Easter- To Live.. For Others

The Lord is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed!

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Let those who have ears, hear!

5:29 AM (CDT)- Spring Springs

Calendar of Saints: John of Damascus (1)

Twice a week I post a quote from saints from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. They are to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

John of Damascus (676-750)
Hymn-writer, Defender of Icons
December 4

John is generally accounted "the last of the Fathers". He was the son of a Christian official at the court of the Moslem khalif Abdul Malek, and succeeded to his father's office.

 John is known as a hymn-writer. Two of his hymns are sung in English at Easter ("Come ye faithful, raise the strain" and "The Day of Resurrection! Earth, tell it out abroad!"). Many more are sung in the Eastern Church.


-Link

Sing Hallelujah- Long Live God.

Easter Blessings to all.

On the Road Again

Image Source

The “Road to Emmaus” Icon by Sister Marie Paul OSB
of the Mount of Olives Monastery, Jerusalem (1990)

from Luke 24:
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus,
about seven miles from Jerusalem, ...
While they were talking and discussing,

Jesus himself
came near and went with them,

but their eyes were kept from recognizing him....

When he was at the table with them,

he took bread,
blessed
and broke it,
and gave it to them.

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

They said to each other,

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money,

I give you myself before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

--Walt Whitman

So let's take to the road with the life ahead of us.

Let's take to the road where, if we are open and aware,

We will, without a doubt,

Meet the Risen Lord, there to break bread

And have his words nourish us with a

Strange burning of the heart and

A warming of the soul.

--pmp

Easter 2014

“If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus' fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.”
― A.W. Tozer, Preparing for Jesus' Return: Daily Live the Blessed Hope

Let the hope and promise of life be alive in all of us this Easter.

A Day for Resurrection

So here is something to reflect on. It comes from an interesting and challenging book, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman. First, the quote:

Christ is not an answer to existence, but a means of existing. (p. 91)

Not knowing where it came from, it can seem like one of those bumper sticker theological statements.
(Note: I am not opposed to short, pithy statements of theology. It's just that many times people use them to make something simplistic, rather than concise. This one is concise.)
It is concise because it comes from one who was an agnostic, perhaps even an atheist, for many years. What's more he is a poet who does not use words unwisely. He chooses his statements with reality in mind. His reality, he has come to see is that there's more to Christ than making him an answer (like bumper stickers try to do.) There is no question to which Christ is the answer other than, for a Christian, this one:

How then does one exist?

And there is the answer- Christ.

Note he doesn't say Jesus. This is a statement of resurrection, life here and forever. This is the Christ, not the wandering Rabbi and miracle worker. Or at least, not JUST the wandering Jesus. In life after Easter, Jesus is not the answer. Christ leads us elsewhere, deeper, to far more profound place than we even know to ask about.

Listen to more of Wiman:

Instead of a resurrection that frees us from this-world thinking... Contemporary Christianity all too often preaches an idea of a resurrection that is little more than a means of projecting our paltry selves ad infinitum, and the result is a grinning, self-aggrandizing, ironclad kind of happiness that has no truth in it. (p. 167)

That knocked more than my socks off and knocked me into a different way of seeing my faith. The resurrection that we  I often have preached, lacks the test of real truth. It was only when Jesus left them that they began to see. That's not just an extension of life here-and-now. That is a new existence.

How then, on this Lord's Day, the weekly Day of Resurrection, did Christ become my way of existing? How did The Christ move me into His existence and out of mine? Maybe I need to meditate on that thought this week. Perhaps I need to allow Christ's existence to show me how to exist.

Thanks be to God!

The Lord is Risen- He is Risen Indeed!

May the blessings of resurrection be found in your life today.

May the promise of The Resurrection come to life around you today.

May the grace of life with God be the foundation of this very special day.

Here's the Polished Brass Quintet from last Easter at 

Holy Spirit Catholic Church

Rochester, MN

Resurrection Continues

“If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There's an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren't yet operational.There's been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible.”
― Mary Karr, Lit

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”
― N.T. Wright


"What really matters is not so much what happened there. It's what happens now. What happens in your life and my life. Is God making himself known in some powerful and saving way among people, even, who don't give a hoot about God? Is this still a reality which is part of the madness and self-destructiveness and darkness of the world? That's what really matters."
- Fredrick Buechner, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly

Just Before Advent

Well, before we get all mushy and sentimental about Christmas, here is a paragraph from the Huffington Post.

Convincing the church she does not exist for the benefit of her members, but for the life of the world is a bad church growth strategy. It's also exactly what the church must do. It's a tough sell because crucifixion seems like a losing strategy unless you believe in the resurrection. Faithfulness seems like a losing strategy unless you believe that the power of the gospel trumps our ability to come up with all the right answers to all the right questions.

Yes, I said the Huffington Post. When we in the church begin to talk like this, whether from the left or right sides of the culture, we will not find our numbers expanding. Of course, I don't think we see numbers expanding anyway. We just see people moving around from one place to another.

Anyway, on this day before the First Sunday in Advent where even I get a sentimental twinkle in the eye and on the blog, I thought I better post this to at least keep the whole thing in perspective.

Now, on with the sentiment. I have a hunch that Jesus liked that, too.

Change Your Perspective

There have been days when my normal ability to spin into the positive side of things just falls apart. I get downright frustrated with myself at those moments. Yet I also find myself stuck in the rut of whining and complaining; grumbling and groaning. My co-workers want to kick me in the butt and my wife wants to hit me up the side of the head.

So, with a period of that whining in the past couple weeks I ran across this quote:

Unquestionably, there are sad things in the world right now, even in my life right now, but grumbling doesn't make anything better. In fact, it makes things worse. The Buddha taught, "Every mind moment conditions the next."
— Sylvia Boorstein in It's Easier Than You Think

It makes sense, but it can be tough when you are stuck. the "Yes, but..." syndrome fills in all the blanks and takes over. That usually means it is time to let go. It is time to see how powerless I am in many things and turn it over.

Maybe that's one of the reasons for the weekly Sabbath (to rest) and for us as Christians, the Lord's Day to remember the resurrection that can even happen in my life.

Today.