recalled to life

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/98/98-h/images/0404.jpg

Saturday in Easter Week

We thank you, heavenly Father, that you have delivered us
from the dominion of sin and death and brought us into the
kingdom of your Son; and we pray that, as by his death he
has recalled us to life, so by his love he may raise us to eternal
joys; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

"RECALLED TO LIFE" is the title of the first section in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. A prisoner of the Revolution, a doctor, immured in the Bastille, receives an unexpected visitor, a benevolent stranger (at first) who rescues him, at last, from his confinement, and the almost certain encounter with Mme Guillotine.... The courage and kindness of one man, the devotion of a daughter, and the unexpected courage and kenosis (self-emptying) of another man, recall the prisoner to life

It is a kind of resurrection. What we experience, as in the collect for this evening, is another kind of new life. It is the one that follows death to folly, or if you prefer, sin, and so often we take this to be personal. The prisoner in the Bastille, rescued and recalled to life, recalls a type of old-fashioned goodness in society, not simply the individual, which was nearly destroyed, by the dominion of sin and death that was The Terror. Not that the kingdom of the Son is the quiet life of a middle-class Englishman. But I forget: the strange virtue of the quiet unassuming business man, the quiet courage he does not exhibit but simply employs with out fanfare, is key to the liberation of the Doctor. 

What we praise God for this week is much more universal: the liberation of the universe, the whole human family at least, from the bondage that is broken when God raising Christ from the dead proves that love is strong as death.

Love is strong as death. And yet it does not overcome it without first he suffered ... 

A Collect for Fridays

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.

Perhaps it is best said in the prayer we have prayed all week, the 8th Canticle,
The Song of Moses, Cantemus Domino (Exodus 15:1-6, 11-13, 17-18):

I will sing to the Lord, for he is lofty and uplifted; *
    the horse and its rider has he hurled into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my refuge; *
    the Lord has become my Savior.
...

With your constant love you led the people you redeemed; *
    with your might you brought them in safety to
                             your holy dwelling.
...

This canticle, drawn from the 15th chapter of the book of Exodus, contains some of the oldest writing in the Bible, in that first verse, "...the horse and its rider has he hurled into the sea."

God delivers from peril, from death, from the kingdom of sin and death that Egypt had become for the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; from the oppressors of Left or Right in political terror times; in our personal lives from less externally visible but often seemingly inescapable forces that keep us down.

Yet God is there, life is triumphant, and love is strong, strong as death: death does not have the last word.

"Caught anything?"

Howard Hayden fly-casting on the Stilly

By the beach near the Church of the Multiplication of Fishes in Tabgha along the Sea of Galilee is the Church of the Primacy of Peter, and in it on a rock that may be a good place to cook fish and bread for breakfast, is the Table of Christ (Mensa Christi) the traditional place to remember and revere the encounter of the Risen Christ with Peter (Cephas, from the Aramaic word כיפא kepha meaning "rock, stone") and the other disciples, as they had followed their native common sense (and the commandment transmitted by the women who had been to the Tomb as Easter dawned upon them) back to Galilee. 

"There you will see me" Jesus had said; nevertheless, they went fishing. All night. Caught nada, until he showed up at daybreak (a lovely time of day there on the lake of Gennesaret). So he guided them.

They cast down their net again and received what they could not fathom except through the mind of faith: a miraculous catch of fish.

Remember what I said? Jesus does not say. I wish make you fishers of souls. Time for a reminder.

 And Peter is first out of the boat, as usual. And maybe not last on the uptake. There on a rock (ahem)  fish and bread are ready for them to break at long last the fast they have been really keeping: the containment of their desire for nourishment of his presence. 

It is not something they could do alone, or by natural means. We are beyond that now. And in the expectation of his continuing presence in and through the Holy Spirit, it is possible, now as it was for them, to be sustained in the word of God.

The rock is faith. That is where it all begins. That is where it comes from. And that is where he led them, once again, when it had seemed all was futile. But now it begins anew. And all they were called for, all they were promised, is coming to unexpected fruition, in the dawning of a new day.

 

Mensa Christi (Table of Christ)

 Church of the Primacy of Peter, Tabgha

We saw these creatures in the shallows along the lakeshore as we were visiting the Church of the Primacy of Peter in January 2015 (Here they are depicted in an ancient mosaic inside the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes):  

Matthew 16:18

And I tell you, you are Peter (Gk Petros), and on this rock (Gk petra) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 

before the day of Pentecost...

Some weeks ago I speculated that the next time clergy and people in Arizona would gather in public together might be for the Feast of Pentecost. And that reminded me of a story. In fact, of a collection of stories, of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, as retold in a Penguin paperback by Roger Lancelyn Green. The first 'real' book I ever owned (besides The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and Sam and the Firefly) it was a gift of my great-aunt Carol. In it I read over and over the tales that began with "on the feast of Pentecost the Knights of Camelot gathered at the Round Table with King Arthur and recounted their adventures of the past year..." And then a new adventure would begin. We have had a strange year; what new adventure we will face we have yet to see; but we will have more than swords and shields and the strength of a horse to meet its challenges. And of course so did they; they too kept the faith....

* * *

Bishop Jennifer Reddall of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona has announced that she is extending the suspension of public, in-person worship in our congregations until May 25, 2020, pending any additional instructions from the Governor of Arizona.  Later this month the Bishop and Standing Committee will discuss possible criteria for safely opening worship and other church activities. 

https://azdiocese.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/3202788

This year May 25th is the Monday before the Day of Pentecost....

Wednesday in Holy Week

In those carefree college days we used to gather at Nancy and Baron's house and march around the living room with their children singing the Sunday School song that included the refrain, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." (Acts 3:6 KJV)

Simple enough. Simple faith. Profound lesson, for children, and if we wish it, for ourselves. The message is not magic. It is not our triumph; not the triumph of the disciples; it is the triumph of God acting in Christ through the Holy Spirit by the mediation of the faith of his followers. Yes we have a part to play. It is in his name that they, and we, also followers, can act. 

Our actions may not be so simply triumphant, not so easily written off as so much magic and miracle. We may not have magic hands or the message so clearly impressed into our heads, as these who had just witnessed the resurrected Christ in all his majesty. 

We do know that he is here, is not dead but risen, and active among us through - stay tuned throughout the Acts of Apostles - the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God that enlightens and empowers us.

How is God active in the world today? Through his people, and mysteriously beyond their knowing. He is always ahead of us, working, laying the tracks that lead inexorably to the fullness of life.

It will be a strange journey. Now we know that more than perhaps we did before St. Patrick's Day.

The strangeness is not unprecedented; in the passage from his Blitz-time poem "For the Time Being", W. H. Auden included words that we sing in the Hymnal 1982‎ #463: He is the Way...

https://hymnary.org/hymn/EH1982/463

... and strange and foreboding as the path before us may be we do not tread it alone. He is with us.

And we shall know him, in the breaking of the bread, and we shall, feel him or not, walk beside him, every step of the way.

• Acts 3:1-10
• Luke 24:13-35
• Psalm 105:1-8
• or Psalm 118:19-24

Tuesday in Easter Week

The Gospel reading we used in the Eucharistic lectionary today was the encounter of Jesus and Mary, just on that first morning. "Tell me where you have laid him," she pleas, assuming he is a gardener.

Sometimes I think this moment came to mind for Francis of Assisi just after he had complied with his father's request and publicly returned to him "everything he had from me" - including the clothes he stood up in. The bishop had quickly wrapped him in his cope. But then, Francis found in the garden the discarded cloak of an assistant gardener, and happily adopted it as his new costume - once he had chalked a cross on the back.

Perhaps he was assuming the guise of an errant gardener, mistaken for the Lord. And took on himself this humble role.

How often are we 'mistaken for the gardener' or mistake Jesus for a gardener? Often enough perhaps that when we do perceive who he really is, we took will turn and say "Rabbouni" (Master).

• Acts 2:36-41
• John 20:11-18
• Psalm 33:18-22
• or Psalm 118:19-24

Monday in Easter Week

 https://www.magdala.org/

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me." (Mathew 28:9-10)


GO AND TELL: that is what the Risen Jesus says to the women, Mary of Magdala and the other Mary.  They are the first to hear and see and tell, in Matthew's Gospel.

GO AND TELL: and they do. The disciples go, as they are told by the women, to await him in Galilee.

"There they will see me" -- this is the refrain, come Easter Week,  of a chant at New Camaldoli, for all the Octave of Easter. He has risen as he promised - and he goes ahead of us.

He goes ahead of us. Before anyone else, he is there. 

He is there, in Galilee, cooking fish over an open fire on a stone by a lake, with birds and animals swimming by. 

He is there in the Resurrection.

He is there in the future. 

He is there for us.

http://www.dormitio.net/english/en.places/en.tabgha/t-church/index.html

The Book of Common Prayer, 1662:
Monday in Easter Week. The Collect.

ALMIGHTY God, who through thy only-begotten Son Jesus Chriſt haſt overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlaſting life; We humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special grace preventing us, thou doſt put into our minds good desires; so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect, through Jesus Chriſt our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghoſt, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

For the Epistle. ACTS 10. 34-43.

The Gospel. S. LUKE 24. 13-35.

 

The Book of Common Prayer, 1979.

Monday in Easter Week. The Collect.

Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that we who celebrate with awe the Paschal feast may be found worthy to attain to everlasting joys; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

• Acts 2:14,22b-32
• Matthew 28:9-15
• Psalm 16:8-11
• or Psalm 118:19-24