361 Do What You Will

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Do What You Will”, originally shared on May 28, 2025. It was the 361^st  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What is the path to Christian unity? It’s the path less taken. Today, we’re going to find out what it is.

   Sally and I and James and Nicole took a walk at the California Botanic Garden in Claremont (formerly named the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden) last Sunday.

   James and Nicole took us on paths that were either new or unknown to us, sometimes requiring us to walk single file, but giving us a greater sense of the garden’s native and natural beauty than the broader roads and the paved paths that we had walked for many years and which had given us another view of the garden that we had begun to associate with all it had to offer.

   The bulk of the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches throughout the world this coming Sunday, John 17:20-26, takes us on a broad and familiar path that gives a common view of Christian unity.

   That is the broad path where people routinely quote this text as being about visible Church unity, where Jesus prays for all denominations to be one church, that we are to work for this unity as a visible expression of the Body of Christ, and they are wrong.

   There is another path in this text, a narrow one where we sometimes walk single-file on a narrower path, but one where we are shown the same native and natural beauty of a common relationship with the one true living God together.

   I saw a story on the news the other day about a group of 6^th grade boarding school students who were asked to video-record questions for their future selves, and then those recordings were played back to them when they were in 12^th grade and about to graduate. It was time traveling, but it took place in real time. 😊

   It made me wonder what questions we might invite our 6^th graders, or even our Confirmation Class students, to ask of their future selves? Have you grown in your Christian faith? Do you think about it at all? Who have you told that you are a Christian? How has faith changed you? What have you done with the faith that was given to you?

   How would we answer those questions? What questions would you ask of your future self?

   Would one be “What is the path to Christian unity?” Maybe. Maybe not. But it was one that Jesus answered on the day we call Maundy Thursday, during the Last Supper. Jesus thought that it was important enough that he talks about it at the end of what is called Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer” within his “Fairwell Discourse”.

   It begins in this week’s Gospel reading, in John 17:20-21,

²⁰ “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

   Jesus, in his final hours, prays for us. He prays for those who believe in him through the witness of his first disciples. Those people are us!

   And what does he pray for? He prays for more than cooperation. He prays that we may all be one. How can this happen?

   Jesus says that unity is given to us by recognizing the common relationship that we have as a result of our common experience of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Christian unity is a unity of a transformational relationship. It comes by a relationship of presence within us, in all of us, just as God the Father is in Jesus the Son, and as Jesus the Son is in God the Father.

   Why does Jesus pray that this might happen? It is so that our witness is credible, so that the world may believe that Jesus is God.

   The world sees our disunity and conflict and it diminishes our credibility. Nowhere is this seen more plainly today than in Ukraine, where the Russian Orthodox patriarch declared the Russian invasion to be a holy war against unwanted Western influence, bringing disaster to the Russian Orthodox people living in Ukraine, and driving them into another denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. How can we overcome this?

   Jesus continues in John 17:22-23.

 ²² The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³ I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 

   This unity among Christians of which Jesus speaks is not something that we can achieve by ourselves. It’s something that we can only receive from God. We have been given everything we need to be completely one.

   The irony of these words of Jesus is that they were the last words said to his disciples before they went to the Mount of Olives and Judas betrayed him.

   Yet, Jesus has given us the same glory that he first received from God the Father. Why? Again, a pragmatic reason: so that the world may know that God the Father has sent God the Son, God’s self, and has loved us even as Jesus Christ, the Son, has loved us. Selflessly. Sacrificially. For us, unity is a means, not an end.

   No love can be purer. Jesus explains this in verse 24,

²⁴ Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

   The glory of God has been known in the world since its foundation. Jesus is God and Jesus has revealed his glory to us and we are to reveal it to the world. How does this happen? We see how it happens in verses 25-26,

²⁵ “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

   The “name”, in Bible times, was believed to carry the true self of the person or thing that is named. When Jesus speaks of making the name of God known, he is speaking of having made God’s true self known. He adds that he also will make it known in his coming torture and death on the cross.

   Why? So that the love with which God the Father has loved Jesus, the Son, may be in us.

   That is the nature of our unity. God’s true self is seen in God’s essence: in his sacrificial love seen most clearly at the cross.

   That’s why Augustine of Hippo, aka St. Augustine, could say, “Love God, and do what you will.”

   If we love God, we will naturally want to do what God wants. We know that it is what’s best for us and for the world and, together, God has made us into The Church through our common, God-given, relationship with God and with one another.

