He just couldn't say it.

 John 21:1-19 is the lectionary Gospel text for Sunday, May 1.

Peter always wanted so badly to get it right.  He was impulsive and brash, and adored the Lord.  He wanted so badly to be the guy.  He tried so hard.

He got the fishing right, so kudos to him for that.

When they were done eating, Jesus asked Peter, calling him Simon, if he loved Jesus (Phileo) more than the others loved Him, or perhaps if he loved Jesus more than he loved the other disciples?  Peter answered that he did love (Phileo) Jesus.  Jesus told Peter to feed His lambs.

Jesus then asked Peter, calling him Simon the son of John, if he loved Jesus (Agape).  Peter answered in the affirmative that indeed, yes, he did love (but again, Phileo) Jesus.  Jesus told Peter to tend His sheep.

Jesus then asked Peter, calling him Simon, son of John, if he loved Jesus (Agape), and Peter again answered Jesus, hurt because Jesus asked him this a third time, and answered, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love (again, Phileo) you."  Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep.

Jesus then told Peter about how he would be killed.

Peter just could not say that he had Agape Love for Jesus.  Jesus tried.  Jesus acknowledged that Peter loved Jesus like a brother, and then got Peter to consider Agape Love, that perfect love that Jesus commanded us to live.  Peter could not do it.  He was grieved about the third question because it was a reminder that he was not able to commit to Agape Love for Jesus.  It was an honest admission.  Peter was doing the best that he could.  He had denied Jesus three times, and this was just one more reminder of how Peter did not "measure up."  It is not easy to live that perfect love as Jesus has commanded.  

But that did not stop Jesus from giving Peter the commission to Feed Jesus' lambs with the Bread of Life, tend His sheep with the Word and feed His sheep with what love Peter could muster.  Peter would need to practice, to work at this love, until he mastered it.  He also told Peter again to FOLLOW HIM in how he lived, to live in Jesus' example, to go where Jesus went.  

Of what are we capable?  Are we only capable of Phileo with family, those like us, those we like or those who please us or make us feel good to love?  Can we only be worried about ourselves and those just like us?  Are we only able to concern ourselves with our personal salvation, while claiming to be followers of Jesus?  That is not of the Christ.  Jesus commanded Agape Love for Neighbor, defined as stranger, enemy, most vulnerable by Jesus (see Luke 10:25-37; Matthew 25:31-46).  If we are only capable of Phileo, we are not capable of heeding the commands of Jesus.

Are we capable of unconditional, even self-sacrificing committed action on behalf of the other, even stranger and enemy and especially the most vulnerable among us?  Are we capable of loving with no return on our love for ourselves?  Are we able to make love an action and not a feeling?  Are we able to active commitment on behalf of others without a return?  Are we capable of living the perfect love that Jesus commanded?

Perhaps it takes time and practice to develop that love and the living of it.  

Whether we are or not, Jesus commands us to it, and the care of God's children out of it.  It is the central teaching of the Gospels and an imperative for those who would follow Him, in how we live in the world.  This Christian thing is about loving with Agape.  Period.  It is THAT which will change the world to be a more loving and faithful world.  It is THAT which will make life sustainable on this planet.  Loving Neighbor as Self means no more wanting harm or lack to come to a neighbor than one would want that for him/her/their self.  Actively committing to bring Shalom for all people is the way we follow Jesus, the way we are faithful to God.  Everything else is just other stuff.  

How much like Peter are we right now?

Of what love are we capable?

That just does not happen!

 John 20:19-31 is the Lectionary text for Easter III on next Sunday.

Jesus came to them.  They were still afraid and huddled together, not sure what to do next.  The whole movement seemed to be over.  Jesus was, to put it mildly, the driving force behind this movement of Agape Love and Grace in the face of empire.  Jesus was gone.  Mary Magdalene claimed to have seen Him, but you know how grief is for folks.  

But Jesus came among them.  "Eireinei." "Shalom."  Peace, completeness, wholeness and well-being be with you.  And before they could even adjust their thinking to His presence with them, Jesus commissioned them and breathed on them the Holy Spirit, encouraging them to forgiveness.  They now had the authority to forgive or withhold forgiveness.  Just like that.

But Thomas.

He gets a bad rep here, and with it an eternally bad moniker.  Maybe it was because of their grief that Thomas did not believe them.  It was not Jesus that Thomas doubted, or that Jesus could be raised, necessarily.  Thomas doubted their witness.  Thomas needed proof.

