Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17 (25-27)

One of my prized possessions is a cassette recording of Thomas Merton lecturing his fellow monks at their Kentucky monastery during Advent of 1964. He tells them that we must come to see that Christianity exists in history, and that we have to see Advent in terms of contemporary history. He details some then-current events: the shootings and killings in Mississippi, the war in Rhodesia. Then he says, “Pious meditations on how rough Mary and Joseph and the Baby Jesus had it are meaningless unless I have some response to the sufferings in the flesh today. Events are manifesting a reality which is present. We’re living in Advent. What’s happening around us is the Advent liturgy of 1964.”

Merton’s words shed light on every season of the church year. In this case, they raise the question of the difference between mere pious mediations on the early disciples gathered at the festival in Jerusalem and the events that indicate we are living in Pentecost. In seeking an answer, we do well to remember John Howard Yoder’s caution against reading “the surface of history,” that is, making simplistic connections between current news reports and the mysteries of what God is up to in the world. But with that due caution, what is the 2013 Pentecost liturgy? Each appointed Scripture text provides not only a lens through which to see the world but also a unique focus on the gift of the Spirit.

In Acts 2, the out-pouring of the Spirit is a dazzling convergence of Passover and Pentecost, signs and wonders that extend God’s message of repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations. The coming of the Spirit crosses countless barriers, and, in Augustine’s words, “gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages.” Where in the world is that happening?

Romans 5-8 has the structure and language of the Exodus. A groaning creation has fallen short of the glory of God and become subjected to futility. God’s gargantuan Gospel rescue operation through the death of Jesus and the freedom of the Spirit encompasses groaning individuals caught in the grip of slavery and fear. Justified by the death of Christ, they are brought out of bondage and now are led by the Spirit through the wilderness toward the promised land of God’s restored creation. Where in the world is that happening?

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ announcement of the Spirit is spoken on the night he was betrayed and arrested. Primal responses pour from the disciples as he tells what was to come: Show us the Father. Where are you going? Why do you have to go? Can we go with you? Who’ll stay with us when you’re gone? To their childlike vulnerability, Jesus promises another Advocate, the Spirit of truth who will teach them what can only be revealed and will abide with them in a new way as they carry on his ministry. Where in the world is that happening?

The Psalmist refrains for 23 verses from naming God while giving an inventory of creation’s extravagance. Finally God’s name is mentioned as the giver of this glorious abundance. God gives breath/wind/spirit again and again to create and renew. Question: how many breaths have you been given thus far? Add one more, and another… Where in the world isn’t that happening? Immersed in Psalms like this one, Abraham Heschel exclaimed, “The world is always on the verge of becoming one in adoration.”

Of course, Pentecost does not preclude the Advent liturgy. There are sufferings and agonies in the flesh today. Nearly fifty years after Merton’s lecture, the shootings and killings continue, as does the war in Afghanistan, Syria, and in too many other places. There are those loved ones who were not given a next breath. Churches still sometimes so entangle the Gospel with local and national idols that they become complicit to, or even agents of, the power of sin instead of the ministry of the Spirit. Insular preachers still serve up meaningless meditations that stem more from their watching reruns of “So You Think You Can Preach” than from their wrestling with the darkness in the evening news, or in a Cormac McCarthy novel, or in their own heart.

Far from negating the gift of the Spirit, though, acknowledging the ways we refuse and resist the Spirit’s work is the way we are made all the more aware of the scope of Jesus’ self-giving death on the cross and of the power of the Spirit to make new. The ministry of the Holy Spirit can then be as tender and focused as the spiritual’s “Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again,” and as explosive and far-reaching as Calvin’s “The church of Jesus Christ and its history is nothing but a chain of resurrections from the dead.”

Where in the world is Pentecost? Charles Marsh writes that Clarence Jordan liked to say “that the steeple is defined by the kingdom, that every local congregation represents a point of entry into the global fellowship of the church, despite the intentions of particular memberships to take refuge in sameness” (Wayward Christian Soldiers, 179). It’s as if the local congregation, in spite of everything, can’t escape her call to be both witness to and bearer of the Spirit. Our ministry comes in reminding ourselves and others of this theological reality.

I can think of several sources who will remind me this week. Our children’s choir, a majority of whom are Latino, is singing “Bonse Aba.” The words are in Bemba, a language spoken mainly in Zambia. Since Bemba words have multiple meanings (most appropriate for Pentecost Spirit/wind/breath!), a word-for-word English translation is difficult, but an approximate translation is “All that sing have the right to be called the children of God.”

Another reminder is the Al-Anon group that quietly comes through a side door and gathers twice a week in a downstairs classroom. Richard Rohr reminds us of their role in the Spirit’s ministry: “When the churches forget their own Gospel message, the Holy Spirit sneaks it in through the ducts and air vents. AA meetings have been very good ductwork, allowing fresh air both in and out of many musty and mildewed churches.”

Most of all, it’s the regular, ongoing worship and ministry of a church caught up God’s message of repentance and forgiveness to all nations that provides the most immediate Spirit-filled answer to the question “Where in the world is Pentecost?”

