​He forgives them and frees them, welcomes them and changes them. He has been anointed to bring freedom from sin and freedom from sinful structures. He has been anointed to create a new community that breaks down the barriers between insider and outsider, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor. In him, all flesh shall see God’s salvation. – Judith Jones

Luke 4:14-30 (The Voice)
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit, and soon people across the region had heard news of Him.  He would regularly go into their synagogues and teach. His teaching earned Him the respect and admiration of everyone who heard Him.
 
He eventually came to His hometown, Nazareth, and did there what He had done elsewhere in Galilee—entered the synagogue and stood up to read from the Hebrew Scriptures.
 
The synagogue attendant gave Him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and Jesus unrolled it to the place where Isaiah had written these words:
 
The Spirit of the Lord the Eternal One is on Me.
Why? Because the Eternal designated Me
    to be His representative to the poor, to preach good news to them.
He sent Me to tell those who are held captive that they can now be set free,
    and to tell the blind that they can now see.
He sent Me to liberate those held down by oppression.
In short, the Spirit is upon Me to proclaim that now is the time;
    this is the jubilee season of the Eternal One’s grace.
 
Jesus rolled up the scroll and returned it to the synagogue attendant. Then He sat down, as a teacher would do, and all in the synagogue focused their attention on Jesus, waiting for Him to speak. 
​
He told them that these words from the Hebrew Scriptures were being fulfilled then and there, in their hearing.
 
They were all saying: “Wait. This only the son of Joseph, right?”
 
He said to them: “You’re about to quote the old proverb to Me, “Doctor, heal yourself!” Then you’re going to ask Me to prove Myself to you by doing the same miracles I did in Capernaum.  But face the truth: hometowns always reject their homegrown prophets.
 
Think back to the prophet Elijah. There were many needy Jewish widows in his homeland, Israel, when a terrible famine persisted there for three and a half years. Yet the only widow God sent Elijah to help was an outsider from Zarephath in Sidon.
 
It was the same with the prophet Elisha. There were many Jewish lepers in his homeland, but the only one he healed—Naaman--was an outsider from Syria.
 
The people in the synagogue became furious when He said these things.  They seized Jesus, took Him to the edge of town, and pushed Him right to the edge of the cliff on which the city was built. They would have pushed Him off and killed Him, but He passed through the crowd and went on His way.”

Scripture:
​Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 (Common English Bible)
Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don’t see. The elders in the past were approved because they showed faith.
By faith we understand that the universe has been created by a word from God so that the visible came into existence from the invisible.
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out without knowing where he was going.
By faith he lived in the land he had been promised as a stranger. He lived in tents along with Isaac and Jacob, who were coheirs of the same promise. He was looking forward to a city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
By faith even Sarah received the ability to have a child, though she herself was barren and past the age for having children, because she believed that the one who promised was faithful. So descendants were born from one man (and he was as good as dead). They were as many as the number of the stars in the sky and as countless as the grains of sand on the seashore. All of these people died in faith without receiving the promises, but they saw the promises from a distance and welcomed them. They confessed that they were strangers and immigrants on earth. People who say this kind of thing make it clear that they are looking for a homeland. If they had been thinking about the country that they had left, they would have had the opportunity to return to it. But at this point in time, they are longing for a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God isn’t ashamed to be called their God—he has prepared a city for them.

The angels watched and waited, and as the Passover began in his thirty-third year, God was praised as a liberator, while the one who frees was taken into custody, swiftly tried, driven like a beast to the place of a skull, and nailed to a tree. And the heavens wept.
                                             - "Bo" Crowe

READING:
Jesus, seeing that everything had been completed so that the Scripture record might also be complete, then said, “I’m thirsty.” A jug of sour wine was standing by. Someone put a sponge soaked with the wine on a javelin and lifted it to his mouth. After he took the wine, Jesus said, “It’s done . . . complete.”
                                              - from John 19


REFLECTION:
In the beginning – or even before the beginning if that makes sense – there was God.  That’s it; God.  There were no stars to adorn the night sky… indeed, there was no sky to be adorned.  There was no sun to rise above the world’s horizon signaling a glorious, new day, and no world to greet this divine herald.  But that was okay, because God was perfectly content, complete, and whole.  God’s heart, you see, burned with a Light that warmed and illumined from the inside out, and God’s Spirit swelled with Joy. 

