Can a twenty first-century person be a Christian? Our language of Scripture, liturgy, and prayer mostly reflect a premodern understanding of the cosmos. Even if we understand that the language of Scripture and liturgy is poetic and metaphorical – in this church we are not, for example, asked to believe that the account of creation in Genesis is literal – how are we to follow Jesus in our own time and place? What does it mean for me as a twenty first-century person to commit myself to the revelation of Scripture, especially when the scientific discoveries of the last few centuries have given us a vastly different understanding of the world than the one that the writers of Scripture held?
Of course, these are not completely new questions. Scientists and religious thinkers through the centuries have been using their God-given reason to understand both creation and the revelation of God in Christ. When Galileo proposed that the earth was round, not flat, for example, and that the earth both rotated on its axis and revolved around the sun, his ideas were considered heretical and contrary to Scripture. He was even briefly imprisoned and forced to publicly recant his discoveries. Now, thanks to the work of astronomers we know that our corner of the universe is just a single small galaxy, that the universe is vaster than we can imagine and slowly expanding, and that the entire cosmos probably began about 13.6 billion years ago with a Big Bang.
Astronomers and biologists have also taught us that all existing matter was created in the Big Bang, that all the atoms in our bodies and everything around us are simply being recycled, and that all life, all things, are interconnected. We thus have a responsibility to respect and work with people, animals, the earth, all of creation, rather than to rape, pillage, and destroy. Mendel and Darwin, and host of other biologists and geneticists have taught us more about the mechanisms of life than ancient physicians, skilled as they were, could even begin to imagine. And more: for the writers of Scripture the known world consisted more or less of the Mediterranean world. Little, if anything, was known of sub-Saharan Africa or Asia. Nothing at all was known of the civilizations in central and South America that began to flourish well before the time of Christ, and whose ruins we are still discovering!
So how do we reconcile what we now know – what God has enabled us to know through the gift of reason – with Scripture? Must we take the Bible literally, as some “creationists” do, or do we have to throw it out altogether, as many atheists do? Worse yet, do we profess one thing when we come inside this building and something else altogether on the other side of the red doors? Perhaps today’s gospel reading helps answer these questions. Clearly, the disciples were confused and afraid – and asking lots of questions. It was their last night with Jesus in the account in John’s gospel. Talking a long time, Jesus had been explaining his reasons for leaving them and how they were to carry on once he was gone. He warned them that they wouldn’t understand right away what was happening. Then he made them a promise: the Spirit of truth would be with them and would guide them into all truth.
John’s gospel tells us a different story of Jesus’ last night with his friends than the story the other three gospels tell. Writing in the ‘90s or later, the evangelist was addressing a community that was separating from the wider Jewish community. These new followers of Jesus needed a deeper understanding of who Jesus was. They also needed reassurance that they had made the right choice in following him. For that reason, the gospel of John is less a historical account of Jesus’ life and more a theological study of Jesus. Seeking to explain for new followers who Jesus truly was, the gospel emphasizes throughout that Jesus is the Word made flesh, i.e., “God with skin on.” However, especially through Jesus’ words in today’s reading, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,” the gospel writer also reassures these new followers that they don’t have to understand everything about Jesus all at once. The gospel writer assures the hearers of this gospel that, by following Jesus, they would be led by God’s Spirit to understand more deeply who God is, who Jesus is, and how God’s Spirit works in their lives. Most important, the gospel writer promises them that the Spirit of truth would continually help them to be transformed into faithful followers of Jesus, and that they – and by extension all faithful followers of Jesus – would continue to reinterpret, as individuals and as a community, the mission of Jesus and its meaning for their lives.
So can a twenty first-century person still follow this Jesus? Just as scientific understanding has changed over the centuries, so too has our understanding of Jesus. Thinkers in the earliest centuries after Christ wrestled with the question of how Jesus could be both human and divine. While orthodox Christianity asserts that Jesus was both, often the emphasis was on Jesus’ divinity. Indeed, the Nicene Creed, which we faithful recite as part of our Sunday worship, represents an attempt by the early leaders of the church to reach some consensus as to who Jesus was, and what his relationship was to God the creator and God the Spirit. Since the Renaissance, and especially since the eighteenth century, scholars and theologians have tended to emphasize the humanity of Jesus. Today, many interpreters of Scripture emphasize Jesus’ social teachings, emphasizing Jesus’ call to seek peace, end capital punishment, care for the poor, welcome the outcast in society, and end exclusion based on gender, sexuality, race, or socio-economic status.
Every era has been called on to reinterpret Jesus’ mission and relationship to God. Indeed, one writer suggests that continued reinterpretation of Jesus’ role is the very thrust of this part of John’s gospel. “What the text wants most to do,” this writer suggests, “is to encourage within the community an openness to fresh encounters with the revelation of Jesus. John intends to shape a community that is receptive to Spirit-guided growth. It is not that there will be new ‘truth’ beyond that of the ‘Word made flesh’…. John imagines a Christian community that is not locked into the past but understands what Jesus means for its own time. He anticipates that changing circumstances and the emergence of new questions – stem cell research, for example, or the ability to prolong life by artificial means, or growing religious pluralism – will require the community to think afresh.”
My friends, this is our call too. God has given us reason, and God has enabled us to understand Scripture, creation and each other more deeply than earlier centuries perhaps did. In our century we too are called to “think afresh.” Or maybe we need to ask ourselves is, do we really want to “think afresh?” Or would we rather let Jesus be a figure in some interesting stories, rather than someone to whom we have committed our lives? If we really want, as twenty first-century Christians, to continue to grow in our understanding of Jesus, how might we do that?
If we believe Jesus’ promise in John’s gospel that the Spirit will guide us into all truth, then we have to be open to the work of the Spirit. We have to let the Spirit teach us, in our own private prayer. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll ask again: can you find a time in your day – busy as you are – to regularly place yourself in God’s presence and let the Spirit begin to work within you? The Spirit also nourishes us in Word and Sacrament. Have you ever felt, sitting here or in any worship service, that sudden shard of understanding, that sudden glimpse of the reality of Jesus in your life? The Spirit especially leads and guides us in our study – of Scripture, theology, science, history, and social justice, to name just a few. Again, I’ll risk sounding like a broken record: God was not done with you when the priest poured water on your head, or the bishop laid hands on you. No less than the first hearers of John’s gospel, we too are called to “think afresh” about Jesus and how our commitment to following him impacts our life. The Spirit also leads us in our practice of mission. Sometimes when we are acting as God’s hands, when we look deeply into the eyes of people striving for justice and hear their stories, we learn more about the reality of Jesus than any book can teach us. And one more thing: growth in our understanding of Jesus is not in the end a do-it-yourself project, important as private prayer and study are. Ultimately, we are called to grow as a community of Jesus’ followers, to be Jesus in the world as a fellowship, and to do his works to the best of our ability.
God has blessed us with reason and skill. Jesus has promised us that we will continue to grow in our understanding of him and of the cosmos. And so, this week I invite you to meditate on these questions. Who is Jesus for you? How has your understanding of Jesus changed over the years? How does your life reflect your commitment to Jesus? Are you open to “thinking afresh” about the work of the Spirit in your life? Rest assured that Jesus’ promise still stands: even with all the discoveries that we have made over the centuries, the Spirit is still at work within us, helping us to see anew, to understand more deeply, and to follow more faithfully.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Who is God Calling Us to be?
Is God calling you? Who might God be calling you to be, and how are you responding to God’s call? If you are in the last quarter of your life, are you accepting God’s call to age gracefully, or are you fiercely resisting going “gentle into that good night?” If you are younger, how is God calling you, your spouse, and your family? How is God calling this parish? In 1841 a small group of Episcopalians decided to begin meeting. To what might this community be called 175 years later? And are we as individuals or as a parish called to partner with God in bringing God’s reign nearer?
Today’s readings from Scripture invite us to wonder about God’s call and possible responses to it Actually, from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is filled with stories of people hearing God’s call and wondering about how to answer it. Think of Jacob at Haran, how he dreamed of a ladder on which angels were going up and down and heard God’s promise to bring him back to the land of Israel. What did Jacob say when he woke up? “’Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’” Or think of Moses and the burning bush, or Isaiah in the temple, or Jeremiah. All knew themselves called by God, and all answered at first, “Surely, not me!” Even so, all eventually heeded God’s call and were transformed into leaders and prophets.
Do we see something similar in today’s Gospel reading? Jesus is about to depart from his faithful friends. Before the end, he gives them a preview of what life after his resurrection might look like. He promises that the Holy Spirit will lead and guide them and will call them to new, more confident life in him. In the last chapter of Revelation, the culmination of many visions, John of Ephesus has a foretaste of God’s future, of the re-creation and renewal of the entire cosmos. And, of course, the reading from the Acts of the Apostles depicts a point in the history of the early church where visions, calls, and responses proved decisive for the fledgling Christian community.
We enter the story at the point where Paul is making further plans for sharing the good news of Jesus. Having left Jerusalem, his plan was to stay in Asia Minor, i.e., what is today western Turkey. However, he “had a vision” of a call to Macedonia, i.e., the northern part of what today we call Greece. Taking with him the younger Timothy, he sailed about 100 miles northwest from Troas on the west coast of Turkey. He then went inland about ten miles to the Roman colony of Philippi, an area that had been settled mostly by veterans of the Roman wars who had been given land in return for their service. In a new place, Paul’s practice was to look for a synagogue where he might begin teaching devout Jews about the new Way of Jesus. So on the Sabbath day, he went where he thought they might gather, expecting no doubt to meet that “man of Macedonia” who had called to Paul in his vision. Sitting down to teach – that was the normal way in the ancient world – Paul found instead that he was teaching women.
One among these women, Lydia, heard God’s call through Paul’s teaching. Lydia was originally from an area of Asia Minor especially known for its expensive purple dye. Perhaps she was an agent of a company there. She was probably a widow and an independent businesswoman who owned her own home, to which she could invite Paul and Timothy. Most likely she was a gentile but also what was a called a “God-fearer,” i.e., someone who respected Judaism and worshipped with Jews without converting. Because of her devotion to God and her regular worship, because of her openness to God, she was able to hear God calling her to join the community of Jesus’ followers. From that moment on, her life was transformed. She was baptized, offered Paul and Timothy hospitality, eventually became a leader of the Christian community in Philippi and an evangelist in her own right, and even offered Paul her home after he was released from prison later on.
Through regular worship and prayer, both Paul and Lydia were able to hear God’s call. Both were transformed by God’s call. Paul left Asia Minor to evangelize Europe, even eventually planning trips to Rome and Spain. Lydia joined other women leaders of the early church, trusting in God’s promises, and courageously spreading the good news of Jesus wherever the Holy Spirit led them.
