C225 Easter 7

[00:00:04] Speaker A: You're listening to by the well, a lectionary based podcast for preachers recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people. [00:00:16] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Robyn Whitaker. [00:00:17] Speaker A: And I'm Fran Barber. [00:00:19] Speaker B: And we're in week seven of the Easter season, the last week before Pentecost. And today Fran and I are going to discuss John 17, 20, 26, Acts 16, 1634 and Revelation 22, really verses 12 to 21. But the lectionary gives you a whole lot of bits of that with a brief reference to Psalm 97. So, Fran, let's begin with John's Gospel. Where are we here? Because we've been jumping around a bit. [00:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah, so. So by week seven of Easter, people might be feeling a little weary of John's particular poetry and circularity in expression. We're in the farewell discourse. And this, it's quite an intimate section because having, having talked to the disciples, Jesus, I mean obviously about instructions and about what will happen and so on, he now turns to praying to the Father, as it says here, on their behalf. And there is something intimate and quite profound about the scene of them overhearing his prayer for them. And in a sense, right off the bat, maybe that's a particular line in a sermon that you might want to take around prayer and what it is to pray for one another and the overhearing of that and what. And the nature of community when that happens and how. That's a different type of community from a secular community if you're praying and so on. Yeah, exactly. So I will say I am attempting to preach on this. I say attempting because it is, it's quite a like incredibly concise, profound trinitarian theological statement, really the whole thing. So I, at the risk of, yeah. Revealing what I'm going to be doing, but what came to mind when I read this passage six times was Anacata Florence's great advice for preachers when. Well, I think she means anytime, but maybe particularly when you're just thinking how is this going to land in, you know, 2025 or. And she says to preach the verbs. So I then went and got all the verbs out of this and it is quite a profound experience. It's repetitive, but it's ask, believe, be, ah, be, may believe sent, given, be become, may know, sent, love, desire, given, known, well known, etc. You get the idea. And all of that at one level is abstract, but in another it isn't. It's about being and about, about to unity and it is about love and. [00:03:19] Speaker B: It'S, you Know, knowing and being known. [00:03:22] Speaker A: Knowing and being known. And it's. Yeah, like we could think up maybe off the bat here we could. What are some opposite verbs that it could say that would be. Send a completely different message, you know, so I offer that just as, as a way in for people. [00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think that's helpful. And I mean it. John's gospel doesn't have Jesus teaching them the Lord's Prayer. So this in John's Gospel is Jesus modeling prayer. That's one Think of what's going on here by, by overhearing. We're seeing in, in the section just before this. He's been praying for the people present with him being part of this last discourse. But here I am really struck by this sense of Jesus praying for those who will come to believe. Right. It's very forward looking and that includes us, you know, us listening, those in our communities. Now this sense that Jesus is praying for those who will come and we're going to see, that's a bit of a thread that goes through our readings in a sense, this expansion of the gospel, you know, that he asks on behalf of those who will believe. There's a future verb there. And, and of course the repetition of love struck me as well because we've had an election. Read these, you know, a new commandment I give to you, you love one another. We've had a number of passages that emphasize love is central, which it is everywhere, but particularly in John's gospel. [00:04:49] Speaker A: And I think, you know, we can be flippant around the word love. It can be sentimentalized. [00:04:57] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:57] Speaker A: And maybe in this upper room here, the disciples were listening to this saying, well, yeah, we can probably love each other. Like that's something we can do, you know, that's pretty doable. But this is before the betrayal and before the denial and before the crucifixion and before the realities, the complex realities of life really do test our capacity to that commitment to love. Not the sentimental feeling of love, but actually the commitment of love. [00:05:34] Speaker B: So yeah, it's almost the embody, you know, that the love with which you loved me may be in them. It's that we actually embody the very love of God, which of course is a profoundly high calling that we will always do imperfectly. But what does it mean to be communities or, or followers of Jesus that actually embody the kind of love Jesus talks about here