The Advocate: John 16:12-15

John 16:12-15

Jesus said to his disciples:

"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.

But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,

he will guide you to all truth.

He will not speak on his own,

but he will speak what he hears,

and will declare to you the things that are coming.

He will glorify me,

because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.

Everything that the Father has is mine;

for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine

and declare it to you."

This is Trinity Sunday in most of church land, and many Rev. Bloggers are getting their Creed on. Not long ago, I would probably have been smug or incredulous about the whole thing. (I am the person who in seminary wanted to make prank phone calls to the Prot Schools, saying, "The trinity is silly!" and hang up. Thankfully, I was at least mature enough not to follow through.) But in reading these blogs, I am impressed with the serious struggle each preacher makes with the meaning of trinity. Balancing tradition with modernity, mystery and faith, and fears of facing blank, bored faces in the pews. It isn't my struggle, but I've made similar ones.

So what does a good Unitarian Universalist make of this passage? I'm struck by the line, "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now..." You can feel them pressing him with questions, and his own sense of the time running out. Maybe they were just starting to get what he was saying. The disciples are a famously clueless lot, and I have the sense that Jesus was fed up a good bit of the time. And yet, he still wants to teach them, he still has faith in them and their worthiness to learn and spread his message. He sounds so human and so sad. He wants, somehow, to love them and teach them beyond his own life.

I think of the bride I met a few months ago, whose father died when she was four. Before he died, he made a tape for her, telling her about everything he wished for her life - love, education, children of her own. What an act of generosity, I thought. To say things she could not have understood then - and in so doing, to love her well past his own life. She is planning to transcribe some of the tape and have one of her uncles read it in the wedding. The groom was a little nervous when he heard this. He thought she might lose it during the ceremony - or more likely, that he might. These would be some powerful words. She assured him that they would be just fine. I assured them they would probably not be, but it would be worth it.

I don't know what Jesus means about the Advocate. I do know some of the words of Jesus were actually words they believe he spoke, and some of the words were added later to describe their shared experience of Jesus after his death. They grew in understanding after he died. He somehow continued to teach them. And he continues to teach us now. Tradition, mystery, faith and sometimes apathetic community all have a hand in it.

Peace Be With You

The lectionary reading this week is John 20:19-31. It begins: "When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came in and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord."

The disciples have shut themselves in a room and locked the door. Note John's nonsensical little dig, 'against the Jews'; all of these fellows are also Jews. The community for whom this gospel was written, and in whose shared worship these stories were recited, was being evicted for following the wrong rabbi. They were mad. And they were lost and confused, just as they describe the disciples at this moment. What else do you do, but lock the door?

And Jesus stood among them, and said, 'Peace be with you.' I think of worship services, where we say "Peace be with you" in such pious, church-lady tones. Given this story, maybe it means more than, "Love your hat." The context is terror. The door is locked, John takes pains to say; Jesus doesn't just casually stroll in. There isn't some mistake about whether or not he really died, or perhaps they got the wrong guy. Walking through a locked door is magic. It's a miracle. It is terrifying.

And then he showed them his hands and his side. A real, human, wounded body. He returned from the dead, walked through a locked door, and he was no ghost. He was the one they loved, but he had died. The text says, "They rejoiced," but not without some struggle, I have to think. I am reminded of a documentary in which an Israeli filmmaker crosses into Palestine, and in the course of filming, befriends a Palestinian boy. They are holding hands. The boy is crazy about him. He tells him, "I am an Israeli." "No you're not," says the boy. "Yes, I am." "But you're not a REAL Israeli," he insists. "Yes," the young man says, still holding fast to the boy's hands. "I am really a real Israeli". The astonishment on the boy's face, trying to hold "love" and "Israeli" in one sentence, is sweet.

All these things at once - grief, disbelief, fear, joy, hatred - sometimes are rolled together in a sentence or two. You get them all at once - you have no choice. Peace be with you. You're going to need it.

Going to the Dogs

In my Bible discussion group yesterday, we meditated and discussed the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman and Jesus. Here's my rough paraphrase...

As usual, our man is dead tired. He just had a major scrap with the Pharisees about hand-washing, and is so sick of those hypocrites. He goes someplace where he thinks nobody will find him, somebody's house.

