Monday, April 30, 2012

Sermon Notes 4/29 John 10, I John 3

April 29 John 10:11-18, I John 3:16-24 Many of us love the good shepherd image-its sense of care, of being carried and protected. The sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd. In a visual culture, voice is still vital. We can tell by the tone of voice that something is amiss with a loved one. We are all plagued with a spiritual deafness at times, sometimes chosen, sometimes not. (master’s voice in the old RCA ad) Can one ever truly stray from the good shepherd? It is a most comforting image when we downcast, to be picked up in the arms of Jesus the Good Shepherd. In a time when so much is coming at us so fast, it is a pleasure to hear that we have a guide to the pasture and to the still waters of refreshment. We go through brainstorming sessions at work and are faced with a million ideas and a million means toward ends, but we still don’t know which way to turn. when someone does decide on a path, then then are hit with a million missiles of complaint. A shepherd is the responsible one, the boss-this passage always hits a candid pastor between the eyes, as our title comes from the root word for shepherd; you hear it in the word pasture. (I know immediately some of you start thinking of the all the pastors you would like to send out to pasture) Pastors shudder and wonder if we are closer to the hired hands? We try to avoid it by using a phrase such as terms of call for contract; we don’t hire a pastor, we call them.In the christian community are we called to all be shepherds as well as sheep? A verse that has me sit up is “I have sheep not of this fold.” Where did we get the idea that we get to decide the size of the fold? Jesus is the shepherd, not us. Jesus is the gate to the fold, not us. god enfolds us with the divine presence. In the the movie Babe, the pig becomes a sheepdog, a shepherd’s assistant. He finds he can speak to the sheep.he discovers that if he speaks politely to the sheep they are quite co-operative. The good shepherd here is one who will lay down his life for the sheep. Notice the intimacy here, Jesus knows the sheep as fully as the relationship of the Father and the son.We go through life knowing that we have so much in us, but it goes unrecognized. One reason Jeremy Lin has hit so big with basketball fans is that he is a symbol of what people can show if only given a chance. The Good Shepherd recognizes us and knows us just as we know the voice of the shepherd. Michener in the novel Hawaii introduces us to an immigrant chinese family. One contracts leprosy and a woman stays with him as a kakua, a pledged helper as the caretaker role. Often, only those who had a kakua were buried in the early days of the islands. Bruce Springsteen is coming out with a new album and one of the songs is :We Take Care of Our Own.I am so glad that our passage from I John does not only emphasize love as a nice feeling. it insists on acting out of love. Love improves and weakens vision. it may well be blind to faults. It sees need and wants to help, is compelled to help.The Easter image for us is the new life is enjoyed within community. We find safety, security, and life within the flock.The church present and future for us is a sheepfold, one that offers us the security of being known and loved.

Friday, April 20, 2012

I John 3:16-24 notes

1) Love in v. 16 is defined as a remarkable capacity of self-giving or martyrdom, or the comradeship of the battlefield. 2) v. 17 is a direct shot at the resumption of the greed is good notion, or a return to the Social Darwinism earlier in the 20th century that seems to be in ascendance. It also applies to the conditions/structures of justice, not just charity or philanthropy. 3)Again, how do you react to little children.what would be a less annoying equivalent in today's time? the linkage of faith and action certainly corresponds to James. 4)Notice that love is the standard of judgment by god. Notice too that John has boldness and reassurance, not guilt and shame. God rises above condemnation, especially self-condemnation. 5) v. 23 is John's golden rule. 6)The dense nature of abiding in this letter is exemplified by v. 24.we may disentangle this thicket, or we could emphasize its interconnected, communal, entwined nature, a good antidote to our rampant individualism.

I John 3:1-7 notes

1) This apparently did not post correctly, so back at it. Look carefully at what he means children of God. Work on ways of speaking about it and its impact. 2) Note well that we can an element of theosis here, something being discussed more in Protestant circles, but the Orthodox family has examined it for quite some time. (theology today has had a number of articles on it over the years) 3)Sin here is difficult. The word, harmatia+=missing the mark but the verb has a sense of doing, putting that into practice. How could that be, given its meaning of missing the mark. would one deliberately miss the mark? Harmatia sounds more like incapacity or built-in limitation more than choice to me. 4) How can missing the mark be lawless, a direct translation, or perhaps not lawful.In European classic sociology, anomie means normless, at sea. So perhaps it could be termed without law, lacking law/direction/standards/guidance. To what degree does this fit our 21st Century context? 5)v.6 is quite strong. it pushes us to consider the depth of abiding in the Revealed One the One who takes away sin. Again, notice the linkage of sin as having blind spots/ignorance toward the reality of Jesus. 6) I hear a lot that people who do wrong say they are still a good person. john seems to have no patience for that. If you do good, you are good, if you don;'t you're not,.Character is revealed by behavior.

