Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

Easter - Years A, B, C


Starting from the end and working backward sometimes helps. In this case we have verses 24, 23, 22, 21, 1 to trigger our latest engagement with the sliver of life we have before us.

 

be glad in this day
it’s here
what else is there
deal with it

 

like a song from West Side Story
I can feel it coming
a castaway
charts a new course

 

in this hope
for wholeness
even unasked questions
are responded to

 

forever endures
love steadfast
good
thanks

 

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/03/psalm-1181-2-14-24.html

 


 

"Open for me the gates of saving justice,
I shall go in and thank Yahweh.
This is the gate of Yahweh,
where the upright go in."
[NJB vss 19-20]

For those of us who claim Justice to be a key issue in life, we need to keep using that gift as a key to Yahweh's intention for us.

Presumably others are given the key of mercy to match that gate of Yahweh.

Let's say there are 12 gates to the city. What are they?

Justice?
Mercy?
Faith?
Hope?
Love?
Persistence?
Humility?
Mind?
Body?
Emotions?
Relationships?
Church?

How do you identify your gate and honor the upright at other gates?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/april2003.html

 


 

Steadfast love endures.

Now if we could get that into our bones we would be able to better interact with ourselves (we are loved) and G*D (G*D is loved) and our neighbors ("they" are loved) and our environment (creation is loved).

We keep forgetting and thinking/behaving as though crucifixion and suffering are just around the corner and that is the end of the story. Easter is a time to simply say, "Love endures." The implications for individuals, congregations, denominations, church universal, and whatever "world" means, are as explosive as e=mc2. This is our constant for a theory of theological relativity.

- - -

Lon (Reader)

Wesley, Faithfully you tell the story, and nowhere on our journeys is the cross found empty without God's steadfast love filling our lives with loops of hope that surround e=mc2 with the connective tissue of strings of love. Sundays lows and highs are only some of the directions we might choose. Blessing and Peace along the way...

Wesley (Blogger)

Thanks, Lon, for adding loops and strings. All these things, even the fleeting ones, express a hope and connection exploding through and beyond every time and space, every strong and weak event.

Likewise with software images. We remember every iteration as good - Day.1, Day.2..5, Day.3.3.1, Day.4.6.7, Day.5.1.2, Day.6.9.7, Day.7.0, Day8.7.7.7. All are blessed.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/april2004.html

 


 

Ah, yes, steadfast love. It sees us through all parts of life -- softening trials, enhancing joys. It sees us through the part of life we call death.

Ah, yes, steadfast love. It makes this day, of all days, a day of life of fullness.

Ah, yes, steadfast love.

Ah, yes.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html

 


 

Steadfast love endures forever.

This is a lens through which we can posit a sense of connection beyond our experience. It has been going on since before we were conscious of being. It goes on long after we cease consciousness. It is not tied to body, mind, spirit, or relationship. It simply is and we have choices about how we will respond to it.

We can presume upon it and get away with what we can and rely upon some deathbed conversion to make it all right. We can desire to expand its presence in our dealings with creation and others and leave the dying process to care for itself.

To have a warmed heart that experiences a touch of such steadfast love is to focus life anew. It is a welcoming into the strange world of resurrections. A vehicle bringing such an awareness may be very specific or cosmically and comically diffuse. Whatever that vehicle is, it might be termed "the Lord's doing."

May your reception and continuing of such an enduring quality find your own life being recognized as "the Lord's doing." In this light we find such a time as this is the resurrection that the Lord has made and we can rejoice and be glad in it.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/april2006.html

 


 

This is poetry. Poetry may be the only way to respond to resurrection.

Here is a resurrection poem from D.H. Lawrence, New Heaven and Earth [go to page 200]

Do you have a favorite resurrection poem (in addition to the poem that is your life)?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/april2006.html

 


 

Ps. 118:1-2, 14-24
Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 25:6-9
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 or Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18 or Mark 16:1-8

No earthquake in Mark. "When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back."

As you look back at your own life-journey (not always "spiritual") can you identify those times when your eye had been downcast, but, when you did, accidentally or hopefully, look up, it was obvious the dragon's maw no longer awaited you?

These are important markers, individually and communally, when we are then able to enter the tomb we so feared or were resigned to.

As in Mark, we may find even these subsequent experiences to be as frightening in their reality as they had been in their expectation. We may yet run afraid, away. But always there is a remembrance of a stone having rolled away and we can regroup to move beyond a next fear.

The ending of Mark is a marker for us in this process. Just how many endings there are to the resurrectional story, no one will ever know. They don't end with the recorded accretion of endings in Mark. We are still adding new endings to this old story. One way or another, fear never has the last word.

What we know as the original ending of Mark begs for completion in our lives. We have hurried (then and then and then) onward through this story that had no beginning and has no end. We have run right up to and past the last word of "afraid" and found ourselves hanging over an existential abyss - How'd we get here? What are we going to do now? Will this be the last word?

Mark's masterpiece has a masterpiece of an ending that tosses the salvation of G*D and Creation right back to us. Are you going to run forever, away, or stand over your nothing left and trust again, build again, live again?

- - -

so a new heaven and new earth
are about to be created

will this creation be a partnership
or a wholly-owned subsidiary

if without remembrance
will it long endure

without labor's seeming vanity
where resurrection's blessing

as came death so comes life
through you and me and us

choose this day
a last fruit - a first

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html


 

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Acts 10:34-43 or Jeremiah 31:1-6
Colossians 3:1-4 or Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18 or Matthew 28:1-10

Matthew's image of an earthquake is important to shake us loose from our expectations and fears. Is there anything more to look forward to? How is the blockage ahead ever going to be taken care of?

Even Jeremiah's wonderful image of being built anew and dancing merrily carries with it an earthquake's worth of transition that will be tempted by and returned to bygone days of the sword instead of grace.

Paul's great assumption that "if" we have been raised with Christ we will seek the things above, causes an earthquake in our lives and the life of our communities that will need continual choice between a building upon the past and attempts to have the past build upon the present. What do we do with still being on the earth, but not of it?

Or another earthquake image of Peter's that there is no more partiality. We have built our lives and decision-making on how we might get to be those for whom partiality, privilege will redound their benefits to us.

It will take a resurrectional earthquake to roll away our expectations and fears to move us into a new perspective and better communal behaviors. Even though we might idealize this as a good thing, it will always mean a change of life (read, sacrifice) to enact and the earthquake itself may scare us more than the resurrectional opportunity it reveals.

- - -

this is a day
holding the tectonic plates
of our lives in place
regardless of the stress
it places upon us
to keep things from falling apart

this is a day
we yearn for sweet release
even a release that shakes foundations
relieving unrealistic expectations
controlling our lives
spending our resources on security

this is a day
of resistance to change
of dreaming heaven on earth
unknowing clouds dim our eye
to unseen consequences
hidden beneath our next step

this is a day
to rejoice and be glad in
to dance merrily
on the graves
within and around
trusting this day

this is a day
like all days
infamous and usual
ready and unready
for an earthquake opening
tombs and joy

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html


 

The phrase "head of the corner" in verse 22 can point in the direction of a keystone at the top of an arch or a cornerstone holding two sides of a building together.

A stone rejected as a cornerstone for lack of squareness yet has the opportunity to be just the right shape for a keystone. This sways me in the direction of keystone.

Once moving in that direction it can be seen how a keystone can rescue an out-of-line cornerstone. It will take the weight, the stress, the pressure of misalignment. This is a more helpful image than that of rule-giver that comes with cornerstones. A keystone is also more humble. Cornerstones often have a date carved on it and a special memory box hidden away inside, while keystones quietly keep things from falling apart.

Easter, a last stone in place to confirm an arc of meaning?

Easter, a first stone in place to set the direction of future growth?

And the ratio of these in your life?

- - -

right hands and left brains
left hands and right brains
have different sensibilities

when it comes to glory's gate
being opened for me and thee
right or left makes no matter

if it takes both hands
and both brains
just open the door

imagine Alphonse and Gaston
as godly comic gatekeepers
holding open a door for all

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

 


 

Image "steadfast love" as an entrance gate into a larger life than the one we have so far experienced. It is a gate to honest perspective on what we have already experienced. Our past is seen for what it has been. It is a gate to honest perspective on what we yet yearn for. Our future is seen without a rosy glow and yet larger than we might otherwise have expected. Our present becomes a place of satisfaction without needing to justify or prove one point or another. In steadfast love we are no longer required to carry the present on or entirely invest in what might be. Here is a space for choosing the best of the past and the next available improvement upon it.

In steadfast love we can take another look at today, see what needs doing, and rejoice and be glad in an engagement with today.

Between temple-cleansing and cross-carrying there is an appreciation that both are extensions of rejoicing and gladness. A burden to redeem and a bearing a consequence of such behavior is lightened – rejoice and be glad, steadfast love abides.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html

 


 

18 - The Lord has punished me severely, but he did not give me over to death.

19 - Open to me the gates of righteousness,
        that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.

20 - This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.

- - - - - - -

Punishment does not lead to thanksgiving. Its unremittingness doesn't leave room for thanks. There is no growth available here.

Amazingly a gate beyond punishment, often thought worse, that of death, does offer a new kind of room. In this fashion death can become a blessed advisor. Whatever kind of death is considered, it is a gate to set things right.

Let us turn our face toward whatever Jerusalem meant for Jesus, including a city of peace beyond punishment and more particularly beyond death wherein new life is raised.

This is a strange kind of process to bet on. Will I be raised through such a gate or simply lie amouldering among the leaves so brown?

Death is a gate of the Lord. Abandon hope. Fear and trembling abide. This is a new way of living. Enjoy.

= = = = = = =

In Speaking of Faith: In Why Religion Matters and How to Talk About It, Krista Tippett remembers a conversation with Thick Nhat Hanh that surprised her when he spoke about the kingdom of God – "He could not imagine the kingdom of God to be a place without suffering, he says. For how then, would we learn to be compassionate? This is a striking Buddhist inversion of the Christian preoccupation with the problem of evil."

In this same way we cannot imagine Christianity with only the resurrection of Easter and no death of Good Friday. Nonetheless, we are able to abstract this enough that it not affect our own life.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

 


 

In the midst of any conflict our demeanor is intended to be that of confidence - we put on a happy face. We talk victory before the final horn sounds. Even as we do so there is a certain uncertainty. In the midst of the NCAA Final Four tournament, remember back to the number of upsets. The oh-so-certain turned out to not be so.

Anyone here been surprised by a diagnosis of cancer in the midst of feeling good? Institutions from family to church to empire wax and wane. Relationship ebb and flow.

Verse 22 gives us an image of an appreciated reversal of an experienced loss. No matter how firm our conviction that we are going to come through some difficulty, when the certain does not come to pass, it is a relief to get to a vantage point where we can see that a stone rejected by the builders actually comes round to be either a new cornerstone or valued capstone. As we look toward the whole of scripture we see how torah and hesed confirm and comfort, in their turn, anticipated victory, loss, and reversal.

Now for the hard part; does this tentativeness about victory apply to Easter? We so would like to have things settled, once and for all. This, however, too easily forgets that there will be another testing - a false pride in a certainty regarding Easter. So let's be thankful, for the moment. This is a good day to rejoice and such will hold us in the best stead possible to face the evening of a day that will open us to another darkly entombed night.

Rejoice that a rejected rock has been glimpsed again. But make no mistake, it will have to be reclaimed tomorrow.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/03/psalm-1181-2-14-24.html

 


 

Palms:
Hey, Hey, Hey!
Steadfast Love, Forever!
G*D Answers!
Salvation - Present!
This Is the Day for Rejoicing!
We Bless the Blessed for a House of Blessing!

Passion:
i am in distress
wasted by grief
a life of sorrow
years of sighing
misery sapped
bones rubbery
i am scorned
a horror
a dread
fled from
death's equivalent
broken
schemed against
plotted against!
can i trust
any hand
any love?

and so?
are you expecting to find what you bring to the table?
might a day of rejoicing in the midst of danger, yet be appreciated?
which is foreground, which background?

Is any predisposition driven by physiology or philosophy?
Here is a suggestion it is a result of brain structure based on this source data.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/04/psalm-1181-2-19-29-or-psalm-319-16.html

 


 

I suffered greatly, yet I live.
I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of life.

And here we find ourselves—between.

And here we find ourselves—making meaning.

And here we find ourselves. And find. And find.

This is a day of life. We rejoice and are glad. Really? Rejoicing and glad? OK, then. Let’s see your version of rejoicing, your variant on gladness. Don’t be afraid, don’t hold back, don’t fizzle out with mere muttering. 

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/04/psalm-1181-2-14-24.html

 


 

Continuing with first lines from the psalmist . . . .

On “Maundy” Thursday we hear the psalmist lead off with: 
“I love you, YHWH, for you have heard my voice and my supplications.”

On “Good” Friday the lead is:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning.”

Now, on “Easter” Sunday in the beginning is:
“I thank you, YHWH, for your goodness! Your love is everlasting.”

To see love when we are heard and love when we are not heard is a great gift that transforms our relationship with G*D, others, creation, this day, and every day.

May your goodness be enhanced by the background love of the universe.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/04/psalm-1181-2-14-24.html

 


 

Originally the "gates of righteousness" alluded to the gates of the Temple which were entered after a victory. This is a very physical, architectural image.

Traditions added to Easter shift these gates to a tomb entered before a victory is achieved. There is also a shift from a communal procession to an individual dividing line.

At play here is a door stranger than those in Monsters, Inc. These shifts call for a door that can magically sift a person’s life and determine their righteousness. The righteous find a triumph beyond these gates while the unrighteous find punishment. The state of your being is only decided here (hooray for death-bed conversions?).

See how this one-ups a common response by turning it on its head as much as does a rejected stone becoming a key stone?

What was once a day that put a stamp of approval, “resurrection”, victory, or mission accomplished is now only a prelude to a resurrection to be claimed. These gates are no longer those to which provisions/sacrifice is brought but a provisional gate.

Yes, it can be argued that Jesus has accomplished a victory over a boasting grave and that his followers approach their death and tomb in the light of his resurrection, sure and certain of their own. This atonement approach misses the existential realities that are taught and catch us between Sunday School bunnies, doctrines of original sin, and limits of interplay between hope and doubt.

Oh, never mind, “Happy Easter”.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/psalm-1181-2-14-24-easter.html