Nor doth he by ascending show alone,
But first He, and He first enters the way.                 

                                                                            John Donne, Ascension

I was puzzling over what to write here when across my Facebook newsfeed came the story of a New Englander (a “Yale grad” the headline noted) who has offered a burial plot for the Boston Marathon bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Three weeks after Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police, and with no cemetery willing to receive his remains, Douglas Keene of Vermont made the offer to Tsarnaev’s family on the condition that it be done

in memory of my mother who taught Sunday School at the Mt. Carmel Congregational Church for twenty years and taught me to ‘love thine enemy.’

It is surprising how surprising Keene’s simple, straightforward gesture seems. But it strikes me that part of its beauty is that it invites us to remember what crucifixion-resurrection-ascension make possible:  the overcoming of our violence and our need to scapegoat and exclude. In Jesus’ living and dying, in his rising from death and his ascension into heaven, a new social order is opened up to us–God’s new creation–in which enemies are loved and we are free to relinquish the cherished fiction of our innocence.

The iconography of ascension makes it difficult for us to reckon fully with this “crown of all Christian festivals.”  Jesus being “carried up into heaven“ (Lk. 24:51) is conceived, understandably, in spatial terms and we think absence, or at least distance. And there is the sense in the theology of crucifixion-resurrection-ascension that Jesus is not here but there: “seated at the right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:20).

But there is also the truth that in returning to the Father Jesus takes our humanity into the very heart of God. We who are his body are caught up in the divine life and its communitas of mutual gift. God’s life and love spills its bounds, so to speak, drawing us in, enfolding us, embracing us. In the ceaseless flow of such gifts we in turn embrace others.

Yet this truth surprises us, epecially, perhaps, because we live in a world ruled by fear and exclusion. As James Alison observes

We can imagine retaliation, we can imagine protection; but we find it awfully difficult to imagine someone . . .  generously irrupting into our midst so as to set us free to enable something quite new to open for us.

This generous irruption makes possible our own ascension: “He first enters the way,” as Donne’s exquisite sonnet has it. Jesus has gone before us in our suffering, our failure, our despair, our death. And in his resurrection and ascension he brings us home to the Father so that here in this place and in this time we might bear witness to “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph.1:23).

A Vermont schoolteacher’s surprising gesture of hospitality shows us what that might look like. Embraced by God, we embrace others.

]]> http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2013/05/ascension-and-embrace/feed/ 0 http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2013/05/in-memorium-brian-logan/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-memorium-brian-logan http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2013/05/in-memorium-brian-logan/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 19:21:19 +0000 Brent Laytham http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/?p=4428 We give thanks for the life and witness of our dear friend and brother in Christ, Brian Logan (1961 – 2013), and  we grieve his loss with his wife, Suzie,  their children, Kolbe and Lydia, and the Church of the Servant King. Hundreds of EP’ers know Brian’s gentle presence, humor, and grace from the many Gatherings he attended.

May Brian’s soul and the souls of all the departed faithful by God’s mercy rest in peace.

Here follows Brian’s obituary:

Born Febrary 24 1961 in Houston,Texas the son of John and Hildy Logan , Brian died Monday, April, 29, 2013 at his home in Eugene, Oregon. He was 52. Brian was raised in San Diego, CA graduating from Mission Bay High School in 1979. He attended Preston Road School of Preaching, Abilene Christian University, and Northwest Christian College.

Brian married Suzie Cox January 29, 1994 in San Francisco, CA, and moved to Eugene, OR where Brian served as a pastor for Church of the Servant King. Brian was beloved by many in the community as a pastor, in his role managing Theo’s Jazz Club, and as the lead barista at Theo’s Coffee House.

Brian was known for his hospitality, never letting a friend go without a beverage in their hand. The consummate conversationalist, he never let a long line at Theo’s stop him from finding out how your day was going. As a pastor, he preached the love and mercy of God up until the eve of his death. To his congregation, Brian is irreplaceable.

Brian loved Jazz, wood working, birds, good food, ancient biblical languages; but most of all his family and friends. His life was spent trying to make others’ lives meaningful. All hyperbole aside, this world has lost a man who made others better.

Brian is survived by his wife, Suzie Logan , son Kolbe and daughter Lydia of Eugene. Brian is also survived by his mother, Hildy Logan of San Diego, sisters Jennie Medina and Katy Schamp; and brother Ken Logan. He was preceded in death by his father, John Logan.

A Memorial Service will be held 2pm May 11 at Valley Covenant Church, Eugene.  A private interment will be held at Rest Lawn Memorial Park in Junction City, OR. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Hosea Youth Services.

