FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR C

November 28, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

Today, as we begin a new liturgical year, the season of Advent invites us to reflect upon the future and, more than that, upon our relationship with time itself. The question is whether there’s a uniquely Christian understanding of time and history, a truly Christian attitude towards past, present, and future?

Before attempting to answer this question, we may find it helpful to survey four basic options that various philosophies and worldviews offer us in the way of possible orientations towards the future. That way, we’ll be in a better position to appreciate what’s distinctive about the Christian viewpoint.

The first basic attitude is optimism: the belief that things are getting better all the time. This view came into prominence in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and it’s with us still. This worldview confidently asserts that despite periodic setbacks, the steady march of reason, science, technology, and education is continually improving the human condition, gradually eradicating disease, poverty, ignorance, and superstition, until eventually a perfect society, or utopia, is achieved upon earth. 

The second basic option is pessimism, perhaps tinged with nostalgia. This viewpoint characteristically looks back to a past golden age as the zenith of history, from which everything’s gone downhill ever since. This pessimistic view is sometimes associated with old age: nostalgic reminiscing about the “good old days,” combined with disapproval and dismay at the dreadful state things have fallen into now. The trouble is that all too often we tend to view the past through rose-colored glasses. When we actually study history, however, we discover that the good old days weren’t always that good, though they had some good features, and many aspects of the present aren’t really all that bad.

A third basic option might be described as resignation. In this view, the future is determined by fate, or by blind impersonal forces beyond our influence or control. So, there’s no guarantee that the future will be either better or worse than the present or the past. Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.

One variation of this worldview is a cyclical view of time, which sees history as having neither direction nor purpose, but a never-ending cycle of repetitions. Civilizations and worlds come to birth, grow, prosper, decay, and die, over and over again. To quote the Book of Ecclesiastes, there’s nothing new under the sun. Or the French proverb: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Our only option, in this view, is to make the best of whatever circumstances we happen to find ourselves in. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

A fourth basic option, finally, is despair. From this viewpoint, history isn’t going anywhere at all; past, present, and future have no discernible direction, and hence no purpose or meaning. In its more depressive moments, the Book of Ecclesiastes gets into this frame of mind: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!” But, to my mind, the supreme expression of this outlook is found in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

So, four possible orientations towards the future are optimism, pessimism, resignation, and despair. During the coming week, it might be useful to reflect on which of those options best sums up our own basic attitude. Perhaps we strongly identify with one or another, or perhaps it changes according to our moods. 

Over and against these four, however, we’re now able to sketch out the biblical view. In the Christian and Jewish Scriptures, first, time has a beginning and an end. History is going somewhere, with a definite meaning and purpose. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. From that moment, history moves forward, according to a God-given plan, towards a future goal and end.

Contrary to the optimistic viewpoint, however, all is not inevitable progress. Everything is not necessarily getting better all the time. Despite all our very real advances in science, education, medicine, and technology, we still live in a world afflicted by war, poverty, disease, famine, pandemic, and disaster. Indeed, the very technology intended to better the human condition often has unintended consequences that threaten our very survival: for example, environmental pollution, global warming, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Christian tradition expresses this aspect of our predicament in theological shorthand by saying that we’re fallen creatures living in a fallen world.

Contrary to the pessimistic viewpoint, nonetheless, scripture promises us that the best is yet to come. The future is better than the past. God holds in store for us joys infinitely surpassing anything we’ve known up until now. Still, this glorious future is in no way the result of human achievement or inevitable progress. Instead, it’s the result of God’s own final intervention in human history – an intervention that the Bible calls “the coming of the Lord.”

And that observation brings us to today’s lectionary readings, which belong to the genre of biblical literature known as apocalyptic. They’re full of mysterious and surreal imagery describing the end times. It’s difficult always to know what to make of them and we do well to be cautious in interpreting them. But one feature they have in common is the warning that before things get better, they’re going to get worse. That’s the bad news. Before the end, signs in the heavens will portend cataclysmic natural disasters as well as persecution of the Church on earth: a time for believers to stand firm and bear witness to the faith. And then, when it seems that things have got so bad that they can’t possibly get any worse – then, the Lord will come. That’s the good news.

