Easter Sunday 2013

Duccio di Buoninsegna [1260-1318]
The Three Marys at the Tomb, c.  1308-1311

Luke 24:1-12

As I did last night at the Great Vigil of Easter, I want to begin my remarks this morning by reflecting on a depiction of Christ’s Resurrection in Christian art. If you would look at the illustration on the cover of our program, it shows an Italo-Byzantine painting of three women encountering an angel at the tomb on the first Easter Sunday morning. In the Western tradition they’re sometimes known as the three Marys; in the Eastern tradition they’re known as the holy myrrh-bearing women.

The resurrection narrative in Saint Luke’s Gospel, which we’ve just heard, names them as Mary Magdalene, Joana, and Mary the mother of James. The other Gospels feature slight variations on their names and number. All four Gospels are clear, however, that before dawn on the first Easter Sunday a small group of women go to the tomb, but find it empty, and encounter heavenly messengers telling them that he is not there, for he is risen from the dead.

The women are then instructed to go and tell the disciples what they’ve heard and seen. For this reason, they are sometimes known as “apostles to the apostles”; and in the Eastern Orthodox tradition they have the title “equal to the apostles.” They’re witnesses to the events of both Good Friday and Easter Sunday. They’d followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. They were present when Jesus was taken down dead from the cross, wrapped in a linen shroud, and laid to rest in the tomb. Then it seemed that their whole world had fallen apart, their hopes dashed. But when they return after the Sabbath to anoint the body, they’re first to find the tomb empty.

Beyond the joy of realizing that something unimaginably wonderful has happened, they receive the crucial assignment of bearing witness to what they’ve seen and heard. In Jewish law, a fact can be established by the unanimous testimony of three witnesses, men or women – hence the importance of there having been at least three women at the tomb.

The Church’s faith in the resurrection of Christ rests in large part on their testimony. In recent years, some New Testament scholars have pointed out that belief in Christ’s resurrection from the dead depends on two pieces of evidence taken together: the empty tomb, and the subsequent appearances of the risen Christ to his disciples.

By itself, the empty tomb proves nothing. The body could have been stolen by his enemies, or surreptitiously removed by his followers. And by themselves, the appearances of the risen Christ can be explained away either as a delusion, or as the apparitions of a ghost. In the ancient world, as in many times and places since, it was not uncommon for grieving relatives and friends to encounter spirits of the departed.

But combine these two pieces of evidence – the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances – and it becomes clear that we’re dealing with an event that’s unique, unprecedented, and mysterious. One who was really and truly dead has now been raised to not just new life but a whole new state of existence. This is not merely the resuscitation of a corpse, but a passage from earthly life through death to eternal life. In the risen Christ, death itself has been defeated, and life has gained the victory.

Of this victory, both the women at the tomb and the disciples are made witnesses. The women are sent to bear witness to the disciples; and the disciples are in turn sent to bear witness to all nations and peoples of the earth. And from then until now, the Church has not ceased to continue this mission of bearing witness to the Lord’s Resurrection.

Years ago, when I was in the process of discerning my vocation to the priesthood, and going through all the steps necessary to secure approval to go to seminary, a friend of mine focused this point for me in a way that I’ve never forgotten. He went to the same seminary I did, in Virginia, three years ahead of me. In the middle of his second year, I went to visit him there, both to catch up with how he was doing, and to see the seminary for myself, since I was already thinking of going there.

In the course of our conversations, he remarked: “I’m a cradle Episcopalian. I grew up attending Sunday School, participating in the Youth Group, and serving as an acolyte. But in my first year of seminary I began to realize that I’d been wrong about much of what I thought were the purposes of the Church’s existence, its reasons for being. Worship and prayer; preaching, study, and teaching; mission, evangelism, and good works in the world – are all ordered towards serving the main purpose, the primary purpose, which is to bear witness to the Lord’s Resurrection. If we’re not doing that, then we’re not fulfilling our mission as the Church; we’re not being the Church.”

Those were challenging words; and I’ve often called them to mind when I’ve encountered people and groups in the Church who seem to think that the Resurrection is an optional extra that we don’t have to believe in if we don’t want to: or perhaps a metaphor for some sort of subjective experience of renewal on the part of the disciples and, by extension, on our part as well. No. Bearing witness to the Lord’s bodily Resurrection is the key activity that defines our identity and mission as the Church.

