What an ambivalent guy I am! So much of my heart & soul seems caught up in worldly crises: the earthquakes in Nepal, oil-exploration in the Arctic Ocean, new lows of mistrust in Albany, a continuing fuss about LGBT’s, what’s shaping up to be a long hot summer in racial confrontations…. I could really go for an extended exile to St. Brendan’s fieldstone hermitage on the Dingle Peninsula, or a little white church singing “This Is My Father’s World” on a sunny morning…. Is there a word from scripture or the pulpit for me and others like me?
The passage from early in The Acts of the Apostles (1:15-26) tells how the first Believers attempted to restore the Christian community broken by the defection of Judas. Peter, already acting as Pope, convened the discussion by saying, “One of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us–one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” After throwing the dice, they deduced that God was pointing out Matthias–who became an Apostle and was never heard from since! But the message is that even severely shaken communities can find a wholeness to go on…
How does John’s First Letter (5:9-13) fit with this? Or does it need to? The core of it is the “testimony” that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. (v.11) But then the writer continues, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Can we really “have” the Son? Is it like having a merit-badge? The better question, I think, is not “Do I have the Son?”, but “Does the Son have ME?” Move over, St. Brendan…
Jesus’ High Priestly prayer continues in the Gospel, John 17:6-19. I read “those whom you gave me from the world” as referring to the embryonic Church: a collection of individuals, to be sure, yet having greater value than the mere sum of its parts. His phrases are filled with “them” and “their”: the only individual mentioned is “the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.” There’s a semantic minefield here: how does the dichotomy of being “apart from the world” square with the earlier affirmation (3:16-17) of God’s LOVE for the world? Verse 18 may help: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Left Foot, Right Foot..
But it’s Spring. The devil of the noon-day sun has me firmly in his grasp. We planted a grapevine (Marie is determined to grow grapes; how many vines have we planted in parsonage backyards?) and a Rose of Sharon bush. The strawberries are loaded with blossoms, and chives and mint are terrorizing the herb-beds. The world and its dysfunction seem far away. I’ll go sit among “the virtues of the starlit heaven, the glorious sun’s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old eternal rocks.” For a while.
God Bless Us Every One! Horace Brown King
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