Tag: Divine Life

Whoever Receives One of These Little Ones

Psalm 1:1a-3c  Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked… Their delight is in the law of Abba God… They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither…

Introduction

We can feel the movements of God, we can even sense them coming from a distance like placing a hand on a railroad track and feeling the power of the locomotive surge even if still far off. But do we understand? No, we don’t. And if we do understand, we are very slow on the pick-up because God rarely acts in ways we expect (want?) God to act. It’s not that we lack common sense or reason, it’s just that the common sense we rely on and the reason we have are influenced by the kingdom of humanity and its ideologies and dogmas, and we are well soaked in that marinade.

I’m not talking about the bad things that happen to you or the good; these need a level of parsing out—what part of these events is human, chance, and divine influence, etc.—and are beyond the scope of a sermon. What I am talking about is God’s movement within the cosmos, the divine foot falls (to refer to Gen. 3) of God walking among us, of the activity of God’s mission and divine revolution of love, life, and liberation. We are trained to expect God to work within the systems and structures we’ve devised and implemented; but God doesn’t. These systems and structures—even the well-intentioned ones—run their course and expire because they’re unable to born again into a new era. So, God moves and acts again (and still!) liberating God’s beloved from these systems and structures, but mostly from themselves.

But we’re always confused, always caught off guard, always slow to understand what God said, what God’s will is in the world and how we actually participate in that will. And because we are hard of hearing and our eyesight needs (always) better lenses, we must, like the disciples, be told repeatedly—not just once at our baptisms or at our confirmations. We must be reminded every Sunday that the deeds and movements of God’s reign in the world are not to be confused with those of the kingdom of humanity. It’s why we repeatedly listen to the various Gospel authors tell us about Jesus; it’s through Jesus, for Christians, we see, hear, and encounter God, through whom we are caught up in the divine mission by the power of the Holy Spirit, through whom and by whom we even can begin to know what God’s will is in the world. It is through Jesus’s teachings to his disciples yesterday that Jesus teaches us today; it is through Jesus’s actions then that we can see God on the move now and follow.

Mark 9:30-37

And then they went into Capernaum, And then in the house it happened that he was inquiring of them, “What were you debating on the way?” And they were being silent, for on the way they were debating among themselves who [was] greatest… And then he received a child and placed them in the middle of [the disciples] and then he embraced [the child] and said to [the disciples], “Whoever receives one of these children in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me but the one who sent me.” (Mk. 9:33-34, 36-37)

Mark starts this portion of text with And from there. From where? It’s uncertain; the gospels aren’t mean to be detailed travel diaries.[1] So, from somewhere Jesus and his crew leave, and he was not desiring to be recognized, thus they avoid popular areas by passing by the sea of Galilee.[2] Why did he avoid popular, public haunts? Jesus’s goal here is to teach the disciples.[3] The reign of God is definitely made known to the world through Jesus’s ability to heal and restore, to literally liberate people from physical, spiritual, social, political captivity, but what does that do for continuing the mission of the reign of God if no one understands beyond the wonderful but fleeting miracles? Jesus’s being in the world must transcend the wonderful physical, fleshy healings that are caught in time and space; the hearts of the disciples and all those who follow Christ must have a heart and mind transplants. They must see things through divine spectacles so that they can continue and participate in God’s mission in the world after Jesus leaves them.

So, Jesus focuses on the disciples and teaches them, “The son of humanity is being handed over into the hands of humanity, and they will kill him, and then after being killed for three days he will rise from the dead.” This isn’t new information to the disciples; it’s a reminder.[4] Jesus is being handed over, he is the object of the handing over. By whom? The subject is ambiguous.[5] Humanity is definitely in view here,[6] but so is God, for Mark—God’s power will be made known through weakness, and this is part of the mission of the reign of God the disciples will learn shortly.[7]

But they were not knowing the meaning of[8] The Word[9] and they were afraid to question him. The disciples do not understand (and this after the incident with Peter in chapter 8), and they are afraid to ask him (maybe because of the incident with Peter in chapter 8). Instead, rather than ask Jesus what he means (again) and gain understanding, they decide to debate something else among themselves, further revealing that whatever they have in mind is in direct conflict to what Jesus—thus God—has in mind.

