Daily Quiz, April 2014

Daily Quiz, April 30, 2014

After escaping from the Egyptians, the Israelites wandered in the Wilderness of 

a. Rephidim
b. Mamre
c. Sin
d. Kadesh-Barnea 

Daily Quiz, April 29, 2014

The "Song of Miriam" was composed for what event?

a. The Passover Event
b.  Miriam is another name for Mary; it is about the Annunciation
c.  The deliverance of Israel from the Egyptian in the Red Sea
d.  The entrance of Israel into the Promised Land

Daily Quiz, April 28, 2014

Church Tradition attributes the founding of the church in Africa to what evangelist?

a. Philip
b. Cyprian
c. Mark
d. Antony

Daily Quiz, April 27, 2014

During the Season of Easter which canticle is used after the invitiatory in Morning Prayer?

a. Venite
b. Nunc dimittis
c. Pascha nostra
d. Phos hilarion

Daily Quiz, April 26, 2014

Whose bones did Moses bring with him when he left Egypt for the promised land?

a. Jacob's
b. Rachel's 
c. Joseph's 
d. Sarah's 

Daily Quiz, April 25, 2014

Who wrote, "Where, O Death is your victory?  Where, O Death is your sting?"

a. Rudyard Kipling
b. Arthur Conan Doyle
c. St. Peter 
d. St. Paul

Daily Quiz, April 24, 2014 

The Paschal Candle is lit for what times in the church year?

a. 50 days of Easter 
b. for baptisms
c. for requiems 
d. all of the above

Daily Quiz, April 23, 2014

The Book of Exodus states that the Israelites were in Egypt for how many years?

a. 40
b. 665
c. 77
d. 430 

Daily Quiz, April 22, 2014

According to the Gospel of Mark who did Jesus first appear to after his resurrection?

a. his Mother Mary
b. Peter
c. John
d. Mary Magdalene

Daily Quiz, April 21, 2014

How many post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are recording in the four Gospels?

a. 9
b. 10
c. 11
d. 12

Daily Quiz, April 20, 2014

According to the account in the Gospel of Matthew, how did the stone get rolled away from the tomb of Jesus?

a. an earthquake 
b. an angel descended to open it
c. the coincidence of a and b 
d. none of the above

Daily Quiz, April 19, 2014

Which of the following Scripture lessons is not included in the readings for the Great Vigil of Easter?

a. Ezekiel's Valley of the dry bones
b. Israel's exodus from Egypt
c. The Creation Story
d. The Flood
e. Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac
f.  David's slaying of Goliath

Daily Quiz, April 18, 2014

Which Mary was not reported in the Gospels to be present at the crucifixion of Jesus?

a. Mary, the mother of Jesus
b. Mary Magdalene
c. Mary, mother of James and Joseph
d. Mary wife of Clopas
e. Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha

Daily Quiz, April 17, 2014

Which Gospel does not have the institution of the Last Supper at the time of the Passover Meal?

a. Matthew
b. Mark
c. Luke
d. John

Daily Quiz, April 16, 2014

Which is not a part of a Passover Meal?

a. Charoset
b. Lamb Shank bone
c.  Roast Egg
d.  Bitter Herbs  (Maror and Hazeret)
e.  Hyssop
f.   Charoset
g.  cups of wine
h.  Matzah

Daily Quiz, April 15, 2014

What is the name of the liturgy often observed in some churches on Holy Wednesday?

a. Lauds
b. Matins
c. Tenebrae
d. Vespers


Daily Quiz, April 14, 2014

"My God, why have you forsaken me" are words attributed to Jesus when he was dying on the cross.  Where do these words come from?

a. the Prophet Isaiah
b. the Prophet Jeremiah
c. the suffering man Job
d. Psalm 22

Daily Quiz, April 13, 2014

We associate with Palm Sunday the expression: "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" In what other places to we find this expression?

a. Psalm 118
b. Sanctus of the Mass
c. Holy, Holy, Holy of the Mass
d. all of the above

Daily Quiz, April 12, 2014

What was the last plague in Egypt before the Israelites left?

a. bloody water
b. darkness
c. death of firstborn sons
d. death of livestock

Daily Quiz, April 11, 2014

Why is Easter not on the same day each year like Christmas is on December 25th each year for Western Christians?

a. Easter is set to be after the Jewish Passover, which is based upon the full moon
b. Easter is the first Sunday after the paschal full moon on the Gregorian calendar
c. Easter is the first Sunday after the paschal full moon on the Julian calendar
d. all of the above

Daily Quiz, April 10, 2014

Which was not among the ten plague of Egypt before the release of the Israelites from Egypt?

a. lice
b. bloody waters
c. locusts
d. boils
e. rats
f. death of first born sons
g. frogs
h. sustained darkness

Daily Quiz, April 9, 2014

What Protestant pastor was arrested and executed for helping a group who were plotting the death of Hitler?

a. Reinhold Niebuhr
b. Richard Niebuhr
c. Paul Tillich
d. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Daily Quiz, April 8, 2014

Who was the sister of Moses and Aaron?

a. Zipporah
b. Judith
c. Miriam
d. Hannah


Daily Quiz, April 7, 2014

When Moses had the experience with God in the burning bush and was called by God to help deliver Israel from Egypt, what excuse did Moses offer to try to decline the call?

a.  he was afraid
b.  he said he lack eloquence
c.  he said he was too old
d.  he said he was from the wrong tribe of Israel

Daily Quiz, April 6, 2014

Moses was raised by Egyptian royalty but which tribe of Israel did he belong to?

a. Benjamin
b. Dan
c. Ephraim
d. Levi


Daily Quiz, April 5, 2014

The father-in-law of Moses was a Midian priest named 

a. Reuel
b. Jethro
c. Zipporah
d. a and b
e. b and c 

Daily Quiz, April 4, 2014

What is the spiritual gift known as "glossolalia" γλωσσολαλία?

a.  clairvoyance 
b. predictive abilities
c. speaking in an unknown tongue or tongue of angels
d. being slain in the spirit
e. healing

Daily Quiz, April 3, 2014

Who is credited with lyrics for "Day by Day, Three Things I Pray," a song popularized in the famous Rock Musical, "Godspell?" 

a. Martin Luther
b. Richard of Chichester
c. John Wesley
d. Augustus Toplady

Daily Quiz, April 2, 2014

Who said, "Even though you intended to harm to me, God intended it for good to save numerous people." 

a.Esther
b.Moses
c.Jacob
d. Joseph

Daily Quiz, April 1, 2014

What numerically unlucky Pope is known for initiating a new calendar named after him and thus created a group of April 1st "fools" who did not "get the memo" about the new calendar and continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1st instead of the new, New Year beginning on January 1st?

a. Gregory I
b. Gregory VI
c. Gregory XIII
d. Gregory IV

And the Word Was Made Written Text and Retained the Memory of Christ Among Us

2 Easter Sunday        April 27, 2014 

Acts 2:14a,22-32          Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9  John 20:19-31              

Lectionary Link 

   When we read the Bible, it is quite easy for us to remain in childlike naiveté in fascination with the story.  We are so fascinated with the story because stories have an artistic magic to create the seeming literal reconstruction of an actual historical event.

  But in our naiveté, we sometimes miss the teaching purpose of the story by the writers who were writing many years after the purported events of the story.

  The Doubting Thomas story is a case in point.  We think that this all about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus and the specific details of this appearance are not found in the other Gospels which were written earlier than the Gospel of John.  If we read carefully this passage as well as the entire Gospel of John, we find that this passage is more about the status and practice of the faith community six or seven decades after Jesus walked on this year.

  What is the issue in the doubting Thomas story?  Did the eyewitnesses to Jesus have a more valid faith experience than those who believe in Jesus but did not have an eyewitness experience?

  The Doubting Thomas story has two significant punchlines for which the story is used as a set up.   The first punchline is found in the words of Jesus: “Thomas you are blessed because you saw me and believe; but blessed are those who do not see me and still believe.”  Do you understand how the writer is using the Doubting Thomas story to affirm the validity of the belief and faith of the people in the community who did not walk and talk with Jesus?

  The second significant punchline of the Doubting Thomas story is the self-pronouncement of the writer about the writer’s own writing: “These things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ.”  The members of the community of the writer of John’s Gospel did not see Jesus, they did not walk or talk with him, but by reading words about Jesus they can arrive at the very conditions of faith and belief.  And these conditions of faith and belief are as valid as or even more valid than a person like Thomas who demanded literal empirical evidence.  Thomas in fact is presented as one who is inferior in faith when contrasted with those who believe and who did not see Jesus.

  So, we can see how the story of the Gospel is crafted to represent the conditions in the church some six or seven decades after Jesus.

  These things are written….the written word attains new status as being the vehicle for belief.  This is an incredible insight from John’s Gospel because John’s Gospel is all about the word.  John’s Gospel begins with, “In the Beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.  And the Word became Flesh and dwelled with us.”   You see the second person of the Trinity is called the Word but that Word became very limited in the historical person of Jesus, but in the resurrection of Jesus, the risen Christ is once again identified with the profound Word which is the very basis for all human consciousness which accounts for how human experience is created much differently from all other sentient and non-sentient life.

  John’s Gospel is essentially about the profound history of Word as an embracing general concept of our understanding of all of created differentiation of everything in life; but it is also about the limitation of Word into the person of Jesus who became a model and exemplar of how you and I should live our worded lives.

  The writer of John's Gospel states that what is humanly understood as actually having existence is created by the word. Indeed this is true.  You and I literally are steeped in words; in our naiveté we think that we are actually seeing each other here and now, but in fact we are seeing versions of each other as we are filtered by the invisible screen of language which is the mental habit of being human.  We see and know each other through the habits of language; we see and know our world through the habits of language.

  The writer of John’s Gospel wrote to educate us in the very practice of Word.  This writer does not even use the word miracle for the fantastic acts of Jesus; John’s Gospel uses the word sign.  Sign is a conglomeration of words.  Sign is a constellation of events to point to another meaning.  The healing of the blind, walking on water, multiplication of loaves and all of the seeming miraculous events are actually signs to teach us about meaning of the life of Jesus. The words are meant to teach us what it means to be born of the Spirit to be able to see our lives in a completely different way.   We, literalists, love our stories, we like to stay at the level of the story and not move on to the educational sign and purpose of the story.

  John’s Gospel is about the Word in all of its varied manifestations.  Words comprise the Jesus stories to teach the readers to know Jesus and to come to have faith in the risen Christ.  The writer of the Gospel of John uses the disciples as examples of students of faith being delivered from literalism about the words of Jesus to arrive at the profound teaching purpose, namely, knowing that one has entered an entirely new paradigm of existence in this transformational kingdom of God.  And this transformational kingdom of God is a parallel universe of faith that we can live in now.  It is heaven on earth;  it is a place where Christ went before us to prepare for us.

  The writer of John understood Jesus to say to his disciples, “My words are spirit and they are life.”  Probably spirit is most easily understood as having an equivalence with the particular way in which our words form and shape our lives and our self-understanding.  The writer of John’s Gospel understood that nothing can get closer to us than our words.  When we receive words and as they penetrate the deepest part of memory and our worded beings, we know that we are being created, formed, made, developed. We are so comprised by words that even our bodies become body language.  The movements, acts and gestures of the body are guided by the purposes of word.  Our body language at a profound level is called our morals and our ethics.

  The writer of John knew that words are spirit and they are life.  Words make up how we can live in a new paradigm, a new heaven on earth as we express what it means to be born from above.

  The writer of John did not write just to entertain us with clever stories about the doubting Thomas; the writer of John wrote to inform us that our lives are always, already being formed by the habits of word.  We cannot escape words.  When we could not fully choose our word environments, we received the scripts of our lives some of which we continue to live out even now.  We live now trying to interdict and change some of the scripts of our lives which sometimes seem to be based upon fear and anxiety and bias and smallness of mind.

  The Gospel of John wrote that the Word was made Flesh in Jesus.  In the Doubting Thomas Story, the writer is essentially saying, “The Word became text; this written text, these spirit-words of Jesus in writing.”  The writer of John wrote the Gospel so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God.  And if Jesus the Christ, the Son of God in us now as the Risen Christ as the fullness of God’s Word, then we can know that we always have a future.  

  In the most practical sense of the word, the risen Christ for me now means, Phil, surpassing himself in excellence in a future state.  The risen Christ for you now is the hope of you, surpassing yourself in excellence in a future state.  And that is a very believable and accessible word about the Risen Christ for you and me.  Let us be thankful for the incredible insights about Word which the writer of John gives us to help us to believe, and let us be delivered from our literalness about the story and be born into the wealth of meaning found in the Risen Christ as the Word from the beginning of human consciousness. Let us be thankful that the Word was made flesh in Jesus in a very special way.  Let us be thankful that the word was made text in the Gospel of John to retain the memory of Christ.  Let us thank God that the Gospel of John gives us words to know that the Word of God can still become flesh in you and me.  Amen.

Cloning the Insides of Christ to Be Everywhere

Easter Sunday        April 20, 2014     

Acts 10:34-43  Psalm118:1-2,14-24
Colossians 3:1-4 Matthew 28:1-10

Lectionary Link

  Children do you know what imagination is?  Do you ever use your imagination?  Do you think that imagination was used to make Disney movies?  And to write books?  And to invent things?

  So today, I am going to ask you to join me in using our imaginations.  With our imaginations we can do magical things.  Did our first president George Washington drive a Cadillac?  No, he didn’t, but with our imagination we can pretend that he did.  And wouldn’t it be kind of funny to thing about George Washington driving a car among all of the other horseback riders and people in carriages pulled by horses?  We can do this with our imagination.

   I would like for us to imagine Jesus living in a home in Jerusalem.  But his home has also become his office.  It is his office and the sign on the door says, “Welcome to Jesus Ministries.”

  And when go into the office of Jesus, we see him sitting at a desk and there are lots of desks and with phones on each desk.  Jesus is talking on the phone.  He finishes one phone call and he has to take another phone call.  And his disciples are also taking phone calls.  And there are so many calls, they have to bring in people to answer the phone in the evening and throughout the night because phone calls are coming in from people who live around the world.

  And the disciples are getting worried.  They go to Jesus when he has a break and they say, “Jesus, there are too many people calling.  People are asking for all kinds of things.  A little girl needs some medicine.  And  a family does not have enough food, but they live too far away.  We cannot get the food to them.  And there is a sick man who wants to be healed, but he lives so far away.”

  Jesus said, “Yes, we have thousands and thousands of requests for help, but I am located here in Jerusalem.  I can only be here in one place at one time.”  One of the disciples said to Jesus, “How can we clone you Jesus?  Can we make a million copies of you?  And then one of your clones could be in places all over the world.  If we could clone millions of copies of you, you could be everywhere and then lots more people could get the help which they need.  Jesus what are you going to do about all of the problems of people in this world when you only live in Jerusalem?”

  Jesus said, “Well, I’ve got a plan.”

 So you know what happened?  Jesus went out on the street and he began to heal and preach good news.  He told the Romans citizens and the Jews they had to love for one another.  He told them that God was near to them and God was coming to them.  And you know what happened?  Jesus made the Romans and the religious people angry.  “What do you mean Jesus, that God’s kingdom is coming?  This is the Caesar’s kingdom or this is the kingdom of King David where someone great like David will come back and be a powerful king.”  So the people got so angry at Jesus for preaching about God’s kingdom.  They were worried that God’s kingdom would be a threat to the kingdom of the Emperor Caesar.  They were worried that this kingdom of God would not be another great military king like King David.

  So do you know what they did to Jesus?  They did not like his message about the kingdom of God’s love, so they put him to death on the cross.  And they thought that this was the end of Jesus.  They thought that Jesus would be gone forever.

  But you know what?  When the friends of Jesus went to the grave and tomb of Jesus, they found it empty.  And you know suddenly people saw Jesus popping up all over.  People suddenly saw him in Jerusalem.  And some saw him on the Emmaus road and on the same day some saw him way up north in Galilee, quite a distance from Jerusalem.

  And the disciples got together and they said, “This Jesus is really clever and he has found the perfect solution to the problem of so many people needing the help of Jesus.  When Jesus died, he has come back and he has had the life that was inside of his body cloned to go into the lives of us and many people.

  And since the insides of Jesus have been cloned and put inside the lives of millions and millions of people, the work of Jesus can get done all around the world.  Jesus is no longer limited to being in just one body in Jerusalem; now Jesus can be the risen Christ in the lives of people everywhere.

  And you know what?  The insides of Jesus have been cloned and is inside us too.  I see it in you.  I look at Wes, and Jackson and Cole and I see Christ is risen and in them.  I look in your eyes and I can see the risen Christ in you and I know that your hands perform the works of kindness and love that allows Christ to do so much in this world now that he is not just limited to the one body of Jesus in his Jerusalem office.

  I look at you and I know that Christ is alive; I know that Christ has risen from the death and I know that the life that was inside of Jesus, his Spirit, has become cloned and is in you and me.

  Isn’t that wonderful?  To know that Jesus is not limited to just one time or place but that the risen Christ can now be everywhere.

  Let me hear you say, “Alleluia.”  Can’t hear you.  Christ is Risen!  Can you say that?  Now say, “Christ is risen, in me!”  Can you say, “Christ is risen in you!”  Now can you say?  I am a Christ-clone.  Because the Spirit of Christ is alive and well in me.  Amen.

A Very Rare Person; A Very Rare Event

Easter Sunday        April 20, 2014     

Acts 10:34-43  Psalm118:1-2,14-24
Colossians 3:1-4 Matthew 28:1-10

 Lectionary Link

   Did the words written in the Gospel of Matthew about the empty tomb account make the empty tomb happen?  Did the words written in Mark, Luke and John make the resurrection of Jesus happen?

  Some times we get the words of explanation about an event and the cause of the event mixed up.  Words about an event do not make an event happen.  The scientific law  which states that water boils at 212 degree Fahrenheit does not cause water to boil.  The law is only the statistical approximation of many observed and tested occasions of water when it is brought to a boil.

  The Gospel words about the resurrection of Jesus did not make the resurrection happen.  In fact the Gospel words about the resurrection appearances of Jesus are not the first writings in the New Testament about the resurrection.

  The first New Testament writings about the resurrection of Christ were written by St. Paul and he never saw Jesus in his lifetime and he was not in Jerusalem on the reported Easter morning and he did not see Jesus before he left this earth.

 St. Paul had a resurrection manifestation of Christ on the road to Damascus when he had an intervention which changed his life.  St. Paul immediately became involved with the group of people who had formed themselves into new community because they were confessing that they too had  experiences of Christ still being alive in their lives.

  This experience of Christ being alive in their lives made them speak in a very poetic language.   St. Paul spoke and wrote about being raised with Christ in heavenly places.  Not only had Christ arose and was with them, but they themselves believed that they too had risen and were seated with Christ.

  This language of the poets can make scientists crazy.  How can you be raised with Christ in heaven?  Show me.  For people who have had experiences of the presence of Christ  cannot put such experiences into a scientific laboratory to test and replicate.  But enough people believe in the truth of such experiences to make them very meaningful and life changing.  Just as you cannot put "falling in love" into a scientific formula, so too the many experiences of the continuing presence of Christ are like the experience of falling in love.

  The people in the decades after Jesus left this earth knew about as much about the resurrection as we do today.  Why?  Rare events create great wonder.  Rare people create great wonder.  For rare events and a rare person of wonder there are many answers and explanations which arise as responses to what is impossible to explain.

  We have Christian people today who are very confident that they know precisely what happened at the resurrection of Christ.  Some people seem to treat their beliefs in the resurrection of Christ as being more valid, truer and better than ours.  They would say that their belief is better because they really believe what the Gospel writers wrote.  If you and I don't believe those words precisely in the same way then our belief is not valid.   And someone may say that you have to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.  But then one must ask what kind of body? One that goes through doors and one that can be in Jerusalem and in Galilee in mere moments in a way that would make a Star Trek transporter seem primitive.  How can a body which seems to behave like a ghost be bodily in the same way it was before it manifested ghostly behaviors?  How can one say that the resurrection of Jesus is a physical resurrection when many of the characteristics of the risen Christ are reported as ghostly or like the visions of angels?

  You see how one could argue endlessly about the resurrection and its meanings.

  Even without having precise certainty, belief statements and the spiritual poetry about the living Christ in the church are not mere poetry, there is a very rare person and a very rare event which they actually do refer to.

  Jesus was and is a very rare person.  The resurrection of Christ was and is a very rare occurrence.  And it is the rareness of both the person and the occurrence of the resurrection which make Easter such a wonderful ambiguous day which is completely chock full of many, many meanings, including a child's desire to get out of church quickly to get the Easter chocolate eggs in the Easter Egg hunt today.  Chocolate Easter eggs, one of the many collateral effects of Easter.

  What is not a rare event for humanity and for each of us and for each of our dear family members and friends is the event of death.

  We might wish that death could be a totally rare event!  But even as we think this we know with our commonsense minds that if death were completely rare, the world would have been over-populated long, long ago.

  Death is not a rare event in this world.  Death is an event which allows the entire world to accommodate the birth of new people.  Death is not rare but for human beings it is a very pronounced transition.  Death is the natural population control that makes room for others in this world..

  In the human sphere, the degree of our attachment to our lives and to each other means that we can cannot regard the human life cycle as being like the agricultural cycle of life.  Does the wheat field mourn when a plant dies at harvest?  Does the field rejoice at all of the seeds produced for new plant life in the future?  In the human sphere, death may not be rare, but it is special, it is holy, it is profoundly transitional for a person and for that person within a community.

  So how do we live with the fact that death as a sort of human population control is not rare and it happens and occurs in many different circumstances?  Do we live with fear?  Do we live with anxiety?  Do we live with resignation?  Do we live halfheartedly?  Do we live our lives as the proverbial ones who are but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it is going down?

  Because death is not rare, to live we have to find a realistic, cautionary, actuarial, probabilistic relationship with death.  In short, we want to survive and live as long as we possibly can.  We have to find way to live without the thought of death paralyzing us from effective action. We need to find way to live inspired by the possibility and probability of our death and the death of those we love.  How can we live inspired by the probability of death?

  This is the ageless question of life?  How do we live with death without fear as though death   were the sword of Damocles hanging over us and able to fall at anytime?

  People in other times and places, in times of war and occupation, in times of slavery, in times of famine and plague, had worse life expectancy situations to live with than we do in our country with our relative higher standard of living and freedom from day to day terror.  But even for us in good conditions, living with death is one of the main issues of life itself.

  The followers of Jesus spontaneously and with many different kinds of experiential events discovered that this rare person Jesus of Nazareth, provided to them rare experiences of knowing his afterlife.  There were many people who had these truly significant experiences of the various forms of the afterlife of Christ made known to them.  Many people were joined together in having a sense of unity about the continuance of the life of Christ.  The continuance of the afterlife spread like wildfire and people who were far from Palestine in location and time from  the year 33 of the Common Era needed to account for the reality and strength of a vast variety of these experiences of the afterlife of Christ.  And so they wrote down in the poetry of Paul and the Apostles and in the Gospel account many different ways of how and why they felt that Christ was risen and alive in the church.  In their accounts they traced stories of the transition of Jesus of Nazareth walking in Galilee and Jerusalem to his death but they also wrote about his reappearances, first in places close to Jerusalem and Galilee but then as appearing to many in the people who lived in many places in the Roman world who gathered in local gatherings because they shared this common experience that Christ was still alive and with them.

  Today we are gathered because we in some way have discovered that Christ is alive in our lives.  We have discovered it when we can live by and for something beyond death and execute faithful and hopeful and creative action in our world.  We have discovered that Christ is still alive when we experience love and when we experience justice, when we experience the heroic examples of people who sacrifice for the common good in dying to slavishly selfish egotism.  We discover that Christ is alive and well in us when we have the ability to lay down our lives for the good of each other.

  I have had the holy privilege of being with people as they approach death.  I have had people who did not want the last rites of “Prayers said at the time of Death” because to the very end they did not think that they would die.  They merely believe that there would be a continuation of that consciousness of eternity which they were already sensing in themselves.  It is almost like some people think, “Death? Not I, that’s for other people.”

  We who have been raised with Christ in his resurrection can affirm this sense of eternity which we know now and we can live knowing that this state of eternity will continue through the gate of death.

  At each burial requiem, the celebrant says, “For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.”

  The early followers of Jesus traced the eternal hope of the risen Christ within them back to a mysteriously rare event in the afterlife of a very mysterious rare person Jesus Christ.  They wrote and confessed the post-resurrection narratives as the reason for the reality of the presence of Christ living in them and who would be in them and with them for ever.

  And so again today, we confess this mysterious, unique and rare person, Jesus Christ and the rare circumstances of his reappearances after his death.   And we exclaim this about the reality of the hope of Christ in our lives:  “Alleluia, Christ is risen!  The Lord is Risen, indeed!  Alleluia!.  Amen.

Baptismal Sermon at the Great Vigil: God loves you! Deal with it!

Easter Vigil         April 19, 2014

Ex.14:10 Canticle 8, Ez  36:24-28 Psalm 42:1-7

Rom.6:3-11         Luke 24:1-12

 Lectionary link

  Tonight we are gathered to celebrate something wonderful about grace.  The most wonderful thing about grace is that you and I don’t have any choice about it being offered to us.  Grace is given to us whether we want it or not. 

  And so Peter and Payton are here tonight to be initiated into God’s wonderful grace.  They like us do not have any choice about Grace being offered and given to them.

  Peter and Payton do not have any choice tonight about being loved.  Their parents, grandparents and family and friends have and will continue to love them.  They have no choice about that.  They may grow up and try to resist this love and grace but they can never take it away nor can they deny that it has been given to them.

  Tonight baptism at the Easter Vigil expresses the grace of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This grace has been known by all of us. This grace that has already come to Payton and Peter in the love of their parents, grandparents, family and friends.  The grace of the resurrection of Christ   is expressed in the lives of the people who are letting themselves be the hearts, the hands, the feet of the risen Christ tonight.

  Jesus did not remain in a tomb; Christ rose and entered and energized the countless numbers of people.  Christ has taken us over to the point of we cannot help but be expressions of the love and grace of Christ toward Payton and Peter and towards each other and towards even our enemies.

  This is the living Gospel of the resurrection of Christ.  We are to be the living proof of the resurrection of Christ in how we offer active grace and love to Peter and Payton and to everyone tonight.

  We, church are gathered tonight, to confess to Peter and Payton and to the entire world:   People, you have no choice; you are loved, by God and by us, even in our fumbling and feeble efforts to do so.  No, we are not perfect in our love but we are perfect in having the heart of the risen Jesus Christ within us to inspire us always to be at the work of loving better.

  A major reason why we baptize babies and children and people of any age is this: People you do not have any choice about these fact.  God loves you.  God cares for you.  God forgives you.  God gives you many wonderful gifts to develop.  And when you finish your life in your body, God is going to give you eternal life.  Folks, just accept it.  You don’t have any choice about whether God loves you.  Deal with it.

  Lots of religions over-emphasize the human choice in choosing baptism or faith or religion.  If someone offers me a million bucks, am I to be profusely congratulated for graciously deciding to take the million bucks?  “O, Phil you are so wonderful for graciously deciding to take the million bucks.”  Absurd right?  What is marvelous is the generosity of the giver and not the minor event of my decision to take the money.

  That is the nature of God’s love and grace for Peter and Payton tonight and for you and me and for all of the people of this world.

  We have the privilege of receiving this generous grace and love and we as the church have the responsibility not to make this grace and love look bad because of the way in which we live.  We are called tonight to be the very proof and evidence of the resurrection of Christ.

  Can you say, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen?”  And now say, “He’s risen in Me!”  Can we also be fully committed to let this resurrection life of Christ in us be grace and love to Payton and Peter and to all whom God would bring into our lives?

  Alleluia!  Christ is Risen in You!  And in Peter.  And in Payton.  Let us rejoice that we have no choice about whether this resurrection power and grace and love is given to us.  But let us humbly accept it and be conduits for the grace, the love and the power of Christ tonight.  Happy Easter to you!  I can see Easter shining in your eyes tonight.  Amen. 

Bad Friday Rewritten as Good Friday from the Hindsight of Resurrection Grace

Good Friday    April 18, 2014

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 Ps 22

Heb.10:1-25        John 18:1-19:37

Lectionary Link

  The Cross of Jesus has developed many meanings since it first occurred.  We can only start with a very secular history of the Roman method of capital punishment, the method of crucifixion.  It was a horrendous event that could be coupled with floggings, humiliations and other techniques of torture.  One could imagine it a part of interrogation as a way for the Roman authorities to find out co-conspirators in anything that could have the appearance of an insurrection.  The Cross of Jesus lost its brutal secular historical interpretation when the followers of Jesus could not believe that the death of such an amazingly perfect person could be but the seed planted for a more perfect and complete outcome.

  The greatest outcome of the Cross of Jesus was the birth of a large number of people who saw the Cross of Jesus as an event of Glory.  St. Paul said that he would know nothing among his people, except Christ and Him Crucified.  St. Paul said that he would glory in the Cross of Christ, through whom he was crucified to the world and the world to him.

  The earliest New Testament writings are the writing of St. Paul and the cross had become for him a profound metaphor of personal transformation.  It had become the profound metaphor for the Eucharist which Paul presided at.  Paul wrote, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast.”  With St. Paul we have a Lamb of God theology which in turn becomes a part of how Christ is presented in the Gospel of John.

  The Passion Gospel of John, which is read on Good Friday, is the most developed presentation of the Passion Narrative.  In this Passion we can see evidence that “Glorying in the Cross” of Jesus has now become the way in which the very Passion Narrative is presented.

  In the Gospel of John, Pilate as the executioner is treated as though he is a minor pawn in God’s purposes for the world.  “Pilate, you could not do anything unless it was allowed and ordained by God.”

  Some people might think that an event can only have one meaning or several official meanings.  Some people would be ready to excommunicate you if you believed or thought lots of different things about the cross.

  I think that the Cross of Jesus, like any event, does not ever finish having meanings, even new meanings because in our isolation from the events of 2000 years, new meanings, other meaning can occur to us.  One meaning can even contradict another meaning and yet still not be censored by doctrinal police who presume to know the “real meaning.”

  For many years, the  prophets and sages to criticized the business of priestly religion.  The economy of priestly religion was for people to provide animal offerings for the priests of the temple.    The priests of the Jewish Temples wanted sacrifices of lambs, heifers, sheep, goats and birds.  Such offerings were good for the Temple economy; the animal offerings were “stand in” victims to pay with life for the sins of the people who gave the animal offering.  People could get “indulgences” for their otherwise bad behavior by offering sacrifices.

  The ancient sages had enough of the “bloody mess” when they cried, “God does not desire bloody sacrifice.  God does not desire the blood of animals.”  What God desires is the living sacrifice of loving mercy and justice and walking humbly before God.

  If this living sacrifice theology really caught on, then religious institutions would surely not be needed.

  The holy Man, Jesus was a living sacrifice with his life; he loved mercy, he did justice, he advocated radical love and he walk humbly as Son of God before God.

  The justice, love and mercy of Jesus caused a stir.  He gained a following and some of his own felt threatened.  Jesus was in the tradition of the prophets who wanted religion not to be a diversionary game from how one lived one’s life.  His radical love, justice and mercy were also a threat to the Romans.  The Roman authorities ended up being like unknowing secular priests who offered the life of Jesus, not on an altar, but upon the cross.

  The Cross to end the life of a political figure got reinterpreted and it became an altar on which an offering was made to God to consummate or celebrate the relationship between humanity and God in a new Covenant.

  And here’s the meaning now.   Please understand that God does not want death or blood or sacrifices.  In the story of the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham, we have a paradigm shift for ancient pre-history.  God did not want human sacrifice so Abraham understood that God would allow animal substitute sacrifices.  But then later we are told by the prophets that God does not desire the sacrifice of animals.   

  You and I could imagine a different life for Jesus of Nazareth.  How about, Jesus living to a ripe age of 90 and then dying a natural death and coming back to life after 90 years of life.  We could have found equal inspiration from those events.  Did God really need Jesus to die a violent death on the cross as the only way in which God could love and forgive people?

   Or is this the way in which humanity gets the real message about freedom.  If even the divine life is and can be offered up to death  for a temporary victory for the forces of evil; is that not the most profound sign of how the very nature of God is Creative Freedom?   Jesus was subject to the conditions of freedom which allowed forces of tyrants to rid the world of people whom they deemed to be a threat to their power.  But isn’t the main point of life to resist and overcome the freedom of evil with the freedom for good?  The death of Jesus on the cross and the frequent defeat of all good things in life is but proof that freedom is a fact of life, it is a fact of God, because even God honors freedom.

  The Cross of Jesus is the story that we’ve been given.  His death on the cross is the death from which we must look for meaning.  The followers of Jesus had the freedom to know and present the cross in a completely different way than it was intended by the Roman authorities.  They had the freedom to reinterpret a very bad Friday and re-create it to be a very Good Friday.  And with this creative interpretive goodness we have the ultimate irony: In but a century and a half this man who died on the cross took over the Roman Empire.

  The Passion Narrative which we have read today is not so much the truth of the details of what happened when Jesus died on the cross; it is the truth of the faith of the people who took the Cross as a rallying symbol of glory.  The people who wrote the passion narrative had already had the evil freedom which resulted in the cross, overcome by the freedom of resurrection goodness.  By knowing the freedom of resurrection goodness, they could re-visit the cross and present it not as harsh history but as the divine providence known from the hindsight of resurrection grace.

  Today, Good Friday, invites us again to have faith in this incredible ironic alchemy of transformation.  We see in our lives and in our world the results of the freedom of evil and badness, of greed, pride, hatred, bias and bigotry.  We find the attitudes and the results of the freedom of evil in our world. 

  And we seek to live with hope for the future and with faith in the present.  We look to our present goodness to reinterpret our past experience of badness; we hope that any Bad Fridays in our world now will be overcome and re-interpreted with future and free resurrection goodness.

   Let us be inspired by the faith of the writers of the Passion Gospel, who knew powerful freedom of such resurrection Goodness that they could write for us a Good Friday.   Amen.

Maundy Thursday; Reflections upon Eucharist and Passover

Maundy Thursday  April 12,2012     

Ex. 12:1-14a       Ps. 78:14-20, 23-25

1 Cor 11:23-32      John 13:1-15

 Lectionary Link

   I begin with a really bad joke which I’ve told over and over again but there is an obvious point about it.

The rabbi and the priest are talking together and the rabbi says, “Father, you Christians have stolen your religious beliefs and practices from Judaism.”  And the priest replied, “Rabbi, what do you mean?”  And the Rabbi said, “Well, take for example the 10 commandments; you’ve stolen them from us.”  And the priest relied, “Yes, rabbi, we did steal the 10 commandments, but we didn’t keep them.”

  The truth of our Christian origin is that we borrowed much from Judaism, but the punchline truth is that we haven’t kept what we borrowed from Judaism in the same ways in which Jews have kept to their ancient traditions and in the ways in which their own traditions have developed.

  This evening is Maundy Thursday and we commemorate the institution of the Holy Eucharist.  And we must know that the Holy Eucharist as it appears in the New Testament writing is not presented as a complete Seder or Passover meal.  The first reference to Holy Eucharist is in St. Paul’s writings in his writing about the Lord’s Table.  He found that the church in Corinth had so removed the lines between a meal with holy implications from an actual eating of a meal that the spiritual meaning of the meal was being lost or diminished or trivialized.  St. Paul told the people of the Corinthian church to eat at home before they came to the practice of Eucharist in the gathering so that they would discern the presence of Christ in partaking of the bread and wine.  St. Paul said that he received this tradition from the Lord himself, even though St. Paul never walked with Jesus.  We are told that the early Christian gathered on the first day of the week for the breaking of the bread and the prayers.

  The Eucharist on Maundy Thursday traces the normal practice of Sunday Eucharist back to a Passover time event.   One can find significant ways in which the Eucharist has departed from the Passover tradition.  Of the Passover meal, there are only two elements which remained; the bread and a single cup of wine.  The Eucharist is a weekly celebration on the first day of the week; the Passover was a once a year celebration and most often done with family and invited guests.  When there was a temple it there was a gathering at the Temple because Passover was an important pilgrimage time.   In the Passover meal there were and are prayers and recitations and the four questions which were part of the liturgy of the meal.  Yes, the Eucharist retains words of our salvation history and Jesus is regarded to be understood under the symbol of the Paschal Lamb, but the Eucharist is significantly removed in its identity from the Passover.  I think it best today to allow the Passover Seder to be observed by our Jewish brothers and sisters within the settings of their community.  We can note how our Christian origins involved a significant re-interpretation, re-editing and reduction of what we inherited from Judaism in our formation.   The best way to observe a Passover meal is to be privileged to accept an invitation from our Jewish brothers and sister and learn to understand and appreciate how the Passover tradition still remains for them a crucial root event for their identity as a community of people.

  At the same time we cannot deny that our founding apostles and early teachers understood the life of Jesus from the Hebraic roots of the Christian Gospel.  We “stolen” from the Hebraic roots in the development of Christian theology and practice, but we haven’t kept the theology and practices of Judaism in the ways in which the continuing Jewish communities have kept to their roots.

  I do not think that we want to return to a literalism about a Paschal Lamb.  The Paschal Lamb as the main course of a meal which celebrates a covenant relationship is based upon understanding that God is a God who would kill all oldest sons except for the families with inside information about how to avoid it.  The Israelites had insider instructions to eat the substitutionary Passover lamb, whose blood was on the door post of the homes, because presumably the angels of death would avoid those homes.  The same Hebrew people who had this Passover story also had prophets who proclaimed that God did not want the blood of animals; God wanted the living sacrifice of lives willing to love mercy, practice justice and walk humbly before God.

   The life of Jesus was a living sacrifice, a gift of God’s most intimate presence to us.  His love of mercy, justice and his humble walk brought him to be killed on the cross.

  And so the early Christians believed that the living sacrificial life of Jesus could continue to be in each person and the profound remembrance of this sacrificial presence was known in the bread and the wine, in the feast of the renewal of the remembrance of Christ’s sacrificial presence.

  When Jesus took the role of a servant in washing feet he was exemplifying how the Paschal lamb was to be known in living a life of loving service.  Loving service is how we express being living sacrifices.

   Let us be thankful for the Passover tradition tonight.  Let us be thankful for the integrity of this tradition which is still observed by our Jewish brothers and sisters.

  Let us freely acknowledge how our Christian identity has grown out of the Hebrew-Judaic traditions and let us share with them the notion of dynamic remembrance.  In the Passover meal, the Jews believe that the power of salvation which was present in the Passover deliverance is a power that can be known as they are renewed by the very same saving power today.

  We as Christian believe that the power of the life, death, resurrection of Christ and the Holy Spirit of God are celebrated and dynamically remembered in the Eucharist which we believe is a gift to us by Christ as being the most intimate expression of the social reality of the gathered church.

  Tonight we gather to give thanks, for Thanksgiving, because Eucharist is an act of thanksgiving for the saving power of Christ which is able to inhabit each of us and help us to be living sacrifices for God and each other.  Amen.