Seventh Sunday of Easter, June 5, 2011

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Acts 1:6-14, Psalm 68:1010, 32-35, I Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11 and John 17:1-11.

All of the lections assigned for this week “show the church at work, seeking to embrace, embody, and enact its convictions in the world. The new rule of God permits new human life in the world. Such new human life is not easy, but it is possible. That new life requires discipline, but it is also marked by a relentless buoyancy that refuses the despair of the world and the seduction of the world. The ground of such a bold refusal is God’s own powerful resolve, which permeates the character of the church. Because of Easter, this community is indeed an Easter-powered community!” (Texts for Preaching: Brueggemann et al., pg.319)

“…you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” (I Peter 4:12). “Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering” I Peter 5:8-9).

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Karen Armstrong, expositor of religious tolerance in her many books, concludes that religion “isn’t about believing things. It’s about what you do. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you.” Certainly, Jesus’ resurrection changed the behavior of the disciples and shaped the life of the earliest of those assemblies that followed his way. In our lection from Acts, it is clear that the disciples were entering into a new time, a break from the past. But they weren’t at all sure about what that future held. Some wondered about the possibility of a restoration of the Davidic kingdom, a political possibility that continues even to this very day! But no, Jesus tells them that it isn’t for them “to know the times or periods” God intends. Instead, through the power of God’s spirit they are to be witnesses to the power and the truth of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. They are mandated to live their lives with compassion and courage in the love of neighbor.

Recently the people of Joplin, Missouri have had an extreme test of their faith and life. Susan Campbell, who holds a degree from Hartford Seminary and writes a regular column for the Hartford Courant, has family members in Joplin. She’s been visiting them and wrote her column this week as an eye-witness to the devastation of that city. She cites the obituaries in the Joplin Globe “full of stories of people who went to be with the Lord, went home to heaven…” She writes that rather than being defeated by the catastrophe of that brutal tornado, they “bow their heads out of respect for the dead and then roll up their sleeves to lift a case of bottled water.” And then she slips in a word about the church which, faithful to its message tells its people and the rest of us that “the record winds were not God’s handiwork but simply a weather event.” Rather, “God is found in the aftermath…” as when average persons beset by tragedy cling to the message of faith that they’ve heard and experienced through the Church.

Those who follow the lectionary learn this week that it recalls God’s mighty acts in Jesus, both his resurrection and his ascension. “Yet the eye of the people of God is on the future, for just ahead lies the challenge of bearing the truth of what God has done to a world that will respond to this good news sometimes in joy, sometimes in anger, but rarely in indifference. And so the people of God pause, in prayer, and gather their strength for the days shortly to come” (Texts for Preaching, Breuggemann et al., pg. 321).

We as human beings never know when or where the tornados of life will strike, but with the disciplines of faith and the witness of those who’ve gone before us, our lections this week give the assurance that we can resist the “roaring lion” of moral and natural evil, live with confidence and trust the future!

Ralph Ahlberg

Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 29, 2011

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Acts 17:22-31, Psalm 66:8-20, I Peter 3:13-22 and John 14:15-21.

“Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord” (I Peter 3:13-15a). “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23).

As I read the words of our lections assigned for this week, I was reminded of the great souls I have known during the course of my ministry. They were the ones not intimidated by difficult jobs in places where fear might well be justified and where success as the world knows it was unlikely. I think of Bill and Helen Webber and Norman and Peg Eddy in particular who spent their lives in East Harlem and became pioneers in contemporary urban ministry. Over sixty years ago, they formed what was named as the East Harlem Protestant Parish, located in the city blocks around 96th to 106th streets in Manhattan.

I first met them on August 28, 1963 as members of the United Church of Christ gathered for the March on Washington, D.C. The bus ride to our nation’s capital was filled with songs that buoyed us up and encouraged our hopes with lyrics like “We Shall Overcome, We Shall Not be Moved.” Then gathered at Lincoln Memorial we listened to the remarkable and historic words of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech. But soon I was back in the comfortable suburban setting of my congregation on Long Island while many of my companions returned to the harsh poverty of an urban ghetto.