Does God still call us? On Monday I returned from a week-long CREDO conference at the retreat center of the Diocese of Virginia. The conference asked us to discern several questions. Perhaps the most important of these questions were “What is God calling me to do?” and “How am I responding to God’s call?” Nineteen of us officially retired clergy, all older than 68, attended the conference. Most were fully retired, but a few, like me, were still serving parishes. We were joined by eight faculty members, four of whom were also priests, representing the financial, vocational, health, and spiritual aspects of ministry. All of the faculty members were very candid about their faith journeys, how they had felt called, how they had responded, and what call they were now hearing. In small groups, each of us looked both back and ahead, sharing our own sense of how we were living out our call.
Some of you have heard my own call story, but perhaps this is a good time to share it. I was not like Lydia! Actually, I thought I heard a call to ordained ministry as a teenager, but I am old enough that no one was ordaining women in those days. As an adult I was busy with raising three children and pursuing a demanding academic career at three different universities. In 1998 I had organized a quiet morning at Good Shepherd in Athens led by a sister from the Community of the Transfiguration in Cincinnati. As I sat praying in the sanctuary, I distinctly heard God’s call. But I answered, “Not me, Lord! Go away.” In 2000, I chaired a parish discernment committee for another person. To my surprise, I asked myself the same questions that we were asking her. Again I said, “Nope, not me.” Shortly after the long-time rector of Good Shepherd left in late 2002, a sister from the Community of the Holy Spirit in New York, Sr. Faith Margaret whom some of you have met, came to talk with then Vestry members about the transition. I spent about five minutes with her talking about Vestry matters and the rest of the time about my lack of prayer life. Following her counsel, I began to pray again and in May 2003 became an associate of the Community.
Perhaps all the prayer had finally opened my ears. Perhaps the Holy Spirit finally shouted at me loud enough. In early 2004, I opened my mouth and said to Sr. Faith Margaret, “I’m thinking about ordained ministry.” She was the first person I had ever said those words to besides my spouse. After that, the Holy Spirit grabbed my hand and off we went: I was a postulant for the priesthood eleven months later, took early retirement from Ohio University in 2005, was ordained priest three years later, and have now stood before you for eight years. By God’s grace, and with the help of you all, my spiritual directors, and many others, I am still learning and growing as a follower of Jesus.
What is God calling you to do? Do you create the time in your day, in your week, so that you can hear God’s call to you? Is there any Sabbath time in your life, so that you too might go outside the gate by the river and hear life-changing teaching? Have you perhaps had a vision or heard a call, as Paul and others in Scripture did? Or perhaps God’s words have pierced your soul as you have read, sat in silence, or even sung a hymn. Is God calling you to have the courage to change the course of your life, to minister in some new way to those around you, to leave behind those habits and addictions that keep you from following Jesus? How are you answering God’s call?
What is God calling us to do? Are we as a parish called to leave our comfortable home in Asia Minor and cross over to Macedonia? Perhaps there’s a Lydia waiting to hear from us. Soon after Johnny “Knuckles” DeVincenzo left prison after a 44-year sentence, he heard a child crying in the lobby of his Harlem apartment building. Her mother explained that they were both hungry, so DeVincenzo took them out to dinner. So began a most unusual partnership between the leaders of the Fortune Society, a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to reintegrate formerly incarcerated people into society, and “The Castle,” a Gothic-style apartment house. Partnering with a development firm, Fortune opened an eleven-story building adjacent to the Castle that houses both former convicts and low-income families. As so many former convicts are older and male, and so many of the low-income families are headed by single mothers, The Castle has become a unique haven. After having previously having been on the own, both the men and women have found surprisingly supportive families and healing for their souls.
Whenever we are moved by love, we are being sent by God. Who is God calling us to be? Where is God sending us? How are we answering God’s call?
Today’s readings from Scripture invite us to wonder about God’s call and possible responses to it Actually, from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is filled with stories of people hearing God’s call and wondering about how to answer it. Think of Jacob at Haran, how he dreamed of a ladder on which angels were going up and down and heard God’s promise to bring him back to the land of Israel. What did Jacob say when he woke up? “’Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’” Or think of Moses and the burning bush, or Isaiah in the temple, or Jeremiah. All knew themselves called by God, and all answered at first, “Surely, not me!” Even so, all eventually heeded God’s call and were transformed into leaders and prophets.
Do we see something similar in today’s Gospel reading? Jesus is about to depart from his faithful friends. Before the end, he gives them a preview of what life after his resurrection might look like. He promises that the Holy Spirit will lead and guide them and will call them to new, more confident life in him. In the last chapter of Revelation, the culmination of many visions, John of Ephesus has a foretaste of God’s future, of the re-creation and renewal of the entire cosmos. And, of course, the reading from the Acts of the Apostles depicts a point in the history of the early church where visions, calls, and responses proved decisive for the fledgling Christian community.
We enter the story at the point where Paul is making further plans for sharing the good news of Jesus. Having left Jerusalem, his plan was to stay in Asia Minor, i.e., what is today western Turkey. However, he “had a vision” of a call to Macedonia, i.e., the northern part of what today we call Greece. Taking with him the younger Timothy, he sailed about 100 miles northwest from Troas on the west coast of Turkey. He then went inland about ten miles to the Roman colony of Philippi, an area that had been settled mostly by veterans of the Roman wars who had been given land in return for their service. In a new place, Paul’s practice was to look for a synagogue where he might begin teaching devout Jews about the new Way of Jesus. So on the Sabbath day, he went where he thought they might gather, expecting no doubt to meet that “man of Macedonia” who had called to Paul in his vision. Sitting down to teach – that was the normal way in the ancient world – Paul found instead that he was teaching women.
One among these women, Lydia, heard God’s call through Paul’s teaching. Lydia was originally from an area of Asia Minor especially known for its expensive purple dye. Perhaps she was an agent of a company there. She was probably a widow and an independent businesswoman who owned her own home, to which she could invite Paul and Timothy. Most likely she was a gentile but also what was a called a “God-fearer,” i.e., someone who respected Judaism and worshipped with Jews without converting. Because of her devotion to God and her regular worship, because of her openness to God, she was able to hear God calling her to join the community of Jesus’ followers. From that moment on, her life was transformed. She was baptized, offered Paul and Timothy hospitality, eventually became a leader of the Christian community in Philippi and an evangelist in her own right, and even offered Paul her home after he was released from prison later on.
Through regular worship and prayer, both Paul and Lydia were able to hear God’s call. Both were transformed by God’s call. Paul left Asia Minor to evangelize Europe, even eventually planning trips to Rome and Spain. Lydia joined other women leaders of the early church, trusting in God’s promises, and courageously spreading the good news of Jesus wherever the Holy Spirit led them.
Does God still call us? On Monday I returned from a week-long CREDO conference at the retreat center of the Diocese of Virginia. The conference asked us to discern several questions. Perhaps the most important of these questions were “What is God calling me to do?” and “How am I responding to God’s call?” Nineteen of us officially retired clergy, all older than 68, attended the conference. Most were fully retired, but a few, like me, were still serving parishes. We were joined by eight faculty members, four of whom were also priests, representing the financial, vocational, health, and spiritual aspects of ministry. All of the faculty members were very candid about their faith journeys, how they had felt called, how they had responded, and what call they were now hearing. In small groups, each of us looked both back and ahead, sharing our own sense of how we were living out our call.
Some of you have heard my own call story, but perhaps this is a good time to share it. I was not like Lydia! Actually, I thought I heard a call to ordained ministry as a teenager, but I am old enough that no one was ordaining women in those days. As an adult I was busy with raising three children and pursuing a demanding academic career at three different universities. In 1998 I had organized a quiet morning at Good Shepherd in Athens led by a sister from the Community of the Transfiguration in Cincinnati. As I sat praying in the sanctuary, I distinctly heard God’s call. But I answered, “Not me, Lord! Go away.” In 2000, I chaired a parish discernment committee for another person. To my surprise, I asked myself the same questions that we were asking her. Again I said, “Nope, not me.” Shortly after the long-time rector of Good Shepherd left in late 2002, a sister from the Community of the Holy Spirit in New York, Sr. Faith Margaret whom some of you have met, came to talk with then Vestry members about the transition. I spent about five minutes with her talking about Vestry matters and the rest of the time about my lack of prayer life. Following her counsel, I began to pray again and in May 2003 became an associate of the Community.
Perhaps all the prayer had finally opened my ears. Perhaps the Holy Spirit finally shouted at me loud enough. In early 2004, I opened my mouth and said to Sr. Faith Margaret, “I’m thinking about ordained ministry.” She was the first person I had ever said those words to besides my spouse. After that, the Holy Spirit grabbed my hand and off we went: I was a postulant for the priesthood eleven months later, took early retirement from Ohio University in 2005, was ordained priest three years later, and have now stood before you for eight years. By God’s grace, and with the help of you all, my spiritual directors, and many others, I am still learning and growing as a follower of Jesus.
What is God calling you to do? Do you create the time in your day, in your week, so that you can hear God’s call to you? Is there any Sabbath time in your life, so that you too might go outside the gate by the river and hear life-changing teaching? Have you perhaps had a vision or heard a call, as Paul and others in Scripture did? Or perhaps God’s words have pierced your soul as you have read, sat in silence, or even sung a hymn. Is God calling you to have the courage to change the course of your life, to minister in some new way to those around you, to leave behind those habits and addictions that keep you from following Jesus? How are you answering God’s call?
What is God calling us to do? Are we as a parish called to leave our comfortable home in Asia Minor and cross over to Macedonia? Perhaps there’s a Lydia waiting to hear from us. Soon after Johnny “Knuckles” DeVincenzo left prison after a 44-year sentence, he heard a child crying in the lobby of his Harlem apartment building. Her mother explained that they were both hungry, so DeVincenzo took them out to dinner. So began a most unusual partnership between the leaders of the Fortune Society, a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to reintegrate formerly incarcerated people into society, and “The Castle,” a Gothic-style apartment house. Partnering with a development firm, Fortune opened an eleven-story building adjacent to the Castle that houses both former convicts and low-income families. As so many former convicts are older and male, and so many of the low-income families are headed by single mothers, The Castle has become a unique haven. After having previously having been on the own, both the men and women have found surprisingly supportive families and healing for their souls.
Whenever we are moved by love, we are being sent by God. Who is God calling us to be? Where is God sending us? How are we answering God’s call?
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Who is a Mystic?
What do you think of when you hear the word “mystic?” Do you think of people sitting around in a trance, perhaps trying to contact the dead, like the spiritualists of the last century? Do you think of whirling dervishes, dancing their way into a spiritual frenzy? Do you think of some mad tribal ritual, where people go into raptures and speak in strange voices?
I once heard a priest, a well-respected man about the age I am now, say in a sermon that he had never had a mystical experience. And I thought to myself, “Are you sure?” Mystical experiences are not necessarily strange or exotic. What we are talking about when we say “mystical experience” is a direct sense of the reality of God, of the divine or holy foundation of life. It is a sense of faith based on direct experience, rather than intellectual assent to certain creedal statements. Mystical experiences also include a sense of being addressed by God or even of being commissioned by God. Most important, when we have a mystical experience, we know that we are in God’s presence. So perhaps mystical experiences are not so strange after all?
