Pentecost 17A, September 24, 2023

This particular parable of the Good Samaritan is likely one of the most familiar of all the parables. We call a selfless do-gooder a good Samaritan. Many a Christian charity focused on care for the sick, the poor, the hungry, are named for the Good Samaritan. Pastor Crispin Wilondja runs Good Samaritan Ministries, a ministry focused on accompanying refugees who have been resettled in this area. I am sure that you can think of other ministries in other places with the same name. And because this parable is so familiar, I would bet that you could retell the story, at least in broad strokes. But familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. If not contempt, at least indifference. We suppose we know the story and so, we half listen, assume we understand, and move on. We don’t wonder what a Samaritan is. We don’t question why it should be necessary to classify this Samaritan as ‘good.’ We smirk at the author’s insight about the legal expert wanting to vindicate or justify himself, calling to mind any number of lawyer jokes. And then because we have helped a charity named for the good Samaritan we pat ourselves on the back and thank God that we aren’t like that priest or that Levite. But this isn’t quite how parables work. They are not fixed stories with an obvious moral suggesting we adopt a certain value and practice a certain virtue. Instead, parables have to be exegeted, contemplated, mulled over, unpacked. Parables have to be read and reread in each new context, each new time and place. Parables are not data to be crunched, are not facts to be recorded are not empirical statements demanding our acquiescence, are not imperatives to be obeyed. They are invitations to introspection, to mystery, to ponderance, to conversation, to reflection. When the legal expert asks Jesus a question, Jesus responds with a question. When the expert asks a follow-up question, Jesus responds with a parable. The legal expert wants to know the fine print, he wants the loopholes, the exceptions. He wants a strict constructionist interpretation, an originalist viewpoint. He wants to know what the framers meant when they said “neighbor,” and more importantly, he wants to know exactly what they did not mean when they said “neighbor.” Jesus rejects this strict constructionist view. And it might be important here to point out that Jesus is the framer. Jesus tells the legal expert that he already knows the answer to his own question. Jesus seems to be echoing the tone of our first reading. The legal expert doesn’t need someone to go off and get the answer, doesn’t need someone to pronounce an edict, file an amicus brief, or author a majority opinion. No, Jesus tells a parable to show that the best interpretation is near the legal expert, the answer comes from his own mouth, out of his own heart. Jesus and the legal expert together become re-framers, reinterpreting the law through the lens of mercy. So, what then does this parable mean to us? How are we to read it? As a congregation, we have been asking this question for some time. Who is our neighbor? So, let’s read it again in our context. A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers. In our context, this might sound like, “A refugee was fleeing the violence of his home for asylum in the US when he fell into the hands of coyotes who exploited him, deprived him of food and water, and dropped him off at the border half dead.” Jesus says that by chance a priest was traveling that road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and when he saw this naked, half-dead traveler he passed by on the other side. There are some who think that I should follow this priest’s example and pass by this whole subject. But the vows I made at my ordination and the vows we all reaffirm when we remember our baptism call us to work for justice and peace in all the world. It would be unfaithful for me to avoid topics of justice and peace when they are right in front us everyday. Pastor Crispin is preaching the same message with his very life, working to help and to heal refugees fearful for their lives and abandoned to their own devices here in our community. Jesus says that “likewise a Levite, when he came to the place [in the road] and saw him, passed by on the other side.” Now, the Levites were the tribe of Israel from whom the priest’s came. They were a privileged group, religiously and socially. They were the keepers of the laws and the customs that made the Hebrew people the Hebrew people, that made them God’s people. I imagine that this Levite thinks this banged-up traveler isn’t his problem. He probably also thinks that this is why he usually avoids this part of town. He’s likely worried, “If they beat this guy up, they might get me too. “It’s just not safe to stop and help. “Someone else will take care of this— some agency, some do-gooder. “This is also what that politician has been talking about; undesirables making the streets unsafe for people like me. “I’d better get out of here.” But then, Jesus says a Samaritan comes along. The Samaritans were a divergent religious and ethnic sect. They were outsiders, heretics, everything the legal expert, priests, and Levites were working so hard not to be. This Samaritan then puts the legal expert, the avoidant priest, and the privileged Levite to shame, demonstrating that without vocational obligation, without their religious heritage, without legal expertise, this foreign heretic was a better interpreter of the law than the legal expert. Jesus reframed the question. The question is not Who is my neighbor [and therefore, who isn’t]? The question is, if you have the law and the prophets, if you know the whole of the law and prophets are summed up in loving God and loving your neighbor, then why don’t you become a neighbor by practicing mercy? Neighbor-hood is a relationship of mutuality. You can’t have a neighbor without being a neighbor yourself. In these next few months, we will be trying to reframe this question, “Who is our neighbor?” and “How can we become a neighbor to them?” Our congregation is shrinking, our funds are dwindling, and we have been hoping for easy answers and loopholes. We have encountered opportunities to become what our neighbors need us to be, and we have passed by on the other side. We have clung to a mission statement some 30-plus-years old. We have hoped that someone else would take responsibility for the ministry here. We have been too religious, too frightened, too complacent, too tired, and by our own admission, too old to engage in the ministry in our path. We have hoped that someone else would go up the mountain or across the sea— or down in the ditch— and come and tell us what we want to hear, would bring us throngs of children and young families, would restore our former glory at best, or would absolve us of responsibility for our dissolution at least. But Jesus tells us that the answers to our questions are near us, they will come from our mouths, and from our hearts. I will be working together with the council and the Mutual Ministry team to define a listening process to discover and to voice a new mission statement and a new vision for this congregation. This will take all of us. It will be uncomfortable, it will cost each of us something, but it will make us neighbors, it will make us merciful, it will fulfill the promises of our baptism to work for justice and peace in all the world. We will know who our neighbors are and they will know theirs, too. Amen.

