411 M.A.G.A.

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for M.A.G.A.”, originally shared on April 30, 2026. It was the 411^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 our answer to the divisions that we are experiencing, possibly even leading to our recent political violence? It’s not that complicated. Today, we’re going to find out.
   The recent attempted assassination of President Trump and his senior officials has led to angry finger pointing and blame around our country.
   Ink has been spilled, pixels have been splashed, decibels have been raised, and bandwidth has been consumed, all to blame someone else. Some, predictably in today’s climate, have claimed that the whole thing was staged.
   It’s been said that the other ideology, the other party, the other side represents the threat of communism, socialism, fascism, nazi-ism, or whatever else is claimed to be an existential threat to our democracy, depending on which side of the divide you stand on.
   We are not polarized any more. We are pulverized each to his or her own tribe, echo chamber, and sense of indignant self-righteousness.
   Critical thinking and personal integrity have been replaced by myside bias and indoctrination.
   Social media could be blamed, as could the shift of higher education to vocational schools for making money, or the Boomers’ destruction of the institutions that formed them, or our therapeutic culture, or our hyper materialism and individualism, or our victim culture, or the rise of forces that seek to destroy the values of the Western world as well the United States and all its institutions. There are many more.
   But I think that the core reason for the “angry finger pointing and blame” is simple. It works.
   It works with us, the American people. It has been effective in getting people elected, making money, and gaining power.
   Do economic and social classes exist as a way to describe our country? There’s a tribe for that. Are we entirely defined by trauma from the pandemic? There’s a tribe for that. Do we seek equity over equality? There’s a tribe for that. And they all seek compensation and will support those who say that they will get it for them.
   George Bernard Shaw once said, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul". 
   That’s all that many see as the proper role of government.
   The American Dream, for many, is an out of court settlement.
   All that matters is that your side wins.
   Today it seems to many to be naïve, even unjust, to expect newcomers to contribute, assimilate, and seek the common good. Civility is seen as weakness or as a badge of privilege. Does it not seem more productive today to hate your enemies today than to love them?
   Those things are no accident, and they go hand-in-hand with the general decline of Christianity in our country.
   What happened?
   I think that the gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday, John 14:1-14 helps us understand where we are today, and what we can do about it as the Christian Church.
   This reading is a part of Jesus’ final words to his disciples as they gathered around a table for the last supper, the institution of Holy Communion, Jesus washing his disciple’s feet as a model of the selfless service he called on them to embody, and his new commandment: to love one another as he had loved them. Jesus would be betrayed, abandoned, and give his life on the cross the next day.
   He says this in John 14:1-4,
14 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to the place where I am going.”
   Jesus tells the disciples gathered in the upper room not to worry, but to believe in God.
   So that’s the big insight? That’s the answer to all of life’s problems and the solution to our national fragmentation?
   Yup.
   We were made for a living relationship with the one true living God. We broke it and we brought evil into the world. We still do.
   We don’t live a natural life. The world is not the way it’s supposed to be.
   What’s the answer? Jesus.
   So, how does that work? Inquiring minds want to know as our Gospel text continues, in John 14:5-7,
⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
   When I served at a church in San Dimas, the members of our congregation ran the political gamut from a person who wore a “Trump” T-shirt to worship during his first campaign for the presidency to a person who occupied a place on the left wing of the Democratic party.
   People would occasionally ask me why I didn’t preach more on political or social issues. But what they were really asking was for me to preach in a way that supported their views.
   They didn’t want me to preach in a way that spoke against their views.
   I didn’t.
