“Glorified ... nice?”
Acts 11:1-18 / Revelation 21:1-6 / John 13:31-35
5 Easter C
28 April 2013
Once again this week, our Gospel text takes us on a trip in the “wayback” machine ... here, in these post-Easter Day, Resurrection of our Lord Sundays, our Word from St. John is from before Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection ...
...however, not before his Passion.
These five short verses are from “the night in which Jesus was betrayed” ... and yes, we just heard these verses on Maundy Thursday, four weeks ago this past Thursday.
So why are we hearing them again, in worship, so soon?
Because just as last Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday, with the 23rd Psalm and texts about Jesus’ shepherding-leadership ... so this 5th Sunday of Easter is known as “Love” Sunday ... with at least one of the texts focusing on “Jesus’ kind of love.”
Here, this year, we once again hear Jesus’ words of the New Commandment, the mandatum, the mandate from which Maundy Thursday draws its name ... Love One Another.
Now, perhaps you remember, as we’ve discussed this Word every year here in worship, either on Maundy Thursday or after Easter … perhaps you remember that the Greek language has three words for our own English love… and they are eros, filos, and agape.
Maybe you remember that eros means what it sounds like … the very human love between two lovers.
... that filos means fraternal love, the love between friends, the love one can have for their city or state or nation, or their favorite ball club.
And that the third word in Greek for love … agape … stands for “Jesus’ kind of love.” Self-emptying, shepherd-servant-leader love.
It’s the love that Jesus exemplifies throughout the Gospels, but especially, in our texts from the Gospel of John which have been our Gospel texts each Sunday during the season of Easter.
It’s the love that Jesus showed Mary as he called her name, appearing to her that first Easter morning.
It’s the love Jesus gave the apostles as he appeared among them, hidden away in fear, saying Peace is Here and Catch My Spirit, to Share It with Others.
The same love Jesus showed his friends there on that Galilean beach as he cooked them fish, asked them to “feed his sheep” and “follow me.”
That’s Jesus’ kind of love. Deep, self-giving, cross-shaped, strength through suffering, flowing from the heart of God, the God we know as the Lamb who is the Good Shepherd. The One who serves unto the giving of his own life, laying it down, and taking it back up again because God willed that it would be so.
This is love that glorifies God in its giving and sharing.
When Jesus calls his disciples to “follow me,” THIS is how he means and intends for them … for us … to follow.
In this “love one another” love.
Which is a whole lot more than just being “nice.”
Sometimes I think that we hear Jesus’ words in this text as “be nice to one another.” And most of us probably do a pretty good job of this, most of the time.
It’s just that, being nice to one another doesn’t glorify God.
It’s not “glorified nice,” it’s giving glory to God through life-changing, world-changing, self-emptying and being-filled-by-God love for one another.
Now, our other Scripture readings give us fine examples of what this love is like, what it does among those who share and receive it, and what happens – on earth as it is in heaven – as a result of it.
The Word from Acts may not seem like a “big deal” to us gathered here today, but most surely, this is The Word that brings us ... we who are not Jews, we who are called by the Jews ta ethna – the nations ... Gentiles ... this word is The Word which brings us into the fold of the Church.
Peter’s protest to the voice he hears as the Lord is not to be taken lightly.
For what God is working here is nothing less than a setting aside of part of God’s own law for his people.
It’s called the Holiness Code, the verses and chapters surrounding the Ten Commandments ... and in those verses and chapters, are express commands to the Israelites about what they are, and are not, to eat, to remain as God’s own people.
This has been “the way of things” for Peter and his people for ages. It’s all they have ever known.
And yet, here, in a vision, Peter is given another Word from God.
God changes God’s mind, for the sake of including more and more people into the fold, the flock, of the Kingdom of God.
And guess what ... “they” are “us.”
The nations. The Gentiles. The not-Jews.
And so Peter follows God’s call to baptize Cornelius, a soldier of the Roman Empire, a Gentile, but not just one Gentile ... God wants Peter to baptize Cornelius’ whole family.
And the Holy Spirit came upon them, as the Holy Spirit had come upon the apostles in that locked upper room, when Jesus said, catch my Spirit ... it came upon these Gentiles as it had among the disciples on that first Pentecost.
Now, here, in these verses, Peter is explaining to the apostles and other Jewish Christians ... the original Christians, for up to this point following Jesus has been a call to only those who were also practicing, law-keeping, kosher and circumcised Jews ... Peter here is explaining to them what has happened.
Which is ... the same thing that has happened to those Jews, when they heard God’s call to follow Jesus.
What God has made clean, you must not call profane .. common ... outside the circle of faith.
If then God gave them ... the Gentiles ... (that’s US) ... if God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?
Who indeed.
Love ... Jesus’ kind of love ... had opened a door that shall never, ever be shut again.
Then God has given even to the Gentiles ... EVEN UNTO US, YOU AND I ...the repentance that leads to life.
The repentance that leads to life.
And we’re reminded again of those words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, with which I closed the Word last week:
This is (repentance, turning around and turning toward the call of Christ): not in the first place thinking about one’s own needs, problems, sins, and fear, but allowing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ. It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. Jesus calls people, not to a new religion, but to life.
This is life. Receiving, living, sharing, Jesus’ kind of love. Waaaaaay more than glorified nice ... this is love that leads to life-change, to church-change, to culture-change, to world-change ... HERE AND NOW, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.
And “on earth as it is in heaven” is exactly where our Revelation passage leads us this morning.
Last week’s reading from this often-misunderstood last book of the New Testament was a heavenly interlude of worship and praise which looked forward to this scene we receive in the Word today.
Now, here, in today’s text, all the conflict, the battles and wars, the injustice and suffering are over, and John of Revelation looks forward to – and sees – a new heaven and new earth, what is coming, through the sheer power and inexorable will of God, to bring agape-love, Jesus’ kind of love, to earth as it is in heaven.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more.
Mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
For the first things have passed away.
This is the end-result of Jesus’ kind of love. When we follow Jesus’ call to “love one another,” this is sooo much more than just being nice. “Loving one another” as Jesus calls us is world changing, life changing love ... it brings a window of God’s future to here and now, to us, here, today ... yes, it will not be completely perfect and well and whole until this time when God makes everything new, but that should not, shall not, WILL NOT STOP US FROM LOVING ONE ANOTHER AS JESUS CALLS US AND WANTS US AND WILLS US TO DO, HERE AND NOW, TODAY, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.
And what gives us that final assurance, that blessed rest and comfort and hope, so we can “love one another?”
It’s right there in the final words of this reading.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
I AM the beginning and the end. These words, the bookends to the Book of Revelation ... words which begin the book in the first chapter ... words that end the book ... I AM, Jesus says, I AM the beginning and the end.
Not bird flu. Not terrorist attack. Not high blood pressure or cancer. Not a break in the Juan de Fuca plate and a 9.0 earthquake. Not Kim Jong Un’s missiles. Not my death, and not yours. No, I AM – Jesus – is the beginning and the end.
And so we have ultimate peace, hope, security ... so we can go forth and live Love One Another into the world ... easy love, loving our friends and family ... and tough love ... loving those with whom we disagree ... or those who worldly wisdom says we should hate and fear ... we can, we will, love them all, because Jesus is the beginning and the end ... our beginning and our end.
Oh, yes, Love One Another does not set aside the rules. Sometimes that love needs to be tough. The commandments of God are still there, to be sure. We still need rules and laws in this life for the protection of the weak and the vulnerable, the suffering and the poor. But Jesus’ word remains ... LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Way more than glorified nice. This is love which gives glory to God.
I was reminded of this love recently as I marked the one year anniversary of my mom’s death. You may have heard me say that I believe that Americans generally “do death” pretty poorly ... the Conventional Wisdom in our culture is that we should get all the mourning over with as soon as possible, and “move on” ... while Jews, among other cultures (such as Native American, Asian, etc.) recognize that mourning takes longer and comes in waves and cycles. The Jewish periods of mourning go three days, seven days, one month, and one year.
That year of mourning involves the family member of the one who has died, saying a prayer called the “Mourner’s Kaddish” ... at least once a week, perhaps even daily, for that year of mourning.
So on April 4, the year anniversary of mom’s death, I lit a candle, and prayed the words of the Mourner’s Kaddish ... perhaps a strange thing for a Christian to do, but I believe, it was and is a sign of what John was seeing and writing about in Revelation ... that is, that in the midst of death, Jesus’ kind of love pushes us on, to live, fully live, in this life, to fully acknowledge pain and suffering, sorrow and loss ... to comfort others in their sorrow and loss ... to work, fully, bravely, for justice and peace for those who are being crushed under the heavy load of the powerful wheels of an unjust world ... to be, to do, because in Christ we have been given this word of hope which sustains us and leads us forward ... I AM the beginning and end ... I AM ... so, he says, you MUST BE, my signs of my love, into this world.