All of today’s readings depict what we could call mystical experiences, experiences of direct encounter with God. The reading from the book of Acts actually lets us see two mystical experiences. In the first, the more dramatic one, we see Paul stopped dead in his tracks and temporarily blinded. Sensing that he is in God’s presence, but in a very different way than he had ever before experienced God, Paul asks the only possible question, “Who are you, Lord?” Along with the answer to his question, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” Paul receives a hint of the commission that awaits him: “You will be told what to do.”
But Paul isn’t the only one in this story to have a direct sense of God’s presence. Ananias too, has a vision, a vision in which he too receives a commission. He hears God command him, despite his reservations about Paul, to go to Paul and minister to him.
The psalmist too has had a direct sense of God’s presence. Pondering the ebbs and flows of life, the psalmist knows that God has been with him, supporting him and upholding him. As a result, the psalmist can exultantly shout, “my heart sings to you without ceasing/ O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.”
That we are hearing about a mystical experience is most obvious in the reading from the book of Revelation. Actually, the whole book depicts a series of visions that John, the leader of a community of Christians in Ephesus, saw while he was exiled by the Romans on the island of Patmos. In the brief reading that we heard this morning, John sees himself ushered into the divine presence, where he is surrounded by virtually all of creation joined together in praise of Christ. As he joins in praise, he sees Christ as the sacrificial lamb, now reigning triumphantly in heaven.
The reading from the gospel according to John also shows the disciples having a direct experience of the risen Christ. Interestingly, notice who realizes first that the stranger standing on the beach is Jesus. It is the “beloved disciple.” He was Jesus’ intimate friend, and the one who was lying right next to Jesus at his last meal. You might remember that last week I mentioned Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting of the empty tomb. In the painting, Peter is downcast and doubtful, but the beloved disciple is radiant, glowing with an inner light. Could it be that intimate friendship with Jesus helps us recognize him, as the beloved disciple did here from the boat?
Of course, Peter too has a direct experience of being in the presence of the risen Christ. Like the others, Peter also receives a commission: to let his love for Jesus be reflected in feeding Jesus’ sheep, i.e., in satisfying the hunger, both physical and spiritual, of those to whom he is sent. Even the beloved disciple has a commission. In the very last verses of this last chapter of John’s gospel, which we don’t hear today, the writer tells us that his task is to testify to “these things” and to write them down.
So, all our lections show us God bringing about personal transformation in people through direct encounter. By God’s grace, the psalmist, Paul, Ananias, John of Ephesus, the beloved disciple, Peter, and presumably everyone else who was on the beach that day had a direct experience of God’s reality and Christ’s risen presence. And all were charged and commissioned to share the good news of God’s love through concrete acts of mercy.
Are the psalmist, Paul, Ananias, John of Ephesus, the beloved disciple, Peter, and the others in the boat that day the only ones ever to have had experiences like the ones we just heard about? Oh sure, you might say, maybe there have been a few saints since the time the Scriptures were written. Julian of Norwich, who lived in the fourteenth century, wrote down her vivid visions of Jesus. Teresa of Avila also wrote about her visions of Jesus and imagined the soul as an interior castle in which he comes to live. And you can still read the journals and other writings on contemplative prayer of Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who died only in 1968.
So, do real, ordinary people, people like us, have such direct encounters with God? Actually, they do. Some years ago, I visited the church where Julian was thought to be enclosed. Most of us would not choose the life she chose: living intentionally in a room built onto the side of a church and spending her days in prayer and contemplation. But what was surprising to me when I visited the church was that a group of people were sitting in Julian’s enclosure spending an hour in silent prayer! You can also visit Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the Trappist monastery where Merton lived. In fact, lay people from all over the world have come to the monastery since its founding in 1848. You can go for a long weekend or for four and half days. Either way, you spend the entire time in silence, except for the seven daily sung offices, which lay folks can join. Those who come to the church of St. Julian or to Gethsemani come to have that same direct experience of God that the people in Scripture and so many others since have had.
But you don’t have to go to England or Kentucky to have such an experience – although going to such places is definitely worth the effort. And it’s not only especially holy people who experience God’s presence with them directly. All of us called to know in our own flesh the reality of God and of Christ’s risen presence with us. We might have such a direct experience of God in nature or when we are at table with Jesus in the Eucharist. More likely, we may have direct sense of God’s presence when we allow ourselves some time to be alone with God, when we “recline next to him,” like the beloved disciple, when we let God love us.
And what happens when we actually have such a direct experience of God’s presence in our lives? Like the psalmist, we may have a deeper trust in God’s mercy, forgiveness, and love. God may start in us a process of inner transformation, in which we begin to become the person we were truly created to be. We may be able to reflect more clearly for others God’s love for us and for them. We may have a clearer idea of what God is calling us to do. God may even strengthen our ability to minister to God’s people.
At this point, you might be thinking, “Wait, wait, none of this applies to me.” To be sure, our temperaments are different. Some of us are called to a more contemplative life, while others of us are called to engage more actively with the world. And we are at different stages of life. Some of us have demanding jobs and families who need our attention. However, as we age, and our social and familial responsibilities lessen, many of us feel called to life that includes more prayer and contemplation. Indeed for many of us, the key to graceful aging is to let go of our tight self-concern and begin to see ourselves as connected with both God and Jesus’ “sheep.”
Almost all of us can discover, or rediscover, that our life is rooted in God, and that our ministry, whatever it is, ideally flows out of the relationship that we develop with God through prayer. And the key to a deeper prayer life? Intentional practice. Our way of putting ourselves into God’s presence does not have to be elaborate or protracted, but it does have to be regular. Whether you spend five, ten, thirty, or more minutes a day with God is immaterial. What does matter is that, when we regularly open ourselves to God’s presence and allow God into our lives, God will grace us with what we need. So I invite you to examine your life. Where are the times when you can allow God to be present to you?
And here is the good news: God meets us where we are. Whether we are in an upper room fearing for our lives, whether we are on the road to Damascus, whether we are out fishing, whether we are in our own rooms, whether we are on the road to Columbus, or whether we are out on our morning walk, if we open our eyes and ears, the risen Christ will make himself known to us. He will gently take us by the hand and graciously begin to work his will for us. We only have to let him.
I once heard a priest, a well-respected man about the age I am now, say in a sermon that he had never had a mystical experience. And I thought to myself, “Are you sure?” Mystical experiences are not necessarily strange or exotic. What we are talking about when we say “mystical experience” is a direct sense of the reality of God, of the divine or holy foundation of life. It is a sense of faith based on direct experience, rather than intellectual assent to certain creedal statements. Mystical experiences also include a sense of being addressed by God or even of being commissioned by God. Most important, when we have a mystical experience, we know that we are in God’s presence. So perhaps mystical experiences are not so strange after all?
All of today’s readings depict what we could call mystical experiences, experiences of direct encounter with God. The reading from the book of Acts actually lets us see two mystical experiences. In the first, the more dramatic one, we see Paul stopped dead in his tracks and temporarily blinded. Sensing that he is in God’s presence, but in a very different way than he had ever before experienced God, Paul asks the only possible question, “Who are you, Lord?” Along with the answer to his question, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” Paul receives a hint of the commission that awaits him: “You will be told what to do.”
But Paul isn’t the only one in this story to have a direct sense of God’s presence. Ananias too, has a vision, a vision in which he too receives a commission. He hears God command him, despite his reservations about Paul, to go to Paul and minister to him.
The psalmist too has had a direct sense of God’s presence. Pondering the ebbs and flows of life, the psalmist knows that God has been with him, supporting him and upholding him. As a result, the psalmist can exultantly shout, “my heart sings to you without ceasing/ O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.”
That we are hearing about a mystical experience is most obvious in the reading from the book of Revelation. Actually, the whole book depicts a series of visions that John, the leader of a community of Christians in Ephesus, saw while he was exiled by the Romans on the island of Patmos. In the brief reading that we heard this morning, John sees himself ushered into the divine presence, where he is surrounded by virtually all of creation joined together in praise of Christ. As he joins in praise, he sees Christ as the sacrificial lamb, now reigning triumphantly in heaven.
The reading from the gospel according to John also shows the disciples having a direct experience of the risen Christ. Interestingly, notice who realizes first that the stranger standing on the beach is Jesus. It is the “beloved disciple.” He was Jesus’ intimate friend, and the one who was lying right next to Jesus at his last meal. You might remember that last week I mentioned Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting of the empty tomb. In the painting, Peter is downcast and doubtful, but the beloved disciple is radiant, glowing with an inner light. Could it be that intimate friendship with Jesus helps us recognize him, as the beloved disciple did here from the boat?
Of course, Peter too has a direct experience of being in the presence of the risen Christ. Like the others, Peter also receives a commission: to let his love for Jesus be reflected in feeding Jesus’ sheep, i.e., in satisfying the hunger, both physical and spiritual, of those to whom he is sent. Even the beloved disciple has a commission. In the very last verses of this last chapter of John’s gospel, which we don’t hear today, the writer tells us that his task is to testify to “these things” and to write them down.
So, all our lections show us God bringing about personal transformation in people through direct encounter. By God’s grace, the psalmist, Paul, Ananias, John of Ephesus, the beloved disciple, Peter, and presumably everyone else who was on the beach that day had a direct experience of God’s reality and Christ’s risen presence. And all were charged and commissioned to share the good news of God’s love through concrete acts of mercy.
Are the psalmist, Paul, Ananias, John of Ephesus, the beloved disciple, Peter, and the others in the boat that day the only ones ever to have had experiences like the ones we just heard about? Oh sure, you might say, maybe there have been a few saints since the time the Scriptures were written. Julian of Norwich, who lived in the fourteenth century, wrote down her vivid visions of Jesus. Teresa of Avila also wrote about her visions of Jesus and imagined the soul as an interior castle in which he comes to live. And you can still read the journals and other writings on contemplative prayer of Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who died only in 1968.
So, do real, ordinary people, people like us, have such direct encounters with God? Actually, they do. Some years ago, I visited the church where Julian was thought to be enclosed. Most of us would not choose the life she chose: living intentionally in a room built onto the side of a church and spending her days in prayer and contemplation. But what was surprising to me when I visited the church was that a group of people were sitting in Julian’s enclosure spending an hour in silent prayer! You can also visit Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the Trappist monastery where Merton lived. In fact, lay people from all over the world have come to the monastery since its founding in 1848. You can go for a long weekend or for four and half days. Either way, you spend the entire time in silence, except for the seven daily sung offices, which lay folks can join. Those who come to the church of St. Julian or to Gethsemani come to have that same direct experience of God that the people in Scripture and so many others since have had.