Today is the Day of Pentecost, 50 days after the Passover, the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, the birthday of the Church. This is a day of celebration , a day of joy and feasting. We deck the place and the minister in red, the color of fire, the color of blood, the color of love. Yesterday, when Deacon Sue was ordained, we invoked the Holy Spirit, we laid hands on her, and we put a red stole across her shoulder, a symbol of service derived from the towel Jesus tied around his waist when he washed the disciples’ feet. Red is the color of the Church because it is the color of the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost, a mighty rushing wind and tongues, or language, that spread through the assembled crowd like a wildfire. This Holy Spirit fell on ethnic Jews and on Gentile foreigners alike, and they all became something new together. But like that one-hit wonder “Closing Time” by Semisonic reminds us “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” We come to this point in the metanarrative of the Scriptures after the Resurrection of Jesus, his appearances to his followers, and his ascension into heaven with the promise of the Holy Spirit and that he would come again. And then, they waited. The apostles— including Mary Magdalene— Jesus’ mother, the other disciples and followers had at this point already begun to gather on the first day of the week. And so they gathered this Sunday morning, as they had been doing, to wonder and wait together. And when this hot and holy wind blew through like a tornado in a wildfire these waiting wonderers were set ablaze like that burning bush that called to Moses and set God’s people free. They each spoke with tongues on fire, burning with love, illuminating the gospel, and purifying the earth. These Gentile proselytes from across the Roman world heard the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of David, speaking to them in a language they could understand. Paul called this the spirit of adoption. There is no human being who is not a child of God. God is the father, the parent of us all. But to have a mother and a father is very different than having a mom and a dad. It is one thing to recognize that we all have a relationship to God and it is another to have a relationship with God. When Paul says in Romans 8 “When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,” Abba is an Aramaic term of affection, meaning something like “Daddy.” The Spirit comes to make us know that we already have a relationship to God as parent, creator, sustainer; but we are invited to have a relationship with God that is deep, intimate, enduring There is a principle in counseling were the relationship between any two people or things is actually a third entity. In the relationship between a married couple the marriage is that third entity. That marriage must be nurtured, prioritized, calibrated over time in order to remain healthy. Theologian Walter Wink theorizes that this is what the ancient world meant by talking of spirits and demons. A toxic and harmful relationship is a demonic spirit. A good and healthy relationship is an angelic spirit. I think this is how we should think of the Holy Spirit. The relationship between the Father and the Son, the relationship between Christ and the Church, the relationship between individual believers, that goes beyond a mere relationship to the other and draws us into relationship with the other, this is the Holy Spirit; that third divine entity that makes two into One. At creation, God breathes a hot and holy wind into molded earth and this created thing became a living being precisely because God desired to be more that related to this creation; God wanted a relationship with this creation. So God named this living being, God walked with this living being, God saw Godself in this living being; God and this living being shared a relationship as close as breath. In Hebrew, the language of the book of Genesis, ruach means breath, wind, and spirit. The same ruach that hovered over the waters before creation is the same ruach breathed into this living being. In Greek, the language of the New Testament, pneuma means breath, wind, and spirit. That same mighty rushing pneuma blowing through that crowd on the day of Pentecost is the same pneuma descending like a dove at Jesus’ baptism, and that same pneuma Jesus promises to send to us to make us one with the Father as he and the Father are one. The ancient mystics tell us that this is precisely why the Spirit came as a tongue on Pentecost; because it is the tongue that forms the Word within us, and it is the pneuma within us that brings that Word to life. There is more to this Christian faith than assurance of our relationship to God. By our baptism we are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit, that is, we are made aware of our relationship to God in Christ and we are invited into a deep, intimate relationship with God. And today, as we come forward for communion, I invite you to receive again this anointing oil, marking your forehead with the sign of the cross and the seal of the Holy Spirit, our deep, intimate relationship with God. Let this tongue of fire form the Word within you and the ruach, the pneuma bring it to life. Let this encounter lead you into relationships with your neighbors and let this relationship lead to mutual understanding. Let this hot and holy wind sweep your inner house “clean of its furniture” that you might make room in your heart for the new thing God is doing. Let this ruach, this pneuma be the Holy Spirit, the relationship between the Father and the Son, the relationship between Christ and the Church, the relationship between individual believers, that goes beyond a mere relationship to the other and draws us into relationship with the other. This is the Holy Spirit; that third divine entity that makes us into One. Amen. 

