PROPER 25, YEAR B

Sunday 27 October 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Mark 10:46-52

 

One of my favorite prayers, from the Eastern Christian tradition, is called the Jesus Prayer. It’s repetitive, said over and over again, like a mantra. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” (Repeat.)

 

One effective way of praying it is to coordinate it with our breathing: breathe in – Lord Jesus Christ; breath out – Son of the living God; breathe in – have mercy on me; breathe out – a sinner. (Or, some people break it into two breaths instead of four: breathe in – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God; breathe out – Have mercy on me, a sinner.)

 

Reciting the Jesus Prayer in this way can be very helpful when we want to pray, but don’t quite know what we want to say, and we just need to settle down, be quiet, and focus our attention on God. The priest who taught me this prayer remarked that in just a few words, it brings home profound truths of the Christian faith: we call upon Jesus as Lord; we confess him to be the Son of God; we acknowledge ourselves to be sinners; and we implore his mercy.

 

The Jesus Prayer echoes several prayers recorded in the Gospels. One is that of the tax collector in the temple who stood afar off and would not lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast and cried out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”

 

And another is the cry of Bartimaeus in today’s Gospel: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” For Bartimaeus, it was a repeated prayer: despite being ordered to be quiet, the Greek text literally says, “he kept on crying out all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me.’”

 

Who was this blind beggar Bartimaeus sitting by the roadside? Saint Mark tells us that he was the son of Timaeus, which is literally what the name Bartimaeus means.

 

Of the hundreds of blind, lame, deaf, sick, and possessed people healed by Jesus, however, only a few are actually named in the Gospels. Some commentators speculate that they’re the ones who became members of the Church and were thus known by name in the communities for which the Gospels were written.

 

In the early fifth century, however, Saint Augustine suggested that to be named in Saint Mark’s Gospel, Bartimaeus and his father Timaeus must have been prominent and prosperous residents of Jericho. In which case, Bartimaeus must have fallen on hard times when he went blind. His request in today’s Gospel—“My teacher, let me see again”—indicates that he was not blind from birth, as does the concluding sentence, “Immediately he regained his sight …”

 

Saint Augustine proposes that blind Bartimaeus begging by the roadside symbolizes the condition of fallen humanity. He who could once see clearly, and who once possessed great wealth, now sits in darkness, having lost everything, unable to help himself. Similarly, in our fallen condition, we sit in darkness, unable to help ourselves.

 

A basic principle of Christian spiritual theology concerns those dry spells when we feel forsaken by God, and it seems that that we’re sitting in darkness—when we feel that we can’t pray and wouldn’t know what to say if we could. At such moments, however, our very desire to pray, to return to God, no matter how hopeless that prospect may seem, is actually evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence and movement within us. We’re not abandoned, because God himself is drawing us in. As Saint Paul says in his Letter to the Romans: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

 

Moved by that same Spirit, Bartimaeus calls upon the name of the Lord. When he hears that it’s Jesus of Nazareth who’s passing by, he’s able to formulate and cry out repeatedly the simple supplication, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”

 

On hearing his cry, Jesus stops. He tells his disciples, “Call him here.” This command foreshadows and anticipates the Risen Lord sending his disciples into the world to preach the Gospel. The disciples obey the command and call the blind man: “Take heart, get up, he is calling you.”

 

As Bartimaeus springs up, he throws off his cloak – probably his most valuable possession. He’s willing to give up everything he has to respond to Jesus’ call. Here we have a dramatic contrast with the rich young man who just a short time earlier in Mark’s Gospel went away sorrowful because he was unwilling to part with his great wealth to follow Jesus.

 

Jesus invites Bartimaeus to specify his request: “What do you want me to do for you?” It’s exactly the same question he asked last week of James and John, the sons of Zebedee. But their answer was full of pride and ambition: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” By contrast, Bartimaeus’s answer is simple, humble, and direct: “Master, let me see again.”

 

And so Jesus grants Bartimaeus his request: “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” But then notice what the text says: “Immediately [Bartimaeus] regained his sight and followed [Jesus] on the way.” In the early Church, the Christian faith itself was known as “the Way.” Instead of going his way, as Jesus has bidden him, Bartimaeus follows Jesus on the Way: the road from Jericho up to Jerusalem, where Jesus will die on the cross and rise again. So, in addition to regaining his physical sight, Bartimaeus has recovered the gift of spiritual vision and wisdom. The blind beggar sitting on the roadside—an image of fallen humanity—has been transformed into a disciple—an image of redeemed humanity—and a model of faithful discipleship for us all.

 

Imagine if Jesus were to come and pose the same question to each of us that he posed to Bartimaeus in today’s Gospel, and to James and John in last week’s Gospel: “What do you want me to do for you?” How would we answer? What would we say? During the coming week, we might reflect on that question. Like Bartimaeus, we can give no better answer than to ask for the spiritual vision that will allow us to follow Jesus on the road leading to eternal life.

Proper 24, Year B

October 20, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

 

Isaiah 53:4-12

Mark 10:35-45

 

A theme running through today’s Scripture readings is that of servanthood. The Old Testament reading comprises one of the Suffering Servant songs from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, believed to have been written during the Babylonian Captivity, when the Jews were living in exile from their homeland: “the righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities.”

 

The Gospel picks up and carries forward this same theme of the Suffering Servant. When the Apostles James and John ask to sit one at the Lord’s right hand and one at his left in his glory, he replies: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”

 

The point not to miss here is that they most likely think that he’s referring to a celebratory cup of blessing, perhaps the victory toast at the messianic banquet, and a nice warm bath to luxuriate in beforehand.  So, they confidently assert, “We are able.” Little do they know that he’s referring instead to a cup of woe and a baptism of blood, namely suffering and death on the cross.

 

But then he makes clear to all the disciples that whoever would be great in their community of his disciples must be the servant of all—“for the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

 

A key to reading and interpreting the Bible accurately is the idea of “corporate personality.” Depending on the context, a person’s name can refer to a single individual or to an entire people associated with that individual. The Scriptures exhibit a definite fluidity in going back and forth using the same name for the individual, or for the collective, or both.

 

The most obvious example is “Israel,” which names both an individual, the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, and the entire people descended from his his twelve sons, the twelve tribes of Israel. We encounter something similar in the New Testament when Jesus says, “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,” or again, to Saul on the road to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? … I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” The point is that in persecuting the disciples, Saul is persecuting Christ himself in the members of his Body the Church.

 

This idea of corporate personality is critical to interpreting the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah. For centuries, Judaism and Christianity have debated the identity of this mysterious figure who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, upon whom was the chastisement that made us whole, and with whose stripes we are healed. Rabbinic Judaism has traditionally understood the Suffering Servant as the personification of the entire nation and reads this passage and others like it as describing Israel’s vocation to suffer at the hands of Gentile persecutors, and so eventually bring about their repentance and conversion to the worship of the one true God.

 

By contrast, the Church has from the beginning read the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah as pointing to and finding their fulfillment in the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. But these two interpretations are in no way mutually exclusive. It’s not a question of either/or but of both/and. The Suffering Servant is both Israel in the Old Testament and Christ in the New Testament. And, by extension, the Suffering Servant is also the Church, the Body of Christ Body on earth, especially in places where Christians suffer horrific persecution to this day.

 

Whatever else the Christian life may or may not entail, we need to understand it as a life of service, after the pattern of Christ the Servant of God. As Christians, we’re all called to be servants, both individually and collectively. The Church is called to be a servant community; and by virtue of our baptism we’re each called individually to some form of Christian service.

 

Notice that in the passage from Isaiah, God speaks of “my servant.” Christ is primarily the Servant of his Father in heaven, and only secondarily the Servant of those to whom he’s sent. So it is with us. Much of the fashionable talk about “servant ministry” in today’s Church misses this crucial point. We’re God’s servants first. Secondarily and derivatively, we’re servants of our fellow human beings. Indeed, we serve our neighbors precisely because we see God’s image in them; and by serving the poorest of the poor we serve Christ himself.

 

Moreover, the service of God consists first of all in worship. That’s one reason we call our gatherings for worship “services.” The service of God consists, secondly, in attentiveness to God’s Word—for good servants are always keen to understand what their master desires of them. We develop this understanding by hearing, reading, and studying the Holy Scriptures, both here in Church and wherever else we have the opportunity. We further develop this understanding by prayer, both corporately in the liturgy, and individually in the privacy and quietness of those places where we can be still and alone with God.

 

And if we’re diligent in worship, prayer, and the study of Scripture—or even if we’re not—then sooner or later, we shall likely hear God calling us to some specific form of service in his Name. This can take dozens and dozens of different forms, depending on the unique needs around us and the gifts and talents that we’re able to offer. In many cases, it comes in the form of an invitation or request from someone such as a Rector or Senior Warden saying, “Hey, would you like to serve on this particular parish committee? PLEASE – we’re desperate!”

 

Whatever it is and however much we enjoy it, however, we need not be surprised to find that it costs us something or involves some sacrifice. That’s both the warning and the promise in today’s readings. If we want to follow the Lord and share in his glory, then we need to be prepared to suffer first. It will all be worthwhile in the end. The path to glory is the path of dying with Christ, every day, so that we may share in his Resurrection. The ultimate surprise and paradox of the Christian life is the unsurpassed joy of serving a crucified King—who came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Society of Mary Annual Mass

Saturday 12 October 2024

Cathedral Church of Saint Paul

Springfield Illinois

(Our Lady of the Rosary)

Acts 1:12-14

Luke 1:26-38

 

 

(Please be seated)

 

First, I bring you greetings from the Officers and Council of the American Society of Mary. My sincere thanks to Bishop Burgess for his kind invitation to offer our Annual Mass here in Springfield today, and to Dean Hook and the Cathedral community for their gracious hospitality. It is a real pleasure to be here. And I look forward to meeting and talking with as many as possible in the luncheon reception following, and in particular to answering any questions you may have about the Society of Mary.

 

(In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.)

 

The two readings that we’ve just heard appear to be the New Testament’s first and last mentions of the Blessed Virgin Mary by name during her earthly life: in the Gospel, at the Annunciation in Nazareth; in the reading from Acts; with the disciples in the Upper Room after her Son’s Ascension into heaven.

 

Outside the New Testament, later writings and traditions tell us about Mary’s life before the Annunciation, including her conception and birth to her parents Joachim and Anna, as well as her childhood and upbringing in the Temple at Jerusalem. And other traditions tell us of the later years of her life, including her living with John the Beloved Disciple in Ephesus, in what is today Turkey, and again, back in Jerusalem, her falling asleep or Dormition at the end of her earthly life, followed by her bodily Assumption into heaven.

 

But whatever credibility we accord these stories—and I find some of them very credible indeed—they belong to Holy Tradition and not to the Sacred Scriptures. So, again, in the canonical New Testament, the first glimpse we get of Mary is at the Annunciation in Nazareth, and the last glimpse we get, at least of her earthly life, is in the Upper Room in Jerusalem in the days between the Ascension and Pentecost.

 

(I realize that I’m leaving aside Saint John’s vision of the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars, in Revelation 12, which is why I was careful to say that these are the first and last glimpses we get in the New Testament of Mary, mentioned by name, during her earthly life.)

 

In any case, both these glimpses of Mary appear in the writings of Saint Luke the Evangelist, the author of both the Gospel bearing his name and the Acts of the Apostles. And the parallels between these two glimpses of Mary in Luke’s writings are striking.

 

At the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Son of God is about to come down from heaven to take flesh in the Virgin’s womb. Conversely, in the Upper Room, the crucified and risen Lord has just returned to his Father in heaven. So here, we see the Blessed Virgin just before and just after her Son’s earthly Incarnation.

 

And in both episodes what comes next is a descent of the Holy Spirit. At the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel promises Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” And in the Upper Room, the apostles have just received the Lord’s promise before his Ascension: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”

 

Furthermore, in both cases, the Holy Spirit’s descent brings about a birth. At the Annunciation, Mary is empowered to be the Mother of God and so bring Christ to birth. And at Pentecost, the apostles are empowered to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and so bring the Church to birth. Thus, Pentecost is sometimes called the birthday of the Church.

 

Part of the traditional interpretation of these verses is that Mary’s prayers in the Upper Room are instrumental in obtaining for the apostles the gifts of grace that they will receive on the Day of Pentecost. For among those present that day, she alone knows what it is to experience the Holy Spirit descending in power.

 

The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, in the Church’s calendar this past Monday on October 7th, reminds us that the Holy Rosary is one key spiritual practice by which we ask our Lady’s prayers for the gifts of the Holy Spirit as we seek to be faithful to our own God-given vocations in our own day.

 

According to tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary gave the Holy Rosary to Saint Dominic Guzman, founder of the Dominican Order, in the year 1208, when he was in southern France on a preaching mission against the Albigensian heresy. Before that time, Christians were already using beaded strings to recite 150 times a rudimentary form of the prayer we know today as the Hail Mary. (Since there are 150 psalms, this method of reciting the Hail Mary 150 times was known as the Marian psalter.)

 

But the new element that Dominic introduced—again, according to the tradition, following Mary’s instructions—was interspersing these prayers with sermons or spoken meditations on various episodes in the course of our Lord’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. Up until this point Dominic had not been able to make any headway in converting the Albigensians back to the Catholic faith. But this combination of prayers interspersed with meditations on the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries became a powerful spiritual weapon against a heresy that denied both the goodness of God’s material creation and the reality of the Lord’s Incarnation, death, and bodily Resurrection. In this way, the Holy Rosary enabled Dominic to fulfill his vocation to restore the Catholic faith in the south of France.

 

However, before the commemoration on October 7th was renamed Our Lady of the Rosary, it was known as Our Lady of Victory. This title commemorated the naval Battle of Lepanto on October 7th, 1571, when, against all odds, the fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Christian states, defeated a much larger fleet of the Ottoman Turks. By turning back the Ottoman naval power in the Mediterranean, this victory helped ensure the survival of Christian civilization in southern Europe. And credit for the victory went to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in response to a massive outpouring of prayer organized by dozens of rosary guilds and confraternities then active in Italy and other Catholic countries. So, both titles, Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary, are highly appropriate for this observance.

 

We see a pattern: the apostles in the Upper Room, Saint Dominic in southern France, the beleaguered mariners of the Holy League. All wondering what happens next, all wondering how they can possibly carry on in their mission against seemingly insurmountable odds. In all three cases, Our Lady’s prayers made all the difference, and they can make the same difference for us in our struggles today as well.

 

And, again, the perfect vehicle for seeking Our Lady’s prayers is precisely the Holy Rosary, in which we ask her, again and again, to pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Contrary to the misperceptions of some, this devotion to Mary leads us not away from Jesus but towards him—by concentrating our attention on his life, death, and resurrection. So, in the concluding prayer, we ask God to grant that by meditating on these mysteries of the Holy Rosary, we may imitate what they contain, and obtain what they promise—In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

 

ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEDICATION

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R.I.

 

 

I Kings 8:22-33

Psalm 84:1-6

I Peter 2:1-5,9-10

Matthew 21:12-16

 

Today is the one day of the year when we celebrate the gift of this church building. Most Sundays, the building is the medium through which we raise our attention to higher things. In this sense, it’s a bit like a telescope. When we gaze at the stars through a telescope, our attention isn’t normally on the apparatus itself—at least not when it’s working properly—but on the heavenly bodies we’re looking at through it. Similarly, the church building is a kind of lens through which we focus our vision on God. But today we step back, as it were, to give thanks for the architectural setting of our worship.

 

In confirmation classes over the years, I’ve often asked young people to define “church.” Their first answer is usually something like the place where we go on Sundays. That kicks off a discussion of the various meanings of the word “church”—not just a building but also a congregation, and beyond that the whole body of Christians throughout the world, the Church Universal. It often comes as a new thought to them that we’re the Church and the Church is us. So, the Church isn’t just a building but a community.

But we can also go too far in the opposite direction. In a clergy gathering I was once attending, an earnest young curate argued that the church building is—and I quote—“just a tool.” His contention was that as long as we’re preaching the Gospel and engaging in Christian mission, it really doesn’t matter whether we meet for worship in a storefront, a warehouse, or a gymnasium. His concern was that congregations with beautiful historic churches often end up worshiping the building rather than God. I suppose he had a point. Yet it seems to me that he was overlooking a number of profound truths.

