['preached' on the internet]
Most congregations skip from Good Friday to the Great Vigil without pausing in the morning on Holy Saturday to remember the in-between time that Jesus spent in the tomb. For those of us who do linger in that space, we find not sadness, but seeds of hope. Yes, the office is based on a combition of Morning Prayer and the Burial Rite, and we hear from the Gospel according to Matthew of how Joseph of Arimathea cared for the dead teacher. Yet….
For years, every Holy Saturday, I have read these words from an ancient homily on the holy and great Sabbath. The homily refers to the harrowing of hell when God first seeks out Adam and then turns to redeem the rest of humanity:
'Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began….
'I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth… all who are sleeping to arise.… Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.…
'Rise, let us leave this place…. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.' (1)
We, too, have spent time in great silence and stillness as we moved through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, this morning to now, the Great Vigil of Easter. We have lit the first fire of Easter, blessed the Paschal candle that will accompany the fifty days of Easter, heard the great and ancient words of the Exsultet, and remembered the story of our salvation. We have told the ancient stories, touched upon our very roots. And we have proclaimed the truth that holds it all together: Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed.
+
How do we really grasp this truth? One of the ways I arrive there lies in the last sentence of that ancient homily: ‘The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.’ Put in other words, God has loved us from before all time and goes to the depths of the sea and the heights of heaven to love us (Psalm 139). God waits for us, all the while beckoning us to accept this unconditional, immeasurable and inexhaustible love.
We stand in a liminal place right now between heaven and earth. As the Exsultet says, ‘How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and we are reconciled to God.’ We will not find ourselves in quite the same place until we gather on All Saints’ Night, another time when the air becomes thin and we stand between heaven and earth. We can dare to stand in such an awesome spot because of God’s love for us, because of the fact that ‘Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.’
+
The other day I bumped into a former parishioner who has long cared for the homebound and now has moved on to provide hospice care. She and I reflected on how relatively few people are comfortable being around the dying and would just assume avoid it all together, despite death being an immutable reality of life. I told her the story I heard when I trained for hospice of the clergyman who was so afraid to get near the dead that he stood at the foot of the stairs and shouted prayers upstairs to the family who were surrounding the deathbed of their parent. And I recalled how the last thing I did for a young parishioner after she died was to wrap her up in her favourite shawl and afghan someone had knit for her, help place her on the gurney and carry her out to the van that would take her body to the undertaker’s.
If it were not for my heart belief in the resurrection, I could not enter into those places of pain, sorrow and despair. Yet I know in my heart that ultimately, you and I will rise, just as Christ arose. By entering into that liminal place, understanding that few others will, I hope to carry some of the burden of those who mourn… as well as convey the Christian hope of life after death, whatever it is and however that works.
+
That is well and good and probably too self aggrandising, so what about right now? Where are the resurrections in our lives?
If we stop and allow our soul to catch up with our madly running bodies, we will perceive large and small resurrections all around us…
— the obvious signs for us in the northeast — spring is well underway. The birch buds are already casting a pinkish hue to the landscape. The robins are back in force pecking at the ground. And I picked my first two daffodils yesterday, easily three weeks ahead of schedule.
— the assurance that God still loves us despite the broken relationships in our lives. We may not have been able to reconcile with the other person involved, sometimes to do so is impossible, but if we turn our hearts and even if we don’t all the way, God still loves us.
— this bright flame of the Paschal candle that can light up an entire room, that reminds us that nothing can overtake the love of God, and that that love will overcome ultimately any and all forces of sin and evil.
— our outstretched hands as we come forward week after week to receive Holy Communion, where we find Jesus again and again.
— the examples of women and men around us who take a chance on God, who do not fall into the pessimism of the world and who remind us that there are better ways to live, engage with one another and ourselves.
As we notice and pay attention to these small resurrections, we can then practise resurrection in our daily life by saying YES to God’s wonderful project of re-creation. For as Jesus Christ is the New Creation, so we are newly created, as God’s beloved daughters and sons. We have already been set free; let us find ways to live into that freedom and proclaim it to others, to say with our whole heart, soul and mind that God loves everyone, no exceptions and on this most holy night that
Alleluia, alleluia, Christ has risen.The Lord has risen indeed, alleluia, alleluia.
END NOTE
(1) The Prayer Book Office, compiled and edited by Howard Galley (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), 735-37.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
Good Friday
[preached at Church of Our Saviour, Killington, VT]
Before going to seminary, I was assigned to work in a congregation other than my own. It was part of what my former diocese called, ‘Ministry-Study Year.’ Aspirants for Holy Orders were asked to leave the comfort of their sponsoring congregation and learn about life in another congregation. I was assigned to one that was an hour and a half away.
When Maundy Thursday and Good Friday rolled around, the rector said that I could spend the night in the rectory, rather than drive all the way back home after the Maundy Thursday liturgy. In that way, I could participate in the overnight watch, which took place in the church’s funeral chapel, a rectangular room off the apse where vigils before burial took place. The congregation filled it with the Easter lilies whose fragrance overwhelmed the small space.
The priest, already ordained some twenty plus years at the time, warned me ahead of time that he got ‘weird’ on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I had no idea what he meant but said that it would be OK.
As Maundy Thursday turned into Good Friday and I walked alongside him, I understood what he meant. It wasn’t that he got weird; rather, he was in deep grief and agony. It was clear to me that he was mourning the death of his love, Jesus. Jesus was the centre of his life and every year he had to go through the passion, crucifixion and death of the one he loved more than anyone else in the world. It was wrenching to watch. I have never meant anyone as Christo-centric as this man and his love for Jesus speaks to me still.
