My Sheep Hear My Voice
I have a Bible Study tip for you this morning. It is often important to ask who is being addressed in a particular passage.
In our passage from John’s gospel this morning we encounter two parties who are at odds. On the one hand we have the people John refers to as “the Jews” and on the other hand we have Jesus.
A word of course must be spoken here about what is meant by the term “the Jews.” Remember that Jesus and all of his close followers during his earthly ministry were Jews.
As this word occurs in John’s gospel, it means those Jews who have not been open to Jesus’ teaching and do not accept what he says and does as evidence of God’s fullness in him. They were not open to John the Baptizer’s preaching either. In the other gospels, these folks are generally referred to as “the scribes and the pharisees.” I.e., Jewish leaders.
Let’s be clear: It is wrong and dangerous to negatively identify Jewish people of today with Jesus’ adversaries as John tells this story about back then.
But to return to the Bible study tip, let’s ask the question of who this passage addresses. This passage describes a conversation. Jesus and 1the scribes and pharisees are talking to each other. But who is the gospel writer talking to?
The original hearers of John’s gospel were members of precarious communities spread across the Mediterranean. This storytelling is addressed to them.
These precarious communities had come together over time as followers of an executed man accused of blasphemy and sedition. As their number expanded their members included a variety of ethnic groups, both Jews and Gentiles. They included to some extent different social classes who were admonished to treat one another equally, regardless of economic status – and were even told that in Jesus there was neither male nor female and neither slave nor free.
We are told in John’s gospel that Jewish followers of Jesus were cast out of the synagogue, and so they no longer had their traditional connections with their religious community of origin.
Throughout John’s Gospel, John highlights the divisions between those of the darkness and those of the light and the writer emphasizes that as Jesus enters history a great division emerges between those who are drawn to him and those who reject him: Those who are his sheep and those who are not.
So, John’s gospel is written to the precarious communities who are trying to stay together despite social differences in uncharted territory. John emphasizes Jesus’ words to inspire confidence in the unity of those who DO hear his voice and see in his signs the revelation of the fullness of God that dwells in him.
One of the reasons they are precarious communities is that they are receiving a different message from the rulers, powers, and institutional systems around them.
John writes so that these precarious communities will overhear this conversation and take what Jesus says to their hearts, for their encouragement, to strengthen their confidence – despite their vulnerability.
Jesus is the shepherd of the way, the truth, and the life. “Hear my voice over the competing voices that urge you to greed, fear, and cruelty.” Jesus’ voice is not the only voice speaking. And it’s not the loudest voice. Then or now. And there are those who claim to speaking his message who are deceivers.
I’d like to linger on this notion of “precarious communities.” I want us to take that very seriously – not just in thinking about the first audience of John’s gospel, but of us.
I used to say that if you have health insurance, and Wegmans nearby, you pretty much don’t need God.
What I meant was that for most of us in Fairport, we could mainly take care of ourselves without any extraordinary help from God.
Around here we normally aren’t living precarious lives day to day. Of course, each of us have moments of coming to grips with our vulnerabilities, but, on the whole, most of us live relatively confident of our social and material position.
But be that as it may, as I think about it now, I’m not at all confident that this will continue.
When I think about the extraordinary economic and political uncertainty that we face today and as I think about the growing, unrelenting effects of climate change and all the other environmental threats that are challenging us and will increasingly challenge us, I invite us to seriously overhear Jesus’ words as one of those early precarious Christian communities.
Let’s hear this passage today with the ears of a precarious community so that we begin to prepare ourselves to have the confidence we will need in what are likely increasingly difficult days ahead. Let’s hear it with confidence that Jesus is the shepherd of the way, the truth, and the life. Let’s hear it over the competing voices that urge us to greed, fear, and cruelty.
Again, Jesus’ voice is not the only voice speaking. And it’s still not the loudest voice.. There are still those who claim to be speaking Jesus’ message who are lying.
In our passage this morning the text makes four important points as these precarious communities overhear again the words of Jesus through the Gospel. Let’s listen so that we hear them as well.
1. These precarious communities are reminded: You hear my voice.
I have not abandoned you. Through the HS you remain in touch with me as much as the original disciples were in touch with me. This is an ongoing relationship. Jesus’ voice is inviting these precarious communities to share their life with him and to take his life into their own.
John’s gospel is often said to be the most mystical of the Gospels. It speaks of a deep connectedness and transparency between God and the world through Jesus. To be in touch with Jesus is to be in touch with God.
Even when they cannot make out clearly just exactly what Jesus means, Jesus’ followers are continually invited into the conversation to listen more deeply, to cultivate the capacity to pay less attention to the distracting voices and noises of the world and be more deeply attuned to the voice that invites them more and more deeply into love. To conjoin their experience with the experience of Jesus and the conversation among Jesus’ followers so that they are more and more faithfully following the shepherd.
Today this passage gives us assurance that we can hear the shepherd’s voice. We can hear it. We can open ourselves to the fullness of Jesus’ guidance.
We can let go of excuses that it is somehow not yet clear enough. We can unplug ourselves from the ego-driven messages of consumer, comfort culture and ego-driven messages of status and ambition, regularly enough and long enough to hear the shepherd’s voice?
2. These precarious communities are reminded: You have eternal life.
Your life is no longer bound by time and space. Your life is in time and space, but no longer bound by it. Your life now extends/opens up beyond the limits of the time allotted in this world.
Moreover, the life we live now is continuous with that eternal life. So Jesus’ voice is inviting us to live into eternity not just in the future but in the now. Jesus’ voice calls them into eternal communion, eternal connection with the love that is the source and being of all that is. Jesus tells them: your life can never be called small, insignificant, meaningless, or worthless. It is eternal. It has no end. Your life is unbounded and precious to the Shepherd. No limits in God’s love.
