Seventh Sunday of Easter, Ascension, Year C, June 1, 2025
Pastor Ashton Roberts • June 1, 2025
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.
Hosanna to the Son of David!! Welcome to Holy Week!! We have made the journey with Jesus here to the hill overlooking Jerusalem and we have begun our ascent to the ho ly city. As we orient ourselves in this story we need to consider two simultaneous contexts: the context within the text of the Gospel according to St. Luke and the context within which St. Luke wrote this Gospel. Within the text, Jesus has come down the mount of Transfiguration and he has set his face toward Jerusalem. Jesus’ ministry has taken a tone quite critical of the city of Jerusalem, making reference not to the Jewish people of the city but to the seat of power and influence, corruption and collusion, that the city represents. Jesus refers to Jerusalem the way cable news pundits refer to Washington. We have heard Jesus speak of Jerusalem as the brood he wished to gather under his wings but they would not have it. Jesus tells parables in which the rulers and their clerks, the Pharisees and scribes, are the villains and scoundrels instead of the noble heroes. And we have now reached the week of the Passover, when people of Jewish faith from all over the Roman world would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast in the shadow of the Temple. We have heard Jesus critique the ruling class of the Jewish people, a group which should have sided with and cared for the Jewish people, but has sided with the Roman Empire instead and has colluded with this occupying force in order to enrich and preserve themselves at the expense of the Jewish people. We have seen Jesus call disciples named “Simon the Zealot,” “Judas, son of James,” and “Judas Iscariot.” The Zealots were an armed resistance group. Roughly 400 years before the time of Jesus, the Maccabees had led a violent revolt against the Greek occupying force and succeeded in retaking the temple. During their siege, the temple lamp only had enough oil to last one day, but the oil lasted 8 days, a miracle commemorated during the feast of Hannukah. This revolt was led by a man named Judas Maccabeus. For two of Jesus’ disciples to be named Judas while Judea and Jerusalem are again an occupied territory, either means families are hoping for a repeat and naming their babies in protest, or these men are taking to themselves the moniker of a revolutionary. Further, Iscariot is not a surname, but a nickname, derived from a kind of concealed dagger. So, this person’s name is something more like a mob enforcer would have; less of a first name, last name situation and more like ‘Guido the Knife,’ as one of my professors put it. Passover is such a big deal and so many people fill the city that Pontus Pilate, the Roman Governor, is in town to make sure things don’t get out of hand. He would have ridden into the city on a horse, under Roman insignia, paying homage to Caesar, who styled himself as “savior” and the son of the gods. The Jewish ruling class is nervous about this guy flouting their authority and showing no respect for Rome. They worry that Pilate will think they can’t control the people, and maybe that they actually can’t control the people, and so they are plotting to kill Jesus as an insurrectionist, as a usurper, as an example; a threat to the Pax Romana, the so-called “peace” Rome imposed through intimidation and brute force. Then here comes Jesus, a grown man riding on a baby horse, surrounded by Zealots and at least two guys named Judas, one of which is probably armed— they’re all waving palm branches— a symbol of Jewish resistance— to shouts of Hosanna, which means “save us” and calling Jesus “Son of David,” meaning the rightful ruler of Jerusalem and the Jewish people. We have to assume that the folks who watched Jesus lampoon Roman symbols, chide the Jewish rulers who had colluded with Rome, and now shouted “Save us, Son of the Real King!” were assuming that Jesus was going to start a revolution, was going to ‘drain the swamp,’ was going to storm the governor’s palace, was going to be the savior who sat on the throne of David and ushered in a new golden age of Judean prosperity and universal respect. Or maybe they thought that this is how God was going to finally bring justice and real peace. That Jesus was going to remove the tyrant and his oligarchs, establish a new, egalitarian kingdom, a commonwealth of and for the people. But Jesus’ very first stop upon entering the city is the Temple, and he doesn’t just drive out the leadership; he drives out everyone, even the livestock, and seems angry that the temple had become a place of commerce instead of a house of Prayer. Everyone was surprised and deeply disappointed. Whatever they had hoped Jesus would do, he had not done. Have you ever been disappointed with God? Have you prayed and hoped and dreamed