   All who believe and are baptised have received all the gifts necessary to be member of the one true Christian Church. We are the Body of Christ. The name on the door matters, but it is secondary to being The Christian Church, the creation of God.

   It is that transformational love of God at work in all of us. Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. It doesn’t require visible unity for this unity to exist. It is essential to who we are.

   “The Body of Christ” is the Bible’s main metaphor for the Church. Christ is the head of the Church and each member contributes to the whole. Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians 12:12-14,

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.

   Have you ever thought about the fact that we don’t confess our belief in our churches or even our denominations in our creeds?

   That’s why the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed that we confess during worship services are called the Ecumenical Creeds. They are a statement of the core beliefs of the Christian Church, the one we refer to as the “one holy catholic and apostolic church” in the Nicene Creed and “the holy catholic church” in the Apostles’ Creed. 

   I did a funeral once where the director told me afterward that he thought I had picked up the wrong hymnal when he heard me lead the word “catholic” during the service.

   The word “catholic” means “universal”. Some versions of the creeds offer the word “Christian” as an alternative. The Roman Catholic church is a denomination, named when there was only one Christian church on earth.

   But now, there are lots of different kinds of visible churches. The visible Christian Church is divided, but that could be a good thing.

   Look at countries where they have one national state church. The only option is “Take it or leave it”. And guess what? Many people have left it. In some places, it means they get a tax break! 😊

   Your choice in the United States is take it or go to another church. Or start your own church. This has provided a rich diversity of Christian life here.

   In fact, having many Christian denominations has produced a religious vitality in the United States that is rarely duplicated anywhere else in the world. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.

   How do we live as the Body of Christ from the inside out?

   One of the exercises I had my confirmation students to do is to imagine that they had a computer monitor on the top of their head and that everything they thought, all day, would be shown there. Would they mind?

   Everyone minded! 😊

   We are sinners. Being a Christian doesn’t mean that we are now free from sin. Even the Church needs reformation every once and awhile.

   But, as 16^th century Church reformer Martin Luther said, “You can't stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair.”

   Luther said that we are at the same time saints and sinners. We sin, but we are made saints by God’s grace through faith and the forgiveness of sin. We are transformed as we grow closer to Jesus. All of us.

   We aren’t the light but we are made new daily, and we strive each day to be better reflectors of the light.

   We are like spokes on a wheel with Jesus as its hub. The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to each other. The farther we get from Jesus, the farther we get from each other.

   I imagine that you pass lots of other churches on your way to the one where you worship. There’s a Presbyterian one, and a Baptist one, and a Methodist one, and a generic one, and a Pentecostal one, and a Roman Catholic one, and another Lutheran one, and a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)/United Church of Christ one, and a Nazarene one, and lots of different kinds of Orthodox ones and lots and lots of other ones.

   We may know members of other churches. Our friends, family members, co-workers and neighbors may be members of other churches.

   But we who are Christians have many more things in common than things that divide us. Sally and I found this in each other when we met after being assigned from our two denominations (My American Lutheran and her Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)/United Church of Christ) to an ecumenical group helping churches work together in common ministries.

   Have you ever worshipped in a church other than your own, in another country than your own, or in another language than your own? The presence of the Holy Spirit is manifest, even if everything else about the service is unfamiliar. Sometimes it even overcomes our resistance to what is not our own but is part of the Body of Christ.

   How does that happen?

   Christians believe that Christianity is not so much a religion as a living relationship with the one true living God.

   The key to understanding these words comes in the very first verse of this week’s Gospel reading, in John 17:20,

²⁰ “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, 

   Our common purpose is to make Christians and point them to a common unity in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

   How does that happen?

   By far, most people come to faith through the testimony of a friend or a relative, a credible witness, those who believe in Christ through the word of his faithful people. Our testimony can be, “Why I became a Christian”, or “Why I remain a Christian”. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or dramatic.

   A very high percentage of Christians come to Christ before their 18^th birthday, because of a credible witness from those who believe in Christ through the word of his faithful people, the Body of Christ.

   The Body of Christ has many members, but Christ is the head of the Body. There is a diversity of demographics and denominations in that body, and we’re all going to be together in heaven, so now it the time to embody what has already begun in our baptism. We are a new creation. We have been born again. Our eternal life has already started. Let’s live that unity now!

   It is tempting, during periods of stress such as the world is living in right now, for various social and political groups to pull back, throw up barriers, and defend who they are.

   We in the Church should be doing the opposite of pulling back. Now is the time to reach out, to recognize the faith that draws us together and to share the hope that is in us with one voice.

