Proper 6, Year C -- Sunday Sermon

Anonymous, David and Bathsheba, High Rhine, Mid-17th Century

II Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15
Luke 7:36-50

For many people today, a favorite saying of our Lord is found in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, 7:1-2, where Jesus warns his listeners, and us: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged …”

It’s a recurrent theme in folktales: the king, judge, or official who decrees a punishment for someone else only to find himself condemned by his own decree when by some twist of fate the positions are reversed. In the Book of Esther, for example, the evil royal counselor Haman ends up being hanged on the very same gibbet he’s had constructed for the hanging of Mordecai the Jew.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged.” Our readings for this morning vividly illustrate this dictum in different ways. In the Old Testament reading, from the second Book of Samuel, King David has committed a particularly heinous crime by arranging the death of Uriah the Hittite in battle so that he can take his wife Bathsheba, for whom he’s lusted.

Sent by God to confront the king, the Prophet Nathan tells David the story of a rich man with many flocks and herds, and a poor man whose only possession is one little lamb. But when called upon to provide hospitality to a stranger, the rich man, instead of taking a lamb from his own flocks, takes the poor man’s lamb. Thinking that the story is true and that Nathan is asking him to render judgment as king, David becomes exceedingly angry: “The man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold.”

At this point, Nathan springs the trap that he’s set: “You are the man … You have smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the Ammonites.” Truly, the judgment that David has pronounced is the judgment with which he is himself judged.

We encounter a similar boomeranging of judgment in today’s Gospel. The host of the dinner party, Simon the Pharisee, presumes to judge both a woman of the city and Jesus himself—the woman for being a sinner, and Jesus for apparently not recognizing this: “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.”

Yet Jesus demonstrates that he’s indeed a prophet, for he knows exactly what Simon is thinking. So he tells the story of two debtors forgiven by the same creditor: one for a small amount and the other for a large amount. Which one, he asks, will love him more? When Simon answers correctly, “The one to whom he forgave more,” then just as Nathan did with David, Jesus proceeds to spring his trap. He proceeds to hold the woman up as a model of the hospitality that Simon has failed to show him. So, having taken it upon himself to judge both Jesus and the woman, Simon finds himself the one judged and found wanting – and precisely in comparison with the woman he’s presumed to judge.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged …” This saying is often misinterpreted to mean that we should refrain from all judgment. But that conclusion would be simplistic. Every day, we cannot avoid making numerous evaluations of other people’s statements, actions, motivations, and intentions. Can I trust this person? Does she really mean what she says? How do I assess what he’s just done so that I can respond appropriately and fairly?

In today’s readings, it is not only King David and Simon the Pharisee who exercise judgment, but also Nathan the Prophet, and our Lord himself. Moreover, both David and Simon the Pharisee give good judgments in response to the stories told them by Nathan and Jesus respectively. Jesus even says to Simon, “You have judged rightly.” The choice, then, is not between judgment and non-judgment, but rather between good judgment and bad judgment, between right judgment and wrong judgment.

In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says “Judge not, that you be not judged,” he is really warning us against the hypocrisy of judging others when our own sins are as bad if not worse than theirs. Hence he follows this saying with the admonition that before we attend to the speck in our neighbor’s eye, we need to attend to the log in our eye.

The message is not that we should avoid judging others, as if that were possible, but rather that whenever we exercise even legitimate judgment we generally stand condemned by the very same standards. Whenever we call others to account—as indeed from time to time we must—we need to remember that we speak only as the greatest of sinners ourselves. We may not have committed exactly the same sins, but the ones we’ve committed are bad enough. We’ve no grounds for any posture of self-righteousness or moral superiority.

And that realization enables us not only to judge but also to forgive. In today’s readings, the final word is not judgment but forgiveness. When David confesses his sin to the Lord, the prophet Nathan proclaims: “The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.” And Jesus says to the woman of the city: “Your sins are forgiven … go in peace.”

