Easter VI
We read more in the Gospel according to John -- and this is the beautiful John, cosmic and welcoming. We abide in God, and God abides in us. It's a short section. Here it is, in entirety:
John 14:15-21
Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.
This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.
On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
Many of you might be familiar with the profound Thomas Tallis setting of some of this text -- a favorite anthem in the Anglican world and beyond, dating from the rich Elizabethan/Tudor period -- 'If ye love me.' Sung at a certain British royal wedding a couple years ago when the Presiding Bishop preached the fire of Love! In his setting, Tallis emphasizes the phrase, '...even the Spirit of Truth,' which is the best naming of what it means to have God among us and within us that I've come across in a while. (Listen in, if you like. There are many recordings -- this is from St John's College, Cambridge, UK.) Here is the Tallis text:
-
If ye love Me, keep My commandments.
And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another
Comforter, that He may 'bide with you for ever, even
the Spirit of Truth. Amen
-
Tallis skips John's seemingly paranoid bit about the 'world' being unable to receive, see, or know this Spirit of the Living God, the Spirit of Truth, and just repeats the possibility and certainty that this Spirit may abide with(in) us forever.
Yet, it may seem as if we live in a 'world' that is, indeed, unable to see or receive life-giving truth-speaking, let alone the Spirit of Truth. How can we note this, and acknowledge the damage this does to many creatures of God, and not retreat into the unhealthy hermitage of our own paranoia or bitterness in this world-as-it-is?
Begin with our own hearts, and our capacity to receive, see, or indeed speak a word of this life-giving Spirit of Truth. How may this change over time: to live, to come fully alive? That we may abide in Christ, and Christ in us? This is the assurance Jesus speaks of in John's Gospel, constantly.
The Christian tradition has used a word for centuries that speaks to the life-long process of change and transformation: sanctification. Now, there is a 25 cent word bound up in centuries of mis-use, if I ever met one. Too often approached as if this were a one-time thing, like magic, or something that some people had and others simply never could -- a terminal state of being doled out whimsically. Unhelpful, to say the least.
Rather, more appropriately, think of something akin to the mystery of what our Buddhist friends think of when they use the word 'enlightened'. The process of becoming 'enlightened' is life-long, and it is always a state of becoming, never a state of finite, finished arrival or end. The 'end' in Christian tradition is actually union with God, and God is endlessly dynamic -- the creating force of all that is and was and shall be in and out of the cosmos, constantly overspilling and 'making all things new,' as John would write in his 'Revelation' much later on.
God abides. Jesus abides in God. We abide in Jesus, and thus, in God (again with the transitive property...!). We are slowly remade into the full image and likeness in which we were made, in God's image, following in Jesus' path.
So, what about this 'world' ("...too much with us, late and soon...," to quote another poet...) that doesn't seem to get this? This 'world' that doesn't seem to want to receive, see, or know the transforming reality, for us humans and for all creation, that is this 'becoming-in-God?' What of the damage that 'the world' constantly does to all the creatures of God -- our species, our neighbors and neighbor species, and the Earth as a whole? Who and what is this 'world?"
Much ink has been spilled over the centuries over whether 'the world's' seeming inability to see and know implies that 'that which resists God's transformative presence and reality' is ultimately apart from God, separate and un-transformable. Free will! Agency! The stuff of rich and also arcane debate in the theological and philosophical halls of inquiry for centuries! If the creative force that is God -- which is Love, per Jesus! -- constantly renews the face of all creation, what is it that leads us and others to treat one another, the Earth, and ourselves so poorly from time to time? Why resist the process and availability of 'sanctification'/enlightenment? Who are these people?!
Creatures other than humans seem to know how to praise God and align with God's creating agency - all things new! It is our species that seems to lose itself in the morass of selfishness and plain old self-centered-ness, and all the social, ecological, and racial injustice and violence that follows from this self-centeredness.
I think the first -- difficult -- step toward understanding this strange relationship and question is simply to acknowledge that we, brothers and sisters, we are 'the world.' Not as meant in the 1980s in a certain pop song worthily raising money for famine relief (remember those days?).
We are 'the World.' We are the selfish ones we have been investigating.
We are also, however, the ones we have been waiting for (as the Obama campaign and the 'Hopi Elders' and many others put it). You know this Spirit already, Jesus says, because this Spirit of Truth abides with you and will be in you.
The human creature swims in the life-giving presence of God, as in a river, if we would but learn to acknowledge it -- not acknowledge with the unknowing grace of the trees and rivers, birds and beasts -- but with the hard-won humility that comes from realizing that everything we have and are is flowing from the hand of the One who made us and is making us still. Making us still: there is always room to say, 'transform my heart.' As Paul writes in today's lesson from Acts, quoting some obscure Greek poet to the Greeks he is meeting: this One is the one in whom we live, and move, and have our being.
And we have a pattern for How To Be in this seeking, this seeing, this receiving of this Spirit of Truth. Jesus. He can speak grandly in John's Gospel -- and strangely differently in Mark's -- but this is still the one who says that taking up our cross (whatever that may be for each of us) and following him is the way to be transformed. Sanctified. Enlightened. "Changed from glory into glory," as the hymn we sang last week put it. So, as Paul writes in a letter to the scrappy-little-gathering-in-Jesus'-Way ('The Church') in Rome: "...let us then lay aside the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light."
It's right there, that armor. And not only for when the world is too much with us, as it certainly is today. It's everyday fashion and wears surprisingly well over time...
Tallis sings, 'If ye love me, keep my commandments.' And it is Jesus who tells us: "this is my commandment: that you love one another, that your joy may be full."
Take deep breaths; forgive someone who doesn't deserve it (possibly yourself, too); love one another.
May the peace of God be with you.