If I’m honest, more than once I have prayed: “Lord, please lead me, but please don’t lead me there.” And when we follow Jesus with conditions, when we set the terms of our discipleship, our prayer becomes an echo of Peter’s rebuke. Before we know it, we’re no longer followers, but stumbling blocks.

We don’t choose the Kingdom of Heaven because it’s easier or softer. We choose it because every other kingdom buckles under the weight of broken promises and false hopes. These other kingdoms promise to satisfy our deepest desires, but in the end, they leave us empty and unfulfilled.

The message is loud and clear: there is no summer vacation when it comes to grafting new members into the Body of Christ.

The mystery we encounter in the Ascension is not that Jesus leaves us. The mystery is that Jesus, who we can no longer see, is not really gone from us at all.

In the Gospel of John, the Church doesn’t have to wait for the Spirit, as if it were the third act in an extended drama. Instead, the Church shares in the life of the risen Jesus from the very first day.

Tonight, we become part of this story. This is not a story we remember. This is a story we enter. And so, we stand in it. We come alongside our ancestors, to join the communion of saints, to take our place in the waters of our deliverance. This is the night…

The true miracle takes place, not when the man first sees the world, but when he first recognizes his Savior. This is why we need the whole story…In that moment, the man who has been cast out of every community he has known discovers where his true belonging lies.

The devil isn’t pressuring Jesus to doubt his identity as the Son of God. He’s asking him to secure it. To prove it. To seize it. To claim it on his own terms. And Jesus refuses.

John’s account says nothing about a manger—nothing about Mary and Joseph—no mention of a baby. But the Church [makes] the claim that both Luke’s Nativity and John’s Prologue are equally Christmas stories. Both Christmas stories are true.

Jesus is honest about the fragility of even our grandest man-made structures. Jesus normalizes chaos as the way of the world. And Jesus calls us to testify – to proclaim Christian hope – in the midst of that chaos.