Jeremiah 31:1-6
Easter - Year A
Jeremiah 31:1-6 or Acts 10:34-43
The issue of loving one another is not just a matter of defining our in-group that we will love. The circle will not only be unbroken, but expanded.
From long ago we have heard, experienced, everlasting love. In today's world we still are hearing that this everlasting love shows no partiality. The last can still be first and the first last without either gaining or losing this everlasting love. The victim and the perpetrator can both be loved. Those with and those without a living will are still loved. There is no stopping this unexplainable experience.
Come, let us go, together, to the place of everlasting love - Paradise - right here.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html
Jeremiah 31:1-6 or Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
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
When Israel sought rest, grace in the wilderness, a reminder of everlasting love appeared.
Resurrections large and small all have this gift of everlasting love revealed somewhere along the way.
A sign of resurrection is: the weary still pull out a tambourine and dance, dance, dance.
So check your tambourine for dust. It it's there you've lost track of everlasting love tracking its way through your life.
Instead of a static cross, a better symbol of resurrection might be a jingling tambourine.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html
There is a great consolation for those who have struggled just to stay alive until this day of restoration from exile. It will be so for those (LGBTQ and allies) who have been exiled from full participation in The United Methodist Church when that denomination’s restrictive legislation is removed from its Book of Discipline. An internal exile or shunning is as destructive as a foreign exile, crusade, or inquisition.
Not mentioned is an equally great sorrow for those who were not able to be sustained during the generations long exile.
These disjunctures in process seem to be as natural as evolutionary development. We go through them as a cycle, seeming not to learn that repeated rebuilding is not as healthy as learning not to repeat from our previous discriminations. In recent decades this same United Methodist Church has had services of repentance for the way it has treated Women, Blacks, and Native Americans. It won’t be long before it goes on to repent for the way it is currently treating Sexual Orientation and Immigration. After these human identity realities based on one characteristic or another, the only one left will be in the mind. Next will come rules to restrict doctrine to one, true, statement. Not being willing to go on to discrimination against privilege of class and wealth, where else can non-learning from this sort of exiling tendency go than to loyalty oaths?
Hooray for restoration, but only if something has been learned from the exile. Otherwise we will simply repeat this exile/restore cycle with different particulars. If you are interested in a Jeremiah like prophecy regarding today you probably can’t do better than Chris Hedges. Listen in to Hedges here.
Easter is more than restoration or bloody Friday atonement.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/jeremiah-311-6-easter.html