Yes, this story is about who to associate with and who we should supper with, and it is also a story about who we are as a people, sinful and exclusionary at times, and how it is Jesus who calls us away from those very human inclinations towards being children of God.

And as disciples they were to follow Jesus and heal people and lift up the poor and do all of those things and all of those things took them away from family. To follow Christ properly, they had to change their lives and loves and headings and they were most likely hated for it.

That is what makes this passage so difficult.

For if we are to be followers of Christ, we are to upend our own lives.

Even today with all of our machines that take us places faster and our work lives more efficient requiring less physical effort, we still have problems with rest, with taking time to reflect on ourselves, where we are headed, focusing on God.

This story is not just a great and dramatic story, it is evidence of God’s love for all of us. It is a part of our Christian DNA; it is a part of us. Unchangeable. Real. Tangible.

Except, what if it never happened?

And still faith does not derive solely from the evidence placed before us by Paul, faith too is immensely personal, individualized to our own beliefs within the structure of scripture, reason, and tradition, of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

And we too are created in the image of God.

God is both the taskmaster, the creator who out of nothing formed creation and the teacher who gave us the law.

This is difficult love. It is hard to love. And yet we must love.

We can look at this world as a world on fire, of declining institutions and relationships; we can shrug our shoulders at such intrigue and opt out of all that troubles us. Doing so, though would mean we are not loving each other.

And it is not comfortable work and I acknowledge that with that pause and prayer before each door is knocked on, but it is necessary work and that is evident by the stories shared and the relief sometimes felt in being able to tell those stories.

Friends, we are called on to share the word and share it well.

I am not sure on what side of that argument I’m on, but it is important to think about such things as we need to wrestle with scripture if we are to allow it into our hearts and impact how we go about allowing the Word to transform our lives.

There is no greater message I can utter than week after week finding a new way to say that you are loved, that through God you are fully and completely loved, and that God, the very essence of God no matter how you understand God, is love.

We can be a place of respite for those who looking for rest. We can take on the evils of this world as Christians are charged to do through love and companionship. We can speak in many tongues and understand all of them.

Yet for us to do so, we must bend to those looking. Search for those wandering. Evangelize to the wondering.

We are a separated and broken people and we heal our brokenness through love.

Love of God and love of each other.

By seeking out love we will see those who might be different from us, who might hold different beliefs from us as the extended portion of God’s family, our family.

And sometimes it is hard to love, seemingly impossible to love, but loving each other is the work we have to do if we are to complete that work.

Because through the difficulty, overcoming the hardness of the action, if we love each other, we are creating relationships and bonds that will bring about the kingdom Christ promises all of us.

Love each other and in that love we will find eventually the glory of God.

And at some point during worship, when we are truly present before God, when we realize we are in room inhabited by and gathered together in the name of love for each other and the perfect love of Jesus Christ, we begin to feel God’s presence.

We did not walk with the Jesus across Galilee as the disciples did, but we are in some ways no different than those disciples for we too are called to tend God’s sheep.

Our choice is do we now leave the empty tomb and evangelize the word of our living Lord?

Or do we visit the tomb on this day, on this sunny Sunday, and return home holding onto the miracle for ourselves, amazed at what had happened?

The first choice is hard, but friends, it is our calling.

This is the night that everything changed and we need to feel that change, imbibe it, let it wash over us, because for us to understand the Easter story, we must live through the passion.

This is a night of mourning, not hope.

And Christ is still calling his church to a similar form of love, that we who are here and have been here a long while, are to welcome the stranger, welcome them in such a way where we are not asking them to bend to our ways but for us to bend to their ways, as if a flower seeking new life in the light of a new sun.

We are reminded of the joy that life brings and that even in the tragedy of our dying, there is somber solace that even in death remains hope.

The kingdom is not just about our reward for being good people, instead it is the higher state in which God desires us to live for it is a place without suffering, without hunger, without fear.