Sermon for Palm Sunday, Year B

Pavel Popov, Judas Betrays Christ with a Kiss (Date Unknown)

Mark 11:1-11

Mark 14:1-15:47

In Episcopal parish churches where they don’t have a choir to sing the Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday, it’s common to have a dramatic reading of it instead. Members of the congregation are assigned different parts, from the narrator, to Peter, to the maid who accuses Peter of being one of Jesus’ disciples, to the centurion at the foot of the cross.

The parish priest almost always takes the part of Jesus. The full congregation takes the part of the crowd, shouting out with particular enthusiasm the lines, “Crucify, crucify him!” (Sometimes one wonders whether they’re referring more to Jesus or the rector.)

Countless sermons and devotional commentaries on this practice point out the contrast between the crowd’s cries of “Hosanna” when Jesus enters Jerusalem, and the same crowd’s cries of “Crucify, crucify him!” within the same week. By reciting these lines, the congregation is reminded that even if we join in singing the praises of Jesus in church, we need to take care that we don’t end up effectively calling for his crucifixion at other times in other contexts.

This year, both the Palm Gospel and the Passion Gospel are taken from Saint Mark. Some biblical scholars reckon Mark’s the first of the canonical Gospels to have been written, while others question that hypothesis. Either way, Mark’s Gospel is clearly the shortest and most succinct of the four.

I want to argue this morning that a careful reading of Saint Mark shows that the real contrast he has in mind is not so much between the cries of “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday and “Crucify him!” on Good Friday, as between the disciples’ enthusiastically following Jesus into Jerusalem at his Triumphal Entry but then deserting him at his arrest a few days later.

Let’s look at both events a bit more closely. On Palm Sunday, Jesus makes his final approach to Jerusalem among the crowds of pilgrims going up to the Holy City to keep Passover. His route by way of the villages of Bethany and Bethphage on the Mount of Olives has deep significance. According to Old Testament prophecy, this is where the Messiah will appear on the Day of the Lord: “On that day,” says the prophet Zechariah, “his feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives which lies before Jerusalem to the east.”

The elaborate preparations involving the colt evoke another prophecy of Zechariah:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt the foal of an ass.

Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a young donkey is thus what the biblical scholars call an enacted sign: a bit of street theater designed to make a theological and political point. He’s visually proclaiming himself the true king of Israel, the Messiah or Anointed One of God, arriving to take possession of his capital city.

The point is not lost on those accompanying him. Spreading their garments and leafy branches in his path, they pay him the homage due royalty and acclaim him the one who comes in the name of the Lord to restore the kingdom of his father David.

Those who engage in this acclamation are not, however, the multitudes at large. Rather, they’re those who’ve traveled with Jesus from Galilee, along the Jordan valley, through Jericho, and up to Jerusalem. The Twelve Apostles are the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples, but the disciples are really a much larger group. They’ve followed him, listened to his teachings, and witnessed his miracles – most recently the healing of blind Bartimaeus on the road out of Jericho. These disciples traveling with Jesus and the Apostles are the ones who acclaim him as Messiah as they enter Jerusalem.

Within the week, however, their hopes for the establishment of the messianic kingdom are dashed. After eating the Passover meal with the Twelve, Jesus goes out to a place called Gethsemene with Peter, James, and John, and spends much of the night in prayer. Identified by his betrayer Judas with a kiss, he is seized by an armed mob sent by the chief priests and scribes and elders. Then, as Mark notes with characteristic brevity, his disciples all forsake him and flee.

There follows that strange incident, found only in Mark’s Gospel, of the young man who follows him wearing only a linen garment. The mob seizes him but he leaves the linen cloth and runs away naked. Biblical commentators down through the centuries have speculated on his identity. Some have wondered if he’s Mark himself. Most likely, however, Mark’s point in relating the incident has to do with the shame of nakedness in that culture. Rather than allowing himself to be seized so that he can continue to follow Jesus in the Way of the Cross, the young man chooses instead the shame of running away naked. In this way, Mark highlights the shame of all those who abandon Jesus and flee in the moment of crisis.