Now, when they enter Capernaum and go to a house, Jesus questions them,[10] “What were you debating? The disciples are silent. This questioning and responding silence further expose their inability to know/understand what Jesus means.[11] For on the way toward one another they debated who [was] the greatest. So they hide, like their foreparents back in the Garden.[12]And like their foreparents, they are guilty; guilty like schoolchildren.[13] So, Jesus takes the role of the teacher because all is not well, And then he [deliberately][14] sat down and called to himself the twelve and says to them, “If someone wishes to be first they will be last of all people and a servant of all people.” Jesus exposes their question about “who is the greatest” as not only inappropriate,[15] it’s also diametrically opposed to the reign and mission of God.

Like children, Jesus must gently grab their chins and reorient their gaze to him and to God. He does this through a child, And then he received a child and placed them in the middle of [the disciples] and then he embraced [the child] and said to [the disciples], “Whoever receives one of these children in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me but the one who sent me.” Jesus exhorts the disciples to see that their priorities are skewed: it’s not about being great as the kingdom of humanity defines greatness because in that economy these children have no status.[16] Rather, it’s about relinquishing the valuations of the kingdom of humanity and identifying with those who have no status within the reign of God[17] (divine equity!) and therein bringing dignity and worthiness to even the least of these in the name of Christ and to the glory of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is divine justice and greatness says Mark’s Jesus: to upend the traditional valuations of the kingdom of humanity with the divine equity of the reign of God![18]

Conclusion

To identify with these little ones, to receive these children who had no rights or self in the world[19] and treat them as if they did is how God’s glory and presence is made known and experienced in the world. To represent God, according to Mark’s Jesus, is to disabuse oneself of phantasmagorical notions of greatness and embrace weakness, to leave behind grasping for “powerful” according to humanity and opt, instead, for powerlessness according to God.[20] To care for the poor, the weak, the sick, and anyone who is experiencing some form of oppression (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually) is to receive Jesus and thus to receive God and if this then it is by these ones who care for the least of these who bring Jesus thus God close to the suffering and so goes the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the world to the glory of God and for the wellbeing of the neighbor (which includes our own wellbeing). According to Mark, this is the will of God, this is what God is (still) doing in the world; thus, this should be what qualifies and quantifies Christian will, our will. Christian praxis in the world is not about competing for greatness but identifying with those who lack it; this is what it means to be the grown Christian of Ephesians, and this is what it means to be simply human. To close, I want to quote a late 20th century American theologian, Paul Lehmann,

The power to will what God wills is the power to be what [humanity] has been created and purposed to be. It is the power to be and to stay human, that is, to attain wholeness or maturity. For maturity is the full development in a human being of the power to be truly and fully [themself] in being related to others who also have the power to be truly and fully themselves. The Christian koinonia is the foretaste and the sign in the world that God has always been and is contemporaneously doing what it takes to make and to keep human life human. This is the will of God ‘as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.’[21]

Amen

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 371.

[2] France, Mark, 371. “In this area Jesus is well known, and we might expect to hear again of the gathering of enthusiastic crowds. But that is not no Jesus’ purpose., and he escapes recognition, presumably by avoiding areas of populations as he had to do in 1:45.”

[3] France, Mark, 371. “Jesus’ mission is now to teach his disciples, and that takes priority over any public activity.”

[4] France, Mark, 371. v. 31, “The imperfect tenses, as well as the fact that this is the second of a series of three such predictions, indicate that what is stated in this verse is the continuing theme of his teaching at this stage. It is thus a reminder that than adding anything new to what we already know from 8:31.”

[5] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 133-134. παραδίδωμι “It always appears in the passive voice, so that its subject remains ambiguous…Mark has already said that the Son of Man must undergo suffering, be rejected, be killed, and rise again. This is all part of a divine plan. Yet it is also the action of bad people acting out of bad motives. Mark will try in the account ahead to show through his narration how it can be both.”

[6] France, Mark, 372. “Probably the choice of the word is mainly dictated by the play on words–ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου in the hands of the ἄνθροποι—a turn of phrase which is deeply ironical in the light of the sovereignty over all humanity which is predicted for the υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου in Dn. 7:14.”

[7] France, Mark, 372. “In such usage παραδίδωμι indicates that the object of the verb is in the power of the subject, and implies that the outcome is one which the object would not have chosen. There is thus an implication of hostility, even though the verb does not in itself mean to ‘betray’…[God as subject] as secondary connotation of the use of the verb in this context.”

[8] France, Mark, 372. “ἀγνοέω normally mans to be ignorant, but in relation to a saying the meaning shades easily into comprehension (‘not know the meaning of’).”