   Jesus prayed for us at the beginning of this week’s Gospel reading, in John 17:20-21a,

²⁰ “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one.

   We are Christians because of an unbroken string of witnesses beginning from that moment and continuing to today. That is how unity happens. We listen to the voice of the Spirit within us all and we are the Body of Christ through a living common relationship with the one true living God, fully praising God for what we have been given and then being something visible, by the grace of God, sharing our own witness for the sake of those who don’t know.

   The path to Christian unity isn’t in the things that we do, but in being who we have been made to be in Jesus Christ. 

360 Be Prepared

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Be Prepared”, originally shared on May 21, 2025. It was the 360^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Have you ever felt that something terrible was going to happen and that you were totally unprepared? Today we’re going to find out why that could be a good thing.

    I was a Boy Scout. Many of us were Scouts of some kind. The Boy Scout motto is, “Be Prepared”. Scout or not, most of us try to live by that motto.

   That’s why we carry insurance. It gives us the feeling that we are prepared. Except when we find out that we aren’t.

   Many homeowners in the recent Pacific Palisades and Alta Dena monster fires thought that they were prepared, but found out that they didn’t have the coverage that they thought they had, or that they did and now they’ve been dropped by their insurance companies, and/or they have seen their insurance premiums rise dramatically. And it’s been proposed that all California residents should share in the costs related to those fires.

   Because we’re preparing for the next major fires.

   We want to be prepared, and we mostly think we are prepared until we discover that we’re not.

   You’ve probably seen stories in the news recently about the terrorist bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. I saw a story on TV this week about a person who lived within the destruction area.

   He was showing a reporter the damage to his home, and he said that he hadn’t worried too much about it because he had homeowners’ insurance. And then he called his agent and found out that he didn’t have coverage because his policy didn’t include “Terrorist Insurance”! Let that sink in for a minute.

   He thought he was prepared, until something came at him that was totally unexpected.

   Our Gospel reading last week took place on Maundy Thursday. We’re still with the disciples in our reading this week in the night that Jesus was betrayed, when he began Holy Communion, washed his disciples’ feet, and gave them a new commandment. “Maundy” is an Old English word from which we get our words like “mandate” and “commandment”, as in words from our Gospel reading last week in John 13:34,

³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

   He continues that theme in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, John 14:23-29.

   It begins with Jesus trying to prepare his disciples at this last supper for what was coming, in John 14:23-25,

²³ Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. ²⁴ Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. ²⁵ “I have said these things to you while I am still with you.

   Jesus tells his disciples that loving Jesus looks like something. He tells them that what it looks like will come from keeping his word, that what they do comes from who they are, and that a transformed life will enable a person to live from the inside out, formed and guided by the Triune God.

   Maybe that’s why many people in our culture don’t feel prepared for what’s coming in the world today. Their lives are formed by themselves and not by the living relationship with the one true living God that Jesus restored for us on the cross.

   In fact, there is a tremendous sense of discouragement in the world today.

   I remember a meme I saw during the pandemic that was a parody of the popular children’s book, “Goodnight Moon.” Over the strangely calming primary colors and the starry night sky out the window of the bunny’s bedroom it said, “Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Zoom, Goodnight sense of impending Doom.”

   Things haven’t improved much.

   In fact, now we’ve added a sense of disorder in the world, particularly in our country, a sense of rootlessness, a worsened national polarization that could go anywhere, a technology that could replace us, a war in Ukraine that could easily spill-over into a calamitous World War, an unstable economy, and closer to home, a sense in the Church that something has broken and is getting worse.

   Why is this a good thing?

   Jesus answers that question as our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday continues in John 14:26-27,

²⁶ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

   Jesus leaves us with his peace. Not what the world gives, but his peace! In fact this peace is beyond all human understanding because it comes from God. We can’t achieve it. We can only receive it.

   An uncertain future makes us more likely to turn to a life that is solid, like a rock. A new life that comes from God.

   Tim Keller, the presbyterian pastor who started a healthy church in Manhattan, in New York, and a respected author, who died a couple of years ago, once tweeted (or “x”’d) , “The gospel is always more compelling to people who know their own inadequacy. The highly competent, confident, and successful have a harder time with the concept of salvation by sheer, unadulterated, totally unmerited grace.”

   The first and most important requirement for being saved is to know that you need a Savior.

   The first and most important requirement for being forgiven is to know that you are a sinner, and to repent.

   I saw another meme a while ago that said, “Everything not saved will be lost.” It was a Nintendo “Quit Screen” message.

