Now Is The Time For You

Amen. So be it. It is true. Amen.

Barbara Hall taught me Biblical Greek and New Testament. When looking at a text like John chapter fourteen she would always say, “Ask yourself, what time is it?”

For Jesus, the Word of God, and his disciples,

 it is the Last Supper after he has washed their feet and given them a new commandment: to love one another as he has loved them and as the father loves him. For Jesus it is time to leave – his departure is imminent. For the disciples it is a time of anxiety – the one they have been following for several years is leaving them. For us it is time to finally understand what is really going on in this all too familiar and over-domesticated portion of Jesus’s Farewell Address which we hear most often at funerals. Which makes it difficult for us to see it is about living here and now, not later.

The disciples are asking all sorts of questions: we don’t know the way; we have not seen the father. They see Jesus and see what he does, but seeing is not enough. They need to understand who he is in a deeper sense. Richard Swanson in Provoking the Gospel of John alerts us to the automotive repair metaphor in the word understand. To understand who Jesus is and what he is saying you need to stand under the text the way a mechanic stands under a car on a lift, looking at everything with a practiced eye. “It is all in the practice, and it’s all in the angle of vision.” [Swanson, p 309]

This is where Barabara Hall’s training in Greek reveals to us that American translations of one word has been heavily freighted with American Evangelical Fundamental meaning, hiding the root meaning of the word πιστεύω - pisteuo. To translate it as “believe” is to assume we know that believe means to place one’s trust in someone, rather than as assent to an idea, or existence of someone or something. Whereas the word pisteuo’s primary meaning is faith or faithfulness – rendering, “You are faithful in God, also toward me be faithful.” And as that deep theological treatise Hebrews reminds us, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.” That is, faith is based not just in seeing, as in “Seeing is believing,” but in understanding and looking at everything with a practiced eye. It’s all in the practice and the angle of vision with which stand under the text.

When we do stand under the text and look at everything with a practiced eye we begin to understand: It speaks to the mystery of human relationships to God. And to the Centrality of Inclusive Love in this relationship. Jesus does many things to reveal who he is: he turns water into wine, the blind can see, many hungry people are fed with limited resources, and most of all everyone is invited to be with him without qualification. Now when Philip asks to show us the father, Jesus points to himself. In fact, he just had when he says, I Am: Way, Truth and Life. “I am” is the name of the voice in the burning bush – the Oneness Jesus knows as Father.

But Philip misses the reference – and so do we, so preoccupied are we with thinking this “I Am” saying has to do with us and our religion versus other religions. How self-centered we easily become to think that the one person who came to dwell among us with the sole mission to gather all people together without qualification would suddenly be claiming that to follow him puts one in some sort of exclusive club rather than an invitation not to put one foot in, but to be all in in accepting his invitation to be part of his radically inclusive community of God’s Love.

We come from love, we return to love and love is all around. W.H. Auden in his poem For the Time Being: Xmas Oratorio, riffs on this very passage in the following excerpt:

He is the Way.

Follow him through the Land of Unlikeness;

You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.

Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;

You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.

He is the Life.

Love Him in the world of the Flesh;

And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

That is, the Father is to be seen in the Land of Unlikeness, the Kingdom of Anxiety and the World of the Flesh. Which is right where we find ourselves here and now. This is not about some future, although it is. This is not about the past, although it is. It is about dwelling in the household of God’s Eternal Love Here and Now.

What time is it? Time to dwell in the house of the lord – which is a long-standing metaphor for having a relationship with God in God’s house – the oiko of God. And God’s oiko is God’s Torah, God’s commands, God’s law. How ironic it is that the root of the word economy, oiko- nomos, means law of the household, and the root of ecology, oiko-logos, means study of the household. Which is The Household – the Household of God! We are to be Economists who dwell in and meditate on God’s Word, and Ecologists who study what it means to dwell in harmony with and in the household of God!

It has been said that Torah is the incarnation of God, and the rabbi is the incarnation of Torah. And rabbi Jesus speaks of the works, the mitzvot of Torah, that he embodies, the very basis of all the things that he does, that he practices. It is all in the practice of the mitzvot that God the father is revealed. This is the Way. And greater mitzvot, greater works than these will you do if you understand you are to be faithful unto me and the father. And if you understand what time it is: time for me to go. And if you understand you are to pray: pray for the will and the desire and strength and courage to embody the mitzvot, the works, the things that I do. This is the practice. This is the Way. This is to be the angle of our vison!

That is, Jesus living out his pattern of Torah observance amounts to seeing the incarnate father, not just in Jesus but in his pattern of living and observance. This pattern of living is the Way, which is the Way of Truth and Life – Life for all living things and all of creation – the kosmos, which is one of Storyteller John’s favorite words.

Note, Jesus is not pointing to himself, nor is he pointing to any kind of exclusive religion, but rather he points to this pattern of Torah observance, the mitzvot, the works themselves, for it is the works that reveal the father. All Jews recognize that any call to focus on a single human being rather than family or community diverts God’s people from proper Torah practice. We can trust the disciples know this much even if they are confused on all the rest.

What time is it? The Time of Apprenticeship is over. It is time for me to go. It is time for you to begin to Be the Way! You will always have me, the Way and the community of the Way. It is now Time for you to embody my Father, to embody the practice and the works, embody the Spirit-Breath of the Living God. Become one with my father and make all of this greater, expand it, extend it to serve all people everywhere all the time. Seek and serve the Word in all persons; loving your neighbors as yourselves. This is truth. This is life. Amen. So be it. It is true. Amen.