The Spirit still comes, gives us the ability to reach the world with God’s Good News, gives us the language – rich and broad and diverse – to tell all what God has done, and is doing.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year B
Texts: Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15; Ezekiel 37:1-14

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

Language has always delighted me.

I love learning words, using words. Foreign languages come easily to me. But love of language isn’t always a blessing. On my first report card in the first grade I received a C in citizenship. My teacher wrote there, “Joseph over-exercises his freedom of speech.” And Mrs. Peterson actually liked me!

My verbal fluency also didn’t help me when I became a parent. I had many frustrating experiences as a father in the years when my children were non-verbal. This went both directions. I couldn’t understand their needs sometimes, especially after trying food, changing, or holding, and I couldn’t explain anything to them. I loved it when, with each child, I could communicate with my beloved words, and could hear them speak.

“Give us language to proclaim your Good News,” we asked the Holy Spirit at the start of this liturgy. But language is more than words. Even once my children learned to speak, my tone of voice, my body language, my facial expression, even my volume, I’m sorry to say, conveyed more to them than my actual words. Communicating love is complex, challenging, and richly diverse in how that communication happens.

So when we ask the Spirit, “Give us language to proclaim your Good News,” when we hear once more of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit onto the faithful believers, we are asking for words, yes. And for much, much more.

This Pentecost event meant finding language – so a diverse group of people could hear the Good News about what God was doing.

Imagine the scene. At the Passover, Jerusalem was filled with Jews from all over the world, who carried news of this strange death and resurrection back to their various homelands. Fifty days later, Jerusalem is filled again, for the harvest festival of Pentecost. It’s an astonishing litany of nations represented, as far away as Rome – over 2,000 miles – and northern Africa – over 1200 miles – and as near as Asia Minor, faithful Jews filling Jerusalem to overflowing once again.

What a cacophony of languages represented there! Only one hundred and twenty followers of the risen Jesus were gathered, speaking only Aramaic, though some knew Greek. How on earth would they tell all these foreign people what God is doing in Christ and what the Spirit is bringing into life?

The Spirit gave them the ability to communicate, Luke says. Over 3,000 joined that group of 120 believers that day. These thousands heard, saw, marveled. And they believed God’s Good News.

The Spirit gave the believers the ability to reach these people.

That’s why we ask, “give us language to proclaim your Good News.” If we’re going to witness to God’s love for the universe revealed in Christ Jesus we’ll need as much help as those hundred and twenty did 2,000 years ago.

We’ll need help to communicate that the God of the universe can bring life even to dead, dry bones. That the God of the universe loves all creatures beyond our understanding and description. That the God of the universe lived a human, mortal body among us and showed us the path of vulnerable, sacrificial love that can heal the earth. That this God will draw all creation into the love and dance of the life of the Triune God. And that this love of God we’ve found gives us life and joy – and hope for us and the whole creation.

How on earth can we tell all this? Well, the Spirit gave them the ability. That’s our only hope.

And the language we pray for is words, and much more than words.

In the Church we constantly pay attention to the words we use. We cherish our ancient words, and here at Mount Olive we lovingly tend that tradition. But we also listen and hear that some words we use, even beloved ones, block others from hearing of God’s Good News. We need the Spirit’s help to hold the balance between beloved tradition and new language, so people aren’t prevented from hearing of God’s love, but are drawn into the heart of God’s love.

We also pay attention to our other languages. St. Francis said, “Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” We attend not only to what comes out of our mouths, but what our mouths look like, our faces, our gestures. Our bodies are gifts of the Holy Spirit, and we will convey compassion, grace, forgiveness, and love far more by how we are with people than by the words we choose. This is true in this place, and our hospitality to guests who sojourn here for a day or months or years. But it is true for every place you go. In your home, at the market, at work, on the street.

What do God’s children you don’t know see in you when you meet them? Do they see welcome, love, grace? Do they see judgment before a word escapes your lips? Is God’s love visible in you? The Holy Spirit fills you to be the embodied love of God. The language you need for that witness is the fullness of communication: voice, hands, heart, eyes, posture, attitude.

Jesus promised God’s revelation wasn’t completed with his teaching.