When Jesus appeared to him, Thomas responded with belief, but Thomas needed proof.  And for generations of people, he is saddled with being "Doubting Thomas."

Well, I have news.  Just as with many of these accounts, we are supposed to put ourselves in the place of the characters, and this one is no exception.

We live on proof, that is we did, until the age of "alternative facts" and the post-truth era of conspiracy theorists, non-journalistic tv and radio news and cult of personality politics.  People believe in a Kabal of liberals engaged in sex trafficking out of pizza parlors in the nation's Capital. They believe in lying multi-millionaires who claim to identify with them and care about them.  They believe that violently stopping the Democratic process is patriotism.  And they will not believe the proof to the contrary.  They have proof and won't believe it.

Poor Thomas had no proof.  Witnesses, clearly, though many, can be deluded!  He wanted proof.  When he saw Jesus for himself, he believed.

How many of us have dismissed the bodily resurrection of Jesus as a powerful tale, but unnecessary to our identification as Christians?

How many of us have acted as if this is a nice story of the past and Jesus is not still alive or relevant to our lives today?

How many of us have picked and chosen parts of the Word of Jesus in the Gospels that have aligned with our philosophies, ideologies and fleeting theologies, but have dismissed the rest of what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us on the living of Agape Love and Grace?

How many of us look for signs of God's love?  Ask for signs of God's activity in our lives?  Beg for proof of both?  

How many of us perceive messages from God in our everyday lives, though they may indeed be coming from a very different source?

How many of us attribute all manner of ungodly beliefs, ideologies and perspectives to Jesus, though clearly the Gospel witness to what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us reveals otherwise?

Let's give Thomas a break, shall we?

My only hope is that I will continue to see Jesus in my life every day, that I will continue to believe in Jesus' Way as a better way for humanity, despite the political and economic and ecclesiastical messages of others to the contrary, and that I will be faithful to Jesus' Way until I am face-to-face with the Prince of Peace.

Why seek the living among the dead?

 Easter (Resurrection of our Lord) Luke 24:1-12

 The women came to care for the body of Jesus.  It was their horrible, loving duty.  But the stone was rolled away and His body was gone.  Of all the horrors of the week, now this. Then the annunciation of the two men in dazzling apparel – “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” He had been raised, just as He had told them that He would be! When the women told the disciples, it seemed to them an idle tale.  Peter, impulsive Peter, ran to see for himself, and went home amazed.

 We do not expect our heroes to die.  We expect them to vanquish the foe.  We expect that they will struggle against evil but overcome it in the end.  We expect that they will live to fight another day.  Jesus had died.  They lay His lifeless body in a tomb for later burial.  It was over.  All their hopes and dreams of a better world, ushered in by God’s Will through Jesus, were dashed.  All the teachings and declarations, the confrontations and signs and wonders, and all the miracles and lessons in life were over.  Jesus was dead.  Empire and those who flourished under it, had won.

 But wait!  The tomb was empty! Angels!  A new declaration!  A new miracle!  Jesus was not dead, but had been risen from the dead!  What does it mean?

 What it means is that God’s victory was one over evil in the political and ecclesiastical realms, but not only in them.  God’s victory is over sin and death itself!  Someone had to pay the price for sin.  Jesus did that.  He who knew no sin, took sin to its death with Him on the Cross!  Sin no longer wins!  Humanity can live lives of Love and Grace with one another, because sin does not hold us in bondage any longer!  We can live in bold certainty of God’s Love and Grace because sin has been defeated, along with the fruit of sin – death.

The ideologies of empire and Kingdom clashed on Jesus' Triumphal Entry in Jerusalem.  But the Will of God, the Way of God, the Way of Jesus, the Way of Love and Grace wins!  God triumphs, through the death of Jesus!  God triumphs over division, destruction, oppression, injustice, inequality, inequities, greed, abuses of power, false supremacy, hatred and war!  The ways of empire lose, in the end.  God wins because love wins.

 Even death, our greatest enemy does not win!  That which many of us still hold as our greatest fear has been conquered!  Jesus took it out!  Death is now something else for us – NOT uncertainty about what comes next or of what our plight will be because of sin, but by God’s Grace, death is but the gateway to everlasting life with God!  It has lost its sting!  It no longer holds sway over us!  It is just something to go through in order for us to be with God and for eternity in a state of well-being, completeness and wholeness with the source of Love and Joy and Peace!  It is but a portal to that new life!