Aprill 22 Sermon Lk. 24:36-48, I John 3:1-7, Acts 3:12-19

When we recite the Creed we confirm belief in the resurrection of the body.When my mother was in an assisted living center a lady who was then in her nineties told me that ministers do not speak enough about the afterlife, note she did not say Hell alone, but heaven also. She said that the afterlife was mentioned in funerals, but she was too upset to hear it well then. (Before she died, she asked her family to ask me to assist in her funeral). In our confessions we also speak of an immortal soul, and it is not at all clear to me that we are affirming the same thing I don’t want to get into an argument about when and how we go to heaven after death. Let’s imagine we are in geometry class and we will have an axiom:when we die we enter into God’s eternal time, where past, present, and future merge. After all, it is in Luke’s gospel that he tells the bandit on the cross this day you shall be with me in Paradise. Second axiom, Jesus is a pointer for our resurrection life. In contrast to John’s story last week, , everybody in Luke seems to be Thomas in their understanding. In the time of Jesus it was another given: that ghosts/spirits can’t eat. Ghosts could not be touched or touch others. So when he asks for something to eat, we are in a new frame of reference. Third assertion, it is dangerous for Christians to separate body, mind, heart and soul as completely distinct entities. We are ensouled bodies, or embodied souls. Our very selves are a mix of these features in our lives. We know this when we speak of something being psychosomatic. For us this resurrection picture seems to mean that we will be ourselves, our restored selves, our best selves in heaven. We will carry within this embodied life: feelings and thoughts and relationships intact.It seems that the phsycial life we have experienced will perdure. Jesus says “see that I am myself.” This resurrection of the body raises as many questions as it may settle. If we eat as resurrected selves, what about bathroom? Maybe heaven will be a place where the men’s rooms are as nice as the women’s bathrooms. Maybe men will finally find better aim in heaven. Seriously, jesus is recognized as himself. Held in the memory and embrace of the divine, we will be recognized, and maybe, at long last, we will recognize ourselves a shte beloved of god, precious gifts of God, part of God’s age old working and reworking to make this world and the world to come a good place. I John makes the wonderful assertion that we are children of God. John indicates that we learn to live within the life and light of Jesus Christ. In time, we start to resemble the life of Christ in our attitudes and actions. So often, I hear people say that temptations do not seem as potent as they age. They attribute it to the wisdom of experience and the aging process, but John would say that we are being conformed to christ. That status is rendered from love. a good way to approach resurrection is to ask: will the love of God for us stop upon our deaths? In Acts Luke’s account has the author of life killed. Death does not close the page of the life of Jesus, and through that life, our lives too will persist in a new way. We are family. could the creator of all life, the giver of new birth, dismiss our lives? Can we really believe that God can ignore the bonds of family? So precious are we, god enfolds our lives into the Author of Life.

