sermon – Page 17

Cloudy, With a Chance of Fullness

May 9, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Jesus left at the ascension, so that we could learn to look for Christ everywhere.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Ascension of Our Lord
Texts: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If you had stopped by here on Monday, April 8th at around 2pm, you would have seen something unusual: Jim Bargmann and I, standing out in the parking lot, staring up at the clouds.

No, we weren’t looking for Jesus. That, of course, was the day of the eclipse and though we knew we weren’t in the path of the totality, we were still hoping to see something. Anything. But, as many of you probably remember, we couldn’t see it here at all. In fact, the clouds were so thick and covered so much of the sky, we couldn’t even tell where the sun was! We watched and we waited for a break in the clouds, and we shared photos from our friends and family who were seeing this amazing thing. But in the end, all we saw was clouds. And after a while we headed back inside, feeling disappointed. And a little bit empty.

And I was thinking about that experience as I was imagining Jesus’s ascension.

Now, we don’t know what the weather was like that day. We aren’t given many details but we do know that there was at least one cloud. Because in the account in Acts, we are told that “as [the followers of Jesus] were watching, Jesus was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

Now, we usually picture it as one of those huge, fluffy, white clouds that is just the perfect compliment to the gorgeous blue sky on a sunny afternoon. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was more like the day of the eclipse, overcast and threatening rain, with gloomy gray clouds covering the sky?

I know that’s statistically unlikely, given the arid climate of Jerusalem. But, imagining the Ascension happening under gray skies, helped me connect with the underlying melancholy of the event. Of course that wasn’t the only emotion, and seems not even to have been the primary one. After all Luke’s account in the gospel tells us that the followers returned to Jerusalem with great joy! And we’ll get to the joy. But I think we can safely imagine that the great joy was also at least tinged with a bit of sadness.

That there was glory, yes, but something gloomy too.

Jesus was leaving. The incarnation was over. And that’s so hard because even death itself couldn’t end the incarnation! That’s what we’ve been celebrating for forty days now – that death wasn’t the end of the incarnation. But this was. The Word made flesh, who dwelt among us, who died and rose again, was going away.

The clouds covered up the sun, and we are left in gloomy gray, staring up at the sky.

It’s a feeling we know well. When someone important to us, important to our community, leaves, it can feel just like straining to see the sun on a cloudy day. A feeling of missing something. A feeling of emptiness and longing.

It’s easy to imagine the followers of Jesus feeling that emptiness, that longing as they stood there looking up at the sky. As they realized that Easter really is over, and the long wait of Advent was beginning. No wonder those two white-robed figures had to prompt them to quit their staring and get back to living. They couldn’t tear their eyes away – they just wanted one more glimpse.

But, of course, the sun is still there even when you can’t see it.

Jesus may have left, but he wasn’t gone. And no clouds can cover up or take away Christ’s promise to abide with us, to be with us “always, to the end of the age.” No matter how empty we feel, Christ fills us. After all, Christ is fullness, as Paul reminds us in the letter to the Ephesians, the one “who fills all in all.” Who fills our broken and empty hearts with abundant and everlasting life – who fills us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit – with love and peace and great joy.

And this fullness isn’t only within ourselves, but Christ is the fullness that is so full that it fills the whole universe. Christ fills everything, is accessible everywhere!

I apologize in advance for this cringey comparison – but one way to imagine it is that Christ being lifted up in a cloud is a little bit like Christ being uploaded to the cloud. Okay, I know that’s a groaner, but go with it for a moment. I create a file on my device – and the only place I can access it is on that device, the place where it is saved. But once I upload it to the cloud, then it’s saved to the network that connects the world and that means I can get to it from anywhere. Christ is the network that connects us to everything – to God, to creation, to one another, even to ourselves.

And that’s part of what the Ascension, the end of the incarnation, the uploading to the cloud, helps us to understand.

Because there is one drawback to incarnation.

It’s singular. It’s particular. It draws our focus to one person and time and place, and that’s amazing because it helps us see the Triune God who is beyond person, time and place. But that focus on the one singular person of Jesus, can blur our peripheral vision, and blind us to the truth that Christ is everywhere, the fullness that fills all people and all things, present and accessible and living from one end of creation to the other. As long as Jesus was here, walking and talking and eating and healing and loving as one particular person, it was a little bit harder for us to see Christ anywhere else.

