The Rev’d Matthew Larsen
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 3, 2017
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
August 20, 2017
When I was young person growing up in a small town in Georgia, most of my peers, most of my male peers, loved American football. Not professional football, mind you, but college ball--UGA, Auburn, Alabama, Georgia Tech--the big land grant universities that had big athletic programs and football teams. My father had played baseball in college and, frankly, we just never were interested in football in my family. As a small, scrawny, bookish boy, I didn’t play football with my friends--I tended to play softball with my family in the back garden or tennis with friends at the town court--but I never learned to play football. I was so out of the loop with regard to understanding football that, one weekend, my parents (who also weren’t really interested in football) took my sister and me to a home game at UGA--the University of Georgia. We checked a book out of the library to read up on the rules so that we’d be a little clearer about what was going on. I remember loving the band, being excited about seeing Uga, the bulldog equivalent of Handsome Dan here in New Haven, and being vaguely interested in whether or not the Bulldogs were winning, but I just had no interest in actually playing football--in chasing a pigskin ball down the field and crashing into other players. It just wasn’t my thing. And so, in a town where football was practically a second religion, I was one of the odd kids out who didn’t play the sport.
It was fine, generally speaking, that I didn’t play football. I played tennis, which I was incredibly bad at because I couldn’t see the ball; I tried to play basketball, until a coach kindly suggested that perhaps basketball wasn’t my highest calling. And all of that was, generally speaking, okay. Except that, in my small school, the physical education program was a little secondary to the athletics program, and, for eight grade, one of our units was weight training in the varsity football weight room. At the same time that the varsity football team was using the weight room.
As a small, scrawny, not-football-playing kid, I can only tell you that I have never felt more out of place than in the varsity football weight room. Now, no one told me that I was in the wrong place, or that I didn’t belong. But I definitely got the sense that I was in the wrong place. I didn’t feel right there.
I know what it means to feel out of place, unwelcome, in a particular situation. Maybe you do, too. And that’s why, when I hear the gospel reading this morning, I really wish things had gone differently. I wish that, when Jesus met the Canaanite woman, that he’d been really welcoming to her. That he’d gone out of his way to greet her, to make her feel accepted. This is, after all, the Episcopal Church, and all are welcome!
But Jesus doesn’t immediately welcome the Canaanite woman, does he. In fact, the disciples are really annoyed with her. They’ve been surrounded by huge crowds--and the gospel writer tells us over and over again how Jesus is trying to retreat from those crowds, to find a moment’s peace--and now they’ve gone away from the Sea of Galilee to the coast, to Tyre and Sidon, a new place--and they’re confronted by a Canaanite woman. She’s not even Jewish. She’s not the audience Jesus is there for! And she follows them, shouting loudly, calling on Jesus to heal her daughter. Over and over and over again. Can’t she just go away, the disciples ask. And Jesus himself at first ignores her and then, when the disciples ask, he seems to try to send her away with the explanation, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 15:24) I can’t help you, lady! Leave us alone!
The woman knows that she is an outsider. She lives not in Jerusalem but out nearer the coast. She isn’t a part of the tribes of Israel. She’s a foreigner, an outsider. And she lives on the margin of society--her daughter is possessed by a demon, she says. She’s so much an outsider that she even breaches the norms of polite society. She trails behind the disciples, shouting constantly at Jesus. This woman is annoying!
And here, depending on how you understand Jesus, things get tricky, right? If you believe that Jesus is fully human, it’s easy to say, “Well, this is a place where Jesus gets it wrong. In his humanity he is challenged by this difficult woman, but eventually he does the right thing. Here Jesus learns that God’s mercy is for all people.” And that well may be. But if your Christology is a bit higher and you focus on that Jesus is fully divine, he must, like God, be fully perfect and surely couldn’t have made this sort of mistake. He must then be testing his disciples--setting up an incident to show them the truth, to teach them that the Canaanite woman is included in God’s love. And that’s an explanation I’ve heard before, as well.
I’d like to suggest that I think that the focus on Jesus’s motivations in this situation may be a bit of a red herring, even an unanswerable question. For me, what this encounter with the Canaanite woman shows us is not something about Jesus--but something about the way the world is.
Our world is deeply divided--in small, quiet ways and in big, systemic ways. There are clear, present ways that we make one another feel unwelcome, excluded, outsider; I think of the obvious issues like segregation, Jim Crow laws, the institution of slavery itself in our country--but also the quieter, more subtle ones--where and which statues we erect in our town centers, whose names are honored in our institutions, and who we see in leadership around us. There are subtle ways that we divide and exclude--sometimes consciously and sometimes even unconsciously. And it’s not just about race, is it. How are disabled folks afforded access to our public spaces? How are the mentally ill cared for and treated in our society? How would the Canaanite woman’s daughter have been received here in New Haven--or the Canaanite woman herself, crying out in the streets as she was?
The world is divided. And we see that reflected in the circumstances of the story we hear this morning.
But Jesus shows us something different. Jesus shows us that the kingdom of God has come near. That the love, the mercy, the grace of God is available to all people--not just the ones we want it to apply to, either! It’s available to those in great need. To those who are annoying. Even to those who are full of hatred.
I worked for a priest once whose voice still resonates in my head from time to time; anytime I’d get really annoyed with someone, he’d remind me, “Oh, she really is something, isn’t she. And just to think--Jesus died for her, too.”
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people,” God says in the words of the prophet Isaiah. This love, this mercy, this kingdom of justice and peace is for all people. Not just for the Jewish nation. Not just for Christians. For all people. Good and bad. Lovely and unlovely.
We look across our nation and can see easily and quickly that the reign of the kingdom of God is not yet. We are divided, we fight, we exclude one another. But the kingdom of God has come near. We know what things can look like. What things should look like. We have a glimpse of the reign of the kingdom of God.
And all people are included in that gift of love. The Canaanite woman, her daughter, you, and me.
Will we accept that great gift? Will we allow our hearts to follow Jesus--to live within the vision of that kingdom of love, of justice, of mercy? Will we welcome the Canaanite woman? Will we welcome one another?
This is not always easy work, living as though everyone is included in God’s love. It requires a cost. It means we have to work towards including those who don’t fit, who differ from our own understanding and preconceived notions of the world. It means we have to give of our selves, of what we have, even of our own privilege, to make sure that all are invited. It means we may suffer at the hands of evil while proclaiming the coming of the reign of the kingdom of God. There is a real cost to living within the knowledge of God’s love and mercy.
But it is only through the mercy of Jesus that we can begin to try. May God give us his grace to love. His grace to heal. And the courage of the resurrection to live into the reign of the kingdom of God.
The Rev’d Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
July 23, 2017
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
For centuries, Saint Paul’s letters have been at the center of Christian faith. Arguably, the most important figure in Christianity besides Jesus, Saint Paul and his letters have been the foundation and source of theological arguments throughout the ages. From the earliest Church Fathers to modern era reformers, Saint Paul has been the aid and inspiration for many Christian thinkers.
