so, to re-cap: love one another

The love that called Jesus out of the grip of death and into life, out of the back of the tomb, out of the darkness into eternal light.......

that is the same love that God expressed when God created all that exists.  It is a love so powerful that its expression is life, its goal is life, its being is life.  The same love that broke the bonds of this earth will break those bonds again when it calls each and everyone one created by God out of the tomb of fear and into the new life which is life in God.

 Jesus was certain God's love was sufficient to call him out of the tomb and into resurrection.  Jesus was certain it could and it would.  Jesus' presence among us is to remind us and to make us certain it can and it will.  This is resurrection love: it is powerful and it is life giving.

That isn't to say that it is easy.  Loving another into resurrection is demanding work.

It's not just that the tomb is dark and deep, but we cling to its walls, refusing to let go of the very things that hold us captive.  We see the light and dismiss it as a figment of someone's imagination, a false hope, a dead end.....without ever seeing the irony of our own image of 'dead end.'

We wrestle with the gift of life.  In order to pick up the life offered by God we must put down the weight of all that burdens us, wounds us, wounds others, drains the goodness out of us and leaves us without the energy to claim the life that is offered.

We argue with the gift of life.  When we look around us we can see no sensible order; seems some folks are way ahead on the 'light of life' game.  We get angry when the wounds of others crash into us and we are wounded as well.  We get so angry we pickup our weapon of choice: jealousy or revenge or even building higher walls so we can 'protect' ourselves....when in fact we are locking ourselves away.We reject the gift of life because it is offered to folks we think are unworthy with words like immoral.  We slap at the hands of those who offer to lead us into the light.

Jesus is God's concrete call to all of creation to come out of the tomb and live in the light.  "Follow me," Jesus said as he offers to lead us to a better place, an eternal place.

Oh yes, and bring your friends.  Tell them the story.  Tell them your story.  Invite them to walk with you on this journey called faith - not a journey into darkness but a journey into revealing light.  Work with them, walk with them, hold fast to them, cajole them when necessary.  Bring food for the journey and good hiking shoes because this is a stoney path.

Along the way you will begin to experience the very resurrection you seek.  You will slough off that which kills and strive towards the love that Jesus incarnated.  You will become love yourself and be the guide for others to Jesus' side.

That's what we're talking about.  Resurrection love.  Manifest in Jesus.  Given to you.  For you to share with others.  It's so powerful that death will flee and only God will remain.

Like I said at the beginning, we're not talking about fairy dust and unicorns here.  We're talking resurrection.

"Love one another.  As I have loved you, love one another."

What kind of love is this?

Having washed the feet of his betrayer, Jesus plunges into the depths of love.

What kind of love?

Creating love: the kind that was present when this creation was called into being by the Divine Power.  The kind of love that is manifest when life is called into being, when light enters the void.  It is the foundation of this world and the foundation of the eternal Divine Kingdom.  It is love that works from the bottom up.

It is hard work.

This love is such a powerful force that it can enter the darkness of the tomb, surrounded by the odor of death, and step out risen and alive.  Yes, we think of the tomb that held Jesus but there are thousands of other tombs: tombs of the living who die a little each and every day because they stand in the presence of death and cannot recognize the life giving power of love that beckons to them.


The back of the tomb is God territory: where the most deadly things happen and yet, in God, are never the last word on anything.  There in the back of tomb where humans are convinced that the power of evil has prevailed is the power of God's love - bringing life - bringing light - making a new day.

So we cannot fool ourselves:  loving another into resurrection is backbreaking work.  But it is not our backs that it breaks, but rather, it breaks the back of racial prejudice and superiority.  It breaks the back of poverty and oppression.  It breaks the back of all the categories we use to separate and (de)value one another: categories like sexuality, age, gender, nationality, religion, criminal record.

This powerful resurrection love breaks our fear, which is the tomb that holds us all.  We fear being found out to be frauds, to be unholy, unworthy.  We fear that the ugliness of jealousy and lust and greed will become visible to everyone and in the end no one loves us and there is no way out of this tomb of fear.

Yet Jesus stepped willingly into the tomb.....in absolute certainty that God is God, and God could and would continue to love him....right back into life again.

Loving another into resurrection is back breaking work.  It will kill you.  It will bring you into life again - a life that cannot be taken away.

That's the love that Jesus is talking about.  Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, love one another.

A lifetime of work to bring about a time of life.

Love one another................

It is a clear command:  Love one another.  As I have loved you, love one another.

But it comes at the most amazing point in John's telling of the Jesus story.  In John, the disciples gather around Jesus in the hours before his arrest and crucifixion.  The writer of John does  not focus on the meal but rather on the humble act of footwashing.

