Fourth Sunday after Pentecost / Lectionary 14A

John 8:31-36

Romans 6:12-23

Usually, we hear this gospel passage on Reformation Sunday, but it came to mind when I was preparing to preach on Paul’s letter to the Romans where he writes about slaves of sin becoming slaves to righteousness.

In the gospel, Jesus is addressing a group of Jews who have believed in him, and they say, “We have never been slaves to anyone.” (John 8:33)

Apparently, they had forgotten that two thousand years before this, their ancestors had been enslaved in Egypt under Pharaoh. And because they didn’t see themselves as enslaved, they struggled to see the meaning of the freedom that Jesus offered.

In our American context “slavery” recalls the chattel slavery that began in 1619 and continued through the mid-nineteenth century. And similar to those first-century Christians, most of us who are white and descended from western European ancestors, would probably insist, “We [too] have never been slaves to anyone.”

But Jesus and Paul have something to say to us about that: We don’t know what we don’t know.

We think we’ve been free but we have been deceived. In verse 20 Paul addresses the illusory perception of freedom, writing that we were once free from righteousness, but that wasn’t because we were free. It was because we were still bound by sin.

The only freedom we know is under grace freely given by God in God’s mercy.

Our freedom is given to us by God through Jesus Christ. As Martin Luther wrote in his essay “The Freedom of a Christian”, “faith alone, without works, justifies, frees, and saves.”[i]

And there is no freedom apart from Jesus Christ. Everyone serves a master of one kind or another.[ii] So, we are either slaves of sin or we are slaves to righteousness. We are either slaves to human passions and addictions, or we are slaves to God and the things of God. There is no third way here.

Remember when Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”? (Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34) We’ve become so conditioned to living in slavery to sin we don’t even recognize the freedom we’ve been given. When we put our gifts of time and our resources, our energy and effort into things of this world, we continue in our enslavement to the things of this world and our treasure is not in God and our hearts are not in God. But when we claim the freedom we already have in Christ, and we treasure God and the ways of God, our hearts follow.

And in Christ our eyes are opened to see that the freedom we are given is not only for ourselves. We are not free simply to exercise and protect our individual rights or freedoms; we are freed that we may love and serve others. Luther writes in that same essay:

A Christian is perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.[iii]

He continues with Paul’s own words from later in this letter: Christians “owe no one anything, except to love one another….” (Romans 13:8)

As Christians, this righteousness becomes the organizing center of our lives, a place of commitment and belonging.[iv] The center is not our country, our vocation or even our families, but God and the things of God. As one New Testament professor wrote, “Righteousness leads to increased spirituality and holiness both of heart and with each other.”[v]

Paul says here that “you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.” (Romans 6:17) The form of teaching — the very shape of discipleship — is the cross, where Jesus emptied himself, taking on all that is ours and gave up his life for us. Obedient from the heart, we become servants to the cross and to Jesus Christ who commands us to love one another.

This is heart-work that demands a high price. It demands that we let go of all that we grasp so tightly, that we might receive what God offers to us. It demands that we open ourselves to be changed from the inside out. It demands risking ourselves and trusting God is there, and that is hard!

But Paul concludes that while the wages of sin —when we stay enslaved in that world where we only think we are free from the devil and the powers that defy God — is death, the benefit of this difficult transformative work is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord: life where we know God’s abundant love and mercy for us and God’s power to heal what is withered, restore what is broken and renew what is dying.

Let us pray.

Holy and life-giving God,

Thank you for your Son Jesus who frees us from bondage even when we cannot see our shackles.

Thank you for your free gift of grace and the freedom we know in your love and mercy that renews us and gives us new life each day.

Show us how to love one another and live under the dominion of righteousness and Your ways.

We pray in the name of Your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

Amen.

[i] Martin Luther. “The Freedom of a Christian.” Three Treatises. 282.

[ii] John B. Cobb, Jr. David J. Lull. Romans. 100.

[iii] Luther, 277.

[iv] Cobb and Lull, 100.

[v] Israel Kamudzandu. “Working Preacher.” Luther Seminary. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4497, Accessed 6/25/2020.

Third Sunday after Pentecost/ Lectionary 12A

Romans 6:1b-11

Grace and peace to you.

DP Washburn once told me the story of an old preacher who was asked what the sermon was gonna to be about and when the preacher said it was gonna to be on sin, he was asked what he was going to say about it, and he answered, “I’m agin it!”

