Welcome, happy morning!

Welcome, happy morning!

This (scroll down) is our second lesson for today, Easter 3A. In the Episcopal Church, most preaching relates to the gospel reading for the day, not always but generally, so this is not likely to be preached on this happy morning. Really a great text for Sunday School though.

The 1 Peter (70-100 AD?) text plays right into the mind and hand of Anselm of Canterbury with his doctrine of blood atonement to explain why Good Friday was necessary, well, both the Incarnation and Good Friday - - to repeat because I wrote about it recently, that under the feudal property like unto slavery system of Anselm's era (1033-1109) in world history, the ages-old, incalculably great human sin debt to a just God could not be paid by any blood sacrifice of mere humans, but in no other way than the bloody sacrificial death of God's own self, payment sufficient to ransom us from the capital punishment of death; and that not only was that sacrifice sufficient to pay God the Father his due for human sins past and present, but that God's willing self-sacrifice, shedding his own blood by death on the cross, was payment so immense, so over-the-top, as to pay for the sins of all humans for all Time (for those humans, Christians, who accept Christ as Savior and thereby enter into the blood covenant) - - a doctrine that in Anselm's feudal age of lords and serfdom seemed reasonable and made much sense as the explanation for the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of God. Again (already I wrote about it recently), not simply God the Father in human terms sending someone else, his Son, to do the necessary suffering, but the One God coming himself to do what in his (or Anselm's) sense of justice had to be done if people were to be Saved as he our Creator so lovingly desired. 

Anselm's theological doctrine is a rationalization to somehow explain how and why it could be that God came down and voluntarily suffered violent death at human hands. Amazingly, it is still with us.

More reasonable to Anselm than to us, to whom it may seem gruesomely bizarre as the demand of a Creator God to satisfy such an appallingly unchangeable sense of righteousness, when in our minds any such sin debt could have been cancelled by simply writing it off like any doting parent at Christmas. 

Nevertheless, if one contemplates it, it's a most generous and loving gift for anyone who accepts the sociological and theological premises of such a system of justice that demands payment in full.  Here's the reading:

1 Peter 1:17-23

If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.


Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. (NRSV).   

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It's an interesting reading to rationalize Good Friday and Easter: demanding of us toward each other the same love God shows toward us in the theological process of Incarnation, Life, Show & Tell, Sacrifice & Death; and Resurrection with such total forgiveness as to come lovingly back to us regardless of our treatment of him. 

It's not related to the art I came across again yesterday while cleaning off my computer desktop. 

Art** that I keep on liking because of its splendiferous detail when viewed up close, including Jesus as the central and maybe slightly tallest figure, in retrospect of course, asynchronously if omnisciently, or perhaps from a timeless sense of eternity, pronouncing a blessing as he waves the Sign of the Cross over the raised Lazarus while, still dopey and confused, "poor Lazarus" as Martin Luther repeatedly called him, is unbound by people in the crowd. Presumably, Lazarus is looking at one of his sisters there, Martha or Mary, and the other sister standing behind her and behind Jesus?

** Once again, attributed to Christoph Schwarz, Germany, 16th century https://www.masterart.com/artworks/5564/christoph-schwarz-the-raising-of-lazarus

Jesus raising The Beloved Disciple Lazarus from death and the tomb, relating not to today, Easter 3A, but to a Sunday in Lent a few weeks ago. 

Unless one tries to link Secret Mark http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/secretmark.html (which seems reasonable if one reads the history and rationalizations of it and decides to take it as seriously as some scholars), Jesus raising Lazarus happens only in the Gospel according to John, where, unlike the Synoptics, where the cleansing of the Temple is the precipitating reason for Good Friday, to Gospel John that reason is Jesus' raising Lazarus that garners unto himself and away from the Temple authorities, at least in their view, the respectful adoration of the people.

Another look, maybe this is clearer ->

First I printed that several weeks ago and coming across it again yesterday took me aback, brought me up short. Seems ages! Many 2020 things that happened only a few weeks back now seem to have happened in Old Times, the Good Old Days. Seems the nature of what we are experiencing in this strange but life-giving Duration of sheltering in our spidey-holes. Remember, that's where Saddam Hussein was finally found, Saddam the cruel and viciously brutal Iraqi dictator president who so valued himself and feared for his life after he was brought down by Shock and Awe, found cowering in a spidey-hole, meekly standing there with his mouth open and swabbed to ID him. Subsequently hanged, somehow American justice for war crimes or crimes against humanity, though it was his own countrymen who judged that and executed him. ho anaginoskown noeito.

Saturday on StAndrewsBay seemed returned to life, even the old normal, Bay loaded with boats and other small craft, StAndrews Marina many trucks, trailers emptily waiting for their boats to return from a day at sea, Marina itself packed with cars, rails lined with people fishing, families picnicking in the pavilion, as life used to be, the Old Time. We shall return, though realistically it remains to be seen if the plague has such a resurgence as to wreak vengeance on merrymakers. We are being cautious, masking, sheltering in place until the Eschaton,

when I shall drive a 1957 DeSoto Fireflyte V8 across the heavens. No, really.

RSF&PTL

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