But you don’t have to go to England or Kentucky to have such an experience – although going to such places is definitely worth the effort. And it’s not only especially holy people who experience God’s presence with them directly. All of us called to know in our own flesh the reality of God and of Christ’s risen presence with us. We might have such a direct experience of God in nature or when we are at table with Jesus in the Eucharist. More likely, we may have direct sense of God’s presence when we allow ourselves some time to be alone with God, when we “recline next to him,” like the beloved disciple, when we let God love us.
And what happens when we actually have such a direct experience of God’s presence in our lives? Like the psalmist, we may have a deeper trust in God’s mercy, forgiveness, and love. God may start in us a process of inner transformation, in which we begin to become the person we were truly created to be. We may be able to reflect more clearly for others God’s love for us and for them. We may have a clearer idea of what God is calling us to do. God may even strengthen our ability to minister to God’s people.
At this point, you might be thinking, “Wait, wait, none of this applies to me.” To be sure, our temperaments are different. Some of us are called to a more contemplative life, while others of us are called to engage more actively with the world. And we are at different stages of life. Some of us have demanding jobs and families who need our attention. However, as we age, and our social and familial responsibilities lessen, many of us feel called to life that includes more prayer and contemplation. Indeed for many of us, the key to graceful aging is to let go of our tight self-concern and begin to see ourselves as connected with both God and Jesus’ “sheep.”
Almost all of us can discover, or rediscover, that our life is rooted in God, and that our ministry, whatever it is, ideally flows out of the relationship that we develop with God through prayer. And the key to a deeper prayer life? Intentional practice. Our way of putting ourselves into God’s presence does not have to be elaborate or protracted, but it does have to be regular. Whether you spend five, ten, thirty, or more minutes a day with God is immaterial. What does matter is that, when we regularly open ourselves to God’s presence and allow God into our lives, God will grace us with what we need. So I invite you to examine your life. Where are the times when you can allow God to be present to you?
And here is the good news: God meets us where we are. Whether we are in an upper room fearing for our lives, whether we are on the road to Damascus, whether we are out fishing, whether we are in our own rooms, whether we are on the road to Columbus, or whether we are out on our morning walk, if we open our eyes and ears, the risen Christ will make himself known to us. He will gently take us by the hand and graciously begin to work his will for us. We only have to let him.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Where is the Risen Christ?
“Where did you meet the risen Christ this Easter?” The question from my spiritual director stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t answer it, so she decided to tell her own story. She is a Dominican sister, and for some years she had worked in adult formation in a large Columbus parish. For the Easter vigil this year, she and another sister decided to go back to that parish. As she was walking into the sanctuary, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around. It was a man she had worked with some years back. Let’s call him “Bill.” When my director had first met him, Bill was an alcoholic. He had already lost two marriages and declared bankruptcy twice. Things went well for a while. But by the time my director left that parish, Bill had gone back to drinking, lost another business, and dropped away from the church. However, one look at Bill’s face at the Easter vigil this year told my director that something had changed. “Sister,” said Bill excitedly, “I’ve cleared up my debts, my business is stable, and I’ve been sober for two years!”
Where do we meet the risen Christ? Where did Thomas meet the risen Christ? Actually, if you think about it, we have an odd set of readings for this Sunday. In our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear Peter’s declaration that he must obey God rather than human authorities, and that, as a witness, he must continue to proclaim Christ crucified and risen. Our psalm exhorts us to praise God joyfully and noisily, most especially for God’s “mighty acts.” In our reading from the book of Revelation, which we will hear throughout Easter tide, John of Ephesus proclaims the Christ “who is and who was and who is to come.” He reminds us that the same Christ has brought us into a kingdom, in which we are all priests – all of us.
And then we hear the gospel passage, which, at first glance, seems to contrast with the joy of the other lessons, especially the exuberant tone of the psalm. It’s a passage, as you’ve just heard, with two episodes. In the first we see the anxious disciples, afraid that they will be the next to be executed. Jesus comes among them and reassures them. He gives them a commission: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into them. They are good to go.
We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with the group of disciples when Jesus appeared to them that Easter evening. Actually, we don’t know much about him at all. We might infer from the three times that he appears in the Gospel of John that he bluntly “tells it like it is.” We first saw him when Jesus heard of the death of Lazarus. Jesus decided to return to Bethany, even though he knew that he was a marked man. “Come along,” Thomas said to the others, “we might as well die with him.” We next encountered Thomas at Jesus’ last meal with his friends. Jesus told them that they would live as he did, since they knew where he was going. Thomas countered, “Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the way?”
And now here we are, a week after Jesus first visited the frightened disciples. Like many of us, Thomas refused to accept hearsay evidence. Someone else’s report of the risen Christ would not convince him. And really, wasn’t such good news too good to be true? As we know, he was not the first or the only one to wonder about reports that Jesus had been raised. Thomas was especially not ready to believe that Jesus had been raised – not after that horrific execution. If you were Thomas, would you have believed such a report?
By God’s grace, Thomas receives the confirmation that he needs. He meets the risen Jesus. Jesus has all the wounds that prove that it is he, not a ghost nor a hoax, nor some other deity. Thomas is then able to make a deep profession of faith: “My Lord and my God.” Then Jesus gently reminds Thomas that all those who follow Thomas in faith will not need to see Jesus’ physical body to trust that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead. We hear no more of Thomas in John’s gospel, but perhaps he received the same commission as the other disciples. Tradition has it that Thomas spread the good news in India. In fact, the Mar Thoma church in south India traces its founding to Thomas.
So where do we meet the risen Christ today? We are among those who will not see Jesus’ physical body. But is God still bringing life from death? As I continued to meditate on my director’s question, I thought about a woman I have come to know through the Wellstreams program. When I first met her, I was sure she was “not my type.” And indeed, at first glance ours is an unlikely friendship: she is about fifteen years younger than I, has been a stay-at-home mom to five children, is delightfully artistic, and is a committed Roman Catholic. By God’s grace, when she contacted me after the program ended, I was able to say “yes,” and we have met regularly over coffee ever since. Our relationship has been a gift to me, and I felt truly blessed by our last visit. Has the risen Christ made himself known to me in her?
Perhaps Episcopal priest and writer Barbara Crafton is right. Crafton has a daily e-message. For the last few months, she has been sending paintings of Scripture stories, with her own commentary. On Friday she sent a picture of a painting by the early twentieth-century African-American artist, Henry Ossawa Turner. Depicting Peter and John at the empty tomb, the painting shows a somber, puzzled-looking Peter. On the other hand, John is transfixed. He is radiant and glows with an inner light. We know he has had a life-changing experience. Instinct tells me that Crafton is right. “We see the resurrected Christ best,” she says, “by seeing the people who see him.”
But there’s more. As the frightened disciples, the walkers on the road to Emmaus, and Thomas discovered, the risen Christ also shows up in unexpected places, in places where old lives are being renewed, where people are welcomed into fellowship, where death is turned to life. Look around you, you may discover him too. Here are some other places he has recently turned up. Marcel Visser discovered the risen Christ through his friendship with a member of the L’Arche community for disabled adults in Cape Breton, Canada. In the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, Ibrahim, a six year-old Syrian refugee who is deaf, is learning sign language through the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf and its partner agencies. Ibrahim and other refugee children like him might have been condemned to a minimal life. However, with the support of Episcopal Relief and Development and other organizations, hearing-impaired children, blind children, even those with mental disabilities are receiving education and, with it, hope for the future.
And one more. I don’t normally read the Sunday New York Times sports pages. However, a couple of days ago, an article caught my eye, and I knew that the risen Christ had unexpectedly turned up in, of all places, a boxing club in Toronto.1 You’ll see all the trappings of a standard boxing club in the Newsgirls Boxing Club: a rope, rings, speed bags, heavy bags, and a punching mannequin. Initially aimed at women, the club is now a welcoming haven for all. The club especially welcomes transgender people, who often find daily life difficult, even dangerous. For many the club is a place of sanctuary and empowerment, even though they will never box anywhere else. Recently, a newcomer to the club, who had come for a few times, asked club founder Savoy Howe a simple question that profoundly moved her. “Why are you so nice to trans people?” the person asked. Howe’s eyes filled with tears as she told the interviewer the story. Then she paused, composed herself, and said, “I mean, why wouldn’t you be?”
And you? Where did you meet the risen Christ this Easter? Where are you meeting him? Have you met him at the altar, when he nourishes you with his Body and Blood? Have you met him in your own prayer time, when you stay silent long enough to hear his faint whispers? Have you seen him in the faces of other people who have seen him? Or perhaps you have met him in your loved ones and friends, those who minister to you and bless you, and those with whom you share God’s blessings. Have you met him in nature, when you look with loving eyes on the beautiful earth which God has given us? Have you met him in the faces of those whom you serve, in work or ministry? Or perhaps he has turned up in places where you never expected he would turn up, in places where outcasts are welcomed, the neglected are cared for, and lives are transformed.
I invite you this week to look around you, to see if by chance the risen Christ has shown up. Be sure: he has and he will. And when he does, he will reassure you that, although we do not see his physical body, we are still blessed with his presence in our lives.
1. David Waldstein, “Sunday Sports,” March 27, 2016, pp. 1, 6.
Where do we meet the risen Christ? Where did Thomas meet the risen Christ? Actually, if you think about it, we have an odd set of readings for this Sunday. In our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear Peter’s declaration that he must obey God rather than human authorities, and that, as a witness, he must continue to proclaim Christ crucified and risen. Our psalm exhorts us to praise God joyfully and noisily, most especially for God’s “mighty acts.” In our reading from the book of Revelation, which we will hear throughout Easter tide, John of Ephesus proclaims the Christ “who is and who was and who is to come.” He reminds us that the same Christ has brought us into a kingdom, in which we are all priests – all of us.
And then we hear the gospel passage, which, at first glance, seems to contrast with the joy of the other lessons, especially the exuberant tone of the psalm. It’s a passage, as you’ve just heard, with two episodes. In the first we see the anxious disciples, afraid that they will be the next to be executed. Jesus comes among them and reassures them. He gives them a commission: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into them. They are good to go.
We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with the group of disciples when Jesus appeared to them that Easter evening. Actually, we don’t know much about him at all. We might infer from the three times that he appears in the Gospel of John that he bluntly “tells it like it is.” We first saw him when Jesus heard of the death of Lazarus. Jesus decided to return to Bethany, even though he knew that he was a marked man. “Come along,” Thomas said to the others, “we might as well die with him.” We next encountered Thomas at Jesus’ last meal with his friends. Jesus told them that they would live as he did, since they knew where he was going. Thomas countered, “Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the way?”
And now here we are, a week after Jesus first visited the frightened disciples. Like many of us, Thomas refused to accept hearsay evidence. Someone else’s report of the risen Christ would not convince him. And really, wasn’t such good news too good to be true? As we know, he was not the first or the only one to wonder about reports that Jesus had been raised. Thomas was especially not ready to believe that Jesus had been raised – not after that horrific execution. If you were Thomas, would you have believed such a report?