Jesus left so that we would learn to look for Christ.

So that we could learn to see Christ in everyone, in everything. So that we could experience the fullness of Christ.

And that doesn’t keep us from staring up at the clouds sometimes – desperate for a glimpse of the sun.

That doesn’t keep us from singing “Come, Lord Jesus” again and again until our throats are raw. It doesn’t keep us from feeling empty, even as we are being filled by fullness. In our longing, we are still clinging to the promise that Christ will return. As those two robed figures said to the disciples: “This Jesus, this Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go.” Christ Jesus will come again.

But what do we do in the meantime? We look for Christ, not just in the clouds, but in the dirt and in the mirror and in each other. We learn to see Christ – especially in those places we least expect, and in those people who are the hardest to love. We let ourselves be filled with the fullness of the one who fills all in all, so that we can be Christ’s eyes and hands and love in the world.

We do what we always do in Advent.

We watch and we wait for a break in the clouds.

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Unexpected Friendship

May 5, 2024 By Vicar at Mount Olive

Jesus’s command to love one another invites us into unexpected friendships, including the friendship between God and creation.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: Acts 10:44-48, John 15:9-17

Dear friends, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus does something pretty unexpected in the gospel reading today.

Here in his last hours with his followers, he says to them: “I do not call you servants any longer…but I have called you friends.” Something has shifted in their relationship, and Jesus names it. “We care about each other. We’re close. I’ve trusted you with everything. We are friends.”

But, it seems like an odd kind of friendship. Not only because we know that these “friends” won’t really act like friends in the chapters to come, but also because of the way Jesus describes friendship: “you are my friends if you do what I command you” – which doesn’t sound like friendship. Following commands, that sounds like what servants do! So which is it – friends or servants? Both? Somewhere in between? What’s going on?

I often feel, when I’m studying or preaching from the gospel of John, that you really need a PhD in Greek and in ancient philosophy to understand what the heck is going on. In this case, it’s really important to understand what friendship meant to Jesus. And, I don’t have a PhD, but from what I understand, the simple version is this: people in the ancient world took friendship very seriously.

Friendships came with serious expectations.

It was sometimes even ritualized with a ceremony involving solemn vows and an exchange of symbolic gifts – basically a wedding, but to celebrate a friendship. Because, just like marriage, friendship meant a serious commitment: to help and give and speak and act in each other’s best interest for the rest of their lives.

And what’s more, friends were expected to be patient and kind. They did not envy or boast. You see where I’m going with this? They weren’t arrogant or rude or irritable or resentful. Friendship bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things and never ended.

Friendship was love.

Literally the Greek word for friendship is “philia,” which just means love.

I imagine that the people of the ancient world would be mystified at our modern dilution of the idea of friendship. You can become “friends” on Facebook by clicking a button? That’s it? What do you mean you’re “just friends?” What is “just” about committing yourself so deeply to one another, that you would even die for each other?

Because that’s how Jesus describes it: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Jesus isn’t so much imparting new spiritual wisdom here as much as he is quoting the common wisdom of his day. Aristotle wrote something very similar – almost word for word- about laying down one’s life for one’s friends almost three hundred years earlier. For centuries, ancient philosophers had described the ideal, the truest friendship as love, self-sacrificial to the very point of death.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is preparing his friends for. He is about to lay down his life for them. For love. For friendship.

And he wants them to love in the same way. That’s the really unexpected part.

Because, you know, the interesting thing about the word for “friend” in Greek is that it has both an active and a passive meaning. A friend is simultaneously the one who loves and the one who is loved, the lover and the beloved. There is an equality and a mutuality built into the very word.

That’s what Jesus means when he says “I do not call you servants any longer.” Jesus is showing how friendship, how love, breaks down hierarchy. It started two chapters earlier when Jesus washed their feet, flipping the expected hierarchy of master and servant. And here, he destroys it completely. No servants. No masters. Just friends.

And not only in this inner circle, but on a cosmic scale as well.