   I think that most people who cared knew what I thought about things in a general way, but my position was to say that we were going to focus on what unites us, not on what divides us, what we were there for, and what we all have in common: Jesus.
   We would let that relationship with Jesus guide us in God’s way.
   What is God’s way? Well, Jesus said that he was the way, and the truth and the life, and that he was the only way to God.
   But the disciples still don’t get it, as we see as our Gospel reading continues in John 14:8-10,
⁸ Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
   Do you look more like your mother or your father? Did Jesus look more like his father, so if you have seen Jesus you have an idea of  what God the Father looks like?
   No. That’s not the idea at all. 😊
   We resonate with God through the work of the Holy Spirit, we sense his presence within us and the re-formation of our truest selves. That internal reshaping is what guides what we do in response.
   Christ is risen, he is God, and he is present in all things.
   He is present in a unique way for our salvation in the forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion. When we eat that bread and drink that wine, Christ himself is present in, with, and under the forms of bread and wine, though the forms themselves don’t physically change. We commune with God!
   And, Jesus says, in Matthew 18:20,
²⁰ For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
   What are the operative words in that sentence? “In my name”.
   We might say that a person’s truest self is located in their “heart”, or in their “soul”, or in their “spirit”. People in the Bible would say that is was in their “name”.
   That’s why God has no name when he speaks to Moses out of the bush that is burning but not consumed. It is inconceivable for a human being to know God’s name, God’s true self. That’s why, when people in the Bible go through some life-altering experience, their name changes. Abram and Sari changes to Abraham and Sarah, Jacob changes to Israel. Saul changes to Paul. They are fundamentally different, so their name has to change accordingly.
   To say something, or to do something, in Jesus’ name, is to do it in the nature of Jesus’ true self. It means to act in accord with God’s will.
   That’s why we can get a weird, and sometimes wildly misinterpreted, statement like we do in the conclusion to today’s gospel reading, in John 14:11-14,
¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. ¹² Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
   To say that we are agreeing with one another to do something in Jesus’ name, or to do something “in the name of Jesus”, by itself, is not invoking some magic words, like in Harry Potter where you say something in Latin and it just happens. 😊
   To ask Jesus to do something in Jesus’ name means to ask Jesus to act in accord with his true self. It means to ask Jesus to do his will, as we pray in the Lord’s prayer, “thy will be done”, not to get Jesus to do our will.
   We act in accord with God’s will as a natural result of our hearts, our true selves, turned to God. God changes us. God makes us a new creation. It is so dramatic that Jesus calls it being born again, and it must happen for us to enter the kingdom of God. But we don’t do it. It comes when we receive the gift of the living relationship with the one true living God that Jesus, who was fully God and fully human being, made possible on the cross.
   What does that life look like?
   I read a review once of a book called The Toxic War on Masculinity by Nancy Pearcey.
   In it, the reviewer summarized the book’s main theme by saying that the historical Christian contribution to gender identity was to shift the idea from “the Real Man” to “the Good Man.” From one who cared only for himself to one who sought to serve others. The reviewer praised the book as a "splendid" and nuanced analysis that navigates modern gender debates by contrasting the "Good Man" (the Christian ideal of responsibility and sacrifice) with the "Real Man" (the secular, aggressive stereotype).
   The Real Man was “tough, strong, aggressive, highly competitive, unwilling to show weakness, unemotional, imposing, isolated, and self-made. They grab all the guns, gold, and girls they can get, and don’t care much who gets hurt in the process.”
   The Good Man, the man of God, is characterized by “honor, duty, integrity, and a willingness to sacrifice. They’re responsible and generous, and they provide and protect, especially the weak.”
   Today, as the influence of Christianity is declining in our culture, we seem to be going backwards, and it’s not difficult to see the consequences.
   Today we are concerned about another land war in Europe, in the Middle East, and in the Far East, even talking in terms of World War III. We know that that wouldn’t end well.
