Pentecost 16 - Sunday, September 8, 2024

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 Choose this day whom you will serve… as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. 

Joshua 24

Jesus: Do you also wish to go away?

John 6

Many Baby Boomers might have these words from the Book of Joshua cross-stitched and framed on their wall. Many Millennials might have it hung as a piece of word wall art. So, you may have heard of it. 

The Book of Joshua is the story of the Israelites’ entry into Canaan (the Promised Land) after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Led by Joshua, the successor to Moses, the Israelites conquer the Canaanites, the native inhabitants of this land and then redistribute the land to the twelve tribes of Israel. The book contains stories of events leading up to the conquest of Canaan, the collective war effort of the Israelites and of their military victory over Canaanite states. The book ends with a covenant renewal ceremony, in which both Joshua and the Israelites declare, “We will serve the Lord.” 

The Israelites didn’t have a consistent history when it came to following God’s ways. As they stand with their toes on the threshold to the Promised Land, Joshua gives them a chance to “get right” with God, to recommit themselves to follow God’s law and live in God’s ways. It was decision time.  They all gave a roar of “Yay God!” and they probably meant it. As their history unfolded, God often caught them backsliding. We all do this.

That’s because making a covenant is a moment in time. Maintaining a covenant is the work of a lifetime. Think about a marriage covenant and the work involved in keeping it strong and true. Every day is Decision Day when it comes to the covenants we have made to one another, to the church and to God. 

The question Jesus asks, “Do you also wish to go away?” was directed directly at his disciples. It comes at the end of the Bread of Life part of John’s gospel (all of John 6). Why would Jesus ask them if they wanted to go away? Hadn’t they already said, “Yay Jesus!” when they agreed to follow him in the first place? Sure, they did. But a lot has happened since then. They’ve witnessed amazing things and heard some very difficult teachings. The recent difficult teaching was hearing Jesus speak of himself as the Bread from heaven, and even more dramatically describing himself as the flesh and blood for them to consume. Many who heard Jesus say that were physically grossed out and theologically offended. So, they walked away. Hence the reason Jesus asks the disciples, are you leaving, too? Now, to be clear, Jesus is not inviting cannibalism but is using the metaphor of eating and drinking as the way to take him and his teaching into their very bodies, their cells, their DNA. 

Nevertheless, people didn’t get the metaphor immediately and looked for wisdom elsewhere. As Jesus watched these people who had a few days earlier believed he was a rock star, head toward the horizon; he invited the disciples to recommit to their call to follow.

In the covenant of faith, every day is decision day. The reason is, life disappoints, our plans go sideways, our hope can feel shaky, and we can be led into evil’s greatest temptations: concluding that we can count on only ourselves, concluding that scripture and faith stories are fairytales, concluding that violence gives the outcomes we need, or concluding that scarcity is greater than abundance.  

Every day is your decision day. Choose this day (again) what will guide your life and your choices – love or hate, hope or despair, joy or sorrow, optimism or pessimism. Go with God, go with the good!

Matthew 10:14

14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

I just want to say, “thanks a lot” to Paris for putting on an Olympic Opening Ceremony that gave every pastor in America a headache. In that show last week, we all experienced many aspects of French culture, some inspiring, some shocking. The next day, for those of us engaged in social media, we were privy to the backlash of some Christians regarding a part of the show that some felt was mocking the celebration of Holy Communion. More specifically, it seemed to some to be a drag queen parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper. My phone started to blow up, maybe yours did, too.

Those not offended were quick to point out that if the tableau was a parody of anything, it was most likely of the painting The Feast of Gods by Dutch artist Jan Harmensz van Biliert pictured here. We were also reminded that the origin of the Olympics was a celebration of Greek gods of which Dionysus was one. I assume he was the figure in blue in the Olympic tableau. Dionysus was the god of wine-making, fertility, insanity, and ritual madness. So, there you go!

We might remember, too, that French culture is proudly secular and that its citizens are constitutionally free from religion. Even if you are convinced that the Last Supper was being mocked, and perhaps it was, it raises some other issues of piety and theology. 

