When I was a kid, I had a great aunt who worked for NASA and lived on the north end of Cocoa Beach, not on the beach but a block away. Their little block house had a flat roof, and we would often go to her house and climb up on her roof to watch the Apollo launches. The whole world shook.

She was my grandfather’s sister, on my dad’s side. Their parents, my great-grandparents, lived with her and her husband in their last years. I remember my great-grandfather in his recliner with a jar of some kind of peppers, offering to give me a quarter if I would eat one. (I knew better!)

After my great-grandparents died, things took a lousy turn. When my great aunt moved them in with her, she essentially took all of their stuff. They were not at all wealthy, it was just stuff, but she refused to even talk about it. That caused a permanent rift between her and her two sisters as well as my grandfather. I don’t think the three of them ever spoke to her again.

This past week we had a wonderful Vacation Bible School, created and led by Christopher and Tiana Maslanka. The kids followed an undersea exploration that also probed the depths of The Lord’s Prayer, verse by verse. I loved it. Our oceans are so important and they are under a lot of stress. It was great to see the kids learn about that, and the Lord’s Prayer is central to our faith so it was great to see them learn more about that.

It reminded me of another undersea voyager.

A little over 8 years ago, the British National Oceanography Centre launched a new, state of the art, unmanned submarine designed to gather vital data from the deepest polar waters. It was and is very high tech and cost about $270 million, which was a lot of money 8 years ago.

John devotes 5 chapters to all Jesus said and did at the Last Supper, from washing his disciples’ feet to lots of teaching and instruction, closing with what we call his “High Priestly Prayer.” Today’s Gospel is the very end of that prayer. After this Jesus will cross the Kidron Valley to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he will be arrested.

He closes by praying fervently that his disciples would be One. He says it three times, not to drive the point home with God, but to drive it home to them. He frames this desire in the most profound terms, that they should be One as he and the Father are One. And he says he is praying this not just for those gathered with him that night, but also on behalf of those who will believe in him through their testimony.

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?”