John 15:1-8

Pastoral Prayer: Holy Father, we admit to our fickleness. Sometimes hot. Sometimes cold. But You, by Your Spirit, stick with us, closer than a brother. Jesus, who is our Brother, has promised to sustain us when we stick with Him. Teach us and remind us this day that we may trust You, love You, and obey You, for the fruitful life is for the blessing of the world, a testimony that You give Yourself for the world. Sanctify us by Your Word this day. And all God’s people say, Amen.

Wednesday I walked past our Prayer Room. We had a couple of fellows working. One contractor was installing cellular radios, upgrading the communications for our Fire Monitoring System. The other young man was here to inspect our Fire Sprinkler System. Church Buildings are not unlike houses. There is always upkeep and maintenance. Always.

The two young men were talking, and I overheard one of them say, “I was reading in Samuel the other day.” After finishing the errand I was on, I stopped back by and stuck my head in. I remarked,

“It isn’t just any day that you walk by and find a couple of contractors talking and hear one say, “I was reading in Samuel the other day.” He responded, “I was just telling Lib my story.” He went on, “I trusted Jesus when I was ten. And I went through the motions.”

When Jesus began what we refer to as His Farewell Discourses, Jesus reminds the disciples that He may be trusted.

Stop your troubled hearts. Trust in God, trust also in me.

Over the course of chapter 14, Jesus names God as Father and gives His relationship with the Father as justification for the disciples to trust Him. Jesus goes so far as to tell his disciples that if they find it difficult to grasp that He and the Father are One, then at least trust Him for the works, the fruit of the life they have seen him live. That is to say, that like Nicodemus, the disciples may easily conclude that,

. . . no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.

Not only is the Father with Jesus, but the Father will send the Spirit who will be with and in them. Jesus presses it more. The one who loves and keeps Jesus’s word will share life with the Father and the Son. Whoever loves and obeys will become the home of Father and Son, being taught by the Spirit who will teach and remind all the reasons Jesus, sent by the Father, may be trusted - loved and obeyed.

Jesus isn’t finished. When the Triune God comes to live with whoever trusts Him, will love him and obey His word, peace will be a feature, not a bug. Whatever comes our way, we will be kept at peace whose mind is fixed on the One who is with and in us.

The disciples whose hearts are troubled now have the promise of Father, Son, and Spirit with them and in them.

“For the next nearly twenty years,” the young man continued. He described his attempts to fulfill his dreams and his goals. He worked long hours, developed unhealthy habits, jeopardized his marriage and his children, and thought he found a future community in a motorcycle gang that would finally put his restless heart at peace. In other words, while he trusted Jesus all those years ago, like many of us, he was led to believe it is now up to us to find and live the Good Life, a fruitful life.

Ancient Israel enjoyed the heritage of the God Who Makes Promises. First to Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob become Israel. Delivered from Egypt, YHWH gives the Ten Commandments.

My people will be like this and not that.

When God’s people would make contact with other tribes and other kingdoms, their difference would be a testimony to the God who delivered them from slavery in Egypt.

If the Ten Commandments described the different way in the world for the people of God, God’s Story reveals that human beings found and still find it nigh impossible. We may blame the crowds, the lack of teaching, and the lack of examples of faithful following; in the end, we discover what the Apostle Paul said of the Law: “it teaches us our lack.”

No wonder we are grateful to hear the Good News that the Father forgives us all our sins, past, present, and future. Almost immediately we learn a new set of lists, new to-dos, that would justify the forgiveness we now enjoy. We, by our actions, take up the task to prove our forgiveness. It is not hard, then, to understand that those lists were turned into new laws, patterned, of course, after the Ten Commandments, which we were now required to keep, to fulfill. We traded one burden for another. We could not keep the Law, and now a new Law is demanded.

In frustration, we develop and maintain a logic. Since we cannot faithfully love and obey, we appeal to forgiveness, thereby reducing our need to and for change. I’m not perfect, just forgiven, we announce. The result is we turn to forgiveness as the means to avoid becoming Christian. I am who I am.

And that is where many of us end up. We hear the Promise of forgiveness and then feel the weight that it is up to us to make good on God’s gift. We find solace with Luther’s description that we are at once sinner and saint. We feel seen in Paul’s words in Romans 7. “I do what I don’t want to do, and I don’t do what I want to do. Who will free me from this body of death?”

“I was dying,” the young man told Lib and me as we stood in the Prayer Room. “I could not sleep at night. I was surviving on caffeine pills, logging into adult websites 14 hours a day, and still getting my work done. I was miserable.”

Rather than a people bearing testimony to YHWH’s deliverance, Ancient Israel had, in a sense, become a body of death. The Prophet Isaiah offers a parable describing the Lord’s vineyard, Israel.

I will sing about the one I love,
a song about my loved one’s vineyard:
The one I love had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He broke the soil, cleared it of stones,
and planted it with the finest vines.
He built a tower in the middle of it
and even dug out a winepress there.
He expected it to yield good grapes,
but it yielded worthless grapes.

Centuries after Isaiah gave his parable, Jesus tells a parable to a contemporary group who inherited the claim that they were the LORD’s vineyard.

Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. He leased it to tenant farmers and went away. When the time came to harvest fruit, he sent his servants to the farmers to collect his fruit. The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first group, and they did the same to them. Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. But when the tenant farmers saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

Wild grapes. Worthless grapes. Vindictive grapes. Selfish grapes. Thieving grapes. Murdering grapes.

I had to meet another contractor and dismissed myself for a moment, but assured the two I would return. The one doing the talking looked at me as if to say, “Sure you do.” I could not avoid the interruption. I returned as soon as I could and suggested he keep going where he was. He said, “No, I am going to bring you up to speed.” He continued. “I had met with the leadership of a motorcycle gang. Plans were moving forward. My hope was that this would satisfy my longing. Not long after that, my wife came to me and said she did not have a good feeling. He had noticed that she was spending quite a bit of time reading the Bible. Notes and Bible studies could be seen around the house. He dismissed what he saw. He had a plan.”

A friend aptly described this common condition. He sent a quote from a W.H. Auden piece titled Age of Anxiety.

Cry – “Miserable wicked me,
How interesting I am.”
We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

Individually and collectively, the description in the two parables, the one in Isaiah 5 and the one in Matthew 21, makes clear that any change then or now would be a matter of God’s grace from inside and out, top to bottom.

Just before the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5, the LORD promises a future free from the filth - outside - and bloodguilt - inside - of a people later described as worthless grapes. Grapes can’t change themselves. They are what they are. But,

. . . when the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodguilt from the heart of Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning.

Jesus brings the future into the present as he points to his suffering, death, and resurrection and promises his disciples that the realities that come with the Presence of the Father, Son, and Spirit will be theirs. The Prophet offers images of purification - burning and fire - by the Spirit, the same Spirit that will teach and remind the disciples of all that Jesus said and taught. The Spirit that Jesus tells them will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and judgment.

When the LORD makes us holy, he does not leave us to ourselves. He does not send us on our way to make our way holy. Instead, Jesus takes up what Ancient Israel could not. Rather than point out how Ancient Israel or anyone may become worthwhile rather than worthless, Jesus takes up to be Israel - the Israelite. And not only declare forgiveness but that He will make us His, Holy. If Isaiah called attention to the wayward vineyard, Jesus supplants the failure with His own identity.

I am the Vine.

Jesus tells the disciples that He is the I AM who spoke to Moses. The Named God who delivered Israel out of Egypt now speaks to the disciples, telling them that He and the Father would be with them, that the Spirit would teach and remind them, and that their future is as the branches of the Vine. In other words, any future fruitfulness would be ensured by the Father, Son, and Spirit - the Triune God - whose Presence is with them and in them.

This is Jesus’s Promise to you! Not only does he forgive you, past-present-future, but He is with and in you and by His Spirit makes your life fruitful. And by fruitful, Jesus is not offering a life of wealth and fame but a life lived in love and obedience that looks like His own life.

Bonhoeffer offered a sermon in Berlin in 1932 titled, Following Christ through the World to the Cross. He described the path of Jesus’s own life.

It is the path of obedience and the way of freedom. For it is the path of God. And that is why it is also the path to love for human beings. Any other path, even if people liked it better, would be a path of hatred and of disrespect toward human beings.

I am the Vine. My Father is the gardener.

Maybe the disciples would have been startled at the reference to the Vine, for the disciples knew their people’s history well. Worthless grapes. They had heard how Jesus stood up to the religious powerful with his own rendition of Isaiah’s parable, the very parable He had given Isaiah to give. And as The Israelite, Jesus takes up the mission of God in Israel unto Himself. He will be what Israel could not, would not. And took that path for our well-being, our fruitfulness. All of us, Jew and Gentile.

“About five years ago I noticed my wife regularly reading her Bible. There would be notes, and Bible Studies spread out. One day, when I was struggling, my wife spoke with me. She told me that she had surrendered. That she wanted God to do in and with her what the Father wanted. That her trust was in Jesus and that she could not see handing her future, their future, over to anyone else. I did not understand what she was trying to say. She handed me a box. She told me to hold it close. In that box, she told me, is all that I hold dear. All the things I think will make my life better, more full, secure my dreams, my future. “You need to give that up,” she told me.

Jesus is not giving us our independence. Yes, he is delivering us from the Powers of Sin and Death, from Hell and the Grave, from Satan and his minions. But that does not mean we are now free to do as we will. We have already proved what we will do - whatever we want! And that does not equate to the Good Life God gives. Now that we have been raised with Christ, that we are, as Paul says, in Christ, and He in us by the Spirit, we are free to move about in the life he now gives. It comes with a warning.

Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit.

Fruit. Jesus is not describing a list of to-dos. That is, He has already described the kind of life that is fruitful for us and for the world. The Ten Commandments in this way are also Good News. Not that our keeping them earns us God’s grace. It is that keeping them reveals to the world that Grace is at work by God’s Spirit in our bodies and in the Body of Christ. My friend Jason changed up Luther’s maxim that we are at once sinner and saint to say that we are at once sinner and sanctified. That is, we are holy and being made holy by the work of the Vine that gives us God’s Good Life, and as the Spirit works in us, we take on the character, we follow the path, of the One who loved us and gave Himself for us all.

The Apostle Paul both simplifies the Ten Commandments and makes them more weighty. He simplifies them by telling us that the Law may be summed up in, Love your neighbor as yourself. He makes them more weighty by casting them in the context of all our relationships. But he knows what Jesus tells us,

I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.

The fruit of a faithful life is sourced in the one to whom we are with and in. We read the word translated as “abide or remain.” Frederick Dale Bruner notes that these are not common ways we describe what is intended. He opts for “stick with.” That is,

I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who sticks with me and I him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.

The Apostle Paul put it this way,

I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by the faithfulness of the Son, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Jesus said,

I am the Vine.

Stick with me and in me. There is your Good Life.

“Not long after the conversation with my wife, I threw up my hands. I let go of all that I was holding on to. Like that little child that throws his hands up to his father, I threw mine up as if to say, God help me. And the Father embraced me, took me, and has not let me go. He changed my wants, my desires. He gave me the desire of my heart - Himself. Now it’s all I can talk about.”

John has already told us that Jesus loved the disciples to the end. And near the end of his earthly life, Jesus gathered those he loved and shared a meal. There he, the Real, True vine, gave the disciples bread that is His body, and the fruit of the vine that is His blood, telling them they are connected, stick with him and He with them.

Come to the Table.

Name?

Todd.

I would pick up my cup of coffee and see another name scrawled on the side of the cup. Tod. Tom. Scott.

“Scott?!” I would shout in my head. It is easy to miss the second d. Even substitute both ds for an m. Maybe it’s the phonics. Todd. Scott. Meh.

When I was much younger, the lack of precision bothered me. Over time, not so much. In fact, in those instances where it mattered, and Tom had been written down or typed, I smile and correct with a grin and say, “My Dad’s name is Tom. I don’t mind the confusion.”

Scribal Errors?

More than one New Testament Greek student faced a personal crisis learning that those asterisks in modern Bibles noted, “The earliest manuscripts do not contain these verses.” Or, “Some manuscripts have . . ..” How did that happen? Whole courses and fields of study are given to textual variations. Over time, we learn the slight differences have not altered the text under consideration to consider it/them spurious.

One feature of Bible translation that cannot be attributed to a copyist is the use of homonyms. That is, words that sound the same but are spelled differently. We might refer to this as a play on words or a double entendre.

Hearing the Difference

The lyricist, poet, and parable writer who gives us Isaiah 5:1-7 does just this here,

he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;

righteousness,
but heard a cry!

Old Testament scholar Walter Breuggemann, points out, as do a number of other commentators on Isaiah 5, that the words translated justice and bloodshed have similar sounds. Listening for the missing, or different, letter is key. We would transliterate the two words mishpat (justice) and mishpah (bloodshed). Visually, we easily see the difference. Those who read Hebrew would too. When the prophets delivered the words from God to the people, it was heard, not read. These were not Pauline circular letters.

Whether on paper seen by the eyes or heard in the ears, the people would have picked up the difference. Reading English translations, we miss the play on words. Instead we clearly see that the vineyard builder expected justice but saw bloodshed. Justice and bloodshed do not sound the same.

Slow Bleed

Continuing the conversation initiated by God through the prophet in Isaiah 1,

Come, let us argue it out (1:18)

the people hear the story, the song, the parable of the vineyard (Is. 5:1-2).

Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.

Wild grapes points the English reader to the missed expectations for God’s people described as bloodshed and a cry. Bloodshed has a specific meaning. Brueggemann notes of mishpah,

. . . thus the outpouring of lifeblood through exploitative social practice; that is, the kinds of economic transactions that abuse, injure, and slowly bleed the poor to death.

While this reflection began several years ago and has been collecting dust, it caught my eye again when considering John 15:1.

I am the true vine.

Jesus’s emphatic claim argues it out. Where Ancient Israel had not lived up to justice but instead yielded bloodshed, Jesus would suffer bloodshed and bring justice - set everything right. In this way, we understand Jesus to be the True, Real Israelite into whom we are taken and given life.

Rather than view Jesus as a replacement for Ancient Israel, the Apostle Paul asserted that Jesus is the fulfillment of justice for us all. Jesus is the One for the many. Pointing out that Jesus is the One causes some to bristle at its exclusivity. But the Apostle’s argument is that death came to the many through one, and so now life comes to the many through the One - Jew and Gentile, all of us.

The Real.

Jesus’s I AM that leads off John 15 puts an end to our scurrying around, hoping that one day bloodshed ends and justice comes. Our longing for everything right is met in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Real in our desert of bloodshed. And while the play on words in Isaiah 5 makes clear the disappointment in the wild grapes, a different letter alters it all for us.

I.

Jesus’s “I.”

Jesus is our missing letter; the I we need to redeem, restore, and reclaim our future is in him who is for us the True, Real Vine.

Jesus gets our letters right.

And it matters.

John 14:22-31

Pastoral Prayer: Holy Father, with each troubling thought of the disciples, Jesus, you still them with Promise. We need Your Spirit to teach and remind us that Your Promise brings peace. Not just for us, but for a world locked in trouble and fear. Remind us here of Your Grace and teach us that living in Your love is Your Spirit’s ongoing work in the Body of Christ and in us. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be Your word of peace to us this day. And all God’s people say, Amen

One of the first times we took a Jeep ride in the San Juan Mountain subrange of the Rockies in Colorado, I would hear, “Did you see the deer?” Much to my chagrin, I did not. Over and over I would hear this line, often as an exclamation. “Did you see the deer?!”

One of the problems is that I did not grow up hunting or living in the mountains. I really did not know where to look or how to discern what I was seeing through the thick trees as we ascended toward a pass or descended towards a gulch.

Over time, I learned. After I discerned what I was and was not seeing while trail riding, it was as if I could see deer everywhere. Now when asked, “Did you see the deer?!” I could respond with a hearty, “Yes!”