and fretted and plotted and worried and wondered why God would take so long to act? Or why God would not act at all, and allow such terrible things to happen? Reality is often disappointing, a cascade of dashed hopes and realized fears. Coping with this disappointment— or avoiding coping with this disappointment— becomes a way of life. When this reality disappoints us it is easier to be mad at reality, to embrace an exonerating and indemnifying cynicism as a protective shield. It is easier to avoid reality, to embrace fantasy and fiction, conspiracy and the illusion of control; to numb out, to dissociate, to distract ourselves from our disappointment or from being disappointed again. But Palm Sunday is an invitation to sit in our disappointment— with reality, with God. Jesus is, as Richard Rohr says, “Reality with a personality,” Jesus came to show us that God is reality itself, that our anger and disappointment is with God. We had hoped for a God of prevention and protection but we have a God of redemption and solidarity. Jesus has a relationship with reality, with God, that is able to face reality as it is and to grieve for it, until a new relationship arises from the grave of the old. Jesus came to show us in the Garden of Gethsemane that he shares our anger and disappointment, and that forgiveness is the product of grief. Jesus has come to show us that reality includes the cross. Palm Sunday is not the end of the story. Palm Sunday is the starting point— from which, we will see the whole cycle of life, and death, and resurrection. Palm Sunday is the invitation to begin again, to enter into this grief, this disappointment, this anger at reality, this anger at God; because we cannot grieve until we are honest about our disappointment, cannot forgive and be forgiven until there is confession and reparation. Palm Sunday is the invitation to begin to trust that life and death and resurrection is the pattern of all things. Palm Sunday is the invitation to lean in, to follow the whole story, to find ourselves within it, and it within our everyday lives, until it builds with in us the resilience that we have called faith, until it leads us to trust in reality, to trust in God. So, join us this week. Come and make the whole journey with us. Especially if you are disappointed in reality, especially if you are angry, especially if you are grieving or struggling to grieve, especially if you need forgiveness or you’re struggling to forgive, especially if you are struggling to reconcile with reality as it is. There is a place for you in this story, because this story is yours. I promise you will not stay disappointed.
The Celtic people of Ireland have a term used to describe the moments or physical spaces in which a person experiences an overwhelming sense of transcendence, of con nection to the divine, to the great beyond. They call these encounters “thin places” because the veil between this world and the next has grown so thin as to be, in that place and at that moment, imperceivable. Particularly in Ireland there are mountains, coasts, and old sanctuaries now in ruins where people have reported feeling God’s presence in such real and powerful ways that they forget where they are altogether. Others describe thin places that are more local and intimate; in a time of prayer or great distress, in a moment of discernment or confusion, the veil thins and brings an overwhelming sense of peace and tranquility, of clarity or purpose. Perhaps you have experienced such a thin place— a location, a state of mind, a taste or smell, that ushers you into an intimate encounter with the Divine, an encounter that leaves you different than when you arrived, and your understanding of the Holy or the Holy One will never be the same. Today we come to the last Sunday of Lent. This season of contemplation, curiosity, and confession has brought us to a thin place in Jesus’ ministry. After raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus and his disciples are gathered in the home of Mary and Martha and the now living Lazarus is at the table with them. It’s hard to even imagine the overwhelming sense of joy and gratitude, of awe and astonishment that must have filled the air in that place. A beloved friend, brother, and follower of Jesus has just been resurrected from the dead, and not warm-bodied resuscitation dead, but stiff and stinking four-days-dead. This resurrection is not only miraculous, not only a sign of God’s work in Jesus’ ministry, but for Jesus, it’s personal. These are his friends, a sort of chosen family for Jesus here in Bethany. Clearly a place where Jesus felt at home. And among the cross-conversations, passing food, laughter, and celebration, Mary seems to slip away unnoticed. On her return, the casual atmosphere quiets as the sweet smell of perfume overtakes the scent of fresh bread, good wine, and unwashed bodies. Mary has