Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17 Easter 6B Could the Gentiles, even the Gentiles, be our friends? Friends for whom we are to lay down our lives? Friends we are to love like Jesus loves us? If the Holy Spirit pours over the Gentiles, does that not mean that God has chosen them, too? If God abides in them and we abide in God, doesn’t that mean we can’t escape being close to each other? Jesus reminds his friends that he chose them, not the other way around. Therefore, those whom God has chosen become part of our circle of concern in ways we heretofore could not have imagined. Committee meetings, parties, worship, work, family dinners — everything just got a whole lot more complicated. When our gatherings include people of different cultures, languages and experiences, very little can be assumed. Have you found yourself in a context where everything was unfamiliar? The attentiveness and energy required exhausts and sometimes overwhelms all involved. I remember … [Read more...]

Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-11 Where are the fruitful places for sharing the gospel? In short, any place where we abide in Jesus. Acts tells us that Philip is sent by an angel of the Lord to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. “This is a desert road.” And yet even desert roads, when God directs us to them, contain people looking to worship, ready to receive the Word of the Lord, eager to be baptized. Desert roads, when our abiding in Jesus sends us to abide with others, contain water, living water that flows from the believer’s heart and is never exhausted. Good fruit is borne wherever Jesus is. And when we follow and stay close to Jesus, we bear good fruit, whether on desert roads or city streets. All the appointed texts for this fifth Sunday of Easter invite us to consider what draws us closer to Jesus and what, in contrast, pushes us farther from him. But how do we know which is which? How do we figure out which branches God will throw on the burn … [Read more...]

Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” No equivocation. No qualifiers. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The good shepherd, in contrast to the hired hand, never abandons the flock entrusted to him. The good shepherd knows the sheep and the sheep know him. The good shepherd described in Ezekiel searches for the sheep, rescues them, gathers them, feeds them, binds up the wounded, strengthens the weak ones. The good shepherd Jesus makes explicit that the flock will expand and the sheep yet to come will be incorporated, fully, into the flock. No sheep will be left vulnerable to the wolves, uncared for or abandoned. The image of the good shepherd tending to the one beloved flock, so valued and valuable that the shepherd will stop at nothing to keep them gathered and safe, calls forth a longing in me that feels almost primal, mostly subconscious, but unmistakable when I read this … [Read more...]

Acts 3:12-19; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48 Eastertide 3B Do you know the phrase, “You know better, so do better”? One little girl with whom I am acquainted repeats this phrase with regularity because her mother employs the admonishment in many settings: in church, at the dinner table, after a less-than-stellar report from the teacher. “You know better, so do better.” The theory, of course, is that once we possess a certain knowledge, we employ it. The reality, of course, is that often our knowledge and behavior don’t match. Even that pillar of the early church, Paul, confessed,“I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19).Knowing, even wanting, to do what is right and good doesn’t necessarily mean we actually do that. In fact, sometimes we do the exact opposite. And yet, knowledge seems an irreplaceable part of the equation for living with intentional integrity. Ignorance may be bliss for the one who is ignorant, but those … [Read more...]

Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31 Easter 2B Marks of the resurrected Jesus community or maybe rules for the household of the Risen Lord, that’s what the texts for this second Sunday of Easter reveal. The fellowship of the One who was raised from the dead looks different from the cultural landscape that surrounds it. Those who have experienced and believed the grave-busting power and love of the Son of God respond with transformed lives. At least that’s what happens in the New Testament. “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possession, but everything they owned was held in common.” “We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship is with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are … [Read more...]

Mark 16:1-8               Secrets people take to the grave don’t often stay there. Movies, reality television and soap operas make great use of secrets long buried coming back to life and rendering the living shocked, distressed or utterly amazed. The long-lost heir to the fortune who was thought dead crashes the family reunion. The man he knew as dad, it turns out, was not his biological father. The reason the family immigrated was to seek a new life… but the backstory involved fleeing from the law. Lo and behold the results from the DNA kit that got mailed off reveal an entirely unexpected family heritage. Grave secrets from one generation come back to life in the next no matter how silent the witnesses to them remained. How is that possible when the parties involved are dead and buried? Secrets people take to the grave don’t necessarily stay there. They have a life of their own in family lore, and future generations and communities with a propensity to not mind their … [Read more...]