No longer is it going to be God up here and creation down here, with God the subject doing the loving and creation the object being loved. The truth revealed in Jesus, God-with-us, is that it’s both God and creation, both loving and being loved, both subjects and objects of the passion and pleasure and pain of love. Jesus reveals God’s desire for mutual love – deep and abiding and unexpected friendship.

And this unexpected friendship between God and creation keeps creating more unexpected friendships, keeps sowing love in places where love seemed impossible.

We see it in Acts, with Peter and Cornelius.

Friendship between them should have been impossible – a wealthy Roman military leader and a poor Jewish fisherman. Come on. How could they love each other? How could they be vulnerable enough to allow themselves to be loved? But the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them all. The love of God was bigger than every hierarchy and cultural barrier that separated them. Cornelius invited Peter. And Peter stayed with Cornelius and welcomed him, the very first Gentile to be baptized. They loved each other. And became friends. An unexpected friendship that changed the course of Peter’s life. And changed the course of the church.

And that’s exactly what Jesus wanted for Peter, when he called him his friend. And wants for all of us.

He wants our joy to be complete – the joy of unexpected friendship.

I hope you have experienced this joy already. I hope you’ve had a friendship that seemed to come out of nowhere–that overcame the barriers of our world that seeks to sort and divide. A friend who, as another ancient philosopher put it, doubled your joy and divided your grief.

We believe that God’s friendship with creation, God’s love poured out for us and our love poured out in return, can create friendships – true friendships which otherwise would seem not just unexpected but impossible. Between those on opposite ends of the hierarchy. On opposite sides of borders. On opposite sides of front lines.

And in our world, we are desperate for more unexpected friendships.

We need unexpected friendship – we need the mutual love of the Holy Spirit to break down the hierarchies that surround us – that never seem to change and keep us part. To break down every way that we let gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, ability, religion, and politics keep us from loving each other.

We need unexpected friendship – we need the love of God who became vulnerable, who invites us into mutual vulnerability. The love that risks being known and being hurt, that trust others with what is most tender in ourselves.

We need unexpected friendship – we need the love of Jesus–who laid down his life. The love that teaches us to lay down our own wants and desires and comforts out of care for each other. That trades happiness for joy.

That’s why Jesus commands us to love one another.

Not because we are servants to be commanded. After all, if friendship has broken down hierarchy, then commands aren’t really commands, are they? And in case, love can’t be commanded. Love must be given freely or it isn’t love.

Rather it is the will of God, the hope God has for humanity, that we love one another. And it becomes a self-fulfilling statement. When Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command,” what he is saying is this: “If do what I’ve said, if you love one another, then you will be loved and loving – active and passive – beloved lovers – in a word, friends.”

Unexpected friends, let us love one another. And our joy will be complete.

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Never Apart

April 28, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

You cannot be separated from God’s love in Christ by anything, so trust your connection to the Vine and God’s ability to grow fruit in you.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: John 15:1-8; 1 John 4:7-21 (with a call out to Romans 8)

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

Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Nothing. This promise of Paul for you and for me is our greatest hope in this life and for the life to come. Neither death nor life, nor the present, nor the future, nothing in all creation can separate you from God’s love for you in Christ.

But here’s a new thought today: if nothing can separate you from God’s love, then you can never be cut off from the Vine that is Christ Jesus. All the fruit of love and life that God dreams to create in you is possible because you’re never apart from the Vine.

Jesus says, “apart from me you can do nothing.” That’s not a warning, it’s a promise and a hope.

And you know this connection already, if you listen.

First John says today that because God’s own Spirit lives in you, you know you abide in God and God abides in you. You’re part of the Vine, as Jesus said.

So, do you have any trust in God at all? Your doubt and confusion are irrelevant. The smallest spark of faith is a sign that God’s Spirit lives in you.

Have you ever felt God pull you into some path, show you someone you could care for? Have you ever noticed you had a gift that seemed God-given? Have you ever had a moment where you felt God was with you? Then you already know God’s Spirit, and God’s Spirit is in you, and you abide in God and God abides in you. And that means you will bear great fruit.

Fruit is the beautiful image that sparks our joy, shapes our imagination, inspires our words and actions.

