Matthew 21:1-11 † Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 
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I suspect it is good for us to remember, especially on a day like today, that where we start is not where we end. It’s true of this infection curve that has become so ubiquitous to our Facebook feeds and news casts; it’s true of the limitations we are being asked to put on our movements and interactions; and it is true of this story of a parade and the tightly-packed cheering, chanting, dizzy crowd that may cause you to squirm as much as it does me, alert and militant in our commitment to social distancing and to the prevention of spreading this infection to our neighbors and loved ones.
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But here we are at the beginning of a Holy Week that is going to get even more crowded and super-heated than it already is here among the palms and coats and shouts, before we find ourselves just a week from now amidst the quiet of dawn and a garden and a tomb that is empty of even its one quarantined resident.

Acts 11:1-18 † Psalm 148 † Revelation 21:1-6 † John 13:31-35

According to local legend, the largest octopus in the world lives below the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. ​

Some say it’s a 600-pound creature, once named King Octopus by The News Tribune.[i] Others say it lives among the ruins of Galloping Gertie, the wreckage of the bridge that collapsed during the November 7th, 1940 storm into the white-capped waters of the Puget Sound.

Douglass Brown was 15 when he saw a giant tentacle emerge from Puget Sound. He was walking along the beach with a girl he wanted to impress when he saw this arm come out of the water.

“It was 10, 15 feet in the air,” he told a reporter for KUOW. “It looked like an octopus or something like that, and I just took off running.”[iii]

Not surprisingly, there is no report on how the relationship fared after that fateful day.
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“They try to scare you,” says commercial diver Kerry Donahue of these big octopi. “Their big defense mechanism [is that] they get bigger than you are.” The first time it happened to Donahue, it terrified him. “Because your radio is to the surface,” he told the reporter, “you take a lot of flak for screaming like a 2-year-old when you run into an octopus.”

They can also get small, though. National Geographic set up a tank and shot a video to demonstrate how malleable these creatures are.[iv]

Acts 5:27-32 † Psalm 118:14-29 † Revelation 1:4-8 † John 20:19-31

From the very beginning of the Christian church new disciples called catechumens were prepared during Lent for their baptism at Easter. ​

Catechumens were paired with sponsors and invited to a time of inquiry—learning, reflection and discernment within the church—because this move toward baptism was understood to be a radical move toward a new way of living in the world that required understanding and careful intention. ​

If you haven’t already, you may want to get to know these faces. These are neighbors of ours, young Americans predominantly from the northwest, with others scattered throughout the country. They range in age from 10 years-old to their mid-twenties. And they are suing the federal government for knowingly causing climate change and violating their constitutional rights. They are litigants of the youth climate lawsuit known as Juliana v. United States.

Their complaint asserts that, through the government’s affirmative actions that cause climate change, it has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.

The constitutional climate lawsuit was originally filed in Oregon in 2015 and has been making its way through the court system. The expectation is that the lawsuit will finally go to trial late this year, although that could change given the considerable resistance it has received from the federal government and corporate interests throughout the process.​

Today's Readings:
Jeremiah 31:1-6  •  Colossians 3:1-4   •  John 20:1-18

Have you ever gotten back something that you thought you had lost? Something of great value? Perhaps even something of absolute value? If you have, perhaps you can imagine what Mary may have felt when she finally realized that this one she supposed was the gardener was Jesus standing before her. When he spoke her name and she realized this was her teacher, the one she loved, the one whose feet she had washed with her hair and perfume and her tears, the one who had given her back her brother’s life, the one whose body she had been looking for all morning long in that garden, Mary realized she had been given back to her what was most precious. She had been given back her life.

I think I can imagine something of what she’s experienced in John’s story. I’ve seen it recently, I think, something of the joy and astonishment and surprise and shudder I think she felt when she spoke that one word Rabbouni, teacher, and wrapped her arms around perhaps the only one in all the world who felt safe to her. I think I can imagine, because I’ve seen the tell-tale signs in the sobs of a grizzly, tough old-bird of a man who nearly lost his life and remembers next to nothing of the many weeks a machine breathed for him as his body slowly recovered from a massive trauma.