Who Are The Sheep?

April 26, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

 “Very truly, I tell you.” These are the opening words of John 10 in the New Revised Standard Bible.

But when I read this passage as a boy in the King James Bible, Jesus said, “Verily, verily I say unto thee.”

I thought that was an odd way to talk. Jesus, of course, spoke in Aramaic and these words are cast in Elizabethan or Shakespearean English. But I was fascinated by the way they rolled off the tongue and eventually I put them in a little song.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee
I am the master of the gate
You should approach on bended knee
And don’t be fretful while you wait.  
I am the shepherd, you are the sheep,
And I’ll rejoice when the pen is full
Full of the righteous, faithful meek
‘Cause I’m not in this for the wool.

Martha tells of her experience years ago watching shepherds gather a straying flock of sheep in rural Wales. She said the sheep looked ugly, wooly, and dirty, quite unlike the little white lamby doll she had as a child. I wondered if she got enough to the flock to also notice they smelled bad.

Familiarity with sheep reek is not as common as it used to be but it’s a helpful clue that good shepherding is harder than it looks. 

As with many animals, sheep lose their cuteness a few weeks after birth and very quickly become too heavy to carry on your shoulders. There is no biblical record that Jesus ever did that, nor does it seem likely that walking behind a fetid flock would inspire him to hoist a sheep. The ubiquitous portraits of Jesus with a cute, fluffy lamb around his neck are best viewed with artistic skepticism in air-conditioned vestibules. Do not try it at home.

But the metaphoric relationship of shepherds to sheep is just what we need to understand our relationship to Jesus. And the fact that Jesus lived in an agrarian culture suggests he didn’t compare us to sheep because of our precocious sweetness. There are less agreeable ways in which sheep behavior reminds us of ourselves.

According to the ever popular Sheep 101 website, sheep gather in flocks and have an almost irresistible instinct to follow a leader. In 2006 in eastern Turkey, 400 sheep plunged to their death following a ram attempting to cross a 50-foot deep ravine. That’s a helpful reminder that, when facing a moral decision, one should avoid succumbing to peer pressure. 

Another sheep habit that reminds us of us is the ovine drive to over-consume everything in their path. The ravenous appetite of one flock kept the White House lawn trimmed to overbite level during World War I, when President Wilson devised practical ways to cut grounds keeping costs.

There is a major difference between us and sheep. Unlike us, sheep appear to have little awareness of the vast differences within their species. They have no sense of the “other,” no xenophobia, no classism, no prejudice against black sheep.

This is a good thing because there are more kinds of sheep than any other species, more than a thousand distinct breeds. There are fine wool sheep, long wool sheep, medium wool sheep, carpet wool sheep, hair sheep, fat-tailed sheep, short-tailed sheep, rat-tailed sheep, and no-tailed sheep.

But lest this staggeringly tedious information distract us from the metaphor at hand, let us return to Jesus’ own reference to varieties of sheep:

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10:14-16)

The allegorical reference to the good shepherd is clear, but the rest of the phrase has provoked more argument and conjecture than all the other verses in this chapter.

What did Jesus mean when he said he had other sheep? And who were they? Did Jesus mean followers of other faiths? 

Bible scholars tend to dismiss the notion. More likely, they say, he was referring to his own followers who had reached different conclusions about him. The disciples knew there were other schools of thought about Jesus’ identity. There were also admirers of Jesus who didn’t hang with his entourage but dropped his name anyway:

“John said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.’” (Mark 9:38-40)

Other theories about the identity of “other sheep” are denominational chauvinism. Many Christians are sure the other sheep must be everyone who is not us. Catholics had the same thought when they saw Cerularius, Luther, Henry VIII, and Calvin bolt the fold to form their own divergent flocks. When viewed from the perspective of the Vatican, Jesus’ statement can sound like a veiled threat to the others: “I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”

Within the last century, ecumenical partnership agreements have made it less likely that Presbyterians will regard, say, Lutherans or Anglicans as “other sheep.” Even so, there are vast differences in the ecclesial styles and beliefs of Christian churches. Some churches make gonads a condition of ordination, some invoke Jesus’ sacrifice by ingesting grape juice and Wonder bread, some sprinkle, some dunk. It would take a gigabyte of hard drive to track and classify all the “other sheep” out there.

One of the most appealing brands of Christianity is also one of the oldest. The Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church trace their origins to A.D. 52 when the Apostle Thomas came to Kerala. Thomas, popularly known as “the doubter,” reportedly preached to a Jewish enclave that converted to Christianity. 

When it comes to authorities on other sheep, few churches speak with greater credibility than the ancient St. Thomas Christian community in India. India is the birthplace of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism and hosts the world’s largest numbers of Zoroastrians and Baha’is. Christians in India have interacted with other faiths for centuries, and they have accumulated vast stores of wisdom about interfaith relations.

Several years ago I was among a group of ecumenists invited to meet the senior Mar Thoma Metropolitan. He was tall with a long white beard, crinkly eyes, and a gentle smile. He wore a pink frock and probably didn’t know that behind his back church journalists called him “The Pink Panther.” In contrast to his magnificent vestments, his bare, bony feet were festooned with tattered flip-flops.

The Metropolitan spoke softly to us American ecumenists as we balanced tea and biscuits on our laps. He made generous comments about the churches in the United States and the gracious welcome they had given him.

“We come from churches that are so different in so many ways, and yet we are all the same family because we all call on the name of Jesus,” he said soothingly. “And, dear brothers and sisters, when at last we come into his heavenly presence we may find that he is called by many other names as well.”

