Monday, April 1, 2024
Monday in the Octave of Easter
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Impossible for him to be held by it
Peter spoke firmly to the people listening:
You killed this man Jesus, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it.
No one ever spoke this way about death. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul acknowledges that for us death is our strongest foe. Even for Christ, “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
But make no mistake. Death will be destroyed. Jesus resurrected could not be held by death, and we will follow him into forever. God’s timetable is nothing like ours, but He has one. All of his trains run on time, even if they are, like the Harry Potter’s magical tracks to Hogwarts, on parallel tracks to ours and invisible to us most of the time.
Andi and Aki hosted our Easter dinner yesterday, and the eight of us Sandels and Tomitas were joined by Alex from Uzbekistan, whose wife and young daughter were visiting family back in Asia. Alex works hard, has a good IT engineering job, understands English well and speaks it well too, although sometimes with some difficulty. He doesn’t hesitate to speak up, to have opinions, to answer questions and to ask them. He and his family have lived in the USA a bit over a year.
Of course Alex struggles with slang. I tried to explain the phrase “old wives’ tale” to him, but his eyes told me he didn’t quite understand.
Alex brought us a box of Halvah, which is a popular dessert in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. His extended family, about fifteen children and adults, is coming for a three week US visit this summer, which they will spend in San Francisco, San Diego, and Houston. Alex’ hard work is paving the way for this visit, and perhaps for more of the family moving here permanently.
My heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body, too, abides in confidence, because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world, nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption. Keep me safe, O God. You are my only hope.
Paul Theroux, my favorite train-riding writer, traveled through Uzbekistan on several trains each time he trekked through Europe to Tokyo and back (1973 and 2004), as much on land as he could make happen.
Uzbekistan was a welcome relief from his time in neighboring Turkmenistan.
I walked past the barbed-wire fence on the dirt road through the desert towards Uzbekistan.
Welcoming, but not immediately.
As I picked my way across the weeds and stones in the no man’s land between the two frontiers, from dismal Farap in Turkmenistan to dismal Jalkym in Uzbekistan, it began to rain, not a downpour but desert rain, a bleak pattering that served only to moisten the dust and intensify the gloom. I came to a gate in a high barrier, the sort of fifteen-foot fence you see at the edge of a sports stadium parking lot, except that this one was trimmed with razor wire.
Things got better quickly. Paul shared his first meal in Uzbekistan with Farrukh, who was driving him out of the desert to Bukhara: “a bowl of cooked pigeon eggs, a bowl of meat dumplings (manti), a wheel of hard bread, a pot of tea. Very nice.”
For our Easter dinner Alex shared our ham, two kinds of scalloped potatoes, a cold macaroni salad, and appetizer trays of cheese, fruit, pralines and figs. He told us he and his family have tea after each meal, three times a day.
We drank a bottle of hearty red wine together and  played “Family Cranium,” which included a question about the Pledge of Allegiance: Which of these three words rhymes with the 20th word of the Pledge? “… and to the republic for which it stands.” Stands rhymes with bands. We recited the pledge for Alex, and then the Pledge to the Bible that Miles and Jasper are learning.
Alex did not share the patriotic parts of Uzbekistani life with us. But I imagined he had mixed allegiances to both his homeland and his new land, to the traditions of his life there and the tidy comforts of his life here.
Alex is a Christian, but many Uzbekistanis are Muslims. There are ninety verses about Jesus in the Koran, more than about any other prophet. However, in these verses Jesus is not crucified; instead he is saved miraculously by God and ascends into heaven. The Koran therefore lacks the compelling concept that Jesus died for me, and because of me, that without his crucifixion I would be reduced to my own incomplete efforts toward salvation, but with his crucifixion, I am free.
I think that difference in theology affects every aspect of life in the USA, and in Uzbekistan. Yesterday, sitting around an Austin dinner table, all of us knew we have been set free.
(Acts 2, Psalm 16, Psalm 118, Matthew 28)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
