Taking a Knee

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 1, 2017

This week a seminarian and I took an afternoon to review the 9 o’clock customary.  If you serve in the acolyte corps, you already know that the customary is a document that lists in detail what we do in the liturgy, with step by step instructions--what each person does, where she or he moves, what comes next--that sort of thing.  It’s detailed.  The customary for the 11am Solemn High Mass runs over 70 pages at present.  It’s a valuable document, important mostly for training new acolytes, but also for making sure the celebrant doesn’t just wander about aimlessly.  It tells us all where to be next.  Every now and again, however, the customary has to be reviewed--to make sure it still matches what we’re actually doing in the liturgy.  To add anything that might have been missed in previous editions.  To make sure it remains a living, useful document.

Some of the things we looked at in the customary this week were the moments when the celebrant and sacred ministers bow after the words of institution, “This is my body, broken for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.” At the nine o’clock service we bow, because, truthfully, it would be hard to genuflect, or kneel on one knee, behind the altar.  It just looks funny. And so we bow at that moment. 

We do lots of bowing around here.  We bow our heads at the name of Jesus.  We might bow or genuflect before the Sacrament of Holy Communion.  We may bow or genuflect at the mention of the incarnation, as in the creed, “[Jesus] came down from heaven…by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man…”  We may even kneel during the canon of the mass, the portion of the Eucharistic prayer when we pray that the bread and wine may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ--that his real presence might be made known in the gifts of Bread and Wine.

All of this bowing and genuflecting and kneeling is designed to do one thing--to show reverence, respect, to the presence of Christ in the world around us.  It’s designed to show us in our bodies as well as our minds that we put Christ first in all things.  That we confess with our whole selves that “Jesus Christ is Lord…” as the epistle reading says.

I love that we genuflect here, that we bow, that we kneel--that we use our whole bodies, not just our minds, to pray.  When I was growing up the only time that I thought about kneeling was when I watched a period film and characters were genuflecting to a monarch--or when a coach said to a high school football team, “Take a knee.”  That usually meant he wanted to tell them something--and wanted the players to be quiet and listen.

With the start of football season again this year, lots of players have been taking a knee--not just football players, but lots of people--in what’s become a surprisingly controversial gesture.  If you follow football at all, or if you read the news, or if you’re on Twitter, you already know what all this is about. Almost a year ago now a player for the San Francisco 49’ers called Colin Kaepernick, during a pre-season game. Kaepernick remained on the bench while other players stood.[1]  Kaepernick sat out the National Anthem as a form of protest, as a way of making a statement publically repudiating systemic cultural racism, protesting the racist treatment of African Americans and people of color in our society.  A few games later,  Kaepernick shifted to kneeling during the national anthem before games as a way of maintaining his protest while also honoring the service of men and women in our armed forces.  A way of showing love and respect for our nation and her people, while still calling it and us to account for the racism that’s a part of our shared lives together.[2]  By the time our President called on the NFL to fire players who didn’t stand for the National Anthem,[3] the idea of taking a knee during the National Anthem had apparently become a subject of national debate, with passionate feelings on both the standing and kneeling sides of things.  This week at the New Haven Symphony’s opening night of its season, as the conductor walked on stage at Woolsey Hall to lead the stirring strains of our National Anthem, the woman in front of me knelt down in her row, and later the conductor made a comment about making it through the National Anthem “without incident.”  Wherever I go, I can’t seem to get away from this issue of kneeling and the National Anthem.

Now, I suppose Christians of good conscience can hold different opinions about Mr Kaepernick’s action.  The irony is not lost on me that what this It strikes me that taking a knee looks an awful lot like genuflecting to me, like a posture of deep respect.  But others see it as an affront to the flag, the nation, or the National Anthem itself.  Mr Kaepernick has made public statements about both his love for our country and also about his concern about how our country treats people of color.  I don’t think, as Christians, we can ignore the overwhelming evidence of systemic and ever-present racism in our culture that seeks to oppress African Americans and other people of color.  We can’t ignore statistics that show that the US locks away in prison a far higher percentage of its citizens than most of the rest of the industrialized world--and that a tremendously disproportionate number of those prisoners are black.  We can’t ignore our history of racial injustice, from Jim Crow to slavery itself.  We can’t ignore that some people in our country owned other people, and that our entire economic system, at its founding, benefitted from slave labor.  It’s worth taking a knee to lament, to mourn, those injustices.

But if in Mr Kaepernick’s action we find critique and rebuke, I also find invitation and hope in the idea of taking a knee.  I’m not suggesting anyone should or shouldn’t fall down the next time the National Anthem is played.  But I am suggesting that the one we are called to kneel before, the one at whose name “every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father,” that this one, Jesus Christ, gives us a way forward.  Even when the whole world, when all of our civil society, seems divided, when there seems no way forward together, no hope, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us hope for reconciliation.  Hope for healing.  Hope for tomorrow.  I find hope in the gospel lesson—the story of the son that shows up to work in the vineyard.