   Albert Einstein reportedly said, “I know not what weapons will be used to fight World War III, but I’m confident that World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
   Yet, we act as if we can isolate ourselves from the consequences of our declining influence.
   Let me be very clear. I am not saying that any of the wars that we are facing right now many not need to be fought.
   But I am saying that they will not make us great, and they certainly will not make us good.
   That’s why it is necessary, especially at this moment in our history, to be thinking about what does make us great.
   We are concerned about what is going on in the world and we want to do the right thing. but are we worried? No.
   In fact, this week’s Gospel reading begins, with words, or similar words, to those that are seen all over the Bible, in John 14:1, where Jesus says,
“¹ Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
   At the root of the Christian life, we Christians experience the peace that passes human understanding. Whatever our emotional state, there is a state of being at our core that is unshakable because it comes from God. And because of that, we can give thanks in every circumstance because that peace, even joy, in all times and conditions of life, is a gift from God in a living relationship with God.
   Nevertheless, some of our own citizens have become so focused on our flaws that they hate our country, while at the same time people from other countries are literally dying to get into our country. And we continue to be a generous people as a whole.
   What is the source of our greatness? It is our goodness.
   Alexis de Tocqueville was a French diplomat and sociologist who toured the United States in the early 1800’s to learn about America, and he was deeply impressed with our singular democracy.
   After looking for the source of American greatness among the attributes and institutions of our new country, he wrote, in his book Democracy in America, “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
   Let’s let that sink in for a minute… “and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
   How do we end the fragmentation, the loss of national unity and identity, the selfishness, the might makes right ideology that has crept even into the church?
   M.A.G.A. Make America Good Again!
   Make our pulpits flame with righteousness again!
   What is righteousness in the Bible but the restoration of the right relationship with the one true living God restored on the cross and given to all who will receive it by Jesus Christ?
   What is the Christian life but living the transformed life that comes from within as a natural, unforced, outcome in response to that selfless sacrifice of Jesus?
   How do we live with integrity, obedient to his command to love one another and to make disciples, seeking only to do God’s will? Jesus.
   Has God withdrawn his blessing from us? Is that why we are so divided, because a house divided against itself cannot stand?
   Where do we find our unity? Jesus. How can we replace rhetoric with revelation? Jesus. How can our hearts find peace? Jesus.
   We cannot know what good is without God, and we certainly cannot be good without God.
   “Doing good” and “being good” require a definition of good that can only come from outside our own judgement. It can only come from God.
   I took a philosophy course one year in college from which, I think, I remember very little. What I do remember is what the professor said in the few minutes at the end of some classes, when he had finished his prepared “professor” notes early and went into what I would call his “cracker barrel philosopher” mode. 😊
   One day, while in this mode, he made the observation that, in his opinion, most of the world’s evil, and probably all of its most heinous evil, had been done by people who sincerely, in their heart of hearts, believed that they were doing good.
   One of the things that I think that means, is that we need to be very humble before God. We need to live in response to the new life that God gives us and renews in us each day, to self-examine what we do in order to consider both our motives and our actions, and to trust only in God as the only source for a life that truly is life.
   God has given us that life, and called, equipped, and sent us to share it with one another.
   Pray that our pulpits flame with righteousness again today to make America, and the world, good again, a good that can only come from God.
   Live through Jesus, not your idea of Jesus, but Jesus who is revealed to you, and is living through you. Live, subject to Him who is the way, the truth and the life.
   That is our answer to the divisions that we cannot overcome, but that God can.
   Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