Well, you just know that means someone is going to show up with a problem. She barges in and starts in on her daughter being demon-possessed and all. He has seen so many of these and he's a little bit bored with it, I think. And she's Greek, to boot. Is there really any decision to make here? There's only so much of him to go around. Pull down the shade, closed for the day, nobody home. Didn't need to say the thing about the dogs, though. Even it's TRUE you can't go feeding dogs before you make sure your own kids are fed. True, if not exactly on message. And she says, Even dogs can lie under the table and catch the crumbs from the children. Not bad, not bad. You got to give the blessing for that kind of balls, especially on a woman. How she must love that kid. He does it, he gives the blessing. He's got to.

Q: When am I so tired I forget my decision to love people, I get stingy with my blessing?
A: Several times a week.

Q: What do I love so much that I would go to any lengths for a blessing? Look like a fool, trash my reputation, grovel at someone's feet?
A: Almost nothing.

Lord, Hear my prayer.

Jumping Around

After preaching and the intensity of coffee hour, where I am very tired and concentrating hard on what people are saying to me because it's my one chance to connect with a lot of my folks, and it's a dear opportunity. I am wiped out but also jacked up from all that human energy whinging around me. I've been slugging around the house, not good for much. My new vice is Facebook, which is bad, bad, bad for someone with ADD. It's also an excellent procrastination tool. One plus: someone from my high school class "friended" me and I saw where she had posted this goofy YouTube clip of the Archies. Suddenly, it was Sixth Grade Slumber Party Time. It was the Archies playing their seminal works, "Sugar, Sugar" and "Shang-A-Lang". It was the Bay City Rollers playing"Saturday Night" and "I Only Want To Be With You". It was the Jacksons, Tommy James, the Partridge Family. I could remember dancing in my girlfriends' basements, squealing when my fave "Roller", Les, appeared on Merv Griffin. (Now he looks a bit stuck on himself, if you asked me.) But more than specific memories, I just felt excited all over again. No pretense of taste, here; none required. I was dancing like an idiot. Actually, I'm a good dancer. But I doubt the neighbors would have noted the quality as much as the simple fact of their 48-year-old neighbor jumping around in her bedroom. Hope I don't show up on YouTube.

I've often pooh-poohed nostalgia. Explore new things, I say. Engage your brain with new information. But this sure was fun. I recently heard someone on NPR recall the sensation of listening to the radio and hearing your favorite song, shouting, "It's on! It's on! They're playing it!" Or walking down the beach and hearing the same song on everyone's radio. That experience is gone. There were fewer choices, then. But maybe music was more exciting because more people shared it with you. It wasn't your special little ipod playlist plugged into your private ear. Or maybe I'm just tired.

where your treasure is

Matthew 6:19-21

.19."Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, 6.20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 6.21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

This teaching has always had a pious ring to it, telling us to be good, to think more of "heaven" than having that lovely thing at ______ (name of store that makes you insane with desire). Certainly the plainest meaning seems to be that possessions and wealth are vulnerable to theft and decay. I've experienced it. Seeing delicate little holes in my favorite sweater after stuffing it in a cardboard box for the summer, or reduced to a doll sweater after my boyfriend put it in the washer by mistake; being obsessed to have a new Blackberry which will be obsolete in 5 months - I well understand. And yet I've found these experiences of emptiness and disappointment do quite little to quench the fever when it comes upon me. I confess that the notion of 'treasure', still sounds rather exciting. I picture running my hands through a pile of shimmering gold coins and cackling, "I'm rich, rich, rich!" I think of waltzing into Macy's and shooting the works on Any Thing I Damn Well Want. I think Jesus knew how alluring all this was to people, even in a culture that couldn't have been as consumer-crazed as ours. Maybe it made them curious about heaven, and what could possibly be more compelling about it than the stuff they lusted for. And so you have to ask, what is heaven? It's 11:00 pm and I have to go to bed. Maybe I'll dream the answer. Or maybe you'll tell me.

I have a "My Bible"

In the group I described last post, the leader asked if we "brought our Bibles". None of us had. I realized that I didn't have one. While I own several Bibles for different purposes - my New Revised Standard with extensive footnotes and cross references from seminary (the first Bible I'd owned in decades), an old Red Letter Edition King James, whose language I love and old type I photocopy for collages, a light, paperback NRSV, and The Message for a jolt with familiar passages - none of them would qualify for "my Bible". That is, a companion, a Bible for comfort, regular study and devotion, something that is - well, personal.