The words of our lections reflect the truth that was lived out in the lives of the Webber’s and the Eddy’s. They focused on the needs of a church community that also faced the dangers that can beset minorities. There were also realities of poverty and crime and the inevitable issues that all humans face of suffering and death. In all such life situations, our Gospel and Epistle lections affirm the power, faithfulness and presence of God. They have enabled generations of church communities to persevere in life with hope, trusting the future while remaining faithful to the purposes of God.

I was reminded of the East Harlem Protestant Parish and its ministry in reading a book written by the Webber’s son, Tom, entitled “Flying Over 96th Street”. He describes his own experience as a child growing to adulthood in East Harlem. While attending a prestigious preparatory school several miles distant from his home, his companions were the sons and daughters of the New York’s wealthy. Then bus and subway took him back to a place where he was the only white kid on the neighborhood basketball court. His book is a marvelous testimony to his appreciation of the friends he made in East Harlem and his own growth as a human being.

Over the years as a pastor and then as a coordinator of urban ministry in the New York City area for the United Church of Christ, I was a very minor participant, more of an observer to the creative efforts of people like the Webbers and Eddy’s to foster a more healthy community. For a while the emphasis was to provide tenements with adequate heating through efficient boilers, or to lobby government in efforts to prevent high rise apartments in already congested areas. But with all the problems and dangers they lived with every day, there were also the blessings that came with community, with the faithful who shared in reading programs for the young, and choir practice, and church suppers and worship that inspired hope and the courage to continue.

I was struck by the words of I Peter, “if you suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed by God.” I can recall Bill Webber speaking at a forum at the Garden City Community Church on Long Island where I was the pastor, and sharing his experience in East Harlem. After decades of effort to make life better for his community, it was obvious to him that the quality of life had actually lessened. Life was harder in East Harlem at the conclusion of the East Harlem Protestant Parish’s life than it was at its beginning.

Yet what a blessing and what a witness those people made! If ever a text was “right on” it is this one, telling us that doing right is always a blessing. And that those who love Jesus and whose lives are instructed by him, will be loved by God.

Ralph Ahlberg

Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 22, 2011

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Acts 7:55-60, Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16, I Peter 2: 2-10 and John 14:1-14.

“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (I Peter 2:9). “Jesus said ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” John 14:6.

Following a worship service during one of my retirement “stints” as chaplain on a cruise ship I was seated for dinner with an ostentatiously wealthy and opinionated woman. She was convinced that as our lectionary text from John puts it, “no one comes to the Father except through me,” which she “proved” by reciting that verse. Now, chaplains are not given the privileges of cruise ship opportunities in order to offend or contradict high spending passengers and I could see by the intense look she gave me that my meditation earlier in the day with its emphasis on the inclusive nature of authentic faith had not pleased her. Although I pointed out that earlier in the same passage from John in verses 2 and 3 there is mention of “many rooms” or “dwelling places” where the divine presence is promised, she remained convinced that my liberal critique of this passage was at best in a grey area of normative Christianity.

As I reflect upon it now, perhaps she was right. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the language about going to prepare dwelling places in the Father’s house points to the claim that Jesus is the exclusive way to God. And, in turn, doesn’t that imply only those who embrace the Christian way can find salvation, i.e., a healthy and harmonious relationship with God, self, neighbor and environment? Yet, for me that conclusion is difficult if not impossible, because many of my Muslim and Jewish friends have clearly achieved that quality of harmony with God and neighbor outside the dwelling places of Christianity.

A better way to interpret this lection from John is admit that this exclusive understanding of Christ’s way to God does reflect that early Christian community of John’s self-understanding. But it makes that exclusive claim of approaching God not out of a sense of moral superiority. Rather it is simply a confession of loyalty to Christ during a time of deep cultural conflict and the threat of persecution.

If that is the case, then it might be appropriate to ask if the perspective John offers in our lection this week could be instructive to those of us in contemporary American congregations as we struggle with what it means to follow Christ. We of the “mainline” or “oldline” denominations are often critiqued as having so bought into the culture of materialism, nationalistic exceptionalism and hedonistic morality that we are indistinguishable from the general population. In what sense then are we in the words of our lection of I Peter “a chosen race and a royal priesthood?” It seems the issue that’s raised in this week’s lectionary readings might well be that question: How are we distinctive?