Footwashing was the work of the youngest or lowest slave in the house.  Guests were offered the opportunity to have the road's dust and other unmentionably smelly things washed off their feet before the evening's fellowship began.  From my time in Africa, it is easy to imagine a small basin being filled with water from a hand held pitcher as it is carried from person to person so the washing could commence.  In rural Africa that is often how they manage hand washing before a meal; it is a sign of hospitality.

But it requires that someone kneel at the feet of another and do whatever is necessary to both cleanse but also soothe those worn feet.  I can picture the muddy watter sloshing out of the basin a bit, some dripping of wet feet, a towel getting increasingly dirty.

I expect that the usual practice was to ignore the person performing this menial task for you (just as we are prone to ignore the bus boy who clears our dirty dishes). You'd avert your gaze and certainly not engage in conversation.  But those disciples were being served by the one they called Master and Rabbi and Lord and even Messiah.  So possibly they averted their gaze out of embarrassment.

Unfolding his body from its kneeling position, Jesus could have looked around the gathered disciples.  They didn't know how close the end was, even if Jesus did.  They didn't know that the spark that would ignite the subsequent fire was sitting right there among them.  They didn't realize at that moment that Jesus had washed the feet of the one who was about to leave the room and hand him over to the authorities.  Judas wasn't who Judas would become in our imagination and in this story at just that moment.

It was then that Jesus said, "Love one another.  As I have love you, you love one another."

Just as I have loved you.  On my knees.  Wet with the dirt and manure of unwashed feet.  Doing the work of the lowest of the slaves.  To all of you.  All. Of. You.

Jesus had already given the command as he moved from foot to foot......it just took a moment for him to stand straight and give us the words for the actions we witnessed.  Love one another.

Not fairy dust and unicorns.  Not sentiment and wedding bells.  Not puppy dogs and Kumbaya.

Kneeling.  For everyone.  Until death.....and then beyond into life.

That kind of love.



John 13.31-35

pausing to rest by still waters........

GOD, my shepherd!
I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
you find me quiet pools to drink from.

True to your word,
you let me catch my breath
and send me in the right direction.

Even when the way goes through
Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
makes me feel secure.

You serve me a six-course dinner
right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
my cup brims with blessing.

Your beauty and love chase after me
every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of GOD
for the rest of my life.

I think we are ready to consider the transformed life of resurrection people:God's people, gathered in by the beloved Son of God, Jesus, and called to live within him.  Perhaps we needed this pause in the middle of resurrection season to take it all in and allow the great power of life that emanates from God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit to take us places we never imagined.

Perhaps it is time to move on out and be about the work of the resurrection.....and that is a scary and complicated adventure.  Perhaps this is exactly why David's beautiful psalm sits right in the middle of our Easter season. ....

because if we are going to live this resurrection life, if we are going to live within Jesus, serving as he served, and bringing God's good news to a host of strangers, if we are going to step into the places of death and darkness and call people to new life in Jesus.... then we just might need to know there will be a resting place, a safe place, a place of blessing and grace prepared for us.

God's great green pastures are neither a reward nor a destination, rather David depicts the depth of possibility in our relationship with this Father of love and Son of grace....... We will need this place of refreshment for the transformed life takes all we have to give.  Thank you God that you know this and provide for us.

and if that wasn't enough...

One of the challenges of the Resurrection Story is the task of living out a new way of being.  How do we take the information of the resurrection and allow it to shift to an actual life of resurrection we can live today?  How does/can the Resurrection of Jesus transform our lives on Monday morning?

Although all of us need the deep assurance and comfort of God's abiding love through Jesus - an image so perfectly depicted in the 23rd psalm, in this fourth Sunday of Easter, we still need to wrap our heads around the impact of God's amazing resurrection of the Son, Jesus.  We need a picture to help us understand the power of the phrase 'I am doing a new thing' and the concept of 'bringing life out of the heart of death'.

A perfect image for this is the story of the raising of Lazarus, good friend to Jesus.  In fact, the Lazarus story bookends the assigned text for Good Shepherd Sunday, appearing in chapter 11 of the gospel of John.

Who is not moved when Jesus weeps outside the closed tomb of his friend?  We have done this, no?  We have had to say final goodbyes to people we love deeply and whose very existence we will miss.  We have had to confront the possibility of living out our lives without this beloved person.  For those of us who are widowed, we have had to figure out who we are now that we are not one half of a couple.  We have to learn how to be single again, but in a new way.

Lazarus gives us all this.  "Lazarus, come out!" Jesus cries.  Humans have rolled the stone away from the front of Lazarus' tomb, but Lazarus himself must respond to the command of the Son of God, the command to walk from death to life, the command to live yet again. He must hear the Lord's voice and follow.

