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Magic

Fifth Sunday of Easter  |  John 14:1-14

We think we are working magic. You can hear it in our prayers: “In the name of Jesus we pray.”

The online Oxford Dictionary defines magic this way: the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces. Christians ask things of God in the name of Jesus, based in large part on John 14:13-14, “And whatsoever you may ask in my name I will do, in order that the Father might be glorified in the son. If you ask of me anything in my name, I will do it.”

Moonlight pine and planetAnd so we use the magic words, believing that if we say them, if we truly mean them, then God will respond. Such is the power of a name.

The ancient world commonly held that knowing the name of a thing gave one power over it. To the Hebrews (and to some modern day Jews), the name of God is so holy that it cannot be spoken. That, by the way, is why we have the word LORD, usually printed in all capitals or a mix of large and small capitals, in our Old Testaments—it is a placeholder for the name of God.

Names are powerful. Speaking someone’s name asserts a claim. If you think it does not, the next time you hear your own name shouted in an airport or spoken on a city street or called out deep in a forest, see if you can resist the urge to turn and find out who is calling.

There is power in a name, but surely that isn’t what Jesus is talking about. He is not suggesting that we practice magic. To pray in the name of Jesus is to pray in the person, true purpose and being of Jesus. God responds to the prayers of our hearts because we speak them from within the heart of God.

In the house of my Father are many rooms, Jesus tells us. He doesn’t mean it is the Hyatt, and before you say that we do not think of heaven as a hotel, may I ask what we do think? We might envision huts, or houses, or tents, or some other personally designated spiritual space, but that is really just a hotel in disguise. Dwelling in the house of God has nothing to do with space and time. Asking in the name of Jesus and dwelling in the Father’s house are the same thing: to do the one is to do the other.

Luke’s gospel put it this way: the kingdom of God is within you.†

In this passage we also hear Philip asking simply to see the Father. “And we will be satisfied,” he says. It is a simple request. Jesus responds that Philip has already seen everything he needs to see, but I don’t think those words were meant for Philip. Those words were meant for us. Don’t we have the same request, that the heavens open and give us some irrefutable sign, so that we can rely upon our senses and our reason and our memory rather than faith?

We have already seen everything that we need to see of God. God is beside us on a train, in a hallway, in a field, on a street, the face of a stranger, the call of a mockingbird. Why would we believe in God more for having seen God? We explain away all sorts of things. Given time and perhaps some therapy or medication, I imagine that we could tell ourselves that a vision of God was only a mental phenomenon, some sort of hallucination.

Having knowledge of a thing is not the same as having faith in it.

One of the most famous verses in scripture is John 14:6. “And Jesus said to him, I myself am the way and the truth and the life: no one comes to the Father except through me.” Many Christians have used these words to tell people of other faiths that they were outside of God’s grace—if you do not believe in our Jesus, then God will not have you. I think that once again we have managed not to hear what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying that God is the one who determines who comes to God.

We don’t get to turn people away from the door to the heaven, whatever heaven may really look like. We are permitted to invite them inside. And when we find ourselves dwelling in the heart of God, we may find that our prayers are already answered, and that many whom we did not expect to see were already waiting there for us.

† Luke 17:21

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Recognizing a Voice

Fourth Sunday of Easter  |  John 10:1-10

Sheep are usually trusting creatures.

Goats 2 017Sheep, goats, cattle, all of them recognize the people who care for them, and they recognize the ones who do not. They know the voice that they trust. Animals may have a deeper wisdom than we, an older wisdom.

My dog is wiser than I. He sleeps more often than I, and better. He enjoys his food and the sunlight and the joy of a friendly touch much more than I. And he knows my voice, though he sometimes chooses not to listen to it.

Jesus says that he is a shepherd, that his own will know his voice. He also says that he is the gate for the sheep, mixing the elements of the analogy.

Word pictures for God—John’s gospel gives us plenty of these. At different points, Jesus is described (or is portrayed describing himself) as light, bread, water, a man, the way, the gate, the shepherd, a vine, a servant, a fisherman, a king, other things. All of these images are true, of course. None of them is complete. If we take any one of these images, however beautiful and true it may be, and hold it to the exclusion of the others, we do not take away a true understanding of Jesus. The same is true of the other people in our lives. They are more, and sometimes less, than the way we think of them.

