Disciple Bible Study 21, Gospel of John Part VI

So you know not all videos are my favorite or yours, I think.

And that is on my list of not favorites.

However, I think it's got some interesting comments that we can build upon.

But first, John had something last week we didn't make it to talk about.

Something you said, can we talk more about?

I didn't bring my Bible.

Was it the Maccabees?

It was the very last um passage in Maccabees.

Yeah.

So um just just a reminder, this is about the feast of dedication, which is really called Hanukkah.

So if if you don't mind me telling you what's going on, I'd love to do that.

Um little bit of our historical recap is uh this would have been great if I had wiped this board off.

Um I don't need to write on there much.

Um I'm gonna get there to do that.

Well, I don't know.

I think I had a cloth and it got taken.

I can use it.

This is silly of me, Meg.

I'm just going to get a wet paper towel and do it.

And uh because that's all it needs.

Um the Maccabees, and we got the we got to actually read this about uh 15 weeks ago, maybe, or or or 14 weeks ago.

The Maccabees are essentially these Jewish freedom fighters who after Alexander the Great has taken over and made all the world learn Greek and sort of zealously um been an evangelist for Greek culture, including things like gymnasiums and Greek language, um, there there follows this Seleucid ruler.

Remember that Alexander's general split his empire into four bits.

One of them was called Seleucius, and um he's really overzealous to not just um have language spoken and gymnasiums available, but really to kind of convert people to, it seems like, from Judaism to Greco-Roman um um religion.

So remember, he is the one who institutes the policy that if you circumcise your baby, your baby is killed and you wear it around your neck for a day before you are before you're burnt.

Um terrible uh oppression, and he's the one who offers what Daniel calls the abomination that causes desolation.

He himself goes into the um the holiest place in the temple and sacrifices a pig to Zeus and thereby defiles the temple.

That's important.

Defiles the temple and all that's in it.

So the Maccabees essentially organize a guerrilla warfare.

I mean, they would never have won face to face on the battlefield.

Just like the um, you know, the um the Continental Army wasn't doing great against Britain.

I mean, really, we won the War of Independence with Guerrilla Warfare and attacking on Christmas Day.

You know, these are not these are just kind of naughty war tactics, but they they were effective.

The Maccabees win, and um they're drawing near to recapturing Jerusalem before one of the three most important Jewish feasts.

The feast of Sukkot, or booths, right?

And that's if you know what that's like, you build a booth in your yard, which is not like a tent, it's like a pergola.

You have to be able to see the sky through part of it, could be a yurt.

You sleep in your yard, basically, for eight days.

It's a festival, uh, like a like a fall harvest festival.

So there's like gourds and pumpkins and a particular kind of um citrus called the um I'm gonna say it wrong, zitrog, I think is what it is.

And um it's it's one of the three most important feasts.

They're hoping to celebrate it in Jerusalem, but they don't get Jerusalem back in time.

They end up in Jerusalem about a month and a half, two months later than the festival should have been celebrated.

So what they do is celebrate it anyway, but they do it late.

And that late festival, of course, lasts eight days.

Hmm, Hanukkah has eight days.

That's because Hanukkah is the feast of Sukkot celebrated two months late.

Now, you've probably heard this story that hey, they didn't have enough consecrated oil to last, and somehow one day's oil turned into eight.

This is the miracle of the oil.

That story comes second.

Hanukkah really is just a late, a late Sukkot, primarily.

It becomes a feast of a dedication or rededication later, because again, uh there's the miracle of the oil.

You can't just consecrate oil in a day, apparently, you need some time.

So um, and there is the miracle of the oil, and that's why you celebrate with like oily foods like latkas with your potato pancakes, fried in oil.

Um, but primarily it's it's the Sukkot.

So in the Maccabees, when you read about this, that's sort of the deal.

The other thing the Maccabees do is they go into the altar where um Antiochus Epiphanes IV had sacrificed that pig to Zeus, and they kind of they don't know what to do with it.

It's they know it's been defiled, they kind of bust it up, but they don't want to throw it away.

They follow the Torah by building uh an altar and unhewn stones there.

Um and they and they leave the bits of the original altar kind of in a rubble pile to be dealt with later.

I mean, ultimately, best thing we can figure out is that they rebuild an altar, maybe with those, but they use mortared stones, which is really strange.

Um, but that's that's sort of what happens.

So when you hear that the feast of dedication, you're really thinking, oh, this is like Hanukkah without the dreidel and the Hanukkah bush and the latkas, it's it's like Sukkot later, and it's in some ways it's it's somewhat religious and somewhat nationalistic at the same time.

Is that is that helpful?

Yes, but but my question, my question had to do with the very last passage which said that, you know, just I'd love to be able to read it, but I can't remember exactly how it was.

But basically it said that they built, I thought, they built a temple facing Edom.

And I'm wondering what was significant about that.

Well, no, there's already a temple there.

Uh the when they rebuild the altar.

Well, but it's but they make a point that's saying that it's facing or directed towards.

I don't know.

I have to go back and read it.

I I must have missed that.

That's what really it just is.

That was what you wanted to know.

Why they would make that point.

Yeah, that is strange.

Anyway, I wish I had had it to put it.

It's the very last passage of Maccabees 1.

This was from last week's reading.

Yeah.

Well, let me just see.

This is um 1 Maccabees 4.

In the very end here, right?

She says 36 through 59.

And it was, but it was, I think it was like 60.

Oh.

It wasn't.

We didn't read it, you just happened to notice it.

There was only one passage left after 59, it seems.

Oh, it faced Idumea.

That's what that's what it is.

They had a stronghold that faced Idumea.

