So the Pharisees and the scribes asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Where does evil come from? Surely the most popular answer to that is “over there.” Point over there, name the evil, condemn it, and separate yourself from it. The Pharisees Jesus jousts with today are far from the only human beings that have dealt with evil like that. In fact, it’s interesting how our postmodern culture has enthusiastically, though I’m sure unwittingly, adopted one of the principles at the heart of the Pharisee movement: purity means overtly signaling your distance from evil. "It’s over there; I condemn it; see how pure I am." Whether you signal your distance from evil by what you post on Twitter, or signal it by how visibly you observe the purity rules of a religion, trying to set yourself apart from the bad guys and make clear your own virtue is one of the most common human behaviors. Where does evil come from? The easiest answer may be “over there,” but Jesus’ answer is “in here.” Now the idea that it’s not just some hearts over there, but every human heart, that harbors and expresses evil intentions is not something Jesus made up on his own: it is the witness of the Old Testament Scriptures which he grounds himself in. And it is the witness of the New Testament Scriptures that the Holy Spirit will inspire after his death and resurrection. And it is the witness of all the saints of the church over the past 2000 years, who came to know the depths of their own fickle hearts best of any of us. Mainstream Christian testimony is unanimous: Evil is not over there; it’s pervasive, including in here. This is, of course, one of the parts of the Christian account of human nature that has now been the most resoundingly rejected in Western culture. Not that the Pharisees liked it – in fact, the disciples didn’t like it either. They push back against Jesus in this chapter too, and he retorts, “Are you also without understanding?” But I think we in the contemporary West might like this teaching least of anybody. What passes for spirituality among us now teaches that everyone has a true inner self that is beautiful and sacred, and that the more we discover and express that self, the better and more spiritually authentic we and the world will be. But at the same time – this is a logical contradiction, of course, but people don’t seem bothered by that -- it also says that when certain other people express their inner selves, their speech and their deeds are evil, and it is our sacred duty to exclude and erase and shame those people, and to be seen doing so, because after what they did, you know, they are just beyond redemption. Now at those two words, anybody who takes Jesus seriously ought to be able to recognize a problem. When we hear a human being characterized as beyond redemption, something ought to kick in and we ought to say, “Hey, wait a minute. ‘There’s a wideness in God’s Mercy like the wideness of the sea. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed.’” Christians know, or at least should, that God’s plentiful redemption is enough for you, and for me, and for everyone. We can’t declare him unable to redeem anybody. But in order to make sense of that offer of plentiful redemption and mercy, and draw on it in your behavior towards others, we need to take time to internalize what Jesus says about people, as actually applying to us. What Jesus says about the human heart as applying to your heart. Alan Jacobs has written, and I think it’s true: “When a society rejects the Christian account of who we are, it doesn’t become less moralistic but far more so, because it retains an inchoate sense of justice but has no means of offering and receiving forgiveness. The great moral crisis of our time is… vindictiveness.” What is it in the Christian account that can set us free from moralism and vindictiveness, and give us this all-important means of offering and receiving forgiveness? The answer is Redemption. The plentiful, final and full redemption you and I and the whole human race need has been provided for by Jesus through his Cross and Resurrection. It’s not up to us. You may not believe that yet, or not be sure if you believe it, and that’s fine, but I wonder if you might try with me to imagine how it works. After the Cross, we now know that a justice greater than we can imagine will be done on the last day, and that it will perfectly satisfy both God, and our own need to see things made right. We now know that death and evil have lost any ultimate power over us and the universe. We now know that our partial and shortsighted efforts at improving the world will be swept up by God in a great cosmic rectification of all things, in the new heavens and the new earth. And we also know that this redemption works not just at that cosmic level, but that it’s available to deal with even the smallest misdeeds in your life and mine. And where Jesus is so psychologically brilliant in this chapter is in asking us to start grasping his kind of redemption right there. He knows, probably, that starting anywhere external will feed all our worst tendencies. He doesn’t ask us to start grasping how God makes things right by trying to improve or sanction others. He doesn’t ask us to start grasping how God makes things right by thinking in terms of global solutions or policy statements. He asks us to start grasping how God makes things right, how vast and full the redemption he offers on the Cross is, by noticing our own need of it. By letting him do it for us. Not to stop there. His redemption is so big you can’t stop it anywhere. He asks us not to stop with our own heart, but to start with our own heart. Because however bad we think those evil people over there are, however much they merit being erased and shamed, if we start trying to figure out how things get made right by looking at them, that will feed our self-righteousness and our moralism and our natural tendency to exclude. Self-righteousness and moralism and exclusion are all things Jesus came to save us from! So if we want to understand redemption Jesus style, Scripture style, Christian style, we start with ourselves. We start with the realization that in making things right God reaches all the way down. Redemption reaches to the bone, to the tiniest flaws and the most intimate hurts. Redemption both rectifies in God’s sight, and starts healing in our own experience, everything that is broken in us. God’s loving justice addresses even the tiniest cracks. So, for example, your hateful little remark about people who won’t get vaccinated, or about people who want to require the vaccine -- or whatever it is, it could be any little sin – up against the perfect beauty and the perfect love and the perfect holiness of God, that flare of anger, that little crack, is something he loves you enough to want to make right. Right there, God wants to offer forgiveness and redemption. And as you begin to look at your little cracks -- or your big ones, the ones that still keep you up at night – as you look at those up against the perfect beauty and the perfect love and the perfect holiness of God, you start to internalize that if we are to erase and shame those who have fallen short of that perfect beauty and perfect love and perfect holiness, we will erase and shame everyone. Start with me. I am beyond redemption. And yet Jesus redeemed me, because that is who God is. This is the scope of the love we’re talking about, and this is the place from where we just might be able to look outwards without moralism and without vindictiveness. Examining your own conscience brings it home: We’re all beyond redemption, and yet Jesus still redeems. Once you grasp it, it seems too good to be true. But it is true. Yes, as Jesus teaches, evil is not just over there, in someone else. It is from within, from the human heart, including yours and mine, that evil intentions come. And there’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in his justice which is more than liberty. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed. Even for those of us – all of us – who without Jesus are beyond redemption. Thanks be to God for his glorious Gospel.
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Every day at around 3 o’clock the excitement begins to build: Within an hour or two hours or, if I’m lucky, in about 15 minutes, the mailman will arrive. I have no way of knowing what will be in his bag or if he’ll even come to our house — but that doesn’t matter. My ear is cocked for the sound of approaching footsteps, for the beep of a scanner. I’m imagining the secret surprises and forgotten treasures that will be left in my mailbox. And as I see our postman approach, I can’t help but burst out in the Mail Song from Blue’s Clues.
I’ve always loved getting mail — but nowadays, it means a little more to me because a card or a new book or even a package of cleaning supplies provides that spark of happiness I crave in this seemingly endless pandemic. Getting something in the mail reminds me that I am not alone, that I am still very much alive despite the fact that death could be lingering around the next corner. Which is kind of a melodramatic thing to say. But if you take a moment to reflect, you’ll find that we’ve all adopted those kinds of habits and that way of thinking. After a year-and-a-half of COVID-19, a year-and-a-half marked by hundreds of thousands of deaths, confused messaging, and little steps forward followed by big steps back, we are all scrambling to find the things that will distract us or give us some kind of relief from the invisible war we can’t escape. But as I am reminded every day the mailman skips our house, nothing we do or buy can keep the anxiety out forever. Try as we might, we can’t ignore that the world is not okay, that things are not alright, that what we thought would give us life simply doesn’t. “Do not work for the food that perishes,” Jesus tells us, “but [work] for the food that endures to eternal life.” Something better, something more nourishing and sustaining awaits us here and now in the midst of chaos and fear. We need only reach out and take it. After feeding the 5,000 on a mountainside and after attempting to outrun them without success, Jesus spends longer than we might think possible talking about a very different kind of meal than the one he had just provided. We’ve spent a month thinking about it with help from the great spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, who reminds us that the bread Jesus offers for us to eat is not like anything anyone might encounter at family dinner or out at a restaurant. It is not even like the bread that fed the Israelites in the desert. It is me, Jesus says, my body, my flesh. “I am the bread of life. . . . If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” This is a hard saying, one that caused many of Jesus’ disciples to leave right then and there because for all they knew Jesus was describing some kind of cannibalism. What he was really talking about, though, was even more incredible, more offensive. After all the years of humankind trying and failing to live with a holy God, fellowship with him — with life eternal — was in reach. All that was needed was the belief that what Jesus said was true. All that was needed was that his disciples should eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. It’s really no wonder they were frustrated enough to leave. In the midst of suffering, no one wants a saying that sets their teeth on edge. And we are no different. Think about it: What help is Jesus’ mysterious sayings when the world is burning around us? We want immediate gratification. We want immediate escape. And when Jesus doesn’t promise us that, we go looking for something that will. “After hearing Jesus’ message, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’” Try as we might to find something that will rescue us from the anxiety and sorrow of the past 18 months, none of it will ultimately satisfy. Because life, the life that knows no end and no change, that cannot be erased by disease or hate or injustice, can only come from God himself, from Jesus Christ our Lord. When Jesus said on the night he was betrayed, “This is my body, this is my blood,” he was making a promise — that every single time we come to the Table he is there for us. And that is the truth we cling to through whatever comes tomorrow or the day after. The bread we eat will not crumble. It will not go to waste. It is a meal that becomes a part of us. It is the way Christ becomes a part of us, transforming our souls and our bodies, our whole being into vessels of his mercy, into a temple more beautiful than Solomon’s. As we hold Jesus in our hands, as we feed on him with faith and thanksgiving, we are bringing the Savior of the World into the places of our deepest fears and most secret hopes, the place where he can and will change us. This is the hope we have, the shield between us and the world, that whatever Jesus touches, he will redeem. AMEN. Wisdom has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. She calls from the highest places in the town, "You that are simple, turn in here! Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity and live."