As Christians, of course, we believe that God has already come among us once, in great humility, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who died on the cross for our sins, was raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven. And at the end of this age, this same Jesus will return in power and majesty, to judge the living and the dead, and to usher in the fulness of his kingdom.

So, as Christians, our proper orientation to the future is neither optimism, pessimism, resignation, nor despair, but hope. Every year, this season of Advent reminds us that our Christian calling is to be a people who live in joyful hope for the coming of the Lord, whatever trials and tribulations we must undergo in the meantime. So, another question worth reflecting on during the coming week is how we may best cultivate this virtue of hope in our lives. What benefits might we gain from becoming a truly hopeful people?

Advent is an exciting time: of anticipation, expectation, and preparation, of watching and waiting. We pray, then, that through our observance of this season, God will grant us the grace to know the joy of Christian hope and make it our own.

THANKSGIVING ECUMENICAL SERVICE

Sunday, November 21, 2021, 4pm

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Manasquan, N. J.

Deuteronomy 8:7-18

II Corinthians 9:6-15

Luke 17:11-19

As we approach our national Thanksgiving holiday, it might be helpful to reflect on the act of giving thanks itself, and the role it plays in our individual and community lives.

Giving thanks, it seems to me, is the outward expression of the inward disposition that we commonly call thankfulness or gratitude. And gratitude is one of the classical Christian virtues. Its opposite, ingratitude, is one of the classical vices. To say, for example, that someone has a grateful heart or a thankful spirit is to pay them a high moral compliment. Conversely, to say that someone is habitually ungrateful is to call attention to a perceived flaw or defect in their moral character.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the great theologians of the thirteenth century, classified gratitude as a subcategory of the cardinal virtue of justice, by which we render to each their due. Traditionally, there are four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. As one of the cardinal virtues, justice comprises dozens and dozens of subvirtues—such as truthtelling, prompt payment of debts, restitution for injuries, and so forth. So, the question is: under what circumstances is gratitude something we owe somebody in order to render them their due and so fulfill the obligations of justice?

Well, according to Aquinas, gratitude is what we owe our benefactors for favors received. Let’s unpack that a bit. In medieval language, a benefactor is someone who gives us something over and above anything they owe us. So, a favor received from such a benefactor is a freely-given gift or good deed that we really had no right to expect. When we receive such a gift, then, our appropriate response is one of inward gratitude expressed in outward praise and thanksgiving.

A prosaic example will illustrate the point. When I’m driving along the street in my car and I come to an intersection where I have the right of way, and another car comes to the stop sign and lets me pass before proceeding themselves, I don’t normally feel any sense of gratitude towards the other driver. Nor should I. (I may feel relief if it looked as though they weren’t going to stop and then they slammed on the brakes at the last minute, but not gratitude.) They’ve simply obeyed the law and yielded me the right of way that was mine. No thanks are called for. (I might thank God that he made them stop, but that’s another matter.)

But if I’m the one coming to the stop sign at a busy intersection where I’m likely to be waiting a long time for a break in the traffic—which seems to happen a lot in this part of the world, especially in the summer—and a driver who does have the right of way takes pity on me, slows down, and waves me on ahead of them, then I do feel gratitude, and give them a thank-you wave and perhaps a smile. And so I should, because they did a generous deed that they didn’t have to do and that I had no right to expect. The virtue of gratitude, expressed in a word or gesture of thanks, involves precisely acknowledging that someone didn’t have to do whatever they did for us, but they did it anyway.

This disposition of gratitude is what St. Thomas Aquinas and the tradition he represents would call a natural moral virtue. That is, there’s nothing particularly Christian about it. It’s capable of being exercised by Christians and non-Christians, by believers and unbelievers alike. Aquinas would argue further that it fulfills the natural moral law that God has both written into creation and implanted in the human conscience, so that we all have some awareness of it and ability to act on it, however obscured and distorted it may have become by the Fall and Original Sin. 

To my mind, one of the unique blessings of the American national Thanksgiving holiday is that it’s something we can all share with our family, friends, and neighbors, no matter what our religious convictions or lack thereof. Very few among us object to the idea of setting aside a day to express our gratitude for all the gifts we’ve received in our life as a nation—and indeed to recommit ourselves to working for a more equitable distribution of those gifts among all members of our communities.

