Being Led

 Psalm 23, John 10:11-18

We don’t do this as often as we used to, in these days of GPS navigation, but from time to time I still find myself inviting someone to just follow my car – or agreeing to follow their car – to navigate to a place that’s new to one of us.

 

And I hate it.

Mostly I hate following someone else.  What if I miss the traffic light? What if I’m following the wrong black car? (I honestly cannot tell one SUV from another.) I can’t predict when I’m going to need to change lanes, or turn, and that drives me crazy.

I am not good at being led.

 

I’m not good at being shepherded.

A shepherd, I am told, leads their flock of sheep – going ahead of them – rather than behind them, like a cow-herder would. So sheep have to follow. Sheep have to trust the path that’s picked out for them, and trust that the shepherd (and the front of the flock) are looking out for all the possible dangers and wrong turns and delays. Trust that the shepherd won’t get too far ahead and leave us behind in the underbrush or at a poorly timed traffic signal.

 

That’s… not easy for me. And I suspect I am not the only one.

 

It’s normal for most of us to want to manage our own progress and destination. We’re generally encouraged to set our own goals and guide ourselves to them – with support and mentoring along the way, yes, but maintaining our own control over our path and life.

 

And yet I have found that I also long for a shepherd.

The world is complex and challenging, and I know most of the problems we need to solve are much bigger than I can manage. I can’t find the right path forward on my own. 
And much of the authority and leadership and protection on offer these days is clearly flawed – imperfect and divided government, eruptions of deadly violence from those who are called to protect us, mixed messages from every side.

 

So I long for someone who not only can, but will, constantly lead me – all of us! – in right pathways; to green places and calm waters.

When traveling through the “shadow of death” – in times of danger, though places of uncertainty or hardship, times where futility and despair hang close to us – I want to trust that I am led so safely that there is nothing to fear, no need to plot my own escape from the shadow.

I long to know that the shepherd is so trustworthy that the rod and staff that keep us together are a comfort to us, to me, not a threat or a worry.

Do you feel that longing, too?

 

The comprehensive care and guidance pictured in the 23^rd Psalm is meant to look like paradise, and I long for that.

But most of the time I still resist being led, because the valley of the shadow is genuinely scary, and I don’t want to follow anyone there, thanks anyway. Day to day, it seems like I should be able to find my own green calmness, on my own terms, even when I don’t know how I’m going to get there, or where it is.

 

Honestly, though? We don’t actually manage paradise on our own. We may find some green pastures for ourselves, but there’s still something more we want (or many things more). We may get so good at caring for ourselves that we are very bad at letting ourselves be cared for by someone else – even if they have more wisdom and skill to heal our hurts or plan a fruitful future than I do.  Doubt and fear intrude on our lives with some regularity.

 

Still, as long as it feels like I can manage more or less on my own, with occasional help, it’s very hard to really turn myself over to a shepherd. To choose to depend completely on anyone else.

Including Jesus. Including God.

 

We talk in the church about following Jesus, and we all try.

At least as long as we like where he is going, and how we’re getting there!

When Jesus seems to be headed into dangerous places, where I’d be in over my head, though – when Jesus gets involved with political hot potatoes, or wades into complex family troubles; goes face to face with my deepest fears, or physically walks into literal and metaphorical war zones – all things he seems to frequently do! – well, then I tend to think that maybe I should let Jesus go there on his own, and I’ll try something else or support him from a distance without following him in.

 

But the shepherding of God that results in fearlessness in shadow, abundant banqueting and blessing, and the complete fulfillment of our needs – the shepherding of God that is pictured in this psalm – isn’t something we can drift in and out of.

The 23^rd Psalm is not just a song of reassurance. It’s a song of complete commitment, an image of what it is like to stop choosing our own way, and instead to follow everywhere that God leads – right through the dangerous valley, or through green fields and pleasant waters that aren’t the particular kind of green and pleasant we would have chosen or preferred.  It sings with a wholehearted acceptance of the comfort in the rod and staff that keep us from going our own way.