We’ll be looking today at this invitation from the figure the Bible calls Wisdom, and at the similar but different invitation from Jesus. This is the third in a series of sermons using our summer book by Henri Nouwen, and before we start talking about invitation, let me remind you that after Mass there’s a discussion of the book over in the education area. We’ll do that again next week as well. But for the moment let’s look at this Proverbs lesson about Wisdom. Wisdom, in the Old Testament, develops into a personified figure, a woman who is an image for aspects of God. The early Christians quickly realized that what the Bible said about Lady Wisdom was the same thing they were discovering to be true about Jesus, and so both St. Paul and St. Matthew use the term Wisdom in describing him: Christ the Wisdom of God, Paul says. Now in this Proverbs reading, notice how proactive Lady Wisdom is. All the preparation for the meal is hers. She is the hostess. She is searching for guests. She is calling out to us to come to the table. It’s all her. And this is true: God’s invitation to come to the Table is his to give. Jesus just takes that for granted as he describes himself in today’s reading from John. What we see, though, is that while that invitation from Wisdom was good and gracious, what Jesus is inviting us into goes much further. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them…. Just as I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate. Isn’t that interesting, that phrase: not like that which your ancestors ate. Why does he mention that? Well, look at what Jesus says about what it does to us not just to show up at the Table, but to internalize his presence, to consume his reality: if we eat him, he says, we live because of him, we abide in him, we feed on him. And Nouwen points out that this piece of the Eucharistic experience actually requires an invitation from us. We think of Jesus proactively inviting us to his table, like Wisdom did, and offering us an encounter that is joyful or comforting or whatever, but the temptation is to leave it where Proverbs left it, where our ancestors left it: God invited me. Wasn’t that lovely? Now let’s go to brunch. Nouwen points out that after Jesus invites us to his table, it’s then on us to invite Jesus to stay with us, day by day. When we invite Jesus in, the fruits of the sacrament multiply and we begin to belong to him in daily life. But if we don’t invite Jesus to stay with us, to continue his presence throughout the next hours and days until we come to his Table again, it’s all too easy to let the extraordinary gift he gives us at Mass slip away. And what will inevitably happen then, if we do not invite Jesus into our lives after he invites us to the Table, is that we will move on to other things to abide in. We will leave Jesus to one side until we’re in church again, and try to feed on other things, to live because of other things. You know those things as well as I do. What things other than Jesus do people live because of? What do we abide in? What do we feed on? The obvious answers are that we try to nourish ourselves with, and live for temporary things, the things our ancestors ate: family, a comfortable life, achieving your goals, romance. Wilier answers have a veneer of spirituality: I want to feed on having a balanced life, I want to feed on being kind, I want to abide in becoming my authentic self, I want to live for the growth goals I have set. Or what most of us fall for, the wiliest answer of all, is an unintentional mix that just happens without our even being conscious of it: "I'm going to abide in my family while being fed by my church involvement and my personal quest for authenticity, while also living for my career." Or fill in the blanks with whatever stuff you think about all day. If you have not consciously chosen not to live that way, you are probably living that way. And this can be very deceptive, because it feeds the mind and the emotions, feeds the need for relationships and purpose and a sense of something meaningful. It keeps you busy enough that you may not even notice what’s missing. But none of that, none of it, actually feeds the thing Nouwen is talking about in his book or Jesus is talking about in this reading. And that's why Jesus says this difficult sentence, "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." Be offended by that if you like, but Jesus isn’t talking about ordinary life. You can have a wonderful, fulfilling ordinary life without eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking his blood. Jesus is talking about something different, about the possibility to have the life of God himself in you. God designed into each of us a human capacity for this almost inconceivable gift of union with God in Christ, and that gift either is alive in us or it isn’t. Only God can cause it to be born, and only God can feed it with himself and thus keep it alive. This is why Jesus' offering is so vital. The invitation Wisdom gives in the first reading is beautiful. She is feeding us something wholesome, nourishing, but not herself. But Jesus doesn’t hold back; he addresses our deepest possible need. He gives himself. This is just staggering generosity. He has to use these metaphors of eating, drinking, consuming him, because nothing else is intimate and concrete enough. God doesn't want just to inspire us or enhance us or comfort us. He wants union. But he will never force it on us. He respects us too much for that. He wants union, but we have to invite him. Nouwen in his chapter "Inviting the Stranger" writes: “Our life is filled with good advice, helpful ideas, wonderful perspectives, but they are simply added to the many other ideas and perspectives… with such an information overload, even the most significant encounters can be reduced to ‘something interesting’ among many other interesting things …. Jesus is a very interesting person; his words are full of wisdom. His presence is heart-warming. But do we want him to come to know us behind the walls of our most intimate life? … The Eucharist requires this invitation. Having listened to Jesus’ word, we have to be able to say more than ‘this is interesting!’ We have to dare to say “I trust you. I entrust myself, with all my being, body, mind and soul to you… I want you to become my most intimate friend…I want to come to know you… as the companion of my soul.” Nouwen concludes: “Jesus wants to be invited. Without an invitation, he will go on to other places… Unless we invite him, he will always remain a stranger, possibly a very attractive, intelligent stranger… but a stranger nonetheless.” Once you’ve left Mass, do you start trying to abide in a mix of interesting things you never even really decided to live for? Are you having an interesting moment at church and then getting on with the rest of your day? What would happen if you came to this Table where Jesus himself has invited you, and then invited Jesus in turn to do what he wants with your life, to know you completely, to be a companion in every hour of your day? As Nouwen says, Jesus wants to be invited, but he does wait to be invited. For the summer read this year Emmanuel is using Henri Nouwen’s book, “With Burning Hearts” A meditation on the Eucharistic Life. Today’s sermon is part of a 4 week series using ideas from this book as it connects with the day’s lectionary. In addition to the sermon series there will be two opportunities for you to discuss the book on August 15 and 22 following the worship service. If you have not yet read the book I encourage you to do so. Hope spills from its pages. The chapter I will be using today is titled Mourning Our Losses: Lord have Mercy.
Today’s Old Testament passage finds us with the prophet Elijah at one of the lowest points in his life. Elijah, probably the most important prophet, certainly one of the most well-known, had many occasions of dramatic stories demonstrating the power of God. His name, Elijah, means the Lord is my God, and that is what defined his ministry, his time of being a prophet. He proclaimed over and over that Yahweh, the Lord, is the one true God. Just prior to today’s passage Elijah confronted the God Baal and his worshipers. At that time Ahab was king of Israel. Ahab married Jezebel who was a leading believer in Baal and many in Israel began following Baal, instead of Yahweh, the lord God. Elijah warned King Ahab of the errors of his wife and her beliefs and spoke openly against the Baal worship. So Elijah had a contest of sorts with 450 Baal priests. Each group of worshippers had a bull to sacrifice. First the Baal priests took a pile of wood and spent most of the day crying to their God to burn the offering, without success. Later, Elijah rebuilt the Lord’s altar of stones that has been torn down and on it put wood and the bull sacrifice. He made it as difficult as possible by pouring water on the wood and building a moat of water around the altar. Then he prayed to God to send down fire on the altar and God did! Certainly this was an effective showing of God’s power and a visible and memorable sign of who is the true God! There are many spectacular stories in the Old Testament! But it is not over. Elijah then proceeded to kill all the priests of Baal. And then King Ahab took this story back to his queen Jezebel who vowed to kill Elijah in retaliation. It is at this point in the narrative that we see the man, the human being, Elijah, rather than the great prophet Elijah who has just prayed for and received a great showy miracle from God. Elijah has forgotten what God has done for him throughout his life. His fear of Jezebel and what she has said she will do to him, overtakes him and he flees Israel. He runs to Beersheba (a land not under Ahab’s control) and even then continues another day’s journey deeper into safety. However Elijah is not relieved of his fear. That is where today’s passage begins. Exhausted and spent, worn out from the killings, the running and the fear, Elijah sits under a bush and asks God to end his life. He is overwhelmed with pain and grief and depression. Enough he thinks, enough, and he asks God to die. Notice that Elijah takes all of his pain and his grief to God; he does not hold back this part of his very human life. At some level Elijah must have had some glimmer of hope that only God can provide. And what happens is that God does provide very practical, tangible things, a touch to remind him of God’s presence, bread, from heaven, and rest to recuperate. We are told that Elijah is fed twice with this food to sustain him and to prepare him for what God will ask him to do next. In these short verses we hear of the depressed and hopeless man turning to God. At some level Elijah knew that God had provided for him in the past and that he may provide for him yet again. Even, or maybe especially the greatest ones with close relationship to God need that sustenance that only God can give. Elijah came to God depleted of everything and he is fed and given strength to continue on. As we approach the Eucharist each week, there will be some times when a few of us will be at the point Elijah was in today’s lesson. We may be despondent, fear-filled, depressed and overwhelmed by our life’s situation. Other days, while things may be going fine for us personally, our thoughts may be filled with the situation in the world and the pain of other people. We may feel the weight of the variants of the Covid virus, or the current political situation, or the increasing violence around us. And at other times we may come filled with joy from something going on in our personal life. What we seek as we gather together in this sacred space is that hope that comes from God. We are not on automatic pilot as we enter the rite. We bring our pain and our joy with us and ask for God’s mercy. We begin each Eucharist collectively saying Lord have mercy. Losses are a part of human existence, a part of the journey of life. Some of these losses might be considered natural, a part of the human process. Others are more of a disturbance of the natural order, such as a sudden fire or a pandemic. While we do not each have the same losses we do all suffer at some point. And, we do not ignore suffering, we cannot, rather we ask God for mercy. In the first chapter of his book Nouwen says this, “We come to the Eucharist with hearts broken by many losses, our own as well as those of the world.” And he tells us that we have two choices in experiencing those losses, we can become resentful, hardened by all that has happened or our hearts can be opened so that we become grateful for the gift of life. We can be resentful or grateful those are the options when faced with loss. I quote again, “The word Eucharist means literally act of thanksgiving. To celebrate the Eucharist and to live a Eucharistic life has everything to do with gratitude. Living Eucharistically is living life as a gift, a gift for which one is grateful. But gratitude is not the most obvious response to life, certainly not when our experiences are a series of losses!” Acknowledging the grief and pain of life, the act of mourning loss, is necessary before we can see the gratitude. It is through mourning that we are able to know life as a gift. As counter intuitive as it seems, Jesus told us, Blessed are those who mourn. When we try to glide over or avoid thinking about the loss we can become insulated, hardened and resentful. Yet when we acknowledge the grief and express it, rather than trying to avoid it we will be comforted. Through our mourning we will find hope, the hope that only God can provide. As a congregation, as a group, we come here together to the Eucharist each time with a mixture of despair and hope. Some of us may have come with an attitude similar to Elijah’s in today’s reading. We may be despondent, perhaps even angry, overwhelmed by personal pain or by the pain of the world around us. Some of us arrive with thoughts of all the good we see in people around us or the good we have experienced recently. We come together with both the despair and the hope and we ask God for mercy. Lord have mercy is our continual prayer. Certainly Elijah was not living his life as one who was grateful at the time of today’s reading. His prayer to God to end his life was really a prayer for mercy. Otherwise he could have ended his own life. Instead he asked for God’s help, for God’s mercy, at a very low and dark point. And God through his angels gave Elijah the sustenance to continue. God fed and comforted him to prepare him to continue in his journey to serve his Lord. Like Elijah when we approach the Eucharist with our brokenness and ask for His mercy we will not be disappointed. God through the Eucharist will feed us. His grace will sustain us. We will find peace through our losses. We begin each mass by praying: Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy. And in so beginning we prepare to receive God’s mercy and love. The hope inherent in the service is there each and every time we come. We will be fed. We will be sustained. We will be shown mercy, given hope and receive God’s love. Jesus invites us to his feast, to be closer to him and to know his love in this tangible way. His love is ready for the taking. “The angel of the Lord came to Elijah a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” Again, I invite you to join with the Emmanuel community this summer to read and explore Henri Nouwen’s book. It spoke to me and I believe it will also speak to you about the beauty of knowing God through the Eucharist right in the midst of our very human lives. Amen. On the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.” We’ve been reading Henri Nouwen together this summer at Emmanuel. He was one of the 20th century’s most respected writers on the spiritual life of Christians, with 39 books on topics ranging from solitude to disabilities to compassion to death and more. The one we chose, With Burning Hearts, is subtitled A Meditation On the Eucharistic Life. The clever thing about that subtitle is that it refers both to the life Jesus offers in the Eucharist, and to the life you and I can live when the reality of what goes on in the Eucharist comes home to us. When the shape of the Mass becomes the shape of our own lives. Nouwen weaves the book around chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel, where we hear of two disciples, just a few days after the Crucifixion, who meet a stranger on the road to Emmaus. He interrupts their grief and depression, and shows them how all Scripture points to what God was doing in Jesus. But it’s only when he breaks a piece of bread to share with them that they realize that he himself is the Risen Jesus -- and run out to share the news that he is alive. The structure of this passage is also the structure of the Mass, which is certainly one reason God must have wanted to make sure it got written down and put into the Bible – he knew we would need that chapter of scripture to understand what he was doing here. We’ll have readings and homilies focusing on the Eucharist over the next 4 Sundays, with a little help from Nouwen’s book. Then on August 15 and 22, after Mass we’ll make time for group discussion. As the stranger told those two disciples, God drops hints throughout the Old Testament about what is coming in Jesus, and today’s reading from Exodus is one of them: the people hunger, and God gives them manna from heaven. He starts by providing something they already understand: quails. We all know what quails are. But God’s next gift dares them to take a new step of trust, and they’re not too sure about it. In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. What is it? A very basic question, and it’s no wonder they are asking. The people have not seen this before, they’re not sure why it’s there, they’re not even sure if it’s edible. It’s easy to roast up a nice quail. But this stuff, this fine flaky substance, they can’t figure out. It’s a weird intrusion into their environment. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, what is it? This is, in a sense, the position we are in every time we hear a Word from God. Something from beyond intrudes into our environment. God’s word and presence come to us from outside our assumptions, from outside what we assume should be true, from outside our perspective, and if we really take it seriously we will probably say What? What is it? After all, if Christianity is what it claims to be, a revelation from God that brings news of God’s achievement in Christ, it has to be something we never could have made up for ourselves. It has to be something from outside that will keep on giving us new information that we didn’t have before. It has to be something that doesn’t quite fit with what we’d expect. I’ve been a Christian for just over 40 years, and I am still regularly saying What? I’ve eventually gotten used to feeling relieved and grateful when that happens, because I know it means that yet again God is intruding into my environment and challenging my assumptions with his weird, freeing, nourishing truth. But the manna God gives me, gives all of us, in his Word and in his Sacrament is so unlike what you and I hear everywhere else. It’s so unlike all the other, easier, more normal-seeming offers out there of temporary distraction or of self-guided improvement or of curating your preferred identity through buying things. When God speaks to us, intrudes into our environment with his grace, if we’re listening, the most honest response is probably “What is it?” And yet this intrusion, God’s giving of himself, full of grace and truth from outside us, is where we find the words of eternal life, the truth of who we are and what we’re meant to be. It is the bread from heaven, which God has given us to eat. If we do not learn how to receive and respond to God’s intrusive Word, his unexpected news of what’s really true about you and me, we will never have the full lives he intends for us. We will, knowingly or not, settle for a cheap, temporary substitute. Nouwen writes about this in his chapter called “Discerning the Presence.” He says, “It is quite possible to come to the end of our lives without ever having known who we are and what we are meant to become. Life is short. We cannot simply expect that the little we see, hear, and experience will reveal to us the whole of our existence. We are too nearsighted and too hard of hearing for that. Someone has to open our eyes and ears and help us to discover what lies beyond our own perception... We cannot live without words that come from God, words… [that] lift us up to a place from where we can discover what we are truly living.” So I guess my question for you this morning is, how much of the 24 hours of your day is spent trying to live without words that come from God? How regularly do you allow God to lift you up to a place where you can discover what you are truly living? If your answer is not that often, take home today’s bulletin and read one of the lessons every day this week and ask God to speak to you through it. Ask him for manna from his word. And then do the same thing next week. If you follow Jesus, he offers you the chance to experience God opening your eyes and ears and telling you things you could never have figured out on your own. God offers you words that come from him, manna that comes from him. It’s right there in your bulletin. It’s right there in your Bible. It’s right there on the altar. Without that manna, your spirit will starve, whether you feel hungry or not. What is it? It is the bread from heaven, the Bread of Life, that God has given you to eat. You’d think Jesus would get tired of us. Here he is trying to get a very well-earned getaway with his disciples, and suddenly a crowd shows up. And this isn’t just some small group of people from a neighboring village. This is 5,000 men and probably at least 5,000 women — and then there are kids and donkeys and goats and pigeons and it’s loud and chaotic and they all want something from Jesus.