410 Trust This Shepherd

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Trust This Shepherd”, originally shared on April 22, 2026. It was the 410^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    There are lots of voices competing for our trust, telling us that they are the only ones who are worthy. Today, we’re going to find out who is trustworthy.

   I ran across an old meme the other day that said, “Every time you paint a room it gets a little smaller.”

   Let’s just think about that for a minute. 😊

   It’s true, but does it matter?

   The room is smaller (dried paint is about .0016” thick), but does it matter enough to make us not want to freshen up the room, or to change its mood, or to match its décor? Or, to make it better?

   Could making our world a little bit smaller be a good thing?

   I thought of that when I was considering the Gospel text that will be read in the vast majority of churches this coming Sunday, John 10:1-10.

   It’s about a gate for protecting “sheep”. That is, who’s in and who’s out.

   Not too many of us have any firsthand experience of caring for sheep. And few of us want to.

   Little lambs are cute, but little lambs grow up into big oafish sheep that need everything.

   So, what do we make of it when Jesus refers to himself as “the shepherd of the sheep”? And, when his disciples don’t understand what he’s talking about, he says that he is “the gate for the sheep”?

   Most of us certainly don’t know. Could it have something to do with our experience of shepherds and sheep, or the lack of it?

   Being a shepherd was somewhat romanticized at the time of Jesus because few people then did it anymore.

   Like some of us romanticize the days when we or our families were farmers. We only remember the good things. We forget about the hard, almost endless, work it takes, the isolation, and the almost total dependance upon things beyond our control.

   Even in Jesus’ day, being a shepherd was not really desirable work. Shepherds were nomadic. They moved their flocks to wherever they could find food and water, so they had no fixed address most of the time.

   They were strangers. They were viewed with suspicion.

   When you heard that shepherds were coming, you hid your daughters and locked up your valuables. Shepherds were not allowed within city limits. Their testimony was not acceptable in a court of law. They smelled bad.

   The word pastor comes from the word “shepherd” in many languages. 😊

   Pastors guide their “flocks”, though we don’t use the term “flocks” for “congregations” much anymore. It seems kind of old-fashioned, and almost none of us accept being called “sheep” as a compliment.

   Most people think of sheep as being passive, as needing someone to take care of them, and as only doing what they are told, none of which are thought of as admirable qualities in our culture.

   So is our message, “Come and be a sheep”? No.

   The Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, John 10:1-10, tells us what the message is in its first five verses. Speaking to the Pharisees about who He is, Jesus says in John 10:1-5,

10 “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. ² The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

   Shepherds spoke to their sheep all day long.

   Many flocks were kept in the same sheepfold with other flocks in Jesus’ day on earth. Shepherds would go to the fold, call their sheep, and only the shepherd’s sheep would follow him, because they knew his voice.

   The message is that all people need a shepherd, this shepherd: Jesus. When you hear him, you know that you can trust him.

   How do we know who our shepherd is? We hear his voice and we know it is him. The Holy Spirit opens our ears and; we resonate with him.

   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, in Mark 4:9?

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

   We who are being saved hear in a different way.

   We know the voice of Jesus because we know Jesus. God has made it so.

   I read a story a while ago about a Native American man who was visiting his long-time city dwelling friend in New York. They were walking along the streets of Manhattan when he suddenly stopped and stood still.

   “What’s wrong?” said the friend.

   “Nothing,” said the Native American. “Listen.”

   “I don’t hear anything,” said the friend.

   The Native American walked over to a tree planted in a ceramic pot and motioned for his friend to come closer. He lifted a branch and there, they both heard the sound of the cricket.

   Once he could see it, the friend heard it clearly.

   “How did you hear that?” the friend asked.

   “Watch,” the Native American said, and he reached into his pocket and threw a few coins on the sidewalk.

   People all around them stopped and looked for the money.

   The Native American said, “We hear the things for which we listen.”

   What do we look for? Do we look for God?

   What do we hear? Do we listen for God?

   Seeing is not only believing. Believing gives us the eyes to see.

   We know that we need a Savior and that we have one in Jesus Christ. We have been given the ears to hear! God has made us His own! This is the Good News!

   This is the message of Easter!

   Jesus gave His life for us. No one took it away from Him. Jesus gave His life and then He took it back again, He rose from the dead! He died as a one-time sacrifice to restore the living relationship with God for which we were created at the beginning of time. He is Risen from the dead! He is who he said he was. He is our Savior, the good shepherd!

   An abundant, real life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come awaits all who repent of their old lives, believe, and are baptised! That’s too good to keep to ourselves.