Rejection and mockery of the gospel have been a part of the Jesus movement at its beginning. Jesus was rejected soundly by the religious leaders, ordinary folks, and even his disciples. The apostle Paul frequently wrote about the struggles of rejection. Some in the Greek and Roman culture to which Paul was preaching heard it as foolishness or insult. Others, of course, did not. The fact that the cross, a popular method of brutal execution in 1stcentury Palestine, is the symbol of our faith, should remind us that the way of the cross is first a path of rejection and pain. Jesus was rejected, mocked, and executed because he proclaimed the heart of God that many found offensive: love your neighbor as yourself, bring justice, feed the hungry, live in peace. The Last Supper is a witness to Jesus’ commitment to peace amid a violent empire. It still is.

We need not be outraged on God’s behalf by French art. Jesus would probably say to us as he did to the disciples on repeat: Shake it off, we’ve got better things to do. Turn outrage into doing the work of the gospel. Find ways you can help school kids get food so they can learn, create an atmosphere that respects all people as children of God. Live the peace you pray for. Let the rejection and offense you sometime experience ignite your passion for a faith active in love.

Shake it off and carry on. Congrats to Team USA!

Ephesians 2

11 Remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—12 remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. 15 He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16 and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. 17 So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18 for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, 20 built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

For this Sunday, there are many wonderful scriptures focusing on the image of the shepherd. In these tense political days, it helps to remember that “shepherd” was a biblical image for the king or other leaders. The Bible calls many of them out for being bad shepherdswho ignore the vulnerable and care for nothing but themselves. 

In the midst of this scriptural sheep fold is the reading from Ephesians 2, a passage that captured my preaching imagination for this week with its image of walls of hostility being tumbled by the crucified Christ. Since we are surrounded by many walls of hostility in this season in America, it is for me the Word of the Lord for this day. 

I found an old article on Ephesians 2 by G. Kevin Baker from the July 11, 2006 issue of The Christian Century magazine. I pass it on to you for your devotional life or your preaching life. The accompanying picture is one I took in November 2022 of the wall erected between Israel and Palestine. This piece of the wall is in Bethlehem. Here are Baker’s words:

The world is full of walls. Everywhere we go, there are fences, gates, partitions and other ingeniously constructed barriers—all aimed at keeping something or someone in and keeping something or someone else out. We need walls: walls in our homes to protect us against wind and rain; walls to keep livestock safely in and predators out; walls to help us separate spaces and improve organization and efficiency. But one does not have to be a sage to comprehend how walls, both literal and spiritual, can lead to grief, division and even violence. All walls serve a purpose, but not all walls serve the purposes of God.

In Ephesians we read that Christ has “broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” It’s difficult to understand how this can happen, especially today, when hostility appears to be the bread and butter of human relating and living. But we know that we have helped to build walls of hostility. We’ve built many of them not out of bricks and mortar, but out of the raw material of sin and division. Then we’ve cemented them with the mortar of name-calling, labeling and prejudice.

An ill-conceived application of the Torah helped ensure that a wall of hostility was solidly in place among those in the growing Christian community. In this case, it was the circumcision insiders pitted against the uncircumcision outsiders. Perspective and power shift depending on what side of the wall a person is standing on. Just ask those called “U.S. citizens by birth” about “noncitizens” in their midst; ask the “legally naturalized immigrant” about the “illegal alien,” the Jewish Israeli “settler” about the gentile Palestinian “squatter” or the white-suburban commuter about the people who live around his downtown church. Again, all walls serve a purpose, but not all walls serve the purposes of God.

What about the walls between Christian communions? What about the voluntary segregation of typical Lord’s Day worship services? What about the scandal of divisions, splits and infighting that flies in the face of Jesus’ high priestly prayer for unity and oneness? (John 17). Such troubles in the body of Christ are a sign not of diversity but of division. They are a sin that compromises the church’s witness and grieves the Holy Spirit.

How then can one receive this word from Ephesians 2? The unity referred to here is not manufactured by human hands busy trying to pursue multiculturalism and tolerance in the world’s image. The peace described here is not just a ceasing of conflict or the absence of violence. The hope alluded to is not merely a hankering after international experiences and cross-cultural encounters. Here unity, peace and hope are not things at all; they are a person. Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall. In Christ’s death on the cross, peace has been achieved and hostility has been crucified. Jesus is the singular, God-human wrecking crew that demolishes division and gifts us with unity, peace and reconciliation.

