I preached today at Seabury. I know, I usually let readers in on the preparation phases, but I just didn’t have the time or temper to process my thoughts in public last night. I’m preaching Sunday, too, so maybe I’ll work on that one in full view.
Anyway, I’ll post the sermon in the “read more” portion of the entry. I was thinking of Marek J as I wrote it; I could not end with a direct quotation from the mastermind of Kombinat!, but I came as close as I thought decorum, piety, and rhetoric would permit me.
Anderson Chapel of St. John the Divine, Seabury-Western
Daniel 3:14-20, 24-28/John 8:31-42
March 31, 2004
If you remain in my word, you are truly my disciples.
Jesus doesn’t teach us, in John’s Gospel, exactly how we might come into his word. Perhaps it’s when we are baptized; perhaps when we are born from above, not by the will of flesh or the will of men, but of the will of God; perhaps when hear and believe, or when first we testify that Jesus is the Son of God. But however, whenever we enter into Jesus’ word, he urges us to stay with him, to come along and see; he teaches us not simply to cling to a single spasmodic moment of conversion, but truly to show ourselves to be his disciples by remaining, abiding in his word. If we have begun to pronounce Jesus’ word with our lips, from deep in our heart, if we dare to express Jesus’ word with our lives — we need to speak the whole word, not just a mumbling first syllable. We need to abide, not merely to visit Jesus, as though discipleship were a theological theme park. Discipleship isn’t a Motel 6, an overnight refuge for busy spiritual travelers who have more important things to do the next day; discipleship is our home, where we remain.
And you will know the truth. . . .
Oddly, John offers us the opportunity to recognize the truth, but not as the condition for taking up Jesus’ way. Instead, Jesus promises the truth to us as the effect of our faithfulness; his followers believed, in order that they might understand the truth. Just as sometimes we don’t know what we’re saying until we’ve blurted it out — so when the Spirit moves us to broach the word of Jesus, when unbidden faith comes to faith-impaired tongues, there’s nothing to do but spill out the words whose truth we can’t yet claim. We try on faith, we venture a word or two in this strange new language, and after we’ve begun conversing in faith, acting on faith, after our lives have acquired the accent that comes with this heavenly dialect, then we can tell that we’ve been grasped by the truth, that truth has begun thinking through us, and — when we open ourselves to the possibility — the truth pours itself out in our words and actions.
As we continue in the word that Jesus taught us, loving one another as he loved us, yielding rather than coercing, enduring what we must and protecting what we can — as we continue in the word, and recognize the truth, the truth may break down, break apart, break out of all the encrusted certainties that support and confine us. We will have to give up the illusion of control to which we mortals so desperately cling, but that’s how it is with the truth. We can’t control the truth, we can’t dictate terms to the truth, and if we try to use the truth to merely temporal purposes, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we relinquish control, if we turn the truth loose to blow where it will, if we take those first hesitant steps out into the brilliant openness of the light that shines from the word — we will know the truth.
And the truth will make you free.
But it won’t be easy.
Amen
Posted by AKMA at March 31, 2004 11:50 PM | TrackBack