John 15:26-27; 16:4-15

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row, / That mark our place; and in the sky / The larks, still bravely singing, fly / Scarce heard amid the guns below. / We are the Dead. Short days ago / We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, / Loved and were loved, and now we lie / In Flanders fields. / Take up our quarrel with the foe: / To you from failing hands we throw / The torch; be yours to hold it high. / If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields.”  May, 1915; Lt. Col. John McCrae

The torch is passed…generation to generation. “Take up our quarrel with the foe.” The foe may change names and faces and tactics…but the quarrel remains. It is a fact of this fallen world. The quarrel remains. The living may not have asked for the quarrel, anymore than did they who fell. But to abandon the quarrel, to leave it unaddressed…oh, that is to break faith with those who have gone before, to break faith with those who fell, giving “the last full measure of devotion.”

It is to break faith with them, and to render their sacrifice meaningless. As Mr. Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “It is for us, the living…to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced…dedicated to the great task remaining before us…that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

Oh, how different is that spirit than ours today. How very different the spirit which inspired those words, than the animating, decimating spirit which fills our day with such cries of self interest. One fears for the future. For what will come of a people who are so quick, so heated in their talk of “me,” and so very cool and distant toward any talk of “we”? What will become of us…in this world…in the Church?

Col. McCrae wrote that the dead will not sleep if we break faith with them…aye, but what of us? What of us? And what of those who come after us? Indeed, how peaceful will be anyone’s sleep…if we fail to take up that quarrel with the foe?

This Gospel Reading for Pentecost in John 15 & 16 contains the longest sustained discussion about the Holy Spirit in all the Gospels. It is also one of the most difficult passages to grasp. Jesus is passing the torch. The setting is the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday. Jesus is now preparing to give the last full measure of His devotion to the Father. The great battle is at hand, Armageddon, the cross.

And there in that Upper Room, like soldiers huddled in a foxhole, or as at Flanders, hunkered down in a trench waiting for that dread whistle to send them “over the top,” the disciples are not entirely sure they want to take up this torch. Now that the ancient quarrel with the foe is passing from Jesus to them, well…their hearts are sorely troubled!

Oh yes, there’s also a good bit of bravado, as often happens before the shooting starts. Peter nosily tells the others that he’s willing to die for Jesus. And the others, not to be outdone, all chime in, “Me too! Me too!” There’s a lot of chest thumping from this band of brothers.

But once the shooting starts, once things begin to explode all around them, as God begins sifting out the hearts of these men…well, it becomes a very, very different picture. And the disciples break faith and run, every man for himself.

But Jesus knows this. He knows them. So He also tells them, a little later in this passage, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

Now the battle is at hand, but one day the peace. Now it is the quarrel, but one day the resolution. Now it is Good Friday, but Easter comes. And then, Pentecost passes the torch to them, to us…and a fire that burns with both the quarrel and its peace.

This is what makes Pentecost and the work of the Holy Spirit so much more profound than all the hand-clapping, drum-banging, Hallelujah-whooping and hollering that gets associated with the Day of Pentecost. You cannot measure the Spirit by the decibels in worship or by the fever of the preacher or by the passionate boldness of the people. The fire of the Holy Spirit is a very different fire in the belly…

It is the Holy Spirit, sent from the Father, through Jesus the Son, who fires us for the quarrel with the foe. Jesus says, “He [the Spirit] will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” The Spirit will reveal the lay of the land, how the battlefield is laid out. He will show where wrong and right and judgment all lie.

But the quarrel with the foe is so very intense because the world will not recognize the Spirit’s jurisdiction. The world calls evil good and good evil. The world calls sin righteous and righteousness sin. And the world has a thousand and one ways to crucify anyone, including Jesus, who dares to convict it concerning right and wrong and judgment.

So who is sufficient for the torch passed to us from the hand of Jesus? Who is sufficient to bear that torch passed from generation to generation, from the hands of martyrs fallen in witness to the faith, to the hands of those who have shaped the path of history in faith, passed now into our own hands. Who is sufficient to take up the quarrel with the foe, especially these days when it is far easier, and far, far more popular just to make a lot of noise and bang on drums!

Who is sufficient? No one. Not the Twelve. Not us. But…when Jesus passes that torch, He passes Himself with it. And the Spirit, sent into the world on Pentecost comes through the Son, bearing the sufficiency of that Son to us. “He will glorify Me,” Jesus promises. “For He will take what is Mine and declare it [give it] to you.”

Which means, yes, Jesus’ quarrel with the foe is now become our quarrel. But the passing torch also means that with the Spirit, Jesus’ peace is also ours, and all that that means. The peace, the promises, the presence, and at the end, the resurrection.

“You cannot bear this now,” Jesus recognized in the Upper Room. It is too much. But when He comes, when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, as He did in our Baptism, He will guide us, teach us, fire us…as He has done for all those who have gone before us.

And when we fall, He will lift us up. When our tongues grow silent with fear, He will give us new speech. When our hands grow weak with meaninglessness, He will give us new strength. And when our own flesh betrays us with selfish cowardice, He will embolden us once again with the fire even to lay down our lives to pass the torch to the next hand. And by the Spirit who gives us the fire of Christ, that Holy Spirit also gives us the life of Christ—though we die, yet shall we live.

In Ezekiel’s strange vision there is no hope in the valley of dry bones; no hope, until God acts by His Word. When God speaks through His prophet, the bones become incarnate, covered with flesh. When God speaks by His prophet, the incarnate bones are inspired with the breath, the Spirit of God. It’s a profound vision, not only for Israel, but also for the Israel of the Church in this world.

The quarrel with the foe leaves us fragmented like those bones, scattered and parched. The quarrels with the foe come by warfare, they come by our politics, our economy; all the quarrels both great and small, in the public square and in the privacy of our homes…the quarrels which fragment us and dry up the marrow of life.

Pentecost 2012 finds the floor of the valley, our own Flanders field, littered with bones. Our bones. The Church’s bones. The world’s bones. Can these bones live? Can our bones even take up the torch, let alone hand on what has been passed to us? O Lord, You know!

“Come, Holy Ghost, Creator Blest!” Rattle our bones. Draw us together, bone to bone. Clothe us in the flesh of Christ and breathe again into our nostrils the breath of God, that we may take up the quarrel with the foe…in all its forms.

“Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord.” Quicken us that we may again dedicate ourselves to the great task of love toward the Church and for the world, the task of love which lies before us.

“Holy Spirit, ever dwelling…ever living…ever binding Age to age and soul to soul,” come, work in us…work in us…that those who have died, that those who have labored long before us, shall not have done so in vain.

