apologies that there is not a finished sermon for this week, not yet.

The computer that I usually use has decided to run so slowly as to make it nearly unusable, and an OS upgrade was needed. That brought everything else to a stand still, at least as far as writing goes.

Setting up and taking down my home on crown land had to happen on schedule. There is no forgiveness, just eviction, if I am even one day late getting out, and huge costs if I am not back in as soon as possible.

But that computer is barely running, with no real connection to the internet, yet.

The sermon is about including women as disciples.

The sermon is about healing illnesses, even those that have gone on forever, but not waiting even one day (until the Sabath is done) to heal the illness … enough suffering is enough!

The sermon is about healing the nations: the vision of the New Jerusalem gives John a view that the leaves of the 12 trees, which produce fruit (ie. that’s the 12 tribes of Israel, or all of Israel, or all of God’s people) … the fruit is good, but the leaves are even more important.

The leaves heal the nations.

Which is really the connection point that I wanted to use to ask:

What is it to heal?

To heal an illness?

To get to that then to ask first: what is it to fix something?

A broken bicycle, a broken window, a broken whatever (so say now, what is it to fix a broken computer!)

Then by comparison and for clarity: what is it to heal?

Take a hip replacement for example. The surgeon does not heal anything. She cuts open the leg, saws out the bone of the hip, replaces it with specialize pieces of special metal, and sews up the muscle and tissue. (maybe I could research it, or ask this special retired nurse I know, my mother, who at 80 some has recently had a hip replaced, and I would know more of the details, but his will suffice : it’s cutting, taking out, putting together, and sewing up.

Then comes the rehabilitation and the healing and the pain and the stiffness and heartache, and hip ache … which is still better than it was before.

Except sometimes it does not feel any better, and is actually worse, like one man I visited in the hospital after hip surgery. His never got better, until they opened up his hip again with cutting and slicing … to take out the forceps and sponge gauge that somehow was left in the wound.

His healing took years, first for the ability to walk, but it took longer for his ability to walk without feeling the ghost pain of that forceps digging into his muscles and that gauze, infected eating at his flesh.

Healing is a deeper, more profound event or process, that the organism itself accomplishes. Outside interference is just that, interference.

The next question moves on to the healing of the nations. That’s not just a quick fix, like sewing a broken shoulder strap with camping think waxed cord. It is a very complex event, one that usually bucks all rules, regulations and expectations.

There is another story that will taken much longer to write out to be shared. That story is a kind of “If Beale Street Could Talk?” kind of event

But I am sure that the reader could probably add there own stories of healing.

Mine is of being in a foreign country, biking everywhere, and coming down with a cold. I could hardly shake. Then the sponsors of my full scholarship to study abroad gave me good tickets to a concert downtown, a string quintet.

Mozart and other composers gave witness to the rightness of the universe.

I biked back up the hill to the Studenentheim, free of the cold.

Healing is a spiritual event. It is finding the spirit to allow the body to heal.

What would the man, ill for more than 38 years smell like, dream like hope like… be like, after he was free of the illness?

That’s us: ill for so long, needing help to heal. And we receive it, What do we do with it?

if it is healing of the nations, then we help others heal, until the whole creation sings in praise of what God has done for us.

At least that what collected for me around the desire thwarted to have a sermon ready before today. Somehow that just seems a bit

Jesus’ Story for ALL, Even Gentiles, Rulers

Refrain:

God, who is the Alpha and Omega, says to John: “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

Peter Bold and Humble; Attentive

In today’s first lesson we hear again how Peter is a leader in the church, so capable, so vulnerable, and so attentive to the Holy Spirit guiding him. Peter explains, step by step how and why he has gone to non-Jews, and accepted them as followers of Jesus.

Today’s Gospel comes from John 13, which starts with the last super. Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, Peter resists, Jesus says this is part of being Jesus’ follower, and Peter follows. Jesus sends Judas out to betray him, which Jesus says is necessary; God will be glorified in the cross.

Then comes today’s Gospel selection which includes Jesus’ central command, chosen as the theme for our Easter celebrations: that we are to love one another as Jesus loves. By this love we will be known as Jesus’ followers. To this command Peter responds that he will always follow … except Jesus says Peter will deny him three times before the cock crows.

