#AdventUs REDEEMER

Redeemer

In the Miriam Webster Dictionary the first definition of redeem is to make something that is bad or unpleasant better or acceptable. 

I hate winter but I love bulb flowers that will only grow in winter.  

So you could say that blue hyacinths are my redeemer.  They make winter better. 

We usually us a different definition of redeem for Christ.  Some might like the definition “to buy back”.  Christ "bought us back from the devil” 

I prefer “to free from captivity, to release from blame or debt”

Blue hyacinths don’t take winter away.  They make winter better.  When they begin to show through the sometimes still snow covered ground, they give me hope that winter will not last forever.  Even though it’s still cold.

Christ frees us from sin, death and the devil as the catechism teaches.  But I still feel cold from sin death and the devil.  

I have Easter and blue hyacinths to give me hope that I won’t be cold forever.

The Ascension of Our Lord

 The Ascension of Christ

Garofalo 1510-20

I used to have a really hard time getting into the Ascension.  It was just awkward like most of the art depicting this event.  It was like Nadia Bolz-Weber of Sarcastic Lutheran says "And Jesus just sort of floated away...kind of like Mary Poppins"

And if it wasn't weird, it was just sad.  You know, snuffing out the Paschal Candle.  Jesus is gone.  Buh bye! 

And then I read N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church and his chapter on the Ascension and I changed my whole thinking about it.  Basically the problem is when we think of Heaven as a physical place, rather than another dimension..or the realm of God.  

Basically heaven and earth in biblical cosmology are not two different locations within the same continuum of space or matter.  They are two different dimensions of God's good creation.  And the point about heaven is twofold.   First, heaven relates to earth tangentially so that the one who is in heaven can be present simultaneously anywhere and everywhere on earth:  the ascension therefore means that Jesus is available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on earth to find him.  Second, heaven is, as it were, the control room for earth; it is the CEO's office, the place from which instructions are given.  "All authority is given to me," said Jesus at the end of Matthew's gospel, "in heaven and on earth."  ( p. 111).

When he ascended, Jesus joined God and he is with God, and so in fact, his Ascension brings him closer to us than when when he was on earth and bound by space and time. When Jesus took his place  at the right hand side of God, he was no longer bound by space and  time and so now is accessible to all of us, not just his first century

disciples.  This is what Jesus meant when he said:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I am coming to you.” If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.  (John 14:27-28)

I tried to refer to this idea when I was challenging Marcus Borg and his  assertion that thinking about heaven is a waste of time and his reply was that he loves Wright but he makes absolutely no sense in this regard.  I suppose if you are such materialist that talking about anything outside of space and time is nonsensical this is not a helpful image.  And there can be problems with the idea of Heaven being a "control room" for earth.  If God and Jesus (and I suppose the Spirit if we are going to be orthodox Trinitarians) are really at the controls for earth I would suggest they are pushing the wrong buttons! 

I think it will take forever to sort out how God works in this world and the questions of theodicy that come with it...but for those unwilling to join Marcus Borg in throwing out Heaven with the bathwater, N.T. Wright is a good place to start.

"He is not here"

   A Christian should be where Christ is. If Christ is not here, a Christian should not be here. That is why no one can find a Christ or a Christian in any particular set of rules…. He has left behind the grave clothes, namely, worldly justice, wisdom, piety, law and the like. …These are all grave clothes. He never puts on grave clothes nor can a Christian.

~Martin Luther

Left over Ham bone? HAM STOCK!

Ham stock is wonderful.    

I won't even bother to make Gumbo without it. But even just to cook some beans and rice in ham stock really makes it so much richer.  And it's so easy.

I cooked a spiral cut ham for Easter dinner.  Spent a good amount of time trying to find the smallest one available but there's still a lot left over but the kids can take ham back to school.  So you cut as much ham off the bone as you can.  As you see, I left a lot of ham on it, it comes off a lot easier afterward.

Put the ham in a large stockpot and cover with cold water.  

Add some celery stalks - even the leftover leafy part from the celery you cut up for Easter dinner....a couple of pieces of onion, some garlic, I had a piece of red bell pepper that was getting soft.  

