Easter joy and life to you in the name of the living Christ!

This message is deeply personal and even confessional. The occasion for this message is my reflection upon the words the risen Jesus spoke to his disciples on Easter evening. We will get to hear that story this coming Sunday. As the story tells us, the women have gone to the tomb and discovered that Jesus is risen. They have reported it to the eleven. Some accounts, such as John's, tell us that Peter and "the disciple whom Jesus loved" then ran to the tomb and saw it empty, as well as Jesus' grave clothes rolled up in a corner. Strangely enough, the first response to this great news by the eleven is that they are hiding behind locked doors out of fear. The Easter news has done nothing for them ... yet.

Jesus then comes and stands in their midst, declares peace to them, and shows them his hands and his side. We hear that this disclosure enabled them to both see the Lord for who he was and to rejoice over it. Jesus again, as the report tells us, declares peace to them, and then gives them the mission: "As the Father has sent me; in the same way I send you." He breathes on them and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit." The Spirit that birthed the world, which overshadowed Mary and led to her conceiving Jesus and which raised Jesus from the dead is, now is conferred upon the disciples. It is the same Spirit we receive in Baptism.

Now, what is important here is what Jesus says. "As the Father has sent me; in the same way I send you." Up until then, he has been saying, "Follow me." Now it has become, "Be me. Be like me. Do the things that I do. See what I see. Love what I love. Forgive how I forgive. Risk how I risk. Live as I live. Tag, you're it now." The author of this Gospel will sum up the entire story of Jesus, as he tells it, as a matter of first believing and then having life. Believing is a verb, always a verb, which means action - seeing, going, loving, risking, and forgiving; that is, doing the things that Jesus does. To do this means to live - to live as God intends. This is what Jesus, especially in John's Gospel, means by "eternal life." It is life on a higher plane, life that is not like the way the world lives but rich in the ways and things of God. Jesus came to give life. Let me repeat this: Jesus came to give life.

My call to ordained ministry is a call, as I understand it, to be a midwife to birthing new life in people with the Gospel being my only resource. Jesus and the Holy Spirit conceive and give birth to new life. I am just a midwife. I do what I do because: a) The vision that Jesus gives us for the world is the only vision that works; and, b) the Jesus-life is necessary for his vision to take hold. Often I am very hard on myself. As a pastor I have gotten to do many wonderful things and I have met many wonderful people and have been blessed by some of the finest people who took time to invest in me. Walter Bouman, whom I mentioned on Sunday, is just one. I have led three churches, have an earned doctorate, am a published author, spoken to leaders and conferences all over the country, founded a movement as an advocate for kids, founded the Haitian Timoun Foundation, taken people on countless mission trips, supervised numerous interns, founded a leadership academy, and have a lot of things that look good on my resume. But in the only thing that really matters, I am not sure whether I would call my life as a pastor "successful." As I understand my call, Jesus never said, "Hey Rick, I'd like for you to run a church." I do understand that my call is to be a midwife to changed lives that change the world.

Sometimes I ask myself, "Just how many lives have truly been changed? How many people have actually reordered their lives, reordered their values, reordered their resources, and truly done that complete reversal of direction and focus, which Jesus calls 'repentance,' and become passionate followers of Jesus?" Sometimes we can spend so much time trying to be the church that we miss the point.

Forgive me if sometimes I seem a little impatient. Maybe it is a mid-life crisis (J), but I am coming more and more aware of the call to discipleship that rests on us all. On a number of occasions, we have asked ourselves about what it would mean and what would be required of us all for Epiphany to be a "great" church? "Great" is defined here not by the world but by God. Would we be "great" if we, as a body, lived like Jesus and our life together became an incubator that served as the medium for the Spirit to birth new and changed lives?

I hope to see you in worship.

God loves you and I do too!

Pastor Rick