FINDINGS II
Easter
VI - C - May 9, 2010
Acts 16: 9-15; Revelation 21: 10, 22-
22:5; John 14: 23-29
 By Harry T. Cook
5/3/10
RUBRIC
In mid-June of 2007, I enjoyed what would be the last of
many lunches over many years with a rabbi named Sherwin T. Wine. We made big
plans at that lunch for the expansion of a lecture series he had established
some years before and into which he had subsequently invited me as a
co-lecturer.
If I was not a disciple of Sherwin Wine, I was at the very least
a fellow traveler -- and we were fellow travelers upon a path not ordinarily
taken by rabbis and priests, i.e. one of agnostic secular humanism. As we stood
that day in the parking lot next to our adjacent cars, we shook hands as we
always did when parting and he said, "I'll be back in August. Don't worry about
the series. We'll work it out together." Then he was gone. He did not come
back. He was killed instantly in a car accident in Morocco a month later.
But his promise to come back was fulfilled, as all that he
had left behind -- an intellectual legacy that had his name on the lips of
thousands across at least three continents -- has lived on. I and others have
continued his work of challenging people to think in new ways, providing timely
lectures covering a broad range of interests and, as he once said, "discouraging
mental laziness."
None of us who follows in his train pretends to be Sherwin
Wine, no more than he would pretend to be anyone of us had he survived and we
had died. But the ding-an-sich, as Immanuel Kant would say, lives on after
Sherwin, and will continue so to do if we, his one-time fellow travelers, keep
on keeping on. The "thing-in-itself" is what matters. Wine and I and those who
walk with us have been, are and will be its stewards.
That is as close as I can come to a personal appreciation of
the gospel lection for this coming Sunday, Easter VI - C.
WORKSHOP
This passage (John 14: 23-29) is a part of what is called
Jesus' "Final Discourse," as if what J. Dominic Crossan called a "Mediterranean
Jewish Peasant" or John P. Meier called "a marginal Jew" went around making
discourses. What we hear in this passage is a late first century C.E. rumination
of an intellectual leader in a community of Jesus Jews trying to help that
community recall the personage who called them into being in the first place.
That one was probably the itinerant sage (again, Crossan) whose radical wisdom
brought down upon him the wrath of an oppressive army of occupation working
assiduously to keep the natives from getting restless. Meanwhile, as the
decades rolled on, that wisdom became a glowing coal of comfort and inspiration
to a beleaguered people who were evidently protective of their identity.
There is the nettle, I think, in that question John has Judas
(not Iscariot) put to Jesus in 14: 22, something to the effect of "How is it
you will disclose yourself to us and not to the world?" The operative Greek
terms here are "emphanizein" (exhibit) and "kosmos" -- the same "kosmos" that
cannot receive the Spirit of truth in 14:17. What has taken place that causes John's Jesus to exhibit his
true self (or identity) to his followers and not to others on the outside? The
answer is somewhat convoluted and seems to be, if not an outright evasion, a
puzzle. If one remembers that the answer, such as it is, is a response to the
question regarding sight -- that is, how the disciples "see" Jesus when the
world cannot -- one can then take the reply John gives Jesus to make (13:23-24)
as explaining why. It is because the disciples demonstrate their love (agape)
for him by keeping his word (or commandments), and in so doing are enabled
thereby to appreciate his nature and real identity. Conversely, those who do
not love Jesus by keeping his commandments cannot ipso facto see him as he is. And
lest anyone misunderstand, John means for his audience to believe that this
word or these commandments have their origin in his origin (cf. John 1:1-14).
Jesus is depicted as telling his followers that he is
vouchsafing all this to them "while I am still with you" (14:25). Imagine the
difficulty the leaders of late first century Jesus Judaism experienced in
holding the focus of their communities on Jesus who had been dead for nearly 60
years. The "still with you" phrase may well proceed out of that ecclesiological
effort, as may the budding doctrine of the Holy Spirit which becomes explicit
in 14:26.
The crucifixion was death in no uncertain terms, and of that
fact few would have been doubtful, certainly not Thomas. The inexplicable
events, surely subjective in nature, testified to by some early Christians
(Paul at I Corinthians 15: 5-8) created another problem. Even if "500 brethren
at one time" saw a risen Jesus, those who didn't would always be doubtful as
John depicts Thomas as being (20:24-25). Hence a presence of some kind must be
established.
The genius of the fourth gospel is to be seen in 14: 25-26
as the connection is made among the Jesus who lived in Palestine circa 6 B.C.E.
and 33 C.E., the Jesus some said they encountered in unspecified resurrection
forms, and finally the evanescent spirit whom John's Jesus is made to call the
"paraklātos," one who is "called along side of" a person to give aid, comfort
and support -- the very things those late first century C.E. communities would
have needed. Most translators now render "paraklātos" as "advocate" in the
sense that an attorney is one's advocate standing with him before the bar of
justice.
John's Jesus says the Father will send this advocate "in my
name." "Name" in such biblical
contexts as this generally means "nature," so that the coming advocate will be
essentially the non-corporeal Jesus. The non-fleshly effect will be the same.
Thus it can be said that "Jesus lives." The implication here is one of emergent
disclosure, of a dynamic, transforming situation in which it will be necessary
over time for the disciples and their communities to learn new things, new
strategies, new ways of coping with the exigencies of being an opposed and
often persecuted minority.
That established, John's Jesus confers the
gift of peace upon his disciples (14:27), not the causal shalom of an ordinary
greeting, but Shalom with an upper-case S. This shalom is Jesus' bequest, his
estate distributed to them. His successors will need all the shalom they can
get to speed them on their way through the troubles their communities would
encounter toward the end of the first century. Jesus will be going, but he will
not be gone. He did go, but through the spirit-advocate he would be coming
back, and was, in fact, never really gone at all.
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
On July 21, 2007, I found myself, as others must have found
themselves, acknowledging that our friend and colleague with whom we had had so
much to do and had planned to do so much more would not be coming back. And yet
his presence remained with us, first as one we were fiercely reluctant to let
go. Then, as sanity reversed its outward flow, Sherwin Wine became in his
absence what he had been in his presence: a challenging, demanding, driving,
purposive force that animated us and that empowered us to pick up where he had
left off. No, none of us would ever be Sherwin, just as Sherwin could never have
been one of us. As incandescent as the personality was, as personalities may be,
it is not, in the end, about personality. It is about the ding-an-sich - the
thing-in-itself.
That is very truth for the communities which claim as their
touchstone of purpose the ethical wisdom of Jesus and of his predecessors, the
prophets. It is the wisdom nurtured by memory and commitment that matters.
The church is shortly to celebrate a feast known as
"Pentecost," the focus of which, however, has nothing to do with "fifty days"
or a "feast of weeks." It has to do with the realization among members of the
earliest communities of Jesus Jews that Pontius Pilate, Herod and the Romans
did not have the last word where that Mediterranean Jewish peasant was
concerned. His witness stood and would stand. It was the thing-in-itself,
impervious to all but human forgetfulness and neglect. And therein is the
homiletic initiative for this coming Sunday. Preach it.
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