Clint Ramos is an acclaimed Tony Award winning costume and set designer on Broadway. He worked on Violet, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweet Chariot and Once on This Island. When we're watching a play or a musical, we don't always think about the set or costumes that much. They set the tone for what we're watching, but we turn our attention on the acting, singing and dancing. We act as if the set and costumes are secondary in the show itself. We walk away from the show saying "that was a neat set" and nothing more. In a recent interview, Clint was asked what he wished the audience might take away from his work. And he answered in an interesting way.

The set and costumes do more than set the tone for the show. The costumes and set are the first things that draw us into the event. Every button on an actor's blouse and brick on a fake backdrop wall are designed to draw the audience deeper into the story. The set and costume designer use their talents to draw the audience deeper into the story on the stage. And by bringing the audience into the story, the designers end up uncovering our personal stories and the story of the world beyond the walls of the theater. The set and costumes are clues inviting the audience to look around and see everything in a new light. Clint's only wish is for the audience, for those of us sitting in the seats, to be "more porous to those clues" that are all around them.

Imagine, for a moment, if we looked at our faith in the same way. What if we were more porous to noticing the God that is always with us? Look around you. In the set that is your everyday life, how are you being drawn deeper into Jesus' story?

I tend to read my copy of The Messenger in my kitchen. I don't always think about how my dishwasher, the pile of dirty dishes in my sink and my dinged coffee grinder can reveal Jesus to me. But the God that created the universe is the same God who is living with you. The sets we build, our homes, offices and school lockers are places where God is truly present. We might struggle to see God in those places but maybe that can be changed.

What's one small thing you could do to make the room you're in right now show God's love a little more clearly? Is there something you need to add or something you need to take away? Whatever you do, remember that Jesus is right there with you—but we can sometimes get in our own way when we try to see him.

This May, spend time helping yourself be more porous to the clues of love that God is always sending you. And let's re-design the sets in our lives to help us see God more clearly.

See you in church!

Pastor Marc

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We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him

whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

1 John 3:16-24

My sermon from the 4th Sunday of Easter (April 22, 2018) on 1 John 3:16-24. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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So on Tuesday, I discovered just how waterproof my rainboots are. My boots, if you haven’t seen them, are pretty much the only water resistant shoes I own. I’m pretty picky when it comes to what I wear so when I find shoes I like, I wear them until their bottoms literally fall off. That means, when there’s even a hint of rain or water outside, I bust out my trusty boots. They’re thick, with a heavy heel, banana yellow in color, and come up to the middle of my calf. They usually work great...but Tuesday was a different story. My family and I were visiting the Cape Cod National Seashore on the one good weather day we had. Since it rained the day before and the temperature was hovering around 40, we bundled up in our winter coats and our rainboots and headed to the beach. I had the bright idea to hike 2 miles along the beach to visit a lighthouse. That hike went as well as could be expected since my unrealistic expectations and unrestrained optimism ran head first into the reality of taking a 3 year old and a 5 year old on a very physical hike. We didn’t make it very far before we got stuck in a tide pool. The ocean waves were pounding the beach, sending the water inland. The pool, at first, didn’t look very deep but a few steps into it, and we suddenly sank. I soon had two very wet kids and some very wet socks because the water came up to my knees, pouring over the top of my boots, and filling them up. When we finally managed to get out of the tide pool, I took off my boots and poured the water out of them. I slipped the, back on only to hear a large squick every time I took a step. My family decided to head back to our warm, and very dry, airbnb but I decided to press on, towards that lighthouse. I found a way through the tide pool, and headed along the sandy shore, with each step going squick. After about a half mile of this, I noticed my boots filling up again with water. Each step I took was squeezing the water out of my socks. But since the water couldn’t go out, it just stayed in my water tight boots. Every step I took meant more squicks as the loose sand on the beach made my feet sink, causing each step to be harder than the one before it. These boots, designed to bring me comfort and protection so that I could engage the world with dry feet, ended up trapping me in miserable wetness to the point where each step was a struggle that I didn’t, necessarily, want to take.