But can we believe in the Resurrection today and maintain our intellectual integrity? Yes we can. True, we live in a skeptical world which discourages belief in anything supernatural or miraculous. But where we end up so often depends on where we start. Some time ago, someone told me that she couldn’t accept Christianity because it was impossible to believe all its stories about miracles. For once, the right answer occurred to me on the spot, right there and then, rather than in the shower the next morning; and I replied: “No, you’ve got it exactly the wrong way round. It’s not that you can’t accept Christianity because you don’t believe in miracles; it’s that you can’t believe in miracles because you don’t accept Christianity.” In other words, if the Christian God is the sort of God that the Scriptures claim him to be, then miracles are no problem. If God created the universe and everything in it out of nothing, then he’s certainly capable of creative actions in the world that surpass human understanding, including raising the dead.

Here, then, is the reason for our joyful gathering this morning and, indeed, every Sunday morning. We gather as the Church to continue the witness begun by the women at the tomb. Christ is not dead but alive; and he makes himself available to us as a living presence in each of our lives if only we invite him in. Because he lives, we also have the promise of eternal life. And it’s our mission as the Church never to cease bearing witness to this good news.

Easter Vigil 2013

Saturday 30 March 2013

Not surprisingly, the Resurrection of Christ is a principal subject of Christian art. In the Churches of the West, both Catholic and Reformed, both paintings and statues tend to depict the Risen Christ emerging triumphant from the tomb, perhaps with the soldiers sleeping on either side of the rolled back stone.

In the Eastern Church, however, the artistic tradition is different. The illustration on the cover of your service booklet shows a typical Eastern Orthodox icon of the Resurrection or Anastasis.

Standing astride a great set of fallen gates – which have landed in the figure of a cross – with the nail-prints visible in his hands and feet, Christ reaches down to grasp the hand of a man rising from a tomb. The man is Adam, our first parent. Beside him is Eve. Behind her, the figure with the shepherd’s crook is likely King David. To the left, stand John the Baptist and one of the kings of Israel, probably Solomon.

This strange image symbolically depicts what happened between our Lord’s death on the cross on Good Friday, and his rising from the tomb on Easter Sunday: namely, his descent into hell. The Apostles’ Creed states that after Jesus died and was buried, “he descended into hell, and on the third day he rose again.” Yet often during Holy Week it’s possible to go straight from the death and burial on Friday afternoon to the Resurrection on Sunday morning, without pausing to consider anything in between.

Over the years, people have occasionally asked me the same question about the Great Vigil of Easter: why are you celebrating Easter when it’s not yet Easter Sunday? Part of the answer is that on Easter Sunday we celebrate the resurrection appearances to the women and the disciples; while during the Great Vigil we instead on the resurrection itself: the deep mystery of what happens in the dark solitude of Christ’s tomb before dawn. So, on this most holy night, it seems appropriate to say a few words about Christ’s harrowing of hell.

The Bible briefly mentions this descent into hell in several places. Perhaps the best-known reference occurs in the First Letter of Peter. The apostle writes that Jesus was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison” (3:18-19). A bit later, he adds: “For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God” (4:6).

Paul writes in his Letter to the Ephesians, that Christ “descended into the lower parts of the earth,” and then later “ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things” (4:9-10).

In the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Peter, in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, quotes Psalm 16, which says, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption.” Peter then says that in the psalm David “foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption” (2:31). These words suggest that Christ’s soul went to the place called Hades, but was not abandoned there, while his body remained incorrupt in the tomb.

One final hint is that in the many places where the New Testament writers speak of Christ being raised from the dead, the phrase “from the dead” in the original Greek means not “from the state of death,” but rather, literally, “from among the dead ones.”

The Church’s traditional understanding is that when Jesus died and his body was placed in the tomb, his soul left his body and descended into the place known in Hebrew as Sheol, and in Greek as Hades: not the hell of eternal damnation and punishment that awaits the unrepentant after the Last Judgment, but rather that shadowy realm where the spirits of the dead were awaiting the coming of the Redeemer.

Here, rather than becoming a prisoner himself, Christ trampled down the gates, crushed the power of the devil, preached the Gospel, and set free the souls of the dead. Finally, his soul ascended and rejoined his body, which was lying incorrupt in the tomb awaiting resurrection.