The Spirit will guide you into all the truth, when you’re ready to bear it, Jesus said. That’s why we delight in this Pentecost language we pray for. We carry the words and attitudes and bodies of our ancestors to proclaim God’s Good News. But as we’re ready, as you’re ready, the Holy Spirit will teach new things to add to the old. Will sometimes urge a change in words or actions. Will remind you of your call to love.

Pentecost isn’t really about that event 2,000 years ago. It’s about the truth of God’s Holy Spirit continuing to give birth to witnesses today, among all God’s children, young, and yes, Joel says, even old ones.

The Spirit will give you the ability. So be ready. It’s breathtaking when God’s wind and fire blow into your life. And just imagine whom God will reach through your witness!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

Prayer is opening one’s heart into the presence of God, living and breathing inside the life of God and inside the community of those whom God embraces, and prayer changes the one who prays. Even God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Seventh Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 17:6-19

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

Why do you suppose Jesus commanded us to pray for our enemies?

Jesus said, “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6:27-28) These are huge asks, even for Jesus. Love even enemies. Give good for hate. Return curses with blessings. Everything that’s counter to our instincts.

But that final command is the critical one. “Pray for them,” Jesus says. Pray.

This says as much about prayer as it does about our enemies. Often we think of prayer as just our talking to God. We wonder if prayer “works,” if we get what we pray for. But Jesus understands prayer so much more deeply and richly, a blessing that would change our lives, if we could grasp it.

We see this in this astonishing moment on the night of his betrayal. God the Son prays to God the Father, inside the life of the Triune God. God prays to God for us. For you.

The thought of God praying to God is pretty confusing. We don’t know how that even works.

How can God ask God for things? Doesn’t God the Father know everything God the Son knows? Isn’t God the Spirit there? Why would prayer be necessary?

Prayer as we often call it – asking for things – wouldn’t be. But God understands prayer very differently, and we see that clearly today: prayer is opening up one’s heart into the presence of God. Jesus, who has loved these women and men for nearly three years, opens his heart and puts them in, and in prayer opens God’s heart and carries them into the life of God.

Prayer is the atmosphere of relationship, where love and grace between beings lives and breathes. Between people we don’t call it prayer anymore, though older forms of English did. We call it communication, loving, embracing. Listening, empathy, sharing. Joining with others in loving relationship, from those closest to us to the stranger we love on the street who is Christ, this is prayer we have between each other.

And here God’s Son prays us into the very life of God, and shows us that the same life we find with each other is a life we can have and do have with God. In prayer, Jesus has wrapped us all up together and surrounded us in God’s embrace, God’s life, God’s joy.

Such an opening of the heart is bound to change the one who prays.

Loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, and blessing even those who curse us, that’s more than we can imagine doing. Many times I’ve not only struggled to do such things, I didn’t want to.

But everything changes when you pray. It’s easy to keep hating someone, to return evil for evil. It’s impossible to do either while carrying that person – their life, their well-being – into God’s heart. Your heart opens to them by the mere fact of your carrying them to God. Now that person – whether loved one or enemy – is embedded in your heart. How will that not change you?

When you open your heart to anyone, whether it’s to you yourself, or to another person, then lift yourself or them into God’s heart, your heart expands. Your empathy grows. Your love deepens.

And this is true for God, too. Such prayer as we hear from Jesus today expands God’s heart, opens God’s life, brings more into the dance and joy of the Triune God. God is changed.

Prayer draws us into community – inside God and between us.

When we pray, we open our hearts to God and to each other and to the world. Prayer keeps us from thinking faith is a personal, private thing. Prayer is how we live and breathe and love our faith with God. How we live and breathe and love in community with each other in Christ. How we live and breathe and love in community with those who are Christ out in the world, those we don’t know, those we think hate us, even those we’re pretty sure we don’t like either.

Prayer pulls us away from being exclusive about being surrounded by God’s love. From thinking that our little sheepfold is the only one, and everyone else is outside. Or at least certain people or groups we don’t like. As Jesus told you a couple weeks ago, you belong to a Shepherd who has other sheep and sheepfolds you don’t know about or control. Being drawn into God in prayer, and drawing yourself and all others into your heart and God’s heart in prayer, removes all barriers of exclusion. God will and does surround all.

Realizing prayer removes walls and barriers between us and God and us and others means new realities, new vision, new experiences.

That’s scary. What’s your world going to be like with all the fences removed? What’s your heart going to be like with no one to fear or hate? Won’t it be dangerous?

But that’s the grace of this particular prayer Jesus prays today. God lifts you up to God to be protected and cared for as you live in this frightening world. Not that pain and suffering be prevented: Jesus says they’re guaranteed on this path. Maybe not a cross, but you’ll be vulnerable. You’ll be hurt at times.

But Jesus prays that you are surrounded always by God’s love and life so you are never alone. Living in community with the world as Christ, and living inside the communal life of God: what better joy could you have? Do you think anything can ever really harm you inside such love?

So let us pray. Really pray. And watch God draw all things together.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

We might say we love people in theory, but loving them in practice is much harder. It’s what Peter experienced when the Holy Spirit sent him to Cornelius, and what we experience whenever God challenges us to love someone outside our comfort zone.

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: Acts 10:44-48, John 15:9-17

Where are the limits of your love? How far are you willing to go, and how much are you willing to lay down before you draw the line? Who are those people who you pray that God loves, because you don’t think that you can?

Today we see the early Church wrestling with the limits of its love. Our reading from Acts is the culmination of a story in which Peter visits the home of a faithful centurion named Cornelius. But the apostle doesn’t go there of his own volition; both he and Cornelius’ household are guided by the Holy Spirit. Peter is staying in a nearby city when he has a strange vision of a giant sheet descending from heaven, filled with all manner of unclean animals – four legged creatures and reptiles and birds. And he hears a voice saying, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” Now, because Peter is Peter, he fights back – not once, but three times. He objects that he has never eaten anything impure, and he has no desire to start now. To give Peter his due, the problem isn’t just that he thinks that eating a lizard sounds gross. He objects because he loves the law. It’s a fundamental part of who he is. The teachings of Moses were how Peter and his people stayed faithful to their God in a world that constantly threatened them with extinction and assimilation. And now God is instructing him…to let go of that? To turn away from the sacred teachings that have meant not only ritual purity but identity and survival and a sure relationship with God? What God is asking of him is terrifying. God is telling him that he must die to himself in order to be reborn as something new.

Then three men appear and tell Peter that an angel has instructed them to bring him to the home of a Roman officer, and Peter understands what God is asking of him: in order to carry the Gospel where it needs to go, he has to break bread with Gentiles. He will need to lay down his life as he has known it in order to serve others. He goes and announces the good news of Christ to all of Cornelius’ household. And before he’s even finished talking, the Holy Spirit comes down on his audience. That same Holy Spirit that descended on Peter and the believers in Jerusalem on Pentecost now comes to this Roman household. There’s no difference. In this moment, there is no more us and them, just one Spirit-filled people. Peter’s companions are astounded by this sight. They can’t believe that God would come to these foreigners.

Now, this shouldn’t be news to any of them. Peter traveled with Jesus, saw him heal people of all faiths and ethnicities and walks of life. On Pentecost, he quoted the prophet Joel saying that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all flesh – all flesh, not just some. Peter and his followers knew that God’s love could extend to Gentiles, at least in theory. But as we’ve been hearing these past weeks, love isn’t love when it’s just a theory. Peter had proclaimed the expansive love of the Spirit, but embracing the physical reality of what that meant, that was something harder. When he was asked to make that love incarnate, to see it and touch it and eat it, his first instinct was to fight back. He wanted God to love all people, but he hadn’t been ready to do it himself.

