On Being Unclear

John 14:23-29 May 22, 2022 Easter 6

 

For people who want clear and simple answers

in their religion, Jesus farewell discourse in John

will be enormously frustrating.

 

Basically what we’re reading today is

a small part of monologue by Jesus to the disciples,

at the last supper about what will happen and what

they should do after Jesus dies

and they continue the ministry without him.

This part is very close to the beginning of the speech.

 

Now when someone is about to leave,

for any length of time, there are usually some practical things

they like to share, like where the important papers are,

where to reach them, when to take the garbage out.

You know, practical things.

 

But none of the things in Jesus farewell discourse are practical.

Jesus speaks for three chapters and most of it is metaphors.

He talks about vines and branches, a lot of glorifying,

houses and rooms, and all sorts of other unclear metaphors. 

John’s complicated sentence structures and poetic language

doesn’t help either.

 

It would seem like a perfect time to tell everyone

exactly what would be happening, and exactly what

to do, but there just seem to be no clear and simple answers

in Jesus farewell discourse.

It can be frustrating to read and

very frustrating to preach about.

 

But sometimes I wonder if this is exactly how Jesus wanted it: unclear.

  

Some people think that clarity is what religion is all about,

and if you are unclear on things, then you don’t have faith.

 

Christians have spent the last two thousand years

trying to get everything correct.

Trying to set out the perfect doctrine and rules.

Even Lutherans have felt like we’ve got the whole thing

all sealed up in a book and we have a special kind of clarity.

 

But then our world changes, our culture changes, 

our understandings change, the questions we ask change,

and what we thought was absolutely clear
is not completely clear any more.

 

Like the doctrine around baptism and communion.

Do we think people are going to hell if they’re not baptized?

Who is welcome to the table and who isn’t?

We have made great changes in just the last 20

years since I’ve been in seminary. 

We’ve become more inclusive and more open. 

No, we don’t think people are going to hell

if they’re not baptized, and everyone is welcome

to the table no matter their age or background.

The people who were suggesting this even when I was in school

were kind of looked on as rebels and outliers. Now it’s the norm.

 

Some people hate this feeling of unclarity.

To some people it feels like shifting sands.
Some people say that changing what we believe

or watering down our believes and convictions.

 

But what if this is just how Jesus wanted it?

For us to be flexible enough to adapt to a changing world?

What if Jesus wants us to have less clarity not more.

To be able to admit that sometimes we were wrong,

or sometimes we don’t know what to do,  

and we don’t know how to do it 

that we don’t know exactly what God wants at all times.

 

Maybe Jesus wants less absolute clarity from

his followers and not more.

I was just reading something about John Wycliffe.

He was a Catholic priest in the 1300’s, 200 years before Luther,

He translated the bible into the vernacular,

words that regular people could understand it’s

called the Wycliffe Bible which you can still read today.

He spoke out against the Pope and the

extravagant lives of the clergy and the churches

the authority of scripture and the understanding of the Eucharist.

He died of natural causes, but one hundred years

after he died, he was declared a heretic,

and his body was dug up and his bones burned and the

ashes thrown into a river.

Say what you will, but that is absolute clarity.

 

Those people who had his bones

dug up and burned were very clear about

what God’s mind was and what the Holy Spirit

was and was not going to do in that new age.    

That was clarity.

 

When you  think about it,

clarity is really the thing that leads to

so much violence and so much of our embarrassing past.

The inquisition, the crusades, the destruction of Native

American populations,  Slavery, the Holocaust, segregation,

they’re all problems of clarity.

Everyone at every time was sure they knew what God wanted

and what the right order of things was.

 

Clarity is still a problem today.

Religious intolerance, wars and persecution.

Christians in this country and elsewhere are still sticking with

racism, homophobia, misogyny, trying to silence people

who have other thoughts, through exclusion,

slander and violence because they have clarity.

Maybe the problem is not the changing culture,

but the church’s stubborn need for absolute clarity?

Maybe unclear is just how Jesus wants it.

 

The one clear thing that Jesus says in his farewell discourse

is what we read today, Jesus promises that God would

send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. Jesus promises 

the Spirit is coming and would be with them and teach them.

 

But the best we can do to describe the Holy Spirit

is to use metaphors. We know the Spirit as a dove,

a beam of light, the breath that moved over the waters,

Wisdom that dances in the entrance gates, the wind.

 

I think that wind is a good metaphor.

You can’t see where it came from or where it’s going

but still you can feel it. You know it’s been there.

But you can’t control it.

 

We like to think we can control the Spirit sometimes,

but like trying to contain the wind it’s a futile attempt

I think that’s why maybe the church has lost its impact

in the last few decades.

We’ve tried to put the Spirit in a neat little package.

We’ve tried to domesticate it and make it predictable.

We’ve tried to institutionalize it. Make its ways clear.

But the Spirit doesn’t work that way.

 

I was asked to do a boat blessing a couple of weeks ago,

and they came and laid out the plans with me.

There was going to be a parade of boats going

by the boat that I was supposed to be on.

It was planned for months.

But the day came and it was too windy to do anything,

so we just stood on the dock and did the boat blessing

from there and then we had lunch.

Everyone took it in stride though.

 

Because the sailors knew you can’t tell the wind

to blow one way or another,

you can’t tell it to stop blowing long enough for

us to complete our plans.

The only thing you do is just figure out

which way the wind is blowing and how fast

and to adjust your world to it, instead of the other way around.

 

Jesus clearly promised us a complete lack of clarity.

And a Spirit to guide us through it.

 

We’ve been reading parts of the end of Revelation.
Another of John’s writings.

In it we get visions of a life to come.

A new heaven and a new earth.

A place of eternal daylight where

the crystal clear river of the water of life flows.

Where every tear is wiped away,

where death and dying will be no more.
Where mourning and crying will be no more.

 

It’s a vision that one day

we all will all resort to love and understanding

instead of intolerance and contempt.

That we will one day live in peace together.

One day there will be no place for war or violence.

No place for racism, and hatred.

One day, we will all follow Jesus words

of love and grace and forgiveness and not

even give it a second thought.

 

And maybe it’s okay that I cannot clearly see

the way there right now.

 

After yet another mass shooting of people

this time in a grocery store, doing their daily shopping,

by a man with such absolute clarity about his white supremacy

that he would kill 10 innocent, unsuspecting people.

And that this was the 198^th mass shooting in the

United States in 2022.

Maybe it’s okay that we don’t understand our way out of this

That it’s not clear how we will get to that vision

of God’s peaceful kingdom.

 

Maybe we just have to and give up our will, our clarity,

and our preconceived notions.
Maybe we have to just throw up our hands and

and say, we don’t know what we’re doing.

 

Maybe the most holy and faithful

thing we can say is “I don’t know.”

And actually let the Holy Spirit guide us.

 

Maybe this is just how Jesus wants it.