The answer, it seems to me, is that when we take Jesus seriously, learn something of his life and teaching, value his community building efforts, understand how he encountered the marginalized poor and disenfranchised within his larger community and made them cherished friends, and attempt to make that our own in the way we live, we have a good chance of becoming very distinctive indeed!

All through history, this reality is revealed in the lives of the saints, those who have followed Jesus. I’ve known them in every congregation of which I’ve been a part. Immanuel Church has many of them, reaching out with unselfish love to help some life within the congregation or neighborhood or larger world achieve a status of acceptance and inclusion within the community that affirms and lessens pain and loneliness. And that’s always been true. In my reading this week I came across the role a nineteenth century Congregational missionary, Samuel A. Worcester, played in his losing struggle for justice among the Cherokee Indians in Georgia’s Great Smokey Mountains. His story is told in a book by Paul VanDevelder entitled, “Savages and Scoundrels.”

In 1841, the State of Georgia declared the Cherokee government a non-entity and passed a resolution extending state sovereignty over Indian lands. When Worcester visited the Cherokees without obtaining a license to travel in that area from the governor of that state he was arrested, found guilty and sentenced to four years of hard labor at a state-owned quarry. All of this violated due process and a denial of the missionary’s civil liberties. Worcester was accused of encouraging the Cherokees to remain on their land and to defend their rights before the Supreme Court in nation’s capital. When the word got out that nine missionaries had been shackled in leg irons and put to work making large rocks into small ones at a state-owned rock quarry, it became something of a public relations nightmare for the Governor and the state government. The Governor attempted to issue a pardon with the hope the missionaries would simply go away, but Worcester refused, indicating he’d await the decision of the Court in Washington. In his opinion, what the state of Georgia was doing to the Cherokees was making a moral and legal mockery of the Bill of Rights, and until the court acted, he and his comrades were content to split rocks.

Although the Supreme Court decided in Worcester’s favor, under the Andrew Jackson administration it didn’t have the power to enforce the decision. Georgia simply ignored it, and sadly when Chief Justice Marshall was replaced by Roger B. Taney one of the great injustices of our nation’s history took place in the forced march of the Cherokee nation to the Oklahoma territory during which thousands died on that tragic journey.

Even so, history remembers the Christian missionary, Samuel A. Worcester, whose life was characterized by courage and compassion inspired by ChristÉand was a rather distinctive witness!

Ralph Ahlberg

Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 15, 2011

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Acts 2: 42-47, Psalm 23, I Peter 2:19-25 and John 10: 1-10

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want… (Psalm 23:1). “For you were going astray like sheep, but now have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls” I Peter 2: 25. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd” John 10: 10b-11a).

Every year our Common Lectionary celebrates “Good Shepherd Sunday” on the Fourth Sunday of Easter. So three of the four lections this week use the image of a good shepherd to describe the loving and protective care of God. The one exception is the reading from Acts that continues a sequential reading of the book from Easter through the Day of Pentecost. This week it describes the idealism and energy of the earliest converts to Christ who devote themselves “to the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (2:42). It goes on to tell of their willingness to have “all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (2:44). It describes a communitarian idealism of the early church that does not long continue.

But the good shepherd image certainly does continue, despite the reality that in our mostly urban world not many of us have had much experience with shepherds, good or bad! It may well be that sheep are often helpless and vulnerable, depend on the shepherd for “nourishment, protection and guidance” and look to “him” (sic) to avoid exploitation or possible destruction, but at best for most of us that’s second hand knowledge.

So when I attended a chapel service at Hartford Seminary several years ago, I was moved by Ibrahim Ozdemir, a visiting professor from Turkey, as he told of his experience as a shepherd. He grew up in a remote village with no school or mosque within five miles and by the age of six or seven began to assume some shepherding responsibility for his family. He was taught to be proud of his work, as the prophet Muhammad himself was also a shepherd. So when he was asked by a Turkish friend at a university in Manhattan for help on a sermon she was invited to deliver on the value of shepherding based on this passage from John 10, this was his response:

“When I was a young shepherd boy in the Anatolian hills, I could produce more than ten distinctly different whistles by sticking a finger between my lips, one tone for each finger, giving different messages to my sheep. One day I did lose one of my sheep. When I realized that I ran to a nearby hills and valleys. One of my eyes was looking for her, while I kept the other eye on the rest of my flock. In spite of all my efforts, my search was fruitless. Evening had come and I had to go home. With tears welling up in my eyes, I told the news to my parents. They were also unset but my father told me that we could continue the search in the early morning. ‘Ibrahim!’ his father said, ‘don’t give up hope!’

“Although I was so tired I could not eat anything, I had a hard time falling asleep that night. When my father awoke me at dawn, I ran outside and what I saw made me very happy. The lost sheep was back at the courtyard. I thanked God for that.”

Ibrahim’s friend immediately wrote back asking why such emotion over a single sheep?

Again, he responded with the following:

“As a large peasant family, we depended on two things for our livelihood: land and sheep. A livelihood from the land, however, depends on weather. If the weather is fine, then we can harvest good crops. When the weather is not fine, we have to wait until the next year and bear the suffering in the meantime. But if, besides land, we have sheep, we don’t worry so much because if the crops fail, the family that has sheep can survive.

“You must understand that we rarely slaughtered sheep for meat. Sheep used to be everything for my family. Sheep provide milk. We used to drink some of it and sell the rest. We also made yogurt and cheese and sold these as wellÉMoreover, sheep provide wool. We would sell some of it, but the best wool we reserved for our family to make clothing and quilts. Sheep also provide us with dung to fertilize our lands and raise better crops. In short, it may seem strange to you, but the sheep are a bounty to us — a blessing and a bounty from God. Therefore when we lost one of them, it was as though we lost a member of our family.”

My commentary concludes that the impact of the sheep-shepherd imagery in our lection is to encourage the reader to believe that no thief or bandit will succeed in destroying even a part of the deeply valued flock. This is because the sheep are the shepherd’s “own.” Their familiarity with the shepherd offers the promise of their safety and security. Just as in the 23rd Psalm with its promise of protective love, here in John 10 that love is reaffirmed with the powerful image of a shepherd in the promises of Jesus. He is our trustworthy guide.

“So again Jesus said to them, ‘He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10: 3-4).

Ralph Ahlberg

Third Sunday of Easter, May 8, 2011

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Acts 2: 14a, 36-41, Psalm 116: 1-4, 12-19, I Peter 1: 17-23 and Luke 24: 13-35.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). “Through him (Christ) you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God (I Peter 1:21). “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (Luke 24:30-31).

The Church through the assignments of its lectionary readings continues to celebrate the power of Easter, the strong remembrance of the victory of Jesus and the power of Christ to bring hope from despair and confidence that God’s loving purposes for God’s creation will overcome the destructive power of evil and death.

As I read the lections this week, it called to mind a passage from Paul Knitter’s recent book, “Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian.” Knitter is a Roman Catholic theologian who has transcended the denominational divides and now teaches at Union Seminary in New York City. His book describes his own spiritual journey and its struggles to make sense out of what are considered the basics of Christian faith and practice, things such as prayer and the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist, and figuring out what the Easter event was all about.

If you read the lections assigned this week and then the passage below, it may bring greater clarity to your own understanding of Easter’s power. At least I found it very helpful. Knitter writes:

‘When Jesus’ disciples experienced the risen Christ-Spirit, they were experiencing something real, something that could not be reduced to ‘just a feeling.’ The conviction that he was alive for them and in them was not the result of subjective auto-suggestion of hallucination or stubborn ‘let’s-believe-anyway.’ Faith in the resurrected Jesus was brought about by something other than, or more than, the disciples’ willpower or emotions. They encountered this Christ-Spirit; they felt its presence and power in the midst of their gatherings and in their individual lives. These encounters, as some theologians suggest, most likely took place in essentially the same ways that they continue to take place today: when the disciples did what Jesus told them to do and gathered together to retell his story and break bread. There was a ‘real presence’ — and that means a real, spiritually tangible presence in their physical lives — of Jesus in their midst. Whatever really happened, what is most important, is that the Christ-Spirit is really alive and well and continuing ‘to do his thing’ in the lives and bodies of his followers.”

My commentary suggests that two responses to the experience of Easter and the risen Christ-Spirit stand out. One is the frequency that our assigned lections speak about public worship. Read them and you’ll find mention of baptism, songs of thanksgiving, communion — all of them responses to people who have been touched by this same Christ-Spirit that Knitter testifies to in the above passage. The power of the event inspires praise and thanksgiving.

The other response the Easter event evokes is changed and transformed lives. In I Peter 1 the resurrection creates a new orientation to life, often initiated in baptism and one that leads to a new orientation of changed values and an inner personal growth marked by a relentless search for truth which is characterized by a selfless love that is both personal and social.

Worship and transformed lives mark the authentic responses to Easter. We, at Immanuel Church, are fortunate indeed in the quality of our worship experience, the nurture offered one another, and in the witness that members and friends manifest in their commitment to the mission of caring for the needs and hurts of our world, both nearby and far away.

Easter is not a single day. It is a life-changing experience. Christ is risen indeed!

Ralph Ahlberg

Second Sunday of Easter, May 1, 2011

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Acts 2: 14a, 22-32, Psalm 16, I Peter 1: 3-9 and John 20: 19-31

James Carroll, in his newspaper column the Monday following Easter Sunday, pictures a “what if?” What if a surveillance camera were placed at the tomb where Jesus was laid out or in the upper room following his crucifixion. What would the videotape disclose? The decomposition of a corpse suddenly halted with a chest all at once heaving with breath? The figure of Jesus coming through the wall of the Upper Room? Carroll answers his own questions, declaring “of course not because, he continues, “the resurrection of Jesus is addressed not to a machine but to the eyes of faith.”

In our gospel lection for this week, the author of John has Jesus say to Thomas, “Do not doubt but believe” (20:26b). What we celebrate especially during the season of Easter is not only a resurrection that happened in the minds and hearts of Jesus’ followers a little more than two thousand years ago, but faith in the possibility of resurrection happening now. Resurrection happens whenever women and men have the faith to choose life and not to give in to the threat of death. It happens when they continue to hope because they believe in a meaningful creation and in the power of love at the very heart of the creation.

Imagine what life would be like without hope. Without hope, something within us dies, because what we hope for determines the vitality of our lives now and in the future. Psychiatrists tell us that the past shapes our psyches, but we’re also learning that it is hope that drives us on. It’s the pull of the future more than the pressure of the past that gives us the power to achieve and change and grow. It’s the undiscovered and inexperienced, the unresolved, unexplained and untamed that pulls us on to the next challenge, the next adventure, the next day.

If it is true that hope does all this, then it also seems true that there’s no sickness worse than the sickness of hopelessness. All too often what creates the fear and anxiety we experience is the suspicion that there is very little we can do to effect either our own situation or the many problems that cause so much suffering.

About sixty years ago, a Christian pastor and theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis for his efforts to resist Hitler. He understood that the pious escapism he experienced among many of his Christian contemporaries, who were wrapped up in a kind of apocalyptic complacency was terribly misguided. In awaiting a rapture or second coming and a judgment separating the “saved” from the “unsaved” they were surrendering responsibility for the future. To that kind of thinking Bonhoeffer wrote that it may be a day of judgment will happen tomorrow. In that case, he continued, we’ll stop working for justice and a better future, but not before.

What Bonhoeffer bore witness to with his very life was his determination to give himself on behalf of a better future for his nation and for those he loved. His faith in God and in God’s loving purposes made that possible.

In the concluding statement of Jesus in this week’s lection, (20:29) he doesn’t belittle the experience of Thomas in his doubts. Instead he anticipates the future by pronouncing a blessing on those who believe even though they haven’t had the confirming and personal experience that Thomas has had.

Harvey Cox puts it well in his latest book, “The Future of Faith” by writing about the Easter event in this way:

“For the early Christians, the reality of ‘Christ’ included, but was not exhausted by the historical Jesus. The cause Jesus espoused, his confrontation with the power wielders, his vision of the coming era of shalom — all these elements constituted his life. They made him who he was.