   Jesus does not give salvation to receive anything from us. Jesus saves us because we have come to know that we need a Savior. He makes us prepared.

   How does this happen? It’s the work of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the one God, the Trinity.

   It’s being like the woman in the song written by Carole King and partners and sung and made famous by Aretha Franklin, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”

“When my soul was in the lost and found
You came along to claim it”

   That’s exactly what the Savior does for us.

   When a man named Zacchaeus, who was also publicly known as a sinner, a chief tax collector, a thief and a traitor to his people, humbled himself before Jesus, Jesus ate at his house, a public sign of welcome. And when Zacchaeus repented before Jesus, this happened, in Luke 19:9-10,

⁹ Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

   So, if you’re feeling lost today, if you don’t know where you are in life or where things are going, if you know that you cannot save yourself, the good news for you is that you have a Savior.

   Don’t give up or surrender to despair. Jesus has come to seek and to save you. Let Him into your heart to make you new.

   Jesus concludes this week’s Gospel reading in John 14:28-29,

²⁸ You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. ²⁹ And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

   Jesus prepares us for what is coming.

   We don’t know what the future holds in this crazy world, but we do know Who holds the future.

   I’m a Lutheran and, like most Christians in Southern California, many of us are struggling. What does it mean to be a Lutheran in Southern California today? It means helping others to be prepared.

   Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, once said, “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” 😊

   We, the loose Lutherans who have landed here, are defined by our diversity, a foretaste of heaven that has resulted in a cross-pollination of vision and ministry in a place where people have come to invent, and sometimes to endlessly re-invent themselves.

   The old pastors used to say that the white stuff on the Sierras wasn’t snow, it was the church transfer letters that Lutherans were given back home, that they had thrown out on their way to Southern California. 😊

   “Being a Lutheran in Southern CA” means offering something solid to our often rootless and insecure culture: a grounded and meaningful life. We are intentional Lutherans.

   We point to a living relationship with the one true living God, freely restored for us by God on the cross, one that offers love where everyone else seems to be hustling to be popular.

   We live as a people set apart, as light, as salt, as leaven. We don’t live by the numbers.   

   We carry our social action in large containers of faith, and grace and the Bible as the living Word of God in a way that offers an alternative life to a secular culture that is not nearly as “alternative”, or as “radical”, or as “open-minded” as it thinks it is.

   We live a definition of “justice” that is “doing God’s will”.

   We are trendsetters and influencers in a way that the world cannot see because it only cares about appearances and we live transformed lives from the inside, out.

   We point the way to Jesus for everything that’s loose to be set free.

   That’s what being a Lutheran Christian in Southern California means to me.

   We are only two weeks away from celebrating the third biggest event in human history after the Birth and Death & Resurrection of Jesus: The Day of Pentecost. It’s the day when the promise of Jesus about the coming of the Holy Spirit, first to his remaining disciples the evening of his Resurrection and then to all who receive it, came true on The Day of Pentecost, in fulfillment of the Gospel for this coming Sunday, in John 14:26,

²⁶ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.

   Jesus spent what we call Maundy Thursday in the Last Supper, talking about the prime importance love in the face of his betrayal by one of his closest disciples, showing them what service meant, that they were friends of God, and instituting Holy Communion, because they weren’t prepared. He was preparing them. He was telling them that they had a Savior.

   They were being told that everything that they had built their lives upon was going away. But Jesus was also telling them to trust him, that they would not be alone.

   That is the gift he offers to you. That new life is the gift that we all receive and that we point to for others.  Repent, open your heart, and receive it from him today. Be prepared by Jesus. 

359 True Love

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “True Love”, originally shared on May 14, 2025. It was the 359^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What is true love? It’s nothing that the world can prepare us for, and today we’re going to find out what it is.

    The world spoke Latin briefly last week: “Habemus papam”. Or, “We have a pope”.

   Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected leader of the Roman Catholic Church, is the first pope born in the United States, and the first pope of the Augustinian Order.

   I once read that one of the strengths of the Roman Catholic Church is that it has a variety of religious orders where there can be diverse approaches to being Roman Catholic, while maintaining unity within the Roman Catholic Church. There are Franciscans, Benedictines, Jesuits, Dominicans, Carmelites, Augustinians, and so on. But there has never before been an Augustinian pope.

   How will being an Augustinian influence Pope Leo’s approach to the work of the Roman Catholic Church?

   I read a post on Facebook by Clinton Sensat in the days after Pope Leo’s election that said, “These are all over-simplifications, but if Franciscans find God in nature, Dominicans in study, and Carmelites in prayer, Augustinians find God in community.”  

