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

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

Your life in Christ is lived in what Mark left open, where you, like believers for centuries, let go of your fear and witness to God’s life in the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Resurrection of Our Lord, year B
Texts: Mark 16:1-8

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

It wasn’t Jesus’ death that frightened the women. It was his resurrection.

These women were as brave as anyone could be in the days of Jesus’ suffering and death. While most of the men who followed Jesus hid away in fear after his arrest, this core group of women who’d been with Jesus from the beginning kept vigil at the cross as Jesus died, watched Joseph and Nicodemus take his body down, saw where he was buried. Sunday morning, while others locked the doors, these women gathered together what they needed to anoint Jesus properly, and headed for the place they saw him buried.

That’s courage. At every point.

And yet, after the women meet a young man who tells them Jesus is now risen, and shows them the empty tomb, Mark ends his Gospel with this: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Now they were afraid. Terrified. When they’d just heard the best news of their lives.

Because it was also the most terrifying news of their lives.

All they endured in those three days was the way of the world under Roman rule, except that it was their Jesus who suffered. But there were always trials, floggings, crucifixions.

And death is death, and they knew what to do when loved ones are dying. You weep and grieve. And you take care of them. You keep watch as they die, and lovingly take care of the body after. Of course it was hard. And they could’ve been imprisoned, or worse. But they knew the duty and courage love demanded from them, and they loved Jesus to the end.

But they didn’t know what to do if death itself ended. If Jesus was still dead, they’d know how to go on. The way they always did. But if Jesus is alive, everything is changed, and they didn’t know what that meant. And that terrified them to their core.

Now, of course that didn’t last.

Mark writes his Gospel in a time when everyone knew that these women got it together that very morning, shared the news of Jesus’ resurrection. They were the first witnesses. And yet Mark still ends this way. It was so unsatisfying to later believers, some ancient scribes added their own endings, verses of which might be included one of your Bibles. The other evangelists, writing after Mark, made sure to include multiple stories of what happened after that early moment at the empty tomb.

So if everyone knows the women lost their fear and spoke up, why does Mark end where he does?

Maybe he wonders if you and I are frightened by Jesus’ resurrection, too. Maybe Mark wants you to write the next verses of this Good News, this Gospel, by how you live your life filled with the risen Christ. Like these women did. But he needs you to know that will mean letting go of your fear.

So, what if you could live your life free of your fear of death?

These women might have known how to deal with death and suffering as part of their regular existence, but what Jesus’ resurrection eventually taught them is that death no longer frightened them. They could live boldly, but ready to go when their time came.

So how would this Gospel continue if you wrote your ending, your life, without fear of dying? Without fearing that your loved ones will die, because of course they will, but God has them well in hand. Without pretending you alone somehow will make it through this life without dying? What if you embraced your failing body or mind, even your death, as part of the gift of living?

Imagine your witness to others if you lived every day with joy and hope as if it were your last, your only day, unafraid of what was next, and ready to go whenever it’s your time.

And what if you could live your life without fear of living?

In Jesus’ resurrection, these women learned that their future was utterly changed, that they had a life to live in Christ that they thought was over. But to live it, to know Jesus’ abundant life, it meant releasing their fear of living fully. It meant trusting God was with them in all things. For their friends, it meant unlocking the door.

So how would this Gospel continue if you wrote your ending by releasing all the things you cling to in fear? All your grasping for possessions or security, all your fear that you can’t prevent problems from happening to you, all can be let go in Jesus’ resurrection life, and you can find true, abundant life here and now as Jesus promised.

Imagine your witness to others if you unlocked the door and lived free of all the things that cause fear, and your life witnessed with joy – even in serious difficulty and suffering – to God’s life living within you.

And what if you could live unafraid to love?

That’s the tenacious fear. These women, and the other disciples, learned in Jesus’ resurrection what it meant to live into his command to love, and they did. At first, everyone shared everything, no one went without, all lived in love together. But even early in the book of Acts it starts to fall apart. This fear clings. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable to others in sharing love, or forgiveness, risking being wounded by others, it’s frightening. But how would this Gospel continue if you wrote your ending unbound from this fear?

All the justice and equity, the ending of oppression and violence, all that God dreams for in our world and that we dream too, all can start to happen when we love without fear. Because we will see the power of Christ’s love working in people, one at a time, for healing and hope.

Imagine the witness and healing your self-giving, sacrificial love could be to others as you joyfully let go for the sake of your family, your neighbors, your world.

Mark left open the end of his Gospel for you to add the rest of your story with the risen Christ.

We know the women and so many others over the centuries let go of their fear of dying, of living, of loving, and transformed their homes and neighborhoods and worlds with the risen love of Christ. That was the gift of the Spirit of God, moving in them, easing their fear, giving them courage to live in love no matter what happened.

And that Spirit is now given to you, and speaks in your heart saying, “don’t be afraid to die. Don’t be afraid to live. Don’t be afraid to love, I am with you. Now go and live in a way that shows the rest of the world how this Gospel, this Good News, continues. Until all are whole and well in God’s love and life.”

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