We had something of a similar story in my family growing up.  Every Christmas my grandmother would host a big gathering for all of her family.  It was a big enough family, five four children and their spouses, twelve grandchildren, cousins, aunts, uncles, and a few crying great-grandchildren sprinkled in for good measure.  And so this gathering was pot luck.  Folks would volunteer to bring something--a meat, a side, a dessert.  And every year my aunt Rachel would promise to bring asparagus casserole for thirty people, for example, and then flake out and bring dinner rolls instead.  My aunt Sarah, however, would always over-prepare. She’d say she was bringing a ham, but she’d really show up with a ham, a turkey, sweet potato casserole, and asparagus casserole for thirty--because she knew her sister-in-law was going to forget.  Now, the dynamics of all of this are fraught, to be sure, but the point is that we learned to rely on my aunt.  We loved both Aunt Rachel who brought the rolls and Aunt Sarah who over-functioned and brought enough food to feed an army.  But we could COUNT on Sarah.  We knew, no matter what was said, that Sarah would come through.  That she’d make sure everything was okay.

The gospel today has a story a bit like that.  A father has two sons, and he asks them to go work in his vineyard.  One son says he’s not coming, don’t count on him, he just can’t make it.  And yet he shows up, he puts in his time, he helps out and gets the job done.   The other says that, sure,  he’ll work in the vineyard.  He has the best of intentions.  But who knows, maybe he overslept, or maybe he just needed to get a little work done at home, or maybe he just wasn’t feeling well.  He doesn’t show.   It sounded right, but he never delivers.  It’s the brother that shows up, the one that changes his mind, that actually ends up doing the thing his father asks.  

The brothers are both from the same family.  But only one shows up in the vineyard. We know that Matthew’s story, this tale in the gospel, is designed as an invitation to Matthew’s community, to his brothers and sisters, an invitation to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, to follow him.  But the verses that follow make it clear that whatever the community has believed, whatever has come before, all are welcome in the vineyard. 

The prostitutes and tax collectors will enter the kingdom before the religious authorities, Jesus says.  Because nothing that has come before is beyond redeeming.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

How can our society, so deeply divided -- divided by racism, by ideology, by hurtful words and hurtful policies and hurtful disregard for one another -- how can we move forward?  How can we live together, in the legacy of racism and slavery that divides us?  That oppresses so many of our brothers and sisters, that tears our society apart? 

This story of the son who changes his mind, who ends up doing the thing that his father asks even when he said he wouldn’t--this story gives me hope for our country, our society.  This story of God’s grace gives me hope for change, for healing, for reconciliation and wholeness. 

In Ezekiel today we hear the proverb, “‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel.” (Ez 18.1b-3)  God, speaking through the prophet, proclaims a different reality--a reality in which change is possible.  A reality in which future generations can live differently.  “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.” (31-32)

When we realize the great sacrifice that Christ has made--how much God has loved each of us, how much God wants to be in relationship with us--how much God wants us to be whole, to be the people that God has created us to be--when we realize that, how can we but help to love God and love one another in return.  How can we but help to turn and live--to do whatever it takes to change our lives, our systems, our culture so that every person is valued, every person is respected, every person is treated with dignity.  So that every person is loved.

We have an example in Christ Jesus ,who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness…and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.” (Phillipians 2.5-8).  Not only do we have an example in Jesus, but we have an invitation--an invitation to participate in his death and resurrection.  An invitation to be freed by him from the bonds of sin and shame.  An invitation to turn and live.  An invitation into new life, into the hope, the joy, of resurrection and wholeness.

Not merely an example, a pattern, but a whole new way of being.  We have died with Christ, and we have risen with Christ.  We are incorporated into his new resurrection life.

In the days that follow, can we take a knee?  Can we acknowledge Jesus as Lord, his life, death, and resurrection--his invitation to new life--as the governing principle of our own lives?  Can we love as Jesus has loved us?  Can we love one another as he has loved us?  Can we trust in his redeeming power?

Through God’s grace we can.  May we claim the liberation, the freedom, that Jesus promises.  May we change the things in ourselves and in our society that separate and divide, that oppress and subjugate, so that all may live.  In the love of Christ, through his redemption, may it be so.

-----

[1] Steve Wyche, Colin Kaepernick explains why he sat during national anthem.”  nfl.com, 8/27/2016.  Retrieved 9/30/2017 at http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000691077/article/colin-kaepernick-explains-protest-of-national-anthem.