 

We have to choose not just to follow, but to be led, to go places we may not know, by ways we may not understand, at the pace and at the time that the shepherd chooses instead of when we are personally ready to go.

And sometimes to stay right where we are even if we’d rather move.

 

Which means we have to trust that shepherd with everything we are and everything we have.

That’s probably why Jesus emphasizes relationship and intimacy as he talks about how he shepherds people: I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.

 

The shepherd knows his sheep individually and sheep know – and listen to – their shepherd’s voice.  That’s not just about being able to identify one another in a crowd, but about a deep understanding – a relationship that is ongoing, dynamic, and intimate, like the relationship between Jesus and God.

He knows us: knows our quirks and our fears, our favorite foods and the deep longings of our hearts, what makes us cry, what makes us laugh with our whole bodies.

And we know him, he reminds us. In particular, we know that he will not fail us.  Someone else might run away when the wolf is nearby, but the protection and presence of the Good Shepherd will never fail.

 

He knows that that is what we need to know most, in order to be shepherded. That when we put our trust, our whole lives, in his care, the shepherd will not fail us.

 

The shepherd we can trust to lead us is the one who puts the good of the flock before his own, who will choose to lay down his life and to take it up again, so that there is no end or limit to the presence and protection, the leadership and life this shepherd gives us.

 

That doesn’t always make it easy to be led. But it is what makes it essential.

Essential to commit ourselves to the most trustworthy, most unselfish and eternal love and care that exists, so that we can be guided through every pasture and pathway, every valley and hill we encounter, every decision and choice, by the greatest love and purpose in the world. Guided in all our moments and actions by a love greater than our own.

 

The paradise of Psalm 23 isn’t just an invitation. It’s direction for our lives.

Direction into places we may not know, by ways we may not understand, at God’s own pace and time. Direction to the overflowing abundance of God’s own heart and home, claimed by God’s goodness and mercy, all the days of our lives.

 

 

 

Children of God

1 John 3:1-7

Beloved, we are God’s children now, says John.

This is just who we are.

And just like that, you’ve been changed. Your passport, your city, your team, your family, your profession – whatever names or communities or history that have made up your identity to this point – those no longer define you. Instead, your relationship with God defines you.

All those things you learn to say to introduce yourself in the first semester of a language class – My name is Emily. I am from Chicago. I am a priest.  – these are no longer your identity.

We are children of God.

That’s how you introduce yourself.
That’s how you understand yourself.

Try it:

Hi, I am _______. I am a child of God.

Use your own name, and say it out loud.

I know, as a “repeat after me” it may feel silly or strange.

But as a fundamental truth, as our true identity, it changes everything.

Because the world changes – and how we react to the world changes – when our identity changes. 

You know that if you got branded with an identity in high school – if you were one of the nerds when nerds weren’t cool, or if you were preppy when preppy meant popular; if you were a greaser or a geek or a jock – the world was a different place because of who you were.  Those identity tags mean different access, different opportunities, different friends, different measures of success or happiness.

That’s true beyond high school, too. The world is a different place for people identified as entrepreneurs or drones, identified as men or women or neither, as black or Asian or white or Indian or foreign or native; as “normal” or “different”, queer or mainstream.

Often, those identities are given to us by others; sometimes we create them ourselves. 

Sometimes both.

In every case, they change how we encounter the world, and how the world sees us.

Sometimes the identities we belong to feel so obvious we scarcely notice them – at least until they are challenged – hey, that’s my family, my people you’re talking about!  Sometimes we’re very intentional about broadcasting and boosting an identity with the hats we wear, the colors we choose - the shirt that says “I bleed Eagles green” - the language we use, the way we introduce ourselves. 

We join groups - sororities, churches, clubs – because we want to match ourselves to an identity of community service, faithfulness, local pride, or fun. And because we want a community that supports our identity as people who serve and build one another up, who pray together, who golf, who dance, who sing….

And when you choose or accept an identity, you change.

We change our behavior – often unconsciously – we change our language, our expectations to fit the identities we adopt.  

People who identify as athletes simply go for their run, whatever the weather; while people who “jog for exercise” might avoid the rain for a run even if they’d go boating or camping in the wet.

