Be of Good Courage: Reflections on John 15.26-27; 16.4b-15 for Pentecost 2021 (23 May 2021)

             In 1995 I went to General Synod for the first time as a clergy representative from the Diocese of New Westminster.  Within fifteen minutes of my arrival at the registration desk, I was whisked away by an anxious volunteer.  The volunteer told me that the priest of the parish who was to host members of the New Westminster delegation on Sunday had come down with a very bad case of laryngitis.  Would I preside and preach at the three points of the parish?

 

            I said ‘yes’ and then realized that I had just agreed to preach three times on Pentecost in congregations I did not know, with little time to prepare and the pressing business of a General Synod that had come together at the beginning of our internal debates about the place of LGBTQ disciples in the life of our church.  But late one night, as I was struggling about what I would say on Monday in a meeting of the whole on the topic of sexuality, I can only say I had a Pentecostal moment.  I realized that the primary gift of the Holy Spirit was courage to act on what I knew, what I had been taught and what I had experienced since I became a disciple and friend of Jesus in 1953.

 

            Just as the first disciples knew who Jesus was and what he had taught them and how he had lived among them, so we, two thousand years later, know who is for us now, what Jesus has taught us and is teaching us now and how he lives with us now.  Through the Scriptures, especially the Gospels, through the writings of Christians over two millennia and through our own experiences of life as members of the Body of Christ, we have come to recognize that Jesus is our foundation; he is our model; he is our mentor.

 

            But what we know, what we have learned and are learning, and what we see is not always enough to enable us to be the disciples and friends of Jesus we seek to be.  Just as the core operating systems of our computers need an upgrade now and then to facing changing technologies, so too does our core spiritual operating system need an upgrade from time to time.  After two thousand years we Christians must share and live the good news of God in Christ in contexts very different from those of first-century Palestine or, for that matter, the late twentieth-century North America at the time of my ordination in 1981.

 

            We need to learn new ‘languages’ so that we can share the good news with those who know little to nothing of the Christian story other than what they read and see in the popular media, especially these days when the Christian voices that have come to dominate the public’s perception of what Christian faith do not speak for all Christian believers.  We have to imagine different ways of ‘being church’ in a society that is wary of committing to any organization or institution which cannot proclaim and live a clear and compelling mission that makes sense in twenty-first century Canada.  We have to apply our core operating system, Jesus of Nazareth, to situations unimagined by our forebears in the faith.

 

            To this end the Holy Spirit has been sent, is being sent and will be sent to us.  Through the Spirit we are ‘en-couraged’ – filled with courage and empowered so that we can act on what we know, what we have learned and what we have experienced as Jesus’ disciples and friends.

 

            Richard of Saint Victor, a Christian theologian who lived and taught in the twelfth century in western Europe, was frequently criticized by his contemporaries for his approach to scriptural and theological interpretation.  Many thought him innovative at best, heretical at worst, and sought to silence him.  In response to their criticism he wrote:

 

            "Do you wish to honour and defend the Fathers?  We cannot honour the lovers of truth more truly than by seeking, finding, teaching, defending and loving the truth.  Do not ask whether what I say is new, but whether it is true."  (McAuliffe et al., With Reverence for the Word 2003, 24)

 

We know that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  But discipleship and friendship with Jesus requires us to look at the world around us, its needs and its resources, its hopes and fears, its lack of vision as well as its precious insights.  How do the Scriptures and our lived experience guide us towards making our time and our place ‘a thin place’ where God’s life and our lives touch.

 

            Today small flames appear over the heads of all who claim to be and who seek to grow as disciples and friends of Jesus.  Today our hearts are given the courage to be who we truly are and to share the good news the message that the glory of God is found in human beings truly alive.  The whole world, or at least this small part of the world we inhabit, is waiting eagerly to hear, in whatever language is needed, in whatever form is needed, this message of freedom and abundant life unleashed this day two thousand years ago – and today and every day.

Alike and Yet Unalike: Reflections on John 15.9-17

 

 

RCL Easter 6B

9 May 2021

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

         As I draw nearer to my retirement from full-time stipendiary ministry, I find myself, like many others at similar points in their lives, marking endings.  On Wednesday past, for example, Greg Kennelly and I participated in our last meeting as elected members of our Diocesan Council.  By the time the next scheduled election of members takes place, I shall be within a month or two of retirement.