This past Thursday was the day of ascension, a holy day when Christians around the world remember and reflect on Jesus’ ascension into heaven to be seated at the right hand of God. This day is important. In fact, this holy day is right up there with Christmas and Easter. This is a day when, as Jesus promises, we see scripture fulfilled and wisdom given. In Jesus’ final moments with his disciples he once again shares the gospel: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. What this means is that beginning with God’s covenant to Israel, extending to the disciples, and to all generations to come, God’s forgiveness and salvation reigns! And not only has God kept these promises, but God makes new promises promises of grace and forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Ascension truly is one of the most holy days in the church’s life, full of promise and hope. But then, Jesus leaves. And I find myself mystified and perplexed. You mean to tell me that God’s ultimate work is finally accomplished in and through Jesus Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection and that because of Christ we too have been justified, saved, and have the promise of resurrection and then he just… leaves? Is this the feast of the ascension or the feast of the abandonment? Surely those standing there that day must have felt the words of the psalmist, the words of Jesus from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And if we’re honest, maybe we’ve felt that too. Maybe you’ve looked up to heaven and felt the vastness of space, the breadth to time, and the depths of the world’s pain and wondered if Jesus leaving this whole Church thing in the hands of his followers was such a good idea. Maybe you’ve felt that black hole of grief collapsing in on itself and swallowing worlds and starlight with a never-ending appetite, trying to fill the void created by your loss. Maybe you’ve felt the brokenness of divorce, the fear of your diagnosis, the shame and aching need of your addiction, the disgusted resignation of being unable to change your circumstances, the injustices of the world, or the person you see in the mirror. Or maybe you’ve just read or watched the news. Maybe you’ve feared for the safety of our immigrant neighbors, or our poor neighbors, or our elderly neighbors. And maybe you’ve wondered if Jesus didn’t so much ascend as escape, blow dodge, go AWOL, or give up on the whole salvation project. I think to some degree our sense of abandonment comes from the language we use to describe what happened in the ascension. We say Jesus “ascended,” was caught up to heaven. We say Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. We paint Jesus in baroque opulence, borne on the wings of cherubim and standing on sunbeams, rising from the earth, departing our realm for a distant, invisible, intangible Heaven beyond our mortal reach. And this language, in words and pictures, teaches us to think of the ascension as a separation, a departure, a loss of proximity to our God. And so we have over-spiritualized the word salvation because of it. We have assumed that our salvation is also our escape, departure, separation from our neighbors, from any responsibility for the state of the world and the plight of our neighbors. Which is why when the earthquake in our first reading causes the chains to fall off Paul and Silas and all the prisoners in that Philippian jail, and the doors swing wide open, we might have assumed, as the jailer did, that all the prisoners would have escaped, “r-u-n-n-o-f-t,” like Everett, Delmer, and Pete in O Brother, Where Art Thou? We cannot fathom what it means to be saved, to be, as Luther said, the perfectly free lord of all and the entirely bound servant of all all at the same time. And all this makes us think of the incarnation in the abstract, like an anomaly in the life of God. It makes us think of the incarnation as an impossible thing we are expected to believe as a litmus test for our faith rather than the living reality of the whole life of God. Theologian Wellford Hobbie writes, “The ultimate question is not whether there is someone or something out there in limitless space whom we call God, but whether there is someone who knows something of the dust of the earth, something of the blood-stained face human existence wears and can feel for it.” When Jesus meets the disciples in that locked room that first Easter morning, he comes in the flesh, scarred from the ordeal of the cross. He comes physically, inviting their embrace. He comes hungry, sharing their food. And he comes reminding them of all the promises God had made, and all the promises God had kept. He comes defining the cross and proving in is very body God’s power to redeem. He comes entirely free in the sovereignty of God and in total solidarity with the human condition. He comes to make us one with God through the preaching of the apostles. Here indeed is a God who knows something of the dust of the earth, who knows something of the blood-stained face human existence wears and can feel for it. Can cry its name into the stench of the tomb and rescue it from death. Here indeed is a God who’s own face was stained with blood, who’s own body is but the dust of earth. Here indeed is a God who not only feels for human existence but feels with human existence. The ascension is not the end of the incarnation. The ascension is not the end of God with us, not the end of grief or pain, suffering or death. The ascension is the incarnation exposed, the incarnation universalized before our very eyes. In Jesus we have found the hidden God. And in the ascension, we have found God hidden in our very lives. Christ is incarnate in us. We have not been abandoned by the ascension; we have been appointed, appropriated, called up and sent out, made one with the very heart of God. We are the living, breathing, bleeding and dying body of Christ. If Christ is the image of the invisible God, then the Church is the image of the invisible Christ. When the world wants to know that there is someone who knows something of the dust of the earth, something of the blood-stained face human existence wears and can feel for it, the world is looking to the Church. When the church prays for an end to gun violence, poverty, war, loneliness, disease, tyranny— and then takes no meaningful action, takes no real risk to see them end, our neighbors do not see God answer prayers. When the church takes a moment of silence in response to the grotesque horror of racism, sexism, classism, the world hears the silence of God. When the church remains silent, the world experiences the absence of God. The ascension of Jesus is not God’s abandonment of the world, but the church’s silence, inaction, and insistence on its own rights is God’s absence, failure, and indifference in the experience of our neighbors. Salvation is not freedom from responsibility for the suffering of our neighbors. Beloved, the incarnation continues in us. The Gospel is embodied in us. In us Christ is dying, In us Christ is rising, and in us Christ has come again. Christ has descended into our personal hells to lead us out of all that holds us captive. Christ calls our names into the tomb to free us from all that binds us. Christ is the Word spoken into the formless void of grief and shame and fear and doubt, Let there be life, let there be love, let there be peace, let there be faith. The world wants to know that there is a God out there who knows something of the blood-stained face of human existence, and can offer more than lip-service to it. Martin Luther said, “God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does.” Perhaps in our context, we might hear his words this way, “God doesn’t need our voices, our advocacy, our votes, but our neighbors do.” The incarnation of God in Christ is the revelation of God’s solidarity with the human condition. The ascension is God’s commissioning of the Church to practice the same radical solidarity with a world in need. We have been called to embody the good news of God’s solidarity with the human condition. People of God, turn your eyes and hearts, and voices toward your neighbor that they may know what is the hope to which Christ has called us, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power that they might see Christ in the Church, which is his body. And when we live out this faith, we are embodying the resurrection, proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. Amen. 

