Being it's Monday

 

Seldom but Sometimes I miss this, getting up custom early and writing a +Time blog post. Not missing it at all this morning, but I sense that it's missing me, like a typewriter sitting in the back of the closet alone, lonely, and wondering why no one loves it anymore, so ...

Despairing of US and at mental and moral odds with everything and everyone going on around, so looking East, what's happening in Palestine and Israel, email daily loads my inbox. Picked up from Haaretz and now subscribed separately, my favorite may be Umm Forat, the now and then post of a Jewish lawyer married to a Palestinian academic living with their small daughter (Forat) and smaller son Adam in Ramallah. He's on sabbatical this year, so they're in Raleigh, NC.

https://ummforat.com/en/when-it-comes-to-vaccinations-gaza-is-better-than-the-west-bank/

Today is 12 April: this day in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in a space capsule, the first person to do so, and became quite the hero for it. From the scoffing atheist anti-religion of the USSR, Khrushchev observed "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there". I guess not, but where IS God? If God is the One whom Thomas doubted, God is not somewhere beyond the firmament but is present wherever two or three gather in His Name, our intriguing theological formula. One day in a seminary classroom discussion of Christ's presence, the professor, Theology-101 as I recall, asserted that Christ comes present where two or three gather in His Name, and so is precisely NOT present where one is alone. An interesting proposition that one could relate to our Anglican tradition that a priest may not celebrate Holy Communion, say Mass, alone; but with unsettling implications for one's prayers and the custom of personally, privately reading the Daily Office.

Oh, my. See what I mean about the dancing fingers?     

Being it's Monday my inclination is to look at the Gospel appointed for next Sunday, Easter 3, Year B:

Luke 24:36b-48 (NRSV)

Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. 

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

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Yes, we are in Year B, when most of our Gospel readings are from Mark, but this is Easter and, as Mark reports no post-Resurrection appearances, our Gospel readings this Easter are from Luke this one Sunday and all the rest from John. 

It's more subtle than yesterday (Easter 2 Doubting Thomas Sunday), but as the above passage shows, it wasn't just Thomas, ALL the disciples are doubting, NOBODY Believes without Seeing. And realizing that they are not convinced by seeing the wounds in Jesus' hands and side, Luke has Jesus ask for something to eat - - a piece of broiled fish, "and he took it and ate it in their presence". Proof enough!

Luke goes on to confirm a key agenda item that Jesus, his story beginning and ending in Jerusalem, is the prophet foretold by Moses and the entire Old Covenant. Luke, further, through Jesus, immediately takes up the defense (which we might call apologia, apologetics?), that, although we hadn't realized it, having the Messiah suffer and die and rise again was part of God's plan all along. Without this compelling assertion, Jesus' death on the Cross would have ended any Jewish expectations of Jesus as the conquering Messiah, the Son of David. 

This new understanding of the Messiah shows Jesus was not the Type A warrior king everyone expected, who would have lived and died like every messianic king before him; but a new kind of Christ, come from God to show us how God would have us live: kind, loving, patient, caring, generous, lovable, humble; the incarnation of agapē itself. As a hymn says, "Love divine, all loves excelling".

Jesus did not come to die for your sins and save you from Hell, an appallingly ungodly, grasping, self-centered, egoistic, anthropocentric theology: Jesus came to call you back to the godly image in which you were created: 

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

The entirety of Easter is in living into our Baptismal Covenant.

ABC&PTL

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