FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

April 25, 2021

(Saint Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.)

Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 

I John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18

The Fourth Sunday of Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday because the Gospel reading is always from Chapter Ten of Saint John, where Our Lord identifies himself as the Good Shepherd. And down through the centuries, this image of Jesus has held enormous appeal for Christians of all ages.

Artistic depictions of shepherds often portray sentimental scenes of bucolic bliss. The shepherd sits on a hillside playing his panpipes and watching the flock graze contentedly in the meadow below. But while such serene images do perhaps capture one dimension of pastoral existence, in the biblical world shepherding could also be rough and dangerous work. In his excellent book A History of Warfare, British military historian John Keegan speculates that ancient peoples developed their fighting abilities by transferring skills they’d learned not only in hunting but also in herding. 

The Second Book of Samuel offers us a glimpse of this process when the young David volunteers to do battle against the armored giant of a Philistine, Goliath. King Saul protests that David is only a youth; what does he know about fighting? But David confidently replies: "Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and smote him and delivered it out of his mouth; and if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him and killed him. Your servant has killed both lions and bears; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God."

Shepherds needed to be prepared to fight not only against wild animals but also against thieves and brigands. A good shepherd thus literally put his life on the line for the flock. And so, in today’s Gospel, our Lord describes himself not once but four times as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep; the third and fourth times he adds that he lays down his life that he may take it up again. In this way, he points to his death and Resurrection as the ultimate act of shepherding by which he will gather and unite his Church as one flock under one shepherd.

So, while it may not seem obvious to us at first glance, in today’s Gospel Our Lord invokes the image of the shepherd as warrior. He develops this picture in contradistinction to the hireling, who is not the sheep’s owner, and who flees at the approach of the wolf, which is given free rein to snatch sheep and scatter the flock: “He flees because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep.” A hireling is someone who does a job simply for the money, and whatever else is in it for himself, so if the job becomes too difficult or dangerous, he doesn’t stick around, because his heart’s not in it. By contrast, Our Lord cares deeply and personally for his flock: “I know my own,” he says, “and my own know me.”

Today’s Gospel thus depicts the Good Shepherd first and foremost as a source of defense against danger. In a world of deadly predators, the Good Shepherd offers protection and safety. Hence the psalmist sings in the twenty-third psalm: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” The point not to miss is that the rod and the staff are not only implements for herding and corralling but are also available to be used as weapons for fending off attackers.

In the life of our society, we entrust this shepherding function of defense against enemies foreign and domestic to those whom we authorize to bear arms and use lawful force on our behalf: the police, on one hand, who protect us against criminality at home; and the military services, on the other, who help deter and defend against threats of aggression from abroad. In both cases, we ask these brave men and women to put their lives on the line, like good shepherds, to provide the modicum of safety that we need to get on with our lives in a peaceful, well-ordered, and secure society.

In the vast majority of cases, I believe, the police and military do a wonderful job, discharging their duties with integrity and respect for those whom they serve. In what I believe is a small minority of cases, we’ve witnessed the excessive and wrongful use of force by rogue elements. By and large, though, I think we’re moving in the right direction as a society in instituting reforms to correct such abuses. Meanwhile, overseas, we’ve recently seen entire military establishments turn on and attack the very societies they’re meant to protect and defend, as appears to be the case in such places as Belarus and Myanmar. Such out-of-control armed forces fall far from their calling to be good shepherds of their people.

In the spiritual realm, the Church’s leaders, your clergy, are similarly called to be good shepherds, protecting our flocks as far as we can from all harm and danger. This responsibility ranges from protecting against the spiritual dangers of false teaching and unsound practices to ensuring compliance with officially-mandated health and safety protocols in a time of pandemic. From what I’ve seen so far here at St. Uriel’s, you’ve been blessed with a succession of truly good shepherds—rectors, deacons, and associate clergy—who’ve done their best to safeguard the interests of the flock. In other places, however, we’ve witnessed sickening examples of clergy exploiting and abusing those in their charge for their own gratification. So we do well to pray constantly for all entrusted with the care and protection of our communities, that we may fulfill our calling to be good shepherds, and not hirelings who care nothing for the sheep.

