“When John’s Jesus says ‘no one can come to the Father except by me,’ and the Church says that means Jesus and the Christian faith is the only way to God – Yes, that is a stumbling block for me.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, August 26, 2018.
You are changing me. And for that, I thank you.
You are changing me. And for that, I need you.
You are changing me. And for that, I love you.
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I read once that Robert Redford begins every meeting he has at Sundance by saying:
“I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when this meeting is over.”
“I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when this meeting is over.”
That’s extraordinary!
So often, we are told that leadership, that strength, that power is imposing our will and bending others toward it. That strong leaders dictate. That strong leaders control.
And yet a company and a festival that has changed the entire power structure of the filmmaking industry has at its heart a leader who says to those whom he gathers:
“I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when this meeting is over.”
A leader who doesn’t say “I want to change you” but “I want you to change me.”
“I want what we do here … to make us different.”
The most powerful and lasting change is not a pummeling into submission. It is the transformation of coming together in a loving process of exploration and challenge.
It is the transformation that happens when we listen and learn from one another, when we are brave enough to speak our truth and be vulnerable with one another, when we are committed enough to struggle mightily with one another.
It is the transformation that happens when we say to each other “I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when our time together is over.”
It is hard work.
It is finding that sweet spot where together we are fed and loved and affirmed, that love that creates a container strong enough where we can also be challenged and changed.
Where we do what is hard, not out of a sense of guilt or obligation but because the hard work of change is where the life is, where the love is, where the joy is.
We have spent the past several weeks listening to John’s account of Jesus teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
I struggle with John’s Gospel. I always have.
I love its poetry. I love the mystical transcendence with which John’s Gospel speaks of Christ, the miraculous power of the inbreaking of God into human life, how Jesus’ divinity brings to life in beautiful and astounding ways what it is for all of us to look on one another and say “God dwells in you.”
And yet I cannot escape that John’s Gospel was written by a thoroughly human community that was trying to do what we humans so often do and that is convince themselves and others of their special righteousness … a community that wished to separate themselves and place themselves above others who saw Jesus differently from how they did. A community that was about casting out as much as gathering in.
I cannot escape that because of this, John’s Gospel is the ground from which some of the more toxic streams of Christianity have sprung. I cannot escape that the theological context for the Holocaust finds its roots in the antisemitism that the Church and the world have drawn from John’s pages.
There are many parts of John’s Gospel in general and this morning’s Gospel reading in particular that I struggle with.
And so, after John’s Jesus goes off on a particularly challenging soliloquy, when the disciples stop and say in exasperation, “We cannot put up with this kind of talk! How can anyone take it seriously?” I am like “Damn straight! I am so there!”
And when Jesus responds, “Is this a stumbling block for you?” I say “Yes, Jesus, I think it just might be.”
Because when John’s Jesus says “no one can come to the Father except by me,” and the Church says that means Jesus and the Christian faith is the only way to God – Yes, that is a stumbling block for me.
And when John’s Jesus says “Everyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in them.” and the Church says that means the only way to be part of the Church is participating in and subscribing to a narrow doctrinal definition of what following Jesus is and everyone else is cast out – Yes, that is a stumbling block for me.
When John’s Jesus says, “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh in itself is useless” and the Church says that means we need to view our bodies with shame and our sexuality as scandal – Yes, that is a stumbling block for me.
There is much about John’s Jesus that I struggle with.
There is much about John’s Jesus that is a stumbling block for me.
Because there is much about how the Church has interpreted John’s Jesus and how the Church has used John’s Jesus that I cannot reconcile with the Jesus I have come to know, the Jesus I have come to love.
There is much about how the Church has interpreted and used John’s Jesus that I cannot reconcile with the beauty and the power and the truth of the Jesus I have met in my sisters, brothers and genderfluid and gender nonconforming siblings of other faiths and uncertain faith and no faith at all.
And so yes, there is much of John’s Jesus that leaves me saying “We cannot put up with this kind of talk! How can anyone take it seriously?”
Yes, there is much of John’s Jesus that is a stumbling block for me.
And … I am not just going to throw out John’s Gospel, or cross out the parts that I don’t agree with or find too hard.
There is much about John’s Jesus that I struggle with, and …
I am going to keep struggling with John’s Jesus … and with all of scripture and with the scriptures of other traditions. I’m going to keep opening the Bible and saying to the God I meet in those pages: “I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when this meeting is over.”
I am going to keep going to God in prayer and meditation and saying: “I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when this meeting is over.”
I am going to keep coming together with you, this beautiful community of All Saints, in worship and conversation, sharing and listening to the stories of our lives, the struggles of our faith, the questionings of our minds and the longings of our hearts and saying, “I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when this meeting is over.”
For as much as I struggle with John’s Jesus, there is one thing I don’t struggle with … and that is a Jesus who is all about the struggle.
Because the most powerful and lasting change is not a pummeling into submission. It is the transformation of coming together in a loving process of exploration and challenge.
It is the transformation that happens when we listen and learn from one another, when we struggle mightily with one another.
It is the transformation that happens when we say to each other “I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when our time together is over.”
As much as I struggle with John’s Jesus, there is one thing I don’t struggle with and that is a Jesus who welcomes the struggle, who invites us to the struggle, who loves us through the struggle and longs for us to do the same with one another.
We come to All Saints Church from many different places. Some of us have found this community by running toward it, some of us have found this community by running away from something else and some of us have no idea how we ended up here.
And what we all have in common is that we are all beautiful, powerful and beloved and we are all in a process of discovering and becoming what that means. We are all, like Jesus, in a process of trying to discern and claim not the identity the world tries to impose on us but the essence of who we truly are. And at our best, we do that together.
At our best, each time we meet, we will say to one another: “I am inviting you to influence me. I want to be different when this meeting is over.”
We have and will continue to do this incredibly imperfectly. Our intent and our impact will at times be wildly different and each time that happens we will have an opportunity to choose between expressing our pain in ways that wound or in ways that invite grace and healing. Sometimes we will choose wonderfully … and sometimes we will choose poorly. And when we choose poorly we will have still another opportunity to choose grace once more.
We all struggle. We all question. We all are grappling with the truth of our beauty, power and belovedness – how hard it is to trust in others and perhaps hardest of all to trust in ourselves. We are all trying to figure out who we are and what we are becoming. None of us have it all figured out. This is the place, this is the community where we come to be honest about that. This is the place we come to love each other in it and love each other through it. This is the place we come to become. This is the place, this is the community where we want what happens here to make us different.
That’s why I came to All Saints Church.
Not to impose my views but to speak my truth in a way that creates space for you to speak yours and together for us to discern a vision.
Not to turn you into who I am but together for us to discover and celebrate who each and all of us are becoming.
Not just for me to change you, but for us to be changed together.
And that’s how I can say.
You are changing me … and for that, I thank you.
You are changing me … and for that, I need you.
You are changing me … and for that, I love you.
Amen.
