The Painted Prayerbook

You in Me in You © Jan L. Richardson

On a day when I was dealing with a vexatious situation, I spent some time talking about it with my sweetheart. Gary is a great thinking partner, adept at asking questions and offering insights (in a non-advicey kind of fashion) that help me find a path through the muddle at hand, whether it’s a tangle of words in something I’m writing, a stuck place I’ve gotten to in a piece of artwork, or the challenges that come up in having a ministry that doesn’t fit a specific mold. I don’t remember precisely what was vexing me on this particular day—I have some recollection I was struggling with an institutional system, which means it was probably either the church or the publishing industry—but I do remember some words that Gary offered as we finished our conversation. “The thing to remember here, Jan,” he said, “is that I am on your side.”

Having somebody on our side, somebody whose sidefulness doesn’t require that we always agree with them or bend ourselves to their agenda, is a remarkable gift. My experience of this with my sweetheart provides something of a glimpse into what Jesus is offering to his disciples in this Sunday’s Gospel lection, John 14.15-21. Jesus’ words in this passage immediately follow our Gospel lection from last week. He and the disciples are still at the table, lingering as Jesus speaks the crucial words he feels pressed to offer his friends before he is taken from them. We see again the depth of Jesus’ desire for them to understand how he means for them to abide with him after he is gone. In this passage he tells them that he “will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This,” he continues, “is the Spirit of truth….”

In his commentary on John’s Gospel, D. Moody Smith notes that parakletos, the Greek word commonly translated as Advocate (the New Revised Standard Version offers “Helper” as an alternative), “means literally one called to the side of, an advocate or an attorney.” As Smith suggests, however, the context of this passage indicates that this parakletos—often called the Paraclete in English—“does not function so much to advocate the disciples’ cause before God as to mediate the presence of Jesus to the disciples.” This Paraclete will do more than help out the disciples in the wake of Jesus’ death; the Paraclete will sustain and make possible their ongoing relationship with him.

Jesus tells them that they will know this Advocate because “he abides with you, and he will be in you.” There it is again, that word abides—from the Greek meno, as we noted last week. Jesus is at pains to impress upon them the fact of this abiding, and how it will happen: he tells them not only that the Paraclete will be in them, but also that he will be in the Father, the disciples will be in him, and he will be in them.

That’s a whole lot of shared indwelling going on, a plethora of mutual meno-ing. It’s this kind of passage that has made John’s Gospel so appealing to mystics across the ages. With John’s intensely spiritual style, it sometimes becomes a challenge, in reading his Gospel, to keep one’s feet on the ground, or one’s head above water—pick your own metaphor, John offers a host of his own. John’s Gospel is a wonder in part for this very reason, that he drenches us with words that draw us into spiritual depths. He always means for us to see, however, the bedrock beneath it all, the response that a life in the Spirit calls us to make.

As any good mystic knows, being in relationship with Christ does not mean forever wallowing around in this mutual, mystical indwelling that takes place among God, Jesus, the Spirit, and us. Abiding with Christ is a wonder and a gift of grace, but it’s not a perpetual feel-good fest. There at the table, Jesus emphasizes that being in relationship with him, and receiving the Advocate, compels us to a concrete response in the world; in fact, we can take Jesus’ words to mean that his sending of the Advocate is contingent upon the disciples’ actions. “If you love me,” Jesus says at the outset of this passage, “keep my commandments.” He will say it again in a similar fashion at the end of the text: “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

When it comes to Jesus giving commandments in the Gospel of John, this is what he has to say:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (13.34, 35)

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you…. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. (15.12-14, 17)

Living with Jesus challenges us to love not only him but also those whom he sends to us. And perhaps this is the real gift and intent of the Spirit, the Helper and Advocate whom he promised to send to the disciples: that the Spirit will sustain us as we live into the love to which Christ calls us, even when, and especially when, it means abiding with those whom we’d rather build walls against.

Jesus’ words this week have me wondering who might need me to say the words that Gary offered me on that vexatious day: I am on your side. Who might need to hear those words from you?

May you know the challenging peace of the One who is on your side and who is within you.

[To use the “You in Me in You” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

A Place to Dwell © Jan L. Richardson

As I’ve shared in a couple recent posts, I’ve been doing some traveling, most recently to Connecticut, where I led a retreat for a wondrous group of women. I left for Wisdom House just twelve hours after arriving home from the funeral for my sweetheart’s mom in South Carolina, so I wasn’t exactly in the most rested state when I arrived in Connecticut. Fortunately, the retreat didn’t start until the following day, and it was a great gift to have some time to rest, settle in, and absorb the hospitality of the staff and the space at Wisdom House. So much of the space that weekend invited me to be aware of the holy: the art gallery, the chapel, the soulful space created by the women who gathered.

