Peace and Forgiveness

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John 20:19-23

One of the things I appreciate most about John’s Gospel is how the stories John chose to share with us tend to be very reflective of our experience of relationship with God. If I were to say in my own words how John tries to some up our experience of relationship with God it is that we abide in Jesus by virtue of the Holy Spirit abiding in us and abiding in Jesus we then actually share with him in his relationship with God the Father so that we abide in them and they in us. We find our place in the loving, familial inner relational self of the God who is best addressed with the personal pronoun “We”. The Holy Spirit binds us to Jesus, unites us to him, and Jesus is in the Father. We are in him, he is in us, he is in the Father and the Father is in him. We know the Father through him and we share in their relationship by the Holy Spirit’s abiding in us. Abide. Abide. Abide. It’s all about abiding.

If I had to off the cuff a definition for abiding, I would say it is imbibing in the presence of another, having a present relationship. I am here for you and you are here for me and we sense each other’s presence. In fact, having a relationship with God is what John would call “eternal life”. At John 17:3 John defines eternal life straight from the mouth of Jesus. Jesus is praying his great prayer for the church. Jesus says: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (NRSV). Knowing another person involves being in a relationship with them. But how does one have a relationship with another whom we cannot see? How does one get to know someone they can’t see.

To answer that question, we need to step back to the beginning of Easter evening and look at how John has chosen this encounter to inform our experience of Jesus. The disciples are hiding in fear. They are disillusioned. They are in that numb, shock stage of grief. They don’t know what to do. The one they had invested their lives in is gone. But then Jesus does something only God can do. He shows up resurrected from death. He shows up and says, “Peace be with you.” He shows them the scars. It’s really him. Jesus showed up. To have a relationship with God in and through Christ Jesus, Jesus must show up. Jesus must step into our lives with the breath of the Holy Spirit and give us his blessing of peace. There is nothing we can do to conjure him up or make that happen. He must reveal himself to us through the presence of the Holy Spirit. It helps to sit and give him a place, like an empty chair, to help us welcome the presence of his person. It helps to make a regular practice of reading Scripture during the time in which we give space to Jesus. It helps to talk to him, to let it all out. Keep at it. He will show up with Peace.

Jesus showing up in the presence of the Holy Spirit can so often happen in the presence of the community of faith at worship. Do you ever wonder why people in small churches always sit in the same place? We make jokes about this, but I am reasonably sure that it is because that spot in that particular pew has been the place where they have had some very powerful experiences with our Lord. It is sacred space. My sacred space. This is where I was when Jesus showed up.

Just as he did on that evening with his first disciples, Jesus the wounded and risen One also sends us forth in his ministry as the Father sent him. He empowers us with the power of his own life, the Holy Spirit, to carry it out. We need to notice how he defines his ministry in terms of forgiving or not forgiving the sins of others. One of the key components in true Christian spirituality is working at the practice of forgiving. A lot of what floats around as spirituality today is simply learning how to conjure up feel good brain chemistry. But, the peace Jesus gives us drives us to make peace in our relationships with others. Almost always, if we are not at peace in ourselves it is because we are not at peace with those closest to us. Jesus pushes those who follow him in the spiritual practice of forgiveness.

The concept of forgiveness is a tricky one. I say that because what the Bible means by forgiveness isn’t exactly what we think forgiveness means. We think of forgiveness as a transaction involving apology. The wrongdoer must hopefully be remorseful, apologize, and want to change. The one wronged must not bear a grudge against the wrongdoer, accept the apology, and try to keep friendship. The Bible’s a little different here.

The Hebrew word we usually translate as forgive actually means to pick up and carry; to bear the burden of another. On the Day of Atonement in ancient Israel, the day they dealt with the sins of the people, one of the rituals they did involved what we call a Scapegoat. The High Priest would place his hands on a goat and whisper the sins of the people into its ear, thus transferring the sin to the goat. They then lead the sin-laden goat off into the wilderness and let it go so that it could be destroyed by whatever was out there. By the death of the scapegoat the sins of the people were destroyed in death as well. Forgiveness involves our listening to the shameful stuff of others and not rejecting them, but rather embracing them to restore their dignity. Shame can only be relieved by touch, be personal physical contact, the touch that says we are still connected. You are not rejected. It is in the way we are physiologically wired. Shame is only relieved by the embrace of others. Forgiveness is I take your shame to myself in this embrace and I do not reject you and there the shame dies. Shame is not cured without affection.

