The Church is Gathered-Acts 4:32-37

We just heard this reading on Sunday and again today…I'll consider it highlighted in neon green!  

...of one heart and mind,
...no one claimed 
...they had everything 
...no needy person among them
...each according to need

It seems that the Church I experience is always being re-gathered.  Can I just let that be? And, at the same time hold on to this ideal in today's reading?  I am tempted to focus so strongly on all the ways church falls short of this ideal  that I lose sight of the "great power" I profess to be a witness of.

St. Luke pray for us.


"We were created to delight, as God does, in the resident goodness of creation.  We were not made to sit around mumbling incantations and watching our insides to see what creation will do for us."
-Robert Farrar Capon

That "Name" Thing Again - Acts 3:11-26

...why are you amazed at this,

and why do you look so intently at us

as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety?

Peter later places the power in the name of Jesus.  When I meet someone new, and I am introduced to them by name, I try to connect something with that name.  It is a game I play that helps me remember their name.  But, in a way, as it helps me recall a name, it also helps me recall a presence or better yet, an encounter.  Peter's faith is grounded in a "name."  Jesus is the name.  And with that name is power and presence and being and healing.   There is so much in a name.

The temptation for me is to come in my own name.  When I give in to the temptation I believe that I have the power, the strength, the piety…to make something wonderful happen.  This beginning part of the Acts of the Apostles reminds me over and over again that I am a witness to the power of a name, that is so much more than a name, so much more than my name;) 

"O Lord, how wonderful your name in all the earth!"  Psalm 8:2

Easter Tuesday - "What shall we do?"

Coming after yesterdays reading of Peter's impassioned Pentecost sermon…and following Acts 2:36 "Therefore let the whole House of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified!" we hear a "now what" question:  What shall we do? (2:37)

The answer according to Acts has something to do with repenting, forgiving, receiving, witnessing saving, accepting, sharing, breaking, and praising.

But the portrait painted in Acts is about the power of a remnant people.  Those nine activities listed are possible only in the context of an encounter of giving and receiving.  To "do" these things today means that I enter the drama and play whatever part bids me "Come."  I Come...not in my own name but in the name of the one who gathers and makes a people whole. Come…and let's see what happens.

Today is the day the Lord has made…what will I do with it?"

Friday of the Pasch: The Holy Cross

Oppressed and condemned 

he was taken away, 

and who would have thought 

any more of his destiny?"  Isaiah 53:8

And God says:  Sorry peoples,  you’ve been trying all this time to pin this on me.  But it’s been you all along.  This divine anger is nothing other than your continuous, spiraling, tit for tat violence. 

And in response I open my life to take the cruciform path that resists playing that game. Instead, to the degree that my faith allows…and in imitation, I offer to bear even a tiny particle of suffering on behalf of another.

Grant me the riches 

of your grace

that, renewed in Spirit,

I may be able to respond 

to your eternal 

and limitless love.  Italian Sacramentary

Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper

What I will miss most this evening while my community celebrates Holy Thursday is singing the Pange Lingua in procession.  The reading of John 13:1-15 and the corresponding liturgy of "foot-washing" that accompanies that proclamation vividly reminds me of the meaning of the meal and the cross.  But it is my bodily participation in that procession that gets at me from the inside out.

I follow.
There is an itinerary.  I connect myself to something ancient…and so anti-modern.  I follow because there is something on the horizon I long for.  I need a map.  Various routes to take but a horizon worth keeping in sight.

I bump up against.
There are others.  I don't know them all.  Some are complete strangers and with a little imagination I sense time and space collapsing.  I sing words from the 13th century and I know new-old companions.  I am so not alone.

I ponder leftovers.
We all ate and drank together.  What leads is leftovers.  The leftovers we honor even more.  So odd.  But eating half of anything always guarantees that half will be left.  There will be plenty.

My prayer tonight... 

That the hospital will be my church community  

That there I will enter a procession…following a path toward a broken world restored  

That I will be wondrously filled with the Word incarnate 

That what passes between me and patient/staff/family goes where the senses cannot lead 

That the night is punctuated with wonder and silence  

That I will learn how to adore

Amen

Getting Reacquainted with my Baptism…Holy Week Prep

3/31/2015

Getting Reacquainted with my Baptism…Holy Week Prep

John 13:21-33, 36-38

As I prepare to spend Holy Week this year working evenings at the hospital, I have just a little more time to look honestly in the mirror.  
Where is my ignorance and fragility?
How do I misunderstand?
Under what circumstances does betrayal appear like a good answer?  
Jesus chose fragile, misunderstanding, and betraying disciples.  He chooses me.  

I hope to unearth that next part of me that has been hiding from the light of the resurrection…that this celebration of the Pasch brings forth something new in me and through me for the life of the world.


"Even though we are baptized, what we constantly lose and betray is precisely that which we received at baptism.  Therefore Easter is our return every year to our own baptism, whereas Lent is our preparation for that return---the slow and sustained effort to perform, at the end, our own "passage" or "pascha" into the new life of Christ…Each year Lent and Easter are, once again, the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection."    
                                                                                             from Great Lent by Alexander Schmemann