Commandment and Tableau (John 13:31 - 35; Acts 11:1 - 18)

This morning, in the passage from John we read, we jump back in time, to before the crucifixion, before the weeping and wailing, before the disciples disappeared on Calvary like so much Hebrew smoke . . . they’re gathered in an upper room, lamp-light low, digesting their food, maybe picking a bit of it out of their teeth, and suddenly Jesus says “one of you will betray me . . .” and after good, old, impulsive Peter gets the disciple whom Jesus loved to ask who is going to do it—maybe he was tired of getting rebuked, of being made an object lesson—after the disciple whom Jesus loved popped the question, he says “the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” And he dips the bread in the dish, hands it to Judas Iscariot, who practically knocks over the table getting out of there.

And that’s where today’s passage begins, right after he leaves.  And as usual in the gospels, what comes before any given passage colors its interpretation—or at least it should—and this is no exception.  And so what we have here is the aftermath of Judas’ betrayal—or at least of Judas’ dramatic exit to do the deed, and the first thing Jesus says is “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.”  Notice the past tense: when Judas got up from that table, after John says Satan came into him, the die was cast.  Things were set in motion, it was all over but the shoutin’.  Now the Son of Man has been glorified—and by “glorified” he means crucified, hung up to die on a tree—now the Son of Man has been crucified, and God has been crucified in him.

Oops … did I say “God has been crucified?”  Well … yes.  It was God in Christ who was murdered, who was killed … if as the doctrine of the Trinity says the work of the father is the work of the son is the work of the Holy Spirit—it was indeed God who was crucified there with the Son . . .

Anyway, Jesus has been glorified, God has been glorified, and not a soul around the table knows what he is talking about.  But he plows right ahead anyway, they’ll understand some day, and he tells them “Little children:  I am with you only a little longer, and you will look for me, but you will not find me, because where I go, you cannot come.”  And then he launches into one of the most famous sayings in the bible: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”  And it is almost as if one causes the other, as if Judas’ leaving prompted the new commandment . . .you shall love one another as I have loved you. And how has Jesus loved them?  What is the exemplar of that love?  Well, it is seen in the fact that the Son of Man has been glorified.

How is it that Christ has loved them?  By dying for them, by being spiked to that Golgotha tree.  And Jesus commands us to love one another the very same way: and that is that we lay down our lives one for another.  And in fact, he says, that will be the mark of my disciples: that they show this love for one another.  I wonder how often we think about that when we sing that song . . . they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love . . .

But if the song doesn’t quite do justice to the extent of that love, it also doesn’t quite cut it in another way: the song defines the boundaries of that love very broadly.  Or rather, it doesn’t give any.  It just says they’ll know we are Christians by our love … period.  No qualifiers. But in this passage, Jesus defines it as “love for one another,” for other disciples.  This is not quite the broad mandate it seems:  Jesus’ mandate is for Christians to love one another, to be “glorified,” to lay down their lives for one another, not necessarily for anyone else.  In this passage, Jesus lays down a community law, a rule for being a Christian family, for being—as Paul would put it—the body of Christ.  Christians are to be a body bound together by love.

Saint Benedict of Nursia knew this.  He spent a whole lot of time as abbot at a monastery in Subiaco that had, shall we say, a small problem with this concept of loving one another.  He’d lived a solitary few years in a cave in the cliff just below that monastery, and he’d gotten to know the monks, and they’d gotten to know him—I guess maybe they borrowed sugar from each other or something—and the monks had come to believe he was a stand up guy, so when their Abbot passed away they asked Benedict to take his place.  And he did.  He became their leader, but it wasn’t long before he discovered that they didn’t exactly live the love command, and what might have clued him in was the fact that they tried to poison him.  Maybe their copy of John didn’t have that part, or maybe they just got it backwards, and were trying to make Benedict give up his life for theirs, but the fact was they tried to kill him.

Now, I don’t know for sure, but this seems to have had an effect upon Benedict, so much so that he began thinking about what it meant to live in community, what it meant to love one another as Christ loves us, and eventually—after having founded and led thirteen monasteries—he began to write his rulebook on how to live in Christian community, and it was so well-thought-out, so balanced, that eventually the majority of monastic orders adopted it, whether they called themselves “Benedictine” or not.

And in the prologue to that Rule, he describes the monastic life as running “the way of God's commandments with expanded hearts and unspeakable sweetness of love,” and the first and second “instruments of good works,” the bases for doing the work of God, are loving the Lord God “with the whole heart, the whole soul, the whole strength... and then, one's neighbor as one's self.”

But the foundation of the Rule, and thus the foundation of monastic life, is not love, but rather obedience … obedience to God’s commands.  The very first sentence of the Rule goes like this: “Listen, O my child, to the precepts of thy master, and incline the ear of thy heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of thy loving Father . . .”  All the commandments in the world, whether they be new commands or old, don’t amount to a hill of beans if they are not followed, if they go in one ear and out the other.  Listen, Benedict says, don’t just hear the words of the master, but truly listen, with your whole heart, with your whole self . . . he uses intense imagery, designed to catch hold of the reader, to make her sit up and take heed: incline the ear of your heart.  He knew—as did the ancients and those who've been on my current Adult Ed class—that the heart is an organ of perception, and what he is saying is listen with your whole self, your body, mind and heart.  Lean your whole being, your entire psyche, into the precepts of God.

And Benedictine monks spend a lot of time listening to the commands of God … their day is balanced between work, prayer and study . . . and the study is intense meditation upon the Word—what we call lectio divina, divine reading—and as they immerse themselves in God’s word for hours each day, they surely do incline themselves toward God’s will, they lean into it and reorient themselves to God’s precepts and will like a plant bends itself to grow into the sunlight.

Well.  This sermon certainly has bent itself to go in a direction I hadn’t planned … I thought I’d talk about the love Jesus prescribes in this passage of John, circumscribed by the bounds of community, and then how it is expanded first by Jesus himself—love thy neighbor as thyself—and then by God in the tableau presented to Peter in the passage from Acts that Jim read: all things are clean and, thus all people as well.  All people are to be loved, all our neighbors.  It started out being an ebony and ivory, we are the world kind of thing, and it ended up as … what?  A treatise on obedience?  On listening for God’s word?

Sometimes it happens like that . . . sometimes the Spirit—or at least I hope that’s who it is—leads us to where we least expect.  And the upshot of this leading, I think, is the thought that all the scripture passages I and our liturgists stand up here and read week after week, and all the interpretations I might give, however cogent and to the point, will do no good if we—and I include myself here intentionally, you’d be surprised how easy it is to not really listen to a passage you’re preaching on—they will do no good if we don’t really listen to God’s word, if we do not incline our hearts and minds and souls to it.  The word of God does no good if we don’t hear it in the fundamental deep sense Benedict is talking about, and then as he puts it, faithfully execute it.  If we do not hear and do God’s word, how are we a community of God?  How are we different from anyone else?

Over the past few years, we’ve been engaged in such a listening activity, such a discernment task … we’ve been listening to God’s will, trying to figure out what it meant for us.  One of the things we've felt called to do is reorganize so as to more efficiently operate as a church, and as our Transformation 2.0 process winds down, we are talking with community leaders about increasing our involvement with local issues.

But with all this comes a particular nervousness, a lot of tension as we try to come to grips with change that is happening.  People worry about the future, and the uncertainty can combine with the nervousness to blunt the mission of God.  But through it all, as the song says, they will know we are Christians by our love, and we’re not just asked to love one another, to let love overcome our fear, our tensions, our nervousness, but commanded to do so. We are commanded in today’s passage to love one another as Jesus loved us.

But these commandments, embodied in our Word from God—who is Jesus the Christ—do no good if we do not listen to them with the ears of our hearts and then execute them.  They do us no good—and they are given to us for our own good—unless we obey.  I say these things in the name of God the one who Creates us anew, every day, and God the one who redeems us, and God the one who comforts us and teaches how to pray, Amen.

The Story of Gazelle (Acts 9:36 - 43)

Acts was written by the author we know as Luke, and it was written as a sequel or a companion-volume to his Gospel. It relates the early history of the church, and in the first half, centers on Peter, but describes the witness of Phillip and Stephen's martyrdom as well. It's as if to say “look at the faithful witnesses, look at how the gospel spread, by many disciples of our Lord Jesus.” The second half of the book focuses on Paul, beginning with his first missionary journey in Chapter 13. But in our passage, Peter is once again front and center.

Last week, we saw Peter's commission on the beach, by the fire, as Jesus said “feed my sheep,” emphatically, powerfully and without qualification.  We noted that it was a reinstatement of sorts for Peter, after his denial and abandonment of Jesus at the hour of his greatest torment. There in John, Jesus told him to take over doing his work – not exclusively, not as the head of the church, but as a tender, a shepherd, a servant. Peter was to do the work of the Lord, the work of his master, feeding his sheep.

In today's passage, we see Peter going about this business of the Lord, and it's introduced by a passage that's not officially in the lectionary, but provides the context nonetheless. Verse 32 says “Now as Peter went here and there among all the believers, he came down also to the saints living in Lydda.” That's the impression Luke was trying to give -- Peter going here and there, to and fro, back and forth, moving from believer to believer, doing the Lord's work, feeding the Lord's sheep. And in Lydda, Peter heals a paralytic, one Aeneas, who Luke says had been bed-ridden for eight years.

And you might just recognize that name if you've ever read Virgil – it's the name of the central character in his epic poem, the Aeneid. The poem was written in about 20 B.C., and by Peter's time – and Luke's – it was a beloved and widely read classic. And so you've gotta wonder at the name Aeneas for this guy – at the least, he was undoubtedly Gentile. At the most, the name is symbolic, in a literary sense, and it looks forward to Chapter 10, right after our story, when Peter receives a vision and converts Cornelius, the first acknowledged Gentile Christian in Acts.

And so our passage is nestled in this context, a context of Peter's awakening to the fact that the Gospel is for everyone, not just the Jews, and in form it's a straightforward miracle story. It begins by introducing Tabitha, which means “gazelle” in Aramaic. (In Greek, gazelle is Dorcas, and thus the two names.) Tabitha is from Joppa, which is west of Jerusalem near Lydda, where Peter had just finished curing Aeneas. And what's remarkable about it is that she is called a “disciple,” a title always reserved for men. In fact, this is the only place in the whole New Testament that a woman is called “disciple.” We know that women held positions of authority in the early church – Paul had high regard for female leaders like Phoebe, for instance – but only here, in our passage, is a woman called “disciple.” Now, I don't want to make too much of this, but I think it's a remarkable show of openness for the time, and only serves to heighten Luke's reputation for inclusiveness and belief in the universality of the Gospel.  Within our story, it functions to underline her importance and general, all-around goodness – not only was she “devoted to good works and acts of charity,” but she was a disciple to boot!

And so it was a great loss to her circle of friends when she got sick and died, and they washed her and laid her in state in an upstairs room. Now, because Joppa, was near Lydda, the disciples heard that Peter was there, and so they sent two men to him saying “Do not delay in coming to us!” And across the ages we can hear the urgency in those voices as they send for the renowned Simon Peter, miracle worker, healer, one of the original twelve Apostles of Christ. And when he gets there, he goes up into the upper room – and does that sound familiar? – and finds all the widows there, weeping and mourning and, undoubtedly, gnashing their teeth.

And you might well ask – what widows? Luke doesn't say, but uses the term as if his readers would know what he was talking about. Which doesn't help us, two thousand years later, but we do know that there were groups of single women, collectively referred to as “widows,” who formed guilds or associations to do charitable work. They were the forerunners of holy orders – nuns and the like – and Tabitha may have been a leading figure of such a group. So you can get a vivid picture of the scene – the room's darkness pierced  by dusty window-rays of the sun, perhaps falling on the dead woman's face; women weeping, holding out their sister's work, her robes and tunics and head-dresses, holding them out to show Peter, mute reminders of their loss.

And I can picture Peter gently herding them from the room, just as Jesus did when he healed the temple official's daughter, and kneeling there on the dirt floor, beside the dead woman. And what he prayed we do not know, but throughout Acts – begun in Pentecost fire –  the Holy Spirit powers the Apostles' mission, supporting and advocating and driving their ministries. Jesus had said he would send the advocate, the comforter, the empower-er, and at Pentecost it came, dancing and playing around the apostles' heads, and since that time, it had been there for them, helping in their weakness, interceding with sighs too deep for words. And so on that day, in that upper room in Joppa, Peter invoked the Spirit of God, and when he was done, he looked at Gazelle and said just two words: “Tabitha, arise,” or as the NRSV puts it “Tabitha, get up.” And it is of great importance that the Greek word for arise is the same Luke uses for Jesus' resurrection. And so we're meant to associate this action with that done by God for Jesus, only here Peter is invoking God's spirit to do the job.