 The worst thing that can happen to us is that we die.  In Christ Jesus, that is not even a defeat.  It is life for us.  All those who are struggling to survive across the world, who are in a living hell of famine, war, oppression, violence, addiction, poverty and hopelessness have a Lord who has gone through those things, and who identifies with them!  This is not a God who is far off and detached from humanity, but one who has come to experience our greatest temptations, our injustices, our suffering and even our death!  This Lord sustains us by being with us in our struggles in life.  Where is God in the midst of all the suffering of the world?  On the Cross, with us in it.  Our hope is in the teachings of this Lord, who calls us to the living of Agape Love with one another and a better world because of it.  Our victory is in a Lord who took on even our death for us, to conquer our sin, so that we could have His resurrection and life eternal with God!

 So, why would we seek the living Lord among the dead things of the world?  Why would we just claim the name and then embrace the things that produce the suffering, violence, injustice, oppression, poverty, hopelessness and even death of our sisters and brothers in the world?  Why would we just claim the name of Jesus and then NOT live what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us in the living of Agape Love?  Our seeking of the Lord in the midst of those things is like going to a tomb to look for someone who is alive!  Those are not the things of the Living Lord, but the things of a dead one!  Our Lord cannot be found among the things of death and destruction, but in the things of life and living!

 We have a God who commands us to transform the world in love, who is with us in the struggles because of a lack of that love, and who has already given us the final victory over ALL OF IT by dying for us and being raised for us!  We go where Christ Jesus goes!  In life, we go where Jesus went in how we live with one another, in the struggles of life we go with Jesus to the Cross and in the end, we go to be with Jesus for eternity!  Our hope is in our endurance in believing in Jesus and Jesus’ Way for us to be in the world – the Way of Agape Love and Grace, even or especially in the midst of the suffering we must endure because of the ways of death and destruction!  Our hope is not in human invention or initiative or the ways of empire in the world, but in the Way of Jesus that transforms the world to be in alignment with God’s Will for us!  Our hope is that, even in the suffering, or especially in the suffering, we have a Lord who identifies with us and all those who are suffering!  Our hope is in a Lord who has conquered even death for us, to give us an eternity of well-being, Love, Joy and Peace – the very things that He taught us to produce in this part of God’s Kingdom, here and now, by the living of Agape Love and Grace!

 Jesus took on our frailty, hunger, homelessness, injustices, suffering and even death.  Jesus taught us God’s better way for all humanity.  Jesus took sin to its death and conquered death itself!  He died our death to give us His resurrection!  As He is raised from the dead, so will we be raised!  By God’s Grace in Love, WE have a promise of life everlasting in Jesus our Lord!

 Why do you seek the living Lord among the dead things?  He is Risen!  He is risen, indeed!

The Last Days

 The last days of Jesus' life, as witnessed in the Gospels, were difficult and meaningful.  Jesus, fulfiller of Law and Prophets, did just that, and out of Love, as the fullest expression of love.

Jesus held His last Seder with His disciples.  When it came to the blessing of the Matzah, Jesus said it was His Body, broken for them/us.  After the supper, the festive meal, Jesus took the Cup, the third one, the Cup of Redemption, blessed it and gave it to them saying, it was His blood of the new covenant.  In that moment, Jesus became the Sacrificial Lamb, much remembered from the Passover (see Isaiah 52:13 - 53).  His body would be broken, and His blood poured out to save the children of God, including the betrayer, denier, doubter and abandoners who sat with Him at the table.

After being wrongly accused, arrested, mocked, beaten, tortured and marched to His execution, Jesus forgave those who did all of that to Him, along with His disciples who betrayed and denied Him, abandoned Him and would doubt Him.  Jesus then died, and the Temple Curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom.  God ripped apart the tapestry that separated the people from the Holy presence of God.  Nothing could then separate us from God (see Romans 8).

Jesus is Love and Grace.

Jesus took our sin to its death with Him on the Cross.

Jesus made atonement for us with God, through suffering and death.

Jesus died our death to give us His resurrection.

This is a God I can worship.  This is a Lord who I can follow all of my life.

Jesus is Love and Grace.

It makes me want to be a better person, and to live Jesus' teachings, commands and examples of how to be faithful to God through the living of Agape Love and Grace.  It makes me want to transform others' lives in the living of Jesus' Way.

Empire's poverty, injustices, inequities, false accusations, arrests, ridicule, torture and execution are commonplace.  They were then and they are now.