We, too, can have the confidence to embrace eternal life. We can look at the particulars of our own lives in this world and discern how they fit into God’s purposes. Our decisions can fit into God’s larger call on our lives. Our priorities can line up with God’s priorities.
Or another way to put this: We can practice the eternal language of love in this life so that we will be fluent in love in the life to come.
First: You hear the shepherd’s voice.
Second: You have eternal life.
3. Thirdly, these precarious communities are reminded: You have been given to me by the Father and you will not be torn from me.
Yes, you have been disconnected from your original communities, religions, and fellow worshippers. You have no place to go back to. And you are not getting any encouragement from those around you who are following other paths, but do not focus on the tenuous worldly connections that bind you together.
What brought you together to be my followers is deeper than that. It is the very grace and love of God that has called you together. Despite all the difficulties and fragility you might encounter, I assure you that this call to follow me is bigger than you. Bigger than your desire or preference. Bigger than your past or your future. It is based on the breath of the Holy Spirit which is ultimately more stable than the mountains. It is based on the bond of love that is as firmly fixed as the roots of the sturdiest tree. This is why my new commandment is that you love one another.
We, too, are invited to be drawn more deeply into connection with Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and with one another. Our ability to hear more clearly the voice of the shepherd only depends on our attending to the relationship. We can intentionally spend time with the Shepherd – devoting ourselves to prayer and to worship and to paying attention to what Jesus says.
4. Fourthly, these precarious communities are reminded: I and the Father are one.
Just as you and I cannot be torn apart, I and the Father are not to be separated. To see me is to see the Father. To hear me is to hear the Father. I do everything according to the will of the Father. I do not blaspheme the Father in saying this, but those who say that I am insulting God are the ones who are opposed to God. To be caught up with me is to be caught up with the Father. To be drawn to me is to be drawn to God.
Have confidence: We do not live apart from God. We live embraced by God, always and everywhere. Like it or not, that is the truth of the cosmos revealed in Jesus, God has entered humanity in Jesus Christ, invited us to be a part of God’s loving and reconciling action in history, in our world, and blessed all of creation in that earthly, flesh and blood reality.
You hear my voice.
You have eternal life.
You have been given to me by the Father and you will not be torn from me.
I and the Father are one.
The precarious communities of Jesus’ followers needed to hear these words in the face of those who would deny or distort them. And the same is true for us.
The loudest voices around us may be those calling us to stray from the path of compassion, peace, and mercy.
As we in our time may face challenging circumstances, as a precarious community, let us live, serve, and love with confidence and courage, always attuned to the voice of the Good Shepherd.
Hear again the psalm of the shepherd. Hear it confidently as a reality that is always unfolding in your life. May its words be like noise-cancelling headphones that drown out the cacophony of distraction and distortion:
Psalm 23
1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
In these moments of quiet, let other voices give way to the voice of peace, the voice of the Good Shepherd.
Everything (In) Between: Righteousness & Mercy
This year’s Lenten worship series invites us to get in-between black and white binaries. Our series amplifies Jesus’ invitation to move away from paralyzing polarities that obscure, rather than clarify, the reality we face.
We are coming to understand that while these dualistic binaries and polarities may seem to simplify our lives at first glance, they can easily keep us from grappling with the deeper truth into which Christ is calling us.
Today, we consider the alleged polarity between righteousness and mercy. We will come to see that these are not in opposition. Rather, they are parts of a process in which both work together, bringing healing and reconciliation to individuals and communities.
First, however, I’d like to lay some groundwork by asking you to hear two short questions. Ready?
Are you with us good guys?
Are you with them bad guys?
Of course, these questions can be deployed in a variety of situations; much will depend on who’s asking, and much will depend on what the exact context is. But we can distill out of these questions that the words doing the work in them are the two adjectives: good and bad, and the two pronouns: us and them.
As I think about good and bad and us and them, I can feel how closely us and good stick together and how closely them and bad stick together. Do you feel that?
And that’s not crazy. Especially for us upstanding church folks and most people who feel like they want to be good or try to be good. It’s probably a good thing in most situations to feel like we identify with good people. I suspect that if we want to do the right thing it will generally be an encouragement to us if we’re identifying with those we consider good people who do the right thing. I want to be one of the good guys. Don’t you?
And, conversely, again, especially for us upstanding church folks and most people who feel like they want to avoid being bad or who are trying not to do the wrong things, it can be helpful to in all sorts of ways NOT identify with folks who are behaving badly. We don’t want to be among those bad guys.
But here’s the thing, it can lead us into trouble if we can’t separate us and good. For example, we might be mistaken about what is good. And the crowd who are us might just be reinforcing a wrong understanding about what is good and bad or right and wrong among ourselves and it can be challenging to separate ourselves from our friends.
We must always be aware that we are more likely to be convinced of a wrong idea or bad behavior or practice that is considered right, good, and normal among our friends and associates.
I’m reminded of a gay married couple I once knew. One of the couple was estranged from their parents. Their parents were part of a fundamentalist church that thought their marriage was wrong, that they were in a sinful relationship. And so these parents were estranged from their child and their child’s partner. Now, I’m pretty sure that part of what was going on was that the parents could not separate from the us good guys of their church. This was a sad sad sad situation for the child. Their parents cast them as one of them bad guys.
But even if – even if – one conscientiously believes that same-gender marriage or same-gender romantic relationships are wrong, doesn’t it give us pause that the stickiness between us and good can’t be dissolved to allow for parents to affirm an us that includes their child?
And now we’re in a better position to consider the supposed binary between righteousness and mercy.
Again, consider the two questions:
Are you with us good guys?
Are you with them bad guys?
Righteousness has to do with the adjectives characterizing good and bad actions and persons.
