Easter Sunday Serrmon Notes 2016

Easter 2016 Is. 65, Lk. 24, Is. 25:6-9

In some ancient caves, early humans sought to reach the beyond. Religion  uses symbolic language to try to touch the beyond. This is such a day.

Angels frame Luke’s gospel-One of the first Easter actions was the stone that sealed jesus from life and from us was rolled away.Easter and eschatology in Is. 65 ends as beginning tombs into wombs emptiness to fullness death into life Waiting for Godot-we give birth -astride the grave,the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more -We are people of the dawn, forever people Easter dawn God is hard at work building a new world, imagining a new world into existence-

why do you look for the living among the dead

Peter has to see for himself, so we are in a superior position than the great apostle himself.We believe the words of the women, the ones in this gospel after all who stay with Jesus.

Hultgren-  Easter also marks the beginning of a new creation.The church at its best continues to be the community of the new creation in a world that is too often headed for dissolution by violence, death, and destruction. - praying for the renewal of the world and seeking to renew it.

In Evangelical Lutheran Worship:”Mighty God of mercy, we thank you for the resurrection dawn, bringing the glory of our risen Lord who makes every morning new.And then, shortly after that, the congregation prays:Merciful God of might, renew this weary world, heal the hurts of all your children, and bring about your peace for all in Christ Jesus, the living Lord.”

In the life of the church, Easter is a once a year event, strictly speaking, but every Lord’s Day throughout the year is a “little Easter, “the eighth day” of creation, the day of new creation. It is also an occasion for the church to claim the resurrection promise that God is making all things new, beginning with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. As the body of believers who belong to the risen Christ, the church is the community of the new creation.

In Isaiah, death  reels in the face of the new creation. Longevity is the rule. More than that, it announces that the future does not have to be a replay of the past. The way things always were in not the rule for god’s new future.Tull-Here it is God who plans and serves the menu, described as very rich food and wine: choice wines, strained clear; sumptuous meats.- banquets often accompany criticism of debauchery. In Isaiah 24, the wine had all dried up, along with mirth and joy. But here food, drink, and delight return on God’s terms, not as an occasion for social oppression, but in a spirit of celebration and harmony hosted by the one who created all foods. Mourning clothes are no longer needed, since the people are comforted. As they eat, God “swallows” both the shrouds (verse 7) and death itself (verse 8). Victorious over that most persistent foe, God wipes tears from all faces.

This “swallowing” recalls the story of the Canaanite god Baal. There the underworld god Mot (“death”) either swallows Baal. Their battle recurs year after year in the seasonal alternation between drought and fertility, just like the Greek story of Persephone and the spring.. Distinct differences from the Baal story appear in this biblical poetry: it is God who swallows death rather than the reverse, and this victory is not subject to repetition, but is sustained forever.We like to imagine shouts of alleluia on Easter and may be there were. Maybe it had a cry that sounded a bit like the birth of a newborn.Maybe it was the whisper of a new breeze.

Easter Column 2016

No Sunday puts pressure on a preacher more than Easter Sunday. The sheer enormity of the task dries the mouth, and flop sweat seeps through the  robe.Quite possibly, someone who worships maybe, at Easter and Christmas, will complain that we read the same things over and over.The words of the prayers and music and hymns are so fulsome and properly so. In a time of diminished expectations, it is quite a stretch to even approach such a huge day.

All of the pastels of spring fit its message of fresh new life emerging. No pretty Easter basket can come within hailing distance of Easter.In a recent clergy discussion on Easter, I was struck at how the gorup shied away from Easter’s  grand point. Instead, out of  a fear of pie in the sky for the afterworld, they insisted on turning Easter inward as an antidote to fear and as a energizing source of social action.I agree with the interpretive move, but Easter, in the end, deals with the fundamental fact of mortal life:death itself.

Part of my disquiet comes from the brave words,especially phrases such as Death has been destroyed, that mark Easter as prolegomenon and as final goal do not yet match the reality 2000 years after the first Easter. Paul knew it well Death is the last enemy. After 200 years, Death stalks us still. After 2000 years, flowers are placed in funeral homes and laid on graves as blankets. Every year, I try to re-read parts of an elegant meditation on the season Alan Lewis’s Between Cross and Resurrection. He sees the Holy Week as a triptych with Holy Saturday, the day when the Incarnate was was interred, between Good Friday and Easter. Only by moving though Death itself can we even approach the power of Easter proclamation.