Now, I might have some excuse for stopping there, but I don’t think I can, because I’m a Christian. And I suspect that most of us here are too, or else we wouldn’t be attending this ecumenical service of Christian worship. And from a theistic and a Christian perspective, much more needs to be said. But I will try to say it briefly.

We begin with creation itself. A basic tenet of the theistic religions—especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—is that our very existence is itself a free gift. God didn’t have to create us; he was under no constraint or compulsion; but he chose to do so anyway. So we owe our gratitude first and foremost to God as our creator. And then we owe thanks to God for his providence: giving us the necessities of our existence, beginning with food, shelter, and clothing.

The great contrary temptation is to fall prey to the delusion that we ourselves are the creators of all that we are and of all that we have. So this afternoon’s reading from the Book of Deuteronomy warns us against thinking: “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” For that is to commit the sin of ingratitude par excellence, not to mention the deadly sin of pride.

More specifically, as Christians we owe our gratitude and thanksgiving to Jesus Christ, for the redemption that he’s won for us by his life, death, and resurrection. Here we have no better model and example than the Samaritan in the Gospel reading, who having been healed of his leprosy, prostrates himself at the Lord’s feet and thanks him.

As Christians, also, we owe thanks for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, who stirs our hearts to praise and thanksgiving for all God’s blessings. Here, in a curious way, we come full circle. For the virtue of gratitude not only disposes us to give thanks for  gifts freely received from our benefactors, beginning with God himself, but it also moves us to exercise the further virtues of generosity and kindness, by which, as the saying goes, we “pass it forward.” So Saint Paul writes in our reading from Second Corinthians: “God loves a cheerful giver … You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God …”

So, even in the face of the stresses and strains of the past year-and-three-quarters—and it’s been rough for all of us—this Thanksgiving holiday affords us the opportunity to consider how we may further cultivate the virtues of gratitude and generosity in our own lives and communities. May God grant us the grace to become a truly thankful people. Amen.

PROPER 29, YEAR B

CHRIST THE KING

November 21, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

John 18:33-37

At the conclusion of the Gospel we’ve just heard, our Lord describes his kingly mission as one of bearing witness to the truth. His subjects, who hear his voice, are those who are of the truth. Then, in the immediately following verse, Pilate asks his famous question, “What is truth?”

We may think of the truth as a statement or proposition that accurately represents reality. If I say that someone is truthful, I’m saying that this person is honest and makes reliable statements. We also speak of the truth as the contents of such a truthful statement, as when a child comes home with a torn jacket and the parent says, “Tell me what happened: I want the truth.” Or again, on taking the stand in court, we swear an oath: “To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

In some intellectual circles, it’s fashionable to deny the existence of any such thing as objective truth. According to relativism, all we have are perceptions—“what’s true for you and what’s true for me.” Certain versions of the sociology of knowledge imagine all truth claims to be oppressive attempts by privileged groups to protect their interests and maintain their power by imposing their own arbitrary view of reality on everybody else.

But the Christian faith commits us, I think, to the philosophical position that there is such a thing as objective truth, which we are capable of recognizing and acknowleding. The same God who created the world of objective reality also created the human mind capable of knowing it. The truth can indeed be slippery and elusive, subject to many conflicting interpretations. Nonetheless, through careful investigation, observation, comparison, examination, and sifting of evidence, we can come to a more-or-less accurate perception of how things really are.

The truth of which Jesus speaks, however, is not one that we attain by our own investigative efforts, but rather one that God reveals. In the words of an old English Christmas folksong, it’s the truth sent from above. Not so much the truth that we uncover, as the truth that uncovers us! In John’s Gospel in particular, the truth is not so much a proposition as a Person. Not static but dynamic: something that happens when Jesus reveals himself as God’s only Son, and when people believe in him, enter into a new relationship with God through him, and find their lives changed as a result.

Today’s Gospel portrays this divine truth as key to Christ’s reign as king. Notice that in response to Pilate’s question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus doesn’t deny that he’s a king. He does say that his kingship is not of this world. That is, he doesn’t use force and coercion to achieve his goals. Instead, he exercises his kingship by bearing witness to the truth; and his kingdom is built up as people hear his voice, believe in him, and live in in faith and obedience to the truth that he both reveals and embodies.

