John 14: 23-29 (links validated 4/25/22)

I recall another story about newly retired man who died suddenly in his early 60s. The family who lived next door had a child in kindergarten. Suddenly the mom of the little girl realized she was not in the yard where she was expected to be at about the same time as she saw her coming from next door. She was very relieved but worried that she had bothered the older neighbour in a time of grief. “Why did you go over to see Gramma Sue”, which was what her children had called the neighbour? “Well - you told me that Poppy Bob had died so I went to see her” “What could you say to her. The grownups don’t know what to say.” “Oh, I just gave her a hug and sat on her knee and cried with her. We both will miss Poppy Bob”. Really, what better thing could someone of any age do in such a situation?

I opened the book Peace is Every Step by the late Thich Nhat Hanh with a foreword by the Dalai Lama. It begins: “Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way…. And I believe that love, compassion, and altruism are the fundamental basis for peace. Once these qualities are developed within an individual, he or she is then able to create an atmosphere of peace and harmony. This atmosphere can be expanded and extended from the individual to [their] family, from the family to the community and eventually to the whole world”...

But just like you, just like our fellow humans all over the globe, we have been traumatized and traumatized people don’t find it easy to discover the peace they long for. How can we? No amount of platitudes or pretty words or charming sentiments or skillful articulations or even powerful sermons, can heal the wounds of the traumatized. I did learn something new about trauma from a festival workshop lead by a preacher I admire. From Nadia Boltz-Weber I learned the phrase “complex trauma”. Complex trauma describes the condition of those who have been exposed to multiple traumatic events over the course of a long period of time. For more than two years now, we have all been exposed to multiple traumatic events which have allowed us precious little peace in the midst of our world’s turmoil. People suffering from complex trauma can experience what some call “emotional flashback” in which you have intense feelings that you original felt during the initial trauma, such as fear, sadness, despair, guilt or shame...

(Includes lots of Greek exegesis!!)

always good insights!

(always excellent exegesis)

Imagine the next time you are going to your local CVS, Rite Aid, or Pharmacy aisle at your local supermarket… and as you’re picking up Advil for headaches; Zantac for heart burn; Claratin for your allergies (perhaps I’m revealing too much here… anyway) you make your way down the aisle you are able to pick up a drug to cure fear. That’s not a premise to some science fiction story – but something that appears to be a not so far off reality. The New York Times not too long ago reported that scientists are working on a drug that will not simply numb you or sedate you when you are anxious about something to alleviate those symptoms – but promises to erase the fear that is tied to specific memories or things...

As C.S. Lewis once said, we too often substitute religion for God. But that is like substituting navigation for arrival or wooing for marriage. Getting to your destination is wonderful but the trip itself is also valuable. Courtship, dating, the thrill of romance you experience when you are wooing someone to marry you is thrilling, unique, scintillating. But the journey toward a whole, wholesome, and goodly marriage continues long after courtship ends...

It reminds me of a story I heard years ago about a little girl who went to Vacation Bible School. Her favourite thing about Vacation Bible School was the singing, and her favourite song was, “I’ve God the Joy in My Heart”. It’s the kind of song that can very easily become an ear worm. “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, Down in my heart (where?) Down in my heart (where?) Down in my heart Down in my heart to stay.” But for this little girl it was the second verses that stuck with her. When she got home her parents were surprised and amused to hear their little girl, sing the second verse with such gusto. Do you remember the second verse? “I’ve got the peace that passes understanding down in my heart, (where?”) Down in my heart (where?) Down in my heart Down in my heart to stay.” Except this little girl kept singing over and over again: “I’ve got a piece of pastor’s understanding down in my heart, down in my heart (where)”...

“Game of Thrones” is a terrific drama, played out in fictional history. Christianity’s core claim is that history itself is a great drama, an epic struggle between light and darkness. Yet the core of the Christian faith is that good and evil are at war and have been for as far back as memory goes. Scholars call this “salvation history,” but ordinary people know it as the ongoing, daily struggle between right and wrong, one that surges around and within every human being. Moreover, just as in “Game of Thrones,” in the real world it is hard to know who is what and which side is winning. Good and evil are entwined in a violent vortex. The sole constant is that the powerful continue to oppress the weak...

John 14.23-29 is part of what is usually called Jesus' "Farewell Discourse." He says to the disciples that though he himself is leaving, he is leaving an advocate with them. An advocate who will teach them and remind them. Jesus also promises to leave "peace" with them. He says it may not look like the world imagines peace to be, but it will, indeed, be peace. How would you illustrate any of that - what "the advocate" looks or feels like, what peace (either the world's or Jesus') looks like? The illustration below, titled "In the Dale" includes the text of John 14:27: "My peace I give you..." In this work, "peace" seems associated with land and house, with calm waters, with neutral colors...