And see!  Tabitha stirs and moves, there in the hush of the upper room. She twitches and opens her eyes, and there is Peter, standing over her, and she wonders at him, because he was not there when last she closed her eyes, and she wonders at where she is, and she arises, unsteady at first on her feet – for she has been dead for many days – and takes two faltering steps forward, wobbly, like a baby deer, like the gazelle whose namesake she is. Peter takes her hand and helps her up, and then calls out to the saints and the widows and brings her forth, and she is alive! And the sweetest hopes of her loved ones have come true, there in the dusty upper room, and there is rejoicing and weeping with joy, and praising the God of their mothers and of their fathers, and thanking Jesus Christ, their Lord and master, for this, his bounteous gift.

And word spread all over Joppa, and the miracle of Gazelle became known to all, and many came to new life in the Lord Jesus Christ because of it. As for Peter, he went to stay in another part of Joppa, with Simon, who was a tanner, and thus unclean. And it wasn't all that long before Cornelius, the first recorded Gentile convert, came to believe as well.

_________________________

 

Like many of the stories in Acts, ours shows the early church in action, doing the work of God, and it's of use, I think, to take a look at the dynamics of this ministry. The story is impossible to date with any accuracy, but it probably is set sometime in the first fifteen or twenty years after the crucifixion. Even if it reflects the time it was written – some 25 years later than that – it's a remarkable look at Christianity in the first century. It shows a faith that's already spread well beyond Jerusalem's walls. Joppa is almost 40 miles away, on the Mediterranean coast, and there's a well-developed community. In addition to the guild of widows already mentioned, there's probably at least one house church, for there's a group of disciples who can reach a consensus to send for Peter to help.

And look at Peter – last week, we saw his personal side, as he impulsively plunged into the Sea of Galilee and swam to shore to greet Jesus; as he was hurt when Jesus asked not once not twice but three times if he loved him, as if his master didn't believe him when he said yes the first two times. And now we have a Peter who seems all grown up, all business, a mature faith leader, who has taken Jesus' commission seriously.  It's less a personal Peter than an icon, an archetypical apostle, going to and fro doing God's work, seemingly without angst or emotion.

And this fits Luke's purpose in this book – his idea was to recount the story of the early church, but from a theological point of view, more than historical. So each story is placed just so, and is told in just the right way, to make theological hay.

This story of Gazelle is told in a way that's highly suggestive of several others in the bible. Scholars have pointed out the similarities with Elijah raising the widow's son in first Kings, and Elisha's raising of the Shunammite woman's son in Second Kings, and that this casts Peter in a prophetic role. But what it reminds me of the most is a miracle of Jesus, when he raised the temple official's daughter from the dead. Remember? Jesus was summoned to the house, but it was too late – the daughter had died. Sending the family out of the room, Jesus brings her back to life, commanding her to get up. And so to my mind, this is an example of Peter acting in Jesus' stead, carrying on Jesus' work. Luke is saying “See?  Peter obeyed God. He did the work of Christ.” And it's as if Jesus had never left – and in fact, Christ was still working on earth, Peter was just a vessel.

At the same time, we're just as clearly meant to associate Tabitha's resurrection with that of Jesus – at the Pentecost festival in Acts 2, it is Peter himself who declares to the crowd that “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.” And now, Luke describes Tabitha's resurrection using the same words, but with one important difference. In Jesus' resurrection, it is God who is the sole actor, God who is the one who raised up his son, but in Gazelle's case, Paul invokes the Holy Spirit, which in turn does the raising. It is clearly a resurrection in the light of and as a consequence of Jesus' resurrection. This miracle, this resurrection, this raising of Tabitha from the dead stands as a marker, a witness to the power of the resurrection of Jesus in all our lives.

Paul said that Christ is the first fruits of those who have died, and that the resurrection of the dead—whatever that means—is through him.  And these images are the key to understanding Peter's miracle, for it reminds us that all of the new creation, all of the new life comes by way of Christ. Because Christ was first raised from the dead, so was Tabitha.  Because Christ was first raised from the dead, so the people of Joppa came to believe, came to new life in the Lord. And because Christ was raised from the dead, so will we all be made alive in Christ.  Amen.

 

Fish or Cut Bait (John 21:1 - 19)

 

John tells us about four times when Jesus appeared to his followers. First Mary Magdalene, at the empty tomb, when she ran to tell Peter and that other disciple—the one Jesus loved—but it was only Mary who saw him, and even she didn't recognize him, not at first, not until he spoke her name in the crisp, morning stillness.  The second and third times were to the disciples, gathered at the house for dinner, doors locked for fear they were hunted, and Jesus was just standing there, plain as day. One minute he wasn't there, and the next he was—just like that! Right through a locked door!

He told Thomas he could put his hand in his side, and in the holes in his hands, but Thomas just looked and said “My Lord and my God!”  And now, John tells us one more story—it happened by the Sea of Galilee, which he called Tiberias. Seven of his disciples were there—Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, and John and James—the Zebedee boys—and two others. And Peter says “I'm going fishing” and the others think it's a pretty good idea, so they pile into a boat and put to sea. And they fish all night but don't catch even one measly little fish.

 

      And I don't know about you, but I can relate to not catching any fish.  I mean, it's the story of my life—I can be using the same bait, the same rod, the same reel, the same aftershave of the fisherman right next to me, and he'll catch all the fish. I remember the last time I went fishing with my family—my Dad and I spent the whole day motoring around this little lake, not much bigger than the parking lot out there, and my brothers spent the whole day in another boat, on the same little lake, and guess who caught all the fish? So I know how the disciples must have felt—tired and discouraged and hungry.  But then something truly strange happens—just after sunup, they look over at the beach and there's this . . . man there. And we know it's Jesus, 'cause John tells us, but the disciples don't know who he is. Just like Mary, and just like on that Emmaus road over in Luke, his followers don't recognize him.  And Jesus calls to them and says “Children, do you have any fish?” and the disciples say “Nope” and he says “Cast the net to the right side of the boat” and just like that, they do it. And what's amazing to me is not that they catch fish—after all, it is Jesus, we're talking about here . . . anybody who could heal the blind and walk on water and raise Lazarus from the dead could certainly fill a boat with fish. No, what's amazing to me is that they do what he says!

Here's this guy, they don't know who he is, or what he is, and he says “Cast in your net on the other side, boys” and they do it. Without any kvetching or whining or back-talk, they just shrug their shoulders and do what they're told, and of course they haul in a mess of fish, a hundred and fifty three of them, to be exact, because he is the Son of God.  Of course, now they know him, now they recognize him, or at least the disciple Jesus loves does.  But note the sequence, the order of events—first they obey him—which takes faith—then they recognize him.  Obedience, faith, comes before the sign, before the miracle.  

And only when they fish as he tells them do they haul in a catch.  And good old Peter jumps right in, as he always does, like that other time in the boat, when he walked across he waves . . . But this time he doesn't sink, he makes it to shore, and finds Jesus frying up some fish, and after they've hauled their catch to shore, he sits them down, there on the beach, and feeds them. And John tells us that Jesus comes and takes the bread and gives it to them, and does the same with the fish.  And it's no accident that the scene seems familiar, that the words John uses resonate with us.

     It reminds us of the feeding of the five thousand, it has a sacramental feel, the feel of the Lord’s Supper, where we are nourished for our mission, sent out to do the work of God.  And, of course, that’s what this story is about—the sending-out of the apostles to do the work of God.

 

It was Jesus himself who said “I will make you fish for people.” And here Jesus is on the beach, not physically with the disciples, but directing operations nonetheless. When they look to him, they will be successful in doing the mission of God, even though he’s not with them in body.  But he's not far away—just a hundred yards, says John—and in the breaking of the bread, in the communal fellowship meal, they are reunited with their master. In their faith, their obedience, and in the sharing of the bread and fish, they know him, there on the beach in that Galilean dawn.

 

Finally, after breaking bread with his followers, Jesus sends Peter to do God's work. “Simon, Son of John,” he says, “Do you love me more than these?” And Peter seems indignant—“Yes, Lord, you know I love you,” as if it’s self-evident, as if it’s beyond argument. Of course I love you. Apparently, he’s forgetting the evidence to the contrary when he denied Jesus three times in just one night. As if to remind him, Jesus asks the same question three times. “Peter, do you love me more than these?”

     “Yes Lord, you know that I do.” “Then feed my lambs.” A second time: “Peter, do you love me?” “Yes Lord, you know that I do.” “Tend my sheep.” And finally, “Peter, do you love me?” and now Peter is hurt, and maybe just a little bit mad: “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” But Jesus’ reply is the same: “Feed my sheep.”

      In a way, this marks the reinstatement of Peter.  He’s goes from Mr. Squirming Three-Time-Christ-Denier to a position of leadership. And it's clear what kind of leadership Jesus has in mind, and it's not exactly leading God's armies against the powers of darkness. He's asked to feed and to tend—in other words, he's asked to serve. And what will be the reward of this service? Will it be a seat at the right hand of Jesus as he rules in heaven? Will it be a mansion in the sky by and by? Will it be walking down those heavenly streets of Gold? Well, it might be, but Jesus doesn't say it  here . . . What he says instead is that Peter will suffer a terrible death, just as he did himself.  As my teacher Charlie Cousar put it, the Christian life is no Horatio Alger story of obstacles overcome and success achieved. It's dangerous and risky, and involves a loss of control as life is given to Christ. It is fundamentally kenotic: a pouring out of one’s life for another.  And Jesus' final command to Peter is: “Follow me.”

     The contours of Christian discipleship are laid out in our passage—its shape, its movement and its worth. It is the story of the church, of individuals bound in community, working together at a single task, in a single boat, with a single net. They work in harmony, casting the net and hauling in the catch, over and over and over again. And as the church looks to Jesus, as it casts its net as he directs, the fruits of its labor are overwhelming, they fill up the Christian boat to the sinking-point.

Albert Schweitzer wrote about this passage, and he said “He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old . . . to those who obey him . . . he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings . . . and they shall learn in their own experience who he is.”  It is through our discipleship, through our obedience and our work that we come to know the Christ. Knowledge of him comes from experience, from doing, as much or more than from books.  And he calls us, the church, the community of God, into his company, into the presence of the risen Lord, to eat and drink with him, just as he did that day on the beach, and we are fed and nourished by his abundance, only to be sent out once again as emissaries of Christ to a suffering world.

And how is that mission to look?  What is it to be all about? Peter is a model, not only of Christian leadership, but Christian life and discipleship. Peter's love for Jesus is translated into service, it is transformed into acts of compassion. In the commissioning of Peter, Jesus equates Peter’s love for him with discipleship, servant-hood, with pouring himself out for the world just as Christ did.

There's a shelter for the homeless at First Presbyterian of Atlanta.  Every Sunday morning, the doors of the church open, and they file in, shabbily-dressed, almost all men, a few hundred of the twenty thousand street-people in that city.  And the director of the shelter said to me: “Most of these folks are not here because they were laid off, or mainstreamed or had their home foreclosed or any other reason like that. Most of them are here because they abused drugs, or alcohol, or just because they have a problem with authority, and can't hold down a job.”

And I struggled with this concept because like a lot of us, I was brought up with this notion of cause-and-effect, that what goes around comes around, and that somehow, if we mess up, or act badly, we get what we deserve. And in our economy, that makes a lot of sense, and you hear it all the time—why should the money of people like me, who work hard for a living, go to support those who don't?  But our passage stands over against that philosophy, because Jesus' command to Peter is absolute. It's cut and dry. There are no conditions to Jesus' love.  He doesn't say “If their situation is through no fault of their own, feed my lambs” or “have them fill out these forms in triplicate so we can means test them, then tend my sheep” or “make sure their pre-tax income is below the federal poverty level, then feed my sheep.” It's simply “feed my lambs."  “Tend my sheep.”  “Feed my sheep.”  Brothers and sisters, Christ's followers are called to continue his works of kenotic, self-emptying compassion.  In a real way, we are called to be agents of God's grace. And that grace is free, there are no conditions. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Jesus tells us “Feed my sheep.”  Period. End of story. 

But it's in the feeding, in the work and sweat and toil, in the fellowship that we are nourished. It's in the sacrifice and the suffering and, yes, the dying that we discover who Jesus is, and experience abundant life in Christ.  Amen.