Mercy has to do with the pronouns: whom will we bring into mercy? Mercy is the offer to transform them into part of a larger us. Mercy is the offer to transform them into part of a larger us.
I think you can already begin to see how this plays into the story of Zaccheus before us.
Zaccheus was clearly one of them bad guys. He was a collaborator with the oppressive and hated occupying Romans. To be a tax collector was bad enough, but it seems that he was even more greedy than he needed to be. He was a persecuting enemy collaborator.
And so when Jesus pays Zaccheus special attention, honors Zaccheus – one of them bad guys – the bystanders resent Jesus’ engaging him with respect. Going so far as to honor Zaccheus with the opportunity to host Jesus in his home. How can Jesus honor one of them bad guys?
From Zaccheus’ standpoint, he is attracted by Jesus’ celebrity status. But he wants to remain invisible. He’s hiding. Being in the sycamore tree is a way of seeing without being seen. He knows he is one of “them bad guys.”
But we can see what is going on here: Jesus identifies him as one of us – ultimately referring to Zaccheus as a child of Abraham. One of us. Jesus sees him as a lost sheep, not a marginal goat or a treacherous wolf. And in engaging with Zaccheus, the opening for restoration and healing emerges.
When Jesus invites him to come down from the tree, and in inviting himself to be Zaccheus’ guest, he breaks through the them to recognize Zaccheus as one of Jesus’ us. And, as Zaccheus becomes part of Jesus’ us, Zaccheus finds himself empowered to repent back into righteousness.
Mercy is not opposed to righteousness; mercy is a part of the path toward righteousness.
The steps of progression go like this:
They are one of them bad guys. A recognition that they are doing a bad thing.
We recognize that they are still one of us. We offer mercy.
This opens the door to their self-recognition, repentance, and change to righteousness.
They become one of us good guys.
Note that recognizing deviations from righteousness is part of the progression. It’s part of the package. Being a chiseling, traitorous tax collector is bad. Let’s not forget that moral judgments – moral differentiations – are appropriate. People get hurt when people do bad things. Let’s not lose sight of that.
But at the same time, note that righteousness and mercy are not antithetical, both are part of a process. A sequence. Our encounter with Jesus challenges us to participate in that process, mindful of both mercy and righteousness.
In the material that supports this Everything In Between series, there’s a reference to a piece by a popular Christian author, Nadia Bolz Weber, who wrote this in her substack blog in December of 2024, three and a half months ago.
A couple weeks ago as I read so many passionate pleas for people to refuse to attend Thanksgiving with family members who voted for Trump (even if your uncle has loved you your entire life, you were expected out of ideological loyalty to abandon the reality of that love for the dopamine bump of self-righteousness) I found myself wishing we could just shake the etch-a-sketch in this country. And that maybe when the silvery sand settled blank, every one of us who has been incrementally pushed farther apart from each other over the years … could see each other as beautiful and worthy of flourishing: trans folks, gun owners, immigrants, “trad wives”, military veterans, incarcerated folks, prison guards, atheists, priests, straight white guys, Black women. That feels like the Kingdom of God. And the Kingdom of God, like its founder, refuses to be domesticated by our current ideological agendas.
[https://thecorners.substack.com/p/the-case-for-revival-an-announcement]
My original intention was that my message this morning would end on this note. These words are certainly ones I endorse. Ultimately, the division between good guys and bad guys is an illusion. Jesus is always calling us away from finger-pointing into the larger us.
Yet the world has moved on in the three and half months since mid-December when she wrote this and I need to acknowledge that as well, so I invite you to come out on a limb with me. And maybe you will feel the urge to take up a saw.
As the weeks have gone by, the current regime in Washington has operated with an increasing level of callousness, cruelty, and recklessness that I can only characterize as evil. We know it’s evil because of a lack of respect for human dignity and the abuse of power. The current regime in Washington is doubling down on the stickiness of us-good and acting out revenge on those they consider them bad guys. The current regime knows neither righteousness nor mercy.
In the last two months we have moved beyond the level of political and policy disagreement into the realm of moral turpitude. This is not a matter of ideological agenda. It is a matter of identifying evil when we see it.
I can tell you that I preached regularly for 35 years. On many occasions I had political and policy disagreements with the government. Sometimes those disagreements were rooted in moral and ethical positions rooted in the gospel. Yet moral purity is not to be expected in governing, and there are often many competing interests that governments must consider in enacting policies. I get that.
The situation we confront today is starkly different. I am calling on us to recognize together that what’s going on now is not normal. And it’s not right. Again, the current regime knows neither righteousness nor mercy. Some people are doing bad things and other people are getting hurt. And worst of all, the regime pretends that it is standing up for Christianity, adding blasphemy to the indictment.
So, if we good, upstanding church folk are going to be true to our baptismal vows, we need to recognize it and respond.
We have vowed to:
…accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.
And that is one step in the righteousness – mercy progression. Recognizing bad behavior.
I confess that I am not clear about what the next steps are in actual practice. I’m open to suggestions. I am clear, however, that we are called to proceed with courage, wisdom, and humility, to find our way toward the kind of wider mercy which Nadia Bolz Weber envisions.
In the coming days, let our prayer be that whenever and however this day’s Zaccheuses come down from hiding in their sycamore trees, we can find the way and the place in-between righteousness and mercy. And until then, let us pray for the courage, wisdom, and humility to resist evil, injustice, and oppression.
I invite you to begin those prayers in these moments of quiet.
Everything (In) Between: Neighbors & Strangers
This year’s Lenten worship series invites us to go beyond black and white binaries. The series amplifies Jesus’ invitation to move away from paralyzing polarities that obscure, instead of clarify, the reality we face.
These dualistic binaries and polarities at first glance may seem to simplify our lives, but they can easily keep us from grappling with the deeper truth into which Christ is calling us.
