Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Do you know who this “great cloud of witnesses” is? Many of them are named in the previous chapter of Hebrews. They are the great heroes of faith. Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Samson, and David are just some of the famous figures from the Bible on the list. Like us, they had to live their lives by faith in God and his promises. They faced threats and dangers for which they could see no solutions. They couldn’t see how the future was going to work out for them, how things could possibly come out all right in the end.

If anything, their challenges were even greater. My brother-in-law jokes about what he calls “first-world problems.” The Wi-Fi stops working at our house and we can’t send an email. We order something on Amazon and they send us the wrong color. We go out to eat and they are out of our favorite item on the menu. How will we ever survive?

It’s not as if we live in the third-world where today’s challenge might be, “Where can I find safe drinking water?” “How can I avoid being killed by the uncontrolled soldiers of my corrupt government?” I haven’t wasted one second worrying about those things my entire life.

The lives of the heroes of faith sounded more like the third-world challenges, even worse. After going on about individual details from their lives, the writer of Hebrews sums it up this way: They “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated…They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”

The point is not to make us feel better because our problems have not been so bad. Your life may have stories that were every bit as hard to survive as theirs. The point is that the Lord took them all the way through life with their faith intact. It can be done.

And now we are surrounded by this “great cloud of witnesses.” Together with the Bible heroes of faith, you may be able to throw in a few that you have known yourself–Christian family members, parents or grandparents, who bravely fought disease, struggled with poverty, were victims of violence or abuse. A friend of mine tells of sitting in church with his grandmother, who sometimes had blackened eyes because of his violent and unbelieving grandfather. But there she was on Sunday morning, with a heart full of faith, singing Christian hymns at the top of her lungs.

These heroes may not be able to see the details of our lives from heaven. But they are still part of the One Holy Christian Church, and they are pulling for us as brothers and sisters in faith. Their example supports us and inspires us. These are the role models we have always longed for, the positive influences we have always needed. We can do it with God’s help. They did. Now they are behind you. So keep running. Don’t give up in this race.

John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Is “love one another” really such a new command? “Love your neighbor as yourself” wasn’t a new idea Jesus first spoke during his earthly ministry. Moses had been teaching it since Israel camped at Mount Sinai 1400 years earlier. In his first letter, John, who wrote this gospel, calls this an old command, “which you have had from the beginning.”

The word used for “new” does not have to emphasize that something is new in time, though it can mean that, too. It can refer to the quality of “new,” something that is superior. We might think of how Paul elevates love above all, even faith and hope, in 1 Corinthians 13: “The greatest of these is love.”

But if there is something new-in-time about Jesus’ command this night, it is this: “as I have loved you, so you must love one another.” We have this outstanding life of love and sacrifice to look at. Is that intimidating? We see Jesus love people we would find irritating or obnoxious, like the self-absorbed rich man who came to Jesus and asked him what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. “Jesus looked at him and loved him,” Mark’s gospel tells us.

We see Jesus love people we might find disgusting and repulsive, the prostitutes, the five-times-married Samaritan woman who was shacking up with her boyfriend. We see Jesus embracing people with dangerous, communicable diseases like the leper he reaches out to touch before he heals him. We compare how we treat people, and perhaps our faces flush with shame.

Listen closer: “as I have loved you.” “I have loved you.” This isn’t a confrontation. It’s certainly not a contest. It’s his claim, on you. We, you and I, are the self-absorbed, the repulsive, the dangerous-to-be-near people he has loved, and still does. He loved the others for us, and he suffered to save us, because he loves and embraces us.

So we love one another. We are his. “My children” he called these men a moment before. It wasn’t a criticism, an accusation of immaturity. It was a term of endearment: “My dear children, my precious ones.” Children imitate their parents, don’t they? So much of play is doing what mom and dad do.

Except it isn’t play when we love as Jesus loved us. We are living as his children, who know what it is to be loved. Love like that, and others will know we are his.

John 13:33 “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.”

A part of me doesn’t like the implications of Jesus’ kind of glory. We are his followers, and I don’t like the place it leads. The first time Jesus tried to explain it to Peter, he didn’t like it, either. You remember how Jesus called Peter Satan after Peter opposed Jesus’ announcement that he would die. Then he announced that anyone who wants to follow him must deny himself and take up his own cross and lose his own life for Jesus: not just apostles, or clergy, but anyone, everyone.