By God’s grace, Thomas receives the confirmation that he needs. He meets the risen Jesus. Jesus has all the wounds that prove that it is he, not a ghost nor a hoax, nor some other deity. Thomas is then able to make a deep profession of faith: “My Lord and my God.” Then Jesus gently reminds Thomas that all those who follow Thomas in faith will not need to see Jesus’ physical body to trust that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead. We hear no more of Thomas in John’s gospel, but perhaps he received the same commission as the other disciples. Tradition has it that Thomas spread the good news in India. In fact, the Mar Thoma church in south India traces its founding to Thomas.
So where do we meet the risen Christ today? We are among those who will not see Jesus’ physical body. But is God still bringing life from death? As I continued to meditate on my director’s question, I thought about a woman I have come to know through the Wellstreams program. When I first met her, I was sure she was “not my type.” And indeed, at first glance ours is an unlikely friendship: she is about fifteen years younger than I, has been a stay-at-home mom to five children, is delightfully artistic, and is a committed Roman Catholic. By God’s grace, when she contacted me after the program ended, I was able to say “yes,” and we have met regularly over coffee ever since. Our relationship has been a gift to me, and I felt truly blessed by our last visit. Has the risen Christ made himself known to me in her?
Perhaps Episcopal priest and writer Barbara Crafton is right. Crafton has a daily e-message. For the last few months, she has been sending paintings of Scripture stories, with her own commentary. On Friday she sent a picture of a painting by the early twentieth-century African-American artist, Henry Ossawa Turner. Depicting Peter and John at the empty tomb, the painting shows a somber, puzzled-looking Peter. On the other hand, John is transfixed. He is radiant and glows with an inner light. We know he has had a life-changing experience. Instinct tells me that Crafton is right. “We see the resurrected Christ best,” she says, “by seeing the people who see him.”
But there’s more. As the frightened disciples, the walkers on the road to Emmaus, and Thomas discovered, the risen Christ also shows up in unexpected places, in places where old lives are being renewed, where people are welcomed into fellowship, where death is turned to life. Look around you, you may discover him too. Here are some other places he has recently turned up. Marcel Visser discovered the risen Christ through his friendship with a member of the L’Arche community for disabled adults in Cape Breton, Canada. In the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, Ibrahim, a six year-old Syrian refugee who is deaf, is learning sign language through the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf and its partner agencies. Ibrahim and other refugee children like him might have been condemned to a minimal life. However, with the support of Episcopal Relief and Development and other organizations, hearing-impaired children, blind children, even those with mental disabilities are receiving education and, with it, hope for the future.
And one more. I don’t normally read the Sunday New York Times sports pages. However, a couple of days ago, an article caught my eye, and I knew that the risen Christ had unexpectedly turned up in, of all places, a boxing club in Toronto.1 You’ll see all the trappings of a standard boxing club in the Newsgirls Boxing Club: a rope, rings, speed bags, heavy bags, and a punching mannequin. Initially aimed at women, the club is now a welcoming haven for all. The club especially welcomes transgender people, who often find daily life difficult, even dangerous. For many the club is a place of sanctuary and empowerment, even though they will never box anywhere else. Recently, a newcomer to the club, who had come for a few times, asked club founder Savoy Howe a simple question that profoundly moved her. “Why are you so nice to trans people?” the person asked. Howe’s eyes filled with tears as she told the interviewer the story. Then she paused, composed herself, and said, “I mean, why wouldn’t you be?”
And you? Where did you meet the risen Christ this Easter? Where are you meeting him? Have you met him at the altar, when he nourishes you with his Body and Blood? Have you met him in your own prayer time, when you stay silent long enough to hear his faint whispers? Have you seen him in the faces of other people who have seen him? Or perhaps you have met him in your loved ones and friends, those who minister to you and bless you, and those with whom you share God’s blessings. Have you met him in nature, when you look with loving eyes on the beautiful earth which God has given us? Have you met him in the faces of those whom you serve, in work or ministry? Or perhaps he has turned up in places where you never expected he would turn up, in places where outcasts are welcomed, the neglected are cared for, and lives are transformed.
I invite you this week to look around you, to see if by chance the risen Christ has shown up. Be sure: he has and he will. And when he does, he will reassure you that, although we do not see his physical body, we are still blessed with his presence in our lives.
1. David Waldstein, “Sunday Sports,” March 27, 2016, pp. 1, 6.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
An Idle Tale?
“But they did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”
In the shadowy half-light of a Sunday dawn a band of faithful women clambered over the rocks and up to the tomb where the body of Jesus, their beloved friend and teacher, had been placed on Friday afternoon. Most of these women had followed Jesus since the very beginning of his ministry, and some of them had used their own funds to support Jesus. They saw how he healed people and lovingly listened to everyone who came to him. They saw how he especially welcomed women, poor people, tax collectors, and even gentiles. They heard him teach in the synagogues and tell stories in the villages. They heard him declare that God’s reign had come close to them. They were there too at Jesus’ last meal with his friends, sitting on the floor, or perhaps in an area screened off from the men. They were there at the cross, standing silently by, watching him die like a common criminal. They followed his body to Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, anointed his body for burial, and watched as the stone covering the mouth of the tomb was rolled in place. Unlike most of Jesus’ other friends, the faithful women didn’t betray him, deny him, or flee from him.
Then in that shadowy dawn, the women had a shattering experience. The rock covering the mouth of the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid had been rolled back, the tomb was empty, and two men stood near it. Angels? Terrified, the women fell to the ground. Then the strangers flung a question at the women, “Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery?”1 As the women stood up, they slowly began to think of all that Jesus had taught. They remembered how he had interpreted Scripture and some of the things he had said about himself. They remembered that he had taken pains to remind Peter and all the rest of his friends that, “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the religious leaders, high priests, and scholars, be killed, and on the third day be raised up alive.” As the sun rose higher in the sky, suddenly the truth dawned on the faithful women, and they knew that something new and totally unexpected had happened. They ran to tell the others, but “but the apostles didn’t believe a word of it, thought they were making it all up.” Even after Peter went to look for himself, he still wasn’t convinced.
No surprise. In his accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and of the earliest experiences of his followers, Luke stresses how difficult it was for people to believe that Jesus had been raised – unless they went back to the Scriptures and thought about what Jesus had said. At the same time that Peter was shaking his head in puzzlement, two of Jesus’ other followers were walking to the village of Emmaus. They related to the stranger who had joined them on the walk all that had just taken place in Jerusalem, not realizing that they were speaking with the risen Jesus. Seemingly exasperated, Jesus said, “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?” Only when Jesus broke bread with them did they fully see him.
The two disciples ran back to Jerusalem, right to Peter and the others, and told them all that had just happened. Then Jesus himself appeared among them all, but, “They still couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It was too much; it seemed too good to be true.” Only when Jesus helped them to understand the Scriptures did the truth begin to dawn on them. And when Jesus reminded them that were witnesses of what had happened to him, they began to see that they too might be called to tell others about what had taken place.
So is the story of Jesus’ being raised sheer nonsense? At the very end of Matthew’s gospel, some of the eleven disciples still doubted. We’ll hear the story next week of how difficult it was for Thomas to believe that Jesus had been raised. Some of the Corinthian Christians must have doubted the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Why else would Paul have had to remind them, “Face it – if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors.” If Jesus’ being raised from the dead were sheer nonsense, could Peter, an unlettered fisherman, have convinced Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, and all his household, that God raised Jesus on the third day, and that the Scriptures testify that Jesus is God’s anointed one?
And yet, the whole story is still so hard to believe! Doubt in Jesus’ resurrection has a long history – and for good reason. None of us were witnesses. None of us travelled with Jesus and his friends. None of us heard him teach or saw him heal. None of us saw Jesus hanging on a cross between two thieves. None of us wept with the women. But we do know death. We do know the death of a loved one. We do know the death of a relationship, whose loss leaves unfillable holes in our hearts. We do know the death of hopes and dreams, as our work for a peaceful and just world evaporates into yet more war, violence, and injustice. We open our newspapers, or turn on our computers, smart phones, or televisions and witness yet another act of terrorism and murder: Brussels, Paris, Charleston, Newtown, Tucson. Too often, we are those people whom Paul pitied, pitied because the resurrection seems so far away from our own experience. Evangelical preacher Tony Campolo is famous for preaching on Good Friday, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!” Is it still Good Friday for us? Is this where we live?
By God’s grace, Good Friday is not where we live! After that shadowy dawn, the women went and told Peter and the other apostles. Perhaps they told others as well. The men on the road to Emmaus understood what had happened and told the Eleven. Peter finally understood what had happened. By God’s grace, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter and others of Jesus’ friends spread the good news that Jesus had been raised from the dead and was still alive to them. Paul had a shattering experience of Jesus’ risen presence on the road to Damascus and became an eloquent preacher of the good news. Others of Jesus’ friends risked life, limb, and property to spread the good news that Jesus had been raised, that their lives were forever changed by Jesus’ resurrection, and that new life was available, by God’s grace, to all who followed Jesus. And so the good news has come down to us, to this very day, to this very place, good news brought to us across the centuries, witness by witness by witness.
No we are not stuck on Good Friday! It is Sunday! We too have heard. We may not know exactly what happened in that tomb in the rock, but we trust what we have heard. We trust Jesus’ promise that on the third day God would do something extraordinary. We too study Scripture and find in it the confirmation we seek of the reality of God and of new life in Jesus. We too trust that death is not the final answer to our brief human lives. We trust that we too will enter that larger life where time is no more, and that in a sense, as Jesus’ followers, we are already living in that life. We too trust that with God all things are possible, even our own transformation.
And we hear something else. We hear in the words of the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrected life an invitation to us, an invitation to follow Jesus and to live as he lived. Like the women who first saw the empty tomb, like the men at Emmaus, like Peter, like Thomas, like Paul, like all those who spread the good news, we too have been commissioned. We too are called to tell others that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he is the first one who was raised, but he is not the last. Where he is, there we will be.
Sometime in the 1980s, I attended a conference of feminists in the church. There were Catholic women religious there, as well as Protestant clergy women and lay women. We discussed books like Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father, and we celebrated liturgies using feminine imagery for God. The Catholic sisters talked of their struggles with the Roman hierarchy and the call they felt to ordination as priests. The Protestant clergy women spoke of their struggle to be heard and taken seriously in churches still dominated by men. During that conference, I was given the button you see me wearing today. I’ve kept it all these years. The button says, “But they did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” For those of us at the conference, the words reflected our experiences in the church at that time. By God’s grace, much has changed in our churches. Although neither women nor married men are ordained yet in the Roman Catholic Church, much has changed even there. Even more has changed in the Episcopal Church, as we have learned that neither gender nor sexuality nor ethnicity nor disability are reasons to exclude people from leadership in the church.
So can I put my button away? Or does the story of Jesus’ resurrection still sound like nonsense? Not for us who believe God’s promises! Not for us who recognize Jesus at the altar and hear his voice in Scripture. Not for us, who joyfully accept his call to share the good news with others.
Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!
1. This and subsequent Scripture quotes are taken from The Message.
In the shadowy half-light of a Sunday dawn a band of faithful women clambered over the rocks and up to the tomb where the body of Jesus, their beloved friend and teacher, had been placed on Friday afternoon. Most of these women had followed Jesus since the very beginning of his ministry, and some of them had used their own funds to support Jesus. They saw how he healed people and lovingly listened to everyone who came to him. They saw how he especially welcomed women, poor people, tax collectors, and even gentiles. They heard him teach in the synagogues and tell stories in the villages. They heard him declare that God’s reign had come close to them. They were there too at Jesus’ last meal with his friends, sitting on the floor, or perhaps in an area screened off from the men. They were there at the cross, standing silently by, watching him die like a common criminal. They followed his body to Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, anointed his body for burial, and watched as the stone covering the mouth of the tomb was rolled in place. Unlike most of Jesus’ other friends, the faithful women didn’t betray him, deny him, or flee from him.
Then in that shadowy dawn, the women had a shattering experience. The rock covering the mouth of the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid had been rolled back, the tomb was empty, and two men stood near it. Angels? Terrified, the women fell to the ground. Then the strangers flung a question at the women, “Why are you looking for the Living One in a cemetery?”1 As the women stood up, they slowly began to think of all that Jesus had taught. They remembered how he had interpreted Scripture and some of the things he had said about himself. They remembered that he had taken pains to remind Peter and all the rest of his friends that, “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the religious leaders, high priests, and scholars, be killed, and on the third day be raised up alive.” As the sun rose higher in the sky, suddenly the truth dawned on the faithful women, and they knew that something new and totally unexpected had happened. They ran to tell the others, but “but the apostles didn’t believe a word of it, thought they were making it all up.” Even after Peter went to look for himself, he still wasn’t convinced.
No surprise. In his accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and of the earliest experiences of his followers, Luke stresses how difficult it was for people to believe that Jesus had been raised – unless they went back to the Scriptures and thought about what Jesus had said. At the same time that Peter was shaking his head in puzzlement, two of Jesus’ other followers were walking to the village of Emmaus. They related to the stranger who had joined them on the walk all that had just taken place in Jerusalem, not realizing that they were speaking with the risen Jesus. Seemingly exasperated, Jesus said, “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?” Only when Jesus broke bread with them did they fully see him.
The two disciples ran back to Jerusalem, right to Peter and the others, and told them all that had just happened. Then Jesus himself appeared among them all, but, “They still couldn’t believe what they were seeing. It was too much; it seemed too good to be true.” Only when Jesus helped them to understand the Scriptures did the truth begin to dawn on them. And when Jesus reminded them that were witnesses of what had happened to him, they began to see that they too might be called to tell others about what had taken place.
So is the story of Jesus’ being raised sheer nonsense? At the very end of Matthew’s gospel, some of the eleven disciples still doubted. We’ll hear the story next week of how difficult it was for Thomas to believe that Jesus had been raised. Some of the Corinthian Christians must have doubted the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. Why else would Paul have had to remind them, “Face it – if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors.” If Jesus’ being raised from the dead were sheer nonsense, could Peter, an unlettered fisherman, have convinced Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, and all his household, that God raised Jesus on the third day, and that the Scriptures testify that Jesus is God’s anointed one?
And yet, the whole story is still so hard to believe! Doubt in Jesus’ resurrection has a long history – and for good reason. None of us were witnesses. None of us travelled with Jesus and his friends. None of us heard him teach or saw him heal. None of us saw Jesus hanging on a cross between two thieves. None of us wept with the women. But we do know death. We do know the death of a loved one. We do know the death of a relationship, whose loss leaves unfillable holes in our hearts. We do know the death of hopes and dreams, as our work for a peaceful and just world evaporates into yet more war, violence, and injustice. We open our newspapers, or turn on our computers, smart phones, or televisions and witness yet another act of terrorism and murder: Brussels, Paris, Charleston, Newtown, Tucson. Too often, we are those people whom Paul pitied, pitied because the resurrection seems so far away from our own experience. Evangelical preacher Tony Campolo is famous for preaching on Good Friday, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!” Is it still Good Friday for us? Is this where we live?
By God’s grace, Good Friday is not where we live! After that shadowy dawn, the women went and told Peter and the other apostles. Perhaps they told others as well. The men on the road to Emmaus understood what had happened and told the Eleven. Peter finally understood what had happened. By God’s grace, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter and others of Jesus’ friends spread the good news that Jesus had been raised from the dead and was still alive to them. Paul had a shattering experience of Jesus’ risen presence on the road to Damascus and became an eloquent preacher of the good news. Others of Jesus’ friends risked life, limb, and property to spread the good news that Jesus had been raised, that their lives were forever changed by Jesus’ resurrection, and that new life was available, by God’s grace, to all who followed Jesus. And so the good news has come down to us, to this very day, to this very place, good news brought to us across the centuries, witness by witness by witness.
No we are not stuck on Good Friday! It is Sunday! We too have heard. We may not know exactly what happened in that tomb in the rock, but we trust what we have heard. We trust Jesus’ promise that on the third day God would do something extraordinary. We too study Scripture and find in it the confirmation we seek of the reality of God and of new life in Jesus. We too trust that death is not the final answer to our brief human lives. We trust that we too will enter that larger life where time is no more, and that in a sense, as Jesus’ followers, we are already living in that life. We too trust that with God all things are possible, even our own transformation.
And we hear something else. We hear in the words of the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrected life an invitation to us, an invitation to follow Jesus and to live as he lived. Like the women who first saw the empty tomb, like the men at Emmaus, like Peter, like Thomas, like Paul, like all those who spread the good news, we too have been commissioned. We too are called to tell others that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he is the first one who was raised, but he is not the last. Where he is, there we will be.
Sometime in the 1980s, I attended a conference of feminists in the church. There were Catholic women religious there, as well as Protestant clergy women and lay women. We discussed books like Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father, and we celebrated liturgies using feminine imagery for God. The Catholic sisters talked of their struggles with the Roman hierarchy and the call they felt to ordination as priests. The Protestant clergy women spoke of their struggle to be heard and taken seriously in churches still dominated by men. During that conference, I was given the button you see me wearing today. I’ve kept it all these years. The button says, “But they did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” For those of us at the conference, the words reflected our experiences in the church at that time. By God’s grace, much has changed in our churches. Although neither women nor married men are ordained yet in the Roman Catholic Church, much has changed even there. Even more has changed in the Episcopal Church, as we have learned that neither gender nor sexuality nor ethnicity nor disability are reasons to exclude people from leadership in the church.
So can I put my button away? Or does the story of Jesus’ resurrection still sound like nonsense? Not for us who believe God’s promises! Not for us who recognize Jesus at the altar and hear his voice in Scripture. Not for us, who joyfully accept his call to share the good news with others.
Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!
1. This and subsequent Scripture quotes are taken from The Message.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Just as I Have Loved You
A little less than a month from now, on April 22nd, this being a leap year in which the Hebrew calendar adds an extra month, Jews around the world will observe the first night of the week-long celebration of Passover. Let’s suppose that you are lucky enough to have some Jewish friends who have invited you to share their Passover meal, the Seder. Are you curious about what they do? Would you be a little nervous about joining this meal, afraid you’ll make some terrible gaffe?
When you arrive at your friends’ home, the house is sparkling clean. You hear that, as part of the cleaning, the family has given away or tossed out all foods containing yeast or leaven, and that they won’t eat leavened bread for an entire week. In the dining room, the large table is set with wine glasses and some strange looking foods. As you sit down, the host hands everyone a small prayer book called a haggadah.
You begin by blessing a first cup of wine. Then the host blesses the matzoh, the unleavened bread, saying, "This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel."
The youngest child asks questions about the Seder, which the father or host answers. As you read and sing your way through the haggadah, you experience the bitterness of slavery by eating bitter herbs, you are reminded of the mortar that the Hebrew slaves worked with by eating a mixture of chopped apples and honey, and you hear of the ten plagues that befell Egypt. For dinner, which follows the second cup of wine, you eat roasted lamb and more matzoh.
After dinner, you drink wine two more times, the host opens the door inviting the prophet Elijah into the gathering, you recite more prayers, and you sing more songs of praise to God. At the end of this meal, having followed the special liturgy, recited the prayers, and sung the songs, you understand perhaps more deeply than you ever did before, how this meal helps Jews to remember, to actively experience for themselves, the liberation of the Exodus event. You understand too why the Exodus event became such an important story for African American slaves and other oppressed people. And you join more deeply, perhaps, with all the rest of the company, and with Jews all over the world, in affirming that, "With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with a great manifestation, and with signs and wonders, the Lord took us out of Egypt."
As an observant Jew, Jesus would have participated in Passover Seders during his life. However, we don’t know for sure whether Jesus’ last meal with his friends was a Passover Seder or not. Some scholars think that it might have been a Jewish meal of special celebration, but not necessarily a Seder. We do know that after Jesus’ death and resurrection, his followers preserved at least two memories of what Jesus did at that last meal. The first memory is preserved in our Gospel reading for tonight. It is the memory of how Jesus modelled self-giving love, and of how his followers were to live out that love in their own lives. As we heard, first, Jesus performed the most humble possible service for his disciples, that of washing their feet, all their feet. Jesus’ washed the feet of Judas, who betrayed him. He washed the feet of Peter, who denied him. He washed the feet of friends who, in his darkest hour, deserted him.
Then Jesus made sure that his friends understood the meaning of what he had done. He told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Facing death, Jesus reassured his friends of his deep love for them, and he charged them to offer that same self-giving love to each other and to all those around them.
The second memory Jesus’ followers kept of his last night is preserved in the epistle reading for tonight: Jesus’ declaration that a new covenant, sealed in his blood, now existed between God and humanity. We also hear his promise to be present to us in bread and wine. In our lesson from the letter to the Christian community at Corinth, Paul remembers for the Corinthian Christians that second tradition, concerning Jesus’ words over the bread and wine of the Last Supper. By Paul’s time, i.e., about twenty years after Jesus’ death, Christians were gathering together in Jesus’ name. Paul reminds them that gathering together for the Lord’s Supper should lead the Corinthians into a deeper form of communion with Jesus and with each other, into a form of active remembrance of the Lord’s love for them similar to what Jews experience in the Passover Seder.
Actually, the Corinthian community was deeply divided. It consisted of a few wealthy families, some artisans and merchants, and a number of slaves. When these new Christians came together for their celebration of the Lord’s Supper, just as Jews do in the Seder, they ate a real dinner. Unfortunately, following the custom of the time, the host served the wealthier members of the community better food in a more comfortable room than he did the lesser community members. So the wealthiest ate well, while those less wealthy ate poorly. If they were slaves, they probably ate very little. In the paragraph just before tonight’s reading, Paul criticizes the Corinthians for their behavior at the Lord’s Supper. In the part of the letter we have just heard, he provides a theological grounding for the instructions he will then give them concerning how they should behave at the Lord’s Supper.
