Easter Necessity

There are so many moments in the gospels when what we read seems less like a factual narrative account of the activity of Jesus and his followers and instead is more like an attempt to frame and present -- sometimes fantastically -- a necessary theological claim.  

One of those is when we read at the end of the Luke's gospel the story of Jesus ascending into heaven to be at God's right hand.  There are several pieces that come together to make His ascension the "preferred method" for Luke to end Jesus' resurrected time on earth.  

That Jesus "born of the virgin Mary" was fully human is as good a place to start as any.  And as fantastic as are the stories of angelic visitations and announcements, and shepherds, along with Matthew's stars, and dreams, and wisemen we hold fast to the claim that he was born into the world of time and space as humans are born.  When Jesus dies it is the end of a human life, horribly ended but human nonetheless.  Time and space cannot be ignored. 

That God raised Jesus from the dead is another claim that makes ascension theologically necessary. And it is important to remember that resurrection cannot be less than incarnation.  It can be more, however.

It is more.  Luke's description of Jesus as appearing but unrecognized on the road to Emmaus and then disappearing at dinner is a fairly modest attempt to account for the difference that resurrection made to this "human one." It is similar to John's treatment of Jesus as capable of passing through locked doors and yet still possessing just as much of a body as was the one crucified.  A body that Thomas is able to touch.  

The 40 day thing is also necessary and functions as a literary device similar to its previous use when Jesus is driven into the wilderness.  It marks a completed period of paradigmatic change.  Just like the children of Israel were changed in their 40 year wilderness sojourn and the earth was cleansed by forty days and nights of rain, in this case Jesus' "work" is done. 

Another way to say it is that resurrection is NOT resuscitation, so when his work is complete, dying is no longer an option for Jesus.  The "best" way for him to get to heaven is to just go there.  And that's what he does: "he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven." (Luke 24:51)

It is a modern yet sophistic curiosity that puzzles about the location of heaven, his direction and rate of ascent, etc.  So we can get back to more necessary theologies we should admit that if Jesus was removed at the speed of light he'd still be within the bounds of what we call the Milky Way.  Better to give God credit for something other than attaining warp speed.

Obviously, Jesus' rate of ascent was not Luke's point.   What was important for Luke was to have us understand that God had done EVERYTHING that was necessary to be done: life, death, resurrection, and ascension; all necessary and all from God.

Pentecost is the next necessity.  

Easter Maturity

I haven't worshipped with other Episcopal congregations during Easter in a while. So I haven't seen what others are doing when it comes to things like standing for the Prayers or forgoing the Confession of Sin or adding alleluias to most acclamations etc.  I am aware of how difficult all of what we are doing in Madison is for several of us.

Just 4 Sundays into this most glorious season and I heard questions at the door. Yet, after what I wrote a couple of weeks ago I'm not about to make a thing out of our postures again. Remember it is our hearts we are called to lift in celebration. I'm still not a cop.

I do know that we are human and so we are prone to habits and patterns that help us to get out of our own way so that God has a chance to sit with us, to breathe with us, to sing and pray and celebrate.
One of the lessons I wink and teach to confirmands is that they should pick a spot in the church to sit every Sunday, so that God will not have to go looking for them.

Most everyone gets the joke but also gets the deeper meaning that our patterns should help us "get out of the way."  It is the first part, our part of the basic sacramental formula that bridges between us and God by way of regularity, validity and efficacy.

There is a caveat.  Sometimes we forget that our habits and patterns are a means to an end, a part of a process that should always seek to obey and and be attendant on God to take God's turn in the process.  So when we hear Jesus saying that there is a connection between our keeping his commandments and the love we share with him it should get our attention.

It would be wrong for us to lapse back into legalism and become as hidebound as first century pharisees.  Yes, we hope to get out of the way but so that we can do all we can to be in love and not just safely or solely habitual or patterned.

The effect of our sacrificial obedience is to surrender to God's love, God's power, God's authority.
I'm thinking Pinocchio.  Yes, the puppet who yearned to be human.  His struggles with learning right and wrong and having a conscience and suffering consequences were all to identify what it means to be human.  Then one day he gives up the 40 coins meant to buy a new suit, helps the Fairy who has fallen ill, and wakes up the next morning a real boy!

Besides the intriguing allusions as they echo things like the biblical changes that come after 40 days/years, there is clearly a lesson about surrender, love and maturity.

Jesus, the incarnation of God's yearning, God's love is not just giving us a set of rules with which to march our way through life's trials. His commandment -- think "love letter" not "military orders" -- is so that we will rise to the maturity of love over law, into life from death ourselves.

There will be trials and struggles.  That's what it means to be human.  There will be love.  That's what Easter means.

Easter Discovery

The stories we hear on Sunday during Easter season are meant help us discover or wake up to something we have likely missed.  That Jesus is raised from the dead brings a new light to the world without which we are blind, not only to the truths embedded in our history but the truths waiting for us in the future.  Like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus we need Jesus to accompany us to discover what God has been doing and to give us the eyes and hearts to see where God is calling us.

One of the joys of this past week was me getting to attend Conversations with Martin Smith hosted by Grace Episcopal in Gainesville.  His playful encouragement led us to consider a new way to understand the vital intersection or common ground shared by spirituality and mission.  

First he helped us to see how we have separated the two interests and made one out of and for extroverts and the other out of and for introverts.  He helped us to see how we have suffered a false dichotomy for years in the church.  His premise was marvelously presented by introducing a third concept that at the beginning seemed unrelated but very interesting.

He proposed we reconsider our understanding of God's will instead -- or in addition to -- as God's desire.  With a twinkle in his eye he encouraged us to consider that we could reclaim a lost tradition in the church; one practiced by the earliest mystics in our tradition.  It reminded me of the Richard Rohr quote we used to remember Ginger Kroeber:

Jesus promises that when the hunger arises within you to find your own deepest aliveness within God’s aliveness, it will be satisfied—in fact, the hunger itself is a sign that the bond is already in place. As we enter the path of transformation, the most valuable thing we have working in our favor is our yearning. Some spiritual teachers will even say that the yearning you feel for God is actually coming from the opposite direction; it is in fact God’s yearning for you. 

Thinking instead in terms of God's desire, God's yearning is a game changer.  Just like the realizations in Emmaus there comes a new way to understand all that we have held differently --perhaps inadequately -- before.  

Smith asked us to consider that God's yearning mattered to Jesus -- Smith said aroused -- and that when he was proclaiming the coming of the reign of God -- we can say "kingdom" but we mustn't think only boundaries and locales -- he was allowing God to do just that; to yearn, to desire, to want us to be with him into a future he already inhabits.  To discover the way, the truth and the life!  

Too often we hear Jesus say "I am the way . . ."  and we think exclusivity.  We think that we have a golden ticket that no other religion possesses or can offer.  What a discovery to think that God is God of all and all futures and that Jesus is the incarnation of God's yearning, of God's desire for us to move into a future with him.  

Easter Imagination

I wrote recently about the comprehensiveness of our Prayer Book's options.  There are 2 versions of our Rite One Eucharistic prayers and 4 of the Rite Two Prayers.  Within each of those liturgical sets are smaller options.  Some we try to employ "per season."  Each year we have prayed using all 6 forms for eucharistic worship.  The end result is not only a year filled with ear catching phrases but seasons shaped by actions that advance and complement the important holy-days spread throughout the year.

Another way that we have lived with our BCP is in preparation for confirmation and reception.  By studying the BCP we have learned how to use it, why it was first composed, as well as what we hope "biblical prayer" will do for us and our world.  The order of services -- from Morning Prayer to The Dedication and Consecration of a Church -- are fashioned and listed in an ideal way to organize the lives of faithful people consistent with our shared biblical witness and our history from Jerusalem to Rome and to Canterbury and to Philadelphia.

In other words we are a people of two books, and we have become a parish formed by almost all of what the 1979 BCP has to offer and helps us to access in holy scripture.  We do "good church" because we have trusted the BCP to shape our lives in worship every Sunday and many weekdays as well.  We have been permitted to join in a long-lived imagination that was shepherded by Jesus and burned into the hearts and minds of people like Luke, Paul and Peter, Stephen and Timothy and John the Divine. The BCP encourages us to echo the very phrases and songs they first practiced.  Our rehearsals are forming us into a people like few others.

Without our utilizing the options proscribed for our consideration our worship in 2017 would sink to robotic incantations more like sleepy magicians than imaginative believers.  It may not have been the first intent of those scholars and priests who feverishly finished their work that September 1979 night in Denver but their imagination was passing along to us from centuries before a richness of sights and sounds, thoughts and prayers only possible because of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

The shape our worship takes -- no matter how we employ our imaginations or choose our options -- replays, represents, rehearses, and reinforces His and our dying and being raised.  In teaching our confirmands I have relied on this schematic like no other.

All of our worship follows this pattern of prayerful entrance, offertory, consecration, and intentional dismissal; of life, death, resurrection, and glorified presence; of bread and wine becoming body and blood; of a gift of human creation becoming a member of Christ's body. None of our worship is without some imagination; sometimes ours but always from God.  Ours is an Easter imagination.