Jesus' death is uncommon because of what it means for all of us who are treated this way by empire.

It means that even though we die, God is still the last Word, and that Word is LIFE, LIFE ABUNDANT and LIFE FOREVER.  It does not mean that we will not suffer or die.  

We go to the Cross with Jesus, or we are not following Jesus.  Sit with that.  Don't rush through it.  Feel it.  Ponder it.  Contemplate on it and what it means for you, for us, that we have a God willing to take on our poverty, frailty, scandal, suffering and death.  That is uncommon, very uncommon.

Why seek the living among the dead?

 

Easter (Resurrection of our Lord) Luke 24:1-12

 The women came to care for the body of Jesus.  It was their horrible, loving duty.  But the stone was rolled away and His body was gone.  Of all the horrors of the week, now this. Then the annunciation of the two men in dazzling apparel – “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” He had been raised, just as He had told them that He would be! When the women told the disciples, it seemed to them an idle tale.  Peter, impulsive Peter, ran to see for himself, and went home amazed.

 We do not expect our heroes to die.  We expect them to vanquish the foe.  We expect that they will struggle against evil but overcome it in the end.  We expect that they will live to fight another day.  Jesus had died.  They lay His lifeless body in a tomb for later burial.  It was over.  All their hopes and dreams of a better world, ushered in by God’s Will through Jesus, were dashed.  All the teachings and declarations, the confrontations and signs and wonders, and all the miracles and lessons in life were over.  Jesus was dead.  Empire and those who flourished under it, had won.

 But wait!  The tomb was empty! Angels!  A new declaration!  A new miracle!  Jesus was not dead, but had been risen from the dead!  What does it mean?

 What it means is that God’s victory was one over evil in the political and ecclesiastical realms, but not only in them.  God’s victory is over sin and death itself!  Someone had to pay the price for sin.  Jesus did that.  He who knew no sin, took sin to its death with Him on the Cross!  Sin no longer wins!  Humanity can live lives of Love and Grace with one another, because sin does not hold us in bondage any longer!  We can live in bold certainty of God’s Love and Grace because sin has been defeated, along with the fruit of sin – death.

The ideologies of empire and Kingdom clashed on Jesus' Triumphal Entry in Jerusalem.  But the Will of God, the Way of God, the Way of Jesus, the Way of Love and Grace wins!  God triumphs, through the death of Jesus!  God triumphs over division, destruction, oppression, injustice, inequality, inequities, greed, abuses of power, false supremacy, hatred and war!  The ways of empire lose, in the end.  God wins because love wins.

 Even death, our greatest enemy does not win!  That which many of us still hold as our greatest fear has been conquered!  Jesus took it out!  Death is now something else for us – NOT uncertainty about what comes next or of what our plight will be because of sin, but by God’s Grace, death is but the gateway to everlasting life with God!  It has lost its sting!  It no longer holds sway over us!  It is just something to go through in order for us to be with God and for eternity in a state of well-being, completeness and wholeness with the source of Love and Joy and Peace!  It is but a portal to that new life!

 The worst thing that can happen to us is that we die.  In Christ Jesus, that is not even a defeat.  It is life for us.  All those who are struggling to survive across the world, who are in a living hell of famine, war, oppression, violence, addiction, poverty and hopelessness have a Lord who has gone through those things, and who identifies with them!  This is not a God who is far off and detached from humanity, but one who has come to experience our greatest temptations, our injustices, our suffering and even our death!  This Lord sustains us by being with us in our struggles in life.  Where is God in the midst of all the suffering of the world?  On the Cross, with us in it.  Our hope is in the teachings of this Lord, who calls us to the living of Agape Love with one another and a better world because of it.  Our victory is in a Lord who took on even our death for us, to conquer our sin, so that we could have His resurrection and life eternal with God!

 So, why would we seek the living Lord among the dead things of the world?  Why would we just claim the name and then embrace the things that produce the suffering, violence, injustice, oppression, poverty, hopelessness and even death of our sisters and brothers in the world?  Why would we just claim the name of Jesus and then NOT live what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us in the living of Agape Love?  Our seeking of the Lord in the midst of those things is like going to a tomb to look for someone who is alive!  Those are not the things of the Living Lord, but the things of a dead one!  Our Lord cannot be found among the things of death and destruction, but in the things of life and living!

 We have a God who commands us to transform the world in love, who is with us in the struggles because of a lack of that love, and who has already given us the final victory over ALL OF IT by dying for us and being raised for us!  We go where Christ Jesus goes!  In life, we go where Jesus went in how we live with one another, in the struggles of life we go with Jesus to the Cross and in the end, we go to be with Jesus for eternity!  Our hope is in our endurance in believing in Jesus and Jesus’ Way for us to be in the world – the Way of Agape Love and Grace, even or especially in the midst of the suffering we must endure because of the ways of death and destruction!  Our hope is not in human invention or initiative or the ways of empire in the world, but in the Way of Jesus that transforms the world to be in alignment with God’s Will for us!  Our hope is that, even in the suffering, or especially in the suffering, we have a Lord who identifies with us and all those who are suffering!  Our hope is in a Lord who has conquered even death for us, to give us an eternity of well-being, Love, Joy and Peace – the very things that He taught us to produce in this part of God’s Kingdom, here and now, by the living of Agape Love and Grace!

 Jesus took on our frailty, hunger, homelessness, injustices, suffering and even death.  Jesus taught us God’s better way for all humanity.  Jesus took sin to its death and conquered death itself!  He died our death to give us His resurrection!  As He is raised from the dead, so will we be raised!  By God’s Grace in Love, WE have a promise of life everlasting in Jesus our Lord!

 Why do you seek the living Lord among the dead things?  He is Risen!  He is risen, indeed!

Jesus' entry means what?

 

Palm Sunday      Luke 19:28-48

 Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem was an indictment of empire.

The Romans would parade their troops into the city after a conquest of the land, and people would be coerced to come out into the streets and lay down their cloaks, shouting, “Io Triumphe!” as the generals, on large steeds would go by.  It was a spectacle of violent control over the people, and it built careers for the triumphant generals.  Their troops, not so much.  Empire’s gods of Power and Status demanded the devotion of the people.

 Jesus, fulfilling the prophets, came humbly, on a colt.  It must have looked ridiculous.  The people spontaneously threw their cloaks on the road and shouted a welcome to Messiah.  The corrupt religious leaders could not have that, so they ordered the parade to stop, but Jesus rebuked them, saying that this genuine and sincere outcry would happen, even if by the creation itself.  Matthew’s Gospel has the people, crowds of them, shouting, “Hosanna!”  “O Save Us!”  Save us indeed, from Rome, from empire, from ourselves.  Save us, O Lord, from the evil we have shown ourselves capable of using against one another.

 Then, Jesus wept over the city and its future.  He lamented that the people did not embrace the things that make for PEACE, things that empire had obscured from their vision with its inundation of greed, lust for power and desire for status.  For there can be no peace without justice.  There can be no Shalom – completeness, wholeness and well-being, and the resulting peace – unless ALL have Shalom.  The people had no Shalom.  There can be no Shalom while empire rules – then or now.  Jesus had seen what generations under empire had done to the people of God in Jerusalem, and what it was yet to do to them, and it broke His heart.

 Then, Jesus entered the Temple and cleaned it out – the place where coins were exchanged from Roman (idolatrous) coins to shekels for offerings and the purchase of sacrifices was changed into a market place, because under empire, one of the gods who are given devotion is wealth.  Even in the Temple of the Lord, the normative value had become profit over faithfulness to God.

 That was the final straw.  It always is the final straw.  Jesus had crossed the line.  Empire was challenged on its abuses of power, and the end of that was told to the people.  Now, Jesus really did it, when He attacked the coffers of the corrupt religious leaders.  They now actively sought to have Jesus killed.  As was told Martin Luther during the 16^th Century Reformation, “Now, you have attacked the bellies of the monks.”  He had attacked the corrupt gains of the church.  As it happened for Dr. King, who launched a poor peoples’ campaign, now he had dared attack the systemic economic injustices of the nation.  They had to go.  Jesus, too, had to go. 

 The people need to be saved, still.  As the few reap the benefits designed for them under empire, the many are crying out to welcome the Lord and be saved, not just from sin and death, but from the evil corruptions of empire that continue to hold them down, back and out, and which diminish and destroy any possible Shalom in their lives.  We have learned what Jesus did and taught against empire and the evil corruptions born of empire.  Jesus enters our lives, and we will either welcome Him with blessings or we will plot to silence Him in our hearts, minds and lives for good.  We will give our devotion to God by living in Jesus’ Way that sustains life, or we will kill Jesus within us and live in the way of empire, the way of greed, power and status that destroys lives. 

Jesus comes to us.  Now.