Margaret B. Via - "What Does It Mean?" (May 13, 1990)
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| Speaker | A few weeks ago, my husband and I were | 0:15 |
| with our Presbyterian minister son | 0:18 | |
| on the New Jersey Turnpike headed south a few miles north | 0:21 | |
| of Newark airport where we were to catch a plane | 0:26 | |
| back to Durham after a glorious Easter weekend | 0:30 | |
| in New York City and the beautiful village of Bronxville. | 0:34 | |
| All seemed well as we happily reviewed the events | 0:40 | |
| and the exciting time we had had together | 0:44 | |
| for those few days. | 0:47 | |
| Suddenly, all four lanes of traffic came to an abrupt halt. | 0:49 | |
| You know the feeling. | 0:54 | |
| It's happened to you, too. | 0:56 | |
| For the next forty minutes, we inched our way along, | 0:58 | |
| not knowing what was ahead or whether we would make it | 1:01 | |
| to the airport in time for our plane's departure. | 1:05 | |
| The ugly sight of the blighted landscape surrounding us | 1:09 | |
| and the thick smog from the noxious gasses erupting | 1:13 | |
| from the nearby chimneys of industry, | 1:17 | |
| did not contribute to a feeling of well-being. | 1:20 | |
| Adding the anxiety of being trapped for who knows how long, | 1:24 | |
| smelling the fumes from the exhausts of the cars | 1:28 | |
| and the trucks, and we had a stressed-filled situation | 1:31 | |
| on our hands. | 1:36 | |
| As the tension mounted within us, | 1:38 | |
| I remembered that this John 14 passage was to be | 1:41 | |
| the subject of my sermon on this day, May 13th. | 1:44 | |
| And, being a mom to other ordained Baptist ministers, | 1:49 | |
| I said, sorry, one Presbyterian and two Baptists, I said, | 1:52 | |
| "Let not your hearts be troubled." | 1:57 | |
| It was partly in jest, but also partly serious | 2:01 | |
| and I thought certainly an appropriate remark | 2:06 | |
| in the midst of such a troublesome dilemma. | 2:09 | |
| Our son wisely responded, "Mom, in that kind of world | 2:14 | |
| we live in, that passage can only make sense | 2:19 | |
| in the language and in the experience of faith." | 2:23 | |
| I was grateful for his comment. | 2:28 | |
| For certainly, that is the way it makes sense | 2:30 | |
| to me and to all of you. | 2:33 | |
| To unpack this comforting and hard to believe | 2:37 | |
| to be true text is not an easy task. | 2:40 | |
| For John's gospel is full of metaphorical truths | 2:44 | |
| and elusive language which demands | 2:48 | |
| much theological reflection and mind-stretching. | 2:50 | |
| A troubled heart is something we know about all too well. | 2:56 | |
| Karl Barth, the great theologian, puts it like this, | 3:02 | |
| "We're deeply sunk into the night | 3:06 | |
| of our fears and frustrations. Into the night of our stories | 3:09 | |
| and the stories of our world." | 3:14 | |
| We worry about our health, our safety, | 3:17 | |
| about whether we should retire early or late, | 3:21 | |
| about whether we stay in one place or move to another, | 3:25 | |
| about whether to remain in a marriage or not, | 3:30 | |
| about whether we make right decisions or wrong decisions, | 3:34 | |
| about how much we are committed to the societal | 3:38 | |
| and environmental problems that we find all around us. | 3:42 | |
| We worry about our aging bodies and those of our parents, | 3:47 | |
| about how much to interfere in our children's lives, | 3:52 | |
| About how faithful we are or unfaithful we are to God | 3:56 | |
| and to each other. | 4:00 | |
| We worry about deadlines and headlines, | 4:02 | |
| about the threat of nuclear holocausts or accidents. | 4:06 | |
| We worry about the political | 4:11 | |
| and the economic state of our world. | 4:13 | |
| Most of our worries are legitimate, | 4:17 | |
| if we are responsible human beings, | 4:20 | |
| human beings concerned about the well-being of others, | 4:23 | |
| our earth, and our cosmos. | 4:28 | |
| In the midst of such a world we live in, | 4:32 | |
| how can the words, "Let not your hearts be troubled" | 4:35 | |
| make sense? | 4:39 | |
| Can we take them seriously and still be caring persons? | 4:41 | |
| Let us take a closer look. | 4:47 | |
| Our text is set in Jerusalem where Jesus and his disciples | 4:50 | |
| are lingering around the table | 4:54 | |
| after a farewell dinner party. | 4:56 | |
| Here the writer seems to be giving attention | 5:00 | |