John 14:23-29
Revelation 21:10, 22:1-5

In our contemporary world, it is difficult to belong. We are so busy and on the move, it seems to be better to keep commitments to a minimum. 20% to 30% of all Americans move each year and the average American moves fourteen times over a lifetime. Poet, essayist, and editor of Poetry magazine Christian Wiman remembers that when he was thirty-six years old, he had moved forty times in fifteen years. He said he owned nothing that would not fit easily into his car. When talking about this with some friends, all of whom were in their twenties and thirties, all smart, well-educated and upwardly mobile, they compared notes and realized that between them they had lived in every state and dozens of foreign countries. Not one person lived near where they were born and raised and none of them ever asked anyone else where they’re from, “skirting the question as if it were either too intimate or, more likely, too involved to broach.”

We are a society that believes in being mobile – people with no sense of belonging to a place or to anyone else but themselves and who can pick up and move whenever the corporation, the job, the career demands it.

The 2001 novel Up in the Air by Walter Kirn was made into the 2009 movie with George Clooney. It’s the story of a businessman named Ryan who lives his life in what’s called “Airworld.” He’s either in airports or in hotels or in the air on a plane and his greatest ambition is to get a million frequent flyer miles. He’s from no place in particular, has no commitments, and the only people he considers friends are the flight attendants. Kirn said he wrote the novel when he had a conversation with a fellow passenger on a plane who said that he was on an airplane 300 days a year and gave up his apartment in Atlanta and bought a storage locker instead.

To settle, to belong, to make and keep commitments in such a society is often considered a sign of a lack of ambition, a vice to be overcome, or some sort of backwardness or lack of self-esteem. In American Anglo culture it is rare to hear someone define herself or himself as belonging to someone else. “I am my own person” is our rallying cry and we admire the “self-made man” or “woman.”

We are losing our sense of belonging. No sense of home; no sense of each other; no sense of belonging to a place. Gertrude Stein, after years of living in Europe, in the 1930’s returned to the U.S. and to Oakland, California, where she grew up. She could find no trace of her childhood home, no durable landmarks, leading her to remark that she could not imagine settling down and writing in Oakland, for “there is no there there.”

Nowadays we have mass media with mass advertising for chain stores, chain restaurants, newspaper chains, chains of radio stations playing the same music, cable and satellite television showing the same programs, chains of bookstores all selling the same books which, of course, are now giving way to online shopping where you can buy anything from anywhere at any time. There is no there there, what writer Scott Russell Sanders calls the “homogenizing of America” – where everyplace looks like every other place, where we have lost touch with our distinctive history, cut ourselves off from our surrounding landscape, where our accents have more to do with television than any regional dialect, where our local towns are becoming colonies of global corporations, and we move through relationships and marriages like we move through places. We hit a rough spot in our marriage and move on rather than doing the hard work of belonging to each other. We destroy God’s land and move on to another place. We live up in the air and don’t care and don’t notice who else is destroying God’s earth.

In the novel and movie Up in the Air the worst thing that can happen to a person who lives in “Airworld” is to be “grounded.” Mechanical problems and inclement weather ground airplanes and play havoc with the tight schedules of people like the character Ryan. “Airworld” is about being in the air, in transit, on the move – not to be grounded.

Our readings for today are about the groundedness of redemption. Much of the Johannine writings are concerned with being grounded, from “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14) to “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16) to our texts for today where Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (14:23) to Revelation where the holy city Jerusalem is coming down out of heaven (21:10). This great vision of redemption at the end of all history is not about going up in the air, not about ending up in heaven. It’s about God and heaven coming down and redeeming, transforming this place.

God’s work is about entering into this place that God loves. This is what Jesus did. He entered it and loved it. This world, this place defined as ourselves, others, all its creatures, and this land is what and who God has created, called good, and entered into in Jesus Christ, to redeem it, serve it, love it, and make it whole. At the end this same, very place will be the dwelling of God with us.

Amen.

John 13:31-35

She stood outside of the meeting room, a cigarette in hand–crying.  This was a weekend spiritual retreat, a time of renewal, but for this woman it was clearly painful, even degrading.  My wife approached the woman and asked what was wrong.  “I’m Baptist,” she said, “and everyone is just saying such bad things about us.”  The retreat was put on by the Episcopal Church and this being a southern Episcopal gathering “Baptist bashing” is bound to be the common sport.  The Baptist are the dominant denomination in the region, often conservative brands.  Many in the Episcopal Church grew up in Baptist churches or similar denominations and they consider their new status as Episcopalians to be an enlightened escape.  So they take cheap shots, ridicule the Baptists and feel self-satisfied.

The flipside occurs of course.  I migrated into the Episcopal Church from a world that found it unimaginable that either Episcopalians or Catholics were even followers of Jesus.  The Episcopalians were clearly apostate sinners who didn’t read the Bible.  The Roman Catholics were not really Christians since they didn’t believe in the Bible and they worshiped Mary.  I think it is fair to say that every Christian group or denomination has its Christian “other” that can be made the object of exclusion.  

And here in our Gospel reading we have Jesus telling us that we need to love these people: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Of course when Jesus gives this commandment it is to a small group of disciples, no denominations have formed yet, no groups have split.  That will come soon enough though, in our Acts reading we see a division being reconciled between Gentile and Jewish believers but we know from Paul that that division will be a major dividing point again.  We also know that the early church will quickly differentiate around different leaders–Paul, Apollos, Peter, etc.  Jesus we could say is working to head all of this off–if you follow me, you must “love one another.”