Alright.

So the last verse, two verses of the Maccabees, say they fortified Mount Zion, which is another name for the where the temple is, with high walls and strong towers to keep the Gentiles from coming and trampling them down.

So they want to make sure the temple doesn't get desecrated again.

They stationed a garrison there to guard it.

He also fortified Bethzor to guard it, so the people might have a stronghold that faced Idumea.

So Bethzor is not on the temple, that's a little bit further out.

And Idumea, interestingly enough, and this is where it's hard to know when this victor is written, um, that's where Herod's father.

Herod's father was an Idumean, not Jewish.

And what ends up happening is that the Jewish people kind of grab Idumea territorially, and they have a successful rebellion, and they enlarge their territory by grabbing this property, Idumea, and they forcibly convert all the Idumeans.

So they say, you're gonna become Jewish or you're gonna leave, or we're gonna kill you.

So when you think Islam converted at the point of the sword, fine, but they did it first.

And um, as a result, there's tension with Idumea.

So in this time, they haven't conquered it yet, they're going to, and that would explain why they make a fortification as a safeguard between Ijumea and the temple.

I see, I see.

It doesn't affect their worship, and again, what's gonna happen from that policy is you're gonna have somebody who's like quasi-Jewish, Herod, end up being this Jewish king.

But remember, he's not actually Jewish, he's an Iumean.

That was a long answer.

Hopefully, it was answered your question there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How about from this week's reading?

Was there anything that's really stood out to you or irked you either from the video or or or or from the reading?

Images that were helpful or or newer old thoughts?

Well, the thing that occurred to me a couple things.

Um I didn't realize that the Jesus that John is portraying is divine.

Not a doesn't seem to be a human Jesus.

And the other thing I am I'm pointing with a commentary from Raymond Brown on John.

And I didn't, I guess I didn't think about it.

Jesus prays for his disciples and for the Christians, but he doesn't pray for the world.

I just thought that was odd.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And and I I think it's maybe a good thing to remember that Jesus seems a lot more self-aware in John about the fullness of his divinity than he seems to in other gospels.

And I think that's a helpful reminder, and it may be because this one's written last.

And unlike the other gospels, there's a lot more reflection after a sign than there than any other ones.

You know, he does a sign that lasts about four verses and then he talks about it for four chapters, right?

That's that's one of the differences here.

And then the other thing is the paraclete presents me with a little problem.

Sure.

Jesus comes from God, the paraclete comes from Jesus.

Is a paraclete the Holy Spirit?

Because if they're all the same, but they're all different.

It seems like one comes after the other.

Yeah, it's good.

I mean, Jesus sort of says, unless I leave, you won't receive the paraclete.

Right?

So I think there's a couple of ways we could choose to read that.

One is Jesus says there is a natural progression.

You can't have two of us at the same time.

But I think maybe another way to hear it is I'm distracting you from other aspects of what it means to participate in God.

And until I get out of your way, your vision won't expand that there's more than this way.

I mean, I think it's choice.

Now there's not just either or, but I just want to suggest those are two different choices.

And notice this is a funny bit though.

Um, Jesus doesn't send the paraclete.

He says, My father will send the paraclete.

And you know, in the Nicene Creed, we say we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Well, that and the Son is only a thousand years old, whereas the Creed is 1700 years old.

So the first 700 years, it was proceeds from the Father period.

If you're interested to know, this was the straw that broke the back in the relations between the Roman Church and the Orthodox Church.

The Roman Church had a had an ecumenical, no, the way you're supposed to change things like creeds and policies is you call an ecumenical council.

Nicaea was one of those.

So there's representatives from all over, bishops and priests come to debate these finer points and come to some kind of consensus, even if it's not a hundred percent.

Now, Nicaea Creed, they were literally fisticuffed brawls during the discussion.

So it was it was not a hundred percent unanimous.

Let's do it this way.

Every time there's a council, some people have sour grapes and they try to take their toys and go home.

No surprise, right?

There were several different of these councils.

There's one at Chalcedon, there's one at Toledo.

It's the way you're supposed to do it.

Well, um, in I and I want to say it's like 1061, the Roman church changes the creed without a council.

And they change it by adding this phrase, and the son, which in Latin is filio key.

Filio means son, and then a k is like and, right?

And the son.

And when the Pope changed that without an ecumenical council, the Orthodox Church has said, we're done with you.

If you're not going to call an ecumenical council, we quit.

So what happened is the Patriarch of Constantinople, that's the center of Christianity in the East, excommunicated the Pope.

Of course, the Pope excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople.

That's not the great schism, but that is the year in which Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy split.

Now there were other things going on, right?

In in Western Roman Catholicism, um sculpture was a mainstay of expressing um you know uh Bible theology through images.

Of course, in the East it was icons.

Now at this year, um people were uncomfortable.

Like when you're used to icons and you see sculpture, you could say how weird.

I mean, but essentially when you split, you say how weird and how wrong.

And they called the sculptures idols, and of course the Romans called the icons idols.

And said you're praying to the icon.

They never believed that, they're praying through the icon.

And the sculpture wasn't worshipped, it was meant to align your worship.

But it was just one of these ways in which that happened, and of course, the other bit really was the was this feuding about who's more important, the patriarch in Constantinople or the Bishop of Rome.

And the Bishop of Rome tried to say, I am, I don't even need a council to change the creed.

I mean, really, that's what's going on.

But proceeds from the Father and the Son, again, as a thousand years old, not 1700 years old.

The earliest Nicene Creed, for what it's worth, the one written in 325, said, We believe in the Holy Spirit, period.

That is it.

We added the other bit in 385 at the Council of Chalcedon.

So the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, with the Father and Son, the Spirit is worshiped and glorified.

That comes from 385, not 325.

So the creed's been amended before, but it was amended in ecumenical council, not by a single individual.

And that was the that was their protest.

We'll talk about more about the the the advocate.

But and and anybody else, other thoughts from this?

Well, if you're talking about just in general, um, I thought it was interesting.

One of the faith or marks of faithful community, one of the questions was, um, abide is a word seldom means.

What other words or images express the idea of abide for you?

And of course, you know, we we often say, abide in me as I abide in you.

This is a conjunction before, yada yada.

But so they said what other words?

Well, yeah, I I got the company to thinking about abide.

Yeah.

And I personally came up with words like in, with, follow, reside.

Um so that is sometimes hard for me to grasp.

Did anybody else come up with with words on that question?

Not synonyms, but ways you understand the body.

Like I don't know.

Because it's all about me.

We're living my life together.

So it's, you know, um things like if I'm uh I try to be more conscious of almost like I would with anybody else I'm living with in the house, if I were to make a major life decision or I'm going through something that's really annoying me or upsetting me, it's um bringing that to, I don't know if any of this is making sense, but bringing that to the Holy Spirit and saying, okay, what's your what's your take on this?

What do I do now?

You know, um something as simple as um counting on the Holy Spirit to be inside of me and be patient, say, with a particular child I'm having to struggle with in the afternoon.

You know, asking the spirit to work me because I know myself well enough to know that in some situations, even with children, the words that want to come out of my mouth or that I want to say are not going to be helpful and constructive.

So asking for the Holy Spirit to handle that.

I'll just open my mouth.

You you have the words come out.

That to me is when I think of a bite, I think it's it's so close, like dwelling.

Is anything listening to the other?

Um dwelling together.

And it's sadly it's up to me whether or not I'm going to take advantage of a body with the you know.

I can be very self-righteous.

I can be very, I want my way.

I can be very, this is inconvenient for me.

I can be very, you should know better.

You know, so I I need that.

Um because left to my own devices and my own words.

I might be honest, but it won't necessarily be good.

Supporting yeah.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

My my word was remember, but not like like in an in a distant sense, but like that in that very concrete sense of like the opposite of dismembering an arm that's severed is like remembering it, reattaching.

Yeah, and it you know, like there's this there's this thought like at the Eucharist where Jesus says, you know, this bread is my body, whenever you eat bread, remember me.

Which people did three times a day, not one time a week.

So like have this concrete thing that when you're nourished by food, be nourished by our time or our presence together as well.

Get the dual nourishment.

So remember, and I guess um like the image I I I sort of get, you know, I used to think that prayer was like a time in which you had like listing things off, like thank you, I love you, do this for me, do this for other people.

And I and I had this like sort of moment where maybe prayer is really just being aware of God's presence at moments throughout the day, which is like remembering God.

Oh, like I'm not on my own because I'm not praying, like, oh, you like you're traveling with me or inside me or whatever it is.

And so maybe abiding is remembering that God is with us wherever we do, and and prayer is this opportunity to say, like, I don't pray and then have a business meeting.

I can just be aware of God's presence throughout the meeting, and and maybe that's a better prayer of do this and then go forward.

It's no no no, just like imagine God's in the room with you, however you do that, you know.

Um which means like we're having conversations in God's presence, even if we're just having them with ourself, is a way we abide.

Yeah.

Would you say that um because I'm uh I'm you know, it said the line that I highlighted here was the paraclete is the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth.

And then at the very last bullet item it says the paraclete is the spirit of Jesus.

So if I think you said a little earlier that the paraclete or the Holy Spirit cannot cannot reside, cannot be here, if you will, if Jesus is here.

So Jesus has to leave this Holy Spirit to be here.

Because that in fact is, if you will, that left.

When Jesus left, he didn't leave, he left something behind, and that is the Holy Spirit.

Is that I think it's one way of looking at it.

I think you can't.

There's a lot, a million ways we can cut it, you know.

I I I might suggest though that we um I might suggest we've got another opportunity, and and you know, C.S.

Lewis writes this in The Great Divorce.

He says God is the great iconoclast, the breaker of images.

So when we get comfortable with an image of God, for our sake, God sets out to destroy that image so that we can make room for something bigger.

Sometimes, like when the cup's full, you can't put anything else in it, which I think is what Jesus means by the way when he says, Blessed are those who hunger, because they'll be filled.

When you're full, you can't be filled anymore.

You're already filled up.

So maybe what God does is breaks our containers so we can make a bigger one.

And I think sometimes, I mean, an opportunity is it's gonna sound funny since Jesus is God and all, but we could get so caught up on just Jesus that we miss those other aspects of God, frankly, that we don't see in our peripheral because we're dialed in so close.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Jesus.

Again, what I'm saying is sometimes we get so fixated on this human experience aspect of God that we forget He there there may be more than just that.

There's other cognitive categories or other ways of relating.

I that might sound a little bit heretical, but nothing wrong with Jesus.

Again, I just I you know again, I think sometimes we forget there's two other members of the Trinity who offer some complementarity to how we relate God.

That's an interesting I I mean I you know part of it I think is is that we we sometimes we we take things we we we forget that there's a lot of symbolism going on here and we settle on oh this is like the Holy Spirit, and we like that's our thing, and we forget that those words mean things.

Like holy means something, and so does spirit, but in our head we think like, oh, spirit's like a ghost.

Well it's not.

I mean it has a very concrete meaning, and like holy dust, right?

Holy doesn't mean perfect and unblemished, it just means set apart, like extraordinary.