Deep in the damp darkness of death, Lazarus hears the Savior's call and steps from beyond the veil back into the bright sunlight of his old life.  Yet, it will never truly be life as he once knew it, for he has tasted death and come again into the world of the living.  Lazarus has stepped out.

Jesus then commands, "Unbind him, and set him free".  Of course Jesus is talking about the burial cloths that are wrapped around the corpse, the bindings of this world which will forever keep him among the dead and restrict his ability to walk and live and move and jump in this new /old life of his.

"Unbind him and set him free!"  Leave behind all that is death to you - shuck it off and step out into a new life, a new being, a new power, a new relationship with this God who has given you life yet again.  Whether it is addiction or anger or deep wounds or resentment or any other prison of death that holds you captive, step out of your tomb and throw off all that binds you to death.  Live.

Now Lazarus is not a resurrection story in that Lazarus is resuscitated rather than resurrected.  Lazarus will, in fact, die again another day.

But we get it, don't we?  We understand that image of being closed in a tomb from which we see no escape.  We long for a time when all that binds us is pulled away and we can live a life we could never have imagined before.  Lazarus teaches us the possibility of living a transformed life as a transformed person.

Between the healing of the man born blind and the calling out of the dead Lazarus, we get the good shepherd.  Perhaps after these two extra stories of resurrection we are now ready to figure out who it is who is calling us out, what life with him will look like and whether, in the end, we can trust him at all.

What happened to the parade?

Easter morning is all flowers and Alleluias and excitement and, well, resurrection!  For the Church, it is THE celebration of the year....well, of all time, but each year we try to pull out the stops.

Then we get to hear about the disciples hiding and Jesus appearing although the door was locked and Thomas coming to deep faith.

Then we get to hear about Jesus serving brunch on the beach and Peter hearing that he is loved, loved, loved and being sent out into the world to tell others of Jesus and take care of Jesus' flock.

And then.....we get sheep.  The sheep hear my voice.  The sheep know me.  The sheep, the sheep, the sheep.

The fourth Sunday of Easter is always Good Shepherd Sunday, and although it is a great image and a most reassuring message, I often wonder how we lost the celebration of resurrection so quickly, moving from Alleluia, from confetti and loud trumpets, to 'he makes me to lie down in green pastures.'  It seems we go from wonder to slumber much too quickly.

There are lots of gospel lessons that ooze resurrection and two of them bookend this section of John's gospel where the Good Shepherd is the main character.  First, in chapter 9, we have the healing of the man who was born blind.  Now just in case you think this is an ordinary healing I will point out two things:  in this story the fact that this man was Born. Blind. is mentioned 8 times in 34 verses with an additional 2 mentioned of the fact that he was bling.  Someone is making a point here.

Second, is the final words of the man who was born blind but who now sees "Here is an astonishing thing!...Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind."

Now there's a story of God doing a new thing right under our noses.  Never since the world began....that is definitely a 'new thing' .....the kind of new thing that Isaiah predicts and is manifest in the empty tomb.

We could never see who Jesus is/was/will be without Jesus coming to us and removing the veil over our eyes.  We would walk around, managing our lives, making a living, but we would not know Jesus and through Jesus, God the Father.

Through Jesus, we now have the ability to see, praise, worship, proclaim, and live out our lives as people healed by God.

Folks, that is resurrection.  A great story for the 4th Sunday of Easter.

That is not the story we are given....but boy would it have made a great sermon.  It gives us a strong image to shape our imagination.  It helps explain how our existence has shifted because of Jesus' presence and gift.

We start this week giving thanks that Jesus came and healed all who were born blind and gave them new life.  Amen

Forgiveness given and received....or

                                               
"Why this scene on the beach between Peter and the risen Jesus is so important for people of faith."

If you are familiar with Peter's understandable but deeply disappointing behavior when Jesus was arrested, and subsequently crucified, you will understand why this scene grabs our attention.

It is intimate.  Although others are around, the gospel writer clearly makes this between Peter and Jesus.

It is serious.  Simon, son of John.......remember when your mother called you by your full name?  It's serious.

"Do you love me more than these?"   Jesus never clarifies what the 'these' are, but his point is made.  Am I number 1....or do I fall further down your list of priorities?

What do you do when you are across from the one you claimed to love yet betrayed so completely?  What do you say when you are as deeply disappointed in yourself as the other guy is?
What do you do when your crime.....sin.....wrong doing.....weakness....is an enormous elephant sitting right in the middle of the room?

Somehow, with your mouth dry from the depth of your emotion and a lot of stress, you croak out, "You know that I love you."   and you wait.

You wait to hear how big a disappointment you've been.  You wait to hear how much hurt you caused.  You wait to hear someone say outloud, "You really screwed up."  but instead you hear.

"Feed my sheep".

