Great expectations
Commentary
Object:
It was Charles Dickens who prodded us to think about hope in his wonderful novel Great Expectations. Young Pip lives in a home with bleak experiences and few hopes. Yet circumstances provide a doorway into the future as a solicitor informs the family that a trust has been set up to provide for his schooling as a gentleman in London.
Everyone reads something different into this change of fortunes, and Pip himself does not find out for years who provided the beneficence. In the end, many of the "great expectations" about Pip's future and hopes are dashed, and Dickens leaves us in a world where the fates are at worst cruel and at best devious.
Thankfully the world of the Bible is much more gracious. In today's lectionary passage the hopefulness of God's intentions is at the fore. Through the Wisdom of Proverbs we learn again what a rich treasure is ours when we live in the house of divine Wisdom. Paul ties our expectations to the resurrection of Jesus and the justification it brings, assuring us of a hope that does not disappoint. Jesus himself provides fortitude through his promise of the Spirit of truth who will guide us on a path that is never a dead end.
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Imagine a scene in a farmhouse kitchen. It is early September. Crops are still in the fields and the smell of freshly cut hay mixes with the odors of manure and the pungent staleness of last year's silage. Flies buzz everywhere, leaving their small black dots of contamination. The air hangs heavy with choking humidity, begging for a late afternoon shower to wash clean the atmosphere.
A ticking wall clock rivets the silence of three who sit around a kitchen table with its plastic red and white covering. Cups of tea, hardly touched, idle in front of each, an older husband and wife and their strapping teenaged son, nearly a grown man in his own right.
Suddenly the young fellow stands and says, "Well..." Mom and Dad jump up quickly and walk him to the door. Outside is a battered compact car crammed with the stuff a first-year student takes off to college, deluded into thinking his mother knows what he will need there.
There are too many important things to say, so nobody uses words. Mom grabs her son around the waist and clenches the air out of his lungs in surprising ferocity as she weeps into his chest. When he finally pats her away and turns toward Dad, there is a glistening of almost-tears in the older fellow's eyes that the son hasn't seen before. They shake hands, man to man, in a grip no bear could pull out of. Finally Dad manages a few expressions. "Son," he says, "remember what we've taught you! When you get to the big city, and you find your place at the university, there will be all sorts of women who come after you. Pick wisely, or it will be the ruin of you. Remember who you are!"
And with that the son escapes to find his fame and fortune. What will he be like in a year or four? What will he do with his opportunities? How will he face the challenges that cultured life has to offer him once the protective structures of rural society no longer define how he is to live? Most importantly, who will he date, and why, and will he find a mate he can thrive with or will he get caught in the lure of enticements that steal his soul as well as his heart?
This is the way we need to enter the book of Proverbs. While it may seem at first glance to be a tedious collection of rather dry one-liners, Proverbs is much more than that. It is our doorway into the educational system of the Israelite community. Our word proverb is derived from a Latin term that means "for a verb." So these are "words" that take the place of "more words" or concise distillations of wisdom compacted into a few carefully conceived phrases. The wisdom presumed by the proverbs is the worldview of the Sinai covenant, as the Prologue (Proverbs 1:1-7) indicates. The message of the book derives its direction from Solomon, who was enormously wise because of the special gift of God (1 Kings 3). Solomon is the father of Proverbs in several ways. First, he created Yahweh's temple in Jerusalem, which gave a permanent home to Israel's covenant marriage partner. Second, Solomon was also known for his wide-ranging and ultimately catastrophic flirtations, courtships, and marriages. In truth, Solomon's early expressions of pithy wisdom (which drew the attention and the attraction of the world -- 1 Kings 4:29-34; 10:1-13) and his disastrous sexual alliances (which caused his downfall -- 1 Kings 11:1-13) served to shape the collection of Proverbs in its final form.
This is seen in the "Lectures on Wisdom and Folly" that stand at the head of the book. In the Hebrew language both "wisdom" and "folly" are feminine nouns. Thus the use of the repeated literary device "my son" in Proverbs 1:8--9:18 is intentional. All readers or hearers of these lectures become the "son" who is courted by two women, "Wisdom" and "Folly." By the end of these carefully crafted lectures, in which each woman is given opportunity to present her case, all readers must choose which woman to be with. Wisdom brings stability and well-being; Folly offers quick experiences and tragic ends.
