Easter Day

Christ with Us

The Love of Christ

Surround us

The Light of Christ 

Lead us

The Peace of Christ

Fill us

The Power of Christ

Aid us

The Joy of Christ

Thrill us

The Presence of Christ

Be with us evermore.

David Adam, Tides and Seasons, SPCK, 1989, 76.

 

• Acts 10:34-43
• or Isaiah 25:6-9
• 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
• or Acts 10:34-43
• John 20:1-18
• or Mark 16:1-8
• Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Easter/BEasterPrin_RCL.html

Holy Saturday and Easter

Holy Saturday 

.82 red - that was the vote. A strong consensus in the affirmative on the proposition. That was the vote of the scholars assembled two decades ago. Using established criteria they evaluated the historical basis of every saying and every action attributed to Jesus in the gospels. Scholars of history and the Biblical text, they could approach received opinion with a detached, even skeptical eye.

They would discuss each proposition brought before them and come to a consensus - or not.

What they did was vote. A red bead in the ballot box affirmed the proposition: YES. A black vote meant NO.

Sometimes they widely disagreed. Sometimes dissenters were few and consensus was strong. On this proposition one dissenter before the vote said something very similar to what Hamlet said to his friend, “There is more in heaven and earth than is contained in all your philosophy.”

It was Holy Saturday and they voted. The consensus was strong: .82 red (out of a possible 1.0).

The proposition before them was this: Jesus’ body decayed.

That is as far as that method can take you. (Holy Saturday) What you can see, what you can measure, what could be recorded with a camera or microphone if one existed at the time - that’s the kind of historical fact their criteria could evaluate.

But --

We know there is more. We have, some of us, perhaps in this room, experienced more than that. And so the question is, what if Jesus rose from the dead? What if it’s true?

Easter Sunday

If the Resurrection is true, Jesus is true: he is indeed the Son of God, the Savior, the one in whom the fullness of God is pleased to dwell, our best hope of seeing the mind of God and therefore the meaning of the universe; and to know him is to have a relationship with him, not an intellectual proposition to demand our assent, but a living Lord to call for our obedience.

If it’s true that Christ is risen, evil has been vanquished. No longer can the powers of this world – Pilate, Temple guard, the coterie of power brokers – none of them hold sway after all. The real power is in God’s hands, the hands of a Savior.

If it’s true that Christ is risen, the gates of death have been shattered, torn from their hinges – he has walked freely through them. Beyond death there is life, new life in Christ. Baptism, the immersion into the waters of mortality and re-emergence into life, shows us that as we die to sin, we are raised to new life in Him.

If Christ is raised, life means something beyond itself. Our petty purposes and grand schemes, the bumps and slingshot wounds of daily life, the deep disappointments of tragic news and wearing sorrow, come around the compass to a new bearing: the compass-needle of our lives now points beyond ourselves; our true direction is found in Christ.

If it is true that Christ is risen, then Jesus is alive – now. You can get to know him – in the breaking of the bread, the sharing of the cup, the anointing, baptism, prayers and peace; you can get to know him through friend and stranger: his image is all around you.

If it is true that Christ is risen, he is offering us a friendship of transformative power: both stern teacher and careful shepherd, he guides us through the painful metamorphosis of our lives into a new life of sacramental meaning and purpose.

If Christ is risen indeed, then we are right to believe in LIFE against DEATH, a revelation of life that is the opposite of the obsessive vision of death and violence so often purveyed in our worldly world, as if it were the end of the story.

If Christ is risen, then the limits are off. If Christ is risen indeed, LIFE is possible – we can do anything through the One who strengthens us.

If Christ is risen, the life of the world – politics, science, art and music, all of it – matters; it is redeemed, it is transformed, it has value and purpose and honor because God has given life value and purpose and honor through the resurrection of his Son.

If it’s true that Christ is risen, then justice is a given. It is going to happen. And how can we do less than work for justice, when God has given his own Son that we might be free?

For by raising his Son from the dead, God has given all of us new life. God sent his Son into the world – bringing his justice indeed – not to bring it condemnation but to redeem it, not to render it meaningless but to give it meaning. For God gave his Son so that who ever put his trust in Him would not perish – would not be sent down to death and shadow – but would be brought into the light and life and love and laughter and joy of the day that dawns today, the new life in Christ that we celebrate on Easter morning.

Death no longer can claim the last word; beyond death is the triumph of the Son of the living God: life everlasting, flowing as a river, in the presence of the Son of the living God.

And we are called to enter the new life in Christ now, today, as we speak, on Easter morning: Christ is alive!

And this present moment is the moment of freedom: we define ourselves as we choose life; we define ourselves as his people, children of the day. We live no longer in darkness, no longer subject to the powers of sin, but in the full light and joy of the Day of the Lord.

This is the Day that the Lord has made – the day when behold! He has made all things new – let us enter into that new day, and the work and the play and the love and the laughter, the burden of sorrow shifted onto the broad shoulders that carried the Cross, the joy of his emerging Kingdom present & effervescent in our hearts and in our lives – this is the Lord’s Day; indeed He is risen: Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Amen.

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Easter Day Year A:  Acts 10:34-43. Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24. Matthew 28:1-10.

A New Zealand Prayer Book, p. 592-3

John Pritchard, Living Easter Through the Year (SPCK, 2005) p. 33-36.

Palm Sunday 2017

When I visited the Holy Land in January 2015, I was among a group of travelers that walked down from the top of the hill just east of Jerusalem toward the valley below.

On the Mount of Olives, in the Dominus Flevit Church at the Garden of Gethsemane, the cross on the altar forms crosshairs like a gunsight, focused on The Rock, the site of the Temple, where Jesus was bound on Palm Sunday.

From the Mount of Olives he rode, descending into the Kidron Valley, and was hailed as he approached the town walls, by a crowd. A crowd of people, celebrating the arrival of the one they hailed as the Messiah, the coming king of the Jews, the promise of ages fulfilled.

Jesus did not disappoint them, that day. He ascended into the Temple precincts atop the giant platform Herod built. He looked all around, at everything (familiar from his yearly family visits) and went out.

Please note that the gospel of Luke tells us (2:41) that these were not strange sights to him (“Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover”) but we see through his eyes the whole set-up of the Temple of the time: the soldiers at the gates, the Fortress not to be missed that overlooked the scene, - handy by bridge or stairs to quell Temple riot or small disturbance, - the courtyards teeming with holiday people, the coffers that ring when pilgrims bring offerings to the God they love. And the Temple authorities, looking on, cooperating, getting along with the Roman Empire and getting enriched by it.

Jesus sees it all and through his eyes we see it - and see it also as it is supposed to be - a house of prayer for all people, together at last in peace to worship one God together.

He goes out. - and returns for days to sit and teach in the Temple compound, the loving God whose peaceable kingdom is on the brink of becoming established.

It is real enough in his followers, his words and deeds, his demonstrations of its power not confined to miracles: for the people sing Hosanna to their king.

This is disturbing, potentially revolutionary, blasphemy! The people who represent the powers that be realize the present dangers of riot, insurrection, overthrow of their established order. Call it - disturbance of the peace, of the Roman peace that is control and profit.

So they plot and worry and one who is as afraid as they are sells him out, tells them where to find him, catch him, on the quiet, isolated from view, and bring him to in-justice.

We see the trial, so-called, acted out - and a very different crowd, Pilate sympathizers, emperor-loyal, coached to cheer the chains they wear, betrayers to a man - they, their livelihooods put at risk by this outsider - they say to Pilate, “Crucify him!” And so Roman justice goes to work “for fear of the Jews” - that is, those Jews who are already on their side, willing to see a man die “for the sake of the nation” - and themselves.

On the Via Dolorosa you begin at Pilate’s palace - or rather, beneath it, where the soldiers played dice, a scorecard scratched in the stone, the prize a prisoner’s clothes.

And then as the path through the marketplace, a busy thoroughfare then as now, twists and turns through the workaday scene, people going about their business as in their midst the soldiers went about theirs, leading a prisoner to the execution place, his shoulders burdened with crosspiece-weight of his own instrument of execution, whipped onward, public spectacle - Don’t Cross Rome, Don’t Even Think to “Question Authority” - and finally up a little hill he is fixed above the ground a little way, shortly, just enough to get his feet clear, but enough to hang - and die.

Eventually we are told the charge against him: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Mocking. Truth.

A man whose kingdom was not of this world, the world of an emperor, Augustus, called Son of God, whose own centurion at the last could say, This man truly was the Son of God!”

And they take him down, we are told, two pious men find him a tomb nearby, and women who mourn him begin to prepare the spice that sweeten the corpse - the last duty of devotion.  And night falls early on the scene.

That is where we leave it today, Palm Sunday: a man executed under Pontius Pilate’s orders.

Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

The Liturgy of the Palms

• Matthew 21:1-11
• Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

The Liturgy of the Word

• Isaiah 50:4-9a
• Philippians 2:5-11
• Matthew 26:14- 27:66
• or Matthew 27:11-54
• Psalm 31:9-16

http://www.custodia.org/default.asp?id=2738 Dominus Flevit Church

Songs that are not Alleluia

We are not ready. There is too much. There is too much going on. There is too much going on here. We are finishing up Lent, managing palm fronds and crosses. We are getting ready for a change of season. And we are trying desperately not to say Alleluia.

Songs that are not Alleluia are required of us today. Close – Hosannas – but not yet Alleluia. So don’t say it – don’t say that word. Not yet.

What sun comes up today is not the sunrise of Easter. It is preliminary, a foretaste of things to come, a hint of what has to happen. For this is the story: that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified, died, and was buried – but it is not the end of the story.

For Jesus it was the end but it was the beginning of new life – for us, for him, for all people. For what he gave to us, in dying, was a place in his kingdom.

In dying he gave us life; he set us free. Like Barabbas we were under condemnation – bound to die. But Jesus stood there and took it. He took on himself our burdens and sins.

Quite how he did it we try to explain – we are full of theories; we call it Atonement. What we know is that through his life and death – his sacrifice of himself – we were made at one with God – reconciled – made right. In ourselves we feel unworthy; we are made worthy in him, through him, and with him to approach the throne of grace.

The throne where we find, seated at the right hand of the father, a friend.

He gave us the dignity of human persons, once lost, now set right before God – and therefore free. No human constraint, no ruler nor principality nor power of this world, can come between us and our God – and the place Jesus won for us and gives us, undeserved free gift, in heaven.

His kingdom is coming, and now is, as we take hold of the awesome fact – God gave his Son that all who believe in him, who trust in him, will find in him, as they dwell in him, everlasting life.

This is redeemed life that begins now – that does not wait – but is already present.


This day of all days as we move from the triumphant procession of the people – waving palms and singing, Hosanna, Son of David, at last he is here, come to set his people free,

This day that continues through plots and scheming, confusion and frustration, betrayal and sorrow, warnings and celebrations,

This day that we come at last to the Cross – and the Tomb;

This day there is too much going on.

How could we be ready? How could we be ready – to open our hearts, to receive the savior, to turn to him who is life?

How could we be ready for what happens?

The one who is our hope, the one who brings us life – must first encounter death – in obedience surrender himself to the guards, endure interrogation and torture, and at the last through wood and nails, suffer execution by the cruel engine of crucifixion.

Only then, after that, through that, not avoiding it is new life won.

It does not look like it now, as the stone is rolled against the tomb, and the soldiers’ guard is set, and the women watch – and wait.

And so we sing songs that are not Alleluia.

Not yet.



[But something new is on the way … Something new is coming: how can we be ready to receive it?]

Lord, you give us life, you give us love, you give us yourself: help us to give our lives, our love, our selves to you; through Jesus Christ who died and rose again for us and who lives with you and the Holy Spirit in everlasting light. Amen.







[Jesus is like Moses in that way: leading the people of Israel, soldiers on their heels, to the edge of the red sea; something held those soldiers back. And in Jesus plunged, passing through the midst of the waters, immersed as in baptism, not going back, not back to the old life of bondage to sin, but through and on to the further shore – and he guides us across the flood tide of life’s fortunes and failings, to our own liberation.]

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To Tara Ward I owe the phrase "songs that are not 'Alleluia'" - and I look forward to seeing her use it in a quite different context.

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He comes to bring us life

As they approached Jerusalem, the disciples praised God with joyful exuberance for all the deeds of power that they had seen.

They were not kidding. He really was the Messiah. And they knew it. And they wanted to let everybody know it.

As he arrived at Jerusalem they set him on the unridden colt of a donkey, showing the prophetic advent of the peaceable king.

Here is the prophecy (Zechariah 9:9):


Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.


He was not playing the warrior prince, but coming as a restorer, a healer, a bringer of peace, a just man. One who would make right what was wrong, who would proclaim righteous behavior as the standard of God. One who would work for justice, for all who sought peace.

He was not kidding. He knew what he was doing. He brought into the city of David the message of the Kingdom of heaven: peace, justice, the establishment of God as the one true final allegiance of all.

And he knew what this could cost him: his life.

But he stayed true to his promise, to his mission. His integrity was absolute.

And so his whole life, that had been given to redeem humankind, came to its consummation, as he led the way to the Temple, and beyond it, to the Cross, doing what was required of him.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? 8
(Micah 6:8)

The Pharisees said, your disciples are making a ruckus, stirring up trouble. Tell them to stop! But he rebuked them in a prophet's words: If these were to keep silent, the stones themselves would cry out - for justice.

‘Alas for you who get evil gain for your houses,
setting your nest on high
to be safe from the reach of harm!’
You have devised shame for your house
by cutting off many peoples;
you have forfeited your life.
The very stones will cry out from the wall,
and the plaster beam will respond from the woodwork.

‘Alas for you who build a town by bloodshed,
and found a city on iniquity!’
Is it not from the Lord of hosts
that peoples labour only to feed the flames,
and nations weary themselves for nothing?
But the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,
as the waters cover the sea.

(Habbakuk 2:9-14)

Soon he would drive out of the Temple the people who were there to monetize the experience, the moneychangers and dove-keepers, the purveyors for profit in a holy place.

He would teach in the Temple. He would eat the sacred meal of the Passover with his disciples. He would face his betrayers. He would confront the powers of this world. He would suffer under Pontius Pilate, be crucified, die, and be buried.

And he would rise again.

In every action, every word and deed he would accomplish in the coming week, Jesus would proclaim:

This is what my kingdom looks like.

From the triumphal entry into the city, through the passion, through his death, and on to his rising from the dead.

He proclaimed it:

The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

(Habbakuk 2:14)

Blessed the king who comes, the king foretold in the Song of Zechariah, the Magnificat of Mary (and wasn't the Anunciation just the other day?), in the voice of John crying in the wilderness:

Prepare the way! The One is coming, who comes in God's Name.

Peace in heaven, and may it be so on earth. May we now prepare our hearts, to make him room, that we may receive our Messiah King. He is the one who brings us into just and right relationship with God, and with the world God has made. He is the one who came to give us life.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
We bless you from the house of the Lord. (Psalm 118:26)

Even so, come to us, Lord Jesus. Maranatha! Amen.


May we live by faith, walk in hope and be renewed in love, until the world reflects your glory and you are all in all. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer, Church of Ireland, 2004)

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Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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