Countless parishes bear his name, and his impact on the Christian faith goes further than the eye can see. While educated in the Law and a Roman citizen, Saint Paul was not systematician, he was not setting out to write a multi volume theological book. Nor was he writing books for the bible. Instead, Saint Paul was a man for whom his experience with the risen Lord altered his life forever. Dedicating his life, even to his last breath, to spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ.
While venerated and held in high regard by scholars and theologians, Saint Paul himself was not a larger than life figure. While successful in teaching people of Jesus, it was not without its blemishes nor was it a one off event. Hence all his personal letters where we find Saint Paul teaching and reteaching Christian communities. Sometimes at a point of anger and frustration. While he was able to make believers out of various non-jewish communities, his missionary efforts would come to end and his life taken away by the empire.
From all accounts, his own included, Saint Paul was not a luminous or grand figure. If we read through Saint Paul’s letters, we’d find out, by his own admittance, that he was not a gifted speaker, possibly suffering from a speech impediment. Saint Paul speaks openly about his imprisonment and physical abuse by Roman soldiers. He even shares with his audience his own medical problems. An unknown deformity in his eye had plagued him in his missionary endeavors in Galatia.
I’m sure like many of us, Saint Paul must at times felt both blessed by God and beaten up by the world. And yet for Saint Paul all the ailments of this world, all its challenges and stumbling blocks, were no longer a deadly threat. While our bodies may be bruised, our hearts broken, our minds challenged, and our bodies decaying, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, all of humanity has been given the chance to transcends this earthly life.
While Saint Paul reminds us that all life will end and flesh will decay, the cosmic promise of Jesus Christ is that all flesh and bodies will be transformed. And while we cannot see what this looks like, what life after death looks like, we are led by the Spirit. As Saint Paul reminds us, we who are led by the Spirit are children of God and we will one day be glorified with Christ.
And yet all this talk of the life to come and bliss of the resurrection may in itself be of no use for us. Specially for those whose lives are filled with fear and horror every day they wake up.
What good is Saint Paul’s message of a new creation?
What actual joy can we obtain by believing that one day all bodies will be redeemed and transformed, when innocent lives and sacred bodies are taken away by evil forces?
Especially as we’ve witnessed and continue to witness over and over again certain lives understood as inferior and even disposable. The plague of human violence has created a false economy where some bodies have been viewed as more valuable than others. And we don’t have to look too far into our history to see this. Just turn on your tv or pick up the paper and you’ll see the death of innocent men, women, and children.
Yet, Saint Paul’s personal assurance that our bodies will one day be transformed is not oblivious to the suffering and pain experienced by human bodies. Rather, Saint Paul’s assurance that one day, one day, our bodies will be transformed and made new comes from his own experience with the risen Christ, whose wounds were not vanished but transformed in his resurrected body. Saint Paul’s certitude does not neglect the pain and suffering of our human bodies, on the contrary, Saint Paul views the state of human creation as that of a mother in the midst of labor. An image he’s not afraid to use even for himself in his letter to the Galatians, where he compares his pain at the division taking place amongst Christians to that of a mother giving birth.
While the pain of labor was symbolic for Saint Paul, his own body was no stranger to pain and violence. Remember his imprisonment and physical abuse by Roman solider. In the Book of Acts, we’re told that “the magistrates had Paul and Silas stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.”
For Saint Paul, a new creation, the transformation of the flesh and body, is at the center of Christ’s resurrection. This believe is what kept him going amidst beating, imprisonment, and ridicule.
In his letter to Romans, Saint Paul’s final known letter, we find a seasoned and experienced Paul. After years of missionary trips all over the known world, we find an old, beat up man, who has given up everything to go out and spread the Good News. Putting his body on the line, Saint Paul seems more convinced than ever of God’s faithfulness.
In the verses the follow today’s Epistle, Saint Paul freely and openly puts it out there for all who might struggle to believe that God will reign supreme. That our bodies, and the bodies of the innocent and vulnerable, the living and dead, will not be consumed by the violence of the earth but transformed by the love of God in Christ Jesus. After his own trials and tribulations, Saint Paul writes:
If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
The Rev’d Matthew D. C. Larsen
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
July 16, 2017
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
In college, I took a mission trip to Honduras to help with construction of shelters for women rescued out of prostitution. On one break, I was sitting outside on the street and a boy walked in front of me, bought some ice cream from a cart, and sat down right next to me. We spoke for a while, and then I decided, since it was a mission trip, I should talk with him about Jesus. I looked at him and very pious said what I thought was “Jesus Christ died for your sin.” What I actually said was, “Jesus Christo se murió por su periodicos,” which of course means, “Jesus Christ died for your newspapers.” The boy calmly looked at me, licked his ice cream, and said, “Sí.”
Swing and a miss. Sort of missed the whole point.
After many years of studying the gospel tradition, I realized my bizarre claim, while not theologically true, was not terribly different from the way Jesus often taught. Jesus often taught to confuse people who weren’t prepared to listen. What do I mean?
Always pay attention to the bits of the scripture that the lectionary cuts out. Our gospel reading about the parable of the seeds cuts out seven verses in between the parable and its interpretation. We imagine Jesus as an effective communicator, because he used stories to drive his point home. But in these omitted verses Jesus explicitly says he speaks in parable to confuse those without ears attuned to the rhythms of the kingdom of god.
The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.’
Last year I published an article on listening in the ancient world. We may tend to think of listening as a simple act, but it is not. Pliny the Younger wrote to the senator Claudius Restitutus to tell him about a reading he had just left. Pliny was in a sorry state of righteous indignation. A few clever persons in the audience had listened to the reading of a highly finished and polished work in the most rude way imaginable: they just sat there—still and undisruptive. They kept their mouth closed. They did not wave their hands. They did not even rise to their feet.[1] The audience, it would seem, did effectively what you all are now doing as you listen to my sermon. To us, this is completely acceptable behavior. To Pliny, it was laziness and conceit. That’s because not all listening is the same.
There are different types of listening. Just because you hear with your ears does not mean you are listening with your heart. Spiritual listening is the kind of listening that allows you to see with the eyes of your heart. Seeing is not the same as beholding, even though both relate to the sense of sight. Listening and seeing is not the same thing as heeding and beholding with the ears and eyes of the kingdom of god.
When Jesus ends the parable with “Let anyone with ears listen!,” he is not simply saying, “Now y’all pay attention.” That is the interpretation of the parable. Just because you have eyes and ears does not mean you are really seeing and listening. The question is: how do you hear? How do you see?
It has to do with the way we see complex issues. Allow me to offer one example. This week the Rev. William Barber, president of the organization, Repairers of the Breach, was arrested for protesting the new healthcare bill, which aims to remove protections for the most vulnerable in our society, including people with pre-existing conditions, such as members of my family, while raising costs for others, all the while exempting the people trying to put the bill into law. Their protest signs said, “Love Thy Neighbor. (No exceptions.)” Barber said, “The senators are preying on the sickest and the poorest in this country. That kind of prayer is hypocritical. Their kind of prayer is the prayer that makes God weep, ... We come here today to talk about sin. Sin. This bill, an attempt to use power to take health care, is sin. It’s immoral.”[2] How can we be a nation too poor to provide healthcare to the most vulnerable in our society and rich enough to spend $406 billion dollars on fighter jets?[3] Jesus never said “I’m sorry but you have a pre-existing condition.” Never said “I’m sorry but as a society we can’t afford to take care of the most vulnerable.”