Jesus’ kind of love. Waaaay more than glorified nice. This is the love that gives glory to God.
Mourner’s Kaddish
MAGNIFIED AND SANCTIFIED
MAY GOD’S GREAT NAME BE
IN THE WORLD THAT GOD CREATED,
AS GOD WILLS,
AND MAY GOD’S KINGDOM COME
IN YOUR LIVES AND IN YOUR DAYS
AND IN THE LIVES OF ALL THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL
SWIFTLY AND SOON,
AND ALL SAY AMEN!
AMEN!
MAY GOD’S GREAT NAME BE BLESSED
ALWAYS AND FOREVER!
BLESSED
AND PRAISED
AND GLORIFIED
AND RAISED
AND EXALTED
AND HONORED
AND UPLIFTED
AND LAUDED
BE THE NAME OF THE HOLY ONE
(GOD IS BLESSED!)
ABOVE ALL BLESSINGS
AND HYMNS AND PRAISES AND CONSOLATIONS
THAT ARE UTTERED IN THE WORLD,
AND SAY ALL AMEN!
MAY A GREAT PEACE FROM HEAVEN –
AND LIFE! –
BE UPON US AND UPON ALL ISRAEL,
AND SAY ALL AMEN!
MAY GOD WHO MAKES PEACE IN GOD’S HIGH PLACES
MAKE PEACE UPON US AND UPON ALL ISRAEL,
AND SAY ALL ...
AMEN!
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
21 April 2013
“Oh, you’re just a shepherd …”
Revelation 7:9-17 / John 10:22-30
Easter 4C
21 April 2013
The 23rd Psalm.
Hymns and praises sung in heaven.
Jesus walks in the Temple during the festival of the Dedication, otherwise known to us as Hannukah.
What could these texts possibly have in common?
ABSOLUTELY MUTTON!
Mutton? Get it? Sheep?
It’s Good Shepherd Sunday!
Alright … yes, on first read, the texts do seem rather disjointed this morning, and the only thing they appear to have in common is sheep and shepherding.
Not a hot topic of life today around here.
Or is there something else here for us who have come here today to hear a Word, catch a glimpse, of the Holy, the eternal and everlasting … that which is set apart from the insecurity of this life, this world?
That’s actually it, you know.
In the Gospel text … here we encounter Jesus in Jerusalem, well before the events of his Passion, before Maundy Thursday’s Last Supper, before Good Friday’s arrest and trial, torture and death on the cross, burial in the Tomb … and before Easter’s Resurrection … here, before all that, Jesus is walking on the sheltered, weather protected side of the Temple in December, at the time of the festival of Dedication … what we today call Hannukah.
And the religious leaders are gathered around him and asking if he’s the Messiah.
What irony.
But maybe not for most of us Christians.
Because most Christians don’t know a lot about Hannukah, or what it represents … which is, the finishing off of the Jewish revolt in the first century BC against Antiochus Epiphanes IV, the Seleucid king who forcibly imposed his Greek ways upon the Hebrew people, corrupting their religion, and destroying their Temple in Jerusalem. The Maccabees – Jewish zealots – rose up and threw off their tyrannical invaders, and rebuilt and rededicated the Temple … that started the festival of the Dedication.
Now … in Jesus’ time … new invaders, the Romans, rule Jerusalem and the Jewish people once again. So these religious leaders around Jesus are wondering, could this Jesus be the new Maccabee? Could Jesus be the new one who is to rise up and deliver them from the Romans and their Caesar, just as they were delivered once before from another evil king?
But Jesus isn’t going to be this kind of a king – Messiah – military/ political deliverer.
No – he’s going to be a Shepherd.
Which probably left these religious leaders … stunned.
This 10th chapter of John’s gospel, in it, Jesus gives three different word-images for how he is going to be Messiah. In our three year lectionary cycle, we read from this chapter of John every year on this 4th Sunday in Easter – Good Shepherd Sunday – and we get all three image / answers:
• I am the gate for the sheep;
• I am the Good Shepherd;
• And, this year, the Good Shepherd says, “My sheep hear my voice.”
“Shepherd” doesn’t sound like a very glamorous description of leadership … and, certainly, it wasn’t in Jesus’ time. The shepherds were at the low end of the power and influence spectrum of their time. Men, boys actually, who lived in the fields with their flocks, who didn’t have learning or influence or power or prestige.
And you know, it’s still that way today.
Though we don’t have many shepherds around in this country any more … this model, this image, of shepherding one’s flock … it doesn’t rank high on the “leadership and influence” spectrum.
Take the conversation I heard a while ago from a couple of my colleagues. The topic was “what kind of pastoral leader are you?” and the answer had to come – Biblically enough – from the five-fold ministry that Paul puts forth in Ephesians:
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ ...
“Pastor” in today’s hipster-church-leadership language gets translated as “shepherd,” by the way.
So anyway, this conversation was going on, about what kind of leader are you, and the one colleague was talking about how he was a prophet, or an apostle, certainly, he wanted to lead his people clearly, authentically, into the future with and for Jesus.
The other colleague started talking, and describing her ministry … full of pastoral care, listening and simply being with a congregation who had been hurt by a couple of painful pastoral transitions … until the first colleague cut her off with the rather disparaging, “Oh! You’re just a shepherd!”
That’s what I meant by saying “shepherd” isn’t high on the “leadership and influence” spectrum these days. It’s not glamorous, it doesn’t get big headlines, to listen to hurt people, to simply be with them, to bind up their wounds and care and pray for and with them.
But sometimes it’s precisely what is needed.
And it’s where Jesus meets us.
And guess what … all those other functions, activities of ministry … being prophetic (speaking out for justice and peace), apostolic leadership (leadership which raises up leaders), evangelists (those who go out and tell and live the Good News into the world so that others can hear it), teachers (helping us learn more about faith, life, ourselves, and Christ) … all those skills are part of shepherding, too. Because they all have to be done with the love, the care, the presence, of a shepherd, in order to be authentic, to be real, to be “right” for the ministry of the congregation.
That’s what Jesus means when he says, My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.
Of course, that doesn’t happen immediately. Jesus has to die on the cross first, and rise again … living shepherding, servant leadership, in his own flesh and blood.
But his sheep do hear and follow him.
Mary hears his voice at the empty tomb … calling her name … “Mary!” … and she turns, and hears, and believes, and goes and tells the other apostles.
The apostles hidden away that same evening, in fear … Jesus comes in among them and announces Peace Is Here! … he says, here, catch my Spirit … and they believe, and receive, and go and tell others.
A week later, Thomas sees and hears and believes when Jesus appears to him.
And all the apostles, home in Galilee, fishing and waiting, hear and see and believe when they meet Jesus on the shore, as he feeds them, as he calls them to follow me.
They all follow Jesus … as prophets, apostles, evangelists, teachers … all shepherds, whose sheep know their voice, their voice speaking in the voice of the Good Shepherd, the one who gives eternal life … eternal life, because life in this world is fundamentally insecure.
It was so during Jesus’ earthly lifetime, this time in our Gospel text when the religious leaders were looking for an earthly Messiah, a political deliverer, one who would save them from Caesar and restore their earthly kingdom of Israel to its former glory.
And it was also fundamentally insecure during the times represented in our New Testament reading from the book of Revelation.
Actually, throughout the entire book Revelation … the word which soaks through and permeats all the words there … is that life is fundamentally insecure; and in the midst of this the only security one can count on is the Lamb at the center of the throne.
Now, one brief word of explanation … any preaching on the book of Revelation without a lengthy teaching exposition of the book is going to be problematic. And that teaching, as those of you who were part of the class we had in 2010 on Revelation here know, needs to be long and thorough because the book is so rich and multi-layered. That 2010 class was 10 weeks long … two weeks ago at Kent Lutheran, I led a three hour class on Revelation, and was just able to touch on the main points without going into much detail at all.
That being said, though, I’ll attempt to offer a concise explanation of our text from Revelation for today.
Chapter 7 of Revelation is one of the “heavenly interlude” chapters … it falls right between the Four Horsemen roaming the earth in chapter 6, and the opening of the Seventh Seal and its subsequent earthly plagues in chapter 8.
Remember – for those of you who have been part of that Revelation class – that the way we are to read the Book of Revelation is as a Word of Encouragement and Hopefulness for All Times – not just one time in the first century AD., and certainly not just for the time of “The End,” and moreover, never using the book as some kind of Almanac to find that time of “The End.” It simply doesn’t work.
