“Wearing the Purple”

Rev Dennis Ryle 17/03/2024

Readings -  Jeremiah 31:31-34, John 12:20-36

In retirement, one gets asked to talk about particular topics. Several times now I’ve been invited to talk about “Who is Jesus to me?” A thoughtful question for anyone of us, not just preachers. What’s behind it? Is it like when some Greek proselytes came to Philip asking for an introduction.

One might ask whether preachers of the gospel are not addressing this all the time. So why this specific question? Has no one been listening? Are we not communicating? Are we not transmitting well? Are our hearers not receiving? Is there too much static?

On the other hand, the last 150 years have yielded much debate about the person of Jesus. Scholars ask, “How much can we know of the human Jesus from the sacred texts we have in our scriptures? The flesh and blood man who from scant available information, worked in his father Joseph’s carpentry business until becoming an itinerant teacher and healer? A leader well versed and received in the synagogue tradition of Galilee, strongly versed in the Hebrew text, yet knowing his way around the local agricultural and fishing industries?”

The stories in the sacred texts of our gospels did not focus on this perspective, however. The stories provided the framework for understanding and accessing what the next generations had discerned in Jesus as the universal Christ. Something happened in the rise and demise of the human Jesus of Nazareth that unleashed a powerful force, a life-transforming energy, a cosmic shift in human affairs past, present and future, that has us crowning the human Jesus as the divine Christ, in whom all things have their beginning, in whom all things are unified and in whom all things have their completion.

Thus, who is Jesus for me? He is both the human Nazarene who walked this earth two thousand years ago and the cosmic Christ in whom I live and move and have my being. They are inseparable. They are one.

Who is Jesus to me? It dawns on me, that whenever I open my mouth to speak, I’m answering this question!  Whether it’s in speaking into a microphone, or deliberating on a committee, engaging in banter at the servo, or muttering (or worse) at a fellow driver’s faux pas on a roundabout, I am saying who Jesus is to me.

This is a daunting realisation for, in my weakness, I am not always aware of this and my sometimes tamed but often wild ego gets in the way.

It is not enough, however, to simply address who Jesus is to me. Having become aware of the deep universal and eternal reach of this one solitary life, in whom I exist from time immemorial to time eternal, I must ask another question.

“To what does this awareness call me?”

Lent is the season that highlights question. I used to think of Lent as the 40-day journey from Ash Wednesday to the eve of Good Friday. A season of penitence that tended to highlight Augustine’s orientation to inevitable human sinfulness and our need for redemption. The ancient Eastern tradition introduced me to the wider journey of the Great 100 Days, enfolding the 40-day Lenten journey. It begins with the hint of glory on the Mount of Transfiguration and ends with Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on humankind. Its focus is not on human brokenness in need of redemption, but human God-ordained destiny. Irenaeus: “The glory of God in [humanity] fully alive,” So, to what does an awareness of who Jesus the Christ is call me?

During Lent, we may have been gripped again by the feisty stories in Mark’s Gospel beginning with Jesus’ baptism and the immediate calling of disciples, leading to large crowd events of healing and teaching, that stimulate our awareness. We may have seen again how these accounts led to the climax of Peter’s confession and Jesus’ confronting declaration that suffering and a cross await him, as it does for any who follow him. 

·      To what does awareness of these stories call me?

·      What did I declare in my baptism?

·      Did I hear my name affirmed as one of Christ’s own?

·      What is shifting for me as I continue to attend to Christ’s call, particularly to lay down my life and take up a cross?

These are the questions that are before me constantly, particularly when I am called to prepare a sermon, a proclamation, a talk, a reflection, or a conversation either in a faith setting such as a church, or bible study, or seminar – but equally in secular settings such as strata meetings, neighbourhood chats or the odd community campaign.

What happens to me when I couple that with the wonder of the set bible readings’ sudden segue from Mark’s breathless log of Jesus’ activity to John’s majestic series of meditative reflections on the timeless Christ. We have segued over the last few weeks from Mark into John’s Gospel.
Mark’s urgency is tempered by John’s deep and leisurely reflections that are meant to be extended meditations on the Prologue.

The understanding of Jesus’ messiahship is at stake. Peter got it so right and then so wrong. Jesus’ way of bringing wholeness through the contagion of unconditional Love and self-giving was the direct opposite of the expected and familiar conquest by military coercion.

