The Truth Is A Person--June 9, 2023

The Truth Is A Person--June 9, 2023

[Jesus said:] "And you know the way to the place where I am going." Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." [John 14:4-7]

Sometimes you have heard a verse from the Bible so many times you assume you already know what it has to say, and that it cannot possibly have anything new to say to you... and so you turn your brain off rather than listening to it. And quite often, that's the very moment we reach for verses to use as weapons, rather than putting our ears and hearts up to them, to let them speak anew.

I think this is one of those times.

I say that because there are LOTS of church folk who know John 14:6 by heart: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me," and their first instinct is to weaponize it.  We Respectable Religious Folks latch onto this language of "the Truth" and Jesus' line about "no one coming except through me," and it is really easy for us to do a bit of interpretive sleight-of-hand and end up morphing Jesus' sentence into, "Unless you believe the correct facts about me (which we'll call 'The Truth'), you don't get into heaven."  And since that line of thinking uses words and phrases from the verse out of the Bible, it's really easy to tell ourselves that MUST be what Jesus is really saying.

But it's not.  Jesus doesn't give us a list of correct facts, orthodox propositions, or theses to memorize as our ticket to heaven.  And to be honest, he doesn't give us some prescribed ritual, prayer, or method for locking in our spot in the afterlife by signing with him as our Personal-Lord-and-Savior (TM).  Instead, Jesus simply offers us himself.  He is the Truth we have been looking for.  His is the Way we are on.  He is the Life in whom we are fully alive.  So for whatever else we thought we meant when we picked up John 14:6 and started waving it around like a club, it means this: in the end, the Truth... is a Person.

I'm reminded of an insight of the late Frederick Buechner along these very same lines and this very same passage.  Buechner writes:  

"Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily believes certain things. That Jesus was the son of God, say. Or that Mary was a virgin. Or that the Pope is infallible. Or that all other religions are all wrong. Some think of a Christian as one who necessarily does certain things. Such as going to church. Getting baptized. Giving up liquor and tobacco. Reading the Bible. Doing a good deed a day. Some think of a Christian as just a Nice Guy. Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me." (John 14:6) He didn't say that any particular ethic, doctrine, or religion was the way, the truth, and the life. He said that he was. He didn't say that it was by believing or doing anything in particular that you could "come to the Father." He said that it was only by him—by living, participating in, being caught up by, the way of life that he embodied, that was his way."

And of course, that's just it: in the end, the Truth isn't so much of a "What" but a "Who"--it is Jesus himself, not simply facts about him or principles derived from him like geometric proofs.

In this era of culture wars and religious self-defensiveness, we are so quick to take Jesus' words about being "the Truth" and to turn them into tools to suit our own agendas and litmus tests to let us play the role of gatekeeper.  You know how it goes:  "Oh, you don't believe in MY group's interpretation of what Jesus said or did or meant? Well, then YOU'RE denying The Capital-T Truth, and you don't get access to God."  Or some other such nonsensical variation.  Those are all ways of letting us keep control in our own hands and trying to pry power of Jesus' hands.  And he's not going for it.

To say that "the Truth" is ultimately Jesus is to say that we don't just memorize correct facts or learn approved faith-statements, but that we are brought into relationship with the One who really knows how the universe is meant to be--and he says that it is all built on self-giving love.  To know "the Truth" is by definition to be pulled into Love, because Jesus (who is the Truth) is also the One who brings us into relationship with the God who is Love.  We so easily forget that, especially among church folk, who are easily tempted to take their personal pet issues, weaponize them as "The Truth" and use them to keep people away from Jesus, when Jesus himself insists on being the Truth who brings us to God.

So in this day, maybe we need to stop and take a look at how we've been using the Bible, or our faith traditions and denominations, or the words of Jesus--and where we've just been ransacking those places to find anything we can hit someone else with, we need to stop.  Jesus hasn't come to give us ammunition to cut down the people we don't think measure up.  He has come--precisely because he IS "the Truth"--to bring anybody and everybody into relationship with the One he called on as "Abba," as Father.  