The metropolitan spoke with such quiet authority that most of us overlooked the radical meaning in his words. Afterwards, on the drive home, we argued about what he meant. What other names is Jesus called?  Was the metropolitan raising the same questions as Tim Rice, lyricist for Jesus Christ Superstar, who lets Judas ask the age-old questions:

Tell me what you think
About your friends at the top.
Now who’d you think besides yourself
Was the pick of the crop?
Buddha was he where it's at?
Is he where you are?
Could Muhammad move a mountain?
Or was that just PR?

These questions will endure as long as we live, and so will the debate about the identity of the “other sheep.”

While we are waiting to discover what, if any, other names Jesus is called, we can take comfort in the fact that we already know the most important answers.

For one, we know Jesus the Good Shepherd is not a rejecter of any sheep, regardless of who we are or what we believe. “I lay down my life for the sheep,” he said. He could have added: “No questions asked.” God sent Jesus to save all us sheep, regardless of whether we agree with each other or even like each other. God doesn’t worry about our differences. God loves us all – Zoroastrians, Muslims, Jains, Lutherans – all of us. And Jesus died for all of us. 

Even so, we still wonder. Was Buddha where it’s at? What is the eternal relationship between Mohammad and Jesus? For Baptists who have for centuries been consigning Buddhists and Muslims to hell, these are awkward questions.

But we can waste a lot of time debating how God plans to save the other sheep, because God is in no hurry to tell us. And those of us who have been saved by our faith in Jesus Christ are not being asked to consider other paths to salvation. 

But we cannot ignore the fact that God loves those who have not chosen our path, not can we disregard Jesus’ instructions to love those sheep as much as we love ourselves.

Presbyterian pastor Dr. Bryon E. Shafer writes “that in my dialogue with persons of a differing faith, I as a Christian encounter insights that bring me to a fuller and more dynamic understanding of God's truth. And indeed I have had such experiences.”

Once we understand that, we can suspend our frustrating debates over the identity of the “other sheep” and focus on the ovine metaphor that assures us God will not rest until all us sheep are safe.

“So Jesus told them this parable: Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulder and rejoices.” (Luke 15:3-5.)

Given the malodorous reality of sheep, the ultimate message must be that God loves all of us more than we can possibly imagine.

I Didn't Recognize You. Have You Lost Weight?

April 19, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, B.Y.

The Twilight Zone encounter on the Road to Emmaus is one of three appearances of the resurrected Jesus in Luke’s gospel. 

Two travelers are walking together when a mysterious stranger appears.

Only one of the walkers - Cleopas - is named. The other walker is the second mystery in the story. Some scholars think Luke either had a lousy copy editor or that the unnamed person was Cleopas’ wife and, by first century standards, not worth identifying.

What we do know is that both travelers had known Jesus for years and know what he looked like. But when a stranger approached them they didn’t see the resemblance.

That’s understandable. For one thing, Jesus probably looked a lot better than he did the last time they saw him, when he was scourged raw, his face twisted in the agony of crucifixion. The stranger may also have been wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional Arab covering that would hide his face. Many artists and cartoonists have drawn a keffiyeh into the picture when they portray this scene on the road to Emmaus.

We can only speculate why the two travelers – Cleopas and what’s-her-name - didn’t recognize Jesus. Not only did they not recognize him, they actually seemed to feel superior to this cryptic stranger.

“What’s up?” the Stranger asks, all friendly-like, and they snap at him. “You don’t know, man? Or, as the New Revised Standard bible puts it, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”

And Jesus – who could resist many temptations but not the urge to tease his friends – said, “What things?” So Cleopas and what’s-her-name immediately begin to proclaim Jesus’ resurrection, which is ironic when you think about it. Their first effort at evangelical witness was to grab Jesus by the robe and tell him about Jesus.

At the end of the story, Luke reports that “their eyes were opened” and they recognized Jesus. As soon as they did, Jesus, apparently still playing them, abruptly disappeared.

As our friends on the Emmaus road demonstrated, it’s not easy to recognize Jesus in our midst at any time in history, whether we know what he looks like or not. But one thing is sure: if we’re going to pick out Jesus in a crowd, we'll have to ditch the blonde image of Sallman’s Head of Christ, and we’ll have to ditch our own presuppositions, the “my Jesus” that limits him to our personal biases and makes him hard to spot.

A pastor friend of mine once told the story of having a late-night visitor at the Manse. The visitor was a homeless woman who obviously hadn’t bathed in weeks. “Please, Reverend,” she said. “I hate to bother you but I’m living in my car and I haven’t eaten in days. I’m not a druggy, Reverend. I need food.”

Pastors hear stories like this all the time. But it was late at night and my friend was tired, so he went to a box in his office where he kept The Deacon’s Fund, ready cash for emergencies. The only cash in the box was a $50 bill – far too much for a meal. But he sighed, and handed it to the woman.

The woman gasped at his unanticipated generosity and grabbed my friend's hands.

“The hands of Jesus,” she said. “The hands of Jesus.”

Embarrassed, my friend freed his hands and sent the woman on her way. But as he lay awake in bed, he had a sudden thought. “Was she talking about my hands?” he wondered. “Or were my hands grasped by a stranger I didn’t recognize as Jesus?”

In that same church there was a regular worshipper named Dick Jalopy. He started drinking as a teenager and in high school his friends called him Sloppy Jalopy. By the time I knew him, Dick was a recovering addict and more than a little eccentric. He believed too much of the national budget was being spent on the Vietnam War and too little on services to the poor, and he carried his protest to political meetings dressed in a false white beard, red cap, red jacket, Bermuda shorts and decaying high tops. He called himself “Santa Cause.” And even without the costume, he looked creepy with his pock-marked skin, long snarly hair and bandy legs. He also smoked constantly, explaining with a cough, “A lot of addicts beat the drugs but never the cancer sticks.”