Even for myself, Good Friday is more a day of emotions than rational explanations. By the time I reach today, I have spent four days hearing about abandonment and betrayal, as depicted in John’s gospel. It is almost more than the heart can bear because it reaches such core human emotions. Moreover, on Good Friday, our liturgy provides so many visual cues that, if we choose, we never need to reach into the theological whys and wherefores of what Good Friday is about. Sometimes, really, that is best.
Looking around the church here, I am struck by its starkness. The altar is bare, having been washed last night. The icons and statues are keeping one another company out in the parish hall. The dossal became the frontal for the altar of repose. The cross simply lies on a table where it was placed last night. The aumbry, with its door flung open, exposing its gold interior, reflects its emptiness back at us.
The hardest part of this liturgy for me comes at the end of our communion from the reserve sacrament. After consuming all that is left over, we blow out the candle that for 364 days a year serves as a reminder that Jesus is present in the form of bread and wine. The wisps of smoke that curl upwards nearly bring me to tears each year. When the smoke disappears from sight, I know there is no more ‘Jesus’ present and my heart breaks. It is a feeling of such desolation that I can barely breathe. The world becomes less for that loss. And the final collect for the day sums it all up in its prayer that God be with us in our last moments.
Given my heart’s predisposition toward understanding Good Friday and the Passion, my mind, usually in dominance, turns off. It doesn’t really need to know why this had to happen; it accepts the cross because it knows the cross leads to the resurrection. The heart believes the mystery of the day and that is good enough.
+
For some, though, the heart’s acceptance isn’t sufficient. The mind wants to know what the theology behind Good Friday is all about. Even 2000 plus years later, we are still struggling to articulate a theology of the cross.
We encounter God on this day — God as the crucified One and the loving, grieving Creator and the Spirit of comfort and challenge, who binds the whole event together. It is the crucified One who takes center stage today. And so Good Friday is God’s Friday. (1)
Part of the truth we confront today is, in the words of Bishop Chilton Knudson, that we also are crucified, made into Christ through baptism. We share through our baptism with Christ the narrative of the cross which becomes part of our story and, in fact, rewrites it. The cross is the central narrative of our story and it encompasses the losses in our own lives through death and endings whether of jobs, health, relationships and ultimately, life.
As we engage more deeply with these realities, rather than flee them, we stare at the cross — challenges, loss, grief — and it stares at us. If we remember, in Martin Luther’s words, ‘I am baptised,’ then we also remember what comes after the cross. The nature of the cross identifies us and shapes the world. Life is dying, rising, struggling and resolving. We find the cross in each little death and rising.
Because of the incarnation, not the cross, Christ has compassion for those who suffer. Being part of humanity was his lot; he was acquainted with grief long before Calvary. The cross is God’s ultimate solidarity with us, the loss, the whole catastrophe.
The cross asks us to struggle through death to new life in a way that is not cushioned. In its own mysterious way, the cross represents the affirmation of all that is painful, sorrowful, and grievous in our lives. These realities are gathered together in God’s merciful words and gracious looks. Through the cross, the scales are tipped for ever for that which is life-giving. (2)
With those promises of God’s accompaniment with us, we can bear to stand at the foot of the cross without turning away. In the words of Leonardo Boff,
Our cross of every day…
We don’t have to ask for it,
we don’t have to look for it.
It arrives, it sets itself up.
It makes us suffer. It makes us die.
Invariably. Inexorably.
Our cross of every day…
It makes us think, look for meaning.
It expands the conscience.
It calls for hope.
It brings knowledge. It makes us live.
Our cross of every day…
the font of life and resurrection. (3)
+
In this week that is one more paradox after another, we reach the greatest paradox of them all: God so desired to reconcile the world to God’s self that God became one of us, uniting God’s self with us to the point of death so that we, too, might be resurrected. The hard wood of the cross is best for feeding the fire of love. Therein lies the good news on this day of juxtapositions called Good Friday.
END NOTES
(1) Feasting on the Word, Year A., Vol. 2, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: WJK 2011), 291.
(2) From meditations given on Holy Tuesday, 19 April 2011, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Burlington, VT.
(3) Leonardo Boff, La Cruz nuestra de cada día (Mexico D.F.: Ediciones Dabar, 2004), end jacket, LAC translation.
Before going to seminary, I was assigned to work in a congregation other than my own. It was part of what my former diocese called, ‘Ministry-Study Year.’ Aspirants for Holy Orders were asked to leave the comfort of their sponsoring congregation and learn about life in another congregation. I was assigned to one that was an hour and a half away.
When Maundy Thursday and Good Friday rolled around, the rector said that I could spend the night in the rectory, rather than drive all the way back home after the Maundy Thursday liturgy. In that way, I could participate in the overnight watch, which took place in the church’s funeral chapel, a rectangular room off the apse where vigils before burial took place. The congregation filled it with the Easter lilies whose fragrance overwhelmed the small space.
The priest, already ordained some twenty plus years at the time, warned me ahead of time that he got ‘weird’ on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I had no idea what he meant but said that it would be OK.
As Maundy Thursday turned into Good Friday and I walked alongside him, I understood what he meant. It wasn’t that he got weird; rather, he was in deep grief and agony. It was clear to me that he was mourning the death of his love, Jesus. Jesus was the centre of his life and every year he had to go through the passion, crucifixion and death of the one he loved more than anyone else in the world. It was wrenching to watch. I have never meant anyone as Christo-centric as this man and his love for Jesus speaks to me still.
