Reflections for Sunday, April 30, 2017
1st Scripture Reading:  Acts 2: 14a, 36-41  and Psalm 116
Reflection:
“So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added.”
          The tiny flock of Jesus’ followers was enormously increased in numbers on this day of Pentecost.  Times of crisis, times of great, disturbing events, these times tend to grab our attention, don’t they?
          Last week’s reading showed how Peter exhorted the crowd to take responsibility for what they had done in crucifying Jesus. Continuing the reading, we hear how the people ask what they can do to make things right – to reduce their level of discomfort – to take from them the guilt that they are feeling.  And Peter wastes no time:  “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.”
          Three thousand people turned to Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, on that day.  Three thousand baptisms!  Can you imagine what that must have looked like?  We might do one baptism in a year – it’s hard for me to wrap my head around this huge number, and in a very short period of time...
          Something special was going on here.  Something extraordinary.  Maybe even supernatural.  As modern Christians many of us resist the mystical or supernatural aspects of our story – of our faith.  But most of us will acknowledge that the Jesus event was a powerful moment in our history. 
          No other spiritual leader of any other faith has so clearly demonstrated the healing power of Love, and given us such powerful tools to replicate the work that he has done. “All these things you shall do and more” Jesus told his followers. And the path he set out is not so arduous that only the elite few can follow it.  In fact his intention was not to set up an elite spiritual system that very few would or could master.  His intention was to hold all things together in love – to show us all the way out of the dilemma of ignorance and cruelty.  Jesus showed us that we can all be part of the solution – that we are indeed already part of the beautiful world that God so loves.  That love runs thru all of us, like sap in a tree.  We have only to believe.
Hymn #163 MV “River Running in You and Me”
2nd Scripture Reading:  Luke 24:13-35
Reflection:
          A couple of things stick out for me in this reading, the first of which is that at the same time Jesus was appearing to Simon in the locked room, he was walking with two other disciples toward Emmaus, and then eating with them, and then vanishing into thin air!
          How much proof do we need?   How much proof did Jesus’ followers need – that he was indeed no ordinary man.  They had over a period of some think about  three years, watched him heal the sick, raise the dead, feed the multitudes and walk on water.  He had cast out demons, challenged the religious authorities and predicted the destruction of the temple.  I know that didn’t happen right away – but maybe that one was for our benefit!
          His coming into the world, his incarnation as a human being, had been predicted thru the ancient scriptures of the Jewish people.  They were expecting him – they just didn’t know what that would look like, and their expectations were contaminated and coloured by their cultural context, their oppressed condition under Roman rule, and their spiritual ignorance.  We can’t see what we can’t imagine or have no model for.  So Jesus “opening of the scriptures” for the disciples on the road to Emmaus opened their minds and hearts to the truth of his divine origin and mission to provide for humanity the model for a different Way – a way based on the Law of Love.
          And then he sat down to dinner with them, blessed and broke the bread, gave it to them - and disappeared from their sight!
          In wonder they discussed these things, and their hearts burned within them.  Hearts so full they could not be alone, they returned to Jerusalem  to tell the other disciples what had happened. There they discovered that Jesus had appeared to Simon as well!
          The blessing, breaking and offering of the bread are the very elements of the sacrament we now call Holy Communion.  Jesus asked them (and us) to remember him in the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine.  As faithful Christians it is something we do, at least at a Communion Service.  But it wasn’t a special, separate event in the day of Jesus – it was at a meal.  Could he have meant at every meal?   I wonder...
Hymn #480 VU “Let Us Break Bread Together”
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Reflections for Sunday April 23, 2017
1st Scripture Reading:  Acts 2: 14a, 22-32  and Psalm 16 (VU p.738)
Reflection:
          Let’s face it:  the events of Easter would have been astounding to the people of Israel.  Right after Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit with fire and great wind), Peter was talking to the huge crowd who had gathered having heard the strange sounds of wind, saw the flames descending, and heard people babbling about God in every language represented in that cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem.  Peter was suddenly very articulate about what had just happened, and what it all meant to these bewildered and probably terrified people.
          Peter’s speech demanded that the Israelites take responsibility (as we all must) for their own actions which resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus, but gave all credit and glory to God for raising him from death.  He quotes the Psalm of David (16) where David sings:  “For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One experience corruption.”
          Peter wastes not a second of this “teachable moment” to call people to greater faith in the power of God to raise the faithful from death and corruption. “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.”  And we, the community of all believers are witnesses also, as we continue as faithful guardians of the story of Jesus, and how the events of Easter transformed the consciousness of a people, and changed the course of human history.
Hymn #376 VU “Spirit of the Living God”
 