The Truth, in the end, isn't a set of facts to be learned by rote, but a Person who teaches us to walk with him and who loves us even when we have gone off track.  That makes all the difference in the world.

Lord Jesus, be our truth--and therefore be our way and our life.

Because Talk Is Cheap--June 8, 2023

Because Talk Is Cheap--June 8, 2023

"We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." [1 John 3:16-18]

I'm tired of talk that stays just talk.  And I'll bet you are, too.

The trouble is, we live in a time and culture that has invented a million different ways to talk, and we are so completely overwhelmed by the messages that bombard us that sometimes we don't notice how little is actually done beyond that messaging.

We have a near infinite list of social media platforms on which we are prodded to broadcast every opinion we have, usually with no effect on the actual choices or actions of those who see what we post.  We have a host of channels of television, streaming services, and talking heads shouting at us all the time.  We have ads hitting our eyeballs on big angry billboards and microtargeted ads on the smart-phones in our shirt pockets.  And with all of their noise, sometimes we fail to see that there's very little substance in all that smoke-blowing, no quality buried inside the sheer quantity of talk constantly buzzing in our ears. (Okay, I know--I see the irony of being a pastor, whose day-job is preaching, writing a blogpost, all about how there is too much "talk" out there.  Let this be a warning to myself as well not to just be another talking head.)

Unfortunately, one of the symptoms of living in this noisy time of endlessly empty talk is that we have just gotten used to people saying things without embodying them.  We're used to the empty promises of politicians and candidates.  We're used to the product not living up to the marketing campaign.  And frankly, a lot of people are just so used to the Respectable Religious Crowd mouthing platitudes about "thoughts and prayers" when atrocities are committed or neighbors are suffering or disaster strikes that they are no longer surprised when our pious talk has no follow-through.  They are used to being disappointed in us.  They are used to hearing empty talk, not just from the pundits on screens, but from pulpits in sanctuaries and publicly pious people surrounding them.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

The writers of the New Testament are pleading with us, in fact, not to settle for a words-only witness. They call us to love, as First John does here, not just in memes and messages, but in action, sacrifice, and generosity.  They call us to put our money where our mouth is, quite literally, and to do it as our way of following Jesus, who first laid his life down for us. That's the difference the world is aching for, because it turns out that the whole wide world is just as tired of the hot air and empty talk as you and I are.  Sometimes we just forget that we don't have to keep perpetuating what we hear and see around us.  We can be the difference.  We can show to the world what love really does by the ways we embody it, rather than just talk about it.

It's not that Christians have never taken concrete action before to embody the love they talk about.  It's just that we often think it's "enough" to settle for less.  Christian communities marched and walked (and took beatings and firehoses and jail time) in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to end Jim Crow segregation--it wasn't just nice talk, but it was action from those who stood arm-in-arm marching across the Pettus Bridge.  There were Christ-following families who housed and hid Jewish neighbors or resisted the Nazi regime in the 1930s--it was action beyond mere talk.  And of course in this present moment, we have a myriad opportunities to do just what John has called us to do--to love in truth and action.  When we host homeless families or give time to distribute food at our local food bank (or to grow that food), when we spend time visiting with sick or homebound neighbors who easily feel overlooked, when we help to resettle immigrants and refugees, or when we gather resources to be distributed around the world in the wake of disasters, we have the chance to live into the love we are good at talking about.  There are a million other ways we can move beyond empty talk--the only question is whether we will take any of those steps, on this day, and then the next, and then the next, until it becomes our whole way of life.  For a watching world that is tired of hot air, that might just be the way we Christians earn the right to be heard.

Talk is cheap.  Love is costly.

When the world around us sees us move beyond the noise of talk to sacrificial love, they'll catch a glimpse of the Christ we want to tell them about.  That might be where we need to start, because honestly, the nobody needs another meme.

Jesus, let our mouths be closed and our hands be opened to act in ways that embody your love. Let that authenticity set us apart so that we truly reflect your goodness.