Today is our 3rd week in the first letter of John. We’ve already seen how this letter isn’t really a letter - it’s more a statement of what the letter writer believes. Some kind of split in their community, based on different understandings of Jesus himself, has caused the larger, more successful part of their church, to leave. What remained behind was the smaller group, the ones that wrote this letter, trying to get the larger group to come back. But at the same time, the author of 1 John affirmed that the Jesus we know: who lived a human life and ended up nailed to a cross - that Jesus is truly God’s Son. Jesus can’t be split into two different parts - into a human side and a divine. He is 100% one of us, and at the same time, 100% God. His entire life mattered. His death mattered. And his resurrection mattered too. To know Jesus is to embody and live out his whole entire story. So that means our life should love and help and make sacrifices for others just like he did. And we’re told told this every single day because God’s love never takes a break.

Which sounds, from our human point of view, as an utterly exhausting way to live. Each one of us woke up this morning with things we have to do. There’s the basic stuff, like eating, and the other things we do or have done for us, to cover the bare minimum of our human living. Some of us are working today or getting ready to go back to work tomorrow. Others are figuring out who will take which kid to practice, who will shop for food for the week, who will try to get their taxes finished before their extension expires, and who will visit their parents, knowing that they might have to say goodbye. It’s amazing how things, sort of, just pile, drowning us in all that we need to do. And then there  are still more of us, feeling lonely or scared or worried, who wished we had a longer to-do list to distract us from our feelings. The complexity of everyday living is tiring all on its own. So it can feel overwhelming when our faith seems to be asking us to do one more thing. It’s like, if on our daily to do list, we had to write “be Jesus to everyone” on it each and everyday. Our faith, this living and breathing and evolving relationship with Jesus, can bring us comfort, peace, and a sense of purpose but it also, at the very same time, demands a lot from us. The flip side of faith is that faith itself, this force that causes us to trust God, is a gift that God freely gives us...but it’s also a gift that compels us to become something new that loves like Jesus can. Faith, which can protect and guide us as we wade through the sinking sands and tide pools of our lives, can also overwhelmed us when crisis, busyness, worry, and our everyday reality  cause us to feel trapped, lost, confused, and wondering where is God right now? When the comforts of faith collide with the demands of faith, we can feel trapped in the sinking sand, unsure if we even want to take our next forward step.

Which is why 1 John says we should - because when we live out the life of faith, we discover the faith we already have. Faith doesn’t ask us to add one more thing to our to do list. Faith asks us to reorient the list we already have by recommitting ourselves each and everyday to that Jesus who has already committed himself to us. When we love like Jesus, when we examine all our doings and decide to root them in God’s only Son, we not only show others who we know Jesus to be but we also reveal, to ourselves, that we truly are God’s children. We might not always believe that or we might doubt that this Jesus matters. But what we do in our everyday life reveals to each of us the identity we were given at our baptism. We were made followers of Jesus. We made faithful and faith-filled. And we are, even today, loved. When we see clearly how much God loves us, how much Jesus on the Cross was meant for you and for me, the easier it becomes for us to love: to see the needs of this world and give our gifts, our resources, and even our lives so that others can thrive. A confident faith doesn’t mean that we will wade through life fully protected from the struggles, harms, and challenges that life will bring us. A confident faith, above all, holds on to our identity as beloved children of God, so that even in those moments when our faith is overwhelmed, flooded with anxiety and doubt so that our next steps feel heavy, hard, squishy and full of the unknown, we still know we aren’t alone. And then, even when we are afraid, we can then love and serve like Jesus because Jesus never stops loving and serving us.

Amen.

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I wonder what the disciples were thinking when Jesus spoke about "other sheep?" (John 10:11-18) Could they imagine who those others were? Would they want others to be included anyways? 