Whatever old veggies you have that you will probably throw out in a few days - throw them in there.  Add some peppercorns.  Bring it all to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer, put the lid on, and go take a nap for a few hours.

A few hours later, strain it, pour it in gallon zip lock bags, label and freeze it.  

You have this year's supply of ham stock.

The Harrowing of Hell

The "Harrowing of Hell" is the ancient church teaching that when Jesus died he "descended into hell" as the Apostles and Nicene Creed teaches.  Well it says he went to Hades which could just mean he died.  He was dead.  And when the creeds were developed they were fighting some notions that he didn't really died, just looked like he died.  The Creeds say, no he died and he went where people who die go.  Wherever that is.

But there is that interesting line from I Peter 3:19

He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ¹⁹

Biblical scholars really don't know what to make of that.  But the early church, particularly the Eastern church knew what to do with that.  Jesus stormed the gates of hell and freed Adam and Eve and all those imprisoned by sin, death and the devil.  

The Acts of Pilate, a third century apocryphal text describes the Harrowing of hell in this way:

The bronze gates were broken in pieces and the bars of iron were snapped; and all the dead who were bound were loosed from their chains, and we with them. And the King of Glory entered like a man, and all the dark places of Hades were illumined..

I'm very taken with this image.  This is what I said last year about that:

.....there is something very appealing about the ancient traditions of Jesus invading hell itself and releasing all the souls trapped there. If Hell is the place of total darkness and absence from God, Jesus' invasion of it shows there is no place that can hold God back. There is no darkness Christ's Light cannot illumine. In fact, if Hell is the absence of God, and Christ has invaded Hell, it no longer even exists! There is no longer exists a place where God is absent.

There is a beautiful homily on Jesus freeing Adam from hell on Holy Saturday by an anonymous Eastern priest from maybe third century that I posted here last year.

The Ascension of Our Lord

So when they had come together, they asked him, 'Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?' He replied, 'It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.' When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, 'Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.'

Acts 1:6-11

The Feast of the Ascension is something of a lost festival. Churches used to have special weeknight worship services to celebrate it. Nobody pays much attention to it anymore.

Part of the problem is the difficulty we have as post modern folk with the image of Jesus taking off as if he had jet rockets attached to his feet. Perhaps we think of it as a sad day. It seems a cruel trick that they get their beloved Lord back for a short 40 days, only to have him leave them again.


But Jesus did not leave them. We have these difficulties because we think of heaven and earth as different locations in the same space and time. N. T. Wright in his "Surprised by Hope – Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church" says we need to understand heaven and earth to be different dimensions of God's creation. 

I think the Eastern Orthodox icons of the Ascension do a much better job of portraying the "other" dimension than does Western artistic images of Jesus floating up the sky.

So that when the risen Christ "ascends" to his heavenly throne at the right hand of God, he has not left us at all. In fact he has entered a dimension where he is accessible to all of us, regardless of where on earth we are. On earth, Christ is only available to his disciples in first century Palestine. Ascended to his Father, Jesus is available to believers of all times and places

…the ascension therefore means that Jesus is available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on earth to find him. Second, heaven is as it were the control for earth; it is the CEO's office, the place from which instructions are given "All authority is given to me, 'said Jesus at the end of Matthew's gospel, "in heaven and on earth" (pg 111)

I think this is also the vision in Revelation – where the saints gather to worship God – it is not some future place – it is reality now. Wright argues and I agree that the biblical view of salvation is when God joins and heaven and earth. Christ's ascension is the beginning of that joining of heaven and earth, future and present.


Heaven is not far away in the sky – it is as close as our prayers.

Almighty God, your only Son was taken up into heaven and in power intercedes for us. May we also come into your presence and live forever in your glory, though you Son, Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

St. Matthias Prayer

Last Thursday the 14th was the commemoration of St. Matthias. But the first lesson for this Sunday, the 7th Sunday of Easter is Acts 1:15–17, 21–26, describes how Matthias being chosen to take Judas place by drawing lots. And I got this wonderful prayer from my friend Erik that I wanted to share.

Matthias, patron saint of

tailors, carpenters alcoholism, and Gary Indiana--
well, here's the day he gets chosen
to replace Judas the betrayer
and then there's no more
about Matthias, except mystery.

Meanwhile we eavesdrop on your prayer, Lord,
asking protection for your loved ones,
sending them out into the world;
they must have been confused at all this.

Not all of us are the big names
upon which you build your church;
some of us wonder if we're more Judas than not
and others feel like Matthias, fading into
the background. Even so,
Sew us together into one great piece;
One holy, whole home
for sinners and saints alike.

© 2009 Erik Doughty. Permission to reproduce this work is granted only when
the author is credited.

It's STILL Easter!

The Resurrection, Cookham - (1923-7)

Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

Indeed he is still risen. Easter lasts for 50 days and even after that, Christ is still risen. But so what? Over at Liturgy- "Lent Prepares for Easter...Yea right" there is an interesting discussion on the challenge of keeping Easter for 50 days.

It's very similar to the Christmas - once Christmas Day, comes, it's over and we are on to something else. By 7 pm you can't even find a Christmas carol on the radio. Of course people are sick of Christmas because they have skipped Advent and become celebrating Christmas in November if not sooner.

The problem with Easter however, is a little different in nature. Most churches don't skip Lent. We get into Lent. There is midweek worship, soup suppers, Lenten disciplines and the like. And then Holy Week and the Triduum, more worship, more prayers, more spiritual reflection. And then Bam Boom - One day of lilies, pretty dresses, rousing hymns, a ham dinner and it's back to life as usual.

I spend a lot of energy reminding folks that we can't ignore the cross. Ours is a Theology of the Cross, not one of Glory. But we worship a crucified AND risen Lord. Both those aspects of Christ are crucial. We cannot ignore the cross. Christ suffered and died a human death. We cannot gloss over or ignore the fact that his life and teachings put him in opposition to the ways of the world and led him straight to the cross.

But the story doesn't end there. If the story of our faith ended on the cross, we would have no faith. It would just be another tragic story of a good man who tried to fight evil in this world and was killed for his efforts. We would have no reason to hope in this world. We would have no reason to take on evil in this wolrd because our story would be a story of good defeated by evil.

Or at best we would have a faith that had nothing to do with this world ---we would give up on this world as lost to evil and would have nothing to hope for but to die ourselves and go to heaven.

In fact this is the spirituality of many Christians - they see nothing redeemable in this world and are just waiting to get to heaven, when the all the good stuff happens.

See, much as we may try, it is impossible to avoid the cross in this world. We understand suffering and death. We may not like it, but we get it. So it's easy to get into Lent and Holy Week. We understand Good Friday.

Resurrection, that's another story. Part of the problem is what N.T. Wright writes about in his book, "Surprised by Hope - Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church". I haven't finished this book but already it has had an impact on my preaching. The problem is that we Christians have lost the biblical witness of the bodily resurrection. We think the next life has nothing to do with this life. We don't need to worry much about this nasty old fleshy world because our souls are going to fly away to spiritual realm that has nothing to do with this life.

If that's true, what is the point of the incarnation? Why would God take on human flesh and enter this world and human history? No, I think God has invested way too much in his creation he called "Good" for us to give up on it.

I agree with Wright, that Jesus' resurrection is a bodily one. He was born into a body - he died in a body and he rose in body. He was born into human history and he rose in human history. That's always been crucial to me - it wasn't just a "spiritual" resurrection. The essence of the Incarnation is God entering human history, bringing the Kingdom into this world.

I am with Updike and his poem "Seven Stanzas of Easter":

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable,
a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

Easter is the colliding to heaven and earth. When God raised Jesus he brought the future Kingdom into
this world. Easter means New Life starts today, in this world – not in the next.

It’s almost beyond our imagination – like the disciples in Luke 24 we are almost “disbelieving for joy” – it seems too good to be true. We need these 50 days of Easter to take it all in.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Oh fill us Lord with dauntless love;
Set heart and will on things above
That we conquer through your triumph;
Grant grace sufficient for life’s day
That by our lives we truly say
Christ has triumphed! He is living!
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Bono *gets* it.