   Augustine of Hippo (a city in North Africa), aka St. Augustine, who lived from 354 A.D. to 430 A. D., who nominally founded the Augustinian order, is well known to Catholics as well as to Protestants and to people of other religions and to people with no religion at all for his influence on Western as well as World Civilization. Many people read his works, “Confessions” or “City of God” as part of world history courses in high school or college.

   You may also be familiar with an Augustinian monk who had some influence on the world: Martin Luther, the 16^th Century Church reformer who protested against the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church of his day and so became the world’s first Protestant.

   I admit that I have never thought much about how my being a Lutheran, influenced by Martin Luther as an Augustinian, has influenced my understanding of being a Christian.

   But I have grown to see the fundamental nature of Christianity as being built on relationship. Our relationship with God is the expression of our faith, and the expression of that relationship is seen in how we treat one another.

   And what are our Christian communities but parts of the Christians Church, the whole body of Christ bound together across time?

   And what are those communities, but visible and active expressions of our relationship with the one true living God, that is, of love? (More about that in a minute.)

   And what is that love, but a very specific kind of love, what the original Greek language of the Bible calls “agape”, or selfless love. The kind of love that is the very nature of God, the love with which God loves us, the love that that can only come from God? Agape.

   In fact, this love is at the heart of the Gospel lesson that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday.

   But if it sounds like you’ve heard it not too long ago, you probably have. It was read in churches on Maundy Thursday, just about 4 weeks ago, on the night marking the night in which Jesus was betrayed, and then tortured, and executed three days before he took his life back again on Easter Sunday, John 13:31-35,

³¹ When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³² If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³ Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   So why are we hearing this text again, and so soon?

   I think it’s because the love that Jesus spoke of looks different to us on our side of the Resurrection.

   Before Jesus gave his life for us and then took it back again to show us that he was God, the emphasis was on Jesus’ words, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.” Jesus was announcing to his disciples that he would soon die.

   But, after the Resurrection, when Jesus took his life back again, the emphasis is now on how we live: we embody his love for us in our love for one another.  

   We live in two relationships of love.

   First, we live in the love that God has for us, shown most plainly on the cross. Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:16,

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

   Second, we live in response to that love through Christian community. We believe that the risen Christ is present among us today. Jesus said in Matthew 18:20,

²⁰ For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

   What do we need in order to have a relationship with God? At least two or three. Jesus is present when at least two or three people are gathered in that living relationship, in Jesus name.

   To be gathered in Jesus’ name is not to use the name of Jesus as a magic word to get what we want. It means to be gathered in his reality, his true self. It is transformational.

   And a community only requires two people. I think that that is because two is the minimum number of people needed for a relationship. Like the HOV lane on the freeway, the “High-occupancy Vehicle” lane. Two is the smallest number greater than one, but that’s considered high occupancy in L.A. and it makes a community in the Christian Church.

   Like religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church, Christian churches provide the opportunities for a diverse people to find diverse expressions of God’s presence.

   And what does God’s presence among us mean? Love. It is transformational love. It is God’s nature, and God’s nature is what defines us as Christian communities.

   This is why Jesus says, at the end of our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, in John 13:35,

³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   Back in the days of what some refer to as “The Great Folk Music Scare” of the early/mid- ‘60’s (😊), one of the songs every Christian youth group sang was “They Will Know We are Christians by our Love”.

   I would bet that some of us of that era could still sing it. It has been said that a folk song is a song that a group of people can sing from memory, and I know that many of us could do it.

   There were four verses and one chorus. Though, when Contemporary Christian Music supergroup “Jars of Clay” recorded it, they only included two verses, oddly.

   The first verse went

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord;
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord;
And we pray that all unity will one day be restored.
   The next verses are about spreading the news of the presence of God, guarding human dignity and pride, and praising the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
   And in between the verses was the chorus,

And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.

   We sang that song in a minor key, and we were serious, and earnest, and a little bit ominous in our delivery.

   And then the Lutherans got involved.

   Well, some Lutherans pointed out that the world must know us by our Lord before it knows us by our love for one another. And that, I believe, is exactly what Jesus is saying in our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, John 13:31-35.

   It’s about true love. It’s the nature of the whole Body of Christ, the Church, because it comes from God. It is what John describes in 1 John 4:16,

¹⁶ So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

   But is this what the world sees in Christians. Most of the time I think that the answer would be “Yes”, but not always.

   Nowhere is this seen more clearly today than in the war in Ukraine.

   The dominant religious group in Ukraine was the Russian Orthodox Church.

   When Russia started the war, seventy percent of the people of Russia were Russian Orthodox, and seventy-one percent of the people of Ukraine were Russian Orthodox.

   The head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia declared it a holy war. The Russian Orthodox in Ukraine said, “Wait a minute! We’re the innocent victims here.”

   Church members in both Russia and Ukraine were, and I hope continue to be, upset about this declaration. The depth of the evil that people can inflict on each other is on full display. Christians are killing Christians, and for what?

   What witness can we give to the world when we in the Body of Christ are to be known for our love for one another but instead are killing one another in a war?

   The plain fact is that human beings are a mess. We have always been a mess. We are sinners. We sin, we separate ourselves from God. We follow our own paths without God.

   We can make no claim for a righteousness of our own.

   Our only witness to the world is the cross, that Jesus gave his life for we sinners, and then took it back again in the Resurrection to validate the power of the cross.

   Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again. The mystery of our faith is not a “mystery” in the sense that it’s a problem to be solved but is that it’s beyond our understanding.   

   The love of God is a gift from God that comes, and can only come, from God, and it comes while we are still sinners.

   I shared a meme near Maundy Thursday one year that showed an angry dog captioned, “Me when Barabbas is freed instead of Jesus.” and a picture of the same dog “smiling” and captioned, “Me when I realize Barabbas is me…”

   How does the love of God come to a sinful humanity? Not from the East or from the West, or from the North or from the South. It comes from above. It comes from God, in the power of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus, who was fully the one true living God and fully a human being: True Love.

   Yes, the new pope is the first member of the Roman Catholic Augustinian order to be pope.

   But I saw a meme online that showed a portrait of Martin Luther, and under it was written: “Still my favorite Augustinian.” 😊

   Christian communities are also human communities. We are, as Martin Luther said, “at the same time saint and sinner.”

   But we are also a new creation, transformed, born again. How do we live the Christian life without becoming bitter by the lack of love we sometimes see in the Christian community and even see in ourselves?

   I think that part of the answer is given in that Gospel reading we are sharing from John this week. Jesus makes this statement in the immediate context of being betrayed by a very close member of his community: Judas. What is Jesus’ response? He focuses on what that community is called to be in the selfless love he has shown them, and will show them on the cross, and now calls them, and us, to live.

   He shows us how to focus on the transformed life that the faithful community is called to live in themselves, among themselves, and in the world, to allow the presence of the Holy Spirit to lead them to get better, and not bitter. To live by the selfless love of God.

   We don’t point to ourselves. We’re sinners. We point to Jesus, to the forgiveness and grace that we strive to embody, and to the greatness of his selfless love.

   That is the good news that points to the relationship for which we were created, and the Christian community in which we live it.

   All we can do is to receive it and to share the good news of the true love of God that never disappoints us but builds us up together in the Body of Christ. 

358 Eternal Resonance

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Eternal Resonance”, originally shared on May 7, 2025. It was the 358^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What makes a Christian a Christian? Eternal resonance. Today, we’re going to find out how.

   Sally and I and James and Nicole went to Knott’s Berry Farm last Saturday afternoon.

   James and Nicole go fairly regularly, but Sally and I hadn’t been there in decades.

   One of the highlights for all of us was seeing Krazy Kirk and the Hillbillies perform. You might also know them as Billy Hill and the Hillbillies from the days when they performed at Disneyland for over 26 years.

   It was a fun show, but the best part of it was looking out over the audience. It was mostly teenagers, young people, and young families, but they were all happy. It was family entertainment, and they were all happy.

   It occurred to me that “Krazy Kirk and the Hillbillies” might also have been a name given to Jesus and his disciples.

   Remember what Jesus’ family did after he started his public ministry and began healing people?

²¹ When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” Mark 3:21

   Remember how Jesus’ disciples reacted when they went to Jerusalem, the big city, with Jesus?

13 1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Mark 13:1

   Oh, and the name “Kirk” is rooted in the word “Church”, aka The Body of Christ. 😊

   Krazy Kirk and the Hillbillies.

   The Jewish leaders were not feeling it though, in the gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, John 10:22-30, and they definitely were not happy when Jesus came to town and told them why the people were flocking to him but that the religious leaders didn’t understand who he was.

   Who was he? What is a Christian?

   What would you say if you were asked?

   As our culture becomes more and more secular, it’s a question that we’re all more and more likely to be asked.

   Some, in our scientific age say that if they saw one of those miracles that the disciples saw, then they would truly believe.

