Taylor Mertins

Paul says the Law brings wrath, but the Gospel sets free. Doing all of the right things, and knowing the right people, and making the right choices, sounds wonderful in principal, but turns out to be impossible. We can’t make ourselves righteous, we can’t rectify ourselves, we can’t redeem ourselves.

Thankfully, God is completely caught up in the work of doing things we could never do ourselves by giving life to the dead and calling into existence the things that do no exist.

No matter what we do or leave undone God continues to hand over the Good News through letters, songs, preachers, and pulpits until our hearts are strangely warmed and we know, deep in the marrow of our souls, that Christ has taken away our sins, even ours, and has saved us from the law of sin and death.

Pentecost is the promise that we don't have to build a tower into the sky to get close to God; God has come to us.

The arrival of the Holy Spirit means we are no longer defined by our mistakes, but only by God’s grace.

The movement that Jesus begins, the adventure of faith we call church, is constituted by people who know we have all the time in the world, made possible by God’s patience, to challenge the world’s impatience, by cross and resurrection.

The gift of the Ascension, of Christ’s ruling at the right hand of God, is the reminder that we can wait and pray. It’s a gift!

Paul writes to the church in Rome that faith comes from what is heard and what it heard comes through the preaching of Christ. The story has the power to change everything.

It changed everything for Paul! The man who agreed to the stoning of Stephen now stands surrounded by stones that invoke his proclamation. He is compelled to preach in order to set the people free and bring about the end of religion.

That’s an odd way to put it. But Christianity isn’t a religion. Or, at least, it’s not supposed to be. Religion, properly understood, is a set of habits, practices, or tradition that are done in order to achieve something, usually from the divine.

Basically, if you do x then your god will do y.

Christianity, however, is the Good News. It is something told to us about what is already finished. Christianity frees us from all the shoulds and musts that we might turn to the Lord who first turned toward us in Jesus Christ.

The story of the Gospel is a promise that no one is outside the realm of God’s mercy, that the worst thing is never the last thing, that grace is greater than our sin.

Living for other people is a completely radical and bonkers idea. Getting rid of possessions so that others can benefit is a wild and far cry from how things are supposed to work. Holding all things in common isn’t normal.

It’s therefore not surprising that the disciples in Acts constantly find themselves in trouble - the kind of conflicts that John Lewis called good trouble.

It’s good trouble because the church is, was, and always will be counter-cultural. All of these things described in Acts sound like the beginnings of a political revolution.

We just have another word for it: Gospel.

The Gospel has a way of digging itself in, commingling with all of our thoughts about how things are supposed to be. The Good News declares that God has changed everything, we only need to act accordingly.

In short - the people are moved to move upon hearing the story. That’s what the word “repent” means after all, it’s a turning or a returning to something.

And that something has a name: Jesus.

It’s a confounding image to take in - these ragtag disciples tripping over themselves in the streets, drunk on the Spirit. It must’ve garnered quite the crowd. However, none of the twelve, Peter included, had much to show for themselves. No exceptional credentials, no fabulous degrees from Jerusalem University, no financial capital to invest.

They have nothing, really.

Nothing except a message.

And, thankfully, the message is always greater than her messengers...

Notice: On Easter, Jesus’ response to the sins of his followers isn’t to berate them or judge them or even damn them. He doesn’t give them a list of things to do, or programs to start, or even prayers to pray.

Instead, he just comes back to them, to us, with love.

How odd of God.

Easter invites us to do nothing more than trust that the Good News really is that good - that God in Christ refuses to abandon us regardless of how good or bad we may be.

If Easter becomes anything less bizarre than that, then we can’t call it the Gospel.

Perhaps a night like tonight would be easier to handle had Jesus offered himself to the eleven but not to Judas. Maybe it would sit better with us if Jesus had drawn the line between those who are in and those who are out.

But no, there’s our Lord caressing the feet of his betrayer, who will shortly use those feet to march out of the room and deliver Jesus to death. Maybe this is Jesus’ way of parabolically embodying another commandment - to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

If we assume that being Christian is somehow synonymous with do-goodery, victorious virtue, and modest morality, then this night is a rather robust rebuttal. If we think that, as Christians, we sit at Jesus’ table with clean hands and a spotless resume, if we think that our feet are washed because of our good behavior, well, then we’re wrong.

John is begging us to see the scene, to take it all in, the feet, the hands, the hope, the loss, all of it.

It’s a ringing reminder from the strange new world of the Bible that Jesus came to seek and to save sinners and only sinners. Or, as Robert Farrar Capon wonderfully put it, even the worst stinker in the world is someone for whom Christ died...