Fifth Sunday of Easter

A New Commandment?

Jesus tells his disciples that he will leave them shortly. He doesn't have a set of instructions, an organizational plan, or even a set of inspired writings. He simply gets their attention by declaring he is giving them a new commandment: "Love one another". 

It is interesting that he doesn't repeat an earlier reference to the "greatest commandment" in response to fancy rhetoric from a Pharisee to love God and neighbor.  This commandment is more to the need of the community of the faithful. Because if the community is not animated by love, love of God and love of neighbor grows out of fiction. What Christ is trying to establish is what grounds the community: love. Doctrinally, the Church is founded on Christ, which is all well and good; but it isn't a very practical statement without this "new commandment". Just as the popular phrase "believing in Jesus" isn't helpful in understanding what one must do with this belief, reciting doctrine or dogma can't substitute for love. Christianity is not merely a creed.

In our first reading, we get a sense of the heady times in the early Church. That although "it is necessary to undergo many hardships", people saw the love of Paul and Barnabas that drew them to worship Christ, which is to say, to join them on this "way".  They "opened the door of faith", by inviting them to share the journey, though difficult, was animated by love.

It is easy to get lost in the rhetoric of Christianity and forget the commandment left us by Jesus to love one another as the very practical way of suggesting that if we are not a model of the Trinitarian love we profess, our faith is a sham. If we don't love one another, and walk together sharing the hardships of being a community of faith, then the mission becomes a philosophy club with weekly rituals and catchy phrases.

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Sheepish Leaders

If you knew God was speaking to you, it is likely you would listen. It is even more likely that you would be trembling in fear and, like countless times in the Bible, have to be encouraged not to be afraid. 

In the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus speaking as the Good Shepherd, which makes us sheep. Sheep have the reputation for being rather dull, but I suppose if you look at the course of history from the outside, say the way an alien race might see us, perhaps the sheep would come out ahead.

In the gospel reading, Jesus does not lead with a conditional statement: “If my sheep hear my voice”, he says “My sheep hear my voice”; it is a declaration. As a matter of fact, real sheep (not metaphorical ones) have been reported to be a good as people in distinguishing others in a crowd (Sheep 101.info). So why use sheep to make his point?

As in most of Jesus’ figurative statements, he uses something familiar to his audience; however, like Paul and Barnabas in the first reading, his audience was divided: some followed, and some thought he was a nut.

The Gospel of Christ isn’t a very attractive philosophy. Following is, for us, a becoming, a transformation into someone who recognizes Christ by his “voice”. Where do we hear Christ’s voice?  Most clearly, we hear the voice of Christ in those who are oppressed, who are marginalized and unjustly punished, who are poor in spirit and materially poor (the two often go together).  It is the “least of these”; but to put this phrase in context from the 25th Chapter of Matthew, the “least” are his disciples. Following Christ puts us at the end of the line, so the poor become not always those outside our community, but those inside our community as well. It is in our poverty, the ordinariness of our daily lives, that Christ speaks, and we respond.  Last week, Christ said to his disciples “Feed my sheep”; we are those sheep; we are those shepherds.

Third Sunday of Easter

He Reveals Himself in This Way

This is an incredible story that resonates with an earlier account of Jesus giving fishing advice to fishermen. In Luke chapter 5, Jesus has the disciples “put out for deep water” and fish. The boat was overwhelmed with fish. Also in Luke’s account, Simon Peter was the “voice” of the disciples and “fell down at Jesus’ knees saying ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” In today’s gospel, however, Peter launches himself half-naked into the water and swims ashore ahead of the rest, only to be confronted by one question asked three times: “Do you love me?”. Three times, Peter affirms his loyalty, which some commentators suggest is an undoing of Peter’s denial of Christ three times. Whatever the case, it is significant that Jesus is recognized in the miracle and in serving them. He does not tell them he will make them fishers of men as he did previously, but this time he tells Peter, “Feed my sheep.” As Christ has fed them, literally, he is sending them into a life of serving those whom they “catch.” For us, it isn’t a numbers game; it isn’t simply about how many fish we get, it's about serving those attracted to Christ. How will they recognize the risen Christ who has already risen and ascended into heaven? They will see Christ risen in our lives of service and communion, of mission and faith.

Second Sunday of Easter

Resurrection and Woundedness

It was important to the early Church that the account of Jesus' resurrection does not become a "ghost story".  Some followers of Christ could not reconcile the divinity of Christ with his humanity, and came to the conclusion that Jesus, being divine, could not have truly suffered on the cross; a wounded God is much more difficult to worship.  Luke writes in the tradition of Christians who share the conviction, handed down by the Apostles, that Christ's humanity and suffering did not detract from his divinity.

