EPIPHANY 7, YEAR C

February 23, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42

1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50

Luke 6:27-38

 

In the Gospel reading that we’ve just heard, Jesus gives one of his most challenging and difficult commandments: “Love your enemies. Do good to those hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.”

 

How many of us can honestly say that we live up to this ideal? I know I don’t. And many if not most of us, I suspect, are definitely not there yet.

 

But still, there it is, in the Gospel text: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Or, again, as the Psalm puts it: “Refrain from anger; leave rage alone; do not fret yourself, it leads only to evil.”

 

Our Lord points out that it’s easy to love those who love us, or to do good to those who do good to us. And the challenge he lays before us goes well beyond mere reciprocity: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.”

 

A basic principle of Christian spirituality is that when we experience a conflict between the ideal of who Jesus calls us to be, and the reality of what we’re actually capable of as the fallen creatures we are, it’s crucial to hold on to both sides of that equation. On one hand, we refuse to jettison the ideal as impracticable and unattainable. On the other hand, we resist the opposite temptation to pretend that we’re better than we really are. So, in our Confession of Sin every week, we acknowledge the gap between the ideal of our destination, and the reality of the distance we still need to travel before we get there. And then we cast ourselves on God’s mercy and ask his forgiveness while we’re still on the way.

 

Today’s Collect reminds us that we don’t get there by force of our own willpower and efforts at moral self-improvement, but only by God sending his Holy Spirit, whose greatest gift is love—without which whoever lives is accounted dead before God, and without which whatever we do is worth nothing.

 

So we do well to pray continually for the Holy Spirit’s gift of love, which alone can remake us into a people capable of fulfilling Our Lord’s commandments. Again, as the Psalmist puts it: “Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him, and he will bring it to pass.”

 

And if we need an example of what it looks like when, by God’s grace, someone is able to love and forgive their enemies, we need look no further than Joseph in today’s Old Testament reading from Genesis.

 

You remember the story. Years earlier, Joseph’s brothers seize him in a jealous rage and throw him down a dry cistern to die; but then they think better of that and sell him to a passing caravan of traders who take him down into Egypt as a slave. Finally, they dip his beautiful robe in an animal’s blood and tell their father Jacob that he’s been killed by a wild beast.

 

In Egypt, however, through a series of providential twists and turns, aided by his marvelous ability to interpret dreams, Joseph rises to a position of great power, second only to Pharaoh himself. Moreover, interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams as predicting seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, Joseph stockpiles the royal grain supply during the years of plenty to provide food reserves for the years of famine.

 

When the famine comes, Joseph’s father Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy food. Since Joseph is in charge of the reserves, his brothers must buy the food from him. And so, these many years later, they come into his presence, not recognizing who he is. But Joseph recognizes them.

 

So, at the beginning of today’s reading, when Joseph reveals his identity and says, “I am Joseph,” it’s no wonder that his brothers are dismayed. Certainly they can expect, at the very least, to be put in chains and reduced to slavery, just as they once did to him. And by the standards of the time, he’d be entirely justified in doing so.

 

The really surprising twist in the story comes, however, when instead of seeking retribution, Joseph forgives his brothers. “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life …” And he instructs them to return and bring their father Jacob to Egypt to dwell with them in the land of Goshen: “I will provide for you there … so that you and your household and all that you have, will not come to poverty.”

 

Now, what is it that enables Joseph to forgive his brothers so magnanimously? Well, we can say first of all that it’s the Holy Spirit’s gift of wisdom that allows Joseph to understand that God’s been working through all his trials and tribulations to make it ultimately possible for his father, his brothers, and all their households to survive and prosper in the time of famine. Similarly, when bad things happen to us, we need to remain open to the possibility that God is working through those misfortunes to bring about a greater good.

 

But there’s more. A certain tradition of Christian biblical interpretation sees in the story of Joseph a symbolic anticipation of Christ’s own death and resurrection. Joseph effectively died at this brothers’ hands, descended into hell (that is, slavery in Egypt), and rose again in the glory to sit at Pharaoh’s right hand. (We see there the symbolism of the risen Christ being raised to the right hand of his Father in heaven.)

 

Saint Paul says in today’s reading from First Corinthians, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies … It is sowed in dishonor; it is raised in glory.” Joseph was able to forgive his brothers because, having lost everything at their hands, he’d gained infinitely more. He was no longer clinging to the old life that they’d taken from him; and his completely new life freed him from any need to bear grudges or seek retribution.

 

It follows that we gain the ability to love and forgive our enemies insofar as we live into the risen life that is ours in Christ Jesus. Again, as St. Paul puts it: “The first man was from earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As we have borne the image of the man of dust, so also shall we bear the image of the man from heaven.”

 

Just as Joseph forgave his brothers, so Christ forgives those who caused him to die on the cross. And when we come to see ourselves and our neighbors through the eyes of the risen Christ, then, and only then, do we gain the ability to love our enemies, and to forgive as Christ has forgiven us.

 

 

 

EPIPHANY 6, YEAR C

February 16, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

(via Zoom)

 

Jeremiah 17:5-10

I Corinthians 15:12-20

Luke 6:17-26

 

One of the most basic human desires is to believe that life is fair. When life seems unfair, we protest. Deep in our bones, we believe that life ought to be fair. Such is our innate sense of justice and injustice.

 

So, for example, when we encounter someone who seems to be doing really well in life, we’re often tempted to attribute that person’s good fortune to a combination of natural gifts and personal virtues. We wish such persons well. They’re talented, they’ve worked hard, and they deserve to enjoy the fruits of their success.

 

Conversely, when we encounter someone who gets in deep trouble, possibly to the extent of losing everything, our temptation is to look for ways to blame that person. Some character flaw or vice must have led to their downfall. It’s nobody’s fault but their own, after all. They brought it all on themselves.

 

The point is that as human beings we naturally want to believe that we live in a just universe. We want to believe that life is fair.

 

Today’s Old Testament reading supports such a view. Although it’s found in the prophetic book of Jeremiah, it really belongs to a genre of biblical writing known as Wisdom literature. This tradition’s basic assumption is that God has structured creation in such a way that good deeds and righteous behavior naturally bring good consequences, while evil deeds and wicked behavior naturally bring bad consequences. Thus, Jeremiah contrasts the blessings and curses that attend two opposite ways of life: “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength … Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.”

 

The problem with this vision is that sooner or later—often by the age of three or four—we make the inevitable discovery that life isn’t fair! Virtue isn’t always rewarded; vice often goes unpunished.

 

So, the question that keeps popping up throughout Scripture, as a sort of counterpoint to this dominant theme, is: “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?” The Book of Job is one place in the Bible where this mystery of innocent suffering is explored extensively, if somewhat inconclusively.

 

This question raises in turn the classical theological conundrum: how can we maintain that God is both good and all-powerful when he permits the innocent to suffer and the guilty to prosper? For many people, this problem of innocent suffering calls into question God’s goodness and power, if not his very existence.

 

This background helps us to understand what’s going on in today’s Gospel reading, which gives Saint Luke’s version of the beatitudes. The more familiar version is found in chapter five of Saint Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus pronounces eight blessings, beginning with “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

 

In Luke 6, by contrast, Jesus speaks not on a mountain, but “on a level place.” So, instead of the Sermon on the Mount we have the Sermon on the Plain. Here, he pronounces four blessings and four corresponding curses or woes. Here, also, they’re more personal, using the second-person plural: “Blessed are you who are poor …” instead of Matthew’s third person: “Blessed are the poor in spirit …” Some commentators point out that Luke’s version is less spiritualized that Matthew’s; here Jesus speaks not of “the poor in spirit,” or “those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,” but simply “you who are poor,” and “you who are hungry now.” In other words, Luke’s Jesus addresses people’s outward economic conditions rather than their inward spiritual dispositions.

 

Be all that as it may, here Jesus stands in continuity with the Old Testament’s Wisdom tradition: pronouncing blessings on certain kinds of people and woes or curses on the opposite kinds of people. At the same time, however, he stands the tradition completely on its head. Look at the people he calls blessed: the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the persecuted. And look at the people upon whom he calls down woes: the rich, the full, those who laugh, and those who are honored and well thought of in this world.

 

These pronouncements run directly counter to the common assumption in both our Lord’s time and ours that poverty and wretchedness are God’s punishments for sin, while riches and prosperity are God’s rewards for virtue. Here, then, Jesus is blessing those whom the world deems cursed, and cursing those whom the world deems blessed!

 

Indeed, our Lord is clearly taking sides with the poor; and condemning the rich! On the basis of this biblical passage and others like it, recent theology has developed the idea of God’s “preferential option for the poor”—that is, in situations where the poor are being exploited and oppressed by the rich and powerful, God takes the side of the poor, and calls his Church to do the same.

 

This text’s underlying assumption is that the rich tend to trust in themselves rather than in God, while the poor have nowhere else to turn but to God, and so end up being truly blessed by God. So, to return to the question: “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?” Our Lord effectively gives the answer: It may seem so now, but in the age to come, all will be reversed. In this age, the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper; but the day is coming when divine justice shall prevail.

 

This juxtaposition of readings in today’s Eucharist suggests that we need to be careful to distinguish how we see things from how God sees things. We want life to be fair. Life can often seem grossly unfair. Today’s Gospel reminds us that those whom we consider most blessed in this life may have the greatest reasons for woe in God’s eyes. And those whom we consider most wretched and cursed in this life may indeed be the blessed of the Lord.

 

The challenge, then, is to try to see others as God sees them and not as the world sees them: and, indeed, so to see ourselves. In this context, it seems appropriate to give the last word to the Prophet Jeremiah. “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.” God alone discerns the depths of the human heart. And, in the end, he shall reward each of us according to his perfect justice—and his infinite mercy.

EPIPHANY 5, YEAR C

February 9, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

(via Zoom)

 

Isaiah 6:1-8

I Corinthians 15:1-11

Luke 5:1-11

 

This season after the Epiphany calls our attention to the ways in which God makes himself known to human beings. The word Epiphany means revelation, manifestation, or showing forth.

 

All three of today’s readings describe individual experiences of God. These stories reflect a pattern that recurs throughout the Bible. From the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, through the Blessed Virgin Mary and the New Testament apostles and martyrs, God’s self-communications usually follow a similar outline, even though they span a period of more than fourteen centuries.

 

As recorded in the scriptures, these human encounters with God generally comprise three parts. They don’t always happen in exactly the same order—sometimes they’re all mixed up—but all three elements are usually present in some form or another.

 

First, there’s a manifestation of the divine presence: God makes himself known. In the Old Testament reading, Isaiah receives a vision of worship in heaven, with the Lord God seated upon his throne, and six-winged seraphim flying to-and-fro and calling to one another, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts!” In the epistle, Saint Paul recounts multiple appearances of the Risen Lord to the apostles and disciples, concluding with his own dramatic encounter on the Damascus road: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” And in the Gospel, Jesus manifests his divine power through a miraculous catch of fish, so great that it threatens to sink the boats.

 

Notice that this initial revelation is completely at God’s initiative. We’re not talking about going into your room to practice meditation techniques in hope of experiencing a sense of the transcendent (valuable as such exercises undoubtedly may be). On the contrary, those who encounter God in the biblical stories often aren’t seeking any spiritual experience at all. They’re typically engaged in mundane activities, like fishing, or traveling from one city to another, and are thus taken completely by surprise when God reveals himself.

Not only that, but the encounter is always personal. The revelation is directed not just to anyone who happens to be passing by, but to a specific individual. So, the first element in the biblical pattern of encounter with God is a personally addressed revelation of the divine presence.

 

The second element is the human response, and then God’s response to that. This human response typically takes the form of fear, trembling, and most of all a sense of utter unworthiness to stand in the presence of the all-holy God. It’s not all warm fuzzies—at least not initially. In Latin this aspect of the divine encounter is called the mysterium tremendum fascinans – which means a mystery that simultaneously repels and attracts, that’s both terrifying and fascinating.

 

Thus, Isaiah exclaims, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Think for a moment what “unclean lips” might mean in this context. Many readers assume that Isaiah is speaking of profanity or even blasphemy. But unclean lips can also result from lying, gossip, libel, and slander, from hurtful and unkind speech. Notice also that in the vision, the seraphim have just been praising the sacred name of the Lord, which Isaiah immediately realizes that his own lips are unworthy to pronounce.

 

Again, following the miraculous catch of fish, Peter falls down at Jesus’ knees and implores him, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” The reason for Peter’s fear is immediate and physical: they’re out in the deep, and the boats are foundering. Peter assumes that he cannot be in the presence of such holiness and live, so that the consequence of his sin must be his imminent drowning. And in the epistle reading, Paul reflects on his own deep sense of unworthiness that the risen Jesus should have appeared to him: “For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.”

 

But then, in response to this overwhelming sense of fear and unworthiness, God always speaks a word of forgiveness and reassurance. One of the seraphim touches to Isaiah’s lips a burning coal taken with tongs from the altar and declares: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Isaiah’s lips are purified to proclaim the Word of the Lord, which will be his calling as a prophet. And Jesus tells Peter not to worry if fishing just seems to have become too dangerous; henceforth he will be catching not fish but people.

 

Notice what God does not say in response to these professions of unworthiness. He doesn’t take the therapeutic approach of building self-esteem: “There, there, it’s all right, you mustn’t be so hard on yourself, you’re not really all that bad.” Isaiah really was a man of unclean lips; Peter really was the sinful man he professed himself to be; Paul really was unfit to be an apostle. The good news is that God called each of them anyway, and then made each of them worthy of their calling.

 

This brings us to the third element in the pattern: a calling, a commissioning, and a sending. For in this biblical pattern the reason for God’s self-revelation is never simply the spiritual enrichment of the individual concerned but rather the calling of that individual to a specific role, task, or mission in God’s service. God commissions Isaiah to be a Prophet to Israel; Jesus calls Peter to be a fisher of people; the risen Lord commissions Paul to be Apostle to the Gentiles.

 

So, to recapitulate, the characteristic structure of the biblical encounter with God consists of three elements: first, a manifestation of God’s presence and power addressed to a specific individual; second, an immediate human reaction of fear and trembling, guilt and unworthiness, to which God responds in turn with words of forgiveness and reassurance; and third, a commissioning to some task or calling to fulfill God’s purposes in the world.

 

When I was in seminary, one of my Old Testament professors, Frank Vandevelder, suggested in a memorable lecture that this threefold pattern repeats itself in so many biblical stories over such a long period that it cannot be accidental. And, he pointed out, it’s thoroughly Trinitarian: God the Father manifests his holiness and power; God the Son forgives us and makes us worthy; God the Holy Spirit empowers and equips us for mission in God’s Name.

 

This threefold pattern reflects the way in which God engages his people not only in the ancient biblical stories but in all times and places, including today. Our challenge, then, is to be ready to recognize and respond to such encounters in our own lives. For we’re no more and no less unworthy than any of these biblical characters. And with them we have the assurance that God’s grace towards us is never in vain; and that is grounds for rejoicing indeed.

 

THE PRESENTATION

Sunday, February 2, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

St. Luke 2:22-40

 

The Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, also known as the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin, or Candlemas, concludes the annual Christmas cycle of holy days. This Christmas cycle begins on March 25th, with the Annunciation, nine months before Christ’s birth; and it concludes today, February 2nd, forty days after his birth. Along the way, we celebrate the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth on May 31st, the birth of John the Baptist on June 24th, the Nativity on December 25th, and the Epiphany on January 6th. 

 

Each of these days highlights a different aspect of the mystery of the Incarnation. At the heart of the Christian faith is the good news that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”—that is, that God the Son came down from heaven and took our flesh to share in our human life, so that we in turn might come to share in his divine life.

 

At the Lord’s Presentation in the Temple, two figures stand out as representing Israel’s hopes and longings for the coming Messiah: Simeon and Anna. Simeon has received the promise that he shall see the Lord’s Anointed before he dies. When Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus into the Temple, Simeon immediately recognizes by divine inspiration that this is the one.

 

In response to this revelation, Simeon sings the song we know as the Nunc Dimittis: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation …” (I must admit how much I prefer the old translation: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”) In any case, Simeon proclaims that Jesus is the glory of God’s people Israel and God’s light to lighten the nations. These words give today’s celebration its essential character as a celebration of divine light and glory.

 

But there’s a dark side to what Simeon says next: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed …” Some translations render “a sign that will be opposed” as “a sign of contradiction.” Either way, Christ’s coming into the world is not all sweetness and light.

 

To understand what Simeon is saying, we can do no better than turn to the twentieth-century Swiss theologian Karl Barth. In his Commentary on Romans, published in 1919, Barth set forth what became known as the theology of crisis, and, more broadly, as neo-orthodoxy. Over and against the optimism of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism, which cheerfully affirmed an innate human capacity to build the kingdom of God on earth by means of progress in education, medicine, science, and technology, Barth and his associates uttered an emphatic “No!” (In German, “Nein!”)

 

Following the devastation and slaughter of the First World War, Barth insisted on God’s utter remoteness from a fallen world, estranged by sin and rebellion. This infinite chasm between God and fallen humanity could never be bridged from the human side. But the good news was that God himself had bridged this unbridgeable gap by his Word, his Self-Revelation, given first in the Law and the Prophets, and then finally and definitively in Jesus Christ, the Word-made-flesh.

 

Confronted with the light of God’s Word, however, human beings are apt to experience a profound crisis. For God’s word initially seems a word of judgment and condemnation. This encounter with the Word exposes our sin, wickedness, and rebellion so that we’re forced to decide whether to come to the light by confessing our sins, or to retreat further into the darkness by insisting on our own worthiness and self-sufficiency.

 

When we confess our sins and cast ourselves on God’s mercy, however, his word of judgment is miraculously transformed into a word of mercy, forgiveness, and affirmation. The paradox is that the more we insist on our own inherent worthiness, the deeper we dig ourselves into the mire and separate ourselves from God; but when we confess our unworthiness and cast ourselves on God’s mercy, God himself makes us worthy, and welcomes us home.

 

So, to return to Simeon in today’s Gospel, many are unable to bear the divine light that Jesus brings into the world. The Incarnate Word stands as a sign of contradiction set for the falling and rising of many. Those who prefer the darkness reject the light which exposes the world’s sins. His Word thus confronts each of us with the choice whether to accept the truth about God and ourselves. In so deciding, we become our own judges, laying bare the secret thoughts of our inmost hearts.

 

Even more disturbing are Simeon’s words to Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” This saying anticipates the sorrow and anguish that Mary will undergo as she witnesses her son dying on the cross as the result of the human rejection of the light. The light and glory that Jesus brings into the world comes at a price: one that he himself pays in his own blood, and one in which the Blessed Virgin Mary shares by her sorrow and desolation at the foot of the cross. It’s fitting that Candlemas comes a few weeks before Ash Wednesday and Lent. Even as we recapitulate the joy and light of Christ’s Nativity, we glance ahead along the road towards Calvary.

 

So, as we join in today’s joyful celebration, we remember the price Jesus pays to bring us his light and glory. His coming into the world confronts each of us with a decision. Simeon and Anna exemplify those who recognize and welcome him as the world’s salvation. We do well to pray for the grace likewise to receive him joyfully, in repentance and faith, as the light who lightens the nations and the glory of God’s people Israel.