JESUS SPEAKS WITH great dignity, passion, eloquence, power and yet restraint as he prepares his friends for his departure.
He prays for protective unity, almost certainly not envisaging this day’s multiplicity of denominations.
But our unity is in the Risen One at the centre of a circle on whose circumference we each stand, seeing Jesus from different angles, some slightly, some vastly different.
Each view is valid—but only one Jesus holds the centre!
Let us remember to keep our focus on Jesus at all times, in all places!
Given the Holy Spirit as our constant Helper, it ought to be a doddle!
Friday, May 13, 2005
Monday, May 02, 2005
BEING
1st May 2005 : Easter 6 : Year A
Acts 17:22-31 : 1 Peter 3:8-22 : John 14:15-21
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 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.
We can tell that Pentecost is coming back to us because our Gospel readings are not especially subtle about revealing the designs of our lectionary makers!
This lack of subtlety is a good thing because it helps us focus on several aspects of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's relationship with Jesus, and God the Father, which tend to become buried in the excitement about the pyrotechnic antics unleashed on the first day of Pentecost experienced by the followers of Jesus.
John's descriptions of the Spirit, whom he calls in Greek the PARACLETE, and whom we encounter as Another Advocate in many of our English bibles, are almost prosaic compared to the material in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.
For instance, these strange words, paraclete and advocate, simply announce the continuing presence of Jesus in another form with his disciples. Both words essentially derive from the same idea. The Greek word, paraclete, comes from words translatable as called alongside. Very appropriate for a Being who clearly is meant to be our helper in living according to the commandments of Jesus.
Advocate, on the other hand, comes from Latin words translating as called TOWARDS, again quite appropriate in the context of a community seeking to fulfill Jesus' commandments.
But notice that Jesus speaks of ANOTHER Advocate. Not THE Advocate, but ANOTHER Advocate. Meaning a Being who in terms of function and action is same as Jesus himself.
We so often think of the Spirit in other-worldly terms, sometimes cosmological, sometimes supernatural, without realising that Jesus sends the Spirit from God-the-Father quite simply to be and do for us exactly what he would do and be if he were physically standing and walking beside us. It is legitimate to think "Spirit" and think "Jesus" in the same thought!
This makes perfect sense given Jesus' promises elsewhere to remain with the faithful despite his lack of physical presence. Even though, especially in John's gospel, Jesus returns to the One who sent him, he seeks to ensure the viability of the mission by sending, not a trusted and able lieutenant, but exactly the same Being, but in a form whereby that Being - the Holy Spirit - can remain, not only with the community of faith but with and, extraordinarily, WITHIN the individuals of that community.
This, Jesus tells us, is how we know the Spirit. Because the Spirit remains with us and IN us. NOT, interestingly, because we DO specific wonders, though Jesus doesn't exclude wonders in the context of his ministry lived out in our own time and place. But here the Spirit - called the Spirit of TRUTH - is about BEING more than DOING. It is a BEING in the context of keeping Jesus' commandments, and the overriding, over-arching Commandment, the so-called New Commandment, to love one another as Jesus loves us, the reality of which reveals that we are indeed Jesus' disciples.
Thus, when we are able to live the same love for ourselves and each other and the multi-faceted poor as Jesus himself lived, then we know that this Spirit of truth is living and remaining within us.
The Spirit informs our actions not so much as an engine or dynamo separate from Jesus, but as the Being who helps us, more and more, to BE Jesus for all who are lost, oppressed, living in desperation, excluded from society. Thus, although we customarily - and rightly - speak of acting "in the power of the Spirit", we are really doing no more than living the life Jesus himself would be living if he were walking down Lake Road today or hopping on a train at Challis or cruising down Champion Drive.
But of course that NO MORE THAN is pretty powerful in itself.
And so we find Paul in Athens preaching to people - powerful, intelligent, savvy folk - who believe in numerous gods, using terms of reference his audience fully understands, to share the message of Jesus, just as Jesus himself used the life and culture of his own earthly time and place to speak to the crowds.
And Peter expounds the virtues of non-violence just as Jesus taught and lived it, reminding us again that our faith, our ability to believe and to live as Jesus lived surpasses our external experience of the world.
Our ability to be people of faith is not dependent on whether this one or that one is nice to us; on whether we have money in the bank, petrol in the car, food on the table or any kind of sense that the world is being fair or just to us.
We can continue to be followers of Jesus, indeed with the Spirit within us we show that we ARE Jesus by claiming and living our faith in the Living God DESPITE ANYTHING the world catapults in our direction. How often we meet people who dismiss faith among the seriously ill as some kind of psychological sop, a vain mind-game conjured up as the last resort when the chemicals and the scalpels and the radiowaves have failed. And yet how often we use mere circumstance as an excuse for putting our faith on the back-burner!
The Spirit of truth living and remaining within us teaches and, as John will later record, reminds us of Jesus and his words and works. The Spirit empowers us to live with and through our circumstances - whether illness or the threat of closure or anything else - because the Spirit helps us to see these things as Jesus sees them - and to deal with them as Jesus deals with them.
Meanwhile, back at the Areopagus, we find a place dedicated, by the time Paul got there, to trying murder cases, with religion as a safe sideline. Ironically, truth very much exercised the minds of the council members of the Areopagus. Paul revealed a truth, thanks, we may safely suppose, to the Spirit of truth, which the Areopagus had scarcely considered.
Let us not tut-tut too loudly or smirk too noticeably in the direction of supposedly intelligent people who showed their naivete and anxiety by covering all bases with the shrine of the Unknown God.
Instead, let us reflect seriously on whether the God we worship, the God who informs our own lives, is known to us through our prayers and worship and study and fellowship and ministry. Let us ensure that we too are not unwittingly worshipping an Unknown God by revealing in our thoughts and words and deeds - or lack of them! - that the One we claim to worship and follow is little or nothing like the Jesus who sent us Another Advocate.
