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Acts 11: 1-18        Revelation 21: 1-6      John 13:31-35

Today’s three readings fit together splendidly. Our Gospel tells of Jesus issuing a new commandment:

…that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Our reading from Acts shows one of the ways in which Peter and the other Apostles came to realize that this the commandment would involve radical changes in their outlook and their relationships with other people and our reading from Revelation looks forward to a future in which Jesus’ new commandment is fully implemented.

“…the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples.”

Searching on the internet for a way of illustrating those themes – commandment, change and fulfilment – I came across a quotation from one of the chief engineers who worked on the Panama Canal. 

The Panama Canal is in the news at the moment because President Trump has recently threatened to take back control of it. The back story is that it was built with American money and expertise after a French attempt to construct it failed. The building of the canal was a hugely challenging project. The terrain was very difficult, with jungle to cut through, hills to circumvent, primitive living conditions for the workers and the danger of catching Yellow Fever and Malaria as a result of mosquito bites. There were a number of setbacks and disasters, and the plans for building the canal changed over time. 

The American project began in 1904, and the first two chief engineers appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt resigned in frustration at the difficulties of the task and the criticisms that they received. The second of those engineers, John Frank Stevens, was the one who realized that the attempt to build the entire canal at sea level was doomed to failure. He explained to Congress that success could only be achieved by building locks and they took his advice. 

When Jesus commanded his followers

…that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

he set them an enormous challenge. He wasn’t asking them to believe in a particular set of theological propositions, he was asking them for something far simpler and yet much more difficult, a call to join a process of love which has the potential to transform the world.   

To contribute to any process involves accepting change. Our reading from Acts shows Peter accepting that the commandment to love one another involves change. He had been brought up as a devout Jew, committed to the law of Moses. Then he had been called to follow Jesus and had watched his master hanging out with publicans, sinners and gentiles, affirming women and even praising the faith of a Roman centurion. And now more of his assumptions were being questioned. The vision he experienced challenged the Jewish dietary laws which he had always observed. The message he heard was:

‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’

In response to that call, and prompted by the Holy Spirit he travelled to Caesarea, understanding that

“The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.”

Them being, of course, Gentiles – non-Jews, people with whom law-abiding Jews would not share table fellowship because doing so would render them unclean. 

He found that the Holy Spirit has got there ahead of him. The people he met were already receptive to the Gospel. He didn’t even need to preach. 

“And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning.”

That testimony of Peter’s was a hugely important moment in the process by which Christianity ceased to be a sect within Judaism and became the world religion it is today. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Christians have continued to question the assumptions on which “us and them” thinking is based and moved to being a more inclusive church. That’s a process which remains incomplete, a process which we are called to pursue in love as we continue to discern what it means to live out the new commandment that Jesus gives in today’s Gospel:

…that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

A call to join a process of love which can transform the world.   

The process of change has at times been messy, and Christians have, and still do, fall far short. Our secularist critics are quick to point out the lamentable failures to obey Christ’s commandment that have happened in the past – the horrors of the Crusades, the cruelty of the Inquisition, Christian support for slavery – and that still happen in the present; think of the scandal of Christian leaders abusing children and vulnerable adults. 

And those criticisms bring us back to the story of the building of the Panama Canal and the quotation that I found on the internet. The third chief engineer, Colonel George Washington Goethals, was appointed in 1907. He faced enormous criticism about his handling of the project and there’s a well-known anecdote about him. One of his colleagues asked him

“When are you going to answer your critics?”

“In time”, he replied.

The colleague persisted.

“But when?”

And the Chief Engineer’s answer was simple:

“When the canal is finished.”

He brought the project to completion in 1914.

I think it is legitimate to answer secularist criticisms about the many ways in which Christians have and still do fall short of obeying Christ’s commandment in a way that is similar to Colonel Goethals’ answer to the colleague who asked him when he was going to respond to his critics. The process of our trying to obey Christ’s commandment isn’t yet finished. Our reading from Revelation gives us a visionary glimpse of what the end of that process will be like, how it will fully be realized in a new creation in which

“…the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples.”

