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!

410 Trust This Shepherd

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

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

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

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

   It’s true, but does it matter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   They were strangers. They were viewed with suspicion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Shepherds spoke to their sheep all day long.

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

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

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

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

   We hear God speak, but in a different way.

   Remember when Jesus taught, he didn’t always expect everybody to understand. What did he say, in Mark 4:9?

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

   We who are being saved hear in a different way.

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

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

   “What’s wrong?” said the friend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

   People all around them stopped and looked for the money.

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

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

   What do we hear? Do we listen for God?

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

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

   This is the message of Easter!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   What was he talking about?

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

²⁰       This is the gate of the Lord;

the righteous shall enter through it.

   Jesus is the gate.

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

   That is a very exclusive statement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   And we bring our whole selves to worship God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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