Peter is so confident, yet his failures are so glorious. Peter is so capable; he brings Dorcas back to life. Yet the Holy Spirit needs to change Peter’s direction, with visions and wisdom.

Refrain:

God says, “To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”

Jesus, with his washing the disciple’s feet, and Peter, in his enthusiastic and misguided yet attentive following, demonstrate that in humble service and in humbling ourselves we receive the water of life.

New Jerusalem:

In our lesson from Revelation we hear that the New Jerusalem continually comes down to earth in our midst. God dwells with all his peoples. That’s plural. God dwells not just with one group, one people, but with all his peoples.

In the Lord’s Prayer we pray that God’s Kingdom will come. Luther explained in his Small Catechism that God’s Kingdom will come no matter what, but we pray that it will come to us, in our midst, and through us.

The old has passed away. The New Jerusalem is the city of Peace, where there is no more crying, no more tears, the old tears will be wiped away. We pray that our eyes will be open so that we can see the signs of the New Jerusalem coming down, in our midst.

For Peter that meant that Jesus’ love, which they exercised for one another, did not stop with their small Jewish group. God intends that their and our group, our ‘one another,’ includes all those we have previously excluded.

God sent Peter a sign, that the Gentiles he is called to visit in the Roman city of Caesarea were ‘baptized’ with the HS as were the disciples. This comes after God gives Peter a vision that what God creates is not unclean. Rather all creation is sacred, though mundane. There are no boundaries to God’s love and Jesus’ command is not limited by our definitions of who we are, and who is not us.

Refrain:

All are included in this God’s promise:

To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. In sacred visions Jesus surprises us showing us to whom God gives the water of life.

Whom do we Exclude, Whom God Includes

In 1981 Henri Nowen came to Yale for a few weeks, played volley ball with the new arriving students at the seminary, and ate in the cafeteria. He received students and staff for less than a few minutes each to dispense spiritual guidance to thirsty souls.

Nowen was a Dutch priest, professor, writer and theologian with interests rooted primarily in psychology, pastoral ministry, spirituality, social justice and community. He knew and shared well that the Holy Spirit finds us in our greatest vulnerabilities, and uses them to demonstrate God’s love, grace, and purpose for us. In his book the Wounded Healer Nowen countered the popular notion that God wants strong, clean, and perfect people to lead the Church of Christ. Rather God uses us as we are, imperfect and wounded.

Nowen knew well, as a popular writer and mentor, that his own soul was thirsty. He went to S. America to live with people of no privilege suffering great persecution. Yet he only first found God’s peace when, after meeting Jean Vanier, Nowen became a member of the L’Arche Daybreak community in Richmond Hill ON. Paired with Adam Arnett, a man with profound development disabilities, Nowen insisted, “It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship.”

The founder of L’Arche, Jean Vanier, died May 7 2019. We were reminded of how Vanier inspired so many people to include people with disabilities of all kinds in those we love, not just for their sake, but for the sake of our thirsty souls.

Jean Vanier was born into a family of Canadian diplomats and public servants. He expected to similarly serve and he started on a career as a naval officer. Then led by the Holy Spirit, his life took a different turn.

He was ordained as a priest. While working on his PhD in France, he volunteered to help his mentor work with institutionalized mentally challenged men.

There Vanier met two men and realized what they needed most from him was for him to be a friend. He invited the two men to leave the institution where they resided and live with him. Thus was born L ’Arche, which became an international organization of communities that match helpers with mentally challenged people to the benefit of everyone. Vanier taught so many people that those with disabilities do not burden us with their need for care. Rather they help us recover our humanity, giving us water for our thirsty souls.

Refrain

God says: To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Jesus sends the most vulnerable and furthest outcast to teach us, what the living water is, and how to receive it and to share it with one another.

Who is thirsty b/c we exclude

Who are the thirsty? Who in our cities, villages, and communities, because we have excluded them, are thirsty, needing the water of life?

What are we going to do about it?

Regularly we pray powerful words: “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.” As Luther reminded us in the Small Catechism, God’s good and gracious will comes about without our prayers, but we ask that it may also come about in and among us.

So we pray first, that we will recognize how Jesus includes us, when we are not worthy; that we will recognize that in our humility and vulnerability the grace of God is most visible; that we will recognize that on our brokenness Jesus builds the Body of Christ. For Christ marks us broken people not only as worthy, but also as chosen, chosen to love one another.