Take another example, the explanation of the crucifixion. In the gospels we hear what Jesus did, what was done to him, told in story form. Elsewhere in scripture, there are references, surprisingly brief descriptions of the crucifixion, comparing it variously to a sacrifice, or a ransom, or to a judicial penalty, among other things. Outside of scripture on the other hand, entire books have been written to explain what happened on the cross (often minimizing everything else), and Christianity has divided itself into camps based at least in part on one or another of these explanations, as though the others are untrue.

It is like trying to understand a home only by what we see on the outside, or the life of the deepest ocean by watching from the shore. Much may be learned that is true, as far as it goes, but we know that the rest remains a mystery.

It must be the same for sheep and goats. Their shepherds guide them, feed them, keep them safe, and so the animals know much about their shepherd. They know when the shepherd comes, what the shepherd does, and they know the shepherd’s voice. The rest remains unknown to them, but the sheep do not seem to dwell on it or let it displace their faith. They respect the boundaries of mystery.

If a sheep were to sit and to write a detailed explanation of the other aspects of the shepherd’s life, explaining the motives and reasons that the shepherd does what a shepherd does, it would make interesting reading. Other sheep may find themselves agreeing or disagreeing. Focusing on the explanations might even be enough to distract a sheep so that it does not hear the shepherd’s voice.

That is a problem with being immersed in religion. We become so distracted, and content, explaining God that we do not even perceive God’s presence. We exchange our faith in God for a collection of ideas about God. Christianity does not promise that we are saved by means of our understanding. The promise is that we are saved through the love of God, saved by means deeper and more mysterious than we can comprehend, and saved from and to something perhaps more profound than we know.

Jesus went to the crucifixion like a sheep to slaughter. As we have said, animals have a deeper wisdom than we. Even though the sheep’s trust may be misplaced, it remains more noble and more whole for trusting than does the person who betrays it. There is a mysterious power in trust and in submission, even when proven wrong, and how much more power when the trust is fulfilled.

Perhaps this Easter season is a good time to remember one of the oldest confessions of faith in Christianity. The Nicene Creed, named for the place where early church leaders met in the fourth century, doesn’t explain much. It does assert a great deal, but by way of sharing the story and preserving the mystery. We learn as much from the way it is told as from what it contains.

The Nicene Creed ª
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

ª This translation is from The Book of Common Prayer According to the Use of the Episcopal Church. You can find the online version here: http://www.bcponline.org

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Walking to Emmaus

Third Sunday of Easter  |  Luke 24:13-35

Nobody seems to know who Cleopas is. He is just another man walking down the road, and as for his friend, well, we don’t know his name. We don’t even know that the second person was a man—perhaps it was a woman, perhaps Cleopas’ wife?

Sun Through Trees 4x6 015All of the famous (and at least named) disciples are huddled together, trying to make sense of reports that Jesus is alive, and these two people leave and start walking away. Oddly, Jesus takes the afternoon to walk down the road with them. They talk about prophecy and scripture, the sort of religious things that they were likely taught from the time they were children, and the unexpected life and death of the man they had believed was the Messiah. And we are told that they were kept from recognizing Jesus until the very end of their time with him.

We don’t know them. We don’t even have the name of one of them, but they were important to God.

We might remember someone else who did not warrant having his name recorded in scripture—the Pharaoh of the exodus story. He was ruler of all of Egypt, and we don’t even get his name. We are told that his heart was hardened so that he wouldn’t understand and yield to what God was doing. In the end, he is a symbol for every despot and tyrant in history, every person and thing that would try to enslave us.

Cleopas and his unnamed companion are also symbols, this time representing us. We, like they, walk along unseeing, thinking that we understand more than other people. These two even chide Jesus, saying, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place?”

When they finally realize what they did not know, they turn around and go back to where they started, perhaps to begin again. When Cleopas and his companion return to Jerusalem, they find that Jesus has also appeared to the other followers gathered there, just as he appeared to them.

All our lives we are travelers. It is impossible to remain in one place, even if we sit perfectly still. Time moves the horizon, and our landscape and our traveling companions change around us. We may think we are on the road to a destination of our choosing, but sometimes we need to go back to share what we found or to find what we left. Sometimes we find ourselves lost, as in a forest, our only light filtered through the leaves of the trees above us.

In the end, our names will not matter. We ourselves may forget them, given enough time. What matters is whether we open our eyes to see who is beside us. Just because we do not recognize God does not mean that God is not here.

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What We Need To See

Second Sunday in Easter  |  John 20:19-31

Several days after he dies, Jesus appears in a locked room full of witnesses including a doubting disciple named Thomas. The wounds on Jesus’ body—the nail holes in his hands, the spear wound in his side—are still there.

Does that bother anyone else?

Almighty God chooses to become incarnate in a human form, performs amazing miracles, dies horribly on a cross, returns to life, and yet somehow fails to heal the wounds on this body? What sort of body is this resurrected one anyway? According to the gospel accounts, something certainly happened to the one that was laid in the tomb—when Mary Magdalene looked inside, no body was there. The implication is that Jesus occupies the same body as before his death, with the same wounds, but now he passes through closed doors, appears and disappears, things Jesus never was reported to have done previously.

What is different about this resurrected body, and why are the wounds still there? The answer must be, at least in part, that God shows us what we need to see.

Thomas, the gospel records plainly, needs Jesus to show himself, needs Jesus to let Thomas see those wounds and touch him. And so Jesus does.

On Canoe PointingThe implication is that God shows us what we need to see. It may not always make sense, not to a rational world view that does not take non-empirical matters into account. It may not even make sense to those people who do embrace matters of mysticism and of faith.

We hold that there are truths that we cannot measure, realities that we cannot measure or even touch and that we often fail to understand or to notice.

The question is whether we see what God shows us. It is different for everyone. A man standing at a bus stop sees a raindrop land on a bench, and to him it is only a raindrop, while the child beside him sees the whole world reflected in the eye of God.

God shows us what we need to see. Are we seeing what God shows us?

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Hearing Voices

Easter  |  John 20:1-18

Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb, the last place she had encountered Jesus, and she cannot find him.
Dogwood flowers 011God is dead, in her heart, in what she has seen—Jesus beaten, wounded, dead on a cross, his body placed in a tomb hurriedly sealed with a stone. Now, as she returns to the tomb, she can not even find the body of the man in whom she has learned to see God. Her loss is so disorienting, so crushing, that she does not comprehend that she is speaking with angels and with a resurrected God among us, Jesus alive once more.

Early sources do not deny that the tomb was empty. Even those groups antagonistic to the new Christian faith did not deny that the tomb was empty. Instead, the question was how—what had these followers of Jesus done with his body?

It is odd that the gospels make no attempt to describe the process of resurrection. In each case, the story skips instead from God-incarnate-dead-in-the-tomb to God-incarnate-alive-once-more. Arguably the most powerful moment in the gospel, the moment in which Jesus returns to life, is never described. They left out the special effects.

There is much in John’s resurrection narrative (and in those of the other gospel writers, and in the references in Acts and in the letters of Paul) to cause us to wonder.

When Lazarus was called from his tomb, everyone recognized him, and not simply because the tomb was marked. When the resurrected Jesus appears, the stories include the difficulty of recognizing him. It is only when Jesus calls Mary’s name that she knows who he is.

Why upon rising from the dead does Jesus not parade through the streets of Jerusalem to demonstrate the power of God?

Why were the first witnesses of the resurrection, in all four gospels, women? In the extraordinarily male-dominated first century world, would not men have made more convincing witnesses? And out of all of the women available, why always Mary Magdalene?

I find myself seeking reason and certainty when it comes to God and the resurrection. I wonder why it is that God did not, does not, proclaim God with all of the convincing power of God. Why are we left with only these odd gospel stories and these strange brief passages describing the post resurrection appearances of Jesus?

It is strange, this way of God. The Almighty, creator of heaven and of earth, choosing the path that leads to crucifixion and death. God slipping quietly from death and the tomb to speak to Mary Magdalene. Almighty God, able to catch the attention of all creation in a flash, choosing to leave us pondering stories.

I want answers. God gives us questions.

I want certainty. God offers us faith.

Faith cannot be mapped. It cannot be measured, or even understood, and it is often characterized more by our doubts than our beliefs.

We want answers. God must want something different for us, something that we might not even recognize when we see it. We may only recognize it when we hear God call our names.