Christ is Risen!

Appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene after resurrection, Alexander Ivanov, 1835 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia!

Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Lo! the Sun’s eclipse is over, Alleluia!
Lo! He sets in blood no more, Alleluia!

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal, Alleluia!
Christ hath burst the gates of hell, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids His rise, Alleluia!
Christ hath opened paradise, Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once He died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

Hail, the Lord of earth and Heaven, Alleluia!
Praise to Thee by both be given, Alleluia!
Thee we greet triumphant now, Alleluia!
Hail, the resurrection, thou, Alleluia!

King of glory, Soul of bliss, Alleluia!
Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, Thy power to prove, Alleluia!
Thus to sing and thus to love, Alleluia!

Hymns of praise then let us sing, Alleluia!
Unto Christ, our heavenly King, Alleluia!
Who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia!
Sinners to redeem and save. Alleluia!

But the pains that He endured, Alleluia!
Our salvation have procured, Alleluia!
Now above the sky He’s King, Alleluia!
Where the angels ever sing. Alleluia!

Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia!
Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!
Who did once upon the cross, Alleluia!
Suffer to redeem our loss. Alleluia!

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A prayer for Easter Day from the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, who through your only-begotton Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord’s resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you an the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

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A couple of Easter Reflections worth reading:

From Alyce M. McKenzie’s post on Patheos “Resurrection: The Ultimate Spoiler Alert”:

Like the women this Easter morning you and I are invited by the angels to put the negative, death dealing, disappointing features of our lives together with Jesus’ prior predictions of resurrection. We are challenged by their question: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” We could flip the question around and it would be just as apt. “Why do you seek death where you have been promised life?”

From John C. Holbert (also on on Patheos), “Go and Tell Everyone!”:

Throughout Mark’s telling of the story of Jesus, again and again persons in the gospel are warned not to say anything of what they have seen, but in typical human fashion they blab it all over the countryside. But finally they are told directly to “tell what they have seen” without restraint, yet they are mute and say nothing at all. A moment’s thought will see the point. If the women did not tell, then someone must and that someone is you and I. The upshot of the raising of Jesus is that the world is now decisively different, because God has announced that the way of Jesus is the way of God, and all must follow Jesus to Galilee and walk in the way he has walked, living a life of justice and compassion and care for self and the world. And we, all of us who have witnessed this truth must tell it and live each day, on all the Mondays that are to come.

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Anyone who might be in New Haven this evening is invited to join the Episcopal Church at Yale and our ecumenical partners from Luther House at Yale for a celebration of Easter this evening at 5PM in Dwight Hall Chapel on Yale’s Old Campus. There will be a dinner after the service, both the service and the dinner are open to all!

Saturday Morning Brunch: Easter Vigil

Today is Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, and this evening churches across the world will celebrate what is called the “Easter Vigil,” a beautiful, candle-lit service marking the arrival of Easter. If you are in New Haven this evening, I invite you to attend the vigil at the Episcopal Church at Yale, done with our ecumenical partners from Luther House at Yale, held at 11PM in Dwight Hall Chapel on Old Campus. To give you a taste of what vigil is all about, below is a series of prayers for Easter Vigil from the book Celtic Daily Prayer.

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This is now the night when first You freed Your people, and led Israel’s children out from slavery in Egypt.
Dry-shod, they walked through the sea.

This is now the night when the pillar of fire destroyed the darkness of sin!

This night, Christians everywhere, washed clean, and free from any blemish, are renewed in hope, and learn to grow together as one.

This night, Jesus our mighty Lord broke the chains of death, and returned to us, undefeated.
He is become our Champion.

What good would life have been to us, had the Son of the Most High not come to redeem us from our helplessness?

The power of this holy night drives away evil and washes guilt away, restores lost innocence, and turns our mourning into joyful dancing.
It humbles the proud of heart, overturns hatred, and quickens us to peace.

Roman Catholic monks of the preparing to light the Christ candle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the joy of this night, Father, receive our offering:
this holy fire, this Easter light.
Let its flame ever-burning break through the darkness of our  times.

Let it be a pillar of fire, leading us forward in Your truth.

May the Sun of Justice which never sets find this flame still burning;
May Christ the Morning Star who came again from the dead find his light brightly burning in our hearts.

In me, Lord, let there be light.

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If you are in New Haven this evening, I invite you to join the Episcopal Church at Yale and our ecumenical partners from Luther House at Yale for an Easter Vigil Service, held at Dwight Hall Chapel on Old Campus at 11PM tonight. All are welcome!

Article Announcement!

The first of two articles about youth ministry I’ve been working on is now up on Provoketive.com!  Check it out, join the discussion, and please share the article with your friends!

Part two is coming soon, stay tuned!

Saturday Morning Brunch (3-23-13)

This weekend I’m in New Hampshire!  The Episcopal Diocese of Massachussetts invited me up to play for a pre-confirmation retreat at the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center.

While I’m away doing music, it seemed fitting to bring back a link from the past.  So here is the official “Camp CD” our band made last summer, free for you to download from NoiseTrade!  Enjoy!

67 Strings: Will You Come and Follow Me?

Travels and Changes

This weekend I’m traveling back up to the lovely Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center to do the music for a Pre-Confirmation Retreat hosted by the Episcopal Diocese of Massachussetts.  Excited to see some good friends there and team up again with a really vibrant and exciting youth ministry!

The past few weeks have been insanely busy for me.  It turns out that job-searching takes a lot of time.  After combining that with my work at ECY, Green’s Farms Church, and as a full-time student at Yale, there hasn’t been a whole lot of time for writing.

Even though I haven’t done a whole lot here on the blog lately, I have been working on a couple of projects elsewhere on the web.

This morning the first of two articles on youth ministry I’ve been working on appears on Provoketive Magazine’s website.  The second part is coming soon, stay tuned!  And please share this far and wide, we’re hoping to drum up some exciting discussion about a very important topic for churches and ministries to intentionally engage in.

I’ve also been doing a bit of web-design for Green’s Farms Church around a special project Senior Minister Jeff Rider is engaged in called “Project Hospitality.”  Check it out, connect with the project on Facebook, and watch for further updates.

Here on the blog I’m hoping to introduce a couple of new “regular features” in the coming weeks (as time permits).

First, beginning soon (though maybe not this weekend, since I’m on the road), I’ll start posting a short, weekly reflection on one of the lectionary texts for the week each Sunday.

Second, as time permits, I’ll be posting on Monday or Tuesday of each week an overview of some major news or political stories of the week that are catching my eye and why I think they are important.

Alongside these more regular “features” I’m working on several original posts that will start appearing on the blog soon!

As always, thanks for reading!

UPDATE:  Due to a technical glitch, the Provoketive Magazine article on youth ministry will be appearing Monday morning.

March Madness!! My Bracket Picks for 2013

For approximately three weeks out of every year, I am actively a sports fan (as opposed to the rest of the year when I am peripherally aware that things are happening in the sporting world and occasionally catch wind of specifics, unless its either an Olympics year or the World Cup is happening, in which case I make some extensions on the time allowed for active sports viewing).

Those three weeks have arrived!

It should of course be obvious that the Memphis Tigers will go all the way in this year’s NCAA Men’s Tournament.  In the bracket I’ve filled out below, I have been informed, my chief mistake is undervaluing Florida.  We’ll see how much that comes back to haunt me…

My bracket for the NCAA 2013 Tournament.

What are your tournament predictions? Who makes it to your final four? Who do you have picked to win it all?

Saturday Morning Brunch (3-15-13): The Election of Pope Francis

“Habemus Papam” – Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., has been elected Pope Francis I (Photo credit: Catholic Church (England and Wales))

The big news this week, of course, is the election of Pope Francis to succeed Benedict XVI.

Here are a couple of resources for getting to know the new Pope, his background, and the controversies that he will face as leader of the world’s 1.2Billion Catholics:

A brief profile of Pope Francis from the BBC.

A pretty good primer on the Jesuit Order (Society of Jesus) from The Daily Beast.

A brief explanation of Liberation Theology from Slate.

An overview of the challenges facing the Roman Catholic Church’s new leader from the BBC.

An editorial at Christianity Today about the importance of the new Pope for global Christianity (with a particular emphasis on the evangelical movement).

Another perspective on the importance of the new Pope for global Christianity, this time an article from Patheos about the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople’s decision to attend the Papal installation (first time that’s happened in nearly a thousand years).

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What are your thoughts on the new Pope and the challenges he faces?  What are your expectations about the future of global Christianity?  What else caught your eye around the web this week?

What are We Going to Do When We Get There? A Homily for Marquand Chapel

Every Wednesday in Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School there is a service of Sung Morning Prayer (currently a setting for Lent) which includes a scripture reading and a short homily.  Today I was asked to give the homily, which you can read below.

The reading for todays service was from Numbers chapter 13: the people of Israel sending spies into the land ahead of them.

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I don’t know about anyone else here today, but I am tired.

I’m tired of temperatures so cold that this poor southern boy is dreaming of getting a surprise phone-call with a job-offer in the Caribbean.

I’m tired of giant hills of snow and of the giant hill this school sits on.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the symbolism… but do we really have to walk up this thing every single day?

