It's Sheep Sunday Again (Reflections on Easter 4, Year A 2026)

 

There’s a curious tradition in the Church during the fifty-day celebration of Our Lord’s resurrection. The Lectionary for the first three Sundays in Easter always focuses on the risen Christ. We see Jesus meeting the astonished women as they leave the empty tomb. We see him appearing to the disciples and “Doubting Thomas.” We see him being made known in the breaking of the bread to the travelers on the road to Emmaus. In the last three Sundays, the focus shifts to Jesus packing his bags and getting ready to return to the Father, making sure that his buddies are ready to receive the Holy Spirit, start the Christian Church, and generally carry on without his physical presence. But in that middle fourth Sunday—for reasons my seminary education and the miracle that is Google are inadequate to explain—we hear about sheep.

Why do we get this “Good Shepherd” Sunday? Beats me. At least we get a chance to recite that most popular Psalm of David’s which so many of us memorized in Sunday School (Psalm 23). God is the caregiver who wants only the best for us, leads us where we ought to go, and is the source of every blessing we’ll ever know. It’s unfortunate that this lovely Psalm is so often used for funerals. It’s really about life.

The gospel reading (John 10:1-10)—as the Bible commentaries remind me—may be a bit of Jesus’ commentary on the events which preceded it in chapter 9. Remember, back in the day there were no numbered chapters and verses in the Bible. When Jesus uses this sheepfold metaphor and talks about “thieves and bandits (v.8), he’s still talking smack about the Pharisees who kicked the man born blind out of the synagogue. They refused to recognize God’s work because it didn’t fit in with their preconceived notions.

In the Bible “shepherd” was often used as a metaphor for the leaders of the people whether such leaders be kings or religious figures. I’m naturally tempted—given the current circumstances here in the U.S.—to launch into a diatribe on false shepherds and excoriate Christian Nationalists, but I think it might be more interesting to drill down on what this passage says about Jesus and the sheep themselves.

In verse seen Jesus says, “I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.” The gate has two functions: it keeps the sheep in the sheepfold where they are safe, and it lets them out to the pasture where they can feed and have abundant life.

In his wonderful 2011 memoir Bred of Heaven[i], the Welsh journalist Jasper Rees writes about spending a week on a sheep farm in the Cywarch Valley. Wales has about three times more sheep than people, and the Welsh have been in the sheep business for over 3,000 years. Jasper lovingly points out that sheep enjoy a long and well-deserved reputation for being some of the dumbest animals our good Lord ever created. They’re not particularly adroit at decision-making, so they depend on the shepherd (and often the sheep dogs) to move them from one pasture to another and into and out of the sheepfold. Sheep need to keep moving, and much of a shepherd’s work is managing this locomotion.

Jasper recounts an event when he and the farmer’s son, Owain, attempted to repatriate an errant sheep belonging to a neighbor’s flock. This critter had somehow managed to fall in with Owain’s sheep. When he and Jasper attempted to capture it, it ran from them just as Jesus said a sheep would. It didn’t know their voices. Eventually, Jasper managed to grab the outlaw sheep by the fleece while Owain put a bag over its head. Blinded, the sheep forgot to keep running away and just laid down. Without vision, sheep don’t move.

Can you guess who we are in Jesus’ sheep metaphor? Yup. That’s right: we’re the sheep. We need vision, and we have to keep moving. Martin Luther told us the Church is always reforming. Jesus is always leading us to new pastures.

I’ve often written about a vision for the American Church. In the years ahead we’ll get away from giant, expensive buildings. Our clergy will be bi-vocational and not depend on the Church as a source of income. We’ll stop emphasizing individual salvation and we won’t worry about going to Heaven. Our job will be to love and serve our neighbors and bring the Kingdom of Heaven here to Earth.

I am sensing something of a renaissance within my own congregation. We are getting out of the sheepfold and reaching out to the community with our public events. We are inviting outsiders to participate. Currently, we’re working on developing a new model of worship with our Wednesday night fellowship. We’re also working on a new model of Christian Men’s Ministry. This won’t be the old way of having the men form a property committee or a supper club, but a real fellowship where truths are spoken and scripture is taught.