And spirit doesn't mean Casper, the ghost, it it means moving air.

So, what kind of air moves?

Wind and breath.

I mean, I you know I think you could really say the Holy Spirit is like a second wind.

You don't get a second wind till you're exhausted.

Just honestly, like you didn't get a second wind in your sleep.

But it's this interesting bit to think about, and this is where Judaism is really tied in with Eastern religion, frankly, is that your spirit, your soul is here and you're breathing.

I mean, that's the basis of yoga.

And I I you know I think it's a really interesting thought, right?

That yoga is not an exercise class, it's a breathing class.

And if any yoga master does this right, they say, listen, you're here so that you can focus on your breath as you contort your body and these weird bits.

So when you leave the class, you're ready to face your day that way.

Like instead of losing your breath when crisis comes, you're ready to center yourself in your breathing, which will change the way you relate to crisis.

Oh, Mike, all that's Eastern.

Yeah, so is this.

This is Eastern.

The Holy Spirit is like a center, an anchor.

And then John's the only one that uses this other word, paraclete.

And we didn't get that in the other gospels.

And paraclete means literally, para is alongside, and uh it's like sort of like well, the one who's kind of alongside us.

Uh gets translated advocate often, and um, I hope it's worth telling you.

Um, I've got this little kucamami idea about this.

Um, you know, we talked about this in Job, how there's this figure called the Satan.

The the Satan in Hebrew means the accuser.

The accuser works for God, he's not like some red guy of evil, works for God and goes around saying, no, your piety's fake.

You're just doing this for what you get out of it.

Usually that's pretty true, right?

In Greek the word is diabolos.

Oh, that means devil.

No, what it means is slanderer.

That's what it means in Greek.

It does not mean devil capital D.

It means slanderer.

You're not good enough.

Oh, you're just doing that, but really you're doing it for this.

I mean, that's the basis of slander, saying stuff that's not true.

And if you're Jewish, that serves a good purpose.

When you're faced with slander, you're able to say, no, in fact, I'm enough.

It's a way of pushing you to be more than you might settle for.

I mean, our Jewish brothers and sisters don't say this is insidious.

They say it's it's a sifting that happens so that we can rise to greater achievement and greater levels.

The devil is not oppositional to God, it's part of life.

They call it the Yetzerhara, the spirit of evil, but it's but it's not insidious.

It's it's meant for us to push against instead of succumbing to.

So just thinking about this in our own way of thinking, um in the United States, everybody gets a trial.

You all deserve a trial, even if you're caught red-handed, right?

And you get a court-appointed defense attorney.

Now, you know you don't want that.

I hope you know that.

If you can afford not that, you want not that for lots of reasons.

Not that those are bad people, but their caseload's crazy.

And you're not probably gonna get your best representation.

So, all right, worst case scenario is the prosecuting attorney is the Diablos or the Satan.

That's their job, is to prosecute you.

But unlike our court system, you don't get an overworked, ill-managed, hired-on, court-appointed defense attorney.

You get the advocate.

What does the advocate do?

The advocate defends you against accusations about your lack of merit or worth or piety.

And that's not a hired help, that's God.

God advocates for you against Satan, the devil, slander, accusation.

That's my kukamami idea.

That's the paraclete.

But they both come from God.

Well, uh the slanderer, the accuser, is a creative being of lesser value and importance and power than God advocating for you.

So the greater thing God does is advocates for us, especially in our time of need.

I mean, all of these are just analogies, and hopefully they're helpful, but God's business is to defend us, not to prosecute us.

That's what I want to say.

Way of thinking about the Holy Spirit.

God advocating the advocate, God advocates for you.

That's what God does.

Created things, charge you, God advocates for you.

I learned about it the other way around.

See, I learned that God was the chief prosecutor, which was why you'd better watch out and you'd better not cry, because God's watching with the book.

But no, no, no, the Holy Spirit, God is countering the book.

The Holy Spirit's the one saying, you can write that down if you want to, but I know how to take care of this in court.

That's similar to what we learned which in Catholic school, which was that if you committed a mortal sin, you know, the sins were all ranked.

Yes, venial and mortal.

Exactly.

And you committed a mortal sin and you didn't get yourself to confession, and something happened to you, you were going to hell.

Didn't matter if you were sorry.

Yes.

You hadn't been to confession.

And so it was over.

Did you have to confess to a priest?

A priest as opposed to just confessing to that was your vehicle to God.

You couldn't go straight to God.

Ah.

Because God was too holy.

Right?

That's it.

You know, they didn't really explain that.

I mean, they really didn't talk about that.

It was, it was just that you had to go through the priest.

Yeah.

That was so this is an interesting thing that you brought up, right?

I mean, again, like, and just think about the court analogy.

I mean, the Holy Spirit probably in general pleads insanity on our behalf, right?

Like, okay, did it, but um but you know, I'm gonna go for the insanity and wins, right?

Because how how does how does God not win in court?

And again, we I think we learned it backward.

We learned God's the prosecutor, God's the defense.

So what if you could breathe in that God is your defender, not your prosecutor?

It would be like a different it'd be like a second wind, wouldn't it?

What's the judge in this analogy?

Well, I don't know.

Well, I you know, I mean, I think if you if you if you think about it, the whole court scene is really just about human justice anyway, and it invites us to consider that God's justice is greater than ours.

So let's say God the Father's the judge, and the Holy Spirit, who is, by the way, the same as God the Father, is the defense, and then the prosecutor is a slanderer who is not going to win.

I mean, I just think that's that's what we're invited to consider, is that we we usually misjudge how court's going to go.

We think we're going to lose.

