Gospel Text

John 17:6-19

 

 

SERMON TEXT

5/12/24 – John 17:6-19

Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year B, Faith Lutheran Church

Pastor Shaun O’Reilly

 

What I love is that

When Jesus prayed for you, it was classic Jesus. 

Embodied as the very gift that frees us,

And with these words to say to God about you. 

 

When Jesus prayed for you, it was close to the end of his life, 

It was close to the end of his strife and the weight he carried, 

His friends gathered round the table, their feet washed clean,

Jesus praying for them, but it means something to the friends of Jesus today too. Jesus prayed for you.

 

He said, “God, O God” you know these ones belong 

I’ve shared the story, I’ve sung the song

They know the tune and melody,

It carries them as they carry

This divine word in their hearts. 

Let them never be apart from you and me O God. 

 

When Jesus prayed for you — he mentioned all that he had.

He said, “give it to them now dad! 

Purpose, Joy, and Truth, give to them

So they can use 

the same materials that have been your body in the world

Now unfurl, a colorful whirl

All personality and promise, Yes Amen,

All you’ve given to me, give to them. To you. When Jesus prayed for you.

 

When Jesus prayed for you, there was nothing you or I could do,

I’m talking long ago, that somehow he knows we need to hear it

Today, hear him say, the words of love, protection, abiding, direction.

And believe! This echo you hear, in it, you peer into intimate conversation 

The son’s dedication in asking — “Don’t let this fail

God, they are frail, but build them up, make them strong,

I’m leaving soon but they belong to us, 

Give them faith enough to believe it. 

 

When Jesus prayed for you, no one else said a thing.

Spoken Word of Jesus Christ RINGS out 

While everything else waits 

It was like it was in the beginning, God creates, 

And it’s a spoken word that brings out life, all existence bending an ear

Waiting to hear, “what will they make, what will God say?”

 

It could be a judgement. It could be the end.

Jesus could tell the truth, let’s not pretend, he could ask God 

why there are no true friends To the Word made flesh, 

why will they abandon and none of these twelve

Still dwell with him at his end? 

He could have prayed judgement then.

 

 

Instead, what you love is that

When Jesus prayed for you, it was classic Jesus. 

Embodied as the very gift that frees us,

it was not judgement or the end

It was still the beginning, his faulty friends he defends with his very life and breath

And these, like last wishes, he pours out, 

Stick with Them. I never left them, Don’t leave them now. 

Give to them! Give them protection, give them each other,

Bind them together, sisters and brothers.

We are God, and we give. 

And when we get nothing back, 

We are still not at a lack of mercy,

We draw from a deep well,

And so let’s water the sheep 

I pray that You keep them all, in the promise make a store

For all these faulty friends of mine and yours. 

Keep these ones I love, Jesus said. When Jesus prayed for you.

 

There’s just not much more of value I can add, 

When in scripture we hear Jesus talk to his dad about you and me.

I’m inviting you, you see, to listen and believe, 

Or just listen and receive when Jesus prayed for you. 

 

Two thousand years away, seven thousand miles away,

A night in Jerusalem, those first disciples near him, 

Jesus, in breath and spirit, praying where they could hear it. 

He could have prayed for power or healing, 

Or that angels come reeling and destroy everything against God’s command, 

But it reads, it reads, John 17 reads, like he took their hands and said, 

“I’m going to pray for you.”

 

And When Jesus prayed for you, it was classic Jesus. 

Embodied as the very gift that frees us,

never one to puff up strength

Or to preach at length that everyone should turn or burn,

It’s like the expression of God yearns to care for the needy, so Jesus says, somewhat sweetly,

Remind them God, Hold them. Give complete joy. They belong. Soak them in truth. Make them wholly good.

 

And I think God understood

Because I look at you now, and believe somehow we are changed because

Jesus prayed for you. 

 

And I want everyone to know, and to the world could we show,

That when Jesus prayed for us it was classic Jesus. 

The voice and blessing of the very gift that frees us

Even now to see a world in need and in love, draw near it.

In the way of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Gospel Text

Mark 16:1-8 

 

 

SERMON TEXT

3/31/24, Mark 16:1-8

Easter Sunday, Year B, Faith Lutheran Church

Pastor Shaun O’Reilly

Love is so large it absorbs

                            the threat of change.

 

On that first Easter Day, these women run from the tomb in terror and amazement — It doesn’t sound heroic, it sounds like they sense some kind of threat —in what they have discovered

And,  Love is so large it absorbs

                                      the threat of change.

 It was the first day of a new week. The sabbath had ended. Like at creation, when all the work was done, and then there was a day of rest … 

And then?   Is there anything more?

This story, this time, this event tells us. Yes. Yes to the more, Yes to what’s next. Undeniably. Never faltering —> Yes. 

A new week begins and there is a new sunrise.     The work is done, and there’s more. 

So let’s start there: What was the work? We heard it last Sunday, as we told the passion story.  “Darkness came over the whole land .. and Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” Nearby, a guard finally says, without mocking — “Surely this man was God’s son.”

That was the work.