We already grow vegetables on the church lawn for our Lutheran food cupboard, but we have been approached by our Seventh Day Adventist friends about opening a food cupboard for our neighbors in need right here in our facility.

Our Good Shepherd is calling His sheep out of the comfort of the sheepfold and into newer pastures. Jesus is also calling each of us as individuals. We’re called to come to the Gate—either to enter the fold and be part of the flock, or to get out of our comfort zone and explore how our lives can better serve and give glory to God.

However the Shepherd is calling you, keep moving safely in the knowledge that He IS our shepherd, and we shall not be in want.

Peace be with you, my friend. Do come again.

  

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[i] Rees, Jasper: Bred of Heaven: One Man’s Quest to Reclaim His Welsh Roots (London, Profile Books, Ltd. 2011). Really fun book. You don’t even need to be Welsh to enjoy it.

Do You See Him? (Reflections on Easter 3, Year A 2026)

 

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual affection, love one another deeply from the heart. (1 Peter 1:22)

Back in 1990 (I think it was) I took a long road trip from LA to Chicago to attend a buddy’s wedding. Since this is a pretty long drive, another LA friend offered that her mom in Tulsa would gladly put me up for a night (rent free) if I wanted to rest during the long journey. I was only too happy to accept the hospitality—and hospitable it certainly was.

My friend’s mom, like all nice Oklahomans, believed in introducing an out-of-town guest to all her family members and just about everyone she’s ever met. This nice lady happened to be the church secretary of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. She invited me to her place of employment to meet her boss, the pastor. She also gave me a tour of the facilities at Prince of Peace, a congregation located in a predominantly African American neighborhood. In the church parish hall, I stood awestruck in front of a gorgeous painted mural depicting Our Lord’s ascension into Heaven. The painting covered an entire wall, and the figure of Jesus was life-sized.

And he was Black.

I, of course, being a white Lutheran boy, had always grown up with Sunday School pictures of a blond, blue-eyed, European-looking Savior. It was quite an eye-opener to me to realize Jesus could appear to others as someone relatable to their experience. I stood looking at the mural for a few minutes and went away thinking, “That’s pretty cool.”

Just how does Jesus appear to us? In the gospel reading for Easter 3, Year A in the RCL (Luke 24:13-35), Jesus is unrecognizable. He is stranger on the road. The two disciples walk with him but have no idea who he is. It’s only when they extend Christian charity and offer him a place to stay the night and something to eat that his identity becomes real to them. Jesus told us:

“…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’… ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:35-36, 40)

Jesus can appear to us in the stranger or the one in need, but Jesus also appears to us through the Word. I think I had a vison of the Lord once during my seminary days during a chapel service led by our professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, a visiting academic from the Church of South India, the Rev. Dr. James Vejayakumar. Vejay, as we called him, was standing in the chancel after having just consecrated the Host. He held the loaf of bread in his hands. He was a small man, shorter than myself, with curly black hair, deep black eyes, and a coffee-and-cream complexion. He wore the vestments of his denomination which looked strange and Oriental. I thought this was what the historical Jesus might have looked like.

As I made my way up the aisle to receive the sacrament, I thought of the words of Luke’s gospel:

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)

Vejay had, indeed, opened the scriptures to me and my classmates, and we experienced the Bible as we had not experienced it before. Truly, this must’ve been the way people felt when Jesus taught them. Jesus came to us in this foreign gentleman and came alive in the Word.

But we needn’t do missionary work among the needy or take seminary classes to encounter Jesus. For Cleopas and his companion, Jesus is made known to them in the breaking of the bread. We share the meal weekly of Christ’s body and blood, made tangible to us in the bread and wine of the sacrament, but we are also experiencing Christ in the very act of eating together. Jesus told us

“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20)

Every Sunday during the consecration of the elements, we pronounce the Memorial Acclamation: Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. How does Christ come to you? Where have you found Jesus? Where do you expect to find Jesus? You may not recognize the Lord at first but keep looking all the same.

Christ be with you, my friend.  