So being “born from above” is something that Israel’s teachers have to take on board if they are going to be part of this new way. When Greeks come seeking such insight, the time has come, and the terrible cost of self-giving Love to unleash its universal reach becomes apparent.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
In the beginning was Christ and Christ was with God and Christ was God. 
In the beginning was boundless Love and boundless Love was with God and boundless Love was God.     

My ego dives and jostles to find its rightful place. Who dares question the ineffable origin of everything I know and experience and, more than that, the vastness of those things that I don’t know and don’t experience?

But even more, I am brought face to face with the terror and the grandeur of being known by the unknowable.

Bill Loader was right when he talked about us wanting to turn away from such divine receptivity and acceptance.

To be known in such a way that it is immediate to me that I am uncovered in my make-believe and posturing, my pretending to be someone I’m not, is unnerving. We get caught up in overthinking.

Frederick Buechner compares humans with animals:

Humans live largely inside their heads… Animals, on the other hand, do not seem compartmentalized that way. Everything they are is in every move they make. When a dachshund takes a shine to you, it is not likely to be because he has thought it over ahead of time. Or despite certain reservations. Or in expectation of certain benefits. It seems to be just because it feels to him like a good idea at the time. Such as he is, he gives himself to you hook, line, and sinker, the bad breath no less than the frenzied tail and the front paws climbing the air. The whole picture can change in a flash if you try to make off with his dinner, but for the moment his entire being is an act of love bordering on the beatific. 

"Ask the animals, and they will teach you," Job says to his foul-weather friends. Innocence is one of their lessons, but the one Job has in mind is another, that is, "in [the Lord's] hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being" (Job 12:7,10).

To what does this awareness call me as I answer the question of who Jesus is to me?
It sets me up towards the awareness needed to learn from him – a position of humility – a stance that calls me to receptivity – I must be empty to receive.

Then, indeed, those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

To be open and receptive to the Author of the Universe is to be in a state of constant preparation for what the Apostle Paul calls metanoia – the changing of one’s mind (heart, demeanour). (Purple of repentance?)

We need to attend to the way we frame and reframe our stories.

Brian McLaren:

[A framing story] gives people direction, values, vision, and inspiration by providing a framework for their lives…. If it tells us that the purpose of life is for individuals or nations to accumulate an abundance of possessions and to experience the maximum amount of pleasure during the maximum number of minutes of our short lives, then we will have little reason to manage our consumption. If our framing story tells us that we are in life-and-death competition with each other … then we will have little reason to seek reconciliation and collaboration and nonviolent resolutions to our conflicts….

But if our framing story tells us that we are free and responsible creatures in a creation made by a good, wise, and loving God and that our Creator wants us to pursue virtue, collaboration, peace, and mutual care for one another and all living creatures, and that our lives can have profound meaning … then our society will take a radically different direction, and our world will become a very different place.

Richard Rohr explains:

When we believe in a deep way that life is good, God is good, and humanity is good, we do exciting and imaginative things because we are confident that we are part of a storyline that is going somewhere good. As Christians, we can live the story given to us at the very beginning (Genesis 1), that creation is “good,” even “very good,” and that it is our vocation to nurture and grow such goodness wherever we can.

Knowing my rightful place about the mirror held to me by the Word that was at the Beginning, I am ready to meet the Jesus of the gospels, anticipated in the Hebrew writings as the Human One.

Last week we were in John 3:16!

everyone’s favourite Bible verse when I was growing up. “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

David Lose wonders however whether, if people thought about what this verse says for just a little longer than it takes to read a bumper sticker, it might just prove to be one of our least favourite verses in the Bible.

He goes on to explain:

Jesus describes in this statement what Luther called “the Gospel in a nutshell” – that God is fundamentally a God of love, that love is the logic by which the kingdom of God runs, and that God’s love trumps everything else, even justice, in the end.

…Not everyone reads it this way. After all, Jesus says “everyone who believes…” will receive eternal life, which perhaps implies a different outcome for those who don’t believe.

 But read on, for in the next verse Jesus states that, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Full stop.
Moreover, the “judgment” to come is not punishment but simply the crisis that befalls those who will not come out of the darkness for fear of the light. It is not judgment as punishment, but judgment as crisis, as tragedy, as loss. God comes in love to redeem such loss, turn such tragedy into victory, and demonstrate true power through sheer vulnerability and sacrifice.