Judgment, then, is an inescapable component of all human relations. We cannot interact with other people in any setting without constantly evaluating and judging them. But we gain the ability to judge rightly through the humility of recognizing our own sins and shortcomings first. When we know ourselves to be forgiven sinners, our judgment becomes more gentle, forbearing, and compassionate. And together with the knowledge by which we judge rightly, comes the capacity to forgive, as God in Christ has forgiven us.

Sermon for Corpus Christi [at the 10 am Mass]

It’s a temptation to take for granted the great privilege of receiving Holy Communion each week. Here at S. Stephen’s, we celebrate the Mass twice every Sunday, and most people come to the altar rail and receive Communion as a matter of course.

It was not ever thus. In most Episcopal parishes a hundred years ago, the principal service on Sunday was generally sung Morning Prayer, or choral Matins, with sermon. Those who wanted to receive Communion more than three or four times a year went to the early service at 8 am.

Even in Anglo-Catholic parishes such as ours, the Solemn High Mass at 11 am would generally be a “non-communicating” Mass: that is, only the priest would receive. Again, those who wanted Communion would go to the early service.

When my wife was growing up in an Anglo-Catholic parish in the Church of England, her family would go at 8 am to make their Communions at the early service. Then, they would go home for breakfast, after which they would return to church to sing in the choir at the non‑communicating Solemn High Mass at 11.

But of course many more people came to the Solemn High Mass than had been at the early service. In other words, even in Anglo-Catholic parishes, the majority of people might faithfully attend the principal service every Sunday and still receive Communion only, say, once a month or even just once a quarter. The canonical minimum to be considered a communicant of the Church is still only three times a year: typically at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.

This pattern began to change in the 1930s, under the influence of what was known as the Parish Communion Movement. The aim of this movement was to promote the full participation of the people in the Church’s worship. And since receiving Holy Communion is the fullest expression of this participation, the Parish Communion Movement sought above all to make the principal Sunday service a Eucharist at which all the people would have the opportunity to do just that.

In England, one of the principal spokesmen of the parish Communion movement, A.G. Hebert, wrote in 1937 that the ideal time was around 9 or 9:30 in the morning. The 8 am service was too early for many people; and 11 am was too late for most people to keep the fast before Communion. In 1949, by the way, Hebert visited this country and preached from this pulpit. Perhaps it was more than a coincidence that just a year later, in 1950, my predecessor Fr. Ward did away with the non-communicating High Mass here at S. Stephen’s.

Three decades after that, the 1979 Prayer Book fulfilled one of the key goals of the Parish Communion Movement by specifying the Holy Eucharist as “the principal act of worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts,” and also by directing that at every Mass the Sacrament must be made available to the people.

So, we’ve come a long way. The question today, however, is whether we’ve come too far, and become too casual in our approach to the Blessed Sacrament. Here, perhaps, the Feast of Corpus Christi can help us.

Historically, in the Church we’ve tended to see-saw between periods when Christians felt free to receive Communion weekly or even daily, as in very first centuries of the early Church, and periods when people were so afraid of receiving unworthily that they tended to refrain from receiving at all. In 1215, for example, the Fourth Lateran Council had to require lay people to receive at least once a year, at Easter, after making their Confession to a priest.

The Feast of Corpus Christi originated in the thirteenth century as part of a movement of popular devotion to the Blessed Sacrament that had as one of its aims a return to more frequent Communion. The message of this feast is twofold. On one hand, we should by all means avail ourselves of the opportunity for weekly or even daily Communion. But on the other hand, we must approach the Sacrament with the utmost care, preparation, reverence, and devotion.

In other words, we need to steer a middle course between a rigorism that would keep us from Communion, and a laxity that would lead us to receive carelessly and thoughtlessly. Alas, the greater danger before the Church today is not rigorism but laxity.

Providentially, the Catholic spiritual tradition offers us practices that can help us increase the reverence and devotion with which we approach Holy Communion. Most important of all is spiritual preparation for Mass: saying our prayers and examining our consciences. For what sins and shortcomings are we seeking God’s forgiveness and help in this Mass? For what people and situations are we offering up our participation in this Mass?

At the very least, we need to make an effort to get to church on time so that we have an opportunity to get recollected in the few minutes before Mass begins. And if we arrive late, the Church’s traditional guideline is that we should only receive Communion if we’ve been present for the reading of the Gospel.