I’m reminded of a story in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that gives us a good image of forgiveness as bearing the shame of others. Four men are carrying a paralyzed man on his mat to Jesus to be healed. The crowd around the house where Jesus is teaching is huge. So, they climb on the roof and make a hole in the tiles and lower the man down on his mat and then they picked him up on his mat and carried him to Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all three say that it was when Jesus saw the faithfulness, the efforts of the men, that he told the man on the mat his sins were forgiven. They were carrying him, bearing him as a burden, in all his brokenness, lameness, and shame to Jesus so that he could be healed. They touch his may. They touch him. They carry him in the weight of his shame to Jesus where he can be restored. That’s forgiveness.

I don’t think in this passage from John that Jesus is simply telling his disciples to forgive those who have wronged them rather than bear a grudge. I believe he is telling them to get involved in the shame-filled muckiness of the lives of others and bear them to himself where they can be healed and transformed like the paralyzed man becoming able to pick up his mat, his shame, and go home.

So how does a small congregation of elderly people who sit in the same pew week in and week out go about bearing others in their sinfulness to Jesus where they can be healed? Prayer is the place to start. Let me share with you a prayer an elderly matron of a small congregation once prayed out loud in a prayer meeting at church.

“Lord, I’m tired—so very tired. Please, Lord, I don’t want any advice. I’ve heard enough of that over the years. I don’t want to be told what I must do. I’ve been told often enough. Lord, I just want to sit here in quietness and feel your presence. I want to touch you and to know your touch of refreshment and reassurance. Thank you for this sacred little spot where I have heard your voice and felt your healing touch across the years. Thank you for these dear friends who share this pew with me. Together we have walked the tear-lined lanes. We know what it is to be lonely…we also know the comfort and strength of one another and the joy of your presence. O God, the child of my womb has become a drunk…Daily I watch her die before my eyes. Where have I failed, O Lord? How can I find the strength to continue? How can I help my dying daughter find herself?

O God, soon I will be going home to be with you and my husband. I am ready, even eager. But until that day help me to be a help to others. Give me strength to live this day and peace to enjoy it. Amen.”[1]

Friends, I think this prayer is what forgiveness looks like. The practice of forgiveness is in that question, “how can I help my dying daughter find herself?” This mother isn’t waiting for an apology. This is praying. She isn’t judging or abandoning her daughter. She’s asking how she can walk with her daughter in love to help her daughter find herself, find peace, find the Lord, find her home in the heart of God as beloved. Peace and forgiveness, they walk hand in hand. The peace of Christ be with you. Amen.




[1] Dudley, Carl S.; Effective Small Churches in the Twenty-first Century; Abingdon Press; Nashville; 2003; pg. 49.

A Living Eulogy

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Luke 24:44-53

Ah yes, the eulogy.  It’s not easy to give a eulogy.  The word literally means good word and to eulogize is to speak good things about someone.  In most cases, finding nice things to say about a person you’ve known since way back when is not a difficult thing.  The task is to try to limit what you say and still come out summarizing who this person was.  

As a minister, the task of eulogizing a person at their funeral often falls back on me.  Usually, I get a family together a day or so before the funeral and get them to start telling me stories about who this person was.  I don’t tell any of their stories in the eulogy.  That gathering simply gives me a sense of who that person was and then I try to say how God worked through this person to love or to bless her family, friends, and even whole communities.  Some people are so saintly that I can say that God gave us glimpse of himself through this person.  

But then there’s that odd funeral when trying to find something good to say…weellllll…better talk about something else.  I‘ve had to do that twice in 26 years of ministry, twice too many.  I’ll tell you about the first time.  I was in my first year of ministry down in West Virginia and I hardly a clue what to do for a funeral anyway.  In seminary, they wisely taught us to avoid eulogizing people if at all possible because our role at a funeral is to proclaim resurrection in Christ.  In our tradition, in our theological tradition the service we do at death isn’t a funeral service nor a celebration of life.  In our Book of Common Worship, it’s called a Service of Witness to the Resurrection.  We’re supposed to talk about resurrection.  That’s why if you come to a funeral that I conduct you won’t hear me talking about going to heaven when you die but rather I talk about resurrection in a new creation.  You will also notice that I didn’t take my seminary professor’s advice as I will always say something about the person we’re commending on.

Anyway, here’s what happened.  It started when the local funeral director called me and said a family wanted the Presbyterian minister to do their father’s funeral because Grandma so and so from way back when was a Presbyterian and that’s what they thought they must be.  Being the only Presbyterian minister for miles around I agreed.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get the family to agree to meet with me for storytime.  It simply would have would have been just too difficult for them.  One of the daughters led me to suspect that her father wasn’t all that great of a man.  I also asked a few people who might have known him or at least of him and they all agreed he wasn’t the finest example of a human being.  So, I was left with a mess on my hands.  I had to do the funeral for a man most people regarded as “Hell bound”.  My usual funeral plan wasn’t going to work because I had no evidence that God had blessed this family through their father and he certainly hadn’t been a person you’d look at and say God is like that.  

Well, showtime.  I stood there and did the service before his two daughters and son as they wept.  I sensed there was a lot of unfinished business there.  So, instead of eulogizing I talked a bit about how to deal with grief and that death is not the end of things.  As I expected, they didn’t pay me.  No matter. What really wrenched my gut with that funeral was that I was unable to tell a grieving family that their father was a blessing to them. That’s pretty messed up.  This man’s funeral had no eulogy.  I am saddened with the thought that this man’s life may have lacked God’s blessing and therefore there was no reason for his family to bless God and be thankful for their father.  If assumptions or should I say judgments are correct, this man was one of those people that make it hard for us to say that Jesus Christ is Lord for if he is Lord, why would he let someone be so hurtful to his own family.  We have all known people like this and I’m sure that is a question we’ve all asked.  I don’t know the answer.

Well, this is Ascension Sunday.  Today we celebrate that Jesus the resurrected one has ascended to the right hand of the Father and from there reigns in the power of the Holy Spirit; and by power I mean the power that comes through the vulnerability of self-denying, self-giving love.  We would like to believe that the way God reigns in his creation is through blessing the good and cursing the wicked.  But, thinking of the man I spoke of earlier, we want to ask why God didn’t get that man for causing so much hurt.  I can’t answer that question, the justice question; but with respect to how Jesus reign’s in this world,  I can say that Jesus’ reigning in this twisted world is going to look like his death on the cross.  The cross was his throne and he reigns in unconditional love.  Jesus shows us how God rules in his creation by suffering for us and with us whether the suffering comes as just part of life or because of the bent and twisted will of others not to mention our own.  

To that weeping family I could have said that Jesus was with them in the sufferings they have endured from being the children of that man but I had no details to point to.  I could have said that their expectations of God should be that somehow God was going to take all the hurt that man caused them and instead of letting it remain as senseless hurt, use it as the means of blessing them and others.  The blessing will primarily be experienced as knowing God and God’s love, which tends to heal and change us so that we might be a blessing to others in their suffering.  The reign of Christ is that he will bless us by being present with us in our hurts and then making those hurts to be the means by which he blesses us with new life in himself and then others through us.  He reigns by suffering with his own and healing us in such a way as we wind up knowing God himself, being healed and changed by God, and them being part of God’s blessing to others.

Well, if you are wondering why I’m talking about eulogies and blessing, I have no short answer to give you other than at the end of our passage from Luke he says that the disciples were continually in the temple blessing God.  The Greek word for blessing is eulogia – literally, eulogy.  The apostles spent their days after Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father in the temple eulogizing Jesus.  Ascended to the right hand means what it sounds like.  Jesus is God’s right-hand man so to speak, the one through whom God does what God does in God’s Creation which is to save and heal his Creation and those in it.  What Jesus did as he ministered back then, is what God continues to do through the people of Jesus in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit: healing, restoring, reconciling, resurrecting in the power of self-giving love.  

Immediately after Jesus ascended, the disciples went back to Jerusalem to eulogize him.  The evidence that Jesus Christ has ascended and reigns in this world is that there are those who know him and can eulogize him because he has acted in their lives for healing, reconciliation, restoration, indeed given new life to them by the presence and good work of the Holy Spirit.   These people know they have been in the presence of God and blessed by God and the wish to witness to that, to eulogize.

The Trinity works in our lives and through us by means of blessing us so that we are a blessing to others.  Jesus, the Son blesses us by letting us know that he is the one who suffers with us, who prays continually for us, and reveals the self-giving love of God to us.  This blessing bears its fruit as we get involved with being Jesus’ blessing of others.  If we’ve got a friend at work suffering through a divorce, or grief, or whatever, this means we will be inclined to be part of God’s blessing to them by suffering through it with them.  Be the one who is intentional about being there and listening.  Be the one who gives hope and encouragement.  Be the one who helps people to forgive and reconcile.  Be a living eulogy of Jesus, the proof of his ascension and reigning.  Be part of his good healing work in the lives of others.  Amen.