Which is the first reason we might not name this as our favourite verse if we gave it any real thought, as our world – and quite often our lives – operate according to the more traditional belief that security comes not through vulnerability and sacrifice but through power and might.

Oh, we probably don’t go around wearing t-shirts that say, “might makes right,” but we live according to such logic regularly. For we live in a world that seeks security not only through power but also through wealth and consumption, and we are taught from a very early age to avoid true vulnerability – and the truly vulnerable – at all costs. So, sacrifice? Sure, when we can afford to. Love our enemies? Maybe if everything else is taken care of first. Vulnerability? Only if there is no other choice.

The kind of self-sacrificing love Jesus offers is frightening to such a world. No wonder some run and hide, as it requires us to trust nothing other than God. And most of us find it impossible to embrace Jesus’ example…except when we ourselves have been brought low by illness, or loss, or a broken relationship, or disappointed hopes or some other way by which the world taught us that no matter how hard we try, no matter what position we may achieve, no matter how much money we may save, yet we cannot secure our destiny or save our lives. Only God can do that. Only love can do that. And it’s frightening to be so utterly dependent on God.

But there is a second reason this may not be our favourite verse as well, and that’s because of the claim it makes on us. Notice that God doesn’t ask our permission first before sending Jesus to die for us. That may seem like an odd detail to point out. But think of the claim a person – any person – has on us once they’ve saved our life, let alone died doing it. In the face of such love, such sacrifice, we must surrender all our claims.

David Lose reflects on the truly offensive nature of God’s grace, suggesting that we might add four words to the end of our service of baptism, saying, “Child of God, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…like it or not.” He tells of a friend sharing a bedtime encounter he’d had with his then six-year-old son. Upset that his father was putting him to bed earlier than he wanted to go, Benjamin said, “Daddy, I hate you.” Benjamin’s father ... replied, “Ben, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I love you.” Benjamin’s response to such gracious words surprised his dad: “Don’t say that!” “I’m sorry Benjamin, but it’s true. I love you.” “Don’t,” his son protested, “Don’t say that again!” At which point Ben’s father said, “Benjamin, I love you…like it or not!”

Why was Benjamin protesting his father’s love? Because he realized he could not control his father’s love and twist it to his advantage. Indeed, in the face of such love there is no bargaining and, ultimately, no control whatsoever. If his dad had said that if he ate all his vegetables he could stay up or agreed that Ben could stay up later this night if he went to bed earlier the next, then Benjamin would have been a player, he would have exercised some measure of control over the situation and, indeed, over his dad. But in the face of unconditional love, we are powerless. Yes, perhaps we can choose to accept it or not, perhaps we can run away from it, but we cannot influence it, manipulate it, or control it. In the face of this kind of love, we are powerless. And only when we’ve died to all our delusions of being in control do we realize that such loss of perceived freedom and power is actually life.

God’s love, you see, is tenacious. And so, God’s love will continue to chase after us, seeking to hold onto us and redeem us all the days of our lives, whether we like it or not.

So maybe this is a text, if we took it more seriously, that might terrify us in how it renders us powerless in a world literally hell-bent on accumulating and exercising power. Then again, maybe as we remember God’s tenacious love we might also realize that, precisely because this is the one relationship in our lives over which we have no power, it is also the one relationship we cannot screw up. Because God created it, God maintains it, and God will bring it to a good end, all through the power of God’s vulnerable, sacrificial, and ever so tenacious love.

Who is Jesus to me? The man and the Christ are not separate but the same. In a strange way that tells me that I and the Christ are also the same. Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

John’s framework gives me some markers by which I can discern what this looks like.
My questing inner Greek is constantly challenged to open my eyes to see Jesus, to lean my ear to the wind to discern where the birthing Spirit is coming from.

I am being called to leave the crumbling structures of tradition, rules, regulations and expectations and security that would have me condemning what and who I do not understand in order to allow the Christ, the Word, the Boundless Love that is being birthed in me to come to the fore and take control.

My inner Greek, the earnest seeker, is ever being called to the teaching and healing of human dilemma in such a way to build the vision of shalom that honours the purposes of the Creator, the Word, the Christ, the boundless Love!