I’m tired because what they don’t tell you, first and second year students take note, is that searching for a job is exhausting!

And I’m tired because I’ve been on an educational journey for about twenty years now, and the closer I get to the end of this journey the less clear I seem to be about what exactly the destination is.

So I don’t know about anyone else here today, but I sympathize a little bit with the people of Israel.

Sunrise on Mt. Sinai in Egypt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By the time we get to our reading, they’ve been on a journey for years following this guy Moses, a guy that most of them had probably never heard of before he wandered out of the desert, a guy who calls down fire from heaven and who glows in the dark whenever he comes out of the tent of meeting.  And even though he’s obviously an extraterrestrial, Dr. Who hadn’t shown up yet to save them, so they’re stuck wandering through the desert going God only knows where.  None of them had ever been to this mythic “land of their ancestors” that Moses talked about, they didn’t know where he’s taking them.

Now I haven’t been to the desert of Sinai, but I’ve spent a little bit of time in the deserts of Arizona and Nevada.  To me deserts seem like pretty bleak places that bear a striking resemblance to cat litter.  So my apologies to anybody here from Arizona, but if I’d been following some guy who glowed in the dark around in the desert for, really, any amount of time, and he said, “we’re almost there, just on the other side of that mountain,” I’d be saying, “Moses, whatever is on the other side of that mountain, it had better be good!”

So I don’t know about anyone else here today, but I get what’s happening in this story: the people want to know what they have gotten themselves into, so they send spies out ahead of them on a 40-day scouting mission.

Moses Pleading with Israel, as in Deuteronomy 6:1-15, illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In scripture, and in the church calendar, the number 40 often signifies a time of waiting or anticipation, as in the 40 days Noah spent on the ark waiting for the flood to subside or the 40 days of the people at the base of the mountain waiting while Moses received the law.

Or Lent, the 40 days leading up to the celebration of Easter.

And during Lent we often reflect on Christ’s 40-day journey of temptation in the wilderness as he takes on our weaknesses to enact our redemption, a journey which is probably a literary echo of the 40 years the people spent in the desert waiting to enter the land right after the 40 days waiting to hear the report of the spies we just read about, because when the spies come back the people have to make a choice.

So all of this leads me to wonder, what if, during this season, we take some time to ask ourselves, “What exactly are we waiting for?  What exactly are we anticipating?”

Then what if we ask ourselves, “What are we going to do when we get there?”

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Related articles

• Prayer, Fasting and Obedience to the Word of God: Jesus’ way to beat the tempter (junjunfaithbook.com)
• In the Desert for 40 Days (wordsonheaven.net)
• To Walk Away, A Short Story (goplayintraffic.wordpress.com)

Saturday Morning Brunch (3-2-13)

First of all, an early Happy Birthday to my brother, Doug, who will be 21 tomorrow!!  (On a totally unrelated note, I officially am old…)

Second, for those who are in New Haven or nearby, I will be preaching this Wednesday in Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School (March 6 at 10:30am, 409 Prospect Street).  Its a short homily in the midst of a service of sung morning prayer, all are welcome, please feel free to join us!

Third, here’s a few things that have caught my eye from around the web this week.  Enjoy!

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From Richard Beck at Experimental Theology, a look at Paul’s language about the atonement in Galatians that argues Paul isn’t talking about penal substitution.

From Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk, a reflection on the idea of schism in the church and its parallels to stories of judgment in the Bible.

From Rachel Held Evans, an interesting look at the way the Bible was used in arguments for and against the abolition of slavery in the 19th century and how that rhetoric is parallel to many discussions today.

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What’s caught your eye this week? What posts or articles have made you think? What have been your favorite things to read?

Some Facts about the Incredible Cost of Health-Care

English: Spending on U.S. healthcare as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week Time Magazine published a massive cover story on the cost of health-care in America.  Says the author, Steven Brill, When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?  This article attempts to answer that first question by looking line-by-line at the charges on seven medical bills and following the money back.