 

Peter's Transformation (Reflections on Easter 2, 2026)

Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:8-9)

It’s something of a tradition that the gospel passage we get for Easter 2 in the Revised Common Lectionary is always this story of “Doubting Thomas (John 20:19-31).” Smart Bible scholar folks have a theory about this. Without getting too much into the historical/literary critical weeds, let’s just say that around the end of the first century of the Common Era there may have been a little rivalry between the disciples of John and the disciples of Thomas. Subsequently, when John’s disciple writes his resurrection narrative, he makes Thomas look like a doofus for not taking his buddies’ word that Jesus really is raised from the dead[i]. 

(Of course, if the Johannine account is correct, you can hardly blame Thomas for being a little skeptical. It’s not like people get raised from the dead every day! But I digress.)

Yes, poor Thomas looks like a doubting, faithless doofus in John’s gospel. He, therefore, stands in stark contrast to Peter, who looks like a doofus in all four gospels. I mean, how would you like it if the one thing everyone remembered about you was the fact you shot your big pie hole off about being faithful to Jesus even unto death, and then—the second things got a little uneasy—you denied you even knew the guy? And not once, but three times?

But the Peter we meet on Easter 2 isn’t the same guy we saw on Good Friday. Somehow a switch got flipped, and the old, cowardly, say-it-before-you-thought-about-it Peter has given way to the bold and eloquent messenger of the Gospel we meet in our first reading (Acts 2:14a, 22-32).

I’d hate to have been Good Friday Peter, wouldn’t you? The guy must’ve been feeling a boatload of emotions, and none of them were good. In a braggadocio moment the night before he swore he’d stand by Jesus even if he had to die for him. He was ready to draw his sword and do battle to protect his rabbi, but when the temple police slapped the cuffs on Jesus, Peter ran away like the others. Then he denied he was Jesus’ disciple. I don’t think this was calculated. I think fear just oozed out of him before he knew what he was saying.

The gospels tell us Peter wept bitterly that night. I imagine him slumped in some dark, dirty corner of  Jerusalem ally, his head between his knees, his body heaving with sobs. What were those tears about? Shame and self-loathing when a man sees himself as being weak and cowardly? Disgust at his own hypocrisy? Grief for the certain death of the friend, teacher, and leader whom he so dearly loved? Utter despair and disillusionment for the movement which promised to be about joy and liberation, but which has turned out to be about nothing at all?

But then came Easter. Peter encountered the risen Jesus and something in him was resurrected too. Peter became like an addict who has conquered addiction. Like a woman escaping an abusive partner. Like a bankrupt starting over. Like a hostage set free. In the power of Christ’s resurrection, he shed the demons of fear, shame, guilt, and self-doubt and became the rock Jesus had prophesied he’d become. He’d become a real adult—whatever his chronological age might’ve been at that moment.

It’s believed he eventually left Judea and Galilee to share the joy he found in Jesus around the Mediterranean world. His journey took him to Antioch in Syria, across the sea to Corinth in Greece, and finally to Rome.

By the time the epistle we call 1 Peter was written (probably sometime in the late 90’s of the Common Era), Peter would be dead. It’s doubtful the Galilean fisherman could write in such sophisticated Greek, so the letter was probably composed by a disciple who had known Peter in Rome.

The letter would’ve been written to that Roman church, and I’m sure that congregation could relate to Peter’s story. Some of them may have lived through the Great Fire of 64 CE and seen everything they owned destroyed. They may have known the terror of flaming death all around them with no place to run, escaping only by crawling through the sewer. They certainly knew the grief of losing beloved leaders as both Peter and Paul would be executed by the imperial authorities. They also knew disappointment as they waited for Jesus’ return and Jesus appeared to be taking his good, sweet time about coming back. Worst of all, they were living under persecution for their faith, marginalized and even criminalized for loving the Savior they’d never met in the flesh.

But through all of this, they received the outcome of their faith just as their leader Peter had done. Some may have been peasants, and some were even slaves, but they loved Jesus and knew Jesus loved them. In turn, they could love one another. They could rejoice even in their suffering because the earthly authorities which took Peter from them could not take away their baptism, their love, or their hope.

What is the outcome of our faith? I like to think it’s real maturity—a maturity which leads us to be like those early Christians who so resonated with Peter’s story. We are to be a community of love; forgiveness for ourselves and others; courage in the face of chaos, doubt, and uncertainty; selflessness; and, finally, peace.