The sad reality is that while those to whom we entrust our physical and spiritual protection usually discharge their duties faithfully and responsibly, in a few cases they don’t. We live in a fallen world where those in authority, those whom we respect, occasionally betray their calling and let us down. The good news, regardless, is that we can always trust Jesus to be our Good Shepherd. He knows his own and his own know him. And so, in the words of today’s Collect, we pray that when we hear his voice, we may know him who calls us each by name and follow wherever he may lead.

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

April 18, 2021

Saint Uriel's, Sea Girt, N.J.

Acts 3:12-19

Luke 24:36b-48

During this season of Eastertide, the Sunday Mass readings revisit Christ’s resurrection from different angles so that over the course of these six weeks we build up a cumulative picture of the Paschal mystery in its many dimensions. Today’s readings in particular focus our attention on the relationships among the Resurrection, the Holy Scriptures, and the living out of our faith in the world today.

In the Gospel reading that we’ve just heard, the Risen Jesus appears in the Upper Room on the evening of the first Easter Day. Initially the disciples have no idea what to make of what they’re experiencing. As Luke puts it, “they were startled and frightened, and supposed they saw a spirit.” So, first of all, Jesus needs to correct that misapprehension by showing them his hands and feet, and reassuring them that it’s really him: “handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

In the ancient world, the appearance of spirits of the dead, especially the recently dead, were not at all uncommon. (Some say that it’s not that uncommon today either, but that’s a discussion for another time.) The point being made here is that Christ’s Resurrection belongs to a totally different category. The Risen Jesus is neither a ghost nor (for that matter) a resuscitated corpse, or an undead zombie. No, the new life into which he’s entered is not the stuff of horror movies but the precise opposite: in his wonderful new existence he’s more gloriously and fully alive than ever before. Nonetheless, between the former life and the Resurrection life there’s continuity as well as discontinuity. His flesh and bones are still tangible; his hands and feet still bear the marks of his wounds; he’s even able to eat a piece of broiled fish! Biological human life in all its materiality and physicality is caught up into the eternal realm of the spirit.

Then, having cleared up the disciples’ misconceptions about what they’re seeing, Jesus goes a step further. He opens their minds to understand the scriptures, showing how the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms all foretold that the Christ should suffer, die, and on the third day rise again.

Let’s dwell for a moment on that remarkable statement: “He opened their mind to understand the scriptures.” The Resurrection is not self-explanatory. The disciples can only fully understand the events they’re experiencing in the wider narrative context of the scriptures, but at the same time their understanding of that scriptural narrative is utterly transformed by their experience of those events. So, in a mutual and reciprocal process, the scriptures interpret the Resurrection, and the Resurrection interprets the scriptures. And then Jesus sends his disciples into the world, having opened their minds to a new understanding of the scriptures as fulfilled in the wondrous events to which they’ve been made witnesses.

Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles takes up the story of the apostles’ preaching the good news to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. It follows a curiously similar pattern to the Gospel reading. Peter and John have just healed a cripple in the precincts of the Jerusalem Temple. Amazed and filled with awe, the crowds witnessing this miracle have run to gather around these wonderworkers.

So, just as in the Gospel reading, a misconception first needs to be cleared up. Just as Jesus had to explain that, no, he wasn’t a spirit or a ghost, so Peter has to explain that, no, he and John haven’t performed this healing by themselves: “Men of Israel,” he declares, “why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” Outward appearances to the contrary, Peter and John are not the stars of this show.

Peter proceeds to explain the miracle’s meaning by proclaiming the Lord’s resurrection, concluding that “the faith which is through Jesus has given this man perfect health in the presence of you all.” Then, to borrow Luke’s phrase from the Gospel, Peter opens their minds to understand the scriptures. He shows that God foretold by the prophets that the Christ should suffer and be raised, and he calls on the people gathered round to repent of their sins and receive the blessing promised to Abraham’s posterity. So here, again, we see the same pattern of mutual interpretation as in the Gospel. The miracle is not self-explanatory and its meaning can only be fully understood in light of the Lord’s death and resurrection in fulfillment of the scriptures—and those same scriptures can in turn only be fully understood in and through their fulfillment in the Lord’s resurrection, as well as in such wondrous deeds as this miraculous healing of a cripple.