That is a heartening passage for it teaches that with God’s help and grace flawed human beings like ourselves can make the changes in our outlook and behaviour that are needed if Christ’s command to love one another is fully to be realized. Each generation of Christians is challenged, just as Peter was challenged, to discern the changes that are needed to move the process forward to its glorious completion.  

The fact that the word peoples in that passage from Revelation is plural is very significant. It points us to strive for a perfected human community in which difference is acknowledged as a glory rather than a problem, and it reminds us of the lesson that Peter learned, that God does not confine God’s love and grace to us and withhold it from them.

“I am the Good Shepherd”

Hearing these words exactly as the disciples heard them is impossible for us, not least because they were almost certainly spoken in Aramaic. We all have some sense of what the word shepherd means, but we need to do a bit of digging to understand what Jesus meant when he identified himself as the Good Shepherd.

It turns out that there are three Aramaic words which can be translated as “good”. One of them means pleasurable or beautiful, the second means good in a moral sense and the third is all about having good relationships. Several centuries after St John’s Gospel was written, it was translated from the original Greek into Aramaic, and when the translator tackled the passage we heard just now, the third of those words was chosen. In that version of the Gospel, still used by Syriac Christians in the Middle East, Jesus is the shepherd who has good relationships.

The shepherd who has good relationships. One reason that this version of the saying makes sense is that it was customary in Biblical times for the job of shepherding to be done by one or more of the sons of the owner of the flock. You’ll recall that when Samuel asked to see all the sons of Jesse, the youngest of them, David, was absent looking after the sheep and had to be summoned to meet the prophet. If the owner of the flock had no sons, then it was necessary to hire a shepherd, but the hireling shepherds were, as Jesus suggests in today’s Gospel, less reliable. A good shepherd is, therefore, the son of the owner of the flock, and when Jesus says “I am the Good Shepherd” he is painting a word picture which conveys the truth that he is the Son of God. 

It’s likely that he had in mind a passage from the book of Ezekiel in which God tells the prophet:

“I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down…I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak…”

And the prophet, in his turn, clearly drew inspiration from the 23rd Psalm, a source of comfort for many generations of Jews and for Christians of all denominations. 

The word “comfort” can be misleading. We apply it to things which soothe us and which are restful - comfort blankets, comfort food - and there’s nothing wrong with that, but the word is derived from a Latin verb, confortare, which meant “to make strong”. And that’s an important reminder that as Christians, as members of the flock of Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd, we are called, we are made strong, in order to be shepherds ourselves. We are called to the active striving for the welfare of others of which today’s Epistle speaks:

“…let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” 

Active seeking for the welfare of others is, of course, central to the mission of Christian Aid, whose work and whose 80th anniversary we celebrate today. The charity was originally founded to help the many millions of refugees displaced during the Second World War and that’s a reminder that Thursday of last week saw the 80th anniversary of VE Day - the end of that conflict in Europe and the defeat of a regime characterised by racism, by a perverted version of national pride and by a lust for territorial expansion. While we rightly celebrate that anniversary, no victory is ever complete, for racism, perverted national pride and the lust for territorial expansion continue to fuel conflicts and to threaten peace and democratic values. Remember, for example, the conflict in Ukraine and the savage cuts to overseas aid made by the Trump administration.

We rightly commemorate the service and sacrifice of that wartime generation who enabled those us to live in peace. We also rightly commemorate the work of those who, perhaps in small ways, worked for reconciliation between former enemies.

If you go to the archives of the Imperial War Museum in London you will find there some correspondence between former German officers, recently repatriated prisoners of war, and a young woman then living in Lancashire. The officers express their gratitude for parcels of clothing sent by the young woman and other members of the Women’s Fellowship of the church to which she belonged. The museum has the letters because I deposited them there. They were written by my aunt Edith.

That initiative of reconciliation arose out of the fact that my father, a Methodist minister, was asked by the commandant of a prisoner-of-war camp in Northumberland to offer pastoral support to a badly-wounded German infantry colonel who belonged to the small Methodist Church in Germany. After VE Day, the prisoners were allowed out into the local community and my aunt met some of them at my father’s home, as did her father and her sister, who was then my father’s fiancée. When my parents got married, the wedding presents included a number of items crafted by the prisoners of war my father had befriended. I have one of them here. It’s a beautifully carved bread plate and in the centre of it, in old-fashioned German script, are words which, when translated, will be familiar to you all and which we will use later in this service.