May your faith bring you to that peace, my friend. Thanks for visiting my blog this week.

 

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[i] If you’d like to learn more about this, I suggest you check out Elaine Pagel’s wonderful book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2003)

All Shook Up! (Reflections on the Resurrection of Our Lord, 2026)

 

Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Matthew 28:10)

I love Matthew’s story of Jesus’ resurrection (Matthew 28:1-10). Of course, I love all four gospel accounts of the resurrection, but each account has some cool, unique details which are just the pickles and onions on the cheeseburger of the narrative. In Matthew’s gospel—for me, anyway—it’s the earthquake. You see, I lived a big chunk of my early life in beautiful southern California where the sun shines, the tacos are authentic, and the ground shakes with uncomfortable frequency.

The biggest quake I can recall was the Landers/Big Bear quake, which scored a 7.2 on the Richter Scale, and woke me from a pretty sound sleep on the morning of June 28, 1992. On that particular Sunday morning I was living in North Hollywood and playing host to my buddy Rich who was visiting from Wisconsin. Rich and I had been out pretty late Saturday night as was our custom back in those days. When the quake subsided—and it seemed like it took forever for the earth to stop its noisy hula dance—I got out of bed and went to the guest room to check on my friend. Rich was sitting bolt upright in bed, not moving a muscle, and staring straight ahead with eyes wide open like the headlamps of a Ford Bronco. I will never forget that look, and I imagine that’s what the guards at the tomb must’ve looked like after the earthquake on that other Sunday morning so long ago.

As I think about it, the ground didn’t need to shake on that Sunday. The very presence of Jesus of Nazareth among us was an earthquake in itself. When the earth moves, the landscape changes, structures which look permanent crumble, and walls topple down.

Jesus was an earthquake.

Jesus tore down old structures and broke down barriers. The sick and lame were no longer wretches cursed by God, but brothers and sisters worthy of God’s love. Foreigners were no longer unclean infidels, but recipients of mercy and part of God’s family. The meek and the powerless were the heirs to God’s Kingdom. Arcane rules of purity didn’t make anyone righteous. Righteousness came from embracing the love Jesus came to give. The righteous were not meant to rule, but to be ruled by God’s Holy Spirit—not to be served, but to be servants to the needy.

While the guards stood there like zombies, the women were given a commission: “…go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’”

Jesus has gone on ahead. I’ve always found that phrase to be exceptionally meaningful. Jesus has gone on ahead of us, and there is no place we’ll ever go that he hasn’t been. Jesus has visited loss and grief. He’s been to the place of betrayal and abandonment by those he trusted and loved. He’s taken a full guided tour of mockery and shame and humiliation. And he knows his way around pain, despair, loneliness, temptation, incapacity, and imminent death. He’s been through it all.

And God raised him from the dead.

Saint Paul asks us:

“Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 6:3-5)

 

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were an earthquake which shifted the ground of human history. Within a single generation people on three continents were worshiping the itinerant, peasant rabbi from Nazareth as their Lord and Savior. Masters and slaves were eating at the same table. An empire which looked unshakable would go in time from persecuting the followers of Jesus to embracing his cross. Jesus rocked the world.

How does Jesus rock your world? Are you like those guards who knew about this wonder but became like dead men, unmoved and unmoving? Or will you be like the women who, though filled with both fear and joy, went forward with a mission to others?

You have to admire the two Marys in this tale. They may have been scared, and they were doubtless gob smacked by this freaky thing which they’d experienced. But—God bless ‘em—they took off anyway. They had a mission to bring hope to a bunch of cowardly men who were probably wallowing in despair and grief and self-pity, believing everything they’d lived for for the last three years had just landed in the dumpster. These gals hadn’t seen any proof for the mission they were sent on, but they started off anyway in faith, and they found Jesus on the journey. I bet that rocked their world. And for the last two millennium, Jesus has continued to shake things up.

Lord, you who have the power to shake the world and change the course of history, give us the living faith to be your servants, to take up your mission to the needy, the despairing, and the confused. Inspire us on our journey and let us find you on the way. May we see you in our neighbors and in those in need. May your peace, which passes our ability to understand it, keep our hearts and minds in you. Amen.