Now, I would propose that this process works in a similar way for us today. God continues to be present and active in our midst, although we don’t always recognize his presence and activity for what it is. In today’s Collect, we pray God to “open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold [Christ] in all his redeeming work.” That’s a wonderful prayer! And a key component of this beholding of Christ’s redeeming work, both in our own lives and in the world about us, is the opening of our minds to understand the scriptures, which sensitizes us to the many ways in which God is present and active in our world. Conversely, our direct experience of God’s presence and activity in our lives helps us to understand what the scriptures were talking about in the first place.

Such recognition presupposes systematic, disciplined, and prayerful reading of God’s Word. Before the disciples could have their minds opened to understand the scriptures, they needed to know the scriptures; and we may be sure that as devout Jews they’d been raised in the synagogue to know them inside out. For this reason, the Church encourages us to make use of such practices as the Daily Office and similar liturgical and devotional schemes that immerse us in the scriptures and psalms day by day, week by week, year by year.

In my time here at St. Uriel’s so far, it’s become clear to me that this is a parish community in which the scriptures are indeed taken seriously, along with worship and prayer. You have a hunger for and a delight in God’s Word. This attentiveness will stand you in good stead during the present interim period. In the coming weeks and months you’ll likely be asked to reflect on your history as a parish and identify the ways God has been active in your midst, leading and guiding you along the way. The parish story fits in turn into the much larger story of God’s gracious dealings with his people throughout history. And I’m confident that God’s gift to you will be not only the opening of your minds to understand the scriptures, where that story is definitively set forth, but also the opening of the eyes of your faith to perceive Christ’s redeeming work in your midst. For those are but two sides of the same coin.

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

April 11, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133 

I John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31

The Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter introduces two themes that stand out in today’s readings: reconciliation and fellowship. It begins by addressing God “who in the Paschal mystery hast established the new covenant of reconciliation,” and then asks that “all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith …”

The word for fellowship in New Testament Greek is koinōnia, which is also often translated “community.” However translated, it refers not to a casual circle of easygoing friends and acquaintances, but to the sort of intimate bond that develops among an otherwise diverse group of people who share some deep common commitment. In the Church, the basis of all true community or fellowship is our shared faith in God the Holy Trinity, and our shared membership in the Body of Christ.

Fellowship and reconciliation naturally go together. To maintain our fellowship in Christ serious interpersonal disputes among the Church’s members need to be identified, named, and resolved through mutual repentance and forgiveness. So reconciliation makes fellowship possible; and fellowship in turn facilitates reconciliation when disagreements arise, as they inevitably will, we being the fallen creatures that we are. A community whose members are unable to be reconciled with one another is likely to split apart and eventually disintegrate. Conversely, communities that actively foster reconciliation among their members strengthen their ability to grow and flourish.

Today’s reading from Acts describes the deep fellowship among the earliest Christian disciples in Jerusalem. “The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no-one said that any of the things that he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of land or houses sold them, and [laid] the proceeds … at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.” 

Now, I don’t think that this passage is necessarily meant to be read as a utopian blueprint for an ideal Christian society (though many have read it that way). Rather, it serves as testimony to the power of the apostles' preaching of Christ's resurrection. Reconciled to God, the members of the Jerusalem Church find themselves reconciled to one another—overcoming the age-old division between rich and poor, those of high degree and low—even to the extent of sharing all earthly goods in common. This transformation illustrates the difference that Christ’s resurrection makes, in fulfillment of the words of Psalm 133: “Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity!” 

Today’s reading from the First Letter of John takes up these twin themes of fellowship and reconciliation. The Apostle writes: “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ … If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” Notice how John links fellowship—which he mentions three times in this passage—with being cleansed from sin by the blood of Jesus. In other words, reconciliation with God makes possible the reconciliation with one another that is the sole foundation of any genuine Christian community.

Similarly, in Saint Luke’s account of the risen Lord’s appearance in the upper room on the evening of the day of resurrection, after Jesus stands among the disciples and wishes them Peace—Shalom—he delegates to them his authority to forgive sins: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” This text has many implications, not least concerning the ordained priesthood’s authority to grant absolution to repentant sinners. But the implication I want to highlight is that this duty to forgive extends to all Christians, because only by mutual forgiveness and reconciliation can we experience that harmony with God and one another—that Shalom—that Christ wishes his disciples when he says to them, and to us, “Peace be with you.”  

