Easter 3B
Peace be with you by Michaela Bruzzese READINGS Psalm 4 Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God. Give relief from my distress; be merciful to me and hear my prayer. Acts 3:12-19 Peter, in the name of Jesus, had healed the beggar who used to be at the gate called Beautiful. Now Peter talks to the onlookers - confrontationally. "You killed the author of life - but God raised him from the dead." (15) It is, according to Peter, Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that offers complete healing. Peter then appeals for the onlookers to repent and turn to God, so that their sins may be "wiped out" - among those sins would be included the crucifixion. Luke 24:36b - 48 Jesus appears to the 12. Says: "Peace be with you" Tells them to look at his hands and feet. He eats with them - it's all very physical! Then Jesus opened their minds and told them the scheme - next being "repentance and forgiveness wil be preache din his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" | Companion means, Com (with); panis (bread) "people who have their 'panis', take bread together Letter to Diognetus - about 130AD. This is interesting in the light of the comments in Luke about the post-Easter preaching of the gospel of repentance and forgiveness to all nations. "For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners [or resident aliens]. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers."
So that was AD 130. What has happned since? Repentance, forgiveness and all the nations. | from Jude Siciliano The community that has experimented the risen Lord is not to sit around locked in their enclosure feeling warm and cozy in their new faith. No sooner do they meet him than he sends them out to preach forgiveness. At Eucharist we have an "Emmaus Experience," for here, at this particular moment, on the road of our lives, we meet the risen Lord. Like the two disciples and then the assembled community, we come to see him here with us through the scriptures and in the breaking of the bread. We are an Easter people. What do Easter believers look and sound like? They live and speak forgiveness. In families they are parents who take back their prodigal children, or they are the ones who stay in touch with the member the rest of the family has cut off; they are the adult children who forgive the shortcomings of their parents and tend to them in their declining years; they are the family cooks who prepare special holiday or birthday meals, hoping that a family that shares stories and breaks bread will hold together and forgive one another the petty and large offenses family members can inflict on one another. Jesus' mandate to preach, "repentance for forgiveness of sins," requires resurrection-believers to also work outside the home as voices and instruments of forgiveness. How will people ever come to know the forgiveness Christ sends his disciples to proclaim, but through us? People don't get to meet the forgiving God Jesus preached by the water cooler at work. But they do get to meet us there. The words we speak and the way we act will put a face on God for them and they will come to know that that divine face is open to anyone seeking forgiveness. But they must first meet that forgiveness through us, and if they do, they will come to know that there is another way to travel the road of life--other than aggression, violence, lies, greed, lust, anger and revenge. Thus, people will meet God's emissaries of forgiveness in us. Jude Siciliano - firstimpressions@preacherexchange.org |
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