Sermon Audio – Cross of Grace Cross of Grace Lutheran Church

John 15:9-17
[Jesus continued…] “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants* any longer, because the servant* does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”






























It was 2012, the evening of Easter. I was a senior in high school. Katelyn had spent the day with me and my family going to church and then for Easter lunch. We had been spending a lot of time together, we both knew there was interest, but we (or perhaps more accurately I) still thought we were in the talking phase, still figuring things out. As we got in the car, I could tell something was wrong, so I asked. And I’m not sure I was ready for the response: so what are we, Cogan? We’ve gone on dates now, I spend all day with your family, what are we? Ah, the moment had come. Time to define the relationship. I was headed to Valpo in the fall while Katelyn would finish her senior year. Would we continue? Or at least try? What kind of relationship was this?
Maybe you’ve been there and had a similar conversation. Defining the relationship happens in the liminal space between acquaintance and closeness. It is a mark of intimacy and trust that was not in the relationship before. This conversation happens because someone in the relationship feels like they aren’t on the same page as the other and there’s a need for clarification.
Or a fast approaching change spurs on the conversation like graduation or moving. And its usually a difficult conversation to have: it risks vulnerability, rejection, but it also could result in deeper companionship and love. We always hear and maybe even say it ourselves that faith, Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus. And that’s true it is, even if you don’t often use or feel the most comfortable with that language. But what kind of relationship is it?
We have all kinds of relationships: think about the varying kinds with your family, or colleagues, or neighbors, or friends. I have a relationship with my neighbor Jo that consists mostly of friendly waves. I have a relationship with Clive, my son, which also has friendly waves. But these relationships are not the same. So what kind of relationship do we share with Jesus? Luckily, he tells us what kind in this passage today.
Toward the end of dinner with his disciples, Jesus thinks it's time to define the relationship. Nothing like a crucifixion to force the conversation. However, Jesus doesn’t really do the DTR the way relationship experts and their articles say. Usually, it’s not a good idea for one person to state what the relationship was and then proclaim it to be something different. It’s something best done or decided on together through Communication, questions, and active listening. Jesus does none of that. Instead, Jesus informs the disciples that their relationship was a master/slave relationship.
In the time of Jesus, master/slave relationships were marked by command, ignorance, and obedience. The master said what to do. The slave, not knowing the details of the task he was doing, simply obeyed out of fear of punishment. This according to Jesus was the one-way relationship between him and his disciples. But somet

Acts 8:26-40
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south* to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,and like a lamb silent before its shearer,so he does not open his mouth.In his humiliation justice was denied him.Who can describe his generation?For his life is taken away from the earth.’
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip* baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.






























We are all losers, at least that’s what it feels like for most of us. Before you pie me, let me explain! Back in February, Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization that conducts public opinion polls on everything from politics to religion, science and more, released updated findings on how folks feel like their side in politics is doing.
And according to that multiyear study, less than a quarter of Americans feel like their side is winning on issues that matter to them. Which means that the rest of us, the vast majority of us, feel like we are losing. No wonder public dialogue, political discourse, or even talking with a neighbor or coworker feels so embittered and tense. Most of us feel like we are fighting a losing battle. In reality though what we are all losing to is tribalism.
Tribalism is the instinct to gather and connect with people who are similar in all sorts of ways: beliefs, interests, experiences, and more. Our tribe tells us who we are, what we’re supposed to do, and what we believe. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing. Having a community that helps give us identity, that surrounds us and supports us is very important.
But tribalism becomes treacherous when it tells us who we should fear. We can so closely identify with our tribe that anyone who is different becomes a threat.
It is dangerous then when a tribe says, “Watch out for them. They aren’t like us. They are trying to take things from you, they only want to hurt you. They are the cause of your problems, of our problems. Be very afraid of them. Be afraid of the democrats. Be afraid of the republicans.
Be afraid of people who are transgender or who do drag. Be afraid of progressives or fundamentalist. Be very afraid.”
Sharon Brous, a rabbi in Los Angeles, writes that “One of the great casualties of tribalism is curiosity. And when we are no longer curious, when we don’t try to imagine or understand what another person is thinking or feeling or where her pain comes from, our hearts begin to narrow.
We become less compassionate and more entrenched in our own worldviews.” Perhaps we

John 10:11-18
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the good shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and runs away – and the wolf snatches and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because the hired hand does not care about the sheep.
“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. There are other sheep who are not part of this fold. I must bring them along also and they will listen to my voice. So that there will be one flock, one shepherd.
“For this reason the Father loves me, because I am willing to lay down my life and take it up again. No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I have received this command from my father.”






