I used to watch Dick come into church on Sunday mornings. He had his preferred pew (as most Baptists do) and members of the congregation tried to sit far away from him. But he was tolerated because that’s what Baptist do, or try to. I don’t think he ever joined the church but he never missed a Sunday.

One Sunday during the organ prelude, I stared at the back of Dick’s head. What’s up with you, Dick? I mused to myself. Sure, you love God and you love people and your faith keeps you clean. But you’re strange, man, and you make people uncomfortable. And no one knows where you live.

Suddenly the organ swelled with the strains of, “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus,” and in the process of standing I was so surprised I lost my balance.

My God, Dick, I thought. Are you Jesus, man?

Sloppy Jalopy? Jesus?

It’s the kind of thought one has when one misses the morning coffee, and I quickly dismissed it. But for years, every time I saw Dick, I’d think: that’s exactly what Jesus might look like to us. Strange. Enigmatic. And he would make us uncomfortable.

Okay, probably Dick Jalopy was not Jesus. But that’s also true of the Jesi we carry in our hearts, white and blonde and holy like Sallman’s head, or glowing and red-bearded like the Holman Hunt figure standing at our door antd knocking.

These images don’t make us think of the Jesus who violated religious traditions by healing the sick on the Sabbath, or by flailing a whip at the money changers. or declaring to his followers that none of this is about you, but about the poor, the imprisoned, the disabled, the oppressed and those drowning in economic injustice.

No wonder Cleopas and what’s-her-name didn’t quite grasp who Jesus was when they fixed their gaze upon him.

“Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets declared,” Jesus told the couple, and they still didn’t recognize him. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”

In a strange way, Jesus was more Santa Cause than Sallman’s head. His defiance of tradition and convention made people uncomfortable, and they turned away from him.

That’s why the Emmaus Road story can be disturbing. If I’m honest, I’ve got to wonder. Would I recognize Jesus if he joined me on a stroll through Times Square? Or would I dismiss him as a strange and eccentric figure who failed to meet my expectations. Would my heart burn within me as he talked? Or would my mind wander because he was saying things I didn’t understand?

And when this stranger went on his way, would I go with him to the judgment?

My prayer is that I would walk so close to Jesus that I would see him among those he called “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine: the poor, the powerless, the hungry, the imprisoned, the immigrants, the victims of abuse, the invisible persons among us.

Help us remember who you really are, Jesus, and the people to whom you came as a servant messiah.

Walk with us, Jesus. And allow our hearts to burn within us.

Is it Jesus? Or is it AI?

April 12, 2o26. Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

When was the last time you suspected a widely shared rumor was not true?

Did you ever get an email from a Nigerian prince who claimed he had millions of dollars to share with you and all he needs is your social security number?

Did you ever get a call from an insurance company that claims your car maintenance insurance has expired and you need to send them money immediately?

Have you received texts that appear to be from a close relative who says he’s in jail and needs you to send bail money immediately?

Most of us can recognize a con when we see one. In the Internet age we have to be very careful when outrageous claims or pictures are posted about the lives of rock stars or politicians.  Sometimes it’s easy to see through the deception of Artificial Intelligence; that's probably not Ronald Reagan and Jack Kennedy schmoozing happily while putting together on a Trump golf course. In such cases we embrace our doubts.

At other times it’s possible to tell the difference between AI and reality. Did Rachel Madow really report the landing of an alien space craft at exit 7 of the Taconic Parkway? Is Prince William really putting his Uncle Andrew in irons and dragging him to the Tower of London?

Well, it looks real. But we are entitled to our doubts.

But was Thomas entitled to his doubts?

    The anecdote that made Thomas famous will be read in thousands of Christian churches this week. It's from John 20:24-25, one of the accounts of Jesus' appearances after his resurrection. 

"But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’" (NRSV)

    So Thomas didn't believe dead people get up and walk. That's not a hard position to defend. Such a thing is impossible to believe.

    A lot of things are impossible to believe. Thomas would have been appalled by the approach conceived 1800 years later by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland.

    "Sometimes," Alice says after interacting comfortably with a talking white rabbit, a disappearing cat, and a mad hatter, "I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

    What an admirable trait: establishing a quota for the number of impossible things you will believe. We all know people who can believe just about anything. What a blessing that is. Doubt is so dark and lonely, while belief is so comforting, so blissful.

     Have you ever believed impossible things?

    If you haven't eaten breakfast yet, here are some impossible things that thousands of people devoutly believe and insist on convincing their family and friends.

    One, NASA scientists have discovered a "missing day" in time which corresponds to biblical accounts of the sun standing still for a day.

    Actually, the "missing day" discovery goes back to a book written by Harry Rimmer in 1890, titled, The Harmony of Science and Scripture. The discovery has been particularly popular since at least 1936, when it began to be reported by radio preachers. I can't begin to understand the math that would reveal a missing day in history, but perhaps that is not important.

    Two, Scientists drilling in Siberia went too far and ended up punching a hole through to Hell, where the screams of the damned drifted up to them.

    Accompanying this report are possibly contradictory, possibly plausible stories that the scientists (a) ran screaming from the hole, shouting, "I can't listen to the agony," or (b) promptly accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior, or (c) both.

    Three, a group known as "The Second Coming Project" is seeking to clone Jesus from the DNA of holy relics, such as the Shroud of Turin.

