Somebody's Praying for You (Reflections on Easter 7, Year C 2025)

 

“The glory you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:22)

Don’t you love being part of a family? Not just a family that swims in the same gene pool, mind you, but a group of people with common goals and interests who love and trust one another and have each other’s backs. I’ll bet Jesus’ first disciples were that kind of family, and the early church must’ve felt much the same way.

Lately I’ve been reminiscing about my old seminary buddies. Thanks to the miracle of social media (which didn’t even exist the year we graduated from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia![i]) I’ve been able to keep up with some of them. One has become the bishop of Upstate New York Synod, one is on the synod staff down in Florida, one is now a seminary professor in California, and one is a hospice chaplain in South Dakota. Some have changed denominations, some have retired (one retiree lives on a boat with her husband and sails the Caribbean), and a few—alas!—have gone home to the Lord. The Church and the Holy Spirit have sent us each on our own journeys, but I like to think there’s a common bond between us which, should we ever sail into each other’s lane again, will make us feel like we’ve never been apart.

I’m grateful to my “Pastor School” classmates for many things and many sweet and wacky memories, but one thing I recall today is the way we promised to pray for one another. In our last semester each of us, in order to be ordained, had to appear before his or her home synod’s Approval Panel—an experience we acquainted with answering to the Spanish Inquisition. Each day, as we sat at lunch in the seminary refectory, we’d ask, “Who’s got an Approval today?” and we’d say a prayer for that fellow student. My home synod was Southwest California, which necessitated I fly back to LA in order to be grilled by the wise potentates who would decide my fate. My appointment was at 9:00 AM, just the same time, given the three-hour time difference, when my buddies in Philly would be sitting down to lunch. I remember feeling strangely calm (which is really strange, since I’m almost never calm) and at peace about the whole business. I felt safe and wrapped in a blanket of prayers coming my way from those who cared about me and wanted me to succeed.

In the Gospel lesson for Easter 7, Year C (John 17:20-26) Jesus is praying for his little family which he’s about to leave. Not only is he praying for them, but he’s praying for us too:

“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

This is Jesus’ great prayer for his followers, that we become a family as tight with one another as he is with his dad. I’ll admit, that’s a pretty tall order. From the very first Christians have had some family dysfunction. Our egos and jealousies have made it hard for us to sit down together at the Thanksgiving dinner table and rejoice as siblings should. We love to bicker over details about what the Trinity means and the nature of sin and the right way to worship. We’re all set to be martyrs for our own opinions and burn heretics at the stake for disagreeing with us. Let’s just face it: being a family is hard. But here we are, all the same.

I think what Jesus was trying to do on that night in which he had his last supper with this little family was give them a master class on how to be the Church. He got down on hands and knees and washed their feet, demonstrating how we are to be present to help and serve each other. Then he prayed for them like a parent would pray for his or her children, asking God to keep them safe and help them get along.

Jesus is praying for us. He’s asking that God’s love would be in us so we can love one another. Maybe the best way to access this love is to be in regular and disciplined prayer for one another. I think there is something amazingly comforting in knowing that another is actively, lovingly praying for you. Perhaps our discipline should be spending a few minutes each morning in intercessory prayer for someone whom the Holy Spirit is putting on your heart. If you’re praying for that person, you might then want to reach out and contact them. Who knows? Your connection might be just the thing someone else needs at this very moment.

Christian legends tell us those first disciples were swept by the Holy Spirit to distant lands from which they never returned. They didn’t have Facebook or Instagram or smart phones to keep up with each other. But I’ll bet they prayed for one another all the same.

Somebody you know needs a prayer today. Send on up for that person, won’t you?

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[i] Now part of the United Lutheran Seminary, a merger between the Lutheran seminaries in Philly and Gettysburg.

Times Change, Love Doesn't (Reflections on Easter 5, Year C 2025)

 

"Peter's Vision" H.D. Northrop (American 1894)

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” (John 13: 34a)

As Bob Dylan reminded us, “the times they are a-changing.”

