Showing posts with label Sermon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sermon. Show all posts

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Pentecost and "esprit de corps"

Day of Pentecost  A May 31, 2020
Gen. 11:1-9Ps. 104: 25-32
Acts 2:1-11      John 14:8-17, 25-17  
Lectionary Link

Today is the Feast of Pentecost and we might begin by recounting the meaning and the symbols of this Feast Day.  

Pentecost means fiftieth and on the Christian calendar is the 50th day after Easter.  It parallel as Jewish feast of Shavuot, or feast of weeks which is the day after the 7 weeks after Passover.  So, Judaism and Christianity have Pentecosts but they have diverge with completely different meanings.

In salvation history, Pentecost is seen as the "coming" out day of the Holy Spirit.  If Christ is the Word who is God from the beginning, then the Holy Spirit is the Eternal Word translated and spoken in every language; meaning that Christian faith was a strategic plan to make God, through Christ universally accessible to the world, and it meant that an understanding of God could no longer be exclusive to the synagogue for only the ritually adherent members of the Jewish faith.  Although, we see an uneven chronology about the Holy Spirit because according to the Gospel of John, the 11 disciples did not have to wait until Pentecost to receive the Spirit; Jesus breathed the Spirit on them in the Doubting Thomas encounter.    And those pre-filled disciples were speaking in different tongues on Pentecost.

Pentecost is the healing of the event of the Babel tower, when God confused the languages of humanity because a "united" humanity planned a prideful overthrow of God by building a great city with a great tower unto the heavens.  A polyglot world of people was seen as God's punishment; but in Pentecost the revealing  of the Holy Spirit meant that Christ could be known in all languages and hence it was a celebration of a unity of harmony in differences.  Humanity can indeed be united in the right way and the right way is for everyone to come to know the nature of Christ, the eternal Word within them.

What does the use of metaphors tell us?  It tells us that metaphors reach their limitation when one tries to convert poetry into literalism.  So, what is the limitation of Spirit or Holy Spirit?  What does it mean to say Holy Special Wind or Breath?  Or Holy Dove?  Or Holy purifying Fire?  Or Holy Anointing oil?  When we try to speak of Spirit we just keep adding metaphors and similes; but are we getting to substantial insight about the meaning of Spirit?

As you know, I like to go off the reservation of textbook and cliche theology and doctrine because I'm too curious about how and what Spirit can mean and evoke meaning for me in this post-modern age that has brought us to skepticism of skepticism.

A pragmatic and graspable insight about Spirit, is to understand it as the mystery of receiving the identities of our lives.  Our group identities are mysteries.  What do we call group mystical identity?  esprits de corps.  Spirit of the body.  We experience esprit de corps in families, in nationality, in school and colleges, hometown cities and town, with our sporting teams and in our faith communities.   We experience esprit de corps in any significant identity we come to have in our lives.  We admit that it is something of a mystery about our group identity.  E pluribus unum.  Out of the many, one.  How does this oneness of group identity happen?

To understand spirit, we might look at an entire continuum of kinds of identities.  We know that there can be evil "esprit d'corps, known as mob behaviors.  One can see when dictators and prejudiced leaders can create mob behaviors and people will shout and do hateful things as a group which they would not necessarily do as an individual.  A bad "spirit" can possess a mob.  Other public group identities are more benign or even beneficial.  A sporting event or even a partisan political rally can be benign.  A rally of people supporting a cancer fundraiser or patriotic causes can result in a beneficial group "esprit d'corps."  In the Christian context, the diversity of believers in Jesus gathering and uniting in that belief through prayer, teaching, singing and liturgy represent what we understand to be the Holy Spirit of Pentecost.  The Holy Spirit can be evident in the effervescence of a gathering.  It is the numerical strength in numbers which shows itself in a qualitative palpable feeling of identity among people.  It is expressed as the mystery of experience another person, as in "whenever two or three are gathered in Christ's name," Christ is present and can be known as giving wisdom and insight within the group experience.

The Bible also includes "spirit" and individual personal self-knowledge.  The Psalmist cried out, "Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me."  It is a goal in life to be "pure in heart."  And we know how hard it is for us to know ourselves as being "pure in motives" in all things.  We also know that in the purity code certain people of wildly erratic public behavior deemed as anti-social were said to have "unclean spirits."  Part of the ministry of Jesus was to whisper people to a place of peaceful "cleanliness of spirit."

But further, the Gospels indicate that Jesus not only invited us to know ourselves as children of God in knowing our heavenly Parent, he also promised that his absence would not leave us disconnected from Him or His Father.  He would send, he would breath, he unveiled that knowing of an inner Advocate, a Spirit of Truth who would help us in the task of replicating the life practices of Jesus with us.

The Feast of Pentecost sums up the very best of knowing within ourselves the Clean Heart of knowing the Holy Spirit within us.  The Feast of Pentecost is a celebration of the spark and effervescence which happens when people knowing the Holy Spirit gather together to reinforce their identity with Christ.  Sparks happen.  It is as though everyone's spirit surfaces and then there is an experience of the further identity of knowing Christ in our midst.  This is why we gather.  This is why we miss gathering now.  We want each person's experience of the Holy Spirit to be evident in a physical gathering so as to realize the group identity of being the body of Christ.   As we celebrate being quite different members in gifts and calling, yet finding enlightened and peaceful reciprocity in pooling our spiritual gifts to make Christ known in our world.

Today, we long for gathered effervescence of the Holy Spirit, even while we make the most of our virtual gatherings.  Don't diminish them and their importance.  The entire holy Scriptures are virtual.  We weren't there when Scriptures were written to their specific communities but by the technology of writing, the Scriptures are virtually available to us and they have been important in the transmission of the presence of God and Christ across history.  And who can we give credit to for this transmission of the Good News of God in Christ across history?  The Holy Spirit, of course.

Let us be thankful for the unveiling of the Holy Spirit for us, as the Clean Heart which we can experience within us.  But also let us renew the effervescent group identity of knowing ourselves socially as the Body of Christ.

We say today again, "Come Holy Spirit, our hearts inspire and enlighten with celestial fire."  Let us know the most significant inner Advocate and affirming presence in our lives today.  Amen.

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Jesus Did Not Want to Be an Only Child!

7 Easter Cycle  A      May 24, 2020

Acts 1:6-14        Ps. 68 

 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11   John 17:1-11     
Lectionary Link


Today is the Sunday after the Ascension.  Houston, there's been a lift off and Jesus has gone out of sight....And where did the early church believe that Jesus went?  They believed that he went into the realm of God to be with his heavenly parent and be a High Priest in the heavenly realm.  And what does Jesus the High Priest do?  He continues to live forever making intercession on our behalf.

In the Gospel of John for today, we've read the true "Lord's Prayer;" the other one is actually the disciples' prayer taught to them by Jesus, and he did teach them to address God as "Our Father."

When we read the Gospel of John, we get the impression that the writer walked with Jesus and was so beloved and close to Jesus that he shared with him his words and thoughts.  And if Jesus is a great High Priest who intercedes for us in heaven, the Gospels also presented him as a man who prayed and interceded for his friends while he lived on earth.

The writer of John really felt so close to Jesus, that he knew how Jesus prayed, so much so that we get a glimpse into the heart of concern of Jesus.  This prayer of Jesus expresses the mystical goal of the Gospel program of John's Gospel.  "Father, I ask that my friends might be one, as you and are one."

We sometimes think that this refers to the unity of the church, and it can and does, but more specifically in John's mystical program, Jesus desires that each person come to know the oneness with the heavenly parent as it has been modeled by him.  

Jesus is saying to his heavenly parent, " Father, I don't want to be an only child....let me have many, many, many brothers and sister.  Let them realize their end in life, which is to know themselves as sons and daughters of God.  That they may be one with you Father, as I am one with with you.

So, how are you and I going to realize and know that we are sons and daughters of God and one with our heavenly parent?

We're going to do what Jesus did.  And what did Jesus do?  He prayed.  We pray because we already have taken up identity within the family of God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  What is prayer?  According to our catechism it is living as though all our lives is a continual response to God with words and without words; with unspoken words of our body language in what we do and perform in love and justice.

In John's Gospel, Christ is the Eternal Word from the beginning.  Jesus said that his words were Spirit and life.   And when we make our lives prayer lives, we make our words spirit and life.  We live our lives emulating Jesus who is an intercessor for others.

When Jesus walked this earth, he prayed for his friends.  When Christ rose and ascended, he continues to pray.  And he says to us, " I want to borrow you and your life; I want to pray in and through you continually and make your lives, lives of prayer, and so you will know your true identity as sons and daughters of God, because you will embrace the very same prayer ministry that I have in this world."

Dear friends, don't doubt the image of God on your life.  You belong to God.  And how do you know it and practice it?  You pray, I pray and we all pray, all of the time.  Prayer involves word and Prayer words create.  They name the situation.  They name the need.  They name the normalcy of health and salvation.  They state the deprivation from health and salvation which sin and sickness and this pandemic are.  And words are like votes; if we cast enough of them to invoke health and salvation, we can tip the scales toward majority in the freedom that is in our world and come to realize health.

No matter what happened to Jesus.  He prayed.  Why?  He was one with God the Creator.  And you and I are invited into the priestly ministry of Jesus by living lives of prayer as it has been shown to us by Jesus.

Rejoice today.  We are chlldren of God.  We are one with the Father.  So, let get on with it.  Let get on with making prayer the very vocation of our lives.  Not just table grace prayer or prayer at church; but prayer as our intentional life of responding to God as our Father.  Amen.


Saturday, May 23, 2020

Mystical Union? Being a Child of God

7 Easter Cycle A May 24, 2020
Acts 1:6-14 Ps. 68
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 John 17:1-11

The Gospel of John is significantly different from the other canonical Gospels. It was written later and includes different literary forms. It does not have parables; it does not have exorcisms, it does not have the Bethlehem birth story, and the miracles are called signs but it does have very long discourses and is the most significant "red letter/words of Jesus" Gospel. One of the long "discourses" of Jesus is the long prayer in John, chapter 17, which is in fact, can more likely be called the "Lord's Prayer," than the "Our Father," since the "Our Father," could be called the disciples' prayer. Remember the Gospel process involved persons who believe they were filled with God's Spirit, who had the mind of Christ, and who believed that when they spoke in the name of Jesus, they were channeling his words as an oracle of Christ himself. These oracle words channeled through the early preachers/friends of Jesus were then placed in narrative teaching contexts that became the Gospels. In the Gospel writings, there is a distinction of weaved words from the oral tradition of Jesus of Nazareth and the oracles words of the Risen Christ channeled through the early evangelists. John's Gospel is so distinctly different, it seems to involve more channeled words of the Risen Christ and the word are presented in a mystagogic form as a spiritual program for initiates to be on a transformational path to realize the end and goal of human life.

What is the biblical end and goal of human life? It is to recover and live out the image of God as our heavenly parent. Jesus Christ is the one who God gave to this world to help human being realize themselves as sons and daughters of God.

In the prayer of Jesus, which we read on Ascension Sunday, we have a prayer of Jesus speaking in the past tense about his time on earth. And he states his pray wish for his disciples. "Father, I pray that they may be one, even as you are one in me." This is the mystical goal of life. Jesus, told his disciples, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father." And now he wants it to be, "if you see my disciple, you also can see the Father; that is, you can see the image of God upon their lives as they have come into the power to be children of God."

What did the early Christians believe about the Ascended Christ? They believed that he had attained another state of glory, of profound influential fame, the influential fame of being next to God and interceding on behalf of his earthly friends.

You and I should use the interceding prayers of Jesus like our stairway, ladder or elevator to attain what St. Paul said, "be seated with Christ in heavenly places." This is the spiritual poetry of the early church to speak about mystical union with God in Christ in knowing oneself as a child of God.

John's Gospel is the most profound Gospel about the Fatherhood of God. Many of the words of the Risen Christ in the Gospel oracles are about the relationship between Jesus the Son and God the Father. Jesus is the unique Child, unique Son of God to help us realize, or have the power and authority to be sibling children of God.

In our modern era of coming into a fuller appreciation of the equality of women in our social order, but also into our theological symbols, the seeming limitation of "masculine" designation for the divine can seem starkly excluding of the feminine. And in charity, we need to understand the limitation of cultures of patriarchal dominance. Hebrew Scriptures has feminine designations for the divine, even while the masculine often prevailed because of the heavenly competition with the various goddesses of Canaan. In the old order when microscopic things were not yet seen, the contribution of the egg as equal in child birth was not known, and the masculine was given an omni-competence for generating the whole child, who had merely been planted in "soil" of the womb. In the old order, the masculine was the nature of a child and the feminine was but the nurture of the child. Since Paul wrote that in Christ, there is neither male nor female, but a new creation, we can understand the Fatherhood of God in a more androgynous way, as an omni-competent Heavenly Parent from whom we derived and whom we seek to be one with as we seek to perfectly bear the image of our heavenly parent.

The prayer, "that they may be one," has often been reduced to ecclesiastical policy. It is seen as a prayer of Jesus for the unity of the church. And yet there are so many churches which are not in such unity. I think that this prayer of Jesus has less to do with the administrative unity of everyone who calls themselves Christian; no, it has to do with each person coming into the power of being a child of God and bearing in the best possible way the image of our heaven parent and creator.

This is the daunting task of our lives; to bear the image of God into our world as we have been given the perfect example in the life of Jesus Christ.

And how to we bear the image of God into our world? With the practice of love and justice. What does God look like in our world now? God looks like love and justice as it can come to people in many ways through the practice of people who are seeking to bear and live out the image of God in this world.

Jesus said, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." And what did we see in Jesus? Sacrificial love, honesty and justice.

Now this day, on Ascension Sunday, we note the real absence of Jesus of Nazareth from this world. And what is it that takes the place of the absent Jesus of Nazareth?
The Risen Christ says, "If people see you, then they have seen your heavenly parent." Why? Because the prayer of the Risen Christ is always, "Father/Parent, make them one as you are one in me."

Let us use the power of the prayer of Christ for us, to realize ourselves as children of God today. Amen



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Sunday, May 17, 2020

Being Contained as God's Offspring through Jesus Christ

6 Easter A       May 17, 2020  
Acts 17:22-31       Ps. Ps. 66   
1 Peter 3:13-22     John 14:15-21                

Lectionary Link
What is a container?   A container is something that has stuff inside of it.  A container has a boundary, a border and outside surface.  And in many ways we live in a world of containers, entities with outer surfaces which contain inner stuff.

Each of us is a container.  Our outer surface is our epidermis with some "attachments," like hair, eyeballs and finger nail and toe nails.    And we have inside of us all our physiological stuff that is best known by surgeons who actually get to interact with the same.  But we contain lots of "non-physiological" stuff, the stuff of what we call thought, emotions, feelings, sense of self, personal identity, cultural identity and many other things which we have named because we believe that they reside or are contained within us.  Through our cultures we have come to accept the mapping of our interior life, and we inherited the knowing of ourselves as body, soul and spirit in our Christian interior map.

The encounter of St. Paul with the Greeks on Mars Hill in Athens is a telling account.  It instantiate the fact that Paul, formerly, Saul of Tarsus was a man with a background in the Hebrew-Judaic tradition but he lived in the Diaspora as a Roman citizen within a culture that would be called Greco-Roman in composition.

Athens was the ultimate symbolic place of Greek philosophical world influence.  Greek philosophers from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle found a way to hold their beliefs in gods and goddesses even while proposing the very foundation of rigorous philosophical, reasoned inquiry.

Paul is presented, in this account from the Acts of the Apostles as a Christian apologist who is looking for correspondences within the artifacts of the Greek culture.  He encountered the agnosticism in the statute with the engraving, "To an unknown god."  This is quite amazing, since there were many gods and goddesses in the Greco-Roman pantheon, so to honor an "unknown god," was a place for Paul to begin, since it represented a humility of openness that there might be something further to understand about the meaning of the divine life.

And Paul, also adopted a phrase which suggested that the God which the Greco-Roman people did not know was not just another member of the pantheon of gods and goddesses, but rather this God was the ultimate Container.  Paul stated, "In God, we live and move and have our being."  Is there a more ultimate Container than such a God?  Such a container would not have anything outside of it influencing it from without.  Such a container would only be influenced by everything that it contained.  We live and move and have our being in God.  We are contained by the ultimate Container.

And yet Paul also goes on to affirm the special existence of human beings.  We are not impersonal stuff in the great God Container; no, we are offspring of God.  Here again, Paul recognized an insight which came, not from the Hebrew Scriptures but which came from a Greek poet.  And Paul, as a Jew, could agree, because he believed that in the tradition of Adam, we were made in God's image, so we are higher personality stuff; not like a rock, or tree, or even a monkey.  We are higher personality stuff.

God can be regarded to be "unknown."  If God is so high and a different kind of existing being, then such an alien would not be able to be communicated with.  There would be no common language between humanity and such a God.  How does an unknown God become known by human beings?  By discovering a human being who is so magnificent that he is bi-lingual in the life and language of God and in the life and language of Jesus Christ we have such a "bi-lingual" Being.  And if such a being is made known, then we can be directed to find our own "bi-lingual nature," and realize our identity as children of God.

The Gospel of John is about knowing the power, the authority of being children of God.  The Gospel of John is explicit about Jesus presenting God as our heavenly Parent with Jesus as the unique divine Son who bears the image of God in such a profound way as to become definitive of what our relationship with God is to be.

Are we to be trapped in the physical and psychological determinism of our natural parents and cultures? No, the Gospel of John through the oracles of Jesus indicate that we can know our determination by our heavenly parent.  We can know that we are offspring of God, sons and daughters of God.

When parents die or leave our lives, we become orphans.  The Gospel of Jesus is a message about never being an orphan; our heavenly parent never left, never will leave, and never will die.

"So, Jesus, how can we know that we've not abandoned orphans, after you are gone and we are not able to see you?"  "I'm glad you ask," says the Risen Christ, "because I have the Holy Spirit within me to know this perpetual connection with God, the heavenly Parent.  And you are going to have this Internal Advocate too, so that you will have your true parentage always verified."  The Holy Spirit verifies our heavenly DNA.

Let us summarize some Gospel and Scripture insights for today.  1-We and everything else is contained in God as the Ultimate Container.   2-God is a very Personal Container, and we are made as God's offspring because unlike a rock or water, we are made of higher personality stuff.  3-God can be unknown unless we have a divine-human bi-lingual conduit for communication between humanity and God.  4-Jesus Christ is the divine-human bi-lingual Unique Son of God who came so that we could realize the original blessing of our creation in God's image as God's children.

And knowing this Gospel, let us accept our heavenly parentage and let us follow Jesus in learning how to be better in our bi-lingual practice of speaking the language of heaven within our earthly human experience.  The divine language in human experience is best known as love and justice.  Jesus Christ became human and spoke human language so that within human language we might learn to speak that which is most God-ward in human experience and so fully possess our inheritance as children of God.

This is the Gospel we celebrate and offer to all today.  Amen




Sunday, May 10, 2020

Jesus, like a Good Mom Prepared His "Kids" for His Absence

5 Easter a         May 10, 2020
Acts 17:1-15       Ps. 66: 1-8   
1 Peter 2:1-10     John 14:1-14



Lectionary Link
The Gospel of John include oracles of the Risen Christ placed within a narrative of Jesus.  These oracles address the issues which were facing the early Christian communities.

And in today's Gospel reading, we might understand Jesus as a good real estate agent, or a heavenly HUD authority.  We all like to have a place to live, and we may want to have assurance of a place to live in our afterlives.  Jesus, the ideal Real Estate agent, promises, "Guys, you going to be just fine in your afterlife, because in my Father's house there are many dwelling places and I've prepared one for each of you."  Now many of us with Downton Abbey sensitivities would prefer that the Risen Christ still spoke King James English, because in King James English, Jesus said, "Gentlemen, in my Father's house are many mansions.".....which would you rather live in a mansion or a nondescript "dwelling place?"  So, in changing translations do we get down-sized to the low rent district of the Father housing complex?

What is being addressed in the oracle of the Risen Christ in John's Gospel?

The church is dealing with the real absence of Jesus.  Jesus of Nazareth is gone.  How can we still have faith and believe that he is alive.  And what kind of future will we have?  What kind of future afterlife will we have?  Will we have a location in the the afterlife?  Will we have a place to live in the afterlife?  Will we have a home in the afterlife?

What does the Risen Christ say?  “Don't be troubled.  You can believe in me and my Father that we will take care of you.  I will prepare a place for you.  You will always have a home with me.”  On Mother's Day, we associate Mom with preparing a home; and if Mom did it for us, so too we have the assurance of the Risen Christ about always having a home, a location, a continuing self identity no matter what happens.  Our good doubting Thomas states the obvious regarding empirical proof.  Jesus, we can't see where you're going or where you've arrived.  How can we know the way?  And the  Risen Christ says, "I am, in you, the Way,"  I'm your internal GPS guiding system because, "I am, in you, the Way."  "I am, in you, Truth and honesty about your life, about God and your purpose in life."  "I am, in you, Zoe, or Abundant Life.  I am, in you, Holy Spirit Risen Christ life, which is the experience of eternal life within ordinary biological mortal life.  I am, your brother in showing you that you belong to our heavenly parent as God's child."

Again, another doubter, Philip, who is all of us in our "show me" demands.  "Show us our Father, show us our heavenly parent, so that we can know we are God's child."

And what did the Risen Christ say?  "Seeing me, you have seen our heavenly parent...the very genetics of the divine image is in me completely and it is in you too as you see the divine image staring at you through each other.  Don't doubt the higher familial likeness of the divine image on you for that is how you are made."

What was another main concern of the early Christians?  Well, now that Jesus has left the world how can any work as good as what he did get done?  "Jesus, you did it all and you did it best, so what can we do in any comparable way?  What is our purpose and work now?"

What does the Risen Christ say?  "Friends, your work is even greater.  Why?  My work as Jesus of Nazareth was limited to the time that I lived in Palestine, but time still is accumulating in greatness in everlastingness.  So, to keep filling up the time, there is greater work to do and I will no longer be limited to my physical body in Palestine.  I will be the Risen Christ in you replicating and reproducing endlessly the work of the Gospel of the Good News of God's love.  So, friends, you are a part of the greater work as the Gospel rolls on in time in everlastingness.  Don't limit me to the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth; let me be the Risen Christ inhabiting all who want me to work in and through them.  I am the cornerstone to the body and temple of Christ as I will inhabit you to keep doing the greater work into the endless future."

Today's Gospel in short: Mom prepared a home for us. Christ has prepared an afterlife home for us and having faith in this, we can live with all of our other temporary homes on earth.  Second, trust the presence of Risen Christ as our Way or internal GPS guiding us as we intentionally commit ourselves to his path.  3rd. Let us live in the Truth as Honesty about the Risen Christ in us.  Next, let us accept the assurance of eternal life within mortal life.  And let us accept the familial likeness of the heavenly parent on our lives and find Christ in each other.  The Father is seen as we let the Father see through us.  And finally, let us not think that Jesus during his lifetime exhausted all of the work God wants to do in this world.  Let us accept the absence of the physical Jesus as the assurance of the omni-presence of the spiritual Risen Christ, who St. Paul said poetically, was All and in all.  By accepting the absence of the physical Jesus we can commit ourselves to be a part of doing the greater work that remains as we allow the Risen Christ to continue to work to share the good news of God's reconciling love in our world.  Amen.

Sunday, May 3, 2020

Being Rightly Related to Power, Knowledge and Wealth

4 Easter A        May 3, 2020
Acts 6:1-9, 7:2a 51-60   Ps. 23  
1 Peter 2:19-25    John 10:1-10                




Lectionary Link

In many ways, life is about our relationship to and with power, knowledge and wealth.  It is a desirable goal to have a right relationship with power, knowledge and wealth.  In our lives, we need good modeling to show us how to have the right relationship with power, knowledge and wealth.

We can come into our relationship with power, knowledge and wealth in at least three ways.  First, in being so dependent that we need all three of these expressed to us in care.  Second, by being presented with a negative relationship with power, knowledge and wealth to expose the wrong use of these human life expression, a kind of aversion therapy.   But finally, we need to experience the best possible modeling of how to express the power, knowledge and wealth of our lives.

I am not sure why we have it in the lectionary, but Good Shepherd Sunday occurs each year in the season of Easter.  It could be that it sometimes coincides with Mother's Day, and who is a better example of good shepherding than a good mother?  But this year, it does not coincide with Mother's Day.

It would be true to say that the desirable expression of the Risen Life of Christ is to live the life of a good shepherd.

The Good Shepherd discourse from John's Gospel models three facets of our relationship with power, knowledge and wealth.

The first being, "sheephood."  Yes, everyone is at times in the role of a sheep.  Why?  Because vulnerability and needing the ministry of power, knowledge and wealth on our behalf is often our life situation.  We can be the most powerful, knowledgable, and wealthy person in the world but still be in need.  Of a good meal, of surgery, of mechanical repairs on our car, a hair cut.  It is being in need of others which creates the balancing of reciprocity that is needed for all societies to function well.  As dependent sheep, we are often on the receiving end of need.  And when we are, we hope that power, knowledge and wealth will be exercise toward us for our care.  And because we all know the experience of human need, this should train us in empathy for others or we may so detest being in need that we may deny that we need help and we may fail to learn the lessons of empathy when we are in need.

Failure to learn empathy in our time of need, can lead to the abuse of power, knowledge and wealth.  In the Good Shepherd discourse, the words of Jesus refers to those who abuse power, knowledge and wealth as thieves and bandits.  Power, knowledge and wealth can be used to exploit the weak, the ignorant and naive and the poor.  People who do not learn empathy and honesty about their own need of other people, can become exploiters.  They are the leaders who are "bad shepherds" who exploit every situation for their own selfish ends.  And in the words of Jesus, he is saying, "Don't be bad shepherds.  Don't abuse your gifts of power, knowledge and wealth; put them at the service of people who are in need."

And that brings us to the metaphor for the proper use of power, knowledge and wealth.  It is the metaphor of the Good Shepherd.  Jesus is the metaphor for the Good Shepherd.  Who is more powerful, wealthier and more intelligent than God and his Son?  How do the Divine Persons of the Trinity use power, knowledge and wealth?  They use them as gifts to us.  And when these gifts are given to us, we in turn need to follow the example of the Good Shepherd in ministering to those who are needy sheep.

May God give us the grace of learning empathy from all of the times that we know personal need.  And may the power of the Risen Christ and the Holy Spirit help us to use our empathy to be good shepherds and minister to those in need.

In this way, you and I can be rightly related to the gifts of power, knowledge and wealth in our lives.  May God, raise us up from the empathy gained in our times of need, to be good shepherds to the people who need our help and care today.  Amen.

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Process Your Surprises with the Risen Christ

3 Easter A    April 26, 2020 
Acts 2:14a,36-47   Ps. 116:10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23    Luke 24:13-35              

Lectionary Page
Do you like surprises?  You probably immediately are thinking, well it depends upon what it is.  The pandemic has been a surprise, probably the biggest surprise in our lifetimes and it is so dominating our lives and making us change our former routines for such a long time, we know that there will be a sea change and there cannot be a going back to the ways things were formerly.  It is a surprise which has permanently altered our lives.

What is the main ingredient in a surprise?  The main ingredient for the one or ones who experience it is that it is unplanned.  I am going to have a planned surprise happen to me.  That an oxymoron.

The disciples of Jesus on Easter Day were trying to cope with a very unfortunate surprise. Their friend and mentorJesus, who was a champion and a King, was taken by the Romans and crucified and he was buried.  What kind of Messiah who did all of those wonderful things ends up dying on a cross?  Surprise.  "Well, we have to pack up and go home.  The Movement is dead.  Let get back to our village of Emmaus, even though we've heard some rumors about body snatching in Jerusalem,  it is time to try to figure out what we're going to do next.

Let's just walk in silence and lick our wounds.  But then we're joined by another person walking the route and he joins us and inquires about us and we talk about the hubbub in the Jerusalem and how Jesus was not who we thought he was and he was not a triumphant king like we wanted and hoped for.  Messiahs and kings don't get put on a cross.

But the traveler seems to know his Hebrew Scriptures.  We use the Hebrew Scripture as a template for understanding what greatness means for us and our people.  But this traveler tells us that we've missed something in the Hebrew Scriptures, the part about the Person of God's anointing and choosing, being a Suffering Servant.  He leads us to a different view of the Messiah and what greatness means for God's Messiah.  The Messiah is Emmanuel or God with us, and where is God with us?  Everywhere including in death and after death."

The two disciples of Jesus in their grief were engaged by this unrecognized traveler and they were challenged to change their model for what the Messiah would look like.  They were presented with Suffering Servant model from the prophet Isaiah.

They were so engaged, they invited the traveler to their home for some food.  And as they sat to break bread together, "Poof,"  the incognito Risen Christ suddenly became known to these forlorn disciples.  And they were surprised, this time in a completely differently way.  They had been surprised negatively in the death of Jesus on the Cross; but now they were surprised by this unique ability of the Risen Christ to be with them incognito and then suddenly be recognized and then suddenly spirited away.

St. Paul wrote that the resurrection involves our spiritual body which reconstitutes a fuller incorruptible self.  And the appearances of the Risen Christ indicates that he was in his resurrected spiritual body which could be reconstituted as actual and apparent physical appearance to some, and then be gone.  One could even believe that the love for Jesus and the loss of Jesus caused such a profound grief that it was a grief which invited Jesus to re-appear and encounter those who deeply mourned his loss.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus had a "peek a boo, I see you" encounter with the Risen Christ.  And they were surprised.  They did not control the surprise.  They did not control how the Risen Christ became known to them.  But they, in joy, received the surprise and responded with hope.  "Let's get back to Jerusalem and see if the gang is still together.  If someone can reappear after death, that would qualify as being a candidate for being the Messiah."

The Emmaus Road story encodes the two ways in which we believe that the church is given to known the presence of Christ.  In Scriptures and in the breaking of the bread.  But these two means of knowing the presence of Christ do not exhaust the many other ways that Christ can be known.

One of the narratives of Hope is the narrative of surprise.  Our lives have been given content, timeline, and identity by the surprises in our lives.  Each person has had Christ incognito surprises  in life and maybe without even acknowledging it or knowing it.  Hope also is the creative force that gives us some anticipation about some more surprises of the Risen Christ variety.

One of the first games we teach our babies is the game of Peek a boo, I see you.  Unwittingly, we in this simple game are trying to wean our baby from our visual presence and then surprise them suddenly.  We are trying to teach our babies that even when we are not with them by sight, sound, or touch, we still are with them with profound loving presence.

And that is what God is playing with us in our lives today.  Seemingly absent or incognito and suddenly, "Peek a boo, I see you, I am alway seeing, I love you, I care for you."

I hope that you have known God to be a loving parent playing with you, "Peek a boo, I see you."  God respects the world enough that God created such that even under every stone unturned there can be a surprise, "Peek a boo, I see you, I love you, I care for you."  Amen

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Is Your Experience of the Risen Lord Blessed?

2 Easter Sunday        April 19, 2020
Acts 2:14a,22-32          Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9          John 20:19-31 

Lectionary Link 

I love the Doubting Thomas Story which we always read on Low Sunday, the Sunday after Easter.  It is full of too much to preach on in one occasion.


I find it interesting that the writer is shamelessly promotional about the author's own writing and, in fact, uses the Doubting Thomas story to validate Gospel writing as a significant means of making Christ present.  "These things are written so that you may believe...."  


Writing is a Word product.  It is a technology of memory.  If Jesus is gone and if all of the eyewitnesses to Jesus have passed away.  And if there is a broken line of community transmission of oral traditions about Jesus, how does Jesus remain in the world?  Through his appearance in written text.  But can written text really be a valid stand-in for Christ, an alter Christus, as another valid presence of Christ?


This pandemic has required that we practice social distancing and not be present to each other. If we don't see each other, do we still exist?  Do we still believe in each other?  Are we still persuaded about the validity and viability of our parish community?


Word has morphed and created many products beyond text.  Human being speak, but then wrote "picture words," which became writing.  We have artistic representations in pictures.   Then came photography, and  telegraphs, and telephones, and  video,  and now we have the mass promulgation of "live" and recorded video on television.  And on the the internet, we have all of the Word products that give us proof to believe in each other and be validly present to each other.  We might say that all of these alternative ways of connection are not substitute for actually being together, but they suffice during this time of pandemic.  We should not minimize these connection; they may actually intensify and appreciate each other better than if we were gathering.


One can remember the proverbial letters from home to the soldier who in the written letter experiences an intense intense sense of his loved one being with him.  But then on the return to the home of his loved one, he soon takes being present so much for granted that his loved one seems to be absent.


The Doubting Thomas, highlights the differences in the how the presence of the Risen Christ was experienced in the early churches.


The eyewitnesses of Jesus and his post-resurrection appearance may be placed on such a pedestal that their experience of Christ might be regarded to be superior to anyone who did not walk and talk with Jesus.  As eyewitnesses were dying out, how could the experience of Christ be regarded to be authentic?


How many times have we thought, well, I can be excused for my faith, because I did not have the privilege of walking and talking with Jesus.  And I haven't had the same kind of experience that St. Paul had; I was not knocked off my horse on a trip to San Diego and blinded by a bright light from heaven; so there is no reason to think that my experience of Christ is as valid and as authentic as St. Thomas' or St. Paul's.


Can we appreciate how the Doubting Thomas Story is the oracle of Christ in the early church invoked to deal with the inferiority complex of second generation Christians who were not eyewitness of Jesus and who did not even know an eyewitness of Jesus?


Can we see this Doubting Thomas Story as witness to the fact that Risen Christ is confirming blessing and validity upon your experience and my experience of the Risen Christ?


The Doubting Thomas was a good scientist.  "Jesus still lives, if and only if, I can verify his existence according to the standards of science which is empirical verification.  If Jesus is alive, show me.  Demonstrate it to me.  Let me see you Jesus so that you can prove your Risen Life to me."


If Thomas's empirical method was the standard for faith, then there would have been only a few valid Christians.  And not even St. Paul would have qualified as a Christian, if he had demanded the type of Risen Christ experience which Thomas did.  St. Paul had a visionary experience of the Risen Christ.


If Thomas's standard for valid faith is the norm, there would be no Christian faith.  There would be no-transhistorical transmission of the Gospel.


The early church included people who were having many different kinds of experiences giving them proof that Christ was still alive, and such experiences were not eyewitness experiences.  So how could the experiences of all of the people who were not eyewitnesses to Jesus or his post-resurrection appearances be valid and trusted experiences?   How could the early church leader convince the followers of Jesus that they had valid experiences of the Risen Christ.


If we understand this dilemma, then we can understand the writing purpose of the Doubting Thomas event.  This Gospel story is the oracle of the Risen Christ conferring blessing upon the experiences of those who were not eyewitnesses to Jesus of Nazareth.


But the Gospel writer gives us clues about how we can know the presence of the Risen Christ in our lives.  First there is peace.  Jesus said, "Peace be with you."  This is part of our weekly liturgy.  We pass the peace to bear witness to the presence of the Risen Christ.  Another sign is God's Spirit.  Jesus breathed on the disciples and said," Receive the Spirit." Jesus also said that His word were Spirit and that they were life.  We have the Spirit and Words of Jesus with us to validate the Risen Christ in our midst.  Jesus said told his disciple to forgive sins, even though they could retain them if they so chose.  The presence of Risen Christ is known and validated in a community which does not retain sins, but practices forgiveness.

In direct contrast to Thomas' demand for empirical evidence of the Risen Christ, Jesus said, "Thomas, I'm glad that you see and believe, you are blessed.  But what about all of the people who do not see and touch and yet still believe.  Truly they are blessed."  Here we see Jesus conferring blessing and validity upon your experiences of the Risen Christ and my experiences of the Risen Christ.  We do not have to have inferiority complexes about our experiences of the Risen Christ.  Accept your versions of the Risen Christ that have come to you this day as valid, especially if they include peace, forgiveness and the Holy Spirit.

And don't forget about Words.  Words of all sorts.  The writer of the Gospel of John said that you could know the Risen Christ by reading his Gospel words.  And he wrote this directly, "Readers, I wrote this Gospel so that you might believe in Jesus as Son of God and Messiah and that in believing you might have life in his name."  In other words, just by having these Gospel words rearrange your inner lives toward Spirit, Peace and forgiveness, your experience of the Risen Christ is just as valid and blessed as the Doubting Thomas.

Friends, you and I are invited to accept the blessing and the validity of our experiences of the Risen Christ today.  Let us not doubt the confirming blessing of Jesus Christ upon our experiences of the Risen Christ today.  Amen.ca

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Easter Co-exists with Every Situation

Easter Sunday     A   April 12, 2020     
Acts 10:34-43  Psalm118:1-2,14-24
Colossians 3:1-4 Matthew 28:1-10

We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our Song.  We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our Song.

Easter is our chief identity as Christians and Alleluia is one of our favorite words.  We were an Easter people during the season of Lent, but we fasted from the word, Alleluia.  We did that voluntarily, but in these past weeks the growing threat of coronavirus pandemic has forced upon all sorts of involuntary fasting.

We have had to fast from many, many things that we have been taking for granted.  Imagine, giving up attending church during Lent.  What kind of discipline is that?  We’ve had to fast from each other; we have had to maintain social distance.  We’ve had to fast from going to work,  and for some, fast from receiving paychecks.

Just as we are Easter people when we fast during Lent, so too we are still Easter people in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic.  And how are we proving that we are Easter people during this pandemic?

By caring for one another.  By restructuring our economic infrastructures for the survival of people.  By redirecting our resources so that all can have enough. By redirecting our modes of production so that our medical professional can have enough of the protective supplies and ventilators for their patients.  We are an Easter people in the midst of the pandemic.

On the first Easter morning when the women and men disciples and friends of Jesus were in mourning over his death, they were confronted with his reappearances.  They were shocked by his re-appearances.  They were baffled by his re-appearances.  They could not believe that someone actually beat death.  How is that possible that someone beat death?  Outlived death?

How is it possible that someone proved that there is a kind of personal continuity of one’s life after he or she has died.  Unbelievable.  Baffling.

But slowly and with confidence those early friends of Jesus began to accept the hopeful promise which the re-appearances of Jesus gave them.

And what happened to them?  They took on their new identity.  They became Easter people.  And they invited many, many more people to become Easter people.  And God’s Holy Spirit had this way of confirming in new and more people this Easter identity, this experience of the eternality of one’s soul.

And the Easter people spread throughout the cities of the Roman Empire because the hope was unstoppable for all kinds of people, Jews, and every sort of resident in the cities of the Roman Empire.

But just because the friends of Jesus became Easter people, did their troubles stop?  Not at all.  They had to live and move under the radar for many years to avoid persecution and martyrdom.  Those early Easter people did not rise to the top of the Empire with immediate social status.

One can still be Easter people and live in hardships.  The first Easter did not make the hardships of the world go away.  In a world of freedom, the freedom of the resurrection appearance of Jesus to occur, changed the world.  These post-resurrection appearances gave witness, an anecdotal testimony, to what everyone wants to believe.

Everyone wants to believe that there is no end to one’s personal identity after one dies, especially since we know that most people will be forgotten within a few generations after one dies.

The first Easter did not so much change the conditions of the world, as it changed the hearts of people who began to act with hope.  And people who
act with hope, change their world with optimism, even when everything is not going well, even when there is a worldwide pandemic.

Easter will co-exist with the rest of human history.  Easter co-exists with the experience of the coronavirus and all its devastating effects.

Good and ills are going to come and go, and Easter is going to be with us, no matter what.

We celebrate Easter today to be renewed in our primary identity in life, which is to be Easter people.  In creation, God planted eternity as an image upon us, we have spent lots of time in our times living in alienation from the eternal image of God upon our lives.

And Easter, helps us to find and express our true nature even in the middle of nature which throws at us lots of diverse experiences, including a global pandemic.   Alleluia.  Christ is Risen.  And Christ says to us.  You are an Easter people and alleluia is your song, and especially now in the middle of this global pandemic.

Let us go forth today as renewed Easter people and let us teach our alleluia song to as many people as we can.  Amen
 

Saturday, April 11, 2020

Easter Vigil Liturgy of the Word with Comments


The Great Vigil of Easter



Following the blessing of the new fire, the lighting of the Paschal Candle and the chanting of the Exsultet, members are invited to a reading of Salvation History with responses from Canticles and Psalms followed by the corresponding Collect.

The Liturgy of the Word


The Celebrant may introduce the Scripture readings in these or similar words

Let us hear the record of God's saving deeds in history, how he saved his people in ages past; and let us pray that our God will bring each of us to the fullness of redemption.

I will read two of the lessons including the requisite lesson from Exodus.  On the others, I will provide, a “CliffsNote” abstract of the lesson and the response.  I would like for us through Easter to focus on “Receiving an identity,” which culminates in “We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song.”



Link for all the Vigil Readings:



The story of Creation


Genesis 1:1-2:2

The creation story establishes human identity.  We are made in the “image” of God and therefore made to live up to that image.  Image=icon.  We are God’s icons.  In the world of freedom we are “tricked” by our underdeveloped state into knowing good and evil in the wrong way.  We discover that as people alienated from our “image” we can only live as imperfect beings in an imperfect world, but still a very, very God-created good world.  Evicted from Eden and alienated from our true identity as God’s children, we look for “salvation,” or a path to return to the original blessing of God’s image upon us.



Psalm 33:1-11, or Psalm 36:5-10

Psalm 33 is a Psalm which expresses rejoicing in God as the creator of the world

Psalm 36, is about God’s love, righteousness and faithfulness.  And since Light was first act of creation, the Psalmist says about God, ”In your light, we see light.”



In the Collect, we asked to be restored in our intended image and dignity.


Let us pray. (Silence)

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.





The Flood

Genesis 7:1-5,11-18; 8:8-18; 9:8-13


The Story of Noah’s Ark presents the sense of God personally acting in the events of nature.  Nature is treated as being in symbiotic relationship with God, except God’s can’t get humanity to comply because of the willful freedom of humanity to forsake the sacred image upon their lives.  The results are disastrous and so God is presented as One who does not give up, but rather, who starts over with a remnant on the Ark.  Noah, his family and pairs of animals, are destined to survive a worldwide flood.  It ends with a rainbow as a promise that God will not destroy the world with such events. (This can be understood as the wisdom of the writer discerning not to accept the freedom of events of nature as direct "acts of God.")  In Christian symbols, the waters of the flood are presented as dying with Christ in being immersed in the waters of baptism.  The rainbow is the promise that the waters of death are not God intended and will not destroy us.


Psalm 46

Psalm 46 is about how God is our refuge (like the Ark) in the storms and tumults of life. 



The Collect picks up the baptismal theme.  Please note how the Vigil indicates how we have Christianized the Hebrew Scriptures, which have a different presentation in synagogues today.



The “Rainbow” Collect is about it being a sign of God’s covenant not to destroy humanity and how we live under the covenant of water baptism.



Let us pray. (Silence)

Almighty God, you have placed in the skies the sign of your covenant with all living things: Grant that we, who are saved through water and the Spirit, may worthily offer to you our sacrifice of thanksgiving; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac


Genesis 22:1-18

Abraham and Sarah had a marvelous birth of an only son, Isaac, the promised heir to continue the line of Abrahamic people.  But God told Abraham in secret to sacrifice his only son away from home in the land of Moriah. (Probably if he had told Sarah, she would have prevented him and thought him crazy).  Kierkegaard called the time of the call to Abraham to sacrifice his son, the “teleological suspension of the ethical.”  Abraham had to abandon the ethical “thou shalt not kill,” and trust God for another kind of “telos” or end.  Kierkegaard called this suspension, a “leap of faith,” and in that obedient leap he discovered that God provided the ram to sacrifice in place of Isaac.  In terms of human anthropology, one could look at this event as wisdom writers understanding that God did not require human sacrifice.  The age of human sacrifice was replaced with an age of animal sacrifices, which is diagnostic of how people regarded what God required.


Certainly, Christians, borrowed the sacrifice of only son Isaac, in understanding how God the Father was seen as being in the  role of Abraham in offering his only Son to death.  And in the case of Jesus, there was no substitute for him being the Perfect Offering.  It should be an evolution in human understanding that the God does not require bloody sacrifices because to assume God needed such would be to diminish divine perfection.



Psalm 33:12-22, or Psalm 16

Psalms 33 including waiting on God for his loving kindness to be known.  Abraham waited on the Lord even as he obeyed.



Psalm 16: “For you will not abandon me to the grave,  nor let your holy one see the Pit. You will show me the path of life;”  This turned out to be true in Isaac’s rescue from death.





Abrahamic Collect

The Paschal Sacrament can be baptism and Eucharist coming to the newly baptized and to all people of the world who are invited to partake.



Let us pray. (Silence)

God and Father of all believers, for the glory of your Name multiply, by the grace of the Paschal sacrament, the number of your children; that your Church may rejoice to see fulfilled your promise to our father Abraham; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.



Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea
The Hebrew Scriptures present the selection of the Abrahamic line as being chosen as exemplars in the world to show the rest of the world how God’s image on humanity was supposed to be lived out.  Israel was to exemplify God’s grace of selection.  How was this shown?  By giving them examples of his power acting on their behalf in very threatening times.  God’s exemplifying deeds were to give Israel a reason to believe, and the rest the peoples of the world, a reason to respect the God of Israel.



The escape from the Pharaoh of Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea is a Root Story event in the identity of the people of Israel.  In the regular recounting of this event of deliverance, especially at Passover time, the people are renewed in their identity as God’s people and renewed in the dynamic remembering of the power of God's deliverance.  If God did it then, then we too can access that power as we remember it afresh in our time.  The followers of Jesus Christianized the waters of the Red Sea as the baptismal path through probable death, but surviving.





Exodus 14:10-15:1

As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, 'Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians'? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness." But Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still."

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers."

The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued, and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh's horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. At the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and cloud looked down upon the Egyptian army, and threw the Egyptian army into panic. He clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, "Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt."

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers." So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them:

"Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;

horse and rider he has thrown into the sea."



Interesting that the ecstatic song of Miriam gets entitled the “Song of Moses.”


Canticle 8, The Song of Moses

 Cantemus Domino

Exodus 15:1-6, 11-13, 17-18



Especially suitable for use in Easter Season

I will sing to the Lord, for he is lofty and uplifted; * the horse and its rider has he hurled into the sea.

The Lord is my strength and my refuge; *

 the Lord has become my Savior.

This is my God and I will praise him, *

 the God of my people and I will exalt him.

The Lord is a mighty warrior; * Yahweh is his Name.

The chariots of Pharaoh and his army has he hurled into the sea; * the finest of those who bear armor have been drowned in the Red Sea.

The fathomless deep has overwhelmed them; *

 they sank into the depths like a stone.

Your right hand, O Lord, is glorious in might; *

 your right hand, O Lord, has overthrown the enemy.

Who can be compared with you, O Lord, among the gods? * who is like you, glorious in holiness, awesome in renown, and worker of wonders?

You stretched forth your right hand; * the earth swallowed them up.

With your constant love you led the people you redeemed; * with your might you brought them in safety to  your holy dwelling.

You will bring them in and plant them *

 on the mount of your possession,

The resting-place you have made for yourself, O Lord, * the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hand has established.

The Lord shall reign * for ever and for ever.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: * as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.



The Red Sea Collect, Christianizes the Red Sea Waters as a Sign of Baptism.  Remember one of the key event of the Vigil is Baptism, so the baptismal theme is pronounced in all of the lessons and teaching.



Let us pray. (Silence) 


O God, whose wonderful deeds of old shine forth even to our own day, you once delivered by the power of your mighty arm your chosen people from slavery under Pharaoh, to be a sign for us of the salvation of all nations by the water of Baptism: Grant that all the peoples of the earth may be numbered among the offspring of Abraham, and rejoice in the inheritance of Israel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.



God's Presence in a renewed Israel 


The prophet Isaiah is a Utopian, envisioning ideal worlds, especially for the people of Israel who have known continuously bad times with the division into two kingdoms and threats from invading conquerors.  The vision of renewal was obviously an analgesic to people in suffering and pain.  The utopian vision, “though it means “no such place,” gives the ideal direction in a world of freedom where good and evil happening co-exist.  The image of God upon our lives include hope, not to taunt us, but to witness to the direction of perfection.  Don’t mock utopian vision or hope.  Hope provides the positive direction of our lives.



Isaiah 4:2-6



Psalm 122

Psalm 122 presents Jerusalem as the ideal city of peace where unity resides.  We are to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, not because God doesn’t love the other cities on the earth, but Jerusalem stands as the ideal city of humanity all living in peace.  This Psalm is coupled with the utopian vision of the prophet Isaiah.



Cloud and Pillar Collect


The cloud and pillar were “markers” of God’s apparent presence to God’s people.  We live toward moments when God’s Presence is apparent and the utopian visions are visions of that hope for the totally Apparency of God, when indeed tears will be wiped away.



Let us pray. (Silence)


O God, you led your ancient people by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night: Grant that we, who serve you now on earth, may come to the joy of that heavenly Jerusalem, where all tears are wiped away and where your saints for ever sing your praise; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.



Salvation offered freely to all


Christian faith was born from understanding of universal or catholic salvation offered to everyone.  This means beyond those who were adherents of Judaism and inhabitants of Israel.  Israel as God’s people were to be the “leavening agent” of salvation for all of the people of the world, but in the reality of conflict and the fear of assimilating into the practices of their neighbor of being assimilated by them, it was difficult for Israel or any people to fulfill that role of being the leavening agent of salvation offered to everyone.  Early Christian readers of the Hebrew Scriptures jumped on the themes of “universal” salvation that they found in the prophets.



Isaiah 55:1-11



Canticle 9, The First Song of Isaiah, or

In this Canticle from Isaiah the universal theme is expressed directly:  Make his deeds known among the peoples;  see that they remember that his Name is exalted. (peoples would mean more than Israel).


Psalm 42:1-7

In this Psalm: The image of God on each person means that the soul is athirst for the living God.  "As the deer pants for the water, my soul longs after Thee."



Collect of Renewal


In this Collect both water and Spirit are used in a way that is explicit in the discourse of Jesus with woman at the well, in John 4.



Let us pray. (Silence)


O God, you have created all things by the power of your Word, and you renew the earth by your Spirit: Give now the water of life to those who thirst for you, that they may bring forth abundant fruit in your glorious kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


A new heart and a new spirit



In Ezekiel, the prophet sees a time when God become accessible to everyone.  Obviously with the destruction of the Temple and people carried into exile, how could “God identity” and “Torah identity” be maintained when not in one’s land or having a Temple to go to?  God was to be portable into the human temple.  I will give you a new heart and a new spirit.

Certainly, the post-Pentecostal church relied upon this understand of what was happening in the experience of the Holy Spirit.


Ezekiel 36:24-28


Psalm 42:1-7, or Canticle 9, The First Song of Isaiah (see above)

Let us pray. (Silence)



Reconciliation Collect


In this collect, there is a petition for us to live lives congruent with the faith we confess, because we have been given access to this new covenant which provided us with a new heart and new spirit.


Let us pray. (Silence)



Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who are reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.



The valley of dry bones


This is the portion about “dem dry bones” of Ezekiel.  A question during the time of Jesus among religious parties was about the resurrection from the dead.  The Pharisees believed in it; the Sadducees did not because they did not think they could find reference to such in the Torah.  The Pharisees and others believed that beliefs could be established with reference to the other Hebrew Scripture writings and not just limited to the Torah.  The dry bones passage of Ezekiel is one such “resurrection” passage from the Hebrew Scriptures.  Obviously hope dwells in people who experience great disappointment and great injustice.  How can a just God be believed in when the hope of justice is not realized?  Well, God has a way of putting flesh back on the bones, a sort of reverse aging, but you get to keep all the wisdom gained from aging.  The Spirit is able to breathe new life and reconstitute a person and a people so that they can know their own continuity into the future in some way.  St. Paul referred to the Holy Spirit as the assurance or down payment of the resurrection.



Ezekiel 37:1-14


The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?" I answered, "O Lord God, you know." Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord."


So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.' Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act," says the Lord.



Psalm 30, or Psalm 143


In Psalm 30, the Psalmist says, “You brought me up, O LORD, from the dead;  you restored my life as I was going down to the grave.”  One can see how these words were appropriated by Christian resurrectionists.


Psalm 143 includes a request for personal revival: "Revive me, O LORD, for your Name's sake;  for your righteousness' sake, bring me out of trouble."



Sealed by Spirit Collect


This collect refers to the “Passover” of Jesus from death to life, and in the waters of baptism we ritually go into the water of death and are raised from the water by resurrection in identity with the “Passover” of Christ.  And we received our Christian Brand on our forehead:  “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”



Let us pray. (Silence)


Almighty God, by the Passover of your Son you have brought us out of sin into righteousness and out of death into life: Grant to those who are sealed by your Holy Spirit the will and the power to proclaim you to all the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.



The gathering of God's people



The prophet Zephaniah is like Isaiah, a utopian, and envisions a rescue and a return of all the people of God to their homes.  When the people of Israel could not have their own freedom in their own land, they still had the identity of hope.  And the prophet Zephaniah feeds the reality of hope with a narrative utopian vision.  Obvious, everyone wants to be “home;” home as the very best place to be, a place of familiarity, safety and comfort.  St. Paul, was not sure about comfort in earthly places or home, and he as a utopian said that we were citizens of heaven.  This is true even as we ask that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.


Zephaniah 3:12-20


Psalm 98, or Psalm 126

In Psalm 98, the poet anthropomorphizes nature and has nature shouting and praising God for what he has done for his people.


Psalm 126 is about restoring the fortunes of Zion and seems to be written in the captivity of exile away from home.  But in exile, the identity with the home place of Zion formed the identity of many people who never did see Jerusalem.  Zion and the Hope of Zion seem to be the same for the Psalmist poet.



The Plan of Salvation Collect


In this prayer we understand the church as God’s providence in furthering a plan of salvation for the whole world to see.  It is a collect of admitting that we are not yet finished in the quest of perfection.


Let us pray. (Silence)


O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation: let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.



The Vigil ends here.  We will begin our Easter liturgy with the Renewal of our Baptismal Vows and complete our Vigil with our Easter Eucharistic liturgy. 




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