In this context, I suspect that the deepest significance of the story of Doubting Thomas—seemingly everyone’s favorite character in the Gospels—is that before he can finally see and touch the risen Jesus, he must rejoin the disciples’ fellowship. Luke doesn’t tell us why Thomas was absent or where he was that first Sunday evening when the risen Jesus appeared to the other disciples in the upper room. What seems significant to me, however, is that Jesus didn’t just go and appear separately to Thomas wherever he was, even though he was clearly capable of doing so. Instead, he waited for Thomas to be reunited with the community one week later. 

That detail suggests in turn that if we want to come to know the risen Jesus, we normally need to do so in the midst of our Christian community. As someone once put it, Christianity is a team sport, not a solo performance. The good news is that once Thomas rejoins the fellowship, the risen Christ does come to him, answering his questions and overcoming his doubts. Our God is a God of second chances par excellence, and that is good news for us all!

These observations suggest some questions that we might profitably reflect on during the coming week. In what ways do we need to be restored to the fellowship of Christ’s body to reawaken and renew the fullness of our faith? More specifically, whom do we need to forgive, and whose forgiveness do we need to seek, in order to take our appointed place in Christ’s new covenant of reconciliation?

I hasten to add that none of this is anything we can do on our own, but only something that Christ does in us. As today’s reading from Acts says of those first Christians in Jerusalem, “With great power the apostles gave their testimony … and great grace was upon them all.” That power and grace could only come from on high. Again, in the Gospel, “Jesus breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit …’” Relying not on ourselves, then, but on the grace that God continually offers us, we find the power to realize true reconciliation and fellowship in the Body of Christ, showing forth in our life what we profess by our faith.

 

EASTER DAY: THE SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION

4 April 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 18-24; 

I Corinthians 15:1-11; John 20:1-18

Yesterday evening, we celebrated the Great Vigil of Easter. This morning’s Mass, of Easter Day, the Sunday of the Resurrection, has a slightly different emphasis. I don’t want to overblow the distinction, but the Easter Vigil focuses on the mystery of what happens in darkness of the tomb between Good Friday and Easter morning: Christ’s descent among the dead and his miraculous Resurrection to new and eternal life. It’s also pre-eminently a baptismal liturgy. The Mass of Easter Day focuses, by contrast, on what happens in the daylight: the finding of the empty tomb, and the risen Lord’s appearances to chosen witnesses. The readings that we’ve just heard highlight three of those witnesses: Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul.

The appearance of the risen Jesus to Mary Magdalene as recounted by Saint John is surely one of the most poignant scenes in the Gospels. She is arguably the first human witness to the Resurrection in that wonderfully tender and emotional encounter in the garden outside the empty tomb.

The second witness introduced by today’s readings is the Apostle Peter, who testifies to his experience of the risen Lord in a sermon he preached on the streets of Jerusalem fifty days later, on the Jewish Feast of Shavuot, better known to us as the Day of Pentecost. Peter proclaims to the people: “They put [Jesus] to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him and made him manifest, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.” 

Two details are worth noting in what Peter says. First, the risen Jesus appeared not to everyone, but to chosen witnesses. Second, their eating and drinking with Jesus highlights the Resurrection’s physical reality. The risen Jesus is not a ghost or a spirit or an angel, for such immaterial beings don’t eat and drink. This detail also hints that eating and drinking together will continue to be a primary means of fellowship with the risen Lord in the years to come, as Christians gather week by week to break the bread and share the cup in his Name.

Our third witness is Saint Paul, who relates in his First Letter to the Corinthians how the risen Jesus appeared first to Cephas (that is, Peter), then to the twelve, then to five hundred brethren at one time, then to James (that is, the Lord’s kinsman who became the first Bishop of Jerusalem), and then to all the apostles. (It’s interesting that in Paul’s mind a distinction clearly obtains between the original Twelve and a number of unspecified others who also bear the title “apostle.”) Last of all, Paul writes, “as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” In other words, Paul is telling us, Christ’s appearances didn’t end with his Ascension into heaven. As we know from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s life-changing encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus took place at least several years later.

