FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 30, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 
Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
II Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
 
Running through today’s Scripture readings is a threefold theme of homecoming, reconciliation, and celebration. So, let’s look at these three images in turn.
 
First: homecoming. In the Old Testament reading from Joshua, the Israelites have just crossed the River Jordan into the land of Canaan, ending their forty years of wandering in the wilderness after 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.
 
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 dies of hunger, the Prodigal “comes to himself” and returns to his father’s house, where, against all expectations, he’s welcomed back with open arms: a homecoming to end all homecomings!
 
So, the first theme in today’s readings is homecoming. The second theme is reconciliation. At the beginning of the Old Testament reading, God says something rather puzzling to Joshua: “Today, I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” To understand what’s going on here, it helps to know what’s happened immediately before. During their forty years in the wilderness, the Israelites have neglected to circumcise their male offspring eight days after birth. So, upon crossing the River Jordan, God instructs them to renew the covenant that he made with Abraham by circumcising all the uncircumcised men and boys among them: a painful procedure, but necessary if they’re to inherit God’s promises to Abraham.
 
God’s words to Joshua, ““Today, I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt,” mean that the people have been reconciled to God by keeping his commandments. 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 God once promised to Abraham and his descendants.
 
And of course 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 to what God has done for us in Christ, as Saint Paul writes in Second Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
 
After homecoming and reconciliation, the third theme of today’s readings is celebration and feasting. Encamped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, the Israelites keep the Passover on its appointed day. Moreover, after they eat the 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 provision. So, when the Israelites arrive home, in 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 provision. When we arrive in heaven, as Hymn 315 tells us, “Sacraments shall cease,” just as the manna ceased. For there, in our true Promised Land, we shall all share directly 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 celebrate; for this son of mine 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 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: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”

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? For 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, the older brother cannot, at least not initially. 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 has to 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 commentators point out that Jesus deliberately leaves the parable’s ending open. He doesn’t tell us 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 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 23, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

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 occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did.” The idea is that making an example of someone serves as a warning not to repeat that person’s mistakes. This verse thus invites us to reflect on the nature of warnings and examples in general.

 

A warning is not quite the same as a threat. I’m old enough to remember when the warning first appeared on packs of cigarettes: “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 by smoking 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 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. 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! It’s for our own good, and we ignore it at our peril.

 

God doesn’t make threats. But he does issue warnings: intended for our ultimate good and, indeed, our eternal salvation.

 

In the Old Testament reading from Exodus on 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 baptism, Church membership, and participation in the Eucharist as a license to indulge in immorality and disobedience. During their forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the Hebrews incurred God’s wrath when they put the Lord to the test and defied his commandments. Never mind that they’d come through the Red Sea and tasted the heavenly manna. Having received such great gifts, they were all the more accountable for their behavior.  From those to whom much is given, much is expected. So, Saint Paul writes, “These things happened to them to serve as an example, and were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.”

 

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

 

Our Lord conveys a similar message in today’s Gospel. 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, then he’ll lose the support of the people.

 

Jesus sidesteps the trap brilliantly. Yes, those Galileans were sinners, but no worse than the rest of you. Similarly, with respect to the 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 other 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 examples 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 all who fail to repent. 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 in this holy season.

 

The underlying 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. If we end up in hell, it’s because we’ve chosen, explicitly or implicitly, to reject God. The so-called torments of hell consist of the eternal frustration of forfeiting the happiness and fulfillment that only God can give us. So, again, heaven and hell are choices that we make for ourselves. In the end, we all get what we want.

 

The examples in today’s Epistle and Gospel are thus given to help us want the right things. 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 if 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. In like manner, 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 bear fruit or be cut down. But the good news is that that day is not yet. We still have time to 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 tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out, so that you may be able to endure it.” In other words: We can do this. By God’s grace, we can do this.

SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 16, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

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, life from death.

 

The story of Abram in the Old Testament reading from Genesis illustrates this theme perfectly. In response to God’s assurance, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great,” Abram 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 fascinating supernatural phenomena, God promises Abram’s progeny the gift of land, from the River Nile to the River Euphrates.