[9] France, Mark, 372. “Mark seldom uses ῥῆμα, and its use probably characterizes the saying as of special importance, a more formal pronouncement.”

[10] France, Mark, 373. “The disciples have been reluctant to question Jesus (v. 32), so he instead questions them, in order to bring out how little they have yet understood.”

[11] Placher, Mark, 134. “The disciples not only fail to understand the fate that awaits Jesus; they fail to understand what it means to follow him. The twelve have been arguing about which of them is the greatest, and, when he asks what they have been discussing, they will not tell him. They do deserve some sympathy. The faults they are manifesting lie deep in flawed human nature.”

[12] Placher, Mark, 134. “Adam and Eve try to hide form God in shame after they have disobeyed God’s command. The disciples are ashamed and refuse to answer when Jesus asks what they have been arguing about.”

[13] France, Mark, 373. Jesus “What were you talking about” question “…is a challenge to ring into the open a debate of which they are apparently ashamed, aware that Jesus will not approve. Hence their silence. There is an almost comical incongruity in the picture of these grown men acting like guilty schoolboys before the teacher an impression which is only heightened when Jesus goes on to use a child as an example to them.”

[14] France, Mark, 373. “he sat down” “This is an issue which must be addressed, and the teacher sits and summons his disciples to gather round and listen.”

[15] France, Mark, 374. “This is such a radical challenge to natural human valuation that it needs constant repetition. The preeminent status in the kingdom of God is characterized by the twin elements of lowliness…and service…The question of τίς μείζων; could hardly be more inappropriate.”

[16] France, Mark, 374.

[17] France, Mark, 374. “The child represents the lowest order in the social scale, the one who is under the authority and care of others an who has not yet achieved the right of self-determination. To ’become like a child ‘…is to forgo status and to accept the lowest place, to be a ‘little one’…”

[18] France, Mark, 374. “In this pericope there is not call…to become like a child…, but rather the injunction to ‘receive’ the child, to reverse the conventional value-scale by according important to the unimportant.”

[19] Placher, Mark, 134-135. “Jesus does not say here that we should be like children; he says we should welcome them. In the ancient world, children were not considered primarily as models of innocence….The distinctive thing about children was their lack of any rights. A father could put a newborn outside to starve to death if he had wanted a boy and got a girl or life the baby seemed weak or handicapped. Children existed for the benefit of their parents—really of their fathers.”

[20] Placher, Mark, 135. “In the Aramaic that Jesus was presumably speaking, the same word (talya) can mean either ‘child’ or ‘servant.’ Welcoming children means helping the most vulnerable. Jesus is thus not urging childishness in any form on his disciples but telling them to stop competing about who will make the top and make sure they care for those on the bottom.”

[21] Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 101.

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Hearts Cleansed First

Psalm 45:1, 7  My heart is stirring with a noble song; let me recite what I have fashioned…my tongue shall be the pen of a skilled writer. Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever, a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your reign; you love righteousness and hate iniquity.

Introduction

We just finished discussing the text of the letter to the Ephesians where “alignment” of the inner and outer person was a core thread woven through. For the author of the letter of Ephesians, whom I refer to as Paul, the encounter with God in the event of faith rectifies and substantiates the inner person of the believer with God in the message of what Christ did in his life and death and resurrection, and which is sealed to the believer by the coming of the Holy Spirit. This “spiritual” reality is not enough for Paul, as if just being right with God on the inside is all that matters. According to the logic of Ephesians, for this inner reality to be a real thing it must be/come tangible and that means it must find expression in the temporal realm through the outer person, the body. Faith must (and wants to!) express itself through acts of love. (full stop) In other words, what is on the inside wants to find expression on the outside.

It’s not a pop-psych thing; it’s not a fad or a phase. It’s not “these kids these days!”, it’s a very important concept that must be revisited often in our lives as we grow and mature, change with new information, and after we deconstruct spiritually and intellectually, emotionally and physically. It’s such an important topic that God in Christ Jesus picks up this very concept and discusses it from a different perspective. This time, though, Jesus addresses the discrepancy between empty action toward God because of a heart that clings to human tradition.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Pharisees and some of the scribes [from Jerusalem] questioned [Jesus], “Why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the priest, but eat bread with dirty hands? And [Jesus] said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as is has been written, ‘This people revere me with [their] lips but their heart keeps far off from me. In vain they worship me, teaching the teachings of the precepts of humanity.’ Leaving the commands of God, you hold fast the traditions of humanity.”