Truth As A Verb--June 7, 2023

Truth As A Verb--June 7, 2023

"But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament and with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love." [Ephesians 4:15-16]

What if "truth" isn't merely something you say or believe, but something you do?

I ask because I think that is exactly what the book of Ephesians wants us to understand--that truth isn't just in the head--in our speech or our thoughts--but about living and acting in ways that are consistent with what we say and the one in whom we believe.  It turns out that our English translations for this verse struggle to convey what the Greek of the original says, because we don't have a word for what Ephesians says here.  In English, we have the noun "truth," which we use to mean something like "the way things actually are in reality" and the adjective "true," which usually means something like "factually accurate."  We don't have a verb, "to truth," but Greek does.  At least here Ephesians has it.  The phrase here in Ephesians 4 is more literally something like "truthing in love" or I suppose "being true in love"--in other words, it's a verb, an action, a way of living.  

Our English-speaking minds don't usually think of "truth" as something you "do" but rather something you say or think, and so we end up with translations like the NRSV above, "speaking the truth."  And so we end up with interpretations of the verse that go something like, "Well, you have to tell people the facts (that's the "speaking the truth" part), but if they're unpleasant, you find a way to sugar coat them (that's the "in love" part).  And from there we end up with a lot of church folk who equate "speaking the truth in love" with "telling people bad news with a sweet tone of voice." Or, equally popular in our day, sometimes people will use the phrase as justification for something terribly judgmental or harsh to someone else, and then insist that they're saying it "because this is me speaking the truth in love to you..." Sometimes it seems like the popular Christian understanding of the phrase is that genuine "truth" will always upset people, and thus we need to find pleasant ways of upsetting people so we can say it was all done "in love."

But honestly, all of that spiritual sugar-coating and well-intentioned (maybe) busybodying seems to be missing the point when we hear this like it originally hit first century ears.  If the writer to the Ephesians isn't just telling us to find a nice way to condemn others to hell (often done by Respectable Religious People in the name of "speaking the truth in love"), but rather directing us to live truthfully in love--then this passage makes a lot more sense.  It's about being authentic--about actions that line up with our words, and words that line up with the love we've met in Jesus.  It's not permission to be a jerk as long as you do it with a smile; it's about being people of integrity, whose actions and choices align with the way of love.

Look, I know how easy it is for any of us to get up on our personal soapboxes and start railing against whatever is our pet peeve or personal hobbyhorse, and then tell people who are upset by it, "Sorry--I'm just speaking the truth in love."  I know how tempting it is, too, when someone else is upset or hurt by my words, to dig my heels in and assume that I was "only speaking the truth in love" and that, therefore, the other person is just being too sensitive, or doesn't want to be forced to see how wrong they are, or that they don't want to "repent" of what I think they need to repent of.  But maybe this is about something more than giving me a permission to have a persecution complex or buttering people up.  Maybe it's always been about actually doing what I say is important to me.

If we are willing to dare to do the truth, our choices will line up with the words that come of our mouths and the beliefs to which we hold.  "Doing the truth" will root out the hypocrisy Jesus was always calling out the Respectable Religious people of his time for, when they would talk in pious phrases but miss out on doing justice or practicing mercy.  It will mean, too, that we move beyond empty talk (like the language of "thoughts and prayers" thrown around glibly and casually after a disaster, a tragedy, or a shooting) to action that is consistent with what we say we believe.  It will mean we don't just talk about having "godly values" but actually rediscovering how the values we find from Jesus will lead us to associate with all the ones labeled as "sinners" and to share our resources with the empty handed.  It will mean we don't get to just slap a cross on our self-interest and assume whatever we do is blessed by God--we'll keep going back to the shape of Jesus' words and actions to bring us back in line with him.

So maybe the question for this day is something like, "How well do my choices and actions fit with the character of Jesus?" And when we get in the habit of asking that over every hour and every decision, we'll find we are a lot less hyopcritical and becoming a lot more authentic.  We'll find ourselves growing in love that is more than a show.  And maybe then we'll know what it looks like to "do the truth" as a verb, even if we never had the words for it before.

