Come, Holy Spirit

Mr Zachary Fletcher
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday
May 20, 2018

"All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability."  Please be seated.

It’s hard for me to think of a place more annoying than airport security.  With each passing year, at least in America, my experiences in airport security seem to get more and more anxious.  I’m so afraid of getting in the wrong line, or upsetting one of the TSA officers.  And those creepy body-scanning machines...  Anyway, it seems that based on my experience, airport security is forever doomed to be a miserable place that puts me, and everyone else, on edge.

So whenever I have a pleasant or interesting interaction with someone in airport security, it’s all the more memorable.  I have one such memory from several years ago.  I had just been in Bermuda for Spring Break.  Now as you might imagine, Bermudian airport security is much more laid-back than anything we have in the States.  The lines were so short, and the officer inspecting my backpack was super nice.  I was studying Greek back then, and the officer came across my Greek textbook.  He says, “Ah, I see you’re studying Greek!”  I say, “Oh yes, that’s me!”  So he says, “You know, I’ve been trying to teach myself Hebrew.”  He leans in, as if to tell a secret: “When God created the world, he was speaking Hebrew.”

I don’t remember how I responded to that.  I probably just smiled and nodded, but I was laughing inside.  I thought, what does that even mean?  God speaking Hebrew?  Seriously?  God doesn’t speak anything!

But I’ve been reflecting on what that Bermudian officer said, about God speaking Hebrew.  And guess what?  I’ve come around.  I think he’s right.  What do I mean by this?

Our religion descends from Judaism.  The Hebrew Bible, which we believe contains God’s promises to his people as revealed in his relationship with Israel, is almost totally Hebrew.  In that context, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom we call God the Father, is understood as the universal Creator, but the narrative of his activities in the world takes place in a particular language, Hebrew.  So in that sense, yes, God did create the world in Hebrew, because that story is a Hebrew story.

And if God the Father speaks Hebrew, then what about Jesus?

While Jesus may have known Hebrew for liturgical purposes, and maybe some Greek, his native language was Aramaic.  This means that the Christian message, from its earliest beginnings, was originally happening among people like Jesus who lived in a world of Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, a very particular context.

So if God the Father speaks Hebrew, and if Jesus speaks Aramaic, then what does the Holy Spirit speak?

Maybe I’m jumping the gun a little bit.  I probably shouldn’t talk about the Trinity too much, since Trinity Sunday is next week.  I’m not assigned to preach Trinity Sunday.  And yet, this question is immediately relevant to what we’re celebrating today.  What language does the Holy Spirit speak?

You can probably see where I’m going with this.  We’ve already gotten a little demonstration of the answer to that question, during our reading from Acts.  You probably noticed, it was different from how we usually read lessons at Christ Church.  And that’s what we learn on Pentecost: we might say, the Holy Spirit speaks every language.

Today, on Pentecost Sunday, we commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit, the moment when the message of God in Jesus – once understood as particularly Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek – began to be heard more widely, more universally, among people, Jews and non-Jews, who spoke all kinds of languages.  It’s the Holy Spirit, newly given to the world at Pentecost, which would help the disciples tell people about Jesus and build the Church in every language under the sun.

This is miraculous work.  Notice what the crowd says when they see the disciples speaking other languages: “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?”  In other words, despite the particular Jewish identity of these disciples, their stories of “God’s deeds of power” are heard by all present, regardless of national origin, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And it’s no coincidence that this is happening on Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή, the Greek term for the Jewish harvest festival, Shavuot, occurring on the fiftieth day after Passover.  It’s no coincidence that God’s definitive gift of the Holy Spirit is predicted by the Jewish prophet Joel.  This is part of the Pentecost miracle.  It’s only through God’s particular revelation to the Jews that the story of Jesus makes any sense.  On Pentecost, we come to recognize that story as universal, through our own very particular languages and cultures.

This is the mystery of Pentecost, which extends all the way to today.  We may not speak Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek – as we just witnessed during the reading from Acts, we speak a number of other languages.  And yet we have still received the good news of Jesus Christ.  The message of Jesus has been passed to us, two thousand years later, in a totally different cultural context from the one we read about in Acts.  This is the work of the Holy Spirit.  So however you understand this bizarre scene as reported in Acts – the “rush of a violent wind”; the “divided tongues, as of fire… resting on” the disciples – make no mistake that we are participating right now in the miraculous reality of Pentecost.  We, the Church, would not be here without Pentecost.  As members of Christ’s Body in baptism, our fellowship transcends not just linguistic barriers, but also time and space as we know it.  Just as the Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to build the first churches, that same Spirit is working today, calling the people of God together, in all their languages, into the One Church of Christ.

And what is the purpose of this unity, brought about by the Holy Spirit?  As we read in the Gospel of John, the Holy Spirit empowers the Church to show a world enslaved to sin the true way back to God.  Of course, that true way is… Jesus.  Jesus says, “When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will prove the world wrong about judgment: […] because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”  The ruler he’s talking about is the Devil.  Our culture worships the Devil in so many ways.  The news cycle, with its endless stream of violence and hatred – and it’s not getting any better – reminds me of how we, as individuals and as a culture, are addicted to sin.  As we’ve seen once again this week, we’re addicted, and thus enslaved, to a false logic that values “freedom” over the dignity of other human lives.  It’s not just about guns; it’s about so much more than guns.  Without the Holy Spirit, who condemns the Devil and all his works, and who shows by contrast what holiness looks like, we remain totally lost, unable to understand the gravity of our individual and corporate sin.  If we are open to receiving it, the Holy Spirit exposes the poverty of our own, chronically misconceived human judgment, and corrects it with God’s eternally perfect wisdom.  And that’s the best, most liberating thing that could happen to us.

This is why we need the Holy Spirit.  And no matter what language we speak, we must listen for the Spirit’s wisdom, as Christians living in such a time as this.  So, let us pray with the Church today, on this Pentecost Sunday, with Christian hope that our prayer will be answered: Come, Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The Rule of Love

Mr Patrick Keyser
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Sixth Sunday of Easter: Rogation Sunday
May 6, 2018

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’

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

            For most of my early childhood my mother ran a daycare out of our home. She usually watched over ten or so children, of whom I was the youngest and most feared. Though some struggle to believe it now, I was a very wild child who struggled with behavioral issues. I was full of energy and had a very active imagination that often spilled over into troublesome behavior. I was scolded many times for pestering and chasing much older children around our expansive backyard. When the time came for me to begin preschool my mother was certain I would be the problem child of the class. She warned my teacher to prepare a special section of time-out reserved just for me. After a few weeks of school my teacher came to my mother and expressed her deep confusion. ‘I’m not sure what you were talking about,’ she told my mother. ‘Patrick is the most well-behaved member of the class. He is an angel.’ My mother was baffled. At home I was still the wild and disorderly child that I had always been, but at school I was on my best behavior. It turns out that I love rules and can thrive in a clearly structured environment.

            This love and reverence for rules has followed me throughout my life, especially in my faith journey. I grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition in which prayer was almost always extemporaneous. When I came to the Anglican tradition, I discovered the Book of Common Prayer and its rich cycles of daily, weekly, and yearly prayer that are governed by an at times elaborate system of rules. I was at home. I poured myself into this way of being and praying and found it to be so life-giving. The structure and rubrics of the Prayer Book became second nature. It all felt very good and I had a sense of deep connection with God.

I carried this love with me to seminary, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that there were some major distortions at the heart of this system. One morning in Berkeley’s St. Luke’s Chapel a student officiant leading us in morning prayer offered the opening versicle ‘Lord open our lips,’ and we good seminarians responded with gusto ‘And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.’ We continued with the ‘Glory be’ and moved toward the invitatory psalm. Those of you acquainted with the rhythm of Morning Prayer may know that this psalm is often bookended by an antiphon, a short sentence that varies with the seasons of the liturgical year. In Easter, for example, we say, ‘Alleluia, the Lord is risen indeed: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.’ That morning as we continued our prayers the officiant offered an antiphon that was not ‘allowed’ for the season of the church year in which we found ourselves. ‘How could they!’ I thought. They used the wrong antiphon!! I was so distracted I missed the entirety of the invitatory psalm, and was then reminded again (!) of this travesty when the same ‘incorrect’ antiphon was offered again.

I was so consumed with the ways in which I thought this minor breach of the rubrics hindered our common prayer that I completely missed the psalms, the lessons, canticle, and homily. By the end of the liturgy I had calmed down a bit, but my fervor was reignited when, after the service, I grabbed a cup of coffee and had a conversation with my colleague who had served as officiant. In hindsight I want to believe I was trying to control myself, but in truth I know I was just waiting for the opportunity to let this person know of this great antiphon tragedy. A comment was finally made about the morning’s service, and I was ready to pounce. ‘You used the wrong antiphon,’ I said with a gleeful smugness. My colleague gave a bit of a shoulder shrug and that was that. I was indignant. Another colleague joined in and asked what I meant. I rigorously defended my position, confident that I was in the right. She listened closely to me and then asked, ‘But why does that matter to you so much? We still prayed, and God was worshiped.’ I sputtered and struggled to get something out about the importance of following rules, of communal prayer, and of saying the same words, as my level of anger rose. Unsatisfied with my answer, she asked again. I was by then incredibly frustrated and decided to excuse myself from the conversation. I knew I was right and they were wrong, and someone this felt so important to me. The antiphon, Patrick! This is of critical importance!! The Prayer Book says so clearly! I went home and continued to reflect on what had transpired. My arrogance quickly turned to embarrassment. I began to see that I had actually been the one who hindered our common prayer. My desire to follow the rules had prevented me from actually praying and connecting with God. My reverence for rules had become idolatry.

            We live in a world filled with rules, and necessarily so I should add. Without the structures of government that establish and enforce the diverse laws that enable our society to function, we would sink into a world of anarchy. Rules are not inherently bad things. We benefit from shared understandings that one is required to drive on a certain side of the road and to observe certain traffic laws. We benefit from having laws that identify unacceptable behavior and punish those who offend. Rules and commandments are, of course, not restricted to the secular and political world. As Christians we believe God has given us certain commandments to follow, and we hear about them in today’s readings. First, let us consider the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, which gives an important example of how the early Christian community grappled with these commandments.

            This reading describes one of the most revolutionary moments in the history of the early church, though unfortunately for us we only heard a small portion of this story that spans the entire tenth chapter of Acts. The chapter begins with a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian cohort who lived in Caesarea (10:1), a city far to the north of Jerusalem that served as the headquarters of the Roman governor. Cornelius is immediately identified as the ‘other’ and an outsider from this early Christian group centered among Jews in Jerusalem. Despite this identification, Cornelius is also described as a ‘devout man who feared God with his whole household’ and who ‘prayed constantly to God’ (10:2). The story tells us Cornelius had a vision in which an angel of God came to him and instructed him to send men to Joppa to get Simon Peter. Cornelius dutifully follows instructions, and then the author of Acts shifts the perspective to Peter. While praying outside on a roof, Peter has a vision in which heaven opens and a large sheet comes down containing all forms of four-footed creatures. Peter hears a voice instructing him to, ‘Kill and eat’ (10:13). Being a good pious Jew, Peter exclaims, ‘By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean’ (10:14). The voice comes a second time, this time telling Peter, ‘what God has made clean, you must not call profane’ (10:15).

            Peter wakes from this trance and is quite puzzled by what this vision could mean. At that very moment, the men sent by Cornelius come seeking Peter. The Spirit comes and tells Peter to follow them. The next day they travel to Caesarea and upon their arrival they find many assembled in the house of Cornelius. Peter reminds this group of the strangeness of this situation: ‘you yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean’ (10:28). Peter then begins to speak to them and tell them about Jesus, ‘how he went about doing good and healing’ (10:38), about his death on the cross, his rising from the dead on the third day, and how he had charged his followers with proclaiming this message.

            Today’s reading picks up at the end of this speech. As Peter is giving it, the Holy Spirit comes upon all the Gentiles gathered there. The circumcised believers who came with Peter are ‘astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles’ (10:45). Even the Gentiles. Can’t you imagine what they were thinking? ‘Those people aren’t like us; they are outsiders; they don’t belong. The rules tell us they are to be avoided and excluded. We shouldn’t have even come here in the first place. It is not lawful for us to associate with them.’ They were astounded. How could the Holy Spirit come upon these Gentiles? It seems Peter, too, continued to be surprised by what was unfolding. He asks, ‘can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ (10:47). The answer is, of course, no, and I think Peter knew that. Nothing can stop the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit blows where it chooses and cannot be contained.

            This story can be thought of as a Gentile Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is lavishly given to those thought to be outside the inner circle, and in the process boundaries are torn down, rules are broken, and diverse peoples are united. Such is the way of the Holy Spirit. Lest we think this experience is one known only by the early church, I remind us of the many ways in which the institution of the Church throughout its history has developed systems and rules that create boundaries and draw lines, marking those who are in and those who are out. For too long people have been excluded because of their gender, because of the gender of the one they love, because of skin color, place of origin, language spoken, the list goes on. For too long the institution lived by these rules and found great safety in them. But as the reading from Acts reminds us, nothing can contain that mighty power of the Holy Spirit. I thank God that the Holy Spirit has come and shaken up our church in recent times to consider these questions, to consider how our rules might actually be serving to exclude or oppress those whom God is seeking out.

            But how are we to know it is the Holy Spirit moving among us? How are we to truly discern whether the Holy Spirit is pushing us to new life or if it is something else motivating us, either societal or political pressure. The answer, it seems, is found in today’s gospel, where Jesus too is talking about commandments and rules. One commandment in particular, however, is highlighted as the greatest. Jesus tells his disciples, ‘this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’ This is the same commandment from the thirteenth chapter of John’s gospel, the one we hear every Maundy Thursday when Jesus gives his disciples this ‘new commandment’ after the footwashing. ‘Love one another, as I have loved you,’ he tells us. Though it might be easy to believe that love is always a warm and comfortable thing, Jesus reminds us of the pain and sacrifice that love sometimes requires. Jesus tells his disciples, ‘no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:13). And of course he would soon demonstrate that great love to his friends by giving himself up to death on the cross. And that, my friends, is the image of perfect love. Love isn’t always easy, but it is always the way that leads to life and to joy. Jesus said, ‘I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete’ (John 15:11).

            This commandment of love is a means by which we can measure all our other rules. This is one that can never lead us astray. We will know we are following in the way of Jesus and we will know we are being guided by the Holy Spirit when we abide in that radical, reckless, sacrificial, life-giving way of love. Friends, abide in that love, and you will not go astray. Abide in that love as Jesus abides with the Father, and you will know joy.

            I still love rules and like to follow them. I still think it’s important to follow the rubrics of the Prayer Book, and yes, I still think it’s important to use the correct antiphon. But I now understand that all of these things must be taken as guides that help us to follow Jesus’ ultimate

commandment, to love another and abide in God’s love. I pray that we might be open to the surprising ways in which the Holy Spirit is moving among us, disrupting, breaking down boundaries, but always leading us into that fullness of God’s love. May you rest this day in that abiding love and experience the complete joy that comes only through our triune God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Get into the chariot

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fifth Sunday of Easter
April 29, 2018

My grandfather had a habit of picking up people on the side of the road that needed rides.  Well, to be more accurate, there was one person he’d pick up and drive around town--an older man who collected and sold cans for a living.  He’d see him standing on the side of the street, pull over, and the man, with his cans, would hop in for a ride to who knows where--another part of town?  To his home--or where he stayed?  I never knew anything about this stranger, and frankly it made me a little uncomfortable. After all, as children we were taught never to get in the car with a  stranger!  Strangers with candy, or puppies, or kittens--don’t talk to them, and don’t get in the car with them.  That’s probably still good advice.  But my young mind wasn’t really able to realize that, while I didn’t know the man with the cans--I still don’t know his name--my grandfather did know him.  He wasn’t a stranger to him.  And he was glad to give him a ride when he could.

Don’t get in the car with strangers.  Sound advice.

And so I wonder what Philip is thinking when he gets in the chariot with this Ethiopian court official.  If this were a movie, we’d be shouting at the screen, “Don’t do it, Philip!  Don’t get in the car!” 

It’s such a strange scene.  It must have been strange for Philip. And, come to think of it, it must have been strange for the Ethiopian man to invite Philip into his chariot!  It’s a strange scene all around. 

To understand how we’ve gotten to this strange scene, let’s remember that in the weeks after Jesus’s death and resurrection, the disciples, the earliest followers of Jesus, were experiencing a liminal time--a time of waiting--probably a time of fear, even of what might happen to them.  After all, their spiritual leader, the person they had believed was the messiah, had been executed--and they had seen him again after his death--resurrected. They’d talked with him, eaten with him, and then he had left--ascended into heaven--with mysterious words about always being with them--about sending his Spirit among them.  Words sending them out to tell the story of what he had taught them about God’s love.

