You are forgiven by God in Christ and sent out to be Christ because you are trusted, and you are needed. And Christ will give you all you need to do the job.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday of Easter, year C
Texts: Acts 9:1-20; John 21:1-19

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Today’s Gospel ends in a startling moment.

To see it, look at next week, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday. Each year’s Gospel on 4 Easter is a different part of John 10. Next week we get the last section of John 10, where Jesus promises no one can snatch his sheep from his crucified and risen hands.

And earlier in the chapter Jesus speaks of hired hands, who, though supposed to care for the sheep, run away at the first sign of danger. I am the Good Shepherd, Jesus says. I never run away. I will lay down my life for my sheep.

So what is Jesus doing today, handing over care of his sheep to Peter? Three times he asks Peter if he loves him, three times he hears “yes,” and three times he says “care for my flock.”

This call to feed my lambs, tend my sheep, is a call to all who follow Christ. And it’s shocking to think what it implies. Somehow, Jesus trusts Peter, and the other disciples, and me, and you, to be good shepherds. Somehow Jesus trusts that we won’t run like hired hands when God’s sheep are in danger, but stick around, put our lives at risk. We will be Christ. We will feed and tend Christ’s sheep.

Frankly, it’s hard to understand such trust.

We have two alarming stories of Christ’s trust today.

Peter is a bumbling, self-centered clod, seemingly not terribly bright, and gifted at putting his foot in his mouth. Paul is a rigid, fundamentalist zealot for his faith who thinks nothing of watching his leadership council illegally stone someone to death for blasphemy, who seems to enjoy arresting followers of Jesus’ Way. These are the two to whom Jesus says, “I trust you. I need you.”

Peter, who just betrayed Jesus in his deepest hour of need, denying three times with cursing and swearing that he even knew him. Three times Jesus says, “If you’re telling the truth, if you love me, then shepherd my sheep.”

Paul, who in all his self-righteous anger, isn’t just persecuting Christ’s people, he’s persecuting Christ. If you hurt them, you hurt me, Christ says to him on the road. But now the risen Christ also says, “I need you to be my witness to all those people out there who aren’t Jewish. You’re not only not needed to purify Judaism; I need you to bring in people who are unacceptable to your Jewish faith. They’re mine, too. Find those sheep and bring them to me.”

It’s enough to question Christ’s commitment to be our Good Shepherd, giving these two such trust.

This is the shocking side of forgiveness and grace, to be honest.

We proclaim that God in Christ forgives sins – yours, mine, all people – and loves without our deserving it. We are declared righteous by God through Christ, made righteous by the Holy Spirit. Even Peter and Paul are forgiven and loved, despite their flaws and sin. That’s good. They’re getting a second chance in God’s forgiveness.

But do you see the Triune God’s plan Jesus reveals today? Second chances are only the beginning. In fact, your second, or third, or fourth, or God knows how many chances, are prelude to the truly surprising part: Christ trusts you to faithfully care for God’s sheep, to be Christ in the world. Forgiveness – as wonderful as it is to know – is never the ending point. You will always hear next Christ’s loving voice, “Now, I have a job for you. I know you can do it. I need you for it.”

It’s good that Peter and Paul look like terrible candidates for this job. Maybe now you can also believe that God really needs someone like you, too.

Now, Christ isn’t giving up the job of Good Shepherd.

Christ, our Good Shepherd, crucified and risen from the dead, holds you in life now and always. Gives second, and third, and fourth, and countless chances to you and to all.

And yes, needs and trusts you to serve as Christ on a difficult path. Today the wounded and risen Christ promises to show Paul “how much he must suffer for the sake of [the name of Christ.]” After his call to tend the flock, Peter is shown by the One who bears love’s scars that he will eventually die for this ministry. We know well this vulnerable love is also our calling.

But your Good Shepherd never stops feeding and guiding and caring for you, even while sending you. Jesus feeds Peter and the others with a meal of reconciliation before sending them to feed the rest of the flock. Christ heals Paul’s internal and external blindness, sends Ananias to feed Paul’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, before sending him to witness.

Your breakfast on the Galilean beach happens here, your care in Ananias’ house happens here. You are fed with Christ’s meal of forgiveness and reconciliation. Fed with God’s Word for guidance and challenge. Fed by Christ’s hands and heart in Christ’s people around you. Here your true Good Shepherd gives you all you need, fills you and heals you, before sending you out.

You are fed. You are trusted. You are needed.

That’s the grace of Christ’s Easter life that offers joy to your heart. Come to the Table again and be filled. Hear God’s Word. Let God’s people strengthen you. Receive here your millionth chance, God’s forgiveness and love that are always yours.

And then listen. Because you’re about to be sent out. There are sheep who need to be shown the way home. There are lambs who need to be fed.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

In the risen Christ’s wounds we see God’s love, we see God, and we are embolden to offer own vulnerable love for the healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Second Sunday of Easter, year C
Texts: John 20:19-31; Acts 5:27-32

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Why did Thomas demand to see Jesus’ wounds before he’d believe?

