• Acts of the Apostles 16: 9-15

Paul was constantly on the road, according to Luke’s account.  Some places he went he was welcomed, others he was banned, while other places he slipped into and out of with little notice.  On this occasion, he was summoned to Macedonia in a vision in which “there stood a man… pleading with Paul to come and help.”  Luke provides a detailed itinerary which finally brings Paul and his companions to Philippi, “a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony.”  On the sabbath, they go to a place out side the city gate in search of others with whom they might pray.  In the crowds, there was a woman named Lydia, “a dealer in purple cloth.”  Paul engaged her in conversation, she responded and was baptized.  She insisted they come to her home.  Thus, the church in Phillipi began.  Paul will benefit from a warm relationship with this community of believers for the rest of his life.

• Psalm 67

The psalmist enjoins all the nations of the earth to acknowledge and to praise the Lord.

• Revelation to John 21: 10, 22-22:5

Apparently inspired by Ezekiels’s vision of a splendid “new” Jerusalem and by Isaiah’s vision of all nations joined together in praise of the Lord, John the Divine is taken by an angel “to a great, high mountain….”  From there he sees that in the “new” Jerusalem the Temple is replaced by the actual presence of “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.”  There is no night, because “the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the lamb.”  The nations of the earth will be drawn to this light and, because there will never be night, the gates will never be shut.  “Only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life” will enter.  Now the angel shows John “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from  the throne of God and of the Lamb,” which nourishes “the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing fruit each month;” “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”  In such bliss, the children of God and the Lamb will dwell forever and ever.

• John 14: 23-29

The setting is still the very long scene in John’s narrative in which Jesus and his followers share what will turn out to be their last meal together before his arrest and execution.  Jesus addresses a Judas (“not Iscariot”).  He tells them that the love they have for him, his words and his Father are all linked together.  Each flourishes because of the other and with the others.  He offers a further assurance to prepare them for his absence: “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name” will continue to remind you of my words and will continue to teach you.  Jesus bestows his peace, which is more abiding, enduring and reliable than “the world gives.”  Do not fret or worry: “I am going away, and I am coming to you.”  If you love, recall my words and accept the peace I give you, then you will understand and even “rejoice that I am going to the Father….”

John’s gospel makes a brain twisting claim that the pending absence of Jesus will actually intensify and spread his presence!  Simultaneously, “I am going away, and I am coming to you,” Jesus tells his disciples.  This paradox occurs for two specific reasons.  First, the words that were said by and about Jesus (which John shaped into his own distinctive gospel), go through the fire of human betrayal, arrest and execution and the intensity produces a new compound– pure love!  This new compound transforms the discovery of the empty tomb into a reason for assurance.  Secondly, those who trust these words will find themselves discovering this pure love for themselves in  a way that is at least as authentic and powerful as anything those who knew Jesus before his arrest and execution did!  John rests his entire claim on the power of the words by and about Jesus– always seen through the prism of that never-to-be-forgotten Thursday night, that awful Friday and the rumors of hope that started to spread at dawn on Sunday– to not just recreate some past, idyllic memory of God’s love, but incite a new experience of God’s love wherever and whenever these words  are proclaimed, cherished and learned by heart.

Peter Ochs is a leader in a bold new approach to scriptures that intentionally attempts to free reading and interpreting the scriptures from the confines of Modernity.  In May 2002 he published a summary of the goals of this project in The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, (see link  on this page).  It includes  a fearless claim that scriptures are essential for the ills of Modernity.  Ochs insists:

“To hear is ultimately to read, and to read is, ultimately, to read scripture.  At the beginning of all our re-creative activity is the reading of scripture.”  But he goes further:  “This reading of scripture is within an activity of redemptively responding to the destruction of our age and the inadequacies of merely modern answers to that destruction.  The redemptive activity of reading is more than just reception.  It is to receive the words of scripture as directives to us: that we should heal the burdens of modernity and that we should heal them in a certain way.”  (from subsections “D” and “E”)

This can serve as a useful restatement of the distinctive power of the words of scripture, which are by definition as well as experience, certainly not regarded as human inventions.  For Christians, they declare a new experience/revelation of God’s love that has been purified into a new compound in the words and deeds of Jesus, the Christ.  John bases his entire gospel on the claim that the words by and about Jesus, refined in the fire of that dreadful Thursday night through that strange Sunday morning, never lose their power; indeed, for those on this side of Easter, they are even more powerful!

The power of these words is seen in another way.  The episode from the Acts of the Apostles, in which simple witness from one person– Paul to a complete stranger, “Lydia”– leads to the formation of  a new church in alien territory that will support and nurture Paul for the rest of his ministry.    The vision of John the Divine reminds us, too, that these words spread like wildfire throughout the world so that those gathered in praise before the Throne and the Lamb represent the entire earth.

Jesus announces his inevitable and even necessary departure when he says “I am going away….”  But then he immediately says that he is coming in a completely new way to even more people, which could be  made possible because of his absence!