This morning we consider the alleged polarity between neighbor and stranger. Let’s dig in.
As we are presented with Luke’s text, the parable of the Good Samaritan is placed within another story. It’s a story within a story. A teacher of the law stands up to test Jesus. He asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Characteristically, Jesus turns the question back to the one who would put him to the test, asking what is written in the law.
The lawyer gives what may have been a rather commonplace summary:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.
This is a good answer as far as it goes, but then the teacher of the law must press the fine point of the law -- who is my neighbor?
But what passion is energizing him in this moment? It may seem that his passion is being clear about the law, or even to show Jesus up with his own scholarship, but there is a deeper, more fundamental passion to which the text alerts us:
Luke tells us that he presses Jesus on this point to justify himself. To justify himself. The lawyer is looking to set a boundary to the concept of neighbor to limit the extent of his obligation. His passion is to be on the right side of the law. If his obligation is unlimited, then he will never be able to justify himself. There will always be something more. He can’t stand that idea.
Another way to put this is to say that he is asking the question from a place of anxiety. His anxiety about eternal life, his anxiety about judgment. His anxiety about being somehow “bad.”
Jesus, on the other hand, simply talks about life. If you love God and neighbor, you will live. You will live.
So before we even begin to look at the parable, let’s step back and reframe the question in our own minds.
Now this takes us to what for me is a deeper and more important understanding of just how we ask for, and hear, Jesus’ guidance and teaching.
We’ve noticed in the last several weeks how challenging Jesus’ teachings can be. But why are they challenging? Well, a big reason is that we want to fit Jesus’ teaching into our goals, our plans, and our understandings of the world. And that just doesn’t work.
If our framework for operating in the world is to protect ourselves and our loved ones, to maintain our status and self-image, to be comfortable and content, then loving our enemy, forgiving those who wrong us, giving up our possessions or our claim to our time is not going to fit into that operating framework.
We would prefer Jesus’ instructions to overlay our operating framework, not undermine it.
But Jesus is not usually giving us advice as to how to fit better in the world’s framework. Instead, Jesus is inviting us into a different framework, namely the Kingdom of God or Kindom of God, or the realm of God. Or, we might even say, the kingdom of heaven on earth.
The lawyer wants Jesus to help him justify himself. Instead, Jesus is asking him to let go of himself and his felt need to justify himself. To get out of himself. Jesus invites him to hear with the ears of life. To hear with the ears of life. These ears of life are the ones Jesus refers to when he says in other passages, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
Parables, by their very nature, can allow us to hear. They are often designed to get around our pre-formed judgments and assumptions so that we can hear with the ears of life, the ears of the Kingdom of God. Parables sometimes set out to ambush our preconceptions.
Of course, the parable of the Good Samaritan is so familiar to many of us that it is hard to hear with new ears. But here’s a little thought experiment that may help us. Rabbi Sharon Brous writes:
My friend goes to a church of Caribbean immigrants in downtown Los Angeles. One day his pastor preached: Say you’re walking in downtown LA, or Chicago, or New York. A naked man runs in front of you on the sidewalk, screaming and cursing. What do you do? Most of us, of course, briskly cross the street. That guy’s unwell, we think.
But say you live in a tiny town of maybe fifty households. You’re walking around one day when a naked man runs in front of you on the sidewalk, screaming and cursing. And because you live in a tiny town, you know this man … it’s Henry. Last week, you just happen to know, there was a terrible tragedy, and fire burned Henry’s house to the ground, leaving him with nothing. What do you do? “Henry,” you say, “come with me, friend. You need a warm meal and a safe place to stay.”
Rabbi Brous continues:
What does it take to shift our collective consciousness from stranger who is unwell to Henry, my neighbor, created in God’s own image?…
The challenge is to imagine a fundamentally different reality: a world in which we recognize and fight for each other’s dignity. A world in which we … train our hearts to see even the people others might render invisible. A world in which we recognize that we—images of the Divine—are all bound up in the bond of life with one another. And our hardest and holiest work is not to look away. [https://cac.org/daily-meditations/knowing-our-neighbors/]
The polarity between neighbor and stranger is not in the person who needs help. It is in the context in which we encounter one another in our own situations and stories.
As has often been noted – one of the significant twists in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan is that the identity of the hero is the one with the alien, stranger, and enemy identity, not the one who was beaten and abandoned on the side of the road.
So how do we, as Rabbi Brous asks, “train our hearts to see even the people others might render invisible?”
Training our hearts to see, like training our ears to hear, is no small endeavor. Even to imagine ourselves in the story of distressed Henry set in the small village imagines us as having to focus our attention and activity with some significant energy. To imagine how we begin to approach persons in the context of a city that is constructed to almost guarantee that everyone on the street is practically a stranger to each other – or on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, full of vulnerable travelers who were not neighbors at home – and robbers who were – is even more difficult.
Perhaps we feel ourselves retreating to that place of self-justifying anxiety where we want to put boundaries on who we will count as a neighbor.
So let’s come at the neighbor/stranger polarity from a different direction.
One strand of response to the parable of the Good Samaritan is that while it’s great to take care of the stranger left for dead on the side of the road, what really needs to be done is to improve the road for everyone and get rid of the danger of robbers.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is one of those who offers this reflection. Disapprovingly, Dr. King says,
There is no suggestion that the Samaritan sought to investigate the lack of police protection on the Jericho Road. Nor did he appeal to any public officials to set out after the robbers and clean up the Jericho road. Here was the weakness of the good Samaritan. He was concerned merely with temporary relief, not with thorough reconstruction. He sought to sooth the effects of evil, without going back to uproot the causes. [https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/one-sided-approach-good-samaritan]
I don’t think this tack really matches the parable’s moment, but it may lead us to this thought: perhaps we need to begin our consideration not in the dramatic crisis situation, but in the ordinary, everyday situations in which we find ourselves.
