Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’ farewell’

Getting out of God’s way – John 14:6

May 6, 2023

Easter 5 – 2023
John 14:1-14
Marian Free

In the name of God who is as close as breath and yet always just beyond our reach. Amen.

I often say that Jesus did us a great disservice by not writing down his teachings or his philosophy of religion. Jesus left it open for his followers to develop their own theology and, in the case of the gospel writers, to draw up their own individual version of events. It is possible that Christianity would be more united had Jesus been more definitive or produced something in writing . There would be less confusion as to what he said and did and no need for the early church to make sense of Jesus’ death and resurrection, because Jesus would have spelled out the meaning of everything before he died. In other words, to avoid confusion, misunderstanding and division, Jesus could have made it clear that he was promoting a new religion. He could have produced a fully formed theology of the Christian faith, written a creed and provided outlines of liturgical and ecclesiastical practice so that no one need be in any doubt as to what the church should believe and what it should do.

Having said that, I suspect that Jesus’ creation of uncertainty was actually a deliberate attempt to free humanity from a need to lock God (and faith) into a rigid set of principles and behaviours. Jesus does not set anything in stone, because Jesus wants us to rely less on ourselves and more on God; to grasp that our salvation is dependent not on anything that we can do, but on what God in Jesus has done for us; and to understand that God cannot be bought, bargained with or reduced to human categories.

He wants those who follow him to avoid the trap that the Pharisees seem to have fallen into – the trap of desiring certainty, of believing that they know and understand God, and of thinking that they can stay on the right side of God if only they follow this rule or another. Jesus hopes that those who come after him will follow his example of openness to God and his willingness to trust God blindly rather than to think that we can bind God to our will.

I find the Jesus of John’s gospel is perhaps the most frustrating, obscure, and contradictory. To give just one example, in verse 13:33 Jesus says: “Where I am going, you cannot come”, then only 8 verses later he says: “You know the way to the place where I am going” and “where I am you may be also” (14:4, 3). Both cannot be true, so we are forced to live with the tension of not knowing for sure.

Jesus seems to be deliberately keeping his disciples (and therefore us) deliberately on edge, ensuring that we don’t try to lock God into one way of being or another. He knows our desire for security, but he want us to understand that our relationship with God is less a matter of holding on, but rather a matter of letting go, less a matter of living within rigid and narrow guidelines and more a matter of grasping the expansiveness and openness of God.

As Meister Eckart says: “God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you.” God is already there, in the depths of our being. That should be the only certainty, the only security that we need. Our task, over our lifetimes, is not to seek assurance but to accept that we already have it; not to seek God in words and deeds, but to discover that God is already present in our lives and to know that we can abandon ourselves to God’s presence. The task of spirituality is not to pray more, read more, do more, just the opposite, it is to let go, to trust, and to follow Jesus to the cross so that all that is false and illusory in our lives can be stripped away and we are left with only what is pure and true – the Spirit within.

Letting go, is counter-cultural and counter-intuitive which is why we resist it and why Jesus insists on it and why Jesus models it in his own life.

So, by a roundabout route, we come at last to today’s gospel, the beginning of Jesus’ farewell speech to his disciples. The scene takes place after Jesus’ final dinner with his friends. The disciples are confused and afraid. Their world has been turned upside down. If they had thought that things would remain the same, they were sadly mistaken. In just a short period of time, Jesus has broken social convention and washed their feet. He has revealed that he is about to be handed over by one of his own, and Judas has gone out into the night to do who knows what. If that were not enough to unsettle and confuse his friends, Jesus has told them that he is going away and that where is he going they cannot come.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” It is clear that Jesus knows that his disciples need some reassurance, but it is also obvious that Jesus is not going to accede to their need for direction by providing them with a guidebook or roadmap. As close as Jesus will get to giving them directions is to say: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” “I am the way, the truth and the life”, tells us nothing about what to do, what to believe and how to behave.

We will only find the way if we allow ourselves to be led by Jesus (not by our conceptions of Jesus). We will only know the truth if we let go of all those things we hold to be true and seek only God and God’s truth. We will only truly know life if we allow ourselves to abandon this life and to accept the life that Jesus offers.

