414 The God You Hate

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The God You Hate”, originally shared on May 21, 2026. It was the 414^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Of all the gods that people worship in the world, how do Christians know that the God they worship is the true one? Today, we’re going to find out.

    The vast majority of the churches in the world will be celebrating the Day of Pentecost this coming Sunday, the birthday of the Christian Church that happened approximately 1,993 years ago.

   When someone says that he’s going to die and then rise from the dead to live forever, and he says that no will take his life but that he will give it and then take it back again, and then that happens, you’d think that nothing in this weird world could ever approach that for weirdness.

   Fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, the most important day in human history, he changed the world. Again. It was the Day of Pentecost.

   Last Sunday was my birthday. I turned 78. Birthdays are a big deal to some, though I find that they mean less to me as I grow older and that time seems to be speeding up.

   My hero in church development, Lyle Schaller, once said that when you are talking with a congregation about long-range planning, you have to remember that a year means different things to people in different demographics.

   For example, a 7-year-old is convinced that there are at least 750 days between birthdays, while a 70-year-old knows that there are no more than 125.

   The Day of Pentecost is the last Sunday in the Easter season.

   The word “Pentecost” comes from the Greek word for “fiftieth”. The Day of Pentecost described in the Bible was on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, held on the fiftieth day from the first day of Passover. Then, it celebrated the offering of the first fruits of the winter wheat harvest at the Temple in Jerusalem.

   This was Herod’s Temple and the massive Temple complex covered 35 acres. People from all over the world came for this celebration and also to see the building, a wonder of the world at that time. The crowds were massive, with some estimating crowds of 250,000 people!

   The disciples were hiding in a house in Jerusalem, and then this happened in Acts 2:1-4,

2 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

   It’s interesting to note that in both the Hebrew language in which what we call the Old Testament was written and the Koine Greek language in which the New Testament was written, there are two words, “ruach” in Hebrew and “pneuma” (from which we get our words “pneumonia” and “pneumatic”) in Greek, that have the same three meanings for both words: wind, breath, and spirit.

   On the first Day of Pentecost, the sound of the wind came and the breath of God that brought life from clay to make human beings was present, and the Holy Spirit, “filled the entire house where they were sitting.”

   Tongues of fire rested on each of the disciples.

   Why didn’t their hair catch on fire?

   I remember when one of the member families in a church I served lived in a house on the edge of open country and a wildfire came to their neighborhood one howling windy night. The fire department arrived to fight the fire and recommended that everyone on their cul-de-sac leave. This family decided to stay and fight the fire with their garden hoses for as long as they could.

   Some were on the roof, and some were on the ground, watching for embers and extinguishing them with their garden hoses.

   At some point, the fire ran up the side of a palm tree, and when it reached the dry top, the tree exploded! Embers blew everywhere around the area and one of them landed on the head of a neighbor who was also on the roof of his house.

   He apparently used a significant amount of hair spray and had a lot of blown-dried hair on the top of his head because when his hair started burning, he didn’t feel it right away.

   So, our member and his sons yelled at him, “Your hair is on fire!” but it was so windy he couldn’t hear them. So, they continued yelling, “Your hair’s on fire!” and he didn’t hear them. But a firefighter standing on the ground heard them, saw the guy with his hair on fire, turned his fire hose on the guy and knocked him off the roof!

   Why weren’t the disciples running around in a panic when they saw tongues of fire on each other?

   Because it was holy fire. God was present in that holy fire.

   Remember when Moses encountered the burning bush in the wilderness, in Exodus 3:2-6?

2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

   The tongues of fire that didn’t consume the disciples’ hair was the presence of God. And what happened next” We saw in the 4^th verse of today’s Gospel reading, “4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

   They left their refuge and went out to where the people were. They began to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. They began their ministries with nothing but the Holy Spirit because it was all they needed.

   So, what had just happened?

   Remember the Tower of Babel?

   After the Flood, people began to repopulate the earth, but they didn’t spread out. The all had the same language, and they were all concentrated in one place. This homogeneity and concentration led them to be full of themselves. The same hubris that does we human beings in again and again.

   They decided that, since they knew how to make strong bricks and mortar, they could build a tower tall enough to let people walk into heaven without God. And how did that work out? We see in Genesis 11:8-9,

 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth, and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

   So, what does that have to do with the Day of Pentecost? That Pentecost story continues in Acts 2:5-8,

5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?

   The consequence of the attempted building of the Tower of Babel is reversed! This isn’t speaking in tongues. People from all over the world came together and heard the same Gospel message being proclaimed in their own human languages.

   This is more like the Star Trek simultaneous translator, where creatures could communicate with every other creature in the universe in their own language in real time.

   On the Day of Pentecost the disciples spoke in their language, but the Holy Spirit made it so that every other person present from all over the world heard the same Gospel message of Jesus Christ in their own language at the same time.

   We see, on the week of this last Sunday in the Easter season, yet another example of oneness under God’s grace and by God’s doing, in the Holy Spirit!

   I would guess that there are many languages spoken among the members of our churches. English? Spanish? Swedish, German, Chinese? Tagalog? Vietnamese? Korean? Armenian? Persian? Norwegian?

   And yet, we all understand one another at the deepest level through our common relationship with the one true living God in the Holy Spirit.

   I’ve been trying to learn Mandarin after serving a Chinese and Taiwanese church in Monterey Park for several years. And I want to help build bridges at a time of global tensions and to help support the growing numbers of Christians who speak Mandarin, the most spoken language in the world. But it’s hard for me to not just speak but to think in Mandarin, because it’s not my native language.

   My grandmother told me that after her family immigrated from Norway, they lived in a part of Wisconsin where there were many Norwegian people, and her family spoke Norwegian at home. Eventually, she remembered, they decided that they would switch to English because they were in America now.

   But she told me, her mother, my great grandmother, always prayed in Norwegian because she wasn’t sure that God understood the new language as well as he knew Norwegian! 😊

   We speak many languages today because we come from other languages, or we have learned other languages. And, like the first disciples, we want to reach the world with the one language that unites everybody: the unifying presence of God in the language of the Holy Spirit, because we have been given good news to share!

   But good news can’t be good, unless we first know the bad news, and that’s where we fail and why our message doesn’t connect with the world today.

   I watched a video online recently that reflected on a familiar “gotcha” question, one formatted to make Christians look ridiculous merely by asking it.

   It came from a page called “Wdysia”.

   It began, “I have a question for Christians. Of all the thousands of Gods in the world, which one is the real God?”

   The answer was immediate: “The one you hate.”

   “I’m sorry, what?” replied the questioner.

   The answerer replied, “The one with actual power and influence in the world. The one whose word testifies against the world that it’s evil. The one that you simultaneously shake your fist at as you deny his existence.

   You know which God is the one true God. It’s the one you desperately hate.”

   The questioner then replies, “OK, so why would I hate God?”

   The one being asked replies, “Because you’re evil.”

   That’s the uncomfortable truth. We are born separated from God. That’s what it means when we say that we are born in sin.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th Century Church reformer, is credited with restoring the Good News, the Gospel, to the Christian Church, because the Roman Catholic Church of his day had given the people only the bad news: that you were facing eternal punishment unless you did enough good to make up for the bad that you had done in your life. Luther knew that he couldn’t humanly do that. He thought for sure that he was going to hell. So, as one of his mentors pointed out, he hated God.

   Luther studied the whole history of salvation in the Bible and recovered the really Good News of what every page pointed to: the cross, including this passage from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, in Romans 5:8,

⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

   Jesus, fully God and fully human being, gave his life for us on the cross. He took his life back again and rose from the dead in his Resurrection, for us! He had created us for a living relationship with God in which every human being has the stamp of right and wrong on their heart and knows when God is missing. We are saved by God’s grace through God’s gift of faith. All that is good news.

   The reason, I think, that this great Good News doesn’t connect with people today is because they don’t ever hear the really bad news. They don’t know why the Good News is good news.

   And they don’t want to. Positive personal self-esteem is what we strive for, it is the highest value in our culture. People don’t know that they are naturally lost and condemned sinners. People, including many Christians, go to church just to be entertained, to be pleased, and to be told that the Good News, the Gospel, is that God made you just the way you are and loves you just the way you are. The cross is offensive to many in our culture. It always has been to many.

   No one knows when Jesus will return in judgment and, even though we long for it to finally come and usher in a new heaven and a new earth, the lead-up is not going to be pleasant. So, I’m not terribly comfortable when I am reminded of Paul’s words in his second letter to a young pastor, in 2 Timothy 4:3,

³ For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires,

   The Bible tells us that we are sinners, that there’s no good news without knowing the bad news. Martin Luther said that only way to heaven was through the Savior, but that people needed to first internalize the bad news before the good news could mean anything to them.

   That’s why he said that both the religious Law, by which we see our condemnation, and the Gospel, by which we see our salvation by faith through grace, are needed to see the whole meaning of the scripture at the cross.

   But, if we don’t know the Good News, if no one has told us, we may only see God as a vengeful judge, and we hate him for making us feel guilty and for justly condemning us in our sin.

   It’s like saying that 42 is the answer. It’s meaningless unless we first know the question.

   Our response, the message of the Day of Pentecost, is that, in our broken world, filled with uncertainty, the war in Ukraine, the war in the Iran, threats of world war, rising homelessness, fear of crime, environmental calamities, gun violence, and a teetering economy, all signs of human sinfulness, God’s answer is the gift of Jesus.

   In a culture that is fragmented, even pulverized, where we often find it impossible to speak about how to resolve these issues without soon shouting at each other, all signs of human sinfulness, God’s answer is the gift of Jesus.

    We are separated from one another, even from our true selves, because we are separated from Jesus. The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another, until we are all one in Jesus.

   How does the Day of Pentecost story end? Peter speaks to the gathered crowd and shares the good news of Jesus. And then this happens in Acts 2:37-42,

37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” 38 Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 40 And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

   The Day of Pentecost, the Birthday of the Christian Church through the coming of the Holy Spirit, that we will celebrate this coming Sunday, comes on the fiftieth day after Easter in the Christian Church.

   But, in God, all time is the present. The Holy Spirit continues to call, gather, and enlighten the whole Christian Church, the Body of Christ, on earth. We are equipped and sent into the world with everything we need to be the church.

   I saw a story online some time ago about a professor who said that he wanted to create a nice cozy atmosphere in his classroom with a fireplace video, so he hooked it up. But when the video appeared on the five large video screens on the walls, he said that it looked like he was teaching in hell! 😊

   That’s the destructive kind of fire.

   The fire of the Holy Spirit is the fire that does not consume but instead gives life.

   Human beings had rejected God and brought evil into the world. We broke the relationship with God that we had been given by God at Creation. We lived in sin, and many still do.

   Jesus paid the price on the cross to restore that relationship for all who repent and believe and are baptized. The resurrection showed that Jesus is God and that he could reconcile human beings to God by his death. And his resurrection means that we too will rise. Our eternal life began in our baptism through the faith that came as God’s gift. That’s Good News!

   Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! And because he is risen, we too shall rise to newness of life now and to life everlasting!

   May this coming Sunday, the Day of Pentecost, be a celebration of the Holy Spirit and a recommittal of your Christian Community to the sharing of the good news of Jesus Christ.

   Be formed and be guided and be defined by it every day.

   And may God, through us, turn the hate of those who feel far from God into love.

413 Unity in RelAtIonship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   How can Christians contribute to making human relationships real?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   What questions would you ask of your future self?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   How does that happen?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

412 Who and Whose

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Who and Whose”, originally shared on May 8, 2026. It was the 412^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   What’s the difference between knowing who we are and knowing whose we are? Today, we’re going to find out.

   What makes you, you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   Do you remember when you were born again? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are a child of God, spiritually alive, active and healthy?

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

   Our mothers are often our first teachers and, in many places, are the first evangelists that we know in life.

   Paul writes to Timothy, a young pastor, about Timothy’s mother and grandmother in his second letter to him, in 2 Timothy 1:5,

⁵ I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

   He spells out how Timothy has experienced the witness of his mother and grandmother a couple of chapters later in 2 Timothy 3:14-15,

¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 

   Many of us could tell similar stories about the mothers in our lives, but not everyone. Some of us grew up without a mother but had people who served as mothers, and sometimes that was their fathers. Some had mothers who were not so loving. Some of us desperately wanted to be mothers but couldn’t. Some of us no longer have their mothers and miss them.

   All those feelings about Mother’s Day are an expression of a deeply impactful and meaningful relationship.

   Jesus had a mother, and he loved her and provided for her. We don’t hear about his “step-father” Joseph after approximately Jesus’13^th birthday. But when Jesus was on the cross, about 20 years later, near death, and in unbelievable agony, his thoughts turn to his mother, in John 19:26-27,

²⁶ When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” ²⁷ Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

   In that third of his seven last statements from the cross, Jesus expresses responsibility and care for his mother, as her first-born son, and he entrusts her to one of his disciples out of concern for her spiritual care, as well as for her material security.

   We love our mothers and care for them out of gratitude for all they have done for us, but most especially because of the deeply bonded relationship we share, both physically and spiritually.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity, one undividable God made known to us in Three Persons. Yet, here’s how Jesus describes himself a few verses earlier, in John 14:6,

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

   The truth is a person, not a proposition. It is the living reality of God in Jesus Christ, revealed by the Holy Spirit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   I’ll be thinking about the love of my mother for all her children this coming Sunday on Mother’s Day, but I’ll be thinking in particular about my mother’s bedroom set fund.

   My mom had a beautiful coloratura soprano voice. She sang regularly at church.

   She was also one of the go-to soloists in our town for weddings and funerals.

   Whenever she received an honorarium for singing, the money went into her bedroom set fund. She taught voice lessons in our home. Everything she received for teaching went into that bedroom set fund, too. Her goal, her dream, was to buy a new bedroom set for her and our dad.

   But, whenever any of us kids had some need that wasn’t in the budget, from jeans to college tuition, it came out of that fund. No questions and without hesitation.

   She finally was able to buy that bedroom set, but it wasn’t until I was in college. I learned a lot about love and sacrifice from my mother.

   My wife, Rev. Sally Welch had a wonderful mother, and Sally has been a wonderful mother to our son and has made innumerable sacrifices out of love along the way. I have learned a lot about love and sacrifice from her, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

   “Honor your father and your mother.”

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

   Don’t be like the family that saw their mother get up from dinner, pick up some plates, and head right to the kitchen sink.

   “Oh, no, no,” they said. “Don’t do that. This is your day, mom. Relax. Take it easy,” they said. “Just leave them there. You can do them tomorrow.”

   Don’t do that. Honor your mother. It’s a commandment. It’s not a suggestion. And by doing so, you will be honoring God, who is at work within you, teaching you to love sacrificially.

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

   When a woman is expecting the birth of a child it’s fashionable today for a couple to say, “We’re pregnant”. Well, OK, I get that, it encourages the dad to feel involved in the process, but, “Really?”. You know who is going to be going through what here.

   So, it’s been proposed that birthdays should primarily be a celebration for the mother. I mean, she did do the work, or should I say “labor”. There is nothing that we did to get born. 😊  It’s our mother’s delivery.

   And there is nothing that can do to be delivered and reconciled to God.

   We thank God each day for our mothers and that we were born.

   We thank God each day for himself, for Jesus Christ our Savior, who gave his life to deliver us from sin, death, and the power of all the forces that defy God, to put us right with God in Jesus Christ, who said “The Father and I are one,” so that we, mothers and children together, can be born again, made a new creation, given the power to become children of God, the gift to all who receive Him, who believe in his name!

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

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