Years ago I bought a Mazda simply because they had a small hatchback - and then gradually found myself identifying with their “Zoom zoom” branding on the road. I drive a little differently now than I would if Toyota had had a Corolla hatchback at the time.

You don’t identify with Philly sports teams and host a genteel champagne brunch for a championship game. But you wear a stylish hat or a smart jacket if you’re a member of the Turf Club. 

And that’s exactly what John is telling us today.

Because of God’s love for us, we are children of God, and that is how we behave because it is who we are. 

It is how we act, how we live, how we meet the world and how the world meets us.

We are children of God, and children of God don’t hang on to sin, John says. Children of God don’t conform ourselves to the world’s values, children of God are like Jesus.

Just like Jesus.

We don’t know all of who Jesus is just yet, John says, but we will. And as we know, we ourselves will become just like Jesus.

Who is just like God.

Think for a moment about the adjectives you’ve heard or used to describe Jesus:

compassionate, gentle, loving, fierce, forgiving, faithful, healing??

That is who you are, when you accept yourself as a child of God.

What if you took that identity – I am a child of God, so I am loving, I am faithful, I am compassionate – and used it to shape how you interact with others as well as how you see yourself?

There’s a spiritual exercise many people use, in which you put your own name (or the name of someone else) into the famous words of First Corinthians 13, everywhere that Paul says “love”:

Emily is patient, Emily is kind…

Joan is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.

Tom does not insist on his own way.

David is not irritable or resentful.

Nancy does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.

Jeff bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Try it yourself. Seriously. 

Put your name in there, and say it out loud.

It’s a lot to live up to, but what if God’s love is already making it true?

John says that’s happening.

Beloved, we are children of God, because of God’s love we are becoming like God, and that is just who we are.

What if you said that to yourself any time you had to send an email to a colleague, client, or boss; every time you pick up your phone, whether you talk on it or text? When you’re navigating the grocery store, or trying to get Zoom to work?
What if you said that to yourself every time you connect to the internet, start the day at work or school, make dinner?

How do you think that might change your interaction with the world?
How do you think believing that with your whole heart and actions would change the way the world appears to you?

That poetry of love from Paul is not the only Bible passage or set of adjectives to try on, to understand and embrace who you are as a child of God.

Come to me, all who labor and bear heavy burdens, Jesus says, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

What if you said that out loud – come to me; I am gentle – and knew that you could give people rest and relief from their burdens.  Wouldn’t you look at the burdened people around us differently?

You could. Because as children of God, we are like Jesus. Becoming just like Jesus.

Which means becoming like God.

So, what if you adopted the classic description of God’s character (Exodus 34) and said to yourself:
I am compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, committed to generations of loyal love, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, without ignoring guilt and consequences.

What if you reminded yourself of that identity when you watch the news, or read the internet, or enter a new place, walk down an unfamiliar street, or decide where to spend and invest your money?

I imagine it would affect how we hear and tell the stories of George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo.  How we respond to the stories of Derek Chauvin, Kim Potter, Eric Stillman. How we hear and see and respond to our long, troubled history that creates the conditions of violent death.

It may change how we experience and respond to political campaigns, to statements from the CDC and missions to Mars, to Oscar nominations and negotiations with Iran – or to changes in school schedules, garbage pickup, and other more local matters.

Beloved, we are children of God.

We are people who – purely through the love of God, not through our own merit or efforts – are transformed to become more and more and more like Jesus, more like God.

It’s just who we are.

And that changes everything.

Real

 John 20:19-31; 1 John 1:1-2:2; Acts 4:32-35

Hearing the familiar story of Jesus and Thomas and his friends again this year, I started to wonder if the doubt for which today’s gospel story is famous really belongs to Thomas, after all. 

I wonder if this is a story about how the belief of the other disciples was missing something.

After all, the other disciples saw the risen Jesus with their own eyes last week. Jesus showed them his hands and side - offered them tangible, vivid proof of Jesus’ conquest of death. They felt it with their skin and lungs as Jesus breathed God’s Spirit into them, and heard with their ears as Jesus told them to continue his own work of demonstrating God’s presence and inviting others to believe.