He and his disciples see them coming, and you can almost hear the annoyance and then the panic in the men’s voices as Jesus asks where they can find enough bread so that the people may eat. And there’s a pregnant pause until Philip says what’s on everyone’s mind: “Even if we had a year’s worth of wages, we could still only afford to give these people a snack. Less than a snack.” And then Andrew, thinking he’d really show Jesus how impossible the situation was, grabs a kid from the front of the crowd and shows him the boy’s lunch. All there is in that basket is five barley loaves and a few fish. It’s a pauper’s lunch and no help at all. But Jesus, who had come all this way to find rest, to watch the sun rise over the Sea of Galilee, to sit in quiet communion with his Father, sees the overwhelming needs in front of him and hears the stubborn doubt of those who know what he can do — and rather than sending everyone away, he says, “Sit down. Let me feed you.” If we were there that day, we would see thousands of people setting down their burdens. We would see them resting on the grassy hillside as they waited for Jesus to serve them. And we would see Jesus walking from one group to the next, breaking off pieces of bread and giving them to the poor, the rich, the young, the old. On that day, everyone ate from the master’s hand and was more than satisfied because Jesus saw the crowd and had compassion on them. He knew that they were hungry. But what were they hungry for? As human beings, we are creatures of desire. We live our lives searching for the things we want, for whatever it is we think is good. We do this because we were created to be hungry, to look outside of ourselves for nourishment, for love, for protection. All good things — but, as many of us know and have experienced, we have a terrible habit of mistaking those good things for the Source of those good things. We think that financial security or professional achievement are the greatest good we can obtain, and so we go about sacrificing to what is nothing more than an idol. We, like the crowd in our story today, will rush to create whatever kingdom we want and totally miss the man in front of us — a man who loves us regardless. And that is what is so striking about the God who made us, the God who redeems and sustains us. Jesus saw the crowd toiling up the hill that day and had compassion on them. He saw that they brought burdens — the sick, the injured, the demon-possessed, the hungry, the blind, the deaf — and he did not hold that against them. He didn't hold it against them that they never dared to ask for what they really needed: Him. God knows that we are hungry, knows that our lives are marked by need and by scarcity. And God, who knows no want, who is perfect happiness and joy and goodness, chose to empty himself, chose to experience the hunger pangs, the dry throat, the aching desire for safety and love and rest so that we might taste the fullness of God’s love, so that we might realize that all our desires are met, are exceeded, in Christ alone. When we bring our requests to God, he tells us to sit down. Jesus says to each of us, “set aside your burdens for just a moment and let me feed you. This bread that I give you may not heal the hurt or erase the anxiety, but it will give you strength, it will sustain you as we both pick up your burden and continue on our way.” And as we take Jesus’ hand, as we scramble to our feet and follow our savior, Jesus leads us on toward eternal life, toward unity with God’s life, toward a place where there are no more tears and no more pain, where there is instead light and love everlasting. This is the hope we have, the hope we encounter every time we come to the Table, every time we listen to the Word. That there is one who is for us, who fed the 5,000 in the wilderness, who led God’s people through the desert and into paradise, who redeemed us from slavery and gave us an inheritance that is greater than we could ever ask or imagine. He is the one who is with us today, the one who is with us always. May he, according to the riches of his glory, grant each of us the strength to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, so that we, too, might be filled with all the fullness of God. AMEN. You’d think Jesus would get tired of us. Here he is trying to get a very well-earned getaway with his disciples, and suddenly a crowd shows up. And this isn’t just some small group of people from a neighboring village. This is 5,000 men and probably at least 5,000 women — and then there are kids and donkeys and goats and pigeons and it’s loud and chaotic and they all want something from Jesus.
He and his disciples see them coming, and you can almost hear the annoyance and then the panic in the men’s voices as Jesus asks where they can find enough bread so that the people may eat. And there’s a pregnant pause until Philip says what’s on everyone’s mind: “Even if we had a year’s worth of wages, we could still only afford to give these people a snack. Less than a snack.” And then Andrew, thinking he’d really show Jesus how impossible the situation was, grabs a kid from the front of the crowd and shows him the boy’s lunch. All there is in that basket is five barley loaves and a few fish. It’s a pauper’s lunch and no help at all. But Jesus, who had come all this way to find rest, to watch the sun rise over the Sea of Galilee, to sit in quiet communion with his Father, sees the overwhelming needs in front of him and hears the stubborn doubt of those who know what he can do — and rather than sending everyone away, he says, “Sit down. Let me feed you.” If we were there that day, we would see thousands of people setting down their burdens. We would see them resting on the grassy hillside as they waited for Jesus to serve them. And we would see Jesus walking from one group to the next, breaking off pieces of bread and giving them to the poor, the rich, the young, the old. On that day, everyone ate from the master’s hand and was more than satisfied because Jesus saw the crowd and had compassion on them. He knew that they were hungry. But what were they hungry for? As human beings, we are creatures of desire. We live our lives searching for the things we want, for whatever it is we think is good. We do this because we were created to be hungry, to look outside of ourselves for nourishment, for love, for protection. All good things — but, as many of us know and have experienced, we have a terrible habit of mistaking those good things for the Source of those good things. We think that financial security or professional achievement are the greatest good we can obtain, and so we go about sacrificing to what is nothing more than an idol. We, like the crowd in our story today, will rush to create whatever kingdom we want and totally miss the man in front of us — a man who loves us regardless. And that is what is so striking about the God who made us, the God who redeems and sustains us. Jesus saw the crowd toiling up the hill that day and had compassion on them. He saw that they brought burdens — the sick, the injured, the demon-possessed, the hungry, the blind, the deaf — and he did not hold that against them. He didn't hold it against them that they never dared to ask for what they really needed: Him. God knows that we are hungry, knows that our lives are marked by need and by scarcity. And God, who knows no want, who is perfect happiness and joy and goodness, chose to empty himself, chose to experience the hunger pangs, the dry throat, the aching desire for safety and love and rest so that we might taste the fullness of God’s love, so that we might realize that all our desires are met, are exceeded, in Christ alone. When we bring our requests to God, he tells us to sit down. Jesus says to each of us, “set aside your burdens for just a moment and let me feed you. This bread that I give you may not heal the hurt or erase the anxiety, but it will give you strength, it will sustain you as we both pick up your burden and continue on our way.” And as we take Jesus’ hand, as we scramble to our feet and follow our savior, Jesus leads us on toward eternal life, toward unity with God’s life, toward a place where there are no more tears and no more pain, where there is instead light and love everlasting. This is the hope we have, the hope we encounter every time we come to the Table, every time we listen to the Word. That there is one who is for us, who fed the 5,000 in the wilderness, who led God’s people through the desert and into paradise, who redeemed us from slavery and gave us an inheritance that is greater than we could ever ask or imagine. He is the one who is with us today, the one who is with us always. May he, according to the riches of his glory, grant each of us the strength to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, so that we, too, might be filled with all the fullness of God. AMEN. As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
In her sermon last week, Deacon Chris spoke about the way that the presence and power of Christ has sustained us at Emmanuel. She mentioned the text we use in the Episcopal Church to bless the Paschal candle, the Easter candle that symbolizes the presence of the risen Jesus among us. It’s a beautiful proclamation: Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, alpha and omega, all time belongs to him and all ages. Deacon Chris talked about the experience we had with that text here at Emmanuel the past three years, which looked different on the outside but was the same on the inside. In 2019, the blessing was said at the Great Vigil of Easter, in the dark back by the baptismal font, with incense and a new fire burning, perhaps 150 people in the church, special music, a special reception, and a total of about 30 lay people serving in all kinds of roles at the Mass and after it. A complex 2 or 3 hour event, with elaborate ceremonial. In 2020, the Paschal candle was blessed privately by the clergy in the Great Hall since nobody else could gather. It looked very different, but it was exactly the same spiritual event. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection was exactly the same in a very different context. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end. She talked about 2021, when the candle was blessed publicly - but in a separate rite just preceding the first of our 3 Easter Masses, since it was not possible for Emmanuel to mount a full Great Vigil liturgy. It looked very different, but it was exactly the same spiritual event. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection was exactly the same in yet another context. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end. We don’t know what the blessing of that candle will look like in 2022, whether we will still be working with only 40-50 participants at Emmanuel, or whether we will have had more invest themselves and will have the people resources to be more lavish. Those kind of questions about how we relaunch given where we and the world are now, that’s what our three vestry groups are working on, and it’s really all of you that will determine the answer. But the heart of what God is doing in that moment will not change. It will be exactly the same spiritual event as in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The same spiritual event, by the way, as it was in AD 121, or 521, or 1521, three more utterly different contexts. The power of Christ and the truth of his resurrection spoken into the world are exactly the same; it’s the context that changes. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end. Some of the most powerful moments in the pandemic for me, were those moments of sharing communion through a window, or giving a blessing out in West Side Park, or offering the ashes on Ash Wednesday... contactless. Those moments when the church was still the church right in the middle of the context we were working with were earthshaking to me, because they proved that nothing, nothing, can take Jesus away from us. Jesus gave the power to live out our sacramental life and our witness and our service in the face of Covid, and he is able to give the same power in the face of anything. Because Jesus is the same, yesterday and today, the beginning and the end. Circumstances and context are no obstacle to his truth and his power. They are the channels in which he can pour it out, if each of you turns to him. I know that many of our parishioners didn’t quite experience what I just described. A large number of folks in our database were not here much, and just couldn't do it -- didn’t have the knowledge or motivation to take the demanding steps Covid required for someone to continue spiritual practice. Many have missed these powerful moments I’m talking about. Several folks who once came to Mass regularly to be fed by Christ are now completely out of the habit or have decided it’s no longer a priority, as you can see by looking around you. Now Emmanuel is far from alone in this. It’s going on everywhere. If you read Marisa’s article on research by Ed Stetzer, or if you have friends in churches around the country, you know. The pandemic has been an accelerant to trends that are no obstacle at all to the power of Jesus, but that all kinds of churches were already struggling to understand and take into account: spirituality being repackaged as a consumer product to obtain and use privately at your convenience; hostility towards Christianity; growing numbers of people who have never experienced how any mature religion is lived out in community; the shift to locating sacredness is found in self-discovery and self-expression, not in a God who reveals himself. The confusion and passivity of churches in the face of all those trends, and the resultant erosion of Christian communal practice, was evident before the pandemic, but easier to ignore in 2019 than it is now, when most churches have had a wake up call about how effective they have been in channeling the unchanging power of Jesus Christ within the lives of people in the database. All of that stuff plus Covid has affected how many people God currently has to work with here. It may affect what you guys prioritize on the Emmanuel schedule, how you try to form disciples, how you decide to reach out to Champaign-Urbana. But does anything there change Jesus? Does it change the sacraments? Does it change the Gospel? Does it change the power of the Spirit? No. By learning how to rely on God’s grace and truth and power and that alone, you the Church can be the living presence of Christ in every situation. Any situation. Because Jesus will help us. Us. You. I mean, look at today’s Gospel. "As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd." Sheep are herd animals, and their shepherd feeds and manages and guides the herd. The shepherd changes them from isolated, hapless creatures into a body brought together, journeying together, eating together, with a common life and a common purpose. Jesus looks at these people in this text and doesn’t see an effective, united body; he sees isolated creatures with no shared guidance or goal. Another gospel writer recounting this same moment describes the people as “harassed and helpless.” So is Jesus stymied? Is he unable to work in such a context? Is he unable to work with such people? No. When he saw the state they were in, Jesus had compassion for them. And how did he express that compassion? He taught them God’s truth, and he healed them. Nearly all of us now are "harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd," and we barely even know it. We have become so unfamiliar with what the life God offers us, the good life, feels like that we barely realize we’re going without it. And of course 18 months of living much of our lives virtually, shut away, has accelerated this trend, teaching every single one of us -- oh, so many things that go against how God made us. Teaching us to dip quickly into all kinds of things rather than soak in the important ones, to stay home on the couch rather than make the effort to go out, to be schooled in how life works by memes and screens instead of by Scripture, to stay away from the sacraments and find a podcast or a meditation that suits our taste, to sign on for being harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. What does Jesus feel about people like this? About the people he sees in today’s Gospel? About us? Compassion. What does he do for them and what will he do for us if we turn to him? Teach us, heal us, as in today’s Gospel. Love us. Feed us. And even better than the shepherd and the sheep, live in us. And once you’ve soaked in his truth and his love and his healing, then he will use you. Christ can use exactly who Emmanuel has, exactly where you are, for exactly what he wants. We have nothing to fear. But first us harassed and helpless people have to come to him and let him heal us, teach us, feed us, and love us. You have to become sheep with a shepherd. You have to become Jesus’s before anything else. Then you can start. Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, alpha and omega, all time belongs to him and all ages. To him be glory and dominion through all ages of eternity. Amen. We are at a liminal point in time right now. The pandemic, while definitely not over, is on the downside (hopefully that trend is continuing) and our gradual return to a more normal level of activity will keep going. So, we are at an in-between state—which is a fairly unique place to be. Something is ending and we are at the edge of something new. It is a time that is ripe for reflection of the past and thoughtful prayer about what the future might be. Our lives rarely have these liminal times so it is important that we don’t rush through them.
I ask you to join me in some reflection of the past and perhaps during the time visiting after church you may want to talk about your favorite memories of church. While I enjoy all the liturgical year services, at the top of my personal list is the Easter Vigil. One of my favorite parts of that liturgy is the blessing of the Pascal Candle. For those of you who may be newer to the Episcopal Church, for most of the year that candle is located in the back of the church next to the Baptismal font. During the Easter season and for any baptism or funeral it stands next to the pulpit. (Symbolic for me, the 2020 Candle arrived in its well-packed box with a large crack in it. That crack continued to grow as the year progressed!) But I digress… Pre-pandemic the blessing of that candle happened in the Vigil after lighting the new fire and before processing the new light through the darkened church. In 2020 the Candle was blessed with just the clergy in attendance. In 2021 it was done with a slightly larger number of people prior to the Saturday evening Easter service. I look forward to 2022. Regardless of how it happens the blessing itself is what has sustained me throughout this troubling time. Mother Beth slowly said these words as her hand traced the cross on the candle. Christ yesterday and today. The beginning and the End. Alpha. And Omega; All times are His, and all ages; To Him be glory and dominion, Throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen. No one has gone through this last 18 months unaffected. Some have experienced more loss than others but all of us have been touched during this time. For me these words of the Pascal Candle blessing have sustained me through the most difficult parts. My summary of the blessing which is easier for me to remember is: “Christ yesterday, Christ today and Christ tomorrow. That is an eternal, unchanging truth. Christ was and is and is to be. That is true for this liminal time also. While change is often challenging, sometimes frightening and sometimes exhilarating, this truth of Christ is throughout all of life. It is the rock on which life is grounded. Christ yesterday, Christ today and Christ tomorrow. This morning we heard the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The theme of this letter is God’s eternal purpose in establishing and completing the church—sometimes known as the body of Christ or God’s temple or the bride of Christ. In the first half of the letter Paul gives the theology of the universal church and then in the second half he offers more practical suggestions about how to be the church. In total the letter indicates the importance and the glorious blessing it is to be the church. The passage read today is the introduction to the entire letter. Thank you (reader’s name), for your thoughtful reading of this; I know it is very dense and not an easy read. In the Greek these verses are one long sentence with a lot of different clauses. At least the English translators tried to help us understand it a bit more! I am going to suggest, as have some commentators, that we look at the passage as poetry, rather than what might be called a straight forward paragraph with one sentence logically leading to another. When we consider it as poetic images, certain words and phrases stand out. For example the word “blessed or blessing” catches our attention. We who have received God’s blessing return that blessing to God. We, together as the church, bless God, as he has blessed us. A similar word used often in the passage is “praise” or “praise of his glory”. Our response to God’s loving care of us is to praise his glory. Another related word that comes through is “Grace” and Paul explains what that freely given love has encompassed. Blessing, praise, and grace are words that tell of God’s gifts to us and also our gifts to God. They point to our relationship as a collective body, the church, with God. In this same vein Paul uses the names of the Trinity, God the Father, the son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit throughout the passage. Christ is mentioned six times in these few verses! And mixed in with the Trinity, Paul speaks of us human beings as children of God and God’s own people. The relationship between the church and God, what wondrous things God has done for us and how the church responds to the love of God is what these phrases are about. Eugene Peterson in his eBook on Ephesians, titled Practice Resurrection says this, “Ephesians roots the church in the gospel of grace, our redemption in Christ and our calling to be the vibrant, living, Holy Spirit empowered, presence of Christ in the world” We are called to be the vibrant, living, Holy Spirit empowered presence of Christ in the world. Christians are to embody God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in all we do. Our daily lives must be Christ like. This is a powerful charge to us now as it has been throughout the generations since Christ’s resurrection. The church building itself is to be a sacred place where we are formed and strengthened to do this work. We as people then are to be the living presence of Christ. Now if you are not thinking, me, you? How can we do that? This is an overwhelming task! Well, my friends, we do not do it on our own, independently by ourselves, for sure. Rather we do it collectively, together with one another and together with God. Peterson actually goes on to say that the church offers hope to the world not because of what individual human beings do on their own strength, but because of what God is doing through the body of Christ, the church. This is a powerful charge to us but also an empowering one. We as the church are important and necessary to the work of God. While I am fairly sure that the church in the time of Paul and in Ephesus did not look or even sound the same as the church in our day and time the basic truths are the same. We human beings are called into relationship with God to be His body on earth, to participate in His work in this particular moment. In this liminal time and as we seek to discern what changes we may make in the future, this awesome truth about the church remains the same! Our rock, Jesus Christ, is there always, present with us in all our circumstances and in all times. This is unchangeable. Christ yesterday and today. The beginning and the End. Alpha. And Omega; All times are His, and all ages; To Him be glory and dominion, Throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen. I think we can count the people we pretty much trust on two hands and the people we trust completely on one. And that’s because trust isn’t something that’s common. It’s not something we give or receive freely because trusting someone opens us up to possibilities that we can’t control. Trust makes us vulnerable, and if the promise is broken or the relationship betrayed, we risk getting really hurt.
