Dear friends:

Pentecost is May 27. Please come. Please wear red. Please think about where and how you feel the Holy Spirit moving you to act and engage in sync with God's call to you.

This coming Sunday is the last Sunday of Easter season. We'll be thinking about this passage from the First Letter of John: "If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son. Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life."

The last three sentences are the ones that should astonish us: "And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life."

So we have eternal life. And we know that "this life is in his Son." So what does that life look like in Jesus? Jesus's eternal life is manifest in his courage. Jesus defies the devil in the wilderness, refusing his temptations by holding fast to God. Jesus has the courage to stand up to the Pharisees and the other Jewish authorities—and to the Roman authorities too. Jesus resists the counsel of his family, when they try to get him to stop attracting the attention of the authorities in a way that can bring him no good. He heals. He teaches. He feeds. He hangs with sinners and tax collectors and Gentiles and women. He is willing to be crucified rather than change his perspective. He breaks the mold of enlightened self-interest that is the counsel of prudence in his and every age.

That kind of courage comes from a different perspective—not the perspective of having to go along to get along; not the perspective that says that discomfort and loss and death are the worst things that can happen to me and that only "good citizenship" and "personal growth" will keep me moving forward and out of trouble. Jesus's perspective is that God matters most of all not only now but also forever, and that God wants us to love others as God loves us, now and forever.

From that perspective, loving others enough to heal them on the Sabbath, feed them when there's no food, share everything I have with others, relate to sinners and the folks nobody likes, enjoy children at least as much as adults, live cheaply and simply, give my time and energy to helping the poor, speak truth to power, spend significant time reading and talking about Scripture and praying—all of those, seen from the perspective of what God wants for eternity, are the most important things we can do. We see Jesus doing them. His eternal life is our eternal life. His love makes eternity with him and God possible for us. All we have to do is believe it and act on it. Now. If we do that, "then" will take care of itself.

Love! Pat