   But would they? It didn’t happen in Jesus’ day, and human nature doesn’t change much over time.

   Even disciples, who had seen Jesus turn water into wine, heal the sick with a word, still the storm, even raise the dead, and who had seen Jesus give his life and then take it back again, and then appear to them multiple times, still had doubts.

   Some people thought that he might be the Messiah, the anointed one, the deliverer who had been prophesied for 1,000 years, but wanted to hear it from him in order to believe it. In today’s text they ask him plainly, in John 10:22-26,

   ²² At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, ²³ and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. ²⁴ So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” ²⁵ Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; ²⁶ but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 

   When John says “the Jews”, he us usually speaking of the Jewish leaders. Remember that nearly 100% of Jesus’ followers were Jewish, and all of his closest disciples.

   But seeing is not always believing when it comes to Christ. In fact, Jesus’ response to “doubting” Thomas, when Thomas came to believe after he had put his finger in Jesus’ hand wounds and his hand in Jesus’ side was, in John 20:29,

²⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

   Seeing is not always believing but believing is a way of seeing. People may know Christians by our selfless love, but we are Christians by our faith, the resonant relationship with God for which we were created from the beginning, that we rejected by disobeying God, that Jesus died to restore. We are now a new creation by the unearned and undeserved grace of God.

   Jesus continues in John 10:27-29

²⁷ My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. ²⁹ What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.

   Is there life after death? Eternal life? Yes, and it begins when we become Christians because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that makes possible the life that we know right here and now. It cannot be taken away from us.

   RCA was a pioneer in audio recording and home entertainment. They manufactured the gramophone, which had a thick, surface destroying needle connected to a large trumpet shaped speaker like an easter lily flower coming out of it. Its shape is what the Grammy award trophy is modeled after. You would crank it up manually and it would spin, first around cylinders and then around flat records, and sound would come out of it. RCA’s logo was a dog staring quizzically into the speaker, and its slogan was “His master’s voice.”

   We hear God speak, but in a different way. Remember when Jesus taught. He didn’t always expect everybody to understand. What did he say?

⁹ And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” Mark 4:9

   We who are being saved hear in a different way.

   Ask a person, “Are you a Christian” and they may reply, “I try to be”, but that’s not how it works.

   We are made a Christian by the love and grace of God. We open our hearts to God and God fills them. We are both saints and sinners, we were cut off from God by our sin, but we are made Christians because we are a new creation in Jesus Christ. We now resonate to the voice of God, and only to what God has revealed to us in the relationship with God for which we were created, restored at the cross. We resonate with what is real.

   Our experience is like a sympathetic vibration, where God, the source, produces in us the tone revealed through Him. That’s what it means to be created in God’s image. Eternal resonance.

   God has given himself on the cross to restore that harmonic relationship. That’s what it means to live as a Christian: reconciled and restored by Jesus Christ on the cross!

   We resonate with God at the spiritual pitch that can only come from God and that God has given and revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. We are created to do that. Each and every one of us.

   Seeing sheep following their shepherd, hearing their shepherd calling them out of mixed flocks, and coming to him because, in the many hours they spent going from pasture to pasture and from stream to stream, has happened as long as there have been sheep and shepherds.

   The sheep know the shepherd’s voice. It’s a reminder that God is OUR shepherd.

   We know our shepherd’s voice, even when we can’t see him. It is the gift of faith. It is the connection with the living reality, what the Bible sometimes calls “the name”.

   That voice resonates within us, and we follow him.

   That’s what makes everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Christians.

   Paul writes in Romans 10:8-11,

⁸ But what does it say?

“The word is near you,
    on your lips and in your heart”

(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); ⁹ because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. ¹¹ The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” 

   This is the Christian life, it is lived in response to what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ. We are born again in baptism. Jesus is our Lord and our Savior! And so, we are saved and made a new creation! We live in the Lord and so we follow Him when we hear his voice.

   How does this work in our lives? God has made it so.

   It’s one thing to know that we are Christians, but it’s a different thing to know when we became a Christian because it’s not something we achieve. It’s something we receive.

   Do you remember when you were born? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are alive and healthy? Do you remember when you were born again? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are a child of God, spiritually alive and healthy?

   This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day.

   I mention this as a public service. Do not forget. I repeat. Do not forget. She’s your mother. Honor her.

   Don’t be like the family that saw their mother get up from dinner, pick up some plates, and head right to the kitchen sink.

