Walking on Water

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Matthew 14:22-33

   “He’s so full of himself he thinks he can walk on water.” “Hey, look, I’m really trying but don’t expect me to walk on water.”  Even someone who has never opened the New Testament or heard a sermon knows that “walking on water” is an idiomatic way of describing super-human or God-like abilities.  More often than not, we use the expression to knock someone down a notch.  We rarely hear it as a compliment, probably because we’ve never met anyone we’d agree is God-like. 

   We meet that person in this story in Matthew’s Gospel; that is what this passage is about. 

   The disciples’ fear is perfectly justified.  This isn’t a story condemning baseless fear; the storm is violent and the disciples could perish.  As Debie Thomas writes, “Nowhere in the Gospels are we called to prove our faith, or test God’s character, by taking pointless risks that threaten our lives. … Whether we’re talking about respecting the power of the sea during a vicious storm or heeding expert medical advice during a global pandemic, the same caution applies: recklessness is not faith, stupidity is not courage.”[i] 

   Why doesn’t Jesus just calm this storm?  The disciples witnessed Jesus perform that very miracle a few chapters back (Matthew 8:23-27), and their response was to marvel, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”  Here, instead, Matthew states that Jesus “went (elthen) to them, walking upon the sea (peripaton epi tes thālassa)” (14:25).  These very words appear in the Book of Job when God questions Job about the cosmos.  According to the Greek translation of Job, God asks Job if he ever “went upon (elthes… epi) the springs of the sea (thalāsses) or walked (periepātesas) in the recesses of the deep” (Job 38:16 Septuagint).  Earlier in the book, Job affirms that the Creator had traversed the oceans before the dawn of humanity, saying that God “stretched out the heavens and trampled on the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8).[ii]  The Gospel highlights Jesus’ choice to walk on the waves as a deliberate recollection of what God did at creation.[iii]

   Jesus hears the disciples cry out in fear when they see him, ghost-like, crossing the turbulent sea without aid of a boat.  He says to them, “Take heart.  I AM.  Do not be afraid.”  “I AM.”  Jesus does not say “I am the bread,” “I am the way,” or “I am the light of the world.”  He says the same words God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, “the bare, unfinished, unqualified I AM, the name that needs no completion because it contains everything.”[iv]  If walking on water weren’t enough to reveal who he is, Matthew’s Jesus repeats the very words of God.[v]   

   Curiously, when Peter hears Jesus’ assurances, he challenges him; he tests him.  “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water” (Matthew 14:28).  “If it is you …”  These words are eerily similar to the tempter’s during Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11).  But Jesus doesn’t need to prove anything, and Peter is not, “I AM.”  As much as Peter may want to emulate his teacher, he sinks beneath the waves.  He cries out, “Lord, save me!” and Jesus does.  Jesus does.

   Jesus accuses Peter of having little faith.  I don’t believe that this is because Peter failed at walking on water.  Rather, I believe it’s because Peter foolishly issued the challenge in the first place: “If it is you…”  But this story isn’t really about Peter and his faith or his lack of it.  It is about Jesus, and who he is.  As Debie Thomas notes, “Jesus never stops moving towards the ones he loves.  He never stops crossing the dark water to come to where we are.  Neither our fearfulness nor our faithlessness alters his steady approach, because we are the ones he’s bound for.”[vi]  Perhaps that becomes most obvious to us, most undeniably real to us, when we’re sinking, when we are surrounded by chaos, and most feel the need to cry out, “Lord, save me!”

    This time, “…those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God’” (Matthew 14:33).    

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.      

[i]  Debie Thomas, “Out on the Water,” in Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories (Eugene Oregon: Cascade Books, 2022).

[ii]   Nicholas J. Schaser, “Commentary on Matthew 14:22-33,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-19/commentary-on-matthew-1422-33-6

[iii]  Zina Jacque, “Commentary on Matthew 14:22-33,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-19/commentary-on-matthew-1422-33-7

[iv]  Jacque, ibid.

[v]  Schaser, ibid.

[vi]  Thomas, ibid.

Wrestling with God

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Genesis 32:22-31

   This story raises many questions: Who exactly is Jacob’s attacker?  Verse 24 tells us it’s a man but after the wrestling match, the man says, “… you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28).  Why would God bushwhack Jacob?  Are we supposed to believe God couldn’t pin Jacob?  Did Jacob want God’s blessing because he knew the blessing from his father Isaac was predicated on deceit, or was he just greedy for more blessings?  And why does a deceitful and irreverent trickster end up with God’s blessing, anyway?

   Jacob is Isaac’s son, Abraham’s grandson.  His twin brother Esau was born first, but Jacob was his mother’s favorite, and together they plotted to steal Esau’s birthright and Isaac’s blessing, both due to Esau as the elder son (Genesis 27:1-29).  Those plans were put on hold when Esau’s understandable homicidal rage sent Jacob running to his Uncle Laban (Genesis 27:41, 28:5).  There, Jacob the trickster was tricked by his uncle into working an extra seven years for the right to marry his true love, Rachel (Genesis 29:15-30).  Laban and his sons grew jealous of Jacob’s wealth and success, which he achieved by systematically stealing Laban’s sheep out from under him (Genesis 30:31-43).  So one night while Laban was away, Jacob gathered everything he had and took off for Canaan, for home (Genesis 31:1-18).

