Friends: Christian faith is about relationship with God the Father Almighty through faith in His Son Jesus. That wasn’t immediately evident to the disciples. Have a prayerful Holy Week; Easter is next Sunday. Blessings ...

(PS: From our auto racing days, Janine Vogrin Doyle (The Bean on our IMS pit note crew; her dad Jim ran the STP Indy Car program) has survived cancer and needs help. Her GoFundMe page is https://gofund.me/e7ca07427.)

Spirituality Column #1011

March 31, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Friends, Partners, and Heirs

By Bob Walters

“Ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you.” – Jesus, John 15:7

“The Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” – Jesus, John 15:16

“This is my command: Love each other.” – Jesus, John 15:17

These familiar verses from “The Vine” passage in the Gospel of John track the final teachings of Jesus to the Disciples after the Last Supper and before His crucifixion.

On what we now traditionally call “Maundy Thursday,” Jesus and the 11 remaining disciples – traitorous Judas has already left to inform the Pharisees of Jesus’s whereabouts – depart their Passover meal out a back door and walk through dark Jerusalem toward the Garden of Gethsemane.

John chapters 15, 16, and 17, a story recorded only in the fourth Gospel, chronicle Jesus’s encouragement, warnings, and instructions to the confused and soon to be bewildered disciples who believe Jesus to be the Son of God, but have yet to comprehend the meaning of His impending departure / death / return.

Jesus doesn’t tell them to behave better; he emphasizes his and their identity. Jesus locks in on the generosity and goodness of God: “He will give you whatever you ask” (v7,16). But they don’t understand what they will be asking for.  Jesus tells them they are no longer slaves, but his friends (v14), because He has “made the Father known to them” (v15). Jesus insists going forward they must work together because they will need each other and be partners to complete the task assigned to them.

The task? Preach Jesus’s message of grace and salvation to the world. Be His partners – and each other’s – in telling the greatest story ever told of how the Son of God came into humanity to heal our sins and restore our loving, eternal relationship with the Father of all things; to tell how Jesus died in loving obedience to His Father but rose in loving glory to seal the truth of His mission and heal the mortal wound of our sin.

Jesus is preaching a New Covenant of faith for all mankind, not of Law for the Jews. Repentance means not just physical obedience, but learning a new way of thinking about life and God; it is a new way of love and redemption.  It is a gift the world will not immediately understand; a gift from a God/man it hates. It is a gift that shows humanity the reality of God, and that gift that says our own lives have purpose as we glorify and are glorified with God. That is what Jesus did; that is the gift God sent.

We are not detached bystanders in our Christian lives today. “If you obey my commands you will remain in my love … as I have obeyed and remain in the Father’s love” (vv9-10). I believe that we, like the disciples, are chosen participants, though I have no idea why this one is chosen and “gets it,” and this one isn’t, and doesn’t. 

All we can do is preach truth, share love, obey in faith, and trust God’s plan. I often think how opaque were Jesus’s claims and instructions as he spoke to Jews, Pharisees, and gentiles. It seems the only beings who understood exactly who Jesus was and the power He had were the demons who feared Him, not the humans whom He loved and came to save. Many humans still do not understand our part in the story.

We want God and Jesus to do stuff for us; doesn’t Jesus say, twice in this passage, “Ask and it will be given to you”? What we are to ask, as friends, partners, and heirs of the magnificent ministry of Christ, is how to best preach, share, and witness this precious word of life. It is for God’s eternal glory, and for joy in our worldly life.

On Easter we celebrate our own salvation, sure. But our joy is being on the team.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes, “Gethsemane” means “a place that crushes olives.” Jesus, the Messiah anointed one, with olive oil, was crushed for our sins.

Friends: Christianity is uniquely personal and also uniquely relational. Our faith life and communion are not so very different from the divine love within the Holy Trinity.  Blessings, Bob

BTW, there is a new Rich Jacobs "Finding Genius" podcast! Here is the link: Exploring The Culture Of Christianity With Bob Walters (recorded 7-31-24).

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Spirituality Column #926

August 13, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Team Effort

By Bob Walters

“…I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” – Jesus praying, John 17:20-21
One of the lessons of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, Spirit – and of church gatherings and corporate Christian life in general is that Christianity is not an individual pursuit; it is a team sport. We are all in this together. Yes, with the triune God.

Do we – each one of us, singularly – have a personal and unique faith relationship with God through Jesus? Yes, we do. 

Does the Holy Spirit abide in our lives individually?  Yes, the Spirit does. 

But are we alone in our faith?  No, we are not.

The above cited prayer of Jesus is from the “Priestly Prayer” in John 17, the concluding prayerful words of Jesus to his disciples before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. To refresh, Jesus and the disciples left the last supper (John 14:31), walked through Jerusalem toward the Garden listening to Jesus’s teaching (John 15-16), and in John 17 Jesus prays for himself (vv1-5), the disciples (vv6-19), and for “all who will believe in me through their message” (vv20-26). That includes us … today.

When Jesus directs us with the two greatest commandments, to love God and to love others (Matthew 22:37-39), and at the last supper reminds the disciples of this “new command … to “love one another” (John 13:35), Jesus is only telling the disciples – and by extension all believers – to do what Jesus himself does in the Holy Trinity … to love God and love others. 

God’s cosmic design is that He Himself is a community, and He created all of us – for His own glory – to be loved and loving, faithful participants in His Kingdom. Our faith in Jesus and reliance on the Holy Spirit bring us into that divine communion.

Perhaps the greatest mystery of our faith is the Holy Trinity – how something can be three in one, one in three, unique, yet together. But don’t get hung up on the math.

For all the different ways the Bible describes God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, when the Bible says in the letters of John that “God is Love,” he is explaining the purpose of the Trinity, and that purpose is relationship, which is what gives communion its meaning.  Love cannot exist without relationship.

God is a community, as we, His faithful, are a community joined with Him and with each other. When we celebrate communion, we are celebrating our relationship not just with God through Jesus and among ourselves as Christians, but celebrating the Father-Son-Spirit relationship that is the abiding and loving truth of our faith. 

Our faith, my faith, your faith, can’t be something we simply “believe.”  Faith is the truth of all being, of how we live our lives.  I don’t merely believe I’m married to my wife Pam; I AM married to Pam.  That’s life and that’s truth … and that is what faith is. 

It is what God calls faith to be: real, the bedrock of our soul.  Faith is not a transient opinion, but life with love, purpose, and direction.  Our communion in faith is the communion into which Jesus invited his disciples, and all who would believe.

The communion we celebrate today as the faithful body of Christ is a communion in faith that is our strength, our hope, and our joy and our oneness in Christ.

To love God and to love each other is a divine team effort, and what Jesus does.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) adapted this from his Aug. 4 communion meditation at church. Regarding the “math” of the Trinity, 1+1+1=3, but 1x1x1=1. Multiply!

Friends, I am thankful for the broad light in Christ we know in scripture.  The disciples only had Jesus’s words, deeds, and promises, but it was obviously enough.  See the column below. Happy Thanksgiving!  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #888

November 21, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Lamp of Faith

By Bob Walters

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Jesus, John 16:33

These words are the last of Jesus’s teaching to the disciples before His arrest, crucifixion, death, and resurrection.  It is the end of Jesus’s dramatic speech (John 15-16) as He and the disciples depart the Last Supper, walking across dark Jerusalem headed for rest and “hiding” in Gethsemane.  In this final teaching Jesus said nothing about salvation, behavior, forgiveness, safety, punishment, God’s wrath, eternal life, or heaven’s rewards. Jesus spoke of the disciples knowing and loving Him, testifying to His identity and truth, and relying on and loving each other.  A rough road awaited.

In the disciples’ looming, frightening here and now and in the momentous, world-changing events of the hours to come, Jesus said they would have trouble, grief, be hated, be persecuted, turned out of the synagogue, and be heartbroken at His death and later His departure.  Jesus promised to send the “Holy Spirit” for comfort, teaching, and truth.  Jesus declared the condemnation of Satan and His own victory over the world, a “victory” no one would understand for decades to come.  Jesus reasserts that it is the disciples’ faith in and relationship with Him that will be their peace.

Jesus then prays aloud (John 17) for Himself, the disciples, and all who will follow in faith and humility.

“If this is a victory,” the disciples must have been thinking, “we’d sure hate to see a defeat.” They knew only faith, Jesus’s identity as the Son of God, and the ominous forbearing of a night of treachery, violence, injustice, denial, fear, and a day of death.

Most of official Israel – the Pharisees, Sadducees, Sanhedrin, rabbis, scribes, ministers, magistrates – rejected Jesus as the Messiah.  The One for whom they had prayed for a thousand years, now in their midst, was invisible and reviled in their wicked blindness.

Much of the world remains in the same spiritual blindness today, 2,000 years later.  Jesus came out of Israel for all the world’s salvation, but His victory over the world remains a matter of faith.  Assured, yes, but there remains daily witness to the “Lord of the World” – Satan – of injustice, violence, treachery … all the things that the disciples dealt with, understanding neither the impending darkness nor the eternal light.

If we can be thankful for one thing this Thanksgiving week, it is the abiding light of the Holy Spirit and the gift that we can in fact know Jesus, truth, and eternal life in relationship with God.  I believe this “heavenly realm” reveals itself even now, and I ask, Are we thankful enough to trust in awestruck wonder that we have a Bible that lifts the world’s veil and helps us see God’s indelible glory beyond? We should be very thankful.

I came to faith at an odd time, maybe. I was baptized 22 years ago this past week – Sunday, November 18, 2001 – but had first come to church and “got it” about 10 weeks prior to that, on September 2, 2001.  We all remember what happened the following week on September 11.  My church friend “El” asked recently “if 9/11 was a factor” in my early days of faith.  Great question but truth is, it was not.

What cemented my faith, late, at age 47, wasn’t a crisis, the world’s ugliness, my own fear, copious personal challenges at that time, or even a desire for forgiveness or heaven.  I had to know why I could pray thanks for the love of my children, the grace of our being, and the beauty of this world, and know a peace I could not describe.

Jesus’s love, not the world’s terrors, lit my lamp of faith. I am thankful it did.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) realizes no time is a bad time to come to faith.

On every Labor Day my thoughts go to the purpose of a Christian life.  Not because I want to work harder, but because I am thankful. And … a Sept. 5, 36^th birthday shout-out to my elder son Eric, who at the start of 8^th grade in 2001 wanted to go to church.  I am so very thankful. - Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #877

September 5, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Labor of Love   By Bob Walters

“Do this in remembrance of me. … For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:24-26

This past Sunday, for the third straight year, I randomly drew church communion meditation duty on or just before Labor Day weekend.  For me, it is a happy fluke.

That’s because 22 years ago, Labor Day weekend in 2001 – Sunday, Sept. 2, to be exact – was the day I first believed.  It was my “Awake Date” in Christ.  I had much to learn, but since that day, then at age 47, I have believed and however imperfectly, lived the faith and been blessed. I wrote about that day in church HERE.  Now, to today.

Our independent Christian church, East 91^st in northeast Indianapolis, celebrates bread-and-cup communion in each service, every Sunday. In our traditional service, a staffer or member of the laity, like me, presents communion. I draw duty twice a year.

Not long after the 2001 Awake Date, I was baptized. Over the next year I read the whole Bible, and over time I grew in knowledge and figured out that not just my purpose in life but ANY Christian’s purpose in life is simply this: to glorify God.

That’s what I talked about in communion this past Sunday, to remember our purpose of glorifying God each time we celebrate communion in Christ with the bread of fellowship and the cup of life.  In communion, Jesus said, “Remember me.” Christians often focus on the “bread of the broken body” of Jesus and the “blood of the death” of Jesus.  In reading the specific communion passages in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and in 1 Corinthians 11, and examining John’s Gospel account of the Last Supper and walk to Gethsemane with the disciples (Chapters 13-17), we know our communion in Christ is about so much more than a broken body and bloody death.

Communion is about remembering the obedience and truth of Jesus, and God’s eternal love, and our forgiven redemption as Jesus defeated death upon the Cross.  In our communion, together, we remember Jesus and our life’s purpose of believing … in His person, His identity as the Son of God, and His Lordship of all Creation.

We proclaim the Lord’s death until He returns, but I honestly don’t think the primary purpose of Jesus on the Cross was His death; His purpose was our saved lives.

Why the Cross?  Well, our sin, of course.  But I think the motivators were God’s love, Jesus’s truth, and the power of the Holy Spirit that could then be unleashed for God’s redemption of humanity.  We are invited into the Kingdom of God: the Garden.

Our purpose in remembering Jesus on the Cross is to glorify Him, and glorify God. My mentor George Bebawi memorably challenged that notion about a “sole purpose to glorify God” because, importantly, he said we must take it one step further. 

Glorify God, yes; but that’s not enough.  By Jesus’ sacrifice, we are invited not only to Glorify God. We also, ourselves, participate in God’s glory not just by going to heaven when we die, but in this life as well by living and sharing our faith with others. This life’s heavenly realms blossom by trusting Jesus not only as savior, but as Lord.

That is the New Covenant, and Jesus will direct our paths … if we let Him.

That is something to remember when we share communion.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that believers glorify God uniquely; God made us that way. Walters has written often about his “Awake Date,” and always mentions he was in church only because his 13-year-old son Eric wanted to go. The service that day was led by then senior minister Dave Faust as E91 celebrated the 50^th anniversary of beloved Russ Blowers’ ministry there.  Dave baptized Bob in November 2001. 

Spirituality Column #802

March 29, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Whenever …

By Bob Walters

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” – 1 Corinthians 12:25

It was the first “Lord’s Supper” – at “The Last Supper” – where Jesus shared with His disciples the bread and the cup as His body and blood.

That was the night Jesus was betrayed into the hands of those who would kill Him.  Jesus emphasized at the supper, when handing the disciples the bread to break and the cup to share, “Whenever you do this, do this in remembrance of me.”