Lord Jesus, align our actions with our words, and align all of it with your love.

Love Sounds Different--June 7, 2023

Love Sounds Different--June 7, 2023

"Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to all who hear." [Ephesians 4:29]

I don't believe that Christians should only ever talk about nice, pleasant, and universally beloved topics like puppy dogs, ice cream and sunshine.  But I do think that folks should be able to hear a difference in the way the followers of Jesus speak compared with the noise around.

We live in a time, it seems, when being crude and hateful (or both) are mistaken for signs of strength.  From politicians, demagogues, and pundits who wallow in name-calling or childish insults at their opponents to a certain strand of public opinion that takes it as a point of pride to cause offense to as many people as possible, we are as a society at risk of confusing being despicable with being tough.  And from there, well, we are in the midst of living through the way public discourse becomes a race to the bottom, with louder and louder voices trying to outdo one another in trolling their opponents.  It's not just a matter of being impolite or profane or saying words that used to get bleeped out over the airwaves--it's almost like there's a pride in dehumanizing other people, a machismo that incorrectly believes upsetting people is automatically a sign of good leadership.  To be sure, throughout history, aspiring leaders have always wanted to project the impression of vigor and power--whether by actually leading a charge into battle, or, as in our time, being as obnoxious and as much like a horse's rear-end as possible.

But among the community of Jesus, we are called to something different--something more. Real strength that arises from love sounds different from the kind that comes from hate and cruelty, because so often those are really camouflage for insecurity.

Because we believe that Jesus has redefined what "power" really looks like and what "strength" really means, we no longer have to one-up each other with mean-spirited and childish attacks.  Because we see in Jesus what real authority is like--and how genuine leadership doesn't have to push others down into to puff itself up--we don't have to play those old, tired games, either.  And because we are learning to see all of our lives through the lens of Christ-like love, we no longer find it acceptable to be hateful toward anybody else, not even if it could score us "points" with supporters.

But, as you can imagine, that is going to mean we reject, and even outright dismantle, a lot of the conventional wisdom of our time that tries to re-brand indecency as virtue and mean-ness as virility. We will be people who do not celebrate when talking heads dehumanize the people they don't like or disagree with.  We'll be people who use our platforms, our social media, and our personal relationships to build people up.  And we will not care if someone else thinks we sound "weak" because we won't punch down with our words.

It may not make headlines, but it will get people's attention in subtler, quieter ways.  And most of all, it will be an embodiment of the love we've first seen in Jesus--which is what this whole life is really about anyway.

Today, consider how, where, what, and why we speak--and how we can resist the impulse to add only heat rather than light with our words.

Lord Jesus, enable us to speak, write, post, and share thoughts in ways that build people up.

A Reason for Honesty--June 5, 2023

A Reason for Honesty--June 5, 2023

"So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another." [Ephesians 4:25]

Plenty of people will advise you to tell the truth.  But here in this lone sentence from Ephesians, it's the reason that gets me.  To hear the writer to the Ephesians tell it, the reason to be honest as human beings is simply this: we belong to each other.

Some advisors might counsel you to tell the truth because it's a sin or a commandment, and you'll get in trouble for breaking the rules if you lie.  Others might say, practically speaking, that if you lie you'll eventually get caught when you can't remember what story you've told to whom, and so it's easiest to be truthful for purely pragmatic reasons. And of course there are folks who relish the idea of brandishing what they think is "the truth" as a weapon to attack and criticize whomever they don't like or agree with--you can be cruel and critical if it's in the name of "the truth," they seem to think.

To be sure, there are also voices around who don't even advise truthfulness if it doesn't serve your interests.  And in the age of social media especially, it is dangerously easily to make a wild, outlandish claim, free of tethering to reality, and post it to stir up the people you want to provoke, without any thought to whether it is true or accurate.  Bold, audacious claims will get you attention and eyeballs, but nobody notices the corrections--and rarely is anybody actually held accountable to retract something they've misled people about.  

