Toward Pentecost: "Imagine Me Gone."

Next Sunday’s Gospel, John 17:1-11, is all ablur in pronouns. 

Ablur.

Jesus is standing with us, but instead of talking to us...about the Father, he starts talking to the Father…about US.  And we’re left to listen and try to make sense of it. There are, by my quick count, 56 pronouns in the reading, 25% of the words.  It takes some time to figure out who Jesus is referring to. 

Time.  

Perhaps that is the reason for the blur of pronouns; he wants to get us confused, so we listen.  It’s time for him to leave, to leave us, to leave us to our own devices.

Imagine someone who means (or meant) the world to you…leaving.  Everything changes, doesn’t it, at least for awhile?  This is what Jesus is trying to invite us to consider, as we sit around in an untidy, squirming circle, wondering why the heck he is talking to the ceiling.

He's saying "Imagine me gone."

We have nine days from this Thursday to consider this, to join those confused disciples. 

Perhaps you have lost someone who...

was everything to you.  Imagine that person speaking to God in heaven, but every time the word “they” is used, insert your own name (and for the grammatically sensitive, change the verb to fit.)

All of our life, we are left and we leave.  Being accompanied by the Spirit of the departed is a door that is open to us. 

I referred to the film “Cherry Blossoms” a posting ago.  It is a story of finding the spirit of those who have physically left us, finding them within ourselves, not merely them but the unbound part of themselves, the free and dancing part of themselves…their Spirit.

Between now and Pentecost, I’d like to return to The Free Lemonade Stand from time to time and share my reflections.  Please share your own reflections as well in comment below.

John 17:1-1

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said,
“Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you,
just as you gave him authority over all people,
so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.
Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
I glorified you on earth
by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
Now glorify me, Father, with you,
with the glory that I had with you before the world began.

“I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me,
because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours
and everything of yours is mine,
and I have been glorified in them.
And now I will no longer be in the world,
but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”