In Jesus’ day most people – and indeed for most people of most of human history – interacted with the same couple of hundred people their whole lives. Strangers were unusual. Strangers were “strange.”
Nowadays, however, we interact with strangers all the time: at the store, in our workplaces, at medical facilities, in the car, online, in the newspaper and on television. We are confronted by stranger after stranger. On top of that, more and more of us encounter more and more people of various ethnic backgrounds, clothing styles, and various features of personal adornment.
It might be helpful to simply acknowledge that for many of us, interacting with strangers, let alone trying to be neighbors with strangers, can be stressful. And that’s ok.
So perhaps a major task as a response to this parable, is to do what we can to foster a sense of neighborhood, of trust, of acceptance, and community. Perhaps the most helpful stance we can adopt is to be open to encounter the image of God in those we meet in our words, our deeds, and our expectations.
That openness gives the image of God in the other person the opportunity to shine forth and not hide. Neighbors are as much created as they are discovered, and they are created in encounters in which we remember the image of God that is us, which resonates with the image of God that is them.
Or, as a kind of shorthand: The task is to live with Mr. Rogers’ ongoing invitation: won’t you be my neighbor?
In this way we build a stronger, more durable, network of connection so that we create a social context that is more like the village of fifty households than like the anonymizing city or the violent Jericho road.
And church – by the way – is one of the best structures we have for doing that. Here we build a shared network of love and care that then reaches out, turning strangers into neighbors – before the moment of crisis.
And, finally, perhaps it will help us to return to the two commandments themselves.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.”
We can get tied up in legalistically parsing out the dichotomy of neighbor vs. stranger. But in the larger cosmic story, the larger story of love that encompasses neighbor and stranger and everything in between, we receive a vision of the bigger picture. Love is actually all one and not parsed between love for God, love for ourselves, and love for our neighbor and love for the stranger. It’s about allowing that one love to flow freely in our receiving and in our passing it on.
Richard Rohr connects it all this way:
The only way I know how to teach anyone to love God, and how I myself seek to love God, is to love what God loves, which is everything and everyone, including you and including me! “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “If we love one another, God remains in us, and God’s love is brought to perfection in us” (1 John 4:12). Then we love with God’s infinite love that can always flow through us. We’re able to love people and things for themselves and in themselves—and not for what they do for us. That takes both work and surrender. As we get ourselves out of the way, there is a slow but real expansion of consciousness. We’re not the central reference point anymore. We love in greater and greater circles until we can finally do what Jesus did: love and forgive even our enemies.
Most of us were given the impression that we had to be totally selfless, and when we couldn’t achieve that, many of us gave up altogether. One of John Duns Scotus’ most helpful teachings is that Christian morality at its best seeks “a harmony of goodness.” We harmonize and balance necessary self-care with a constant expansion beyond ourselves to loving others. …
Imagining and working toward this harmony keeps us from seeking impossible, private, and heroic ideals. Now the possibility of love is potentially right in front of us and always concrete. Love is no longer a theory or a heroic ideal. Love is seeking the good of as many as possible.
That is the path that leads us away from our anxieties of self-justification. Leads us away from the paralyzing polarities that deflect us from the deeper cosmic reality of God’s creation. Leads us out of the binary framework of us vs. them.
“Love is seeking the good of as many as possible.”
That, my friends, is the path to life. The life into which Jesus invites us every moment.
The First Sign of Jesus
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“And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy
Yes, God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy.”
These are the words of the refrain of the song For Everyone Born, a Place at the Table, by Shirley Erena Murray. We’re not singing it as one of our songs today, but I’d like you to hear the refrain as a frame to the message in the next few minutes. “And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy.”
This miracle of turning water into wine might seem frivolous. Beneath Jesus. Not worth mentioning in the Bible. This passage from John’s Gospel might have seemed downright evil to our Prohibitionist forebears, who clearly saw the dangers that alcohol abuse posed to the community. There’s no question that alcohol abuse is social problem in several dimensions. But this story is not about temperance! And it is not particularly timely for dry January.
But let’s step back and try to read this story with the eyes of our gospel writer, John and his audience. Let’s look at it in the context of how John tries to depict Jesus as incarnating God, i.e. bringing God into our world.
First, let’s notice with what prominence the Gospel writer recounts the story. He tells us that it is the first of his signs.
The first of Jesus’ “signs”. In the Gospel of John there are seven signs that Jesus performs. These are signs that reveal to any who would see, that Jesus is bringing God’s reality into the world, that God is entering the world through this Jesus of Nazareth. For reference, two of his other signs are the healing of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead. I’ll leave it to you to Google the others.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ glory is pointed to, revealed by, the signs that showed the inbreaking of divine power, grace, and love. The signs are God’s abundance breaking into our world.
This turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana is the very first of these signs. Not preaching, not healing, not raising the dead. Turning water into wine.
We find Jesus, his mother, and the disciples have all been invited to a wedding feast. The gospel writer tells us that the wine gave out. We don’t know if the groom had not planned well enough ahead, or if the guests were particularly thirsty, or if more people had stayed longer than planned. We don’t know.
But whatever the reason, John’s audience would immediately understand the gravity of the situation and how it might have happened. If the wine has truly given out, the party was about to come to a halt. This was not a BYOB arrangement. You might think that’s foolish or wrong or whatever, but that was the reality in those days in that context. That party was in trouble.
Jesus’ mother raises the subject to Jesus himself: They have no wine.
Now, the next words from Jesus are puzzling to us: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me. My hour has not yet come.”
And, as you might imagine, biblical scholars have a lot to say about this. Some of it is interesting and helpful.
When Jesus says My hour has not yet come, he is saying that the hour of his death and resurrection has not yet come. So, whatever happens here needs to be understood in terms of that.
