“Two Views of Peace” John 14:23-29

What kind of peace does the Holy Spirit give to us?  

          If you’ve been paying attention to the readings in this Easter Season you will have noticed that the theme of “peace” weaves in and out, time and again.  

It is peace that comes with the presence of Jesus in the upper room.  

It is peace that Jesus bestows with the gift of the Holy Spirit upon his disciples.  

It is peace that Jesus says that he will give to us, but it is not peace such as the world gives.    

So, what kind of peace is it that the Holy Spirit gives?  What are we talking about here?

          In the novel “Gods and Generals”, Jeffrey Shaara depicts or imagines a poignant scene between General “Stonewall” Jackson of the confederacy and his attending slave, John Lewis.

Jackson asks Lewis, “Have you heard from your family lately?” 

There is deep irony in the question.

Jackson has committed his cause to the South and to the preservation of slavery, and at this particular time in history the slave trade from Africa has been abolished, but it was done so largely to create a higher demand for domestic sale of slaves.  It was economically more advantageous to profit from breeding and selling humans, than it was to import them across an ocean.

Jackson was a deeply religious man, and the inquiry is heartfelt, if disconnected from the harsh realities of life.   

When John Lewis tells him he has not heard from his family in quite some time, Jackson launches into an eloquent prayer for Lewis’ family and for all families that are separated by this war.

          In response, Shaara imagines Lewis joining the prayer, and asking a question of God within the General’s hearing.

“Why is Lord, good folks, — good Christian folks,– can stand by and see their black brothers in bondage?  Why don’t they just break those chains?” 

          Both peer up into the heavens, into the clear starry night for an answer. 

At length Jackson closes the prayer, “yes Lord, our hearts are open, you show us the way, and we will follow.”  

          At the General’s words, John Lewis is crestfallen. 

          Hearts are not open, eyes are turned heavenward and not toward the neighbor, and so they cannot see.

          We wonder how it is that on this peace inspiring starry night that prompts them both to raise their eyes to the heavens, to the same God, that they cannot find the ability to look into one another’s hearts?

On face value, both want peace. 

On face value, both are eloquently asking God to bring those separated from families home again, for sustenance in the weariness of the tasks and lots placed before them both.

          Here is the strangeness of the kind of peace that comes from the Holy Spirit.  

          What we often want to do (from the outside looking in,) is to try to figure out who has the Holy Spirit and who does not.  

          We measure the prayers of one person or the cause of one against the other, looking at their circumstances, perhaps knowing the outcome of the war, how this story ends, and we make judgments. 

“That’s where God must be!  That’s where the Holy Spirit is!  We can tell because of the way things work out in the end.”

          That would be fine, except Jesus says, “I do not give peace as this world gives it.”

          When you throw that phrase in, you have to go back and re-think the presence of the Holy Spirit all over again.  You can’t use the criteria of this world to determine the work of the Spirit!

          You can’t look at the outward signs, who wins, who sounds more reasonable, who seems like they have the Spirit as you would recognize it, and who doesn’t.  

Jesus does not give peace in the way this world gives it, with rewards for being “right.” He does not give it with proofs drawn from how things come out in the end, with the pitting of one against another or the choosing of sides.

          When you take seriously the promise of Grace that Jesus comes to give, you have to look at this exchange with new eyes.  

Who is it that has the Holy Spirit here?  In whom is the Holy Spirit working?

          It is working in both of them!

But it is also working in each of them uniquely, mysteriously, granting limited insight, opening some possibilities, and patiently waiting for other revelations to occur.  

These two characters as Shaara imagines them are representative of the two sides of a nation caught in a terrible conflict.

 Each fervently praying to the same God to give them guidance and direction, each receiving the same measure of grace and peace from that same, all gracious God.

          The problem, you see, isn’t that God isn’t pouring out Grace and Spirit upon them both.

          The problem isn’t that God has chosen one side over another, that God is present with one or absent in the other.  

If you take the God of grace and the gift of peace from the Holy Spirit that is “not of this world” seriously, then you have to say that God, the Holy Spirit is in them both.