between him and the Father? [00:05:57] Speaker A: And the hint in. Well, it's more than a hint, but the hint, hint in this passage and in John more generally, Is it's this love is characterized by the glory that they will be given because of the glory in Jesus. And for John, that glory is not the triumphant cross primarily, it's the suffering. And so there's something about this love being best witnessed in the depths of life. And at the risk of leaping, we won't go there just yet. But what happens in the prison cell with Paul and Silas in Acts is something about that. A place of depravity and violence. But the act of love and prayer that emerges from there is in my mind echoing what this glory and love is here. And we also see that in Gethsemane. I mean, you know. [00:06:52] Speaker B: Yep. And of course, in John's Gospel, right at the end, a reading that we had some weeks ago now with Peter being asked, do you love me? Like this will be the test of faith. The mark of a follower of Jesus is, you know, do you love Jesus? And then, can you feed my sheep? Can you pass on that love? So there's quite a lot to play with here. And I mean, if you haven't preached for a long time on prayer and what prayer's doing and how we pray for one another, that in itself would be a good general theme that you could bounce off. [00:07:20] Speaker A: One of the things I did too, in trying to get into this reading was go to Dorothy Lee's book called the Gospels Speak, where each chapter is aligned to a particular gospel. And so I think there's a chapter on Mark and suffering, I think. I'm not sure. But anyway, the one on John is about. About meaning. And so Dorothy has this really helpful discussion there around the human pursuit for meaning and what that looks like in the modern world, which is often quite individualistic and very much about curating identity and so on. Whereas here in the Goth, in the New Testament, it's very different. It's communal, to put it very simplistically. But also with John, it's about, well, the notion of glory plays into this, but it's about abiding and discipleship. And so I feel like abiding and discipleship are also categories you could play with to understand and preach this passage in John 17. [00:08:22] Speaker B: Yep, sounds good. Should we go to Acts 16 now? [00:08:25] Speaker A: Yes. [00:08:30] Speaker B: So we pick up midway through the chapter in 16, 16, and we're still in Philippi. So for those who were in church last week, we heard the first part of this story, which is Paul encountering Lydia. So we're sort of in this expansion in Acts that's embodying the inclusion of Gentiles and those into the community. And the story of Lydia ends with her and her entire household being baptized and then an act of hospitality that we're going to see actually repeated in the next story. So we get these sort of almost parallel stories or similar stories being told through different characters and different circumstances. She prevails on Paul and his fellow travelers to come stay in her home. And now we're still in Philippi and we meet a slave girl. And if I could just point out a couple of little technical things before we sort of go to bigger themes. She's a. So an enslaved person. She has a spirit of divination is the translation usually used. But the Greek word there is Python. It's a spirit of Pythia. And this spirit is associated with the high priestess to Apollo at the Delphic Temple. So a priestess who would utter Delphic oracles. And so there, you know, while in Luke's Gospel, actually most of the exorcisms are done on men, there is a sense that this is. This has a gender to it, that because of the priestesses in the. In this cult, that she is a. An enslaved woman standing in the same tradition. It's worth noting, too. I mean, there's lots we could say about her. She's not a full character. We don't find out what happens to her or her name, or her name. But we know she makes a lot of money. So she's. She's treated, you know, in the text and arguably in her ancient setting as a pure commodity. Right. So we've got the kind of dehumanizing of a person, I reckon, at two. [00:10:39] Speaker A: Levels, like as a slave, first up, but also in economic oppression, in the sense, because of her layered money making capacity that, you know, a normal slave doesn't have that. [00:10:50] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:50] Speaker A: On top of being a slave. [00:10:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, that may have afforded her certain privileges in terms of she might have therefore been well fed and some other things because she was worth money. There's a real question about whether losing that capacity to utter oracles would have been helpful to her or not. But I think in the logic of. [00:11:11] Speaker A: Luke's world and the story itself, and. [00:11:14] Speaker B: The story itself, you know, what happens to her. She is liberated from this spirit that is binding her to a cult and a practice that's, you know, has made her a commodity. So there is a sense of liberation