Judas, the one Frederick Dale Bruner distinguishes as the good Judas, responded to Jesus’s words,

And the one who loves me will be loved by my Father. I also will love him and reveal myself to him.

Judas, the good one, replied,

“Lord, how is it you’re going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”

By contrast, Judas Iscariot, or the bad one, witnessed the woman anointing Jesus’s feet, an expression of love and devotion and preparation for his death, and feigned concern for others.

“Why wasn’t this perfume sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

John provides this detail,

He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He was in charge of the money and would steal part of what was put in it.

Judas, the good one, wondered why Jesus would not reveal himself to the world. Judas, the bad one, pretended to care about the world.

In other words, ever since Jesus announced his impending departure, the disciples have expressed a collective concern. They have troubled hearts. Here it is good to note that Jesus’s words up the page in verse 1 and then again in verse 27 carry the force of a command. Even more, the disciples have what they need to stop their troubled hearts, and it is to their benefit to do so. Jesus has taught them and is reminding them of what he has been saying.

Stop for you know the way to where I am going.

Stop for you have seen me and so have seen the Father.

Stop for if you have not made the connection that the Father and I are One, then trust that the works I do are the works the Father does in me.

Stop.

But here again, Judas, the good one, seems troubled by a lack. It is as if he is asking, “Doesn’t the world need to see you?”

Not a bad question.

Still.

Doesn’t the world need to see Jesus?

How is it you’re going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?

We would anticipate a justifying word in response. That is, we would expect an explanation. The absence of what we would expect leads some to conclude that Jesus did not answer the question and moved on. Rather than explain to Judas, the good one, what he was up to, Jesus

reiterates what he has said.

In verse 15, Jesus tells the disciples,

When you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Here in verse 23 Jesus tells the disciples,

When you love me, you will keep my word.

Rather than Jesus ignoring the good Judas, Jesus is drawing the disciples into the answer.

When you love me, you will keep my word.

Jesus adds.

My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

The word home, monēn, here in verse 23 is the same word up the page in verse 2.

In my Father’s house are many monēn (rooms, homes).

Here Jesus uses that word again,

And make our monēn, home, with him.

Listen afresh to the logic. Judas, the good one, is troubled that Jesus is revealing himself to them and not the world. Jesus replies with his earlier remark that when anyone loves Jesus, they will keep his commands, his word. And those who love Jesus will be loved by the Father, and both the Father and the Son will make their home with them. Stay with it. If the Father and the Son have made their home, their monēn, with them, then when they are seen loving one another, the world will see Jesus.

In other words. The Body of Christ becomes the place where Jesus and the Father dwell. Eugene Peterson, in his translation, The Message, captures the reality that it has always been the aim of the God Jesus calls Father to make his home with us. Listen to his interpretation of John 1:14

The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.

The words moved into the neighborhood " is a callback to Israel’s wandering in the wilderness when they lived in tents. There was a tent for God’s presence. God pitched his tent with the people as they wandered. Here, John conveys that Jesus pitched his tent with us, with people. The Human God lived with human beings - in the flesh.

Israel built a temple, believing that God needed a more elaborate building. Over time they came to believe God was housed there. Stephen, in his sermon before being stoned, said,

But the Most High does not dwell in sanctuaries made with hands.

The Apostle Paul witnessed the countenance of Stephen change as the crowd killed him. Now Paul the missionary, the Apostle to the Gentiles, bears witness that the peace Stephen found was the reality that Christ was in him, his hope of glory. Thus, when he found the very religious in Athens, he exclaimed,

The God who made the world and everything in it - he is Lord of heaven and earth - does not live in shrines made by hands.

Put another way, God will not be told where he lives and refuses to be boxed in by buildings. He will not be captive to our ideas about him. Instead, he takes up residence with and in his people. Therefore, when the world sees the Body of Christ loving, they see Jesus.

When the Body of Christ is doing other than loving Jesus, it will be hard, maybe not possible, for the world to see Jesus. The question may quickly arise then: if the Body of Christ is doing other than loving Jesus, then does the Body of Christ cease to be the Body of Christ?

May it never come to be!

It may be helpful to contrast our own context with what we find in John 14. For the disciples, the difficulty lay in grasping that Jesus was leaving. More and more, Jesus is making the point that what they need cannot come unless He does leave. That is, the Spirit that will mediate the Presence of the Father and Son will not be sent until Jesus leaves. On this side of the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost, the Spirit’s ongoing mission is to teach and remind them of everything I have told you. Jesus has told them that upon his departure, the Spirit will be with and in them.

There is another way to underscore what is at work in the passage. First, what we find in Jesus’s response to good Judas is both individual and communal. Bruner puts it this way, noting that meditations and commentators on this passage tend to make Jesus’ response either individual or communal. Seeing that the Body of Christ cannot be other than the Body as community, and that the community is comprised of individuals deeply loved and invited into a trusting and ever-deepening relationship, he offers a way to see both.

I believe our Lord’s promise in v. 23 can and should be understood, in context, and both corporate and individual, but in that order. For the corporate Church community precedes, surrounds, and mediates to individual believers, through Word and sacraments, the living God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But once this has been said, John’s Jesus does seem be seeking to invite individual Christians into this community in the emphatically singular-individual vv.21 and 23 (and in the earlier v.12). Jesus wants to privilege each one of us with a very close relationship with himself, his Father, and his Spirit within his community, the Church.

Then, Jesus points out that the Spirit will maintain constant mission - to teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said. They are not left alone as orphans, feeling abandoned, turning troubled and fearful. Jesus does not just tell them to stop; Jesus prays that the Father will send the Spirit, and by the Spirit they will be reminded to trust what Jesus has said- everything he has said.

Laura attended a meeting at the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma this past week. One of the sessions was led by Dave Wattenbarger. We have known Dave a while, as he is the representative who evaluates and offers help to agencies that represent the Food Bank in different communities, like ours.

Dave understands volunteers. He also knows that the environment in a Food Bank is affected by the manner and presence of those volunteers. Dave told the hard truth that there will be times volunteers need to be asked not to come back and help, that their demeanor and words are unhealthy for helping those who would rather not come to a Food Pantry. In other words, Dave knew that agencies associated with the Food Bank that help the Food Bank achieve its mission may, at times, keep people from seeing the mission of the Food Bank to help.

Just so, when the Body of Christ is doing other than loving Jesus, it will be hard, maybe not possible, for the world to see Jesus. Jesus does not tell us not to come back. Instead, the Spirit is given to teach all things and remind us of everything Jesus has told us.

When troubled and fearful, we look for peace. It is no surprise then that Jesus tells the disciples twice in what we call chapter 14 to stop being troubled. We should not be surprised then that Jesus points to the peace his presence, and the future presence of the Spirit, gives to them, to us. Jesus told the disciples then and we today that he leaves us with his peace.

My peace I give to you.

Oh for a little peace and quiet.

On an individual level, we are offered life hacks, body hacks, vacation ideas, and retirement goals. “One day,” we say.

Oh for a little peace and quiet.

And when those days finally come, when we think we have found peace and quiet, the days are shorter than we realize, or we are faced with the realization that Jesus was right when he tells the disciples near the end of his Farewell Discourse that in this world you have trouble, suffering.

Follow Jesus around for three and a half years, and you may be sure the turbulence created by his adversaries left and right would leave any disciple hungering for an island escape. They may not have had social media, but they were well aware of the trouble caused by Jesus seeing people others would as soon ignore as avoid. What began with such promise for a different future was overtaken by plots and schemes against Jesus. The disciples caught in the crossfire were criticized for their association, even used as objects by which Jesus’s enemies sought to discredit him.

This and more create questions when Jesus tells the disciples he gives them his peace.

What peace?

On a communal level, all the hope in human progress we can muster has not created a peaceful world. Today’s mantra is not that what the world needs now is love sweet love. Listen to the rhetoric. What the world needs now is less people. And most often it is the lyricist singing that tune that decides what people we need less of.

If individuals may be caught up in the causes for a lack of peace, then it should not be hard to see that communities may participate as well. And the Body of Christ is not immune when she fails to teach what Jesus taught and remember all that Jesus said.

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Stop being troubled and fearful.

We cannot ignore that when Jesus tells the disciples to stop being troubled, to not be fearful, to receive the peace he leaves with them, that he is giving them himself, who is himself our peace.

That is, Jesus’s talk about leaving cannot be detached from his suffering and death. John assures us that Jesus is not ignorant of what is going on around him. He is well aware of his adversaries. Mark, in his Gospel, foregoes the early parts of Jesus’s life and gets straight to his preaching and the furor he created. From the outset in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’s enemies look for ways to kill him. That is hardly what you and I would consider peaceful, easy feelings.

The peace Jesus gives is in the confidence that He is doing what the Father gave him to do, what He commanded Him. Despite what He sees ahead of Him, Jesus commits to the Triune God’s determination to not be God without us. Despite the opposition, Jesus faces trouble with the peace that the Father is with Him, is in Him.

Jesus does not just tell the disciples; he faces trouble knowing that the ruler of the world is both coming and has no power to hold him. That is, Jesus keeps making a reference to the Cross and Resurrection in the face of trouble, and his commitment to give himself for us all, rooted in His love for us, brings peace to a troubled heart, extinguishes fear of what lies ahead, and rests in the Promise of a future now made present in Him.

Doesn’t the world need to see Jesus?

In you, in us, by the work of the Spirit, the world will see Jesus, for there is no trouble His peace will not overpower.

For the first 80 years of its existence, the Southern Baptist Convention did not have its own confessional statement. Birthed out of the debate over slaveholding missionaries, the Southern Baptist Convention of churches used any of primarily three confessional statements: The Philadelphia Confession of Faith, The New Hampshire Confession of Faith, or The Abstract of Principles. None of these statements addressed the matter of slavery.

Thus, as those who left the Triennial Convention to form the SBC, they could stand by, as we interpret it. It being the Bible.

The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy that broke out in the early part of the Twentieth Century spurred the Southern Baptist Convention to articulate its first confession in 1925, The Baptist Faith and Message. Thirty-eight years later, amid the rising influence of German Higher Criticism, the Southern Baptist Convention revised its confession in 1963. The year of my birth.

Beginning in 1969, for the first time in its history, the Southern Baptist Convention, through its publishing arm, began releasing its twelve-volume commentary set, The Broadman Commentary. The first volume (1969) relied heavily on the Documentary Hypothesis for its content. That volume was recalled after much criticism, and another was offered in its place (1973). I’m told the revisions were slight. This was my first preacher-boy set of commentaries presented as a birthday/graduation gift (1981). My set included the re-released volume 1.

In 1998, an article on the Family was added to the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message. Two years later, absent a major conflict, the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message was updated again, often referred to as BFM2K.

This short genealogy of Southern Baptist Confessional Statements came to mind while re-reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Protestantism without Reformation. Why? In his 1939 essay, Bonhoeffer mentions Southern Baptists. Under section I, The Unity of the Church and the Denomination,

Americans have been less able than any other people on earth to realize the visible uniuty of God’s church on earth. Americans have been more able than any other people on earth to envision the variety of Christian forms of knowledge and community. . . American Christendom has not central organization, no common confession, no common ritual practices [Kultus], no common church history, no common ethical, social, or political principles, North and south (the question of slavey) but also the migration from east to west (the “boundary” = “frontier”) signify changes and separations of the denominations.

. . .

The Congregationalists ordination formula is entirely free; it requires only a confession of one’s personal committment to rthe Lord Christ in personal experience, in the certainty of the call to ministry and in belief. But even in cases where there are confessional obligations, these are limited to a certain degree since most denominations mutually recognize the administration of the sacraments, of the ministry, and ordination. This is true for Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Reformed, United Lutherans, Northern Baptists, evangelicals [Evangelische]. Only the Episcopalians, the Missouri Lutherans, and the Southern Baptists have resisted such recogniton to this day. (I added the bold type.)

As we interpret it.

“We have no creed but the Bible,” is the mantra I heard often growing up in our branch of the Christian tree. The intent was to say that to be Baptist is not to adopt a creedal statement, a binding of the conscience before God, as it were. Instead, the competency of the soul before God required only a confession of faith in Jesus Christ. When it comes to beliefs, “We have no creed but the Bible.” What we learned over time is that,

We have no creed but the Bible... as we interpret it.

And we is the unspoken magisterium comprised of the celebrity class of Southern Baptists. When the Southern Baptist Convention determined to update its confession for 2000, it was no Nicea or Constantinople. There were no real dissenting interpretations. There were only those in whom power had been consolidated to work out a confessional statement,

as we interpret it.

Bonhoeffer’s description of the lack of commonality among American Christians may be expressed in contemporary terms as the denominational penchant to preserve its particular identity over against the common confession that Jesus is Lord. Not just Southern Baptists, but the die was cast, according to Bonhoeffer, that rather than admit to the legitimacy of these disparate institutions, the churches and her people suffer under the impulse to see the denomination as more important than the Church.

Each one relying on,

as we interpret it.

When I received a denominational publication recently, I read with interest the evaluation of the current controversy among Southern Baptists - women. Specifically, may women serve in title or function as pastor in a local Southern Baptist Church? The ongoing debate reveals countless qualifying conditions and nuances in nomenclature, so the zone has been sufficiently flooded that, despite Al Mohler's intent to bring clarity and truth, both are lacking.

Leaders are called to bring clarity to times like these. I appreciate the writer who offered an opinion piece from his perspective. He and I had this discussion several years ago, the first time the matter made it to the floor of an SBC annual meeting. He was gracious then, as he is in his article, even though we do not see things the same way.

In his effort to point out how this matter is really a secondary issue, not one that rises to subvert the confession that Jesus is Lord, he wrote,

“... men serving in the role of pastor/elder is not about the superiority of men over women. It is about obeying and being submissive to the authority of the biblical text as we interpret it. (Italics are mine.)

As we interpret it.

Honesty.

A breath of fresh air.

That is, the matter is one of interpretation. The we are those who find in Mohler’s amendment their interpretation. What’s more, making an interpretation authoritative in a constitutional amendment moves the subject from confession to creed, where one does not bind, the other does. Rather than church autonomy, this is one more step toward another tool in the toolbox of the unseen magisterium of the SBC.

In the end, we will have shuttered,

We have no creed but the Bible.

As if it ever was.

John 14:15-21

Pastoral Prayer: Gracious Father, we live with endless speculation about what Heaven will be like. This day give us Your word that Heaven, a way of describing where You are, is Yourself who came down when Your love filled our soul.

We had not been at Snow Hill but a few weeks when Al stopped by. He and his wife Wanda had told me they voted “No” when the church cast the vote to call us as Pastor and Family. “No one deserves a 100% vote,” they said. Al and Wanda were the two who made sure that their own maxim held. We laughed, not sure what else to do.

Al stopped, and we chatted about lots of things. It was a “get to know you” conversation. Al made sure I knew that he really liked Charles Stanley. Stanley was his favorite preacher. All those years ago, Charles Stanley was pastor at the First Baptist Church, Atlanta. He had developed his own ministry resources under the banner In Touch Ministries. You could find his content on television, radio, and publishing that carried his name well beyond Atlanta. I told Al that Frank, a good friend, and I often listened to Stanley’s sermons on cassette tapes and talked about them while we were in college. Some of you will need to Google cassette tapes.

Seven years later, or some twenty-five years ago, I sent out a weekly email. Back then I was able to personalize those emails. Rather than beginning with "Dear Church Family," as those emails do these days, you would have opened an email that read more personally, like "Dear Glenn and Jeanene." I had not sent out an email for a few months as I was recovering from surgery. In that email, I attempted to express how valuable it is when, after you have missed time at church, someone simply says, “We have missed you.” Not, “Where’ve you been?” “What happened to you?” Or, “Well, stranger, good to see you again.”