Peter subsequently experiences the shame of forsaking Jesus when he denies him three times in the high priest’s courtyard when accused of being one of his disciples. Remembering the Lord’s prediction, “Before the cock crows twice, you shall deny me three times,” Peter breaks down and weeps bitterly.

In the end, Jesus faces his trials, his scourging, his mocking, his carrying of the cross, and his death by crucifixion alone, abandoned and forsaken by the same disciples who followed him into Jerusalem singing hosannas just a few days before. The sole exceptions in Mark’s account are the women who came up with him to Jerusalem. As Jesus dies on the cross, they stand watching from afar.

New Testament scholars suggest that Mark may have been writing specifically to encourage Christians in his own day to remain loyal and faithful to Jesus under the threat of persecution and martyrdom. Unlike the disciples who fled, the Christians of Mark’s generation had received the Holy Spirit, first poured out upon the Church at Pentecost, and subsequently conveyed in the Church’s Sacraments. One of the Spirit’s gifts is fortitude, the ability to stand fast and confess Jesus as Lord even at the cost of one’s own life. The martyrs of the early Church exhibited such fortitude in spades.

This gift of remaining faithful unto death was most recently displayed by the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded by the Islamic State on a beach in Libya; to a man they died saying prayers, with the name of Jesus on their lips. They did not forsake Jesus, and Jesus will not forsake them.

Mark’s challenge to us, then, is not to forsake Jesus as his disciples did on the night of his arrest. We’re called to remain faithful in simple ways: most of all by keeping on coming to Mass and participating in the life of the Church – both when it feels good and when it seems difficult, inconvenient, and the last thing we feel like doing. For if we continue faithful to Jesus, in season and out of season, we have the assurance he will continue faithful to us.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B

April 22, 2015

Jeremiah 31:31-34

If you’ve been paying attention to the readings and the sermons this Lent, you’ll have noticed that the theme of Covenant has pervaded the past five Sundays. We’ve seen that biblical covenants are mutual agreements between God and his people, usually commemorated by some sort of sign or marker.

On the First Sunday in Lent, the Old Testament reading introduced God’s Covenant with Noah and all his descendants, that is, the entire human race, in which God promised never again to destroy the earth with water. The sign of that covenant was the rainbow.

On the Second Sunday in Lent, we considered God’s Covenant with Abraham and his descendants, whom God promised to make as numerous as the stars in the sky, and to whom he promised the land of Canaan. The sign of that covenant was circumcision.

On the Third Sunday in Lent, we looked at God’s Covenant with Moses and the Israelites, given on Mount Sinai. The sign of that covenant was the two stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments.

Then last week, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, the focus changed a bit. The Old Testament reading from Numbers introduced the problem of the people’s disobedience and rebellion in the wilderness. Although they’d promised to obey God’s laws and walk in his ways, they nonetheless grumbled and complained against Moses, so that God sent fiery serpents, which bit them so that many died.

Then, when Moses interceded with God for the people, the remedy was a bronze serpent mounted on a pole; upon which those bitten by the fiery serpents could then look and live. We noted also that, beginning with Chapter 3 of John’s Gospel, the Christian tradition has understood the bronze serpent as an anticipation or type of the cross of Christ, upon which sinners may look and be saved.

The wider point is that there’s a big difference between promising obedience and actually being obedient. Throughout, the Old Testament records that again and again the people of Israel broke their promises to God, and relapsed into idolatry and wickedness.

From the Christian viewpoint, the Old Testament has a certain quality of incompleteness. It clearly reveals God’s holiness, goodness, and mercy; and it tells the stories of many very good and even heroic individuals. But the overall picture it paints of the human response to God is one of infidelity and rebellion. The Old Testament masterfully points out the problem of the human condition, namely sin, but it doesn’t quite give the solution. Last week’s Old Testament reading pointed towards the solution, in the form of the cross, by which God forgives our sins. But even then, forgiveness by itself isn’t quite enough. Something more is needed.

One way of describing the problem is that deep down within ourselves we often experience a conflict between what we know to be right in our minds and what we desire with our hearts and choose with our wills. Faced with this conflict, we can go in one of two directions.

First, we can simply rebel. In today’s world, this rebellion most often expresses itself in the attempt to rewrite God’s laws and redefine wrong as right and right as wrong. Now it’s true that a good deal of re-thinking of traditional morality is taking place in today’s Church. That process is, however, a matter for corporate discernment rather than private judgment. Over time, the Church may or may not reach a new consensus on what counts as right and wrong on any given issue. In the meantime, however, we’re called to remain obedient to the laws, commandments, and precepts that we’ve received. But the sad fact is that our unruly wills and disordered affections all too easily lead us astray.

Second, we can make a strenuous effort to obey God’s laws even though deep down what we really want is precisely what the law forbids. Without the inner renewal of our hearts, this effort leads to legalism: a rigid insistence on keeping the letter of the law that breeds nasty intolerance and hypocrisy.

So, we find ourselves caught on the horns of a dilemma: between rebellion on one hand, and legalism and hypocrisy on the other. We have the assurance that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross obtains the forgiveness of our sins, but still, something more is needed: namely, a thoroughgoing renewal of our inner selves so that what we know in our minds to be right also becomes what we desire most in our hearts.

None of the covenants of the Old Testament were able to accomplish this inner renewal – at least not completely or permanently. Yet in today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah, God announces a new Covenant: “I will put my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

As Christians, we believe that this new Covenant is none other than that mediated by Jesus Christ. In his Incarnation he lived the perfect human life, overcoming all opposition between law and desire, letter and spirit, outward constraint and inward motivation. By his death upon the cross, he obtained the forgiveness of our sins. By his Resurrection, he overcame the power of sin and death. And by the sending of the Holy Spirit, he incorporates us into his risen life so that the New Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah becomes a living reality in our midst.

The promise of the New Covenant is that by putting our faith in Jesus Christ, and inviting the Holy Spirit to take charge of our lives, we open the door for God to begin working on us and changing us from the inside. Little by little he will reform us and renew us, writing his law not only in our minds but in our hearts and wills as well.

The well-known preacher Fleming Rutledge writes this:

“When God’s law is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we discover that God’s will and our will are one and the same. Not only will we not want to be … angry with our brother … we won’t nurse anger, and we won’t even notice that we don’t do it. That’s freedom! Our wills have blended into God’s will.

“Impossible you say. Precisely. It’s as impossible as unlocking the door from the inside with no key. It has to be done by divine intervention. Something has to work on us from beyond ourselves. That is exactly what God announced through Jeremiah in his new covenant. ‘With men it is impossible but not with God,’ said Jesus, ‘for all things are possible with God.’”

Beginning next Sunday, we shall commemorate the mysteries of our Lord’s suffering, death, and resurrection: the saving actions by which God establishes his New Covenant with us and with all creation. Rather than just piously remembering these events as having happened in the distant past, we do well to seek to enter into them and experience their power in the present. We pray that God will make his new Covenant a living reality in our lives, and that he shall write his law in our hearts.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B

Michelangelo, The Brazen Serpent, Sistine Chapel Ceiling, 1508-1512

Sunday 15 March 2015

Numbers 21:4-9

John 3:14-21

One of the recurring images of the Lenten Season is that of the Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt. Both the Old and New Testaments repeatedly cite this period as a time of testing – during which the Israelites were often tried and found wanting. Instead of trusting the God who’d sent Moses to lead them, they frequently grumbled and complained, finding fault with Moses and accusing him of having led them out into the desert to die of thirst and starvation.

Three weeks ago on the First Sunday of Lent, the Gospel presented Jesus as effectively reversing Israel’s disobedience by successfully resisting the devil’s temptations during his forty days in the wilderness. And so, Christian Lenten devotion down through the centuries has urged us to avoid the negative example of Israel’s rebellion and to embrace instead the positive example of our Lord’s faithfulness and steadfastness.

Today’s Old Testament reading from the Book of Numbers continues this theme of Israel’s disobedience in the wilderness. This episode occurs near the end of the forty years of wandering, when the Israelites are about to make their final approach to the Promised land from the lands to the east of the River Jordan. Their route takes them out of the Sinai Peninsula by way of the northeastern tip of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba. For much of their forty years in the Sinai they have camped near oases where food and water have been at least available even if not plentiful. But now, again traversing an arid desert landscape, they begin to grumble and complain once more.

In the past, these incidents have come to fall into a standard pattern. First, the people find fault with Moses and accuse him of having led them into the desert to die. Second, in desperation and fear for his life, Moses prays to the Lord. And third, in response to Moses’ intercession, God provides a miraculous deliverance in some such form as manna from heaven, or water from the rock, and the people cease complaining.

This time, however, events take a slightly different turn. In response to the people’s grumbling and complaining, God sends a plague of fiery serpents, which bite the people so that many of them die. But the Israelites have actually learned something during their forty years in the wilderness, for now they recognize without being told that they’ve sinned and that the snakes are their punishment. And again, they’ve learned that the right course of action in such circumstances is to entreat Moses to pray to God for them.

The Lord’s response this time is interesting. He answers the prayer not by taking away the snakes, but by providing a remedy for the snakebite. The theological point is that even though sins can always be forgiven, the consequences of sin cannot always be undone. So, God directs Moses to make a bronze image of a snake and set it on a pole, so that anyone who’s bitten may look on the image and live.

Anthropologists have a field day with this story, pointing out how primitive religions often use images of dangerous animals to protect against those animals, and also how in many cultures snakes are symbols of medicine and healing. But in the Bible the serpent has a deeper significance still. Remember that in the second chapter of the Book of Genesis, it is the serpent who tempts Adam and Eve to disobey God in the Garden of Eden.

We see certain parallels between the two stories. In the wilderness, the Israelites are disobedient to God and so suffer death by fiery serpents, just as in the beginning Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent to disobey God and so become subject to sin and death. In a sense, then, the grumbling of the Israelites in the wilderness symbolizes all human sin in all times and places, while the fiery serpents symbolize the poisonous consequences of that sin.

Why, then, should healing come by means of the visual image of a bronze serpent on a pole? The Greek Orthodox theologian Andreas Andreopoulos suggests that in order to be healed, the Israelites must face up to the reality of their sin and its consequences. The bronze serpent visually symbolizes their transgression, so they can look upon it, acknowledge their sin, and come to repentance. Only in this way can they find healing, forgiveness, and salvation.

This background helps explain the significance of our Lord’s words to Nicodemus in today’s Gospel reading from Saint John: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The healing of the snake-bitten Israelites by means of a bronze serpent on a pole foreshadows the healing of our fallen humanity by means of the cross of Christ. There is no more powerful symbol of the horror of human sin than the cross. When the Son of God came into the world, this is what we did to him. Yet, paradoxically, for this very reason the cross becomes the remedy for sin. Looking at the cross, we come face to face with the consequences of our rebellion against God. And in this way God gives us the opportunity to repent and return to him.

As we continue our journey through Lent towards Holy Week and Good Friday, we pause today to acknowledge that we’re often more like the disobedient Israelites in the wilderness than we care to admit. We have sinned; and the consequences of our sin are always with us, like nasty little vipers nipping at our ankles. Yet just as God gave the Israelites a remedy for snakebite in the form of a bronze snake on a pole, so he gives us a remedy for our sin in form of a cross. And when we look upon him who was lifted upon that cross for our sakes, we receive the assurance of eternal life.

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, Year B

March 8, 2015

The Ten Commandments

During Lent in Year B of the three-year lectionary cycle, the Old Testament readings at Sunday Mass focus attention on the theme of Covenant. To review what I said two weeks ago: in the ancient Near East, a covenant was a well-known form of agreement or treaty between two parties usually but not always of unequal power and status: a superior and an inferior, such as a powerful king and a vassal.

In a typical covenant, the superior party promised some benefit, such as military protection and good government, to the inferior party, in return for the inferior party’s pledge of obedience, loyalty, and tribute. Very often, also, the parties to such a covenant erected some sort of monument to stand as a perpetual sign and reminder of the agreement they’d made.

A basic principle of biblical theology is that in revealing himself to his people in a particular time at a particular place, God accommodates himself to their dominant images, symbols, and categories of thought, to make himself understandable in the context of their society and culture. So, it’s not surprising that the Old Testament depicts the relationship between God and his people as unfolding through a series of covenants. In each covenant, God makes a promise, usually makes some demand in return, and usually gives some sign to stand as a reminder of the covenant.

Two weeks ago, the Old Testament reading reminded us of God’s covenant with Noah, in which God promised never again to destroy the earth by water. The sign of that covenant was the rainbow.

Last week, the reading reminded us of God’s covenant with Abraham, in which God promised to make Abraham the ancestor of a great nation in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. The sign of that covenant was circumcision.

Today, we come to the third of the great covenants of the Old Testament, God’s Covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai. In this covenant God promises the twelve tribes of Israel that they will enter and take possession of the Promised Land, and that he will be their God and they will be his People, if they keep his laws and commandments. The sign of this covenant is the two stone Tables of the Law that Moses brings down from the mountain. And inscribed on these two Tables are the Ten Commandments.

Jews and Christians alike revere the Ten Commandments as the definitive summary of God’s moral law. Even though the Church early on set aside many of the ritual and ceremonial precepts of the Torah as no longer binding upon Christians, we’ve nonetheless always recognized the Ten Commandments as a digest of moral principles that remain valid for all people in all times and places. G.K. Chesterton once said that you can’t break the Ten Commandments; you can only break yourself against them.

The Ten Commandments are best understood in the context of the story of how they’re given. Moses leads the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt with great signs and wonders. At the Red Sea, they’re miraculously delivered from death at the hands of the Egyptians when God parts the waters to let them cross over on dry land. They enter the wilderness and come to the foot of Mount Sinai. The mountain is covered by clouds of thick darkness and flashes of fire. Alone, Moses ascends the mountain, to receive God’s law.

The first commandment refers explicitly to this preceding sequence of events: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods but me.” Here God is saying, in effect, “Now that I’ve done all this for you; here’s what I expect of you in return.”

The purpose of the Covenant is to call the people into relationship with the Lord who has delivered them from slavery. Henceforth, their motive in obeying the Commandments will be to express their gratitude and loyalty to the God who has chosen them as a people for His own possession.

The Christian Church has traditionally interpreted the Ten Commandments in light of our Lord’s Summary of the Law in Matthew 22:37-40: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

The classical Christian tradition sees the first four commandments as teaching what it means to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind: You shall have no other Gods before me, you shall not make any idol, you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain, remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day. The remaining six commandments teach what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves: Honor your father and your mother, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet.

The Ten Commandments are worthy of memorization, study, and reflection. We Anglicans have traditionally used them as an outline for examining our consciences and repenting of our sins before we come to Holy Communion, which is why they’re printed in the Prayer Book at the very beginning of the Eucharistic Liturgy.

But it’s crucial to remember that we cannot save ourselves by keeping these laws. Notice that God gives the Commandments to the Israelites after He’s saved them from the Egyptians, not before. Similarly, for us, salvation comes to us first, apart from works of the law. If we try to fulfill God’s commandments by our own efforts, we quickly discover how far short we fall of the mark, and how much we need God’s forgiveness and grace.

Instead, God offers us eternal salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and we receive that salvation in faith. Then, and only then, do the Commandments come into play as a means of teaching us a way of life appropriate to our identity as a redeemed people, a way of life by which we express our gratitude and loyalty to God for all that he’s already done for us.

During this Season of Lent, then, the Church calls us to renew our commitment to keeping God’s Law. But we do so never as a means of earning God’s favor – as if that were possible – but always as an expression of love for God, who in Christ Jesus has loved us first.