But Jesus, we could hear someone say, those people don’t really follow you.  They don’t _______ (Episcopalians insert “work for social justice.”  Mennonites insert “practice peaceableness.” Evangelicals insert “submit to the authority of scripture.” Etc.).  Jesus however seems relatively uninterested in the inside or outside status of his followers.  When the disciples complain about a person who was casting out demons in the name of Jesus and “was not following us,” Jesus tells them that anyone working for the good of the kingdom of God in his name is a disciple.  “Whoever is not against us is for us,” he tells them (Mark 9:40).  It is sometimes hard to see this in our many divisions and denominations, the history of serious and often important theological splits.  But we must come to see that for all of the differences, we are seeking the same kingdom, we are trying to follow the same God made manifest in the world through the Christ whose name we bear.

Even the fiercest disagreements and differences within Christianity, the kind that produced interChristian martyrdoms, should be guided by that other command Jesus gave about love: “love your enemies and pay for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…For if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” (Matthew 5:44-48).  This passage from the beatitudes states again what is to be the mark of the Christian–love of one another even when that other is an enemy.  This love, even for enemies, even the enemies close to us is to be the thing that distinguishes Christians.  It is to be our witness.

This is a hard love to live into for sure.  We see the differences between an Episcopalian and a Missionary Baptist as being greater at times than those between an Episcopalian and a Buddhist.  In my own context Episcopalians are always trying to have interfaith dialogue which is easy since the small percentages of non-Christian religious practitioners in Arkansas are thrilled to have someone to talk to and pay attention to them.  This is all fine and good and we need interfaith dialogue, but in a place like Arkansas the real conflicts and disagreements, the hard work is intrafaith dialogue.  It is here that we need to start if we are to learn to love one another, much less love those of a completely different religion.

So how do we begin the practice of this love and conversation (and shouldn’t we have conversation to have love)?  I think the place to begin is in the work of the kingdom coming into the world, the building up of our communities.  There is a local prison ministry that brings together Christians of all kinds to help bring men incarcerated for serious crimes to a new kind of life.  There are other ministries that work to care for the homeless and feed the hungry.  A common ministry of prayer, particularly for the violence we see in our cities, could be another way forward.

We must also look for witnesses of dialogue within the church.  I have always been impressed by the friendship and conversations between Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright.  These are two scholars who clearly respect one another and yet have deep and critical differences in their positions.  Others who have offered respectful engagements with those with whom they disagree are teachers like Dallas Willard who, though more conservative, praises people like Albert Schweitzer as exemplars of the Christian faith.

Finally, we must wash each others feet.  This commandment from Jesus to love one another comes at the last supper after he has already demonstrated this humble act of service.  It is our service to one another that most marks our love and most marks our place as Christ’s followers.  With so much disagreement over sacraments like baptism and communion, and the great deal of conversation that must take place around the interpretation of scripture, feet washing is a ready and simple way to enact our love for one another.  Every summer gathering of the Ekklesia Project ends with an intra-faith foot washing service.  What if we could take this witness and make intrafaith foot washing services a regular practice in our individual places?  With such acts of loving one another we will show that we are Christ’s followers.  It is a witness the world needs; it is a command we must fulfill.

Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

Sharing a household with beloved in-laws who watch TV regularly and don’t hear as well as I do, I have learned to turn away from a blasting televisions, as it strives to capture my attention with its show of urgency or of overwhelming sensation. Yesterday afternoon was somewhat of an exception. When my dear mother in law instructed me in a whisper to ‘turn on the TV’—she was on the phone at the time—I felt a sense of foreboding. As I pondered the clicker, I felt caught between my habit of flatly refusing such invitations to be informed—a habit rooted in a general distrust that what the TV anchors would express as urgent truly was—and a nagging sense that I could be neglecting a civic duty by not paying attention to the story. I turned it on long enough to get the gist of what happened at the Boston marathon, before turning my attention back to playing with my five year old daughter.

Later that day, it was time to take my daughter to dance, something I value for the way it gathers parents away from our private projects, and allows us to observe and so share with the practical experience of child-rearing. As we headed to the studio, I anticipated that in the waiting room, where parents babysit their other children and chat for thirty minutes to the rhythms of the recital soundtrack, I would hear lots of talk about what happened earlier in Boston. Surprisingly, nobody mentioned it for the first twenty minutes or so—a sign perhaps of a reality alternative to that of the news media—as matters of costumes and upcoming picture-taking were talked through.

When the subject finally did come up, I noted how confident the talk was. “It was only a matter of time,” proclaimed one woman, who had just noted that they were sending in the National Guard. She then intimated that they/we had their guard up for a little while after 9/11, but then returned to a normal, lazy way of handling the business of life.

Let me speculatively draw out two assumptions that inhabit these remarks, and inform our discussion of the topic that afternoon in general. The knowing reference to the National Guard bespeaks the assumption that our nation is at war, though we sometimes forget the fact, and further that this recent phenomenon has simply revealed the underlying condition. Furthermore, I suggest that one can discern in our way of talking a “knowledge” that is underwritten by underlying laws or regularities of history. In this instance, the law of history, which allows us to speak in a matter of fact way, is that violence and war are inevitable. To reinforce this interpretation of our talk in the waiting room, I might remember the figure of the police official on TV a few hours earlier. At the climax of the news conference drama, the reporters prodded him to legitimate a certain reading of invents by introducing loaded terms. ‘Are you calling this an “attack”?’ Has this been executed by “terrorists”? In response, the official showed his bureaucratic skill by replying, with a thin veneer of impartiality, “I’ve described the facts, and I’ll let you reach your own conclusions about that.” Naturally, both reporter and viewer were tantalized. Thus, a peculiar sense of time, originating in the events of 9/11/2001, shapes an epoch in which violence or war for us is inevitable—“it was only a matter of time.”

I don’t wish to say that “war” names the only conception of history that underwrites the confidence that time, the ways of history, are within our grasp. Nor do I wish to persuade anyone reading this of a particular interpretation of “what happened in Boston.” (I sense my own habitual aversion to news sometimes leads me to the vice of refusing to feel much in the face of events like this.) I want rather to point out the way some of our scripture readings, at this time of year, portray rather the disruption of our confidence and the senses of time that buttress it. I call to witness, here, the befuddlement of the disciples as they try to interpret and respond to the presence of the resurrected Jesus. Challenging our sense-making capacities, the gospel writers portray them as asking, ‘What are we to make of this? What are we to make of ourselves in light of it?’

As Janice Love pointed out in her blog last week, the character of the encounter of Peter with Jesus is that of a re-training, or re-orienting of Peter by Jesus. There seems to be an unavoidable irony in the fact that Peter’s vocational training, though it seems to begin understandably enough with love of God, points finally to his own crucifixion-like death. He is thus directed by Jesus toward an end which, as philosophers remind us, is for any of us truly unthinkable—our own deaths!

And yet, if we are focusing on the move from certain knowledge to incomprehension, we might pause here and ask, ‘Isn’t the Gospel of John all about the splendor of truth? About light overcoming darkness?’ John begins famously by laying aside all doubt, proclaiming the truth that Jesus is the Word of God, the One through whom all things were made. (John 1:1-3) More, this is the light which enlightens, dispelling the darkness (Jn 1:5, 9). And, at the gospel’s end, John states forcefully his reason for writing: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (Jn 20:30-31)

This week’s gospel reading and psalm, furthermore, seem to be all about comfort and confidence. While knowledge of the messiah may be blocked for the bad guys, “my sheep,” says Jesus, “hear my voice; I know them and they follow me.” (Jn 10:27) Further, “My father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” (Jn 10:29-30) So, we the sheep are secure in the knowledge of Jesus, and Jesus and the father are one. Things are looking pretty good for confidence.

I recently returned from an academic conference where conceptions of time were explicitly linked to knowledge, and where we were made duly cautious of how such conceptions of time are constructed by us—therefore leading to the production of “knowledges” that are imposed upon situations and persons resistant to them. Our sense-making, one speaker intimated, can be perilous in a world where catastrophic events disrupt time and sense, leaving the neighbor whom we are called to love in the “timelessness” of trauma. In light of this, John’s injunction to believe for me is both complex and convicting. That is, in spite of the chaos and violence we bring upon each other, some of which flows from our claims to have knowledge, are we to confidently believe? This question occasions the complexity of belief as well as the convicting nature of exhortation to believe. For, I suggest, the answer is “yes.” But our belief is somehow chastened (made “complex”) by the imperative to acknowledge how our presumptuous sense-making contributes to violence. It is in such confessional acknowledgment that we take up the invitation to proclaim Jesus as the truth that enlightens us.

Indeed, I suggest that the paradox of proclaiming belief from within this condition of uncertainty and fragility is neither contradictory nor irrational. It would only appear so if we really believed that our actions could only and exclusively be our own. I suggest that certain modern psychologies give rise to this assumption, but it is finally unrealistic. It suggests that the human being is truly the “consistent animal”, the creature of self-mastery, and that Paul’s very different description of reason will—“the good that I would I do not; the evil that I would not do, that I do” (Rom 7:19)—is but an occasional aberration.

Put differently, I wish to say that perhaps we should consider that the believing John exhorts us to undertake does not originate within us. It is not our own, at least in the sense that modern psychologies have trained us to think of beliefs as our own. Rather, to believe the gospel is to receive it as gift, while offering it back to the giver and as witness among others. Believing and proclaiming. So, let us, responding to God’s word, hear John’s invitation to respond to the gospel by proclaiming with borrowed confidence the belief we are given to proclaim. Let us do so well aware of our doubt and hypocrisy and without getting stuck in them.

Acts 9: 1-20
Psalm 30
Revelation 5: 11-14
John 21: 1-19

What a gift the Great Fifty Days are for the church! Time to celebrate. Time to ponder. Celebrate and ponder the stupefying wonder that is the Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. Here we are on the third Sunday of Easter and the disciples still aren’t getting it. Their continued bafflement speaks volumes to the shock of what has taken place. Thousands of years later the ripples of that decisive Act of God can continue to confound us; the church is still in need of this gift of time to yearly reorient ourselves to what God is up to.

Unexpected, startling, the Resurrection of Jesus has left the disciples at loose ends, unsure of what the implications are and of what they are to do with themselves. “I am going fishing.” says Simon Peter in this Sunday’s text from John. This is the first hint in John’s gospel that some of the disciples are former fishermen. When confronted with something surprisingly new, it seems to be human nature to fall back on old ways. The others, lacking for any better ideas of what to do, decide to join him. They hang out the “Gone Fishing” sign and head for the boat, though their efforts prove fruitless. It all seems a bit anticlimactic and even a little lame after everything that’s happened. Perhaps the real miracle is that the church was birthed at all!

Enter once again the Risen Christ, stage right – technically for the fourth time, if you count the first appearance to Mary, which the text apparently does not, claiming that this is Jesus’ third appearance to the disciples. Only under his direction does their fishing bear fruit…or fish, I should say. The disciples, in all their frailty and failings, have chosen to answer Christ’s call to follow him and it seems only in following him will they be prospered. Prospered not for themselves, however, but prospered for the sake of the gospel and God’s beloved world. Narcissism may be our North American culture’s new normal but it does not have a place in the economy of God.

Now, after a BBQ breakfast on the beach and with their full and rapt attention, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and the only One found worthy in our text from Revelation to break the seven seals and open the scroll held by God (look out!!) engages in some vocation management with Peter.

“Do you love me?”
“Do you love me?”
“Do you love me?”

Three times achingly affirmed by Peter, “I love you,” for three denials when the heat was on.

“Feed my lambs.”
“Tend my sheep.”
“Feed my sheep.”

Thankfully Peter doesn’t get sidetracked into farming the way St. Francis did with constructing church buildings. If the church finds itself getting sidetracked, as we have so often done, perhaps it would be good to return to Jesus’ question of Peter… “Do you love me?”

Meanwhile, the fledgling church soon comes under threat. Saul’s zeal is “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord”. Where Saul was throughout Jesus’ life and ministry we are not told, but he has made it his mission now to take down the followers of the Way who cannot, it seems, be stamped completely out despite the death of their leader.

Enter the risen Christ – stage left – to once again do some vocation management. But, unlike Peter, who needed the flames under his butt fanned (gently) to get moving, Saul needs cooling off. Only the Risen Christ is able to bring the zeal of Saul to his knees. And bring it, he does. Everything goes suddenly south for Saul, everything suddenly shifts, like in an earthquake when what seems solid becomes liquid. True reality revealed to him, Saul is blinded and loses his appetite, dependant now on help from the very people he has been persecuting to be able to see again, to see anew. His zeal, the instrument Christ has chosen for his own purposes, now returns to proclaim Jesus risen: “He is the Son of God.”

Make no mistake – any who heed the call to follow Jesus are likely to encounter rejection and suffering on the Way; Jesus makes this clear for both Peter and Paul. And it is a Wounded Healer that we worship. But, make no mistake, Jesus is no symbolic head of his church. He is active, seeking, directing, guiding, behind, beside, ahead of us, calling us to follow him into God’s good future, loving him and singing praises as we go.

click here for a previous bLOGOS reflection on these texts

Acts 10:34-43
Ps 118
Col 3:1-4 OR 1 Cor 5:6-8 OR 1 Cor 15:19-26
Jn 20:1-9 OR Lk 24:1-12

We didn’t expect this. No matter how many times we’re told the story, we never do. Like Hazel Motes in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, most of us shout to the world through our attitudes and actions – if not necessarily with words – that, “I’m a member and preacher to that church where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.”

Jesus, who some hoped to be Israel’s hope, lay dead, having been executed as a political criminal. Faithful women walked to the tomb after the Sabbath observance – as soon as the relative safety of daylight permitted – to tend to his body, finishing Friday afternoon’s rushed burial. The men trembled indoors, afraid the Empire’s brutal rage for order would not spare the dead rabbi’s now disillusioned followers.

Very different men, dressed in dazzling garments, surprise the women in the tomb, asking, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Mary Magdalene and her companions slowly grasp how much has changed, again proving themselves sharper than the men hiding in Jerusalem. Nothing of the past several days made sense to the disciples, especially those who knew “the ways of the world,” as the men probably understood themselves. The dead, by everyone’s experience, “stays that way,” and even those who’d witnessed Jairus’ daughter or Lazarus prove otherwise remembered that a living Jesus revived them. But Jesus was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that.

And now, even with a missing body, the evidence still pointed toward total defeat: Rome had won, Israel remained captive, and no one’s life was better. Even direct experience of the risen Jesus wasn’t enough to rid the disciples of paralyzing fear, or Pentecost would have been superfluous. To live into this new reality, Jesus’ bewildered followers had much to learn, but much, much more to unlearn.