And isn’t that what we always do? In this place, we are bold to proclaim God’s limitless, unconditional love for all people. We strive to create a community where everyone can find warmth and welcome, and to live lives that carry God’s mercy into the world. But believing in God’s love is much easier than being God’s love. In reality, there people with whom we’d rather not share fellowship. There are places we’d rather not go. There are differences we’d rather not work to overcome. So who are you afraid to love? Who do you wish you could love not just in theory but in practice, but don’t know how? Is it people with different political beliefs? Is it people of different nationalities or languages? Is it people of different social classes? People whose bodies look or work differently from your own? Who makes you want to leave the room, or look away, or cross on the other side of the street, and say, “sorry, God, but this person isn’t for me.” I wish I could say that my answer was “nobody.” I wish I could love all people without reservation or qualification. But if I said I did that, I would be lying. I believe that God’s love is for everyone, but faced with the flesh and blood reality of what that asks of me, I often shy away. All the time, I choose to love people who are easy and comfortable and safe rather than allowing the Spirit to lead me somewhere new.

But the Holy Spirit is not about what is easy. She pushes us out of our safe, comfortable places and challenges us to be more, to believe more, to love more. No matter how big we think God’s love is, it will always be bigger than that. When we see its incarnate reality, it will leave us astounded. The immensity of God’s love breaks us open and shakes us out of what we know. Sometimes that comes at a real price. Like Peter, we might be asked to rethink who we are and what we believe. We might need to let go of things we cherish – good things that have served us well, but cannot take us where we need to go next. We might need to lay down parts of our lives so that we can recognize new people as friends. This can be scary and painful, so thanks be to God that we don’t do it alone. The Spirit goes out before us and does the real work. She brought Philip to the Ethiopian official, and Peter to Cornelius, and she shows us where we need to go now. She is the one who inspires, and who baptizes, and who brings new life. Our job is simply to follow along, to recognize what the Spirit is doing, and to not withhold the water.

The best way – and indeed, the only way for us to know God’s love is to love each other. Christ says that we abide in the love of the Trinity when we keep God’s commandments, and the ultimate commandment is that we love one another. There are times when that love can only emerge through sacrifice, even loss. But Christ tells us that the love that lays itself down is the greatest and most godly love of all, and he promises that the feast that awaits us at God’s great banquet is far better than whatever meals we eat at our own tables. It is only natural that we feel some fear when we let go of the familiar and venture into the unknown. There’s nothing wrong with trepidation, so long as we hold to God’s truth that perfect love will cast out all fear. If we follow where the Spirit leads, yes, we will astounded, but on the other side of that astonishment is the fullness of the body of Christ. On the other side of that astonishment is God.

Amen.

Staying connected to Christ, as a vine and branches, keeps us connected to the flow of the Spirit’s love, changes us, and helps us embody God’s love in the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8 (added 9-11 from start of next week’s Gospel; will read again on 6 Easter.)

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

It all started with a problem of widows and food distribution.

After Pentecost, the newly born Church shared everything in common. Money, food, possessions, all belonged to all. But there were two groups of Jewish Christians, those who spoke Aramaic, and those who spoke Greek. In Acts 6, Luke calls them the Hellenists and the Hebrews. And the Hellenists said the Greek widows were being neglected when the food was shared.

The Church lifted up seven leaders to help, including Philip, whom we met today, and Stephen. Philip’s first job as a Christian leader was to make sure everyone was fed, regardless of their ethnicity.

You see, as we heard a couple weeks ago, these believers learned that love isn’t love if it’s just a theory. They saw God’s love embodied in Jesus, fully revealed on the cross, now living in the Risen Christ himself, and in the Spirit-filled new Church. But you can’t preach love and have people not getting enough food. Love is only love when it’s embodied.

This early Church was shaped by this mutual love, by its willingness even to love others beyond the circle of believers. They embodied Jesus’ command.

The writer of 1 John is crystal clear today: We love because God first loved us. We cannot claim to love God, whom we do not see, the elder says, if we don’t love our sisters and brothers whom we do see. Love isn’t love if it’s just a theory.

Philip, and Stephen, and the other deacons, were just another way the Church made Christ’s love concrete and real. Stephen did more than serve food. He became an evangelist and preacher, and when he was martyred, Philip went out doing the same.

But he wasn’t alone. Filled with the Spirit at Pentecost, Philip was joined into the life of God. He was part of the Christ vine Jesus talked about. He was commanded to love, yes. But he was empowered in that love by staying connected to his Christ. The sap of the vine of God’s eternal love flowed through the Spirit into Philip. And he listened. He followed. And he loved.