”Unser täglich brot gib uns heute”

“Give us this day our daily bread”

The story serves as a reminder both that we belong to a Christian flock that is world-wide, a reminder of the value of the ecumenical partnership that is Murrayfield Churches Together. And it reminds us also that Christ calls us to be be shepherds, shepherds who have good relationships, including good relationships with that wider flock which we call humanity, all made in the image and likeness of God. That is what Christian Aid seeks to do.

To return to those words from today’s Epistle:

“…let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” 

‘Who are you?’

You might be forgiven, reading today’s three Scripture passages, if you at first thought they were all to do about hearing imaginary and unknown voices! In fact you’d not be alone in that thought, for how many of us can actually say we have heard the voice of God or Jesus telling us to do something?

When someone says they have heard God talking to them, your first thought might be that they are ‘off their head’ but as Scripture and other peoples’ experience often tells us this is not necessarily the case and perhaps God did ACTUALLY speak to them.

St.John, in this morning’s second reading records hearing voices and having a vision of angels praising God. In the first reading from Acts the disciples experienced Jesus after his resurrection telling them what to do. Fanciful stories? Well, whatever happened lives were changed. St.Paul’s conversion is perhaps, the most dramatic account of hearing voices and it is hardly surprising that he wasn’t believed at first by the disciples. Why? Because whose word did they have except Paul’s - the Christian persecutor, that he had heard the voice of Jesus call him and command him to stop persecuting his followers and to become one of them.

Paul or Saul, as he originally was, I like to think that Paul was his Baptismal name, certainly changed his tune and his life. He was a religious zealot, a fundamentalist Jew, hell bent on disproving that Jesus was the Messiah. He supported the Temple authorities in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus and was very good at rounding up and condemning the followers ‘the way’.  His sudden and rather dramatic conversion to a champion of Jesus must have been viewed by the disciples as being rather questionable. Was he claiming to be a Christian in order to infiltrate the Early Church and thus destroy it from the inside? Could they trust Paul’s testimony that he had heard the voice of Jesus speak to him?

Quite rightly, the disciples questioned his motives and it took a long time for Paul to really win their trust but win it he eventually did. His writings bear testament to that. Paul, never knew Jesus personally (remember that fact) but Jesus inspired him once he was able to proclaim him as his Saviour and Lord. When he could answer; ‘I know who you are.’ to the voice he heard.

Jesus is good at inspiring people, that’s why, I suspect, that we are here to his morning. We might not fully know what it is that we are doing except the fact that there is something about Jesus that encourages us to live our lives in a particular way and to seek not only to praise and worship him but to reach out to others in need as he did with the Gospel message of unconditional love.

Paul was tested and tested again and again in his new found faith and yet he hung on; despite all the shipwrecks, imprisonments and other hardships. I can relate to that testing, in my own call to ordination and the priesthood. 

Selection and training is never straight forward and my path was anything other than uncomplicated. I have, though, always felt my call. I did not experience any ‘voices calling me’ or experienced an amazing conversion, it’s just always been there for as long as I can remember from my childhood onwards. Others as I have said hear a call or undergo a conversion of life that sets them on a new path but not all of us. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t bothered by God but everyone’s ‘call’ is different.

When anyone experiences a call, it will be tested and the eventual right path found, even if that is not the path one originally thought it was meant to be. All of us are called through our Baptism to ministry and what I mean by that is that we are all called to serve others in Jesus’ name. For some of us that is to ordained or licensed ministry, for others it is to be a ‘Christ light’ in the work place or the home reaching out to others where they are and where we happen to be as well. Like Jesus the greatest thing we can ever give anyone is our attention and time, when they need it most.

All of us here today are ministers of Christ, we are his disciples journeying together closer everyday to God and the ways of the Divine. Following Jesus is a life long occupation, at times we are called to reach out to others and at other times we are the ones that need to reached out to. All of us need to listen to the voice of God of Jesus in our daily lives. Some of us might actually hear that voice, others of us will be prompted to do or say something to help another and others of us may be just called ‘to be’ and shine as that Christ light in the world. We might not even know that we are doing so but if God has a plan then God usually gets his way.