Paul reminds the Corinthians – and us – that in celebrating the Lord’s Supper we actively, experientially remember, i.e., we enter into and appropriate for ourselves, Jesus’ giving of himself over to death. As we actively enter into Jesus’ giving of his body and blood, that event is no longer something that happened a long time ago. It is an event that we experience in our own bodies. It is not that we are, “performing a historical passion play, replicating the movements of Jesus.” Rather, we too are at table with him, we too hear him bless the bread and wine, we too are in communion with him, and we too receive his body and blood from his own hands. We too are included in the new covenant, the covenant that he established on the night he was handed over, the covenant that he ratified by dying on the Cross and rising from the tomb. Ultimately, we too can say, “The Lord died for me.”
But we do not come to Jesus’ table all by ourselves, as atoms. We come to Jesus’ table as part of a community. We come together. “In this shared meal,” we are reminded, “Christians become sisters and brothers in Christ.”1 In this moment we come away from screens of privacy and loneliness. We come out of our fragmented lives. We come hungry, yearning to be fed by God. We leave filled, fed with God’s love. Divisions among us cease. Here we are knit together by our hunger for God and by our experience of God’s satisfying that need for all of us. In receiving the bread and wine, now become Christ’s Body and Blood, we too can say with all our hearts, “Christ died for us.”
As we experience the new covenant in Christ’s blood, and as we are fed by God, we also hear again another commandment, “Do this in remembrance of me.” How do we do this? First of all, we come. We come to the Lord’s Table! Again and again. Again and again we recall our memories of that last night with him. Again and again, we “offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies.” Again and again, we take into our bodies, the sacrament that feeds us, heals us, and gives us hope. As we remember his death, we marvel again at the depth of his love. And as we proclaim together “the Lord’s death until he comes,” we know that we have had a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, when, in the last day, all of us will be gathered together around the Lord’s Table forever.
And then we go. Enlivened by the Holy Spirit we know that the Lord who showed his deep love for us still lives. Nourished by his Body and Blood, we obey his command to share his love for us with everyone we encounter. We go out into the world, into our homes, into our schools, into our workplaces, into our clubs and secular organizations, hearing his words in our hearts, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we care for our children or the elderly, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we volunteer our time to a worthy cause, or as we forgive those who have betrayed us, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” And as night closes in, on our days and our lives, by God’s grace, we will also hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
May it be so.
1. And following, Ellen Charry, quoted in Synthesis, Vol. 28 No.4, p2.
When you arrive at your friends’ home, the house is sparkling clean. You hear that, as part of the cleaning, the family has given away or tossed out all foods containing yeast or leaven, and that they won’t eat leavened bread for an entire week. In the dining room, the large table is set with wine glasses and some strange looking foods. As you sit down, the host hands everyone a small prayer book called a haggadah.
You begin by blessing a first cup of wine. Then the host blesses the matzoh, the unleavened bread, saying, "This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel."
The youngest child asks questions about the Seder, which the father or host answers. As you read and sing your way through the haggadah, you experience the bitterness of slavery by eating bitter herbs, you are reminded of the mortar that the Hebrew slaves worked with by eating a mixture of chopped apples and honey, and you hear of the ten plagues that befell Egypt. For dinner, which follows the second cup of wine, you eat roasted lamb and more matzoh.
After dinner, you drink wine two more times, the host opens the door inviting the prophet Elijah into the gathering, you recite more prayers, and you sing more songs of praise to God. At the end of this meal, having followed the special liturgy, recited the prayers, and sung the songs, you understand perhaps more deeply than you ever did before, how this meal helps Jews to remember, to actively experience for themselves, the liberation of the Exodus event. You understand too why the Exodus event became such an important story for African American slaves and other oppressed people. And you join more deeply, perhaps, with all the rest of the company, and with Jews all over the world, in affirming that, "With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with a great manifestation, and with signs and wonders, the Lord took us out of Egypt."
As an observant Jew, Jesus would have participated in Passover Seders during his life. However, we don’t know for sure whether Jesus’ last meal with his friends was a Passover Seder or not. Some scholars think that it might have been a Jewish meal of special celebration, but not necessarily a Seder. We do know that after Jesus’ death and resurrection, his followers preserved at least two memories of what Jesus did at that last meal. The first memory is preserved in our Gospel reading for tonight. It is the memory of how Jesus modelled self-giving love, and of how his followers were to live out that love in their own lives. As we heard, first, Jesus performed the most humble possible service for his disciples, that of washing their feet, all their feet. Jesus’ washed the feet of Judas, who betrayed him. He washed the feet of Peter, who denied him. He washed the feet of friends who, in his darkest hour, deserted him.
Then Jesus made sure that his friends understood the meaning of what he had done. He told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Facing death, Jesus reassured his friends of his deep love for them, and he charged them to offer that same self-giving love to each other and to all those around them.
The second memory Jesus’ followers kept of his last night is preserved in the epistle reading for tonight: Jesus’ declaration that a new covenant, sealed in his blood, now existed between God and humanity. We also hear his promise to be present to us in bread and wine. In our lesson from the letter to the Christian community at Corinth, Paul remembers for the Corinthian Christians that second tradition, concerning Jesus’ words over the bread and wine of the Last Supper. By Paul’s time, i.e., about twenty years after Jesus’ death, Christians were gathering together in Jesus’ name. Paul reminds them that gathering together for the Lord’s Supper should lead the Corinthians into a deeper form of communion with Jesus and with each other, into a form of active remembrance of the Lord’s love for them similar to what Jews experience in the Passover Seder.
Actually, the Corinthian community was deeply divided. It consisted of a few wealthy families, some artisans and merchants, and a number of slaves. When these new Christians came together for their celebration of the Lord’s Supper, just as Jews do in the Seder, they ate a real dinner. Unfortunately, following the custom of the time, the host served the wealthier members of the community better food in a more comfortable room than he did the lesser community members. So the wealthiest ate well, while those less wealthy ate poorly. If they were slaves, they probably ate very little. In the paragraph just before tonight’s reading, Paul criticizes the Corinthians for their behavior at the Lord’s Supper. In the part of the letter we have just heard, he provides a theological grounding for the instructions he will then give them concerning how they should behave at the Lord’s Supper.
Paul reminds the Corinthians – and us – that in celebrating the Lord’s Supper we actively, experientially remember, i.e., we enter into and appropriate for ourselves, Jesus’ giving of himself over to death. As we actively enter into Jesus’ giving of his body and blood, that event is no longer something that happened a long time ago. It is an event that we experience in our own bodies. It is not that we are, “performing a historical passion play, replicating the movements of Jesus.” Rather, we too are at table with him, we too hear him bless the bread and wine, we too are in communion with him, and we too receive his body and blood from his own hands. We too are included in the new covenant, the covenant that he established on the night he was handed over, the covenant that he ratified by dying on the Cross and rising from the tomb. Ultimately, we too can say, “The Lord died for me.”
But we do not come to Jesus’ table all by ourselves, as atoms. We come to Jesus’ table as part of a community. We come together. “In this shared meal,” we are reminded, “Christians become sisters and brothers in Christ.”1 In this moment we come away from screens of privacy and loneliness. We come out of our fragmented lives. We come hungry, yearning to be fed by God. We leave filled, fed with God’s love. Divisions among us cease. Here we are knit together by our hunger for God and by our experience of God’s satisfying that need for all of us. In receiving the bread and wine, now become Christ’s Body and Blood, we too can say with all our hearts, “Christ died for us.”
As we experience the new covenant in Christ’s blood, and as we are fed by God, we also hear again another commandment, “Do this in remembrance of me.” How do we do this? First of all, we come. We come to the Lord’s Table! Again and again. Again and again we recall our memories of that last night with him. Again and again, we “offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies.” Again and again, we take into our bodies, the sacrament that feeds us, heals us, and gives us hope. As we remember his death, we marvel again at the depth of his love. And as we proclaim together “the Lord’s death until he comes,” we know that we have had a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, when, in the last day, all of us will be gathered together around the Lord’s Table forever.
And then we go. Enlivened by the Holy Spirit we know that the Lord who showed his deep love for us still lives. Nourished by his Body and Blood, we obey his command to share his love for us with everyone we encounter. We go out into the world, into our homes, into our schools, into our workplaces, into our clubs and secular organizations, hearing his words in our hearts, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we care for our children or the elderly, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” As we volunteer our time to a worthy cause, or as we forgive those who have betrayed us, we hear, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” And as night closes in, on our days and our lives, by God’s grace, we will also hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
May it be so.
1. And following, Ellen Charry, quoted in Synthesis, Vol. 28 No.4, p2.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
But Now am Found
I’ve always loved the hymn, “Amazing Grace,” especially that great line, “I once was lost, but now am found….” It’s a very popular hymn in this country, but do you know its story? It was first published in 1779, and its author was an English poet and clergyman, John Newton. Newton was not raised in a religious family, and in his early years, especially during the time he was forced to serve in the English navy, he was often a stubborn and recalcitrant loner. After leaving the navy, he got involved in the Atlantic slave trade, ferrying Africans to the U.S. and other cargo back to England. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel off the coast of County Donegal, Ireland. Newton felt so threatened that he called out to God for mercy. The storm abated, and he realized that God had saved his life. He continued in the slave trade for the next seven years. However, in 1755, he gave up sea faring and began studying theology.
Newton was ordained in the Church of England in 1764 and began writing hymns with the poet William Cowper. Recalling his own moment of conversion off the coast of Ireland, he wrote “Amazing Grace” to illustrate a sermon for New Year’s Day 1773. Though not well known in England, “Amazing Grace” was sung extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the U.S. in the early 19th century. In 1835 it was joined to the tune “New Britain,” by which we know it today. Perhaps what is most “amazing” about the hymn is that, with its message that our sins do not cut us off from forgiveness and redemption, and that, God, in God’s mercy, continues to search for us, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.
Unquestionably, John Newton knew his Scripture. When he wrote “Amazing Grace,” perhaps he had in mind not only his own extraordinary experience of God’s radical acceptance of him, but also this passage from the gospel of Luke that we have just heard. Spoiler alert right from the top: the parable that we wrongly call “The Prodigal Son,” is not primarily about forgiveness. It is about restoration, wholeness, and God’s unrelenting search for us, in order to bring us back into community with Godself and with God’s people. You can see that immediately if you look at its context, and especially if you think about why Jesus might have told this parable.
A major motif of the gospel of Luke is Jesus’ humanity. What is more important, throughout both the gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, is that the writer emphasizes Jesus’ message that all are welcome in God’s realm, and that salvation is available to all humanity. In the gospel in particular, Jesus heals, seeks out, welcomes, and dines with all kinds of people, rich and poor, sinners and law-abiding, Jews and gentiles. In gathering together all kinds of people, Jesus intentionally creates a new family within the realm of God, a family whose members acknowledge God’s grace and mercy, especially as they see it reflected in Jesus’ welcome of all into that family.