Sister Jo-Ann, my wonderful host at Wisdom House, took me on a tour of the Farm House that’s on the property of the retreat center. Built in the 1700s and used for smaller retreats, the Farm House enchants. With seemingly endless rooms, including tiny bedrooms that remind me of monks’ cells, and lots of inviting nooks and crannies, it’s the kind of space I could happily spend a few weeks in. Though nobody resides there full-time these days, the Farm House possesses a sense of habitation and warmth. There’s a plaque by the front door that lists the names of those who have lived there, from generation to generation. It invites those who cross the threshold, whether for a few hours or a few days, to enter it as a dwelling place, a habitation for the holy.

Nourished by the hospitality I received at Wisdom House, I’ve returned home to my sweet little studio apartment. I’ve lived here for nearly a decade, and the ongoing process of learning how to inhabit this 300 square foot space, and how to work in it as an artist and writer, is one of the most creative things I’ve ever done. Every few months or so I move a few things around in order to squeeze out a few more square inches. My latest accomplishment has involved creating a writing nook. Desperate for a space that I can devote solely to writing (an activity from which I am easily distracted), I recently looked at the landing at the top of my stairs and realized that, especially with its window that overlooks the back yard, it would make a great space to write. It doesn’t make the writing any easier (I didn’t expect it to), but it does offer greater focus, which comes as a needed gift.

I’m intrigued by spaces and by how our experience of architecture shapes our perception of it. Our sense of a physical place goes beyond the interplay of form and function; particularly as we experience a space over time, the outward, physical space can become intertwined with the interior space of our psyches and souls. The places we inhabit or regularly visit imprint themselves on our memory and imagination, coloring how we perceive and engage those spaces. Gaston Bachelard, in his famed book The Poetics of Space, observes that “A house that has been experienced in not an inert box.”

With spaces on my mind, I’ve particularly appreciated the chance to ponder this week’s Gospel lection, John 14.1-14. Sharing a table (an evocative space in itself) with his disciples shortly before his death, Jesus tells them—among many other things—that “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” He uses an architectural image to help them begin to understand the kind of place that he is preparing for them, yet Jesus himself, recognizing the layers of meaning that a house can evoke, is talking about far more than architecture here. The word that Jesus uses for “house” is the Greek word oikia (related to oikos), which refers not only to the physical structure of a house but also to the family that dwells there: the household. D. Moody Smith, in his commentary on John’s Gospel, notes the relationship between the word for “dwelling places,” monai, and the verb meno, which means to remain, abide, dwell, endure.

John likes this word. We visited meno on Epiphany 2, reflecting on the story in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, in which two of John the Baptist’s disciples ask Jesus where he is staying—where he is meno-ing—and he tells them, “Come and see.” He knows they are asking more than where his physical dwelling is.

Here, at the other end of Jesus’ ministry, we find this word again. The disciples did indeed come and see—boy, howdy, what they saw—yet Jesus is still beckoning them to go deeper in the ways that they will abide with him, both now and in the future.

Jesus tells his companions about these dwelling places in order to encourage them and stir their hope. At the same time, he desires to be clear with the disciples that dwelling with him is not a far-off proposition; rather, he is calling them to live with him now and throughout their earthly lives. In John 15, which we don’t visit in the Revised Common Lectionary this year, Jesus goes on to offer the image of the vine and branches as a vivid metaphor for how he desires the disciples to abide with him and he with them. Variations of meno appear many times in John 15; Jesus really wants them to get this whole abiding thing before he goes.

In addition to the images that Jesus offers with oikia and monai, he tells the disciples (in response to Thomas’ question about how to get to these dwelling places) that he himself is the way—the hodos in Greek, which can mean a physical road or journey as well as a way of life. Jesus’ description of himself as the way has a deep resonance with other images that we have visited in the weeks of Lent and Easter. His invitation to the Baptist’s disciples to come and see, the wellspring of living water that he offers a thirsty woman, breaking bread at Emmaus, the piercing of his body in the crucifixion, his invitation to Thomas to place his hand in his very flesh: these are among the stunning images that describe how Jesus opens his very self—body and soul—to us. In reflecting on this, D. Moody Smith draws our attention to Hebrews 10.20, in which the author writes of how we can enter the sanctuary—that holy space—“by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh).”

I wrote last week of Christ as the radically hospitable shepherd who not only guards the flock but lays himself down to become the gate for them. This week’s metaphor of Christ as the way further develops this image. Here at the Last Supper, Jesus speaks not only of future concerns but also of present ones, and he means for his friends to understand that the way, the journey, is itself a dwelling place. Jesus is not simply telling them about the destination he intends for them; he is calling them to make their dwelling in him now; he is urging them to make the way, and Christ’s very self, their home.

