I Heard It, But I Didn’t Understand

John 16:12–15
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

In one of his stories from Lake Wobegon, G. Keillor tells of the priest at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Parish, who, in a move that he realizes was clearly a mistake, forms a worship committee. The committee installs bright lights in the sanctuary.
In a comical scene, he disables the lights the night before Easter.
Keillor says that the priest doesn’t like the bright lights, they remove mystery. He says the priest “always thought the Lutherans wanted to do away with mystery altogether.”
hmmmmmmm
I collect quotes. Mostly one or two lines. . . don’t want to go beyond my attention span. . .
Here’s a few

To try to deny the Trinity endangers your salvation, to try to comprehend the Trinity endangers your sanity." Martin Luther

I realize that the only time the church is really sufferable is when it is at prayer. When it talks, it claims too much for itself. Reinhold Niebuhr

I wonder if we make the mistake of addressing the Trinity as a problem to be solved, rather than a mystery with which we are called to live. A truth given to us to inspire wonder.
I suspect that Niebuhr is spot on about most of our explanations of the Trinity. I could probably simply say - about most of our explanations.

In a marvelous sermon - “So Explain It To Me” - colleague Mary W. Anderson (anybody know her? I like her stuff) says:

Yet how important is it to explain the mystery of God revealed to us in three distinct ways? Mysteries explained cease to be mysteries, don't they? Perhaps the doctrine of the Trinity challenges our secret wish to know God fully and eliminate all mystery. This, after all, was the burning desire of our first parents in the Garden, a desire that ultimately caused them to fall from grace. Does this temptation to dispel all mystery still burn within us?

I haven’t even touched on Trinity as relationship, etc. etc.
One last quote:

God tends to confound, astonish and flabbergast. A Bethlehem stable, a Roman cross, an empty garden tomb. We might as well reconcile ourselves to the fact that God's truth often turns up in ways we don't expect. - Sue Monk Kidd

DID YOU HEAR THAT?

John 14:8–17, 25–27

Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. 12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
25 I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

Last week opened with an I statement
“I frickin hate preaching on this passage.”
How about another I statement -
“I don't know what the heck to do with Pentecost.”

I think, in part, that we make a mistake.
We read Pentecost as a Power Event.
We are empowered by the Spirit.
Yet, this is the Gospel we're talking about.
Forgiveness. Love. Not power.
Is it, instead, a learning event?
I know, stated that way it sounds a bit flaccid, but a learning event as in being informed and renewed by a vision of God who is for you, and for you in a particular way, and sends you into the world to be for the world in the same way.
I know that we say that knowledge is power, but. . .
Well, I like the suggestion by Edmund Steimle that the miracle of Pentecost is the hearing. "And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?”

We have a hearing problem at my house.
It resides - most irritatingly and obviously - in my 5 year old.
I will say to him. "Don't do - - - ."
He then does it.
I will then say to him "Did you hear me say, 'Don't do - - - ?'"
"Yes" he will say.
Then why did you do it?
"I don't know."
Come to think of it.
That's not a hearing problem, is it?
hmmmmmm
I digress.

I like the suggestion that the miracle of Pentecost is that one would hear the Good News.
Let me quote from a sermon by Jim Callahan, from the Christian Century, May 2000. I linked to this on textweek.com.

Some call Pentecost the "birthday of the church." I disagree. I sense that the church was born on Good Friday when Jesus, "just hanging around," as Robert Capon stunningly puts it, asked the Father to forgive us, and a few bewildered, broken-hearted women and men wandered off wondering how they were going to live with that. Pentecost was the day they got their answer: with great joy, and with wind and fire and Spirit, making them look like a bunch of happy drunks in the midst of a numbingly sober and sour world. At last they knew that they were God’s -- every last one of them -- and that God was Love, not just in poetic theory but in palpable fact. They learned that in belonging to God they belonged also to each other. The joy derived from their trusting contained power, power not only to gladden but also to heal and redeem.

Here’s a true miracle of the Spirit - that we should believe - that we should hear this Good News - that we should become a part of Jesus' mission of loving the world to the end.
Here’s a true miracle of the Spirit - that we should be forgiven, that we should do greater works than Jesus. How greater? Greater in that the love which Jesus has unleashed, should go to the ends of the earth - borne by disciples who will hear the call to take up their cross and will in their own, halting and half hearted ways, follow this one who gave his life for the world. . .

The One Campaign

John 17: 20-26
20 "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

25 Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

Let me start with an "I statement." I frickin hate preaching on this passage.

Remember "The Concordat?" The debate surrounding it was at its height during my internship year which I spent in the NW WA Synod. At its Synod Assembly, a resolution against "The Concordat" was being debated. Speaking in favor of "The Concordat" one pastor said something like: "In John 17 Jesus prayed for the unity of the Church. Vote for 'The Concordat' and help fulfill his prayer."

Then I read or heard a statement by Luther Sem. prof David Frederickson who stated that Jesus was not talking about the "big church" in John 17. Jesus was talking about individual congregations. I prefer Frederickson's take.

I am reading a book by Peter Steinke-- Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times: Being Calm and Courageous No Matter What. In a chapter titled "The Leader's Challenge" (and on page 108) he writes about what church leaders can do during times of conflict to harness the good that can come out of the conflicted time. Introducing this theme he writes some good stuff that I would like us to ramble on. I'm not sure what this has to do with preaching; maybe it will help our thinking on this painful to preach on text.

A conflict-free congregation is incongruent not only with reality but even more with biblical theology. Jesus upset many people emotionally. The life of Jesus takes place against a backdrop of suspicion, opposition, and crucifixion. The Christian story is underlined with conflict. Early on, we encounter the emotional reactivity of the religious leaders, who see Jesus as a threat to their authority and belief system. Eventually the tension between the roaming preacher and the established religious order comes to a dramatic point. Tension leads to crucifixion.

The church has had divisions from its inception. No doubt, it has fought senseless battles, squandered its resources on frivolous issues, sent negative signals to society, shattered its unity, and forfeited chances to share its goodwill. Some churches work through the reactive period and emerge stronger. Others shuffle from crisis to crisis. What makes the difference in outcomes?

Nowhere in the Bible is tranquility preferred to truth or harmony to justice. Certainly reconciliation is the goal of the gospel, yet seldom is reconciliation an immediate result. If people believe the Holy Spirit is directing the congregation into the truth, wouldn't this alone encourage Christians who have differing notions to grapple with issues respectfully, lovingly, and responsively? If potent issues are avoided because they might divide the community, what type of witness is the congregation to the pursuit of truth?

What's Love Got to Do With It?

John 14:23–29
Jesus answered him, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
25 I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. 28 You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. 29 And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

I really don’t love the Gospel of John. I may love Jesus, but John? Not so much.
To my ears, in John, Jesus sometimes sounds kinda like a cult leader. “If you loved me...” "Those who love me...” “the word that you hear is not mine...” “Whoever does not love me...” “here, drink this Kool Aid...”
I suspect that the question to ask would be “Is the problem the Gospel of John? Or me?”
I resent that.
At the same time, Jesus calls us to receive the gifts that he brings, poured forth by God, through the Spirit.
While most everything I see addressing this text talks on and on about the Advocate. While that may well be central to this text, I am interested in the line: “ I do not give to you as the world gives.”
Am I starting to sound like Hauerwas or something? I don’t know.
The Rev. Dr. P. d’Basement will ask where the promise is in a text.
For me, there is rich promise in Jesus’ proclamation that he gives in ways quite different from the world. . .
I still don’t like John. I do love Jesus. You, the jury’s out.
My problems with this Gospel notwithstanding, there seems to be a path here to invite others to live in the promise. . .

The Glory of True Love

John 13:31–35

31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 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.' 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

The two words which have grabbed my attention are “glory” and “love.” Song writers have tried to put them together. The group Chicago (lead: Peter Cetera) wrote a song called, The Glory of Love, which was used in one of the Karate Kid movies. It was a sappy love story where “The Kid” (the knight in shining armor) fights for his and his girl friend’s honor. “…knowing together that we did it all for the glory of love…” Balladeer, John Prine wrote a song with Roger Cook called, “The Glory of True Love.” The opening line goes,
Oh the glory of true love Is a wild and precious thing It don’t grow on old magnolias Or only blossom in the spring No the glory of true love Is it will last your whole life through Never will go out of fashion Always will look good on you.

In the thirteenth chapter of John we have Jesus washing his disciple’s feet..which is followed by the prediction of the betrayal by Judas…which is followed by Jesus’ announcing his departure and his commandment to love one another …which is followed by his prediction of Peter’s betrayal. Love and rejection emerges as a pattern here. The glory of true love (agape) in John’s gospel is Jesus on a cross. Lutheran N.T. professor, Barbara Rossing writes, “The disciples will participate in Jesus’ glorification through their participation in his love.” We are so deeply rooted in our own self interests that it is nearly impossible to preach and live this selfless love that Jesus demonstrated. We tend to glorify love and sing about it in our own sappy ways. I wonder how we might preach this kind of love not so much as obligation but as promise. “Oh the glory of true love Is a wild and precious thing It don’t grow on old magnolias Or only blossom in the spring No the glory of true love Is it will last your whole life through….." Certainly, God’s love as promise will last our whole life through…..