jesus-christ

Inside-Out.

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A Gaelic Blessing                                                                                          

Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Deep peace of Christ,
of Christ the light of the world to you.
Deep peace of Christ to you.  

Epistle Lesson

Colossians 3:1-4

The New Life in Christ

3 So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, 3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Gospel Lesson

John 20:1-18

The Resurrection of Jesus

20 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Friends, here we are…Easter morning.  My morning started early!  It was dark…pitch dark.  Of course, it didn’t really start until I was able to get some coffee, breakfast, and a nice hot shower!  It’s fascinating to me that in that in-between time of waking, a threshold time of nighttime to morning, to daybreak is also a time when dreams come to us. These dreams are often very lucid dreams.  I recently had a dream where I was with two friends at the entrance of a cave.  I was kind of scared to look into the cave, it was dark and there was some kind of presence wanting to come out.  It made my hair stand on my arm…that tingling feeling.  Yet, as I do now in those dreams, I leaned into the dream and stayed with it.  I began to realize that the cave was the deepest part of me and I had to lean into this presence, which I realized in some point in this dream that it was a presence filled with wisdom and transformation…I was being confronted with something that has been born anew within me…yet, it was still disorientating and I was curious.  

Maybe we can relate…We’ve experienced being confronted with loss, disappointment, expectations dashed, or sensing something is changing within and around us in our lives and in the world.  It can be a bit scary!  When we get in touch with those moments of disorientation, we can have a notion, or an inkling, of what those early disciples were going through.  Often, we find that they are just as disoriented, just as lost, as those disciples. But, they are there for us.  Friends, in this world where church folks are leaving the church because of so many reasons…disillusionment, disappointment, and a wrongful transactional narrative of a pie-in-the-sky faith that isn’t really faith at all.  I believe it is more important than ever to remember that the church can be a great source of deep friendship and community, a gathering of people committed to leaning into the disorienting throes of life together…it’s more than what we do on a Sunday morning, or at any event.  It is a way of sharing life together. And, maybe the point of beginning Easter Sunday in the dark.  We have to go to the dark places and that can be scary and uncertain.

In our gospel lesson, Mary Magdalene was the most prominent disciple.  She had just seen their best friend, their rabbi, someone who’s words and actions drew them in, someone who they had projected their hopes and dreams on, humiliated and violently killed on a cross by a religious structure in bed with the state.  And, let’s be clear, Jesus did not go to the cross to appease a vengeful father. Jesus was nailed to a cross because he challenged a system that excluded many, while maintaining a status quo that kept some in places of servitude, while others seemingly prosper. Jesus came and demonstrated radical inclusiveness, radical friendship, and called us into lives filled with freedom, love, purpose, and deep Presence with others and with God. Jesus invited us, and still does, to deeper lives that are good for us and for others. Jesus models this life and calls us from the cross and the empty tomb to empty our lives of the things that keep us from truly loving everyone, including ourselves…and it is often the hardest to love ourselves.  

Jesus’ death was more than physical pain, that moment on the cross, Jesus was lost and disoriented as well I believe… on the cross, resurrection was probably not on his mind. He even cried out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. Many of us today have been disoriented by so much happening in our culture with wars in Ukraine, Palestine, Yemen,  and other places…economic uncertainty, political partisanship, the collapsing of so many institutions, including the church, and then adding in our own personal issues. We have felt lost, wondering where God is in all of this, if God has forsaken us.  

Yet, if we believe that God and humanity are together in Jesus, then God through the cross, is telling us that God is in the struggle with us…all of the struggle, embracing all of our lives, and the lives of those around the world and knows what it’s like to feel alone and forsaken.

Mary Magdalene, a true disciple and friend of Jesus…she was in the struggle with Jesus in his moment of forsakedness…one of only two disciples that did not desert Jesus, goes and finds the tomb empty! She runs to tell the other disciples, they go to the tomb and find it as she said…and, John, who is at least credited with writing our gospel lesson this morning, makes it clear that he’s faster than Peter!  I love the gospel narrative of John…and this phrase in John: the “disciple that Jesus loved”.  Now, scholars say that could be referencing John, or another disciple who’s writing this text, or it could mean all of humanity, or a reference to both Judaism and Gentiles…those inside and those outside.  Either way, the disciples that morning are trying to react to news that they were not expecting.  Something new had happened.  

These disciples ran to the tomb in the dark.  Into this cave, this dark place, this crypt, probably also with the hairs on their body standing up!  And, again, they came to that morning, and we come to Easter morning in the dark.  Easter comes to us in the darkest of times often. 

Into these moments of being in the dark is when the impossible becomes possible, when, like Mary, we hear a voice that we don’t recognize at first call our names.  It may take a bit to hear deeply, but then we hear God calling us from deep inside and outside of us and we are awakened to a new reality, that God is with us as we look into the tombs, the dark caves, of our lives in the midst of the darkness to find a deeper illumination, a light, a love that connects us to our suffering and the suffering of the world, and also gives us the hope that resurrection, growth, promise, and, yes, new life, springing up within us.  

Mary, overcome by grief…stays, she is weeping, struggling, in the dark. Yet, she stays at the tomb, letting things unfold…when she finally hears, really hears, this gardener and sees that he is Jesus,  then, the joy of Easter possibility, Easter imagination, Easter reality rises up within her! 

Easter has so much to teach me…and us…it’s more than candy and easter bunnies (although those are great and also symbolize something), it is leaning into the darkness and finding new birth, new beginnings, new imagination and possibility rising up in all of us!

What happens next after this gospel lesson of that first morning? Well, the story gets out, the new reality sets in, people begin to see Jesus and to experience new things. Life as we know it is never the same, and it becomes filled with imagination, new possibilities, strength, confidence in the face of incredible odds. Something begins to form in these early believers that moves them from the “inside-out” to change the world, starting with their own awareness as image bearers of God, as the body of Christ.  If we want to change the world, start with changing our own lives…to embrace birth from deep inside the darkness of our lives that grows out in the light of a new day…an “inside-out” flow of love and deep wisdom and transformation.  

Friends, Jesus invites us to remember that we, today, are still the body of Christ, and that this Christ is all around us and in us and we too are rising out of the tomb, out of the darkness, and into new life!  Christ has risen! 

Good.

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John 10:10-18

10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes[a] it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

Sheep are interesting.  Several years ago, when our kids were real young, we went to the United Kingdom to visit dear friends of ours:  The Mathesons, Sextons, Gravelings, and the Kenny’s.  We were supposed to stay with Andy Matheson.  When he picked us up at the train stating in Tonbridge, UK, he informed us that his son’s family had decided at the last minute to come into town and that he made other arrangements for our family of four to stay at.  It was a friends’ house who was on vacation that week and agreed that we could stay there.  I was bummed, I was looking forward to late night conversations with Andy, but I said, that it sounded great.  What he did not share with us is that the house was not simply a house, but an English manor house with over 25 rooms, including like 7 bathrooms, overlooking the Penshurst Estate. The house overlooked fields of sheep.  The sheep would go from one field to the next throughout the day.  Our kids and our British friend’s kids made it a game to try and catch a sheep…they were unsuccessful.  

I tell you this because our passages this morning are about sheep and shepherds.  I read once that you cannot very easily approach sheep…they are sheepish if you will.  They aren’t easy to heard either, unless you are their shepherd.  Shepherds, especially in Jesus’ time, spent a lot of time with sheep.  Shepherds had a way of gathering sheep, by simply calling them out.  Sheep will follow the shepherd because they recognize the shepherd’s voice.  They trust that voice.

In this passage, we are sheep, you and I together.  It’s obviously a metaphor, but much like the beauty of the landscape at Penshurst, that English estate, we are live together in a beautiful world.  We also produce a lot of smelly and messiness.  Our relationships with each other are filled with craziness at times, we don’t always follow or lead each other well.  There are dangers around us, and sometimes there are other forces out there, thieves such as depression, loneliness, selfishness, pride, or addictions, or folks not being the best version of themselves, or fully understanding themselves or others that come in the middle of darkness as it says in John 10:10 that kill and destroy the lives that we were called to live.

There are also systems in this world that want to steal and destroy our lives…to make us less than human, to distrust, live in fear or anger.  These systems have voices, you hear them in media and from many so called leaders and persons who have power and/or wealth and want to protect their status.  That’s been true throughout history really.  But those voices of systems of the world diminish us.  

Yet, Jesus tells us that he has come to give us life.  When we slow down, or get caught up in recognition of good things around us and the origin of that goodness, we can recognize the voice of the true shepherd, the voice of Jesus who has entered in the fields of our lives, who walks with us and towards us…walking through the messiness to call us towards new fields, new adventures.  

We often recognize the voice of Jesus through others.  Maybe we literally hear words from Jesus through others such as a speaker, or maybe even a preacher.  Or maybe we recognize the voice of God through something we read, or a song we hear.  Maybe it’s listening to our neighbors as our church is doing.  Or, maybe it’s seeing someone else practice charity through actions or giving themselves away.

We know it when we see it and hear it though, especially as we train our eyes and ears to see and recognize the true shepherd.

Friends, we have said it before, we are living in a new place with church.  The old forms simply don’t work anymore.  The world is crying out for us, the church, to be an example of goodness, of the good shepherd, to be reflections of Jesus’ actions and to reflect and amplify the voice of the Shepherd who is calling us towards him, towards abundant life, towards being one flock.  This shepherd has laid down his life for us, yet in doing so, has overcome all of the messiness in our lives and is creating something new and beautiful as he leads us into new fields, filled with beauty and relationship.

So, let’s listen to the voice of the Shepherd, let’s love each other well, and let’s play in the fields of the neighborhood around this church, as well as the neighborhoods in which we live in Cincinnati, and the world.  Let’s work towards being the diverse, yet unified flock God’s marked us out to be…we can do this, we can believe in each other as my grandfather did with me and God does with us, trusting each other, loving each other, and growing in the ways that God intends in the process.

Endgame.

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Jeremiah 31:31-34

A New Covenant

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

John 12: 20-33

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

27 “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30 Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people[a] to myself.” 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

My kids have an amazing memory.  Especially my son when he was younger.  If I promise something to him, or even hint at a promise.  He doesn’t forget.  If something comes up and we have to possibly be flexible, Brennan will simply say, “but you promised” and that’s the end of that for him.

If you are a parent, you know that it’s not always easy to keep your promises to your kids, try as you might, you simply can’t always do it.  Grace then becomes a necessary gift to demonstrate and teach!

Our Old Testament lesson is about the promise, or covenant, of loving relationship.  God has made promises to the people of Israel.  A covenant of deliverance from Egypt, which God delivered on.  Now the Israelites find themselves in exile in Babylon.  God tells them that he has new promises for them.  A covenant of abundance, of Presence, of blessing, of relationship.  In this passage, God uses the term husband.  Now, this is not meant to be patriarchal, but it was written a few thousand years ago, and the author is trying to convey something deeper than a masculine or feminine expression.  This is a word of deep relationship, of connection, of relationship.  The author is saying that God has made a commitment to Israel, to us, God is with us in relationship.

The passage goes on to say that God’s law will be put on our inward parts, on our hearts.  It will no longer be about following a set of rules written in stone, but they will be placed on our hearts, they will become a part of us and lived out.  

This is demonstrated to us by Jesus.  Jesus embodied the law as we have said before.  God’s covenants to us are fulfilled through Jesus in deep and powerful, and loving ways.  We are called to cultivate, to discipline ourselves to follow Jesus, or, rather, to know what it means to “live in Christ”. But, this discipline is essential in growing in our understanding of our true selves as created, redeemed, and sustain by God.  The root word of discipline even comes from disciple.  A disciple is a student, a follower of Jesus.  Now, Jesus also reminds us alter, that being a disciple leads to be a friend of one another and of God’s at the Last Supper.  Living in Christ, and being a friend of Jesus is more about being than doing.  It’s living out the Presence of God that is within and all around…and cultivating an awareness of our deepest identity that is in Christ.  

In our gospel lesson, we hear Jesus talking to some Greeks, probably Greeks who were seeking to know more about God, who were drawn to Jesus’ teaching because it had power and demonstrated a challenge to the current system that governed culture.  Jesus shares with them a hard thing to hear.  That in order for something to grow, it has to die.  He goes on to say that you have to lose your life to gain it.

This is hard to hear, yet true.  When I was a kid, we lived on about 7 acres.  My uncle lived next door and had a few more acres of land.  We shared a large garden that was about 1/2 the size of a football field.  Every year, in the fall, the plants and veggies in the garden would die and go back into the ground.  He had a larger farm with cows.  In the spring, we would go to the cow field where we had a manure pile.  I hated this job, but we’d load up a bunch of smelly manure and spread it on our garden.  Before that we would have tilled the ground to loosen it up and to churn up all of the dead plants into the ground.  It was hard work, but when did that, planted the seeds, and then put the manure all over it, the nutrients that came from the smelly waste, would cause the ground to produce life.  In order to do some of the more mundane chores, I would simply have to follow my dad and uncle’s lead, and live in a trust that they knew what they were doing, yet I benefited from great food and I learned a lot.  

Jesus is calling us to be truly human and to grow.  The way of Jesus can be hard, it requires trust, sometimes we have to spread some manure, till the ground.  Yet, seeds are constantly being planted in our lives and in the lives of others that produce beautiful things.

Friends, we may have gone through some difficulties, or death, in the past…or even right now, we may be dealing with addictions, with broken relationships, or strained relationships out of the pandemic and the tumultuous years we’ve gone through, maybe we have experienced betrayal even, having been betrayed or the betrayer.  We may have a physical set back or even death.  We have fears, anxieties.  Yet, I’m here to tell you that’s part of life, it smells, it’s hard.  God does not cause bad things to happen, but know that God is working to produce good things, to restore relationship, in all of it.  If we can trust God, then we may be able to see and to hear what God may want to pull out of the waste, out of death. 

That’s hard for some.  I know there are probably some folks in this room who are ready to give up on their life with God and maybe even giving up on church.  I’d love to tell you about a God who is giving you, and giving Westwood First Presbyterian new promises of life.  Our future with God is filled with God’s intimate presence with us as we practice disciplining ourselves through community with each other, through reading the scriptures with new eyes, through practices such as contemplation, lectio divina, listening, sabbath, and service.  We will be starting some new things this spring with our adult education, which we will call the “Westside Abbey @ Westwood First Presbyterian,” where we will be cultivating some of these practices and teachings.  The word Abbey means “joy” in its Hebrew roots…it also denotes a space set aside for spiritual growth.  God is calling us to cultivate a life and love with radical inclusion in our communities and within ourselves.  There is grace, and there is trust…both go towards growth.

The title of this sermon is “Endgame”.  My son and I used to watch the Marvel movies when they came out, so I thought of that movie!  

Jesus talks about the “endgame” in the gospel passage.  But, it’s not like the endgame in Avengers.  Jesus is not a super hero in the way that we imagine super heroes.  He is not crushing enemies.  He is following the way of humility, of emptying, of dying, which is much more powerful than any Avengers movie storyline.  It’s a storyline of practice that has changed my life, your life, and the world.  

Jesus knew this, Jesus also knew that he had to die.  He died because of his challenge of a system that kept all of us enslaved to a way of life that was getting us nowhere…yet Jesus overcame that system, challenged that system, and invites us to love our neighbors as he did…Jesus even overcame death and is alive today, giving us hope that as he is lifted up, we are lifted up with him and are able to live full lives forever with him.  The Ruler of the world in this passage is both Caesar and a deeper ruler, some would call Satan or evil systems…Jesus came to usher in a new reality that is both spiritual and material.  A new way of living.   

Let us be a church that lives out this radical call on our lives to follow Jesus by living in Christ.  That in knowing our identity in Christ, we don’t have to force our God on others, just love others well and allow God to be shown through us!  

Lifted.

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John 3:14-21

14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

This is the word of the Lord; 

Thanks be to God

SERMON                     “Lifted.”

Sermon:

When our kids were little, we would take them rock climbing.  It was always a fun outing!  We would usually go to Yellow Springs, OH where they have some great cliffs for climbing (as well as good restaurants and Young’s Dairy for ice cream!).  Our kids loved to climb, and our son still does…but, back then, it often meant me or Debbie belaying them at the bottom and lifting them up the cliff wall…they were pretty light then, so fairly easy!

This morning we’re talking about being lifted up…we want to be lifted up in our everyday lives, out of the mundane, the ordinary, the routine.  We so often get caught up in days upon days of wondering, is this it?  Is this all there is to life?  We get caught in ruts where we possibly make decisions or begin to think in ways that are not helpful.  Oftentimes, these decisions and thoughts, especially when made in isolation or without a sense of intentional and positive growth, change, or maturity could lead to patterns that don’t move us forward. 