Mark 6

1 [Jesus] came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.2 On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”And they took offense at him. 4 Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” 5 And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief.

  Then he went about among the villages teaching. 7 He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9 but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10 He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11 If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

As we are celebrating the 4th of July celebrations, I look forward to gathering with many on Sunday for a celebration that comes with no fireworks nor BBQ dinners. Scripture, of course, knows zero about American Independence Day although it knows much about occupation and freedom. Our liturgical discipline is only scantily aware of the 4th. We liturgical types will remember the 4th in our prayers and will probably have a musical nod to the day. But mostly, we will keep to our scriptural schedule of reading through the gospel of Mark. Interestingly, this Sunday’s scripture is about Jesus’ rejection in his hometown of Nazareth. He was amazed at their unbelief and so shaken by it that he could barely perform any healing miracles there. Then we’re told Jesus prepared his disciples for taking a turn on their own preaching and healing. Part of their training for this assignment was to prepare them for the rejection that would surely come.

Researching this scripture for sermon preparation, I discovered a June 29, 2009, article in The Christian Century by Pr. Nadia Bolz-Weber. This well-known preacher titled her article on Mark 6 “More rejection”. Here it is for you, only slightly edited by me for clarity.

The Gospel is always proclaimed by flawed mortals—otherwise it would never be proclaimed at all. The Gospel is also always heard by flawed mortals—otherwise it would never be heard. 

In [this week’s gospel reading], Jesus enters his hometown, Nazareth, having just outdone himself in the miracle department: he raised a young girl from the dead. But he's hardly been elevated to superhero or superhealer status—recall [in that story], the people laughed at him. The rejection our Lord meets in his hometown is different from what he faces elsewhere only in degree.

We might be tempted to look down our noses at the people of Nazareth for responding to Jesus the way they do. But we would miss an important point: we too disbelieve. We too are apt to restrict what we think God is capable of in our lives and our communities.

Such a reaction also overlooks the connection between this episode and what follows. The rejection Jesus experiences allows his disciples to know that in Christ God has entered the human condition in an entirely real way, complete with suffering. The disciples are no longer ever alone in their weaknesses and so-called failures—and neither are we. As they go out two by two, they do so knowing that even Jesus, God the Word, came to his own and his own received him not. In this way God glorified the stranger.

Rejection has been the traveling companion of the Gospel from the beginning. Don't take it personally.

Okay, we’ll try!

Job 38

1The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Psalm 107

 Then God spoke, and a stormy wind arose,
  which tossed high the waves of the sea.
 They mounted up to the heavens and descended to the depths;
  their souls melted away in their peril.
 They staggered and reeled like drunkards,
  and all their skill was of no avail.
 Then in their trouble they cried to the Lord,
  and you delivered them from their distress.
 You stilled the storm to a whisper
  and silenced the waves of the sea. 

2 Corinthians 6

3We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.

Mark 4

37A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40He said to them, “Why are you afraid?

This Sunday (Pentecost 5B for the liturgical geeks) invites us into an array of scriptures, portions of which are quoted here. From Psalms to Paul, from Job to Jesus they all take up the matter of stormy theology. God is portrayed as both the creator of storms and the calmer of storms. The questions in these scriptures capture my attention.

The whole book of Job is packed with so many questions, as if the writer had a shaker full of question marks and peppered the paper with them. Mostly Job and his friends are puzzling out why Job, a/k/a “Mr. Goody Two Shoes”, is suffering so when it seems he should be walking around saying, “I’m just so blessed.” God remains silent through these rantings until the very end of the book. We’re told God, whose name has been taken in vain throughout, finally steps on stage in the form of a “whirlwind”. Let’s remember that the synonyms for “whirlwind” are less friendly sounding nouns like tornado, cyclone, hurricane. When one of those words comes our way, the weather alerts go off on our phones and there’s a run on the grocery stores. God appears on stage dressed in danger.

