June 1, 2025 7th Sunday of Easter Luke 9:46-62

             If this sermon works well then I will probably offend all of you before I’m done, and then add to that by giving a depressing message.  But only then can we truly be in a place to understand God’s grace and know how to joyfully live in forgiveness.

            I’ve long read the Bible passages about the disciples arguing among themselves as who was the greatest as if they were adolescent boys posturing for dominance in some toxic masculinity sort of way.  I’ve wondered how shallow and selfish they must have been!  How did Jesus put up with them, and why did Jesus select this bunch of nitwits?  Surely there were better people that he could have selected.  But more recently I’ve begun to question these ideas.  Have I been turning them into caricatures I could easily cast aside instead of realizing their dynamics are very common today?  Perhaps they were actually as bad as I’m apt to caricaturize them, but I suspect not.

            Something that has been growing worse for decades, but it has gotten especially prominent since the last presidential election, is moral posturing and virtue signaling.  And are not moral posturing and virtue signaling any different than arguing over who is the greatest?  All sides seem to do it, and in doing so all sides miss the truth.  Here is where I’m likely to offend all of you. 

Many on the conservative side of things praise President Trump.  However, as conservative author David Brooks pointed out in his recent address to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, this is a fundamental mistake.  Trump is not conservative.  He is anti-liberal.  His policies are irrational and inconsistent.  They’re dangerous and weaken the nation at home and abroad.  You cannot undermine the legislative and judicial branches of government by declaring everything to be an emergency.  At the very beginning of his term his surrogates called the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America a money-laundering organization.  He has wreaked havoc in our social service programs, immigrant resettlement programs, and threatens our mission work worldwide.  People the Lutheran church used to care for nationally and internationally are dying because of him.  So called government efficiency is, as far as I can tell, excuses to go after everything an anti-liberal doesn’t like.  There is serious fear within the Rochester area by Lutheran pastors.  I have not personally been threatened by federal officials, but colleagues in the area have.

            Perhaps you are a conservative who is opposed to Trump.  There are plenty of people like that.  They’ve gone pretty quiet lately out of fear.  But rarely do I meet conservatives like David Brooks who can also critique conservativism.  Conservative approaches can stall progress, create divisions, and not recognize that systems cause problems powerless people cannot get out of.  Trump supporter, or conservative against Trump, it easily comes in line with the disciples arguing for who is the greatest.

            But if you’re on the liberal side of things the same dynamics are happening.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is truly on the liberal side of things.  Most of its policies reflect the attitudes of the educated elite.  Fancy words and sophisticated concepts are thrown around all the time.  They site endless studies and claim to what they call unbiased do scientific research, but their perspectives show ignorance of: hard manual labor, the dynamics of rural communities, commercial production, and present-day agriculture.  Liberals have become great at virtue signaling.  Clothes and cars are chosen to send the message of their so-called enlightenment.  They shop at stores and farmers buying locally sourced organic produce, and ethically sourced commercial goods, claiming they are good environmentalists, good humanitarians, and stewards of the earth.  They’ll write letters, attend rallies, create policies, and fight on behalf of whatever minority happens to be the shiny object of the moment, yet never be willing to do hard tedious manual labor, and think themselves good people.  Is this also not arguing who is the greatest?

            Have I managed to offend you yet?  All sides seem to create caricatures of the other and then hole up within their self-built righteousness.

            Now that I’ve offended you, it is time to depress you.  Evil is clever, very clever.  It is thrilled to have us pointing at each other.  While each side has merits to its case it also does have evil elements.  Evil is thrilled to have us consume our time and efforts pointing fingers and arguing over who is the greatest.  Doing so keeps us from seeing the real problems.  We try to take the speck out of our neighbor’s eye and miss the log in our own.

            Evil is truly clever.  Among its more clever things is to turn good into a destructive bad.  Last year one of my doctoral courses had best-selling author Joanna Penn as a guest.  She’s written over 40 books of multiple types.  She’s a British author, and like many British authors she is particularly adept at creating villains.  I asked her how she went about creating an evil character.  She said she started by finding something good within herself.  And then she’d push that good just a little too far until it became destructive.  In one of her books there is a woman who has a heart for saving the environment.  After much soul-searching the woman realizes the only way to truly ensure environmental safety is to cause the extinction of one particular species – humans.

Here's a trick of evil.  I think we’d all agree that health care is a good thing.  We’d also agree that we should care for the elderly, the weak, and the disabled.  We don’t kill off a person as soon as he or she consumes more from society than they give to society.  And yet, the greater the health care the weaker humans become.  In the natural world those who are not fit and vital die quickly.  They do not become a burden.

For one of my son’s recent college classes they used computer models and artificial intelligence to speculate about what good health care does to human genetics.  Good healthcare undermines one of the fundamental dynamics of evolutionary health.  It allows the weak the opportunity to pass on their genetics.  It should be no surprise when I tell you that my son’s computer models predict humans will quickly become less physically strong and less intelligent. 

Is healthcare therefore bad?  Yet it is undeniably dooming us!  Actually, we don’t have to worry about that.  Our level of health and way of life will collapse long before we become genetically weak.  I’ve preached in the recent past that according to geologist Scott Tinker we need to reduce our energy consumption by 93% if we want the planet to survive.  That means immediately stopping life as we know it.  We also need to eliminate at least 6 billion people from the earth because the earth cannot sustain the human population.  From what I understand we’ve already passed the tipping point.  There is no going back.  The damage is done and things will only get worse.

            To withhold basic care from a suffering and struggling human is evil.  The Bible tells us over and over again to offer care.  Yet providing it is destroying us and so is ultimately evil as well.

