408 From "Rise!" to Risen!

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From “Rise!” to Risen!”, originally shared on April 8, 2026. It was the 408^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Do you like stories? How about stories about yourself? Today, we’re going to hear one.

   The Artemis II rocket lifted off a week ago last Wednesday on a 10-day manned trip around the moon, taking human beings to the deepest spot in space that we have ever been. It will return this coming Friday.

   It’s pretty exciting to see the pictures and hear the reports. It was our first trip back to the moon’s neighborhood in over 53 years!

   And, the pilot of the mission, Victor Glover, was born right here in Pomona and graduated from high school right here in Ontario.

   They took photos of the back side of the moon, which no human beings have ever seen from the earth. Someone posted a photo of a flower tortilla against a black background online and claimed it was a picture of the back side of the moon, but I wasn’t fooled! 😊

   An unmanned Soviet probe took blurry, low-resolution photos in 1959, but the back side (it’s not “dark”, BTW) has only been seen live and in person in part by the 24 American astronauts in the Apollo missions.

   Now the Artemis II crew has seen it in full, and transmitted photos. Before that, it had been a mystery to humanity. What could we believe about something we hadn’t seen?

   What they also saw was the vastness of space. One of the first photos NASA released was a photo of the earth in that vast black background. They had seen photos of the earth in space taken by others during previous missions, but I read that the Artemis II mission crew members were all stunned when they were far enough away to see it for themselves.  

   You might remember that the actor William Schatner, probably known best for his role as Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek TV series, rode on one of those brief flights into space for paying civilians sponsored by billionaires. When he came back to earth, he said that he was deeply shaken.

   He said that he wept at how small and fragile our planet looked in the midst of that vast, mostly empty, space.

   For all but a very of few of us, space beyond the earth has been a mystery. And it isn’t much more than that even now.

   That’s not what we mean by mystery in the Christian faith, though. A mystery in the Christian faith is not like a mystery that we can figure out, like in a novel or a TV series.

   It’s a mystery in the sense that we can’t understand it unless it is revealed to us from outside of ourselves. Like the mystery of salvation. The gift of God that we celebrated on Easter Sunday.

   The first Easter weekend began with Jesus’ death and ended with his resurrection. He had given his life, and he had taken it back again.

   This coming Sunday will be the Second Sunday of the Easter season. Christians have celebrated it since the Resurrection.

   The Second Sunday of our Easter season is the time by which Easter Eggs have been turned into egg salad sandwiches, the candy has been wolfed down, the decorations have been put away, and the kids have gone back to school. “Spring” break is over.

   And, the Second Sunday of Easter is also known by some as the First Sunday in the Coachella Music Festival. 😊

   In churches, the Second Sunday of Easter is sometimes called “Low Sunday”, or what could be called the Sunday of Disappointment! It’s the Sunday when we all look around and ask, “Where is everybody?”

   In Western Christianity, however, the Second Sunday of the Easter season is also known as Divine Mercy Sunday, the Octave Day of Easter, White Sunday, and even Quasimodo Sunday.

   Yes, that’s right, “Quasimodo” Sunday, the name of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so named after that Sunday in the Church calendar because he was found at the cathedral as a hunchbacked infant on “Quasimodo Sunday”. It was named after the first words of the antiphon of the Latin introit in the Mass for that day, found in 1 Peter 2:2, “quasi modo geniti infantes…” or “Like newborn infants…”. It’s also the name of a surfing position. But I digress. 😊

   Last Sunday, The Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord, aka Easter Sunday, our churches were as full as they get. “Christ is Risen! He is Risen, Indeed!” We celebrated that then, and this coming Sunday, it will be almost like it never happened.

   There are some people who don’t keep the sabbath holy every Sunday. But if there is one when they do, it will be Easter Sunday. Others are dragged or guilted-in by insistent friends and relatives. Some are bribed with the promise of candy and colored Easter eggs and, for adults, food afterwards. Some come just because it’s what they and/or their family have always done, and it has become part of their identity. They, as the Steely Dan song said, “suit up for a game they no longer play”.