Scripture itself is quite reticent about Easter morning description. We get no cinematic description of the event itself. No, we get a report of a stone rolled away, an empty tomb, and the wondering, fearful awe it evokes.

To find a hymn that works the deep symbolic structure of the day, we go back 1300 years to the hymn, The Day of Resurrection. Attributed to John of Damascus,the hymn  captures the deeper and more expansive view of Easter. While we note the Passover setting for Maundy Thursday, it is extended here to Easter. Passover saved the Israelites from the angel of death, but Jesus passed through the angel of death itself into  a resurrected state-”Tis the spring of souls today;/Christ hath burst his prison, /and from three days' sleep in death /as a sun hath risen; /all the winter of our sins, /long and dark, is flying/from his light, to whom we give /laud and praise undying.” It is a good spiritual exercise to reflect on  hymns as religious poetry. Please consider doing so for the two Easter hymns that have been with us through the centuries by John of Damascus.

Easter alters, no undercuts, the basic symbolic structure we use to face the large events of life. The  dead and buried Jesus enters into the very bastion of Death itself and emerges as , as Risen. In the notion of the descent into Death’s prison abode, artists  pictured Jesus leading a procession out of the abode of the dead toward a beckoning heaven.In the  pre-dawn darkness, the dawn of a new light emerged.In the final analysis,the Creator God is the God of life. God takes the conclusion of life itself and turns it into an open door to new life.

Week of March 27 readings

Easter Sunday-In the spring of new life, Easter announces that the cold and dark of winter will not last. We make our great claim on souls: Death will not get the last word. Only go0d can create life from death, to make the tomb a birthplace.God is at work toward a new dawn of restoration and renewal in creation.

Monday-"Viriditas wasn’t just something evident in creation, but was reflective of the very state of our soul. We each have the capacity to bring forth new life just as the earth brings forth greenness."--- Christine Valters Paintner

Tuesday-As people of faith, we need to remember that the resurrection tosses out all standard expectations and measurements of failure and success. Neither failure nor success is good or evil; both can result in growth, stagnation, or regression. In our struggle with failure and success, we may find a hidden strength as we commend our spirits to our Creator and seek to yield our lives to love. Our challenge is to have faith—in failure, in success, in whatever life brings. The unexpected turns, the painful endings, the precarious beginnings are all part of the path of faith, where we are reminded with each step that the resurrection did not happen only once long ago—it happens each day of our lives. From "On Having Faith in Failure," Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life

Wednesday-"I come to realize that the opposite of despair for me is not hope, but precisely this experience of wonder. Wonder that there is anything at all, wonder that in the presence of great darkness there is also so much beauty, so much love."

Thursday-Simplicity opens wide the doors for a process of letting go, allowing us to be fully present to the graces given us in this precise moment.  When we practice simplicity, we also learn to dispose of burdens in our lives.  These might be possessions, opinions, expectations, or commitments that no longer feed us but that we continue to fulfill because of how we want to appear to others.  Simplicity invites us to make choices about our priorities and how we want to expend our limited energy.”--- Christine Valters Paintner,

Friday-"We live much of our lives rooted in habits and because they are often enacted without awareness some of these become compulsions . . . . Compulsions restrict our freedom, we act in certain ways not because we choose to, but because we feel compelled by habit or the trajectory of our lives. We begin to cling to certain beliefs, patterns, behaviors, not because we love them, but because we are afraid of losing them."--- Christine Valters Paintner,

Saturday- I can only imagine what drew each person that night to pray together rather than to choose to sit comfortably with a book and a cup of tea in their sitting rooms as the weather lashed the sidewalks and streets without. I can only imagine what hope or faith might have been stoked by the prayers and Psalms we prayed together as the shadows lengthened. The words we spoke created a space among us where we all were sheltered, if only for thirty minutes or so, in a place set apart to be human in the presence of other human beings in the presence of God. Nothing special. It happens every day, morning and evening, somewhere and has for millennia. 

Palm sunday column

My favorite sporting event is March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. It has such agony and ecstasy. I watch or listen on the radio for upsets, and it rarely fails to disappoint. (Indeed, I am proof reading this piece with a game on right now).Palm Sunday arrives with the tournament this year, and I am taken with this odd pairing of events.