April 22 Week Devotions

Sunday April 22-Earth Day is today. This is an example of the secular world teaching the church about its responsibility. Thoughtlessly, the church mirrored the culture about nature as something to be exploited. In other words, we lost the notion of creation. Instead of seeing science as an enemy we do far better to see how it depends our reading of Scripture and bolsters our sense of awe, wonder, and reverence toward the environment. After all, the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” It is not solely for our pillaging. Monday-Both of our daughter are taking some important tests. Evaluation causes anxiety. We go back to be little and ashamed that we do not make the grade. We feel diminished. Even if an assessment is generally laudatory, a rarity I know, we tend to disregard that and expend our energy on the criticism. Judgment day strikes terror in us with the image of god as stern evaluator. Jesus is the judge judged inour place. what assessment tools do you think Jesus employs? Tuesday-I’m staying ahead on sermons and started working on June 24, where Jesus stills the storm. My memory went back to the movie, Good Will Hunting. The therapist has a simple painting of a fisherman rowing in a storm (you can dial it up on the internet) and the young genius finds much meaning in it. When do you feel that way? Where do you find solace? Wednesday-I admire Ir Kent Groff’s book Active Spiriutality. He sends out devotional ideas every week, and he sent a note form AA’s Big Book. “As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done."* We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.” Thursday-No one gets out of life unscathed. Even if we do recognize all sorts of blessings, we all suffer through many trials of various sorts. I am convinced that we make it through those trials only by tapping into the grace and resources of the divine. I look at what people go through and am astonished that they survive, let alone flourish. where have you sensed divine aid in getting you through a time of troubles? Friday-I have an aging-related question. When you were younger, did people whine and complain as much as they do now? Maybe, it is what we complain about, but it seems to me we live in a culture of complaint. What good is complaining? What negative impact does it have on our thought processes, our feelings, our relationships? Saturday-If all goes well, I will visit our eldest daughter this weekend. It is an adjustment visiting with an adult child than when they were under one’s own roof. I wonder if God works to respond to us in different ways as we mature in our spiritual and ethical lives over the years?

Sermon 4/15 thomas

Life and light pervade Easter life. At the start in Genesis, God is shown to be the God of life. Now in the midst of this new creation God demonstrates not only organizing life from nothingness, but from death itself.I John starts with this affirmation, that the word, the message of life was and is present in jesus, the Healing, Teaching, Crucified and Risen One. We get a glimpse of early Christian life. Part of the resurrection life was one of sharing the fulness of life with each other. Is it possible to live a life such as the story in Acts? Still, even if it a utopian vision, it is a Christian Utopian vision, or is it?.We would be tempted to call this a cult, not a community. Easter life is life in community, in this world and the world to come. Along with I John, our gospel reading shows us that the early church was filled with troubles in its early Easter life. Was the resurrection real, or an illusion born of desperate grief and hope? Thomas is disbelieving more than doubting-in my experience doubting is bad in the Christian ethos, as it seems to mean undue skepticism or even wondering about the goodness of God. Doubt is seen to be the opposite of a blind faith, and it can turn sullen and angry when it tries to shut down our questions, our struggles, and wrestling with the faith. Jesus maintains the scars-I usually call them scars, but John depicts them as open wounds. they are the emblem that it really is the Crucified One, the suffering servant of all. As Carrie Newcomer sang of the wants and wounds of the human race-those were still visible in the resurrected Jesus before his friends in this new form. William Temple calls the wounds of Christ credentials before humanity. The resurrected Jesus is the pioneer of our heavenly expectations, I think. Jesus is recognizable, but he can appear through locked doors. The life he lived is carried with him into that next chapter of existence. Maybe even in heaven, it takes some time for healing to be complete. Those wounds are an open prayer for us and to God. Part of Easter life for us here is learning to live with our wounds, allowing them to heal, but not letting us define us. No life can be encapsulated with one story, one incident, one victory, or one wound. When I moved my mother to an assisted living center, some of the ladies found out that I was a minister. They asked me, well coerced me, to offer a class on heaven. they were worried that they would not be recognized by their loved ones and wanted some biblical proofs. they were disappointed that I could offer none, but they did go along with me in looking carefully at the resurrection accounts as a guideline into the resurrected life. Jesus does not castigate Thomas. indeed, he offers him what he said he wanted. Johnny Cash was a religious person with his struggles. in Meet Me in Heaven, with the Carter family, he answered some of our questions and fears about the afterlife. In TV we talk about breaking the wall when a performer winks at the audience or speaks directly to us. here John breaks the wall when Jesus say blessed are those who do not see but believe. Jesus steps out of frame and speaks directly to us. Yes, Scripture always speaks to us, but it is good to hear something directed right at us from the misty past into Eastertide 2012. Every day of our lives is set in Easter light, the hope of the dawn. may we live in that light.

Week of April 15 devotions

unday April 15-Ps. 133 is proof that good prayers can be short. I like it as a grace: “how good and pleasant it is/when kindred live together in unity.” we live in a fractured and divisive time. Unity seems to be felt only with those with whom we feel affinity. we seem at the ready to cause dissension and less sense of cohesion. How do you seek unity? Monday-I just saw an article in the New York Times on a copy of the Mona Lisa housed in a Spanish museum. It was apparently painted by a student of Leonardo as the great artist was working on the portrait. It is made from a slight angle and the brushwork matches that of the master. How does a slight difference in perspective make a difference in how you approach an issue? Tuesday-I was paging through a book by Kathleen Norris, acedia, a spiritual companion of depression.She reviews Dante’s Inferno and bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and some of Chaucer’s Tales, and they all touch on this malady of not being able to care, of being listless and withdrawn. Love is easily distracted, but it can be slowly poisoned by indifference, apathy, routine, and acedia. How do you nurture your love? Wednesday-Our youngest daughter is an art history major and is in a class on early Christian art. We can be exposed to a world of art with just a click on google images on the computer.For example select artistic renderings of the gospel reading from last Sunday on Thomas or this coming Sunday on Luke 24:36-48 or perhaps better the road to Emmaus story. What coincides with or alters your vision of the narrative? Thursday-Tranquility has a sense of being restful, or being able to rest over something in Latin. I vividly recall the calm that descended when the Apollo astronauts announced: “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed. “ Our tranquility is easily disturbed by events and situations. Prayer may be a great resource to find an inner tranquility that may rise above circumstance. it opens us to a stable center. Friday-Leon Russell plays at the casino tonight. Two things come to mind. I first became aware of him at George Harrison’s concert for Bangladesh.Even pampered rock stars could decide to use their celebrity toward a noble purpose. The second is that he was in a group of studio musicians called the Wrecking Crew. People my age were often disappointed in live concerts as we were used to hearing these talents on record. Who are some “behind the scenes” people in your life that make a difference in the quality of life? Saturday-Elm Street church has a spaghetti supper today.Sometimes church suppers contain much of a communion service, especially those of which Paul speaks. They are rarely gourmet affairs, but are comfort foods more often than not.Usually, we have an abundance of food.It may well be the only time in the week some oflks do not eat by themselves. As it says in Lord of the Rings: small hands do what they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

NRA in St Louis column

I see the National Rifle Association is in the area with an enormous convention of some 70,000 people. Sportsmen get to enjoy acres of sporting goods. I think I saw that our area will get over 35 million dollars in business from this gathering. My problem with the NRA is its political and social agenda. I admire the tenacity, hard work, and grass roots support they have garnered to make their views public and powerful. I continue to be astonished that they have managed to convince the Supreme Court to agree with their long-held assertions that the Second amendment is a personal right, detached from its wording of “a well-regulated militia.” In my view, every Christian has to come to grips with pacifism as the Christian response to violence. I do realize that few Christians are pacifists. In the just war tradition, we follow notions of self defense and protection of the innocent seriously at the individual and social levels. Yes, guns are used in self-defense at least a million times a year. Public safety, however, is a public concern. Civilized societies put violence in the hands of the public authority. Vigilante justice is injustice, as witnessed with the storm in florida and the stand your ground law. The NRA vision of America is a grim one. In reality crime has gone down in this country for some time. In the NRA image, lethal predators lurk around every corner. In reality, we are the longest standing stable democracy in the world. In the NRA vision, citizens are fearful of government tyranny set upon disarming its citizen-hunters. Let’s be reminded of some stubborn, inconvenient things: facts. We have 9500 murders by guns in the last numbers I checked. 100, 000 people are shot every year. 3, 000 children are killed by guns every year, and almost 200 of those are accidents. While guns are used for self-defense, they are much more likely, if kept in the home, to be used in homicide of a relative or a death by accident. Abusers often use their possession of a firearm to cow their victims into submission to their reign of terror. When a gun I sin the home, suicide is often the weapon of choice. Let’s look at the numbers another way. Since 1979, 100,000 children have died from gunshot. Compare that to our losses, our terrible losses, in Iraq and Afghanistan. The plague of AIDS has taken perhaps 600,000 lives from 1985-the middle of the first decade of the new century. At a smaller level, we have massacres in schools and colleges. W ehave had a federal judge murdered and a member of congress disabled in Arizona and not a political peep about controlling gun violence. In our own area, we are urged to have easier weapon access, notwithstanding that such laws led to an increase in gun violence in cities such as Jacksonville, Florida. I fear we live in a time when facts fall fallow on the mental landscape. Instead, we place facts into a narrative of our choosing. When facts don’t fit that framework, we discard, or we accuse the presenters of bias. We seek not information, but to have pre-existing opinions confirmed. Instead of marshalling evidence, we build up our version of interpreting our social world. Increasingly we rely on emotional appeals, outright fantasy, to uncover deep seated prejudices and conceptions. When will we oppose the merchants of death with the political skill they possess and use so well?

Earth Day 2012 Column

Earth Day falls on a Sunday this year. I can think of few things where the culture has delivered the gospel to the church more than this day. Before this the academic environment of the church drew a sharp line between the “nature religion” of the land of Canaan and the more abstract, spiritual nature of the God of Israel. Theologians spoke against nature gods and even the more technical phrase, “natural religion.” Two movements changed this. First the environmental movement opened the eyes fo the church to the countless passages of Scripture that use natural imagery and indeed emphasize our connection wit the natural world. Second, Lynn White wrote a famous article where he laid much of the blame on the doorstep of the church for natural destruction due to the reading by the church of early chapters of Genesis as to give free rein over despoiling the environment. In response to this assault, the church rediscovered its environmental heritage in its relationship to the natural world. Creation is not limited to human capacities alone. God labors long and hard for the entire sustaining of a universe, and perhaps even multiple universes. Earth Day restored to the church the world as creation. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Of course, we have resistance to its implications. In part, the church continues to walk in lockstep with the right wing insistence that the earth is purely for human disposal, as in the assertions of Senator Santorum. Some fear that we are slipping in worshipping nature instead of the Creator of all. In its concern to read the bible as a scientific statement of creation, as least in Genesis 1, the right wing of the church continues to war against science, so its continued work on studying the environment is viewed with a skeptical eye. On the other hand, many churches will be careful to include liturgy on the environment as part of worship this Sunday. Catholics may choose to life up figures such as St. Francis. Presbyterians can point to the eminent scientist, decoder of the genome, Francis Collins. For me, one of the most moving and valuable books on the nexus of environmental science and Scripture is by the esteemed biblical scholar William Brown, Seven Pillars of Creation. Just as the Bible had constant interaction with nature and the understanding of it in its day, he lets our astonishing new scientific understandings to interact with Scripture. In the end, with those reading glasses, he arrives at a sophisticated religious appreciation of the grandeur of creation. Untethered from the attempt to superimpose a pre-scientific understanding on creation in this new century, he only appreciates more the depth, complexity, and power interrelationships that mark the world of God’s creation. Reverence for God’s creation does not threaten to displace worship of God. Instead, it is a realization that all of us are called as caretakers of this fragile planet. I am of the age when I got to see the earth rise form the lunar perspective from Apollo 8. I was captivated by how it looked like a marble in the inky background of space. It also looked disapprovingly small, and how thin its blanket of atmosphere looked. Earth Day reminds us that our environment exists in a delicate balance. We have no right to judge the Environment only by measuring its current monetary potential at this moment. Jefferson said that life belongs in usufruct to the living. in other words, we are entitled to the fruits of life, but not to attack the basis for that fruitful natural abundance. Reclaiming nature as a sacred gift and treating it with reverence and respect is a human and religious obligation for ourselves and our posterity.

Monday, April 9, 2012

I John 1-2:2

1) Since the lectionary avoids the OT after Easter, I suppose I will work with I John. The word of life reminds me of John Paul II’s culture of life. A book on John’s gospel by is called Word of Life. from the same phrase sprinkled through that gospel (1:4, 14, :6, 11:25) .
2) Notice the link of fellowship with others and with God.
3) What odes it mean say God is light? How could scientific advances give us more images here? (Think photons, big bang, spectral analysis) It easily moves into a nimbic, glorified, reverent sense as well. That is a sense that is often studiously avoided in my experience.
4) How could one put some concrete examples around walking in darkness v. walking in the light.? Isn’t his underlying our polarized politics? T what degree is this amplified by the poles of truth and lie?
5) How would you explain how blood cleanses?
6) v. 8, 10 are a direct hit on sin, even if we avoid even the word in polite company. Should worship services always have a confession of sin?
7) v. 9 how do you square being just and faithful with forgiveness and cleansing. Take a moment with cleansing. It carries an old cultural code of sin as stain, individual and communal, no? Sin here is hamartia=missing the mark.
8)How do you react to little children language in 2:1?
9) How do you imagine Jesus as an advocate? the word is paraclete, counselor, advocate, helper, attorney/spokesperson
10)atoning sacrifice/propitiation is a fairly rare term in the NT, ilasmos.
11) How is this atonement for the whole world do you think?

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Week of April 8 Devotions

April 8 Easter Sunday 2012-Some of us reading this will live to the rough 2000th anniversary of the first Easter. Mark’s gospel ends with an empty tomb and a word from an angelic messenger. No Hollywood CGI images, but a report of a resurrection. In that way, we are all carriers of the same story, as no one witnessed the actual resurrection. If you were making a movie of Easter, how would you present it?

Monday-Easter Monday does not have nearly the letdown of the day after Christmas for many of us. We have a longer buildup for Easter than Christmas in liturgy. Why doe sit not have the impact of Christmas? Maybe you have some leftovers from Easter supper. Easter light shines on Easter supper and on leftovers on Monday the same way. Whenever we catch sight of new life, whenever we sustain the hopes of God’s constantly new way in the world, it is the Easter dawn.

Tuesday-For the first half of radiation treatment, I avoided side effects, but they came into the second half. So my discomfort hit, but I was surprised less by it and more by the immediate impact it had on my mood, especially my tolerance for frustration and my impatience. I didn’t need the reminder, but it was a powerful demonstration of how a physical issue places a burden on our emotional and mental state.

Wednesday Ched Meyers is in our area today. About a quarter-century ago, he wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Mark that emphasizes its views of a spiritual and political power struggle. He reminds us that the kingdom of God is a political image that describes the way god wants things to work in the world, divine organization. When we are led to peace and justice, reconciliation and hope, fairness and equality, we know we are living ever closer to God’s kingdom, God’s way in the world.

Thursday-an old friend is coming into the area tomorrow. We don’t appreciate our friends as much as we should. We let them fade away from our lives at times, or let some small matter undermine the relationship. In the great farewell sermon in John, Jesus says that he will no longer call his disciples by that name, but as friends. Consider thanking an old friend, as Jefferson did with Madison. Consider getting back in touch with an old friend.

Friday- Christians are always people of the dawn, due to Easter. On the show Mad Men, don is accused of liking only beginnings. Easter points to new life, always. The notion of being born from above/born anew/born again has a sense that Easter is embraced every time we move from a spiritual rut to a new perspective. Do you see some beginnings in your life in different areas? At the same time, where do you need ot perseverance to follow through from the start of the goal to implementing your plan, from dream to reality?

Saturday Cursillo is a Roman Catholic retreat movement that has caught some significant support with Protestant groups. It is both a retreat experience and a sort of Christianity 101. A group, Ultreia (onward/excelsior) is meeting here today and sharing in the Lord’s Supper. It’s an ecumenical group, so it is important to share the Lord’s Supper, as our traditions disagree on the prayers and even its meaning, but we do share this bread and cup. Beyond the Babel sounds of our traditions, the action is the same the world over.

Easter 2012 mark 16;1-8, Is. 25:6-9

Easter 2012
Mark’s gospel ends in such an odd way for ....Yet, It seems to me to fit our stunned reaction to our view of how things work getting pulled out from under us that life ,not death, has the last word. Many religious people in the time of Jesus and most before believed that dead was dead, the finish. The very notion of resurrection was a developing well into the time of Jesus and beyond. We catch some sight of it in our little piece from Isaiah’s glimpse into an decidedly new inbreaking future. A big part of me likes the careful way Mark writes the close to his gospel. We sing and pray such bold things this morning, especially about the defeat of Death. However-I don’t know about you, but for a defeated power, Death still packs quite a wallop. Mark leaves it uncertain and open, but how would one know how to close a story such as this?

The women were afraid of a looming obstacle to be able to honor the slain body of Jesus. A large stone would block their way in. When they arrive the blockage was removed, and they were able to peer into a tomb that had become the womb of new life. Instead of the awful silence of the grave,a they heard words: “he is not here; he has been raised.” In the end, they are truly blocked from anointing the body of Jesus, for how do you anoint the absent?

I like to see Mark’s open ending as an open invitation to Easter life. The ellipsis, for... is filled by our life as Easter agents.Is is an open invitation to living life in the awe, the reverence of living in
Easter dawn. It has a Easter light shine through an open window every day of our lives.William Placher was a theologian who spent a career at Wabash College in Indiana. His last published work was a commentary on the gospel of Mark that e did not live to edit fully. He liked the ending of Mark , as he said, “Mark throws the ball to us...it is up to live out the story and to keep it alive” (248).

Our other reading in Is. 25:6-9 imagines a big funeral mercy dinner, but it is a huge Easter celebration. As Patricia Tull notes (384) , “God plans and serves the menu.” Now as the people are dining, Death is on the menu for God. Death was usually portrayed as swallowing up life, but now its maw is forever closed, as it is swallowed up by the Creator of life. The Destroyer will be destroyed. The reason for a funeral will disappear. Then can true lasting comfort come, so not only will tears be dried away, but the very cause of tears will be eliminated. Every Easter dinner is a foretaste of that heavenly banquet, as we once again read of Jesus being raised, being lifted out of the abode of death into the abode of eternal life. Communion is set up as an Easter spiritual banquet.

In the face of seeing Death brought low in the face of life, Mark has an open ending. Maybe it was deliberate. He tells us to read the gospel again in Easter light. It tells us that we can turn a page, or better, God will turn a page in our life. We live our lives in Easter light too, even if it seems we are in the dark as the women were on Easter morning, before the dawn. God offer us Easter life in the face of death, in this world and the next. Far too often we live as if imprisoned, keeping life and love at bay as if a large rock was rolled against the entrance. It is rolled away, why seek the living one in the abode of death? No final curtain for us, no living death either:Christ is alive; we are alive in Christ.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Ps. 118

1) In many ways this psalm is a template for all of Holy week. it is a great example of how the placement of it on different days drastically affects our reading and what passages jump out at us. see vv. 25-27 for Palm Sunday, v. 17 for Easter-
2) This is thought to be a liturgy for entrance to the temple. It is part of the Egyptian hallel set. It is possible that these are linked to the hymns after the last supper's Passover meal.
3) The stellar pastor in Crawfordsville, IN, Rev. Dr. John Van Nuys, as been working with this material in relation to actually entering the temple. He speculates on the liminal experience of moving through the crowds to the entry ways and then moving from dark to light, from constricted to open space, the basics of a liminal experience.One can examine reconstructions of Herod's great temple project on-line. A nice model is in Paula Frederickson's book, King of the Jews.
4) Hosanna-literally save us, or a general shout of acclaim appears here. does its appearance in the Eucharistic liturgy affect your reading? (25-6)

5)v. 22 is frequently cite din the NT. Why do you think it was used? What does it mean to you now?
6) when do you need a sense of God being on your side? when can this be fraught with danger?
7) Notice that it is is framed by the same phrase at start and closing.
8) when has refuge in God been better than confidence in mortals (v.8) again, when could this pose problems?
9) How is this psalm a template for testimony/witnessing to life with God? (See Long's book on testimony or Anna Carter Florence on witness in preaching)Again, what difficulties are posed by this practice when it moves toward arrogance or even delusion?

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Holy Week '12 Devotions

Palm Sunday April 1-Hosanna cried the crowd. It means save us , save us now, but it had become more a a cheer like Hurray by the time of Jesus, a song of acclaim. Its ambiguity fits the day. it was a triumphal procession, but within days the cries turned foul. In divine irony, the words for triumph were answered in the shadow of desolation, the cross.

Monday-Beneath the Cross is one of the great Holy Week hymns. Notice the perspective who was and who is now, beneath the cross?The first verse is replete with Biblical allusions:mighty rock (Is. 32:2), weary land (Ps.63:1) , home within the wilderness (Jer. 9:2) rest upon the way (Is. 28:12, burden of the day (Mt. 11:30). Elizabeth Clephane was soaked in Scripture. i so admire people who know their bible so well that its images just pop through their imaginations.

Tuesday-I’ve been thinking about words and silence in Mark’s account of Calvary. (some of this was included in the original Passion Sunday sermon but it was changed due to Simon’s baptism).At the cross in Mark’s gospel, Jesus speaks but twice, one the cry of desolation from Ps. 22 and the last is an agonizing, agonized cry of death itself. Here was a time when actions spoke volumes.

