It's Madness to Hold Onto the Method

The Holy Gospel According to St. John the 14th Chapter

”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him,

because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus was trying to tell the Disciples, among other things, that First:  Things were going to dramatically change (this talk was at the Last Supper) and Second:  That things were not going to be any different than they’ve always been.  For some reason, this left the disciples a  bit confused!   

Perhaps thinking about it like this may help... About 15 years ago my kids created messes faster than I could clean them, they fought going to sleep and a huge part of my world revolved around the triumphs and tragedies of “the potty.”  Now, they clean the house when I send a text message (and a minor threat), they put themselves to bed and I haven’t thought about "the potty" in years.  So, EVERYTHING has changed!!!  And at the same time, nothing’s changed.  They always have been, and always will be, my kids!  My unconditional love for them is the unchangeable frame which surrounds the millions of changes that have and will happen in our lives together.  

This is what Jesus was trying to get the Disciples to understand.  God’s unconditional, unlimited love for all of creation was not changing.  However, inside that unchangeable frame, the METHOD God was using to call us to live into that love WAS changing... Jesus had been that METHOD for the disciples for three years, but now he was leaving them and something new called the “Advocate” was coming.  That was going to be a big change, but God’s love... that would, as always, remain constant... the disciples would not be left orphaned!    

It was a huge change for the disciples, but not the first time God had changed the METHOD.  The METHOD God first used to share God’s love for creation was simply loving creation into being.  As the world changed, God changed the METHOD, making covenants, giving the Torah and telling them He would be their God and they would be His people.  When the world changed again, God changed the METHOD again using prophets and kings and eventually sending Jesus.  Now, in the story from today, the world was changing yet again and so God would yet again show creation God's unlimited, radical love in a brand new way... through the Holy Spirit.  God's love is constant, but how it gets to us... through creation, covenant, prophets, kings, Savior and Spirit... that does indeed change.  What makes this even more challenging is that inside those big changes, smaller changes happen too.

All of that change is hard for disciples in any time to process and I think sometimes disciples today, like the disciples back then, try to manage all that change by tying ourselves to a METHOD with which we've grown comfortable.  The disciples back then tied themselves to the person Jesus and didn't understand that the way Jesus would be present in their lives could or should change.  The METHOD, after all, is often easier to see and understand and so we convince ourselves that the METHOD shouldn't change.  So, when it does, it's jarring. 

When I was in Colorado, a pastor friend and I started a Bible study called “Bibles and Brews.”  We met in a small craft brewery and did Bible studies and book studies with about a dozen people.  We shared a meal, spent time checking in on each other, prayed for each other, read and talked about scripture.  Almost all the people who came to that had been hurt by the church in some way or another and many of them, in spite of really growing in their faith at Bibles and Brews, told me they would still NEVER set foot in a church again.  While part of me understood that, since my family and I had also been horribly hurt by church, I also felt that as a failure... my failure... that I couldn’t get them “back to church”.  

Do you see the mistake I made there in Colorado?  I was so focused on getting these people back into “church” as in the building with a steeple, hymns, an organ, vestments and pews that I missed completely that right under my nose, God had changed the METHOD!  God knew those folks simply couldn’t receive God’s love through the old METHOD of a “church” because of how they had been hurt, so God sent that love through a new METHOD... a brewery!  In hindsight it seems obvious now but it took me about a year after I left Colorado to figure out what God had been doing there. 

In today’s lesson, the world changed.  God did something new and the disciples missed it, even with Jesus sitting at the table telling them exactly what it was God was doing!  They missed it!  They missed it because they were tied more to the METHOD, more tied to Jesus as a person, than they were to God’s unchanging love.  In Colorado the world changed.  God did something new and THIS disciple missed it!  Right there in a brewery in Colorado God did something new and I missed it!  I missed it because I was more tied to the METHOD, called “church”, than I was to God’s infinite and ever present love.  

The world’s still changing you know.  Right here in Augusta, Maine... the world is changing.  A look at our history and a look around our city and it’s easy to see that the world is changing.  And since the world is changing it seems very likely, given God's track record, that God is doing something new right here, all around us, right now, right under our noses.  The question for us then becomes what are we going to do about it?

The disciples, when they were faced with their changing world, locked themselves in a room and hid from the world.  That’s certainly an option but to live faithfully we need to honestly ask ourselves what it is that we are most tied to.  Is it God’s infinite, unchanging love OR are we more tied to a familiar METHOD?  If we are tied to a METHOD like the disciples were at the Last Supper or like I was in Colorado, then there's a really good chance we too might be missing something important God is doing right under our noses!  

God’s love is what is changeless.  Jesus told the disciples that since they loved him, they should follow his commandments.  His commandments were (and are) to love God and love our neighbors... to tie ourselves in all we do to God’s unchanging love.  But tying ourselves to God’s love also means being ready and willing to let go of even the METHODS we’ve grown most comfortable with over the years, so that God’s unchanging love can be free to reach into places and hearts where it hasn’t been able to reach before.  

May we have the courage to let go of even our most familiar METHODS when God has moved on to something new.  May we accompany God's unchanging love to the people and places God intends for it to go and may we find that courage by living each day more deeply ourselves into God’s unchanging love for all of creation.  Amen.