And the father's going to throw the book at us when in fact the point of the trial is just actually to give the accuser the opportunity to make a statement that God's going to overturn anyway.

I know that's really weird.

I hadn't quite got the words tied around it, but it's an opportunity.

I mean, I think I think it it's kukamini, but I th but I think it's alright.

What I what confuses me from time to time is I s I sort of feel I understand it why there is an accuser.

Why is I mean why is there good and evil?

And and I I say this this way, because it seems to me that that uh we need evil to understand good.

Because without that reference, yeah, we need a pos a reference position to understand another reference position.

Without that, yeah, there's there's what?

Nothing, you know, right?

You know, and what's interesting is St.

Augustine of Hippo says evil's not real.

It's it's actually just the absence of being, but it's a concept we leverage.

You know, and you know, did God create slander or is it just part of the human experience and we've given it a label?

I mean, I don't know the answer to that.

Well, it's a good scapegoat to have.

You know, I mean, you hear all I just hear all the time, you know, growing up, the devil made me do it.

You know, my mother was one of those who would say, Don't you ever say that to me?

Because she's saying, Margaret Ruth, I know you and your decision-making situations.

So it's it's real easy to kind of it helps us to not necessarily have to be so accountable for our own actions, you know, always influenced by I mean, and I'm not saying that's real or legit.

Yeah, I'm just saying, you know, over time, um, you know, and again, particularly because I deal with children a lot, I I see it in adults, I see it in myself.

The minute a lot of people are accused of something, they either want to point the finger at somebody else and point out what they're doing, yeah, or point out to you how it was not their fault.

Yeah.

Even though they're standing there with a giant branch in their hands with blood dripping off the end of it, that one thing.

Well, you know, you know, our in the evolution of our brain, right?

Our reptilian brain, the tiniest bit is hardwired to do like four things.

They're called the four F's.

I think there's really five, but there's there's fight, right, flight, food, reproduction, and freeze.

Those are what we do, right?

And so if there's a lion, we're going to either freeze, because honestly, if we don't fight, our death will be less painful than if we resist and get killed.

This is true of like rape victims, right?

Flight's no good.

Flight, you sometimes try and then sometimes you fight, right?

Then you never know.

This is what you do, right?

So that's like our our strongest instinctual response.

Of course, our brain has grown over that later, but we perceive criticism the same way we perceive a physical thrill.

So if somebody says, your work sucks, it's almost like there's a lion in front of us.

There isn't, but our brain does the same thing.

It releases adrenaline and cortisol, right?

And I I always think that there's such a I mean, I don't want to like undo the idea of spirits for you.

Actually, I think I want to I want to say how I think they're really appropriate.

There is something so almost supernatural, so much greater than our own like cognition in our wiring about accusation that we give it a spiritual reality.

Right?

I mean, and what I mean is particularly if you were a teenager, you thought when I have kids, I'm not gonna be dumb like my parents.

I'm not gonna do this and this and this and this.

The minute you have kids, you find your parents, whether they're with you or not, accusing you of your parenting.

You're soft.

You're entitling your kids, you're spoiling your kids, you need to man up, you need to soldier on, you need to woman up in all kinds of accusations.

They're not even there.

They're nowhere nearby, they're not saying that to you.

There's and so there's well, is it just your memory?

Or is there almost like this, frankly, this spirit of accusation that follows us wherever we go.

And it's so strong and so real.

And listen, if you're not a parent, it doesn't matter.

Think about your relationship with your body.

You're fat, you're gross, no one will ever be attracted to you.

Don't wear that bathing suit.

What are you trying to tell the world?

I mean, these kinds of things are in our brain, and we didn't ask them to go there.

They just show up, and that's accusation and slander.

And we can give in to them, and we can say, well, I'm just gonna hide all my vulnerability, or we can say, yeah, maybe, but I've decided like I'm not doing it for other people's approval, I'm doing it because I want to.

I sometimes, and this is a bit of a digression, but uh consistent with what you what you said, I sometimes will say something.

This is particularly when my when my kids were younger.

Is that mine?

Yeah, you someone's ringing your doorbell.

I'm sorry, folks, I should turn the whole thing off.

But anyway, um I'll I'll I said something to my kids, and all of a sudden I said, that was my father.

Yeah.

That wasn't me.

I know what your amazes me sometimes.

And you know what your father told you?

What his father told him.

Right.

I mean, that's the interesting thing, right?

And we try to be a little bit better than our own parent.

I mean, this is interesting to think compassionately, no matter how bad your parents were, they were probably better than their parents were.

I mean, that's just sort of an interesting thought.

I remember calling my mother the first time the words because I said so to you.

Because I used to get so annoyed.

And I'm sure knowing me, my mother was such a saint.

But I remember those words being spoken kind of angrily to me, and I'm sure it was because she had already given me 10 reasons why, and I was not satisfied with any of those.

And then I had my second daughter who I love to pieces, and she's me all over again.

And one day those she was like three, and I she was my yeah, do you see me standing here in the middle of the road?

I'm not getting hit by a car, am I?

Do you see me getting hit by a car?

No, it was the same way.

Sure.

Um, and I picked up that phone and I called my mom, and I was like, You're not gonna believe what I just said, and she said.

Because I said so?

Yeah.

But you know, actually, it's not a bad phrase.

And I've done this with my daughter.

I've said, because I told you, and because this is a risk to you, and I'm gonna explain that now.

But the because I said so is I know more than you do, I see more than you do, and you just need to trust me that I'm looking out for you.

So I need you to listen immediately, and then I'll give you the explanation.

And I don't know that that's a bad way of parenting, because it is both fan.

It made total sense what I said.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The way, and she would also try to stick things in the outlets.