Mark opens chapter 7 with the local pharisees coming together with some of the scribes having arrived from Jerusalem.[1] Here we, the audience, are being introduced to the building crisis and intensifying controversy between Jesus and the established leadership of Israel.[2] Not just the local leadership is worried, but the larger leadership is worried; so Jerusalem dispatched a group of scribes to see about this Jesus and his claims and actions.[3] As the two groups (the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes) come together they take notice that Jesus’s disciples eat bread with unclean hands—that is, unwashed. This small oversight on the part of the disciples sparks pharisaic and scribal attention because, as Mark parenthetically explains to us, for the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they might carefully wash [their] hands, holding fast to the tradition of the priest; and they do not eat unless they ritually wash themselves also from the market… According to Mark, there is a human-made[4] tradition demanding hands (and bodies from the market!) are thoroughly cleansed before consuming food. Even more, anything to do with food should be baptized (washed thoroughly): winecups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches.The desire is to prevent something external and unclean from contaminating the person on the inside. So, seeing the disciples break such a tradition—running the risk of making themselves unclean—provokes the Pharisees and the scribes to question Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the priests, but eat bread with unclean hands?” As Jesus is pulled into the crisis, this rather small oversight becomes a much bigger deal.[5]

The reason why this small oversight becomes significant is because it marks a very early departure of Jesus’s followers from the traditions of the priests, a departure which will become—over time—more radical.[6] Jesus takes hold of the conversation and moves it away from the banality of tradition-obedience and toward something much more significant: inner-person and outer-person alignment and obedience to God.[7] Jesus begins by calling them hypocrites and then quoting Isaiah, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as is has been written, ‘This people revere me with [their] lips but their heart keeps far off from me. In vain they worship me, teaching the teachings of the precepts of humanity.’ And then concludes, “Leaving the commands of God, you hold fast the traditions of humanity.” In other words, Jesus has turned (flipped?) the table on the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes: it is not my disciples who have left the true tradition of reign of God; it is you who have left God as you cling to traditionalism of the kingdom of humanity.[8] According to Jesus, the existing leadership of the children of Israel have allowed God’s commands to slip away as they grabbed onto the traditions of humanity. They are the ones who are now caught in dissonance: they say they love God but their actions demonstrate that they love their own traditions more. Something is askew.

Then, according to our assigned text, Jesus turns to the crowd, and draws them into the discussion, leaving the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes to their own thoughts, “Listen to me all [of you] and understand, nothing from outside of a person is able to make them unclean by entering into them. Rather, it is that which proceeds out of/is spoken by a person which makes the person unclean. Jesus addresses the crowd because what is at stake exceeds just washing one’s hands according to the traditions of human beings; what is at stake is one’s orientation toward God (inward) and, thus, one’s orientation toward the neighbor (outward).[9] Building from the Isaiah quotation, Jesus recenters the state of the inner person (the heart) as the most important thing, as the seat of what defiles or does not defile a person.[10] It’s not a dirty pitcher or dirty hands that makes one unclean, it’s what is produced from the heart and finds its way out that makes someone unclean. Thus, why Jesus then says, For it is from within the heart of the person that the bad reasonings bursts forth….all these wicked things burst forth from within and pollute the person. In other words, you can be as ritually pure according to tradition as you want—avoiding this or that thing, person, or deed—but if your heart is still far from God then none of it matters because you are still unclean and exposes that you’ve never been thoroughly washed (baptized), from head to toe. [11] You can say you are worshipping God and love God all you want, but your actions (toward your neighbor) will speak otherwise because what’s on the inside always wants to find expression on the outside. For Mark’s Jesus, clinging to traditionalisms in the name of God reveal the heart that is turned away from the neighbor because it cannot see the oppression and marginalization being imposed on the people who are just trying to live to the best of their ability. In other words, for Jesus, the Pharisees and the scribes from Jerusalem have forsaken the mission of the reign of God and have invested in the tyranny of the kingdom of humanity; God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation is being ignored (at best) and hindered (at worst).