So, yeah, there are a lot of opinions on why anybody should be truthful--or even whether it is wise to be truthful.  But over against all of those is this beautiful, compelling voice from Ephesians, who doesn't hold out the threat of getting caught or sent to hell for breaking a commandment as his reason for being truthful.  And neither does he think in terms of self-interest by saying, "You should tell the truth if it's to your advantage, but if it paints you in a bad light or doesn't reinforce your preconceived notions, maybe don't mention it."  Rather, the writer of Ephesians sees truth-telling as an act of love.  We are called to be truthful to one another because we belong to one another, and that means honoring one another with integrity in our words as well as our actions.

These days it is very tempting to commit to a set of presuppositions or a policy platform, and then only to accept the facts that reinforce our preferred way of seeing the world.  We self-select channels for news, and algorithms learn to show us more of the content we already have "liked" or "shared" or agree with, until we don't even realize we are in echo chambers anymore.  And in that kind of setting, it's easy to feel like you have to shout what you want others to believe, and to you have to stifle the voices saying anything different, because you don't want "them" to "win."  If that isn't a lot of folks' primary approach to being on social media, I'll eat my hat.  Once we've given our allegiance to a particular narrative or group or side in a culture war, we've already accepted the presumption that we're in a conflict with winners and losers, and the goal of defeating the "other side" becomes an end in and over itself. And when that happens, "truth" becomes just a tool, or a weapon to attack with when the facts of a moment suit your perspective, but dropped when it is not useful for your case.  That turns the people with whom I do not agree into foes to be attacked, and it hardens me against a being open to reconsidering that I might possibly be wrong, because that kind of reconsideration would be a "defeat."  And from there, we find ourselves not just in echo chambers, and not just stuck in increasingly divergent understandings of reality, but forced into seeing others as an enemy army.  Sound familiar?

That's what makes this verse from Ephesians so powerful for our time.  It doesn't see truth-telling as a matter of convenience, or a way to avoid punishment for lying, or a weapon to attack "those people" with.  But rather, being truthful is an expression of loving other people--whoever happens to cross our path.  We owe honesty not just to fellow Christians or people we think of as "on our side," but anybody whom we encounter, because a neighbor is anyone who is at hand. The biblical witness says that I owe my fellow human beings honesty and truth-telling, not simply out of fear that I'll get zapped if I tell too big a whopper, but because we have an obligation to each other to be real.  The only ground for  a healthy relationship is honesty, and being followers of Jesus puts us at least in relationship with all people as neighbors.  Being truthful with them, even when it is not convenient or doesn't fit my pre-conceived narrative for the world, is a way of loving my neighbor. 

In the last number of years, I suspect we've all been pretty disappointed from time to time when people we respected (or used to respect) made outrageous claims, shared something obviously misleading on social media, or reinforced the echo-chamber mentality for them and others around them.  And I'll bet that a lot of those folks are ones who would say they are followers of Jesus, which makes it even more disappointing to see or hear what they say.  I get that--I've lost connections and respect for others in that way, too.  Maybe others have felt the same about me--this is the challenge of our time.  But today begins a new opportunity to do something different.  Today is a chance to make the intentional effort to be honest, not just in daily conversation (don't tell someone over the phone that it's raining when it's sunny, I suppose), but in the platforms we have to persuade and influence others, too, with things that aren't grounded in reality.  Today is a chance not to just blurt out sweeping generalizations or news stories without context, but to be diligent about what we say, what we share, and what we pass on to others as credible.  And we will do those things because we are no longer conscripted fighters in someone else's culture war, but because we see the people around us as neighbors, whom we are therefore called upon to love.  Maybe today is a day to see truth-telling as a matter of loving others, not merely avoiding punishment or scoring victories.  

Let's see what happens if we try it.

Lord Jesus, enable us to love the neighbors you send our way by leading us to be people of honesty and integrity all around.