Fruit can’t grow without a connection to the vine or branch, down into the roots, into the soil. And Jesus and Paul both love to describe the life in Christ we’ve all been called to live as fruit. That’s huge. Your Christian life isn’t a job to do, a series of duties that weigh on you. Loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself isn’t something you have to work hard to do.

The Christian life, your following Christ, your love in the world, is fruit. It grows from your life that is connected to the roots, the branches, the sap of God’s love and grace. Since your baptism you have been joined to this Vine. And nothing, nothing can separate you from God’s love, God’s sap, God’s roots.

That means you will absolutely bear fruit. Isn’t that amazing? All the love you know God hopes you can share, all the Good News of God’s grace you wish everyone knew, all the calls to follow and love and care for others and do justice, all this is fruit. God grows it in you and me, and blesses the world.

And don’t worry about Jesus’ words about pruning.

Pruning doesn’t destroy the vine or tree. Pruning cuts away the parts that aren’t bearing fruit anymore, or never did. The parts that take energy and life away from the fruit.

God’s pruning helps you remove the things that fight against God’s fruit, the ways of thinking and doing and speaking that try to dry out the juice and keep the fruit from bursting into the world. That keep you and me from bearing the fruit of love. When we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, God prunes while forgiving.

You could pray for pruning with joy and trust. If you know things in you take away from bearing fruit of God’s love, ask God for help to get rid of them, toss them in the pile of old branches. So nothing can get in the way of love of God and neighbor flowing through you.

And trust the sap is flowing strongly for you to live your Christ life.

When you struggle with your calling, your following, take a pause and listen for God’s life flowing in you. It’s there. Nothing can separate you from God’s love.

When you fail to love, or despair at your inadequacy to heal the problems of injustice and oppression, take a breath and feel deep down to your roots, to where God’s love and hope are. Don’t beat yourself up for your failure, or your fear, or your doubt, trust this: what God needs you to bear as fruit of love and justice and peace in your life and in this world will happen.

And when you don’t have any idea what the next step on the path is, trust the Vine. Nothing can separate you, so trust the way will be revealed. God’s sap is flowing in you and giving you wisdom and possibility. God will ensure you know where to go, what to do, when to do it.

But remember to nurture your connection to the Vine.

Nothing can separate you from God’s love in Christ, from Christ the Vine.

But it’s harder to sense that connection if you distance yourself from God and the community of faith. It’s harder to hear the Spirit’s movement without others to encourage and notice. It’s harder to feel God’s strength if you live away from God’s voice and gifts.

You strengthen your connection to God’s roots by seeking and hearing God’s Word. Sharing in the Meal that gives you forgiveness and new life, new sap for your fruit. Staying connected to others who are also joined to the Vine, for encouragement and support and love. Jesus’ words today are a gentle reminder to nurture your unbreakable connection as intentionally as you can, so you know it better.

I am the Vine, you are the branches, Jesus said. And you will bear great fruit.

That’s a promise. Through you, it will mean hope for the world.

Because nothing can separate you from that Vine. And with God’s love flowing into you, nothing can stop the fruit of your life in Christ from bursting into the world with life and love.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Hired No More

April 21, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Your Shepherd will never lose you and calls you to shepherd all Christ’s sheep with the same insistent passion and care.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 10:11-18

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

The problem with the hired help is they don’t have the same investment.

The owner of a business has their whole livelihood bound up in that business, so everything about it matters deeply to the owner. Their employees are paid to do their jobs. They can walk away or be fired. But the owner is in it completely.

So, Jesus is right. The shepherd of the sheep cares for all of the sheep because the sheep belong to the shepherd. Their whole lives are in the shepherd’s hands. If wolves attack, there’s no choice but to defend the sheep. If sheep get lost, the shepherd has to find them. If they’re hurt, the shepherd must help them. The shepherd’s life is bound up in caring for the sheep.

Those who are paid to care for the sheep don’t have a reason to lose their lives keeping the wolves away, or climbing down a cliff to rescue them. At some point, they’ll abandon their job if the risk is too great. Jesus knows what he’s talking about.

Because there are plenty here who’ve been abandoned by Jesus’ hired hands.

