The Peace Pulpit

As we try to listen deeply to God's word now during this liturgy, I think it's important to remind ourselves of what is happening during these weeks of Easter. We don't say it's the fourth Sunday after Easter; it's the fourth Sunday of Easter -- we're beginning the fourth week of the Easter time, the time of the risen Jesus. During this time, what the liturgy guides us in doing is trying to hear how the disciples came to understand Jesus. Think back to Easter Sunday, and if you remember, we listened to the gospel of Mark, and that gospel is rather unusual in the way it ends, because it's a very abrupt ending.

I sense, as I’m sure you do, great excitement in the church this morning as we gather to celebrate this feast of Easter. We sing out with great joy, we clap, we rejoice, and that’s the way it should be, because we celebrate the most extraordinary event in all of human history -- a unique, one-time-only event. And even though we have the spirit of excitement and joy, I think that very often, we really do not reflect on how extraordinary it is, what we celebrate.

In a few moments when I return to the altar, I will proclaim the words of the Eucharist prayer, and I ask you to listen to the beginning words of that prayer right now, because they really express what God is trying to teach us through the lessons of today.

The words are: "Yes, God, you are holy. You are kind to us and to all. For this we thank you. We thank you above all for your son Jesus. You sent him into this world because people had turned away from you and no longer loved one another. Jesus opened our hearts and our eyes to understand that we are brothers and sisters and that you are the one God of us. Jesus brought us the good news of life to be lived with you forever in heaven, and he showed us the way of that life, the way of love."

The most important part of the scripture message for us this evening that I hope we will take away with us as we leave this church and go back out into our daily lives are those words that the disciples hear from God: "This is my beloved son. Listen to him. " Listen to him.

If only we would do that. All of us. Each of us. Listen to Jesus. Listen not only to his words but listen too by watching what he does, how he acts. He speaks through his actions too. But listen to him.

Sometimes I think when we hear incidents described such as the one in today's gospel, where Jesus heals someone, performs what we think of as a miracle, we think that that's put in the gospel to prove that Jesus is God, but that's not the case. You see, when the gospels were written, by that time, sometime after Jesus had died and risen from the dead, they were written by communities of people who were convinced simply by their experience that Jesus is God; they didn't need any other proof. They had experienced the risen Jesus in their life. So these stories are not given to us to prove that Jesus is god, but rather to show us what kind of God we worship.