A Counterpoint to the Noise--June 2, 2023

A Counterpoint to the Noise--June 2, 2023

[Jesus prayed:] "I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.  And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in the truth." [John 17:15-19]

We're meant to be the minority report in the world, we followers of Jesus.  We're meant to offer an alternative to the conventional wisdom, a counterpoint to the loud and dominant messaging of the day.  Like the ancient Hebrew prophets at their best, we are meant to speak a different word over against the noise all around... but from a place of love.  Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest might well have criticized their society and their leaders, but it was because they cared about the people to whom the spoke.  (As James Baldwin said about his relationship with his own country, "I love America more than any other country in this world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.") But that means we are going to be constantly finding ourselves in a place of tension, speaking up in the world because God loves the world and the people in it, but also feeling out of place in that same world because it keeps running away from God's open arms.  That's the two-step we are constantly doing: reaching out to the world in love, but being willing to be left on the outside looking in when the world doesn't want to listen.

Without that grounding in love, we come off not as Christ-like counterpoints to the world's noise, but as sanctimonious scolds who just add to it.  And, my goodness, there is no shortage of Respectable Religious Finger-Wagging that just seems itching to condemn folks or to look down on them, all using the slogan, "But I'm just telling 'The Truth'" as cover.  That's not what Jesus has in mind here.

For one, Jesus doesn't picture his followers being in positions of power to stand in judgment over others.  That's like the prophets of ancient Israel, too--they had no political office, no wealth, and no official leverage, but only the power of their words and the courage to speak them.  Jesus doesn't envision his disciples deputizing themselves as the local morality police with the power to force others to follow their rules, but rather that we would be a compelling presence by the ways our lives line up with the truths we are telling.  We'll stand out by our love in the midst of indifference and self-interest... by our commitment to justice rather than what is convenient or comfortable... and by our refusal to do things for money and power.  That standing out--that sort of blessed weirdness--is what it means to be "holy," or as the phrasing is in these verses, "sanctified."

That's critical to pay attention to: when Jesus prays that his followers would be "sanctified" (made holy), it is in terms of "the truth."  What should set us apart in the world is not our public shows of piety or religiosity, not our holier-than-thou condescension toward "those sinners," and not a reputation for being wet blankets who hate it when anybody else has fun.  What should set us apart in the world is that we'll be the ones willing to keep speaking the vision we've been given from God--a vision of justice and mercy, of care for the vulnerable, and of the life we've found in Jesus.  So often when church folk talk about being "holy" or "sanctified" we end up using it as a way of puffing ourselves up or looking down on others, rather than a calling to stand out because we're willing to keep telling the word we've been given from Jesus.

So every time we insist on valuing people over just making bigger profits at work, we're speaking up a truth in line with Jesus.  And every time we hold both public figures and our private selves accountable to live with integrity, we're being made holy in truth-telling.  Every time we are willing to go against the flow for the sake of holding on to what is good, true, and decent rather than just chasing after what is trendy, convenient, and profitable, we're being "sanctified" in the way that matters.  And every time we let God's love for the world lead us to speak up to set things right rather than shrugging with indifference, we're becoming the answer to Jesus' prayer for his followers.

Today, where someone needs a friend or an ally to speak and stand alongside them, you can be that presence.  Today, where it feels like everyone else has agreed to sell out what is "right" for what is "profitable," you can be the one who points people back to what matters.  And where it seems like the world is drowning in noise, you can be the one whose actions speak louder than any of it.

Who knows what God might do through any of those chances we get on this day?

Lord God, give us the courage to stand out from the crowd in ways that look like you.

Things Left Unsaid--Devotion for June 1, 2023

Things Left Unsaid--June 1, 2023

[Jesus said to the disciples:] "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you." [John 16:12-15]

You could always tell you were getting close to the end when the sneakers came off. You knew when an episode of the classic kids show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, was nearing the last minute or so, our old TV friend Mister Rogers would sit on his bench, untie his tennis shoes, and sing the closing song.  It was practically a liturgy.  And as part of the generation that grew up on that Presbyterian pastor of the airwaves, I can remember the words by heart.  He would sing to us, watching at home, moments before walking out his television house door, a promise:

"I'll be back, when the day is new,
And I'll have more ideas for you.
And you'll have things you'll want to talk about--
I will too."