All of us have experienced that kind of wounding to some degree, whether we were a child or an adult or somewhere in between. And what’s so deeply tragic about that fact is that those wounds influence our perception of ourselves and of other people and, most importantly for us today, our perception of God. At times we may catch ourselves wondering if God is like the friend who left because we couldn’t solve the argument. Or if he’s a wild-card, who is one day kind and the next day malicious, like the boss who made our first job hell. And without us realizing it, we begin to hold back from God because we’re so accustomed to doing so with everyone else. What would it look like to really trust God? Like, really really. In our psalm appointed for this morning, we hear from a man who knows in his very bones that he is out of options. He and the people he’s praying for are without resources or recourse — they are poor and oppressed, and no one will help them. The situation is dire and would be hopeless; but the psalmist cries out to the God of his forefathers, saying, “Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.” He and his people are exhausted, worn down by their poverty, mocked and beaten and left for dead by the leaders who were supposed to protect them. There is no help available to them, nothing and no-one on earth who will listen but God, and so they appeal to him, looking away from the pain of the present and toward the sky: “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, until he has mercy upon us.” “We will wait for you,” the psalmist says. “We will wait just like a servant waits to hear his master’s command. We know that nothing on this earth will help us, so we put our trust, all our trust, in you.” That level of trust doesn’t make sense to us. It’s almost baffling. We’re so used to picking ourselves up and taking care of our own problems. Waiting on the action of someone else just doesn’t seem like a good idea. How do we know that the LORD will act? How do we know God actually cares? The psalmist knows the answer to both questions is yes. They trust in the LORD, which is not an empty name or meaningless word. When the psalmist prays, “O LORD, have mercy upon us” and “so our eyes look to the LORD our God,” they are remembering the Name that delivered them out of bondage and into freedom, out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. When Israel is pinned between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea, they panic and murmur, but the LORD reassures them that he will fight for them — they need only be still. This is just one of the stories the psalmist holds in his heart as he prays. As he waits. We don’t know what answer he received. We don't know how long he waited. But we do know that the LORD loves the broken-hearted and the down-trodden. That he is near to the sorrowful and the distressed. As Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And it is Jesus who ultimately tells us what God is like. It is Jesus who ultimately tells us that God cares and cares so deeply that he would send his Son to earth to die for our sake. Jesus knows what it is to suffer, knows what it is to be betrayed, and when he invites the weary and the burdened to come to him, he does so as one who understands, as one who loves us more deeply than we can ever know. What would it look like to really trust God? It looks like taking Christ’s hand and walking with him through the ups and downs of our lives. There may be days when we falter, days when we stumble, but Jesus promised never to leave. He is our hope, our sure defense, our savior, our friend. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, and the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, to Christ Jesus our Lord, until he show us his mercy. AMEN. From Curate Marisa Crofts:
We’ve all been asking it, and we’re all some degree of nervous about the answer: What will the church look like now that we’re coming to the end of the pandemic? Will we pick up as though nothing has happened? Will we scrap everything we did in 2019 and start completely from scratch? Or will we settle on some middle-of-the-way option that no one has envisioned yet? That, I will admit, feels like a pretty dramatic series of questions. But if you’ll forgive me for the drama, I hope you’ll also be able to feel that the process of reopening is a fraught one. COVID-19 has affected us all, whether we caught it or not. As of this summer, we are emerging into a society that has changed and will continue to change in ways we can see and in ways we can’t. Trying to respond to that kind of context is a task-and-a-half — one that has the potential to bring out the best and the worst in us. So, in a sense, it’s worth the drama. More than that, however, trying to get a read on our current situation is worth serious thought because it is in our current situation that the Spirit works. God is not OOO, nor is he just avoiding the mess in this already-too-messy year. He is creating and sustaining the world as he always does. The question for us, then, is how will we walk through this time as faithful witnesses to him? Just a few weeks ago, I was able to attend a continuing-ed event with the Rev. Dr. Ed Stetzer, who is known for his work at Wheaton College and his numerous books about evangelism, in which he asked that very question. How do we “present ourselves as living sacrifices” to God in this time of cultural upheaval? First, he said, we need to reckon with the very real challenges (and opportunities) facing the church at this time. Stetzer called these challenges and opportunities the “headwinds and tailwinds” of 2020, the things pushing back on us and the things pushing us forward as we seek God’s will in what’s ahead of us. Bad news first! America is getting less religious. Between 2009 and 2020, the number of people who identified as “non-religious” doubled, from 14% to 28% — and Stetzer argued that most of those folks would once have been nominally religious. This is a major shift for the church for many reasons, but the most important might be that up until now, our style of evangelism focused on getting people who were tangentially connected with the church to commit more deeply to their faith. Evangelizing people who are “non-religious” is an entirely different barrel of monkeys. Speaking of, people are becoming more and more suspicious of proselytizing. In years past, telling unchurched people about the gospel was often seen as embarrassing (for you and for them); but now, people are concerned that evangelism is coercive, that it encroaches on a part of people’s lives that is private and entirely subjective. I’m sure you’ve heard something like this before: “You can believe whatever you want. But don’t tell me what I should believe.” And one of the reasons for that isn’t just because “tolerance” is a buzzword. Over the past 50 years, the church has lost much of the respect she enjoyed (and took for granted). Once upon a time, the church was seen as a voice of authority and as an agent of justice and equity in our society. Now, however, the failings of so many churches in America — the sex-abuse scandals perhaps being the most damning example — has corroded the faith people once had in the institution that so famously asked, “What would Jesus do?” Which brings me to Stetzer’s last point: People have become “inoculated” against their need for God. When we were first locked down in the spring of 2020, the fact that we could no longer walk into our church buildings, no longer receive the Body and Blood of Christ as we used was painfully real to us, especially given that many people were unable to celebrate Easter in person. Fast-forward to summer 2021, however, and you’ll find that a full third of people who were once regular church attenders have not returned to the pew. Why is that? The reasons for such a change are, of course, complicated; but Stetzer suggested that one of those reasons may be because people have grown bored with Jesus. Stuck at home, unable to do anything but surf the web, people have found other, more exciting or gratifying outlets for religious expression. Politics, matters of social justice, and conspiracy theories move in a way the church does not. Engaging in these things gives participants a feeling of having done something important, something immediately helpful. Why look for a God you’re not even sure exists when you can actually see tangible results and feel the excitement of the crowd at a protest or a rally? Even one of these challenges would be enough to make ministry difficult. But four? The reality of our situation is anything but inspiring — though that does not mean it’s hopeless. Back in 1968, the U.S. was also facing a time of cultural convulsion. Protesters flooded cities and towns, decrying the war in Vietnam and the violence against African Americans; both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, Jr. were assassinated; and the “Hong Kong Flu” (no, I’m not kidding) was catching. No one who looked at that picture would say, “Oh yes, this is definitely fertile ground for renewal in the church.” But it turns out it was. Since the early 1960s, churches across America had been experiencing charismatic revivals that would eventually give birth to Christian groups like the Jesus Movement, which claimed the world’s attention in 1972 as over 200,000 people gathered in Dallas to worship and pray and ask what it was that the Lord was calling them to do. If renewal can come out of the tumult of the 1960s, then renewal can come out of the past year-and-a-half. And so we come to the good news: The current cultural moment is just as much of an opportunity as it is a challenge. And that’s because the combination of isolation and existential dread we’ve all been dealing with hasn’t just pushed people to ditch religion entirely. It’s also forced everyone to ask hard questions. It’s made us look at life and death in ways that very, very few people in the West have done for nearly 100 years. And the church is uniquely positioned not just to meet those people where they are but to offer them comfort and a home in the promise of Christ. While the general perception of the church has suffered, people have nevertheless noticed how local congregations stepped up their ministries to care for those who were heavily impacted by the pandemic. Just think of one small example from Emmanuel: even when we were shut down, we never missed a day of passing out sack lunches to those who came to our door. People outside of our church community see that witness and ask, “Why would they do that?” Why do we do that? We serve the poor, the widow, and the orphan because Jesus told us to follow him. Christianity has a set of priorities that are fundamentally different from anyone else’s in the whole world. And that reality is becoming clearer. Just as folks are getting real about what their values are and where their values lie, the church is also poised to explore and embrace a greater clarity about what Christianity actually is. And as we return to some sense of normalcy, there are ample opportunities to coalesce that clarity and momentum about our identity with the excitement and momentum of people looking to find a community that can help them process the past 16 months. The coming year is going to be interesting to say the least. Interesting and perhaps disheartening. Yet despite the challenges we face, there is hope. And what is hope but remembering that the Lord has promised to act — and then trusting that he will do so? God is on the move, and he is ready to sweep us up into his work. I pray that when that happens, we will all be ready to go. Some of you know that my father has been in declining health on several fronts. A couple weeks ago I had to make an emergency trip down to Nashville, and I spent four days sitting in his hospital room, waiting for him to be well enough to get discharged to a nursing home short-term. As I sat there, the prayers that initially arose were those instinctive, self-focused pleas that you could sum up in the single word “Help.” Please let Dad be OK. Let them get his blood pressure back up. Please make the social worker answer the phone. Please help me sleep tonight.
We’ve all prayed things like that, which is perfectly appropriate and normal. All human beings have times when we dislike the way things are, and those of us who pray inevitably find ourselves asking God, over and over, to give us what we want instead of what we have. I’m grateful to know that the God who became incarnate in Jesus is a God who listens in love, even when what we say to him is expressing mostly our own desire for control. But I’m also grateful, over years and years of praying the Psalms in the Daily Office, to have been gently schooled in another way of addressing God in times of pain and powerlessness. And this more Biblical kind of prayer is what I eventually found anchoring me, orienting me, by the hospital bed, rather than those instinctual prayers focused on trying to get my way. You know, the Psalms give us a model prayer vocabulary; with repeated use, they soak us in the truth that God is there with us when we address him, that all of life can be lived in an open dialogue with God, and that there is a larger horizon and a deeper steadfastness out there in which to trust, even when life has sent us suffering. Today’s Psalm, 130, is a perfect example of that kind of prayer. I’d like you to take a look at it in your bulletin. It starts: Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice; let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication. The Psalmist begins from this point of view, just like anybody: I’m in the depths, hear me, consider my point of view! Listen to me, God. That’s an authentic and normal way to pray. But the text doesn’t stay there. Let’s read verses 2 and 3. If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, O Lord, who could stand? For there is forgiveness with you; therefore you shall be feared. Now that’s interesting. As soon as he mentions his own weakness and his own dilemma, the Psalmist is reminded of everyone’s weakness and everyone’s dilemma. The Psalmist remembers that it’s not just him – so much is amiss, and yet God is undaunted by that. With God is forgiveness, with God is the answer for everything that has gone amiss. The Psalmist’s problem, my problem, your problem, is at its root one instance of a bigger problem, the problem of a world in which alienation from God has infected everything and broken people and systems and creation in all kinds of ways. Any problem we have, any injustice we see, any pain we face, is an example of the world being fallen. If you understand the world the way Scripture does, this is deeply comforting. You’re not alone. The universe is not ganging up on you personally. This is all part of the big picture caused by humanity’s refusal of God, and answered by God’s determination to forgive us and heal us. So even as the Psalmist bewails the dilemma he and all people are in, we already see this movement of his eyes rising up to a wider horizon. And let’s watch it happen even more. Verses 4-5. I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope. My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning. This is the moment the Psalm turns from complaint to hope. From help me/ help us to: My soul waits for the Lord. The gaze moves from me and my problem, to us and our problem, all the way up to God himself, and that changes the game completely. Psalm 130 is what is called a Lament Psalm, and nearly all lament psalms have that kind of turn in them. There is nearly always a moment where even in the midst of suffering, the reality of God reorients and regrounds the Psalmist. Jerome Creach, an OT scholar at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, writes, “Lament… allows the worshipper to complain about injustice and to call on God to hear the cries of those who suffer…. Because lament is offered to [the God with whom we’re] in covenant relationship, however, lament also is praise, and a very important expression of praise at that. It gives evidence of faith worked out in the midst of hardship, hurt, and loss.” The God with whom we’re in covenant relationship. As the Psalmist looks at God, he remembers a reality bigger than whatever he’s facing, and he reaffirms his attachment to God and his trust in God. So his world is no longer defined by the circumstances he’s lamenting; it’s defined by the God who is so much bigger than our circumstances. And that’s how it works. If we belong to God, we know who God is. We know what he wants for us and for the world. We know he knows better than us what is needed. So in the hospital, if I can get my eyes off me and onto the God of the universe, I’m no longer waiting to get my way about the social worker or the blood pressure monitor. I’m waiting on the Lord. My hope is no longer in being able to get my control back. My hope is in the Lord. And beautifully, the last section of the psalm finds the writer so grounded and strengthened by the steady presence and love of the God in whom he hopes, that he has the energy to turn outward and exhort others to receive the assurance and grounding he has received. O Israel, wait for the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy; With him there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins. Mercy is not getting your way. Redemption is not regaining control. Mercy and redemption are located outside us, in the God to whom we belong and with whom we are in a covenant that will never end. God is not a butler, not a wellness coach, not an EMT to be contacted in our time of need, and then ignored the rest of the time. God is God. And this is such good news. With the God to whom we have access through Jesus, we no longer have to hope in our own control. Even in the bad times, we can let God lead us into a larger, more spacious, more secure reality, assured that whatever happens, it will be OK. It will be OK, because this infinite, merciful, hope-worthy God is our God. Will you take out your bulletin and read the whole Psalm with me again, please? “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
About five seconds into preparing for this week’s sermon, I immediately started thinking and couldn’t stop thinking about Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And that’s not because of the movie’s theological precision or amazingly realistic special effects but because (spoiler alert!) when the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant they all end up melted or zapped by the overwhelming (and fairly creepy) brilliance and splendor of God’s glory. Of his holiness. When we close our eyes and listen to our OT lesson this morning, as we watch Isaiah look around the heavenly throne room, that same sense of ominous power arises. Smoke billows around us. The hem of God’s robe sparkles in the flicker of candlelight. And the seraphim — these fiery, flying angelic beings — sing with so much conviction that their voices shake the foundations of the temple — and we can’t help but be shaken, too. We cover our eyes instinctually and take a step back. We know to our core that we aren’t supposed to be there. We’ve wandered into something too big for us, something dangerous, something otherworldly and beyond our understanding. And when Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I have seen the King, the LORD of hosts,” a part of us feels the same way. But why? Why does he say that? Why does Isaiah, upon seeing the beauty and splendor of God cry out in fear for his life? And why do we feel the same? How can we be so uncomfortable, so afraid in the presence of God, when we know that he has made us and that our hearts are restless until they rest in him? Isaiah knew that to see God revealed in his might is a death sentence — because that which is sinful cannot survive that which is perfectly holy. The stain of our sin, the selfishness of our hearts, separates us from encountering God, enjoying God as he is. And so, like a blade of grass that scorches under the bright light of the sun, we wither before the holiness of God. “Woe is me, I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.” Can we face God and live? No. God’s holiness must and will consume us. And yet such is his grace. “Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’” God’s holiness is a consuming fire; but just as fire kills, it also makes way for new life. When Nicodemus encounters the presence of God in the face of Jesus, he, too, learns that those who would enter God’s kingdom must die. Jesus says, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The life you live now, Jesus tells him, must die and must be born anew for you to come into the kingdom. And Nicodemus doesn’t understand — who would? “How can these things be?” he asks. And Jesus responds, “This is the way: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The light of the glory of God, the living coal of his mercy and judgment, has entered the world; and he will show us our sin, show us what God’s holiness cannot abide. But God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, to call it guilty and leave it at that. He sent his Son into the world so that all might be saved through him. That all who hear the Spirit’s call might be baptized not only into Christ’s death, but into Christ’s life. When we enter the waters of baptism, we encounter God’s judgment, his fiery love that will settle for nothing less than a renewed relationship between him and us. But we also encounter his mercy, we encounter the holiness that undoes and then renews, that kills and then revitalizes. When the name of the Triune God is spoken over us at the fount, we are washed, dressed in white, and brought into the very presence and fellowship of God, where we can join with one voice in the angelic chorus: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” AMEN. Pentecost is one of the great Baptismal days in the Episcopal Church, and in fact it’s one of the great days, period.