But what might be particularly troubling here is how we read “What has this to do with us?” One way to read this is negatively. Jesus is implying this is none of our business. It’s too trivial a matter with which to reflect his glory.
But the other way to read this is more like a frame: What has this to do with us? I’ll show you what this has to do with us. Just watch!
And that take fits with the story because his mother is not put off by Jesus’ words. In fact, she believed that he was saying that he will take care of the situation because her next words are to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.”
Then we learn that there are six stone jars nearby. Jesus tells the servants to fill all the jars with water. Once they had done this Jesus tells them to take some out and give it to the chief steward, the fellow in charge of the food and drink for the feast. So that’s what the servants did. When the steward tastes it, he is amazed. So late in the party this new wine is better than the wine that began the party. The steward calls the bridegroom to express his astonishment.
This is unheard of. Generally the good wine is served first while people’s taste buds still have some sensitivity. But you’ve been hoarding the good stuff for late in the feasting! He is amazed.
John concludes the story by saying that in this act, Jesus revealed his glory and that his disciples believed in him.
This miracle is not frivolous. It is not beneath Jesus. It is a sign.
What does this sign tell us? What does it say that the first sign is to bring wine to a wedding feast?
In the Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky devotes a brief chapter to a reflection on this story. Alyosha hears it being read by one of his fellow monks who is sitting up with the body of the honored monk and elder Zosima. The story changes his life and as he hears it he weeps with joy. Here’s what he says:
I love that passage, it's Cana of Galilee, the first miracle... Ah, that miracle, ah, that lovely miracle! Not their grief, but their joy Christ visited when he worked his first miracle, he helped their joy . . .
He who loves people, loves their joy. Father Zosima used to repeat it all the time, it was one of his main thoughts . One cannot live without joy.
Joy, the joy of some poor, very poor people... Why, of course they were poor, if there wasn't even enough wine for the wedding, And his mother, knew that he came down then not just for his great and awful deed, but that his heart was also open to the simple, artless merrymaking of some uncouth, uncouth but guileless beings, who lovingly invited him to their poor marriage feast.
As Jesus begins his ministry he begins it in a celebration of abundance. He reveals how God created the world to be- filled with blessing and joy.
The prophet Amos had foretold
Behold the days are coming when the mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall flow with it. [Amos 9:13]
Now, let’s go back to the turning point question that Jesus asks and deploy it to set an agenda for ourselves. What has this story to do with us?
As tomorrow we remember with gratitude the life and ministry of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, let me share a recollection he wrote of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery as part of the voting rights struggle. This takes place just a few weeks after the infamous police violence at the Edmund Pettis Bridge and the murders of two civil rights workers:
Some of us started out on March 21 marching from Selma, Alabama. We walked through desolate valleys and across tiring hills. We walked on meandering highways and rested our bodies on rocky byways. Some of our faces were burnt from the outpourings of the sweltering sun. Some literally slept in the mud. We were drenched by the rain. Our bodies were tired. Our feet were sore. The thousands of pilgrims had marched across a route traveled by Sherman a hundred years before. But in contrast to a trail of destruction and bloodshed, they watered the red Alabama clay with tears of joy and love overflowing, even for those who taunted and jeered along the sidelines. Not a shot was fired. Not a stone displaced. Not a window broken. Not a person abused or insulted. This was certainly a triumphant entry into the "Cradle of the Confederacy." And an entry destined to put an end to that racist oligarchy once and for all.
The marchers “watered the red Alabama clay with tears of joy and love overflowing, even for those who taunted and jeered along the sidelines.”
Friends, we live in uncertain times. With tomorrow’s inauguration of President Trump, many of us are worried about what comes next. What comes next for our trans siblings? What comes next for migrants and undocumented workers? What comes next for democracy and the rule of law? What comes next for those who depend on SNAP benefits and Medicaid? What comes next for the prospect of expanded economic justice? Maybe our worries will turn out to be misguided. Maybe not. I can’t say for sure with the authority of the pulpit.
But I can say this: we are continually invited into joy. We are continually invited to live out justice and joy – they go together.
Dr. Barbara Holmes, an African American theologian and spiritual teacher, who died much too early just a couple of months ago teaches us this:
We are born with an inner fire. I believe that this fire is the God within. It is an unquenchable, divine fire. It warms us, encourages us, and occasionally asks us to dance.
Suppose that at the entrance to heaven there is a scale—not a scale to weigh good and bad deeds—but a scale to measure joy. Suppose our passage into the next life will not be determined by the number of souls saved, sermons preached, or holiness pursued. Just joy.
We’ve become very somber Christians in a very somber age. It’s not that we don’t have things to be concerned about. There are wars, natural disasters, deficits, broken relationships and viruses. But in the midst of this, we’re called to joy by a joyful God and a joyful Savior. Hierarchies have always been afraid of a dancing, joyful Jesus. They’re not so worried about the institutional Christ, but they fear this living, singing Jesus who can boogie, who sings all the way to Gethsemane, and tells jokes. Remember the one he told the Pharisees about the camel and the eye of the needle?
No matter the circumstances, we’re called to joy.
Live into joy! God is inviting us into a life of joy.
Since we believe that God is present in all times and places, then there is at least some echo of joy to remember – even if we can’t exactly feel it – in every time and place as well.
Jesus’ turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana is The First of Jesus’ signs. It’s not simply first in time, but it also sets the stage for Jesus’ whole life and ministry. He’s showing us that a foundational confidence/appreciation of joy lubricates the difficulties. Energizes. Inspires. A spirit of celebration is infused into life that both flows from, and testifies to, our trust and faith in God’s goodness.
What does this have to do with us? This has everything to do with us. Let us demonstrate that with our lives! Let us show that as we grow together as a joyful community of faith.