You know?

Yeah, right.

I was like, I don't have time to explain to you.

There is an alternate style of explain afterwards, but the the immediate thing was to stop the behavior.

Yeah.

So that she was alive, so I put it.

Because she's grown to trust that you're looking out for her and you're not just being a tyrant.

Like you know something she doesn't know, and then you'll tell her after the danger is safe.

I mean, that's as long as you did the both things.

That's when I became a tyrant.

Yeah, right.

Right.

I want to share something with you guys that I saw many years, many, many, many years ago.

I was at Baybrook Mall, and you know it's got a little area there where they it's a their caf, they're they're you know cafes or whatever.

Uh but do you know what, remember where the cookie place was?

Yeah.

Well, I was sitting there, and I and and and I was coming with people shopping, and and it was pretty busy.

But right behind it used to be a pet store.

Yep.

Sure.

And and there is a there is a woman that came out past her and she had all these these uh you know presents and stuff.

She had a little girl who couldn't have been more than about you know five or six or something like that, and that little girl was electric.

I mean electric.

She was bouncing all over the place, and she turned to her mother and said, Oh, why is something in the in the window?

Something there was an animal in the window.

Oh, well, I remembered mother going.

It just is.

I never forget that.

Well, and I think part of it is because you get to a certain point where you realize why is a question kids ask, and they don't actually really listen to the answer you give, so why should you give one?

I mean, that's part of the frustration.

But hopefully you teach them that if they do ask, you'll answer.

I don't know.

I mean, but I just to return to this idea, um, we usually think that devil is this oppositional resistant force to God instead of honestly part of living and an opportunity we had to grow closer to God by resisting.

By resisting.

And I think that's really, for me, it's really helpful.

And then the the spirit is there, whether we succeed or not, to advocate for us.

And you know, without coming like sounding too crazy, I think I've told you this in a sermon before, but Renee Brown's done this research that says the biggest criterion for a joyful life is whether or not you believe people are pretty much doing the best they can with what they have.

So even when people do something awful, at a certain point they're giving in to slander and accusation that we often give in to ourselves, even if the circumstances are different.

And it's a way that we stop saying, geez, Mike, you idiot, you dummy.

You can say, you know, that was a moment where I gave in, and I don't and I, okay, but I don't want to do it next time.

It's a totally different way of orienting ourselves.

And it's easier to see that in other people than it is in yourself.

I think so.

But I do think this is helpful.

We we don't get the phrase in John, but Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself.

And I don't think that's just a command.

I think Jesus says we can only love our neighbor like we love ourselves.

And if we don't love yourself, you don't want to love anybody else, really.

Yeah.

I think I'm here because if you're critical, if you live a life that is self-critical, you tend to be very critical of other people as well.

I think.

I think that's right.

Because I'm I'm somewhat self-critical.

Um I do not like to look at myself in the mirror.

Yeah, many of us are anything I can do.

I avoid mirrors as much as I can because I don't want to see me.

Well, I am critical of other people too.

I try not to be, but I am.

It's one of these funny things I think that we get from people who really matter to us is an opportunity to see ourselves through their eyes instead of our own.

Um, because sometimes I think like I'm not fit for human consumption, my eccentricities drive people crazy.

And then my wife says, I really enjoy being around you, and I have got cognitive dissonance.

I think I must be fooling you.

What is cognitive dissonance?

I'm sorry.

Cognitive dissonance is like it's it's tension between one fact pattern and another.

So I think I'm no fun to be around with.

She says I'm fun, and and now I'm like, what am I going to decide?

Yeah, there's a disconnect or there's um an oxymoron going on, and and how am I gonna shake it out?

And what's interesting is um sometimes we look at ourselves in the mirror and we don't even see what's in front of us.

We see what's in our head about how we look and not how we actually look.

I see the smallest one.

Yeah, and no one else sees that.

That's the funny bit.

And when I look in the mirror and shave in the morning, the person I see in the mirror, I don't know who he is because he looks old.

Yeah.

So I think this is an interesting thing, right?

I mean, I don't I'm not a spiritual director, but I will say that there becomes this interesting thought where we can stare ourselves down and um look at ourselves.

The exercise is to look in the mirror for a long time until we get some self-compassion.

So, uh, I don't like this, I don't like that.

Okay, well, I'm gonna make room for that.

I'm gonna make room for that.

The truth is, when you look at your spouse, you see the things that they don't like about themselves and they don't bother you, I don't think.

I mean, you know, well, my hair is whatever today, and like, I think your hair looks great.

And so, what if we were able to look at ourselves like we'd look at somebody we love?

That's kind of one of those Ignatian spiritual disciplines of just make yourself do it.

If you don't spend enough time, you won't make the conversion.

I don't like to look in the mirror either.

I see hairs out of place and this or that.

And then, you know, I did come to a point recently where I don't have the energy to care about that.

So when I when I see it, I'm like, I'm tired, whatever, it's fine.

You know, I mean I just I I think I think we can get there through tired, but can we stay in a place where we're comfortable enough looking at ourselves that we aren't like, uh, because none of us look like that anyway.

This is the job of the advocate.

Let's we sound like we've come off.

The advocant is there to advocate for us in moments of shame, self-doubt, accusation.

It's another way of understanding the function of the Holy Spirit.

Um, I do want to make sure we get to talk about Maundy Thursday because only John does this, right?

May Thursday comes from the Latin word mandate, and that's a command.

That's because after washing the feet, he says, a new commandment I give you.

A new mandate, Maundy Thursday.

Love one another as I've loved you.

Now, um, it may be interesting for you to know that the Episcopal Church is in full communion with a few other religious traditions.