Even for myself, Good Friday is more a day of emotions than rational explanations. By the time I reach today, I have spent four days hearing about abandonment and betrayal, as depicted in John’s gospel. It is almost more than the heart can bear because it reaches such core human emotions. Moreover, on Good Friday, our liturgy provides so many visual cues that, if we choose, we never need to reach into the theological whys and wherefores of what Good Friday is about. Sometimes, really, that is best.
Looking around the church here, I am struck by its starkness. The altar is bare, having been washed last night. The icons and statues are keeping one another company out in the parish hall. The dossal became the frontal for the altar of repose. The cross simply lies on a table where it was placed last night. The aumbry, with its door flung open, exposing its gold interior, reflects its emptiness back at us.
The hardest part of this liturgy for me comes at the end of our communion from the reserve sacrament. After consuming all that is left over, we blow out the candle that for 364 days a year serves as a reminder that Jesus is present in the form of bread and wine. The wisps of smoke that curl upwards nearly bring me to tears each year. When the smoke disappears from sight, I know there is no more ‘Jesus’ present and my heart breaks. It is a feeling of such desolation that I can barely breathe. The world becomes less for that loss. And the final collect for the day sums it all up in its prayer that God be with us in our last moments.
Given my heart’s predisposition toward understanding Good Friday and the Passion, my mind, usually in dominance, turns off. It doesn’t really need to know why this had to happen; it accepts the cross because it knows the cross leads to the resurrection. The heart believes the mystery of the day and that is good enough.
+
For some, though, the heart’s acceptance isn’t sufficient. The mind wants to know what the theology behind Good Friday is all about. Even 2000 plus years later, we are still struggling to articulate a theology of the cross.
We encounter God on this day — God as the crucified One and the loving, grieving Creator and the Spirit of comfort and challenge, who binds the whole event together. It is the crucified One who takes center stage today. And so Good Friday is God’s Friday. (1)
Part of the truth we confront today is, in the words of Bishop Chilton Knudson, that we also are crucified, made into Christ through baptism. We share through our baptism with Christ the narrative of the cross which becomes part of our story and, in fact, rewrites it. The cross is the central narrative of our story and it encompasses the losses in our own lives through death and endings whether of jobs, health, relationships and ultimately, life.
As we engage more deeply with these realities, rather than flee them, we stare at the cross — challenges, loss, grief — and it stares at us. If we remember, in Martin Luther’s words, ‘I am baptised,’ then we also remember what comes after the cross. The nature of the cross identifies us and shapes the world. Life is dying, rising, struggling and resolving. We find the cross in each little death and rising.
Because of the incarnation, not the cross, Christ has compassion for those who suffer. Being part of humanity was his lot; he was acquainted with grief long before Calvary. The cross is God’s ultimate solidarity with us, the loss, the whole catastrophe.
The cross asks us to struggle through death to new life in a way that is not cushioned. In its own mysterious way, the cross represents the affirmation of all that is painful, sorrowful, and grievous in our lives. These realities are gathered together in God’s merciful words and gracious looks. Through the cross, the scales are tipped for ever for that which is life-giving. (2)
With those promises of God’s accompaniment with us, we can bear to stand at the foot of the cross without turning away. In the words of Leonardo Boff,
Our cross of every day…
We don’t have to ask for it,
we don’t have to look for it.
It arrives, it sets itself up.
It makes us suffer. It makes us die.
Invariably. Inexorably.
Our cross of every day…
It makes us think, look for meaning.
It expands the conscience.
It calls for hope.
It brings knowledge. It makes us live.
Our cross of every day…
the font of life and resurrection. (3)
+
In this week that is one more paradox after another, we reach the greatest paradox of them all: God so desired to reconcile the world to God’s self that God became one of us, uniting God’s self with us to the point of death so that we, too, might be resurrected. The hard wood of the cross is best for feeding the fire of love. Therein lies the good news on this day of juxtapositions called Good Friday.
END NOTES
(1) Feasting on the Word, Year A., Vol. 2, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: WJK 2011), 291.
(2) From meditations given on Holy Tuesday, 19 April 2011, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Burlington, VT.
(3) Leonardo Boff, La Cruz nuestra de cada día (Mexico D.F.: Ediciones Dabar, 2004), end jacket, LAC translation.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Maundy Thursday
['preached' on the internet]
Maundy Thursday • 5 April 2012
The dilemma of a person planning the liturgy for Maundy Thursday is choosing which thread to emphasise. The Maundy Thursday liturgy has way too many foci to do all of them well… yet this sermon is about to do just that — name them all without going into depth on any one theme.
Take your pick:
— The institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper: For those of a more sacramental bent, focusing on the breaking of bread and sharing of wine seems the logical choice. The reading from Corinthians gives us the words for it and if we choose the second gospel reading, we hear repeated the action of taking bread and wine, blessing them and sharing them.
— Foot washing: Many choose instead to go with this thread and, indeed, this is what the current prayer book supports, placing the gospel narrative of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet as the primary text for the evening, understanding that the commandment that Jesus gives on his last night of life in the here and now is that we love one another and manifest that love through washing one another’s feet, the most humble action one can do for another person.
Those two foci are the principle ones for this night.