Happy Easter, my friend. Thanks for reading.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

 

Doing the Dirty Work (Reflections on Maundy Thursday 2026)

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)

Some years back, at a pancake breakfast fundraiser for one of the veterans’ charities my wife supports, I had the honor of sharing a table with the newly elected US congressman for our district, Representative Andy Kim. I found Congressman (now Senator) Kim a very affable fellow, although, being accompanied by his small son Austin, the congressman’s focus during that meal was making sure his boy ate his pancakes in a manner befitting a young gentleman. While Mr. Kim busied himself with parenting, I had a delightful conversation with one of his staffers, a bright young man whose name I’ve long since forgotten.

Much more memorable for me than that pancake breakfast was the TV news image of Rep. Kim on the late afternoon of January 6, 2021. There he was, a member of the United States House of Representatives, dressed in suit and tie, kneeling on the floor of the US Capital rotunda, picking up garbage left by the rioting horde which ransacked and desecrated that building on that horrible day. I guess Mr. Kim’s mom taught him he shouldn’t ignore a mess and expect someone else to clean it up. Neither should anyone who believes in equality ask anyone to do something he’s not willing to do himself.

But much more shocking than a US congressman picking up trash is the image of our Lord and Savior on his knees, washing the dirty, sweaty feet of his all-too-often clueless disciples—even the one who he knew was about to rat him out to the authorities. Our Maundy Thursday gospel (John 13:1-17, 31b-35) tells us Peter was pretty freaked out seeing his beloved and esteemed rabbi doing the dirty work assigned to a slave or the lowest person on any household totem pole. I’ll bet the others were weirded out by this too, but the evangelist doesn’t tell us. But Jesus explained this act of service—an act others might see as degrading—was a demonstration of how he expects us to live our lives. We are to love as he loves: without hierarchy or judgment. We are to love others as ourselves. We can no longer demonize or vilify. We can’t say the poor deserve what they get. We can’t look down on anyone. We are to love, forgive, assist, and share.

I always wonder what the mood was like around that Passover table. Jesus’ buddies surely knew something was about to go down. After all, their rabbi had made a pretty big fuss in town on Sunday with all that palm waving and cloak throwing and riding into town the way the prophet said a king would arrive. And then there was his act of civil disobedience in the temple—kicking out the moneychangers and welcoming the sick and lame. He’d started teaching right there in the temple, too. This was the Big Time—the wandering teacher from hick Nazareth was playing the Palace. Were the disciples shivering with anticipation or quaking with dread?

Luke tells us Jesus was longing to eat this holiday meal with his friends.[i] It would be the last Passover seder they’d share together. No matter what was going on in the world outside, and no matter how the disciples were feeling about it, I think Jesus approached that holiday with a sense of joy recalling its meaning. The meal couldn’t be eaten without recalling God’s goodness and faithfulness. God saved God’s people from slavery in Egypt, sustained them as they wandered and complained their way through forty years in the wilderness, gave them prophets, and brought their exiles home from Babylon. God had a track record of coming through even when the prospects looked as murky as a backed-up septic tank.

We’re told that as Jesus broke the bread that night, he gave thanks. You’d wonder what he was giving thanks for, considering he was about to be betrayed, abandoned, arrested, beaten, mocked and crucified. But Jesus was thankful. I imagine he was thankful for God’s unfailing presence even in the midst of chaos and grief. And he was thankful for the ones he loved, for the disciples to whom he demonstrated a radical form of servant-love. As Jesus and the disciples ate that last meal in remembrance of God’s faithfulness, so we eat it now in remembrance of Jesus’ self-emptying love for us.

We call the night when we share this feast Maundy Thursday—the Thursday of Christ’s mandate. It’s the night when he gave us two commandments. First, that we eat this meal to remember not only God’s power to deliver God’s people, but to remember how Jesus suffered to deliver us. Second, when we come together around this table, we are reminded of Jesus’ command to love one another as servants—even if that means sometimes we have to do the dirty work.

A blessed Three Days, my friend. May Christ’s love shine in your heart. Come back and visit me again or—better yet—leave me a comment.

