Dionysus on a Bike

John 14:27-29 – 5/9/2026

Jesus is no longer with us in the flesh, as a living, breathing, embodied, in the room, person. We are not in the position of the original disciples. We cannot simply ask Jesus what to do or what the answer to our questions are. Jesus told the disciples he would leave them. As it would turn out, those disciples were the only people for whom following Jesus meant literally walking behind him. Whatever challenges those disciples faced, they never had to wonder what direction to go. They could always defer to their leader. Even when the disciples didn’t understand, they knew they had someone with them who did.

And yet, the disciples could only Jesus as a man, as another human being, with the emphasis on “other.” Jesus was their teacher, their brother, their friend, and ultimately their savior, but they would always be as distant from him as any of us are from other people. We cannot see into another person’s mind. We can never be sure if the person we see is the person they really are. There is always the chance that we are simply creating the other we are tying to know in our own image of them and so miss them altogether. It’s clear from the Gospel accounts that this happened frequently with the disciples. They were with Jesus in the flesh, but they often completely missed who Jesus was and what he stood for.

Jesus told his disciples he was leaving them, and he also told them he’s coming to them. A paradox. A contradiction. Leaving them in the flesh meant that disciples could be with Jesus in a closer more intimate way. The promised Advocate, the Paraclete, the indwelling Holy Spirit. To have God’s Spirit, Jesus had to leave. To know Jesus more closely than a friend and brother, Jesus had to send his very Spirit to dwell in their spirits. The distinction between self and Christ had to disappear and that couldn’t happen while Jesus was still with the disciples in the flesh.

One of the mysteries of the faith is that we are Christ for the world and for each other. Jesus is still with us and clearly at the same time not with us. Jesus is closer than he ever was even as he is completely absent. In this case we have an indwelling closeness but the ambiguity of never knowing if we are simply inventing something of our own making. We trade one presence for another, and we trade one absence for another. The walk of faith and the journey of life are always risks and hope without certainty. Incompleteness, ambiguity, hope toward the unseen, these are inescapable. The life of faith is to affirm that ambiguity and find joy in it.

Further Reading: Sartre and Beauvoir’s writings deal with the ambiguity of existence. See especially Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.