Candle lighting
We light this candle in the name of the Maker, who lit the world and breathed the breath of life for us.
We light this candle in the name of the Son, who saved the world and stretched out his hand to us.
We light this candle in the name of the Spirit, who encompasses the world and blesses our souls with yearning.
Opening words
God who is love,
whenever we encounter wisdom that rings deep and true in our soul, we know there is your love;
whenever we encounter the gentle grace of compassion we see that you are present;
whenever – and however – we gather to offer our lives in worship, to return our awareness to your presence and be renewed we recognise that you are in us and we are in you.
God who is love, in you we live and move and have our being, so again today, give us the grace to see and to know, to recognise and delight in your presence among us – for in meeting with each other we meet with you.
Amen
Scripture Reading
God with us, Emmanuel, as we listen for your word to us today, help us to be awake to your presence, and open to your grace.
As we listen and as we follow in your way, may your Spirit breathe in us and may your living Word be revealed in our lives. Amen.
You can listen to the gospel reading in the audio clip below that.
Reflection
The audio is here.
Scroll down to find questions for reflection in green and prayers
The words we hear from Jesus in this week’s short passage from the gospel according to John follow on directly from the reading last week. Their context has not changed – Jesus and the disciples sit around the table with the remnants of the Passover meal and soon they will move from there to the garden.
In John’s telling of this part of the story, Jesus has a lot to teach the disciples still and this final sermon is packed with sayings and images that we could spend several weeks exploring and sinking into. In fact, there is a richness here that needs a lifetime to journey with. The lectionary readings for these 40 days after Easter all illustrate and demonstrate in some way what it means to follow Jesus the Christ. Each week we have had a glimpse of what it looks like and sounds like to receive the Holy Spirit and to cooperate with the transforming fire as the indwelling Spirit is doing the work of the gospel in the depths of our being.
In the gospel readings, we’ve heard the stories of Jesus’ appearances to the disciples. We’ve heard some of the teaching and healing conversations he had with them and in this Last Supper discourse we’ve been given the image of Jesus the Christ as the good shepherd and heard a repeated emphasis on the communion of Father, Son and the disciples through the Holy Spirit.
There is a lot to take in, and although it seems that the church calendar will move us on without much time to really chew over what is being offered to us here, we can tuck away all of these teachings into our kete so we can keep them in our awareness and let them form us and feed us as we move on to Pentecost and the vast stretch of ordinary time beyond. This ordinary time, which starts at the beginning of June is looking like it might be extra ordinary for us, because it may be that we will be allowed to gather together again in person and face to face. So, uppermost in our minds – well, at least in my mind – is wondering what that return might look like. What will be the new normal we are hearing so much about?
The reading today offers us some guidelines for our thinking and reflecting on that. Here Jesus tells the disciples that he is going away but that he will not leave them as orphans. I’m sure it would have made no sense to them when they heard this, and these words of comfort obviously didn’t land well in the days following the crucifixion when the disciples locked themselves in a room and jumped like rabbits at every loud noise. Perhaps they were recalled with a greater sense of comfort later, maybe even as they waited in uncertainty after the ascension when the post resurrection Jesus, who had been appearing among the disciples and disappearing, was lifted up and carried into heaven leaving his disciples once more.I wonder if they felt abandoned and like orphans or just ever so slightly hopeful, even if they weren’t sure what they were waiting and hoping for? I imagine that no amount of comforting words beforehand would have eased the sense of loss the disciples felt either when they watched Jesus being arrested and taken away to be crucified, or when they watched him disappear from sight for the last time. It must have felt devastating and disorientating and each time I expect that there would have been a sense that no one really had any idea how the rest of their lives were going to go.
There is no return to ‘normal’ after something like that- we are changed by loss and we can only go forward towards a new way of being together. And with the coming of the Holy Spirit they began to go out in public one more to preach and teach and heal just as Jesus had done.
This was now their new normal.
So doubtless, the loss at the ascension would have felt very different from the last time that Jesus left – when he died on the cross, there really wasn’t any hope that life might go on at all. It is hard to argue with the finality of death unless, that is, you have a totally different perspective on life. Which I think is, at least in part, what Jesus is trying to explain to the disciples and also to us in his last supper discourse.There is a different perspective, a different way to understand and perceive and participate in life and at its core, this difference is about connection and communion. It is about recognising that you are not an individual, separate and isolated, but you are part of a great whole; you are surrounded by and integral to a great web of interconnections; you are a thread woven into the very fabric of the universe; you are the branches in the vine – you (all, inclusively) are in Christ and Christ is in us all, inclusively. This is the saving, reconciling, healing, restoring, renewing and redeeming life which Jesus embodies throughout his life.
This is the Life that cannot die because it incorporates death into the very process of restoring, renewing, healing and redeeming all that is.