I like the praise-and-fame kind of glory. I would like adoring fans telling me how wonderful I am. I could be very content enjoying the respect and support of my congregation, my family, and my neighbors because they think I am nice, or talented. I like this kind of glory, because I like myself–a lot.

There is nothing wrong with being nice or having talent. But we aren’t much use to God or anyone else when being “nice” keeps us from telling someone what needs to be said–that living that way is sin; that no, you are not a good person, you need a Savior, too. We are selfishly squandering our talents when we turn them only to creating a comfortable life for ourselves. The world may glorify a life of self-indulgent luxury. God sees just wasted resources, and a lost soul.

Jesus’ suffering may help me see some of the places my own life will lead. But it also leads him to one place neither you nor I can ever go. That is the place of divine justice. That is the substitutionary sacrifice for sin, that belongs to his suffering alone. “My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.”

Peter and John tried to follow Jesus that night, you may remember. After his arrest scattered the disciples, Peter and John doubled back and followed him to the home of the high priest. There Peter’s empty self-confidence turned to cowardice, and he denied knowing Jesus, disavowed any relationship with him three times.

John made it all the way to the cross. There he stood, looking up at Jesus while he bled and died. But even John didn’t go where Jesus went. His hands and feet were not pierced by nails. He didn’t suffer the terrifying loneliness, the dark despair of God’s abandonment, as the single sacrifice to settle accounts between God and man. That trip Jesus made all alone.

At times, perhaps, we have foolishly believed we could make this trip with Jesus, or at least one like it. We will pay for our sins ourselves. We will make ourselves miserable. We will deny ourselves some pleasure. We will make some heroic sacrifice, and then won’t God be pleased, and impressed with our devotion. How pathetic that we would compare our measly discomforts with the hellish agony Christ endured!

It’s not that we fail to go where Jesus went the day he died. It’s that we can’t. “You cannot come.” But thank God we don’t need to. He left nothing for us to do, no sin unforgiven, no soul unredeemed.

The old Lenten hymn asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” By faith it implies that we were, that we are, there as we hear the story and ponder the meaning of the cross.

But in another sense, we weren’t there, and we will never go, because Jesus went in our place. We may have crosses of our own. Jesus warned that they would come. But they are not like his. Our crosses may serve us. Only his can save us.

John 13:31-32 “When he (Judas) was gone, Jesus said, ‘Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.’”

When I played football in highschool, we called the guys who handled the ball–the quarterback, the running backs, and the receivers–the “glory boys.” They were the “skill players” whose talents got their names in the paper. They got all the attention and praise.

Sometimes we may think of glory as little more than fame and praise. We throw huge parades for our returning sports heroes after they win the championship. In the past we glorified generals and their troops returning from victory, or astronauts from new exploits in space, in a similar way. But there is another side to glory.

Thirty years ago, a film by the name of Glory depicted the heroic courage of the 54^th Massachusetts Regiment, an all-black regiment, in the Civil War and their white leader, Colonel Robert Shaw. More than a third of the regiment, including Shaw, gave their lives in an unsuccessful assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. Their dead bodies received no military honors from their battlefield opponents. They were stripped, looted, and thrown into a mass grave. But their bravery won them the respect of the Union army. They earned a more sober, a more subdued kind of glory.

Jesus knew that the events of the next twenty-four hours would be no happy celebration of his fame and popularity. Who associates glory with having your back shredded by whips, your body fastened to wooden beams by spikes driven through your hands and feet, and then left hanging there to die? His cross and death were dark, grisly, humiliating. The Father’s abandonment took him all the way to hell. You don’t get any lower than that.

Still, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.” Yes, Jesus came through his crucifixion to a victorious resurrection, ascension to heaven, and place of power on heaven’s throne. But his glory didn’t wait for that.

In the Bible, the glory of God is not merely praise and fame. It is more than a blinding light that surrounds him and emanates from his presence. It is the revelation of the kind of God he is. And nothing so distinguishes our God as the love that was willing to suffer so much to save us.

Paul once described it this way, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6-8). That’s what Jesus was about to do. That’s how much he loves us. And that is why the Son of Man was now being glorified, and God was glorified in him.

John 21:9-14 “When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish you have just caught.’ Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.”

Does Jesus’ behavior here strike you at all? Who is this standing on the beach? This is the mighty Lord of heaven and earth who has accomplished his mission to save the world. This is the Conqueror of sin and death returned from battle. This is the glorious King victorious over hell and all its demon forces. Would you be surprised if he had shown up in a blaze of heavenly light, more like he appeared to Saul in our lesson from Acts, and demand these seven men get on their knees and worship him, more like the residents of heaven in Revelation? Wouldn’t it be appropriate considering who he is, and what he just accomplished?

But this is still Jesus. Today he has been cooking for them, making them a simple breakfast over a campfire. He invites them to sit down. He himself serves them the bread and the fish. The King and Conqueror is still a servant to his servants, even in the intimate details of life, like this breakfast on the beach.

A day will come when we will see him shining in all his glory. We will fall on our knees and we will worship the Lamb because he was slain, and with his blood he purchased for God people from every tribe and language and people and nation.

But today he is still our Jesus. He is serving you and keeping a thousand little details in your life working every day. Do you know that not a single atom in your body can hold together without his direct attention?

Before we eat our meals, many of us have learned to pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed.” Has it ever occurred to you that he answers that prayer, both parts, every time? He is not too busy running the universe to be a guest at your table, present in the faith and conversations of as many as are present. He is not too busy to bless your macaroni and cheese, or hamburger helper, or grilled chicken, or whatever else you might be sitting down to eat. This food has sustained you all this time, hasn’t it?

He still serves in the intimate details of your life, even many we hardly notice.

John 21:4-6 “Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, ‘Friends, haven’t you any fish?’ ‘No,’ they answered. He said, ‘Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.’ When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ As soon as Peter heard him say, ‘It is the Lord,’ he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards.”

We might be tempted to jump right to the good part, the near record catch of fish. But let’s not forget the struggle that preceded it. I like fishing. I don’t like staying up all night working. I could tolerate it better when I was in my thirties, like these guys probably were, but even then it made me tired and cranky.

I really don’t like it when my hard work produces nothing. I spend hours trying to repair the car myself, but I can’t quite get it to work and have to take it to the mechanic anyway. I spray the weeds. I mow the weeds. I get down on my knees and pull the weeds. And then I look at my lawn and it seems like I have more than ever before. I take the gospel to the same door four, five, six, or seven times. Then the person finally attends church and tells me the next time I go back, “No thank you. Your church isn’t for me.”

All of this contributes to a sense that God isn’t here, he isn’t with me, working with his blessing. I don’t like the struggle. Sometimes it even makes me a little snippy with God, like he isn’t doing his job. Remember Martha’s words to Jesus when he came to comfort her after her brother Lazarus died? “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Remember the disciples’ complaint when Jesus was sleeping through the storm on this same sea, maybe in this same boat? “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” What does it say about our faith in him when we accuse him of falling down on the job?

Let me ask, without the struggle, how could he come to our rescue and make his presence known? We might be tempted to say that we would see him in how smoothly our life was running. Please. You know as well as I do that when things are going well, we often think of him and recognize him the least. Then we forget about him. If not for the struggle we might not seek him at all.

But then he brings blessing to our life’s struggle, and we see our living Lord. “Then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’” I don’t know how long Jesus will let your struggle go on, maybe a night, maybe a lifetime. I don’t know how he will finally bring it to an end. Maybe relief will look supernatural. Maybe he will send someone to your aid. Certainly they all end when he ends our journey here and calls us home to heaven.

This much we know: We can count on him to bless us and bring our struggles to an end. He participated in our struggles himself to save and win us. He sacrificed heaven’s comforts and endured hell’s torture to spare us from sin’s sentence. By rising from the dead he proved that life’s great struggle, the struggle to be free from death and judgment is over. He has no intention to lose us to some lesser struggle now. So he brings his blessing to life’s struggle, even blesses us with and through life’s struggles. This is another way Jesus shows us he lives.

John 21:1-3 “Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Tiberias (which we know better as the Sea of Galilee). It happened this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathaniel from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. ‘I’m going out to fish,’ Simon Peter told them, and they said, ‘We’ll go with you.’ So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.”

These men were here for one reason: they wanted to see Jesus. This is where he told them to go, where he said he would meet them. In the past there were times when they had questioned his plans or resisted his instructions. Not this time. They came as he said. The only problem was, Jesus was nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes we sense Jesus’ absence, too. We may not be surprised when we have chosen our path in defiance of his word. We don’t expect him to follow us into our vices. Psalm 5 reminds us, “You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.”

But what about when we aren’t embracing open sin? We understand that sin is always with us, that our sinful nature taints everything we do, even the good stuff. We make no claims to perfection. But we live in grace. Christ has forgiven all our sins. As forgiven people it is also true that we resist sin. Sometimes, even when we have chosen to sacrifice for others, or we take a stand for good morals that earns us the ridicule of others, it seems that Jesus is absent. We do not sense his blessing. We cannot feel his reassurance.

A man once called me, distraught, because he felt as if the Lord were rejecting him. He attended a small group Bible study, and everyone who came talked about their blessings the entire time. They had great jobs, great families, great lives. He had lost everything. He knew some details about the way they lived that made him question why the Lord seemed to be with them, but not him. He didn’t sense God’s presence in his life.

Here’s our problem. God never promised we would “sense” his presence, as if we had some kind of spiritual metal detectors built into our souls and he was the gold that made them start buzzing. He is present with us all the time because he promises that it is so. He promises “I am with you” dozens of times in the Old Testament, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, and others. Jesus made the promise to his disciples during his ministry and in visions after he ascended. Does he even have to say this if people are sensing he is there? He is with us, because that’s what his word says. He doesn’t go AWOL, whether we sense him or not. He is present even when you can’t see him. That he gives us faith to believe this is also how he shows he lives.

John 20:21-23 “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you!’ As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’”

Delivering this message is a sobering responsibility. This is not something we get to apply any way we want. These words are the difference between life and death, heaven and hell.

That is why Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” All through his earthly ministry, Jesus did not make his choices or live his life any way he wanted. Everything he did was in line with the heavenly Father who sent him. Even when it meant suffering, pain, and death, Jesus bowed to his Father’s will.

That is just how he sends us out with the power to promise forgiveness. We are to be careful not to announce forgiveness unless he would be announcing forgiveness, too. We are to be careful not to withhold forgiveness, unless clear unrepentance shows us that he would warn the person that they were rejecting God’s grace.

Jesus himself made these bold statements. We thrill to hear him say to the paralytic, the sinful woman who anointed his feet, and others, “Your sins are forgiven.” But we tremble and take warning when we hear him say to his enemies after he healed the man born blind, “Your guilt remains.”

This is a hard assignment. After all, Jesus could see through human hearts. All we can see is what people say or do. But as an added assurance, he also “breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” Our Savior hasn’t left this vital work to good luck. He doesn’t cross his fingers and hope we get it right. Through faith he has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit. In his word we have the Holy Spirit to guide us as we apply forgiveness or warn people that they have rejected and lost it. The Spirit’s guiding role is another indication of the importance our Lord assigns to this task. 

When we see how important he considers forgiveness, doesn’t that give us peace? Like the disciples, in our own way we have denied him, deserted him, or disbelieved his words. But when he brings us back, what peace in knowing that forgiveness is what his life and work were all about. We still hear him say “I forgive you” through the lips of his disciples today.

John 20:21-23 “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you!’ As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven.’”

Jesus places a high priority on delivering forgiveness. Consider the timing of this command.  It was still Easter night. The grave had not been empty for 24 hours. The disciples had not grasped the full implications of the resurrection. They didn’t yet understand why it happened or what it meant.

Nevertheless, as soon as Jesus had proved to them that he was alive, he told them that he was sending them to announce forgiveness. Couldn’t he have spent more time explaining what happened? Couldn’t he have spent more time explaining the meaning of his resurrection for them?

But the assignment sort of does that, doesn’t it? Forgiveness of sins is what Easter is all about. When the disciples went out to forgive people in Jesus’ name, it was not forgiveness based on their say so. It was not forgiveness based on wishful thinking or human philosophy. It was not forgiveness with no basis at all. It was forgiveness based on God’s mighty acts in living human history! God had become a man. He lived with us, seized responsibility for our sins, and died for us as our substitute. He rose from the dead to announce to the whole world that it worked, that forgiveness of sins is ours.

See how important he considers forgiveness! His resurrection has many other messages, many other assurances and promises, too. It tells us he is God, that we will rise and live forever, that Jesus is alive and well even now to fight our battles and preserve his people. But the very first message he sends his disciples to preach in connection with Easter is the message of forgiveness, for without forgiveness, none of the others would even be true.