That introductory bit, about how valuable it is when someone says they missed you, was received by Al and Wanda as though I were being critical of them, as if I were calling them out for not telling me they missed me. Al stopped by again. This time he reported that I had been offensive. I tried to explain. I sent the same email to everyone. Eventually I sat down with them and one of our deacons and presented them with a copy of the exact email with a header that read Dear Aaron. I sought to explain what I meant by the words I used. There was no intent to call anyone out. I was unsuccessful.

And sad.

Jesus’s words troubled the disciples. While he was not attempting to thank those who had reached out to say he had been missed, Jesus’s words informed the disciples they would miss him. That is, he would only be with them a little while longer. He added that you will see me and then you will not see me. More words from Jesus only left the disciples puzzled, confused. Our passage this morning lengthens Jesus’s response to Philip, who kept the back and forth going between the disciples and Jesus with,

Show us the Father, and it is enough.

When we reach our Scriptures for today, Jesus has told the disciples to believe in Him, and if that proved too difficult, then they should believe the works they have witnessed him do. And the works Jesus did and does are the Good News for the salvation of sinners, the restoration of the world, and the rescue of all things from the Powers of Sin and Death. That is, remember, Jesus’s claim that he will do anything they ask is not everything they ask. And the anything they ask in line with the aim of the Gospel is the anything he will do.

And now he turns to them, having believed into him or in the works he has done, he tells them.

If you love me, you will keep my commands.

“If.”

Iffy that they love Jesus?

John opens what we call chapter 13 by remarking that Jesus loved the disciples to the end. From there John references the supper they share together, but rather than give the details of the supper like Luke, for example, John describes Jesus taking up a towel and wash basin with which he washes the disciples' feet - an act of self-giving love.

When Jesus comes to Peter, you may recall, he protests. Rather than grasp this as an act of self-giving love to another, Peter took it for an act beneath his Teacher. When Jesus turned the tables and told Peter that his refusal of self-giving love meant there would be no place for him, Peter overcompensated and requested more than just foot-washing. After the expression of self-giving love to his disciples, Jesus told them to express their self-giving love to one another.

Frederick Dale Bruner, commenting on John 14, calls back to John 13 and understands the first command Jesus gives as Jesus’s first special command to the disciples. Receive love. Receiving love enables them to know how to love.

If it helps, Peter would be a solid illustration of the way some of us were given the faith. There was not much talk about loving Jesus. It was more about being obedient. Our progress in the faith was not described as rooted in love but in keeping the right rules, even rigidly. Our pieties, those as elementary as reading Scripture, prayer, and worship, were not described as motivated by loving God but by owing God our best performance of the faith.

Bruner’s point is one that lands hard for those of us who are recovering legalists, fundamentalists. The preparation to obedience, to faithfulness, is love. Not just any love, but receiving the self-giving love of God in Jesus Christ.

Translating verse 15 with If, warms a legalist’s heart. How might we compel others to faithfulness? We tell them if they don’t obey, then they don’t love. Some of us learned later in life that God’s determination to be God not without us was rooted in his self-giving, other-directed love found in one of our earliest and easiest to memorize verses,

God first loved us.

God loves us first.

When I investigated the email mishap with Al and Wanda, I learned the confusion was complicated by a technical matter. Like my Nan, Al and Wanda had a MailStation. For people without a computer, this allowed them to send and receive emails. My grandmother used one mostly to keep up with my Uncle in St. Louis. She too received my weekly emails. Sometimes when reading an email via a MailStation, the header information, giving needed context, could be missed or missing. Technology happens. And sometimes better translation decisions could be made.

Here in verse 15, the clause contains signals that make the better translation,

When you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Not if but when. What Bruner calls a grace translation. Love drives obedience. Love commits to faithfulness. Obedience, faithfulness, indicates that love shows up, no matter what.

Jesus is giving these final words on his way to the Cross. He will face the cup in Gethsemane, and in love He shows up obedient, faithful, when surrounded by enemies. He finishes his work, commits Himself to the Father, and is raised from the dead. Jesus is for us the Faithful One, the Obedient One, the One who is Faithful to us and for us. Obedient for us and in us. He is so because the Triune God, Father-Son-Spirit, determined not to be God without us. Despite and in spite of our resistance, our sin, Jesus drank the cup and gave Himself for us all. And because the Promise is central, that is Jesus is Promise and the Promised One, Jesus pledges,

I will come and take you to myself.

Jesus’s Promises are not condition-al. Jesus’s Promise conditions the disciples’ future, and ours. Jesus, the Promised One, is not condition-al but He conditions our future. That is, Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection set the conditions of our future. There is no “if” with Jesus. Jesus ties believe with love. And in his Farewell Discourse, he connects love with obedience.

Not if but when.

When you love me, you will keep my commandments.

When calls attention to our need. That is, there are times our whens are far apart. Thus, what is conditional is not Jesus’s love but ours. There are the times we demonstrate, or illustrate, not only our love but the love that conditions our present by bringing the Promised future into our current reality. Given the Promise of our future with Jesus, we give ourselves to love one another, to love others. When Jesus tells the disciples, and so us, with

I will take you to myself,

He adds to it here,

I will not leave you as orphans.

Jesus not only conditions our future, but brings into the present the future that he describes,

When you love me, you will keep my commandments.

And our whens are brought closer all the time because,

I will ask the Father and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever.

Another. Not just any other. But another just like Jesus. The word another is distinguishing the nature of the other. Koine Greek, New Testament Greek, has two words for another. One emphasizes difference - this one is another unlike that one. One points to likeness - this one is another same as that one. Jesus uses sameness here. The Father will send you another just like me. How would the disciples experience the presence of Jesus, how do we? The Father gives us another just like Jesus.

Various translations emphasize the possibilities. The word is Paraclete - one who comes alongside to help. Bruner takes up the possibilities for the word and makes the case of the Spirit of truth to be a True-Friend.

Called alongside to help. Especially in critical situations, such as appearances in court where one especially needs someone to stand alongside oneself and to give true, helpful, and encouraging testimony and support.

A True-Friend who encourages us in our whens and admonishes us when the distance between our whens is great. Put in a more common way, a true-friend who encourages our faithfulness and calls us out when we are not. Bruner likens the Spirit to our Defender and our Prosecutor. We like the first. Not so much the latter. But with the Spirit, our True-Friend, we have both. And we need both.

But this True-Friend is not on the sidelines, not ever. Jesus tells the disciples that this True-Friend will remain with you and in you. The True-Friend is the never-gone-Presence of the Son with us.

This sounds like Jesus’s words at the end of Matthew’s Gospel,

I will never leave you or forsake you.

Here John gives us Jesus’s words as He tells the disciples, and so us, that this reality, the one that includes Jesus coming to take us to himself, is given to them and to us is the True-Friend given by the Father at the Son’s request. And here, lest there be any doubt about the Spirit, Jesus tells the disciples that the Spirit that will be in you is the Presence of the Son, who is in the Father, who is in them, in whom the Son is.

There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

The Spirit does not just remain with us, but in us. And as such gives us the Presence of the Father and the Son so that the God Jesus called Father, the Jesus the Father called Son, Who lived by the Presence of the Spirit THIS God will be and now is with you and in you.

That is love.

The God we know by name - Father, Son, Spirit - gives Godself to us and by grace is now in us, brings love closer than it has ever been. And as such that love births within us as we receive the Love That Is God and we give ourselves in self-giving love for others.

Bruner makes this point vivid for the Church,

The Church cannot offer a visible Spirit, only a mutually loving community and a historically testable Gospel, that, together, evidence the Spirit.

We cannot say, look, there is the Spirit! Or, look, over there is the Spirit. But since the giving of the Spirit is for the community, it is the Spirit's work in the community that reveals Jesus to the world.

How?

Hearing.

When we hear the Good News of the self-giving, other-directed love of God revealed in Jesus Christ, we receive the Love That is God. And in response, in our first obedience, we are baptized. We do not baptize ourselves. The Church baptizes. Whether it is gathered near a river, a lake, a pool, or in a building made holy by the Presence of the Spirit, the Church baptizes. And the baptized become part of the Body of Christ. Not a fictional idea, but the only Body Christ has on earth today - the Church.

And the Church is given the Bread of Life as food for living. Thus, we take the Lord’s Supper, for we do not know how it happens, but we know that it does happen that in bread and cup, Jesus is Who we take in that by the Spirit together we may live out his special commands.

And we do this to remember.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the One who gave himself for us all.

Luke describes the Church as taking in the fellowship of the breaking of bread not just on Sundays but as often as they met together.

I was once asked why the Church meets so many times a week. I admit that at the time I did not understand the question as I should have. Competition for our time and attention had and has been growing. Minimizing our commitments to the Body was, and often still is, viewed as a checked-box event. But the Church, the Body of Christ, is well aware that without Christian community we become untethered to the ongoing reminder that we are loved, receive love, and that the Spirit in us empowers us to love as we have been loved.

We sing and dream of our future with God when He will be all and in all.

Here, Jesus tells the disciples that this future, the One Promised, is given us in the present by the Spirit - our True-Friend and that True-Friend who is the never-gone Presence of Jesus makes real the Love That is God so that the Love That Is God may be revealed in His Body, the Church.

Quite a few years after my visit with Al and Wanda, Wanda called. Al had since died. We talked as before, as if nothing had happened, as if all were well. And it was. For by God’s grace what we often only reserve for the future was given us in the present.

Still.

Brother Justice, my pastor until I was in Middle School, believed Southern Baptists could trace their roots to the first-century Christians. He followed a small pamphlet of five lectures offered by J.M. Carroll (1931). Carroll took the idea, called Landmarkism, from J.R. Graves, who lived in the 19th century. I may still have a copy of The Trail of Blood.

My Church History professor, Slayden Yarbrough, at Oklahoma Baptist University, disabused students of the notion by pointing out that there is no traceable Baptist lineage, no line of succession, from the first century to this day. Leon McBeth’s tome, from whom I took Baptist History in Seminary using his text, made the point in the book’s title: The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness. One might argue that Graves, and the popularizer, Carroll, felt the need to counter both Roman Catholic and Orthodox claims that their histories could be traced in an unbroken line to the Apostle Peter.

Thus, my formative years were often characterized more by Baptist distinctives than by theology. W. T. Conner’s Christian Doctrine was the only systematic theology text written by a Southern Baptist, maybe even still. It is not that Southern Baptists did not read systematic theologies. It was common to say, when I was in Seminary, that Southern Baptists had produced few, if any, writing theologians who offered the denomination a purely systematic theology. The SBC was/is most often considered a “preaching denomination.” That is, deciphering Southern Baptist theology requires gleaning sermons.

My late friend, James Leo Garrett, offered a Historical Theology but not a purely systematic theology. During my M. Div, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary adopted James Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology as our systematic text. But Erickson, while Protestant, was not Southern Baptist. That is not to say that Baptists have no theology. Instead, it points out the inherent need to justify the value of our denomination rather than to produce a distinctively Southern Baptist systematic theology from which doctrinal positions inform our ecclesiology.

Preserving a denomination is not equal to ecclesiology.

Our Monday Night Live Class over at Jason Micheli's Substack resumed on July 6 after a hiatus. We took up a discussion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's essay Protestantism without Reformation, written in 1939. Bonhoeffer wrote the piece after two trips totaling 14 months in the United States. It is found in volume DBWE 15.

Bonhoeffer’s observation includes,

Even the term “church” is often viewed with suspicion. The characteristic term is “denomination.” For many American Christians, church is associated with too much clericalism, autocracy, confessional conceit [Dünkel], intolerance, persecution of heretics, a desire for worldly power and political favors. To be sure, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Presbyterians are consciously churches, but in the eyes of the others, they are merely denominations. The remaining communities have more a denominational than an ecclesial [kirchliches] self–understanding.

Quite a number of years ago, I was invited to lunch by a friend who at the time held a leadership position in our denomination. The lunch turned into a conversation about a controversy raised by a local church concerning the Lord’s Supper. It became clear that we were talking from two different perspectives. One of us was viewing the matter through a denominational lens, the other theological. The context was ecclesial to be sure, but when I was told, “that’s not Baptist,” the notion of the Holy Scriptures questioning one another would have been helped by an outsider’s input.

Bonhoeffer saw us.

Only the truth revealed in Holy Scripture can and must decide bewtween the existing differences [between churches in America]. Churches must allow themselves to be questioned by one another on the basis of Holy Scripture.

If only.

We did not part as theological enemies. These years later, he has served in another denominational capacity. He moved. I still pastor the same church. I wonder what might have changed had either of us, or both of us, read Bonhoeffer then.

Times have changed, and so has the need to preserve and protect our denomination. Any criticism has been and remains viewed with suspicion. The response was a form of toxic positivity. You know, the adage you heard growing up, “If you don’t have anything nice to say . . ..” It really was not a matter of not being nice and more of, “Wait, have we thought this through?” Critique was dismissed as malcontent. Not over theology but loyalty. Naturally, the knives labels came out. Rather than conversations, loyalists were Conservatives; all others were Liberals.

We didn’t have much stomach for critique.

Still.

Bonhoeffer saw us.

American theology and the churches as a whole have never really understood what “critique” by God’s word means in its entirety. That God’s “critique” is also meant for religion, for churches’ Christianity, even the sanctification of Christians, all that is ultimately not understood.

No one likes being critiqued.

But we want to be seen.

Bonhoeffer’s observations that took the form of his essay won’t allow us to be seen and not critiqued, particularly by God’s word. Our “succession” as some identity marker is not the aim of the Gospel. But succeeding churches who bear witness to the Risen Christ in communities that give the world the Body of Christ welcome critique, for it is not a matter of how long we have been, but that we are seen by the world as if they were seeing Jesus.

John 14:12-14

Pastoral Prayer: Merciful Father, hear our prayers that Your works continue in Your Body, the Church. By Your Grace and for Your Glory, pray in and through us, producing the works of the Son by the Spirit, through the Cross of Christ and His Resurrection, which is now ours. Give us Your Word this day and always. And all God’s people say, Amen.

I entered the gym and saw Terry sitting near the top of the bleachers. I joined him there. The gym at First Baptist Church Oklahoma City is on the second or third floor of their building. Our high school church league basketball team played there. Our game would start after the game we were watching. It had been a rough few days for Terry. He had just gotten out of jail over the weekend.

We met in Middle School. He was considered a good-looking kid. All the girls liked him; just ask him. Walking home from school one day, we went by his house. It was not too far out of the way for me. He took me and maybe Chas to a small storage cabinet behind his house. Terry opened the doors to reveal his candy store. “Take what you want,” he said.

Terry was not considered rich by any means. In fact, we wondered where he got all that candy. We put two and two together and realized that Terry had been the culprit behind the break-ins at the school’s Student Store, stealing candy and more. He was a repeat offender, it turns out.

His habit did not die. Terry expanded his exploits into High School. Again, his target was the school’s Student Store. Pencils. Candy. Stuff. Not terribly valuable but not his.

I don’t recall the specific violation that landed him in jail that weekend before our next game. It was more than the petty larceny we knew about. Terry would not be able to play that night. We had a rule that players must attend three of five church events each week before the game. Sunday School. Morning Worship, Church Training, Evening Worship. Wednesday Youth Group. Miss more than two, and you did not play in the next game. Maybe now you pick up what it means to be a recovering legalist, a true fundamentalist. All law and no grace.

Terry showed up to watch.

We talked about his weekend. He did not offer many details. He did make a point to tell me,

“I prayed and asked that God would get me out of jail. He didn’t.”

I looked at him. I replied, “Terry, God did not put you in jail. You did that. You can’t break the law and think your prayer works magic and rules out consequences.”

Prayer is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Oklahoma Baptists may have felt a little pride when Bailey Smith was elected as President of the Southern Baptist Convention in June of 1980. Smith was pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Del City. He was the youngest pastor elected to serve the denomination as President at 41. Two months later, speaking at the Religious Roundtable’s National Affairs Briefing, he made a lightning-rod remark.

