I remember a time when “reading the newspaper” meant ensconced in your favorite chair or at the kitchen table with the newsprint at the ready. The silent exploration occasionally interrupted with: “Are you done with that section yet?” These days I assume the edition is digital. Now one can be ensconced with their favorite device without worry of any inquiries about the availability of a particular section. Continue reading
It is not unusual to come across a post, newspaper article, history channel or some other venue which promotes “This Week in History,” and then will list several historic events that happened on dates that fall within “this week.” I thought this week’s was interesting. It included: Continue reading
If you knew this was your last week, your last day on earth, what would you tell the people you love? Would it be advice? Your hopes for them? Would it be the dreams you have? Perhaps, the gratitude and love in your heart? What would be your last words to the ones you love? Beyond the fact we’d really not like to think about it, even if we were ready to do so, this is something difficult, daunting, and delicate.
In many of the weekday gospels of Eastertide as well as this Sunday’s gospel we are hearing Jesus’ answer to the question. Judas is on his way to betray Jesus, the countdown to the crucifixion is running, and Jesus is facing his disciples with news that will devastate them. It is not a time for parables or sermons – he goes straight to the point – just one commandment: “love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”
It wasn’t “read your Bible”, “believe all the right things”, “go to Church every Sunday”, “pray three times a day” – and don’t get me wrong these are all good and holy things – and I hope you do them. But this Christian life, distilled down and held up as Jesus’ last words to the gathered disciples, is simply “love one another.” This new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, and yet it is profound enough that the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into practice. (D.A. Carson) Why is that? As G.K. Chesterton once wrote that “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”
And it should be noted that this is a command, not a suggestion, a matter of choice, a proposal, or a suggestion – a commandment. But how we love matters. Think about your own childhood. My mom absolutely commanded me to behave as if I loved my sisters and my friends: “Share your toys.” “Say sorry.” “Don’t hit.” “Only say nice things.” I was an obedient lad. I did those things with a clenched jaw and rolling eyes. I am pretty sure that is not how Jesus loved. Behaving as though we love is easy enough (rolling eyes aside), but that “all in-deeply-engaged-generosity-from-the-heart” love – that is an altogether different matter.
And yet the dying wish of our Savior was to love one another. Our God is the one who calls us, first and foremost, to ensure every one of his children feels loved. Not ashamed. Not punished. Not chastised. Not judged. Not isolated. But loved. “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” And if we fail to do these things? Then the world won’t know what they need to know about God through the life, death and resurrection of Christ because we will not have put it on display for all the world to see. And we the people of God, the Church, will be seen as flawed and hypocritical – not as a place of holiness, healing, hospitality, and hope.
As I have loved you – at least we have a road map, a set of instructions. Do what Jesus did: “Weep with those who weep. Laugh with those who laugh. Touch the untouchables. Feed the hungry. Welcome the child. Release the captive. Forgive the sinner. Confront the oppressor. Comfort the oppressed. Wash each other’s feet. Hold each other close. Tell each other the truth. Guide each other home.” (D. Thomas, Journey with Jesus)
The French theologian Maurice Blondel offered some sage advice when he counseled believers to just do it, because the love operative in our hands reaching out in the love of Christ to others, has a way, in time, to work its way back from our hands, up our arms, into our hearts, and let us experience “As I have loved you.” Then we truly move towards the place where we love one another. And then “all will know that you are my disciples.” And when we enact these final words of Jesus, the Kingdom of God is revealed.
The development of the printing press, furthermore, aided Luther’s success. For all the reasons described in previous posts, the time was ripe for change. There was no other European nation that was more ready – it just needed a tipping point. Many point to the printing press as the tipping point, but the real tipping point was that Luther quickly moved to publishing in the German language. His ideas were no longer limited to the intellectual elites and Church scholars. He bypassed that “battlefield” and attacked in a language all the people – high and low-born alike could understand – German. Continue reading
This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter in Year C of the Lectionary Cycle. In yesterday’s post we explored a possible understanding of Jesus’ command to love each other. Today continue to read O’Day reflection (734):
To interpret Jesus’ death as the ultimate act of love enables the believers to see that the love to which Jesus summons the community is not the giving up of one’s life, but the giving away of one’s life. The distinction between these prepositions is important, because the love that Jesus embodies is grace, not sacrifice. Jesus gave his life to his disciples as an expression of the fullness of his relationship with God and of God’s love for the world. Jesus’ death in love, therefore, was not an act of self-denial, but an act of fullness, of living out his life and identity fully, even when that living would ultimately lead to death. …
This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter in Year C of the Lectionary Cycle. In yesterday’s post we explored a possible understanding of Jesus’ departure reference. Today we explore the last of the three parts of this very short reading: the Commandment to Love. 34 I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. 35 This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Continue reading
In today’s gospel we find Jesus with his apostles and disciples. It is a time that finds the followers of Jesus confused, worrying, and wondering what is unfolding? It the evening of Holy Thursday, the traitor Judas has left the scene to initiate the betrayal of Jesus and those who remain have just been told that Jesus is going,..and they’re not coming along. But they are not to worry because the Father in Heaven has prepared a house (mansion in the Kings James translation) that has many rooms. The New American translation says that “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” (Verse 2)
Verse 2 also has some translation options: “In my Father’s house [oikia] there are many dwelling places [monai].”Should oikia be translated “house,” i.e., a physical structure (as in 11:31 & 12:3); “household,” i.e., a community of people (as in 4:53 & 8:35)?; or even “family” – all of which are valid translations [EDNT 2:495]. Often people immediately think of the King James’ translation: “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” – which immediately moves one thoughts and reference to heaven. Is this the intention of this passage?