Earlier in his letter to the Romans Paul wrote, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” (5:20 NIV) And that statement is what compels the question that begins our reading today: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (6:1 NIV)

Not surprisingly, Paul answers his own question: “By no means!” (6:2)

Both the old-timey preacher and Paul’s adversaries are operating in a system where sin refers to individual actions that are good or bad, that help us climb an imaginary ladder to a better place with God or send us hurtling into the depths.

But Paul understands sin as more than our human striving or failing.

For Paul, sin is a force that corrupts God’s intentions for the world and humanity. It is the devil and all the forces that defy God, the powers of this world that rebel against God and the ways of sin that draw us away from God that we renounce at baptism. (Holy Baptism, ELW)

And so he goes on to write,

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been 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 too might walk in newness of life. (6:3-4)

Against an understanding of baptism as ‘fire insurance’ or a performative ritual, Paul reminds us that baptism is about life and death.

One lecturer suggested this week that if we took baptism seriously, we would play a funeral dirge as we approached the font for the Holy Sacrament. His reasoning was that at the font where the earthly element of water is joined with God’s Word in Matthew 28 for us, we receive the promise and treasure of new life and new life is not possible unless it is preceded by death.

I know, we don’t like to talk about death. And we certainly don’t like to voluntarily enter into it. We prize our individualism and our independence too much for that. The death Scripture describes is death to sin, what Martin Luther describes as:

death to death, by which the soul is saved and separated from sin, as also the body is freed from corruption. By this death we are bound by grace and glory to the living God. (Luther's Commentary, 101)

In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther describes the new life we receive in baptism as:

victory over death and the devil, forgiveness of sin, God’s grace, the entire Christ and the Holy Spirit with his gifts. (Book of Concord, 461)

Next, echoing Jesus own words in John 11:25 when he told his followers, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” Paul writes,

5 For if we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

The Greek translated here as “united” is better translated as “planted together with.”

Gardens, vines and growing things are common metaphors in Scripture. Often symbols of abundance and good life, in Genesis and John we are reminded that gardens are also places that contain both life and death.

In Genesis 2-3, the garden is the place where the tree of knowledge of good and evil stands and where the four rivers run that water the earth and bring life to it.

In John 18 and 19, the garden is where Jesus is betrayed and arrested and where he is buried and resurrected.

Our death to sin means “we are made completely pure and innocent in God’s eyes. The guilt of sin is washed away and we are made totally new creatures.” (Bayer, 77) But the old Adam still lives in the world and must be slayed again every day. As Luther writes, “Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, begun once and continuing ever.” (Book of Concord, 465)

If you’ve ever tended a garden, you know it can go to seed and weeds pretty quickly. Disease and infestation can kill and too much or too little rain can either rot or scorch the plants. But well-cultivated and tended, it holds so much more possibility, promise and abundance.

Our life in Christ does not mean that we escape death. But in baptism God acts upon us and makes us who we are. Our old lives and identities die and we are planted together with Christ where we are called to walk in new life (6:4), planted where we are that our lives would show God’s abundant love and mercy to the world.

Thanks be to God. 

Amen.

Second Sunday after Pentecost/ Lectionary 11A

Romans 5:1-8

Grace and peace to you.

For most of the summer, our epistles or New Testament readings will come from St. Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Rome. It is the longest of Paul’s letters, which is why it is the first one in Scripture. Scholars believe Paul wrote it between 55 – 58 CE while he was living in Corinth, and unlike some of the other epistles attributed to him, this letter’s authorship is undisputed.

While Romans is not one of the four Gospels in our canon, Martin Luther once called it “the chief part of the New Testament and the [clearest] Gospel.”[i] Luther wrote that a Christian finds most things one ought to know in this letter,

namely, what is law, Gospel, sin, punishment, grace, faith, righteousness, Christ, God, good works, love, hope, the cross, and how we are to conduct ourselves toward everyone.[ii]

A summary of Paul’s teaching to the Church, the letter

is about God's saving work in Christ for Jew and Gentile alike, both of whom fall short of doing the will of God yet receive grace and mercy from God.[iii]

Whenever we hear one of Paul’s letters it’s helpful to remember that we are not the intended audience. We are eavesdropping on a conversation he is having with another group of people.

Often Paul wrote to communities where he had planted churches and addressed specific conflicts that were happening in those places. In his letter to the Romans, while he knows some of them by name, he is writing to a community or congregation of Christians that are largely unknown to him; he is planning to go there and meet them but that hasn’t happened yet. [iv]

Because we are on this side of history, we know it never will. He will go to Jerusalem where he will be arrested and lose his freedom, and when Paul does go to Rome it will be as a prisoner of the state and not a free missionary. [v]

But that’s another part of the story.