Thus the Four Horsemen, the Seventh Seal, and the woes they bring to earth … political instability, war, famine, disease, natural disasters … those woes have, do, and will happen as part of life on earth … in any and all times. In the time of the original hearers of Revelation, when Caesar Domitian claimed to have “everything under control” and so he told the people “just trust in me to deliver you,” those woes were a constant threat to humanity.
Just as they are today.
Because life – this life – is fundamentally insecure.
And so as we settle into chapter 7’s heavenly interlude of worship and praise … full of the words of some of the great hymns of the Church … Blessing and honor and glory and might … Who is this host arrayed in white? … and what we get here, in comparison to the insecurity that reigns on earth, is the Lamb who is the shepherd.
The Lamb is the One who brings fundamental security to life.
But the security he brings is not as the world craves, desires, or says that it gives.
For the Lamb … the worldly weak one, the one who willingly goes to his own suffering and death on the cross … The Lamb, Jesus the Christ, brings fundamental security to all life on earth as it is in heaven, because he is the Shepherd.
For first century Christians, living in a time of increasing threats; political threat of invasion from East of the Empire … economic threat, the boycott of Christians by the Roman government, who saw Christianity as a dangerous superstition, dangerous because it was unpatriotic (in a world where “Caesar is Lord” was the compulsory word about the empire … Christians uttered another word, “Jesus is Lord!) … for those first century Christians, they needed a word of real security, real hope, real peace. And so it came for them, from the One who walked in among the fearful disciples on that first Easter and proclaimed, Peace Is Here!
The Lamb who is the Shepherd.
The One who rules from the throne of heaven reigns as a servant-leader, serving unto the giving of his own life, laying it down, and taking it back up again because God willed that it would be so …
Not as the Domitian Caesar of that first century world or as the Caesars of the world who have bombasted their way to earthly thrones throughout the ages … liars who have claimed security through warlike strength, life filled with materialism, and salvation by protection of the state alone, wealth alone, earthly power alone. Liars of every time … including our own.
To them … of them … the Lamb who is the Shepherd sits as witness, on the throne of heaven, bringing true comfort and hope, life and salvation, to those who have suffered, are suffering, will be suffering at the hands of the sham-leaders of the world.
Which gives those of us on earth hope. Hope that is real Hope … not homeland security, not private, individual security or publicly legislated security, not stocks and bonds and gold and paper traded securities … for all those are, are different ways of marking and masking the fundamental insecurity of this world and this life.
No … now … Our Hope Is In the Lamb Who Is The Shepherd. The One Who Leads Through Serving, Who Shows Strength Through Suffering, and Who In Dying, Brings Life … for you, for me, for all the world.
So that we who are his, through the Water and the Word, the Bread and the Wine, the Forgiveness and Love We Can Never Earn, but Which Are God’s Great Gift Of Love For You … so that we, now freed from the first and last great worry and fear of this life … … what happens to me when I die … now, we who have been given the freedom of Life … we can live in this fundamentally insecure world of bombings and shootings, industrial accidents and plane crashes, yes BUT IT IS A WORLD FULL OF LIFE WHICH GOD LOVES AND SO WE’RE CALLED AND FREED AND SENT TO GO FORTH INTO IT AND LIVE IT FULLY … FULLY FREED, FULLY FREEING, FULLY HOPING AND WORKING AND SERVING IN THE SERVANT-LEADER STEPS OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, THE LAMB WHO IS THE SHEPHERD, WHO RULES AND REIGNS WITH A SPIRIT OF HOPE AND PEACE AND LIFE.
Last week I began the message with words of great tragedies which had happened recently during the month of April … not knowing that we’d have more in the week between then, and now. But I didn’t list one notable one … on April 6, we commemorate the martyrdom at the hands of the Nazis of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, theologian, reformer of the Church, a Luther for us today most certainly.
Imprisoned for the final years of his life by the Nazis, Bonhoeffer, I believe, saw and wrote of this freed life which Christ gives to us to live into the world God loves. In his “Letters and Papers from Prison,” he wrote of it thusly:
To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be a person – not a type of person, but the person that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. This is metanoia – (repentance, turning around and turning toward the call of Christ): not in the first place thinking about one’s own needs, problems, sins, and fear, but allowing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ. It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. Jesus calls people, not to a new religion, but to life.
Jesus calls people, not to a new religion, but to life.
Life in a world that is fundamentally insecure, but lived, fully, securely, IN CHRIST.
“Follow me,” Christ calls.
Will you?
Revelation 7:9-17 / John 10:22-30
Easter 4C
21 April 2013
The 23rd Psalm.
Hymns and praises sung in heaven.
Jesus walks in the Temple during the festival of the Dedication, otherwise known to us as Hannukah.
What could these texts possibly have in common?
ABSOLUTELY MUTTON!
Mutton? Get it? Sheep?
It’s Good Shepherd Sunday!
Alright … yes, on first read, the texts do seem rather disjointed this morning, and the only thing they appear to have in common is sheep and shepherding.
Not a hot topic of life today around here.
Or is there something else here for us who have come here today to hear a Word, catch a glimpse, of the Holy, the eternal and everlasting … that which is set apart from the insecurity of this life, this world?
That’s actually it, you know.
In the Gospel text … here we encounter Jesus in Jerusalem, well before the events of his Passion, before Maundy Thursday’s Last Supper, before Good Friday’s arrest and trial, torture and death on the cross, burial in the Tomb … and before Easter’s Resurrection … here, before all that, Jesus is walking on the sheltered, weather protected side of the Temple in December, at the time of the festival of Dedication … what we today call Hannukah.
And the religious leaders are gathered around him and asking if he’s the Messiah.
What irony.
But maybe not for most of us Christians.
Because most Christians don’t know a lot about Hannukah, or what it represents … which is, the finishing off of the Jewish revolt in the first century BC against Antiochus Epiphanes IV, the Seleucid king who forcibly imposed his Greek ways upon the Hebrew people, corrupting their religion, and destroying their Temple in Jerusalem. The Maccabees – Jewish zealots – rose up and threw off their tyrannical invaders, and rebuilt and rededicated the Temple … that started the festival of the Dedication.
Now … in Jesus’ time … new invaders, the Romans, rule Jerusalem and the Jewish people once again. So these religious leaders around Jesus are wondering, could this Jesus be the new Maccabee? Could Jesus be the new one who is to rise up and deliver them from the Romans and their Caesar, just as they were delivered once before from another evil king?
But Jesus isn’t going to be this kind of a king – Messiah – military/ political deliverer.
No – he’s going to be a Shepherd.
Which probably left these religious leaders … stunned.
This 10th chapter of John’s gospel, in it, Jesus gives three different word-images for how he is going to be Messiah. In our three year lectionary cycle, we read from this chapter of John every year on this 4th Sunday in Easter – Good Shepherd Sunday – and we get all three image / answers:
• I am the gate for the sheep;
• I am the Good Shepherd;
• And, this year, the Good Shepherd says, “My sheep hear my voice.”
“Shepherd” doesn’t sound like a very glamorous description of leadership … and, certainly, it wasn’t in Jesus’ time. The shepherds were at the low end of the power and influence spectrum of their time. Men, boys actually, who lived in the fields with their flocks, who didn’t have learning or influence or power or prestige.
And you know, it’s still that way today.
Though we don’t have many shepherds around in this country any more … this model, this image, of shepherding one’s flock … it doesn’t rank high on the “leadership and influence” spectrum.
Take the conversation I heard a while ago from a couple of my colleagues. The topic was “what kind of pastoral leader are you?” and the answer had to come – Biblically enough – from the five-fold ministry that Paul puts forth in Ephesians:
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ ...
“Pastor” in today’s hipster-church-leadership language gets translated as “shepherd,” by the way.
So anyway, this conversation was going on, about what kind of leader are you, and the one colleague was talking about how he was a prophet, or an apostle, certainly, he wanted to lead his people clearly, authentically, into the future with and for Jesus.
The other colleague started talking, and describing her ministry … full of pastoral care, listening and simply being with a congregation who had been hurt by a couple of painful pastoral transitions … until the first colleague cut her off with the rather disparaging, “Oh! You’re just a shepherd!”
That’s what I meant by saying “shepherd” isn’t high on the “leadership and influence” spectrum these days. It’s not glamorous, it doesn’t get big headlines, to listen to hurt people, to simply be with them, to bind up their wounds and care and pray for and with them.
But sometimes it’s precisely what is needed.
And it’s where Jesus meets us.
