5/11
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| Con Ed to the rescue |
The Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association has just sent an open letter to the Presbyterian Church’s Committee on the General Assembly requesting the Committee to facilitate the capacity of Commissioners to this year’s Assembly to exercise their historic commission to exegete the socio-economic political context of the Assembly for both the broader church and society. It has been announced that due to the exigencies of a virtualize Assembly in response Covid19, this year’s Assemble will only deal with institutional and administratve business. PHEWA on the other hand, calls for the historic and traditional role of commissioners to speak…and act… with a prophetic voice to be respected and enacted. This years’s context is like no other. (Text will follow)
Wanted to walk late afternoon, but when I went out it was cold and the rain drops were getting bigger and more frequent. Some kind of electrical emergency was shutting down 112th. Cold and wet I went home. And just before Bible Study, when it was too late to go out, the sun came out.
This week we dove into John 14: 1-14. After just having predicted that a Peter all too ready to proclaim his loyalty would betray him three times, Jesus goes into an extended discourse about where he’s going, who he is, what the disciples are supposed to do etc. While it has elements of “Second coming” language, this is not such a big deal in John’s Gospel in that Jesus is a cosmic figure with an eternal reality, this earthly sojourn just an interval. In other words, he’s always been around and always will be around. Much of this passage focuses on Jesus’ disappointment in the disciples inability to get him.
Thomas question about where Jesus is going (5) sets up the later “doubting Thomas” scenario. The last time wetland about him, someone wanted to know, so what happened to Thomas? One answer is that he went off and wrote his own gospel which got left out. There’s a lot of similarity between John and Thomas with their mystic and cosmic vibes. And perhaps a sense of competition which some think is why John puts Thomas in this “doubting” role.
The key passage is of course, verse 6:
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
There’s a lot going there. The way is about journey, not a doctrine. It’s a way of being, a way of doing. A path. Like Aerosmith and Groucho Marx, walk this way… Early Christians called themselves “the Way” even as the non-denominational church Dion does set up for calls itself “the Journey.”
Truth is a big word. We live in a time when truth seems extremely mutable. Even facts not commonly accepted or respected. In post modern academia, truth is relative and constructed. But as my theologian songwriter friend Kristen Leigh Mitchell says, Something’s got to be true. Something must be true. And we need to own it. And proclaim it. So I affirm that, even understanding what is ultimately true may be beyond words.
And the life. In Deuteronomy, God puts before us life and death.
15 See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. … 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…..
Jesus tells us he has come so 10:10b, “…. that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." His way is the way of truth and life. Not a word here of doctrine.
The second half of verse 6 (No one comes to the Father except through me. )has been much abused. I always rejected it because of its seeming close to exclusion My first “boss,” mentor and ultimately friend, Dr. Bill Wiseman, once said to me that as a child, he saw Jesus here as a traffic cop with a hand up and a stop sign. But as he neared the end of his journey, he saw Jesus with a big sign saying welcome, come in. Everyone and a beckoning hand. I now affirm the truth of this statement, even though I don’t understand how it works. It is a word of welcome and acceptance. And it is all part of the way.
There’s a lot of “wanting to see God” and Jesus saying “if you want to see God, see me” to which a Buddhist would say, Well of course… Just as we want others to see God in us even as we see God in them. Especially in the midst of coronavirusworld.
And the passage devolves into (vv 10-11) I Am in the father and the father in me which is ultimately like:
I am he as you are he as you are me
And we are all together….
I am the egg man
They are the egg men
I am the walrus
Goo goo g'joob
( I am the walrus, Lennon/McCartney)
Though these verses are full of dense lines of thought, let’s make it simple:
* We know God by knowing Jesus
* We know Jesus through his works
* He “returns” by us doing his works (even “greater works”)
As for giving us “what we ask for in his name”…(vv13-14), its obviously not meant to be a “magic formula”…”in my name” clearly means “ in my way…”
In the end, we can say “the destination the journey, the journey is the destination”
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