Sermon April 5, 2026 "God Loves His Peeps" by Rev. Katrina Ross Zezza

 

Image by Katrina Ross Zezza, 2013

Sermon April 5, 2026 "God Loves His Peeps" by Rev. Katrina Ross Zezza
Scripture Readings: Acts 10:34-43, John 20:1-18
Watch video of sermon on YouTube starting at 37:57

At Christmas, we observe how love is being born into our world. On Good Friday, we bear witness to all the ways that the sins of the world are trying to stop this love that is the mission of Christ. And on Easter Sunday we celebrate, because even though we thought love had been lost forever, it is returning to us. The banner behind me was made by congregants of this church, which most of you know. I learned today that it was made by a team of people, and Louise Bookman did the flowers. Each of these banners has a different theme, reflecting on an aspect of Christian faith. We have a booklet that guides you through a meditation on them, which was written by Linda Shepperd and Doris Kersten. They wrote that the theme of this one, “testifies to the new life that God offers us in Christ, not just at Easter, but every day of the year. The garden, full of life bursting with greenery and bright flowers, conveys the assurance that spring follows winter… The rising of the sun each day assures us that God offers healing and new life.” So how do we bear witness to the resurrection in our own lives? How can we be the body of Christ, and testify that love is winning, that life finds a way?

Our family went to the MET last night. I spent a lot of time looking at crosses and depictions of Jesus from different periods in history. The earliest Christians didn’t often depict Jesus dying on the cross, as a symbol of their faith. Instead, they filled their sacred spaces with images of Christ as a living presence. He appeared in fresco paintings and mosaics as a shepherd and a healer, surrounded by plants and animals, sometimes depicted as an animal himself, the lamb of God. If he was shown on the cross, he was usually shown triumphantly, alive with eyes open. And it wasn’t until the middle ages that Christians really started to emphasize the pain and suffering of Christ on the cross. 

But the earliest known depiction of Jesus was actually not made by a Christian. I wish it was at the MET, but it’s in Rome. It was made around the year 200, and was found in a building which was probably a school for imperial slaves. It is believed to be a piece of graffiti mocking a Christian, named Alexamenos. There are words carved into the plaster piece of wall, that say, “Alexamenos Worships his God”. And a badly drawn cartoon-like sketch accompanies the words, clearly meant to insult poor Alexamenos. It is a drawing of two figures. One is a human figure raising their hand in a gesture of worship, presumably Alexamenos. And then there is a figure hanging on a cross, with the head of a donkey. It seems that the donkey Jesus rode on Palm Sunday was a bigger part of the story than a lot of us realize. It was a symbol of humility, especially because of its contrast to the mighty war horses of the Imperial guard. But I think this piece of graffiti shows something really significant about the cultural context of Christ’s resurrection.

The idea that Christians worshipped someone who was crucified was absurd and laughable to non-Christians. Because being crucified was not only horrifically brutal, it was also embarrassing. The powers that be did their worst to Jesus, killing him in the most disgracing way they could, to put an end to his message and to spread their own message which was: This is what happens when you don’t submit to imperial domination. 

And when people started saying, “Jesus Lives” it would have been absurd, but also infuriating to the Romans. It undermined Imperial authority in an outrageous way, to say that a criminal executed by the state had been brought back to life. The message of the resurrection is that even though their kind of power seems to have won, taking people’s whole lives, ultimately love will have the last word. They tried to kill him but they couldn’t do it, he is alive even today, right here in this room.

One time when I was in college, I sent my grandmother a birthday card, and I thought it would be hilarious to sign it: “Love… your favorite granddaughter” without my name. Even though I knew my grandmother would never have a favorite. She loved all of us to the max. She had 16 grandchildren. All of whom sent her birthday cards. And all of whom lived close enough to stop in for a visit around her birthday. Every day she would sit in the same wingback chair in her living room, and during the month of March her birthday cards sat right next to her, near the lamp, on the table. The other granddaughters came to visit over the course of the next few weeks, and they sat with her to talk. Inevitably they all read the cards sitting there on the table, and you can imagine what kind of a stir it caused. “Your favorite granddaughter?? Who’s that??” My grandmother called to tell me. She said they all wanted to know exactly how she knew who that card was from. It was a scandal. And I was of course very pleased with the chaos I created. 

I kept thinking of my grandmother with her birthday cards this week, because of a recurring phrase in the gospel of John that I’ve always wondered about. Five times, the author refers to one of the disciples as “The disciple whom Jesus loved.” And I’ve always been like wait who’s that?? We’re supposed to know who that is? Does Jesus have a favorite disciple? What about me? In our reading today it says, "Mary Magdalene ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved…" I was comforted though by the line in our other reading today from Acts which says, “God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” 

Anyway, there is so much we don’t know about the way the gospels were composed, but most scholars believe that this “beloved disciple” is John himself, the author of the gospel, son of Zebedee and one of Jesus' twelve disciples. In the next chapter it says, “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down.”(21:24) So it seems, instead of naming himself, the author refers to himself as “the one whom Jesus loved” or “the beloved disciple.” But why does he do that? 

He's not saying that Jesus doesn’t love others. God’s love for humanity is core to John’s message. In John 15:9 he tells us that Jesus says, “As the father has loved me, so I have loved you” and the you here is plural. In John 15:12 Jesus says, “This is my command- love each other as I have loved you,” again in the plural- all of you.  And in John 13:1 he says, “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” The word telos, translated here as the end, can also be translated as uttermost or maximum. So basically it says, Jesus loves all of his people to the max. One interpretation I came across from a pastor named John Piper, is that it might be John’s way of saying that his most important identity is not his name, but the fact that he is loved by God. 

Max Lucado, a Christian writer who is more conservative than myself said some things I disagree with, but I really do like this quote. He said, “If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning... Face it, friend, He’s crazy about you!”

Many scholars believe that the Gospel of John was actually composed not by an individual but by a "Johannine community," a group of followers who refined the story told by John, which was handed down to them. This adds more layers to the meaning. Imagining the author, who is the “beloved disciple” as a community of Christ followers means we are all the disciple whom Jesus loved. God loves all of us to the max… anyone who reads the gospel and wants to follow Jesus, even poor Alexamenos, maybe even especially him. 

If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. You are God’s favorite. Let that be how we define ourselves as Christians- beloved. The theologian Richard Rohr says, “What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than death. Jesus walks the way of death with love, and what it becomes is not death but life. This is the mystery: that all that has died will be reborn in love.” As humans we understandably doubt this sometimes. We think we have been abandoned. And in our despair we bring harm to the earth, to ourselves and our fellow human beings. We are understandably doubtful about the resurrection, but the faith that we are called to hold onto is this: ultimately love wins. Love has the last word, not death. Even grief as painful as it is, is still love. It is a continuation of our love, just in another form.

So let us pray:

O Great Love, you are truly good. Thank you for being the God of hope and not despair. Please help us to discern what you are calling us to be and do for this world. May we recognize our interconnectedness and let go of our despair. May we re-member our wholeness and find peace. We pray this in all the holy names of God Amen