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On some Summer days, a few of us would bike to a nearby “deserted” farm.  A lane led from the road to an old barn where hay was stored.  Although the fence was pretty decrepit, there was a nice white wooden gate–and sometimes it wasn’t locked, merely latched.   An invitation to swing, either singly or in twos; and we did!  A couple of times the farmer would drive up in his battered pick-up and yell,  “Hey, you kids!  You’ll pull the hinges off!”  And we’d beat it outta there…  I’ve been wondering, lately, about the purpose of that gate.  There was very little of value behind it, although it did seem to keep the predators out.  Scripture readings for this upcoming weekend speak about guarding The Flock, or at least The Truth.  Will we find safe passage here, or will this merely separate further the In People from the Out People?

We revisit the early Church in Acts 2:42-47, where “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”  Seems as though sheep see each other as equal and living together in the same corner of the pasture!  Some preachers say that this is a vision of how things’ll be in the Ultimate Kingdom.  I don’t notice any reference to gates which divide the Wealthy from the Needy.  This may be a worthy message during these times in which we’re reminded so often that “We’re All in This Together”.

It takes a bit of time-travel to appreciate I Peter 2:18-25.  Acknowledging the unfairness of slavery, the author contrasts earthly suffering with the obedient suffering of Jesus.  Is there a way to insert a compassionate quality into the obvious abuse of the lesser by the greater (in worldly terms)?  What are the gates which we’ve erected, even with the best of intentions?  Verse 25 speaks of the aimlessness of wandering sheep looking for Something Better, and then being recalled to the relative safety of the Shepherd whose voice they know…

There’s much we can look at in the Gospel, John 10:1-10.  Loaded with imagery, here’s the main passage of Jesus saying “I am”–have we forgotten “the gate”?  John’s perceived audience was the community of True Believers in the midst of a pagan world, and he emphasizes the Gate as protection against predators.  More, the Shepherd chooses by name those who’ll follow; others will evidently settle for remaining where they are.  Today is full of competing shepherds:  better cars & roof gutters, national security & the economy of warfare, big houses with their own gates to keep out the riff-raff…  Does Christ as gate keep the community from being polluted by The World?

My first experience with a Gated Community was as a student pastor near the ski area of Elk Mountain.  The new chalets of the Village of Four Seasons were impressive; but the final one was the gatehouse in which stood a stern-faced guard who kept the huddled masses out.  Nobody without a pass could enter.  No way.  No how.  We live in a world of gates and fences.  The Church celebrates the (only) one who can wreck wrath’s walls!

In the process of unfolding,                      Horace Brown King

My encounter with lessons prescribed for the upcoming weekend can be enjoined every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

Shannon Michael Pater asks, “Who among us have not felt blindsided in times of distress and wondered if even God can see what is around the bend?” (FEASTING on the WORD, A 2: 420)   Scriptures read on the upcoming weekend will give permission to the religious traveler to be unrecognizing of the Presence of God–with the understanding that this is a transitory dimness of sight, and that God’s expectation is that sooner or later even the blind will have an AHA! moment.

Acts 2:36-41 continues on with Peter’s sermon to the formerly ignorant of the Godliness of Jesus.  As the light finally dawned on them, they were “cut to the heart” for their neglect of holiness nearby.  Peter advised them to stop in their tracks and draw into Christ through baptism; and they too shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And the important verse is for right now, “For the promise is for you, for your children,  and for all those who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”  This force of the Spirit, so recently felt at Easter, continues to pervade through today and into the future.

We also hear from the First Letter ascribed to St. Peter, 1:17-23.  Written to exiles from Judaism in Asia Minor during the early days of the Church, it exudes a parallel to that of current-day people exiled from “normalcy” and feeling separated from society.  By the time of this publication, news of the Resurrection had spread far beyond Jesus’ neighborhood, and a corps of believers had established themselves in many centers.  A couple of generations had passed, yet still no “second coming”…or was there?  What WAS this light spreading across the Mediterranean world?  This, says Peter, is the mutual love resulting from a new life from “imperishable seed”.

The Gospel is Luke’s oft-told tale of the Walk to Emmaus, 24:13-35.  Many would-be disciples have remained in the garden at Jerusalem, or perhaps even at the foot of the Cross on Golgotha.  Luke invites each one of us to become that un-named companion of Cleopas, journeying away touched by the sacred events.  These travelers have heard the rumors, but haven’t yet embraced the Story.  Yet.  We are directed by this story to own this road as ours and to aid those “scavenger angels [who]  sweep over the road searching for signs of spiritual life among the fragments.” (Pater, ibid.)  What are the conversations we might have had before we had holy sight?  When did the grim memories of death turn to the hope of life?

Those of us of a certain age can remember a series of movies called “The Road to ______”, with Dorothy Lamour,  Bob Hope & Bing Crosby.  There were always exotic adventures and silly mishaps on the journey; but it always came out right.  I was also reading Kipling’s old chestnut from 1890 about the Road to Mandalay, the lament of a former soldier who compared the tediousness of the London streets to the delicious air of Burma…as he thought he remembered it.  “An’ I’m learning ‘ere in London what the tenyear sodger tells:  ‘If you’ve ‘eard the East a-callin’, why, you won’t ‘eed nothin’ else.'” Road-warriors all, we journey deeper into the revealed presence of Christ, wherever leads the road of today.

In the process of unfolding,                       Horace Brown King

My travels with lessons and readings assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

“Faith is a mystery of the heart that the mind wants to solve”, says Clayton J. Schmit in FEASTING on the WORD  (A 2:395).  Too many contemporaries have missed the might of Easter’s Resurrection because they’ve been taught only the STEM curriculum without a balance of poetry.  The Easter story is purely a right-brain exercise:  like most of our faith-journey,  the stories we tell completely omit the “How” and concentrate on God’s “Why”.   Post-Easter readings appeal to our hearts, and affirm that we, also, can experience a joyous dependence on God’s choice of Life.

In Acts 2: 22-32,  Peter draws on Messianic hopes to rally his cosmopolitan hearers on the feast of Pentecost:  although from many diverse cultures and languages, what unites them is the common denominator of Belief in God.  Using this singleness of faith, Peter is able to persuade them that the audacious tale of a Resurrected Christ fits right into God’s plan for making all people whole. If death has no power over us from now on, those who intimidate others have lost their weapon!

The writer of I Peter speaks of the transitory rewards of earthly inheritances–money is easily spent, real estate may soon be appropriated for development, heirlooms grow dusty with age.  But God’s inheritance is imperishable (1:4), and is kept in trust for all who will accept it!   “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.”  Here is a reason for life which isn’t dependent upon property or status, arranged for us because God WANTS to.

The Gospel is again from John, 20:19-31, the story of “Doubting Thomas”, unique to this writer.  In true Classic style, these well-developed stories of John demand an “other” to ask all the proper questions–and often this lot falls to Thomas.  He seems to be the one appointed to speak the doubts of all the others, including me.  Remember the nerdy kid in class who would interrupt the prof with the observations we all wanted to make, but were afraid of the master’s wrath?  We were glad for this brave kid, and so am I glad for Thomas:  he’s the one who gave Jesus opportunity to display his physical wounds and thus refute those who claimed mass hysteria or complete reliance upon a disembodied ghost.  Please note that Jesus breathed the Spirit into the disciples at this time, a fitting finale to this Gospel which was written so that all may believe that Jesus is the true Messiah, the Christ–“and that through believing you may have life in his name”.

It’s hard to preach Easter.  Everything about the Resurrection goes against our knowledge of physics or medicine.  But it’s just in this otherness that the story has its  power.  Best of all, our Lord knows our puzzlement and kindly works with it as we grow into acceptance and gladly–eventually—relinquish our desire to control Creation.

In the process of unfolding,                               Horace Brown King

My meeting with the Scriptures assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

Alas!  One of Marie’s friends on Facebook wrote, “They’ve taken away our Easter!”  I suspect she means the Easter of brass quartets and special anthems, the Easter of lilies and hyacinths and jelly beans.  But no–Easter comes anyway, for the Word of the Lord endures all things; even quarantines.  Sometimes despairing of ever returning to normal (?), I’m amazed–again and again– that God is still in charge, and once again changes the gloom of Crucifixion into an unexpected Resurrection!  I guess that Jesus DID know what he was about…  Easter readings take us through death and shortsightedness into life and divine knowledge, beyond Long Ago into the Always Now.

There seems to be several options for the First Lesson; United Methodists will be looking at Acts 10:34-43.  Read publicly what you will, but this should be introduced by a synopsis of the entire chapter, Peter’s vision of the “clean and unclean” especially.  Here’s where Creation had been missed due to Peter’s limited expectations, where the eyes of his soul were opened to see God right here.  Then, only then, could he preach eloquently of the Easter message to newcomers on the scene, Cornelius and his family/friends.

The Epistle is that written by Paul or one of his assistants to the Colossians, 3:1-4.  He’s expecting that the audience has already tasted of resurrection, “Since you have been raised with Christ…”  Here is the imagery of dying and rising, important for those of us who’ve shunned Holy Week’s roller-coaster:  the disciple’s life has been “hidden” (buried) in Christ ’til now.  “Made like him, like him we rise; Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.”  (Charles Wesley, 1739)

John’s Gospel, 20:1-18, is a warm, human account of not only the Resurrection, but of Mary Magdalene’s misplaced recognition.  Who expected that Jesus, last seen as a very dead corpse, would be up and walking around?  Quick to blame the government, the economy or the prevailing status quo, she wailed to the angels, “THEY have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  Had grave-robbers taken away Easter?  Persistent Jesus helped her see through her tears,  reclaimed an Eternity which was almost missed due to limited expectations.

Peter and Mary were persons who had traveled with Jesus long enough to know that God works in unexpected ways.   Yet they weren’t primed to see holiness staring them in the face!  For would-be disciples like you and me, this is good to know.  May those who’ve been buried in quarantine and its associated worries rise to life again with clearer vision and a restored hope!  Charles Wesley writes again, “And are we yet alive, and see each other’s face?  Glory and thanks to Jesus give, for his almighty grace!”

In the process of unfolding,     Horace Brown King

My wrestling with scripture assigned to the upcoming weekend can be watched at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com