I get that these issues are complex, and I don’t mean to make them seem otherwise. The issue raised by our gospel reading, though, is how we will we listen, how will we see the situation. Seeing and listening with the eyes and ears of the kingdom of god means be attuned to how the most vulnerable in our society are being treated. What would it look like for god’s justice to reign? Jesus stands every time with, and was in fact one of the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the vulnerable.
What is at stake in how we listen? In the parable, it is a question of do we listening in such a way that it open, receptive, and life-giving. Or are our hearts, eyes, and ears to hardened or shallow to allow life around us to flourish. What is at stake in the end is not only the flourish of those around us, but also our own very souls, as well.
Come to the one who nourishes the soil of our hearts, who teaches us to see, to listen with eyes and ears of the kingdom of god, to the one by whose wounds we ourselves are healed.
[1] Pliny, Ep., 6.17.1–2; cf. A.N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 375.
[2] Taken from http://www.charlotteobserver.com/latest-news/article161200048.html (July 15, 2017).
[3] Taken from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-10/f-35-program-costs-jump-to-406-billion-in-new-pentagon-estimate (July 15, 2017); https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/07/10/nation-too-broke-universal-healthcare-spend-406-billion-more-f-35 (July 15, 2017).
The Rev’d Kathryn Greene-McCreight
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 25, 2017
The Rev’d Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 18, 2017
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Trinity Sunday
June 11, 2017
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday (Year A)
June 4, 2017
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year A)
May 28, 2017
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Ascension Day
May 25, 2017
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Sixth Sunday of Easter: Rogation Sunday (Year A)
May 21, 2017
If you’re graduating this weekend, or anytime this spring, congratulations to you! It’s likely felt like a long and hard journey, lots of work, lots of projects, lots of writing—and hopefully lots of joy in the process and in the material you’ve engaged. If you’re a teacher or professor and your students are graduating, perhaps your grades are in, which may feel like even more work, so congratulations to you, too. And if you’re not graduating, if you’re not turning in grades, I’m sure you can join me in a collective sigh of relief that we didn’t have these particular deadlines to make—while still giving thanks for our graduates and the work they’ve accomplished.
We place a lot of importance in academic achievement in our world—especially in towns like New Haven. When I moved back to New Haven I joked with a friend that in New York people ask what you do—what your profession is. Here in New Haven folks are more likely to ask what your work is—what you’re researching, what you’re studying, what you’re writing about. I suspect Paul could have fit in well in New Haven.
Paul was from Tarsus, a large and wealthy trading city in the south of what’s now Turkey. Paul was Jewish, but he was also a Roman citizen. A professor of mine in seminary once wondered aloud if perhaps Paul’s father had been a slave who had purchased his freedom. His background isn’t exactly clear, but he had enough advantages that he was sent away from home to Jerusalem to study with the famous rabbi Gamaliel. We can tell from his writings that his education was broad—he has command of classical literature and is well versed in philosophy. On top of that Paul was a Pharisee, a member of a sect of Judaism that strictly interpreted the law; Paul, then, would have been a scholar of the law, a scholar of Torah. He would have known Greek and Hebrew if not other languages as well. It’s likely that if Paul were a student he’d be graduating with honors.
And so it’s no wonder that, when Paul is in Athens, he has a broad understanding of the philosophical and religious influences that inform the culture of that learned city. And he’s well equipped to engage the Athenians on their own terms, explaining to them the good news of Jesus Christ.
Let’s remember the context in which Paul is operating; a scholar of Jewish law and classical philosophy, Paul was originally fighting against the followers of Jesus; we read just last week about the stoning of Stephen, the first deacon and martyr; Paul, or in his Hebrew name, Saul, was there, holding the cloaks of the folks doing the stoning. His world was turned upside down by a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus, when Jesus asked Saul why he was persecuting him. The early followers of the Way ministered to Saul and he was transformed. His zeal in persecuting Jesus’s followers was exceeded by his evangelism—his telling others about Jesus—and he became an apostle, one who goes and tells others, of the good news of Jesus.
That’s how he found himself in Athens, preaching and teaching in synagogues, and in the portion of Acts we read today in the public square, at the Areopagus, a rock outcropping near the Acropolis where, centuries before, criminals had been tried and civil suits settled. Paul has been trying to convince folks in the public square--Jewish believers, Stoics, Epicureans, whomever will listen--of the resurrection of Jesus, and some dismiss him—but the Athenians are intellectually curious enough to give him a hearing, and so they take him to the Areopagus and ask him to explain this new teaching.
Paul flatters them: Referring to the many idols he’s seen around Athens, he says, “I see how religious you are, Athenians!” And he is clever enough to engage them on their own terms. After all, this is Paul, who tells us in his letter to the Corinthians that his strategy is to be all things to all people so that he might save some!
You’ve seen at the Met and at the Yale Art Gallery the figures of Greek and Roman gods, these idols that Paul notices in the city, in the marketplace, in the temples. For us they’re historical artifacts, but for the Athenians they were contemporaneous figures of religious devotion. They would have made offerings and prayers in temples, in homes, at these objects of devotion. And there’s one failsafe image—the statue of the “unknown god,” just in case they’ve missed one of the pantheon of deities, as though a prayer might be addressed to Zeus, to Athena, and to the unknown god that might have been left out. And Paul seizes upon this opening. Look, Athenians! You’re already leaving space for this god whom you don’t know, and I’m telling you, that unknown god is the unnameable God of the Jewish people, whose son Jesus is the anointed one, the Messiah, foretold in prophecy. He was born, dwelt among us, was killed, but then rose again and appeared to his followers! And he is alive and present even now, and it is in light of his life and his resurrection that the world will be judged.
Now, we don’t know exactly what Paul said, but I suspect that’s pretty close. He quotes the 6th C poet and prophet Epimenides from Crete, that this unknown God was the one “in whom we live and move and have our being,” as Paul renders his quotation. (Acts 17.28)[1] Epimenides’s verse was about Zeus, whom he argued was immortal, against other Cretans who believed that Zeus was mortal. So we see that Paul is appealing to the Athenians’ sense of religiosity; he is referencing an ancient source of their own tradition, linking the immortality of Jesus with that of Zeus; and he’s creating space to argue that the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God and Father of Jesus Christ, is the one in whom the Athenians live and move and have their being—they just haven’t recognized it yet!
He goes even further to make a connection. “We, too, are his offspring,” Paul continues. (28) Here Paul is quoting the popular 3rd C poet Aratus, who wrote a poem called Phaenomena about the natural order of the constellations. In its introduction, Aratus writes:
From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring (emphasis added)... He tells what time the soil is best for the labour of the ox and for the mattock, and what time the seasons are favourable both for the planting of trees and for casting all manner of seeds. For himself it was who set the signs in heaven, and marked out the constellations…[2]
Aratus concludes the introduction with praises to Zeus before going on with the main point of the work, which is to describe the constellations.