Amen

Luke 24:44-53

“Jesus lifted up His hands and blessed His disciples. While He was blessing them, He left them and was taken up into heaven.” OK. So now what? Well…it depends. It depends on whether you live by faith…or not.

Graduation fever is in the air again. Over the next couple weeks hundreds and thousands of high school and college students will march into auditoriums and gymnasiums to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.” They will collect their diplomas and check out. And every graduation speaker seems to address the same question, “Now what?”

I don’t quite recall at what age…except that I was older than I should have been to be first learning this…but I recall that it dawned on me at one point that commencements were not about endings. I had simply figured that you called a graduation ceremony a commencement exercise because the word commence meant end, over, finished, done. So it always puzzled me that in war movies when the officers shouted “commence firing” the soldiers “began” to fire. Ya, vell, like Sven and Ole…some of us take a little longer to get it!

“Oh,” it dawned on me, “commencement is not about an ending…it’s about a beginning.” A new chapter in life is commencing, a chapter for which the school years had been preparing. Suddenly the whole world of education took on a new light.

Ah…but you see, I had been thoroughly trained in the secular way of thinking. In the secular way of thinking the only purpose for an education is to get a job, or to get into college to get a better job, or to get into grad school to get an even better job…and of course, more money! Why, if a person accumulated enough of the alphabet behind his name—BA, MA, MDiv, STM, PhD—wow, top rung of the ladder, and raking in beaucoup bucks!

But…that’s the secular way of thinking. For the Christian, education is not so utilitarian. We Christians know that we get an education in order to gain understanding about this world, God’s world, about ourselves and our life in this world. To acquire an education is to acquire understanding and insight. It’s not just to get a job! It is to bring that accumulation of wisdom, understanding, and insight to whatever we commence to take up after school.

And that is what is happening here in this reading for Ascension Day. It is almost as though Jesus, having gathered His graduating disciples around Him, hands them their diplomas, humming the first century equivalent of “Pomp & Circumstance,” and with a word of blessing goes one way while they go another. So…now what?

Well, as I said, it depends. It depends on whether a person lives by faith or not. What did all of those last three years mean to the disciples? From Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River to His temptation in the wilderness, His preaching and teaching in the towns and synagogues, His healings, and finally to all the events of Holy Week—triumphal entry, Last Supper, betrayal, arrest, torture, crucifixion, and resurrection; what did all of that mean now?

St. Luke notes that for some of those disciples, they still didn’t get it. “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” “Lord, now that You’ve gotten this Messiah business out of Your system, now that You’re done with all of this sin, death and evil stuff, now that all those three years are over and done, now, are You going to get to the real work?”

They didn’t get it! Like many a student who never gets it, who never gets why they are in school in the first place. They don’t get why they have been given an education. Just like many a Christian never gets it…never gets why they go to Sunday School and learn those stories in the Bible. You hear it so often as students get older…even well into adulthood…“Oh, those Bible stories…I learned all that stuff when I was a kid.” Well, duh! Of course you did. But you’re not a kid anymore, are you? And those stories of the Bible teach us different things than when we were five or six. It’s called maturity. It’s called growing in wisdom and understanding and insight. It’s not something to get over and done with and on to the next thing.

But…the majority of Jesus’ disciples on the Day of Ascension…they understood! When He had departed they returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God. No…that doesn’t mean they were at the temple 24/7. Being Christian is not about spending all your time doing stuff at Church. Sure, there’s plenty to be doing here—worship, study, prayer—but it’s not 24/7. “Continually in the temple” means that the disciples got it. Education with Jesus is not something to get over and done with so as to get on to something else.

Living by faith, the disciples of Jesus, back then and now today, living by faith the disciples of Jesus recognize, understand, and seek to understand more and more that what Jesus accomplished is now given to us. By His ascension, Jesus sets His disciples free for living in this world. Living by faith—a faith that comes by our Baptism, by hearing the Gospel, by our being taught the meaning of all that Jesus said and did—by faith we are free from having to discover or create some sort of meaning for life. Jesus has done it.

So, for instance, it is no longer our job that gives us meaning; it’s our faith that gives meaning to our job. It is no longer a task to find a purpose to life, which then will give meaning to our lives. Our faith gives life meaning and purpose…a faith which is always seeking further understanding.

For by faith we understand that we are created in the image of God…for we are learning what that means. By faith we have the wisdom to know that we are being transformed by this life—the ups and the downs—into the likeness of Christ, into the likeness of God. By faith…a faith which matures by the things we learn from God’s Word—as a child, young adult, and into older age—by this faith seeking understanding we have the insight to know that in Christ all things in heaven and on earth are made to work for our eternal good. All things.

By faith, this faith seeking understanding, we know who we are, and who we are fills all that we do…whether in here and out there.

Which means we are free. Like those disciples on the Day of Ascension, we are free in the knowledge, in the acquired wisdom and the insight which come only in Christ. We are free in knowing what Christ has said and promised us…together with all the things we learn in our education at school and in life—by this faith which is always seeking understanding…we are truly free.

So…now what? Well, what does it matter? Whatever comes now, for the graduates of these days or for us, whatever comes we know: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. And we…we are His. And blessed is the one who has learned, and continues to learn what it means that we are His!

Amen

John 15:9-17
Preached by Deacon Joshua Schroeder

“God is love,” writes St. John of old.  “God is love.”  Aye, that is true.  But what a mischievous devil love is!  The ancient Greeks said that it is impossible for a god to love and be wise!  So, it would seem to be.  Religion is taking a dark turn these days!  The fiction of The DaVinci Code is proving to be more true now than when the book came out, because, like the movie, we Christians seem to be taking our cues from Machiavelli’s Prince. As Machiavelli wrote, “Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

Love easily turns to lust, turns in upon itself and is consumed.  Ah, but Jesus does not sound very Machiavellian when He speaks: “As the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you…love one another.”  This defies the ancients’ wisdom.  For the loving of one another cannot exist without Jesus’ love for us.  And even Jesus’ love for us cannot exist without that mysterious love of the divine Father of His only-begotten Son. 

And that love is a far more splendored thing than the clichéd language about personal relationships with Jesus!  “Relationship” has become such a thought-cliché, a word devoid of meaning because of its casual overuse.  Listening to that kind of personal relationship talk sounds more like some kind of a childhood crush on Jesus, than anything like the maturity of love the Bible talks about!

