Easter 2013 Sermon Notes

Easter 2013 Is. 65:17-25, Lk. 24:1-11

Easter is the great moment of revelation for the church. we are given new eyes to examine this have a sudden insight, they puzzle over it. they do report it however.Had they wasted time, effort, and money to go to the body? followed by two disciples-no less than 5 women, three named. Are the two unnamed women to life.-women and spices they were going to do a good and proper thing, to anoint the body. They could find no body and were understandably puzzled. The were going to honor a lifeless body, but they do not encounter the stench of death, but the springtime of fresh new life.Notice that they do not draw us into identifying with them, to getting us to place ourselves in the midst of that first Easter morning? So do it, place yourself at the tomb with the women or the two male disciples.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” I was asked to read by a dying minister for his spouse. It resonates  as a good question to ask oneself in the recesses of a soul when things seem lifeless and unremittingly  grey.(see Feasting on Word for Easter paragraph) Even at Easter, death continues to stalk us all, and that leads to the new creation imagined in Isaiah.

Easter is the beginning of a new story, not the end of the story of Jesus Christ. In itself it points to a new time, and Jesus is the trailblazer.Jesus interrupts them on their way to speak to the disciples.Easter’s message comes as an interruption.they were not believed, (idle tale=leros=nonsense, as in delirious).

I do agree that we keep the dead alive in our memory. Easter goes far beyond that. Here we take a stand that the God of life does not permit death to be the ultimate fate.Second,  Easter light not only shines on to a distant future but it lights up life here and now. It puts a relentless focus on how the past merges into new. The national PCUSA ordination exams had an essay on eternal life. Many of the essays asserted this, but they rarely amplified it. Third,Easter does point to a new and better future and our loved ones live in it through being incorporated into the presence and time of God. They are dead indeed, but they are with the living, all those who lives persist within the life of God.the Lord and Giver of life ignores the grace and opens us to a new dimension of life. Heaven is clearly then linked to Easter.

Is Easter reform or revolution? Reform means that something is OK, but needs some adjustments. Revolution wants to sack an entire system and start anew.Part of me just dismisses all of the stuff associated with Easter, the breeding green plastic grass, the eggs, the candy, the bunnies. I do get that they presage life in the spring.No, I am not going into some diatribe on incipient paganism. I do want to say that all those signs of new life are part of the natural course of events, but Easter is a transformation of nature with its heralding life beyond the vale of death.In one sense, it is a revolution of what we know. In another it is a reform of life. I have the sense that God cannot bear to lose us forever. Even though God created mortality, resurrection is turning a new leaf on that creative design.The way we view the day Easter starts in the dark of the stone-cold tomb.In the pre-dawn darkness, light appears before the sun. Teh sun rises on the shadow of death and dispels it, for on this day, life, blessed life gets all the attention. In the way Jesus saw the day, it was almost half over when he was raised. As Dorothy Bass says, he received the day as a gift, as we all do.

Week of March 31 Devotional Thoughts

Easter Sunday-We connect Easter with spring. After the snowfall, I like seeing signs of life re-emerge, and daffodils survive and green growth struggling forth. When the snow melts, I will dig up a garden. Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener, and the empty tomb was a new Eden of life.Sanctuaries are filled with flowers. to borrow from Babara Qalters, what flowers would you like to see in your spiritual garden this year?

Monday-Where did April Fools Day even come from? It may be related ot the feast of fools or prank days in various cultures, but its origin for us seems lost.In mnay culutres, the figure of the fool, the clown, the jester can go in a number of directions.I never appreciated the trick sof the day or the kind of pranks tha seem to give os much pleasure ot others. I do grasp that humor, in different forms, may be able to speak a truth that seriousness could not utter.

Tuesday-How does one handle falling behind? Sometimes we can schedule time to play catch-up, but sometimes the goal seems to recede away from us, even if we work our hardest. It may be wise to break up an ultimate goal into some pieces, and it may be wise ot make some process points to be built into one’s plans, including the inevitable delays.What are your best tools for keeping on, for perseverance?

Wednesday-Nahum is  little book. It has a phrase on peace (1:15)that also shows up in Isaiah 52.When Israel lost wars, it seems its concern for peace grew. We are so used to seeing conflict on the horizon, where do you spot emissary signs of peace? What do you tend to seek as signs of peace? What sort of emblem for peace would you create, as say, a new peace sign? Perhaps move this locus a bit: from inner peace, to interpersonal, to community to nation.

Thursday-We speak of learning to read between the lines.Sometimes what we read or hear conveys more meaning that what lies on the surface.It may be emotion; it may be a hidden agenda, it may be some didden depths under a seemingly simple exterior. Do you think reading between the lines is a virtue or a vice? why is it so diffiuclt to communicate that we feel a need to read between the lines?

Friday-The stores are selling some Easter candy at a discount. Even that plastic grass that seems to breed is available.Easter seem to flee away more quickly than the Christmas season. We seem to return to normal more easily.Every sunday we have Easter in focus, but we grow inured to it with repetition.What parts of Easter do you most want to keep in heart and mind? What parts are easiest for you to relinquish until next year?

Saturday-My favorite sporting event the men’s college basketball tournament continues. For me a big part of it is the David v. Goliath aspect of it. It also is a time for folks to move out of their personal zone and connect with people on the same thing. In the scheme of things, it is unimportant, but it still is a container for hopes and emotion.some get all wrapped up in a team with whom they have some connection. What are the connections for your response to church?

Week of March 31 Devotional thoughts

Easter Sunday-We connect Easter with spring. After the snowfall, I like seeing signs of life re-emerge, and daffodils survive and green growth struggling forth. When the snow melts, I will dig up a garden. Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener, and the empty tomb was a new Eden of life.Sanctuaries are filled with flowers. to borrow from Babara Qalters, what flowers would you like to see in your spiritual garden this year?

Monday-Where did April Fools Day even come from? It may be related ot the feast of fools or prank days in various cultures, but its origin for us seems lost.In mnay culutres, the figure of the fool, the clown, the jester can go in a number of directions.I never appreciated the trick sof the day or the kind of pranks tha seem to give os much pleasure ot others. I do grasp that humor, in different forms, may be able to speak a truth that seriousness could not utter.

Tuesday-How does one handle falling behind? Sometimes we can schedule time to play catch-up, but sometimes the goal seems to recede away from us, even if we work our hardest. It may be wise to break up an ultimate goal into some pieces, and it may be wise ot make some process points to be built into one’s plans, including the inevitable delays.What are your best tools for keeping on, for perseverance?

Wednesday-Nahum is  little book. It has a phrase on peace (1:15)that also shows up in Isaiah 52.When Israel lost wars, it seems its concern for peace grew. We are so used to seeing conflict on the horizon, where do you spot emissary signs of peace? What do you tend to seek as signs of peace? What sort of emblem for peace would you create, as say, a new peace sign? Perhaps move this locus a bit: from inner peace, to interpersonal, to community to nation.

Thursday-We speak of learning to read between the lines.Sometimes what we read or hear conveys more meaning that what lies on the surface.It may be emotion; it may be a hidden agenda, it may be some didden depths under a seemingly simple exterior. Do you think reading between the lines is a virtue or a vice? why is it so diffiuclt to communicate that we feel a need to read between the lines?

Friday-The stores are selling some Easter candy at a discount. Even that plastic grass that seems to breed is available.Easter seem to flee away more quickly than the Christmas season. We seem to return to normal more easily.Every sunday we have Easter in focus, but we grow inured to it with repetition.What parts of Easter do you most want to keep in heart and mind? What parts are easiest for you to relinquish until next year?

Saturday-My favorite sporting event the men’s college basketball tournament continues. For me a big part of it is the David v. Goliath aspect of it. It also is a time for folks to move out of their personal zone and connect with people on the same thing. In the scheme of things, it is unimportant, but it still is a container for hopes and emotion.some get all wrapped up in a team with whom they have some connection. What are the connections for your response to church?

Column on Good Friday Frames

How do we come to grips with the meaning of Good Friday? the bible itself has many images: ransom, offering, reconciliation, and others. Such horror requires that we attach meaning and purpose to it.  In some way or another we have been stressing the understanding of Anselm, 1,000 years ago. In his view, sin attacked God’s honor, and God used the cross to restore justice and honor, with Jesus at the fulcrum point of a humanity that sullied God’s honor and the divinity that sought to restore it. Calvin, among others, turned the critical issue from God’s honor to a sense of pardon for deserved punishment, with a criminal case model. Somehow, the death of Jesus transferred both guilt and punishment on to Christ. The transfer of punishment model is breaking down, I think, and is buttressed by constant repetition more than a grasp of it. I often go back to a little girl who heard the usual model of good Friday and replied: “well I live Jesus, but I hate God.” Many have a difficult time imagining God as a dispenser of eternal punishment for minor offenses. Guilt is not the pervasive sense that dogs our thoughts. In a world of slaughter, it is almost impossible for some of us to concur with a model of redemptive violence.

Miroslav Volf, a prominent theologian at Yale, disagrees and says that Jesus is not a third party who mediates between an angry God and humanity. Jesus represents a god who was wronged and still embraces humanity. My recent Christian Century magazine had an extended piece by a British writer making a case for the cross showing solidarity with the human experience of suffering, an identification, not separation, from the plight of humanity.   

A more ancient view saw it as posed between death and life, fate and freedom. Look at pictures o the harrowing of Hell. You see images of Jesus leading people from the abode of death into the light of heaven. In some pictures, you can see a devil throwing a fit that its power is and jurisdiction is fleeing away. The question would become  if the abode of death itself was the issue or did the abode of death contain some punishment in it beyond death itself? As Alan Lewis wrote, it is a fearsome thing to confront the specter of God in the grave.

More and more, I am attracted to the idea of the cross as medicine, a sort of homeopathic medicine, for sin-sick souls. I think of John 3, before the great declaration of salvation, not condemnation. Jesus refers to a serpent in the desert during the exodus in the wilderness. If the people looked up toward an image of the serpent, they were healed. (Think of the symbol of the pharmacy in drug stores). The cross is filled with irony. The instrument of execution leads to a life where we are assured that God understands, is with us in our joys and sorrow in the deepest valley imaginable. The cross draws the poison out of human life, a sort of spiritual poultice. It’s a vaccine against an arrogant, triumphal view of the faith and its way of life. It is alos a protection against the poison of shame, perhaps our deepest wound. the cross takes shame and grace over disgrace.

