Daily Archives: April 21, 2025

Apostle Signs Nike Endorsement Deal

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Around Easter each year friends and family send me all kinds of Easter-themed images, memes, articles, and what-not. I am always amazed at the creativity and imagination of some folks, for example:

The (fake) Press Release from Nike:

JUDEA — Saint John the Apostle has reportedly signed a lucrative six figure deal with Nike following his win against Saint Peter in a footrace to the tomb of Jesus.

Saint Peter has continually maintained that it was not a race, and that they were just excited to learn if Jesus had indeed risen. However, that hasn’t put a stopper on Saint John’s growing fame as a sprinter. Nike decided to strike while the iron is hot.

“We’re proud to have signed John to an official endorsement deal,” said Nike CEO Tiberius Calceus. “We’re also excited to announce a collaboration with the apostle on the brand-new Nike Air John 1, the shoe for beloved winners. Run like John with a pair of Air John 1’s today.”

Image and text courtesy of Babylon Bee

Resurrection Faith

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Today’s gospel from St. Matthew  is familiar to all readers: Jesus has been crucified, died, and laid within a tomb guarded by soldiers and watched by Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary.” The Sabbath has passed and dawn approaches on the first day of a new week.

The gospel accounts of the empty tomb are fairly similar. Women (names and number of women differ) come to the tomb early on Sunday morning. The stone is rolled away and the tomb is empty. Some of the gospels have an angelic messenger who speaks to the women.

There is great diversity in the accounts of the appearances of the risen Christ. It is difficult to harmonize any of them. Perhaps there is a message in that: Our contemporary experiences of the risen Christ will differ. There are those who visibly see a white light and others don’t. There are those who experience Christ in a radical transformation, A “born-again” event in their lives. There are those for whom Christ has been such a reality throughout their lives that they can’t think of a moment when Christ wasn’t present to them or when there was a great turning point in their lives. How the risen Christ comes to people differ – then and now. Our stories about the risen Christ’s presence in our lives differ – and in that lack of uniformity there is witness to the breadth of humanity.  

The woman left the empty tomb “fearful yet overjoyed” only to encounter the Risen Christ telling them: “Do not be afraid.” A good message for us. Resurrection faith does not arise on the basis of evidence, of which the chief priests and soldiers had plenty, but on the basis of the experienced presence of the risen Christ, by testimony of those to whom he appeared, and by his own continuing presence among his disciples – on the Easter morning and in all the days since.

We need to be a people unafraid to proclaim a radical resurrection faith in the present, not just a historical event. We need to tell it with joy!

He is risen! Alleluia!

Image credit: Christ’s Appearance to Mary after the Resurrection | Alexander Ivanov | Russian Museum | PD-US

Chameleon of a Word

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Collaborate is a well known word. You can collaborate with your work project members and that is a good thing. You can collaborate with the enemy and that is not so good a thing. But that is not the “chameleon” element that captured my interest thanks to the good people at Merriam Webster’s “Word of the Day.”

The origin of the word “collaborate” comes from the Latin “com” meaning “with, together, or jointly,” teamed up with the verb laborare (“to labor”) to form the Late Latin word collaborare (“to labor together”) … ahhhh, excuse me….. wait a minute. What happened to the “m” in “com?” And that is the chameleon element.

The Latin prefix “com” has a habit of changing its appearance depending on what it’s next to. For example, if the word it precedes begins with “l”, com- becomes col-; if next to an “r”, become cor- as in corroborate.

Just an interesting tidbit from the world of words … which makes you wonder about “tidbit.” The primary mean of which is “a choice morsel of food” but can also “chameleon” its way to a choice or juicy tidbit of news.

The “bit” part comes the Old English bita (a morsel of food) which likely comes from the Middle Dutch bete or the Old Norse biti. But what about the “tid” part? That is less clear. The best guess of the etymologists is that is come from titmouse. Which is an interesting word since it is not a mouse at all, but a small bird the size of a chickadee. The “mouse” portion is likely a derived from a linguistic variation, mose, referring any of various small Eurasian songbirds. That variation goes back to the Old English māse, derived from the Germanic *maisōn- which has nothing to do with the modern French word for house.

I should probably stop there lest I be lost in the never ending origin of words.

We mourn his passing

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This was the pontiff who took the name “Francis” in homage to Catholicism’s most iconic and beloved saint, the “little poor man” of Assisi; the pope who rejected the marble and gold of the Papal Apartments in favor of the Domus Santa Marta, a modest hotel on Vatican grounds; the pope who returned to the clerical residence where he’d stayed prior to his election to pack his own bag and to pay his own bill. His pontificate that followed was consistent to its start.

May his soul and all the souls of the faithful rest in peace.

On the evening of the first day

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This coming Sunday is the 2nd Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday. The gospel is taken from John 20:19-31, the scene in the Upper Room on the evening of the Resurrection. Our gospel contains the second and third appearances of the risen Jesus in John’s gospel. These three appearances take place in Jerusalem.  There is a fourth and final appearance of Jesus later in a section referred to as the “Epilogue” of John.  This appearance is at the “Sea of Tiberias” in Galilee (John 21).

In the Johannine narrative our gospel occurs on what has been a full day: “On the evening of that first day of the week.”  It was just that morning that Mary Magdalene had visited the tomb and confessed, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him” (20:2) – ironically echoing one the decisive misunderstanding of Jesus’ ministry: from where did Jesus come and where is he going (e.g. 7:33-36, 8:21-23).  Mary became the first disciple of the good news of the empty tomb conveying the word to Peter and “the one whom Jesus loved.” Slowly the implications of the empty tomb and the burial linens come to the disciples and they begin to understand – each in differing ways and to varying degrees. The disciple whom Jesus loved “saw and believed” (20:8), however “they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead” (v.9).

At this point, it is perhaps that their faith is as complete as faith in the empty tomb can be, but as many commentators have noted, to assign to the disciples a full belief in the Resurrection is to rush the story. Resurrection faith begins when Mary encounters Jesus in the garden and he is revealed as the Risen Christ and Good shepherd – he knows his sheep by name and they respond to his voice (10:3-4, 12,16, 24; cf Is 43:1). In telling Mary “stop holding onto me” (v.17) Jesus lets Mary (and the reader) know that the unfolding of the events of the hour are continuing.

In the course of these posts we will consider the key words/phrases of “peace”, “sent”, “he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit”, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” and more

Image credit: Maesta altar piece, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1308, Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena | Public Domain