2nd Scripture Reading:  John 20: 19-31
Reflection:
          This reading is about actually the second and third resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples.  The first was to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb.  At first, Mary did not recognize him, but when she did her great love for him caused her to try to hold on to him.  But Jesus told her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.”  Don’t cling to me now. I am different.  He sent her to tell the other disciples that she had seen him, and that he was ascending to God.
          The next day, it seems, Jesus appeared to the disciples in a locked room where they were hiding. He just appeared.  He didn’t knock.  They didn’t let him in.  He just appeared among them, and said, “Peace be with you.”  I don’t imagine they had been feeling very peaceful!  And at first it appears they did not know who he was! Once he showed them the wounds of the crucifixion:  the nail holes and the slash in his side -then they recognized him and rejoiced. 
          But Thomas was not with them.  The next week, Jesus appeared to them again, just appeared, again in a locked room.  This time Thomas was there and he needed actual physical evidence of the crucifixion before he was prepared to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead.  Jesus said: “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
          Described in Luke, the appearance of Jesus to two disciples on the road to Emmaus is the fourth appearance, and again they do not recognize him at first, until , first having opened the scriptures to them so that they might better understand what has happened, he breaks bread with them and then vanishes. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” they said to each other.
          The fifth resurrection appearance was to seven of the disciples on the lakeshore as they were fishing.  With Jesus gone, they did not know what to do, and so they returned to their boats and went looking for fish.  When he appeared, they once again did not recognize him, until he advised them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat from where they were, and they pulled in such abundance of fish that the boat was nearly capsized!     
          We see that Jesus can come and go at will thru locked doors and instantaneously, he does not appear exactly as he did before the crucifixion, but he makes very sure the disciples know that it is him.
          Perhaps they do not recognize him because they just don’t expect to see him alive ?  Traditionally he is described as having assumed a “resurrection body”. Cynthia Bourgault postulates that this body might be “timeless” and thus not so dense as a human body.  But he could be touched and he did eat...
          The disciples, and we not so very different, are operating on the information they can glean thru their five physical senses.  Jesus knows this and makes sure that they can see, hear, touch him, and see him taste and smell food.  He is calling them, and us, to open our minds and hearts to the possibility that there is more going on than we can actually sense in this way.  He challenges them to believe that God can and has raised him from death, and that because God loves us, this is available to us also.  But there is something about believing... the power of what we hold in consciousness is so very important to the outcome.  Do we believe that God will  not abandon our souls to Hades?  Do we believe that God raised Jesus from the grave?  Do we believe that Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb in God’s holy name, and that the disciples did also perform such acts after Jesus was gone?
          I do not believe that this lifetime is all there is for me.  I believe that I live in Christ now as part of his true “Resurrection Body”, and that I am beloved of God, and that there will be a place for my eternal soul in God’s house of many mansions.  I don’t pretend to know what that looks like, but I believe my earthly eyes are not actually capable of seeing it clearly – and I believe that later I will see clearly – when that time comes.  And I believe the very same is true for you – to the extent that you believe, or at least that you keep an open heart and an open mind to what is possible, and an intention to be open to the guidance and instruction of the Holy Spirit.  God loves each of us and waits patiently to welcome each of us home.  Praise be to the God of Love.
 
 
 
 
Hymn #563 VU “Jesus, You have come to the Lakeshore”
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Reflections for Sunday, April 2, 2017 – Lent 5
1st Scripture Reading:  Ezekial 37:1-14  & Psalm 130
Reflection:
          “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” Sometimes our grief is too great to bear, our pain too deep to share.  Sometimes as friends and family, as close as wallpaper, we still cannot comfort or relieve the suffering. 
          Out of the shadows of destruction, the people of Israel have lost hope.  It feels like there is nothing left but death and dry bones.  Objectively we know that such times will come – are part of life on this planet.  But that is cold comfort. Does it help to hear:  “this too shall pass” or “time heals all wounds”?  Not really.  In the darkest hours of our lives the only thing that really helps is the compassionate accompaniment of a friend.
          And so we cry out in pain, or grief, or fear:  “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”  And we have a friend, we Christians, a friend in Jesus.  Many of us could testify to the times we have cried out to Jesus and found comfort and relief in our darkest hours.
          God promises in Ezekial that the dry bones of the people of Israel shall be resurrected.  There is a future.  God, the giver of all life has not given up on the people of God.  There will be new life, for God is with them, as God is with us, and the future is not so dark, for we are not alone.
Hymn #90 MV “Don’t be afraid”
 
2nd Scripture Reading:  Romans 8: 9-11 & John 11:1-45
Reflection:
          Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go.”  We are prisoners here, in the flesh of our earthly bodies.  We are prisoners so long as we are blind and asleep to life in the Spirit.
          In the reading from Romans we hear Paul exhorting these new Christians to remember that the Spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead is the same Spirit that breathed life into them.
          The same God who put flesh on the dry bones of the Israelites, giving them new life and new hope, is the God who by the Spirit breathed new life into Lazarus in answer to the prayers of Jesus.
          The question for me is why did Jesus wait four days – why wait till death was certainly irrefutable – before he came to help Lazarus?  Who is this Jesus that he can heal rotten flesh, and free Lazarus from the tomb?  I believe that Jesus’ whole life on earth was a teaching tool – his incarnation as a human being meant to teach us how to move into the life of the Spirit – to “free the captives” if you will.  So in this instance he challenged one of our most deep-seated beliefs – that death is the enemy, death always wins out, and death is final – and we as humans can never escape the mortality of the flesh.
          But we can!  We must certainly give up the body when our time is up here on earth.  But by raising Lazarus from the dead – really dead – Jesus proves to us that death is a paper tiger.  Life in the Spirit, life as part of the Body of Christ, is so much richer and stronger than life as an unconscious human.  And life with Christ, sharing in the love of Christ which is also the love of God, goes beyond the grave.
          As we learn to live in the Way of Jesus, we live more and more the   life of the Spirit.  We are transformed.  As Spirit washes over us time and time again, we are washed clean, and our spiritual connection is strengthened.
          The love of God is the creative power of the universe.  As we learn to know this, and to glorify and then to embody this love, then to that extent we become branches of the true vine, immersed in the river of Love that flows by the throne of God.  On that plane, in that place that Jesus has gone before to prepare for us, there is no death and no physical body.  Our experience here on earth has prepared us to “sing with the angels” or to join our voices in joy and exultation to the song of all Creation.   As pure consciousness we will return to the God who gave us the great gift of human experience.  Right here, right now, we are called to learn the great lessons of love that Jesus came to teach us.  Death has no sting, no final victory.  The Beatles had it right:  “all there is is love!”
Hymn # 87 MV “Water Flowing from the Mountains”
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