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[i] See Luke 22:15-16.

It Was Quite a Rally (Reflections on Palm Sunday 2026)

 

“Tell the daughter of Zion,

Look, your king is coming to you,

    humble and mounted on a donkey,

        and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Matthew 21:5—quoting Zechariah 9:9)

 

So, did you hear about the March 28 “No Kings” rally? I’m writing this post before the event, but I’ll bet it’s going to be one epic shindig—actually a bunch of epic shindigs all across the country. I don’t have to tell you that lots of people are pretty upset these days. It seems our government has decided to start a war without asking our elected officials for permission. There’s also been no small amount of public ire over the way untrained goons have been dispatched into our city streets with, apparently, unlimited authority to harass anyone who speaks English with an accent. The President thinks we should all bring our birth certificate and passport (assuming you have a passport) to the polls in order to be allowed to vote. And, of course, prices—particularly gasoline prices—are shooting up like a bottle rocket dipped in gasoline. (This last is particularly irksome to Americans as even a ten cent per gallon increase at the pump is historically received as if it were a crime against humanity!) All considered, it’s not hard to see why folks have taken to the streets to register their displeasure.

I think we can well sympathize with the folks who came out in mass for a demonstration in that Jerusalem street back in 33 AD. They were none too happy with their rulers. They were living under occupation by a foreign empire whose big chief expected to be worshiped like a god. Their governor had no respect for their culture. Pontius Pilate once robbed their temple treasury for a building project and had his secret police beat the living snot out of the people who gathered to protest.[i] Roman taxes were pretty high, too, and the tax collectors weren’t exactly the most honest civil servants you could ask for. There was a lot of corruption and a lot of anger in those streets, and it didn’t take much for a riot to break out.

Every year, just around the time of the spring equinox, we Christian re-enact one of those public demonstrations. This one, however, was actually peaceful—but it was no less political. You know Jesus knew exactly what kind of statement he was making when he rolled into town on that donkey[ii]. He knew folks would be familiar with Zechariah 9:9[iii] They’d recognize the rabbi riding the donkey was doing something they expected a true king to do. At least that’s what their prophet had told them:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The folks must’ve caught on to the symbolism because they start shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Hosanna” was originally a phrase which meant “Help us, please!” The people were sending out an S.O.S. indicating they were none too pleased with the way things were going and they begged Jesus to save them from the goat rodeo that was life under Roman occupation and the religious authorities collusion. To drive home the point, they call Jesus the “Son of David.” David, of course, was Israel’s greatest king back in the good old days before the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions and the country’s subsequent subjugation to other neighborhood bullies. Back when Israel was the meanest dog on the block and didn’t take guff from anyone. Jesus, as we know, was born in the family of David[iv], so you can see why people were expecting some pretty radical stuff from him—as if Jesus’ teachings weren’t radical enough!

All of this kingly hoopla about Jesus must’ve given the local authorities a real wedgie. But then, just in case the street demonstration was too subtle for the ruling class, Jesus entered the temple and performed a pretty wild act of civil disobedience. He chased out the money folks who were ripping off the peasants and invited into God’s house the blind and the lame—the folks the authorities looked at as sinners cursed by God. Jesus then provided these marginalized people free healthcare.

This “Pro King” rally back in 33 AD was certainly a political statement in its time. An abused and discontented people looked at Tiberius Caesar and said, “Not my emperor!” They were fed up with the cruelty and corruption and greed they saw in Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, and all the other big shots. What they wanted was a king who loved them and would rule in mercy and righteousness.

Every year we in the Church reenact this famous street protest. We wave the palm branches and sing “Glory, Laud, and Honor” to the one whose kingdom is not of this world, but whose kingly authority is meant to rule in our hearts. As obedient subjects of this king, we strive to love everyone, even those with whom we disagree. We are to practice humility, kindness, forbearance, mercy, charity, inclusivity, generosity, and hospitality. If the rulers of this world aren’t into those things, we who are ruled by Christ will press on with them anyway. For us, the demonstration never ends.

Keep singing, my friend. Keep believing. Keep on keeping on.