In this letter, instead of counseling the Romans on a particular aspect of their life together, Paul addresses fundamental parts of their – and his and our – life in Christ.[vi]

And as if we found scattered pages laying on the kitchen table, we pick up the letter in chapter five.

Here Paul writes about new life in Christ and the fruits of that life.

He begins,

Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; (5:1-2)

I don’t know about you but, today, with our human sinfulness and brokenness on display throughout the world, in places of government, in intensive care beds in our U.S. hospitals and in places like Ghana where their public health officials have to fight COVID-19 with inadequate equipment, in the faces of hungry neighbors here and on the streets of places like India, this reassurance that we have peace felt like balm, soothing and restoring me.

And yet, if we only understand peace as a sense of calm and rest, we lose out on the fullness of what Paul is describing.

Peace with God is reconciliation with God. It is the peace of being in relationship with God, a relationship that only happens through Jesus Christ.

This relationship is only possible because of the grace - God’s favor or goodwill – we have received. It is never because of our works, or our efforts, but God’s own divine action upon us. Grace isn’t a transaction.

“This grace in which we stand” is the place where we are freed from sin and we are living in faith in Christ and Him alone.

Luther wrote, “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace.”[vii] Karl Barth wrote in his commentary on Romans that faith doesn’t offer us any shortcuts, but it does offer us hope that God will accomplish God’s purposes. [viii]

Continuing his letter, Paul wrote,

hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (5:5)

So maybe this peace with God, which is ours through our new life in Christ, is balm after all:

healing that comes from the Holy Spirit poured into us by God who abundantly loves us and gives us everlasting life;

and reconciliation – the restoration of relationship – that only happens when we see each other as God sees us, whole and beloved.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God, Thank you for your Son Jesus in whom we have faith. We stand in Your grace that brings hope for our lives and our world. Show us how to bear your love into the world and see our neighbors as you see us, whole and beloved. Amen.

[i] Martin Luther. “Preface”, Commentary on Romans. Translated by J. Theodore Mueller.vii.

[ii] Luther, xxv-xxvii.

[iii] Arland Hultgren. “Summary.” Enter the Bible. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=6, Accessed 6/13/2020

[iv] Anders Nygran. Commentary on Romans. Translated by Carl C. Rasmussen, 1-8.

[v] ibid

[vi] ibid

[vii] Luther, xvii.

[viii] Karl Barth. The Epistle to the Romans. Translated by Edwyn C. Hoskins. 153.

Day of Pentecost

John 20:19-23

Grace and peace to you.

Today’s Johannine Pentecost is a familiar text, if only because we heard it on the Second Sunday of Easter in a longer passage that included the story of Jesus and Thomas. The Acts passage with its imagery of fiery tongues appearing and everyone hearing God speak in their own languages is always part of our readings on the Day of Pentecost but the gospel varies, sharing different parts of the Farewell Discourse and the earlier promises that Jesus makes to send a paraclete to the disciples and to give them his peace.

On Pentecost we particularly remember that Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into his disciples and commissions all of us to continue his work of making God known in the world. Particularly this year, when we are being careful to not breathe on one another or be breathed on, we can appreciate the intimacy of that moment, receiving the very breath of God from Jesus.

And then, in verse 23, Jesus tells us what that work looks like, saying

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

In John’s gospel sin is isn’t about morality; it isn’t about being a good or bad person or knowing right from wrong. Sin is not recognizing and embracing the revelation of God in Jesus.

Luther teaches in his Small Catechism that the Holy Spirit “abundantly forgives all sins – mine, [yours] and those of all believers.”[i] It is this same Holy Spirit that sanctifies us – or makes us holy – that we may bear witness to God’s love and mercy.

And it is through the Holy Spirit, that we, as Matt Skinner writes, “can set people free from their inability to see or refusal to recognize God in the world.”[ii]

Of course, the other side of this charge is that when we fail to point to Jesus, 

when we fail to bear witness to God’s love and mercy,

we fail our neighbors and community. The world retains its sin of not recognizing God in its midst, or “grasping the knowledge of God.”

Pentecost reminds us that Jesus did not breathe the Holy Spirit on the disciples for their own sake, but for the sake of the world. As God’s people animated by God’s breath and clothed with God’s power, our freedom as Christians is always for the sake of the world.