You should really read his op ed piece. I really am impressed at how he fits the real world into the ebb and flow of the liturgical year.

Christos Anesti

Today is Easter for our Greek Orthodox brothers and Sisters.

Christos Anesti! (He is Risen)
Alithos Anesti ! (Truly he is risen!)
Alithinos o Kyrios (True is the Lord)

LEGO Jesus

I just think this is cool!

Swedish church unveils Lego Jesus statue for Easter

Easter Dinner

I like to cook.

My kids are in college now but they came home for Easter.

So I bought an 8 1/2 lb spiral cut ham. Way too much for the three of us but there's nothing like a spiral cut ham and that was as small a ham as I could find.

I was sort of listening to Emeril Lagasse on Good Morning America and this is what I remember of his glaze, besides what I have in the house...

Some lemon juice - maybe a half a cup....about 1/3 cup brown sugar...some honey ...a couple of squirts of honey mustard (he said dry mustard but I didn't have any) ...some ginger..mix it up

Brush the ham with it and then keep basting every 1/2 hour.

Cheesy potatoes. You know that disgusting mixture of hash browns, cheese, cream of broccli (I think you are supposed to use cream of mushroom but my kids won't eat mushrooms and this is the way I can sort of get some vegetables in my son) ...sour cream, butter, and cheese. What I discovered today is that you CAN use frozen hash browns. They were all out of the refigreated bags so I bought frozen and just thawed it out. There's a recipe on the bag. My son loves these.

I roast two sweet potatoes, peel them, mash them, mix with a little cream a LOT of butter, vanilla extract, brown sugar and whip them up then reheat them. This is like a dessert, which is a good thing because I didn't have time to make cupcakes like I usually do for Easter.

I had some left over cole slaw. I cheated and bought the already bagged slaw cut with cabbage, carrots and broccoli - added a little balsamic vinegar, mayo...garlic salt, cayenne pepper ( l like to make it interesting)

Asparagus spears. Now I'm not real fond of asparagus - I used to cut it in the fields as a kid and I watched the geese run through the fields and poop on the asparagus but my daughter loves it. I need to learn to like it since it grows wild in my back yard. I nuke it in just a little water for about 8 minutes, add butter, lemon juice, garlic salt and lemon pepper.

I know -- it's an obscene amount of food for three people.

Today I will simmer the ham carcass and make a ham stock. I use that for making gumbo. Ham stock is what adds richness to gumbo. I make good gumbo.

A Favorite Easter Hymn We Didn't Sing

Welcome Happy Morning

We don't have a Lutheran Worship book ...it's a long story and has a lot to do with Hauge....and this is not a song most Lutherans are familiar with but it is one of my favorite Easter hymns...


Welcome Happy Morning age to age shall say
Hell to day is vanquished heaven is won today
Christ once dead, is living, God forever more
Him, their true creator, all his works adore

Maker and redeemer life and heath of all
God from heav'n beholding human nature's fall
You the true and only Son of God above
Died as mortal man to save us by your love

Source of all things living, you came down to die
Plumbed the depths of hell to raise us up on high
Come then true and faithful; come fulfill thy word;
This is your third morning; Rise O buried Lord!

Free the souls long prisoned bound with Satan's chain
All that once had fallen raise to life again;
Show your face in brightness shine in every land
As in Eden's garden when the world began

Welcome happy morning, age to age shall say!

Venantius Fortunatus, c. 590, tr. by John Ellerton, 1868
Tune Fortunatus, Arthur Sullivan, 1842-1900

Christ is Risen!

Jesus Martinez Gordo

Let the Faithful respond - He is risen indeed!

And now on a lighter note--What are you wearing for Easter????

I'm wearing this suit I ordered from Chadwicks - that color with a yellow clergy shirt. That's right - NO BLACK! It' Easter for heavens sake!

AND I'm wearing strappy OPEN TOED matching high heels - these in the green.