Sermons

• Symbol of Love – The Rev. Michelle Meech

  May 12, 2024

  From today’s Gospel: Jesus says, “They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.”

  Indeed, there is something “other-worldly” about the Gospel of John.  Many people call it mystical or metaphysical, John’s way of helping us understand the meaning of Jesus. Helping us understand the meaning of the events that took place in the first century to a person named Jesus – who stood in the face of communal and political oppression, to offer an experience of a greater Truth – the Truth about what it means to be human and what our responsibilities to one another are as incarnate creatures of God’s Love. John’s Gospel articulates something beyond our ordinary perception, beyond our easy definitions of black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. John’s Gospel gives us a much more difficult-to-grasp vision of Truth that isn’t about facts the facts of history.

  These words of today’s gospel come from the middle of Jesus’ prayer before he and the disciples entered into the Garden of Gethsemane: I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

  Here’s how John tells the story of Jesus: During the Feast of the Passover, as they were finishing their dinner, the disciples started asking questions about the future. Questions like:  Where are you going?  Why can’t I go with you? Can you show us God?  Why will you reveal yourself to us and not to the entire world?

  And Jesus responds to their anxious questioning with teaching – not with facts and certainties, but with the language of symbol. He offers an experience of Truth rather than a definition of it. So that these disciples might get beyond their fears, beyond their need to know, beyond their concepts and ideas so they might come into contact with a bigger Truth, so they might encounter the mystery that is God.

  And after his teaching, Jesus looks up to God and prays. Jesus prays for those whom he has shepherded and will come to shepherd after his death. For those whom he has taught and will come to teach through his own students. For those who believe in the Incarnation and those who will come to believe through the community of believers. Jesus prays not just for the disciples present, but for all us disciples who are to come: I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.  All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.  And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.  Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

  Jesus prays in a way that we know he is inviting an experience of God. And in so doing, Jesus becomes the tangible, fleshy, living, breathing direct encounter with God. Jesus becomes the symbol – the experience of God.

  Sandra Schneiders is a renowned scholar of the Gospel of John.  In her book entitled Written That You May Believe, she discusses symbol and the difference between sign and symbol. Signs, she says, “merely point to or stand for an absent reality that is totally other than itself.” A simple illustration of this, is a stop sign. This sign points to the need to stop but is not the stopping itself or the intersection or the accident that might ensue should you choose not to stop. The sign directs you to a reality but is not the reality or the potential reality.

  Symbols, however, are wholly different. A symbol is “a… reality [that can be sensed] which [makes us present to] and involves [us]… in a transforming experience of transcendent mystery.” (pg 66) Both signs and symbols are “of the world.” They can be sensed – touched, smelt, seen, tasted, heard. They are words and gestures, as well as tangible objects made of the elements of creation.

  But symbols do more than point to something, they are the contact with God, the contact with Truth. The Incarnation shows us that God can be encountered in these touch-able, hear-able, see-able, parts of our experience. And these entities, gestures, actions, and utterances are symbols. They do more than point to God, they make God real for us by bringing us into direct contact with the loving mystery of God. Symbols are themselves transforming experiences, mediating the transcendent or some aspect of it.  They are not communication tools, like the stop sign. Symbols are the encounter with God.

  They “lead a person into the unknown by [making] present the mystery of the transcendent, which is many-faceted.” (pg 67)  Many-faceted because symbols are not simple. They don’t stand for one thing. A symbol cannot be easily reduced to a single meaning as a sign can. As a matter of fact, symbols often cannot be explained because, as Schneiders says, a symbol “is not simply an appeal to the intellect but a locus [a location] of experience.” (pg 68)

  

  Christ the Alpha and Omega by Studio Dimchovsky

  Jesus is different things to different people at different times. Jesus is a shape-shifter, a trickster, and a mischief maker. He is the Good Shepherd and the rabble-rouser, the king of glory and the lowly servant, the living God and the crucified criminal. He is champion and victim, leader and follower. He is the Alpha and the Omega – the whole of the universe, present in the world since the beginning of time… and the very specific human being, flesh and blood, born approximately 2000 years ago to a Jewish woman named Mary in a very troubled time of great oppression at the crossroads of human civilization. There are people who view Jesus as a great spiritual leader and there are people who view Jesus as a tremendous political leader. There are some who see Jesus as just a man, a folk hero really, who got caught up in the volley of power in the backwaters of the Roman Empire.  And some who believe Jesus to be the one and only son of God. Most of the time, in my conversations with Christians and non-Christians alike, their view of Jesus is somewhere along this spectrum, typically believing multiple things about Jesus at the same time.

  And what all of this comes to mean for you is utterly different than what it comes to mean to the person beside you. And the person across the aisle. And the person walking down the street.

  And that is the very nature of a symbol – to be beyond categorization, beyond ideas and concepts. Regardless of the facts of Jesus’ life, the Truth about who Jesus was and is, is much bigger, much more complex, problematic, wilder, and utterly unconfined by simple definitions based on the facts of his life. The limits of our imaginations or even the needs of our religious beliefs are wholly unable to grasp the Truth, the mystery of God’s Love expressed in Jesus. Because all we know is that we encounter God in the incarnation, in the flesh and blood of God’s holy creation.

  And lest we think that the encounter with Jesus is limited to the disciples, the reality is that because we are born of Spirit, called to participate in this life together as the Body of Christ, the symbol of God’s Love, the experience of God’s Love is the community in its witness to the world. As Schneiders goes on to say, “the community is not a stand-in for the absent Jesus, but is Jesus’ way of being present in every time and place.” (pg 69)  We experience God in the wine and the bread and so we become the symbol. We experience God in the water of baptism and so we become the experience of God for others.

  We are the incarnate “thing” through which people experience God. I’m not saying this because I’m a big fan of the institutional church. As ironic as it may seem, I’m not prone to being a fan of any institution. But I’m not talking about “the institutional church.” I’m talking about loving community, indeed beloved community. I’m talking about a group of people for whom Eucharist is central to our way of life together because it is through this symbol that we encounter God.  Where baptism is an encounter with the mystery of God. It is through community that we have an experience of God incarnate. It is here that each person is known to one another simply as “Beloved”… if nowhere else than at this Table.

  What does that mean for how we are with one another? For how we care about ourselves and each other? What does that mean for how we understand ourselves as humans, as the Body of Christ broken for the world? Do we experience God’s Love in one another? Do we show forth God’s Love to one another? Do we own our call to be this symbol, to be this incarnate experience of God?

  Jesus prays for us, 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 truth. Jesus stood in the face of communal and political oppression, to offer an experience of a greater Truth – the Truth about what it means to be human and what our responsibilities to one another are as incarnate creatures of God’s Love. Regardless of what the institution of church does or how many times the research tells us the church is dwindling in numbers, the Truth remains that where two or three are gathered together in Jesus’ name, he will be in the midst of us.

  Let us share our prayers for the world and let us gather together at the Table as beloved community, the Body of Christ broken for the world. And may we become the symbol of God’s Truth for the world, and an experience of God’s Love in the world.