The Resurrected Christ commissions us and sends us into the world to tend to those who do not believe, not to condemn them but that they may be saved. (Jn. 3:17)

Wherever you are gathered today as the Church, celebrating Pentecost means moving out into the world so that our neighbors will know the God who loves them. While the ways we can physically be present in each other’s lives and in the community remain limited because of COVID-19, we have not stopped being an extension of Christ’s presence in Shelby and Cleveland County.

Sometimes, we use words; we’ve installed a new banner outside the church on Lafayette Street that proclaims to anyone who passes by, “Jesus is always with you.” Other times, we share out of the abundance we’ve been given; this past week outreach volunteers voted to send $500 to the Cleveland County Potato Project which continues its mission to feed hungry neighbors here; CCPP had an opportunity to buy a surplus harvest of potatoes in Washington State and let us know that they needed partners to help fund the project.

Maybe pointing to Jesus, living the life of Jesus today, looks like sewing masks for those who need them, providing transportation for a friend or delivering groceries for a neighbor who is at risk. Maybe it sounds like a phone call to someone you haven’t seen in a long while or inviting someone to evening prayer online. I’m confident it looks like wearing a mask, standing six feet away from other people and washing our hands.

And this week after the death of George Floyd, I believe that living the life of Jesus also means naming the places where I am complicit with the ways that being white means I can run through my neighborhood, drive my car, wear a mask or a hoodie, and never fear for my life because of the color of my skin.

I confess when 17-year old Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida in 2012, I didn’t understand what it had to do with me. That happened in Florida and I was here in North Carolina. What I forgot, or could not yet see, was that we are all God’s beloved children and it doesn’t matter if the deaths happen in Florida or Georgia or Minneapolis. What wounds and kills one of us is lethal to us all. The sin of systemic racism doesn’t only shorten the lives of our black and brown siblings. It diminishes your life and mine, too.  

My prayer this Pentecost is that just as we listen for the rush of wind of the Holy Spirit we will listen to black and brown voices. Not debate, not argue, not analyze, but listen. Tonight at 8 o’clock on Facebook Live, local black pastors Donnie Thurman, Jerret Fite, Chris Gash, Billy Houze, Lamont Littlejohn, Ricky Mcluney and James Smith will be speaking and I invite you to listen with me.

Let us pray…

Come, loving and merciful God, into our lives.

Come, Jesus Christ, breathe on us and send us into the world as your witnesses.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love.

Amen.

[i] Martin Luther. Luther’s Small Catechism. Augsburg Fortress. 31.

[ii] Commentary on John 20:19-23.Workingpreacher.org, accessed 5/29/2020.

Day of Ascension

Luke 24:44-53

Grace and peace to you.

Recently a memory flew across Facebook showing my oldest daughter on a river dock after a race. Rowing is one of those sports that parents love; you spend twelve hours waiting to watch your child compete for less than ninety seconds. But I was well-practiced, because before she rowed, Casey was a gymnast. She started the sport late, at the wizened age of 10, and when she was trying to get her back handspring her coach said, “It’s always easier for the younger gymnasts. They’re fearless because they haven’t learned that falling hurts.”

This memory came back to me as I read the late author Danaan Perry’s essay, “The Parable of the Trapeze” which is in his book Warriors of the Heart. Describing life as if it were “a series of trapeze swings” Perry writes about looking forward and seeing the next trapeze bar with his name on it and knowing he will need to release his grip on the bar he has in order to reach out and grab the next one. [i]

And then he writes,

Each time, I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing I have always made it. I am each time afraid that I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between bars. I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow to keep hanging on to that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives. So, for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of “the past is gone, the future is not yet here.”

The disciples knew how much it hurt to fall, and to fail. They had witnessed the crucifixion and watched as Jesus was executed by the religious authorities. Gathered together they had tried to make sense of the news of the empty tomb that they had heard from Mary, Joanna, the other women and from Peter. Startled and terrified, they had witnessed Jesus returning to them and eating with them.

And now, they are listening to Jesus open their minds to the Scripture, and tell them he is leaving them and they are to wait for the Spirit to come to them.

Only Luke narrates the event of the ascension and he places it at the end of the same day as the resurrection. They had experienced a roller coaster of emotions – of grief, loss, fear and hesitant hope – and now, as Perry wrote, they realized, “The past is gone, the future is not yet here.”

That in-between time is transition. It is both terrifying and transformative.