there. The other word I find very annoying, ironically, in the translation is verse 18, where Paul is very much annoyed. It's not a great translation. I don't think the Word itself can have a sense of being troubled or burdened. So annoyed. Just sounds like Paul's getting a bit pissy. [00:11:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:47] Speaker B: Right. Like it's an irritant. I think it might better capture the dynamics if we thought of Paul here as troubled by this girl following them around, that there's a deeper sense to it than just, she's irritating and I want to shut her up. [00:12:04] Speaker A: So it sounds like you're alluding to some sense in which there's an empathy in Paul for her wellbeing. [00:12:11] Speaker B: Yes. Rather than just a judgement. Yes, yes. [00:12:14] Speaker A: Of his own experience of her. [00:12:16] Speaker B: I mean, given that many of us find Paul to be a complex character that's not always warm and fuzzy. I just think that that translation doesn't help us. [00:12:24] Speaker A: No. That's really good to know. Yeah. [00:12:26] Speaker B: So we can go to bigger picture now, but yeah, a couple of textual things there, I think. Fran, I don't know how you want. There's so much in this passage. We could talk for two hours about this passage. So the challenge for preachers will be where you focus. But for me, one helpful lens here is to go all the way back to the start of Luke, to Jesus opening speech in Luke 4, where he talks about, I've been sent to set the captives free and that we get multiple points of liberation in the story of this enslaved woman. Of Paul and Peter themselves. Of the jailer. Yeah. [00:13:05] Speaker A: Of. [00:13:05] Speaker B: You know. Yeah. Multi. Multiple layers of liberation and sort of overturning of the status quo. [00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Or to put another way, I guess there's sort of three types of captivity that happen in the beginning. [00:13:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:17] Speaker A: Since Paul and Silas to the most. [00:13:19] Speaker B: Sorry, Paul and Silas. I said Peter before. I don't know why. Yeah. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Paul and Silas to the most high God and the slave girl to the spirit of divination and to her owners. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Yep. [00:13:29] Speaker A: And the jailer's sort of sense of duty that leads to him wanting to take his own life when he thinks it's gone wrong. [00:13:36] Speaker B: To the Roman overlords, really a fear. A fear. [00:13:39] Speaker A: So there's these multiple sorts of. Of captivities going on. And then in the end there's. They find their freedom in being bound to God. And in a sense, to me, in my mind, these passages this week, this story is an illustration of the sort of. Of the John 17 passage we just talked about, where they are made one through the liberation and then their joint captivity to the most high God. Like, you know, there's a freedom that's born for them and that. I think it's Willie James Jennings, who maybe talks about this passage also being a new expression or a different expression of Galatians 3, where there is no longer slave nor free or Jew or Greek. [00:14:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:30] Speaker A: And that they all. [00:14:31] Speaker B: That this is male or female. [00:14:32] Speaker A: Male or female. And that this is a, A narrative expression of that. [00:14:38] Speaker B: Of that. Yeah, I really like that. So to think. And I, I would even add more possible captivities to this, particularly if we're moving into our contemporary setting. I mean, the slave owners, who again are never named, we don't have a sense of their personhood, but they're captive to a kind of a capitalist, you know, markets, it's all about money. So to be captive to greed to the extent that you are doing exploitative and immoral things, you know, there's other people in prison who are possibly captive to all sorts of injustices. [00:15:11] Speaker A: And you know, Jennings goes into this a bit. His stuff's really, in his commentary also about. I mean, he's very. He centers the body, the physical body in his analysis in acts in general. But here, you know, the violence subjected to the bodies, the repetition of the imprisonment, the whipping, you know, he's very visceral. And he also does talk about the economic exploitation, but also the prison system itself, the existence of it, like. And he talks about it not being a question of whether it's moral or not, but what is it to be a witness to Jesus Christ in the world, that. That means a whole new beginning for everyone who, who sees this, who sees Jesus for who he is and understands the freedom that Jesus brings. This passage is really about what does it look like if there is a new beginning for everyone, what does it mean for prisons? Now, of course, you know, all the criminologists, well, we need prisons. You know, we've got all functional reasons why we need to protect people and so on, but