            Do you see how clever evil is?  And this is just one example.  It happens all the time.  Yet as long as we keep our moral posturing arguing over who is the greatest, evil (in is subtlest form) is allowed to run unchecked.

            Simple fact.  We’re in a mess.  We can’t get out of it.  We’ve all contributed to it.  We’re ruining God’s good creation and we have no good options before us.  I told you at the beginning I would make you angry and then depress you.

            In our gospel reading James and John wanted to call down divine wrath upon towns of foreigners who didn’t accept Jesus.  Then several would-be followers wanted to follow Jesus.  They each had rational excuses for a delay.  Jesus rejected them.  Jesus was focused on Jerusalem and his crucifixion that would happen there.  That would be the price of defeating evil.  By all worldly judgements and perspectives it was nonsense; but all worldly judgements and perspectives end up having evil weave itself into them.

            So here’s the truth.  Only when we can go to God realizing that we are trapped, helpless, and broken are we truly in a place to be amazed by God’s grace.  Only when we realize how trapped, helpless, and broken we are are we able to have the authentic humility needed to work in God’s kingdom for the future.  Our culture: its conservatives, liberals, and any philosophical perspective that thinks it has the ultimate answers, does not like the truth of evil or the cross it leads Jesus to.

            A happy future, and the happy ending to a dark sermon, is to be in awe of God’s boundless forgiveness for us.  It is to know that God loves us, and delights in us, even as we endlessly make messes of everything we touch.

            What do we then do?  How do we act?  How do we work through messes that even our best efforts cause, things like the side effects of having basic healthcare for sick people? 

            We endlessly root ourselves in the humility of our sinfulness.  Martin Luther’s ever famous quote in a letter to Philip Melanchthon comes to mind: “Sin and sin boldly, but rejoice in Christ more boldly still.”  It is not by dwelling in our sinfulness that gets us out of it.  It is by rejoicing in Christ that we have the perspective we need to be able to engage evil.  Again from Martin Luther, the words of the hymn A Mighty Fortress.  This is a German to English translation from centuries ago:

“For still our ancient foe, forsworn to work us woe, with guile and dreadful might is armed to wage the fight: on earth there is no equal.

“If we in our own strength confide, our striving turns to losing; the righteous one fights by our side, the one of God’s own choosing.

“…Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; though all of these be gone, they yet have nothing won.  The kingdom’s our forever!”

            Luther’s truthful thoughts are an expression of complete humility yet absolutely bold defiance because of the security of God’s love.  It is helplessness that is rooted in hope that is beyond us.  When that perspective is applied to the world’s problems the answers are neither flashy nor easy (and they are never popular or will be widely embraced by humanity) but they are the end of evil and the beginning of God’s kingdom. 

            This will never be fully realized in the world.  God alone can bring it about.  But it lets us live with bold defiance with faith in God’s promises.   It gives us hope in the face of hopelessness, and can let us navigate the inevitable mess of evil with true love.

May 18, 2025 5th Sunday of Easter Luke 9:18-27

             If you ever travel on the Thru-Way from the Victor exit to the Canandaigua exit you know that the right hand lane is so rough that it feels like pieces of your car are going to start falling of here there and everywhere.  In the over 25 years I’ve lived in this area that lane has always been rough, despite several attempts by the Thru-Way to fix it.  I’m curious if the current repaving project will finally set it to rights.

            While I would argue that far right lane is an example of either truly flawed design or very sloppy inspection of the road base before paving, it does remind me of something else.  In college I worked a few semesters as a co-op student with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation in their Bureau of Environmental Quality.  For much of that time I shared office space with an experienced engineer who had spent his career designing highways.  I remember talking with him about some of the most problematic highway projects at the time.  He would become frustrated.  One time he pointed to a coffee mug on his desk and said, “People are never satisfied.  If I were to design a road so smooth that you could put that mug on the dashboard of your car and have it not spill a drop all too soon people would complain and want something better.”  While I will maintain that the right lane of the Thruway between Victor and Canandaigua is a truly abysmal bit of highway, I believe he had a point.

            God made us to be highly capable and creative beings.  We can do many amazing things.  Among them is that we can shape our environment to make it safer and more comfortable for ourselves.  There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but at what point do we go too far?  At what point are we just never satisfied and so we expend endless thought and resources making things ever more comfortable?

            That takes us to the very uncomfortable teaching in our gospel reading where Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”  Ouch.  We don’t like to hear that.  And there’s more. 

The gospels record Jesus saying things like this any number of times.  This one stands out for having a word added – daily.  “Let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

That one additional word here makes a big difference.

Of course the idea of taking up a cross is not a pleasant one.  Crucifixion was shameful, extremely painful, and of course, results in death.  No one in their right mind would want to willingly do such a thing!  But the image is easily symbolized.  Taking up your cross is adapting a way of life that is counter to the ways of the world.  Instead of looking to your own interest, which is the way of the world; it is investing your whole self in the betterment of others and the world at large.  Why do such a foolish thing?  Because when your value is held securely by God you don’t rely on the world.  And because you discover your fullest self when you are absolutely giving of yourself.  The ironic truth is that the more you give of yourself the more yourself you become.  Even so, this symbolic meaning can easily be distorted. 

We live in turbulent political times.  The country has become increasingly polarized in recent decades.  I have my own fears, concerns, and angers.  The situation is far more complex than most people are willing to admit, but there are many calls for action.  People of all political persuasions attend rallies, protests, demonstrations and the like.  That’s fine.  Citizens have every right to do so, and such things do have a place in creating change.  But in and of themselves they accomplish little to nothing.  If you want political change and all you do is attend rallies, and if you send some money to election campaigns, then all you’re really doing are the charismatic things and avoiding the real work.

