A
Reflection for 3rd
Sunday of Easter All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. April
15, 2018 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Doghouse
Blues
From
John’s 1st
letter (3:7) “Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who
does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.” How
many of you always do what is right?
Sometime
ago a friend greeted me and said “It’s nine o’clock in the
morning and I am already in the dog house!” He then listed a series
of offenses and slights that he had committed that had lowered the
temperature significantly in the home he shares with his wife. I, of
course, told him that I knew nothing about doing that in my own life.
We had a good laugh over that because we both knew how flawed we both
were and that our wives kept finding reasons to wonder what ever did
they see in us to take the plunge and accept the proposals they
received from us. We also knew what it was like to be on the giving
end of the blame stick as we would sing in our minds the old
spiritual “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen./ Nobody knows but
Jesus.” Yet here is the difference - we both knew that, while we
(and they) could at times be annoying, we were loved and that love
between us would survive. We would remember our vows and we would
forgive and ask forgiveness in order to move our relations back to
what the Bible calls “righteous”.
“Righteous”
in the New Testament is not about doing things perfectly but about
being in a faithful relationship, or what is called a Covenant, with
another where both sides make a commitment to love and honor one
another. The commitment is held together as long as the partners in
the covenant keep it alive and renew their commitment by word and
deed. That is what we do in church
Earlier
this month, on the 50th
anniversary of his assassination, there were a series of reflections
about the meaning of the life, death, and ministry of the Reverend
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and one speaker shared that in the
African tradition a man is not fully dead until he is forgotten. If
we forget Dr. King, we run the risk of forgetting the covenant for
equality in this nation and the dreams for our nation’s wholeness.
The
early church had to deal with the death of Jesus and so it told the
stories of the man Jesus and the Spirit of the Christ as a way of
keeping him alive in their hearts. We continue to do that every week
and we remember and live into the covenant of God’s love,
forgiveness and hope.
The
Book of the Acts of the Apostle, from which we will be reading for
the next several weeks of Easter Season, has a certain structure
which will be repeated over and over again. There is first a
challenge, a situation which needs to be addressed. Then there is a
response by one or more of the apostles who call upon the Holy Spirit
for guidance and help. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Apostles
respond to the challenge or situation. Then there is a sermon in
which the Kerygma, the core of the Christian understanding, is
retold. The understanding is the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth; his
birth, death and resurrection has changed the world and the Spirit of
the Resurrected Christ is alive and available to all who call upon
his name. After the sermon there is a reaction by people or the
authorities which will then set up another challenge or situation.
In
this week’s lesson Peter and John, as they were going up to the
Temple to pray, meet a lame beggar asking for alms. The situation is
then set up as to how they were to respond to the brokenness of this
world. Peter says, “Silver and gold have I none, but what I have I
give to you”; he gives the lame beggar the Spirit’s gifts of
wholeness and the beggar begins running and jumping and praising God.
The beggar had been at the Beautiful Gate for years and was a
well-known fixture, so when people see this sight, they started
asking what was going on. Peter begins the Kerygma and says that the
crowd also needs wholeness as well. They had been part of the crowd
who had called for the death of Jesus; they had allowed their leaders
to do the murder. Peter tells them that he wants them to be in a
righteous relationship with God and assures them of God’s
forgiveness. For Peter, it is more important to be in a righteous
relationship than it is to be right.
In
the Gospel lesson from Luke, the body of the dead Jesus is not there,
but the women who have come to anoint the dead body meet two men in
dazzling clothes who tell them that the Lord is Risen. The women tell
the disciples who think the women are just being hysterical with
wishful thinking and dismiss their witness. It is only later when the
two men who have met the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus run back to
tell them that they had seen Jesus and recognized him in the breaking
of the bread. Even though the witnesses were men, the disciples are
still disbelieving and wondering what is going on. In the middle of
the disbelief, Jesus comes to be with them, bringing his Peace with
him. He does not waste time blaming them for not believing, but he
sits down to have a meal with them. This is the expectation of what
goes on in a Christian community. The community knows that that
center of their faith does not make sense; it cannot be understood by
rational argument but only by righteous relationship of immersion in
a community that shares God’s Peace, eating together at meals as if
Christ was there whenever two or three are gathered together in the
breaking of the bread and committing to grow deeper in the faith, to
give what they have to the broken world in which the Risen Lord’s
Spirit still lives.
Doghouse
Blues
Morning
at nine, and he’s already in doghouse!
Living
together with one another really is rough,
but
doing this whole mindreading thing is tough
on
mere mortals like a friend, parent or spouse.
Forgiveness
isn’t only reserved for the big stuff,
but
for petty misdemeanors of an everyday life
scraping
away like a sandpaper gloved midwife
trying
to do a life giving act with a snarling gruff.
They
bump into each other, on her toes he’ll trod.
Without
thinking, she reacts with one more carp
added
to long litany of the past offenses in sharp
relief
demonstrating how much he is so flawed.
‘Fore
the sun goes down, they’ll recall that above,
beneath,
between and through lives forgiving love.
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