We have had a lot of practice lately learning to let go of the past – what we know and love, what is familiar and treasured – and reaching into an unknown future. I know for me, some days it feels like I have a firm grip on what will happen next. And other days, or maybe even later that same day, it feels like my hand has just grazed the rung but it’s out of reach and I am freefalling.

But I’m not. I know God is with me and will keep me and sustain me, and all I can do is take the next faithful step.

At the Ascension, Jesus doesn’t vanish into a black hole or mythical abyss; in fact, he only leaves us so that we might know his presence even more fully.

Making us witnesses to all he has taught and said, he promises us that we will receive the power from on high – the Holy Spirit – and going ahead of us and leading us, he sends us into the world to tell everyone what we know:
that, in his name, “a total life-change through the forgiveness of sins” is offered to us, in the gift of grace.[ii]

In this in-between time, that sometimes feels like seconds but often feels like an eternity, Jesus is with us, leading us toward the new thing that God is doing and calling us to be.

May we open our minds and reach our hands out to receive Jesus’ blessing and leading.

Let us pray…

Holy God, Thank you for going before your people, leading us and making us witnesses to your Word.
Bountiful God, Thank you for your providing all that we need and sustaining us.
Merciful God, Thank you leading us to your grace and forgiveness by Your Word and Son Jesus.
God of Creation, Resurrection and Ascension, Clothe us from on high with the power of your Holy Spirit and encourage us to share the Good News of forgiveness and new life found in Jesus.
We pray in the name of your Risen and Ascended Son, Jesus.
Amen.

[i] “The Parable of the Trapeze” in Warriors of the Heart. Danaan Perry. http://www.earthstewards.org/ESN-Trapeze.asp, accessed May 22, 2020. Used with permission.
[ii] Luke 24:47 The Message

Sixth Sunday of Easter

John 14:15-21

Grace and peace to you.

Today’s gospel picks up where last week’s text left off. Jesus still is speaking to the disciples in his “Farewell Discourse.” He has washed their feet; he has spoken to them about betrayal and death; and he has given them the commandment to love one another, just as he has loved them. (John 13:34) Last week we heard him reassure the disciples that God is with them even in the uncertainty and disruption they are facing. (John 14:1-14)

Today’s text begins and ends with bookends of sorts:

First Jesus says “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” and then he repeats himself, saying, “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”

In both verses, the Greek verb for “love” is better translated as “keep on loving Jesus”, as in “the ones who keep on loving Jesus will keep his commandments.” And “the ones who keep his commandments are those who keep on loving Jesus.”

Some fifty-six years ago, a phrase came out of pop culture when American folk musician Len Chandler recorded a song and Martin Luther King, Jr. included some of the lyrics in a speech he made. The song was “Keep On Keepin’ On.” Today when you are in the midst of hard or challenging times, someone might tell you, “Keep on keepin’ on.” It’s encouragement to do what you know how to do as best as you can, trusting there’s hope ahead.

And that’s what Jesus says to his disciples in this text:

Keep on loving me – you know how to do that; love me by following my commandment to love one another. Keep on keepin’ on.

And when life is hard —
and we’ve talked about how being a person of faith and following Jesus doesn’t mean that we never face challenges or hard times, so we know it’s okay for us to admit there are times when life is hard — when life is hard, Jesus promises again that we are not left alone. Here he tells us God will give us another paraclete, an Advocate, Helper, or Counselor.

I hadn’t noticed before that the text says that God will send us another paraclete. Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregen suggests that the Helper is not so much our helper as a helper to Jesus, reminding us of all that Jesus has said to us, what the promises of God are, and awakening us to the holy in our ordinary lives. We know Jesus as the One God sends us to show us how God suffers with us and how much God loves us. And here, Jesus tells us that God will send another One to us. 

John’s gospel alone describes the paraclete as the “Spirit of Truth”. Jesus says here, “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him...” (14:17) And later in 15:26, he says “the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father…will testify on my behalf.” And in 16:13, he promises that “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth….”

The bad news is that hearing “all the truth” means hearing that we are sinners. Turned in on ourselves — full of ourselves — we cannot receive the love God offers as we are. Grasping for what’s known and familiar, we cannot, by our own efforts or merits, open our hands and hearts to receive God’s surprising grace.

But there is good news in this truth-telling, too.

The paraclete is the One today who shows us the extraordinary truth of God’s abundant love and mercy as God lifts our chins and opens our eyes to see our Savior on the cross with open hands stretched out to the world.

Luther wrote in his explanation of the third article of the Apostle’s Creed,

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith…. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers.

