Resurrection of the Lord (Year C, RCL)

Each year when I sit down to write my Easter sermon, I remember Doris Olson. Doris was a pillar of the church, and when I arrived as the new pastor, she came to my office and told me a story.

Luke grounds the resurrection narrative in tangible details: the rock-hewn tomb, the linen cloth, the heavy stone, the fragrant spices. The reader can imagine the place and time. Then things fall off the map.

I didn't start my day thinking about gang killings. But then a man showed up and asked about a funeral for his nephew—on Palm Sunday.

Karl Giberson offers a cultural history of the Bible's first human. It's an intriguing and unsettling story.

When she knew she was dying, my grandmother took me to see the cornerstone of a small brick church in my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. I didn’t recognize the sign outside. It was a Baptist church, I think. It was pretty rundown, but still in better shape than the neighborhood. Overgrown vacant lots were everywhere; it was like visiting an abandoned church in the jungle.

The story goes that God got a body. I’ve often pondered the relationship between incarnation and pain.

My father died about three years ago. As May comes around, the azaleas spring to life, and I remember my father's passing. Just as sure as the tulips and dogwood blossom, my mind wanders back to my dad. Even when I begin to open up to these strange and wonderful stories of Easter, struggling with the notions of recognition and revelation, I think about the last few months of my father's life.

This Colossians reading is one of those distilled, cryptic passages that draws us into so much more than we can imagine. Such verses expand our capacity to wonder and give praise. They invite us into God’s mystery.

Transformation for Betsy, her congregants, and others will likely occur through encounters with members of the Muslim community. As a leader, Betsy can cultivate these encounters.

How can Paul navigate the choppy waters of a pagan environment, with its idols and temples? The obvious place to start is the Shema.

In my Century lectionary column for this week, I focused on the reading from Isaiah 65. It’s a text I find baffling, frustrating and hopeful. If space were limitless, here are some other things I might have included.

Each of the four Gospels’ depictions of the first encounter with the resurrected Christ suggests a different lens for perceiving the risen one. In Matthew, Christ’s resurrection looks like a theophany—earthquake and blazing light—and Christ appears suddenly and vividly to disciples on the run and on the mountain. In Luke, the risen Christ is first encountered as a peripatetic teacher and finally recognized in the breaking of bread. Mark apparently included no straightforward account of the risen Christ at all.

And in the Gospel of John, Christ rises from the ground in a springtime garden.

In John's Easter account, people spend the day running around trying to come to terms with what God has done in the night.

God's "consuming fire" is the fire of holy love. It doesn't await sinners in the future; it burns up sin itself.

I dreamed of meeting Adam in heaven. He wasn't hard to recognize; he looked like my great-uncle Harold, with the weight of his years melted off.

While Christian scholars have long questioned body-soul dualism, it remains common in church circles. This may finally be changing.