And when Thomas returns, they say that they’ve had this extraordinary experience, but they can’t or don’t share the miracle with him. Resurrection isn’t real in their story – the experience hasn’t changed them, affected them enough for Thomas to see, feel, and experience those effects and be changed himself – to believe.

Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe, Jesus says when he returns to Thomas and all the other disciples.

But how are those who do not see Jesus in the flesh supposed to believe?

I think Jesus knows that the only way anyone who wasn’t there that one specific day in Jerusalem can believe is by seeing and touching and feeling what the resurrection has done to those who have experienced it, who do believe.

John explicitly says that, writing this story.

Jesus comes back – to Thomas and to the others – so that the reality of resurrection can be transmitted to us through Thomas’ visceral and fervent response; so we, too, can believe. Be caught up in the presence of God both then and there and here and now.

Because belief is an experience, a state of being, a changed life. Not an intellectual acceptance of a report.

There’s a strong emphasis on the practical, concrete, shareable effects of faith in the stories and prayers of this week.

Both times that Jesus visits the disciples, he emphasizes the physical signs, the sheer reality of his flesh. I think that’s on purpose, so that you and I, hearing the story later, can have a vivid, physical, tangible (and yes, slightly gory) sense of the reality of resurrection.

The first letter of John begins with tangible emphasis: Listen, what we are telling you is what we’ve seen, and heard, and touched, with our own hands, ears, eyes. The writer (the community that has experienced transformation) wants you and me to share the real, physical, concrete, vivid sense of fellowship, of communion with Jesus, with God, that conveys the forgiveness of sins and the renewal of life that they have experienced: felt, touched, heard and seen. They want us to experience the realness so that the joy they experience in God will be complete.

It’s not enough just to experience resurrection. We complete ourselves, our joy, by sharing it with others.

And in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us how fellowship with God has measurable, practical effects on those who share the experience of resurrection. “The believers shared one heart and soul,” a complete and joyful sharing of resources in which no one has any need that is not met, as they share their experience of the resurrection of Jesus. 

Unity and plenty – and popularity in the neighborhood, too, Luke tells us.  These are the effects of sharing the reality of resurrection. It changes the world – or at least the community.

And at the beginning of the service today we prayed for this for ourselves, asking God to ensure that all of us – all who are baptized, all who are part of the church, the Body of Christ – will actively demonstrate in our lives the effects of our faith. 

So, what did you tell other people about the resurrection you experienced last Sunday?  

How did you demonstrate Easter in your life, so that other people might see and believe?

I’ve talked with several people who told me they feel more connected this week, or grateful or uplifted, by our Easter services – video, phone, and outdoors. I’m hearing that souls were nourished by the music, or by seeing and hearing one another, or the altar bright with flowers, or the gospel proclaimed.

And my soul is also fed by hearing and seeing the hearts filled and spirits lifted by the celebration we shared.

But who else will see, touch, hear, or feel the reality of resurrection, or the presence of God in the world, by seeing, touching, or hearing your life?

What vivid reality of transformation can people hear in your words, your stories?

What inspiring, or calming, or heartwarming energy, rooted in your own experience of God, can people feel for themselves, by knowing you?

What actions of care, patience, generosity, kindness, or justice, will other people see for themselves as you do them, because God is present and real in your life and heart?

Your primary resurrection experience might not be the story in scripture. Your transformative encounter with the presence of God might not be an Easter church service. The experience of resurrection comes in all kinds of ways. For you, it might be an encounter with someone who listened to you when no one else heard. Or a miracle of healing, or a gift of not actually needing a cure. It might be a slow trickle of peace into your life from years of prayer. Or something else I’m not thinking of.

But however your life has been shaped or fed or transformed – slowly or all at once – by the presence of God, it has to show. 

It matters, to God and to our community, that other people can experience the reality of God through us – in other words, that through our lives and words, others may come to believe, to experience God’s reality for themselves. 

