Reading the Gospels for Lent

 

Read John 17-19

 

Jesus continues his sermon to his disciples on the last night of his life.  The shadow of the cross has fallen upon the path of his life, he knows that people don’t understand the unconditional and unceasing love of God (because God is uncontrollable and unpredictable in ways that flummox and frustrate us.  We tend to grasp at God rather than be grasped by God).  As Jesus preaches and teaches, he says, “That they may all be one. As You, God, are in me and I am in You, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that You have sent me.”  Jesus is praying for unity.  This doesn’t mean uniformity or conformity.  Rather I deeply believe there is room for individual uniqueness within unity.  In fact, unity finds its deepest expression when we all share and shine our lights together.  But prayerfully striving for the “me” inside the “we” is complex and perplexing.  We’d prefer some solid ground of easy-to-follow rules for unity to stand on rather than constant shifting sand of trying to build a culture of “me” and “we”.  If Jesus’ prayer is for us to find harmony in the midst of the song of life, how do we this Lent seek to embrace and embody that?  Please hear me say that right now I am talking to the church!  How to we practice Jesus’ prayer to be in God and God in us and God in others as part of our shared life?

 

As you keep reading today, Jesus is arrested.  Note that when the guards come with their pitch forks and torches and evil intentions ~ they don’t recognize him!  They don’t even know who he is!  How often do we join the mobs of today informed by some misinformation on social media?  How often do we quote statistics that have been proven wrong but feel right?  Oh, Lord, how we all stand angry in groups convinced we have it all figured out, only to not even know who or what we are looking for!  And Jesus, says in 18:5, “I am he.”  Actually, Jesus just says, “I AM,” as in the name of God, “Yahweh”.  In John, we continue to circle around the truth that God is in Jesus and Jesus longs to awaken us to the truth that God is within.  When Jesus utters the Divine Name, people fall to the ground out of fear or reverence or some combination thereof.  How might you and I speak God’s name as we practice Jesus’ prayer to be in God and God in us and God in others as a part of our shared life?  And in speaking God’s name, we don’t so much as invoke God’s presence, but recognize God is there all the time…and all the time God is there!

 

After the sham of a trial where false accusations fly, anxiety is caught, and people scapegoat Jesus thinking that will quell the fear that hangs in the air (notice that this story line is as current as the newspaper you read this morning!), Jesus is crucified.  Mary, Jesus’ mom, watches in horror as her son is killed as a common criminal.  We stand alongside moms and dads today, we grieve the death of their children due to violence, overdoses, illnesses, and often with the unanswerable question, “Why” troubling our souls.  The good news, the gospel medicine for our life, is that God is there not only in the good times when laughter is easy, God is there in the pain and wounds and hurts and harms of life.  God is there in the crucifixion, not at the distance, but on the cross.  God’s love, misunderstood and mistaken and maybe even feared, is put to death.  Know this friends, God didn’t have an accounting problem regarding our debt.  If you read the Old Testament, God forgives again and again and again.  The cross is not a sin management system as if there was no other way for God to forgive.  God has shown time and time again a way of letting go of human brokenness.  The cross is what love looks like ~ vulnerable and seemingly defeated.  But wait…there is more.  Come back tomorrow to witness that the prayer to be in God and God in us wasn’t forever conquered on the cross, rather there is more to the story of God’s love that is good news to our souls.