If you have been a church-goer for very many years of your life, the story of Daniel in the lions’ den is very familiar. I honestly can’t remember a time when I did not know it well. For me it was not just a good fable teaching a moral about trusting God in times of adversity. It was not a clever tale about the world’s first successful lion tamer. It was not a made-up story about a good Jewish boy who would not forsake his faith even when captive in a foreign land. It was an absolutely true account of God’s deliverance for those who serve Him faithfully at any cost. And I have never to this day abandoned that understanding of the story. It is part of the Word of God and it tells us in considerable detail exactly what happened. 

There are quite a few things to be gleaned from this event in Daniel’s life, and God’s deliverance is only one of them. But since it is the most obvious one, let’s look at it first. Why did God deliver Daniel from the mouth of the lions? Our Scripture passage tells us that “no harm was found on him, because he trusted in his God.” Daniel exercised an altogether uncommon level of faith, one that went far beyond “I believe;” for Daniel it was more like, “Because I believe, this is how I will live my life on a daily basis.” Here he was in a foreign country, deprived of temple worship and, as a resident in one of the king’s palaces, he was deprived even of regular contact with his fellow Jews. Yet three times every day he went to his window that faced Jerusalem, where the temple lay in ruins, and “prayed and gave thanks before his God as he had done previously.” Daniel’s devotional life was a habit he never broke despite the injunction of the king against it.
Here we have a blatant example of civil disobedience in the face of an explicit command from the king himself. It reminds us of Peter and his colleagues who, after being freed from prison and being told again that they were not to preach in the name of Jesus, still told the authorities, “We must obey God rather than men.” For Daniel, obedient and faithful worship of his God was not optional. He trusted that God would take care of the king’s command even if it meant surrendering his life to dismemberment at the jaws of the lions. Would we do the same? At the very least we would be more likely to follow Jesus’ injunction to enter our closets when praying, a much safer option than going to the window. Of course the context of Jesus’ words was completely different. But the point is that Daniel’s actions were bold and highly visible, with dire consequences. 

The words of the king to Daniel are fascinating. They went far beyond a mere acknowledgement of the king’s fondness for Daniel as his faithful servant. He said, “May your God, Whom you serve continually, deliver you!” Even before God actually did deliver Daniel, the king was profoundly affected by Daniel’s witness and Daniel’s testimony to the depth and constancy of his faith. Daniel’s worship of God was not something that he picked up and set down at periodic intervals according to a loose adherence to his Jewish faith. It was something that he practiced not fewer than 3 times daily, accompanied by giving thanks and seeking mercy, two of the most important elements in prayer.

You know what happened next. But what’s most important is what the King said after staying up all night fasting and then, in the morning, hurrying to the lions’ den. He calls out, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God Whom you faithfully serve been able to deliver you from the lions?” Daniel of course gives God the glory, saying that God sent His angels to shut the mouths of the lions. And then the King makes this amazing statement that we would never expect to hear from the mouth of an unbeliever even in the face of this miracle. He issues a decree in the languages of all the people living in his kingdom, telling everyone to tremble and fear before Daniel’s God:  

“For He is the living God,
    enduring forever.
His kingdom shall never be destroyed,
    and His dominion has no end.
He delivers and rescues,
    He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth;
for He has saved Daniel
    from the power of the lions.”

This is not a bad witness to the Almighty God from the lips of a foreign monarch who only has peered in from the outside. Refusing to consider any explanation other than the miraculous, he changes his injunction from “worship me” to “tremble and fear before the living God.”

Just imagine being in Daniel’s shoes! He rose from being a young Jewish captive to procuring the favor of the kings of the Medes and Persians and becoming number one among the presidents in the kingdom simply because he was faultlessly faithful in his service both to his heavenly King and to his earthly monarch. He faithfully worshiped God with thanksgiving and pleas for mercy, and he experienced God’s miraculous deliverance in the face of a certain and gruesome death, a fate that soon was meted out instead to Daniel’s accusers. 

