Words 4.11

 Words Twice a Week           4.11

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.

WAIT A MINUTE!  HOLD EVERYTHING!  HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?  WHY DID NO ONE CALL ME AND SAY “CHARLIE, WHAT ABOUT….?”  Last Tuesday – I don’t know, listening to Merle Haggard “Sing Me Back Home” and I must have taken my eyes off the road of life – last Tuesday, April 6, was the day that Twinkies were first marketed in 1930!  I mean, Twinkies are right up there with SPAM and Jello as iconic American foods.  And sure – they are probably full of all kinds of stuff, but hey, they taste so good!  So – here’s a haiku about Twinkies.  Then I think I’ll run out and pick up a couple.

    For afternoon tea

    Mint, Earl Grey, or Darjeeling - 

    Twinkie anyone?

Ok – now here are some of the days for this week, and I’ll try not to miss anything as significant as Twinkie Birthday!

Some days from the church calendar

April 14    Two of the first African American priests and bishops in the Episcopal Church.  They both died on April 14, Demby in 1957, Delany in 1928.

Edward Thomas Demby   Beginning as an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister, in 1898 he was ordained a deacon (and a priest the next year) as a priest in the Episcopal Church of the United States and later a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Arkansas and the Southwest, Demby worked against racial discrimination and for interracial harmony, both within and outside of his church.  He was the first, or one of the first African American bishops in the Episcopal Church.

Henry Beard Delany  Born into slavery in 1858, after the Civil War he learned bricklaying and carpentry from his father, who was a ship and house carpenter.  He attended St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, which Episcopal priests had founded in 1867 to educate newly freed men and women, studying theology, music and other subjects.  He joined Raleigh's St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, was ordained a deacon in 1889 and a priest in 1892.  He was unanimously elected suffragan bishop for Negro Work at the North Carolina diocesan convention, and consecrated in 1918. 

April 15    Another double day – a priest and a sister who both worked and lived among people with leprosy on the Island of Moloka’i 

Damien  He was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious institute. He was recognized for his ministry, which he led from 1873 until his death in 1889, in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi for people with leprosy (Hansen's disease), who lived in government-mandated medical quarantine in a settlement on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokaʻi.  During this time, he taught the Catholic faith to the people of Hawaii. Father Damien also cared for the patients and established leaders within the community to build houses, schools, roads, hospitals, and churches. He dressed residents' ulcers, built a reservoir, made coffins, dug graves, shared pipes, and ate poi by hand with them, providing both medical and emotional support.  After eleven years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, Father Damien contracted leprosy. He continued with his work despite the infection but finally succumbed to the disease on 15 April 1889.

Marianne   Marianne Cope, also known as Saint Marianne of Molokaʻi, was a German-born American religious sister who was a member of the Sisters of St Francis of Syracuse, New York.  Known also for her charitable works, in 1883 she relocated with six other sisters to Hawaiʻi to care for persons suffering leprosy on the island of Molokaʻi and aid in developing the medical infrastructure in Hawaiʻi. Despite direct contact with the patients over many years, Cope did not contract the disease.  She was the 11th person in what is now the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.

April 16  Molly Brant  also known as Mary Brant, Konwatsi'tsiaienni, and Degonwadonti, she was a Mohawk leader in New York and Canada in the era of the American Revolution.  She was the consort or common law wife of Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Northern Indian Affairs.  She attended the Church of England.  She had significant influence among the Mohawk and the Six Nation Iroquois League and remained loyal to the British during the American Revolution.  She died on April 16, 1796.

And some days from the world/earth calendar -

April 12

+ Clara Barton died in 1912.  A civil war nurse whose experience led to the creation of the American Red Cross.  She was president of it for 23 years.  After the war she ran the Office of Missing Soldiers, helping to locate 22,000 men.  In 1869, Barton closed the Missing Soldiers Office and headed to Europe. The third floor of her old boardinghouse was boarded up in 1913, and the site forgotten. The site was "lost" in part because Washington, DC realigned its addressing system in the 1870s. The boardinghouse became 437 ½ Seventh Street Northwest (formerly 488-1/2 Seventh Street West).  In 1997, General Services Administration carpenter Richard Lyons was hired to check out the building for its demolition. He found a treasure trove of Barton items in the attic, including signs, clothing, Civil War soldier's socks, an army tent, Civil War-era newspapers, and many documents relating to the Office of Missing Soldiers.  This discovery led to the NPS saving the building from demolition. It took years, however, for the site to be restored.  The Clara Barton's Missing Soldiers Office Museum, run by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, opened in 2015.  Her home was established as a National Historic Site in 1974.

+ and speaking of the Civil War, in 1861 the South Carolina Militia fired on Fort Sumter.  With the return fire and later surrender of the fort, the American Civil War began.

+ In 1961, Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth for the first time.  In 1981 the Space shuttle blasted off for the first time.

+ in 1951, the Israeli Knesset set the 27th of Nisan as Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoa.  (It was last week, April 8 this year.)  Unfortunately, since WW2 we continue to see atrocities of ethnic cleansing.

April 13

+ Tiger Woods became the youngest man to win the Masters golf tournament in 1997.  What a lot has happened in his life since then!

+ in 1970, an oxygen tank on Apollo 13 exploded.  “Houston, we have a problem...”

April 14

+ George Frideric Handel died in 1759.  According to the website, “When Messiah was first performed in London (1743), when the chorus struck up, 'For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth', reportedly the audience and King [George II] stood and remained standing until the chorus had ended. Some days after the first performance, Handel visited Lord Kinnoul. His lordship paid him compliments on "the noble entertainment". Handel is said to have remarked, "My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wished to make them better."

+ the heaviest hailstones ever recorded (2.2 lbs) fell in Bangladesh on this day in 1986.  92 people were killed.

+ the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in 1912.  1500 people died.  I’d say April 14 scores “Ice 2, Humans 0”.

+ Rachel Carson died in 1964.  She wrote a couple of books about the sea, and then Silent Spring about pesticides in the environment, giving a strong boost to the environmental movement.

April 15

+ Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

+ It would be tax day in any other year.  I finally got mine done this week.  Each year I say – next year in February!

+ Wordsworth and his sister went walking in 1802 and saw “a crowd, a host of golden daffodils.”  He finally got around to writing and publishing the poem in 1807.

+ in 1935 Kodak introduced Kodachrome, if you wanted to take a picture of those daffodils.  Paul Simon sang the song.

April 16

+ The Rolling Stones released their first album in the US in 1964.

+ Charlie Chaplin was born in 1889.  In the Tai Chi for Arthritis and Fall Prevention, they start with “a Charlie Chaplin stance.”  Pretty amazing that 100 years later, we still know what that means.   Chaplin selected the costume with which he became identified. He described the process in his autobiography:  “I wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large ... I added a small moustache, which, I reasoned, would add age without hiding my expression. I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.”

April 17

+ Ben Franklin died in 1790..According to wikipedia, he was a leading writer, printer, political philosopher, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.  He founded Philadelphia’s first fire department.  

April 18

+ Ireland became independent on this day in 1949.  

+ San Francisco earthquake in 1906.  Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died. Over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed.  Other earthquakes occurred in Oct 1989 (during the World series!) and in 2014

+ Albert Einstein died in 1955.  Einstein became one of the most famous scientific celebrities, beginning with the confirmation of his theory of general relativity in 1919.  And just to look at the list of his scientific topics is pretty overwhelming – I don’t even know what most of them are!  Despite the general public having little understanding of his work, he was widely recognized and received adulation and publicity. In the period before World War II, The New Yorker published a vignette in their "The Talk of the Town" feature saying that Einstein was so well known in America that he would be stopped on the street by people wanting him to explain "that theory". He finally figured out a way to handle the incessant inquiries. He told his inquirers "Pardon me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein."  Some quotes attributed to him "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"; "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”; "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere"; "Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value."  And more here.  Unfortunately the one about the bees is probably not actually from him.  His brain was removed after he died and pieces of it shared with various scientists.  A 2001 book, Driving Mr Albert tells some of the story.

+ Thor Heyerdahl died in 2002 I read the book, I saw the movie, I carved a Tiki figure and wore it around my neck.  You?

+ Dick Clark in 2012.  I watched American Bandstand, and danced in my dreams.  And a couple Rockin’ New Year’s Eves.  You?

Challenge for the week – write a poem about wandering around and suddenly seeing a “field of crocuses, or croci”.  Either is acceptable.  Crocuses could rhyme with “Memphis slow buses”; croci could rhyme with “Lodi”.

That’s what I got for now……

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Words 4.8

 Words Twice a Week           4.8

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.

A short poem/prayer to remind ourselves that Easter is not over.  This is the second of seven Sundays of Eastertide, and beyond that, the message of Easter extends to each day as it comes.

    Into the darkness and gloom

    of poverty and sickness,

    of hostility and racism,

    of sadness and fear and confusion,

    Dear Lord, the light of your Easter morning

    shines still in our lives and in our world,

    and brings comfort and hope and courage.

    Thank you for this kind and wonderful gift.

Now some thoughts on some of the lessons for Sunday -

Acts 4.32-35

+ we read from Acts during the Sundays of Easter.  This passage is one of a series of summaries showing how things are going as time goes by and the Word spreads and the community grows.  The first summary came right after the events of Pentecost and Peter’s sermon, this one comes right after Peter and John heal a man, are arrested, and released.  Luke shows us how the power embodied in these events also forms and strengthens the community.

+ the community was all of one heart and soul, and they shared possessions.  It embodied unity and charity.

+ complete sharing of possessions is one form of responsible use of possessions, but there are others – renouncing all, giving alms.  What works for you with respect to possessions?  And note this was sharing to alleviate the poverty within the group.  Addressing the poverty of the whole world will come later. Which is easier for us – to deal with poverty among church members, friends, neighbors, or poverty in third world countries?

+ “The community is an odd and crucial presence in a culture of competition, conflict, isolation, brutality.”  Easter makes a different way of life possible.

+ Luke describes a relationship with God, and with each other, in this world.  In fact, Luke envisions the church becoming a new family – how does that work?  Do you see points of possible conflict?

Psalm 133

+ “a psalm of ascent” – a pilgrimage psalm.  Maybe they sang it on the way to Jerusalem? Maybe day by day as the trials and tensions of pilgrimage began to weigh heavy?  When might you find yourself singing this psalm?

+ the oil running down – well, sounds kind of icky.  On the one hand, if the oil represents blessing, then we can picture blessing running down.  On the other hand, one writer notes that “life is so good it must be marked by luxury and extravagance at times.”  What do you do for extravagance?

+ the dew of Mt Hermon – refreshes the land, settles the dust.  

1 John 1.1-2.2

+ we read through most of 1 John during Eastertide, so a few introductory thoughts.  The letter is really an address to a congregation from which some have separated off and are now beginning to pose a threat.  (Apparently saying that Jesus was not the Christ – see 2.22)  One thought is that the address itself is structured like this -

  -a prologue (vs 1-4), 

  -one main section (1.5-3.10 which begins “This is the message…”) about experiencing the Divine, walking in the light, and awareness of and opposition to sin,

  -a second main section (3.11-5.12, again beginning with “This is the message…”) about loving each other,

  -an epilogue  (5:13-21)

+ John stresses the reality of the Easter (and beyond) experience.  What we have heard, felt, seen, and we are telling you because this makes for happiness.  What parts of the Easter experience lingers with us – what did we see, hear, taste, touch, smell?

+ vs 1 – “from the beginning” – the prologue obviously is meant to harmonize with the beginning of the gospel.  Here an added subtlety is that “beginning” can refer to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the beginning of the Christian witness.

+ “sharing” (several times in the passage) – sharing with God in a vertical dimension, and sharing with others in a horizontal dimension.  Both are significant; is one more important for you?

+ God, and the experience of God, is light shining in the darkness showing us how to live and helping us.  And living in the light allows us to live together as Ps 133 envisions.

+ “If we say we have no sin….”  Sin is a part of life, and so it is not so much a “yes” or “no”, but rather a matter of degree?  Ultimately we belong to light and not to sin.

   When we are living, it is in Christ Jesus; 

   And when we’re dying, it is in the Lord.

   Both in our living, and in our dying,

   We belong to God, we belong to God.

John 20.19-31

+ as we noted last week, John has essentially 2 resurrection appearances – last week to Mary Magdalene and 2 disciples; and this week to Thomas and the other ten.  Recall that Thomas often asked a question that allowed Jesus to explain or expand.  Here he is the reason Jesus goes on to say “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

+ and it extends the thought from last week that there are different ways people come to faith. Some by hearing, some by seeing, some by touch.  If you add in the Emmaus story from Luke, some by taste!

+ coming to faith is not a once for all time kind of thing, it is a decision that must be made anew in each new situation.  The last “convert” in the gospel is Thomas, a disciple, even one of the twelve.

+ Jesus shows them his hands and side, where he was wounded.  Is that to emphasize that the crucified Jesus and the risen Lord are one?  Aren’t we tempted to sometimes just focus on the resurrection and bypass the suffering – in our own lives, I mean?

+ the appearances do not simply attest to his resurrection, they change life for the disciples, empowering them for the future.

+ He breathed on them.  I guess I’m glad that it was the bread and the wine that became the sacrament, not the “breathing on.”  But this is “pentecost” for John – the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

+ and the power to forgive or retain sins.  How does that work out – if God forgives but we don’t?  Where in our lives today do we do this well, where not so well?  Is it easy for you to forgive, not hard?  Are there people you know who seem to do it easily, or with difficulty?  Why do you think that is?

+ and “As I was sent, so I send you.”  Again, it is not just proving the past, it is pointing to a future.

+ the passage really is about Jesus more than about Thomas.  Jesus comes to people in hiding, held captive by confusion and fear, and brings them peace and power.

+ and finally Thomas – does he “doubt”?  Or is he somehow just “unable to believe”.  Does he “refuse to believe”?  One writer notes that while we do not have the advantage Thomas has (being able to see and touch), we also do not have his handicap – we have never known Jesus crucified, dead, and buried.  Just like I have never really known life without electricity – well, going to camp, but even there we had flashlights, and now a small solar panel.  But from the very beginning, I have always known Jesus Risen.  

+ vs 30  this sounds like an ending.  (Many scholars think ch 21 with the fishing and the breakfast was added later.)  If so, note that here it ends with grace – “through believing you will have life.”

That’s what I got for now….

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Words 4.4

 Words Twice a Week          4.4 

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.

Some of the days from the church calendar -

April 5  Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati   Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati was born as Ramabai Dongre on 23 April 1858 into a Marathi-speaking Chitpavan Brahmin family. Her father was a Sanskrit scholar and taught her Sanskrit at home. His extraordinary piety led him to travel extensively across India with his family in tow and Ramabai gained exposure to public speaking by participating in the family's public recitation of the Puranas at pilgrimage sites around India, which is how they earned a meager living. Ramabai's fame as a woman adept in Sanskrit reached Calcutta, where the pandits invited her to speak.  In 1878, Calcutta University conferred on her the titles of Pandita and Sarasvati in recognition of her knowledge of various Sanskrit works.  She worked to improve the status of women and children in India and founded a mission where they could shelter which survives to this day.

April 6  Daniel G. C. Wu  

   Born Ng Gee Ching, in China in 1883, he arrived as a child in Honolulu, Hawaii. Initially lukewarm toward Christianity, he agreed to assist deaconess Emma Drant, who taught him English in exchange for him teaching her Cantonese and assisting the Chinese community in Hawaii. Inspired by Drant's faith, he converted to Christianity, and took "Daniel" as a colloquial name on his baptism as well as changed his surname to "Wu", which is the Mandarin pronunciation of his name, and which Americans not of Chinese descent could pronounce more easily.

   Upon his ordination in 1912, Wu became vicar of two  missions in the San Francisco area, which thrived despite the racial discrimination and other hardships still faced by congregation members.  Wu frequented the port of entry, making contact with newly arrived, many of them Cantonese people. He assisted their transition to their new home and culture, while helping them and their children maintain their Chinese identity and heritage. Wu and his wife King Yoak Won (and the two congregations) offered English and sewing classes for adults, as well as Chinese language classes for children.

   Although the first two Chinese missions of the Episcopal Church, founded in 1874 in Carson, Nevada and the following year in Nevada City, both folded as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, both congregations that Wu shepherded survive to this day, albeit in different locations. They now offer services in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as continue to offer language and sewing classes.

April 8  

  William Augustus Muhlenberg    Born in 1796, he became an Episcopal clergyman and educator. Muhlenberg is considered the father of church schools in the United States. An early exponent of the Social Gospel, he founded St. Luke's Hospital in New York City.

  Anne Ayres     Anne Ayres, born January 3, 1816, was a nun and the founder of the first Episcopalian religious order for women.  Born in London, she emigrated to the United States with her parents in 1836. She settled in New York City and tutored the daughters of wealthy families.  In the summer of 1845, Ayres heard a speech by Episcopal clergyman William Augustus Muhlenberg and decided to follow a religious life.   Ayres gathered other women to teach at the school and do other charity work. They formed the Sisterhood of the Holy Communion (with Ayres as First Sister).  Aware of longstanding prejudice against religious orders since the Protestant Reformation 300 years earlier, the new order did not wear habits, but had a secular dress code, as well as took renewable vows for three years at a time. The House of Bishops formally recognized the new order (the first religious order for women in the Episcopal Church) in 1852.

April 9  Dietrich Bonhoeffer  -  a German Lutheran pastor and theologian whose life is an interesting story.  He was part of the Confessing Church that opposed the Nazi’s and the rise of Hitler.  He wrote a classic Christian text – The Cost of Discipleship – saying that grace was free, not cheap.

April 10   two guys today

William Law   Born in 1686, he was a Church of England priest who lost his position as a fellow (I love that terminology – I’d love to be a fellow of something!) at Emmanuel College, Cambridge when his conscience would not allow him to take the required oath of allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch, King George I. Previously William Law had given his allegiance to the House of Stuart.  He continued as a simple priest, and when that also became impossible without the oath, he taught privately and wrote.  His book A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729) deeply influenced the chief actors in the great Evangelical revival. John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Henry Venn, Thomas Scott, and Thomas Adam all express their deep obligation to the author.  It’s still in print today and popular, particularly in evangelical circles.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin  He was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher.  He came up with the idea of the Omega point, a point in the future when all reality would come back together as it was in the beginning.  At least that’s how I understand it.  He died in New York City, where he was in residence at the Jesuit Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, Park Avenue. On March 15, 1955, at the house of his diplomat cousin Jean de Lagarde, Teilhard told friends he hoped he would die on Easter Sunday.  On the evening of Easter Sunday, April 10, during an animated discussion, Teilhard suffered a heart attack and died.

Some days from the earth/world calendar -

April 5

+ birthday of Spencer Tracy (1900), Bette Davis (1908).  So – I remember seeing Tracey in Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner.  Do you remember Bette Davis, (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Death on the Nile) or just “She’s got Bette Davis eyes”?

+ according to Biggby Coffee, it’s National Caramel Day.

April 6

+ it’s the birthday of Merle Haggard  Okie from Muskogee, The fighting Side of Me, Silver Wings, Sing Me Back Home, Mama Tried – just a few of his hits.  And then how about this - Merle appeared in season five, episode three of The Waltons called "The Comeback". He played Red Turner, a local musician who had become depressed and withdrawn after the death of his son, played by Ron Howard.  Wait a minute - How did Ron Howard get from Mayberry to Walton’s Mountain? And how about this - he died on this day, yup, on his birthday, in 2016.

+ in 1924 four aircraft left from Seattle westward on an around the world trip.  157 days later 2 of them finally made it back to where they started.  157 days!

+ in 1909 Robert Peary made it to the north pole.  Or maybe not.  “Peary's claim to have reached the North Pole was widely debated in contemporary newspapers, but eventually won widespread acceptance. In 1989, British explorer Wally Herbert concluded Peary did not reach the pole, although he may have been as close as 60 mi. His conclusions have been widely accepted, although disputed by some authorities.” (wiki)  What do you think?

+ the first modern Olympic games opened in Athens in 1896.

April 7

+ the World Health Organization was founded ny the UN in 1948.

+ it’s the birthday of William Wordsworth in 1770.  Probably his most famous poem is I wandered lonely as a cloud….. .

+ also the birthday of Billie Holliday in 1915.  See the movie?

April 8

+ Pablo Picasso died in 1973.

   Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement.  See his works here.  He said “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them”  and “When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope.' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso” and “Computers are useless, they can only give you answers” and famously, “Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not” and this favorite of stewardship people, “The meaning of life is to find your gift, the purpose of life is to give it away.”

   In the 1940s, a Swiss insurance company based in Basel had bought two paintings by Picasso to diversify its investments and serve as a guarantee for the insured risks. Following an air disaster in 1967, the company had to pay out heavy reimbursements. The company decided to part with the two paintings, which were deposited in the Kunstmuseum Basel. In 1968, a large number of Basel citizens called for a local referendum on the purchase of the Picassos by the Canton of Basel-Stadt, which was successful, making it the first time in democratic history that the population of a city voted on the purchase of works of art for a public art museum. The paintings therefore remained in the museum in Basel. Informed of this, Picasso offered three paintings and a sketch to the city and its museum and was later made an honorary citizen by the city.

April 9

+ Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959.  He held that structures should emerge from the earth, not be imposed upon it.  He said you should build your house halfway up the hill so that you can walk to the top for the view – or something like that.  We’ve been in several of the houses he designed – and I don’t know.  It would be interesting to try to live in them.

+ In 1860, the first known recording of the human voice.  Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville, a French printer, bookseller, and inventor “:invented” the sound recording device, called the phonautograph.  You can hear him (probably) singing “Au Clair de la Luna”.

+ Robert E Lee surrendered to Ulysses S Grant at Appomattox in 1865, in the house of Wilmer McLean, effectively ending the civil War.  There’s a neat website for the National Historical Park.  We’ve been there.  It was a moving experience.

+ also on this day in 1995, Robert McNamara, confessed about the Vietnam War, “We were terribly wrong.”

April 10

+ General William Booth was born in 1829.  He was a Methodist preacher, but frustrated because he kept being assigned to congregations when wanted to be free to evangelize.  He left the Methodist connection and shortly afterward founded The Salvation Army.  It’s poetry month, you might have encountered him in the poem Booth led boldly with his big bass drum, are you washed in the blood of the lamb…” by Vachel Lindsay

+ Kahlil Gibran died in 1931.  He wrote The Prophet, one of the best selling books of all time.  Ok, it’s pretty far down the list, but it’s there. In 1974 there was a musical adaptation on Atlantic Records featuring Richard Harris (“Albus Dumbledore”, MacArthur Park.)  You can buy it or stream it on Amazon or ebay or other places online.

+ Paul McCartney left the Beatles in 1970.

April 11

+ the Fair Housing Act became law in 1968.  I’m sure it has helped, but I sense there is still a long, long way to go.

That’s what I got for now….

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Words 4.1

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.)

+ note the extensive list of appearances, but Paul does not mention the women!  Did he not know the Easter story, or did he just not feel their witness would make a difference, or did he just forget about them?

+ 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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