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Lent
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
The pronoun for God is God. And as beautiful as our language and metaphors for the divine are, they are only ever in service of the God who defies the limits of our language and test the bounds of our imagination continually. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week.
Speaker 1:Head to commons.church for more information. Now, we find ourselves in the season of Lent, and this is the season that leads us to Easter, and this is why I am wearing this purple stole again today, because it reminds us of our place in the year. But to remind us of our place in this series, let's look back at last week, Because we are walking our way through a conversation that Jesus has, one of his last conversations in fact, with some of his closest friends. And they gather together for dinner, sometimes called the last supper, and Jesus says, okay, guys, I've got one last thing to say. And the conversation starts in John 13, but it goes all the way to the end of John 17.
Speaker 1:And we are working our way through that entire conversation, but last week, we took time to focus on chapter 15. And there, Jesus says, as always, some fascinating stuff. He talks about God as a gardener, himself as a vine, and us, you and I, as branches. And there's this really sort of beautiful flow from the divine to Jesus and through us that plays out in these images. In fact, Jesus talks about how the father prunes branches in him that bear fruit in order to help them produce even more.
Speaker 1:And then he extends that image to say, actually, you and I, we are the branches, and it's Jesus who produces fruit in and through us. And so we really settled into that image for a bit last week, that seasons of pruning. Seasons of perhaps leaving old things behind, seasons of growth even when that growth is hard. These do not need to be experienced through the weight of our having missed the mark. Sometimes, the gardening that is happening in our lives is simply the story of God's leading and guiding as we grow.
Speaker 1:And I think that if we automatically jump to the mindset that anything that is painful is somehow because somewhere we have failed. That can make what was meant to be the tender presence of the gardener in our lives something that we dread rather than invite. And the truth is, seasons of pruning are hard enough as it is. Without that voice in the back of your head that tells you it's all your fault. And so if you are in that type of season right now, I hope that you sense the gardener with you as you grow, and you know that there is care in the presence that is offered to you.
Speaker 1:Now, that also led us into some of the harder words that Jesus has to say. He says, remember, if the world hates you, it hated me first. And rather than being an excuse for bad behavior here, this is actually an invitation to love recklessly. The truth is, when you love like Jesus, across religious and social and economic and ethnic barriers, when you love actually without restriction. You will inevitably find yourself at odds with a culture that defines itself by those on the inside and those on the outside.
Speaker 1:Like the truth about us is we love to know who we're against. And sociologists like Henry Toshfeld and Rene Girard have demonstrated that almost any perceived difference will stimulate tribal psychology in our minds. It's like it's hardwired in, almost as if sin actually does pit us against each other. And so to love the way that Jesus loved is hard. In fact, you could almost say that it requires a long and delicate process of pruning away what is dead and dried out, so that new and tender shoots might grow.
Speaker 1:But the bottom line is, if you want to be hated like Jesus, then you need to be hated for who you refuse to hate. Now, today, we get to explore the ways in which God is actually present to us, helping us do that. Because today is all about the Holy Spirit. But first, let's pray. God of love, who stands above the lines we draw, and the groups that we create, and the ways in which we divide ourselves into smaller and smaller units.
Speaker 1:Would you continue to invite us to love as you love? Across artificial barriers and through our prejudice into love that really does reshape the world around us. Where we have at times embraced our tribal identities perhaps with more excitement than our shared humanity. Where we have excluded others instead of finding ourselves in community. Where we have believed that there is more that separates us than the welcome that unites us, we repent.
Speaker 1:And, we ask that you might help us do better tomorrow. Where we need some pruning, or where there are old habits and patterns that need to be left behind, and change that needs to come, we ask for courage. And, where pain has scared us away, or rejection has injured us, or shame and guilt have caused us to look inward, would you bring healing to us? But, most of all, might we come to know your spirit with us, in and through us to the world, Bringing healing and hope and hints of your kingdom as we go. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. Today is John chapter 16. And today we have persecution, pronouns, paracletes, new perspectives. And I may have forced that last one in there a little bit just because it sounded nice.
Speaker 1:But let's start by reading from John 16 to get rolling. And this is verse one. All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. Now let's pause here already because this all of this is everything that we have been exploring together over the last three weeks. Everything from you should watch each other's feet, all the way to if they hated you, they hated me first.
Speaker 1:And this is a good spot to pause and to gather that up quickly because Jesus is essentially asking us to do that. So if you remember, this conversation begins with an object lesson. Jesus washes everyone's feet and he says, this is how it should be. Whenever you start to think of yourself more highly than someone else, pause, stop, find a way to serve them, And elevate them because this community is about mutuality. Next, he calls himself way, truth, and life.
