Sometimes God’s messages slip in quietly and other times it is like being gobsmacked!

Today’s scripture readings is a hand to a forehead moment!

This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?  Indeed.

         On July 27, we started in the sixth chapter of John.  Perhaps this Sunday we can put a Coda on it, bring it to an end, perhaps with a little additional twist.

This morning we are offered a glimpse of God through the signs in this passage from John and an invitation to let God in, from our Epistle reading. What a wonderful opportunity to engage with God…..and can we delve more deeply into that engagement?

If you ask Episcopalians what we like most about our denomination, many of us would say it’s the liturgy. Whether we’re cradle Episcopalians or just got here last Sunday, whether it’s Rite I or Rite II, we love the Service. Week after week – or if you’re really good – day by day, we turn to the Book of Common Prayer for familiar words that draw us into a space of comfort and stability. When we gather together, we sing hymns and recite creeds, listen to the readings and the homily, but throughout our worship, the thread that holds our tradition together is prayer. No wonder we have a prayer book.

In today’s Gospel, we hear two stories of healing. They are also stories of hope—a bold, persistent, expectant hope

Both of today’s readings draw our attention to the storm, especially to the wind, and as we have seen in many places in the Bible, the movement of air, God’s breath, should cause us to pay special attention. But my homily for today is not really about the storms, or, maybe it really is.

In the very beginning of Mark, Jesus’ first spoken words were to proclaim the good news that God’s kingdom has now drawn near. He calls his hearers (us) to “turn our lives around and live trusting in this good news! In this first chapter of Mark, we learn that by living into this good news of the Kingdom of God, we are to believe and repent. Paul, in our second reading describes this repentance as dying to old ways, giving up ourselves and being made new.

But what exactly is this Kingdom? We have been told the Kingdom is here but not yet here in its entirety—-that it is like heaven, only we haven’t been there either. And because we can’t see it, our comparison ends up being that of a shrub! Suffice it to say, it’s complicated!

Dave and I have two children, born four years apart. As youngsters, they got along pretty well, but our daughter didn’t hesitate to be the Bossy Big Sister when the occasion called for it. I remember one time when she said, “Mom, you have to do something – he’s going to embarrass himself!” Of course, our son was not about to embarrass himself – he was beyond embarrassment -- but he had already embarrassed her.

Maybe that’s how Jesus’ family felt, “for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’” The family went out to restrain him. Like our daughter, with the wisdom of her four-years’ seniority, they probably sensed that he was getting himself into trouble. Kids can make fun of your little brother and powerful people were out to destroy Jesus.

In case you have not been here when I have quoted the lyrics of Jimmy Buffett’s songs, I’ll quickly say that no less than the legendary musician and lyricist, Bob Dylan, said his favorite song writer was Jimmy Buffett.

And I hasten to say that Bob Dylan and I are not talking about Buffett’s hits like “Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville”, but many of Buffett’s lesser known and quite thoughtful songs.

As I prepared for this day over the past many weeks, 2 songs kept coming to me with comfort and challenge. Buffett wrote the first song I want to mention, after the horror of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans in 2005, 19 years ago. Buffett loved New Orleans and agonized with all of us to see the destruction in that beautiful city. He wrote the song, “Breathe in Breathe Out Move On” as comfort and guidance in the tragedy and pain of Katrina, and to remind us all to not stay in the pain of the past but to live now, the preciousness of life that can disappear in a night of rain.

The opening verse says:

I bought a cheap watch from a crazy man

Floating down Canal

It doesn't use numbers or moving hands

It always just says "now"

Last week we celebrated Ascension Day, Jesus lifted up and returning to the Father, to God. And those wonderful angels, told his friends to stop looking in the sky, in the wrong direction, and to go back to Jerusalem, and wait, and to wait in joy and in worship and together in community, until, as Jesus promised them, “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

The church calendar counts 10 days between Ascension and Pentecost, but who knows how many “not many days” was. We can all remember when we were children and being told by an adult that something would happen “soon” or “not many days from now”. We quickly learned we would not get an exact answer, but we knew it was not now!

So, the disciples finally did stop staring up and went back to the city and waited.

But a couple of key points: they waited together, not wandering off from one another, not saying I’ll just take care of me, but staying together, putting up with each other, and caring for each other. And also key, they waited in joy and they waited worshipping together.

All week, when I’ve seen folks from the churches, as we finish our conversation, I’ve said: “See you Sunday, and we are observing Ascension Day!”

My parting words have resulted in a slight pause, and then a polite smile as response to my exciting news, and occasionally a: “Oh! Nice.”

Ascension Day is hard to remember and I understand folks’ response, which were less uninterested and more, what is she talking about?

So, let’s start there: Today is our last Sunday in the 50-day season of Easter. And today we are celebrating Ascension Day, observed.

After yesterday’s rain, I could not resist going out and taking a few pictures of my irises in full bloom, now glazed by, bejeweled really, by raindrops.

Purple, yellow and white all radiant, despite the drab day.

And I could hear our Psalm this morning:

“Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things!”

Throughout this season of Easter we have read selections from the letters of John, in 1stJohn, as well as, for the gospel readings, mainly John.

These readings throughout Easter have shared the theme of how we relate to, connect to, are loved by God, and called to love God.

And we can get a clue as to how we are to love God, by the number of times these readings use the word “abide”, 6 times in each reading today!

And these two books of the Bible hold the highest number of times for that word, abide, to appear, the gospel of John uses this word 41 times! And the 1st letter of John, 22 times!

Our readings and hymns today are full of images of Jesus as the good shepherd, loving, tending, protecting and guiding the sheep, and yes, the baby lambs too.

Our opening prayer reminds us that:

“God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads…”

When I was 5 years old, I was hit in the forehead with a swing. My brother, sister and I had gone to a neighbor’s yard to play on their swing set, a slide, two swings, and that double swing that 4 kids could sit in; all of it minimally safety tested and lots of fun. Until, you are the youngest there, and not paying attention and you walk too close behind the 4-seater swing as it comes back towards you. Being a forehead injury, it bled a lot, and I had my first visit to a hospital for stitches, and was then destined forever to wear a hairstyle with bangs.

Amazing how scars remain.

What a tumultuous time it was for the disciples during that last week of Jesus’ life. It started with Jesus and the disciples approaching Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.

One of the sights I watch for each year is the blooming of the forsythia and the daffodils, in folks’ yards and gardens but even more, where a house no longer stands, where only the spring dressings remain.

I am referring to the places I see often as I drive the main roads and even more, on the back roads, where a hedge of forsythia, several bushes, grown together, glow with the yellow of early spring, and clearly marking the side yard of a house, but there is no house, it is long gone, collapsed, fallen in, and then the remnants hauled away, but the forsythia still blazes each March, with, and now without, the people who called that patch of land home in years past.

On the eve of Good Friday, Jesus gave his friends, and onward gives to us, a new commandment to love one another, ok. But there is more, as HE has loved us. Oh…..Not just a thin soup of love, not just a half-effort of love, but the extravagant, caring and yes, willing to die for you love that Jesus gave.

Regardless of how you approached Lent, there never is a wrong way. Even if you threw up your hands on a day 2 and grumbled that this is all too much, God is a patient God. We are loved as someone created in his image and therefore loved through all our shortcomings…Lenten practices included.

This morning, as is our tradition, we’ve come in waving our palms, escorted enthusiastically by the sounds of a trumpet, apparently much as Jesus did coming into the city of Jerusalem. Happy Passover! Happy Passover Holiday! Chad Pesach Sameach!