knelt at the feet of Jesus who was reclined at the table. She has opened a jar of pure nard and she has anointed Jesus’ feet, wiping up the excess with her hair. Mary has found her thin place and she has poured out holy oil to mark this sacred moment. Mary makes Jesus the Anointed One— she marks Jesus as the Christ. What she bought for his burial she couldn’t hold. It was not precious by comparison to the surpassing worth of the feet it soothed and salved. The Greek has a word for this—Kairos. This word is often translated as “time,” but that is because we don’t really have a word for this kind of time. It is a point in time when the past, present, and future meet in a divine and miraculous moment. This was the moment, and she had learned her lesson; and she would rather honor the living than grieve the dead. If death meant anything now. Yet there is one who cannot enter this thin place with those at the table this night. Judas cannot move past the tangible things, the things he controls, things like money, things like their public image. He cannot fathom “wasting” such a costly commodity nor can he believe that Jesus would let something so intimate happen so openly. Judas is not worried about where God is and what God is doing in this moment, because he doesn’t count moments. He counts minutes because time is money and he’s afraid they’re running out of both. There is another Greek word for time—chronos. Judas is a slave to chronos time, the kind of time that keeps an eye on the watch, that calculates what is valuable or invaluable, what is spent and what is saved, based on what it has to offer his position, his pocket, his power. Judas knows Jesus can’t have much time left. Judas knows it would take the average Judean almost 10 months to earn what that perfume would cost. Judas knows what they could get for it and how much he could pocket if they did. A touch lightheaded and feeling ever poorer as the scent began to fade, Judas protests, “We could have sold that for a small fortune and given the money to the poor.” Jesus defends Mary: “She bought this for my burial. It is always time to help the poor. But you won’t always have this moment.” I wonder if we too aren’t slaves to chronos time, constantly trying to squeeze a few extra seconds out of our relentless schedules, evaluating what gets our attention based on what it has to offer us in return, taking for granted this table we share with the Anointed One, appalled at the wasteful and undignified piety of others at the table. Yet as people of faith, God is inviting us into kairos time, God’s time, counted in moments and not minutes. Time that doesn’t ask, “how can I spend and save my time,” but instead asks “how is God at work in this moment, and how am I called to meet God there?” This is exactly what Mary is doing in our passage today. Her relationship with Jesus is so intimate that she meets him in this moment this thin place, this place between death and life, this place between what has been and what will be, this place between what God has done and what God is doing. And Mary chooses to be present in this moment with Jesus, forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead. Beloved, we stand on a threshold this day, Between living our lives to the minute And living our lives in the moment. Jesus is inviting us to the thin places That are our very lives, To recognize that Jesus is still with us In the monotony of our ordinary days, In the sinks full of dishes Baskets full of laundry Looming deadlines, Failing health, And dwindling bank accounts. In these moments, We can live like Judas, With an eye on the bottom line, And a hand in the cookie jar, Looking out for ourselves, Minding the minutes Until things are better, Until things settle down, Until the congregation is bigger, Until the market bounces back, Until the midterms, Until… Until we have taken the time for granted And missed Jesus in the moment. Or We can live like Mary, With our eyes on Jesus. We can forget the anxiety of the minute We can embrace God’s abundance now, We can eulogize the living, Telling them what they mean to us while we have them Instead of waiting for their funeral. We can find Jesus with us In our homes, At our tables, At our desks, computers, workbenches, dashboards. We can live in the thin places Between Kairos and Chronos time Where Jesus comes to meet us. Places like this table, this thin place Where the church on earth And the host of Heaven Join in an unending hymn To praise the Son of the Living God And meet Christ in the moment. We can come here And share in this table Where the line between bread and body And wine and blood Has become so thin That they have become one. And having met Jesus here We can pour out our lives Like precious oil, A fragrant offering to Jesus, To bless the meeting place of heaven and earth And blur the line between the minute and the moment. Amen.