This is true in our own lives, as well as our life together as a community of faith.  It happened to Israel.  They were stuck in the desert, both physically and metaphorically.  They were losing faith and getting tired.  Which, I get, especially coming through the pandemic.  So many folks are tired, weary, ready to move on…and, in the midst of this, relationships have shifted.  Some, including many in this church, have grown.  Some not.  Isolation became more apparent.  And, the mental and emotional toll is huge on a lot of folks. 

The Israelites decided to look for fulfillment in behaviors that led to living in a way that was not healthy and did not reflect their being made in God’s image.  They also turned on each other.  Friends, we know that before the pandemic, our culture was divided, isolation has always been with us…and we know folks have turned to violence, destructive patterns, looking for ways to make sense of the changes, going after conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, and many have gone after other distractions, some not so bad, some that could lead towards something potentially destructive if not moderated.

Good questions for us as a church universal, not just here at Westwood First Presbyterian Church but everywhere, are: “Have we gotten tired of waiting on God, of having faith?  Have we sought after other things such as consumer-based church where we chase after program after program or worry about worship styles?  Have we chased after theologies and ideologies that are more closely related to cultural systems rather than radically challenging those systems?  Have we become more focused on ourselves and our way of doing things rather than practicing hospitality and reconciliation with our community?”  I wonder what folks in this community, or the communities in which we live, think of Westwood First Presbyterian or the church universal. 

Within this tiredness or rut that the church finds itself in, and in the ruts of our every day that lead us to make personal decisions that may not be healthy, we get to the point where we finally realize and hope for something more.  We want to be lifted up.

God wants to lift us up, but it starts with us looking towards God inside of us and all around us for deliverance rather than the systems of this world or the unhealthy places we may find ourselves.

With Israel, God told Moses to put up a pole with a snake on it.  He did and folks were saved from death.  Now, I’m not sure of all the symbolism of a snake on a pole, but I do believe that the writer of this story was saying that Moses went to God and God gave Moses a sign.  In antiquity, snakes shed their skin and could be symbols of new growth, regeneration.

Our gospel lesson finds the writer referring to this Old Testament lesson and saying that Jesus is being lifted up and we are called to look to him for deliverance, for justice, regeneration, and for the way to live. 

As Christ is lifted up, literally on a tree at calvary, but also lifted up daily in our lives, we find our salvation.  Friends, because Christ shares with us in our humanity and Christ is also eternal in Christ’s being, we find that our identity is wrapped up in Christ.  As Christ is lifted up, we are also lifted up.

Colossians 3:3 gives more evidence of this, “our lives are hid in God through Christ”.  We are being lifted up with Christ and Christ is rising up within and around us.  Now, we may be thinking, do I want to live forever if this life is a reflection of the life eternal?  Well, the folks listening to this reading in John had an understanding of eternal that we don’t have on the surface.  Eternal means the quality of life, not just quantity.  And, eternal tied in with Christ means amazing quality that does last forever, and it starts now.

You see, Jesus is also lifted up as the one true human that we are all called to live in, just as Christ lives in us.  Now, we are not perfect, we mess up…hang out with me for a while, crawl into my head, and you may have some deep reservations about me!  Of course, the opposite is true, if I were to know your deepest thoughts and faults, I may be wanting to get out of here as well!  But, our lives are wrapped up in Christ and Christ redeems and saves all of us, our thoughts, our actions, and, well, everything.  Nothing is outside of God’s reach.

Our text this morning talks about belief.  IN our culture, we seem to put a lot of emphasis on believing the right things.  However, I would say that this text is calling us towards something deeper, trust.  We are called to trust God and even to trust each other.  Which, can be hard and we need to make sure we are wise with some folks.  But, yes, we should grow towards building trusting relationships.  Sometimes, even with the best intentions, our trust can be broken.  Yet, as we see with God, God continues to put his trust in us.  Even after Jesus is crucified, Jesus comes to his disciples and shows them amazing trust.  

As we do this, as we become “lifted up” people, we will grow stronger as persons and we will grow stronger as a church.  We have potential to be agents of good, of change, of hospitality and deep friendships as we experience God lifting up Jesus, lifting up us, and lifting up the community around us.  We are the body of Christ, called to illuminate to the world the love of God.  To all of the community, not just those that are similar to us, but everyone…that’s good news…may we all do the lifting up of Christ in this community, following Christ’s example of radical hospitality, friendship, and inclusion and, in so doing, be lifted up.