Psalm 107 acknowledges God as both the creator of the tornado and the one who saves us from it. Question: Why does God create the deadly tornado in the first place? Answer: Not sure. In Mark 4, we hear the well-known story of Jesus calming the storm on the sea. While Jesus is the one who calms the wind and waves, he is, as God Incarnate, also God creator of storms. 

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he doesn’t speak of literal hurricanes but of the great hardships he and his companions in ministry have endured for the sake of the gospel. In this letter, we all hear a loud echo of our own experiences of life and living. We’ve had plenty of difficult times from losing our job to losing our child. We’ve been in storms that nearly drowned us. We get the metaphor.

Many theological questions come out of these stormy scriptures. Probably the most emotional one is: Does God truly care about us? What emerges as an answer is best articulated in Job’s story. What is affirmed is God’s powerful presence and the assurance that God does love and care for us. But honestly, what’s also affirmed in all these texts is that there are so many things we don’t know, can’t know, and simply won’t know. 

For some people this reality makes faith an empty promise. It’s concluded that if God does exist, God obviously cannot be trusted. To be a person of faith means to choose love over fear, trust over doubt, and belief over knowledge. It’s both a choice and a call.

Genesis 3

8[Adam and Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.9But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” 11He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” 13Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.” 

These verses are part of the human origin story from Genesis 2-3 in the Jewish and Christian traditions. The Garden of Eden was a seemingly perfect gift from God. Adam and Eve had each other, plenty of food, a beautiful safe garden, and oh, yes, they had a very benevolent God who occasionally strolled around the Garden making sure everything was going as intended. So, what could go wrong? The short answer is “temptation” but let’s see how we got there.

Pastor Peter Marty tells the story of a congregation that received permission to park in the bank parking lot next to the church. It was a friendly standing agreement, except for one Sunday per year. On that one Sunday, the bank put a rope across the entrance to the lot. Why? Well, the bank officer told the pastor, “It’s only so the church remembers that the lot belongs to the bank and not to the congregation.” Smart.

We humans grow physical attachments to material things. Ownership is prized. You can tell by the way we talk: my house, my property, my business, etc. In C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape tells his Padawan, Wormwood, a good way to lead souls to hell. He coos, “The sense of ownership is always to be encouraged…and all the time the joke is that the word ‘mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything.”

While in the origin story of our temptation, Adam blames God for giving him Eve, who gave him the apple, and Eve blames the serpent; the real problem is that these first humans forgot or refused to believe that the rope across the parking lot wasn’t theirs to move. They assumed everything was owned by them in the garden and they took down the rope and drove on in.

Ever since that half-eaten apple was left on the ground, we have continued to struggle with the reality that all things come from God and belong to God. God has called us to the big job of being stewards/mangers in creation, but we are never the owners. 

Martin Luther taught that we probably don’t really believe the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. Gee-whiz, that seems like the easiest part of the whole thing! What do you mean Uncle Marty? He comments that if we really believed God is the creator of all, we would be horrified because it would mean we own nothing. (These are my memories of what Luther said, but he did use the German word for “horrified”.)

Most Americans I know strive to be owners rather than renters or managers or stewards. Ownership is often a sign of success and value. But God has never made success a goal for a human life, only faithfulness to God’s goals of equality, love, peace, forgiveness, mercy, grace and all the other holy et cetera’s. 

John 3

11“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 

I enjoy some of the little articles that float across my newsfeed with titles like, “What Baby Boomers grew up with that Gen Z don’t.” I can relate, of course. When I started college in 1974, I proudly packed up my new electric typewriter convinced it was the only tool I needed. It’s amazing how much has changed in the last 50 years. No more card catalogs in the library or rolodexes on the desk next to the rotary phone. 

Technology and culture have changed, and so has church culture and theology. In the year 325 C.E. early Christian bishops gathered to draw a “forever” line in the sand defining orthodoxy and heresy. We still recite that line in the sand in worship as the Nicene Creed. In those first three or four hundred years of the new Christian church, confusion was abundant. Different clusters of Christians in cities around the Mediterranean and in small backwater villages often had clashing ideas of who Jesus was, how to be a Christian, how to understand the holy meal, baptism, pot-luck dinners (yes, really!), and just about everything else. We were institutional and spiritual two-year olds after all. 