“There was a man who had two sons.” This is how Jesus begins this parable we have come to call the Prodigal Son. There was a man who had two sons and one day the young er son came to the father and asked for his share of the inheritance. The father gave his son his share of the property and the son left to make a new life in a new place. The younger son used his fortune to buy friends and throw parties. Then tragedy struck. There was a famine. And the younger son ran out money and ran out of friends and wound up feeding pigs and wishing he could eat so well. So, the younger son decided to go home. “I can’t just walk up to dear ol’ dad and expect him to feed and clothe me,” the younger son thought to himself. “I’ve burned that bridge. I can’t be his son. But I can be his slave.” So, the son goes home and as he nears the house his father, who’s kept his eye on the horizon ever since the younger son disappeared behind it, runs to meet him on the road. The younger son can’t even get out the little speech he’s been rehearsing the whole way home. The father won’t have it. “Quick!” the father shouts to a slave, “Get a robe! Get some shoes! Get a ring! My son is home!! I thought you were dead, But you’re alive! We’ll have a party! I’ve been fattening up a calf for just this reason!! We have to celebrate!!” This is where the older brother comes in. Maybe it’s the end of the day and he’s come from the field for dinner. Maybe the sound of music or the smell of the roasting meat drew him home in curiosity. Whatever the reason, When a slave says the party is for his younger brother he’s indignant. He cannot, WILL not share this meal. “Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you,” protests the older son. “never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!” Now, If we’re being honest, I’m sure most of us can concede that the guy has a point. I mean, this older son has stayed and done his job, honored his father, as the law commands. He’s been there the whole time and now he’s expected to celebrate the return of his whoremongering little brother? I mean, for heaven’s sake, no one even told him about the party!! He had to ask a slave what was going on. I’m not sure I would have gone in either. Maybe you’ve had this same feeling. Maybe you’ve lost a brother or a sister to years of addiction and your Mom or Dad seem to be enabling them. Maybe you’re working harder and longer, struggling to make ends meet, and folks who don’t seem to work at all are eating up your tax dollars in social services. Maybe you’ve been in line at the grocery store behind someone speaking Spanish and using an EBT card and thought to yourself “I can’t believe I’m paying for that.” Maybe you’ve been angry that so much time and resources have been spent on wars in other countries when there are so many problems in this country. The rising tide of nationalism and classism in our nation has been exploited to drive a wedge between neighbors, even between family members. Those of us who were born citizens, or had access to the resources to become citizens, we, like the older brother, may see the plight of our Latinx siblings, the quagmire of foreign entanglement, the rising food prices and falling stock prices and say, “Not it! Not my problem. You need to stay where you are, fix your own country make your own money.” This is what the older brother means when he says “this son of yours.” He means, “this is your problem, and not mine.” This thinking largely comes from the fact that we have been fed a steady diet of individualism and hyper-capitalism that teaches us that life is everyone for themselves, the rich have worked harder than the poor, and that with enough work we too will be rich. We have no responsibility for anyone but ourselves. What I have I earned, I deserve. If you don’t have, you did not earn, and do not deserve. But Jesus’ parable leads us in a different direction. ‘Son, you don’t understand,” the father says to the older brother. “You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours— but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!” A clean conscience needs no mercy, and the older son wants the younger son to pay, to work for it, to deal with his problems on his own, just like he had. But the father reminds the older son that everything he has he has by the same benevolence that killed the fatted calf to celebrate with the younger son. Where the older son wants to distance himself from the younger son, the father calls him a brother. “this brother of yours.” This meal is not just a party, it is an act of reconciliation. You see, this feast not only reconciles father to child but child to child, brother to brother, and this feast, by which the father receives back his son, is the same feast by which the older son receives back his brother. The feast of our reconciliation is the Eucharist, where we are not only reconciled to our Parent, but to each other, brother to brother, sister to sister, sibling to sibling. God is reconciling the world to Godself and to each other. No matter how far away the younger son went, how much he squandered, how shameful his living, how little he thought he deserved it, he was always a son, always a brother. And no matter how much time and energy is spent working for the father, doing what is right, avoiding what is wrong, the older son is no more a son that the younger. Nothing could undo or augment their relationship to their father and brother. But by this celebration feast, each could begin to renew his relationship with his father and brother. Beloved, there is nothing in all of creation that could ever separate us from the love of God. But none of us are only children. This meal that gives us back our relationship with God our Parent also gives us back our neighbors as brothers, as sisters, as siblings. We can no longer say “This son of yours is here illegally.” “This daughter of yours is not my responsibility.” Because we are God’s children too, and every child of God is our sibling, our responsibility. This feast of our reconciliation is not a private meal for two, but an open invitation to celebrate that we are all God’s family by the same grace. We were dead and are now alive!! We were lost and are now found!! And this is something to celebrate!! AMEN.
