Gospeling Your Life ~ Animating Force

 

Read John 13-14 – In chapter 12, Jesus enters Jerusalem in the Palm Sunday parade.  You may want to go back to compare John’s telling to the other three gospels we have read.  Notice what comes next, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.  Jesus shows us what leadership looks like.  Jesus embodies a way of life that feels downright offensive given the gospel of America based on the teachings of Adam Smith.  Leaders are supposed to be confident and certain and even a bit full of themselves.  As Brian McLaren said, we prefer a confident lie to a confusing truth.  The gospels are confusing truths.  My page of questions about the gospels grows longer every time I read a chapter or verse. My page of certainties keeps getting crossed off as what I thought I knew just ain’t so. 

 

Do you think Jesus washed Judas’ feet?  Would you wash the feet of one who betrayed you?

 

Jesus gives a new commandment in 13:31-35 to love one another.  Jesus breaks open God’s inclusive, expansive, evolving love.  Jesus soaks and saturates our life with God’s love.  And God’s love isn’t meant to just live in the corners of our souls.  It isn’t about getting a golden ticket to the Willa Wonka chocolate factory in the sky (there is a strange vision of heaven).  Jesus calls us to love because we are loved.  Love is a fuel that feeds our actions and lives.  Love is an animating force.  How is that true for you?  How might that be true?

 

As you ponder this re-read chapter 14 where Jesus describes, defines the Advocate who animates our lives with love.  You are not alone.  We are not alone.  We are empowered by a Spirit that is hovering and humming over the chaos of our lives in creative ways.  May this Spirit of Love from the Living God fall afresh and anew on you and me and we this day in ways that the world around us senses. 

Read John 15-16 ~ John 15 has captured my sacred imagination as a metaphor/image for the church.  We are leaves on a vine.  Each leaf (representing an individual) is unique.  And leaves share similarities too, just as all humans share 99 percent of the same DNA.  Both are true.  We tend to over emphasize the differences and uniqueness and write off the similarities as being too simplistic.  We are connected as people of faith to the vine of life.  The vine in creation delivers nutrition and water and what is necessary for life to the leaf.  The vine of the Holy feeds and fuels us.  In our church, we celebrate our Core Values of worship, belonging, caring, justice, faithfulness and welcome.  Each of these can be expressed in our lives individually and collectively.  Where have you encountered these words in the gospels?  How did Jesus express these values?  And where do you see these words taking life in our church?  And where can we continue to expand and evolve in living these words?  In chapter 16, Jesus is asking us not to be a cul-de-sac or dead end to the world of the Spirit.  The benediction at the end of worship is, “Our service of worship has ended and our service/worship (caring, belonging, faithfulness, justice, welcome) in the world begins”.  The moment we step out the narthex doors our values are lived in you, and you continue to abide in the vine of the One who is with you.  I encourage you to hold this prayerfully, loosely, and lovingly as you go about your day today.  Amen.