You already have a Shepherd, and it’s not you. But this Shepherd guides you, knows you, loves you, gives you life, and now calls you to follow, doing the same, for the healing of the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: John 10:11-18; 1 John 3:16-24; Psalm 23

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

Over the years, I’ve learned a number of truths about serving faithfully as a pastor that I now teach to our vicars.

The one I teach first and often, is: “Your people already have a Savior, and it isn’t you.”

Everything I know and do as a pastor is helped by this. Whether it’s relieving the anxiety of carrying the weight of people’s needs, or it’s pulling me from the temptation to see myself as the only one who can do something, remembering that you all have a Savior and it isn’t me has saved my life in ministry more times than I can remember or count.

So hear this truth your Savior gives you today: You already have a Shepherd, and it isn’t you. This is also good news. With the overwhelming problems of the world, anxieties about our families or our lives, fears that we aren’t doing enough, aren’t good enough, aren’t . . . whatever enough, we seem to believe we’re the Shepherd to fix it all, make things right. We carry the weight of others, the weight of our lives, the weight of the world, and forget that maybe we have help.

Well, you do. You have a Shepherd. And thanks be to God, it isn’t you.

And today your Shepherd claims to know you as well as God knows God.

Let that sink in for a moment. Can you grasp it? Within the life of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit live and dance and move in love. Love, according to Scripture, is the essence of what holds God together. So how well do you think God knows God within that love? The inner knowledge of God begins before the universe began, so at least more than 15 billion years ago. Can there still be secrets within God? Hidden actions? Unknown stories?

But the Son of God, your Shepherd, says: “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” Just as God knows God, your Shepherd knows you. And loves you.

How many people actually know us as we truly are?

We don’t help with this. We put on appearances, worrying about what other people think. We keep our fears to ourselves, believing others would ridicule them. We keep our sin and brokenness inside, certain others would turn away if they knew. We keep our inadequacies locked away, not wanting others to realize how inept we feel. We keep our doubts hidden, not wanting our friends who share our faith to think less of us. We sometimes don’t even let our sadness or grief be known, fearing no one will care.

Yet your Shepherd knows you fully. All these things, and more. As well as God knows God, within God’s Triune life, your Shepherd knows you. Loves you. Calls your name.

What might that mean for you, for your life, for today, for tomorrow, to realize this?

Hear this, also: your Shepherd wants to guide you.

The complexity of the world today is almost beyond comprehension. Now that we understand there are many, many systems of brokenness, simply knowing what to do is really hard. We used to think sins were just bad things we did. Now we know it’s more, that we’re also involved in systems of racism, prejudice, oppression, violence, and countless others, sometimes without knowing. For people who care about faithfully serving God, loving as Christ, how can we ever know what to do?

Well, your Shepherd wants to guide you in that. Lead you to green pastures that all can share, along paths that are right and good, for your life and the life of the world. Everything your Shepherd teaches you in the Gospels is meant to lead you, is the loving voice calling to you. Even when the path winds through valleys of death and pain, suffering and fear, you are never alone, your Shepherd’s staff is guiding you.

Decisions about how to be faithful and loving and Christlike aren’t going to be easy in this complicated world. But you can trust that Jesus, your Shepherd, is helping and guiding, through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

But your Shepherd not only guides you. Your Shepherd gives you life.

In this Easter season our ears still ring from the Alleluias that broke out in the darkness of our fear, and we once again walk in awe of this mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection.

Today, remember where your Shepherd has walked. Through the valley of the shadow of death, into death itself, and out on the other side, now alive and loving and calling to you.

Your Shepherd who knows you better than you know yourself isn’t stopped even by death, lays down his life and takes it up again, all to offer you abundant life, life that is full and rich with love, life that doesn’t even end at death.

What might this mean for you, for your life, for today, for tomorrow, to know this?

This is all good news. But your Shepherd says one more critical thing today: The people of the world already have a Shepherd, too. And it isn’t you.