This is one of those weeks where I feel like the lectionary isn’t doing its readers and hearers any favors. Our gospel lesson begins, “Jesus answered him…” Who’s him? ? And what was the question? So, backing up just a bit, Today’s lesson comes in a section of John’s gospel known as the Farewell Discourse. Jesus speaks to his disciples on the night he will be arrested. Where the other Gospels spend part of one chapter recounting the institution of the Last Supper, The Gospel of John doesn’t even mention it and instead spends chapters 14 through 17 on a long monologue, interrupted a couple of times by questions from the disciples. Just before our passage today, the other Judas, not the one who will betray Jesus, asks Jesus a question, “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answer to the other Judas is our reading for today. But then this raises other questions. How is what Jesus says to the other Judas supposed to answer his question? The other Judas asks “How do you reveal yourself to the us, and not to the world?” “Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’” Why don’t you reveal yourself to the world, Jesus? Why don’t you reveal me to the world, Other Judas? seems to be Jesus reply. Jesus seems to say, “It is you, my beloved ones, and those who love me, who will reveal me to the world, when you love me, and when you love one another.” Here as Jesus is leaving He is giving his disciples some final instructions. And they are in fact, the same instructions he’s been giving all along. Love me. Love one another. Then, It’s almost as if Jesus anticipates their next question. Jesus says, “I have said all this while I am still standing here. But when I’m not standing here, the Holy Spirit will be with you in my place, and the Spirit will teach you everything you need to know and will remind you what I said while I was here.” In my last year of Seminary, I was asked by the Bishop of the South Carolina Synod to serve as a Synodically Authorized Minister to a small rural congregation in a tiny town where the next nearest ELCA congregation was some 30 miles away. It was my job to function for them in every capacity an ordained pastor would, including limited permission to consecrate the Eucharist, normally the sole propriety of an ordained pastor. When I first arrived there in early September, there was an enormous amount of anxiety, grief, and frustration about dwindling numbers, about what could or should be done to bring in and keep new members, about how to meet the Synod’s expectations and avoiding closure. It was clear that this congregation knew and loved Jesus. It was clear that this congregation wanted to be out in the community but they felt too worn out and resources felt too scarce to do anything meaningful. It was clear that this congregation felt the other Judas’s question in their bones. “How come you revealed yourself to us, Jesus, but haven’t given us what we need to share that with others?” But it was also clear that this congregation had a fierce love for each other. While they struggled to know how best to meet the needs of the neighborhood, this congregation was a vital part of each other’s lives. They called and checked on each other. They visited each other when they were sick. One couple loaned another their favorite recliner so the husband could sleep while recovering from a fall. They spent their own time and money to make repairs to the church building. A member volunteered to be the organist when the previous one resigned and moved away. When the child of the former administrator lost her mother suddenly in her freshman year of college, they met her in her grief and in her need and gave her a job and the grace she needed. And they embraced this starry-eyed seminary student who was trying to put all his theory into practice, and they wrestled with the scriptures with me, they listened to my ideas and backed me up in trying new things; they came to worship 5 times in one week between Palm Sunday and Easter, they invited me for dinner, they called me to the bedside, they let me be their pastor before I could rightly claim the title, they were effusive with their encouragement, and gentle in their critique. AND when the opportunity presented itself to offer Sunday School at the new assisted living and memory care facility that had just opened across the street, they showed up early, they helped move furniture, they engaged in conversation, they bought flowers, they made space for these children of God to be a part of the life of their congregation. Those residents couldn’t come to church, and they brought church to them. This is what ministry looks like. It is not measured average weekly attendance, or average weekly contributions, or in Church Vitality surveys or viability metrics. Ministry is not measured by rubrics of success and failure. Ministry is measured in presence and faithfulness. This is what Jesus means when he tells the disciples “I do not give to you as the world gives.” The world wants to weigh and measure and quantify and validate by comparison. But where the world gives stress and competition Jesus gives the Spirit and Peace. Ministry is measured in presence and faithfulness. Jesus’ call to discipleship is powered by The Holy Spirit of the Living God and the Peace of Jesus himself. The late theologian Rachel Held Evans gave this advice to a gathering of ELCA Rostered Leaders in 2017: “ You have the Sacraments. You have the call. You have the Holy Spirit. You have one another. You have a God who knows the way out of the grave. You have everything you need. You just need to show up and be faithful.” You just need to show up and be faithful!! That’s it. Saints, our congregation has twice the members and roughly 6 times the annual budget of this small, rural congregation in South Carolina, and we are situated in a suburban county of nearly 1 million people— people who need us to be revelations of the presence and faithfulness of Jesus, who need the sacraments, who need the Holy Spirit, who need the community we have in each other. They need a God who knows the way out of the grave. They need us to show up and be faithful. We have many opportunities to meet our neighbors where they are, to love Jesus, and to love each other. We don’t need more money to show up and be faithful. We don’t need more members to show up and be faithful. We have everything we need to show up and be faithful. And when we do God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, will reveal Jesus to the world through us. Amen. 

We live in an age of polarization. Our politics has divided us into hardline camps of right and left, conservatives and liberals, deplorables and snowflakes, “fascists” and “communists”, “our” side and “the other” side. Politics has always been dialectic, but it seems, in a brief span, we have gone from disagreeing about how best to solve our problems to disagreeing about what the problems even are. We retreat into echo chambers, into carefully curated alternate realities that allow us to avoid “the others” while plotting to impose our version of reality with the force of law. I believe our political divides strike at the heart of a fundamental human need to belong. As older societal distinctions and institutions decline in social capital, we have to find new allegiances, new distinctions, new paradigms and mythologies to help us understand not only who WE are, but who THEY are. In order to belong to something we must be able to define the edges of that thing, we must be able to mark the passage from outside to inside, from not in to in. We have to be able to distinguish what inside-ness looks like, feels like, and in this way we are able to define the edges of our very identity. Then it is from these identities that we engage in the new politics, were we vie for “most victimized” status so we can be most innocent, most pure, best positioned to receive justice instead of practicing justice. Looking at today’s readings, we see a similar dynamic at play. In Acts, Peter is confronted by those who think that Peter, who is Jewish, ought not to eat with Gentiles. Conquered over and over again, the Jewish people had defined and maintained their identity by drawing hard lines between those who were Jewish and