Some people may think that being met with anger for their activism work, and possibly being arrested, for is a cross that they are bearing.  Perhaps so.  But again, that’s an approach that is charismatic, loves the spotlight, and is nothing more than moral posturing.  If you want to make real change then you have to work and work hard.  That work is often very boring and overlooked.

Taking up your cross daily means a way of life.  It is not execution.  It is not charismatic.  It is a way of life that is driven by hard working love.  It is not afraid to be obscure, unrecognized, and even scoffed at.

In a week and a day many communities across America will be having Memorial Day parades.  Victor has a Memorial Day parade.  Canandaigua does too.  It is a good time to remember those who have died in service to their country; those who have given their lives so that many others can enjoy a good life.  I think it is safe to say that in almost every one of those parades there will be fire trucks.  Kids love fire trucks.  They’re big.  They’re loud.  They’re shiny and bright.  Fire trucks signify a crisis, and that people who are skilled and brave are heading into that crisis, possibly risking their lives, for the betterment of the community.  We do well to celebrate our fire fighters.

            If you’ve heard me preach like this before you know what I’m going to say next.  How many garbage trucks will be in the Memorial Day parades across the nation?  Also, Canandaigua has a big truck with a giant drain snake on it that is used to keep the sewer lines clear.  Do you think that truck will be in the parade?

            Do not our garbage collectors and our sewage treatment workers also do dangerous stuff on a daily basis?  Are they not also skilled?  Do they not handle toxic chemicals, sharp objects, and dangerous things?  If they did not do their work, would we continue to live in safe places?  Wouldn’t the garbage and filth quickly pile up into a national health crisis far bigger than a burning building?

            Of course I deeply appreciate the many fire fighters and emergency medical technicians in our communities.  Having fire trucks in a Memorial Day parade is fun!  Having garbage trucks would be disgusting.  But still, if there was a, “Take Up Your Cross Daily,” award, I’d be giving it to the garbagemen.  (Perhaps I should organize a political protest demanding equal representation in Memorial Day parades.  For every fire truck there must be a garbage truck or sewage service vehicle!)

            I started by talking about people never being satisfied and always wanting better roads, and better everything.  We want comforts, conveniences, entertainment; and ever more.  We also like things that are charismatic and attention getting.  These are all parts of our human nature.  We live in a culture that celebrates these things and craves these things.  Yet each and every one of these things is antithetical to what our Lord Jesus taught.

            When he said to take up your cross daily and follow him he was not teaching that people should embrace pain and misery.  But he was teaching the truth about wholeness of life.  If all you ever think about is more comforts and conveniences… if all you ever think about is doing things that are exciting and charismatic, then you will never be satisfied.  You will miss most of life.  You will lose sight of who you are and what your purpose is.  I think that is the biggest crisis our nation is facing.  We’ve been able to indulge too much thinking it will make us happier and more fulfilled, when all it does is leave us empty.

            Jesus said that for those who want to save their life they will lose it.  But those who lose their life will find it.  That goes for not only eternal life, but also life now.

            So, don’t expect God to call you to dramatic and exciting things.  Perhaps you’ll do some of that, but most of it will be meaningful things.  It will be doing routine tasks; caring for others; using your time, talents, and money not in systematic ways, but in careful person-to-person ways.  Taking up your cross builds relationships.  Those who do so are blessed to see the kingdom of God coming into their midst.

May 11, 2025 4th Sunday of Easter Luke 9:1-17

             You’re certainly familiar with the phrase, “Jack of all trades.  Master of none.”  I think it’s a model we do well to remember; especially in our society today where it feels like we are supposed to specialize in something.  We become an expert in that one thing and then rely on other experts to do other things.

Think of cars.  When was the last time you yourself made a major repair to your car?  Our answers vary.  Many of us will answer, “never.”  We have, or we’ve had, a job that made money.  Presumably (or hopefully!) we were good at our job.  We made money.  We then paid experts in cars to keep our cars running.  The same goes for just about everything else.  We pay plumbers, electricians, and contractors -all of them experts in something- to build and maintain the homes in which we live.  We pay specialists to fix our computers and phones.  We may pay people to mow our lawns and clear the snow.  We do not make our clothes or appliances or toys; we buy them. 

The idea is that we specialize in something in life, which we count upon to pay a living wage.  That is the specific value we create for our society.  Then we rely on the expertise of others, and pay them, to take care of the rest of our wants and needs.

From the perspective of basic economics all of this is efficient.  It allows us to create a great deal of goods and comforts at an absolutely minimal cost.  How effective would it be if in order to have a car you had to start by mining iron ore?

Specialization is efficient and works very very well.  But if we build our whole lives around specialization, especially our faith, then we’ve run into trouble.  It is true as it says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.  To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, …to another gifts of healing… to another the working of miracles… to another prophesy…” and so on, but that is not specialization in matters of faith.  You do not get to say, “Because I am not good at something I don’t have to do it.  That’s someone else’s job.”  That’s not how faith works.  But I fear that thinking creeps into our faith all too often.

If we turn to our gospel reading we see something else going on.  Whenever I read this text my attention is drawn to the feeding of the 5000 with five loaves and two fish.  How can so little food feed so many, and there be more leftovers than there was food originally.  My attention is also drawn to the disciples being sent out with the power to cure diseases and cast out demons.  I want to know how that was possible, and what was this healing power actually like?  I also imagine how scary it must have felt to just go out to unknown places with nothing but the clothes on their backs.  But when I focus on those things I miss something else going on.  That is, that in these 17 verses these faithful disciples are in the Jack of all trades role.