It can’t simply be for identification. After Jesus’ resurrection, even those closest to him didn’t always know him at first. But their recognition came in different ways. Mary heard him say her name, and knew. The disciples of Emmaus recognized him when he broke the bread. The seven in Galilee knew by the huge catch of fish. No one seemed to need to see his wounds just to know it was Jesus.

John suggests the wounds are important in a deeper way than mere identification. On the first Easter night, Jesus appeared to all but Thomas, and “showed them his hands and his side,” John says. Maybe that’s why Thomas wanted to see the wounds, too. And when he does, he is overwhelmed and says, “My Lord and my God.”

Thomas not only recognizes his beloved Lord Jesus, alive. He names him as God. Christ’s wounded hands and feet and side showed him.

Thomas witnesses: You’ll know God when you see God’s wounds of love.

Eventually Paul will declare that at the cross God reconciled the whole cosmos back into God’s life, that the cross is central to all we need to know about God’s love in Christ.

Thomas starts that idea, but please notice what he understands. For 2,000 years the Church has debated, fought, made claims, proposed theories about how the cross and resurrection of Christ Jesus reconcile us to God. For some, the theories are the important thing. You have to know how it works for it to be real.

Thomas disagrees. He says, all you need to know God’s love is to see God’s wounds. Then you can believe.

And he’s right. I don’t need to understand vitamins or nutritional science to be nourished for life. I just need to eat food. You can study how food works, but the smallest child can eat a meal and be satisfied.

Likewise, you don’t need to know how God in Christ reconciles all things at the cross to believe that God does. You only need to see the signs of God’s love, and believe. Those wounds, suffered by the very Son of God out of love for the cosmos, show you God’s love in the only way you can understand.

Because what God’s Son reveals in his scarred body is exactly what he taught again and again: love willing to be wounded heals the world.

What Thomas saw in Jesus’ hands and feet and side fit with everything he’d heard from Jesus. Jesus’ way of repentance and following is a way of vulnerable love, in order to heal relationships between individuals, between cultures, between nations. Such love, spreading throughout the world, will end poverty and hunger, war and oppression, and all the isms that infect our hearts and minds. Love willing to be hurt will break the forces of evil and the barriers built up in our hearts that keep us from loving God and loving neighbor.

Jesus never shied away from telling the cost of this love. True love is willing to be wounded, even die, he said. And he was right. Love your enemies? That’s going to leave a scar. Pray for those who hate you? You’ll be marked by that. Give to everyone who begs from you? That will cost you. Forgive not seven times but so many you’ll lose count, even if it’s the same sin you have to keep forgiving over and over? That will cut to your heart. But in this love, life will be restored.

When Thomas saw these wounds, he knew he was looking at God’s love. Jesus’ teachings were now revealed as truth in the risen Christ.

But why does the risen Christ still have wounds?

Jesus is raised from the dead. Why does he still bear marks of his suffering?

Because when love is wounded for the sake of others, that leaves scars. They’re healed, but still there, signs of that love. Think of the wounds a mother receives giving birth. A new life is in the world, but the marks still remain as sign of the vulnerable love that brought that life into being.

So God is still bearing the wounds of God’s love for the cosmos, even after Easter. The Triune God still bears scars of suffering and death, reminders of the love poured out at the cross. Even though life has been restored, even though death has no more power, the marks remain.

As they do with you. When you forgive one who has asked it, a new relationship is born, and new life happens. You still carry the scars, though, but they’re healed, reminders of your love, not painful wounds that still fester. When you offer your love to another, and it costs, you still carry those costs, even though life comes out of your woundedness, and love grows and thrives. Risen wounds remain a sign of the love that caused them.

And when Thomas sees his risen Lord still scarred from his outpoured love, but alive and offering peace, Thomas realizes that vulnerable love not only redeems the world, it lives beyond the woundedness.

Seeing Christ’s risen wounds, the sign of God’s redeemed suffering, emboldened the disciples to follow the same love.

Look in Acts today at the courage of Peter and the others before the same council that just condemned Jesus to death, the same council that will soon turn into mob frenzy and stone Stephen to death. “We won’t stop proclaiming Jesus’ death and resurrection,” they say. “We have to obey God, not you human authorities.”

Most of them did lose their lives, gave up everything out of love. But living in the risen love of God in Christ, they knew from the risen Christ’s wounds that offering themselves in vulnerable love was not only the way of Christ, it was the way to life, to hope, to healing. So they let go of their fear. One at a time, they went out to change the world by their love, whatever the cost. And change it they did.

You know God’s love when you see God’s risen wounds, and there you find God’s grace to be wounded yourself.

That’s the way out of this locked upper room for Thomas, for you, for me.

Christ is risen, and you can see God’s wounds still, the marks of God’s wounded love that transform the whole creation. That’s the love that will empower yours, embolden you to offer yourself in love to your family, your neighbor, your world.

And people will see God’s love when they see your wounds. It’s time to unlock the door and go out as you are sent, as Christ yourself, to be a part of God’s healing of all things.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

These two women witness to you that Christ is your resurrection and life now, not just a promise of life in the world to come.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year C
Texts: John 20:1-18, with reference to Martha in Luke 10 and John 11

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This day could change everything about your life. Today. Easter Day.