Thinking "We"

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John 14:15-17

One of my favourite “snarky moments by God” moments is the burning bush encounter that Moses had with God when God called him to go back to Egypt to be God’s voice to Pharaoh and to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.  In the conversation, Moses made several unsuccessful attempts to get God to reveal God’s name.  You see, back then they believed that if you knew the name of a god, then you had power over that god, the power to conjure that god up and get it to act on your behalf.  After a couple of attempts, God got fed up with Moses and seemingly gives Moses a name just to shut him up.  In Hebrew it sounds like “Yahweh”.  Grammarians would call it the first-person singular form of the verb “to be”, which is basically “I am.”  A full translation into English of that one little word would be “I am who I am, I will be who I will be.”  The humour in the moment should not be missed.  Moses was trying to get a name out of God to be able to control God.  So, God is like “You want a name.  Here’s one, ‘I am who I am, I’ll be who I’ll be’.  Now shut up and go do what I’ve asked.” Yes, a snarky moment by God, but point made.  You can’t control the one who just is who “We” is and who will be who “We” will be.

Uh oh.  Did you notice that?  I used “We” instead of “He” as a pronoun to refer to God.  Do you remember that from last week’s sermon.  I heard that all that using “We” to refer to God stuff in last week’s sermon was a little confusing, so I thought I would take another shot at it.  So here we go.

I suspect that it is highly probable that nearly all of us were Sunday Schooled into an image of God as someone who can’t be seen, but who probably sounds like Charlton Heston’s voice speaking from the burning bush to Moses (also played by Charlton Heston) in Cecil. B. Demille’s movie “The Ten Commandments”.  Interestingly, in that movie there were several times that God spoke and it was apparently only at the burning bush that it was Heston’s voice but disguised a little so that it sounded like God was calling Moses with a voice that sounded like Moses’s own voice.  That there is some pretty profound theological thinking on the part of a Hollywood director.  And get this, in the credits DeMille decided not to credit the person who supplied God’s voice for the rest of the times God spoke.  DeMille's autobiography contains all he ever said about who’s voice it was.  He said it was that of "a man I had known many years, not a professional actor...It was agreed among us that, out of reverence for the part of Voice of God, the name of the man who played it should not be revealed”. That’s pretty deep too.  The voice of God is that of an old friend who shall remain nameless.  That’s from way back when in the days when Hollywood was a bit more reverent.

I think DeMille has probably hit a chord with a good many of us in his portrayal of God. I think most of us would go “Yeah”, to thinking of God as an unseen presence who is an old friend who is kind of just there in a familiar way and chooses to remain nameless and who has “His” own voice but who also speaks to us personally in a voice that sounds much like our own.  That being the case, I think most of us would then be comfortable with thinking of God as “You” – as a person, an Other, to whom/with whom we have a relationship.  That is, if you’ve gotten yourself out of that mode of thinking about God as the Creator of the universe and giver of the moral law who sits on a throne way, way, way off in a far, far, far, away place up, up, up there called Heaven judging the dead and who God doesn’t get involved in things down here much if ever.  

Any reading of the Bible will leave you with the Truth that God is a “You”, a person whom we can relate with and who is very involved in the goings on of things.  God is particularly involved with a certain family of people historically known as Israel whom God has expanded to included people who come from other families and bloodlines.  Throughout history God has proved faithful to this people out of great love for them and through them is blessing the world.  

When this God, this “You” somehow got involved in this world by becoming a part of it as the man Jesus of Nazareth, well, let’s just say our understanding of God as being simply “You” get’s complicated.  Jesus was/is “You”.  He wasn’t simply “You” dwelling in a human.  He was “You” become a human.  So, “You” dwelled among us as Jesus of Nazareth.  That being the case, Jesus also carried on his own relationship with “You” whom he called “Father” who was the "You" who called Jesus, “Son”.  If Jesus had a relationship with “You”, does that mean that Jesus simply had a relationship with himself and thus spent a lot of time talking to himself and doing the God-things that he wanted to do?  And, what about those times when other people heard God the Father speak to Jesus, the Son?  "You" is somehow both Jesus and the unseen voice he subordinated himself to and called "Father".

Jesus and others also speak of the Holy Spirit who is God or “You” present with, among, and in us.  The Holy Spirit is “You” whom we ourselves experience.  The Holy Spirit includes us each and us together in “You” as participants in the family of "Father Son and Holy Spirit" but don’t go thinking that makes us equal to “You”, or "Divine" in ourselves.  As the Holy Spirit, “You” is at work in us and through us healing things and giving hope just as “You” did in and through the human being “Jesus” and just as “You” did as the God whom the people of Israel thought of as Father.

So, let’s take a moment to ponder the implication of God, whom I’m calling “You”, self-revealing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  They each are “You” without the others disappearing in some way.  When “You” became Jesus, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit didn’t cease to exist.  When we encounter “You” as the Holy Spirit, the presence of God with us, God the Father and God the Son don’t cease to exist.  Quite the opposite, the Holy Spirit makes it so that we share in the relationship of God the Father and God the Son as God's beloved children.  We are participants in the family so to speak as children of the Father and siblings of the Son who is the firstborn.  Before Jesus and before the giving of the Spirit, when “You” just seemed to be “You” and there was no talk of Son and Spirit but some talk of “You” being Father to his people Israel, even then God the Son and God the Holy Spirit were still part of “You”.  So, if “You” is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then “You” is really at heart, in essence “We”. 

Does this mean that we have three God’s instead of one?  No.  It’s hard to grasp because of our culture's overly individualized definition of what a person is.  We do not have three God’s but, it would be helpful for us to think of God as a family into whom we have all been unconditionally included, a family whose personality is unconditional love and unwavering faithfulness, a family that is always present to us and listens, a family that when all Hell has broken loose on us is there somehow making all things work to a good that will in time materialize.  God is a family who is for others rather than for itself.  The more time we spend with the family the more we absorb and become like that family.  Though we ourselves will fail miserably, we must strive to live up to that family name - Trinity.   

This family has a distinct way of being that I think Paul probably described best in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, the love chapter.  It reads: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”  God, “We”, is a communion of persons who give themselves to each other so completely in mutual unconditional love that they are one.  We, you and I, have a home in “We”.  It becomes evident as you and I love as Christ Jesus has loved us in giving his life to and for us.  Think “We” when you think of God.  Amen.

 

Ever Want to See God?

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John 14:1-14

Here’s an off the wall or maybe on the wall question for you: should churches display pictures of Jesus?  It may sound like an odd question, but, historically, it has been huge.  Some traditions, like Western Protestantism, have in the past called it idolatry; believing that making an image of God was a violation of the Second Commandment which forbids such a thing.  If you make an image of God, you might start worshipping the image rather than God and then you’re violating the First Commandment.  Other traditions, such as Eastern Orthodox traditions, think images of Jesus help us to contemplate God and get a sense of God’s personality that will, by the work of the Holy Spirit, rub off on us so that we become more Christ-like.  And, there are still others who just say if we’re going to have pictures of Jesus, then at least make him look like a first century Jewish peasant and not some white dude out of King Arthur’s court.  

To put it all in perspective, there is a biblical mandate prohibiting the making of images of any kind that represent anything in heaven or on earth not even of God for reasons of idolatry.  It seems God doesn’t want us making images of what we think God might look like.  That’s just creating God according to our imaginations.  If I were to form an opinion on why, I would venture that the prohibition is for the reason that how we picture God places limitations on how we relate to God and to one another.  Displaying pictures of Jesus in which he looks like a white dude from the Middle Ages tends to make people of colour feel distanced from Jesus and re-enforces underlying notions of white privilege.  A similar thing happens when we put up a picture of God as some bearded old man sitting on a throne ruling everything and waiting to judge the quick and the dead for their sins.  God is more than just a creator and judge who is remote from us.  That image needs to be counterbalanced with images of the laughing Jesus or of Jesus blessing children; something that looks like love.  How we image or picture God has consequences for how we live the faith.

While we’re on the topic of images of God, we also create images of God with the language we use to describe God, particularly how we name God.  The pronouns we use to describe God have their effect as well.  Calling God “him” or “he” makes us think of God as male and it feeds this thing called patriarchy; male domination of things.  But if we go the other way and call God “her” or “she, historically such imaginations of God have started to resemble a nature or fertility goddess.  If you think patriarchy is bad, do a survey of ancient religions that involved the worship of female deities.  You will find these groups oddly tended to become very reliant on the sexual degradation and exploitation of women and/or the emasculation (sometimes literally) of men.  We can’t call God “it” either.  God’s a person, not a thing.  So also, if we do away with pronouns all together and simply refer to God according to one of God’s actions, like Creator or Deliverer, God becomes impersonal, simply the force behind certain activities.  