[2] Billy Witz, ”This time, Colin Kaepernick takes a stand by kneeling during anthem.”  The New York Times,September 1, 2016, p. B11.  Accessed online 9/30/2017 at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/sports/football/colin-kaepernick-kneels-national-anthem-protest.html.

[3] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/911655987857281024 (accessed 9/30/2017).

What God Sees

The Rev’d Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 24, 2017

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I still remember the first time I discovered the wonders of DirecTV and Dish Television. Growing up in a household with basic cable, where our channel list only reached double digits, seemed amateur and primitive once I stumbled upon satellite television. There were all kinds of television channels. Channels dedicated solely to cartoons, sports, news from around the globe, movies, and music. There were also channels that I found extremely odd yet interesting, for example, the Golf Channel and the Outdoor Channel. I never understood why someone would want to watch a channel solely dedicated to doing things outdoors while seating inside . Wouldn’t you just move outside and experience a true live broadcast of the Outdoors. 

However, as I scrolled down the infinite glorious list of television channels, one channel in particular caught my attention. And that channel was the Eternal Word Television Network, known as EWTN.

Are you shocked?

I remember watching Life on the Rock with Fr Mary and of course Mother Angelica. Till this day, I occasionally peak and watch EWTN programming, however, nowadays I do this through their YouTube Channel rather than on the television. On a particular Saturday morning when I was visiting my uncle’s home, I stumbled upon a kids cartoon series which retold the great stories of scripture. From the story of creation, to the parting of the red sea, the story of David versus Goliath, and of course, the story of Jonah and the whale. This cartoon series quickly became the highlight of my family visits. So often the core message behind the re-telling of these biblical stories was simple -- God is faithful, even amidst human sin, doubt, and all other obstacles. These cartoons were not concerned with biblical interpretation and history and cultural context. After all, their audience was a seven year old Carlos not a twenty-seven year old man.

Unfortunately, in simplifying and whittling down a biblical story to one or two easy points, we lose sight of the layers and complexity in holy scripture. We accidently neglect pockets of scripture that demand of us to more deeply listen, read, and inwardly digest God’s holy word. So far many years, my understanding of the Book of Jonah came from a 18 minute cartoon episode and nothing else. So if you would have asked me what the story of Jonah was all about I would have simply said -- “The story of Jonah is the story of a man who was in a shipwreck. He trusted in God and loved God. So God protected him by giving him refuge in the belly of a whale. The whale spit out Jonah and God forgave a few bad people afterwards. The end.”

In reading this week’s scripture passages for mass, I quickly realize that my childhood understanding was not only that, a child understanding, but neglected the layers of conflict and wisdom in holy scripture.

Professor Julia O’Brien at Lancaster Theological Seminary points out that“Throughout this book, Jonah cares only about himself. In the first chapter, Jonah jeopardizes all on board the ship in order to avoid a task he refuses to accept. In chapter 4, which we heard today, Jonah’s concern appears to be his reputation: he credits his refusal to go to Nineveh to his awareness the God might relent from carrying out the very punishment Jonah had announced. In the same way Jonah's care for the bush is not for its own well-being but for what it offers him.”[1]

The image of a faithful and humble Jonah has been shattered, I admit, I had not given much thought to the book of Jonah since I was a child. My attention would sometimes shift to the story of Jonah, without much meaning, whenever I saw a Vineyard Vines whale on an article of clothing. In re-reading this book, rather than finding a faithful hero in Jonah, what I found was an anti-hero. By no means a villain but a true anti-hero --  someone whose actions and character are highlighted for the specific purpose to not follow in their ways.

Even with its comic and exaggerated features, the story of Jonah challenges us to question not only the main character’s actions and comments but also question God’s response.

It’s clear from the minor prophets in the Old Testament, that Nineveh was at odds and despised by the Judean community. So much so that Jonah cared more about the destruction of a bush than the possible destruction of women, men, and children in Nineveh. And let’s not forget the opening lines of the book, where God tells Jonah “ Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it: for their wickedness has come up before me.” All signs point to an utter rejection and punishment of Nineveh and its people. But by the end of the story, God shows mercy on Nineveh. Completely at odds with Jonah’s message from the Lord and his human understanding. In the story of Jonah, God’s freedom to act is reinforced. While wicked cities and people are punished in other prophetic books, in the Book of Jonah God shows mercy.

God is free to act as God pleases. We can trust in a loving, merciful, and redeeming God because of God’s very own gift in the person of Jesus Christ. However, even before the arrival of the Incarnate Word, we see God act out of love, mercy, and redemption. Even if it meant shocking those who swore they know God and had heard his word spoken to them. Regardless of how Jonah viewed Nineveh, regardless of how we might view anyone on earth, even our biggest enemies, borrowing words from First Samuel, we should never forget that God does not see as mortals see.

What Jonah saw in Nineveh was an evil and wicked nation and people. His view was supported by those around him and by their understanding of God. But God does not see as mortals see. What God saw in Nineveh was a people who had turned in their ways which was more than Jonah could gaze on. This is not to excuse the horrors that the people of Nineveh had committed against feuding nations. Rather, this is a reminder that even amidst horrible deeds, wickedness, and sinfulness God does not see as mortal see. Because what God sees in all of humanity is not, as the old spiritual says, a “wretch like me” but humankind created in God’s image.

What God sees in us we cannot fully understand but we can begin to acknowledge that no matter how hard we try, how well educated our opinions and thoughts might be, we will never see the world as God sees it. And this is a good thing. Because as Christians our job is to view the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. If we’re able to hold on to an ounce of understanding of how God views the world it is not by our doing but by doing of Christ. Even if we can’t see as God sees, we are given a lens through Christ to see the world beyond our capacity and imagination. We are able to see God’s kingdom even if blurred and at moments unclear. We are assured, once again, of God’s capacity for love, mercy, and redemption, even if we our eyes fail to see. For the love of God is broader than the measures of the mind, and God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea. Amen.

[1] Julia M. O’Brien. Jonah, Theological Bible Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.  

How often should I forgive?

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 17, 2017

I once knew a woman that had a memory, they said, like an elephant.  She could recount any wrong done to her by anyone in the county, or to her mother or grandmother, for that matter.  Like the Appalachian feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, wrongdoing--and remembering--was generational for this woman, and it carried on to her children.  She was willing to forgive, but she never forgot.  And she passed that gift of remembering down to her children.  And they remembered everything she’d ever done wrong to them.  And they never forgot.

Forgive and forget, we say.  But she never forgot.  And so I wonder what she thought about forgiveness--what forgiveness meant for her.  I wonder what we think forgiveness means to you.  What forgiveness means for me.

My sister and I loved to play Monopoly growing up.  I liked to be the car or the little dog.  My mother would sometimes be the top hat.  I never wanted to be the shoe.  But whatever game piece I was, as I moved around the board, I was wary of that corner space, “Go to jail.”  Or, if you were very unlucky, you might draw the card, “Go directly to jail.  Do not pass Go.  Do not collect $200.”  This was an unfortunate sentence.  But, if you were very lucky, you might be holding another card, the “Get out of jail free” card, which would let you out of jail, back to the action, back to racing around the board, buying properties, collecting rents, and bankrupting your opponents.  “Get out of jail free” was forgiveness.  A reprieve.  A chance to get back out there.  Isn’t that what forgiveness is about?

We know we are supposed to forgive one another.  We pray for forgiveness at every service: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” we say.  And I don’t know about you, but usually I think of forgiveness as something a parent gives to a little kid.  Oops, I broke the window!  I’m sorry!  Forgive me!  Don’t punish me!   Or like that “get out of jail free” card.  Forgiveness is a pass on something we’ve done wrong; it’s avoiding punishment, right?

No.  That’s not what forgiveness is about, though I confess to you it’s what I think about when I think about forgiveness.  Real forgiveness, true forgiveness, seems to elude us, as it does Peter, who really wants to understand.  Who really wants to get it right.  Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?  Is seven enough?  That’s a gracious plenty, right?  Three strikes and you’re out in baseball.  Seven times is really generous!  But Jesus says, Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Over and over again.  Forgive over and over.

How can that even work?

I want to tell you three stories about forgiveness.

Several millennia ago, maybe seven or eight thousand years ago, there was a boy called Joseph.  He was the son of Jacob, also called Israel.  He was the grandson of Isaac, and the great grandson of Abraham and Sarah.  Joseph was the next to youngest boy out of twelve boys and at least one girl in his family; he was the firstborn of his father’s second wife.  He was younger, a bit clever, and very annoying, and most of his dozen brothers hated him. 

One day when he had been particularly insufferable a few of his brothers decided to kill him.  Instead their brother Reuben convinced them to throw him down a well.  (That’s better, right?)  And so they did.  They felt a little bad about leaving him there, though, and so they sold him as a slave to a caravan of merchants heading to Egypt.  (Again, better than letting him die in the well, right?)  And so they were rid of Joseph.  Remember, however, that Joseph is clever.  And even as he is borne away into slavery in Egypt, all is not lost.  He works his way up through the ranks of servant eventually to become the second most powerful government functionary in all of Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh himself. 

When Joseph was in his thirties, and his authority in Egypt well established, a famine struck the ancient Near East.  Joseph, because again, he is clever and wily, had stored up on behalf of the Egyptian government so much grain that he could not even measure it all.  And so all of the Egyptians and the surrounding tribes and nations came to the Pharaoh to beg for grain.  They came to ask Jacob for help. 

And amongst those who came were the sons of Jacob, his father, the Israelites.  Not knowing who he was, they came even to Jacob for help.  And Jacob fed them. He gave them grain.  He saved them.  And years later, when their father died--it’s always at the funeral that things come out, right?--when his father died, his brothers came to him and begged forgiveness.

Realizing that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers said, “What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?” So they approached Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this instruction before he died, ‘Say to Joseph: I beg you, forgive the crime of your brothers and the wrong they did in harming you.’ Now therefore please forgive the crime of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers also wept, fell down before him, and said, “We are here as your slaves.” But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.   (Genesis 50:15-21)

Joseph’s forgiveness didn’t unwind all the past.  It wasn’t a “get out of jail free” card.  But it saved his brothers and their families.  And it acknowledged a far greater truth--that God’s goodness prevails even over our sinfulness; that the love that is God triumphs even over death and destruction.  His brothers had intended to do Joseph evil.  But God used it for good.   Joseph didn’t put himself in the place of God, which is, at the root of all things, the original sin.  He simply continued to love his brothers.

Here’s another story about forgiveness.  Basil, Cardinal Hume, formerly Archbishop of Westminster, tells this story.   

When he was a boy the young Basil sneaked into the pantry of a neighbor’s kitchen, poking around for a treat or something good to eat.  He found there, in the unattended pantry, a bushel of apples--just picked, ripe and fragrant.  There were so many apples, and surely his neighbor wouldn’t miss just one. 

So sure enough, Basil reached out and took just one apple.  Just one.  And, as he turned to run from the pantry with his purloined fruit, he ran into the neighbor himself.  And what do you think the neighbor said to him?  Of course the neighbor told him to put it back.  And of course that’s the right thing to do.  But later in life, as he pondered the mysteries of God’s forgiveness, Basil the adult, the Benedictine monk, the Archbishop, began to suspect that there might have been a different response. 

He began to reimagine the story so that, as he turned and ran from the pantry, right into the neighbor, the God figure in his re-imagining, God might have said, “Basil, I see you’ve taken an apple. They’re so ripe, so fragrant, so delicious.  Here, why don’t you have another.  Go on.  Take two.”

What do you feel when you hear that story?  Profound relief at the forgiveness and generosity of God?  Confusion or even anger that the boy isn’t corrected, or even punished?  I have to admit I struggled with this story for a while.  I wanted to explain to young Basil why it was wrong for him to steal.

But God, who has all the apples, is generous and giving.  Is loving and forgiving.  Here, take two.

This word “forgive” has nothing to do with “getting out of jail free.”  It has nothing to do with punishment postponed or remitted.  It has nothing to do with getting away with something.  It doesn’t even have anything to do with correction, or reproof, or reproach. It’s neither fair nor just.  But it is lifechanging.

This word “forgive” that Peter is struggling with, this word “forgive” that we are praying for--forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us--this “forgive” isn’t even about other people.  It’s not about those who’ve sinned against us.  It’s about us ourselves.  It’s about how we have been forgiven by God.  It’s about God’s radical willingness to love us in spite of how we have failed to love God.  And it’s about the possibility of something new, of something radically alive with generosity and wholeness.

The word “forgive” that Peter asks about--Lord, how many times should I forgive someone--that word, in the Greek root, is aphiemi.   It’s the same word in the Our Father--“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  And it’s the same word in another story that you may remember, the story of Lazarus.

Jesus’s friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were about the most hospitable folks we know of in the gospels.  They always had friends over.  They were always welcoming people.  And when Lazarus fell ill, Mary and Martha sent for Jesus.  But he didn’t arrive in time.  And so, when he finally made it to their house, Lazarus was dead and in the tomb.  Jesus, with tears in his eyes, called his friend forth from the tomb, and Lazarus came out.  Jesus’s next words to the community, as Lazarus stepped forth from the tomb into the sunlight, were “Unbind him and let him go.” 

The Greek word that Jesus uses is aphete, from the same root, aphiemi,  that Peter uses to mean forgiveness.  That Jesus himself uses when he teaches us to pray, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Jesus isn’t saying Lazarus has done something wrong.  He’s saying that Lazarus is freed, set forth, sent forth, going into new life. 

And that’s what forgiveness is. 

It’s not a “get out of jail free” card.  It’s not a pass, an excuse, an avoidance of punishment.

It’s a chance for something new.  For wholeness, for reconciliation, for a new life.

It’s what’s offered to us in Christ’s death and resurrection.  That God loves us so much that, despite our failings to love God, even in the moments of greed, lust, wrath, pride, or whatever sin you can imagine when we put ourselves in the place of God, that God still holds onto us, expecting that we can be in better relationship.  That we can love God, that we can love one another, as we ourselves have been loved.

For that’s what God does.  Even in the face of our sinfulness, God is still there, loving us, giving God’s own self to us.  Even as we take all the apples for ourselves, God is there saying, take more.  Here I am.  As Christ pours himself out on the cross he forgives the thief who hangs by him.  He forgives those who have crucified him.  He is there, offering his love.  Inviting us into loving relationship.  And sending us out, forgiven, to love one another and the world. 

When you come to the altar today, receive God’s presence in the Sacrament; receive Christ’s forgiveness.  And be transformed, sent out to something new, to love God and love one another.  That’s the story of Joseph--responding only to the love of God, not the hurt that’s been done to him.  That’s the story of Basil Hume--God’s gracious love, offering even more of God’s own self.  That’s the story of Lazarus--sent forth into new life.  That’s our story--healed, forgiven, restored, and sent forth into new relationship, new life in Christ.

AMEN.

Sermon for Holy Cross Day

The Rev’d Molly James
     Dean of Formation, Episcopal Church in Connecticut
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Holy Cross Day
September 14, 2017

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the Living Word, who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is a privilege to be with you all this evening. I am grateful to Fr. Stephen for the invitation. It is always a joy to be a part of liturgy in this beautiful and holy space. It is a particular joy to be with you on this night as we celebrate the feast of the Holy Cross. It may sound strange, but this is actually one of my favorite feasts of the Church year. Now, don’t get me wrong, of course I love Christmas and Easter. Of course I find Holy Week to be tremendously meaningful. It is more that today feels a like a more personal and intimate feast day. It is like Holy Week in miniature without all the logistics and details we clergy have to keep track of then. It is a day that is a real gift. It is a day to contemplate what the Cross means in our own lives.

For me this day has real, personal significance. When I was in the midst of my own discernment process for ordination, I was asked what moment in our Lord’s life I connected with most deeply. My answer was immediate: the Cross. I was 22, and I was only a few years removed from a battle with bone cancer. It mattered a great deal to me that our Lord and Savior knows the fullness of the human experience, including the realities of pain and suffering. My intimate connection with God came through confronting my own mortality and knowing that God knew exactly what I was going through.

I know I am not the only one for whom the realities of the crucifixion hold deep meaning. No doubt many of us here have had profound experiences of personal pain and suffering. No doubt, like so many of the notable Christian theologians and mystics, we have come to the realization that God’s presence can often be most deeply felt in the midst of those challenging experiences. Profound experiences of suffering have a way of narrowing our vision. We realize how many things in life are more superficial or insignificant. The mundane distractions of daily life fade away, and we are left with what really matters: our relationship with God and with those around us. The experience of illness or profound loss can take away so much, but as St. Paul, so eloquently reminds us, there is nothing in life, not even death, that can separate us from the love of God. And it is so often in those crucible moments of our lives that we see the love of God most fully and feel it most deeply in our own hearts.

That is the truth of the Cross. The Cross shows us the depth of God’s love for us. God loves us so very deeply that God is willing to give of God’s self, even to the point of death. This is a profound reality, and it is often the pathway to deeper relationship with God. There is, however, an important caveat to be made here.

While I absolutely believe that suffering is an avenue to deepen our connection to God, that does not mean that suffering is a good in and of itself or that it should be sought out. Our Collect today asks that we might “take up our Cross” and follow Christ. That phrase deserves a little unpacking. And our readings help us to do that. Our readings, particularly the Epistle from Philippians and John’s Gospel remind us that love and self-giving generosity are at the heart of the Cross. They remind us too that we are called to be children of the light. God does not wish for us to experience pain or suffering. We must remember that Jesus came so that we might have LIFE, and have it abundantly.

Unfortunately, there is a strand in our Christian tradition that has said that since suffering is a way to God, we should seek it out (note the monastic traditions of self-deprivation or even self-harm). Or perhaps even worse is the way the Church has used the glorification of suffering to promote oppression. Sadly,there is a legacy of the Church saying to those on the margins or those who are oppressed that they should accept their current reality as their “cross to bear” and to find consolation in the fact that suffering brings us closer to God.

One of my favorite theologians, is a Roman Catholic sister from Brazil named Ivone Gebara. She is a feminist theologian who is deeply critical of the Church for the ways in which it has used the Cross to perpetuate those on the margins of society, particularly women. Gebara helps us to look at the reality of suffering with an important critical lens. When we encounter suffering in our lives, our own or others, we must ask an essential question: is this suffering endemic to the human experience (such as illness or a natural disaster) or is this suffering the result of injustice? If it is endemic, then we must learn to live with it, and it is here that we can be grateful for the gift of feelings God’s presence most abundantly in the midst of suffering. If, on the other hand, the suffering we have encountered is the result of injustice then we followers of Jesus are called to fight injustice.

There is far too much injustice in our world today, whether it is the economic injustice of the ever widening gap between rich and poor, the rise of hate speech and hate crimes against individuals for their gender, race, sexual orientation or ethnic identity. Too many of our sisters and brothers are suffering. We are called to take action and to speak out against injustice wherever we find it.

So I hope that this Holy Cross day will be a day of comfort and inspiration for all of us. I hope we can find comfort, particularly any of us who may in the midst of our own trials and tribulations, in the profound truth that God knows our suffering and God is present with us even in our most painful moments. And I hope that we will also be inspired, particularly those of us who are in positions of power and privilege, to fight against injustice. I hope that we will be inspired to stand with those on the margins, and to realize that if we have any cross to bear in life it is the hard and holy work of realizing God’s dream of justice and life abundant for all people.

AMEN.

Beyond "Playing pretty," being nice

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 10, 2017

When I was a child we’d often visit my great grandmother on Sunday afternoons.  She lived only about 40 minutes away, and we could leave right from church and be at her house in time for a late lunch, eat some fried chicken and drink some sweet tea, enjoy a slice of chocolate pie that was her special recipe, and then change out of our church clothes into play clothes to go outside.

Outside was a wonderful place for a young child to be--no adults around to supervise, garden toolsthat doubled as toys, a wild rose garden with paths to explore, and a barn with a hayloft to climb up in.  It’s a wonder I never got tetanus, climbing over rusty farm implements and boards with nails in them and all manner of other things that, today, seem pretty dangerous.  But as a child there seemed to be no danger, and it was good to be outside, playing with my sister and our cousins.

My great grandmother, however, was wiser than I was, and she knew the perils of the outdoors.  She’d warn us not to throw chinaberries at one another for fear we’d put someone’s eye out.  She’d remind us to turn the water off at the pump house for fear the well would run dry.  (It never did, as far as I know.)  And she had a particular phrase for how she expected us to behave:  “Y’all play pretty, now.”

Y’all play pretty.  What my great grandmother meant was pretty straightforward.  Don’t hit one another.  Don’t break any bones.  Don’t call each other names.  Be nice.  Be safe.  Take care of each other.  Play nicely with one another.

That’s a reasonable thing to tell children, isn’t it.  It’s probably a good thing to tell adults, too, for that matter.  Play nicely with one another.   And we generally did.  I suspect that, had we not been nice, if we’d “played ugly,” my great grandmother would have come out the door of the screened in front porch and told us about it. 

As best I remember it she was a pretty straightforward person.  She’d have told us if we were doing something wrong. 

And that’s really what Jesus is talking about in the gospel reading for today.   If someone sins against you, go and tell them privately.  If the person doesn’t listen, go with one or two other people.  If he or she still won’t hear you, tell the whole church.  

Part of that seems like good advice.  It sounds like my great grandmother stepping out of the screened porch onto the concrete steps of her farmhouse, calling across the garden to us to stop throwing chinaberries, or to quit running with the rake, or to turn the tap off at the pump house.  It’s reasonable, instructive rebuke--clear, concise, and truthful.

But what really makes my skin crawl about that passage, and maybe yours too, is another image.  The image of well-meaning, good Christian folks, banding together, coming to someone’s home and calling them out for something.  In the community where I grew up, I heard this sort of thing called “speaking the truth in love,” and I imagine it went something like this.  “Brother So-and-So, you’ve acted contrary to scripture.  You’ve sinned against the Lord.  You’ve not kept the faith.”  And it makes me think of these stories I’ve heard of folks getting thrown out of their faith communities--sometimes for things that you and I wouldn’t think are sinful.  Maybe for being who God has made them to be--gay, or lesbian, or transgendered--or somehow being a little bit “other” in the eyes of the community. 

I tend to associate this passage with moral purity codes--of how the community think folks should act and be and do--which sometimes can align with what we know of God in scripture, and sometimes doesn’t.

I think that sort of approach, using this scripture as a proof-text to get what we want from another person, seems manipulative and, frankly, contrary to what the gospel is really telling us.  “Telling the truth in love” isn’t a mandate for trying to remake the world in an imaginary image, or a way of testing someone’s purity, or a way of excluding someone from society.  I’m not sure I trust the motivation of those folks who are showing up to “tell the truth in love.”  So there’s the bit about manipulation that makes me wary about this passage.

But there’s also some discomfort around anyone telling me what to do, anyone calling out sin!  I’m not very comfortable with that, and maybe you’re not, either.  We are a pretty individualistic society, and we don’t want other folks to tell us what to do--and we certainly don’t want God to tell us what to do!  That’s at the core of our human condition, isn’t it; what was the one thing God told Adam and Eve not to do?  Don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; everything else is yours, just don’t eat from this one tree.  And of course, that’s exactly what Adam and Eve did.  They ate from the one tree that was forbidden. 

We don’t like to be told what to do.  But sometimes it’s actually good for us!  God set boundaries for Adam and Eve that protected them from the problem of evil, and they broke those boundaries.  They’d have been better off following what God said.  My great grandmother was right to tell us not to run with rakes or throw chinaberries; there’s a slight possibility we could have injured ourselves. 

But what Jesus is inviting us to do is not to be the morality police.  It’s something quite different.  He’s inviting us to be honest with one another in relationship; even to name when we have experienced sin personally; when we have been hurt. 

That can be quite empowering, and it can indeed lead to repentance, to change. 

If someone has hurt me, I can be honest about that hurt--to speak how I am experiencing that hurt--and perhaps they’ll listen.  Perhaps they’ll change.  But even if they don’t, I am surrounded by the Church, that bears witness to the kingdom of God come near. 

“If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.   …Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’” (Matthew 18:17-18, 20)

Jesus is inviting us to be more than nice--to do more than “play pretty”--but to genuinely be honest with one another, to be open, vulnerable, to be in real relationship with one another where we can tell each other honestly how we are, how we experience one another; he is inviting us to be honest about sin itself.  Not as a method of rebuke, as a way of shaming or blaming one another, but as a genuine expression of relationship, of honesty, of loving faithfulness to God and one another.

I hope this bears itself out in community here at Christ Church.  I believe it’s part of what we’re working on at Saint Hilda’s--a life of Christian honesty.  I like to think of Saint Hilda’s House as something of a lab for life--a place for discernment and formation where young people get to reflect on what it means to give their lives to Jesus; what it means to love one another, to be in honest Christian relationship.   You know the part about service, how each Hildan volunteers for ten months in a nonprofit group focused on justice--the Community Soup Kitchen, Columbus House, IRIS, Christian Community Action, and, this year, Junta and the offices of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut.  You probably know that each Friday the Hildans spend a day in study and contemplation, reading and discussing theology together and meeting with spiritual directors and mentors to reflect on their time in the House.  But also each week they have a house meeting--a facilitated time to check in with one another and a time to reflect, honestly, with one another on how their common life together is going.  It can, and often does, involve telling the truth in love.  It can be hard.  And it’s also a primary way for the community to grow in relationship, to deepen in love.

“Playing pretty” -- being nice to one another--is good up to a point.  But for real relationship to happen, we also have to be honest with one another.  And here’s the catch--and here’s where that phrase “telling the truth in love” gets it right in theory if not in practice--the lens through which we relate to one another can only be love.  “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:8-10)

What would it look like if everything we did, every action we took, every word we said, was rooted in love?  Love for our neighbor as ourselves? 

How would our laws change?  What would national borders and immigration policy look like if everything was borne of a place of love for our neighbor?

How would our criminal justice system change?  If we love the neighbor who sins against us, who steals, who commits murder, how then do we go about the work of justice--the hard work of protecting the vulnerable in society, of lessening the danger around us, while loving even our enemies--even those who perpetuate crime? 

How would we be in relationship with one another?  How would we deal with hurt, with pain, if we loved one another? How would our tongues be tempered?  How quick would we be to forgive--if we were rooted only in a place of love?

If it sounds like hard work, it probably is, and we have a lifetime to practice. When we don’t get it right we are assured of forgiveness. And that there will be a chance to try again.  But through God’s grace we already have the pattern for love--the cross.  We have already seen how Christ’s love for us has changed us, has changed the world. 

I invite you this week to look at the relationships you’re in.  To do more than “play pretty” or be nice--but to be in real relationship, to really love one another.  Let everything you do be rooted in love.

Christ has shown us the way.  We know how to love, because he has first loved us.

AMEN.

Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev’d Matthew Larsen
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 3, 2017

Who is welcome?

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.

More than Conquerors

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.

How We Listen

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).

Sermon for Second Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 6

The Rev’d Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 18, 2017

Trinity Sunday

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Trinity Sunday
June 11, 2017

Sermon for Pentecost

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday (Year A)
June 4, 2017

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year A)
May 28, 2017

Sermon for Ascension Day

The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Ascension Day
May 25, 2017

Paul makes the grade

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)

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

The Very Rev’d Andrew B. McGowan
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year A)
May 14, 2017

Entering the Door

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.

Seeing hope, seeing Jesus

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.

Doubting Thomas? Faithful Thomas!

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!

What are you looking for?

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.