We then pray: that we will recognize who we exclude and leave thirsty; that we will change allowing the New Jerusalem to arrive through us for them; that we will give them living water, wash their dusty feet, stoop to give them the necessities of life, listen to them and learn from them the basics of humanity, that we will allow them to give us water for our thirsty souls.

And we also pray: that we will realize that God is glorified in our mundane service, in our being vulnerable to the messy mundane needs of the excluded; and that in our lives of loving service to the most vulnerable outcasts, indeed to all of God’s creation, others will recognize us as Jesus’ disciples … and join us.

We give God thanks that we are so privileged to be the open-armed welcoming party to those we previously excluded.

Refrain

God’s says: To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. Jesus demonstrates that in humbling ourselves and in humble service we receive the water of life. The Holy Spirit surprises us with new visions of what the water of life is. God sends the most vulnerable and furthest outcast to teach us, what the living water is, and how to receive it and to share it.

The water from the spring of life showers down on us from the New Jerusalem descending into our midst, invigorating and inspiring us also here and now to be the disciples of Jesus, the one’s known by our love for all of God’s many peoples.

Amen

Knowing plainly Jesus’ words is rarely enough. Love is required.

Waffles for Jesus

Two hungry young boys sparred with each other while eating breakfast. Finally they got to the last waffle which they both wanted. Their fight almost got ugly before their mother stepped in:

She said to them, “Didn’t you learn in SS last week that Jesus taught us to share what we have?”

So the oldest boy said to his brother “Joey, you be Jesus!”

Powerful Love, Handle with Care

As we hear Jesus’ voice and follow him Jesus calls us to love one another, just as he has loved us. This love is powerful. It can give life. Peter exercises this love and it brings Dorcas back to life. Jesus promises that no one will snatch us away or that we will eternally perish.

But like Joey’s brother we can also turn this power of love just a few degrees, and it becomes something that destroys instead of giving life. This love should come with a warning label: Handle with Care!

Revelation code Great Ordeal

In our reading from Revelation we hear the code used then to keep people and the writings safe from the destruction readily handed out by Rome to Christians. The great ordeal is code for the persecution that cost many their lives before Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 AD.

Every generation faces it’s own great ordeal. Often the ordeal is not openly recognized, but it sits hidden in plain view like an elephant in the room.

Franz Lost

Franz stood looking at his boss in disbelief. Two weeks before his girlfriend had broken up with him, telling him he was a loser. He believed her because his big investment with all his savings had turned out to be a scam and he’d lost everything. Then he found out that his girlfriend had been seeing his best friend for at least a month and she had taken the money he’d given her to pay the rent. The fridge and cupboards were almost bare.

Then this morning his boss told him he was fired, even though he was good at his job. It was the last straw. He simply did not know what to do.

Shepherd of (dumb) Sheep

When we hear that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, we often forget what an insult it is to be compared to sheep. Sheep are just dumb.

Growing up on a farm with sheep, I watched as my brother showed me how dumb sheep can be. In the evening, herding them into the safety of the barn through a narrow door, my brother put a pitchfork handle a foot off the ground in front of the third sheep coming in through the door. She jumped over the handle as did all the rest of the 100 sheep, even though the handle was already removed after the tenth sheep was safely in the barn.

It is no accident that Jesus compares us to sheep, and that we need a Good Shepherd to guide us to what is important in life, and to save us from what robs life from us.

Franz’ Dark Plan

Unemployed Franz came up with a plan, a dark plan. He was done and no one would miss him. He went on to the group chat that he’d been on for a few years, to say good bye, that he was moving on. He could have just headed out on his last walk, but he remembered what Aaron had said.

Aaron’s Light

Aaron, as a young boy, had lived through a pogrom. His father was intent on not just feeding his family, but also on keeping the Sabbath, which always included the lighting of a candle. When their last candle was gone, the father used some of their meager ration of butter and a piece of string to make a candle. Aaron had said it was foolish to use precious food for a candle. His father replied, “Without food we can survive a week. Without faith we wouldn’t survive an hour.” ( SERMONSHOP, August 5, 2000, Bill Adams Trinity Episcopal, Sutter Creek, CA reworked TL).

When Aaron had greeted Franz, they were just strangers in the grocery store exchanging kind words. Then as Franz was paying at the checkout, Aaron came walking back into the store, to thank Franz, and to say good bye.