This doctrine of Christ’s descent into hell points to at least three truths of importance.

First, Jesus truly experienced death. From his conception, he went through all the stages of human existence, both on this side of the grave and beyond. And this means that he’s present for us in every stage of our life and death. Even as we go down into the grave, he’s already there waiting for us. Not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Second, by descending into hell, Christ has made his presence known in every part of creation, from the highest heaven to the lowest depths of the earth. In particular, by preaching the Gospel to those who had died before him, he shows that his offer of salvation extends to all people in all times and in all places.

And third, by ascending from hell after descending there, he accomplishes his victory over death and the grave: a victory which will be made manifest when he appears to the women and the disciples on Easter Sunday; and a victory in which we share by being baptized into his Body, the Church.

Tomorrow morning we shall celebrate the discovery of the empty tomb and the appearances of the Risen Lord to his followers. But this evening, we rejoice, give thanks, and celebrate -- for in the words of the Exsultet: “The night is come, wherein the bonds of death were loosed, and Christ harrowing hell rose again in triumph.”

Good Friday, 2013

Friday 29 March 2013

This year, the theme of our Sunday evening Lenten series was forgiveness and reconciliation. During the course of the series, we watched three movies and read one book. The book was Free of Charge, by Miroslav Volf, a professor at Yale Divinity School who was born in Croatia. And one of the movies was the French language film The Widow of Saint Pierre. So, by way of a Good Friday sermon, I want to offer some reflections on both the movie and the book.

The film is set on the island of Saint Pierre, a French territorial possession located just off the coast of Newfoundland. The year is 1850, during the short-lived Second French Republic. The movie begins with a senseless drunken murder committed one night by a drunken fisherman, Neel Auguste.

After his arrest, Neel is sentenced to death. Since there is no guillotine on the island, however, the island authorities must send to France for one before the execution can be carried out. And it will take months and months for a guillotine to be shipped to Saint-Pierre.

In the meantime, Neel is delivered into the custody of the local army captain. Skeptical that the guillotine will ever arrive, his wife takes an interest in rehabilitating the convict. She soon has Neel doing odd jobs all over the island – fixing roofs and such – so that he becomes popular, well-loved, and apparently forgiven. It also turns out that Neel has several children by one of the women on the island, and the captain’s wife arranges for the local priest to solemnize their marriage.

Meanwhile, the island authorities grow increasingly nervous, knowing that Neel’s new-found popularity could cause them problems when the guillotine finally arrives. But the law must be upheld. They try alternatively bullying and cajoling the Captain to restrain his wife’s activities on behalf of Neel. But the Captain, deeply devoted to his wife, refuses to rein her in and insists that the prisoner is his responsibility, not theirs.

In one revealing scene, the captain’s wife explains to Neel the philosophy of what she’s doing. He was drunk when he committed the murder, but since he no longer drinks, he’s changed. People can change, so they ought to be given second chances. Yet the expression on Neel’s face betrays skepticism of such a simplistic and facile explanation.

When a guillotine finally arrives from Martinique, it becomes clear that even though the islanders have forgiven him, Neel has not forgiven himself. Deep down, he believes that he must pay the penalty of his crime. He refuses to take advantage of an opportunity to escape to Newfoundland; and when the islanders initially refuse to unload the ship’s cargo, Neel himself enlists for the work because the money he earns will go to support his wife and children once he’s dead.

Meanwhile, on account of his defiance of the island authorities, the Captain is sent back to France where he’s court-martialed and executed by firing squad for mutiny. And on Saint-Pierre, Neel is finally executed as well.

It’s a disturbing movie, devoid of any explicitly religious message. But if I read it correctly, the deaths of both Neel Auguste and the Captain have a dimension of redemptive self-sacrifice. Rather than escape, Neel Auguste chooses to accept the death penalty to expiate the guilt of his crime, and in the process he’s able to bequeath a small inheritance to his survivors. Similarly, the Captain loves his wife so much that he accepts death willingly to pay the price of her transgression and testing the limits of what was acceptable to the island’s authorities and their sense of the demands of outraged justice.