The disciples were there during Jesus' early ministry. They witnessed his acts of power. They saw Jesus literally walk on water. I'm sure they were impressed by what Jesus could do and what he said. As his ministry grew, political and religious authorities pushed back. Jesus was challenged in public and forced to defend what he was doing. The disciples, I'm sure, were forced to do the same. Scripture is clear that the disciples never truly understood what Jesus was doing. They struggled to understand what he taught and they were not clear about who he really was. But when the disciples were confronted by others, I imagine it gave them a false sense of righteousness, a belief that they understood exactly who Jesus was. At the same time, however, the disciples probably were very afraid. They didn't know if they people they spoke to would welcome them or challenge them. The disciples would not know what other people, outside of Jesus' inner circle, would do. Other people, then, would be unknown variables. And Jesus just his told his disciples that those unknown variables, the people who make the disciples afraid, will be Jesus' followers. 

It's sometimes difficult for us to imagine the diversity inherent in the body of Christ. Faith itself is a gift from God and a gift that God gives to us in a very personalized way. God knows each of us and knows what our faith needs. This is amazing and wonderful. But it also means that what our neighbor needs might not be what we need. And that their shape and experience of faith might be different from our own. But regardless of our faith, and whether we identify as Lutheran Christians, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholic Christians, Reformed Christians, Non-Denominational Christians, and more - we are all followers of Christ. And we are all invited to keep our eyes, our heart, and our focus on the Jesus who guides us all. 

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One of the striking claims in this passage from 1 John 3:1-7 is “no one who sins has either seen him or known him” (3:6). This seems to contradict what we heard last week: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1:8). How can the author of 1 John say that the followers of Jesus do not sin and, at the same time, that we need to confess the sins we know we have?

Like I mentioned in my sermon last week, there has been a split in the churches that first wrote and used the gospel according to John. Two groups emerged arguing over the nature of Jesus. The author of 1 John believed Jesus to be fully divine and fully human - all at the same time. The other side believed that Jesus’ divinity is all that mattered. This argument about Jesus impacted how they lived their lives. If Jesus is fully human, then how we live our lives right now matters. If Jesus’ humanity is not important, than what we do today doesn’t really matter in the end. For the author of 1 John, sin (the way we deny Jesus and fail to trust him because we are too busy acting as if we are the center of the universe) impacts our relationship and experience of Jesus. For the other side, sin does not alter their relationship and union with God. This kind of belief encouraged a way of life that did not focus on justice, righteousness, or ethics. It’s a way of life that assumed we’re already “good enough,” and thinks that Jesus (and Jesus’ church) cannot show us a new way of living.

Today’s passage from 1 John begins by proclaiming who, through baptism and faith, you are. You are a child of God. You are, right now, living with a fully human and fully divine Savior who cares about you. You have been adopted into God’s family and God’s family cares about justice, mercy, hope, and love. When we live as authentic children of God, following Jesus and serving each other are just what this family of faith do. But, as imperfect people, we sin. We make mistakes. We fail. But when we admit our faults, we also admit who we belong to. Being with Jesus empowers, inspires, and helps all our relationships with other people because we all struggle. In spite of our identity as Children of God, we will sin. But we trust that the Jesus who lived, died, and rose for us, will keep his promise. The eternal life doesn’t begin only when we did. In Christ, our eternal life starts right now. And the core of that life involves loving God and everyone else.

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We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

1 John 1:1-2:2

My sermon from the 2nd Sunday of Easter (April 8, 2018) on 1 John 1:1-2:2. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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So if it’s okay, I’d like to spend some time today with y’all nerding out. But instead of digging into our shared love of comic books or which Star Wars movie is the greatest, I want to take us to another level. I want to spend time with something called P52. Well, P52 is just it’s nickname. It’s full name is Rylands Library Papyrus 52 and it looks like this Slide 1. It’s a 3.5 inch by 2.5 inch piece of papyrus located at John Rylands University in Manchester. And it doesn’t look like much. The papyrus is all brown and fragile. Its edges are jagged and torn. And the words written on it are missing most of their letters. In fact, the whole thing looks like maybe it was tossed in the trash and left in the Egyptian desert for 1900 years - which might actually be what happened. On first glance, P52 looks like a piece of junk. But it isn’t. That, right there, is the earliest written copy of anything we have from the New Testament. What’s on that scrap is the gospel according to John, chapter 18, verses 31-33. And it’s a copy of the gospel, dated to sometime between 125 and 175 CE, just a generation or two after that gospel was first written down. The bible we read today, the scriptures that structure our faith, are connected to that little scrap of papyrus that someone left in a trash can 1900 years ago.

