I've subscribed for years to the journal of Christian spirituality, Weavings. Each issue has the words of its theme on the cover-Hospitality, Holy Work, Praying Like Jesus. Its arrival always feels like a telegram from God: work on this! I would be trying not to hear the call to seminary and the Weavings cover would be, "The Time is Ripe." I would be struggling to balance church, work, home, family, study, and the cover would be, "Sabbath Time." You get the picture. The most recent cover reads, "Vengeance is Mine." Our adult Sunday School is reading these articles in May. You might want to come.

The topic seemed appropriate, given the news this week. The desire for revenge is common to humans. You've seen it with kids riding in the back seat. One kid whaps the other-it doesn't matter who starts it-but then the offended party has to whap back. Which means the first one is required to even the score, so the second must respond, and pretty soon the driver has to threaten to turn the car around if it doesn't stop. The need to "even the score" can be as complex as demilitarized zones on the international scene or as bitter as visitation rights in divorces. In election years, scores are evened in television ads and letters to the editor. In the Presbyterian Church, we even the score with overtures to General Assembly. In relationships, scores are evened with one more final last word.

Evening the score struck me in the gospel reading today. Who had better grounds for revenge than Jesus? His best friends deny, betray, and abandon him as he faces death. Jesus knows about it before they do it and warns them, so they know he knows. Jesus could have taken the opportunity to do some pro-emptive score evening. Instead, he told them to love each other, to take his example and stop keeping score. This is glory? Love counteracting denial, betrayal, abandonment?

I've come to the conclusion that the crucifixion is a "not" story. One of my Bible professors introduced me to the concept-stories intended as negative examples. In terms of exacting vengeance from each other, Jesus' crucifixion is a "not" text. As in, "Don't do this." The apostle Paul says the crucifixion was the sacrifice "once for all"-as in, the last and final act to even the score. The driver won't need to threaten to turn the car around if you kids don't stop. The crucifixion means, the final "whap" has already taken place. No one needs to whap anyone else ever again. "Vengeance is mine," says the Lord.

One of the blessings of having adult children is looking back on their childhoods and regretting your sins as a parent. My former pastor used to hear my daughter parrot some particularly weird thing from me and he'd tease me saying, "She'll spend years in therapy over that." If I am to believe that Jesus evened the score, not only is there no need to get even with my pastor for that smart remark, my daughter doesn't need to get even with me. Nor do I need to live in anticipation and dread of her doing so. Since the score is already even in God's eyes, I can trust God to redeem even my parenting mistakes, and to give me the grace to forgive my daughter's need to deliver the final whap. I can even trust God to bring me to forgive myself.

The trick, of course, is to trust God to do that. To trust God to get even on our behalf-both as the offended party and as the offending party. Wouldn't it be nice if God gave us some guarantee, some reminder about not having to take the revenge matters into our own hands? A token, or a piece of paper, or something. A story would work. Christians have kept the book of Revelation in the cannon for that purpose, to help us remember to trust God. Revelation is complicated and can be read on all kinds of levels, most of which are misunderstood. It was never intended to anticipate facts surrounding the plotline at the end of time. What "happens" as described in Revelation is symbolic, and Christians are supposed to understand meaning not events.

The "meaning" we can take when we read Revelation and John together today regards the implication of the resurrection. If the crucifixion is a not text, the resurrection is a "yes" text. The "yes" is God's "yes" to us-as individuals, as a congregation, as the Church. We are free. Christians are not stuck, nor are we condemned to think or do as the rest of the world thinks or does. The crucifixion means we can rely on God to take action on our behalf, the resurrection means God already has taken action. The resurrection is a "yes-do this" story, a story of life and fullness and abundance. Every Sunday when we gather together in worship we rehearse the implications of that story.

If you are aware of recent events, then you know that things have been happening in the Iraq war that I thought Americans didn't do. If you find this news troubling, there are two things you ought to do immediately: immerse yourself in the faith community and get to worship.

Do you think I'm saying that because I'm paid to say that? Do you think this is like a commercial announcement? I used to think this advice was the sappiest thing I'd ever heard, and it made me mad. I've come to understand it differently. Worship takes a bunch of wildly differing people and makes them into a body-a community, a group of people of who study, worship, and serve together. When we worship, we act as if we think God wants us to be more than isolated and limited and broken-God wants us whole. We stick up for each other when we share joys and concerns, we look beyond our own narrow interests when we bring food to the Resource Center and when we hear about the mission of the church. When we worship together, we invite another reality into the world-God's reality. Do you think we say the words of the Lord's Prayer because they sound good? Don't you think we pray "thy kingdom come" because we really want God's kingdom to come? Worship presents a different picture-sort of like what we see in the book of Revelation today-a picture where God is present to and part of God's people. Worship makes more room for that coming reality by making us into people whose very lives declare that God acts and Jesus has finished the work of salvation. We cannot do that on our own or even one-by-one. We need the faith community to equip and support and restore us so that God's kingdom will come. So we can be an alternative to what we hear in the news.

So it is fitting that today we baptize two young people. Baptism affirms that God is doing something very new. As these two young people make their baptismal promises, you as a congregation will promise to be part of God's "new thing" that happens to them when we bless the water and pour it over their heads. When we form a faith community around them, we point them to the "yes" story of the resurrection. How will we let worship shape us into the people of God-for the sake of these two girls? Week after week we invite the kingdom to come, week after week we say we accept the "not" of the crucifixion and promise to live into the "yes" of the resurrection. When we bless the water and pour it over Samantha's and Adelia's heads, we are saying that we believe God's kingdom will come.