The New York Times last January reported that scientists are working on a drug that will not simply numb you or sedate you when you are anxious about something to alleviate those symptoms - but promises to erase the fear that are tied to specific memories. Using a test group of arachnaphobes to illustrate how this works - they had three groups of people who were petrified of spiders. Group One was shown a tarantula and then given the drug; Group Two was shown the spider and given a sugar pill or a placebo; and Group Three was given the drug first and then shown the tranatula.

Howard Thurman has told about the experience he had as a child with Haley's Comet. He was just a tiny boy at the time. The coming of the comet had caused great excitement, and no little anxiety. People were selling and buying "comet pills" that would protect you from disaster if the comet's tail swept the earth..." and other illustrations

In the week we read this, the English speaking world will mark the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, and do so in part by acknowledging how his turns of phrase have become commonplace in our mouths. Even in the mouths of those who never read books, let alone plays, let alone Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare has shaped the language we speak, has formed our thinking and our values. Here are just a few phrases Shakespeare coined that pop out of our mouths:

The resurrected Christ appears to us in the flesh in those persons who are arsonists of the heart, who truly make our hears burn within us. The arsonist of the heart invariably looks like someone we know, an ordinary somebody, like the resurrected Christ in his appearances—a gardener, a cook, a stranger. It is interesting to speculate as to why the disciples so often didn’t recognize Christ after the resurrection. After all, he had only been dead for a day and a half when he first appeared. Yet Mary Magdala, who surely knew him well, took him for a gardener. Later, on the road and on the shore, his disciples took him to be a stranger, then a cook. Only in the breaking of the bread did they recognize him as the Christ.

("I don't know how many of you are familiar with a series of books called 'Where's Wally?' They show extremely complicated pictures of crowds of people doing lots of different things and the reader's job is to find where Wally is hiding in the picture. He can always be identified by his red and white bobble hat and football scarf, and because he always looks a bit of a Wally...")

("Pope Francis once said: 'The Holy Spirit annoys us. Because he moves us, he makes us journey, he pushes the Church to go forward. And we are like Peter at the Transfiguration: "Oh, how wonderful it is for us to be here, all together!" But let it not inconvenience us. We would like the Holy Spirit to doze off. We want to subdue the Holy Spirit. And that just will not work...")

("The 2001 novel Up in the Air by Walter Kirn was made into the 2009 movie with George Clooney. It's the story of a businessman named Ryan who lives his life in what's called "Airworld." He's either in airports or in hotels or in the air on a plane and his greatest ambition is to get a million frequent flyer miles. He's from no place in particular, has no commitments...")

There was once an old Rabbi who lived on the edge of a dark and gloomy forest. The forest may have been dark and gloomy, but it was also known far and wide as a sacred forest. And in the sacred forest there was a sacred tree. And beneath the sacred tree were written the sacred words in a sacred language that only the Rabbi could read. And whenever his flock was in grave danger, the people would go to the Rabbi and the Rabbi would go to the sacred forest, find the sacred tree and read the sacred words, and a miracle would happen and the people in the village would all be saved. Now when the old Rabbi died, a new Rabbi took his place...

("As C.S. Lewis once said, we too often substitute religion for God. But that is like substituting navigation for arrival or wooing for marriage. Getting to your destination is wonderful but the trip itself is also valuable. Courtship, dating, the thrill of romance you experience when you are wooing someone to marry you is thrilling, unique, scintillating...")

"The words of this gospel remind me of the young girl Paloma, in the French novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Paloma is keenly intelligent, and also cynical and world-weary. She writes in her Journal of Profound Thoughts that "the world, in its present state, is no place for princesses" and so she's going to end it all on her 13th birthday with a carefully planned, dramatically executed suicide..."

("Prescient as genius is, Marcel Proust offers a wonderful example of this in The Guermantes Way. A young man receives a telephone call from his beloved, and somewhat suffocating, Grandmother. 'I spoke, and after a few seconds of silence, suddenly I heard that voice which I mistakenly thought I knew so well; for always until then, every time that my grandmother had talked to me, I had been accustomed to follow what she said on the open score of her face...")

(includes several quotes)

("As children we believe in fairy tales and nurse the naive idea that there is somewhere a divine magic which can, and will in the end, swish away all evil, injustice, and pain and make a happy ending to everything. The older we get, the harder it is for us to believe that...")