“It’s interesting to me at great political battles how you have a Protestant to pray and a Catholic to pray and then you have a Jew to pray,” Smith stated. “With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew. For how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the true Messiah? It is blasphemy. It may be politically expedient, but no one can pray unless he prays through the name of Jesus Christ.”

The blowback came from Jews and even Baptists, among others. Later in his life, Smith described his words as an “unfortunate remark.” An interviewer reported,

He denied anti-Semitic intent and cited words attributed to Jesus in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

“So I believe that for our prayers to be heard, they must, as the Bible said, be made through Jesus,” Smith told People magazine in 1982. “I’ve never apologized for what I believe, but I am deeply sorry that I hurt some people.”

I recall the debates that swirled after that. I began at OBU in August one year later. There were still conversations being had.

One outcome was that many, and still do, believe that for a prayer to be heard, the one praying must conclude their prayer with the words “in Jesus’s name.” It was, and is, seen as the magic seal of every prayer. It was the law of proper prayer.

Prayer cannot be reduced to employing a proper formula.

Yes, Jesus said,

If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

That is Good News.

But Jesus’s Good News is not that we now have an expansive list of what we may ask, and that it is secured by the appropriate ending to our prayers. The Good News is that the Triune God will keep doing what the Father, Son, and Spirit have been doing to put an end to the Powers of Sin and Death through the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, for he lives with death behind Him, and in Him we do. The Good News is that the God who raised Jesus from the dead, having first delivered Israel from Egypt, rescues and delivers people today from the Powers of Sin and Death. He still works the works He always has so that we might believe into Jesus.

Look up the page to the last line from our reading last week. It is worth reminding ourselves that the Farewell Discourse runs right into Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer and builds as we go along. That is, we fail if we make Jesus’s words here about anything but the ongoing works of the Father through the Son. That is what Jesus said.

Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves.

And then Jesus gives the Truly, Truly, or the King James Verily, Verily; it is the exclamation point that emphasizes what follows. Jesus doesn’t want what he says to be missed when He says,

The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

That is, the works Jesus does are not random or disconnected from Who He is and His mission. Life may be arbitrary in our experience of it. But the works Jesus does are not. Therefore, the greater works that those who believe do and will do cannot be anything less than, or different from, what Jesus does with the Father in Him. Put another way, the Church, the only Body Jesus has on earth today, will do by the Spirit what the Father gives the Son to do. Jesus said anything, not everything.

Think of it this way. After the Resurrection, Jesus is not now answering prayers as if He is Bruce Almighty. He is not at all like the Jim Carey character that takes up God’s job while God, played by Morgan Freeman, goes on vacation.

Bruce sits at his computer and sees his Inbox full of prayer requests. Rather than read them he indiscriminately answers all of them, “Yes.” When he leaves his house the next morning, chaos abounds. The always “Yes” creates a waterfall of contradictory conditions. And they are random and disconnected. We may want our every prayer answered with a “Yes,” but it is Good News they are not.

Jesus tells us his works, the works they have seen, the works we have seen, are always on offer.

Ask anything in my name, and I will do it,

Jesus connects Who He is and the works the Father has done through him. Therefore, the answer cannot always be, “Yes.” It may be better that rather than viewing the lack of a “Yes” as a “No,” it may be that our ask does not align with the works Jesus did and does. Anything is not everything.

Jesus adds,

That the Father may be glorified in the Son.

Consider this one more layer that points to the obedience Jesus describes as,

I only do what the Father gives me to do . . .

I only say what the Father gives me to say . . .

I do what I see the Father doing, and I say what I hear the Father saying . . .

Glory is revealed in the faithfulness of the Son. Jesus prays that in his hour, on the Cross, the Father would be glorified in the Son. That is to say, that the offer to do anything for those who pray in the name of Jesus is not about praying and then appending Jesus’s name to our ask. Jesus makes the offer on his way to the Cross. That is, anything that brings glory to the Father through the cross of Christ is the anything prayers Jesus will do.

The glory of God is made known as Jesus answers our prayers that His works of grace and mercy - the work of the Cross - bringing about the redemption of all creation from the Powers of Sin and Death - are answered. Jesus continues the works of the Father through the Spirit in the Church. Our work today is gospel work. To ask, praying, that the Spirit of Jesus will do and does the works of Jesus through those who believe into Jesus, you and me, we, is the cause for which Jesus answers.

If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

Our friend Jason neared the end of his sermon last Sunday on this very passage.

On Wednesday afternoon, I was at the infusion center at my oncologist’s office, he said.

An old woman sat directly next to me, a red-orange tube running from a bag to her chest. She wore a blue scarf with peacocks on it around her small, bony head. Her face looked so sunken and her skin so stretched and translucent that guessing her age felt impossible. She greeted me - exhausted, her eyes only half open - with a distinct prairie accent.

After I sat down next to her, I opened Frederich Dale Bruner’s doorstop heavy book on the Gospel of John and I turned to his commentary on this passage from the Farewell Discourse.

No sooner had I opened the book than the woman started to cry- whimper really - from the sores her chemo-poison had burnt into her mouth and tongue and throat. Beseeching the nurse, she pleaded, “Make the pain go away.” She kept on like that, inconsolable, with no concern for what I or anyone else might think about her. In a different-size person you’d call it a tantrum. After a while, once she had calmed down and her agony subsided, she glanced down at the page open between us where verses thirteen and fourteen were set apart and made obvious by bold italics.

Then she glared at me, “Why did Jesus ever make the promise.”

Hearing this question as Jason preached reminded me of another conversation.

We sat at a high-top table. For a few years, a few friends had gotten together most every week to talk about the upcoming Sunday’s Scriptures in the Lectionary. This time one of those friends and I were meeting with a small group that had serious, even hard questions about life and faith, about the Bible and why some things, bad things, happen. The stories we heard were heartbreaking; some were maddening. Why did they not end sooner? How will we recover? Will there be justice? Why no answer? Didn’t Jesus say ask and I will do anything?

Not long after those conversations, my friend told me he could no longer believe. His prayers and others had not been answered. These were not prayers for a new car, a new house, a new job, more pay, or anything that we have heard some propose that we name it and claim it. Whatever it is.

To this day I am saddened that I did not have a better response. No matter my tried-and-true, even Scriptural, suggestions, they were no match for those who had decided there were no works to believe in. That asking in prayer did not work. Maybe you have been or are there. Or maybe you have never been in one of life’s gravest situations, so you have not been disenchanted, but you would not be sure how you might respond should you get news that your body is at war with itself.

Jason continued his story.

“Why did Jesus ever make that promise?”

The woman in the peacock scarf did not lift her tired, hollow glare from me.

She waited for an answer.

“Because,” I replied, “Jesus wants to continue his redemptive work through us - through our prayers. If we pray petitions conformed to his cross and in his service to the gospel, he promises to act on them. Ask in the cross’s cause, and he has bound himself to do it.”

I watched that port in her chest rise and fall as she sighed. She thought I was dodging her question.

“What sort of prayer is in the cause of the cross?” She asked.

I thought about it.

Finally, I answered, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner - God answers that prayer every time.”

A silence settled between us. I turned pages in Bruner’s big book, and I got to work as I waited for the nurse. After a while she turned to me in the large, leather infusion chair.

“How long you been coming here? She asked.

She looked surprised by my answer, “Over ten years now.”

“You ever pray for God to heal you total? Make you whole and put this clean behind you?”

I nodded, “Of course. All the time.”

“Me too,” she said, “For almost a year now.”

I waited.

I could tell she was considering whether the next question would offend me.

“If Jesus made that promise …”

And she pointed at the page of the book resting on the arm of my chair.

“If Jesus made that promise, then how come not one of my prayers for healing has been answered? He promised to do it, right? But he hasn’t done it. And the hourglass in me is nearly empty.”

I closed the book and turned in my seat to look her square in the face.

“Jesus does not always heal us,” I said, “God does miracles, absolutely. But more often, the way we suffer and the manner in which we die, they are a way - no, they are the way - we bear witness to his cross and our resurrection. Remember, the Father did not remove the cup from Jesus either.”

She stared at me, chewing on my words.

“Look,” I said, “No one wants me to be healed more than me. But God’s trying to heal a whole creation, and he can’t do it without a people who live as if they they’re unafraid to die.”

“My daughter is a Buddhist,” she said, “According to her, the Buddha teaches that all of life is suffering. What do you think about that?”

“I think the Buddha didn’t need to be very perceptive to come up with a line like that.”

She looked me over, uncertain if I was joking.

“I don’t know about the Buddha. I only know that he’s not the way to the Father.”

She turned away from me and looked at the ceiling tiles.

“I would prefer it if Jesus would just do anything I asked of him.”

“Sure, you would. Me too! That’s the trouble with a true and living God. He’s real enough to disappoint us. The anything he promises is not everything. But he is already your everything.”

“How is that? How is he already my everything?”

“It’s a different promise he makes, I said, “whenever you pray, it is Jesus praying in you as though you are his very own garden. We do not always get the answers we want, but we never pray alone. And the one who prays with us lives with death behind him. So even our prayers that seem to go unanswered are nevertheless proof that this sickness will not end in death.”

Jesus told the troubled disciples, not that everything would he do, but anything that was in line with the Good News of God’s salvation, the gospel he would do. Greater things, Jesus said. Not different things. We are given, that is the Body of Christ, is given anything we need to do the works that give the world the Good News. And that news most often comes, no always comes, as power is made perfect in weakness. This is the cause of the "anything," not everything, Jesus says he will do.

We are in Christ, having died with Him. We have been raised with Christ whom the Father raised from the dead. Now living with death behind Christ, and so us, Jesus is given to do anything we ask for the redemption of others, of sinners, of the world by His grace and for His glory.

John 14:8-11

Pastoral Prayer: Gracious Father, we are not the first to question what we hear and see. The disciples had event side seats to Your Words and Way in Jesus. And like the disciples, events we experience, even words we hear, may lead us to question, to wonder about what we believe. Loose Your Spirit among us that the words delivered today become Your Word for us this day such that we see, hear, and know You are the One, the God who intends to know us and us know You that we believe we have in Jesus the very Face of God. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. And all God’s people say, Amen.

When I check to see how many of you who receive the weekly email I send out, I get the sense that most of you, the majority of you, who do not read it, feel like Paul Kingsnorth in his book Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. He writes,

I don’t hate many things in this world - hate is an emotion I can’t sustain for long - but I hate screens, and I hate the digital anticulture that has made them so ubiquitous. . . . When I see a small child placed in front of a tablet by a parent on a smartphone, I want to cry; either that or smash the things and then deliver a lecture. When I see people taking selfies on mountaintops, I want to push them off. I won’t have a smartphone in the house. I despise what comes through them and takes control of us. Takes control of me when I let it. If there was a big red button that turned off the internet, I would press it without hesitation. Then I would collect every screen in the world and bulldoze the lot down into a deep mineshaft, which I would seal with concrete, and then I would skip away smiling into the sunshine.

No offense taken. There are days I feel the same way.

I recall our first not-landline-phone. We served in Milford, TX, about an hour south of Dallas. That meant the best hospitals were an hour away. When offered an opportunity for a phone, one the size of which fit in a soft case the size of a shoebox, I thought it might be useful for those trips if I needed to reach Patty or her me. Or if a call needed to be made to a family or church members to alert them of impending needs. Maybe you had a bag phone.

That was 1992 or 1993.

Since then we have moved from Bag Phone to Flip Phone to Blackberry to mobile phones that are more powerful than your tablet and some laptops.

The first phones were relatively easy to use. When they became smaller and more powerful, security measures were added. We selected passcodes so that if left somewhere, they could not be used by someone else. Then cell phone makers added fingerprint technology. Only your fingerprint would allow access to your phone. Today, it is Face ID. From time to time I help my Mom with her phone. When it requires a Face ID, it will not accept mine, only hers

Jesus tells the troubled disciples,

The one who has seen me has seen the Father.

To keep with the analogy, the way we know and have access to the Father is in the Son.

Remember, Jesus told Thomas,

If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

We tend to read every “you” as an “I” or “me,” whereas here the word “you” is plural, so it would be “Whoever,” “Those who,” or, in Okie Brogue, “Y’all.”

Whoever, those who, ya’ll know me, will know the Father, do know him and have seen him.

Let me be more nerdy for all our benefit.

In an even more nerdy way we might say,

You all know me and continue to know me. You will at some point also know my Father. And that some point is now for you know him now and have seen him in me such that you know him completely.

Nothing is lacking in Jesus’s self-revelation as the Second Person of the Trinity.

But something had been lacking in the disciples. Despite the ways YHWH showed up in the history of Ancient Israel, the disciples had only heard, maybe read, even studied times where the Divine, the LORD God, had been so close.

Sometime after YHWH’s footsteps were heard in the evening breeze in Eden, Abraham sat siesta at the entrance to his tent when he noticed three men walking his way. Genesis 18:1 begins,

The LORD appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre.

The root of the Hebrew word Mamre signals strength, vigor, fatness. Yet, their bodies betray the name of the place they stay. Sarah was well past childbearing years, and Abraham was no spring chicken. Hardly images of vigor. Rushing to greet the pilgrims, Abraham offers water and bread. Bedouins practice this hospitality to this day.

During their conversation, the man identified in the passage as the LORD told Abraham that in one year’s time they would be parents.

This event is described as a theophany - an event where the Divine is revealed to humans. Here the LORD visits Abraham as a man. Might this be what is called a pre-incarnate revelation of Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity? Many think so.

Theophanies.

These events dot the Story of God told as the LORD God revealed Himself to Ancient Israel.

Jacob prepares to meet his brother Esau. He spends the night alone at the Ford of the Jabbock. During the night he wrestles with a man until daybreak. Unable to escape, the man dislocates Jacob’s hip. Before letting go, Jacob is given a new name, one that identifies his adversary as God Himself. His new name, Israel, means

“You have struggled with God and men and prevailed.”

Jacob in turn names the place Peniel,

“For I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.”

It was believed that seeing God’s face meant certain death.

Moses is having a conversation with YHWH at the Tent of Meeting located ahead of the people. When God’s presence descended as a cloud over the Tent of Meeting. While there, Moses and God would talk. On this occasion, God was sending Moses and the people on ahead with a couple of angels. Moses protested, telling YHWH not to send him or the people anywhere if YHWH would not go with them. Once Moses is assured that YHWH will go with him and his fellow wanderers, Moses makes a plea.

Let me see your glory.

YHWH told Moses to grab the second set of tablets and meet him on the Mountain, on Sinai. Moses would be able to see YHWH’s glory but not his face. Moses was to locate himself on a rock. God would cover Moses until his glory, his face, would pass by, such that Moses saw not YHWH’s face but, as it were, the back of his head.

This event became such a one that six times it is referenced in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures.

King Nebuchadnezzar, the narcissistic leader of Babylon, desired to be worshipped above all things. He had a golden statue created to be worshipped. Three Hebrew boys in the king’s employ refused to bow at the commanded moment. In keeping with the decree, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would be thrown into the fiery furnace. Heated to seven times its normal temperature, such that one fellow stoking the fire was killed. The three were thrown into the fire. Looking into the blaze, the king asked, how many did we throw into the fire? Three. Then how is it we see a fourth? One that looks like the son of the gods.

Theophanies. Events where the Divine is revealed to humans. There are some 60 passages in the Bible in which, in one way or another, God, the One determined not to be God without us, reveals Godself.

Something was lacking.

These were but glimpses, foreshadowings, foreshadows of the God John declares,

In beginning was the Word the Word was with God and the Word was God.

John goes on in the Prologue to say,

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son, from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Thus, for those early readers of John’s Gospel, like we today, hear Jesus say,

The one who has seen me has seen the Father.

