We should start this morning by noting where we are in John’s Gospel, at the beginning of chapter 5. As many of you will have surmised by now, this comes right after chapter 4, in which only two things happen. Just preceding these events, John recounts a healing in Capernaum, which is up on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee. Just before that is Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in which he talks about giving “living water.”

Jesus is getting around! Samaria is between Galilee to the north and Jerusalem to the south, and it’s about 100 miles from Jerusalem to Capernaum across hilly terrain. Clearly John isn’t telling us everything. But, as he writes at the end of chapter 20, “…these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Remember that is why we are here; “life in his name.”

This encounter combines elements of those prior two: living water and healing.

I love this graduation Sunday each year. We celebrate these wonderful young people for their achievements in earning a high school diploma or college degree and look ahead to their next challenges. After all, graduation means moving up. The best part of what you’ve done is not the diploma or degree, even if it’s Cum Laude or you’re the Valedictorian. The best part are the opportunities your achievements open for you moving forward.

I remember my first days like yesterday.

Just as you will learn a lot about whatever you’ll study, your faith deserves and requires the same sort of attention. If anyone ever tries to tell you faith is for simple minds, you’ll know that person hasn’t given it real study.

  The 630’ tall (and wide) Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO marks the time and place from which a small band of men, the Corps of Discovery, ventured across the Missouri river into an unknown, unexplored, unmapped terrain… a vast landscape of never-before documented peoples, plants, and animals. When the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed the Missouri River, a treacherous journey that lasted more than two years and over 8,000 miles stretched westward before them. This was an enormous human achievement which completely changed the size, shape, and future of our - until then - small, still-new nation. 

                   Interestingly, however, it seems the thousands of amazing discoveries catalogued during the Lewis and Clark expedition were so expansive, so significant, so utterly foreign … that it took nearly a half-century for the young nation to actually begin to grow westward with any real consistency. There were fur traders, of course, and occasional traders with Native American tribes, but it took time and a collective percolation of this new reality… for the effects of that exploration, to actually manifest itself in the young nation’s physical - and cultural - self-understanding. One gets the sense that our 19th century ancestors couldn’t quite assimilate all that was suddenly and wondrously opened to them… as if there was a communal questioning: “What does this mean?” “What do we do with all these amazing stories?” “What’s next?” “What now?”

I was, by appointment of Caesar, recently Governor of the Eastern Province of Judea.  And it is my pleasure, honorable Senators of Rome, to present my report to you this day. 

     It seems there have been some malicious rumors floating around lately about a certain Christus who supposedly died there in Jerusalem but came back to life ---- or so people say.  Furthermore, some sources blame me as the one who killed him because I am a Jew-hater.

     Neither of these accusations are true.  Allow me to set the record straight so these falsehoods might be stopped.

     Let me give you my first-hand accounting of the actual events:

First of all – being Governor of Judea is a very difficult job.  You have no idea how irascible those Jews are!  Never has there ever been a people as cantankerous, excitable and rebellious!!  One does not govern Judea – One sits on it!  You must hold the lid on firmly –- with all your strength!

We live in such interesting and exciting times. The new wonder is artificial intelligence, and I think it holds great promise for us. I use it sometimes as a research assistant. For example, for my Bible study two weeks ago, I wanted to focus on parts of the Passion that are unique to Luke’s Gospel. I asked ChatGPT to summarize them for me, with quotes from the NRSV of the Bible, which is what we use in worship.

It gave me a list within a second or two. I’ve been studying the Bible for about 50 years now, so I could look at that list and recognize it was correct, and use it to then frame our discussion. It’s not doing my work for me, but saving time the way a calculator helps with math and helping to leverage what I already know.

I saw a news article recently about a doctor who had used AI in a similar way. He had a patient with a particular form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome related to a particular gene. He fed the patient’s lab work and history into an AI. It suggested he look at a study that folic acid had been effective for this specific issue, and gave him a link to the study. He read it. He tried it. It worked.

Wednesday night I met with the youth group. I had invited them to ask me any question on their minds, anything at all. I was somewhat surprised that most of their questions were about the Bible. It was fun.

The question that took me the longest time to answer was, “What is your favorite book of the Bible?” How do you pick a favorite? After a few minutes of serious contemplation, I decided it has to be John’s Gospel. My reasons include its incredible prologue, “In the beginning was the Word…”, his most detailed account of the Resurrection and the ways that he shows who Jesus is and what he means to God’s people and the creation as a whole.

One of my favorite moments in John’s Gospel is the exchange between Jesus and Pilate when Pilate asks Jesus, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Then comes the kicker. Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”

Come, join with me, let us join the disciples as they enter the upper room for their Passover meal, this meal would also be the last with Jesus before He went to the cross. Jesus was the only one in the crowd that knew it.

Let’s imagine that evening, let’s imagine what was probably on the minds of Jesus’ disciples. I’m guessing that their first thought was who would sit where? Perhaps, even pushing and bumping each other out of the way to get the preferred seat. Who would be in the “honored” seats?

They all knew where Jesus would be reclining, the 2nd seat on the left side. The seat of the host. The question on their minds was, who would be sitting in the most honored guest’s seat on Jesus’ right and then who would be the second honored seat on his left? Does this seem a little familiar? How times have you wondered where you might be seated at a wedding reception? How many of you remember arguing with brothers or sisters about who called “shotgun first?” I kind of liked sitting in the middle in the pickup. Thereby avoiding opening or closing the gate. The shotgun seat had its privileges, opening the gate wasn’t one of them! Still, everyone scrambled for the chosen seat.

One Sunday I went home feeling great about the services that morning. The hymns and offertory music were beautiful and on point. The readers read well.  The prayers were earnest. Attendance was strong and the sermon seemed to have hit home well. It was a very blessed day.  After almost everyone had left, I went to my office to take care a few things before heading home.  But there was trouble.  A nasty computer virus had entered my computer.

Viruses are bad, but this one really scared me because the message said: Infected registry. That’s really bad. Here’s why. Everything we do with a computer, all the programs and documents, are in the operating system. The registry is all the stuff your computer does right when you turn it on, before your home screen even pops up.

I asked the children, what’s going on outside? I’m sure if I asked that to this group, we would come up with a lot more! We’ve got all manner of issues going on locally, and in the world. Crime. Traffic. Tariffs. Wars. Hostages. We see all manner of trouble, and we have no control over it.

In today’s gospel, we have a story with a story. Inside we have the scene with Jesus, Lazarus, Martha and Mary and Judas among his other disciples. But in order to understand their gathering, we need to look at what’s going on outside in their world, beyond the walls of the house. And we need to consider what happened before this moment and what is to come. I’ll set it up for you!