REAL. EASTER.*

5th Sunday of Easter---Year A
(click for video link)

Acts 6:1-7

John 14: 1-12

How peppy are your Alleluia’s?

Anyone text you “He Is Risen” lately?

Are there any lilies? Alive ones?

Is Easter beginning to fade a little?

With today’s reading’s---It might seem---At first glance

That the church has forgotten it is Easter

We have one of the most popular funeral Gospels

“In my Father’s house there are many mansions…

And from the Acts of the Apostles

We have the powerful story of the Stoning of Stephen

the first Christian Martyr

There is nothing sentimental about REAL Easter

It is always rubbing up against the cross.

Easter sentimentality ---As my dad would say of a salad dinner---

doesn’t stick to the ribs

Well…the lectionary gives us---REAL Easter

No sentimentality here---Easter is about REAL

A look at the Collect Prayer

Is always a good place to go to clarify a Sunday theme

And today it ends this way:

Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life,

THAT WE MAY steadfastly follow his steps

in the way that leads to eternal life.

So the theme---The desire ---The goal of this worship

Is to increase our steadfastness in following

IN HIS STEPS---Right on through to eternal life!

And our example is STEPHEN

This community’s patron Saint

The first Christian Martyr

Our example---is a story about how a person

who has perfected the art of  Steadfastly following  in his steps

… how such a person dies

Anyone want to leave yet???

The word Martyr is in fact a Christian word

It comes from the Greek word for ‘witness’

But according to church historians

there are defining characteristics of Christian martyrdom:

-there’s innocence --- the victim is innocent

(so you can’t be a Christian martyr with explosives around your chest)

-there’s blessing/forgiveness of ones enemies/executioners

-and there’s a vision…a vision of God’s Glory

(and the clue…the evidence…seems to be a palpable sense of peace)

in other words

martyrs die like Jesus died

Stephen is innocent

He forgives his persecutors

And he sees the glory of God---it was reflected in his gaze

The stoners are rushing at him

---but note that detail

---they have their fingers in their ears

But even so…plugged ears and all

Their other senses haven’t stopped working

That innocence---That forgiveness---That peace and light

It penetrates---It sinks in

Plugging ones ears is a rather lame defense

And in the story ---En route to the stoning

Their “coats were laid at the feet of a young man named Saul”

This is a gesture acknowledging Saul’s leadership

The next lines read:

“Now Saul agreed with his being killed. 

And on that day there began a great persecution

Against the Church in Jerusalem.

…Saul continued to inflict outrage against the Church. 

He went into one house after another.

He dragged out both men and women.

He handed them over to prison.”

If I remember my high school English

That is what you call foreshadowing

That young man Saul

Will soon (in Chapter 9) fall to the ground on the road to Damascus

That Saul will become the Apostle Paul

The greatest Missionary Witness the Church has ever known

Witnesses to the martyr’s death

To a death like Jesus’

Are powerless

They cannot resist being penetrated to their deepest core

Paul witnessed

Innocence, forgiveness, and glory

He witnessed truth and light

He couldn’t help but be changed

And he couldn’t resist becoming a witness

telling the story…that is what witnesses do

And then

He too was martyred

And the church told his story

and on and on

down through the ages

countless lives lived in the footsteps

…in the pattern of Jesus

story upon story

This is the REAL Easter

The pattern of dying and rising

I’ll never forget a story I read a few years ago

It was in a book by a New York Times Journalist named Danner

It is a true story… gruesome but powerful

I won’t give you all the details

It was 1981

In the middle of the bloody armed conflict in ElSalvador

I don’t remember who was on what side

And it doesn’t really matter for this story

There was a tiny village called El Mozote

It had a reputation for being neutral in the civil conflict

One day Armed militia came to town and massacred everyone

There was one young woman who was singled out

She was taken a ways off to a hill outside the village

Fittingly called la Cruz…the Cross

And there

With a handful of torturers

She was subject to a day’s worth of unspeakable brutality

And eventual death

The story goes that all the while

This young woman sang hymns

She sang and sang

I wonder…were her eyes fixed on God’s Glory?

Was her singing actually powered by God’s Glory?

She was eventually shot…and she sang still

Shot again…and she sang still

The men’s laughter soon turned to fear

How do we even know this story?

On that hill

There was the victim

And the perpetrators

Who told the story?   How did it get out?

It is the pattern of Paul

There is no power

Strong enough to block

Innocence, forgiveness, peace and light.

There is a pattern---Someone always tells

The truth ---the innocence---The light---The Glory

It always penetrates

And it won’t stay unspoken

If we are getting REAL

We’ll admit that for most of us

Most likely…We will not find ourselves

in the center of a frenzied mob with stones in their hands

or atop a Salvadoran hill surrounded by blood thirsty death squads

so one more story…a story closer to home

I met a mystic once

…a rural/southern Indiana/farm-raised/could be you or me…mystic. 

The nurse called for the chaplain to visit with Lucy.  

I paused at the almost closed door to Lucy’s hospital room,

and overheard the nurse: ‘Now Lucy, let’s put that cover back over you

…the chaplain is coming.’

Lucy was at least ninety with a head of silken snow-white wavy hair.

And skin like the surface of my favorite pearls.  

She was very weak but mightily intentional.  

First she wanted me to read to her from scripture.  

I pulled out my trusty little green ‘Pastoral Care of the Sick’ book

and opened it to John 14…the same reading we had today

I went on reading until she asked me to move on to the greeting cards

I opened them and read them to her…but not just the new ones.  

There was a stack of others from relatives and from neighbors and friends.  

She told me a stories about each sender

All the while Lucy’s right fist never let go of the sheet that so concerned her nurse.

She grabbed it like my daughter used to grasp her ‘blankie’

As she grabbed she worked the fabric through her fist

Eventually she managed to pull the sheet off completely.  

And there she was, this beautiful woman

a woman of the deepest faith, near death,

and much to the discomfort of her nurse…naked…but for her adult diaper.

At that moment I caught her staring off to the right…over her shoulder.  

“Lucy, what is it?  What has grabbed your attention?"

Lucy was staring at the crucifix on the wall,

her body a perfect mirror of his.  

She turned to me,

and with a forcefulness not residing in her weakened body,

she proclaimed ‘I came into this world exposed and I will leave it exposed…just like him.’

What kind of life leads a person to that proclamation?

Was there a consistency about the cross-shaped pattern of her life?

And what does cross-shaped even look like?

I think it is that mixture of great joy and great sacrifice

Joy and sacrifice...isn’t that what brings life to life?

I want to know

Because all this makes me wonder

Am I the subject of such a story?

Am I, at least sometimes, a carrier of such innocence?

Am I such a forgiver?

Do I glimpse the glory of God from time to time

…and more importantly

does it show on my face?  In my life?

To celebrate Easter

For REAL

Asks something of us

from each of us individually

and all of us as a community

We are asked to take our fingers out of our ears

We are asked to LEAN IN

LEAN IN

Get within earshot

Hear the life giving stories

Share them

And make our lives one for the telling

So the Collect prayer

With a small addendum

Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ

to be the way, the truth, and the life,

THAT WE MAY steadfastly follow his steps

all the way to eternal life

with such style and grace that OUR living

And OUR dying might become a source of nourishment for others.

Amen/Alleluia

"I AM NOT LISTENING!"

Tuesday of the 3^rd Week of Easter (a day late;)

Feast of St Athanasius

Acts 7:51-8:1

The Stoning of Stephen

Stephen’s speech is the longest discourse in Acts. This telling is Luke’s conveyance of the whole of the Biblical story and how that story continued in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and continues still in the Apostles and the church. 

We are coming in on the tail end of the speech.  The question seems to be about who  is the authentic Israel.  Stephen gives testimony to Jesus’ messiahship and claims his faithfulness to the genuine story of God. 

The language is so descriptive.

Two things: 

1.  The very biblical name-calling.

I particularly like stiff-necked people. (Exod 33:3, 5; Deut 9:6, 13, 27)

Anyone who has had an experience of whiplash can feel what this is like.  One’s vision is tunneled.  What is happening all around is obscured or outside the frame.  It hurts to try and turn. It hurts to be confronted with an alternative vision.  The first reaction is to avoid that confrontation…to fear the change it will demand.

2.  And then that wasn’t enough.  While shouting loudly, they held their ears. The confrontation with Stephen’s passionate confession rang so true and was so frightening that not-hearing wasn’t an option.  I used to do that when my sister was trying to tell me something important I didn’t want to hear.  I would cover my ears all the while chanting “I’m not listening, I’m not listening.”  But of course I was...remember what happens to Paul soon thereafter. Sometimes (but I severely limit my intake), when I see the news on television or hear it on radio, that is the scene:  loud shouting and covered ears.  No listening, no hearing, no dialogue, no conversation…no possibility for communion.  I have a deep fondness for solid argument and debate but the prerequisite is a capacity to listen and hear.  And that demands a generosity of spirit that is grounded in honoring the other as child of God.

And on that theme...Thank you Pope Francis for your TED talk.

Certainly an Idea Worth Spreading!

Which Mask?

Monday of the 3^rd Week of Easter

St. Joseph the Worker

Acts 6:8-15

They could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit 

with which he spoke. 6:10

Withstand: remain undamaged or unaffected by

They could not withstand.  A response/a change was assured.  What would it be? 

The ‘so-called’ Synagogue members throw around inflammatory rhetoric. Just as in Luke’s Gospel they misunderstand and are scandalized.  

With an Ignatian sensibility I place myself in the scene:

Am I Stephen the Scapegoat?  No. It is best not to fall for making myself the hero of the story;)

Am I one of the members of the ‘so-called Synagogue’? 

Depending on the day…I certainly am.  It happens when I can’t withstand wisdom and truth that upsets my current knowing; that asks for humility; that demands metanoia. (example: when I stall in questioning my own impact on the environment because I want to believe that my choices do not have real implications for others. The funny truth is that they also have real implications for my own peace of mind and heart.)

Am I part of the easily stirred up crowd of people, elders and scribes?

Ohhh.  Yes.  This happens when I prefer sloth to actually thinking things through on my own, when deliberate reflection is too much work.  When I let sloth take the upper hand I fall for the most proximate rallying cry.

(example: succumbing to the temptation to believe bumper sticker reductions of complex issues or not believing them but still refusing to seek clarity and understanding in light of the tradition and my own experience)

Am I a Sanhedrin member?

Good question.  They hear the inflammatory accusations.  They looked intently.  They saw innocence.  But the text leaves us guessing…for now.  Stephen’s speech is coming. God, Moses, the Law, and the Temple!  Is this just tooo much?  The narrow vision of stability and self-protection or the grand vision of the prophet like Jesus?  I’d rather not take that part in the scene.

To be continued…