those who were not Jewish. Those who were not Jewish, but wanted to worship the God of the Jews were welcome to come to the temple to pray, were welcome to keep the law, and the feasts, but they weren’t really Jewish until they were circumcised. As the infant Church began to realize that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, and as Gentiles began to join the movement, Jewish Christians began to insist that these Gentile converts must become full-fledged Jews first in order to become full-fledged Christians. So, those who have confronted Peter in Judea are demanding to know how and why Peter is not following the Rules, why he would be sharing the table with those who are obviously not God’s chosen people. Or, perhaps more terrifying, has God chosen new people? Can God’s mind change? Peter recounts for his accusers a vision, in which a voice tells him “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” and an encounter with Cornelius, a Gentile believer who has his own vision of a man called Peter who will give him a message that will save Cornelius and his entire household. The Holy Spirit tells Peter “not to make a distinction between them and us.” How can we know who’s in and who’s out if there’s no distinction between them and us? In our Gospel for today, Jesus has just washed the feet of his disciples, and shared a last meal with them. He seems to do this knowing that Peter will deny him and Judas will betray him, and all of them will desert him. And yet, knowing all of this, and having served them anyway, Jesus says, “Just as I have loved you, love one another. And by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples.” Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment by which to distinguish themselves. Love each other. That’s it. Love each other, and everyone will know that you are my disciples. Jesus draws a line an identifier, a guidepost, a mile marker. Jesus says, those who love each other, those are my disciples. Those who don’t love each other, not my disciples. Finally!! Some criterion, some measure of belonging. Peter’s vision that nothing is profane, Cornelius’ vision that the Gentiles have the Spirit too, John the Revelator’s vision of God making a tabernacle of the whole universe, Jesus making love the hallmark of his disciples; All these things define the edges of the gospel message. The Church, Jesus’ disciples, Christians, whatever the moniker, our belonging is defined by who we include, not by who we exclude. Where we are inclined to build a wall, the church must build a door. Where we mark a boundary, the church must see a threshold. Where we want to distinguish between them and us the church must see only Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We must come to this table, to the Eucharist, to this bread and wine this Body and Blood, to realize that finally, God makes no distinction between the physical world and the spiritual world. All things come from God, All things are filled with God, and all things will return to God. The divisions and distinctions we create may serve some purpose in this life, may even meet some fundamental human need, but we are moving toward a future in which even the boundary between life and death, the beginning and the end, will pass away. God in Jesus is calling us to make no distinctions between ourselves, to see our boundaries not as the limits of our belonging, but as the unfinished edges of a work in progress. The church must choose advocacy over aversion, intercession over introversion, and repentance over repulsion, finding those with whom we disagree are still our neighbors. The church must amplify cries for justice, even when we are embarrassed by their indictment, even when they challenge our hegemony, even when they require more of us that we think is possible. Beloved, our belonging is not defined or determined by politics and party but by a God of unbounded compassion and measureless grace who fills us with the Spirit and bids us love as we have been loved. We may find disagreement among us, as the early church did. But our divisions do not create a smaller circle, rather like fish and loaves, what we divide, God multiplies. Our divisions and distinctions expose the vastness and inclusivity of a God who calls us to love our enemies because God already does. In Jesus, God in Christ became the other, made all the thems into us-es, calling disciples to make no distinctions between them and us, between sacred and profane, until there is no other, and in the end, there will be nothing but God, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. In the end, there will be nothing but love. Until then, until all distinction has ended, and all things have been made new, let your life and your faith, and your politics, and your identity be defined by love. Amen. 

It sure doesn’t feel like mid-May, does it? This cool, drizzly gray has us pulling out the wool and Gore-Tex we had just tucked away in favor of cotton and linen. I’m grateful for the rain, and the temperate weather, knowing that the sticky, smothering heat is just around the corner. But it is somewhat unnerving, if not innervating, this unseasonable weather. And then there was an earthquake! Did y’all feel the earthquake? The epicenter was just 15 or so miles from my wife’s parent’s home in Tennessee, and I felt it some 170 miles away in Metro Atlanta. Or maybe, nothing so trivial as the weather, minor earthquakes, or an American Pope garnered your attention this week. Maybe it was something much more personal that clouded your skies and shook your solid ground. Maybe it was something much closer to home that made this Easter season feel like a dissonate chord, like wishful thinking or some naïve fable whose moral is from some bygone era and not for the stark cold reality of our real lives. At first blush, these readings about a woman raised from the dead, blissful saints singing praises in heaven, and casting Jesus as a hired shepherd, don’t seem to speak to our everyday. Have you ever seen someone raised from the dead? I haven’t. Don’t these depictions of heaven leave you thinking that heaven seems like some outlandish dominion from the climax of baroque opera, with all this singing and adulation around the exalted throne of a triumphant underdog of a hero? It makes me want to echo these Judeans who approach Jesus in the temple, “Tell us plainly, Jesus;” what is all this resurrection business about anyway? Juxtaposed with real life, in which we all have to deal with real death, loss, and grief, what are we supposed to take from these stories about resurrection and heavenly worship when our dead aren’t raised and heaven seems like a distant fantasy? Surely we aren’t just supposed to believe with all our might and hope that someday it will all come true, right? Some context might help. This story of Peter from the book of Acts, is written about a time in the history of the Church when the first followers of Jesus are themselves trying to make sense of the resurrection and ascension, and Jesus’ promise to return to judge the living and the dead. If you’ve been in Bible study with me you’ve heard me say, that this first generation of believers thought Jesus was coming back next Thursday and they were genuinely surprised with every passing Thursday that he had not returned. And then, people like Tabitha, pillars of their community, began to die. This left burning questions for those awaiting the second coming. What would happen to those who died before Jesus came back? And so the community sent for an apostle. They were all surprised when Peter raised her from the dead. The book of Revelation is written in code so that it was possible to critique the Roman empire and maintain a little plausible deniability. Over the centuries, we lost the decoder, and so we are left guessing to a large degree. But, we know from early Christian art, that palm branches are a symbol of martyrdom. So, these throngs singing around the throne, are those martyred for their faith, for being followers of Jesus, the slaughtered Lamb. They have come through the ordeal of keeping the faith and losing their lives, likely symbolized as being washed in the blood of the Lamb. As your preacher, I too wish Jesus would just tell us