And guess what … all those other functions, activities of ministry … being prophetic (speaking out for justice and peace), apostolic leadership (leadership which raises up leaders), evangelists (those who go out and tell and live the Good News into the world so that others can hear it), teachers (helping us learn more about faith, life, ourselves, and Christ) … all those skills are part of shepherding, too. Because they all have to be done with the love, the care, the presence, of a shepherd, in order to be authentic, to be real, to be “right” for the ministry of the congregation.
That’s what Jesus means when he says, My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.
Of course, that doesn’t happen immediately. Jesus has to die on the cross first, and rise again … living shepherding, servant leadership, in his own flesh and blood.
But his sheep do hear and follow him.
Mary hears his voice at the empty tomb … calling her name … “Mary!” … and she turns, and hears, and believes, and goes and tells the other apostles.
The apostles hidden away that same evening, in fear … Jesus comes in among them and announces Peace Is Here! … he says, here, catch my Spirit … and they believe, and receive, and go and tell others.
A week later, Thomas sees and hears and believes when Jesus appears to him.
And all the apostles, home in Galilee, fishing and waiting, hear and see and believe when they meet Jesus on the shore, as he feeds them, as he calls them to follow me.
They all follow Jesus … as prophets, apostles, evangelists, teachers … all shepherds, whose sheep know their voice, their voice speaking in the voice of the Good Shepherd, the one who gives eternal life … eternal life, because life in this world is fundamentally insecure.
It was so during Jesus’ earthly lifetime, this time in our Gospel text when the religious leaders were looking for an earthly Messiah, a political deliverer, one who would save them from Caesar and restore their earthly kingdom of Israel to its former glory.
And it was also fundamentally insecure during the times represented in our New Testament reading from the book of Revelation.
Actually, throughout the entire book Revelation … the word which soaks through and permeats all the words there … is that life is fundamentally insecure; and in the midst of this the only security one can count on is the Lamb at the center of the throne.
Now, one brief word of explanation … any preaching on the book of Revelation without a lengthy teaching exposition of the book is going to be problematic. And that teaching, as those of you who were part of the class we had in 2010 on Revelation here know, needs to be long and thorough because the book is so rich and multi-layered. That 2010 class was 10 weeks long … two weeks ago at Kent Lutheran, I led a three hour class on Revelation, and was just able to touch on the main points without going into much detail at all.
That being said, though, I’ll attempt to offer a concise explanation of our text from Revelation for today.
Chapter 7 of Revelation is one of the “heavenly interlude” chapters … it falls right between the Four Horsemen roaming the earth in chapter 6, and the opening of the Seventh Seal and its subsequent earthly plagues in chapter 8.
Remember – for those of you who have been part of that Revelation class – that the way we are to read the Book of Revelation is as a Word of Encouragement and Hopefulness for All Times – not just one time in the first century AD., and certainly not just for the time of “The End,” and moreover, never using the book as some kind of Almanac to find that time of “The End.” It simply doesn’t work.
Thus the Four Horsemen, the Seventh Seal, and the woes they bring to earth … political instability, war, famine, disease, natural disasters … those woes have, do, and will happen as part of life on earth … in any and all times. In the time of the original hearers of Revelation, when Caesar Domitian claimed to have “everything under control” and so he told the people “just trust in me to deliver you,” those woes were a constant threat to humanity.
Just as they are today.
Because life – this life – is fundamentally insecure.
And so as we settle into chapter 7’s heavenly interlude of worship and praise … full of the words of some of the great hymns of the Church … Blessing and honor and glory and might … Who is this host arrayed in white? … and what we get here, in comparison to the insecurity that reigns on earth, is the Lamb who is the shepherd.
The Lamb is the One who brings fundamental security to life.
But the security he brings is not as the world craves, desires, or says that it gives.
For the Lamb … the worldly weak one, the one who willingly goes to his own suffering and death on the cross … The Lamb, Jesus the Christ, brings fundamental security to all life on earth as it is in heaven, because he is the Shepherd.
For first century Christians, living in a time of increasing threats; political threat of invasion from East of the Empire … economic threat, the boycott of Christians by the Roman government, who saw Christianity as a dangerous superstition, dangerous because it was unpatriotic (in a world where “Caesar is Lord” was the compulsory word about the empire … Christians uttered another word, “Jesus is Lord!) … for those first century Christians, they needed a word of real security, real hope, real peace. And so it came for them, from the One who walked in among the fearful disciples on that first Easter and proclaimed, Peace Is Here!
The Lamb who is the Shepherd.
The One who rules from the throne of heaven reigns as a servant-leader, serving unto the giving of his own life, laying it down, and taking it back up again because God willed that it would be so …
Not as the Domitian Caesar of that first century world or as the Caesars of the world who have bombasted their way to earthly thrones throughout the ages … liars who have claimed security through warlike strength, life filled with materialism, and salvation by protection of the state alone, wealth alone, earthly power alone. Liars of every time … including our own.
To them … of them … the Lamb who is the Shepherd sits as witness, on the throne of heaven, bringing true comfort and hope, life and salvation, to those who have suffered, are suffering, will be suffering at the hands of the sham-leaders of the world.
Which gives those of us on earth hope. Hope that is real Hope … not homeland security, not private, individual security or publicly legislated security, not stocks and bonds and gold and paper traded securities … for all those are, are different ways of marking and masking the fundamental insecurity of this world and this life.
No … now … Our Hope Is In the Lamb Who Is The Shepherd. The One Who Leads Through Serving, Who Shows Strength Through Suffering, and Who In Dying, Brings Life … for you, for me, for all the world.
So that we who are his, through the Water and the Word, the Bread and the Wine, the Forgiveness and Love We Can Never Earn, but Which Are God’s Great Gift Of Love For You … so that we, now freed from the first and last great worry and fear of this life … … what happens to me when I die … now, we who have been given the freedom of Life … we can live in this fundamentally insecure world of bombings and shootings, industrial accidents and plane crashes, yes BUT IT IS A WORLD FULL OF LIFE WHICH GOD LOVES AND SO WE’RE CALLED AND FREED AND SENT TO GO FORTH INTO IT AND LIVE IT FULLY … FULLY FREED, FULLY FREEING, FULLY HOPING AND WORKING AND SERVING IN THE SERVANT-LEADER STEPS OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, THE LAMB WHO IS THE SHEPHERD, WHO RULES AND REIGNS WITH A SPIRIT OF HOPE AND PEACE AND LIFE.
Last week I began the message with words of great tragedies which had happened recently during the month of April … not knowing that we’d have more in the week between then, and now. But I didn’t list one notable one … on April 6, we commemorate the martyrdom at the hands of the Nazis of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, theologian, reformer of the Church, a Luther for us today most certainly.
Imprisoned for the final years of his life by the Nazis, Bonhoeffer, I believe, saw and wrote of this freed life which Christ gives to us to live into the world God loves. In his “Letters and Papers from Prison,” he wrote of it thusly:
To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be a person – not a type of person, but the person that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. This is metanoia – (repentance, turning around and turning toward the call of Christ): not in the first place thinking about one’s own needs, problems, sins, and fear, but allowing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ. It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. Jesus calls people, not to a new religion, but to life.
Jesus calls people, not to a new religion, but to life.
Life in a world that is fundamentally insecure, but lived, fully, securely, IN CHRIST.
“Follow me,” Christ calls.
Will you?
Sunday, April 14, 2013
14 April 2013
“Jesus, the friendly host”
John 21:1-19
3 Easter C
14 April 2013
If you enter this third week of April each year with some fear and trepidation … wondering, watching, waiting for something, anything to happen that’s bad news or tragic … well, I assure you that you’re not alone.
These days in April have become black days over the course of our lifetimes. April 19, 1993 ... twenty years ago this Friday ... was the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco, Texas – and two years later, the same day brought the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. April 20, 1999 was the shootings at Columbine, and April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech. And 2009’s April brought the much-feared swine flu, which made many of us quite ill.
And now, in 2013 ... “the spring of the year, when the kings of the world go to war,” as the Bible’s Chronicler so deftly puts it, we await the blustering of the world’s latest nut-job-dictator, Kim Jong-Un, as he holds us all hostage with the threat of nuclear war. And we have yet another flu pandemic threatening us.
Why this month – so often, these weeks so close to Easter, Passover, and Spring Break – why this time of year is so filled with tragedy, upheaval, and rumors of war, is anyone’s guess. Maybe it’s the end of winter or the lengthening days.
But whatever the cause, whatever the reason, unless we’re total pessimists, or afraid of our own shadows … most of us choose to go about our lives, day to day, thinking of the good which that new day might bring, without much thought to the other possibilities of what might be … that is, until events like these happen and then we react in whatever way we’re moved to react … fear, disgust, anger, grief.