When Pilate asks Jesus if he’s the king of the Jews, he’s trying to determine whether he poses a political or military threat to Roman rule in Palestine. At one level, Jesus reassures him: “My kingdom is not of this world … otherwise my servants would fight.” Many people mistakenly interpret those words to mean that our Lord’s kingdom is completely spiritual and otherworldly, as though faith and politics belong to completely separate realms having nothing to do with each other. Wrong!

On the contrary, our Lord’s statement that his kingship consists of bearing witness to the truth has enormous political implications. His kingship subverts all ideologies and power structures founded upon lies and falsehoods. Classical Christian political theory regards earthly authority as instituted by God to keep order in this world, secure some measure of justice, and serve the common good. But earthly rulers are accountable to God. When they overstep the bounds of their authority and violate God’s laws, they subject themselves to divine judgment.

The early Christians thus routinely prayed for the Roman Emperor and endeavored to be law-abiding subjects of the Empire. But when the Emperor demanded to be worshiped as a god, they had no choice but to refuse, even though they knew that it could mean going to the lions. The emperor’s claim to divinity was a lie; worship of the emperor was false worship. No wonder that the Roman imperial authorities found overwhelmingly threatening and subversive this new sect worshiping a king whose claims took precedence over even the claims of Caesar.

For Christians, allegiance to Christ as King comes before any earthly allegiance. When earthly powers usurp God’s place and demand unqualified loyalty and obedience, they commit a blasphemous falsehood. The proclamation of Christ’s kingship unmasks and exposes this lie for what it is. For this reason, Pope Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King in 1925, to counter the rising totalitarian movements of Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, which were then setting themselves up as new secular religions demanding their followers’ total and unthinking obedience.

Those who belong to Christ’s kingdom hear his voice and receive his truth. That truth may challenge our most culturally ingrained assumptions and values; it may call into question our most cherished political loyalties. Still, as Christians we owe primary obedience to Christ as our king. We’re indeed called to be loyal to our families, to follow our employers’ lawful directions, and to obey the laws of the state. But if any earthly power should ask us to violate our consciences by disobeying God’s laws, then we’ve no choice but to refuse and resist. When asked by King Henry VIII to assent to the royal supremacy over the Church in spiritual matters, Saint Thomas More replied that he was the king’s good servant, but God’s first. That witness to the truth cost him his head. But on that point he was certainly right, and clearly among those who hear the voice of the one true king.

Today, more than ever, we need to reaffirm our loyalty to Christ as the King who reveals God’s truth. Many of our political leaders have made a career of debasing truth into a transactional commodity: anything that can be made up, manipulated, and molded to serve the interests of the moment and gain short-term advantage by telling people what they want to hear: not the truth but lies, distortions, and disinformation that deceive their followers into unquestioning support of their political agendas. 

Jesus operates in a diametrically opposite manner: the truth he reveals is not necessarily what we want to hear, but it’s absolutely what we need to hear – for the sake of our liberation and salvation. Elsewhere in John’s Gospel, he promises us: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” A key paradox of the Christian life is that Christ is the King whose service is perfect freedom.

Proper 28, Year B

Sunday, November 15, 2021

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

Mark 13:1-8

We’ve just heard the passage known as the Little Apocalypse, in Chapter 13 of Saint Mark’s Gospel. In the very precincts of the Jerusalem Temple, Our Lord makes the shocking prediction that the Temple itself will soon be destroyed. Then, having gone out across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives, he sits down, assuming the posture of a teacher. Speaking to his innermost circle of disciples—Peter, James, and John—he describes the times of trial and tribulation that will precede his Second Coming. 

As we approach Advent, with its focus on the Last Things, the lectionary’s compilers chose this Gospel to get us thinking about the world’s end. These apocalyptic passages can be difficult for contemporary readers. Despite the very real threats to our collective existence posed by weapons of mass destruction, environmental degradation, and other potential sources of global catastrophe, many people find it hard to take seriously these biblical predictions of a literal end of the world brought about by God himself in response to a rising tide of human disobedience and rebellion. Nonetheless, it’s all there, in the Scriptures.

