First Monday of Eastertide

4/13/2020

Monday after Easter

Introductory Note: This might come as a surprise to some, (it was to me!), but Easter is not only a Sunday celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, but it is also a season of such celebration called Eastertide. Eastertide celebration continues for the next fifty days until the Day of Pentecost, Sunday, May 31. So, let the festivities continue!

During this season of celebration, we remember and rejoice as Easter people. “We are Easter people,” wrote Pope Saint John Paul II, “and Hallelujah is our song.” Therefore, we are not despairing people, but full of Hope. We are not cynical people, but full of Faith. We are not self-centered people, we are full of Love for others.

Christians are Resurrection Easter People and this is a season for singing “Hallelujah!” – come what may.

For a number of meditations, we’ll reflect on the fruit of the Spirit – Love, Joy, Peace, etc. – as befits Easter people at Eastertide, for we have risen from death to life, in the death and resurrection of our glorious and risen Lord, Jesus Christ.

Today is, therefore, about Love.

Epistle Reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-7, 13

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Meditation: “A still more excellent way.”

Reflect on the way you live your life. How do you live your life? What is your way? What guides it, explains it, characterizes it? Paul introduces the ‘Love Chapter’ with: “And I will show you a still more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31).

Love is the most excellent way of life. It is the first fruit of the Spirit. It is the first and greatest commandment. It is the chief motive of God, “God so loved the world …” God is love.

But is Love your way? Consider what Paul says of those who do great and, indeed, marvelous things – but without love. They are an offensive noise who for all that are nothing and amount to nothing. They are Shakespeare’s poor fool, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Meditate on love. Ask yourself: Do I love? Is love my way? Is love my motive? Is love my goal? Specifically, am I patient and kind? Am I humble and respectful? Am I gracious and cheerful? Easily pleased and slow to take offence? For Christ’s sake?

And what is the quality and strength of my love? God’s Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it outlasts anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has failed and fallen (JB Phillips).

Is this the nature of your love?

Cloud of Witnesses

“Thus in Jesus' terms we can love our neighbors without necessarily liking them. In fact, liking them may stand in the way of loving them by making us overprotective sentimentalists instead of reasonably honest friends.

“When Jesus talked to the Pharisees, he didn't say, ‘There, there. Everything's going to be alright.’ He said, ‘You brood of vipers! How can you speak good when you are evil!’ And he said that to them because he loved them.

“This does not mean that liking may not be a part of loving, only that it doesn't have to be. Sometimes liking follows on the heels of loving. It is hard to work for somebody's well-being very long without coming in the end to rather like him too.”

– Frederick Buechner

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

– Mother Teresa

“Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies– or else?”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mustard Seed Theology (for small kiddoes)

Note to parents: During Eastertide, we’re going to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, and the new life that He has bought us, as only Easter people can do – with love and joy and hope and merriment!

Introduce the fact that we are now – because of Easter, a different kind of people: Easter People. And the first characteristic of Easter people is: Love.

Easter people love God, they love one another, they love their neighbor, they even love their enemies. Easter people love the way Jesus loves. What did Jesus say love was? How did Jesus love others?

They put others first.

(Now, the idea of putting others first is going to be fairly agreeable to your children in the abstract, as an ideal; and rather disagreeable when practically applied to their siblings, or their peers, in actual daily life. So, here is where you, the parent, are going to have to inject the fun of being Easter People, and lead by happy example.)

Some ideas:

Everybody takes turns washing each other’s feet. (That is right out of John 13, as you know.)

Or, everyone sits close together, on the rug, in a line, where the ones behind give neck rubs to the ones in front. Then after 60 seconds, everyone turns the other way, and vice versa – for 60 seconds. (I say 60 seconds because this can quickly devolve into something more like a wrestling match. But if it does, no big deal. The point is being made.)

Or, everyone does a chore, or a favor, or a kindness to/for another person in the family. Whatever it is should cost something for the one showing love to the other. This is to be something of a sacrifice.

Now, huddle up as a family and discuss what small sacrificial thing you can do – as Jesus’ Easter people – to love someone, (to put another person first), outside of the family: a neighbor, a grandparent, a teacher, a person in your church. (Be careful not to shoot down or dismiss ideas as you brainstorm, especially the contributions of the littlest ones. It goes a long way in the hearts of the littlest people when they see they have a voice that is not only heard but followed. That, too, is love.)

Mustard Seed Truth: Christians are Easter People and they are known by their Love.

Mustard Seed Scripture: John 13:34 “I am giving a new commandment to you —love each other in the same way as I love you.”

Morning Prayer: (from the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi)

Lord, by your grace, make me an instrument today of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;

O Jesus, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying to ourselves that we are born to eternal life.

Amen

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First Monday of Eastertide

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