By our actions towards one another and ourselves and our community, what do we reveal? That we are impostors or deluded? Or that because we do what Jesus does, then the Spirit of truth indeed dwells and remains within us?
Acts 17:22-31 : 1 Peter 3:8-22 : John 14:15-21
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. 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.
We can tell that Pentecost is coming back to us because our Gospel readings are not especially subtle about revealing the designs of our lectionary makers!
This lack of subtlety is a good thing because it helps us focus on several aspects of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's relationship with Jesus, and God the Father, which tend to become buried in the excitement about the pyrotechnic antics unleashed on the first day of Pentecost experienced by the followers of Jesus.
John's descriptions of the Spirit, whom he calls in Greek the PARACLETE, and whom we encounter as Another Advocate in many of our English bibles, are almost prosaic compared to the material in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.
For instance, these strange words, paraclete and advocate, simply announce the continuing presence of Jesus in another form with his disciples. Both words essentially derive from the same idea. The Greek word, paraclete, comes from words translatable as called alongside. Very appropriate for a Being who clearly is meant to be our helper in living according to the commandments of Jesus.
Advocate, on the other hand, comes from Latin words translating as called TOWARDS, again quite appropriate in the context of a community seeking to fulfill Jesus' commandments.
But notice that Jesus speaks of ANOTHER Advocate. Not THE Advocate, but ANOTHER Advocate. Meaning a Being who in terms of function and action is same as Jesus himself.
We so often think of the Spirit in other-worldly terms, sometimes cosmological, sometimes supernatural, without realising that Jesus sends the Spirit from God-the-Father quite simply to be and do for us exactly what he would do and be if he were physically standing and walking beside us. It is legitimate to think "Spirit" and think "Jesus" in the same thought!
This makes perfect sense given Jesus' promises elsewhere to remain with the faithful despite his lack of physical presence. Even though, especially in John's gospel, Jesus returns to the One who sent him, he seeks to ensure the viability of the mission by sending, not a trusted and able lieutenant, but exactly the same Being, but in a form whereby that Being - the Holy Spirit - can remain, not only with the community of faith but with and, extraordinarily, WITHIN the individuals of that community.
This, Jesus tells us, is how we know the Spirit. Because the Spirit remains with us and IN us. NOT, interestingly, because we DO specific wonders, though Jesus doesn't exclude wonders in the context of his ministry lived out in our own time and place. But here the Spirit - called the Spirit of TRUTH - is about BEING more than DOING. It is a BEING in the context of keeping Jesus' commandments, and the overriding, over-arching Commandment, the so-called New Commandment, to love one another as Jesus loves us, the reality of which reveals that we are indeed Jesus' disciples.
Thus, when we are able to live the same love for ourselves and each other and the multi-faceted poor as Jesus himself lived, then we know that this Spirit of truth is living and remaining within us.
The Spirit informs our actions not so much as an engine or dynamo separate from Jesus, but as the Being who helps us, more and more, to BE Jesus for all who are lost, oppressed, living in desperation, excluded from society. Thus, although we customarily - and rightly - speak of acting "in the power of the Spirit", we are really doing no more than living the life Jesus himself would be living if he were walking down Lake Road today or hopping on a train at Challis or cruising down Champion Drive.
But of course that NO MORE THAN is pretty powerful in itself.
And so we find Paul in Athens preaching to people - powerful, intelligent, savvy folk - who believe in numerous gods, using terms of reference his audience fully understands, to share the message of Jesus, just as Jesus himself used the life and culture of his own earthly time and place to speak to the crowds.
And Peter expounds the virtues of non-violence just as Jesus taught and lived it, reminding us again that our faith, our ability to believe and to live as Jesus lived surpasses our external experience of the world.
Our ability to be people of faith is not dependent on whether this one or that one is nice to us; on whether we have money in the bank, petrol in the car, food on the table or any kind of sense that the world is being fair or just to us.
We can continue to be followers of Jesus, indeed with the Spirit within us we show that we ARE Jesus by claiming and living our faith in the Living God DESPITE ANYTHING the world catapults in our direction. How often we meet people who dismiss faith among the seriously ill as some kind of psychological sop, a vain mind-game conjured up as the last resort when the chemicals and the scalpels and the radiowaves have failed. And yet how often we use mere circumstance as an excuse for putting our faith on the back-burner!
The Spirit of truth living and remaining within us teaches and, as John will later record, reminds us of Jesus and his words and works. The Spirit empowers us to live with and through our circumstances - whether illness or the threat of closure or anything else - because the Spirit helps us to see these things as Jesus sees them - and to deal with them as Jesus deals with them.
Meanwhile, back at the Areopagus, we find a place dedicated, by the time Paul got there, to trying murder cases, with religion as a safe sideline. Ironically, truth very much exercised the minds of the council members of the Areopagus. Paul revealed a truth, thanks, we may safely suppose, to the Spirit of truth, which the Areopagus had scarcely considered.
Let us not tut-tut too loudly or smirk too noticeably in the direction of supposedly intelligent people who showed their naivete and anxiety by covering all bases with the shrine of the Unknown God.
Instead, let us reflect seriously on whether the God we worship, the God who informs our own lives, is known to us through our prayers and worship and study and fellowship and ministry. Let us ensure that we too are not unwittingly worshipping an Unknown God by revealing in our thoughts and words and deeds - or lack of them! - that the One we claim to worship and follow is little or nothing like the Jesus who sent us Another Advocate.
By our actions towards one another and ourselves and our community, what do we reveal? That we are impostors or deluded? Or that because we do what Jesus does, then the Spirit of truth indeed dwells and remains within us?
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