The beginning of Prologue of the Rule of St.Benedict begins with the word; ‘Listen’ and goes on to say; ‘to the Master’s instructions and take them to heart’. They are good words and words appropriate for us today as we ponder on God’s call to us. ‘Listen’ and keep on listening all your lives to what God might be saying to you. For the more we listen or try to listen the more we might come to realise who is speaking to us and what it is that we are called to be and to become and to do.

“…the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear…”

Today’s Gospel tells us that those who had followed Jesus had become prisoners. The disciples gathered behind locked doors on the evening of the first Easter Day are prisoners of fear and Thomas, who wasn’t present then, is a prisoner of what we would now call a very “left brain” way of thinking. He isn’t prepared to accept or to trust the testimony of others. He is only prepared to rely on the evidence of his five senses.

The disciples had good reasons to be afraid. Jesus had been executed and they believed that they, too, were wanted men and women, guilty by association with him. Prisoners of fear, they had literally locked themselves in. They had forgotten the commission that Jesus entrusted to them and they had not fully understood the news that Mary Magdalene had brought to them only that morning when she told them “I have seen the Lord.” 

The disciples were not only fearful for their lives. What they had known – the teaching of Jesus, which they had not fully understood, the realization in their midst of a new way of living, which they had admired but not always been able to emulate – all that seemed to have ended in disaster. A few years earlier they had been able to answer the call to follow Jesus, to embark on that new way of living. And now their confidence in the new order which Jesus had lived and taught had been shattered. 

But there was also, I would suggest, a third ingredient. They had let Jesus down. Peter had denied him three times. All but one of the twelve had forsaken him and fled. Only the beloved disciple had been a witness of his final hours. Alongside their fear was a burdensome sense of their own inadequacy, their guilt. A guilt so great that Mary Magdalene’s testimony that she had seen Jesus alive that morning was disturbing. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that the doors were locked not only against the hostile political and religious authorities, but also against the memory of the teacher whom they had abandoned. 

The Gospel writer has already given us one echo of the Hebrew scriptures in his account of Easter – Mary Magdalene meeting Jesus in a garden which recalls the Garden of Eden. Perhaps here he is giving us another – the disciples are in hiding, just as Adam and Eve tried to hide from God after eating the forbidden fruit. And there’s a third reminder of the book of Genesis to come. 

And then the Resurrection becomes a reality for them. Jesus appears and speaks the words of peace which heal their guilt, restore their sense of community with him and with one another and reaffirm them in their mission. The words of peace heal the guilt and heal the brokenness, and the Gospel writer makes this clear, for it is only after they are spoken that rejoicing becomes possible. 

“Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”

And the word then doesn’t just mean “that’s what happened next” but also “that’s what happened as a result.” The message of Jesus is “Nothing that has happened, nothing that you have done or failed to do has broken my relationship with you.”

This is what Easter says to us, says to our fearfulness and our sense of inadequacy for Easter is not just about the Resurrection of Jesus but also about the resurrection of us that it can bring about. And that is about much more than making us feel better in ourselves. It is not just freedom from fear and guilt, it is freedom to live in different and better way.

I hinted that today’s Gospel includes another reference to Genesis and that, of course, is the moment when Jesus breathes on the disciples and says “Receive the Holy Spirit”. And we are meant to be reminded of the story in Genesis of God breathing life into dirt and so creating Adam. Reminded, too, that life is more than biological, it is vocational. Jesus resurrected his disciples by liberating them from guilt and fear. He resurrected Thomas by liberating him from the “mind forg’d manacles” of a narrow, and deeply sceptical outlook. The Twelve were empowered for mission and the mission was to share the peace and forgiveness which they experienced in that locked room and also to share the confession of Thomas, who got to deliver the punch line of St John’s Gospel when he acknowledged Jesus as “My Lord and my God” – a message which, tradition tells us, he carried as far as India. 

