Earth Day 2021

Prayer: Psalm 23

God, my shepherd! I don't need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction.

Even when the way goes through Death Valley,
I'm not afraid when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd's crook makes me feel secure.

You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing.

Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.
I'm back home in the house of God for the rest of my life.

The Message (MSG) Copyright 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

Romans 8:18-22

¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. ¹⁹For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the children of God. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of the One who subjected it in hope; ²¹because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. ²²For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. NKJV

Earth Day #51

Easter is 50 Days, a week of weeks. We're close to the halfway mark on this Fourth Sunday and 22^nd Day of Easter. Though we still can greet everyone with "Christ is Risen – Happy Easter!" the church's year of grace begins to ease toward the Day of Pentecost that initiates the half-year long, sometimes surprising Season of Pentecost, Time of the Church. With April being Earth Month, this being Earth Week and Earth Day only last Thursday, how better to celebrate the New Creation of Easter than with Earth Sunday? What better juxtaposition than Psalm 23 with its natural – not exclusively rural at all – word pictures and reassurance of God as our shepherd who knows us, who always has our back, who goes before us everywhere and waits for our arrival?

I've designed for Earth Day every year for a long time. Results have ranged from a First Place Blue Ribbon at the County Fair to fair to middling. We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors—we borrow it from our children was the theme on one of my four pieces for Earth Day 2010 and it seemed exactly right for 2021. The header image for this blog post is one of several variations of this year's design.

Our Divine Image

Genesis 1:26-27

God spoke: "Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself … and every animal that moves on the face of Earth."
God created human beings; he created them godlike, reflecting God's nature. …

Genesis 2:15-17

God took the Human and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order.
God commanded the Human, "You can eat from any tree in the garden, except from the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. Don't eat from it. …

Scriptures from The Message

Humanity's Image of God or Imago Dei we read about in Genesis is an often-discussed theological concept. It has been described as our relationships, with the inter-relatedness of the Trinity as ideal. In addition, a person who bears God's image would posses divine attributes of love, mercy, and justice as Jesus demonstrated. Stewardship of creation we find in both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2? Of course! And more! United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon recently claimed speech is a huge aspect our divine image. Scripture reveals the word of God as both speech and action. God's word creates. It restores and heals. God speaks words of challenge, of resurrection, of new life, of new creation. We refer to the Ten Commandments of the Sinai Covenant as Ten Words because scripture tells us "God spoke these words" to guide us in our common life where those words become actions. We've discussed signs and symbols that point toward something other than themselves; we're familiar with logos in branding for products and organizations. The gospel of John tells us Jesus is the Logos or Word of God; although John's theology tells us Jesus pre-existed with God the Father, Jesus is the result of God speaking. (It gets very complicated and I don't want to summon the heresy brigade…)

We humans speak with far more than languages like English, German, and Spanglish. Physical postures and gestures talk "body language." Whether from our own choices or defaults resulting from actions of others, our homes, professions, clothing, and food send messages. Etc.


Restore Our Earth

"Restore Our Earth" is this year's official Earth Day theme. In Romans 8:19, "…creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the children of God," the apostle Paul assures us when we claim the fullness of our divine nature and image (love, justice, engaging speech that's active in love), especially in this Earth Month – Week – Day, we'll help restore, revitalize, and resurrect aspects of creation that are less than fully alive.

God's Word is both speech and action. Especially people outside the church sometimes inspect our lives to determine whether or not we walk the talk. When we claim our divine image, our speech and action reflect each other and we do walk the talk. We'll help Restore Our Earth because We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors—we borrow is from our children.

Easter 3B

Prayer

God,
We are surrounded by violence,
learning geography through tragedy:
Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Brooklyn Center, Chicago.
No place is safe.

We pray for all whose breath has been taken.
Receive them into your loving embrace.
We pray for all who grieve.
Carry them gently through the darkness.
Be their strength and ever-present help in this terrible time of trouble.

Bring your light into our darkness.
Bring your peace into our chaos.
Bring your love into our broken communities.

We ask because we know you can—because of the cross.
You held all power and yet refused to strike back.
No threat could tempt you to violence.
Through your restraint the world was reborn.

Oh God of resurrection hope, give us the strength and courage to do what you would have us do.
Mold us into who you are calling us to be.
And meet us in our inadequacy to make all things new. Amen.

Prayer by Pastor Jen Brothers, Roanoke, Virginia

Luke 24:13-16; 27-49

¹³Now on that same day [Easter] two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. … ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

²⁸As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

³²They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" ³³That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" ³⁵Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

³⁶While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." ³⁷They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

⁴¹While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, jesus said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence.

⁴⁴Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

Easter is Fifty Days

• Easter is 50 days—a week of weeks (7 x 7). The Day of Pentecost is the fiftieth day of Easter—May 23rd this year.

• As the day after the Sabbath, the Day of Resurrection is both the eighth day of the old week and the first day of a new week. As the first day of a new week, Easter is the beginning of a new creation.

• The new creation contains evidence of old, deadly pasts. Last week's two-part reading from John showed us Jesus' scars. Today on Resurrection Sunday evening Jesus proves his humanity by displaying his hands and feet. On this side of Easter we often find ourselves in the "Yes, already!" of resurrection and the "No, not yet!" of Holy Saturday, that apparently motionless time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.


The Third Sunday of Easter

Though we've been in the lectionary year of Mark's gospel since Advent, on most Sundays of all three years during the fifty days of Easter we hear a passage from John, and this week we're considering a pair of post-resurrection encounters with Jesus from the evangelist Luke.

Luke's Gospel (Volume 1) and his Acts of the Apostles (Volume 2) emphasize: history with an almost constant "on the road" trajectory; women and other marginalized persons; prayer; neighborology—the word about our neighbors; the Holy Spirit; table fellowship. This week's reading includes most of those themes.


Post-Resurrection

Jesus told them and showed them about the Reign of Heaven throughout his earthly ministry, yet he needed to teach and tell his followers more, because during those three years of public ministry he hadn't yet been killed by imperial forces and raised from the dead. The forty days between Jesus' resurrection and his ascension are particularly important because Jesus calls us – and in the power of the Holy Spirit enables us – to be his crucified and risen presence in the world, so we need to learn how. Last week we read John's account of Jesus bestowing the Holy Spirit on his disciples; every year on the Day of Pentecost we hear Luke's multilingual fire and wind from his book of Acts. Jesus doesn't ask us to do anything he hasn't already done.

Though we often refer to Jesus post-resurrection appearances, he wasn't a ghost, an apparition, a stained glass likeness, or a digital rendering. Just as when he lived on land from infancy through childhood into adulthood and onto his death and burial, after being raised to new life Jesus had a substantial body. People who met Jesus after the resurrection touched flesh and blood and bone; in the Creed we confess, "I believe in the resurrection of the body." In today's two-part reading Jesus enjoys real meals of real food. However, a resurrected body has an additional dimension. Jesus enters places without going through a door. In today's story he disappears without leaving through a door. We can't do that yet!


To Emmaus and Back to Jerusalem

Luke's story of Jesus emphasizes inclusive table fellowship. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Little Town of House of Bread. Throughout his ministry we meet Jesus eating with friends, strangers, and outcasts; his first act of public ministry in John's gospel is turning plain water into finest wine at a wedding party. In the upper room of Maundy Thursday Jesus says the cup is his life blood, the bread is his body.

Jesus' twice identifying Moses, prophets, and psalms with his own life recalls the Exodus story of the God who sees the suffering of enslaved people and calls Moses to liberate them, along with later prophets who called people back to faithful obedience.

As many have observed, the meal in Emmaus definitely is about the presence of the risen Lord in word and sacrament; it sometimes is considered the first Eucharist because unlike the Lord's Supper Founding Meal of Maundy Thursday, Eucharist is a meal with the Risen Christ in the midst of a fully redeemed creation.

This also is about Christ with us whenever we welcome strangers to our table as Jesus did. Welcoming others often opens our eyes so we recognize Jesus—sometimes in retrospect, like the travelers on the Emmaus Road. As happened in the meal in Emmaus, at times we will find ourselves hosted and made comfortable by people we imagined were our guests.