Fast forward to the early Christian era. The great prophet John the Baptist gets his head cut off; the first deacon Stephen gets stoned to death; Peter and Paul and their companions are imprisoned, beaten, and ultimately executed; literally thousands of Christians are shredded in coliseums by lions for the entertainment of scoffing and cheering unbelievers. What happened to the God who could rescue Daniel from the lions and protect the three young men from the fiery furnace?

Some of you have sung various settings of the wonderful spiritual, “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel.” Its text goes like this:
He delivered Daniel from the lion's den
And Jonah from the belly of the whale
And the Hebrew children from the fiery furnace
An’a why not’a every man?

Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel?
Deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel?
Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel?
An’a why not’a every man?

We sang this in Chicago Master Singers (CMS) and on tour, and we also took it on tour with my First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest choir. While we were in Europe, a woman in the church choir took me aside in bitter tears to tell me why she could not sing that song any more. She was a black woman from the South who had escaped her oppressive surroundings with a beloved relative after the murder of her father. Her father had taken the bus on a route he had taken many times before; but, for some reason, he accidentally got off at the wrong stop and ended up in an all-white neighborhood where he did not belong. He was captured and brutally beaten to death. And so, through those bitter and angry tears, this woman in my choir quoted the words, “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, an’a why not’a every man?” 

Why not her father? Why not John the Baptist? Why not Stephen? Why not Peter and Paul and the other early Christian martyrs? Why not some of our own loved ones who knew, loved and served our God as faithfully as Daniel? These are questions that have been asked again and again across the centuries. They are questions for which we have no answers that will satisfy everyone who asks. Sometimes it seems to be a matter of God testing us to see whether we will repudiate our faith or grow stronger in it. Both responses have been seen and recorded over and over. But does God permit agonizing deaths for some simply as tests for others? Are some persons more deserving of deliverance than others? Are some people simply foreordained to suffer unspeakable torture in this life? 

Most of you know the tragic story of the Gabel family. CMS tenor Gary Gabel and his wife, Betty, raised their son John in the faith of Jesus Christ. John married a radiant Christian woman and together they responded to the call of God to be His witnesses in Afghanistan despite the incredible dangers of proclaiming Christ covertly in a country where missionary activity was illegal and punishable by death. Gary and his wife Betty decided to go to Afghanistan to visit their son, John; their daughter-in-law, Theresa; and their grandchild on her first birthday. As they were about to enter the hospital where Theresa worked, a security guard opened fire and in an instant killed both Gary and John. “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, an’a why not’a every man?” 
Our faith is filled with “why’s” and “why not’s” for which we are not given answers. John, the Beloved disciple, simply died of old age in exile on Patmos. Yet two of John’s followers, Ignatius and Polycarp, actually welcomed martyrdom, seeing it as a way to complete their identification with their Lord and Savior. Polycarp’s martyrdom is said to have brought many more persons to faith than his life and teaching. Yet others, when faced with the waves of persecution under various Roman emperors, simply recanted or even repudiated their faith. 

What is our answer and our takeaway from these stories?
 
1)    First, we must let God be God, without demanding answers that God does not provide. “Why do the righteous suffer” is very high on the FAQ list of all humankind. I suspect that one could fill every library in metropolitan Chicago with the books that have been written on this subject. Curiously, Gary Gabel himself gave me one such book as a gift a few years before his death because he was moved by the story of my daughter’s death. He personally inscribed the book. Who could have known? We must let God be God.

2)    Second, we observe that the Psalms are replete with askings of our question both ways: why do the righteous suffer, and why do the wicked prosper? And every time the same answer comes back: God’s ultimate judgment is certain. It may be “deferred justice” and sometimes we may not even live to see it carried out. But God is on His throne. His righteousness demands His justice. Without God’s justice we could not know His mercy. The psalmists are reminding us that our perspective is severely limited by our finiteness. We cannot see as God sees. But His justice will prevail. That’s the entire point of the Book of Revelation in a nutshell: the righteous will enjoy unspeakable bliss and the wicked will suffer eternal punishment. Our job absolutely is NOT to second-guess God or to make our obedience contingent on our understanding of precisely how and why God acts, or within what timeframe He acts, or whether His actions always conform immediately to our own sense of how justice should be executed. 

