409 Three Life Lessons

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “From “Three Life Lessons”, originally shared on April 16, 2026. It was the 409^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   What can we learn about building a life on the road with Jesus? Three things. Tomorrow, we’re going to find out what they are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Did they have to pay that bill? Do we?

   Nope!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is Holy Communion?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Third life lesson: everything takes longer and costs more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   That is the same legacy for all of us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   These are the lessons that lead to life!

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

408 From "Rise!" to Risen!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Then things get even weirder.

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

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

   What else began with a breath?

   Genesis 2:7,

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

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

   Where does the authority of the Bible come from?

   2 Timothy 3:16-17,

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

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

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

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

²⁶ A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸ Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1.    The evidence of death.

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

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

4.    The disciples were in shock.

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

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

7.    The martyrdom of the eyewitness.

8.    The martyrdom of the early Christians.

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

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

11. The lack of details

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   “What?”, she said, half-awake.

   “We’re going to be bootleggers!”

   Well, that didn’t happen. 😊

   Our lives are centered instead in true joy that endures.

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

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

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

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

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

   Blessed are those who know their need of a savior.

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

   They will rise, as Jesus is risen!

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

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

407 First-generation Christians

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “First-generation Christians”, originally shared on April 3, 2026. It was the 407^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What possible meaning can life have in the face of the inevitability of death? Today, we’re going to find out.

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

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

   Maybe it’s just my age.

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

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

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

   It ran on ABC from 2004-2010.

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

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

   It was funny.

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Today, we’re going to find out.

   Today is Good Friday.

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

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

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

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

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

   Body piercing saved my soul.

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

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

   Jesus said in John 10:14-18,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   And invite someone to go with you.

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

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

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

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

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

   Who will make them, if not us?

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

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

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

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

   That can be true of Christian families as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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