When it comes to what pronouns we should use to address God, one of the best solutions I’ve heard comes from the author Brian McLaren.  In his book Do I Stay Christian?, he says a good place to start is to always address and refer to God as “You”.  That way God is always “other” and always a person, a person other than me.  But he doesn’t stop there.  He goes on to include thoughts on God being Trinity, that God is the loving communion, the loving relationship of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  That being the case, the one we call “You” should actually be addressed and referred to as “We”.  That God is not a He nor a She nor an It but rather a You who is We is Christianity’s most profound thing to say when talking about God.  Moreover, if God is We, a We whose essence is unconditional, mutual, self-giving Love (If God is in God’s self the Supreme relationship of Love), then we whom “We” made in “We’s” own image must accept and pay careful attention to the fact that living together according to unconditional, mutual, self-giving Love is the purpose of our existence.  We, you and I, are meant for building one another up in love not for being all Me/I can be.  I find me when you and I find “We” (God) together.  I hope you’re getting all this.

So, if you want an image of what God looks like, well it’s complicated.  But, there is somewhere we can look for an image.  Jesus tells Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”  What Jesus means by “see” there is key.  He’s not talking about the way God looks in appearance.  He’s talking about catching a glimpse of God as a person.  He and the Father are one.  The Father dwells in him and he is in the Father.  If we get to know Jesus, we are getting to know the Father.  If we know Jesus, we have seen the Father.  So with Jesus and his relationship to the One he called Father we’re getting a picture the God whom we can call “We”. 

So, if we were taking a look at Jesus and we can do so by taking a quick walk through John’s Gospel, here’s what we would “see” with respect to Jesus from which we can catch a glimpse of God.  Jesus welcomed strangers to come and see where he lived and became friends with them.  Jesus could see deeply into people to know their deepest desires.  Jesus cared enough about a couple’s wedding that when the wine gave out, he miraculously provided some very good wine.  Jesus had no tolerance for big, business religion that took advantage of people.  Jesus answered questions about himself and had nothing to hide.  He was transparent at face value.  Jesus welcomed and conversed with people that others would think to be morally questionable.  He held them accountable but did not reject them.  Jesus healed people again and again.  Jesus cared that people had enough to eat and fed them abundantly.  Jesus practiced the rituals of his faith.  Jesus confronted the hypocrisy of religious people who were judgemental and exclusive.  People who use religion as a means to personal power hated him.  He wept for a dead friend and then raised him.  There was something special about him that those who followed him could hear God in his voice.  He humbled himself and washed his disciples’ dirty feet.  He was betrayed and denied by his closest friends but still he comforted them in their shame.  He comforted them in their grief.  When his life was at stake, he didn’t defend himself or assert himself, but rather gave of himself to the point of death.  God raised him.  He returned to his friends to restore the friendship, gave them his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and a profound sense of peace and of purpose.  Such is love.  

Jesus told Philip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”  Jesus and the Father are one and we have to bring the Holy Spirit into that relationship as well.  God is “We”.  Looking at Jesus we see, we come to know, God who is “We.” (and I’m going to use that pronoun for the next little bit to refer to God.)   “We” cannot be captured in a painting on a wall.  If Jesus gives us a glimpse of “We”, then “We” looks like, “We” is, indiscriminate hospitality, sacrificial generosity, unconditional love, a humble “for-us” friend who comforts and heals and restores, and who forgives.  “We” is not wishy washy with respect to our conduct, but holds us accountable for when we do things that hurt others and break trust with others.  Nothing is impossible for “We”, even raising the dead.  “We” is all about forming and sustaining relationships that look like “We”.  When those relationships get strained and broken and put asunder, “We” comes to heal, to reconcile, to restore, and to resurrect the relationship.  “We” comes and speaks and in that voice we each hear our own name.  “We” draws and includes individual people whom I will call “me and me and me and me” into the fellowship of “We” with the gift of the life-giving presence of “We”, the Holy Spirit, so that “me and me and me and me and me” indwelt with “We” are “Us”.  In “Us”, in our fellowship with each other, this is where the God who is “We” abides and “We” can be seen when “Us” finds itself surprisingly and instinctually being the way Jesus is and doing the things Jesus did.  

To close, Church isn’t about be trying to find a more fulfilling way of being me.  Church is “Us” living according to “We”.  That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?  Amen.