Now, that’s sort of mindblowing, right? I like to nerd out with old papyrus because we see how we are connected to a faith that is bigger than ourselves. Our belief and those moments in our lives when Jesus is very real to us - they are part of a wider reality of faith that includes everyone here and whoever held that piece of papyrus out in the Egyptian desert. As much as we in the church like to talk about our faith being a very personal thing - by using words like “my faith” or “I believe” or even “Jesus loves me” - the faith we have is also a very communal thing. Our faith connects us, unites us, and brings us together into a community that looks to Jesus for its life. What we do in worship today might sound different from what happened in Egypt 1900 years ago, but we are all connected to a Jesus who is both personal and communal. Our faith is not designed to be a solo activity. Our faith is a team sport.

So for the next six weeks, we’re going to hang out in 1 John. 1 John is usually called a letter but it really isn’t. It’s more of a position paper, describing what they think the main themes from the gospel according to John are all about. But whenever someone writes down anything that says “this is what this means,” then we can be sure that there are others who don’t agree. Later on, we’ll discover that there’s been a split in the churches who first wrote and used the gospel according to John. And their disagreement centered on Jesus himself. One group, the larger and more successful of the two, decided that Jesus’ divinity, his status as God’s Son, was the most important part of who Jesus was. And since Jesus’ divinity was all that mattered, they decided that the rest of Jesus’ story - his humanity, his life, and his death - didn’t matter at all. For them, it was as if the opening chapter of the gospel according to John, the bit that described Jesus as being God and present since the beginning, was immediately followed by Easter. Everything in between was almost meaningless. It didn’t matter that Jesus was born. It didn’t matter that he was a teacher who always formed communities. It didn’t matter that he ate meals with people he shouldn’t, argued with the religious authorities, and healed those in need. And it especially didn’t make one lick of difference that Jesus ended up dying on the Cross. For the larger community, this framework created a kind of faith that was very personal, very individualized, and one that didn’t need really need the wider community. Because a faith that only cares about Jesus’ divinity, is a faith that doesn’t really care much about our everyday living. Instead, once that kind of faith feels like it already believes enough, then it starts acting as if life, right now, is meaningless to God. We can then make our life into whatever we want it to be, staying rooted in ourselves alone, and not in fellowship with the rest of the team.

Now, I know this kind of faith sounds a bit odd to us. But imagine if we didn’t have Mark, Matthew, or Luke in our bible. Then a faith that doesn’t pay much attention to Jesus’ life and death is a faith that a certain reading of the gospel according to John, can be possible. It’s a faith that’s centered on me and God and... no one else. It’s a faith that looks to escape the world rather than spend time trying to live in it. And it’s a faith that doesn’t really value community because it doesn’t believe that a community is needed to make people grow. It’s a faith that, in the end, looks for Jesus but ends up leaving Jesus’ community behind.

So, It’s to this larger, more successful, community that the author of 1 John was writing to. 1 John wasn’t written by the side that was the most powerful. And it was a letter that, in the end, didn’t really work at all because the two communities never reunited. 1 John is a piece of writing that failed it’s goal - yet it became part of our bible because, I think, it helped show all of us how faith is a communal effort. What we teach, share, and entrust to the next generation is a faith that grows, changes, and evolves in and through community. The gospel according to John needed Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke needed the gospel according to John. Even the structure of our scripture itself shows us that we can’t be who God wants us to be unless each of us commit to following Jesus with each other.

And that commitment isn’t always easy. We will disagree with each other. We will see Jesus in different ways. There will be parts of our personal experience of faith that we believe should be essential to everyone, but we’ll discover that the person sitting next to us in these pews doesn’t feel that same way. [Nicolas, like the rest of us, is going to discover that] What makes church hard is that we are called to be with people who aren’t just like us. But that’s also what makes church essential because a faith without community is a faith that will not last.

