First Presbyterian Church Of San Anselmo

At Pentecost, the Spirit fills everyone gathered with a spirit of boldness, a spirit of generosity, and a spirit of real and lasting community.

In the forty days leading up to the Ascension, Jesus and the disciples had the chance to say good-bye – part of the aliveness that they experience in Resurrection. In Resurrection, no good-bye is ever final.

The Apostle Paul walks around Athens and notices a temple to “An Unknown God.” The God who is beyond our knowing, reaches out to us, in the Risen Christ, and is close at hand.

When we pause to think, reflect, and feel, life begins to speak.

In the days after Resurrection and Pentecost, the community had everything in common, sold what they had, and gave to any as they had need. The Resurrection experience of radical sharing in community is alive with possibility.

This Sunday, we considered the familiar story of the two disciples who encounter the Risen Christ on the Road to Emmaus. The Risen Christ is alive in the world in the steady, sustaining rhythm of human companionship – sharing life’s journey – walking and talking – companions on the way.

Like the women headed to the tomb, we know what it is to wake up in a bad-news world. On Easter morning, there is a different kind of headline: Christ is risen! The Good News is alive in the world, and so are we.

Palm Sunday is a protest. The people follow Jesus, shouting and embodying together Good News. Holy Week is how that Good News then gets lived out.

God creates, commands, and impels an ethic and moral order that center the protection, care, and well-being of the most vulnerable.  NOTE: Our usual method of recording did not work as planned, and as a result the sound is not of as high a quality this week.

As a woman washes Jesus’ feet, we see her lavish love, in response to God’s, inviting us to live out our own.

In the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus invites us to sit down and rest in the presence of the holy.

At a banquet, Jesus tells a story about a banquet. The Good News is... all are welcome. The invitation is for everyone. The response is ours to make.

The Good News is that God’s love for us in Jesus Christ catches us by surprise – because God always loves us and the whole world more. What Jesus does in his testing in the wilderness and at the wedding at Cana should catch us by surprise. It’s not the way the world works – but it points us to the way the world ought to be.

Jesus teaches us how to be fully human, and then invites us to be salt and light for the world. How we live our lives teaches something. It makes a difference in the world not only through direct cause and effect – but it also ripples out in what people see and what people hear; in how we convey, in our lived-out lives, what matters most and what it means to be human. We learn by living – and our living teaches something too.

The Beatitudes describe how God is infusing the world with good. They give us a lens – that draws us into a vision –that comes to life in the lives we live. What we learn with Jesus is nothing less than how to be fully human.

Jesus invites us to ask questions – to seek understanding beyond what we know now;  to learn and grow; and to learn to live together in the complexity of the things we can’t yet comprehend.

As part of the humanity we have in Jesus Christ, God gives us the capacity to learn from our mistakes, and help set the world right.

Standing knee-deep in the waters of baptism, we find our true humanity in Jesus Christ. Jesus embodies and invites us into that full humanity – the fullness of life lived out in mutuality, sharing, love, healing, and peace.