On that evening Jesus labored mightily, one last time, for the disciples to understand not only that He was the Son of God, but that He was God and that their continuing faith in Him and witness to His truth would light a path of salvation from sin into God’s Kingdom for all mankind. “This is my body … and this is my blood.”

We think – maybe too much – of the broken body and blood of Jesus on the Cross.  We see our sin, experience our guilt, and sense our salvation in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. But the bread and the cup as death?  Let’s think that one through.

As Jesus says “this is my body,” He is breaking the bread in fellowship with the disciples.  This is the fellowship we as Christians come to know in Christ and with each other.  The cup as “the new covenant in my blood” communicates the promise – a covenant – with His blood, and Jews recognize blood as the source of life.

I’ve come to believe that the battered and bloody Jesus on the cross is not the remembrance Jesus had in mind at the Last Supper.  The bread was the symbol of His love and fellowship with them, and the cup was the symbol and promise of life.

The cross is much more than a picture of Jesus’s sacrifice and suffering.  It is a picture of us … of me, of humans … and sins we commit in human fallenness.  I think the cross is a picture of the ugliness of the fallen world, and shows the infinite resolution and love of Jesus to complete His mission to bring humanity back into fellowship with God – back into Eden, back into God’s Kingdom, and into eternal life.

At the Last Supper, Jesus knew that the greatest challenge to the disciples after His death would be their staying together in fellowship and in faith.  He used the bread and cup to do that: “Do this in remembrance of me,” as if to say, “Stay together, persevere.  Your fellowship will be critical to your mission ahead: to share the truth of God’s love and my eternal life with a hostile and doubting world. I am with you.”

Obviously, the resurrection – Christ’s return – and all that subsequently happened made clear much that was murky as the disciples struggled to understand these last instructions of Jesus.  But the world remained and remains hostile, and all believers benefit from the communion of the bread and the cup as we take the focus off of ourselves and our sins, and remember the promise and truth of the Son of God.

Jesus remains our savior always; regardless of what we think.  Our belief or non-belief doesn’t affect His truth or love one way or the other.  But they sure affect us, and we can have the joy and hope of Jesus as we remember His body and blood.

That’s when we have His fellowship and His life.  And it is ours … whenever.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests we encounter the communion elements – the body and blood, bread and cup – knowing Jesus remembers us, too.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) “came from the other side” so to speak and so understands how stupefying John 14 can be to a non-believer.  Now, he gets it.

Spirituality Column #463
September 29, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

By Bob Walters

"No greater love has anyone than this; that someone lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13 (ESV)

It’s a good bet that this is one of the most familiar verses in the Bible, even among people who don’t read the Bible, don’t especially believe what it says about Jesus, or maybe are unaware that this even is a Bible verse.

Dying for others as an act of sacrificial love is something that abides deeply in our American DNA.  No other country has military cemeteries in as many far-flung places as has the USA, which has advanced the cause of freedom with its own treasure and blood throughout her history.  Americans “get” this.

Among the Bible literate, John 15:1-17 is known as “The True Vine” or “The Vine and Branches” story.  The “someone” who “lays down his life for his friends” is Jesus, whose death and resurrection restores our relationship with God.  This passage has fascinating depth, symbolism, instruction and Old Testament pedigree.

Essentially, these words are Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples as they leave the last supper.  Heading to the garden of Gethsemane where He will “sweat blood” in distressful prayer, be arrested by Jewish guards, be abandoned by most of his disciples and then led away to trials, beatings, rejection, humiliation, crucifixion and death, Jesus talks of abiding in His love and loving one another.

In Isaiah 5:1-7, “The Song of the Vineyard,” the “vine” is the symbol of Israel; much like Americans would recognize the bald eagle as the symbol of our nation.  God is telling Israel, through Isaiah, that “the vine” he has loved and set apart, i.e., their nation, has failed him.  Jesus is now telling the disciples that He is the true vine, the true representation of God’s will and purpose.  And after all … Jesus is God.

This is the kind of teaching that regularly infuriated the Jewish leaders.  Jesus constantly represented to them that He was the Messiah savior, son of God, come to save all mankind.  The Jews did not want to lose what they assumed was exclusively theirs and were unwilling to share God’s favor with all humanity.

The instruction of “The Vine” of Jesus is simply this: “Love one another as I have loved you” (verse 12). And we can only properly love each other if we properly abide in the love of Jesus (verses 4-7, 9-10).  It is instruction for everyone.

The circle is complete when our love for each other abides in the love of Jesus, and then produces fruit for the glory of God.

That’s abiding in the true vine.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) thanks Dr. David Faust, pastor, mentor and friend, for the Vine background.