And so, the author of 1 John, begins his writing in the place where our faith starts: with an honest sharing of what was “from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.” Our personal story with Jesus - with its struggles, doubts, and joys - is a story that we are asked to share with each other. When we tell our story, we commit ourselves to this community. And when this community listens to these stories, all of us discover a little more of what following this Jesus thing is all about. The person in Egypt hearing about Jesus from P52 had no idea that us, here in Woodcliff Lake, would be talking, and sharing, and following that same Jesus 1900 years later. But the Jesus that gave that person in Egypt life, and breath, and held them through all things - is the same Jesus who is here, with us, forming us into a new community where walking in His light is all that we [including little Nicholas] do.

Amen.

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Christ is Risen! Alleluia! 

It's hard to pick a "favorite" when it comes to the different stories of Jesus' resurrection. But today's reading from the gospel according to Mark 16:1-8 is near the top of my list. If you open up your bible at home, you might notice more verses after these eight. Yet we know that Mark originally ended at this point. Overtime, two different endings were added to the text. One was short, with the women telling others about what they saw (and completely contradicting the verse that came before it). The other ending is much longer, merging together stories from Matthew, Luke, and John. We know this original ending to Mark, with people too afraid to speak, troubled the early church. The early Christians felt compelled to show that the early disciples overcame their fear. And we know the women at the tomb did speak because, 2000 years later, we're sitting right here.  

So why end the story in this way? Because, I think, Jesus' resurrection is terrifying, shocking, and downright amazing. This kind of ending doesn't happen in our daily lives. The shock of the empty tomb is unexpected. And Mark loves the unexpected. The women, out of devotion to their teacher and with a desire to properly care for him in his death, arrived at the the tomb early in the morning. They knew Jesus died and they all knew what death looked like. They had their expectations of how Jesus' story ended. But once they approach the tomb, every expectation was reversed. The large stone was rolled away. A young man, dressed in white, sat inside. The young man acknowledged their fear and surprise and he told them to leave this place and go forward to Galilee. The women run away in silence because none of this was expected. And that makes sense because Jesus was (and is) a brand new thing. 

This brand new thing, however, doesn't end with verse 8. Jesus continues. If we look at the opening verses of the gospel according to Mark, we read this: "The beginning of the good news..." Mark's story was never meant to be an ending nor designed to contain everything about faith and Jesus. Mark (and all the gospels) are only a beginning. And this new beginning continued in Galilee, Turkey, Greece, and beyond. Jesus' story continues wherever people gather to show and tell hoe Jesus made a difference to them. You, right now, are part of that story. And I pray that Jesus' story of love, compassion, and grace will continue to shape your life in amazing ways. 

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When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.​

Mark 16:1-8

My sermon from Easter Sunday (April 1, 2018) on Mark 16:1-8. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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I’ve noticed that my life lately keeps wrapping up mid-sentence. When I walk from one side of my house to the other, with a very clear and specific purpose in mind, I’m usually detoured by the most random thins - like that sock, right there, in the middle of the floor. I grab it, planning to toss it into the laundry but then realize I forgot to move the laundry into the dryer. Oh, and there’s that email I need to write and I better post that funny thing my kids said on Twitter before I forget….….wait...I forgot what they said. When I finally return to that original task, hours have literally floated by. I call these mid-sentence moments because my wife and I will start a conversation and in the middle of a sentence, something like this will come up, and we’ll finish the conversation days later. This mid-sentence kind of living is exhausting and it’s also hard because it leaves conversations, thoughts, and experiences hanging in the air. And unless I keep these mid-sentence moments right here, right in front of me, they end up forgotten and falling away. Now I know that most of my mid-sentence living is caused by my life choices. It’s not easy having many competing priorities and living with a family that has their own priorities as well. I have some control over my mid-sentence moments but I also know that this isn’t always true. There are experiences that stop us in mid-sentence and not by our own choice. We are caught up by things and events and people we can’t control. And before we know it, our expectations are inverted. Our plans go awry. Our assumptions are undone. And we become like Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, left in mid-sentence.