Where We Live: COVID-19

We've all celebrated the Day of Resurrection countless times, but the world still experiences hatred, poverty, violence, and injustice. Illness and death continue. Every one of us knew we had to trust the year 2021 would be a lot better than 2020 had been, and then it began with an insurrection on Capitol Hill and COVID-19 surges, continued with I've lost count of how many mass shootings. Yet our theology tells us Easter, the event of Jesus Christ's resurrection, that eighth day that's also the first day of the new creation, marked the end of decay and death, concluded endless cycles of poverty, violence, illness, injustice, and sorrow.

Theology of the cross emphasizes Saturday with its winter-like quiet, yet God calls us to live as people of the cross who are fully alive, resurrected, and redeemed. Filled with the Spirit of the Day of Pentecost that's the fiftieth day of Easter, we become agents of God's justice, inclusion and freedom for all.


Where We Live: Into the Future

So… Jesus again shares a meal with friends, in a culturally congruent way, of course:

"While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, Jesus said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence." Luke 24:41-43

Jesus' first followers fished for a living! Fish was a more abundant and therefore less expensive protein source than sheep or goats. They may not have had stationary BBQ pits as we do on beaches and other places, but I love to imagine there were dedicated areas in their meeting spaces where people cooked food they brought to share.

The Christ of God and Christianity always are incarnate (embodied, enfleshed) and contextualized into Right Here and Right Now. With the current plethora of spoken languages, cultures, and cuisines (these days isn't almost everything almost everywhere some kind of culinary fusion?), contextualizing our service to others into this Right Here and this Right Now is a challenge we meet head on as we resume old ministries and create new ones post-COVID.

• In Luke-Acts life in Christ is a journey along The Way of the cross and the empty tomb. How would you describe your journey to the Day of Resurrection 2021?
• What difference does the presence of the risen Christ make in your journey during these Great Fifty Days and into the upcoming Green and Growing Season of Pentecost that's often called the Season of the Church?
• How have you experienced the risen Christ by providing or receiving hospitality?
• How will you recognize the risen Christ when you meet him?
• Like the Emmaus Road travelers, do you sometimes only realize you encountered Christ when you look back?
• Will we make a place at the table for everyone?
• Or is that unrealistic?
• Will the world recognize us as the body of Christ when we welcome strangers and make the surrounding world a post-resurrection reality?

Easter 2B

Prayer on Easter II

God of resurrection hope,
The gloriously surprising season of Easter hope again weaves through an almost endless season of global pandemic that surprised all of us. More than an entire calendar year? We never would have imagined!

God of resurrection joy!
Thank you again for first responders, healthcare, and other essential workers who make it possible for others to stay safe, stay home. Thank you for providing virtual ways to connect socially in spite of necessary physical distancing and remote relating. Thank you for working through scientists and medical personnel during these long months. And thank you for the gift of vaccines! Thank you for the amazement of how so many of us have been cooperating together.

God of our future,
You have gone before us into the frontlines, and into the hidden places of this ongoing worldwide uncertainty. Sometimes we imagine we have chosen you, but we know you first sought us out and chose us. Please continue to create in us a single heart and mind, as you show us the path of life is the way of the cross and the empty tomb, that our lives will testify to the risen Christ.

In the name of Jesus, crucified, risen, and with us always.
Amen.

cf: Psalm 133; Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 1:1—2:2; John 20:19-31

John 20:19-31

¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

²⁴But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

²⁶A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." ²⁸Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"

²⁹Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." ³⁰Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Easter Day and Bright Week

• Easter is 50 days—a week of weeks (7 x 7); 7 is the number of perfection in Hebrew numerology. The Day of Pentecost is the fiftieth day of Easter! This year Pentecost will be on May 23rd. Where will we be then?
• The day of resurrection is the day after the Sabbath; it's both the eighth day of the old week and the first day of a new week. As the first day of a new week, the day of resurrection is the beginning of a new creation.
• Many baptismal fonts are octagonal with eight sides to help demonstrate our baptism as a new creation Into Jesus' death and resurrection.
• Orthodox churches in particular celebrate the seven days from Easter Sunday through Easter Saturday as Bright Week, and consider the entire week a single day—the eighth day of creation or the first day of the new creation.

The order of the new creation subverts the order of the old:
• God names Adam – Genesis 2:7
• Jesus names Mary – John 20:16

• The new creation is not pristine, but carries evidence of old, deadly pasts. Today's reading from John shows us Jesus' scars. On this side of Easter we often find ourselves in the "Yes, already!" of resurrection and the "No, not yet!" of Holy Saturday, that time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.


The Second Sunday of Easter, Part I

Although the gospel according to John doesn't get its own lectionary year, on most Sundays of all three years during the fifty days of Easter we hear a passage from John. Every year the gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Easter is this 2-part narrative of Jesus coming to his followers twice through closed doors.

Verse 21 Jesus bestows the gift of peace that's not simple absence of conflict; this peace is shalom: expansive well-being, harmony, integrity, when individual and community both function as part of the other. However, (ironically) we get our English irenic from the Greek word the gospel uses. After filling them in his redemptive shalom, Jesus sends the disciples out into the world.

Verse 22 Jesus breathed on them, "Receive the Holy Spirit." The only other place the Greek bible uses that word for breath is Genesis 2:7 – "God formed Adam out of dust and breathed into him the breath of life." In the power of the Holy Spirit of life, Jesus then trusts them with the office of the keys or forgiveness that creates radical, from-the-ground-up new life.

And then… that famous incident about Thomas.

Verse 25 "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." The New Creation carries scars from the death of the old. Resurrection doesn't erase crucifixion; resurrection transforms death into life. As we've learned throughout our earthly existence, past negatives frequently intrude on the newness of now.


The Second Sunday of Easter, Part II

The first story happens on the evening of the day of Jesus' resurrection; the second a week later.

Thomas sometimes gets called "doubting," but unbelieving or not-believing is closer to the perspective of the fourth gospel. Thomas' disbelief? in the scandal of crucifixion! Not disbelief in resurrection from the dead. Gnostic trends that denied the physical reality of the body were making rounds at the time of this gospel. If physical bodies weren't actually real, they couldn't actually die. Thomas doesn't question resurrection, but cannot imagine the outrage of crucifixion, death, and burial. In John's gospel, believing and trusting means abiding (resting, reposing) in Jesus.

Verse 27: Then Jesus said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Jesus draws attention to the scars of crucifixion and invites Thomas to physically experience the reality of his death with his own senses.


Where We Live: COVID-19

Closed door, locked doors: Greek word is the same and means it's hard to get in. Fear again! "Fear of the Jews" probably refers to those who conspired to kill Jesus, because after all, Jesus' disciples were Jewish. For more than a year many of us have spent a whole lot of time behind closed doors (and behind masks when we venture out) for "fear of COVID-19." Government and health officials have instructed us to protect ourselves and others from exposure to a deadly virus, and most people realize COVID is an extremely serious threat, fear a more than reasonable reaction.

As Easter People, we talk and we walk Eighth Day Theology of a New Creation, while on this side of Easter we often find ourselves in the "Yes, already!" of resurrection and the "No, not yet!" of Holy Saturday, that time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. So… after over a year of planetary COVID-19 devastation, over a century of environmental destruction, months (years, and decades) of other big and little disappointments wondering, "how can this still be happening in our lives and communities," today's scripture shows us we need to examine not completely healed wounds and other revelations of deaths.

The new creation is not unspoiled and untarnished, but bears marks of death; today's reading from John shows us Jesus' scars. Jesus draws attention to the scars of crucifixion and invites Thomas to physically touch and feel the reality of his death. In John's gospel, believing and trusting means abiding in Jesus; it's relationship and repose with Jesus, and also with one another. As Jesus grants us his shalom-filled peace, we go from being solitary isolated individuals to belonging within the body of Christ, with individuals and community functioning as parts of the other.

Most of us sometimes wonder if Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension already has redeemed all creation, why is so much of the world so thoroughly messed up? We often skip from Good Friday to Easter because we're literally afraid to acknowledge everything is not yet okay, we fear acknowledging (and inspecting) the remnants of death that remain and continue to intrude upon new life. We don't want other Christians (or even ourselves) to think we don't trust resurrection, that maybe we doubt like Thomas because we'd rather not believe in the reality of death.

Besides COVID-19 with its fallout, the past twelve plus months have revealed racial and ethnic brokenness, economic inequalities, histories in the USA and elsewhere we'd rather bury. Notice "know" in the word acknowledge.


Today's Questions

• As churches return to campus to resume previous ministries and create new, much-needed ones, can churches become the places with the people that acknowledge wounds, touch scars, and find ways to redeem them into a future?

• What wounds need to be touched and attended to in your country? City? Neighborhood? Family? Church? Are some more urgent than others?

• What does "shalom/peace be with you" mean in the uncertainties and ongoing realistically high anxieties of this pandemic? We thought we had a few vaccines—in fact, the world has a dozen effective vaccines, then we hear about serious side effects, production slowdowns, and even breakthrough infections in fully vaccinated people. Help?!

• Do we know (acknowledge) God's presence in the cruelty of COVID-19, in human hatred and violence toward other humans, in the degradation of everyone's home of planet earth? Can we find (see, touch, hear, feel) God within and God surrounding those situations?

Maundy Thursday 2021

Psalm 116:12-13; 17-19

What shall I render to the Lord
For all his benefits toward me?
I will take the cup of salvation,
And call upon the name of the Lord.
I will offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
And will call upon the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord
Now in the presence of all his people.
In the courts of the Lord's house;
In the midst of you, O Jerusalem.


Passover / Easter

This week the synagogue has been celebrating Passover; in a few days the church celebrates Easter. These great festivals of freedom and liberation carry a similar focus of remembering God's acts of deliverance from death. Seder participants recount the Exodus narrative of Israel's wayfaring from slavery into the gift of the promised land with symbolic fresh food that no longer depends upon empire—they sometimes call it "eating history." After Lent ends, Christians retell and re-enact their experience of death and resurrection with the Triduum or Three Days: One Liturgy in Three Acts.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

²³For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, ²⁴and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

²⁵In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." ²⁶For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Maundy Thursday

The one liturgy in three acts of the Triduum – "Three Days" – begins on Maundy (mandate or command) Thursday with Jesus' example of servanthood when he washes his disciples' feet, and then another demonstration and command as he takes, blesses, breaks, and distributes bread, followed by taking, blessing, sharing a cup filled with fruit of the vine. The second act happens on Good Friday. Act three? Easter: Vigil – Sunrise – Day. Saturday has been described as "the day nothing happens, yet the day everything happens."

The Lord's Supper founding meal we find in Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church and in three of the gospels evokes familiar images and rings with unforgettable phrases. The central picture is Jesus sharing a meal with his friends; whether it's Leonardo's Renaissance Italy or twenty-first century Mercy Street Church Downtown, it's the same reality. While Jesus breaks bread and blesses wine, he tells us to do what he does—"in remembrance." Do this religious ritual? Jesus' world already had plenty of religious rituals. Our world has enough of those, too.

According to Mark, Luke, and Matthew, the original setting was a Passover meal. Jesus' words and actions continued the Jewish practice of remembering by re-enacting God's people's Passover from slavery and death into life and liberty. There where any observant Jew would have been on that day, Jesus tells his friends to "do this." Repeat this blessing and breaking of bread, this pouring-out of wine? "Do this" blood of the new covenant announcement?


Remember

Re-membering means re-collecting the pieces and putting them back together to restore a broken whole. When an individual or a community re-members, they weave together past and present. Scripture abounds with instances of God's command to remember, with instances of community remembrances, with stories of God remembering how quickly humans forget. Our scriptures are written-down accounts of countless communities remembering by telling stories that later got recorded on parchment, still later printed on paper. Even later accessible on-screen!

God told Israel to remember their passage from slavery into freedom; when the church obeys Jesus by breaking bread and pouring out wine in his memory (the Apostle Paul explains doing this proclaims Jesus' death!), part of the liturgical action includes retelling the story of God's people from creation through redemption in order to make it part of our own history. So it's not only about Jesus for each of us, for everyone gathered in a virtual or in-person local assembly—remembering becomes about all of us throughout the history of the cosmos. We recollect how God has led us, how even those hard days didn't last forever…as COVID surges, recedes, and threatens to overwhelm us again, we re-call the small deaths and the huge losses; we again trust God whose final answer always is resurrection from death. For the apostle Paul, the gospel is death and resurrection.

"Do this" religious ritual? There are plenty of those. "In memory?" We keep celebrating this sacrament, this holy communion, this freedom feast of the Lord's Supper with each other. And we're not likely to keep on performing an action unless it has meaning, unless it says something to us and about us.

Do we need bread and wine to remember Jesus? Aren't there other ways? Well, throughout the records of Jesus' life we find Jesus feeding other people and feasting with his friends; Jesus repeatedly talks about those who will banquet in the Kingdom…and about giving his body for the life of the world. The Reign of God, this Welcome Table, and the Calvary Cross are tightly bound together.


Breakout People

As Christians gradually return to their church campuses, resuming some pre-COVID ministries and initiating new ministries in response to new needs, all of us trust God into the future because God has gone ahead of us and waits for us there. Similar to ways a Passover Seder and the Lord's Supper re-member liberation and resurrection with all five senses, we serve our neighbors' whole lives as we attend to their needs and even to some of their wants. When Jesus breaks bread and blesses wine, he tells us to do what he does—"in remembrance." Do this religious ritual?

Wherever we go we become a living and a life-giving memory of Jesus. In us, Jesus again becomes alive in the world and we become a living connection to the heaven of God's reign on earth. Where will people find us as the world opens up? Will people recognize us as the body of Jesus Christ when we share our substance and pour out our lives?

Today is Thursday, tomorrow's Friday—Sunday's coming!

Lent 6B

Prayer of Hope

O Lord, our God, victim of violence on a cross,
look with compassion upon all involved in shootings this week
in America and around the world.

Receive into the arms of you love those who have died.
Comfort those traumatized by these horrendous events.
Wrap your Everlasting Arms around those who mourn.
Heal those whose hearts and minds are terrorized.
Strengthen those medical personnel who minister to the wounded.
Protect the law enforcement officials to risk their lives for our safety.
Calm all whose memories of violence are triggered by this shooting.
Bring the gunmen to repentance and redemption,
and deal tenderly with his confused family and friends.

Hear our cries of lament as we seek to understand the incomprehensible,
and deliver us from the evil of violence in any form.
Through Christ we pray. Amen.

From the United Methodist Church: Litany on the Tragedy of Gun Violence

Mark 12:28-34

²⁸One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: "Which is most important of all the commandments?"

²⁹Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; ³⁰so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' ³¹And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these."

³²The religion scholar said, "A wonderful answer, Teacher! So clear-cut and accurate—that God is one and there is no other. ³³And loving God with all passion and intelligence and energy, and loving others as well as you love yourself. Why, that's better than all offerings and sacrifices put together!"

³⁴When Jesus realized how insightful he was, he said, "You're almost there, right on the border of God’s kingdom."

After that, no one else dared ask a question.

The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

Today's Reading from Mark

One more time I'm blogging the focus passage from Mark in the booklet we're using at church to guide our Lenten reading of Mark's gospel. In Mark, Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross is relentless; every year on the Sixth Sunday in Lent we re-enact his entrance into the city riding on a donkey and surrounded by excited onlookers waving leafy (palm?) branches. Today's reading is Jesus' last discussion or dialogue with questioners before his trial and execution. His declaration about love of God, self, and neighbor being the greatest commandment and the path to life satisfies him and silences everyone else.


In Three of the Four Gospels…

…so take notice!

Synoptic gospels Mark, Matthew, and Luke that view Jesus' ministry in similar ways all record Jesus' reply to this question from the scribe or religious scholar. Matthew and Luke call him a "lawyer."

Matthew 22:34-38

³⁴When the Pharisees heard how Jesus had bested the Sadducees, they gathered their forces for an assault. ³⁵One of their religion scholars spoke for them, posing a question they hoped would show him up: ³⁶"Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most important?"

³⁷Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' ³⁸This is the most important, the first on any list. ³⁹But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them.'"

Luke 10:25-28

²⁵Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. "Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?"

²⁶Jesus answered, "What's written in God's Law? How do you interpret it?"

²⁷He [the guy who asked Jesus] said, "That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself."

²⁸"Good answer!" said Jesus. "Do it and you’ll live."

The Ten Words

Three weeks ago for the Third Sunday in Lent we discussed the Ten Words of the Sinai Covenant that God gave the people after they'd been freed from slavery in Egypt, while they still were on the way to the Promised Land. Following the Ten Words (sometimes literally translated into Decalogue) brings heaven to earth, creating God's love, mercy, and righteousness within the community and radiating outward into the rest of the world. Heaven comes to earth in the Ten Words; heaven touches earth in Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Word. The commandments and Jesus recognize all life as sacred. In these three Great Commandment scriptures, Jesus (in Mark and Matthew) and his hyper-religious interlocutor (in Luke) summarize the Ten Words by quoting "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One" from Deuteronomy 6:4 along with "…you shall love your neighbor as yourself" from Leviticus 19:18.


Theology. Context.

The evangelists who wrote the four canonical gospels recorded some history of Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension; they also presented carefully crafted theology. Mark places today's conversation with the legal eagle-religion expert as the last in a series of give and take exchanges between Jesus and The Authorities. As a rabbi-teacher, Jesus constantly engaged others in conversation; many would have had similar content. As an itinerant preacher, Jesus undoubtedly developed some outstanding homilies he'd tweak or contextualize so they'd relate to his current listeners. As a famous example, we have Matthew's Sermon on the Mountain and Luke's Sermon on the Plain that are parallel yet with distinct differences because he addressed different audiences. The events of the week before Easter that we call "Holy" occupy a large portion of Mark's gospel with its focus on Jesus' identity and purpose. Today's scripture portion ends with, "After that, no one else dared ask a question." In real life was that Jesus' final engagement with religious or political powers that be? It's impossible to know. But Mark the evangelist places it there to demonstrate Jesus' overarching authority.


Doing the Word

Then God spoke all these words: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; [therefore] you shall have no other gods before me." … Exodus 20:1-3

• Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do." Exodus 24:3

• But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it. Deuteronomy 30:14

Much later, the Apostle Paul quotes Deuteronomy:
• But what does scripture say? "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart," that is, the word of faith that we proclaim. Romans 10:8

In these passages, the Hebrew Dabar is the Word that created heaven and earth. "Dabar" is speech and action in one. Speaking Dabar and its cognates generates life, creates a new reality. The commandments' covenant of love acknowledges all life as sacred; acting in love makes life together possible. Doing these words creates life and holds us together as families, churches, and communities. Not doing the words negates life, leads to discord, violence, and death.

Martin Luther begins his Small Catechism – traditional preparation for First Holy Communion – with the Ten Words or Commandments. As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us, "It is the God of the Commandments with whom we commune."

The Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," isn't explicitly in the bible, but it can be an excellent guideline, particularly once we know a individual's or a group's history, preferences, and needs.

• The way we know we've been transferred from death to life is that we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn't love is as good as dead. 1 John 3:14

• Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. Revelation 22:14


End of Lent Questions

How has your Lent been? Did you follow any particular devotional practices? Did you participate in any service activities, or find helpful ways to mitigate yours and a few neighbors' COVID loneliness and stir-craziness?

Besides the end of COVID, worldwide vaccinations, and a revitalized economy, what are your hopes for the Great Fifty Days of Easter?

Lent 5B

A Prayer in a Time of Violence

Saving God, in these last weeks of Lent, we cling to the promise of your glorious resurrection.

Bloodshed and hate, fear and death are our daily news. We yearn instead for your daily bread—for the grace and love we need to survive, for the justice and wholeness you want for your children. We have repeated destructive patterns for so long that we don't know how to live together, much less to love each other. We have acted out our hate and wasted precious life too many times to count. We see so much violence that we can hardly envision peace. We need you to break in, Lord. Break into this world, into our lives, into our hearts. With deep and desperate hope, we wait for you. And as we wait, we pray:

Come, Lord Jesus, to shatter the order of violence with your disruptive peace.
Come, Lord Jesus, to replace the death all around us with reverence for life.
Come, Lord Jesus, to root out the hate and loathing that live in us; stop us from hurting each other and ourselves.
Come, Lord Jesus, to release the chokehold of our fear; free us to know your joy.
Come, Lord Jesus, to show us that we cannot undo one sin with another; turn us back toward you.
Come, Lord Jesus, to hold the pain and sorrow we can no longer carry; heal and comfort us with your love.
Come, Lord Jesus, to show us how to live; give us the wisdom, courage, and fortitude we need to tell the truth and to be changed.

Come, Lord Jesus, come. Amen.

by Pastor Rebekah Close LeMon – Atlanta, GA

Mark 11:15-19

¹⁵Then they came to Jerusalem. And Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; ¹⁶and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷He was teaching and saying, "Is it not written,

'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? [Isaiah 56:7]
But you have made it a den of robbers." [Jeremiah 7:11]

¹⁸And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. ¹⁹And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

Today's Reading from Mark

Again this week I'm blogging the focus passage from Mark from the booklet we're using at church to guide us through our Lenten reading of Mark's gospel. In Mark, Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross is relentless; by today's reading Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem. Every year on the Sixth Sunday in Lent we re-enact his entrance into the city riding on a donkey and surrounded by excited onlookers waving palm branches.


In All Four Gospels…

…so take notice! Synoptic gospels Mark, Matthew, and Luke record this Temple Cleansing incident after Jesus reaches Jerusalem before his trial, conviction, crucifixion, and death. Historical evidence indicates that's when Jesus probably confronted the temple money-changers and merchants. However, John places it at the start of Jesus public ministry, theologically setting the stage for Jesus' mercifully justice-seeking presence throughout his ministry.

Luke 19:45-46

Then Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, "It is written,
'My house shall be a house of prayer' [Isaiah 56:7];
but you have made it a den of robbers." [Jeremiah 7:11]

Matthew 21:12-13

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changes and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, "It is written,
'My house shall be a house of prayer' [Isaiah 56:7];
but you are making it a den of robbers." [Jeremiah 7:11]

John 2:13-15

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.


God's Presence

From the beginning, God's Spirit of Life filled creation. We often study the story of Israel's exodus from slavery in imperial Egypt as they walked through a series of deserts on their way to promise landed freedom. During that journey the people famously knew evidence of God with them as fire in the night sky, clouds during the day. They'd encountered a God who met their bodily needs with water springing from the rock, manna raining from the sky. They received the gift of God's presence in the Ten Words or Commandments of the Sinai Covenant to guide their lives together. This was God with the people, God for the people, not remote and capricious like other deities of the Ancient Near East.

However, just as Israel wanted a human monarch like the other nations, eventually they also wanted to honor God with a temple on a fixed location. You may remember King David being perplexed about living in a house built of expensive materials while God apparently resided in the portable tent of the Ark of the Covenant?

Today's reading references the Second Jerusalem Temple that was destroyed in the year 70—about three decades after Jesus's death and resurrection, not long after Mark wrote his gospel. As a central engine of the local economy, the temple employed near-countless workers and artisans. Our twenty-first century culture usually compartmentalizes life into work, play, family, private, public, religious, secular, and that's ok because most humans need categories and order to get through days, nights, weeks, and months—probably more so during the pandemic. Needless to say, though people in Jesus' day engaged in activities similar to ours, they didn't have a concept of sacred-profane, holy-mundane; those are very post-Enlightenment, and even during the time of the sixteenth-century Reformers they didn't have much currency.

By Jesus' time and for Jesus, the temple was an offense because the God of the bible goes everywhere God's people venture and (unlike "fake gods" back then) cannot be contained or located in a particular place. What is more, for Jesus the J-Temple was an outrage because the excessive monetary cost of supplies needed to engage in temple rituals (converting currency into temple coins, buying animals, oil, and grain for offerings) burdened low income "regular people" to a degree that further impoverished them, while at the same time filling the pockets of people who already had more than enough.


God's Presence in Jesus

As Christians we recognize Jesus of Nazareth as God's presence in ways that reflect Old Testament images or types of God's presence alongside the people. Even beyond that, we recognize Jesus as the ultimate showing-forth of God's essence and identity in ways that make Moses and David (for example) pale in comparison.


God's Presence in the Church

In baptism we receive the gift of God's Holy Spirit so that everywhere we go we will be the presence of Jesus Christ-presence of God. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 the Apostle Paul reminds us, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" Later in 1 Corinthians 6:19 he tells us, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?" So that's the nature God's presence now assumes: embodied in a human person.


God's Presence in COVID-19 – Violence – Injustice

That's now the essence of God's presence: embodied in humans as temples of the divine. What a gift and what a challenge for God to trust us during these turbulent times!

How's your Lent going?

Lent 4B

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

We're halfway through Lent—halfway to Easter! Lent emphasizes repentance, prayer, living in grace, and acts of compassionate service. Lent long has been a season to prepare for baptism at the Easter Vigil or on Resurrection Sunday morning, and on Easter those of us already baptized can publicly renew our baptismal covenant. Filled with images of baptism and unity (unity but not sameness!), "My God is Still Making Good Trouble," comes from the 2020 movie about the late congressperson John Lewis.


From song, "My God is Still Making Good Trouble"

My skin is alabaster and I understand what that means
There's history in my color and a burden in me and this free

And the burden is the wall between you and me
But there's a love that's still turning over tables
And a love making blinded eyes see
There's a healing that's waiting in the water
That's still making saints out of rebels
My God is still making good trouble

Even though we are all broken
There is a dream still worth holding
Let's walk towards the fire and push past the fear
And call hate a liar loud and clear

There's a love that's still turning over tables
And the love making blinded eyes see
There's a healing that's waiting in the waters
That's still making saints out of rebels
My God is still making good trouble
Good trouble…

by Leigh Nash, Matt Maher, and Ruby Amanfu

Mark 6:45-52

⁴⁵Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. ⁴⁶After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.

⁴⁷When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and Jesus was alone on the land. ⁴⁸When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. ⁴⁹But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; ⁵⁰for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." ⁵¹Then Jesus got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, ⁵²for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

Today's Gospel Passage

Most Sundays we discuss one of the scripture readings from the lectionary. However, at church we're reading through Mark's gospel during Lent and the pastor asked if I'd write about the gospel reading from Mark listed in the booklet we're using. Mark especially emphasizes God for all people (not only Jews); in Mark we find God outside established religious, economic, social, and political structures: on the margins rather than in the center. In Mark, Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and the cross is incessant and relentless. Here's the outline of Mark's gospel I blogged at the start of this new year of grace.

Immediately before this reading, Mark's gospel has the parable of Sower and the Seed followed by Jesus feeding 5,000 (men, plus women and children so at least 15,000 people) with five loaves and two fish and ending up with twelve baskets of leftovers.


Textual Notes

• 6:45 "the other side" refers to ethnically different, sometimes geographically distinct people and/or places. Those others sometimes are simply strangers or foreigners, sometimes actual enemies. Genesis 14:13 tells us Abram was an Ivri – a Hapiru or Hebrew – literally someone from the other side. In Jesus of Nazareth we meet the God of heaven, someone from the very other side.
• 6:47 "the boat was out on the sea" This body of water is the Lake of Galilee, and not an ocean or a sea with currents and tides, but Mark calls it a sea to make a theological point about Jesus as Lord of creation.
• 6:48 As Jesus walked on the sea to demonstrate his stewardship of supposedly chaotic, destructive forces, "he intended to pass them by," or "intended go right by them" in Pastor Eugene Peterson's The Message. Jesus had no intention of paying them any attention?! What can we make of this? We constantly find connections between Old and New Testaments; we know Jesus as a kind of successor to Israel's prophets, priests, and kings, though ultimately far more than any of those. The church proclaims Jesus of Nazareth as God incarnate, divinity enfleshed.

In his commentary on Mark, Binding the Strong Man, Ched Myers explains (my paraphrase):

Jesus passing by his disciples isn't even possibly about Jesus neglecting or ignoring them; it references the saving appearance and presence of Yahweh, the God of Israel in (among other places) Exodus 33:19, 22; Exodus 34:6; I Kings 19:11; Amos 7:8, 8:2

• 6:50 "take heart, be courageous," is not the cardiac "heart" word in Greek.
• 6:50 "It is I" / Ego eimi – at the burning bush encounter in Exodus 3:14 Yahweh, the God of Israel, self-reveals to Moses as "I Am." You may remember John's gospel records Jesus in a series of "I Am" declarations? Referring to himself as I Am, Jesus identifies with the God of Israel.
• 6:52 "hearts were hardened or calloused" here heart is the cardiac word. It helps us twenty-first century Westerners to remember the heart in Hebrew biology is the locus of will, action, identity, intention, somewhat like psyche in English. Ched Myers' insight is helpful when he says a hardened heart was the Egyptian Pharaoh's heart condition.

Immediately after this event on Lake Galilee, everyone is back on land with a throng of people. Jesus goes everywhere: into villages, cities, farms, and the marketplace (sounds like some overlap to me, but Mark lists those venues separately), and Mark describes a series of healings.


Water

Hebrew and Christian worldviews emerged from God's self-revelation within contexts where just about everyone believed that distant, unapproachable gods caused natural disasters and disturbances, primarily because of their anger and displeasure with humans. People viewed existence as endless cycling and recycling of the same events. In that world of semitic mythology, water was a symbol of chaos, danger, and destruction.

The experience of God's people Israel and then of the Church was distinctly different. They knew a God so in love with creation that in Jesus of Nazareth God chose to live as a human creature. Not only had the endless recurrence of the very same thing stopped in its tracks, this God promised and provided a hope, a future, and the reality of resurrection from the dead.

Both creation accounts in Genesis begin with water as a life-giving force, not a destructive one.

• In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1-2
• Streams welled up from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground. Genesis 2:6

Water is the womb of creation; water is the womb of our first birth and of our second birth. Baptism immerses us in God's creative power of death and resurrection, as we identify with this planet's history and with Jesus of Nazareth, who was baptized in the River Jordan.

In the focus passage in our Lenten booklet for the 3rd Sunday in Lent, March 7, Jesus stills the storm:

³⁷A tremendous storm came up, and the waves broke against the boat, almost overwhelming it. …³⁹Jesus got up, admonished the wind and spoke to the sea: "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and there was a tremendous calm. …⁴¹They were tremendously fearful and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!" Mark 4

"Who is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him."

Who are we, the people of God? We live baptized into Jesus Christ, whose Word stilled the storm, so do the oceans and the breakers obey us? God calls us to be co-creators and stewards of creation, to be the presence of Jesus Christ… think about it!

Lent 3B

One Virtual Year

Thanks to everyone who follows this blog! Last time we met in the dining-multipurpose room for Sunday School was twelve months ago. A entire calendar year.

Though I started this blog long ago as a safekeeping place for notes from studies I'd facilitated and some I'd participated in, I began blogging every week after a class member asked after my notes. During real-life meetings I learn a lot from the participants, and I probably teach more than I do with these mini-essays. Live discussions are more dynamic and overall considerably better, but I like how these notes have been turning out, so I'm calling it my "pandemic best." Thanks again!

Exodus 20:1-5a, 7-17

¹Then God spoke all these words: ²I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³you shall have no other gods before me.
⁴You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; …

⁷You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses God's name.

⁸Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁹Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ¹¹For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

¹²Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

¹³You shall not murder.
¹⁴You shall not commit adultery.
¹⁵You shall not steal.
¹⁶You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
¹⁷You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Declaration from Psalm 19

God's Word vaults across the skies
from sunrise to sunset,

The revelation of God is whole
and pulls our lives together.
The signposts of God are clear
and point out the right road.
The life-maps of God are right,
showing the way to joy.
The directions of God are plain
and easy on the eyes.

You'll like God's Word better than strawberries in spring,
better than red, ripe strawberries.

Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!
Keep me from stupid sins,
from thinking I can take over your work.
Then I can start this day sun-washed,
scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.

These are the words in my mouth;
these are your words I chew on and pray.
Accept them when I place them
on the morning altar,
O God, my Altar-Rock,
God, Priest-of-My-Offerings.

The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson


Third Sunday in Lent

Lent continues as days lengthen into Spring. Lent features the color purple that signifies repentance; during Lent we remain especially aware of living in grace, of receiving life as gift.


Covenant

For the third Sunday in but not of Lent the lectionary brings us another covenant. Here are notes from our discussion of covenants during Lent 2019. Covenant comes from co and venire – a coming together agreement. Exactly how many covenants are in the bible is up for dispute. All biblical covenants are covenants of grace; in many ways creation itself is a covenant. Although we know about the interrelationship of the Trinity / Godhead, God has such passion for giving, for relationship, for grace, creation is like James Weldon Johnson's poem that begins, "And God stepped out on space, and he looked around and said: 'I'm lonely—I'll make me a world.'" We find the Sinai covenant, also known as The Ten Commandments or Decalogue – literally Ten Words – twice in the Torah or Pentateuch: Deuteronomy 5:6-21 and today's reading from Exodus 20.


Events Leading to Exodus 20

For today's Sinai Covenant / Ten Words / Decalogue / Commandments (sometimes called the Mosaic Covenant because Moses was sort of an intermediary), we're in the book of Exodus, which means "departure," in this case departing from slavery in imperial Egypt. After a series of devastating plagues that *apparently* came from the god of the Israelites (there needs to be cause and effect, correct?).…

• Exodus 12: the Egyptian Pharaoh finally tells Moses, "Take all your people and get out of here right now."
• Exodus 13: celebrating Passover; God leads the people by going before them in a cloud by day, fire by night.
• Exodus 14: Israelites cross the Red Sea on dry ground.
• Exodus 15: Song of Moses; song and dance of Miriam
• Arrival at the Desert of Shur. A fresh tree branch sweetens the bitter waters at Marah – nature healing nature.
• Then to Elim with 12 springs and 70 palms.
• Exodus 16: another desert / wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Sinai.
• Bread from heaven, quails from the sky. Manna="what is it," possibly coriander/cilantro seeds
• Sabbath-keeping
• Israel receives the gift of sustaining food; then they know God is Lord.
• Exodus 17: another desert – Rephidim. God provides water from the rock for the thirsty Israeiites, "that the people may drink."
• Exodus 18: elders and judges to help Moses minister
• Exodus 19: three months out of Egypt, the people reach the desert in the shadow of Mount Sinai.

Sabbath-keeping is a specific commandment, yet the Israelites started observing Sabbath before they formally received the Commandments.

• Exodus 19: Moses consults with God, who tells the Israelites if they obey, they will be God's treasured possession (Hebrew segullah), a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. The baptismal hymn in 1 Peter 2:9 famously parallels this and describes us as a chosen generation, royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people. The people respond with, "We will do all the words the Lord has spoken." Exodus 24:3 also reports this response.

Exodus 20's commandments/ Sinai Covenant text begins by telling us "God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt…" therefore. In addition to deliverance from slavery, God's ongoing presence during their desert trek helped convince Israel this God was worthy of obedience, therefore the commandments became a welcome gift of grace.


Sinai Covenant / Ten Words / The Reformers

The desert intermission between imperial slavery and the Promised Land became a time and a place to trust God for everything. Everything. In the desert you can't plan or plant, produce, create, administer, or stockpile. You only can receive life as gift—similar to when we find ourselves in life's metaphorical or actual deserts. The past twelve months?! I'd call this past year both a metaphorical desert and an actual one.

As Martin Luther pointed out, technically we only need the first "no other gods" commandment, because this decalogue or set of ten commands is about putting God first in everything we do by responding to the needs of our neighbor. The Ten Commandments literally are the working papers for our 24/7 lives together as the assembled church, and for our public witness out there in the everyday world.

We've observed how almost every time the Apostle Paul refers to law, he means ceremonial, ritual, sacrificial law (including circumcision) and not the commandments. However, when magisterial Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin talked about the uses of the law, they meant the commandments. The Reformers' Third Use of the Law is about the neighbor, about the other, about the neighborology word we often used during Luke's lectionary year.

In his Small and Large Catechisms, Martin Luther presents the commandments as the gifts of grace they are by telling us how not to violate them (what does each commandment forbid?) and how to keep them (what does each commandment encourage?); the Shorter and Larger Westminster Catechisms do the same. So it's not only a matter of not breaking the commandments; it's even more about keeping them. As Matthew 19:17 records, when the guy asked Jesus, "What must I do to be saved," Jesus answered, "Keep the commandments. Keep covenant with all creation."


Sabbath

This Exodus passage charges us to keep Sabbath because God rested on the seventh day of creation. Deuteronomy 5 says we need sabbath resting, ceasing from social expectations, to temporarily quit working, earning, etc., because "You no longer are slaves—God brought you out of slavery into freedom so therefore—you shall keep Sabbath." Just as God kept Sabbath rest on the seventh day of creation, because now you are free people (as God is free) and no longer beholden to any empire, you can take a time out. Both rationales remind us God created humanity in the divine image (imago dei), so keeping Sabbath is part of rocking that reality and a way to participate in God's own holiness.

Lent 2B

Mark 8:31-37

³¹Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

³⁴Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?"

Celebrate! from Psalm 22:23-31

Shout Hallelujah and worship God;
give glory, sons of Jacob;
adore God, daughters of Israel.
God has never let you down, never looked the other way
when you were being kicked around.
God always has been right there, listening.

Down-and-outers sit at God's table
and eat their fill.
God has taken charge;
and from now on has the last word.

Shout Hallelujah, worship God;
give glory, you sons of Jacob;
adore God, you daughters of Israel.
God has never let you down!

from The Message (MSG), alt. Copyright 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson


Lent 2 Currents / Recently in Mark

Today is the second Sunday in (but not of) Lent; Sundays don't belong to Lent because every Sunday is a festival of resurrection, a "little Easter." Lent derives from lengthening days as the Northern Hemisphere moves toward spring. Lent is a season of repentance and re-orientation; Lent is a season of awareness that we receive life as a gift of God's grace and mercy, a season freely to offer grace, mercy, and life to others. Today's reading concludes the first half of Mark's gospel. Maybe surprisingly, it comes before the Transfiguration we studied two weeks ago in Mark 9:2-9.

For today for some reason the Revised Common Lectionary didn't include Peter's confession of Jesus as the Christ that immediately precedes today's reading in Mark 8:27-29… we'll hear it next autumn toward the end of the season of Pentecost.
• 8:27-28 Jesus asks his disciples, "who do you say that I am?" "Some say…" "But who do you say I am? 8:29 Peter answers, "Thou art the Christ."

In the same way Jesus insisted on hearing not the opinion of others, but who his disciples believed he was, although we need to listen to and consider what other people say, ultimately each of us needs to talk and walk our own testimony of Jesus' identity.


Today's Gospel Reading

Today's scripture portion opens with Mark 8:31 that's sometimes referred to as Jesus' first passion prediction of the three in Mark's gospel. Jesus then teaches his disciples about the way of the cross, about paradoxically losing their lives in order to gain life. The word for life is "psych" that we know from a wide range of English words. Psych implies psychological, emotional, volitional, relational, and every aspect of our humanity—similar to heart in Hebrew. Jesus doesn't say Zoë–life that brings us the name Zoë. As with most events in Jesus' ministry that made it into the gospel accounts, this teaching probably wasn't a one-time occurrence; most likely Jesus repeated it on several occasions so his disciples heard it more than once.

The Greek text says the cross, though some English versions read their (as in yours, ours possessive) cross. Jesus talks about taking up the cross and following him—about giving up our own druthers and preferences to help take care of the needs of our neighbors. Jesus' cross becomes our cross. For most of us, service to the neighbor begins where we find ourselves here and now; except for medical, fire, police, and some retail workers, for the past stay safe stay home pandemic year, being neighbors has been extremely local.

Jesus original context was the Roman empire that occupied his homeland and controlled every facet of existence. His ministry of love, healing, and compassion, his nonviolent resistance to religious, political, and economic powers was contrary to Rome's values and ultimately led him to the cross.


Where We Live – #Resist

As twenty-first disciples of Jesus baptized into his death (and resurrection), our contemporary context is Jesus' current setting: Jesus' cross has become our cross.

Some interpretations of this text have neglected Jesus' cross and ignored his clear charge to lose our lives for the sake of the gospel, for the possibility of God's reign in our midst. Denying our instinctual preferences and following Jesus means to recognize, to name, and to resist planetary and human suffering that happens because of neglect, indifference, empire, and exploitation. Pain and loss that's been going down in the wake of COVID-19. Denying-following means to embody God's love, mercy, compassion, and justice in the face of hatred, discrimination, enmity, injustice, and every dehumanizing force. In the contemporary vernacular, it means to #resist everything that results in death, desecration, and marginalization, etc. You can make your own long list. In alignment with our baptismal promises, along with nonviolent resistance, God calls us to act in ways that lead to justice and hope, that translate words into actions.

As Pastor Eugene Peterson says in his translation of today's responsive psalm, "from now on God has the last word – down-and-outers sit at God's table and eat their fill." Does that sound like Jesus? Does it sound like us?


Where We Live – 7 Marks

Martin Luther listed seven marks of the presence of the church—please take note of the seventh:

• the proclaimed word
• baptism
• Holy Communion / Lord's Supper
• keys and confession
• ordered ministry
• prayer—including the liturgy
• the cross

Lent 1B

Mark 1:9-15

⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

¹²And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

¹⁴Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

Collect for the First Sunday in Lent

Book of Common Prayer, traditional version

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted of Satan: Make speed to help thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations; and, as thou knowest their several infirmities, let each one find thee mighty to save; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer, contemporary version

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.


Lent 2021

Last week on Ash Wednesday the Church's year of grace segued into the season of Lent. "Lent," an old English word for springtime, refers to lengthening days. If you're a musician, you know the tempo lento is broad and slow.

Lent was one of the church's earliest observances, beginning with only a few days, gradually expanding into the current forty. Churches that observe the Three Days-Triduum – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter – generally count Lent from Ash Wednesday through Wednesday in Holy Week; others go from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday evening. Because every Sunday is a festival of resurrection, Sundays are in Lent but not of Lent.

Lent emphasize repentance, with somber purples and lavenders Lent's typical colors. Lent also focuses on baptism; just as with baptism, the turn your life around, penitent aspect of Lent is about living bathed in grace as we confess sins and shortcomings, then move in a new direction. Traditionally Lent has been a time of preparation for baptism during the Easter Vigil on Easter Eve or very early Resurrection Sunday morning. Lent is a season for those of us already baptized to remember how in grace God claims us, names us Christian, and in the power of the Spirit sends us into the world to live as good news for all creation.


Today's Gospel Reading

Every lectionary year (A–Matthew, B–Mark, and C–Luke) the gospel reading for the first Sunday in Lent is Jesus' testing by Satan, who traditionally is the prosecuting attorney in Judaism. Every year! This event is that important!

This year's reading from Mark begins with Jesus' baptism we discussed on January 10th. We need to remember Jesus did not receive our trinitarian baptism into his death and resurrection, yet his baptism by John still related to repentance and newness and like our baptism, it signified (was a literal "sign") that affirmed his identity. Sounds like an excellent choice for opening up our journey through Lent!

Jesus goes from John baptizing him in the Jordan River wilderness into deeper, denser wilds. (By the way, Greek uses the same word for wilderness and desert.) Matthew and Luke both specify three of the temptations Jesus experienced; Mark doesn't provide details. Jesus refutes each challenge by quoting scripture.

After being baptized and spending about a month in solitude, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." Mark 1:14-15 Jesus told them and then he showed them.


More for Lent 1

The first reading for today, Genesis 9:8-17, describes God's covenant with Noah, his sons, their descendants, and with "every living thing." This short passage says every living thing three times! God disarms, setting his weapon (rain-bow) in the sky as a sign of covenantal promise; surprisingly, Genesis 9:15-16 tells us the rainbow is so God will remember. As twenty-first century people, inside the church and outside, we often use rainbows with their full range of colors as signs of inclusiveness.

Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." Mark 1:14-15

Mark 1:13 tells us Jesus was "with the wild beasts." Richard Bauckham, in The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation (new to me book I recently got on eBay!) points out that elsewhere in Mark's gospel "being with" is the language of love and conveys close friendship. Bauckham suggests Jesus’ presence evokes Isaiah of Jerusalem’s vision of messianic peace that encompasses all creation, with humans and animals living tougher in harmony, with animals neither predators or prey. This Peaceable Kingdom belongs to the many ways the Good News of God's reign comes near in Jesus—and also in us, Jesus' contemporary disciples.

Isaiah 11

¹A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
⁶ The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
⁷The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁹They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Lent during COVID-19

Matthew's and Mark's gospels tell us Jesus answered the devil's challenges by quoting scripture he'd memorized—"knew by heart." How about us?

• What scriptures, prayers, hymns, do you rely on when the going gets rough and tough? When you're confused or uncertain about your next move (pandemic, anyone)?
• What scriptures do you recall when life is glorious and you want to thank and acknowledge God?
• Favorite Easter hymns?
• Have you started spiritual practices or service projects for this Lent?
• Are they the same or different from previous years?
• Jesus said, "the time is now, and the Reign of God has come near." The word here for "time" is kairos, and means an unrepeatable opportune moment. Chronos in Greek is linear calendar and clock time, as in "chronology, chronological." Are you thinking of brand-new or renewed ministries for return to campus?
• Has COVID-19 led to some unique moments and opportunities?

Transfiguration Year B 2021

God's Glory from Psalm 50

God, the Lord God, has spoken;
God's summons covers all the earth,
like the sun from its rising to its setting.
God has shone forth from Zion;
perfect in its beauty.

Gather to me my faithful ones;
the ones that make covenant with me by sacrifice.
The heavens declare God's righteousness
and proclaim, "God, the Lord God, is judge."

Psalm paraphrase from The Billabong, a lectionary worship resource by Jeff Shrowder, Uniting Church in Australia

Mark 9:2-9

²Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" ⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

⁹As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

Transfiguration?

Depending on how you structure the church's year of grace, opinions differ as to whether the Christmas season ends at the Day of Epiphany, at Jesus' Baptism, or at Jesus' Presentation in the Temple. But with Lent beginning next week on Ash Wednesday, without a doubt Transfiguration concludes seasons that specifically magnify Jesus as God incarnate and Jesus as light to the world. However, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and some Anglican churches observe Transfiguration on August 6th, and some Orthodox Christians on August 19th. The Roman Catholic calendar also schedules T-Fig on the Second Sunday in Lent. As we've seen, a happening in Jesus' life is a strong sit up and take notice when more than one gospel records it. All three synoptics that view Jesus' ministry in a similar way include Transfiguration:

• Mark 9:2-9
• Matthew 17:1-9
• Luke 9:28-36

Metamorphosis is the Greek word translated transfiguration; even if it's not in your daily vocabulary, you probably know metamorphoses from caterpillar to butterfly, a redecorated room, a transformed human life. It's essentially beyond (meta) the original shape, form, appearance or likeness (morphe), and strongly implies what people perceive with their senses.

In Matthew and Mark, six days later comes after Peter's confession of Jesus as the Christ of God. In Luke they've just celebrated Succoth, the Feast of Booths–Tabernacles–Tents when people re-enacted God's protection during the exodus (Leviticus 23:39-43). Those temporary structures provided shelter yet people remained somewhat exposed to nature, so it's possible Peter, James, and John imagined offering hospitality to Moses and Elijah because their memory of Succoth was fresh.

Scripture and our every days consistently reveal creation as the setting for God's activity. Mountains often were arenas of divine revelation; OT examples include Moses on Mount Sinai [Exodus 20:1-17], Elijah on Mount Carmel [1 Kings 19:12]. The NT brings us Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and God's ultimate self-revelation in the cross of Mount Calvary.


Transfiguration!

In this literal mountaintop experience Jesus appears with Moses and Elijah, who represent Old Testament law and prophets. Particularly in Mark and in Luke, Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and to the cross is focused and incessant. In Mark, transfiguration comes after Jesus' first of three predictions of his death and resurrection (Mark 8:31). With Transfiguration so closely following foretelling his passion, death, and resurrection(!), the way of Jesus begins to take the shape of a cross. But also—as the four companions descended the mountain Jesus ordered them "to tell no one until the Son of Man [Human One] had risen from the dead." For those first disciples and for us as twenty-first century Jesus followers, a cruciform life that resists death-dealing temptations and accretions of consumerism, empire, and violence also forms us into Easter people who testify to God's power to bring new life out of death.

Traditional and valid interpretations of this transfiguration event include:

1. You can't stay on the mountaintop forever.
2. The party needs to end because you need to go back to the daily rhythm of life with its public witness out in the world.
3. You can't contain God or put "god in a box." Martin Luther talked about a domesticated god.
3. God is not a place god of a single particular locale; God is God of all places, all people, everywhere.

Like Jesus' Baptism a few weeks ago, the Transfiguration famously brings us a Trinitarian theophany, a simultaneous revelation/showing forth of all three persons of the godhead.


Listen to Jesus


For Transfiguration the voice (from the clouds, (not "from heaven") charges us "listen to Jesus," not look at him, despite the resplendent glory and bling surrounding him. Listen to jesus, not to his antecedents Moses or Elijah, who didn't quite get everything right all the time. Ultimately we need to listen to and hear Jesus, the ultimate Word of God. "Listen to Jesus" and not to any other cultural, economic, consumerist, national, or ecclesiastical voice.


Into Lent

Unlike Advent that has become reflective and hope-filled rather than penitential, Lent remains a season to consider and repent of the countless ways all of us fall short of God's holy demands, to ponder our mortality as we anticipate the astonishment of Easter. Burying the alleluias in hymnody and prayer until Easter contributes to that somber mood.

Traditional Lenten practices include "giving up" something, often a favorite food like chocolate or desserts or eating meat—Meatless Monday extended to six weeks. People often "take up" something; pre-pandemic, service activities were super-popular. Food bank, clothing center, church food pantry, animal shelter, reading to kids, etc., all provide fulfillment for both giver and recipient. There are countless excellent Lenten devotional books, booklets, along with scriptural reading plans related to Lent's emphasis on Jesus and the written Word. At our church we're offering a special series on reading and discussing Mark's gospel together with a very small in-person group, two or three on Zoom.

Glancing backwards and looking forwards helps ground us in this here and now. You've heard "if you keep looking back, you won't see where you're going." But if you don't appreciate the past, you'll probably keep making the same mistakes and missteps.

• How do you interpret the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus?
• Does this anticipation of Jesus' cross and resurrection inspire you? Lead to questions? Feel reassuring?
• How does God's "listen to Jesus" command relate to the church as a whole and to you as an individual member?
• How does the transfiguration story prepare you to journey through Lent?
• Or can you think of a better story to help get ready?
• Have you thought through your practices for Lent 2021?

Epiphany 5B

Praises from Psalm 147

Hallelujah!
Sing praise to our God!

God's the one who rebuilds cities,
who brings us home.
God counts the stars
and gives each star a name.

Sing to God a thanksgiving song,
play music to this God—
Who fills the sky with clouds,
preparing rain for the earth;
Then turning mountains green with grass,
feeds both cattle and crows.

Jerusalem, worship God!
Zion, praise your God!
God makes cities secure, and blesses our young.
God keeps peace at the borders,
and puts the best bread on our tables.

God spreads snow and scatters frost.
Then at God's command it all melts;
God breathes on winter—suddenly it's spring!

The Message (MSG), alt. | Copyright 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson

Mark 1:29-39

²⁹As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. ³⁰Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her at once. ³¹He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

³²That evening, at sundown, they brought to Jesus all who were sick or possessed with demons. ³³And the whole city was gathered around the door. ³⁴And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

³⁵In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. ³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ³⁷ When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." ³⁸He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." ³⁹And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Continuing…

The church's year of grace still is in the fairly short ordinary time season of Epiphany. Epiphany means revelation or manifestation; it emphasizes the universalism of Jesus as redeemer, savior, sovereign for all people and all creation everywhere. Light is THE Epiphany symbol; we know how far into the dark a tiny candle shines. Scripture readings for epiphany also include stories of God's call to people who lived long before us; these accounts relate directly to places and ministries God calls us to so our light can shine. Not surprisingly, evangelism – reaching out to those around us with the Good News of Jesus Christ – is another focus of the epiphany season.


Resurrection

Today's gospel reading brings us a pair of Mark's ongoing emphases: resurrection and service. In 13 verses we get a tremendous amount of action, several changes of scene. Mark uses the word for "raised up" we find in 1:31 sixteen times in his gospel; it actually means resurrection to new life. In fact, the theme of resurrection from death pervades both Old and New Testaments.


Expectations

As we've noticed from reading the gospels, Jesus' followers, whose tradition believed God would send a Messiah, assumed God's chosen anointed (Christ and Messiah both mean "anointed") would be a military leader who'd violently zap all of Israel's enemies and restore the Davidic reign.

Partly a human doing, marginally a divine initiative, the people's pleadings for "A King Like the Other Nations" had been answered with the both-kingdoms (northern Israel and southern Judah) United Monarchy of Saul, David, and Solomon. Despite their conviction a Ruler like David eventually would come onto the scene, by Jesus' day they wanted and expected an updated, better, more effective version. On some level many were primed and ready to do military battle alongside the anticipated new monarch; even after Jesus called the first disciples with, "Follow me," they never expected to be asked to follow a servant God. The outrageous idea of a ruler who would wash the feet of his followers was way beyond their comprehension. They could not have imagined a divinity who would allow himself to be put to death without resistance. Their default image of salvation and sovereignty was a king who would fight with all his might—surrounded by fully armed troops, of course.


Service

Service is the second prominent biblical current in this passage. Diakonia/deacon with related nouns and verbs weaves a path through the New Testament; this includes Jesus' declaration he is with us as "one who serves."

In today's text, Jesus resurrects Simon Peter's MIL to new life so she'll be able to serve again. In the Acts of the Apostles, we discover the nascent church didn't first ordain the Ministers of Word and Sacrament that people tend to think of as the church's primary "ministers"; in the power of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost, the church first ordained the servant class of deacons. Early Christian communities followed Old Testament patterns of laying hands on and praying over a person to authorize them for a particular ministry.

Acts of the Apostles 6:1-7

¹Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. ²And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, "It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. ³Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, ⁴while we, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word."

⁵What they said pleased the whole community, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. ⁶They had these men stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. ⁷The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

Deacon

Deacons replicate Jesus's act of foot washing – towel and basin ministry – that many churches demonstrate during Maundy Thursday worship. As with all humanity, God first creates those individuals in the divine image; later God specifically calls them to neighbor-oriented caring love. Deacons – ministers of word and service – draw on Jesus' model to reflect God's own servant nature. Historically, the class or group or tribe of deacons has been world-facing: to the world the church is supposed to look like people who serve! Of course, that includes Ministers of Word and Sacrament/pastors when they're out in the world, although the Minister of Word and Sacrament's primary stance is facing the church.

As you've learned, all this is somewhat generic, because God's calls usually aren't so clearly demarcated. God baptizes all of us into lives of direct and indirect service; God calls all of us to spread the Word in a wide range of ways; God calls everyone to celebrate and share the sacramental holy ordinariness of creation.


Next Sunday

For Western Protestant churches, the Epiphany season concludes next Sunday with the Feast of the Transfiguration. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and some churches in the Anglican tradition celebrate Transfiguration on August 6th, often for an octave of eight days. Lent, the season of lengthening, longer days that initiates spring in the northern hemisphere begins in ten days with Ash Wednesday on February 17th.