But what about all the others? They tend to remind us of human frailty and, for that reason, are not primary. But they certainly are woven into the night and to ignore them is to turn away from that which resides within each one of us.
— Betrayal: Even Jesus of the Fourth Gospel, a Jesus who knows well what is unfolding and controls it to a certain extent, cannot stop Judas, one of his chosen, from betraying him. Jesus knows the betrayal has to happen… but does that make it any easier for him? Judas’ betrayal brings to mind the poignant words of Psalm 41.9: ‘Even my best friend, whom I trusted, who broke bread with me, * has lifted up his heel and turned against me.’ For Jesus, no one seems trustworthy.
— Abandonment: Jesus’ anguished words in the Garden of Gethsemane, paradoxically a place of tranquility not al that far from the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem, remind us that the Son of Man was not immune from a sense of incredible isolation and abandonment, a most human sentiment. Despite being with his trusted disciples, he is alone in his agony as he contemplates his death. Our ritual tonight concludes with two threads: the recitation of Psalm 22 which opens with the most awful words any human being can utter: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’, and the narrative of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is abandoned not only by his Father in heaven, but also by the disciples who cannot stay awake with him as he prays. The narrative leaves us in a place of dereliction and desolation.
— Helplessness: Despite Jesus’ knowing what will unfold and seeming to be in charge, there has to be some sense of helplessness as the events of the night and the next day unfold. Once he reaches the walls of Jerusalem, with no pardon, there is no turning back. He can only make his way uphill through the streets of Jerusalem to its apex, Golgatha.
+
Clearly the story we tell every year on Maundy Thursday does not intend to leave us in a state of betrayal, abandonment and helplessness, but it is important to name these emotions because what we do and what we pray tonight evokes them and we should not try to dance around them.
+
So, if you were planning tonight’s liturgy, where would you put your attention? What part of this complex and rich liturgy speaks the most to you? Where does your heart find itself going? Even as you have listened to these words, where did you find your mind wandering? (To me, a sermon is a doorway through which one is invited to walk and if one misses a portion of the sermon because one has wandered off to a corner of one’s heart, the sermon has done its work.)
Is it the institution of the Holy Eucharist — the centre of our worship for the past fifty years, the manna from heaven that sustains us in our spiritual wilderness?
Is it the commandment to wash each other’s feet — an action that evokes a certain element of squeamishness for some, repulsion for others, indifference for others or deep meaning for still others?
Is it the mixture of recollections of abandonment, betrayal or helplessness at what life has thrown you?
Wherever your heart leads you tonight, go there. Rest in the moment of what has been raised up. Engage it. Wrestle with it. And, if it is the hard stuff, remember that God does not leave us hanging over the pit with no one to save us. God does not abandon us, betray us or play with us as a cat plays with a mouse. God goes with us to the depths and back up to heaven again.
And, remember that through all the services of these great three days, above all, we contemplate Christ’s victory over death and proclaim the resurrection. That is where we headed, step by step, in this liturgy we have just begun that will not end until Easter Even.
Maundy Thursday • 5 April 2012
The dilemma of a person planning the liturgy for Maundy Thursday is choosing which thread to emphasise. The Maundy Thursday liturgy has way too many foci to do all of them well… yet this sermon is about to do just that — name them all without going into depth on any one theme.
Take your pick:
— The institution of the Holy Eucharist at the Last Supper: For those of a more sacramental bent, focusing on the breaking of bread and sharing of wine seems the logical choice. The reading from Corinthians gives us the words for it and if we choose the second gospel reading, we hear repeated the action of taking bread and wine, blessing them and sharing them.
— Foot washing: Many choose instead to go with this thread and, indeed, this is what the current prayer book supports, placing the gospel narrative of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet as the primary text for the evening, understanding that the commandment that Jesus gives on his last night of life in the here and now is that we love one another and manifest that love through washing one another’s feet, the most humble action one can do for another person.
Those two foci are the principle ones for this night.
But what about all the others? They tend to remind us of human frailty and, for that reason, are not primary. But they certainly are woven into the night and to ignore them is to turn away from that which resides within each one of us.
— Betrayal: Even Jesus of the Fourth Gospel, a Jesus who knows well what is unfolding and controls it to a certain extent, cannot stop Judas, one of his chosen, from betraying him. Jesus knows the betrayal has to happen… but does that make it any easier for him? Judas’ betrayal brings to mind the poignant words of Psalm 41.9: ‘Even my best friend, whom I trusted, who broke bread with me, * has lifted up his heel and turned against me.’ For Jesus, no one seems trustworthy.
— Abandonment: Jesus’ anguished words in the Garden of Gethsemane, paradoxically a place of tranquility not al that far from the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem, remind us that the Son of Man was not immune from a sense of incredible isolation and abandonment, a most human sentiment. Despite being with his trusted disciples, he is alone in his agony as he contemplates his death. Our ritual tonight concludes with two threads: the recitation of Psalm 22 which opens with the most awful words any human being can utter: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’, and the narrative of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is abandoned not only by his Father in heaven, but also by the disciples who cannot stay awake with him as he prays. The narrative leaves us in a place of dereliction and desolation.
— Helplessness: Despite Jesus’ knowing what will unfold and seeming to be in charge, there has to be some sense of helplessness as the events of the night and the next day unfold. Once he reaches the walls of Jerusalem, with no pardon, there is no turning back. He can only make his way uphill through the streets of Jerusalem to its apex, Golgatha.
