Listen: if God has indeed raised Jesus from the dead, that changes everything.  You've heard of Spring cleaning? Well, introducing the Easter makeover. Peter says, we've been “born anew to a living hope.”

Street theater, anybody? It’s Holy Week in a world where empires still vie violently for world domination armed and armored atop the modern-day equivalents of Roman war horses. Hosanna! God save us! cry people who are weary of the death and destruction unleashed by modern-day Caesars. Into this world, our world, this week, today , enters a rabbi on a borrowed donkey.

Did you catch those opening verses? “The scribes and the Pharisees said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery” Caught in the very act? Really? How? And why does she gets paraded out there for everyone to see and shame but not him? Frederick Dale Bruner, a keen and witty Bible scholar wrote, “The whole set-up has an unpleasant odor.”

I’m old enough to remember a band named Rufus back in the 70s, a funk band from Chicago best known for launching the career of a lead singer named Chaka Khan. I had the 45 of their first hit, “Tell Me Something Good.” So it that throughout the six Sundays in Lent and also on Wednesday nights in Bible study we’re going to listen in as a variety of biblical voices tell us something good.

Beginning with John. John calls the turning of water into wine, “the first of the signs through which Jesus revealed his glory” (John 2:11). The word is sign.