St Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church – Live at 5
Seventh Sunday of Easter; John 17
May 20, 2012
Rev. Kristin Schultz                


Jesus is at dinner with his disciples.
It is a Thursday night – the night of Passover.
It is the last meal Jesus will eat with his friends before he dies

Like so many teachers, or parents, given one last chance to hand over some package of wisdom for their charges to remember, Jesus tries to tell the disciples what it has all been about.
For three chapters, John’s Jesus preaches to his disciples – trying to sum up three years of ministry together and prepare them for the next step.

Jesus knows what will happen in the coming days –
his arrest, his death, and his resurrection.
And he knows that after the resurrection, he will be with the disciples only a short time.
He is truly going away, and leaving them to tell the story –
    the amazing, life-changing story of his life, death, and resurrection.

He knows it will not be easy.
Jesus knows there are challenges ahead,
and so he has promised his disciples help.
He will send an Advocate, he says – one who will guide and protect them
as they carry out their mission in the world.
He will leave them –
but he will not leave them alone.

Then we come to chapter 17, the chapter of today’s gospel lesson.
In this chapter, Jesus does something wonderful:
he prays for his disciples.
David Lose, who writes a wonderful weekly blog for preachers,
calls this “The other Lord’s prayer.”

Once, when they saw him go apart to pray,
the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray.
so he gave them a prayer to teach them to pray – for themselves and for others –
in a way that would shape their faith and bring them closer to God.

Now, again, Jesus gives them an example of prayer,
when he prays for them, with them.

So what does he pray?
He does not pray that all their problems will be solved and their work will be easy. He knows it won’t happen that way.
He does not pray that all their enemies will be defeated
and they will never make mistakes.

As Lose says:
So what does he pray for? He prays for them to hang in there.
And for them to hang in there together.
He asks that God would strengthen them,
care for them, protect them, and keep them together.
In fact, Jesus asks that they would be one,
one fellowship, one family,
not just modeling the “oneness” of Jesus and the Father but actually living into it, participating in it, making it real and in this way sharing in Jesus’ joy.

What’s important for us in all this is that Jesus is not just praying for his disciples back then.
When I read the gospel lesson, you may have noticed that I read a little beyond what was chosen for today.
There is a very important piece in those verses I added on:
Jesus says,  “”I ask not only on behalf of these,
but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word”
That’s us, my friends.
We are the ones who believe through the words of the apostles;
    we are the ones for whom Jesus prayed, and prays still.
We, too, benefit from Jesus’ prayers for strength and courage,
his prayers for community and love.
Each time we read these words, we are reminded of Jesus' constant care and concern and compassion for us,
     and for all the world God loves.
This, indeed, is the work of the Spirit, the advocate and comforter:
to remind us of Jesus' active and ongoing love and compassion
and to draw us more deeply together.


Now I want to invite you to enter a bit more deeply into this message,
    and give you something to take with you when you leave here tonight.
Think for a moment about what you would like Jesus to pray for, for you.
What bit of comfort, or strength, or courage do you need.
Try to boil it down to one or two words – words that express what you need Jesus to pray for for you.

Now I invite you to write your word or words on the cards JP passed out.  
You can take that with you, put it in your purse or billfold or on your desk,
    and remember throughout the week that Jesus is praying for you,
that the Spirit of Jesus is with you to guide and care for you.

(Pray – invite people to share the words they wrote):
Gracious and loving God,
We give you thanks that your son came to live among us, to teach us to live.
We thank you that he lived a life of prayer and service, that we may learn to pray and serve. We thank you that he loves us – that you love us – that you wish for us abundant life. We pray tonight for :

For all these things, and whatever else you see that we need, we pray in the name of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Mothering Love:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

Need I tell you, “Today is Mother’s Day”?  A day fraught with complexity.  For some this is a difficult day—one that reminds them of what they did not have or of what they have lost.  For others this is a Holy Day of Obligation—the flowers, the cards, the Sunday brunch.  Some preachers wrap the day in cliché.  Others avoid it all together.   After all, it’s a Hallmark holiday, not a Holy Day in the church calendar.

And yet this is a day that offers us an opportunity to reflect on love—the kind of love that brings us to life, the kind of love we know in Christ, a mothering  kind of love.  