+
Clearly the story we tell every year on Maundy Thursday does not intend to leave us in a state of betrayal, abandonment and helplessness, but it is important to name these emotions because what we do and what we pray tonight evokes them and we should not try to dance around them.
+
So, if you were planning tonight’s liturgy, where would you put your attention? What part of this complex and rich liturgy speaks the most to you? Where does your heart find itself going? Even as you have listened to these words, where did you find your mind wandering? (To me, a sermon is a doorway through which one is invited to walk and if one misses a portion of the sermon because one has wandered off to a corner of one’s heart, the sermon has done its work.)
Is it the institution of the Holy Eucharist — the centre of our worship for the past fifty years, the manna from heaven that sustains us in our spiritual wilderness?
Is it the commandment to wash each other’s feet — an action that evokes a certain element of squeamishness for some, repulsion for others, indifference for others or deep meaning for still others?
Is it the mixture of recollections of abandonment, betrayal or helplessness at what life has thrown you?
Wherever your heart leads you tonight, go there. Rest in the moment of what has been raised up. Engage it. Wrestle with it. And, if it is the hard stuff, remember that God does not leave us hanging over the pit with no one to save us. God does not abandon us, betray us or play with us as a cat plays with a mouse. God goes with us to the depths and back up to heaven again.
And, remember that through all the services of these great three days, above all, we contemplate Christ’s victory over death and proclaim the resurrection. That is where we headed, step by step, in this liturgy we have just begun that will not end until Easter Even.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Wednesday in Holy Week
['preached' on the internet]
When we read the passion story on Palm Sunday, I always see in my mind the way we used to enact it at the church I used to attend in the mid-to-late 1980s. There, they had an altar in the middle of the crossing on an octagonal platform. The narrator, Jesus, and assorted characters stood around the platform and, as the narrative moved forward, they would move clockwise around the platform. It was as though the gears of inevitability grinding away had become manifest.
So it is today. Every year when we hit Wednesday in Holy Week, I feel as though we have turned a major corner. No longer is this journey to Golgatha theoretical; it has become real. No longer are we talking about friendships; we are talking about betrayal. It is a huge shift. We have moved a quarter round on the clock to half-past the hour.
+
The combination of the words ‘betrayal,’ and Jesus’ term of affection for his disciples, ‘little children,’ stand in stark contrast to one another. This is the only place in the entire gospel of John where the tender term, ‘little children’ shows up (teknia in Greek, a diminutive). It appears before Jesus’ handing the disciples the commandment to love one another. Jerome of the fourth century relates the story that in John’s old age his message was reduced to this: ‘My little children, love one another.’1
Before exploring that exquisite summation, we must remember that Jesus says these words in the context of the last supper in his last discourse to the disciples. In other literary genres, it would be akin to the dying father handing over his testament to his children. Jesus announces his imminent departure just before announcing to them what they are tasked to do after his death, ‘love one another.’
Raymond Brown, whose in-depth commentary, The Gospel According to John, is the apogee of biblical scholarship, writes:
‘Yet love is more than a commandment: it is a gift, and like the other gifts of the Christian dispensation it comes from the Father through Jesus to those who believe in him.… The love Jesus has for his followers is not only affective but also effective: it brings about their salvation. It is expressed in his laying down his life, an act of love that gives life to [all].’2 Brown emphasizes that for John this love is for all Christians, but not for all people. Again, we must remember the context of the gospel, written at the end of the first century, when Christians were still considered thrown out of the synagogue. There tended to be a ‘circle-the-wagons’ survival mentality and that is expressed here.
Jesus gives this new commandment to love one another just after he has washed the disciples’ feet, an act of submission in his culture, an act of love. It is that action that could well have been the unifying act of Jesus’ followers instead of the eucharist.
+
‘My little children, love one another.’
As always, there are questions:
What is loving one another in the selfless, spontaneous nature that God loves us?
How do we love one another in ways that are genuine, no-strings attached?
How aware and thankful are we aware of the gift of God’s love for us and the fact that we humans have the capacity to love?
And how do we live with the realities of our lives where we fall so short of expressing this divine love? How do we hang onto the hope of divine love when faced with all the conflict — armed and verbal, global and local, physical and emotional — that surrounds us?
+
It is in this frame of mind that I remember the context of Jesus’ words of love that are then followed by his betrayal by Judas. The Last Supper— when Jesus was about to offer himself up not only to the twelve but for humankind. The Last Supper, the time at which Jesus commanded us to love one another — the one commandment, mandatum, by which we have the name, Maundy Thursday.
In the midst of the betrayal, Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us. Love — not a romantic or sappy emotion, but a God-based love. For it is in loving our neighbour that we find God and we are to love God, too. The other part of the foundation of love is our neighbour. We find our identity not only in God but in other people. Our life and death are inextricably intertwined in the lives and deaths of our neighbours. As children of God, we are interconnected.
Yet, as we have seen over and over again, one human or one people has killed another. In those deaths, we lose a piece of ourselves.
When Judas betrayed Jesus, it was night. Right now it would seem as though collectively this past century and now in this new century humanity has entered night. (The Nobel Peace Laureat, Elie Weisel even entitled his first book, about his concentration camp experiences, Night.)
Somehow we have to trust that it is always darkest before the dawn, but that the dawn does come. We walk toward that dawn, Easter, knowing we have yet to walk further into the night.
Somehow, may you and I make a difference in our own neck of the woods so that our entire world not be enshrouded by night, but shine with the radiance of God’s light... it is possible. We just have to work at it. And we can, as a community of Jesus’ followers. As we know, never underestimate what a small group of people can do to turn the world upside down. It happened with Jesus and his disciples; it can happen with us.