   Our churches will have put out their best of everything in the hope that some will be impressed and come back. And maybe some will but, if you had never been to a church and you were there last Sunday, Easter Sunday, and you come back to that church this coming Sunday, you will probably be just as flummoxed as everybody else.

   The Gospel reading that will be read this coming Sunday in the vast majority of churches throughout the world, John 20:19-31, is even more disappointing!

   How do you see the resurrected body of Jesus, after he had told you he was going to rise from the dead, and not know what to do next?

   That happens, when the disciples are gathered on the evening of the Resurrection.

   They are still processing what had happened in the morning. They had heard from some women that Jesus had risen, but they knew that he was dead. John had seen him die. Then this happens in John 20:19-23,

¹⁹ When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

   The disciples were afraid of the Jewish leaders. The Jewish leaders. Remember that all of the disciples, and Jesus, were Jewish. They were afraid that what had happened to Jesus could happen to them. Yet, it’s been said that the Bible says “fear not” or “don’t be afraid” or something like that 366 times, one for every day of the year plus one for a leap year! Jesus said these or similar words many times, including in today’s Gospel reading when he suddenly appears inside a locked room.

   The first words out of his mouth are “Peace be with you”, sholom aleichem, a common, even casual greeting.

   Was it weird to them that he was dead and now he appeared among them in a locked room? Was that why his first words were to calm them down? Did they know that they were out of debt? That he had paid their debt of sin on the cross?

   H.L. Menken, the journalist, essayist, and cultural critic, once said, "Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong."

   I thought of that when I heard that Warren Buffet, the wildly successful investor, philanthropist, and former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, made a, I think, serious proposal for stopping our increasing national debt. His solution ws to pass a law making all sitting members of Congress ineligible for reelection if the federal deficit exceeds 3% of annual GDP (Gross Domestic Product). He said that this would take care of it in "five minutes". 

   Well, it is simple. Jesus had a more difficult solution to get us out of our sin debt.

   He gave his life, he took it back again, and then he appeared to his disciples in a locked room.

   Then things get even weirder.

   He shows them his wounds on his hands and on his side. He commissions them with a mini-Pentecost, just for them. The words “ruach” in Hebrew, the primary language of the Old Testament and “pneuma” in Greek, the primary language of the New Testament, both have the same three meanings: wind, breath, and spirit. They can all mean the same thing.

   Breath. He breathes on them. They receive the Holy Spirit. Does that seem strange?

   What else began with a breath?

   Genesis 2:7,

⁷ then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

  This is revealed to us in the Bible, which is filled with the power of God in the Holy Spirit.  

   Where does the authority of the Bible come from?

   2 Timothy 3:16-17,

¹⁶ All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

    Other translations replace “inspired” with “God-breathed”. The word “respiration” has the same root. The Bible’s authority comes from God. It is the primary  means by which God comes alive for us.

   But one disciple, who had ventured out, was not present when Jesus breathed life and power on the disciples. We see it in John 20:24-29,

²⁴ But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

²⁶ A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸ Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 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.”

   So, there’s a doubter? Jesus moves forward to send the disciples out anyway.

   We live in an increasingly secular age. We live in a time when people  are hungry for the real community that God gives.

   But more importantly, people need churches whose community is not built on human traditions but is built on a living relationship with Jesus Christ. Christ: crucified, risen, and coming again. How do we convey that to this generation?

   I was stationed in the Marine Corps Barracks at the Norfolk Naval Base for a time when I was in the Marine Corps.

   At some point, we got a new sergeant. He had been a drill instructor at the Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot, but he had been convicted on around 27 counts of maltreatment of recruits.

   That’s right, he was too mean to be a Marine Corps drill instructor, so they sent him to us.

   He was a drinker and would sometime come in after having been out all night. It was time to get up when he turned the lights on, normally at 5:30 or 6:30 a.m., and he would go around to each of the cots. If anybody didn’t have their feet on the floor by the time he got to their cot, he would stand at the end of it, extend one palm out, facing up, and say in a deep voice, “Rise!”

   There was something about the way he said it that cut through the deepest sleep.

   But if anyone was still asleep the next time he came around, he would say “Rise!” a second time.