St. Paul writes famously, “Love is patient and kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  Love is not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs…”  Now that doesn’t mean that love’s patience is never tried!  It doesn’t mean that love never faces the unkind, the rude, the anger of the self-seeking.  Rather, in the face of such thing, love bears, believes, hopes and endures.  Love, Jesus says, bears much fruit!

Ah…but here is where the ancients haunt us!   If it is love to keep no record of wrongs, is it not love to go to your offending brother and show him his faults just between the two of you?  If it is love to bear all things, is it not love to say clearly, “This is wrong and we cannot bear it anymore!”  If love covers a multitude of sins is it not love to call those covered sins sin?

And…if it is love to lay down one’s life for another…can it ever be love to make another lay down his life by taking it?  …as is done in war?  …as happened on Good Friday?  Ah…it’s no wonder we think it wise to stick with thought-clichés and speak in pious platitudes about love.  Because love, as the Scriptures reveal it, is far more fearful and wonderful than we are entirely comfortable with!

The challenge for us is not really that love is such a mischievous devil.  The challenge is to recognize which Love, whose Love defies the poets’ art and the schemers’ fears.  Jesus shows that love which loves completely, full-circle.  “As the Father has loved Me, I have loved you.  Now remain in My love.”  OK, so far so good, but what does it mean to remain in His love?

Jesus says, “If you obey My commands, if you do the things I have taught you, you will remain in My love.  Just as I have done the things My Father has taught Me.”  So that’s it?  Just get out there and imitate Jesus?  Obey!  Obey!  Obey!  No.  We love one another, because that’s what Jesus has done.  He has loved us, because that’s what the Father does.  The Father loves His Son, who loves us, who love one another.  It’s not an imitation of Jesus’ love.  It is Jesus’ love.  It’s God’s!  It’s ours too.  All together as one!

You see, that’s what the thought-clichés and pious platitudes about love fail to grasp.  We cannot love one another unless we remain in Jesus’ love.  We cannot bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things unless we remain in the love of Him who has done all things in the laying down of His life and taking it up again.

Ah…but to remain in His love means that we will also see our own lovelessness.  We will also see our own records of wrong, our impatiences, our unkindnesses, our rudeness, our boasting, our easy anger, our delight in evil.  We see these things we because we see why the Son has laid down His life in love, why the Father’s love has laid down the life of His Son, has cut Him to bleed…for us.  To remain in His love is to see our lovelessness. 

And yet, at the same time, it is also to see all of this embraced in His love.  Our record of wrongs erased, our easy angers soothed, our impatiences and unkindnesses assuaged, our lovelessness loved.  Our dying lives lifted up.  In His love we love, as St. John reminds us today.  In His love there is a wisdom which the ancients could not fathom, an art which the poets cannot tell.

And every day we live in that love.  We remain in Him, in His love, because in love He has laid down His life for us.  It’s not a feeling, it’s a promise.  It’s not a cliché, it’s a new every morning merciful faith.  His life for us, our lives for him.  His love in us our love in Him.  And out of that comes the fruit, fruit that will last: the love for one another.

Now that is a many-splendored love.  It is a love that can be fearful and wonderful, because we see that it’s not just them out there who present the challenges to love.  It’s not just them who are impatient and proud, who keep records of wrongs.  It’s not just out there and them, but we too who do not always protect, always hope, always trust, always persevere.

This is the love of God, the love that pierced the Son and made Him bleed, the love that pierces our sinfulness and makes it plain…this is the love which at the same time lays down its life for our sin, as in this same love we lay down ours for others.  Neither denying the pain nor the purpose, yet doing so in love, as we are loved in Christ, as He is loved in the Father.

To love and be wise.  So many things to ponder.  So many reasons to do so.  But then isn’t love the most excellent way?  His most excellent way?

 Amen

John 15:5

The seed is in the ground.
Now may we rest in hope
While darkness does its work.

But…this approach is about as helpful as a farmer going out to harangue his cornfield every morning about growing faster and fuller. Ain’t gonna happen that way! Simple botany.

Jesus is mighty clear about where the good fruit comes from. “I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” “Apart from Me you can do nothing”…nothing, that is, which is truly good…as God defines “good.”

Many of us who are here today, are here because we had mothers and fathers who first brought us for Holy Baptism. We can remember how they kept the promise they made when we were baptized. As they promised, they brought us to the services of God’s house. They taught us the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. They told us Bible stories and when we were older they placed into our hands the Holy Scriptures. As they promised, they provided for our further instruction in the Christian faith by Sunday School and Confirmation.

Because of a mother or father, because of a grandfather or grandmother, because of a godparent, and often because of all of them, we learned that in Holy Baptism we were made branches of the True Vine, Jesus Christ. They showed us by their lives what it means to be grafted into Him, and that His life flows in us.
No…not everyone has that kind of Christian upbringing. Some have only gotten connected to Jesus as an adult. And yet, because of this background, these folks do have a vital sense of what it means to be connected to the True Vine, because they know the difference between before and after Jesus.

But either way, as a child or adult, the simple botany of this matter is that getting connected to Jesus through Holy Baptism is God’s good and gracious will for every single person on this earth. There is only one True Vine, and He is Jesus Christ.

Now…to remain as branches of that True Vine…ah…this is so much more than the clichés about a “personal relationship” with Jesus. The whole problem with this “relationship” language is that it’s always more about me than it is about Him! And it so easily turns into motivational seductions. But in truth, staying connected to Jesus, “abiding in Him” as Jesus calls it, is not about my relationship with Jesus…it’s about Him reaching to me. It’s about Him who speaks to us through the Word of God preached and taught in a congregation. It’s about Him whose life flows to us in the bread and cup of the Holy Supper.

Martin Luther once quipped that we do no one any favor by baptizing them. For as soon as a person is baptized, grafted into the life of Christ, that person becomes embroiled in the ages old struggle between the Jesus of whom God speaks, and some kind of Jesus which a person creates in his own mind.

Like so many of the people in the Gospels, we too can easily make Jesus into “my Jesus” …a Jesus who only says nice things, a Jesus who doesn’t really care how I live and what I do, a Jesus who never judges me but who would certainly judge those other people I don’t like very much. A Jesus who likes to do what I like to do, who listens to my kind of music, who affirms my prejudices. A Jesus…who is pretty much exactly like me!

But if my experience of God and my ideas about who Jesus is are not regularly and frequently pruned by God, the Vinedresser who speaks to me from outside myself by the preaching of the Holy Scriptures, well, I’ll just end up with a Jesus of my own creation, which is basically me myself as both branch and vine…separated from Jesus…withering…dying…lost.

