“Philip said to Jesus, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’”
Seeing is believing. Philip had spent all of that time with Jesus, even bringing his reluctant friend Nathanael along, and he still didn’t get it. He couldn’t understand that in seeing Jesus he was seeing God. Jesus had to make it really, really plain to him. Then two chapters later, when the disciples said that they finally got it, Jesus immediately told them that they would be scattered in spite of their belief. Indeed they were, as soon as he was arrested.
Philip went and hid like the rest of them. Through the trial and passion of Jesus only Peter hung around, apparently so he could deny knowing Jesus three times. Even so, the group stayed in touch after Jesus died. They were all together behind closed doors three days later when the risen Christ suddenly appeared in the room. Philip’s eyes probably popped. This wasn’t the Father he had asked for; this was something totally unexpected.
Fifty days later they were still together on Pentecost, the traditional Jewish celebration of the wheat harvest. Suddenly there was a sound “like the rush of a violent wind…Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”
What would it have been like to be in that group, to have a tongue of fire sitting on top of you and suddenly be filled with words that were a mystery to you? What would it be like to be totally consumed by the Holy Spirit? They must have seemed out of their minds, those disciples, for the people around them thought they were drunk. Peter managed to find words that everyone could understand so he could preach, and assure the crowd that they hadn’t hit the bars that early in the day.
What about Philip? He ended up getting a lot more than he bargained for. He wanted to see and be satisfied. Instead he saw little but was filled to overflowing. The ironic thing is that we often ask for little when God wants to give extravagantly. We think we know what we want, but God gives something else that is so much greater. We want to see the Father – and discover that we have been made joint heirs with Christ, as the Apostle Paul puts it. Ask for a little, get a lot.
And what about those who don’t get what they ask? What about the apparently unanswered prayers for health and safety in the midst of death and destruction? Is the love of God limited to a few chosen people, the inner circle? That’s a gospel that is sometimes preached, but not by me. I have no doubt that human sin can thwart the effect of God’s grace, and that a fallen world waiting for its final redemption can bring pain and suffering. But I cast my lot with Philip. I’ll keep asking, and try my best to hold on when the wind and fire arrive.
Pentecost: Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Given and Sent
The Apostle Paul had an attitude. No doubt about that. He wanted everyone to listen to him, because he had some important things to say about Jesus Christ. So when a slave girl followed him, day after day, yelling at people to pay attention because he was a slave of the Most High God and knew a way of salvation, Paul finally blew up. He ordered the spirit of prophecy to come right out of her, and it did. After that she wasn’t of much use to her owners, so they angrily dragged Paul and his friend Silas off to jail. We aren’t told what happened to the slave girl.
It was a bad night for Paul and Silas, hurting from a beating and their feet spread apart in stocks. They kept their spirits up by singing hymns, maybe even including this week’s psalm. They must have had powerful singing voices, for the earth shook and the shackles fell and the jail doors opened. Wakened by the commotion, the jailer was sure everyone had fled and that he’d have to pay for it in the morning, so he decided to save the executioner some work. Paul stopped him just in time from doing himself in. Still shaking, he asked Paul what he needed to do to be saved. Like any good street evangelist, Paul gave him a simple answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” And so everybody in his house was baptized without delay.
The jailer’s conversion was dramatic. Conversions often are in the Bible; that’s what made them memorable. Yet quiet conversions are just as important, because everyone is called. Everyone is invited. “Let everyone who is thirsty come,” we hear at the end of the book of Revelation. “Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” Take the water of life as a gift that God gives freely, abundantly, extravagantly.
“Give” appears nearly twenty times in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel. Often it is in the perfect tense, “has given,” implying that what was given in the past continues to affect the present – the “gift that keeps on giving,” as the old Victrola ads used to say. That gift is love, given to us by God through Jesus Christ, love that is the very Being of God. God’s love is beyond comprehension, more beautiful and wonderful than we dare imagine, and it is given freely. “The love with which you loved me,” Jesus prays to God, “may be in them, and I in them.”
Dwelling in that love, Jesus also prays that all may be one. That may be hardest for us to accept or imagine. But if God is willing to take in apostles with an attitude and fearful jailers, then God will certainly take in you and me and everyone who thirsts. Yet the gift comes with a catch. Having received it, we are then sent to take it to others. It is not for us to hoard; we must also freely give it. Who do you know who is thirsty? Who needs the love of God found in Jesus Christ? Who desires to be within the unity of God?
Let everyone who is thirsty, come. Let anyone who wishes, take the water of life as a gift.
Easter 7: Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26.
It was a bad night for Paul and Silas, hurting from a beating and their feet spread apart in stocks. They kept their spirits up by singing hymns, maybe even including this week’s psalm. They must have had powerful singing voices, for the earth shook and the shackles fell and the jail doors opened. Wakened by the commotion, the jailer was sure everyone had fled and that he’d have to pay for it in the morning, so he decided to save the executioner some work. Paul stopped him just in time from doing himself in. Still shaking, he asked Paul what he needed to do to be saved. Like any good street evangelist, Paul gave him a simple answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” And so everybody in his house was baptized without delay.
The jailer’s conversion was dramatic. Conversions often are in the Bible; that’s what made them memorable. Yet quiet conversions are just as important, because everyone is called. Everyone is invited. “Let everyone who is thirsty come,” we hear at the end of the book of Revelation. “Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.” Take the water of life as a gift that God gives freely, abundantly, extravagantly.