As we heard in today’s reading, some Pharisees and Scribes, i.e., some of the religious leaders, appear to question Jesus’ willingness to cross ethnic, gender, and social class boundaries. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they complain. Think about it. In Jesus’ time there were only very prescribed people with whom it was customary to share food. In response to this complaint, Luke has Jesus tell three stories, all having to do with something lost, and all ending with joyful recovery of the lost item. All three stories illustrate what Jesus’ ministry is about. The first two, which come in between the opening sentences and the parable we just heard, are relatively simple and straightforward. The first, as those of you Bible-readers remember, is the parable of the ninety-nine sheep that are safely in the fold and the one that has gone astray. After diligently searching for and finding the lost sheep, the shepherd in the parable says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” In the second story, a woman turns her house upside down searching for a lost coin. When she finally finds it, she says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Interpreting both these parables, Jesus says, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
The third parable, the one we just heard, is more complex. But ultimately its theme is similar to that of the other two. God deliberately seeks those who are lost, it tells us, and rejoices when the lost ones are found. This is not the parable of the Prodigal Son, as it’s usually called. It’s really the parable of the selfish sons and the loving father. Consider: both sons are lost – in different ways. The younger son is more obviously lost. He has taken a chunk of the family’s money and run away. He’s probably immature and inexperienced, so the money quickly disappears, either through extravagant spending or because, as a young man, he was taken advantage of by expert con men. Be that as it may, he was reduced to starvation and a less than minimum wage job. How does he save himself? He rehearses a pro forma apology and heads back home expecting at least a decent meal and a place to sleep. But his father rushes out. Can you picture the old man? Perhaps he’s spotted the boy from the roof-top. He tears down the stairs and out to the road, robes flying, bare legs exposed. When he sees him, does the father rebuke the boy? Of course not. He embraces the boy, ignores his pro forma apology, and calls for a celebration on the spot. “Rejoice with me, for this son of mine … was lost and is found.”
The older brother is also lost. He bears the burden of goodness – as eldest children often do. He is expected to live up to family mores, carry on the family name and occupation, and live up to family standards of behavior. But in some ways, goodness is a prison, especially if you think that you have to be a model person solely through your own efforts. The older son is also alienated from the community and celebration, and has yet to realize that he constantly receives his father’s love, whether he is the model son or not. Lost in alienation, he stands outside the party. A celebration was always waiting for him, but he has always seen himself as carrying the burdens of the world on his own shoulders.
Both sons need the grace of restoration to family and community: one for the unholy life that he has lived, and the other for a life solely focused on himself. Both need to know that they are truly God’s beloved, if imperfect, children. Both need to know that God continually seeks them out, finds them, and rejoices over them. “Rejoice with me, for the child that I have loved has come back to the family.”
Where are we in this insightful parable? Some of us may feel like the younger brother. Perhaps we have intentionally cut ourselves off from community. Perhaps we have committed unspeakable crimes. Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999, has just broken her silence about what it has been like to have been the mother of such a son. Others of us have severed our ties with our families or communities through addictions, either to such harmful substances as alcohol or drugs, or to ostensibly good things like work, sports, or computer or smart phone screens. If we are like the younger brother, God is always waiting for our return, eagerly seeking us, and yearning to draw us back into community.
The truth is that most of us are probably more like the older brother. Priest and writer Henry Nouwen reminds us of our need to acknowledge “the fact that what God has for us is really there all the time….” What we really need are eyes to see. Nouwen continues, “Celebration belongs to God’s Kingdom. God not only offers forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing, but wants to lift up these gifts as a source of joy for all who witness them. In all three parables which Jesus tells to explain why he eats with sinners, God rejoices and invites others to rejoice with him.”1
As we respond to God’s invitation, we are also called to emulate the third son, the teller of these parables. God also invites us to seek out the lost and invite them into community. Episcopal Relief and Development is at work all over the world doing just that. Many of their stories touch my heart. However, this month two stories in this month’s Rotarian reflected a similar commitment. In one, a woman was working with women who had been trafficked as young prostitutes and were trying to come off the streets. In another, a team of young Rotarians were delivering 2,400 durable non-inflatable soccer balls to countries where young people have been seen playing soccer with bundles of trash or rags. Wherever they stopped, the team played a lively game of soccer with the recipients of the balls.
In this parish, we know the joy of welcoming our Loaves and Fishes diners. I wonder, who else should we be inviting? Ultimately, all are welcome in God’s realm. All are invited, sought, and rejoiced over. God rejoices over you and invites you to bring others into the celebratory feast.
1. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992), quoted in Synthesis, Lent 4 2016, p 4.
Newton was ordained in the Church of England in 1764 and began writing hymns with the poet William Cowper. Recalling his own moment of conversion off the coast of Ireland, he wrote “Amazing Grace” to illustrate a sermon for New Year’s Day 1773. Though not well known in England, “Amazing Grace” was sung extensively during the Second Great Awakening in the U.S. in the early 19th century. In 1835 it was joined to the tune “New Britain,” by which we know it today. Perhaps what is most “amazing” about the hymn is that, with its message that our sins do not cut us off from forgiveness and redemption, and that, God, in God’s mercy, continues to search for us, "Amazing Grace" is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world.
Unquestionably, John Newton knew his Scripture. When he wrote “Amazing Grace,” perhaps he had in mind not only his own extraordinary experience of God’s radical acceptance of him, but also this passage from the gospel of Luke that we have just heard. Spoiler alert right from the top: the parable that we wrongly call “The Prodigal Son,” is not primarily about forgiveness. It is about restoration, wholeness, and God’s unrelenting search for us, in order to bring us back into community with Godself and with God’s people. You can see that immediately if you look at its context, and especially if you think about why Jesus might have told this parable.
A major motif of the gospel of Luke is Jesus’ humanity. What is more important, throughout both the gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, is that the writer emphasizes Jesus’ message that all are welcome in God’s realm, and that salvation is available to all humanity. In the gospel in particular, Jesus heals, seeks out, welcomes, and dines with all kinds of people, rich and poor, sinners and law-abiding, Jews and gentiles. In gathering together all kinds of people, Jesus intentionally creates a new family within the realm of God, a family whose members acknowledge God’s grace and mercy, especially as they see it reflected in Jesus’ welcome of all into that family.
As we heard in today’s reading, some Pharisees and Scribes, i.e., some of the religious leaders, appear to question Jesus’ willingness to cross ethnic, gender, and social class boundaries. “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they complain. Think about it. In Jesus’ time there were only very prescribed people with whom it was customary to share food. In response to this complaint, Luke has Jesus tell three stories, all having to do with something lost, and all ending with joyful recovery of the lost item. All three stories illustrate what Jesus’ ministry is about. The first two, which come in between the opening sentences and the parable we just heard, are relatively simple and straightforward. The first, as those of you Bible-readers remember, is the parable of the ninety-nine sheep that are safely in the fold and the one that has gone astray. After diligently searching for and finding the lost sheep, the shepherd in the parable says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” In the second story, a woman turns her house upside down searching for a lost coin. When she finally finds it, she says, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Interpreting both these parables, Jesus says, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
The third parable, the one we just heard, is more complex. But ultimately its theme is similar to that of the other two. God deliberately seeks those who are lost, it tells us, and rejoices when the lost ones are found. This is not the parable of the Prodigal Son, as it’s usually called. It’s really the parable of the selfish sons and the loving father. Consider: both sons are lost – in different ways. The younger son is more obviously lost. He has taken a chunk of the family’s money and run away. He’s probably immature and inexperienced, so the money quickly disappears, either through extravagant spending or because, as a young man, he was taken advantage of by expert con men. Be that as it may, he was reduced to starvation and a less than minimum wage job. How does he save himself? He rehearses a pro forma apology and heads back home expecting at least a decent meal and a place to sleep. But his father rushes out. Can you picture the old man? Perhaps he’s spotted the boy from the roof-top. He tears down the stairs and out to the road, robes flying, bare legs exposed. When he sees him, does the father rebuke the boy? Of course not. He embraces the boy, ignores his pro forma apology, and calls for a celebration on the spot. “Rejoice with me, for this son of mine … was lost and is found.”
The older brother is also lost. He bears the burden of goodness – as eldest children often do. He is expected to live up to family mores, carry on the family name and occupation, and live up to family standards of behavior. But in some ways, goodness is a prison, especially if you think that you have to be a model person solely through your own efforts. The older son is also alienated from the community and celebration, and has yet to realize that he constantly receives his father’s love, whether he is the model son or not. Lost in alienation, he stands outside the party. A celebration was always waiting for him, but he has always seen himself as carrying the burdens of the world on his own shoulders.
Both sons need the grace of restoration to family and community: one for the unholy life that he has lived, and the other for a life solely focused on himself. Both need to know that they are truly God’s beloved, if imperfect, children. Both need to know that God continually seeks them out, finds them, and rejoices over them. “Rejoice with me, for the child that I have loved has come back to the family.”
Where are we in this insightful parable? Some of us may feel like the younger brother. Perhaps we have intentionally cut ourselves off from community. Perhaps we have committed unspeakable crimes. Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999, has just broken her silence about what it has been like to have been the mother of such a son. Others of us have severed our ties with our families or communities through addictions, either to such harmful substances as alcohol or drugs, or to ostensibly good things like work, sports, or computer or smart phone screens. If we are like the younger brother, God is always waiting for our return, eagerly seeking us, and yearning to draw us back into community.
The truth is that most of us are probably more like the older brother. Priest and writer Henry Nouwen reminds us of our need to acknowledge “the fact that what God has for us is really there all the time….” What we really need are eyes to see. Nouwen continues, “Celebration belongs to God’s Kingdom. God not only offers forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing, but wants to lift up these gifts as a source of joy for all who witness them. In all three parables which Jesus tells to explain why he eats with sinners, God rejoices and invites others to rejoice with him.”1
As we respond to God’s invitation, we are also called to emulate the third son, the teller of these parables. God also invites us to seek out the lost and invite them into community. Episcopal Relief and Development is at work all over the world doing just that. Many of their stories touch my heart. However, this month two stories in this month’s Rotarian reflected a similar commitment. In one, a woman was working with women who had been trafficked as young prostitutes and were trying to come off the streets. In another, a team of young Rotarians were delivering 2,400 durable non-inflatable soccer balls to countries where young people have been seen playing soccer with bundles of trash or rags. Wherever they stopped, the team played a lively game of soccer with the recipients of the balls.
In this parish, we know the joy of welcoming our Loaves and Fishes diners. I wonder, who else should we be inviting? Ultimately, all are welcome in God’s realm. All are invited, sought, and rejoiced over. God rejoices over you and invites you to bring others into the celebratory feast.
1. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (N.Y.: Doubleday, 1992), quoted in Synthesis, Lent 4 2016, p 4.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)