And that’s where it all began, with God’s Joy; because it eventually - and inevitably - overflowed its source.  Some say that God breathed Spirit into the void; others that God spoke into that void.  But if we had been there we would know that God laughed; God’s Spirit over­flowed with a rich, divine laughter that left life in its path.  God’s laughter echoed through the void and a universe sprang forth, a universe full of songbirds and sailors, mountains and mystics, daylight and darkness, rivers and raccoons, black holes and maypoles, damsels and their heroes, thunder and wonder, and all was marked by joy!

God gazed on this marvelous creation and laughed again… woops! More life.  God couldn’t help it – God can’t help it – for God to be is to create; to laugh joyfully again and again into any void that appears, filling it with life.  God gazed on this marvelous creation and was strangely attracted to one group of creatures that seemed very much like God; made in God’s image, per­haps.  So God befriended these creatures - women, men, and children alike – and even allowed them to stand in for God, charging them to care for the rest of the creation.

If all this sounds too good to be true, it was; for God’s chosen creatures, like God, were free, and in freedom chose to abandon God.  Foolish as it may seem, humankind turned from the light to walk in darkness; women, men, and children covered their ears to block the sound of di­vine laughter, the very laughter that alone could fulfill their lives and fill them with joy.

Was God angered by this choice?  No.  Was God tempted to end it all right there and show them just who was boss?  …Well, maybe for a moment; but when all is said and done God is God, and God’s heart was broken.  All of the creation, you see, including those special creatures, represents God’s own family; all of the creation is made from the very stuff of God.  So God wept at the sight of all the carnage called forth by humankind from the underbelly of creation: estrangement, exile, greed, anger, hatred, violence… was there no end to this malady, no end to this empty parody of life?

It seemed that there was no end… that there could be no end, unless God ended it.  So God watched and God wept.  For eons it seemed, God watched and wept; but through it all con­tinued to love these creatures, and strove within for a way to regain their trust, a way to demon­strate clearly that Divine Love knows no limits, and will settle for nothing less than fullness of life for each one of them.  Finally, in a flash of insight God exclaimed, I will become as my creatures; I will share their fate, regain their trust, and above all demonstrate that my love is theirs now and for always.

A novel idea, this.  A novel and, perhaps, dangerous idea; for God to become human, sharing its risks, its frailties!  So God called together heaven’s brain trust – rank upon rank of angels - and ran the plan by them.  An excellent plan, so far as it goes, one angel remarked.  But it’s too dangerous; it has no safeguards.  What if something goes wrong?  What if you are re­jected, or worse assaulted by these ungrateful creatures?  No, we angels cannot recommend that you follow through with this plan.

But God thought otherwise, and as if to avoid a change of heart, swiftly left the assembly, shedding divine robes in haste; rich, blue robes whose stars – all save one - were strewn helter-skelter on the floor.  Before the angels could respond, however, before they could block the door and reason with God to stop this foolishness, the stars burned holes in the floor, and the angels, peering through in curiosity, looked down on a pasture shrouded with darkness and scattered here and there with sheep, and on a small band of shepherds warming themselves by a fire.  Sensing their fear the angels spoke gently to the shepherds.  Don’t be afraid, one began, we mean you no harm.  In fact, another chimed in, we bring good news, joyful news; for this very night a savior is born for you, your - oh, what’s their word; oh yes - your Messiah.  Turning in fear to flee this dreadful apparition, the shepherds froze in their tracks at the sight of one last star shin­ing in the night sky illuminating their village; and then they heard, drifting on the night wind from somewhere in the village, the sound of a newborn baby… laughing.

The angels watched anxiously as this vulnerable infant grew to be a man; for some thirty-three years they waited; watching with baited breath the life of– oh, for God’s sake!  A Galilean peasant! Jesus of Nazareth. How could such a bumpkin command a hearing, how could this peasant Jesus convince anyone of the profundity of God’s love? So they waited and they watched, with little hope that the light of God become human would long shine. And their despair deepened.

The angels watched and waited, and as the Passover began in his thirty-third year, God was praised as a liberator, while the one who frees was taken into custody, swiftly tried, driven like a beast to the place of a skull, and nailed to a tree. And the heavens wept.

Unable to contain their grief, rank upon rank of angels descended through the clouds to hover above the cross, their tears washing the blood from the limp, lifeless body of Jesus.  The light has gone out, one angel said.  God gave everything there is to give, but nothing could withstand such brutality… darkness has overcome the Light.  So the angels wept - lost in darkness - the day God died.