END NOTES
(1) Raymond Brown, The Gospel according to John, XIII-XXI, Vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, The Anchor Bible, 1970), 607.
(2) Ibid.,612-13.
When we read the passion story on Palm Sunday, I always see in my mind the way we used to enact it at the church I used to attend in the mid-to-late 1980s. There, they had an altar in the middle of the crossing on an octagonal platform. The narrator, Jesus, and assorted characters stood around the platform and, as the narrative moved forward, they would move clockwise around the platform. It was as though the gears of inevitability grinding away had become manifest.
So it is today. Every year when we hit Wednesday in Holy Week, I feel as though we have turned a major corner. No longer is this journey to Golgatha theoretical; it has become real. No longer are we talking about friendships; we are talking about betrayal. It is a huge shift. We have moved a quarter round on the clock to half-past the hour.
+
The combination of the words ‘betrayal,’ and Jesus’ term of affection for his disciples, ‘little children,’ stand in stark contrast to one another. This is the only place in the entire gospel of John where the tender term, ‘little children’ shows up (teknia in Greek, a diminutive). It appears before Jesus’ handing the disciples the commandment to love one another. Jerome of the fourth century relates the story that in John’s old age his message was reduced to this: ‘My little children, love one another.’1
Before exploring that exquisite summation, we must remember that Jesus says these words in the context of the last supper in his last discourse to the disciples. In other literary genres, it would be akin to the dying father handing over his testament to his children. Jesus announces his imminent departure just before announcing to them what they are tasked to do after his death, ‘love one another.’
Raymond Brown, whose in-depth commentary, The Gospel According to John, is the apogee of biblical scholarship, writes:
‘Yet love is more than a commandment: it is a gift, and like the other gifts of the Christian dispensation it comes from the Father through Jesus to those who believe in him.… The love Jesus has for his followers is not only affective but also effective: it brings about their salvation. It is expressed in his laying down his life, an act of love that gives life to [all].’2 Brown emphasizes that for John this love is for all Christians, but not for all people. Again, we must remember the context of the gospel, written at the end of the first century, when Christians were still considered thrown out of the synagogue. There tended to be a ‘circle-the-wagons’ survival mentality and that is expressed here.
Jesus gives this new commandment to love one another just after he has washed the disciples’ feet, an act of submission in his culture, an act of love. It is that action that could well have been the unifying act of Jesus’ followers instead of the eucharist.
+
‘My little children, love one another.’
As always, there are questions:
What is loving one another in the selfless, spontaneous nature that God loves us?
How do we love one another in ways that are genuine, no-strings attached?
How aware and thankful are we aware of the gift of God’s love for us and the fact that we humans have the capacity to love?
And how do we live with the realities of our lives where we fall so short of expressing this divine love? How do we hang onto the hope of divine love when faced with all the conflict — armed and verbal, global and local, physical and emotional — that surrounds us?
+
It is in this frame of mind that I remember the context of Jesus’ words of love that are then followed by his betrayal by Judas. The Last Supper— when Jesus was about to offer himself up not only to the twelve but for humankind. The Last Supper, the time at which Jesus commanded us to love one another — the one commandment, mandatum, by which we have the name, Maundy Thursday.
In the midst of the betrayal, Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us. Love — not a romantic or sappy emotion, but a God-based love. For it is in loving our neighbour that we find God and we are to love God, too. The other part of the foundation of love is our neighbour. We find our identity not only in God but in other people. Our life and death are inextricably intertwined in the lives and deaths of our neighbours. As children of God, we are interconnected.
Yet, as we have seen over and over again, one human or one people has killed another. In those deaths, we lose a piece of ourselves.
When Judas betrayed Jesus, it was night. Right now it would seem as though collectively this past century and now in this new century humanity has entered night. (The Nobel Peace Laureat, Elie Weisel even entitled his first book, about his concentration camp experiences, Night.)
Somehow we have to trust that it is always darkest before the dawn, but that the dawn does come. We walk toward that dawn, Easter, knowing we have yet to walk further into the night.
Somehow, may you and I make a difference in our own neck of the woods so that our entire world not be enshrouded by night, but shine with the radiance of God’s light... it is possible. We just have to work at it. And we can, as a community of Jesus’ followers. As we know, never underestimate what a small group of people can do to turn the world upside down. It happened with Jesus and his disciples; it can happen with us.
END NOTES
(1) Raymond Brown, The Gospel according to John, XIII-XXI, Vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, The Anchor Bible, 1970), 607.
(2) Ibid.,612-13.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Tuesday in Holy Week
['preached' on the internet]
Julia Slayton, in a meditation on this gospel several years ago, considers the opening line of the gospel reading:
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
I want to go with this thought because I had never looked at today’s gospel reading in quite these terms.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus. We want to get closer to see and know him for ourselves.’
She reflects on how there are people whom we want to see, those people who draw you to them for reasons you sometimes don’t know. Perhaps you’ve had that happen?
We want to know those people in life who bring Jesus closer to us, don’t we? They exist. Some of us have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity in our lives to meet such a person. Archbishop Desmond Tutu always comes to mind but there are others.
Two years ago at the Catedral Metropolitana in San Salvador, I finally met, after several years of email correspondence, someone who is almost a blood brother to me. He is an 81 year-old retired Episcopal priest in Buffalo, dealing with asthma, congestive heart failure, and the issues of mortality that come along with aging. Our connection is through El Salvador. He knew Oscar Romero and worked with him for five years. He was there at the time of Romero’s death and burial. He is also one of the last people to whom Romero gave communion… ever.
I said it must have been incredible to have been in Romero’s presence. He answered that Romero was one of those people who could take your pain away. Just spending time in his presence was enough to release the suffering. The church’s human rights officer, who would come into Romero’s office with 100 new cases of disappeared or tortured people in his hands, would walk out a restored person because of Romero’s healing touch on his forehead.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus… now.’
There is the desire of meeting the person of Jesus and then the desire to meet him now.
‘Now’ is the operative reality for the gospel. Now, the present moment. Now is the time to live fully into our baptism that has been given us through Christ’s life, death and baptism. Not tomorrow, not yesterday but fully in the present.
The Ash Wednesday epistle, which we heard six weeks ago says: ‘See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!’ Now is the time to enter into the life of dying and rising anew.
Our Christian life can be lived on the spot where we stand. This spot can encompass dying and rising anew. It can encompass the cross and resurrection. We just need to make our hearts open to that journey that happens in the present.
Do we know the hour, the now, the here?
The now is in Darfur. The now is in Sudan. The now is in the hospital. The now is in the wrecked homes from Irene. The now is the remnants of lives post tsunami in Japan a year ago. The now is in Russia. The now is in Haiti. The now is El Salvador. The now is in the Anglican Communion. It is here now and always.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
Of course, when we say ‘We wish to see Jesus,’ Jesus sometimes will take us where we don’t want to go. There are ‘now’s which seem too much for us. Taking care of an aging parent. Walking alongside a dying person. Dealing with a child suffering from learning disorders. Giving up everything to follow Jesus. Don’t we go through those moments saying: ‘There’s no way I can be doing this. It has to be God who is doing this through me’?
+
This Tuesday in Holy Week, the gospel asks us: Where are you bidden to abide, to stay, to watch, to pray?
Is it in the home of Mary and Martha with Lazarus?
Is it at table with Jesus and the twelve?
Is it at the trial?
Or in the garden?
Or on the cross?
Or at the tomb?
Where and when will Christ’s hour come for you?
Where is God’s glory redeeming the world now?
What is the now before you?
Remember, we cannot limit God’s power to our own terms or imagination — God’s power is far greater than that. So where do we see God’s glory redeeming the world now?
+
Hymn 333 uses the words of Jaroslav Vajda that express this sense of here and present:
Now the silence
Now the peace
Now the empty hands uplifted
Now the kneeling
Now the plea
Now the Father’s arms in welcome
Now the hearing
Now the power
Now the vessel brimmed for pouring
Now the Body
Now the Blood
Now the joyful celebration
Now the wedding
Now the songs
Now the heart forgiven leaping
Now the Spirit’s visitation
Now the Son’s epiphany
Now the Father’s blessing
Now
Now
Now
Christ’s now is here with us. Here, now. Let us glorify God now, here
.
[based in part on Nancy Roth’s meditation on Hymn 333, New Every Morning, Year C, 2000, 46-50]
Julia Slayton, in a meditation on this gospel several years ago, considers the opening line of the gospel reading:
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
I want to go with this thought because I had never looked at today’s gospel reading in quite these terms.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus. We want to get closer to see and know him for ourselves.’
She reflects on how there are people whom we want to see, those people who draw you to them for reasons you sometimes don’t know. Perhaps you’ve had that happen?
We want to know those people in life who bring Jesus closer to us, don’t we? They exist. Some of us have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity in our lives to meet such a person. Archbishop Desmond Tutu always comes to mind but there are others.
Two years ago at the Catedral Metropolitana in San Salvador, I finally met, after several years of email correspondence, someone who is almost a blood brother to me. He is an 81 year-old retired Episcopal priest in Buffalo, dealing with asthma, congestive heart failure, and the issues of mortality that come along with aging. Our connection is through El Salvador. He knew Oscar Romero and worked with him for five years. He was there at the time of Romero’s death and burial. He is also one of the last people to whom Romero gave communion… ever.
I said it must have been incredible to have been in Romero’s presence. He answered that Romero was one of those people who could take your pain away. Just spending time in his presence was enough to release the suffering. The church’s human rights officer, who would come into Romero’s office with 100 new cases of disappeared or tortured people in his hands, would walk out a restored person because of Romero’s healing touch on his forehead.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus… now.’
There is the desire of meeting the person of Jesus and then the desire to meet him now.
‘Now’ is the operative reality for the gospel. Now, the present moment. Now is the time to live fully into our baptism that has been given us through Christ’s life, death and baptism. Not tomorrow, not yesterday but fully in the present.
The Ash Wednesday epistle, which we heard six weeks ago says: ‘See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!’ Now is the time to enter into the life of dying and rising anew.
Our Christian life can be lived on the spot where we stand. This spot can encompass dying and rising anew. It can encompass the cross and resurrection. We just need to make our hearts open to that journey that happens in the present.
Do we know the hour, the now, the here?
The now is in Darfur. The now is in Sudan. The now is in the hospital. The now is in the wrecked homes from Irene. The now is the remnants of lives post tsunami in Japan a year ago. The now is in Russia. The now is in Haiti. The now is El Salvador. The now is in the Anglican Communion. It is here now and always.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
Of course, when we say ‘We wish to see Jesus,’ Jesus sometimes will take us where we don’t want to go. There are ‘now’s which seem too much for us. Taking care of an aging parent. Walking alongside a dying person. Dealing with a child suffering from learning disorders. Giving up everything to follow Jesus. Don’t we go through those moments saying: ‘There’s no way I can be doing this. It has to be God who is doing this through me’?