Jesus put in a royal purple robe, and mocked. And left by his closest friends. Peter tried to stick around but eventually denied him. And Jesus was hung up on that cross and suffered and died. 

That was the work. 

We told the story last Sunday. And we told it on Friday night. Todd preached, telling us that the Great Three days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil are the heart of our faith. And Good Friday is the center of that heart. And he said, I don’t have a lot of comfort to give you tonight, on Good Friday at our Lord’s death. 

But then, later, later that preacher said: Maybe Jesus holds comfort for us. That because he did the whole work of suffering and dying, it means: that when we suffer, and when we die, especially when we follow the hard road of faith—loving others and the world more than ourselves—well, as we do it all, we can hear Jesus, that faithful worker, say: “I know. I’ve been there. I’m with you.”

So the work was done. God’s unending love for us on the cross. And the sabbath came. Rest and quiet. 

And at it’s end, at the beginning of a new week, the women go to his tomb. They go to anoint his body. And they find: The crucified one is not here. Jesus is raised.

And they fled from the tomb, “for terror and amazement had seized them.” There’s that threat! 

              And here is this Love so large it absorbs the threat of change.

Mostly, I think, it’s that everything is new, and they don’t understand. Or, I think, it is all flooding in at once. It is the exchange in their minds (and souls): we went to the tomb hoping to anoint our dear friend’s precious body; now we are running, attempting to believe what we’ve heard—that this friend has more for us?

That the work is done and the sabbath is over, and there’s a new week??!

Can God have more for us?!

What can this change bring? I’m afraid. 

 

 Hear the Promise of Easter:

                  Love is so large it absorbs

                          the threat of change.

 

I’m imagining that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, as they run, they are covered emanating smells. What else could have happened to those oils and spices they were going to use for anointing? 

What happens when you are carrying something fragile, being careful, it’s spill-able, but then you are filled with terror and amazement? I know what happens, it ends up all over you and all over everybody else.

I think the Mary’s are covered now in oils and spices. They went to anoint a body, and they are anointed. Like, they are blessed. 

Blessed for burial and new life. Blessed for the work.

Which is to die to themselves the way Jesus gave up everything and humbled himself out of love and service; and they are blessed to rise up too—new, changed, alive in that love. Not dead, alive. He is not dead. He is alive.

It reminds me of an easter story I’ve heard, there was a church in England that wanted to put up a new banner for Easter, you know — advertise to the community like our signs outside. 

But the printer got it wrong and when the banner came back it said:

Chris is risen! Chris is Risen!

And I don’t know if the church put it up and painted on a T, or left it as Chris, or got their money back.

But you know, in the theme of the breaking NEW of Easter, the Springtime life, the “Now the Green Blade rises” eastertide — to say that Chris is Risen — someone’s name —  is not far from our Gospel of God among us. 

It’s a change to have someone’s name like that in the phrase, but Love is so large it absorbs the threat of change.

 

The message the women receive at the tomb is: the crucified one has been raised. Go and tell the disciples and Peter, he’s going ahead of you to Galilee.

So there’s more to come. “Ahead of you to Galilee” means, there’s somewhere to Go, there’s something to do. And whoops, I spilled the oil all over myself, but I guess I’m blessed now to be this body in the world. 

And they’re supposed to go and tell, tell the deserter disciples, tell the disciples AND Peter — Peter is named outright here, the one who had denied Jesus publicly three times after pledging “I will never turn away.”

Go and Tell those, and that one, the news. 

Go to the lowly and the ashamed and the underserving, and when you tell them “He is Raised!” I bet you, you raise them up. 

 

This is Easter life! Christ, Risen. And it means the disciples are Risen, sharing in his life, death, and his life again. 

 Chris is Risen!  You are Risen.  

 

For those terrified and afraid. For those laying low, I think they get anointed. 

           We are made new.

The women flee in terror and amazement, but that won’t be the end of the story. Easter new life has made it to today.

I know change is hard. It was hard for them to follow Jesus in his ministry. It was hard, and frightening to go to Jerusalem—the place of power—and feel the powerful turn on Jesus. 

 And it is scary and stupidly unknown to say: that dead, beloved one is raised. 

There’s no blueprint for the followers. And they are terrified and amazed. And God doesn’t leave them there. God doesn’t leave you there.

Love is so large it absorbs

                         the threat of change.

 

And so we are raised in this new life, to walk the road together. Trusting and leaning on that love, like we have before. We say with our psalm today: Thanks be to God, God’s love endures forever.

Even in change, even now, even today, even you and me, anointed to follow our God.

 

Christ is Risen. Christ is Risen indeed, Alleluia.

And so are you. God’s love is so large. 

Amen. 

 

 

Gospel Text

John 12:20-33

 

 

SERMON TEXT

3/17/24, John 12:20-33

Fifth Sunday in Lent, St Patrick’s Day, Faith Lutheran Church. Pastor Shaun O’Reilly

 

I love that today’s gospel reading has these visceral descriptions about interacting with the savior. First, the visiting Greeks say: We wish to see Jesus. And then, later in the passage, there’s the moment when Jesus says, I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.