So, although there were many witnesses to the Lord’s Resurrection, today’s Scripture readings present us with a representative three: Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul. And to each of these three chosen witnesses, Christ gives more or less the same command: Go and tell others what you’ve seen, heard, and experienced of me.

Outside the empty tomb, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene: “Go to my brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’” Obeying the Lord’s command, Mary Magdalene then goes and tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and relates the things he’s said to her. For this reason, Mary Magdalene is sometimes given the title “Apostle to the Apostles.”

In his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Peter concludes his account of the risen Lord’s appearances thus: “And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and of the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him received forgiveness of sins through his name.” Similarly, the purpose of Paul’s Damascus road experience is not only to divert him from his persecution of the Church and convert him to being a follower of Jesus but also to commission him to his lifelong calling of being an apostle to the Gentiles.

In all three cases, the Resurrection appearances and the apostolic preaching go hand-in-hand. The risen Christ appears to chosen witnesses—Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul—precisely so that they can go in turn to proclaim the good news in ever-expanding circles radiating out into all the world.

And so it continues to this day. The challenge for us, then, is to carry forward our witness to the reality of Christ’s Resurrection in our lives so that others may have the opportunity to know the joy of the risen Lord in their lives.

Our natural reaction to this challenge may well be, “What? Who, me? You must be mistaken! You must have me confused with somebody else.” We’re apt to feel a certain sense of unworthiness to such a high calling, and that’s not totally inappropriate. But there’s the rub. More often than not, the Lord chooses the least likely people to be his witnesses.

While there’s no biblical warrant for the tradition that Mary Magdalene was a reformed prostitute, Luke’s Gospel does record that she’d had seven demons driven out of her. So it seems fair to say that she had a troubled past, at the least. And then Peter, before he became the Prince of the Apostles and the rock on which Christ would build his Church, denied Jesus three times before cockcrow in what must have seemed to all involved an unforgivable betrayal.

But Saint Paul wins first prize for a (not unrealistic) sense of unworthiness. He follows his account of the Lord’s resurrection appearances with the heartfelt protest: “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Nonetheless, bearing witness to the transforming power of Christ in his own life, he concludes: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.”

So, while we may think of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and Paul as great saints of the Church, otherworldly haloed figures in stained-glass windows, they were in reality highly fallible and often deeply troubled human beings. The good news is that the risen Christ chose them to be his witnesses anyway. And if he so chose them, he can certainly so choose us, as well.

EASTER VIGIL

April 3, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, New Jersey

So far as I’m concerned, the Easter Vigil really is the most exciting and powerful service of the entire Church year. Maybe you agree, or else you wouldn’t be here this evening.

It’s also one of the most ancient Christian liturgies we have on record. By the third century it was firmly established as the Church’s annual occasion of administering Holy Baptism. While practices varied from place to place, the typical pattern was for adult converts to undertake a period of preparation for baptism lasting as long as three years or more. During this period, they were called catechumens. The final forty days before Easter – which gradually evolved into the season of Lent – comprised intensive instruction in the essentials of the faith, as well as fasting and prayer undertaken by the whole Church together with and on behalf of the catechumens.

Finally, between sunset and sunrise on Easter Eve, a long vigil service would take place, lasting many hours. (What we’re doing here this evening is a highly abbreviated version of that!) Down through the centuries, various ceremonies evolved to punctuate the stages of this liturgy: kindling new fire; lighting the Paschal Candle; chanting the Exultet; reciting the Litany of the Saints; proclaiming the Easter Alleluia. 

From the earliest days, however, the heart of this liturgy has comprised three basic components: first, a lengthy service of readings from the Old Testament, each pointing by way of anticipation to Christ’s death and Resurrection; second, the administration of Holy Baptism; and third, the celebration of the Eucharist, at which the newly-baptized would receive Holy Communion for the first time.

From the beginning, then, the Church’s celebration of Christ’s Resurrection at the Great Vigil was paired with the administration of Holy Baptism – although eventually Baptism ceased to be confined to Easter and came to be administered at other times during the year. The point I want to emphasize is that this pairing of Holy Baptism with the Easter celebration was neither accidental nor arbitrary, but deliberate and intentional. To see why, we need look no further than our Epistle for this evening, from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 6, verses 3 through 11.

Here, the Apostle describes Baptism as a kind of virtual participation in Christ’s death, burial, and Resurrection. “Do you not know,” Paul writes, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

 

It’s a remarkable passage. Here baptism appears as a symbol not only of washing and cleansing, but also of drowning. Paul is saying that this enacted sign of death-by-water becomes for Christians the means of participation in Christ’s own death and burial. In other words, Christ saves us not merely as external beneficiaries of but rather as active participants in his crucifixion and entombment. And the vehicle by which we share in his death and burial is none other than the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

It’s not as though Christ pays the price of our sins on the cross for us as a kind of divine bookkeeping transaction. The supernatural reality at play here is more organic than forensic. We participate in Christ’s death through baptism, so that, as Paul writes, “we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin.” In the background here is the ancient understanding that a slave is a slave only for life; in death the slave gains freedom from the former master. Similarly, by our participation in Christ’s death through Holy Baptism, we gain liberation from slavery to sin’s former mastery over our lives.

That’s the first part of Paul’s argument. The second part is that through Baptism we participate also in Christ's Resurrection from the dead. This sharing in Christ’s risen life is both a future and a present reality. On one hand, Paul writes, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” That’s the future aspect: the hope of sharing in the glory of resurrection on the last day. But at the same time, Paul writes, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In other words, through Baptism we enjoy an anticipatory foretaste, here and now, of the life of the world to come, making possible new lives in this world marked by love, joy, hope, self-giving, and service. As Paul puts it, we were buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that “we too might walk in newness of life.” 

Holy Baptism is, then, the link between the first Easter Day two millennia ago, and our life together in the Church today. The Easter Vigil commemorates not only Christ’s victory over death, but also our death to sin and our resurrection to new and eternal life in him. On this most holy night, then, we have fittingly renewed our baptismal commitment, as we celebrate the power of Christ’s resurrection in our lives today.

GOOD FRIDAY

April 2, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, New Jersey

The archetypal symbol of Christian faith is the cross. Apart from its historical role as the instrument of the Lord’s execution and death, some commentators see its intersection of vertical and horizontal beams as a visual symbol of incarnation. The vertical beam symbolizes transcendence. It points to heaven above, and to eternity. The horizontal beam symbolizes immanence. It points to the world around us, the here and the now. So the cross’s intersection of vertical and horizontal signifies by itself the union of transcendence and immanence, eternity and time, spirit and matter, divine and human, in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. 

At the historical level, Jesus’ death on an actual wooden cross on the hill of Golgotha also exhibits both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. Along the vertical axis, the Lord is offering up to his Father in heaven the one, full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; and the Father is looking down from heaven and lovingly accepting his Son’s sacrifice. Along the horizontal axis, the dying Lord is stretching out his arms of love to gather in all for whose salvation he’s offering himself; and conversely his life, forgiveness, grace, and strength are flowing out from his stretched-out arms to the world’s remotest ends.

This ancient Good Friday liturgy exhibits a fourfold structure, which oscillates between these vertical and horizontal dimensions. Alternately, our attention is drawn upwards, vertically, to Jesus lifted high on the cross. Then, our attention is redirected outwards, horizontally, to the world he died to save. And so the pattern repeats itself.

We begin with the Liturgy of the Word, culminating in the Passion according to Saint John. Its purpose is to focus our attention vertically on Jesus and what he actually did on Good Friday. In some churches, the Passion is read dramatically, with readers taking the various spoken parts. Done well—and from what I’ve seen so far, it’s done very well here at St. Uriel's—that kind of reading can be effective and moving. In parishes that have the resources to do so, the Passion is sung to the ancient chants, with the cantors and choir taking the various parts. Either way, the goal is a performative recitation, aiming not merely to remember something that happened in the past, but to make it vivid and real, to transport us back, so that we become virtual eyewitnesses; or, conversely, to bring it forward into the present so that we experience it in the here and now in all its naked terror and awe.

Then, following a sermon or homily, which is ideally kept brief, we turn outward from the cross horizontally towards the world, reciting the series of ancient prayers known as the Solemn Collects. This movement has a deep inner logic. It’s not simply that since we really have nothing to say, we may as well just say some prayers. No, having just listened to the Passion Gospel, we ask God to apply the benefits of his Son’s death “to all people everywhere, according to their needs.” We make these prayers in the assurance that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” The Church’s liturgical response to the proclamation of the Lord’s death is thus to pray for all those for whom he died.

Continuing our alternation between the vertical and the horizontal dimensions, we turn our attention once again vertically to the cross, this time in love and adoration. A crucifix is brought in for the congregation’s veneration. The rubrics specify that this cross must be made of wood, like the cross on which Jesus was crucified. This ceremony dates back (at least) to the fourth-century Church in Jerusalem, where worshippers at the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher would line up for hours on Good Friday to kiss a large fragment of the true Cross that would be unveiled and exposed for that purpose. In the current pandemic, we must temporarily forego the practice of each person having the opportunity to venerate individually, but still, we can all do so collectively, from a distance.

Following the Liturgy of the Word, the Solemn Collects, and the Veneration of the Cross, comes the fourth part of the liturgy, the Mass of the Presanctified. We retrieve from the Altar of Repose the Blessed Sacrament reserved at last night’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper. In many churches, the Sacrament is reserved one kind only, the sacred hosts but not the wine, to emphasize that today’s liturgy is not another Mass, not a fresh offering of the Holy Eucharist, but Communion from the Reserved Sacrament—an extension of the single extended Triduum liturgy that began last night.

The Church’s sacramental theology teaches us that we receive the grace of Holy Communion just as fully in one kind as in both kinds. But still, Communion in one kind does diminish the symbolism. The English Dominican theologian Aidan Nichols writes: “We are invited to come to Communion under the deliberately deficient symbolism of the single species. As orthodox Catholics we know that our Lord is wholly present in his full Godhead and his full manhood under either Eucharistic sign. Yet we also respect the ways in which he allows himself to be given to us ... Today we receive him, quite deliberately, by the symbolism of incompletion … Today we have only a truncated Eucharist … for today Christ our Lord suffered the disintegration of his very being.” 

In the pandemic, of course, we’ve been receiving Communion in one kind now for many months. I long for the day when we restore the chalice to the congregation so that we can all receive in both kinds. In the meantime, our Masses share in this aspect of the diminished symbolism of the Good Friday liturgy—perhaps a fitting liturgical expression of our life together under pandemic conditions.

Still, the Holy Communion of Good Friday conveys the Lord’s life, grace, and power to all who receive it. Having venerated Christ on the cross, we receive him into ourselves—not just for comfort and consolation, but also for empowerment as agents of the cross: ambassadors of Christ’s forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing. So here we have another turn to the horizontal. Just as in the Solemn Collects we prayed for the world that Christ died to save, so now in the Communion of the Presanctified we offer ourselves as living vessels to carry forth Christ’s salvation into that same world. 

Following Communion, we leave in silence. There’s nothing left to say. For the time being, the Incarnate Word has been silenced. We do well to keep silence too, waiting in hope and expectation for what God is going to do next.

MAUNDY THURSDAY

April 1, 2021

St. Uriel's, Sea Girt, N.J.

The Liturgy of Maundy Thursday commemorates our Lord’s institution of the Eucharist, and his washing of his disciples’ feet, at his Last Supper with them on the eve of his death. This year, however, we’re unable to enact the foot-washing that is a familiar staple of this liturgy in so many parishes: a particular deprivation for your clergy, for whom the ritual affords a welcome annual reminder of our vocation as first and foremost one of service: to be “servants of the servants of God.”

It also seems a bit odd to be commemorating Our Lord’s commandment to celebrate the Eucharist “in remembrance of him” at the end of a year in which for a time all public gatherings, including for worship, were prohibited (in my opinion, quite appropriately). So, I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on something of what I think we may have learned about the nature of our Eucharistic life as the Body of Christ in a time of pandemic.

In a theological sense, this pandemic has served as one of those sudden and unexpected calamities that lay bare the quality of our spiritual foundations—as in Our Lord’s parable in Matthew 7 of two houses, one built on sand and one built on rock. When the rain fell, and the floods came, and the wind blew, the house built on rock remained standing firm, but the house built on sand fell “and great was the fall of it.”

The parishes and congregations found best prepared for this pandemic were those that had already been building on solid foundations. In a few cases, this was true simply at a technological level. I know at least one parish that several years ago had installed a sophisticated system of wall-mounted cameras for recording and live-streaming liturgies. They had no idea that a pandemic was coming; they were simply responding to the pastoral needs of an aging and geographically-dispersed congregation whose members could not always be physically present for worship. So when the pandemic came, they were already all set to begin broadcasting Mass for a remote congregation. The good news in this respect has been that not only here at St. Uriel’s, but across the Episcopal Church, such remote participation in worship has remained relatively high. And that’s a foundation on which we need to continue building.

At a spiritual level, the most impressive responses to the crisis have similarly come from those parishes and communities that already had a doctrinally sound theology of worship. Here at Saint Uriel’s, our Anglo-Catholic tradition stood us in particularly good stead. For example, parishioners who’d already been taught that Christ is fully and equally present in both the consecrated Bread and Wine found the transition to Communion in one kind less distressing than those who had not. I long for our return to Communion in both kinds, both the Host and the Chalice, so that we may "do this, as often as [we] drink it, in remembrance of [Him]". But in the meantime, we may rest assured that we receive the fullness of sacramental grace in receiving the Host alone (or, indeed, the Chalice alone).

Once live-streaming became the only option in many places for continued access to worship in locked-down churches, it’s understandable that some dioceses and parishes switched to Morning Prayer as a way of leveling the spiritual playing field. If everybody couldn’t be together to receive Holy Communion, then the clergy also would also abstain or “fast” from the Eucharist in solidarity with their parishioners. That choice was consistent with certain traditions of Anglican understanding and practice.

I rejoice, however, that other parishes of a more Catholic bent, such as Saint Uriel’s, decided without hesitation to keep on offering Mass for the spiritual benefit of even physically absent congregations whose members could participate remotely from home, often via hastily-improvised live-streaming technology. The holy sacrifice of the Mass is the most powerful intercession we can offer for the needs of the Church and the world. The venerable Catholic practice of making a spiritual Communion became an invaluable rock to cling to while we weathered the storm.

Since we’ve reopened for limited in-person worship, it’s wonderful that so many St. Uriel’s parishioners have felt safe enough to return to church. But the important thing is to do the best we can and offer that to God. If some people aren’t ready yet to return and prefer to follow our services online, making a spiritual Communion at the appropriate moment, then that’s an acceptable offering as well. God knows that we’re all trying to do the best we can under difficult circumstances.

Perhaps counterintuitively, I believe that our present trials are strengthening us for the future in ways that we can only dimly perceive at present. Specifically, I want to share three principal hopes for whatever “return to normal” lies ahead.

First, contrary to those who fear that prolonged physical absence will irrevocably damage Mass attendance, we may dare to hope that one result will be a renewed appreciation of the value of gathering in churches for worship, along with a greater commitment to regular participation in the liturgy. When something has been taken away from us for a time, we’re less apt to take it for granted and more likely instead recognize it for the incomparable privilege that it is.

Second, many Church members, lay and ordained, have found themselves moved to greater reliance on different forms of personal prayer—particularly the Daily Office and Marian devotions such as the Holy Rosary. We may hope that this deepening of personal spiritual discipline will strengthen us for our future life and mission.

Third, when we’re finally able to return to unrestricted participation in worship in our beloved sacred spaces, we may discover that we’ve learned something crucial: namely, that even when physically present in church we’re still worshiping at one remove. Generations of liturgical theologians and mystics—going back to Saint John the Divine on the island of Patmos—have reminded us that the true liturgy, the ultimately real liturgy, is that offered in heaven before the Lamb’s eternal throne. Our temporal gatherings in earthly cathedrals, churches, and chapels represent really another form of remote participation—a symbolic live-streaming in time and space of the endless offering of God the Son to God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, into which Our Lady and all the angels and saints in heaven are continually drawn in perfect praise and adoration.

So, this evening we give thanks for Our Lord’s institution of the Holy Eucharist as the sacramental means by which we “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Our eventual restoration to full participation in the Church’s liturgical and sacramental life will be a joyous homecoming—and may God hasten its day! But we remember that, like a TV screen connected to the internet, even so-called “in-person” earthly worship puts us in contact with an infinitely greater reality that continues to beckon us in its promise of the ultimate fulfillment of all our deepest desires and longings in the life of the world to come.