Speaker 1:And he takes these massive Jewish ideas, these names for the divine, and he applies them to himself. He says that all of our shared history, our story, our collective reaching and longing and searching for God, all of this has somehow found its culmination in me. And then last week we saw Jesus say, I am in the father and the father is in me, and you are in me, and I am in you. And somehow, there is a divine breath that flows in and through all who come to love the way that God loves. So there's a really strong thread that's being drawn throughout this entire conversation.
Speaker 1:And Jesus is piling new images and ideas on the table as he goes, but there is a pretty consistent theme that he's building on here. And now he says to his friends, I've been telling you all this, so that you don't fall away. That's kind of a dark turn. Jesus has been hinting at his death all along, but now he says, guys things are about to get hard for you. They will put you out of the synagogue.
Speaker 1:And remember, this is not just getting kicked out of your church, this is being kicked out of your community. In fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not really known the father or me. Now, is shocking language here. But the thing is, people are rarely as vicious as when we think we are defending God.
Speaker 1:Historically, this gospel of John is written much later than the other gospels. Probably at the earliest in the eighties or nineties of the first century. And so part of the reason you get this emphasis on Jesus' words here, words that weren't recorded in the other Gospels, is likely that this Gospel is being written in a time when the church is actually experiencing the kind of hatred that Jesus warned them about. Now, we know that in the late first century, persecution of the church was sporadic and localized. Sometimes we imagine sort of a hardcore systemic persecution of the church, but that doesn't seem to be the case historically, at least not in the first century.
Speaker 1:In the book of Revelation, also written during the late first century, the writer talks about churches that are doing really well. They're wealthy and they're comfortable like they are in Laodicea. He talks about churches that are facing a lot of hostility and persecution like they are in Pergamum. And then he talks about churches where things are good, but they can see the tide starting to turn against them like what's happening in the city called Smyrna. So the early church was actually quite diverse in their experience of persecution, But when Jesus' words about hatred may have seemed a little strange or cryptic a generation ago, now that at least parts of the church are actually experiencing this.
Speaker 1:It's like all of a sudden these words have a new and deep resonance to them. Things that were said a long time ago, all of a sudden seem very new. And this is really interesting, Especially, as we move to talk about the holy spirit today. Because, this is part of how God speaks to us. The bible is this massive collection of texts.
Speaker 1:I have noticed in my twenty years of following Jesus and teaching from the scriptures that there are passages that will fly right over my head one day, and then deeply resonate with part of my soul the next. And part of learning to read the bible well is absolutely hermeneutics and grammar and translation and context, but perhaps even more deeply is about allowing the spirit to make these connections between the words that we read and the events that unfold in our lives. Carl Barth once said that we should read with the bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. And I love that, but perhaps equally we could say that we should read with the bible in one hand and our diary in the other. And so, of course, you need to be aware of context and history as you read, but you also need to be aware of yourself as you read.
Speaker 1:To be present to how words and ideas and thoughts and images are interacting with your experience of the world as you go. And so for this community at this time experiencing this kind of hatred, it's these words that come flooding back to the front of their memory of Jesus. And that type of experience, where old words find new meaning for you, that is deeply important for you, so notice it. Remember back to the first week in this series, Jesus says to Peter, you don't understand, but one day you will. And that kind of slow bubbling discovery, this is part of what we are invited into in the Christian story.
Speaker 1:So pay attention to those moments where things you've heard before find new purchase in your soul. It's important. Now, what we see here is that this community is experiencing the kind of viciousness that all of us are capable of where we think we are the defenders of God. And sadly, this is not just a first century story. This is one that continues to cause hurt and pain and suffering across our world today.
Speaker 1:Whether that is the Lord's Christian army in Uganda, or ISIS in Syria, or Buddhists in Myanmar, or the KKK in America. When we begin to imagine that God is so small as to be defined completely by our categories, What happens is that somehow God becomes so small that God is weak enough to need our protection. And even if we never turn that into physical violence, when we take up the mantle of defending God, we distance ourselves from the Jesus who would rather die for us than defend himself from us. In fact, when Jesus says, anyone who kills you will think they are doing a service for God. The word that he uses there is latria in Greek.
Speaker 1:That's where we get our word liturgy from in English, and it means worship. But violence is only ever the worship of our own inflated sense of self importance. And so whenever you feel the tendency to defend God in whatever way you think God needs to be defended, pause and remember that God is not nearly as delicate as you think. And Jesus continues here. Very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away.
Speaker 1:Unless I go, the advocate, we'll talk about that word a little later, will not come. But if I go, I will send him to you. Now, couple things here. For a lot of us, it's important to recognize that the bible is full of gendered language when it comes to God. However, there are numerous examples and metaphors for for God that are either non gendered or feminine.
Speaker 1:And one of those metaphors that is often held up as an example of this is spirit. So in both Greek and in Hebrew spirit is actually the word for breath. And so you will hear me use the language of breath when I talk about the divine, particularly in my prayers, because I find it a very beautiful and compelling image for God. But in Hebrew, the word ruach is a feminine noun, and in Greek the word panuma is a neuter noun. And both of those are used to speak directly of God.
Speaker 1:Except that here, Jesus speaks of the holy breath of God, and then he uses the weak word paraclete, which is a helper or an advocate as a secondary metaphor. And then from there, we read a lot of masculine language that follows. So in verse 13, we read that when he, the spirit of truth or the true breath comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come.
Speaker 1:He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you, and that's a lot of he's. Some of this is language, and some of this is translation. See Greek, like French, is a gendered language where nouns have a grammatical gender. This has nothing to do with men and women. In French, a book is masculine.
Speaker 1:In Spanish, a table is feminine. And that's just hard for us to make sense of if we're used to thinking and speaking in English. But in Greek, pneuma is neuter, paraclete is masculine. And that is regardless of whether that advocate is a man or a woman. And so when Jesus uses paracletos in verse seven, the grammar of the section follows suit.
Speaker 1:It's not a statement about the gender of the spirit. It's simply how Greek functions grammatically. However, there is a little interesting thing here. Because throughout the chapter, instead of the verbs being inflected for the masculine, it's a pronoun that's being used in this passage. And it's akenos, and that's in the masculine form to match the word paraclete, but literally, akenos actually means that one.
Speaker 1:And so if you wanted to translate this passage strictly literally, it would actually sound more like, unless I go away, the advocate will not come, but if I go, I will send that one to you. And when that one comes, the spirit of truth will guide you into all truth, and that one will glorify me because it is from me that one will receive what will be made known to you. And for some of us, that might not be a big deal. We've been able to move past the limitations of our language, in our imagination of the divine, and that's great. But for some of us, to speak of spirit, and breath, and ruach as the feminine presence of the infinite in and through us, this is healing.
Speaker 1:And so I wanna make sure that as we read, the transmission of Jesus' words into English doesn't hinder that experience for you. As Rabbi Daniel Rutenberg says, the pronoun for God is God. And as beautiful as our language and metaphors for the divine are, they are only ever in service of the God who defies the limits of our language and test the bounds of our imagination continually. Now, that said, no sooner have we gotten through that, than our imagination gets pushed even farther. Because, the way that Jesus talks about this advocate really is remarkable here.
Speaker 1:If we back up to chapter 14, just for a second here, where Jesus first introduces this advocate word. He says, starting in verse 16, I will ask the father and he will give you an advocate to help you and be with you the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept that one because it neither sees that one nor knows that one. But you know that one for the spirit lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you, I will come to you.
Speaker 1:But before long the world will not see me anymore even though you will because if I live you also will live. And on that day, you will realize that I am in the father, and you are in me, and I am present in you. Now, that is a mess of pronouns. Isn't it? I, and me, and the father, and the spirit, and that one in him, and you, and me, and honestly, it's just a little hard to follow here.
Speaker 1:If I got it right, it sounds like this. I'm leaving to be with the father so I will send the spirit. But when the spirit comes, I will be with you. Even though I'm away and with the father who is in me while I'm in you through the breath that lives inside of you. It's almost like Jesus is changing the rules as he goes here.
Speaker 1:This week, I was playing hide and seek with my son and he has this tendency to jump out immediately and yell surprise as soon as you walk into the room where he's hiding. He's terrible at this game. And so I said to him, buddy, you're terrible at hiding. And he's like, no, I'm good at hiding, but I'm better at surprising. And I said, alright.
Speaker 1:It's your world. I'm just living in it. But that's kind of the deal here. Jesus is saying, I'm good at going away, but I am better at coming to you. And that doesn't make sense, but it's my world.
Speaker 1:So that's the rules. And that's because this entire concept of trinity that Christianity hangs its hat on. A triune God who exists eternally as community from before time is crazy. There's actually an old saying in the church. We must speak of Trinity because it sits at the heart of our faith.
Speaker 1:But if we speak for more than a moment, we will inevitably slip into heresy. And this is because the church has always tried to affirm the mystery that sits at the center of the divine. That somehow one God, as father son and spirit can be the singular force of all that is. And that our best attempts to parse or explain or even make sense of that mystery must always be held as limited. You see this belief that God is somehow within God's self, an unending dance of gift and reception.
