(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Eternal Resonance”, originally shared on May 7, 2025. It was the 358th 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 16th 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’ 13th 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!
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