Abandoned to the wolves by others in the Church, the hired hands (even though they’re not actually paid). Maybe you’ve been told to leave by someone Jesus asked to love you. Or marginalized by those supposed to care for Jesus’ flock. Things got challenging and you were left out and alone.

For decades this congregation has been a sanctuary for those kicked out of other sheepfolds, rejected both by leaders and members of the flock. What you’ve found here is this good news: Jesus the Christ, God-with-us, is your Good Shepherd, and no one can snatch you out of his hands. No matter if the hired hand is the pastor, or the bishop, or the person in the community ignoring you, or telling you you’re not acceptable to God, the Shepherd’s voice reigns over all. You belong. You are loved, and worthy.

But many of us have also been the hired hands.

How often have some of us disappeared in the face of adversity, leaving some of our fellow sheep, our neighbors, exposed and alone? How often have we decided we were the gatekeepers to the sheepfold, as if we knew whom God loved and didn’t? How often have we looked the other way when other sheep were unheard, ignored, patronized, or pushed to the side? Especially if they weren’t part of our own flock.

There’s also good news here for you if you’ve been such a hired hand. Your Good Shepherd still loves you and loves me. Being a bad hired hand is forgivable.

But the Shepherd still has a powerful word today for us to hear clearly.

Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

That means this sheepfold we know as the Church isn’t the whole flock. There are many other sheep, and Jesus knows and will find them. All God’s sheep belong to Christ, who gives his life for them.

So, Jesus clearly says here we hired hands don’t have a vote over who are Christ’s sheep and who aren’t, over who is loved by God and belongs to God. Only God does. And God’s word, repeatedly given by the Son of God, but also the prophets and the martyrs, is “all are mine. I won’t lose a single one. I will draw all people, all things, to myself, into my love and life.”

The Triune God is the only one with a vote. And the vote is: all are to be found and kept safe and loved.

Since we’re not the Shepherd, we don’t naturally have that kind of instinct, investment. But what if we did?

If you belong to Christ the Good Shepherd, and are cared for, and loved, and no one can snatch you out of the Shepherd’s hands, which is true; and if you are now called to care for the other sheep, whoever they are, which is also true; here’s the question: can you grow into the same investment Christ has? To be willing to do whatever it takes for any of Christ’s sheep, like Jesus?

Isn’t that what Jesus meant by “love one another as I have loved you?” That you and I actually love as God loves in Christ? Not caring for others because someone told us to. Not looking out for our neighbor because we think it’s expected. Not welcoming all, or setting aside our privilege, or changing how we think about another person because that was what we were required to do. No – because our heart was changed into Christ’s and it was the only thing to do.

Love as I love, Jesus said. Stop being a hired hand and become one of my shepherds.

This is the new heart we pray God gives us in the Spirit.

That you are transformed into someone who loves as passionately and as deeply and as committedly as the holy and Triune God. So that you never run away when someone is in need because they are yours, you love them, and it would be unthinkable. You never think or tell or treat someone as if they’re outside God’s embrace because you can’t imagine a situation where anyone would be.

The Good Shepherd needs other shepherds to help, not hired hands, because all God’s children need to be cared for and protected. Especially – and hear this clearly – especially the ones outside the sheepfold of the Church. We are called to love all with the same unbreakable, unstoppable love you and I have from God in Christ.

Now, the Good Shepherd will bring everyone into God’s love. Jesus says so. There will be one flock, and one Shepherd. You can count on it. But what if, because of your Spirit-transformed heart and love, and mine, all could experience and know that right now? If every heart knew the love of the Shepherd for them, and beat to the rhythm of the Shepherd’s heart themselves, what could this world look like?

Well, God has a good idea – but you are needed for it to become reality.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Believable

April 14, 2024 By Pr. Joseph Crippen

Faith in the risen Christ will transform you for life in this world, filled with God’s love and bringing healing. Life after death is the frosting on all, but not the important thing.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: Luke 24:(33-36a) 36b-48; Acts 3:12-19

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

You might be mistaken about what these first believers realized Easter day.

There was a lot of confusion, all day. The women first saw Jesus, then apparently Simon Peter. Then the couple walking home to Emmaus, who ran back to the Upper Room to tell the others they’d seen him.

