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| Holy Spirit Window, Rome |
Prayer
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Brian McLaren
"Finally, Jesus challenged them to love him and to keep his commandments. I suspect everyone seated in that room nodded their head and thought, 'I do love you and of course, I will keep your commandments.' But in a few short hours their teacher would be arrested and tried. In a few short hours his life would be ended and their lives filled with fear that the same thing would happened to them. Would they still love him? Could they keep his commandments?"
Commentary, John 14:8-17, 25-27, Lucy Lind Hogan, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.
"Whether in the company of Jesus or, in his absence, in the company of the Spirit, what ultimately matters is recognizing God's action and becoming part of it. All else is subordinate to that."
"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
Jesus is concerned pastorally for his followers. In part because his followers can only understand death’s victory. We must remember at this time there is NO victory over death. They look at the oncoming trial and sure death sentence at the end. They perhaps see it as the end of the movement, the end of the work towards the kingdom, the end of their own ministries, the end of a friend’s life, the end of (dare we say) hope.
In the immortal words of Jim Morrison and the Doors:
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again
It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end
This is a really creepy song but it captures and tells of the reality that life’s pleasures will not keep death from its work. So Jesus is combating the very real understanding of death’s finality. Jesus offers them this understanding, He “demands that they have faith in him” and that this is more than a request but a necessary piece of participation in the victory over death that is to come. (R. Brown, John, Anchor Bible, vol II, 624)
Jesus is saying, have faith in me. This is a very real living faith that unites them with God. In the victory of the resurrection, they will come through death’s door to dwell with God and with Son. And, to do this, to make their journey, they must be prepared. Just as Jesus goes to prepare a place, the follower must be prepared too. (625)
They are to be prepared by doing the same work as Jesus, even greater works. Jesus tells them to ask for great things and he will on their behalf. God will be glorified in this relationship, this conversation between worlds. It seems then that part of the work, part of the preparation is prayer ad continued relationship with Jesus even after his death. The disciple must trust and engage in work, and do so in prayer conversation with Jesus.
The work they are to do is to follow Jesus’ commandments and love him. The commandments are simply to love one another, to love God above all else, and to love Jesus. This is the Maundy, the commandment of love within the apostolic community. A love for one another that mirrors the love of God. Love for one another spins out the action in the world at the same time as it draws others into the community. The work of the disciple is to work and to work out of the empowering relationship of love with God - the Trinitarian community.
The family of God metaphor is revealed again in the paradigm of children of God who are united to the community of God when Jesus promises not to leave them orphaned. Jesus reflects that he is going away, but within this apostolic community he will never be far away and in fact, will be one with those who participate in the commandment to love. Moreover, Jesus himself and God will be glorified and revealed in the uniting spirit of this community, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the perfect love of Father for Son, and Son for Father.
Raymond Brown writes so much better than I:
Jesus emphasizes that divine indwelling flows from the Father’s love for the disciples of His Son. In 3.16 we heard that God loved the world so much that He gave the only Son – if the incarnation (and death) of the Son was an act of the Father’s love for the world, the post-resurrectional indwelling is a special act of love for the Christian. In 2 we found the word “dwelling place” used for the heavenly abode with the Father to which Jesus would take his disciples; here [at the end of the lesson] it is used for the indwelling of the Father and the Son with the believer…in Johannine thought this was now the hour when men would worship the Father neither on Mount Gerizim nor in the Jerusalem Temple, but in Spirit and truth. (648)
This week we shift to Paul's letter to the Romans. He is teaching about the Holy Spirit and how it participates in the Christian life. Paul believes that the Spirit works in two ways. The first is to draw people into the family of God so that we become children of God. The second is to help individuals live a life following Jesus.
Those who follow this God through Jesus Christ are new people. Like Israel, we are claimed and rescued by God. We are set apart in the midst of the world. God is our Father, God is 'abba'. This is the very strong theme of this portion of Romans.