Up to this point we liturgical Christians have been celebrating the joy of Jesus’ resurrection. At least that’s the theme of the first three Sundays in Easter in the Revised Common Lectionary. Then, on Easter 4, we got the obligatory “sheep Sunday[i],” and this week, on Easter 5, we hear the disciples getting the warning that Jesus has already packed his bags and booked his flight home to the right hand of the Father. He’s telling these guys to put on their big boy pants and get used to doing mission on their own without him. As he says in verse 33, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” Stuff is going to be different going forward.

The gospel lesson for Easter 5 (John 13: 31-35) comes on the night of the Last Supper just after Jesus has done the wacky, counter-cultural thing of washing the feat of his disciples. He’s basically turned the social order ass-over-tea kettle by taking the slave’s subservient role for those who had been following him around and hanging on his every word. This, he tells us, is how we love one another. We serve without making distinctions.

Unfortunately, being human, making distinctions is one of our favorite things to do. It’s how we spend our weekends and holidays. We’re not real keen on Jesus’ “the last shall be first” thing. We want to be first. Of course, if we’re first, that means others have to be behind us, and we’re generally cool with that. As the late Kris Kristofferson once so eloquently said,

'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on

Prove they can be better than at any time they please

Someone doin' somethin' dirty, decent folks can frown on…[ii]

 

Jesus has given us a pretty tough order: Love one another without regard to prestige of place and without judgment. That’s just not how we roll most of the time.

But it’s not impossible, either. Even Simon Peter took a while to get this “love without distinction” thing figured out. Just look at the first lesson assigned for Easter 5, Year C (Acts 11:1-8). God might’ve been a little too subtle for a numbskull like Peter to get what he was after in the dream he sent him. Peter didn’t quite catch on to the metaphor at first, not quite grasping God’s point that, just as there are no unclean animals, there are no unclean people. I’ll bet it was a test of his faith to believe that God could love and bestow the Holy Spirit on Gentiles—and the same Gentiles who had occupied Peter’s homeland, crushed his people with taxes, threatened them with violence, and hung his buddy Jesus up on a cross. Nevertheless, he went and preached to them and prayed with them and saw that, underneath it all, they were just the same as he. Some other good Christians gave Peter a load of grief for welcoming these uncircumcised foreigners, but Peter finally got it that in God there is no such thing as “them” and “us.” There’s only us. And that must’ve been a shocking adjustment for Peter and the early Christians to make.

It's a pretty shocking adjustment for us, too. It upends our whole idea of ministry. Why do we spread the gospel? The answer used to be to save souls. We had an “I’m saved and you’re not” attitude. We could define who we were by contrast with who we were not. But what if winning the world for Christ doesn’t mean getting everybody to share our exact same theology or point of view? What if it just means loving everyone as our equal? Even people of different faith traditions or no faith tradition at all. Even people who have different sexual or gender orientations. Even people who’ve come from or live in other countries or people who belong to a different political party. Or people who have wronged us in the past. Loving without a pecking order. Without desire for place or prestige. Without judgment.

On May 24 the ELCA commemorates the Christian mathematician, astronomer, and Roman . Catholic canon Nicolaus Copernicus, who died on that day in 1543. It was he who made the rather shocking—and to some, disconcerting—discovery that the earth isn’t the center of the universe. No. The earth actually revolves around the sun, and not the other way around. Not everything is about us. The world is changing and so is the Church. Perhaps, in ten years, we’ll no longer be at the center of American culture. Perhaps America will no longer be the dominant power in the world.

Maybe that’s what Jesus in John’s gospel is trying to tell us. Forget order and hierarchy and differences in culture or opinion. These things will always change anyway. Just love indiscriminately and let God do the rest.

Practice compassion this week, my friend. And do come and see me again.

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[i] Why a Sunday which always references sheep and shepherding you may ask? If you find out, let me know.

[ii] From “Jesus Was a Capricorn” from the 1972 album of the same name.