In many churches, Palm Sunday collides with another set of readings that walk us through the suffering of Jesus as Holy Week starts.I always recall, with a smile, an older pastor who told me that he could only work with a small parade so many times. I liked Palm Sunday as a child, as my brother and I had sword fights with them on the way back to church.

One advantage of Palm Sunday readings to start Holy Week is that  we get a yearly demonstration on how fickle crowds can be. They shouted, Hosanna (save us). So it has  a positive  sense of a cheer,such as Viva, but  in the back of it is a plea for help. I would bet that some of the same people who shouted the acclamation,lAter in the week, were in the group who shouted, Crucify Him, just a few days later. So many churches bray about constant blessings and mountain top experiences. Life rarely stays on the mountain top.

It may be a salutary spiritual practice to examine the accounts of the entrance into Jerusalem in the four gospels (Mt. 21:1-11, Mk. 11:1-11, LK. 19:28-44, Jn.12:12-19). The similarities are oftne obvious, but look for the differences, subtl or large and aks why they appear in this way.Following the suggestion of John Dominic Crossan,one may see Palm Sunday as a counter-demoinstration to the parade of Roman  troops getting ready for possible unrest during the Passover season.Jesus does not enter the city like a triumphant military ruler.In roman culture, palm branches had become a bsic symbol of victory, especially military victory. Drawing from Zechariah 9:9, Jesus enters as  an emissary of peace. In Luke, Jesus weeps over the city right after Jesus has the cheers ringing in his ears (v.40).

Part of the reason we celebrate Palm Sunday is to relieve the gloom of Holy Week, especially the liturgies of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It gives us a bridge to the celebration of Easter.When the positive thinking  push hit the church, I recall that the cross was removed from some churches as “too negative.” Jesus lays ahold of an entire life, not only the ins or the virtues, but the fullness of human life.

By Thursday of Holy week, Jesus would be in the garden of Gethsemane in desperate prayer, as foreboding was moving inexorably toward tragic reality.All of us have Gethsemane moment. Sadly, they are more frequent, often, than the rarer Palm Sunday moments of triumph and energy. Both highs and lows are fleeting, evanescent.they acquire stability in reflection and memory. I wonder if the Palm Sunday cheers sounded hollow to him by them, or did they give him courage? I wonder if the cheers and the cloaks being laid before him gave rise to a memory of the temptation to power at the start of his work.

By and large, we rarely praise God fully or well. Rarely do hideous words such as crucify him drip from our lips. Silence is our most common mode. It may be an angry silence, a silence of assent, or not bothering to even respond. Perhaps during Holy Week, we do well to reflect on the moments of our lives that find resonance in the events of Holy Week, and go to church.

Sermon Notes Palm?Pasison sunday 2016

Palm Sunday 2016

I am mixing the readings this morning to pick up elements of both Palm and Passion sunday.Passion in this usage is a Latin derivative that means suffering.this year we draw from Luke.We move from the passionate response of  a symbolic parade to the passionate cries, maybe of the same people, to crucify by Friday. What an epic shift in public opinion.

Israel’s story starts with Abram and Sarai in close-up. Now the story of God and humanity has its focus on Jesus and a small group who will peel away at the end. Individuals matter in our faith,how big was the Palm sunday celebration? John Dominic Crossan imagines it to be a sort of counter demonstration to the march of roman troops. It doesn't seem to have attracted the attention of Rome.Events hurtle by in the gospels over the period of the mission of Jesus but they slow to an agonizing crawl here. we move from a sweep of days to a the slow peal of bells almost minute by minute. Truly reading this is a Via dolorosa, way of sorrows

Simon of cyrene-Libya may have children mentioned as Christians, alexander and rufus cyrene had a synagogue hotbed of discontent-He is there to worship in a pilgrimage of 900 miles, maybe a journey of a month. he gets pulled out to help with the cross. One cannot help but wonder what he made of this in future years. He may have carried it in front of Jesus so he did not see much of the suffering one.Paul says we are here to bear one another’s burdens. Here he carries  the heavy physical burden of the cross beam. At the same time he is helping the death penalty along.Some think the beam along weighed 180-00 pounds and could have been say 650 yards.He does not volunteer; he is pressed into service.He literally helps carry the cross. Jesus said if we cannot carry the cross we are not worthy as a metaphor.