“And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy.”
Let us spend a quiet moment locking that affirmation of justice and joy into our hearts, so that we may keep it with us for whatever lies before us in the days ahead.
The Body of Christ and the New Creation
This morning I’d like to frame our time together with something from Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians. In the fifth chapter he says:
When anyone is in Christ, there’s a new creation. All the old passed away. Everything made new.
Ephesians 4:1-7, 12-13
4 Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. 2 Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love, 3 and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together. 4 You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. 5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.
7 God has given his grace to each one of us measured out by the gift that is given by Christ.
12 God’s purpose was to equip God’s people for the work of serving and building up the body of Christ 13 until we all reach the unity of faith and knowledge of God’s Son. God’s goal is for us to become mature adults—to be fully grown, measured by the standard of the fullness of Christ.
Hear again what St. Paul says at the end of our reading for this morning:
God’s goal is for us to become mature adults—to be fully grown, measured by the standard of the fullness of Christ.
What does that mean? It means we need to be the grown-ups.
When I was a kid, I used to think how great it would be to be a grown-up. After all, grown-ups get to do whatever they want. That turned out not to be so not true, as many of you know. Then I thought, oh, when I’m a retired grown-up, then, I’ll get to do whatever I want. And it turns out that’s not quite true either, of course.
In any case, St. Paul has a particular vision of a grown-up or mature adult in mind. A mature adult, fully grown measured by the standard of Christ. Measured by the standard of Christ.
Not every way of life or every way of being in community leads to being this sort of grown-up. A particular set of virtues, attitudes, and habits are required.
In our passage this morning, Paul calls us to at least some of that particular set of virtues. St. Paul calls us to:
Humility
Gentleness
Patience
Acceptance of one another with love
And together these virtues allow us to
Make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit that ties us together – we seek agreement, ways to work together.
These virtues are at least some of the ingredients for the recipe of being grownups living out love together. For a group to live together.
To be this sort of new creation community does not happen by accident. It happens by the cultivation of these virtues. These virtues we practice together as we worship together, work together, learn together, play together, live together.
We become grown-ups together bringing forth, living out, nurturing, and demonstrating love in our lives and our life together as the Body of Christ.
Each one of us who has been called into this project – has been given grace, not measured out by mere mortal standards, not measured out by some tiny measuring spoon, but measured out by the gift that is given by Christ. I don’t know exactly what size that is, but I can guarantee you that it’s anything but small. Each of us brings some gift of grace that strengthens, widens, and deepens the web of relationships that bind us together. These are not stingy gifts.
And hear this: we are not constrained by our own individual limitations because we are being invited into a community in which our limitations will be made up for by the grace of others and our grace will make up for the weakness of others.
God’s new creation, coming into being in and through us, takes shape as a pattern of relationships of giving and receiving according to the way of love: the way of Christ.. And further, it is God’s delight to live out that economy through us.
It is God’s delight to live out that economy through us.
This new creation is God living out God’s life in the world through us as Christ’s body.
Let’s focus just for a moment on what St. Paul means when he uses the phrase “the Body of Christ.” – when he says we have been called into the Body of Christ.
How do we understand this?
Here’s the quick take version:
Jesus – flesh and blood historical human -was the Body of Christ. Christ’s presence in the world, God’s presence in the world. The Word made flesh.
But – as the Creed says – Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, rose from the dead, and then ascended into heaven. Simply put, that means that the Body of Christ left the world.
But – and here’s the critical point for us: Now we are Christ’s body, that is – God’s bodily presence in the world. We are – in Christ – God’s bodily presence in the world. We – as new creation – become together the Word of God made flesh.
This does not mean that we are the only manifestation of God’s presence in the world. But we are certainly meant to be a particular physical, bodily, real-life instantiation of God’s love in the world. Living out God’s way of radical inclusion, radical generosity, radical forgiveness leading to radical reconciliation, and radical compassion.
We are called to be an inspiration and an encouragement to the whole world to live Jesus’ way of inclusion, generosity, forgiveness, reconciliation and compassion. To live out the new creation system, a new creation economy.
We can think of this new creation economy as a circle of giving and receiving: An economy of God’s abundance.
We are being called to take our place in the new creation circle of giving and receiving: our life practicing humility, gentleness, patience, acceptance, and unity. This circle takes shape as the Body of Christ, God’s presence in the world. A community of grown-ups – measured by the standard of the fullness of Christ.
Our lives become larger and more abundant in the new creation as we help each other, encourage each other, pray for each other. Act as though we are in this together. Like we are one body.
We don’t live our this life alone. At our best, we live it celebrating together all the ways we experience and attend to the new creation that is breaking forth within us and around us.
We tend the new creation as we appreciate one another. As we open ourselves up to each other in open-hearted, prayerful, conversation and service.
Grownups by the standard of the fullness of Christ. To be the presence of Christ in the world bringing forth, living out, nurturing, and demonstrating love in our lives together.
What does that mean today?
In our particular context as we are FUMC today, we think about how we function together as a church, how we reach out to our local community and beyond. We think about how we support one another in the difficult situations that we encounter in our lives and how we celebrate our blessings together. We practice living the new creation as the Body of Christ in the world: grown-ups according by the standard of the fullness of Christ.
Jesus convenes a new celebration at the Last Supper at which we recount the heritage of God’s liberating love. We recount Christ’s liberating and reconciling power that is unleashed among us and through us. We recount the Spirit’s infiltration into everything with her refreshing life.
We tend the new creation as we attend Christ’s new banquet table, always hopeful that new ties, new love, new connections are being created among us and spreading out into all the world. At this table we are nourished by the Body of Christ and thus are nourished to be the Body of Christ. We consume the Body of Christ and we are consumed into the Body of Christ.
We take our place in the new creation.
When anyone is in Christ, there’s a new creation.