“Have you heard the news?” I hear this question a lot. We like to be in the know, to have the scoop, the latest information; to be informed, on the inside. As the new s cycle has gone from the morning paper and the evening news to real time, live-tweeting, video streaming, 24/365, keeping up with the news has become quite the chore. In the early twentieth century, German theologian Karl Barth advised preachers to write their sermons with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. As a smartphone has replaced a newspaper this sort of preaching has become ever more elusive, and I sometimes change the direction of my sermons to address midweek changes, sometimes even early Sunday morning changes. Our screens have become extensions of our psyches, even of our bodies. TVs, computers, tablets, smartphones have become part of how we communicate, how we show up in the world and how the world shows up to us. As these technologies become more and more immersive they become more and more subversive of our ability to rightly perceive reality. These devises, their apps, and their creators are dividing us into market segments in virtual spaces, and into us and them, we and they, the rational and the duped, the sane and the insane, the good and the evil in actual spaces. Algorithms sort and silo us, monitoring and predicting our behavior, radicalizing us with confirmation biases, and then when they can predict exactly how we will behave, they hit us with ads, a private form of propaganda, and sell us whatever they are shilling. These apps are free to us because of what marketers will pay for access to us. Corporate pimps are trafficking us and we are grateful for the opportunity. And it is in exactly this contrived environment, this virtual reality, that most of us consume the news. That news is rarely good. The occasional feel-good, human interest story might sneak past the editors, but crime, mayhem, tragedy, and terror all sell far more clicks and downloads, streams and views, than 80-year-olds graduating college, lemonade stands to fight cancer, or dogs saving their owners from housefires. Folks generally take one of two approaches to the constant barrage of bad news. First, escape. Folks will turn to forms of religion that promise the great by-and-by, the ‘far off sweet forever,’ where suffering will be no more, and my absolution here and now not only frees me from guilt, but also responsibility. Others escape into a liquor bottle, or a pill bottle, or through a syringe, pipe, or straw, through sexual encounters, junk food, social media, video games, or whatever habit or substance they can use to ignore the terror and despair of reality. Some even choose sheer ignorance, a genuine unknowing of the state of things, a sort of ‘plausible deniability’ for any responsibility for the way things are. Escapists are easily manipulated because they’re already looking for alternate realities, and the creators of these screens we all love so much are the very folks selling you their brand of alternate reality. The second way folks respond to the cavalcade of terrible news is confrontation. Some folks are fighting mad, ready to mount an army to take on the forces of darkness in this world. But this is often its own form of drunkenness, an intoxication from too much consumption, and while the fervor for justice is laudable, they usually burn out quickly, like gasoline. And the purveyors of these screens we love are counting on the combustion of this energy to drive more and more time with these very screens. Ok. What does any of this have to do with the lessons for today? Isaiah is written to the people of Israel after they have been conquered and exiled by a foreign power and the prophet is calling the people not to be persuaded by the glamour and glory of the tyrant, but to remember and return to the Lord. The Apostle Paul writes to the city of Corinth, a Greek city conquered by the Roman Empire and living under Roman rule, and the Apostle tells them to remember that God rescued the Israelites from slavery to Pharaoh. Jesus’ entire ministry happens in Judea, which is also a Roman occupied territory. Empires rise and fall. Regimes come and go. Principalities and powers spring up and wither. And