Easter 4 John 10v1-14

 
Song “Holy Spirit living breath of God”
https://youtu.be/8nbMfLQd2P4
 
Christ has no body on earth but ours
No hands but ours, no feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes through which he looks out on the world
Ours are the hands which show kindness
Ours are the feet that carry us to help one another
So help us to harvest Love.

Song “Will you come and follow me” 
https://youtu.be/o469PRLdbHU
 
Loving God we thank you for the breath in our bodies
For a new day and a new week
Forgive us when we mess up and it goes badly wrong
Help us to listen to one another and to you
To be a healing presence
And to show love
So that become the people of God
In Jesus Name Amen 

We say the Lords prayer in our own language

Song “When I needed a neighbour”
https://youtu.be/B7a7LdgRh-k

Reflection on John 14v1-14 
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable, to You, our Rock and our Redeemer.

 If like me, you have attended numerous Caribbean funerals, the bible reading from John chapter 14 is easily recognisable.  This passage is entitled-the way, the truth and the Life’.  I was once asked by a friend to visit his uncle, in hospital who nearing the end of his life.  The first reading that came to mind was John chapter 14 which I read then prayed.  
When I was much younger, I always thought how wonderful; God has many mansions in heaven and I can have a choice of which one I will reside in!

Jesus was with His disciples; preparing them for a future where He will not be physically present.  Peter was previously told that he was going to deny Christ and he must have been still reeling from the shock of that statement.  When Jesus moved on to this teaching the disciples must have been concerned. But compassionate Jesus says ‘let not your heart be troubled; believe in God and believe in me also’ the heart is the main fortress and must be protected to prevent it being wounded. Its job is vital to keep the body functioning. Jesus assures His disciples (He assures us) that He is going to prepare a place for us. It must have been still a lot for the disciples to comprehend.  So much so, that Thomas made the statement/question ‘Lord we do not know where You are going and how can we know the way?  And Jesus gives those awe inspiring affirming words ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me’. No one comes to the Father, except through me.  

Stones are used to build, to build houses.  Together stones are powerful.  One stone has to be head cornerstone.  Jesus is that Head Cornerstone that was despised and rejected wounded for our transgressions.

Let us with this Pentecost, rise up as new born babes and desire the pure milk of the word of God. In these unprecedented times, I am reminded of Isaiah 43:18-19(a) ‘Do not cling to the things of the past or dwell on what happened long ago.  Watch for the new I am going to do.  It is happening already-you can see it now.’  We are witnessing a different way of worshipping.  We are caring, tolerant and loving towards one another. 

In August and September of 1992 we were in Jamaica to attend our mother’s funeral. On the eve of going to the funeral parlour to see and dress my mother’s body; I laid in bed in the darkness of the night; sleep would not come.  All manner of thought ravished my mind.  I was so distressed. I was even annoyed as my husband slept beside me.  How could he sleep?  Hours past and the torment continued. I heard a voice said ‘let not your heart be troubled’ I shot up and looked around the darkened room to see where this voice came from.  My heart thumping as if it were going to burst through my chest cavity! As I waited for the beats of my heart to normalise; I recited from Psalm 30: tears my flow in the night but joy comes in the morning.
So, we are re-building God’s spiritual home- Let not our hearts be troubled.  Let us continue to believe in God and also in Jesus.  The only way to get to the Father’s House is through Jesus.  Amen.

Song “Broken for me” https://youtu.be/8CKOvHDOdbY

This is the day God has made
We will rejoice and be glad in it
We will not offer to God
Offerings that cost us nothing
We will seek peace and pursue it. Amen

© Pat Nimmo and Claudette Binns
 

Easter 5 2014, John 14v1-14

The most difficult dilemma hindering inter-faith dialogue is how to balance the universal vision aspects of faith against the exclusive. Every world faith has both. The dying Christ is raised to life by a God who favors the outcasts and the heartbroken and who summons all tribes and tongues into an inclusive community. The paradox of the great world faiths is that they both create a dream of a single human family and threaten that dream at the same time. Jesus says in John 14:2, as well as John 14:6: "1 am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me." These verses stand only a few lines away from each other in the same chapter of John's gospel. Could it be telling us about the need to hold the universal vision and the exclusive together and about the central place Jesus must have for Christians even in interfaith dialogue? Jesus himself has something to teach us about how to participate in interfaith dialogue. Despite the fact that Jesus never met a Buddhist or a Hindu. Islam did not appear until 600 years after his crucifixion. So far as we know, Jesus' inter faith experience was confined to the  different sects and movements within the Judaism of his day and to the people, mainly Romans, he called heathens.  

To be a disciple of Jesus means to follow his way, to live in the  21^st century the same way he lived in his, as a sign of God. Building friendship among peoples of other faiths is a facet of the coming of God's Shalom. There are at least four ways in which the Jesus in the gospels provides useful guidelines for building interfaith dialogue. The first is that any dialogue must take place with actual people.


 The second way is by reminding us that religion is always a mixed blessing. Jesus was fiercely opposed by many of the religious people of his day. His attacks on the misuse of religion remind us that, wherever religion exists, we can be sure that someone is trying to use religion to dominate, frighten or oppress someone. and some of the most demonic claim to be expressions of Christianity. Jesus was not a model of  tolerance. He did make judgments about the faith of the people he met. He argued with some of the Pharisees and the rulers of the temple. But the key to Jesus' approach to any religious perspective was, "By their fruits ye shall know them." He seemed uninterested in the doctrinal content or ritual correctness of the different religions he encountered. He was, however, concerned about the practical outcome of their faith. He once told a Roman that he had not found such a faith as his anywhere in Israel. 

Third, Jesus' example reminds us that the search for human oneness-in-diversity in inter-faith dialogue is a matter of making judgments; it sometimes requires refraining from judgment. Tibetan Buddhists say that sometimes their faith is crazy wisdom. Its  certainly also true of Christianity. Jesus also spoke of the speck in the neighbor's eye and the plank in your own. The fourth way the Jesus of the Gospels helps inter-faith dialogue is that he expects to find God already present in the "other," including the one with whom we are in dialogue, no matter how strange or unfamiliar that other's ideas or religious practices may seem. Christ meets us in and through the stranger. Those who seriously engage in conversations with people of another faith do not remain unaffected. Dialogue changes those who risk it. Unforeseen things can happen. God can and does speak to us through people of other faiths, changing our viewpoint. We have reached a point at which trouble globally between nations and religions fuels terrorism. We need more than ever to recognise the  fragile oneness of the whole earth and all its inhabitants. 


From Jesus we learn that he is the way and that in God's house there are many mansions. John is the fourth gospel. Its author makes no attempt to give a chronological account of the life of Jesus (which the other gospels do, to a degree), but rather "...these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." Some versions use the word “mansions,” some “living spaces.” "The place" Jesus is preparing is not a physical dwelling, but a "place" in God's family -- a "place" where we can be related to and remain with God as closely as Jesus does. Jesus emphasizes his desire to be with us, to make his home in our hearts. "Place" has the sense of "room": God has room in his life for us; what sort of room do we make for him and others?