We start out with the disciples being given power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and to proclaim the kingdom of God.  There are three distinctly different roles right there.  They are being exorcists.  And they’re being healers.  And they’re being evangelists.  They do not necessarily all go together.  But I think we could say that casting out demons and curing people of diseases must have been exciting work.  Perhaps the evangelism was too.

Then the text gives us a bit of an interlude about King Herod executing John the Baptist and wanting to see Jesus.

The disciples work must have been successful because on their return they (and Jesus) are soon hounded by crowds wanting more.  Jesus has tried to get them to a place of solitude for some rest and relaxation but the crowds find them anyway.  Notice how the situation is changing as the gospel goes on.  Instead of Jesus having to go out and preach about the kingdom of God now the crowds are coming to him.  I hope you can sense the strains and problems that are developing.  Jesus sent his disciples out to meet needs.  The needs turned out to be greater than they could meet.  The crowds need and want more.  But how much more is there to give?  And when can Jesus and the disciples get some rest?  The scene is set for the Feeding of the 5000 Miracle.

I can sense the exasperation from the disciples when their break, already interrupted by the crowds, is further challenged when Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.”  The disciples are not being lazy or selfish when they tell Jesus to send the crowds away.  They are tired.  They’re being practical.  They are also aware of the available resources.  They have five loaves and two fish; which anyone can tell you is not nearly enough to feed 5000 people.

If we’re talking about the disciples having the role of being a Jack of all trades, then here they’re being workers in the human resources department who are pointing out to their boss that they simply need more rest.  They’re also being accountants.  Surely you cannot feed so many with so little.

Jesus, knowing what he will do but seemingly oblivious to these obvious problems, instructs the disciples to have the crowd sit down in groups of 50.  Now they’re being ushers doing crowd control.  Then comes the miracle.  Jesus turns five loaves and two fish into enough to feed these 5000!  It’s abundance coming out of almost nothing.  And now the disciples take on yet another job.  That of cafeteria workers.

I’ve noted this before and it is always important to note, as Luke tells the story of the feeding of the 5000 Jesus does not directly distribute all the food to the people.  Jesus takes the bread and fish and then gives it to the disciples who then give it to the crowds.  We’ve talked before that if Jesus does all the distribution directly, even spending only a few seconds with each of the 5000 in the crowd, the food distribution would have taken hours.  But instead Jesus gives the food to the disciples who then, in the role of cafeteria workers, distribute the mass quantities of food to the people.

Are the disciples grumbling about all this work?  Are they saying, “We have the power to heal people and cast out demons.  We’re charismatic enough evangelists that we have helped to attract this huge crowd.  Why are we now being asked to do something as mundane as cafeteria work?”  They don’t say that their special gifts lie in higher things and therefore they shouldn’t stoop to such tasks.

And their multiple roles are not yet done.  For after the 5000 have eaten there’s cleanup work to do.  What’s to be done with all the leftovers?  Leave them on the ground to rot?  Are the locals going to say, “This Jesus guy brought in a huge crowd one afternoon and they left the place a mess!”  No, the disciples now have janitor duty.  Things have to be cleaned up.

To be fair, I’m exaggerating here.  The text makes no mention of the disciples doing the cleanup, but I think it is likely and I hope I make a point.  In these 17 verses of Luke’s gospel the disciples have been: evangelists, healers, and exorcists.  They’ve done human resources work and accounting.  They’ve worked as ushers, cafeteria workers, and janitors.  My point is that there is work to be done and they do it.  They may not be happy about it.  We aren’t told.  But there is no trace of arrogance from them. 

It is easy in our lives of faith to think that we are good at certain things, and as long as those things are needed in God’s kingdom then we do them.  But if our skills are not needed, or we think we don’t know how to help, then we’re off the hook.  It is almost as if we expect God to provide someone else with that specialty skill to do it.  If God does not provide then it does not get done and we complain about it not getting done.  Nowhere in the Bible does it allow for that though.  While it is indeed true that we all have gifts and we should use them, the real work is doing what needs done; whether it fits our skill set or not.

About 20 years ago there was a church growth concept called Natural Church Development.  Our congregation participated in it with limited success.  One of the things Natural Church Development discovered in its research is that the strongest and most effective churches are often fairly small.  You’d expect that a large church able to hire lots of expert staff would be the best way to bring about spiritual development.  But not so.  It turns out that the best faith growth came about when people just did what needed doing regardless of their skill set.  If a Sunday school teacher was needed and no one had the skills, then someone still stepped in and did it.

This can be frustrating.  It is difficult to be pressured to do things you aren’t good at.  It is fatiguing when you’re doing your best and the results are endlessly mediocre.  Yet God does not have the expectations of quality that we do.

I’m currently rebuilding an old farm wagon that my grandfather first built out of some old dump trucks.  The wooden parts had deteriorated and the dump hoist he made for it never worked.  Rebuilding it is taking a lot of metal work – grinding, cutting, and welding.  I’m not good at any of that stuff.  I can do basic things, but I’m slow and the end result is usually mediocre at best.  Nevertheless, I’m doing it.  It’s frustrating.  The end results will not be pretty, but I think it will work.  That’s the key.  At the end it will work.  So I keep at it.

Being an effective follower of Jesus is not about being a specialist.  It is often being a Jack of trades and master of none.  You may do you best at something you’re not good at.  It may be frustrating and slow.  The end results may not be great.  People may ignore your work.  Or people may even criticize you for it, yet it is still work that has been done.

Jesus’ disciples did what needed doing, whatever it was; charismatic or dull, seemingly prestigious or lowly.  But it was all work in God’s kingdom and all work worth doing.  We have the same attitude.

