Text: Genesis 1: 26a, 27; 2 Corinthians 13: 13; Matthew 28: 18-20   

This year when Father’s Day is coupled with the church’s Festival of the Trinity, a creative idea for a Father’s Day card is a cover that reads: “A gift for you: ‘A father’s Father.’” Inside there is a picture of a gift box opened to show three large hollow letters G, O, D,                         and a box of three crayons to use to color them in.
The name on the box is “Trinity,” with today’s Scripture
            helping us decide when to uses each color.
The Bible’s opening chapter in Genesis names the first crayon to pick up; it is called “Elohim,” a Hebrew name for God, which can mean one or more than one, with the number not referring to God, but to the number of actions God uses to do the work of creation.

Three are given in the very first lines in the Book of Genesis: breath, voice, a molding hand, and, near the end of the first chapter where we read that God said,
 ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;…’ So God created humankind in his image,  in the image of God he created them;
                        male and female he created them.
we know the “us” means the multiple ways – the multiple actions – of the one God Who as Creator, breathes, calls, molds humans into being, and therefore, the crayon named “Elohim” is a mix of hues that give the fullest, deepest, boldest coloration to God’s creative actions, especially God’s act that colors male and female with shades of God’s likeness.

As a brand-new father was handed his newborn child, he said his first thought was not,
“Look what my wife and I have accomplished, giving birth to this baby! But look what God has created us to do.”
There in the hospital room, he heard an echo of the Psalmist’s hymn:
“I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
              Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.” (Psalm 139)
Gazing at the infant in his arms, a new dad was caught up in the thought of God, the Creator,  a father’s Father, and everyone else’s too.

Some people, when searching through the Bible for more hues to give color to a portrait of God, get caught up in harsh shades that depict God as a stern Father acting as Judge, trying and passing sentence on defiant and rebellious men and women who are pronounced guilty and sent off to eternal fire. 

     The sermons of the prophet Isaiah expand the choices to the hues that add mercy         
     and  compassion that portray God as a shepherd, searching for and cradling wayward 
     and lost lambs, and a mother hen who tucks her chicks under her wings and pulls them close      to her body, which depict a seeking, caring, loving, caressing God.

Max Lucado tells the story (“No Wonder They Call Him the Savior”) of Christina, an attractive young woman who ran away from her poor village in Brazil to find excitement in city life.
            Her mother, Maria, knew what would happen to her daughter, and so she went to the                   local drugstore where she spent all the money she had on black and white photos of                     herself, and then headed to the city where she posted the photos with a note on the back             in phone booths, bars, nightclubs, and on bathroom mirrors in boarding houses, all                       places where street walkers and prostitutes would see them.
                     Soon her money was gone and she had to return tearful and tired to her village.
A few weeks later Christina was coming down the steps in a seedy hotel. Her face was drained of its youthful sparkle; her dreams had become a nightmare, and a thousand times she had longed to be back in the village, but felt she had strayed too far to ever return.
            Just then she spotted her mother’s photo on a mirror, walked over, removed it and read               what was written on the back.
                   "Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please                           come home."
            And Christina did.

It is a story that colors the name God with the crayon marked: Jesus Christ, Who is God coming to us, to reach out to us while we are lost in a life of sin and yet, longing to be welcomed home, 
with the words on the back of the portrait reading:
                        “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Grace” the brilliant, unfading color of God’s love brought near, as God takes on our likeness, our humanness, from beginning to end, in Jesus Christ Who has worked to save us and claim us, to restore us to God’s likeness in which we were created.
           God, the Father, seen in Jesus Christ as Savior; for fathers, and everyone else.

There is one more crayon in the box named “Trinity;” it is marked with the word “Ruach” in Hebrew, “pneuma” in Greek, “Holy Spirit” in English. (Story told by Wayne Cordeiro)
            In the bad part of town there was a small, rundown bakery; yet at 5 am every morning the             aroma filled the air, drawing people to form a line that stretched around the block and wait to get their hands on a loaf of that fresh-baked bread.

The “Spirit of God” is the aroma drawing the most rundown soul to be filled with God’s presence, it is a savoring of the truth that God wills to be, intends to, as close as breath, breathed into us;
           the breath that does not drift off into an illusion or takes the shape of a ghost,
           but abides in the fade-less hues through Jesus’ promise,
                 “And remember, I am with you always.”
            God, the Holy Spirit, for fathers and everyone else.

This sermon’s idea of a card for Father’s Day carries over into an assignment for fathers and everyone else to use the crayons in a box labeled “Trinity” to portray God as:
           Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
           Creator, Savior, Abiding Presence.

It’s a life-long exhilarating, humbling pursuit that began when Tertullian, a late second-century Christian from Carthage, came up with the word “Trinity,” and then, when  struggling to portray God in the hues of that title, said God is like a bulb, Jesus is the flower, and the Spirit is the fragrance. (Adapted from Tertullian)  

A beyond Father’s Day quest for fathers and everyone else, to continue what Tertullian began, with Paul’s blessing:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. AMEN.

 

 

 







 

 

 

 

 

 

 


”
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text:  Acts 2; 38-39; Luke 24: 32, 34-35

Then they told - those first three words in the last sentence in today’s Easter Gospel, prompt today’s sermon title:  “Breaking the Silence” - breaking the silence with conversations on the road and at table and everywhere. We talk via cell phone, texting, Skype, Facebook, and Twitter - about the weather, and what weather we have to talk about!

