Friday, April 20, 2012
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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