he's got a much more big, you know, radical. [00:16:19] Speaker B: And he's of course, writing in the context of America where there is the privatization of the prison system has led to mass incarceration and particularly of people who are not white skinned. [00:16:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:16:32] Speaker B: And similarly in Australia we have a huge. A disproportionate incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And, and I mean, that's another thing that's at play here in this text. I don't want to lose the thread of what you're saying, but the accusation when they drag Paul and Silas before the magistrates in verse 20 is that these men are disturbing our city. They are Jews, they're not Abiding by the Roman. The Roman custom. So they're othered. Right. So they're seen as disturbers because they're different. And there's a certain kind of ethnocentric kind of, you know, they're not one of us, which of course, we do in all sorts of ways with both migrants and incarcerated populations. And so there's so many layers and so many directions you could go here. The writer, I mean, Luke, we'll call him Luke, the writer of this is, you know, wonderfully dramatic, but he paints a very stark picture of the ancient prison system. They are beaten. They're in an innermost cell and their feet are put in stocks, so they're sort of doubly bound. And we know from the archeology of these ancient prisons that these inner cells had almost no daylight or, you know, ventilation. And, you know, when the Gospels talk about visiting people in prisons, it's because if other people didn't bring you food and water, you often had nothing. I mean, there was not any kind of provision of three meals a day. So it's a very bleak situation. And I think one could, you know, think with this about the kind of justice you could do a whole sermon that links to captivity and liberation and incarceration systems in our contemporary world. If that was one direction. [00:18:20] Speaker A: One direction, but also the theological pastoral point of this, which is, I think that God does not perceive anyone as beyond the liberation. So someone is that deprived and that oppressed and that with nothing left that is not beyond God's capacity to transform. [00:18:43] Speaker B: Yes. [00:18:45] Speaker A: I have a picture in my mind. I've just been traveling in Vietnam and went to the Vietnam, Vietnam War Museum. And there is a. I don't. I don't know if they're a mock up or they're the original. There are some prison cells there, though, with nothing in them. Like, it's what is in my mind most freshly when I read this passage. Now I read the passage before I left. [00:19:09] Speaker B: And now you've read it again. [00:19:10] Speaker A: Now I've read it again. And that's there. The images and the torture. I mean, there's. It's awful. [00:19:14] Speaker B: Yes, we know that. We know that happened. Yep. [00:19:16] Speaker A: Yeah. The degree to which humans can invent ways of making one another suffer. And is next level. But one of the cells, they just leave prisoners for the extremities of cold and heat. There's no roof on them deliberately. So you're in the sun like 39 degrees. So in terms of what we're saying, you know, so I think Sometimes with these stories in Acts, people be like, oh, it's all very exaggerated and, you know, extreme. But they're not. It's like this is. This is producing a really important theological pastoral point that we're in danger of missing if we want to flatten it and explain away the imagery and the extremity, you know, this assault of transcendence. And we do find that unbelievable in, you know, our secular three, to use Charles Taylor's term. But we need to shut up and listen to it and allow ourselves to be captured by it. Yeah, because it's the point of it all. [00:20:19] Speaker B: Well, that's right. And I think the drama of Luke's stories, you know, worked rhetorically, like, were powerful because they're based on lived experience. This is something that for the first generations of readers, they knew the bleakness of these things. They knew what enslavement looked like, you know, as would some people in our own communities now, but just not those of us who are a bit more comfortable and Western to press in here on the. I mean, the other thing I think is a profound moment is obviously this. This praying and singing hymns. So there's the worship in this bleak innermost. You know, their feet are literally bound in some sort of stock type thing, and yet they're praising God. And that in itself leads to some sort of earthquakey shaking up. But they don't. It's a curious blend of things going on here. It's almost like God responds, but that's not what liberates them at that moment. But they worship regardless that they're stating. I mean, there's a few ways you could interpret that. It's an act of faith and belief. It's also an act of resistance that you still praise God when. [00:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:21:26] Speaker B: When earthly powers have imprisoned