We talk about sports – the Flyers’ almost win in the playoffs, about scandals and stars and the newest flicks.  We talk about a pop singer turned into an idol.  We talk about our personal life in details updated by the minute.

Now, when hearing today’s Gospel, it’s time to break the silence and talk about our own after-Easter stories.
It’s time to say,

“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he was talking to us on the road,
while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

“Opening the Scriptures” to let Jesus “talk to us” through the Gospels-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, so that, through their words, He can introduce Himself to us and inspire us – literally, breathe Himself into us.  But our crunch-time schedules may have us saying, “I don’t have time to read the Bible.” and some may admit, “I don’t have a Bible.” or “I got one years ago but don’t expect me to know where it is now.”

The world of electronic communication is ready to help us;all we  need to do is decide to let those resources break into our preset webpages and apps, to read the UCC daily devotional, and the Bible – all online.  Or an in-print copy of the Upper Room or Our Daily Bread or other booklets – which take us back to the Bible.

A delightful sight was to see a young person sit down at a table in a local restaurant with Bible in hand.  Others were coming in with daily newspapers or a novel or magazine, or electronics to read on screen, but she came in with a Bible, the bread of Scripture to read while eating her lunch.

It’s time to take that kind of time so that our hearts may burn within us, as through the Bible, the God of the Scriptures may talk to us, especially as God spoke and continues to speak through Jesus.  It’s time to also take time to let the Easter Jesus be made known to us         in the breaking of the bread in the gathered company of the first of Jesus’ followers and now in our time of coming together to worship to receive the Word that is read and the bread and cup that are shared, bringing us into the company of Christ  and all Christ’s people. 

Again, we hear, “But I don’t have time to do that.”  For some that is a harsh reality – the ill and those who are caring for them, those who must work, and those who are on the road or in the air, some with schedules that defy being able to be present with us.

For these people, often frustrated by being absent, the world of electronics becomes a servant of the church as via CD’s and DVD’s and webpages – like ours – it is possible to be a part of a service of worship. At the same time there is the need to break the silence, to dare to speak up to whatever it is that is taking over Christians’ time to come together to worship; whatever it is that is preventing us from letting the Easter Jesus be made known to us in the breaking of the bread.

A personal confession: At home we were grumbling about all the intrusions, prompted by a newsletter from one of the groups to which we belong.  Most of the members in the club are Christians and belong to a church, yet, they schedule trips and tours on a Sunday morning when they could be on a Saturday or later on Sunday.  While we were grumbling, a club member called. He and his wife are Christians who attend and participate in their congregation.  When we shared our grip with him, he said, “We don’t like it either.” and admitted, “Well, then, why haven’t we said anything about it?”

It’s time to break the silence; it’s time to stop grumbling about how other religions are being featured and quoted and given media time;  it’s time to carry forward Peter’s Easter sermon that we heard today, knowing we, too, are living

“In the name of Jesus Christ
so that your sins may be forgiven;
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you, for your children,
and for all who are far away,
everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”

That’s us; we are the baptized, marked, set apart to follow in the way and do the work and word of Jesus.  It’s time to break the silence and be true to our Baptismal mark of God’s forgiveness, of Christ’s claim on us, and of the Holy Spirit’s gift, the breathe of God’s presence,  that move us to have a yearning, a burning desire, to talk about Christ’s effect on us.

The other week that silence was broke at the checkout in a local store by the woman ahead of me.  Noticing my clerical collar, she asked, “Are you a priest?” and I answered, “No, I am a pastor.”  


“It is a Bible-believing church?” she asked. 
“Yes,” I said, “And more. Scripture fills our worship, Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament letter, and Gospel.”

Sensing that she really wanting to know if I and our congregation are “saved,” I went on to say, “Our life and our worship center in Baptism; we begin every service by the font; we constantly recommit to the vows.”  and I began to repeat them:

            “We belong to the faith and family of Jesus Christ,
              renounce evil and receive the freedom of new life in Christ,
              accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.”

I never got to the remaining two; she’d heard enough to say,
            “Then you are a believer.”
and the young man checking us out added, “So am I.”

As in the Gospel story, the Easter Christ becomes known to us through Scripture and at worship’s table, filling us with a burning desire to tell others, on the road, at home, at a check out, anywhere and everywhere.

Known to us to share with others.

It’s time to break the silence!                                 AMEN.

Text: John 20: 21, 28

“My Lord, what a morning!” –the song adopted as the title on Henry Bellefonte’s album, and Marian Anderson’s autobiography, could also be used for  this morning’s Easter Gospel.  Jesus’ closest friends, huddled together in the upper room, where they’d spent the last night with Jesus, suddenly hear Him speaking to them and saying,

“Peace be with you.”

Only the word they heard was “Shalom!” which some of us have sung to one another at church or Scout camp:

            “Shalom, my friend, shalom, till we meet again.”

turning Jesus’ Easter greeting into a “Goodbye.”

And whenever we say it, we may use it in ways that lose its intended meaning:

“Shalom” – in its Hebrew richness means “whole, untouched by violence or misfortune, being happy individually and harmony in the community; a reality intended to exist between God and humans, and one another. (source: “A Theological Word Book of the Bible, editor Alan Richardson, P. 165-166)

“Shalom,” Jesus’ Easter greeting to His closest friends which they receive as His PROCLAMATION:

“Shalom” – now given to them, as the Apostle Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, would later carry to Jews and Gentiles when he wrote: “He is our peace (our Shalom)!” (Eph.2:14)

There, on that Easter evening, the back-from-the-dead Jesus was giving Himself to them;  He was becoming Shalom to them, the fullness of Himself in them!