| to the major crisis of the early church: | 5:03 | |
| the absence of Jesus. | 5:06 | |
| The concern here is not about the terrible things | 5:09 | |
| that will happen to Jesus very soon, | 5:12 | |
| but rather what will happen to his disciples | 5:15 | |
| once he is gone. | 5:18 | |
| The disciples were afraid for themselves. | 5:22 | |
| With the announcement that his departure was imminent, | 5:25 | |
| what were they to do? | 5:29 | |
| Jesus had promised so much. | 5:31 | |
| What were they to think about him and his life and his work? | 5:35 | |
| Was it all for naught? | 5:39 | |
| Was it over? | 5:42 | |
| Do they return to their fishing boats and tax tables? | 5:43 | |
| If not there, then where are they to go? | 5:48 | |
| Jesus comforts the Joanna in church, telling them that, | 5:53 | |
| though he is leaving, he will not leave them | 5:57 | |
| to fend for themselves. | 6:02 | |
| The good news is that Christ will send the Holy Spirit | 6:05 | |
| to be with the church. | 6:08 | |
| The good news is that Jesus' and God's relationship | 6:10 | |
| is closer than parent and child, father and son. | 6:14 | |
| If you know one, you know the other. | 6:19 | |
| The literal translation of the text seems to be | 6:24 | |
| most meaningful, "Let not the heart | 6:28 | |
| of you be troubled." | 6:32 | |
| The heart is a word rich in meaning in the scriptures. | 6:36 | |
| It is a word which represents the total human person. | 6:40 | |
| It can mean a hidden place, | 6:45 | |
| the place of will and understanding, | 6:47 | |
| the center for decision-making, of intentionality. | 6:50 | |
| It functions as the source of thought and reflections. | 6:55 | |
| Within the heart, human beings meet God. | 7:01 | |
| In this gospel, the heart is a place of emotions, | 7:07 | |
| the place where we see God more clearly. | 7:11 | |
| The words of the poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins, | 7:16 | |
| seem appropriate to describe what, I think, | 7:20 | |
| John tries to say. | 7:23 | |
| "I lift up heart, eyes, | 7:26 | |
| Down all that glory in the heavens | 7:28 | |
| to glean our Savior." | 7:32 | |
| In their life with Christ, the disciples have experienced | 7:36 | |
| a break with the world. | 7:40 | |
| They are now in opposition to the world | 7:42 | |
| because of their experience with the dynamic Jesus. | 7:44 | |
| What a blow to find out that Jesus will not be with them. | 7:49 | |
| They are heartsick. | 7:53 | |
| Because Jesus leaves, they are in trouble. | 7:55 | |
| The trouble, according to Bootmon, for the disciples, | 8:00 | |
| comes from the collision of the world with Revelation. | 8:04 | |
| The disciples now have the burden of the world upon them. | 8:09 | |
| The revelation has been given to them, | 8:14 | |
| but the Revealer, Jesus, will not be with them. | 8:17 | |
| That trouble gives that gives the trouble | 8:22 | |
| its positive significance. | 8:26 | |
| The disciples know the hurt and the strangeness | 8:30 | |
| of being cut loose from the world | 8:34 | |
| because they have been close to Jesus. | 8:37 | |
| They had just begun to faintly grasp | 8:42 | |
| the other side of things, the other way, God's way, | 8:45 | |
| God's truth in the person of Jesus. | 8:50 | |
| The collision of the world with Revelation, | 8:55 | |
| with God in Christ, with God in us, | 8:58 | |
| is what this trouble is all about. | 9:02 | |
| It's the same trouble we have today. | 9:06 | |
| The church, the believers, the disciples are lonely | 9:09 | |
| in the world because of their encounter | 9:13 | |
| with the person Jesus, who has made | 9:15 | |
| all the difference in their lives. | 9:18 | |
| They have seen themselves and the world | 9:21 | |
| with new eyes because of their life in Christ. | 9:24 | |
| What does this mean for us, now? | 9:29 | |
| Our anxiety stems from our believing existence | 9:33 | |
| in our alien world, | 9:37 | |
| our aloneness in our belief, | 9:39 | |
| the fragility of our belief, | 9:43 | |
| the uncertainty of our belief. | 9:46 | |
| The secret of the untroubled heart is faith in the Christ | 9:52 | |
| who is not confined to our world, | 9:56 | |
| yet, who is our hope. | 9:59 | |
| It is in the devastation of bewilderment | 10:04 | |
| that we can hear the promise of a place, of home, | 10:06 | |
| not one in the sense that we know home. | 10:11 | |
| Deep within our suffering, we find that home, | 10:14 | |
