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Most of us have driven there.  The forest track goes on and on; one maple looks like another; and we wonder if these ruts really come to an end at some place.  Maybe we’re just driving around and around!  Maybe we’ll never get anywhere!  Sometimes this long detour takes place in our heads:  ideas and emotions circle like buzzards, urging on our expiration on our way to Nowhere.  The weekend’s scriptures address this anxiety that, Easter notwithstanding, we may be trapped on the carousel of same old-same old.

“For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”  St. Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, recalls to his Jerusalem hearers that there really is an outcome of their faith.(Acts 2:39)  They have just seen God’s Spirit blowing fire into Believers, and are aware that there’s a dynamic in these days after Easter: the people of God are being guided–driven??– into new life!  We read these words so many centuries removed so that faith communities can re-experience this emergent movement to Somewhere.

A much later letter ascribed to St. Peter, probably written in his name, is intended to bolster persecuted congregations in Asia Minor.  “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors…” (I Peter 1:18a)  By the time this was written (64 AD?), the Easter light was spreading and “Nowhere” was replaced with the frontiers of the Roman Empire.  “The futile ways” were seen as yesterday’s affliction, now redeemed by the Resurrection.  Our Church IS going somewhere…

The Road to Emmaus story (Luke24:13-35) endures because it’s a good tale:  despondent acceptance is presented as earth-bound vision.  “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”  And then, revelation!  The Mysterious Stranger re-tells Messiah-ship from his perspective, and they recognize him in a sacramental moment as the Bearer of New Life….  What difference does a Risen Savior make when “death & despair in all around I see?”  What gloomy thoughts do we entertain on the Way to Nowhere, confined by the horizons of tight agendas and impossible expectations?

Cynthia A. Jarvis asks, “Where were we going when the question of a stranger prompted us to confess that we had lost our way?” (FEASTING on the WORD, A 2:423)  The revelation of the Risen Christ enables us to put together the incongruities of daily living into a purposeful Whole, to recognize that God continues to call us home.  We have not been left to wander the forest aimlessly: we HAVE a destination!

God Bless Us Everyone                                Horace Brown King

My thoughts on lectionary passages for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

I have no idea how my computer works.  My engineer friends tell me about circuit boards and billions of on/off switches.  All I know is that when I push a couple of buttons, the thing begins to be useful.  I don’t know much about my car, either.  I turn the key, it starts.  My days are full of these mysteries:  my appliances do their work, and I don’t need to know how it happens.  Some of the Easter People continue to speculate about God’s miracles, imposing human limits as markers of their faith.  This weekend’s scriptures present Holy Mystery as a virtue, prodding us to accept that Creation continues despite our meager and mortal understanding.

In these weeks between Easter and Pentecost, we read from the Acts of the Apostles instead of the Old Testament.  We pick up the story in 2:14, just after the Holy Spirit had enlivened the Believers with celestial wind and fire and witnessing in all the known languages.  Were they drunk?  No; this is a mystery!  And Peter followed by introducing Jesus as the Christ to the crowd:  “God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”(v.24)  The lesson tells us that it’s really OK not to know how all this happened.  It’s God’s; why should I need to know?

The author of the First Letter ascribed to St. Peter writes, ” By [God’s] great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…”(1:3)  That hope is a needed proclamation, especially in times when most of our cultural expectations are tipped over.  Jaded ones sojourning through the ages begin to doubt that there’s EVER a sunrise:  we need a little Easter, right this very minute.  The writer continues, “Although you have not seen [the Christ], you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy…”(1:8)

So here again is “Doubting” Thomas–he shows up every year on this Sunday after Easter because he has so many fans.  “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.”(John 20:26)  John has evidently heard in his faith community, just as I have in mine, the comments that “some things are beyond GOD”!  These otherwise faithful folks would be reluctant to admit to worldly blasphemy (those are old words, we don’t use them much), yet I have no other terms for fencing in the Holy.  Jesus later said to Thomas and the rest of us, “Have you believed because you have seen me?   Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”(20:29)

The Enlightenment didn’t do any favors for our spirit-journeys.  We struggle to keep the mystery,  the parable, the analogy alive in this literal age.  There’s no good reason to dissect the Easter Story:  life is richer as we take it for what it is, God’s affirmation of steadfast omnipotence.

God Bless Us Everyone                     Horace Brown King

My musings upon lectionary scriptures for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

The great Paschal Easter festival is upon us, the affirmation that beyond the ups & downs of penitence and prayer comes the annual celebration of God’s Steadfast Love.  “Arise, my love, and come away, for the winter is past” (Song of Solomon ).  In earlier days, catechumens preparing for reception into the Church would spend the Eve of Easter in a vigil of prayer and song;  “the night is departing, the day is approaching; therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us gird on the armor of light”. (Romans 13)  Scriptures for Easter Sunday help us to sing about this audacious message, even in the turbulence of current events!

Jeremiah 31:1-6 are words of consolation from God to Israel, and we have appropriated them as spiritual successors.  I especially like the 4th verse, “Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.”  It gives me comfort to remember that this was uttered in the dark days when Israel was in political decline and ethical laxity.  Even THEN, God’s desire was to express a steadfast love to these recalcitrant believers.  It musta been Beyond their Wildest Dreams.

The Apostle Paul spent a great many words attempting to bring a semi-systematic doctrine of Resurrection.  To the Colossians he wrote, “When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” (3:4)  Impatient with waiting, expecting every day to hear that the Rapture has happened, members of the nascent Church were disappointed that the Evil Empire remained so powerful.  Paul & other preachers told their hearers to move on from earthly concepts to the visions “that are above”. (v.2)

John’s Gospel account of the First Easter (20:1-18) addresses all the fears and doubts of the gathered Church by the narrative of Jesus’ closest friends who couldn’t make much sense of the whole process.  Feminists, take heart!  Only Mary hung around to see what the new day would bring.  She had the greatest quantum leap of them all:  not many years ago, she wouldn’t have believed such intimacy possible.  This upside-down Easter even was Beyond her/their Wildest Dreams…  It reminds us that Holy Encounters come as a gift, whether or not we attempt to see them rationally.

Clayton J. Schmit says that “the resurrection upsets all expectations, and the only way to apprehend it is to come and see that things are different.”  (FEASTING on the WORD, A 2:371)  Many will attend worship this day defying God to make things “different”.   Others will come hoping to see life in a different & expanded mode.  Still, others will recognize that the Risen Christ has been hosting their souls for quite a while.  Whatever your perception, I wish you a Blessed Easter!

God Bless Us, Every One                     Horace Brown King

My thoughts about lections for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com

One could almost draw a parallel between Palm Sunday and Christmas Eve:  the long-expected Messiah makes a very public entrance, and the Crowd (angels, shepherds) goes wild!  “Now, at last, thing’s ll be made right!”  Cynics will mock our optimism–just LOOK at Washington/world hunger/poisoned air & water–yet year after year a few of us have the audacity to maintain that “God’s steadfast love endures forever.”

In the gloom of Lent, Psalm 118 breaks in as a breath of fresh air!  This reading is a marvelous intrusion into the sadness of a weary world.   God’s steadfast love (hesed) becomes a frame (vv. 1,29) not only for the movement of this Psalm, but also for the movement of the stories of Jesus intersecting with the Crowd in their excursions through life and death.  Somewhere on this roller-coaster of Holy Week is a continual opportunity for Believers to shout, “Hosanna!  Blessed is  one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Matthew’s account of Palm Sunday (21:1-11) brings a wealth of detail, some of which can get in our way.  It really doesn’t matter how many donkeys were involved, since Matthew is trying to refer back to Zechariah.  What DOES matter is that the Crowd recognizes in Jesus the fulfillment of what they had hoped for in a Messiah…  Well…  At this point, most would have desired a hero who would lead the militia against the Romans, who would Make Israel Great Again, who would give Jewish individuals a pride of being world-citizens; that’s what they hoped.  What they got was an earthquake:  “The who city was in turmoil”.  The Messiah shakes all our foundations and overturns our well-told aphorisms:  there’s more here than meets the eye…

The challenge to Palm Sunday congregations is to be open and receptive to how God is announcing mighty works, shaking the foundations even in our daily same old-same old.  What’s our place in this Great Parade?   We need a few perceptive ones to be cheerleaders:  “Hosanna!  Blessed is the One who comes in the Name of the Lord!”

God Bless Us, Every One                              Horace Brown King

My thoughts about lectionary scripture for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com