As I watched the movie and reflected on it afterwards, I couldn’t help wishing that someone had told Neel Auguste that he didn’t have to die to expiate the guilt of his crimes, because Christ had already done that for him on the cross. He was already forgiven by God on account of the death of Christ. His faith in that assurance might not have altered the outcome of the story – the wheels of temporal justice would likely have turned inexorably anyway. But then he could at least have faced his death in the confidence that his sins were forgiven, his guilt taken away.

At some level, Neel understood what the Captain’s wife did not: that true forgiveness is always costly. In the book Free of Charge, Miroslav Volf makes it clear that to forgive is not to excuse or overlook wrongdoing. If I forgive you for some injury you’ve caused me, I am simultaneously condemning what you’ve done as wrong, and also saying that I’m not going to hold it against you. And that kind of forgiveness is costly, because it requires me to bear the injury, to absorb the offense, and to let go of the natural desire for compensation or retribution.

Yet Volf is also clear that as Christians we’re called to forgive others their trespasses because God has forgiven ours. When someone injures or offends us, we cannot withhold our forgiveness once we learn to see that person as a sinner for whom Christ died, someone who stands forgiven by God in Christ. And just as forgiveness is costly to us, so it’s costly to God, for it entails the sacrifice of the cross.

Volf does a good job of making clear that Christ’s death on the cross is not the unjust punishment of an innocent victim to make satisfaction for human sin. Rather, because Jesus Christ is the Incarnate Second Person of the Holy Trinity, by dying on the cross God himself bears the burden of our sins and absorbs our offenses. Volf writes: “the one who was offended bears the burden of the offense” (p. 145).

And yet, because Christ is not only truly God but also truly human, his death pays the price of human sin. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul writes: “One has died for all; therefore all have died.” Volf expands on this idea: “Now we see that we were also in Christ. What happened to him happened to us. When he was condemned, we were condemned. When he died, we died” (p. 147). The upshot is that our sinful natures have been crucified with Christ; we’re separated from the guilt of our sins; and we’re set free from the power of sin itself.

Such is the power of the cross in the life of the Christian. It’s the sign of the forgiveness of our sins in virtue of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. So, unlike Neel Auguste in The Widow of Saint-Pierre, we don’t need to die to expiate the guilt of our sins, because we’ve already died in Christ. And insofar as we accept God’s forgiveness, we can rest assured that Christ has taken away our guilt. We’re set free to live in the power of Christ’s resurrection, to live in Christ and to have the risen Christ live in us as the source of our life. But that is to get ahead of the story, which we’ll pick up again tomorrow evening and on Sunday morning.

Maundy Thursday, 2013

Thursday 28 March 2013

Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.”

In the thirteen years I’ve been at S. Stephen’s, the foot-washing has never been a problem. Every year we invite twelve parishioners to come forward as representatives of the congregation to have their feet washed by the clergy; and we never seem to have any problem finding volunteers to fulfill that role.

This has not been the case in most of the other parishes that I’ve known. Before I came to S. Stephen’s, in the other parishes I served, just about every year someone who was asked to have their feet washed at the Maundy Thursday liturgy refused point blank: sometimes sheepishly, sometimes defiantly, sometimes apologetically – but always implicitly taking the stand of Peter, “You shall never wash my feet.”

The ceremony of the foot washing, the Mandatum or Maundy, dates from the Middle Ages. In obedience to our Lord’s new commandment to love one another as he has loved us, on Maundy Thursday Popes would wash the feet of servants, abbots the feet of monks, and kings and queens the feet of peasants.

Yet in many places it remains a controversial practice. Some years ago the Episcopal news magazine, The Living Church, printed an opinion piece by a priest arguing that we ought not to do the foot washing at all because it distracts our attention from the primary focus of Maundy Thursday, our Lord’s institution of the Holy Eucharist.

The foot-washing plays out differently in different parishes. When I lived in Texas, an old lady in the church I attended loudly told everyone that if they ever did the foot washing there she’d leave the parish. And since she was one of the principal contributors, her threat deterred the rector from introducing the practice, for several years at least.

On the other hand, this past week I heard of a parish where all the members of the congregation – about a hundred and fifty people – have their feet washed, a process lasting about an hour and a half. And just today, I heard of a parish where the ones who get their feet washed are the twelve members of the vestry, some of whom consciously or unconsciously project the smug attitude that now they’ve got the rector where they really want him.

Many more people are quite happy to have the foot washing take place in their parish so long as they don’t have to participate. The first time I was asked to be one of the foot-washees in a Maundy Thursday service, the rector was very specific that he wanted us to remove the shoe and sock of the right foot. This made me slightly uncomfortable, because several years before, when I was fifteen, I’d had surgery on the big toe of my right foot, leaving only half a toenail there. So, I was a bit reticent about exposing this little deformity to my rector’s up-close and personal inspection. In fact, I even warned him ahead of time so he wouldn’t be too shocked by the discovery.

The only reason I’m sharing this piece of information is to offer an example of why people are sometimes reluctant to participate in the foot washing ceremony. A writer by the name of Jay Rochelle says this: “When we wash feet we quickly recognize the many meanings feet have for us. We consider them sensitive and silly appendages. People don’t want to expose them. Feet get knobby and worn. They are covered with protruding veins, bunions, and calluses. Who wants to let the priest or anyone else touch these barges of human flesh? It’s an unfamiliar intimacy.”

So we can understand why Peter initially refuses to allow Jesus to wash his feet. Peter clearly wants to follow Jesus and to serve him in any way he can. But when it comes to allowing Jesus to minister to him, Peter draws back. “You shall never wash my feet.”

The conventional explanation of Peter’s refusal is that he thinks it beneath our Lord’s dignity to do the menial work of a household servant. But perhaps Peter is expressing a much deeper refusal to let Jesus get close to him and know him, with all his faults and shortcomings. Perhaps it symbolizes his own reluctance to open up, and let his Lord care for him, and love him, just as he is.

In that case, our Lord’s response is telling. “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.” In other words: no foot washing, no Eucharist. To be in fellowship with Jesus, to share in the Lord’s Supper, Peter must open up and let Jesus into every private corner of his life. That’s what letting Jesus wash his feet symbolizes. Peter quickly gets the point. “Lord, not just my feet but also my hands and my head!”

Having been on both the giving and receiving end of the foot washing, I can testify that it’s a moving and humbling experience. When I kneel down and the feet of my parishioners, I am reminded in a profound way whose servant I’m called to be. But to be willing to get your feet washed requires definite humility as well. We need to realize that before we can minister effectively to others, we need to open up and allow our Lord to minister to us.

Quite apart from Maundy Thursday, the foot washing reminds us that if we want the fellowship and communion with our Lord that he offers us in the Holy Eucharist, we need to begin with this basic attitude of openness and receptivity. If we don’t feel comfortable exposing our feet in church and participating in the foot washing ceremony, fine. The real question, however, is whether we’re willing to invite Jesus into every dark, dusty, grimy corner of our lives, so that he can pour on fresh clear water, and wash us clean. Not just our feet, but our hands and our heads as well. For, in this way, he cleanses us and makes us fit partakers of his heavenly banquet.

Palm Sunday, 2013

Sunday 24 March 2013

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” That saying highlights what I like to call the “paradox of judgment.” We cannot avoid judging. From day to day, we make hundreds of critical evaluations and decisions. Yet the paradox is that in the very act of evaluating we subject ourselves to evaluation; in the very act of judging, we subject ourselves to judgment.

There’s a story of a brash American tourist who went into one of the famous art museums in Italy. In less than an hour he breezed through all the rooms containing medieval and renaissance paintings that often occupied other visitors for days. On his way out, he remarked to the guard at the door, “Well, I certainly don’t think much of your old masters.” The guard replied calmly, “Yes, sir. And they don’t think much of you either. But unfortunately for you, it’s not the old masters who are on trial here, but the viewers.”

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes that the word “trial” signifies an event (or even an ordeal) designed to reveal the truth. The purpose of a judicial trial in particular is to find out the truth of an accused person’s guilt or innocence. But in the process the trial typically lays bare many other truths as well – the honesty and reliability of the witnesses, the competence of the lawyers, the impartiality of the judge, and the wisdom of the jury.

In other words, many others are on trial than just the accused. In a real sense, the entire system of justice is on trial. When the courts find guilty and sentence someone who’s innocent, and who’s later exonerated by new evidence; or, conversely, when they acquit and set free someone who’s guilty, who then goes out and commits more crimes, then the judicial system itself stands judged by its own false judgment.

In every act of judgment, then, we subject ourselves to judgment. The judgment may be for us or against us. The crucial point is that we have no privileged vantage point from which to evaluate and judge without being evaluated and judged at the same time.