What is so very challenging to us today is the very radical notion that we are not the one's being spoken to in Paul's letter. We are today the ones who reside in the Temple. We are the ones who have already been chosen. Like ancient Israel, we are the ones who inherit participation in the family through the Holy Spirit.
But God is doing something even greater. Today the Holy Spirit pours out beyond the walls of the Christian Church just as it poured out beyond the Temple walls. Jesus' followers abound and God is working in their lives as they try and make their pilgrim journey. We need to hear the words of Romans not as the newly invited follower of Jesus but as the stayed community who is not yet ready for the new interlopers.
What would it be like to open our eyes and see upon whom the Holy Spirit falls today? Who is it that cries out 'abba' but has no home? Can we open our hearts and doors to welcome the sojourner in?
Even now the Holy Spirit is making new members of the family of God. May the Episcopal Church open its arms to welcome brothers and sisters who are new and different.
This is the text that most people think about when they think about the story of Pentecost. Though it is important to remind the congregation there are different stories. Here in this text, Luke weaves the time. The time is a particular time of God's acting. As in the incarnation of the crucifixion - this is God's day and God's time. The coming of the Holy Spirit arrives at the appointed time.
Some Thoughts on Genesis 11:1-9
From my book on vocation entitled The Jesus Heist
Take the story of Babel, for instance, in the eleventh chapter of Genesis.
The story of Babel is one of the best-known stories of the Bible because it captures
our imagination. Typically, in Christian church contexts, it is told this
way: Once upon a time there was a people and who built a tower that would
reach to heaven. In doing this they became like gods. They made a name for
themselves—the story says. God is displeased with them because, like gods,
they will be able to do many things. “Nothing will be impossible for them.”
So God scatters the people. Most of us aren’t even aware of the ambiguity
in this passage. We read this story as a cautionary tale about human sin and
God’s judgment, is a lesson learned in Mrs. Irving’s fourth grade Sunday school
class. But something more is going on here.
Let us look at the actual story, which is an origin story about creation that
repeats the narrative of how God populated the earth with people. People are
being scattered. Just before the Babel story, we are told that Noah’s descendants
are scattered. They are sent out to populate creation. There is great
debate about this very short origin story, and whether its verdict on the populating
of the earth by the scattering of the people is positive or negative.2 But
I want to focus on the disbursement itself.
One of the issues in the story is that the people want to stay together.
They don’t want to be scattered. So they build a tower. The purpose of the
tower is to reach to heaven. God, on the other hand, wants the people to be
scattered. It seems that in the scattering, regardless of its causes, God is present.
God is present in the scattering after Eden, God is present in the scattering
after Babel, God is present in the scattering after Egypt, and after the fall
of the first temple in Jerusalem. God is present at the edges, on the margins,
in the scattering. God is not particularly interested in towers that reach up
to heaven and make names for those who build them. A very large number
of Jewish and Christian scholars believe that humanity’s want to cohere is
directly opposed to God’s desire. It displeases God when people are all in one
place where they are comfortable, avoiding being scattered.
The church has a Babel quality to it. It builds towers that are gates to
God. It especially likes big ones. The church attracts people and holds them
in place so they aren’t scattered. In my own tradition, we joke about how there
is effectively assigned seating on Sunday morning. The institutional church
creates a holding pattern, a safe routine. Every year in liturgical traditions of
Christianity, fifty days after Easter, the feast of Pentecost is celebrated. The
institutional church celebrates Pentecost as its birthday. We never stop to
think about the absurdity, the contradictory themes of the Bible passages read
on this day every year, read to people sitting in thousands of shrines that boast
to be the gates to heaven, or gather inside rooms to hear about God disbursing
his followers into the world. The lens here is wrong. We can imagine a lot
of things about the story of Pentecost and what God intended and imagines
will take place as a society of friends of Jesus. But one of those things is not
that some two thousand years later the followers of Jesus would be sitting in
a room listening to a story.