you, you'll still keep praising God, which is what Psalm 97 does. But it's also. There's a certain maybe spiritual liberation in it. But. [00:21:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm wondering if it's what. What you're saying is, as disciples, we're called to live in the world as if God has come because God has come. So you live in defiance of the reality around you because there is a bigger reality, you know, to be true. [00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:21:57] Speaker A: And that's what maybe. [00:21:59] Speaker B: And your hope is in that other reality, even when it's not fully. [00:22:04] Speaker A: Even when your feet are in the stock still. [00:22:06] Speaker B: Yes. [00:22:06] Speaker A: You know, you, you, you are. You. You are liberated in the love of God and being bought at one with God. 17 John 17. The stocks don't matter at that level. [00:22:18] Speaker B: At that. Yeah. At one level. Yep. [00:22:20] Speaker A: But then we hear here, like, the walls crack and yes, you know, they can run away. And that's an interesting part of this story. So the jailer freaks out because he thinks everyone's gonna leave. Because who wouldn't? [00:22:34] Speaker B: Yes, I know, but, like, why wouldn't you know? [00:22:37] Speaker A: He'll be punished awfully, presumably. So he's like, oh, I just want to take my life. I can't. [00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I think we see some honour, shame, culture there. Like, the honorable thing to do then would be to take his own life also. Maybe if you're gonna preach this, do some trigger warnings. There's all sorts of stuff going on here. [00:22:51] Speaker A: But Paul and Silas, they don't run away. I mean, they. [00:22:57] Speaker B: No, they don't. [00:22:57] Speaker A: They don't. They don't. They don't abandon the place. The place is transformed. I don't know. [00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:04] Speaker A: I'm grasping for what. [00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think what's fascinating. [00:23:08] Speaker A: There is do not harm yourself. Sorry for we are all here. [00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So all the prisoners have stayed. So maybe in that act of sort of grace, if you want to call it that, because that seems to be what leads this jailer to ask this question, what must I do to be saved? Which might also be a very real question, like literally saving my life. But there's something about what he's witnessed where he falls down before them and recognizes something quite miraculous. They haven't behaved in the way that humans are expected to behave. Right. They've again, we've got a flipping of the script, you know, in every human instinct would be to run out of the jail and just go, oh, that's an act of God. Thanks, I'm free now. Yeah, see you later. That's what I would do. But they haven't done that. And that in itself is somehow enough to con. To ask them. And then we. We get a repetition, kind of almost of the Lydia story of. Of the believing the same household. The baptism. And he takes them in and washes their wounds, which is a reminder that they were flogged. And that's a horrible, horrible physical. Yeah. Thing and. And baptized. And then offers them hospitality. So we've got a pattern in acts of, you know, turning to God belief, baptism, and then this instant offering of hospitality as gift and them receiving it. So they're not always the givers, they are the receivers of hospitality. Paul and Silas, which we forget too, as people who are, you know, ministers or whoever, we work in these charitable models where we've got everything to give and nothing to receive. And this is a reminder that actually in preaching the good news, we receive as much as we give and maybe more. [00:24:59] Speaker A: Just as a slight side note, slightly off track, but I've been thinking about this. The model of servant leadership as an image. I was listening to a podcast. I forget who it is, but she was. She's challenged that model of talking about discipleship and ministry and wants the category of friendship to operate much more readily and the reciprocity of that. And I feel like that's what's playing. You know, if we looked at. If we looked at this as the model of friendship, then Paul and Silas are much more ready to accept the hospitality. [00:25:30] Speaker B: Yes. It's not one way. It's a mutual thing. Yeah. I mean, the last thing I'll say about this, because we're going to run out of time, is a lot of what's going on in Acts, as we've seen over these last few weeks, is the apostles now embodying the ministry of Jesus. So at another level, you can read this entire story of Paul exorcising a spirit like Jesus did, being imprisoned and suffering and being whipped and stripped naked like Jesus did, still praising God in the midst of that, like Jesus did, and then calling people to believe and accepting hospitality. And, you know, and we see that pattern just repeated and repeated. And I think maybe the question for our communities then is. And