 

The key point in understanding this story, I think, is that in a society that conceived of the afterlife chiefly as living on in and through one’s descendants, God’s words to Abram amounted to a promise of immortality. God transformed 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 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 confesses the Christian hope in new life after death: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

 

The Gospel reading requires a bit more unpacking. Jesus and his disciples have begun their final journey to Jerusalem. Some Pharisees warn him to “get way 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. He tells them 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 is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.”

 

Calling Herod a fox is quite an insult. As depicted in 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 deeper. Like jackals, foxes scavenge at the kills of larger predators, like lions and bears. So, in calling Herod a fox, our Lord is possibly likening him to a scavenger feeding on Rome’s imperial leftovers. As a client king, Herod depends on Rome’s power to sustain his position in the region. So casting Herod as a fox is really subversive speech.

 

But then, our Lord uses an even more unexpected animal image to describe himself. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

 

For our Lord’s listeners, this image of a hen gathering her brood under her wings is both 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 …”

 

The image is also startling. The Old Testament picture of finding 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 the 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 chicks may have a chance to scatter and escape. If they live, however, it will be because the hen has given her life in exchange for theirs.

 

In one of the classics of early modern political thought, Machiavelli remarks that the successful prince combines the strength of the lion with the cleverness of the fox. But 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 ways of the lion and the fox and adopt instead the way of the mother hen—the way of vulnerability and self-sacrifice.

 

These juxtaposed images of the fox and the hen convey a prophecy of our Lord’s coming suffering and death at the hands of this world’s powers, which the Bible repeatedly likens to predatory animals. The paradox, however, is that in the end the fox doesn’t have the last word. Our Lord’s prior message to Herod concluded, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.”  The first readers of Luke’s Gospel would clearly have understood the third day as alluding to the Lord’s resurrection.

 

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

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR C

March 9, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Romans 10:8b-13

Luke 4:1-13

 

This morning’s reading from the Book of Deuteronomy 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 those passages of scripture that he considered it necessary for us to know by heart.

 

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 the original Hebrew. Longer passages he was content to have us recite in English translation. And one passage he considered most important was that in today’s Old Testament reading, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down to Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number; and there he became a great nation, 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. By reciting the story of God’s mighty deeds in the past, the Israelites reaffirmed their allegiance to God, and reconstituted themselves as God’s People Israel. So, over many centuries, this annual confession of faith powerfully formed and shaped their identity as the People of God.

 

The memorization of scripture passages 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 priestly formation. But we don’t need to be in training for holy orders to benefit spiritually from committing key biblical texts to memory. So, there’s 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 one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth 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 by means of a confession of faith that involves quoting Scripture.

 

To the temptation to misuse his divine power by turning stones into bread, Jesus responds: “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” To the temptation to fall down and worship the devil in return for all the world’s kingdoms, Jesus responds, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 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, “Do 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 cites today’s Psalm, “He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,” and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” So, we need to be careful. Not all quoting of Scripture serve God’s purposes. Even so, in his three responses, Jesus demonstrates how the right use of Scripture can be a decisive shield against temptations to sin.

 

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 sabbath 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 testing. The Word of God was truly in his heart and upon his lips.

 

So much of what we do in worship today is designed to have precisely that effect: to bring the Word of God near us and put it in our hearts and upon our lips. In our Sunday Eucharist, 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 daily Morning and Evening Prayer from the Prayer Book recite the entire Psalter once a month, and read through much of the Bible every two years. This regular repetition of set prayers, psalm verses, and scripture lessons, 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.

 

This Season of Lent is a time of year when by God’s grace we recommit ourselves to resisting temptation and repenting of our sins. 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 in our identity as God’s People. So we do well to make the commitment, at the very minimum, to be here in church every Sunday, not only throughout this Lenten season, but into Eastertide, and throughout the coming year, and beyond.

ASH WEDNESDAY

March 5, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

 

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” With these words, the priest marks the congregation’s foreheads with ashes on Ash Wednesday—one of the Church’s two principal fasting days (the other being Good Friday). The ashes serve as outward signs of our repentance and our commitment to keeping a good Lent, marked by acts of penitence and self-denial; prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

 

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These words hark back to God’s words to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the third chapter of Genesis. There, after the serpent successfully tempts Adam and Eve to disobey God, God pronounces three curses: first upon the serpent, then upon the earth, and finally upon the first parents themselves.

 

To Adam in particular, God declares: “Because you have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it’ … cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life … In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground; for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

 

We don’t need to read the Genesis creation story literally to appreciate its profound symbolic truth. Somehow, something has gone terribly wrong with us and with our world. War in Ukraine and the Middle East; catastrophic weather patterns resulting from human-induced global warming.

 

None of this is God’s fault. God didn’t intend his creation to turn out this way. But human disobedience and rebellion have brought it all about. We’ve been cast out of paradise and we’ve incurred a death sentence: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

 

On Ash Wednesday, the priest has the unenviable duty of re-pronouncing this ancient curse on the faithful who come forward to receive their ashes. I remember one of the priests at my seminary telling us that after we were ordained, one of our most difficult duties would be to say these words even to our own children when we marked their foreheads with the ashes.

The traditional formula is actually, “Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.” Here, however, the word “man” really means “human being,” and signifies our common descent from Adam. In the original Hebrew, moreover, the name Adam is derived from Adamah, which means “ground” or “earth,” reminding us that in the beginning God formed the first man out of dust from the ground.

 

In the biblical understanding, moreover, Adam’s death is not part of some natural biological cycle but rather the direct consequence of his rebellion and fall. The words accompanying the imposition of ashes thus mean not merely, “You’re going to die,” but “You’re going to die because of your sin”—the sin, that is, in which we all share as members of a fallen human race in a fallen world.

 

So, the first point to get clear about our ashen crosses is that they’re markers not only of fasting and repentance, but also of sin and guilt, of mortality and death. Now, if that were the end of the story, we could only despair. It’s not the end of the story, but our primary need is to recognize the truth of our situation so that we may seek God’s forgiveness, grace, and healing. And that really is the point of today’s liturgy: to accept in all humility the truth of who we are apart from God. (The word “humility” derives from the Latin humus, earth—so that having humility means implicitly accepting the truth that we’re from the earth, destined to return there.)

 

These first words of our Lenten journey are, however, by no means the last. In his First Letter to the Corinthians (in a reading we heard two Sundays ago), Saint Paul writes explicitly of the contrast between the first Adam and Christ, the second Adam: “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.”

In a few minutes, we shall receive a cross of ash on our foreheads. But we need to remember that at our baptism we received another cross on our foreheads, not of ashes but of the oil of chrism, marked with the words: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” So, where the Lenten cross of ashes signifies our membership in Adam, the man of dust, the baptismal cross of chrism signifies our membership in Christ, the man from heaven.

 

These two signings of the cross point to our two identities: who we are in Adam, and who we are in Christ. On one hand: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” On the other hand: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Our baptism carries the promise that even after we return to the dust after the pattern of Adam, nonetheless resurrection glory awaits us after the pattern of Christ.

 

Today, then, we acknowledge our old identity as members of Adam, the man of dust. In forty days’ time we shall conclude this season of Lent at the Great Vigil of Easter by renewing our baptismal vows in celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. In between, the Church invites us to undertake a journey of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in order to reclaim and live into our new identity as members of Christ, the man from heaven. God has granted us the desire to be here at the starting point; we pray that he will likewise grant us grace to continue and finish the journey that we begin today.

LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, YEAR C

March 2, 2025

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Exodus 34:29-35

Luke 9:28-36

 

In the contemporary Episcopal Church calendar, the Gospel for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany is always that of Our Lord’s Transfiguration—in which Jesus shines with resplendent light on the mountaintop in the presence of his disciples Peter, James, and John, with the Old Testament figures Moses and Elijah making cameo appearances. So, even though the Feast of the Transfiguration proper is traditionally kept on August 6th, today is nonetheless widely known as “Transfiguration Sunday.”

 

A standard line of interpretation has grown up around the Transfiguration’s placement at this point in the liturgical year. The vision of our Lord radiating the light of heavenly splendor culminates the season after the Epiphany – the wintertime of the year when we consider the various manifestations of the Lord’s glory, beginning with his baptism in the River Jordan and his changing of water into wine at the wedding at Cana in Galilee.

 

But just as Jesus and the three apostles must come down off the mountain to continue the journey to Jerusalem—despite Peter’s expressed desire to “hold on to the experience” by building three booths—so we also must come down from the season after the Epiphany to traverse the dark valley of Lent, which leads us inexorably towards Our Lord’s passion and death on Good Friday. And so, countless sermons warn us against trying to hold on to “mountaintop experiences” and admonish us instead to take up our crosses to follow Jesus in the hard way of discipleship.

 

Now, that’s a perfectly valid line of interpretation. I’ve preached that sermon any number of times myself and will almost certainly do so again. But this morning I’d like to suggest an alternative interpretation in which the Transfiguration doesn’t stand as much in contrast to Lent as it anticipates and points to the Lenten season itself.

 

Today’s Gospel opens with Jesus taking the apostles Peter, James, and John up on a mountain to pray. This detail epitomizes a distinct pattern in our Lord’s earthly ministry. As we read the Gospels, we notice that Jesus typically alternates periods of intense activity with periods of withdrawal and solitude.

 

Most of the time, the Gospels depict our Lord traveling from town to town, preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, performing miracles, and engaging in debates with his religious critics. It’s an active ministry that requires enormous stamina.

 

But every now and then, Jesus goes off by himself to a lonely place apart. The pattern begins after his baptism in the River Jordan when he goes into the wilderness forty days and forty nights—as we shall hear in next week in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent. And it continues throughout his ministry. For example, after feeding the five thousand, Jesus goes up on a mountain to pray while his disciples set out in a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee, setting the scene for his nighttime miracle of walking to them across the water’s surface.

 

So, we see in our Lord’s ministry a pattern of alternation between what the Christian spiritual tradition calls the active life and the contemplative life. His ascending the mountain to pray at the beginning of today’s Gospel continues precisely this pattern.

 

Many spiritual writers observe that such alternation marks the Christian life as well. As baptized members of Christ’s Body the Church, we’re most of us called to alternate between going out into the world to undertake good works and returning to gather for worship as well as withdrawing into solitude and quiet for prayer. Moreover, the Christian life is marked by rhythms of alternation among different types of prayer over time. At certain times in our lives, we may find ourselves drawn to spontaneous and emotional expressions of praise, at other times to more formal liturgical prayer, or indeed to silent contemplation.

 

The cycle of the Christian year likewise takes us through a rhythm of seasons, feasts, and fasts – some joyful, some penitential, some ordinary. As finite creatures, we can’t do everything at once, so we designate distinct times and seasons, feasts and fasts, to concentrate sequentially on the manifold dimensions of our faith. Then, as we repeat the cycle year by year, we gradually build up a cumulative appreciation of the whole faith in all its multifaceted beauty and splendor.

 

Against this background, one way of looking at the Season of Lent, which begins this week on Ash Wednesday, is as an invitation not so much to come down off the mountain as to go up on it! Jesus and the three disciples need to get away after the exhausting grind of their itinerant ministry. In the Bible, moreover, the mountaintop is the characteristic meeting place with the divine—as exemplified in today’s Old Testament reading about Moses and Mount Sinai. In the same way, the Season of Lent bids us find a space set apart from the busyness of our lives, where we may encounter God.

 

For example, we might make a point of coming to one (or more) of our Friday evening Stations of the Cross. Or join in the Lenten series on the Nicene Creed that we’ve scheduled for Sunday evenings by Zoom. There are many other possibilities for disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that we might take on. The true point of all our Lenten practices is to create a space in our lives where we can be available to God; and we need to devise our Lenten rules with that objective in mind.

 

And it’s just possible that even amidst the season’s austerities—indeed precisely in and through the season’s austerities—we shall glimpse the glory of the Lord. Notice that when Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, they speak with him of his departure or exodus, which he’s to accomplish at Jerusalem; and this refers of course to his coming death on the cross and his resurrection on the third day.

 

It’s thus a mistake to draw too sharp a contrast between the Transfiguration and Calvary. They’re two sides of the same coin, the wonderful mystery of our redemption. And so, by ascending the mountain with Jesus during this upcoming season of Lent, we open ourselves up to the dual vision of darkness and light, of his suffering and his glory.