And then – later – after it’s all over, as we reflect on it all, and try to adjust to a “new normal” we may remember what life was like “before” – the day before “it” happened. Wasn’t life better, easier, more carefree the “day before?”
But then came “the day of” … the accident, the tragedy, the diagnosis, the life-changing announcement.
And now, we have to live with what life is like “the day after.”
There’s a looking back, and a looking ahead. Maybe we’ll feel lost, or cast adrift. There’s a sense of danger, but also, hope; our spirits hunger for better days ahead; all the time as we are asking, watching, wondering, “What’s next for me, for us, on the day after?”
For Simon Peter and the other disciples, it was the day after Jesus had appeared to them in Jerusalem. On the “day of” … they had been there and seen their rabbi, their teacher, their friend be betrayed by Judas, one of their own … arrested, flogged and beaten, hung on a cross to die. They surely thought that “day of” that they would never see Jesus alive again.
But then … then he wasn’t in the tomb when the women went there that early morning three days later … and then Jesus appeared and spoke to Mary, and then he walked into that locked upper room where the disciples hid in fear, fear of what might come next for them. Peace Is Here! Jesus joyfully proclaimed to them. Jesus showed them his hands and his side, where the nails and spear had pierced him. He called them to believe that he had been raised from the dead. And then he gave them his Spirit ... here, catch my Spirit ... to send them out in his name to proclaim forgiveness, and life, and salvation to the world.
What a day! Whirlwind, alarming, shocking, frightening, exciting times.
And like all days, it had to end.
So now, it was the day after … the days after. The disciples went back home to Galilee – familiar surroundings to them, and life felt like it might settle back to the way it was before. Except that … NOTHING WAS THE SAME, EVERYTHING HAD CHANGED! Jesus had risen from the dead! Mary had seen it and proclaimed it, and they, the disciples, had seen him – twice, and begun to believe that it had really happened as Jesus said it would. Everything was and is all different now!
But these disciples were regular folks like you and me. They didn’t know what to do, what to make of all this. As our Gospel text begins, they are sitting around together, like nothing had changed … but it has changed, so who can sleep? So Peter … good old Peter … decides to go fishing. When all else fails, get in the boat, get out on the lake, maybe something will come to him – or, at least, maybe he’ll feel less confused.
And the rest of the gang says, “We’ll go with you.” What a bunch of guys!
So out they go, seven of them in a boat, bobbing around on the Sea of Tiberias - trying to fish, casting out the nets, pulling them back in - … “but that night, they caught nothing.”
We shouldn’t be too surprised at this. Their full attention likely isn’t on the fishing – it may be something to pass the time while they try to sort out exactly what had happened, what they had seen and heard. If they are trying, it’s probably increasing their frustration and anxiety that they aren’t catching anything.
They stay out all night in that little boat, bobbing up and down … and eventually, the Son comes up. They see Jesus on the beach but don’t recognize him. Perhaps it’s just another insomniac, out watching the lake instead of sleeping. So Jesus makes another miracle happen. “Fish on the other side,” Jesus tells them. And the nets nearly break, for all the fish.
John figures it out first – this is no neighbor, nor is it a friendly ghost … It is the Lord! And then … good old Peter, who has been fishing nearly naked for some reason – Peter puts on some clothes and swims to meet Jesus on the shore. This makes no sense. But Peter isn’t making sense here – after sleepless and fishless nights, seeing and hearing miraculous things – and now, his dead and risen Jesus standing on the shore before him.
It’s ... the day after. And Jesus is there for the disciples, just like he was in the days before – feeding them, teaching them, simply being with them.
By themselves, without Jesus’ help, trying to make sense of it all on their own, they’re just a poor group of guys drifting and bobbing around in a boat on a big lake … maybe hurt, maybe angry, frustrated … “why isn’t this working?” … they are confused.
But with Jesus there, with his presence, with his encouragement, they “haul it in.” Big time.
And once they get ashore, Jesus is still there, initiating, providing … Jesus, the friendly host, serves them up breakfast. And this time, none of those disciples have any doubt as to what this is all about. They see – they hear – and they eat. And believe. They get it, at last.
It’s “the day after.” And now, because of Jesus’ presence, initiating, providing, leading, guiding, life has purpose for these disciples and they will be able to go forward, forward in following him.
And maybe – maybe that’s the point of connection for those lost, drifting, skunked disciples – and us.
Because for us … it’s also “the day after.”
Try as we might, there’s no going back to the day before. We might want it so badly, craving the simplicity, the familiarity, the ease, the good memories of it all … it all, what life was like for us “before” … before the accident, the tragedy, the national mourning, the personal loss ... even the regular growing and changing that is life.
But to want to go back to the day before, like Mary, clinging to the risen Jesus in Easter’s Gospel reading, is to crave reincarnation rather than resurrection.
There is a big difference. Reincarnation means you have to die all over again.
Reincarnation might mean you could relive all those good times and good memories once again, but you’d also have to relive the bad ones … the Columbines, the Wacos, the Oklahoma Cities, the Virginia Techs … the Good Fridays. Over and over and over again. And see no end to this circle, this cycle, this downward spiral.
But resurrection says something different. It says, look around, everything may well look familiar but NOTHING IS THE SAME NOW. It’s a new day, a new era, things are different. Honor, respect, dignify the past by letting it be the past – but now we are in a new era where the downward spiral has been stopped … and things will be different from now on, forever.
In other words … you can still go fishing, Jesus says, just know that without me, you might have momentary successes, a hit, a bite, here and there, but you’ll never be able to make a really good catch.
Let me guide you, let me feed you, hear my call to you to be sent out – turn to me first so that I may guide you in all you will do, all you will be about … and your nets will be so full you won’t be able to haul them in.
That’s not to say that bad things, bad times won’t still happen. In that last section of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus prepares Peter for that day when his fate will meet Jesus’ head on. “Feeding my sheep” involves some risk, to Peter, to those others who will hear Jesus’ call to “Follow Me.”
If it sounds a little out of control, a little chancy, a little “unsafe” in the “we want it all nailed down and secured and controlled” sense of things … well … it is.
Because the control that it’s out of, is Peter’s. Is the other disciples.’ Is ours.
Surely safety, reason, prudence would call us to something else. Not listening to the advice of the stranger on the shore. Maybe staying put on the shore ourselves. Protected. Or better yet… locked up in our rooms. Doors closed and latched. Backs turned on the world around us. Maybe hiding. Maybe cowering in fear. It would be safe, yes.
But eventually, we’ll get hungry and bored. For this is no kind of life to live, and it surely isn’t resurrection living. Someone will want to go, get in the boat, and go fishing – to do, to live, the way we were and are intended.
Go with them!
One of those who went fishing, the way he was called by God to live ... was author Brennan Manning. Monk, author of the “Ragamuffin Gospel,” spiritual mentor ... Manning died last Friday. He wrote these words in his book “The Furious Longing of God,” about what he learned, while fishing ... what being a follower of Jesus is all about:
The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that he lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all,, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friend, is what it really means to be a Christian.
It means we’ll go fishing.
And what we’ll find once we go fishing ... once we push off from shore ... is that the resurrection future is never out of Jesus’ hands … the Son who rises and shines on that beach, who directs their fishing and fixes them breakfast, he does and will provide for us – as he did on the day before and the day of, so will he invite and provide for us on the day after, and the day after, and the day after that, until that final day after, when fishing and feeding and following are done, and Jesus has gathered us all to his final, everlasting feast.
But – until then – for now – we have an outpost of that feast right here. A foretaste, a teaser, a down payment on that promise … now, as then, with Jesus, the friendly host.
The bread, the wine, the water, the Word of forgiveness and hope, welcome and life and peace … these are always on, always ready, always For You. Served up with a smile, and an invitation … “Come, see and hear, go and tell ... Follow Me.”
Will you?
John 21:1-19
3 Easter C
14 April 2013
If you enter this third week of April each year with some fear and trepidation … wondering, watching, waiting for something, anything to happen that’s bad news or tragic … well, I assure you that you’re not alone.
These days in April have become black days over the course of our lifetimes. April 19, 1993 ... twenty years ago this Friday ... was the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco, Texas – and two years later, the same day brought the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. April 20, 1999 was the shootings at Columbine, and April 16, 2007, at Virginia Tech. And 2009’s April brought the much-feared swine flu, which made many of us quite ill.
And now, in 2013 ... “the spring of the year, when the kings of the world go to war,” as the Bible’s Chronicler so deftly puts it, we await the blustering of the world’s latest nut-job-dictator, Kim Jong-Un, as he holds us all hostage with the threat of nuclear war. And we have yet another flu pandemic threatening us.