   In these verses, twenty years have passed since Jacob fled Esau’s wrath.  Jacob receives word that his brother is coming to meet him with an army of 400 men (Genesis 32:6-8).  Terrified, Jacob divides his entourage of wives, servants, livestock and possessions into two parts.  That way, if Esau attacks, he won’t lose everything.  He sends generous gifts to appease Esau (Genesis 32:13-18), and then he sends his family and belongings across the River Jabbok.  Maybe he figures that even if Esau refuses his tribute, he may at least take pity at the sight of his defenseless wives and children.  He sits down by the river, alone and a fugitive once again.  And then in a few short words we’re told, “a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

   Jacob refuses to let his opponent go even after his own hip is put out of joint.  The man, the angel, God, whomever it is, says, “Let me go; it’s almost daylight.”  Jacob says he’ll only let go if the man blesses him.  The man agrees and gives Jacob a new name.  In Jacob’s culture, that means a new identity.  No longer Jacob the usurper, the cheat; now he is Israel, a name that means, “You have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”  That’s the big “reveal;” it was God all along.  The scene concludes with Jacob carrying away God’s blessing along with his new identity.  Not only will Jacob and Esau be reconciled in the chapters to come, but Jacob will sire a nation from his twelve sons, and they and their descendants proudly bear his name to this day, a people defined by wrestling with God.

      A God who wrestles with us, and what’s more, God started it!  This challenges any attempt to make God fit into some easy mold.  Further, God blesses Jacob even though he isn’t deserving, holy, or righteous by any stretch of the imagination.  So one lesson might be, “Don’t second guess God.”  

   But what can wrestling with God mean for us, today?  What does it look like in our lives – in your life, in my life? 

   It’s likely a very personal thing.  It’s probably ongoing, not once and for all.  It may look like when you lost a loved one, lost your health, lost a job, or lost a dream, and you wondered where God was, how God could let it happen, or what’s even the point of a God who doesn’t fix everything.  Maybe it’s when you figured out there’s something, some situation, you can’t change, fix, control, explain, or even understand.  Maybe it looks like when you found your way to a therapist, a grief group, a twelve-step meeting, a church, or seminary. 

   It may be about coming to faith or keeping faith.  Maybe you wrestle with God when you remember how you used to be able to recite the Apostles Creed without even thinking about it and now, you have to cross your fingers.  Maybe it’s when the Dalai Lama makes a lot of sense, and you find yourself wondering, “If scripture isn’t either history or science, what is there to hold on to?”  Maybe it’s when you haven’t lost your faith in God, exactly, but you’ve lost faith in the system that promised to help you grasp God by giving you the right language and answers – the Church, a denomination, a belief system. 

   Or maybe it’s that you can remember when you thought believing in God was stupid, or unsophisticated, and then something happened that shook you to your toes.  Maybe you encountered people who trust that God wants the world, this world, here and now, to be more just.  Maybe it’s when you figured out God is love, but it turns out love isn’t like unicorns and rainbows.  Love is hard.  Love is sacrifice.  Love is eating with the sick.  Love is trouble.  Love is rebellious.  Love doesn’t make the pain go away.  Love sits with us in in the middle of it.[1]. Love inspires us to act.

   Maybe God wrestles us into loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Maybe God wrestles us into opening our hearts to let God in.  Those are life-long wrestling matches from where I sit.  In the closing verse of the lesson, Jacob limps away, transformed.  When he finally sees his brother Esau, Jacob says, “For truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis 33:11).  Jacob looks at the face of his enemy, and he sees the face of God.  This is hard.  And hopeful.  This takes wrestling with God, and not letting go.

   Barbara Brown Taylor says it’s times like this that Jacob’s story says to us, “Don’t be so sure that’s an enemy you’re wrestling.  Don’t be so sure you can’t find God in the dark.  Don’t be so sure you know how this story ends.  Above all, don’t be so sure you can’t make it through the night.  Faith has a lot more to do with hanging on than with being sure.”[2]

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.      

[1]  “Brené Brown on Church as Midwife,” posted April 11, 2014, on David Lose, “In the Meantime,”  http://www.davidlose.net/2014/04/brene-brown-on-church-as-midwife/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+davidlose%2FIsqE+%28…In+the+Meantime%29

[2]  Barbara Brown Taylor, “Jacob Wrestles,” https://www.fapc.org/sermon/twenty-fifth-sunday-after-pentecost. 

A Pearl of Great Price

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Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

   What is worth more than anything to you?  Jesus looks at that question in this passage in Matthew’s gospel.  He’s describing the kingdom of God, or the reign of God.  Matthew uses the phrase, “kingdom of heaven,” for his audience of Jewish Christians, but in all of these kingdom parables, Jesus assumes the kingdom of God is something that can be perceived and experienced as a present reality, not just something in the future. 

   Each of these little kingdom parables is worth its own sermon, but I’m focusing on two of them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field which someone found and hid, and from his joy he goes and sells all as much as he has and he buys that field.  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a person on a journey seeking fine pearls, and finding one valuable pearl, he goes and sells all, as much as he has, and buys it.”

   The owner of the field has hidden a treasure and someone else has found it.  The person who found it wasn’t looking for it; he stumbled across it unexpectedly.  He is overcome by his good fortune and joyfully sells everything he has to buy the whole field and secure the treasure.  In the pearl parable, the person is deliberately searching far and wide for a fine pearl.  He finds it, and like the first man, he liquidates all his assets so he can buy the sought-after pearl.  The two characters make their discoveries as a result of entirely different circumstances, but once they’ve found the valuable object, they are all in.  Neither one of them pauses to calculate the risks, do a cost-benefit analysis, or consult with his investment advisor.

   This, says Jesus, is what the kingdom of God is like.  It is worth everything.  Many people will use these parables to talk about the cost of discipleship and that’s worth exploring, but only after we talk about something else: overwhelming joy, and the commitment that this kind of joy engenders.  This is not a parable about sacrifice; it’s a parable about joy.  These men give up everything because what they get is worth everything to them.

   What is it about the kingdom of God that is worth everything?

   Years ago, I stumbled onto Brené Brown’s TEDTalk about shame (https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame), which led me to her other TEDTalk and her books, nearly all of which I’ve read.  My interest led to my being sent to a national training along with other pastors from my presbytery where we learned to teach groups about Brown’s research.  On our return, we led a presbytery clergy retreat in the hope that Brown’s work would help us in adaptive leadership – leadership in these changing times. 