   “Oh, no, no,” they said. “Don’t do that. This is your day, mom. Relax. Take it easy”, they said. “Just leave them there. You can do them tomorrow.”

   Don’t do that. Honor your mother. It’s a commandment. The fourth one, “Honor your father and your mother.”

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, describes the meaning of this commandment in this way, “We are to fear (note: respect) and love God, so that we neither despise nor anger our parents and others in authority, but instead honor, serve, obey, love, and respect them.”

   I’ll be thinking about the love of my mother for all her children this Mother’s Day, but I’ll be thinking in particular about my mother’s bedroom set fund.

   My mom had a beautiful coloratura soprano voice. She sang regularly at church.

   She was also one of the go-to soloists in our town for weddings and funerals. Whenever she received an honorarium for singing, the money went into her bedroom set fund. She taught voice lessons in our home. Everything she received for teaching went into that bedroom set fund, too. Her goal, her dream, was to buy a new bedroom set for her and our dad.

   But, whenever any of us kids had some need that wasn’t in the budget, from jeans to college tuition, it came out of that fund. No questions and without hesitation.

   She finally was able to buy that bedroom set, but it wasn’t until I was in college. I learned a lot about love and sacrifice from my mother.

   My wife, Rev. Sally Welch has been a wonderful mother to our son and has made innumerable sacrifices out of love along the way. I have learned a lot about love and sacrifice from her, too.

   In addition, our mothers are often our first teachers and, in many places, are the first evangelists we know in life.

   Paul writes to Timothy, a young pastor, about Timothy’s mother and grandmother in his second letter to him, in 2 Timothy 1:5,

⁵ I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

   He spells out how Timothy has experienced the witness of his mother and grandmother a couple of chapters later in 2 Timothy 3:14-15,

¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 

   Many of us could tell similar stories about the mothers in our lives, but not everyone. And, for some of us, it will be a painful day.

   Some of us grew-up without a mother, but who had people who served as mothers and sometimes that was their fathers. Some had mothers who were not so loving. Some of us desperately wanted to be mothers but couldn’t. Some of us no longer have their mothers and miss them.

   All those feelings about Mother’s Day are an expression of a deeply meaningful relationship.

   Jesus had a mother, and he loved her and provided for her. We don’t hear about his “step-father” Joseph after approximately Jesus’ 13^th birthday. But when Jesus was on the cross, about 20 years later, in unbelievable agony, his thoughts turn to his mother, in John 19:26-27,

²⁶ When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” ²⁷ Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

   In this third of his seven last statements from the cross, Jesus expresses care for his mother, as her first-born son, and he entrusts her to one of his disciples out of concern for her spiritual care, as well as for her material security.

   We love our mothers out of gratitude for all they have done for us, but most especially because of the deeply bonded relationship we share, both physically and spiritually.

   Our Gospel reading from John about what a Christian is ends with a statement about why the cross of Jesus can reconcile us to God. Jesus said, in the conclusion to our Gospel text for this Sunday, in John 10:30,

 ³⁰ The Father and I are one.”

   Jesus is speaking of God. There is only one God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All are present in Creation, and all are One. All are present at the cross, and all are One. All are present in the work of the Holy Spirit, and all are One.

   What does this mean for us in the work of Jesus on the cross? John describes what this means in the very first chapter of his Gospel, in John 1:12-13,

¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

   It means that we are born separated from God by sin. But we are born again in our baptism, reconciled because of the mighty acts of God’s grace, because of the cross, through our repentance and in the gift of faith, in a living relationship with the one true living God so that our hearts, our true selves, resonate with God, know God, and are guided by God at work within us forever.

   I’ve heard it proposed that our mothers should be celebrated on Mother’s Day, but that they should also be celebrated on our birthday.

   Because, when a woman is expecting the birth of a child it’s fashionable for a couple to say, “We’re pregnant”. Well, OK, it encourages the dad to feel involved in the process, but “Really?”. You know who is going to be going through what here.

   So, it’s been proposed that birthdays should primarily be a celebration for the mother. I mean, she did do the work, or should I say “labor”. There is nothing that we did to get born. 😊

   And, there is nothing that we did or can do to be born again, to be reconciled to God.

   We thank God each day for our mothers and that we were born. We thank God each day for himself, for Jesus Christ our Savior, who gave his life to put us right with God, who said “The Father and I are one,” that we, mothers and children together, can be born again, made a new creation, given the gift to all who receive Him, who believe in his name!

   The sacrificial love of God on the cross has made us children of God, so that we can live in response to it and resonate with the reconciliation that God has given to us there forever!