Who Was Your Shepherd? (Reflections on Easter 4, Year C 2025)

 

“The Father and I are one.” (John 10:30)

The last thing Jesus told Saint Peter—and us—in last week’s gospel from the Revised Common Lectionary (John 21:1-19) was “Follow me.” This always seems to be our evangelist’s point. You want to know God? Look to Jesus. He’s the way, just as John has him say in John 14:6. The whole freaky, wonderful, mystical, “I AMness” of God is too far beyond our puny brains’ ability to comprehend it. I don’t care if you’re a MENSA scholar, God remains a mystery. The clue we have as Christians to living with this mystery is the person of Jesus Christ.

On the fourth Sunday of Easter, we always get these “Good Shepherd” reading in our lectionary. Our gospel is John 10:22-30 in which Jesus promises eternal life to his “sheep.” If you know anything about sheep, you may take a certain amount of umbrage at being compared to a critter renowned only for its fluffy coat and notoriously low IQ. What’s more significant, I think, is that Jesus compares himself to a shepherd. That’s his way. Shepherds don’t drive sheep like cowboys drive cattle. Shepherds lead sheep. Jesus is always leading us by his example. A fun little detail about the Easter 4 gospel reading is that we encounter Jesus in the act of devotion. He’s a good Jewish boy, so he’s in the temple for the Festival of the Dedication—Hannukah. He’s being observant of his faith tradition, taking time to celebrate an historic act of God’s goodness and love for God’s beloved people. Just like we all should do, right?

But what else does a shepherd do? Looking at the appointed Psalm (one which everybody’s grandma probably knew by heart back in the day), we see that a shepherd keeps the sheep safe, provides food and drink, and makes sure they go where they’re supposed to go. Who in your life has been the protector, the provider, and the guide?

(Don’t you like the way I handle this segue?)

For a lot of us, our mothers served a shepherding role. Moms make sure you’re fed and clothed and they try to teach you to grow up as a decent, contributing member of the human race. When I taught a diakonia class in my synod, I asked the students who was the most important religious influence in their lives. Just about every student replied that influence was their mother or their grandmother.

Although my dad was a big influence on my faith, it was my mother who said nighttime prayers with me and my sisters, who taught us the dinner grace, and taught us the words to “Jesus Loves Me.” Dedicated Lutheran that she was, my mom was also my Sunday school teacher. I learned the doctrine of justification by grace through faith from mom, not my pastor or my seminary Confessions professor.

My wife was a single mom for many years. I know she did a terrific job because my stepdaughter didn’t grow up to be a jerk. Rather, she’s one of the most accomplished people I know, and she credits her mother with being her inspiration.

Moms don’t have to swim in the same gene pool with us, either. Sometimes God puts other shepherds in our lives like teachers or Girl Scout leaders or coaches or aunts, grandmoms, foster moms, or bosses. The mom who raised you had the duty of leading you to the green pastures and beside the still waters, but another shepherdess might’ve seen your talents, inspired you, corrected you, and made you see something about yourself you didn’t know was there. I will always be grateful to my grad school thesis advisor, a little English lady named Dr. Sybil Robinson. She was very patient with me, always good-humored, and she encouraged me to be a teacher. My seminary theology professor, Dr. Margaret Krych and my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) supervisor, Sr. Aine Garvey, were mature ladies whom I thank for their inspirational wisdom. I’ve also “borrowed” moms like my very cute late mother-in-law Mary Meidhof and older ladies from the congregation who always made me feel welcome and valued like a visiting son.

John’s gospel points us to the sacredness and mystery of God through the person of Jesus, our good shepherd. We know we follow Christ so we may live in relationship with God. But I believe the way of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is manifest in the brothers and sisters around us. Let’s thank God for our mom/shepherds, and keep looking for the way of Christ in others so we, ourselves, may be that way of Christ for others.

A Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. Thanks for leading your sheep.

PS - Prayers and blessings to Pope Leo XIV. May our two communions join together some day as one.