Easter 6C

6th Sunday of Easter May 26, 2019 Our gospel readings for the last few weeks in John’s gospel have taken us back in time to before Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. Last Sunday, we saw Judas leaving the Upper Room gathering with the other disciples to go out and betray Jesus. And this Sunday, we see the remaining disciples growing increasingly more anxious, and several of them are posing questions to Jesus to try to understand his mysterious words about leaving them soon. This section of John’s gospel is made up of four whole chapters that are known as John’s farewell discourse—four chapters where Jesus is reassuring and comforting and teaching his disciples, trying to prepare them for what is next. Liturgically, this week, we are moving toward the end of the Easter season. This Thursday is the feast day of the Ascension when we celebrate Jesus’s ascension into heaven (it’s 1 of 7 of our major feast days in the church). Two weeks from today, we’ll have the feast of Pentecost, when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. And next Sunday is this weird, in-between time, when Jesus has ascended but the Holy Spirit hasn’t shown up yet. But for today, Jesus is promising his disciples and us that the Holy Spirit is coming, and he offers them and us the gift of his peace saying, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” I’ve been thinking about peace this week. Often when we use the word peace, we mean an absence of conflict or even a “Peaceful easy feeling” (like we sang coming in at 10). But the word that Jesus uses—shalom—is a much more complex word. It means beyond peace to completeness or wholeness, and even such completeness or wholeness that causes one to act or respond with generosity. The thing about Jesus’s peace is that it is a gift which is freely given by him but cannot be earned or attained by us. Peace is something that we can only receive. And sometimes we refuse to receive it, don’t we? One member of our Wednesday service congregation, when we were talking about this, shared a story of a lady in her church who resisted the institution of the passing of the peace in the “new” prayer book and she would just stand there with her arms crossed as people exchanged the peace around her. So we can resist this gift of peace, this gift of wholeness. But we can also be conduits of Jesus’s peace for one another. Another one of our Wednesday congregation shared that she had recently been using a spiritual practice called “a meditation for loving kindness.” In this practice, you pray the following things for yourself and for other people, praying them three times each. 1. May you be happy. 2. May you be healthy. 3. May you be at peace. Consider starting this practice just for yourself, that you may be open to receive Jesus’s gift of peace, Jesus’s gift of wholeness. Then deepen the practice to include those for whom it is easy for you to love. Pray this three-prayer for each of them three times. Then, we you are ready for the advanced class, add in doing this for a person you are at odds with—maybe someone who has wounded you, someone with whom you disagree. This week, your invitation is two part. First, pay attention to the ways that you resist the gift of Jesus’s peace or wholeness in your life. When you catch yourself in those moments, consider uncrossing your arms and asking for help receiving it. Then second, look for ways to pass that gift of peace or wholeness on to others. There are countless ways of doing this in every single day, but if you are looking for a place to start, consider using the meditation for loving kindness: 1. May you be happy. 2. May you be healthy. 3. May you be at peace.