From the earliest days, however, the Church has understood these passages to have a double meaning and application. On one hand, they speak of a sequence of global and even cosmic future events culminating in the end of the present world, the return of Christ to judge the living and the dead, and the inauguration of God’s Kingdom in a new heaven and a new earth. We cannot know ahead of time what exactly all this will involve or what it will be like for those who are then alive. The biblical prophecies are couched in highly symbolic imagery pointing to mysterious realities otherwise impossible to describe in words.

On the other hand, “the end of the world” becomes an individual and personal reality for each of us as we face death. The world will go on without us, but at the moment of dying our world comes to an end. In the hour of death, we begin to experience for ourselves – immediately and directly – the events traditionally associated with the end of the world: the coming of the Lord, the last judgment, and the life of the world to come.

Our Lord’s message in today’s Gospel is twofold. When the disciples admire the magnificent buildings of the Jerusalem Temple built by King Herod the Great – “Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” – Jesus warns them that the time is coming when “there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.” 

Beyond the historical fulfillment of this prophecy by the Roman legions several decades later, these words admonish the disciples, and us, that nothing in this life is permanent. If we put our trust in earthly goods, no matter how strong and sturdy they seem, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. We live in the midst of a world that is passing away.

To the disciples, however, this prediction may have seemed shocking and blasphemous. The Temple of Jerusalem was God’s dwelling place on earth. What Peter, James, and John say next can be paraphrased: “Okay, Lord, now you’ve got our attention! When is all this going to happen, and what will be the sign that the time has come?” Here, however, they manifest the misguided tendency of some Christians in every generation to try to work out the timetable, so they can predict with certainty when the end is at hand.

But Jesus responds with a contrary warning. He says, in effect, “Even when things get so bad that you think that it must be the end of the world, don’t panic, the time is not yet. Many will come in my name, saying ‘I am he,’ and they will lead many astray.” In other words, the Church must settle in for the long haul. Those too ready to believe rash predictions are likely to be led astray by false prophets. So, the two counterbalancing parts of the message are, on one hand, that the end of the world is indeed coming; but, on the other hand, we need to avoid jumping the gun and prematurely concluding that the time is here. Those who get caught up in doomsday cults are apt to make bad decisions that they live to regret.

Finally, Jesus deploys a totally unexpected and surprising image. Wars and rumors of war, nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes, and famines: all these are “but the beginning of the birth pangs.” That image requires a bit of unpacking. “Birth pangs” is biblical language for labor pains – the rhythmic contractions that signal the onset of labor and the sequence of events culminating in the delivery of a child.

This image of childbirth occurs in several places in the New Testament. In his First Letter to the Thessalonians, Saint Paul writes that the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night: “When people say, ‘There is peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them as travail comes upon a woman with child, and there will be no escape.” Later, in his Letter to the Romans, Chapter 8, Paul varies the image slightly and writes of the whole creation groaning in travail, undergoing its present sufferings, which nonetheless cannot be compared with the glory to be revealed. And in John’s Gospel, Jesus says alludes to his own coming death and resurrection with this amazing image: “Truly, truly, I say to you … you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child has been born into the world.”

This image of “the beginning of the birth pangs” thus carries a promise of reassurance and hope. Labor pains are exceedingly unpleasant, but in the vast majority of cases they’re the prelude to the overwhelming and unparalleled joy of new life. 

Even in the midst of violence and destruction, catastrophe and disaster, whether in the world at large or in our own personal worlds, God is always at work, bringing new realities to birth. The promise of the Lord’s resurrection is that death never has the last word, for in Christ it becomes birth into eternal life. And for Christians, the agonies of death are but the birth pangs of a new creation, a world without end.

 SUNDAY AFTER ALL SAINTS (YEAR B)

November 7, 2021

Saint Uriel’s, Sea Girt, NJ

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9

Psalm 24

Revelation 21:1-6

John 11:32-44

A few years back, when the Episcopal Church adopted the Revised Common Lectionary, we got a whole new set of readings for the Feast of All Saints. The readings that we’ve just heard, appointed for Year B in the three-year cycle, take what might be called—to use a big word—an eschatological approach to the Communion of Saints.

Now, what does that mean? Well, eschatology is the branch of theology dealing with the Last Things, or what some of our Protestant brothers and sisters call the “End Times.” So, an eschatological approach simply looks at the Communion of Saints from the viewpoint not of what is, now, but of what is coming, what awaits us in the future. In different ways, today’s readings focus our attention on the Saints of God from this future perspective.

The reading from the Wisdom of Solomon is more usually associated with All Souls Day and funerals than with All Saints Day. But notice how it describes both what is and what is to come. First, it uses the present tense: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God … [and] they are at peace.” 

But then it shifts to the future tense: “Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good … In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble.” The English biblical scholar N. T. Wright suggests that these verses express the Jewish hope in a future resurrection of the dead. Despite their sufferings in this life, the souls of the righteous rest in peace now, safe in God’s hands. But on the Day of Resurrection they’ll be reunited with their bodies and rise in glory. The Christian Church inherited this hope of a future general resurrection, of which Christ’s own resurrection is both the pledge and first fruits.

Psalm 24 asks: “Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? And who can stand in his holy place?” The hill spoken of is Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and the holy place is the Temple of Solomon. The answer is: “those who have clean hands and a pure heart.” But then, again, the psalm shifts to the future tense: “They shall receive a blessing from the Lord and a just reward from the God of their salvation.”

The reading from Revelation transposes this hope from an earthly to a heavenly Jerusalem. Saint John records: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” The vision is not of what is now but of what is to come. In this new Jerusalem, “[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”

Then, in the Gospel, we have Saint John’s wonderful account of the raising of Lazarus. Some of the Early Church Fathers point out that Jesus summons Lazarus from the tomb with the same divine voice that created heaven and earth in the beginning. Just as God gave life to humanity with the words, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” so Jesus gives new life with the words, “Lazarus, come out!” This command anticipates in turn the future day, when, as Saint Paul writes in his First Letter to the Thessalonians, “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.”

Today’s readings thus give us a kaleidoscope of beautiful images of the Communion of Saints as the future reality that awaits us in Christ. The Saints of God are not only those figures from the past whom we commemorate on their feast days in the liturgical calendar, nor only those in heaven who watch over and pray for us now. The promise is that if we remain faithful to our baptismal vows—and don’t turn away from our calling—then we also shall be numbered among those who shine forth and run like sparks among the stubble, who ascend the hill of the Lord and stand in God’s holy place, who inhabit the new Jerusalem where God wipes away every tear, and who hear the Lord’s voice commanding us to come forth from our tombs.

One further detail from the Gospel reading merits comment. When Lazarus emerges from his tomb, he’s still wrapped in bandages with a cloth covering his face. So, Jesus commands those standing by, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (Notice the contrast with the Lord’s own Resurrection, where he needs no such help and simply sheds the grave clothes on his own.)

Here again, some of the Early Church Fathers see the unbinding of Lazarus as a symbolic anticipation of the Church’s ministry of binding and loosing. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says first to Peter and later to the disciples: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  The parallel saying in John’s Gospel is that of the Risen Lord to the disciples in the Upper Room: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

By this interpretation, Lazarus’s graveclothes represent the sins of humanity, and the unbinding of Lazarus represents the Church’s ministry of reconciliation. While only the Lord’s own voice can raise us from the dead, he delegates to his Church the authority to forgive sins in his Name, exercised through the priestly ministry handed down through the generations from the apostles by prayer and the laying-on-of-hands. 

More broadly, our Lord’s command, “Unbind him, and let him go,” reassures us that we’re not expected to achieve the perfection of sainthood alone, by our own efforts, which would be impossible in any case. We’re all in this together. We all have a part to play in helping one another along the road to our heavenly destination. And we joyfully fulfill that role as we keep on meeting together as a parish community, Sunday by Sunday and during the week, for all our activities of worship, fellowship, education, and mission.

ALL SOULS DAY

Tuesday 2 November 2021

Saint Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

The commemoration of All Faithful Departed on All Souls Day is part and parcel of the Church’s year-round practice of praying for the dead. Even though intercession for the departed has been integral to Catholic worship since as early as the second century, it was restored to the Episcopal Church’s Prayer Book only in 1979. Before that, official Anglican liturgy had been under the influence of a theology associated with the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation, which condemned prayers for the dead. In virtue of the all-sufficiency of Christ’s merits, combined with justification through faith alone, this theology held that those who died in a state of grace went straight to heaven, nonstop, no layovers, no changing planes. On the other hand, those who died without faith in Christ effectively landed on the square marked “Go to hell; go straight to hell; do not pass Go; do not collect $200.”

It followed that prayers for the departed were unnecessary for those in heaven; and futile for those in hell. It was a harsh doctrine. Since it made heaven contingent upon explicit faith in Christ in this life, it effectively consigned to eternal punishment all members of other religions as well as honest nonbelievers. And it was little comfort to those who’d lost loved ones whose faith and works in this life seemed, well, ambiguous.

But the vast majority of us are neither perfect saints nor totally depraved sinners. We try to live good lives according to certain guiding principles. Yet we all have our character flaws, imperfections, inconsistencies, and hypocrisies. We may come to Church and find our faith a great help and comfort—indeed something totally worthwhile—yet we often fail to practice what we preach or live up to our highest ideals. We’re on the way, but not quite there: called to be saints, yet in this life neither completely good nor completely bad.

In other words, when we die, most of us are fit for neither heaven nor hell. Now, I do believe in hell; I’m not a Universalist. The Church’s teaching, as I understand it, is that it’s possible in this life to completely reject God and everything that God stands for. The dignity and freedom of the human person is such that God respects our choices; and the consequence of the human decision to reject God is an eternity spent apart from God; and that is hell. I once explained this to some atheist friends; and they said, “Well that doesn’t sound so bad.” But on the contrary, a worse fate cannot be imagined. God created us to find fulfillment in union with him; an eternity spent apart from God represents the ultimate frustration of all human potential and aspiration.

Still, it’s possible to believe in hell but also to believe that few people actually end up there. Hell must exist for the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. But I’d like to think that comparatively few people choose to make good their evil and evil their good in such explicitly Faustian terms as to merit everlasting damnation. 

At the same time, when we die, few if any of us are ready for heaven. Our sins and imperfections are such that we couldn’t bear the glory of God’s divine perfection. So, between going straight to heaven and straight to hell, there must be a third way; and the Church’s name for that third way is Purgatory.

An analogy from the world of criminal justice may be helpful here. In the past twenty years or so, a new approach to the prevention and correction of wrongdoing has gained currency, which goes by the name of “restorative justice,” or “restorative practices.” In the past, civic communities tended to respond to crimes and other transgressions with either vengeful retribution at one extreme or permissive leniency at the opposite extreme. But neither of those approaches proved particularly effective. 

Restorative justice aims at a third way. Punishments are made to fit the crime; for example, a teenager caught doing drugs is required to do community service at a rehab clinic. Those who’ve committed violent crimes are brought into dialogue with their victims and their families, so that they can begin to understand the consequences of their actions. Throughout, the aim is to re-educate and rehabilitate; to heal wounds; to repair the tears in the fabric of community. Occasionally, it doesn’t work; some people are so damaged that the only thing to do is lock them up and throw away the key. But in many more cases, it does work. In my own native Northern Ireland, for example, such techniques have been helpful in reintegrating former terrorists on both sides of the conflict into the community's life.

Now, to switch back to theology, Purgatory represents the ultimate divine restorative justice. If the doctrine that sinners go straight to hell represents vengeful retribution, and the doctrine that we all go straight to heaven represents permissive leniency, then the doctrine of Purgatory represents the third way, the way of restoration. 

In this life, the divine restorative justice is already at work on us, especially in the Sacraments, worship, and fellowship of the Church. After death, the divine restorative justice continues to work with even greater effect. We come to see ourselves as we truly are. Our wounds are healed; our broken relationships mended. This doctrine does not deny the grace of Christ but rather gives it full expression. Here the Holy Spirit restores us and makes us new, so that we finally become the people that God created us to be.

In praying for the dead, we not only remember fondly those near and dear to us, but we also take our place as participants in the cosmic drama of redemption. That’s our privilege and duty as members of the Body of Christ. We pray not only for those whom we love but see no longer, but for all the souls of the faithful departed, and especially for those who have no one to pray for them. (We have the additional comfort of knowing that the members of the Church on earth will pray for us after we've gone on before them.) In this way, we fulfill our responsibilities as a community composed of all nations and peoples, being made new by the working of divine grace both in this life and in the life to come.

PROPER 26, YEAR B

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Saint Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N.J.