Where are you living these days? Where are you making your home? How do you make your journey, your path in life, a dwelling place?

Blessings to you in these resurrection days.

[To use the “A Place to Dwell” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

The Sheepgate © Jan L. Richardson

This week’s gospel lection, John 10.1-10, introduces a paired set of images that Jesus plays with in intriguing ways: the shepherd and the gate.

I have to admit that of all the ways of describing Jesus, the image of him as a shepherd is one I’ve never particularly gravitated toward. I suspect this owes to a combination of factors: I live in a culture that is far removed from the agrarian setting in which Jesus employed this image, and I grew up around cows, so am not very knowledgeable in the ways of sheepdom. I suspect, however, that the real reason that I struggle with shepherd imagery is this: I am resistant to being herded. I am also all too aware of how badly things can go wrong when we are overly willing to let ourselves be led. (“Lambs to the slaughter” comes too easily to mind.)

The thing about living with the lectionary is that it confronts us with texts and images that may not sit easy with us, so John’s passage has been a good challenge for me this week. In letting the text work on me, I’ve come to appreciate how Jesus offers several points that provide crucial clarity about the sheep-and-shepherd thing.

First, Jesus does not call us to follow him in a mindless fashion. Part of my trouble with ovine imagery is that I’ve heard plenty of times that sheep are stupid, and so what does this metaphor say about us? It was illuminating to attend a workshop last year with Roberta Bondi, who was one of my professors at Candler School of Theology. In the course of the workshop, during which Roberta spun wool as she talked, she challenged this pervasive notion about sheepish intelligence. It’s not that they’re stupid, she told us; they are prey animals, not predators, and so their instincts strike us as counterintuitive or just plain dumb, because they don’t think as we do. Gail Ramshaw, in her wondrous lectionary resource Treasures Old and New, adds another layer of insight, observing that “At the most ancient level of biblical storytelling, sheep are highly respected, for without their life, communal survival would not be possible. Contemporary interpretation of the Bible’s sheep stories,” she goes on to write, “needs to balance its characteristic talk about how stupid sheep are with the economic reality that sheep were the primary life source for the people, God’s gift of sustenance for the people.” Christ likens us to sheep not because he expects us to be vapid, but because he counts us as valued.

Second, Jesus calls us to follow him in the context of relationship. He wants us to know him. “He [the shepherd] calls his own sheep by name and leads them out,” Jesus says in this passage; “…the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” Jesus’ call is grounded in his desire for a relationship with us, to know us and to be known by us. He expects us to engage in discernment, to ask questions, to be wise in the ways that we follow him. It’s important to note that this passage follows on the heels of his healing of the blind man in John 9, which we visited on Lent 4; this week’s gospel lection is a continuation of Jesus’ teaching about how he desires us to see.

A third point of clarity that Jesus offers in this passage is that we are not to follow him just because he says so, or because hellfire and damnation await us if we don’t. The presence of the shepherd is never threatening; rather, it is precisely the opposite. The shepherd is the one who extends radical hospitality to the sheep; he protects them against whatever would threaten them, even, as Jesus states repeatedly later in this chapter, laying down his own life for them. Ramshaw points out that “herders in that part of the world lay their own bodies down for a night’s rest in the gap of the fence, the body of the shepherd thus serving as the gate.” Indeed, Jesus describes himself in this passage not only as the gatekeeper of the sheepfold but as the gate itself.

Jesus’ image of himself as a gate underscores the fact that his way is one of hospitality, not of threat. The gate—the one that Christ opens to us, the one that Christ himself is—does not open by way of force. Rather, this entry becomes compelling because of the one who offers it, who opens it to us as a way of blessing. “I came that they may have life,” Jesus proclaims in the final verse of this text, “and have it abundantly.”

Jesus means for us to have this abundant life not solely in some future world but also in this present world. He intends, too, for us to have this life together. Christ calls us to fields where following him means tending to one another—to our sheepmates. In the midst of my resistance to being herded, I have to take care not to forget that there are good reasons to travel in flocks. Ramshaw offers a good reminder here—and if I keep turning to her this week, it’s partly because I’ve just recently found her treasure of a book, but mostly because she’s been particularly helpful to me in thinking sheepishly; she writes, “Shepherding stresses the communal nature of the sheep. Our singular noun flock is one made of many. The church proclaims the good news that I am not alone. We are the flock, and we share a common life.”

As you navigate this shared life, what, or who, is determining the direction of your path these days? Which has more influence over the shape of your path—your reactions, or your intentions? How are you experiencing the hospitality of Christ? How might he be challenging you to know and hear him in this season? What gate might he be beckoning you toward?

[To use the “Sheepgate” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]