The Riverside Gathering Posts

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem [Luke 9:51]. To show you just how far the world has come since the mid-1950s, when I was a young lad growing up with my three brothers in rural southern Gaston County (NC), our family had a special board game, a game that would now be called “quaint,” or possibly even “weird.” It was manufactured and sold by Parker Brothers, the dominant name in board games at the time. The name of the game was—wait for it, wait for it — “Going to Jerusalem.” I’ll bet you thought I was speaking…

The LORD created me at the outset of His way, the very first of His works of old. In remote eons I was shaped, at the start of the first things of earth…. And I was by Him, an intimate, I was His delight day after day, playing before Him at all times. Hebrews 8:22-23, 30 (The Hebrew Bible, tr. by Robert Alter) Selecting appropriate scripture passages for this upcoming Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost—particularly passages from the Old Testament—has long been challenging for the church. For the majority of Christians within the Western Tradition, the first Sunday after Pentecost is designated Trinity Sunday, a day in which we…

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us” [John 14:8, NIV]. Generally, on Pentecost Sunday, one is drawn to the traditional first lesson offered by the Lectionary committee: Acts 2:1-21. After all, a significant portion of the contemporary church marks the Day of Pentecost as the moment of the church’s birth, with its rushing, powerful wind, its tongues of fire, not to mention the wonderfully strange phenomenon of the disciples’ sermons and presentations being uttered in their own native Galilean tongue yet heard and understood by “devout Jews from every nation under heaven” [Acts 2:5] in their own native languages. As important as the…

The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." [Acts 16:29-31, NRSV]. In The Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s sacred historical and theological account of the early church, we encounter three miracle prison escape stories. In the first, [Acts 5:17-21], the apostles are arrested and locked in the public prison after performing many miracles of healing. Yet, during their first night of confinement, an angel of the Lord opens the prison doors,…

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you [John 14:26]. You might think it a bit odd, but sometimes when I read a pericope of Holy Scripture, my mind jumps back to a situation or to an event decades long gone. It isn’t so much that the verses themselves cause me mentally to recall the long-passed event. Rather, it’s in what I can only describe as the movement of the Holy Spirit—as presumptuous as that might sound—that my heart is “reminded” of the special moment in my past. That…

The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us [Acts 11:12a, NRSV]. There was an elephant in the living room, and it simply couldn’t be ignored. It had been some time since the authorities at First Church (Jerusalem) had heard from Peter. Everyone knew that he was impetuous, sometimes reacting without thinking, but reliable word had come back to James and the others in leadership positions within the Jerusalem church that Peter had overstepped his authority, that while he was out in the field, so to speak, he had baptized a few Gentiles and worse, he had entered several Gentile households…

Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord [Acts 9:40-42]. I’ve shared some poignant, pensive, and even painful stories with some of you concerning the slow demise of our dad, who died November 22, 2014. During the last half decade of his life, he suffered from dementia. The illness took a bit…

Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” [Acts 9:3-6]. Just outside Bab Kisan (i.e., “Kisan Gate”), one of the seven ancient city-gates of Damascus, Syria, there is a statue of the apostle Paul being thrown from his horse as he approaches the city on the fateful day of…

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” [John 20:24-25]. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Jane and I spent almost two weeks in March lounging and talking with a small group of college friends at two separate idyllic spots on the South Carolina coast. Virtually all of us are the same…

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight [Isaiah 65:17-18]. Sorry to start my Holy Week meditation on a downer, but as I began to write this week’s piece on Tuesday evening, I heard—through the magic of my Phonak hearing aids—snippets of an evening news story regarding the Brooklyn subway incident, in which 10 or more people were shot by an assailant, posing as a workman. During Palm…