Easter 5C

The 5th Sunday of Easter Year C May 19, 2019 This past week, I was spending some time preparing for our upcoming move by going through a bunch of our stuff that has been stored in our garage for the last two years. In and among untold numbers of books that have been hidden away in boxes, I re-discovered one in particular of which I am quite fond. It’s title is Being Dead is No Excuse (and if that isn’t intriguing enough, the subtitle is): The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral. The book was written by Episcopalians and natives of the Mississippi Delta—Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays. The book is full of recipes and anecdotes about funerals and characters from the authors’ small town of Greenville, Mississippi. And the emphasis throughout the book is on how food can both unite and divide the community. While chapter one signifies the unifying force of good funeral food (it is titled: “Dying tastefully in the MS Delta” and concludes with a top ten list of funeral foods), chapter 2 captures the division that can be created by different visions of what is appropriate in good funeral food. It is titled “the Methodist ladies vs. the Episcopal ladies.” The opinionated, Episcopal authors have this to say about the local Methodists’ funeral food: “Though a number of old planter families still hew to the religion of the Wesley brothers, and there is certainly no spiritual or theological animosity, the culinary competition between the Episcopal ladies and the Methodist ladies is cut-throat. Episcopalians are snooty because they spurn cake mixes and canned goods, without which there would be no such thing as Methodist cuisine. Methodist ladies do great things with the contents of cans and boxes. If a survey were done of the winners of Pillsbury Bake-Offs, ten to one the majority would be Methodists. The casserole is the most characteristically Methodist foodstuff…The Methodist culinary genius might be summed up this way: “Now you’re cookin’ with Campbell’s. (See also [Chapter 5] “Comfort Foods: There is a Balm in Campbell’s Soup p. 141.)”i Our Acts reading for today gives us one of the most pivotal moments in the early Christian movement, when Peter has a vision where the voice of God tells him that he no longer needs to worry about being bound by the Jewish dietary laws that he has followed all his life. In our reading for today, we have the second telling of this same story, which happens when Peter has returned to Jerusalem and is justifying his actions of eating with Gentiles to the other Jewish followers of Jesus. Food has been the number one thing that this early church has been fighting over, namely the question of whether the Gentile converts to Christianity have to convert to Judaism and follow the dietary laws. Because of this vision given to Peter by God, Peter becomes converted in his thinking and in his response, and we see that he recognizes that he does not want to stand in the way of the work that God is doing. “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” Luke tells us of Peter’s critics, “When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’” Food which has divided this community since its very beginnings, is now no longer an impediment to belonging and to following Jesus. Over the last few months, the Church Development Institute (CDI) team from St. Thomas (that is me, Tracy Edgar, Mary Haley, and Rick Lantz) along with the vestry have conducted interviews of various parishioners about the gifts and challenges of St. Thomas. Folks were pretty much unanimous in their assessment that one of our strongest gifts is hospitality—how we use food (and drink!) to create community and welcome others. One of the greatest challenges that folks have generally articulated is the desire for us to attract new members. As a part of our work with CDI, we are supposed to plan and implement a project over this summer. After looking at the responses to the interviews, we began trying to figure out how to capitalize on our gift for hospitality in order to attract new visitors to our congregation. We had a number of different ideas, but through various conversations, we have begun working more intensively on a particular idea. It is a project called “CAST” which is short for Co-op At St. Thomas. Our vision is to create a gathering place for our community of Isle of Hope and beyond on our church grounds once a month beginning in September and running on a trial period through December. We plan to begin reaching out to local vendors from other farmers’ markets, local artists, food trucks, musicians, a local pet-grooming truck, the people who catch and sell shrimp and crabs, anyone we can think of who could help us create this festival on the first Friday night of the month from 4 pm to 8 pm. We also want to have a featured charity who we would promote and who would help us promote the event and who we could raise money for that month. We’ve also talked about having activities for children centered around our newly re-vitalized playground. We have a vision of creating a community gathering space for people to bike, walk, golf-cart, or drive over, shop and picnic on our grounds listening to live music and enjoying each other and our beautiful home. All this would be centered around locally grown, caught, or cooked food--Food as a way to unite us here in Isle of Hope. We would also look to have some soft advertising for the different things going on here at St. Thomas as a possible bridge for folks who might be interested in joining us for worship or other events. I want you to be thinking about the following questions. We’ll be collecting feedback from you in the comings days about this idea of CAST—Co-op At St. Thomas. Here are the questions I want you to be considering: What do you think? Do you have any ideas/suggestions about this? What are your concerns? Would you like to help with this endeavor? How might God be calling us to expand our vision of how we use our gift of hospitality to promote unity and community? i. Metcalf, Gayden and Hays, Charlotte. Being Dead Is No Excuse: The official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral. Miramax: New York, 2005, p 34.