Jesus says to his disciples, Jesus says to you and me, “Love one another as I have loved you.”  “Love”—it’s a word that appears again and again in the Gospel of John and in the letters of John as well.  In the Gospel of John, the word “love” appears twenty times and in the First Letter of John which we hear today it appears thirty-three times.  

When I was in seminary, I took Greek.  We all did.  It was a requirement.  The text we read was the First Letter of John.  Midway through the course, after maybe the sixteenth sighting of the word “love”, I raised my hand.  I wanted to know just what John meant by that word.  A three-sentence explanation would have sufficed.  The professor dodged my question.  “Hmm, aah,” he replied and then went on with the lesson.

He never did answer my question.  Today, I’m beginning to think that it was a question best left unanswered, a question I needed to answer for myself.

“Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus says to his disciples.  What does that mean?  What kind of love is that?  What does love like that look like?  What does love like that feel like?   

Answers to questions like that don’t come from books or scholars or even poets.  Answers to questions like that come from life, from experience, from being on the receiving end of love.  

There’s a picture I keep on my bookshelf.  I look at it every morning as I’m praying.  I keep it on my laptop too.  It’s a picture of my mom looking at me.  She’s looking at me with love and delight.  I’m always brought up short by that picture because the looks I often got from my mom were looks of frustration, confusion or exasperation.  And yet, when I look up, I see mom looking back at me with love.  It’s not that she has forgotten the time I mixed cookies on the kitchen floor or the time I spilled her best perfume on her dresser or the nights I came in rather late.  She remembers those but in the love that picture captures, those trifles do not matter.  The psalmist says of God, “She rescued me because she delighted in me.”

Perhaps you noticed.  I’ve changed the pronouns.  That’s because the love I know, the love of God and Christ, I knew first through my mom.  

“Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus says to his disciples.  He’s not talking about a feeling.  He’s not talking about a kind of extended liking.  He’s talking about a way of living that involves coming back again and again to those one loves.  A way of forgiving time and again.  A love that welcomes people as they are.  A love that delights in people.  A love that says in ways big and small, “You are my beloved.  With you I am well pleased.”  A nurturing kind of love.  A life-giving love.  The kind of love we all long for.

Today is Mother’s Day—a day fraught with complexities.  For some this is a day that reminds them of the nurturing love they longed for but never received.  Others find in this day a painful reminder of losses—mothers gone, children never born, children dead before their time.  I like to think of this day as a day that invites us to remember the nurturing, loving mothering that runs through every life.  Mothering we receive sometimes from our mothers, sometimes from our fathers, sometimes from our friends, sometimes from teachers or bosses or neighbors, and sometimes from total strangers.  Mothering that is not gendered.  Mothering that is simply an expression of deep, life-giving love.  Mothering love—the love of Christ and the love Christ calls us to.

And Both Were Changed:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

Two lives converged that day on the road to Gaza—two men encountered one another in the wilderness and the noon-day sun.  One, a foreign dignitary, a court official, draped with the trappings of wealth and power, riding in a chariot down a wilderness road, the other, propelled by the Holy Spirit, running to catch up with the man in the chariot.  The former we know only as the Ethiopian eunuch; the latter we know by his name--Philip.  Two men separated by a wide gulf of class and race and sexual identity.  Two men drawn to one another by the Spirit and the word of God.  Two men meeting at the margins of their lives.  Two men changed by an encounter on a road through the wilderness.

As he approaches the chariot, Philip hears its occupant, the Ethiopian eunuch, read from Isaiah, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth.  In his humiliation justice was denied him.  Who can describe his generation?  For his life is taken away from the earth” That Ethiopian eunuch turns to Philip and asks, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”

I wonder what was behind that question.  Do you think that that Ethiopian eunuch was remembering the treatment he received at the temple?  Was he recalling the words from Deuteronomy that were hurled at him on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem?  The words that banned people like him from the assembly of the Lord.  Was he remembering the temple gates slammed shut when he approached.  Was he recalling the humiliation he felt?

I can imagine Philip telling that court official about Jesus and his promise to let the oppressed go free.  I can hear Philip recalling the people Jesus healed and the people Jesus welcomed in his midst—prostitutes, tax collectors, the blind, the lame, even a bleeding woman.  And I can imagine the Ethiopian eunuch wondering to himself, “Does that include me?  Does Jesus welcome me into his midst?”