This matters, not just for others, but so that our own joy – our own renewal, forgiveness, and unity with God and one another – may be complete: full and satisfying and life-giving.  Just the way the community of John wrote to their friends, nearly two thousand years ago.  

So – with that in mind – I’ll ask again: how are you sharing your resurrection experience – your experience of the real presence of God, in a way that others might see, touch, feel, or hear?

You might not know that right off the top of your head. 

I don’t always know for sure myself.

But think about it now, today: what are the real effects of your faith in your life? what are the practical results of your trust in God? the noticeable results of whatever (tiny or dramatic) experience you have had of God being real?

For me, the accumulated experience of resurrection – of hope made new, and the presence of God made vivid – over many years, has made me more grounded, and more joyful, in ways that I hope may be visible to others.  Sometimes my accumulated experience of resurrection means I’m able to look at an incomplete project, a failure, or an emptiness in my daily life – or in the life of our community – and see not a dead end, but an opportunity for God to act. And when I act on that confidence, or share that sense of opportunity, perhaps others can see, feel, or touch that sense of hope for themselves.

I know that my sense of our connection as a community, through this last year of physical absence, has everything to do with the reality of God’s presence. And if my sense of connection has helped anyone else keep their own sense of connection just a little stronger, or more real…

well, that’s what John and Jesus are talking about, faith that sparks faith, just like we read about and prayed for today.

Maybe for you, that experience of resurrection, of God’s reality, shows up in actions like caring for a sick or vulnerable friend or acquaintance. Like giving twice as generously as you thought you could. Like inviting others to read the Bible with you, and being fed by that yourself. Or being able to accept forgiveness, and give it.  The ability to tell a story of your own miracle, so that others feel as if they were there. So that Thomas could believe.

All of those are ways in which our experience of resurrection may show in ways that others can see, touch, feel, believe.

Whatever you have seen of resurrection, however you have come to believe, is meant to be shared in practical, tangible ways. Because God is always working – with us, beyond us, through us – to bless those who have not seen, so that they too may come to believe.

How the Story Ends

 Mark 16:1-8

I still remember how upset I felt in 2005 as I sat in a theater watching the end of “Revenge of the Sith”, the third Star Wars movie (or sixth, depending how you count).

As the movie ends, everyone you’ve invested in is dying, or has turned to evil. The “good guys” are scattered; hope is thin. Everything has fallen apart, and the movie ends in a cloud of foreshadowing and questions.

I hated it. I’ve never watched the movie again.

 

It’s a terrible way to end a story, if you ask me.

And it’s the way Mark ends his gospel: The women fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The “good guys” are scattered: these women have come to the tomb as the straggling remnant of the fans and friends of Jesus, because everyone else has already dropped away.

Hope is gone at the beginning of the scene: Jesus is dead.  And by the end of the scene hope is fragile and utterly strange. He has been raised, but what on earth does that mean? Are we about to see a ghost?

Everything has fallen apart. The cloud of foreshadowing in Mark’s story is an optimistic one, and the questions are full of potential, but everything we counted on is changed, and the last word, the fade to black, is a racing, frightened silence.

 

I do not like cliffhangers in my stories.

There’s enough uncertainty in everyday life, thanks.
I want resolution.

I want an ending that wraps things up.

 

I’m not the only one. 

It didn’t take long after Mark put down his pen (or stylus or quill or whatever) before other folks came along and added more, trying to resolve his story: the women did tell Peter and the others; Jesus later appeared to some of his followers, and gave them a new mission.

Others wrote more because the suspense Mark leaves us with is unbearable, and we know what has to have happened, right? 

 

But maybe that’s exactly why Mark leaves this story unresolved.

Because we do know what happened.

This story isn’t a cliff-hanger after all.

It’s a prequel.

 

A story that comes before the story we know, to renew our investment in that familiar narrative; to build up the excitement of the truth we know well.

 

Mark knows that you and I are here – like the very first community that read his words – because we do know what happened after. We know about the impossible renewal that comes from Jesus’ resurrection, the powerful mission to spread good news. 

The truth that God has transformed the world by offering the gift of eternal life through the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is known and familiar; so familiar we sometimes stop paying attention.  Or it seems theoretical; not practical and immediate in our daily lives.

 

So Mark tells us a story. Gets us invested in Jesus.

And then – he vanishes from the tomb, in a wave of foreshadowing, leaving an awe-inspiring message inviting us to follow him to Galilee, where who knows what will happen….

and Mark stops, right in the middle of the suspense, the anxious, world-shattering wonder.

 

So we’re hooked in again, reaching for resolution, fired up to look and seek and wonder and explore.

 

Because the story isn’t over.

It’s still unfolding, still being told, still happening.

You and I (here), today, are part of the same original story.

The story of God’s salvation of all humanity.

The story for which Mark gives us a prequel.

 

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the story.
We don’t know where the women went when they fled from the tomb in silent fear and wonder.
Don’t know who they eventually told.
We don’t know how the community of disciples actually re-gathers, or what steps led from that moment of shocking revelation and absence at the tomb to the reunion of Peter and the others with the living Jesus.

 

We don’t know what happens when we leave here today. We don’t know how we get from here – this bright, cool churchyard – to a full and crowded church building, or even if that’s the future God has planned for us. 

We don’t know how our community of disciples re-gathers; we don’t know how Jesus is going to surprise us, or what new mission God’s going to give us. 

But we know all that must happen.

 

We don’t know who gets their vaccine when, what happens with the virus variants, what happens with schools and workplaces.
We don’t know what expectations we still have to let go, what losses and what discoveries and what joys will come next. We don’t know who we’ll invite to worship with us, or grow with us, as things change in the next year and decade. 

We don’t know how any of that gets done. But we know it will.

 

While we don’t know what happens next, we do know how the story ends, where the story is going.

It ends with the complete reconciliation of the world with God; the end of all injustice and evil. It’s going always toward the fullness of abundant life.

 

And when we know where the story is going, how it ends, there’s a thrill in the uncertainty, a gift in the unknown in front of us.

That’s why many of us love movies: We know, mostly, that the good guys will win; that it will all work out. But we don’t know how it can possibly happen; we don’t know what challenges our heroes will face, or which decision is the right one, until it’s through. The uncertainty is the adventure, the joy.

 

That’s why I read mystery novels – I know that at the end, truth will be revealed and justice will be done; but I have no idea how. The revelations I can’t predict are the whole point.

 

This knowledge of the end is how we commit ourselves to the future in our everyday lives, too. 

We know that the child will one day be an adult, but we have no idea what wrong decisions or brilliant discoveries we’ll make in parenting or teaching or grandparenting - or in our own growing up. 

You know you’ll eventually get home from this trip, but not who’s going to offer help, or what compromises you’ll need to make, when the flight gets canceled. 

We know we’ll finish that degree, or the kitchen renovation, but have no idea how we’ll navigate the requirements of learning, or what’s lurking in the plumbing behind the walls.

 

We know there’s a future where the Covid pandemic isn’t the primary shaper of our collective lives. 

We don’t know exactly how we’ll get from here to there; we still have discoveries to make about what matters next. 

We don’t know whether the next thing to shape our lives will be climate change or world peace, hoverboards or a hurricane.

We don’t know whether the story that we’ll eventually tell about these days will be remembered by others centuries from now – like the story that the women at the tomb eventually told – and we don’t know what future generations will make of it. (I’m sure Mary and Mary and Salome wouldn’t have predicted the trumpets in the churchyard or colored eggs and chocolate bunnies!)

We do know that the story still goes on, and we know where it’s going, how it ends.

Because we know that this story is God’s.

Jesus’s story.

Mary’s story, and Mary’s and Salome’s. 

Peter’s, and the other disciples.

Yours and mine.

These stories, our stories, are God’s story. 

A story that isn’t over, though the ending is already written.

It’s written in lives of love and change and wonder, miracle and ordinary. It’s the story of the resurrection of the world along with Jesus, and the journey that ends in the fullness of eternal and abundant life.

Alleluia!