I went online and ordered this one. It's an NRSV in gray, genu-wine imitation leather. I bought it from one of Amazon's used book dealers (it's new) and I waited a long, long time for it. I wondered if it was okay that I was checking the mail each day and saying where's my *$%ing Bible?

So today it arrived. I didn't expect it to be so pretty and to feel so soft and nice in my hands. It says "Holy Bible" and has a curlicue cross with little curlicue ornaments down the side. The verse on the front is "Be still and know that I am God." (I only need reminding of that several times a day.) There's a shiny blue ribbon marker. It has the handy titles above the stories like "The Transfiguration" so that people who haven't memorized chapter and verse can find things. And there are some silly things. It's clearly a gift Bible, probably for confirmands - that's about 9th grade, right? - and so there are all kinds of workbook pages in the front and back for the young person to fill in. "Favorite and Special Memories" of church events, holidays and vacations, etc. "People who have touched my life" with "Name" and "Why this person is special" to fill in. Then there's the "About Me" page with blanks for favorite movie, TV show, etc. "Milestones on the Spiritual Journey" that asks about when you were baptized and how you came to know Jesus. There are also lovely things like the prayer of St. Francis, St. Patrick, Thomas A Kempis, Merton, and more. There are Bible verses to read when you're afraid or lonely. There are instructions for Lectio Divina and centering prayer.

While I really didn't want all this extra stuff and I am totally making fun of the workbook pages, I secretly want to fill in the blanks about my family and my special friends and how I feel about God and my favorite TV show. Because that would make it My Bible, wouldn't it?

How about you? Do you have a My Bible? What's it like? Did you used to have one? Do you wish you did now?

Wade in the Water

I had a lovely meeting with some Christian UU ministers; we call ourselves the "Friends of Josh" - a sly way of describing a secret society, akin to AA, who call themselves the "Friends of Bill." We had an introduction to Ignatian spirituality, which involves praying and imagining oneself in a story in the gospels. We read Mark 1:9-17, which is jam-packed with not 1, not 2, not 3 but FOUR stories!

We were to choose one of the stories, then ask for our desire from God. Then we imagined the story as fully as we could, making use of our senses, and relating ourselves to Jesus, or to what he was experiencing. I chose the baptism. I have been to the River Jordan, as I believe I've posted before, or to the spot where they take tourists for group baptisms. There is a pristine park gathering spot, with a counter to purchase a big t-shirt in which to dunk oneself, and changing rooms. They videotape every baptism, and you can purchase a recording of your holy moment as you're leaving the "park". I started calling it and other places like it in Israel "Jesus Land".

It made me smile. I had to wipe all that out of my mind. I sat on the riverbank, and looked at the lush, green trees that grew alongside it. I was a child of five in my imagining, in shorts and a T-shirt. I watched as Jesus was getting baptized. I was drawn to the tender way John cradled the back of his head as he dipped back. I didn't know if I was supposed to do this, but I decided to get in the water, too. It was cold! Suddenly, (or "immediately", as Mark is fond of saying) I felt the strong tug of the current. It was hard to keep my footing. I also saw clouds gathering and darkening, and birds - not just one dove, but many birds, filling the air. There was a loud voice that I could not understand, and it seemed to come from everywhere, and filled the skies.

I was very frightened - cold, pulled about by swift waters, and the voice and birds that were everywhere. Suddenly, I was caught up in some very strong arms. I knew them to be Jesus. I was held fast. And even though the water was still cold, the voice was still roaring, the birds were still circling, and the current swirling, I knew I was safe.

Moments later I was seated on the bank of the river, the delicious sensation of cool water on my skin in the midst of a hot afternoon. It sparkled and danced in the light.

I have been wondering what Jesus is like - not just a character in a story, but what the living Jesus might be like for me. This is a clue, I think. A focusing of God's love that is too powerful and mysterious to take in without some human form that I can relate to. Someone/something that doesn't take me out of danger, but holds me in it, so I am not alone or afraid.

And I pray to give this love to other people, frightened and selfish as I am. But first I must receive it.