So we can see in this reference that Paul is doing two more things—replacing the idea of Zeus’s pervasiveness with that of the God of Abraham—it is the God of Abraham that creates and fills all things—and the making the connection that we are children of the God of Abraham, as evidenced in the story of Jesus, the very Son of God.
Paul goes on to argue that God is not something that we can make, an idol of gold or silver or stone, but in fact is the source of all things, of all life, and that God’s own son Jesus has been raised from the dead.
The Athenians can’t quite get their heads around this idea of resurrection, but some do; Acts tells us that Damaris and Dionysius are among those who come to believe because of Paul’s testimony.
So what does it matter that Paul is clever? That he argues, successfully or unsuccessfully as you might count it, with the Athenians? After all, these old gods, Zeus and the rest of the pantheon, aren’t around any longer, and yet the God of Abraham, Isaac and Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ is… So Paul must have had some effect! And those old philosophies the Athenians clung to, Stoicism and Epicureanism, those are long gone.
Except are they really?
The Stoics held that, to live a good life, one must align his or her will with the reality of life, with the nature of life itself, so that, whatever situation one might find himself in, he may be happy. That is to say, accepting the world as it is, aligning one’s own will with the reality of things, is a virtue. Even in suffering, if one accepts it, one may be happy.
Epicureans weren’t quite what we think of today; they weren’t hedonists, cooking gourmet meals and feasting. Actually they lived quite simply, for, by containing their desires, they believed they could avoid pain and fear and live in tranquility. That is to say, the good life, a life of virtuous pleasure, was one lived simply, yet avoiding pain or fear.
These don’t seem too far off some of our own philosophical systems, our own ways of living, today—not too far from what one might find in a self-help book, or a TED Talk, or a personal philosophy. “It is what it is,” we say. “Live simply,” we say. And so much of what we do is designed to avoid pain and suffering. It’s not surprising that some of our own contemporary values line up with those of the Stoics and Epicureans; it’s how we think as humans. There’s nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes says (1.9).
Except that what Paul is suggesting, who Jesus is, is something completely different from our philosophical systems, our ethical constructs, even our religious frameworks.
We read in the gospel today more of Jesus’s long farewell discourse--after the Last Supper and before Jesus goes out into the garden, before he goes to his crucifixion. Jesus tells his followers to keep his commandments—to love one another as he has loved them. And he promises that, even when he is gone, God will send God’s Spirit to be with them—with us—forever. Jesus says, “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you… On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” (John 14.17, 20)
Jesus is promising that God is not only the one in whom we live and move and have our being—but that God is desiring to be with us, reaching out, coming again to us. Jesus is promising that we are more than the created offspring of God. We are the adopted children of God. That God has chosen us.
Following Jesus is more than a philosophical commitment, an ethical system, a way to live. It’s an ontology—a way of being, an actual identity, a presence, a reality. Because God has—in the incarnation and death and resurrection of Jesus, in the sending and abiding of God’s Holy Spirit—God has chosen to be with us forever. God has chosen us.
Living a good life seems like a moot point when we can live a life that is God’s, that is a part of the very presence of God. Avoiding pain or fear or anxiety seems less important knowing that God has in fact suffered death and risen, disproving the very power of pain, of fear, of death itself. Paul is engaging the Athenians with what they know. But what he’s offering—what Jesus is offering—is so much greater. No philosophy or system can compare to the knowledge that, in God’s great love, we have been chosen. We have been sought out. We have been incorporated into the very love that is God.
Paul gets a passing grade. He gets his diploma. He’s a good teacher, a good rhetorician, a good evangelist, telling the good news of Jesus. But how are we doing? How are we going to tell the city around us that God loves them—that God has chosen them?
Will we do it with our words, with well-thought out arguments and stories? Will we do it by sharing our own experiences of God’s love? Will we do it with our lives, by showing people, in words and actions, what it looks like to offer ourselves in love and service to God and neighbor?
What will we say? What will we do? How will we share that great news of God’s abiding, transforming, incorporating love?
The good news is that it’s not our work alone. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit, that revealing, self-offering, abiding presence revealing God’s love in the world—by whom, and with whom, and in whom we have our being. Receive the Holy Spirit, Jesus tells his disciples. Will we receive it? And like Paul will we share that good news of his abiding presence with the whole world?
[1] This connection is supported by a reconstruction of Epimenides’ text published by J. Rendel Harris in the Expositor (Apr 1907, 332-37), found online at https://books.google.com/books?id=facQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA336#v=onepage&q&f=false. For more information see the Wikipedia entry on Epimenides, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides (accessed 5/20/2017).
[2] From a translation by G. R. Mair in Callimachus, Hymns and Epigrams. Lycophron. Aratus. Translated by A. W. and G. R. Mair. Loeb Classical Library Volume 129. London: William Heinemann, 1921. Online at http://www.theoi.com/Text/AratusPhaenomena.html (accessed 5/20/2017)
The Very Rev’d Andrew B. McGowan
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year A)
May 14, 2017
The Rev’d Matthew Larsen
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fourth Sunday of Easter (Year A)
May 7, 2017
And Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
This morning I would like to use our Gospel passage as a lens through which to read the rest of the Gospel of John, and in particular a few important passages before and after Jesus’s resurrection.
The words translated “gate,” “sheepfold,” and “gatekeeper” in John 10 are more literally “door,” “courtyard of the sheep,” and “doorkeeper.” Being inside or outside the courtyard matters. You can only get in the courtyard through the door and you want to pass through the door and by the doorkeeper with the shepherd.
There is another passage in the Gospel of John where all these words and ideas appear close together. In John 18, at the trial of Jesus, it says
Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, but Peter was standing outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out, spoke to the woman who was the doorkeeper, and brought Peter in. The woman who was the doorkeeper said to Peter, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.”
In nearly complete reversal of the ideas laid out in our Gospel reading, Peter does not enter through the door into the courtyard with Jesus. He waits outside the door. Eventually someone other than Jesus, our good shepherd, brings him in another way. The doorkeeper asks Peter if he really is one of Jesus’s disciples, and, at least in that moment, he answers truthfully: I am not.
Peter was scared to enter through the door into the courtyard with Jesus. In fact, without Jesus’s resurrection power, he could not.
But I would like to read another passage through our Gospel reading. In John 20, Mary Magdalene is standing outside the tomb, weeping. When she eventually works up the courage to go inside, she hears Jesus is raised. She realizes she wasn’t standing outside the tomb in the garden, but outside the garden and still inside the tomb. She returns to the garden and sees Jesus but doesn’t know it. She thinks he is the gardener. She asks where Jesus has been taken. It is not until he calls her by name, “Mary,” that she recognizes Jesus.
“The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” He calls Mary by name, she recognizes his voice and her name, and he leads her from weeping to joy. Jesus comes that we may have life and have it abundantly, that we may come into the courtyard and find pasture. He calls you by name, “Beloved Child of God.” He leads us from the empty tomb into the garden of resurrection life, and he makes us lay down in the green pasture.