“Give” appears nearly twenty times in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel. Often it is in the perfect tense, “has given,” implying that what was given in the past continues to affect the present – the “gift that keeps on giving,” as the old Victrola ads used to say. That gift is love, given to us by God through Jesus Christ, love that is the very Being of God. God’s love is beyond comprehension, more beautiful and wonderful than we dare imagine, and it is given freely. “The love with which you loved me,” Jesus prays to God, “may be in them, and I in them.”
Dwelling in that love, Jesus also prays that all may be one. That may be hardest for us to accept or imagine. But if God is willing to take in apostles with an attitude and fearful jailers, then God will certainly take in you and me and everyone who thirsts. Yet the gift comes with a catch. Having received it, we are then sent to take it to others. It is not for us to hoard; we must also freely give it. Who do you know who is thirsty? Who needs the love of God found in Jesus Christ? Who desires to be within the unity of God?
Let everyone who is thirsty, come. Let anyone who wishes, take the water of life as a gift.
Easter 7: Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Peace Where There is No Peace
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.
I have lived long enough to have witnessed how elusive peace on earth really is. For my father’s generation, there were the very real dangers of German expansionism that resulted in two world wars. For my generation, there was the more elusive threat of Communism and the country-dividing conflict in Viet Nam that it spawned. Now, even as weapons have become more precise and more destructive, the combat zone has become murkier and the weapons more useless against a shadowy enemy. No longer are imperialist countries the issue; instead, there are “cells” that create fear simply by planting crude bombs made from readily available goods.
The Christian Church has been for many people a refuge from the world of fear, a place that is reliably the same, week after week. For them, change in the Church is threatening. For others, lack of change is stifling. For yet others who have suffered mental or physical abuse by Christians, the Church is itself a source of fear. And increasingly “Christian” is an adjective attached to newsworthy examples of prejudice or narrow-mindedness.
Why is the peace of Jesus so elusive? Perhaps it is because the name of Jesus has been used so many times as a battle cry. Ever since coming of draft age during the Viet Nam era, I have been fascinated by the historic peace churches, the Friends (Quakers) and the Mennonites, in particular. They believe that the teachings of Jesus are essentially pacifist, and refuse to engage in combat under any circumstances. I know the world would be very different had that view prevailed in our history, yet I will say that most Christians have accepted precious little of the gift of peace which Jesus has tried to give us. Instead, we have sought the world’s peace, a tense absence of conflict held in place by power.
Paul’s vision of the man who said, “Come over to Macedonia and help us,” was used by missionary-minded Western Christians who “viewed peoples of other races and religions as living in darkness and deep despair and as imploring Westerners to come to their aid.”* We still suffer from the consequences of that missionary imperative, for it created lasting instability in many parts of the Global South, and for some, rejection of Christianity as a Western religion.
We cannot undo the past. But we can do a better job of seeking the peace of God rather than the peace of the world. If the Church as a whole were to do that, perhaps “Christian” in the news would no longer be pejorative.
May God be merciful to us and bless us; show us the light of his countenance and be gracious unto us.
Easter 6: Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:1-10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29. *David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, p. 340. It’s a tome, but well worth the read. For those who have trouble getting through it, there’s also a reader’s guide to Bosch's book.
I have lived long enough to have witnessed how elusive peace on earth really is. For my father’s generation, there were the very real dangers of German expansionism that resulted in two world wars. For my generation, there was the more elusive threat of Communism and the country-dividing conflict in Viet Nam that it spawned. Now, even as weapons have become more precise and more destructive, the combat zone has become murkier and the weapons more useless against a shadowy enemy. No longer are imperialist countries the issue; instead, there are “cells” that create fear simply by planting crude bombs made from readily available goods.
The Christian Church has been for many people a refuge from the world of fear, a place that is reliably the same, week after week. For them, change in the Church is threatening. For others, lack of change is stifling. For yet others who have suffered mental or physical abuse by Christians, the Church is itself a source of fear. And increasingly “Christian” is an adjective attached to newsworthy examples of prejudice or narrow-mindedness.
Why is the peace of Jesus so elusive? Perhaps it is because the name of Jesus has been used so many times as a battle cry. Ever since coming of draft age during the Viet Nam era, I have been fascinated by the historic peace churches, the Friends (Quakers) and the Mennonites, in particular. They believe that the teachings of Jesus are essentially pacifist, and refuse to engage in combat under any circumstances. I know the world would be very different had that view prevailed in our history, yet I will say that most Christians have accepted precious little of the gift of peace which Jesus has tried to give us. Instead, we have sought the world’s peace, a tense absence of conflict held in place by power.
Paul’s vision of the man who said, “Come over to Macedonia and help us,” was used by missionary-minded Western Christians who “viewed peoples of other races and religions as living in darkness and deep despair and as imploring Westerners to come to their aid.”* We still suffer from the consequences of that missionary imperative, for it created lasting instability in many parts of the Global South, and for some, rejection of Christianity as a Western religion.
We cannot undo the past. But we can do a better job of seeking the peace of God rather than the peace of the world. If the Church as a whole were to do that, perhaps “Christian” in the news would no longer be pejorative.
May God be merciful to us and bless us; show us the light of his countenance and be gracious unto us.
Easter 6: Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:1-10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29. *David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, p. 340. It’s a tome, but well worth the read. For those who have trouble getting through it, there’s also a reader’s guide to Bosch's book.
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