it goes back to our John 17, if we are to embody this love, what does that look like in our contexts to keep embodying the ministry of Jesus? We might not be quite as miraculous and dramatic as Paul and Silas, but we can embody. Yeah. Any last thoughts, or should we? [00:26:31] Speaker A: No, I think we've explored it enough, I should say. We've explored it, but not exhausted. Did it? [00:26:39] Speaker B: Of course. Exactly. But we shall now briefly touch on Revelation 22. I mean, the one thing to say about Psalm 97, which is this wonderful psalm of praise and declaration of. Of God as king, is I think if you were going to preach the Acts reading, there's a way to connect that to our own contemporary worship, which is to say when we utter words like, the Lord is king, let the earth rejoice in. In worship, or wherever our context is, that is an act of resistance and hope, you know, in ways that have political and spiritual dimensions. And I think there's a way to connect those two things. [00:27:23] Speaker A: And we've perhaps been numb to that radicality. [00:27:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:27:27] Speaker A: By stupid, brainless things like that. Gospel and politics are not Related or something. [00:27:32] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. But Revelation 22. [00:27:36] Speaker A: Right. So you're the scholar of Revelation. Robin, why do you think the lecture in the Wisdom of the Lectionary writers, they have presented this passage on Easter 7. Oh, sorry, is that too hard? [00:27:52] Speaker B: That is too hard, because sometimes I do not know what the wisdom of the lecture. [00:27:56] Speaker A: So I know you critique the bits of seeing of it. [00:27:58] Speaker B: Well, yeah, because the lectionary gives us 12 to 14, 16 to 17, 20 to 21, which means they've left out the bits where there's still, you know, murderers and idolaters and liars lying outside the gates. And so one of the tensions in Revelation is even at the very, very end, when God comes down to the people and New Jerusalem is built and the gates are open, but there is still a sense that there are those who are not in yet. And I think that does make sense of the converse of the come at the end. So maybe one way to answer your question is here, at the very end of the Easter season, before Pentecost, we get an invitation to come, to come and hear the Gospel, to come and be part of the kingdom of God. And this is right at the end, 16 and 17, we get the Spirit and the bride saying, come. And then everyone who hears that is to say, come. So there's a passing on of the testimony or a passing on of the invitation. If you've heard the gospel and you've come, it's your job to invite others to come. And then this very open invitation, let everyone who's thirsty come. The water of life is there as a gift. [00:29:04] Speaker A: So. [00:29:05] Speaker B: And of course, we're going to get into Pentecost, where that gift now gets given expansively to Gentiles and across all sorts of barriers and things. So perhaps that's a reason. [00:29:15] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I can sit with that one. I must say that my musical imagination is piqued by that part of the passage. I can't think of a piece of music particularly, but I'm sure people out there could with the sort of the come repetition. And, yes, there's some sort of round. I'm just thinking liturgically, you could do something quite evocative. [00:29:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:35] Speaker A: With this passage. [00:29:37] Speaker B: Or rephrase it into some sort of call to worship, where you invite people to come at the beginning of worship and maybe, you know, to send them out with an invitation to invite others to come and hear the good news. The other thing I'd say about this passage is if you wanted to preach on it, which I suspect there's enough other things going on this week People may not, but we get lots of different Christological images for Jesus so that's quite striking. [00:30:04] Speaker A: Yeah Names for Jesus Alpha and Omega. [00:30:08] Speaker B: He is the root and descendant of David, the bright morning star. So the sense of a star that guides and is the first hope of dawn so it just disrupts our very human images of Jesus and gives us some other sort of language to play. [00:30:23] Speaker A: With which could be sprinkled through the liturgy every week but in this week in the prayers. Yeah, that. That would be also. Yeah. [00:30:32] Speaker B: What does it mean to pray to our morning star and. [00:30:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:34] Speaker B: You know. Yeah. So that might be enough on that Any last thoughts? [00:30:41] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. I think you've captured the invitation aspect and the future aspect sort of the eschatological hope having been born out. [00:30:55] Speaker B: By the well is brought to you by Pilgrim Theological College and the Uniting Church in Australia. It's produced by Adrian Jackson. Thanks for listening.