And I would like to read our Gospel passage in light of yet another story in the Gospel of John. Later in John chapter 20,
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
And then just a few verses later, the story continues:
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”
The disciples have locked themselves inside the locked doors of the house. The locked doors are their fears and doubts. But despite the closed doors, Jesus enters their fears and offers them peace. “Peace I give to you, my own peace I leave with you.”
The epistle reading says, “By Christ’s wounds we are healed.” I believe that is true both spiritual and theologically, as well as psychologically and emotionally. The resurrected God appears to us with a wounded and scarred body. Something about seeing and touching the broken body of the resurrected Jesus heals our own wounds and fears and doubts. God doesn’t tell us why pain exists in the world, but God does show us that God is no stranger to pain, to injustice fueled by human fear.
Jesus enters into our lives through the locked doors of our fears, worries, pains, insecurities, and wounds. We hear his voice:
1 The Lord is my shepherd; *
I shall not be in want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures *
and leads me beside still waters.
3 He revives my soul *
and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake.
4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil; *
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
5 You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; *
you have anointed my head with oil,
and my cup is running over.
6 Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Jesus is the door. Jesus is also the shepherd. Jesus is also the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Jesus calls our name and brings us out of the tomb into the garden. Jesus breaks through the doors of our fears and give us his own peace.
The Lord spreads a table before us today, too. Jesus is the host and the sacrifice. He offers himself so that we may live. Come, see, and touch the wounded and broken body of Christ. And see that it is by his wounds that we are healed.
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Third Sunday of Easter (Year A)
April 30, 2017
Last week I was in an establishment where John Kerry was having dinner. I played it very, very cool. I didn’t stare. I didn’t go over and say anything. I didn’t snap a surreptitious picture for social media. I just finished my dinner and left. No big deal, right? It’s New Haven. There’s a former Secretary of State. It happens all the time, right?
When I lived in Manhattan this sort of thing happened all the time. Folks in my neighborhood would see a celebrity and play it very cool, not looking, not gawking, just going on about their business. A colleague was constantly running into Alec Baldwin in a coffee shop, or seeing him pedaling on a Citibike. I never had these sorts of encounters. I learned Alec Baldwin takes a Citibike by seeing it online, probably in the New York Post, after he’d been given a ticket for cycling the wrong way on a one-way street.
It’s really pretty easy for me to play it cool with celebrity sightings. Mostly because I generally can’t recognize anyone in public! Sure, I know when I see Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live, but I’m sure I’ve missed him on the streets of New York dozens of times. I’m just not expecting to see him.
What’s more, I have a little bit of anxiety about recognizing people. Maybe you do, too. Have you ever run up behind someone and called her name, only to have her turn around—and it’s NOT your friend Jill from high school, but someone that just looks vaguely like her? The humiliation is just too much. So I just keep my mouth shut. I’m not one for recognizing folks.
I am pretty good about recognizing people from church, though. But, and here the tables are turned, sometimes folks don’t recognize me out of my collar! Whenever I’m in the Stop and Shop I’m pretty good at spotting parishioners—but sometimes I look different out of collar, out of context! And that’s a pretty funny moment, too.
So I’m a little sympathetic towards Cleopus and his friend from this morning’s gospel. They don’t recognize Jesus at first as they walk along the road with him.
On the same day Mary Magdalene found the empty tomb, Cleopus and his friend were walking along the road to Emmaus, a town about seven miles outside of Jerusalem, about three hours away. And we don’t know for sure, but it seems safe to assume they might be walking from Jerusalem. It’s likely they’d’ been in Jerusalem, because Cleopus’s mother was at the crucifixion—maybe he and his friend were too—and it’s likely they were coming from there because they knew of Jesus’s crucifixion and about the empty tomb. Nevertheless, they don’t recognize the stranger that joins them on the road; they explain to him why they’re sad—about the events in Jerusalem, the crucifixion. And the stranger starts to interpret these events to them.
So why is it that they don’t recognize him?
Maybe they really don’t realize it’s him because they aren’t very sure what Jesus looks like. Cleopus’s mother was there, but maybe he and his friend weren’t at the crucifixion. Maybe they weren’t that close to Jesus and haven’t seen him very much. Maybe it’s that he’s out of context—that they don’t expect to see him.
Maybe it’s that they have bad eyesight. Issues of recognizing people happen throughout scripture, and it’s worth noting that the ancient world didn’t have the same kind of corrective vision techniques we enjoy today. I can’t recognize people more than thirty feet away without my glasses, but, if I have my glasses on, I’m likely to see you down the street.
Or maybe it’s that they just can’t see, don’t expect to see, what’s happened. They’re overwhelmed by their grief, in their expectation that death is the final word, that the world really is the way they expect it to be. Maybe they expect death because they cannot find hope. Maybe they expect death because they cannot recognize the movement of God around them in the world. Maybe they expect death because they cannot see Jesus.
It’s hard to hold onto hope, isn’t it. The world can tell us that hope is foolish, naive, irrational. I’m reminded when I’m looking for hope of a story that Cope Moyers, Bill Moyers’ son, told. Cope had been in the 1980’s or 1990’s a producer for CNN, a successful and hard-working media professional in his own right, just as his father had done. But underneath the veneer of success and happiness, Cope had also developed a hidden life of drug addiction. He’d disappear for days and even weeks at the time to sneak away to flop houses, dingy apartments, drug dens in Atlanta and New York to smoke crack, to get away from his life, to self-medicate whatever the pain was that was chasing him. And each time his father would hire an investigator, find Cope, and go off and get him and take him to rehab. This happened again and again and again until finally Cope was done. And after years of expensive rehab, he finally was able to stay sober, and he dedicated his life to recovery work, serving as the development director for the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota.
I met Cope when he was sober, when he had just written his book Broken about his addiction and recovery experience. He was at a speaking gig, talking about his story, talking about the book, talking about recovery, and it was a hard and personal story to tell in public. During a question and answer session someone in the audience had a question for Cope. With some emotion in his voice, the audience member rose and asked his question, “So how many times do you go to rehab? I mean, if someone goes and gets clean and then starts using again, how many times do you keep going back?” I imagined the pain of a family member whose life had been twisted by addiction, whose savings had been dried up, who was experiencing the pain of watching a loved one die in the grip of addictive behavior. And Cope Moyers stood up, leaned into the microphone, and straightforwardly replied, “Oh, that’s easy. You just keep going back as many times as it takes. You keep going back until it works.”
There was no magic number after which it was too much. There was no point after which there was no hope. You just keep going back as many times as it takes.
Cope Moyers hadn’t given up. And he was alive. And lots of other folks surely are alive because of his story, his faith, his hope that things can be better. That there is recovery. That there is life.
Now there are plenty of reasons that this might seem like a glib reply. There are limits to what families can do financially; there are limits to what our souls and bodies can bear—sometimes we have to set boundaries to protect ourselves from hurtful behavior. There’s a limit physically to what the body can bear—witness the many deaths from overdoses even in our own city. All of those are appropriate and true sorts of limitations, boundaries, that respect the reality of death. But Cope didn’t get hung up on any of those limitations. He didn’t need to, for Cope had seen death—but somehow he’d come to believe in life.
And that’s what God shows us in the resurrection of Jesus. That the story is not yet finished. That there is hope beyond our wildest imagining. But we can miss it if we’re not looking for God.
Cleopus and his friend by all rational standards aren’t wrong to assume that Jesus is dead. But they have forgotten the thing that Jesus has revealed—that the God of Life, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, is ultimately in control. That God has swallowed up death. That, in Jesus, there is hope.
And so it’s no wonder that, as he sits at table, takes the bread, blesses, breaks, and gives it to them, that then they are able to see for the first time who he really is. That they are filled with hope. That they see Jesus.
And when they realize who it is that accompanies them, their whole world is changed. They run the seven miles back to Jerusalem to be with the apostles, to tell them what they’d seen, what they’d experienced, how Jesus was alilve and had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
How many times do you go back to rehab, the man asked Cope Moyers. How many times do we go back? How many times do we come forward to receive Jesus’s own self-offering, bread taken, blessed, broken, and given? His own body given for us? His own love poured out, shared with and for us?
Every time. Every time. For when we look for Jesus, when we really see him, our whole world view is changed. We can’t help but be filled with hope, for the God of Love has shown us that death is no thing. We can’t help be filled with hope, for Jesus is walking beside us. We can’t help running to tell this good news—that the Lord is risen indeed, and he has appeared to us!
Where are you in need of hope today? Where are you longing for the presence of Christ? When you come to the altar, receive the very body of Christ, broken for you. Receive his presence. Know that he is here. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Second Sunday of Easter (Year A)
April 23, 2017
Last week the worst thing imaginable happened. Any death is a loss, any death is sad, but my friend Joshua, he was so young. Only thirty three. Executed. Well, murdered, really. Maybe you heard of him—the carpenter’s son, the teacher and preacher that had been going about Galilee for the past few years, proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is near… He drew such crowds—he had such a presence about him, a spirit, a charism, that people began to wonder if he might be the anointed one, the Messiah, the one spoken about by the prophets, who would restore our nation to wholeness and throw off the yoke of oppression.
Apparently the attention he gathered was too great; the Romans, afraid of rebellion, suspected him of treason, and the Temple authorities accused him of blasphemy. Despite the danger, we followed him to Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover. And, just as we feared, after dinner on Thursday night he was taken into custody, betrayed by our friend Judas, and, after a trumped-up trial, executed—hung—crucified—for all to see.
Mary and some other disciples went and prepared his body for burial and laid him in the tomb Joseph gave him. They went back on Sunday to tend to the body—but the tomb was empty. They told his other followers as soon as they could reach them that Mary had seen Joshua, again, alive...
It seemed so astounding, so unbelievable. I hadn’t made it back to Galilee yet—but my friends told me later that they were so afraid that they met together, locking the doors because they were afraid the police would come and arrest them and take them away for trial, too, just for knowing Joshua. But while they were there, hiding away, suddenly Joshua appeared again. “Peace be with you.” Peace, he said. Just appearing like that, through that locked door.
Maybe they were projecting, just wishing, hoping that it was really him. Maybe it was just a ghost, a spirit, an apparition! But how could it really be Joshua? I had seen him die—seen him killed. Mary had put his body in that cave. She told me how the soldiers had blocked it up with a stone. Sure, it was strange the tomb was empty—but there was no way he still could be alive, was there? “I can’t believe it,” I thought. “I won’t! Not unless I see the holes where they nailed him, the place where they stabbed him—no, not unless I can feel it—I just can’t believe it unless I see it for myself!”
I didn’t want to be fooled—I didn’t want to go through that suffering again. I missed him so much—there was something so powerful about being with him, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up that what Mary said was true—I didn’t want to hope, be wrong, and then lose him all over again.
Now it’s just one week later, one week since that Sunday when Mary found the tomb empty, when my friends saw him—and tonight we all were together—I was with them this time—and he appeared among us again, again saying “Peace be with you”—I could hardly believe it was him—but there he was—and he asked me, he asked as though he’d heard me say it, “Thomas, touch my hands. Reach out and feel the wound in my side. Believe!” Believe, he told me!
I was overwhelmed with desire and love and peace and joy—overwhelmed with love—and, I can’t explain it—I just knew it was him! That we were all there together. My Lord! And, can it be, my very God?
What are the things that you notice about Thomas in his story? How do you identify with him? Perhaps you hear his longing for Jesus—the loss that he’s experienced. Perhaps you identify with that feeling of the loss of a loved one—of the hole that remains when someone so near is gone. Maybe you know that trauma of loss that can extend even beyond death; Thomas and his friends feel loss over Jesus—and that loss extends even into a loss of security, an awareness of the danger that surrounds them, of their own mortality-- the danger they themselves face—the fear that they will be taken into custody by the police and executed as well.
The doors are locked out of that fear—not fear for the Jewish people, it should be said, for these are all Jewish people—but rather fear of the government officials, the religious authorities—those in power are the ones the writer of John names in that phrase, “the doors were locked for fear of the Jews.” Those rhetorical phrases in John have been put to evil use, justifying anti-Semitism and violence for far too long—maybe you identify with that loss, with those wounds of Jesus.
Or perhaps you know that feeling of doubt that Thomas has. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20.25b) After all, we call him “doubting Thomas,” don’t we—so quick to call him out for this doubt. But it’s not really that different for us, is it? What would we say about someone who had been raised from the dead? Would we really believe it if we hadn’t seen? How do we really believe it?
Each year, be it during Lenten study groups or confirmation class or just around Easter in general, people will ask questions about belief in the resurrection. “Do I have to believe in the resurrection?” or, more likely, “What if I am not sure about the resurrection?” Our modern concept of belief has us so tied to the scientific method, of a way of being able to prove something empirically, that we forget that belief is about so much more than proofs or theorems or data. Belief is about encounter, about experience. Thomas’s questioning, his longing, the thing we call doubt, is really about belief. In fact, it’s quite faithful. He wants to believe—he’s asking to believe. He is faithful, like those who ask the questions about resurrection.
For asking those questions is not sinful or faithless; rather asking those questions can become a part of faithfulness, of seeking. I am reminded of another gospel story of belief, that of the father who brought his son for healing to Jesus in the 9th chapter of Mark: The father tells Jesus that his son has had a spirit since birth that makes him unable to speak, and sometimes seizes his body. “‘It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.’ Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’’ And after prayer, the spirit came out of him. (Mark 9.22-24) Perhaps you identify with Thomas in seeking, in longing. Perhaps your prayer is, “I believe; help my unbelief.”
Ultimately Thomas is deeply faithful—in his questioning and in his response. As Augustin reminds us, scripture doesn’t say that Thomas actually touched Jesus’s wounds. He was invited to do so—but just seeing them was enough. Encountering the risen Lord, seeing his wounds there, being invited into relationship with Jesus—all of this drives Thomas to his confession, “My Lord and my God.” It is Thomas who, for the first time in the gospel of John, directly names the divinity of Christ. My Lord and my God. Faithful Thomas is perhaps a better moniker!
But for those who are seeking, like Thomas, who are asking, “Do Christians believe in the resurrection?” the answer is yes. We do believe in the resurrection, and we make that claim in the creeds every week: “On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures, he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” We do not make this claim lightly. We make it on the basis of Mary Magdalene’s having told us about her experience. About Thomas’s telling us about his experience. On the basis of those who were there, telling their stories of encounter of the risen Lord.
Perhaps you, like Mary Magdalene, like Thomas, have had an encounter with the Risen Lord—perhaps you too have uttered those words, “My Lord and my God.” (John 20.28) All of these witnesses claim that encounter: Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, whom Jesus tells not to hold onto him, who reports back to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” The disciples themselves, locked away in fear, to whom Jesus appears, saying, “Peace be with you.” And now Thomas, who longs for Jesus, who wants to touch his very wounds—and, who, when he sees Jesus, confesses, “My Lord and my God.” All of them have a personal encounter with the risen Lord. And so dowe. For belief is not merely an intellectual assent but an experience of Christ—a way of being—an encounter with the resurrection.
Jesus says “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (29) I don’t think this is a lessening of Thomas’s belief—that Thomas would have been more faithful if he’d believed without seeing. Rather I think this is Jesus’s way of telling us that not everyone going forward will be able to stand in the same room at that exact time in first Century Palestine with him. We will encounter the Body of Christ in different ways—but that we will encounter him, just the same.
How is it that you encounter the risen Jesus? We have that experience in different ways: in the community that is this place, the Body of Christ, the Church. The Anglican priest and reformer John Wesley had an experience of having his heart “strangely warmed,” of knowing the presence of God to be near and real, that supported and sustained his ministry and missionary zeal—an encounter with the risen Christ. We receive the body of our crucified and risen Lord each week or each month in the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, the Mass—here at this altar—a physical encounter with God’s love, with God’s grace—a physical encounter with the risen Lord made known in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. Our souls and bodies are sustained by this meal, this self offering, this Real Presence.
Perhaps like Thomas you are longing for this encounter, feeling loss, and longing for the presence of Jesus. Perhaps you have questions, doubts even, and are faithfully seeking, as Thomas was, to see our risen Lord. Or perhaps you have seen those wounds yourself and recognized an encounter with the risen Lord. Wherever we find ourselves today, Jesus invites us to come, to touch his wounded hands and side, to experience his presence with us. And he bids us his peace.
When you bid one another peace today, know that you are offering one another the same words as our Lord: “Peace be with you”—a sign of his risen Presence among us. May we look for Christ’s presence in our lives this week, in this Body, in all that we meet. And as we look upon the wounds of his Body, may our prayer be that of Thomas’s—My Lord and my God!
The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Easter Day
April 16, 2017
We have walked this Holy Week through the steps of Jesus. We have walked the way of the cross. As Father Matthew put it in last week’s newsletter, we weren’t “going through the motions,” but we have played “a part in the divine drama of salvation.” We had our feet washed as the disciples did. We dined with Jesus in that upper room—but this time, we received his very body and blood in the sacrament. We sat with him in the garden. But then Friday we came to the foot of the cross and grieved there at his death, even as we rejoiced in his presence, the salvation he has wrought by his own self offering.
And today we have come here, to this holy place, to this celebration of Easter, of the Resurrection. And, as I asked you on Christmas Eve, I want to ask again: What have you come here to see? What has brought you here? What are you looking for?
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary—probably Mary the mother of James and Joses, not someone we know much about, but someone who as apparently at the crucifixion—the two Marys come to the tomb on that Sunday almost two thousand years ago looking for something. But they’re not filled with anticipation, with joy, with excitement as we are today. They were filled with sadness, dread, even fear. They were going to visit their friend’s grave.
When I was a boy we’d visit my grandparents’ graves around the holidays to bring flowers to put on their tombstones. Sometimes when friends are in town I’ll walk with them over to the Grove Street cemetery to visit historic grave markers. That’s not the sort of visit Mary and the other Mary were making, though.
Their friend had just been executed –for claiming to be a king; for blasphemy—claiming to be the Son of God; for unsettling the religious and political power structure as it existed; for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and refusing to back down in the face of fear and oppression and death. They were there at the cross where, as they watched, their friend and teacher was hung to die, his body whipped and broken and bloodied, hanging in humiliation until he drew his last breath.
His dead and lifeless body was taken down and put in a borrowed tomb. Perhaps the Marys were coming to finish preparing the body for burial, to complete the anointing. They would have approached in sadness, in dread. They were looking for a dead body. They knew their friend was gone, out of the world, out of their lives, out of his very body.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came looking for a dead body. They came looking for death.
Death is something we know, isn’t it. Maybe we’ve seen a loved one die. We’ve seen the violence in our streets. We’ve witnessed the violence in our world—seen bombs dropped, men shot, women and children slain. We’ve seen bodies succumb to the ravages of illness, or the seductive slow death of addiction. We’ve seen relationships die, torn apart by greed or lust. Lives deformed by pride, anger, or greed, life drained away. Yes, we know death—in ourselves, in the world, and in the relationships around us.
Like Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the mother of James and Joses, we know death. And we come looking for it. Expecting it. It’s what we know.
And that’s what makes it all the more astonishing—when they arrive at the tomb—to find it empty. To be greeted by an earthquake and an angelic messenger who has opened the tomb and who tells them, “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.” (Matthew 28.6)
For Mary and Mary and all of the disciples that have been waiting in Jerusalem, this is good news, indeed! Jesus is who he says he is. He is the Messiah. He is the Son of God. And he is ALIVE. He is with them. In fact, the very next thing that happens is that they SEE him, in his flesh.
And what this means is that everything that they thought they knew, everything they expected, everything they thought they had come to see, is turned upside down. Everything is made new.
There is no death. There is only life. Only resurrection. Only Jesus.
They came expecting a dead body. I grew up in the south, where, usually, when someone died there was an open-casket visitation. You came and you walked through, by the body, and then you greeted the family members that were standing there, and maybe you said something like “I’m sorry for your loss,” or maybe you said something awkward like “Oh, she looks like she just fell asleep,” complementing the funeral home’s makeup skills. Or maybe you awkwardly stood there, not knowing what to say. That’s what a dead body was like. No energy. Everything still, stopped, stagnant.
That’s what the women came to see. They came expecting a dead body. But instead what they found was an empty tomb.
They came expecting a dead body. But what they found was life—Jesus, alive, there before them, promising to be with them, to meet them again at Galilee.
Everything they knew about death was wrong, for death is conquered. God has swallowed up death in victory. Death is not even a thing.
They came looking for a dead body. And they found life.
They came looking for death. And they saw Jesus.
Friends, that’s the mystery of Easter. No one but Mary and the other Mary knew what was happening—just a couple of people—that showed up at that empty tomb, expecting the stench of death—but finding the radiance of life. Running to Jesus’s feet to hold onto him. Assured of his presence, running ahead to Galilee.
Because everything has changed, for them, and for us. All of the death-dealing of this world has been conquered. All of the death that we know has been trampled down under Christ’s very feet. Our whole world view has been remade—our way of seeing has to change. The whole world has been renewed. Our very selves have been restored in the image of God.
