Okay Christian person. Let me ask you a question that is enough to make your brain hurt. We’re in the season of Eastertide right now. Alleluia! The Lord is risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia! The resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ. So, now what?
 
It was one of our “Worship Questions To Go” this last Sunday. We talked about it at length Monday Night in the Zoom Bible Study--
 
What do we do with the Post-Easter Jesus?
 
That’s literally the age-old question we’ve been struggling with since the women discover the empty tomb. And by “we,” I mean us—Jesus followers. What do we do with him?
 
You start to really feel the struggle in the early Pauline letters. 1 Thessalonians is probably the first of Paul’s letters to emerge and it likely doesn’t come along until mid-1st Century—20 years after the crucifixion. In fact, Paul’s letters emerge before the Gospels. Then Mark comes first and not until at least 60-65. The others much later, and John’s Gospel may not have emerged until as late as the 2nd Century!
 
Even the Didache, which is literally a manual for being a person of “The Way”—basically what they call the lifestyle of following Jesus—They aren’t even known as “Christians” yet! The Didache comes out also mid-1stCentury, and even the Didache doesn’t talk about the resurrection. Not one word!
 
After years of prayer, a lot of thought, and serious study—I think I understand why no resurrection. I think it’s because they are living it. Like, if you put yourself into their context, in the years immediately following Jesus they are mourning, processing, developing love and community around his teaching. They are experiencing and actually becoming the resurrection. They are becoming the resurrection. 
 
This is no “belief structure.”
This is lifestyle. 
This is huge!
 
It’s also important to know that Paul never meets Jesus of Nazareth! Paul’s experience of Jesus comes on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9) post-Easter and he has a serious life-changing confrontation with the risen Christ! He is blinded by the light of Christ! 
 
So, what we get here in 2022 are these glimpses of the Risen Christ through the eyes of the earliest followers. And this is significant! Scholars agree that to best understand the impact of a leader, a movement, or a culture is to examine the lives of the adherents. 
 
What do they do? 
How do they live? 
What do they teach their children?
Hmmmm.
 
That’s enough to make your brain hurt, too! 
What do we do with this Post-Easter Jesus?
And that is it.
 
Are we becoming the resurrection? 
Following Jesus? 
Loving God and loving each other as Jesus loves us? 
Building welcoming community and taking care of our neighbors? 
Yes or no?
 
When we look in the mirror, do we see the face of Jesus? 
 
Sorry to make your brain hurt—I’m just askin’…
 
Grace & Peace,
Scott

Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you*
​

Could be God talking through Sting. Not menacing—just present. Holy Spirit. 
Always in all ways.
 
One of the things I learned in yoga is connecting body and Spirit. Focusing on the breath. It helps me, anyway. We don’t do a very good job of connecting body and Spirit in Christianity. Not like yoga does, anyway. 
 
This Sunday we’ll be playing around with the scripture from John when the risen Christ breathes onto the disciples. He breathes the Holy Spirit onto them! Whoa!
 
Back at the beginning. The very beginning—in Genesis, God literally breathes creation onto the face of the Earth—Whoa!
 
So, just focus on the breath.
Your breath.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Holy Spirit—that’s God. 
Whoa!
 
Every now and then I get something I wish I’d written like this. Barbara Stacey sent me this piece—forgive the patriarchal language—just focus on your breath.
 
There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what his name is. God was gracious enough to answer, and the name he gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH.

Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because we have a preference for vowels. 

But scholars and Rabi’s have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing. 

YH (inhale): WH (exhale). 

So a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God. 

A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words. 

Even an atheist would speak His name, unaware that their very breathe is giving constant acknowledgment to God. 

Likewise, a person leaves this earth with their last breath, when God’s name is no longer filing their lungs. 

So when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name?

Being alive means I speak His name constantly.  
So, is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest?

In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs. 
In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst. 
In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down. 
When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.  

When I think about it, breathing is giving him praise. Even in the hardest moments! 

This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought. God chose to give himself a name that we can’t help but speak every moment we’re alive. 

All of us, always, everywhere. 
Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips.**

Whoa! Right?
 
Just breathing—sighs too deep for words,
Scott
 
**by  Sandra Thurman Caporale.
*by “Sting” Gordon Sumner.
Graphic artist unknown.
​

Wow, it’s quiet around here this early.  
Very quiet. It’s a quiet week. 
And that’s totally cool with me.
 
Most of you know, I keep my office hours early in the mornings during the week. I don’t think Haytown is on Spring Break, but so far there’s a skeleton crew here this morning. Later the place is teeming with kids and WOW! It’s awesome. Life in the Community House. 
 