We imagine ourselves more insightful, benefitting from all those early mistakes, grasping the truth quickly and decisively. I, however, confess that I’m forever missing the point. Despite all I’ve heard, I still cling to the familiar “ways of the world,” where death still has dominion, the world’s evil will be fought on the world’s terms, and putting the right guys in power will fix all the mischief done by those too foolish or wicked to agree with me. Like the disciples, I consider the evidence of these past three days and struggle to believe that, despite this humiliating public defeat, God still reigns, Israel still lives, Christ defeats the grave, and I am invited to follow.

That last bit’s the most difficult. On Easter, I’m okay with reveling in Christ’s triumph, but if his death and resurrection have changed everything, then so, I fear, must I. All that talk about taking up my cross and following him puts a damper on the party, at least for those of us who are still unlearning. I either work out my idea of kenosis in my head – like Hazel Motes, the preacher – or I act it out on my own terms and get it wrong—like Hazel Motes near the novel’s end, who blinds himself, wraps his torso with barbed wire and lines his shoes with rocks and shards of glass. And, sooner or later, I meet someone like Mrs. Flood, Hazel’s landlady and admirer, who cringes at Hazel’s misguided discipleship. Like many critics of what passes for Christianity in contemporary North America, she gets it nearly right, saying, “‘Well, it’s not normal. It’s like one of them gory stories, it’s something that people have quit doing—like boiling in oil or being a saint or walling up cats…’”

But the point of the gospel’s “gory story” is that we are called to be saints, that the unexpected events of the past three days are God’s revelation that nothing, in fact, is more normal. We’ve had it all wrong: it’s the violent and madly self-reliant “ways of the world” that are and always have been abnormal. Like Hazel Motes and Mrs. Flood, like the men huddled indoors on Sunday in Jerusalem, I’m dreadfully slow in re-imagining the cross as a seat of triumph and the grave as a grace-filled womb.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting Christians mark Easter with anything less than jubilation. This is the festival of the victory of our Lord! This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad!

Nor am I suggesting that the Easter is a call to individual works righteousness or even “making the world a better place.” Our Lamb has conquered; let us follow him!

But to follow is work: often hard, sometimes painful, but always grace-filled. And don’t say it can’t be done: over the past three days, we’ve been shown how. As the Apostle’s Creed says (in not so many words), Christ went through hell to win us. There is, then, no need to earn God’s love. That’s not the point of our following Him. The point – and end – is the more-than-lifelong process of emptying ourselves to make room for Him. Only in following Him, our conquering Lamb, do we find Him.

Today, and for fifty days, we celebrate.

Christ is risen! He is truly risen!

And our work – the only work that matters – has just begun.

click here for a previous bLOGOS reflection on these texts

Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29
Luke 19:28-40

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

These celebratory words plunge us into Palm Sunday pageantry: greens waving, draped cloaks, children processing, and hosannas resounding. Six weeks into Lent, we may be looking for an escape. We hear the cry, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” and we catch a brief glimpse of Jesus as coming king. Finally there is light in the darkness!

The crowds that gathered some 2000 years ago are also relieved; it’s not simply six weeks from which they seek reprieve, but a lifetime (and an ancestry) of heaviness, oppression and fragility. At last Jesus will take hold of Jerusalem! Maybe even a wisp of smugness laces the festivities; finally the powers that reign are going to be put in their place. “That will show those Roman occupiers who our God really is!”

Mixed with our anticipation, we also are prone to gather with a waft of conceit. Unlike the original Palm Sunday crowds, we stand in history after the events of this most Holy Week. We believe Jesus is not only a worthy king, but we know that this humble donkey-rider will conquer even death itself in resurrection. This Biblical crowd has no idea the depth of what lies ahead., but we think we do. So we smile confidently and hurry our children to the aisle to wave a palm branch in celebration.

But what the crowd then, and so often now, seeks to avoid is the truth that “if we follow Jesus into Jerusalem, humiliation and death will follow.”

Because if we really enacted Luke’s gospel text, the next part of our liturgy would have someone stand up and demand the jubilation cease.

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”

The triumphal entry is cut short as the opposition strikes, and gives voice to the discord. In the chapters that follow we see the Temple cleared, traps laid, fatal betrayal, arrest and crucifixion. Those who are celebrating the Passion liturgy this Sunday will walk through two jam packed chapters of Luke’s gospel. In five short days the triumphant crowds cry has twisted from “Blessed is the king” to an ugly “Crucify Him!”

Then a mighty roar rose from the crowd, and with one voice they shouted, “Kill him…” (Luke 23:18 NLT)

In light of this, what are we to make of this palm parade?

Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez notes in The Abingdon Women’s Preaching Annual, that the crowd on Palm Sunday “seemed to recognize him. Even during the week, their presence protected him. But we know that their mood changed by Friday. Once Jesus was in the hands of the rulers, once he no longer seemed to have power, then the recognition faded that in this man God was visiting his people…. We like a God who seems ready to do something for us. On Palm Sunday when Jesus seemed powerful, the multitude followed. But when Jesus is Pilate’s prisoner, the same multitude turned away from him and back to the old leaders who again seemed in control.”

It is great to celebrate Palm Sunday when the surroundings are festive, but it’s even more important to sing “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord” when it looks like the powerful are back in charge. When lies and betrayal stock us. When accolades dry up and criticism prevails. When mockery, arrest and death pursue us. When the one we thought would conquer Jerusalem hangs on a cross outside the city gates.

It’s here that our pride can be laid down and we can admit we did not know the cost of our Palm Sunday proclamation.

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

It cannot be silenced by the opposition. Jesus tells these foes that if the crowds were silent, even the stones would shout out.

In the days ahead may we not relinquish our participation in the persistent refrain.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
The Lord is God,
and he has given us light.
Bind the festal procession with branches,
up to the horns of the altar.
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;
you are my God, I will extol you.
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever. (Psalm 118:26-29)

click here for a previous bLOGOS reflection on these texts

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3: 4-14
John 8: 1-11

Lent is a difficult season to live into. 40 days contemplating our frail and fragile condition, giving sadness and heaviness room to breathe. This is particularly true in a culture that values positivity like it were gold. Which leaves little room for tears. Crying is for girls, or babies, not for people who are trying to keep it all together. Yet this week’s psalm is all weepy and emotional.

The psalmist apparently has no regard for good manners or propriety. Psalm 126 reads like the interior of a manic person.

Laughing, shouting, crying, shouting, weeping, shouts of joy.

None of it is ignored, all of the emotions are part of the song, all honored. The psalm cares nothing for the safe center of the emotional spectrum. It does not say: “First we were all a little bummed, but then we felt pretty good.” No. Instead it says: “First we were drenched in tears, then we were shouting for joy.”

The psalm ends in joy, but it doesn’t skip the sadness to get there. The poem is a journey home, and part of that journey is through the valley of shadows and pain. The pain and trouble cannot be bypassed, because it is exactly at that point of honest crying out that the future is opened to something new.

That is the logic of the psalm,
the logic of Lent,
even the logic of the Gospel.

Notice the little detail in the psalm about the stream-beds in the Negev. “Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negev.” The Negev desert is in the southern part of Israel, to the north are mountains, and in the short rainy season the water runs off the mountains and into the desert. The water does not gently flow into the Negev, slowly filling the stream beds.

It floods the place.

Every year people are killed as the watercourses, once dry, are overrun with rushing water. In previous times in Israel’s history before the plains eroded, this flood would spill into the farmlands and sustain the crops for the growing season.

So when the psalmist pleads for the Negev to fill with water, the expectation is that God will bring the rain which will in turn bring the harvest. But the next verse mentions no rain. Instead it says, “May those who sow in tears.”

So much sadness that it could flood a desert.

Psalm 126 is what we call a song of ascents. It is a part of the psalter that would have been sung on the way up to Jerusalem and to the Temple during the high holy days. The psalms functioned like a hymnal. Each served a purpose, and the songs of ascents were the traveling songs.

Last year I was in Jerusalem at the Temple mount and heard a story about these pilgrimages to the old Temple back when there still was a Temple instead of rubble and painful loss. Our group took a tour of the tunnel excavations being done on the Temple wall that is buried under years of history. At one point we got to this huge model of the Temple that flipped around to show us the different periods of construction and destruction. Our guide flipped it to the model of the Temple in its heyday, before the conquests and the exile and the loss of home. And he told us this story.

He said that during the high holy days, people would come into the Temple Mount through a main gate and create a huge line that went around the outer perimeter, which would wrap a mile around. Everyone lined up in one direction, moving toward the center. This would be one of only a handful of times each year when all of Israel would gather together. People would see relatives and friends they had missed for months. They would catch up on each other’s lives. She had a baby, he got married, they planted a new crop.

But if someone was in mourning, if their heart had broken to pieces during those months apart, then they did not walk the line with everyone else. They would walk the Temple mount for a mile in the other direction, against traffic. In the sight of all of Israel.

No one could ignore it, and they therefore told about their grief by putting one foot in front of the other.

But the psalmist does not get lost in sadness. Instead all of that pain somehow makes room for joy. One relies on the other. The psalm believes the absurd logic that tears can change things. Go read about the Egyptian revolution and Wael Ghonim for more about the political/transformative aspect of tears.

Lent is the time when we walk with Jesus toward Jerusalem, toward the cross.

When Jesus approached the city of Jerusalem for the first time, he climbed the Mt. of Olives,one foot in front of the other, and as he looked out over the city, he began to weep.

What was Jesus sowing with his tears? Did he chant this little psalm as he crested the hill, looking over the holy city and realizing what was left to do?

First the crying, then the joy.

First Friday, then Sunday.

First the dying, then new life.

There is no previous reflection on these texts. You may download our collection of previous year C reflections here.