Because death is no more.
What does that mean for you? Death is no more. Death is vanquished. Death, and sin, and brokenness, and anguish—nothing means as much as Christ’s love for us—as God’s love for us in Christ. For that self-offering love, that death and resurrection, have conquered and redeemed the whole world.
The greed fades away in the face of the generosity of Jesus.
Our lust and gluttony tempers in the face of Jesus’s great desire.
Our hatred is covered by the outpouring of his love.
Our violence is futile against his own sacrifice.
Everything has changed. Nothing is as it seems. Because in Christ there is no death. Only life. There is no grave. Only victory. There is no darkness. Only light.
And that, my friends, is what we have come looking for this morning. That’s what we have run to the tomb to see yet again.
We have come to see the light of Christ, the light that burns away our sinfulness, our separation, and welds us back into one piece with God. That shows us the hope, the possibility, of our wholeness. That recreates us. That makes us risen bodies with him.
If it seems farfetched, poetic, soft or foolish, even, to think of this re-ordering, that death is no thing, that sin is no thing, that there is, in Christ, only life, just remember that the people around Jesus found it hard to comprehend, as well.
It was only those few dozen who knew that day. It would take weeks, months, years even, for the full news of Christ’s resurrection to spread. That’s what we hear in Peter’s sermon in the reading from Acts today—the spread of this good news.
And I’d suggest to you that the world is still hungry for the good news of Jesus’s redemption. The good news that Jesus lives. The good news that, in Christ, death is no thing.
Who will tell it to them? Who will take it to them?
I know you are looking for Jesus, the angel says. He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said.
That’s what you’ve come here to see. To see Jesus. To find that all the death-dealing you see around you is short-lived. To find hope that good triumphs over evil. To find assurance that life has conquered death.
And that’s what the world is looking for. What the world is longing to see. People everywhere are longing to know that they are loved. That there is hope. That death is no thing. Will you run with Mary to tell them?
Will you run with Mary to tell of God’s great love?
You are looking for Jesus. He is not in the tomb. He is not dead. He is risen. And that great love now floods the whole world.
Christos anesti! Christus surrexit! Christ is risen! Alleluia!
Easter is about God overturning and exceeding human expectations.
I grew up a poor pastor’s kid, living in a small, old rental house in a rural town 40 miles north of Dallas. My dad started a company to make some extra money and, after a few years, his company had him traveling overseas for long stretches of time. To my childhood memory, he would be gone for three or four months at a time. One trip took him to Australia and every time he called home he would tell us he was bringing home a very special gift for us. We waited for what felt like weeks and months for dad to come home, but also for that special gift. When he finally returned, after the hugs and kisses, we said, “Where’s the special gift?” He grinned with pride, went to his bag, and pulled out a handcrafted, beautifully painted, aboriginal boomerang.
“Be not far from me for trouble is near and there is none to help.” (Ps 22:11)
How can I preach to you on a day when there are no words to be spoken? How can anyone speak of hope on a day where it looks to be crushed? How can we even think to bring to words any Good News on this day where the flame of love seems to have been snuffed out?
Job brings to words even this kind of silence demanded at suffering. As his friends try to offer vain words of comfort, he responds: “Look at me and shut up.” (Job 21:5). So we must look at the man on the cross, and we must shut our mouths. But only for so long.
Two years ago from this year's Easter Day, on the 16th of April, I was ordained into the Sacred Order of Deacons. At my ordination, I was blessed to have Fr Tony Lewis serve as the preacher -- some of you may know Fr Lewis as a friend of this parish and professor emeritus of my Southern home and training ground, Virginia Seminary.
In preparation for my anniversary as a Deacon, I read through his sermon manuscript. And once again, I was moved by his words and insight as scholar and priest.
The Rev’d Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Palm Sunday
April 9, 2017
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the year 132 of the Common Era, sixty-two years after the destruction of the Jewish Temple, a successful revolt briefly freed the people of Israel from Roman occupancy. This newly gained freedom marked a victory for all those who from the time of Jesus had tried to bring to a halt Roman rule in Jerusalem.
As an act of liberty and triumph over the empire, the newly freed people commissioned the minting of new coinage. Removing all references to the Roman Empire, these new coins replaced the face of Caesar with images of palm trees and branches. Accompanied with the phrase“ For the Freedom of Israel.”
The palms that adorned these newly minted coins were not merely the particular design choice of a coin marker. No, these palm images represented the Jewish fight for freedom. For first and second century Jews and Jewish-Christians, palms symbolized the fight for liberation. A true political symbol, palms represented the struggle and hope of a people. The very struggle and hope of one day achieving freedom from earthly foes and for the reign of God to be made manifest with the coming of the anointed one, the messiah.
And here we are, hundreds years after the death of Jesus and the end of Jewish Wars, holding on to our green palm blades, remembering Jesus’ final entrance into Jerusalem and recounting his abandonment, betrayal, capture, and death on a Roman cross.
While we may not grasp our palms as a sign of political revolution, like those who fought after the destruction of the temple. We do hold our palms as a sign that something extraordinary has taken place here on earth and in heaven. And our palms do point us to a revolution, however, it is not merely a political or earthly revolution but a cosmic and world altering event in creation.
Our palms point us to a revolution that begins with the “yes” of a teenage girl, Mary, most Holy, as she proclaimed to blessed Elizabeth -- “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.”
Our palms point us to a revolution where the first shall be last, the last shall be first. Our palms points us to a revolution where humanity is not afraid to face the demons and ailments found in our society and the world. Our palms point us to a revolution that threatens structures rooted in death and sin. Our palms point us to a revolution that is embodied in the person of Jesus Christ.
And today on Palm Sunday our palms point us to the Passion. Our gospel passages and the liturgies of Holy Week direct us to Calvary and to the bliss that lies behind the cross. We our first directed to our Lord’s Last Supper and his institution of the holy mysteries in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
And on that very day, using the words of blessed Bishop Frank Weston, we are commanded to “Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. [To] Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.”
We will remember our Lord’s abandonment, betrayal, capture, and death. And we will be invited to venerate the holy wood of the cross on which hung the salvation of the world. And finally, we will proclaim Christ’s victory over death in the peak hours of the night as we await the rising of the sun.
However, first, we like Jesus, will have to walk into a place of turmoil. As Matthew’s gospel indicates, as Jesus was preparing to enter into Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil. Jesus walks into Jerusalem knowing very well the evil and violence that can penetrate our cities and towns.
Yet, Jesus does not run away from the turmoil. And so during Holy Week we are invited to walk into the turmoil of Jerusalem. We are invited to remember, even experience, the passion of our Lord. And simultaneously we are invited to walk into the turmoil of our own lives, our homes, and our own cities and towns, knowing full well that Jesus will always be present pouring out himself for us and for the world, over and over again. Just as he gave himself up for his disciples and for all creation 2,000 years ago, Jesus continues to pour out himself for the life of the world -- here in New Haven, and on all the altars of the world, and in every alley and street corner where death lingers.
For being found in human form, Jesus humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. Amen.