All the old past away
Everything made new. Everything made new.
Wandering Heart: Here’s My Heart
Second Sunday of Easter
Watch the Sermon on YouTube / View the Bulletin
I must say that the piece of the Gospel Lesson that stands out for me is this verse:
“Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
The last time I preached here was in February 2022. I was in the midst of an involved diagnostic process. I’d woken up on New Year’s Day of 2022 with a lump on the side of my face. One thing led to another and a few weeks later I was scheduled for a surgical biopsy at Rochester General.
A few days before the surgery, I was summoned to the hospital – I felt like out of the blue – for a regimen of pre-surgical tests. No one had told me ahead of time that was a part of the deal. So I found myself feeling a bit resentful and put upon that I needed to drive up there early on a Monday morning. I felt like my life was no longer my own.
when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, someone else will take you where you do not wish to go.
But an interesting thing happened as I drove up there that morning. It dawned on me that maybe this was all part of a larger process that really wasn’t in my control, and I just needed to hand myself over to it. Where I wished to go really didn’t matter. This was out of my hands. My wandering heart needed to answer a call to a larger and more pressing story. I needed to trust others to be in charge. My life wasn’t my own. I had entered a different world I didn’t really understand.
At the first Easter Peter and the other disciples had entered a different world they didn’t really understand.
It’s worth noting that the tone of the days following the first Easter is not joy. There were a whole range of emotional and attitudinal responses. There was bewilderment. There was wonder. There was curiosity. There was fear. And then there was some guilt and shame as well.
As Peter tries to come to terms with that first Easter, he’s coming off some hard days.
Let’s remember, of course, that Peter had sworn up and down when he talked to Jesus before the crucifixion that he would never turn away from him. He would never abandon his teacher.
Jesus, of course, knew better and told Peter that, in fact, before the morning would arrive, Peter would deny Jesus three times. And that’s what happened. Peter denied three times to folks around him that he even knew who Jesus was.
As this series on Peter’s wandering heart has highlighted, Peter comes across in the Bible as a person who wants to do the right thing. He is typically motivated to step forward and take charge. He is portrayed as decisive, if not impulsive. So, his grandiose self-confidence in the face of Jesus’ warning is not a surprise. Nor is his failure to live up to his own ambition.
And then Jesus was executed. Peter felt like he let Jesus down at the end. His last opportunity to be faithful and he blew it. After making a big deal that he would be loyal, he caves.
And this situation is, of course, complicated by the problem of what to do after the crucifixion. Peter and the other disciples have to figure out: What’s next for us?
They had left their prior lives behind to follow Jesus, and there is no obvious way forward. To them the Jesus story is over. Dead and gone. So, in our reading this morning, we find them back fishing – the old agenda. The Jesus business is done.
But Jesus appears, and just as he did at an earlier fishing episode, directs Peter to a huge catch of fish after a night of fruitless effort.
Jesus’ appearance is mysterious, intimidating, and dramatically unsettling. This is a decidedly “rock my world” situation. But Jesus has prepared breakfast and offers them to join him in the meal.
As I read the passage, it feels to me like that meal begins to bring Peter and the disciples into this new world Jesus has opened up. Breakfast really can be the most important meal of the day.
But the invitation back into Jesus’ story puts Peter at a crossroads: Jesus asks him three times whether he loves his old fishing agenda more than the agenda of shepherding the flock Jesus has gathered. Are you willing to trust yourself into my agenda, my way, my love, my life?
Easter puts Peter at a crossroads, and we may find ourselves at the same crossroads:
Will we follow our wandering heart? OR
Will we follow Christ’s heart with a courageous and confident wonder?
Before this Peter had thought that his bluster and grandiosity was his strength. He had relied on his impulsiveness to dominate his situation and those around him. But in this Easter transformation, Peter has to wonder again whether he had it right.
Peter and Jesus had had some arguments about what it might mean to be strong. Jesus had said time after time, in a variety of ways, that to be strong is not to be in a position to dominate others, but to find ways to love others.
The strong person is not the one who succeeds in a rivalry with others. The strong person is the one who has the capacity to engage rivals into reconciliation. The strong person is the one with the patience and the presence to love the world into peace.
Strength is the ability to hold onto the truth, even when that truth is uncomfortable to bear and even when that truth is about our own limitations.
Strength is not about building up strong defenses, but rather about being open, vulnerable to the good, the beautiful, and the just.
Not high walls, but wide bridges.
And the question naturally emerges – but is that safe? Will we be secure?
Good Friday reminded us that even Jesus was not safe in this world.
And, in its turn, Easter reminds us that not even the worst is the end. It is the prelude for God’s response. The setting for God’s wondrous action.
The crucifixion of Jesus, his descent to the dead, and his resurrection drive home to us that God does not abandon us in the midst of trouble, pain, sin, or death, but instead continues to embrace us into the future with love.
The Easter Story is the sign that new life can be on the other side of evil, suffering, and death. Ultimately our stories become part of God’s story; all our stories are being gathered up into love.
That was my experience as I was led where I did not wish to go. I was gathered up into love. Part of that was the love of this congregation in notes, cards, calls, and prayers. Another part were the compassionate health-care workers of all kinds who took care of me.
So, can we hear that? Can we live that?
All our stories are being gathered up into love.
All our stories are being gathered up into love.
Of course, some will be drawn in kicking and screaming. Some will feel it is a plot against them. Some will be drawn in only in fear. Some will be bewildered the whole way.
But some of us – especially those of us who take the Easter message to heart – will go with the assurance that, yes, it’s out of our hands. When we were young we went where we wanted, but now we are being invited to trust ourselves into love.
To give up following our wandering hearts and follow Christ’s heart in wonder, open to whatever comes next.
We are invited to say: Here’s my heart!
Thanks be to God!