Authentic Christian faith, Vine-and-branches Christian faith, is like, to change the metaphor, an old-fashioned bucket brigade. The faith is handed from generation to generation. Which is great IF what’s in the bucket is the faith once delivered to the saints. But these days…ewww!…what is being passed in some of those buckets looks and smells more like what we on the farm used to haul out and spread in the fields!

So Christian faithfulness frequently checks that bucket to ensure that it contains the real thing! Oh yes, each generation of Lutherans groans a bit when it gets handed that bucket containing Luther’s Small Catechism to memorize. But in this case, groaning is a good thing! Because the history of the Lutheran Church is mighty clear. Whenever a congregation departs from that Catechism, things get real stinky real fast, no matter how many people rave about the new aroma!

It’s simple botany. We plant the good seed and we nurture it from preschool to today’s confirmation class, and beyond. We preach the Vine, and teach it and study it and ponder it and listen some more…because these are things we can and should do.

But…it is Christ the Vine who brings forth the good fruit in us by His Word to which we listen, by the Sacrament we eat and drink. It is the divine Father who prunes our withered limbs to bear greater fruit, the Spirit who sends the life of Christ pulsing through our veins restoring souls that grow weary in the struggles of faith.

That’s why we come here, eager to eat and to drink again, eager to listen again and inwardly digest the life of the Vine into whom we have been grafted, so that His immortal sap may flow in us, producing in us that good fruit which He desires, in the ways in which He desires. Simple botany. Simple…and beautiful!

Wendell Berry writes: I went away only / a few hundred steps / up the hill, and turned / and started home. / And then I saw / the pasture green under / the trees… All around, the woods / that had been stark / in the harsh air / of March, had turned / soft with new leaves…. In its time and great patience / beauty had come upon us, / greater than I had imagined. Standing on the hillside of this Divine Service, we too can look back over our lives and see…not our handiwork, but His…so fruitful…so beautiful! From the vantage point of this place of Word and Sacrament, looking back over the past and looking ahead to the future, we can grasp the simple botany of Jesus’ words, “I am the Vine; you are the branches.”

Amen

John 10:11-18
This is “Examination Sunday” for the 2012 catechumens.  Speaking in the 8:00 Sermon (Early) are, in order: Brooke Bindl, Shayne Brasda, Brea Falstad, Lauren Kriewaldt, Anthony Rittmeyer, Danielle Sandstrom.  Speaking in the 10:30 Sermon (Late) are, in order: Riley Barnharst, Katie Conklin, Derek Gordon, James Saager, Matthew Saager, Tierney Woodward. Elizabeth Yamriska.

The Flock of Jesus Christ is a wild, daring venture. But ours is an age of confined animal husbandry. Gone are the open prairies and pasturelands dotted with grazing farm animals. First came the fences that confined flocks and herds to a specific area. And now we have the confinement systems—highly efficient systems for livestock production. So these days, critters don’t go wandering off. They are closely confined. And it in some circles, the Church has been taking notes.

Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know My own and My own know Me.” It is that simple!

Like sheep we are so easily distracted. Like them we nibble at this and nibble at that and get into butting heads…and we become quite oblivious to everything around us. So is the solution better control? Control every movement, every “Baa” that comes from the flock? There are plenty of congregations these days that think so…and they build big fences, with barbed wire and lots and lots of rules.

The Good Shepherd has the better way: “I know My own and My own know Me.” That’s it! “I know My own and My own know Me.”

And this brings us to question #1. What do you know about the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ? He is the One who has called you by name. So what do you have to say about what Jesus has done to make you part of His flock?

[Answers to Question #1]

The Good Shepherd says, “They will listen to My voice; so there will be one Flock, one Shepherd.” And that is wildly daring!

As I mentioned earlier, what may work well and efficiently for the handling of livestock production today is not at all a good way to handle the Flock of Christ. The Flock of the Good Shepherd is not managed by a confinement system, hemmed in with a whole list of rules, by a closed system designed to produce results. Get ‘em when they’re young and keep ‘em confined until it’s time to ship ‘em off to market.

Yet this is the very thing that is happening more and more and more in our churches in this era of uncertainty and rapid change. So instead of being the daring venture of which Christ spoke, the Church becomes a confinement market industry.

No! What the Good Shepherd does is call His own sheep by name [six/seven...you, me]. We hear His voice and we follow Him. Where the Good Shepherd is, there are His sheep. And where His sheep are, there is His flock. Shepherd, Sheep, Flock, all together as one.

Question #2. How does this picture of one flock with one Shepherd explain what it means that you are part of that flock?

[Answers to Question #2]

The really daring venture of the Flock of Christ is that our Good Shepherd actually leads us into places where the wolves could take us. Our Good Shepherd leads us into places where we do in fact fail, where we may begin to resemble the wolves more than the flock, where we may become inattentive, get itchy feet, and wander. He leads us through the valley of the shadow of death; leads us where we sheep would never go if it were all up to us!

Yet in each and every place where He leads us, He does not shout out commands: “Stay together, get back, don’t run, be safe, do this, don’t do that. No…not rules and commands. The Good Shepherd, when He sees the wolf coming, coming in the very place where He has led us, there He lays down His life for us. The wolf takes a bite out of Him, and we sheep are spared. Our Good Shepherd says, “I lay down My life for the sheep.” “I lay it down that I may take it up.” …and us with Him!

Question #3: Does this mean that His flock never feels troubles? What sort of “wolves” and other “predators” make being a Christian difficult? But Jesus has promised, “I lay down My life for the sheep.” How does this promise strengthen you?

[Answers to Question #3]

Martin Luther once declared, “Thank God a seven year old child knows what the Church is: sheep who hear the voice of their [Good] Shepherd.” “I know them,” this Shepherd says, “and they follow Me.”

Yes, often times that means the green pastures and the still waters. But there are times…times when it is the valley of the shadow of death. Still He leads and we follow. He speaks and we listen. And even in the darkest valley we shall fear no evil…for He is with us. And we are a Flock, His Flock. And in this flock He says, “I am the Good Shepherd. I know My own, and My own know Me.” So we do…yes…so we do.

Amen

Luke 24:13-49

Mars Hill, Athens, about the year A.D. 51. You’re a raffish Jew from the outback, named Paul of Tarsus, come by way of Palestine and all the cowtowns of Asia Minor. You’re going to preach the Good News to well-heeled, sophisticated Athenians who long ago lost any real belief in the gods, or any real devotion to their own country. But they probably still practice gymnastics at the club, and one or two of them can probably still recite some Homer.