The whole article is incredibly long (36 pages in print), but that only speaks to the thoroughness of its reporting.  What it uncovers is many incredible, alarming, and even infuriating facts about how health-care cost, pricing, and billing practices work in America.  If you can’t read the whole article, here are some of (to my mind) the most striking points made:

• The US will spend $2.8 trillion on health care this year ($800 billion from Medicare/Medicaid and $2 trillion from the private sector).
• Healthcare accounts for 20% of America’s GDP every year, making it by far our largest “consumer good.”
• The United States spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia. [Brill doesn't make this point, but its worth noting that those 10 countries have a combined population approximately 6.5 times that of the United States.]
• If we spent the same amount per-capita on health care as other developed nations, we would save $750 billion this year.  That means that Americans are paying 27% more for health care than other developed countries (and the costs are rising faster than inflation).
• The Health-Care-Industrial-Complex spends more than 3x as much on lobbying every year as the Military-Industrial-Complex.
• Mark-up of medical costs from the Medicare Fee Schedule (which is calculated to cover all the related costs of service) to the chargemaster schedule (a fee schedule unique to each hospital which serves as the basis for its “uninsured” charges), is routinely a 250% or more increase in price.  It is not uncommon for such a mark-up to be as high as 1,000%.
• Insurers and “billing advocates” usually negotiate a discount on these chargemaster claims, resulting in a national average of hospitals collecting only about 35% of what they bill.
• Charitable giving to hospitals (including not-for-profit hospitals) usually accounts for less than 5% of a hospitals annual revenues.
• Even still, hospitals (especially not-for-profit ones) usually run a profit.  The national average profit margin (calculated after executive bonuses and including hospitals that ran a loss) of not-for-profit hospitals in the United States is about 12% per year.  More not-for-profit hospitals make a profit every year (in both actual numbers and percentages) than for-profit hospitals.
• Outpatient emergency services run a profit margin of 15% (national average).
• Outpatient non-emergency services run a profit margin of 35% (national average).
• 60% of personal bankruptcy filings are over medical bills.
• The ambulance industry makes more money than Hollywood.
• Prescription drug costs in the United States are 50% higher than the costs of comparable products in other developed countries.
• Despite the claim that high profits in the American market are needed to fund research and development at pharmaceutical companies, on average major pharmaceuticals spend between 15 and 20% of their gross revenue on R&D compared to frequent 30% or higher profit margins (calculated after executive bonuses and research and development costs).
• Despite complaints about bureaucracy, Medicare’s administrative costs amount to about .6% of the total paid in claims each year.  In comparison, private insurers routinely have administrative costs equal to 25% or more of claims paid.

Find out more about what drives the cost of health-care by reading the full article.

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Brill concludes with this assessment of the economics of the health-care industry:

Unless you are protected by Medicare, the health care market is not a market at all. It’s a crapshoot. People fare differently according to circumstances they can neither control nor predict. They may have no insurance. They may have insurance, but their employer chooses their insurance plan and it may have a payout limit or not cover a drug or treatment they need. They may or may not be old enough to be on Medicare or, given the different standards of the 50 states, be poor enough to be on Medicaid. If they’re not protected by Medicare or they’re protected only partly by private insurance with high co-pays, they have little visibility into pricing, let alone control of it. They have little choice of hospitals or the services they are billed for, even if they somehow know the prices before they get billed for the services. They have no idea what their bills mean, and those who maintain the chargemasters couldn’t explain them if they wanted to. How much of the bills they end up paying may depend on the generosity of the hospital or on whether they happen to get the help of a billing advocate. They have no choice of the drugs that they have to buy or the lab tests or CT scans that they have to get, and they would not know what to do if they did have a choice. They are powerless buyers in a seller’s market where the only sure thing is the profit of the sellers.

The real issue isn’t whether we have a single payer or multiple payers. It’s whether whoever pays has a fair chance in a fair market. Congress has given Medicare that power when it comes to dealing with hospitals and doctors, and we have seen how that works to drive down the prices Medicare pays, just as we’ve seen what happens when Congress handcuffs Medicare when it comes to evaluating and buying drugs, medical devices and equipment. Stripping away what is now the sellers’ overwhelming leverage in dealing with Medicare in those areas and with private payers in all aspects of the market would inject fairness into the market. We don’t have to scrap our system and aren’t likely to. But we can reduce the $750 billion that we overspend on health care in the U.S. in part by acknowledging what other countries have: because the health care market deals in a life-or-death product, it cannot be left to its own devices.

Put simply, the bills tell us that this is not about interfering in a free market. It’s about facing the reality that our largest consumer product by far — one-fifth of our economy — does not operate in a free market.

Brill has several suggestions about how to tackle the cost of health-care in America, and I have some ideas of my own, but I would love to hear from others first.  What should we do about this problem?  What solutions should we consider?

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Related articles

• Jeffrey Young: Steven Brill Health Care Article Paints Bleak Portrait Of Health Care (huffingtonpost.com)
• 10 Things We Learned From Time’s Analysis Of Why We Pay So Darn Much For Healthcare (consumerist.com)
• Brill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us… (healthland.time.com)
• Time Magazine Runs Its Longest Article Ever (daily-download.com)
• Steven Brill Explains Why Hospitals Screw the Uninsured: Because They Can (motherjones.com)