Mark 12:28-34

This morning’s Gospel gives us Saint Mark’s version of what is known as the Great Commandment. A scribe asks our Lord: “Which Commandment is the first of all?” It was a common question among the rabbis of that time: which of all the hundreds of commandments in the Jewish Law stands first in importance as summing up and interpreting all the rest?

 

In his response, our Lord gives not one text from the Torah but two. First, he quotes the text from Deuteronomy 6:5 known as the Shema, recited daily by pious Jews, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” But to this he joins a second text from Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  

According to some commentators, this answer differed significantly from many other answers given by various priests, scribes, and rabbis. Some argued that keeping the Sabbath was the most important commandment; others that it was circumcision; others that it was the offering of the Temple sacrifices. 

But still, at least some teachers gave answers like the one Jesus gave. A gentile who wanted to become a Jew once asked the great rabbi Hillel the Elder, who lived in the first century BC, for a concise summation of the Torah. Hillel answered: “What is hateful to thee, do not do unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law, the rest is commentary; go and learn.” Likewise, the rabbi Akiva ben Joseph, who lived in the early second century, described the commandment “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” the most important principle of Judaism.

The great genius of our Lord’s response, however, was to join these two verses together: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God …” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” To my knowledge, none of the other Jewish teachers of the time made this move. So together, these two commandments passed into the Christian tradition as the Summary of the Law, Matthew’s version of which we recite at the beginning of almost every Rite I Mass.

As any of the kids who’ve been through my one of my Confirmation classes can tell you, the Summary of the Law furnishes the two headings under which the Ten Commandments are arranged. Commandments 1 through 4 tell us what it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength: namely, You shall have no other Gods before me; you shall not worship idols; you shall not take the Lord’s name in vain; keep holy the Sabbath day. 

And Commandments 5 through 10 explain what it means to  love your neighbor as yourself: Honor your father and mother; Do not commit murder; Do not commit adultery; Do not steal; Do not bear false witness; Do not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. 

Under the subheadings of each of the Ten Commandments, Christian ethicists have extrapolated many more principles and precepts of moral behavior. But in the end, they all fall under the wide umbrella of our Lord’s Summary of the Law: Love God; Love your neighbor.

A key message for us is that Christian discipleship isn’t ultimately about obeying rules: It’s about love; or, more precisely, about learning to love the right things in the right way in the right order. Love is at the heart of the Gospel. As Saint John says, “God is love.” In his life, death, and resurrection, Christ reveals and manifests the depth of God’s love for his creation. Through baptism, and participation in the Church’s sacramental life, we’re engrafted into Christ’s Body so that his life becomes our life; we live in him, and he lives in us. It follows that his life becomes manifest in us precisely insofar as we learn to love as he loves. Indeed, as the early Church Fathers pointed out, Christ alone has perfectly fulfilled his own commandment: loving God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength; and loving his neighbor as himself. In John’s Gospel, Jesus calls us to imitate him in fulfilling this command: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

And so, when we’re contemplating the ethics of one course of action versus another, a key question is whether the action we’re considering adequately expresses our love for God and love for our neighbor. Or does it place, say, the love of self or of some created commodity in place of both? That’s a fairly simple test; and a question that we all can benefit from asking ourselves periodically.

The Jewish rabbis whose sayings are recorded in the Mishnah and the Talmud agreed that we love God by behaving in such a way that brings honor to God in the sight of our fellow creatures. One way in which we express our love for both God and our neighbor is by regular attendance at worship. Even before we kneel in Church and say our prayers, the very effort of getting up and getting to Mass is a visible and tangible expression of our love for God, a public testimony to God’s place in our lives. Moreover, it expresses our love for our neighbor because, believe it or not, when we come to Mass we give encouragement and support to our fellow worshipers, many of whom are more glad to see us than we ever realize, and conversely are disappointed when they don’t see us.

The genius of our Lord’s Summary of the Law is his joining together of two commandments that really are inseparable. We cannot love God adequately without loving our neighbor. But neither can we love our neighbor adequately without loving God. Some years ago, a couple told me they were going to stop coming to church because they felt that their time and money would be better spent helping those in need, for example, by contributing to the local food bank. On reflection, they got the second half of the Summary of the Law, and they got it right: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But they were missing the first half: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. As Christians, we’re not given the option of picking one or the other. We’re called to do both.