 

         I have also been remembering mentors such as my Grade 8 and 9 English teacher, Mrs Galbraith whose husband had been taken prisoner by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War 2; my Grade 7, 8 and 9 civics teacher, Mr Comer, who was instrumental in organizing teachers into a collective bargaining association and later a state senator; and my seminary liturgy professor, Louis Weil, who was one of the group of scholars, clergy and laity responsible for the American prayer book of 1979 which influenced our own Book of Alternative Services of 1985.

 

         One of the ways that I earned a little extra money while I was doing my doctoral studies in Notre Dame was by serving as a supply priest in the Dioceses of Northern Indiana and Western Michigan.  Once, while presiding at a small parish on the shores of Lake Michigan, a member of the parish came up to me after the service and said, ‘Louis Weil taught you how to preside at the eucharist, didn’t he?’  When I asked how she knew, she said, ‘It’s how you use your hands, rarely if ever fussy, carefully contained, choreographed not mechanical – just like Louis.’

 

         Some years later, after I had come to VST, established my own teaching career and begun working with people serving in aboriginal communities, I attend an international conference of Anglican liturgists.  During one discussion about a particularly thorny topic, Louis voiced his opinion, I voiced a different one.  After the session I went up to Louis to apologize.  ‘Nonsense,’ Louis said, ‘you are not my clone, Richard.  I taught you to think pastorally, historically and theologically.  That means we may, from time to time, see things differently.’

 

         Such is the role of mentors in our lives.  We begin by imitation, the sincerest form of flattery.  Then, one day, consciously or unconsciously, we move beyond the boundaries of our formation and do something different, perhaps even something our mentors might not approve entirely.

 

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. [John 15.16-17]

 

         For me this short section of the Gospel according to John is revolutionary in what it says to us and what it implies about our relationship to Jesus, our Friend and our Mentor.  Through these words of Jesus, John dares to tell us that being a disciple of Jesus may be something more complex from what we may imagine it to be.  We are not servants; we are not clones; we are friends.  Friends are alike and friends are unalike; our distinctiveness does not divide us but rather enriches our friendship.

 

         To be sure our vocation as disciples of Jesus is founded on our imitation of Jesus, a life-long effort to be Christ-like in all we do, in all we way, in how we mould our hearts, minds and souls.  Sometimes we succeed spectacularly in our embodiment of God in Christ.  Sometimes we fail in equally spectacular fashion.  But in imitating Christ, we find abundant life and sow that life all about us.

 

         Our imitation of Jesus is honed by our reading of and reflection upon the Scriptures, especially the Gospels.  We learn from each other how to love and to serve the neighbours among whom we live, work and play.  In our public worship, whether we participate on-line or on-site, we practice what we preach by holding before God the needs and concerns of the whole world, human and non-human, animate and inanimate, Christian and non-Christian, near and far.

 

         But to have Jesus as our Friend and our Mentor also means using our distinctive gifts and experiences to do ‘more than we can ask or imagine’.  To be like Jesus means going where Jesus could not go in his earthly ministry and confronting needs and situations unknown in 1^st-century Palestine.

 

         Just before the portion of John’s Gospel we heard this morning, part of the so-called ‘Farewell Discourse’, Jesus says yet another extraordinary thing.

 

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. [John 14.12]

 

During his earthly ministry, Jesus gathered a small community of friends who, after his death, resurrection and ascension, went out and changed their world.  We who gather for worship today are the visible evidence of that great work of transformation.

 

         As the end of this pandemic approaches, and it will end, we will find ourselves facing our own moment to do great things.  We have learned new ways to share the good news of God in Christ and we will learn how to integrate them into our on-going ministry here in New Westminster and beyond.  We have known the pain of isolation and separation.  How will our experience of such pain transform our community life when we are finally permitted to expand our presence in shared physical space and to increase our community activities?  We cannot return to the ‘old normal’; we must shape a ‘new normal’.

 

         In all of this Jesus will be our Friend and our Mentor.  We will continue our commitment to imitate him in thought, word and deed.  But we will also explore going beyond imitation into faithful imagination.  This imagining may lead us into unexplored territory.  But I am convinced that our Friend and our Mentor will not disapprove.

 

Let us pray.

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.  Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  [Evangelical Lutheran Worship 2006, 304]