John

Casting lots to determine how to fill an apostolic vacancy? Really?

I have found myself dreading Facebook lately. With the general election beginning to churn, the competing posts are out: “Evidence of Obama’s socialist conspiracy!” “Republicans plan to inspect every woman’s womb!” Some are rather scary while others I quietly cheer; still others simply draw me into grief over how little Jesus seems apparent in any of it.

My desire to clean the kitchen was an exercise of love. Then my mom asked me to do what I was already planning to do—and my gift turned into affliction.

If anything remains sacred in our culture, it’s the family. Yet Jesus challenged the family’s ultimacy.

If anything remains sacred in our culture, it’s the family. Yet Jesus challenged the family’s ultimacy.

Is John 1 a midrash on the creation story and the song of creative Wisdom? If so, its writer has infused it with profoundest joy.

I remember a film about Doubting Thomas that I saw in Sunday school as a girl. It was one of a series that our church showed us: the Bible story was read while a sequence of tableaux ran on the screen—it was not a motion picture, really, but more like a slide show. The actors were all attractive people with earnest expressions, and their faces stayed on the screen for a long time while the text was read. Sometimes the camera would zoom in, so that we could get a really good, long look at a particularly earnest expression.

I think I would find it all a bit too much if I were to view it today. But this was a long time ago.

I remember Thomas's face.

The risen Christ does not rebuke Mary for her error. He seems rather to enjoy the occasion of her surprise.

“There is the danger of protecting ourselves from God by striving to be passive. The ‘I’ is very active in its attempt to surrender.”

“There is the danger of protecting ourselves from God by striving to be passive. The ‘I’ is very active in its attempt to surrender.”

Our pastor had an affair and confessed it in his sermon. He stood up in front of the church and let the gathered members know that he had succumbed to temptation, but he was ready to just "move on." 

Our pastor had an affair and confessed it in his sermon. He stood up in front of the church and let the gathered members know that he had succumbed to temptation, but he was ready to just "move on." 

There must have been some Lutherans sitting in that conference room when the Revised Common Lectionary was birthed. That is the only explanation that I can come up with for Ephesians 2:1-10 having a role on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B.

Jesus and Nicodemus might as well be speaking different languages. Jesus speaks of birth from above; Nicodemus is befuddled. Jesus speaks of the spirit as wind blowing where it will; Nicodemus wonders how this can be. They are like a creationist and a paleontologist comparing notes on fossils--they simply can't fathom each other. Their organizing assumptions are too different.

Here's when we sense that Nicodemus begins to understand what Jesus is saying: when Jesus reinterprets the story of Israel in the wilderness, drawing from the language that has oriented Nicodemus's life and thought. It doesn't seem likely, after all, that the series of puzzling metaphors Jesus begins with would push Nicodemus to understanding. But something clearly does.

To build stronger communities, we need to get in the habit of recognizing what undergirds our relationships. We can't afford to take it for granted.