One key discipline of preparation is the traditional Fast before Communion. For some people health concerns make this impossible, and we certainly don’t want people passing out in the pews. But even if we can’t go completely without food from midnight the night before, it’s still a commendable practice to observe the minimal rule of eating nothing for at least an hour before Mass. It’s really difficult to be spiritually awake and alert for Holy Communion on a full stomach!

Also, the Church’s traditional wisdom is that we should not receive Holy Communion more than once a day, just as ideally priests should not celebrate Mass more than once a day. This is one reason among many, incidentally, why I’m really glad that Fr. Sawicky has arrived. If for some reason you have occasion to be at a second Mass on a day when you’ve already received Holy Communion, it’s perfectly okay and indeed highly commendable to go up for a blessing and not receive a second time. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! This is not like a meal where it’s bad manners not to eat what’s set before you.

Finally, no less important than preparation before Communion is thanksgiving after Communion. When we return to the pew from the altar rail, or after the end of the closing hymn, we need to take a few moments to say “thank you” to God for his gift of himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament, and to recommit ourselves to whatever tasks he’s given us to do in the world.

So, on this Feast of Corpus Christi, we give thanks for all who worked so hard for so many years to re-establish the Communion of the Faithful as the norm every Sunday and Holy Day. But we also show our gratitude by receiving this great gift with all the care, reverence, preparation, and devotion that it deserves.

Sermon for Proper 4, Year C [at the 8 am Mass]

I Kings 8:22-23, 41-43
Luke 7:1-10

We hear a lot today about boundaries. The maintenance of appropriate professional and personal boundaries is a hot topic. And both our Old Testament and Gospel readings today touch on what might be called religious boundaries.

In the first reading, King Solomon is praying at the dedication of the newly constructed Temple in Jerusalem. He calls on God to listen to and answer the prayer of even the foreigner who comes to Jerusalem to pray towards this house.

At this stage of Israel’s history, a foreigner is by definition a Gentile. Such a foreigner is forbidden to enter the Temple on pain of death. So here we encounter a firm religious and national boundary. Entry into God’s house is restricted to members of God’s people Israel; everyone else must stay outside.

Yet Solomon acknowledges in his prayer that God himself is not bound by such boundaries. When the foreigner prays towards this house, Solomon implores, “hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all for which the foreigner calls unto thee; in order that all the peoples of the earth may know thy name and fear thee …”

In other words, the boundary restricting a foreigner from access to God’s house may be appropriate and necessary in that time and place; but it doesn’t restrict the foreigner’s access to God himself. God is perfectly well able to hear their prayers as well and reach out beyond the boundary to do all that the foreigner asks.

In the Gospel reading, however, we encounter almost exactly the reverse situation. A Roman centurion in the town of Capernaum has a servant who is ill and at the point of death. The centurion is a foreigner in the land of Israel. And as an observant Jew, Jesus is forbidden by the purity regulations of his religion from entering the house of a Gentile. If he does so, he will become ritually unclean, and will have to undergo a process of ritual purification before being allowed to participate again in the life and worship of the Jewish people.

So, where in the first reading we have a foreigner forbidden from entering God’s house, in the second reading we have God Incarnate forbidden from entering a foreigner’s house. The religious boundaries work in both directions!

Centurions were middle-ranking officers in the Roman army, which was divided into units called legions, cohorts, and centuries. Typically, in the first century, a legion consisted of about 4,800 soldiers, and was divided into ten cohorts each comprising 480 men. A cohort was divided in turn into six centuries, each consisting of 80 men and commanded by a centurion, assisted by junior officers.

So in or near Capernaum, the fishing village on the Sea of Galilee that was home to Saint Peter, there was stationed a century of soldiers commanded by this unnamed centurion. Unlike many Roman officers, however, he loved the Jewish nation, and had even built Capernaum’s synagogue. Incidentally, the basalt foundations and floor of the first-century synagogue at Capernaum can still be seen today, beneath the ruins of the fourth-century synagogue that replaced it.

