God is aware of the speed of things

By John Pearring

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051521.cfm
Acts 18:23-28
John 16:23b-28

When Jesus explains something that appears oddly confusing, snap to attention and hold onto your hat. Something big is about to happen to you. 

A lot of Jesus’ communication confuses us. At one moment, he’s blithely scratching in the dirt during the planned stoning of a woman, and the next, he’s tossing tables in the Temple entrance with a raging flare. Even in his ministry, he seemed at cross purposes. He forgave a man’s sins, and then he healed him. Another fellow is healed first, followed by forgiving his sins. We can’t apply formulae to Jesus’ miracles and judgments because his formulaic steps are different for everything he does.

The widely shifting styles and procedures by Jesus and the full range of human emotions in his personality always tie into some unique point he is making. With the help of the Holy Spirit and our Church, we can find out that message. Each thing he did and does through the Holy Spirit today perfectly aligns with who he is, what the Father asks him to do, and how he wants to reach out. 

Jesus promises us clarity on the mystery of his miracles and teachings. We have direct links to Jesus and the Father through the presence of the Holy Spirit right now. Clarification, which seems impossible, is really right at our fingertips.

We, believers, know this complex display of behavior during the life of Jesus wasn’t accidental. He remained hard to pin down. Jesus’ life was not mercurial in a bi-polar sense. He’s mercurial in the dangerous, pay attention, and “trust me” sense. Each of his statements, his behaviors, and his teachings draw us into him. They are meant to awaken, to enable, and to reveal his love for us. 

Jesus’ complexity was not just for the disciples but for us readers and listeners too. I believe his life was revealed for all of creation that came before his birth, too. He witnessed to them. And for the angels. 

In Saturday’s gospel, though, the peculiarities of Jesus’ life and teachings begin to open up, to be explained. We get Jesus’ admission that while his teachings, actions, and statements had been in a code, a masked sort of communication through the majority of his years with the disciples, in his last days on earth, that was no longer the case.

“I have told you this in figures of speech.
The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures
but I will tell you clearly about the Father.”

The “hour” he’s talking about is the fulfillment, the finishing of his life in revealing the Father to us with a redemptive death. His living presence to all of creation with the Holy Trinity is completed by his resurrection. His ascension allowed us the indwelling of that Holy Spirit. The hour is monumental. 

When he brought up his speaking pattern in “figures,” he clarified the new way of life that his death and resurrection would bring. The “I have told you this” that he referred to in figures of speech was the relationship the disciples had with the Father, with himself, and with the Holy Spirit. He cited a specific and mind-blowing re-ordering of the universe.

“You know how you used to plead with God, whom I’ve told you is your Father, and you could only hope for the best? Because of your love for me, now you can mention my name, and the Father will always respond to your pleas. Do this so that your joy will be complete.”

My paraphrase highlights the shift for the disciples that would soon go out to the world. This change is from a static place to a dynamic relationship. 

Before Jesus, people painfully pled to God for mercy from the effects of their sinful lives. The static nature of Jewish existence was sin, then punishment, followed by his long-awaited mercy. All this, from a God housed in a temple and spoken to only through holy priests. 

Jesus announced a new joyful integration with God. The disciples, and ultimately all of creation, were morphing. They were being transformed through a dynamic and direct relationship to the Holy Trinity. God was their Father, revealed to them in Jesus, the only begotten Son. Soon, the Holy Spirit would live in them and in anyone else who believed. This relationship would be available to everyone, both Jew and Gentile. Can this fantastic night and day difference be proclaimed too loudly? It’s a massive improvement for all of creation.

Do we know this, though?

We each grasp things differently. Consequently, we have our own processes of logic. Logic is how we reason stuff out. One extreme type of logic is the literalist. That means we accept a specific meaning of words and interpret that communication word for word. At the other end of the spectrum are obsessive folks who measure everything seen or heard with total skepticism. We analyze every element of every phrase as if it were a mistake. Between these two are the laissez-faire or those of us who deliberately abstain from interpretation. That’s the group who just let stuff happen.