So, it’s a bit surprising that so many people today seem to think that they have the luxury of critically examining the claims of Christianity, and effectively standing in judgment over God himself, without any corresponding sense of their own accountability. In his famous essay “God in the Dock,” C.S. Lewis describes the difference between previous generations and us in this regard:

“The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the bench and God in the dock.”

But what would it really look like to put God on trial? The answer is that almost two thousand years ago, we did put God on trial. When God came among us as a human being, we arrested him, put him on trial, and executed him.

What stands out in the Passion according to Saint Luke is the depiction of the different ways in which the characters in the story respond to Jesus. Luke seems acutely aware that it’s not Jesus who’s really on trial here, but everybody else.

In the course of the story, a number of the characters reach their own verdicts concerning Jesus. The chief priests, scribes, and rulers of the people seem to have their minds made up from the beginning; and they press relentlessly for Jesus’ condemnation, thus securing their own condemnation.

Representing the powers that rule this world, Pilate and Herod find nothing to condemn in Jesus. Pilate even declares Jesus innocent three times; but then demonstrates the sheer bankruptcy of his system of justice by condemning Jesus to death anyway.

The crowds are a bit harder to pigeonhole. At least some of them go along with the chief priests and scribes in crying, “Crucify, crucify him.” But Luke is careful to tell us that the crowds watch the crucifixion itself in silence, not joining in the taunts of the rulers and soldiers. And then, once Jesus has died, the crowds return to their homes beating their breasts – a gesture of sorrow and perhaps even repentance.

The starkest contrast is that between the two thieves crucified with Jesus. The one thief joins in the executioners’ mockery and abuse. The other thief, against all expectations, puts his faith and trust in Jesus – saying “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” – and in turn receives the promise, “Today you shall be with me in Paradise.” There’s no clearer instance of the point that Jesus is not really the one on trial here; in reaching the true judgment about Jesus the good thief has gained his own acquittal.

We may well say the same of the centurion who renders the verdict, “Certainly this was a righteous man!” In so saying, he acknowledges the guilt of his complicity in a wrongful execution and yet, paradoxically, emerges as a righteous man as well – as does Joseph of Arimathea, the member of the Council who demonstrates that even the rulers are not unanimous in their condemnation of Jesus.

In all these different ways, the characters reach their various judgments concerning Jesus, and, in so doing, find themselves judged accordingly. The same is true for us today. As we question, probe, and evaluate God, we are really the ones being questioned, probed, and evaluated. As we render our verdict, verdict is rendered on us.

The trouble is that none of us can stand up to that kind of scrutiny. None of us has clean hands. Throughout our lives, so many of our judgments are misjudgments; so many of our decisions are so deeply flawed. So often, we’re at our worst precisely when we’re trying to do our best.

But notice that the characters who come off best in the Passion narrative are not those who are beyond reproach – for, besides Jesus, there aren’t any – but rather those who accept responsibility for their actions and repent of their sins: the thief who acknowledges that he’s suffering the due reward of his deeds; the centurion who admits his complicity in a wrongful execution; the crowds who go home beating their breasts.

Our only hope lies in repentance. Yet, once we’ve put God on trial and condemned him to death, what possible hope can remain for us? For the answer to that question, come back a week from today.

Lent 5, Year C -- Sunday Sermon

John 12:1-8

When Pope Francis is inaugurated on Tuesday, one item almost certain to be missing from the ceremony is the papal tiara, the beehive-shaped Triple Crown. From the twelfth century until well into the twentieth, the papal inauguration was actually a coronation. But the last Pope to be crowned with the tiara was Paul VI in 1963. Later in the same year, at the end of the second session of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul descended from the papal throne, and laid his tiara on the High Altar in a dramatic gesture of renunciation of temporal power and glory. It was later announced that the tiara would be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. As it happened, Roman Catholics in the United States bought the tiara, which is now on display in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C.

At one level, Pope Paul’s gesture calls attention to a perennial issue in the life of the Church: the tradeoff between earthly riches, and the Gospel mandate to give to the poor. In one place in the Gospels, our Lord tells the rich young man, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." But then in today’s Gospel, after Mary of Bethany anoints our Lord's feet with costly ointment, Judas issues the challenge, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” and Jesus rebukes him, ‘Let her alone … The poor you have always with you, but you do not always have me.”