You’re no great orator yourself, although you can write a persuasive letter with a rhetorical turn of phrase. But you’re not much to look at, either. Well, that’s OK. The Athenians will be polite, and listen to you anyway. What else do they have to do? Not a lot, as your friend Luke remarks in his record of this day.

So you preach the one God by whom we live and move and have our being. The Athenians have a vague insight about Him already. You tell them you’ve noticed their shrine to “the unknown god.” They don’t necessarily believe all that rubbish from the old myths about Zeus cavorting with his sister Hera, or with various human women; that sort of story may be fine for the naïve plowboys up in Thessaly, but not for Athenians. One ruler of the universe? They’re not surprised. A Son of God? Well, depends on what you mean by “Son.” They’ll keep listening.

The immortality of the soul? Now, really smart people (Athenians, for example) are flattered by that notion. Their own Plato even suggested it five centuries earlier; maybe the soul lives on in some timeless realm; maybe it gets absorbed into universal being; maybe it returns after a thousand years for another cycle.

If Paul were wise he would have stopped there, with God and a Son and our immortal souls. The Athenians could buy that. But Paul had to go on and talk about the resurrection of the body, because unless Christ is raised in the body our faith is in vain.

And when they heard that, the Athenians look at this rumpled little Jew, probably wondering why on earth he would want that body back again. They shake their heads, smile, and go home. And that’s pretty much what folks still do. Immortality? Oh yes, that’s cool! The resurrection of the body? Aah, that’s just old fashioned Christian superstition.

There is, perhaps, no stranger tenet of the Creed—to us folks today, as much as to the Greeks back in Paul’s day—than the resurrection of the body. The resurrection of this limited, lumpish thing that grows old, wears out, dies, and decays. But if it’s hard to see how the body could rise again—and that has been a puzzler since the first Easter—it may be even harder to see why we would want it to rise again!

Why not take Plato’s view of the matter, that human beings at death simply slip this husk of flesh and are free? It’s certainly the driving, persuasive argument from the assisted suicide and euthanasia crowd. The Greek symbol for the psyche, the soul, was the butterfly. Butterflies don’t want their cocoons back—why should we?

St. Luke’s Gospel presents us with a very human Jesus, both before and after Easter. This is so very different from St. John’s Gospel, as the Jesus who emerges from those pages is such a mysterious and divine Jesus! But in Luke, Jesus is clearly the 2nd Adam, the greater Adam, the ultimate Adam. Jesus is The Son of God and the Church is His Eve, the mother of all the living, bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh.

There is a lot of touching that goes on in St. Luke’s Gospel, before and after Easter. A lot of touching…in love. From the intimacy of the Incarnation, when the Holy Spirit touches the young Mary, whom no man had touched, to the intimacy of the Upper Room when the resurrected Jesus not only shows the startled disciples His wounds but commands them to touch Him. No not little prissy touches…He invites all of them to lay their hands on Him and touch Him convincingly! Such an intimate privilege!

And between those touching moments, there is so much physical contact recorded in Luke. Jesus touches the lepers to heal them. He touches the dead to restore them to life. (Both kinds of touching declared unclean by the Law, but exploded by Jesus into acts of cleansing love!) Even the parables that are unique to Luke have lots of touching. The Good Samaritan touches the beaten man, binding up his wounds. And in the parable of the Prodigal Son, touching runs the whole spectrum from the pigs’ sloppy kisses to the waiting father’s forgiving embrace.

And then there’s all the grateful touching that comes in response. The anointings with oil and perfume and tears, the hands, the hair, the kisses from women and men who touch Jesus in the profound love of their gratitude and faith. So much touching!

Oh…and in this Gospel there’s eating! With Luke you get lots of eating! All the significant events transpire around a meal. Not only the Last Supper, but all the dinner parties with Pharisees and tax collectors, Jesus’ friends and foes. The parables overflow with celebratory parties, eating and drinking. Indeed, the whole of St. Luke’s Gospel gives us a Jesus and a faith which requires a body to eat and drink and make so very merry…even after Easter, at the supper in Emmaus and the fish dinner in the Upper Room.

What, then, is the body good for? St. Luke’s answer is simple and stunning. The body is for love and for other people. Think of the angels. Theirs is not an embodied existence. They are spirit creatures. Their existence is glorious, but it is not a fellowship, not a communion together. But we human beings are the sort of creature created with a physical body; a very great gift!

We not only have bodies; we make bodies. We make children. We also make the bodies of cities and neighborhoods and coffee clubs and congregations. Our love is given through the body…in all the rich variety of touch from spouse to family to friend; our union with God is mediated through the body…Jesus’ body, the body of believers, with our own mortal bodies and one day in our own resurrected bodies.

Oh yes…we also abuse our bodies; we abuse the bodies of others. And the gift of touch is exercised as much by sin as it is by faith and love. But this only shows that our embodied life in this world is incomplete…and the fullness for which our bodies were created is yet to come, when they are recreated anew in the resurrection. St. Luke points us in that direction!

Jesus, the eternal Son, was made flesh in a human body that He might be like us; and we have bodies, we make bodies, and we unite in bodies, that we might be like Him, that we may be one in Christ with God. The eternal Son was made man like us in the Incarnation, so that we created men, we created human beings, may have a body like His in the resurrection. According to St. Luke, Christmas and Easter, birth and resurrection, they always go together in Jesus!

The hope of the Christian faith, therefore, is so very different from the hope entertained by many of our “spiritual” contemporaries. Theirs is an immaterial hope, a great Nirvanic void. Our Christian hope is as tangible as your own body…your body which was buried with Christ in Holy Baptism, so that your body will be raised with Christ in the resurrection!

As St. John writes today, “What we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He [Jesus] appears we will be like Him!” To feel His embrace in the resurrection, because we inhabit a body that will feel it.

And not only His embrace, but to feel the embrace of perfect love and immortal longing, from all those who have gone before us. To eat and drink anew with Him in the kingdom feast, because we have a body that can eat and drink, and laugh and marvel, pinching ourselves again and again (even marveling that we have a body to pinch) because we find ourselves in the midst of such unbelievable company.

So what could such a body be like? Well…ask the darkness to define the light. Ask death to describe life. St. Paul can only wax poetic about the mortal putting on immortality, the perishable putting on imperishability. St. John can only say, “We will be like Him.” “We will be like Him.”

But thank you, Dr. Luke, for showing us that after death we will not be a ghost. We will not be some disembodied spirit, banished from the delights of the body. After death we will eat and drink and touch and love, with a body, as if truly for the very first time…tasting the Spirit’s grace, seeing the Father’s face, feeling the Son’s embrace.