When it comes to seeing and knowing the Father, nothing is lacking in Jesus for He is in the Father and the Father is in him.

No one, John says, has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side - he had revealed him.

Imagine the disciples hearing Jesus and his attempts to still their troubled hearts. We might think Jesus has just sat them down to hear a philosophy lecture about the nature of Being. Those are our categories. What the disciples had conceived of Jesus, Jesus told them in his response to Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi,

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven.

Jesus does give them the nature of Being but not as a philosophical answer to the question of existence. Instead, he gives them the intention of God the Father, to reveal himself, what he is like, the One who to them has been hidden in theophanies, in prophets’ words, in miracles, in stories of deliverance and discipline, in plenty and in want.

Jesus reveals the God who does real things in the real world. He tells them, this Father whose intention is to be known has come in flesh and blood, in our humanity to reveal, to explain, who the God who said Let there be is and is like.

Jesus makes three appeals to the disciples. He asks them,

Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

We may hear this question in light of the crowds who found Jesus worthy of hearing,

They [those gathered in the synagogue] were astonished at his teaching because he was teaching them as one who had authority and not like the scribes.

And here John points to Jesus’s authority,

The words I speak to you I do not speak on my own.

Put another way, “We are one in this.”

Just before Jesus begins his Farewell Discourses, before being betrayed and crucified, he tells the disciples at the end of our John 12,

For I have not spoken on my own, but the Father himself who sent me has given me a command to say everything I have said. I know that his command is eternal life. So the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told me.

Hear the words of Jesus. Hear the words of God. And we pray each week that though the preacher’s sins are many, the Holy Spirit speaks to us a Word that is God’s word for us that day, even this day.

By the Spirit of God, the Triune God’s Words, delivered by the Son, enter us through our ears and into our hearts. Jesus is giving the disciples the words.

Jesus then tells the disciples,

Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.

Don’t you believe?

If not, believe!

They hear his words. Jesus tells them to believe that, if they had believed in him as Lord of all, they now question because he has told them he is leaving.

Jesus then points to what they have witnessed. That is, they have seen the works Jesus has done, and they testify to who He is.

The works the disciples have witnessed have call-backs in Ancient Israel’s own story. Now the one story that summarizes it all is at hand. For Jesus is Himself God, and revealing the God who will raise Jesus from the dead, having first delivered Israel from Egypt.

The Spirit will lead the disciples to make this connection. Not that Jesus is a new Moses. They do not see Moses’s face when they see Jesus. They see the Face of God. And by God’s Spirit, through the Church, the world might see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, even today.

The Apostle Paul puts it this way to the Corinthians,

For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

“Is that money burning a hole in your pocket?”

I doubt my parents had read Sir Thomas Moore’s Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1530). According to the Google Machine, the idiom I heard often as a youngster is an adaption of Moore’s,

A little wanton money,
which burned out the bottom of his purse.

My grandchildren have heard that line from me. Birthday money, Christmas money, MAD money can’t be spent fast enough.

“Is that money burning a hole in your pocket?”

A fellow in line for our food pantry asked how I was doing. He wondered if we had big plans for Saturday. Would I would be setting off fireworks come the 4th. I told him that while we may have had a few fire works as kids, I could still hear someone tell me,

“You might as well take a match to your cash.’

Before you recoil thinking, “How cruel!” the fellow took my response and ran with it. He and his friend could not agree more. I could not hear the reply within the car but it sounded someithing likle, “Gone in less than 60 seconds.”

It is not news that consumer prices are up. Everyone that budgets feels the pinch. Some more than others. One fellow who may not be too concerned about the price of a gallon of gas or milk stopped by a local fireworks stand. He told the folks manning the counter that he wanted to donate $100 to a young person or family that might be experiencing hard times. He wanted them to enjoy the 4th. Raise their spirits.

Money did not burn a hole in his pocket. He did not mind that it would be gone from his hand and into another’s in less than 60 seconds. He hoped that his anonymous gift would brighten a moment in time. And I am sure it will. Anyone who has watched young people’s eyes glisten while sparklers burn or brace for the pop of a firecracker knows that sight.

The nagging thought that $100 would buy food that would last longer than a Roman Candle is real. School is less than two months away. What clothes would $100 buy for that new school outift? It is not that we should begrudge what someone wants to do with their money. How or to what end we give our money away is an individual’s prerogative. But in our land of the free and home of the brave, all experiences are not eqaul. If we notice that reality, that some have needs others might meet, is it out of bounds to suggest we might think beyond what might be gone in 60 seconds when responding to the urge to give our money away?

A family in need, experiencing difficult times, that faces an uncertain future, will enjoy the gift of a stranger.

They could have had more.

“Does that look like Cheeseburger Soup to you?" I asked the waitstaff.

He just stared at me.

Yesterday I texted Patty, “How about lunch?” I had dropped off a return item at the UPS Store. We often have lunch together once a week, but that schedule has been more hit-and-miss over the past month. “Sure,” she replied.

I picked her up from work and asked where she would like to go. “Let’s get a salad.” One of our regular restaurants was our next stop. Walking in, I noticed the blackboard announcing the specials. I read,

Soup
Cheeseburger

Our waiter came over and took our order: “Two waters.”

“Is the Cheeseburger Soup good? Does it really taste like a cheeseburger?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded.

“I will give that a try,” I requested.

I added a house salad; Patty ordered her usual salad. We chatted it up while waiting. Soon, my house salad came. Then, the waiter brought out a bowl of soup and Patty’s salad.

I looked at the soup bowl. It did not look like cheeseburger soup. But I’m no chef. There have been times when what I see has tasted very different from what I expected and has been very good. Judging with my eyes could be misleading. I took a bite. It did not taste like Cheeseburger Soup. I called over another of the waitstaff,

“Does this look like Cheeseburger Soup?”

She looked as if responding might be committing a crime against the restaurant.

Our waiter returned to ask how our food was.

“Does this look like Cheeseburger Soup?”
"This is chicken,” I held up to make my point more emphatically.

He just stared.

“They must have changed it on me,” he said sheepishly.

I admit to being baffled.

“Is it good?'“ he asked.

“Yes, but it is not Cheeseburger Soup.”

I got this odd feeling that the entire staff was hoping I would find the Chicken Verde Soup overwhelmingly good, so much so that I would ignore the fact that no one admitted it was not what I ordered.

For a minute I felt gaslit by waitstaff. Maybe I was!

We continued eating a bit. I told Patty the whole scenario did not make sense. It is one thing to suggest the Kitchen changed the menu. But it was clearly advertised. And what was delivered to our table could not pass as Cheeseburger Soup. It did not look like it. It did not taste like it.

Their refusal to talk about the mistake and my reticence to be That Guy kept me eating the soup until the bowl was empty. We paid, even tipped despite the mistake. On the way out, the Manager said, “Have a good day.” I quipped, “I would make sure the board was correct.”

I didn’t die.

The food was good.

We enjoyed lunch together.

But - it was NOT Cheeseburger Soup.

While a true event, this serves as a parable of the Church, largely leaders, offering something different than what is advertised. We dare not offer Jesus as simply an ethic to follow, a will to our power, or a means to achieve our ideological superiority.

He is the One the Father raised from the dead, having first delivered Israel out of Egypt. (To borrow from the late Robert Jenson.)

John 14:5-7

Pastoral Prayer: Gracious Father, there are so many places to go. Travel options vary like the movie title - Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. We can’t leave out cruise ships or space ships. But any of us who have traveled know that however we get to where we are going, doing so alone eliminates the possibility of sharing the experience. Photos and videos just don’t rise to the level of in-person. And that is what we don’t want to miss. Wherever we go in the Scriptures, Jesus, You told us they testify of You. For us to make them about anything else seems like making Where more important than Who, a ” a destination more than Being. Give us the Good News that You are the Who and the Where we are by Your Grace. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Who and our Where. And all God’s people say, Amen.

Imagine hauling a canoe overhead and carrying a 50-pound pack along a wet, uneven path for more than 1000 feet. There is no hurry. Every step matters. The only sure footing comes if you can look both down at the footprints ahead of you and up to avoid tree limbs and branches that will set you on your soiled seat if you don’t see them.

Three years ago, Charlie, Jason, Ben, Chris, and I set out into the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area. We launched at Gun Flint Trail. After a short paddle that seems like a long paddle for those non-paddlers, we made Saganaga, one of the largest lakes in the BWCWA with depths to 280 feet; a fact I did not know at the time. The BWCWA includes 1 million acres of islands and lakes. Getting from one lake to another often requires traversing portages, both short and very long. These narrow walking paths may be fairly level or could be quite the climb or descent, sometimes both.

Tony served as our capable guide. Hailing from the Minneapolis area, Tony has led trips for decades. Even at that, Tony needed a map. Every trip and every route may be different. When we completed the trip, we talked about a future trip. “You know what you need to know now, you don’t need me,” Tony told us. Could we now lead a group? Talk about confidence!

Jesus told the troubled disciples,

You know the way to where I am going.

We would not have known where we were going, much less where we were, had Tony not been leading the way. Jesus implies that the disciples have been following long enough to know the way. We had followed Tony and his trusty map for about five days over water and land. The disciples followed Jesus for more than three years from Galilee to Judea and back, through and around Samaria, into foreign territory, and into adversarial settings. They had followed Jesus, who healed the sick, made the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, the mute to speak, the possessed set free, and the dead revived. The disciples witnessed Jesus speak to those he was not supposed to and not cow tow to those who picked verbal fights with him.

You know the way to where I am going.

When Tony suggested that after one trip, we could lead our own adventure into and out of the BWCWA, we could not have imagined it. When Jesus tells the disciples they know the way to where he is going, it seems to trouble them all the more.

You may hear Thomas incredulously ask,

We don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?

Wait what?

Keep in mind, Jesus had just told the disciples that he was going where they could not come, and now he tells them they know the way. He told them it was his hour and that they would follow later.

When we set out on our foray into the BWCWA, Tony told us there would be no phone service. He carried an emergency phone. It may have offered GPS coordinates if we were lost, one of us injured along the way, or worse. But we could not pull up our favorite Maps App. We did not know where we were going. Fortunately, Tony had a map and a route he hoped we would follow. We checked that map every stop, every evening, and every morning.

You know the way, Jesus said.

We don’t know where, said Thomas.

Where.

Our series title is a bit evocative - Heaven is not a place.

After all, many of us who grew up in the early days of Evangelism Explosion or that Baptist baptized version, Continuing Witness Training, learned two diagnostic questions.

“Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for certain that if you died today you would go to Heaven?”

“Suppose you were to die today and stand before God and he were to say to you, ‘Why should I let you into my Heaven?’, what would you say?”

Do you hear it? “Would you go to Heaven?” And “Why should I let you into my Heaven?”

Yes, we are in good company when Thomas replies to Jesus and says,

we don’t know where you are going, how can we know the way.

Listen carefully to what Thomas does.

Like Thomas, we are conditioned to think where before way. That is, once we establish there is a place called Heaven, then we ask, “How do we get there?” Tell us the way.

Take out any smartphone and put your where into the search bar, and the way will pop up. Most will give you a route for walking, taking a car, or using public transportation. It is hard to think about going anywhere without first knowing where we want to go, so we will know the best way to get there.

Thomas is us. We are Thomas.

We took our trip to the BWCWA in 2023. We talked about getting a copy of the map of the area we paddled and camped. We didn’t do it. I am confident not that we could replicate the trip with the same success, but that I would only know where to put in for the trip if someone told me. And then, once in Saganaga, knowing which island we stopped at for lunch would be a roll of the dice. In other words, I still would need someone. Give me a map and a mode, and every island would look like that last one, and we would starve waiting on me to determine if it was the correct island or not.

Jesus answers Thomas’s pleading question. He does so without giving the coordinates of a place. Jesus does not tell Thomas, “Heaven, Oh, it’s up there.” Here in John 14:6, one of the most-quoted verses in John, Jesus does not point to a place. Instead, he does what Jesus had already told the religious leaders, and was overheard by the disciples, all the way back in John 5:39.

You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me.

Jesus tells Thomas,

I am the way.

Did your ears perk up?

When Moses saw the bush that did not burn in Midian, he experienced worship drawn by what he saw and the Voice he heard. Take off your shoes. God speaks. Moses hears. Good News comes to us like that. Worship calls for words to be spoken and words to be heard. Worship is both speaking and hearing. Today, when God’s Spirit speaks, and his people listen and heed His Word, worship happens, for that is the place where we show our allegiance, our highest commitment.

When Moses heard his commission, he asked,

“Who am I to say has sent me?”

“Tell them I AM has sent you.”

When Jesus takes up the I AM, He is telling us that He was the Bush that did not burn. He is the Voice Moses heard. The same God who spoke over the chaos, Let there be and there was is the One speaking to the disciples now.

Jesus is now revealing in John’s Gospel the full force of what that means. Jesus tells the disciples that their people’s history with God, the Great I AM, is not just in the past, it is very present, as present as Jesus is with them. When Jesus gave the seven I AMs in John’s Gospel, they are not new; they are call-backs and call-forwards. This is Who I Am is.

Hear them:

I AM the Bread of Life
I AM the Light of the World
I AM the Door
I AM the Good Shepherd
I AM the Resurrection and the Life

I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life
I AM the True Vine

Seven times, the number of Divine Completeness, Jesus declares I AM. Jesus, God very God, the Ancient Creed exclaims. Thomas, I AM, and you are where I AM. I AM where you are.

There is a translation of YHWH that is illustrated in the seven I AMs - I will be who I Am. Put another way, I AM for you.

So, when Jesus begins,

Stop letting your hearts be troubled, Believe in God; believe also in me,

He is telling them to believe in the God who called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who through Moses set their people free, that Joshua led into the land long promised, that preserved them in the midst of their failings and disappointments, their victories and their defeats, the One who has been both silent and very wordy.

He adds,

Believe also in me.

Believe in the One whom you have seen and heard, the One in front of you, the One who has been with you and you with Him who has in his life work done all the things that remind you of the God Who is the Great I AM.

Jesus’s words are not a suggestion so as to get over a troubled heart. Jesus’s words are said such that the means of getting over your troubled hearts is to take God at his Word.

Believe also in me.

They are troubled by the fact that it is all over. That they will now be left alone. Those who chose against Jesus will choose against them. From where will their help come? They cannot hear in Jesus’s words given in the Old Testament as the people made their way to Jerusalem for the three great feasts

I lift my eyes toward the mountains.
Where will my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to slip;
your Protector will not slumber.

Indeed, the Protector of Israel
does not slumber or sleep.

The Lord protects you;
the Lord is a shelter right by your side.[a]

The sun will not strike you by day
or the moon by night.

The Lord will protect you from all harm;
he will protect your life.

The Lord will protect your coming and going
both now and forever.

Jesus presses this more than how we see it on paper in our translations. Jesus’s words-"believe in God, believe also in me"-are not offered as a good idea.

Jesus commands it.

It is imperative.

Do nothing less.

Thus, Jesus does not ignore Thomas’s question about the where and the way. He gives them Himself.

Believe in God; Believe also in me . . .

I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

We turn this into an outline of our belief system. We structure Jesus’s words to support our interpretation. But Jesus’s command, his imperative, is this,

I AM!

Thomas, you are looking for coordinates; I AM giving you myself. Thomas, you are looking for how to get there, the way. I AM giving you myself. Thomas, I have told you the Truth - my life bears witness, and you are able to testify, I AM. Thomas, I have taken you into my life, and you have taken me into yours, I AM your life!

And if they are still working out in their heads how Jesus is the I AM, Jesus follows on,

If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.

There is no clearer way to say to Thomas and so the disciples, “The God about whom you learned as young boys studying the Torah, is me!”

Believe in me.

So, with the same conviction I now say to you who may have troubled hearts,

Believe in Jesus.