Speaker 1:A mysterious, benevolent relationship without beginning or end, and that is the fundamental source of everything that exists in the universe. Now, the church fathers called this the perichoresis, and that comes from Greek. Where choresis is the word for choreography or dance in English, and peri means around. It's where we get things like perimeter in English. And so literally, this is the eternal dancing around.
Speaker 1:And that is the best image that we have ever been able to come up with for God, which is kind of amazing, isn't it? But here's why Jesus' words are so deeply important for our faith today. Because the concept of triune God is simply too big for us to handle. And Jesus is an example of that divine present in history, spirit. This is that same mysterious love and that same creative force that Paul says holds all things now resident and breathing through us.
Speaker 1:Look, nobody is gonna confuse me with some kind of charismatic preacher. Like, I like to think I have some charisma, but that's a different thing. I started my faith journey in the Pentecostal tradition, but I don't speak in tongues. I don't really jump up and down. I don't yell very often.
Speaker 1:And we really don't do altar calls here because we trust that God is going to be present apart from our need to conjure up some kind of religious experience. My conviction as a follower of Jesus is that the same God I see in him is present in me. And because of that, because the divine is resident within me, I can love the way that Jesus loves. And I can serve the way that Jesus serves. And I can at least begin to see people the way that Jesus actually saw people.
Speaker 1:As beloved. And not because it comes easily, but because I am empowered by the creative force that upholds all things in the universe. See, Christianity, at the end of the day, is not just a nice set of ideas. It is the conviction that the divine desires to reside in and through you to the world. And, that every breath, every time your chest rises and falls, every second of every day, this is an opportunity for you to commune with the creator.
Speaker 1:And that cannot help but change you for the better. You see Jesus calls this breath of God the Paraclete. And without going into a long discussion etymology and language here, advocate is like it's a bit stiff, but it's probably the best translation we've got in English. Because this is the one who is on your side. It's the one who defends you.
Speaker 1:It's the one who makes a case for you. And paraclete does get used in legal context in Greek, like a lawyer, but it's actually not primarily a legal term. It's actually a friendship term. But think about this. When Jesus wants to speak of the forces that are at work in our lives, he turns to this ancient Hebrew concept of or Satan, which means accuser.
Speaker 1:And he uses the concept of spirit which he calls our paraclete or defender. And so in Jesus' imagination, there is a force in the world that will accuse and ridicule and tear down and interrogate you. And that voice, if listened to, will lead to more walls and more hatred and more violence and more disintegration. And then there is a force that will defend, and encourage, and comfort, and advocate for you no matter what. And that voice, if listened to, will fill you with breath and invite the divine to take up residence through you.
Speaker 1:Think of it this way. There's a voice in your head that reminds you of what you should be and beats you up because you're not it. And then there is a voice that reminds you you are loved and invites you gently to what you could become. And that might sound similar, but those are two very different postures through which to make sense of your story. In fact, you could say they're as far apart as possible.
Speaker 1:Because it doesn't matter how well intentioned you are, if you live from that voice that tells you you are less than you need to be loved. If it is accusation that drives you, that will come out in all kinds of toxic ways. What Jesus seems to understand is that when you know the universe is for you, and that when you know that God is in you and with you, and with every breath, even though you have yet to become all that you could be. When you live from that place of welcome and embrace, it cannot help but shape you into the image of Jesus. And I understand that often times, even when it comes to questions of the holy spirit, for all kinds of different reasons, we have bought into all kinds of accusations against us.
Speaker 1:Like, haven't worshipped the right way, or we haven't prayed enough, or we haven't discerned the steps to conjure God's presence with us. And sometimes, when we bought into those kind of accusations, the most terrifying thing we can hear is that we are already perfectly loved. But my prayer today is that you might hear in the words of Jesus. This affirmation that God is for you, defending you and encouraging you, advocating for you no matter what. And that in that you might sense with every breath, everything you are invited to become.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. God, help us as we try to wrap our minds and our imaginations around this idea of a triune God who exists as perfect community since before time. Help us to recognize that everything we are, everything we see is an outflow of that generous community. And that when we hear that voice that accuses us and interrogates us and questions us and tears us down, That is only the voice that takes us away from your embrace. Because your spirit is there, defending us, comforting us, showing us where we can do better, and inviting us to who we can become because we are already loved.
Speaker 1:Lord, might you teach us what it means to live from that voice. To sense your spirit with us in every moment. To know that we are loved, and then to let that bleed through in every conversation and relationship we enter. Might the way we walk through this world hint at the beauty of your kingdom. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.