In the beginning, shortly after the resurrection, the disciples had a custom
of getting together. We already talked about this in a previous chapter. Every
time they gathered, Jesus appeared and told them to get out. In Matthew, they
are on a mountaintop and Jesus appears and they are sent out into the world
(Matt. 28:16–20). The shorter ending of Mark tells us they were sent out to
the east and west (Mark 16:8). In the longer version of Mark, Jesus appears to
them in a room where they are all sitting at a table. Jesus “upbraided them for
their lack of faith and stubbornness” and then sends them out to do the work
(Mark 16:14–20). In John’s Gospel, he appears and gives them the Holy Spirit
by breathing on them. Then, in a series of visits, Jesus explains that they are to
love as he has loved, and they are to follow Jesus in the way that Jesus lived—
including his suffering and death (John 20:1–31). Each of these stories makes
clear that the work of the gospel is living in the world just as Jesus lived.
Now, most people who know the story will tell you the story of Pentecost
that matches the one found in Luke’s writing. So let us ponder the Christian
story of Babel found in chapter 2 of Luke’s second book, Acts of the Apostles.
We are told that, as in the other Gospels, the disciples have a habit of meeting
together. They get together, men and women, for prayer. It happened
that they were together on the day of the religious festival called Pentecost.
Pentecost was a pilgrim festival in Jerusalem—it was a holiday from work—
and people from all around would make their way to Jerusalem for special
observances at the temple. Pentecost was also called the Feast of Weeks, and
it happened fifty days after the festival called First Fruits. So the disciples are
together. There is fear and anxiety about what has happened to Jesus. They are
trying to figure out what they are supposed to do. They are worried that they
will be taken away, scattered, and killed. In this setting, the disciples experience
a mighty epiphanic moment: they have an experience of God’s presence.
I like Eugene Peterson’s telling of this story in his well-known biblical paraphrase
called The Message. He writes that there is a sound that fills the whole
house. The sound is like a great and mighty wind. It is a gale-force wind, a
knock-you-down wind. Then there is a wildfire that comes upon them. Some
translations say tongues of fire. I prefer Peterson’s imagery of a wildfire. A fire
that is wild comes upon them. It is madness.
This moment is a recreative act. It is an image that recalls God’s mighty
acts in history, including Babel. We are reminded of the book of Genesis
when the mighty wind moves over the waters of the earth. We are reminded
of the creation story of Israel, when God appears to Moses in a burning bush
that is not consumed. The inauguration of the freeing of Israel happens before
Moses, and a pillar of fire leads them away from Egypt. These images and
words are intended to capture our imagination and show us the remaking of
the disciples.
Like Babel, God does not intend for them to be sequestered in upper
rooms. God does not intend for them to make spaces that are the gate to
heaven. God pours out God’s recreative fire that they may be disbursed, that
they may go out. God disburses the disciples so that the gospel story of God
in Christ Jesus might be shared with all the people. And so those who followed
Jesus, who were praying together so they would not be scattered, who
were taking care of widows and orphans, who were in a holding position,
are sent out into the world. The doors burst open and they go out. And they
speak in many languages.
Those disciples who had previously been known only as followers—that
is what “disciple” means—were turned into apostles—people who are sent.
That is what “apostle” means—people who go. All the disciples were made
apostles; all disciples are to be made apostles. There is no place for Christian
towers of Babel among the friends of Jesus. We are set free. We are the laborers
sent out on the fiftieth day for the harvest. We are the laborers that God in
Christ Jesus has been praying to be sent (Luke 10:1–20). Christ’s resurrection
on Easter is the first fruit; it happens on the festival of the first fruit. Jesus is
the first fruit of this re-creation and new Genesis. The Christian Babel story
is the harvest story that falls fifty days later in parallel with the religious feast.
God is at the margins; God is disbursed. God’s people are to move to the
margins and be disbursed.
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