+
This Tuesday in Holy Week, the gospel asks us: Where are you bidden to abide, to stay, to watch, to pray?
Is it in the home of Mary and Martha with Lazarus?
Is it at table with Jesus and the twelve?
Is it at the trial?
Or in the garden?
Or on the cross?
Or at the tomb?
Where and when will Christ’s hour come for you?
Where is God’s glory redeeming the world now?
What is the now before you?
Remember, we cannot limit God’s power to our own terms or imagination — God’s power is far greater than that. So where do we see God’s glory redeeming the world now?
+
Hymn 333 uses the words of Jaroslav Vajda that express this sense of here and present:
Now the silence
Now the peace
Now the empty hands uplifted
Now the kneeling
Now the plea
Now the Father’s arms in welcome
Now the hearing
Now the power
Now the vessel brimmed for pouring
Now the Body
Now the Blood
Now the joyful celebration
Now the wedding
Now the songs
Now the heart forgiven leaping
Now the Spirit’s visitation
Now the Son’s epiphany
Now the Father’s blessing
Now
Now
Now
Christ’s now is here with us. Here, now. Let us glorify God now, here
.
[based in part on Nancy Roth’s meditation on Hymn 333, New Every Morning, Year C, 2000, 46-50]
Monday, April 2, 2012
Monday in Holy Week
As a preface…
For seventeen years straight, I celebrated daily Holy Eucharist during Holy Week. (For eight years before, I attended daily Holy Eucharist during Holy Week.) I did so for several reasons: first, to provide for those few who wanted fully to journey from Palm Sunday to Easter without skipping the days; second, to let the rest of the congregation know that there were a few people who were praying on their behalf and third, to allow me qua individual to pray in ways that the latter portion of Holy Week sometimes did not allow because of all the preparation.
This year, as part of my continued desert time, I find myself without an altar or community in which to mark the progression of the gospel narrative. I may not be able to partake of daily communion, but I can still read, mark, digest and inwardly learn the scripture which has become an old friend (I still use the BCP lectionary for this week).
+
Mary comes to Jesus with nard to anoint his feet which she then wipes with her hair. She comes to him as he visits his dear friend, Lazarus in Bethany… the one place where Jesus can relax, be out of the public eye and, at this point, escape scrutiny of those who wish to destroy him. It is scandalous what she does — first, she dares to approach the teacher. Second, her action is so incredibly sensual, something we would expect more to find in the Song of Songs than in the Fourth Gospel, as she anoints his feet and wipes them with her hair. Third, she uses the most expensive perfume there is, nard.
Judas Iscariot, hardly the voice of integrity, whines at Jesus about the wasted money. Jesus of the Gospel according to John, who knows what is to happen, simply replies that Mary is preparing for Jesus’ burial at which time she will anoint his body.
The gospel in this conversation propels us forward to the moment in the last supper when Jesus will wash his disciples’ feet. Here though, a week before Passover, Mary does for Jesus what he will later offer his own.
The act of anointing Jesus provides a moment of tender intimacy in the face of impending death. She ministers to him in a way that no one else has or can. Does she know that he is walking toward the cross? Does she know what awaits him when he finally arrives in Jerusalem? My heart says yes.
+
We have participated in or witnessed moments of incredible tenderness in the midst of incredible sadness or even death. Several years ago, I entered a hospital room to visit a parishioner whose cancer had gotten the upper hand. As I arrived, the parishioner was receiving a massage. As I watched the masseur work on her body, and noted her face — eyes shut, calm, pale — I knew I was witnessing a Mary moment. The tenderness of the masseur’s touch, rendered smooth by the oils he was using, that brought momentary healing and peace, was as powerful as the fragrance of nard filling the room. I said nothing, did not even announce my arrival but sat and watched, knowing how I was standing on holy ground and that heaven and earth had come close in that moment. I knew deep in my heart that the masseur was preparing her body for burial just as Mary had for Jesus so long ago. When the parishioner died less than two weeks later, I thought back to the masseur’s loving touch and took solace in the knowledge that while we may not have massaged the parishioner at the time of her death, she had been blessed already.
+
Not all of us will have the occasion to anoint someone or give them a massage in a way that will prepare them for their death into new life. But we all have the opportunity to accompany others into the depths, as they invite us. We all have the opportunity to witness to them God’s abiding love that has been with them and us since before our beginning. We all have the opportunity to be extravagant, giving from our abundance to those who so desperately need release — the blind, the prisoners, those who sit in darkness. We all have the opportunity to declare to those who need an encouraging word that the former things have come to pass and new things shall spring forth.
That message of liberation, pardon and love is even more extravagant than the most costly perfume or nard in the world. The best part is that you and I have been called to share it. So, let us be about doing so.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Still here
I will be supplying on Palm Sunday and Easter and preaching on Good Friday so there will be sermons. I have so missed the rhythm of preaching. May this desert time end soon.
Meanwhile, a photo of my presiding at San José, El Congo, El Salvador on Lent IV. I do still remember how to do that, thanks be to God. The former Archbishop of the Province of the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America (IARCA) is to my left, so is the Reina (Queen) of the congregation; and to the right, the priest in charge.
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