Daily Quiz, May 2014

Daily Quiz, May 31, 2014

The Visitation of the Virgin Mary is a Feast of the church which commemorates the visit to Mary by whom?

a. The Archangel Gabriel
b.  Her pregnant cousin Elizabeth
c.  Her husband Joseph
d.  Simeon
e.  Anna

Daily Quiz, May 30, 2014

Which is not true of Joan of Arc?

a. She is one of nine patron saints of France
b. She is known as The Maid of Orleans
c.  She had visions of the Archangel Michael
d.  She died because she compromised with English factions in France
e.  In a posthumous inquisition she was declared to be a martyr


Daily Quiz, May 29, 2014

In Judaeo-Christian sacred story and tradition which of the following did not have an Assumption into the heavenly realm?

a. Jesus
b.  The Virgin Mary
c.  Moses
d.  Enoch
e.  Elijah



Daily Quiz, May 28, 2014

The Protestant Reformer and theologian John Calvin is often associated with which of the following theological positions:

a. Ontological argument for the existence of God
b. Predestination
c. Postlapsarianism
d. Free Will


Daily Quiz, May 27, 2014

What Saxon King of Kent in Southeastern England was converted to Christianity after Augustine came to England?

a. Eadbald
b. Eormenric
c. Ethelbert
d. Hengist

Daily Quiz, May 26, 2014

Which Pope sent Augustine to the British Isles to bring the faith there only to find that there was a vibrant Celtic church already there?

a. Gregory the Great
b. Leo the Great
c. Pelagius II
d. Nicholas I

Daily Quiz, May 25, 2014

What was the celebration of every 50th year called in the book of Leviticus?

a. Anniversary
b. Jubilee
c. Liberty
d. A Sabbath of Years 

Daily Quiz, May 24, 2014

Who was the first missionary bishop of the Episcopal Church who founded many parishes in the Midwest?

a. James Lloyd Breck
b. Samuel Seabury
c. Jackson Kemper 
d. James DeKoven

Daily Quiz, May 23, 2014

What astronomers with controversial views in their own time eventually made it to the calendar of saints in the Episcopal Church?

a. Johannes Kepler
b. Gregor Mendel
c. Nicolaus Copernicus 
d. Nicholas of Cusa
e. all of the above 
f.  a and c
g. b and d


Daily Quiz, May 22, 2014

Body art?  What does the book of Leviticus say about tattoos?

a. Forbidden
b. Forbidden except on toes
c. Permitted to mark slaves 
d. Not forbidden

 Daily Quiz, May 21, 2014

Who translated the Bible into the Algonquin language?

a. John Eliot
b. One of the editors of the Bay Psalm Book
c. One of the editors of the first book printed in British America
d. All of the above


Daily Quiz, May 20, 014

St. Alcuin is associated with what historic school?

a. Oxford
b. Cambridge
c. University of Paris
d. York School

Daily Quiz, May 19, 2014

An offering for Azazel is the origin of what common colloquialism?

a. don't count your chickens before they hatch
b. a stitch in time saves nine
c. scapegoat
d. the horns of a dilemma

Daily Quiz, May 18, 2014 

"In my Father's house there are many dwelling places/mansions....."  This Gospel portion is often used for what liturgy?

a. Requiem
b. House blessing
c.  Blessing of a new church building
d.  Rogation Day


Daily Quiz, May 17, 2014 

The familiar expression for "lex talionis" is stated:

a. possession is nine parts of the law
b. an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
c. take the fifth
d. law of God
e. law that has not been written


Daily Quiz, May 16, 2014

For what country has the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church called for special prayers on Sunday, May 18th?

a. Syria
b. Ukraine
c.  South Sudan
d.  Nigeria

Daily Quiz, May 15, 2014 

What were the signs of divine presence when the people of Israel were traveling through the wilderness to the Promised Land?

a. a cloud
b. a pillar of fire
c. glowing face of Moses
d. all of the above

Daily Quiz, May 14, 2014

The Sermon on the Mount or Sermon on the Plain?  Jesus said, "Bless are the poor in spirit." And, "Blessed are the poor."  In which Gospel is is quoted as saying the latter?