I have never been convinced that Jesus would come to the attention of political power with such speed and a felt need to kill him by crucifixion. Pilate ruled for about 10 years.may have been called back after a brutal suppression of a Samaritan revolt and may have committed suicide-and Herod antipas became friends due to what? killer of John the baptist-builder- struggle over power-exiled to France and died  within a few year in Spain or there and the wife stayed with him-both were conniving seekers of power, especially Antipas-Barth suggests that they were unwitting agents of a divine project. God was actively turning their schemes into  a different vein.-Father forgive them appears only in some of the manuscripts of Luke. It becomes a template for Stephen’s forgiving in the book of Acts.

The women stood at a distance and watched it all. they did not yet return home as did others in the crowd who beat their breasts in mourning and lament.joseph of arimathea not sure of all of this location, so indeed a shadowy figure to us.He does the right thing. usually victims of crucifixion were left to the dogs and vultures. he has Jesus wrapped in a burial shroud and buried in a tomb.He does the right and proper thing. it could have well been dangerous for him to go to Pilate with this e request for some respect and courtesy for the slain Jesus. Jesus came from Mary as the first born and now he is the first on laid in the tomb. Tradition has him going off to England to evangelize.

Devotional Pts. for week of March 20

Sunday March 20 -The saving work of Christ is hidden in plain sight. Christ is in the midst of us. Praise, joy, and song are the right response. Blessing peace and glory are present and surely coming. The immediate future is not bright: weeping, betrayal, denial, are all on the horizon, and yet, the ultimate future is sure, forgiveness, reconciliation,and the reign of God relentlessly on the way...Therefore, we are called to point out the hidden pictures that reveal Christ-God for us and wish us in the very thick of it all. (Presbyterian Outlook)

Monday- God wants nothing so much as for us to know the love of God, ..., but that God wants us to be drenched and soaked in God's love and to learn to share in that love that is God's being so that we may become like God in ourselves and toward others. To do that requires a strange and paradoxical thing. We have to let go of ourselves. We have to let go of whatever image of ourselves we cling to. We have to let go of that false self certainty that demands that we feed its continual and bottomless appetites. We also have to let go of that self that appears so good that we would be willing to sacrifice absolutely everything to maintain it.(Abbey of the Arts or God Pause)

Tuesday-Isaiah 43:13-20 "I am about to do a new thing" says the Lord. Does this statement bring comfort or anxiety? It depends on how you view change, and what this statement means for us. When the Lord states a new thing is about to happen, be ready and hang on because it probably won't be a subtle change or go unnoticed. Because God knows our needs before we even ask, these new things can happen. Wednesday-"When the earth is saturated and drenched with rain, its verdancy invites us to consider the dry places of our own souls needing the gift of vigor and life through the element of water." --- Christine Valters Paintner Thursday-I imagine this True Self as the welcoming space within me that allows all the parts of me to dwell together. The True Self has become more about relationship and healing, a quality of connection within myself where the fragments have been gathered together and made whole again. This is who I was created to be, and it is in that work of remembering, gathering, weaving that I discover my deepest call.” Abbey of the Arts Friday-little by little,less by taking pains than by taking it easy,the forgiven person becomes a forgiving person, the healed person becomes healing,the loved person becomes a loving person. God does most of it. the end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life. Frederick Buechner Saturday-Douglas John Hall-”the theology of the cross is bound to this world in all of its materiality, ambiguity, and incompleteness...We whose movement in one way and another had always been away from the world, whether into our own private little worlds or to some theoretic supperworld of our own devising-we, through our baptism into his death are being directed toward the world where his life is being lived, hidden among the lives of those especially whom the world as such seems to have denied fullness of life.”

Sermon Notes for March 13 John 12, Is. 43

March 13 lent 5-Is. 43:16-21, Phil 3:4-14, John 12:1-8, Ps. 126

Do not remember the former things-what former things?The character of our god has not changed. God’s grace and power have sustained us in the past, will see us through the present and guide us into the future. I am reminded of the poem “A Homecoming” by Wendell Berry:

…In the trust of old love, cultivation shows a dark and graceful wilderness/at its heart. Wild/in that wilderness, we roam/the distance of our faith/safe beyond the bounds/of what we know. O love,/open. Show me/my country. Take me home.

“Safe beyond the bounds of what we know” is as apt a description of a faith journey. In times of of disappointment with the present and the prospects of the future, Isaiah 43 urges us to be alert for the signs of God’s continued presence, It is not on the past as the past that the prophet wants the people to concentrate. The prophet aims to create an imaginative space in the minds of the people so that their conception of the past can transform their understanding of the present and, thus, the future: “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” In a seemingly hopeless situation, the prophet calls on the people not to lose heart but to look with anticipation for the signs of God’s approaching redemption, for the “new thing” that is coming.(Callie Plunket-Brewton)  Water in the wilderness and rivers in the desert in verses 19b-20 suggest a link between the Exodus journey. Wild animals populate the  the wild places, the uninhabited and uninhabitable land, and yet, the prophet assures the people that they need not fear such places. Even the wild animals that live there are amazed at the marvelous deeds of this god who “gives water in the wilderness.” The Creator God cares for all things, all of creation.A journey through the wilderness will be hard, but the grace and power of God prevailed in the past and will do so in the future.  

Already Jesus is under direct threat, for the miracle of bringing life to Lazarus, so he is in a safe house. John’s story of the anointing-(Skinner)-The fragrance of the perfume is overpowering and expensive and shocking. she does a new and different thing is with the burial perfume. It is a prophetic demonstration of Jesus' death and burial. We are in the home of the risen Lazarus whose own body had begun to decay.. Mary does not anoint Jesus as king or Messiah; she anoints a dead man walking, a soon to be corpse. Smell is a most evocative sense, especially with memory. We are transported back to an aunt’s kitchen when we catch a whiff of an old recipe. If the beautiful scent and ugly crucifixion seem incongruent, then we are onto John's strange logic whereby Jesus is lifted up onto a cross so that he might attract all to himself (12:32).Lavish devotion contrasts critical stinginess., to honor Jesus in extravagant ways, perhaps even by giving a massive donation to the poor.Love produces extravagant gestures.

The God of time is not bound by the past. We may well learn from the past, but we do not follow a God who repeats endless cycles. The future is in God’s hands. the future is shared by the work of our hands.Paul famously called us a new creation. the church too is a new creation. The church can be and will be a new creation.God transforms the old into something vibrant and alive, even in the face of death.

Spiritual Points for Week of March 13

Sunday March 13-Ps.126 shows a type of prayer that uses the imagination of an answered prayer as a guide to contemporary prayer. What deep wishes have come true for you? when have your tears turned into songs of joy?

Monday-“Worship is something like a language school. In particular, it resembles a Berlitz approach to learning a foreign language, in which the novice is repeatedly exposed to native speakers. Someone has described one of the roles of preaching as akin to providing a model to show how the language of faith is used. In other words, we learn the meaning of words like ‘holy,’ ‘repentance,’ and ‘justification’ and phrases like ‘Jesus is Lord’ by using them and hearing them used in various contexts. . .The preacher tells stories, links one thing with another, shows how the biblical stories and images connect with the world. Language school. Over time, one learns the nuances of the language. . .Some things cannot be acquired instantaneously. Like learning to read music or learning French, learning the language of the biblical faith takes time.” Byars,

Tuesday-Have you ever had the experience of being utterly undone by despair and grief, and then suddenly, as if from nowhere, a shimmering joy starts to well up from within your deepest self? What were the circumstances that led to this experience? Abbey of the Arts

Wednesday-This is the opportune moment, according to (Pope) Francis, to accomplish what God intends for the sake of God's mercy. The pope challenges us,..,. that now is the right moment to act selflessly, to risk living out the implications of God's redemptive economy. As Pope Francis says, quoting John XXIII in his opening of the Second Vatican Council: "The Bride of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy rather than arm herself with the weapons of rigor." Quoting another of his predecessors, Benedict XVI, Francis says: "Mercy is in reality the core of the Gospel message; it is the name of God himself, the face with which he revealed himself in the Old Testament and fully in Jesus Christ."Mercy is the name of God.Michael Jinkins-

Thursday-“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Cost of Discipleship

Friday-“Sometimes we can become paralyzed by the idea of trying to figure out exactly God’s will, as if God has only one option available to us and gives us the burden of trying to figure out what it is.  Instead, I prefer to imagine a much more expansive and spacious God, one who offers life-giving paths out of a variety of directions we might choose.  Often discernment is a choice between many goods.”

Saturday-As you journey through Lent are there times when you feel as though you are living in a weary land? Do you have a rock of strength and support in your life? Will you be restored? Can you live without complaint, without mumbling? Do you look to Jesus when you are weary and need "a shelter in the time of storm?"

ASermon note son the Elder brother: Lk. 15, 2 Cor. 5

Are all three lost?

“Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possible one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting instincts. It will not let us go.” ― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It This great book and film is at its heart an angle into a younger brother and an older brother and their Presbyterian minister father. -the Presbyterian Church strikes me as a church of the elder brother.

This morning let’s call this the parable of the elder brother. Yeah yeah, the spoiled brat get to come home celebrated and forgiven. Dad gets played yet again. We could call Dad an enabler of his younger son’s malfeasance.The elder brother plays by the rules.He is never recognized as trying his best.When he goes to church all he hears is that he is not doing enough.All I hear is how we need to have more Roman music in church and dancing like the old Baals. That and give give give:time, money, ideas, money, talents, money.Worse he is told to count his blessings. What blessings? He works hard and no one seems to appreciate it, even Dad.How’s your brother, everyone asks-they all seem to like him. they are not there to bail him out of his latest jam, like when he wants me to buy his kid a present that he couldn't afford for his birthday, or the many times he decided that he just had to act out on the birthday of our parents.

Barnes-In the parable, the elder brother seems anxious about the fuss made over the return of his brother. The subtext of that worry is that he doesn't feel appreciated. Yet his carefulness and propriety make him uncomfortable ..We don't like prudence-we like risk-takers.

thank you, including those elder brothers who back up a bit when I say, "You are so cherished." Happy are those whose transgressions are forgiven. What about those whose sins are comparatively minor or dull? It is not an easy task to do good out of duty or fear of retribution.When you have been hurt far more than you have hurt others; it gets old praying for forgiveness week after week. It gets old hearing testimonies of rotten people finding God when it seems that living a godly life leaves you feeling left out of the party. elder brothers do the right thing, and the pressure is intense. They do not get the respect and love that they were told they deserve when they do the right thing-women like bad boys. Churches fall all over someone who has turned the life around in the story book conversion story but neglect the ones who progress step by step through a dutiful life.

The reading from 2 Cor 5:16 is a vital one, but is this a story of reconciliation. Perhaps the elder brother grows into it. 50 years ago the Presbyterian Church issued this great affirmation of faith in our country and it was met not with reconciliation, not with acceptance, but vitriol.Forgiveness provides the opening for reconciliation, but at times, it can only provide some safe space and maybe if desired by both parties, reciliation can arrive. divorced parents can operate smoothly and well at e wedding of a child.

God loves the father in the story. God loves the younger one we term the prodigal. Yes, god loves older brothers too.

Column on Springsteen and The River

I am taking time on Sunday evening to attend the concert, probably sponsored by AARP or Centrum Silver, I suppose, of Bruce Springsteen. I am not going to claim him as a secular saint, or even as a good Catholic. When Daughter #! was young, she asked me why I liked someone who couldn’t sing. she thought for a minute and brightened: “you like his words, don’t you?” I am asserting that he is a thoughtful man who struggles with deep and abiding spiritual themes in his long career. He is going to play his double album, The River, in its entirety, so I will focus on some of those songs.

His concerts are staged with some of the feeling of a revival, but a “rock revival.” Religious imagery appears in his songs with some startling frequency. “Roll the stone away/It’s independence day” has to be a bow to the Easter story. Its use in the song takes the theme of death into new directions in the midst of a transition form one point in our pilgrimage to the next. I admire his ferocious insistence on the constant tension between vice and virtue, of aspiration amid the hard realities of adult life. In the pop song Hungry Heart, he realizes St Augustine’s assertion that “our hearts our restless until they find their rest in God.” Springsteen realizes that “everybody’s got a hungry heart.”

The River is a long ode to the lost and the possibility of redemption. The title song itself charts the start of a young marriage that is a sign of a too early adulthood and its broken dreams. It concludes with a secular baptism where the singer wants to: “drive to the sea/to wash these sins off our hands.”

