FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE Volume 67 Number 5
MAY 2017
The Episcopal Church of Saint Michael & All Angels Pacific View Drive at Marguerite
Corona del Mar
California 92625
949.644.0463
stmikescdm.ladiocese.org
...From the Desk of the Rector
BELOVEDS IN CHRIST -
SAVE THE DATE JUNE 4, 2017
T
hese are the “Great Fifty Days”! The Easter Season is the oldest in our Christian Calendar: it encompasses the amazing events of Christ’s resurrection and ascension and the coming of God the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. (You will note that it has ten days more than Lent.) Easter Season challenges us to be Easter people. What does being Easter people mean? In “Surprised by Hope” (page 209) The Rt. Rev’d Tom Wright, the retired Bishop of Durham, writes: “God’s new world of justice and joy, of hope for the whole earth, was launched when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning. ...He calls his followers to live in him and by the power of his Spirit to be new-creation people here and now, bringing signs and symbols of the kingdom to birth on earth as in heaven.” This seems to me to be what “being Easter people” means. What does “resurrection” mean? To witness to belief in “resurrection” as we do at the end of the creeds (“the resurrection of the dead” as we say in The Nicene Creed – BCP 359, and “the resurrection of the body” as we say in The Apostles Creed – BCP 96 and 120) is a follow-through to having said “I believe in God...” at their beginning. To confess faith in “resurrection” is not to talk about something natural in human beings, but to talk about the first thing – trust in God. When Christians talk about “resurrection” we do not mean: (a) that God reanimated the cells of the dead body of the crucified Jesus. God will not have to go hunting for our bones or ashes and reconstitute our bodies. Paul, the earliest writer on the resurrection, spoke of a “spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44). Something new was and is being worked in resurrection. (b) “Resurrection” does not mean that our immortal souls live on. Rivers of ink have been spilled debating the difference between immortality and resurrection as God works it. Immortality is a pale, comfortless, vague affirmation compared to the resurrection of Christ -- and us. (c) “Resurrection” does not mean the same thing as the Bible stories in which two widows’ sons and two sisters’ brother are brought back to life ...only to die again. “Resurrection” means that Christ dies no more, that “death will be no more” (Rev. 21:3); for us, it means something new and unending. (d) Christ’s resurrection was not a mere psychological event to the disciples, although their experience of the risen Christ utterly changed their lives. They had all deserted him in his dying -- only to later proclaim him at the risk of death. The empty tomb signals an event which Jesus confirmed in his postresurrection appearings.
PENTECOST 50TH ANIVERSARY OF THE PARISH PETER HAYNES’ RETIREMENT CELEBRATION LUNCHEON FOLLOWS 9 AM WORSHIP
READ ABOUT OUR 50 YEARS
Our parish history, “A Celebration of 50 Years,” is available for $15 from Lulu Press bit.ly/SMAAhistory. Twenty percent of the purchase price supports our parish budget. 51 pages of text, color photographs, and historical tables.
Continued on page 3 BUILDING OUR F AITH: L OVING CHRIST AND SER VING OUR COMMUNITY FAITH: LO SERVING