The Roman Catholics, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and the Moravian Church.

The Moravian Church is a small church that sort of grew up in um Central Europe during the Reformation.

And one of the key differences between us and the Moravians is that the Moravians believe foot washing is a sacrament.

We've got seven, they have eight.

We do May Thursday every year in church, and you get to wash somebody's feet.

But I guarantee you, if you dare do that, your feet have already been cleaned.

Or if you didn't go get a pedicure ahead of this, let's be honest, we change our socks, you know.

It's not like we went jogging and came in all sweaty and were like, wash my sweaty feet.

Most people would take a shower first and then come so that the foot washing is symbolic.

Foot washing doesn't mean for us anything close to what it meant back then.

Right?

Foot washing, feet were just considered filthy, dirty bits.

What do we have that's like that?

Our rectums.

Foot washing is like wiping somebody.

I don't want to say, coming up and I'll practice this.

But but but the truth is, when you think about it, you would do that for somebody you love.

You did it for your children, I hope, right?

That's what you did in diapers.

Honestly, I didn't look forward to the day where I'm going to do that for my parents, but of course I would do that for my parents.

I don't want to do that for my wife.

If I needed to, of course, I would do that for my wife.

And to be honest, I didn't think that would threaten our relationship.

I think it would grow it.

Because I would be willing to say, this is something I don't want to do, and I'm doing it because I love you, and I'm going to do it with dignity and care.

And in that sense, right, um, Jesus washing the disciples' feet is the opposite of humiliating.

It might be something they don't want to receive, and I guarantee you, your parents don't want you wiping their bottoms.

My parents spent much of my young adult life saying, we don't ever want you to have to take care of us.

It might be difficult for them to receive.

It's not difficult for me to give.

I think that's really important.

Jesus isn't humiliated to wash their feet.

They feel humiliated.

And it's a good reminder that God is not too big to meet us at our lowest point of need.

In fact, that's exactly what holiness is: not being greater than our need, but great enough to meet our need.

I mourn for dads who never change the diapers of their kids.

They missed an opportunity to be there for their kids when they were needed.

So God's not too great to change diapers.

No, God's great because God does change diapers.

And this is what Jesus offers us to consider is you think about laying down your life.

This is why I think the video says something interesting that the foot washing relates to the cross.

Jesus didn't die by washing the disciples' feet.

He didn't die, he didn't kill him.

But he laid down his life doing it, which means he poured out some energy for them.

And a lot of times we think sacrifice is about death and the ultimate sacrifice is you die, but there is this really helpful thing that comes from Elizabethan England.

Their emblem, uh, you can see it all over England in stained glass, is the pelican nipping itself in the chest to give its starving chicks during a time of famine some blood so they'll live.

Now, listen, the mom doesn't prick herself to death.

If she did, the babies would die.

So it's not about killing yourself.

It's really just an image about sharing our life to nourish other people.

That doesn't literally mean our blood.

Remember, there's this ancient symbol that blood just means life.

We share our life with other people when we sit in the hospital with them.

When we take them to doctor's appointments, when we listen to a friend go on and on and on about how bad their day was, and we don't correct them or judge them, and we just sit there, we share our life with them.

In that sense, I think footwashing's a great way to understand the cross.

It's this image.

If we hold too hard on the image and make it literal, I think we might miss what it's trying to tell us, which is we're called to share our life with other people, and they're called to share their life with us so we can build each other up when we're low, which is this whole business about producing fruit.

Listen, the tree doesn't enjoy fruit.

There's nothing in the fruit for the tree.

In fact, making the fruit costs the tree its own energy.

What it's doing, right, by making fruit is putting its energy into fruit it doesn't get to eat, so that life can continue to grow.

The point of the fruit is to nourish a seed.

And that's what foot washing's about, and that's what abiding in God's about.

And ultimately, that's what the cross is about is giving life to other people.

Not killing ourselves for other people.

Sometimes we do that, but really sharing it with other people.

And we're not humiliated to do it.

It's a gift that we're able to give, even if other people are loath to receive it.

That was really preachy, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to give a sermon.

But I think it's an opportunity.

You know, there's there's different scholars that say you they disagree about whether you could make a slave wash your feet or not because it was considered so low.

It depends who you read.

Slaves had to do it, and only slaves, or you couldn't even make a slave do it.

I don't know the answer to that.

But but Jesus is not above slave tasks to increase our life.

This helps me understand Peter's reaction.

What you just said.

You're too important to do this.

Yeah.

I'm not worth it.

Right.

It's an interesting thought, right?

Is this comes back to the Paraclete?

We often say, I'm not worth grace.

I'm too bad.

I knew what I was doing when I did that, and it was wrong, I shouldn't be forgiven.

And that's our problem, but that's not God's problem.

So the question is, how could we grow into, as part of our identity, that that's not God's problem?

And then it might not be our problem anymore either.

The bit about the vine and the branches I want to like come to is we, I mean, there's more than two choices.

We could consider, hey, listen, if we get this wrong, God's going to prune us off and throw us into the fire, which of course we know means eternal hell.

It doesn't mean that at all.

Fire is a semin- is an image of just total destruction or a refinement.

Now listen, if you throw a branch in, it's going to be destroyed.

And unless you're the burning bush, you're not gonna burn forever.

A vine goes up in smoke in a jiffy.

It doesn't get punished.

It's dead, it doesn't feel anything, it's just gone and obliterated.

We can consider traditionally bad people get nipped off and then they burn in hell forever.

But that's not even the part of the gardening image here.

Like that's just adding weirdness to this.

That's not what vines do, that's not what gardeners do.