Remember, Jesus tells the disciples these things as his last words. He is on his way to the Cross where he will be killed for giving his life for others. And in his final words he forgives and promises. He forgives for we really don’t know what we are doing.

We are Thomas. Thomas is us.

And he promises. And what He does is bring the future into the present by His Spirit such that he makes his home in us. Jesus is the Promise, not the means to a Promise. Jesus is Our Person, not a portage.

Believe in Jesus.

(Thanks to Darek Latta for use of his artwork).

“I’m going to set you to plowing in the sand hills,” John said.

The closest I had been to “on” a tractor was as an elementary-aged boy visiting southern Kansas. We referred to our great-grandpa as “Great Grandpa on the Farm.” Original, I know. We visited once or twice, and then, as age would have it, the farm was sold, and Great Grandpa on the Farm moved to the City, Oklahoma City. The moniker stuck.

When John asked if I wanted to help him plow the ground, I had to say “Yes.” After all, he heard this City Boy claim to want to know about farming and ranching. It was one of the Green Behind the Ears Pastoral Endearments. I meant it, though. How else would I learn the lingo? For example, until someone tells you that you are going to cut calves, you think you are going to watch calves and cutting horses with roping riders.

Or, when in winter you hear, “I’ve got to go break ice.” We are not talking about cracking old-fashioned ice trays to free the cubes. When someone refers to a stock tank, you might think it is a galvanized tub. Instead, other parts of the country would tell you to meet at the “farm pond.”

John helped me get settled and familiar with the gauges, gears, levers, and pedals of the John Deere. He then instructed me on the usual pattern for plowing this particular field in the sand hills. Round and round in an ever-narrowing pattern starting near the four sides of the field. I don’t recall how long I had been plowing before I got stuck in the sand. Seems I needed to lift the plow when I hit the large pockets of sand in the sand hills. Who knew?! It was among my first plowing ventures.

I did not mention this was before cell service.

Eventually, John came to see how I was doing. We dug out, and I learned how to navigate the sand hills so I'd never get stuck again.

Farming. Ranching.

John is very much alive, just as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus.

One remark John made has always stuck with this City Boy.

“Once you’ve lived in the country, you won’t want to live in the city again.”

We will mark 32 years of living on over 2 acres. Coyotes, deer, and rabbits roam our property from time to time. The same goes for the some forty acres next to us. The same animals and more travel the dry creek bed that runs at least half a section northwest of us across and across the road. Greg lives on about ten acres that is part of his family’s property, which could be at least a quarter section. Tony and Billie live next door on a lot that mirrors ours.

John was right. We like our space.

Ten years ago, a development company bought up almost half a section of land to build entry-level homes, including custom homes, senior living duplexes, and more. It may take another ten years to complete the project, billed as adding affordable housing. Our community needed quantity housing. The form of these homes reminds me of the house we rented in southwest Dallas County in the late 1980s. Hundreds of acres of tract homes were built on the old Timberridge Ranch. These homes are so close we could almost shake hands out of the windows of the adjacent homes. Quantity. The builders produced the same three to five floor plans with mixed exteriors over the hundreds of acres they developed.

Quantity versus Form.

My friend Josh sent me a collection of Wendell Berry essays compiled by Paul Kingsnorth, The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry. I had tried Berry some twenty years ago when a group of like-minded folks talked about Wendell as if he were a modern guru. It could be that it took more maturity on my part. Maybe it is that I had told Josh about Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. I thought it would interest him, so I sent a copy. That may have spurred him to send me the book of Berry essays. Clearly, Berry influenced Kingsnorth. Josh did not know I had tried Berry years ago. But seeing the kindred spirit that is Kingsnorth, he may have had a hunch I was ready for Berry.

Berry’s 2004 essay Quantity versus Form was my first selection to read. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t one of those pietistic things we practiced as young fundamentalists. Maybe you had this habit. We might let your Bibles fall open and start reading where they fell open. This was not like that. I selected the essay by title and began reading. The piece grabbed me so quickly. After thinking about it, maybe . . . nah, it wasn’t proof of piety. But it was close.

I still cannot be accused of farming, much less ranching. Reading Berry describe life, and more in the register of farming, is intriguing. I recall working on my Master’s and Doctorate in the late 80s and early 90s. Leadership books abounded. Maybe they never go out of style. I do recall grappling with those considered leadership gurus who raised the specter of the need for mission and vision statements, who appealed to the habits described by CEOs of major corporations, and sought to translate that into pastoral work. Jesus, CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership was published in 1996. These were the days of the ever-accelerating Church Growth Movement.

Differing metaphors arose to distinguish church leadership paths. While some dared to keep the notion of a shepherd handy for describing pastoral work, others sought contrasting word pictures to promote the modern trend that aligned with ranching. Are you a farmer or rancher? Farmers likely will work 80 acres with a family and a team of mules. Ranchers will put together cooks, trail bosses, stable hands, and horse trainers. They will build corrals and herd cattle on open ranges. Pastors may not have liked the sound of ranching, but being CEO was attractive to many, still. Some of us were not excited about being considered ranchers, even if the metaphor fit others. Eventually, churches began structuring pastoral care as if filling ranching needs. Titles described roles by assignment - Senior, Executive, Teaching, Family, Discipleship, etc.

Quantity versus Form

Berry took aim at the push to produce more. Quantity farming would affect the form of life most often associated with farm life. Maybe he had McLuhan’s " The Medium is the Message “ in mind. Whatever was nagging Berry, his essay reaches well beyond the farm. When quantity becomes the aim, the form becomes a tipless arrow. Or, as he put it.

The pursuit of higher and higher productivity has replaced those complex forms with the form (if it can be called that) of a straight line. The minimal formality of the straight line is even further attenuated because the line really is an arrow pointing toward nothing at all that is present, but toward the goal of even more production in the future. The line, it is proposed, will go on and on from one record yield to another. And the line of the determination is marked on the ground by longer and longer rows, which is to say larger and larger farms.

Maybe you have drawn the parallels.

Berry has a word for those who might find his words critical. I leave you with them.

But even gratitude [for modern technologies in any field] does not free us of the obligation to be critical when criticism is needed.

Now, back to the sand hills. There’s lots more to learn.

John 13:33-38

Pastoral Prayer: Gracious and Merciful God, you know our hearts and it is terrifying. LORD, you know our hearts and there could not be better news. For in spite of and despite what You know, You determined not to be God without us and that is evidenced in the love Jesus describes in his love for the disciples whose hearts are no different than our own. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be pleasing in Your sight O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. And all God’s people say, Amen.

We made our way to the sanctuary of Christ Church. The front door was locked. We walked around back and found the unlocked door. We went in through the door giving us entrance into Gibson Hall. In these older high church buildings, areas are given names. To us, this might be our Fellowship Hall. We walked through that area, through a door that opens to the kitchen and turned left. We ventured up two staircases, then through a small maze of short hallways that opened into a grand sanctuary.

The stained glass, the wood adornments, the pipe organ, the grand piano, the chancel, the elevated and uncentered pulpit and the Eagle Lectern. If ever there was a space that by its beauty could lift one’s eyes to the heavens it would be a place like this.

Construction on Christ Church’s first building began in 1826 after Thomas Jefferson gave the first donation of $200. Their current building was completed in 1896. Given the era of construction, this means that over time bathrooms were installed in less than obvious locations. After Monday evening, for instance, we could not imagine the disturbance of almost 25 of us taking turns in one very small restroom. It was as if we would only find relief by playing hide-n-seek with bathrooms. By Tuesday afternoon we had located three or four more restrooms giving us all a sigh of relief. What had been hidden to us had been found.

The thought occurred to me when reading John 13, that Jesus who has been out in the open with his disciples and his adversaries begins to play hide-n-seek with his words. For example,

Little children, I am with you a little while longer, You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, I now say to you also, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’

We begin our new series through the Farewell Discourse and Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer, or what are sometimes called the Upper Room Discourses. Alex read the familiar line of John 14,

Let not your hearts be troubled.

Many a funeral message begins with Jesus’s words, aiming to bring comfort to those now hidden from us in coffin and grave, from sight. It makes sense that the loss of a loved one is a rupture in our sense of wholeness.

For our series, though, these words strike us as needing some context; after all, at this point, Jesus is very much alive. Notions of his absence, his departure, his farewell, and his goodbye are at least confusing and clearly troubling for the disciples.

Starting with John 14 sets us one chapter into Jesus’s Farewell Discourse (John 13-17). And while the theme of our series takes up with those first words, Let not your heart be troubled, describing in brief the troubled hearts of the disciples, the following verses of John 14 do not give us the full weight of what scholars mean when they began using Farew” in the 19th Century. We need to gain some sense of what deeply troubles the disciples, such that we grasp the weight of the moniker farewell under which these five chapters fall.

What earns these chapters the title, Jesus’s Farewell Discourses, is that Jesus tells the disciples three times in these five chapters that he will be leaving them. As with any goodbye, it stirs all sorts of emotions. What could he possibly mean, leave them? They have declared their allegiance, even if they are wholly unaware of what they have committed to. How could Jesus say something that would mean a rupture in their future?

Ruptures that result from departures, from separations, are not new in the Scriptures. Take, for instance, the scene described in 1 Samuel between the best of friends.

And Jonathan said to David, “Go in safety, inasmuch as we have sworn to each other in the name of the LORD, saying, ‘The LORD will be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants forever.’ Then he rose and departed, while Jonathan went into the city.

This rupture between friends stayed with David. When he assumed the throne, one of his first actions was to look for anyone left from Saul’s house, hear that as reference to his friend Jonathan. The loss was real. He wanted to show his kindness.

Or listen to Luke’s description of the aftermath of the Apostle Paul’s long goodbye to the elders in Ephesus, likely a place Paul stayed the longest of any stop on his missionary journeys.

And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And they began to weep aloud and embraced Paul, and repeatedly kiss him, grieving especially over the word which he had spoken, that they should see his face no more. And they were accompanying him to the ship.

Hearing of Paul’s impending departure meant a rupture in his relationship with the Christians in Ephesus. They would no longer see his face or hear his voice. So deeply grieved they wept and hugged Paul. They followed him until his ship sailed.

Describing this long section of John as a Farewell Address caught my attention. The etymology of farewell is “fare thee well.” We might say today, “I hope your travels go well.” What we find in John 13-17 is much more than well-wishing.

What if scholars had referred to this as Jesus’s Goodbye Address? Is that better? The history of the word goodbye is something like “God be with you.” Another similar expression would be Godspeed. According to the Google Machine, the first use of goodbye dates to just more than 500 years ago. It was used as a blessing, meaning that God be with the one leaving. After just 200 years, God was replaced by “good.” Even though we do not offer farewells these days, we do say goodbye. What was once “God be with you” has now been replaced with something like “Later.” What we find in John 13-17 is much more than a future chance meeting.

By the time we have reached verse 33 of John 13, the disciples are already trying to put the pieces of Jesus’s words together. John 12 offers this collection of words to cipher.

The hour has come.

Now my Soul has become troubled and what shall I say, “Father save me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this hour.”

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself.

For a little while longer the light is among you.

The disciples do not get the way John advances the story as he begins chapter 13.

Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that he should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

Reading this foreshadowing, leaves us reading the Farewell address shouting at the disciples in the screenplay, “Don’t you get it?!” But, they find it troubling and so would we. In fact, we still grapple with the Crucifixion, referenced in Jesus’s words, if I be lifted up. We find it easier to gloss any role human beings play in the death of Jesus. We prefer a reductionist explanation declaring it the plan of God before admitting responsibility.

What’s more, we are the sort that never want to be told we cannot do what we want or go where we want. And now he tells his closest friends they cannot follow him. That is, Jesus spends his teaching ministry ratcheting up expectations to real human levels only to tick off just about everyone to the point of murderous plots. No one tells us!

Isn’t that how we could read the account in Genesis? Adam and Eve hear one restriction, just one. And the prohibition birthed the desire because someone told us anywhere but there, anything but that.

Maybe we should admit it. Early and often. The influence of our self-perceived freedom is disrupted every time we are told we cannot. We are told we are not old enough and we pout. We are told we are not ready and we protest that we are. We are told we do not qualify and we take it as a slight and overstate our ability. Not one of us likes to be told we cannot in a world in which freedom is our highest achievement.

In a recent sermon, my friend Ken Sundet Jones, a retired Lutheran professor in Iowa, made the point we did two weeks ago. No longer do we worship Astarte or Chemosh, but we do worship the Self as the ultimate to who we give all allegiance. No wonder we resist being told we cannot do or go where we want, after all we are our own highest interest.

Imagine the disciples hearing Jesus say he is going where they cannot. Jesus had invited fishermen, a tax collector, and other unremarkable fellows not just to a front row seat to his life work, he inducted them into his very own work by giving them authority and freedom to do what he did. But, the freedom to do what Jesus did was not just any freedom. It was freedom to bring Good News to others.

Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You shall seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, I now say to you also, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’

Farewell.

Goodbye.

On his way off stage, or at least as the disciples perceive it, he gives them the impossible.

A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

Talk about raising the bar! There is no “that you should” love one another but instead “that you” love one another. There is no loophole or crack into which we could slip any excuse. This is what we call the Law. That is, the Law kills our excuses and closes our loopholes. It leaves us looking for rationalizations. It leaves us looking for help.

And, frankly, it is what we need. Talk of authenticity and accountability fail to achieve their goals of trustworthy relationships when we do not admit that what is most important to us is US. Yet, when Jesus gives the command to love one another, he is calling us into our true humanity, that for which we were created. And he is calling us to life in himself.

Thus, by the time we get to John 14:1, we have more than one reason for the disciples to be troubled at heart. Jesus tells them they cannot go where he is going and they are to love as Jesus loves.

Troubling.

There is Good News. The Gospel is God’s Word to us. Tucked away in Jesus’s first direct word to the disciples that he will be departing, he adds,

Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you shall follow later.

We use farewell and goodbye that describe a rupture in the nearness of or proximity to those for whom we care. We speak these words knowing we cannot be with them where they go. Put another way, we are where we are and they will be wherever it is they go without us. Something is wrong. Something needs to be repaired.

Jesus makes a Promise.

You will follow later.

Maybe this is specifically for Peter. We could easily understand this as Peter’s future. Tradition has it that Peter was crucified upside down. I am going to the Cross, you will follow later.

Yet, when we read the Apostle Paul in Romans, we understand that following Jesus means being buried with him in death and raised with him in the Resurrection. In other words, though we may not reach the bar of loving one another like Jesus, His love will bring us into fellowship with him for he does not leave us with Farewell or Goodbye.

We often hear John 14 at a funeral where the aim is to offer comfort that those now taken from us are safe in God’s mansion over that hilltop enjoying all the food at the big, big table, in the big, big house with lots and lots of room. But, is Jesus telling us that a place soothes our grief, resolves our loss? Aren’t we more consoled at the thought of being with those now absent? Can we really hear John 14 as if Jesus replaces life with and in him by emphasizing a place? Such a shift away from Jesus to a place prompt us to obsess about what is Heaven like. Is it about living forever, a claim that implies we keep track of time in eternity? What will we do there, as if eternity requires something worthwhile that can be described as what we now enjoy? What will my room or mansion look like? If we are going to spend eternity there, it would be good were my room in the mountains I love, or near the beach, or on a lake, or whatever your most ideal location.

Is our troubling, the feeling of rupture healed by the promise of a place? Or when we feel something is terribly wrong, that we are no longer whole, that what is ruptured leaves a gaping hole in our lives, does it point us to the One who loves us to the end? Fleming Rutledge gets our attention.

Something is wrong and must be put right. When we feel that in our bones, when we admit that something is wrong not only with the whole human situation in general but also with one’s own self in particular, then God is at work bringing us closer to the cross of Christ.”

We cannot ignore Jesus’s Promise, not of a place but Him. The line that gets to the telos, the aim of the Promise is not where but who. And Jesus’s own words give us He who is our Promise.