plainly. It would make my job a lot easier. But then, if I could give you a measure of certainty, what need would there be for faith? I think that to see the good news in these texts, you maybe have to be one of those who have gone through an ordeal. I think that maybe those sheep given to Jesus are given by suffering, by heartache and pain. Maybe you have to go through something to appreciate what it takes to get to, to be brought to, the other side. The word martyr is almost a transliteration of the word for witness in Greek. It was only because those who were witnesses were killed for sharing what they had witnessed that the word martyr came to mean those killed for their faith. It was those who had witnessed Jesus’ life and ministry, his death and resurrection, his ascension and the ministry of the Holy Spirit and told of what they had seen, whose lives were changed by what they had seen— it was these who came to be known as martyrs, these who came through the ordeal with blood on their clothes, who knew how and why to praise the slaughtered Lamb as their shepherd God. These texts were written to communities who experienced loss and grief, change and anxiety. Only a people of sorrows and acquainted with grief can see the resurrection for what it is— It is the faithfulness of this slaughtered Lamb and shepherd God to death and beyond it. Death, loss, and grief are the vantage point for resurrection. Jesus’ voice doesn’t come shouting across the hills. God is never that far away. Rather, Jesus’ voice comes whispering in the ear of a head laid on his shoulder. Jesus’ voice comes speaking words of consolation as he wipes the tears from our eyes. Are you a person of sorrows, acquainted with grief? If you are not, choose it. Choose the sorrow and grief of someone else, drawing close enough to whisper in their ear and wipe away their tears. Give your life and see if you don’t become a witness to resurrection. If you are a person of sorrows and acquainted with grief, then you too must choose it. Don’t avoid it, Don’t ignore it; embrace it, endure it as a share of the blood of the Lamb. I stand here as a person of sorrows, as one acquainted with grief. I am a witness that resurrection is always at the end of our grief, if we can trust that God is faithful to death and beyond it. Resurrection is not a test of our faith, but an invitation to experience the faithfulness of God, of the Lamb that was slain. Life, and death, and resurrection is the pattern of all things. The path from death to resurrection is grief. If we wish to be witnesses to resurrection we must become acquainted with grief. It is only then that we will hear the voice of Jesus calling our name into the tomb, calling us out, calling us to get up, and making us witnesses who will give our lives to God and to the Lamb who is worthy to receive blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might forever and ever. Amen. 

I have always admired my wife’s ability to remain calm in a debate and guide her interlocutor to her position by asking strategic questions whose answers expose the wea knesses in the other person’s arguments while implying her own argument. Her opponent usually ends up arguing her points for her. I’ve seen this with many an obstinate retail associate, child in her classroom, even her own family. And then it was really quite the show when we went to seminary together. Our classmates would turn a funny, ghostly color when in the course of classroom discussion Jennifer would say, “I have a question.” It’s a good thing that she and I already agree on so much; or at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe. Jesus asks a lot of questions in these passages. “Why are you persecuting me?” “You have no fish, have you?” “Do you love me more than these?” “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?” Now, before you start humming either The Contours or Paula Abdul— depending on your age, I imagine— stay with me, because Jesus’ questions beg their own question: Why would Jesus ask questions to which he already knows the answer? Even in Peter’s third response he begins, “Lord you know everything...” And as far as that goes, if God knows everything, and has the power to fix everything why doesn’t God just fix everything? Or further, why doesn’t God just prevent all these problems in the first place? When Jennifer would ask these questions of store clerks, defiant students, and misguided classmates she already knew what the answers would be. She knew that the clerk could take the coupon despite the expiration date; the clerk just had to show a little grace. She knew the student would be more compliant if the behavior the classroom needed seemed to the student like the student’s idea. And she knew that the misguided classmate had not had to wrestle with God the way she had in order to keep her faith as a woman called to ministry in the patriarchal and misogynistic tradition of her upbringing. By asking the questions to which she already knew the answer she was providing our classmates with the same opportunity to wrestle, to contend, to take hold and refuse to let go until it changed them and the way they knew their God. I think Jesus asks his questions for the same reasons. Jesus did not ask these questions so that he will know something he didn’t already know; Jesus asked these questions so that Peter and Saul would know that they already knew the answers, too. And when Peter knows that he knows he is given charge of tending and feeding the flock. Jesus’ question to Peter precedes his question to Saul, not just chronologically, but logically as well. Jesus knows everything. Jesus knew of Saul’s love for God, his blamelessness in keeping the letter of the law, and even that his persecution of the followers of the Way stemmed from his passion for God’s law. But Saul didn’t know that. Peter knew his guilt and his shame at having denied and abandoned Jesus before his crucifixion, and in the intimacy of his relationship with Jesus was forgiven and reconciled. All Saul knew was his anger and hatred. Saul had no relationship with Jesus. Both Saul and Peter needed to be freed, so both had to be confronted in love. When Saul knows Jesus, learns of his forgiveness and his desire for reconciliation through the witness of Ananias, something like scales falls from Saul’s eyes and his body and soul are restored with food and drink. What remains for us is our questions. If Jesus knows everything and can fix everything, why doesn’t he? Well, like a good rabbi, I think Jesus would answer that question with another question: Do you love me? Then why are you neglecting your neighbor? We tend to be like those traveling with Saul on that road to Damascus; we hear the voice but we see nothing. We hear the word of God about love and grace and we remain willfully blind to the charge to be witnesses, to care for the flock, to feed the flock. And in this willful blindness, we let others take us by the hand and lead us where we do not want to go. For some of us, this is the end. And for a precious few, who will humble ourselves and listen to God and our neighbors, we will see that even though we were God’s enemy, God loves us and asks us to love our neighbors in return. It is not that we don’t already know why God knows everything and doesn’t act, it is that God has asked us this very same question and we do not like the answer. Presuming we are innocent, we would rather be rescued than freed and empowered to change. God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it. But there is plenty you can do because of it. So, Jesus’ questions remain: Do you love me? Then why don’t you act like it? By asking these questions to which Jesus and we already know the answer, Jesus was providing us with the opportunity to wrestle, to contend, to take hold and refuse to let go until it changes us and the way we know our God. When we know our God through Jesus, learn of God’s forgiveness and God’s desire for reconciliation with us through the witness of the gospel, through the promise of our baptism, through the intimacy of relationship, something like scales will fall from our eyes and our bodies and souls are restored here with this food and drink. So, do you love Jesus? Then why don’t you act like it? 

