Early Church theologians had a concept called “theosis”—often translated as “being made” or even “turning into” God, an idea which can sound almost offensively presumptive to our ears. But I suspect they understood this “becoming God” to be a process similar to the responsibilities that fell upon an adopted person.

Within the Church, we often make [the Gospel] far more complex than it needs to be. We pile on so many peripheral descriptions and explanations and theological addendums or asides that what’s supposed to be “good” news ends up so drenched in bad news that anything good is very nearly lost. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Good News doesn’t need to be couched in death and blood and Hell.

God does act, but God tends to operate with an infuriating amount of patience and deliberation. Also, God doesn’t necessarily work for us as much as with us and through us, using our observations, insights, and skills to bend history closer and closer to the Kingdom. Change takes time, work, and energy—and we need to embrace all three if we ever expect to see any results.

“Today’s message is exceedingly simple: love one another. Do you want to know God’s will? That’s it—the whole thing. Is there some sort of secret to resolving conflict? Again, there you have it. What about dealing with people who seem hell-bent on being your enemy? The answer’s the same: love one another.”

“We, the Church, are the Body of Christ still incarnate in this world. We—as a group and as individuals—are responsible to act justly, to deliver God’s messages, uncomfortable as they may be, to work for reconciliation and reunion when—not if—we fall into conflict. We are the ones meant to heal, to welcome, to share with one another and those around us, and to answer when Jesus calls. So we too need to learn to listen.”

“…if you don’t ‘get’ the Trinity, you’re in good company. No one ever has, and it’s pretty much certain that no one ever will. God’s being is one of the foundational mysteries of Christianity—as soon as we think we have a grasp on it, we need to have the humility to recognize that we are, in fact, undoubtedly and completely wrong.”

…humans haven’t always looked at the world the way we do today. We know that modern science and its resulting technologies have rewritten our understanding of the universe, but they’ve remade parts of our lives so thoroughly that we can’t even remember things that were completely normal—even instinctual—for a majority of human existence.

The Ascension is one of those stories from the Bible that isn’t simply strange but genuinely does not make any sense today. We hear it as Jesus pulling a Superman and flying up into the sky, suggesting not only that heaven is found in some sort of alien world or alternate dimension but that Jesus is somehow inherently different from us—more demigod than actual human.

Somewhere along the line…we who inherited the mantle of the Church lost touch with that loving, prophetic Spirit. We found it easier to establish rules and customs justifying the exclusion and even outright rejection of certain groups of people rather than walk in the discomfort of the Spirit’s voice. For centuries we clapped our hands over our ears and squeezed our eyes shut, doing everything we could to avoid God’s vision…

Over this and the past few Sundays you may have noticed the frequent repetition of one of John’s favorite words: “abide.” It’s been showing up in both our Gospel and Epistle readings for several weeks now. For me, the concept behind “abiding” has a kind of passive quality. It conjures up images of waiting for a bus or, more positively, settling into one’s home each evening.

In the modern world most of us have little or no context for what Jesus is talking about [in John 10]—not just the ins and outs of sheep husbandry, but even the immediate situation he’s facing in our passage. He isn’t making isolated statements while cuddling a newborn lamb or resting in a pasture. He’s addressing and trying to make sense of a very real and potentially dangerous experience.

This year our Gospel readings primarily come from the book of Mark. Mark, likely the first Gospel to take written form, tends to focus more on action and interaction than on narration, as we encountered this morning in his singular account of the resurrection. But what we read wasn’t just the resurrection—it actually appears to have been the original ending to the entire book…

The Bible traces these kinds of internal fights and rivalries—this tendency to blame and isolate from one another—all the way back to the beginning of humanity. What we see playing out today in attempts to set “genuine” Christians against undefined “false” ones or “real” Americans against our just-as-American neighbors is simply that original sin playing itself over and over again…

With thousands of years of history and theology to look back upon, it’s easy for us to recognize Jesus as prophet, priest, and king, but in the earliest days of Christianity—particularly before Rome destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem—that second title would have been questionable at best.

One thing we know for certain about the author of John’s Gospel is that they loved wordplay. The characters are constantly misinterpreting one another. It happened during the cleansing of the Temple in the previous chapter,[1] and it’s already occurred in this conversation between Jesus and a Judean elder named Nicodemus.

The Ten Commandments are pretty famous, to say the least. In Lent, Episcopal Churches have a tradition of opening their services with a recitation of them. They showed up as one of our Lectionary readings today. Religious or not, the general public even has regular arguments about whether or not they should appear in government buildings. But late last night, just before bed, I had a sudden thought: what if there aren’t actually Ten Commandments? What if we’ve been looking at them wrong for hundreds or even thousands of years?

It’s easy to look at the Bible as if it were a map, some sort of guide that shows us how to get to Disneyland or where to find a buried treasure. We start at Creation, take the exit for the Ten Commandments, turn right at the Beatitudes, trundle our way down the straight and narrow, make sure to avoid that oh-so-tempting turnoff for the byway to hell, and with enough time and luck, finally arrive at the Kingdom of Heaven…

Many ancient cultures expressed sorrow or repentance through the use of ashes. You’ll read about people throughout the Hebrew Bible who cover themselves with them—Job; Jeremiah; according to the book of Jonah, the entire city of Ninevah showed their collective repentance in that manner.

Today’s reading comes from the first half of [II Corinthians] and appears right after a discussion recognizing the “glory” of Moses’ teachings while emphasizing that Jesus’ life-giving Gospel appears even more glorious. He contrasts how after receiving the Torah, Moses had to cover his face to hide its radiance after standing in God’s presence. In Jesus, God’s glory is unveiled for all to see.

It isn’t part of our readings today, but our I Corinthians passage calls me back to the story of Cain and Abel from early in the book of Genesis. We still get caught up in sibling rivalry today, but it’s a problem that goes way back—all the way to the world’s first brothers.