The gospel according to Mark is a little weird because it ends basically in mid-sentence. Unlike Matthew, Luke, and John, there’s no vision of the resurrected Jesus in this text. Jesus doesn’t speak Mary’s name. He doesn’t walk through locked doors to surprise a disciple named Thomas. We don’t even get to see Jesus having brunch with his friends on the beach. Instead, we get a large stone, rolled away. A young man sitting there, telling the women to not be afraid. He gives them a job, saying “Go and tell.” Tell the disciples what you saw. Tell Peter where Jesus is going. Tell everyone that Jesus isn’t where you expected him to be. And the women, according to this text, go nowhere and say nothing.

Which isn’t really the story we expect to hear on Easter. We already started today by proclaiming that Jesus is risen. We’ve already shouted alleluia. We’re gathered here because we know that someone told; that there have always been women preachers because if the Marys and Salome hadn’t preached, we wouldn’t be here right now. We expect on Easter for the Bible to show us Jesus raised from the dead and yet the gospel according to Mark leaves us, and these women, stuck in mid-sentence - between what we know came before and what now looks brand new.

Now the women already knew everything that had gone before this moment. They had followed Jesus, heard his teaching, watched his healings, and were the only ones of Jesus’ disciples who saw him die on the Cross. I’m sure these women thought they knew Jesus’ whole story. But then, in a completely unexpected way, the women heard that the resurrected life was now a reality. And at that moment, their understanding of their relationship with Jesus suddenly changed. Their connection to God’s Son; this Savior who called each of them by name; who promised through word and deed that God knew them; that God saw them; and that God loved them; this Jesus who gave so many other people new life now had a new life of his own. And because Jesus knew these women, this new Easter life was now part of them. Their mid-sentence life was over and their resurrected life had, because of Jesus, begun.

But, according to Mark, this resurrected life doesn’t show up at the end. The resurrected life appears in our everyday living and it shows up everywhere. We see what this life looks like “when Peter’s mother-in-law is raised out of a fever and freed to serve (1:31).” We see the resurrection happen when a tax collector, a profession in the ancient world that required corruption, abuse, and violence, leaves his tax booth behind to follow Jesus(2:14). We see a person marginalized because of their difference “raised into the center of his community’s attention and is” then fully “healed (3:3).” And we watch a father, knowing that his doubt and his faith are not incompatible, so he bring his most cherished relationship to Jesus because being with Jesus changes everything. (Mark 9) Time and time again in Mark, the sick, the wounded, the marginalized, and the ones society casts aside are raised up, given new life, and then placed into a community called to care and love them. It was only at the tomb, after the good news of new life was told to them, that the disciples finally realized that Jesus had already been filling out the next part of their sentence and the next part of their life.

The resurrection isn’t something we have to wait to find out. It’s already here. In our baptism and in our faith, the new life of Jesus is given to each of us as a gift. This gift isn’t given to us because we’re perfect, or get everything right, and or we come to church every Sunday. No, this resurrected life is given to us because God lived our mid-sentence life and, through the Cross, God pushed us to the other side. It’s not always easy to feel and notice this resurrected life. We are, like those women at the tomb, still living lives in between what has come before and what will come next. The Marys and Salome had no idea what joys, struggles, and experiences their new life with Jesus would bring. But they did know that Jesus was right there, ahead of them, and he is right here, ahead of us. We just need to shift our focus, reset our eyes, look to him, and live into our resurrected lives. Lives where healing, not harm, is all we do. Lives where love of neighbor becomes a reflex because it’s part of who we are. Lives where the walls and dividing lines we build to keep others out so that we can stay in our personal bubbles - those walls need to be torn down. And these resurrected lives are where inclusion, care, service, and love become habits that offer new life to all. The resurrected life knows who we are, where we’ve been, and knows all the ways we failed to serve others without fear. This life knows us as we are, right now, caught in our mid-sentence moments; but with our eye stuck on Jesus, this resurrected life will carry us through into a new reality, into God’s reality, where the next part of our life becomes love.

Amen.

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