No Need of Sun

    "The holy city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it
        for the glory of God gave it light,
        and its lamp was the Lamb."
                              Revelation 21:23

 "Shine your love on us each dawn,
   and gladden all our days....
   Let your loveliness shine on us."
                            Psalm 90:14,17

A New Earth

A plum tree, one of the earliest fruit trees to blossom in our neighborhood.
Revelation 21:1-7 is certainly my favorite passage in the last book of the Bible and one of my favorites in the whole New Testament.  When I was active as a pastor, it was often a passage that I used for funerals as a comforting promise of the afterlife, but I think it is an exciting proclamation of what is also happening already.
As we hear these passages from Revelation on the Sundays of Easter, the light of the Resurrection adds new meaning to them.  Jesus has risen into this new heaven and new earth and makes it accessible to us right here and now.  By becoming human, and even more so by rising into God, Jesus is himself the wedding of humanity and divinity.
Here in the Revelation passage the union of God's people with God is compared to "a bride adorned to meet her husband."  In this new heaven and new earth the home of God is now with us.  Repeating from last Sunday's passage, from much earlier in Revelation, the visionary tells us that God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and lead us to the springs of life-giving water.  "There will be no more death or mourning, no more crying out or pain....And the One who was seated on the throne said, 'See, I make all things new.'"
Teilhard de Chardin sees our whole universe evolving into this newness, into the Risen Christ.  He says, "By virtue of creation and even more of the incarnation, there is nothing profane for those who know how to see."

Love One Another

 

This very tight little bunch of daffodils has volunteered in a spot down by the lake for several years.  They grow very close to the ground, I guess to guard against the three mornings below freezing that we've just had.
John 13:31-35 is part of the long sort of sermon that Jesus gives his disciples at the Last Supper.  Jesus commands, "Love one another as I have loved you."  He adds that that is how people will know that we are his disciples.  I wonder how often that is evident in our lives.  In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, some people are finding it hard to love these two brothers.
A reporter mentioned that on the social networks some Catholics are praying for the younger brother  because he might have been strongly influenced by his older brother.  Some may have said that, but we really pray for people not on the chance that they might deserve our prayer.  We pray for them whether they deserve it or not.
If we obey Jesus' command, we love people, not because of who they are, but because of who we are.  Jesus says to love the way he does and that's the way he loves.  His love is unconditional, free, unearned.  In his life he loved everybody, even the unlovely and the unloved.  He didn't hesitate, wondering if they might respond.  He just loved them.
In this passage from John, Jesus says that he's not going to be around much longer.  It's up to us now to take up his job of  loving everybody.  We are not left to our own resources.  God is love.  In this Spirit of Love we live and move and have our being.  It is Love who lives around us and within us.  To love as Jesus loves we need only let Jesus within share with us his unearned way of loving.  That means we love those who do evil, even our enemies, as Jesus commands in another place.  It's not easy, but it works.

Boston?

                                          

Yesterday's lovely dawn was a promise that this darkness would not last.
I was dismayed at the amount of time I spent watching the events in Boston unfold on television.  I am not accustomed to watching TV in the daytime, nor much past eleven at night.  But I became addicted to this developing story.
I was haunted by the meanness of the attack on the Marathon.  I wondered who could so deliberately intend that the victims would not run again.  I imagined some envious would-be athlete.  I caught myself feeling worse for the maimed than for the dead.
When the pictures of the bombers showed up on the screen, that's when I became fixated on the story.  Killing the policeman and yet sparing the man whose car they hijacked made their motivation more of a mystery. 
Then we saw the older brother flat on the ground.  Was he dead?  Was he surrendering?  And the younger one gone where?  It was becoming clear that this show was not going to wrap up at the top of the hour.  Maybe the next hour.  I found myself asking God to touch his heart and bring him to surrender.  No more killing, please.
All citizens' having to lock themselves in their homes, the thousands of police,  the long, long hours of searching and risking being blown up, the contradictory interviews, and finally a kid in a boat.
Two things struck me.  The role played by smart phones in getting pictures of the bombers.  I really dislike how these phones have destroyed human interaction, but here they were doing a great service.  Then the fact that calling off the search and letting people leave their homes allowed a man to go  into his back yard where he saw blood on his boat.
During all of this I was surprised that I remained very aware of the same God in me and in the threatened citizens and in the brave police and in the hunted man.

Springs of Life-giving Water

The spring rains made this creek look especially healthy.  I was born in a house beside this creek, just a little further downstream from where I took this picture.
When I was little, my cousins and I took a tin cup and some peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches that we had made and hiked up alongside a stream that feeds this creek.  That stream also fed the town reservoir.  We figured that meant the water in that stream was safe to drink, so above the reservoir we somehow got out on a big rock in the middle of the stream and sat down and ate our cracker sandwiches and dipped our tin cup into the stream and drank the cold, clear water.  I remember that it was April because we were afraid that our parents might find out that we had sat on a rock.  We were forbidden to sit on the ground in a month with an "r" in it.
Believe it or not, that pleasant memory came back to me out of the combination of this picture and my prayer reflection this morning on Apocalypse 7:14-17, which speaks of "springs of life-giving water."  The passage promises an idyllic life where God will provide shelter and food and water and will protect us from sunburn and even wipe away every tear from our eyes.  In a strange reversal, the Lamb will shepherd us and lead us to springs of life-giving water.  Both here and hereafter.

I know my sheep

It looks like this pair of tree swallows is now in control of the bluebird house.  I can't be sure because they all look alike.  How do they tell each other apart?
Many years ago I became friends with a couple from Korea.  After we knew each other for several years, the wife one day asked me, "How do you tell each other apart?  You all look alike to us."  I laughed and told her that they all look alike to us as well.  It's only after I got to know them, that I could tell them apart from other Koreans.
Sheep all look alike to me, but I read that each shepherd in the time of Jesus could tell his sheep apart, maybe even giving them names.  That may still be true of a man who has a small number of sheep. 
We are told that in the time of Jesus the sheep recognized their shepherd's voice and came to him when he called them.  He did not herd them from behind as we might see large flocks today.  They followed him because they knew his voice.
In John 10:27 Jesus says, "My sheep hear my voice.  I know them, and they follow me."  In  this passage he is distinguishing his followers from those who do not believe in him.  So they not only recognize his voice but they believe what he says.  They really hear him.
I find it very heartwarming that Jesus knows us, not only as his flock, but as each individual member of his flock.  In last week's Gospel he referred to us as his "dear little sheep."  We certainly relate to Jesus as members of the Church, but we remain individuals whom he knows intimately and cares for lovingly.  Why wouldn't we follow him!

The Birds of Spring

This duck is in the top of one of the many 4 and 5 foot high pines that surround my yard.   Her right leg is badly damaged.  She has a hard time walking.  She seems to swim and fly fine.  Each year for several years now she has made her nest in one of these short trees.  Her faithful mate is always watching out for her.  Saturday he floated patiently just off shore while she tried out five trees, flying from one to the other.  This was the fifth.  Still not satisfied she flew down to her mate in the lake and they swam off together.  I haven't seen them since, so maybe they have found something more suitable.  I wish I could think of some duck house I could have built for them. 
I did have a friend build a bluebird house for my yard about ten years ago.  The first year two beautiful bluebirds made their home there.  The second spring two tree swallows enlarged the entrance a little and moved in before the bluebirds returned.  Tree swallows are gorgeous.  Unlike their dingy barn swallow cousins, they have a bright, metallic blue back and a pure white chest.  Like their cousins, they are very aggressive.  When the bluebirds arrived and tried to take over the tree swallows chased them off.
Every year since, there has been a battle.  The bluebirds won only once.  In early March this year two tree swallows arrived, stayed a day and left.  Two bluebirds moved in.  Three days later the tree swallows came back.  Irate to find the house occupied, they started trying to intimidate the bluebirds.  The tree swallows fly up high and then swoop down towards the male bluebird sitting on top of the house, just missing him each time.   When that didn't work they went away.  They were soon back with two other tree swallows and continued their intimidation.  The bluebirds moved out.  Then the four tree swallows began fighting over the house.  Word got out.  By Saturday there were at least ten tree swallows swooping and diving, trying to get possession of the house.  I thought one pair won, but yesterday and today the house seems to be empty. 
Robins, starlings, a cardinal, and a cute pair of house finches add to my bird watching pleasure.