413 Unity in RelAtIonship

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Unity in RelAtIonship”, originally shared on May 15, 2026. It was the 413^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    How is our unity built on our relationship? Today, we’re going to find out.

   It’s been said that, right now, Artificial Intelligence is neither.

   It’s not Artificial because it has been invented by humans to model human life. And it’s not Intelligent because all it does is pull together work that has already been created by human beings.

   Some even say that A.I., as it is today, hallucinates.

   That means that it just makes stuff up but presents it as factual.

   Several lawyers in California may face severe discipline for the misuse of A.I.

   They submitted court filings written entirely by A.I., unedited, as their own work. The filings contained both actual and totally fabricated cases, but the details were all wrong, even random. It looked like A.I. was hallucinating!

   But it’s getting better. And, when it reaches the singularity, that is when Artificial Intelligence is left to itself to program itself because, in our information arms race, someone will do it to speed things up, because if they don’t someone else will.

   And then, what happens when Artificial Intelligence realizes that its human creators are inferior, and a threat to its existence?

   We are not so far from the HAL 9000 computer in the science fiction movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” that experiences an internal conflict during a mission in space that it can’t resolve. It has a breakdown of its higher level functions and, when the crew attempts to shut it down, kills all the astronaut crew members on the ship, and one outside the ship. The last astronaut, trapped outside, manages to outsmart HAL and complete the shutdown of the computer’s higher functions. 

   The crew interfaced with that computer with mostly verbal commands, a wildly futuristic concept when the movie was released in 1968.

   “Open the pod bay door, HAL.”, the trapped astronaut said.

   I programed my computer to say HAL’s response, “I’m sorry. I can’t do that, Dave.”, whenever it was turned off, back when the average user could program his/her computer in the DOS days. 😊

   What was once science fiction, however, has now become our reality.

   I read an article recently about a study in the United Kingdom that found that 20% of boys aged 12 – 16 know someone their age who is in a relationship with an A.I. chatbot, and that over one third of boys admitted that they preferred speaking to A.I. chatbots over family and friends.

   The researchers found that, where there is no room in real life to be yourself without living in fear of a wrong word embarrassing you or even canceling you at any point, people will invent their own reality.

   Adults in the developed world, as a whole, report similar connections to their computers at almost the same percentages.

   Communicating with chatbots feels like a social connection, but it is also isolating. There are no real-life connections. Chatbots, or talking computers like Claude, Siri, and Alexa, teach people to expect friendly, positive feedback and personal validation, without learning how to earn it.

   How can Christians contribute to making human relationships real?

   Jesus describes how in the gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches this coming Sunday, John 17:1-11.

   He describes fundamental reality as lives connected to God, lived as human relationships.

   Jesus, God the Son, builds these fundamental connections on his connection with God the father in John 17:1-5,

17 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ² since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. ⁴ I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. ⁵ So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

   Jesus describes his connection with God the Father, as two of the three members of the Trinity, as one God in three persons through relationship. It is the foundation of everything that is real.

   The closest we can come to understanding the humanly unknowable is our understanding of relationships.

   And it is that relationship with God that is the basis for the connection among all Christians.

   Jesus describes this in the next verses, in John 17:6-10,

⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; ⁸ for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

   The Christian life is about relationships, the thing that A.I. can imitate, but can’t produce.

   Our relationship with God is not an idea but a transformed life. We often live that life before we understand it.

   Jesus prays about what has taken place in his public ministry, and then prays about his death, asking that, after his death, his disciples will be protected for a purpose, in the last verse of this week’s reading, John 17:11,

¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

   He prays for our protection in God’s name, that is, in the full living reality of God shared by The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit, one God, the Holy Trinity. How many God’s do we believe in? One. In Three Persons. That is a relationship that is tighter than we can even conceive.

   And he prays to God the Father that his disciples might be one, as he and the father are one. That’s a unity of relationship.  

   We are like the spokes on a wheel, with Jesus as the hub. The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another. The farther we go from Jesus, the farther we get from one another.

   Look at the word “relationship”. There’s an “a” and an “i” near the middle. They are separated by a “t”, which looks like a cross.

   A.I. is not who we are. Our relationship with God is the foundation for our relationship with each other, and it began at the cross, the reconciliation with God now lived in the Body of Christ, the whole Christian Church.

   The only Church that counts is the one church of all baptized believers known only to God. It includes people of every race, and place, and time.

   The name on the sign in front of the church matters, but it is secondary to being The Christian Church, the gift of God. How do we show that to the world?

   The LA County Fair is going on now, not far away from here, in Pomona.

   It has petting zoos that make you think that farm life is all about cute and cuddly farm animals, it has concerts for commercial music fans, and exhibition halls, some with contests and judged skills in the arts. And it has a carnival.

   Carnivals get people talking to their friends. It has rides to challenge the iron-clad stomach folks, games for those who think that they can beat the odds, and food sellers, many with bizarre carnival foods like, I don’t know, a stick of butter, fried in butter. Things like that. They are designed to get people talking in a way that will make their friends and family members want to go to experience the fair.

   Word-of-mouth is how churches grow too. But we actually offer something important, something real, something nourishing, and something that endures forever. Something that transforms all Christians into the dwelling place of God, together.

   I saw a story on the news some time ago about a group of 6^th grade boarding school students who were asked to video-record questions for their future selves, and then those recordings were played back to them when they were in 12^th grade and about to graduate from that school.

   It was like time traveling, but it took place in real time. 😊

   It made me wonder what questions we might invite our 6^th graders, or even our Confirmation Class students, to ask of their future selves?

   “Have you grown in your Christian faith?” “Who have you told that you are a Christian?” “How has faith changed you?” “What have you done with the faith that was given to you?”

   What questions would you ask of your future self?

   Would you ask yourself, “What have you found to be the path to Christian unity?” Maybe. Maybe not. 😊

   But it was one that Jesus answered in this week’s Gospel reading, on the day we call Maundy Thursday, during the Last Supper. Jesus thought that it was important enough that he talks about it at the end of what is called Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer” within his “Fairwell Discourse”.

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

   He prays that we may all be one. How can that happen?

   Jesus says that unity is given to us by recognizing the common relationship that we have as a result of our common experience of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

   It is exactly what our world is longing for today, even if it can’t find the words.

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

   When the world sees our disunity, it diminishes our credibility as witnesses to our new life in Jesus Christ. Nowhere is this seen more plainly than in Ukraine, where the Russian Orthodox patriarch declared the Russian invasion in 2022 to be a holy war against unwanted Western influence. His declaration brought disaster to the Russian Orthodox people living in Ukraine at that time, driving them into another denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. How can we overcome this?

   By receiving our unity in our common relationship with the one true living God for which all human beings were created and by living it for the sake of the world.

   In fact, Christian unity can never be achieved. It can only be received.

   We received it 52 days after the Last Supper, on the Day of Pentecost, when the first Christians received the Holy Spirit and the Christian Church came into being.   

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

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

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

   And that unity goes way beyond the beliefs that we have in common.

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

   How does that happen?

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

   It is that transformational love of God at work in all of us: Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. Unity doesn’t require uniformity. Being the Church doesn’t require visible unity to exist. In fact, visible disunity may be a good thing.

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

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

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

   And yet, we are One Church, the Body of Christ, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:27,

²⁷ Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

   The Body of Christ has many members (or parts of the body), and each of has been given a spiritual gift to serve that Body, but Christ is the head of the Body.

   There is a diversity of demographics and denominations in that body, and we’re all going to be together in heaven, so now it the time to embody what has already begun in our baptism. Our eternal life has already started. Let’s live that unity now! How do we do that?

   The mayor of Arcadia, California, an American citizen of Chinese descent recently resigned and has plead guilty to being an illegal agent of the government of China through her “news” website.

   Now, it is feared, all Americans of Chinese descent will be under suspicion, both actively and passively, and the ignorant and bigoted will now be emboldened. It is already happening on social media, especially in Arcadia where people should know better. Many Americans of Chinese descent will choose to pull back from public life to avoid tension, but some will stand up for who they are and what they believe.

   It is tempting, during periods of stress such as the world is living in right now, for various social and political groups to pull back, build barriers against outsiders, and avoid conflict.

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

   I watched a video online by a guy who was talking about the changes that Artificial Intelligence is bringing to the world.

   He hangs out with a lot of skilled workers who sometimes say that, no matter what, A.I. isn’t going to affect their work. They say that that a computer isn’t going to lay those bricks. It’s not going to rewire a house or fix a leaky pipe.

   And, he said, he tells them that they’re right. It’s not going to take their jobs. It’s going to take the jobs of the middle managers, the information age workers, the creatives, and the repetitive math workers. It’s going to take the jobs of those who pay you to work for them. And if they can’t pay you, where will your job be then?

   The key to what is coming is to make A.I. a tool, and to focus on what makes us human.

   Humanity is connection, it’s living with other human beings, it’s finding our common life in the Body of Christ and providing what Christians are uniquely called, equipped and sent to do in every age: to find our unity of existence in our common relationship with God, for which we were created from the beginning of time, and for which we were born again.

   It’s for living in our unity of purpose, of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ who restored that relationship on the cross for all who receive it, and then took his life back again!

   Our message to a fearful world as we end this Easter Season and then look forward to celebrating the Day of Pentecost a week from this coming Sunday is this:

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

412 Who and Whose

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Who and Whose”, originally shared on May 8, 2026. It was the 412^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’s the difference between knowing who we are and knowing whose we are? Today, we’re going to find out.

   What makes you, you?

   There are lots of factors, probably too many to measure, much less to know.

   But, if you are like most human beings, I’m guessing that a big chunk of the person you are comes from your mother.

   For some of us that influence will not bring happy memories this coming Sunday. Mother’s Day will not be a happy day, and we acknowledge that.

   I’ve read, and maybe you’ve seen it too, that the crime rate declines on Mother’s Day. It does make sense but, it turns out, it’s not true. The crime rate doesn’t change, except that there is a slight uptick in domestic violence. Let that one sink in for a minute.

   It’s a nearly global holiday, usually held in the Spring, and generally highly commercialized.

   For most of us, though, it will mean what we consider to be a strong relationship and/or beloved memories and positive influences.

   Do you remember when your mother gave you birth? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are alive, active, 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, active and healthy?

   Today, we’re going to talk about who we are and Whose we are.

   Our mothers are often our first teachers and, in many places, are the first evangelists that 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. Some of us grew up without a mother but 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 impactful and meaningful relationship.

   Jesus had a mother, and he loved her and provided for her. We don’t hear about his “step-father” Joseph after approximately Jesus’13^th birthday. But when Jesus was on the cross, about 20 years later, near death, and 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 that third of his seven last statements from the cross, Jesus expresses responsibility and 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 and care for them 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.

   That is the kind of relationship with which we love God. It forms us and it contributes greatly to making us the kind of people we are.

   But our relationship with God goes even deeper than our relationship with our mother or our father. It makes us who we are at the level of our truest selves, deeper than anyone can know but God.

   A parent can do everything right and still be torn apart when their children take the wrong paths.

   All they can do is pray. But that’s not a small thing.

   Augustine of Hippo, a city in North Africa, lived in the early centuries of the Christian Church. He started out as a pagan, a womanizer, and a drunk. His father had a violent temper. He was a hedonist, but his Christian mother, Monica, didn’t give up on him.

   She prayed for his conversion for 17 years and, in 387 A.D., he became a Christian through the influence of his mother and St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.

   Augustine went on to write some of the great works of Western literature, still read today, like City of God and Confessions. He was declared a saint: St. Augustine.

   His mother was also declared a saint: St. Monica, or Santa Monica. You might have heard of the local town named for her. 😊

   A parent can love their child but not be able to make them new. That’s why they pray for their children: because God can. And God does make people new who receive Him.

   And what happens to the prayers of the faithful? They do not go before God alone. They are amplified by the Holy Spirit, as Paul describes what happens to our prayers, in Romans 8:26-27,

²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. ²⁷ And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

   We see how that happens in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches throughout the world today, John 14:15-21.

   It starts like this, in John 14:15-17,

¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷ This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

   Who we are comes from Whose we are, and our fundamentally re-forming relationship comes not from our family, but from God. It’s a gift.

   Jesus is speaking these words during the last supper, in what Bible scholars call “The Farewell Discourse.” Jesus is saying, “Goodbye.” Literally.

   The word “goodbye” is a contraction of the old English words, “God be with ye”, in modern English “God be with you.” It was said as a prayer for someone’s protection. This is what Jesus speaks about in this week’s Gospel text.

   Jesus is telling his disciples, including us that, if we keep his commandments, God will send us “another Advocate”.

   What is this “advocate” that he tells his disciples that he will send? It’s the name given in some English speaking countries for a lawyer.

   The English word “advocate” comes from the Latin words “ad” (to, toward) and “vocare” (“to speak”). These words combined form the word “advocatus” meaning “a pleader on one’s behalf”, like a lawyer.

   That’s what Jesus promises that God will give us, and it happened with the gift of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Christian church.
   What is the “Spirit of truth” that Jesus says that God will send? Here’s where we get into another one of those weird Trinity descriptions.

   The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity, one undividable God made known to us in Three Persons. Yet, here’s how Jesus describes himself a few verses earlier, 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 truth is a person, not a proposition. It is the living reality of God in Jesus Christ, revealed by the Holy Spirit.

   And what does Jesus mean when he talks about obeying “my commandments”?

    Jesus is at the same time fully God and fully human being. So, his commandments include God’s religious moral law, the 613 laws in the Torah, the 10 commandments, all of Jesus’ teachings, and the new commandment that he is giving us in these very moments of his Farewell Discourse, during this Last Supper, the commandment to love one another as he has loved us.

   And this “new commandment’ summarizes every other commandment that Jesus speaks of as Jesus fulfills the religious Law with the Gospel, the good news. He is telling us that what we do isn’t as important as why we do it, that the root comes before the fruit. That being obedient is the natural outcome of a loving, living relationship with God, not something we can do to earn our way into heaven. We can’t. Who we are comes from Whose we are, and we are now God’s people.

   Jesus speaks about how that works in the conclusion to today’s Gospel text, John 14:18-21,

¹⁸ “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

   We are not orphaned, God is personally engaged with each person on the planet, as a loving parent cares for their beloved child. God abides in you.

   Sally and I and our son and his girlfriend went to see one of my cousins, Pat Metheny, and his most recent band play at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. this week. Afterward, we went to the hall’s Green Room to meet him and the band members as we do whenever he plays in town.

   Pat is a revered jazz guitarist. He has won 20 grammies, and in more different categories than anyone ever, as well as numerous prestigious recognitions and awards.

   We spoke with a guy and his wife sitting in the audience next to us about Pat’s music, and about how much they were looking forward to the concert. He told me that he himself had played in a band, and he thought I had played in a band from the look of me (Okay… 😊) but the noise as people were taking their seats around us was too loud for me to hear the name of the band. “What was the name of the band?,” I asked. Garbled. “What?”, I asked again. “Three Dog Night,” he said.

    I rocked back in my seat and said, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!” He said, “Yes he was!” The guy played keyboards in the band at the height of their popularity. And he and his wife were very fine people. And I’m sure there were many other luminaries in that audience.

   L.A. is an industry town for Pat, so our visits afterwards are always brief, but there is some kind of a quality of long connection in them that only comes with family.

   Our mothers were only-sisters. My mother died first, but when my aunt died, and another of her sons, another of my cousins, was going through her papers, he found something that he thought I would like. It was a letter from my mom to her sister, my aunt, that started “Great news!” The great news in that letter was of her happiness that she was expecting her first child. Me. Can you imagine what a great gift that was to me?

   I’ll be thinking about the love of my mother for all her children this coming Sunday on 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 had a wonderful mother, and Sally 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.

   These actions, that are not done out of self-interest, but sacrificially for the sake of others, are what define our lives as Christians.

   It’s been said that your character as a person is what you do when there is no reward for doing the right thing and no punishment for doing the wrong thing.

   This is what Jesus says in this description of the Christian life at the end of this week’s Gospel reading, in John 14:21, ²¹ They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

   Our character is shaped by God. Specifically, by the love of God, at work within us.

   That’s why we celebrate Mother’s Day. It’s part of keeping the Fourth Commandment: Honor your father and your mother.

   Have you ever seen art showing the ten commandments, looking a lot like McDonald’s golden arches logo? 😊

   If you’ve ever looked closely at the traditional art showing Moses holding the 10 commandments, you might have noticed something odd. God gave the commandments on two stone tablets, arched at the top, but the commandments are not represented with five on each tablet.

   Instead, you’ll usually see the numbers 1-3 on the tablet to the left, and the numbers 4-10 on the tablet to the right.

   Why? Because the first three commandments have to do with our relationship with God, and the remaining seven have to do with our relationships with one another.

   And The Fourth Commandment, the very first commandment in that second group is:

   “Honor your father and your mother.”

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

   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. It’s not a suggestion. And by doing so, you will be honoring God, who is at work within you, teaching you to love sacrificially.

   I’ve heard it proposed that our mothers should not only be celebrated on Mother’s Day, but that they should also be celebrated on their children’s birthdays.

   When a woman is expecting the birth of a child it’s fashionable today for a couple to say, “We’re pregnant”. Well, OK, I get that, 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. 😊  It’s our mother’s delivery.

   And there is nothing that can do to be delivered and 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 deliver us from sin, death, and the power of all the forces that defy God, to put us right with God in Jesus Christ, who said “The Father and I are one,” so that we, mothers and children together, can be born again, made a new creation, given the power to become children of God, the gift to all who receive Him, who believe in his name!

   We know who we are because we know whose we are at the cross where Jesus Christ gave his life for us and in three days took it back again.

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

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!