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

Daily Quiz, May 13, 2014

Which of the following is not true about Frances Perkins?

a. Episcopal laywoman, first woman cabinet member
b. Secretary of Labor under FDR
c. Architect of Social Security, Child Labor Laws and Work Safety Laws
d. A saint on our calendar of saints for May 13th
e. Her family owned a Pancake Restaurant

Daily Quiz, May 12, 2014

Why did there need to be two copies of the tablets on which the Laws were written for Moses to receive on Mount Sinai?

a. One for the ark of the covenant; one for the outer court of the tabernacle
b.  Moses in anger over the golden calf, broke the first copy
c.  One in the Hebrew language and one in the Ugaritic language 
d.  For the two shrines, one at Bethel and another at Shiloh

Daily Quiz, May 11, 2014

Which symbol was not found on the priestly vestments of Aaron?

a. Lamb
b. Golden Bells
c. Urim
d. Thummim
e. Pomegranates 
f.  Rosette 

Daily Quiz, May 10, 2014

The Ark of the Covenant was located where?

a. Holiest of Holy in the tabernacle
b. Holiest of Holy in Solomon's Temple
c. In Shiloh
d. Carried in various military conflicts of Israel
e. all of the above

Daily Quiz, May 9, 2014

What was the most notable experience of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu?

a. they saw the God of Israel
b. they opposed Moses' leadership
c. they were all of the Levi priestly caste
d. they made it to the Promised Land

Daily Quiz, May 8, 2014

How many versions of the "10 Commandments" can be found in the Bible?

a. There's only one
b.  2
c.  3
d.  4

Daily Quiz, May 7, 2014

On what Mountain did Moses receive the Law?

a. Mount Tabor 
b. Mount Herman
c. Mount Sinai
d. Nebo 

Daily Quiz, May 6, 2014

In which of the following Psalms is the Lord referred to as a shepherd?

a. 23rd
b. 95th
c. 1st
d. all of the above
e. a and b

Daily Quiz, May 5, 2014

According the portion of Mark's Gospel which are at the end and were added at a later time by scribes, what will the followers of Jesus be able to do?

a.Cast out demons
b.Speak in new tongues
c. Handle poisonous snakes without harm
d. Drink poison without harm
e. Heal the sick
f.  all of the above

Daily Quiz, May 4, 2014

What were the  names of the sons of Moses?

a. Zipporah
b. Gershom
c. Jethro
d. Eliezer
e. a and b
f.  a and c
f.  b and c 
g. b and d

Daily Quiz, May 3, 2014

When the Israelites were without water in the wilderness how were they eventually provided with water?

a. God brought rain
b. Moses led them to an oasis which had a spring
c. Moses struck a rock with his staff and water poured out
d. The eventually found a stream of water 

Daily Quiz, May 2, 2014

Which famous saint and bishop and champion of the views which won the day at the Nicaea Council ordered monks to burn writings which he deemed heretical?

a. Arius
b. Eusebius of Caesarea
c. Athanasius
d. Alexander 

Daily Quiz, May 1, 2014

When this man heard about Jesus, he said "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" 

a. James
b. Philip
c. Nathaniel
d. Nicodemus

God as Expanding Container of All

6 Easter a         May 25, 2014    

Acts 17:22-31       Ps. Ps. 66  

1 Peter 3:13-22     John 14:15-21   

Lectionary Link            

  Sometimes when we read the Bible we can be led to some misreadings if we try to visualize with spatial verification the perceptual cosmology of ancient times.  This perceptual cosmology involves a flat earth, a dome sky over which the sun and moon and stars pass each day as they pass under the flat earth each day to return again on the dome sky screen above.  And if you could take a trap door through the top of the domed sky, you would arrive at the abode of God in the “highest” heaven.

  One can appreciate the perceptual truth of the past; in fact we still embody this perceptual truth of the past every time we say the sun rises and sets.  But those ancient perceptual truths have to be internalized to interior heavenly space to have significant spiritual significance for us to today.

  And we can find other biblical models and metaphors to evoke insights for us about the reality of God in our life.

  One of my favorite metaphors comes from a phrase which the writer of the Acts of the Apostles attributes to St. Paul when he was trying to evangelize the Athenians.  Athens was perhaps the intellectual center of the World.    The Hellenistic culture was spread worldwide by the conquest of the most famous student of Aristotle, Alexander the Great.  The remnant of the Hellenistic culture was still present in the Roman World of Jesus and the early church, as a common Greek dialect remained as the lingua franca of the world and this Greek, left over language, became the language of the New Testament.

  The phrase which St. Paul reportedly borrowed from the Greeks to make contact with the philosophically minded Athenians is this:  In God we live and we move and we have our being.

This is a phrase which I would like to explore as providing us with some significant insight about God.  In our day of the pragmatic requirement of truth, sometimes theology and statements about God don’t seem to have any pragmatic value or function.  What difference does an insight about God have for you and me today?

  In God we live and move and have our being.  I think to understand this is to have our lives and life actions altered and changed forever.

   In this view of God, we can understand God as the ultimate Container.  God as the ultimate Container means that everything else is contained and is interior to God.

  But this container is not a hard and firm and static container.  It is an ever expanding container.  God as the greatest Container of all is also an expanding Container.  Why is it necessary for God as the ultimate Container to be an expanding container?  Because everything which exists within God has degrees of freedom which contributes to the actual expansion of the fullness of the divine.  And it has to be this way if we want to embrace a notion of genuine freedom.

  If God is not an expanding container whose boundaries are somehow fixed, it would mean that God would know the future and the possible as actual.  And that would mean determination and predestination; If God knows the future as a present time actual, then such knowledge would implied a fixed universe.  The entire universe might as well be a robot.

  But an expanding God who contains all actually is being affected by how all free beings are acting.  So, our prayers do actually make a difference.  It does matter what we do.  This view of God honors a genuine freedom in this world.  And which of us doubts genuine freedom?  It is so genuine that at times it seems quite obvious that the bad guys are winning.  Freedom is genuine because there is present at the same time so much conflict and competition between human systems and the systems of nature.  Why else would lighting strike cause fires which burn homes and earthquakes sometime have massive destructive effects in human populated areas?

  This massive expanding Container of God within whom we live and have our being, can be so expansive that we can seem like impersonal fragments within such vastness.

  But the Gospel of John gives us the personal touch of the divine.  Who is Jesus?  He is God in human form contained by his Father.  The Son is contained in the Father and the Father is evident in the Son.  We are not rattling around in a massive impersonal bucket of bolts.  We posit a Personal Containing Parent within us from whom we have come.  If personality is what we regard to be the very best of humanity, then for God to be greater than we are, God at the very least would have to be hyper-personal, or personal to the superlative degree.  And so Jesus came to show us that we are personally contained by a very great parenting Personality, indeed, in whom we live and move and have our being.  And this Parenting Personality has not left us orphans.

   The writer of John’s Gospel understood that the life of Jesus was an announcement to the world that we are not abandoned by an unknown and aloof super-impersonal Being.  We are contained by a great Energy of Creativity and Freedom.  We are inspired by God who is pure freedom and pure creativity to use our freedom and creativity in the very best possible way, because you know what?  Our freedom contributes to the future state of an expanding God who responds to our freedom.

  Indeed we are not omnipotent in our freedom, but our freedom is very significant.  And this is the pragmatic truth of living and moving and having our being in God.

  People who are committed to other views of God will say, that if God is expanding then God cannot be perfect because a perfect being does not and cannot change.

  Let us redefine perfect as that which is greatest and the greatest can change as a genuine response to freedom.  And God’s greatness and perfection does not suffer, since God does not have a significant rival; God’s only rival is the Divine Self in a future state.  God’s greatness of the past is only compared with God’s greatness of the future.

  This notion of God helps us to embrace our true freedom in this world.  The great Containing God tries to lure us to excellence, love and justice, even as we have the freedom to resist the lure of God.

   In God we live and move and have our being.  This is a very pragmatic and vital truth for you and I and it can deliver from the cruelty of fatalism.  We are only partially determine; let us embrace the partial freedom which we do have with a new determination, because as we live and move and have our being in God, we in some small but significant ways, determine the Divine Self.  And that is the excitement that you and I can know from this Gospel of being sons and daughters of God, with spiritual DNA.  Amen.

Not for Funerals Only

5 Easter a         May 18, 2014

Acts 17:1-15       Ps. 66: 1-8  

1 Peter 2:1-10     John 14:1-14   

 Lectionary Link           

  We have read today something of a farewell discourse of Jesus from John’s Gospel.  Do you know perhaps the most common liturgical setting for this Gospel reading?

  If you’ve been to memorial services, requiems or funerals, this Gospel lesson is often the Gospel of choice for the celebration and thanksgiving of the life of a faithful departed loved one.

  The liturgical use of this Gospel reading, I fear, has fixed its meaning to death or the event of death and departure.  And the liturgical use of this Gospel has so fixed the meaning of this Gospel with the event of the death and departure of Jesus and our faithful departed, we perhaps have been given a habit of misreading this Gospel.  Or we have established a habit of  limiting the meaning of these Gospel words.

  I would suggest for today, that these words involve the Gospel writer throwing of the voice, like a ventriloquist into the narrative figure of Jesus in order to teach the community of John another one of the many metaphors of spiritual transformation which are a part of the Gospel of John.  This Gospel is chock block full of metaphors of transformations to represent the state of living in this world in a much altered state of being because of one’s relationship to God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

  How many metaphors does the writer of John use?  Born again, born from above, Living Bread, Bread of Life, Living Water, Truth, Life, Light of the World, One with the Father,  The Way, Lamb of God, Good Shepherd, the Gate, the Vine, One with the Father, The Resurrection, The Word from the Beginning and more.  To be indelicate as I often am, John’s Gospel gives us a presentation of metaphors on steroids.

  And today I mean to free our Gospel lesson from it being limited to use at funerals and burials and memorial service.  Our reading presents profound metaphors representing the experience of one who has such an enhanced relationship with the sublime God that it needs to be shared as a possible invitation for every human person to know as well.

  Being a lower middle class person with aspirations for the socio-economic higher mobility, I always preferred the King James Version of this passage.  “In my Father’s House there are many mansions.”  Those subsequent egalitarian translators have shattered my hopes by evicting me to a seeming lower rent district with a different translation:  “In my Father’s House there are many dwelling places.”  Mansions or dwelling places?  Which would you choose?

  I think that the King James Version with the word “mansions” is what caused this passage to be so associated with the afterlife.  Of course heaven for English citizenry would involve mansions to go along with the streets of gold.

  As much as we love the imaginations of mansions and streets of gold to envision the afterlife, I actually believe that “dwelling places” is truer to the themes of the writer of John.  And this reference has a credible reference to a very this worldly state of being in relationship with God rather than referring to the imaginations of the afterlife.

  In my Father house are many dwelling places.  And where is the most obvious dwelling place of the Father on earth?  In the same passage we find that Jesus and the Father are One.  So Jesus is the most obvious dwelling place of the Father on earth.  This is consistent with the “body as God’s Temple, Body as Temple of the Holy Spirit” theology of the early Christian community.  Forget about the mansions in heaven, as Disneyesque as that might be in its appeal; the Father’s dwelling place is within you and me.  The words of Jesus might be read as “I go to because I have prepared you be a dwelling place of the Father.  Your being is made ready to be a room of dwelling for God as Father and Holy Spirit.”

  And this is not other worldly, it is very much here and now in this world.  As we know our bodies to be a location and dwelling place for God, we let our lives be expressive of the state of a transformed life touched by and in touch with the sublime presence, so magnificence we only humbly confess, “O, my God.”

  You and I, as dwelling places for God; this is a meaning which I would like for us to embrace as Gospel for us today.

  The second meaning that I would like for us to share today is the continual presentation in the Gospel of John of Jesus and the Father being one.  Jesus is a totally father-ized being.  It sounds a bit too patriarchal in our age of sensitivity about something we all know, namely, that Mother too is formidable in nurturing formation as well.

  What are some possible meanings of this notion of Jesus being a radically Father-ized being?  One of the insights which we have received from the psychoanalytic tradition is that the holy family of “mommy, daddy and me” is quite formidable in one’s psycho-social formation as a person, even to the point of making us feel as though we have been over-determined by mom and dad.  For most people, in their twenties or thirties, they have to grapple with the praise-worthy or blame-worthy sense of having been over-determined by mom or dad.

  Becoming a God-Father-ized person, a God-Motherized person,  a God-Parent-ized person means that one plumbs an underneath depth of being to be open to fresh and new determinations in one’s life such that one gains a freedom from mom and dad without being too critical of one’s parents and even forgiving of all figures in one’s life who one once held personally responsible for not being perfect to one’s need.

  To know one’s deepest parent aspect of personhood dwelling in one’s holiest center of being is to know the freedom, the peace and the joy of a new kind of creative freedom in one’s life.  It is an experience and an initiation into a state of being which can only be called transformational.

  The writer of the Gospel of John indicates that  Jesus is not calling us to mansions in the sweet bye and bye; the writer of John is calling us to a transformational state of being where one can feel indwelled by a Higher Determining Power.  And this is a heavenly state that can be known before death.

  So next time you hear this Gospel read at a memorial service, remember it is not for the sweet bye and bye, rather it is for a transformational state of being in the here and now.  Why? Because our bodies can be known as God’s dwelling and as such we can access a different kind of determining power, which can rightly be called a new Parent, a divine Parent who has become the new factor in our lives.  Amen.

Jesus as the Gate

4 Easter a         May 11, 2014  

Acts 6:1-9, 7:2a 51-60   Ps. 23 

1 Peter 2:19-25    John 10:1-10               

Lectionary Link

  Today we have read another riddle of Jesus. Jesus said, “I am the Gate.”  I am the Sheep Gate.  That is quite a riddle to say, “I am the Door.”  How can Jesus be a Gate or a Door?

  Well in the time of Jesus a Shepherd was a Gate.  A shepherd would sleep in the gate opening to the sheepfold.  The shepherd would not let the sheep out during the night.  And the shepherd would not let the foxes and the wolves attack the sheep because the Shepherd slept in the doorway of the sheep fold.

  We call Jesus the Good Shepherd and one of the roles of a good shepherd was to be gatekeeper.

  Today is mother’s day and your mom is a good shepherd for you; she is a good gatekeeper for you.  And she is the best looking door or gate you have ever seen.  But please don’t say to your mom, “Mom, you are the best looking door I’ve ever seen.”

  But let me try to show you how a human door works.  I stand in this door way here.  And I won’t let you go through this door because there is something dangerous in this next room and I want to protect you from it.  It may be a snake or an alligator or it may be a busy street with lots of traffic and so I am going to block you from going into the street because I want to protect you.  Do you think that I would be a good door if I could protect you and keep you from getting harmed or injured?

  But I am also another kind of Door.  I can also be an Open Door.  Come, into this room.  In this room there is the adventure of new learning.  There is beauty and truth and books and a museum.  There is sports and exercise and dance and stories.  So I am an open door for you to learn new things that are good for you.

  But I am a closed door to protect you from going to the wrong places.  But I am also a closed door to keep the bad things outside from getting inside to hurt you.

  So now do you see why Jesus as the Good Shepherd said, I am the Sheep Gate and I am the Door.

  Jesus is the one who opens good things up for us but he is also the one who teaches to protect ourselves from the bad things which can hurt us.

  We all need to have moms and dads and teachers and gatekeepers in our lives.

  You too need to be good doors and gates.  Is that silly?  How and you be a good door?

  You can be a good door when you protect babies and animals from getting harmed or hurt.  You can be a good door when you take good care of younger babies and children and when you help them to learn new things in their lives.

  So now we understand the riddle of Jesus when he said that he was the Gate to the Sheepfold.

  We need people in our lives who are good gates and doors; people to protect us from wrong things but people who open up for us new learning.  We also need to be good gates and doors and we protect those who need protection and as we share our learning with those who need it.

  So remember these riddles about Jesus.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  Jesus is a good gate-keeper.  And on this day, remember that your mom is a good gate keeper too.  But please don’t say to her, “you’re the most beautiful door I’ve ever seen.”

I Am the Gate Sunday?

4 Easter a         May 11, 2014

Acts 6:1-9, 7:2a 51-60   Ps. 23 

1 Peter 2:19-25    John 10:1-10               

 Lectionary Link

  If I were to give you a choice of metaphors for this day, which would you choose?  I am the Good Shepherd?  Or I am the Good Sheepfold Gate?

  Obviously in our aesthetic sensibilities for pastoral metaphors, Good Shepherd does sound a bit more pleasing than Good Sheepfold Gate.  I don’t think that I’ve ever heard this Sunday referred to as Good Sheepfold Gate Sunday, but as most of you know, with me, there is always a first time.  I designate this as “I am the Good Sheep Gate Sunday” with justification from the Gospel lesson for Cycle A of the lectionary.  The lesson from John’s Gospel centers upon the metaphor of gatekeeper and Jesus as being the “Gate.”

  One can note that being the gatekeeper and being the gate are but further elaborations of what it meant to be a shepherd.  The Good Shepherd Sunday metaphors highlight three states of the human condition, the state of vulnerability characterized by the metaphor of the sheep, the use of power for exploiting the vulnerable as signified by the false shepherds and the use of leadership and power for the care of the vulnerable as represented in the metaphor of the Good Shepherd.

  Since the Gospel reading for today highlights the gatekeeper and the self-designating phrase of Jesus, “I am the Gate,” I want for us to explore the metaphors of gatekeeper and gate as aspects of the role of the shepherd.  The phrase, “I am the Gate” has some literal significance for the role of the ancient shepherd.  The sheepfolds were corrals for sheep and goats constructed out of wood sticks or stones.  These sheepfolds had an open door or gate area for the entrance and exit of the sheep.  The shepherd often functioned as the “literal” gate of the sheepfold as the shepherd would sit and sleep in the door opening.  So the Shepherd as the gate of the sheepfold would keep the sheep from leaving the sheepfold, but the shepherd was strategically placed to lay his life down for the sheep in preventing wild animals from entering the sheepfold to attack the sheep.

  In the metaphors of gatekeeper and shepherd as the gate, one can find manifold meanings which provide us insights into the role of good leadership.

  Good leaders are good gatekeeper and good gates.  The gate or door is an architectural feature which fills the place of the threshold in how we articulate architecture space.  I understand the sheepfold to be the safe and comfortable space for the protection and the nurture of the vulnerable in our care.  The sheepfold is a paradigm or a constellation of ideas and teachings and knowledge which we give to people for them to abide in for their own safety and well-being.  Certainly on this day, Mother’s Day, we recognize that mother is one of the most important gatekeepers in the lives of her children.

  The gatekeeper or the person as an actual gate means that leadership has the responsibility to keep people safe within a knowledge environment.  As we know in life, access to knowledge and life experience has to be regulated.  Regulation of life experience and knowledge has to be parsed appropriate to the life stages of the people who need to be nurtured in knowledge and life experience.  An important role of leadership is the regulation of knowledge and the exposure of people to life experience at the appropriate times.

  All knowledge and life experience cannot be openly accessible to all people all of the time.  A mother or father does not want one’s preschooler to be exposed to the knowledge of a sixth grader, though in a family, such regulation is a challenge to achieve.

  Sheep owners often had sheepfold close to home but they also had sheepfolds that were built in the mountains and valleys of seasonal grazing places.  When the shepherd was leading the sheep to seasonal grazing places, they would inhabit these sheepfolds away from home.

  The shepherd or gatekeeper is a person who leads others to new experiences.  A shepherd or leader is one who provide adventures in learning and creative advance for students or those on the progressive path of leaning in life.

  Jesus as the Good Shepherd was the master teacher for his disciple students.  He provided them progressive learning experiences to lead them from native naivete and ignorance into new experience of knowledge and wisdom.  The Gospels are presented to us as manuals using the disciples as those who are on the path of progressive learning with Jesus as their wisdom teacher.

  The disciples are shown to be those who are led away from their comfortable and familiar interpretations of faith and life into new adventures in understanding how God was working in the world and in their lives. Jesus as a crucified and risen messiah was the ultimate wisdom which these disciples were being led to learn about.

  Today, in our lives we need to be sheep-like disciples and students willing to follow teachers who will give us the appropriate exposure to new knowledge, new understanding and new wisdom so that we can progressively transform our lives in wisdom which helps us in our art of living.  At the same time we also need to be gatekeepers and doorways for the people who have been given to us to regulate in the knowledge of life.  It takes great wisdom to be a gatekeeper because not everyone is ready for all presentations of world experience and knowledge at one time.  We need to be those who discern the condition of the people in our care and area of influence but we also need to be informed in our own experience to have full menu of teaching events to offer to those for whom we care.

  On this Good Shepherd and Gatekeeper Sunday, we need to be committed to learn as much as we can for ourselves, but not just for ourselves, but for those for whom God wants us to be gatekeepers and spiritual directors.

  Each of us today need to recommit ourselves to find and follow good gatekeepers who can bring us to the next phase of learning in our lives.  At the same time, each of us need to be gatekeepers who are able to share through our teaching and life example the wisdom and care for those who need to be protected and comforted by us.

  Today, we give thanks for our mothers who have been gatekeepers in our lives.  We give thanks for Jesus the Good Shepherd, who has been in the threshold between places of safety and comfort and the adventure of new learning for the continual transformation of our lives.

  Let us today continue in the role of following our gatekeepers to new knowledge, even as we take up gatekeeping for those who need us to have a role of regulation for knowledge, safety,comfort and further adventuresome learning.

  Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  Jesus is the Gate.  Jesus is the gatekeeper.  We can embrace all of these roles even as we always remain the learning sheep of our Good Shepherd Jesus.  Amen.

The Serendipity of Apparent Presence

3 Easter a         May 4, 2014   

Acts 2:14a,36-47   Ps. 116:10-17

1 Peter 1:17-23    Luke 24:13-35              

Lectionary Link

Today I would like for us to consider the difference between the actual and the apparent.  I think it is important to know the difference between the actual and the apparent.  The discrepancy between the actual and the apparent is probably the first and hardest lesson that has to be learned in life.

  A baby is born and lives with the actual presence of mother with actual contact with the maternal body.  But what happens when a mother wants to get some sleep or do other things?  What happens when mom does not have actual contact with her baby?  What happens when she is not touching her baby?  Or speaking to her baby?  Or is out of the sight of vision for her baby?  Mom may continue to miss her baby and worry about her baby, but she still believes that her baby in still in her life and very important to her.  But what happens from the baby’s point of view?  A baby loses contact with the maternal body; a baby loses contact with the touch of any parent or parent surrogate person; a baby does not hear the sound of her mother’s voice or any voice; a baby does not see any moving person the field of vision.  The apparent absence of mother can perhaps mean the actual non-existence of mother.

  Apparently, mother is no more, when she is gone.  And so there is great relief when the sensorial connections are made again.  Mom has to re-appear again and again so that the patterns of re-appearance can convince her baby that the apparent absence of mom does not mean the actual absence of mom.  And to help the “separation” anxiety mom will provide for her baby many things which will help her baby deal with the times in which the lack of sensorial accessibility to her baby might tempt the baby to assume apparent absence means real absence.

   This relationship is the same in our relationship with God.  This relationship was the same for the relationship between the disciples and friends of Jesus after he no longer was accessible to them in the same way .

  Jesus died.  Apparently he was gone.  His friends could not see him or touch him or talk to him in the same way in which they had had done before.  Did his absence mean that he apparently was no more?  The absence of Jesus could not mean that he had not existed; but how did his absence affect his apparent continuing relevance and meaning in our lives?

  The literature of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus function to cover the transitional period between Jesus leaving this earth and attaining the kinds of presences in the time of his apparent absence.

  Jesus was dead and gone; the Jesus Movement should have been over and done, his followers should have been defeated and disappointed.  The Roman authorities should  have been relieved that this flash in the pan apocalyptic insurrection was so short lived.  And all of the rabbinical schools of Judaism should have felt relieved that one less Jewish sect would exist.  John the Baptist was killed; some of his followers kept meeting and many of them followed Jesus of Nazareth, but now that Jesus was gone, there was one less rabbi to compete in market of religious ideas and interpretations.

  However the friends and followers of Jesus did not quit.  The Movement did not die.  It in fact grew exponentially.  It was a Movement which consisted of people who were probably surprised that they did not suddenly just dwindle into oblivion.  The Movement was so vibrant in the cities of the Roman Empire, they had to reconstruct for themselves the reasons for their success. 

  When the presence of the actual body of Jesus was no longer around, the number of people who believed that the Risen Christ had become apparent in their lives in some way, greatly increased.  A movement which was supposed to die on the cross with its founder, did  not die.  The Cross could not kill the life of Christ out of this world.

  The Cross of Jesus became like a launching pad which suddenly released the insides of Jesus to be made available in many different ways to many different people.

  I don't think we should read the Gospel accounts of the post-resurrection appearances as history; read them as the artistic explanation of the early followers of Christ as they were trying to tell and celebrate how they continued to be comprised with such joy and fellowship. 

  I believe the New Testament were writings created by people who were surprised that they continued to be together.  They were surprised by the phenomenon of something which kept them together and kept the movement growing and spreading to more people.

  The Gospel accounts of the post-resurrection appearances helped the community try to explain their continuing existence and they gave origin answers about the practices of the church.

  This post-resurrection appearance of Christ to the disciples who were walking back home to Emmaus should only be called a “half post resurrection appearance” of Christ?  Why?  Because it was written that the resurrected Christ had the ability to turn on and turn off his recognizability.

   What were the signs and the activities within the church of how Christians expressed how they knew Christ to be still alive?  The church practiced Eucharist and the Church practiced the interpretation of Scriptures to explain how Scripture was relevant to their contemporary life.

  This is what the Emmaus Road post-resurrection appearance of Jesus is all about.

  The Emmaus Road disciples said that their hearts had burned when Jesus was explaining to them the current relevance of the Scriptures.  And so that burning excitement was there in being engaged by God’s Word because it is only through words that we make the creative advance in our lives.  The words about creative advance in our lives cause us to burn with excitement.

  When Jesus was compelled by the disciples to sit down for something to eat; when Christ took bread and blessed it, poof, Christ was suddenly recognized.  Can there be a more obvious reference to the way in which the gathered church realized the presence of Christ?

  Word and Sacraments were two of the modes of realizing the apparent presence of the risen Christ.

  We have the Emmaus Road story because the church had to account for its own success and to celebrate the origins of how the apparent absence of Jesus of Nazareth has become transformed and known as the apparent presence of the risen Christ.

  Today in our gathering, you and I are invited to know the risen Christ in Word and Sacrament but we have perhaps let the church authorities administrate Word and Sacrament so that it can seem that Word and Sacrament exhaust or limit the experiences of the presence of Christ.  Word and Sacrament are not the only modes of how the risen Christ can be known to us.  It has been my goal to show us how Word and Sacrament are connected with our entire lives so that we understand that the apparent presences of the risen Christ can be endlessly proliferated within the events of your life and mine.  We come to be engaged by Word and Sacrament so that we can be prepared for the serendipitous occasions when the risen Christ suddenly becomes recognized, almost like saying to us suddenly, “Peek a boo, I see you.  And I am with you always.”  Amen.

Emmaus Road: Peek A Boo, I See You

3 Easter a         May 4, 2014   

Acts 2:14a,36-47   Ps. 116:10-17

1 Peter 1:17-23    Luke 24:13-35              

 Lectionary Link

   How many of you have ever played the game of “Peek-a-boo?”  It is one of the first game that we probably learned to play as a baby.

  We cover our face with our hands and then we suddenly take them away.  And say “Peek-a-boo”  I see you.

  Or we cover baby’s head with a blanket, and baby pulls the blanket off and we say, “Peek-a-boo.”

  What is the meaning of this game?  I pretend to be gone away and absent.  I pretend that you cannot see me.  And then I suddenly return by saying “Peek-a-boo.”

  When you are a young baby or a child, can you see and touch your mommy and daddy all of the time?

  No, they sleep in another room; they go to work.  They go into the kitchen.  You go to preschool or school.  So sometimes we cannot see or touch or hear our mommy and daddy.  But even though we do not see, or touch or hear them we know that they still live.  We know that at anytime they can surprise us when they come to be with us.

  And that is what our Gospel story is about.  When Jesus died, they put his body in the tomb.  And suddenly his body was gone from the tomb.

  And his disciples suddenly began to have peek-a-boo games with Jesus.  Suddenly Jesus would appear to them to let them know that they were okay and he was still alive.

  And now God still plays peek-a-boo with us.   Although we don’t actual see God or Jesus.  We still know his presence.

  In the love of our parents and friends, Christ is jumping out and saying “Peek-a-boo, I love you and I care for you.”  In the fun that we have, in learning, in seeing the beautiful world that God has made for us, God also has hidden his presence.  And God is saying to us, “Peek-a-boo, I see you….I love you and I care for you.”

  And you and I, are to be God messengers for the game of Peek-a-boo.  When we are loving and kind, when we care for one another and when we help each other, Christ is saying “Peek-a-boo” to this world through us.

  So even though we don’t see or touch Christ, let us remember that Christ is still present in many, many ways and he is ready to surprise us at anytime with love and care, and he is saying, “Peek-a-boo, I see you and I love you and I care for you.”  Amen.