This is one of the most remarkable things Jesus ever said. “I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

There are other sheep unknown to us. Other folds. Others whom Jesus knows fully, as God knows God. Others whom Jesus loves, and calls, and guides, and gives life to.

We don’t know anything about this. He might be talking about other faiths. Other nationalities. Other planets and beings, even. There is a cosmic breadth to your Shepherd’s embrace, and it will be reached. There will be one flock, one Shepherd.

And you and I have no say over any of it. How much energy have we wasted wondering about people of other faiths, or of no faith, and their place in God’s love, or about what sins are forgiveable? How arrogant have we Christians been about a truth we don’t own?

But your Shepherd says, that’s none of your business. That’s my job, my Shepherd work. And the only thing you need to know is, they’re mine, and I love them as much as you. And one day, I’ll bring all together.

This is your Shepherd, and this is the life your Shepherd wants for you. And all those other strange sheep.

What would life be like if you trusted your Shepherd with all this? First John today suggests it would be radically different. People who follow such a Good Shepherd, he says, really follow. If the Shepherd lays down his life for others, so do the sheep. If the Shepherd’s love abides in the sheep, then they love other sheep. “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?,” the elder asks today. “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

That’s what’s next. Our lives, transformed by the presence of our Shepherd knowing, loving, guiding, bringing life, now follow the same path. Not as The Good Shepherd to our sisters and brothers. That job’s taken. But as anointed followers, copying the life and love and teaching of our Shepherd. Not because we will save anyone. Again, that job’s taken. But because our Savior and Shepherd chooses to touch others with our lives. With our love and grace in actual deeds and life.

This is how your Shepherd will heal this world, fill all creation with life and love, and bring together one flock.

So now it’s time to follow.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory. Love is only real when it’s embodied, and that’s true for God’s love, seen in the crucified and risen Christ’s life, and now seen and embodied in us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: Luke 24:36b-48

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

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory.

No one ever was healed by teachings about love, or comforted by the idea of love, or blessed by a diagram of love.

Love is only love if it’s carried in a body. If it has arms to embrace, or lips to kiss, or hands to hold, or shoulders to support, or a voice to comfort, or a lap to enfold. Love is only love if it is lived. If sacrifices are made, or encouragement is given, or wisdom is shared, or forgiveness is poured out.

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory.

The eternal and Triune God is as aware of that as we are. Becoming incarnate as a human being among us was the only way God could truly show us love, shape us into people who love. No prophetic declarations, no visions of seers, no words from on high could love us in a way that would change our hearts. God tried all those things. But coming to us in the flesh was the deep plan from before the beginning, because it was the only way for God to truly love us so we could know. And so we could love.

That’s why it’s so important that Jesus ate a fish on that first Easter night.

Last week John told us of this night; today we hear Luke. Both agree.

Whatever else the disciples experienced in that upper room, Jesus, their beloved friend and teacher, was physically present with them. His body which was cold and dead now was alive and warm. They knew it was his body: it still bore the wounds his love accepted. Nail marks were still in his hands, John said. The gash the spear cut into his side could still be seen and felt.

Luke agrees with all that, and then says, “Oh, and by the way, he ate a fish.”

Here’s what happened. His disciples, locked away, now see Jesus in front of them, and they’re shaking, terrified. Sensibly, they think they must be seeing a ghost.

Thomas wasn’t there this first night. But Luke says that night everyone got Thomas’ gift. Jesus said to all of them, as he did to Thomas the next week, “Touch me, and see.” He showed them his hands and his side. (And, by the way, if Thomas’ friends told him that they touched Jesus’ wounds, embraced his body, little wonder he wanted the same they got if he was going to believe.)

And then Jesus looked at the remains of the meal on the table, and said, “Are you going to eat that?” Actually, Luke says he asked if they had anything to eat. But what a vision of a loving family! A loved one arrives after all have finished eating and asks if there’s anything left. It’s a moment of pure delight for we who read this story.

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory. And life isn’t life if it isn’t real, lived, physical, touchable.