The paraclete is the One who helps us hear the Gospel — the Good News — that God loves us and does not leave us alone in our brokenness and in our sinfulness, but forgives us and gives us new life. In this same text in the The Message paraphrase of the Bible, Eugene Peterson writes, “you’re going to see me because I am alive and you’re about to come alive.” And I hear Jesus saying to us,

Keep on keepin’ on. Find your life in keepin’ on loving me and loving others as I love you.

Thanks be to God.

Fifth Sunday of Easter

John 14:1-7

Grace and peace to you.

Earlier this week, I went over to the sanctuary. We have not worshiped together in that space since March 8th and I haven’t led worship there since March 22nd. I thought about today’s gospel text as I removed the purple Lenten paraments and carried away stones and branches that adorned the altar. I’ve heard from altar guild volunteers that preparing the sanctuary for worship is a kind of devotional practice, and I could hear Jesus’s words, “I go to prepare a place for you” as I hung a new season’s paraments and replaced the wooden candlesticks on the altar.

These are also verses we often hear at funerals, and for many of us, it may be hard to separate them from images of heaven, or the life we have been promised after death.

It’s true that this passage is part of Jesus’ farewell discourse when he is telling his disciples goodbye, but he isn’t merely consoling or comforting them in their grief and sorrow.

When Jesus talks about the many “dwelling places” that God provides, Jesus is talking about God, Emmanuel, the God who is with us, here and now.

Back in the very first chapter of John, the Fourth Evangelist told us, “the Word became flesh and lived among us….” (John 1:14) Johannine scholar and preaching professor Karoline Lewis teaches that the verb here means “to tent”.[i] God pitches his tent alongside ours. Or as Eugene Peterson writes in his paraphrase The Message, “God moved into the neighborhood.”[ii]

That is good news when we are separated from each other and from our traditional worship spaces, the very places we think of when we hear the words “in my Father’s house.”

So, I want to hear from you what space you are in as you are worshiping today? Your living room, a bedroom, a basement? I invite you to use the chat or comments to name the space where you are.

Now, hear this promise:
God abides or dwells there with you.

After Jesus tells the disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them, he says, “And you know the way to the place where I am going." (John 14:4) And immediately, Thomas leads the disciples in questioning him and says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (John14:5)

When we are anxious or living in uncertainty, like Thomas we jump to those How, What and Why questions, “How can we know?”, “What do you mean?”, “Why is this happening?”

But Jesus answers the “Who” question instead, saying “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:5-7)

Jesus explains that the Way isn’t something we find on any roadmap. It isn’t a set of directions from Google maps or a GPS. It is a way of being in the world, living in relationship with God, and living in the image of God, in our daily lives. God shows forth who God is through God’s own good creation — us! God speaks through our lives as we bear God’s merciful love into the world.

Fourteenth century English mystic Julian of Norwich served as an ‘anchoress’, or spiritual counselor, in her community about 100 miles northeast of London. Cloistered in an approximately 12-foot square room attached to the church she participated in worship through an open window and people visited her in her cell for spiritual direction. [iii]Methodist pastor Kate Hanch imagines Julian, sheltering in place in her cell, mindful of the suffering she still witnessed in the world – illness, poverty and famine – mouthing the refrain attributed to her, “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”[iv]

God’s promise to dwell with us is not that that God will end all adversity, calm all the storms, prevent death or even cure all the disease. The promise is that God is right there in the disruption and uncertainty with us. Confident of God’s abiding with us, we can pray in the words of Julian of Norwich:

In you, Father all-mighty, we have our preservation and our bliss. In you, Christ, we have our restoring and our saving. You are our mother, brother and savior. In you, our Lord, the Holy Spirit is marvelous and plenteous grace. You are our clothing; for your wrap us and embrace us. You are our maker, our lover, our keeper. Teach us to believe that by your grace all shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
Amen.

[i] Lewis, Karoline M. John (Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries) (p. 17). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.
[ii] ibid
[iii] “About Julian of Norwich.” Julian Centre. http://juliancentre.org/about/about-julian-of-norwich.html
[iv] Kate Hanch. “Amid this pandemic, can we say with Julian of Norwich, ‘All shall be well’? https://baptistnews.com/article/amid-this-pandemic-can-we-say-with-julian-of-norwich-all-shall-be-well/?fbclid=IwAR3j2dWUhkCLlZ9_YWAuqjPcf559FaBoDk0303wtlb_JLQCjGsfgcPlo5_w#.XrbWxWhKhBz