Wednesday-O Sacred head Now Wounded is an ancient and powerful song. It is a great confluence of music and lyric. The great contemporary hymn writer Brian Wren titled one of his books from this hymn, “What Language Shall I Borrow.” It is such an excellent question. What language can we borrow or adapt to come to grips with the meaning of the cross as a vehicle of reconciliation? What language can express what Jesus went through?

Maundy Thursday-Our service this year has an emphasis on Passover. Recall that the last supper in the synoptic gospels occurs with a the Passover meal. Passover includes public worship but it is a feast celebrated in homes. Jesus told his disciples to do this to remember him, not only as memorial but to bring his living presence into life today. (Maundy comes from a Latin for the mandate from Jesus). We will have questions on the basics of communion, along with the basic Passover question. How do you connect Passover and communion?

Good Friday-This year the women in Mark’s account caught my eye with special force. The disciples had all fled. Those were male disciples. The women continued to serve Jesus and the movement, just as they had done from the time Peter’s mother-in-law had been healed in the beginning of the healing accounts.The disciples who willing to follow the way fo the cross were the women. No wonder they were the first Easter people as well.

Holy Saturday-I am so glad we are trying out a Holy Saturday service here again.One of my best religious memories is taking the huge Easter basket to a little boy) to the church to be blessed on Saturday afternoon before the long Saturday evening service. we are offering a special Holy Saturday service this year that picks up the long narrative arc of scripture that points toward Easter. We are not going to do all of the suggested readings but use our sanctuary as illustration of some of these great passages.

Palm sunday/Passion Sunday sermon with Simon's baptism at 11

Palm Sunday 2012
Last year, we worked with Palm Sunday alone , so I included some readings for this Holy Week. Mark’s gospel goes at a good clip, especially with his favorite word, immediately, but now the narrative slows way down, for us to bathe in the details.

This day is made all the more holy as we will have a baptism of Mr. Simon Harper. This provides us an opportunity to look deeper in the meaning of baptism. Paul sees it as a ritual identification with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.We are surrounded by palms today. All living things require water, and simon receives the living water of the Spirit this morning to keep him as Ps. 1 say, rooted as a tree planted near a stream. Just as Jesus utterly identifies with the human condition, Simon is joined to the Christian community. We are, if you will, water sisters and brothers with Simon through the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Jesus could not bear the actual instrument of torture, the cross by himself. Jesus needed physical help, and he gets it from someone from eastern Libya. It was a seaport, and its major export was an herb for abortion. Simon may have travelled over 750 miles to get to Jerusalem for Passover, or he was a resident alien,and his name is Jewish of course,(it means listening/hearing, or one heard of, so reputation, or perhaps street cred) and Cyrene did have a Jewish population. When Jesus spoke of going the extra mile, he was speaking of people such as Simon who was forced to help the Roman army do their work by carrying a pack. Mark speaks of his two sons as if they are known to his audience. We are told that Simon came from the fields, maybe a country bumpkin or he lived in a rural area, as did many of the crowds who hailed Jesus just a few days before. It is an irony that the first Simon, renamed Peter, who was called by Jesus has deserted and denied him. Now a foreign Simon is called into the service of a deacon.Part of the reason. He who had helped so many, now needed a helping hand. At Christmas I read the children a story about Joseph struggling with the enormity of this child being born to him. So he decides that he will give him a helping hand as he grows up. With Joseph gone, a stranger lends a hand, but it is ironic aid, as he is guiding him on the road to execution. Jesus could not bear the cross alone due to the torture he received. Even more significantly, Jesus was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, not like Atlas of course, but the moral weight of a world.

The Friday morning Wiseman bible class has done several sessions on the letter to the Galatians. It calls on us to bear one another’s burdens. In baptism we are all called to be Simons.At the same time, this week and this sacrament reminds us to lay our burdens down. We pile too many grudges in our backpacks. Some burdens will have us fall, as tradition holds that Jesus fell three times carrying the cross. Like Simon of Cyrene, like simon Peter, we are called as church to lend a hand. “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother graced Boys Town for years. Some of the burden of guilt and wrong Jesus carried to the cross for their destruction. My burden is light Jesus said. Save us, hurray, hosanna, the crowd shouted on Palm sunday. In the blink of an eye, it turned to crucify him, crucify him. In our time, in this place, the cry of hosanna, save us has been answered. through the life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus, through Holy Week simon and we find salvation.