Why this month – so often, these weeks so close to Easter, Passover, and Spring Break – why this time of year is so filled with tragedy, upheaval, and rumors of war, is anyone’s guess. Maybe it’s the end of winter or the lengthening days.
But whatever the cause, whatever the reason, unless we’re total pessimists, or afraid of our own shadows … most of us choose to go about our lives, day to day, thinking of the good which that new day might bring, without much thought to the other possibilities of what might be … that is, until events like these happen and then we react in whatever way we’re moved to react … fear, disgust, anger, grief.
And then – later – after it’s all over, as we reflect on it all, and try to adjust to a “new normal” we may remember what life was like “before” – the day before “it” happened. Wasn’t life better, easier, more carefree the “day before?”
But then came “the day of” … the accident, the tragedy, the diagnosis, the life-changing announcement.
And now, we have to live with what life is like “the day after.”
There’s a looking back, and a looking ahead. Maybe we’ll feel lost, or cast adrift. There’s a sense of danger, but also, hope; our spirits hunger for better days ahead; all the time as we are asking, watching, wondering, “What’s next for me, for us, on the day after?”
For Simon Peter and the other disciples, it was the day after Jesus had appeared to them in Jerusalem. On the “day of” … they had been there and seen their rabbi, their teacher, their friend be betrayed by Judas, one of their own … arrested, flogged and beaten, hung on a cross to die. They surely thought that “day of” that they would never see Jesus alive again.
But then … then he wasn’t in the tomb when the women went there that early morning three days later … and then Jesus appeared and spoke to Mary, and then he walked into that locked upper room where the disciples hid in fear, fear of what might come next for them. Peace Is Here! Jesus joyfully proclaimed to them. Jesus showed them his hands and his side, where the nails and spear had pierced him. He called them to believe that he had been raised from the dead. And then he gave them his Spirit ... here, catch my Spirit ... to send them out in his name to proclaim forgiveness, and life, and salvation to the world.
What a day! Whirlwind, alarming, shocking, frightening, exciting times.
And like all days, it had to end.
So now, it was the day after … the days after. The disciples went back home to Galilee – familiar surroundings to them, and life felt like it might settle back to the way it was before. Except that … NOTHING WAS THE SAME, EVERYTHING HAD CHANGED! Jesus had risen from the dead! Mary had seen it and proclaimed it, and they, the disciples, had seen him – twice, and begun to believe that it had really happened as Jesus said it would. Everything was and is all different now!
But these disciples were regular folks like you and me. They didn’t know what to do, what to make of all this. As our Gospel text begins, they are sitting around together, like nothing had changed … but it has changed, so who can sleep? So Peter … good old Peter … decides to go fishing. When all else fails, get in the boat, get out on the lake, maybe something will come to him – or, at least, maybe he’ll feel less confused.
And the rest of the gang says, “We’ll go with you.” What a bunch of guys!
So out they go, seven of them in a boat, bobbing around on the Sea of Tiberias - trying to fish, casting out the nets, pulling them back in - … “but that night, they caught nothing.”
We shouldn’t be too surprised at this. Their full attention likely isn’t on the fishing – it may be something to pass the time while they try to sort out exactly what had happened, what they had seen and heard. If they are trying, it’s probably increasing their frustration and anxiety that they aren’t catching anything.
They stay out all night in that little boat, bobbing up and down … and eventually, the Son comes up. They see Jesus on the beach but don’t recognize him. Perhaps it’s just another insomniac, out watching the lake instead of sleeping. So Jesus makes another miracle happen. “Fish on the other side,” Jesus tells them. And the nets nearly break, for all the fish.
John figures it out first – this is no neighbor, nor is it a friendly ghost … It is the Lord! And then … good old Peter, who has been fishing nearly naked for some reason – Peter puts on some clothes and swims to meet Jesus on the shore. This makes no sense. But Peter isn’t making sense here – after sleepless and fishless nights, seeing and hearing miraculous things – and now, his dead and risen Jesus standing on the shore before him.
It’s ... the day after. And Jesus is there for the disciples, just like he was in the days before – feeding them, teaching them, simply being with them.
By themselves, without Jesus’ help, trying to make sense of it all on their own, they’re just a poor group of guys drifting and bobbing around in a boat on a big lake … maybe hurt, maybe angry, frustrated … “why isn’t this working?” … they are confused.
But with Jesus there, with his presence, with his encouragement, they “haul it in.” Big time.
And once they get ashore, Jesus is still there, initiating, providing … Jesus, the friendly host, serves them up breakfast. And this time, none of those disciples have any doubt as to what this is all about. They see – they hear – and they eat. And believe. They get it, at last.
It’s “the day after.” And now, because of Jesus’ presence, initiating, providing, leading, guiding, life has purpose for these disciples and they will be able to go forward, forward in following him.
And maybe – maybe that’s the point of connection for those lost, drifting, skunked disciples – and us.
Because for us … it’s also “the day after.”
Try as we might, there’s no going back to the day before. We might want it so badly, craving the simplicity, the familiarity, the ease, the good memories of it all … it all, what life was like for us “before” … before the accident, the tragedy, the national mourning, the personal loss ... even the regular growing and changing that is life.
But to want to go back to the day before, like Mary, clinging to the risen Jesus in Easter’s Gospel reading, is to crave reincarnation rather than resurrection.
There is a big difference. Reincarnation means you have to die all over again.
Reincarnation might mean you could relive all those good times and good memories once again, but you’d also have to relive the bad ones … the Columbines, the Wacos, the Oklahoma Cities, the Virginia Techs … the Good Fridays. Over and over and over again. And see no end to this circle, this cycle, this downward spiral.
But resurrection says something different. It says, look around, everything may well look familiar but NOTHING IS THE SAME NOW. It’s a new day, a new era, things are different. Honor, respect, dignify the past by letting it be the past – but now we are in a new era where the downward spiral has been stopped … and things will be different from now on, forever.
In other words … you can still go fishing, Jesus says, just know that without me, you might have momentary successes, a hit, a bite, here and there, but you’ll never be able to make a really good catch.
Let me guide you, let me feed you, hear my call to you to be sent out – turn to me first so that I may guide you in all you will do, all you will be about … and your nets will be so full you won’t be able to haul them in.
That’s not to say that bad things, bad times won’t still happen. In that last section of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus prepares Peter for that day when his fate will meet Jesus’ head on. “Feeding my sheep” involves some risk, to Peter, to those others who will hear Jesus’ call to “Follow Me.”
If it sounds a little out of control, a little chancy, a little “unsafe” in the “we want it all nailed down and secured and controlled” sense of things … well … it is.
Because the control that it’s out of, is Peter’s. Is the other disciples.’ Is ours.
Surely safety, reason, prudence would call us to something else. Not listening to the advice of the stranger on the shore. Maybe staying put on the shore ourselves. Protected. Or better yet… locked up in our rooms. Doors closed and latched. Backs turned on the world around us. Maybe hiding. Maybe cowering in fear. It would be safe, yes.
But eventually, we’ll get hungry and bored. For this is no kind of life to live, and it surely isn’t resurrection living. Someone will want to go, get in the boat, and go fishing – to do, to live, the way we were and are intended.
Go with them!
One of those who went fishing, the way he was called by God to live ... was author Brennan Manning. Monk, author of the “Ragamuffin Gospel,” spiritual mentor ... Manning died last Friday. He wrote these words in his book “The Furious Longing of God,” about what he learned, while fishing ... what being a follower of Jesus is all about:
The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that he lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all,, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friend, is what it really means to be a Christian.
It means we’ll go fishing.
And what we’ll find once we go fishing ... once we push off from shore ... is that the resurrection future is never out of Jesus’ hands … the Son who rises and shines on that beach, who directs their fishing and fixes them breakfast, he does and will provide for us – as he did on the day before and the day of, so will he invite and provide for us on the day after, and the day after, and the day after that, until that final day after, when fishing and feeding and following are done, and Jesus has gathered us all to his final, everlasting feast.
But – until then – for now – we have an outpost of that feast right here. A foretaste, a teaser, a down payment on that promise … now, as then, with Jesus, the friendly host.
The bread, the wine, the water, the Word of forgiveness and hope, welcome and life and peace … these are always on, always ready, always For You. Served up with a smile, and an invitation … “Come, see and hear, go and tell ... Follow Me.”
Will you?
Sunday, April 07, 2013
7 April 2013
“’Group hallucination,’ claims absent disciple”
Easter 2C
Acts 5:27-32 / John 20:19-31
7 April 2013
A few years ago we had a Nativity Movie Night and showed “What the Bleep do We Know?” Maybe some of you remember it. For those who don’t know or haven’t heard of or seen it, this is a fairly deep movie about quantum physics, the interrelationship of all things, and, yes, faith … though coming at faith from an angle that could make the very traditional among us squirm a little.