Daniel is an amazing model for us on so many levels. Of course first and foremost was his faithfulness to God. But he also models for us faithfulness to those whom we serve in this life, as this is our responsibility not only to them but before God Himself. Our job is to follow Daniel’s example of faithful obedience.
Daniel also models faithfulness in his life of devotional worship. His was not a once-a-week practice of his faith, nor was it even a once-a-day faith. At a very minimum, he worshiped God actively three times a day. I’m willing to bet that his prayer life extended well beyond those 3 times of formal devotion. I don’t doubt that anyone who does morning, noonday and evening prayer on a daily basis also communes with God at many other times of day. Paul admonished us to “pray without ceasing,” and God told Joshua, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful.” Could that be our formula for realizing God’s promises more fully? Not many of us have given it a try in terms of total immersion in God’s Word and in prayer. Our life-styles do not allow it, yet every one of us could do much better.

Finally, while we are not allowed to get closer to Daniel’s prayer life, we are told what may be the two most important things imaginable about it: it was characterized by giving God thanks and by pleading for God’s mercy. We know there are other important elements in prayer, starting with praising and honoring God, continuing with making intercession for others and including making our requests known to Him. All of these things are embodied in the Lord’s Prayer itself. But if our prayers are grounded in giving God thanks and in pleading for His mercy, we are off to a great start in knowing Him and committing ourselves to doing His will, faithfully and frequently. Then, whether literally or figuratively, we will know what it is to experience God’s deliverance. “Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, an’a why not’a every man?”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord my Rock and my Redeemer.

What will heaven be like? Do you actually think about that very often? Is there very much concreteness to your thinking? I’m guessing probably not. I’m also guessing that the older you get, the more you wonder about what heaven will be like. I know that for years my mother was quite content with vague images of pearly gates, a gatekeeper named Peter and streets of gold. She knew that “a river runs through it,” that there are angelic creatures everywhere with varying numbers of wings, that there is a special floor just for Baptists and that there is little likelihood of running into any Catholics. But once she passed 90, most of that began to change. Suddenly the presence of Catholics or even Anglicans seemed much more likely and the special floor for Baptists seemed less likely. The images seemed less important; yet the questions remained. 

Gradually my mother pontificated less and less about precisely how she thought heaven would be, and she began to ask more frequently what I thought. Because my mother was past 90 and had been a believer her entire life, it was possible for me to avoid purely speculative answers while assuring her that heaven would exceed our fondest imaginations; that the place Jesus had gone to prepare for us would be beyond any level of perfection that we could envision; that the tearless joys of heaven would be so great that we gladly would toss out our long list of burning questions we once thought we would ask God as soon as we got there, because they would seem petty and irrelevant (which, of course, many of them really are!).
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Some people may need to undergo a radical personality change when we get to heaven. For our threescore and ten on earth, or as it seems increasingly common today, for our fourscore and ten, we have been quiet, contented pew persons, avoiding doing anything very demonstrative, avoiding such pious acts as bowing, crossing, genuflecting or even saying “amen” to the prayers or to the words, “The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.” But in heaven, we will be shouting “hallelujah” over and over, multiple times each day. How do I know? The Bible tells me so. 

Our passage from Revelation 19 says that a loud voice of a great multitude will shout “hallelujah,” and that no sooner will they have shouted it than they will shout it again. Then it says that the 24 elders, who also play harp (5:8), will be shouting, “hallelujah.” And just when it’s starting to sound unnecessarily redundant or too enthusiastically Pentecostal for our tastes, “something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder” will shout yet another “hallelujah,” adding “For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.” Get your pipes ready. That voice includes yours!
Just exactly who constitutes this “great multitude” of “hallelujah” shouters? It’s the same multitude that was described earlier on in chapter 7 of Revelation where John writes, “I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no one could count, from all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation to our God Who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” Sounds like we had better be practicing our praises right now while we have the opportunity. 