I’ve had it with war—no more chariots in Ephraim, no more war horses in Jerusalem, no more swords and spears, bows and arrows. He will offer peace to the nations, a peaceful rule worldwide, from the four winds to the seven seas.
                                      - Zachariah 9.10 (The Message)


READING:
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
                                    - Matthew 21.1-11 (NRSV)    


REFLECTION:
When I was a child in the Deep South, I had no inkling of the passion of Jesus in any real sense. The southern-fried religion that reared me always jumped plum over the passion of Holy Friday and the execution of Jesus; straight from the glory of the Triumphal Entry to the Glory of the Resurrection; there was no conflict, vulnerability, suffering, and execution in between to raise disquieting questions and challenge the theology of triumphalism. With the Resurrection of Jesus, according to triumphalism, the Roman Empire was replaced by another; the Christian Empire. It’s Lord and Master would someday consummate this dominance on the battlefield of Armageddon and the violent destruction of God’s enemies. In fact, the only vague trace of passion was referenced in the abstract notion of Jesus’ blood shed for our sin.

This interpretation replaces passion with triumphalism, and in so doing obliterates the intimate connection between Holy Week and the ministry of Jesus. This connection is important, because the meaning of Holy Week becomes visible only when interpreted through the ministry that preceded it, and in a real sense caused it. You see, Jesus had two passions, and they shed light on each other. The first passion of Jesus – the one that inspired his vision and drove his every action – was the Reign of God (sometimes called the Kingdom of God); not an empire to replace Rome, but an alternative vision to challenge the very notion of empire.

Empire – in Jesus’ day represented by Rome - is based on dominating power, repression, violence, and exploitation, especially against the peasant class whose cause Jesus championed; while Jesus’ vision is based on liberating humility, recognition of the worth of all, and fairness toward all. Empire? Not so much; say rather anti-empire. It was this first passion that inevitably led Jesus into conflict with Rome, and brought its swift retribution of Jesus’ second passion: humiliation, scourging, and crucifixion.

On Sunday we will examine the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the light of its connection to his entire life and ministry, and his challenge to the notion of empire. It very well could be an eye-opening experience. I hope you will join us.

I rise to taste the dawn, and find that love alone will shine today.                                                                      
              - Ken Wilber






READING:
This is how much God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son.  And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.  God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was.  He came to help, to put the world right again.  Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it.  And why?  Because that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

This is the crisis that we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness.  They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God.  Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure.  But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.
                                      - John 3.16-21 (The Message)


REFLECTION:
We of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) …whoa Nellie! This title requires some explanation. It would be easy to read this title as a claim to be the only true disciples, but that would be a mistake. We firmly believe that we are not the only Christians, but Christians only, serving humbly beside Christians of any other stripe or color.

Anyway, we Disciples recently lost a saint – a truly awesome man! – Fred Craddock, who both inspired and humbled us all. He inspired us with some of the best preaching around; and he humbled us with his commitment to serve “The least of these” in practical, hands-on ways. How he managed to write as prolifically as he did and still find time to serve others remains a mystery God alone can penetrate.

Dr. Craddock begins his commentary on John 3.16 with the caution that it is easy to trivialize this verse. Boy! He could say that again. Most of us know this verse in some form, and most of us trivialize it by reading our meanings into the text. We typically think of God as loving… unless you cross him (sic); in which case God can be a harsh judge. And we trivialize it by thinking of the salvation of the Christ as a pie-in-the-sky reward in the distant future for confessing that we believe this statement about Jesus.

We do this, however, at the expense of its context in John’s theology, losing any chance of recognizing the profundity, subtlety, and radically challenging content of this verse. We need to step back and tease out John’s thought on the nature of the God who loves the world, and what he means by salvation.

I invite you to try this in preparation for Sunday’s worship. Reflect on your notion of the God who loves. Is that all God does? What is this God like? And what is this love John speaks about? Is it sentimental and weak, or profound and powerful? And try to summarize what you think of as salvation. Then on Sunday we will examine this verse, and the passage in which it is nestled, with a view to discard any trivializing tendencies, and catch a glimpse of something both inspiring and challenging that can be embraced by all, including those who think long, hard, and reasonably about spiritual things… and expect preacher types to do the same. Join us, won’t you?