Words Twice a Week 4.1
If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church. Click here.
Ok – there are a ton of lessons that you might end up encountering this weekend – from Maundy Thursday to Good Friday to Easter Vigil to Easter morning to Easter evening. We are going to mainly look at some of the ones from Easter morning, although just a note that I always wanted to have a service for Easter evening focused by the Emmaus Road lesson. It could be fun to let everyone break the bread and see what happens – kind of like Cinderella and the glass slipper! Never did it.
Some thoughts on some of the lessons for Sunday -
Isaiah 25.6-9
+ this is a little bit of eschatology – words about the future times. “On that day” – these are things the community is waiting for and expecting/hoping will happen. But it’s not just that they will be rescued from this or that danger – this is about a radical transformation of the human situation. In our day and age, does anything else seem sufficient?
+ a reminder that Easter is still more about tomorrow than today.
+ Isaiah envisions two things
– 1) a feast for all peoples. So what is on your Easter table, and how is it or is it not a feast for all people? Could all people eat it? Is the producing and preparing of it good for all people? Where is the balance between “having a feast” and “having it be something good for all people”?
- 2) and then God will destroy death. Ok, sounds good, but then everything that lives dies sooner or later. Does God “destroy the shroud” by somehow making death “ok”? How would that work for you?
+ the mountain – where we encounter God? Where has that been in your life – the church, the forest, the coffee shop, the concert hall?
Psalm 118.1-2, 14-24
+ so at both ends of Holy Week we get some of the same verses of Ps 118 and some different ones. The overlap is vs 19-24. Last week we also had vs 25-29, this week we have 14-18.
+ we recall from last week that the main part of this is kind of a play-by-play of a king coming victorious to the temple. The verses added this week are about glad songs of victory because of “the right hand of the Lord” (three times in vs 15-16); and then about how death was immanent but didn’t happen. The verses that are left off this Sunday have to do with asking God to save us and a description of the king approaching the altar.
+ so if we are hearing this primarily about Jesus, would we lop off the verses about the king approaching the altar because there isn’t any literal king, there isn’t any literal procession? There is the reality that death did not have the last word, that “God has not given me over to death” doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t die, but that life/love was the last word. There was a line way back in the “email a Day” era about God not letting death destroy what God made and loves – something like that.
+ between Friday and Sunday Jesus, his work, his vision, his love is being undone by death, but God will not let that stand.
+ back to verse 17, 18, 19 – I shall not die, the Lord has chastened me, open to me the gates of righteousness. Who is this? Jesus, but maybe more than Jesus. Those who have been saved along with Jesus by the right hand of God? You and me? Maybe, but not because we are so special or good; rather because of what God has done!
+ last Sunday we noted an ominous tone in “the stone the builders rejected”. Do we still hear that this Sunday? How?
1 Corinthians 15.1-11
+ What Paul proclaimed was 1) good news, a saving word, and 2) was what he had received, not what he thought up by himself. How much of our faith is “received” and received how and from whom? What do we figure out for ourselves? What do we make up?
+ Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,
was buried (confirming that death)
was raised in accordance with the scriptures,
and appeared to a whole list (confirming the resurrection.)
+ reading on in the chapter, we discover some at Corinth are denying a general resurrection. Paul sees the resurrection of Jesus as the start of a general resurrection, a start of God’s overthrow of evil.
+ Paul says “I am what I am” by grace, “I’ve done what I’ve done” by my hard work, though of course it was God working through me.
Well then we have our choice of the Easter morning story from Mark or from John. They are different! First Mark -
Mark 16.1-8
+ and first, does this sound like an end? And if it is, what is Mark trying to say? If it isn’t, what more might he have said that somehow got lost? Vs 9-20? I come down on the side that vs 8 is the end. Let’s keep this in mind as we go through -
+ Mary and Mary and Salome go to the tomb on the first day of the week when the sun had risen. They worry about the stone, giving it a place in the story, but it has been rolled away.
+ there’s a young man in the tomb (did he roll the stone away?), sitting on the right side. What’s that about – is it somehow supposed to connect with “the right hand of God” or “sitting on the right hand of God”?
+ “tell the disciples Jesus is going ahead to Galilee.” What will happen there – ascension, new commission, ??? What is “Galilee” for you? And are you headed that way, or pulling a Jonah?
+ he explains to the women, but they don’t understand, they run away afraid, say nothing to anyone.
+ Mk 16 completes the strange conclusion of this gospel – where the soldier confesses faith, the disciples flee, the women observe, the burial is handled by Joseph of Arimathea. The young man notes that the humans placed Jesus’ body, but God raised it. Humans can only do so much, and ultimately (?) fail, but God picks up where failure leaves off?
+ so is vs 1-8 a beginning or an ending. On the one hand there is grace, hope, words of a new beginning; on the other hand the women are afraid and silent. God will have to somehow pick up where they are falling short. So if it ends here, the hopeful word of the gospel might be that despite our failures, our fearfulness, our silence, somehow God still breaks into our world with grace, love, new potential?
+ this from Fred Craddock – “Mark’s accent, central focus, and climax is the cross. Mark, of course, believed in the resurrection, but he did not include any dramatic resurrection appearances that would transcend and in a sense reduce the centrality of the cross as the definition off messiahship and of discipleship. For Mark, the resurrection served the cross; Easter did not eradicate but vindicated Good Friday. And if worshipers do not experience Jesus as dead, they can hardly experience him as resurrected.”
+ and this - “Even so, astonishment, trembling, fear, and silence do not seem inappropriate for Easter morning. They will find their tongues, they will witness, but early in the morning is no time to be glib and chatty about an empty tomb and a risen Lord.” Ok – I’m supposed to do the welcome on Easter morning. “Don’t be too chatty?”
Then John 20.1-18
+ so it’s like how many differences are there between these two pictures?
- Mary goes while it is still dark
- She sees the stone moved and runs to tell Peter and the Beloved Disciple.
- they run and do this curious dance; the BD gets there first, looks, but doesn’t go in; Peter gets there second but goes in first; the BD goes in, sees, and believes. They each get to do something first!
+ they both saw and even believed, but did not understand, because scripture is important for understanding reality; we might even say scripture interprets reality. And vice versa?
+ Mary encounters 2 disciples, 2 angels, and Jesus. She is still “in the dark” and focused on the body. “Dead bodies don’t simply disappear”. Jesus saying her name shatters her world. Anything like that ever happen to you?
+ Jesus to Mary – “Do not hold onto me; go and tell the disciples (a different message from Mark; the ministry of the risen Christ is different from the ministry of the human Jesus. The ministry of the risen Christ is to go away and send the Holy Spirit?)
+ And then here’s a line from a commentary on this “Do not hold onto me” verse – “Mary and the disciples and the church are not to long for the way it was….” How does that resonate with our present COVID situation?
+ Anyway, Mary does go and tell.
+ John has two resurrection stories – this and Thomas. (Well, then ch 21 with Peter fishing, and breakfast on the seashore – forerunner of countless lakeside Easter sunrise services! - and “Do you love me? Feed my sheep”. Some people think that was added later.) But the “seeing, believing, understanding” in chapter 20 show that faith comes and is focused in different ways for different people. How has that worked out in your life?
That’s what I got for now…..Still no recipe poem for a Moonlight cupcake.
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