in the meantime, tyrants commit atrocities, tragedies happen, customs and cultures die out, plates shift, storms destroy, pandemics disrupt and kill, etc., etc.. Suffering is part of this life. No one escapes it entirely. And direct opposition usually makes the suffering worse. But Jesus proposes a third way. Repentance. And before you accuse me of victim-blaming, stay with me. We tend to think of repentance in terms of guilt and reform, of feeling bad and trying hard to do better in the future. But, given the context, maybe there is a better way to think of repentance. Jesus is not blaming the victims of Pilate’s atrocity for their own desecration. Nor is Jesus blaming the victims of a falling tower for their own demise. Instead, Jesus calls his hearers to repentance— that is, to change their minds, to set their minds on reality as it is, and each time they find themselves drawn to escape or confrontation to return to reality as it is. In our modern parlance, we might call this mindfulness or meditation. The mystics and monastics might have called it contemplation. Others might just call it prayer. And science is starting to discover that this mindfulness, meditation, contemplation, prayer literally changes our brains, creating new neural pathways, thickening the prefrontal cortex, changes our brainwave pattern and makes us less likely to feel anxious or depressed. And even for those who suffer from clinical depression and anxiety disorders, mindfulness, meditation, contemplation, prayer are often part of the clinical approach to treatment. This mindful repentance anchors us in reality as it is and disentangles us from the lies and terrorism of tyrants and tycoons, of algorithms and advertisers, and roots us in reality— that is, it roots us in Christ, who is “reality with a personality,” as Richard Rohr says. When Christ becomes our lens for reality, we can see the cross as the form reality takes, the intersection between matter and spirit. Reality includes suffering and reality transcends suffering with meaning and purpose. This is precisely what we mean by redemption, the making something from nothing God has always been doing in Christ. This mindful repentance is the path through the wilderness in which our Lenten journey began, the path through this wild, uncharted place filled with bad news and anxiety, and the temptations toward easy answers, quick fixes, and addiction. The call to repentance is not a call to feel guilty and try harder. The call to repentance is the call to change our minds, to reclaim our minds from those trying to co-opt them, to reject all the false realities of tyrants and tycoons, and to root ourselves firmly in ‘reality with a personality,’ in Christ Jesus. And when we find ourselves anxious and avoidant or anxious and confrontational, the call is to return to reality as it is in Christ, and to return and return again and again as often as we stray. This takes practice. This is practice itself. But paths through the wilderness are made by walking. And there are many of us walking this path with together. So, when you hear bad news, be mindful, return to the Lord, remember that reality includes suffering and transcends it. We have to change our relationship to the news in order to change our relationship to reality. Mindfulness, meditation, contemplation, prayer is the practice of repentance, returning the heart and mind to Christ, who is reality itself. In changing our minds, we make ourselves less manipulable. We have to do some research— which is not the same thing as googling— and be much more discerning about the media we consume. We must seek our experts and we must listen to them. And when we have cut ourselves off from the tools the tyrants and tycoons are using to manipulate us, we become little outposts within the empire where “alternate ‘realities’” have no sway. We become digital hermits, leaving behind social media and entering society. We become pilgrims and sojourners in an adopted land, seekers of truth in the realm of false gods. Have you heard the news? The good news that Jesus is calling us to repent, to change our relationship to reality, returning with all our heart and mind to Christ, who is the Truth, reality itself. Amen.