Indeed, just as he said, fifty days after his resurrection, during the Festival of Weeks--the celebration of the wheat harvest, the celebration of the giving of the Law--right there in Jerusalem, a huge thing had happened.  As the city was filled with people coming to celebrate the festival, the crowds were seized by a spirit moving like the rush of a mighty wind-- a wave of excitement, of energy, moving through the whole town--and Peter’s preaching helped three thousand people come to believe the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection--and begin to understand what that meant for them.  That they had hope, a new life in God, a new life in Jesus, the Messiah.

More and more people were coming to know Jesus than had ever met him in his lifetime--all through the witness of these disciples, sharing the good news of Jesus with townspeople, with friends, with family--even with visitors to the city.  People were even living differently; they were living in community, sharing their goods and wealth, providing for one another, and especially for those in greatest need.  The Jesus movement, the Way, was taking on so much traction that the disciples called on seven people to serve the widows--the needy--among them.  And Stephen and Philip along with five others had hands laid on them, received the Holy Spirit, and went out to serve.

Stephen’s preaching of the good news about Jesus was so enlivening that some people who heard it were converted. And others were afraid.  Afraid of what it might mean for the way that they worshipped--the change that it might mean in their understanding of their relationship with God.

And so Stephen was stoned and killed by an angry mob.

That stoning is the turning point in Acts, this chronicle of the earliest days of the Church, the Body of Christ.  We hear that the Church in Jerusalem is persecuted after Stephen’s stoning.  And so Philip goes out--led by the Holy Spirit, he leaves Jerusalem--perhaps he’s afraid, perhaps he’s seeking a safer place to be--but the Holy Spirit must have other ideas, because Philip has been sent to this wilderness road, a dangerous place, to be sure.

He’s gone from Jerusalem, which had become dangerous for followers of Jesus, to Samaria, where a good number of Samaritans received healing, and hope, and the good news of Jesus as the Messiah.  After this successful time in Samaria, the Spirit sends Philip south, along a wilderness road to Gaza.  And he goes.

Along that road he meets the Ethiopian--a powerful government official, the treasurer of the kingdom, in charge of all its wealth, second only to the Candace, the queen, herself.  Her kingdom would have been in what is now the southern part of Egypt and the Sudan, but she--or rulers like her--had conquered widely.  The treasurer was a representative of a powerful foreign government--but he was far from home.  He had come up to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of weeks, the harvest festival, and he was returning.  This man was what scripture refers to as a “godfearer,” someone who is not Jewish, not a member of the tribes of Abraham, but was interested in God.  He was curious, seeking.  Reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Trying to learn more. 

But he was on the outside.

Eunuchs were often chosen in antiquity and even into the late 19th and early 20th Century as servants to powerful rulers; they could not procreate, obviously, and so could be trusted not to disturb the royal line--and because of their outsider status in terms of gender, reproductive abilities, and the like, they were wedded to the royal household as the one place they could gain status and power.  Indeed, this treasurer, valued as he was by his queen, could never have been admitted to a synagogue (Deuteronomy 23). 

And so he must have been very curious, very persistent, very faithful indeed, to have come such a long way, and to be reading this scroll, probably in a language that was not his native one, as he travelled along the road.

Philip, drawing near, heard what he was reading, and called out--and the treasurer called him into his chariot to explain what he was reading.

Upon understanding that the Jesus Philip spoke of was the Messiah foretold in the prophecies, the treasurer asked to be baptized--“Look, here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36) And Philip baptizes him on the spot--and he goes away rejoicing.

We’ve been reading Acts together as a parish at the Sunday forum--just as the Christians of the first few centuries of the Church would have done, just as they do today--rehearsing, re-hearing, re-membering the stories of the spread of the good news of Jesus Christ--and how the world was changed--how the world is and can be changed today by hearing those stories--by learning that good news, that Jesus is the anointed one, the Messiah.  That Jesus is the change agent. That Jesus is Lord.

And one of the questions we’ve been asking is what those stories have to say to us today.

The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, the Jewish deacon and evangelist and the seeking treasurer of the Candace’s kingdom, has a number of things to tell us today.

The most obvious--and one of the most exciting things about the story--is the shift in focus, the ever-broadening, ever widening circle of awareness of the messianic truth of Jesus.  We can think of this awareness as ever-growing ripples, like ripples in a pond, spreading out with the energy of the Holy Spirit:  from the first disciples gathered around Jesus, to the thousands in Jerusalem at Pentecost, the number of people who learn about Jesus is growing.  But the kinds of people that learn about Jesus, that come to follow him, are growing as well.  Remember that Philip goes to the Samaritans--people who claim the Torah but who have an acrimonious relationship with the Jewish people.  Even the Samaritans are claiming Jesus as messiah--receiving the good news!  Peter and John go to check to be sure what they’ve heard is right, and sure enough, the Samaritans believe--and when Peter and John lay hands on them, they receive the Holy Spirit.  God’s Spirit is moving--even among people who are not part of the community the disciples come from.  The circle is widening.

And the circle is drawn even wider with the Ethiopian, isn’t it.  He is a man from far away, even from the ends of the earth, some ancient writers would say.  He is most definitely not Jewish--he can’t even enter the Temple.  His skin is possibly different from Philip’s, and his gender is, well, indeterminate by modern standards.  He is a eunuch--out of the bounds of normalcy.  He is other.

And yet he is seeking God.  “Here is water!  What is there to prevent me from being baptized?”  And he is baptized, and he receives the Holy Spirit.  God is present with this foreigner, this man with different skin, with a different genderedness.  He is part of the new community, the ekklesia, the Church which is Christ’s body.  And it only took baptism, it only took the Holy Spirit, to help everyone else--including the Ethiopian treasurer--to recognize it.

Now, let’s not pretend that this was an easy revelation for the disciples.  James and Peter and Paul and Barnabas and all the disciples gather to hash out how it is that observant Jewish folks, descendants of Abraham, and gentiles, people with no tie to this shared common heritage or even to the law, can all follow Jesus.  In some ways the whole history of Christianity, the history of the Church itself, hangs on this meeting--this Jerusalem council--and perhaps our failure to be united as the Body of Christ hangs on our failure to really believe that God is for everyone!  Perhaps we’ve failed to live into the truth of the Jerusalem council! 

But even in the midst of our brokenness, I want to hold up that, while we have a long way to go, we are at least talking about, at least being attentive to, the issues that the Ethiopian eunuch presents.

We are at least talking about issues of race, of genderedness, of orientation and expression, trying to work towards a more just society, a more just church--trying to look more like the Body of Christ that the Holy Spirit spreads across the entire world, even to the ends of the earth--trying to think more comprehensively about the Church than just a club of folks like ourselves, however we define that.

In some ways it’s easier for us to talk about the Ethiopian’s foreignness, his queerness, his other-ness, and embrace him. It’s great that Philip got up in that chariot! It’s great that Philip baptized him!  That’s good news!

But I want to point out one thing that I’m not sure we are are as comfortable with--that I’m not sure we are as attentive towards.  I told you earlier about how uncomfortable I was with that stranger I didn’t know getting into my grandfather’s car. 

But that’s exactly what happens in this story. 

The Ethiopian, the treasurer, the powerful government functionary, invites the wandering Philip, walking down the road, into his chariot.

He takes a chance.

It’s the outsider, from our perspective, the one from the ends of the earth, that invites Philip in.

That’s worth some reflection.  Who is inviting us in?  Who is longing to hear the good news of Jesus?  Who is longing for healing?  Who is longing for hope?

Maybe it’s folks close to us.  Family, friends, neighbors.  Or maybe it’s someone from the ends of the earth that we least expect.  In a moment we least expect.  Somewhere along a byway, a wilderness road, where we never expected ourselves to be.

Are we listening like Philip?  Are we looking around?  Are we hearing the world cry out--even in places we might not expect?

The Ethiopian invites Philip in. Let’s listen for that.

But let’s also ask the question--are we willing to respond?  It’s probably very uncomfortable for Philip to approach the Ethiopian and ask, “Do you understand what you’re reading?”  Probably as uncomfortable as the Ethiopian asking Philip to get in the chariot with him.  It requires breaking down a barrier of separation--of politeness, of caution, of individualism--you name it--whatever it is that separates us.  Maybe even breaking down barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding.  But Philip has heard him reading--and, empowered by the Holy Spirit, he asks the question.  “Do you understand what you’re reading?”  And then he tells the story of Jesus.

Friends, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit.  We received the Holy Spirit at our baptism.  We received the Holy Spirit when we were confirmed, when hands were laid on by someone who had hands laid on by someone and someone else, going back, that had hands laid on by the disciples who knew and walked with Jesus.  God’s Holy Spirit is filling, is empowering you, to go out from Jerusalem and tell the good news of healing, of hope, of salvation, of everlasting life--the good news of new life in Jesus Christ.

Just to tell your story.  Your story of how you’ve been saved by Jesus. 

And that’s enough.

The powerful treasurer ran off rejoicing.  I’ll bet he went back and told the queen, all his employees, maybe even the whole kingdom.  We don’t know.

And we don’t know what will happen when we tell our stories either.  But we can trust the Holy Spirit--that the Holy Spirit is moving, that God is faithful.  And that something exciting is happening.

Will we take the chance?  Will we listen?  Will we climb into the chariot, break through boundaries, and share the story of Jesus?

Here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?  What indeed.  Remember your baptism.  Remember you are empowered by the Holy Spirit.  And let’s go out and share the Spirit of God with the world.

Our Good Shepherd

The Rev'd Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 22, 2018

As a current New Haven resident, and as a former suburbanite of New York, Washington D.C., and Houston, I have to admit to you that I know very little about sheep. I can tell you where to get the best lamb vindaloo in town but after that my extended knowledge on sheep comes to an end.

Throughout the years, I’ve come to value the Fourth Sunday, sometimes referred to as Good Shepherd Sunday, as the one Sunday a year I learn a new random fact about sheep and shepherds.

Unfortunately, I have not done much research on sheep or shepherds nor have I read James Rebank’s highly acclaimed 2016 book, The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape. I’m sorry I come bearing no major herding advice or shepherding knowledge.

Having said all of that, there is one “sheep fact” I would like for us to consider when reading today’s Gospel passage.

A flock of sheep, like any other herd of animals, is made up of similar and yet distinct individuals gathered together for a common purpose. While there might be a shared bloodline among some in the flock not all come from one family. While they might look alike, sound and smell the same, this doesn’t guarantee that they’re actually related.

So when we hear Jesus refer to himself as the Good Shepherd, he is referring to himself as the guide, protector, and overseer of a flock. The shepherd of a flock that doesn’t share a singular bloodline or even a common background. The sheep of a flock have not chosen to be together but have circumstantially ended up as members of one flock, under one shepherd. 

And here we gathered in this space like a flock -- individuals made up people from different bloodlines and families, from various backgrounds, with stories to share gathered by our own individual, and shared, desire to be under the care of the one shepherd, Jesus Christ. The one who knows us and the one we know.

You and I have most likely ended up in this place for a host of circumstances. And maybe those circumstances have changed for you throughout the years. Maybe we brought you here, is different from what’s kept you here. Yet we are here for one reason -- to praise and adore our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who knows us and the one we know. The one who has been our aid and support. The one who comforts us. The one who seeks to be in relationship with us. The one who has laid down his life for us.

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” The death and resurrection of Jesus is our shepherd’s ultimate act of care and love for us his sheep in which God in Christ reveals to the world his desire that all might be one. That all the nations, and all of creation, may become one flock under the one shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ. Through the resurrection, the cross is no longer sign of death and pain. The wood of the cross becomes the wood of our shepherd’s staff, through his cross our Lord seeks to guide us and leads us to the realization that we are to be one flock, one body. That we are meant to be his Body, the Church Catholic, united by the cross and joining in the resurrected life -- a life that gives us the strength to push against the darkness and evil of this world.

Even as our Lord and his Body, the Church, seeks to create one flock, we know all too well of the disunity that exists in the Body of Christ. We know that there are those who are not part of the flock, those are not active members part of the Body of Christ, either by personal decision or circumstance. And we can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that there are those who are not part of the flock because of others in the flock. Because of an individual’s, or group of individuals, personal desire for control and power. Sometimes this lust for control and power, human sin, can run so deep that it’s willing to alienate and hurt those who once belonged to the fold of Christ. Making those who have been pushed aside by some in the flock want nothing to do with the Church, the Body of Christ, and at worst they won’t nothing to do with God.

Even with our Lord’s intention that we may be one flock under the one shepherd, Jesus Christ, sin finds a way to distort our Lord’s desire for us.

But our Lord knows this about us, he knows of our capacity to create divisions and sin. But thanks be to God that in due time, in God’s time, all will be one. Not by our doing but by Christ’s doing. Not through our actions and voice but through the actions and voice of Christ himself. Jesus says “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”

It is not through our voice that Jesus will save, has saved, those who are not part of the fold. It is through his voice, the voice that shouted “It is finished” on the cross that the world is saved, it is through his voice that we can become one flock under the one shepherd.

Christ promises that he will bring those outside fold into unity, that they will listen to his voice. He does not promise that they will be part of the flock but he promises that he will speak to them and that they will listen.

This is our great shepherd. The one who seeks not only those in the flock but all of humanity. This is our God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Don't Worry

Mr Zachary Fletcher
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Third Sunday of Easter
April 15, 2018

Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.”  (Luke 24:36b)

I’m not the first person to appreciate the theological insights that come from Tinder. It’s not so much the app itself – in fact, I should say, I no longer have Tinder.  What I mean is, sometimes the experiences one has as a result of being on Tinder can be theologically enlightening. Let me explain.

Several years ago, I was on a Tinder date in L.A.  The date began at Starbucks, and after a little while, my date wanted us to drive up in his Toyota Prius to one of his favorite scenic locations, a mountain with a great view of the skyline.  Now L.A. is known for its horrible traffic, so I was thankful he was the one driving.  At a certain intersection, we roll a bit too far forward of the white line.  So my date decides, in a split second, to start backing up – without looking behind him. Within a few seconds, I feel a jolt. The Starbucks latte I’m holding splashes all over the window to my right.  In that moment, I realize: we’ve just hit the vehicle behind us.

Oh no, I say to myself.  This is a Tinder date gone awry.  We know we have to pull over and interact with the person behind us whose vehicle we just hit.  We may have to call the police.

So we pull over, dreading what’s likely to come next.  The vehicle we hit is an imposing-looking Ford F-150.  Its driver gets out, and starts walking towards us.  He looks like he means business.  I’m expecting anger, perhaps even some slurs.  We roll down the window.

I will never forget what happened next.

The man stands there smiling at us, with not a hint of anger.  As if reporting a miracle, he says, “There’s no damage!  Don’t worry!”  Beaming, he hands each of us a business card.  “You’re welcome to come anytime!”, he says.  It’s a business card for his church.  And with that, the man heads back to his massive truck, gets in, and drives away.

I had been expecting the worst.  But this Christian man, in his Ford F-150, who had every right to be angry with me and my date, caught us off guard with this act of forgiveness.

“Don’t worry!”, he said.

In today’s Bible readings, we see this same kind of unexpected, undeserved forgiveness.  We first see it from Peter, though it may not be immediately obvious.  Of course this passage from Acts is notorious.  It’s easy to notice only Peter’s words of condemnation: “But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life…”  These are harsh words, perhaps not entirely appropriate because chances are, these people Peter is talking to – the ones who just witnessed a crippled man be healed in the name of Jesus – probably had nothing to do with Jesus’ death, strictly speaking.  They’re simply onlookers.

But if we remember that Peter is himself a Jew, addressing a crowd of his fellow Israelites, and if we remember that Peter himself denied Jesus three times, we can see that Peter’s condemnation comes back to include himself as well, not to mention us.  That’s why we read the Passion story on Palm Sunday and Good Friday.  We rehearse this story to remind ourselves of our collective, human culpability for Jesus’ death.

And yet, this actually isn’t what Peter is focusing on here.  Rather, he says, “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus…”  Peter is saying, Yes, Jesus died in this horrible way, but don’t worry! – God has taken this horrible death, and for no good reason except for his own goodness, “raised [Jesus] from the dead.” This is how God shows us his forgiveness, a forgiveness we never expected to receive.

Not only is God’s response to human brutality totally undeserved and unbelievable, but even more shockingly, Peter notes it was predicted all along, in the Hebrew Bible.  Peter says, through Jesus’s resurrection, “God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer.”  Yes, this horrible thing happened, but guess what – don’t worry, because God still came through in the end, simply because He said He would.