Jesus knows about these types of people. I think his confusing statements are for all three of them, and it shakes them up even today. It’s simply impossible with Jesus in your grasp to walk away from the stuff he says because it’s not part of any flow we’re used to. How can one be laissez-faire with Jesus? He’s also too way out there to take literally. And, if you try to analyze everything he’s saying and still live your daily life you’ll have an aneurism. 

Jesus brings God into our daily, overwhelming lives to confirm God's design of the universe. We don’t have that much time to calculate the truth of everything around us. We can’t pause on the meaning of everything said and everything happening around us because our world is moving way too fast for thoughtful reflection. Today, words no longer mean just one thing anymore, so the literalist is a fish out of water. The laissez-faire, laid-back dude, has to compromise his let-it-flow principle because he’s got an iPhone and unrelenting responsibilities. 

Jesus keys in on that busyness, and he did so with the apostles, too. Our logic processes have had to speed up even faster with technology, colossal population increases, and instant global communication. God has been there the whole time. Activity and busyness change dramatically with Jesus. He brings us to the Father and urges us to allow the Holy Spirit to dwell within us.

Take driving down the street. We seem to just go with the flow, but much more is going on than we can think about. We trust that folks are honoring the speeding rules, the stoplights, and watching out for pedestrians. We expect folks to stay in their lane and be smart about safety. It’s too danged hard to operate any other way. We know that the order of things isn’t always smooth, but we drive down the street anyway.

That may seem like an offramp discussion on Jesus and the confusing things he says, but we’re zeroing in on Jesus’ change to the cosmos. 

The order of the world isn’t based upon our grasp of it and our individual compliance. All of us have varying abilities and training. The world’s order is really based upon the incredible interrelationship of God to each and every person and being. It looks a lot like chaos out there, but in truth, it’s both smart and dumb people flowing along in Spirit-filled trust.

The same was true in Jesus’ time. The world operated on trust/verify paths, similar to today. When Jesus introduced a wokeness to God, he reset everything. The disciples were reset. We, too, can be reset.

The order of the world isn’t really that organized on its own. It’s on a path with God even if it doesn’t know it. God’s personal involvement in everybody’s lives is making the whole thing work. The chaos takes place from folks purposely pushing God away, controlling everything they can, and leaving destruction in their wake.

If we try really hard to figure out what’s going as we drive around, we’ll eventually have to pull over. We can get pretty good at seeing oncoming traffic, stuff popping into view from the left and the right, and all the signals, noises, and GPS directions we juggle as we drive along. Sure. There’s someone else in the ordering than us, though. God is actively involved.

So, when Jesus showed up and began explaining how God works, his disciples wrote that stuff down because they saw it happening to them. What Jesus said was counter to everything they thought about in the order of the universe. Jesus explained the balancing act of God’s involvement, and he changed the world.

The Spirit of Jesus constantly steps into the intersections of traffic, helps keep lanes from flying into each other, and even guides us inside our vehicles. God’s been involved in every discovery that’s improved safety and helped our lives to keep up with speeds of communication unheard of just 10 years ago. 

It’s the full integration of the Holy Trinity into our world that repairs brokenness and disease and misery and bigotry, and every other thing. 

Jesus is in charge of the way things are ordered, and he uses everything and everybody at his disposal to be with us and get us to be with him.

Jesus explained to the disciples that they had a relationship with the Father they didn’t have before. And, this new manner of relating to God, as their Father, is because Jesus said that his dear friends loved him. 

The fact these cosmic changes make our brains jog so intensely tells you everything about God you need to know. God’s not only wise and obviously has a ready memory for the smallest of details, but he is also quite aware (ultimately and completely aware) that complex topics require delicate pacing for us to ingest.

I say pacing because that’s the art of communication. God has been working at a proper pace with each advancement in communication every step of the way. How could it be any other way?

When he sounds confusing, call upon Jesus, tell him you love him, and ask for clarity. Then hold onto your hat.