3rd Sunday of Easter Yr B (April 22, 2012) Acts 3:12-19

            But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given 

            to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we 

            are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, 

            whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this 

            perfect health in the presence of all of you.                                             Acts 3:14-16

   

Unbelievable. Those who had known him all those years of his life. All those years he had been brought to the gate called 'Beautiful' to beg for alms because he was born lame and could not work as a man works for a living. Living instead in shame.

And Peter had healed him in the name of Jesus Christ, having no money to give him. What a choice!  As if anyone would rather beg than work.

And now Peter and John are preaching in Solomon's Portico in the temple, and Jews are questioning that they were able to do this healing. Peter is crystal clear that it is not their  power at all, but Christ's power and the man's faith in Jesus of Nazareth that healed him.

We often find this as difficult to believe ... as the Jews did ... as it is to believe that people can walk on water or that pigs fly ... yet I know this kind of unbelievable event to have truly happened! 

      = human beings walked on the moon!

      = the 1980 American Winter Olympics Hockey team beat the Russians!

      = A baby born with a congenital defect needs surgery to correct it but
          must wait several months; when the time comes despite dozens of
          tests showing the defect clearly, the baby is perfect, totally normal!

On Thursday evening a (young and quite cynical) sports radio talk show host in Pittsburgh was taking odds on the Penguins a) winning Friday's Game 5 and b) winning the series. He agreed with the majority of callers that they had about a 30-35% chance of winning the next game, but UNlike most of the callers, he gave them NO CHANCE, 000% chance, of getting past the Flyers. 

I wanted to call in and tell him while he was certainly entitled to that opinion, it was a primary reason why he was sitting at a mike and not playing or coaching a professional sport. There is ALWAYS a chance to win, and if you don't believe that, you've lost the game before you play it. We saw that with the way the Steelers' season ended, and on and on. Great upsets have been immortalized in movies and books from long before Shakespeare to Lucas and beyond. 

As it turns out, the Pens DID win Friday, but lost again on Sunday .... yet I still say that I've seen pigs fly. It's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

      + do you know of a person being healed that can

          only be explained 'by faith in the name of Jesus'?

      + why is it easier to believe in a sports team 

          'upset' than a person's unexplainable healing?

      + what might God be calling YOU to do 'in the

          name of Jesus' that you have avoided because 

         you just don't quite believe it could ever happen?

     As the following pictures are not mine I have distorted them to be unrecognizable.   

     They are intended to help you imagine or visualize the event, nothing more.

 

The FIRST 'Miracle on Ice' US Olympic Hockey Team, a Gold Medal upset in 1960 at Squaw Valley, Idaho

Did you ever dream that it could come down?

As DW (Darrell Waltrip) would say 'Who woulda thunk it?  A kid not even 21 could win the Daytona 500?'      In 2010 Rookie Trevor Blayne did just that!

 

2nd Sunday of Easter Yr B (April 15, 2012) Acts 2: 32-39

            This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the 

            right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he

            has poured out this that you both see and hear..... Now when they heard this, they were 

            cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other  apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?

            Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ 

            so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.                             

            Acts 2:32-33, 37-38

My apologies for falling behind since Easter -- there were too many things left to be done until 'after' and one large commitment only completed this past weekend.

For this season of Easter I am using passages from Acts  of the Apostles which feature the phrase "the name of Jesus Christ.' We hear it; we pray in and through it; we even on occasion swear by it (or just plain use it in swearing!).

But what is it about this name? or any name, divine or not? What is so special about our 'baptism' name or our 'given', 'family', or 'maiden', or 'married' name?

The ancient Hebrews and peoples of the middle east understood that speaking in a person's name meant acting with their authority and power. It is why to this day having a 'letter of introduction' is so valuable when you are trying to gain access to museum's private collection for research, or an interview for an article.

This is why Orthodox Jews even now do not speak the name YHWH aloud, because it would imply having or invoking the divine power to do so. And they are offended by others doing so in their presence.

We baptize in the name of Jesus Christ because we are baptized into a new and eternal life through baptism into his death AND resurrection as we are claimed in love by God the Father and filled with the gift of Holy Spirit. In the end, our baptismal name(s) and the wondrous new family name we are give in that act are all we take from this world. 

And it is all the letter of introduction needed!

     +what's YOUR baptismal name? what's it mean to you?

     +do you remember and celebrate your baptismal date 
        as a second birthday --- not with presents, but with 
        cake and your favorite dinner and family around all 
        retelling the story of your day?

     +how important to you is it to remember other peoples'  
        names in addition to other information about them?  
        what can their names tell you about them?

The baptism that was celebrated during worship this very Sunday! Thanks to Natalie Pontorero for use of her photos (I blurred the next one intentionally).

AG's bulletin for her 'Birthday'..... her baptismal name is hers to share! ......... But I can choose to share mine if I want to:

 

 

Easter Sunday Yr B (April 8, 2012)  Mark 16:1-8a

        6 But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, 

        who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place 

        they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you 

        to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”  8 So they went out and 

        fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said 

        nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.                                           Mark 16:6-8a

This year we are spending in the gospel of Mark is being illuminating to me in a way the previous Year B's were not. Which might be due to where I am personally in my life, or the experiences I have had in the past 3 or 6 years that make me in some real way a different person than I was those years ago, or the commentators have either put forth some new thoughts OR I have found commentators that I hadn't known of before ..... or some combination of those possibilities and others too numerous to list.

This unusual and abrupt ending to Mark's gospel (at least, the original manuscripts) is not even truly a 'resurrection' story, because Jesus is nowhere to be found in it! It is, according to David Lose (Working Preacher), more accurately to be called an 'empty tomb' story. 

And what happened to my heroic women? Where is Mary speaking the first sermon, the first proclamation of the gospel? The women here flee in terror. The last word of the gospel is ---- AFRAID!!! What kind of GOOD news is this? 

(ref. also The Hardest Question: Beyond the Blog and Christ Our Savior Lutheran Church, Anchorage, Alaska's Pastor Dan Bollerud's Grace Notes)

   +aren't we a lot more like Peter and the disciples than we thought? just when we think we are 'getting' the story straight about this God we know in Jesus .... the rug gets pulled out from under our feet? 

    +yet we ARE the inheritors of this good news ... and we do (at least some of the time) 'get' the story straight. is Mark expecting US to be the ones to fulfill the angel's instructions?

    +what are your most painful, wounded places right now? your 'tombs'? places of loss and grief that you have to go to for work or family or sense of obligation? could you allow the risen Christ to transform it into Galilee, to make it a place of resurrection and new life where he is already waiting?                                                                                                          

A tomb in the style of Jesus' alongside the road in modern Israel

The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

At the Garden Tomb, Jerusalem

May the blessings of the risen Christ be with you this Eastertide and always. Peace be with you. N

                                                                                                                                                      

Palm Sunday (April 1, 2012) Mark 11:1-11
       9Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

        “Hosanna!
        Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
          ¹⁰ Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
        Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

¹¹Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. Mark 11:9-11

This is one of the more vivid visual passages in the technicolor section of the gospels we call 'the passion of Christ.'  As is so frequent (and appropriate!) we hear of simple details that were recorded (no doubt) for a purpose that seem to be detached or left dangling on their own. For me there are two such details in this passage.

First -- the whole thing about the colt/donkey. Never before ridden so it's somehow unblemished or pure? Not according to Mike Baughman in this week's The Hardest Question. It's because it's not a gelding, but rather is untamed, wild and unpredictable ... (he points out it is probably significant that it isn't sterile because what Jesus is about to do is fruitful -- the same  basis for my preference for wine over juice at the table, though I don't drink wine any other time).

Second --the almost total anticlimax of v.11: after all the palms and cloaks spread on the road, the colt being obtained so oddly, when Jesus gets to the temple .... he looks around and leaves. HUH???? I would have been shouting inside myself: Jesus, you're finally here, DO SOMETHING!!!
 

And Jesus is riding it down the usual conquering hero's route into Jerusalem ... but, you recall, on a 'model' that's never been test-ridden. Which is Jesus in a nutshell: not concerned with the way things have always been done, just with how they need to be done from this second forward.

And he does, soon enough -- with a decisiveness born of the valuable assessment no doubt made the day before as he looked around.... and did nothing because the hour was late.

         +  does the church today spend enough time / not enough time / too much time assessing the damage that has been done in the world (and therefore, what our response could rightly be)? 

         + how well (or not) has the church been able to react to the need to take risks, to drive the untamed prototype? how might we go about following Jesus more and more into new ways of doing ministry?  

Palms from years past flank the cross at NSPC

Southern half of a panorama of modern day view of Jerusalem just after sunrise taken from the Mount of Olives

Northern half of the panorama -- newly regilded Dome of the Rock at left-center; the Holy of Holies of Temple would have been placed a bit to the north (right) of that (and clearly visible to all from Mt. of Olives).

Model of the Holy of Holies,  the Women's Court in front of the low arch and the Court of the Gentiles (to which Jesus returns the next day and drives out those doing business within the temple precincts.) It would have been prominently visible from the Mount of Olives (to the right of the golden Dome of the Rock in the panorama photo above).

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name? Will you go where you don't know and never be the same? Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known, will you let my life be grown in you, and you in me?                The Summons (v.1) by John Bell