The lectures are clearly planned and creatively balanced. A survey of the topics and lines shows us how well these addresses were developed:
* Enticement to Perverse Ways (1:8-19)
* Wisdom's Call (1:20-33)
-Benefits of Wisdom (2:1-22) [22 poetic lines]
-Benefits & Specific Instructions (3:1-20) [20]
-Benefits & Specific Instructions (3:21-35) [15]
-Benefits of Wisdom (4:1-27) [27]
-Warning against Adultery (5:1-23) [23]
-Warning against Perverse Ways (6:1-19) [20]
-Warning against Adultery (6:20-35) [16]
-Warning against Adultery (7:1-27) [27]
* Wisdom's Call (8:1-36)
* Wisdom's Invitation & Folly's Enticement (9:1-18)
If at the close of these lectures one should choose Folly, the rest of the Proverbs have no meaning. That person should slam shut the book and get on with other destructive behaviors, for she or he cannot understand the language that is used in the house of Wisdom.
If, however, one hears and understands these lectures and responds with an appropriate desire to court and marry Wisdom, the rest of the book of Proverbs becomes the stuff of which her house is made. When one is bound to Wisdom, the proverbs are the furnishings of her house and the decorations on her walls and the conversation pieces in her rooms. The many proverbs are not to be read together as an unbroken narrative but are supposed to be savored and tasted like the many meals taken in the marriage house of Wisdom and breathed as if they were the life-sustaining rhythms of respiration itself.
The power of this planning re-emerges in the final segment of the book. Proverbs ends with a short description often called "The Wife of Noble Character" (Proverbs 31:10-31). Shaped as an acrostic poem, the 22 couplets each begin with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this way the very literary technique communicates the completeness of the idea explored: here is everything you need to know about the noble wife, A to Z.
But what is the purpose of this culminating articulation? Does it describe the ideal woman every young man should seek when dating? Is it the catalog of traits to be found in the most respectable of Israelite wives? Can it be used to identify the appropriate tasks of a homemaker in ancient Israel?
Perhaps any or all of these are possibilities, and that is why so many Christian preachers use this passage as a text for the homily on Mother's Day. But if the book of Proverbs is taken as a whole and careful attention is paid to its development, there is a wonderful completeness brought about by this acrostic poem.
The opening lectures of the book place before the reader the requirement to choose between two women, Wisdom and Folly, each of whom presents her attractions and enticements. If we choose to marry Wisdom, chapters 10-31 of Proverbs describe the furnishings and lifestyle in the home created by our new spouse. This acrostic poem forms a concluding testimony of the good life created by Wisdom. In that sense it is more than a sociological description; it is a theological culmination of the life-engagement processes found in the covenant community.
Wisdom, according to Proverbs, is not merely intelligence, for people with big brains can do very foolish things. Nor is wisdom simply street smarts or hardscrabble experience, though both of these can help us figure out what really matters in life. At its root, true wisdom is the process of entering and appreciating the worldview developed out of the Sinai covenant community. When one learns to live with Yahweh in holy awe, the contours of the world begin to be defined by the resurgence of the Creator's design. Living in this universe, one becomes married to Wisdom, because Wisdom is the human expression of Yahweh's presence at the heart of the society. In Wisdom's house, conversations of daily simplicity as well as the intimacies of family relationships and the governing principles of kings and courts are formed by the language of these Proverbs.
Romans 5:1-5
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl often wrote about the meaninglessness of his patients' lives. He was able to sympathize with them in a powerful way since he spent part of World War II in a concentration camp. He remembered the dark weeks of 1944 vividly -- the numbness of the gray days, the cold sameness of every dreary morning.
Then, suddenly, like a bolt of bright colors came the stunning whisper that the Allies had landed at Normandy. The push was on. The Germans were running. The tide of the war had turned. "By Christmas we'll be released!" they told each other.
Frankl recalls the changes that took place in the camp: every day the workers went out to their same jobs, but their hearts were lighter and the work seemed a bit easier. Each mealtime they peered into the same cauldron of slop, but somehow it seemed less difficult to swallow since every bite was a countdown to freedom. The stress in each barracks community was the same: people fighting for a little privacy, jealousies and dislikes aired in spicy retorts. Yet forgiveness came a little easier these days, for the ups and downs of the present dimmed as the future became a closer and closer reality.