 The problem is not with what God is doing, saying to them, or giving to them.  

The problem is that they are more attuned to listening to what they think is the voice of God, rather than listening to one another!  

          “Those who love me, will keep my word.”  Jesus said.  “and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  

What does that look like?    

Well, from John and from the witness to Jesus that we have in the Gospels, we discover that keeping Jesus’ Word has an awful lot to do with loving others, and listening to them, and getting people to listen, both to what God in Christ Jesus has to say, and to what they are saying to themselves and to each other.

Think about it.  When Jesus meets the woman at the well, he spends more time listening to her, than he does speaking.

When he has exchanges with the Pharisees, he does so based upon listening to what they are saying, and then commenting upon it.  

Oh, Jesus may have harsh observations to offer them, to be sure, but he does so after perceiving what is in their hearts, or what is on their minds, or what their actions are doing to others or will result in, that they cannot see and have not considered because they are so intent on their own understandings.

Jesus does an awful lot of listening as it turns out, though we mostly talk about what he says after such listening. 

Jesus listens to the complaints, to the pleas, to the objections, and then he has a word to speak into them.   

So, if you would seek to keep Jesus’ word, the first exercise is to do what Jesus did, which is to listen! 

Then based on what you have heard, to discern what word to speak from God into that place, into that particular situation that will bring the presence and possibility of the Holy Spirit.  

          There was a hymn in the old green hymnal that we didn’t sing very often for the tune was somewhat difficult, but then so were the words.  The hymn, “They Cast Their Nets in Galilee” cataloged the experience of the disciples and where they end up.

          “They cast their nets in Galilee, just off the hills of brown; such happy, simple fisher-folk before the Lord came down, before the Lord came down.

          Contented, peaceful fishermen, before they ever knew the peace of God that filled their hearts, brimful and broke them too, brimful and broke them too.

          Young John, who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos died.  

          Peter who hauled the teeming net, Head down was crucified, head down was crucified.

          The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod.  Yet, let us pray for but one thing, the marvelous peace of God, The marvelous peace of God.”

          What kind of peace does the Holy Spirit give?  It is not a peace that this world recognizes, but a peace that is all about engaging in this world.  

          It is not a peace that always gives rest and certainty, but it is often a peace that opens us up to the complexities of life, as we listen to the Spirit at work in so many places, so many people, and in so many ways.  

It is a peace that sometimes leads us to places we would not willingly go on our own.

          It is a peace that when we perceive it is able to fill our hearts brim full. 

It is also a peace that is breaks them apart, breaks them open.   

It breaks our hearts when we recognize how far short we all fall from God’s hopes and dreams for us in this world.

It breaks our hearts when we recognize that we often do not listen as Jesus modeled for us so to do.

          If you seek the peace of God, do not look for it so much in the stars, or in lofty ideals, pious prayers, flights of fancy, ideologies or retreats from the hard stuff of this life.

          If you would seek the peace of God, look where Jesus taught us to look.  

Look deeply into the eyes of the neighbor.

Look deeply, maybe and especially into the eyes of the one whom you do not understand or with whom you cannot seem to get along.

          See the Holy Spirit at work in them.

          Give God the benefit of the doubt, which is to say that the Holy Spirit may be stirring in ways that you do not yet recognize in that other.

          Listen to what it is they have to say.  

Listen with the ears of a Father who would readily welcome both of these men into the same household, and make of them both God’s children, God’s family.

“Have you heard from your family lately?”

“Not a Sentimental Shepherd” John 10:22-30

This is “Good Shepherd” Sunday.  Every year at this point in the Easter Season we have an opportunity to hear Jesus talk about his role as the shepherd. 

          We also hear the 23^rd psalm, with its pastoral images of how the shepherd provides for the flock, leads them through the valley, and delivers goodness and mercy for those whom he leads.

          The problem, of course, is that many who hear this Gospel and this psalm will have had very little actual experience in the world of living with and working with livestock. 