When Jesus invites his Apostles to touch his wounds, and then to give him some cooked fish to eat, his intent was clear: "It is I myself".  During Good Friday, we venerated the Cross and meditated on the wounds of Christ as those wounds were the sins of humanity being put upon Christ.  Today we see Jesus, the resurrected Christ, but we also see his wounds.  Jesus was resurrected with his wounds.

Being resurrected doesn't mean we jettison our wounds, or, as Hamlet put it "shuffle off our mortal coil"; the resurrection has transformed our wounds, not removed them.  We carry our wounds through our baptism into our new life in Christ, and we often take on new wounds.  What is markedly different, though, is as Christians we live with our wounds visible, proof of our resurrection.  We can share the painful wounds we've received because we live in a new body, the body of Christ.  Love has conquered death, our wounds are no longer harbingers of death: proof we have not died, but that we live.

In a sense, our wounds when not hidden, become the agent of connection with a wounded world.  The bumper sticker "Not Perfect, Just Forgiven" comes to mind.  Our wounds make us human, the freedom from having our woundedness lead us into despair, hate, anger, greed, etc.. is our release from death--our resurrection with the risen Christ. 

What being resurrected means for us is living with the confidence that love overcomes death.  That our wounds present in our new life in Christ become a source of great hope for whom woundedness has led to death.  Like Christ, we can live a life that removes the defensive imperative to cover our wounds and move to dominate, to control and accumulate wealth.  Our life in Christ shows the world another way: the way of Jesus displaying his wounds to his followers as the beginning of their spiritual journey as people of the resurrection. 

Easter: The Resurrection of the Lord

The older I get, the less concerned I am about the historical facts of my faith.  Don't get me wrong, if I could know some historical fact regarding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, I'd jump at the opportunity; it's more a matter of accepting the inherent limitations of living a life of faith regarding the type of knowledge faith reveals.  I see so many folks trading their faith for a kind of intellectual dishonesty that makes bizarre claims in an attempt to find an empirical backing to what they claim to believe already. 

Christian curmudgeons who scour the Bible making esoteric connections that reveal the exact time Christ will return are examples of this type of dishonesty. Another kind of intellectual dishonesty is prevalent myths handed down by unsuspecting pastors who “read this somewhere” that when Jesus said to turn the other cheek, rather than being a form of submission to an aggressor, it was, in fact, a Middle Eastern custom of offering your enemy your left cheek as a form of insult. Or how about the old “eye of the needle” problem for wealthy people seeking the Kingdom? I’ve heard this explained away from the pulpit by referring to unnamed sources that, in fact, the “eye” was a very narrow gate that a camel could get through, but that it had to go on its knees to make it. The good news here is that you can have your riches and make it through the “eye” on your knees. Of course, there never was such a gate in Jesus’ time, and even the metaphor itself is strained to find Good News for the wealthy (see Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 3, pp. 592-594 ). But there is no way to explain away the necessity for crucifixion before resurrection while claiming orthodox Christian faith. There is no other way to resurrection than through crucifixion.  This is the substance of my faith when I proclaim each Sunday "He was crucified, died and buried.  On the third day, he rose again in accordance with the scriptures."

Crucifixion forces our hand and breaks our plans for an orderly and carefully controlled life while putting us at the feet of the cross, or on it.  We will likely never have empirical, historical evidence of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, but one thing is eminently probable: Jesus was killed on the cross by Roman and religious authorities who were threatened by the instability of challenged metaphors: Jesus said he was a king, and Jesus said he was the Messiah.  The only possible way Jesus could walk to the cross was a faith born not in what would come after, but in the sustaining relationship of love he had with the Father.  Jesus' fear, and feeling of dejection in murmuring the 22nd Psalm "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" ends with the 31st Psalm: "Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." 


The Resurrection is what happened after.  The disciples witnessed it according to the accounts of Scripture.  But my faith in the Resurrection is also founded on the resurrections I've experienced in others and in myself that have their origin in The Resurrection. This yoking of death with birth is an incredibly rich source of our human experience recorded in art and literature.

 Easter is the "difficult birth" of a faith borne on the cross of a two-thousand-year-old man who claimed to be a king and Messiah, but the millions of new lives hewn from the roughness of the Cross is witness to a deeper and more profound truth than a single historical event; the Resurrection has lived long after Jesus walked the earth.