It was interesting, says Frankl. Fewer people died in those months. Even the weakest ones began to cling tenaciously to life.
But Christmas 1944 passed and the Allied troops never came. There were setbacks and defeats and the bits of news smuggled into the camp made no more promises.
Then, says Frankl, then the people began to die. No new diseases came into the camp. Rations remained the same. There was no change in working conditions. But the people began to die one after the other, as if some terrible plague had struck.
Indeed, it had. It was the plague of hopelessness, the epidemic of despair. Studies show that we can live forty to sixty days without food, eight to twelve days without water, and maybe three minutes without oxygen. But without hope we can't survive even a moment. Without hope we die. Without hope there's no reason to wake up in the morning.
This is why Paul's testimony in today's lesson is so powerful. We are people who live on hope, who thrive on hope, who exist for hope. But the world that Paul describes in the early chapters of his letter to the Romans is dark and gloomy and hopeless. It robs us of our futures because it keeps us from God and from ourselves and from one another.
Enter Jesus. Jesus is God's hope renewed in the world. We lost our futures, but Jesus restores identity and meaning and hope. We begin to see again. We start anticipating a world waiting to be born. We reach for the unseen. And divine love allows us to think in terms of promises that might be fulfilled.
John 16:12-15
Although its literary development is markedly different from that of the Synoptic gospels, there is a very clear pattern to John's rehearsal of thought and portrayal of Jesus' activities and teachings in this gospel. A significant transition in referential time takes place between chapters 12 and 13 (related to the coming of the "the hour" for Jesus; note 2:4; 4:23; 7:6; 12:23; 13:1; 17:1), and this change is further accentuated by the grouping of all of Jesus' "miraculous signs," as John calls them, into the first twelve chapters. For these reasons the first part of John's gospel is often called "The Book of Signs," while the last part wears well the name "The Book of Glory." A highly significant prologue opens the gospel (1:1-18), and an epilogue obviously written by another party and added after the initial gospel was completed (ch. 21) brings it to a close.
Once the transition takes place to the "Book of Glory," Jesus meets for an extended meal and conversation with his disciples. The monologue seems somewhat meandering and repetitive until the Hebrew chiastic manner of communication is overlaid. Then the "Farewell Discourse," as it is known, becomes an obvious, deeply moving invitation by Jesus for his followers to remain connected to him by way of the powerful Paraclete (a Greek term meaning "counselor" or "advocate") in the face of the troubling that will come upon them because of his imminent physical departure and the rising persecutions targeted toward them by the world that remains in darkness. In chiastic summary, the Farewell Discourse can be portrayed in this manner (see Wayne Brouwer, The Literary Development of John 13-17: A Chiastic Reading [SBL, 2000]):
Gathering scene (unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love) 13:1-35
Prediction of disciple's denial 13:36-38
Jesus' departure tempered by Father's power 14:1-14
Promise of the "Paraclete" 14:15-24
Troubling encounter with the world 14:25-31
"Abide in Me!" teaching 15:1-17
Troubling encounter with the world 15:18-16:4a
Promise of the "Paraclete" 16:4b-15
Jesus' departure tempered by Father's power 16:16-28
Prediction of disciple's denial 16:29-33
Departing prayer (unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love) 17:1-26
It is clear, from this development, that today's gospel reading is part of Jesus' recurring message of comfort for his disciples who will soon feel his absence. Only through the "wireless" connection of the "Paraclete" will they continue to be bound to Jesus from his vantage point in the Father's house (John 14:1-4). Through this ongoing link, the presence and power of Jesus remains with us and we find ourselves empowered to live in a challenging world that groans in the agony of too much darkness.
Application
A friend of mine was awakened suddenly on a Saturday morning by a telephone call across three time zones. His brother had been injured and was hospitalized in the critical care unit with a cracked skull and a swelling brain. My friend was helpless. No airplane could get him to his brother's side before either the injury might prove fatal or the swelling would subside and the emergency pass. Enforced patience drummed him with nervous fret, a burden he did not want to bear.
Patience is a tough virtue, slipping from our grasp in the moment of demand. It always races with Road Runner while we are stymied in the dust with Wile E. Coyote, never catching up no matter what Acme technology we employ. Stephen Winward says that at his mother's knee he learned a poem that has proved perennially true:
Patience is a virtue: possess it if you can!