We hear Jesus talk about sheep and the activity of the shepherd, and we tend to conjure up images from our Sunday School.  A laughing Jesus cradling the docile little lamb in his arms, clean white robes flowing, or the “Good Shepherd” walking with the lamb riding on his shoulders.

          I have spent far too many days on the farm to have bucolic images come to mind. 

Those who have worked with livestock of any kind know how tasking and frustrating animals can be!  

When I hear this gospel lesson, it is not cuddly animal images that come to mind.  It is the harsh reality of working with the livestock day to day that comes to mind. 

The first great lesson is the nature of the relationship, it is far from idyllic!  I did not work with sheep, but rather cows, pigs and chickens.  The experiences are somewhat similar.

The sheep know the voice of the shepherd because the shepherd has been fussing regularly in their daily lives, and often very inconveniently!

 The shepherd has been shearing them, tending their medical needs, feeding them, weaning them from their mothers, and shoving wormer down their gullet for their own good!

The shepherd has been moving them from pen to pen, pasture to pasture to keep them safe and fed properly, not gorging on new grass nor overgrazing and ruining their future. 

The shepherd has been scooping their poop and putting up with their incessant bleating, bellowing, and squealing at what he quite often has to make them do! 

If the livestock has gotten used to hearing the shepherd’s voice, that has probably included not hearing only “gentle words and urgings” but also some rather “colorful” language, — peppered with outbursts and exclamations!  

We do have some biblical precedent for that kind of coaxing and pleading.  

More than once in the Old Testament the words of the prophets express God lamenting about wayward people, faithless Israel, and people going astray.   

Jesus makes a side comment or two as well, wondering how much longer he must put up with this “perverse and faithless generation.  He looks sadly upon those he sees who are “like sheep without a shepherd” – which is probably much less a comment about “poor little innocent lambs” than about stubbornness and people following their own inclinations.   

I think it is important on this Sunday to counterpoint the romantic view of God as some kind of “sentimental shepherd” with the harsh reality of a God, who; (like any real shepherd, farmer or rancher,) though motivated by love and care for those in their keeping, is also committed to the day to day reality!

 What is at stake in making this clear is the very matter of the Incarnation, the investment that God has made in coming to be among us as “Good Shepherd!”

We do not have a sentimental, post card image God. 

We have a God who knows what it is to get down and dirty in the day-to-day with us.  

We have a God who fusses with creation with bare hands, who shapes and forms us in Genesis, getting hands dirty.  

We have a God who enters creation physically in Jesus, to live, walk and move along the dusty pathways with us, experiencing firsthand what it is to live in this world.

Let’s acknowledge that if we want to compare ourselves to the flock that we have to acknowledge that we’re really pretty hard to put up with most of the time!

That’s not meant in any derogatory way!  I’m just being descriptive here.

Sheep don’t mean to be dense or wayward.

Cows don’t consciously choose to be contrary.

Pigs don’t search for ways to get out of their pen on purpose or to tick off the farmer.

In every case, they are just following their natural inclination, their own “self-interest!”

They are looking for greener grass.  They are following their own lines of self-interest, which are not always what is in their best-interest in the long run.

It is often the case that the farmer, rancher, shepherd has to work diligently to keep the herd or flock from doing damage to themselves in their heedless pursuit of their own appetites.

I confess, that left to my own self-interest, I would most likely always see to my own needs first, heedless of the needs of my neighbor.

To follow “the good shepherd”, who lays down his life for his sheep is to see the stern determination in Jesus and to hear it in Jesus’ voice.  A determination to not just let us wander off thinking only of our next mouthful, but to wrangle us into moving together toward a healthier place and goal.

Such determination penetrates to the level of life and death.  “No one will snatch them from my hand!”  Jesus says.

We do not have a “sentimental God.”

We have a God who gets down and dirty and walks the dusty road with us, and then invites us to “follow.”   

In John, Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me.”

The truth of the matter is that even if Jesus recognizes you, you may not yet recognize the shepherd’s voice if you have not been letting Jesus fuss with you in your daily life!   