Why would we wait? Why would we celebrate passively? Why would we decline to show the slightest hint of enthusiasm in our worship? Is it that we are embarrassed to do so, even when we are safely surrounded by persons of like faith? Or is it simply because we are too bored in our worship experiences to truly throw ourselves into them, with all our hearts and souls and mind? This, too, will pass, “when we all get to heaven.” But why not practice some of this enthusiasm as a warm-up act? Why not ready ourselves for this eternal celebration around the throne of God? Why not see worship as a drama in which we are the actors instead of the audience, to borrow from Kierkegaard?

The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) met earlier this month for 12 days in Lusaka, Zambia. They had endless meetings about many things, including such spiritual headliners as climate change and gender equality. But do you know what made by far the greatest impression on all the delegates from Northern lands who had made their way to darkest Africa for this conference? Two things: 1) the level of enthusiasm for worship exhibited by their African brothers and sisters in Christ, and 2) the fact that they were content to worship together for 2 to 3 hours at a time with no one fidgeting, looking at the clock or seeking distractions to help pass the time. Imagine a culture where the privilege of worshiping God is so treasured! These African Anglicans are actively getting reading for heaven! 

In a session for feedback, many delegates praised the beauty and power of the choral singing they had experienced. For Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the high point was the Festival Eucharist held on the Cathedral grounds, which formally opened the proceedings and included 5,000 Anglicans from across Central Africa. He said, “We had the Word, the Sacrament, and this hugely joyful celebration that summed up what the church is about.” Wilfrid Baker of the Church of Ireland said, “It showed me that there is an enthusiasm and a joyfulness about the worship that, to a large extent, we have lost in the North.” Canon Elizabeth Paver of the Church of England said she was considering whether “our own services need to be longer” to match the celebrations of 2 to 3 hours common in Zambian Anglicanism. As Dawn Margaret is fond of saying, if we cannot be willing to devote 75 minutes per week to focusing on worship, what will we do in heaven when worship will be at the very center of our existence, when our hallelujahs will be “like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder?” 

Is that all we will be doing for the whole of eternity?  Is that really it? Will we get tired of it, or at least get hoarse from all that singing and shouting? Apparently there is a great deal more that we cannot even begin to imagine and that cannot be described adequately in literal human terms, hence all the apocalyptic imagery. Sometimes John admits that what he sees in his vision is “like” something on earth, and he is just doing his best at trying to describe it intelligibly. But he tells us that there will be wheat and barley, and oil and wine (6:6). There will be a river clear as crystal and fruit trees (22:1,2) and a crystal sea (4:6); there will be harpists, perhaps lots of them (14:2); we will sing the Song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb (15:3,4); there will be lots of feasting (19:9,17) and, above all, we will “hunger no more, nor thirst, nor will the sun beat down on (us), nor any heat; for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be (our) Shepherd, and will guide (us) to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from (our) eyes” (7:16,17). After all, we were created in the image of God, and He knows best what we will need for all eternity.

Would you like more details? Perhaps. But from what we are told, everything has a pretty good ring to it. Will it be dark and chilly without the sun? Apparently not: John writes that “the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb” (21:23). What’s more, “there will no longer be death, (and) there will no longer be mourning or crying or pain” (21:4), and the One “who sits on the throne says... ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost’” (21:5, 6). 

These are thoughts that come in handy when we are standing at the bedside of a believer who is facing “the valley of the shadow of death.” These are truths that enable us to “fear no evil.” These are the things that assure us that “death is now but our entrance into glory” (Jesus Lives and So Shall I).

My favorite verse in our passage from Revelation 19 is the last, verse 9: “Then (the voice coming from the throne of God) said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are true words of God.’” 

We have a feast coming up soon – the annual benefit dinner of the Chicago Master Singers at the elegant Exmoor Country Club in Highland Park. It requires lots of preparation in order for it to be successful; but once the evening arrives, the greatest joy is sharing it with friends who have gathered to celebrate all that is good about CMS and to bask in our fellowship together. One of the best ways to ensure that it will be a special time is to invite others to join us for this great celebration, because such things are meant to be shared. I think that we are in for another amazing evening.

