High Noon May 6, 2012 Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B Acts 8.26-40

            Noel Coward wrote that “mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.” Well, mad dogs, Englishmen, and evangelists.

Arise and go toward the south. The same Greek expression can mean “at noon.” Whether or not Philip dared the twelve o’clock glare of the Gaza road, going there at all was a crazy thing to do. His forced-march mission to the Samaritans had finally received imprimatur from corporate and with Simon the Magician under a severe no-compete injunction Philip owned the franchise outright. Now he bails out to seek his kicks on Route Sixty-Six.

            Arise and go. God likes that line. It is the exact same phrase the Almighty used to shift Jonah, an establishment prophet with at least one royal sermon to his credit, into the role of official evangelist to the Taliban. (Jon 1.1, 3.1) The Lord trots it out again to goad Ananias into sharing the Four Spiritual Laws with the Osama bin Laden of the infant church. (Acts 9.11) Whatever the location of the big and little hands, it’s always high noon when God calls gospel gunslingers to step into the street and face former foes armed only with divine love.

            And he arose and went. Philip’s actions exactly mirror the angel’s orders. Like some lunatic bursting the police cordon of an official motorcade he dogtrots to the chariot and asks an insulting question: Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? And instead of being Tasered he finds himself ensconced in the limo giving Bible lessons to a big shot.

            And he arose and went. Jonah at first hung fire because the idea struck him as fishy, but God eventually fished him out of his disobedience and Jonah arose and went. (Jon 3.3) Ananias brought the Spirit up to date on current events but ultimately got with the program. God’s called missionaries ventured out in the carcinogenic heat-shimmer of a hostile world and preached saving grace with power.

            At what point does God say to you today, Arise and go? What mad dog mission marks you as a foreigner among the savvy native survivors of this present age? You can leave no greater legacy in life than an epitaph which reads, And he arose and went.

Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darling,

Doug

Of Busses and Busyness April 29, 2012 Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year B 1 John 3.16-24

We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

Elizabeth Templeton asked England’s House of Bishops how they would respond to a stranger who announced that his bus left in two minutes and he wanted them to explain the resurrection. Templeton herself replied that she would advise the inquirer to be prepared to miss his bus. Archbishop Rowan Williams countered, “I think I’d have asked the man where he was going, then said that I’d accompany him on the journey.”

We sometimes think of laying down our lives in a one-shot blaze of glory. Certainly the cross teaches us to honor Christian martyrs, but that kind of finality eludes most American Christians. Fred Craddock chuckles at his own childhood visions of glorious martyrdom which would result in a monument: “Johnny, you stand over there where Fred gave his life. Let’s get your picture.”

Mostly, though, we lay down our lives by laying out our lives a few minutes or hours at a time on unplanned bus rides that take us out of our carefully constructed route. Jesus died on Friday, it’s true; he also spent his whole afternoon on Sunday telling Bible stories to numbskull disciples on the Number 3 bus to Emmaus. He even accepted their invitation to dinner, foregoing a new episode of “CSI Jerusalem” that he’d forgotten to TiVo.

Frederick Buechner tells how, in the course of a required charity gig as part of his seminary curriculum, he met a man whom he was able to help with alcohol and employment issues. He ran into the guy a few months later. “What was left was just his need for somebody to be alone in the world with,” the novelist recalls. “When you find something in a human face that calls out to you, not just for help but in some sense for yourself, how far do you go in answering that call, how far can you go, seeing that you have your own life to get on with as much as he has his? As for me, I went as far as that windy street corner up around 120^th Street and Broadway.”

“You have your own life to get on with.” He laid down His life for us. One of these statements reflects the nature of the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. No one builds monuments to bus stop martyrs, but the angels rejoice at each tiny Calvary along the road to Emmaus.

Going My Way?

Doug

Cheap Trick April 22, 2012 Third Sunday of Easter, Year B Luke 24:36-48

            The New York Times reports that Spanish prostitution rings have begun operating out of border towns along the Pyrenees. They cater to tourists who cross over from France on the weekends. To staff their stables, these sex-traffickers recruit young women from eastern Europe by promising legitimate jobs then making them sex-slaves to pay for transportation and upkeep. Police recently rescued a Romanian teenager on whose wrist her owners had tattooed a barcode that tallied her remaining debt: $2,500.

            And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.

            The church rightly rejoices in the proof of Christ’s post-resurrection palpability, what theologian N. T. Wright dubs the “trans-physicality” of the risen body. When he flashes his scars and scarfs a fish stick we rejoice in proof that the Kingdom of Heaven holds hope for embodied life.

            What we sometimes miss is the fact that scars hurt and eating implies hunger.

            In John’s vision of the New Jerusalem the Tree of Life bears fruit to eat and leaves that heal. (Rev 22.2)  Whatever we make of seven-headed, ten-horned dragons and apocalyptic horsemen, the line from the resurrection to the Revelation seems to run along the path of human need. Perhaps the glory of Heaven is not that we will never be hungry, but that hunger will never lack food. Perhaps the joy of eternity is not that no one will be hurt, but that everyone will have power to heal.

            When human beings merchandise one another with price tags pricked into women’s wrists, we need to see the nail prints in the hands of Our Lord. When an empty belly drives the homeless to endure an empty life, we must hear Christ ask us, “Have you anything here to eat?”

Jesus Loves Everybody; Jesus Loves Every Body,

Doug

            

The Flight to Freedom April 15, 2012 Second Sunday of Easter, Year B 1 John 1:1-2:2

Shin Dong-hyuk was born into the slavery of a North Korean prison camp. The paranoid regime of dictator Kim Jong Il imprisoned Shin’s father for having two brothers who defected to the South, and imprisoned Shin for being his father’s son. He knew no other life and no other world.

While working in the camp’s garment sweat-shop, Shin met Park Yong Chul. Park was also a prisoner, but not a born slave. He had once been abroad. He knew another life and another world, and he told Shin what he knew. The two men made up their minds to escape.

On New Year’s day 2005 they bolted from their work detail and scrambled toward the electric fence. Park arrived first and in attempting to slip through the lowest two strands made contact with the bare metal. The current, designed to kill rather than repel, fried him. The weight of his corpse yanked the wire low enough to allow Shin to scramble through. He crawled to freedom over the sacrificed flesh of his friend.

John insists on the physicality of salvation. This is the Jesus whom our hands have handled. That heavy-handed verb means to grip, grasp, paw and prod. In Genesis 27.22 it describes how blind Isaac palpates the backs of Jacob’s hands like a text in Braille. In Luke 24.39 Jesus double-dog-dares the doubting disciples to grope his resistant flesh and confirm that he is no ghost. Doubtless John refers primarily to experimental proof of the Lord’s resurrection, but the text also hints at the physicality of Christ’s crucifixion: The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

Park Yong Chul and Jesus Christ: the analogy is as inexact as it is inescapable. The dead body of a friend bridges the barrier between our birth into sin’s slavery and a world that we could not even imagine until another came to tell us. We crawl to life on the cross that covers the burning current of our condemnation.

Cross Over!

Doug

(To learn more about Shin Dong-hyuk’s pilgrimage to freedom, see http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702304724404577295463062461978-lMyQjAxMTAyMDIwNTEyNDUyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email_bot.)