| that hope in the present and in the future, | 10:18 | |
| because of Christ being present to us. | 10:22 | |
| The faith that allows the hearing | 10:28 | |
| is cause for joy and peace. | 10:31 | |
| The dwelling place of God, God in us, the presence of Christ | 10:35 | |
| in the world, is home. | 10:40 | |
| It is our dwelling place. | 10:43 | |
| The miracle of Jesus' return, makes Jesus real to us. | 10:46 | |
| It places Jesus and his truth | 10:52 | |
| in the center of God's truth, | 10:56 | |
| which has always been there and which is applicable | 10:58 | |
| for us through all times and generations. | 11:02 | |
| The truth that God went away, but did not stay, | 11:07 | |
| is too good to be true. | 11:11 | |
| In our forsakenness, we are not forsaken. | 11:13 | |
| In our disconnectedness with the world, Christ is present. | 11:17 | |
| We the homeless, we the troubled, | 11:22 | |
| we the stranger in the world, find that our friend, | 11:24 | |
| our companion, our resurrected Lord | 11:28 | |
| is our access to God. | 11:33 | |
| The deeper we stand in the night of our fears | 11:37 | |
| and the isolation from the world over against our belief | 11:40 | |
| in the authenticity of God in Christ, Barth tells us, | 11:44 | |
| the more Jesus will help us, will come to us | 11:49 | |
| in our own time and in our own separation. | 11:53 | |
| My friend, Emily Wilson, a poet and a writer, | 11:59 | |
| talks about Betty Hill and a beautiful book | 12:04 | |
| called "Hope and Dignity." | 12:07 | |
| The book is about older black women in North Carolina. | 12:10 | |
| Betty is over a hundred years old, | 12:14 | |
| living in a rural North Carolina community | 12:17 | |
| in a small, unpainted, badly in need of repair house | 12:20 | |
| with the privy in the back yard. | 12:25 | |
| Betty can not read or write and lives alone. | 12:28 | |
| She talks about her past, about her dead husband, Perence. | 12:32 | |
| There she has little in the world | 12:38 | |
| except her memories and her faith. | 12:43 | |
| She says, about the present and the future, | 12:47 | |
| "I sing by myself here. | 12:50 | |
| The Lord has looked after me | 12:54 | |
| and I'm thanking God for it everyday." | 12:57 | |
| And she sings, "This love I have, | 13:01 | |
| the world didn't give it to me. | 13:05 | |
| This love I have, the world didn't give it to me. | 13:07 | |
| This love I have, the world didn't give it to me | 13:12 | |
| and the world can't take it away." | 13:16 | |
| The meaning of this dialogue in John's gospel | 13:20 | |
| is to show that the believer, who is discouraged | 13:24 | |
| and who can not see his own present and future, | 13:27 | |
| or own faith possibility, | 13:30 | |
| can discover it, can know it. | 13:33 | |
| However, this believing existence | 13:37 | |
| is no permanent settled state, | 13:40 | |
| rather, it is the ever taking hold, the ever grasping, | 13:43 | |
| the ever claiming of it. | 13:47 | |
| Of that, which has already been given us. | 13:50 | |
| It is ours for the reaching. | 13:53 | |
| It is our for the taking, | 13:55 | |
| ours for the claiming each day of our lives. | 13:57 | |
| Many painters through the years, have been fascinated | 14:02 | |
| with the Crucifixion and have painted it | 14:06 | |
| over and over again. | 14:08 | |
| One such painter in our time never had | 14:11 | |
| any formal with the church, yet he painted | 14:13 | |
| the Crucifixion over and over, | 14:16 | |
| in brutal form and color. | 14:19 | |
| He is reported to have said, "I don't know what it means, | 14:23 | |
| but, if there is any meaning, anywhere. | 14:27 | |
| I suspect it is there." | 14:31 | |
| "Let not the heart of you be troubled." | 14:35 | |
| Where is the meaning of it? | 14:39 | |
| The meaning lies in the Cross, as the artist suggested. | 14:41 | |
| The meaning lies in the dining room with Jesus. | 14:46 | |
| The meaning lies in our struggle with church, | 14:50 | |
| with the complexity, the simplicity, and the reality | 14:54 | |
| of the resurrection. | 14:59 | |
| The meaning lies in our faith and the One who comes to us, | 15:01 | |
| the One whose power is in us, but not of us. | 15:06 | |
| The meaning lies in Jesus Christ, | 15:12 | |
| whose living presence is found | 15:14 | |
| in communities and in persons, | 15:17 | |
| grasping them, inspiring them, | 15:21 | |
| and transforming them. | 15:25 |