In addition to it being the Fourth Sunday of Easter, today is also, often called, in many places “Good Shepherd Sunday,” where churches all over the world hear some bit of this portion of John’s Gospel where Jesus waxes poetic about his identity as “the Good Shepherd.”
It’s a popular image, I suspect most of us have seen or heard of before: Jesus, with livestock draped over his shoulders. There are paintings and stained glass windows showing as much. There are a few “Good Shepherd” and “Our Shepherd” Lutheran Churches right here in Indianapolis. I was baptized at a Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, in Vickery, Ohio. But I often struggle with what to say about it – or what new thing to say about it – I guess. On one hand it seems like such an obvious cliché. On the other hand, I’ve never met a shepherd, so…
So, today might seem like a stretch. It’s not the first time you’ve heard that from me, and it won’t be the last, but I found myself wondering about “the hired hand” that Jesus mentions in this morning’s Gospel, this time around, as a way of wondering differently about “the Good Shepherd,” too.
Well, here’s “the stretch.” Jesus’ mention of how “the hired hand” doesn’t know or care about the sheep…? How the “hired hand” sees the wolf coming and runs away – leaving the sheep to be snatched and scattered because the “hired hand” doesn’t care about the sheep, in the same way the Good Shepherd does…?
All of that reminded me of George Costanza. (I told you it was a stretch, but after last week – with Jeannie’s fall and all of my waterworks about my Father-in-Law – I thought we could use a laugh this morning, so I’m going with it.) Jesus’ talk about the “hired hand” made me think of this ridiculous bit of Seinfeld, where George Costanza is at a child’s birthday party.






























In the show, George smells fire, sees smoke in the kitchen, and runs out of the party, knocking over a clown, an elderly woman with a walker, and pushes several children out of his way, trying to get to the door and escape to safety. He gets accosted by the clown, the party’s host, and emergency workers afterward where he tries, shamefully, to explain himself and defend his actions.






























“The hired hand, who is not the good shepherd … sees the wolf coming and runs away…” “The hired hand runs away because the hired hand does not care about the sheep.” Okay. Funny stuff aside.
Part of what Jesus is saying – and had been trying to prove throughout his ministry – is that the world was and is filled with too many “George Costanzas.” I mean, too many “hired hands.” There were and are, it seems to me, too many pretending to share grace, to do God’s bidding, to be Messiah, Savior, GOD … but too many who can’t… who won’t… who don’t… none who could ever measure up to the fullness of love we know in Jesus, the one and only, real, Good Shepherd –

Luke 24:36b-48
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’
They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’






























We all like mercy, just not too much of it. Lindsay Holifield is a singer/songwriter and artist in Alabama, who struggled severely with anorexia for 14 years. She tells a story of being in a treatment facility for her sixteenth birthday. While other girls gathered for dinners and parties,
Lindsay remembers her charge nurse Lupe bringing her a piece of cake and she sobbed at the thought of such high calorie food entering her body. That was the first birthday she’d spend inpatient at a treatment facility, but not her last.
For nearly a decade and a half, Lindsay couldn’t subdue this self-destructive drive that had taken hold of her. She writes, “I desperately wanted to wake up each day without having to submit afresh to the hellish existence of self-starvation and running till my lungs felt on the verge of collapse. But I felt chained to this destructive cycle deep into my bones, despite my best intentions.”
Many treatment providers, likely friends and family too, lambasted Lindsay for not having enough motivation or courage or strength to overcome the voice inside her that demanded self-destruction. Everyone, from doctors to mental health clinicians, told her that if she wanted to get better, really wanted it, she’d have to try harder, pull herself up by her bootstraps and will her way into recovery. But, as Lindsay explains, “After each attempt under this approach, I would fall flat on my face. The despair of my situation began to swallow me whole: there was no way out, because I could not yell at myself enough to make myself well.”
We are all too familiar with the work harder advice, the tough love attitude, the “you just have to want it more” approach. You’ve likely said and received similar sentiments as Lindsay had. When folks are struggling, sad, or scared for any number of reasons, we find it much easier to say “just get over it”, “work harder”, “stop being so weak, or afraid, or fill in the blank”.To the person with anxiety or mental health problems we say deal with it. Or the one grieving we say “how long”? Or the person in an abusive relationship we say “just leave”. That’s the way of our culture. And sometimes it works, sometimes this does the job we hoped it would and we see results. I’m not discounting that. But many times, like with Lindsay, this strategy fails.
At twenty six, Lindsay sat in a green folding chair on a farm in Nashville, TN. In the folding chair across from her sat a woman who fiercely supported her recovery; but there was no yelling or giving a firm lecture. Alternatively, with tenderness unknown to Lindsay, the woman explained how her struggles made sense in light of her own experiences. “Perhaps,” the woma

Acts 4:32-35
Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
John 20:19-31
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors on 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.” When he said this, he showed them his hands and his sides, and the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. He said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so now I send you.” And after he said this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Now, Thomas (who was called “the Twin”) one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus appeared. So the disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas said to them, “Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands, and put my fingers in the marks of the nails, and my hands in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later, the disciples were again in the house and this time, Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your fingers here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Now, Jesus did many other signs which are not written in this book, 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 might have life in his name.






























If I were to meet Thomas today, I would ask him, which would have been harder for him to believe: What we heard about in this Gospel reading from John or what took place in that reading, later in Acts, Chapter 4.
In John’s Gospel, immediately following Easter’s resurrection, we hear the familiar story about the unfairly infamous “Doubting Thomas” with all of that heavy breathing, behind the locked doors of that hideout of a house. There are Jesus’ holey hands and scarred sides. There are those commands to be sent into the world with the authority to forgive the sins of others, at their discretion. And there’s that invitation to “not doubt, but believe.” That’s a whole lot of hard, holy stuff to take in, to buy, and to make sense of.
But it’s at least as easy to believe, if you ask me, as what happens later in Acts. Did you hear it? Were you paying attention? Did you consider it with at least as much seriousness as Easter’s good news and Thomas’ doubts?
First, it’s worth knowing that “the whole group who believed” as we hear about in Acts, was bigger than just the handful of disciples who saw Jesus in that house with Thomas on Easter Sunday. By the time we get to that Acts reading, thousands had been baptized and had come to believe; believers and followers were being added to the mix every day. And this is what we’re told:
- The whole group of those thousands who believed were of one heart and soul. (How could that be?)
- And not one of them claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. (Can you imagine?)
- There was not a needy person among them, as the story goes. They sold their land and houses, and laid the proceeds of it

Mark 16:1-8
When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.
As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.






























Beware and warning! This book is different from other books. You and you alone are in charge of what happens in this story. There are dangers, choices, adventures and consequences. you must use all of your numerous talents and much of your enormous intelligence. The wrong decision could end in disaster - even death. but don't despair. At any time, you can go back and make another choice, alter the path of your story, and change its result.
That’s how every “Choose your own adventure” book begins. Then you are thrown into the thick of some plot. Maybe you're a teenage detective searching for a stolen rare tea bowl like in Cup of Death. Or you’re a doctor for a highly skilled expedition on the Amazon river as in Lost on the Amazon. Or the COO of spy activity for a new nation in the year 2051 as in Beyond Escape.
Did you read these books as a kid or remember your kids reading them? They were all the rage in the 80s and 90s. But if you’ve never heard of the “choose your own adventure” series, they were small chapter books created by Edward Packard and Ray Montgomery, two dads, who loved telling stories to their kids.
Here’s how they work: every few pages you are left with a decision to make: swim up the river turn to page 43 or stay on the shore turn to page 71. Make a run for it turn to page 4 or talk to the shop owner, page 38. And then there were multiple endings based on the decisions you made. At first, you likely made choices by following your intuitions, decisions you would actually make in real life. But then, if you weren’t happy with the ending, you’d go back, make different choices, and receive a different ending. And the allure of the “choose” books was that the deaths were never final. No matter how the story ends - you could get sliced in half by a portal that sends your torso to the future and your legs to the past - even then you could go back and make different choices. The ending was never really the end.
And as a kid… I couldn’t stand these books! I didn’t like hopping around from one scene to the next. I wanted consistency in the story; I wanted some certainty as to what could be expected; I wanted closure. That’s how real life is, afterall. We take comfort that, most of the time, we can anticipate what’s coming next. Sure, this life might be a little mundane sometimes, but at least we know what it holds: we’re born, we go to school, we get jobs. We might get married; we grow old, and we get one ending, the same ending, [we die].
We make choices along the way, but we can’t go back and change them. That’s why my routine loving, black and white thinking, ten year old self didn’t like “choose your own adventure books”: I wanted more closure then they could offer. And my hunch is that’s likely why we struggle with the end of Mark’s gospel, too. It offers no closure.
Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome came