It's All About The Bunny!

Driving down Teasley Lane in Denton, Texas last week, a church bulletin board invited me to Church to celebrate Easter. It read, "Come have breakfast with the Bunny." Maybe I'm old fashioned or maybe I respect Christ Jesus...I would never go to church on this celebration of the resurrection of Jesus to have breakfast with the Bunny. Will the religious nonsense ever stop? Being a Christian in our day and age apparently is little more than an old side-show wowing a few customers. I can remember when I was first born again to this living hope in Christ when I saw a church that was inviting people to come see a samurai chop a watermelon in half off the pastor's belly. A youth pastor invited kids to watch him jump from a railroad trestle into the Ohio River while swallowing a goldfish. I feel sick. The loss of respect for the reality of the person of God in Christ is appalling. While God is in the business of washing away sins through the death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus, our modern churches are in the business of washing away any hope of true forgiveness by offering a Christ who is no more powerful than a cartoon Bunny on Easter morning. O that men and women who name the name of Christ would return to the greatest truth ever uttered among men that Jesus is both Lord and Christ reconciling the world to God. We must stop putting up with such senseless religious frivolity. One cannot entrap a man into Christianity by dangling a Bunny on a stick and then sneaking up behind him with the gospel. A person must know and understand with their mind before they can return and be healed of their appalling stroke of death. I speak to Christians. Those outside the church God will judge. Those inside, we confront one another. Remember the words of this hymn? Behold the Man upon a cross, My sin upon His shoulders. Ashamed I hear my mocking voice, Call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held Him there Until it was accomplished His dying breath has brought me life I know that it is finished. I will not boast in anything No gifts, no power, no wisdom But I will boast in Jesus Christ His death and Resurrection. Should we not opt for glorifying the eternal Son of God? I call upon all who read to put away childish things and return to our eternal profession cast throughout the Christian centuries in the eternal Scriptures and reflected in substantial documents produced by godly followers of our Lord. Col 1:19-23 - For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. The Nicene Creed - I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

Morning Prayer from Isaiah 6

O Lord Adonai, You alone sit exalted in ineffable majesty. When you are silent, I tremble, for your power is overwhelming. You, Creator and Judge, harden the hearts of men. You alone are truly sovereign and thrice holy. You live in utter distinction from all those whom you have created. Your eyes are too pure to behold iniquity and in no wise pardon the guilty. My soul, O my Creator, is in the palm of your hand. In your unspeakable exaltation, in the brilliance of your purity and in the heat of your raging fire I cover my face and fly to your beloved Son in whom you are well pleased and whose blood speaks kindly for me. I praise Thy name, Lord, Adonai. O holy and sovereign master, you alone are glorious.

King Witlaf and New Years Eve

For many the merry memento of Christmas is nullified quickly by the renewed new year subscription that occurs each January 1. Yes, time to make merry and forget all that background music about "second birth" and "peace on earth good will to man." Time's a wastin'...the ball's a droppin'...on to a new year. For me, however, I leave new year revelry to King Witlaf's men. When Christ saved me, my passion for alcohol passed away with my new passion for Jesus Christ, His kingdom and His righteousness.

Witlaf, a king of the Saxons, Ere yet his last he breathed, To the merry monks of Croyland His drinking horn bequeathed, that, whenever they sat at their revels, And drank from the golden bowl, They might remember the donor, And breathe a prayer for his soul.

So sat they once at Christmas, And bade the goblet pass; In their beards the red wine glistened like dew-drops in the grass. They drank to the soul of Witlaf, they drank to Christ the Lord, and to each of the Twelve Apostles, who had preached his holy word.

They drank to the Saints and Martyrs of the dismal days of yore, and as soon as the horn was empty they remembered one Saint more. And the reader droned from the pulpit like the murmur of many bees, the legend of good Saint Guthlac, And Saint Basil's homilies; till the great bells of the convent, from their prison in the tower, Guthlac and Bartholomaeus, proclaimed the midnight hour.

And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney, and the Abbot bowed his head, and the flamelets flapped and flickered, but the Abbot was stark and dead. Yet still in his pallid fingers he clutched the golden bowl, in which, like a pearl dissolving, had sunk and dissolved his soul. But not for this their revels the jovial monks forbore, for they cried, "Fill high the goblet! We must drink to one Saint more!"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out From the Rising of the Sun

Out from the rising of the sun, O’er tracts of desert wild, The Magi came on journey lone, To seek the heaven-born child; The star o’erhead their footsteps led, And hope their way beguiled.

They bore Him costly gifts of gold, And myrrh and spices sweet: “For He is King,” they had been told, Whom they would meekly greet; And they would go, in reverence low, And worship at His feet.

O humble Child, in manger laid! The wise beheld Thee there, And reverently their homage paid, And gave their offerings rare. Their quest was found, and to the ground They bowed the head in prayer.

O Jesu, who in manger lay, The Son of God most high, Let me my humble homage pay, And bring my offerings nigh, And humbly greet Thee at Thy feet, And low in worship lie.

εὐφράνθητι Ἱερουσαλὴμ

From St. Pauli to St. Paul

Wonder of wonders; Miracle of miracles. A few words from Treadwell Walden (1896) reminded me of my conversion from the passions of this world to this Christ who pursued me into the liberty of His almighty presence and service.

St. Paul says, " I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision; but showed unto them that they should Take upon them a New Mind and turn to God, and do works worthy of the Metanoia."

When the scales had fallen from his eyes his Mind "beheld no other vision than of Christ. He that had then met him was thenceforth ever before him. The narrow, prejudiced, sectarian Pharisee was "changed " into an apostle of Christianity so magnificent, so enlightened, so large and liberal in his conception of it, that none of his new brethren could keep pace with him, as even all present ecclesiasticism is in danger of falling behind him.

All the marks of the Metanoia are here:

It was the Mind changed through circumstance ; for when he beheld the supernatural presence of the Lord, as actually risen from the dead, the whole vision of his error burst upon him.

It was the Mind changed in understanding ; for he spent three years of solitude in Arabia, receiving the fullest indoctrination from Christ.

It was the Mind changed by evolution; for, with the root of the matter in him, he now grasped entirely the transcendent change of situation, and came forth able, above all others, to reconcile the old economy with the new, to proclaim the advanced principles of the Gospel with a profundity of spiritual discernment which no one should ever exceed, and to be the most powerful advocate Christianity should ever know.

It was the Mind changed in disposition; for, from the fierce, proud, intolerant, self-sufficient son of the law, he became the patient, humble, compassionate, affectionate servant of Christ, " all things to all men."

It was the Mind changed by development; for the same capacity for faith, for zeal, for force and energy, for religious devotion, was now carried over and enlarged in the interest of a cause as new and as vast as the whole just revealed purpose of God in man.

It was the Mind changed by revolution; for it was a revolt from Judaism in its narrow rabbinical form, a total break with the artificial, superstitious, selfish system under which he had been born and bred, and a leap into the large spiritual consciousness of Christ Himself.

It was the Mind changed before repentance set in, which repentance accompanied, which repentance intensified, which repentance helped to fill with a due apprehension of the cross, but of the extent of whose growth in its change, of the extent of whose apprehension of his Lord, the word "repentance" in its fullest theological acceptation could never follow, compass, or describe. Nothing less than the word "Metanoia"—or some English expression that shall be the full equivalent of the word—can compass or describe it. For what was its most conspicuous, foremost feature ? A profoundly illuminated intelligence followed by a nature as profoundly penetrated. The "spiritual man" was there; the "natural man" was there no longer.

The Great Meaning of Metanoia, Treadwell Walden.

Photo Credit: 'Br Lawrence Lew, O.P