Maybe he then points to another passage in Isaiah—the passage where the prophet says, "and do not let the eunuch say, 'I am just a dry tree.' For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off."

Do you wonder if maybe, just maybe, Philip found himself wondering just how broad God’s love really is.  Do you think Philip was going back and forth is his mind about baptizing that Ethiopian eunuch?  Maybe that’s why that Ethiopian eunuch points to the water and says, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  “What is to prevent me from being part of God’s family?”  “What is to prevent me from sharing in God’s love?”

It’s the Ethiopian eunuch who spots the water.  It’s the Ethiopian eunuch who stops the chariot.  I like to think that it’s the Ethiopian eunuch who leads Philip to the water.  Both go down to the water—the baptizer and the baptized.  Both come up out of the water.  And both are changed by the encounter—the baptizer and the one baptized.

It’s that way sometimes with encounters at the margins.  You meet the other, the outsider, and things change.  Not always, but sometimes.  You get a different perspective.  You see a different side of things.  Maybe even of yourself.  New possibilities open up.  I think that’s what’s happening in our church right now at this moment in our history as a denomination.  For over thirty-five years our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered brothers and sisters have challenged the church to open the doors to all the sacraments.  “What is to prevent us from receiving communion or having our children baptized or being ordained a deacon, a priest, a bishop?  What is to prevent us from being married to the one we love, to the one who shares our life?”  “What is to prevent us from being a full member of the Body of Christ?” our LGBT brothers and sisters ask the church.

Come down to the water they say to the church.  Step in.  When we come out of those waters, we will all be changed.  And that is what is happening to our denomination, to our worshipping community and I hope to you and me as well.  As we see the witness of loving commitment manifest in the lives of those whose relationships shower blessings on all whom they encounter, we ask ourselves, “What is to prevent this relationship from being blessed?”   As we step into the waters of same-gender blessings, as we look at the words of commitment and the theology that undergirds those words, as we witness God’s love made manifest in the couples in our midst—be they same gender or different gender, maybe we will all be changed, maybe we will all draw a little bit closer to that ideal of loving, life-giving and reconciling covenantal relationships that Christ calls us to and that our liturgies proclaim.

Step into the waters of love.  They come from God.

Happy Easter

Today is often called Good Shepherd Sunday.  It is obvious why. Reverend Susan opened up the Mass with the appointed collect of the day...O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people...

The Psalm continues, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want

Finally, in the Gospel we hear Jesus say, I am the good shepherd.  One of the many famous “I Am” statements found in John’s gospel.

A Shepherd. A reference that we see used through many books of the bible. One of the oldest occupations and one that the people could relate. A shepherd would spend so much time with their flock, that they could often tell one from another. Unusual markings, the way they walked, their voice, and many other characteristics. Like wise, the flock would know their shepherd.  His or her voice or call was distinct enough that the sheep would know with whom to go. In fact, sheep would often recognize the face of their shepherd. The shepherd was charged with protecting the flock from predators and leading them to food, water, safety, and bringing the lost back into the fold.


Jesus speaks about the hired hand who is not the shepherd, the hired hand that does not care for the sheep, who sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away. When we walk into church, we bring everything in our lives through those doors.  Things in our lives that are not easy to share or those parts of ourselves that we hide. We bring our faults, struggles, failures, worries and hurts of the world. The wolves in our lives. As we feel defenseless and unsure, these wolves snatch our peace and scatter our lives.  We feel lost. We seek out understanding and answers. Searching for ways to fix those hurts that we have and those pains that we see in the world. We easily hear and may even say ourselves, where is God? Where is God to protect? Where is my shepherd? Perhaps it is in that question. Where is God? Where is the good shepherd? As if we are suppose to be looking around for Him, searching for Him. We often forget - we do not find God, God finds us. It is not the sheep that searches for their shepherd. Jesus as the good shepherd seeks us out to find us when we are lost.