("Jeremy Rifkin in a book called the Emerging Order put forward the belief that the consumer mentality that we have been so influenced by, based on the illusion of infinite supplies of energy and raw materials, could no longer sustain us. He called for a second reformation...")

("Whatever happened to the simple cup of coffee? Now, the person who hands you your cup is a barista — and you've got a lot of choices to make. Regular or espresso, latte or macchiato, mocha or cappuchino: the list goes on. But here's a coffee you won't find in those barista joints. It's called caffè sospeso. Caffè sospeso is translated suspended coffee...")

Bishop Desmond Tutu told the story of a black woman who had lost both a husband and a son at the hands of hand of hateful followers of Apartheid in South Africa. In the new era that followed, there was a time of reconciliation in which the perpetators of crimes were brought to justice. The man responsible for killing this woman's husband and son stood before the court, which asked the woman what she wanted in this case...

("I have in my hands two books - a dictionary and a novel. Which one do you prefer? A dictionary has good words; in fact, it has all the good words. Somebody once defined a dictionary as a book with an excellent vocabulary, but whose plot leaves something to be desired...")

("A few years ago some Christian advertising executives tried to redress the balance. They paid for huge billboards that proclaimed the message, 'Christians make better lovers!' Someone wrote on one of the billboards, 'If Christians do make better lovers, you won't know for sure till you've tried all he others!'...")

("It happened that a missionary priest was visiting his extensive parish, high in the Andes Mountains. The best way to reach certain parts of the parish was by horseback. Once, toward sunset, the priest got disoriented and could not find the way back to his base camp...")

("Last week, as Timothy McVeigh's scheduled execution drew closer, I had occasion to re-read part of St. Therese's autobiography. She first experienced her 'mission' to pray for souls when she read about a notorious murderer named Henri Pranzini. Like McVeigh, he seemed unrepentant as the day of death neared...")

("Naya was born in Washington, D.C. two years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln there and lived well into her nineties. Like everybody else, she had her happy times and her sad times, her weaknesses and her strengths, her good luck and her bad luck, but what makes her so rare in my experience is that, no matter what happened to her, she seemed always to remain remarkably and invincibly herself...")

"Robert Fulghum says this about Mother's Day and the church. 'For 25 years, the second Sunday in May was trouble. Being the minister of a church, I was obliged in some way to address the subject of Mother's Day. It could not be avoided. I tried that..."

("In Africa young girls who consecrate themselves to God as nuns dress up as brides for a wedding and sing love songs to Jesus. A few years after such a religious ceremony, a young nun who had been having a rough time in her mission assignment comes back to the convent and asks the Mother Superior: 'Mother, is it really true that we are spouses of Christ.'...")

"I recall the story of a little girl who, when trains were popular transportation, was taking her first train ride with her parents. As night descended, the mother took the girl, who was clearly quite anxious, and placed her on the upper bunk of the sleeper. She told her little one that up there she would be nearer to God and that God would watch over her..."

"One time a Sunday School teacher was talking about the end of time - about Heaven and the Kingdom of God and the New Jerusalem. She told her class of youngsters about the 'crowns of glory' that await people who believe. 'Now tell me,' she said at the close of the lesson, 'Who will get the biggest crown?'..." and other illustrations

"It seems that one day an artist was commissioned by a wealthy man to paint something that would depict peace. After a great deal of thought, the artist painted a beautiful country scene. There were green fields with cows standing in them, birds were flying in the blue sky and a lovely little village lay in a distant valley..."

("Jerry was the kind of guy we all love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, 'If I were any better, I would be twins!' He was a unique manager, his career marked by the loyalty of several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant...")

("Home! What is a home? A home is a place of joy, security, comfort and love. For a child, home is a safe place; it’s the place where they grow and learn; it’s where they are loved and in return give love. Home is the place we like to be; the place we like to come ‘home’ to. It’s our resting place after a hard day. Home is the place where we live...")

("A plane landed after a long flight. The flight attendant explained that there was enough time for everyone to get off the aircraft and then reboard in 50 minutes. Everybody got off the plane except one gentleman. The pilot had noticed him as he walked by. He could tell that the man was blind because his guide dog lay quietly underneath the seat next to him...." and another illustration)

("I heard of two artists who were asked to illustrate peace. Each was assigned the task of depicting a peaceful scene on canvas. The first artist drew a beautiful picture of a countryside on a warm, spring day...")