So when Peter says, “Repent, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,” it’s not condemnation, but rather an invitation to simply accept God’s free offer of forgiveness, shown by his Son’s resurrection.

Peter’s proclamation of God’s forgiveness points to what Jesus is doing in the Gospel reading from Luke.  Now, since his disciples had basically abandoned him, Jesus had no good reason to appear to them again – except to show them that no matter what, he would not abandon them. When Jesus says, “Peace be with you,” he means, “Don’t worry.”  He’s already forgiven them for their unbelief, when he uses a piece of fish to prove to them he’s actually there.  And he doesn’t stop there – Jesus, like Peter in Acts, explains it was all part of the plan. Despite humanity’s sinfulness, God destroyed sin once and for all.  “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.”  In other words, don’t worry.

Easter is a season of forgiveness.  It reminds us not just of what Jesus has done for us, but of what we as Christians are called to do for others.  Like Jesus’ disciples, we are empowered to extend forgiveness, not just to those that deserve it, but to everyone.  Because Jesus empowers us to forgive, that means we’re invited to forgive even when we don’t feel like it.  Even if our kindness is reduced by our natural human limits, the truth is, God’s kindness has no limits.

Perhaps this coming week, you’ll choose to forgive someone for something.  It could be anything, big or small.  Maybe you’ll be sitting at an intersection, and someone will carelessly back into you – and after seeing your vehicle is undamaged, you’ll invite them to Christ Church. In any case, your act of forgiveness will be pointing them to the One who has already forgiven us, the One who continually tells us, “Don’t worry.”

Amen.

The Mourning of Thomas

The Rev'd Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Second Sunday of Easter
April 8, 2018

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

In describing Jesus’ appearance to his disciples, the author of Saint John’s Gospel paints a vivid scene. It was evening, and it was the first day of the week. The doors of the house were locked for fear of the Jewish authorities. And there, in a dark locked room, Jesus appears to his disciples. In a room filled with fear and anxiety, Jesus makes his resurrection known to his disciples. In the midst of loneliness, darkness, and deep intimacy, our risen Lord reveals himself and brings forth peace to his disciples.

Imagine how the disciples must of felt at that very moment?

So far, the disciples have only witnessed our Lord’s capture, trial and violent death on the cross. Left scared and in fear of the authorities, the disciples have locked themselves in a dark room. In the middle of this dark period: filled with fear and loneliness, Jesus appears to them. Sharing with them one simple thing, his peace. Standing there, Jesus utters the words “Peace be with you.”

Jesus does not explain his resurrection. He does not tell his disciples what he’s been through. He does not give them a long speech or commandment. He simply offers them his peace. Amidst there fear and darkness our risen Lord simply offers his disciples peace.

See, the resurrection is not something Jesus can simply explain. It is not something we can simply explain. Rather, the resurrection is something we can only experience.

In a 2016 Guardian article, Fr Giles Fraser beautifully captures this challenging truth as he writes,

“The resurrection is not an argument...the resurrection is the name we give to the multiple ways we push back against the darkness.”

The resurrection of Christ does not seek to proof anything as much as it seeks to invite us towards something. The resurrection affirms what God in Christ has already done.

The resurrection invites us to accept that in Christ there is eternal life. It reminds us that even death is not the end. The darkness of death will not have the last word. The darkness of our lives: our pain and suffering, will not have the last word. Resurrection pushes against the darkness of this world. Resurrection is God’s invitation for us to walk as children of the light in the midst of the chaos of life. This was the invitation for the disciples, and this is our invitation as followers of Jesus.

In reading today’s Gospel, we should remember that Jesus’ resurrection has already taken place, prior to his appearance to the disciples. While the women shared the news of the empty tomb, the disciples, the men, did not believe that the resurrection had taken place. Unlike the women who showed up to the tomb with their oils and spices seeking to take care of the body of our Lord, the disciples were in hiding. Up to this point, the disciples did not believe in the resurrection because they had no experienced it, but now was the time for the disciples to experience the resurrection themselves.

And we’re told that “Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.” Which begs to ask:

“Where was Thomas?”

“Why was Thomas not in the room with the disciples?”

The answers to these questions are known to God alone but what we do know is that the disciples from Peter to John to Thomas, were all in mourning at the lost of their friend and Lord. So, while today’s Gospel  is often attributed as the story of “Doubting Thomas,” we might just maybe change our perspective - even if just for this sermon. From understanding this passage as the story of “Doubting Thomas” to the story of “Mourning Thomas.”

See, it’s no accident that our risen Lord appears to his disciples in midst of deep loneliness, darkness, and fear. Our Lord’s resurrection is not simply a sign of God’s greatness and power over death, but an invitation to a life in Christ which proclaims that we too shall overcome the great evils of this world.

The resurrection of Jesus does not take place instead of death, but it takes place in the middle of death itself. In the hope and joy of Easter, we cannot forget that death has to happen in order for resurrection to take place.

The disciples were not hoping for resurrection. I’m sure this was not all on their mind, rather they were simply mourning: crying, shouting, and wailing at the lost of their best friend. While we know that Thomas was not with the other disciples, we can assume that he like the other disciples must of been in great pain and fear. We cannot deny that like all the followers of Jesus: the disciples, the women, and all those whom Jesus touched and healed, he too was deeply mourning the lost of his Lord.

While the disciples were in a state of mourning, Jesus appears to them. And Thomas, who was not there when Jesus appeared to the other disciples, could not believe what they were telling him.

Do you blame him?

Imagine that you had lost a loved one: the love of your life, a spouse or partner, a family member or a best friend, and in the middle of your mourning, your friends told you that they’ve come back from the dead.

Do you think your response would be any different from that of Thomas?

Don’t you think you too would have said something similar to Thomas?  Who says “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."

Thomas’ answer is not necessarily the answer of someone who lacks faith, but the answer of someone who is wrapped up in their own pain and trauma.

It is the answer of someone who cannot fathom anything beyond death. It is the answer of someone who has not experienced the resurrection, so he cannot see anything beyond the moments of mourning, suffering, and pain.

During this Eastertide, God invites us to experience Christ’s resurrection in our own lives?

Might there be a relationship in your life  that’s in need of peace, the peace that Christ offers his disciples? A relationship in need of reconciliation?

Might there be a dark and even a locked place in your heart and mind that’s in need of the presence of Christ?

Might you like Thomas, be in need of experiencing the risen Christ?

Thanks be to God, that Jesus asks Thomas to physically experience the resurrection. Thanks be to God, that Jesus invites us to experience the resurrection week after week in the Holy Sacrament of the Mass. Thanks be to God, that Jesus invites us  to be resurrected with him in the darkest and loneliest moments of our lives. Thanks be to God, for Jesus who is our Lord and our God. Thanks be to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Go and Tell It! He is Risen!

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Easter Day
April 1, 2018

What are the memories you have of Easter?  The sights, sounds, smells, associations you have with this feast, this holiday?  I remember Easter lilies on the cross at church, their sweet smell filling the whole space, new Easter clothes, and of course Easter baskets, chocolate bunnies, and always egg hunts.  On Easter afternoon after church my parents would hide the plastic eggs stuffed with jellybeans and chocolate pieces in our yard--in clumps of flowers, forks of tree branches, behind stones, anywhere a small child could reach--and we’d find most of the eggs and gorge ourselves on candy before dinner.  There were always a few eggs left behind that the dog would find later in the week, but most of them we found ourselves--sometimes with a little help.  I always have good memories--good associations--with Easter.  And I hope you do, too.

The women in the gospel reading we hear today, Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome, wouldn’t have had any such associations.  They were going to a tomb to anoint the body of their beloved teacher and friend, their spiritual leader, someone whom they believed was the Messiah--but surely he couldn’t be, for just days after his entry into the city of Jerusalem, he’d been captured, tried, tortured, and executed by the Roman government.   They would have gone with mournful hearts, carrying oil and aromatics to treat the body early that morning to counteract the decay in the heat of the day.  In their grief they’d not even thought about how they’d get to Jesus’s body, how they’d roll the heavy stone away that had been put there to secure the tomb.  And, when they arrived, they were astounded to discover that the stone had already been rolled away--and that there was a young man, all in white, sitting at the side of the tomb, telling them that Jesus had been raised. 

They were so astounded, so afraid, that they fled, they ran off, and scripture tells us that they said nothing to anyone about what they had seen.

Now of course the strangeness of this statement, the last one in our gospel reading, is that of course the women DID tell someone. The young man, the angel, whatever he is, told them to go and tell the others¸specifically mentioning Peter.  The young man told them to go to Galilee and that there they would see Jesus again. 

Now, we hear in John’s gospel about Jesus’s appearances in a locked room to his disciples; from Luke we hear how he appears to two men on the road to Emmaus, and about Jesus’s sharing a meal with his disciples; in Matthew we hear how Jesus meets his disciples--and then from the mountain in Galilee commissioned and sent them out to teach and baptize. 

These are the sorts of memories that they would make over the next few hours, the next few days.   Memories they would tell and retell and tell again, that they’d write down, that would become the gospel narratives we read tonight. 

And all of them, all four gospels, begin with that one event--Mary Magdalene who is present at the tomb, who sees the empty tomb.  And while Mark’s gospel tells us that she and Mary the mother of James and Salome were afraid, that they fled in terror, even--that they were so afraid that they told no one--we know from the gospel accounts that this isn’t the end of the story.

Maybe they were terrified!  But they told the story.  They passed on the reality of the event, the vision, the experience of finding the tomb empty.  And they made memory, made meaning, of the event, a memory, a re-membering, an anamnesis in Greek, that we re-member today.

In the 4th century a wealthy woman named Egeria, probably a nun, probably from Spain, made a series of pilgrimages to the near East, to the Holy Land, and specifically to Jerusalem.  Egeria wrote about the Holy Week and Easter celebrations in Jerusalem that she saw.  During Holy Week particularly, the Christians in the city would move from station to station--a vigil on the Mount of Olives on Thursday, a procession just before dawn through the gate of Jerusalem to the place of the cross, veneration of the cross and then Eucharist there.  But every Sunday, in fact, almost every day, there would be prayers at the empty tomb.  And offerings, the Eucharist, the mass, there at the empty tomb.  Over and over again, wherever their processions and prayers and vigils might take them, the Christians returned to the empty tomb.  The Anastasis, Egeria called it-- the word for resurrection.  They kept returning to the place of the resurrection--to the resurrection itself.

For them this memory making, this response to memory, was rooted in a physical place.  And over and over again they returned to resurrection.

I wonder if the women at the tomb returned.  Luke and John seem to indicate that they did.  That they went back to the tomb and looked there.  More precisely that the men went to look, because what the women were saying was incredulous. 

Maybe they returned for strength, to remember, to remind themselves, to live again, in the hope of that moment of the empty tomb, the hope of resurrection.  Maybe they returned just because they couldn’t really believe it was true--that Jesus had really risen.  Scripture is full of those stories of Jesus’s disciples that couldn’t really believe it.  Thomas is the most obvious, who asks to touch our Lord’s wounds before he can really believe Jesus is alive, is risen.  But others of Jesus’s followers couldn’t believe that he was risen, either.  The men on the road to Emmaus don’t even recognize him until, in this action that prefigures the Eucharist, Jesus takes bread, blesses, breaks, and gives it to them.  Some of the disciples run to the tomb to look for themselves to see that it’s empty, because they can’t believe what the women have said they’ve seen.  And we hear in Matthew of the officials who won’t believe that Jesus is risen; they pay off some soldiers to say that Jesus’s followers stole his body from the tomb--a bit of first century fake news, obfuscation. 

The truth of the claim “He is risen!” was not immediately obvious to the disciples, and certainly not to the world around them.  And so they kept going back.  They kept telling the story.  They kept going back to the resurrection.

And that’s the central thing, isn’t it?  That’s the story. 

Love itself, the very creating life force that gives birth to all things, came to be a part of creation.  God in the flesh came to share our life, to show God’s love.  And the world killed him.  Love comes and is killed because the world couldn’t believe it.

But love is stronger than death.  Christ rises victorious--and invites us into new life. 

But the world cannot yet believe that it’s true. 

And so we go back.  Again and again to the empty tomb.  To the resurrection.  The Anastasis. 

We go back to the story, to the event, to the reality of the thing itself, to touch, taste, hear, smell, re-member what it is that we know in our bones, that we have come to know in our hearts--that God is alive and moving and desires to be with us--and desires us to be with God.  That Christ is alive.  That he is not dead.  He is risen.  He lives and moves in the world.  In our lives.

And so we go back, again and again, to the memory of the empty tomb.  To the place.

But the only reason we can go back--the only reason we know where to go, what happened--is that the women told us about it.

They may have been afraid.  They may even have run in fear.  But they didn’t stay silent.  They told us.

Think back to the place of resurrection for you.  Where is your anastasis?  Where have you seen the resurrected Jesus?  Where have you seen new life--in your own life?  In the world around you?

Maybe it’s in a loving relationship.  Maybe it’s in a sense of meaning in the work you do.  Maybe it’s in a great gift you’ve received, a mercy extended, a reconciliation or restoration.  Whatever it is, that’s one place of resurrection--one place you have seen the love of God poured out for you, drawing you nearer into the sacred heart of God.

Maybe you can’t see resurrection today, not just yet.  Maybe the stone is still rolled up against the tomb, and just for today it seems too heavy to move.  Then where are you longing to see resurrection?  When the stone is rolled away, what will you see?   What is the thing you’re crying out for, longing for, the place you need new life?  Can you imagine that stone rolling back, and Christ himself standing there with outstretched arms, embracing you, drawing you in close to a place of new life, of love, of healing?

Wherever you are today--if you’re feeling the glow of resurrection light, or if you’re dwelling in the dark shadow of the tomb, longing for resurrection, remember what we know.  Go back to the anastasis, to the tomb. 

He is not here.  He is risen. 

Go back to the tomb.  Again and again.

Listen for the voices of the women who have run from the tomb, and believe what they’re saying.

And then go and see it again for yourself.

Take strength and courage from them, from one another, so that, as you leave the empty tomb, you, like Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome, can go and tell the world.

Sure, they were afraid, but they told the story.  And we know they did because now we know it.

What will you tell?  And to whom will you tell it?

Love has conquered death!  Christ has risen!

The world is waiting to hear.

Return to the place of resurrection.   Be raised with Christ.  And go with fear and trembling and tell it.

In the name of the risen Lord Jesus, AMEN.

Be Not Afraid

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Great Vigil of Easter
March 31, 2018

How do you feel about being in the dark?  Were you a child that wanted a light on at night? Are you an adult that keeps a night light?  I leave a few lights on every night when I go to bed--I couldn’t even tell you why, maybe to show that someone lives here on campus--maybe in case I need to get up at night that I can quickly see where I’m going, orient myself, keep from tripping or falling.  We keep security lights burning around the border of campus, street lights on the streets of New Haven that help us feel safer about where we are, more secure about where we’re going.  I even leave a light on for the dog at night if I’m going out after dark so she’s never alone in the dark.  Darkness often seems to be a thing to be avoided--something at least unsettling if not menacing.  And with beeswax or electrons we can fight it back, illuminate the world around us.

Tonight we gathered in the dark and lit a fire, that primal element, that basic chemical reaction, that fast oxidation of combustible substances, that gives us light, and heat, and a sense of security.  That drives out the darkness. 

And even though it was just a small fire that we lit, it was enough to light the paschal candle, the candle that will burn through Easter from which all our candles will be lit, the central candle that lit our own lights, that lit the candles on the altar, that shone across our faces so we could see one another, that soft warm glow that we carried from the garden around the street and into the nave.

There in the darkness we heard again the story of God’s saving works in history.  Our creation and preservation; the deliverance of God’s people from bondage in Egypt; the knitting together even of old dry bones to create something new; the calling together of God’s people.  And together, as the people of God, we remembered our baptisms--our plunging into the dark cool waters of death and our resurrection, out of the empty tomb, with Christ into the light of new life.

And now we have proclaimed the resurrection of Christ with alleluias and acclamations.  And we may feel secure, triumphant, assured in the theological and historical knowledge of our Christian tradition.  Of course Christ is risen.  It’s Easter! As sure as the Easter bunny and chocolate eggs, Christ is risen!  Cadbury crème eggs indeed, Alleluia!

In that Easter darkness tonight I confess I felt anticipation, joy, excitement--not the fear or anxiety I might feel any other time in the dark--those times when I might leave a light on.