That where I am you may be also.

(Thanks to Darek Latta for use of his artwork).

Furnishings in high church sanctuaries intrigue this low-church, free-church pastor. The Eagle Lectern in Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, is the latest to draw my attention. Many are unfamiliar with the Eagle Lectern and would mistake this for an American Eagle. However, the Eagle Lectern dates to at least the Thirteenth century and is often considered to represent John the Apostle. On this Eagle Lectern rests a very large open Bible. My friend Josh took the photo while we were taking in the stained glass and the well-preserved woodwork throughout the church.

About twenty years ago, a voice thundered from a different platform behind a different lectern.

Preaching is dead! The speaker proclaimed.

To be fair, the announcement fit the theme that American Christianity was entering a new era and, with it, the need to rethink everything from preaching to publishing, from discipleship to worship. The short-lived movement found interest in deconstruction. Not many years later, the late Phylis Tickle would refer to this moment as The Great Emergence. Tickle described deconstruction as the church having a garage sale, something that occurs every 500 years in the history of the church, as she sketched it.

I was at the Emerging Church Conference, led by young church leaders, taking stock at the turn of the millennium and considering how the church might respond. In an adjacent hall was the National Pastors Convention, which I had attended the year before. Considering myself young, I was interested in hearing how the church might face changes in an emerging culture. It is where I heard:

Preaching is dead! The speaker insisted.

For some, as the movement progressed, it was the furniture. Rows of pews facing forward toward a person felt more like a lecture hall. The solution was a more informal setting, in the round, on much more comfortable seating. Add that the person up front dressed like a lecturer, dressing down became its own symbol; this is not your parents’ church. Add the felt need to change the room's ambiance, and it was not surprising that some both supportive and critical referred to this as smells and bells.”

Others in the movement took the view that as times change, the message must change. Re-arranging or changing the furniture raised a few hackles. But the question of the relationship between changing times and the timeless message became another matter. For example, the book The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives attempted to provide a congenial way to broach a sensitive topic. Five respondents each offered an essay on their position: that the method and the message do not change to the other end of the spectrum, and that the emerging culture requires both changing methods and a changing message. This segment of the movement raised the issue of the intersection of theology and preaching. If a few hackles were raised when rearranging the furniture, questioning theology and preaching did.

“Preaching is dead” became both a hyperbole and a conviction that no one listens to sermons anymore, at least not like those your parents and grandparents sat through. But what would this mean? What does it mean? And, now twenty years later, we are still asking what of the intersection of theology and preaching? Are we past telling the old, old story? What are the new ways we might tell an old, old story? And if the message changes, what exactly is the story?

Preaching is dead?

Twice this year, I have spent a few days with some twenty pastors/preachers from ten different denominations. These ministers represent both high church and low church traditions. None of them thinks preaching is dead. Otherwise, they would not have filled out an application for the second cohort of the Iowa Preachers Project (IPP).

Many, if not all, of these pastors/preachers were taught the how-tos of sermon development. They did not sign up for a refresher in sermon preparation. Something within them recognized the need to continue honing their preaching skills to avoid the ditches preachers often fall into. Pastors are not stand-up advice columnists, political pundits, or self-help gurus. It is easy to be influenced by the success of talking heads, social media influencers, and the like. This is our current environment. These participants know there is Good News in the Risen Christ and that words matter when proclaiming the Living Word. The Word that delivers a Promise to a world holding onto the last knot in their rope.

During the final feedback session on the future of the IPP, an Eli Lilly Endowment grant-funded project under their Compelling Preaching Initiative, one young preacher identified a good way to describe the IPP.

There’s a school of thought emerging out of Iowa (insert field of dreams joke here). As in Antioch, Alexandria, and Vienna in prior generations, a conversation begun and ongoing for generations is beginning to coalesce around a series of questions: What is a sermon? What is a good sermon? What makes it good? What’s it for? And how is it different from all other forms of speech.

The deadline has passed for the next cohort that begins in September. However, an Advisory Board is working behind the scenes to ensure the sustainability of this project, this school of thought. I am glad to serve on that Advisory Board, to have met the Founder, Ken Sundet Jones, and to know that my friend Jason Micheli is the Preacher-in-Residence for the IPP.

The Eagle Lectern is often considered a symbol of the Gospel's delivery to the four corners of the earth, according to a Wiki article that references A Guide to Church Furniture. If the Eagle Lectern is a symbol, the church’s proclaimers become the in-the-flesh messengers on whose lips the Good News is declared. And while some preaching may need to die, the Story that gives us the Promise of God continues to be told, with the subject of the sermon being the crucified and risen Christ, who just is, the God named Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

To adapt Mark Twain,

The report of the death of preaching has been greatly exaggerated.

I was born and raised in a Southern Baptist Church. I learned the Bible, a love for Jesus, what it means to trust Jesus, and was baptized. I was licensed to preach and ordained to Christian Ministry in the same church. I have served in volunteer and paid vocational roles in Southern Baptist churches since I was 18. I have three degrees from Southern Baptist-affiliated institutions: Oklahoma Baptist University (B.A. ‘85) and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div. ‘88 and D.Min. ‘93). I have served the church I am currently in as pastor for almost 32 years. I have served as a representative of the SBC on the Baptist World Alliance, in several roles in the Oklahoma Baptist Convention, and in the Union Baptist Association. My involvement has diminished over time. I have felt and lived the description “on the edge of the inside” I read in a piece from Father Rohr some twenty years ago. After the recent vote on the Mohler Amendment at the Annual Meeting of the SBC, I received a message. It seemed others in our church might have the same questions. So, I wrote the following piece.

Dear Church Family,

The Southern Baptist Convention makes news at least every June. Why June? Because that is when the Southern Baptist Convention’s Annual Meeting is held. It is not that Southern Baptists don’t make news other months of the year. But when your reported numbers make you the largest non-Catholic denomination in the world, the media pays closer attention to what you do in your annual gathering.

This year was no different. In fact, this has been the pattern for most of my adult life, attending and serving local Southern Baptist churches.

A few months ago, Al Mohler began circulating his intention to put forward a motion to amend the Constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention. He had heard a woman on a church podcast teaching an audience that included men, and that, for Al and others, is outside the cooperative parameters of Southern Baptist Churches. The immediate question is: What does this mean?

Nothing.

I did receive a text message after the newsmaking event at this year’s Annual Meeting,

So does this mean we are no longer SBC…and/or has the convention become a top-down entity that has oversight and influence over local congregations?

Since others may wonder what the implications are, I thought I would reply this way in the event others have the same question.

First, what is the issue?

There are many.

But the presenting issue began when some Southern Baptist churches invited women to preach on Mother’s Day. The most notable Southern Baptist woman invited to preach on Mother’s Day was Beth Moore in 2019. She was not the pastor. Nor was she invited to pastor. Moore was invited to preach. For many, this signaled a liberal drift in the SBC.

Over the weeks leading to the Annual Meeting in June, after that day in May 2019, others expressed their opinions. For example, many Southern Baptists believe a woman serving a local church should not be a pastor or have the word “pastor” in her job title. And still others believe that any vocation that includes a pastoral function should be filled only by men.

After pushback on his proposed amendment became public, Mohler revised his wording to illustrate the pastoral function he had in mind. He added “such as” preaching. One group believed this was enough to narrow the amendment to only preaching. Others see the words “such as” as allowing more narrow applications to be arbitrarily applied.

This is an interesting position for Al Mohler, who opposed such an amendment when it first came up. Now he is for it.

What does this vote mean?

A change to the constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention requires a positive vote for two consecutive years. It must pass by a 2/3 majority on the second vote. Previous attempts to approve a similar amendment have failed to reach the threshold in the second vote. Thus, the immediate answer to the question: What does this mean?

Nothing.

Next June, 2027, in Indianapolis, where the Annual Meeting will be held, the second vote will be taken. If approved by a 2/3 majority, then the constitutional amendment will be approved, and churches that invite women to preach or are asked to proclaim the Gospel in a pastoral setting will be in violation of the Constitution. That church then risks its messengers being denied “seating” at future annual meetings.

Second, what is the history?

The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 over disagreement with northern churches refusing to send slaveowners as missionaries. From 1845 until 1925, Southern Baptist Churches exercised their autonomy by using the confessional statement of faith of their choice. Three common confessions used were the New Hampshire Confession (1833), the Philadelphia Confession (1742), and the Abstract of Principles (1858).

When the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy broke out in the early twentieth century, Southern Baptists set out to author their own confession of faith. Thus, the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message is the outcome of that desire. Then, in 1963, amid the impact of Biblical Higher Criticism, the Southern Baptist Convention revised the 1925 version to include what amounts to a confessional response, resulting in the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message. Various reasons and objections have been given in support of updating the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message that resulted in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Whatever position someone takes on the motivations, the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message is the most recent version available to Southern Baptists.

The article The Church in the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) is among the shortest of all articles. All three of the versions of the BFM confess local church autonomy, independence, and reference the offices found in Southern Baptist Churches - pastors, deacons, and elders. (The naming of these offices varies. For example, in the 1925 edition, it was bishops, or elders, and deacons. In the 1963 update, it was pastors and deacons. In the 2000 BFM, it is pastor/elder/overseer and deacon.) In the 2000 BFM, this line is added: While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.

Since the approval of the BFM2000, there has been a push to consider only those Southern Baptist Churches that use the BFM2000 as cooperating churches. This has not universally succeeded except at the level of the individual persons who serve at the will of the Convention. Some local associations have implemented this position for their cooperating churches. The move risks what the article, “The Church,” also identifies as a Baptist principle: local church autonomy, as described in the first Southern Baptist Confession dating to 1925.

Third, what about us at this moment?

The nature of confessions, as distinct from creeds, is that they are not used to create a binding, top-down connectional framework in which the denomination tells a church what it must do or how it works out its own understanding of the confession. That means that nothing changes for us. Things may change for the Southern Baptist Convention, but that does not mean a change for us.

We have a woman who serves as our Youth Pastor. Changing her title will not remove the reality that Laura serves our church in pastoral ways. She functions as a pastor. Given that the amendment uses the word “function,” which is not precisely defined but illustrated only with “such as.” History indicates that “function” will become the next word to parse until it excludes women from any future list of pastoral functions.

So while the recent vote does not change what we do, a future vote will not change it either. This has been unanimously expressed. What’s more, this issue came up in our church in concert with what our church believes is a mishandling of the clergy sexual abuse issue in the SBC. Adding more consternation is that the SBC elected as President someone who views the recent sexual abuse investigations as a hoax and a distraction.

We have much to pray for and over.

Fourth, what will we do?

My mentor, Rick Davis, provided me with a number of what I have come to call Davisisms. One whose sentiment is taken from the mouth of Jesus applies here.

Put your head down and do your job.

When distractions mount, those that do not rise to the level of the Gospel of Grace keep doing what you are doing. Jesus put it this way,

But Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

As far as what we will do with regard to the recent action taken in Orlando at the SBC Annual meeting?

Nothing.

We will keep our hand to the plow, proclaiming the Good News of the Risen Christ, giving glory to the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 28-16-20

Pastoral Prayer: Almighty Father, made known to us by the Son through the Spirit, yet One, we gather to hear Your Word and to celebrate at Your Table. May the Words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be Your Triune Word for us this day. And all God’s people say, Amen.

I sat and filled out the required paperwork while waiting for word of Mom’s condition. She had called about Noon on Saturday to say, “I’m sick.” I can count on one finger the number of times that Mom has called with that news. “I need to go to the Doctor,” she added. We pulled into the new OU Medical Urgent Care facility, not two miles from their house.

One of the queries on the information sheet asked about religion. Which one or none would be the spectrum of expected answers. “Christian,” I wrote in for Mom.

Which one.

Reading through the Story of God that starts in Genesis 1 with the Voice that broke the chaos with the words, Let there be could be understood as the story of a particular God. That is, the people we know as Ancient Israel encountered a number of gods along the way as they learned just Who is the God who spoke to Abram, Issac, and Jacob. The One who spoke to Moses in a bush that did not burn. The One who spoke to Jonah and others.

For example, the Canaanite god Ba’al makes appearances as Israel is both confronted by the coastal people that sent marauding bands inland, and notably when they sent their giant to mock and taunt Israel’s army. While in Egypt, Israel would have encountered Ra. Confronted by the Moabites, they would have heard of Chemosh. When facing the Amonites, they would have become aware of Molech. Years of Babylonian captivity would have exposed them to Marduk and Nebo. We could add Asherah, Astarte, Asteroth, Dagon, Rimmon, among others.

Which one?

We were transferred to OU Medical by mid-afternoon. Once there, I waited, not a forte, especially given the circumstances. I was told someone would give me an update. By this time, the girls had joined me in the waiting area. A very nice chaplain came to tell us we could soon go back, only two of us. These rules, given the circumstances, are not my forte either. I learned this from my mentor, who was rarely kept at bay by waiting rooms and rules.

Mom was in the hospital three years ago after a fall. On that occasion, I met the chaplain as he came around. Very nice. He had checked his notes, Protestant of the Baptist variety. This time, there was no such discussion. Most surely, it was because we were in the trauma section of the Emergency Room. It took a while and some stern words to finally convince them that she was sick and that the X-rays they were reading showed old injuries, which they admitted. They were only doing their job, and I am grateful. And, I was only doing mine.

The chaplain position requires versatility, a breadth of hospitality, for the chaplain is not there to proselytize but to comfort. He provides what the limited information he receives allows until he knows the patient and the family better. On this occasion, this Chaplin in the trauma unit was as much an informant. He informed us of the perspective of the staff and relayed the information we needed to the staff. On this afternoon and early evening, there were many who arrived who required much more demanding attention than Mom did. The Medi Flight crews were coming and going.

By the time Mom was moved to the ICU, we were told that a doctor would come early in the morning and brief us, and that she would require a procedure. The CT scan and other symptoms had left the doctors very concerned, which translated to threat level concern for us. We were prepared for unsettling news. The Prayer Chain went out. We waited. Not only did we wait for the procedure before Mom’s to end, but we also waited for hers to begin.

We did not wait long before the Doctor, whose ponytail I may have envied, and his assistant came to where we waited. “We did not find what we expected. There is nothing there.” What they had described to us was the likely reason for Mom not feeling well. They were specific, descriptive, and particular. We were braced for bad news, not for the news that nothing was there. Yet, we had asked for prayer. And those prayers to a particular God were answered. Now hear me. My Mom is sick. She has a couple of conditions that will not be cured. But, in this moment, what we had been told was, was not.

Which one.

Not Ba’al, Ra, Chemosh, Molech, Marduk, Nebo, or any other tribal god worshipped by the various tribal peoples Ancient Israel encountered on her way to learning whose Voice thundered, Let there be!

The Story of God, the One we discover in the Scriptures, revealed in events monumental and mundane, is the Which One. We learn of the One particular God with a particular story, that includes or takes in all stories whose name Moses learned is Yahweh. The presence of any and all other gods expresses the human awareness that we don’t make rain, make crops fruitful, or are guaranteed an increase in the size of our families.

Today is not Trinity Sunday as it appears on the Christian Calendar. But, every Sunday we worship the God whose name was given to Moses and in Jesus’s ministry is named Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is said that sermons and Bible Studies on the Trinity, the Triune God, eventually end up in some heresy. And, given what is meant by Trinity - the Three-Personed God, that is very possible. However, the point is not to explain what is hard for us to grasp, but to name which one we refer to when we use the generic term god. What we discover is that God is not a noun. Instead, when we follow the God revealed in Jesus, God gets the verbs, which is to say that God is the name we give to the events in which God reveals Himself.

After Mom’s first procedure to get eyes on what tests had revealed, another doctor came. When he began to explain who he was, we asked how he was connected to the doctor with the ponytail. “That was the weekend team.” We identified the different doctors not by the givenness of their names but by the events in which they were involved to help reveal what had made Mom sick.

