“And is better.” Familiar words, I’m guessing: if you ever
watch tv, you’ve probably caught ads for Ford which proudly proclaim just that to
us. To stir you up with excitement at how
amazing it would be to buy a Ford (which, so the messaging would have it, has
great mileage and impressive
functionality), they present a bunch of situations in which ‘or’ would be
thoroughly trumped by ‘and.’ Who would
order sweet or sour chicken, practice
black or white photography or stay at
a bed or breakfast? Yes, “and is better.”
The
disciples fear themselves faced with “or.”
Named or not, they’ve encountered God’s presence in Jesus and they want
that forever, always active, accompanying them, teaching them, consoling them,
strengthening them. But, they’ve also
been hearing about this Way he has to walk.
And he has to, because we need him to.
We have become so tone deaf to our own belovedness that we can only be
renewed in it by witnessing our God lay down his Life for love of us, consent
to the Passion, experience abandonment and die, really die, not just appear to. To love us to the end, there has to be an
end, a final breath. They fear. Who wants to choose between a God of constant
presence or a God who loved us to the
end, real end, real death? “And is
better.”
In that
upper room, Jesus consoles his disciples.
He tells them the shocking truth: “God is so utterly besotted with you
that he dares to give you and.” God so loves the world, that he’ll break any
boundary to shower that love upon us, to beckon us into it, to strengthen us to
live it. He’ll trump any ‘or’ that
tempts us to doubt, to fear: In Christ, He will be lifted up in death as a sign
of his love and remain forever, in the
Spirit, as sign of that self-same love.
On the
cross, those few disciples who did not scatter would see this abundant ‘and’-love
revealed. The women and John must have
winced in pain as the spear pierced their Lord.
He was pierced, consented to have violence enter him, but then out
poured not just blood but water and blood.
He returned no insult, only life-giving sustenance. I wonder if their minds traveled back to that
time on the Feast of Tabernacles when he had called to the thirsty and said, “Come
to me, for from me springs of living water will flow?” Whether they understood yet or not, the
narrator follows this saying by commenting on it for us: “He said this about
the Spirit.”
There it
was! In this moment of dying, of
consenting to there being an end to which to which we could be loved, out flows
the streams of living water, the ever-abiding
presence of the Spirit. That’s what
Zeenah is about to be gifted with. She
will be purified to serve as a glorious Temple for the Holy Spirit, reborn by
water and the Spirit to share in Christ’s life as Priest, Prophet and King. This is how we remain in so great a love:
bathed in it, and buoyed up upon it.
No comments:
Post a Comment