FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 27, 2022

Saint Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

 

Joshua 5:9-12

Psalm 32

II Corinthians 5:16-21

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

 

A triple theme runs through today’s Scripture readings: homecoming, reconciliation, and celebration. Let’s look at these three images in turn.

 

First: homecoming. In the reading from Joshua, the Israelites have just crossed the River Jordan into the land of Canaan, ending the forty years of wandering in the wilderness after their liberation from bondage in Egypt. They’ve never seen this place before. Still, it’s the land God promised their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as their inheritance. So, they know that they’ve finally come home.

 

Similarly, in the Gospel reading from Saint Luke, the parable of the Prodigal Son is all about homecoming. After taking himself off to a far country and squandering his inheritance in loose living so that he nearly perishes from hunger, the Prodigal “comes to himself” and returns to his father’s house, where, against all expectations, he’s welcomed with open arms: the homecoming story to end all homecoming stories!

 

The second theme is reconciliation. At the beginning of the Old Testament reading, God makes a rather puzzling statement to Joshua: “This day, I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” To understand what’s going on here, it helps to know what’s happened immediately before. During their forty years in the wilderness, the children of Israel have neglected to circumcise their male offspring eight days after birth. So, upon crossing the River Jordan, God instructs them to renew his covenant with Abraham by circumcising all the uncircumcised men and boys among them: a painful procedure, to be sure, but necessary if they’re to inherit God's promises to Abraham. 

 

So, God’s words to Joshua, “This day, I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you,” mean that the people have been reconciled to God by keeping his commandments. More broadly, they no longer suffer the shame and disgrace of being a band of wandering fugitive slaves. They’re now God’s People, ready to take possession of the land that’s rightfully theirs.

 

And I don’t need to labor the point that the parable of the Prodigal Son is all about reconciliation. Forgiven and restored by his father, the Prodigal can surely make his own the words of Psalm 32: “Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away.” Both the Israelites entering the Promised Land and the Prodigal Son being welcomed home are figures pointing in their different ways to what God has done for us in Christ, as Saint Paul writes in Second Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” 

 

The third image is that of celebration and feasting. Encamped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites keep the Passover on its appointed day. Moreover, something enormously significant happens. After they eat land's produce, unleavened cakes and parched grain, the manna ceases. The manna, we recall, is the miraculous bread from heaven that God has provided for their sustenance during the forty years in the wilderness. But it was never meant as anything more than a temporary measure. So, when they arrive in their new home, the land flowing with milk and honey, the manna ceases. 

 

The Fathers of the early Church discerned in the manna a figure of the true Bread from heaven, the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, which sustains us on our journey through this life. But this too is a temporary measure. When we arrive in heaven, as Hymn 315 tells us, “Sacraments shall cease” just as the manna ceased. For there, in our Promised Land, we shall all share in the feast of which the Eucharist is the foretaste, in direct communion with Christ, and with no further need of intermediate signs.

 

The homecoming party in the parable of the Prodigal Son stands as another figure of this same heavenly banquet. In his joy at his son’s return, the father in the story orders up a great feast: “let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” There we have it all in a nutshell: homecoming, reconciliation, and celebration.

 

The good news is that God is giving a homecoming party, and we’re all invited. We accept the invitation by being reconciled with God and our neighbor. As Saint Paul writes in today’s Epistle: “God through Christ reconciled us to himself, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation … We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

 
The challenge in today’s readings is to examine our lives and ask ourselves where we need to be reconciled to God. In which of our relationships do we need to forgive or seek forgiveness? If God in Christ has given us the ministry of reconciliation, then that’s what we need to be about as Christians.

 

The not-so-good news is that some of our relationships may have become so damaged that reconciliation is no longer possible, at least not in this life. Even though we’re called always to pray for the grace to forgive those who’ve done us harm, nonetheless, forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean letting people back into our lives who’ve demonstrated that they can only be relied upon to do us further harm. In these few cases, our only option is to pray for the good of the other person, in the hope that we may be reconciled in heaven if not in this world.

 

Sometimes, then, reconciliation happens and sometimes it doesn’t. And that observation brings us to the jealous older brother. Even though the father forgives his wayward son, it seems that the older brother cannot. Even though many readers find him easy to identify with, he’s not in any sense a figure to admire or imitate. He’s so wrapped up in self-righteousness and self-pity that his father effectively must beg him: For God’s sake, stop taking yourself so seriously! Let go of your wounded pride, come inside, join the party, and have a good time! Some New Testament commentators point out that Jesus deliberately leaves the parable’s ending open. He doesn’t tell us whether what the older son does, because he wants us to supply that ending ourselves by our own acceptance of the invitation.

 

So, we’re left with the question: What’s stopping us from coming home, being reconciled, and joining in the celebration? Like the old man in the parable, God is always ready and eagerly waiting to welcome us back with open arms. Will our response be that of the Prodigal Son returning to his father’s house, or that of the jealous older brother staying outside and making himself miserable? How we answer that question determines how we spend eternity.

 

THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 20, 2022

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

 

Exodus 3:1-15

Psalm 63:1-8

I Corinthians 10:1-3

Luke 13:1-9

 

From today’s reading from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “Now these things are warnings for us, not to desire evil ...” This verse invites us to reflect on the nature of “warnings” in general.

 

A warning is not quite the same thing as a threat. I’m old enough to remember when the warning first appeared on cigarette packets: “The Surgeon General has determined that smoking may be hazardous to your health.” Tame language compared with today, but the intent was to warn people that if they persisted in smoking tobacco products, they incurred a grave risk of lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease, and a variety of other potentially fatal ailments. It wasn’t a threat but a warning.

 

The distinction, I think, is that a threat has the purpose of intimidation, coercion, and control—and it’s made for the benefit of the party issuing the threat. The word for someone who habitually gets his way by making threats is a bully. A warning, by contrast, is made for the protection and safety of those being warned: like the signs we see on the beach: No swimming: dangerous rip currents! The warning is for our own good, and we ignore it at our peril.

 

If this distinction is valid, then it seems to me that our God doesn’t make threats. But he does issue plenty of warnings: always intended for our ultimate good, indeed for our eternal salvation.

 

In the wonderful Old Testament reading from Exodus about the burning bush, God commissions Moses to liberate the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt. Although the reading doesn’t explicitly mention it, a key component of Moses’ ministry will be to warn Pharaoh and the Egyptians of the dire consequences of their failure to obey God’s command to let his people go—warnings that sadly go unheeded.

 

In the reading from First Corinthians, Saint Paul is warning his readers not to presume upon their baptism, membership in the Church, and participation in the Eucharist as a license to indulge freely in immorality and disobedience without fear of any consequences. During their forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the Hebrews whom Moses delivered from bondage in Egypt incurred God’s wrath and punishment when they put the Lord to the test and defied his commandments. Never mind that they’d been led through the Red Sea and had tasted the heavenly manna. Having received such great gifts, they were even more accountable to God for their behavior.  So, Saint Paul writes, “Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.”

 

The early Church fathers interpreted this point as meaning that the temporal punishments of sinners in the Old Testament serve as figurative or allegorical warnings of the eternal punishments awaiting unrepentant sinners in the world to come. In other words, while we probably won’t be punished for our sins in this life by plagues, serpents, or the earth swallowing us up alive, nonetheless these calamities symbolize the miseries of hell, and hence serve as warnings to repent while we still have time.

 

Our Lord’s message in today’s Gospel is similar. Preaching to the crowds, he’s told of a group of Galileans massacred by the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. We don’t know the exact incident referred to here, but those relating it are likely seeking to entrap him. If, on one hand, he condemns Pilate for his brutality, then he can be charged with sedition. If, on the other hand, he says that those Galileans were sinners who got just what they deserved, in effect blaming the victims, then he loses the support of the common people.

 

Jesus sidesteps the trap brilliantly. Yes, those Galileans were sinners, but no worse than the rest of you. Similarly, with eighteen Jerusalemites killed by a collapsing tower in Siloam: again, we don’t know the historical incident referred to, but the point’s the same: they were sinners, yes, but no worse than all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And in both cases, Jesus repeats the refrain: “unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

 

Our Lord’s point is much the same as Saint Paul’s in today’s Epistle: “these things are warnings for us.” Specifically: the temporal sufferings of the Galileans massacred by Pilate and the Jerusalemites crushed by the falling tower point to the eternal sufferings awaiting us all if we fail to repent. It’s not a particularly comfortable message but hey, it’s Lent, and we owe it to ourselves and to God to wrestle a bit with the Sunday Scriptures that the Church lays before us for our edification in this holy season. 

 

The key theological point is that heaven and hell are choices we make for ourselves. God never sends us anywhere we don’t want to go. If we end up in heaven, it’s because we’ve chosen, explicitly or implicitly, to accept God’s offer of eternal life and bliss; if we end up in hell, it’s because we’ve chosen to hold on to the lesser goods that we’ve put in God’s place and mistakenly believe will bring us the happiness that we seek. The torments of hell really consist of the eternal frustration of forfeiting the happiness and fulfillment that only God can give us. So, heaven and hell are choices that we make for ourselves. In the end, we get what we want.

 

The warnings in today’s Epistle and Gospel are thus given to help us make the right choices. Both Paul and Jesus are warning us to repent, to put God before all else, precisely so that we may enjoy eternal happiness. God does not want any to perish, but desires all to be saved—and indeed gives his only Son to death on a cross to precisely that end.

 

The parable of the barren fig tree drives this point home. The fig tree is us. Even though we fail to bear the fruit that the Lord seeks from us, he doesn’t cut us down right away. When the landowner comes three successive years and finds no fruit, the groundskeeper persuades him to give it yet another season. God gives us not only second chances, but third, fourth, and fifth chances. Christ digs about our roots and pours on manure. (It may seem irreverent to picture God’s grace as manure, but hey, that’s the metaphor right there in the parable!) 

 

The day of judgment will come, when the fig tree must either have borne fruit or be cut down. But the good news is that day is not yet. We still have time to take God’s warnings to heart, and repent and return to the Lord. And we have the promise relayed by Saint Paul in today’s Epistle: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” In other words: by God’s grace, we can do this.

SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 13, 2022

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

Genesis 15:1-12

Psalm 27

Philippians 3:17-4:1

Luke 13:13-35

A theme running through our readings for today is that our God is a God who brings joy from sadness, hope from despair, light from darkness, and indeed life from death.

The wonderful story of Abram in the Old Testament reading from Genesis illustrates this theme perfectly. In response to God’s assurance, “Fear not, for I am your shield; your reward shall be very great,” Abram somewhat impertinently complains that God has given him no offspring to carry forth his name and his inheritance. God then takes him outside and shows him the myriads of stars in the clear night sky and declares, “So shall your descendants be.” Not only that, but after an offering of sacrifice accompanied by some interesting supernatural phenomena, God promises Abram’s progeny the gift of land, from the River Nile to the River Euphrates. 

The story’s key point, I think, is that in a society that conceives of the afterlife as living in and through one’s descendants, God’s words to Abram amount to a promise of resurrection and immortality. God transforms a man without heirs into the father of many nations, a landless nomad into the future possessor of vast fertile territories.

Psalm 27 takes up a similar theme. Despite his many discouraging struggles with enemies threatening his life, the psalmist sings joyfully: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?” And near the end he reaffirms his belief that he shall see “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!”

In the reading from Philippians, Saint Paul boldly articulates the Christian hope in life after death: “Our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him to subject all things to himself.”

The Gospel reading takes up this same theme of life from death, but requires a bit more unpacking. Jesus and his disciples have begun their final journey to Jerusalem. Some Pharisees warn him to “get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” The warning is credible, for Herod has just recently killed John the Baptist. The irony is that they’re already on their way out of Herod’s territory, heading into Judea. Jesus tells the Pharisees to “go and tell that fox” that he’s not leaving from fear of anything that Herod can do to him. When he dies it won’t be at Herod’s hands, “for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.”

Calling Herod a fox is quite an insult. As depicted in numerous ancient fables and stories, as well as in rabbinical sayings, foxes have the reputation of being sly and crafty. They’re also omnivorous. They’ll eat anything. They’re both predators and scavengers – killing and eating all sorts of smaller animals like rodents and birds as the opportunity presents itself.

But the political insult cuts even deeper. Like jackals, foxes scavenge at the kills of larger predators, like lions. So, it’s just possible that in calling Herod a fox, our Lord is likening him to a scavenger feeding on the leftovers of Roman imperial conquests. As a client king, Herod depends on Rome’s power to sustain his own position in the region. So casting Herod as a fox in relation to Caesar’s lion is daringly subversive speech.

But then, our Lord uses an even more unexpected animal image to describe himself. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”

For our Lord’s listeners, this image of a hen gathering her brood under her wings is at once familiar and unfamiliar. The Psalms are full of verses in which the speaker seeks or finds refuge under the Lord’s wings. For example, Psalm 17, verse 8: “Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me under the shadow of your wings.” And again, Psalm 91, verse 4: “He shall cover you with his pinions, and you shall find refuge under his wings …”

Yet the image is also startling. The Old Testament language of refuge under the Lord’s wings tends to evoke eagles, falcons, hawks, or other fierce birds or prey who are generally more than a match for predators seeking to take their young. But a hen is no match for Herod’s fox, much less Rome’s lion. By covering her chicks with her wings, she lets the predator know that there’s no way to get to the chicks without killing her first. If the predator attacks the hen, the chicks just may have a chance to scatter and escape. If they live, it will be because the hen has given her life in exchange for theirs.

In one of the great classics of early modern political thought, Machiavelli remarks that the successful prince combines the strength of the lion with the cleverness of the fox. Here Jesus shows that his power is not that of any such prince, but of one who stands defenseless and ready to die for those entrusted to his care. He says, in effect, that if we would be his followers, we must likewise forsake the way of the lion and the fox and adopt instead the way of the mother hen – the way of vulnerability and self-sacrifice.

Embedded in the juxtaposition of these images of the fox and the hen is thus a prophecy of our Lord’s coming suffering and death at the hands of this world’s powers, which the Bible repeatedly likens to dangerous wild animals. The paradox, however, is that in the end the fox does not have the last word. Our Lord’s message to Herod is, “Behold I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.” 

The original readers of Luke’s Gospel would clearly have understood the third day as an allusion to our Lord’s resurrection after three days in the tomb. Again, our Lord’s words at the end of today’s Gospel combine a prediction of desolation with a promise of hope: “Behold, your house is forsaken; and I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”—words spoken not only during our Lord’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday but also at every Sunday Mass when we welcome the risen Christ into our midst in his sacramental presence.

In other words, even after this world’s lions and foxes have done their worst, and all lies in ruin and desolation, the true victory goes not to the wild animals who rely on speed and strength to catch and kill their prey, but rather to the lowly mother hen, who offers herself up for her chicks. Just so, God brings joy from sadness, hope from despair, light from darkness, and life from death.

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 6, 2022

St. Uriel’s, Sea Girt, N. J.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Romans 10:8b-13

Luke 4:1-13

Today’s Old Testament reading always takes me back to my first year in seminary. Our Old Testament Professor had an old-fashioned teaching method; he required us to commit to memory certain passages of scripture that he considered it necessary for us to know. 

Some shorter passages, like the Song of Miriam – “Sing to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider hath he cast into the sea” – he had us memorize and recite in Hebrew. Longer passages he was content to have us recite in English translation. And one passage he considered most important of all was that in today’s Old Testament reading, “A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous.”

Every year, faithful Israelites would recite these words when they came up to the Jerusalem Temple to offer to God the first fruits of the harvest. These words constituted a solemn remembrance of their sojourn in Egypt, their toil and affliction, and their deliverance from bondage by the Lord’s mighty hand and outstretched arm. Most of all, these words gratefully acknowledged that the present harvest was the gift of the same Lord who’d brought them into this place and given them this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Imagine the cumulative effect of re-enacting this solemn ritual year after year, generation after generation. By reciting the story of God’s mighty deeds in the past, the Israelites reconfirmed their allegiance to God, and renewed their membership in God’s People Israel. So, over time, this annual confession of faith powerfully formed and shaped their identity as the People of God.

The memorization and repetition of passages of scripture is an invaluable exercise. While my seminary classmates and I initially chafed at our professor’s requirement, by the end of the semester we were immensely grateful to him. Learning these verses by heart deepened and enriched our process of priestly formation. But we don’t need to be in training for holy orders; all Christians stand to benefit spiritually from committing key biblical passages to memory. So, there’s a question and a challenge for each of us: Do we have an arsenal of scripture verses, passages, and stories that we can call to mind and recite at key moments in our lives—moments of decision and maybe even temptation?

The more we immerse ourselves in the scriptures, the closer we come to realizing the goal that St. Paul sets before us in today’s Epistle: “The Word is near you, on your lips and in your heart . . . because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved; for man believes with his heart and so is justified, and confesses with his lips and so is saved.”

At the offering of the first fruits, the Israelites confessed with their lips what they believed in their hearts. The temptation narrative in today’s Gospel exemplifies the same principle. Jesus overcomes each of the devil’s three temptations in the wilderness by means of a confession of faith.

And each time the devil tempts him, Jesus responds by quoting Scripture. To the temptation to misuse his divine power by turning stones into bread, Jesus responds: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” To the temptation to fall down and worship the devil in return for all the world’s kingdoms and their glory, Jesus responds, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’” And to the temptation to throw himself down from the Temple pinnacle to have the angels catch him and so demonstrate his divine Sonship, Jesus responds, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” (An equally good translation would be, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”) 

This third temptation shows us that the devil himself can misuse Scripture for his own ends, as he quotes today’s Psalm, “He will give his angels charge over you,” and “On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” So, we need to be careful. Even so, in his three responses, Jesus demonstrates how the right use of Scripture can be a decisive shield against the assaults of the evil one.

This wilderness episode reveals a lot about Jesus. No doubt, as he grew up, he learned large portions of the Hebrew Bible by heart, both at home with Mary and Joseph, and every week in the synagogue in Nazareth. Luke’s Gospel tells us that when Jesus was twelve years old, his parents took him up to Jerusalem, where he amazed the teachers in the Temple by his understanding and his answers. Having grown up immersed in the scriptural heritage of his people, Jesus was equipped to stand firm in the time of his testing. The Word of God was truly in his heart and upon his lips.

So much of what we do in the Church’s liturgical life is designed to have precisely the same effect: to put the Word of God in our hearts and upon our lips. In our Sunday Masses, we follow a three-year lectionary that systematically takes us through large parts of the Bible, keying a wide variety of readings to the changing seasons, feasts, and fasts of the Church Year. 

Those who read the Prayer Book’s offices of Morning and / or Evening Prayer cycle through the entire Psalter once a month, and through most of the Bible every two years. This regular repetition of set prayers, psalm verses, and sentences of scripture, is a great gift of our Anglican spiritual tradition. The more we repeat them, the more they sink into the depths of our subconscious awareness, the more they become part of who we are, and the more likely they are to spring to mind when we truly need them: in moments of tragedy, crisis, decision, or temptation—or of rejoicing and celebration.

This Season of Lent is a time of year when by God’s grace we recommit ourselves resisting temptation and repenting of sin. It’s a time when we recommit ourselves to faithful participation in the worship that helps put the words of Scripture in our hearts and on our lips. And it’s a time when we recommit ourselves to the lifelong process of allowing God’s Word and God’s Spirit to form us ever more deeply into our baptismal identity as God’s People.