It’s these descriptions of connection: through seeing; and through being absorbed or drawn in. “We wish to see Jesus… When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.” 

These phrases are so rich and vivid, I want to share with you an artistic description of longing and sight and revelation that is close to my heart. This depiction comes from Eugene O’Neill’s Long days journey tonight. He was a New York playwright of Irish descent. In 1957 he won the Pulitzer Prize, after his death, for this play,. And in it, in Act four, this character Edmund, has a heartfelt conversation with his father, telling him of divine moments when he’s been at sea and his dreams have been visualized, kind of like “we wish to see.”

Edmund says:

“Several times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint’s vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see — and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again.”

 

Now, how absolutely spiritual does all of that sound? The lifting back of the veil, a glimpse of revelation. Where you see something, and you become something. 

I love that these greeks say this, and I wonder why they came to the disciples saying this: We wish to see Jesus. 

I wonder, did they want an autograph? Like waiting for T Swift after a concert? Did they want to see him because they had a problem with something they had heard we wish to see Jesus and we want to talk to him about all the trouble he’s starting?

Well, in context Jesus had just had his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, they probably wanted to see what it is what all about. But I wonder today if it is for you if it is like it is for me. Their longing stirs up my longing.

“We wish to see Jesus!”     Yes, Yes I do too! 

I’ve seen before, but hearing you long for it, I long for it again.

Do you long for it?

I wonder if it stirred up the longing of the disciples. 

In biblical greek, the word for disciples means “learner.” And you all know what it’s like to learn and be instructed, sometimes it becomes rote, and tiresome, and systematized. Did it wake the disciples up to have these foreign visitors coming in, hearts full of longing of what could become, and saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

Fun fact, I was walking my dog this week, and I was dictating back to my phone parts of my sermon as a draft, and at one point when I said “Sir we wish to see Jesus” Siri chimed in from my iPhone saying “sorry I didn’t get that!”

Ha. I know. Siri. But this is my wish. 

If you turn to the Lutherans saying, “We wish to see Jesus” – which I hope you do – you’re going to get back a theology I love. And that I think is true. 

It is that Seeing Jesus and Experiencing God is not some quest for heaven or the realms above. It is the God of flesh that has come right close to us and met us. The divine gives us our daily bread, and walks with us in our days. 

So much so that it is said that when someone asked Martin Luther what he would do if he knew the world was ending tomorrow, he responded, I would go out in my garden and plant a tree. 

Like, I would not be staring at the sky waiting for a sign, but I would be here and now, with the things of this earth, like God is, and doing the good work. 

This is, too, our sacramental theology, our sacred connection. The water of baptism. The grain and grapes of our communion. We meet God in these earthy elements that we taste and see and feel and experience together, and it is not some other worldly longing, it is a gift come right down to be with us where we are. 

 

Which is what Jesus answers to the crowds and the disciples wanting to see. 

 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. ³²And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” ³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

 

It’s happening now, he says. You and I delivered from evil, re-created to be agents of mercy. “And when I am lifted up” – his lifting on the cross – “I will draw all people to myself.”  

 

Friends in Christ, if we wish to see and experience and live in Jesus the divine, it is Cross-high.

Meaning, it’s right here.

In fact, it’s right here in all of our suffering and pain and longing too. 

We do not look to distant days of the future, we do not look beyond our cosmos,  look to your Lord on the cross, here today, loving you by giving Godself, shared among us as we say “body of Christ for you.”

Look to your God loving you from the cross and be drawn in. 

“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”

 

Do you know the true story of St Patrick? He wasn’t Irish first, God forbid. He was from Great Britain, and was taken by Irish raiders into slavery and servitude in Ireland for six years. 

He was a shepherd there, and became devout in his faith. The legend is that he was longing and praying for the people to come to know Jesus Christ there. 

After six years he escaped his enslavement and found a way back to Britain. There, though, he had a revelation. A saint’s vision, Eugene O’Neill might say.

He was to go join the Christian mission that existed for Ireland and groups that were going back to encourage the small group of Christians there and to spread the word, to tell the story. 

Patrick’s story is one of a man, taken into bondage, as good as dead. Brought back to life and society and hope. Only then to receive the call to go and serve his enslavers with a bondage-breaking message: Turn to Christ, restorer of the broken! 

Could it be that this faithful one becomes so revered in that land because his God-given vision was for what was there, and for the people, and as a shepherd, caring for what is right before you, and his vision was cross-high

?

He loved like Christ loved, self-sacrificing, returning to his oppressors. And proclaiming the message of our savior, who by his cross draws all people to himself. 

 

Today, do not hesitate to be drawn again. To taste and see the love of God for you. 

At the beginning of our Lenten journey we drew ashes on each other’s foreheads. We drew the shape of the cross. Saying: “this is the road we walk.” Not just seeing Jesus, but going, and to go with Jesus means the cross, and our giving up, and our inevitable death. Our Lord says, “unless a grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Be drawn in again today to the story, life, death, life again. This is the story of the love of God for the world.