   I once heard a story about a tourist who was riding a tour bus in Israel, looking at the geography. Suddenly, he saw a flock of sheep and a shepherd behind it. The shepherd was shouting at the sheep and hitting them with his staff to keep them moving forward.

   The tourist went to the guide and said, “I’ve always pictured shepherds walking in front of their sheep and the sheep following the shepherd. “Why is that shepherd pushing and driving them from behind?”

   The guide replied, “That’s not the shepherd. That’s the butcher.”

   But the Pharisees, the religious influencers of Jesus time on earth, don’t get it, as our Gospel reading for this Sunday continues, in John 10:6,

⁶ Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

   How can people come to faith if they are separated from God by their sin?

   How can we know that God cares about we sinners, much less loves us?

   By the cross. This is what Paul says in Romans 5:6-8,

⁶ For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

   Almost all of my ancestors came from the country of Norway. My family there can trace our relatives back to the Viking Era in the 1,100’s. Some of our ancestors were farmers who worshiped many gods. Some may have been marauders. Some may have been slaves.

   But they came to Christ. They were saved by Jesus. They repented and received new life by the grace of God through the ministry of missionaries, Christians who shared their faith, just like us, as Christians have done for 2,000 years.

   But, as with their faith, my family didn’t always know what they had.

   My grandmother on my father’s side remembered the time when her family burned most of the cherry wood furniture they brought with them from Norway, because nobody wanted that old stuff. They wanted the modern American plastic kind.

   How do we know what is real at any given time, what endures? How can we know who God is, and what God has given to us? Trust this shepherd, Jesus, care for others, and show others how to do the same.

   When we share the gospel, we share Jesus, not our culture. The meaning of things is more important than human traditions. Quality is more important than size. Making Christians is more important than making church members.

   And we are helped by the fact that Christianity is able to adapt to cultures, not like some other religions that are locked into one culture and one language at one time in their history.

   We believe that what defines us is at the core of our faith, revealed to us through the Bible, and expressed primarily in two ancient creeds: The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. They represent the faith that was handed down from Jesus to the apostles, and now to us.

   And, as Church reformer Martin Luther said, as long as the Gospel is rightly preached and the Sacraments are rightly administered, everything else is secondary. It may be important, but it is not something that cannot be adapted. It is not based on a law, or on a saying, but on a person, Jesus Christ. That gives us a great deal of freedom, and it is given so that we can receive and promote life!

   We see this in the final four verses of this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading, in John 10:7-10,

⁷ So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸ All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹ I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

   So, when the Pharisees couldn’t understand what Jesus was saying when he said that he is the shepherded that rightly brings the sheep into the fold, Jesus told them that he was the gate to the fold.

   Did that make it any clearer for them? Or us?

   What was he talking about?

   I think that he’s making a reference to a verse from the Psalms that we often read at funerals. It’s a verse about death and salvation and about the meaning of life and the cross. It’s Psalm 118:20,

²⁰       This is the gate of the Lord;

the righteous shall enter through it.

   Jesus is the gate.

   We can only be made righteous before God by faith in Jesus Christ.

   That is a very exclusive statement.

   It connects to a news article that I read this week about a priest in India, and to a Bible verse that was read all over the world this past Sunday.

   Father Vincent Pereira was charged with a crime for saying, during a worship service, that Christianity is the only true religion, because it could hurt the religious sentiments of other people.

   Father Pereira, a Roman Catholic priest, appealed to the Supreme Court of India, where the case awaits trial.

   The president of an international Christian human rights group has asked the court to reject the charge against Father Pereira, and to reject the claim that no faith can claim exclusive truth, because it would criminalize “a key doctrinal belief of many religions.”

   Isn’t that true? All religions have a wisdom tradition, but not all religions are true. If we believed something else was true, wouldn’t we believe that?

   There are many, many different religions in the world. But, just because there are many, does that mean that one of them can’t be true?