The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch begins and ends with the Holy Spirit.

Philip was out telling the Good News and God’s angel told him to go to a certain place on a common highway. When he got there, the Spirit sent him to a man in a chariot, reading the prophet Isaiah out loud.

And Philip went. That’s the wonder. The Spirit said, “Go talk to him,” and Philip went. He sat in the chariot for hours talking about Jesus and the Scriptures and helping this man hear the Good News. He started with Isaiah, what the man was reading, and next thing we know this official knows about and wants baptism. Philip covered a lot of ground that day, literally and figuratively.

And then the Spirit gave Philip a great gift of love and welcome: the answer to the Ethiopian’s hard question. He asked, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” And Philip answered him with love, offered baptism, and changed this man’s life forever.

But apart from Christ’s love, Philip would have given a very different answer.

Because the answer had always been “everything prevents you.”

As a eunuch, Jewish law prevented this man from full fellowship in Jewish community, from being a Jew at all. Deuteronomy is clear. This mattered because this official was a God-fearer, a person drawn to Jewish teaching and to the God the Jews proclaimed. There was a large Jewish community in Ethiopia, he likely learned to love God there.

Philip meets him on a Palestinian road because this official travelled all the way to Jerusalem to worship. He came to worship, even though his sexual status prevented him from full participation. He was even reading a scroll of Isaiah aloud as he returned home.

This man was intelligent and worthy of great trust – he ran the treasury for a major African nation and its queen. But he could never become a full member of the faith community he was drawn to so deeply. Imagine his courage to ask Philip if he would also be excluded from the community of Christ.

Why does this matter? Because this is the love the Spirit wants to grow in us. Love that is real, not a theory.

Philip was Jewish. He knew the law, that people who were castrated weren’t welcome. But he didn’t hesitate. He listened when the Spirit said, “Go to that one.” He got into the chariot and spent time with this Ethiopian. Gave him the grace of listening and teaching.

Philip witnessed to the embodied Suffering Servant love of God that Isaiah spoke of. He told the Ethiopian enough about God’s love in Christ that the Ethiopian threw all caution to the wind and asked if he might also be baptized.

How can you claim to love a God you haven’t seen if you don’t love a sister or brother you have seen? That should be carved over every church office, over the entrance (or exit) to every Christian worship space. This is the love Philip embodies, a love that ignores inconvenience in order to be present, a love that overcomes innate prejudice and fear, a love that teaches and shapes a heart to see all people as God sees them.

And today Jesus gives us tremendous news, how we’ll be able to love like this.

This repeated commandment to love could overwhelm us. Love your enemies, pray for them. Give to whoever asks. Turn the other cheek. Be a peacemaker. Welcome back all who stray. Be willing to lose everything to love another. These are daunting. We’re well aware of the command; we care deeply about obeying it. But how can we ever love as God loves?

Stay connected to me, Jesus says. I’m the vine, you’re the branches; you’re part of me. My love runs in you like sap, and you will, you will bear fruit. Abide in my word, Jesus says. Live with the Scriptures, engage them, and I will guide you. Take and eat, take and drink, and I will fill you with my life and my love. Be in servant community with each other, and I will surround you with people who literally embrace you with my love. And watch for this: I will send you the Holy Spirit.

Apart from me, Christ says, you can do nothing. But connected to me, there is no limit to the love you will bear.

As we deepen in faith and in connection with Christ the True Vine, we will be transformed into God’s embodied love. You need to be ready for that. Ready to be open to Christ changing your mind, or saying you’re on the wrong path. Ready for your prejudice and certainty of ideas to be broken apart. Ready to hear the Spirit nudge you to love. Ready when the Spirit says, “There’s the one I need you to meet, go.” Or “here’s the situation you can make a difference in, go.”

But the joy of living in the Vine is you are connected permanently to the life and love of God that heals and loves the universe. The Spirit will make you able to do anything needed. And that’s a path of joy and delight.

Come, Spirit, join us to the vine, fill us with the sap of God’s love, nourish our lives to embody this love always.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

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