He is clear that cheap grace is hard to find and redemption may have a heavy cost. He takes the tragic inability of Moses to see the Promised land and adapts to it to unfulfilled dreams.  “Little girl down on the strand With that pretty little baby in your hands, Do you remember the story of the promised land? How he crossed the desert sands /And could not enter the chosen land/ On the banks of the river he stayed /To face the price you pay.” –

For him, life is a precious, but tenuous thing. Life is haunted by the past. Again in a song from the River” But I ride by night/ And I travel in fear/ That in this darkness/I will disappear.”

In Stolen Car:  “We got married, and swore we’d never part/Then little by little we drifted from each other’s heart/At first I thought it was just restlessness/That would fade as time went by and our love grew deep/In the end it was something more I guess/That tore us apart and made us weep. Springsteen is a romantic but he has an awareness of original sin. We can take what is pure and love-filled and find it poisoned, not only by our own decisions, but by the wounds and half-steps we share in relationships.

He closes the album with an awareness that life is filled with random, tragic, occurrences: Sometimes I sit up in the darkness/And I watch my baby as she sleeps/Then I climb in bed and I hold her tight/I just lay there awake in the middle of the night/Thinking 'bout the wreck on the highway

I suppose he will close with some of his great songs including, perhaps Badlands. There he takes the Pauline triad: “I believe in the love that you gave me/I believe in the faith that could save me/I believe in the hope/And I pray that some day/It may raise me above these/Badlands.

Springsteen’s song The rising (Easter is approaching) ends with what could easily be termed a benediction, and when he sings it, he raises his hand as if he were giving a blessing. For me, his great blessing is to give voice to an American set of dreams and struggles during the course of a lifetime.

Week of March 6 Devotional Pts

March 6 Sunday-Ps.32  is one of the classic penitential psalms perfect for this season.In our time, this may be a bit of a forced feeling, as few of us have a deep sense of sin. the core is v.4-5, and it is part of 12 step programs on dealing with addictions, no? That allows v. 7 to see the divine eye as a safe place, not one to hide from.What sins do you feel the most compulsion to keep hidden?

Monday-Clouds of witnesses surround us like mists rising early before the day settles in. Clouds of witnesses break from fields of stubble like black birds on the wing. And God is in the clouds.

Tuesday-God  liberates  from this exhaustion, commanding that they take rest each week. We essentially live in this self-made, insatiable Pharaoh-system again. So weary are we, so burdened by consumer debt, working long hours with very little time off. So many take pride in wearing the badge of “busy.” So many are stretched thin to the very edges of their resources.When we practice Sabbath, we are making a visible statement that our lives are not defined by this perpetual anxiety.  At the heart of this relationship is a God who celebrates the gift of rest. Brueggemann says we are so beholden to “accomplish­ing and achieving and possessing” that we refuse the gift given to us.

Wednesday-Have you ever been unable to praise God? Have there been periods of your life where love for God seems distant and far away, like a fading memory? Perhaps you have dealt with depression and wondered where God really was. From time to time the psalmist's words capture this feeling so well: "My soul thirsts for you...as in a dry and weary land where there is no water." The psalmist has been there. Yet, like a light in the distance, the psalmist also sees hope, and this hope draws ever closer and overwhelms the psalmist to the point of praise. Joy seems to overwhelm the psalmist when he or she feels the need for God's presence so greatly and deeply. In the depths of thirst and longing the psalmist is able to find solace in knowing God is present. (God Pause)

Thursday-Henri Nouwen wrote that “to give a blessing is to affirm, to say ‘yes’ to a person’s Belovedness.” In Lent, may each of us know how dearly beloved we are, even as we feel the weight of our suffering. May we flee the promises of gimmicky gratitude and walk as best we can toward the truth of God’s love for us, which marks us and holds us, no matter where we find ourselves. May we know what blessing is, and may we feel it, believing.(From Duke’s leadership blog)

Friday- A coracle was a boat without a rudder to guide it on rivers.It sits on the water more than in the water and is moved by current or wind, but it is unstable.

Saturday-“What is ritual? Ritual may be any pattern of behavior that involves repetition, including brushing one’s teeth or loading the dishwasher. Ritual is the menu at Thanksgiving or decorating the tree at Christmas. The virtue of a repeated pattern is that after the first or first few times we become free of the need to think about the details required in executing it. Someone has said that we’re not dancing until we don’t need to count the steps. Once the dance is internalized, we lose ourselves (or find ourselves) in the dance itself, freed from having to think through every move. Ritual is like the dance. It is something to be realized in the doing, not in thinking about it.” Byars