The purpose of the Nicene creed was to define Christian beliefs about how to understand Jesus and his relationship with God the creator and the God of the patriarchs, matriarchs, and prophets of old, and his relationship with the powerful Spirit experienced most profoundly at Pentecost. It wasn’t sufficient to say, ‘it’s all a big mystery”, because humans don’t do mystery very well. If we don’t have answers and explanations, we will make up our own to build a foundation on the words, “I’m right and you are wrong.” That’s what was happening in the very early church. The result – theological chaos.

Christians had a lot to explain, like how they really believed in one God even though they sure sounded like they believed in three. Their fiercely monotheist family and friends could not abide such talk. Hearing Christians speak of holy communion as eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus sounded cannibalistic. Early on, we were the weirdest group of people around. 

But over the many years that followed, Christianity became very mainstream. Many generations of people in Western culture were raised in church, they memorized the creeds and scriptures, and practiced a piety built on Sunday Schools, confirmation classes, and weekly worship. Now a lot of that has been called into question since the mid-20th C. Church folk are being told that what they believe and how they practice is all going the way of TV repair men and newspapering.   We’re back to theological chaos and creativity.

We’re being told we are irrelevant, will increasingly be so, and should pack up our facilities and let the YWCA take them over. Yes, people are seeking relationships and spiritual practices but not in these old ways. Sure, change is always inevitable, but irrelevancy is not. I believe the church can be very relevant in an ever-changing world. We will need to change many things. We will disagree about what to keep and what to let go. I believe we’ll endure because Christianity at its heart is about relationships. Even ye ol’ Nicene Creed was, at its heart about the relationship among God, Christ, and Spirit.

The new wisdom in both church and culture is that relationships are everything. In the orthodox Nicene Creed and in scripture, relationships are also everything. Those 300 plus male bishops in Nicaea in 325 had the task of defining what the relationship was between Creator + Christ + Spirit. They were very different divine parts. How could they be united? Isn’t that the central question of today? We struggle with how different people with their various ethnic backgrounds, religions, politics, gender identities, etc. can come together on anything. Talk about relationship unity amid diversity is still an active on-going conversation. The loving, grace-filled relationship between God and people is the central theme of scripture. 

Perhaps the ancient creeds sound fuddy-duddy to some ears, but when we drill down to the core of their meaning and purpose, we discover what they were attempting to do – define how different “persons” can be united. Isn’t this our own church and culture’s goal in 2024? And on this Memorial Weekend, we recall our national creed: E pluribus unum, an echo of Nicaea. 

 John 17

11And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 

Most of us own a Bible or maybe six, but a lot of us have something more than that. We have a relationship with Scripture. When the Bible has been a part of your life, most of your life, you have a history with it.

Some stories and passages are connected to significant events, good and bad. Maybe you hear a scripture read and think about how that was read at your wedding, or your mother’s funeral, or your child’s baptism. Maybe your Sunday School teacher had you memorize a particular passage, or another passage was a special scripture at confirmation camp. I have a relationship with this verse in John 17, where Jesus prays for us and asks that we all might be one as he and the Father are one. 

I pastored in one community for 11 years and it was a tradition in that town to have an ecumenical Thanksgiving service. So, pastors and congregations who most of the year did very little together – Ebenezer AME, First Presbyterian, St. Nicholas Catholic, First Baptist, St. Paul’s Lutheran, St. Mark’s Episcopal, First United Methodist – came together to prepare the lowest common denominator worship service we could agree on to show some Christian unity and give thanks. The pastor who tended to be the leader, always wanted us to use John 17 as the gospel reading because in his view, what Jesus was praying for was that all Christians would be the same, that we wouldn’t have all these divided denominations. 

During a good bit of the 20th C, predominately White American denominations spent a lot of time working on finding ways for denominations to come together. But it seemed to me then, and seems even more to me now, that Jesus calls us to unity around much more than the fact that some of us are Lutheran and some of us are Baptist.

Jesus’ prayer for his disciples (called the High Priestly Prayer) includes four interrelated requests. One scholar put it this way: First, he asks God to protect them from fragmentation so that they will remain one in heart, purpose, and intent; and that they will come to know themselves as one body, one communion, one fellowship despite their many differences, nullifying the impulse toward division and discord.

