3rd Sunday of Easter                                                                        15 April 2018

Acts 3:12-19, Psalm 4, 1st John 3:1-7, Luke 24:36b-48

The celebration of Eastertide continues into its third Sunday, 50 great days given to Hilariter, joyfulness, because Christ is risen. The marks of the cruel execution still displayed on his risen flesh^[1] bear witness that Jesus has triumphed over death’s sharpest blow, God’s ultimate joke on the diabolical forces of evil, sin, and death. We who believe because of the bold witness of the disciples  are drawn together as family, a new kind of family, immersed together in the waters of baptism.

Family is foundational and good, and the family tie we share with one another, and with all Christians in all times and places, is a sacred bond. Our family includes even those who followed God by faith before the coming of Jesus. Peter and John, having just healed a man lame from birth, explain to the astonished crowd in Jerusalem what has happened by an appeal to family ties. “This man was healed,” they say, “by the power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”^[2] It would be like a patriotic American speaker appealing to Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. Not only did Israel’s God heal the man, but also raised Jesus from the dead. Peter and John are telling the people of Jerusalem that their God, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,  is doing a new thing in Jesus, and that there is still time for them to be part of it.

The 1st Epistle of John also places us in a family. “See what love the Father has given us,  that we should be called children of God.”^[3] This says something important about our interaction with God. More than anything else, it is a relationship, a family relationship. God is our parent, we are God’s children. God’s parental role is to guide, shape, and form us

into who we were created to be. Our role as God’s children is to trust, obey, follow, and grow, exercising childlike faith in God, our loving heavenly parent.

The psalm provides an image of a childlike faith, as opposed to a childish faith. Childlike faith is a quiet trust in the goodness of God and of God’s good intentions, a confidence that God does indeed do wonders for the faithful, and hears us when we call upon him.^[4]  Childlike faith quiets the heart when those “middle of the night” concerns awaken us and demand our fretful attention.  Childlike faith is faithful in worship, which leads to ever increasing trust in God, which makes the heart glad, the spirit at peace, and the soul at rest.^[5] 

Childish faith, on the other hand, results in misplaced and misled worship^[6], and an ill at ease, “glass half empty” frame of reference. “Oh, that we might see better times,”^[7] is the lament of childish faith. God’s children, confident in God’s faithfulness, are content to be childlike, full of wonder at what God is doing, joy in seeing God’s plan unfold, trust that God is leading along right pathways, cherishing each moment as gift, and confident in God’s faithfulness through thick and thin.

Although Easter assures us that the final victory, the last laugh, belongs to God, we also know that we live somewhere in between the dawn of the victory and its final realization. We know that in this “in between time” all things are being, as we prayed on Good Friday, “brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made,”^[8] our Lord Jesus Christ. “Being brought to their perfection” is not to say, “have been brought to their perfection.” It is an ongoing process, an unfolding victory, as the grace of God in Christ continues to be made known in the world.

We know, also, that there are those in this world whose life circumstances do not appear  to  be a sharing in God’s Easter victory, but rather more like a Good Friday tribulation. Such stories abound around the globe, but we need not travel the globe to find them, for they are being played out in our city and county, where children suffer from neglect, abuse, violence, abandonment, to name but a few causes of suffering. The month of April is designated as “Child Abuse Prevention Month,” a time set aside to remember all children and to do what we can to alleviate suffering in their young lives. This month our church is partnering with

the Children’s Advocacy Center of Tom Green County to provide travel kits for children who are placed in foster care. The toothbrushes, travel-size toothpaste, and other personal care items that we bring on Sundays will be a small expression of our care and concern, part of what I sense is a larger calling for Emmanuel Parish because of our stewardship of the Kreps Trust, a significant endowment given to support ministry with children and youth.  

This cooperation with the Children’s Advocacy Center feeds a hunch that I have about the Kreps Trust being a call from God for Emmanuel to serve underserved children, to help them draw into relationship with our heavenly Father, to help them know that there is a God who loves them, and that there are people who won’t hurt or neglect them, but who will help and heal and guard and protect them, a people who live as children of the heavenly Father, brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, a beloved community, a joyful family, a place of shelter, where one can lie down, sleep in peace, and dwell in safety.

God bless the children, and God bless us, as we live in childlike faith, brothers and sisters in Christ, and continue to grow into the beloved community, the joyful family that God intends for us to be.

-Matthew Rowe+