Easter 4C 2019

Easter 4C 2019 May 12, 2019 I am struck this morning by the story from Acts. There are all sorts of interesting details in this story not the least of which is the transformation of Peter from total failure to a hero who rivals the prophets of old in his ability to resurrect someone. But the story isn’t so much a story about Peter; instead, it is a story about the church; it gives us a wonderful picture of a worshipping community in the early church which is also a community that expects, even demands resurrection, and it shows us some characteristics that we can try to emulate as we try to grow more deeply into how God is calling us to be a resurrection community, a community that expects, demands, and works for resurrection in this particular time and place. The writer of Acts (who is also the writer of Luke’s gospel), tells us that in the particular place of Joppa, there lived a disciple whose name was Tabitha. She was well known for being devoted to good works and acts of charity. She is the only woman in all of scripture who is named as a disciple, and she is particularly well known for her ministry to widows, some of the most vulnerable of the population of the Roman Empire and in Jewish culture. Tabitha is known for making clothing for widows; when she becomes ill and dies, the disciples send for Peter, whom they know to be in a near-by city. This part, in and of itself is incredibly remarkable. She is dead! What is it that they expect Peter to do? Well, clearly they expect Peter to bring Tabitha back from the dead, otherwise, why else would they call him? Peter comes quickly, and they tell him the stories of Tabitha and the ways that she has made a difference in their lives and in their community. He puts them all outside, prays, and then says to her, “Tabitha, get up.” And she does! Peter takes her out and shows her to the rest of them, and the news of what has happened spreads throughout Joppa, and many come to believe in the Lord. And Peter stays with them there for some time. But how does all this relate to us? We see disease and brokenness all around us and within us. The recent school shooting in Colorado (just one in a string of far too many—the shooting at the synagogue, the bombing in Sri Lanka on Easter) these are further evidence of the relentless insinuation of evil and destruction in our lives and our world. What is modeled for us in this story of life in the early church is that, as a community who expects, demands, and works for resurrection, we must first be dedicated to being a community of healing; we must first be dedicated to be a community of hope. We must be unafraid to ask for healing and resurrection for ourselves, for each other, and for the whole world. We also cannot be content to let disease, unhealthy patterns of life, and death run unchecked among us. Another thing that strikes me about this story and how the community at Joppa functions as a community that expects, demands, and works for resurrection is the reciprocity that is involved in the community and the mutual care that is offered there. Tabitha is known for being devoted to good works and acts of charity; she takes care of vulnerable people within her community probably from her own resources. When she becomes ill and dies, the community takes care of her, washing her body, calling for Peter and physically going to get him. They care for her as they mourn her loss. In this picture of health and life in the early church, all are both giving and receiving, and the health of this faith community spills out into the greater community as evidence of the power of Jesus Christ to heal and resurrect. So, your invitation this week is two-fold. First, ask yourself if you are participating in the full reciprocity of what it means to be this church, this resurrection community. Are you giving more than you are receiving? Are you receiving more than you are giving? Do you feel that you are not being nourished? If so, could that be because you are only receiving and not giving? Do you feel tired, burned out? If so, could that be because you are only giving and not receiving? What balance might God be calling you to find between these two extremes? One way to be intentional in seeking this balance is to allow someone to do something for you, whenever you can, and to try to do something for someone else at least once a day. Second, spend some time listing to God in your life every day, and then let your life be a prayer, a response to what God is speaking in your life. Ask God for health, wholeness, healing, and resurrection in your life. Ask God for health, wholeness, healing, and resurrection in this church. Ask God for health, wholeness, healing, and resurrection in our world.

The Third Sunday of Easter Year C

The Third Sunday of Easter Year C May 5, 2019 This past week, our speaker at Spring Clergy Conference was Dr. Catherine Meeks who is the Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing in Atlanta. (Let me just say that I’ve gone to 15 years of clergy conferences, and Dr. Meeks, was by-far the best speaker I have heard. She has such a gracious presence, is clearly very comfortable in her own skin, and has a way of sharing her story and other truths in a way that is both matter of fact and gently joyful.) Dr. Meeks’ time and work with us was divided between watching documentaries (one of which revealed to me a part of our American history that I had been completely ignorant about), conversations about what next steps we might take in our congregations, and her emphasis on the notion that racial healing in our Church begins with our own inner work and awareness. She began our conversation together by referencing the story of Jesus’ healing of the man at the pool of Bethsaida, when Jesus first asked the man, “Do you want to be healed?” She reminded us that “we as Christians believe in healing and transformation. We believe that Jesus brings those about. It is up to us to set ourselves on the road.” I am still processing all of what she said and what we all shared, and I don’t have any ideas about what my next steps here are in light of all this, but we have certainly already begun this conversation in our Just Mercy book study, and through that, I am thankful that we have already begun this work of racial healing here together. But what I was struck by is her image of healing and transformation which is given by Jesus and of our own responsibility to set ourselves on the road in light of our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today. We see Saul, who has made a name for himself by persecuting people of the Way, the followers of Jesus. We have already seen the young Saul earlier in Acts as he stood by and held the coats of the people who stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Our reading for today shows Saul on the road to Damascus when he is blinded by a light from heaven and hears a voice asking him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” It’s interesting to me that Saul never answers the Lord’s question. Instead, he responds with a question: “Who are you, Lord?” And the Lord replies: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." The story goes on that those who are with Saul hear the Lord’s voice but do not see anything. Saul follows the Lord’s instructions, going into the city where he is blind and doesn’t eat anything for three day. Finally, he is visited by Annais, who the Risen Christ has sent (after having to do some convincing). And through Annais faithfulness and work on behalf of the Risen Christ, Saul is healed and transformed, and he begins to testify about his conversion. But still I can’t help but wonder, why is Saul persecuting Jesus and his followers? What is it that is going on inside him that makes him think that is what he needs to be doing? Most of us don’t naturally identify with Saul, I would guess. It’s not a very flattering picture of humanity, and yet it is one in which we all share. Each one of us is capable of being a Saul, persecuting others, and if we are truthful, we have all done this in much smaller, yet still destructive ways. I think back on the times when I have persecuted someone else—making someone else feel like they are an outsider, engaging in gossip about someone, thinking uncharitable thoughts about someone, judging someone. All of these are micro-aggressions or precursors to persecution that come out of a place of insecurity or dis-ease in my own soul. We persecute others, I think, when we are afraid that we are going to lose something that we think belongs to us or is owed to us. Your invitation this week is to pay attention to the goings on in your soul, especially when those goings on involve persecuting someone else or even the precursor to persecution, when you are feeling insecure or uneasy or you are afraid. When you catch yourself in that moment or in reflecting after, ask God for forgiveness and healing, and rest in the assurance that both you and the one you have harmed are both beloved of God who are loved beyond what you could ever ask for or imagine. “We, as Christians, believe in healing and transformation. We believe that Jesus brings those about. It is up to us to set ourselves on the road.”

The Second Sunday of Easter Year C

Easter 2C April 28, 2019 I had a parishioner at a previous church who told me that she decided to give up fear for Lent. After the 40 days were over, she confessed to me that it had been the hardest thing that she had ever done and that it had made her aware how much fear she felt in her life on a daily basis. Now this parishioner wasn’t an especially anxious or fearful person in my experience, so after she told me that, I started paying attention to all the times in a given day that I felt afraid. It’s not something most of us pay attention to, and I, too, was surprised at how often I feel afraid in any given day. Most of us just ignore it, squash it down or even let the fear drive us in ways that we may not be attentive to. But what happens when we are honest about the fears we experience, when we face them squarely in the face, and then refuse to hold on to them or let them drive us? Our gospel reading for today picks up immediately after last Sunday’s gospel reading leaves off. It is still Easter day. Mary Magdalene has discovered the empty tomb and hurried back to tell the disciples. Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” have raced back to verify that the tomb is, in fact, empty, and Mary Magdalene has an encounter with both angels and the risen Christ who she initially mistakes as the gardener. She recognizes the risen Christ when he calls her by name, and he sends her to be the “apostle to the apostles”—to share the good news of his resurrection with the rest of the disciples. So we assume they all hear the news that Jesus is risen from the dead. Later that same day, John tells us, the disciples are huddled together in a locked house, “for fear of the Jews” when Jesus appears to them. But Thomas misses out because he isn’t there with them at the time. And so when they later tell him they have seen the Lord, Thomas says that he is going to need to see him, too, to believe it. A whole week goes by, and this time, Thomas is with the rest, and Jesus shows up again and gives Thomas what he needs to join the rest in their belief. Here are some things that jumped out at me from this reading this week. First, in John’s gospel, belief is never a noun; it is always a verb, an action. Second, something I’ve never noticed before is that Thomas isn’t there at that first appearance because he isn’t afraid. The others are huddled together behind locked doors out of fear, but Thomas is out and about, doing his own thing. And that’s the thing to remember about Thomas: he has been fearless all along. Earlier in John’s gospel, when the authorities are threatening to kill Jesus, Thomas is the one who says, well, we should go with him, so we can all die together. Thomas isn’t afraid to make his needs known, to ask for what he needs to believe in the resurrection—both from the others and from Jesus himself. And he is unafraid to wait, dwelling in the unknown and the uncertainty, and to show up again, a week later with all of his doubts, to see if Jesus will show up once again. Thomas is not afraid to doubt. Thomas is not afraid. What would it be like to give up fear for Easter? What would it be like to show up, how you really are, doubtful, uncertain, afraid, and to allow all of that to be transformed by encounters with the Risen Christ who is loose and at work in the world? What would it be like for us to give up fear for Easter as individuals? What would it be like for us to give up fear for Easter as a church, the body of the risen Christ in the world? Yesterday, I read a quote from the writer Anne Lamott. She wrote, “They say that courage is fear that has said its prayers.” This week (and if you are bold like Thomas for the 40 days still left in Easter), your invitation is to give up fear; to acknowledge it, when it steals upon you, and to release it, let it be transformed by God through prayer into courage, choosing instead to believe, to act in the power of God’s love made manifest in Jesus’s resurrection.

The Day of Resurrection: Easter Day 2019

The Day of Resurrection—Easter Day April 21, 2019 There are very two different store signs on Montgomery Cross Road that I like to read as I frequently drive past. The first is Jerry’s lounge, which is often clever, sometimes slightly irreverent, and usually involves drinking. (There was one in homage to the newest season of Game of Thrones up there last week: “we drink and we know things.”) The other is the sign at Maycrest Hardware. These postings are always religious themed. And I have to be careful how I say this because if there is one thing that I’ve learned about living in Savannah these last almost two years it is that at least someone in this church is related, somehow, to the person who does that sign at Maycrest Hardware. I like to read the sign at Maycrest Hardware; I don’t always agree with it, and it encourages me to think theologically about my beliefs and why I believe the way I do. This past week, the sign caught my attention. It read: “Redemption is possible. Witness Tiger Woods.” I had read a couple of different blog posts about Tiger’s victory at the Master’s this week, and I had even thought about it in connection to Easter. But that sign on the Maycrest Hardware made me start to wonder, is Tiger’s story truly a story of redemption, in the truest sense of the word? It’s definitely a story of a fall from grace followed by faithfulness, hard work, courage, a willingness to show up, and an amazing comeback. But does redemption imply some sort of moral change? Does anyone but God know they state of Tiger’s heart in all this to say whether or not this is truly redemption? So, I looked up the definition of redemption in the dictionary: redemption is the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil or a thing that saves someone from error or evil. (The second definition is considered archaic. It is the action of buying ones’ freedom. And this is actually how the word redemption is used throughout the Old Testament.) Our collect for the day also speaks of redemption: “O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection…” Still, I continued to ponder, is Tiger Woods victory at the Masters’ a true story of redemption? Over the last four days, as we have been walking beside Jesus and his disciples in Jesus’s last days of his earthly ministry, I’ve been inviting the congregation to think about discipleship and what our sacred stories have to reveal to us about our call to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Discipleship comes from the Latin word that means pupil; there is an aspect of learning involved in discipleship, but it is not just an intellectual learning. Discipleship also involves a learning of our hearts and our souls. On Maundy Thursday, we saw how Jesus modeled vulnerability as a component of discipleship for his followers and for us, and we pondered how we are called to be vulnerable and how we are called to acknowledge and receive the vulnerability of others when they share that gift with us. On Good Friday, we saw Peter deny, three times, his discipleship of Jesus, and we pondered how we, too, deny through both word and action, our own discipleship of Jesus. We laid these failures at the foot of the cross, and we were assured of Jesus’s forgiveness of us and of all who fail him. Today, I am especially struck by the discipleship that is illustrated in our gospel reading for today—and I don’t mean the two men who race competitively to the empty tomb to try to verify Mary Magdalene’s report to them that the tomb is empty. No, I’m talking about the discipleship of Mary Magdalene, herself; Mary Magdalene, who comes to the tomb alone when it is still dark for what purpose? Mary Magdalene who exhibits a faithfulness and courage and a presence at all of the significant moments of Jesus’s death and resurrection that really none of Jesus’s other disciples exhibit. I’m reading a book titled The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity by Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault. And Bourgeault looks at the gospel accounts, the historical research, and the myths that surround Mary Magdalene. She points out that all four of our gospel accounts agree that Mary Magdalene was present as a witness at Jesus’s crucifixion; and all four gospel accounts agree that Mary Magdalene was the first witness (or one of the first witnesses with other women disciples) of Jesus’ resurrection. In fact, in the early days of the Christian Church, Mary Magdalene was known as “the apostle to the apostles” because she was the one to tell the other apostles the good news of Jesus’s resurrection. In this book, Bourgeault writes, “All four gospels witness to Mary Magdalene as the premier witness to the resurrection - alone or in a group, but in all cases named by name. . . All four gospels insist that when the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. She does not run, she does not betray or lie about her commitment, she witnesses. But why, one wonders, do the Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell Peter's threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady, unwavering witness of Magdalene is not even noticed? How would our understanding of the Paschal Mystery change if [the role of Magdalene was acknowledged?] What if, instead of emphasizing that Jesus died alone and rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave? For surely this other story is as deeply and truly there in the scripture as is the first. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feelings about ourselves? About the place of women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?”i And there’s that word again. Redemption. The heart of what we gather here to celebrate today is the power of redemptive love, how it transforms the worst that we have to offer, even death, into redemption and resurrection and new life. Magdalene loved Jesus. She showed up, over and over again, courageously, when it made no sense to do so, because of her love and the way that her relationship with him had redeemed and transformed her life. There is no doubt that Tiger Woods’ love for the game of golf inspired his come-back, his Masters win, even, I daresay, his redemption. (So whoever you are out there, you can tell your cousin at Maycrest Hardware that I agree with the sign.) Each one of us has been redeemed by God’s love, redeemed of all our failures and failings, redeemed from all the times when we did not show up, from all the times when we did not love. And each one of us has also followed the example of Mary Magdalene and showed up courageously because of love despite all reasonableness. On this Easter Day, what might God be calling you to show up for in your life, out of love, despite all reasonableness? For that is our continued call as disciples of the Risen Lord. Let us pray: O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. Alleluia. i. Bourgeault, Cynthia. The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. Shambhala: Boulder, 2010, p 16.

Good Friday 2019

Good Friday 2019 At our Maundy Thursday service last night, I began a conversation that I would like to continue about what does it mean to be a disciple. Now, there’s no right answer to this question, and there are probably as many different interpretations of this as there are people in this room. But as we walk through these holiest days of our church year, I believe our readings give us an opportunity to engage this question for our own lives and to encounter the stories through this lens. What does it mean to be a disciple? The Latin root of the word disciple literally means a pupil. And these holy days show us how Jesus has taught his original disciples and us how to be his followers. Now this isn’t just an intellectual teaching, a teaching for our minds, but it is also teaching for our hearts and our souls. Today, I invite us to focus on Peter and the ways, in John’s passion gospel that Peter fails as Jesus’s disciple. Because they are the ways that we all fail as Jesus’s disciples, too. My friend, the Rev Carol Mead, writes a daily devotion that goes out on email, and she started her devotion from Wednesday of Holy Week in this way. I think it gets to the heart of Peter’s failure as Jesus’s disciple and to the heart of our own failures as well. She writes, “A story on professional wrestling considers why fans like a 'sport' that even its participants admit is faked. The story suggests that many people drawn to it are themselves, ‘heroes of their own imaginations.’" She continues, “In our culture we need to be seen as strong, and sometimes that need can turn into delusion about what we control. But if we could get past that need for the appearance of strength, we could be more authentic to other people and to ourselves.”i Peter was very much a hero in his own imagination. Immediately after Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, Judas leaves to go betray Jesus, and Jesus gives the disciples his new commandment—to love one another as he has loved them. Then Jesus tells them that he will be going away. (This is John 13:36-38.) “Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered, ‘Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterwards.’ Peter said to him, ‘Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.’ Jesus answered, ‘Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.” Peter imagines that he will act heroically when the time of trial comes, but Jesus predicts that he will, in fact, deny him three times. And this is indeed what happens. And what is interesting about this is that Peter doesn’t deny the person of Jesus three times when the rubber meets the road. As we heard today, Jesus is arrested, and Peter and the other disciple follow to where they take Jesus. And two out of three people question Peter and they ask him, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?” And two times, Peter says, “I am not.” In his third denial, they ask if he was there with Jesus when he was arrested, and Peter denies that, too. What is striking to me about this is that in the comfort of the gathering with Jesus and his other disciples, Peter imagines that he will follow Jesus to the extent that he would even lay down his life for him. But in times of trial and difficulty, Peter denies that he is a disciple of Jesus. And we get that don’t we? How many times in our lives have we imagined that we are heroes in the ways that we live out our faith? How many different ways do we think that we are faithful disciples and followers of Jesus? But then, when things get difficult or the stakes are high, how many times do we deny, through our words and our actions, that we are disciples of Jesus? It’s probably not as dramatic as Peter’s denial, but our denial is there in how we treat people, in the words we say to them or about them, in the devices and desires of our own hearts, in the way that we put ourselves above others, in the ways that we act like we are in control when we are most definitely not. I invite you today to recognize and admit those failures, those times that you have denied, through word or action, being a disciple of Jesus, and to bring them to the foot of the cross. I invite you to offer them to Jesus, and to hear him offer you his forgiveness, this day and always. i. Carol Mead “Heroes” April 17, 2019