Conclusion

According to Mark’s Jesus, our hearts must first be made right before we can begin to align the outer person with the inner person in a way that conforms with God’s will and the mission of the reign of God. Our hearts are repeatedly tempted to return to the ways of the kingdom of humanity, and we find ourselves lured to (re)draw lines of division between the “acceptable” and “unacceptable,” the “good” and the “bad,” the “clean” and the “unclean.”[12] (Remember, according to Ephesians, humans love a good dividing wall and God loves unity.) So, Mark’s Jesus is asking us—challenging us, inviting us[13]—to reevaluate and take stock of these tendencies and to align our bodily expressions to our faith, our auditory words to God’s Word residing in our hearts, to recenter in our lives and loves those who have been otherwise left out and oppressed by the dominant culture of the kingdom of humanity (people of color, queer people, indigenous people, people who are disabled, our elders, women, etc.). We must take a deep, hard look at the ways we’ve participated in forcing obedience to external conformity on those who look different from us, act different from us, and who walk through the world differently from us, and really see how we have refused to let them be who they are inside and out, how we have denied their bodies, their stories, and their religions in the world. Our histories expose that our hearts have been far from God—calcified, cold, and dead—even though we have convinced ourselves we acted and proclaimed in God’s will and name! We must take our inner and outer alignment seriously—for Jesus is speaking to us and not “them out there” who are getting it wrong according to our books. We must begin to realize we’ve conflated the goals of our human empire for the mission of the reign of God. And it is “We” because we are being addressed, those who claim to represent God by bearing Christ’s name into the world and those who claim to participate in God’s mission of divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world by the leading of the Spirit.

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 276. “…not the local scribal leadership but…a delegation ἀπὸ Ἱεροσολύμων.”

[2] France, Mark, 276. “With the beginning of chapter 7 we return to a situation of controversy and of teaching, the two closely woven together. Opposition and rejection have of course been recurrent themes in the Galilean ministry so far, but with this new pericope the tension between Jesus and the religious leadership rises to a new of mutual repudiation, and Jesus deliberately fuels the fire with a more radical pronouncement even than his controversial comments on the sabbath (vv. 15, 19).”

[3] France, Mark, 280. “The fact that in both instances they are described as having arrived …from Jerusalem probably indicates that they have come specially to investigate and/or to dispute with Jesus.”

[4] France, Mark, 280. “…it is the behaviour of Jesus’ disciples rather than his own actions which provides the point of dispute…The issue this time…is not one of obedience to the OT laws, but of rules subsequently developed in Pharisaic circles. While no doubt it could normally be expected that hands would be washed before a meal for hygienic reasons (since food was often taken from a common dish), the only hand washing required in the OT for purposes of ritual purity is that of priests before offering sacrifice…The extension o this principle to the eating of ordinary food and to Jewish people other than priests, was a matter of scribal development, and it is uncertain how far it had progressed by the time of Jesus.”

[5] France, Mark, 277. “While the issue raised by the scribes in v. 2 is at the relatively inoffensive level of ritual washing before meals (a matter on which Jews themselves held different views), by his pronouncement in v. 15 Jesus deliberately widens the discussion to include this ritual separation which constituted one of the ‘badges’ of Jewish national identity.”

[6] France, Mark, 277. The hand washing is smallish but ends up being the catalyst for the “stark polarisation of views which must pit Jesus’ new teaching irrevocably against current religious orthodoxy, and which will, in the fulness of time, lead the community of his followers outside the confines of traditional Judaism altogether.”

[7] France, Mark, 283. “Jesus’ response will therefore focus on this more fundamental issue of the relative authority of tradition as such as a guide to the will of God, rather than on the provenance of the particular tradition in question.”

[8] France, Mark, 285. “The basic charge is economically expressed by means of three contrasting pairs of words: ἀφέντες…κρατεῖτε; ἐντολὴν…παράδοσιν; θεοῦ…ἀνθρώπων. The fundamental contrast is the last—true religion is focused on God, not a merely human activity. What comes from God has the authoritative character of ἐντολή, which requires obedience; what comes from human authority is merely παράδοσις, which may or may not be of value in itself, but cannot have the same mandatory character. Yet they have held fast to the latter, while allowing the former to go by default.”

[9] France, Mark, 286. “Indeed, the Pharisees and scribes are not mentioned again; their accusation has been rebutted, and now Jesus takes the imitative in raising publicly a much more fundamental issue of purity which goes far beyond the limited question of the validity of the scribal rules for hand washing. No specific regulation is now in view, but rather the basic principle of defilement by means of external contacts which underlies all the purity laws of the To and of scribal tradition.”

[10] France, Mark, 291. “Unlike the things which do not defile because they do not make contact with the καρδία, the really defiling things are those which actually originate in the καρδία.”[10] The seat of thought and will

[11] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 102. “The challenge is not to particular details of traditional purity laws but to the whole idea that ‘purity’ means keeping your distance from unclean persons, things, and types of food.”

[12] Placher, Mark, 103. “Worry about your own attitudes and behavior, not how you might look to others if they see you associating with the wrong people. There are no ‘wrong people’ when it comes to those Christians should care about.”

[13] Placher, Mark, 104. “Jesus invites us to let all our respectability be burned away so that nothing will distinguish us from the freaks and lunatics, and only thus to enter his reign.”

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The Paraclete Cometh

Psalm 104:34-37a 34 I will sing to Abba God as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being. May these words of mine please God; I will rejoice in Abba God. Bless God, O my soul!

Introduction

Last week, Jesus prayed for his disciples to have the fortitude to remain in the Word of God. Being not of the world but remaining in the world means that this fledgling community belonging to Christ needed to remember that their creation as this fledgling community was solely based and sustained on God’s Word proclaimed in and through Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, this one who is God. As Jesus prepares to leave his disciples, he knew that the hatred of the world toward this new community of God would try to eclipse the joy and confidence of these faithful. So, he prayed. He prayed that they would remain one as Jesus and God are one, because they are stronger together as a group, and the world loves to divide and conquer. He prayed for the sustaining of their identity, that they remember whose they are, because the world will do whatever it can to make the forget. He prayed for them to be protected in their new creation (new eyes, new ears, new words), because the world will try to steal from their new creation, forcing them to relinquish new eyes and ears, holding their proclamation hostage, demanding they forsake their divinely gifted life, love, and liberation.

Jesus knew they needed help. This little community—barely a smoldering wick—was about to be launched into the world to fend for themselves. They would be assaulted on every side because of who they were and what they said: they, like their Christ, were to become the locus of God’s revolutionary activity in the world; their message would echo Jesus’s, calling into question the kingdom of humanity, exposing the upside-down world, and proclaiming the words of the divine revolution in the world for the oppressed. Jesus knew they were sitting ducks and without God, they would not make it far because this community was not a community created by human strength so it could not be sustained by human strength. So, this community needed something bigger and stronger, something that is of the same substance as the word that not only called this community into being but also the entire cosmos.

Jesus prayed on behalf of the community, asking for God to show up. And God did.

Enter the Paraclete!

John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

“But I, I say to you the truth, it is profitable to you that I, I go away. For if I do not go away, the paraclete cannot come to you. But, if I go, I will send them to you. And coming, that one will convict the cosmos concerning sin and concerning justice and concerning judgment…I still have many things to say to you, but you are not able to bear them just now. But, whenever this one comes, the Spirit of Truth, they will guide you in every kind of truth, for they will not speak from themself, but as much as you listen they will bring back word to you. (Jn 16:7-8, 12-13)

The lectionary loops us back into John 15 after bringing us to John 17 last week. Thus, according to the logic of the lectionary, Jesus’s promise of the Spirit is the fulfillment of the prayer to God to protect, guide, and strengthen the disciples who will be left in the world. But the advent of the Spirit, the Paraclete, is more than just a helper for those who will be left by Jesus; they are the very foundation of the church, as we say in our creed every Sunday: the Spirit is the “life-giving breath of the church.” For it is through, with, and by the Spirit that the work and word of Christ started in the body of Jesus will transition to the work and word of the fledgling community, who is now transfigured into the body of Christ in the world in Christ’s absence.[1] It is by the Spirit of God, the Paraclete, that God’s will and mission in the world will continue to be made known to the beloved in and through the new community of God.

Jesus—the Reconciler—must leave the disciples and return to God the Creator so that the Spirit of God—the Redeemer—can be sent into the world, specifically into the hearts of the disciples, to continue the work of God in the world. The work of the Spirit is to continue to reveal God in the world by means of the light of truth that is the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ.[2] In this way, God’s self-revelation and mission in the world is not cut short by Jesus’s bodily absence; through the Spirit rather than the incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ, does the Word and mission of God begin to transcend not only geographical boundaries (Acts 10 fulfilling Acts 1:8) but will also transcend chronological boundaries. By the sending of the Spirit, the Word of God will continue in the world, the light of truth will continue to illuminate hearts and minds from one era to another, in one context to a completely different one, through decades, centuries, and millennia.[3] It is through the witness of the Spirit in the lives of the disciples that witnesses back to Christ and thus forward to God[4] that is the continual fuel for the fire of divine revolution setting human hearts ablaze like match sticks—one by one.[5]

It is for this reason that Jesus both addresses the disciples’ impending grief (being left alone in the world in distress)[6] and exhorts them toward joy: even though they will grieve Jesus’s absence, feel fear and anxiety, they will be comforted by God’s Spirit, the Paraclete, who will usher them further into God’s truth and into God’s reality thus farther and deeper into God.[7] This is why Jesus turns the conversation toward what the Paraclete will do when they show up, because it is through the disciples (and through the church that will be born through their bodies and the Word of God) that the Paraclete will expose the world’s misconceptions of sin, justice, and judgment.[8] In this way and to quote Rudolf Bultmann, “The world is accused, and the Paraclete is the prosecutor.”[9] With the Paraclete set loose in the world through the disciples, human sin is exposed by divine righteousness,[10] human justice is brought to trial by divine justice, [11] and human judgment is found guilty by divine judgment.[12] Thus, God’s truth continues to be the light of the world from one era to another, within one context and then in another, living in one heart and at the same time in a completely different heart. The one word of God is always new in every moment as a word of revelation; it is not static doctrine, archaic dogma, suffocating fundamentalism, and deadly legalism. Rather, it is always a new living-word summoning the dead in their tombs into life in the world.[13]

Thus, Jesus can assure the disciples that even though he has much more to teach them, he will leave that to the Paraclete who will guide them (teach/lead) into every kind of truth further revealing Christ into the world, further instigating God’s divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world in pursuit of the God’s beloved. The Paraclete will not lead the disciples (those then and those now) to a static conception of God or into a conception of God so different there must be a break with this history set out through Christ, but into God’s self-disclosure made known in the revelation of God incarnate, Jesus.[14] In other words, divine truth will be revealed in every moment as the present moment—whatever/wherever—is revealed by the divine word and ushered into divine comfort by the Paraclete, who is the Spirit of Truth.[15] Starting first with the community—whatever/wherever—and billowing outward into the world.

Conclusion

Those first disciples lost their main, they lost Jesus whom they loved dearly—they staked their lives on this love of Christ, and then he left them. The distress they felt was real; it’s a distress that we feel today, feeling left/abandoned by God without Jesus to be here with us bodily. But the Paraclete remains in the world and always with the disciples of Christ, those who are thrust by faith into God and are dependent on God’s word. Our God is Triune, three persons one God; personal and close, at all times, in all eras. God is not dead, dear ones; God is alive, God is here, God is with us, and God is within us. Martin Luther writes about this portion of the Gospel of John, “Therefore God has been gracious to us and has given us a Comforter to counteract this spirit of terror—a Comforter, who, as God Himself, is much stronger with His comfort than the devil is with his terror.”[16] The one who lives in us and through us is the one who can bend space and time to become one spot and moment so that all time and all space is in this God of presence, revelation, and comfort.

Yet comfort only comes when God’s truth exposes and reveals us, the way we miss the mark, our decrepit ideas, broken systems, and violent ideologies. By the presence of the spirit—it’s conviction—we cannot pretend not to see what we see, hear what we hear, feel what we feel. We do not have the luxury of undoing God’s summoning of us out from our tombs back at Easter. By the Spirit, the Paraclete, this humble community, bends its knees, confesses, and finds absolution by faith in Christ and union with God. Through the conviction and exposure of the Paraclete, divine comfort becomes true comfort—not the comfort of the world that is fleeting, comfort that lasts through thick and thin because it’s built out of the stuff of the infinite and not finite, of the eternal and not terminal, out of the substance of God and not the substance of humanity.

God’s Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete, the Prosecutor comes to bring God close to us through the light of truth to live with us and among us and in us, to work in and through us the divine revolution of God’s love, life, and liberation in the world. Today we rejoice because Christ’s joy is made complete in us through the sending of the Paraclete who binds us to God through Christ. We can let go of the rope and fall into God because God will show up because God never left us.

[1] Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. GR Beasley-Murray, Gen Ed, RWN Hoare and JK Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 552. Originally published as, Das Evangelium des Johannes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964, 1966). “After Jesus’ departure, the situation on earth will remain unchanged in as much as the offence which Jesus’ work offered the world will not disappear. The witness, which till now he had borne to himself, will be taken over by the Paraclete, the Helper, whom he will send from the Father.”