It’s possible that our centurion may have been what was known in the Roman world as a “God-fearer,” that is, a Gentile who admired the Jewish religion, prayed to its God, and tried to follow its ethical teachings, without going the whole way converting, being circumcised, and becoming a Torah-observant Jew.

Be that as it may, a key responsibility of the centurion’s job was to pay close attention to everything that was going on in his immediate vicinity – so that he would be in a position to respond to the first signs of trouble. He would thus have been fully informed about Jesus. Prophets and teachers with a popular following were precisely the sorts of people the Roman authorities wanted to keep a close eye on. So, no doubt, the centurion would have heard about our Lord’s powers as a healer and miracle-worker as well.

No wonder, then, when his beloved servant is at the point of death, that he sends the local elders of the synagogue to seek Jesus’ assistance. In response to his plea, and with the elders’ good recommendation of this centurion, Jesus agrees and comes with them. But when he hears that our Lord is on the way, rather than let him complete the journey and cross the threshold of his house, the centurion sends friends with the message: “Lord … I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But say the word, and let my servant be healed.”

In other words, in a display of enormous cultural sensitivity and consideration, the centurion is respecting the religious boundaries that Jesus must observe. His statement, “I am not worthy,” refers not to his moral character but rather to his ritually unclean status as a Gentile. He knows that if Jesus enters his house, it will cause him the great inconvenience of having to undergo ritual purification, and could very well cause others to accuse him of being a Roman collaborator.

But the centurion also knows that while as a human being Jesus is restricted by these religious boundaries, as the agent of God’s power he is not. So the centurion affirms his belief that Jesus can heal his servant simply by speaking a word from a distance – just as he himself obeys orders issued from a distance by his superiors, and just as he commands his subordinates to travel great distances to carry out his orders.

In short, while both the centurion and Jesus himself are restricted by the religious boundaries separating Jews and Gentiles, nonetheless, both the centurion’s faith, and our Lord’s power and authority, are able to cross over and transcend all such boundaries. Jesus marvels that not even in Israel has he encountered such faith. And, even from a distance, the centurion’s servant is healed.

Now the great temptation for the preacher at this point would be to conclude that, well, that was then and this is now, and of course we don’t observe such silly religious boundaries anymore. But that conclusion would be profoundly mistaken. The boundaries have changed, to be sure, but they’re still there.

For example, according to the canon law of the Episcopal Church, only those who’ve been baptized may receive Holy Communion. Only priests may celebrate the Eucharist. Only bishops may ordain. The rubrics of the Prayer Book set multiple boundaries on what may and may not be done in our liturgical services. And these religious boundaries are valid, necessary, and appropriate for ordering our life together in the Church.

Yet the message of our readings this morning also remains valid. We’re bound by these boundaries, but God is not. God hears the prayers of all who call upon him, whether Christian or not, whether religious believer or not. And God retains absolute freedom in deciding how he may choose to respond.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

The curious thing about Trinity Sunday is that it’s one of the few festivals in the Church calendar that celebrates a doctrine. Many feasts of the liturgical year commemorate events recorded in Scripture – and very often on the date or during the season of the year when we believe them to have happened. Easter falls in the spring around Passover, the time of year when Jesus died and rose again. And following the New Testament chronology exactly, Ascension comes forty days and Pentecost fifty days after Easter.

The date of Christmas is admittedly arbitrary, and appropriately occurs on the date of an old Roman midwinter holiday celebrating the triumph of light over darkness around the time of the winter solstice. But then the Church coordinated the dates of the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist to fit in chronologically with the putative date of Christ’s birth at Christmas. Likewise, we keep most saints’ days on the anniversary of the saint’s death: his or her “birthday into heaven.”

