Ralph Milton's Rumors

R U M O R S # 443
Ralph Milton's E-zine for people of faith with a sense of humor
2007-04-01

April Fool's Day, 2007

THE EXTRAORDINARY GIFT

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Motto:
"A merry heart doeth good, like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." (Proverbs 17:22 KJV)
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May the rising of the sun on Easter morning fill you with light and love and hope, and the sure knowledge of God's loving presence in your life!

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Rib Tickler - This from Evelyn McLachlan of Mississauga, Ontario.
Joseph of Arimithea's friends were astonished at his generosity at giving his new tomb to Jesus.
"Shucks, it was nothin'," he told them. "He only needed it for the weekend."
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Next Week's Readings - These are the readings you will probably hear in church this coming Sunday, April 8th, which is Easter Sunday, the most important Christian festival and the high point of the liturgical year.
The Lectionary offers alternate readings for everything except the Psalm. I won't comment on everything because that would make Rumors even more long-winded than usual.

Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 65:17-25 - I like Isaiah's song. It reminds me of Vera Lynn's song that she sang in the darkest days of World War II.
There'll be bluebirds over
the white cliffs of Dover,
tomorrow, when the world is free.
There'll be love and laughter,
and peace ever after . . .
Leonard Bernstein did it in West Side Story.
"somehow, somewhere,
we'll find a new way of living.
We'll find a way of forgiving. . .
As predictions of the future, none of them were correct, but that's not what they were about. They put words and music around the deep visceral yearning of the human heart - they expressed what all of us feel.
There is a lot of despair and cynicism around this Easter Sunday. That is why it's important to declare that resurrection has happened. It is happening. It will happen again. "They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain."

Psalm 178:1-2, 14-25 - paraphrased by Jim Taylor
Perhaps it was in a movie, many years ago. I see a child advance fearlessly to huge oak doors set into solid rock walls. With supreme confidence, the child kicks the doors - and wonder of wonders, they open.
The miracle, of course, is not the opening but the confidence. The people who knew Easter similarly had the confidence to kick doors open all over the world; they feared nothing and no one anymore.
14 Our God is great, God is mighty;
Even the powers of death yield to God.
God is invincible!
God is my strong arm, my protector;
God has freed me from fear.
15 Let ancient trees tremble, let governments hang their heads
As we shake up the skies with our shout of victory;
God is invincible!
17 Once I was a groveling coward;
I cowered from the shadows of the powerful.
But now I know that I shall survive;
I shall live to honor my hero.
18 I was oppressed; I was humiliated;
I suffered; how I suffered!
But God did not abandon me;
God did not leave me to grovel in the ground.
19 So fling open the doors! Throw open the barriers!
Boardrooms and corridors of power, make room!
God is with us;
we're invincible!
21 Thank you, thank you, God!
Thank you for recognizing my plight;
Thank you for picking me up out of the mud.
22 You rescued me.
Now the one the world has ridiculed has become someone to watch out for.
23 No one but you could have done it;
I can hardly believe it myself.
24 Good God, what a day! What a day!
Let me revel in it!
You are invincible! From: Everyday Psalms
Wood Lake Books.
For details, go to www.woodlakebooks.com

1 Corinthians 15:19-26 or Acts 10:34-43 - Like the Isaiah passage, this Corinthian text is not a prediction but a dream - a hope. There has never been a time in human history when there have not been "wars and rumors of wars."
But Paul, I think, is telling the folks in Corinth that God isn't limited to our narrow concepts of time and history. Neither is God way off on some distant cloud listening to harp music. God is right there in the places where it hurts most - in Iraq and Afghanistan - in the intensive care ward at the hospital - in our hearts as darkness imprisons us with fear.
I have a bit of a quarrel with the last two verses. God defeats enemies - not by destroying them, but by offering them love. As my favorite prophet Julian of Norwich reminds me - God can do, or at least chooses to do, nothing except love.
That's what Easter morning is all about.

Luke 24:1-12 or John 20:1-18 - My Easter story - the story that resonates deep in my soul, is the story told in John about Mary's visit to the tomb.
Many years ago in Israel, for a course I was taking on John's gospel, I stripped the text of all the preaching elements to see the storyline more clearly. Doing that, I saw a powerful short story, and how much John is a women's gospel. It's led a number of scholars to speculate that Mary of Magdala wrote the basic story line and a later redactor added the rest to make it more acceptable to the early church fathers.
Be that as it may, the thing that moves me in this account is that Mary stayed behind at the tomb to cry, and that it was through her tears she was able to see the risen Christ.
Maybe that applies to the Luke account as well. The dry-eyed guys couldn't see the resurrection and called the women's story "an idle tail." Female hysteria. But Peter at least had the grace to go see for himself. Perhaps, as he stooped at the entrance to the tomb, the bottled up tears burst out in spite of his macho self-control. And then he too experienced the risen Christ.

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Rumors - When I was 13 or 14 years old, I decided I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. In middle age, I concluded I was too ordinary to be a writer. Great writers have to be at least slightly crazy, and I was terminally sane.
Now at a mellow 72, I've realized that ordinariness is the essential quality of most writers.
When I first took up this craft full-time, I didn't realize how much of your life you have to spend alone. And that is exactly how it has to be, because it takes a long, long time to discipline promiscuous words into an approximation of what you have in your head. And if it is something in your heart you want to express, that takes even longer and often involves intense emotion.
In Winnipeg at McNally-Robinson, which is one of those mega bookstores, I am doing a reading and signing of "Angels in Red Suspenders." There are questions afterwards. A young man asks, "What is the essential characteristic of a writer?"
I have no idea. All I can tell the young man is that noticing God in the ordinary stuff is what makes me want to write. This morning, it was the extra five minutes Bev and I snuggled close to each other in bed before we gave in to the necessities of the day.
If I don't write about it, the wonder and the glory of those simple moments disappear, and I forget that the warm, encompassing love of God would be somewhat like that five minutes of gentle joy Bev and I gave each other.
The power of the ordinary almost overwhelms me sometimes when I read stories such as the resurrection account in the gospel of John. The Jesus Seminar folks sniff at the historicity of it all, but they've missed the point of the story. It's not about history. It's about holiness that breaks through the ordinary.
Mary of Magdala has gone to pay her last respects to a long-time friend. Death was no stranger in her time and in her life. Anointing the body was the ordinary, necessary, expected thing to do.
When she can't find the body, she weeps, and through the haze of her ordinary tears, sees the extraordinary truth of the resurrection.
There is no essential difference between one who is a writer (and every preacher is a writer) and one who is not. There is no essential difference between you and me and Mary of Magdala. God gives every one of us the gift of holy, transcendent moments.
Easter morning is one of them. But we've got to pay attention. Deep attention. Stop. Look. Listen.
Then, when very ordinary women like Mary of Magdala, very ordinary men like me - very ordinary people come to church for very ordinary reasons and listen through the very ordinary ache deep down in their souls - it is then that we will receive the extraordinary gift.
We know the risen Christ.