But that’s not what the earliest followers of Jesus were feeling.  That’s not what Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome felt early that morning as they were rising to go to Jesus’s grave, to anoint him with oils and aromatics as part of the burial tradition.  I wonder if they’d even slept, so fearful for their own safety, so distraught over the loss of their friend and teacher, the one whom they loved. 

We hear it in the gospel passage we read tonight; when they reach the tomb and find the stone rolled away, they must have been surprised; when they look inside the tomb and see a young man, a youth, dressed in white sitting at the side of the tomb, they are positively alarmed.  He speaks.  He tells them Jesus is risen.  And they flee, alarmed, amazed, shocked, afraid.

Fear is palpable through the ending of the gospel of Mark.  If you’ve been reading Mark with us as a parish this Lent, you’ll remember that a couple of chapters back, as Jesus is praying in the garden of Gethsemane, a mob comes to take him by force for trial. 

As he is taken, his followers flee--and, as Mark says, “a certain young man was following [Jesus], wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked” (14.51-52). 

It’s a bizarre detail in Mark, and it’s hard to say exactly who the boy is.  Is he Mark himself?  Is this John the beloved disciple who makes cameos in other gospels, or James the Less, brother of Jesus, or another figure entirely?  Is his appearance a holdover from an earlier story, corrupted in transmission before being written down in the story that is Mark?  Or is he just a random person who shows up in a burial shroud? Is he merely a metaphor for death? I’m convinced he’s an actual person, and I’m convinced we absolutely don’t know who he is.  He’s interesting as an oddity--a thing we can speculate about, a baroque detail that grabs our imaginations.  But at the end of the day, the only thing we can say about the boy that runs away is that he’s frightened.

And maybe that’s why this detail is there.  To remind us that Jesus’s friends, his disciples, his followers are afraid.  Very afraid.  And with good cause.  They’ve just seen their friend and spiritual leader dragged off by a mob.  They will seem him crucified. They’ll see him put in the grave.  And, when these brave and faithful women show up two days later to anoint his body, they’ll be afraid--afraid that the tomb is open.  Afraid of the young man inside.  Afraid, amazed, astounded at what they hear--that he is risen.

The young man runs away in the dark.  The women quake in fear in the early light of dawn.  They are afraid.

Tonight, there in the dark, we were not afraid.  Because we know what the empty tomb means.  Because we saw the light of Christ spreading across the garden, across the church from candle to candle, across our faces.  Because we know that Christ is risen.  That Christ lives.  That Christ has conquered death.  That we have nothing more to fear.

Last autumn in Charlottesville hundreds of alt-right protesters including neo Nazis marched with torches around the Grounds of the University of Virginia, and the photos were frightening.  But the photos that remind me of the light tonight, of the light of our procession, of the light spreading across your faces in this church, the light that shines in the darkness, were not those torches of the protesters, but the candles of the counterprotesters mere nights later--the thousands of men and women, young people, that showed up to lend their presence in a crowd ten times greater to advocate for peace, for love, for inclusion of all people.[1]  Their light reflected in part the light of Christ for the world, the love of God.  That light began to drown out fear and despair.  To give us hope.

That light, the light we bear tonight, begins to question the very nature of the dark for me.

Perhaps darkness is not fear at all, not  a place to avoid, to drive out, or to be afraid.  Perhaps darkness is the place where everything stops, where our illusions fall away, where hatred and falsehoods fall shattered to the earth--and where only the truth of God’s love can remain, there burning in that place where all else has been stripped and burned away.  Slowly and softly at first, and then gathering its light, until it shines through all of creation.

Hundreds of times in scripture Jesus tells his disciples, Jesus tells us, “Be not afraid.”  That there is nothing to fear.  Perhaps the darkness is not fearful at all but just our response to realizing that the lies that sin and death tell us are wrong.  Perhaps darkness is that holding space, the place before the dawn, where light begins to shine to show us a new way.  Perhaps darkness is not full of fear but of hope, of new possibility.  Perhaps we have been waiting in darkness, waiting for Jesus to show us the way by the light of his countenance, in which we are made whole. (Ps 80)

In our gospel reading tonight from Mark we see again a young man there at the empty tomb.  Is he the same figure as before? Is he a literary construction, a metaphor for resurrection, for new life?  Is he the same actual particular person that’s made his way first to the tomb?  Who knows!  But what we do know is that this young man, this youth, is not afraid at all.  And he tells the women who have faithfully come there looking for Jesus that he is risen.  “Do not be alarmed!  …He has been raised; he is not here.”  (16.6)  He shares his hope, he shares the resurrection with them.  He shares with them the good news that Jesus has conquered death. 

The good news that he’s passing on, the good news that Mary and Mary the mother of James and Salome will go on to share with the world, is that Christ has conquered death.  That there is nothing to fear.  That everything they thought they knew about fear and death is a lie.  That there is hope.  Be not afraid.

The Church has a hymn, a chant, that encompasses this revelation of this new reality in Jesus.  Much like Fr Carlos’s story of the mad curate that ran about the church, waving the cross, shouting over and over again, Victory!  Victory!  Victory!  So has Holy Mother Church sung through the ages the shout “Christus vincit!  Christus regnat!  Christus imperat!”  Christ is victorious!  Christ reigns!  Christ commands!

Friends, if you have any doubt, look to the empty tomb.  He has been raised; he is not there.  He is here in our lives.  He is here in the sacraments.  He is here with God.  And he has conquered all.

Do not be afraid.  Do not believe the lies that the world tells us about fear, about darkness, about despair.  Live in hope.  For Christ is risen.  For. Christ reigns. 

Christus vincit!  Christus regnat!  Christus imperat!

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

---

[1] Hawes Spencer and Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Photos of Peaceful Charlottesville Vigil:  ‘Our Home, Not Their Home.’”  The New York Times, August 17, 2017.  (Accessed online at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/us/charlottesville-vigil-candlelight.html 3/31/2018.)

Victory, Victory Victory!

The Rev'd Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Good Friday
March 30, 2018

Blessed be the name of the Lord, from henceforth, and forevermore. Amen.

At his questioning by the high priest, Jesus answers “I spake openly to the world… and in secret I have said nothing.” Before Pilate, when asked if he is a king, Jesus replies “Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.”

In his trials by Caiaphaus and Pilate, Jesus affirms the work given to him by God the Father. The work he has been on through his ministry in Judea. In secret he has said nothing and he has not hid his actions from anyone. Jesus has sought the poor, the sick, the rich, and the powerful. Jew and Gentile alike. Jesus has openly taught and performed great signs among all people.

And through his life, Jesus has bore witness unto the truth, which in his own words, was the purpose of his birth.

And in bearing witness to the truth, Jesus has bore witness to both the truth of God the Father and the truth of this world. In our sight, these two truths seem to be opposing forces.

It’s as if in shining a mirror unto the truth of God and the truth of this world, we see two distinct reflections.

The image reflected of God the Father was restoration and wholeness with the world, and the image reflected of this world was sin and death.

On this day, two thousand years ago, these opposing images came to a clash. And the world that God longed to have and the world as it was met on the cross.

The faithfulness, obedience, and selfless love of God was hung by a world corrupted by anger, fear, and injustice. The truth of sin and death seem to have won over the truth of God. By all standards of power and rule, the officials and the crowd had won. Jesus had been killed. His disciples had fled. Our Blessed Mother, the Beloved Disciple, and the faithful women were in tears as they held our Lord’s lifeless body. All pointed, once again, that sin and death had the last word.

What the world saw was the death of Jesus -- the death of a teacher, the death of a friend, the death of a son. But “the Lord does not see as mortals see.”

On this day, two thousand years ago, what the world viewed with its eyes was a man hanging on a cross. What the world viewed was an act of injustice take place as innocent man was put to death. What the world viewed was the end of a movement that had managed to touch the hearts and minds of all kinds of people. What the world viewed was the end.

But the Lord does not see as mortals see.

What hung on the cross was not death but salvation. The truth of God, the truth that Jesus came to bear witness, did not compete against sin and death as co-equals. Rather, on the cross, God exposed sin and death for what they really are, human disfigurements. Humanity’s capacity for sin and its many embodiments: abuse, violence, hatred, envy, indifference to human life and suffering, and all others, is not what we’re meant to be or what we’re meant to become.

On the cross, Jesus reflects to the world a broken image of itself. He shows us what we are capable of doing to ourselves and others. He does this not to judge us, or even to condemn us, but as if he were a doctor, he does this to diagnose us.

Remember that the Lord does not see as mortals see. What God sees in the world is a people in need of a remedy. And that remedy is the cross, the cross becomes the medicine for the world. The cross which captures our human capacity for sin and death becomes our very life source. The cross is capable of holding up for us our sins and our redemption. After all, we have a God who not only forgives our sins but forgets - as the author of Hebrews writes, The Holy Spirit testifies, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

Through the cross, the death of Jesus becomes the world’s greatest sacrifice. Unlike the sacrifices of old in which the high priest had to take part in a yearly sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin, Jesus, our great high priest, who is both priest and sacrifice, has made, as the prayer book says, “By his oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the world.”

In his sacrifice, the cross becomes a symbol of life. No longer is it an implement of suffering and death. God transforms this once violent image into our salvation. God is not only capable of shining a mirror on our sins and the sins of the world but responds with the cross to be our cure.

As we prepare to venerate the cross, remember that through the cross, God has not only shown us what sin and death can do but what God is capable to do. Where there is sin and death, there is love and life. God has shown us how deep is his love and how powerful is his might. And as if death and sin were nothing more than a smudge on our face, as a mother God has made us clean and giving us the victory.

In Anglo Catholic folklore, there’s a story of a curate serving in stately English parish. A somewhat eccentric and young priest, the curate seemed to have gone mad on Good Friday, as he processed around the Church with a crucifix in hand, shouting, “Victory, victory, victory!”

As you approach the cross, and kneel in veneration, pour out your heart to the Lord. Whatever may be heavy on your soul and burdensome bring it to the cross.

And as you kneel, touch, and kiss the cross, and remember those words shouted in that English parish -- “Victory, victory, victory!”

On this day above all days, God is good all the time. Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Come, Sit and Eat

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Maundy Thursday
March 29, 2018

Tonight we have come to Maundy Thursday, the first of the three great days of preparation for Easter—the Triduum—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday—moving into the Great Vigil, Easter itself.  What a strange word, Maundy.  Someone asked me last week, “What does Maundy mean, anyway?”  It’s a good question—after all, it’s a word you’re likely to hear only today!  One generally accepted explanation is that Maundy is a English corruption of the Latin word “mandatum” which appears in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the bible, in John 13:34-35:  “I give you a new commandment, [a mandatum novum], that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  This passage comes immediately after the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet as an example, he tells them, of how to serve one another.

The Economist this week has another explanation—that the baskets used for almsgiving were called by an old English word maunde.[1]  That’s possible, too, I suppose—after all, monarchs in England have for centuries observed this day with both footwashing, as Elizabeth I did, and almsgiving, as Elizabeth II has done today at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.[2]    

So Maundy Thursday is associated with almsgiving and with footwashing—but it is also from its very earliest days associated with the Eucharist—the institution of the Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, the Mass—as our readings from Corinthians and from the gospel of Luke recall in our minds—that moment at which Jesus takes bread at table, breaks it, and gives it to his disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22.19)

Tonight is the night in which we will celebrate our Lord’s gift of the sacrament of Holy Communion, the Eucharist—and we’ll celebrate that sacrament, as he taught us to do, in just a few moments.  But first, since it’s Maundy Thursday, we’ll also wash feet.

Now, people have different reactions to this.  I’ll bet you just had a particular internal emotional reaction yourself, even, when I mentioned washing feet.  

Perhaps your response was a warm, pleasant one—something about how nice it is to serve and be served—a positive association with doing something that Jesus did with his disciples.

Or maybe your reaction was more along the lines of, “There is no way I am leaving my pew and taking off my shoes for some stranger to wash my feet.  Yuk.  Gross.”

Regardless of how you feel about footwashing, and believe me, folks have feelings about it—the practice is ancient and has gained a revival in the liturgical renewal movement of which our 1979 Book of Common Prayer is a part.  We first see the rite in the early and medieval church, often as practiced as a reversal of authority—kings would wash the feet of their subjects; abbots would wash the feet of monks.  Queen Elizabeth I washed the feet of the poor at Westminster.  And now Episcopalians, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, nondenominational Christians, and even Presbyterians and Baptists have gotten on board with this practice, this acting out of the thing that Jesus does with his disciples in the gospel of John. 

It’s easy to see why the rite is so popular:  from Jesus’s own explanation, it’s an act designed to show us the importance of service; one way to read the gospel and the rite is that loving one another as Christ loves us is about serving one another. 

And we like service, right?  That’s a good thing!  It’s something we can do.  We can measure the work, we can observe the impact.  We can know that we are making a difference in the world.  I am fully supportive of service.  Let’s volunteer to serve a meal at the Soup Kitchen or at Chapel on the Green.  As the motto of Saint Hilda’s House says, let’s go “through the gates into the city,” serving those whom we meet.  There’s nothing better for building community and working for the kingdom of God, right?

We can get our minds around that.  We can see how it makes sense to wash another’s feet—literally as well as metaphorically. 

But what about the flipside?  What about having our own feet washed?  What about being served?  As I’ve asked people about having their feet washed this week, and believe me, I’ve asked a lot of folks, I have heard funny reactions such as “Oh, guess I’d better get a pedicure!” to “I’d better remember to wear my good socks!” to feigned responses of horror:  “Nobody’s going to touch my feet!” 

Now, when we’re talking about the play-acting that is foot washing in the liturgy, that’s fine; we can make all the jokes we want about how uncomfortable it is to have our feet washed—because it is, right?  It’s just strange!  Who do we let touch our feet?  Maybe doctors or pedicurists—that’s pretty safe—they have chemicals and soaps and gloves and things to make the procedure sanitary and distanced—or maybe people that we really love, that we really trust.  Our spouses, perhaps our parents if we’re younger.  But that’s about it.  Feet are a no-go zone.  That’s really intimate.  Really uncomfortable.

It wouldn’t have been so unusual in the near Eastern culture of Jesus’s time to have your feet washed; there was no sidewalk, no pavement, and feet got dusty.  Today in some near Eastern countries Muslims wash their feet at the door of the mosque before offering prayers.  And Jesus’s disciples would have expected their feet to be washed when they came in for dinner—to be washed by a servant, a professional, someone whose job it was to wash dirty feet.  But this footwashing was uncomfortable for them.  Peter even refuses at first Jesus’s invitation!  He says to Jesus, “You will never wash my feet.”

Part of what made it so uncomfortable for these disciples was this reversal—that it was Jesus who was washing their feet.  Suddenly the footwashing wasn’t about a clinical, professional act—not like a pedicure or even a cleaning up before dinner—but their spiritual leader, their friend, the one they had come to understand as Messiah, was washing their feet.  Shouldn’t they be serving him?  And yet, there they were, their tired, dirty, inelegant, vulnerable, exposed feet.  Held in their Lord’s hands.  Washed and dried with his towel.  Cleaned and refreshed. 

This same Jesus that takes his disciples’ feet in his hands, tenderly washing them, is the same Jesus that we hear, in the gospel lesson from Luke, as he takes the bread, breaks it, and gives it to them with these words:  “This is my body, which is given for you.”  (Luke 22.19a)  This is my body.  Take and eat.  What if we were sitting at that very table?  How intimate, vulnerable, uncomfortable would those words make us feel?  When we hear those words every week, they can become rote.  Sure, this is my body.  Got it.  We understand what that means theologically, spiritually.  But what if you heard that at Easter dinner:  Hey Carol, pass the dinner rolls.  Here, have some.  This is my body!  If Uncle Bob says that, you’re going to be a little bit uncomfortable, right?  What is he talking about?  What does this mean?  What’s wrong with Bob?!

This is comparing apples and oranges, right? Jesus’s words are not the same as Uncle Bob’s carrying on at dinner.  But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be shocked by Jesus’s words.  Surely the disciples were shocked.  Just like the footwashing, this offering of his own body—in the meal that becomes the Eucharist, on the Cross, in his Resurrection—this offering of Jesus’s own body is real.  It is intimate.  It is vulnerable.  We are vulnerable, exposed to Jesus.

We are so separated from one another in our modern lives that it’s easy to feel disconnected.  Or to distrust connectivity, closeness.  A few months ago I had a conversation with a man who articulated something that I think is in the back of many of our minds.  He said, you know, I think I’m a pretty good person.   I don’t lie or cheat or steal.  I’m nice to people.  But I’m worried I’m not doing enough.  I mean, why would Jesus love me, particularly?  What have I done to deserve that?  Don’t I need to do something for God?  Keep up my end of the bargain?

Our rational, skeptical selves can really be taken aback—be made uncomfortable, even—by this Jesus figure who, against all convention, stoops to wash our feet—to take them in his hands—breaking boundaries and even comfort zones—by this Jesus, who offers us his own body and blood—by this Jesus, who offers himself on the cross.  This Jesus is real. He has a body, he sweats, he bleeds, he moans.  He holds the disciples’ feet tenderly, washes them, dries them with a towel.  He breaks bread and gives it to them.  This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.

Maundy Thursday is weird.  It is uncomfortable.  It is shocking.  It is intimate, and we feel vulnerable.  And that shocking intimacy is something of the point.  Jesus gets close to us—to our own imperfect bodies, our own imperfect souls, and offers us his perfect body, his perfect self.  And we can’t do anything to hold up our end of the bargain.  We can’t deserve it.  All we can do is receive his gift.  All we can do is say thank you.  All we can do is live, knowing that he has chosen us.  That he gives himself to us.  That he draws us in love to him.

Sometimes it helps me to hear things said different ways.  Sometimes poetry helps me understand an idea a little better.  Sometimes the poetry of the footwashing, as uncomfortable and weird as it is, helps me to understand that the Eucharist is even more intimate.  That Jesus wants to serve you and me.  That Jesus wants to love you and me.   Lord, how can I serve you?!  I want to ask.  And Jesus seems to answer, There’s plenty of time for you to serve others as I have served you.  But tonight, at this supper, sit back, have your feet washed, and receive my self offering.  My own body and blood.

This poem from George Herbert tells it better than I can.  Maybe it can help you prepare to hear Our Lord’s words, “This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.” 

A poem, from George Herbert:

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,              

      Guilty of dust and sin.             

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack   

      From my first entrance in,     

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning         5

      If I lack'd anything.   

'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'             

     Love said, 'You shall be he.'   

'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, 

      I cannot look on Thee.'              10

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,             

      'Who made the eyes but I?'  

'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame          

      Go where it doth deserve.'  

'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'      15

      'My dear, then I will serve.'  

'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'        

      So I did sit and eat.[3]

Come and have your feet washed.  Come to the altar and receive the gift of Christ’s presence in the Holy Communion, the sacrament of his Body and Blood.  Come.  Sit, and eat.

---

[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/04/johnson-word-origins?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/theweirdnessofholyweek (accessed 4/2/15)

[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43581080 (accessed 3/29/18)

[3] George Herbert, “Love bade me welcome,” drawn from The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250-1900, ed Arthur Quiller Couch, 1919, as published online at http://www.bartleby.com/101/286.html (accessed 4/2/15)

From Glory to Passion

The Rev'd Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Palm Sunday
March 25, 2018

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

In our first reading from Saint Mark’s Gospel, Jesus arrives to Jerusalem for the first time and he is greeted with people spreading their cloaks on the road and spreading leafy branches.

Shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Truly a grand entrance for someone’s first visit.

So far in Saint Mark’s Gospel, Jerusalem is only mentioned as the place where some of the curious have been attracted and from where hostile scribes have questioned Jesus. Yes, Jerusalem was at the center of the Jewish political and religious identity, but up to this point in Saint Mark’s Gospel, Jerusalem has not played a pivotal role in the life and ministry of Jesus.

But this will quickly change. Almost immediately after Jesus’ grand entrance into Jerusalem, the centrality and importance of Jerusalem in the life of Jesus becomes a focal point. And while Jerusalem might have played a passive role up to this point, Jesus knows to well the shift that’s about to take place.

While on the road to Jerusalem, just a few verses prior the account of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem, we’re  told that Jesus took the Twelve aside and said to them “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, the Son of Man will be handed over to chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

Jerusalem which has served as the epicenter of Jewish life, will now serve as the final destination of “The Way,” that is the way of the Cross, the path Jesus has been on since his baptism in the Jordan River. See, in Saint Mark’s Gospel, there are no nativity stories or infancy narratives, there is not much detail or commentary on the actions of Jesus or extended thoughts or explanations from Saint Mark. Rather, all that takes place is to point us to the cross.

While the cross and resurrection is the ultimate destination, there seems to be a sudden and rapid change of events in Saint Mark’s Gospel. This quick change may be disorientating and even a bit daunting. After all, in what seems like a matter of moments the crowds go from shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” to “ Crucify him!”

In today’s liturgy, we personally experience this sudden change of events. We begun today’s liturgy recalling Jesus’ glorious entrance into Jerusalem, and not much long after, we turn our attention to his capture, trial, passion, and murder.

The rapid shift in today’s liturgy from Jesus’ glorious entrance into Jerusalem to his passion reminds us of how quickly things turn in Jesus’ own life. First proclaimed as the blessed one and then as the king of Jews, Jesus does not rebel against the forces that seek to destroy him put exposes their corruption and malice. As Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians states, Jesus “became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.”

Jesus sought not to prove himself to officials but to put on stage human sin and death, and the evil grip they have on humanity. And just as immediately as our attention shifts from a glorious entrance into Jerusalem, to our Lord’s passion and death, it will shift to the third day. Through his resurrection, Jesus defeats the very things that seek to consume us, inviting us to follow not only in the way of the cross but in the way of the resurrection.

Here we are, beginning this journey, waving our palms. And just like those crowds, one moment shouting hosanna and in the next crucify him. In the week to come, we will continue to walk in the way of Jesus by enacting our Lord’s footwashing and the ancient Christian practice of venerating the wood of the cross. And ultimately experiencing the empty tomb.

And why do we do this? Why are we here waving palms and continuing to participate in the rituals of Holy Week?

The reason why we do this is to put ourselves in the midst of our Lord’s passion. Not merely as bystanders or observers but as participants in the passion. It is to help us experience the passion alongside Jesus, his disciples, and the crowds. It is to help us understand, as much as we possibly can, the deep love and faithfulness God has for us.

Finally is to make us experience not only our Lord’s suffering but his triumph which is to become our own victory. His passion becomes our passion, his resurrection becomes our resurrection.

So let us prepare ourselves for the journey ahead of us. Let us be present here in this place, seeking to come to full unity with God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We Wish to See Jesus

Mr Patrick Keyser
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 18, 2018

‘They came to Philip… and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”’

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

Last month I had the opportunity to take a weekend course at the Divinity School with the Rev. Becca Stevens, an Episcopal priest and founder of Thistle Farms, an organization based in Nashville that helps women in recovery from trafficking, prostitution, drug addiction, and homelessness. Becca started this residential community, called Magdalene, in 1997 with a simple vision. She wanted to create a place where women who wanted to get off of the streets could live together for two years at no cost and begin to heal. There would no external authority figure in the house to govern the lives of the women. Much like a monastic community, the women developed their own rule of life that governed the way they lived together. The community was grounded on the belief that ‘Love Heals,’ and this simple mantra has guided the work of Thistle Farms for over 20 years. It is Becca’s deep conviction, born out of her own journey from abuse to healing, that no matter the depths of brokenness or the pain we have suffered, love has the power to heals us, because love is the most powerful force for change in the world.

A few years after establishing the first community, Becca realized that the women of Thistle Farms were still incredibly poor and needed some way to earn an income. She strongly believed that in order for the women to truly have agency and freedom they needed economic independence. A new idea was quickly born. Becca founded a social enterprise in which the women of Thistle Farms became producing all-natural candles and body products.

This enterprise has expanded rapidly and now brings in millions of dollars of revenue each year. As Becca writes, ‘there is poetic justice in producing healing and nourishing products for the body, all crafted by women whose bodies have endured years of abuse.’[1]

The story of Thistle Farms is an inspiring one. After learning from and with Becca through the weekend I left feeling really good and energized for ministry. I share the story of Thistle Farms with you, though, not simply because it is a nice and inspirational story, though I do hope you will consider reading more about the work and ministry of this place and the products the women of Thistle Farm produce. I share this story with you because it is a testament to the power of the gospel, and it illustrates what Jesus is trying to teach us today.

Today’s gospel passage moves us deep into the heart of John’s gospel. Narratively it comes just before the story of the Last Supper and the footwashing. In the sections immediately preceding it, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in Bethany, then Mary lovingly and extravagantly washed Jesus’ feet with costly perfume and her hair. Jesus then entered the holy city of Jerusalem in great triumph with acclamations of ‘Hosanna’ from the crowd. These events all took place in anticipation of the Passover feast, which is the ‘festival’ that is mentioned. Today’s passage begins by noting that among those who had come to worship at the Passover festival were some Greeks. Presumably they had traveled a considerable distance, and we have no indication as to how they had come to know about this extraordinary person called Jesus. The passage tells us that they first come not to Jesus but to Philip and then request to see Jesus. Philip, in turn, goes not to Jesus but to Andrew. Only then do the two disciples go to Jesus, and though the two disciples tell Him about their arrival, the text never mentions a direct encounter between the Greeks and Jesus. They fade into the background, and instead Jesus uses this moment to openly announce the events that are to come.

He tells Philip and Andrew, ‘the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.’ This word ‘glorify’ appears several times in today’s passage, and the concept of ‘glory’ is an important one both in the gospel of John and in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew word is kavod, which is used to describe the majestic and awe-inspiring power of God. In the book of Exodus, God’s glory is described as a devouring fire on the top of Mount Sinai. At the end of the book, the tabernacle, the moveable place of worship that the Israelites used during their time in the desert, is completed and God’s kavod fills the tabernacle. The same term is used again in the book of Ezekiel when, toward the end of the book, the prophet sees a vision of the glory of God returning to the temple. It comes with the sound of mighty waters, and this glory makes the earth shine with radiance (Ezekiel 43:2). In the Hebrew Bible, God’s glory was something that would have almost demanded reverence. It was something to which one would have bowed down in awe and wonder.

Jesus takes this notion of glory, this idea of God’s awe-inspiring majesty, and turns it completely on its head. He begins to illustrate what he means by ‘glory’ and ‘glorify’ by using an agricultural image. He tells the disciples, ‘unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’ We can easily see how this image points to Jesus’ own death and resurrection. Like the grain of wheat, Jesus will die and be placed into the earth, in a tomb, and sealed away. From his death, though, will come abundant life. But Jesus does not use this image to describe only himself and his own death. It is also the way we as his followers must travel.

Jesus continues to instruct his disciples saying, ‘whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.’ Jesus’ path leads to death, and so too must the path of those of us who seek to follow him. To be clear, I’m not talking about physical death here, though we know that one day we will all face the death of our mortal bodies. No, I’m talking about the type of death that comes with the Christian life, the dying to self, to sin, to the ways of the world. The Christian life is not an easy one. If we truly live it out and follow Jesus we will suffer loss. We cannot ignore this reality. Yet though the way of Jesus is challenging, we also know it to be the way of life. The great promise of the gospel is that life emerges from death. And Jesus shows us how to follow this path with courage. He tells his disciples, ‘my soul is troubled,’ and what should I say- “Father, save me from this hour?” No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.’ Jesus knows what lies ahead. He knows what he must do, and moves forward with total trust in the Father.

At the end of today’s passage Jesus proclaims, ‘now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ The gospel writer adds, ‘he said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.’ This is what Jesus means when he says he will be glorified. Stripped of his clothing, beaten, spat upon, crowned with thorns, nailed to a cross, and lifted up for all to see and mock, Jesus will be glorified. And the whole world will see the glory of God, not as described in the Hebrew Bible but in the form of one who emptied himself completely and was obedient unto a humiliating death on a cross. And we who see this glory will fall down before him in awe and reverence.

In older calendars of the Church, this Fifth Sunday in Lent marked the beginning of Passiontide, a tradition we still observe here at Christ Church. Our attention and focus now turn with Jesus toward Jerusalem, toward the events of Holy Week, and ultimately to the cross. As we continue our journey with our Lord toward Golgotha, we are invited to consider what needs to die in our own lives. Jesus reminds us of the core paradox of discipleship: ‘those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.’ Friends, what in your life needs to die this season? What sins cling to you and separate you from God? Whatever they may be, take them and bring them to the cross of Christ, and be assured of the promise that those things that fall into the earth and die will bring forth much fruit. That is the message of the gospel. We see it in our own lives, and we can see it in the ministries of places like Thistle Farms. We see it in the lives of women like Regina, who was one of the first women to join the Magdalene community. Like so many of the women who come through Thistle Farms, she had suffered severe trauma in her childhood and had been stuck in a life of addiction, prostitution, and trafficking. One night soon after Regina had joined the Magdalene community, Becca tells how she stopped by the home to check on Regina and found her dancing all by herself. She was dancing from sheer joy. It was an embodied prayer of profound gratitude to God, for she who had once been ensnared by the worldly powers of death and destruction, addiction and exploitation, was now experiencing new life. Now twenty-one years later, Regina is an employee of Thistle Farms and has helped over 200 hundred women get off the streets.[2]

Friends, as we move through this Passiontide toward the cross, may we, like the Greeks at the Passover festival, seek Jesus. If we make that our prayer we are assured that we will indeed behold our Lord in his glory, not as radiant light or fire on the mountain but as one lifted high upon the cross drawing all the world to himself. We will glory in his cross. We will come and adore. And we will see Jesus.

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

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[1] The Rev. Becca Stevens, Love Heals (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2017) 2.

[2] Stevens, Love Heals, 61-62.

Lift High the Cross

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 11, 2018

I grew up for the first six years of my life in a house in the country that backed up on a pine thicket.  The trees there were longleaf pine, probably at the time only about 10 years old--not towering trees, but tall enough to a small boy of four or five.  Throughout the year and especially in the fall these trees drop some of their needles, layering on the floor of the forest a bed of pinestraw that builds over time.  My dog at the time liked to roam through the thicket, chasing rabbits and squirrels, and I’d follow him across the soft, quiet pine straw floor of the thicket.

  During the heat of the day the pine trees were cooling, filtering the light of the sun onto the forest floor, but by dusk they provided cover of darkness for forest creatures to come out, and the thicket came alive with the sound of crickets, cicadas, and frogs from the nearby pond.  Dusk and dark were the times that, even as the thicket found its night-time voice, that another sound appeared, as well.  I didn’t like to walk into the thicket at night, for fear of stepping on the small brown hognosed snakes that lived there, silently slithering across the pine needle bed, hunting for food, for, when they were disturbed, they’d puff up a bit and hiss.  We called them spreading adders.  They were harmless, not aggressive, not poisonous, but that hiss was enough to strike fear in the heart of a small child.  And while as an adult I’m sure it was the wind in the pine trees that made its own sound, as a child I was sure there was a chorus of spreading adders out in the forest, singing a song, warning me to stay away, quietly hissing through the night.

And that’s how my discomfort with snakes was born.

Maybe you like snakes, but I don’t.  And so this story of Moses and the serpents is an uncomfortable one for me! 

You remember the story:  the Israelites have been freed from bondage in Egypt but are in sojourn in the wilderness, wandering for forty years (that is to say, a long time) until they enter the land promised them.  And they’ve grown weary--impatient, the story tells us, and they’re complaining.  “Why’d you bring us up here to die?  There is no food, there is no water, the food is terrible.”  (Num 21.5)  And it gets worse.  There’s no food, the food is terrible--and also there are snakes.  Poisonous serpents, our translation says; firey serpents, the Authorized translation says.  And they bite--and people die. 

And when the people acknowledge their sin in speaking against God--in this complaining, this being caught up in the bad so much that they miss the good--they pray to God to remove the snakes.  And so God tells Moses to make a staff with a bronze snake on it--and when the Israelites are bitten, they can look upon the staff with the snake--and live.

Now, there are lots of questions that come up for me in this story.  What are the snakes about?  When I was a child I was pretty sure these snakes were the spreading adders in the pine thicket!  But the language isn’t so clear about them.  One of the Hebrew words used is generally translated as serpent or snake--the same word used about the serpent in the garden of Eden, the wily one that convinces Adam and Eve that they can be like God.  Another word used is seraphim, which gets translated fiery serpent, or poisonous snake.  It’s the same word as the seraphim in Isaiah that touch the hot coal to Isaiah’s lips, blotting out his sin, as scripture says, and Isaiah replies to God’s call, “Here I am, send me.”  (Is 6.1-9) 

Are these seraphim, these snakes, literally desert vipers that bite and kill?  Are they seraphic messengers from God, as Isaiah’s visitors were, calling God’s people back to right relationship with God?  Are they a holdover from an ancient Babylonian god, a signpost on the road to monotheism for the people of Israel? 

Whatever the serpents are, when one of them is lifted up, the people that look upon it, even though they are bitten, do not die.  And what is that miracle about? Is this some sort of ancient medicine, that gazing upon the agent of the poison somehow renders it ineffective?  One might reasonably wonder if the serpent and staff that Moses raises up is connected somehow to our modern day medical symbols, the staff and serpent in the Yale School of Medicine crest, for example.  (That symbol is actually the Rod of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, whose temple feasts we heard about in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians just a few Sundays ago.)[1] 

I can’t offer an explanation about exactly what the snakes are, or why the bronze snake on a pole makes their bite less deadly.  But this instance was so important for the people of Israel in their journey that the staff with the snake on it was apparently kept and, when the temple at Jerusalem was built centuries later, the staff was raised in the temple, only to be destroyed along with the hill altars and sacred poles in King Hezekiah’s reformations three centuries later.

The problem, the sin, of the people of Israel was not that they were complaining.  It wasn’t even the snakes, though they were a whole other problem all to themselves!  The problem was that they had forgotten God’s mercy.  Here they had just been freed from bondage to Pharaoh--set free from slavery--and they were complaining about the food they had in the wilderness!  They’re complaining so much that they’re exaggerating. “We have no food, and the food we have is terrible!” they say. They have lost sight of the main thing.  They’ve lost sight of God’s mercy.

Perhaps the image of the serpent on the pole helped them remember God’s mercy--that they were spared from slavery, that they were spared from death.  Whatever it was, or however it worked, that ultimately was the message--that, through God’s mercy, God’s people were saved.

And isn’t that the message we hear today?

Today, Laetare Sunday, when the introit invites us to rejoice, we begin to make a turn--in the lectionary readings and in our hearts--from a self-examination of our sins, a focus on those things which  separate us from God and creation, and towards the joy of God’s saving works.  We turn our gaze to the marvelous mercy of God, the ways in which God reaches out to us, even when we try to separate ourselves from God, drawing us back to God’s own self.

The gospel of John proclaims that “… God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (Jn 3.16)  That the entire point of Jesus, God’s son, coming into the world was to draw the world, us, all of creation, closer to God--back into relationship.  That the world, through Him, might be saved. (Jn 3.17) 

That God wants to be with us so much that God comes among us, even amongst our sinfulness, our willfulness, our neglect--our disregard for God; that God comes amongst us even as we complain and moan about how bad our lives are and forget for the moment how very good God is; even in the midst of our blindness, God comes in the person of Jesus Christ, to live and die, to be among us, all for the sole purpose of drawing us closer to God.

The Israelites looked upon the bronze serpent on the staff, we look upon the crucified body of our Lord, raised on the cross, raised as a standard, showing whom we follow, whom we believe in.  This is a God of mercy, a God of love, who comes among us, empties himself, and triumphs over death.  And we rejoice indeed at this great love--this love that has first loved us--that invites us to love one another, in God’s name.

We know that love.  We know that sacrifice.  We know that triumph over death.  We celebrate it each week, here, as we walk under and through the roodscreen, as we receive the Body of Christ in the Sacrament, and as we bear that love out into the streets of New Haven and beyond.

There’s something about lifting up that banner--about lifting up that cross--that’s important.  It’s only when the Israelites gaze upon the bronze serpent that they are healed.  It’s when Jesus is lifted up that the world is given life.  And next week in the gospel reading we’ll hear a reprise of Jesus’s insistence that he must be lifted up:  “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (Jn 12.32). 

That’s the verse on the reverse of the rood screen here--on the back of the beam that holds the cross, just there where we enter the choir each week to go up to the altar to receive communion.  When you receive communion today and rise from the rail, you can turn around and see it there, carved into the wood.

And when you turn around and look, you’ll notice something else, something that Father Bob Fix, who served as a seminarian here at Christ Church in the early 80’s, has pointed out.  When we enter under the cross, under the rood beam, we can see the figure of Jesus suspended, crucified.  When we kneel at the altar rail, we receive the Body of Christ in the sacrament.  And when we turn around from the rail, after we’ve received the Body of Christ, the rood itself--the cross--is empty.  And it’s so.  The back side of that cross is completely plain; there’s no corpus, no body on it.

Fr Ficks points out that, in our communions, the Body of Christ is now present in us.  Through the gift of the Incarnation, God has come among us.  Christ, through the grace bestowed in the Sacraments, now inhabits us.  And we go back out into the nave, back out into the streets of New Haven, back out into our daily lives, carrying Christ with us.  Bearing him forth.  Carrying that banner, that staff, that cross, lifted up, out into the world.

When  you find something so good, don’t you want to tell people about it?  I can’t tell you the number of folks who want to tell me about their fitness regimen, or a new restaurant they’ve found, a book they’ve read or movie they’ve watched, a trip they’ve taken--something that’s caught their imaginations for just a second.  Something worthy of their attention, something they think is worth sharing.

We have received the greatest love imaginable; God has come among us.  Christ has given his life in love and service to all of creation.  And the good news is that he has triumphed over death--and that he invites us into that new, everlasting life.  That’s good news.  How can we NOT share it?

Now, let’s be clear, I’m not telling you that we should go out and argue with folks, convince them to follow Jesus, coerce them even.  The work of conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit.  All I am suggesting is that we are called to lift the standard, to lift up Jesus.  To claim Him in our lives, in our work, in our very being.  “I volunteer at the Soup Kitchen because it’s what Jesus teaches.”  “I believe this because of my Christian faith.”  “I chose this line of work because it’s a way that I can share the love that God has shared with me, that I meet in Jesus.”

Whatever word or phrase we put on it, lift high the cross of Christ in our work, in our lives, each and every day.  Share Jesus’s love with the world, because he has first loved us.  Let us this Lent turn our eyes to the cross.  Let us show people Jesus.

---

[1] See “Going Vegetarian for Jesus,” a sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany at christchurchnh.org/sermons, and Paul’s writing in 1 Corinthians 8:1-13.

Can Anger be Righteous?

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Third Sunday in Lent
March 4, 2018

When I was a child I had a small leather bound bible in the Authorized translation, a “red letter” bible, the ones that had the words of Jesus printed in red while the rest of the typeface was in black.  I don’t recall if this bible was a gift or one that I purloined from my parents’ bookshelf, but however it came to pass, the red-letter King James edition of the bible made its way to my bookshelf in my room.  I remember how tissue-thin the pages were, how hard they were to separate sometimes, and how bold and exciting that red typeface was against the black and white of the page.  And I remember that, throughout the book, there were stitched in a several sets of pages printed in color, on thicker stock--illustrations of the stories and scenes described in the biblical text itself.  Necessarily, because of the printing technology, they were grouped together and would sometimes be distant from the texts they depicted.  And so you could get a very brief synopsis of the highlights of the biblical narrative by just flipping through these sections, these illustrations, which I did.

There were images of the plagues in Egypt, of Sampson and Delilah, of Noah’s ark, and the tower of Babel.  But the only image I recall from the gospels is the one depicted in today’s reading, Jesus casting the moneychangers out of the temple.  Or, as it’s sometimes called, the cleansing of the temple. 

There was Jesus, very white with long flowing brown hair, in a clean white spotless flowing robe, sandals on his feet, and a whip of cords over his head, looking rather fierce, charging the tables of the money changers, throwing them over with one hand, while whipping the air with the cords in the other.  Animals were scattering, people were running, and the whip was going to town.  Jesus looked quite mad.   (If you don’t believe me, go and check out the picture by El Greco in the National Gallery.  In this 16th C rendering, Jesus is actually whipping the people around him, and in this case he looks quite calm about it.[1]) 

This image of Jesus as angry and attacking was a bit troubling to my young mind; my grandmother was the one in our family that got angry, and you didn’t want to be the object of her anger!  The rest of us tried to be nice. Anger surely wasn’t a good thing.  But the exegetical work of the adults around me assured me that Jesus was just exhibiting “righteous anger,” an anger directed towards an injustice or a wrong, which made it all okay to be angry.  The moneychangers were cheating people by charging an unfair exchange rate.  They had taken the focus away from God in the temple by focusing on the mechanisms, the things that needed to be bought, in order to offer right worship to God.  So Jesus was rightly angry.  He was wiping away the corruption that had seized the temple and putting things right again.  His anger was righteous.  It was holy.

Now, most of these things are probably true.  Whenever you get a bunch of folks selling something, at least some of them are going to do it dishonestly.  Indeed, in the synoptic gospels, Jesus calls the temple a “den of robbers.”  (Matt 21.13, Mk 11.18, Lk 19.46)  And when we put the way we pray, the method and mechanics of our prayer, above our relationship with God, we’ve gotten things backwards, rather than letting these things be tools we use to relate to God.  So these may be reasonable explanations of why Jesus is concerned about the selling of animals and the money changers in the temple and so on.  But what about this righteous anger?  I still wasn’t so sure about angry Jesus.

But righteous anger could be a seductive sort of thought right now, especially when our society is so fraught with anger.  We can’t seem to actually hear one another.  Our political and social discourse is peppered with ad hominem attacks.  Everything is black and white, either-or; there’s no middle ground or, it seems, even a middle way forward.  And it’s no wonder our emotional levels are at a fever pitch, that our civility is strained.  For the issues we are facing as a society--poverty, racism, sexual violence, gun violence--all of these are life and death issues, and we are not wrong to turn our full attention towards them, to take note of these ways in which great evil is moving in our land, in our relationships, in our lives.  More than once I’ve heard rallying cries for righteous anger:  if you’re not angry, you’re not listening.  If you care about xyz issue, you should be outraged.  Our anger is a performative requirement for showing that we are engaged, we are aware, we care about those around us.  To be engaged in the issues of our day is to be angry.  Or so the conventional wisdom seems to say.

And here, in this passage, we have a model for righteous anger, don’t we?

Or do we?

I want to suggest that, at least in the gospel of John, I’m not sure that “righteous anger” is really the focus.  Perhaps more controversially, I’m not even sure “righteous anger” is a thing in John.

Let’s look at the text for a few clues that, for me, unravel this concept.

It’s true that, in the synoptic gospels, Jesus drives out everyone that’s selling something in the Temple.  John is the only gospel, however, where Jesus takes the time to make a whip of cords.  Artistic representations aside, he’s not acting in a fit of rage; it must have taken a few minutes to knot and tie all the ropes together.  And John is pretty clear, El Greco’s picture not withstanding, that the whip is to move all the animals out, the sheep and the cows.  If you’ve ever been around livestock, you’ll realize that the sheep each weigh more than you do, and the cows are just tremendous, over half a ton in weight.  These aren’t pet livestock or even breeding stock that have been handled; they’re the livestock that’s been raised specifically for sacrifice, for slaughter, so they’re not particularly disposed to go where you want them to.  They can hold their own; they may need a little tap to get their attention, to get them moving, to get them out of the temple.  But nowhere in John does Jesus use the whip against the people doing the selling.  Just the sheep and the cattle.

We read in Matthew and Mark as well as John that Jesus overturns the tables of the moneychangers; in Matthew and Mark he even overturns the seats of those who are selling doves for sacrifice.  But in John he just tells the dove merchants to pack up and get out:  “Take these things out of here!  Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”  (John 2.16)

And that seems to be the point--the disruption of the focus of religious activity, of the object of worship--a refocusing on God God’s own self--on the kingdom of God--on right relationship with God, which, after all, was the entire point of the Temple sacrifice.  We hear in Mark (11.16) that, after Jesus has driven all the merchants out of the Temple, that no one is able to carry anything through it.  Instead, Jesus disrupts the Temple economy--the entire way that people were praying--and instead enters into a teaching relationship with them. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus has been teaching, giving good news, hope, healing--imparting the wisdom of the Kingdom of God to the people he encounters.  Now he engages questions of authority--by whose authority he teaches and heals.  In John, towards the end of our passage, the scribes and Pharisees ask for a sign, and Jesus gives them himself as a sign:  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (Jn 2.19)

Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians that “For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (Cor 1, 1.22-24)  Jesus becomes both the sign and the wisdom that the Jewish and Greek traditions seek, and yet the message of the cross is disruptive to our conventional wisdom; it’s foolish, even, as Saint Paul says.  We’d not be wrong to expect a warrior king to use his power and set things right, to mow down injustice and oppression.  This is the sort of Messiah we might seek.  But our Messiah dies, crucified on the cross.  We might seek an ethical teacher that wows us with his philosophical discourse, that shows us how to be our best selves, to live our best lives, to engage life to the fullest and live for ourselves.  But instead we encounter a human being, fully divine, who shows us how to love others, who pours himself out and dies.  Who invites us to pour ourselves out in love for him and for one another.

The angry, powerful Jesus that turns over the tables in the temple, that wields his whip, is an attractive idea.  The idea of our own agency, our own righteous anger, righting the wrongs of the world, is a tempting corollary. But that’s not really the Jesus we meet in John.   Ultimately the Jesus we meet loves the world around him.  Loves all the people around him.  Loves them so much that he submits to an execution and death.  And he rises again to be with them--with us--forever. 

That’s our sign and our wisdom.  That’s who Jesus is.  And that’s the life he invites us into--that self-offering love, that self-offering life that can stand in the face of any suffering and death the world deals, that life, that love, that ultimately prevails.

So what does that mean about our own anger at the evil that surrounds us, the evil that we endure, the evil that we visit on others? Can our anger be righteous?  Or asked another way, is it wrong to be angry?

As best I can figure, anger is morally neutral.  It’s a part of our lives.  It’s a human response.  We certainly see anger in Jesus, after all.  He is at the very least annoyed with these dove-and-sheep-and-cattle-sellers, with the Thomas Cooke agents, the merchants there in the Temple.  There are other instances when Jesus could be angry; he seems annoyed by the Syrophoenician woman who just wants healing for her daughter.  He seems annoyed--or at least startled--by the woman with a hemorrhage who grabs his garment in the crowd.  But he heals them.  The kingdom of God has come near.

Should we be angry?  I’m not sure “should” is the right word.  Perhaps the question might be, “Am I angry,” and “Why am I angry?”  Perhaps we could be attentive to what our anger is about, and what it’s doing.  Does it motivate us to do something, to have an awareness, to take action, against the injustice that surrounds us?  Then perhaps it’s righteous--that is to say, perhaps it’s helping us be in right relationship with God and with one another.  Or is it debilitating?  Does it fill us with fear, paralyze us, keep us from action?  Does it separate us from God? Does it separate us from one another? Then perhaps it is not helpful.  Perhaps it’s damaging.  And perhaps, and in truth, we have less control than we’d like over our emotions, and instead we could focus on our actions.  If we are angry, what do we do about it?  And when we find ourselves overwhelmed by evil, overcome by anger, can’t we take that anger and lay it at the foot of the cross?

It’s no accident that, when Jesus is asked to point out the most important part of the law, he summarizes it by saying to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Everything else, all the ways we are to be in the world, come from this way of loving.  When we can stop to love God, love others, love ourselves, then our whole way of being is changed.  When we recognize how we ourselves have been loved, everything is changed.

As we examine our lives this Lent, as we examine our sins--as we attend to those things that separate us from God--let’s also be attentive to how we are separated from one another.  Does anger separate us--even when rooted in a sense of injustice?  Can we turn towards love, even in the midst of working for justice?

The image of running in with a whip, righting wrongs, turning over tables, is a seductive one.  But ultimately the Jesus we meet is the Jesus that tells Peter to put his sword away.  He isn’t turning over tables in the Temple to punish folks, or to right some liturgical wrongs.  He’s doing these things to dramatically change the narrative.  In Luke, just after driving out the money changers, Jesus teaches.  In Matthew he invites people into the temple and heals them.  He behaves as though the values of the kingdom of God were already ruling the world, for, when Jesus comes near, they are.

And that’s what we’re invited to do.  In the face of great injustice, to love like Jesus.  To teach his foolish wisdom.  To join in his healing ministry to the world.  For it is only the love of Christ that can heal the world.  It’s only the love of Christ that can right wrongs, heal injustice, and heal broken hearts.  It’s not the anger of the whip or the power of the sword, but the vulnerability of love that upends the whole system.

As we walk this way of Lent, I invite us all to examine how we deal with our own anger.  To strive in all things to love God and God’s creation first.  For everything else will follow.

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[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Driving_the_Money_Changers_from_the_Temple_(El_Greco,_Washington)#/media/File:El_Greco_13.jpg

Our Unity with the Cross

The Rev'd Carlos de la Torre
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Second Sunday in Lent
February 25, 2018

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

I am going to start by sharing with you a somewhat embarrassing story about me. When I was in high school, I failed Chemistry. I didn’t just struggle through chemistry class or simply perform poorly on my exams. I failed, I got a big ole F on my report card.

So I’m always cautious to borrow chemistry terms when speaking on any matter. However, in reading today’s Gospel passage a chemistry term, that I’ve somehow managed to remember after all these years, came to mind -- synthesis reaction .

In a synthesis reaction, two or more simple substances combine to form a more complex substance.

Saint Mark’s gospel calls us to look inwardly at our own synthesis, at our new substance, not merely as human beings, but as disciples of Jesus and as members of the Body of Christ.

Please humor me as I tap into my failed inner chemist -- What today’s passage calls us to examine is how we humans, substance A, combine with the cross of Christ, substance B. In other words, what does it mean for us to be merged with the cross, following in the footsteps of Jesus. The Evangelist invites us to look at ourselves as a new substance, formed not only by our human reality but by the reality of the cross.

And in order to take up our cross and follow Jesus, we are first to deny ourselves. So what does it mean for us to deny ourselves?

Our Lord’s call for our own self denial does not mean that we need to relinquish the enjoyment of certain things, as though doing without them or enduring suffering will make us holy or a more faithful disciple of Jesus.[1]

Professor Eugene Boring comments, that the word translated as “deny” in today’s gospel is found elsewhere in Saint Mark’s gospel only in reference to Saint Peter's denial of Jesus. “Deny” is the opposite of “confess” or to “acknowledge”; the hearers of this message are called to deny themselves rather than deny Jesus, that is, no longer to make oneself the top priority and the center of one’s own universe.[2]

To deny ourselves is to confess and acknowledge Christ above all things. It means heeding the words of Jesus, and not being ashamed of him or his teachings. Not being shy to follow in the ways of Jesus, and more importantly, not being scared to stumble as followers of Christ or wrestle with certain aspects of the Christian life and our own personal life along the way.

To confess and acknowledge Christ is to affirm that our God is not ashamed to be our God. It is to affirm that even when we stray away we are constantly invited to return to God. God is not afraid to embrace our humanness, our imperfections, our sins, and shortcoming. Even if we deny Jesus, just as Saint Peter did on the night of our Lord’s capture, we are invited, again and again, to return to God.

The call to deny ourselves demands of us to elevate Jesus above all things, above all rulers, and all other powers of this world. It demands of us to elevate the love of God above all human systems that seek to destroy human life. It demands of us to elevate the working, and to grow in our trust, of the Spirit to guide our lives. As Christians, as disciples of Jesus, we are no longer mere mortals, through the waters of Baptism we have become members of the Body of Christ.

In becoming members of Body of Christ, we have been united with all Christians in a most powerful and universal way. You and I have at least one thing in common with 30% of the world’s population, 2.2 billion people.

So what does it mean to up our cross and follow Jesus?

Let’s be clear, “taking up once cross does not refer to the inconveniences, or even the suffering, that are a part of human life. Our pain and suffering are not “just the cross I have to bear.” Jesus is not commanding endurance of the pains of life, but the voluntary taking up of the cross, and sharing the suffering involved that is being a follower, a disciple of Jesus.”[3]

As a members of the Body of Christ, as disciples of Jesus, we are to look at our lives through the cross of Christ. To pick up our cross and follow Jesus is to follow in the path of Jesus -- the path to Calvary . And this path is not an easy one. The way of the cross admits that human suffering, and our human capacity to bring about suffering and pain to others, is a reality in our world. And the way of cross also admits to us that at the end of the road ahead there is not death but life, there is resurrection.

Our unity with the cross, our membership in the Body of Christ, our denial of self and our confession of Jesus above all things, gives us the language to interpret and speak about the world around us. The cross can and should become the symbol in which we look at our daily lives, and even the conflicts of this nation and the world. Dare I say, it gives us the authority to call out places where evil and death dwell, and it allows us to affirm and pray for resurrection to take place.

In denying ourselves and taking up our cross, we are affirming and confessing in the one holy and living God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[1] Eugene Boring. Mark: A Commentary (The New Testament Library). Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. P 244.

[2]  Eugene Boring. Mark: A Commentary (The New Testament Library). Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. P 244.

[3]  Eugene Boring. Mark: A Commentary (The New Testament Library). Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. P 244.

Where is our hope?

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
First Sunday in Lent
February 18, 2018

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  (Mark 1.15)

Most Sunday mornings before Morning Prayer, while Patrick and Zak are lighting the candles and opening up the church, I walk around the building, down Elm Street and up Broadway, picking up the trash from the night before.  There are usually a few bottles, a can maybe, a takeout container, and always a few Styrofoam cups.  Always Styrofoam.  I drop the handfuls of trash in the trashcan on Broadway near the Morgan memorial, and I walk into the church to the sacristy to wash my hands. 

Somehow that Sunday morning ritual has helped me become more aware of the trash that we throw away--of our cultural willingness to just toss things aside, in the bin, or on the street.  In the Rectory, probably like at your house, all my trash goes in a bin with a lid.  Every few days I pull the trash bag out of the bin, tie it up, and toss it in the dumpster.  It’s neat, out of site, practically hermetically sealed.  Then a waste disposal company comes twice a week and hauls the whole thing away.  I never have to think about it again. 

Our culture is addicted to throwing things away.  Coffee cups, take-out containers, old printers and laptops, clothes we’ve outgrown, tools that are broken.  Toss it in the bin.  And because someone else hauls it away, it’s out of sight, out of mind.  At least until the bill comes.

Do you know we pay almost seven thousand dollars a year to have the trash from our campus hauled away?  And that’s just here, at Broadway and Elm.  Think about what the hospital must spend--or Yale--or the City of New Haven!  Throwing things away is big business. 

It wasn’t always this way, was it?  I seem to remember a time when we valued things, repaired things, held onto them for longer.  And that’s still the case with objects of great value, of course.  When an inexpensive, mass-produced dish breaks, I am quick to toss that out in the garbage.  I can buy another.  But if a fine piece of porcelain breaks, conservators will repair it carefully.  And paradoxically, the greater the value of the piece, the less it’s diminished by the repair.  Take, for example, the Japanese practice called kintsugi (ken SU gi), a method of repairing broken pottery using a mixture of lacquer and gold dust.  By joining the pieces back together with the lacquer and gold dust, the piece is mended, but the crack is not only visible but actually enhanced.  You can see the gold shining where the mend was made.  The method values the nature of the piece itself and, while not obscuring the original crack, makes a repair that has its own beauty.  Indeed, pieces repaired by the kintsugi method have a beauty all their own, and as the method developed, it’s possible that some collectors intentionally broke pieces just to have them repaired in this beautiful manner.[1]  The piece mended by kintsugi has special beauty because it is not merely repaired; it is transformed into something new.

When something breaks, what do we do with it?  Do we keep it or toss it out?  Do we mend it or throw it away?  In the first lesson today we hear God’s promise to a broken creation—that story of God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants and even the animals that God will never again destroy the earth with a flood.   Do you remember the story—how things got to the point that there was a flood to begin with?  Earlier in Genesis we read that “the LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.  And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.  So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’”  “And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.’”  (Gen 6.11, 13) 

This is a far cry from the creation story, when God creates and calls all of Creation good.  Now that same creation grieves God’s heart.  It is torn apart by violence.  Evil and corruption have seized the day.  And you know the story.  The earth is flooded, and everything except Noah, his family, and the animals they save on the ark is destroyed.  God makes a new start—a new beginning—with a new earth, to be inhabited only by these righteous eight persons and all their accompanying animals saved on the ark.   

And immediately that new beginning is compromised.

The next thing we read in Genesis is about a breakdown in relationships in Noah’s family--an affair of sorts--more violence, and Noah curses his grandson in despair and anger.  A wholly renewed creation, and humanity manages to mess things up within the first generation.  Does that sound familiar?  It should—it’s the story of the fall, of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden, of Cain and the murder of Abel.

Not even a flood can wipe away the sinfulness of humanity.  Throwing it all away doesn’t work.  So what are we to do?  Where is our hope?

What hope is there for us?

Our hope is in God, who, after the story of the flood promises that “never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  (Gen 9.11a)  God sets the rainbow in the sky as a reminder of this covenant, this promise. 

Our hope is in God in Christ, Christ Jesus who dies and rises, who doesn’t merely come on the scene to fix things but rather conquers sin and death. 

And so we learn, in the story about Noah, that God chooses us—that God covenants with us—and like those Japanese pots he doesn’t throw us out but puts us back together when he breaks.  We learn in the Markan gospel that Jesus isn’t some magical Teflon figure impervious to temptation; he is really tempted just as we are—perhaps more than we are—and yet is victorious.  Satan, like a prosecuting attorney, just wants to reveal the truth—that Jesus conquers evil, sin, and death—that even the wild beasts come to a place of peacefulness, not violence, in his reign.  And we learn in 1st Peter that our baptism saves us, incorporates us into the reign of Christ, into that victory of Christ over sin and death.  We, too, have hope of forgiveness, of freedom from our sins, of freedom from the control of evil and violence, because in our baptism we are made a part of Christ’s own victory. 

God has made a covenant with us.  He has chosen us.

And this is good news.  This is gospel.

When Jesus comes near, the kingdom of God is at hand.  Suddenly the world can be different.  Our relationships can be different.  Jesus says in the passage we read today, “Repent, and believe in the good news.”  That word “Repent” we can often think of as feeling sorry for something, apologizing.  But it really means change.  The Greek is metanoia, which means to change our minds. 

You may be wondering this week as we are reminded by yet another school shooting of the deep evil in the world.  You may wonder why God doesn’t wash it all away and start over.  You may wonder if we can change.  If things can be different.  You wouldn’t be wrong to ask that question.

A few years ago I preached at a nearby church; as best I can remember, the gospel had something to do with repentance, much like today.  And after mass a woman came up to me, very earnestly, and asked, “Father, do you think that people really can change?  That they really can be different?  Or do we just keep doing the same old things over and over again?”  Her question took me aback, and I stammered that of course I believed that we can change.  But I’ve really thought about her question over the years.  And I wish I could say to her what I will say to  you now:  Yes, I believe that people can change, through the grace of God, through the transforming death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I believe that we can change--that people, systems, institutions and nations can be changed, because I’ve seen it happen.  Here are some examples.

Every Saturday evening an AA group meets in the parish hall.  It’s a big group, maybe sixty or seventy people.  Late in the evening, when the group lets out, folks exit through the west hallway into the drive by Bank of America.  It’s Saturday night, so many of them hang around together, talking, laughing, smoking, sharing stories, before heading off for ice cream or pizza or wherever else their Saturday evening takes them.  When the group first started meeting here, a couple of parishioners mentioned to me with some concern that they’d noticed a group of drunken young people partying in the driveway by the kitchen on Saturday evening!  I was glad to clear things up; what they’d actually seen was just a bunch of young, funloving, sober folk, partying it up in the drive.  Through the grace of God, and through the support of one another, these beloved people of God have found, at least for today, sobriety.  They’ve broken free of the grip of addiction and reclaimed their lives.  Their joy shines through the cracks, mended with sponsors and meetings and changed behaviors, a wholly new and beautiful life from the shards of an old one.

We meet moments of healing and grace all the time.  Jesus heals the man possessed by a demon.  Another person gets the psychiatric help he needs to live a life of dignity and purpose.  Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law.  A woman suffering from cancer undergoes a course of chemotherapy and enjoys a longer life with her family.  Jesus looks upon the rich young ruler and loves him.  And a man with a home and family volunteering in the Soup Kitchen hears for the first time the life stories of another man who sleeps on the streets of New Haven and recognizes their shared humanity. 

These are dramatic moments.  Moments when lives are changed.  Not repaired, but transformed into something new.  The old is still there--but something new is born in the putting back together.  A new life, something whole, something transformed.

Trying to wipe away the sinfulness of humanity doesn’t work.  The flood didn’t work.  Handpicking the best people didn’t work.  They turned around and did it all again.  And so as the story goes God hung up his bow in the sky and kept reaching out, even to the sinful, fallen descendants of Adam and Eve, even the folks that disembarked the ark and started the process of death and decay all over again.

The kingdom of God is near.  Repent and believe the gospel. 

Let’s repent.  Change the way we are thinking.  Believe that there is hope, good news, in Jesus Christ. 

And rather than throwing all that out, God came to be among it.  To be among us.  To show us how much God loves us so that, in that moment of realizing that great love, we may be transformed.  Made into something new.  So that even when there are cracks, the light that shines from them shows the very glory of God. 

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[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030202723.html

Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany

The Rt Rev'd Ian T. Douglas
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Last Sunday after the Epiphany
February 11, 2018

In the name of the One Holy and Triune God. Amen.

In 1997 the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, our church-wide governing body, designated the Last Sunday of Epiphany as “World Mission Sunday” calling on the church at every level, parish, diocese, and General Church to increase awareness of and participation in God’s global mission.  The last Sunday of Epiphany, which we celebrate here today, was chosen as World Mission Sunday because in Epiphany, the season of light, the Church recalls that the Magi, those wise men from the East, were the first gentiles to see and understand that Jesus is the Messiah, the light of the world.  It is a good and right thing that we are celebrating World Mission Sunday today here at Christ Church in New Haven. (And I have to confess, I was the author of the General Convention resolution back in 1997 – so I never neglect to note God’s global mission on this the last Sunday of Epiphany.)

And on the Last Sunday of Epiphany the Gospel is always the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop.  Depending on which year we are in in the lectionary cycle we hear either Matthew’s, Mark’s, or Luke’s version of the story - and they are all very similar.  This year we have Mark’s version.  So the question might be asked: Why would the General Convention choose this Sunday, when we always hear the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus as our Gospel, to focus on world mission?  What does the Transfiguration have to do with mission, with God’s mission?

You probably are not surprised to hear that I think the Transfiguration of Jesus has a lot to say about God’s mission, specifically: 1) that Jesus embodies and extends God’s saving mission in the world begun in the covenants God made with the people of Israel and affirmed in the words and witness of the prophets.  2) that we followers of Jesus, (disciples) upon discovering and experiencing what God is up to in Jesus the Christ,  too often want to institutionalize, or fossilize, the radical good news of the Jesus movement.  3) Yet Jesus invites us, urges us, to go down from our mountain top epiphanies and join God as apostles of God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation.

Recall the story.  Jesus goes up on the mountaintop with Peter, James and John to pray.  And there Jesus is transfigured in the glory of God and his cloths become dazzling white.  And appearing with Jesus are Moses and Elijah.  Moses - the one who received the law and led the people of Israel out of bondage in fulfillment of God’s covenants with God’s treasured people; and Elijah the prophet, the one who called the people of Israel back into right relationship with God.  The appearance of Moses and Elijah underscores that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.  And if there is any question about who Jesus is and what his mission is, a voice from the cloud makes this unambiguously clear:  “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him.”  Jesus is indeed the son of God, the Messiah, fully human and fully divine.  The one who has come to restore all people to unity with God and each other as the Christ.

And what do Peter, James and John do when they see and experience the truth of Jesus revealed on the mountaintop?  Do they immediately go as apostles, sent to witness to the Transfiguration?  They do not.  Instead they say: “Let us make three dwellings, one for you (Jesus), one for Moses and one for Elijah.”  They seem to want to capture and domesticate the mission of God as revealed in the law and the prophets, and in Jesus the Son of God.  Their inclination is to set apart the good news, to institutionalize and enshrine it.  It is almost as if they want to hide the light of God’s mission in Jesus in the baskets of the dwellings they seek to construct.  Companions in Christ, how often does the church do the same today?

But is that what God wants?  Does God want us to remain safe and secure in the dwellings of our own construction?  - to rest inside even the most beautiful of our church structures?  God does not.  For God sends us out as apostles (literally those sent) to be about God’s saving and healing work in the world.  That’s why in all three Gospel versions of the Transfiguration, (Mathew, Mark, and Luke) the story is followed immediately by Jesus’ healing of a boy with a demon – from Transfiguration to healing, from mountaintop to mission.

And the good news is each and every one of is likewise sent as apostles to comedown from our mountaintops and join Jesus in God’s mission of healing and  wholeness.  By virtue of our baptism, we are commissioned, co-missioned in God’s mission to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.  In baptism we are sent forth to be agents of God’s restoration and reconciliation in the world. 

In a few minutes, Brett Alan Judson and Chaou Li will come forward to be confirmed promising to follow Jesus as his/their Savior and Lord.  Before he/they are confirmed all of us with will be given the chance to affirm our own baptismal vows using the words of the Baptismal Covenant.

In the first three questions of the Baptismal Covenant we will be asked to profess our belief in the Triune God.  Responding with the words of the Apostles Creed, we identify as disciples of the Transfigured Messiah seeking to follow God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Then in the last five questions of the Baptismal Covenant we promise to come down from our mountaintop experiences of Jesus and participate in God’s mission of healing and wholeness in the world.  With God’s help we commit to being apostles of God’s restoration and reconciliation in the world living lives of: worship (Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and the prayers?) forgiveness  (Will you persevere in resisting evil and when you sin repent and return to the Lord?) evangelism (Will you proclaim in word and deed the good news of God in Christ?) service (Will you seek and serve Christ loving your neighbor as yourself?) and justice (Will you strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being?) 

So there we have it.  On this the last Sunday of Epiphany, on this World Mission Sunday, each and every one of us, is invited to own again our mountaintop experiences as disciples of the living God in Jesus; and then commit our lives anew as apostles of God’s mission in the world.  May we be those disciples and apostles of the Transfigured Jesus that God wants us and needs us to be. Happy Epiphany!

Searching for Jesus

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 4, 2018

This week we celebrated the eve of Candlemas with a wonderful solemn high mass, a procession with blessing of candles, a potluck that was an embarrassment of riches, and a burning of the greens that was, despite the drizzling rain, dramatic to say the least.  The flames were higher than the roof of the parish house.  It was a great time to be together.  And the very next day, due to the strangeness of the American calendar, Groundhog Day coincided with Candlemas itself.  Just before Morning Prayer in the lady chapel, Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog, emerged from his den and saw his shadow, predicting six months’ more of winter.  But take heart, Staten Island Chuck, a rival rodent, did not see his shadow.  So maybe spring is just around the corner.

While I wish that Chuck were right, I suspect that Phil is the more accurate predictor, if groundhogs have anything at all to do with the weather, which they don’t.  I wouldn’t be sad to see winter wind up early, though, primarily because it’s flu season, and I’m concerned about the prevalence of the flu we’ve seen this year. 

This year the flu season is particularly bad; I’ve read about how the flu vaccine doesn’t contain all the right strains this year, and I keep hearing from many of you how you’ve gotten the flu--and how bad it is.  But there is one bright spot in flu season this year.  Doctors have at their disposal an anti-viral medication called Tamiflu that is reducing the severity and the duration of the flu.  I’ve heard great anecdotal stories about people that, as soon as they got the flu, immediately started a regimen of Tamiflu, and have gotten back up and back to work in days rather than weeks. 

It’s truly a modern miracle.  This antiviral medication is reducing suffering and pain and getting people back on their feet.   If we must have six more weeks of winter, at least we’ve got Tamiflu.

In our gospel today we hear the miraculous story of Jesus healing the sick, particularly the story of Jesus healing Peter’s mother in law.  The mother in law isn’t named; Peter’s wife isn’t named.  The important thing for the gospel writer to convey is the healing.

Think of it:  the apostles didn’t have Tamiflu.  Peter’s mother in law (let’s call her Jane for purposes of this story) has gotten sick.  Jane is a force to be reckoned with; even Peter is a little afraid of her.  But he’s married her daughter, and Jane has made the best of it.  She loves her daughter and her son-in-law, and part of her mission in life right now is to take care of them and her other son Andrew.  She knows how Andrew and Peter are captivated by this teacher Joshua that they’ve met, and so, when Peter asks if they can have him over, she dutifully sets to work planning a meal.  But about that time she catches the flu.  She was so careful, using her Purell hand sanitizer and trying not to touch doorknobs or stair rails or anything that, and now she’s down with the flu.  Bedridden.  Can’t get up.

And Peter and Andrew have the nerve to bring his friend Joshua over to the house, along with James and John.

What could have been a disaster, the burden of all these guests arriving, turns instead into our gospel story of healing, however, as Jesus, Peter’s friend Joshua, takes the hand of Jane, the mother in law, and lifts her up.  She’s healed, restored to strength and wholeness.  They don’t have Tamiflu.  It’s only the power of God, working in creation, the very presence of God in Jesus Christ, which heals Peter’s mother in law.  And the news spreads.  The demons are cast out and the ill are restored to wholeness; the fever lifted, and Peter’s mother in law is restored to health.  And by that evening everyone who was sick in the surrounding area turned up at Peter’s house.  The whole city gathers around the door, the gospel writer tells us, as people come to seek healing.  (Mark 1.33) 

I realize that these stories of healing in the gospel are included to show us a visible, tangible revelation of God’s healing power, God’s restoring power, God’s renewing power as revealed in Jesus Christ.  I give thanks for these miracles and find strength and hope in them!  But I also get anxious about the people that didn’t make it to the door that evening to be healed.  What about people in other towns?  What about the folks in other places?  What are they to do?  Peter’s mother in law is healed—but what about everyone else in need of healing?  What are we to make of them?

After all, we hear that, after that evening of healing, the next morning,

“while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.  And Simon and his companions hunted for him.  When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’  He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’”  (Mark 1.35-38)

The healing of sickness and casting out of demons are amazing things, to be sure.  Just the idea of cure, of relief from fever, that Paul’s mother in law experiences is a miraculous thing.  When you think about it, it’s a miracle our bodies work at all—anytime we recover from the flu it’s a miracle!  In our postmodern culture, with the benefit of medical science, we tend to pathologize things that make us “sick”—things that make us less than our normally performing selves, the state of self which we consider normative [1]—and as our understanding of mental health has developed, we’ve lost a sense of “possession” of the demonic sort, generally leaving that sort of thing up to horror movies and sensationalist television shows.  Healing the sick mother in law and casting out demons are things for modern medicine, and Jesus’s actions may seem like foreign, unfamiliar ideas to us—and may seem quite different categorically from one another, too. 

But they begin to seem more familiar—and to look quite similar—when we consider the outcome of these healings and exorcisms.  Bruce Malina and Roger Rohrbaugh have argued that there is a difference in disease and illness:  that disease is a biological process, but that illness is the way we relate—or stop relating, in the face of biological breakdown—to our culture, to our communities.  Using that model, we realize that Paul’s mother in law, healed from her disease, her fever, is able to return to the work she wants to perform—healed from her illness she is able to rejoin her role in community as a leader in the house—so that she is once more able to be a hospitable caregiver, welcomer, mother, and friend to these followers of Jesus.  She serves them—the Greek diékonei implies even a kind of table service—that she might have risen from her sick bed and fed all her guests.  Freed from her illness, she is free to serve—to cook, to welcome, to entertain, to celebrate. [2]  Similarly, those who are possessed by demons, whatever the sort they may be, are freed to be themselves—to rejoin community—to live lives of purpose and meaning no longer held back by outside possession; free from the control of an outside force; freed to be the people that God had made them to be.

Everyone is searching for you, Jesus! Everyone is hunting for Jesus, looking to have their diseases cured, but underneath the process of curing disease, they’re really seeking healing of illness--wholeness, restoration of relationship, and new life.

So to use this model of disease vs illness, Tamiflu can shorten the length and severity of the disease process of the flu virus.  But only Jesus heals their illness.

And so it begins to make sense that Jesus says, “Let us go on…so that I may proclaim the message there…; for that is what I came out to do.”

We can get caught up in the healing of disease in this story, and why wouldn’t we!  The usefulness of the medical arts in our society, in our world, is so important.  It’s a ministry of healing; it’s joining in the work of God’s restorative acts in creation, and so it’s no wonder the whole town turns out at Peter’s door.  There’s such longing for healing in our world.  And thanks be to God for those of you who have given your lives to the healing arts--to those of you who develop curative measures like Tamiflu, or penicillin, or any sort of healing protocols that help our bodies work as God made them to. 

But let’s not miss the deeper implications of this story.  Let’s not show up only for the physical healing but for the spiritual healing as well. 

For now, we know the brokenness of things—that illness is real, that possession—however we name that demon, be it schizophrenia, addiction, lust, or greed—is a real thing—that sin binds us—we know that we are not fully the beings that God has created us to be, not fully occupying the shape of us that is being made in the image of God.

Jesus comes to give us that message of healing, of freedom, of restoration—the promise of healing for even illness—the promise of freedom even from possession—the promise of restoration in, with, and through God.  The main thing—the most important thing—that Jesus is about is not only curing Peter’s mother in law, though that’s an awfully good thing.  The most important thing is that he is telling people about God.  About the transforming power of God’s love for them.  The freeing, healing, restoring power of God’s love.  That freedom, that love, that everyone is searching for.

The collect this morning reminds us that we are turning the corner from the revelation of the Incarnation, from the epiphany moments of the wise men, the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, the wedding at Cana in Galilee, even the wonder of the Transfiguration which we will read about next week—we are shifting from a focus on the recognition of God’s incarnate Word breaking into the world—to Lent--to a realization of the world’s brokenness, our own brokenness, that ultimately results in the death of our Lord—and is transformed and redeemed by his resurrection. 

And that’s what we’re longing for, that transformation.  That’s why people are hunting after Jesus.  They want to be restored to wholeness--to right relationship with God, with creation, with one another.  And that kind of spiritual healing, that freeing from illness in our model, comes only through Jesus.

That kind of healing is about relationship.  About being seen--and known--by someone who truly loves you, by God who truly knows and loves you. 

And so Jesus goes out to tell the message of hope, of good news, casting out demons along the way.  To know people, and to be known by them.  To love them.  To give them hope.

You’re invited to share that kind of healing with the world.  To show people Jesus’s love.  To show people Jesus.

We prayed today:

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ

As we move towards Lent, I invite us to keep praying for that freedom from brokenness, from sin—even for transformation in the brokenness of the world that we cannot control, knowing that in the fullness of time the kingdom of God will fully come.  Rather than being bound by the things that seek to control us, I invite us to be wrapped in the love and grace of God.

I invite us to share that love of Jesus--to be people of mercy, hope, and love.  I invite us to show people Jesus--through small, simple acts of lovingkindness and gratitude.  Through forgiving.  Through inviting.  Through being with the other.

The healing miracles of Jesus prefigure the kingdom of God--not merely in that disease is wiped away, but in that relationship is restored.  That we know and love one another, that we know and love God, as God knows and loves us.  That’s the message Jesus is carrying out. 

Hunt for him in your Lenten lives, each and every day.  He has already found you.  Let your freedom, your hope, your joy be found in him.

---

[1] Malina & Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, p 210, as quoted by Brian Stoffregen at http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark1x29.htm (last accessed 2/8/15). 

[2] Ibid.  The distinction of disease vs illness is theirs.

Sermon for Candlemas

The Rev'd Prof. Bryan Spinks
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Eve of Candlemas
February 1, 2018

Going Vegetarian for Jesus

The Rev'd Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 28, 2018

One of the things that I love to do is cook for people.  I’m not saying I’m good at it--only that I enjoy  doing it.  Just last week a colleague and I were discussing a menu for a luncheon and, as we thought about who was coming to the meal, it became more and more complicated to hone in on just one dish that everyone could enjoy.  The vegetarians didn’t want meat, and the paleo folks didn’t want any starches.  The dairy-free diners couldn’t have butter, along with the vegans, who wouldn’t eat eggs.  Finally we settled on a fish with a salad, confident that everyone could eat at least one of the two things on offer.

There are good and important reasons--ethics and health requirements at the top of the list--that the diners coming to lunch had for their dietary requirements, and I wanted to be sure to provide for all of those needs.  Outside of dietary requirements, there’s even the whole realm of personal choice.  It’s fine to eat what you like!  I remember as a child not liking eggs, and I’m pretty sure that, until about the fourth grade, I told everyone that tried to give me eggs that I was allergic to them.  That probably wasn’t the best choice; I should have just said, “No, thank you,” when the eggs were passed around!  And that would have been fine, too.

You might be tempted to think that Paul’s advice to the Corinthians is something along the lines of, “Therefore, if carbs are a cause of their failings, then I will always eat paleo, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.” 

The letter to the Corinthians isn’t about all eating the same way so that dinner planning is easier.  It’s not about health, or even about the ethics of eating animals.  It’s not about dietary principles.  It’s about Christian witness.

Remember that Corinth is a trading city, a cosmopolitan port on the isthmus that connects the northern part of Greece with the southern.  Ships would be dragged across on logs from one side to the other of that little land strip.  There were people of all religions, nations, backgrounds--wealthy merchants and poor laborers, slaves and free, and goods from everywhere.  Corinth was a crossroads.  And in that place was a new and growing Christian community, a community of probably mostly Greeks that had likely followed other gods before; people that had heard the good news of Jesus and wanted to follow him but were still learning.

They had friends that made sacrifices to Apollos; the wealthy ones among them might even be invited to dinners in the local pagan temples, dinners where meat which had been sacrificed to pagan gods would be served. What were they to do?  Should they eat the meat or not?

And so they wrote to Paul and asked. 

Now, Paul, they might have said, we know that there is only one God, revealed in Jesus Christ, and we know that all things belong to God, and so surely it can’t hurt if we eat this meat.  It’ll just go to waste otherwise!  And besides, won’t it look like we’re superstitious if we avoid the meat? 

There must have been lots of arguments about why rational people could just go ahead and eat the meat. 

But Paul reframes the question entirely. 

For Paul it wasn’t about whether you could, or whether you even should, eat the meat.

It was all about what that action said to other people. How it affected the community.

For Paul this was not a choice made in a vacuum, made only for one’s own self. The freedom of the individual was tied to the wellbeing of the whole community.

What would happen, Paul reasoned, if someone saw you eating at that banquet in Asclepius’s temple, the god of medicine?  Would they think you were a follower of Asclepius, not of Jesus?  What sort of a witness would you be providing?

A decade or more ago, before people were maybe as careful about ethics surrounding drug company sales representatives, my friends who were doctors and single would invite me along occasionally to dinner with drug reps.  The meals were extraordinary; we’d end up at the most expensive steak house in town, with lots of great wine and well-aged filets.  These were delicious dinners.  And while I’m not sure it ever made a difference in what my friends prescribed, I did feel better about things when ethics rules got a little tighter at the hospital, and the expensive meals fell by the wayside.  But we enjoyed it while it lasted.

That’s the kind of meal you might have expected in the Temple of Asclepius.  It would have been lavish.  The best people, the wealthiest, would have been there.

To give that up was something indeed. 

And what Paul is saying is that he’d turn down that steak dinner every time.  Give up meat entirely.  Shun the free meal, the lavish banquet, all of it--if in any way it might seem to someone that he was straying from his devotion to Jesus Christ as Lord.

The only thing that mattered to Paul was following Jesus.  And showing other people how to follow Him.

Friends, we live in an age of rampant individualism.  Our President has campaigned on a slogan of “America First.”  And yet here is Paul, admonishing the bright young things of Corinth to put aside their own culinary desires, their own status, their own wants--to consider the other.  The person who is new in the faith.  The person who hasn’t yet heard about Jesus--but is looking to them to see how they act. 

I want to be clear that I don’t think Paul is saying that we are responsible for someone else’s actions.  We know we can’t control the actions of others.  But Paul is saying that we are responsible for our own actions.  And that our actions are not just for us alone, but for our brothers and sisters.  That we are responsible to others and to God for what we do.  That how we use our lives is a witness--a witness for the gospel.  That it says something about what we believe about Jesus, and about whom we follow.

This is Cain’s first retort to God; when Cain kills Abel and God comes looking for him, God asks, “Where is your brother?”  And Cain replies, “I don’t know.  Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The answer is yes.  Yes, we are responsible for one another.  We are one another’s keepers.

And what Paul is concerned about, what Paul is aiming for, is that each new Christian in Corinth lives such a life that it’s clear whom they love.  That it’s clear that they are following Jesus. 

And that, in that light, in that love, other Corinthians too may be drawn to God.

Their lives are vessels--to show people Jesus.

So yes, in this context, it matters how and what they eat.  It matters how they treat one another.  And it matters what they say.

Today is our annual meeting, and one of the themes we’ve talked about is how well things are going here.  How here at Christ Church we’re a part of a discipleship movement.  We pray, we learn about the faith, we support one another in Christian community, we reach out in love and service to our neighbors.  We are following Jesus.

But what are people seeing from the outside?  Are we living like the Corinthians, who want to go to the banquet in Asclepius’s temple because the food is so good?  Are we doing what we want? Or are we living in such a way--are we talking about our faith in such a way--that the people around us can’t help but see Jesus?  Are we living out our faith, are we talking about it, in such a way that folks in New Haven are learning that Jesus loves them?  That they want to come to the banquet here at this table?  That they want to see Jesus?

If this all seems too much, remember who it is that we serve. We serve the risen Lord Jesus, who heals the sick, raises the dead, and casts out demons.  He teaches like one with authority, not like the scribes and Pharisees, not like the powers of this world.  It is his own abiding presence, the Holy Spirit, that will do the work of sharing God’s love.  All we have to do is open the door.

Take a chance this week, this month, this year.  Tell people something about what you believe.  Invite them to come and see. 

This year, let’s help show people Jesus.