One of my favorite scenes in the film portrays the day that Columbus’ ships first got close to land in America … right before he landed. The story goes, that although the ships were quite close in, and would have been obvious to us if we would have been there … the native people simply couldn’t see them, because they had never seen sailing ships before. The images entered their eyes but their brains couldn’t, wouldn’t process the information because it was unknown to them.
Finally, the spiritual man for the natives came forward … put his arm on their shoulders, one at a time, and pointed to where the ships were, describing them so that the natives would hear, and then see, and then believe that these ships were there, with white people on them, white people who would soon come ashore, speaking a strange unknown language, people who were so different from them that, without the help of the spiritual man, they couldn’t have believed they were really, truly, right there, in front of them.
Well, as I said, it’s a squirmy sort of movie, but that point … that faith, belief comes through hearing, hearing from another, hearing and then seeing … it’s a hallmark of John’s Gospel which we have before us these Sundays in the Easter season.
Last Sunday’s Resurrection Gospel certainly had that Word for us. Mary Magdalene saw dead Jesus, dead Jesus alive again-but-anew, and didn’t recognize him ... didn’t recognize him until he called her name, “Mary,” and then she heard, and saw, and believed it was Jesus before her. And so Mary ... not Peter, not the beloved disciple, who entered the empty tomb but only saw empty grave clothes ... Mary became the first to bring the news of the Resurrection to the others ... and from her, through their proclamation, to the world ... but not quite yet.
Not quite yet ... because this week, in our continuation of last week’s text, it’s evening of that same first Easter day, and Jesus’ closest followers are hiding away behind locked doors because they’re scared. Scared that what happened to Jesus will happen to them, soon enough, too. Mary’s words to them that she’s seen dead Jesus, except he’s not dead anymore; her words, true as they are, do not give them peace. Peace to be bold, be strong in faith.
Until peace himself walks in, through their locked doors and into their fear-locked reality.
Jesus comes in ... the Prince of Peace ... and he stands among them; and in the literal words of the text, says “Hey! Peace Is Here!”
Peace? In the midst of all their fear and foreboding about what might happen to them?
Yes ... Peace ... Peace in flesh and blood ... Jesus, there among them once again. And just like with Mary, the disciples hear the voice of the Lord to them, and see him, his scars and wounds and all, not a Zombie Apocalpyse but the Risen Lord before them .... and now, only now, can they rejoice because now they do believe the Word which Mary received and gave them hours earlier.
And then Jesus does something even more amazing.
He breathes on the apostles and they catch something from him.
It’s true, it’s true ... this is what the text says,
When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
That word, receive, it literally means the same as when you’re playing with someone, throwing them a ball, and you say, “Here, catch.” That what Jesus does with the Holy Spirit, he says to the apostles, “here, catch what I have to give you. Catch the Holy Spirit. Come on!”
This is so important for us to hear, especially as Lutheran Christians.
Because historically, we’ve so prided ourselves on our Christian Education. Sunday School, Confirmation, Bible Studies, colleges and universities, theological seminaries.
We have worked very, very hard to TEACH THE FAITH TO PEOPLE. To make faith education a priority.
And that’s a very commendable thing to have done, and to keep on doing.
But sometimes, I wonder if we’ve forgotten Jesus’ point in these words from John’s Gospel.
“Come on, come on, catch the faith! Catch the Spirit! Be caught up in the love and joy and peace and forgiveness and hope of what it means to follow me!”
Faith IS meant to be caught. Oh yes, we can and should and do study the Word, learn the verses, hear the stories read, have the Word proclaimed to us in worship and in sermons. But hey ... let’s do it with Spirit, folks. Let’s toss the Faith around so that people can catch it with hope and joy and peace and love.
This faith, this life, was never, EVER, meant to be a dusty, dry, dogmatic exercise. Amen?
That’s why we lead Confirmation as we do with our youth and parents – “Faith Thinking” which is a relationship-filled happening event-time where we toss the faith to our young people. Ditto with Kids’ Church, and I hope that the participants in Adult Education can feel that’s what we’re trying to do there, too.
Faith is meant to be caught. Caught, catching the Spirit of joy from the One passing it along to us.
Now, yes, there will always be those who will take a little longer to “catch faith” and catch fire with the Spirit. That’s who Thomas is and represents in the second half of our Gospel story, and why, every year on the Sunday after Easter, we hear, not of his “doubts” – Jesus never uses that word here - but, literally, of his “not-faith.”
He’s not “doubting Thomas,” but rather “not-faith Thomas.”
There is a distinct difference.
Thomas wasn’t there with the others when Jesus appeared to them ... who knows where he was, maybe he went out for a pizza!!! He didn’t receive Jesus as they did, they, those closest to Jesus, they, those first charged with being sent out into the world to spread Jesus’ good news.
And Thomas ... Thomas simply believes that he must be in the same place, on the same level as the others as he has been all along, to be a full part of this Resurrection story going forward.
And so, a week later, Jesus comes to Thomas, too, and he – Thomas – also hears and sees and believes.
So don’t hang around, don’t cling to this portion of the text too long. Don’t use it as a club, against those who have their “doubts” about Jesus, about this faith, about the church.
For the face of Christianity in these latter days has certainly given the world much room for doubt ... especially with those who speak God’s name loudest, controlling the faith-stage with their sometimes scary, often angry speech and acts.
Thankfully ... this appears to be changing ... at least we see signs of hope. Pope Francis and his setting aside the trappings of his office, turning instead as Jesus does ... to the poor, reflecting Jesus’ words and actions. The “old mainline” denominations, Methodists and Episcopalians and Presbyterians and, yes, timid Lutherans, standing up for the world’s “least of these,” and speaking out too ... reclaiming the word “evangelical” from a partisan political label, to what it really means ... “people who bring Good News to the world.”
These times call for a bold faith.
As bold as it was in the early days of the church.
That’s why, during the Easter season, we set aside our Old Testament scripture readings to spend time in the book of Acts.
Here, today, in a scene not long after that which is before us in the Gospel, we see what the Good News of the Resurrection brings forth in the apostles ... including Thomas ... the text says “Peter and the apostles” so Thomas must be here too ...
... and what we see and hear from them is ... boldness. Action. Decisive faith.
Just hear Peter’s words as he responds to the religious leaders of his age, who had told Jesus’ followers to stop speaking of him:
We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus ... God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things ...
What the apostles ... Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas and the others ... what they have heard, and seen, this is no group hallucination ... it‘s the power of the Resurrection made visible to them, Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit, at work, among these men and women, witnesses of all these things.
And just look what the peace and power of the Holy Spirit brings forth in them. And wills to bring forth in us too ... yes, you and I, the latest in this line of those who follow Jesus.
Now that can be a sobering, even frightening thought ... if we really think about it. If we really believe the words we speak every week. “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” “This bread, this cup, this Eucharist that we share, it is a foretaste of the feast to come.” “Go in peace ... serve the Lord ... remember the poor ... Christ is with you.”
And yet ... and yet the truth behind these words is the same truth that walked into the apostles’ midst later on that first Easter day. “Peace is here!” Jesus is present, present with us just as he was present with them then.
Not to frighten. But to bring his word of Peace and Power. To give us his Spirit, so that we can play “Catch the Faith” with en-Spirited enthusiasm, power and hope, into the world.
The author CS Lewis – yes, he of the “Chronicles of Narnia,” ... there’s a quote of Lewis’ which we use in our Faith Thinking confirmation classes, which goes quite well with this Scripture-word that’s before us today:
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him, and kill him as a demon: or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.
We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we’re talking about either was (and is) just what he said or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that he wasn’t either a lunatic or a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem. I have to accept the view that Jesus was and is God.
The Resurrected Jesus makes people of power and peace ... peace to be and bring ... and power to proclaim ... into the world.
And YOU ... YOU ARE WITNESSES TO THESE THINGS. You see them here all around you. A little band of disciples, almost dead, ready to lock these doors tight and move on not that long ago ... now, alive ... alive and vital with the Peace and Power of God’s Spirit ... Christ’s Spirit among us ... flowing from here and here into us and then out these doors and into this community.
Is there anything ... anything ... our God cannot work among us, for his good and gracious will to and for the world? This God, who brings forth life from death itself?
And YOU ... YOU are witnesses to these things.
So what’s next, Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life?
Peace is here! God’s Spirit is here, leading, guiding.
Catch it ... catch on ... come, see and hear, go and tell, Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed!
Amen.