We do this every day. That is, while we know one another’s names, the names are filled with meaning by the events in which we have learned about one another. Admittedly, we sometimes learn things we did not expect. Like the event of my referring to Mom’s health in this sermon. You discover that I might like a ponytail like the one worn by the doctor who performed the endoscopy.

When Mom refers to a particular moment during her stay in the hospital, she describes the event that includes the nurse, tech, or administrator. When we received the news that what they saw on the CT scan was not what they normally find, that they found nothing, we could do nothing more than thank the God who spoke to Moses from a bush, to the Father to whom Jesus prayed, and to the Spirit Jesus said he would send. The event of an answered prayer reminded us again, Which One?

The passage Laura read, one that many of us learned as a memory verse, one that gets used over and again as a means to inspire us to give the Good News, includes those of us to whom faith comes more easily than others, and for those who see and still have questions and doubts. Jesus gathers the eleven, which includes both. He does so on an unnamed mountain. Maybe, as some think, it is Mount Arbel that overlooks the area of Galilee where the vast majority of Jesus’s ministry took place. We do not know. Maybe it is left out, lest we make the mountain a holier place than the One Who Is Holy.

Jesus includes the Story of God. “All authority has been given to me.” Returning to what is referred to as the Farewell Discourse, which includes Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer in John 17, we understand that Jesus prays to the Father in the Spirit. Thus, Jesus has the full authority of the Triune God. That is how the Story of God works. Jesus then tells the eleven to “make disciples.” That is, it is an ongoing event. It is not a one-time or one-off activity. Making disciples takes in baptizing. That is, we should hear that word in two ways. First, baptism is the passive activity into which we are immersed. The Apostle Paul describes baptism as being buried with Christ and raised to new life. We take this to mean water baptism. It is certainly a sign, a symbol. But, it is more. It is the recognition that God in Christ Jesus has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves. When a pastor or minister or parent baptizes a person in the course of church life, that pastor or minister becomes for that person the bodily expression, Christ’s Body, who immerses that person into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There is another way to hear the word baptizing that makes it more than a one-and-done. And I don’t mean a re-baptizing after we learn more. That is, I trusted Jesus at 9 and was baptized. Over time, I have come to know more and learn more. The temptation is to think I did not know what I was doing. Now that I understand more, I need to be baptized again. But, that is to think that God’s work of grace requires something of me, that I know more. It does not. That is the creeping Law.

Instead, what all of us experience, sometimes with more intention than other times, is the immersion into the Trinitarian reality of the God whose name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The late Dallas Willard made this point in a talk he gave some years ago. He pointed to this passage and asserted that making disciples is immersing people into the Trinitarian reality - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Put another way, we keep telling this One God, the One we learn from Jesus, the One in the Heavens, the One to whom Jesus named Father, the One the Father names Son, and the Father and Son who send the Spirit. Not just any Spirit, but the Spirit of Jesus. That is how the Story of God gives us Which One. No other god descended to us with the determination to love us and not be God without us. No other god comes to give Himself to us in grace and mercy. The God named Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more than a God who sends rain, makes crops grow, and makes our families grow. This God, the One named Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the One who thundered Let there be and who uttered Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

We saw a number of doctors. Hospital floor doctors are now called hospitalists. Other doctors are identified by their specialty. Nursing staff are referred to according to their role on the team. All of them become the events in which the One God cares for us. That is one way to describe the Body of Christ. We are all together and with one another so that there will be a living witness, a living Body of Christ to care for all others, and as we are going to immerse in the Trinitarian reality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And the reality is that the Son suffered at the hands of men who sought the outright allegiance of their subjects by exerting power and domination. The Body of Christ is no longer the Body of Christ when it takes up such practices. And the Body of Christ, you and me, will have a warped understanding of the Trinitarian reality of Father, Son, and Spirit when in our lives we entertain commitments to those whose example is other than Christ Jesus.

Take Herod, for example. Herod heard of the birth of the Messiah, and in order to maintain his power, he had children killed. Herod was confronted by John for his immorality. John’s popularity scared Herod. But then, at a banquet, the table was set for a show of power and domination. During the festivities, the celebration of Herod, he impulsively offered to do anything Herodias’s daughter asked. Thus, Herod killed the prophet by taking his head. Herod wanted to be worshipped. And in order to gain the allegiance, he performed, like the pattern of the Roman Empire, to gain that allegiance by force of will.

A friend sent me an essay that included a line from Hamlet. The writer begins,

Hamlet, instructing the players, warns against theatrical excess: “I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-Herods Herod.” It is a funny line, but also a useful one. To “out-Herod Herod” is to mistake performative force for truth, spectacle for authority, masculine display for moral courage.

Out-Herod Herod.

Which One.

The Triune God does not our Herod Herod.

Instead of inviting us to a table to offer a show of force and to execute his enemies, the Triune God determined not to be God without us. And as such comes to all of us with an invitation to gather around a table for all, albeit scorned by many. And through those that gather at the table, the offer is to take in not just the Story of God, but the One who gave himself for us all. That leaving this table, we venture into the world as the living Body of Christ, immersing all we know in the reality of the God named Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Come to the table.

While things have slowed a bit here, life has not.

I am sharing a piece I wrote for our church below. The lack of the latest sermon and the absence of Monday Night Live episodes result from events that took precedence. We should get back on track very soon, week after next. In the meantime, here is an update that has slowed things here.

Dear Church Family,

Next month, July, will mark 1664 Sundays we have been together at Snow Hill. Of those Sundays, there have been only two times when an emergency kept me from attending our worship services. Last Sunday marked the second time.

If you are not aware, many a pastor finds it hard to be on the needing end of an emergency. I am no different. And it is a malady, not a virtue.

“I’m sick,” she said when I answered the phone.

“I need to go to the Doctor,” she continued.

By the time we worked through the Urgent Care and into the ER, it was clear I would need to miss Sunday. One phone call and one text message later, the Spirit of the Lord brought a peace that our Church would carry on with fellowship and worship, because the Body of Christ is always animated by the Spirit of Jesus, who never sleeps. Thus, neither does His Church.

What made this particular occasion a wonderful example of Jesus’s presence was that not only would I miss the morning, but Rusty would, too. And that leads us to both this Sunday and a new series that will begin on June 14.

We will look at Matthew 28:16-20 and the words of Jesus,

“Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Last Sunday, the Church was immersed in the Trinitarian reality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. What do we do when circumstances alter the normal pattern of our worship together? We trust the Father who speaks through the Son by the Spirit! That is an encounter with the Triune God.

When the named God is Trinity, we are pointing to both the Identity of the Christian God and, therefore, the Story of God that reveals the named God to us. Put another way, when we look back at the Story of God, we realize that the Triune God is not new but has always been Father, Son, and Spirit.

Through the Body of Christ on earth, you, we, witness the work of the Trinity as Alex and Laura, and Taylor and Caden, expressed the work of the Spirit to reveal the Son and the Father.

Thank you!

Our family thanks you for your prayers for Mom. Keep praying.

Looking forward to gathering with you for Bible Study and Worship on Sunday. We will observe the Lord’s Supper, Communion together.

Glad You Are Our Church!

Todd

Here is a link to the Snow Hill Substack -

Happenings on The Hill

The Spirit of Jesus Never Sleeps

Dear Church Family…

Read more

2 months ago · 1 like · Todd Littleton

*From time to time, the live audio of the sermon has minor differences from the manuscript posted here. Both are available.

Acts 2:1-21

Pastoral Prayer: Almighty Father, it’s no surprise to you that we may keep track of family using Life 360. We may do the same and include friends with Find My. Given the benefits of modern technology, we are only a phone call away. And yet, life often leaves us thinking, “If only I had been there.” Your Spirit has always been at work in our world. You came to us in flesh and blood - in Jesus. Now you are closer than hovering over the waters, or in flesh and blood, You now live in us - the Triune God. You are our Life 360. You found us. May the witnesses who provide meaning to Your Story be the Promise that not only gives us hope but is the Promise we proclaim. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be the Word of your indwelling presence this day. And all God’s people say, Amen.

Not long after we had been married and moved to Texas, my mentor insisted that Patty and I take the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory. After Rick scored the test, he met with us to discuss how the results could help us understand one another, address any relationship conflicts that arise, and strengthen our marriage by highlighting our similarities and differences. Over time, personality instruments have been simplified to move beyond the four letters used to type personalities in the Myers-Briggs to what animal you are, or what color on the color wheel you are, and many more. And each one leaves us pigeon-holed, pitched into a type that often leaves us emphasizing “what we are” more than who we may become.

When it comes to Pentecost and how our tribe has handled the subject, even object, of the Holy Spirit and the events of Acts 2, we move directly to Paul’s correspondence with the Christians in Corinth. There, we find Paul giving us the “Gifts of the Spirit.”

Three times in his correspondence with the Christians in Corinth, the Apostle Paul lists the gifts of the Spirit. Given our tendency to pitch people into categories, it’s no surprise that we moderns create quizzes to help Christians learn what gift we have. Once we learn what our gift is, like those personality inventories, we think that the newly discovered gift is all we can do in the Body of Christ. We found our place.

We think.

For those of us who are not considered capital-C Charismatics, we tend to spend all our time determining our gifts. other than speaking in tongues, of course, and making the fruit of the Spirit a new law whereby we judge one another’s spiritual progress. Moving straight to Gifts and Fruit has short-changed the Third Person of the Trinity. We have often reduced the Holy Spirit to one who hands out gifts and develops fruit.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. John Stott, in his little commentary on Acts, summarizes the references to the Christian observance of Pentecost. The first is connected to the Feast of Harvest (Deuteronomy 16:16). It was sometimes called the Feast of Pentecost because it occurred 50 days after Passover. Stott notes that the date came to be connected to the Exodus, believing the Feast of Harvest, or Pentecost, came 50 days after the Exodus. For Christians, Pentecost commemorates the giving of the Spirit fifty days after Easter Sunday.

And this brings us to Pentecost Sunday. The events of Acts 2 occur fifty days after Easter, the Resurrection of Jesus. And when we get to Peter’s answer to the prevailing question from onlookers, we hear him call back to the prophet Joel. What that means is that talk or reference to the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, is not new. It comes before we get Paul’s correspondence with the Christians in Corinth. The Spirit is found from the Beginning.

. . . and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

The Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, do not leave us with a Spirit that merely hovers. Our series through Jonah gave us several illustrations showing that the wind of God, the ruach of God, is the means by which God pursues us and others.

Robert Jenson notes,

Through the whole Hebrew Scriptures, “ruach Yahweh” maintains its primal impact. The Spirit is experienced as moving transcendent force, to create or throw down, whether in nature or society; this is especially true in the direct documents of religious life. (e.g. Pss. 18:5; 104:29-30). At the very heart of Israel’s faith, its confession of the exodus, Israel can say that the breath of Yahweh freed them from Egypt, in that Yahweh’s ruach blasted the Egyptians and drove back the waters (Exod. 15:8-10). Above all, therefore, God’s Spirit creates life: “The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4)

Clearly, the Spirit is more than God’s Office Administrator, handing out gifts and developing fruit.

Jerusalem was bustling with visitors from far and wide. After the events of Passover, many stayed over and intended to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. This time, those in Jerusalem would have been aware of Jesus’s crucifixion and the news of the Risen Lord. Luke relays,

until the day he was taken up, after he had given instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After he had suffered, he also presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

On this day, those staying in Jerusalem witnessed the sweeping wind, pneuma, the Greek word for wind or spirit. This is the wind, the ruach, that hovered over the face of the deep. Here at Pentecost, the Spirit of God gives words that those visiting from foreign places could understand.

Words.

Understandable words.

Seeing and hearing led many to ask,

What does this mean?

And we who are leery of what we don’t understand, ask the same, still.

What does this mean?

We do poke a little fun at ourselves anytime the Holy Spirit comes up. We find ourselves a bit uncomfortable with Spirit-talk. Guarding against what we have been taught are excesses, we low church folks appear to be straitjacketed by it all. Add that we might observe Pentecost Sunday, and some may wonder the same as others did on that day in Acts, “Have you been drinking?”

Peter gets up to dispel the accusations that those gathered were witnessing the aftermath of day drinking.

You men of Judea, and all you who dwell at Jerusalem, be this known to you, and give ear to my words. For these are not drunken as you suppose, seeing it is the third hour of the day. But this is that which has been spoken through the prophet Joel:

And it shall be in the last days, says God,
I will pour forth my Spirit upon all flesh.

What does this mean?

Peter’s words to those wondering about the meaning of the events they are experiencing are that God has a history. And today, that history includes not just those who closely followed Mary’s Boy and Pilate’s victim. No, the history of God, God’s Story, comes with a long Promise. And all along the way, the reality of God's presence has been the ongoing presence of the Spirit of God, the ruach of God.

Even more, by calling back to the prophet Joel, Peter takes in all of Israel’s history as if to say that the Spirit of God has been at work before Abraham. And that means that God’s Story takes in people,

. . . Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians.

If that triggers your lack of ancient geography, we could sum it up and say from every continent on ea”

Pentecost is not an event that should divide us between capital-C charismatics and small-c charismatics. Instead, Pentecost is the day that signals that God’s Story is Promise that God has determined to not be God without us. Maybe we would be safe in saying that this Promise embedded in Creation comes nearer than it ever has. That is, every step of the way, when human beings are determined to be human without God, God’s Promise remains. That God is not against us but for us. That the very events that mark Israel’s history and your own are full of events whose meaning may be understood as occasions for God to be more present to you than anyone. Most often we realize the presence and work of the Spirit of God in retrospect.

When Peter heard Jesus talk about death and resurrection, he could not conceive of the notion. And, after the death of Jesus, he, along with the others, hid in fear and were unsure what to do once visiting the empty tomb.

It was not until Jesus restored Peter on the seashore over breakfast, and then, when the full awareness came, that what Jesus had promised in John 14 was realized.

We often focus on the first part of John 14. After Jesus tells the disciples in John 13 that he will suffer and die, Jesus sensed their internal struggle.

Let not your hearts be troubled.

These words are often referred to in Christian funeral services. We are there reminded that God is preparing a place for us. And our hope is lit for we will have a place in God’s House. However, reading further leads us to a more comforting reality. That is, rather than live with only a vision of the future, Jesus tells the disciples that there is a reality that alters our present sense of absence.

“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

Jesus has already told the anxious disciples that he will not leave them as orphans. He then tells them,

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.

Pentecost Sunday is the day in the Christian Calendar when we are reminded that Jesus has not left us as orphans; he has not left us to fend for ourselves; he has not left us alone. By the Spirit, the Triune God comes to live in us - in you!

Jesus ascended. The Spirit descended. What John describes as having been witnessed to in flesh and blood now inhabits you who are flesh and blood. That is how describing the Church as the Body of Christ is not a mere metaphor. It is grace and a means of Grace for the world.

Robert Jenson, in his essay, The Spirit That Spoke By the Prophets points out,

Of the signs and wonders that are to accompany the fulfillment of God’s word, the most material then can become that all God’s people shall be speakers and not only hearers of that word.

Therefore, if what seized the people who observed the event of the descending Spirit of God left them wondering what it means that people heard understandable words, it is no less noteworthy that all of the Spirit of Jesus - that is, the Triune God, now at home in us, makes us speakers of God’s Promise and not only hearers.

Once we get the order or rather the nature of the Grace of God’s Spirit in us, then we may recognize that the Spirit of God gives the Body the gifts it needs to proclaim that word and develops the fruit of the Spirit such that the Body of Christ on earth expresses the enthroned Jesus whose Body we are.

What does that mean?

That materially, in flesh and blood, the Grace of God by the Spirit of God has birthed us into the Story of God that we become material witnesses to the Promise of God that God will not be God without us, even when we have fought to be human without God.

Good News!