Seeking peace in violence. 

Seeking justice in vengeance.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?
I hadn't thought of any other possibility!
Why indeed!