Thank you, Dr. Luke, thank you for showing us by your Easter account that in the resurrection we will certainly eat and drink and be merry, oh so very merry.

Amen

John 20:19-31

Today we get yet another New Testament figure who has seen a lot of revision in recent years. Last Sunday on Easter it was Mary Magdalene. For centuries she was a fallen woman whom Jesus lifted up. Now she’s pretty much just a wonder woman.

Back in Lent we had Judas Iscariot. For centuries he’s been the ultimate traitor. But in recent years he has been recreated as God’s patsy, the fall guy, or as a tragic figure who really did try to help Jesus, or, as the 3rd Century Gnostic “Gospel of Judas” suggests, Judas was Jesus’ secret collaborator who helped Him escape His prison of flesh to return to the pure spirit world of Barbello.

But today it’s the disciple Thomas, called Didymus, the Twin. For centuries Thomas has been known as “Doubting Thomas” because of his skepticism about the resurrection of Jesus. But in recent years he has been caught up in the revisionist tide of turning doubt from a vice into a virtue.

You know how the game is played. Doubt is set in contrast to certainty. And certainty, oh, that’s what all those religious fundamentalists have, and you know how bad they are! But doubt is what all the really cool people have, and that’s good! People with religious certainties are always beating up on others, like those fundamentalists do, and that’s bad! People with doubts are often made to beat up on themselves, and that’s bad! Because doubt really is cool, and that’s good!

So Thomas scores big in this new game. Those bad ol’ intolerant fundamentalists are always beating up on Thomas—“Bad Thomas! Doubting Thomas!” But the revisionists say that Thomas has integrity. He has honesty and strength, because he expresses his doubts. “Way to go Thomas. You da man!”

Yes, well…it’s a popular game, but it has nothing to do with faith. Doubt and certainty are all about “me.” But faith is not about “me.” Faith is about Jesus. Doubt and certainty are about what I believe or don’t believe. But faith…faith is all about Jesus, what He has done for us, and what He has promised for us.

What’s more, as Christians, we are always sinner and saint at the same time in this life. Always both. So, as sinner, we always have our doubts, our uncertainties, our difficulties with belief. And as saints in Christ, we always have Christ with us, so we always have our certainties, our trust, our confidence, which is the gift of God that comes by grace through faith. Being Christian is NOT about becoming more saintly and less sinful, more certain and less doubting. We always have both because we are both. No, being Christian is all about Jesus! Jesus, Gospel, gift, grace!

Because we are not saved on the basis of our certainties. Nor are we lost on the basis of our doubts. A hundred years ago there were plenty of people on the Titanic who were certain that the ship would not sink. There were plenty of people, too, who doubted whether that was a wise thing to conclude. But those doubts didn’t sink the Titanic, nor did all the certainties added together keep it afloat. Despite both the certainties and the doubts, the great ship sank because it hit an iceberg!

So the greater ship of the Church, captained by Jesus Christ, does not depend on the certainties of those onboard, nor is it affected by the doubts of those who don’t sail with Him. We are saved or lost on the basis of Jesus Christ alone…that He successfully steers His ship and keeps it afloat! Whether He is, in fact, who He claims to be. Whether He has done, in fact, what He claims to have done. It’s about Him!

And that’s what St. Thomas gives us by his famous story in this chapter. In the beginning of the episode it’s all “me, me, me, me, me.” There’s Thomas saying, “Unless I see…unless I put my finger…my hand…I will not believe.” So of course there’s doubt…it’s all about “me.” And the other disciples just wail on him, “We have seen.” “We have seen.” The certainty of “me.” But by the end of this account, there is no longer any “me” or “we.” There’s only Jesus. And given Jesus, Thomas confesses, “My Lord, and My God.” The words of faith.

There’s something of the realist about Thomas. In that Upper Room, on the night of the Last Supper, when Jesus had said mysteriously, “I go to prepare a place for you…. And you know the way to the place where I am going,” it’s Thomas who replies, “Lord, we don’t have a clue where You are going, so how can we possibly know the way?” Earlier in John’s Gospel, when Jesus speaks of going back to Judea, Thomas knows that for Jesus to return to Jerusalem is to go to His death. Yet it is Thomas who bravely urges the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.”

In view of this, Thomas’ skepticism about the risen Christ is not so surprising. Reality had already made itself known in the form of a cross, when his Master had been crucified; when he had fled and deserted Jesus; when he was struck with the reality that all the hopes of the last three years were as dead as his Lord.

It’s no wonder, then, that when his friends share their joyous news, “We have seen the Lord,” he reacts with his famous words of doubt. “Yeah, right!” After all, you can’t banish your own doubt and skepticism by someone else’s certainties. It doesn’t work that way! And Thomas had more than enough certainties of his own. They were written in Jesus’ dead body.

And nothing is worse than getting all torn up again by your own broken dreams. Thomas wasn’t going to have it. He demanded proof. But Thomas doesn’t get proof. Thomas doesn’t get persuaded by the others’ certainty. Thomas gets Jesus…and he never seems to get around to actually touching those wounds.

Although very likely filled with the fear and shame of knowing that he not only doubted but also deserted his Friend, when Thomas is confronted by the risen Lord, when he is greeted by the forgiveness and the grace in Jesus and His words, “Peace be with you,” well, Thomas believes what had been so unbelievable. And he makes the great confession, “My Lord and my God!”

Does that mean there’s no place for proof? Well, yes and no. It’s like Jesus with His wounds. The wounds were there for Thomas, but that’s not what changed him. So if you want proof, it’s there. There’s Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And those who pooh-pooh these writers because it’s “the Bible,” well, they’re just parading their ignorance. The Bible has far more textual evidence and support than any other book out of the ancient world!

But, hey!, if you don’t want to take the word of the Gospels for it, then read the Antiquities of the 1st Century Jewish historian Josephus. Read the Roman historian Tacitus, his Annals and his Histories. Read the Roman historian Suetonius and his spicy books about the Caesars. Jesus shows up in all of them. No, they don’t read like the Gospels; you wouldn’t expect them to. But the simple fact that He’s in them, means something really did happen in Jerusalem way back when. And then there’s all the archaeological finds! But evidence does not turn a doubting Thomas into a believer and confessor. Jesus does that!

That’s why the Church’s primary work is to give people Jesus. It’s as simple as that. We give ‘em Jesus. He is there in what we teach and preach. He is there in the water of Holy Baptism, in the bread and wine of the Holy Supper. He is there in the words of Holy Absolution, speaking His pardon for our sin. He is there in the fellowship of the two and three gathered together to worship in His name. In the mutual conversation and consolation that goes on among and between Christians…He is there. Whether people believe it or not, whether any doubt or are certain, it doesn’t change the reality. He is here.