God knows each one of us.  He knows our laughter, the way we talk, the things about ourselves that no one knows. When we are lost, He knows. He knows because the flock, the community, is just not the same.  Something is missing. How do we know he is searching for us? It is because we hear his call, his distinct voice. Just as sheep recognizes the voice of their shepherd, we recognize Jesus’ call to us. That call sometimes comes quietly in our hearts, so quiet that we just have to stop what we are doing and listen.  Other times the call comes loudly and literally smacks us on the head. A call that confronts us head-on. Sometimes we are too busy that call comes and goes unnoticed.

We are all children of God and that Jesus lives in each one of us. Since Jesus lives in each one of us, who do we shepherd? Our children, family, friends, those who seek public office, others that lead us? What about the stranger, the homeless, the sick, and those that are outcast or need help? Does the shepherd in us stir? Do we hear the cry of others being lost? Doesn’t that voice with in us call out to them? Do we let our distinct voice out so that they may hear it? That they may be found? What about those that have the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help.  Do we call to them? Do we shepherd them as well?

We are called to be like Christ. We all serve as shepherds in the world and community around us. We heard in John’s first letter, “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Not just talk about it, but to do something. To advocate, to protect, to revive, to lead, to share. To be living examples of Christ in our world. Powerful actions are not always large, sweeping, and news worthy. Sometimes the most powerful actions are small and unnoticed. The simple act of opening a door for someone. Saying thank you. Sharing the gifts we have with others. Gifts of love, time, companionship, a meal, a shoulder, our experience, a conversation, a smile, compassion, patience, and countless other gifts. When we share our gifts, we see God. We see God when those gifts are used for one another. Gifts that when shared are multiplied many times over and returned to us.

Yes, there is a great deal of struggle and pain in this world, but I do not think God asks any one of us to fix it all alone.  God asks that we just help. To shepherd in the ways in which we are able

We see the wolves in the world. Do we run?

The Good Shepherd is risen indeed. The Good Shepherd is alive in each one of us.

Close your eyes. He calls to us. Do you hear it? How do we respond?

It’s Not a Club—It’s a Church:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

What was your first church like?  How did it feel to you to be there?  Did you feel welcomed?  Loved?  Accepted for who you were?  Did you have a niche to fit in?  Space to grow in?  Did people know your name and the names of those you loved?  I can imagine that there are as many different first experiences of church as there are people in this room.  Churches take so many different shapes and forms.

Maybe yours was one of those churches where you knew you were loved right down to the tips of your toes.  Maybe you could count on someone smiling warmly when you caught their eye—even if you were in the midst of making mischief.   When you shrieked—as most kids do—did folks turn to you and smile or did they turn and scowl or did they not respond at all just pretending that that noisy you wasn’t there?  

One of my good friends often talks about the church she was raised in.  My friend was never an easy person to pigeonhole or to control.  She pushed every boundary she could find.  But that church of her childhood not only accepted her, they reveled in her.   My friend knew she was loved no matter who she was or wasn’t—no matter what she did or didn’t do.  That’s how my friend came to know she was beloved of God.  That’s how my friend grew to love God.  She was loved and that was all she needed.

My friend was lucky enough to be born and baptized into a community that knew how to love the children in their midst.  They weren’t perfect, but they knew how to love their kids.  I suppose you could say that that was one of their special gifts, one of their charisms, one of the marks on their part of the body of Christ.  What a gift that community gave their children!  What a gift that community gave the future!

The community to which John wrote or maybe preached was also a community with charism—a special gift.  The gift of that community was the gift of an active love for one another.  It wasn’t something that came easy to them—time and again in the three short letters of John—we hear about the challenges they faced as they worked to live out their life in Christ as a life grounded in love for one another.  But work at it they did.

I wonder how they did it—I wonder how they kept coming back to that practice of love. How they returned to love when they felt cranky, hurt, ignored, misunderstood.  How they returned to love when the love they gave was not met with love.   I wonder how they learned to live that active kind of love—that love of neighbor that loves no matter what is given back.  It couldn’t have been easy.  If it were easy, we’d have no letters from John.  He wouldn’t need to write.  But write he does.  

Could it be that that little community was one grounded in connection—connection with one another and with God?  How does John put it---“we are God’s children” and “we will be like him”.  They weren’t strangers tossed together, they weren’t people gathered together because they shared a common interest or a common end.  They weren’t an interest group or a business or even a club.  They were brothers and sisters—all children of God, all beloved of God.  Children of God joining together to help one another live in love.  How they lived with one another, how they treated one another, what they said about each other, what they held dear mattered.  Such things matter for us as well.    

