risen, day 3

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:
Power of Love, shining through the risen Jesus, radiantly shine in the dark places of my pain.  Let their power to infect me be broken and drawn into your heart. (Feed My Shepherds by Flora Slosson Wuellner)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 80

Scripture for the Day: Luke 24:1-12

Reading for Reflection:

There was one resurrection; there are four narratives of it.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell the story, each in his own way.  Each narrative is distinct and has its own character.  When the four accounts are absorbed into the imagination, they develop rich melodies, harmonies, counterpoint.  The four voices become a resurrection quartet.

     Yet many people never hear the music.  The reason, I think, is that the apologetic style for years has been to “harmonize” the four resurrection stories.  But it never turns out to be harmonization.  Instead of listening to their distinctive bass, tenor, alto, and soprano voices, we have tried to make the evangelists sing the same tune.  Differences and variations in the resurrection narratives are denied, affirmed, doubted, and “interpreted.”

     There is a better way.  Since we have four accounts that supplement one another, we can be encouraged to celebrate each one as it is, and to magnify the features that make it distinct from the others.  Instead of melting them down into an ingot of doctrine, we can burnish the features that individualize them.

     When we do that, our imagination expands, and the resurrection acquires the sharp features and hard surfaces of real life.  Through the artistry of the four evangelists, the particularity and detail of local history, the kind we ourselves live in, becomes vivid. (Subversive Spirituality by Eugene Peterson)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Arise, My Soul, Arise

Arise, my soul, arise,
Shake off thy guilty fears:
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the Throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on his hands.

He ever lives above,
For me to intercede,
His all-redeeming love,
His precious blood to plead;
His blood atoned for ev'ry race,
And sprinkles now the throne of grace.

Five bleeding wounds he bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me;
Forgive him, O forgive, they cry,
Nor let that ransomed sinner die!

My God is reconciled;
His pard'ning voice I hear;
He owns me for his child,
I can no longer fear;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And "Father, Abba, Father!" cry.


Closing Prayer:

O God, who by your One and only Son has overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life; grant, we pray, that those who have been redeemed by his passion may rejoice in his resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.  Amen.

                                                                ~Gelasian Sacramentary