In general, what you do is when you find dead bits on a branch, you prune the bits off so that the branch isn't pouring energy into stuff that goes nowhere.

I pour a lot of energy into stuff that goes nowhere.

So the Master Gardener is interested in getting rid of that.

So the energy is free to go places that go somewhere.

It doesn't have to be our total destruction.

This could actually be God dismembering the parts of us that are slowing us down and going nowhere for our sake.

Kind of a thought about burning, burning the the the uh the dead limbs and what have you.

Um you know they don't go away, they just are changed.

That's really good, thank you.

That's good.

In fact, those dead limbs, when they're changed to ash, they become actually a pretty decent fertilizer.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a great thought.

Yeah.

God would love to take the worst parts of us and make it fertilizer for our growth.

I have difficulty pruning things in the garden.

I don't know, but some of the rice flowers are not so doing.

They just walk like that in order to plant this for I have trouble a little bit.

See, I think this is a good image, right?

Is God's the master gardener as composed to the pruning I do.

I'm I'm I'm I am I have the black thumb, and whether I'm pruning a plant or somebody else I know, I'm not always operating with surgical precision.

Sometimes I use a machete.

Yeah.

You notice in 16, just to like buttress this idea about the advocate, Jesus says the advocate will prove the world wrong about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment.

And I think that's an important thing to consider is the Holy Spirit is going to prove us wrong in court, that we misunderstand grace and forgiveness and estrangement.

That's the job of the Holy Spirit.

Say that again.

The Holy Spirit's job is to prove us wrong in court about our misunderstandings of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

We think sin separates us from God.

Can we actually be separate from God?

We think that we earn God's favor or we lose it.

Um maybe not.

I mean, I just you know, it invite you to this theological model, but often we can say God loves everybody as long as they earn it.

I mean, that's usually what we the parentheses we put in.

But that, like last week we talked about seeing God the way we see things.

And I think that's a good example of that.

Yeah.

You know, we give God that characteristic when really we're the ones, well, I love everybody as long as they're good, as long as they're kind.

You know, that's what we do, and I think maybe we transfer that to God.

Yeah, and I think I think there's another way to put like the way the advocate works, it's not just between us and God, but it's between other people and us.

And so Anne Lamotte, this cranky feminist theologian, I think she's really good.

She has this phrase, we know we've created God in our own image when God hates the same people we do.

So so I think a way to envision the advocate is advocating to us on behalf of the people we hate.

And the question is, will will we hear that out or will we say case closed?

Right.

Yeah, and there's these phrases we get.

I mean, I I think I mentioned this to you before.

When my dad came back from Vietnam, my dad had some really good, like concise phrases.

You know, he he essentially was exposed to a lot of horror and trauma, and he's fighting this enemy that he was had to in some ways believe was less than human so that he wasn't overcome with guilt for killing them.

And he came back and said a communist is a man trying to feed his family.

I think that's an interesting thing to consider is so is somebody really at the end of the day, so is a Shi'i'd Muslim.

I mean, there's someone who cares about their children.

They might do it differently than us.

But I'm in a core, nobody is hell-bent on destroying their children.

Even suicide bombers.

And that's, you know, suicide bombers aren't unique to radical Islam.

That was happening in Vietnam.

Yeah.

Women were strapping bombs on them and coming to army bases, and they did it because they had no hope for their living.

But at the end of the day, they were doing that for the sake of their children.

Yeah.

Or the future generation.

They thought if they did this, they could get American occupation to leave.

then things would be better.

I mean it we're rarely willing, I think, to sit and let the case unfold before us and get the whole fact pattern.

We usually make snap judgments.

Somebody who does that is evil and wrong instead of like that's really terrible to imagine that that's the best way you have to help your children is blowing yourself up.

Right.

Crazy thought.

Do you think that the Holy Spirit exists where there aren't human beings?

Well I think if we say that God is everywhere all the time, the answer has to be yes.

And I didn't know I mean I don't want to sound crazy and say like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are different, but in some ways I think we're able to have different relationships with different conceptions.

We say really that the Trinity is no more three than one.

So the Trinity is not like a model we use to help understand God.

Like the Trinity is who God is.

And at the base point we say, I think the reason the Trinity is so important is God exists in community.

There's difference inside of God and it is not threatening to God.

It's actually like unitive.

So the Father, son, and the spirit are different and their differences don't push them apart, they draw them together.

I think it's really interesting to think about unity and mission among difference.

And that's not just like a neat thing like that's who God is.

So everywhere there's Father, son, and spirit different but all united at the same time and we have this opportunity to be unified in difference wherever we go whether there's people there or not a long time ago I read this book called The Shack.

Yeah I think it was called and um I I have a hard time getting through it and I also it's weird because it was a long time ago that I read it so I don't really but I remember when I when I was done with it thinking like it really one thing the book did impress on me was that concept that that they were three different entities yet the same and it's interesting because there were times where I was teaching you know about the Trinity and I would honestly say to the kids this is a concept I have a I have a hard time because kids especially little kids like all you have to do is act like you know something and they think you're an authority.

You know so you want to be really careful about what you I wanted to be really careful about what I said.

Yeah.

And um but I remember I don't really remember that much about what I thought about the rest of the book but I do remember afterwards thinking I mean that the one thing that book did for me was really open my eyes to three separate parts of one same am I making any at least I'm not making sense.

Maybe I should reread the book I don't know oh maybe we could all reread it's an interesting book.

I mean it really what it tries to do is stretch us into the boxes that we usually put this in.

That's exactly what it did.

Yeah.

It's you know like a tripod right not for very long it wouldn't be very functional if it