Thomas, however, missed that meeting and demands physical proof; he needs to touch the nail-pierced hands and feet, and sword-cut side, and Jesus obliges him, which artists show Thomas reaching out and putting his fingers on the scars, but their paintings are wrong.  Thomas, like the others the week before, only needs to hear the invitation.  At the sound of Jesus’ voice, he answers,

                “My Lord and my God!”

From Jesus’ PROCLAMATION: “Shalom!” to Thomas’ EXCLAMATION: “My Lord and my God!”

“My God!” the first and only time that confession is made and preserved in the Gospels. We hear the title: “Jesus” – God saves,  “Messiah” – the anointed One, carried into Greek as “Christ,” and “Immanuel” – God with us; but now from the lips and heart of Thomas,  the name -“God” and not just “God,” but “MY God!”

For Thomas, the Easter Jesus becomes the fullest image a human can get of God, a God, Who with scars of crucifixion, gives the “Shalom” of God’s forgiveness, a God Who with His “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” transforms all who now embody Christ’s “Shalom” into a “holy temple, a dwelling place for God,” (Eph.2:21-2)

And now it’s our time to hear and receive today’s Gospel, like those who were the first in the upper room on the first evening of Easter, or, this Sunday, a week later, like Thomas who was convinced, as were the others, with the sound of the voice of God who spoke and brought world into being.

Now it is our turn to hear Jesus’ Easter PROCLAMATION:

“Shalom!"

and like Thomas answer with the Easter EXCLAMATION:

            “My Lord and my God!”

“My God made know to me in Jesus Christ” – as the Confirmation prayer has us saying, “MY God!” – “I give myself to you as your own, to love and serve you faithfully all the days of my life.”

A cartoon pictures a man about to be rescued after being ship-wrecked on a tiny dessert island.  The sailor sent to bring him back, steps on the island holding a stack of newspapers in his arms.  As he hands them to the man, he says, “Compliments of the Captain.”   But then he adds, “The Captain would like you to glance at the headlines to see if you still want to be rescued.” 

The headlines of our time, a personal crisis or fear that is taking on a crushing weight, a family situation that seems too complicated to resolve, or the gridlock in our nation’s government, and a world scene that is dark with breakdowns in diplomacy and flare ups in violence; the news of today, might be what threatens to turn us away from Jesus’ Easter PROCLAMATION: “Shalom!” and Thomas’ Easter EXCLAMATION: “My Lord and my God!” and send us looking for a deserted island.

But that is also why the Easter Gospel has us hearing the voice of Jesus, coming to us to penetrate every cell and every thought and every part of our being, to dominate us with the gift of His greeting.

Jesus’ tomb is empty so He may fill us with the “Shalom” of His presence and overpower evil with good, shame injustice with mercy and self-centeredness with compassion, and conquer our last breath with life on the other side of death.  Jesus’ tomb is empty so He may find some way to bring us to personalize Thomas’ exclamation: “My lord and my God!” 

And so, a political prisoner condemned to die in his cell emerges after 20 years, kept alive by personalizing Thomas’s confession.  In our nation’s dark history of slavery a plantation owner used his whip to keep his slaves from forgetting he was their lord, but they endured each lash by saying to themselves, 

“My Lord is King Jesus.”

A dear friend, Rev. Anna Dederer, who had served as a missionary in Micronesia, retired to California. After visiting us, we heard nothing from her and later learned she’d become terminally ill, endured three weeks of pain, and died praying,  “My Jesus will come and take me home.”

Three people who received Jesus’ “Shalom” and personalized it with Thomas’ “My Lord and my God!”

Today’s Gospel PROCLAMATION that invites our EXCLAMTION, trusting that, in spite of the headlines, God is in each day’s dawning, awakening us to say or sing:   “My Lord, what a morning!”       

 AMEN.

Text: John 19: 12, 25b, 31-35

A new book contends that the drama into which we are drawn through  the Good Friday narration as scripted by the writer of the Gospel according to John, is wrong.  The author offers as evidence the Roman custom to leave the bodies of the crucified to rot away on the cross.  Ask those who were there on Good Friday.

Ask the Roman emperors who ordered mass crucifixions, as many as 2,000 in one day! There would not have been enough hills or crosses for the flesh to rot and the skeletal bones to fall to the ground and leave the beam empty to hoist another body.

Ask the forgers of the heavy nails pounded into hands and feet.  Shaping them was time consuming and costly.     Nails had to be reclaimed as soon as possible and used for the next to be condemned to death by crucifixion.

Ask the people in the Gospel scene. Ask Pilate who tried as hard as he could to manipulate himself out of sentencing Jesus to death by crucifixion.  The report is there in accounts we can read to this day: Tacitus, a revered Roman historian, and Josephus and Philo, Jews who wrote in the first century.

If the Gospel story is dismissed, their records remain to write the script for Pilate to speak:

“I know that many of you think that I’m to blame for the death of this man, Jesus, who has been called the Christ…As far as I could tell, he was innocent of the charges the chief priests of his people brought against him, but there were bigger issues at play. I admit I’m not exactly proud of the way things turned out, but you have to understand the pressures of my job at the time. I was in a delicate position — my wife, Claudia Procula, is the granddaughter of Caesar Augustus. Being that close to the ruling family, I couldn’t afford to look like a screw–up. Before being sent to the province of Judea…I had a successful career as an officer in Caesar’s army. I had a good reputation.

“But as procurator, (you’d say governor) I faced a different sort of problem. I was responsible to see that the taxes kept rolling in to Rome. It was also my job to keep a lid on any troubles in that part of the empire. But being in charge there proved to be no easy task.

“That Jesus business was just one more Jewish squabble that got dumped into my lap, and I must say in my entire career, I’ve never met a more stubborn people than those residents of Judea.” (Adapted from Proclaim Sermons for this Week , April 13, 2014)

“When they shouted at me, ‘If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor.’ (19:12) I knew He had to go.”

Pilate had to act to show he, in the name of Rome, was in charge.  The Romans left the crucified to decompose on the cross?  Ask Pilate! The sooner Jesus was out of his sight the better.  The Romans left the crucified to decompose on the cross?

Ask the three women standing as close as they could get to Jesus:his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of  Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. (19:25b) They had to complete the burial rites of their people.  They needed the corpse to do that.  

The Romans left the crucified to decompose on the cross?       

Ask the leaders of the Temple, the keepers of their Hebrew laws. The sun was setting on that Friday of crucifixion.  Since it was the day of Preparation, (they) did not want the bodes left on the cross during the sabbath,(19:31)

Nor would Pilate and the soldiers. Jesus, left to hang there to desecrate the Jews’ Sabbath, could be the spark to ignite the powder keg that would explode into a revolution.  He and the two crucified with Him, even though still breathing, had to be taken down before sunset!

So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken
            and their bodies removed.
But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead,
            they did  not break his legs.
Instead one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear,
            and at once blood and water came out.

The Romans left the crucified to decompose on the cross?  

Ask Jesus’ closest friends, who spent the last night of His life around a table where He took basin and towel and washed their feet, a commissioning sign, they were to be a servant-people of the Servant-Christ. Then He went on to the ultimate service, to pour out His life-blood in death to pay a debt He didn’t owe for a debt we couldn’t pay.

The Romans left the crucified to decompose on the cross?  

The strange twist to that claim, publicized in time to be reviewed in the midst of Holy Week and echo through and challenge the Good Friday story, is, Jesus’ closest friends would come to realize, and we who give ourselves into His saving friendship, know, the cut of the spear and the report:at once blood and water came out reveal the evidence!

His Presence now resides in us!

“Water” poured over us in Baptism, washing us in the cleansing, claiming love of God, fills us with the life of Christ… every breath is the “Amen” to that double gift of grace!

“Blood” – The Passover remembering the blood signed door frames, sparing that household from death, now echoes through the Holy Meal and raised chalice “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”

The Gospel according to John begins with the Baptizer saying when seeing Jesus, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  and in the final chapters has Jesus pouring out His life’s blood to fill everyone who receives Him as Lord and Savior.

Ask those who were there! Ask those who are here! -
                         the Body of Christ in the Body of His Church.

Let the story be told through His baptized and communing followers!

Amen.

Text: Philippians 2: 5; Matthew 21: 10-11

Another Palm Sunday, and with Easter coming in mid-April, a time for Confirmation :  a joy-filled, yet challenging time for a sermon – and as promised to this year’s class of ten, a SHORT sermon.

It could be as short as the sermon’s title:  “New Apps for Your IPod/Pad”   with the most essential App being a symbol for Paul’s plea to his favorite church, Philippians 2:5:

            Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. 

The App showing a clip art form of a human brain with a cross imposed upon it, a  design we might add to our crazy, wonderful “Anti-Workbook,” as today’s assignment.

One of other Apps to open, because this site leads to many more…all opening to what we need to have the mind of Christ in us:

• The Bible He had in his day, the word He called “bread;
• The “Our Father…” prayer Jesus gave His followers to pray;
  
• The ten rules for living  He taught and fulfilled with His actions; 
• The Apostles’ Creed – not written by the first disciples and Paul, but gathering together all they confessed and used like a touchstone to open up the larger thoughts behind each word;
• Contacts with Christians through the centuries and Christians all over the world, some living as present day martyrs; many coming to us through web pages and YouTube. 
  

This may all sound rather boring, until we let each site be like a play that puts us on stage or behind the scenes putting up all the props, or like a game that has us running up and down the court or field,  like the Bible Apps that draw us into the scenes and we say as did one reader,  “I find myself on every page.”

For each of you who have been born in the internet age and come to my rescue when trying to get our DVD to open each Sunday in Confirmation Class,  there is the possibility of giving  a 21st century spin to the Confirmation vow that has you pledging to “do the work and word of Jesus as best you are able.”

A European project has people selecting 3,000 themes in the Bible and turn each one into a Twitter entry of 140 characters.  Might you take up the challenge – first to search the Bible for the  themes and then tweet them in the allotted spaces?   It’s a ministry to involve the world in asking the Palm Sunday question: “Who is he?” and – in pursuing the answer, begin to learn how to think like Christ, how “to have the mind of Christ.” 

There is a very personal reason to add the App marked with a brain and cross that will open up to more Apps all designed to help you think like Jesus so you can live like Jesus.  Even I who come late to the world of laptops and IPod and pad, have this reason reinforced every day as I enter the computer world you know so well to read the Bible, a daily devotional, and sites that give me the background material to prepare a sermon.

The recurring and most annoying problem is that there are pop ups- several open up to literature and videos posted to drag us down into a cesspool of thoughts and associations meant to divert us from sites that serve to nurture the mind of Christ in us!  It’s those enticements that are intent on pulling you away from your vows, that challenge you to delete them and choose to open the App created with a clip art-like drawing of the human brain and a superimposed cross for you to remember is also on you:

The sign of the cross marked on your forehead when you were baptized and again when you began this Confirmation year at the font and now as you kneel to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

Another silent reminder is the fingerprint you make on the screen.  It reveals the Apps where you spend your time, what is most important to you; the Apps that define you.

This is the day to pray that your print will be on the one that opens to all the sites you will use as you commit to having the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus, a vow sealed with the mark of the cross.

                                                                        AMEN.

Text: Matthew 21: 9-10

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on this day called Palm Sunday,     the crowds that followed Him knew their Hebrew history.  Even the most inactive Jews – not able to keep all the laws for lack of time or interest, or unable to attain the rank of rabbi, knew their Bible.  They knew what the sermons of their prophets said about a day when God would take on human flesh and be present in Messiah,  “the anointed One,” which in Greek is “Christ.”

The Palm Sunday air was thick with excitement and anticipation. The prophets had given signs. When Messiah comes, the blind will receive their sight, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and even the dead will be brought back to life.  All the things Jesus was seen or reported to have done.  Everyone who lived in or around Bethany was abuzz with the latest report: Jesus had called Lazarus out of the grave and back to life!

It was the news that swelled the crowd to pour out of the countryside into the streets of Jerusalem, waving palm branches torn from the trees and marching to the beat of the song, slightly revised from the Book of Psalms:

“Hosanna to the Son of David!
  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!    
  Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Matt. 21:9)

They who knew their Bible history remembered King David ascending the hill to the temple, to the cheers of the people providing the processional hymn for Israel’s greatest king.It was the sight of the donkey that had them adding:

“Hosanna to the Son of David! –
  Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

King David had ridden on a donkey; now the sight of Jesus on a donkey was the sign- Now they were getting their king back!

“Hosanna to the Son of David!

At the same time, the Roman authorities and their legions were entering by the opposite gate, the route royalty traveled.  Their entrance was staged with pomp and pageantry.  The people who represented the power of Rome rode in mounted on horses, the war machine of the day and the ceremonial vehicle for conquering heroes.

Their arrival was timed to happen just as Jews were coming in to celebrate the Passover in numbers that filled houses and streets wall to wall.  The power of Rome was there in Governor and legions,  to quell any Jewish uprising, and if some of their malcontents  staged a revolt, they would be squashed and destroyed.

The astute among the Jews who enjoyed political satire, might have thought:

•  “How clever of Jesus to choose to enter Jerusalem on the same animal King David mounted:   a donkey, a farm vehicle - when Romans ride on horses!
• “How ingenious of Him to come in such a disguise!”
• “Wait till they see what He’s about to do – to dethrone them, to bring down the wrath of God to pulverize them!”
• “Now, at last, we will have all the power; now those who have made us bow down to them will be forced to bow down and serve us!”
  

How sad, how tragic, that they didn’t hear what Jesus had said about coming to serve rather than be served, even to forgive one’s persecutors, and “to pay a debt He didn’t owe to cancel a debt we couldn’t pay.”  How sad, how tragic, that they didn’t pick up on the question rippling through the crowds in the city,

            “Who is this?” (Matt. 21:10)

The question that rings through this day to haunt and captivate us with God’s choice not to rule from above – like earthly monarchs, sitting high on a horse, followed by legions of soldiers, but as God in Christ, coming to rule from below –riding in on a down-to-earth donkey, not as a sign of a new Kind David, entering Jerusalem to overthrow and replace the rulers of the Temple in league with the powers of Rome, but to endure the depths of human suffering and the humiliation of crucifixion intended to bring down God’s Messiah, only to have the world see the Servant-Christ turn the cross into a throne for the God of  love, and hear His followers raise the coronation cry on Easter morning:

"Hallelujah. He is Risen."                                           

The answer to the question: “Who is this?”  But it will take time, perhaps more time than it took Jesus’ closest friends, perhaps a whole life time, to be captivated with the answer.

The British author Graham Greene was eager to be in the company of the Roman Catholic mystic Padre Pio, who resided in an Italian monastery, (Incidentally, one of his shrines is here in Pennsylvania, off Route 100, near Bally.)  Greene had to wait two and a half years for a 15-minute appointment with a man who was considered to be “a living saint” whose body was marked with the wounds of Christ.

On the day Greene was due to meet with the mystic, he first attended a mass where Padre Pio officiated. Their appointment was to begin immediately after the mass.  Instead, Greene left the church, headed for the airport and flew directly back to London. When asked why he broke the appointment he had waited two and a half years to have, Greene said,  “I was not ready for the manner in which that man could change my life.” (Adapted from the Rev. Marek Zabriskie, Rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Fort Washington, PA)             

“Who is he?”               

The answer waits to make its mark on us, to change us, as it did Padre Pio, and to move us to exclaim as the disciple Thomas   did,

“My Lord and my God!”

This week that begins with a parade draws us into following a Man on a donkey and in His company find that when asking “Who is he?” we are changed as we pursue the answer,  so that by Good Friday and Easter Sunday morning we might say, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

AMEN.

Dear Friends, 

Pf. Elisabeth Preckel brought this new German Holy Week through
Easter gift to us which is now sharedthrough a photo.

First the hill and cross is displayed on Good Friday, then the tomb with the sandstone circle covering the opening are added on Holy Saturday, and finally the stone is rolled away and the candle lite on Easter morning and Easter’s ongoing Sundays.

A scene in wood and wax that anyone of us could make with poster board pieces and a candle and display on a table where it becomes a daily sight that stays in place for Easter’s weeks that will bring us to Pentecost. Or, simply cut out this photo and imagine your way through the movement of the pieces that – as pictured – celebrate God’s glorious, beyond words Easter morning when the light of the rising sun was surpassed with the Christ-light of His resurrected presence., The light that shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it; the light that is meant to shine on us and to be reflected by us.

But more than that, engage us, and especially our children, in experiencing the Story that brings us to Easter’s worship and the Sundays in the season.

Rejoicing to join you in Easter’s joy, “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”   

                                                Your Pastor, Martha B. Kriebel +  

Text:  John 4: 13-15, 42 

A traveler stops his car at a small restaurant along a desolate highway;  no one else is there, it must be past the time when all the locals stop for their morning coffee and donuts. The waitress, seeing how exhausted he is, comes over and asks, “What would you like to drink, coffee –regular or decaf, with sugar, cream; or tea – hot or iced; or soda – Coke, Pepsi, 7-up or root beer?”

Those choices at that out-of-the-way stop remind the weary, thirsty traveler that today’s drinks are no longer simple decisions between water, coffee, or tea, and now each one comes in varieties of flavors.  There are drinks to meet every person’s preference, but everyone knows when it comes to quenching thirst, the best choice is just plain water.

And so, before the traveler announces his choice, the waitress automatically puts some ice in a glass, fills it with water and places it on the counter in front of him.  As he drinks, the two begin to talk, which is what often happens, a quenched thirst invites conversation. 

Push that scene back into today’s Gospel setting and the counter becomes a well, the weary traveler becomes Jesus, and the waitress becomes a Samaritan woman at the time of noon… with two changes; Jesus must ask for a drink, and their conversation is filled with tension and false impressions.

The tension is Jesus is a Jew speaking to a woman (a taboo for a Jewish man who only speaks to his wife in the privacy of the home) and worse than that, the woman is a Samaritan, an arch-enemy of Jews and vice-a-versa.
Yet, Jesus asks her to draw Him a drink from the well, and, as can happen, He starts the conversation about well water versus spring water as He says,

'Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 
but those who drink of the water that I will give them 
will never be thirsty. 

The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water 
gushing up to eternal life.’

Jesus knows, even as He drinks to satisfy His physical thirst, she has a much deeper thirst that the well’s water cannot quench. It’s obvious in her coming to draw at high noon to avoid the villagers who fill their jugs in the early morning.  She wants to escape their shunning her, gossiping about her, twisting her life into a sordid, scandalous story, when it is really a story of one tragedy after another – that many preachers continue to turn into a sermon to pronounce judgment on those who are “that kind of woman!”

I must confess, in years past, that is how I labeled her as I misread her having had five husbands and not married to the one with whom she is living. (vs. 18) “Had five husbands” – that means she has been widowed FIVE times, and without a roof over her head, food on her table, clothing to cover her body, might she have had to let 
herself be taken in at a price!  

Is it as a servant or an arrangement the man will not legalize?   We aren’t told. (Reference: David Lose, Luther Seminary,   St. Paul, MN) All we do know is that her plight has her drinking from the bitter cup of tragedy,
which only Jesus sees and knows all the wells in the world cannot quench the thirst of her mind and soul.  She knows it too, as she begs, 

“Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty,
or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

And Jesus answers, “I am he, the one to whom you are speaking - “living water.”


He is offering her the drink beyond all drinks. Her plea is carried forward in people, usually young adults, who come to our church office asking to do volunteer service to work off hours for a DUI arrest. My heart aches for them. Most are victims of drugs and alcohol taken to self-medicate mental agony or a personal crisis and ongoing failures in finding work.

It is obvious what they need is to drink from the spring Jesus freely offers, and the joy is to see how many find their way to that spring when our parking lot is filled on Friday nights as people come to the AA and ALANON meetings,and extend the story of the Samaritan woman who “left her water jar and went back to the city” where she shouted,  “Come and see!”  Her invitation to them becomes their own celebration, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe,  for we have heard for ourselves,  and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’ 


Jesus Christ, God coming in the garb of our humanness to be living water, not well water. Well water is still, in the language of the Gospel story, “well” also means “see” (to look into), water that serves as a mirror, mirroring the face –and the inner life that hides beyond that image,  and so, even its coolness and whatever we now add to flavor it, giving us almost too many choices, only entertains and satisfies our taste buds for a moment. 


There is the need to come again and again, and still have an unquenched, unmet inner thirst of mind and soul.
God in Christ offers Himself as “living water” like a spring whose flow doesn’t sit and stagnate and become a breeding pool for whatever will be harmful to body, mind, and soul.

I think of His offer whenever I pass a small pond by the side of Swamp Pike across from Limerick Garden of Memories. In the summer it turns green and becomes a breeding site for mosquitoes and no one cleans it up.
That pool serves as a constant reminder to keep the spring of worship and teaching and preaching open for the flow of Jesus’ life to turn us into people who become like those Samaritan villagers, confessing, ‘we believe…we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’

For, remember, when the woman saw her reflection mirrored in the water in the well, she also saw Jesus standing beside her; the same Jesus who stands beside us today offering Himself to us and all the villagers of the world to savor the drink beyond all drinks, and confess with the poet: (H.W. Farringtom)

I know not how that Bethlehem’s Babe could in the Godhead be;
I only know that Manger Child has brought God’s life to me.
I know not how that Calvary’s cross a world from sin could free;
I only know its matchless love has brought God’s love to me.

AMEN.

Text: John 3: 5-7, 16-17

We’ve just heard what is probably the best known verse in the Bible: John 3:16…

 ‘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. '

When hearing or saying those words, we might put an equal sign between “believe” and “eternal life,” as though, quoting from the Apostle Paul, “to confess with your lips and believe in your heart” (Romans 10:9) will earn the reward of “eternal life.” 

That’s why Nicodemus, a rich and prominent lawyer and a member of the Jew’s Supreme Court called the Sanhedrin, sought out Jesus under the cover of night.  He didn’t want his colleagues to see him talking with Him.
It could threaten his reputation and position. But he wanted to hear what Jesus had to say he had to learn, to know to think, to believe – (as a Jew)  in order to “walk in the way of the Lord,” with the “way” being the Hebrew Law, or, as we Christians say, “have eternal life.”

Jesus’ response was,
‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 
What is born of the flesh is flesh,
and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 
Do not be astonished that I said to you, “
You must be born from above.”

Nicodemus immediately put his mind to work on what he thought he was hearing Jesus say, “You must be born again.”  You must do the work of thinking, accepting, believing that the One you have sought is God in human flesh, and believing that, you will earn the grade of eternal life with God.

We might insert our own name, or anyone else’s name; 
“YOU” _______must do the work to earn eternal life.

And what if we or a loved one doesn’t have a date to give, like a grade to show or a diploma to display, to document a time when a personal confession was made? What if we or someone one else fears flunking and doesn’t even try, or decides to play hooky, because there are other, more exciting things to do?
What then; is the answer “perish?”  or in harsher words, “Damned! Condemned to hell’s fire?”

There are times, when, as a pastor conducting a funeral service, someone will come up and say, “I’m really worried. I don’t think he/she was saved.” Implying the deceased never made a public confession of Jesus as Lord and Savior, or, as some say, “never got saved.” It is then that we need to hear what Jesus said:

‘Do not be astonished that I said to you, 
“You must be born from above.”

“Born from above,” not “born again.” Not our work but God’s labor that is like natural birth.

As a teenager, I worked summers and weekends in a hospital’s maternity department where my aunt, the supervisor, gave me on-the-job training to work as a practical nurse, usually in the 12-bed ward. One day the staff in the labor room was shorthanded and I was asked to oversee a patient while the doctor and nurse ate a quick supper, and they would be as close as a phone call.

Well, the baby everyone thought would arrive several hours later, didn’t wait. I called, wheeled the soon-to-be-mother into the labor room, praying as I did, and raised a silent “Amen,” as the staff arrived.  It was a vivid reminder that being born into life as a child of God is as Jesus said, “from above,” an action of God beyond our timing or control.  which Jesus stamped with the “Amen” of John 3: 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.’

And then Jesus turned John 3:16 and 17 (let’s not forget to add that “Amen” verse) into the sight of Good Friday’s cross with His arms out stretched to embrace the entire world in what Nicodemus first heard: 

'No one can enter the kingdom of God 
without being born of water and Spirit.'

One outstretched arm as a sign for “being born of water;” the other as “being born of Spirit,” with a capital “S,” 
the embrace the early church leaders struggled to find a way for new Christians to accept as a gift and not what they worked to earn.  What they did was to develop an order for Baptism that was really a funeral service. (Reference: “Body and Soul” M. Craig Barnes, P. 82)

As each person descended into the water, the charge was given to give up the old life of sin and vices; as a sign of submission they took off their old clothes. Then they were submerged or water was poured over them as the words were spoken,

“Buried with him in baptism.”
When they stood and left the water, they heard,
“Risen to walk with new life in Christ.”

As the leader declared how God’s Spirit clothes us with the new life of Christ, they put on new clothing.  Today’s Orthodox Churches continue this ritual when baptizing infants, and from the first centuries on whole household were baptized, infants through adults…the sign that parents and the whole church family through their examples and prayers, influence a child to grow into the Baptismal vows, and as we do here, take them in the “yes” of Confirmation…

...Which takes me back to what may be said at a funeral. “I’m really worried. I don’t think he/she was saved.” with the implied fear being,   “He/she will be damned, sent to an eternity in hell’s fire!”  and maybe a fear we have for our own future.

I think of the Baptismal font where parents and a church vow to be a nurturing influence and never stop giving the newly baptized infant to God in prayer, praying for him or her, even to the grave, prayers that silence the worry, “Was he/she saved?”  For through prayer the way is open to Jesus, with arms outstretched to take everyone in, 
those who have had a dramatic experience of being accepted by God, those who can only say, “I want my life to be a thank-you to God,” and those we fear will not be welcomed, because the life they lived seems to be a rejection of God’s call in Christ.  Look to the cross and hear God saying, “Come in! Come in to My embrace!” that is greater than all our sin and can even overpower rejection with welcoming love. 

It’s the warranty Jesus attached to our life; read the words printed in today’s Gospel. AMEN.

Text: Genesis 3: 6-7a, 9; Matthew 4: 1, 11

A missionary friend of ours whose name some of you have heard mentioned in past years, Rev. Anna Dederer, told a story about a custom in Micronesia where she served as both pastor and nurse.  When the tribal chief died, they dug a hole large enough to bury him and all his possessions.  Anna told the story at our dinner table with a twinkle in her eyes, and said in her German-English:

“Ach, vhat a big hole it would take for you!”

and we all laughed.  It is a joke into which your name might also be inserted,  going back to the original couple named Adam and Eve.  They had a garden home filled with everything any human  might need or want.
But the trouble was, the more they had, the more they wanted, and so, as their desire is described:

'… when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, 
and that it was a delight to the eyes, 
and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, 
she took of its fruit and ate;
and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, 
and he ate. '

Note: The man didn’t resist or question the woman’s offer; she gave and he took, and together they BOTH ate.
And when they did, … the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked… The more they had, the more there was to put in the hole that would be dug for them when they died.  All “stuff” that has no lasting value, things that when people who have them, see what they have, like Adam and Eve, know that they are naked.        

The truth repeated and perpetuated by one generation after another up to us. A man drives his top-of-the-line car between a winter home in Florida and a summer home in the New England hills and in between, jets  to Europe to ski or the Caribbean to swim and snorkel,but then he develops a circulatory problem that becomes a recurring crisis sending him to the hospital and then to rehab and a new schedule for his life that confines him to his room.  
He looks at his car, his bank account and investments, and knows they cannot buy him health or friends. From a distant past, when he still took time to go to church and devoted a few minutes each day to read his Bible, he remembers Jesus’ story about a man with many barns who hears God say, 

“You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.  
  And these things…whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20)

He knows and he feels the nakedness of Adam and Eve.  The Old Testament lesson heard on this First Sunday in Lent may be playing itself out in the lives of many who are hearing it.  Ads and Apps, billboards and slick brochures tempt us to want the life they are promoting, like the Garden of Eden tree with fruit that “was a delight to the eye.”

If we have them, we will become “wise” with the wisdom of the world that tells us things will give us status found at certain rendezvous places, be they drinking holes or high-priced restaurants, educational institutions, sports clubs, spas, exotic get-away vacations, or stores that dress us in designer label clothing.  All things that, when we have them, we have nothing beyond them; things that will eventually knock us down to the heritage of Adam and Eve’s line: they knew that they were naked.

The ongoing temptation of Adam and Eve, perhaps going on in your life and mine for which we are programmed by the world in which we live. In the Gospel that is always read on the first Sunday in Lent, the scene changes from a garden to a wilderness of rocks and sand, wild animals on the prey, scorching heat by day and bone-chilling cold at night, a place where Jesus withdrew from the world of water and food to fast and pray and sort through the options as to how He could best serve God and all God’s people.  

In those forty days – the Hebrew way of saying “a long time,” His mind was dulled, his stamina drained, and His stomach ached for food. The perfect setup for being enticed with the world’s quick fix of instant satisfaction and gratification; become a miracle worker, an entertainer, a power-wielding idol.   All of whom have their day and cease to be; and, like Adam and Eve, find themselves at life’s end stripped down to nakedness.  Yet, those options are enticing, especially when famished with both emotional stress and physical hungry.

Years ago one of our young people was in a serious auto accident that required stitches in his jaw and face and limited him to sipping liquids through a straw for weeks. There he lay in a hospital bed watching a TV commercial for pizza with gooey cheese piled high and a variety of toppings. His hunger had him craving for a pizza like the one pictured on TV, and so, the first thing he did when he came home was to struggle  to work pieces into his mouth between the stitches.

Like that TV ad, the world programs us to resort to feed our hunger with weight gaining foods and to do the same for the hungry around us. Give them boxes of food, box after box, ignoring the adage: hand a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime. 

Or the quick fix solution for stress-filled conflicts: react with the knock-down power play of force, out-bomb, out-burn; retaliate rather than negotiate. Intimidate people into submission rather than serving them with compassion.
The temptations Jesus rejected with Scripture that gave Him the strength to stand up to a knock-down world. 
 The God-intended choice affirmed with the picturesque line that ends the story:  angels came and waited on him.
“Come in! Come in!” shout both the Garden and the wilderness stories, calling us to immerse ourselves in both scenes, to be tempted as were Adam and Eve and as was Jesus.

Then, let the seeking God Who questions, “Where are you?” see us leaving our life of things to give our full allegiance to the Voice of the Creator Who has called us into being; and let Jesus set the example, to use Scripture as He used it, and commit to following Him and receive from Him the strength to stand up to a knock-down world made strong with a question and answer that was written 450 years ago but  remains timely…into our day:
“What is your only comfort in life and in death? 
  That I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to 
  myself, but to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
I belong; YOU belong, not to the world, but to Jesus Christ! 
Our standup answer to a knock-down world!” 

AMEN.