Seldom in a woman, and never in a man.
My own parents used to tell us, "All good things come to those who wait." While that may have been true in the past, it hardly seems to apply any more. We seem systematically to have beaten the need for waiting. We buy instant foods and "nuke" them to serving temperature in microwave ovens. Our satellite dishes and internet search engines bring immediate access to news and information from around the world. We pop painkillers to evaporate our aches so we don't even have to deal with the whys of our hurts. If we see something we like, instant credit grants us immediate possession.
Still, there are things that we can't control and these keep the fires of desire burning the paper house of patience in our souls. It is the ache of loneliness and the pain of frustration that too often hold us aloof from patience. Some time ago I received a letter from a wife whose life has been turned upside down by a marriage gone sour and the complicated pains it causes each day. "I'm so lonely," she shouts in print, punctuating her cry with exclamation points. I've spent time in her impatient circle. You have too.
Our world is imperfect with corners that bump knees and scorpions that poison hands. We get lonely, we get pained; we struggle to survive and are old in body before our youthful ideals get a chance to catch up. We try to find a little comfort and come away addicted to work, booze, drugs, or sex, always far short of heaven.
The patience of waiting is tied to our understanding of how time will get resolved into eternity. If there is no God outside the system, we are stuck with cycles of repetition, crushed beneath recurring tasks and tedium that never ends. If there is a God who has promised to interrupt history with healing and hope and harmony, we wait with expectation.
My friend's brother died from his head injuries. Now my friend waits in patience for the coming of Jesus. He is confident that then he will see his brother again, according to the promise of scripture. Without that promise he could not be patient. In an impatient world, his is a remarkable hope. A religious hope. A patient hope.
An Alternative Application
Romans 5:1-5. Years ago, Dr. Arthur Gossip preached a sermon titled "When Life Tumbles In, What Then?" He preached it the day after his beloved wife had suddenly died, and no one could bring more powerfully than he the challenge of the closing lines:
Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely. Standing in the roaring Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I... call back to you who one day will have your turn to cross it, "Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom and it is sound!"
That's where Paul stands when he calls to us from this letter. Do you hear his voice? "Hope does not disappoint us..."
Everyone reads something different into this change of fortunes, and Pip himself does not find out for years who provided the beneficence. In the end, many of the "great expectations" about Pip's future and hopes are dashed, and Dickens leaves us in a world where the fates are at worst cruel and at best devious.
Thankfully the world of the Bible is much more gracious. In today's lectionary passage the hopefulness of God's intentions is at the fore. Through the Wisdom of Proverbs we learn again what a rich treasure is ours when we live in the house of divine Wisdom. Paul ties our expectations to the resurrection of Jesus and the justification it brings, assuring us of a hope that does not disappoint. Jesus himself provides fortitude through his promise of the Spirit of truth who will guide us on a path that is never a dead end.
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Imagine a scene in a farmhouse kitchen. It is early September. Crops are still in the fields and the smell of freshly cut hay mixes with the odors of manure and the pungent staleness of last year's silage. Flies buzz everywhere, leaving their small black dots of contamination. The air hangs heavy with choking humidity, begging for a late afternoon shower to wash clean the atmosphere.
A ticking wall clock rivets the silence of three who sit around a kitchen table with its plastic red and white covering. Cups of tea, hardly touched, idle in front of each, an older husband and wife and their strapping teenaged son, nearly a grown man in his own right.
Suddenly the young fellow stands and says, "Well..." Mom and Dad jump up quickly and walk him to the door. Outside is a battered compact car crammed with the stuff a first-year student takes off to college, deluded into thinking his mother knows what he will need there.
There are too many important things to say, so nobody uses words. Mom grabs her son around the waist and clenches the air out of his lungs in surprising ferocity as she weeps into his chest. When he finally pats her away and turns toward Dad, there is a glistening of almost-tears in the older fellow's eyes that the son hasn't seen before. They shake hands, man to man, in a grip no bear could pull out of. Finally Dad manages a few expressions. "Son," he says, "remember what we've taught you! When you get to the big city, and you find your place at the university, there will be all sorts of women who come after you. Pick wisely, or it will be the ruin of you. Remember who you are!"
And with that the son escapes to find his fame and fortune. What will he be like in a year or four? What will he do with his opportunities? How will he face the challenges that cultured life has to offer him once the protective structures of rural society no longer define how he is to live? Most importantly, who will he date, and why, and will he find a mate he can thrive with or will he get caught in the lure of enticements that steal his soul as well as his heart?
This is the way we need to enter the book of Proverbs. While it may seem at first glance to be a tedious collection of rather dry one-liners, Proverbs is much more than that. It is our doorway into the educational system of the Israelite community. Our word proverb is derived from a Latin term that means "for a verb." So these are "words" that take the place of "more words" or concise distillations of wisdom compacted into a few carefully conceived phrases. The wisdom presumed by the proverbs is the worldview of the Sinai covenant, as the Prologue (Proverbs 1:1-7) indicates. The message of the book derives its direction from Solomon, who was enormously wise because of the special gift of God (1 Kings 3). Solomon is the father of Proverbs in several ways. First, he created Yahweh's temple in Jerusalem, which gave a permanent home to Israel's covenant marriage partner. Second, Solomon was also known for his wide-ranging and ultimately catastrophic flirtations, courtships, and marriages. In truth, Solomon's early expressions of pithy wisdom (which drew the attention and the attraction of the world -- 1 Kings 4:29-34; 10:1-13) and his disastrous sexual alliances (which caused his downfall -- 1 Kings 11:1-13) served to shape the collection of Proverbs in its final form.
This is seen in the "Lectures on Wisdom and Folly" that stand at the head of the book. In the Hebrew language both "wisdom" and "folly" are feminine nouns. Thus the use of the repeated literary device "my son" in Proverbs 1:8--9:18 is intentional. All readers or hearers of these lectures become the "son" who is courted by two women, "Wisdom" and "Folly." By the end of these carefully crafted lectures, in which each woman is given opportunity to present her case, all readers must choose which woman to be with. Wisdom brings stability and well-being; Folly offers quick experiences and tragic ends.
The lectures are clearly planned and creatively balanced. A survey of the topics and lines shows us how well these addresses were developed:
* Enticement to Perverse Ways (1:8-19)
* Wisdom's Call (1:20-33)
-Benefits of Wisdom (2:1-22) [22 poetic lines]
-Benefits & Specific Instructions (3:1-20) [20]
-Benefits & Specific Instructions (3:21-35) [15]
-Benefits of Wisdom (4:1-27) [27]
-Warning against Adultery (5:1-23) [23]
-Warning against Perverse Ways (6:1-19) [20]
-Warning against Adultery (6:20-35) [16]
-Warning against Adultery (7:1-27) [27]
* Wisdom's Call (8:1-36)
* Wisdom's Invitation & Folly's Enticement (9:1-18)
If at the close of these lectures one should choose Folly, the rest of the Proverbs have no meaning. That person should slam shut the book and get on with other destructive behaviors, for she or he cannot understand the language that is used in the house of Wisdom.
If, however, one hears and understands these lectures and responds with an appropriate desire to court and marry Wisdom, the rest of the book of Proverbs becomes the stuff of which her house is made. When one is bound to Wisdom, the proverbs are the furnishings of her house and the decorations on her walls and the conversation pieces in her rooms. The many proverbs are not to be read together as an unbroken narrative but are supposed to be savored and tasted like the many meals taken in the marriage house of Wisdom and breathed as if they were the life-sustaining rhythms of respiration itself.
The power of this planning re-emerges in the final segment of the book. Proverbs ends with a short description often called "The Wife of Noble Character" (Proverbs 31:10-31). Shaped as an acrostic poem, the 22 couplets each begin with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this way the very literary technique communicates the completeness of the idea explored: here is everything you need to know about the noble wife, A to Z.
But what is the purpose of this culminating articulation? Does it describe the ideal woman every young man should seek when dating? Is it the catalog of traits to be found in the most respectable of Israelite wives? Can it be used to identify the appropriate tasks of a homemaker in ancient Israel?
Perhaps any or all of these are possibilities, and that is why so many Christian preachers use this passage as a text for the homily on Mother's Day. But if the book of Proverbs is taken as a whole and careful attention is paid to its development, there is a wonderful completeness brought about by this acrostic poem.
The opening lectures of the book place before the reader the requirement to choose between two women, Wisdom and Folly, each of whom presents her attractions and enticements. If we choose to marry Wisdom, chapters 10-31 of Proverbs describe the furnishings and lifestyle in the home created by our new spouse. This acrostic poem forms a concluding testimony of the good life created by Wisdom. In that sense it is more than a sociological description; it is a theological culmination of the life-engagement processes found in the covenant community.
Wisdom, according to Proverbs, is not merely intelligence, for people with big brains can do very foolish things. Nor is wisdom simply street smarts or hardscrabble experience, though both of these can help us figure out what really matters in life. At its root, true wisdom is the process of entering and appreciating the worldview developed out of the Sinai covenant community. When one learns to live with Yahweh in holy awe, the contours of the world begin to be defined by the resurgence of the Creator's design. Living in this universe, one becomes married to Wisdom, because Wisdom is the human expression of Yahweh's presence at the heart of the society. In Wisdom's house, conversations of daily simplicity as well as the intimacies of family relationships and the governing principles of kings and courts are formed by the language of these Proverbs.
Romans 5:1-5
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl often wrote about the meaninglessness of his patients' lives. He was able to sympathize with them in a powerful way since he spent part of World War II in a concentration camp. He remembered the dark weeks of 1944 vividly -- the numbness of the gray days, the cold sameness of every dreary morning.
Then, suddenly, like a bolt of bright colors came the stunning whisper that the Allies had landed at Normandy. The push was on. The Germans were running. The tide of the war had turned. "By Christmas we'll be released!" they told each other.
Frankl recalls the changes that took place in the camp: every day the workers went out to their same jobs, but their hearts were lighter and the work seemed a bit easier. Each mealtime they peered into the same cauldron of slop, but somehow it seemed less difficult to swallow since every bite was a countdown to freedom. The stress in each barracks community was the same: people fighting for a little privacy, jealousies and dislikes aired in spicy retorts. Yet forgiveness came a little easier these days, for the ups and downs of the present dimmed as the future became a closer and closer reality.
It was interesting, says Frankl. Fewer people died in those months. Even the weakest ones began to cling tenaciously to life.
But Christmas 1944 passed and the Allied troops never came. There were setbacks and defeats and the bits of news smuggled into the camp made no more promises.
Then, says Frankl, then the people began to die. No new diseases came into the camp. Rations remained the same. There was no change in working conditions. But the people began to die one after the other, as if some terrible plague had struck.
Indeed, it had. It was the plague of hopelessness, the epidemic of despair. Studies show that we can live forty to sixty days without food, eight to twelve days without water, and maybe three minutes without oxygen. But without hope we can't survive even a moment. Without hope we die. Without hope there's no reason to wake up in the morning.
This is why Paul's testimony in today's lesson is so powerful. We are people who live on hope, who thrive on hope, who exist for hope. But the world that Paul describes in the early chapters of his letter to the Romans is dark and gloomy and hopeless. It robs us of our futures because it keeps us from God and from ourselves and from one another.
Enter Jesus. Jesus is God's hope renewed in the world. We lost our futures, but Jesus restores identity and meaning and hope. We begin to see again. We start anticipating a world waiting to be born. We reach for the unseen. And divine love allows us to think in terms of promises that might be fulfilled.
John 16:12-15
Although its literary development is markedly different from that of the Synoptic gospels, there is a very clear pattern to John's rehearsal of thought and portrayal of Jesus' activities and teachings in this gospel. A significant transition in referential time takes place between chapters 12 and 13 (related to the coming of the "the hour" for Jesus; note 2:4; 4:23; 7:6; 12:23; 13:1; 17:1), and this change is further accentuated by the grouping of all of Jesus' "miraculous signs," as John calls them, into the first twelve chapters. For these reasons the first part of John's gospel is often called "The Book of Signs," while the last part wears well the name "The Book of Glory." A highly significant prologue opens the gospel (1:1-18), and an epilogue obviously written by another party and added after the initial gospel was completed (ch. 21) brings it to a close.