("Once upon a time back in the last century there was a young woman from Ireland who had lost her parents and all her family. Some kind people wrote to their relatives in America and said we have this fourteen year old orphan here who is very bright and very pretty and very hard working...")

("Once upon a time there was a high school with very serious problems. The students were out of control and over the top. They smoked, they drank, they did drugs and all on the school campus. They hassled teachers, they shouted racial epithets at basketball games, they spread graffiti all over the school walls...")

There is that story about the police person who stopped a motorist. This police person had seen this motorist rage at another motorist, cut the person off, and offer the gesture to indicate that the other person was #1...

("Wayne Teasdale, writing in The Mystic Hours says, "The world is divided enough by religions, culture, languages, ethnicities, tribes and nations. Even more profound are divisions between the haves and have nots, the educated and the uneducated, those whose hearts are open and those whose hearts are closed...")

("Chuck Colson had worked for President Nixon years ago; he was in the Nixon administration; and he became a primary part of the Watergate scandal. Now, as a young man, God did not live in Chuck Colson. God didn’t live in Chuck Colson at all...")

"Back in 1872, just a few years after the American Civil War came to a close, Julia Ward Howe, a poet, suffragist, and social reformer, had a vision. Julia envisioned the establishment of a day to honour mothers — women who understood the cost of war and who attempted to bring the brutality and injustice of armed conflict to an end..."

The young boy woke up in the middle of the night. He had a nightmare and he was scared. He got out of bed and headed towards his parents’ room. The house was silent and dark. He became uneasy and scared. When he arrived at their room the bed was empty. Now, he was frightened and began to cry. He started to call out for them and run through the house. He was still running when he felt hands touch him from behind. For a moment, he felt absolute panic. Then he heard his mother's voice and he broke down in sobs. As she held him tight he told her he was scared because he couldn't find her. He thought he was alone. She told him that they had fallen asleep watching the television while sitting on the couch. They had been near him all along. He had nothing to fear...

("Dave Dravecky had been asked to speak at a church but he really did not want to do it. He still had not accepted the amputation of his left arm and the end of his major league career. 'I felt lousy that night,' he recalled. But he went anyway..." and other illustrations)

("There is a story told about Mohatma Ghandi, during a period of unrest between the Hindus and Muslims in India. A Muslim man had killed a Hindu man's son and, in a rage, the Hindu responded by killing the man. After a few weeks he came to see Ghandi, telling him, 'I can find no peace since this thing happened.'...")

("C.S. Lewis described in his own life a very similar experience on the death of his mother as he wrote in the Joyful Christian. 'With my mother's death, all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable disappeared from my life..." and other illustrations)

("On a cold winter evening a man suffered a heart attack. After being admitted to the hospital, he asked the nurse to call his daughter. He explained, 'You see, I live alone and she is the only family I have.' The nurse went to phone the daughter. The daughter was quite upset and shouted, 'You mustn't let him die! You see, Dad and I had a terrible argument almost a year ago..." and another illustration)

("One of the practices that I have found helpful in developing intimacy with God is what I found in a little book called the God of Surprises by Gerald Hughes. The practice is called A Review of Consciousness that he outlines is done in four steps and only takes fifteen or twenty minutes at the end of each day...")

("A retired couple was alarmed by the threat of nuclear war so they undertook a serious study of all the inhabited places on the globe. Their goal was to determine where in the world would be the place to be least likely affected by a nuclear war. A place of ultimate security...")

("A man was trying to read a serious book, but his little boy kept interrupting him. He would lean against his knees and say, 'Daddy, I love you.' The father would give him a pat and say rather absently, 'Yes, Son, I love you too,' and he would kind of give him a little push away so he could keep on reading...")

("Of course, some turn such bleak moments into payoffs of a bizarre order. All of us know the Home Alone movies in which McCauley Caulkin turned his character's uncertainty about the future into resounding victory over burglars who attack his home at Christmas when his parents and family have flown off to Paris, forgetting him-- leaving him behind...")

Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist, discovered this great truth in the midst of a Jewish concentration camp during WW II. While seeking to survive the horror of this imprisonment Frankl began observing his fellow prisoners in the hope of discovering what coping mechanism would help him endure this horrendous existence. What Frankl discovered was this... Those individuals who could not accept what was happening to them, who could not make their present suffering fit with their faith, who could not find it's meaning in their world view... they despaired, lost hope, and eventually gave up and died. But those individuals that could find a meaning from their faith, were then able to find hope for a future beyond their present suffering, and so could accept what they were enduring as a part of their existence, and they survived...

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(a response to the events of 9/11)

(a response to the events of 9/11)

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