And it’s Jesus who makes the difference between a doubting Thomas and the same man who confesses, “My Lord and my God.” It’s Jesus who makes you and me Christian…with all of our own doubts and with all of our own certainties…some of which may even be true, and some of which may sink us faster than the Titanic.

But it’s not about us. It’s not about our doubts or our certainties. It’s always about Jesus. The Jesus who gives Himself for us and to us. The Jesus who says to us, “Peace be with you.” The Jesus who puts that confession on our tongues, “My Lord and my God!” As Thomas shows us, in the end, it’s always Jesus!

Amen

John 20:1-18

Poor Mary Magdalene. For centuries she has been portrayed as something of a scarlet woman, but these days folks don’t much like that portrayal. The revisionists like her much better as a powerful woman, a woman who would have been in charge, except all those other misogynist apostles, especially that pushy Simon Peter, just shut her out. But, hey!, who needs history. All you have to do is rewrite it as you want it. One creative novelist, without any historical basis at all, portrayed her as Jesus’ wife. Others simply settle for a little behind the scenes affair between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

In the Bible, however, she’s far more like the female counterpart to the Apostle Paul. “Once I was lost, but now I’m found.” Paul the former terrorist, becomes the great apostle to the Gentiles after his meeting with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

So Mary Magdalene, from whom St. Luke tells us Jesus exorcised 7 demons… (and I doubt that a woman possessed by seven demons would be the solid pillar of the community that the revisionists want to make her)…this St. Mary, once Jesus stepped in, she too, like Paul, is lifted from her once-destructive life to become an apostle, in fact, the apostle to the apostles, as we heard it in the Reading today.

Now if the Lord Jesus had changed your life as much as He changed Mary Magdalene’s, you might begin to understand the love and the gratitude she felt for Him. While St. Mary Magdalene wrote no epistles, like St. Paul, telling of her gratitude, her love for Jesus and His grace toward her, it certainly must have been equally as profound as Paul’s.

Mary Magdalene came to the garden alone, while the dew was still on the roses. She came early in the morning, after the Sabbath was over and while it was yet dark. She came to visit Jesus’ grave, as many a grieving person has done.

While the other Gospel accounts refer to Mary Magdalene along with the other women coming to anoint Jesus’ dead body, St. John focuses only on Mary Magdalene at the tomb.

When she arrives she finds that the stone covering the entrance of the tomb has been rolled away. Obviously distraught that the tomb is open when it should not be, Mary goes to tell Peter and John that the tomb is empty. But an empty tomb is not yet the full good news.

The two men come running. John, the beloved disciple, being much younger, gets there before Peter. But soon enough Peter comes barreling up, dashes headlong past the younger John right into the tomb. Like John he quickly sees that it’s empty. Then Peter sees the napkin that had covered Jesus’ face. It was folded up neatly, and lay separately, by itself.

Many explanations have been attempted concerning that neatly folded napkin. Some persuasive, many very fanciful. The simplest thing is that it was clear that whoever unwrapped Jesus’ body…it was not grave robbers. Grave robbers would not have taken the time to be so tidy. The two men see and go back home.

They go back home because for St. John, it is significant that Jesus does not appear either to Peter or to himself, John. Jesus appears first to her who had stood by the cross with His mother. To her, who had first discovered the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene is to be the first eye witness to the resurrected Jesus.

Why? It doesn’t say. But women do play pivotal roles in the telling of Jesus’ story in John’s Gospel—His mother at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus pardons, the sisters Mary and Martha, the three Marys who stood at the cross, the Virgin Mary, her sister Mary, wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene…and now here, Mary Magdalene at the tomb. Each is significant.

Mary couldn’t bring herself to leave, nor could she stop crying. Finally, she has to see for herself what Peter and John had seen. And so she stoops and looks in the tomb. But now…at either end of the shelf where Jesus’ body had lain sat an angel, one at the head and one at the foot. It’s St. John’s way of tying the Old Testament into the New. This scene is reminiscent of the mercy seat, the gold covering of the Ark of the Covenant, which sat in the temple behind the curtain, in the Holy of Holies.

The top of the Ark had two gold cherubim, facing each other, at either end. The space between them was called the mercy seat. It was there at the mercy seat that the high priest, who entered the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement, would sprinkle sacrificial blood to atone for the sin of all the people.

By this allusion to Yom Kippur, St. John declares that the Risen Christ is now the mercy seat of God. The Jerusalem temple has served its purpose. The Risen Jesus is the new Holy of Holies, the tabernacle, where God meets mankind with His love and mercy and forgiveness. The sacrificial blood of Jesus has been sprinkled there and atoned for the sin of the whole world! The temple of Jesus’ body has been destroyed, but, as He said, after three days, He has raised it up again!

But Mary Magdalene…she doesn’t know any of that. The two angels prepare the way for mercy, asking her: “Woman, why are you weeping?” But she’s thinking that someone stole the body.

Then, outside the tomb, she sees Jesus Himself. But still she doesn’t recognize Him. He too asks very mercifully, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Now Mary can no longer restrain herself. “Why does everyone keep calling me ‘woman’ and ask why I’m weeping? Isn’t it obvious?! His body is gone! Where is it?”

It’s only when Jesus calls her by name that His lamb finally hears her Shepherd’s voice. “Mary,” He says. “Teacher!” she exclaims. Overjoyed, Mary wants to grab hold of Him and not let go ever again. It’s as if Mary wants to freeze the moment like Peter did on the Mount of Transfiguration, like Mary and Martha did at Bethany when their brother Lazarus was raised. Mary Magdalene wants to hold on to the Risen Jesus. But it’s not to be!

That’s not what happens with Easter. Easter is not a treasure to have and to hold. Easter is a gift to be given away…a gift that must be given away, lest it perish. The Risen Jesus sends Mary to do just that…give it away to the others. She is now the first apostle sent to the other apostles with the news. No longer that the tomb is empty; but now she tells them, “I’ve seen Him!”

And now you know…you know that Christ’s tomb is empty and Jesus lives. You know because you have heard, the Word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation has struck your ears: “The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! So now, you have work to do. Easter sends you to your brothers and sisters, to your friends and your neighbors, to all the weeping people who cannot see, who cannot hear that there is any good that has not been stolen out of this world.

