There is an interesting phrase in the Gospel reading for last Sunday, Easter 3: “then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” I wonder why he hadn’t done it sooner? I mean throughout their time together, the twelve are often pictured as failing to understand, or misunderstanding, or bumbling along with only partial understanding. Wouldn’t it have been easier on everybody if Jesus had open their minds at the very beginning? Or maybe at the Last Supper? Or at least somewhere along the way?
The more I thought about it, the less literal I decided to take this. I think maybe Luke was using a metaphor. Then I remembered a story that might help it all make sense. It’s a story told of an explorer who a century ago had just returned to his country from the Amazon.
The people at home were eager to learn all about the vast and mighty river and the country surrounding it. But how he wondered, could he ever describe it to them - how could he ever put into words the feelings that flooded into his heart when he saw the exotic flowers and heard the night sounds of the jungle. How could he communicate to them the smells the filled the air and the sense of danger and excitement that would come whenever he and his fellows explorers encountered strange animals or paddled through treacherous rapids?
So the explorer did what all good explorers do - he said to the people, "go and find out for yourselves what it is like," and to help them he drew a map of the river pointing out the various features of its course and describing some of the dangers and some of the routes that could be used to avoid those dangers.
The people took the map and they framed and hung on the wall of the local science museum so that everyone could look at it. Some made copies of it. After a period of time many of those who made copies for themselves considered themselves experts on the river – and indeed they knew its every turn and bend, they knew how broad it was and how deep, where the rapids were and where the falls were. They knew the river and they instructed others in what it was like whenever those people indicated an interest in it. But the reality was, of course, they had no idea what the area was like—they had no frame of reference.
Until Jesus was actually resurrected and the disciples actually saw him, could they really understand what he had been saying? I think it would be a lot like looking at that map. Or maybe, to use a more contemporary example, it would be like watching a Discovery Channel story on the pyramids of Egypt and think you really understand how big they are.
Maybe the question for us is that: are we looking at an ancient map or a TV program when it comes to our faith in Jesus’ resurrection? Or have we too had actual living encounters with him? In Luke, the disciples first thought Jesus was ghost or apparition, insubstantial and unreal. Luke is at pains to point out that Jesus is very substantial. Jesus shows his wounds and invites them to touch him. Then to top it off, he eats some fish. What more proof could he give that this Jesus was the same Jesus they had spent time with before the crucifixion? That he had really come back from death?
But what about us? How do we see Jesus two thousand years later? Please forgive my abruptness, but it’s by opening our eyes. Jesus said we would encounter hungry people, thirsty people, people in prison and if we would pay attention, we would notice it was him. When we have looked through our tears into the eyes of a friend who is comforting us, we can see Jesus. Jesus knew the dark of night and the pain of abandonment, so when we face our darkest nights and feel most alone, if we open our eyes we can see him standing with us. And though we may not be able to touch him, we can actually feel his strong arms and rough, but gentle hands touch us.
And perhaps, for many of us, the Collect for Sunday reminds us of a most meaningful way. “O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread…” When I take the cup and feel the warmth of the wine trickle down my throat, it is a moment when I am very aware of his presence in my life, warming me and strengthening me. And the rest of the Collect of the Day is a prayer that can be ours everyday if we want an encounter with the living Christ: “Open the eyes of our faith that we may behold him in all his redeeming work”--including his redeeming work that has made us his.
Peace,
Jerry+
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
New Life: Part 2
Today I led a worship service at a retirement community. It wasn’t a first. From sometime in 2002 until March of 2008 I was there at least once a month and for several years, twice a month. When I retired last April, I stopped going. I really believed my work there was an extension of my parish work and that it essentially belonged to the parish to continue it. It didn’t.
A year passed and just before Lent began one of the regular worshippers called and asked if I would return. There had been no worship and no Communion since I left. They had tried to get a clergy to show some interest, but it hadn’t happened. I said yes. Today was my third time in this new sequence. And there was something different about today I want to share.
But first, let me tell you what it’s like. At its peak, attendance was about 17 or 18. Because most residents are older, now and then there would be a death or a transfer to a nursing home and somebody new would wander in to replace them. The number was steady, but then began to slowly decline. By March of 2008, the attendance was about 12 or 13. The truth is I didn’t and don’t really care how many come.
The make up of worshippers is a mixture of Episcopalians, United Methodists, Presbyterians, some Catholics, and now and then a Baptist or two. Most are women. A couple are on walkers, one or two on canes, and some just move slowly. There is a kind of core group of five or six who are there every time. It was this group who got together and asked me to return. The administration of the Community is supportive, even happy for me to be there.
I began this time, I agreed to come once a month. But as I thought about it, I felt drawn to go more often. I know how important it is for me to worship and to take the sacrament and I felt that from these folks too. When I went for the first time in April, I told them I’d be willing to come twice a month if they wanted it. And they did. Today was my second time this month.
When I met with them a couple of weeks ago to see if they wanted twice a month, I was a little surprised by their enthusiasm for it—and humbled too. They vowed they would work to build the community so “it’d be worth my time.” And then today arrived and as worship began we had 17 souls, at least a third of whom were first time attendees.
How’d it happen? They put up notices in the usual spots, of course, but mostly they went table to table, person to person at dinner last evening and breakfast today inviting, encouraging, and promising something good would happen if people came. Coincidentally with this, I’m writing lectures for my upcoming class in the Early Church History. How did a rag tag bunch of 20 or 30 believers manage to start and sustain a world wide religion? Going table to table, person to person, and promising, that’s how.
How was attendance at your church last Sunday? As we read reports in the news magazines and newspapers about how Christianity is on the decline in this country and church attendance is at an all time low, we might wonder what it would take to change that. We have a couple of good models to consider.
Peace,
Jerry+
A year passed and just before Lent began one of the regular worshippers called and asked if I would return. There had been no worship and no Communion since I left. They had tried to get a clergy to show some interest, but it hadn’t happened. I said yes. Today was my third time in this new sequence. And there was something different about today I want to share.
But first, let me tell you what it’s like. At its peak, attendance was about 17 or 18. Because most residents are older, now and then there would be a death or a transfer to a nursing home and somebody new would wander in to replace them. The number was steady, but then began to slowly decline. By March of 2008, the attendance was about 12 or 13. The truth is I didn’t and don’t really care how many come.
The make up of worshippers is a mixture of Episcopalians, United Methodists, Presbyterians, some Catholics, and now and then a Baptist or two. Most are women. A couple are on walkers, one or two on canes, and some just move slowly. There is a kind of core group of five or six who are there every time. It was this group who got together and asked me to return. The administration of the Community is supportive, even happy for me to be there.
I began this time, I agreed to come once a month. But as I thought about it, I felt drawn to go more often. I know how important it is for me to worship and to take the sacrament and I felt that from these folks too. When I went for the first time in April, I told them I’d be willing to come twice a month if they wanted it. And they did. Today was my second time this month.
When I met with them a couple of weeks ago to see if they wanted twice a month, I was a little surprised by their enthusiasm for it—and humbled too. They vowed they would work to build the community so “it’d be worth my time.” And then today arrived and as worship began we had 17 souls, at least a third of whom were first time attendees.
How’d it happen? They put up notices in the usual spots, of course, but mostly they went table to table, person to person at dinner last evening and breakfast today inviting, encouraging, and promising something good would happen if people came. Coincidentally with this, I’m writing lectures for my upcoming class in the Early Church History. How did a rag tag bunch of 20 or 30 believers manage to start and sustain a world wide religion? Going table to table, person to person, and promising, that’s how.
How was attendance at your church last Sunday? As we read reports in the news magazines and newspapers about how Christianity is on the decline in this country and church attendance is at an all time low, we might wonder what it would take to change that. We have a couple of good models to consider.
Peace,
Jerry+
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
New Life
This time last year, I was in my first week of retirement from the parish. I was more than a little lost. There were lots of projects around the house I’d let slide that could occupy my time. There was a course in the Fall at the seminary I needed to prepare for. The blog gave me a chance to theologize a little. But with all that, there was a vacuum.
Gone was the weekly preparation for and teaching of the adult ed Sunday class I’d taught for years. Gone was the almost weekly homily for a weekday Eucharist and the once a month sermon for Sunday morning’s multiple services. An equally big loss I felt was the daily contact with other staff members and parishioners. They were my friends and suddenly I didn’t see them or talk to them anymore. In a real sense, life seemed, if not over, certainly diminished.
Easter Sunday is just past and this is Easter week. Both are times of thinking about resurrection and the new life that results.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells Mary not to cling to him. He has a new life to pursue, an ascended life. In another Gospel, he tells her to tell his followers to meet him in Galilee. There he will commission them for new work.
That’s what’s happened to me. I have new work. Life didn’t end after all. It certainly changed, but it didn’t end. Just as in death and resurrection. I’m teaching, both at the Seminary, and a short class at the church we attend. The University of Memphis keeps me busy leading workshops that help people improve their lives. Parkview Retirement Community has asked me to lead a worship service twice a month for them—something I’d done for years before retiring. Thinking I would like never preach or celebrate again was a real loss, but in my new life I get to keep doing it after all.
Life is different. I still miss my friends, though we stay in touch with emails and the occasional lunch or after work drink. But I’ve discovered I can still feel productive and useful and have the sense that I’m still doing the work I was called to do.
I hope you can have that same sense of new life as you reflect on the meaning of Easter.
Peace,
Jerry+
Gone was the weekly preparation for and teaching of the adult ed Sunday class I’d taught for years. Gone was the almost weekly homily for a weekday Eucharist and the once a month sermon for Sunday morning’s multiple services. An equally big loss I felt was the daily contact with other staff members and parishioners. They were my friends and suddenly I didn’t see them or talk to them anymore. In a real sense, life seemed, if not over, certainly diminished.
Easter Sunday is just past and this is Easter week. Both are times of thinking about resurrection and the new life that results.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells Mary not to cling to him. He has a new life to pursue, an ascended life. In another Gospel, he tells her to tell his followers to meet him in Galilee. There he will commission them for new work.
That’s what’s happened to me. I have new work. Life didn’t end after all. It certainly changed, but it didn’t end. Just as in death and resurrection. I’m teaching, both at the Seminary, and a short class at the church we attend. The University of Memphis keeps me busy leading workshops that help people improve their lives. Parkview Retirement Community has asked me to lead a worship service twice a month for them—something I’d done for years before retiring. Thinking I would like never preach or celebrate again was a real loss, but in my new life I get to keep doing it after all.
Life is different. I still miss my friends, though we stay in touch with emails and the occasional lunch or after work drink. But I’ve discovered I can still feel productive and useful and have the sense that I’m still doing the work I was called to do.
I hope you can have that same sense of new life as you reflect on the meaning of Easter.
Peace,
Jerry+
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Christ Crucified
Today is Tuesday in Holy Week and the Epistle is from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians1:18-31. In it he writes, “For Jews demanded signs and Greeks desired wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” Paul often mentions crucifixion and it may seem strange that he focuses on it. On another occasion he even said, “I’m determined to nothing among you except Christ crucified.” What’s this about?
What we have to know to make sense of this is that Paul couldn’t separate resurrection from crucifixion. Whenever Paul mentions crucifixion, it’s shorthand for “and resurrection.” They are always linked for Paul and should be for us too. In their recent book, The First Paul, Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan help us understand this obsession of Paul for the crucifixion. I’m indebted to them for the following thoughts.
For Paul, “Christ crucified” was a reminded that his death was the action of Imperial Rome. Only Rome crucified; only the empire that thought peace was a product of war, war in which Rome was the victor. To say that Christ was crucified was to proclaim that Jesus died because he was against everything that Imperial Rome stood for. And the cross was Rome’s way of saying “no” to everything Jesus stood for. But, resurrection was God’s way of saying “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the powers that had killed him. It was a system of domination and violence that killed Jesus. It was a God of peace and love that resurrected him.
The wisdom of this world that Paul mentions is the idea a few, in this case, the rulers of Rome, should dominate the many. That wisdom also says that it should be done through violence and threats of violence. Peace, the Pax Romano, brought by Rome, was stability, but a stability through conquest and power. This is the wisdom that Paul calls foolish; in fact the word he uses is the root word for our word “moronic.” The wisdom of this world is stupid, moronic, and brutal, Paul says.
Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection have the effect of revealing a new way to a life of peace—not stability, but peace. We are called to this same dying and rising which Paul calls the means to life “in Christ.” As he puts it, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” For Paul, in our baptism, we symbolized our being “buried with him.” As we emerge from the baptism, we are raised from the dead so we might walk in newness of life. It’s similar to getting a heart transplant! But it is Christ’s spirit that is transplanted in us say Borg and Crossan.
I think they’re on to something. But, if all this has been too much a theological excursion and word game, let me break it down. Jesus came to reveal the nature and character of God. God had tried other ways to communicate with us, through the law and through the prophets, for example, but we didn’t really get it. Then he became incarnate in Jesus to perfectly reveal his character to us. Jesus’ crucifixion reveals God’s character as love and his passion as the re-creation of the world. He didn’t die in our place, he died for us, in the same way someone might plunge into a river to save a drowning person and in the process, drown himself. Just as this person died so the drowning person could live, Jesus died so we could live a new and different kind of life.
Paul sums it up this way in 2nd Corinthians, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!...All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Our task during Lent, especially during Holy Week is to search our lives. To reflect on the wonder of God’s immeasurable love for us and know that we do nothing to earn it except be alive. And it is to reflect on the agony and pain Jesus experienced, especially the last few days of his life, as he tried to make that as plain to us as he could. He died to give us life, to give life to the whole of God’s creation, to create new people for the New Jerusalem.
At the dawn of Easter, we might reflect on the wonder of God’s victory over creation—a victory not won by power and brutality, but by love and grace. And as we rise from our reflection, we will want to make sure that we are living the life that a person with the Spirit of God inside would live.
It's not so much about being good as doing good--doing what Jesus would have done. We will look for ways to give comfort to the comfortless, succor to those who suffer. We will wipe away tears from the eyes of those who weep, give the shelter of companionship to those who are alone. And when they come to us asking to see Jesus, as the Greeks did in today’s Gospel reading, we will be able to show them Jesus in us.
Peace,
Jerry+
What we have to know to make sense of this is that Paul couldn’t separate resurrection from crucifixion. Whenever Paul mentions crucifixion, it’s shorthand for “and resurrection.” They are always linked for Paul and should be for us too. In their recent book, The First Paul, Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan help us understand this obsession of Paul for the crucifixion. I’m indebted to them for the following thoughts.
For Paul, “Christ crucified” was a reminded that his death was the action of Imperial Rome. Only Rome crucified; only the empire that thought peace was a product of war, war in which Rome was the victor. To say that Christ was crucified was to proclaim that Jesus died because he was against everything that Imperial Rome stood for. And the cross was Rome’s way of saying “no” to everything Jesus stood for. But, resurrection was God’s way of saying “yes” to Jesus and “no” to the powers that had killed him. It was a system of domination and violence that killed Jesus. It was a God of peace and love that resurrected him.
The wisdom of this world that Paul mentions is the idea a few, in this case, the rulers of Rome, should dominate the many. That wisdom also says that it should be done through violence and threats of violence. Peace, the Pax Romano, brought by Rome, was stability, but a stability through conquest and power. This is the wisdom that Paul calls foolish; in fact the word he uses is the root word for our word “moronic.” The wisdom of this world is stupid, moronic, and brutal, Paul says.
Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection have the effect of revealing a new way to a life of peace—not stability, but peace. We are called to this same dying and rising which Paul calls the means to life “in Christ.” As he puts it, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” For Paul, in our baptism, we symbolized our being “buried with him.” As we emerge from the baptism, we are raised from the dead so we might walk in newness of life. It’s similar to getting a heart transplant! But it is Christ’s spirit that is transplanted in us say Borg and Crossan.
I think they’re on to something. But, if all this has been too much a theological excursion and word game, let me break it down. Jesus came to reveal the nature and character of God. God had tried other ways to communicate with us, through the law and through the prophets, for example, but we didn’t really get it. Then he became incarnate in Jesus to perfectly reveal his character to us. Jesus’ crucifixion reveals God’s character as love and his passion as the re-creation of the world. He didn’t die in our place, he died for us, in the same way someone might plunge into a river to save a drowning person and in the process, drown himself. Just as this person died so the drowning person could live, Jesus died so we could live a new and different kind of life.
Paul sums it up this way in 2nd Corinthians, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!...All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Our task during Lent, especially during Holy Week is to search our lives. To reflect on the wonder of God’s immeasurable love for us and know that we do nothing to earn it except be alive. And it is to reflect on the agony and pain Jesus experienced, especially the last few days of his life, as he tried to make that as plain to us as he could. He died to give us life, to give life to the whole of God’s creation, to create new people for the New Jerusalem.
At the dawn of Easter, we might reflect on the wonder of God’s victory over creation—a victory not won by power and brutality, but by love and grace. And as we rise from our reflection, we will want to make sure that we are living the life that a person with the Spirit of God inside would live.
It's not so much about being good as doing good--doing what Jesus would have done. We will look for ways to give comfort to the comfortless, succor to those who suffer. We will wipe away tears from the eyes of those who weep, give the shelter of companionship to those who are alone. And when they come to us asking to see Jesus, as the Greeks did in today’s Gospel reading, we will be able to show them Jesus in us.
Peace,
Jerry+
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