But no matter how splendid this gathering will be, I know it cannot begin to compare to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Jesus Himself spoke of this great feast in one of His Kingdom parables, saying “Behold, I have prepared My dinner: My oxen and My fattened livestock are killed, and all things are made ready. Come into the marriage feast.” This will be the benefit dinner to end all benefit dinners. And the benefits are eternal. Consider Who is the Host, and Who is calling us to the dinner! His voice says, “These are the true words of God.” And we of all persons are most profoundly blessed to have been “invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” 

Who will be on the guest list? Have you invited your friends? In the parable of Jesus, when the first round of invited wedding guests failed to show up, replacement players were recruited from the streets. But it was the servants of the King who were sent out to bring in the wedding guests. Perhaps that’s what God desires us to be doing as His servants: not just to be enjoying the fruits of our own religious experience but to be active recruiters of others. To use other Biblical analogies, we are to be going into the fields that stand ready for harvesting and into the vineyards where the fruit already has fully ripened. 

If the tables are to be filled at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, I think that God wants us to be active in the process. As Paul writes in Romans 10, “There is no distinction between Jew and Gentile; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for ‘WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.’ How then will they call on Him in Whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him Whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?”  Paul did not deliver this as an address at a clergy retreat. He wrote this to laypeople of the Church at Rome who, like us, were expected to be proclaiming the Gospel wherever they went, even at the cost of their lives. Don’t you have friends with whom you would like to share this dinner?

What will heaven be like? We have our questions and would like to know more. There’s no “click here to find out more.” But what we do know is absolutely glorious. And it should inspire the way that we worship and the way that we witness. Our worship should indeed be the sort of “hugely joyful celebration” described by Archbishop Welby, a celebration carried out with enthusiastic involvement and commitment. And our witness to those with whom we would enjoy sharing the Marriage Supper of the Lamb should be intentional and passionate, unselfconscious in our proclamation that “Jesus is Lord.” “Blessed (indeed) are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Try to ensure that everyone you know is on the guest list. It’s an important part of your job as a servant of the King. 

In His Name, Who lives and reigns forever with the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, Amen

Today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, also known as “Good Shepherd Sunday.” Accordingly, in the Revised Common Lectionary, Psalm 23 is read in every year of the three-year cycle, as are portions of chapter 10 in John’s Gospel where Jesus is identified as the Good Shepherd. Of particular interest in Year C is the passage from Revelation (Rev. 7:9-17), where we read about the great multitude clothed in white robes who are “standing before the throne and before the Lamb” and “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” who “serve Him day and night in His temple.” The elder in John’s vision says that “the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their Shepherd.” Nothing could be more contrary to nature than the Lamb becoming the Shepherd. But this is a bonafide glimpse of eternity where “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world” indeed becomes “the Lamb in the center of the throne (Who) will be their Shepherd.” 
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This is a mystery beyond human comprehension, yet the history of Christian art is filled with compelling representations of this image. My personal favorite is a Trinitarian image in the magnificent basilica of St-Denis on the outskirts of Paris, a medieval structure that houses the tombs of countless members of French royalty. Here God the Father is depicted on His throne in heaven, holding in His arms a Lamb behind which stands a Cross and above which hovers a dove representing the Holy Spirit. The image presents the unity of the Trinity in a way that, for me, no amount of verbiage can equal. 

We cannot explain the Trinity, yet we can visualize it in many ways that speak directly to our hearts of faith. We attempt many analogies to explain the Trinity and we find the flaws in all of them. Yet here today we have the incredible mystery of God the Father, the Lord Who is the Psalmist’s Shepherd, alongside Jesus Himself, Who is laying bold claim to being the Good Shepherd Who knows His sheep and is known by them. And no one can snatch the sheep away from Jesus or from the Father’s hand because, as Jesus claims at the end of today’s Gospel, “The Father and I are One.” 