“The stories of the Resurrection, as hard as they are for modern ears to comprehend, mean that the life Jesus lived and the project he pursued (the Kingdom of God) did not perish at the crucifixion, but continued in the lives of those who carried on what he had begun.” (Pgs.51-51)

Perhaps, in part, that’s what Thomas and Jesus teach us in our lection from John’s gospel this week.

Ralph Ahlberg

Easter, April 24, 2011

Lessons designated by the Common Lectionary include: Acts 10: 34-43, Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24, Colossians 3: 1-4 and John 20: 1-18

The theme that Easter emphasizes is the reality of evil and death and the power of God to overcome this greatest of all enemies. Yet we in our contemporary western world, pretty much the products of scientific rationalism, are bathed in the fear that death and evil may be our ultimate fate. More than thirty years ago, Ronald Goetz suggested this writing in the magazine “Christian Century” that “we live in a world where death is a final necessity.” His words sound amazingly contemporary in describing us as a people “now engaged in a life-and-death struggle over oil” which is but “the decaying remains of prehistoric, once living matter.” And so he concludes that for many the evidence of history points not to the reality that “death is swallowed up in victory,” but the mocking reversal of such confidence: “Victory is swallowed up in death.”

What then do we do with the conviction of faith that Christ has risen? Christ is alive? Christ’s spirit of goodness and love broods over and comforts God’s people? Perhaps we begin by recognizing that the empirical world doesn’t contain the totality of things. The world that we feel, see and touch isn’t the whole of reality.

Our lections for this week offer us witnesses to the power of God’s goodness and love for God’s creation. If God is love and goodness and if in God we live and move and have our being, then it is reasonable to assert that death and evil do not have the last word. For Christians, the resurrection of Christ is a sign or signal of that truth. In our lection from Psalms, there is a prayer of thanksgiving for the Lord, “my strength and my might,” who “has become my salvation” (118:14). In John, Mary becomes a witness to declare, “I have seen the Lord.” (20:18) And in Peter’s sermon he testifies as a witness to the risen Jesus (10:41-42). Through the centuries there have been strong witnesses to the power of love and goodness to overcome the destructiveness of evil and death. As Goetz put it thirty years ago, “a whole new world opened up” for those who follow Christ as it may for us as we put death and evil in its place through the force and conviction of God’s love and goodness.

In his recently published book entitled, “Allah: A Christian Response,” Miroslav Volf tells a touching story expositing this unconditional goodness and love of God that Easter represents. He was on a long trip with his four-year-old son. In order to help the young child endure the monotony, he told a story based on the legend of King Midas who transformed all he touched into gold. The boy knew about transformation because he’d had much experience transforming toy cars into robotic monsters and then back into cars. In the story a man named Lucius saw a woman transform herself into a bird. Amazed he tries to do the same but accidentally turns himself into a donkey, which Volf described to his son as a “dumb and stubborn little creature, with big shaggy ears, a funny tail, and all.”

Then Volf writes: “My son was quiet for a while, and then he asked me a question I hadn’t expected.’Daddy, would you love me if I became a donkey?’” He continues that he responded to his son “foolishly,” saying he said he didn’t much care for donkeys and that if his son turned into one he’d no longer be his son so he wouldn’t love him but the donkey. Through his rearview mirror he then noticed his son’s tears. The boy couldn’t bear the thought that his father might stop loving him under any circumstances – and he concludes: “My son was yearning to find in my love a reflection of divine love, unchanging no matter what changes we undergo, completely unearned but freely given.”

The event we celebrate this week isn’t about the fate of a good and loving man. Rather it’s about divine goodness and love and the status of that goodness and love in the universe. Easter offers evidence that goodness and love have power, even ultimate power. In the resurrection of Christ we believe that goodness and love overcame evil, fear and hatred. If not, how relevant is goodness and love in our world if they have no purchase on reality, no available power?

In James Russell Lowell’s words:

Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne, -
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.

A blessed and hopeful Easter to all!

Ralph Ahlberg