The confirmation class is on hiatus right now for their Spring Breaks. We have 3 families represented and all three families live in different school districts with staggered Spring Breaks. 3 separate and consecutive weeks. So, the class isn’t meeting for a month. We’ll resume next week after Easter. 
 
We are not doing a Maundy Thursday service this year, so it’s the quietest Holy Week and Spring Break for me ever. I feel it in my bones, in my flesh. To be honest, it’s a little weird. Just sayin…
 
So, I read Richard Rohr almost every day and it reminds me that a few years ago during Holy Week I think, he was focused on the physicality of our spirituality. Most often mainline church people tend to shy away from the “flesh.” Like, we get too hung up on “the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” from Jesus’ short little soliloquy from the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26.
 
You remember the first Maundy Thursday scene. Jesus has gone to the garden to pray knowing that time is growing short. Judas has gone to summon the authorities, the soldiers are on their way, and the kiss of betrayal is moments away. Jesus expects the disciples to wait with him. They are tired from the wine at dinner, and they nap—until the cops show up.  
 
Anyway, this is probably why we fall into this “dualism” between body and Spirit. We here in mainline Christianity don’t do a very good job of connecting body and Spirit—when in fact it’s all connected. Like, it’s not either/or, but both/and. Always in all ways. 
 
Don’t ever forget that Jesus is fully human and fully God. It’s both/and. Not either/or.
 
And like it or not, I’m getting old. I’ve been paying a lot closer attention to my body these days. Losing weight. Working out. Self-care. Stress relief. Trying to stay loose. That’s my “happy place.” Connected body and Spirit. 
 
All this to get to Spring Break and Holy Week. 
 
I hope you can tune into your body, too. Not just your heart and soul. Not just your Spirit. Both/And. Tune into the flesh and the Spirit. 
 
I hope and pray that you are in a space where you are both Spiritually and physically at peace. That you’re in your happy place. I hope that you feel it in your heart and soul, of course. And I hope you feel it in your bones. Always, in all ways.
 
So, maybe this isn’t just another Holy Week/Spring Break. 
 
Maybe this is the one that gets into the marrow. 
 
Grace & Peace,
Scott

Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
 
In the name of love
What more in the name of love
 
This turned up on my workout playlist this morning while I was pumping on the indoor bike. What timing!
 
I’ll never forget the first time I heard those U2 lyrics. Who can? It’s from The Unforgettable Fire. Right after the bridge, the final verse. OMG! The passion. The emotion. The indictment, white people!
 
Never mind the historical error.
 
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior was assassinated on the stoop of his Memphis hotel room right around dusk in the evening of April 4, 1968.  
 
Over 50 years ago. Hard to believe it’s been that long. 
 
Even harder to believe—U2 released The Unforgettable Fire on October 1, 1984 and Pride was the first single released from (what we used to call) the “album.” 
 
Especially if you’re of a certain generation, I’ll be surprised if you don’t remember the song. MTV was still very new, and the video is on YouTube. The YouTube offices were a scene of gun violence a few years ago right around this same time.
 
This week of course, more gun violence. It’s not always racially motivated—and it’s become so de rigueur, so commonplace, according to the website https://www.gunviolencearchive.org, there are 3 pages of incidents of gun violence in the USA just on Monday, April 4, 2022. Whoa! 
 
What continues to hurt even one of us hurts us all.
 
In 1984 this band, U2, was just about to explode across the world. The Joshua Tree was still a couple years in the distance, but they were already well on their way. Live Aid probably pushed them over the top. But this song Pride got everyone’s attention—demanded everyone’s attention.
 
The song still resonates today. Don’t kid yourself that “we’ve come so far” on race in the United States. Clearly, we have not. We’ve barely moved the needle!
 
My whole doctoral project dissertation was about fostering what MLK called “Beloved Community.” If you’re curious, it’s called: Doing Beloved Community: Building Relationships in Public Squares.
 
Dr. King’s words continue to challenge us: the Beloved Community is a vision where “all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.”
 
I know we think we’re trying, white people, but we’re not even close. Having said that, I have to say that this church, FPC, is pretty “woke.” Some of us describe our church as “traditional” and we are about some things. But not about this. 
 
We are pretty woke, welcoming, aware of the diversity in our community, and aware of our privilege. I brag on you all the time. 
 
Right here from our little corner of the world, it feels like we’re just trying to keep the dream alive. 
 
Grace & Peace,
Scott