🦁 Easter 1-5

Readings: Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Genesis 1:1-19; 1 Corinthians 15:35-49. 

Reflection

Good morning. This is Tim. Trouble coming to you from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come to us from Psalm 118 versus one and two and 14 to 24. Genesis chapter one, verses 1 to 19 and first First Corinthians chapter 15 verses 35 to 49. 

Welcome to the Monday After Easter. We now begin in the Episcopal tradition and other liturgical traditions, what is known as the Easter season or Easter time. It is a 50 day celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ prior to Pentecost, when we will go back into ordinary time, which is a 50 day time frame. This is the second longest season in the church and liturgical church year and today's readings come to us from the the first Corinthians and the rich called entitled The Resurrection Body. Now, this is one of the little things in art or faith that people go that we've never seen a resurrected body. There's mean running around. It's Happy Easter Jesus Zombie Day. 

We in our modern culture refer to The Walking Dead. So Jesus was the Walking Dead, which he was not. He was resurrected. And as Paul points out in his letter to the Church of Corinth today, there was there's a physical human body made from dust. Adam. But the last Adam became a life giving spirit. The last Adam he's referring to here is Jesus. And there's a spiritual non-natural. Jesus was resurrected in the spiritual, not in the natural. Is that what we gained from the reading here with Paul? So that makes it all different. And when we talk about Jesus and when he appears to the disciples and the apostles and all the different readings and stories that we have that come out of this, depending on which gospel resurrection you read, Jesus appeared as a gardener. There was a glowing white figure that appeared. 

Jesus didn't reveal himself to the women. Until whom do you seek? As I told you, He says, I am. And oh, here we go. So he revealed himself that way until that point. The women at the tomb hadn't recognized him. 

And we have all these these different stories that come out because these are retellings of what happened. Understand that the Gospels is the gospel of Mark, not the gospel written by Mark, because we know that the Gospels came out somewhere 30, 50 years later. So these probably were not even the original disciples that wrote them. But when they went out, you had churches. So Mark went and talked to people. Matthew went and talked to people. Luke went and talked to people, you know, John, etc. All the different apostles went out and talked to different people. So you wound up with the disciples being considered the Gospels and we have the four canonical gospels. There's also the Gospel of Thomas and some others out there that are not canonical, and some of which weren't even even known at the time the canon was made. 

But they're the teaching. These are the people retelling the teachings. That's why the stories are different, because for Matthew, the tax collector and Luke, the physician, you've got two different experience. They're going to pick out different things. There's there's a lot of overarching things. But again, we're going back to as a physician, Luke points out different things than Matthew does as a tax collector. So, so all the gospels, it's like I'm taking five, four witnesses to an event of different backgrounds and then turn around, Tom, to retell what they saw and that event. You're going you get similarities. You're also going to get differences. So because we we look at things and refer to things based on our experience, what we're taught is important, how we view things, what we were. And we may know, we may have seen one thing and the other people didn't see it. You know, those types of things that go on. But the important part to remember here is in the resurrection of Jesus, we have the New Covenant. The New Covenant is what is important right now, and that is what matters. 

And our New Covenant is to love God with all our hearts, all our minds and all our soul, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus also goes on to say during Maundy Thursday that doing this, you know, when he washes their feet showing, is that he's setting an example for his disciples that they are to be servants, that they are to to humble themselves. There's a difference between being humble and lowering yourself, by the way. There are some folks who believe what he said about law in lowering yourself to the status of a servant. That's not what that's not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus affirmed, You call me Lord and teacher and I am. 

But I'm also doing this. So this is where we get the concept of humility humbling oneself. You still are whatever it is that you are your status, but you do humble works. There's another way of looking at it. You don't make that of yourself. We've all heard the phrase, You ain't all that. That's what we're talking about. Be humble. You can be good. You can be a teacher, You can be wealthy, you can be a leader. But do it with humility. One of the things we talk about in leadership is being a servant leader. The best leaders that I have ever been associated with were those leaders who there was no job that they weren't willing to do. It didn't matter what it was. I remember a specific instance where I had someone who was an appointed and appointed position, so he'd been appointed by apologies. It's called a career executive assignment with the state, and I was the dispatcher. We had a major fire going up in the north end of California, and I was trying to move a lot of fire engines. We were working on a master mutual aid system and this person was in there with us. He was the director of a region that the Pacific region where the fire was and the phone's ringing. 

And he said, no, you do what you're doing. You need we need to get those far. I'll take care. He answered the phones. He didn't have to at his level. You don't answer phone calls. You have you know, someone calls for them. They'll see if they're available, those types of things. This is what Jesus. This is an example of what Jesus talking about is humble yourself. Nothing is too low for you to do. Because if I, your savior, your Lord, your teacher, can wash your feet, you can wash the feet of others. And as I talked about before, this was a very menial task, a very necessary task with a very menial one. So as we start Easter tide here and we're looking at the resurrection and now we have the New covenant with God through the the death and resurrection of Jesus. One thing let's let's look at being humble, being the one who will do what needs to be done. It doesn't matter how, quote, low unquote the job is, but humble ourselves. Amen.