The cross is a bridge, a portal, from the heart of God to earth. It is not about distant God orchestrating events like pieces on a chessboard. No, it is Emmanuel, God with us, beyond the sheer Incarnation itself but into the warp and woof of human experience. When we are drawn into its vortex, our conceptions and misconceptions abou

OT Notes Good Friday

Psalm 22 almost looks like a template for the account of the events of the end of the life of Jesus.

Is. 52:13-53:12 is the longest and most famous suffering servant passage. Again, some of its material is echoed in the accounts of the last day of Jesus. the servant is a representative figure, both individual and corporate, it seems to me.How do you think Isaiah meant it and how do see see resurrection/ascension

How do you come to grips with the notion of vicarious suffering (53:4-6).?

How does this long hymn apply and not apply to Jesus?.  as the exaltation or the cross itself, or both?

In v. 8 do you think that the unjust order was applied to the narrative of Jesus  or do you imagine an intake of breath when Christians read Isaiah in the light of the story of Jesus ( including, suffering, silence, and even the type of tomb)?

Why the emphasis on silent suffering? How is suffering ever redemptive?

v.10-how do you square this passage with the love of God? How do you square the crucifixion with that love in its operation, not its goal? The new Christian Century has a good piece by a British author on coming to grips with atonement concepts.

How do we avoid making a a passage such as this a glorification of suffering, especially of others?

Suffering falls into the abstract-perhaps one could emphasize one element of suffering from the Passion narratives. Otherwise, we get numb to the succession of pain.

It can be an instructive exercise to compare Passion descriptions in a variety of movies on Jesus.

OT Notes Holy Week

We have such a vast number of OT readings in Holy Week, I think i am going to pick one from Maundy Thursday  Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, at least as a start.I am also starting slowly as I am tired from digging a path to the church door after over a foot of snow fell yesterday.

Maundy Thursday-Since the last meal of Jesus was at Passover, we have a reading from Exodus 12. One can hear the echoes of priestly concern with the inclusion of Aaron and the careful description of how to prepare the lamb. It is clearly a scared meal, pregnant with meaning. I love how it is a meal for people on the move.this is the first time we encounter the word congregation for the people. If the blood is sacred, does it render the the houses sacred by marking their entrance ways?
Does the bitterness of the herbs reflect on the bitterness of slavery?
I realize that in blood is life according to the bible.I do not grasp how the blood on the doorpost works as a warning,but it certainly gets at the idea of death passing over the people.
Passover marks a new beginning and opens into a new future (see Janzen 81).
Linkages to Jesus as the lamb of god are a matter of the imagination.What links do you make between the Lord's Supper and Passover, if any? In the synoptic gospels, Jesus is working on the image of covenant significantly, no?

Corrected Week March 24 devotions

Sunday March 24 Palm Sunday is paired as Passion Sunday as well. More and more, i appreciate the conflicting feelings of acclamation for Jesus would soon lead to the suffering (its Greek root is where we get Passion in this light). We like symmetry of feeling, but the truth is that high and low points mix easily in time. Perhaps that is why crosscutting of two different images is such an effective device in the movies.

Monday-From Lord of the Rings-Frodo: “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf replies ;So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil... you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” Have things come to you that have caused such reflection?

Tuesday-Take a few minutes to recollect a particular issue of the past that once was a deep prayer concern for you. How has it resolved itself? Is there any way that you notice it's still in process, or that you're being changed in relation to it? Now make a note of some current issue that concerns you. How would it change your expectations to frame it as an "answering" prayer?  

Wednesday-In my mind, Holy Week was accompanied by grey skies. That may have been a child’s overactive imagination, but it seemed that nature itself knew the weight of the week. Think about how the weather should look for Maundy Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this week.

Maundy Thursday- Some churches do footwashing this day, from the gospel of John. I admire them. I am of two minds on it, as it seems to me rooted in a far gone culture. On the other hand, I wonder what religious ritual could fit its purpose of humility and service?

Good Friday-In my new Christian Century, the cover piece is on the cross. A British author, Hefling, He asserts we have over-stressed retribution for evil and not enough about restoration and healing. It is seeking to draw good from evil, through divine acceptance and transformation of suffering, not coercion, not control. The cross is less avoiding punishment for us, it is God absorbing suffering with us.

Holy Saturday-I am always drawn back to Alan Lewis’s posthumous book on this day.”Far from being the first day, the day of the cross is, in the logic of the narrative itself, actually the last day, the end of the story of Jesus. And the day that follows it is not an in-between day which simply waits for the morrow, but it is an empty void, a nothing, shapeless, meaningless, and anti-climactic; simply the day after the end... These were anonymous, indefinite hours, filled with memories and assessments of what was finished and past; and there was no reason to imagine.. an imminent triumph.”