   And if they still hadn’t woken up, he flipped the cot, and you, upside down. Which usually got a person’s attention.

   How many people would catch that reference to Jesus’ power over death shown in the raising of Lazarus, and in his ability to take his life back again after he was crucified, today?

   Thomas didn’t, and he was one of Jesus’ closest disciples!

   Thomas came to belief because he saw the risen Christ and put his hand in his wounds. That’s not something that happens to us. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” Jesus said.

   Our identity as the people of the Christian Church comes from all those faithful people who have passed their faith from generation to generation, and on to us.

   I was looking for a cologne that I could put in my gym bag, once, when I worked out at a fitness center in Clairmont. I wanted something that smelled good, was not expensive, and didn’t come in a glass bottle that could break in my gym bag.

   Old Spice cologne checked all the boxes, but what really sold me was the marketing slogan on the box: “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.” 😊 That’s how legacies are passed on.

   Will we pass on the living existence of the Christian faith to those who come after us? That is the purpose of the gospel of St. John from which we are reading today.

   This week’s passage ends by describing the purpose of the whole Gospel of John with what I think are two of the most important verses in the Bible, in John 20:30-31,

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

   Some of those who were at worship in Christian churches on Easter Sunday were not doubters. They weren’t even interested. They were (is it too harsh to say it?) spiritual tourists.

   But, at least they were there. You may have noticed that the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, part of what is also known as March Madness, has just wrapped-up. You may also have noticed that the two games between the women’s final four teams, one of which was the UCLA Women’s Basketball team, were played on Good Friday. The championship game, the end of the madness, was played on Easter Sunday! This says everything you need to know about the status of Christianity in the United States today.

   The news has been reporting an increase in religiosity among Gen Z youth, though, those born between 1997 and 2012, who would be between about 14 and 29 today. But it is a self-defined, more private form of religion.

   We offer something else. Something true. Something that endures.

   It is neither religion nor self-affirmation. We proclaim Jesus, crucified, risen, and coming again. We proclaim that belief is a gift from God and leads people to life that truly is life in the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created. It is assured to us by the cross of Jesus Christ, and the resurrection that validates it.

   There are many good reasons to believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ:

1.    The evidence of death.

2.    The sixteen Roman guards stationed to prevent any trickery.

3.    The seal of the punitive authority of the Roman Empire set upon the stone.

4.    The disciples were in shock.

5.    There was no body and no benefit to steal the body.

6.    The witness of women at the center of events in a time of Patriarchy.

7.    The martyrdom of the eyewitness.

8.    The martyrdom of the early Christians.

9.    The experience of Christians of the risen Christ to this day.

10. The change in the sabbath from the seventh day to the day of the Resurrection as the day of worship for the Church now begun, a radical change.

11. The lack of details

12. The testimony of hostile witnesses who became Christians, i.e., St. Paul.

   And yet, over the years, people have not come to believe because of reasons. It is because they have experienced the gift of a living relationship with the one true living God in Jesus Christ.

   Sally and I didn’t know what retirement would look like. I just knew that I was 70 and it was time. And as it happened, I began having a number of health challenges right after my retirement, so it was the right time to retire from regular parish ministry.

   Shortly before I retired, however, I had a dream.

   Small, local, craft breweries were getting really popular, and I dreamt that I was pitching an idea for investors. A small group had gathered to listen, and I was explaining that craft breweries were popular right then, but that those drinkers would get older, and their tastes would change, and they would be able to afford more, but that they would still want something that seemed exclusive, known only to a few. More people were coming over to listen.

   I proposed that whisky would be the next big thing. More people came, and they were getting excited.

   I said that the next big thing would be small batch, local, craft whisky distilleries. And by now there was a huge crown in front of me and they were shouting, “Take-my-money!”

   Suddenly, I woke up and I woke Sally up and I said, “Sally, I know what we’re going to do in retirement!”

   “What?”, she said, half-awake.

   “We’re going to be bootleggers!”

   Well, that didn’t happen. 😊

   Our lives are centered instead in true joy that endures.

   Those are the difference between “Rise!” and “He is Risen!”

   How do we convey the most important news in history to our generation when it has no felt need? A start would be to tell the world that it needs Jesus more than it needs whiskey, or anything else that the world tries to put in the place of God.

   What Jesus has done for us in his death and resurrection is not mystery. It is revealed in our Gospel reading for today, in John 20. We have been reconciled to God. We have been given life in Jesus’ name, his true self. Life that really is life.

   Jesus gave his life for us when we were still sinners, separated from God, to reconcile us to God. He proved that his death could do that, because he is God; he validated his work on the cross, when he took his life back again at his resurrection.

   That is our story, too. Our story, the one we have to tell, is a story about God’s love for us.

   Blessed are those who know their need of a savior.

   And blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.

   They will rise, as Jesus is risen!

   The vast emptiness of space is filled with the glory of God!

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

407 First-generation Christians

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “First-generation Christians”, originally shared on April 3, 2026. It was the 407^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 possible meaning can life have in the face of the inevitability of death? Today, we’re going to find out.

   I saw a sign advertising for a church in North Carolina last year that said, “Drive Thru Crucifixion. Weather permitting. No Charge. Come share the joy of Easter with us!”

   I don’t even know where to start with that, except to say that everything about it is wrong, and it would be even more wrong this year with our rising gas prices! 😊

   Maybe it’s just my age.

   When I was a younger man, I wondered why the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes was even in the Bible. It just seemed to be the rantings of a bitter, old man.

   But, the older I get, the more it makes sense to me. 😊

   I’ve had the same experience watching the TV show, “Lost”.

   It ran on ABC from 2004-2010.

   It was a sort of science fiction drama about the survivors of a plane crash somewhere in the Pacific Ocean (or was it?), who may or may not be alive in our dimension, on an island that may have supernatural or spiritual powers, or not.

   It raised deeply important questions about time and space, reality and illusion, God and human beings, and I found something that I used in my sermon pretty much every week. I put a “Lost” promo side in our audio/visual system whenever I was about to quote from it, and after a while, whenever it appeared, I could hear a low groan from the congregation.

   It was funny.

   But then the show ended, suddenly, with most of the characters, major and minor, meeting in a church, getting on a plane and taking off, or maybe it was a metaphor for an afterlife. And that was it. It was over.

   It felt like the writers had just got tired of working on it and, instead of giving answers to the show’s mysteries, instead of tying up all the loose ends and explaining them, it just ended.

   I concluded that it was the best TV show in the history of television with the worst ending ever.

   And then I got a little older, and I changed my mind. I realized that it was the best TV show with the best ending ever, because it was real.

   We die, at least for this life, without getting all the answers. The loose ends don’t get tied up, goals go unmet, and mysteries go unexplained. By all appearances, we just end. We’re over. Cancelled.

   So, a new question is raised. What possible meaning can life have in the face of the inevitability of death?

   Today, we’re going to find out.

   Today is Good Friday.

   Good Friday is the day we mark as the day that Jesus was crucified. What’s so good about that?

   I have a T-shirt that says, “Body Piercing Saved my Soul”.

   It’s a reference to Isaiah 53:5, in Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah,

⁵ But he was wounded for our transgressions,
    crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
    and by his bruises we are healed.

   (Many translations replace “wounded” with “pierced”, i.e. “he was pierced for our transgressions”)

   Body piercing saved my soul.

   It refers to Jesus giving his life on the cross. There’s no mystery about who took Jesus’ life.

   No one took it from him. Jesus gave his life.

   Jesus said in John 10:14-18,

¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. ¹⁷ For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

   Good Friday is the main event. Over half of the entire gospel of John is about the last week of Jesus’ life. The resurrection validates that Jesus was who he said he was, that his death on the cross could reconcile God and humanity. There’s no Christianity without the resurrection of Jesus.

   But that in no way detracts from the fact that it is the crucifixion of Jesus that is the central event of all human history. His death is what brings life for all humankind.

   Here it is, near the end of the Gospel reading, John 18:1-19:42, that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world on Good Friday, in John 19:28-30,

²⁸ After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” ²⁹ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. ³⁰ When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

   I spent a summer when I was in seminary doing a quarter of Clinical Pastoral Education. CPE is a program training prospective pastors to do hospital visits and patient counseling. It’s very intense, is partially intended to desensitize seminarians to the things they will see in hospitals, and it  exposes them to a lot of different kinds of life experiences.

   The program I was part of was held at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois.

   One night, there was a humongous thunderstorm, and a lightning bolt hit a transformer that knocked out power to the hospital. The emergency generators kicked in and all essential services like the operating carols, the Natal Intensive Care Units, respirators, and so on, received power.

   Almost immediately,  the switchboard was lit up with calls from very agitated air traffic controllers from the nearby O’Hare International Airport asking what had happened to the fluorescent cross on the top of the hospital.

   Pilots coming in for landings had used that cross as a visual reference point as they descended and, seeing no cross, had been thinking that they were coming in from the wrong side of the airport. They were pulling up and flying in stacks over O’Hare.

   From that night onward, the cross was included in the emergency power network.

   The cross is our reference point. We see the love of God on it, what God did to restore the living relationship with God for which we were created. We see where we stand in limitless eternity.   

   The Artemis II rocket lifted off last Wednesday on a 10-day manned trip around the moon, taking human beings to the deepest spot in space that we have ever been.

   It was even more exciting than normal as the pilot of the mission, Victor Glover, was born right here in Pomona and graduated from high school right here in Ontario.

   The launch reminded me of a quote, possibly apocryphal, from one of the early astronauts, Walter Shirra in 1962 who, when he was asked what he thought about while he sat in what he called the couch just before lift-off said, “Every time I climb up on the couch I say to myself—just think, Wally, everything that makes this thing go was supplied by the lowest bidder.” 😊

   When the get into space, they will see the great void that has humbled dozens of space explorers before them. The limitless space in which our planet was created, and to which Jesus came to die. How can we respond to that?

   Did you know that there is a local connection to the crucifixion?  If you know the whole story, you know that Jesus was crucified between two thieves. One taunted Jesus, and the other asked Jesus for mercy and received Jesus’ promise of salvation right there. The traditional name for the repentant thief on the cross is San Dimas. It’s never too late to turn to Jesus and repent and be forgiven. Jesus gave up his life to give you life.

   I remember reading a story about a congregation that asked people to donate easter lilies for its annual spectacular display to decorate the altar area and back wall for Easter Sunday. The flowers remained for weeks and drew visitors. One year, a woman decided that she wanted the lily that she had donated money for to take to a shut-in. She didn’t think that anybody would miss one lily.

   After the church had cleared out, she crept up to the altar and discovered that almost all the lilies were fake! She confronted the pastor who said that years earlier, the leadership had decided that it was not good stewardship to buy flowers and throw them away, that they could keep artificial flowers, use the donated money for good causes, and that artificial flowers were a better symbol of the resurrection anyway, because they never died.

   The thing is, though, is that they never died because they were never alive. Jesus lived among us, gave up his life for us, and then took it back again, but gave it up to bridge the gap of separation, to reconcile human beings with God.

   The night that Sally and I had learned that she was expecting our son was a happy night. We went to bed filled with joy. But then the next morning we found that the young man who lived across the street from us when we lived in another town had gone up the street and around the corner to buy cigarettes for his mom around midnight. On his way back, he encountered another young man whose car had a flat tire and stopped to help him.

   Meanwhile, a gang was out looking for the young man with the flat, angry over some offense and when they saw him, gunshots rang out. They missed the guy with the flat but hit the young man from across the street instead. He managed to stumble back to his front lawn and died there. Sally later said that she had felt that someone had died that night.

   In the midst of life, we were in death. But the message of the cross is that Jesus took the bullet for us, so that in the midst of death, we might be in life, eternal life in a living relationship with the one true living God.

    A pastor who served not far from us when I served in San Dimas told the story of having gone in to start his church’s Good Friday service, expecting the regular 30-40 people, but finding the place packed, wall to wall, standing room only.

   He said to an usher, “Wow! This is unbelievable!” The usher said, “What do you mean?” The pastor said, “Well, everybody’s here!”

   The usher said, “But you told us that we had to be here.” “What?” the pastor replied.

   “You said that we couldn’t come to church on Easter Sunday if we didn’t come to church on Good Friday.”, the usher said. “What?”, the pastor said.

   The pastor tried to think of what he could have said that the people interpreted in this way.

   And then he remembered that the theme of part of his sermon the previous Sunday was that you can’t know Easter without first knowing Good Friday! 😊

   The message of the cross is that God redeemed the world because God so loved the world.

   What’s good about Good Friday? It was terrible for Jesus, but it was really good for us.

   I’m not saying that you have to go to Good Friday worship before you can go to church on Easter Sunday, but Easter doesn’t make much sense without it.

   I encourage you to go to a Good Friday service to experience the depth of the riches of the love of God for you on the cross, because body piercing saved your soul.

   And invite someone to go with you.

   We are now about 2,000 years, or about 100 generations from the first Good Friday. It’s said that the Church is always one generation away from extinction. One. If you are a Christian, it’s because somebody, probably a friend or a relative, brought you to a church.

   I once heard a story about the development of the Christian Church in Indonesia. The seeds of the Church were planted by missionaries, but it had grown into an independent church, with its own schools and seminaries. It was financially independent and had developed its own cultural identity.

   During the pre-Christian era, Indonesians were pre-supposed to have the religion of their parents by birth, not by faith. God stood above the parents and the children stood below the parents.

   But when the Indonesian church composed its statement of faith, they included the words, “We believe that God has no grandchildren.” That is, that we are not Christians because our parents are Christians. We are Christians because we have received the gift of reconciliation through faith.

   We have been reconciled to God through Jesus’ death on the cross. Each of us. Each of us has had the relationship with God for which we were Created, restored. All we “do” is to receive that gift in faith. Our attitudes and actions are the fruit produced from that relationship with the one true living God. God has only children.

   Who will make them, if not us?

   My grandmother on my father’s side came from Norway with her parents when she was a small child. They settled in Wisconsin among other Norwegians and did what they knew: farming. She said that they came speaking Norwegian, but when she was in 8^th grade, they switched to English, the language of their new country.

   But she said that her mother always prayed in Norwegian. Because she wasn’t sure that God understood the new language as well as he knew Norwegian! 😊

   Norwegian was her heart language. But what becomes of the heart when we are no longer in a familiar culture?

   It’s a common pattern among immigrants to the United States that the third generation tries to remember what the second generation tries to forget.

   That can be true of Christian families as well.

   Worship can become performative. Faith can become whatever serves our needs.

   Sometimes, we inherit not the content but the language and the mannerisms, even the social values of our own tribe and clan. We become a social service agency using religious language, or a social justice organization with a Christian tradition,

   We are imitative in language, behavior, customs, and culture, having the form of the Gospel but not the substance of it.

   Make these few remaining hours of Lent mean something. Remake your heart language.

   What’s the meaning of life in the face of the inevitability of death? Sharing the good news of what Jesus Christ did on the cross.

   Be a first-generation Christian again. Imitate no one but Christ. Be a child of God, because God has no grandchildren.

   And teach all who come after you to do the same. 

406 From M.T. to Empty

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From M.T. to Empty”, originally shared on April 1, 2026. It was the 406^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    The Gospel of John in the Bible spends over 50% of his gospel on the last week of Jesus’ life. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   I saw a meme online a few years ago in which what looked like a granddaughter was escorting what looked like her grandmother toward her home.

   The grandmother said, “Netflix used to come in the mail!”

   The granddaughter replied, “Sure grandma. Let’s get you to bed.” 😊

   When people say to me, “Age is just a number,” I just say, “Yes, but I’m getting to a big number!” I’m not bothered by that number, but every once in a while something happens that drives it home.

   Sally and I took my car to the dealership for maintenance last week. While we were talking with the service agent, I mentioned that we had bought Sally’s car from the same dealership.

   I said that we had traded-in my milk caramel-colored Ford Explorer, but that it was hard to let it go. I had driven that car for so long that the steering wheel was worn to the shape of my hands!

   We keep our cars until they are falling apart, and that one had a cracked engine block and was burning so much coolant that I had to top it off after every time we used the car. 

   Still, I said, when we took the Explorer in for the trade-in, I felt like I was taking Old Yeller back behind the barn.

   She stared blankly and smiled politely. I realized that she had no idea what I was talking about. Age comes, and death. But, for Jesus, death came at a small number. He was 33 years old.

   This week is Holy Week, marking the last week of Jesus life on earth. It’s a big deal. It’s about a death. And the life that it brings.

   Maundy Thursday is the day in Holy Week in which we see the Last Supper, Jesus last meal with his disciples with the Institution of Holy Communion, Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus’ commandment to love each other has he has loved them, and Jesus being betrayed by one of his disciples to his death.

   There’s a lot going on this Thursday! 😊

   Though, some churches have given up on foot washing, when the pastor removes his or her robe and members of the congregation who wish come forward and the pastor washes their feet, which I did for my 41 years of parish ministry before my retirement.

   I understand that it’s not being done in some places. It might seem too personal to some. I mean, when Isaiah writes, in Isaiah 52:7a, “⁷ How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,

who brings good news,” he certainly never saw my feet. 😊

   Maundy Thursday ends with Jesus’ praying so intensely in the Garden of Gethsemane that he literally sweats blood. He prays for a way out, for another way other than being tortured and crucified to restore the living relationship with God for which humanity was created.

   But, he says, he would follow God’s will. He would empty himself. He would become a servant.

   The word “maundy” is an Old English word from the Latin word “mandatum”, in modern English word “commandment”, as in the “new commandment” that Jesus gives to his disciples.

   But hold on! Can love be commanded? Jesus thought so. But how can that be?

   Jewish people will be celebrating a seder meal during their season of Passover, which lasts from April 1^st to April 9^th this year. It will overlap Holy Week this year, as it usually does. The seder meal at its center commemorates their liberation from slavery in Egypt.

   That seder supper was not celebrated in its current form until many years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. But the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples was held during Passover in Jesus’ time, and it had many references to liberation from slavery, including the bread and wine presented as Jesus body and blood.

   As well as to the last plague, the blood of the spotless lamb that was painted over the doors of all the households of the people of God in slavery in Egypt. The angel of death visited every home at night, and the first-born son died, except in those homes where the blood of the lamb was painted over the entryway. Those homes were passed over. Hence, Passover.

   Only, Jesus is the Lamb of God, and we are freed from sin, death, and the forces of the devil by his blood freely given on the cross. Those references make the Last Supper the first celebration of Holy Communion, on the night in which Jesus was betrayed. The washing of the feet of the disciples by Jesus was a witness to serve one another as we have been served by Jesus Christ. The giving of a new commandment by Jesus is an expression of what the Christian life is: we love sacrificially because God first loved us.

   “Maundy” is an Old English word rooted in the Latin word “mandatum”, which means “commandment”, or “mandate”. That new commandment comes from who we are, and who we are comes from whose we are.

   The whole text is in John 13:1-17, 31b-35, but Jesus gives the new commandment at the end, in verses 34-35,

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.”

   We cannot be commanded to love. That love would be meaningless. It would be like those Chatty Cathy dolls you might remember from years ago that were programmed to speak to you, like with a primitive artificial intelligence, I suppose.

   My sister had one. She’d pull the ring attached to a string on the back of the doll’s neck and it would say things like, “I love you.”

   But did it love you?

   No. It had no choice. It had no agency.  

   Fun fact: that’s why God gave Adam and Eve the ability to say “no” to God. And they did. And we do. And that’s why evil entered and continues to enter the world.

   We think that the world revolves around us, and it gets us every time.

   Years ago, there was a restaurant/drive-through in San Dimas called “Bravo Burgers”. There’s still one in Pomona, but I still miss it being close-by.

   Most of their food packaging had “Phil 4:13” written on it. Philippians 4:13 says,

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

   The owner said that he put that verse on his packaging out of gratitude to God.

   But, he said, “There isn’t a day that goes by when someone doesn’t come in and ask, ‘Who’s Phil?”

   Philippians 4:13 is often seen and quoted as meaning that, in anything I want to do or don’t want to do, God strengthens me. But that’s not what it says at all.

   Here’s the context of that verse, in Philippians 4:11-13,

¹¹ Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. ¹² I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. ¹³ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

   Paul is writing to the Church at Philippi to answer their concern for him by saying that serving Jesus Christ is all that matters. Our personal need or lack of need is not relevant to our service in Jesus Christ.

   How can that be?

   It’s because Christian behavior is not rooted in the requirements of the law, but in the new Creation we have been made to be in Jesus Christ. Our new selves are rooted in the love for one another that comes from our love for God. Our love for one another is an expression of our new selves.

   The mandate of which we are reminded on Maundy Thursday is that we live in love to serve one another, as Jesus came to serve us.  

   It’s at the very core of what it means to be a Christian. Paul nailed this down in an earlier part of his letter to the church at Philippi in Philippians 2:2-8, from a passage we read last Sunday, 

⁴ Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

   Can love be commanded? Yes, not in our behavior alone, but because we have been fundamentally transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ demonstrated on the cross, the love that shapes us in the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water within us, and the love of the Church, the Body of Christ, expressed through us.

   On Maundy Thursday, Jesus removed his outer robe and washed the feet of his disciples, the job of the lowest servant in the household, the job that nobody could mess up.

   He modeled who he is and what his disciples are to be to one another, and Judas went out to betray Jesus to the authorities.

   The only way to go where Jesus is going is obedience to God in response to and through Jesus Christ. That is the work of the Holy Spirit within us, it is not our wisdom.

   Every religion has its wisdom and its wisdom traditions. They are everything in some other religions. They are the least important thing in Christianity.

   C.S. Lewis wrote, in his book “Mere Christianity”, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

   The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. Selfless and sacrificial love. It is lived in us as an outcome of a living relationship with the one true living God. It is the relationship for which we were created.

   It is our worldview:

   God made us for a living relationship but without making us to be simple robots. We needed to be able to say “no” to that relationship in order for our “yes” to mean something. The first people disobeyed God. They said “no”, and evil entered the world.

   People only came back to God when they needed something. So, God set them free by coming to them, in the form of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human being, to show His love by suffering and dying for us on the cross, so that we might know the abundant eternal life for which we were created in the beginning.

   What does that life as the disciples of Christ look like? How do we make sense of what we believe to the world? How do we love one another in obedience to the command of Jesus? How do we serve one another sacrificially as Jesus did on the cross?

   Paul says, in Galatians 5:6b,

“the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”

   That’s the message of Maundy Thursday.

   Maundy Thursday reminds us of Jesus’ mandate, Jesus’ command, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

   The world thinks that it’s impossible to compel someone to love you, or to compel someone to love someone else, because we first and primarily think of love as something romantic, or maybe patriotic, or directed toward our family or friends, or, most commonly, about us.

   But the love that Jesus commands is something entirely different: it’s selfless, it’s a kind of love that can only come from God.

   And it does come, and it is who we are because it comes as the result of whose we are. We are saints and sinners, and we are God’s new creation!

   We are not the people we want to be. But, by God’s grace, we are not the people we were.

   On Maundy Thursday we see how we can be commanded to love by becoming who we were always created to be.

   On Maundy Thursday Jesus is both preparing us for his death on the cross and showing us how to live in response to it. Our power comes from his love.

   Gas is unbelievably expensive today. It’s around $6.00 a gallon for regular where I live.

   I remember in the 70’s, though, when there were gas shortages twice in that decade, both also stemming from conflicts in the Middle East! There were long lines of cars at the gas stations, and some cars would run out of gas waiting in line and drivers would get out of their cars to help the driver with the empty tank up to the pump.

   We are running on fumes ourselves, more or less, today.

   The last week of Jesus’ life, Holy Week, is the climax of the story of our salvation. That’s why it takes so much of John’s gospel.

   Jesus emptied himself. He was fully human being and fully God, and he washed feet, he commanded us to love as he loves, and he demonstrated that he came as our servant and our friend from M.T. (Maundy Thursday) to empty.

   On this Good Friday, we will see the fullness of that selfless love poured out. For us.