May 4, 2025 3rd Sunday of Easter Luke 24:36-53

             Buddhist monk and author Jack Cornfield famously wrote in his book A Path with Heart, “Life is a test – it is only a test.  If it had been an actual life, you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do.  Remember, this life is only a test.”  I am not an expert in Buddhism, so I will not be too critical of a statement like that.  However, I will use it as a stepping stone to help us understand our gospel reading for today.

It seems that in the minds of many Christians life is indeed a test by God.  If you pass the test then you get to go to heaven where there is eternal joy and bliss.  If you fail the test then you go to hell where there is extreme torment for all of eternity.  Some passages in the Bible can be used to support such ideas, so I will not say they are completely unfounded in Christianity.  However, overall that is not Christian teaching.  If it were, then God would be a cruel being who liked to play games with helpless subjects.  If life is a test that bears such severe consequences, then we definitely need God to give us further instructions on where to go and what to do.

It also has another impact that is far more subtle.  Many people seem to think that God gives us subtle nudges and clues as to where to go and what to do.  That idea is hardly better.  Why would God make life into a game to see how well we could follow subtleties?  What if we missed something?  What if we misinterpreted something?  And if God truly loves us, then why make getting life right so difficult?  And also, maybe the nudges and subtle clues idea works for humanity’s smartest people, but if we’re somewhere below average in intellectual ability how are we supposed to then recognize God’s instructions?

That whole collection of ideas don’t fit though.  God is not a cruel being who lies to play games with helpless subjects.  God does not do things in a way that favors the intelligent or the inciteful.  The wider truth revealed throughout the Bible is that God created the world, and its rich and diverse life, because God is creative.  God loves variety.  God loves dynamic things.  And in human beings, God has created a creature which has been endowed with the power to respond to God’s love.  God wants the authentic relationship of trust that comes from that.

Life is not a test.  Life is not a series of clues to be solved.  Life is a generous gift from God, with the invitation to live it in loving trust with the God who created you.

I think we’d all like to have more proof from God, and we’d like to have more clear instructions about what to do with life’s difficult decisions.  Those desires are understandable.  However, think of it this way.  If God gives you a clear and unmistakable instructions then you’d better follow them!  When God does not give you clear and unmistakable instructions, then God is giving you the freedom to respond in whatever loving way you feel like doing; and what is best.  God gives you not only life and creativity, but also forgiveness for those unavoidable times when your decisions go wrong.

In our gospel reading we see Jesus giving the disciples several things.  They are given forgiveness for their recent failings, they are given clear proof of the resurrection, they are given understanding to strengthen their relationship with God, and they are given clear instructions about what to do next.  Let’s briefly touch on each.

The forgiveness comes at the beginning when Jesus says, “Peace to you.”  They were startled and terrified at the sudden presence of the resurrected Jesus.  Remember that in the midst of their wonder and confusion about it all there was also a great sense of guilt.  They had all failed Jesus just a few days before.  All of them -every last one of them- fled when Jesus was arrested.  I’m not just talking about the twelve male disciples but also the women.  Even Peter, who had directly promised that he would never deny Jesus, shortly afterward did that very thing three times.  If they all fled and forsook Jesus, then seeing him alive and back again was a troubling prospect.  What punishment were they going to receive for their failure?

So Jesus starts off with, “Peace to you.”  They’re not in trouble at all.  They don’t need to worry.

If you call to mind the birth story of Jesus at Christmas you’ll remember the angels said a similar thing to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” 

God knows that any relationship with his creation has to be built upon peace – not fear, not warfare, …not playing games to see if the humans can manage to figure it out.

With peace proclaimed to his followers Jesus goes on to the next step – giving them proof of his bodily resurrection.  He invites them to see him and touch him.  He eats a piece of fish in their presence as additional proof.

This is finally the kind of thing we want to have with the resurrection stories.  You’ll remember that on Easter Sunday two weeks ago we had the story of Easter morning; the empty tomb.  The followers of Jesus discovered that the tomb was open, the body was gone, two men in dazzling apparel said he had been resurrected, and yet the resurrected Jesus never makes an appearance.  Last week we read a story from early Easter evening.  There the resurrected Jesus met two followers who were walking to Emmaus.  We were told that their eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus until the very end when he broke bread with them.  Then as soon as they recognized him he disappeared from their sight.  It felt like a cruel tease.  Why couldn’t they have spend joyous time knowing they were with the resurrected Jesus?

Now this week we read later in the evening when the resurrected Jesus does appear to his followers for an extended time.  They felt joy and ongoing disbelief, but it least it was a real and meaningful encounter.  It is what they needed.

It is what we need too.  If life is to be a relationship with God, then God knows we need real interaction.  If this life and this whole universe are not just some sort of test, then we need God to show that God does indeed value it.  God shows he values it by coming to live a lifetime as Jesus.  And God shows the promise of eternal life with Jesus’ actual real physical resurrection.  Jesus may come and go suddenly.  He may not be bound by normal physical limitations, but he is still real.  So the disciples get this proof.

With the disciples getting peace and then proof, they are ready to receive greater understanding about what has been going on all along.  Jesus opens their minds so that they can see God’s big plan has been at work all along, and everything continues to go according to it:

God created.

God revealed things through Moses and the prophets.

The Messiah had to suffer because it reveals the nature of God’s love, which is the foundation we need for relationship with God.

The resurrection had to be real to prove that death is not the end, and to reveal that God does indeed have the power to make good on his promises.

Finaly, the disciples are given clear instructions about what to do next.  This is the kind of thing we think we want from God.  But their instructions are to stay put and wait for further empowerment.  That’s not the kind of instructions we want to get!  These instructions were not long-term, however.  We know the stories.  Fifty days later the Holy Spirit comes upon them dramatically and they are sent out into the world.