It made the ending not so sad--maybe even a little bit hopeful.  It was an assurance that there was more to come, that the relationship (such as it was between a TV personality and watching children) would continue, and that there would be more to discuss and share together.  And it was a brilliant move on Mister Rogers' part, because it allowed a generation of kids to be able to think about endings in a new way, without despair, while holding onto the promise that there was more to come.  In fact, it was precisely the fact that there were things left unsaid that gave us reason to believe there would be more conversation: it was like Mister Rogers was saying, "We can't be at the end of our friendship, because we haven't talked about all the things on each of our minds.  So of course, we'll get together again."

Well, in so many words, that's how Jesus speaks to his disciples.  There is more to come--you can know it for certain exactly because we haven't talked about everything you have questions about, and there are still things I want to share with you but we haven't had the chance for all of it yet.  Jesus prepared his disciples, not just for the idea that he wouldn't be with them in the same way (after the cross and resurrection), but also for the idea of facing the world even without having all the answers yet.  The Spirit would keep speaking.  There was more yet to be said, and there were more things they would come to learn.  But in the mean-time, they would have to learn to be OK with not having the whole picture, and trusting that Jesus did.

That's something we still struggle with, isn't it?  We want to imagine there's some way to have all the answers, all correct, right now.  And then, of course, we can be in control.  We want to imagine that at some point, the last open question was answered, the final right answer was given, and the last unknown variable was solved, all in time to make inside the covers of our Bibles.  It's tempting, isn't it, to believe that every possible question or situation just needs the proper Bible verse thrown at it, because then we wouldn't need to wait on the Spirit anymore.  The Spirit will have no room to surprise us, no ability to show us a deeper reality, no need to lead us into the unknown--because it will all be known, answered, diagrammed, and resolved for us.  And if we are honest, some part of us wants a reality like that, where we're never called to trust that we'll be given the insight we need at the right time, and where we never have to admit in humility that we don't know it all.

Jesus, however, isn't offering us that kind of arrangement.  He doesn't say, "Wait until the Answer Book is finished--then you'll be able to confidently beat people up with the Bible verses you'll have weaponized, because you'll have control."  Rather, he tells his followers that the Spirit will keep speaking, and we'll have to keep listening, because we can't bear it all at once. (Perhaps, like T. S. Eliot said, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality.")  So Jesus himself doesn't believe the solution is to wait for a Book of Easy Answers (and he certainly doesn't think of the Scriptures that way), but rather to trust that the Spirit will keep telling us what we need to know as we go.  That's hard for us, because it means we'll never be in the driver's seat or calling the shots--we'll forever be trusting the Spirit to give us what we need, step by step, moment by moment, and situation by situation.

But, for those of us who know the Mister Rogers closing song, that also offers us hope.  It means that Jesus isn't done with us--because there's more yet to be said, more to be learned, and more to be shared.   At no point does Jesus say, "Here's the last answer to the last possible question, so now that you've got all the correct responses, you're on your own." Rather, he tells us to trust that the Spirit will give us the truth we need at the right time, and will keep speaking even now more than two millennia later.

It does mean a shift in our faith to learn to be OK with taking this life of following Jesus one step at a time.  We've wanted to have an answer book we can control, which won't ever have new information added or new questions explored (and so sometimes we try and pretend that's what the Bible is for), and instead Jesus gives us a Person--the Spirit--to trust to keep speaking as we face new situations and deeper realities. If we're going to be Jesus people, we're going to have to learn to receive what he gives rather than what we thought we wanted.  But, to be honest, he hasn't failed us yet... even if he hasn't been our genie granting our wishes for answers and control.

So let's trust today that where we need it, Jesus will give us the ongoing truthful voice of the Spirit.  Let's trust that when the time calls for it, the Spirit will direct us, give us new realizations, and move us in new directions that we cannot even imagine yet.  And let's trust Jesus promise that there is more to be said, so we can take the next step out the door and into the neighborhood.

Lord Jesus, give us the direction of your Spirit where we need it today, and allow us to accept the pace at which you give it.