But Trinity Sunday is different. We could really observe it at any time of the year, for the mystery it celebrates is timeless. Such events as the Birth of Christ, the Baptism of Christ, and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost all represent definite historical moments in God’s revelation of himself to his people. For this reason, theologians sometimes speak of the cumulative record of these moments as “salvation history.” But there is no single historical moment when God revealed himself as Trinity. Rather, over several centuries of sustained reflection on the biblical revelation, the Church developed the doctrine of the Trinity – as summarized in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds – as the only way of speaking about God that could adequately account for the reality of people’s actual experiences of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

So, why do we celebrate Trinity Sunday when we do? The reason is simple: For the past six months, from Advent Sunday through the Day of Pentecost, we’ve been retracing the history of God’s self-revelation to his people, from the preaching of the Old Testament prophets, through the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Christ, to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Today, we step back and do precisely what the early Christians did: we reflect on what we’ve learned. And the whole history of revelation that we’ve been recapitulating these past six months adds up to this picture of the Triune God given expression by the Trinitarian doctrine.

The word Trinity never occurs in Scripture. It appears to have been coined by the Second Century Roman theologian Tertullian. But the Christians of the first four centuries found that the doctrine made sense of so much: such as the threefold “Holy, Holy, Holy” of the cherubim in the vision of Isaiah; and God’s strange use of the first-person plural in the opening chapter of Genesis: “Let us make man in our own image.”

Most important of all, the doctrine of the Trinity helped the early Christians understand the words and actions of Jesus, who was himself God Incarnate and yet spoke of his Father in heaven and of the Holy Spirit he would send down upon the Church after his Ascension. Moreover, Trinitarian language helped them make sense of their own experience of God: for at one and the same time they had a vivid sense of God as their heavenly creator and father; of Jesus as their Lord, Savior, friend, and brother; and of the Holy Spirit as the guiding and empowering divine presence within. God was indeed one in being, and yet had revealed himself as three Persons.

A good exercise on Trinity Sunday, rather than trying to resolve the paradox of how God can be one and three at the same time, is to ask ourselves how we’ve experienced the three Persons of the Trinity in our own spiritual lives: In what ways have we known God as our Father in heaven; as Jesus our Savior; and as the Holy Spirit who indwells us and gives us inner counsel and strength?

Most of all, the doctrine of the Trinity speaks to us of God’s very nature and being as love. Our God is not a solitary monad subsisting in splendid isolation, but rather a community of three Persons eternally united in mutual relations of perfect self-giving love. And because God has created us in his image, it follows that we find the fulfillment of our nature not in rugged individualism, but rather in relationship and community. In other words, because God is love, we realize our God‑given purpose in life by learning to love and to be loved! And our eternal destiny in Christ is to be caught up forever into that perfect circle of divine love that is God’s own inner life.

So, Trinity Sunday remains a superb way to wrap up and summarize the completed cycle of the liturgical year before we move into Ordinary Time. And it invites us to celebrate the most unique aspect of the Christian revelation: our faith in God who is one in three and three in one, whose very nature and essence is love.

Easter VII -- Year C [Sunday after the Ascension]

John 17:20-26

The opening chapter of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that after our Lord’s Ascension into heaven, the Apostles together with the women and Mary, the mother of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem. And: “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer …” This period of prayer culminated, of course, in the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

In the cycle of the Church Year, we find ourselves in the corresponding period. We celebrated the Ascension on Thursday; and we shall celebrate Pentecost a week from today. Christ has ascended into heaven; but the Holy Spirit has not yet descended. So for us, as for Mary and the Apostles in the Upper Room, it’s a time of waiting and prayer.

Although in many places it’s become the practice to transfer the Ascension from Thursday to Sunday, nonetheless I think we lose something vital by doing so. For the Sunday after the Ascension has much to teach us about praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit. And this is particularly the case with today’s reading from Saint John’s Gospel.

The setting is the Last Supper. Our Lord is praying for his disciples on the eve of his arrest, trial, and death. He prays specifically for their unity in love after he’s taken from them. So this prayer exactly anticipates their situation after his Ascension. He’s no longer physically present with them; yet he’s entrusted them with the mission of preaching the Gospel to the ends of the earth. They cannot possibly fulfill this mission without prayer. So here he prays for them and for us as well.

A helpful hint for understanding today’s Gospel is that when we hear it read, we need to assume the posture of people being prayed for. After his Ascension, Jesus stands in the presence of the Father continually making intercession for us. And in today’s Gospel we have the privilege of hearing a snippet of what his prayer for us sounds like.

He prays that we all may be one, as he and the Father are one. During the past century, this passage has become one of the proof texts for the ecumenical movement, which has striven mightily to overcome the various divisions within the Body of Christ.

A key development in the history of Christianity in the twentieth century was the growing realization among Christians that our disunity hinders the Church’s mission and witness in the world. Thus, Christians who had once seen themselves as being in competition and rivalry – Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics – began to discover the rewards of getting to know each other, exchanging ideas, and exploring areas of potential co-operation.

By the 1960s and 1970s, conversations between Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, and Methodists had gained great momentum, occasioning enormous optimism about the ecumenical future. Yet in the following decades, disillusionment began to set in. While these dialogues produced some interesting agreed statements on doctrinal matters, and in some cases formal intercommunion – such as between the Lutherans and us – early hopes for quick corporate reunion have largely met with frustration.

In response, some proposed changing the movement’s goals and methods. In 1995, for example, Konrad Raiser, Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, proposed that the various church bodies should give up seeking doctrinal agreement and structural unity, and instead devote themselves to co-operation on issues of justice, peace, and protection of the environment.

Others sought to ignore, minimize, or trivialize the differences between Christians. For example, also in the 1990s, when I was in my previous parish, I participated in a great ecumenical service at a local Lutheran church for the Week of Prayer for Christian unity. About forty clergy of different traditions processed and sat together. The vestments and robes ranged from Geneva pulpit gowns to cassocks and lacy surplices. The musical offerings featured traditional choral music, an African American Gospel choir, and a folk rock group. A Baptist preacher and a Roman Catholic priest both gave outstanding sermons. About four hundred people packed the church to standing room only. It was a moving and powerful witness to our shared commitment to Christian unity.

Imagine my disappointment the next morning when I opened the local paper and read the first line in the story: “Christians of all denominations came together last night to demonstrate that doctrine doesn’t matter.” What a profound misreading of that service’s meaning! Doctrine does matter! Yet in that ecumenical service we’d come together to express, first, our conviction that our shared beliefs and practices outweigh our differences; and, second, our commitment to praying and working together to resolve and overcome the very real differences that still divide us.

For the unity that we seek, the unity for which Christ prayed, is nothing less than unity in the fullness of truth and love. Such unity can’t be achieved by warm fuzzy feelings of togetherness fostering the illusion that differences in belief don’t matter. It can’t be achieved solely by new bureaucratic structures, or by carefully crafted statements concealing unresolved differences behind compromise formulas and ambiguous language. It really can’t be achieved by human effort at all. Rather, it’s a gift of the Holy Spirit, which can only be prayed for and received in God’s good time.

Listen again to our Lord’s words: “that they may be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may also be in us . . . that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one . . .”

This unity, which Jesus has with his Father in heaven, is a complete harmony of heart, mind, and will. In John’s Gospel, Jesus emphasizes again and again that he has come to speak the words and to do the will of his Father in heaven. And here Jesus is praying that his disciples may likewise be of one heart, mind, and will—both with him, and with each other.

And such complete harmony of heart, mind, and will is humanly impossible. But notice that here Jesus is praying for his disciples. He’s not commanding us to be one; he’s not promising that we shall be one; he’s praying that we may be one. In other words, we cannot achieve this true unity on our own. We can only pray for it, and we can only receive it as a gift from God.

One of the signs of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst is the unity of our hearts, minds, and wills in the truth of God’s Word. A key work of the Holy Spirit is to reconcile those who are divided and at enmity. And so, in this interval between the Lord’s Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we join with our Lady and the Apostles praying in the upper room – the same room, incidentally, where Jesus prayed at the Last Supper – that we may all be one, even as he and the Father are one.

Our Lady, Queen of Apostles -- Homily at Mass

On Thursday, we celebrated our Lord’s Ascension into heaven. By an old tradition, the Saturday after the Ascension is kept as the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of the Apostles. The title refers to a particular episode in the life of Our Lady described in the reading from Acts. After the Ascension, the apostles returned to Jerusalem, went to the upper room where they were staying, and: All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer: together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

So here we have the eleven apostles and the Blessed Virgin Mary praying together in the interval between Our Lord’s Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. As our Eastern Orthodox brethren like to point out, although Mary is not herself an apostle, she occupies a place of honor in the Church’s devotion even higher than the apostles. And according to one tradition, the prayers of Mary at this time were instrumental in obtaining for the apostles the gifts that they would receive on the Day of Pentecost.

That scene in the upper room remains a powerful image for us today: the Blessed Virgin Mary praying for the outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. As Queen of the Apostles, Mary specially watches over the bishops, priests, and deacons who continue to this day in the apostolic succession. And she watches over the whole Church comprising all those who have received the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.

In the upper room, Mary and the Apostles were engaged in a period of watching and waiting, prayer and preparation. The Church likewise regards these days between the Ascension and Pentecost as a time of prayer and preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Now is a time to reflect upon whatever decisions or tasks of discernment we may have before us – as individuals, as families, as a parish, or as a Church. Without rushing to premature judgment, we simply watch and wait with Our Lady and the Apostles in the Upper Room, making their prayer our own: Come Holy Spirit, come.

Ascension of the Lord

In my end is my beginning. The motto of Mary Queen of Scots famously quoted by T.S. Eliot in East Coker might well sum up the relationship between today’s readings from the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel according to Saint Luke.

Actually, the placement of the first and third readings in today’s liturgy exactly reverses Luke’s sequence in his two books. The Acts of the Apostles is Luke’s sequel to his Gospel. So the third reading this evening comes from the very end of Luke’s Gospel, which comes first; whereas our opening reading came from the very beginning of the sequel, in which Luke tells the story of the early Church.

In any case, for Luke, the Ascension of the Lord is so pivotal an episode that he tells it twice: first at the end of his Gospel as the climax of his story of Jesus; and then at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles as the commencement of his story of the early Church. And the Ascension is pivotal for us today in our life as Christians as well.

What really happened on Ascension Day? The short answer is that we don’t know. Perhaps the story is just a symbolic way of saying that Jesus has returned to his Father in heaven. Or, perhaps Jesus really did literally lift off from the ground and soar up into the clouds. The priest and writer Robert Farrar Capon once commented that Jesus only needed to get up as far as the first cloud in order to make his point – a visual point that his disciples would have understood perfectly in terms of their own world view and cosmology. The underlying theological principle here is that God always accommodates himself to our limitations by speaking in a language, whether verbal or visual, that we can understand.

The question, then, is what difference it makes to us. It used to be fashionable for theologians to write books attempting to tease out the relationship between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith: that is, between the historical figure of Jesus about whom we read in the Gospels; and the Christ whom we worship and obey as Lord in the Church today. The Ascension teaches us, however, that the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are absolutely one and the same person. In other words, the Jesus about whom we read in the Bible is not merely an historical figure who lived and died in the ancient past, but rather someone who is alive even now in the fullest possible sense of the word.

The Ascension is absolutely critical to our Christian faith because it addresses the question: Where is Jesus now? The answer is that he’s been exalted to the right hand of his Father in heaven, where he reigns as Lord over all creation.

Yet, precisely because he’s returned to his Father in heaven, he can be present for us in the Church here and now. We can know him not only as someone whose words and deeds we read about in the Bible as a distant figure from the past, but also as a living presence in our midst – and more specifically, as the one who still speaks to us in his Word, who still comes among us in his Sacraments, and who still claims our deepest loyalty, allegiance, faith, and obedience as our Lord and Savior.

Paradoxically, then, the Ascension marks the beginning not of the absence of Jesus from his Church on earth, but rather of his presence in a new mode. During our Lord’s earthly Incarnation, his presence to his disciples was localized in his human body. After his Ascension, however, Jesus becomes present in the Spirit wherever his disciples travel, wherever the Church gathers in his name, wherever his Word is preached, wherever his Sacraments are celebrated.

So the Ascension is both end and beginning. It marks the end of the story of our Lord’s earthly Incarnation at a definite time and place in human history. But it also marks the beginning of our story as the Church, the Body of Christ on earth, the community of those who continue his mission and find new life in him.