In faith, we can only let go– not hold on, only empty ourselves – not try to fill ourselves, only get out of God’s way and let God be God in us.

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Seeing the whole picture

May 18, 2019

Easter 5 – 2019

John 13:31-35

Marian Free

In the name of God when loves us and calls us to love each other. Amen.

You probably know the story of the six blind men and the elephant. One had hold of the tail and insisted that it was a piece of rope. Another reached his hands around a leg and thought it was a tree. A third grabbed an ear and declared that it was a fan and so on. Because they were unable to see none of them had a complete picture of what was before them and each believed firmly in their own experience and denied the possibility of any other answered . To take another example. Imagine that you are traveling with companions in a foreign country and are invited to share a meal with a local family who have slaughtered a beast in your honour. Because you are guests you are served the choicest parts of the animal – the eyes, the heart, the skin. None of you taste the tender, juicy meat and leave with a firm belief that that particular animal is one that you never want to eat again. Having tasted only a part, you have no appreciation for the whole.

If our experience of something is only piecemeal it is easy to mistake a part for the whole or to come to the wrong conclusion based on only a fraction of the information. We know this to be true and yet this is how we often read our bibles. Again and again we return to the passages and stories that are familiar and comforting to us and we fail to see them in their proper context thereby missing the wider implications and the subtleties within the passage. Unfortunately this is what happens in our Sunday readings. Few of us have the time or the attention span to listen to a gospel in its entirety, so it is served up to us in bite size pieces which do not allow us to hear the whole story.

Such is the case this morning, our reading makes little sense on its own, because it belongs within the wider context of chapter 13 which in turn is belongs to Jesus’ farewell speech (13-17). The few verses that we have before us this morning make little sense. There are three (even four) sub-stories. ‘When he had gone out,’ refers to Judas’ leaving the group to hand Jesus over – an act that Jesus sees as a decisive and maybe essential part of his story: ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified’. In John’s gospel Jesus’ death is not seen as a defeat but as a victory. It is the cross, not the resurrection that is the place of Jesus’ glorification. Jesus then warns the disciples that he will be with them only a little longer before giving them instructions as to how to live in his absence.

The complexity of the passage explains why preachers (including this one) focus on the last two verses: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this shall everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

If we begin at the beginning we see that the context of Jesus’ words is a Passover meal. We are told that Jesus knows that the end is near. (In fact we learn that he has foreknowledge not only of his death but of how his disciples will act in the next 24 hours). Despite this ‘Jesus, having loved his own, loved them to the end’. One way that Jesus demonstrates this love is that he leaves the table, takes a towel and washes the feet of his disciples. Jesus washes the feet of Judas whom he knows is soon to betray him. He washes the feet of Peter whom he knows will shortly deny him and he washes the feet of the remainder – all of whom will desert him when he needs them most. When he returns to the table Jesus explains that his behaviour is an example for them to follow. Jesus’ love is demonstrated by service, by humbling himself and putting the needs of others before his own. Before he commands his disciples to love, Jesus shows them how it is done.

On his last night on earth, Jesus thinks not of himself, but of his friends. He continues in chapters 14-17 by preparing them for his departure, assuring them he is going ahead to prepare a place for them, letting them know that they would not be left alone, teaching them how to live together and instructing them on the nature of love. ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down their life for their friends’ (15:13). ‘They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them’ (14:21).

Jesus knows what the future holds and he knows the caliber of those whom he has chosen. In his final hours he chooses not to accuse them or to remonstrate with them. Instead Jesus demonstrates his love for them – love that recognizes but overlooks their collective and individual frailties. By his own behaviour at the meal and on the cross, Jesus shows the disciples what it is to love.

Seeing the whole picture tells us not only where our passGe fits in the gospel as a whole, but helps us to interpret Jesus’ meaning. Jesus commands his disciples to love as he has loved, with a love that is humble and non-judgemental and that is self-sacrificial to the point of death. Jesus’ love of the disciples is a love that is shared by the Father and a love that will ensure that even in his absence Jesus will be a present reality.

As the poet Leunig says: ‘Love one another, it is as easy and difficult as that.’

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