Welcome to Holy Textures, Year B, Season of Easter

   

Holy Textures is a spot for my musings on the various Biblical texts that come our way through the Revised Common Lectionary.

My goal is to provide timely, short, easy to use and thought-provoking background commentary for your sermon or bible study preparation.

Year B - Season of Easter - 2021

This has been a year of pandemic, climate, economic, and political disruptions. Among other things, it has revealed deep-seated inequalities that have made plain for all to see that the old "normal" is deeply unfair and unsustainable for too many human and non-human lives.

Easter provides a whole season to reflect on the Good News that the oppressive political system that executed Jesus is not the only game in town. The proclamation, "He is risen!" is not just the celebration that the individual person of Jesus is risen. We are celebrating that everything Jesus stood for is risen. Is undefeated. Is the true and trustworthy. His struggle is now our struggle. His story is now our story. How do we want to write our chapter of the life of Jesus?

As usual with the Season of Easter, we get to spend time with the Gospel of John. I like to think of John as like a good day at the spa: Soaking in the swirling eddies and quiet back pools of his repetitive, non-sequitur, images and stories. John wants us to really GET the life that is Jesus. What could be more refreshing than that?

David Ewart
Permission is granted for non-profit use of these materials.
Acknowledgement in oral presentations is not required.
Otherwise, please acknowledge source as, "David Ewart, www.holytextures.com."

 

He has been raised!

Easter Vigil
April 3, 2021
Mark 16:1-8 
"It is women who witness the abject humiliation, degradation and torture of Jesus on the cross. It is women who hear him cry, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" It is women who witness his death. It is women who follow and witness where his body is placed. And so, fittingly, it is women who are the first witnesses of the empty tomb, and the first to receive the good news: He is risen!"

 

But Mary stayed weeping outside the empty tomb

Easter Day
April 4, 2021
John 20:1-18, Alternate Reading A 
"As the Word descended from the Father and became flesh at the start of John's Gospel, Mary is experiencing the reverse process - of the flesh becoming Word."

Mark 16:1-8, Alternate Reading B 
"It is women who witness the abject humiliation, degradation and torture of Jesus on the cross. It is women who hear him cry, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" It is women who witness his death. It is women who follow and witness where his body is placed. And so, fittingly, it is women who are the first witnesses of the empty tomb, and the first to receive the good news: He is risen!"

 

Jesus himself came near and went with them

Easter Evening
April 4, 2021
Luke 24:13-49  
"The details reported in Luke make it very clear that it was the same Jesus who was crucified who is now resurrected. And they are not seeing a ghost. However, Jesus-who-died-on-the-cross-and-is-now-resurrected has not come back simply to take up his old job. He now says: Over to you."

 

Reach out your hand and put it in my side

Easter 2
April 11, 2021
John 20:19-31 
"John doesn't care what we see with our eyeballs. He wants us to SEE with our inner eye who Jesus really is. That is why he has written these signs for us. That in SEEing, we might believe; and in believing, we might have the life that is in Jesus."  

 

They were still disbelieving. He asked, "Have you anything to eat?"

Easter 3
April 18, 2021
Luke 24:36b-48 
"However, the Jesus-who-died-on-the-cross-and-has-been-raised has not come back simply to take up his old job. In effect the now-resurrected-Jesus says, 'Over to you.'"

 

I am the good shepherd

Easter 4
April 25, 2021
John 10:11-18 
"Are you mourning today? Are you spiritually spent today? Are you afraid today? Is death nearby today? David and Jesus are here today inviting us to enlarge our frame and hold our grief, exhaustion and fear in a larger, deeper reality: God provides and guides and protects and restores."

 

I am the vine. You are the branches.

Easter 5
May 2, 2021
John 15:1-8 
"When we love one another as Jesus loves us, we first learn from Jesus what love is. And having experienced being loved by Jesus – had that love heal, restore and renew the loving that was already in us – we then love others the same way."

 

Abide in my love.

Easter 6
May 9, 2021
John 15:9-17 
"So as we look around church on any given Sunday, we may see people that we know and like, know and don't like, or don't know at all. Whatever. Jesus is commanding us to regard each other as a friend, so that we might bear fruit, fruit that endures."

 

Lifting his hands, he blessed them

Ascension Day
May 13, 2021
Luke 24:44-53 
"And as if to emphasize that this blessing of his disciples has not been finished - is still on-going - Luke tells us that: While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. (Luke 24:51) Might it not be that even in heaven Jesus-now-resurrected is still blessing his disciples?"

 

 

 

As you have sent me into the world, so I send them

Easter 7
May 16, 2021
John 17:6-19 
"Whenever we are offered a blessing in the Bible, we might be tempted to run and hide - because a blessing never comes without a God-sized mission. And God-sized missions never come without a cost."

 

When the Spirit of truth comes ...

Pentecost Sunday
May 23, 2021
Acts 2:1-21  
"We might all hear the same words - each in our own language - but we will not all hear and understand exactly the same meaning. The problem with life, and faith, and following Jesus is always: What does this mean?"

 
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
"Whatever else we may want to say on this day of Pentecost about the Spirit, it is important to notice that Jesus always refers to the Spirit as the Spirit of truth. And in John truth is always the way, the life, the light, the joy, the friendship." 

 

2021 Key Liturgical Dates