Judas’s objection is not unreasonable. Mary’s gesture is certainly costly. A denarius is a day’s wage, so a jar of ointment valued at 300 denarii is worth the best part of a year’s wages. Moreover, Mary’s actions are as extravagant as the ointment is expensive. Anointing his feet and wiping them with her hair borders on scandalous impropriety in a culture where men and women are supposed to keep their distance and certainly not touch one another. What’s going on?

Mary’s action becomes intelligible in light of the preceding events in the narrative of John’s Gospel. Remember, this Mary is the sister of Martha and Lazarus. And today’s episode follows on directly our Lord’s raising Lazarus from the dead.

To recapitulate the main points of that story, Jesus and the disciples withdrew across the Jordan because a mob in Jerusalem was on the verge of stoning him, and the Jewish authorities tried to arrest him. When Jesus received word that his friend Lazarus was ill, he waited three days and then announced his intention to go to him. Since Bethany was only two miles from Jerusalem, however, the disciples reminded Jesus of the danger; and ultimately Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

So, it was enormously risky for Jesus and the disciples to return to Judea. Then, after the raising of Lazarus, the dangers multiplied. For in John’s Gospel it was this miracle that precipitated the decision of the Council, the Sanhedrin, to do away with Jesus. The chief priests and the elders asked: “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” And the High Priest Caiaphas responded, “It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.”

When today’s Gospel begins, then, Jesus is already a man marked for death. The authorities are trying to track him down and catch him away from the crowds so they can arrest him and hand him over to the Romans for execution. Against this background, Mary’s anointing his feet has deep significance. If she’d poured the oil on his head, the symbolism would have been that of a coronation—anointing a king about to enter into his reign. But anointing the feet is characteristically something done to the dead in the Jewish rites of burial.

Our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel bear this symbolism out. But we have a slight translation problem. Our Revised Standard Version renders his words as “Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial.” But another possible translation is something like, “Let her alone, for she was keeping it for the day of my burial.”

Barbara Brown Taylor points out that Mary’s action is itself prophetic, an enacted sign pointing to our Lord’s crucifixion. For it’s precisely the costliness of Mary’s offering, the selfless extravagance of her love, that anticipates the great cost that Jesus will bear on the cross out of God’s extravagant love for his creation.

One further detail: when Jesus was about to raise Lazarus from the dead and ordered the stone sealing the tomb to be removed, Mary’s sister Martha objected, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” By contrast to the stench of death, however, when Mary anointed Jesus’ feet, “the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.” In the same way, our Lord’s approaching death on the cross will be a sacrifice of sweet fragrance that brings life, health, and salvation to the whole world.

None of what I’ve said really answers the question with which I began, of the trade-off between the Church’s stewardship of earthly riches and its fidelity to the Gospel mandate to give generously to the poor. I have a hunch that at times we are indeed called as the Church to do as our Lord bade the rich young man do: sell what we have, give to the poor, and have treasure in heaven. And there are times when we’re called to expend the equivalent of costly ointment of pure nard in our worship of the one Lord.

We spend a significant amount of money on our music and liturgy here at S. Stephen’s, not because we’re refined people who deserve quality entertainment, but because we believe that the worship of God demands our very best, just as Mary of Bethany gave her very best to honor her Lord. There’s a time to don the papal tiara, and a time to lay it aside. And who knows, the time may come when it will become appropriate for a future Pope to put it on again.

However we negotiate these choices, today’s Gospel suggests we’re called to do nothing by half measures. The Christian life is a life of radical generosity born of love. And we’re called to give it our all. Mary of Bethany enacts this radical generosity born of love in her anointing of our Lord’s feet, just as Jesus will soon offer himself for the whole world in his sacrifice of himself on the cross. And it’s precisely this same costly, extravagant, all-outpouring love that we’re called to make manifest in the Church today, as we follow Christ, and serve the world in his name.

Lent 3, Year C -- Sunday Sermon

Luke 13:1-9

Some of the most interesting episodes in the Gospels describe various people’s attempts to entrap Jesus into saying something that they can use against him. Today’s Gospel opens with just such a challenge: “Some present told Jesus of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” 

They are reporting an atrocity and outrage. We have no independent attestation of the incident, but apparently Roman troops under Pilate have massacred a group of Galileans either in or en route to the Temple, so that their blood ran together with that of their sacrificial animals.

The challenge is to see how Jesus will respond. After all, he is himself a Galilean. If he flies into a rage and denounces Pilate, his enemies will have a pretext to arrest him on a charge of sedition. If, on the other hand, he says nothing or implies that the Galileans were sinners who got what they deserved, then he’ll seem harsh and uncaring, and people will turn against him.

The text doesn’t tell us the motives of those reporting this outrage. Perhaps they’re provocateurs sent by the authorities to entrap Jesus. Or, perhaps they’re zealots using this report of a Roman atrocity to try to get Jesus to commit himself publicly to their cause of armed rebellion.

Either way, Jesus refuses to fall into the trap. Instead of saying anything for or against Pilate, he takes the occasion to warn his listeners of their own need to repent. Those Galileans were no worse sinners than any other Galileans. Nor were eighteen Judeans killed by a collapsing tower any worse sinners than all the other residents of Jerusalem. “But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” 

The traditional interpretation of these words is that our Lord is warning his listeners not to worry about why bad things happen to good people, but instead to make use of the time available to repent and amend their lives, so that they won’t perish in the final judgment on the last day. According to this interpretation, the Galileans massacred by Pilate and the Jerusalemites crushed by the falling tower symbolize and point to the fate of those condemned to the eternal punishments of hell. “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

However, in recent years some New Testament scholars have suggested a more literal interpretation, according to which Jesus is directing a large part of his message against those of his fellow Jews who seek to achieve the Kingdom of God by means of armed confrontation with Rome. But in Jesus’ teaching, the Kingdom of God comes about not by means of earthly power and coercion but by means of sacrificial, self-giving love and forgiveness -- turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, praying for your persecutors, loving your enemies -- precisely the type of sacrificial love that Jesus himself embodies and fulfills on the cross.

So, when Jesus calls his contemporaries to repent, he’s concerned not so much with their personal sins as with the whole strategy of armed resistance that the Jews of his day are counting on to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. He accurately foresees that this strategy will provoke an escalating cycle of repression, further outbreaks of rebellion, and finally a conflagration of total disaster. In AD 70, his predictions come true, when the Jews revolt and the Roman armies besiege Jerusalem and destroy its Temple.

Against this background, the exchange in today’s Gospel takes on a whole new meaning. We can imagine some zealots trying to enlist Jesus in their cause by telling him of a Roman atrocity. But Jesus warns them that unless they forsake the path of rebellion and violence, they too shall perish by Roman swords and collapsing buildings. Jesus means it all very literally, and subsequent history eventually proves him right.

If this reading is correct, then these words of Jesus are much more specific to his immediate historical circumstances than the Church has generally recognized. Nevertheless, the exchange in today’s Gospel holds up a principle of crucial importance for us today.

Confronted with so much that’s wrong with our world, people in our culture seem always to want to assign blame to something or someone other than themselves: whether the government, big business, the unions, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Tea Party, the NRA, the Christian Right, the Roman Catholic Church, or perhaps the forces of socialism, secularism, and sexual permissiveness. Whatever side we may find ourselves on, the pervasive tendency is to assume that we’re the good guys, and that those who disagree with us are the bad guys. Thus, the solution is almost always to find some way to outflank and outmaneuver the bad guys, driving them from office and expunging their influence on public life. Or better yet: to persuade them of the error of their ways so that they will repent, change their minds, and come around to our point of view.

This approach is fundamentally flawed because it still treats the cause of the problem as “out there,” to be solved by changing – or at least neutralizing – the attitudes and behavior of others. But the effects are generally counterproductive. Such mutual recrimination and scapegoating tends to push people into defensive corners so that the conflicts intensify and we become more and more divided and polarized.

In today’s Gospel, however, Jesus challenges his fellow Jews who see the Romans as the problem to recognize their own need to repent and change their ways before they do anything else. Likewise, when we become distressed with something that’s wrong in our world, our society, or our community – or for that matter, in our Church -- Jesus challenges us to try to recognize our own complicity in the problem first, so that we can hear God’s call to change our ways, before we try to change anyone else.

Such is the meaning of repentance. And if we’re serious, we’ll soon discover that we can’t do it without the Lord’s help. So, this season of Lent invites us to examine our lives and discover for ourselves the difference that Jesus alone can make.