You can believe whatever you want about Christ’s resurrection. But the witness of the very first to meet Jesus alive was that he was really there. In person. In flesh. Still wounded. Still loving. Breathing on them. And eating. We sometimes have a habit of seeing Scripture stories as pristine tableaux. Jesus reaches out his hand, saying, “touch my wounds,” and disciples demurely place their fingers on them.

That might have been the start. There was definitely hugging next. Kissing. Laughter. And more eating and drinking.

This is the truth of that first night: Jesus, risen from the dead, ate a fish. His disciples saw him. Touched him. And they knew the world had changed.

It was this physical reality of their risen Lord that broke open their lives.

Slowly they started unlocking the door. They began to go out and tell other people. When the Holy Spirit poured into them at Pentecost, their boldness increased and they spread over the whole world. Even though they were arrested and tortured and killed, they never feared the authorities again. Christ is risen, they said, and we saw him. Touched him. Hugged him.

But starting on this first night, they understood that if love isn’t love if it’s a theory, meeting God’s love embodied in a risen Jesus was only the beginning. Again, the Gospels agree that after easing their fear and inviting their touch, and after blessing them with peace, Jesus repeatedly named them as the embodiment of love sent into the world.

You are witnesses of this, he said. As we heard from John last week, he said they would bear God’s very own forgiveness in the world in their bodies. He told them, gathered on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, that they now were to love those whom he loved, feed those whom he loved, care for those whom he loved.

Now all his teachings started to make sense, in these forty days of joy, walking with Jesus once more. Love isn’t love if it’s a theory, only if it’s embodied. So God became embodied as a human being. And now the Risen Son of God makes us embodied love for the world.

No one will be changed by God’s love solely by preaching or teaching or any words.

Only embodied love is love. Reveals love. Creates love. So that’s our calling now.

When you offer undeserved forgiveness to someone you embody God’s love. And God’s love is real to them. And healing happens.

When you embrace someone different from you and love past your prejudice, you reveal God’s truth. And God’s love is real to them. And healing happens.

When you set aside your needs and offer yourself to another without strings attached, you are the physical, living presence of the risen Christ. God’s love is real to them. And healing happens.

And yes, you might be taken advantage of. You might not have love returned. It might cost. If love were a theory, you could make all sorts of arguments about how that could be love’s shape, love’s cost, love’s reality. But they’d be worthless.

Instead, God, embodied in human flesh, loved you, and the whole creation all the way to dying on a cross. You’d never have believed love could look like that unless someone showed you. None of us could.

It’s funny how important that little piece of fish really is.

Because now we know, now we’ve seen, that love, even if it loses everything, even if it dies, can’t be killed. As a theory, it makes no sense.

But this is no theory. This is embodied truth. And just as Jesus, the risen Son of God, in his body still bore the wounds his love accepted, so will our bodies and our hearts. Our wounds are part of the love, part of the sign, part of the story, part of the truth.

Love isn’t love if it’s a theory. And now the world can know God’s love for itself. For you and I will now bear this love in our bodies and hearts and lives. It’s the only way God could heal this world, and it’s already happening now.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

“Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don’t know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it’s not. It’s a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody keeps pulling it and pulling it.” -Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 20:19-31

 

In the novel State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, a character believes that her husband is dead. But then she gets word that she might not have been told the whole story about his mysterious disappearance. Against all odds, the man she loves just might be alive. The reader might expect this revelation to fill her with joy, but it does just the opposite. It fills her with pain and rage. She had finally come to terms with the loss of her husband, but now she has to go through the whole painful journey again, waiting and wondering if she will ever see him again. As she tells another character, she doesn’t want to hope for his return, she just wants to let go, to find closure and move on. She says:

“Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don’t know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it’s not. It’s a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody keeps pulling it and pulling it.”

Ann Patchett hits on a difficult truth in this passage. Hope isn’t all sweetness and joy. Sometimes, hope hurts. It drags us forward when we’d rather give up and stay put. It cracks open our complacency and exposes us to loss. Despair defends us from disappointment, but hope leaves us vulnerable. The woman in the novel doesn’t want to think that her husband is alive, because then she might have to lose him all over again. Better not to hope at all, she thinks, than to subject herself to that kind of heartbreak.