Good Friday of the Lord's Passion

We Call this Friday Good

Good Friday is when we recall that even Jesus' closest disciples fled into the night and sought refuge away from the Roman and Temple authorities for fear that they, too would be arrested; faith: FAIL. Today is a day we move deeper into meditating on our need to tell God, as Jesus, hanging on the cross to pull off another miracle, save yourself and save us! No? We’re out of here! I’m not going to end up like that!! 

     Peter’s famous denial three times echoing Jesus’ earlier query, also three times: “Do you love me, Peter?” Peter responded then: “You know that I love you!” Now, fearful of his life, he replies “I know nothing of this man you refer to!” This person is the disciple upon whom the Church. Peter, the so-called “Rock” by Jesus, crumbles into sand at the crucifixion. 

     The cross is a spectacle of human folly, failure, and faithlessness. "Yet, in spite of that", as T.S. Eliot wrote, “We call this Friday good.” Its goodness lies in God’s total submission to his love for humanity in the person of Jesus. It is the goodness inherent when we willing suffer for another person, perhaps a stranger, or even an enemy. Today, we contemplate how we respond to being asked to suffer for another, or whether or not suffering (of ourselves or another) sends us scurrying into the night, renouncing God because we suffer. 

     “How could God allow such suffering ?” many ask and imply this is the cardinal weakness of Christianity. Perhaps the better question is “Why would God be willing to enter into our world of suffering?” The mightiness of God isn’t a lifeboat dropping out of the sky for survivors floating in a tempest; it is God falling into the water next to us to show us the way to dry land. 

     God with us, “Emmanuel”, means God suffering for and with us. God does not want to “save” us as much as he intends to be with us. We want to be “saved”, just as Jesus wanted to escape suffering; it's only natural. No one suggests that to follow Jesus we should seek out pain, but rather following Jesus we will enter the suffering of a suffering world with a resounding affirmation: “Yes” to being with the poor and hopeless, the excluded, imprisoned, tortured, and sick. “Yes” to the suffering of the world, and all its messiness and dysfunction. The cross’ affirmation is entering into the heart of the suffering world and walking with those who suffer to find God calling us into his embrace, arms stretched out on the cross, now embracing us in all of our horror and pain, failure, and humiliation. Today we come to the cross to be embraced by Jesus’ crucifixion and to be resurrected with The Christ.

Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

Today we begin Holy Week. We see the Passion from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem to rolling the stone to seal the tomb. On Monday, we rewind to six days before Passover, followed Tuesday and Wednesday with the Passover meal and Jesus' subsequent betrayal by Judas. Holy Thursday is Jesus washing his disciple's feet and telling them "If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet." Good Friday, we, once again, meditate on The Cross.

So today and Friday, we speak of the Lord's passion, of God's love for His creation.

Passion.  The word evokes wild adventure, impulsive romance, gestures too big to fulfill, and the brief but intense relationship between Romeo and Juliet.  This concept places Jesus in the tradition of the foolish Romantics—an itinerant preacher from the margins schooled by his radical cousin (John the Baptist) and led to make one final, dramatic gesture to get his message out: die as a martyr.  But Jesus’ death was unlike the death of many of the martyred faithful to come.  His death wasn't for a cause, but a relationship.  God fell hopelessly in love with humanity and inserted Himself to be with His creation to deliver this message of healing, love, and forgiveness.  God’s power isn't the power of Zeus with lightning bolts from the heavens, but God’s message is now simply “Return; I love you”.

Throughout Holy Scripture, God has struggled and seemingly failed many times, just as His people have.  It has been an on-and-off-again cosmic love story between the Creator and His creation since humanity was first created and was given a choice not to love God.  This dance between Creator and created culminated in His great and defining act of love: self-sacrifice on the cross.

Today’s Gospel reading recounts this journey to the cross with Jesus as God leading the way, experiencing the pain and abandonment of His creation, the physical pain of a gruesome, ignominious death, giving into the abyss of his uncreated end: all for love.  But in this remarkable journey, he found a few responding with courage: Simon of Cyrene shared some in Jesus' suffering, the women who gathered at the foot of the cross and stayed there long after the men had scattered for fear of being arrested, the felon who believed because he saw the suffering of an innocent man, and finally the Roman centurion who saw in this suffering man God’s love.  This is pretty intense stuff.

God’s affirmation of his creation, of saying “yes” to the cross, is the ultimate passionate folly to a world seeking safety over communion.  God as Jesus: crucified, dead and buried.  Stay tuned.