The disciples are given instructions for what to do.  We are given the same instructions.  We are to proclaim repentance and forgiveness to all nations.  That means that the good news is not to be limited to just our friends and families.  It is not a limited commodity to be hoarded.  It is something good to be shared widely.

It is a sad thing that so few want to hear it and live it in our land today.  People would rather indulge in cheap temporary thrills rather than have the deep lasting relationship that comes with diligence and commitment.  That is their loss.  We, however, are inspired by the truth, and can live meaningful lives in confidence.

God wants us to live in confidence and freedom, being in a genuine relationship with him, and then mutual relationships with each other.  Ultimately we are called forward towards God’s promise of eternal life, which is a promise that gives us enduring joy. 

April 27, 2025 2nd Sunday of Easter Luke 24:13-35

 Whenever I read the story of the two followers of Jesus walking to Emmaus my mind wonders to why the guys didn’t recognize Jesus?  Could they actually not recognize who he is until suddenly their eyes were opened when Jesus breaks bread with them?  The text says that their eyes were kept from recognizing him.  That’s in the passive voice in Greek, which means that it is God who is keeping them from recognizing him.  All of that feels unfair.  I ask myself why is God playing games with them?  And wouldn’t their whole experience be better if they’d have recognized Jesus right from when the first met him, then spent hours knowing they were talking with him before he disappeared?  That’s what I’d want.  But this not recognizing Jesus until he is revealed and then he suddenly disappears is just frustrating!

All of those are fair frustrations to have with the text.  We’ll come back to that.  But in those frustrations we don’t want to miss the situation of these two men.

They had put their faith in Jesus.  They had believed in him.  They thought he was the one who would save the nation and bring about God’s long-promised kingdom.  He was, or was becoming, the center of their lives.  But then it all fell apart strikingly fast.  Jesus was celebrating the Passover just like everyone else, and then suddenly he was arrested, tried, sentenced, and executed; all in less than a day.  It so sudden and so fast they could hardly wrap their heads around it.  They’d put their faith in the wrong person.

Then the women report the stone of the tomb was rolled back, the tomb was empty, and two men in dazzling apparel appeared.  They said Jesus wasn’t there but was resurrected from the dead.  The story went from shocking to ridiculous.  The whole thing must have felt like a fiasco; with the women just desperate for a happy ending.

The two men on the road to Emmaus are like many people in our society today.  They don’t know what to believe in.  They don’t know who they are.  They don’t know what their purpose in life is.  They don’t where they are going.  Like the two men walking to Emmaus, they are just wandering along towards a temporary destination but with no real purpose.  Everything seems confusing and unsteady.  They tried to believe in something – they’d tried to believe in Jesus – but it had failed.  So now what?

I said a moment ago I thought this identity crisis is something many people in our society today are feeling.  That’s probably an understatement.  It’s actually dominant.  It’s like the whole society doesn’t know who they are, where they’re going in life, or where we’re going as a nation.  There’s no national identity and no national purpose.  And, despite that polls say that most people believe in God, and they have largely Christian morality structure and worldview, they do not have a functional fear of God.  By fear of God I do not mean paralyzed trembling at the fear of eternal damnation.  I mean a healthy respect that we are all dependent upon a Being who has created us but we have no means of controlling.  You find taught throughout the Hebrew scriptures that there is nothing we humans can offer to God that God can’t get better elsewhere.  And so we are forever dependent upon a Being for whom we can offer nothing, yet upon whom we absolutely depend.  That’s the kind of fear and respect I mean.  But instead, people in our nation seem to believe in a god who thinks just like them – has the same morality and the same views.  And, a god who is willing to allow excuses for their every moral slip.

So, with no real direction in life, and no fear of God, people are living life lost and trying to find meaning by consuming things.  We consume more food, more creature comforts, more entertainment, and endlessly more technology.  Instead of people having a sense of purpose based upon their labors and how their efforts contribute to their family, their neighborhood, and their nation, they try to find a sense of purpose by posturing for image in social media, through virtue signaling with their purchases and social beliefs, and through consuming things.

This Wednesday the Men’s Breakfast will be watching the video The Rise of the Pavement Princess.  It’s about men in society today struggling to have a place and a purpose, and so they buy a “pavement princess”, which is another way of saying a big macho looking offroad luxury pickup truck that never actually does any real work or leaves paved roads.  Those ridiculous shows of masculinity, that never actually do anything, can easily cost more than four years of college at a public university.  They are a symptom of something much deeper and much bigger.

It feels to me like most people in our society are just as lost in life as the two men walking to Emmaus that Easter evening.  They are consuming pointlessly and exhausting themselves accomplishing nothing and going nowhere.

Let’s recognize that it is in the midst of their lostness that the resurrected Jesus comes.  That goes for the two men heading to Emmaus and for people today.  In both cases they cannot see Jesus in their midst.  They do not understand.  Perhaps it isn’t God blinding them so much as it is that in every input their senses receive they just interpret in a way that refuses to see God at work.

On the road to Emmaus Jesus explains from scripture all the things about himself.  The two men don’t understand.  We’re not told exactly why they can’t understand so we shouldn’t speculate too much.  If I put it into today’s situation I imagine a grandfather trying to talk to his granddaughter about the Bible and faith in Jesus.  The conversation is polite but doesn’t go anywhere.  The grandfather is anxious and finds his granddaughter isn’t interested at all.  The granddaughter tries to be tolerant but finds her grandfather’s faith talk to be quaint, irrational, and out-of-touch with her own “enlightened” world view.  And so the conversation goes nowhere.  The risen Lord is not made visible.

            What are we to do?  The world is lost but doesn’t believe it.  People don’t want to hear the truth that saves them.  Jesus is there but never seen.

            The risen Lord is revealed to the eyes of the two men in the breaking of the bread.  This is not exactly the same as holy communion, but we would be right to realize there are parallels.  In classical Greek drama the meal scene is the anagorisis – the recognition scene.  The anagorisis often involves the recognition of someone to whose identity one was previously blind.  Aristotle, whose works are the foundation for poetry, rhetoric, and literary theory – wrote that recognition is a change from ignorance to knowledge.  The recognition might bring about affection if it is between friends, or it may bring anger if it is among enemies.  Recognition may be based on visible signs, memory, or reasoning, but as Aristotle says, the best kind is, “that which arises from the actions alone.”  (Aristotle, Poetics 1452a-1455a)  If that is what Luke has in mind as he’s telling this story, then he’s crafted to anagorisis here to be from the actions alone.  The two men recognize Jesus when he breaks bread with them.

            It would be wrong to say that spreading the gospel is as simple.  No, there are a number of things at work here that we do well to pay attention to.

            First is that the risen Jesus meets the men where they are, even as they are heading aimlessly away without any real hope.  Second, Jesus stays with them.  He listens to their situation and understands it.  I think that’s where a lot of evangelism efforts fail.  People want to talk rather than to listen.  We need to listen.  We need to understand the lives of those we want to reach.  We need to realize the complexities of their lives.  Few people find themselves lost or not knowing their life’s purpose from only one thing.  Many factors are contributing to our current societal mess.  You don’t necessarily have to understand them all.  But you have to show that you understand at least some, and that you truly care.

            Jesus travels with them.  He listens to them.  Only after quite a while does he speak.  He explains things to them even as they don’t understand.  Jesus does berate them a bit for being foolish and slow of heart, but he immediately goes into an explanation.

            Then, only after all of that, does he break bread with them.  The turning point is his actions, but his actions come after all of that preliminary work.  I believe the same is true for our lives and our faith.

            That means that we too need to know who we are, what our purpose is, and where we’re going in life.  If we don’t know that we have a hard time showing someone else!  The answers to all of those vary for each of us, but all of them are based on Ephesians 2:10.  That says we are created by God for good works.  By good works I don’t mean being a bleeding heart giver to everything that comes along.  I mean working for the good of others.  Life’s purpose and value comes through work; and by no other means.  In other words, a life of comfort and luxury is a life that is pointless and going nowhere.

            With our purpose established, and with care-filled listening, we set the scene where the risen Christ can be seen in our actions.

            Certainly we ourselves want our own proof, or we want more proof than we get.  But that is part of the authenticity of faith.  Spreading faith is not one person who knows it all with absolute confidence telling it to another.  Spreading faith is the shared life of wonder; and questions and doubts about God.

So, it’s our:

1-purpose established,

2-care-filled listening,

3-meaningful shared actions,

4-and shared wonder

that genuinely spread the kingdom of God, and reveal Christ’s presence alive and among us.

April 20, 2025 Easter Luke 24:1-12

 If there were a security camera in the tomb of Jesus at the resurrection I wonder what it would have shown?  Would it have been mostly hours and hours of just a corpse lying there before something happens?  (And from that perspective consider how absurd it would be!  Why would you put a security camera in the tomb of someone who was dead?  I suppose if the person had been buried with a lot of treasure, and you were hoping to catch some grave robbers, you might just do that.  Otherwise no.)

If there were a security camera there in Jesus’ case I imagine a great Monty Python sketch could be inspired by it.   They could create something where Jesus would be arrested for the resurrection.  The district attorney would say, “Jesus of Nazareth, we have security camera footage that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that you did not stay properly dead after being duly executed.  How do you plead?”  Of course it’s absurd, but we’ll come back to that later.

What would a security camera show?  Would it be Jesus waking up, taking off the wrappings, folding them and laying them to one side, pushing back the stone, and walking out of the tomb?  Or would the camera image be obliterated by a blinding flash of light from a great energy source and then reveal the grave cloths lying there and the tomb empty?  Perhaps the energy source would be so great that the camera itself would be destroyed.  Or perhaps there would be no blinding light, simply the disappearance of the body in a blink of time.  But if that’s the case, how was the stone moved aside?

Along those lines, was the stone rolled aside to let Jesus out, or to let the women in?  In the account of the resurrection in Matthew’s gospel the women see the stone rolled back, but Jesus is already gone.  How did he get out?  But that’s a different story.

In our age of fake news and social media distortions of just about everything, it is understandable that we want solid undeniable proof of something; especially something as outrageous as the claim that a man who was publicly executed does not have enough common courtesy to stay dead and in his tomb!  But the gospel writer Luke isn’t giving us the clear proof that we want.  In fact, Luke tells the resurrection story in a way that makes the whole thing all the more confusing.

Luke is an excellent storyteller.  If I were sitting around a campfire at night I’d want to hear Luke tell stories.  Unlike most people who start a story by giving you the background information you need for the story to make sense, Luke dives right into the action.  This often leaves us scratching our heads until sometime later when Luke gives us the background information.  That happens in today’s gospel reading.

We should note that what we read today actually begins in the middle of the story.  Not only does it begin with the middle of the story, it begins with the middle of a sentence!

Luke 24:1, where be began reading goes, “But on the first day of the week at early dawn, they came to the tomb carrying the spices that they had prepared.”  That’s the second half of the sentence.  The first half of the sentence is the final verse of Chapter 23, which we did not read.  That verse goes, “On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment, …but on the first day of the week….”

Okay, so maybe our gospel reading should have started earlier in the story.  But even if it had, Luke is still hanging on to many details we need.  For example, though we are mid-story Luke hasn’t told us who these women are and how many of them there are.  Luke will tell us who they are later on, but at this point we’re left to wonder.  We can’t picture the scene too crisply.  Is it two women?  Is it 32 women?

Whatever the case, this unnamed, unnumbered group of women come to the tomb and find the stone rolled away.  We’re familiar with that part of the Easter story so we’re probably okay with it.  But if we’d read earlier in the story we wouldn’t be okay with it!  You see, Luke hasn’t mentioned this stone before.  All he’s told us is that Jesus has been put into a tomb and the women saw it.  Only now do we find out about a stone being put across the opening.  And somehow – we’re not told how – it has rolled away from the entrance!

We’re also not told how the women felt about the stone’s movement.  Apparently they feel confident enough to venture inside.  That may make us scratch our heads.  Tombs are very small things – they’re incredibly cramped.  But somehow this group of women of unknown number has gotten inside.  And then, suddenly, two men appear in the tomb with them!  We the readers are left to wonder, “How big is this tomb that all these people can fit inside?” 

Among the many things Luke isn’t telling us is who these two men are.  We’re just told they’re dressed in dazzling clothes.  That’s a clue though.  You’ll remember that two men in dazzling clothes also appear at the Transfiguration.  They’re Moses and Elijah.  Also, later on two men will appear to the disciples at Jesus’ ascension.  Luke doesn’t tell us clearly, but it’s safe to say he wants us to think these are the same two men all along.

The women are understandably terrified.  It’s creepy enough being in a tomb, let alone having two men in dazzling apparel suddenly appear!  The men ask, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.”

It’s as if the two men are teasing the women for being there.  That’s not fair!  Exactly how were the women supposed to have anticipated Jesus not being there?  They saw him die and be buried, after all.

            You could say that they should have known because of what Jesus had taught them beforehand.  In fact the next sentence from the men suggests that answer.  The men say, “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”

            There’s a problem with that though.  That’s not an entirely accurate statement.  You have to be picky here, but unlike the other gospels, in Luke Jesus never actually predicts to his disciples that he will be crucified.  He did indeed tell them that he would handed over to sinners, and be killed, and on the third day rise.  But he never actually tells them he will die by crucifixion.  That’s significant for how Luke wants us to understand the reactions of the women and later the disciples.

            In those days Jews believed that being crucified was a sign that that person was cursed by God.  Jesus’ crucifixion takes his followers completely by surprise because not only is their leader dead, in their understanding he must have also been cursed by God.  Clearly they had put their trust in the wrong man.

            So then the resurrection comes as an even bigger surprise to them.  Luke tells us though that the women did then remember Jesus’ words.  They returned from the tomb and told all of this to the eleven remaining disciples. 

Only now does Luke give us the names of some of the women who were there.  He never does tell us how many there were though.  It’s an odd move for a storyteller, but the disjointedness of the story and the uncertainty Luke has been creating in our minds all through this is part of the confusion he wants us to feel about the whole situation.

The disciples do not believe the women.  We can understand why.  Our English translations tell us the disciples thought the women’s words were an idle tale.  But the English word “idle” is perhaps not a good choice for translation.  The Greek word there is a technical medical term that means “delirium”.  The disciples dismiss the women’s message because they think the women are delirious.  We can understand why the disciples thought that.  Think of what the women have told them: a stone that somehow rolled back of its own accord, two men in dazzling apparel who suddenly appear in a tomb, a body that was clearly laid there that has somehow disappeared without a trace, and yet the linen wrappings are left there in an orderly way.  And of course, where is Jesus!?!

All of this gives us a resurrection story for Easter Sunday that is weird.  Keep in mind that Luke is an excellent storyteller.  If the story feels disjointed and weird it is because Luke crafted it to feel that way.  We know the resurrection story from the other gospels.  We might easily smooth over all the weirdness and never even realize it.  But I think it is important to realize what Luke has done.  It’s for a purpose that we don’t want to miss.

We want to have clear, high quality security camera proof of Jesus’ resurrection.  We want it to be crisp, solid, and well defined.  We tell ourselves that having that would strengthen our faith when we have doubts and uncertainties.  But the truth is that a life of faith seldom fits into crisp, solid, and well-defined actions.  Is that God playing games with us?  Why can’t God give us what our faith needs?

Because that is not the nature of faith; especially faith in the resurrection.  Faith in the resurrection can never fit into crisp, solid, well-defined things.  Resurrection itself does not.

 I raised earlier the ridiculous idea that Monty Python could have done a comedy sketch about Jesus being criminally charged for not staying properly dead.  That’s just it.  When death is not the end where are the rules?  What are the boundaries?  What is failure?  What is success? 

How do you punish someone who’s been executed but won’t stay dead?  You certainly can’t sentence them to death again.  They’d just come back?  And if you can’t keep them dead, then you can hardly expect prison or house arrest to do anything at all!

You see, the resurrection upends everything we count on in life.  It just doesn’t fit.  It is absolutely wonderful, yes.  But by its very nature, its reality cannot be clearly defined.  Luke’s inconsistent, confusing, and quirky way of telling the story of the resurrection reflects its very reality: wonderful but undefinable by any means we can understand.

I think C.S. Lewis captures a bit of this in the final paragraph of the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia series.  If you’ve never read the series I hope I don’t spoil it for you by saying that at the very end of the very last book everyone dies.  Then Lewis concludes, “But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

That is the great yet undefinable promise that we are given in Christ’s resurrection.