Aaron was moving to another city, but it was important to say good bye, anyway, as Aaron said so often, “It helps us remember the light of life.”

Moderator interrupts

Remembering Aaron’s words, Franz decided one last visit on-line would be the right way to say good bye. No one on line seemed to notice him saying good bye. Franz was ready to sign off when the moderator popped in and asked him to meet her in a private chat in a half hour. She had something she wanted to get his input on. So Franz waited with his last plan.

As we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice and follow him Jesus calls us to love one another, just as he has loved us.

Price of Love, a Mother’s Love: I’ll go with you.

Even when we seem to be totally lost, the Good Shepherd sends someone to save us, to feed us and give us living water, to protect us from the ravages of sin. The price Jesus paid is high. Sometimes when Jesus sends us to love one another with that love, the love of a mother, the price is just as high.

During the Holocaust the Nazis worked people in concentration camps until they could no longer work, before they executed them. A father and mother, among the many, were crowded in with their two children. The older had a deformed leg since birth. Every day, the mother and two children were taken to one work site and the father to another. One night the father returning to their wood bunk found only his one son. “What happened?” he asked. The surviving child said that his brother had collapsed, so the guards had ordered him to be taken away. He clung to his mother’s skirt, sobbing. She picked him up and, holding him close to her, said, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll go with you.” Mark Daniels, Do Not Worry!

The Watch, a day at a time

As we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice and follow him Jesus calls us to love one another, just as he has loved us. Our love can make all the difference in the world.

When the moderator met Franz in their private chat she said she needed Franz’s help with a project. Franz knew this kind of work inside out. He easily sorted the confused plan of the moderator into something workable.

Franz was about to summarize the modified plan to the moderator, when she had to sign off. She asked Franz if they could meet again tomorrow to finish the plans. The plans turned into some work for Franz, not much at first, but enough to pay for food and rent. Before long Franz was the project’s manager.

A year later the moderator told Franz that she had noticed he was in a dark place, and had kept a suicide watch on him. Franz was surprised that she’d seen through him, but he thanked her, and asked her how he could repay her. She said “pay it forward as she had”. She taught him everything she could about keeping a suicide watch on anyone who seemed to be at risk. It was a skill, she said, that had saved people in more than 5 generations before it saved her, and always people had paid it forward to others in need.

Franz still does not know the moderator’s real name or where she lives. But he knows she kept him alive through the valley of the shadow of death, and more. Against all odds she kept him from hunger, saved him from despair, and showed him how to give life to so many people around him.

As we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice and follow him Jesus calls us to love one another, just as he has loved us. Our love can save lives.

Against all Odds: Jake

In her book The Spark Kristine Barnett tells the story of her son Jake.

At age 2, Jake started to crawl into his shell, because he was autistic. Once this had been diagnosed, everyone predicted what was not possible including that in just a few years Jake would not speak or communicate at all.

Kristine simply would not believe it. She did everything she could to give Jake exactly what he was most interested in, not what others told her she should. Instead she did everything that she dared to do. It was a lonely, difficult, and unrewarding road for years. It seemed it would never end.

Then, at age 16, we see little Jake, a small boy for his age, standing and talking with the professor. Jake then joins one of the groups of college students working on the difficult problem the professor has given them. In his group Jake stands at the whiteboard and writes a bit and then, giving the other students leading questions, entices and invites them to understand what he sees clearly … in a multitude of ways.

Soon one and two students from the other groups come across to Jake’s board. Not too much later most of the students are there listening, eagerly absorbing what Jake offers to them, until first one, then another, and then most of them, nodding understanding, return to their own whiteboards to work through the problem before them.

Jake is one of the most brilliant minds of this century.

And we almost lost him completely.

As we hear the Good Shepherd’s voice and follow him Jesus calls us to love one another, just as he has loved us. Our love can give the world gifts it would otherwise never know.

Jesus Knows Us: Breath, be Bold.

Whatever the challenge is that we face, more important than us hearing, following and loving as Jesus does, is that Jesus knows us. Jesus the Good Shepherd will protect us, comfort us, guide us. Jesus knows us completely and still loves us. Then Jesus sends us out to be the voice, the hands, the feet, the rod and the staff of Our Good Shepherd to one another.

Amen