Easter 2C
Acts 5:27-32 / John 20:19-31
7 April 2013
A few years ago we had a Nativity Movie Night and showed “What the Bleep do We Know?” Maybe some of you remember it. For those who don’t know or haven’t heard of or seen it, this is a fairly deep movie about quantum physics, the interrelationship of all things, and, yes, faith … though coming at faith from an angle that could make the very traditional among us squirm a little.
One of my favorite scenes in the film portrays the day that Columbus’ ships first got close to land in America … right before he landed. The story goes, that although the ships were quite close in, and would have been obvious to us if we would have been there … the native people simply couldn’t see them, because they had never seen sailing ships before. The images entered their eyes but their brains couldn’t, wouldn’t process the information because it was unknown to them.
Finally, the spiritual man for the natives came forward … put his arm on their shoulders, one at a time, and pointed to where the ships were, describing them so that the natives would hear, and then see, and then believe that these ships were there, with white people on them, white people who would soon come ashore, speaking a strange unknown language, people who were so different from them that, without the help of the spiritual man, they couldn’t have believed they were really, truly, right there, in front of them.
Well, as I said, it’s a squirmy sort of movie, but that point … that faith, belief comes through hearing, hearing from another, hearing and then seeing … it’s a hallmark of John’s Gospel which we have before us these Sundays in the Easter season.
Last Sunday’s Resurrection Gospel certainly had that Word for us. Mary Magdalene saw dead Jesus, dead Jesus alive again-but-anew, and didn’t recognize him ... didn’t recognize him until he called her name, “Mary,” and then she heard, and saw, and believed it was Jesus before her. And so Mary ... not Peter, not the beloved disciple, who entered the empty tomb but only saw empty grave clothes ... Mary became the first to bring the news of the Resurrection to the others ... and from her, through their proclamation, to the world ... but not quite yet.
Not quite yet ... because this week, in our continuation of last week’s text, it’s evening of that same first Easter day, and Jesus’ closest followers are hiding away behind locked doors because they’re scared. Scared that what happened to Jesus will happen to them, soon enough, too. Mary’s words to them that she’s seen dead Jesus, except he’s not dead anymore; her words, true as they are, do not give them peace. Peace to be bold, be strong in faith.
Until peace himself walks in, through their locked doors and into their fear-locked reality.
Jesus comes in ... the Prince of Peace ... and he stands among them; and in the literal words of the text, says “Hey! Peace Is Here!”
Peace? In the midst of all their fear and foreboding about what might happen to them?
Yes ... Peace ... Peace in flesh and blood ... Jesus, there among them once again. And just like with Mary, the disciples hear the voice of the Lord to them, and see him, his scars and wounds and all, not a Zombie Apocalpyse but the Risen Lord before them .... and now, only now, can they rejoice because now they do believe the Word which Mary received and gave them hours earlier.
And then Jesus does something even more amazing.
He breathes on the apostles and they catch something from him.
It’s true, it’s true ... this is what the text says,
When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
That word, receive, it literally means the same as when you’re playing with someone, throwing them a ball, and you say, “Here, catch.” That what Jesus does with the Holy Spirit, he says to the apostles, “here, catch what I have to give you. Catch the Holy Spirit. Come on!”
This is so important for us to hear, especially as Lutheran Christians.
Because historically, we’ve so prided ourselves on our Christian Education. Sunday School, Confirmation, Bible Studies, colleges and universities, theological seminaries.
We have worked very, very hard to TEACH THE FAITH TO PEOPLE. To make faith education a priority.
And that’s a very commendable thing to have done, and to keep on doing.
But sometimes, I wonder if we’ve forgotten Jesus’ point in these words from John’s Gospel.
“Come on, come on, catch the faith! Catch the Spirit! Be caught up in the love and joy and peace and forgiveness and hope of what it means to follow me!”
Faith IS meant to be caught. Oh yes, we can and should and do study the Word, learn the verses, hear the stories read, have the Word proclaimed to us in worship and in sermons. But hey ... let’s do it with Spirit, folks. Let’s toss the Faith around so that people can catch it with hope and joy and peace and love.
This faith, this life, was never, EVER, meant to be a dusty, dry, dogmatic exercise. Amen?
That’s why we lead Confirmation as we do with our youth and parents – “Faith Thinking” which is a relationship-filled happening event-time where we toss the faith to our young people. Ditto with Kids’ Church, and I hope that the participants in Adult Education can feel that’s what we’re trying to do there, too.
Faith is meant to be caught. Caught, catching the Spirit of joy from the One passing it along to us.
Now, yes, there will always be those who will take a little longer to “catch faith” and catch fire with the Spirit. That’s who Thomas is and represents in the second half of our Gospel story, and why, every year on the Sunday after Easter, we hear, not of his “doubts” – Jesus never uses that word here - but, literally, of his “not-faith.”
He’s not “doubting Thomas,” but rather “not-faith Thomas.”
There is a distinct difference.
Thomas wasn’t there with the others when Jesus appeared to them ... who knows where he was, maybe he went out for a pizza!!! He didn’t receive Jesus as they did, they, those closest to Jesus, they, those first charged with being sent out into the world to spread Jesus’ good news.
And Thomas ... Thomas simply believes that he must be in the same place, on the same level as the others as he has been all along, to be a full part of this Resurrection story going forward.
And so, a week later, Jesus comes to Thomas, too, and he – Thomas – also hears and sees and believes.
So don’t hang around, don’t cling to this portion of the text too long. Don’t use it as a club, against those who have their “doubts” about Jesus, about this faith, about the church.
For the face of Christianity in these latter days has certainly given the world much room for doubt ... especially with those who speak God’s name loudest, controlling the faith-stage with their sometimes scary, often angry speech and acts.
Thankfully ... this appears to be changing ... at least we see signs of hope. Pope Francis and his setting aside the trappings of his office, turning instead as Jesus does ... to the poor, reflecting Jesus’ words and actions. The “old mainline” denominations, Methodists and Episcopalians and Presbyterians and, yes, timid Lutherans, standing up for the world’s “least of these,” and speaking out too ... reclaiming the word “evangelical” from a partisan political label, to what it really means ... “people who bring Good News to the world.”
These times call for a bold faith.
As bold as it was in the early days of the church.
That’s why, during the Easter season, we set aside our Old Testament scripture readings to spend time in the book of Acts.
Here, today, in a scene not long after that which is before us in the Gospel, we see what the Good News of the Resurrection brings forth in the apostles ... including Thomas ... the text says “Peter and the apostles” so Thomas must be here too ...
... and what we see and hear from them is ... boldness. Action. Decisive faith.
Just hear Peter’s words as he responds to the religious leaders of his age, who had told Jesus’ followers to stop speaking of him:
We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus ... God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things ...
What the apostles ... Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas and the others ... what they have heard, and seen, this is no group hallucination ... it‘s the power of the Resurrection made visible to them, Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit, at work, among these men and women, witnesses of all these things.
And just look what the peace and power of the Holy Spirit brings forth in them. And wills to bring forth in us too ... yes, you and I, the latest in this line of those who follow Jesus.
Now that can be a sobering, even frightening thought ... if we really think about it. If we really believe the words we speak every week. “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” “This bread, this cup, this Eucharist that we share, it is a foretaste of the feast to come.” “Go in peace ... serve the Lord ... remember the poor ... Christ is with you.”
And yet ... and yet the truth behind these words is the same truth that walked into the apostles’ midst later on that first Easter day. “Peace is here!” Jesus is present, present with us just as he was present with them then.
Not to frighten. But to bring his word of Peace and Power. To give us his Spirit, so that we can play “Catch the Faith” with en-Spirited enthusiasm, power and hope, into the world.
The author CS Lewis – yes, he of the “Chronicles of Narnia,” ... there’s a quote of Lewis’ which we use in our Faith Thinking confirmation classes, which goes quite well with this Scripture-word that’s before us today:
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him, and kill him as a demon: or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.
We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we’re talking about either was (and is) just what he said or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that he wasn’t either a lunatic or a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem. I have to accept the view that Jesus was and is God.
The Resurrected Jesus makes people of power and peace ... peace to be and bring ... and power to proclaim ... into the world.
And YOU ... YOU ARE WITNESSES TO THESE THINGS. You see them here all around you. A little band of disciples, almost dead, ready to lock these doors tight and move on not that long ago ... now, alive ... alive and vital with the Peace and Power of God’s Spirit ... Christ’s Spirit among us ... flowing from here and here into us and then out these doors and into this community.
Is there anything ... anything ... our God cannot work among us, for his good and gracious will to and for the world? This God, who brings forth life from death itself?
And YOU ... YOU are witnesses to these things.
So what’s next, Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life?
Peace is here! God’s Spirit is here, leading, guiding.
Catch it ... catch on ... come, see and hear, go and tell, Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed!
Amen.
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