   Jesus says, in today’s Gospel reading, ^9 “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

   He says it even more plainly in another passage from the gospel of John, in John 14:6-7,

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

   Nations and cultures rise and fall while Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will be present forever because Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity, fully God and fully human being.

   How do people find Jesus? Jesus finds them, often through missionaries, through people who teach people how to recognize what is already inside of them by knowing how to hear the shepherd’s voice. Jesus is already present in every culture, and He calls people of every nation to follow Him.

   Lives that have been changed are lived in love for God and in the service of others, with our whole selves.

   And we bring our whole selves to worship God.

   We respond to his voice by worshiping Him in a way that is not directed toward ourselves, but toward the one true living God.

   That’s why, as the Danish Lutheran philosopher and theologian Soren Kirkegaard said, when worship is finished, the question we ask is not, “What did I get out of that?” but “How did I do?”

   There are many church related groups in the world, but there is only one Church. The Body of Christ.

   It is composed of all the baptized believing Christians who know the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus, and follow Him in daily life. And worship Him with the other members of the Body of Christ.

   That one flock is composed of people of every race and place and language and culture. People of every nation. Even of people of every time! A community of people who love God, love others, and hear the voice of Jesus, the one shepherd.

   Every time you paint a room, you do make it a little smaller. But in the room that is the Christian church, the inside is always larger than the outside. 😊

   The voice of Jesus the shepherd is calling all people to hear his voice and to follow Him now.

   That voice doesn’t come from any one culture because Christianity doesn’t come from the North or from the South or from the East or from the West.

   It comes from above. And it proclaims the one way to salvation through Jesus Christ, our shepherd!

   When I was in the Marine Corps, I saw a t-shirt that said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest #*&^%$@$& in the valley.”

   We don’t do that. And we don’t have to. We have a Good Shepherd. When it comes to what is needed for life and salvation, the Good Shepherd has done it all. For us.

   You can hear Jesus in your heart today, and you can trust that shepherd.

   Christ is Risen! He is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia! 

409 Three Life Lessons

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From “Three Life Lessons”, originally shared on April 16, 2026. It was the 409^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 can we learn about building a life on the road with Jesus? Three things. Tomorrow, we’re going to find out what they are.

   I served a congregation in Compton, California for 9 years and then a congregation in San Dimas, California for almost 32 years. Yes, I travelled “Straight Outta Compton” to the home of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”.

   It wasn’t a long trip, but it was a momentous one.

   In addition to regular church and community ministry, I was involved in property improvements inside and outside the church in Compton, and we built a new parish hall and a new, larger, worship and administration building in San Dimas.

   I learned a few things in the process of those projects.

   Three of those lessons stand out, and they all are reflected in Gospel reading that will be shared all over the world this coming Sunday, Luke 24:13-35.

  First life lesson: anyone can hand you a bill. That doesn’t mean that you have to pay it.

   We frequently had bills handed to us during construction that we disputed. Things happened that were not our fault. Work was done that was not contracted. Plans we designed were not followed.

   Jesus had died on the cross. It was God’s plan. Three days later, two of his discouraged followers were leaving Jerusalem, headed for a village about 7 miles away called Emmaus.

   It wasn’t a long trip, but it was momentous.

   On the way, Jesus caught up with them, but they didn’t recognize him. They thought he was dead.

   Who wouldn’t? His disciple John and many others had seen him dead.

   They were heartbroken as they walked, and Jesus asked them what had happened.

   We hear the answer in Luke 24:18-21,

¹⁸ Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” ¹⁹ He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰ and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹ But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.

   They thought that they were living in a nightmare. They thought that their redeemer was dead. They thought that they had run up a debt for their sins before God, and that they were going to have to pay that bill themselves.

   Did they have to pay that bill? Do we?

   Nope!

   They were on the edge of figuring this out. Women said that they had gone to Jesus’ tomb early that morning and found it empty. Angels had told the women that Jesus had taken his life back again and risen from the dead! The disciples had seen the empty tomb!

   Jesus is astounded that they haven’t figured out what was going on. Jesus opened their eyes to see that everything that had been prophesied in the Bible about the human debt for sin had just been fulfilled in Jesus!

   Their debt of sin had been stamped, “Paid in Full” by Jesus’ death on the cross!

   We learn the same life lesson when we come to live the Christian life.

   When a person becomes a Christian, or goes through a renewed faith and begins experiencing a life transformed by God, friends, and family, and co-workers will notice.

   We are made a new creation. We are born again. When that happens, and people find out, some of them will begin doing things to irritate you just to see if they can get a rise out of you.

   They will try to get you to do things that are contrary to your new life. They will throw the “gotcha” questions at you, give you a demeaning nickname, distance themselves from you, accuse you of being “holier than thou”, or of thinking that you’re better than them. They will say they miss the old you and will try to pull you back to your old self.

   The thing is that you don’t owe them anything, neither beliefs nor behaviors.

   Sometimes, in fact, it takes the hand of God for you to recognize who your friends and family truly are, and who really wants the best for you, and who wants to build you up, to point you to a better future, and to guide you forward.

   You have been made a new Creation by God. The bill for your debt of sin has been paid.

   Second life lesson: you can have it done well, you can have it done fast, and you can have it done cheap. Pick any two.

   If it’s done fast and well, it won’t be cheap. If it’s done well and cheap, it won’t be done fast. If it’s done fast and cheap, it won’t be done well.

   Deitrich Bonhoffer, the German Lutheran pastor murdered by the Nazi’s for his active opposition to the fascists in World War II, spoke to Christians about “cheap grace”. God’s selfless love for us, God’s grace, is free. But it was never cheap. It came only through the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross, giving his life and then taking it back again in his Resurrection.

   This expensive grace is what Jesus reveals when he agrees to stay with the disciples in Emmaus. They still don’t realise that they are with the risen Jesus. But then this happens when they sit down for dinner, in Luke 24:30-31,

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

   That’s right, they recognized him in the breaking of bread. They realized that they were communing with Jesus. And in that moment, he vanished from their sight, because he was now within them.

   They would no longer see Jesus. They would know him in Holy Communion.

   The 16th century Church reformer Martin Luther described Holy Communion in his Small Catechism, beginning with a question and an answer:

“What is Holy Communion?

   Holy Communion is the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ given with bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us to eat and to drink.”

   The forms of bread and wine don’t physically change, but Jesus becomes present in those forms when the words of institution are said by someone trained and ordained for the good order of the sacrament. Those words begin, “In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread...”

   Jesus instituted Holy Communion in the context of his betrayal unto death on the cross.

   The road to the cross wasn’t long, but it was momentous.

   Sally and I take short drives on Historic Route 66 when we are out running errands. It goes right through the area where Sally and I and, for a while, our son James have lived for almost 40 years.

   Route 66 was one of the first American highways and was synonymous with the romance of the road and new starts for those migrating west. It was popular as a vacation adventure highway when the road was dotted with oddities and local treasures, stretching from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California.

   Its impact on popular culture included the song, “Get Your Kicks On Route 66” and the “Route 66” TV series.

   It was eventually replaced by the United States Interstate system in1985, but it retains its status for many as a highway of possibilities, a road of the imagination, as Historic Route 66.

   Roads are places where change takes form, where work becomes possible, where missionary journeys happen, where lives are transformed.

   In fact, the early Christian movement was known as “The Way” long before it was known as Christianity.

   And how does Jesus describe himself? He says, in John 14:6,

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   The life of a disciple is built on the work of Jesus on the cross. We are sinners and therefore separated by Sin from the holy God. Jesus is God in flesh and fully human at the same time. He paid the penalty for our Sin himself. The canyon between us and God is bridged by the cross.

   To be a disciple and live a Christian life isn’t cheap or fast. It took the cross of Jesus Christ done well for us to live well in response to it, and we come into his presence in the forms of bread and wine in Holy Communion.

   God builds the foundation of our lives as Christians on the Word, embodied now through the Bible, and on the Sacraments, which are Baptism and Holy Communion.

   The early Christians spent 3-years in instruction before they were welcomed as full members of a local church. If our desire to serve involves no cross-bearing and does not bring meaningful life transformation, it is simply a superficial nod to Jesus. It is fast and it is cheap grace. It will not be a life lived well.

   Third life lesson: everything takes longer and costs more.

   A building contractor, a member of our church who was advising our building committee during our worship-and-administration building construction, sent me a picture of a giant yacht with a small motorboat tied behind it.

   The name on the motorboat was, “Original Contract”. The name on the yacht was, “Change Orders”.

   Change orders are the changes to the original contract that are made once work has begun. They can drive up the cost of the project astronomically. But, sometimes, the client doesn’t know what they want until the project has begun, and sometimes they just get a new idea.

   We see this in our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday. The two disciples who had been on the road to Emmaus with Jesus are stunned, they are excited, they don’t know how to process the feelings they had when Jesus opened up the scripture to them.

   Their eyes were opened to who Jesus was when he broke bread with them.

   They left Emmaus immediately and walked the 7 miles back to Jerusalem. They found the 11 remain disciples that had been the closest to Jesus, and the disciples speak first and then he two who were on the road respond, in Luke 24:34-35,

³⁴ They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

   Literature and all the arts are full of stories that take place a road.

   What road are you on, and is it taking you closer to God or farther away?

   As with “change orders” on a building project, sometimes, people who become disciples of Jesus don’t know what they are getting into until God comes alongside them on their life’s road, opens their eyes, enters their true selves, and their life transformation project begins.

   Maybe the word “sometimes” should be changed to pretty much “always”. God always accepts us as we are. Repentant sinners. But God never leaves us as we are. God makes our hearts, by God’s grace, a place that is fitting for the one true holy God to dwell in. That involves basic transformation. We are imperfect sinful human beings.

   The Christian life doesn’t end in perfection until Jesus returns to bring in a new heaven and a new earth. We don’t need perfection to be accepted by God. We need only to acknowledge our need for a Savior, and that we have one in Jesus Christ.

   Our behavior changes and improves not from fear but from faith, from our relationship with God. We are God’s people, and what we do flows out from who we now are.

   We don’t live to get something from God. We live in response to all that God has already done for us at the cross.

   I was standing between the two buildings that we built at the church I served in San Dimas after the new worship and administration building had been dedicated. People were moving from the new building to the reception in the parish hall, and a member of the congregation approached me and said, “Isn’t this wonderful! This is your legacy!”

   I said, “This isn’t my legacy. These are buildings. My legacy is the lives of those who come to receive the gift of faith in Jesus Christ through the ministry that happens in these buildings.”

   That is the same legacy for all of us.

   What is your road to Emmaus? Is it your coming Baptism? Is it a time of renewal in the Holy Spirit? Is it your daily walk of faith in a living, acting, loving, relationship with the one true living God?

   What is your Historic Route 66? Where has Jesus called you to go? And to whom have you been sent to share your story?

   Who will you encounter today, or tomorrow, or any day, who has never heard the story of salvation, or has never allowed it to sink in, or seen at it work in an actual Christian life?

   Pray that God would fill you with the Holy Spirit and then hit the road.

   Share your story with your friends and relatives and whoever you encounter on your life’s road.

   Communicate the new life that exists in Jesus Christ in you in your own words and deeds for others. Jesus, who is the Way, the way, and the truth, and the life.

   Our lives are not long but, by the grace of God, they are momentous.

   We are made a new Creation in Baptism, we are fed for our life’s road with Jesus in Holy Communion, and we are entrusted with the good news of Jesus Christ, the great lessons of life over death forever!

   These are the lessons that lead to life!

   Christ is Risen! He is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia!