Going and Coming – Nick Utphall reflects on housing, habitat, and witnessing
Care for Creation Commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary
Readings for the 7th Sunday of Easter, Year A (2026)
Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11
It’s been a season of comings and goings. Jesus gone, then back from the dead (Easter Day). Disciples alone and shut off behind closed doors, then Jesus appearing with peace (2nd Sunday of Easter). Jesus coming to Cleopas and the other disciple as they’re going down the road, then suddenly leaving again just as he came to be known (3rd Sunday of Easter). The Good Shepherd who comes into the sheepfold and leads out the sheep, and leads me to green pastures and beside still waters and through darkest valleys (4th Sunday of Easter). Jesus, who goes to prepare a place for you, and also assures the arrival of the Spirit, another Advocate (5th & 6th Sundays of Easter). That’s a lot of going and coming, coming and going!
It is said that we’re always Easter people and that every Sunday of the year is a mini-marker of the resurrection. But this Easter season seems to indicate that Advent isn’t the only season of Jesus coming. (Of course, we know this because Jesus always promises to come among us in communion bread, or to be into our midst where two or three gather.)
Still, for so much about God’s presence (if not always completely predictably) and for resurrection being a bodily and earthly reality (not a disembodied separate spiritual sensation), these creation care commentaries have raised in recent weeks the risk that this collection of lectionary readings can be interpreted as otherworldly, of souls sequestered away in an afterlife rather than life here on earth now and yet to come.
The readings this week also could carry such a conundrum: Jesus floating off into the stratosphere. A God who is up above the atmosphere. Even the start of Jesus’ longest prayer (all of John 17, with a portion read on this 7th Sunday of Easter each year) seems like it could be God’s internal dialogue, and has Jesus here specifically not praying for this world, while he is going to God and won’t be here.
About this opposition to “the world” in the Gospel of John, Craig Koester writes, “The fourth evangelist understood that the world was corrupt, but he believed that change could occur when people were transformed by the power of God. In response to the world’s corruption, the community needed to maintain its own separate identity; but because of God’s power to bring about change, the community was called to bear witness to the world rather than withdrawing from it. The community’s distinction from the world was the basis for its engagement with the world. A religion that is the warp of the social fabric cannot easily confront society with its flaws. It was precisely because the community was different from the world that it could challenge the world on the basis of the love and Word of God” (Craig Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003, p281, italics in original). This distinct vision of a counter-cultural community could presently be a path for resisting Christian Nationalism, and also clearly can propel our practices exactly of caring for this world with God’s transformative love.
To re-ground our perspective in the realities of this earth, these descriptions of God going with the clouds at least present an invitation for us to look up at the sky (“gazing up toward heaven,” Acts 1:10). The Psalm’s line about “the one who rides upon the clouds” (verse 4) could call to mind eerie, threatening Ghost Riders in the Sky of the old country song. Instead of such spooky supernatural images, imagine the natural version; if you had to imagine God riding in the sky or Jesus getting carried off on a cloud, you could ponder: what sort of clouds might you expect? You can use this National Weather Service chart to consider the possibilities, including how high Jesus could ascend on each type. Lest that speculation seem nebulous (for a word with a root that is Latin for clouds!), in the Psalm God’s presence with the clouds is what contributes to weather patterns like rain. Perhaps your prayers this week could include (if they don’t usually) thanksgiving or petition for the weather that God is bringing, with an eye to the literal sky.
Still, as the disciples are gazing toward the heavens, the two men in white redirect their attention away from the clouds. Even the disciples’ initial question hadn’t been about what was going on off in some other realm, but our own realms and rulers here. They asked about restoring the kingdom, which might parallel references in 1st Peter to situations of anxiety and ordeal, suffering and oppression under opposing powers. 1st Peter reminds us to expect Easter impacts present in our lives and world, including (perhaps especially) when things aren’t going how we wish with the ruling earthly authorities. The solution to our suffering isn’t only “pie in the sky, bye and bye” (a phrase written to critique heavenly promises while neglecting struggles to live here-and-now).
Perhaps related to the reflection in 1st Peter for how we approach suffering, another theme in these readings is the multiple commendations to be witnesses of Jesus. Our witnessing can intersect with our observations of suffering. It is frequently noted that the Greek word for witness is martyr. But it’s not only about suffering and death. Just as the story of Jesus’ crucifixion is incomplete without the resurrection, we are martyrs not because of the suffering, but through it we move toward new life. As we are commissioned to be found “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), we bear witness to good news of life across the world and we further the work of the God who “gives the desolate a home to live in and leads out the prisoners to prosperity” (Psalm 68:6 NRSV; ELW version: “you give the solitary a home and bring forth prisoners into freedom”).
The Psalm’s phrase could mirror and call to mind ministries against homelessness or as prison chaplains.
ELCA Social Messages are one form of our ethical guides, adopted by the ELCA Church Council. (ELCA Social Statements are more in depth and approved by two-thirds of an ELCA Churchwide Assembly.) An early Social Message on homelessness speculated that the situation would worsen in the decade after it was written in 1990. In fact, homelessness has more than tripled in the United States since then, to more than 771,000 people in a 2024 count. Still, the Social Message’s calls for care, emergency support, education, advocacy, and adequate housing remain a worthwhile and necessary response, as God works to give all “a home to live in” (Psalm 68:6).
Our church also encourages us to care for those in prison. You can see some overviews of ELCA prison ministry here. Again, the trends continue to worsen in this country, as now more than 6 million people are involved somehow in the criminal legal system. And, as with housing insecurity, incarceration disproportionately affects people of color. Current efforts to exponentially increase detention centers are aimed at the immigrant community, who may have already been forced from homes by various challenging circumstances in their countries of origin. (You can find more on this through the ELCA’s AMMPARO program.)
For these anthropocentric (human-centered) views around the Psalm’s verse about God responding to homelessness and captivity, such perspectives could also easily be applied about efforts on behalf of other creatures. Restoring plots of habitat may be part of giving homes to the desolate. Maybe that’s as simple as No Mow May to reduce cutting your lawn so the pollinators have more opportunity to find food in your yard. Maybe it’s streambank restoration and picking up trash, or the clean-up and recovery after a climate disaster, or planting native seedlings that will offer habitat improvements to expand ecosystems that had been diminished. It has recently been reported that bird populations are decreasing even more substantially in agricultural areas, but that also presents solutions. On a larger scale, we could relate this sustenance of homes to reducing climate change that is causing bleaching of coral reefs, desertification, and threats to normally resilient sequoias. Those intense droughts and places of magnified wildfire force coincidentally also fit verse 9 from our Psalm: “You sent a bountiful rain, O God; you restored your inheritance when it languished”!
All these are examples related to solidarity and assistance in giving homes to live in for places and creatures (including humans) who had been left alone facing desolation. We get to witness (both to see and to tell about) this kind of good news!
And leading out prisoners could cause us to consider captive animals. In my own area, there has been longstanding question of and push against the use of primates for research at the University’s Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, and recent high-profile resistance to inhumane conditions at a facility for beagles being bred for research. Of course, you could also consider your local humane society, again transforming captivity into being given a home.
It is interesting to hold striving for housing and habitat and against confinement and captivity as God’s work and mission when we also have the first question of the disciples in Acts, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom?” (1:6) We’re witnessing restoration while they ask when it will happen. And it may even be amusing that Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set” (1:7). After all, his very first public words in Luke’s Gospel (the first volume of the same author of Acts) were to read from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). And then Jesus declared, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21). Jesus could start his public ministry by declaring God’s work was fulfilled today, and have his final words before ascension say that we don’t know the times!
Maybe one way to take this is that we’re not expecting a sudden and complete fix. It will neither be that the answer gets beamed down from heaven, nor that we’d get raptured away from the problems. Instead, we can anticipate this work continues on. The Easter season may be on its way out, but God’s work will keep coming with the risen Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit “that is resting on you” (1 Peter 5:14). Even as we’re approaching the end of these 50 days, still new life will continue to spread and we’ll continue to witness it in our world.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Originally written by Nick Utphall in 2026.
nick@theMCC.net
https://utphall.wordpress.com/
Seventh Sunday of Easter in Year A (Utphall26)
Going and Coming – Nick Utphall reflects on housing, habitat, and witnessing
Care for Creation Commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary
Readings for the 7th Sunday of Easter, Year A (2026)
Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11
It’s been a season of comings and goings. Jesus gone, then back from the dead (Easter Day). Disciples alone and shut off behind closed doors, then Jesus appearing with peace (2nd Sunday of Easter). Jesus coming to Cleopas and the other disciple as they’re going down the road, then suddenly leaving again just as he came to be known (3rd Sunday of Easter). The Good Shepherd who comes into the sheepfold and leads out the sheep, and leads me to green pastures and beside still waters and through darkest valleys (4th Sunday of Easter). Jesus, who goes to prepare a place for you, and also assures the arrival of the Spirit, another Advocate (5th & 6th Sundays of Easter). That’s a lot of going and coming, coming and going!
It is said that we’re always Easter people and that every Sunday of the year is a mini-marker of the resurrection. But this Easter season seems to indicate that Advent isn’t the only season of Jesus coming. (Of course, we know this because Jesus always promises to come among us in communion bread, or to be into our midst where two or three gather.)
Still, for so much about God’s presence (if not always completely predictably) and for resurrection being a bodily and earthly reality (not a disembodied separate spiritual sensation), these creation care commentaries have raised in recent weeks the risk that this collection of lectionary readings can be interpreted as otherworldly, of souls sequestered away in an afterlife rather than life here on earth now and yet to come.
The readings this week also could carry such a conundrum: Jesus floating off into the stratosphere. A God who is up above the atmosphere. Even the start of Jesus’ longest prayer (all of John 17, with a portion read on this 7th Sunday of Easter each year) seems like it could be God’s internal dialogue, and has Jesus here specifically not praying for this world, while he is going to God and won’t be here.
About this opposition to “the world” in the Gospel of John, Craig Koester writes, “The fourth evangelist understood that the world was corrupt, but he believed that change could occur when people were transformed by the power of God. In response to the world’s corruption, the community needed to maintain its own separate identity; but because of God’s power to bring about change, the community was called to bear witness to the world rather than withdrawing from it. The community’s distinction from the world was the basis for its engagement with the world. A religion that is the warp of the social fabric cannot easily confront society with its flaws. It was precisely because the community was different from the world that it could challenge the world on the basis of the love and Word of God” (Craig Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003, p281, italics in original). This distinct vision of a counter-cultural community could presently be a path for resisting Christian Nationalism, and also clearly can propel our practices exactly of caring for this world with God’s transformative love.
To re-ground our perspective in the realities of this earth, these descriptions of God going with the clouds at least present an invitation for us to look up at the sky (“gazing up toward heaven,” Acts 1:10). The Psalm’s line about “the one who rides upon the clouds” (verse 4) could call to mind eerie, threatening Ghost Riders in the Sky of the old country song. Instead of such spooky supernatural images, imagine the natural version; if you had to imagine God riding in the sky or Jesus getting carried off on a cloud, you could ponder: what sort of clouds might you expect? You can use this National Weather Service chart to consider the possibilities, including how high Jesus could ascend on each type. Lest that speculation seem nebulous (for a word with a root that is Latin for clouds!), in the Psalm God’s presence with the clouds is what contributes to weather patterns like rain. Perhaps your prayers this week could include (if they don’t usually) thanksgiving or petition for the weather that God is bringing, with an eye to the literal sky.
Still, as the disciples are gazing toward the heavens, the two men in white redirect their attention away from the clouds. Even the disciples’ initial question hadn’t been about what was going on off in some other realm, but our own realms and rulers here. They asked about restoring the kingdom, which might parallel references in 1st Peter to situations of anxiety and ordeal, suffering and oppression under opposing powers. 1st Peter reminds us to expect Easter impacts present in our lives and world, including (perhaps especially) when things aren’t going how we wish with the ruling earthly authorities. The solution to our suffering isn’t only “pie in the sky, bye and bye” (a phrase written to critique heavenly promises while neglecting struggles to live here-and-now).
Perhaps related to the reflection in 1st Peter for how we approach suffering, another theme in these readings is the multiple commendations to be witnesses of Jesus. Our witnessing can intersect with our observations of suffering. It is frequently noted that the Greek word for witness is martyr. But it’s not only about suffering and death. Just as the story of Jesus’ crucifixion is incomplete without the resurrection, we are martyrs not because of the suffering, but through it we move toward new life. As we are commissioned to be found “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), we bear witness to good news of life across the world and we further the work of the God who “gives the desolate a home to live in and leads out the prisoners to prosperity” (Psalm 68:6 NRSV; ELW version: “you give the solitary a home and bring forth prisoners into freedom”).
The Psalm’s phrase could mirror and call to mind ministries against homelessness or as prison chaplains.
ELCA Social Messages are one form of our ethical guides, adopted by the ELCA Church Council. (ELCA Social Statements are more in depth and approved by two-thirds of an ELCA Churchwide Assembly.) An early Social Message on homelessness speculated that the situation would worsen in the decade after it was written in 1990. In fact, homelessness has more than tripled in the United States since then, to more than 771,000 people in a 2024 count. Still, the Social Message’s calls for care, emergency support, education, advocacy, and adequate housing remain a worthwhile and necessary response, as God works to give all “a home to live in” (Psalm 68:6).
Our church also encourages us to care for those in prison. You can see some overviews of ELCA prison ministry here. Again, the trends continue to worsen in this country, as now more than 6 million people are involved somehow in the criminal legal system. And, as with housing insecurity, incarceration disproportionately affects people of color. Current efforts to exponentially increase detention centers are aimed at the immigrant community, who may have already been forced from homes by various challenging circumstances in their countries of origin. (You can find more on this through the ELCA’s AMMPARO program.)
For these anthropocentric (human-centered) views around the Psalm’s verse about God responding to homelessness and captivity, such perspectives could also easily be applied about efforts on behalf of other creatures. Restoring plots of habitat may be part of giving homes to the desolate. Maybe that’s as simple as No Mow May to reduce cutting your lawn so the pollinators have more opportunity to find food in your yard. Maybe it’s streambank restoration and picking up trash, or the clean-up and recovery after a climate disaster, or planting native seedlings that will offer habitat improvements to expand ecosystems that had been diminished. It has recently been reported that bird populations are decreasing even more substantially in agricultural areas, but that also presents solutions. On a larger scale, we could relate this sustenance of homes to reducing climate change that is causing bleaching of coral reefs, desertification, and threats to normally resilient sequoias. Those intense droughts and places of magnified wildfire force coincidentally also fit verse 9 from our Psalm: “You sent a bountiful rain, O God; you restored your inheritance when it languished”!
All these are examples related to solidarity and assistance in giving homes to live in for places and creatures (including humans) who had been left alone facing desolation. We get to witness (both to see and to tell about) this kind of good news!
And leading out prisoners could cause us to consider captive animals. In my own area, there has been longstanding question of and push against the use of primates for research at the University’s Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, and recent high-profile resistance to inhumane conditions at a facility for beagles being bred for research. Of course, you could also consider your local humane society, again transforming captivity into being given a home.
It is interesting to hold striving for housing and habitat and against confinement and captivity as God’s work and mission when we also have the first question of the disciples in Acts, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom?” (1:6) We’re witnessing restoration while they ask when it will happen. And it may even be amusing that Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set” (1:7). After all, his very first public words in Luke’s Gospel (the first volume of the same author of Acts) were to read from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). And then Jesus declared, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (4:21). Jesus could start his public ministry by declaring God’s work was fulfilled today, and have his final words before ascension say that we don’t know the times!
Maybe one way to take this is that we’re not expecting a sudden and complete fix. It will neither be that the answer gets beamed down from heaven, nor that we’d get raptured away from the problems. Instead, we can anticipate this work continues on. The Easter season may be on its way out, but God’s work will keep coming with the risen Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit “that is resting on you” (1 Peter 5:14). Even as we’re approaching the end of these 50 days, still new life will continue to spread and we’ll continue to witness it in our world.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Originally written by Nick Utphall in 2026.
nick@theMCC.net
https://utphall.wordpress.com/
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