   That’s how I ended up in San Antonio studying shame, worthiness, courage, and vulnerability.  Brown began her research trying to understand what makes certain people more resilient and whole, a quality she calls “whole-heartedness.”[1]  She concluded that what most blocks whole-heartedness is shame.  Shame, at its heart, is a fear of disconnection.  We’re all hard-wired for connection and so we fear disconnection.  Shame whispers, “If you know the truth about me, you’ll reject me.”  It’s that feeling we are not enough – thin enough, rich enough, young enough, pretty enough, powerful enough, smart enough, perfect enough – you fill in the blank.  Shame is what we’re perpetuating whenever we communicate to others that they aren’t enough – which leads to all sorts of bad behavior – bullying, for example, which Brown says isn’t a school problem; it’s a national pastime.[2]  Another expert says there’s no record of a violent or cruel action committed other than as a reaction to shame or humiliation.[3]   

   We all have shame.  We all worry, now and then or maybe all the time, that, “I’m not good enough.”  So we hide who we really are.  But in order for connection to happen – true connection – we have to let ourselves be seen.  Brown discovered that what whole-hearted people have in common is courage; specifically, the ordinary courage to be seen, to show up, even though they’re imperfect.  Whole-hearted people believe that what makes them vulnerable makes them beautiful.  They don’t talk about vulnerability being easy or comfortable, just necessary.  They are kind to themselves, because they know that we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t first treat ourselves kindly.  They are willing to let go of who they think they should be in order to be who they are, which is essential for connection with others.  Real connection flows from authenticity.

   So, in their vulnerability, wholehearted people are willing to say I love you first.  They’re willing to do things where there are no guarantees.  They’re willing to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call with results from the mammogram.  They’re willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out.  Wholehearted people, Brown found, also have a strong sense of love and belonging.  And this was the surprise: The one variable that separated people who have a strong sense of love and belonging from people who struggle for it, was that people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging.  That’s it.  They believe they’re worthy.

   Here is the other surprise: While all of us struggle with vulnerability, it also appears that vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, and creativity, of belonging and love.  When we numb ourselves to our vulnerability, when we numb ourselves to grief, and shame, and disappointment, we also numb ourselves to joy, and gratitude, and happiness.  We live in a culture that does a lot of numbing.[4]  The problem is, Brown says, we can’t selectively numb emotions.  She says, “We cannot say, ‘Here’s the bad stuff. Here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s disappointment.  I don’t want to feel these.  I’m going to have a couple of beers and a banana-nut muffin.  I don’t want to feel these.’  You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other … emotions.”[5]

   This is not a commercial for Brené Brown; it actually is about the kingdom of God.  What I figured out in San Antonio is that Brown’s research is a secular repackaging of the good news of the Gospel.  Her hardcore research just restates what Jesus said, again and again, and especially what Jesus said about life lived in the kingdom of God.  In a wonderful conversation my colleague and I had with Brown at the San Antonio airport while we were waiting for our flight to San Francisco, she told us that her friends in the Episcopal Church tell her, “Brené didn’t say that.  Jesus said that.”   

   Jesus said that.  Jesus said, and modeled, and taught: “Love each other, even when it’s hard, even when it makes you vulnerable, even when it’s a risk.  Include people, connect with people, even when they aren’t like you, even when they scare you.  Practice empathy and compassion even when your first impulse is fight or flight, even when revenge is more attractive than understanding.  Treat everyone you encounter like the children of God they are.  Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Know in your bones that you are enough; that God knows you, loves you, and created you to be worthy, to be enough.  Live as though you are enough, and as though everybody else is, too.  Stick to your values even when it’s hard, even when it gets you in trouble.  Not to earn God’s love or prove you’re perfect – that’s the folly of the Pharisees – but in response to the gracious and unconditional love of God you already have.  You’ll be afraid.  It will be hard.  You will be hurt.  But this life, this wholehearted life and the world you will help create by living it are so much better, so much truer, so much holier, that it will be worth it. 

   It will be worth it.  It will be worth everything, says Jesus.  It will be worth the extravagant investment of your heart and soul and everything else, all you possess.  And the result is not a moaning and groaning sense of sacrifice, but joy.  Joy, and authenticity.  Connection.  Creativity.  Peace.  And freedom.  Freedom from the bondage of shame, perfectionism, and numbing.  For you.  And for everyone else. 

   What would you give for that?  It wouldn’t be easy.  It wouldn’t be pain-free.  It’d be more of a journey than a destination.  It’d be more of a practice and a path than an accomplishment.  The early Christians called it, “the Way” (Acts 9:2).

   What would that be worth to you?  

 © Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

[1]  This summary of Brown’s research is gleaned from three of her books: Daring Greatly (New York: Gotham Books, 2012), I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) (New York: Gotham Books, 2007); The Gifts of Imperfection, (Center City, Minnesota: Hazaeldon, 2010); and Brown’s TEDTalk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” TEDxHuston, June 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability. 

[2]  Brown, “The Cruelty Crisis: Bullying Isn’t a School Problem, It’s a National Pastime,” Psychology Today, October 31, 2010,  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ordinary-courage/201010/the-cruelty-crisis-bullying-isnt-school-problem-its-national-pastime. 

[3]  Donald I. Nathanson, M.D., http://psychcentral.com/lib/shame-the-quintessential-emotion/000730/2. 

[4]  Brown reports that we’re most in-debt, obese, addicted, and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. Brown, “The Power of Vulnerability,” ibid. 

[5]  Brown, ibid.

Next on My Path of Faith: Seminary Education

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   If you have looked forward to or even in some way depended on my blogposts interpreting the lectionary Scripture passages, I’m sorry to have gone missing for a bit.  I write today to explain why I’ll be going missing a while longer.  This blog has been a joyful spiritual discipline for me; my beloved husband claims I’m a “scholastic” in the manner of the medieval thinkers who centered their theology on a “disputed question.”  Maybe he’s right.  What I know for certain is that wrestling with Scripture is one way I wrestle with God and follow Christ. 

   However, I’m returning to full time work after about six years of, well, not “retirement,” exactly, because in addition to this blog, I’ve been preaching two or three times a month as a guest preacher, teaching preaching as an adjunct at San Francisco Theological Seminary, and serving as a spiritual director.  But I have not been working full time, and as joyful as this spiritual practice of blogging is, I won’t have time to keep it going on any sort of regular basis when I’m working full time.

   Beginning July 6, I will be serving as the Dean of San Francisco Theological Seminary.  I follow a line of deans to whom I’m grateful and for whom I have tremendous respect: the current Dean, the Rev. Dr. Laurie Garrett-Cobbina, the amazingly gifted holder of the Shaw Family Chair for Clinical Pastoral Education, Director of the Clinical Pastoral Education Program, and Shaw Chaplaincy Institute for Spiritual Care and Compassionate Leadership; Dr. Christopher Ocker, my intrepid church history professor and the current Dean of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley; and the Rev. Dr. Jana Childers, my homiletics professor, fellow Bonhoofer, and the courageous, hard-working, and eminently savvy Dean of SFTS for 16 years, including during some of the seminary’s most tumultuous times.

   I love San Francisco Theological Seminary.  I received my M.Div., D.Min., and the Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction from SFTS.  I served on the Board of Trustees for 10 years, participating in faculty searches and on the Lloyd Center Board.  As I mentioned, I’m adjunct faculty.  I was pastor of the church across the street, First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo, for nearly 15 years, during which time I supervised 15 SFTS student interns, was pastor to many students, and counted about a dozen active or retired faculty and their families as church members, several of whom I buried.  There’s hardly anyone around who has had the long, varied, and ongoing relationship with the seminary that I have.  If you’ve ever been on the SFTS campus, you know what a glorious place, what a holy place it is.  I am honored to be taking this step; it feels like a call.

   I am taking this step at a time when seminary education, like the American Christian church, is changing.  If you’re a pastor or a church member, you’ve witnessed this change firsthand.  It’s tempting to conclude that the church and seminary education are “in decline;” it’s tempting to long for the good old days.  First, whenever someone talks about the good old days, you have to ask, “Good for whom?”  But more importantly, human systems, cultures, traditions, and institutions come and go, evolve and change, and God is still at work.  God is still present.  God is still writing the story.  I heard a sermon suggesting that we’re all “pencils in the hand of a writing God.”  The UCC has a marvelous slogan that “God is still speaking.”  God is not finished with us.

    There’s a compelling series of books published by a project called, “Theological Education Between the Times” (and I intend to read every single book).  That is where we are.  Between the time when one set of assumptions functioned but those assumptions are now eroding, and the next time, which God has not revealed.  I step into this new responsibility during this in-between time with humility, curiosity, courage, and hope.  I will continue putting one foot in front of the other on the path of faith.  I ask for your prayers.

Another Way to Think About Eternal Life

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John 17:1-11

This passage is part of the prayer that Jesus prays for the disciples at the end of the Farewell Discourse. The Farewell Discourse is John’s recollection of Jesus’ final instructions just before he’s arrested. His instructions to his disciples begin with the foot washing in chapter 13 and continue through chapter 16; all of chapter 17 is his closing prayer before he leaves for the garden, where he’s immediately arrested (John 18:1-12). In these verses, Jesus is still sitting at the table with his disciples. He knows what lies ahead and he knows that this is his last opportunity to teach them what is most important.

In a nutshell, his prayer says, “I’ve taught them everything I know, God, everything that you showed me. Now these disciples who have been mine are yours. They have been one with me; now they are one with you.” The verses are filled with the plea that God “glorify” Jesus. As David Lose writes, it’s “a lot of glory talk,” especially for contemporary ears. We tend to identify glory with strength, victory, triumph, success, and adulation. About the only place I run into the word “glory” apart from vague, churchy hymns is in the context of war or sporting events. Jesus, however, seeks glory in servanthood, suffering, vulnerability, and loss. Somehow, God is glorified in these things in Jesus. Does that mean Christ’s followers should seek out suffering and loss? Definitely not, and the danger is that these verses could be interpreted as promoting or recommending if not exalting suffering. That isn’t the point. But perhaps it should tell us that God isn’t glorified in what we normally define as success, particularly where that success comes at the expense of justice and shalom for God’s creation.

Then Jesus refers to “eternal life.” He says, “…glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

This is eternal life: that they may know the one true God and Jesus Christ.

Hmmmm. Nothing about heaven or any kind of afterlife; not even any reference to time. This is very different from contemporary ideas about what “eternal life” means. Here, eternal life is “knowing;” knowing God and Christ, which implies an interactive, two-way relationship.

Commentator Cody Sanders quotes Mary Coloe: “As Son, [Jesus] reveals God’s love for the world and God’s desire to draw all into God’s own eternity life, which is to participate in the very being of God” (emphasis added). Coloe uses the phrase “eternity life” to emphasize a different quality of life, rather than simply the elongation of it. Sanders also quotes David Ford: “I have read the whole Gospel as an invitation to enter into a relationship of trusting Jesus, with continuing ‘life in his name’ involving an ongoing drama of desiring, learning, praying, and loving in community, for the sake of God’s love for the world.”

This connects with the glory talk in this way: As Brian D. McLaren writes, “In Christ, we see an image of God who is armed not with lightning bolts but with basin and towel…” (see John 13:1-10). McLaren continues, “In Christ, God is supreme, but not in the old, discredited paradigm of supremacy: God is the supreme healer, the supreme friend, the supreme lover, the supreme life-giver who self-empties in gracious love for all.” Catherine LaCugna puts it this way: “The very nature of God … is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth.”

If we worship and follow that God, the God that Jesus tried to show us – not dominating, nonviolent, supreme in service, and self-giving – then we will be living “eternity life,” a different quality of life, now. Not in the future after we die, but now.

As Diana Butler Bass puts it, Christianity has long been an “elevator religion” focused on getting people up, up, and away from this troubled earth to heaven. By keeping us focused on heaven and life after death, elevator Christianity has kept us from noticing or taking seriously what’s happening around us: growing economic inequality, the climate catastrophe, expanding militarization and weaponization, and scapegoating people on the margins. What Jesus points us toward here, and what we so desperately need, is to switch from elevator Christianity, a religion organized for self-preservation, privilege, and the hereafter to a religion that knows and participates in the very being of our loving God, that seeks out the deepest possible communion with every creature, a religion organizing for the common good of this world that God so loves (John 3:16).

In other words, a religion that’s a movement. A movement for “eternity life,” or as McLaren translates it, “life of the ages,” or “life to the full.”

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Cody J. Sanders, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-171-11-7
Mary L. Coloe, John 1–10, Wisdom Commentary (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2021).
David F. Ford, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021).
Brian D. McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian (New York: Convergent Books, 2016).
McLaren, Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It (New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2021).
McLaren, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007).
https://brianmclaren.net/if-youve-never-discovered/

The Power to Love

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John 14:15-21

This passage from Jesus’ Farewell Discourse begins and ends with love. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” says Jesus. “What commandments?” you might ask? In John’s gospel, Jesus gives only a single commandment, and it occurs in the chapter just before this one: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:14-35). He repeats this in the chapter that follows this one: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:12-13). 

“Love, love, love,” as Lennon and McCartney wrote; “All you need is love.” What does this love look like?  Jesus shows us: It looks like serving others humbly without concern for status or station (John 13:1-17). It looks like healing the sick (John 4:43-54, 5:1-14), giving sight to the blind (John 9:1-41), raising the dead (John 11:1-43), conversing with outcasts in a way that grants them dignity as God’s children (John 4:1-28), standing up for what is right in the face of power (John 2:13-19), feeding the hungry (John 6:1-14), and laying down his life for those he loves.     

Love one another.  If Jesus is our model, that’s a tall order. No one can hope to love others as Jesus did without help, and so Jesus promises that help. He will not leave his disciples orphaned (John 14:18). He will send the Spirit.  John uses the Greek word parakletos, or, in English, Paraclete. The word literally means one who comes along side you. It has been translated as comforter, helper, counselor, and encourager; the New Revised Standard Version translates it as “advocate,” the one who pleads your case, who takes your side, who intercedes for you, and who stands up for you. Note that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit not as “the Paraclete,” but as “Another Paraclete.” Jesus was the first, which explains why this Paraclete will come only after Jesus himself departs. 

There have been Christian traditions that interpreted the Spirit’s advocacy role as interceding for us before God like a lawyer in a courtroom before a judge. In this interpretation, the Spirit is one who pleads our case that, though we have sinned, because of Jesus and his sacrifice we deserve to be forgiven. The picture of God that this implies – God as needing to be persuaded to love and forgive us – doesn’t fit with John’s confession that “God so loved the world that God gave the only Son…” (John 3:16).  David Lose writes, “So perhaps it’s actually the other way around. Perhaps it is the Spirit who intercedes on God’s behalf before us. That is, perhaps the Spirit is the one who comes to remind us of our identity as children of God, as sheep who recognize the voice of our shepherd, those for whom the good shepherd lays down his life. Because, Lord knows, that can be a hard identity to hold onto, a hard identity to believe is really ours, especially when we are stressed or frightened, unsure about our future and it feels like everything has been turned upside down.”

It is that very advocacy, that comfort, that encouragement that we need in order to keep Jesus’ commandments – in order to love one another. “We love because [God] first loved us” (1 John 4:19).  Jaime Clark-Soles writes, “What appeared to be bad news to the disciples, namely Jesus’ departure from them, turned out to be the best of news for both them and us. While Jesus walked the earth, his ministry was limited to one locale and one person, himself. Upon his departure, his disciples are given the Spirit and moved from apprentices to full, mature revealers of God’s love. And this happens not just to the first disciples, but all those who would come later, those who never saw the historical Jesus. You see, the evangelist [that is, the author of the Gospel of John] insists that present believers have no disadvantage in comparison to the first believers. Everything they were taught and they experienced is available to the same degree and with equally rich texture to us.”

Available to the same degree.  This is stunning, when you think about it. Jesus says, “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:18-19). Wrap your head around that: Jesus is in God, and we are in him, and he is in us. We are included in him and in his ministry. Clark-Soles coined the word “Quattrinity” to describe John’s view of Christ’s believers: “In John, Jesus insists that the intimate relationship that exists between him, God, and the Spirit also includes believers. The believer does not stand close by admiring the majesty of the Trinity; rather, she is an equal part of it. John tries to push at this by grabbing hold of a number of terms and repeating them: abide, love, the language of being “in” (14:17 and 20), and later in the Discourse, an emphasis on “one-ness” (cf. 17:21-23). Johannine believers don’t ‘imitate’ Jesus; they participate in him wholly.”

In a couple of weeks, on Pentecost Sunday, the Church celebrates the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, our Helper, the one who helps us love by assuring us that we are fully loved.  In the Book of Acts, the Spirit comes after Jesus has ascended to God (Acts 2).  In John’s Gospel, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit directly from Jesus that first Easter night (John 20:21).  What matters is not how or when but our experience that the power of God’s love for us in turn empowers us to love.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2020/05/easter-6-a-spirit-work/   

Jaime Clark-Soles, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-1415-21-2

Refuge and Refugees

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Psalm 31: 1-5, 15-16

Commentator Joel LeMon puts it simply and bluntly: “This psalmist is a refugee.” He adds that the entire Psalter is refugee literature, written by refugees for refugees, giving voice to those who yearn for safety and protection. Though scholars disagree on exactly what date the psalm was written, this part of the book of Psalms is typically viewed as a response to Israel’s experience of exile.

“In you, LORD, I take refuge. … rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me.” Certainly, nearly everyone at some point longs for refuge and deliverance. This psalm speaks to us and for us in those moments. “I need your help, God. Rescue me; deliver me.” But LeMon reminds us that there are those for whom this is not a mere moment, a temporary crisis. There are those who live this psalm for months, years, even decades.

There is 7-year-old Alia, who fled her home in Aleppo, Syria and is currently living in Damour, Lebanon, and there is Bizimana, who fled his home in Rwanda and is now living in Nairobi, Kenya.

There are Wictoria, Vova, and their son, Sasha, who fled their home in Kyiv, Ukraine.

There is 75-year-old Achan, who fled her home in Pajok, South Sudan and is currently living in a refugee camp in Lamwo District, Uganda, and there is 24-year-old Fouzia, who fled her home in Kabul, Afghanistan, and lived for 14 years in Tajikistan,.

There are Noorkin and her son Yacob, who fled their home in Myanmar when Myanmar’s military and Buddhist extremist groups started clearance operations against Rohingya people. Noorkin is 40-years-old and Yacob is 10, and they’re living in Bangladesh.

The United Nations reports that as of the end of June 2025, 117.3 million people had been forced to flee their homes globally due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order. Among them were nearly 42.5 million refugees along with 67.8 million people displaced within the borders of their own countries and 8.42 million asylum-seekers. Incredibly, more than 1 in every 70 people on Earth has been forced to flee their home.

This psalm provides a stark reminder of the plight of refugees in every age. Though the identities and threats change, the experience of refugees remains consistent. They exist at the dangerous periphery of society. They are afraid, but they are also feared by the communities where they land. In 2025, the U.S. Government indefinitely suspended immigrant visa processing from 75 countries (see the full list, below). The common denominators appear to be poverty and/or countries populated largely by Muslims and people of color. The only more or less European country on the list is Russia.

The reason given for these exclusions is keeping the United States safe from terror. As Marci Glass points out, there is a risk in welcoming people to the U.S. “because people are people. We harm each other. We are not always kind. We have differing levels of mental health and stability. We have complicated family relationships and different understandings of how to live together. … We humans are a risky business.” But the real issue is the nature of that risk. Our fears – or at least, the administration’s fears – are not rational. A meme circulating the internet a while back illustrates the problem: “Muslims make up 1% of the population, commit .5% of the mass shootings, and account for 10% of U.S. doctors. So if you’re ever at the wrong place at the wrong time and get shot by a Christian, don’t worry. There’s probably a Muslim that can help.” Statistics show that we have a far greater chance of dying by being hit by a bus or falling out of bed than we do of dying by terror from a refugee from one of the countries listed on the ban.

This psalm reminds us of God’s fundamental identity as refuge. Again and again Psalm 31, like so many other psalms, portrays God as the place of protection for those seeking refuge. So what does that mean for Christians? Doesn’t it define Christian ministry as a ministry of and for refugees? Perhaps it invites us to recognize that people don’t become refugees by choice. As Marci Glass writes, “When your village is bombed, you flee. When ISIS invades your area, you flee. When famine or war make living in your home unsafe, you flee.” Perhaps it invites us to make an effort to meet some refugees and hear their stories.

Perhaps it invites us to join in the holy work of being a refuge.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
The list of countries banned from partially or completely banned from U.S. immigration:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Myanmar, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, The Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, North Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Yemen.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/restricting-and-limiting-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-security-of-the-united-states/

Joel LeMon, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-psalm-311-5-15-16-5
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/14/full-list-75-countries-visa-processing-suspended
Marci Glass, https://marciglass.com/2017/02/01/risk-and-refugees/, February 1, 2017.
https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/listicle/13-powerful-refugee-stories/
https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/overview/figures-glance

Abundant Life

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John 10:1-10

It’s an occupational hazard of being a Christian that there are other Christians who think you don’t measure up. One of my favorite cartoons is one of Wiley Miller’s “Non Sequitur” strips in which a man and woman are standing in front of a church, looking at the church sign. The sign says, “The Church of We’re Absolutely Right and Everyone Else Is Wrong.” The man says to the woman, “…And ironically, it’s non-denominational.”

This narrow view of who owns the truth – of who’s in and who’s out with God – has driven many people away from organized religion all together. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, a precocious child named Adah muses, “According to my … Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly… This was a sticking point in my own little march to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw. At age of five I raised my … hand in Sunday school to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Savior as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did nothing to earn? … Miss Betty sent me to the corner for the rest of the hour to pray for my own soul while kneeling on grains of uncooked rice. When I finally got up with sharp grains imbedded in my knees I found, to my surprise, that I no longer believed in God.”

This passage from Chapter 10 of John’s Gospel seems at first glance to be one of those “I am the only way” texts that people have relied upon to set Jesus up as a hit-or-miss savior. “I am the gate,” says Jesus. “If anyone enters through me, he shall be saved and shall find pasture.” This is pretty unequivocal. Christ is the gate. I think what’s important about this statement, and all of Jesus’ statements to this effect in the Gospels, is just that: HE is the gate. Christ is the gate. We, on the other hand, are not the gate, nor are we the gatekeepers. Back in the ‘80’s there was a nightclub in Manhattan called Studio 54. It was famous in part because bouncers stood by the door with a clipboard, looking over the crowd outside to decide who looked cool enough to be admitted. When it comes to salvation, we are not like the bouncers at Studio 54. It is Christ’s job to decide who is saved and on what basis, and for what reasons. It is not our job. If you don’t remember anything else about this passage, remember that it isn’t our job, it isn’t the job of any human being or group of human beings, to decide or even to worry about who is or isn’t saved.

Perhaps more importantly, though, Jesus doesn’t say what he means by “saved.” The traditional assumption, like Adah’s assumption in The Poisonwood Bible, is that he’s referring to an afterlife; that those who are “saved” go to heaven after they die, and those who are not, well, something else happens. But Jesus isn’t talking about heaven here. In Greek and Roman politics of Jesus’ day, kings and emperors were described as “good shepherds” who promote and provide a life of security and abundance for the empire’s subjects. John consistently presents Jesus as an opponent to imperial rule, so much so that he is killed for his opposition to Caesar. Biblical scholar Warren Carter writes that this description of Jesus in John 10 mirrors the role of the emperor as a ruler who keeps secure borders, a warrior who saves the people from attack or economic harm, and a benefactor who offers provision and even abundance. But unlike the emperor, Jesus is a true good shepherd, one who genuinely seeks to protect human lives from the thieves and bandits in imperial leadership. In the Roman world where 70 to 80 percent of the population was food insecure, protection from theft and the image of a green pasture was a poignant promise. So John’s Jesus offers not heaven in an afterlife, but a critique of the Roman Empire, which claimed (as reported in the writings of Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, and others) to bring wholeness and wellbeing to society, while its structures actually brought sickness and poverty to most of its subjects.

In other words, Jesus means it quite literally when he says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). When imagining Jesus as “the gate” (John 10:7, 9), it’s easy to think of the gate as penning in the sheep and restricting their movements. However, the purpose of the gate is to protect the sheep from those death-dealing forces in the Roman world, and to provides access for the sheep to the pasture (John 10:9). Rather than a hit-or-miss savior obsessed with our eternal souls, this passage shows us a savior concerned with our well-being: our health, our wholeness, our shalom. Not after we die, but here and now, in this life.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Wiley Miller, “Non Sequitur,” in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 15 (year unknown).
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York: HarperPerenniel, 1998).
Warren Carter, “Jesus the Good Shepherd: John 10 as Political Rhetoric,” in Come and Read: Interpretive Approaches to the Gospel of John, ed. Alicia Myers and Lindsey S. Jodrey (Lanham, MD: Fortress Academic, 2020).
Laura Holmes, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-101-10-7
Lindsey Scott, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-101-10-5

Cut to the Heart

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Acts 2:14a, 36-41

    This passage in Acts reports that three thousand people joined the Christian movement as a result of one sermon – a very humbling statistic for any preacher.  In contrast, where I live, if you confess to being a Christian you’re likely to get funny looks.  Recently I learned there are people describing themselves as Christians who say empathy is toxic, a means of manipulating people’s emotions to accomplish a “liberal” agenda. Yikes. No wonder we get funny looks.

    At first blush, it seems that the words of Peter’s Pentecost sermon would be the last thing we’d say to people who already think we Christians are curiosities at best, loathsome at worst.  “Repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven … Save yourselves from this corrupt generation,” preaches Peter.  It isn’t only our un-churched friends and neighbors who are uncomfortable with that kind of language. A pastoral intern I worked with called words like these – repent, sins, save – “stained-glass words.”  They are churchy words, words that have been trivialized in our culture, shrunken into something simple and even punitive when they have a deeper, richer, more life-affirming and more hopeful meaning than most people outside the faith, and many within it, assume.

    Sin might be the scariest of these words.  Maybe it’s easiest to think about sin in the context of another of these stained-glass words, repent.  In Scripture, repent is not feeling really sorry for what you’ve done, nor is it feeling ashamed of the horrible person you are.  In the Hebrew Bible, to repent means to return to God, to reconnect with God.  According to this definition of repent, sin is being disconnected from God.  This disconnection happens when, individually and corporately, we ignore God, turn from God, don’t take God into account.  Which we all do, at least some of the time. 

    Repent has the same meaning in the New Testament, with one nuance.  The Greek roots of the word combine to mean “go beyond the mind that you have.”  Go beyond the mind shaped by culture to the mind that you have in Christ.  In the New Testament, repentance is the path of reconnection, the path of transformation.

    Salvation simply means to be saved from our predicament.  What is our predicament?  Peter says we need to be saved from this corrupt or crooked generation.  These words have a hellfire and brimstone sound to them, but what they require us to do is look at sin as something that surrounds us.  Sin isn’t just personal peccadillos but is pervasive in the structures and systems of society.  When Peter says to the crowd, “this Jesus whom you crucified,” he isn’t talking to the people who hammered the nails into Jesus’ hands, or even to the crowd who shouted, “Crucify him!”  He’s not looking for particular people to blame.  He’s referring to this systemic aspect of sin.  We are not all equally blameworthy for the systems of violence, injustice, and death that surround our personal lives, our society, and our world.  But we are all caught up in vicious cycles of violence and injustice, whether as victims or victimizers or some of both.

    That is our predicament.  This predicament looks different for different people.  We can look around us and see victims of obvious violence and oppression: victims of war, punitive immigration policies, racism or sexism or homophobia, and we can say, yes, those people are in a predicament.  Those people need to be saved.  But for others, the predicament might feel like something’s missing or wrong or broken.  Your daughter is getting a divorce.  Your son is trapped in an addiction.  You’re in debt, you hate your job, your relationships give you more pain than joy.  You can’t get off the hamster wheel of getting ahead or spending or worrying.  You’re afraid that this is all there is.

    Peter’s listeners are “cut to the heart.”  Perhaps the story of the crucifixion has opened their eyes to their predicament and to their need for rescue from all that led to the crucifixion: empire, domination, injustice, the fear of losing privilege and power.  Or perhaps they’re overwhelmed with the good news of great joy that God is willing to die at the hands of God’s people and then come back again, not to make them pay, but to give them more love. 

    It turns out it isn’t Peter’s preaching that saves three thousand people.  What saves them, what saves all of us, is the story itself.  A better translation of “save yourselves” is “let yourselves be saved.”  Salvation is an experience more than a doctrine; it is that moment when you feel cut to the heart, and you have a clarity about God’s love that both reveals your predicament and empowers you to address it.  When the people ask Peter what they should do next, it isn’t to get step-by-step instructions for salvation – it’s to respond to what they have already received by the grace of God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Peter says, “Be baptized.”  Baptism is just the symbol of that new power and new life.

    Grace, baptism, the power of the Holy Spirit.  More stained-glass words.  This story in Acts is about God’s mission in Christ to us as well as to Peter’s First Century audience.  We are included in the promise he proclaims: “For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls.”  But it is also about God’s mission through us. As Christ’s disciples, we are given the task of spreading the Good News of the promise we have received – the promise, as Frederick Buechner put it, “that Jesus lives on among us not just as another haunting memory, but as the outlandish, holy and invisible power of God working not just through the sacraments [of baptism and the Lord’s Supper] but in countless hidden ways to make even slobs like us loving and whole beyond anything we could conceivably pull off ourselves.” 

    That is the Good News.  How do we spread it?  How do we do that in a culture that not only doesn’t like the word salvation, but much of the time, is oblivious to any predicament calling for it?  A culture that often seems to be actively working to maintain our predicament, even to the extent of treating empathy as toxic – unless, of course, that empathy is directed toward people in their own group, and toward efforts that support the structures that privilege that group and deny the humanity of other groups?

    At a church I served, carved into the wood on the inside of the pulpit where no one but the preacher could see it was a verse from John’s gospel: “Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:21).  That reminder is not just for preachers.  It is for all of us.  Individually but even more, as the church, the body of Christ in the world, it is our job to show people Jesus. To show them the loving, empathetic, compassionate Jesus who relentlessly sided with outsiders and the downtrodden, who forgave sinners and preached peace, who stood up to empire rather than collaborating with it, whose cross tells us how far God’s love will go to bring us back to God. Who “lives on among us not just as another haunting memory, but as the outlandish, holy and invisible power of God working … in countless hidden ways to make even slobs like us loving and whole beyond anything we could conceivably pull off ourselves.”   

    When George Buttrick was the chaplain at Harvard, a student came to his office and announced that he didn’t believe in God.  Buttrick responded, “Sit down and tell me what kind of God you don’t believe in.  I probably don’t believe in that God either.”  I wonder what I’d hear if I asked one of my neighbors who is likely to give me a funny look, “Tell me what it is you think Christians believe and do that is so threatening.  I probably don’t believe those things either.  Tell me what kind of church you mistrust.  I’m willing to bet that I don’t go to that kind of church.  Tell me.”

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.   

Resources:

Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancico, 2003).

Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991).

Debbie Blue, “Reflections on the Lectionary,” in The Christian Century, March 25, 2008.

William H. Willimon, Interpretation: Acts (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988).

Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (New York: Walker and Co., 1995).

The Easter Laugh

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John 20:19-31

I served a church in Marin County for nearly 15 years, and for nine of those years, we celebrated the Sunday after Easter as Holy Humor Sunday. Holy Humor Sunday is the revival of an old Easter custom begun in the early centuries of Christianity known as “Risus paschalis,” the “Easter laugh.” The custom was rooted in the musings of early church theologians, including Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom, that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. For centuries in Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant countries, the Sunday after Easter was known as Bright Sunday, and the week following Easter Sunday was observed by the faithful as days of joy and laughter with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.

I’m not sure when this fell out of fashion. Was it with the Puritans, or during the Victorian Era? Was it during the 20th century with its own brand of Puritanism? Somehow, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection with joy and laughter became sorely neglected. Let’s face it: laughing in church hasn’t been encouraged. Many of us learned at an early age that giggling or laughing in church would earn us an angry “Shush!”

The custom of the Easter laugh has been recovered and reclaimed in recent decades, and I think it’s about time. I for one can’t imagine that the disciples didn’t laugh with surprise and joy at seeing Jesus, hearing his voice, maybe even giving him a hug, once they were past the fear stage. They knew the joke was on them, because they hadn’t believed what he told them. And far from being somber, I suspect Jesus himself was grinning from ear to ear.

It’s odd, when you think about it, that we assume that Jesus always spoke with a serious if not disapproving tone and a cross expression. Given the descriptions of his willingness to break bread with outsiders and the accusation that he was a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:24), I suspect that Jesus often spoke with a twinkle in his eye, maybe even with a chuckle or a belly laugh. Why is it that we insist Jesus was harsh and humorless? I believe that says more about us than about Jesus.

Take the speech he delivers to poor Thomas, the only disciple who was missing when Jesus showed up at their hideout that first Easter night. When Thomas finally shows up, he only asks to see what everyone else had already seen, and yet he’s known as “Doubting Thomas,” as though somehow his request proves his faith is inferior to the other disciples. But what if, rather than condemning or chastising Thomas, Jesus speaks not only with compassion but with humor. I invite you to imagine that when Jesus spoke to Thomas, he was laughing – not mocking him but chuckling with humor and tenderness. “Oh, Thomas, thank God you’re here at last! You have some serious catching up to do. And bless all those, all the coming generations of my disciples who will doubt, and question, but whose trust in me will nevertheless change who they are, and what they do with their lives.” And then he claps Thomas on the back, and they all share a good laugh.

As Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer.”

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.