And fearless is what the disciples became, as is made clear in today’s reading from Acts. The boldness and confidence of Peter and the others in the face of the tribunal which had demanded the death of Jesus is in sharp contrast with the fear that had driven them to lock themselves in. The Resurrection of Jesus and the consequent resurrection of his followers is on-going and active in a world that is fearful and defensive. 

That is a point that Pope Francis made in his final Easter homily. He was too weak to preach it himself but these words, written shortly before he died, speak eloquently to the power of the Resurrection.

“…our Easter faith, which opens us to the encounter with the risen Lord and prepares us to welcome him into our lives, is anything but a complacent settling into some sort of ‘religious reassurance.’ On the contrary, Easter spurs us to action…”

The Lord is risen! Alleluia!

It is early morning on Sunday. The sabbath is over. Jesus’ devoted women friends have been preparing ritual spices with which to anoint the body of their beloved Master and Teacher. They are now hastening to the tomb where the body had been so hastily laid just as the sabbath was about to begin. The accounts of the gospels show that only the women lingered as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus brought Jesus’ body down from the Cross and entombed it, so only they knew exactly where the tomb was. They had seen the great stone rolled across the entrance and are now wondering how they will get past it. They are determined to go anyway, trusting that someone will help them.

As they approach the tomb, they are amazed and probably relieved to find that the stone has been rolled away. But when they go into the tomb they find no body. Instead, suddenly, two bright figures appear telling them that Jesus is not there. He is risen, as he had foretold. The women are terrified and bow down. Then they turn and run away.

From here the Gospel accounts begin to vary. Mark says that the women were too frightened to tell anyone. Luke, Matthew and John say that they ran to tell the disciples, who do not believe them. Only Peter wants to find out what is going on. He runs to the tomb, but all he finds there are the linen cloths in which the body was wrapped. So he rejoins the other followers of Jesus in the Upper Room.

It is worth noting that all the persons mentioned or referred to by the evangelists in their several accounts were still living when Jesus rose from the dead and after he ascended into heaven. By the time the gospels were written, many had died. But there were still plenty of living eyewitnesses to testify to the events of that momentous day. Why then do the four gospels seem to tell us such different things?

Well, partly because certain people remembered vividly the experiences which had meant most to them. So Mary Magdalene remembered meeting her Lord in the garden. The disciples who walked the Emmaus Road remembered their talk with the stranger and their recognition of him as their Lord when they broke bread together. 

The differing Gospel accounts mostly come together when Jesus meets his closest followers later that day in the Upper Room. Even then Thomas’ personal experience is singled out for special mention. The eleven collectively see their Lord again and know that they are forgiven for deserting him in the garden.

But otherwise, as to who went where and in what order, it’s confused. If any of you ever watch police and crime shows on television, you will probably have noticed how different individual person’s recollections are of one important event. I think that is what has happened here, especially as the four gospels were all written years after it all took place.

We must be forever grateful that the records of these individual experiences were preserved and handed down to us. But we were not there. Try as we may, we cannot share the depth of Mary’s sorrow and joy in the garden. We cannot share the despair of the disciples on the road to Emmaus nor their joy at the table when they recognised their Lord. We need to have the reality of the resurrection brought home to us as we are today.  

That is why this morning’s two other readings are so important for us. Peter and Paul knew too that their listeners or readers would never experience what those early followers of Jesus experienced. So they go to the heart of the matter. Peter tells his Gentile listeners about the reality of Jesus, and that his message is meant for them. Paul explains to the Corinthians the significance of Jesus’ life and death. He affirms to them the reality of the resurrection, witnessed by many people, some of whom are still living.

We need to hear this message. We need to hear the facts as they are presented to us in the gospels. But we need more than that. We need to know that Jesus Christ really rose from the dead, and that what he said and taught, and what he was, speak to us today as they spoke through Peter to Cornelius and his family, and through Paul to the Corinthians. We know that sometimes we have deserted Jesus, sometimes we have denied him, sometimes we have doubted him. But because he was raised from the dead, because he lives, we know that we are forgiven. So let us be thankful today and celebrate with joy our Lord who died and was raised for us and for all Christians everywhere. Amen.

The Lord is risen! Alleluia!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!