Easter 7: Relationship with God

Acts 1.1-11

Psalm 47

Ephesians 1.15-23

Luke 24.44-53

The God of Jesus is no longer a god who saves us from the consequences of our folly, neither circumvents the unforeseen disaster.  That God is not the god of the great design, a design into which each of us is fitted like so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  That God is not a god who fights with our armies, neither a god who punishes our enemies.  In short, that God is not a god who saves us from the human condition.  Of course, as is so often the case in the New Testament, Jesus’ followers have not altogether learned that.  The author of the Acts of the Apostles records that directly before his departure they asked Jesus: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1.6b)  At the deepest level what they are really asking is “Lord, is this the time when you will save us from the human condition?”  The Roman occupation of the Jewish promised land is for them only a symptom of that condition.  Even the apostle Paul does not seem to understand, when he almost rails in the letter to the Romans: “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7.24)  No, no; the salvation of the God of Jesus is not one which delivers us from the our human nature nor out of the human condition.  Rather one which draws us more fully and authentically into it, one that draws into maturity within it.


Thursday the Church commemorated the ascension of Jesus, when – after forty days from the resurrection, forty days spent with his closest friend in fellowship and teaching – Jesus returns to his Father.  I used to find preaching about or discussing the Ascension particularly unnerving, because whatever I said about it, whatever theological slant I gave it, I was always aware that I might be asked the question:  “Why did Jesus have to leave at all?”  I realised that apart from retreating into pat, metaphysical answers, I had no real response.  After all, Jesus was risen from the dead, why did he have to go back?  Why couldn’t he remain and become a sort of CEO of the new kingdom movement, at least oversee the beginning of the project for a few years?  But, more recently, I have begun to understand it as imperative that Jesus returned to his Father, because it was only with that happening that his followers would ever really grow up and take responsibility for their own lives and for their own calling.  Jesus’ departure from his friends seems particularly relevant to us living in the post-modern world, in the era beyond the “death of God.”  Perhaps, the greatest challenge for the Church today is this very question:  Whether we are willing to grow up and let go of infantile and infantilising images of God and of religion.  Whether we are willing to engage with both in a way worthy of responsible adults.

For some reason we human beings are all too willing to cede our responsibility or initiative.  We are often quick to find someone or something to blame, and  ever keen to vest another with the authority which is only properly our own.  But the call of God in Jesus is to move beyond that.  The call of God in Jesus is to grow up and enter into maturity – spiritual maturity, emotional maturity.  Had Jesus remained, this could never have happened.  As the theologian John McNeill writes, “As long as Jesus remained alive and present, his disciples had their center of authority outside themselves and were not therefore, totally responsible for their actions.  They were striving to meet the expectations of someone else.  They had not yet become fully creative and responsible adults.”[1]  As long as Jesus remained with them they could more easily opt out of the reality of the human condition and the adult demands it makes on every one of us.  Had Jesus remained they would have been able to continue with that childish image of a god who is our friend and our friend only, and who controls every eventuality.  Yet, in the ascension of Jesus, it was confirmed that that was not to be an option, not for them, neither for us.

Jesus’ ascension radically challenged the disciples’ conventional understanding of God and their relationship to God. It revealed a God who demands of human beings an appropriate self-reliance, who does not resolve all our problems, nor fights our battles.  And this was a major ideological and theological shift, one that we are only recently beginning to really take seriously.  Instead of the god who like in ancient Greek dramas descended from the heavens and set all to right, we are revealed a God who ascends into the heavens and allows us (as Paul writes to the Philippians) to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2.12b)  This God allows us to reason, think, doubt and even if we want reject God, all for the sake of our having the opportunity and responsibility of making decisions of real integrity.  This God allows us to struggle with our humanity and thereby reveal our divine image and likeness.  And why does God do this?  Well, it seems to me that it is only with people like that – people who are autonomous, capable of making informed decisions, able to direct and confront their lives – with whom mature relationship is possible, and at the bottom line it is about relationship.  In the Gospel of John we heard last week Jesus saying to his followers, “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.” (John 15.15) Here Jesus highlights the relationship with human beings that in him God is proclaiming.  It is a relationship based not a model of inequality and servitude, but one which is based on mutuality, partnership and freedom.  It is a relationship based not on commodities – what one can do or produce for the other – but on the personal encounter of autonomous beings for the sake of relationship itself.  On our part it demands that we cease thinking of God as some big daddy in the sky, a sort of cosmic Santa Claus who fights our battles and grants us treats if we pray hard enough or behave well enough.  It challenges us into real relationship with God.  In fact, you must admit that if we treated our fellow human beings the way we so often treat God, we would be accused of self-serving opportunism, indeed of using another.  Why should that criteria change because the relationship is with God?

Because God offers to us the possibility of real relationship, God also offers to the us the invitation into partnership.  We are not mere pawns of some all-powerful deity; neither as Paul says are “we…enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world.” (Galatians 4.3)  The ascension of Jesus highlights one of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and one of the fundamental truths of human existence – our free will and therefore agency.  God will not force the divine will for creation upon us, but rather invites us to share and take an active part in that vision, that vision which  Jesus called the kingdom of God.  For God to do otherwise, would mean that we would have to have been created to be something less or other than the image and likeness of God.  Granted, God sends to us the Holy Spirit to comfort, guide and inspire – but not to possess us or somehow overrun our freedom and possibility of choice.  In that freedom and choice God makes the invitation to partnership.  Our world is the creation of human and divine cooperation.  We are free to choice its path and direction, always knowing that we must take responsibility for the consequences and eventuality of those choices. 

The Roman Catholic Franciscan Richard Rohr believes that for every hundred years since the birth of Jesus, the human race has matured one year in our ability to understand the message of Jesus; that makes us about twenty years old.  Understood in this light the message and mystery of the Ascension is an important one, particularly important at this present time in our history.  It challenges the Church corporately and each of her members individually to grow up, to take seriously their responsibility as adults and their inheritance as friends of God,  called into maturity and invited into partnership.  It reminds us of the dignity we have as creatures made in the image and likeness of God.

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[1] John Macneill, Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey to the Fullness of Life for Gays, Lesbians, and Everybody Else (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) p. 9.

Easter 6: Moving Beyond the "Tribe"

Acts 10:44-48

Psalm 98

1 John 5:1-6

John 15:9-17


The following news story was recently featured on National Pubic Radio: “When pollsters ask Republicans and Democrats whether the president can do anything about high gas prices, the answers reflect the usual partisan divisions in the country.  About two-thirds of Republicans say the president can do something about high gas prices, and about two-thirds of Democrats say he can’t.  But six years ago, with a Republican president in the White House, the numbers were reversed: Three-fourths of Democrats said President Bush could do something about high gas prices, while the majority of Republicans said gas prices were clearly outside the president's control.  The flipped perceptions on gas prices isn’t an aberration, said Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan.  On a range of issues, partisans seem partial to their political loyalties over the facts.  When those loyalties demand changing their views of the facts, he said, partisans seem willing to throw even consistency overboard.”  In short, what the study highlights is the strength and blindness of tribal loyalty.  Human beings appear to be hard-wired to abandon even reason when it comes to sticking by their group identity.  So we can begin to understand how difficult it is to change a person’s mind when it goes against that of their colleagues, co-politicos or, in the case of St Peter, their co-religionists.