Some of you may know that I recently had sinus surgery. I had several issues that obstructed my airway, making it harder for me to breathe, and exacerbated by my season al allergies to almost everything that grows outside. When the surgery was over, and while I was still in recovery, the doctor came out to tell Jennifer how the procedure had gone. He talked about the three procedures she had known about ahead of time and how they had been very successful. But then he asked her when I had broken my nose. We had been married almost 18 ½ years at that point, and she knew it had not happened during our time together. Further, she was sure that a broken nose was something that might have come up sometime in those 18 ½ years and she had never heard about it. The doctor said the injury had been quite significant, similar to a crushing injury, and he had had to reconstruct my airway. Once I regained consciousness, she asked me about it. I also had no idea. I have absolutely zero memory of any trauma to the head that would have resulted in a crushing injury to the inside of my skull. My mother passed in 2013, my grandmother in 2021, and my childhood pediatrician has long since closed up his practice and destroyed all his records. My aunt couldn’t remember any significant trauma to my face or head that could have caused such an issue. A couple of months later, I heard a story of a man whose older brother had suffered a head injury at birth from the use of forceps, which had deformed the infant’s skull causing a traumatic brain injury. Then it all clicked. My mother was 17, I was her first child, two week late, and it was a difficult birth. She avoided a c-section because the physician had used forceps to deliver me. It seems like the only reasonable explanation for evidence of an unknown crushing injury was likely due to the use of forceps some 43 years ago. Scars are like that sometimes; they lie buried deep in our bones, deeper that we can see or perceive, affecting us in ways we have taken for granted, understood as normal, just the way it’s always been, until someone more acquainted with “normal” comes along and says ‘this is what breathing is supposed to feel like’ and you have to question all you’ve ever known. Our gospel reading gives us the story of Thomas, the disciple and would-be Apostle. Thomas was one of the 12. He was with Jesus, heard his teaching, witnessed his miracles. When the other disciples try to dissuade Jesus from returning to Judea after the death of Lazarus, Thomas pipes up confidently, “Let us also go that we may die with him.” When Jesus gives his farewell teaching after washing the disciples’ feet, promising that they all knew the way to where he was going, it is Thomas who seems to say what everyone was thinking, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” After the Day of Pentecost, as the Apostles fan out from Jerusalem and establish communities of believers across the known world, the Apostle Thomas is said to have traveled to India where he is credited with the founding of the Indian Orthodox Church before he was martyred and his remains brought by his followers to Edessa. And yet, despite all of his bravery, fidelity and martyrdom, he is often called Doubting Thomas. Today, a Doubting Thomas is a euphemism for a person thought to be overly skeptical, an unbeliever. But I think this legacy of Thomas the Dubious is unfair. The other disciples experienced Jesus’ miraculous appearance behind their locked door, and Jesus showed them his hands and side. They had an experience and they had proof. They could take believing this for granted. But all Thomas had was their word. And that wasn’t enough for Thomas. Thomas knew this wasn’t normal. Without the same experience and the same proof, Thomas couldn’t wrap his mind or his heart around such an unbelievable possibility. Thomas, like the others, had witnessed the crucifixion. He had seen the beatings, he had seen Jesus’ mangled face and heard his final, strangled words. He had seen Jesus die. He had watched blood and water gush from his speared side. And Thomas had walked that Roman road up to Jerusalem, had seen it lined with crosses and littered with corpses. Thomas knew, as a victim of empire, as a witness to imperial terror in the name of what Rome called ‘peace,’ that this was normal. After all he had witnessed, after all he knew to be true, he needed some proof. Thomas couldn’t base his faith on the unbelievable claims of someone else’s experience. He was going to have to see it for himself. He could not accept a reality that did not include the cross. Each of us is certainly all too familiar with the same sort of grief, pain, trauma, that Thomas knew. It lives deep in our bones like a crushing injury we have accepted as normal, usual, routine. We have been up close and personal with death, with Sheol, Hades, what some call Hell. We have witnessed the mortality of those we have loved, and we are staring down the barrel of our own. Faith in resurrection as some sort of exemption, some sort of erasure of all our grief, pain, and trauma is certainly unbelievable, even offensive. Belief in some ancient mystery or in some future rescue is little comfort to those accustomed to the cold, dark normal of Hell. But that is exactly where Jesus met Thomas. Eight days later, Jesus appears to Thomas and shows him the scars. He shows him the nail holes in his hands and feet. He shows him his side. I think we can assume that there were thorn marks on his face, patches missing from his beard, and stripes on his back. And the very second that Thomas could see for himself that this is the same Jesus he’d seen brutalized and killed, that all the trauma that had marked his soul had marked his God as well, he fell on his face in wonder and worship. This is the good news for us. We have a God who is far more acquainted with what ‘normal’ really is. We have a God who knows what breathing is supposed to feel like. We have a God who has descended into our grief, pain, and trauma and has repaired the crushing injury we didn’t even know we had. Thomas’ disbelief is not a cautionary tale about the supremacy of faith over doubt. Thomas’ disbelief is an invitation to explore all the crushing blows we have absorbed as though they were normal; an opportunity to discover the resurrection as a reorientation to a new normal that refuses to accept imperial terror as normal, the propaganda of state violence as truth, or personal grief, trauma, or pain as too private to be shared. Thomas didn’t doubt. Thomas just didn’t know what a breath of fresh air was supposed to feel like. Happy are those who have not seen and yet come to believe. But I think happier still are those whose scars were so deep they didn’t even know they couldn’t breathe until the Holy Spirit addressed those scars and fill their lungs with the breath of life. Amen. 

I remember being in school and having to do all my math by hand, showing all my work. Of course, the reasoning always given for solving these problems long hand was “ You won’t always have a calculator!” Well, I guess we showed them, huh?! I have a calculator, a compass, a phone, a notebook, a camera, a calendar, a measuring tape, a level, the whole Bible, Luther’s Small Catechism, a parking meter, a newspaper, all my favorite music, a tv, and the entire internet in my pocket. All day. Every day. And it has completely changed our lives. Often for the better. This thing can summon an Uber if you’re stranded. It can order takeout if you burn dinner. It can remind you it’s time for your pet’s flea and tick medication. It can help you run a small business out of your home. It can help you stay in touch with friends and family who live far away. It can guide you, turn-by-turn, from one destination to the next. It can help you find and connect to a community. It can help you pray. But, as they say, the greater the light, the greater the shadow. For all the good these devices can do, they are also capable of inflicting great pain. There is a show on MTV called Catfish. The premise of the show is that people write into the host for help in tracking down a person they met online. Usually, the person who writes in has met someone on social media or a dating site, and they have formed a relationship. The person writing in is usually deeply in love and, because their significant other has failed or refused to video chat or meet in person, the subject of the show has become suspicious that the other person has not been truthful about their identity or some aspect of their lives, and they want the host of the show to help them get to the bottom of the situation. With very rare exceptions, the show almost always ends with one person devastated at the loss of this relationship and embarrassed at having been duped, while the other person is exposed and ashamed. Further, the internet has made it easier for hate groups to organize, created a platform for fringe conspiracy theorists to gather a following, and allowed our politicians to circumvent the normal means of mass communication, replacing press conferences and nuanced policy discussions with tweets and hashtags, memes and TikTok videos. Despite the fact that the internet and smart phones have democratized access to information we have only built higher walls between us and allowed pundits and politicians to divide us and pit us against one another. Ultimately, we all wind up echoing the question of Pontius Pilate from the Gospel of John: “What is truth?” It has become very difficult to know the truth and to trust it. We are all fearful that we are living in some cosmic version of an episode of Catfish, being gaslit by our virtual relationship to reality and hoping that someone will be able to help us find what is real. And then we come here this Easter morning with all our grief, suspicion, and anxiety to hear a story about a man rising from the dead and it feels like a bridge too far. Like some sort of fable or children’s story, the stuff of legend or naivete, and we are too grown up, too educated, too streetwise or too wounded to fall for it. To be quite honest, just reading these lessons for this Feast day, it sure seems like even the people in the texts themselves struggled to believe what they were hearing. If we zoom out to the whole of the 10 th chapter of Acts, Peter has received a vision of “unclean” animals— or non-kosher animals— and a voice says that he should “Rise, kill, and eat.” Peter is a good Jewish boy, and he is suspicious, like this is a test of some sort, and he says to the voice, “Yeah, no thanks.” The vision repeats itself twice more and he repeats his answer both times. Then a group of visitors arrives and asks Peter to come to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion of the Italian Cohort, because Gentile Cornelius and his non-kosher household what to be baptized into the church. Then Peter gets it, and our first reading is his response. Paul gives a lovely defense of belief in the resurrection in our second reading, but you’ll remember that had he not been knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus or he would have still been persecuting Christians instead of being one. And by his own account, even after that miraculous experience, he still spent 14 years learning what it all meant before he became the Apostle to the Gentiles. And then the Gospel reading. These women are standing in the empty tomb, and had it not been for these shiny-clothed messengers they wouldn’t understood what was happening. And when they tell the story to the apostles, they don’t believe either. Peter has to get up and go to the tomb to see for himself. If these women can stand in the empty tomb and not get it; if Paul had to be struck down and re-educated; if Peter had to be told multiple times and has to go stand in the empty tomb himself— what hope is there for us who struggle to know the truth, who are suspicious of being duped, who are leery of being catfished by reality? Well, our hope is precisely in their disbelief, incredulity, and hesitation. Peter wasn’t convinced by the threefold vision. Or by the women’s story. Paul wasn’t convinced by the blinding light or the voice of Jesus. The women weren’t convinced by standing in the empty tomb. In each instance, they needed reminding, repetition, contextualization. They needed some time to become acquainted with this new version of reality. Their experience needed a story, and the story needed their experience. The Resurrection of Jesus is not an idle tale to be believed in spite of our better judgement, but a reintroduction to reality— a reality that includes the brutality of the cross, the suffering of grief, the ubiquity of death, the tyranny of empire, the injustice and oppression of state violence, the skepticism of disbelief, and transcends all of it with awe and wonder, with healing and hope, with life, freedom, and justice, with a resilience we might call faith. The story of the Resurrection is not a fairy tale ending to the narrative of the life and death of Jesus. The story of the Resurrection is not some creedal litmus test, is not a Pollyanna hope in the afterlife that abandons us to the whims and wiles of this one. The Resurrection of Jesus is a story looking for your experience. The Resurrection of Jesus is an invitation to trust that suffering, grief, death, tyranny, injustice, and oppression are not final. The Resurrection is less about belief and far more about experience, about discovering that life and death and resurrection are always happening. The Resurrection is about showing up to grieve what we have lost and finding that God was working while we weren’t looking, in ways we could not have guessed, in ways we cannot quite understand. The Resurrection is about standing in the empty grave of all our hopes and dreams and needing to be reminded that God promised to bring life out of death. The Resurrection is about holding space for our disbelief until our experience makes sense of the story. The Resurrection is about trusting our experience when the story is hard to believe and trusting the story when our experience is hard to bear. This practiced trust builds in us a resilience we might just call faith. And seeing it for ourselves, we will go on our way, amazed at what has happened. Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.