Today we are baptizing Silas Jude Ruiz.  We are welcoming him into the Body of Christ.  This is not something I do or his parents do or his sponsor does.  This is something we all do together.  We receive him into the Body of Christ and commit to helping him live his life in Christ.  

We welcome Silas into a community where all are welcome.  We welcome Silas into a community where all can safely live.  We welcome you, Silas, into a community where you can grow into the person God created you to be.  Challenge us.  Inspire us.  Help us to grow in our life in Christ.  Shake the walls.  Rattle the foundations.  Keep us ever mindful of the One in whose name we gather.  Like you, Silas, we are marked as Christ’s own forever.  Thanks be to God.  

Happy Easter!
Our bulletins this morning say “2nd Sunday of Easter,”
    and our Easter season will last seven weeks and end with Pentecost.
But does it really feel like Easter any more?
The eggs have been colored, found, and made into egg salad.
The chocolate bunnies have been eaten and Easter baskets put away.
For most people, Easter is over.

Which is a shame.
Because we live in world that needs Easter.
Not just one day, but every day.

As my husband, Lee, recently said to me,
    if you feel your spirits getting too high,
        just spend a few hours reading or listening to the news.
News reports are full of violence, around the world and here at home;
    insensitive comments and inappropriate conduct by politicians;
    and constant fear for the future of our economy.

It is in this context that we come to church this Easter season,
    to hear again the stories of the Risen Christ and his followers.


The stories began with an empty tomb.
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb of Jesus that early Sunday morning,
    to pay her respects to her dead friend and lord.

It was already the third day – the third day in a world Mary Magdalene could not imagine
    – a world without Jesus.
So she came, weeping, to his tomb.
She expected to find it sealed.
Instead, she found that the tomb was open, and empty.
She heard her name spoken, and everything changed again.
Her grief was replaced by wonder and joy.
Mary was no longer lost, but given a new purpose –
    to share the good news about the risen Christ.


That same evening, the disciples were gathered in a locked room.
They did not believe the crazy story Mary came running to tell them that morning.
They did believe their lives might be in danger,
    from the same men who had arrested and killed their teacher.
They did believe that everything they had longed for was gone –
The one they thought was God’s promised Messiah was dead,
    and with him, all their hope.

Then Jesus came to them.
Just like that, Jesus appeared, and everything changed again.
“Peace be with you.” Jesus said.
“As the Father has sent me, I have sent you.”
Then he breathed on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Once before, Jesus had called these men and women to leave the lives they knew
    to follow him.
Now he gives them a new promise.
He offers them a peace that the world can not give –
    the peace of knowing and being known by Jesus,
        who has conquered sin and death.
Now he gives them a new purpose –
    sending them out, filled with the Holy Spirit,
        to witness to what they have seen and heard.
He sends them to bear witness to what God has done
    in the life, death, and resurrection of their Lord, Jesus Christ.

After his resurrection, Jesus appears three times in the Gospel of John.
He visits twice in a room where the disciples are meeting, fearful and doubting;
    and he appears to his friends as they fished,
        and eating with them on the beach.
Every time he comes to them, they become stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring.
Every time he comes to them, they become more like him.

Jesus is making them Easter people –
    his followers,
        filled with the news of the resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit.


A while ago I read an interesting quotation from a book called The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, written by the Jewish NT scholar Pinchas Lapide.
For him, the proof of the resurrection lies in the changed lives of the disciples; he writes:

“When this scared, frightened band of the apostles, which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.”

When they met the risen Christ, the disciples were transformed,
    from a frightened band of misfits
        to God’s powerful witnesses in the world.


We, too, have met the risen Christ.
We, too, have been filled with the Holy Spirit,
    and sent to bear witness to our Lord.
And so we go –
    hoping that we, too, will become stronger, wiser, kinder, and more daring;
    praying that we, too, will become more like him.
God changes hearts and transforms lives to create God’s Easter people.
This is how God continues God’s work of resurrection in a world in need of healing –
    by sending God’s Easter people to bear witness to the truth.

Easter people know that our sins are forgiven,
    so that we might forgive others.
Easter people know that Jesus loves us unconditionally,
    and sends us to love as he has loved.
Easter people know that whatever we face, whatever we fear,
    it cannot be more powerful than the God who broke the power of death itself.


Our world desperately needs Easter people.
People who bring comfort and peace where there is grief and despair,
    bring reconciliation where there has been hatred and fear,
    bring new beginnings where there has been death and chaos.


Jesus lives!
–    not only 2000 years ago, leaving behind an empty tomb,
    but now, here, among us.
We have heard him call our names –
    in the water of baptism, in the bread and wine,
    in the many and varied ways Jesus encounters each one of us in daily life.
And so we are his Easter people.


Alleluia! Christ is Risen!      
    (Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!)

Eastering:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

“Enough,”  he says, “I’ve waited long enough.  I’m heading home.”

Rising, he turns to his companion.  “Are you coming with me?” he asks.

She shrugs her shoulders and gets up.  What else is there to do?  They’ve waited long enough.  Three days,  an empty tomb, rumors of angels claiming that the one they love lives, but still no sight of him.  The tomb is empty.  He should be here by now.  And yet He’s not.  They’ve waited long enough.   It’s time to go.

And so they leave that locked-up, stuffy upper room and head down the road to Emmaus—two despairing hearts welled up with grief and fear and pent up pain.

They had hoped—oh how they had hoped—that He would be the one, the one to change the lop-sided world  in which they lived; that He would be the one to throw off all those chains that bound them to a life of burdens they often couldn’t bear.

But now—but now He’s gone.  Leaving them with only their hopes, a promise and an empty tomb—hardly enough to penetrate their gloom, hardly enough to keep them waiting in that upper room.  

So down the road they walk. As they walk they remember what He said, what He did, what He promised, and maybe most of all how He treated them with dignity and with love.  They remember how he lived that Reign of God he talked about so much.  Sometimes it almost felt as if they were living it too.

Lost in their memories and in their conversation, they don’t see the stranger coming their way.  They don’t see Him until he’s right there in their midst.  And even then they don’t really see him at all.  Their eyes are blinded by their dashed hopes and unfulfilled expectations.  So focused on what they expect, they miss the risen Christ in front of their eyes.  

I think Cleopas and his companion are not alone in that.  Expectations too clearly drawn and too tightly held can keep you and me from seeing the risen Christ standing right before us.    But the risen Christ isn’t that easy too shake.  Like the stranger on that road to Emmaus, the risen Christ comes to us in different ways, in different shapes, at different times in our lives.   Sometimes as a neighbor, sometimes as a friend, sometimes as a stranger, and sometimes a pesky co-worker or an annoying cousin.

Sometimes we meet him in a story told—a story that shifts our understanding of our world and our place in it; a story that helps us see our way out of a dilemma we thought we were stuck in; or maybe one  that expands our horizons just a little.  

Sometimes we meet him in a question asked.   “Are you sure?  Are you sure that’s how you want to play it?” someone says to us in one of those moments when we’re about to cut a cord of connectedness.  In the question we meet the risen Christ Eastering us into a different way of living, into a different way of being in the moment.  

Sometimes we meet him in an invitation offered.  “Won’t you join me?” or “You’d be great at...” or “I hear they need some help...”  Invitations to join the risen Christ in the work of Eastering the world in which we live.  

Cleopas and his companion meet the risen Christ in their despondency and despair. Walking with them, He begins to Easter them into new life.

Eastering.  As Cleopas and his companion can attest, it’s not a one-shot-only kind of thing.  Eastering.  For some of us it happens slowly over time.  A brush with newness here.  A glimpse of hope there.  First stirrings of new life.  

We get a whiff of Him and a sense of something changing in our lives.  

And then the wine is poured, the bread is broken, a glass is raised, a loaf is shared.  Gathered around the table we meet Him in the breaking of the bread.  

In our best moments we, like Cleopas and his companion, rush off—off to join the Resurrection.  Off to be the Resurrection bringing light and life and word of the living Christ to the dark corners of our world.  Off to do the work of Eastering.  

Eastering.  It’s not something to put off until the just the right moment appears. Eastering.  It’s not something we wait for.  Eastering.  It happens when we work for justice. It happens when we live with love.  It happens when the passion for God’s reign burns white-hot in our hearts.  Shall we be off to our work of Eastering?