En el nombre del Dios: creator, redentor, y santificador. Amen. In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
I’m a big fan of classic English literature. I love how the characters in those stories sat in reflective thought for hours just pondering. For example, in Charlotte Brönte’s novel, “Villette” the main character, Lucy, spends three hours reflecting upon a single conversation she had with Dr. Bretton. (
Smith, Elder, & Co, UK, 1853)
Smith, Elder, & Co, UK, 1853)
Three hours! Can you imagine? There is wisdom in this, though. Taking time in reflection often leads to a fuller understanding.
It’s a lost art I wish we would reclaim, and church can help us do that. As it happens, our lectionary writers provide us the perfect opportunity today by leading us to revisit the Last Supper, even this far into the 50 Days of Easter, and reflect deeply on what is being re-presented.
Before the resurrection, the disciples heard Jesus’ words, but we’re told, they didn’t fully understand them. After the resurrection, everything Jesus said and did has new, more profound meaning. The church is invited to spend some time listening deeply and letting God guide our understanding, because these events will be the foundational guide for our life choices, just as they were for those first disciples.
Last Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday, we heard Jesus claiming himself as the gate, who, as Susanna+ preached, is a different kind of gate – a gate that opens out to welcome in, instead of closing in to keep others out. This week, Jesus says that no one can come to God except through him.
This statement has often been used by the Church as an exclusionary text. Unless you are Christian, or a particular kind of Christian, you cannot enter. Sadly, that totally misunderstands who Jesus is, as the second person of the Trinity, and does harm by excluding the very people Jesus died and rose to reclaim.
By using the I AM statements in this gospel, Jesus is claiming his divinity, which is now intimately and innately tied to his humanity. I AM is the name God used to identify God’s self in Exodus. In Jesus, the fullness of the Trinity of God is now revealed to us in human form.
By this revelation, Jesus invites us into a new relationship, one that moves us beyond a literal, earthly understanding and into an expansive, spiritual understanding. The literal listeners, symbolized by Thomas in this story, ask, ‘Where are you going? How can we know the way?” In other words, how do we follow you? Remember, this is before Thomas has touched the divine wounds in the resurrected Christ.
Jesus responds with amazing compassion, gently addressing the very human hesitance to move from earthly to spiritual understanding. He clarifies that what he is speaking about isn’t a location, but a relationship: “where I AM, there you will also be… because I AM in God and God is in me… If you know me, you know the fullness of God also…” Trust me, Jesus says, but if you can’t trust me, trust the works themselves. They, too, reveal God.
You’ll notice I changed the word “Father” to “God” when quoting this gospel. The reason is, the centuries-old habit of the church using the term “father” exclusively for God has led to both a denial of the feminine aspect of God and the diminishment and value of women. The outcome, with which we are still contending today, is the ongoing subjugation and exploitation of women and others who lack power or privilege: children of all genders, LGBTQIA2S+, immigrants, the poor, and the vulnerable.
The word Jesus used in this gospel, which has been translated only as “father,” has multiple and layered meanings and opens up to us the vastness of the nature of God. The word actually translates as nourisher, protector, upholder; nearest ancestor, progenitor of a people, the founder of a race or tribe.
Jesus, the Christ, who proclaims himself as “I AM,” God, is our progenitor, our nearest ancestor. Through Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, we have been given a new relationship with the Trinity of God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, who dwells in and acts through humanity.
Jesus was the firstborn, the progenitor of the state of coexistence of divinity and humanity. We are the next born of it, because where Jesus is, there we are also. Jesus, who is God, dwells in us and we in him.
When we ponder these words of Jesus, they reach deeply into us, moving us beyond our earthly understanding and into a deeper, truer, broader spiritual understanding. This will definitely take some time, probably more than a single 3-hour ponder session.
Moving into this new relationship with God will require us to open ourselves as we reflect, and to respond to God each time They tap us on the shoulder and call our attention to Them. When we do, our understanding grows, matures, expands... and we realize that the truth God is revealing to us will affect every decision we make and every action we take.
The story of the stoning of Stephen is a perfect example of how earthly ears resist hearing the truth of God. The world will kill speakers of the truth to maintain the status quo, the agreed-upon storyline.
I remember when I was about five years old, and I would try to tell my family and the nuns at my Catholic school about my spiritual experiences of God: how the trees sang a song of heaven to me; how forest critters, including snakes, drew close and hung out with me like family; how the healing power of God opened my awareness to illness and injury in other people’s bodies, or how God my Mother would hold me in her lap and heal me from the continuing abusive experiences in my childhood.
I learned very quickly that these were not welcomed discussions, especially my experience of God as Mother, which I had before my Christian educators taught me that God could only be Father. It didn’t stop these experiences from happening - it only stopped me from talking about them.
If ever you “have tasted that the Lord is good…[Peter says] let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, ...a holy priesthood…” Like Jesus, Peter isn’t talking about a location when he says “be a spiritual house,” and he isn’t talking about an ordained office when he says “be a holy priesthood.” He’s talking about the fullness of the human-divine relationship that is in all of us, because of Jesus.
The spirit of Jesus lives in us, and that truth affects how we hear Jesus say,” the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these.” It’s hard to imagine doing greater works than Jesus did - raising the dead, healing the man born blind, calming the storm on the sea… but only when we listen with literal ears and from an earthly understanding.
In fact, we’re already doing these works. Whenever we accompany someone through a time of transition as they let go of their old life or their old self, or a loved one, and step into a new life, God, who dwells in us, is doing Their work raising the dead back to life. When we speak the truth of God in Christ by our lives or using words, and someone finally gets it, God has done Their work in us, bringing sight to the blind. When we walk willingly into someone’s nightmare, bearing the peace of Christ to them by our very presence, God has worked through us to calm the storm in their life.
Jesus concludes this portion of his farewell discourse with a statement that truly deserves reflection: “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” Jesus isn’t promising that we can have whatever we want. Quite the opposite.
Jesus is promising that when we enter into the intimate, innate relationship with God who dwells in us, what we desire will begin to reflect God’s desire, and the will of God will be done on earth as it is in heaven by God in Christ who works in and through us.
I pray we all spend time reflecting often and deeply with the one who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life in us so that we will be guided by God in every circumstance and teach our young ones how God’s will is accomplished on earth as it is in heaven.
Amen.