    It's hard to tell from these reports whether the project was inspired by Jurassic Park, the novel and movie in which long extinct dinosaurs are cloned when scientists retrieve their DNA from mosquitoes trapped in prehistoric tree sap, or whether the scientists knew that carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin reveals it to be 1500 years too young to have been Jesus' burial garment. The curious thing is that no one from the Second Coming Project has been interviewed by Fox News.

    Four, airlines will not pair Christian pilots and co-pilots out of fear that the rapture will snatch away both crew members capable of landing the flight.

     I can't remember when I first heard this report, and there are several versions of it. It may be the reason the Wright brothers didn't fly together at Kitty Hawk in 1903.

And, Five, perhaps the hardest claim to believe of all of them:

   Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.

    Thomas will be remembered as "Thomas the Doubter" until the end of time, and many Christians reserve a special place of scorn for him. How, we ask ourselves, could this ingrate doubt that his Lord has been raised from the dead?

    Despite our derision, it seems likely that we would have been in the same place as Thomas. If there is one thing we have learned about life, one thing we have seen with our own eyes, one thing we have experienced as irrefutable and irreversible truth, it is that death is the end.

    The dead do not rise.

    As soon as life leaves the body, the body's inner parasites multiply exponentially and the body begins its inevitable return to dust. "I will not believe," Thomas says. And when you come right down to it: why would he? Would you?

    Let's give Thomas credit: he says what he means and he isn't trying to deceive anybody. You don't often encounter that kind of integrity, even in the church.

    I have a social media friend who tells about an experience she had while visiting a church. The pastor – no doubt one of those glib guys who brandishes his broadly beaming mug on his webpage and on Facebook – told the congregation: "If you don't have a smile on your face, you shouldn't be here. Christianity is a religion of joy."

    The woman, whose daughter is seriously ill, fled the service in tears. She did not come to church to smile. She came looking for comfort and she is told that God dismissed her because she was not smiling.

    When Jesus appeared to his disciples, they were in no mood to smile, either. They had every reason to expect that their fate would be the same as Jesus' fate – in fact, Jesus had predicted that would come to pass. In days following Jesus' arrest and crucifixion, they had abandoned him and hid themselves in shame, tortured by a gnawing sense of failure. But when Jesus found them in hiding, all he said was, "Peace be with you."

Thomas missed that first appearance of the resurrected Jesus and he continued to dwell in the miasma of doubt.

But let's not let that darkness define Thomas for all time. When he did finally encounter the resurrected Jesus, when he could run his fingers across the nail holes in his hands and the sword wound in his side, a faith was born in Thomas that was unlike all others.

    Thomas, as we all know, responded to Jesus' offering of peace with an unequivocal declaration: "My Lord, and my God."

    Thomas was a doubter and he said so. What a great model he was for the rest of us doubters. We may come under some social pressure to falsify our testimony, and we may be told we are Judases if every day with Jesus is not sweeter than the day before.

But once we experience the presence of Jesus we can assure ourselves that Jesus will be with us, in times of joy, in times of sorrow, in times of discouragement, in times of exultation.

And so it was with Thomas, who never turned his back again on the living Christ.

    Thomas was very busy following his final appearances in scripture. After he had embraced Jesus as "my Lord and my God," he embarked on a missionary journey that rivaled Paul's. He traveled thousands of miles to South Asia, and founded two of the world's oldest Christian churches - the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the Mar Thoma Church of India. The testimony of these two churches thrives today, and their message is the same good news Jesus brought to the disciples, and the same good news we are compelled to bring to our neighbors everywhere: Jesus is alive.

And we respond in hope and faith when we feel the presence of Jesus:

“My Lord and my GOD!”

Selah.

Jesus' Swell New Body

 

Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026. Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

For the past several hours, the disciples have hidden in a darkened room, confused, grief-stricken, frightened.

The central figure in their lives, Jesus of Nazareth, has snatched from them. They have watched his agony on the cross. They have watched him die. They may even have thought that their own lives are over. What could the future hold for them in the dangerous byways of Roman Palestine?

But now it’s Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene is the first to visit the tomb of Jesus. In one of the most moving stories in scripture, in John’s gospel, she encounters a man she assumes is the gardener.

“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means teacher.)

How quickly her grief turned to joy. For me, this is one of the most poignant and dramatic scenes of the New Testament. After weeks of threats, days of fear, hours of horror, finally: a happy ending.

But why didn’t she recognize him?

Perhaps Jesus was the last person she expected to see walking around a graveyard and her mind wasn’t focused on the man.

But Mary was not the only apostle who didn’t recognize the resurrected Jesus.

In Luke 24, the resurrected Jesus joins two of his disciples on a walk to Emmaus, but Luke reports “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” (v.16). Mark reports, a bit mysteriously, that Jesus appeared to them “in another form” (Mark 16:12), which, as author Garry Wills writes in What Jesus Meant, is “hard to interpret.”

In Luke 24:36b-48, the resurrected Jesus startles the disciples with an abrupt and unexpected appearance.

He appears ghost-like through a solid wall.

But Jesus insists he is no ghost. He demonstrates the solidity of his flesh by eating fish.

How does he do it? What is going on?

“Jesus appeared in numinous form” writes Garry Wills in What Jesus Meant, “his body was not the earthly body anymore, but one both outside time and space and affecting time and space.”

The resurrected body of Christ could pass through walls and, ultimately, ascend into heaven, but Jesus could also allow Thomas to touch his wounds of crucifixion. Even more amazing, Jesus could eat with his companions.

And now it is Easter and we’re still wondering. What was Jesus’ resurrected body really like?

We can’t get the question out of our minds because the Jesus we see moving in and out of the closing scenes of the Gospels is not the Jesus we thought we knew.

That Jesus was – how shall we put it? – a hale fellow well met. He was good company, a charismatic preacher and teller of tales, an imbiber of wines, a bon vivant. His enemies took advantage of his epicurean ways by calling him “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” (Matthew 11:19). When Jesus was offered the physical pleasures of a foot massage or a soothing anointing by a beautiful woman, he accepted. When a fruitless fig tree denied his impulse to nosh, he cursed it (Mark 11:20).

There are other things we know about the pre-resurrected Jesus. When anguished, he wept. When pricked, he bled. When he met an obstacle, he had to go around it.

But in his post-resurrection period, so much about him is different. The dark circles of overwork have disappeared from beneath his eyes. His face seems younger, more relaxed. He looks like the old Jesus but he can make himself unrecognizable when it suits him. He somehow manages to walk through walls, but his body is corporeal enough to eat broiled fish. Even odder, the nail wounds of his crucifixion are visible, observable, touchable. He isn’t a ghost. He isn’t a zombie. Jesus’ resurrected body, which he defines in his own words as “flesh and bones,” is an unprecedented manifestation, a new state of being not seen since the dawn of creation.

We can’t stop wondering about it. We’re overflowing with questions we can’t wait to put before God. And one of those questions is, why did Jesus need a body? Wasn’t his soul’s immortality enough? Wasn’t it supremely liberating to shed his body and allow his spirit to fly free and unfettered for all eternity?

Let’s face it. The human body can be an uncomfortable thing to carry around with you, especially when it ages or falls ill. St. Francis of Assisi referred to his own body as “Brother Ass,” an obstinate encumbrance that led him into unspeakable temptations and had to be beaten into submission. Both Francis and St. Benedict, another mystic, punished their insubordinate bodies by throwing themselves naked into patches of thorns and writhing until they were suitably chastised and bleeding. Toward the end of his life, Francis concluded such behavior was patently nuts and began to protect his body to keep it well enough to labor, as a humble ass, in the vineyard of the Lord.

For C.S. Lewis, the human body is as likely to steer us toward faith as it is to lead us into temptation.

“There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter [he wrote]. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began ‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus riz.’ This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.”

The pleasures of the flesh may the succubae that lead us to sin, but they are just as likely to lead us to a more intimate experience of God. Olympic sprinter Eric Liddell preached that sermon in a single line in Chariots of Fire: “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”

There is no better instrument for detecting God than our bodies, even when they become old rattle traps. We feel God in the kiss of the sun on our backs, in the soothing caresses of a lover’s hands on our shoulders, in the culinary pleasure of a good meal, in the relief of slaked thirst or the contentment of a good wine. As a lifelong Baptist, I like to fast before partaking the Eucharist because the warmth of the wine fills my chest like a subtle indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

C.S. Lewis also believed that erotic pleasures were portals to heaven. Christianity’s embrace of sensuality – beginning with Jesus’ own fondness for food and drink – sets Christianity apart from other more ascetic religions and from the heresies of Christians who believe God wants them to suffer, flagellate themselves or avoid earthly delights as a preparation for heavenly bliss. The body is a gateway, not a barrier to God, and the more people love one another, the better they will understand what heaven is like. “To love another person,” the chorus sings at the end of Les Misérables, “is to see the face of God.”

But perhaps the definitive evidence that God created the body as a gateway rather than a temporary encumbrance is the resurrection of Jesus. Because Jesus’ soul, like ours, is immortal and indestructible, his eternal personality – like ours – was never in jeopardy. Mysterious as it is to us, God deemed that our bodies would be inseparable vessels for our souls and essential transoms for our insights into God’s truth. The resurrection of Jesus seals the relationship between our body and our soul forever.

And just as important, the resurrection of Jesus seals God’s deal with us that we, too, will have the same experience.

Just how that will happen is unclear, and Christians have always wondered about it. Even in the beginning of the church, so many had doubts about it that Paul adopted a scolding tone:

“How can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain … For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” (I Corinthians 15:12-17)

You can spend hours in theological libraries or on the Internet, reading tomes and sermons about each of these issues, and many of them are exceedingly clever. Some surmise that our resurrected bodies will have no gender and cite the Pauline declaration that “in Christ there is no male nor female,” while others conclude optimistically that our resurrected and improved bodies will be spectacularly superior to our old shells.

Those answers will have to wait and may depend on whether our resurrected bodies are still curious.

But what is clear today is that God created our bodies to fulfill the destinies of our immortal souls, and Jesus affirmed it when his sudden appearance scared the disciples out of their wits. It seemed ghostly enough, but he said, “It is I myself. Touch me and see.”

The resurrection of Jesus that was witnessed and proclaimed by his followers is, as Winston Churchill said in another context, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Even more so is your resurrection, and mine.

But amid all the speculation and puzzlement, one fact emerges clearly enough: God proved his love for us in “that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us … For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” (Romans 5: 8-10).

Something extraordinary happened that Passover long ago that kept Jesus’ contemporaries returning worshipfully to the site of his crucifixion and inspired his disciples to risk their lives to keep his story alive.

According to Paul, the numinous body of Jesus gives us a glimpse of our own numinous bodies when he shed our earthly shells.

“So it is with the resurrection of the dead; what is sown as a perishable thing is raised imperishable. Sown in humiliation, it is raised in glory; sown in weakness, it is raised in power; sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (I Corinthians 15:42-44, REB)

We hope, of course, that our resurrected bodies will be young, attractive, and more vigorous than the husk we carried through life.

But the promise of Jesus is that God will restore us to a higher level of understanding when our own numinous live outside time and space but continue to experience the effects of time and space.

But for those who view death as an inevitable result of the time and space in which we are imprisoned, it’s good to be reminded that God transcends our earthly limitations.

The Creator God who loves us all unconditionally sent God’s son into the world to conquer death. Regardless of how God did it, Christ is raised. And because Christ is raised, so will we be raised.

We cling to this hope: that what has been sown in us in weakness will be raised in power.

Christ is Risen. Hallelujah.

To Die Twice for the Gospel

March 22, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y. 

In 1968 I completed my four years as an enlisted assistant to Air Force chaplains and headed off to college.

Those four years in the Air Force went by so quickly and were such a tiny   segment of my life that it seems remarkable the impact of those years remains so strong sixty years on. I was 18 when I enlisted, which means I spent the entirety of those years before my frontal cortex was completely developed.

Even so, the Air Force was an invaluable introduction to ecumenical and interfaith customs and traditions. I typed sermons for Baptist, Methodist, and Catholic chaplains. I typed, prepared, and duplicated worship bulletins. I prepared the chapel altar for Catholic Mass, Protestant worship, and Jewish shabbat.

I also observed the gulf between evangelical and mainline Protestants. One active couple in the chapel was a master sergeant from a Lutheran background and his wife Muriel, a recovering alcoholic and passion born-again Christian.

Muriel was on Sarge’s back night and day to get “saved,” to find Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. Sarge figured Jesus had saved him two-thousand years ago through his death and resurrection. 

Enduring Muriel’s evangelical coercion day after day, Sarge finally capitulated and said the magic words. Muriel rejoiced mightily and sent a hand-written message to everyone she knew: “Sarge has been saved!”

By this time I was in college preparing to be a journalist. One night I received a late-night telephone call in the dorm. It was Muriel.

“Sarge is gone,” she said, her voice shaking. “Heart attack.”

Not quite awake, I said, “Oh, Muriel, I’m so sorry.”

“He’s gone,” she said. After a few seconds of awkward silence, she added, “Of course he wouldn’t come back now even if he could.”

Those words echoed in my head as I returned to my room and went back to bed.

“He wouldn’t come back now even if he could.”

I kept repeating the words in my head.

“He wouldn’t come back now even if he could.”

Well, why would he? Why would anyone, safely past the dreaded veil from life to death, want to go through it all over again?

Did Lazarus of Bethany want to come back to the travails of life? Or was he perfectly happy where he was, free of pain, free of worry, free of the agonizing illness that killed him?

When Lazarus walked out of the tomb, was he aware of the stench of the burial cloths still clinging on him? Was he elated to see his sisters rejoicing? Was he surprised to see Jesus standing in front of him? Was he pondering what might happen next?

Lazarus returned to his sisters’ house in Bethany. Did he pick up his life as he had left it. What would be the new normal of life now? News of his resuscitation spread rapidly and he was a celebrity, sought by crowds who wanted to see him, touch him, perhaps ask him what it was like on the other side? (Many scholars use the word resuscitation to describe what happened to Lazarus because he would die again. Jesus was resurrected and will live forever.)

Did Lazarus know a contract had been put out on his life? 

“When the great crowd … learned that Lazarus was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.”

Thus Lazarus returned from his untroubled repose to extraordinary stress in his resumed life.

Some writers try to interpret what Lazarus was going through by portraying him as desperately unhappy. Nikos Kazansakis, in The Last Temptation of Christ, depicts a ghoulish Lazarus still decaying, much like the dead in Beetlejuice who exhibit the causes of their deaths, whether by ax, disease, or decapitation, as they sit in an eternal waiting room.

We can’t be sure if Lazarus is happy or not because he disappears from the Gospel at this point. He was present when Mary poured expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. Knowing the miracle Jesus had recently performed, we understand why Lazarus’ sister was so overcome with gratitude that she would go to such extravagant lengths. 

The Bible does not provide any more information about Lazarus. Any further details are based on church history and may or may not be reliable. According to one tradition, after Jesus ascended to heaven, Lazarus and his sisters moved to Cyprus, where Lazarus became the bishop of Kition and died naturally in 63 CE. Another theory suggests they went to Gaul to spread the gospel, with Lazarus eventually becoming the bishop of Marseilles and being executed under Emperor Domitian. Ultimately, what happened to Lazarus remains uncertain. However, it is clear that he died again physically and will one day be resurrected to join all God’s saints in eternal life.

Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Associate Professor of New Testament and Christian Ministry,Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina, notes that the story of Lazarus of Bethany is a pivotal moment, a high point for how Jesus reveals who he is.

“Throughout the Gospel, Jesus makes several "I am" statements about his divine identity, using metaphors that link him to God's work and affirm his unity with the Father. In his conversation with Martha, before bringing Lazarus back to life, Jesus announces that he is the resurrection and the life, which is the fifth of these metaphorical "I am" declarations:

* I am the bread of life (6:35, 48, 51)

* I am the light of the world (8:12; 9:5)

* I am the door of the sheep (10:7, 9)

* I am the good shepherd (10:11, 14)

* I am the resurrection and the life (11:25)

* I am the way, the truth, and the life (14:6)

* I am the true vine (15:1)

Beyond the emotional and identity-related peaks, John 11 also features a peak of confession or belief. After Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus will rise again and identifies himself as the resurrection and the life, he adds, “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Martha’s answer becomes a central declaration in John’s story:

“Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

While Peter gives the Christological confession in the Synoptic Gospels, in John's account it is Martha who offers the climactic confession—with the language of belief unique to John. Martha’s role as a model of belief highlights the significance of women disciples in early Christian communities.

John emphasizes this theme again in 20:31: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

The resuscitation of Lazarus is the climax of the Gospel of John. It’s at this point that Jesus clearly affirms that he is the Messiah, the resurrection and the life.

Lazarus, whether he did so voluntarily or not, emerges from the tomb as a powerful testimony of God’s power and Jesus’ mission.

“Jesus said to Martha, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?’ So they rolled away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’” (JN 11:41-42.

And when Jesus’ said, “Lazarus, come out,” this quiet, loving, reanimated man of Bethany became the authoritative, commanding, mighty exemplar of the power of the Triune God.

And Lazarus lives in our hearts as the only person in history who gave his life twice for the Gospel of love.

Blind sight

March 15, First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

There are three instances in the gospels in which Jesus cured blind people.

In John 9, Jesus restored the sight of a man who had been blind since birth.

There is the healing of blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52.

Earlier, in Mark 8:23-25, Jesus delivered a two-part remedial on a blind man who initially saw people walking around like trees but, after Jesus touched him a second time, “saw everything clearly.”

There is no question that the restoration of sight is a monumental miracle. Just how monumental the miracle may be is hard to access by we who have always taken our sight for granted. 

“I never thought of being blind as a disadvantage, and I never thought of being black as a disadvantage,” said Stevie Wonder. “I am what I am. I love me! And I don't mean that egotistically – I love that God has allowed me to take whatever it was that I had and to make something out of it.” 

Ray Charles said blindness clarified his perception of other people. “I knew being blind was suddenly an aid,” he said. “I never learned to stop at the skin. If I looked at a man or a woman, I wanted to see inside. Being distracted by shading or coloring is stupid. It gets in the way. It's something I just can't see.”

Because I have never been blind myself (at least physically), it’s inappropriate for me to speculate how blind people feel about their lack of sight – except to reiterate that blind people I have known were undeterred by it.

Curiously, the blind men who sought Jesus help were utterly incapacitated by their plight, beggars who sat by the road and spread their cloaks so passersby could toss coins in their laps. 

Blindness was regarded by passersby as a terrible affliction, perhaps a punishment for some unknown sin. Jesus had to clarify for his disciples that no one was to blame for a blind person’s disability. 

When his disciples introduced Jesus to the blind man in John 9, they asked a strange question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). 

The question is an odd one because – as British theologian Leslie Weatherhead pointed out – it implies that the blind man may have sinned in a previous life. Weatherhead, writing in The Christian Agnostic (1965), sees deep significance in the fact that Jesus did not scoff at the disciples’ assumptions about reincarnation (one of many eccentric views that led his critics to redub him Weslie Featherhead). 

Jesus however, was more intent on making another point: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus said, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (John 9:3) Meaning, of course, that restoring a blind man’s sight calls vivid attention to Jesus’ as an agent of God’s power.

So it was with Bartimaeus, a blind beggar sitting by the road when Jesus passed by.

“When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher, let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” Mark 10:47-52)

It’s interesting that Bartimaeus suggests he once had the ability to see, while other blind persons cured by Jesus had been blind all their lives. Doctors tell us that would make a big difference because the brains of persons who have never had sight are incapable of interpreting images and it wouldn’t matter if their optic nerve suddenly started to send signals. 

But miracles are miracles whether they require a quick fix or a massive cerebral reconstruction, and Jesus appears equally adept at both.

The blind men cured by Jesus appear to be ordinary persons – that is, neither excelling nor lacking in moral character. Nothing is known about the state of their souls before Jesus brought them into the light.

But over the centuries, preachers and theologians have used recovery of physical sight as a metaphor for the restoration of ethical insight. 

The Apostle Paul, who persecuted Christians with Pharisaical zeal, was blinded by his encounter with the resurrected Jesus and his sight was not restored until he was touched by the disciple Ananias: 

“And immediately something like scales fell from Paul’s eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized.” (Acts 9:18)

One of the best examples of the metaphor was provided by repentant slave trader John Newton. Although Newton had a lot on his mind when he wrote “Amazing Grace,” he summed it up in eight syllables: 

“I once … was blind but now I see.”

Newton, an English cleric and poet, was a crew member on a slave ship in 1748 when an Atlantic storm threatened to send the ship to bottom. Newton experienced a sudden religious conversion, but the moral scales about slavery did not drop from his eyes for several more years. In 1755 he quit the sea and began to study theology. He wrote the famous poem to support the three points of his New Year’s sermon on January 1, 1773.

In his moral blindness, Newton made a fortune transporting African slaves to their dissolute masters. Once his sight was restored, Newton joined forces with abolitionist William Wilberforce, who wrote the Slave Trade Act of 1807 that abolished the trade in Britain. 

The miraculous transition from blindness to sight provides the structure for an apt allegory of what happens when Jesus enters our lives.

The physical blessing is breathtaking enough. One blind man initially saw people walking around “as trees,” but when Jesus touched him again he saw clearly. 

But many of us who have always seen with our eyes sit in moral and ethical darkness along the sides of the road, spreading our cloaks to capture whatever self-centered schemes and hand-outs may be thrown our way. For many of us, the darkness prevents us from seeing the fullness of God’s love. In our blindness, we may nurture hatred, greed, and bigotry, and we reach out to grasp whatever pleasures and amusements may be tossed in our laps. 

But as we sit in our darkness, the day will surely come when Jesus will pass by our perch on the side of the road.

That is our cue, as the blind man cured by Jesus in John’s Gospel declared, “I do not know whether (Jesus) is a sinner. One thing I do know, that, though I was blind, now I see.”

That is our cue, as it was for Bartimaeus, to begin shouting out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus, according to his promise, will stand in front of us and say,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” (Luke 4:18).