If one is convinced that house [oikia] refers to heaven alone (v.2) then the prepare a place (v.2) and the where I am (v.3) refer to a place in heaven where Jesus is. The I will come back speaks to the parousia – although that is not a topic the Gospel speaks about elsewhere. But clearly oikia has other meanings: household, community, family. If one lends credence to those understandings, then the reference can be heaven and earthly life.
Some of this should sound familiar to those who would study the Gospel According to John. The encounter with Nicodemus (ch. 3) and the Samaritan Woman at the well (ch. 4) hinge of the ambiguity of words. And there is more. The same ambiguity exists with mone (singular). It means a “place where one may remain or dwell,” It can mean a physical structure – and often in secular use it refers to a transient or overnight lodging [TDNT 4:574] – rather than the fixed “mansions” of the KJ translation.
Then again, all the focus on the “where” might be a diversion from the more important element. Many argue that here in v.2 the context (because of v.3) lends itself to a permanent dwelling – but is it physical? The only other NT use of mone is John 14:23, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling [mone] with him.” The use there seems to imply an abiding relationship between people and God – and one in which the Father and the Son come to the human person!
This noun is related to the verb menō meaning “to remain, stay, await” [EDNT 2:407]. The verb occurs often in the Farewell Discourse (14:10, 17, 25; 15:4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 16) most often referring to the relationship between God and Jesus or God and us. Another reference with this meaning of menō is 8:35 (where oikia also occurs): “ A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains.” Do the words “remain” and “house” refer to a physical place or to a relational state? Our children remain our children forever, even though they may not be living in our house. The relationship remains even while the physical presence may not.
Fr. Raymond Brown (627) writes:
This special house or household where the son has a permanent dwelling place suggests a union with the Father reserved for Jesus the Son and for all those who are begotten as God’s children by the Spirit that Jesus gives. Thus there would be some precedent for reinterpreting “many dwelling places in my Father’s house” parabolically as possibilities for permanent union (mone/meno) with the Father in and through Jesus.
Why mention all this? Jewish traditions that identify the ‘Father’s house’ with a heavenly dwelling place clearly lie behind the imagery of v. 2a (e.g., Pss 2:4; 66:1; 113:5-6; 123:1; Is 66:1), but it is critical to the interpretation of Jesus’ words in this gospel that “my Father’s house” not be taken as a synonym for heaven. This needs to be read first in the context of the mutual indwelling of God and Jesus, a form of indwelling that has been repeatedly stressed from the opening verses of the Gospel (e.g., 1:1, 18). And that indwelling is the critical relationship for the disciples in the post-Resurrection era.
This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter in Year C of the Lectionary Cycle. In yesterday’s post we explored a possible understanding of Jesus’ reference to “glorification.” Today we explore the second of the three parts of this very short reading. Referring again to his imminent departure, Jesus said to his disciples, “My children, I will be with you only a little while longer You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you” (v.33). Continue reading
Back in January when those opposed to vaccines/mandated vaccines began to shout “my body, my choice” as a moral logic for the freedom to refuse vaccinations, I could not help but note the irony of the moment as they co-opted the long held cry of those in favor of a woman’s right to an abortion. By-in-large I thought if fair to speculate that those who shared the same “battle cry” did not share a political view/party/perspective. My pastor asked me to write a piece on for the parish bulletin, which I did. But…. Continue reading
When Fyodor Dostoevsky sent the manuscript of his celebrated novel, Crime and Punishment, to the publisher, he included a brief note: “This is the story of a university student who is infected by ideas that float on the wind”. That image is one that stuck with me in all the years since I first encountered it. Is the idea/project/choice with which I am confronted something that is just floating in the wind or is it something with foundation and anchorage. Enter the age of the covid-19 pandemic and the idea of being infected by things that float in the wind has new meaning. We have taken great efforts over the last 2.5 years to limit infectious floating things and to build up our immune system against such infections so that if we can’t prevent infection we can at least mitigate the short-term and long-term effect. Continue reading
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