Perhaps this is some of what Thomas is going through when he hears his friends say that they have seen the risen Christ. His fellow apostles tell him that, while he was gone, Jesus appeared, and showed them his wounds, and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit. They ask him to join them in the good news of the resurrection, but he refuses to believe their story. With that refusal, he is saying: no, I’m not going to open myself up to that kind of pain again, only to be let down. If Jesus wants me to believe, let him show himself to me like he did to the rest of you. Until I see him with my own eyes, I’m not going to let myself hope that he’s really alive. It’s not worth the heartache. It’s not worth the loss.

This unwillingness to hope protects Thomas from hurt, but it comes at a high price. For that long week between Jesus’ two visits, Thomas is alone. He might be hiding in the upper room with his friends, but he’s excluded from their fellowship. The apostles are living together in a joyful new reality, and they want Thomas to join them, but his despair cuts him off from this new thing called the church. He’s being invited to discover new life, but his pain and fear convince him that it’s better to accept death. It’s a safe decision, one that defends his heart, but it traps him in a protective cage away from the people he loves, and away from the possibility of anything better.

History has not been kind to Thomas and his despair, but in our own ways, we have all done the same thing and allowed our pain to turn us away from the resurrection. We all know what it means to doubt God’s power to heal the world when the forces of sin and death seem too terrible to overcome. We make our compromises, and resign ourselves to the way things are, instead of fighting to see God’s will be done. The story of Thomas asks us: What are the things that you are too afraid to hope for? What dreams of life and healing are you suppressing to defend yourself against heartbreak? How are you accommodating yourself to the forces that draw the world away from God? How are you surrendering to despair?

In the face of the brokenness of this world, despair makes a lot of sense. Sin is powerful, and common sense might dictate that we submit to its reign. We could just accept that we will never be free of the ugliest parts of ourselves, and stop struggling to learn and grow. We could just accept that the broken relationships in our lives will never be healed, and stop praying for reconciliation. We could just accept that mass killings are now a part of life, and stop working for change so we can stop being disappointed when that change doesn’t come. We could just accept that our planet is doomed, and choose to make the most of its abundance while we can with no more hope for the future. We could make our peace with death. It would make our lives a lot more comfortable, if we could let go of hope. It would be so much easier if we just didn’t care.

But we are called to never accept death’s triumph. We are called to stay open to the Holy Spirit’s power to breathe new life into all things, not to close ourselves off for fear of being let down. This is a hard thing to do. But hope is not a virtue because it is easy. It takes courage, and commitment, and deep wells of faith. It forces us to believe in things that we can’t yet see, and may never see in our lifetimes. Hope means that we have to let go of our desire for closure, because God’s plan is always unfolding. It means accepting that that fishhook that hope plants in our hearts is going to keep dragging us onward to ventures of which we cannot see the ending. Sometimes that path will lead us to joy; other times it will pass through defeat and loss. But in faith, we can keep journeying forward, because we know that our hope is leading us toward the reign of God. The end of all things is God’s good will for the world, in Christ’s victory over death. The hope that makes all other hope possible is the hope of the resurrection. Because we proclaim Christ raised, we can say in confidence that death doesn’t win. We can find hope in our hurt because we know that pain and loss will not, and cannot have the final say.

To all of us who must believe without seeing, it is only in hope that we meet Christ raised. This can be a challenge, but it is also a joy, because in that hope, we not only encounter the resurrection, but we share it with others. When we live in hope, God heals those around us, using us to bring comfort to the despairing and light to those who walk in darkness. Hope breaks us opens to be the wounded healers this world needs. Yes, it does put hooks in us, and sometimes the pull hurts. But that pull is what draws us into God’s embrace. It’s the pull that lifts us up out of the grave, and raises us with Christ into new life.

Amen.