Much of the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles is pre-occupied with questions as to how Gentiles are to be accepted into the new Israel.  The thought of the earliest Christians – who were, of course all Jews – was that they needed to fulfill the mandates of the Mosaic law – including circumcision and adherence to the dietary requirements outlined in the Torah – in order to come to baptism.  After all, baptism – or a form of it – was already the rite by which Gentiles joined the Jewish faith.  The coming of the promised Messiah in the person of Jesus made no difference.  To join themselves to Jesus the Jew, they must first become Jews themselves.  The fact of the inclusivity they experienced in the person of Jesus, the fact of his commitment and care for the marginalized, the fact of his reaching out beyond the cultural divide of Jew and Gentile, or the social divide of men and women, or even the religious divide of clean and unclean did not really sink in; none of these were sufficient facts to overpower the ingrained allegiance to group, the ingrained tribal identity.  And yet eventually the truth of who Jesus is and what God was doing in Jesus overrode a narrow definition of the “group”, opening the floodgates for many considered beyond the pale to be gathered into the kingdom vision of inclusion and generosity.

If we follow the figure of Peter we can see this whole dynamic played out in one person.  He certainly was a devout Jew, and like all the other Jews who confessed Jesus as the Messiah saw the necessity of continuing to follow the Mosaic law, and of encouraging Gentile followers to do the same.  He clearly struggled with this – perhaps the facts had already begun to tally – and his struggle is dramatized by the writer of the Acts of the Apostles in Peter’s vision of “all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air” (Acts 10:12) accompanied by a voice saying “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” (Acts 10:15)  Peter balked at the prospect: “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” (Acts 10:14)  And the voice responded, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane”. (Acts 10:15)  This happens to him no less than three times.  In an odd and experiential way God laid the facts before Peter, that the divisions and allegiances which he clung to in the past were dissolving away in order that something less particular, yet far more glorious, could be inaugurated; and immediately, upon the vision’s end Peter is called to the house of Cornelius, “a centurion of the Italian Cohort”. (Acts 10:1)  What he and his companions discover on their arrival there is an entire household of Gentiles among whom was clearly evident of the presence of the Holy Spirit; now the facts were stacking up.  He finally is convinced, the facts trump his tribal allegiance, and he says : “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit as we have?” (Acts 10:47)  Subsequently, in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, it is Peter who, at the very first Church council held in Jerusalem, speaks in favor of the inclusion of Gentiles: “And God, who knows the human heart, testified to [the Gentiles] by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us.” (Acts 15:8-9)  His arguments convinced the others gathered.  We cannot fully appreciate the significance of that decision, but it shaped Christianity as a faith that could move beyond tribal allegiance, affirming that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34-35)

Now, I do not mean to suggest that the “facts” as to God’s will and purposes presented in Jesus and in the records of the early Church are of the same nature as quantitative facts of polls and percentages.  But experience itself is a kind of fact, and we can still resist the truths made known to us by our experience in seeking to remain faithful to pre-conceived ideas based on tribal allegiance.  I recall once when someone I knew made a racist comment, deprecating the work ethic of African-Americans – they simply said that black people were lazy.  I pointed out their black neighbour whom they knew and liked, who was well-educated and industrious, a pillar of the local community.  Their response?  “Well he’s not like the others”.  It was easier simply to make an exception, than to allow the truth of their experience – the facts living literally next door –  to threaten their allegiance to a particular world-view, to open their mind and heart to something larger than their immediate group.  How far we human beings will go in order to keep intact our world-view, our allegiances coherent.  And while we may argue that tribal allegiance is just an expression of loyalty, it is at best a mis-placed loyalty, at a worst a facile argument to maintain the status quo.  In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Roman 12:2)  As we look to the end of the Easter season and the more conscious celebration of the resurrection, it’s not a bad question to ask if we are living according to the pattern of old allegiances, tribal allegiances (and tribes come in many forms and guises), or whether we are engaging with new possibilities conveyed to us by new information, new facts, new experiences.

At the Watergate hearings in the 1970s the Republican senator from Indiana, Earl F. Landgrebe is quoted famously – or infamously, perhaps – to have said, “Don’t confuse me with the facts.  I’ve got a closed mind”.  His loyalty to Richard M. Nixon trumped even the simple facts laid before him in the hearings.  How frightening, how destructive, how dangerous is this sort of loyalty.  It can not only blind us to possibility, but to the truth of what is happening around us, to the truth of the facts, whether quantitative or experiential.  It can be surprising the extent to which the faith of Christ calls us beyond conventional relationships and conventional loyalties, how it presents a vision of relationship and of relating which can take us far beyond where we comfortably would want to go.  The cheap inculturation of Christianity can sometimes keep us from engaging with its invitation to go beyond family alliances, social boundaries, party lines and to examine situations in the light of new facts and new experiences.  It can sometimes make us to forget that Christ’s resurrection bridges the petty divides we so tenaciously hold on to in order to establish and affirm our identities.  It can make can keep from engaging in God’s abiding promise that he is making all things new in ways beyond simple understanding and exceeding all that we can desire.

Easter 4: Resurrection Means Dying

Acts 5:5-12
Psalm 23
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18


We cannot separate the resurrection life from the gospel’s call for death to self.  Thus far the readings for the Sundays in Easter have made reference to this in some way or another.  Two weeks ago we heard how the early Christians claimed no “private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common” (Acts 4:32); and how “as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold….and it was distributed to each as any had need.” (Acts 4:34, 35)  They learned to die to the accumulation of private wealth and the prestige and social power that comes with it, so that they might live to a new order that listens attentively to the needs of their sisters and brothers.  The first letter of John, being read in course this Easter as the second reading, reminds us that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8), in fact, the writer continues, “if we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8, 10)  The writer implores us to die to our constructed sense of goodness or self-righteousness – in modern psychological parlance, our ego – and thus in humility live into the reality of God, into a shere dependence on God’s free grace and love.  In the various post-resurrection appearances Jesus consistently challenges the disciples into the truth of the resurrection by challenging them to put to death old patterns of thought, pre-conceived ideas of how things should be.  To Thomas who will trust only his senses, only his personally confirmed empirical evidence, when it comes to the resurrection, Jesus says, “Do not doubt, but believe” (John 20:27) adding, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29)  Jesus implores Thomas to die to the “facts” in order that he might to the truth. 

Whether we like it or not, living the new life of the resurrection implies dying and confronts us directly with one of the most fundamental of Jesus’ teachings, a teaching which in some form or other appears in all four of the gospels: “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.” (Luke 17:33)  Few Christians have really appreciated the centrality of this truth, how it is the only lens through which can fruitfully make any sense of the Jesus story, and ultimately of our own.  Yet, it is not simply a matter dying so that we may live.  If it were, then this dying would simply be another way of “not dying”, another way of exerting our own reality, establishing our own self.  No, the Christian idea of dying has always love as its rationale, the well-being of the other as its purpose.  It is a “dying” rooted in self-sacrifice.  And so we hear this morning from the the first letter of John:  “We know love by this, that [the Son of God] laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” (1 John 3:16)  Neither Jesus’ teaching of dying to self nor his own willingness to embrace the cross should be interpreted as some kind of nihilism, an exaltation of death for death’s own sake, but instead as the ultimate expression of willing love and service: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13); “I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11) 

What are the distinguishing marks of the this kind of dying?  Well, we see them exemplified in Jesus’ own death, as outlined in today’s passage from the Gospel of John.  Douglas Wingeier, the theological educator and biblical commentator points out, that this death is first and foremost an act of love:  “The Father loves the Son who is giving up his life.  The Son loves the world, for which he is dying.”  Secondly, it is absolutely voluntary.  Jesus is not coerced: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10:18)  Lastly, Wingeier, posits the absolute inseparability of Jesus’ death and his resurrection, the paradoxical truth that death in love and service is always somehow life-giving.  When the writer of John’s first letter tells his readers “that [the Son of God] laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” (1 John 3:16), it is this pattern of Jesus’ sacrifical death which is referencing, a pattern to be imitated by those who seek to follow him.

Self-less, sacrificial love in its many forms is inherent in living out the resurrection, and there can be no resurrection without it.  There is no resurrection without death, there is nothing really new without – sometimes very painfully – setting aside the old, there is nothing about “us” which can be fruitfully accomplished when I refuse to set aside “me”.  It is so absolutely plain in the Scriptures; it is so absolutely intrinsic to the pattern of Christian life, a pattern set by Jesus himself who in love and service “laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16) and thus left “us an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2:21)

Today we are asked to reflect on the places in our lives where we are dying to self.  Certainly, it is all our prayer that no one of us will be brought to the place where our situations call for a death like that of Jesus, or of any the holy martyrs who followed his example to that ultimate degree.  However, if we our commitment to love of the other, or our commitment to the Gospel brings attendant upon it no dying at all, no sacrifice at all, there is something we are missing, because the pervasive call of Jesus in the Gospels makes it clear, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)   Where are you allowing an encounter with another, to make you die to old ideas or concepts?  Where are you sacrificing your own desires, your own willfullness, your own anger, for the well-being of a another, or the well-being of the community as a whole?  Where are you opening yourself up to the possibility that this moment, this present conflict, project, situation is not about you?  Where are you saying no to self, for the love of the other, for the sake of a larger vision, for the possibility of something more profoundly real?  Where are you changing your mind?  All these, and so many possible examples, require of us a kind of death – perhaps not as conspicuous as martrydom, but in some cases no less difficult.  They offer us the opportunity to imitate Christ.  They hold out the potential of a life more full, more abundant, more genuine.  The truth is that if we refuse to die to the hurts inflicted by another, all that happens is we become bitter, angry people.  If we refuse to die to our own desperate desire for safety through accumulation, we simply become fear-bound misers.  If we refuse to the die to dreams that will not now come true, we will miss the glory and joy inherent in the reality that is.  Each of these little deaths holds out for us the hope of resurrection, as new life, new perspectives, new possibilities arise now that we have cleared away the old.   Only by laying down our life in all manner of ways, can we ever really have the power to take it up again, to enter the joy of what it means to live in the resurrection right here and right now

Easter 3: Recognizing the Risen Christ

Acts 10:34-43

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

1 John 3:1-7

John 20:1-18

It is tellng how the scriptures describe the appearances of the risen Jesus, especially how those who encounter him recognise him.  If you remember in the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener.  In the Gospel of Luke the two disciples on the road to Emmaus travel with Jesus and speak with him for some seven miles and do not recognise him in all that time.  Last week we heard about Thomas who can only say, ‘My Lord and my God!’ when he has put his hands in Christ's wounds.  Later in John's gospel we are told that the disciples were fishing and Jesus was on the beach.  The disciples saw him, but also did not recognise him.  Today we hear that other disciples believe Jesus to be a ghost, not even the wounds on his hands and feet really convince them.  The gospel tells us that while joyful at the prospect that this might really be Jesus they remained ‘disbelieving and still wondering’ even after he had shown them his hands and feet.   Quite different stories and yet there is running through them a common thread, a common thread that is central for our understanding of the resurrection.

If we look at the gospels, it is clear that the experience of the empty tomb does not inspire belief in the resurrection or the resurrected Christ. As we learned in the gospel of Mark: the women went out and fled from the [empty] tomb for “terror had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”(Mark 16.8)  Neither does being told that Jesus is risen establish belief.  For the angels tell the women and they still leave in fright.  The other followers of Jesus undoubtedly told Thomas and that did not bring him round to belief.  Not even seeing the risen Jesus brings recognition.  Mary Magdalene sees Jesus in the garden and the disciples see him on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, and none of them recognise him by sight.  If we are to believe the gospels not the empty tomb, not being told it is so, not even seeing, brought Jesus’ earlier followers to recognise him as the risen Lord.  What then does?  Well, for Mary in the garden it is when Jesus calls here by name.  He says “Mary.”  Then she recognises him and believes.  For those on the road to the Emmaus it is at the end of their journey with Jesus, and they have stopped for the night.  There Jesus “took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” (Luke 24.30) And it was only then that “their eyes were opened, and they recognised him.” (Luke 24.31)  For Thomas it is when he touched Jesus; when he puts his hands into Jesus’ wounds in the context of his believing brothers and sisters.  It is only then that he is able to say “My Lord and my God!” (John 20.28)  For the disciples fishing it was when they experienced the abundance of God’s generosity in a great catch of fish.  It was then that they recognised the figure on the shore as Jesus and Peter immediately throws himself into the water and begins to swim towards his Master.  In another episode, it is only when Jesus asks for food and eats it with them that they accept that it is Jesus and are ready to listen to what he has to say.  He then begins to teach them the truth of the scriptures; about his death and resurrection and the proclamation of the good news to all the nations, telling them that they are witnesses of these things.

Not the empty tomb, not hearing the stories of witnesses, not even actually seeing the resurrected Jesus bring people to recognise the Risen Lord.  If it had, then we the latter followers of Jesus would be, as Paul says to the Corinthians, “of all people most to be pitied,” because belief in the Risen Christ would be open only to those who were actually there at the time – those who saw the empty tomb, or heard first-hand the stories of witnesses, or actually saw Jesus for themselves.  But no, the way in which the risen Jesus was made present and recognisable to those first followers is the same way in which he has been made present and recognisable to Christians throughout the generations; the same way in which he is made present and recognisable to us: it is when we are called by name as Mary Magdalene; it is when we are gathered to hear the truth of the Scriptures and break the bread like the two who journeyed to Emmaus and like the gathered disciples on the shore of Lake Tiberias; it is when we touch one another deeply as Thomas touched the wounds of Jesus;  it is when we are able to see the world's goodness and bounty as gift from God's generosity as did the disciples who were fishing.

Today we have gathered together in the name of God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And because Jesus tells us that where two or three are gathered together is his name he is there among them (Matthew 18.20), then the risen Jesus is here.  Do we recognise him?  Today we have heard the reading of the scriptures.  We have listened to the stories of the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles and praised God in the psalms of the Hebrew scriptures.  We have proclaimed the good news-the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have broken open the Word of the Living God. The risen Jesus is here.  Do we recognise him?  Will we recognise him? Today we will come to the table of the Lord.  We will say the prayers and we will break the bread. Here in Hanford we will share in the heavenly banquet of God and the mystery of Christ's life, suffering, death and resurrection.  Not 2,000 years ago, but here right now, in this time and in this place, Christ will be known to us in the breaking of the bread.  The risen Lord is here.  Will we recognise him?  As friends and fellow Christians in this community we often come together for shared meals and parties.  We rejoice in the company of one another – we eat, we drink (we even get drunk).  Well the risen Lord is there – in the community, in the food, in the music, in the sharing, even in the drink (it wasn't for nothing that Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine). Have we recognised him?

You see, it is not a question of seeing Jesus.  It is a question of recognising Jesus.  For us Christians the presence of the risen and living Jesus is all around us – in the community that gathers here Sunday by Sunday and through the week, in the reading of the scriptures at the Eucharist and in Bible studies, in the daily breaking of the bread, in the prayers we offer for one another, in the gentle touch of our brothers and sisters when are in pain and in their joyful embrace in times of joy.  Jesus is there.  The risen Lord is here.  The problem is that, like his earliest followers, we do not always recognise him; but, the risen Lord is here.

Throughout the season of Easter we greet each other with the acclamation, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”  and we respond by saying , “He is risen indeed! Alleluia!”  If these words are not to be empty formality, then we must accept that believing in the risen Christ means recognising the risen One in the working out of our lives.  The risen Christ was no more present to his early followers 2,000 years as he is to you and me, to us, today.  He is present in our being called by name in baptism.  He is present when we gather to share the scriptures and break the bread. He is present when we rejoice in God's goodness.  He is present when we touch one another in sorrow and humility.  Alleluia! Christ is risen!  He is alive here among us now.  If not, then what are we here for?   And what in the world do we think we are here doing?   Amen.