Yet in the very next verse after our reading ends, John tells us that those who heard these words from Jesus “took up stones again to stone Him.” Unbelief remains fierce. To be completely fair, this claim of Jesus could easily have been understood by those hearing Him as utter blasphemy. It would have taken a significant leap of faith to concede that Jesus’ claim of union with the Father could be substantiated. The church fathers spent a great deal of time, thought, energy and blood trying to fathom this mystery before the Council of Chalcedon came up with a “definition” deemed “definitive.” Earlier in this chapter of our Gospel reading we have some who, on hearing Jesus’ words, said that He had a demon and was insane. Others said, “These are not the sayings of one demon-possessed; a demon cannot open the eyes of the blind, can he?” These were the observers who saw what John calls the “signs” that attested to Jesus’ claims and that inspired belief in some alongside rejection in others. The specific point of reference was the healing of the man born blind recounted in the previous chapter.
 
But let’s back up a bit further and look at the broad sweep of our lectionary readings for today. Returning to the best known of all psalms, what does it mean to us to have the Lord God Almighty as our Shepherd? For starters, it means that we will lack nothing: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want!” That is a rather comprehensive statement with which we as materialistic and hopelessly acquisitive 21st century Americans might be inclined to take issue. Yet again and again we realize its truth. As the psalmist wrote in Psalm 84:11, “The LORD God is a sun and shield; The LORD gives grace and glory; no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” And as Paul wrote in Philippians 4:19, “my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” 

The keys here are “good things” and “all your needs.” It is not at all hard to be genuinely satisfied with the things that God provides for us, even when we find ourselves wishing for more. Often it can be absolutely jaw-dropping to see what He provides, because as Paul writes in Ephesians 3:20, our God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.” But remember that God generally provides through human intermediaries; yes, He might yet drop down manna from heaven or cover the ground with quails, but He has other rather more practical ways of meeting our needs or, more importantly for us today, of meeting the needs of others through us. 

Paul told Timothy in I Timothy 5:8, “if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Imagine the difference if we were to concern ourselves more with how to help “God our Shepherd” care for His sheep than with how He might be caring for us! Then “I shall not want” would have an amazing reciprocity that would supply the needs of everyone, and God would still be the One to get the credit. If, instead, we sit by and wait for God to produce green pastures and still waters, we may wonder at times whether God is somehow impotent when the fault lies with our passivity.

There are three magnificent truths in Psalm 23 that are wholly independent of human initiative: 

One is fearing no evil when walking through the valley of the shadow of death; a second is knowing that God’s goodness and lovingkindness will follow us all the days of our lives; and a third is knowing that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

This third truth is the one that should undergird the other two: death becomes nothing to be feared because, as the writer of the hymn “Jesus Lives and So Shall I” has said, “death is but our entrance into glory.” And this confidence is built on two incomparable realities: 1) God the Father’s fundamental goodness and lovingkindness are eternal, and 2) in the words of another great hymn, our “hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Indeed, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast” (I Cor. 5:7) as those whose robes are washed white in the Blood of the Lamb.

What is the key to unlocking the mysteries of Scripture that sometimes seem to elude us? For me, the answer is simple: compare Scripture with Scripture, and let God do the illuminating through His Holy Spirit. This is what we call “resonance:” allowing the light of God’s truth to shine from one passage to another one. We already have seen the resonance, for example, between Psalm 23 and John 10. The psalmist says, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord, my Shepherd, forever.” What does Jesus say about that? He says, 28 “I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” Yes, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever!

How can Jesus, the Good Shepherd, make such a bold claim? Again, because the key verse in all of this is verse 30: “The Father and I are one.” The Lord Who is my Shepherd is one with my Good Shepherd, Whose voice I know because, as Jesus said, 27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” This unity of the Father and the Son in procuring our eternal salvation is precisely what Paul is echoing in Ephesians chapter 1 when he writes, “In love (God) predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (Eph. 1:4,5). That’s what God our Shepherd does because that’s Who He is: a God of love Whose will is rooted in His “kind intention.” Paul’s word for “kind intention,” εὐδοκία, is no doubt one way of saying “hesed,” lovingkindness, in Greek. 

Isn’t this a blessed Sunday? What should be our response? Obviously at the top of the list should be offering our eternal thanks to God for Who He is and how He acts. What next? We could be like those who hearing Jesus’ words, choose to pick up stones. Or, being less aggressive persons, we could simply say “thank you” and wait it out until our “entrance into glory.” Or we could say this: O Lord, my God, You are my Shepherd, I shall not want. Lord Jesus, my Good Shepherd, I have heard Your voice; I will follow You. O Holy Spirit, You have brought into my heart the very lovingkindness of my Eternal God, and I will do the work You have put before me to share Your shepherding with a world that is characterized by poverty of spirit and great need. O Triune God, make me Your Shepherd now and forever until, passing through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for You are with me, and I am with You, and no one will ever be able to snatch me from Your arms of love.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to You, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

I wish you Easter blessings on this the Third Sunday of Easter! As we pass through the Sundays of Eastertide, our Scriptures continue to focus on the post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus. Today we have three of them: one to Paul on the Road to Damascus(Acts of the Apostles 9:1-20), one to “myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands” around the throne of God as previewed by John in his vision on Patmos (Revelation 5:11-14), and one to 7 disciples who had gone fishing with rather little success (John 21:1-19). They may have become a bit rusty at their craft, having mostly abandoned it for their three-year sojourn with Jesus. Yet it seems remarkable that these fishing professionals would have had such a dismal outing and almost equally remarkable that they would accept advice from some unidentified Person standing on the shore Who somewhat condescendingly addresses them as “children” and suggests from a football field’s distance away that they try moving their net to the other side of the boat. I would have expected Peter to say some first-century Aramaic equivalent of “yeah, sure.”

But perhaps in the spirit of “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” they give it a shot and end up with an astonishing result. John is the first to speak up, recognizing that a miracle has taken place and that there is only one possible identity for the Stranger on the shore. There is a lot to absorb in this remarkable story, and our focus is almost always on the part that is yet to come: the exchanges between Jesus and Peter. But have you ever given much thought to the fact that John tells us there were exactly 153 large fish in the net? 

The amount of detail in this account is not insignificant. It is a vivid account from an eye-witness who shared the entire experience and recorded it decades later with a certainty and confidence that leaves little room for doubt. These disciples are face-to-face with the risen Lord for the third time, twice in the Upper Room in Jerusalem and now on the shore of the Galilean lake. John is only counting the appearances to a larger group of disciples, not also the ones to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary or to the two disciples going to Emmaus. He tells us exactly how many fish were caught and that Jesus, having already started a charcoal fire, had been cooking fish and preparing breakfast for His disciples. He recalls the very words that were spoken and even mentions Peter’s leaping into the sea. He remembers that contrary to expectations, the net had not been torn from this amazing catch of large fish. His thoroughness in recounting the details bears further testimony to his having seen the risen Christ on this occasion which, for him personally, was indeed the third one. 

As much as we would love to know more about the resurrection body of Jesus, we know that it had substance, corporeality, and that He could eat with His disciples and invite them to touch Him. He did so in the Upper Room in Jerusalem and now He is eating with them again in Galilee. What did He look like? Was it so different from before that those who knew Him best had trouble recognizing Him, or was it just that on each appearance to them ”their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him,” as we are told was the case with the disciples on the road to Emmaus? We do not have that answer. Obviously we know that He was able to appear unexpectedly without opening a door. But He was no phantom. Luke, in his introduction to the Book of Acts, writes that He “presented himself alive to the apostles by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”

There may have been a great deal of doubt and even unbelief at first; but by this time the disciples were fully convinced that they were encountering the Lord Who, having surrendered His life on the Cross, was now risen from the grave and communing with them. What an absolutely amazing experience, on top of all the other amazing experiences they had shared with Jesus Christ, God incarnate. And soon they were to witness His ascension into heaven, though not before they received His commandment to go into the world making additional disciples and baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Now we come to Peter. He was among those who heard the Great Commission and obeyed it, even to his own death on a cross which Jesus predicts at this breakfast gathering. But first it was time for him to patch up his relationship with the Jesus Whom he had denied three times at the trials. There are so many ways to view this exchange between Peter and Jesus, and no doubt every imaginable spin has been given to it. Personally, I see it as an amazing demonstration of the grace of Jesus showered on all who turn to Him, even if they don’t always get it quite right. Peter failed in a very intense time of testing. He went out and wept bitterly. Three times he said, “I know not the man,” “I am not one of His disciples,” and “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Perhaps he said it three slightly different ways. In any case, Jesus now asks Peter, the repentant Peter, if he loves Him. He asks him three times. And three times Peter declares Jesus’ knowledge of him, indeed, of all things, and affirms that Jesus knows of Peter’s love for Him. And three times, with slight variation, Jesus responds, “Tend My lambs,” “Shepherd My sheep” and “Tend My sheep.”
Of course Jesus would have been speaking to Peter in Aramaic, and we have no way of knowing what His exact words were. It seems reasonable to assume that the variations mean absolutely nothing despite many a preacher’s valiant efforts to attach some significance to them. What definitely seems significant is that Jesus gives Peter three opportunities to state his love for Him, if only to counterbalance the threefold denial. And the threefold iteration of “tend My sheep” is simply the way that Jesus personalized the command He gives to all His disciples to make more disciples and baptize new believers. Just moments later Jesus says to Peter simply “Follow Me.”

There is of course another level of meaning to Jesus’ words. Tending and shepherding suggest an even deeper level of commitment to serving others in Jesus Name than simply to be getting the sheep into the fold and moving on. Feeding and tending require a greater presence, a greater openness, a greater readiness to do whatever is needed to provide nurture and care. Making disciples takes time. This is of far more importance than splitting hairs over the nuances of tending vs. shepherding, or of distinguishing between sheep and lambs. 

I do not believe that feeding and tending sheep is a spiritual discipline that is expected only of clergypersons or evangelists or missionaries. I believe that Jesus calls every single one of us to put our love to the test in exactly the same ways He called Peter to do the same. That is the context here: not whether one is a missionary or a clergyperson, but whether one loves Jesus Christ with all one’s heart and soul and mind, and translates that love into action so that our hearts of love distinguish us from others. This is what Jesus was asking of Peter. This is what He asks of us, each and every one of us. We cannot imagine that we are exempt from living lives that declare our identification with the boundless love of Christ, Who gave His very life for us. Yes, we too are commanded to follow Him, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Just this past Thursday Pope Francis met in Rome with representatives from the worldwide Methodist Church. He began by saying, “We come together united in the faith that Jesus is Lord and that God has raised Him from the dead. This baptismal faith makes us truly brothers and sisters.” He ended by saying, “In today’s world, afflicted by so much evil, it is more than ever vital that as Christians we offer a joint witness inspired by the light of Easter, becoming a sign of the love of God, which in the resurrection of Jesus is victorious. May this love also, through our humble and courageous service, reach the hearts and lives of our many brothers and sisters who are looking for such love even without knowing it.” In that context, the love of Jesus that we are to share with others knows no labels and cannot begin to distinguish between “Catholic” and “Methodist.”

Our Lenten observances are now over, whether we succeeded brilliantly or failed miserably in keeping them. Now it’s time for us to live into our Easter faith by sharing the love of Jesus Christ wherever we go, with all of those with whom we come in contact, in the ways that we serve God by serving others, in the spirit in which we do every task God sets before us, however mundane or menial. If each of us were to do this faithfully, the results would be nothing short of spectacular. This is our “takeaway” from today’s Gospel. Yes, it is about Peter and his personal reclamation. But the same Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, Who spoke to Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, speaks the very same words to you and to me today: “Tend My lambs,” “Shepherd My sheep,” “Tend My sheep,” Follow Me.”

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen