easter-3-2020-monroe.md

April 26:The Third Sunday of Easter

Monroe (Sat 4/25)

Easter continued

We are still in Easter. In fact the Gospel reading is placed on Easter evening. So if you think time is moving in a strange fashion during this time of Corona Virus – you’re absolutely correct.
This episode in the Gospel of Luke – 2 of Jesus’ disciples on the road out of Jerusalem. Outside the city. Not yet to their destination. It is so well-known as to be almost a clichè. For that reason it is a passage that is for me scary to try to preach on.
It is the pattern of readings during Easter that we listen to a series of excerpts from the Acts of the Apostles. As if to say, “Having experienced the Resurrection – now, what are you going to do about it?”
Peter stands up boldly and preaches for all he’s worth. We heard the first part of this sermon last week. He continues. Imagine, if you will, the strongest, boldest, preacher you’ve ever heard or seen. That’s Peter. Next week’s reading tells us the effect of his preaching. The people were in awe. Wonders and signs were being done before their very eyes.

All who believed were together and had all things in common; ⁴⁵they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds* to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home* and ate their food with glad and generous* hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Peter was a heck of a preacher. That’s what he did in the light of the Resurrection.
We heard from the Epistle of 1 Peter last week and again for 4 more Sundays before we reach Pentecost. In this “epistle” we hear Peter in a letter or even a kind of lecture, a teaching. (Probably another writer, actually, the Greek is too polished to be Peter himself.)

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth* so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply* from the heart.* ²³You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God

It’s a more intimate setting than the narrative in Acts. Still very clearly a response to the Resurrection. The basic stuff of being a Christian.

An interesting time to be alive – to be a Christian.

Prine

On April 7, a singer-songwriter I have loved my whole adult life, died in Nashville. He died of Covid-19. But he had lots of underlying health conditions. He had lived a very full life.
I first heard of the singer, John Prine, in the early 1970’s. It was a time when the music I was hearing around me seemed to be nostalgic for the 60’s, somehow replayed, rehashed, but not very good. According to me who, in my 20’s, of course, knew everything there was to know.
I heard him as one bursting on the scene with a new and powerful voice and message. A singer who was real, heartfelt, and he somehow wasn’t going to be put down.
Maybe a little like the way people heard Jesus when he burst on the scene in Jerusalem, leading people like those two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
In one of Prine’s last albums, recorded just a few years ago a song begins:

When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel, ain’t the afterlife grand?

Prine sang about heaven as if he’d seen it, but also as if it was his own to furnish. Most of his characters don’t know what’s good for them. They drink and smoke until their organs fail. They go when they should stay and stay when they should go. They’re well-meaning but mostly directionless.¹
It’s as simple as that. It’s not complicated. Two guys walking along the road, sharing gossip about the unusual things going on in the city. Two guys looking a lot like you and me. Eager to hear a new voice. But not quite ready, yet, to hear the heavenly words they were about to hear.
As if they said to one another, “A heaven where the likes of you and me get in. Wouldn’t that be a place?” And then Jesus taught them, broke bread and shared it, and their hearts burned with awe and wonder.

Earth Day

50 years ago this past Wednesday the first Earth Day occurred. An anniversary intended from the first as a day to demonstrate support for good stewardship of our environment. I’m looking at a picture … [describe them]

Images of New Delhi, India on Oct. 28, 2019, left, and April 20, 2020. India’s air quality improved drastically during a nationwide lockdown to curb the coronavirus.


A headline in the news read: Economic disruptions caused by COVID-19 lockdowns present a unique environmental moment for action on climate change.
One might imagine that our global pandemic was good for the earth. 50 years of Earth days and we have finally done something good for the environment.
Not so good for humans though.
And that’s the most interesting thing for me. We have been so destructive for the environment, for the Earth. But we are part of the environment ourselves.
On this the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, a little bit of the Resurrection has come to the environment. But here we are in our 3rd week of Easter and we still wrestle with the Resurrection. What are we going to do about it?
Preach like Peter?

Ramadan

Ramadan starts on Thursday, April 23 this year, and takes us all the way to Saturday, May 23.
It is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and is considered a holy month for Muslims. It marks the time when Allah revealed the first verses of the Quran to a caravan trader called Muhammad. All Muslims start fasting during Ramadan when they reach puberty, usually by the age of 14. Fasting occurs from sunrise to sunset, and a day of abstinence is broken by a night-time meal called Iftar. But when does fasting start?
Ramadan is being practiced this year, because of the Corona virus, in ways that it has never before been observed. Like Passover & Easter.
Muslims in Israel and the Palestinian territories were preparing Thursday to begin the holy month of Ramadan without visits to mosques or festive communal meals. The Islamic world struggles to balance the demands of religion with public safety in the wake of the spread of the coronavirus.
With traditional, communal meals for the poor, large fast-breaking dinners with family and friends called iftars, and cultural events after sunset canceled, the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims find themselves cut off from much of what makes the month special as authorities fight the pandemic. Israel Times

Learnings

These events lead me to several insights that are important – if they’re true.
The experience of the Resurrection affects everyone. Those of us who have figured it out – whatever it is. Those of us who don’t get it and imagine heaven to be a place to “get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band // Check into a swell hotel,” – ain’t the afterlife grand?
All of us are on the road to Emmaus. Emmaus is heaven, as it were. We only get there in the end. In the meantime. Here we are, walking along the road.
All of us are essential workers. We may feel insignificant or overlooked. We may feel unimportant. We are all as essential as those two pilgrims on the road to Emmaus.
The essential workers in our society tend to be the ones least appreciated by society at large. Too often in the past invisible. During this pandemic, suddenly they are well within our horizon. Pilgrims on the way to Emmaus are all around us. And we are on the pilgrimage with them.
Our mission – "If you choose to accept it – is to respond with what those two pilgrims on the road responded with:

• vulnerability,
• a willingness to welcome the stranger,
• ears to hear,
• a willingness to listen …

We’re all part of a magnificent and awesome system. The environment, the earth and indeed the whole surrounding universe, is all part of an intricate relatedness. In a song I first learned from Pete Seeger:

• Chorus

Somos el barco, somos el mar
Yo navego en ti, tu navegas en mi
We are the boat, we are the sea, I sail in you, you sail in me
The stream sings it to the river, the river sings it to the sea
The sea sings it to the boat that carries you and me – Chorus
The boat we are sailing in was built by many hands
And the sea we are sailing on, it touches every land – Chorus
So with our hopes we set the sails
And face the winds once more
And with our hearts we chart the waters never sailed before – Chorus
– Lorre Wyatt
For God’s part – he reveals, he embraces with love, he empowers where power is helpful, he shelters where weakness is stronger, he lights the way to Emmaus for the continuation of our journey.

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us

The Passover was a hurried meal, hurried because the Israelites had to move, and move quickly. Our last full-participation in the Eucharist was, in every congregation throughout the church in the US, a kind of hurried meal. We felt the wilderness coming and had no idea what it would be like. Now we’re in it. The wilderness – though perhaps we can begin to see a destination on the distant horizon.
May our hearts be opened, as with those two on the road.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. --Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

And may we pray as with the prayer from Evening Prayer:
Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.

Note

lectionary

---

1. A Different Kind of Heaven; Paradise According to John Prine By Adam Willis April 14, 2020 ↩︎
   

easter-morning-2020-monroe.md

April 12:Easter Day – Monroe

Thin space – The time between times

It all comes down to an image for me. I saw it literally and frequently in Hawai’i. Sitting on a shore, looking out at the ocean, wistfully, peacefully, longing. A priest I knew once saw me doing that on the island of Moloka’i. He told me that when he saw me looking that way, across the lapping waves out to sea, it explained to him in a flash what it meant to live in Hawai’i.
What I was looking at was the intersection of the ocean and the land. At a certain point in that intersection it’s a little bit of ocean and a little bit of shore – but neither at the same time.
A poet and a philosopher by the name of John O’Donohue gave me that image as a metaphor for what the Irish Celtic spiritual tradition has called thin places. Thin places are where the distance between God and human is not very great. It is a place where the mundane is made sacred. It is a place where the grandeur and majesty of the divinity is made humble so that it can mingle with the likes of you and me.
Another way to think of thin places is that they are a time between times. It’s neither what came before nor what will come after. It is a place where, as Annie Dillard put it, God might break in at any moment and blast it to bits.
We are living through a thin place.

Then and Now

Then

Today is Easter Sunday. The narrative we have just heard is placed in Jerusalem, year circa 33 CE. There is turmoil that will explode in another generation into a general revolt which will be crushed in brutal fashion by Rome.
In a minor narrative, probably not noticed by most people, a holy man from the north of the country has descended upon the city. He offended religious leaders. He sparked passion among some as he performed miracles. He got caught between the political forces of the rulers and the ruled. He was executed.

The ¹ very first Easter the disciples were locked in their house. It was dangerous for them to come out. They were afraid. They wanted to believe the good news they heard from the women, that Jesus had risen. But it seemed too good to be true. They were living in a time of such despair and such fear. If they left their homes their lives and the lives of their loved ones might be at risk. Could a miracle really have happened? Could life really had won out over death? Could this time of terror and fear really be coming to an end?

Alone in their homes they dared to believe that hope was possible, that the long night was over and morning had broken, that God’s love was the most powerful of all, even though it didn’t seem quite real yet. Eventually, they were able to leave their homes, when the fear and danger had subsided, they went around celebrating and spreading the good news that Jesus was risen and love was the most powerful force on the earth

Now

Today we are quarantined behind the doors of our homes. If we leave our home, our own lives and the lives of our loved ones might be put in jeopardy. If we are homeless we are quarantined to our 6 foot section of pavement. It is dangerous to go out. We can’t see the enemy because the enemy is a virus. Scientists are not even sure whether it’s a living thing or not. One of the greatest threats is the threat of fear.
But you are here – mostly you are here in a virtual way, facilitated by the internet – you are here because for you in some sense or another the place of bondage and fear is not your home. Your true home is another sort of place. A place of shouts of joy, the play of children, singing the good news – it’s called gospel – a place of love not fear.
Emily Dickinson wrote a poem (#1383) that tells of the collapse of the distinction between then and now. It goes like this:
Long Years apart — can make no
Breach a second cannot fill —
The absence of the Witch does not
Invalidate the spell —
The embers of a Thousand Years
Uncovered by the Hand
That fondled them when they were Fire
Will stir and understand —

4 questions

At the seder meal shared at Passover, there is an important role for children. It’s one of the things I have loved about it. Children have a vital role to play. For too long our liturgies suffered from being a kind of “adults only” affair.
One of the crucial roles that children play is by asking what are called the “4 questions.”
Although they are called “The Four Questions,” really this part of the seder is one question with four answers. The central question is: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” source

• On all other nights we eat bread or matzah, while on this night we eat only matzah.
• On all other nights we eat all kinds of vegetables and herbs, but on this night we have to eat bitter herbs.
• On all other nights we don’t dip our vegetables in salt water, but on this night we dip them twice.
• On all other nights we eat while sitting upright, but on this night we eat reclining. (because in ancient times, a person who reclined at a meal was a free person, while slaves and servants stood)

The answer to the question is: this night is different because on this night Moses led us from slavery. For thousands of years rabbis have known that in the telling of the story of deliverance one lives (again) in the time of deliverance. The separation of then and now is erased – if only for a time.
The four questions of the children at the Haggadah are a variation of – why do we do this? What is the point? The rabbis answered that we tell the story because we are present as the Israelites escape from Egypt.
I said last week that we were beginning the essential story for those of us who profess to be Christians. We began the story as Jesus entered in triumph into Jerusalem – and then within the week was executed and buried. We began the story then but we finish the story now.
We don’t tell the story that takes a week to tell because we don’t know how it ends. We tell the story week by week because when we do we are there with Mary Magdalene with Peter and John and Thomas and all the rest. We are there and our lives are why we tell the story.
As the Passover telling of the story breaks down the distinction between past and future, so too does this story that we conclude today. We are there with Mary, confused at the empty tomb. We are Mary as the Lord calls our name. We are commissioned, along with Mary, to go forth to announce the good news.

What is essential and what is incidental?

Over the years, I have tried to understand and to be clear to myself, my answer to the question, “What are the essentials? What is it that I believe in over all else?”
I have it down to a couple of things, but the most important can be expressed in a single phrase. Jesus Christ is risen today.
The essential point however is not the proclamation alone. It is our answer to what does it mean? What is the meaning of Christ is risen today in my life? Today? Here, now.
It has been so since ancient times.
It is the faith that motivates us, drives our getting up in the morning and our falling asleep at night. It is the faith that washes infants in the font of baptism. It is the faith that lays to rest the weary of soul. It is the faith that heals the sick and raises up the downtrodden. Jesus Christ is risen today.
There was a beautiful 90-year-old woman at my church in Indiana. She insisted on sitting in church with the children of the parish. The children had a special section just for them in the front of all the pews. She insisted on sitting there, in her wheel chair, with all the other children. They loved her and she loved them. She had such a deep faith. When she died and took her last breath she had the sweetest most peaceful smile settl on her face. Her obituary listed her as the head of the children’s corner at church.
She had lived with the words of the St Francis prayer. They hung in her living room. “It is only in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
She knew the faith of Mary standing there before the empty tomb. She knew what it meant that Jesus Christ is risen today. She was born into a life of joy. That’s what her smile meant.
Jesus Christ is risen today is truly the good news. Hallelujah.

Notes:

lectionary

Prayer for People Facing Great Uncertainty

God of the present moment,
God who in Jesus stills the storm
and soothes the frantic heart;
bring hope and courage to all
who wait or work in uncertainty.
Bring hope that you will make them the equal
of whatever lies ahead.
Bring them courage to endure what cannot be avoided,
for your will is health and wholeness;
you are God, and we need you.
Taken from A New Zealand Prayer Book—He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa’ (adapted)

---

1. one source This year, we might get to experience a taste of what that first Easter was like, still in our homes daring to believe that hope is on the horizon. Then, after a while, when it is safe for all people, when it is the most loving choice, we will come out, gathering together, singing and shouting the good news that God brings life even out of death, that love always has the final say! … This year we might get the closest taste we have had yet to what that first Easter was like." – author unknown ↩︎
   

palm-sunday-2020-monroe.md

April 5, 2020: The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday – Monroe

This Day

Today is a strange day. Today the church wraps together Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. What used to be the two Sundays preceding Easter is now just one. And it is the first time the Eucharist has been celebrated in this place since March 8 – almost a month.
Palm Sunday for me has wonderful and joyous memories. My favorite part was the custom I developed at St. Mary’s in Honolulu. We would bless palms in the gathering room and then march in procession out the doors, through the parking lot, cross one of the major thoroughfares coming out of downtown, and sing as we passed McDonald’s. There was a dear little Japanese lady, Jane Oki was her name, it was her favorite too. One year we had a leading musician from the Hawaiian Waikiki scene playing his accordion as we sang and marched.
As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, with people singing and waving palms, the city was an intense place. There many factions fighting one another, both figuratively and literally. Passions were sometimes at the boiling point. There was deep resistance and resentment over the government – Roman at that point. And the bitter rivalry between the different branches of Judaism was enough to lead many to sense that the end was coming near.
In our own time – it’s funny as I wrote that paragraph above, it seemed like most of it could have been written about our own time.

Time of Crisis

There have been Mob actions from time immemorial. On Palm Sunday we begin with one. The crowds were gathered around Jesus in his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. We know how that one ended, right?
I continue to read and hear about the need to focus on facts over fear, calm over panic. It’s not always easy to sort out the difference. To separate the triumph of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, with shouts of joy and Hosannah – from the pathos, the passion, of the Lord abandoned, alone, dying.
Like the victims of Covid-19 we hear about. The people who die alone, whose loved ones say goodbye by phone or video, with no opportunity to hug or hold hands.
That’s Jesus at the end of today’s Gospel reading.

Speak to the people

The last two Sundays Mary Pat and I have watched, listened, sung, prayed with St. Paul’s in Morning Prayer. We have been blessed to be a part your life in Christ.
There’s a sense in which this past month has been the most momentous in the history of this parish.
The church that gathers at St. Paul’s in Monroe – though you can’t gather at the moment – is one that prays and makes music together, in praise of the goodness of God and the love that binds. Even if it can only be 2 or 3 gathered together, you are faithful and joyful and caring and determined. What a story you are!
One of the things I have grown to know more and more deeply is that it matters what stories we tell about ourselves.
If this is our story, what does it say about us?

• Do we tell the story to demonstrate that out of catastrophe comes a new beginning?
• Do we tell the story to pass the blame around?
• Do we tell the story to make the case that we are resourceful creations and we will find a solution?

We have seen and heard the stories of despair and sadness: choir in WA, nurses and doctors crying on TV, stories that make me cry.
We have seen and heard the stories of inspiration and generosity: landlord who wouldn’t accept rent for this month, signs in chalk on the sidewalks,
What story do we offer in the midst of this time of pandemic?

Stories

We are living in an exceptional time. Fewer and fewer people are questioning that. I remember hearing the question and asking others: “Do you know where you were when JFK was assassinated?” I still do. I remember vividly the circumstances when I learned about the events of 9/11. I remember the moment I learned about the Challenger disaster.
We are living through such a time. It’s not a moment. It’s an unfolding saga. Sometimes it seems like it is in slow motion. Sometimes it seems like there are an unfathomable number of things happening in flash of time.
Such times make us who we are. We are, as it were, formed by the catastrophes and events that happen during our lifetimes.
But also I would add by the stories we tell and retell. Some events get repeated from generation to generation and they are formative for the children and the grand-children – unto a 100 generations.
Such is the story we tell today, on Palm Sunday. We tell the story of Jesus’ death on the Cross on only 1 Sunday in the year. It’s too much – even at the length we have heard it today. It’s a story that takes a week to tell. We call it Holy Week.
This is in so many ways the one story that Christians have to tell. It is the story we tell over and over, year by year, century by century. We retell it because it is the one story the universe has to tell. It is the one story that says who we are as Christians. It is the story that forms and shapes us.

What is new for me

One of the things that has shifted for me in the past couple of weeks is that I have listened to blogs that I haven’t always taken the time to listen to. Sources of wisdom, insight, learning that I realize feed my soul. It’s been a little blessing in the midst of the upheaval we are living through.
There was a surprising bit of learning last week. Krista Tippet was interviewing an Italian theoretical physicist. Carlo Rovelli is his name. It was said of him that: “Carlo Rovelli takes up vast ideas beyond most of our imagining, like quanta, grains of space, and time and the heat of black holes.”
Such thoughts may not be your cup of tea, but it was evocative and inspiring for me. In my own words I heard him saying that in the larger framework of creation, there aren’t really things there are only relationships. There isn’t really time as past-present-future, there are only relationships and what he calls “happenings.”
The only thing that matters is our connectedness. Whether it is by ones or twos. Whether in a convention center or monastic cave, we are nothing but our relationships to one another. Whether we are at the point of triumph with Hosannah’s and waving palms, or we are at the withering solemnity of a lonely, suffering, death, we are never alone and bereft. “No man (or woman) is an island.”
And the story is not over. It takes a week to tell. Holy Week. And the end of the story is an empty tomb and there,

Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my sisters / brothers that I am going into Galilee. They will see me there.”

Notes

lectionary

Psalm 118:

28 “You are my God, and I will thank you; *
you are my God, and I will exalt you.”
29 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; *
his mercy endures for ever.

Philippians 2:5-11

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

A Prayer for Our Uncertain Times

May we who are merely inconvenienced remember those whose lives are at stake.
May we who have no risk factors remember those most vulnerable.
May we who have the luxury of working from home remember those who must choose between preserving their health and making their rent.
May we who have the flexibility to care for our children when their schools close remember those who have no options.
May we who have to cancel our trips remember those who have no safe place to go.
May we who are losing our margin money in the tumult of the economic market remember those who have no margin at all.
May we who settle in for a quarantine at home remember those who have no home.
As fear grips our country, let us choose love.
And during this time when we may not be able to physically wrap our arms around each other, let us yet find ways to be the loving embrace of God to our neighbors. Amen.

• Submitted by Fr. Michael Graham, S.J.