And as they’re all standing around talking excitedly about actually seeing Jesus alive that day, Jesus is suddenly standing with them in the locked room. And they’re terrified. They thought he was a ghost.

But he ate and let them touch him, proving he was physically alive, in the flesh. And something changed in them. That’s what you need to sort out.

So first try to forget all that you know 2,000 years after the fact.

We hear these stories with four Gospels in hand, the rest of the New Testament, and two millennia of theological formulation about resurrection. But that’s not what they knew that Sunday.

Something profound changed for these believers when they saw Jesus physically alive, not a ghost or a vision, and he gave them peace. As far as we can tell, it wasn’t that they suddenly believed in life after death. According to the Gospels, Jesus didn’t attract followers by promising life after death. He only spoke of it a few times. Twenty years after the resurrection, Paul has to introduce the whole idea of life after death to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians, and it sounds for all the world like they’d never heard of it before, not even in Paul’s original preaching.

So if it took the early Church close to two decades to trust that in Jesus’ resurrection they also would find resurrection after their deaths, what on earth did they proclaim at first? And why on earth did thousands flock to them to be baptized?

Well, read the Gospels.

All the teaching, all the calling, is to draw people into the life and heart of God for the healing of this world and of their lives. That’s why people followed. Love God with all you have, Jesus said, and love your neighbor as yourself, and you will know life worth living. Abundant life. You’ll be walking in the light instead of stumbling around in the dark. And people longed for that.

In Jesus, they experienced God’s love in person. And he called them to be God’s love in person themselves. He spoke words of hope that God cared for all people, and asked them to share those words of hope and live in a way that fulfilled that hope for others. And that was more than enough to drop everything and follow.

The devastating events of Holy Week broke their hope that this could be a life of abundance and grace and love. Death really was in charge, like they’d always assumed. Power and oppression always won, as they’d long believed.

But when they saw Jesus physically alive again after that horrible death, and they could be hugged, embraced, kissed by him again, when they could eat with him again, God’s love was once again theirs. In person. The only way any of us ever know love. That’s what changed them.

And with the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, they spread this news of God’s embodied love that could change the world.

That’s what drew thousands to the church, their transformed lives of embodied divine love. As we’ve been hearing these weeks of Easter, in those first days the believers shared everything with each other. They healed, like Jesus. They lived in love, reached out to those who were poor and enslaved and oppressed and welcomed them with God’s love in person.

Paul spread the news of God’s love that could not be killed, and convinced thousands of people that abundant life in this world, a life of wholeness and love and peace and grace, was possible with the life of the Risen Christ giving courage and strength.

And yes, as the years progressed, more and more it became clear that something else had happened on Easter. Death had been broken for them, too. For all. And Paul proclaims that with all his heart.

But what if you joined the church in those first years, when life after death wasn’t part of the preaching?

It wasn’t bait used to get you to trust God. It wasn’t whitewash used to make you forget about the pain of your life. It wasn’t the only reason to consider faith in Christ.

Imagine that just knowing Jesus is alive, that Christ is risen, gave you the confidence to live in love and courage as those first believers did. That it transformed your life, gave you hope, freed you from fear, helped you love your neighbor and inspired you to offer your life to God.

What if you were just as ignorant as these believers were at first about life after death. Would you still want to be a Christian?

They did. Jesus alive again was enough for them.

Now they could trust him and follow him as before. They could walk in love, proclaim forgiveness and invite repentance, let go of everything and make sure all had what they needed. They could live abundant life without the fears their neighbors had, trusting God was with them, as Jesus promised. They could expect the Spirit of God to move in their hearts and send them into the world afire with God’s love.

And it was enough. It was enough. It made these women and men leave their locked rooms and witness to the power of God to change this world through their lives and love.

So definitely hold the certain promise that you will live in Christ after you die. It’s true and it’s yours. But if you really want to live in Christ now, and know the joy of these first believers, put that hope of life after death away for when you’re facing death and you need it. Because right now Christ is risen for you, and that’s enough to change your life, right now. And through you, change the world.

Because Jesus says you are a witness to these things.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen