What is eternal life?  What do we understand when we use those words?  What does Jesus mean, in today's Gospel reading, when he uses those words?  Let me read again the passage that contains these words: "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him; and this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." (John 17:1-3).

There is a common notion of what eternal life means, shaped over many centuries of popular piety, reinforced by preaching and teaching which was itself shaped by popular piety.  What I mean by "popular piety" is the religious devotion which most people carry around with them.  Popular piety is often at odds with the official teaching or doctrine of the Church, and so you often get a disconnect between the pronouncements of the Church and the head space and heart space that most people are in.

In the case of eternal life and its related topics of death, resurrection, and Divine judgment, the classic teachings of the Church, and what most people assume are actually very different.  Most people assume that when you die you go to heaven, or to hell, I suppose, if you were really bad.  The assumption is that the essence of the person is something called a soul, and that when the body ceases to function, the soul leaves the body and ascends, or possibly descends, as the case may be (though most people nowadays tend to shed the idea of a hell, and so the soul only ascends in most people's minds).

The classic teaching of Christianity, taken from the strictest understanding of the Bible, and taught by the Church Fathers, and reiterated in our Lutheran Confessions (though only in passing, not at length) is that when a person dies, they die, possibly entering into a kind of sleep (which is why Hamlet says that in his famous monologue), and on the last day they are raised with new bodies to be judged by Christ.  In fact, several of the Church Fathers go to great lengths to try to explain to their Pagan critics how this could even work.  Gregory of Nyssa, for example, imagined that the molecules scattered around in the decomposition process would be miraculously reassembled, and the consciousness of the person too would be reconstituted, because of course the person would be made to remember all that they had done.

Most people nowadays, much as the Pagan critics in the 300's when Gregory of Nyssa lived, do not find this a very comforting way of thinking, and even find it a little hard to buy into.  As I said, popular piety and the official teaching of the Church often diverge from each other.

But what did Jesus mean in today's Gospel reading when he said "eternal life"?  You see, I think he was talking about something much more immediate than life after death.  I think he was talking about an experience of the eternal in the now, in this present life, an experience brought about by knowing God.

The words behind our translated words "eternal" and "life" are the Greek words "aiwnios" (aionios) and "zwh" (zoe).  Each of these words carried a huge amount of cultural, philosophical, and religious baggage, so the simple fact of their use is really not enough to know what Jesus in John's Gospel meant.  The words were used in subtly different ways by the many philosophers and religious teachers who preceded Jesus and John, and had various uses in the time of Jesus and of John.  So which of those understandings do we apply?

One school of Greek thought used the word "aionios" to mean an "age", a "period of time".  Another used it to refer to "eternity" in the sense of "a very long time, a time without limit"; and another used it to mean "eternity" in the sense of "timelessness, a state of being outside of time."  Which one is it for the Jesus of John's Gospel?

And what about the word for "life" -- "zoe"?  Generally, but not always, the word was used to refer to life in the more abstract sense, life not merely in the biological sense of physical life, but in the broader, more philosophical sense of "Life" with a capital "L".  In contrast, the word used for ordinary, biological life was the word "bios" (bios) from which you can see that we get words like "biology" and "biography."

I think what is meant when in John's Gospel Jesus says "zwh aiwnios" (eternal life) is an experience of a fullness of life, an abundance of life, that comes from connecting with God in an intentional way.  The words in this passage say, "Father... you have given [your Son] authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him; and this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."  This is not a matter of knowing about God and Jesus Christ, but knowing God and Jesus Christ.  In this knowing, coming to know, something profound, something life changing, something life deepening and life broadening happens.  We are lifted beyond the mere confines of "bios" life, to the fullness of "zoe" life, of a life which is not only in biology, but extends beyond biology.  We are given a deeper vision of ourselves, of each other, and of the universe, because our narrow sense of self becomes enlarged, or even transcended, by the only full or complete "self", that is God, who is revealed most clearly to us in Jesus Christ.

To put all that in the simplest words: When you come to know God revealed in Jesus Christ within yourself, only then do you really start to get what life is all about.  Before that, whatever understanding of life we may have is a shadow life (like the darkness that John's Gospel uses to talk about the ordinary world), a dry, dusty, ever hungry life, seeking, searching, devouring, but never satisfied, never at rest, never at peace.  When you know God revealed in Jesus Christ, eternity breaks into now, and you are saved from the half-life, the narrow ego life of mere biology, mere survival, mere consumption.

God has given Jesus authority over all flesh to give life in its fullness to all: and this is that full, abundant life filled with eternity: to know God, and to know Jesus Christ whom God sent.  Amen.

In today's reading from John, Jesus speaks the language of attachment.  While our translation says "If you love me, you will keep my commandments..." it could just as easily read something like "When you love me you keep my commandments..." or  "In loving me you are keeping my commandments..." or "In so far as you love me you keep my commandments..."  In other words, while the English word if' could be understood as setting out a sort of veiled threat, "If you really loved me, you'd keep my commandments," the Greek of the text implies something different.  It implies rather a natural link between loving Jesus and keeping Jesus' commandments; that the keeping of the Jesus' commandments to love God, to love people, especially those who are unlovable, and to love each other in the community of the followers of Jesus -- that the keeping of these commandments flows out of loving Jesus:"If, or when, or in so far as you love me, you keep my commandments."

  I said that this is the language of attachment.  Dr. Gordon Neufeld, a Vancouver based psychologist from the school of psychology called Developmentalism (as opposed to Behaviourism) stresses the importance of the attachment process in human relations.  His research, corroborated by current brain research, indicates that the process of children becoming attached to their parents or guardians is key to the maturation process of the structures of the brain, which in turn promote the emotional maturation process of the person.  One indication of fully formed attachment is that the child is open to the leading and guiding of the parent or guardian, and is also more likely to be open to the leading and guiding of other adults, such as teachers or coaches.  Children who are attached to the adults in their lives want to cooperate, are open to learning.  Children who are peer attached resist adult direction, and often learn poorly from adults, not because they are unintelligent, but simply because they don't want to -- the adult, the teacher, the coach is emotionally insignificant to them.  As Dr. Neufeld notes, you can't teach out of your position, you can only teach out of your relationship to the child.  Or, to put it in crude terms, kids who like their teacher are more open to learning from the teacher; kids who don't like a teacher are less open to learning from that teacher.

  Jesus is talking the language of attachment.  He says, in so far as you love me, you will keep my commandments.  It is out of our love for, our attachment to Jesus, that we embrace his instructions, his guidance, his path.  Later in today's reading, Jesus says, "They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me..."  Again, this is not an "if...then" statement, but rather a "because...therefore" statement.  Because you love the Teacher, the Master, you want to learn from him and follow in the Way.  The key is not obedience, not self-denial, not servility, but love.  If I become obedient to Jesus it is because I love Jesus.   If I deny myself, it is because I love.  If I become a servant, it is because I love and want to serve.

  This extends naturally to every relationship, of course.  Those whom I love I am more eager to serve.  But Jesus knows that it is too easy to draw the circle of love in tightly around the people who are related to me, or who are like me, or who share in my opinions and values.  So Jesus, the one whom I love, says Love your enemies' (Matthew 5:44).  Love the ones who are hard to love.  Draw the circle wide.  Draw the circle as wide as the earth itself.

  But here is the warning: If you try this out of a sense of obligation or duty or even fear (say fear of judgment), it will be a burden.  If you do it out of love, it will be a joy.  I've sensed in myself the difference between when I'm in a dutiful or fearful mindset, and when I'm in love with God, how following in the Way feels different, how it is a different kind of inner experience.

  The same holds true for the closely related movement of the heart called forgiveness.  We try to forgive with our heads, but forgiveness happens in the heart, and it has to do with relationship, attachment, and love.  In this case it is the love that is prepared to let go, to surrender everything to God -- why?  Not because God demands it.  That's onerous.  But because I love God, because I love Jesus, and my true love says to me, forgive, let go, I'll take care of it.'  Because my true love loves not only me, but also the one I can't seem to forgive.

  It's hard to grasp it in the head, because it pushes all our self-righteousness buttons, all our catalogues of wrongs done to us.  I know, I've been there many times, and still find myself there sometimes.  But I have also learned that when I am in love with Jesus, I can find compassion and love for a lot of people my head can't seem to forgive.  I have learned that in as much as I love Jesus, I keep his commandments.  "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."  The secret is love.  Amen.

Jesus uses figures of speech in this Gospel reading; and the disciples - his first followers - had difficulty understanding what he meant. I suspect we today still have difficulty understanding these figures.

Jesus says that he is the Good Shepherd - the One who lays down his life for the sheep. Jesus calls his own by name - and when they hear his voice - they follow him. Jesus further says: "I-am-the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture." (John 10:9)

In the Bible, people are often referred to as sheep. Some people today don't particularly like to be referred to as sheep because they think that sheep are among the dumbest animals on earth. Actually sheep are beautiful and useful animals. They are created by God and are quite intelligent. Unlike cattle they can be led rather than herded. They also have a highly developed sense of voice recognition.

When I grew up in Medicine Hat, Alberta, my stepfather had a flock of sheep. I would watch with amazement as he would go outside and call the sheep. Although they were grazing and scattered all-over the field, at the sound of his voice they would immediately come to him. Sometimes I would go out to the field and try to call the sheep. Although I would try my best to imitate my stepfather's voice, they wouldn't even look up from their grazing. A tourist in the Middle East reported watching several shepherds all bringing their flocks of sheep to a water hole at the same time. To his astonishment, after the sheep had drunk their fill, at the call of their shepherd, each sheep would return to the flock to which it belonged. The sheep responded and followed their shepherd because they knew his voice. They had learned to trust him because a good shepherd is willing to lay down his life for the sheep.

Every night the tourist would see him do that literally. As dusk fell, a shepherd would lead his sheep to a safe place - either a cave or a walled enclosure where the sheep could be safely sheltered for the night. The shepherd then would lay down across the opening with his staff in his hand. The shepherd literally was the gate for the sheepfold. With his staff he would control who would enter or leave. He was ever watchful to keep the sheep from leaving and predators from entering.

This imagery helps us to understand what Jesus means when he says, "I am the good shepherd.. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."(John 10:11) We are not sheep. We are, however, the people of God, called and claimed by the One who has laid down his life for us - Jesus Christ, the Son of God! What a wonderful assurance this is - that Jesus, who suffered and died for us and all people, is also the gate to the kingdom of God. What a relief it is to know that I am not the gate which keeps people in or out of the kingdom of God. I give thanks to God that this role has been assigned to Jesus. Our role is simply to follow Jesus.

We follow him because we trust him. We follow with deep humility, knowing that none of us has a right to be in the sheepfold. We are here because -already in baptism -- we heard God calling us: "a beloved child of God." We are here because we believe the promise that nothing can separate us from God's love in Jesus Christ. We are here because we continue to hear the voice of Jesus who alone can make God -- and God's will --- known to us. We follow that voice because in Jesus we see as much of God as we ever hope to see in this life.

As we read in the gospel of John: "The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known." (John 1:17_18) Jesus, who is close to God's heart - through his life, death and resurrection has made God's heart visible to us. From Jesus we learn that God's heart overflows with love and compassion for the human family.

Jesus' love for the human family frequently brought him into conflict with the religious authorities of his day. Following the heart of God led Jesus to cross the cultural and religious boundaries of his day. He sought out the poor, the outcast and the disenfranchised. He sat at table with them and welcomed them into the kingdom of God. Because Jesus followed the heart of God -- healing the sick on the Sabbath and allowing his disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath -- he was accused of breaking the law of Moses. Finally, following the heart of God led him before Pontius Pilate to be accused of blasphemy and to be crucified.

What Jesus said and did in his lifetime is our window into the heart of God. Looking into that window I see that we are called to welcome all people into the full life of the church, but especially the poor, the disenfranchised and those who because of their sexual orientation or other reasons feel excluded. Some may ask: "what then do we make of the passages in scripture which are often seen to suggest otherwise?" For an answer we can only point to Jesus, the Living Word of God. He is the only One who can help us interpret scripture and understand what God's will is for us today. From Jesus we learn that simply following precepts in the Bible is not enough nor does it make us followers of Jesus. To follow Jesus requires courage. Perhaps, more than courage, it requires trust -- trusting that the One who calls us to follow also walks with us.

In his book about Martin Luther King Jr. -- "Bearing the Cross" -- David Garrow describes a time in Martin Luther King's life when many "strange" voices competed for King's attention -- voices of fear, voices of doubt, voices of despair. It was during the Montgomery bus boycott. King and his family were repeatedly threatened with violence. He feared for his family. At home, around midnight, the phone rang. An anonymous caller shouted a murderous warning: "If you aren't out of this town in three days, we're going to blow your brains out."

Sitting at his kitchen table worrying about the threat to his children, his wife and himself, he prayed. He confessed to God that he was losing his courage. As he prayed, he heard a voice, "Martin Luther," the voice said, "stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And, lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world."

King was convinced it was the voice of Jesus . Almost at once his fears and uncertainty disappeared. And the rest is history. Because Martin Luther King did not listen to the voices who claimed that slavery was the will of God, a black man today has a good chance to be the next president of the United States.

Being obedient to the will of God has its risks. Because Jesus looked into the heart of God and focused his ministry on those texts in scripture which breathed love, and compassion -- people who studied the Bible closely and devoted their lives to living according what they made of its teaching, rejected Jesus, accused him before Pilate and crucified him.

I pray that we will have the courage to follow Jesus, and allow the spirit of Christ to continue to call, gather, enlighten and to form us to be the people of God at this time in this place. If we do that we will be for others a window into the heart of God. I want to close with a prayer which comes to us from the Anglican Church Prayer
Reshape us, 0 Holy God,
until in generosity,
In faith,
and in expectation that the best is yet to come, we are truly Christ-like.
Make us passionate followers of Jesus rather than passive supporters.
Make our hearts as well as our churches places of radical discipleship and signposts to heaven, then, in us, through us, and _ if need be - despite us, let your dream for earth come quickly. Amen ... Amen . . Amen
Bishop Gerhard Preibisch

"The LORD is my shepherd..."  Image, symbol, metaphor, the language of poetry.  "The LORD is my shepherd... he makes me lie down in green pastures, and leads me beside still waters."  An icon painted with words, a mental image drawn from ordinary things.  But why?  Why not the language of discourse, or analysis, or explanation and clarity?  Why this language of poetry, of imprecision, of feeling, rather than some other language?

Maybe it's because other language simply can't convey the sense of "aha!" or of having been deeply moved or touched by something the way poetry can.  Maybe it's because image, symbol, and metaphor are the best we can do when trying to describe the indescribable, explain the inexplicable, and reduce to words what cannot be reduced to words.

Listen to how the physicist Erwin Schroedinger tries to explain the ramifications of quantum mechanics, a branch of physics of which he is considered the founder:

"...you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you.  You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable.  As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to striving and suffering.  And not merely someday': now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once, but thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over.  For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end." (source: Ken Wilbur "No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth" Shambala 1985 p.59)

Here is a physicist who must turn to poetic and religious language in order to convey what he sees in his mind after having worked through the complex and very abstract mathematics and observed the highly technical experiments of his field.  Why?  Because what he is talking about is so much beyond ordinary experience that plain description won't do.  Ironically, paradoxically, plain description would sound much more abstract than the language of poetry.  Poetry always turns to ordinary experience and uses it to describe extraordinary sensations or insights.  There seems to come a point in human experience when prose, plain description and explanation won't do; when only image, symbol, metaphor, the language of poetry is sufficient to the task.  This is the case in love, in grief and loss, and certainly in things pertaining to the Divine.

In one of the many letters that Martin Luther wrote to various people, he made this comment: "Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily"  (letter to Eoban Hess).  This is not some new insight of recent academic studies into communication; it is something that has been plain to many who deal with trying to convey the eternal in the context of the temporal; the Divine in the midst of the human.

All through his ministry, Jesus also reached for images, symbols, metaphors to express his message, to proclaim the breaking in Reign of God, to communicate with the people.  Shepherds, landowners, slaves and tenants, merchants, housewives, parents, siblings, sheep and goats, whatever came to hand that in some way would convey to people, out of their own experiences, what God was about.  Had he explained to people rather than told symbolic stories, he would probably have been forgotten, if for no other reason than that he would have seemed boring and incomprehensible to most of his intended audience.  As among the Greek philosophers, only the educated elite who had been trained in the philosophical systems of the day would have glommed on to him.

Images, symbols, metaphors: the valley of the shadow of death; the shepherd's club and staff; a table set out when enemies lurk; oil on the head; an overflowing chalice; to dwell in the house of God always.  Each image evokes a response, and not always the same response.  Each image evokes different responses in different people, and different responses in the same person at different stages in that person's life.

When I was a teenager in gang ridden Los Angeles, the valley of the shadow of death was walking home after dark.  Later it was illness and death in my family, then a long string of funerals in my first parish, then a growing awareness of Paul's words "die to sin and rise to Christ."  Different meanings, different associations at different stages in life: some more literal, some more symbolic, but always visceral, always in the heart and in the gut.

Why this language of poetry, of image, symbol and metaphor?  Marcus Borg makes the comment, "Metaphor... means to see as'... It emphasizes seeing, not believing.  The point is not to believe in the metaphor, but to see in light of it... Metaphor is poetry plus, not factuality minus.  That is, metaphor is not less than fact, but more.  Some things are best expressed in metaphorical language; others can be expressed only in metaphorical language" (Borg "Reading the Bible Again for the First Time"  Harper San Francisco 2002 p.41).

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.  Jesus the good shepherd.  Jesus the gate for the sheep.  We the sheep of God's sheepfold, the lambs of God's flock.  We hear the voice of our shepherd and we follow because we know that voice.  Surely goodness and mercy will follow us, and we will dwell in God's house always.  Images, symbols, metaphors, the language of poetry by which to see, a lamp for our feet on the path of life, an expression of God's presence when words almost fail.  Pictures to carry with us in our thoughts, wherever we go.  Images to mull over, meditate on, play with, try on.  Sometimes it's the only language that will do.  Amen.

The famous Christian writer Frederick Buechner, in an interview with the Christian Century magazine was asked, "Do you ever get invited to speak to church groups?"  His answer was, "Yes.  I say the best thing that could happen to your church is for it to burn down and for all your fax and e-mail machines to be burned up, and for the minister to be run over by a truck so that nothing is left except each other and God.  And then I say if you want to know what the original church was like, go to an AA meeting where all they have is each other and God, and they say to each other, we cannot live whole lives without each other and a higher power.  (Christian Century September 11-24, 2002)

It is an extreme statement, a statement meant to wake people up, and it is right on the mark.  We have lost our way because we have become comfortable, and I am as comfortable as any of us.  We have our wonderful congregation, but we also have lots of other things too, so many in fact that we don't really need each other or God, and because we know that the congregation will chug along, we can go away and trust that when we come back it'll still be here.

But the church began its life with tragedy and loss, so that the disciples had only each other and God, and had no idea where else to turn.   On the Sunday after the crucifixion, two of those disciples, not from the inner circle of 12, but from the group around them, the larger group that might have numbered up to 500 at one point, but had probably dwindled by then to a few dozen, two of these disciples, disappointed, broken hearted, defeated, left Jerusalem to go home.  How could they face their family and neighbours?  Their hopes and dreams about Jesus of Nazareth had been shattered.  All was lost.  The powers of oppression and corruption had won.

In their dejection, a stranger joined them and engaged them in a conversation, a miraculous conversation which gave them a whole new way of looking at what they had experienced, a kind of upside down way of reading the Bible, upside down anyway from what they had been taught.  It said that God's Messiah was not a conquering hero, but a suffering servant, and that defeat was God's plan.  These two had only each other and God, and in that the Messiah came to them and their hearts burned with a new understanding of the world and their purpose in it.

"Stay with us.  Tell us more," they insisted at the road house.  And then in the simplest, most every day gesture of all -- giving thanks and breaking a loaf of bread -- they recognized who this mysterious stranger was, and in that moment, just when they might have grabbed him and hung on to him, he was gone.  All they had left was each other and God.  But that was enough.  That was enough for them to turn around and go back, and reengage.

Fredrick Buechner's words scare me a little.  They scare me because I would never want any of that to happen, and because I know he's right.  A friend of mine who is a drug and alcohol counselor once said to me that recovering alcoholics have an advantage over the rest of us: they know they are sick and broken.  They know they need help,  they know that to do nothing, to go along the way they have means destruction.  So they have only each other and God to try to stay sober, to try to be healed.  The rest of us, by contrast, can fool ourselves into thinking that everything is good, we're fine, and we don't really need a community, and God is handy, as long as God doesn't interfere too much with our plans.

So I'm troubled.  I think about people in the Bible and their response to trouble.  When Job lost all his children and possessions, he was able to say, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall go; the LORD gave and the LORD has taken away: blessed be the name of the LORD." (Job 1:21)   And Paul was able to say "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ..." (II Corinthians 12:10).  These are qualities which I fear I might not be able to muster, should the occasion arise, and yet I know Frederick Buechner is right: that is where the Church began, and that is that place where the Church is always at its best: when all we have is each other and God.  Amen.

We often treat healing as a thing, an act, a miraculous reversal of the aging process, or of the consequences of unhealthy lifestyle choices, or of the consequences of exposure to toxic substances, or of the working out of genetic predisposition.  But as I am compelled to think about the matter each time we have a healing service, it strikes me more and more that healing is a lens through which we see the world.  It is a way of looking at things, a way of thinking about life and relationships, and a way of relating to God.  Healing is at least, and maybe at its core, a state of mind or a particular awareness of reality.

Look, for example, at our reading from John for today.  The story of "doubting Thomas" is usually held up as a story about doubt and faith.  But look at it through the lens of healing and it becomes a different kind of story.  Thomas, the disciple who, when Lazarus had died, and Jesus was about to go to Judea where his disciples knew Jesus was a wanted man, said "Let us go with him that we may die with him..." in other words, Thomas who was prepared to face death with his master, when the moment came, ran like the others and hid.  He is now deeply wounded by his own guilt, his sense of failure, his feelings of inadequacy, not to mention his grief at having lost his master, this amazing teacher and healer named Jesus whom he followed for the last three years.  Thomas bears deep wounds of the soul, though he may have no wounds of the body.  Then the others suddenly claim to have seen Jesus risen!  It can't be.  It's a joke, a cruel practical joke.  "Stop it you guys!" he says.  "I'll believe it when I can touch his wounds!"  Thomas now also suffers from being alienated from the rest of his fellow disciples.  He is alone with his pain.

When Jesus appears to Thomas in the company of the others, a whole set of healings take place at once.  Thomas knows he is forgiven for his cowardice, his grief is healed, and he is reintegrated into his circle of friends.  Of course, his failure to act is still there in his past; Jesus' suffering and death are still there in his memory; and life in community is always hard work.  But this story about Jesus' appearing to Thomas is not just a story about doubt and faith; it is also an  image of healing and restoration.  There was nothing physically wrong with Thomas, but inside he was broken, wounded, sick to the soul.

So too we can see Peter's speech to the men of Jerusalem not only as a proclamation about Jesus, crucified, dead, and risen, but also as an expression of a healed way of seeing what happened to Jesus.  Peter could now see the hand of God in all of the tragedy.  "...this man," Peter says about Jesus, "handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the Law (i.e. the Romans).  But God raised him up..."  Peter could look beyond the normal human response of hatred, resentment, thirst for revenge, and see that the evil perpetrated by his audience was in fact part of the plan, part of God's design.  Peter could be healed of the ordinary human traits that seek tit for tat, blood for blood, death for death, and so on, and being healed of these, could embrace Jesus' call to love enemies and pray for persecutors, because he could see that the hand of God works in ways we would never expect.

If only later generations of Christians could have grasped this, instead of hunting down Jews as Christ killers every Good Friday.  It is a sign of the brokenness, the unwholeness, the lack of trust in God's guiding hand, that such Christians should lash out in hatred.  [Is it possible -- I only throw this out as a bit of speculation, I don't have the answer --- is it possible that forgiveness arises out of healing and forgiveness leads to healing? And as long as we are broken, we are unable to forgive, and as long as we can't forgive, we cannot be healed?  Maybe?  Something like that?  Something to think about?]

Moving on: Look at the First Letter of Peter for today through the lens of healing.  The author of this letter can hold together two things we normally would consider incompatible: the phrase, "you are being protected by the power of God through faith" and the phrase, "In this we rejoice, even if now for a little while you have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith... is tested by fire."  Our normal way of thinking is that suffering must mean that God has abandoned us, and God's presence means relief from suffering.  But we are not whole people in our understanding if we get stuck in this way of thinking.  We don't know what this or that struggle or burden or malady might mean in the long run or in the big picture of what God is doing in the world.  However, if we think about life through the lens of healing, thinking not in terms of a thing that happens, but rather a way of seeing, of receiving our experiences, then it may be that our troubles begin to look different to us.

Healing and wholeness go together, and seeing the world through the lens of healing means seeing the whole, seeing not only the human side of how things work, not only us as the centre of our universe (which we are not) but the whole thing: from the life of microbes to the life spans of stars.  We are made of the same stuff as the stars, and of the same stuff as the viruses and bacteria that infect us.  It all hangs together and we inhabit our particular part of it.  We are both resilient beings and fragile beings.  Humans can endure great extremes of hot and cold, abundance and starvation, but at the same time we can be permanently disabled or even killed by a blow to the head or a clogged artery.  Healing does not mean the suspension of the laws of nature, but rather the willing integration of ourselves into the whole which God has made, and the sweep of history which God directs.

Ultimately, I think, healing in the Christian context, is to know the presence of God, the presence of the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ, right here, right now, in here [point to heart/chest], and out here [gesture to room].  That is the ultimate shift in thinking, and the one which gives us the eyes and the mind of wholeness, of healing.  Amen.

In this sermon I want to accomplish two things: I want to grapple with the issue of the differences between the four resurrection accounts in the four Gospels, and I want to keep it short.  Let's see if I can succeed in both of these at the same time.

If you line up the four Gospels side by side, and compare how they describe the resurrection, or rather, what happened at dawn on Sunday at the tomb where Jesus' dead body had been laid to rest the previous Friday, you will see some notable discrepancies.

The beginning of this account is told most similarly by Mark and Luke: the women come to the tomb with the spices they've prepared, the stone has been rolled away, the body of Jesus is missing, one or two men in dazzling white clothes, who seem to be angles of some sort, appear to them, the women are amazed and frightened.  Matthew, as we heard today, adds the element of the guard posted by Pontius Pilot and the earthquake.  John simply has Mary Magdalene going to the tomb by herself.

In the next section Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell essentially the same story: the angelic man or men tell the women not to be afraid, they refer to Jesus as "the crucified", they tell the women to inform the other disciples.  In Matthew and Mark the man or men say that the disciples will see Jesus in Galilee, while the men in Luke refer to what Jesus had said in Galilee: namely that he had to die at the hands of sinful men.  John skips all this to begin his rather different story of Mary Magdalene, running back to tell the other disciples that someone has stolen Jesus' body, and then Peter and John racing to the tomb, seeing the clothes folded up neatly, and believing that Jesus had risen.  Peter and John leave, but Mary Magdalene stays.  She sees two angles sitting where the body had been, asking why she is crying.  She laments that Jesus' body has been stolen, then turns around to see someone whom she thinks is the gardener, but turns out to be the risen Jesus.

At this point all four Gospels coincide briefly, affirming that Jesus appeared first, and identified himself to either Mary Magdalene by herself, or Mary Magdalene in the company of two other women.  In Matthew then the women take hold of his feet and worship him, but in John Jesus tells Mary Magdalene not to touch him.

In Mark, Luke, and John the woman or women then go and tell the other disciples, but in Mark and Luke the disciples won't believe the women.  Finally, Matthew adds the conclusion to the incident with the guards.  The guards tell some of the priests what they saw.  The priests pay them a large sum of money to say that some of Jesus' disciples had stolen the body.  Matthew's punch line is: "and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day" (Matthew 28:15).

At first reading it is troubling to see such variation in the accounts, and the modern mind goes immediately to the thought: well, it must all be made up!  But look again, and consider the very peculiarity of these divergent accounts being gathered together as authoritative tellings of the Jesus story.  If this were simply made up, then either there should be one uniform story shared by all, or there should be four completely different stories.  Indeed, if the early church had been interested in fabricating or covering up, they would have suppressed the differences and put forward a uniform narrative.  In fact there was a man named Marcion who went through the trouble of crafting a unified Gospel and pushing to get rid of the four which tell slightly different stories about Jesus in favour of his one, consistent account.  But the leadership of the Church said, "No.  These are the accounts we have, for good or ill, and we trust those who wrote them."  In other words, the Church was not afraid of the differences.  If there were differences, they reasoned, then they have some purpose, or perhaps result from the fact that any four people telling what happened to someone else a long time ago will tell what they heard somewhat differently.

So what we have are the memories and handed on stories about this amazing Jesus, edited together or remembered by four different people writing anywhere from 40 to 60 years after the events, writing to their particular audiences, wanting to promote the message of and about Jesus, and doing so in a way that was meaningful to their readers.

So look past the little details and note the overarching commonality of the first Easter: one or more women from Jesus' band of followers go to the tomb.  It's empty.  There is an encounter with one or two men who seem odd, different, almost otherworldly, who say that Jesus is risen [remember, calling them angels can be merely to say they are messengers, which is what the word means, or is an interpretation put on these otherwise inexplicable men].  After this Jesus himself appears to the woman or women.  Then the woman or women go to tell the others.

It is the story of an unexpected turn of events, a surprise of a strange and unnerving sort.  Something happened there that morning, something whose details got sifted and sorted through the years according to need, preference, purpose of telling, and so on, but still something strange, the outline of which is discernible despite the differences of detail.

I will leave you to decide for yourself what happened.  Grapple and struggle with it.  Picture yourself there, trying to make sense of things which don't make sense.  I don't know what conclusions you'll come to, but as for me, I will declare:  [chant] Christ is risen....  Amen.