And just as surely as the blind man testified his sightedness to those who accused Jesus of being a sinner, and just as surely as Bartimaeus began to see the amazed crowd that surrounded him, we will experience the spiritual liberation declared by Jesus. The demons of our darkness – self-absorption, religious chauvinism, racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia – will be extinguished by God’s eternal light.

And then we can dance with Bartimaeus and feel the sweet release of the famous chorus:

Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

Woman of Light

 

March 8, 2026, First Lutheran Church of Throggs Neck, Bronx. N.Y.

John 4:5-42

John’s gospel introduces us to two people who are not mentioned in the other three gospels. And they are two very different people.

One is Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a rich man of high status who was intrigued by Jesus but was afraid to be seen with him. He came to Jesus in the still of the night.

The other is a Samaritan woman who encountered Jesus in the heat of the day at what is traditionally known as Jacob’s Well. John does not reveal her name but the Orthodox church has dubbed her Photiní, “the luminous one.”

The Samaritan woman is obviously not a woman of means. Many have read this passage in John and concluded she was a pariah both in her own community and among Samaritan-disdaining Jews.

She has been married five times. She has come to the well in the sweltering noon time when no one else is around, suggesting she is shunned by her neighbors because of her marital infidelity. 

But are we jumping to confusions about this poor woman?

If you read this passage in our trusty Lutheran Study Bible, you’ll find a clarifying footnote.

“While we tend to think that Jesus is questioning the woman’s morals, her marital history is not the point and most likely not her fault.” A woman of her time would have little control over the men who desire her and she may have been passed around from man to man.

Professor Laura Holmes of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., also cautions against judging the woman too hastily.

“While some wealthy women in Rome may have had the legal authority to divorce their husbands,” she points out, “this was only possible with the permission of their fathers … and would not have been likely or possible for a poorer woman in the province of Samaria. Therefore, she most likely had five husbands due to tragedies, either death or being divorced or both.”

“The reason Jesus asks her about her husband,” the commentary notes, “is to get her to another level of understanding, because she then sees Jesus as a prophet.”

It quickly becomes apparent that Jesus’ encounter with the woman is no accident. He and his disciples are walking from Judea to Galilee and it’s necessary to pass through Samaria on the way. But when Jesus pauses to talk to a woman at Jacob’s Wel, we know his reason for passing through Samaria was not merely a geographic convenience.

“Give me a drink,” he tells the woman, not one to beat around the bush.

The woman is astonished. It is certainly not done for a man to approach a woman he doesn’t know, especially a Jewish man and a Samarian woman.

But Jesus does have her attention. Like Nicodemus before, she takes Jesus’ words literally. When Jesus tells Nicodemus, “You must be born again,” Nicodemus asks, “How can this be?” When Jesus tells the woman she might ask him about “living water,” she responds, “Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?”

She may have been confused because the Greek word for “living” water also means “running” water—in other words, water from a river or stream, rather than well-water. 

“Since a well can be poisoned or tainted, running water was understood to be safer and more valuable,” writes Professor Holmes. “But even with this misunderstanding, she still wants what this running (living) water does: It will forever quench her thirst, and that is what she desires.”

But as she continues her conversation with Jesus, especially when he shows he knows how many husbands she has had, it becomes clear to her that this is no ordinary man.

“The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming …When he comes he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’” (Jn. 4:25-26)

That sounds very matter-of-fact in English. But the woman must have been astonished by his declaration. There is no “he” in the Greek John is using to interpret Jesus’ Aramaic words. What the woman heard was “I Am,” the name of God that was revealed to Moses at the burning bush. Later in his narrative, when skeptical Jews in the Synagogue questioned who he is, Jesus responds, “Before Abraham was, I am.” (Jn 8:58) Jesus’ words were explosive and dangerous, a declaration that he and God are one. If this were not true, he would be speaking blasphemy, and the men in the temple attempted to stone him. 

Indeed, the Samarian woman seems skeptical about Jesus’ declaration. But at that point Jesus’ disciples, who had been out buying food, returned and couldn’t hide their astonishment that Jesus was talking to a mere Samarian woman.

“What do you want,” they demanded. “Why are you speaking to her?” (Jn 4:27)

That must have been an awkward moment for the woman, suddenly confronted by a dozen surly men. She decided this would be a good time to leave. She left her water jar by the well and hurried back to the city.

She still had questions, but she was eager to share her experience with people in the city.

“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” (Jn 4:29)

As further evidence that the Samaritan woman was not shunned by her neighbors, the people were persuaded by her hesitant witness.t

John reports what happened:

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.”  So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” (Jn 4:39-42)

At this point the Samaritan woman disappears from the Gospels. In order to get some idea what happened (or might have happened) to her, we must turn to the traditions of our Orthodox siblings.

Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine tradition identifies her as Saint Photiní (also spelled Photina or Photine), which translates to "the luminous one". In Russian Orthodoxy she is called Svetlana, which also means bright.

She is revered as a martyr and "Equal-to-the-Apostles" for her role in spreading the Gospel.  According to tradition, she was baptized, became a great evangelist, and was eventually martyred in Rome under Nero.

 "Photiní" comes from the Greek word for light, signifying her role in bringing the light of Christ to others. Tradition indicates she had five sisters and two sons (Photinos and Joseph), who were also martyred. 

We Lutherans do not honor her as a saint.

But we can honor her because, even before she fully understood, even while she was asking if he could be the Messiah, she chose to tell others about her encounter with Jesus. The persons she told were moved to seek their own encounters with Jesus. And as a result of the witness of the woman at the well, they believed.

At times we, too, wonder if our faith and understanding is strong enough to share it with others.

When we hesitate to speak, the woman at the well – Photiní if you will – shines a much needed light on our path.

Amen.