 

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[i] This story isn’t in the Bible, but was recorded by the historian Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities 18:60-62)

[ii] Don’t get too hung up on Matthew’s insistence that there were two donkeys. Jesus wasn’t a trick rider. This was likely a mistranslation of the Zechariah text Matthew was quoting.

[iii] Actually, there was no “9:9” in those days. The Bible verses were numbered hundreds of years later.

[iv] See Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38.

Even if it Stinks (Reflections on Lent 5, Year A 2026)

 

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-27)

I phoned my friend Jerry this past week. We met years ago at the Lutheran/Roman Catholic Dialogue, and I’ve always known him to be a good dude. In fact, if you looked up “good dude” in the dictionary there should be a picture of Jerry. He’s a US Navy veteran, a retired Philadelphia police officer, and a retired religion teacher at several of the high schools in the Catholic Diocese of Philadelphia (he was even principal at one of these schools) and has been a Roman Catholic Permanent Deacon for the last thirty years. Jerry always used to come out and represent Saint Anselm’s Parish at our annual ecumenical Easter Sunrise Service. He once told a family who requested I speak at their loved one’s funeral, “I know Pastor Owen. He’s a good man. He’d make a good Catholic.” I guess to Jerry that was high praise.

But Jerry has cancer. He’s been fighting it for a long time. Now he’s seventy-nine years of age and getting really tired. And his doctors tell him the cancer drug has stopped working.

That stinks.

I think I know how his family feels. They’re probably praying a prayer similar to the one Jesus hears in the Gospel Lesson the RCL gives us for Lent 5 (John 11:1-45): “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” I’ll bet they’re praying Jesus shows up in time—not to raise a soul to heaven but to give a body a little more time here on earth. I wish I had the power with my own prayers to grant that time to Jerry.

But Jerry, who has been a minister of sorts all his life, is resting rather serenely in the promise I printed above. “Those who believe in me,” Jesus says, “even though they die, will live.” He’s cool with that.

This story from the eleventh chapter of Saint John’s gospel always has me thinking about the way we handle grief and loss. Both of Lazarus’ sisters confront Jesus with the statement, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” They both play the “if” game. It’s the same one we often play ourselves. If such-and-such had happened, or if such-and-such had not happened, the ending would be different. But Jesus has no time for ifs. He changes the question to “do you believe?” And—really—that’s the most important question of all.

Our faith asks us to believe and trust that God can give new life to things we think are already dead and stinking. We worry about the future of Christianity in America as we witness the rise of the “nones” (those with no religious affiliation) or watch as Christian Nationalist nitwits profane our faith and alienate the young by preaching intolerance as virtue. We fret about the future of our country as we see one bad decision following another made by a government of uniquely unqualified, corrupt, and rapacious nincompoops. We are right to lose sleep over a war and its collateral damage. We grow increasingly uneasy about rising prices and dwindling financial resources, and we sniff the stench of decay at times over relationships, aspirations, and our own physical and emotional health.

And yet, Jesus asks us, “Do you believe?”

Despair is, as Luther told us, a great and serious sin. But, perhaps, when we’ve reached the point of thinking something is dead and in the grave, that the raven is croaking “Nevermore,” we have not seen what God has the power to do. Doubt is a cousin to despair, but it still admits a sliver of daylight. Doubt comes when the Lord says to us, “Mortal, can these bones live?” and we answer, “O Lord God, you know,” because we certainly don’t know ourselves. Nevertheless, we admit a possibility. If we can admit the possibility we can move from despair to doubt and from doubt to hope. Hope says what we long for may not be so, but we will press on anyway as if it is. If we can move from doubt to hope, in time we may make it all the torturous way to belief. Belief says “I can’t see it or prove it, but I know in my soul the Lord God loves me and all God has made. I know with unshakable faith God is in control and God will make things anew—perhaps not the way I imagine, but beautiful all the same. God can and will—should I be willing—use me to the furtherance of God’s glorious will. This moment is temporary. God is eternal.

I wish my friend Deacon Jerry were well and strong enough to join us at sunrise on Easter this year, but even if he is not, I know that he will be with us in spirit. And I know someday we will all be whooping it up together in celebration of an Easter morning that has no end.

Keep believing. I’m so glad you stopped by!