The story of creation tells us that God created the world with immense diversity. At the end of it all, God proclaimed it “good.” Unfortunately, through our human history tainted by sin, we are highly suspicious of difference and diversity. We prefer people in judgmental categories: best, good, average, poor, unsatisfactory. 

Jesus prays that his disciples (the first ones and us latter ones) will be one in the gospel, one in mission, one in the way we love our neighbors as ourselves. It doesn’t seem like anything else matters – political party, race, blood type, health, mental ability, sexual orientation, religious denomination, yada yada, yada.

The one thing that matters is our unity in the gospel. That’s the sweet spot. When we strive toward this, we help Jesus’s prayer come true.  I think it makes him smile.

I share a reflection on the four scripture readings for the Fifth Sunday of Easter by Austin Shelley. His original title was, “On watch.” I encourage you to read the delightful and powerful story from Acts 8. The last paragraph of this article was meaningful to me as I hear story upon story of church struggles and new possibilities in our season of the church. This is our watch.

Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:25-31; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

Retired US Coast Guard captain Donald Coffelt once urged me, his pastor, to rest. “On a ship at sea, someone is always ‘on watch,’” he explained. “When one person’s watch is finished, the person coming on duty salutes and says, ‘I have the watch.’ The person leaving salutes back and replies, ‘You have the watch.’ There is never a gap, and everyone gets time to rest.” On the heels of this sage advice, he also issued an accompanying offer to keep watch over a task so that I might step away and trust the necessary work to capable colleagues and lay leaders.

Sharing the watch emerges as a unifying theme across this week’s lectionary texts. Fruitful ministry becomes sustainable when it is shared, person to person and generation to generation, and only when we recognize the idolatry of believing we must discern God’s will—or set out to do God’s will—alone.

The Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8 is under no delusion that a life of faith is a solo endeavor. A man accustomed to shouldering heavy responsibility, he is unembarrassed by his desire for deeper understanding. Led by the Spirit, he rightly discerns that he needs a guide—a companion—to help him grasp the words of the prophet Isaiah.

When Philip, also led by the Spirit, goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza to function as this guide, he takes up the watch. Beginning with the very scripture with which the eunuch had been struggling, “[Philip] proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.” It behooves us to note that it is necessary for Philip to meet the eunuch at the place where the eunuch is, not the other way around. When offering to take up the watch, we do well to meet the current watch keepers where they are instead of expecting them to come to us.

Roadside water appears, the sight of which causes the eunuch barely to contain his enthusiasm for receiving the sacrament of baptism. Philip obliges and is immediately snatched away to Azotus to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ all the way to Caesarea. Alone again, but still dripping with baptismal waters, the Ethiopian eunuch takes up the watch once more, this time as one who is claimed by Christ and called to follow in the way of the suffering servant of Isaiah.

This week’s epistle lesson and psalm echo Acts’s call to shared ministry while simultaneously lifting up the source of the love that fuels the mission of the church. 1 John 4:19 succinctly proclaims the order of things: “We love because [God] first loved us.” The final verses of Psalm 22 invite us to consider both the unending love and dominion of God and our role in receiving and extending that love from one generation to another.

Psalm 22 is likely better known for its opening verses, recited by Jesus from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” While I do not suggest, as some biblical scholars do, that in his moment of deep agony Jesus is intentionally invoking the entire psalm, I do believe that the ending of Psalm 22 provides perspective when we find ourselves and those we love suffering and feeling forsaken by God.

As the Lord once gave his servant Job the benefit of a tiny glimpse of God’s eye view, so the psalmist herself widens the lens of her experience of suffering without backing away from its gruesome reality. Thus, the psalmist’s lament “I am poured out like water, / and all of my bones are out of joint; / my heart is like wax; / it is melted within my breast; / my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, / and my tongue sticks to my jaws; / you lay me in the dust of death” faithfully co-exists with the promise of God’s ultimate deliverance: “Posterity will serve [the Lord]; / future generations will be told about the Lord, / and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, / saying that he has done it.”

The gospel text reminds us that even shared ministry will bear no fruit unless it is rooted in God. Disciple to disciple, and generation to generation, may we abide in God, sharing the watch as we traverse the unending sea of God’s abiding love.

Luke 24

36bJesus himself stood among [the disciples] and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43and he took it and ate in their presence.

I often remind my parishioners that Easter isn’t one day but is 50 days long. There is “Easter Day” and there is “Eastertide.” The ancient Church’s reason for celebrating for 50 days (something few can sustain), is because the gospels tell stories of the risen Christ walking on wounded feet around the Galilee for 40 days until he ascended into heaven. Fifty days after Easter Day is the Festival of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit comes among us as comforter and challenger. 

But Eastertide isn’t about celebrating the empty tomb for 50 days, it’s about an on-going discovery, one Easter dinner at a time. For more on the topic of Easter dinner, I offer excerpts from an article written in 2006 by Bishop Craig Satterlee. He was my professor and doctoral advisor when we were both affiliated with the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. He is a great preacher and liturgist in our church. This is his reflection on a resurrection story in Luke 24:

The risen Christ breaks bread in Emmaus and then eats fish in Jerusalem. Easter, or at least the first Easter as Luke describes it, is not as much about an empty tomb as about food. Jesus spends Easter Day eating. His followers celebrate Easter not at an empty tomb, but around a table. So, we might consider Easter as a multicourse meal rather than a trip to the empty tomb, and experience resurrection by eating.

We enter Jesus’ dinner party between two of the courses. The 11 are discussing the first of these courses, bread served to Cleopas and a companion. In Emmaus, Jesus took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Cleopas reports that they talked a lot about scripture, and experienced Jesus as risen.

Our minds turn to two other meals, an earlier and a later course in Jesus’ Easter feast. Jesus served the earlier course in an upper room on the night of his arrest. Sitting with the disciples, Jesus took, blessed, broke and shared the bread. He referred to the bread as his body and to the accompanying cup as the new covenant in his blood. It was a Passover meal, so scripture again figured prominently. Jesus serves the later course—Jesus’ body and blood “in, with and under” bread and wine—whenever Jesus’ followers come together to share scripture and gather around the table.

Just as we begin to connect the dots between the meal in the upper room, the meal at Emmaus and our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, we look up and see Jesus standing in the midst of Cleopas and his companion, the 11 and those who are with them. Everyone is terrified, so Jesus shows his hands and feet and invites his friends to touch him. But our minds are on food. What is Jesus doing with the broiled fish? We get it: Jesus has indeed risen from the grave because apparitions do not eat. But is ghost-busting the only reason that Jesus eats broiled fish?

Bread and fish are not much of an Easter dinner. Why bread and fish, loaves and fishes? Our minds race to other meals that appear to be courses in Jesus’ resurrection feast. Jesus served the first of this pairing in a deserted place when he blessed bread and fish and gave them to a multitude. All ate their fill, and there were leftovers to boot. This meal served as a foretaste of the feast that Jesus will serve when the reign of God comes in all its fullness. Surrounded by people of every time and every place, surrounded by all of creation, Jesus will serve up the great and promised feast, the final course of Jesus’ resurrection banquet. No one will be hungry; all will be satisfied. The last will be first and the first will be last, and the feasting will continue forever.

What about all those other meals Jesus attended and served? Could Jesus’ eating and drinking with the poor, the outcast and the despised also be courses in this resurrection feast? Jesus certainly raised people to new life at those dinner parties! And if resurrection happened at those tables, does that mean that Jesus, risen from the dead, is present and bringing new life to every table at which the hungry are filled, the despised are loved, the outcast are welcome, and the poor receive the reign of God?. . . 

It may be easier to testify to the risen Christ by making a trip to the empty tomb than by eating around a table. A trip to an empty tomb confines Easter to very early morning on that first day of the week when women went to anoint Jesus’ body. We know when, where and how resurrection happened. We know when Easter is over.

Celebrating Easter by eating means that Jesus could show up, that resurrection could happen, at any table, at every table. We have no way of knowing when, where and how the risen Christ will bring new life. Rather than being confined to one day, or to 50, Jesus’ Easter feast continues as one meal leads to another, and tables get larger and larger, and closer and closer together.