[2] Bultmann, John, 553. “The ἀλθείας is for him the self-revelatory divine reality, and the function of the Spirit consists in bestowing revelation by continuing Jesus’ revelatory work, as is stated by the words μαρτυρήσει περὶ ἐμοῦ…”

[3] Bultmann, John, 553. “Jesus will send this Spirit from the Father, and from the Father he will come forth. This two-fold designation makes the reference to the idea of revelation certain’ even after Jesus’ departure, God’s revelation will be mediated through him: he it is, who sends the Spirit…who bears witness to him; but he does so in his unity with the Gather, who has made him Revealer; he sends the Spirit from the Father; the Spirit proceeds from the Father, just as it is said in 14.16 that the Father sends the Spirit at the son’s request, or in 14.26 that he sends him ‘in the name’ of the Son. All these expressions say the same thing.”

[4] Bultmann, John, 554. “Thus their being with him ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς has not come to an end with his farewell, but continues further; and this is the only basis on which their witness is possible. Their witness is not , therefore, a historical account of that which was, but—however much it is based on that which was—it is ‘repetition,’ ‘a calling to mind,’ in the light of their present relationship with. Him. In that case it is perfectly clear that their witness and that of the Spirit are identical.”

[5] Bultmann, John, 553-554. “The word μαρτυρήσει indicates that the Spirit is the power of the proclamation in the community, and this is made fully clear by the juxtaposition of the disciples’ witness and that of the Spirit: καὶ ὑμεῖς δὲ μαρτυρεῖτε (v. 27). For the witness borne by the disciples is not something secondary, running alongside the witness of the spirit.” And “Their preaching is to be a ‘repetition’ of his preaching, or a ‘calling to mind,’…” (554)

[6] Bultmann, John, 558. “They are not asking where he is going to—the answer would be: to the father, and that would solve their difficulty—but they are in λύπη because they are about to be left in their distress.”

[7] Bultmann, John, 558.

[8] Bultmann, John, 560-561. “Only in the word was Jesus the Revealer, and only in the word will he continue to be it; for the Paraclete, who is take his place, is the word. The word is very far from being a closed doctrine, or complex of statements, not on the other hand is it the historical account of Jesus’s life. It is the living word; that is, paradoxically, the word which is spoken by the community itself, for the Paraclete is the Spirt that is at work in the community.”

[9] Bultmann, John, 562.

[10] Bultmann, John, 563. “The world understands sin as revolt against its own standards an ideals, the things which give it security. But to shut oneself off from the revelation that calls all worldly security in question and opens up another security—that is real sin, in contrast to which all that used to be sinful was only temporary and passing.”

[11] Bultmann, John, 565. ‘For the world , this victory is just as much a κρυπτόν (7.4) as is the real nature of ἁμαρτία; as the world sees things, to suffer the wreckage of death means condemnation by God; the world can only see victory in what is visible. But the significance of the victory lies precisely in the overcoming of the visible by the invisible; this is why the world does not know that it is condemned, or that it is conquered. But this is what the Paraclete will show.”

[12] Bultmann, John, 565. “In each case the world thinks it possesses the criteria for this judgment in its concepts of ἁμαρτία and δικαιοσύνη. But as it deceived itself over the meaning of A and D, so too it fails to see that the χρίσις is already ensuing, that the prince of this world is already judged; i.e. it fails to see that it is itself already judged—condemned for holding on to itself, to it s own standards and ideals, to what can be seen.”

[13] Bultmann, John, 561. “For the word is at the same time spoken into a situation; i.e. it is spoken as the word of revelation against it. If therefore the community has any understanding of the word of revelation that brings it into being, it can and must know that it has always to interpret the word afresh and to speak it into its own present as the word that is always the same—that word that is the same because it is always new.”

[14] Bultmann, John, 575. “This means that the Spirits’ word is not something new, to be contrasted with what Jesus said, but that the Spirit only states the latter afresh. The Spirit will not bring new illumination, or disclose new mysteries; on the contrary, in the proclamation effected by him, the word that Jesus spoke continues to be efficacious.”

[15] Bultmann, John, 574. “If the Spirit is at work in the word that is proclaimed in the community, then this word gives faith the power to step out into the darkness of the future, because the future is always illumined afresh by the word. Faith will see the ‘truth’ in each case, i.e., it will always be certain of the God who is manifest in the word, precisely because it understands the present in the light of this word.”

[16] Martin Luther, “Sermons on the Gospel of St. John Chapters 14-16,” Luther’s Works, vol. 24, ed., Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1961), 291.

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