Once the transition takes place to the "Book of Glory," Jesus meets for an extended meal and conversation with his disciples. The monologue seems somewhat meandering and repetitive until the Hebrew chiastic manner of communication is overlaid. Then the "Farewell Discourse," as it is known, becomes an obvious, deeply moving invitation by Jesus for his followers to remain connected to him by way of the powerful Paraclete (a Greek term meaning "counselor" or "advocate") in the face of the troubling that will come upon them because of his imminent physical departure and the rising persecutions targeted toward them by the world that remains in darkness. In chiastic summary, the Farewell Discourse can be portrayed in this manner (see Wayne Brouwer, The Literary Development of John 13-17: A Chiastic Reading [SBL, 2000]):
Gathering scene (unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love) 13:1-35
Prediction of disciple's denial 13:36-38
Jesus' departure tempered by Father's power 14:1-14
Promise of the "Paraclete" 14:15-24
Troubling encounter with the world 14:25-31
"Abide in Me!" teaching 15:1-17
Troubling encounter with the world 15:18-16:4a
Promise of the "Paraclete" 16:4b-15
Jesus' departure tempered by Father's power 16:16-28
Prediction of disciple's denial 16:29-33
Departing prayer (unity with Jesus expressed in mutual love) 17:1-26
It is clear, from this development, that today's gospel reading is part of Jesus' recurring message of comfort for his disciples who will soon feel his absence. Only through the "wireless" connection of the "Paraclete" will they continue to be bound to Jesus from his vantage point in the Father's house (John 14:1-4). Through this ongoing link, the presence and power of Jesus remains with us and we find ourselves empowered to live in a challenging world that groans in the agony of too much darkness.
Application
A friend of mine was awakened suddenly on a Saturday morning by a telephone call across three time zones. His brother had been injured and was hospitalized in the critical care unit with a cracked skull and a swelling brain. My friend was helpless. No airplane could get him to his brother's side before either the injury might prove fatal or the swelling would subside and the emergency pass. Enforced patience drummed him with nervous fret, a burden he did not want to bear.
Patience is a tough virtue, slipping from our grasp in the moment of demand. It always races with Road Runner while we are stymied in the dust with Wile E. Coyote, never catching up no matter what Acme technology we employ. Stephen Winward says that at his mother's knee he learned a poem that has proved perennially true:
Patience is a virtue: possess it if you can!
Seldom in a woman, and never in a man.
My own parents used to tell us, "All good things come to those who wait." While that may have been true in the past, it hardly seems to apply any more. We seem systematically to have beaten the need for waiting. We buy instant foods and "nuke" them to serving temperature in microwave ovens. Our satellite dishes and internet search engines bring immediate access to news and information from around the world. We pop painkillers to evaporate our aches so we don't even have to deal with the whys of our hurts. If we see something we like, instant credit grants us immediate possession.
Still, there are things that we can't control and these keep the fires of desire burning the paper house of patience in our souls. It is the ache of loneliness and the pain of frustration that too often hold us aloof from patience. Some time ago I received a letter from a wife whose life has been turned upside down by a marriage gone sour and the complicated pains it causes each day. "I'm so lonely," she shouts in print, punctuating her cry with exclamation points. I've spent time in her impatient circle. You have too.
Our world is imperfect with corners that bump knees and scorpions that poison hands. We get lonely, we get pained; we struggle to survive and are old in body before our youthful ideals get a chance to catch up. We try to find a little comfort and come away addicted to work, booze, drugs, or sex, always far short of heaven.
The patience of waiting is tied to our understanding of how time will get resolved into eternity. If there is no God outside the system, we are stuck with cycles of repetition, crushed beneath recurring tasks and tedium that never ends. If there is a God who has promised to interrupt history with healing and hope and harmony, we wait with expectation.
My friend's brother died from his head injuries. Now my friend waits in patience for the coming of Jesus. He is confident that then he will see his brother again, according to the promise of scripture. Without that promise he could not be patient. In an impatient world, his is a remarkable hope. A religious hope. A patient hope.
An Alternative Application
Romans 5:1-5. Years ago, Dr. Arthur Gossip preached a sermon titled "When Life Tumbles In, What Then?" He preached it the day after his beloved wife had suddenly died, and no one could bring more powerfully than he the challenge of the closing lines:
Our hearts are very frail, and there are places where the road is very steep and very lonely. Standing in the roaring Jordan, cold with its dreadful chill and very conscious of its terror, of its rushing, I... call back to you who one day will have your turn to cross it, "Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom and it is sound!"
That's where Paul stands when he calls to us from this letter. Do you hear his voice? "Hope does not disappoint us..."