Once we tune our ears to hear the shepherd’s voice, we know what it is that we need to do.

Beloved, this is Good Shepherd Sunday, and today the Shepherd calls to you. 

Don’t be surprised of you chafe at that call a bit.  It’s what wayward sheep will do when reminded they can’t just do what they please!

And, by the way, God knows that, because in Jesus God has been fussing with us for a very long time.

God has great and gracious promises, words of encouragement, and words of correction to keep us from wandering off on our own.  

It is a good day to “tune up” the ears, and to “tune in” the heart, that we may find our way as the shepherd leads us in daily life.

“Could We All Just Breathe?” Reflections on Courts and Wars.

“We don’t choose the times we live in.  The only choice we have is how we respond.”   

That’s a quote from a fictional character caught up in the intrigue of the Netflix film, “The Edge of War.”   The film follows fictional minor diplomats trying to smuggle documents that would alter Neville Chamberlain’s signing of the Munich Accords appeasing Adolf Hitler.  They never imaged as young men back at Oxford that they would have the responsibility of a looming world war thrust upon their shoulders.

It aptly sums up how I have felt for most of my ministry.

               I did not choose these times.

I would have been much more comfortable a few decades earlier during the heyday of Mainline Denominations.   I was trained for the maintaining of institutions, for the care of members, and for attending to the seasonal rhythms of parish life.

“Hatch, Match, Patch and Dispatch” as the humorous artwork given to me at my ordination and which still hangs in my office puts it.

I was not trained to fight “worship wars,” evaluate church growth trends and fads, engage in conversations over sexual identity, minister during a pandemic or engage in social media ministry.

I could never have dreamt I would have to somehow address the rise of authoritarianism and fascism in the United States or watch as “settled law” was overturned by Originalist Supreme Court Justices, thereby threatening to cascade a whole sequence of basic human rights.

But… here we are.

I will be too liberal for most, and not conservative enough for many.  

I will be charged with being a “baby-killer” by some for supporting women’s reproductive rights and not outspoken enough on behalf of the unborn by others.

This is the lot-in-life for a Pastor, who tries to hold together divergent communities, made up of individuals with strong opinions about a wide range of issues.   

You get used to being a disappointment, or an annoyance, or being accused of being “too political” or “not caring enough.”

I want desperately for my people to simply breathe.

I’ll even hazard to make that what I consider a faithful biblical response in these times.   

In my reading of the Genesis story, the original temptation is not about being male or female or a silly apple.

 It is about the age-old human temptation to become as God, “knowing good and evil.”

That always sounds like such a good thing.   If I could just know what is good, and what is evil, I as an individual would surely always choose the good, or seek it, or be able to impose it, or strive for it!

And so, grasping to what I conceive as “good,” — cock sure that I know what God knows or wants, and the world would be better for everyone if that is done. I succumb to the temptation.

The primary problem with that endeavor of course is that I am not God.

That is the little detail that escapes old Adam, old Eve, and every generation which follows.

It’s the one temptation for which Jesus, the Son of God, will not fall.

Even though Jesus could legitimately grasp it, claim it, and exercise it.   The Synoptic Gospels all recount the story of Jesus refusing to turn stones to bread, to lay claim to the world by bowing the knee to Satan, or by grasping at his own authority.

Those are the very same old temptations which always get us and to which we are vulnerable.  

We want to Know. 

We want to be as God. 

We want to control and exercise power. 

We always assure ourselves of our ability to be able do well what it is that Jesus would never touch!

This is the temptation ever before us, to think we could make this world better if only people would listen to us, believe like us, listen to our wisdom or cease doing what offends us, for surely whatever offends us must by necessity also offend God!

Fill in the blank here with whatever you want to insist upon, do away with, put back in the schools, etc. because you deem to know God’s will in this matter.  

If some suffer because of those necessary actions that must be taken, so be it, they should know God and that would fix it!

They should refrain from offending – which they really cannot do because, hey, we are all creatures and not God!

We just forget or ignore that little detail.

Time and again, Abel’s blood cries out from the ground because of our thoughtless insistence on our own way and what would be good for “us.”

 Always and again we hear our own heartless words echo back, “What concern of that is mine?  That is their problem.” Which is really, just an echo of Cain’s “Am I my sibling’s keeper?”

“Us” and “Them”, and because we are assured that God is with “Us” and not with “Them,” well that settles it!

So, I have no other advice but that we should all just, for God’s sake, “breathe.”

Breathing is what God does over the face of the waters to create in the first place.  

Breathing is what God does to the lump of clay. There is no life until there is breath.   Could we learn something from that about when we want to assign life when life begins?  There is no life without breath. 

Breathing is what Jesus does upon the disciples when he wants them to experience God, to calm their locked-door fears, and to move them out of introspection to looking outward again toward a world in need of care and redemption.

It’s not much, in know, and seems wholly inadequate a thing to do in the face of overwhelming possibilities and consequences, but — as a response to all the that surrounds us, could we all just… “Breathe?”

Maybe in the sound of listening to our neighbor’s breath, God’s renewed presence might come and we might find our way through all this – together.

               Pastor Merle

“What to Fall Back on?” John 21:1-19

They’ve gone back to fishing.  

All of the disciples, despite having seen the resurrected Jesus twice as he appeared to them behind locked doors are now back in the same boat again – literally.

They are trying to carry on as if meeting and following Jesus had never happened.

          Some people would be perplexed at this.  How could you go back to fishing, back to your old way of life, after meeting Jesus?   After seeing the crucified risen?  After receiving from him the gift of the Spirit and that gift of peace?

          Me?  

I’m not surprised at all.    

          The disciples are just doing what comes naturally when your world is turned upside down.  

It’s true, they have experienced amazing things, and yet they aren’t sure just what to do with it all.    

          They were relatively certain of what needed to be done when Jesus was there daily, a guiding presence leading them through the Galilee.   

          They had a sense that even when he sent them off to preach in the villages, he was a presence lurking in the background.  He would still be there when they returned.  They would have someone with which to process their work of sharing the kingdom, let them know if they were doing it right.

          But now, Jesus, though having been seen, is not exactly predictable.   

          He pops up, but they don’t really know how to reach him.

He calls to them, but how are they to call to him? How to talk to him, how to check out what they should do next?

He breathes on them and send them out, but this seems different somehow.      

          And so, uncertain with how to proceed into the future, they have simply fallen back on  what they know how to do.

          It’s what you or I would do.   If the new job didn’t pan out, we would simply say to ourselves, “Well, I can always go back to ….”  and fill in the blank.

          I can always go back to …what I did before.   

          I can always go back to …where I lived before.  

          I can always go back to …the familiar territory, the place where things made sense, the life that had a familiar rhythm and routine.

          So it is that the Disciples go back to the Sea of Galilee, the south side near the Roman city of Tiberias. 

Here they are doing what they think they ought to know how to do, to fish.    

          It’s not going well. 

They have labored all night, and still have nothing to show for it.   

It is at this point in the story that we have to do a little “filling in of the blanks” of our own, based on our own experiences of “going back.”  

          I picture those disciples in the boat, struggling with the nets.  It’s been three years since they did this, you know.   Some things are like riding a bicycle, they come back quickly, but other things are muscle memory and muscles that have not done a particular kind of work for a while grow weak and complain quickly.   

          I imagine their once weather hardened hands now splitting and cracking at the wear of water and rope.  Their backs straining, old unused muscles making their presence known again. 

          I imagine the monotony of casting and drawing…casting and drawing and finding nothing to show for the effort.   

          In such times the mind begins to wander. 

The mind wanders over the mistakes made, the words spoken and left unspoken, the opportunities missed and the paths untaken.

          A wandering mind is often a source for self-doubt and self-pity.  

          “What good am I?  I can’t even fish anymore!”  We might imagine them thinking.   

          Like little kids in a moody funk they are sitting in their boat, feeling alternately sorry for themselves and probably utterly useless.

          A wandering mind is subject to things seen and things imagined.   

          From the shore, a football field’s length away, just out of range of recognition, a voice is heard.   “Paidion” it calls.  “Children,” — “You have no fish, have you?”

          “Children.”

There is a reason why the voice of Jesus calls them that.   It is what they feel like.    Helpless children adrift in a sea of doubt and confusion caught doing what the parent never intended them to do again.  

          The voice states the obvious, “You have no fish, have you?”  

The voice then tells them to let down their nets on the other side of the boat.    

          There is in that moment a snap of recognition.  Someone told us to do this once before.

Could that distant figure on the shore be Jesus?   

          Hurriedly the nets and swung over the opposite side of the boat and the fish are waiting there, nets straining.

“It is the Lord!”  John says.

Peter, flustered beyond thought, throws on his clothes and jumps in the water.  

I always chuckle at that. 

Don’t most people remove their clothing before jumping into the water and swimming?  

He can’t even get that right!

          During the shore lunch that follows, when the rest of the disciples are gathered, eating with Jesus, the pointed question is finally raised.    The one that cuts to the heart of why the disciples are fishing instead of doing what Jesus had called and trained them to do.

          “Peter, do you love me more than these?”    

          More than “these” — That is the question over which we puzzle.  “More than these,” what?  

          More than — these other disciples? 

          More than — these other activities?    

          More than these — fish that you came back to catch?

More than — this old life to which you tried to return?   

          It is Jesus asking the most pointed of questions. 

“Do you love Jesus more than whatever it is you feel you can always fall back on, go back to?”    

Or is there really no going back?

          Once you have been in the presence of the resurrected Jesus, you can’t go back, try as you might. 

          Once you have felt the peace of Jesus’ breathed upon you, you can’t just go back to living the way you used to live!   

          You have been changed, and to deny that will only put you into a funk.   

          To deny the Lord’s call upon your life will make you feel like a child set adrift in a sea of doubt and confusion. 

You know that Jesus is here for you!

You just don’t know where you will meet him next, where he will show up again.  What he will empower you to do in the future.

If the resurrection is about anything, it is about change, and how there really is no going back, much as we might wish to, or like to try.  

          The resurrection is about what happens next as the disciples move into the world to both proclaim, and to find the resurrected Lord already waiting for them there.

          There is no going back.

          There is no recapturing of the carefree days when we did things just for ourselves.

          There is only now the reminder that we are called to do the work Jesus empowered us to do.  Entrusted us to do. 

The work of feeding the lambs. 

The work of tending the sheep. 

The work of Feeding the sheep.   

And if there is any fishing to do, it will be the kind of fishing for people that Jesus modeled.   Meeting people where they are, loving them, forgiving them, freeing them from the things that knot them up and tie them down.

          Being a disciple of Jesus will take us places that we don’t necessarily want to go.  

          It will mean, (as Peter will find out,) that sometimes someone else will end up taking you places you never thought you would have to go!  Standing up and saying things you never thought you’d have to say.  Making decisions that are unpopular with those within the community for the sake of including those who have been excluded from the community, or from the promise, or from the way of Jesus.

          It will mean learning that if you are going to fall back on anything, it can’t be what you used to do. 

You can only fall back on the promises of God found in Christ Jesus.

          The promise of God, that Jesus will be with you always.   

          A Risen Lord who you’ve met, seen, whose presence you have felt.  For these disciples once, twice and now three times.

And don’t you suppose if Jesus has shown up in your life that many times, Peter, he will show up there again?  

When you least expect it, calling you his child? 

Reminding you of his presence? 

Giving you what you need to do his work? 

          There is no going back to what used to be!

The Lord is Risen, he is Risen indeed and rises again and again to meet us and call to us. 

He comes again and again to sit down with us at table and to remind us who and whose we are, and what we are meant to do.  

It can feel more than just a little scary doing this work of feeding lambs, tending sheep, and proclaiming the Kingdom. But what else are you going to fall back on, if not on the waiting arms of the Risen Lord?