Most of us take a lifetime to unpack this, to let it sink into the depths of our being because it is so counter to the way we understand so many things. It is counter to the way we understand our selves – we think we are separate individuals who can make connections we want and ignore the connections we don’t like. We think we can make decisions based on what works for us without reference to or consequence for the whole. It is also counter to the way we understand the world – we think we humans are separate from the rest of creation and can thoughtlessly use it or abuse it without any negative consequences for ourselves. It is counter to the way we understand community – we think we can join, or not. We think we can exclude and have in groups and out groups – us and them/saved and lost. And we think we can make community serve us, rather than recognising that we need each other to be wholly ourselves and that we flourish best when we serve the whole. And it is counter to the very way we understand life itself – we think life is bound by time, has a start point and an end point and proceeds in a straight line from one to the other rather than a flow of Divine joy, pouring forth in continuous motion of emptying and refilling, receiving and giving, dying and rising.
Quite honestly, all of this inclusive communion and connection is utterly mind blowing stuff. As I say this, or as you read it, it ought to leave you feeling like you cannot get your head around it…because you can’t! Of course you can’t! This is the unfathomable love of God, the immensity of grace, the unexplainable mystery of Love which loves us into being and sustains us in being and which asks only this of us: to return like for like – love for love.
If you love me…Jesus said. If you love, you will keep the command to love. Love received generates love to offer. Our short gospel passage is full of verbs telling us how love is made manifest in us and through us – this is actually a better translation of that last verse where the NRSV opts for ‘those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them’.
The closer translation is ‘I will manifest myself to them. ‘In Jesus the Christ, Love is made manifest – which means love is made clear or obvious, and also means love is shown or demonstrated by action or appearance.
So in as much as we love, Christ is revealed in us and through us. That’s it. That in a nutshell is the whole journey of faith and the whole mission of the church. The witness of the church is to be the community of people who are embodying Christ by loving. This is the new normal we are always being called into. We – you and I together – continue the mystery of the incarnation by embodying the life and love of God. We are called to live in this love and to nurture all and any signs of this love wherever we find it.
So as we contemplate the return to our ‘normal’ life we have an opportunity to look carefully at how we were living and what we were doing. We have an opportunity to choose the counter cultural perspective of communion and connection as the ground of our being and to allow whatever we do to flow out of love, service, forgiveness and generosity.
Can this be our new normal? Can it be yours?
What will change if you look for the positive flow and put your energy there?
Where might resistance, coolness, judgement or fear fall away if you choose to see and nurture communion and connection?
I wonder what might become unimportant to you?
Or what might you see differently?
We have time to treasure these questions and to be ready to extend ourselves differently when we gather again so that whatever we do is flowing from the love we have received and becomes the love we have to give.
Questions for conversation or to journey with
What we do flows from who we are… and we become what we love….so what does that mean for you?
The gospel passage is full of verbs – love, reveal, ask, be in, know, see, keep…which ones speak to you?
What has been an experience of communion and connection that has supported and sustained you through lockdown?
When have you been most conscious of losing a sense of connection and communion and what contributed to that?
Love, service, forgiveness, generosity – which one of these is a starting place for you to extend yourself differently? What might that look like in your life? What might that look like at St. Peter’s?
Prayers of the people
God of surprises you call us
from the narrowness of our traditions to new ways of being church,
from the captivities of our culture to creative witness for justice,
from the smallness of our horizons to the vastness of your vision.
Clear the way in us, your people, that we might call others to freedom
and renewed faith.
Silence for the prayers of your heart.
Jesus, wounded healer you call us
from preoccupation with our own histories and hurts to daily tasks of peacemaking,
from privilege to pilgrimage,
from insularity to inclusive community.
Clear the way in us, your people, that we might call others to wholeness and integrity.
Silence for the prayers of your heart.
Holy, transforming, Spirit you call us
from fear to faithfulness, from clutter to clarity, from a desire to control to deeper trust, from the refusal to love to a readiness to risk.
Clear the way in us, your people, that we might all know the beauty and power and danger of the gospel.
Silence for the prayers of your heart.
God of all peoples, all times and places, you call us to be your dwelling place, to be your home in the world, and your partners in forgiveness and reconciliation. Clear the way in us, your people, that we might grow into the spacious, gracious and abundant life you offer us in each moment of our living and moving and being.
AMEN
(adapted from a prayer by Joan Puls and Gwen Cashmore)
Blessing
May God bless you.
May you be holy and strong and creative
May you know the joy of Jesus
May you dance in the wildness of the Spirit’s breath.
May God’s glory continue to grow in you
gently, powerfully, tenderly.
May you be cradled in warmth and healing
May you be held in God’s wisdom and love.