The story from Acts of how God poured out his Spirit upon the Blessed Virgin and the disciples is so colorful and exciting. Tongues as of fire! A violent wind! Men and women bursting into the streets with the joy of the Lord! The sudden change of what had looked like a local Jewish renewal movement into a multiethnic, multilingual, multisensory, multieverything, movement with a message for the whole universe. It’s such a gripping moment. But if we want to understand what that gripping moment has to do with Baptism, and why Episcopalians try to schedule Baptisms on Pentecost, it might be helpful to turn to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John today. In this section of John, Jesus is giving his farewell teaching to the disciples before he is arrested, and one of the things he wants to bring home to them is the nature and work of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate as Jesus calls him here. Though it’s in the past for us, when Jesus spoke those words he was telling the disciples about something still in the future for them, and he put it different ways: The Spirit will be in them, the Father will send the Spirit, the Spirit will come. However you phrase it, it was a promise of something that had not happened yet, a mode of connection with God that before Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection and Ascension was not yet available, but that God was planning to make available on Pentecost. And what will this Spirit do? Apparently he’s going to prove the world wrong about all sorts of important things – maybe we can talk about those the next time this lectionary Sunday comes up – but what concerns us today is that the Spirit’s also going to point, inexorably, to Jesus Christ. Three quotes from the passage: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now,” says Jesus. Without the activity of the Holy Spirit, we cannot bear all the truth God has revealed in Christ; the full Christian revelation is too splendid for our finite intellects. Once we receive the Spirit, we have an inner companion who can unfold Jesus to us. “The Spirit will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears,” says Jesus. The Spirit is not a solo actor, but the intimate conduit, the faithful transmission, of the Gospel and the Biblical message and the experienced power of God to us. He relays with absolute fidelity what the God who became incarnate in Jesus is doing and saying. “The Spirit will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you,” says Jesus. The Spirit will take all the glories and insights, all the justice and holiness, all the mercy, all the beauty, all the brilliance that belong to Jesus and pass them on to us. In fact, it’s true for the whole Trinity. The Spirit opens onto the life of the Trinity, the Spirit is the one who sweeps us up into that eternal exchange of Love, the one who makes it all real to us. If, by the way, the Christian proclamation of God doesn’t feel real to you, or the doctrine doesn’t seem to apply, or you just don’t get it, pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you. That’s his job. So I said this all had to do with Baptism and I haven’t mentioned Baptism, so let me mention it. We had two readings: The discourse we heard in John is a teaching about what the Spirit will do, when he comes on Pentecost, in and for people following Jesus. The story that we heard in Acts, the exciting one with the fire and the street scene, is the narrative of that coming on Pentecost, the first time in history the Spirit came in the way Jesus had promised. And it just so happens that the same people in that John reading were also present historically in Jerusalem at Pentecost, the first time in history the Spirit came. Jesus promised it in John, and 50-so days later it happened to them in Acts. But that doesn’t do us much good. We weren’t there for the discourse in John, we weren’t there that first day the Spirit was given in Acts. How do we get in on this promise? Well, we get in on it by Baptism. From God’s point of view, the moment we are baptized, every single thing that Jesus has for us and did for us, every single thing that the Spirit is deputized to unfold to us, is ours. The door to intimacy with the Trinity is thrown open. We are claimed and marked as Christ’s own forever, sealed with the Holy Spirit. In a few minutes, after the washing of water and the action of the Spirit, I will mark the Cross of Christ on Pepper Crofts’ forehead, and that Cross will never come off. It’s indelible. From this moment forth, the Spirit will be taking what is Jesus’ and declaring it to her. The Spirit will be bringing her in to the benefits of the Cross and Resurrection. The Spirit will be saying to her all the many things Jesus wants her to know, but she cannot bear yet. And if you are baptized the same is true for you: It’s indelible. And the Spirit is trying to take what is Jesus’ and declare it to you. The Spirit is trying to bring you in to the benefits of the Cross and Resurrection. The Spirit is trying to teach you all the many things Jesus wants you to know, but you cannot bear yet. And I’ll tell you this: Whether today is the day of your Baptism, or your Baptism was 8 or 18 or 80 years ago, thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit there’s always more. There’s always more. Today is the seventh and final Sunday of Easter. This past Thursday we celebrated Ascension with a glorious sung evening prayer and next week will be Pentecost. Like the original disciples we now are in a period of waiting, waiting for the promised gift of the Holy Spirit as we say good-bye to the most beautiful Eastertide. Good-byes and waiting are necessary parts of life, though not always our favorite things to do.
This morning’s gospel comes at the end of Jesus’ long good-bye to his closest companions, which actually covers several chapters of John. These recall the conversation that took place on the night before Jesus’ arrest and death. Throughout these chapters Jesus has reminded his disciples what he had done during his time on earth with them and he explains what it has meant. He tells them what is ahead of him and of them. He tries to prepare them for the future, even though they do not seem to understand. He then explains what he expects from them as they will be the ones to carry on his ministry on earth. And he reassures them that they will not be left alone to carry out this work. It is a lot to take in and yet very important for them to hear and later to reflect about. Jesus then ends this long good-bye to those whom he loved the most, with a prayer. And this is today’s gospel passage. Just as he has throughout his life with his disciples, on this last night, Jesus continues his teaching and his modeling for them. His prayer on behalf of his followers then and now, is a demonstration of how to pray for others, how to do intercessory prayer. This quiet, trusting prayer shows the level of deep intimacy between Jesus and his father. And we modern day disciples are drawn into that closeness and into that relationship and assured that our trust is well-placed, even thousands of years later, As I reflect on this lesson I have thought about how our intercessory prayers match with Jesus’ prayer this morning. In her book, “Kitchen Table Wisdom”, Rachel Naomi Remen tells of a patient of hers who is told by his oncologist that there was nothing more that could be done for him. The physician then said, “I think you’d better start praying.” Are our intercessory prayers a kind of last resort, something to do when there are no more effective treatments available? Is God a final referral, and prayer the last ditch effort to get what we want to happen? Do we wait as long as possible before we ask for God’s help? Remen counteracts this idea by talking about prayer in this way. “When we pray, we stop trying to control life and remember that we belong to life. It is an opportunity to experience humility and recognize grace.” We stop trying to control life when we pray. Our prayers express that God is in charge and that what we ask for ourselves and for others is that God assist us in carrying out His will. Thanks to a faithful group of daily office readers and those in the St. Luke’s guild, even during this time of the pandemic Emmanuel has continued to pray regularly for those on the parish prayer list. This list includes the names of those for whom we pray in a corporate way. Most often, only a very few here know what the person needs or perhaps even who the person is, but God knows and that is what is important. We say the person’s name to assist in lifting them into God’s presence. Of course in our private prayers we may be more specific in our requests, asking for healing or a resolution to a loved one’s problems. Or sometimes, rather than using words, we may visualize the person being held by Jesus for a moment or two. Remember Jesus’ example as he prayed on behalf of his followers as he tells them goodbye. Jesus asks God to protect those he loves, the people that God gave to him to be close to while he was on earth. He asks God to guard them and protect them from the evil one. He asks that God sanctify his followers; that they be made holy, set apart for God’s purpose in the world. Jesus prays that his disciples find unity with each other, that they form a community, and are made one, just as he and his father are one. And Jesus prays that through this unity that his disciples find joy. Protection, discernment, unity, joy, these are all things that Jesus prayed for his disciples both then and now. And when you think about it, this is what others ask us to pray for them. And what we ask others to pray for us. Protection, “Hold us close God; keep us safe”. Discernment, “How can I know that what I do is in accordance with God’s will; Show me your way, Lord.” Unity, “Help us to love each other, God, as we each love you. Keep us together, and help us to forgive to make that unity possible.” Joy, “May we see your hand at work in the world around us, Lord. Help us to know and to be grateful for all you have given us.” Jesus’ good-bye prayer in this morning’s gospel is the teaching example of intercessory prayer. When we pray to God on behalf of others may we do it not as a last resort, but regularly and often. And may we follow Jesus’ example in asking for God’s protection, discernment, unity and joy for those for whom we pray. We do not tell God what to do; rather we ask for his assistance and loving presence as we seek to carry out his will. This prayer in today’s gospel is an example for us, but even more it is a source of comfort for us even today. While Jesus prayed these words long ago it is his prayer for us now. In his last night on earth Jesus prayed for protection for all who would carry out his work in the future. That includes us. In these last few days of Easter tide may our alleluias be great. While we, like those disciples, wait to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry out Jesus’ work, may we use the time to renew our prayers on behalf of others, following Jesus’ example. “Jesus prayed for his disciples; Jesus prays for us.” Take a microphone to the streets of Champaign-Urbana and ask people to tell you what God is like. You can bet that "love" or “loving” will be mentioned more than any other word. And Love is all over the Bible, too, as we see in this week’s readings. Last week, 1 John even told us that God is love. Now that sounds like a simple statement, but it isn’t. Ask people to explain it, and you’ll discover that they don’t agree.
So I want to talk this week about what our own community, followers of Jesus, means by God’s love, and point out three misunderstandings about it. Now of course if you orient your life around something else than Jesus, they could be perfectly reasonable ideas. All of these are misunderstandings from the Christian point of view, which is of course what we’re all here to situate ourselves in. One common misunderstanding, if I may put it this way, is in essence the assumption that the Bible’s statement “God is Love” can be reversed. That when we talk about God being love, we basically mean more or less the same thing as “Love is God.” Love is the highest reality. And you hear this implied when people say things like "I think in the end, all religions boil down to loving your neighbor." But actually there is a great difference between claiming God is love, or claiming Love is God. Peter Kreeft explains it this way. "When we say A is B, we begin with a subject our hearer already knows," and add some new knowledge about it. "Mother is sick means: you know mother, well, let me tell you something new about her: she's sick. God is love means let me tell you something new about the God you know"...this infinite, majestic Lord of the universe, who is all powerful, all knowing, all holy.... let me tell you something more about that God – his deepest nature is Love. "But Love is God means: let me tell you something about the human love you already know; [whatever that word love stands for in your mind,] that is the ultimate reality. That is as far as anything can ever go. Seek no further for God [than the idea of love you already have]." The Biblical teaching that "God is love" is radical and intellectually profound. The cultural teaching that "love is God" is a platitude and for Christians, a complete non-starter. Another misunderstanding is that divine love is a sort of generic benevolence. Again, from the Christian point of view, God’s love is anything but. The love of God that Christians talk about is specific and personal and has a definite shape about which he has told us a great deal. Jesus says today for example, that abiding in his love includes keeping his commandments. For us, what God’s love is like is revealed in Jesus. We see that character as Jesus eats with outcasts and as he denounces false teaching about God. We see it as he heals people as a sign of the complete restoration God will one day bring, and as he confronts sin and exploitation as a sign of the same thing. We see it as he humbly washes the disciples’ feet, and as he holds them to a higher standard of behavior than the Old Testament did. The love God reveals to us in Christ says no to some things and says yes to others. That love both challenges and pursues us. Which leads me to an additional comment on the "generic" misunderstanding. God's love is also not generic in terms of how it is given. God does not love humanity in bulk, as an undifferentiated mass. He loves you as you. He loves the secret beauties about you that no one else knows. There is nothing generic about this. It is specificity to the end and if we want to know what the specifics are, we look at Jesus. The third common misunderstanding is that when we say God is loving, that somehow cancels out his justice and his holiness. People in cultures like ours that have a residue of Christianity but where very few people actually know the teachings of Christianity often think this. They've picked up that God is loving and forgiving, and they assume that’s all he is. There’s this naïve storybook image that you know, somebody will reach the gates of heaven, and God will sort of ineffectually beam at them and say, "Well, you made a lot of mistakes, and you don’t really deserve it, but aw, heck, come on in anyway." (If you push someone on this, they will often say it doesn't happen for so-called really bad people -- Hitler is the most common example -- but that surely God will turn a blind eye for all the nice folks like us.) Behind this image is a confused view of love that says, "If you love me, you’ll accept anything I do." Sure, love accepts people, but it does not accept actions that hurt people. Love cares about right and wrong. How loving would a God be who didn't care whether or not a parent abused their child, or didn’t care whether or not a shooter took the lives of innocent people? The idea that God ought to ignore evil asks God to contradict his own nature. To deny his own holiness and justice. Even more, it makes light of God’s own self-sacrifice on the Cross; God chose to put himself through that agony because his love says such a strong No to evil, that that No ends up as a Yes to redemption. It’s because God’s love says No to evil that it says Yes to coming in person to heal the damage evil has done, to set the world to rights. God’s love is holy love. His love is married to his holiness. His mercy is married to his justice. It’s this seamless reality. And through Jesus he offers you and me, and the entire created universe, a way to satisfy both, which has got to be the most loving thing anybody has ever done for anybody. We could say so much more about God's love, but that's enough for one day. I just want you to hear this call from the Gospel again: Abide in my love, says Jesus. Abide in my love. This is a love that doesn't peter out at what we already know, but that builds on our understanding of the God who spent the entire Old Testament getting across his holiness and his justice so we could understand the radical claim that this God, this God is love. This is a love that is specific and personal and deliberate, not vague and generic. This is a love that is both holy and just, and merciful and kind. It’s a love that loves you. There’s a lot of stereotypes about twins out there, but one of the most common and perhaps the most accurate is that there is always a time when the twins will butt heads. For me and my sister, that was our senior year of high school. It was a rough season for several reasons, but the one thing that really got to me, the one thing that I couldn’t let go was that my twin always, always, always slept through her alarms, which would mean that we would be late to school. It infuriated me; but rather than mapping out a quicker way to school or helping my sister figure out how to wake up in the morning, I would actually drive to school more slowly and then park in the back of the very last parking lot just to spite her. Because why not. After school, we’d get home, still mad about the morning, and we would inevitably hear, “Why can’t you just get along?” And my answer, being the mature 18-year-old I was, was always some variation on, “I don’t know. Why does she have to be so frustrating?”
Human relationships are hard — and that’s not just because we get annoyed by different things or that we come from different backgrounds and speak different languages. It’s because there is something wrong with our hearts. In our epistle lesson today, St. John urges us to love one another. “Beloved, let us love one another,” he says, because 1) love is from God and 2) God is love and 3) if we love each other, God abides in us. The repetition can at first strike us as tiresome. We got the message the first time. You want us to love one another. There’s nothing that special or that hard about it. But when we stop and think about our own high school tantrums or more recent experiences at holiday dinners or on our favorite social media platform, I think we would all agree that love and everything about it is much easier said than done. Why is it so hard to love other people? Why do we constantly fail to love one another? The answer to those questions lies back at the beginning. When God created humankind, things looked pretty great. Man looked at woman and woman looked at man, and there was recognition of mutual humanity, of worth and value, of beauty. There was, in short, love, the giving of oneself for another’s sake with no designs on what you might get in return. But the effortless goodness of those first moments ended quickly, and what was left was afterwards has forever haunted us. The world changed in an instant and try as we might to get back to paradise, we could never find the way. Not that we didn’t try. History is littered with attempts at fixing what we broke; but none of them ever worked because we were always too tired, too angry, too concerned with our own survival to realize that we were the problem. On that day in the garden, our mother and father chose themselves over God, and every single human heart since then has followed their lead. Except for one. His story is the greatest love story ever told: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us,” writes St. John. “God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Before time began, when there was nothing but God, he knew that his creation would fall, knew that we would think we were gods, we would decide to do as we pleased with the world and each other. And God knew that we would hate our creator because of it. He knew this, and still decided we were worth saving. In this is love, not that we loved God — because our self-obsessed hearts never could — but that he loved us and sent his Son to bring us back home. I think this year more than any time in our lives, we have a much more accurate understanding of how limited we are. We feel how hard it is to love other people when we’re anxious about catching a deadly disease, when we’re exhausted from keeping the kids quiet during Zoom meetings, when we’re angry over another mindless shooting rampage. We may be good people. We may have the best intentions, but we still need to be reminded, encouraged, exhorted to love one another — because we forget or we’re too tired or we decide that those people don’t deserve it anyway. In short, because we’re human and we need God’s grace if there is to be any light in our world. Love is from God, and our capacity to love comes from him. Our world may be fractured, we may at times feel nothing like tenderness or compassion toward it, but that doesn’t mean that love is in short supply. It is in fact a never-ending fountain because God is love. In him is no failing, no exhaustion, no spite, no deceit. He alone can heal our hearts so that we may truly love one another. AMEN. “Jesus said, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. Both the gospel and the psalm use the metaphors of sheep and shepherd. It is not a leap to know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd and that we humans are the sheep. In the time scripture was written, these metaphors would have been readily understood as a way to describe the relationship between Jesus and his followers. Other Biblical leaders, Abraham, David, and Amos were shepherds or traveled with herds of sheep. It was natural to call God’s people, a flock. These metaphors, when originally written, brought actual meaning to the hearers. However, for most living here and now, the image of a shepherd is not part of our day to day experience. I can honestly say I have never met someone whose job was to watch over sheep. And yet I can understand a good shepherd because of what I have heard in these passages. Also, most probably our first-hand knowledge of sheep is limited. We enjoy the products the animals provide—beautiful wool and good tasting meat but that’s about it. We take others words about sheep—they are animals without much intelligence, followers who are quickly lost without a good leader. The actual metaphor loses some of its power without experience of the reference. As I said, I do not know any real-life shepherds. However, I have had an encounter with a group of sheep that for me provides a picture of what Jesus is talking about in this morning’s gospel. Some years ago I visited Iona, a small island in the Hebrides. Iona was the spot that Columba used as a base to bring Celtic Christianity to Scotland in 563. The island, just a little over 3 square miles, has become a place of religious pilgrimage and spiritual retreats. It is the burial place for approximately 60 kings, including MacBeth and Duncan! There are fewer than 200 people who live on the island year round and many of those raise sheep as their main source of income. The sheep wander the island freely. I was there near the summer solstice when the days have about 20 hours of sun. Late one night I walked alone to the west shore to see a gorgeous sunset. On the way I encountered a large group of sheep. They were as interested in me as I was in them so I paused as they neared me. One of the larger rams had those beautiful curved horns and I was a bit afraid at first. We each stood our ground and looked into the other’s eyes. We both decided the other did not pose a danger and we rested quietly together there for a while. I then continued my trek and the ram continued his grazing in that same spot. After the sun had gone down I returned the same way I had come. That same ram was still in that spot, watching for me to come back. He then accompanied me as I walked to the gate of his field and again made eye contact as I left. Perhaps sheep are followers, but certainly not stupid! This metaphor of sheep changed for me after that real life experience. Because of being “up close and personal” in that large group of sheep, I was interested in knowing more. I identified at least six different breeds of sheep, many whose names I cannot pronounce. The variety was incredible. Some had black faces, some white faces, some were rounder than others. Some had long black legs, and others shorter white legs. I was fascinated by those with pink faces. Some of their wool was coarse and some soft and fluffy. Some had large curved horns. Each of the sheep had a painted owner’s mark, a bright red stripe, a yellow cross, a circle of blue and so on. All of the sheep graze together until spring when they are gathered and separated for shearing. Though different looking, they were able to co-exist in a peaceable and calm way, each getting what they needed. Taking the metaphor of sheep representing human beings, I wonder. Certainly there is a wide diversity in people’s appearance, as was true of the sheep but did that Scottish flock hold a message for us that Jesus wanted us to know? “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” I believe Jesus acknowledges and encourages diversity in his followers with this statement. At the time this scripture was written the sheep that did not belong to the fold were most likely the Gentiles. And the writer of this passage was encouraging inclusion of the Gentiles as equals in Christianity. Today we know that the body of Christ includes all nations, races and people. There is diversity in Christ’s church worldwide. We know this and yet do we embrace this diversity? I wonder, “Who are the gentiles of our day?” Who are the “other sheep” who do not belong to this fold? I ask you to keep in mind the image of that large group of sheep of all kinds grazing quietly together, including, accepting and watching over me that night. Can we not do the same to the “other sheep” of our time? Jesus, our Good Shephard, said, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. Amen. A friend of mine says, it takes God to know God. We can get a certain distance toward the divine on our own, but eventually we need supernatural help. It takes God to know God. If that’s true, and I think it is, knowing God requires a bit more than the techniques we use to learn things in most of our life. If we need to familiarize ourselves with something, we might read about it, talk to someone who is an expert in it, Google it.
And of course, people read and talk and google Christianity, as they should. The world is full of skeptics who researched the historical data on the Resurrection and came to think it was plausible – there are enough books telling that story to fill a whole bookshelf. And in the Episcopal church, at our best we place a high value on that kind of thing – intellectual inquiry, encouraging asking questions, hoping people will think things through and not just blindly accept what someone else says. At our best, this is a great trait. Sometimes among our denominational family though, it turns into condescension towards others, or intellectual laziness that is content to applaud questioning as an end in itself, and resists actually reading and thinking historically and textually about doctrine and Scripture. I’ve noticed in discussions of the Bible that as our culture has shifted steadily to emphasize self-expression as the highest good, folks seem to want to jump straight to how they feel about a text, or how they feel about other people’s actions related to the general topic of the text, rather than beginning by using our brains to read and absorb and interact with what it actually says. The Gospel we have this morning is like that. We lose so much if we jump straight to how it makes us feel without noting that it’s full of perplexing details. Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Excuse me; how did he get in the room? They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. But you just told us that not five minutes ago, they were discussing the fact that Jesus had been raised from the dead. What’s with the "ghost" remark? And startled I can understand, but if it’s they know it’s Jesus, why are they terrified? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. Why does he tell them to touch him when he told Mary Magdalene not to? Is he proving his identity by showing them the marks of crucifixion, and if so why are there still wounds in a risen body? Does being raised not fix that? They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Do risen bodies have to eat? How often? Is this some kind of stunt? If we don’t consider the text closely enough to feel disturbed by it and ask questions about it, we are never going to receive its benefits. We have to start by observing what the text actually says. And then Jesus tells them, I told you “while I was still with you: everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” And here comes the moment where, as important as data and observation are, we go beyond it as we’re confronted with this startling sentence: Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. Don’t jump over that. Look at what it says. Note that this is not a claim that the disciples thought harder or the disciples changed their opinion or the disciples heard some new information. It’s claiming there was an act of God. He opened their minds. It starts with their already being aware of what’s in the Scriptures – you can’t understand something you’re not even aware of – but it goes beyond that, because at this moment Jesus supernaturally changes the way they are able to absorb and conceptualize something they had naturally observed and learned. It takes God to know God. Some of us have been in good Bible studies, ones where people both intellectually observe the text and are open to the Holy Spirit, as opposed to one where people just share how they already feel about things loosely related to the theme of the passage. If you have been in a good Bible study, I will wager that you have had this happen to you. You have had God open your mind to understand the scriptures. You saw things one way, and then something happened inside you that you weren’t the cause of, and everything looked different. It takes God to know God. In the spiritual life, it’s definitely not that we don’t use our intellect and our powers of research. It’s that we do, but God adds something to them that we could never achieve on our own. He reveals himself. When we carefully consider what the Scriptures say, God steps in with the next step: He opens our minds, in the words of today’s Gospel, to understand them. Or in the words of the Collect prayer for today, he opens our eyes to behold him at work. God gave us intellects so that we could use them. But God also acts upon us and reveals himself, to bring us closer to him than mere human powers can get. Both these things are true, and in the Christian life neither stands alone. There are two conclusions about life that we ultimately have to make. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Or did he not? If he didn’t, as Paul says, we are of all people most to be pitied. But if he did, then our hope is sure because it is founded on a promise that confronted death and won.
It’s easy to say something like that, to hold up a coin and show you both sides and say pick one and stick to it. The stakes in that case aren’t very high. But when something goes wrong, when a loved one dies, when a pandemic takes away everything from family reunions to a spontaneous drink with friends, the meaning of those words, “Jesus is risen, Jesus is Lord,” are a lot easier to ignore or even forget. Sometimes the world just gets too big and too messy for us to really believe that the battle has been won and we are the victors. Sometimes we just want to lock our doors and stay inside for fear of what may confront us without. What is doubt but fear that Christ has not risen? That fear is exactly what kept the disciples inside on the first day of the week after Jesus’ death. When Mary Magdalene brought news of the Lord’s resurrection, none of the disciples went out to find him, rejoicing in the power of God. Instead, they locked themselves in their rooms because they were terrified. It was in the midst of that fear that Jesus appeared before them, saying, “Peace be with you.” He held out his hands and showed them his side. “Peace be with you.” And Jesus breathed on them, giving them his Spirit, the Spirit of peace, the Breath of God, before he disappears. But in his absence, the doubt once again creeps into the disciples’ minds, and when Thomas emphatically and infamously does not believe their report, they all go back into hiding, locking the door behind them. A week later, Jesus appears again, saying again, “Peace be with you.” And immediately he turns to Thomas and shows him his hands and his side; and Thomas, repenting of his doubt, recognizes that Jesus is who he is. My Lord and my God. If we ask what or who overcame the disciples’ doubt, the answer, I think, is obvious. The risen Lord himself. But just because the answer is obvious does not make it any less remarkable. Jesus doesn’t confront his disciples’ lack of faith or the fact that they abandoned him, he just shows up. And in that act of showing up, the Son of God, by his very presence, scars and all, lifts his disciples out of their fear and commissions them to do his work. “Peace be with you,” he says again and again; and the peace he gives is himself. As much as we might not think it, as much as we might protest against it, we are the very same as the disciples. Confronted with death and disease, with the threat of violence or with the pain of indifference, we can be tempted to hide in our homes, to put our lamps under a basket, because we cannot risk the hurt of Christ’s resurrection not being true. But when we doubt, Christ himself answers. He reaches out to us through his Word, through the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, through the church herself, saying, “Peace be with you.” Because Jesus is risen, because Jesus is Lord, the promise is true: where there is a cross, there will always be resurrection. AMEN. Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.
When Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome come to the tomb on the first Easter, they are coming looking for an end. Jesus is dead, his mission is over, and they just want it all to have a proper burial. They are coming looking for an end, whereas God is offering them a beginning. They are going to bid farewell to their hopes, whereas God is welcoming them to a future in which hope becomes something substantial and concrete. Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him. The hope Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of James and Salome learn about this morning is not primarily a hope of life after death or a hope of comfort now, though the Christian faith does offer us life after death and give us comfort. The young man at the tomb tells these three women not that they can feel less sad because Jesus has gone to heaven, but that Jesus has been raised to new life by the power of God, his body is no longer in the tomb, and he is already out in front of them -- in this world, in that risen body, going ahead of them to apply to our world the same power that raised him. In this year where so many human bodies have been invaded by a virus, where nearly 3 million human bodies have died of it, where we’ve reckoned anew with all the human bodies who have been harmed because their skin is brown or black – in this world, we need a God who deals with bodies. We need a hope that is substantial and concrete, a hope that is bodily, a hope that is not just for later, but for now -- and this is the hope we hear about on Easter. The Presbyterian writer Timothy Keller has a brand new book drawing on the overwhelming events of the last year, which for him coincided with battling pancreatic cancer in his own body. It’s called Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter. As he works through the data on the resurrection, he lays out why the hope Easter proclaims works in times of fear: because it guarantees that Jesus in his risen body is already out in front of us, drawing his future into our present, and his risen body into our mortal bodies. “In the resurrection,” Keller writes, “we have the presence of the future. The power by which God will finally destroy all suffering, evil, deformity, and death at the end of time has broken into history [on Easter] and is available, partially but substantially – now.” That power breaks into the world specifically in the risen body of Jesus. Not in an idea or an aspiration, but in human flesh – human flesh remade into a carrier of the power of God’s coming Kingdom. So hope for a Christian is not optimism. Hope is not wait and see. Hope is not put a good face on it. Hope is not pie in the sky when you die, although the hope that begins today certainly extends past the grave. Hope for a follower of Jesus is substantial, concrete and bodily, guaranteed in the risen flesh which carries God’s future now, and brings it into our world, our bodies, our lives. Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him. Let me read that quote from Keller again. What we learn today is that “The power by which God will finally destroy all suffering, evil, deformity, and death at the end of time has broken into history [on Easter] and is available, partially but substantially – now.” It is available. Not in its fullness till the next world, when God’s whole future is made manifest, but still available, partially but substantially, here where we can see it. And in fact, you will see it in just a few minutes yourself. After all, the body of Christ that we offer and share at every Eucharist is, of course, that very same risen body, that very same carrier of the power by which God will finally destroy all suffering, evil, deformity, and death at the end of time. Easter is not just for later. If you come to communion today, in just a few minutes you will hold it in your hands. And at the end of time, the fullness of its effects will be realized, substantially and concretely, and all suffering, evil, deformity, and death will be destroyed. But it begins now. It begins here. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Happy Easter. What we do tonight is remember. As a family gathers after a death, we have come together to remember. We take turns telling stories, praying, and sitting some in silence. We find comfort in being in each other’s presence. We are a family, God’s family, and we are in mourning, sitting together, shedding some tears, talking about the one we love who has died an awful death. For a little while we go back in time and identify with those early disciples.
For one night we experience a fraction of the pain of those original disciples in thinking that Jesus was gone, gone forever. Even though Jesus had told them what was to come, on Friday they did not know it. Sunday was not to be imagined. So tonight is a time to put ourselves in their place and think as they did that Friday. What might it have been like to not know Jesus as the Risen Lord? What would it be like to not have Jesus in our life? A critical part of our Good Friday experience is to live as witnesses of the horror and senselessness of the crucifixion. I have often wondered how could Mary, Jesus’ precious mother, have kept her vigil as her son suffered? His pain was so intense and real; how could she have remained there watching? And yet how could she not. Tonight we remember and identify with these disciples and like them we look to find meaning in Jesus’ death. When Jesus entered the upper room on the night before he died for us, he was tired. Exhausted. And afraid. He knew that death was coming, knew that his time was up. This would be his last meal on earth, his last night to spend with his friends. But instead of doing the things we might think a person would do if they knew they were about to die, Jesus does something unexpected. He takes off his coat, wraps a towel around his waist, pours water into a basin, and washes his disciples’ feet.
The whole scene is strange. We might imagine the surprise, even the distaste on the disciples’ faces. Because what was happening didn’t make sense. Barely a day had passed since Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem, and the people had hailed him as king. But now he was doing the work of a slave. What did this mean for their understanding of the Messiah? What does it mean for them? Up until that moment, they would never have imagined that this man would pick up a basin and a towel and begin shuffling around the room on his knees, washing the dust of the roads off of the feet of his followers. But here he was, doing just that. What the disciples didn’t understand and what we so often forget, is that Jesus is a king who embraced humility. As St. Paul tells us, the Son of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, so that we might be saved. On the night before Jesus died for us, he showed the disciples what his love looks like: willingly humbling himself in order to serve and save his people. Today, we enter into the story of Jesus’ last hours on earth. We walk with him into the upper room, we watch and listen as he breaks bread with his disciples, we wait with him as he prays in the garden. And the whole time, we know that the betrayer is coming. That the cross is coming. But in this moment, here, right now, Jesus invites us — despite our own exhaustion, our own worries and fears — to do as he has done. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Jesus, in this small act of washing feet, challenges us. He challenges our love for honor and prestige, our debates about who will be the greatest. If you want to become great, he said, you must become small. Jesus challenges our distaste and embarrassment with the least and the lost. While we don’t want to look dirty, Jesus is on the ground washing off dirt, he’s eating meals with cheats and speaking to drunks and healing adulterers. And Jesus challenges our lack of love, our desire to correct instead of comfort. While we are picking and choosing who is worthy of our efforts, who is not “too bad to be worth saving,” Jesus is washing Judas’ feet. This is a hard lesson and we may say to ourselves, “who can bear it?” But the good news is that Jesus has loved us unto the end, straight through Golgotha and beyond. Jesus has shown us what it means to love as he loves; but we may not feel like we have the strength to do it. And we don’t; only Christ in his humanity and his divinity has the strength to love his own, even his enemies, unto the end — which is why he has given himself for our sake, not only in the act of service and humility, but in his very body and blood. As we leave here today, we go out into a world that is just as broken, just as violent as the world in which Jesus lived. To love as Jesus loved is hard, and it can sometimes look just as odd as a king washing the feet of his servants. But Jesus calls us to follow him regardless. May we remember that and hope as we come to the Table — for Jesus has given us himself, that we might have the strength to walk beside him. AMEN. Our Lenten pilgrimage has given way to Holy Week. We begin today the slow march with Jesus to the Cross and tomb, through Good Friday to Easter. And through the things we will do together over this week, we feel again the sublime truth about Christ, his humiliation, his exaltation, and his cosmic offer to take us along with him in that process.
We feel this year, perhaps more than any other in recent memory, how much evil and suffering there is in the world. Perhaps what happens to Jesus should come as less of a surprise to us this time around. I’m sure every one of us has brought some aspect of what we’ve been through this past year with us today as we enter into what Jesus goes through on our behalf. Personal pain, family pain, global pain, whatever it is, we carry it with us into this great week long process that is bigger and more powerful than the things we bring with us. And accordingly, we have just together proclaimed the passion Gospel, taking it into our voices, because that is where it belongs. If we want our life story to make sense, we have to find its meaning in Jesus’ story. We have to find ourselves in him. If you believe that, you will want to live this week with Christ, whether in person, on Zoom, via video, or through the materials we’ve emailed out. This week we walk together with Jesus through the great events by which he won our salvation. Take everything you bring, all your pain, all your questions, all your hopes, and pour them into this. Let Holy Week do its work until we arrive at Easter. Let God bring you, in Christ, all the way to the real end of the story. |
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