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

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