In today’s Gospel Jesus encourages the disciples to not be anxious and he helps them to find the way to peace and serenity in desperate times. The setting is the Last Supper. This is a night dense with fear, apprehension and anxiety. Jesus has predicted that some who are there will betray him and that he is going to leave them and be taken away into suffering. That kind of dinner speech could certainly create anxiety. Where are you going and how will we know the way to find you?
The Gospel of John is concerned about answering these anxious questions about where. The first recruited disciple asks Jesus: “Where are you staying?” Pilate asks Jesus: “Where are you from?” On Easter Day, Mary sees an empty tomb and exclaims, “We do not know where they have laid him.” Where.
John is not concerned about the geographical space of “where.” Instead there is an inner place that can’t be seen. Throughout John, we hear Jesus’ desire that the disciples have the same indwelling connection with Abba Father God that Jesus has. For Jesus this communion with Abba is his spiritual ballast. “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.”
For 41 years I have almost always used this gospel at Funeral services as the gospel reading. Often, when we are thinking of someone we love who has died, we think of many dwelling places in God’s house, a mansion in heaven with a special place for our loved one. But as I look at this gospel again, I think Jesus is teaching about an invitation to enter into a deep relationship of union with him.
Mystics understand this kind of invitation, because they know that is where solid ground will be found in the storms and uncertainties of life. It’s hard for us to grasp this invitation. But it is a very simple invitation Jesus has repeated again and again. Jesus is the way. Thomas, who needs GPS or Map Quest step by step turn guidance toward this way, asks, “Master, we do not know where you are going, how we can know the way.” Give us some specific help here please.
Once again this invitation comes to you: Come my way, my truth, my life. But Jesus needs to be invited and asked. You and I are invited into a personal relationship with the living Jesus. If you invite him, there will be a response, and you can build on that friendship over and over through all the storms and challenges and difficulties ahead of you.
For many years, the Episcopal Church has been teaching this organizational theory called “System’s Theory” based on Rabbi Edwin Friedman’s classic book, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue. He wrote that book in reflection on his own experience when his synagogue blew up in conflict and he had to leave. The book was the organizational Bible of this Diocese in the 1990s. At the core was the leader/ rector/rabbi who needed to have a non anxious presence to guide a congregation through change.
How does a leader handle conflict and difference within a family or organization? The leader doesn’t have to get caught up in the maelstrom of emotions going on around them. Balancing intimacy and autonomy. How to enjoy close contact with siginficant others in their lives without losing one’s independence? He wasn’t teaching how to manage conflict, but how to manage oneself in times of conflict. The leader can chose not to be caught up in the dynamic reactivity going around him or her. The trick is to step back from all the emotion and stay connected and committed to the organization. Reactions to the leader during these times will be resistence and stabotoge. So the leader needs to be self-differentiated. That is a two step process. First, he/she needs to know deep within them what they believe. Second, he/she needs to define themselves to the others. It’s a balancing process, no one is perfect at this.
Family systems like a church want homeostatis and resist change. It is very difficult to change a family system like a church or synagogue.
If you have been in our parish since 1981, we are a very, very different congregation than 1981.
When I first came here in 1981 Messiah Parish was the Santa Ana Country Club at prayer. Most of the old timer families had fled to the suburban churches, leaving an urban core going through dramatic change. Today we are a church that radically welcomes everyone, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, social class, and political persuasion to the heart of ministry and activity.
This kind of change rarely happens, but it had to happen for us to have the vitality we have now. I am not a model of non anxious presence. But I do know that my personal relationship with Jesus as the Way, has been the spiritual ballast for me through many storms. I remember the loneliness of leadership in 1990 when we lost important parishioners because of our inclusion of Latino and gay-lesbian members and our ministry with the homeless. You can ask Ellen Hill how I was doing back then. It was especially difficult when patriarchs of this parish who were key leaders and had guided me through my first years hear expressed their very strong disapproval of the vision I was proposing. That was when I began to learn that not everything people say that is critical is necessarily a personal attack on me.
Non anxious presence does not mean becoming a self actualized tough guy in the perfect storm. The only way I know to make it through the wilderness of tough, challenging or changing times is companionship with Jesus, fostering friendship with him, listening for his voice, and trusting that the amazing grace that came out of no where in the past, remembering that, will be with us as we both enter the uncharted waters of the future. For me it is retirement, and a total change of identity. For you it will be a new pastor. Our ability to be faithful disciples will be related to how we keep our eyes on Jesus who is the way and listen for his counsel in our prayer. That will be when our hearts will become steady and hopeful.
Amen
Resources used:
America Magazine, “Untroubled Hearts,” by Barbara Reid, May 18, 2011.
Generation to Generation, Edwin Friedman.
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