 

This Wednesday marks the 68th anniversary of the consecration of this church building by John Seville Higgins, the ninth Bishop of Rhode Island. In a spiritual sense, a church’s consecration by the bishop really does make a difference.

 

A consecrated church can never be thought of in purely instrumental terms, as we might think of a civic auditorium or a convention center. Before October 9th, 1956, this building was no more than an exalted meeting hall. But on that date, it became a church in the true sense of the word: a place set apart, standing on holy ground and enclosing sacred space, where the God whom heaven and earth cannot contain has promised to be specially present and available for his people.

 

Furthermore, there’s a deep and intimate relationship between a church building and a worshiping congregation. Over the years, the community shapes the building—adding new furnishings here or a memorial there, and undertaking periodic renovation and remodeling projects. The building’s physical characteristics thus come to reflect the very human stories of its people, their heartbreaks and joys, their disappointments and dreams.

 

Conversely, in subtle and subliminal ways, the building shapes the community. Because God has created us as embodied creatures and not as disembodied spirits, our material surroundings profoundly influence our spiritual lives. As we worship in a particular place over the years, its physical surroundings become part of who we are. I’ve always suspected that if the same group of people were to have worshiped for a period of years in a different church building, their corporate character and identity would be different—not necessarily worse or better, but different. So, it’s a reciprocal relationship: the community shapes the building; and the building shapes the community.

 

As I was reading the parish history written in 1998 for the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the parish’s founding, one paragraph stood out. It describes a period in the early 1950s preceding the church’s construction, and it reads as follows:

 

Meanwhile, the size and design of the church had still not been settled. Understandably the Diocese, with the bottom line in mind, was urging a bare bones no frills structure. The people of Saint Mark’s rejected this sort of compromise. They wanted first, a church building which would be a suitable witness to the greater glory of God. Secondly, they wanted a structure worthy of their faith, determination and hard work.

 

I’m glad they stood firm and ended up with this beautiful building made of good quality materials. I’d say it’s stood up very well over the past 68 years!

 

The old canard that “the church is the people, not the building” misses the most profound point of all: namely, that the Church is a mystery. It cannot be reduced to any particular building or to any particular community. It’s greater than the sum of its parts. With Christ as its head, its members comprise all Christians who’ve ever lived and all those yet to be born. For the Church isn’t just a human institution, but a divine society, a supernatural organism straddling heaven and earth, the past and the future, the life of this world and life of the world to come.

 

Still, our observance today celebrates the Universal Church’s physical embodiment in one particular place: this building. Here we encounter and experience the basic incarnational principle of the Christian faith: just as the eternal Son of God came down from heaven and made himself present to us as the human being Jesus of Nazareth, so the invisible Church, the mystical Body of Christ, finds concrete expression both in human communities and in material edifices such as cathedrals, churches, chapels, and shrines.

 

As embodied creatures, our principal way of knowing the spiritual realm is through sacramental signs. What that means is that we encounter the infinite in and through the finite, the invisible in and through the visible. An ancient text associated with today’s liturgy remarks that this visible building and all its furnishings “are but the figures” of God’s true House of Prayer in heaven. Nonetheless, it’s precisely in and through these earthly figures that we catch glimpses of heaven itself.

 

So, a church building isn’t just a utilitarian meeting place, but a visible symbol of the Universal Church in all times and places. As such, it becomes the spiritual home where a living community of faith encounters the living God. A congregation without a church building is like a family without a dwelling to live in—homeless. And, in most cases, homelessness is a condition of deprivation to be remedied at the first opportunity. (Experiments in “churches without walls” are the exception that proves the rule.)

 

Today, then, we give thanks for all the ways in which this church building has shaped the life of this community. We recommit ourselves to its care as a gift entrusted to us by those who’ve gone before us. We give thanks for the parish family that worships here and calls this place home. Above all, we rejoice in our membership in the Church Universal, of which this building stands as the visible symbol here and now, in this time and place.