This could just be a day to remember historic truth – Jesus’ resurrection – and our promised future – life in the risen Christ after we die.

This could just be a day to play with our emotions. We’ve walked through Jesus’s suffering and death this week, and in some ways experienced that pain. Today could be the emotional payoff: be glad, be joyful, the story has a happy ending.

But there are women who were there 2,000 years ago who can tell you that today, Easter Day, could change your life. Fill your heart. Reshape everything you know about who you are and what God is doing in your life. There are two witnesses whose lives were forever changed by Christ Jesus and the power of resurrection life that flows through Christ into the world.

If you could be so changed today, wouldn’t that be worth hearing?

Listen to Martha of Bethany.

She isn’t named as one of the women who came to the tomb. Her vital testimony comes a few weeks earlier. Martha’s the loud one who speaks her mind. Whether it’s about domestic arrangements or Jesus’ failure to come and save her brother’s life, Martha bravely tells Jesus exactly what she thinks.

Many of us have prayed the grief she shouted at Jesus after her brother died. But listen carefully: Martha believed in the resurrection, that Lazarus would live again in the last days. But her grief and pain were real right now. She laid it all at Jesus’ feet: her anger, her sadness, her helplessness, and said: you should have done something.

And Jesus offers himself to Martha’s pain. “I am the resurrection and the life, Martha. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this, dear Martha?”

Jesus claims she can know his resurrection life right now, in her grief and pain. With no promise of a miracle for her brother. Jesus can be life to her, hope to her, healing to her, right now. And she leaps into trust: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” The greatest testimony about Christ in all the Gospels.

Martha trusts Jesus’ resurrection life before she sees any sign of it, and with no expectation he would raise her brother. And her life is changed forever.

Now hear Mary of Magdala.

She gives us the first Easter proclamation, the foundation of all proclamations: “I have seen the Lord!” She is the first apostle, the first believer, the first to announce that everything had changed.

But Mary Magdalene’s life was very different from Martha’s. The one thing we know about Mary’s history is that Jesus healed her of seven demons.

It could literally have been demonic possession. Some demonic possessions in the Gospels also sound like epilepsy. Still others manifest like mental illnesses we know, maybe bi-polar, schizophrenia, or multiple even personalities. “Seven demons” sounds like she was tortured deeply in her mind. No stable household with beloved family like Martha, no dinner parties for her beloved Master, just life in torment. That’s the unspeakable suffering Jesus took away from her. He literally saved her life. And she clung to him ever after.

Now the only one who gave her life any meaning, the one who had been God’s love for her and had transformed her whole existence, is brutally taken from her. But there was no running away, no locked room for Mary. She had to go to the tomb as soon as day broke, to be close to her beloved. Other women did, too, but John only mentions Mary. All the Gospels know Mary was there.

And like Martha, Jesus meets Mary in her pain and offers himself. She grasps at straws in her grief, talks to the man in the garden in the half-light of dawn, maybe he knows where the body is. And then, that moment that stuns us every time: Jesus says her name. “Mary.” And life begins for her again.

Can you hear these women? Can you believe them?

Martha tells you this morning that whatever pain, anger, or grief you have, Christ will take you seriously and offer himself for healing. Offer himself as your resurrection life right now. Your depression, your anxiety, your fear. Your doubt, your frustration, your suffering. All these, Martha says, Christ will take into God’s own heart and return life and hope and healing. Martha says you can trust the One who embodies God’s love, even without any proof. And you will find life.

Mary tells you this morning there’s no such thing as an outsider when Jesus, the Son of God, is here. You might feel alone, abandoned. You might feel assaulted by demonic forces, addiction, or mental pain. You might be lost and not know where you are going. You might feel as if no one cares, as if you don’t matter. Mary says, believe me, you matter. Christ will find you, drive out your demons, and give you your life. And Mary says you can wait for God, even in your darkest hour, when you are certain even God has abandoned you, and you will hear the risen Christ calling your name.

Martha of Bethany, Mary of Magdala, knew Jesus was life, and that changed them forever.

That’s what’s possible for you this day. We walk through Holy Week every year not to artificially recreate emotion, and not to simply recount historical truth. We walk this week to hear again and again the power of God’s love in Christ, and hear these witnesses who knew life in Christ as a present reality that changed them forever.

Like us, they knew that in rising from the dead, Jesus destroyed death’s power. They believed, as we do, that this meant we will have our own resurrection after we pass through death. We cling to that promise. But there is so much life to live before the moment of our death, and these women testify to you that Jesus is resurrection and life for you right now.

This day could change everything about your life. Today. Easter Day.

Hear these women. Believe them. They’re the first of millions who have sung their witness through the ages. And they invite you to open your heart and your life to the wonder of what Christ the Resurrection and the Life can mean for you in this life.

Join them. Trust them. They won’t steer you wrong. They know the Christ, the Risen One, and the abundant life God in Christ can give. Let them take you by the hand and show you the steps to the dance that will fill your life with God’s joy and hope. Until you, too, grasp others’ hands so all may know God’s life.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen