I have a wise old friend who told me her story, so similar to another I know as well, too similar for both not to be listened to, believed, and heeded. It is a story how the darkness overcame her and landed her in the darkness from which there was no escape, no matter what she tried. It nearly ended her.
little light in the darkness
The small light in the darkness saves many. The darkness is made by lies that engulf, sink, and consume the will for joy. Who indeed cares for the truth? Is it little, too little perhaps, to ask that the truth be spoken, heard and listened to? A young girl saw her mother cry silently without words not knowing what was happening. … the guest did as he wished with no fear for if anyone objected then or later complained death would come quickly. And so many times, a different guest, a repeat guest, a different guest. The young girl was ordered to ready the house for the guests so that they would be pleased, moving so quickly to run from the terror. She left behind any thought that she was a person, other than one that made everything ready for the guests. Until this daughter was taken in turn, too young, and taught the small pleasures that are possible, of sorts. In that moment the lies began, and they overtook reality, the horrible reality, that nothing could make right. The darkness is made by lies that engulf, sink, and consume the will for joy. But the darkness, somehow for this little girl, is still lighter than the void that took her soul. Who cares for the truth? It is no joy to know, but the truth does make a few things understandable, even the lies.
Why
So why ask or hope for truth? Through all of time girls and boys have hoped that there would be a place for them in the world, not just a pit of worthlessness, but a path through the sun, through the rain, through the cold, through the heat, through the storms, and in the calm evening breeze on the lake. Why ask if truth is a factor? Cannot one just live with the lies? Cannot one live with the fiction that demeans some in order to eliminate them, and leave more space on the path for others? We have been doing it forever as humans, why not just let it continue? God. God loves. God loves all. So all will be well. All will be well. All manner of things will be well. And we will be the ones to make it well, for all. That is why the truth is important! The truth, bright, blazing truth of Christ, takes all that is not well, makes it brilliantly clear what it is, horrendous and terrorizing, and makes it also well.
The Beaver
Beauty Waiting
The other night, as the evening darkness began to colour the world in blues and oranges, a small beaver swam by going south out from its home in the creek,
Going to safety.
and alerted to my presence on shore slapped an alarm and dove to safety leaving the rings of golden shimmer against the night between the trees.
Still going.
And came back to the surface further on its journey, out in the deep.
Calm
The beauty of the night deepened and shone as a few stumps left by the earlier beaver stood watch as the horizon climbed over the shore into the little light that remained.
Home for the night..
While just a tinge of light still touched the shore, the beaver came back, heading home for the night, leaving a wake behind that danced in the blues and in the orange-silver-golds of the set sun. Ahh, the night was set right and I headed back home as well …
Onward
but no, the beaver was still out for more yet this evening, going back away from, not towards home.
I did then head home, to sleep well, no guests.
Under the care of the Spirit that makes all things well.
Light Truth Joy
It is at sunset as the light begins to close the day, that we see how the light, the goodness of the light persists always to bring us to face, see, hear, and heed the truth, for then the watchful Spirit inspires us to be able to know profound joy.
The sun that daily sets … and rises new again each morning.
The sun that daily sets … and rises new again each morning. This friend came to see her darkness, to embrace it, and to set it aside with truth telling and truth listening and truth sharing. Which inspired a number of people to embrace their past, of darkness and ill, and to allow God to redeem it with love for themselves.
A Path
There is a path for everyone, or rather a path for each of us, not that it exists until we walk forward, but it unfolds under our movements forward in life toward the end, which is not death, but the ability to love, truly love, with all the sacrifice that entails.
June 2, 2019 Be One: Love your enemies Easter 7 The story setup
Nice Ice Left Over Hostiles In the movie, the Hostiles, set in 1892 starting from New Mexico a small band of soldiers and their charges, their enemies, ride across the wilds of the west north to Montana. In 1876, just 14 years earlier General Custer made his last stand in the Battle of the Greasy Grass. Before and after that battle both the army and the Indians, (or indigenous warriors we might better refer to them now) engaged in warfare as despicable as ever. Soldiers, non-combatants, women and children were captured, raped, tortured, and killed without reason. The captain in charge of this little band moving north had lost his wife and children to the Indians, learned their languages, joined the fighting against the Indians, killed, slaughtered and revenged death upon death. He lived out his hate under the auspices of the army and he did it better than most. Arriving at a fort in New Mexico with captured Indians, he receives new orders. Orders he cannot stomach. The captain is ordered to escort and protect his enemy, a chief, along with his family, who’ve been held captive 7 years in New Mexico, back to the chief’s home ground in Montana. There the captain is ordered to release his enemy, to give the chief back his freedom. This chief is responsible for the death of the captain’s family. He has engaged in slaughtering settlers, among them women and children, as well as scalping and torturing his victims. He has revenged the killing of his people as effectively as the captain. The captain can hardly believe his orders. He rebels and refuses, threatening to resign his commission. Then it’s pointed out that he will not be allowed to resign. Instead he will be courtmarshalled and stripped of his pension. At that, against every angry bone in his body, the captain begrudgingly accepts his orders. He obeys. As they ride across the wilds of the west north to Montana the captain puts his male prisoners, the chief and his son, in chains. The chief is old and riddled with cancer. He will soon die, which is the reason his request to be allowed to return home is granted.
The view south as we move north Similar stories nonfiction setup There are so many stories like this one. The movie is fiction. But is a fictional story filled with truth. There are so many non-fiction stories like this one. M&B Mizen In May 2008 16 year old Jimmy Mizen from South London was brutally attacked and killed by another boy. His parents could hardly believe it. http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf Gee Walker In 2005 by two racist thugs torturously murder Anthony Walker, 18, with an axe. His parents could not believe it. http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf
It may seem ordinary but … Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas In 1944 one evening in German occupied France, Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas preached a fiery sermon against the persecution of Jews and deportation of French men as forced labourers. The following night he was arrested by the Gestapo. He was sent to a detention camp at Compiègne from where most prisoners were transported to concentration camps in Germany. http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf The normal course: There is no life lived without being hurt by others. Our normal and natural response, built into us by millennia of survival instinct, is to allow hurt to grow into anger, and terrible hurt to grow past anger into rage. Over time, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, we instinctually allow anger and rage to grow into determined revenge. Revenge may become polite comeback. But, fuelled by hatred, our anger becomes vicious payback, just reckoning, and even, in the extreme, murder or even mass murder. We find polite comebacks and even vicious payback short of killing to be somehow expected and acceptable.
Stand Tall in the Dark God’s Doch To that acceptance God says a strong DOCH! But let me put that in a context that will perhaps help us understand exactly what God does with our natural urge towards revenge, polite or vicious, or even outrageous. Intro to Doch As we celebrate the last Sunday in Easter we remember that on Easter, God changed everything. On Easter God undid the laws of causality and set all of us free: God took death and turned it to life; God took despair and turned it into hope; God took the emptiness of consuming and turned us to value each tiny piece of creation. God took everything that breaks us, dosed it in Light and made it into a salve of holy healing which makes us stronger, more compassionate, and more loving than we were before. In the words of Rev. Dr. Anna Madsen, who presented Grace to us at the Study Conference in Canmore a few years ago, God took the world God created good, which we broke bit by bit and said “Doch!” Now if you – like me – don’t know German we need a translation or really an explanation of Doch. Doch, D O C H, has different degrees of intensity. Doch can mean simply ‘Not so’: If I say: “His shirts are wrinkled” and you respond “Doch, he ironed them.” It’s just a few degrees different. Or Doch can be a voracious protest against what is previously stated. It’s a change of many degrees. When a person suffering alone from mental illness cries out in fear of what will come, We say “Doch! We will learn to stand with them, to give people with mental illness what they need to be able to stand tall and function well and live among us!” Or taken to the extreme, Doch can mark a change in the universe. It can be God turning us or the world around 180 degrees. God created the world good, but we broke it, which could be the end of our story! But God says “Doch, Doch, Doch! My Son, Jesus redeems the world.” God constantly changes our paths, by just a degree or by 180 degrees and we end up in completely different places. God’s doch shepherds us. Most people grow up and find their way into a vocation, a career, a job or series of jobs; Doch the prophets, in other words all of us children of God, are called even before we leave the womb to the task of proclaiming God’s Good News with our choices, actions, and lives. This job is not easy or safe, DOCH, God calls us to turn as many degrees as it takes to challenge the throngs of people that have turned away and call them back to God … as many degrees as it takes. It can be dangerous work, fraught with risks. Aber (Ahh Bear) Doch, We, the people of God, will not live afraid of what can be done to us, for God is with us.
The View is wide and wild Emotions not to control, but motivate us There is too much hurt in every single life. Now we cannot stop an emotion. Try to just stuff it down and it’ll just go somewhere crazy on us. But we can choose what to do with any and every emotion that comes our way. We can let it run loose and effect our words and actions OR we can choose to align our choices and actions with our priorities and goals in life. Since our No 1 Priority is to be and do the Good News, then we soon learn, often the hard way, that letting loose with even a bit of revenge, yet alone with outrageous vengeance, and being the Gospel to other people are mutually exclusive. Most emotions own us for about 90 seconds. Our feelings should not be stopped. But we don’t have to hang on to them for even hours yet alone weeks or years. Furthermore raw action should never erupt out of our emotions. DOCH. Our actions should always be a choice of our heart and mind and body, so that we live according to the goals God calls us from the womb to strive toward. Emotions, carefully chosen, can motivate us towards God’s calling for us.
Emotions seem to loom over us, but we can choose how to respond
Themes all Easter In today’s Gospel Jesus prays, “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Last week we heard an earlier part of Jesus’ prayer put it more simply. We are to love one another as Jesus loved us, so that by our love the world will know us as Jesus’ disciples. Story of Paul and Silas In the first lesson for today, Paul and Silas heal a young girl who was possessed by a demon. The owners, who were making money with the demon’s ability to tell the future, have them arrested, flogged, and imprisoned. An earth quake hits the city as they sing and pray. The doors are broken open and the chains unfastened. Instead of escaping, Paul and Silas urge all the prisoners to stay put, thus saving the life of the jailor. That jailor is so impressed with the unusual manner that his life is saved that he believes the Gospel that Paul and Silas proclaim. He and his household are baptized.
A view through a grid; Still Christ’s Light Shines Golden
God’s Doch God’s constant DOCH is ‘at all costs, love even your enemy.’
Story resolution Hostiles In the movie the Hostiles, as they ride across the wilds of the west to Montana the captain encounters God’s Doch. As they stop where the chief has returned home and will breathe his last breath in the wild mountains of Montana, the captain says that, though they have each fought against the other, and each has lost so many friends to the other, when the chief dies a piece of the captain will die with him. In obeying the orders he cannot stomach, the captain eventually gives his enemy his last breath in freedom at home, no longer as an enemy, but as a friend. The captain recognizes the gift of life, even in his enemy, as they ride across the wilds of the west to Montana.
In the wild … there is the Light
What about us? As we encounter the terrible ravages of evil that leaves us so wanting for life, can we recognize the gifts of God even in our enemies? Can we give them life at their last breaths, as friends, because God has made us, all of us, while yet sinners, children of God?
Similar stories nonfiction resolutions In the real life of so many people, this is exactly what they chose. Gee Walker After Anthony Walker’s murderers were sentenced Gee Walker, his mother, said: “I cannot hate. I have to forgive them. … Their minds must be very tortured. … Hate is what killed Anthony.” http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf
No Matter, Let the Light Shine
M&B Mizen After her 16 year old son was killed, Jimmy Mizen’s mother Margaret said “I just want to say to the parents of this other boy, I want to say I feel so, so sorry for them. I don’t feel anger, I feel sorry for the parents. We have so many lovely memories of Jimmy and they will just have such sorrow about their son. I feel for them, I really do…. People keep asking me why I am not angry but I say …There is too much anger in the world…. it was anger that killed my son. If I was angry I would be the same as this boy.” On the first anniversary of his murder Jimmy’s father said, “today, for us, was a message of peace, a message of change that we have been gradually working towards over [a] year. … This affects everybody. If somebody is killed in your local park or in your local shop, then this affects you. We didn’t just get here overnight…. If the will … is for it [here and now], we can change.” http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas Bishop Théas was imprisoned for ten weeks with Protestants, Jews, non-believers, trade unionists, young resistance workers, and French officers. When some prisoners asked for a day retreat he preached about forgiveness, and suggested they should pray for their captors. This provoked outrage. Théas replied, “My friends, I cannot proclaim anything except what the Lord said: Love your enemies. No more, no less.” http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf
The extreme story, resolution Cartier and Nixon When former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey died hundreds of people from across the world attended his funeral. All were welcome, but one – former President Richard Nixon, who had recently dragged himself and his country through the humiliation and shame of Watergate. Eyes turned away and conversations ran dry around him. He was being shunned and ostracized. Then the current president Jimmy Carter walked into the room. President Carter, not of Nixon’s party and well known for his honesty and integrity, moved toward his seat, until he noticed Richard Nixon standing all alone. Carter changed course, walked over to Richard Nixon, held out his hand, and smiling genuinely and broadly embraced Nixon and said “Welcome home, Mr President! Welcome home!” Newsweek magazine reported the incident including the words, “If there was a turning point in Nixon’s long ordeal in the wilderness, it was that moment and that gesture of love and compassion.” Source: Reported in Maxie Dunnam, The Workbook on Living as a Christian, pp.112-113 https://storiesforpreaching.com/category/sermonillustrations/love-for-enemies/
Whatever comes our way, God’s Light will shine!
MLKing Martin Luther King dared to suggest that Blacks should have the same civil rights as other Americans. For all he stood for King received death threat after death threat, he was maliciously accused of being a communist, his house had been bombed, and he was jailed over 20 times. Yet in his essay, Loving Your Enemies, he wrote: “To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.’” https://storiesforpreaching.com/category/sermonillustrations/love-for-enemies/ and http://paxchristi.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Elements_Love-Your-Enemies-Stories.pdf Jesus Jesus says to us, love one another as I have loved you. Love even your enemies. Us Following Jesus as his disciples is complicated, challenging and sometimes calls us to things we can hardly stomach. But still through words from each other and in so many other ways the Holy Spirit guides us to see Christ loving even our enemies, as we journey through the wilds of our lives, even when our greatest enemy is ourselves.
Whatever, However, Whenever God embraces us, even when we are our own enemies the Light still shines beautifully for us.
Today is my x’s xth birthday, since the photos are too large to email, I’ve posted the greeting and photos here, for x and for all to enjoy.
Photos made especially to celebrate a good birthday, when I cannot be there in person to celebrate with everyone.
Life
is full of
opportunities and pathways.
Some of the best moments are available to us when we take time to notice the small, less traveled side roads.
Whether you find those moments or not the golden blessing of Christ’s light will always be there for you, long after the sun has set on any times of your life.
The water of life is yours, in great quantities.
and also sprinkled drop by drop where beauty transforms life from mundane to precious.
When one does not notice those moments there are still the telltale signs of blessings left behind.
Life will bring many great things your way, some will grow and die; always there will be something new beginning, promising great things for your future.
Enjoy all the blessings of each day, especially this day as you are celebrated.
Having chosen to use the Alternative
Gospel from John:
Jesus’ Story and Love, contrary to common practice, included Women.
And Jesus Love Heals; thus we heal one another.
Acts 16:9-15 – Lydia
Acts Thoughts
A women,
if you judge me to be faithful, come and stay with me. Response of
faith: to provide what is needed: hospitality for travellers, for
homeless. Now common? Enough, but in those days, accepting a woman as
one of the disciples was a rare act of equality.
No
matter our traditions, our culture norms, our expectations; Jesus
love reaches all people.
And we
are to love as Jesus loves us,
We are
to love those whom our tradition excludes from consideration.
Psalm 67 – Let all stand in Awe!
Revelation 21:10, 22–22:5
The city, no more night, only
goodness
For
the healing of the nations
Revelation Thoughts
In the
New Jerusalem, in the City of God, An exclusion: no unclean, only
those written in the Book of Life
there no
other light needed than the Light of God, no night, no darkness, no
abominations, nothing unclean.
[All
chaff will have already been burned away.]
The tree
produces fruits and leaves, the leaves are for the healing of the
nations.
Gospel (alt.): John 5:1-9 Heal one
another
as Jesus healed even on the Sabbath
Gospel Thoughts
Our
travails last and last: this man’s for 38! years!
And all
during that time no one has helped him.
Then in
a heartbeat Jesus heals him, even though it is the Sabbath.
Love
acts to restore health without regard for expectations and artificial
limits (which do not provide health in following them.)
Love one another as Jesus Loves us means HEAL one another, even if the stink of rot has surrounded the illness or circumstance of sin for decades, for generations even!
Today it is so dry there is a province wide fire ban in place
Though this is the first
as yesteryear’s extreme’s become
today’s normal, and
today’s new extremes become
tomorrow’s normal.
Hang on!
It’s going to be a rough ride for the next 50 years!
First Break in Nice (Thick) Ice
Back
when the ice was just breaking up, the reflection of light and cloud
make the water and shore jump.
Birch White Goldenized
The
Birch Show Their Colours Well
Mud Mirrors
Even
the huge puddles of spring mud and snow melt pick up the the light of
the sky behind the trees’ reflections.
Spring Moon Rises at Sunset
The
moon ascends into the evening sky, brilliant white against the gold
and blue of sunset.
Predawn Moon Going Down
Just
days later the moon settles in the west as the dawn touches the east.
Sunrise Moon Setting
And
settles closer to the water as the early morning breaks.
Open Cold Water
Waves
and White Water return as the wind churns up the lake touched still
with small patches of snow and ice.
Surviving Rodents
The few brush left with partial birch trunks, long since food for the beaver who keep the lake level high, stand out in the gold light at sunset.
Sol Plays with Aqua
The
water and the setting sun play with each other in familiar yet newly
wonderful manners almost each night.
Ugly becomes Gorgeous
Even
the junk, abandoned, and starting to be trashed camper cannot help
but shine with the immense wonders of the setting sun.
My favourite of late
The
reaching thirsty trees along the shore silhouette wonderfully against
the blues and oranges of the sun set reflecting remnants of light on
the water.
See
Previous Post for
Themes of Each Sunday in
Easter
The
one theme for this entire Easter:
Love one
another as I have loved you. Jesus’ single command that encompasses
everything else that is God’s story of love, encompassed in the
life of Jesus, (so that we -finite creatures- can comprehend what God
-infinite divinity- wants us to know.)
God’s Light Reflected to Us
Jesus is the Good Shepherd, We are
called to love one another as Jesus love us:
We are to be Good Shepherds to
one another
Acts 9:36-43
Thoughts
As Jesus
is able to bring the young girl and Lazarus back from the dead, so
Simon Peter is able to bring Dorcas, Tabitha, back to life after she
dies!
Our love
can be as life giving as Jesus’.
Handle with care!
Psalm 23
Thoughts
The
needs for life, abundant life, of a sheep, (green pastures, still
waters) the good Shepherd provides for us.
More: in
the dark valley of the shadow of death (the greatest evil) I need not
fear, the shepherd’s tools: rod and staff, comfort us.
Table
along with my enemies! My cup runs over!
Goodness
and mercy shall follow me all my days. I dwell eternally in God’s
house.
Revelation 7:9-17
Thoughts
There
are those who will survive the Great Ordeal, the silence of Beale
Street in every generation. They will be gathered at Christ’s
throne!
They
will be washed white in the blood of the Lamb!
Shelter,
food, water, no scorching by sun, but water of life, and tears wiped
away!
John 10:22-30
Thoughts
We, like
the Jews, want to know plainly, though Jesus has told and done
enough. Like doubting Thomas we want to put our hands in Jesus’
side and feel the nail marks in his hand, but that is not enough. The
HS must transform our hearts, teach us to know Jesus’ voice.
Voice
and sheep and shepherds and gathering in and gathering to go out to
green pastures and still waters.
They
will never perish, die but not perish! No snatching, not from God.
Jesus is God, one and three persons.
Outline Ideas
We want
to know plainly, though Jesus has said and done enough, and
there is no more that would help us.
Apologists,
trying to argue the existence of God, futile. Every argument for or
against God’s existence begins with a presumption that is equal to
the conclusion of the argument.
HS
transforming our hearts. The
gift of faith, the growth of faith, the exercise of responding to
faith.
Jesus
the Good Shepherd, 23rd
and repeated in Revelations:
provides
life abundant
protects
from destruction and all loss
We
are to exercise that same love for one another
Peter
brings Dorcas back to life,
as Jesus did with talitha cum, and Lazarus.
Our
love, as Jesus’ Love, is a life changing thing.
Warning
Label Volatile Potential Handle
with Care
Handle
with Care Negative Potential:
as
always, what can be so positively powerful, with a slight twist, a
few degrees off from original, and there can be as much destruction
as there could have been profound positive change.
Devil
is so tempting, looks like Jesus the shepherd, just not.
Sin
looks so tempting, looks like good life, it is not.
Handle
with Care Positive Potential:
give
life, but in the lack of exercise, leave
people ‘dead’.
Stories
needed of giving life (being the good shepherd
for one another), of degrees of destroying life, of
withholding means destruction.
Mother’s
Day, possibly use stories as above, of mothers in action giving life?
Winston
Churchill once said: “[People]
occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves
up and hurry off as though nothing had happened.”
The
Light of Christ is alarming, blinding, and demanding. Often we try to
control what part of the Light, what part of Jesus’ story, what
part of the awful freedom of forgiveness we acknowledge.
Other times we entirely deny the Love of Christ that shines a light into every darkness, exposing all our secrets and revealing every hidden truth. Instead we choose to slip back into the convenient darkness of our daily lives.
The Light of Christ Finds Us in Our Darkness.
Jesus does not give up on us. He keeps showing up to get our attention. Have you seen Jesus talking? Or God giving a lesson? Or have you seen the crimson blood of Christ wash the stain of sin away to leave a person fuller white bright? For 200 years no one in England reported that they had, and then came Julian of Norwich who we commemorate this week.
While
the Black Plague, the Peasants Revolt, and the suppression of the
Lollards devastated the English countryside, Julian lived a mystic’s
life, profoundly assured of God’s care and love as few people in
all of history.
In the
face of so much evidence that death, raw evil, and sin had the world
in its control, she famously quoted Jesus in her vision, “All will
be well. All will be well. All manner of things will be well.”
These simple words have given a thin thread of powerful hope to people in the most desperate situations. Among others, I know that it helped a young mother of two teenagers, living in Germany, stay alive. She was struggling to stay sane after years of abuse by her husband, when he had secretly already started another family with a much younger woman.
Julian wrote “God is nearer to us than our own soul”. God sees us as perfect and waits for the day when evil and sin will no longer hinder us.
Throughout
these 7 Easter Sundays we keep in mind Jesus’ command to “Love
one another as I have loved you.” It will be part of the Gospel in
two weeks and we know these words contain everything else in Jesus’
story.
In
today’s readings we hear how Jesus continues to surprise people
with visions of his love.
Jesus in a vision astounds Saul of Tarsus. A well educated Pharisee and righteous under the law for himself, Saul is dedicated to God. He stones and arrests followers of Jesus to cleanse the synagogues of them. Then the Light of Christ finds him. Saul has a vision of Jesus telling Saul he is persecuting Jesus himself. Blinded by the Light, Saul needs help from others to regain his sight. When he does Saul is baptized as Paul.
After
3 years of study Paul
spreads Jesus’ story of the Love of God
around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea
as far as Rome itself.
In Paul’s
writings to his congregations
to encourage their faith we have the earliest accounts of the
Christian faith,
which we receive, practice and proclaim today.
Our reading from the Book of the Revelation to John reminds us of what danger and persecution the early Christians faced. Any author, carrier, or reader of Words about faith in Jesus, if caught by the Romans, would be put to death. Difficult to produce and therefore very precious, the writings would also be destroyed.
To preserve the writings (and the people) the writing’s content was codified. The codes, colourful and out of this world, were popularly used by Christians but not understood by their Roman persecutors. Today we can estimate much but do not fully know their code. Revelation is the only one of these many writings accepted into the New Testament.
Written to inspire, comfort, and encourage faith in people who were mercilessly persecuted, Revelation has touched the hearts of desperate people through the generations and even today!
Seeing What Others May Overlook, a Mystic’s View.
Today
Jesus still appears in visions to people, though perhaps as rare as
in Julian of Norwich’s time. I personally know only one sacramental
mystic to whom Jesus appears in the ordinary things of creation: in
Light, in Truth and in Grace, in visions both troubling and
comforting.
This mystic’s experience is quite like the disciples’, who, having encountered the awesome, fearful truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection, return to something familiar. They go fishing. Then Jesus appears, hardly recognizable, and asks them to fish on the other side of the boat. The results overwhelm the fishers and their nets, and open their eyes to who has spoken to them. Ashore he feeds them from their spectacular catch and with the bread of life. They leave the nets and resume Jesus’ ministry healing people with God’s love.
In the stories of the Fishers and of Paul, in stories codified to preserve them and in Julian’s visions and counsel, and in the words of mystics of all times, the constant in all of them is the brightly shining love of God.
This
Love was exercised at great expense by Jesus for us, and by many who
have gone before us and who handed on the faith to us.
Jesus’
love story is not a benign story, it is not a safe story, it is not
an easy story to get right. It is always a story of how we are to
love one another as Jesus loves us.
At age
60 James Mitchner, a man of grand words and acquaintance of powerful
people everywhere, including many US presidents, told a story about
the most influential person he ever met.
At 7
years old Jim was orphaned and sent to live with relatives. The
couple was so poor both husband and wife worked seven days a week.
That first weekend, with apologies, his foster parents set off to
work leaving Jim alone. He was bored, bored stiff. He walked around
the house. Nothing happened. So when he heard a truck coming down the
alley just before noon, he went out on the back step. The truck
stopped at each house until it stopped at his house. The driver got
out with the truck running, emptied the garbage cans, got back into
the truck, and drove on. That was the day’s greatest action.
The next Saturday, again Jim was just as alone, just as bored. Nothing was happening in the empty house. So just before noon he sat down on the back step to wait for the garbage truck. He waited and waited. Finally after an hour of waiting Jim heard the truck. It followed the same routine, stopping at each house until it stopped at his house. The driver got out with the truck running, emptied the garbage cans, got back into the truck and drove on. Lonely Jim was left to go back inside … to boredom.
The third Saturday, same story. Except the truck didn’t come. With nothing else to do Jim sat and sat, and waited. Finally about 3 o’clock he heard the truck. The truck kept the same routine, stopping last at his house at the end of the alley. The driver got out with the truck running, grabbed and emptied the garbage cans, and got back in the truck. But then the driver turned off the truck, walked through the gate and said,
“Hi, what’s your name.”
He
answered, “I am Jim and I am lonely.”
“I
have seen you for the last few weeks. I’ve thought of you each day
and I am sorry I have not stopped.”
The
garbage man sat and listened to Jim, not only that day, but each
Saturday. James’ foster parents set out chairs for the garbage man
and for Jim.
James Mitchner, a man of many words, acquaintance of most US presidents of his adult life, and of powerful people everywhere was most influenced by the garbage man who took the time to turn off his truck each Saturday from the time Jim was seven until he was seventeen. (story told at Asset Build Workshop – Powell River)
God’s love story was lived out by a garbage man on Saturdays with a lonely child. What followed for James Mitchner was a life of military and civilian travel, adventure, and writing books that inspired a generation and more.
Christ’s
Light will find us, shock us, blind
us, turn us around, and make us into new
people. Jesus’ love will send us into lives of real work filled
with real excitement and
challenges, even
abundantly filled with real adventure, … if not in travels, then in
learning, sharing, and bringing abundant life to others. The Light of
Christ will repeatedly interrupt our work and dreams, guiding us
onward, correcting and even reversing our courses, but always moving
us towards loving one another with God’s love in all things.
The only question is what we are going to do with the brilliance of Christ’s Light, the Freedom of God’s Forgiveness, the comfort of the Spirit, the abundance Jesus helps us catch, and the abiding assurance that all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well?
What are we going to do in response to the Love that resurrected Jesus from the dead, and saves us each day?
Amen
The Son’s Light Never Sets, God’s Love Never Ends.
As We
Gather…for this Sunday
Born in
1342 Julian of Norwich was a mystic, counsellor, and lay theologian.
We commemorate her on May8th. We know little directly about her life,
but what we know leaves us to think she was married, lost her husband
and children to perhaps the plague. We do know she became sick
herself at age 30, thought she would die, received her last rites,
and had 16 visions of Jesus.
Julian did not then die, though. She lived on, secluded in a cell attached to St. Julian’s Church, as an anchoress.
What was
unusual is that she wrote down short descriptions of her visions.
Only later people learned they were written by her.
Though living apart she received people for counselling and became known affectionately by many. Through many years she rewrote her visions adding theological reflections in what survive today as her book Revelations of Divine Love. Her words of counsel have provided inspiration and hope for generations of people. She died at least 74 years old, sometime after 1416.
and just when I thought it was safe to put away the winter jackets, the wool socks, take off the ice tires, bring out the canoe, lighten the setup, burn little if any wood for heat …
That leaves room for less wet, less bugs, less allergies so it is not all bad.
After cutting wood in comfort, not too hot, not too cold, and making some good progress stacking cut pieces to split later …
And after enjoying the snow free and sunny afternoon as the snow of the morning completely disappears…
I finally pull out the canoe, reattach the supports removed last fall to be sanded and varnished with a fresh coat to stop the break down at the attachment points.
The wood has been water stained, but the new coats of varnish should help them last a few more years.
Delivery is more difficult since the trailer is no longer available, wood furnace in a shelter tying it up.
So atop the truck, slow progress toward the lake, supper late, and finally delivery to the water.
Canoeing into the sunset wonders.
Wonderful to be out on the water again, though I did need a warm jacket against the biting wind. A vest and hoodie did not cut it.
Red Sky Sailors Delight; but here it still snows the next day, nicely like small cool ash melting on impact with the brown bare earth.
Later I watched as the sun set and left a red sky for the lake to reflect back on.
This
morning we remember Jesus’ last hours, as the soldiers, by Pilate’s
orders, in response to the crowd’s demands, hung Jesus on the worst
instrument of torture, the cross.
The
characters
Remember
the many characters in Jesus’ last hours. Judas, the soldiers, the
High Priests Annas and Caiaphas, Pilate, Malchus, Peter, the crowd,
Jesus’ Mother Mary, her sister Mary of Clopas, Mary Magdalene,
Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and of course Jesus.
Our part
None
of us were present in that horrific drama more than 2000 years ago.
Yet we are characters in so many terrible dramas that have taken
place in our own life times, dramas that are devastatingly so
similar.
Girard,
Scapegoating
The
French Historian and Anthropological Philosopher Rene Girard
identified the similarity that ties Jesus’ last days with our all
too common dramas as a common human sin, scapegoating. Girard pointed
out that we all greedily strive to have more than just the
necessities of life. Thinking that life is a zero sum project (that
there is not enough for everyone) we try to take from others so that
we will have more. That’s greed. And greed eats at our souls.
What
nearly always happens next is worse. Since we cannot tolerate that we
would be mutually so terrible to those close to us, we together find
an innocent bystander, someone vulnerable and uninvolved, someone who
we do not know well and therefore can bring ourselves to not care
what happens to them. Without any justification we project all our
collective sin and guilt onto that person, condemn them, judge them,
and ruin them. Working together we ease the unbearable conflict
between us.
Like
Joseph’s brothers in the Old Testament getting rid of the evidence
of their horrendous sin against their own brother, we exile the
innocent person. We’ve attached our sins to that person and then
collectively forgotten about them and our sins, so that we can live
together in peace. The darkness hides that our peace is bought at the
price of an innocent bystander’s destruction.
We are
exactly like the characters
In
exactly this manner Judas, the high priests, the crowds, Pilate, and
the soldiers condemn and kill Jesus. And we do this so often to other
people today. We may not use crosses to crucify, because we want to
be able to say we are not as bad as those who have gone before us.
Instead we use gossip, innuendo, and rumours to ruin innocent
people’s reputations, ruin them financially, and drive them from
our communities.
Even
when we are not Judas or soldiers or the crowd, or the high priests
or Pilate, we stand too often with the crowds watching as another
person’s reputation and finances are ruined. We watch and are too
afraid to interfere. We are even entertained and reassured as if to
say to ourselves, “all is well in the world if evil is uncovered in
others and they are made to pay. We, though, are good enough for
God.”
Jesus,
Clear story of God’s intent: the last scapegoat
In
truth Jesus came to be the last scapegoat, the last sacrifice needed
to set us all free from all sins, especially these terrible sins of
greed and scapegoating, of hiding from our own sins.
God
led Abraham to the mountain to sacrifice Isaac. But then God
interrupts the sacrifice providing a goat instead for the ritual. God
says: no more child sacrifice.
Likewise,
God led Jesus to the cross, as the last scapegoat ever needed, and to
give us Jesus’ life and death story so that we might learn more of
God’s intention for us, which includes: no more scapegoats.
Jesus
forgives those who betray, arrest, judge and crucify him. God calls
us, instead of scapegoating innocent bystanders, to be that same
forgiveness for all people.
Yet,
we are still in bondage to sin and unable to free ourselves, and we
continue to sacrifice others instead of ourselves.
Today we
are in the crowd again
Today
we remember how we are just like that crowd again, as Jesus is raised
on the cross to die a torturous death.
We beg for
forgiveness … and time
We
ask for forgiveness. We hope we will learn to stop sacrificing
innocent people as scapegoats. We pray that God will intervene,
transform our sins into blessings, and make God’s will clear also
among us, in our words and through our actions.
…
Even
so, we know we will continue to sin, so remembering Jesus’ story,
we beg God for mercy, and forgiveness, …
No bugs,
lots of water spread across the low spots.
No great
big, throny bushes, no green trees, and no crowds … in fact great
solitude and quiet.
Just a
walk around
a bit
near the
sunset
before
settling in as a guest of the Queen,
honoured
chosen of my Lord,
on the
shores of a small quite lake,
since
the oil company bought it all up,
except a
few pieces
which
means the Queen still has a small plot
that she
shares, by law, with a few homeless,
and
quite a few wealthy land owners looking for
the gift
of nature: health and joy.
There’s also enough detritus left around that proves there are a number of irresponsible beer drinking, condom throwing, and garbage dumping foolish visitors.
So I took a bag with me on my walk around to collect some of the detritus. Lots more, like the condoms, still lay strewn on the ground, things that I needed more than just one bag to be able to pick up and haul out for other fools.
Why does the Queen receive such fools?
Why does the Creator tolerate such fools?
Perhaps because one fool is pretty much like another, and all are fools in one way or another.
My call is to be a fool for Christ, so there is that.
And I took a quiet walk around tonight before enjoying a quiet night, with only a couple parking for hours, depositing another condom and toilet paper to found on a quiet morning walk before the full light of dawn.
Solitude is precious as are a good night’s sleep and the clear light of truth.