Someone you know is as grief-stricken as Mary Magdalene. Someone you know has had their life paralyzed by grief at the death of a loved one, or by the loss of something they valued as much as life itself. Someone you know has no clue as to what Jesus’ resurrection means, what it means that He calls each of us by name. Someone you know does not understand how anything can become new because of Easter. Someone you know…perhaps even you.

Easter makes you an apostle. Whether by word or by deed we approach those who are weeping, literal tears or only figurative tears. And those weeping folks may react kindly to such mercy or more like Mary Magdalene erupting in her grief. But either way Easter now manifests itself in how you live, and in how you talk about this life, this world, and all the daily messes with which we must all contend.

Easter has now made you an apostle, because you too have heard: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Amen

Zechariah 9:9-12

So it begins! The climax of the Lenten season is upon us. Jesus enters the gates of Jerusalem to the shouts of the people, to the songs of praise…only to hear those voices at week’s end turn first to accusation and then to jeers, as He goes to His death on a Roman cross.

The climax of the whole Christian story is upon us. Little wonder that each of the evangelists—Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—slows down at this point in his Gospel. Each of them moves from the fast-paced, panoramic view of Jesus’ life and ministry, out of which they each capture significant moments along the way, to this almost slow-motion recounting of Holy Week, of Jesus’ final hours. Each step of this journey is significant. Each step deserves the care and the detail which the evangelists give it.

That’s why we have Holy Week. Not just a few holy minutes, but the whole, holy week. We have today, Palm Sunday, on which it begins. We have Holy Monday, on which we ponder the confrontations between Jesus and His opponents—the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees—which hasten the week’s outcome. We have Holy Tuesday, on which we ponder the disciples’ struggles with events that rush around them like whitewater rapids, leaving them confused and afraid. We have Holy Wednesday, on which we ponder the treachery of Judas Iscariot, and the great paradox that only one so close can betray so fully.

We have Holy Thursday—Maundy Thursday, for the mandate to love—and to taste again the flavor of Jesus’ gift in bread and wine. We have Good Friday, when the darkness becomes palpable, the silence unnerving. We have Holy Saturday, the day of waiting, because faith always has its days of waiting. And then, we have Sunday again, Easter, the Resurrection, all the more glorious because of the slow, pondering journey through this week. Easter is an empty day, a hollow, shallow day without all of this week, this Holy Week. So it begins!

Zechariah’s prophecy is so stirring! “Rejoice greatly…shout aloud…Behold, your King is coming!” Sound the trumpets! Strike the drums! Wave the banners! Drop everything and cheer!

And Jerusalem did exactly that on that day. No Caesar witnessed a procession along the Apian Way like this one in Jerusalem that day. The city was turned upside down. So much so that the Pharisees, those religious fanatics who were always afraid that someone somewhere was having a good time…the Pharisees are scandalized. “Look, the whole world has gone after Him!” And hell hath no fury like a Pharisee scorned.

And it would be so very easy for a preacher to ratchet up the rhetoric on Palm Sunday. Gimme a J! Gimme an E! Gimme an S-U-S! Jesus, Jesus, He’s our Man. He can do it, yes He can! And Zechariah’s words lend themselves so easily to that kind of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Because we today are so susceptible to messianic fever. Four years ago during the presidential campaign folks cheered the idea of ushering a messiah into the Oval Office. This year, it seems we’re more concerned about which devil, Republican or Democrat, will do the lesser amount of damage. But…you can still sense it in all the discontent, that if a rider on a white horse should appear, from either party, we’d gallop off after him. “Hosanna! Blessed is he that comes!” Ah…but just ask the Germans of 1933 how things worked out when you elect a messiah.

What makes Zechariah’s words on Palm Sunday so hard to grasp is that we are so accustomed to the classic rags-to-riches story. It animates our culture. Whether it’s the old Horatio Alger stories of hardworking youth who ultimately make good, or the more contemporary real-life versions starring Bill Gates or the late Steve Jobs, we are primed to expect it. We want a story that portrays that upward mobility to which we ourselves aspire. But the story which begins today isn’t like that. It goes the other way.

So in our service today, we began with the procession, the parade with palms. But then we went on to read Philippians. What’s remarkable about that early Christian hymn which St. Paul cites in the 2nd chapter is the dramatic movement it portrays. Jesus leaves the glory of His inheritance to be joined to us in every way. And the service today will not end as it began!

But Jesus goes down this direction. He embraces His downward mobility, refusing the glory that is His so as to pour Himself out in love for us. St. Paul is not merely reciting history. He is inviting us not only to contemplate this act of self-giving on the cross, but also to embrace it for ourselves. “Have this same mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,” he urges.

That may seem hard to imagine, and yet each of us has had moments where we have sacrificed something for others, or at least we have witnessed tremendous self-sacrifice. If you are a parent, you know, even if your children do not, the extent of your sacrifices for them.

And whether at home or at work or simply as a member of the human race, you also know, even if you dare tell no one else, how wearying, how very tiring, it can become to empty yourself, to be the rock, the confidante, the worrier, to pour yourself out for the sake of another. No, it’s not the same thing as Jesus’ self-emptying to become man and die…but it is certainly more than a little taste of what St. Paul is urging upon us in Philippians.

Now what the prophet Zechariah and the apostle Paul and the evangelist John are all telling us is that this King who comes to us on His donkey, this Messiah who pours Himself out, does so for the express purpose of filling up those who have been emptied, and even eviscerated, by this life; to fill up with His life and His love, His grace and His gifts all those who have been emptied! He pours Himself out that we may be full!

So much is often made of Jesus’ donkey on Palm Sunday. The lowliness of it compared to the warhorses of Rome, as if Jesus were doing the equivalent of walking in His inaugural parade rather than riding a limousine or a golden coach or a big white Jesus-mobile. But that misses the point.

The donkey is such a King David beast. It was Solomon who first imported warhorses into the army of Israel. In David’s day they only had donkeys. No horses, donkeys. So Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey is not so much a slap at the powers that be, as it is a reminder that He who comes, comes as the Son of David, the Messiah, the Shepherd King. And like David, Jesus too is a Man of blood, who will certainly have blood on His hands by this week’s end…His own blood, on His own hands, and His feet and His head, His back, His side…pouring it out for a world whose own blood can run so cold. That is the humility of this beast of burden…the donkey…and also Jesus Himself. So it begins.

“Behold, your King comes to you!” That’s today, then Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday, before we get to Sunday again and those Hallelujahs! We walk these days with Him who pours out Himself so that we may be filled; with Him who dies that we may live, fully. So it begins!

Amen

(Three MP3 tracks located below)