This is forgiveness in its rawest form.  No recriminations.  No words recapping the bad deeds of old.  No finger pointing or name calling.  Just a mission.  An important mission.  A mission to lead the others in the telling of the story to the whole world.

There are lots of potential explanations of why Jesus repeated the question three times.  Some say it parallels the 3 time denial of Peter.  Some say it helps Peter focus on the task at hand instead of the past.

Perhaps it took three times for Peter to truly believe he had been forgiven in such a way that his past was just a building block for the future that Jesus had for him.  Perhaps it took three times for Peter to truly forgive himself for being the fragile, fractured human being that we all are.

But this is the one who received the mission:  tend my sheep, feed my lambs.  Tell the world about God's love poured out; tell the world your story.  Forgiveness given sets us free and breaks open the possibility of new life.  Forgiveness received sets your steps on the path of life in God.

This is Jesus: God's great forgiveness given for you.

Do you love me? repeat 3 times

It's Peter and the risen Jesus on either side of a charcoal fire on a beach alongside the Sea of Galilee.  It's a scene that can break your heart.

"Simon, Son of John, do you love me?"

This is not a simple question because Peter is not just any Tom, Dick or Harry.
He's the one who vehemently denied knowing Jesus.
Not once.  Three times.
Just before they crucified him.
Just before he died.

I think there were some days when Peter simply wanted to die from the shame of it all, and the scent of this fire on the beach could have easily brought back the smell of the fire that night just days earlier.  That fire.  On that night.

"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

"Simon, do you love me?" Jesus asks again.

What is Peter to do now?  How can he convince Jesus that his love is genuine?  How can he convince himself that his love is strong enough for whatever trial is in his future?

He had failed once.  Would he fail again?  What exactly did loving Jesus look like?

"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

"Simon, do you love me?" Jesus asks a third time.

Was it to counter balance the three times Peter denied him?  Was it to help Peter be certain that he could translate love into action?  Was this third time to get Peter's mind off himself and focused on the work that Jesus had for him?

"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."  Really, what more could Peter say?

Then feed my sheep.

The past was past.  God's future was waiting.  Jesus called Peter to be a part of God's future.  It was time to let it go and get on with the coming of the new creation and that looked like tending sheep.

Return to this story again and again when you are uncertain of your love, when you have failed yourself and others, when you are so distracted by the daily grind that you can't see or hear Jesus at work in the world, when you don't know what God is calling you to do.  Feed the sheep, tend the lambs, watch after the flock.

God will be at work in and through you whether you recognize it or not. Peace my friends.

Might as well go fishing

That's where we find the disciples at the end of John's gospel: fishing.  Not terribly surprising since that is what most of them did either for a living or to provide food.  Not only that, what else were they to do?  They went back to what they knew, what was comfortable, what put food on the table.  They hung out with the folks they knew and felt comfortable with.  They went fishing.

Although, after hours of night time fishing, they had caught nothing.  I guess that happens even to professional fishermen.  Checking with our local fishing expert, that indeed happens to him.  But the strange/amusing/unbelievable part of the story comes next:  Jesus tells them to put their nets down on the right side of the boat.

Now I can't help but think that this is metaphor since I doubt if fish are that discriminating about exactly which side of a boat they swim under.  What, however, could this metaphor be pointing us to?

Well, right could mean the opposite of wrong.  You were putting out your nets on the wrong side of the boat.  Could that mean that they were seeking to tell the Jesus story in the wrong places?  In the wrong manner?  Wrong technique?  I don't know.

This shift to the 'right side' could also point to efforts that are made without the cooperative energy and direction of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, therefore, empowers the fishermen to catch their fish by directing them to the 'right' place.  Maybe.

Of course, 'catching fish' is also probably a metaphor since at his calling Peter was told to Follow and learn how to be a 'fisher of men'.  So I'm thinking that 'catching fish' is really leading folks to Jesus.  Note that the net was filled with fish (153) but it was not torn.  Remember how Jesus said he did not lose even one that was given to him by the Fathr (except the one destined to be lost) John 17.12.  I like the interplay of these two images.

What do we have in the end?  We have folks who are doing what everybody does: working to provide a living for themselves and their families.  Apparently, hidden in the metaphors, is the message that our work goes beyond just catching halibut.  We also are given the task of gathering in those who have not heard of Jesus and bringing them to him.

Third, there are lots of 'uncaught' fish in the sea and netting them for Jesus is a part of our work.  When we wrap up this story and Jesus tells Peter to 'feed my sheep' he is not giving him a different task - something other than catching fish - he is simply giving Peter a different picture of what his work looks like.

In our fellowship, our every day work, our ordinary activities, even the stuff we need to do to maintain ourselves, we are not to lose sight of our larger calling as people of faith:  go and find the lost ones and bring them to Jesus.  It's a different kind of fishing.